Time and Culture in the Northwest: The Field of Archaeology

The Field of Archaeology

Goals and concepts of archaeology
1. Chronicle the past
  1. The rise of American archaeology during the late 19th and early 20th century
  2. American archaeology closely associated with cultural anthropology
    1. Mid-nineteenth century paradigm
      1. Evolution
        
        Universal stages of cultural development
        
        Natural and necessary order
    2. Turn of the century
      1. Strong reaction against "unilinear evolution"
        
        Racist and arm chair
      2. New paradigm "Historical Particularism"
        
        Associated with Franz Boas
        
        Every culture has its own history, no universal stages
        
        Each cultures history and character has to be analyzed on its own terms; fieldwork is an essential component
      3. In archaeology paradigm became known as "Cultural Historical" archaeology
        
        Frontier expeditions and "vanishing places and people"
        
        Many more people doing began archaeology, collected lots more data
        
        Early salvage archaeology and academic expansion
      4. Cultural historical approach involves gathering data and looking for patterns in the data in order to make statements about the people who made and used the items
        
        Required looking at ways to systematically and consistently organize and categorize objects in order to describe the unwritten history; how do you do this with archaeological data such as artifacts and features?
        
        Organize artifacts into Types
        
        A Type should represent what would have been the normative rules governing the manufacture of objects by some group of people who shared ideas because they lived in the same area at the same time
        
        Types are used to define Phases, periods, etc.
        
        A Phase is sort of equivalent to the concept of an ethnic group, ie., people who have similar
        
        Technology
        
        Social organization
        
        Belief system
        
        Language
        
        Regular interaction, ie., consider themselves related to one another but not to others
        
        It is not easy to develop Types and Phases
        
        Coin exercise

The coin exercise was adapted from an idea suggested by Rosemary Joyce at one of the MATRIX workshops. The exercise consists of showing the class a handful of coins. The coins include a modern penny, nickel, dime, and quarter, a late 19th century nickel, and a Sacajawea dollar. One of the students is asked to set aside his or her knowledge of the coins and to group or order them by physical attributes such as color, size, and shape, the qualities often used to order artifacts. The grouping inevitably results in the penny being grouped with the dollar, and the dime being placed before the nickel. We then bring in what we know about the coins, that they serve as currency and have different monetary values-including the antique value of the old nickel. We then discuss how the "archaeological" grouping differs from "real world" grouping and how these create challenges in archaeological classification.

Explain cultural processes; processual archaeology—1960s
1. Criticized assumptions and goals of cultural historical archaeology
  1. Change a result of migration (movement of people), or diffusion (movement of objects and ideas)
2. Goal of description too limiting
  1. Archaeology should go beyond description of the past to explanation of past events and cultural processes
    1. Non-material aspects of human behavior, such as social organization also accessible to archaeologists
  2. Change could come about for reasons other than migration and/or diffusion and furthermore there must be reasons why migration and diffusion take place
  3. Each society has its own history, but within each of those histories there are commonalities that reflect universal qualities of human social behavior
    1. Relationship between environment and culture
      - Similar cultures developed in similar environments
      - Culture always changing
    2. Rise of interdisciplinary archaeology
      - Zooarchaeology
      - Geoarchaeology
      - Paleobotanical archaeology
      - Radiocarbon revolution
Contemporary evolutionary and non-evolutionary (post-processual) interest in the role of social factors not just environment as adaptational responses and factors that cultures adapt to
Important in prehistoric archaeology but also increasing importance of archaeology of the historic period where multiple lines of evidence make information easier to locate
Cultural resource management (CRM)
1. Federal, state, and local mandates to protect archaeological and historical resources
  1. Started in the very early 1900s along with other "conservation" efforts such as formation of National Parks, National Forests, etc.
  2. Significant excavations part of FDR's New Deal
  3. River Basin survey associated with hydro-electric development beginning in the 1930s
  4. Interest and public support grew along with environmental movement
  5. Laws now require that any project involving public lands or funds consider if the proposed action will impact cultural resources
    1. Most archaeologists work in CRM
      - Agency archaeologists
      - Private firms
    2. Requires archaeologists to consider "stewardship" as important as pure research
      - Resulting in lots more information
      - Seldom well distributed
      - Often removed from larger aims of archaeology, ie., incomplete stewardship because information doesn't contribute to synthesis and generalizations
    3. Increased role of American Indians and others
      - Archaeology (like many professional fields) dominated by white males for most of the twentieth century.
      - Wrong for lots of reasons
        
        Not fair
        
        Leads to limited understanding
      - Now we are required by law to inform and consult effected tribes; there is also an ethical requirement to inform and consult all effected parties