Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory最新文献

Archaeologists all over the world face problems regarding complexity and disorganization. Whether surveying, excavating, or doing laboratory analysis, the nature of the evidence of prehistoric societies is fragmented and incomplete. On a global and very general basis, the older the site, the greater the fragmentation, the more the missing data, and the greater the disorganization that the archaeologist must navigate to understand the past. Of course, there are notable exceptions. Most archaeologists consider the topic from the specificity of a particular time, a particular place, and a particular society. In this paper, it is considered in its most non-particular and general format. In order to do so, the paper creates an artificial archaeological region that is surveyed and excavated to a greater and lesser extent and analyzed with a variety of statistical and graphic evaluations. It concludes that when all other things are equal, increasing fragmentation causes far more disorganization and increases complexity than does missing data. Thus, fragmentation is a far more important problem for archaeological interpretation than relatively small amounts of missing data.

Abstract

Geographic information systems (GIS) has been used in archaeology for four decades, and colloquially appears to have become a main tool in the geospatial aspects of archaeological practice. In this paper, we examine temporal trends in the use and/or mention of GIS in archaeological publications (books and journal articles), conference presentations, and websites. We gathered data through keyword searches and with formal sampling surveys and conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses to characterize the changing nature and intensity of GIS use in archaeology over time, and then contextualize these trends with a narrative history of archaeological GIS. We show how archaeological GIS-use has grown from a few early adopters of the 1980s, through a slow initial integration phase in the 1990s, to a set of two major expansions in the 2000s and 2010s. While we find that applied use of GIS has grown to the point where it can be considered ubiquitous—if not completely universal—in the discipline, we also discovered that the major focus in archaeological GIS advancement is methodological rather than theoretical. We identify five roadblocks that we believe have hampered the development of a theory-rich archaeological GIS: (1) deficiencies in the archaeological GIS education model, (2) over-reliance on commercial software, (3) technical/technological barriers, (4) gaps in acceptance of GIS, and (5) the perception of GIS as “just a tool.” We offer initial suggestions for ways forward to mitigate the effects of these roadblocks and build a more robust, theoretically sophisticated relationship with GIS in archaeology.

Over the last several decades, the application of aDNA and strontium isotope analyses on archaeologically recovered human remains has provided new avenues for the investigation of mobility in past societies. Data on human mobility can be valuable in the reconstruction of prehistoric residential patterns and kinship systems, which are at the center of human social organization and vary across time and space. In this paper, we aim to contribute to our understanding of mobility, residence, and kinship patterns in late Prehistoric Iberia (c. 3300–1400BC) by providing new strontium data on 44 individuals from the site of Humanejos (Parla, Madrid). The study presented here is multi-proxy and looks at these new data by interweaving biological, chronological, and archaeological information. This analysis found that 7/44 individuals buried at Humanejos could be identified as non-local to the necropolis. Although more men (n = 5) than women (n = 2) were found in the non-local category, and more non-local individuals were identified in the pre-Bell Beaker (n = 5) than in Bell Beaker (n = 1) or Bronze Age (n = 1), we find no statistically significant differences concerning sex or time period. This contrasts with other archaeological datasets for late prehistoric Europe which suggest higher female mobility, female exogamy, and male-centered residential patterns were common. At Humanejos, we have also identified one non-local female whose exceptional Beaker grave goods suggest she was an individual of special status, leading to additional questions about the relationships between gender, mobility, and social position in this region and time period.

Archaeological studies of early weaponry have relied for decades on ethnographic parallels—whether from ethnohistorical accounts, ethnographic literature, or from objects studied in museum collections. While such accounts and collected objects provided key data in the past, including of morphometrics and functionality, few studies have explored the quality of such data. In this paper, we critically assess a dominant theoretical paradigm, namely the utility of ethnographic collections to assess Pleistocene archaeological material. Our focus is how ethnographic spear morphometrics are used to propose delivery methods of archaeological weapons. We discuss the archaeological significance of early spears, and the role that ethnography has played in interpreting them. We provide new morphometric data of ethnographic wooden spears, which have been used analogically to assess the earliest archaeological hunting tools. We systematically collected data from ethnographic collections of wooden spears in five museums in the UK and Australia including mass, length, diameters and point of balance, alongside any recorded information on provenance and use. Older datasets, as well as the data in this paper, are limited due to collection bias and a lack of detailed museum records. By subjecting the new data to statistical analyses, we find that with a few exceptions morphometrics are not reliable predictors of delivery as thrusting or hand-thrown spears (javelins). Prevalent hypotheses linking variables such as mass, tip design, or maximum diameter with delivery are unsupported by our results. However, the descriptive statistics provided may remain useful as a means of comparative data for archaeological material. We conclude that using simple morphometrics to parse weapon delivery has had a drag effect on forming new and interesting hypotheses about early weapons.

Abstract

Accurately reconstructing past human population dynamics is critical for explaining major patterns in the human past. Demand for demographic proxies has driven hopeful interest in the “dates-as-data” approach, which models past demography by assuming a relationship between population size, the production of dateable material, and the corpus of radiocarbon dates produced by archaeological research. However, several biases can affect assemblages of dates, complicating inferences about population size. One serious but potentially addressable issue centers on landscape taphonomy — the ways in which geologic processes structure the preservation and recovery of archaeological sites and/or materials at landscape scales. Here, we explore the influence of landscape taphonomy on demographic proxies. More specifically, we evaluate how well demographic proxies may be corrected for taphonomic effects with either a common generalized approach or an empirically based tailored approach. We demonstrate that frequency distributions of landforms of varying ages can be used to develop local corrections that are more accurate than either global corrections or uncorrected estimates. Using generalized scenarios and a simulated case study based on empirical data on landform ages from the Coso Basin in the western Great Basin region, we illustrate the way in which landscape taphonomy predictably complicates “dates-as-data” approaches, propose and demonstrate a new method of empirically based correction, and explore the interpretive ramifications of ignoring or correcting for taphonomic bias.

Early Southern Mesopotamia shows a complex history of expansion of (irrigated) farming in relation to urban developments and changing landscapes. As a first step to study expanding irrigated farming system, an irrigation-related agent-based model was developed to explore farm(land)s and irrigation systems in relation to decision-making processes, both of farms and their farmlands (an agriculture unit) and collective decision-making processes for irrigation system management—especially sharing water between farms. The decision-making processes include options to move farms, expand the system, or start a new system, as these would be options available for Mesopotamian farmers as well. In this text, we report how model parameters contribute to the generation of various patterns of yields and expansion of farms and system. Additionally, the Gini coefficient (based on yields) is applied to estimate levels of inequality among farmers. Our results show how (1) human decision-making determines the level of influence of and benefits for farms, as well as the overall irrigation system; (2) Gini values effectively capture the degree of inequality in yields among farms based on water availability; and (3) our model is a suitable base for further study, by incorporating additional agents into the irrigation system and expanding the spatial–temporal scales of the irrigated landscapes, to reach a more comprehensive understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of irrigation systems in Southern Mesopotamia.

Today, mercury is a matter of concern for health and environmental authorities across western countries, and legislation has been passed and programs have been implemented for its total elimination from human activity. But this was not always the case: mercury and its compounds have been highly appreciated and used since remote times all over the world with very diverse purposes ranging from decorative, medicinal, metallurgical and symbolic. In particular, cinnabar (HgS, mercury sulfide), a mineral of an intense red color, has been considered in many cultures as an exotic raw material, highly valued and associated with the elites and sacred practice. In this paper, we examine one such case, set almost 5000 years ago, in Copper Age Iberia, by investigating mercury exposure through human bone. The study presented here includes a total of 170 samples from 70 different human individuals and 22 animals (plus one soil sample) from the Copper Age mega-site of Valencina, south-western Spain. It is the largest ever single-site study of exposure to mercury based on human bone in combination with cinnabar use. Abnormally high values are recorded in some individuals dating between 2900 and 2650 BC, especially in those buried in remarkable tombs belonging to the social elite of this period, but high levels of mercury are also recorded in the rest of the population. Three lines of interpretation are used to explain these results, including the manipulation of cinnabar (grinding it into powder, mixing it with other substances, using it for the decoration of objects, buildings and the human body), its direct consumption through ingestion or inhalation by a ‘special’ social group and the contribution of environmental factors. Based on the currently available evidence, which is carefully reviewed, Valencina represents the most intense and prolonged case of exposure to mercury recorded in human history, which makes it an important site to assess the long and complex history of use of this substance.

The main objective of this paper is to develop quantitative measures for describing the diversity, homogeneity, and similarity of archaeological data. It presents new approaches to characterize the relationship between archaeological assemblages by utilizing entropy and its related attributes, primarily diversity, and by drawing inspiration from ecology. Our starting premise is that diachronic changes in our data provide a distorted reflection of social processes and that spatial differences in data indicate cultural distancing. To investigate this premise, we adopt a parsimonious approach for comparing assemblage profiles employing and comparing a range of (Hill) diversities, which enable us to exploit different aspects of the data. The modelling is tested on two seemingly large datasets: a Late Bronze Age Cretan dataset with circa 13,700 entries (compiled by PG); and a 4^th millennium Western Tripolye dataset with circa 25,000 entries (compiled by AD). The contrast between the strongly geographically and culturally heterogeneous Bronze Age Crete and the strongly homogeneous Western Tripolye culture in the Southern Bug and Dnieper interfluve show the successes and limitations of our approach. Despite the seemingly large size of our datasets, these data highlight limitations that confine their utility to non-semantic analysis. This requires us to consider different ways of treating and aggregating assemblages, either as censuses or samples, contingent upon the degree of representativeness of the data. While our premise, that changes in data reflect societal changes, is supported, it is not definitively confirmed. Consequently, this paper also exemplifies the limitations of large archaeological datasets for such analyses.

Archaeological palimpsests are depositional units where the remains of various human occupations have been mixed for hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years. They create various sets of analytical scales that archaeologists must deal with routinely. In this paper, I argue that sociocultural processes derived from a communities of practice framework — scaffolding, guided participation, and continuity through shared activities — can be used by archaeologists to describe a palimpsest’s lithic assemblage, to differentiate its patterns, and to interpret their meaning. These processes must first be remapped onto an ecological approach to skill before they can be expanded onto new sets of scales, however. I ground my work at the site of La Martre (Quebec, Canada), a nexus of fifteen marine terraces spread over 500,000 m². Slow depositional processes and plowing have mixed its lithic remains to create a 10,000-year-wide depositional unit with poor chronological and spatial control. Fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 1999 sampled 0.03% of its total surface. Most of its 2111 tools and 207,506 flakes were uncovered in its 40-cm-thick plowzone. I build methodological tools — dispersion surfaces, skill combinatorics, and extended skilled reduction sequences — to describe a small subset (N=93) from one of La Martre’s loci (16-west). I describe ten extended skilled reduction sequences showing various degrees of skill and knapping methods. Concepts of scaffolding, guided participation and continuity through shared activities are then used to interpret these patterns.