ANTH 235,
PRESERVATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA:
FORMATION PROCESSES
“What are fossils, after all, if not vestiges both destroyed
and preserved by time?” – Pascal Tassy, paleontologist
“Archaeologists don’t excavate data; they excavate
objects” – David Hurst Thomas, archaeologist
Our ability to interpret the material remains of the past is
limited more by our theoretical naïveté and a lack of
methodological sophistication than by the information
itself in the ground.
SYSTEMIC CONTEXT (LIVING CULTURES)

FORMATION PROCESSES
(A.K.A. TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESSES)

ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT
(THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD)
Formation Processes (Dr. Michael Brian Schiffer, UA).
Includes natural processes and cultural processes.
Taphonomy (Gr. τάφoς [burial] + νόμoς [law]): all of the
sciences that seek to understand “the ways in which things
become entombed,” including the process of fossilization.
See: http://www.journaltaphonomy.com/
Specific factors influencing the differential preservation of
archaeological remains:
Climate (including environment)
Geology (including soil and underlying bedrock)
Vegetation (see example below)
Strangler Fig roots are slowly tearing apart the late 12th century CE
Buddhist temple complex at Ta Prohm, near Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Human behavior (construction, resource extraction,
agriculture, etc.)
Woomera, the Australian Aboriginal “Swiss Army knife”
What conditions lead to good archaeological preservation?
Consistency counts! (very dry, very wet, very cold, etc.)
DRY AREAS: Masada, the Judean Desert, Israel
Masada, near the Dead Sea in the Judean Desert, was held under
siege by Roman legionnaires from 66-73 CE
WET AREAS: Biskupin, Poland: a fortified early Iron Age
settlement (550-400 BCE)
The late Lusatian Culture fortified settlement at Biskupin is well preserved
through waterlogging, allowing accurate reconstruction (and is sufficiently
famous as a national symbol to have been the subject of a postage stamp).
See also: http://www.dziejba.org/strony/english/summary.htm
Iron Age “Bog People” of southern Scandinavia (ca. 400 BCE)
The naturally preserved Iron Age “Tollund Man” from Denmark. Note his
well-preserved leather cap and belt and the noose around his neck, the latter
having been used to ritually strangle him around 400 BCE.
The head of the “Tollund Man”
See also:
Asingh, P. and N. Lynnerup, editors. (2007). Grauballe
Man, An Iron Age Bog Body Revisited. Højbjerg, Denmark:
Moesgaard Museum & Jutland Archaeological Society.
COLD AREAS: Siberian mammoths & other Ice Age
mammals; Iron Age Scythian culture tombs at Pazyryk,
Russia; Inuit settlements in North America and Greenland
Ötzi, the so-called “Ice Man” of the Italian Alps, discovered in 1991
(about 5300 years old; the oldest known preserved human corpse)
SPECIAL CASES OF PRESERVATION: Intentional
mummification in Dynastic Egypt and the volcanic
cataclysm at Pompeii and Herculaneum, Italy, 79 CE
The intentionally mummified Pharaoh Tutankhamun, ca. 1341-1323 BCE
Pompeii about to be devastated by the eruption of Mount
Vesuvius, 24 August 79 CE
The watchdog of Vesonius Primus captured in his death throes,
Pompeii, 24 August 79 CE
discard behavior
modern material culture studies
(sometimes called “contemporary archaeology”)
recycling (e.g., Australian Aboriginal tula-adze and Middle
Eastern tells)
Australian Aboriginal tula-adze (left) and tula-adze slug (right);
the “slug” representing a worn-out and discarded tula-adze
Jericho Tell in the West Bank, occupied from roughly 9000-1500 BCE
curation (heirlooms)
DESTRUCTION OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD:
1. World War I trench warfare – impact on western
European prehistory
2. Geometrically increased demand for raw materials,
beginning in the first Industrial Revolution in the late
18th century
3. Highway construction – especially in the US after
World War II
4. Urban sprawl – a global, increasingly severe
phenomenon (see composite night map of Earth
below)
5. Looting and illicit trade in antiquities – not only a
recent phenomenon, but has intensified in the early
21st century to epidemic proportions. This is now the
most serious problem we face as regards the
preservation of the human heritage.
Fair warning:
We are perhaps the last generation of
archaeologists who will be able to study untouched
archaeological sites.