Search Results

A Lost Landscape: Ancient Settlement of Samaca and Ullujaya

David Beresford-Jones

in The Lost Woodlands of Ancient Nasca: A Case-study in Ecological and Cultural Collapse

This chapter explores the archaeology of the lower Ica Valley. This is based upon many seasons of archaeological fieldwork with the purpose of gathering different datasets with which to reconstruct ... More

This chapter explores the archaeology of the lower Ica Valley. This is based upon many seasons of archaeological fieldwork with the purpose of gathering different datasets with which to reconstruct geomorphological, ecological, and land-use changes in the Samaca and Ullujaya basins. The chapter looks at the rich archaeological record in these basins from the Early Horizon (c.750 bc) through to the Inca Late Horizon that ended abruptly with Spanish conquest in ad 1532, as revealed through detailed archaeological survey and excavation.Less

Issues, Agendas, and Archaeological Constructs

Bernard A. Knapp

in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus: Identity, Insularity, and Connectivity

The search for culturally bound artefacts, architecture, and other aspects of material culture reveals little about the lives, mindsets, identities, or social concerns of prehistoric or historical ... More

The search for culturally bound artefacts, architecture, and other aspects of material culture reveals little about the lives, mindsets, identities, or social concerns of prehistoric or historical people. This chapter discusses at length the various theoretical issues that firstly provide a framework for a social interpretation of the archaeological and documentary evidence, and secondly form central themes in the book. The issues in question are: island archaeology/history, insularity, connectivity, islandscapes, islanders' social identity, ethnicity, habitus, migration, acculturation, and hybridization. Each is defined straightforwardly and then treated, first, from a general, social science perspective, and second by considering how it has been applied, or misapplied, in the field of archaeology. Numerous archaeological examples from around the world are provided to elaborate and exemplify the discussion of each issue, and to evaluate their usefulness in attempting to understand better the Mediterranean archaeological record.Less

Broadening Our Horizons: Towards an Interdisciplinary Prehistory of the Andes

DAVID BERESFORD-JONES and PAUL HEGGARTY

in Archaeology and Language in the Andes

This chapter proposes a new and more coherent interdisciplinary prehistory of the Andes, based firstly on a long overdue re-examination of the relationships between the various regional ‘dialects’ ... More

This chapter proposes a new and more coherent interdisciplinary prehistory of the Andes, based firstly on a long overdue re-examination of the relationships between the various regional ‘dialects’ within the Quechua language family; and secondly on a more satisfactory correlation with the archaeological record. The founding principle is that language families necessarily reflect past expansive processes, whose traces should also be clear in the archaeological record. It provides a logic by which to assess correspondences between archaeological and linguistic patterns, on the three levels of when, where, and why particular language expansions occurred. In the Andes, the horizons thus offer the most natural explanations for the major Quechua and Aymara dispersals. With the Incas too late for the time-depth of either family, the Wari Middle Horizon emerges as the most plausible candidate for the first major expansion of Quechua, and not (as per traditional linguistic thinking) of the Aymara family, here tentatively associated with the Early Horizon instead.Less

Portraits in a landscape: Christian origins in northern Italy

Mark Humphries

in Communities of the Blessed: Social Environment and Religious Change in Northern Italy, AD 200-400

This chapter discusses the importance of archaeological records in tracing and interpreting the origin of Christianity in northern Italy. Archaeological records increase researchers' knowledge beyond ... More

This chapter discusses the importance of archaeological records in tracing and interpreting the origin of Christianity in northern Italy. Archaeological records increase researchers' knowledge beyond what can possibly be known from medieval sources and conciliar acta, and they also provide glimpses of various Christian communities set in the context of their immediate surroundings. By correlating archaeological records with other evidence, it appears that there were about twenty identifiable Christian communities scattered across the Po valley and in Venetia et Histria. The ‘scatter’ of these Christian communities was not uniform and their density varied from region to region, with the highest concentrations near the Adriatic Coast where they cluster along the main communication routes.Less

Function, Circumstance, and the Archaeological Record: The Elusive Past at Saints’ Rest

RUSSELL K. SKOWRONEK and KENNETH E. LEWIS

in Beneath the Ivory Tower: The Archaeology of Academia

One of the principal goals of the Saints' Rest archaeological work, conducted as a field school by the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University in the summer of 2005, was to ... More

One of the principal goals of the Saints' Rest archaeological work, conducted as a field school by the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University in the summer of 2005, was to investigate the building's function. This task seemed relatively unambiguous. This past residence hall had modern counterparts that could surely provide analogies useful in interpreting the past lifeways. However, one had to be careful in making comparisons over a century in which many things had changed. This chapter examines the building at the scale of both the larger community of which it was a part and the members of this institutional household. This helps in drawing analogies to discern the nature and distribution of boarding-hall activities in the archaeological record.Less

People in context: overview and conclusions

Anne Haour

in Rulers, Warriors, Traders, Clerics: The Central Sahel and the North Sea, 800-1500

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study which compared the rulers, warriors, traders, and clerics of medieval central Sahel and north-west Europe. It discusses the problems ... More

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study which compared the rulers, warriors, traders, and clerics of medieval central Sahel and north-west Europe. It discusses the problems associated with the use of historical and archaeological records to comprehend the past and the problems concerning the paradox between the local/immediate and the global/long term. It suggests that despite the limited evidence available, the data from the central Sahel and from north-west Europe make most sense when considered together.Less

Encountering the Wider World before the Transition to History: Chinese Ceramics in Proto-historic Taiwan (Tenth through Sixteenth Centuries)

Yi-Chang Liu and Su-Chin Wang

in Historical Archaeology of Early Modern Colonialism in Asia-Pacific: The Southwest Pacific and Oceanian Regions

Because the historical archaeology of Taiwan has, since the seventeenth century, focused on either Dutch and Spanish occupations or Chinese immigration, it hasremained unconcerned by earlier, ... More

Because the historical archaeology of Taiwan has, since the seventeenth century, focused on either Dutch and Spanish occupations or Chinese immigration, it hasremained unconcerned by earlier, proto-historic encounters with the outside world. Based on foreign ceramics, particularly those originating from China, this chapter explores the exchanges between Taiwan and other regions from the tenth to sixteenth centuries. Although the archaeological record suggests that the island of Taiwan was visited by the Chinese, the two major trade routes of the time (one from Fuzhou or Quanzhou to Ryukyu and the other connecting Quanzhou and Luzon through the Penghu Islands) may have simply skimmed past Taiwan’s coasts. The lack of desired products which might have met the demands of Chinese markets restricted Taiwan’s share of the growing maritime commerce. The “Austronesian Routes” —the multi-dimensional and complicated communication and exchange networks that prehistoric aboriginals of Taiwan had long actively participated in—were steadily fragmented during the process of expansion of the South China ceramic trade, and they were eventually segregated from world commerce systems. It is this long-term process that generates the “backwardness” of Taiwan's aboriginal societies as portrayed not only in early Chinese texts but also in Dutch and Spanish documents.Less

The Upper Paleolithic as History

John F. Hoffecker

in Landscape of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought

This chapter begins by illustrating V. Gordon Childe's role in shifting the subject of archaeology from artifacts to people. In his book Society and Knowledge, Childe presents a theory of progress ... More

This chapter begins by illustrating V. Gordon Childe's role in shifting the subject of archaeology from artifacts to people. In his book Society and Knowledge, Childe presents a theory of progress based on the observation that human societies increase their mastery of the environment by creating new technologies. The book's central theme is human creativity, which Childe used as framework for interpreting archaeological records as a historical narrative. The archaeological record of the first 40,000 years of the modern mind is referred to as the Upper Paleolithic. The chapter reviews how Upper Paleolithic history recognizes the accumulation of knowledge as the essence of the historical process. By the later stages of the period, humans came to understand more about biology, chemistry, and physics, while artifacts have progressed over time—all of which provide a record of how knowledge was developed during the Upper Paleolithic.Less

Introduction

A. Martin Byers

in Cahokia: A World Renewal Cult Heterarchy

Cahokia is a major archaeological site of the prehistoric Mississippian period in the American Bottom region of the central Mississippi Valley. It is also impressively large, but it is only the ... More

Cahokia is a major archaeological site of the prehistoric Mississippian period in the American Bottom region of the central Mississippi Valley. It is also impressively large, but it is only the largest of several other large and contemporaneous multiple-mound groupings nearby. The American Bottom is a large east-bank floodplain of the Mississippi River opposite the confluence of the Missouri River. The chronology of the American Bottom is described. The chapter also addresses the precursors of Cahokia. The first modern archaeological account of the presented Mississippian period archaeological record is Melvin Fowler's four-tiered settlement model. While each of the interpretations characterizes the Middle Mississippian social system of the American Bottom slightly differently, the differences are largely quantitative and not qualitative. The hierarchical monistic modular polity account and the heterarchical polyistic locale-centric account are then discussed. These two accounts constitute complementary opposites of the same archaeological record of the American Bottom.Less

Where Do (Hopewell) Research Answers Come From?

DeeAnne Wymer

in Hopewell Settlement Patterns, Subsistence, and Symbolic Landscapes

This chapter addresses the questions of where our ideas about the Hopewell come from and how we assess or ought to assess these ideas. The chapter claims that prehistoric archaeology is a social ... More

This chapter addresses the questions of where our ideas about the Hopewell come from and how we assess or ought to assess these ideas. The chapter claims that prehistoric archaeology is a social science and, therefore, characterizations and explanations of the archaeological record require generating and testing ideas, expressed as theories and models, that may have been and, indeed, in all likelihood was, profoundly different from any social world that has been experienced by modern-day anthropologists. The chapter feels that we are faced with a heavy burden of explaining an archaeological record while being able to rely on only some of the current anthropological theoretical knowledge since much of the patterning of this record, particularly the great earthworks and mortuary features, may have been generated by a people whose cultures have no direct analog today. The chapter concludes that scientific conclusions can be achieved through objective theoretical, methodological, interpretive, and empirical debate.Less

Excavating Jerusalem

in Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society

This chapter begins with an analysis of the practices and records of the major Jerusalem excavations, and subsequently turns to reexamine the significance of those excavations from the perspectives ... More

This chapter begins with an analysis of the practices and records of the major Jerusalem excavations, and subsequently turns to reexamine the significance of those excavations from the perspectives of larger processes of territorial transformation involved in making a new urban landscape, and the multiple uses and (re)interpretations of archaeology's objects in museums and by tour guides. Focusing on these interlocking fields of practice makes it possible to illustrate how the work of archaeology transformed truths in Jerusalem's Old City, setting new coordinates for historic and contemporary realities within which claims to the present and future have been formulated and framed.Less

The Foods They Ate

Mark S. Warner

in Eating In the Side Room: Food, Archaeology, and African American Identity

Chapter 4 explores the foods the families ate--at least in terms of foods preserved in the archaeological record. What is missing, of course, are the methods used to cook the meats, the side dishes ... More

Chapter 4 explores the foods the families ate--at least in terms of foods preserved in the archaeological record. What is missing, of course, are the methods used to cook the meats, the side dishes that accompanied them, knowing the family routines of who was busy in the kitchen and who helped with clean-up. The bones, scales, and shells we recovered, however, do have a story to tell. It is a story that places the eating habits of these two families firmly within broader African American food traditions and, to some extent, mass consumer culture.Less

Introduction

Daniel O. Sayers

in A Desolate Place for a Defiant People: The Archaeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp

This Introduction provides an overview of this volume that is focused on the archaeological record of the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia during the period between 1607 and 1860. ... More

This Introduction provides an overview of this volume that is focused on the archaeological record of the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia during the period between 1607 and 1860. The overview includes a summary of the volume’s chapters, and brief discussions of the time period of interest. Also, the social history of the swamp, several central theoretical concepts in the volume, and key finds of research including significant archaeological patterns are discussed. Finally, a brief account of the public interest and impacts of archaeological work in the swamp are provided.Less

The origins of cultural diversity

Janusz K. Kozłowski

in Origins of the Human Brain

As this chapter attempts to draw an outline on the origins of cultural diversity in prehistoric man, it aims to present hypotheses concerning the significance of the differentiation of various types ... More

As this chapter attempts to draw an outline on the origins of cultural diversity in prehistoric man, it aims to present hypotheses concerning the significance of the differentiation of various types of archaeological records and their interpretation in terms of the processes taking place in the anthropological sphere, which is the ‘living’ culture of prehistoric man. In particular, the chapter focuses on the reasons for the diversity of cultural artifacts both of those independent of humans as well as of man-dependent diversities which may have an arbitrary or symbolic character. The identification of the latter may indicate a relationship between the diversity of archaelogical remains and the emergence of ethnic groups, cultural groups, or socio-political groups.Less

A Spartan Domesticity: Household Life in La Isabela's Bohíos

Kathleen Deagan and José María Cruxent

in Columbus's Outpost among the Tainos: Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493-1498

This chapter highlights the differences of La Isabela from other fifteenth-century towns in its virtually all-male population and its utterly isolated frontier position. It was nevertheless a ... More

This chapter highlights the differences of La Isabela from other fifteenth-century towns in its virtually all-male population and its utterly isolated frontier position. It was nevertheless a community of people with many of the concerns common to households and communities everywhere: cooking and eating, household organization, health and sanitation, religious life, personal appearance, social hierarchy, leisure activities, and personal economy. What little we know about how the people at La Isabela dealt with these issues comes from the archaeological record. La Isabela's chroniclers wrote of virtually nothing about life in the town other than the starvation, sickness, and misery of its residents. While their focus is understandable, it ignored most of what was happening on a daily basis in the town, and it is the material world of La Isabela that reveals the cultural practices and texture of daily life there in the late fifteenth century.Less

Funerary Expression and Ideology in the Cogotas Culture Settlements in the Northern Meseta of the Iberian Peninsula

Miguel Ángel Arnáiz Alonso and Juan Montero Gutiérrez

in Atlantic Europe in the First Millennium BC: Crossing the Divide

This chapter discusses different theories about the presence of pit burials in the domestic archaeological contexts of Cogotas groups from a critical perspective. It provides a general description of ... More

This chapter discusses different theories about the presence of pit burials in the domestic archaeological contexts of Cogotas groups from a critical perspective. It provides a general description of the archaeological record of the Cogotas culture, particularly the funerary record, and presents the interpretative approaches that so far have been offered in relation to the funerary ritual. Finally, it suggests new lines of interpretation based essentially on the transformation of segmentary social organization, which is reflected in the archaeological record through ritual practices such as the inhumation of human bodies and immolated animal remains.Less

Destinies Converged

Kathleen Deagan and José María Cruxent

in Columbus's Outpost among the Tainos: Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493-1498

This chapter discusses the beginnings of European colonialism in America, which took place at La Isabela. Any thoughtful analysis of colonial development must take into account the contours of the ... More

This chapter discusses the beginnings of European colonialism in America, which took place at La Isabela. Any thoughtful analysis of colonial development must take into account the contours of the original Columbian venture, its failure, and the recasting of Spain's economic and social policies in the Americas in response to that failure. It has been maintained throughout this book that the trajectory of this first colony was profoundly shaped by the local experiences and actions of the non-elite residents of the colony, both Europeans and American Indians. It has also adhered to the principle that the archaeological record is often the only direct source of information about cultural practice and daily life of nonliterate participants in the colonial arena. This final chapter compares and interprets the archaeological and historical data from some Spanish sites of the very early colonial period to more precisely articulate La Isabela's role in colonial development.Less

The Houses Organized

Nicholas Cahill

in Household and City Organization at Olynthus

This chapter focuses on the diversity among the Olynthian houses, in addition to what is normal in this city. Attempts to identify more restricted women's quarters in the architecture alone have been ... More

This chapter focuses on the diversity among the Olynthian houses, in addition to what is normal in this city. Attempts to identify more restricted women's quarters in the architecture alone have been notably unsuccessful. Virtually none of the discussions of male and female space in Greek houses, however, deals in any depth with artifacts as evidence of how rooms were used, although many lament the absence of such data. A close look at the architecture and contents of houses at Olynthus reveals paradoxes at a number of levels. Although Jameson, Nevett, and others do not recognize a gynaikonitis in the archaeological record, many Olynthian houses did have specific rooms which seem to have been intended for women's activities: the kitchen-complex. The distribution of artifacts in houses at Olynthus reveals very different and much more diverse patterns of household organization.Less

Final Commentaries: A Matter of Substance, and the Substance of Matter

María Cecilia Lozada (ed.)

in Andean Ontologies: New Archaeological Perspectives

This concluding chapter reflects on the previous chapters, noting that the “ontological turn” calls for new ways of thinking about archaeological material. It notes in particular three themes that ... More

This concluding chapter reflects on the previous chapters, noting that the “ontological turn” calls for new ways of thinking about archaeological material. It notes in particular three themes that run through the various contributions: (1) using indigenous, post-conquest concepts to interrogate pre-Columbian materials; (2) rethinking the status of the human body; and (3) applying relational, or mereological, thinking to illuminate the Andean archaeological record.Less

In Feast and Famine: New Perspectives on Black Bears in the Southern Appalachians and Piedmont, AD 1000–1800

Heather A. Lapham

in Bears: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives in Native Eastern North America

This chapter reviews the archaeological record of black bears (Ursus americanus) in the southern Appalachian Mountains and adjacent Piedmont region of Virginia and North Carolina between the eleventh ... More

This chapter reviews the archaeological record of black bears (Ursus americanus) in the southern Appalachian Mountains and adjacent Piedmont region of Virginia and North Carolina between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries to better understand Native American bear procurement and use prior to and following European colonization. A contextual study of bear remains from two sites more clearly defines the role of bear in subsistence, ritual behavior, and mortuary practices, deepening our understanding of bear-human relationships. Differences among sites in geographic location, occupation period, disposal methods, and other variables suggest changing patterns of bear use through time and space. Careful consideration of bear-human relationships reveals the many roles and multiple functions that bears and their body parts had in Native North American societies, from subsistence resource, to gifted object, marketable good, ritual offering, and political symbol, among others.Less