Archaeology

4th Edition

Chapter 1

Meet Some Real Archaeologists

Outline

• Introduction• The Western World Discovers Its Past• Founders of Americanist Archaeology• Revolution in Archaeology: An

Advancing Science• Archaeology in the Twenty-First

Century• Conclusion: Archaeology's Future

First Archaeologist

• Most historians list Nabonidus, the last king of the neo-Babylonian Empire as the “first archaeologist”.

• Nabonidus rebuilt temples of ancient Babylon and searched the foundations for inscriptions of earlier kings.

• He looked for answers to questions about the past in physical residues of antiquity.

The Western World Discovers Its Past

• Fifteenth-century Italian scholar Ciriaco de’ Pizzicolli established the modern discipline of archaeology.

• He translated the Latin inscription on the triumphal arch of Trajan in Ancona, Italy.

• He devoted his life to studying ancient monuments, copying inscriptions, and promoting the study of the past.

Archaeology’s Alphabet Soup

• BC - “before Christ”– Example: 3200 BC; letters follow the

date.• AD - anno Domini, “in the year of the

Lord” – A year after the birth of Christ. Letters

are before the date - AD 1066.– The earliest AD date is AD 1. There is

no AD 0 (use 0 BC to denote that date), double numbering is not allowed.

Archaeology’s Alphabet Soup

• BP - “before present”– Many archaeologists are more

comfortable using this age estimate with AD 1950 selected as the zero point.

• A date in lower case, such as 3200 b.c. , denotes a date derived by radiocarbon methods and reflects radiocarbon years rather than calendar years.

Boucher de Perthes

• In 1836, Perthes found ancient tools and bones of extinct mammals in the gravels of the Somme River.

• He believed these proved the existence of ancient man.

• Current religious thought was that human beings had only been on earth for 6000 years, so many didn’t believe him.

• Some suggested the tools were produced by lightning, elves, or fairies.

More Discoveries

• More finds were made in the gravel pits at St. Acheul and in southern England.

• Respected British paleontologist Hugh Falconer and other scholars declared their support for Perthes’ findings in 1859.

• This began the recognition that life was more ancient than Biblical scholars argued and human culture had evolved over time.

British Archaeology

• These discoveries led to two divergent courses for British archaeology: – The problems of remote geological

time and the demonstration of long-term human evolution.

– The archaeology of ancient Greece and Rome, a field now known as classical archaeology.

Archaeology and Native Americans

• American scholars saw living Native Americans as relevant to interpretation of archaeological remains.

• Many Europeans saw Native Americans as “living fossils,” relics of times long past.

• New World archaeology became connected to the study of living Native American people.

Elements Peculiar to New World Archaeology

• Racist, anti–American Indian theories that dominated early 19th century American scholars.

• The form of antiquity legislation in North America.

• The fact that many Native Americans still do not trust conventional Western scholarship to interpret their past.

Branches of Archaeology

• Classical archaeology - Studies civilizations of the Mediterranean, such as Greece and Rome, and the Near East.

• Ethnology - Deals with the comparative study of cultures.

• Americanist archaeology - Evolved in association with anthropology in the Americas; it is practiced throughout the world.

C. B.Moore: Genteel Antiquarian

• At age 40, Moore was introduced to American archaeology and transformed himself from gentleman socialite to gentleman archaeologist.

• Moore was an antiquarian, more interested in objects of the past than in reconstructing the lives of the people who produced them or in explaining the past.

Artifact

• Any movable object that has been used, modified, or manufactured by humans.

• Artifacts include stone, bone, and metal tools; beads and other ornaments; pottery; artwork; religious and sacred items.

Midden

• Refuse deposit resulting from human activities, generally consisting of sediment.

• Food remains such as charred seeds, animal bone, and shell; and discarded artifacts.

Nels Nelson: America’s First “Working” Archaeologist

• Nelson learned largely by experience. • His first responsibility was to record what

he saw, then to conduct a preliminary excavation where warranted, and finally to offer tentative inferences to be tested by subsequent investigators.

• Nelson typified the early 20th century archaeologists, who strongly believed that archaeology should be brought to the public.

A. V. “Ted” Kidder: Founderof Anthropological

Archaeology• Helped shift Americanist archaeology

toward more anthropological purposes.• Maintained archaeology should be

viewed as “that branch of anthropology which deals with prehistoric peoples,” a doctrine that has become firmly embedded and expanded in today’s Americanist archaeology.

James A. Ford: A Master of Time

• Refined techniques to place the stages of pottery development in sequential order, a process known as seriation.

• By assuming that cultural styles change gradually, archaeologists can chart a style through time and across space.

• Ford’s seriation technique established the baseline prehistoric chronology still used in the American Southeast.

Walter W. Taylor: Moses in the Wilderness

• Combined lines of evidence to create a picture of what the past was like and to discuss the functions of artifacts, features, and sites.

• Urged archaeologists to forsake temples for garbage dumps.

• Proposed that archaeologists quantify their data and test hypotheses that would refine their impressions.

Culture History

• The kind of archaeology practiced in the early to mid-twentieth century.

• It “explains” differences or changes over time in artifact frequencies by positing the diffusion of ideas between neighboring cultures or the migration of a people who had different mental templates for artifact styles.

Trait List

• A simple listing of a culture’s material and behavioral characteristics, for example, house and pottery styles, foods, degree of nomadism, particular rituals, or ornaments.

• Trait lists were used primarily to trace the movement of cultures across a landscape and through time.

Conjunctive Approach

• As defined by Walter W. Taylor, using functional interpretations of artifacts and their contexts to reconstruct daily life of the past.

Lewis R. Binford:Visionary with a

Message• Binford argued that archaeologists

should acquire data that make samples more representative of the populations from which they were drawn.

• He urged archaeologists to look beyond the individual site to the region so entire cultural systems could be reconstructed.

New Archaeology

• An approach to archaeology that arose in the 1960s emphasizing the understanding of underlying cultural processes and the use of the scientific method.

• Today’s version of the “new archaeology” is sometimes called processual archaeology.

Kathleen A. Deagan:Archaeology Comes of

Age• A curator at the Florida Museum of

Natural History, she specializes in Spanish colonial studies.

• She is concerned with the people and culture behind the artifact and with explaining the social and cultural behaviors that she reconstructs from archaeology.

History of Archaeology: A Summary

• In North America, archaeology began as the pastime of the curious and the wealthy, who lacked formal training.

• Archaeology as a formal discipline dates to the mid nineteenth century and was characterized by a scientific approach and rigorous methods of excavation and data collection.

History of Archaeology: A Summary

• By the 1950s, archaeology began to move beyond description and chronology to focus on the reconstruction of past lifeways.

• This continued in the 1960s, with the addition of efforts to employ a scientific approach aimed at discovering universal laws and to develop theories to explain the human history uncovered by archaeology.

Archaeology Today

• Today, archaeology covers both prehistoric and historic archaeology.

• The number of archaeologists has grown dramatically since the 1960s.

• The field represents many different theoretical perspectives and acknowledges the need to communicate results to the public.

Quick Quiz

1. Fifteenth-century Italian scholar Ciriaco de’ Pizzicolli is considered the “first archaeologist”.

A. TrueB. False

Answer: B. False

• Most historians list Nabonidus, the last king of the neo-Babylonian Empire as the “first archaeologist”.

2. The earliest AD date is AD 0.A. TrueB. False

Answer: B. False

• The earliest AD date is AD 1. Use 0 BC to denote AD 0.

3. Which of the following is an example of an artifact:

A. Metal toolsB. Beads and other ornamentsC. PotteryD. Religious and sacred itemsE. All of the above

Answer: E

• Metal tools, beads and other ornaments, pottery and religious and sacred items are examples of artifacts.