ANTH 235, THE VARIETY OF THE EVIDENCE:
WHAT IS THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD?
Three principal interrelated questions to be addressed today:
1. What constitutes the archaeological record?
2. What are the minimal bits of data archaeologists use?
3. How do archaeologists organize and manipulate
those minimal bits into larger data sets with which
to understand past human behavior?
American archaeologist, Lewis R. Binford, 1960s:
Binford, a key figure in the “New Archaeology,”
opposed the then conventional wisdom that “No one
ever excavated a kinship system.”
The archaeological record is material culture, but nonmaterial aspects of culture are reflected in material
ways.
PRINCIPAL COMPONENTS OF THE
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD:
 artifact
 feature
 structure
 burial
 ecofact (“ecological artifact”) or biofact
(“biological artifact”)
 site (many types)
o general purpose or habitation sites
o cemeteries & burial sites
o kill sites (including butchery)
o ports & trading centers
o ceremonial sites
o quarry-workshop & resource extraction sites
o art sites
o shipwrecks & other submerged sites
FOUR WAYS ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES CAN BE CLASSIFIED:
1. by function (already discussed above)
2. by archaeological context (Where do artifacts
occur in a particular site? On the surface? Only in
particular strata?)
3. by artifact content yielding cultural affiliation
(Neolithic, Mayan, etc.)
4. by topographic location (cave sites, valley-bottom
sites, hill-top sites, etc.)
HIERARCHICAL PATTERNING OF ARTIFACTS:
 attributes (reflect individual behavior)
 artifacts (reflect group behavior)
 tool kits or sub-assemblages (reflect communities)
 assemblages (reflect archaeological cultures)
 industries: all tools made of one material found in a
site (e.g., stone, pottery, bronze, etc.)
Provenience (where something is found; its spatial context)
versus provenance (where something was made; its origin);
don’t confuse these terms!
Law of Association (J. J. A. Worsaae, 1843):
“Artifacts accompanying a human burial are in most
cases things which were in use at the same time.”
ASCENDING LEVELS OF ORGANIZATION OF THE
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD:
*
archaeological culture
*
culture area
*
archaeological region
Regional Archaeology: Gordon Willey, Virú Valley, Peru (1940s)
Gordon Willey (foreground) and colleagues excavating in the
Virú Valley, Peru in the 1940s
The intent of regional archaeology is to orient local
archaeology to some larger, meaningful geographical unit.
Research strategy of regional archaeology stresses
sampling a region – not just readily identifiable sites, but
areas in-between as well…
The archaeological record is non-random.
It is unintentional for the most part, but definitely not
random. Don’t confuse unintentional and random!
Interpretation of the archaeological record rests on two
principal concepts:
1. clustering
2. patterning
“Cluster” and “pattern” are, in a sense, analogous to “site”
and “region”…
CONCLUSION: archaeological data must be viewed in a
hierarchical fashion to extract the maximum amount of
information.
An analogy of the archaeological record.
Incomplete, out of focus, hard to properly orient…seemingly random.
Richard Gregory’s Dalmatian illusion
And if you really like optical illusions, stare at the dancing almonds
below for a while. This is not an animated .gif; just your own little
synapses playing perceptual mind games with you!