Issue 3

Archaeology + Anthropology

May 2011

Monte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico 2008. Photo by Ryan Anderson.

~ Contents ~

Introduction to this issue
Ryan Anderson

Towards a non-anthropocentric and non-anthropological archaeology
Johan Normark

What does an archaeological perspective bring to anthropology?
Maureen Meyers

Archaeology, Anthropology, and Multi-sited Ethnography
Colleen Morgan

Why Anthropology is too Narrow an Intellectual Context for Archaeology
Michael E. Smith

Archaeology: More than Strata and Sherds
Paul Wren

Archaeological Perspectives and Anthropology: A story about shoes
Nicolas Laracuente

Archaeology as part of anthropology
Olaf Jaime-Riveron

Alcohol and Archaeologists
Scott R. Hutson

A Qualitative History of “Cultural Resource” Management
Adam Giacinto

Visual Anthropology: Yucatecan Archaeological Sights
Veronica Miranda

Reader Responses: The Archaeology Issue (Open Thread)

Archaeology, Anthropology, and Multi-sited Ethnography

A couple of weeks ago I attended a brown bag lecture given by Barbara Voss (Stanford) titled Sexual Effects: Postcolonial and Queer Perspectives on the Archaeology of Sexuality. It was an excellent overview of her research on China Camp in San Jose, California, a community that was overwhelmingly male. In her talk she discussed what the materiality of homosociality looks like as well as how we can think about gender and sexuality in the past. Barbara Voss is a prominent voice in the field of archaeology, and her work is interdisciplinary to the core. The talk was well attended, but I didn't recognize any socio-cultural anthropologists in the audience. This was a fairly typical occurrence, sadly. Even at our more formal gatherings, the Monday evening 290 lectures, the socio-cultural professors and students are completely absent at talks that feature archaeologists.

There are a number of ways one could react to this, and I think I've run the gamut at this point. Do They (the capitalization as the beginning of an anti-fraternal sentiment) think that the past (Us) is irrelevant? Do they just not understand archaeology? Do they not feel like we have anything to offer them? Or are they just bowing underneath the substantial burden of both a widening of anthropological purview and a narrowing of in-field specialization? In their introduction to the 2009 Annual Review of Anthropology, Don Brenneis and Peter Ellison succinctly address this point, stating that "The expanding universe of knowledge increases the distance between disciplines of inquiry as the techniques and theories that are developed at the advancing edges of fields become ever more remote from their common roots." The study of human experience has become so broad that the specializations necessary to make meaningful contributions to research, to carve out your own niche, leave no time for holism.

I still don't think that lets Them (or Us, for that matter) off the hook entirely. While I am certainly on the more eclectic side of archaeology, I find resources in geology, geography, science and technology studies, architecture, new media studies, information studies, material sciences--I've stuck my nose into most corners of academia and have come away inspired, refreshed, and excited to use my changed perspective to think about archaeology. Truly, I think most of what I think of as "The Big Kids," the prominent scholars in any field, do the same--they are broadly familiar with the academic terrain surrounding their interests. I walked into Lawrence Cohen's class to co-lecture on Virtual Anthropology and he was familiar with my work, and the excellent ethnographic work of Tom Boellstorff in Second Life. Being broadly conversant in your colleagues' work is only a start--if you don't think that their research is in some way relevant to your own, then you aren't being creative enough. If you don't think that the study of materiality and human lifeways in the past is relevant to understanding current populations, then I'm not sure there's much I can write to make you think differently.

Finally, for a mild, anthropological example, back to Barb Voss' talk. During the post-lecture discussion one of our professors asked if Voss had done any comparative work in the small town in China where most of the residents of China Camp were born and raised and kept families. Alas, she said, no. "Archaeologists aren't very good at multi-sited ethnographies." This comment struck me during the lecture, and later I realized that I thought she was completely wrong on this point. I refreshed my knowledge of the anthropological literature (and controversy) surrounding multi-sited ethnographies and came to the conclusion that archaeologists are the ultimate multi-sited (material) ethnographers. It's just that often times our study sites are piled on top of one another. Many of us multiply the difficulty by studying and comparing many sites of various ages. Our material, temporal perspective literally grounds your research, even if the many peoples that have lived in your study region before had vastly different lives and perspectives throughout the ages.

While holism may not be first in your mind as you conduct your research, holism will lend depth to your research, and maybe get you a half-step closer to being one of the "Big Kids." At the very least, before you do "an archaeology" of something, look us up first. You might learn something, if only the location of the good bar in town.

Colleen Morgan

Visual Anthropology: Yucatecan Archaeological Sights

My first critical encounter with the Yucatan was during the summer of 2002. Before that, I visited the peninsula twice during the early 1990s, but those experiences were heavily filtered and constrained by tourism. My family and I spent our entire vacation in Cancun and only ventured out for a few day trips to popular archaeological and tourist sites. There were so many aspects of life that we completely passed by. It was not until the summer of 2002 that I was introduced to the complex and dynamic history of the peninsula--this was also the first time I was exposed to what life was like for the majority of its residents.

In 2002, I was an undergrad at Humboldt State University and had decided to spend my summer working as a field technician for an American archaeological project located in the interior of the state of Quintana Roo. Since the archaeological site was rather remote, a base camp was set up in the nearest pueblo. Although the pueblo was one of the largest in the area with a population of 3,000 it still lacked many of the conveniences of urban life including running water and a sanitation system. Every week we had to drive two hours to the closest city to get supplies. By the end of the summer I had a new understanding and relationship with the Yucatan, which came primarily from experiencing life in a rural Yucatec Maya pueblo. These experiences greatly contrasted from the encounters I had in my youth, which were heavily influenced by the images and narratives promulgated by tourist media, international hotels, and popular discourses.

It has been nine years since I first started working in the Yucatan and every year I continue to delve deeper into the history, politics and culture of the region. And although I chose to change my focus--from archaeology to cultural anthropology--I will never forget that it was archaeology that started me on my research path.

These sets of photos were taken during several different field trips from 2008-2010.

Veronica Miranda
University of Kentucky

Coba, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Ek Balam, Yucatan, Mexico

Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico

  

 

Valladolid, Mexico

Archaeology as a Part of Anthropology

One of the advantages of studying archaeology (and conducting archaeological research) in the USA and Mexico is that it is considered an anthropological discipline, based in a four-field approach.

The historical reason for this archaeological tradition in this part of the world has to do with the origins of anthropology. Franz Boas, the founding father of anthropology as a science, envisioned a holistic approach for a better understanding of cultural variation and cross-cultural comparisons. Archaeology as anthropology has received a wonderful feedback from cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, and linguistics anthropology. For a better understanding of past societies, it is compulsory to have broad perspective of contemporary societies (actually, evolution, as a theory, relies on geological events that occurred in the past, and only are understood in the present).

Since the foundation of archaeology as a distinct subfield within academic anthropology, it has been a self-sustaining endeavor. Faculty archaeologists have to teach, conduct research, and publish. Museums are not just for storing archaeological artifacts. Boasian archaeology brought museums to schools and universities.

During a sabbatical, Franz Boas founded anthropology and archaeology in Mexico. He brought an international student to Columbia University and was advisor of the first Mexican PhD in Anthropology, Manuel Gamio. Now, the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) and important departments such as Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas-UNAM are the inheritors of this approach in anthropology.

For this geographical area, USA and Mexico, this approach is so important. Historically, our ancestors have continuity not only in contemporary communities of Native Americans, but also in our daily lives. For this reason, attending schools and universities with this anthropological paradigm allows us to have a holistic view of the past. This anthropological archaeology is not the History of Art anymore, which was primarily concerned with the aesthetics and artifacts of the elite.

Anthropological archaeology is concerned with daily life activities, status in the past, ecological adaptations, evolution of technology, and political economic changes. This academic tradition has opened the door to ethnoarchaeology, geoarchaeology, zooarchaeology, and paleoethnobotany. With these interdisciplinary intersections, archaeology reinforces anthropology as a SCIENCE with all capital letters. Diverse anthropological events around the world and during distinct epochs can be compared by cross-cultural studies.

Archaeology contributes to anthropology in a unique way: the study of diachronic and long-term processes that all the other social sciences do not have. Geography, sociology, political sciences, cultural studies, and even history all rely on historical sources.

Anthropological archaeology relies on material culture. The focus is the study of ancient populations, as complex or simple as they were. We use both qualitative and quantitative methods. We analyze different social strata by combining bottom-up and top-down perspectives. Also, archaeology has the opportunity for addressing agency, identity, ethnicity, and gender roles.

There are other archaeological traditions that consider themselves apart from anthropology. For instance, almost all colleges in the United Kingdom teach archaeology as history, some even consider anthropology as part of archaeology. This has had some advantages for the development of archaeological theory and the study of material culture, especially in relation to issues about interpretation and reflexivity. There are contributions for the study of historical archaeologies: Medieval, Post-Renaissance, Colonial or Industrial. However, it is important to take into consideration that those traditions were born in places (paraphrasing Eric Wolf 's “People Without History”) with historical records, often in former Colonial countries.

One of the advantages of the anthropological paradigm of archaeology in Mexico and the USA is the study of the so-called peoples without history. With the study of myths, oral traditions, epigraphy, non-western writing systems, ethnohistory, and the aid of the four-field approach, our multiple data sets and understanding will be more ever more robust. We can also incorporate current theoretical orientations in social sciences and methodologies derived from Historical, Medieval or Industrial Archaeology. Even better, with an anthropological archaeology perspective we can study Medieval, Historical, or colonial societies.

An additional opportunity that we have in Mexico and the USA is that we are studying our ancestors. Studying the past is not only pure scientific inquiry; it is also a way of reconstructing identity, recovering heritage, and providing historical discourse to nations, peoples, and identities. Now, there are current theoretical orientations that talk about Post-Colonial Archaeologies. I think is excellent that in a Hegelian way the inheritors of the past—it does not matter if they were born in the South of Rio Grande (Latin America) or anywhere else—can conduct archaeometry, geoarcheology, or zooarchaeology and they can establish bridges with other archaeological traditions in a way that is more dialogic and multi-vocal.

Olaf Jaime-Riveron

A Qualitative History of “Cultural Resource” Management

For some time I have been gathering definitions for the term “cultural resource.” I have read books, reports, forms, websites, and articles. I have conducted a number of semi-structured interviews with Cultural Resource Management (CRM) practitioners, Native American monitors and curators, academics, and policy makers. I have gathered data about cultural resources as a professional archaeologist, and worked at public institutions aimed at storing that information. Through this process I have come to understand one thing above all else, as my understanding of “cultural resource” has become more detailed, my personal definition of the term has become more indistinct.

There is a popular tendency amongst critics of CRM to define “cultural resource” using single-dimensional categories, e.g, “cultural resource” means data/money to the Archaeologist, heritage to the Native American, obstacle/cost to the Developer, and legislation to the Bureaucrat. In response to this: first, applying the critique of postmodernism, now nearly cliché, that groups only appear completely homogeneous in their opinions from the outside. Second, and most importantly, over time it has become glaringly evident that “cultural resource” only exists as a term because all of the involved parties, and individual members, have been fighting over how best to define it for decades.

CRM, often more generally described as compliance or contract archaeology, has gained an increasing presence in the United States since the 1930s. The term “cultural resource” was first used by National Parks Service staff in 1971-1972 (Fowler 1982: 1). W. D. Lipe and A. J. Lindsay are most commonly recognized with the first publication containing the “CRM” in the Proceedings of the 1974 Cultural Resource Management Conference, Denver. Thomas King contests this, perhaps in jest, observing that the first use of “CRM” came in the airport bar, following the Denver conference, while a number of the participants were waiting on their delayed flights (King 2002: 13). Whatever the case, archaeologists in the southwestern U.S popularized the label of “Cultural Resource Management” beginning in the early 1970s. This corresponded with a period of drastically increased housing development and large infrastructure improvement projects, which required government agencies to hire private archaeological contractors. The business of professional archaeological consulting now accounts for roughly $500 million dollars a year nationally (King 2006: 1). In San Diego, nearly every project involving development on public or private land requires CRM consultation. CRM practitioners, often under the watchful eye of Native American monitors, are hired by developers to help avoid, or at least minimize, destructive impacts upon existing cultural resources. All of this preservation and archaeology is mandated under federal, state, and local law.

If CRM helped to define “cultural resource” in terms of “archaeological data”, it was the legislation that helped to make these so commonly thought of as synonymous. Contract archaeology is government mandated archaeological practice, as defined by legislation, in response to the environmental and cultural costs of development. This relationship was born from the looting of Mesa Verde prior to 1906; carved through the New Deal projects from 1933-1969; re-shaped by the building of reservoirs, gas pipelines, and roads from 1946-1969; and finally, sold by freeways, tract homes, urban renewal, and the oil crisis from 1950s-1980s. The primary bureaucratic smorgasbord, effectively fattening the body of historical/archaeological and environmental preservation legislation to what it is today, emerged at local, state, and national levels from the mid-1960s through the 1970s. This collection of laws, acts, regulations, and executive orders granted archaeologists the ability, and funding, to “manage” threatened prehistoric and historical period cultural material. In the co-evolutionary relationship that has defined the development of practice in CRM over time, it has been the bulldozer that has been the primary host, and the archaeological practitioner that has been the pilot fish. Through the passage of legislation, the CRM practitioner has moved from picking through the dirt behind the bulldozer, to scrambling just ahead it and behind the surveyors, to defining its path through a maze of culturally significant boundaries, months in advance of work.

CRM archaeologists have been the principle consultants for defining which cultural resources should be held as significant within the legislation, and consequently, preserved. Thomas F. King has used the term “archaeobias” to describe this infusion of archaeological interpretation into the cultural resource preservation legislation (King 2006: 1). The biases in “cultural resource” began to be contested as the cultural material collected by archeologists was recognized as the material remains of other people’s cultures. Beginning in the late 1960s Native Americans gained public attention through the American Indian Movement. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, and later, the Native American Graves Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), NPS Bulletin 38 in 1990, and revisions to the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) helped to add a wider array of socio-cultural considerations to the preservation legislation. Traditional cultural activities and beliefs gained preservation status under law. Most notably, places of religious or cultural significance, with no directly associated artifacts, came to be formally recognized. Subsequently, definitions of “cultural resource” began to include aspects outside of the physical archeological data, incorporating the terminology of intangible cultural values.

So, what does “cultural resource” mean for contemporary considerations of heritage? In CRM, boundaries are created in space, around objects of cultural value with different temporal attributes. Like the land surveyors of the United States Geological Survey, which incidentally produce the most widely used maps in U.S. archaeology, areas are classified in terms of type and composition. Through the mandates of legislation and the demands of development, these areas, lets call them “archaeological sites”, are evaluated by archaeologists for their eligibility to be listed in registers of local, state, and the national significance. As in theories of classic economic exchange, relative cultural significance is usually directly related to the scarcity of other like-sites listed upon these registers. The greater the demand for use of a specific area for development, and the higher the value of the cultural resources upon this land, the more costly the price for CRM practitioners to conduct work. Such sites of cultural value are not always destroyed though the deep pockets of determined developers, and are often moved or halted following determinations of “significant”. However, the inertia of progress is ceaseless, and in the end, usually the dominant force. In this way, the objects of cultural activity, and the space that surrounds them, are commoditized. This status as commodity is not simply a creation of the legislation, but defined through the practice of CRM itself and the culture that considers them to be valuable.

Definitions of “cultural resource” are written through ideologies of culture and archaeology, designed for a diffuse, rather than a distinct, sense of ownership and responsibility, and are grounded in classifications of spatial association. A common respondent definition follows: A cultural resource is a physical or intangible, built or natural, aspect of the environment, that holds cultural significance for a group or an individual. “Cultural resource” began with an archaeology that was funded through development and promoted through legislation. This has since created a practice that, through evaluations of significance, promotes the understanding that culture is a commodity. The most prominent trend in recent years has been the increasing recognition of intangible cultural heritage. This has served to alleviate some of my personal anxieties of yet arriving at a concise definition of “cultural resource”. While it is true that my understanding has grown increasingly indistinct over time, the past decades of defining this term has only served to increase its sense of intangibility for most everyone else as well.

Adam Giacinto

References

Fowler, Don D.
1982 Advances in Archaeological Methods and Theory, “Cultural Resource Management”, Academic Press, USA

Lindsay, A.J and W.D. Lipe.
1974 Proceedings of the 1974 Cultural Resource Management Conference, Federal Center, Denver, Colorado, edited by W. D. Lipe and A. J. Lindsay, Jr., pp. vii-xiii. Museum of Northern Arizona Technical Series No. 14. Flagstaff

King, Thomas F.
2002 Thinking About Cultural Resource Management: Essays From the Edge. AltaMira Press, USA.
2006 How I Infected Cultural Resource Management With Archaeobias. Presented at the Society for California Archaeology. SCA, CA.

Why Anthropology is too Narrow an Intellectual Context for Archaeology*

In the past few years I have found two new homes for my work as an archaeologist. Institutionally, I am no longer part of a Department of Anthropology, but rather a faculty member in the new “School of Human Evolution and Social Change” at Arizona State University. Intellectually, I was born and raised in anthropological archaeology, but now consider the amorphous field of comparative and historical social science as more congenial to my research. I still teach courses called anthropology, and I participate in anthropology degree programs. Some of my best friends are anthropologists. But intellectually I have found less and less in common with the discipline of anthropology, and more and more in common with other disciplines, as my career has proceeded.

Most published accounts of the relationship between archaeology and the larger discipline of anthropology (e.g., Earle 2008; Gillespie and Nichols 2003; Gumerman and Phillips 1978; Longacre 2010) consist of either pronouncements (“archaeology must be part of anthropology” or “archaeology should not be part of anthropology”) or else fantasies about ideal conditions (“archaeologists can work together with ethnologists”). If one starts from the perspective that four-field anthropology is something useful, then it is easy to argue that archaeology should be a part of the mix (Gillespie and Nichols 2003). But if one starts by seeking the most productive intellectual context for archaeology, then an affiliation with anthropology is more difficult to argue for.

I was trained in anthropological archaeology, and I have always considered myself an anthropological archaeologist. I belonged to the Archaeology Division of the AAA from its founding until my recent resignation from the AAA. I was “in the trenches” of four-field anthropology at my prior university, organizing lectures and debates on the topic. But in recent years I have come to believe that Wallerstein’s (2003) critique of the structure of the social science disciplines may apply equally to four-field anthropology. Wallerstein argues that “the social construction of the disciplines as intellectual arenas that was made in the 19th century has outlived its usefulness and is today a major obstacle to serious intellectual work” (Wallerstein 2003:453). One of those commenting on Wallerstein’s paper was sociologist Craig Calhoun, who suggested that, “Surely sociology, political science, and economics are as important for a cultural anthropologist (let alone a social anthropologist) as physical anthropology or archaeology” (Calhoun 2003:462).

My undergraduate interests in anthropology started with archaeology and urbanism. My initial impression was that sociocultural anthropologists took ancient cities seriously (e.g., Steward 1961). Many articles in the journal Urban Anthropology in the 1970s seemed relevant to ancient cities. When I returned to comparative urbanism after a number of years working on other topics, I was surprised to discover that the discipline of urban anthropology seemed to have disappeared. The journal Urban Anthropology is now called Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, and the Society for Urban Anthropology is now the “Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology.” Cities, for sociocultural anthropologists, may be places to do ethnography, but they are not a topic for analysis or comparison. Most research in urban anthropology today consists of studies of “Globalization in this city” and “Globalization in that city.” This retreat from a broadly conceived urban anthropology came at a time when studies of urbanism were exploding in other disciplines, from geography to sustainability science. Ask scholars in these disciplines about the major problems facing humanity today, and cities will be near the top of the list; yet a book called Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems (Bodley 2007) does not even mention cities! Urban anthropology has really dropped the ball.

When I moved to Arizona State University in 2005, I was pleasantly surprised to find that transdisciplinary research was emphasized and facilitated. A major reason for the transformation of the Department of Anthropology into the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (also in 2005) was to place anthropology within a broader intellectual context and promote transdisciplinary work. Anthropology remains strong here in terms of degrees, courses, and students, but we now have non-anthropologists as colleagues in our school, and most of us are engaged in research that expands the horizons of anthropology in some way.

I recently joined a transdisciplinary research project on urban life (http://cities.asu.edu/). My training in anthropological archaeology had suggested—wrongly—that disciplines like sociology, political science, or planning are irrelevant for archaeologists. I have been delighted to learn that much of the scholarship is in fact relevant to ancient cities, and many researchers in these areas are interested in ancient cities. Geographers, planners, sociologists, and urban historians want to know what the earliest cities were like, and how they compare to modern cities. When I took urban geographers to task for promoting comparative analysis while limiting their scope to the past two centuries (Smith 2009a), they invited me to participate in a symposium on comparative urbanism. When I mentioned the importance of V. Gordon Childe’s (1950) article, “The Urban Revolution,” to the editors of Town Planning Review, they invited me to submit a paper for their centenary volume (Smith 2009b). I still find myself amazed at this outpouring of interest in archaeological research on ancient cities by all kinds of scholars of urbanism (except sociocultural anthropologists).

I have encountered numerous useful concepts, theories, and ideas about urbanism from these other disciplines, but few from sociocultural anthropology (Smith 2011). My own contributions to comparative urbanism (e.g., Smith 2007, 2010) seem more valued by scholars in these areas. Reading the literature and interacting with urban scholars in non-anthropological disciplines has made me question the intellectual usefulness of my affiliation with sociocultural anthropology. Now, perhaps my situation is unique and other anthropological archaeologists get what they need intellectually from their interactions with sociocultural anthropologists. This can be a tricky topic to analyze, because four-field anthropology today is most commonly invoked in reference to university politics (e.g., protecting anthropology departments). It is not professionally feasible in most North American universities to divide anthropology departments into smaller units, even if people were to agree that it is a good idea intellectually. I am fortunate to teach in a unique program that values both anthropology and transdisciplinary research, and this setting has allowed my research on urbanism to thrive.

I recently resigned from the American Anthropological Association. Part of my reasons are intellectual—the anthropological retreat from comparative analysis and the predominance of relativist and interpretivist scholarship—and part are professional—the behavior of the AAA leadership on a variety of issues, from science to ethics (Dreger 2011) to outsourcing AAA journals to a commercial publisher. In its place I have joined the Social Science History Association, whose goals and themes are much more closely aligned to my view of archaeology as a comparative and historical social science discipline.

Rather than toe the four-field anthropological line about the (supposedly) close relationship between archaeology and cultural anthropology, I prefer to take a broader view. Some parts of sociocultural anthropology articulate with archaeology, but then so do parts of other disciplines, including history, economics, geology, linguistics, sociology, botany, planning, semiotics, engineering, political science, soil science, geography, religious studies, agronomy, management studies, ecology, etc. Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips (1958) once claimed that “archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing,” and Lewis Binford (1962) promoted a program of “archaeology as anthropology” [see also \Gillespie, 2003 #9111]. I disagree with these views. Had my research on comparative urbanism remained within the confines of anthropology, it would have remained pedestrian and limited in scope. Based on my personal experience, I suggest that the intellectual horizons of archaeology should not be limited to the rather parochial discipline of anthropology.

Michael E. Smith
Arizona State University
mesmith9@asu.edu

*This is a revised and much expanded version of an article, “Archaeology is Archaeology,” that appeared in Anthropology News, January 2010, page. 35.

References

Binford, Lewis R
1962 Archaeology as Anthropology. American Antiquity 28:217-225.

Bodley, John H.

2007 Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems. 5th ed. AltaMira, Lanham.

Calhoun, Craig

2003 Comment on Wallerstein, "Anthropology, Sociology, and Other Dubious Disciplines". Current Anthropology 44:462.

Childe, V. Gordon

1950 The Urban Revolution. Town Planning Review 21:3-17.

Dreger, Alice

2011 Darkness's Descent on the American Anthropological Association: A Cautionary Tale. Human Nature 22:(published online).

Earle, Timothy

2008 Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology: Theoretical Dialogues. In Handbook of Archaeological Theories, edited by R. Alexander Bentley, Herbert D. G. Maschner, and Christopher Chippindale, pp. 187-202. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.

Gillespie, Susan D. and Deborah L. Nichols (editors)

2003 Archaeology is Anthropology. Archaeological Papers, vol. 13. American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC.

Gumerman, George J. and David A. Phillips, Jr.

1978 Archaeology Beyond Anthropology. American Antiquity 43:184-191.

Longacre, William

2010 Archaeology as Anthropology Revisited. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17:81-100.

Smith, Michael E.

2007 Form and Meaning in the Earliest Cities: A New Approach to Ancient Urban Planning. Journal of Planning History 6(1):3-47.

2009a Editorial: Just How Comparative is Comparative Urban Geography?: A Perspective from Archaeology. Urban Geography 30:113-117.

2009b V. Gordon Childe and the Urban Revolution: An Historical Perspective on a Revolution in Urban Studies. Town Planning Review 80:3-29.

2010 Sprawl, Squatters, and Sustainable Cities: Can Archaeological Data Shed Light on Modern Urban Issues? Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20:229-253.

2011 Empirical Urban Theory for Archaeologists. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 18:(in press).

Steward, Julian H.

1961 The Urban Focus: Is There a Common Problem and Method in Studies of City Development—A Science of "Urbanology"? Science 134:1354-1356.

Wallerstein, Immanuel

2003 Anthropology, Sociology, and Other Dubious Disciplines. Current Anthropology 44:453-465.

Willey, Gordon R. and Philip Phillips

1958 Method and Theory in American Archaeology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Towards a non-anthropocentric and non-anthropological archaeology

Archaeology is a highly differentiated field that often crosses disciplinary boundaries. However, from one standpoint most archaeological perspectives are the same. In the multiplicity of archaeological studies focusing on the search for our earliest ancestors, cultural heritage, contemporary landfills, material culture, palaeoclimate, indigenous values vs. archaeological values, etc. there is still, in 99% of the cases, an anthropocentric focus. The human being and that of human manufacture (“Culture” or “Aggregate”) are singled out as completely different from that unaffected by human intervention (“Nature” or “Substance”). This sets up a traditional “modernist” dichotomy, which has been part of our discipline since it emerged.

A rock is believed to be of greater importance if it contains traces of human usage. Since most archaeologists actually are more interested in the human being or “society” that used the rock, explanations to what the rock was used for are always sought from causes that transcend the rock itself. It is here it starts to get problematic. We automatically fall back upon a hylomorphic model of the objects. This means that an aggregated form is imposed on inert substance from external causes. The external cause for any object that is labeled “material culture” is always the single human being or the culture of which it is part. The object is passive in this view. However, properties of the objects always affect the end result. One cannot chip a flint axe in any way one wants to since the morphology of the rock sets limits, clay needs to be wet in order to form a vessel shape, etc.

Another problem with the anthropocentrism in archaeology, particularly regarding those focusing on past meanings (“contemporary archaeology” does exist as a sub-discipline, apart from the fact that all archaeologists work in the present), is that there is a sort of “event horizon” that we cannot really cross with any great accuracy. This is the moment when the “systemic context” becomes an “archaeological context” to use Michael Schiffer’s classic terms. The moment an object ceased to interact with the ancient human being(s) we will have a problem knowing what the object meant for that particular human or culture in any interesting detail. Hence, most studies focusing on past meaning settle for a human being with fairly generalized cognitive capabilities, a sort of frozen moment of time (our present), and then project these capabilities across the past event horizon into the systemic context. I call this “an archaeology of fullness”. Archaeologists want to erase every void of the past (the void that is assumed to exist before the event horizon of every object). In doing so we fill the past with anthropocentric narratives (gender, ethnicity, cosmology, etc.) usually removed from the physical objects of our study (artifacts, ruins, bones, etc.). The tiresome desire for a “holistic” view is impossible. Let us instead settle for creating an archaeology that is independent of anthropology. The fragments are the strength of archaeology.

Archaeologists following the “archaeology of fullness” perspective have a fairly pessimistic view of their discipline. The archaeological objects are not deemed to be enough to establish knowledge of the past. Instead, one often sees analogies with present ethnographical studies in order to fill the voids of the past. When objects are reduced to “material culture” or “materiality” they are simply being reduced to an anthropocentric perspective. It is often believed that we cannot think of object and subject apart from each other. They are always correlated with one and another—something called correlationism.

Objects are more than their “cultural” parts. The archaeological record is fragmented but it does not get less fragmented by imposing “Culture” to fill out the voids before and between objects. We need to cut objects from their relations to humans and to what went on before the event horizon. Only by removing relationism, correlationism, and anthropocentrism from the objects/artifacts can a truly independent archaeological discipline emerge. We will be liberated from nature and culture and we will escape the chains of anthropology.

Johan Normark
Archaeological Haecceities

Alcohol and archaeologists

I have always been curious about how archaeologists talk about alcohol. It seems like every archaeologist has more than a few heroic stories about how much beer or whiskey they or their colleagues drank at such and such a dig or while surveying such and such a valley. Not being much of a drinker myself, I admit being baffled by the exuberance with which archaeologists tell stories about how crew chief X used to clean the profiles of the excavation pit with a bottle of Jack Daniels by the end of the day (no slip twixt trowel and lip!). Or about how field director Y would drink his students under the table (then dance on top of the table) only to harangue them about their lack of pep four hours later at the beginning of the next work day. Many years ago, after overhearing a conference-goer say that he had drank so much the night before that “it was coming out of both ends,” a buddy and I considered embarking on a formal ethnographic study of the drinking habits of the tribe.

I first wondered whether there might be a discrepancy between how much archaeologists say they drink and how much they actually drink. I had always suspected such a discrepancy because I have never seen much drinking on any of the field projects of which I have been a part. Drinking was not absent—one project managed to get a bar (the “Cinnabar”) going in the middle of a Belizean jungle preserve—but even on projects where alcohol was customary—where workmen got shots of liquor each payday, for example—I rarely saw archaeologists have more than a couple drinks. Of course, the projects I have been on are not a representative sample of all archaeology projects. My sample of projects is heavily biased toward academic archaeology south of the border. But if we do restrict our discussion to academic archaeologists, could all the talk of heavy drinking really be anything more than talk? Let’s be honest: academic archaeologists rarely measure up to the stereotype of the heroic drinker. Like most people in academia, we’re an egg-headed bunch. Though many of us may be more outdoorsy than the average bench scientist or comp. lit. professor, does the competency, the assiduousness, and the work-through-the-weekend drive needed to succeed jive with the kind of personality that can sustain the epic benders with which archaeologists regularly regale each other? Some people can balance heavy drinking with heavy publishing, but I sure can’t.

At the same time, there is good reason to think that archaeologists may indeed drink a bit more than other academics. The only thing that anyone remembers about the SAAs in Vancouver was the high price of beer. The keystone case study of Shanks and Tilley’s Re-Constructing Archaeology was about beer cans. The same venues that host archaeology conferences often host meetings of political scientists, mathematicians, etc., but the venues’ experiences with these other breeds of geek have not always prepared them for the archaeologists, who often drink the hotel bars dry.

Fortunately, there is enough literature on the archaeology of alcohol to suggest several fruitful interpretations of archaeology with alcohol. The recent popularity of research on feasting in prehistory (Dietler and Hayden 2001; Bray 2003) has brought alcohol to the forefront of archaeological discussions of power and politics. I sometimes wonder if the fascination with feasting reflects the popularity of alcohol among archaeologists. Beyond feasting, archaeologists have investigated a wide range of topics concerning alcohol in the past. I mention just a few to bear witness to this breadth. Paul Shackel (2000) reports that brewery workers in 19th century Harpers Ferry drank the owner’s profits by abusing the free beer system (and raising the level of workplace injuries in the process). Beaudry et al. (1991) interpret hidden caches of bottles as a form of resistance to capitalist ideals of sobriety among factory workers in Lowell, MA. Among 19th century Asian migrants to North America, drinking helped maintain ethnic identity (Ross 2010). In Southwest Asia in the 2nd and 3rd millennia BC, drinking beer as opposed to wine accorded with low versus high status (Joffe 1998). In the Classical world, alcohol played a primary role in the colonial encounter between Romans and Gauls (Dietler 2006). There are ethnoarchaeologies of alcohol, ranging from studies of the style of pots in which beer is served (Bowser 2000) to studies of how it might have been brewed (Hayashida 2008). Ancient breweries have been excavated, including the remarkable locale in Hierakonpolis, Egypt, from the 4th millennium BC (Geller 1993). Scientific techniques for detecting alcohol as a residue on pottery are constantly advancing (e.g. Isaakson 2010) and pushing alcohol further back in time, with the earliest data coming from China in the 7th millennium B.C. (McGovern et al. 2004).

How can this broad literature illuminate all the drinking that archaeologists supposedly do? By the 1980s, scholarly opinion on drinking had shifted from alcohol as a destructive social and personal pathology to a constructive good that integrates social groups (e.g. Douglas 1987). But this line of thinking does not explain why drinking might be a diacritical marker of archaeologists specifically. It should come quickly to mind that drinking is an embodied practice, and the embodied experience of fieldwork involves not just working together but living together with other project members in variable conditions of deprivation, driving diggers to drink. Consumption at conferences becomes a ritualized reenactment of the field moment.

Yet I think we can go further, keying off Dietler’s (2006:232) point that alcohol as embodied material culture “has an unusually close relationship to the person and to both the inculcation and the symbolization of concepts of identity and difference in the construction of the self.” What one drinks, where they drink, when they drink, how they behave when drinking, who they drink with, what paraphernalia they drink with, how much they drink, how they handle themselves when drunk (“styles of inebriation”; Dietler, ibid), and how they discursively construct their drinking all play a role in the formation of identity. Though identity is multifaceted, I limit myself to professional identity. Getting and holding a job requires both technical competence and social competence: ethnographic research has documented that drinking can be a very important aspect of social competence, so much so that it is sometimes considered part of the job (Mars 1987:93). This finding makes sense of all the times people told me, when I began to do archaeology, that “you can’t be an archaeologist without drinking!?!” Of course, for archaeology, unlike the case of the longshoremen studied by Mars (1987), the statement that one can’t succeed in the profession without drink is patently false. Thus, for all the alcohol that archeologists do drink, there is still a symbolic supplement. I suspect this discursive supplement is a kind of garb that archaeologists boastfully (shamelessly?) use to conceal or mitigate an uncomfortable truth at our ontological core: that most of us in the academy are nerds at heart.

Yet this line of thought does not explain why alcohol may play a more important symbolic role for archaeologists than for other academy brats. Though this essay has never been on firm empirical ground, I will now stake even less firm ground. Indiana Jones was a rebel, and as much as archaeologists fret over inaccuracies in the portrayal of archaeology in his films, archaeologists alone are entitled to the social capital clinging to Indy’s coattails. Despite this unique entitlement, cashing in on the stereotype still requires a convincing performance. Ever since the temperance movement, drinking alcohol has had a diffuse touch of rebelliousness. Does the hype about archaeologists as drinkers tap into this rebelliousness, thus making a more convincing case for archaeology’s association with a hunk the likes of Harrison Ford? I suspect that this kind of construction of identity and difference occurs among archaeologists as opposed to just between archaeologists and outsiders. One can imagine archaeologists competing with each other for prestige and social positioning within the field, one-upping each other with statements of alcoholic grit.

In the end, I have no conclusions, just speculation and questions. After all, this post doesn’t really begin to get at the kinds of information about drinking (when, with whom, how, where, with what props and with what bodily comportment etc.) necessary to get deeper into the construction of the drinking self. I hope someone else will commit to the ethnographic gumshoeing required to say something more substantive.

Scott R. Hutson

References

Beaudry, M., L. J. Cook and S. A. Mrozowski
1991  Artifacts and Active Voices: Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality, edited by R. H. McGuire, and Robert Paynter. Blackwell, Oxford.

Bowser, B. J.
2000  From Pottery to Politics: An Ethnoarcaheological Study of Political Factionalism, Ethnicity, and Domestic Pottery Style in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 7(3):219-248.

Bray, T. (editor)
2003  The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires. Kluwer, New York.

Diehl, M.
1990  Driven by drink: the role of drinking in the political economy and the case of Early Iron Age France. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9:352-406.

Dietler, M.
2006  Alcohol: Anthropological/Archaeological Perspectives. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 35:229-249.

Dietler, M. and B. Hayden (editors)
2001  Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D. C.

Douglas, M. (editor)
1987  Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Geller, J.
1993  Bread and beer in fourth-millennium Egypt. Food and Foodways 5(3):255-67.

Hayashida, F. M.
2008  Ancient beer and modern brewers : ethnoarchaeological observations of chicha production in two regions of the north coast of Peru. Journal of anthropological archaeology 27(2):161-174.

Isaksson, S., C. Karlsson and T. Eriksson
2010  Ergosterol (5, 7, 22-ergostatrien-3b-ol) as a potential biomarker for alcohol fermentation in lipid residues from prehistoric pottery. Journal of Archaeological Science 37:3263-3268.

Joffe, A. H.
1998  Alcohol and Social Complexity in Ancient Western Asia. Current Anthropology 39(3):297-322.

Mars, G.
1987  Longshore drinking, economic security and union politics in Newfoundland. In Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology, edited by M. Douglas, pp. 91-101. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

McGovern, P. E., J. Zhang, J. Tang, Z. Zhang, G. R. Hall, R. A. Moreau, A. Nuñez, E. D. Butrym, M. P. Richards, C.-s. Wang, G. Cheng, Z. Zhao and C. Wang.
2004  Fermented beverages of pre- and proto-historic China. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101(51):17593-98.

Ross, D. E.
2010  Comparing the material lives of Asian transmigrants through the lens of alcohol consumption. Journal of Social Archaeology 10(230-254).

Shackel, P. A.
2000  Craft to Wage Labor: Agency and Resistance in American Historical Archaeology. In Agency in Archaeology,, edited by M.-A. Dobres, and John Robb, pp. 232-246. Routledge, London.

Archaeology: More than Strata and Sherds

As a student of archaeology, I have always been sensitive to the issue of the types of questions archaeology alone can, or cannot, answer. By “archaeology alone,” I am referring to studies of prehistoric peoples that must try to make sense of the physical evidence without the benefit of a recorded history. I have worked mostly in the American Southwest, where the Hohokam, Mogollon, ancestral puebloans, and others abandoned their communities long before the arrival of the Spanish and left behind no written records.

Archaeological studies can determine quite a bit about people from the durable items that survive the passage of time: What they ate, where they lived, when they lived, what they manufactured, where they found their raw materials, who they traded with, etc. The material record can also reveal clues about their social behaviors. Differentiation in household goods can indicate social or economic stratification, grave goods hint at reverence paid to the dead, and monumental architecture reveals the presence of community-level organization.

This is still pretty thin, from an anthropological point of view. My very first anthropology course defined culture as a set of shared ideas and behaviors. Archaeologists talk about “cultural” material and studying lost “cultures,” yet the artifacts and structures we excavate seldom seem to tell us much about the shared ideas and behaviors of the people who left them behind. Even behaviors such as the daily routines of gathering and preparing food must be guessed at, since in most cases the people who abandoned these habitation sites, well, they abandoned them. Only a handful of archaeologists are lucky enough to find a snapshot in time such as that provided by the sudden and rapid burial of Pompeii. Most sites in the Americas were cleared out, and sometimes decommissioned and burned before the former residents moved on, leaving little if any clues to the activities that previously occurred there.

Bigger questions remain mostly unanswered by the artifacts: What were their motives? What institutions did they create? What did they believe? Without a record, whether written by the people themselves or by their contemporaries (enemies or conquerors, for example), we will likely never know. I was surprised by a particular example of the importance of corroborating documentation while touring the Mary Rose museum in Portsmouth, England. One exhibit case contained mysterious items and a sign that asked visitors if they know what the objects were, or how they were used. Even with written records from that period (she sank in 1545), archaeologists and historians have been unable to identify the artifacts. Similarly mysterious items with no identifiable function are often labeled as “ritualistic” here in the American Southwest... but, I digress.

If the only things archaeological data could tell us about past societies were dates of occupation, population estimates, diet, goods produced, subsistence methods and the like (the kind of information you learn in a Geography 101 course), I probably would have lost interest by now. Fortunately for me, I have met and worked with archaeologists who engage in interdisciplinary approaches.

I’m not talking about the kind of interdisciplinary work that happens when geologists, biological anthropologists, climatologists, and other specialists are brought in to help interpret an archaeological site. I don’t mean working with cultural anthropologists to interpret material culture through ethnographic analogs, either (although this is important and valuable). I’m referring to archaeologists working with academics from other fields entirely, in an attempt to provide a deeper time perspective to better understand present day societies and institutions.

Such interdisciplinary opportunities include:

1. Economics. Archaeological data can reveal much about production and exchange that is useful to economists, who can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking human history began with the creation of the central bank.

2. Architecture. Techniques have been developed by architects that can be applied to archaeological studies of the built environment, such as Hillier and Hanson’s space syntax analysis, and Rapoport’s concepts of low, middle, and high level meaning.

3. Urban Studies and Planning. Analysis of ancient cities can help to identify universals in the ways humans aggregate into large settlements.

4. Sustainability. This is a hip new topic, and archeological studies have a lot to offer with regard to human interactions with the environment over time.

Like nearly everyone, I was drawn to archaeology by the ruins and the promise of unearthing mysterious items. As I became more involved, I embraced the measurement aspects: the what, where, and when of the artifacts. But archaeology has to be much more than the salvage of ancient treasure if it is to be relevant, both to the social sciences and to me. The potential to use archaeology to help see the big picture of humanity is what is keeping me around.

Paul Wren

Further Reading:

The Mary Rose Museum

Hillier, B., & Hanson, J.
1984 The social logic of space. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rapoport, A.
1988 Levels of meaning in the built environment. In F. Poyatos (Ed.), Cross-cultural perspectives in non verbal communication (pp. 317–336). Toronto: C. J. Hogrefe.

Urban Organization through the Ages: Neighborhoods, Open Spaces and Urban Life

Archaeological Perspectives and Anthropology: A story about shoes

Artifacts elicit emotional responses in people. I will argue this point with a shoe… actually, a few of them. But first, some background.

On the American Anthropological Association Website, Anthropology is defined as the “study of humans past and present…A central concern of anthropologists is the application of knowledge to the solution of human problems”. An anthropological subfield, archaeology studies human cultures through their material remains.

So what?

What does an archaeological perspective add to anthropology? Materials provide a focal point that grounds abstract ideas or experiences. Family pictures, plaques, or mementos serve as special reminders of the past events and experiences, but materials, and the social performances in which they are set, can work for you as well. Pipe cleaners can facilitate healing after a childhood in the shadow of domestic violence. The performance of two black artists demonstrating graffiti art in a room full of white academics challenges several layers of assumptions. Pipe cleaners and pieces of wood are common. The importance of these particular material artifacts come from their context or the stories associated with them.

Shoes. We wear them nearly everyday. They are commonplace. In the right context they are effective bridges to facilitate an understanding of historic events. For me, the most powerful example of this bridge is the shoe room at the Holocaust Museum.

Image from Flickr user Anna Lundqvist

This room engages more than your ears listening to a story. Eyes aren’t enough to process the materials in front of you. The smell of leather overwhelms you. Context provided by the rest of the museum solidifies your understanding of exactly how horrific the Holocaust was. Reviews of the museum are a testament to the impact of this exhibit.

When I was the park archaeologist at Cane River Creole National Historical Park, I excavated a unit under the collapsed chimney at the North Tenant Cabin at Oakland Plantation:

 The artifacts recovered from the excavation included one leather shoe. Speaking with park visitors and other archaeologists in the area contextualized this artifact in the material culture of hoodoo. The shoe was located underneath an opening (the chimney) in the house. Park visitors told me the placement was meant to keep witches and evil spirits out of the house. Similar caches of artifacts are found in Annapolis, Maryland. Here is a webpage on hoodoo at the James Brice House in Annapolis, a .pdf report on excavations at the Adams-Kitty House (see appendix 1), and some videos of Mark Leone discussing the subject.

Recently, during a project for the Kentucky Archaeology Survey we encountered some brick piers from a historic structure.  Here's an image from the site:

During the excavation, we recovered several leather shoes and shoe fragments. While archaeologists are still working on an interpretation of the site, its location beside the tallest building in Lexington is remarkable. This shot was from inside the excavation trench:

In this context, leather shoes, and this site, could provide a focal point from which to discuss the historical development of Lexington, Kentucky.

At the 2011 Now What Lexington conference, I co-led a session on public archaeology. Attempting to conform to the unconference format, we tried to speak only enough to get the conversation moving and the comments were very valuable (a post for another time). One of the participants, Mick Jefferies, remarked that, to him, archaeology was about the stories we tell. They promote modern people to become viscerally rooted in their communities.

I can think of no better way to put it myself, thanks Mick.

Nicolas Laracuente

@archaeologist

Introduction: The archaeology issue

Where does the line between archaeology and cultural anthropology begin and end?  When does a fire-pit, for example, suddenly shift from being "modern" or "contemporary" into the archaeological category?  For instance, in some cases sites are considered to be of "historical value" when they are 45 years old.  This means that the same scatter of historical material (cans, bottles, etc) could literally be categorized as refuse one week and archaeologically/historically significant the next.  I always found this strangely fascinating when I was working in CRM.  Archaeological and historical sites keep materializing day after day, all because of the ways in which we define them.  Similar arbitrary divisions often separate the work of cultural anthropologists and archaeologists, as if each has some burning need to stake out (and hold) a particular intellectual territory.  It's interesting how we humans like to divide up the world into neat little conceptual bundles.  I suppose it makes for more efficient paperwork and such.  But I am somewhat of a skeptic about all of these divisions.

When it comes to the academic positions, boundaries, and barriers between archaeology and anthropology, I think I might have an identity problem.  Maybe I am just not committed enough to one camp, maybe I am an apostate of both sides, or maybe I am just a filthy centrist in this grand academic battle.  I cast fault upon my education: I have been allowed to take a mixture of archaeological and anthropological courses from my undergrad all the way to my current PhD program (although, admittedly, my archaeological ratio has decreased in the last two years).  Yep, this means that I have read my fair share of Bruce Trigger and George Stocking.  I think this is a good thing.

Ya, I know there are supposed to be BIG DIFFERENCES between anthropologists and archaeologists.  I have heard about these BIG DIFFERENCES for some time now--this is not really a new story.  We have all heard about departments splitting apart, about irreconcilable philosophical positions, about the epic battles between the materialists and the postmodernists, and the fact that the cultural anthropologists just weren't willing to co-mingle with the archaeologists at last year's Christmas party.  Sometimes these divisions erupt into deep schisms--although I am not convinced that this needs to be the case.

OK, so I am technically a cultural anthropologist--I guess.  But I am not all that keen on labels that supposedly encapsulate my entire academic and philosophical being.  Then again, maybe I need to worry about having a nice, defined, focused label that I can attach to myself at conferences and other "career building" social gatherings.  Or not.  So now what?  Personally, I think there is a lot to be gained from a working relationship between cultural anthropologists and archaeologists--whether or not they all decide to join in one harmonious group and sing the academic version of kumbaya at next year's AAA meeting.  It could happen, you know. 

I definitely think that cultural anthropologists can learn plenty--about material culture, artifact life cycles, urban spaces, comparative site analysis, and long-term social processes, etc--from archaeologists.  Absolutely.  At the same time, I think that archaeologists stand to gain quite a lot from ethnographers and other anthropologists who study contemporary populations and social situations.  Maybe, just maybe, the study of contemporary social and political systems--not to mention material culture, space, and place-making--can spark some ideas for thinking and rethinking archaeological possibilities.  The past can inform the present and vice versa...you know the drill.

Now, I am not making the argument that the present and the past are perfectly applicable to one another, and that we can learn everything we need to know about one through assumptions and observations about the other.  I am arguing that taking into account both the archaeological and the anthropological might generate some productive ways of thinking about and engaging with our research.  I certainly do think there are plenty of avenues for some incredibly fascinating and creative collaboration between the anthropologically and archaeologically-minded of us.  But hey--that could just be my four-field indoctrination clouding my ability to think clearly.  I blame old Franz Boas, for starters.  In the end, when it comes to the critically imperative disciplinary choice between the archaeology camp on the one hand, and the anthropology camp on the other, well, I'll take both.

But here's the most important point: dialog and collaboration do not necessarily mean agreement--whether theoretical, methodological, or otherwise.  Dialog simply means conversation, which opens up the possibility for approaching issues from different perspectives.  This, I think, is what is most valuable about any working relationship between archaeologists and anthropologists.  Hopefully the latest edition of this site can add something to the conversation--that's the goal anyway. 

Now that I have stepped down from the soapbox, I want to say thanks to everyone who took time to contribute to this issue.   This time around we have essays by Johan Normark, Maureen Meyers, Colleen Morgan, Michael E. Smith, Paul Wren, Nicolaus Laracuente, Olaf Jaime-Riveron, Scott Hutson, and Adam Giacinto.  This month's visual anthropology (archaeology) comes from Veronica Miranda.  Lastly, don't forget that there is always a space where you can voice your own opinions about the main theme of every issue--the Reader Responses page (aka the Open Thread).  Thanks, and I hope you enjoy this month's essays!

-R.A.

What does an archaeological perspective bring to anthropology?

I think it is important that this question is asked. I recall sitting in one of my first graduate seminars and trying to explain that I felt there was a hierarchy in the field of anthropology; cultural anthropology was ‘above’ the others. My cultural anthropology peers protested this was not true, but the reality was (as is true of many graduate programs in anthropology) I had to take courses in cultural anthropology to earn my degree, but they did not have to take courses in archaeology to earn theirs.

And therein lies the rub. How do we explain the importance of archaeology to anthropology if anthropologists often appear to have little interest or place less importance on knowing what our subfield entails? I know, for example, how to read ethnographies, how to explore them using a Geertzian vs. a Foucaldian perspective. But few of my cultural peers have read archaeology books, much less a cultural resource management report, and understood it. Fewer still have taken an archaeology field school; at most, they took an introduction to archaeology class.

So what does archaeology bring to anthropology? Archaeology, in case your introductory class was a long time ago, is the reconstruction of past cultures. We bring a long-term perspective to culture. Culture changes; we all know that. Cultural anthropologists can see the minute changes often, and sometimes see how that leads to larger changes. For example, a cultural anthropologist following the technological revolution that is Facebook in the last ten years would have seen one of the larger changes Facebook helped to bring to the change in government in the Middle East this past winter. Big changes indeed. Archaeologists often can not see the minute changes (although sometimes we can) but we see the big picture changes. We see how cultures change, and often, through examining the minutiae of daily life, we see why. For example, it is well-known that the American Revolution was a climax, of sorts, of a change in thinking among human cultures. A change from a focus on community to one on individual freedom. Why did this come about? One can read history books or even documents written in the late 18th century and see that the colonies felt a need for independence from Britain. This need for independence persisted so that today we have ideas of states’s rights and more directly, individual liberties. These are important American ideals.

But archaeology allows us to look deeper into that picture, to see where the beginnings of these ideas manifest themselves in the material culture, in the things left behind, or as James Deetz stated, in the small things forgotten. About the time the first colonies were founded, people lived differently. They did not have material items like individual bowls, plates, knives and forks. They ate meals from a communal bowl, meals that usually consisted of a stew that had simmered all day, possibly more than one day. They slept in one communal bed. They had perhaps two rooms in their homes. A man named Josiah Wedgewood learned how to make refined earthenware, and he glazed it. He learned how to make this cheaply, that is, for mass production means. He wanted to sell more of this earthenware to more people, so he marketed this as a new idea—that the emerging middle class should have separate bowls, plates, dishes, (and eventually forks, knives, spoons). Prior to this, only some royalty could afford more than a set of dishes for their household. About the same time, the colonizers in the new wilderness of the New World needed a way to bring order to their environment, their new place. They also were, many of them, quite successful in their endeavors. They began to build homes that reflected their taming of the wilderness, homes that had separate rooms for separate functions: a “living” room separate from a “bed” room which was separate from a kitchen. This separated labor from non-labor, and helped separate servants from non-servants. What people ate reflected these changes too. We see cut marks on individual pieces of meat. Instead of cooking an entire chicken as a stew, we see it roasted and cut into individual pieces for the individual plates.

And we see all this through the archaeological remains. What it reflects is the larger emergence of the middle class out of the Middle Ages’ social construct of gentry and other. The New World allowed this middle class, already emerging in the Old World, to take a firm foothold. The archaeological remains of these changes in thinking begin to appear during the mid-seventeenth century. If we just used historic documents, we might think these changes did not occur for another one hundred years. We can see, through archaeology, outside forces (here, economic) that shape the social.

Archaeology helps anthropology to see the consequences of the history of cultures on present-day cultures. We allow anthropology to not just see the culture in context in the moment, but rather to see the effects of past contexts of that same culture on this moment. Culture does not occur in a vacuum, but is the result of years, decades, and centuries of choices and consequences. We act today, as a culture, because of what came before. We have the ability to not only see what came before, but to see how this before affects the present because of archaeology. If archaeology is viewed in this way, it becomes an essential part of anthropology, not a sub-discipline but a necessary part of the discipline. 

Maureen Meyers

Reader Responses: The archaeological issue (Open Thread)

So what's the deal?  Are the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology compatible?  Are they even related?  Should anthropologists and archaeologists cut their losses and go their separate ways, or should they just get the band back together and move on with life?  Tell us how it is, or how it should be...