History of North American Archaeology
Introduction:
Important elements in the pattern of development of archaeology on this continent
included:
(1) the location of the founding European settlements in the east;
(2) regional environmental characteristics;
(3) the visibility, "allure," and accessibility of the archaeological record in each
culture area;
(4) the quicker pace of development toward the east until the 20th century.
There were four main periods in the history of North American archaeology:
Period I: Incidental Discovery and Speculation: 1492-1840
American Archaeology
American archaeology has developed as a result of dealing with Native American
cultures and the ruins, mounds, and artifacts in the New World. Ethnological,
historical, and anthropological theory developed that dealt with the human activities and
experiences of the native people. Throughout the history of American archaeology
beliefs about Native American cultures have changed.
During this first period, professional archaeologists were rare. So-called
armchair explorers began to deal native people in South America, Mesoamerica, and
North America. The first question they tried to answer was, 'Who are the Indians?'
The armchair scholars tried to find out where Native Americans originated. After they
found many mounds and ruins in Ohio, the mound builder debate became their main
concern. Some said the Native Americans were savages, and they were not capable of
building mounds. Benjamin Smith Barton argued that Danes built them, moved into
Mexico and later became the Toltecs. William Bartram the Creek built mounds and used
them. John Haywood noted that the Cherokeealso built mounds. Governor De
WittClinton said Scandinavian Vikings built mounds in western New York State. Caleb
Atwater suggested that built the mounds before they migrated into the New World,
eventually ending up in Mexico. He also thought that Native Americans migrated into the
New World after the original mound builders moved out from this region. James H.
McClloh viewed the Native Americans as descendents of the mound builders. They
were the same race and the Native Americans were capable of building the mounds.
However, this idea was unpopular during this period because of the cultural
evolutionary theory among the European scholars. This cultural evolutionary theory,
along with a lack of professional archaeologists and difficulty in excavating the mounds
made it difficult for archaeologists to do little more than speculate.
A. These are the earliest but incidental reports of the most conspicuous
archaeological features by explorers, fur traders, travelers, etc.; there were
distortions but they were important because many are now destroyed.
B. The speculation was based on European myths: Atlantis, Mu, Ten Lost
Tribes of Israel, Tartars, Scythians, Welsh.
C. The Mound Builders were postulated and the search for treasure in the
mounds began.
D. Jose de Acosta (1589) suggested that Indians were from Asia but he
was only one hypothesis among many others.
E. People in this period raised basic questions: Who were the Native
Americans? Where were they from? Why were they so diverse?
Period II: Systematic Survey and Testing: 1840-1914
In this period, several institutions, such universities, museums, and the
government, began to support archaeological activities. Archaeologists became more
professional. Most of scholars began to accept the idea that the ancestors of the Native
Americans built the mounds, and different tribal groups had built different mounds. Many
professional archaeologists began to excavate at several regions; the southwest region;
the eastern regions, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Maine, Cahokia in
Illinois, Ohio-Fort Ancient, Hopewell, thenortheast, Quebec, Montreal with Iroquois
villages, and Alaska.
Archaeological methods, such as scientific surveying, mapping, digging, crosssection drawing, careful plotting, and recording of findings were also
developed. Artifacts such as stone were classified, and archaeologists began to notice
cultural variety. However, although they noticed the environmental differences associated
with cultural development, they still believed in uniform cultural stages.
A. The roots of empirical archaeology began in natural history surveys
sponsored by national institutions, especially the Smithsonian, the
American Museum of Natural History, and Harvard University's Peabody
Museum:
B. Ephrain Squire and Edwin Davis (1848, published Ancient Monuments
of the Mississippi Valley), Clarence Moore, John Wesley Powell,
Frederick Ward Putnam, and Cyrus Thomas studied sites in the Eastern
United States; Adolph Bandelier and John Wesley Powell in the
Southwest. Cyrus Thomas shattered the Mound Builder myth in the
1850s - archaeologists could then concentrate on the Indians themselves
(but this was a fading interest).
C. Formulation of culture areas occurred by William Henry Holmes and
others.
D. Professionalization of the discipline began; there was a need felt to
record rapidly vanishing information; and so there was the organization of
local naturalist, historical, and scientific societies.
E. Some advances occurred regarding:
(1) integration of archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, and physical
anthropology (the source of modern departments of anthropology);
(2) concern for careful description;
(3) advancements in field methods and reporting techniques;
(4) increased recognition of the great antiquity of the American Indian;
(5) growing concern for the preservation of sites and artifacts.
Period III: Syntheses, Taxonomies, and Chronologies: 1914-1940
From this period, chronology became the main concern in archaeology. The
theory of Franz Boas, cultural diffusion, influenced archaeological studies. Previous
typology and developed into stratigraphic and seriational procedures that dealt with
pottery type, artifact sequences and distribution.. N.C. Nelson excavated in the
southwest region and studied the Rio Grande Pueblos. He classified pottery
depending upon the coloration, and noted the occurrences and absences of pottery
type. However, he didn't note frequency and percentage.
Seriation was key in dealing with cultural change through time.
Instead of using evolutionary seriation with simple to complex cultural development,
similarity seriation was used in this period. and other tools were classified by the
similarity. Alfred Kroeber artifacts by the frequency of their occurrence. The studies
indicated the development and replacement of pottery trends. James A. Ford studied
Hopewellian, Woodland, and Mississippian pottery. He found cultural variation in the
way the pottery made, such as the use of paste, temper, decoration, and features through
time. H.S. Gladwin studied in southern Arizona, and noted that the pottery style
was a key indicator of cultural change and the potshards were clues to spatial-temporal
cultural variation. Ford and G.R.Willey worked on the mounds of preceramic and
nonfarming cultures in the upper middle-eastern region.
In this period dating techniques were also beginning to be used.
Alfred Kidder classified Pueblo groups in terms of the cultural diffusion among them and
A.E. Douglass, the astronomer calculated age of the cultural periods through
dendrochronology. Chronological study in this period showed historical relationships
among cultures that possessed similar pottery styles or designs.
A. Many new trends emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, in part spurred by
the Great Depression and federally funded archaeology through the
Works Progress Administration (WPA).
B. Taxonomic systems: Will C. McKern came up with the Midwestern
Taxonomic System.
C. There was eventual replacement of seriation/typologica1 methods of
dating by radiocarbon in the 1950s; which provided independent, firm
chronological frameworks.
D. This was the period of the "founding fathers" in archaeology and
regional syntheses, such as Lloyd Wilford in Minnesota (at the University
of Minnesota).
E. This period also marked the appearance of professional conferences
and organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology (1934)
and the Plains Anthropological Conference (1931).
F.The main focus of the period was historical and chronological: and
involved construction of taxonomies, area chronologies, and space-time
charts; refinement of stratigraphic and seriational procedures, and rapid
adoption of new absolute dating techniques (e.g. C-14 dating and dendro).
Dendrochronology
Tree-Ring dating, developed by A.E. Douglas.
a. dated live trees and then looked for beams in ancient structures to correspond.
b. Very localized-mostly sw.
C-14 Dating
a. Radiocarbon Dating, Libby (1949)
b. Radioactive carbon is absorbed by all living organisms, this ceases when the
organism dies and then begins to decay at a known rate.
c. Thus, by estimating the amount of carbon left in an organism you can estimate
when it died.
d. Calibration-radioactive carbon amounts fluctuated periodically, can calibrate
dates with other techniques, such as dendro.
Timea. Fagan uses A.D. and B.C., also years ago.
b. I tend to use B.P.
IV. The Classificatory-Historical Period: Context and Function (1940-1960)
In this period, archaeologists began to deal with Native cultures in terms of three
concepts: artifacts as behavior, pattern, and the environment, and the context and function
of each of these concepts in the culture. Other disciplines, such as geology, botany and
biology, chemistry, and mathematics began to be more involved in the archaeological
field during this period.
Artifacts were to be understood as the material relics of social and cultural
behavior. However, some scholars disagreed with this concept. Paul Martin stated that a
culture couldn't be considered as physical objects, nor generalized by the similar styles or
types of the objects. Irving Rouse also argued that a culture couldn't be inherent in the
artifacts. Culture is a relationship between the object and the people who made used it.
Walter W. Taylor noted that historiography was necessary in archaeological research, and
used artifacts to reconstruct the cultural context. In this period, archaeologists began to
realize the environmental aspects that affected cultural development. Research of
R.Wedel’s Great Plains, Emil W. Haury’s Ventana Cave, Arizona, and E.W.Gifford’s
California shellmounds showed the relationships between the native cultures and the
environment. Julian H.Steward developed environmental-evolutionary theory, known as
cultural ecology or multilinear evolution. The natural determines the cultural
development and technological adaptations.
Period IV: Recent Trends: 1960 – 1990s
A. There were two major trajectories: Processual archaeology and
Cultural Resource Management (CRM)
B. Processual archaeology (the New Archaeology) was developed by
Lewis Binford and others in the 1960s; with the motto "archaeology as
anthropology"; The new focus was on the transformation of
archaeological data into cultural data, the organization of past cultural
systems and their transformations through time, and the external stimuli
that triggered these changes. They had a "behavioral" approach.
**Ethnographic analogy is becoming more important to archaeological research
than histographical seriation and trying to understand larger patterns of human
behavior and activities from archaeological findings. A dilemma between Processualism
and Postprocessualism still remains in today’s American archaeology. However, a
combination of the scientific approach, ethnological research, and the concept of
cultural anthropology helps today’s American archaeologists to find the route of
migration from Asia, and the subsistence, technology, and behavior of Paleo-Indian.
C. Cultural Resource Management (CRM) dominates North American
archaeology at present, the result of national laws, such as the National
Historic Preservation Act of 1966; Its goal is to manage and conserve
America's archaeological heritage.
D. Other trends:
(1) massive growth in the numbers of professional archaeologists;
(2) increased use of statistics and computers;
(3) introduction of large-scale probability-based surveys;
(4) refinement of excavation procedures (e.g., use of flotation, bulldozers)
(5) de-emphasis on mound excavations; and
growing interest in the archaeology of the historical period, both Indian and EuroAmerican. Class Status, Mortuary, Environment
Period V: Postprocessualism
From the middle of the modern period (1970’s), archaeologists began to be
concerned more about human behavior and the study of Native American cultures. Frank
Hole said that whatever directions we may take in method, theory, technique, era or area,
we must keep in mind the central idea that we are dealing with and trying to understand
he human experience. Archaeology is not merely a science of material culture, but
concerns of human beings and their cultural behavior in the past. This trend is called
Postprocessualism.
Hodder:
A. Culture is interactive
B. Culture change must include women, ethnic minorities, illiterate
C. Archaeologists bring cultural biases to work, act as mediators of the past.
D. Can one study “the archaeology of the mind” with material remains?
Conclusion:
A. A well-grounded understanding of North American archaeology
includes an understanding of its history.
B. Two excellent introductory surveys are Gordon Willey and Jeremy
Sabloff s (1993) A History of American Archaeology (third edition, W.
H. Freeman, N. Y.), and Bruce Trigger's (1989) A History of
Archaeological Thought (Cambridge University Press, N.Y.).