Archaeological Method & Theory

Magnetic survey data presented as filled contour maps with a non-linear scale reveals the characteristic dipolar signal from iron smelting furnaces. High resolution data, from 10cm spaced surveys, can be modelled mathematically to recover the angles of inclination and declination, which can be used to estimate the last date of firing of a furnace.
The techniques are illustrated with maps of 4 furnaces from prehistoric and medieval sites in north Wales and the results are compared to conventional archaeomagnetic determinations. The potential use of these techniques to any burnt features, such as hearths or small ovens, is discussed.

Mit 21 lokalen, regionalen und überregionalen Studien bietet der Sammelband einen Querschnitt durch die Erforschung frühmittelalterlicher Zentren und Siedlungsstrukturen vornehmlich des bayerisch-ostfränkischen Raumes und benachbarter Landschaften. Das thematische Spektrum reicht dabei von überregional bedeutsamen Zentren wie Pfalzen und Bischofssitzen zu solchen ländlicher Gesellschaften, z.B. Mühlen oder Pfarrkirchen. Der zeitliche Rahmen spannt sich von der Spätantike bis in das beginnende Hochmittelalter.  Im Mittelpunkt des Interesses stehen Kriterien für Zentralität, methodische Probleme wie die Abgrenzung von Zentrum und Peripherie, Ursachen für strukturellen Wandel von Zentren sowie die räumliche Verteilung zentraler Funktionen innerhalb überörtlicher zentraler Räume.

Historical Archaeology in Central Europe contains 25 articles that present archaeological analyses and interpretations on a variety of subjects from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, addressing the topics of Religion, Conflict, and Death; Technology, Industry, and Modernization; and Landscapes and Cities in Change. The articles collected for the purpose of this book offer a broad variety of topics and provide examples from urban archaeology, landscape archaeology, underwater archaeology, industrial archaeology, battlefield archaeology, aviation archaeology, Ottoman archaeology, and material culture studies. Sites and case studies presented range chronologically from the 15th to the 20th century. Furthermore, the volume presents summaries of the status and theoretical foundations of a historical archaeology in the various central European countries and offers the perspectives from each. The result is a volume that summarizes the state of historical archaeology in the region and lays a foundation for current and future generations of Central European archaeologists to build upon.

Historical Archaeology in Central Europe contains 25 articles that present archaeological analyses and interpretations on a variety of subjects from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, addressing the topics of Religion, Conflict, and Death; Technology, Industry, and Modernization; and Landscapes and Cities in Change. The articles collected for the purpose of this book offer a broad variety of topics and provide examples from urban archaeology, landscape archaeology, underwater archaeology, industrial archaeology, battlefield archaeology, aviation archaeology, Ottoman archaeology, and material culture studies. Sites and case studies presented range chronologically from the 15th to the 20th century. Furthermore, the volume presents summaries of the status and theoretical foundations of a historical archaeology in the various central European countries and offers the perspectives from each. The result is a volume that summarizes the state of historical archaeology in the region and lays a foundation for current and future generations of Central European archaeologists to build upon.

Draft final completed section of the South Yorkshire Archaeological Research Framework on behalf of Historic England and the South Yorkshire Archaeology Service. The final published version will be in the form of an interactive website hosted by Historic England that will feature all of the regional archaeological resource assessments and research frameworks, which should be going online in 2020. I would like to thank Andrew Lines, Jim McNeil, Zac Nellist, and Dinah Saich of the South Yorkshire Archaeology Service; for approaching me to see if I would be interested in producing this document. The comments made during and after the day workshop on the Iron Age and Roman periods by the many colleagues who attended were extremely useful, and where possible have been incorporated within this document.

This article examines the productivity of agriculture at the Postclassic polity of Xaltocan, Mexico. Employing multiple lines of data (remote sensing, artifactual, ecofactual, chronological, demographic, historic, ethnographic, and environmental), it reconstructs the potential productivity of an integrated raised field, chinampa system that surrounded the polity. This exercise reveals that the system was capable of producing a sizeable caloric surplus above the needs of the kingdom's estimated total population and the number of laborers necessary to maintain full production. To situate the processes related to agricultural production, the paper considers how farmers' strategies were articulated with multiple institutions. Increased integration between political, social, and household institutions possibly fostered residents' incorporation into the body politic and provided mechanisms to finance the political economy. Such integration and dependency fractured, however, when Xaltocan was conquered.

For the past decade, several archaeologists have advocated the development of middle-range theory as a way to give objective meaning to the archaeological record (e.g., Bettinger 1987; Binford 1977, 1983b; Thomas 1983, 1989; Torrence 1986). They argue that we must translate the static archaeological record into behaviorally dynamic terms by documenting causal linkages between relevant behaviors and their static material by-products.
This is accomplished, they argue, by making observations today that establish signature patterns allowing the unambiguous recognition of particular dynamics from their static by-products, and inferring past dynamics from identification of signature patterns in the archaeological record. Further, it has been emphasized that the operations and products of middle-range theory must remain logically independent of the general theory we use to explain the past to avoid automatically confirming our ideas about the past through a tautology. This approach to middle-range research is flawed in two major respects. First, the justification of inferences relies on the establishment of universal behavioral laws and unambiguous signature patterns to validate the use of uniformitarian assumptions, neither of which can be accomplished in the manner proposed. Second, the tautological relationship between description and explanation is not only an unavoidable, but also a necessary aspect of science. Solutions to these problems lie in using the physical characteristics of the archaeological record itself as our source of knowledge about the past rather than translating the record into untestable behavioral reconstructions.

Although it is now commonplace for archaeologists to study use-alteration patterns on ceramics, the same cannot be said of one of the most ubiquitous classes of hunter-gatherer artifacts, fire-cracked rocks (FCR). It can be shown, however, that many of the same methods and theories applied to the study of cooking ceramics are also relevant to the investigation of rocks used as heating elements. Because use alteration analyses of FCR are so scarce, I describe a range of attributes with the goal of helping researchers identify use alterations (e.g., sooting, reddening, various fracturing patterns) on lithic artifacts from sites worldwide and evaluate their potential function in various cultural practices. These attributes are also outlined in order to create a standardized terminology for describing FCR use-alteration patterns. I discuss my analysis of FCR from three Late Archaic sites (Duck Lake, 913, and 914) on Grand Island in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, followed by an interpretation of their cooking contexts, as a case study. The results indicate great intersite variability among FCR characteristics, cooking methods, and cooking facilities (earth oven, stone boiling, and rock griddle). This use alteration analysis can be applied in archaeological contexts worldwide where similar materials are recovered.

This book investigates what has constituted notions of "archaeological heritage" from colonial times to the present. It includes case studies of sites in South and Southeast Asia with a special focus on Angkor, Cambodia. The contributions, the subjects of which range from architectural and intellectual history to historic preservation and restoration, evaluate historical processes spanning two centuries which saw the imagination and production of "dead archaeological ruins" by often overlooking living local, social, and ritual forms of usage on site.

Case studies from computational modelling in archaeology discuss a comparable paradigmatic change from a mere simulation of supposedly dead archaeological building material to an increasing appreciation and scientific incorporation of the knowledge of local stakeholders. This book seeks to bring these different approaches from the humanities and engineering sciences into a transdisciplinary discussion.

Objects in graves have been a traditional focus of burial archaeology. Conventional interpretations of their meanings revolved around religion (equipment for the hereafter, Charon’s Penny), legal concepts (inalienable possessions) and social structure (status display, ostentatious destruction of wealth). An interdisciplinary perspective drawing on archaeological literature, anthropological evidence and sociological theory widens the range of possible interpretations. Textual sources of the Roman and early medieval periods highlight the importance of gift-giving to the deceased, but also to deities. Anthropology shows the importance of the disposal of polluted items in the grave, and of protecting the living. Ethnographic cases also underpin theoretical considerations concerning the role of biographical representations (metaphors) during the funeral, as well as emphasizing the desire and the need to forget the dead. Textual and archaeological evidence from the Early Middle Ages suggest that these motives were not sharply separated, but that many of them played a role during any one funeral. In addition, motives changed over time, and the associations of particular grave-goods (such as coins or weapons) varied across time and geographical regions. Above all, multiplicity of messages and variability of meanings characterized the deposition of objects in early medieval graves.

Este libro plantea una síntesis de uno de los temas metodológicos que más desarrollo ha conocido en la Arqueología de los últimos treinta años. Desde que en la década de los 1960 la disciplina arqueológica superase definitivamente el esquema que mantenía al artefacto como objetivo epistemológico principal y a la excavación como único vehículo capaz de alcanzarlo, las teorías, métodos y técnicas de reconocimiento y análisis territorial se han expandido de una forma acelerada. Ello ha creado un ámbito de estudio y práctica profesional de la Arqueología, del cual, a pesar de su pujanza y de la diversidad y complejidad de procedimientos técnicos y nociones teóricas que aparecen implicadas, todavía no se había realizado una verdadera síntesis en lengua española. Este manual ofrece a los jóvenes estudiantes y practicantes de la Arqueología actual un tratamiento riguroso, pero accesible, de los principios aplicados tanto en la detección y caracterización de sitios arqueológicos en el territorio actual (prospección de superficie, prospección geofísica, empleo de imágenes captadas por plataformas aéreas y espaciales, cartografía arqueológica), como en la interpretación de las pautas de aprovechamiento, organización y percepción del territorio que se dieron entre las sociedades del Pasado.

This paper aims at highlighting a methodological flaw in current biblical archaeology, which became apparent as a result of recent research in the Aravah's Iron Age copper production centers. In essence, this flaw, which cuts across all schools of biblical archaeology, is the prevailing, overly simplistic approach applied to the identification and interpretation of nomadic elements in biblical-era societies. These elements have typically been described as representing only one form of social organization, which is simple and almost negligible in historical reconstructions. However, the unique case of the Aravah demonstrates that the role of nomads in shaping the history of the southern Levant has been underestimated and downplayed in the research of the region, and that the total reliance on stone-built archaeological features in the identification of social complexity in the vast majority of recent studies has resulted in skewed historical reconstructions. Recognizing this "architectural bias" and understanding its sources have important implications on core issues in biblical archaeology today, as both "minimalists" and "maximalists" have been using stone-built architectural remains as the key to solving debated issues related to the geneses of Ancient Israel and neighboring polities (e.g., "high" vs. "low" Iron Age chronologies), in which-according to both biblical accounts and external sources-nomadic elements played a major role.

This paper reviews the earliest empirical evidence for seafaring, leading to the exploits of Homo erectus in two world regions. This leads to the explanation of the rationale of replication experiments intended to establish the minimum conditions under which demonstrated maritime colonisations in the Lower Palaeolithic could have succeeded.

The 'Past Sense' Project (PSP) brings together contemporary and historical archaeology, and psychotherapy, to consider the significance of material culture within contexts of domestic and sexual abuse, past and present. PSP will pilot a range of approaches to explore how collaborative community encounters with historic landscapes and buildings, artefacts, and other historical sources might enhance the process of identity (re-)construction and trauma management, for survivors of childhood and adulthood violence and abuse.
Methods include experimental auto- and co-archaeologies that integrate personal narratives and reflections within analyses of data obtained from archaeological surface- and building surveys, and auto-archive material. This will involve considering the (re)construction of meanings for material culture in relation to memory and identity, through studies of artefact biographies, and attending to the production and appropriation of transitional objects, through autobiographical studies.
We will also test the incorporation of recording, analysis, and interpretation of archaeological and other historical material (including written evidence, oral histories, photography, and artistic images) from earlier periods (particularly the 19th - mid 20th centuries) within community work – potentially involving creative elements (such as storytelling and artwork). In doing so, we will explore how engagement with material relating to domestic life in the more distant past (where appropriate, integrating historical material relating to domestic and sexual violence) might enable traumatised individuals and groups to confront experiences of violence in the more recent past. By examining diachronically continuous and changing abusive practices, and socio-political responses to abuse, we aim to foster recognition of dominant ideologies, and the practical, detrimental, effects of structural gender inequality. Emphasising acts of resistance to violence in and around the home, we endeavour to highlight personal and collective achievements that might reinforce and augment both a sense of self, and of community, for survivors of abuse.

This paper discusses territorial markers in the Late Mesolithic based on ethnoarchaeological data as well as findings from modern social psychology. On the basis of the archaeological evidence from Southern Scandinavia, it is suggested that Late Mesolithic graves, which often appear to have had visual markers above ground and probably, in some instances, were ‘air graves’ located in trees or on platforms, were used as the primary territorial markers, whereas coeval shell middens played a role as site markers at archaeological sites where molluscs were collected.

On the basis of the evidence from the mouth of the River Muge in Portugal, it is suggested that the shell middens here may have constituted the primary territorial markers.

In general, the picture that emerges is of aggressive, territorial and non-egalitarian Late Mesolithic societies, in good accordance with the skeletal record .

Celem tekstu jest podkreślenie biograficznego charakteru kultury  materialnej. To znaczy, rzeczy i krajobrazy również mają swoje biografie, historie życia, które łączą się z historiami konkretnych jednostek. Za studium przypadku posłuży carska aluminiowa manierka z czasów I wojny światowej odnaleziona na terenie byłego obozu jenieckiego w Czersku.

The Bremer Site lies along the shores of Spring Lake in southeastern Minnesota, and excavations in the 1950s uncovered evidence of Woodland and Mississippian occupation phases. In 2011, a new program of systematic survey and excavation began to better understand cultural patterning and diachronic changes at the Bremer Site. The investigations came to include microarcheaological methods, including sediment micromorphology and soil chemistry. No element has received more archaeological attention than P, which can reflect human and animal waste, organic refuse, burials, and ash. There has been interest in integrating soil chemistry into the workflow of fieldwork and in the potential of portable analytical instruments to yield data within the timeframe of an excavation season. The last few years have seen the rise and proliferation of portable XRF (pXRF) instruments in archaeological studies. The newest generation of pXRF instruments is able to quantify P at low concentrations, and our focus here is developing effective methods to do so in archaeological soils and sediments. Using sediments from the Bremer Site, we evaluate two preparation techniques in order to find which one best balances analytical quality and preparation time. To analyze as many specimens as possible during an excavation season, it is desirable to identify adequate preparation methods as well as the smallest number of analyses needed to attain reasonable confidence levels. Regarding repeatability, we show that, to attain P values with a standard error better than 10% or 20% of the mean, one or two analyses per specimen are sufficient in a majority of cases. Regarding repro-ducibility, we compare the pXRF data to two independent ICP-OES datasets. Ultimately, these tests aid in establishing methods that enable archaeologically significant pXRF analyses of soil P concentrations, even when working far from an analytical laboratory.

The nineteenth century was a time in which the Mashantucket and Eastern Pequots committed to their identity a new centrality of reservation lands. The period also saw their autonomy and sovereignty curtailed by a colonially imposed overseer system.  With the granting of reservation lands the colony of Connecticut also assigned each tribe with a white male caretaker with the paternalistic duty of managing their financial and subsistence wellbeing.  Through an analysis of their daily recordings this paper seeks to explore the extent to which the services of two such overseers were utilized by reservation occupants. 

The results of this research reveal two groups who shared similarities but also differed in their approach to subsistence and in their daily mitigations of reservation life.  Further analysis offers evidence for a critique of our ability as historians and archaeologists to essentialize either group into a cohesive “tribe” at all, as interfamily variation at both reservations seems to contradict patterns garnered from the communities at large.

"Earlier provisional title was "Archaeology, Tourism, Museum...."

"This chapter is divided into two distinct sections that are positioned in a point-counterpoint structure of dialogue. These two position statements invoke the etymological meanings of the word essay, to attempt, put to the test, trial, to act out, to explore, travel, and travail. The first is an historical analysis written in the third person by an anthropologist whose expertise includes the ethnography of archaeology and the anthropology of tourism. The second is a counterpoint commentary written in the first person by an anthropologist whose specializations include Pre-Columbian and historical archaeology. Both of us have significant research experience in same area of the Maya world in Yucatán, México. From these two differing vantage points, we chart our perspectives on the relationship between archaeology and tourism in terms of the problems of exploration, protection, and exploitation.
In the first section, Castañeda takes an historical approach to the emergence of archaeology in the institutional context of the modern museum. He essays an analytical and theoretical manifesto about the deep, intimate interconnections between tourism and archaeology as revealed through an understanding of the museum. In his historical analysis of the role of archaeological representation in the museum, he identifies the sociological creation of universal heritage. He theorizes a notion of the universal citizen-heir as the implied benefactor of this universal heritage. In the second section, Mathews elaborates a commentary on this historical analysis of archaeology, tourism, heritage and the museum. Specifically, she counter-argues and assesses Castañeda theoretical and analytical claims through the use of archaeology and tourism at sites that are not postcard worthy. Together these two “attempts” grapple with the historical and contemporary interconnections between archaeology and tourism. Together we put to the test our typical assumptions about the ethics of archaeologists, tourists, and tourism promoters in the contemporary contexts in which we are now beginning to ask how and why archaeology and tourism are interwoven phenomena in today’s world.""

Eine kontrovers diskutierte, sehr junge Theorie-Strömung ist die "Symmetrische Archäologie". Unter diesem Begriff wird eine fundamentale Kritik von Grundannahmen archäologischer Forschung zusammengefasst. Anstatt wie üblich von der strikten Trennung von Menschen und Dingen, Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Forschung und Gesellschaft auszugehen, denkt die "Symmetrische Archäologie" in komplexen Netzwerken, Verknüpfungen und Symmetrien durch Raum und Zeit.