Ch. 2 - Structure of Archaeological Inquiry (ANT 213)

Moundbuilder Myth (Moundbuilder Hypothesis -- proved false by Cyrus Thomas, 1894)

- 16th-century Europeans arrived in North America - posed questions: Who were people already living here? Did Europeans have right to take land? - Colonial Americans encountered thousands of mounds of varying sizes and shapes, and earthworks in Ohio and Mississippi River valleys (e.g.: Monks Mound at Cohokia, 70 ft tall, footprint larger than Egyptian pyramids) - Colonists held several theories about Moundbuilders; most favored idea: they were built by ancient peoples defeated by Native Americans. - Some believed them to be Viking or Egyptians, Israelites, Chinese, Greeks, Polynesians, Phoenicians, Norwegians, Belgians, Tartars, Saxons, Hindus, Africans, Welsh, or residents of lost continent of Atlantis - Ohio minister suggested God created to mark Eden - 19th-century scholars saw Native Americans as intruders who tore down magnificent ancient civilization. Gave early Americans sense of superiority and justification in avenging ancient civilizations by taking Native American lands. - Squier and Davis hypothesized that Indians were not sophisticated or agricultural enough to have built the Mounds, and they were built by ancient "semicivilized" societies - Thomas concluded the Mounds were built by Indian ancestors

What two paradigms do anthropologists use to study culture, and how are these different ways of thinking reflected in archaeology?

- 2 major approaches to the study of human culture: Ideational Perspective - deals with ideas and symbols - sees culture as instrument to create meaning/order in world Adaptive Perspective - emphasizes aspects of culture that articulate with environment, technology, economics - sees culture as way in which humans adapt to natural/social environment - 2 approaches are reflected in 2 major paradigms of modern archaeology: Processual Archaeology - scientific approach and focuses on material factors of life Post-processual Archaeology - historical approach, emphasizes symbolic meanings, power relationships, individual actions and gender

Paradigm

- 2: processual and post-processual - provide overarching framework for understanding "how the world works" - influences how you frame your research questions, and how you interpret the answers - not open to direct empirical verification or rejection; they just turn out to be useful or not - shouldn't seek to be paradigm-free. All humans possess culture, all archaeologists possess paradigm. - The overarching framework, often unstated, for understanding a research problem. It is a researcher's "culture." - Paradigms are a lot like culture—both are learned, shared, and symbolic. Archaeologists sharing the same paradigm can converse with one another and leave a lot unstated; an archaeologist following another paradigm might have to ask many questions, seeking definitions of basic concepts and terms. Like culture, your paradigm influences how you frame your research questions, and how you interpret the answers.

Rock Shelter

- A common type of archaeological site, consisting of a rock overhang that is deep enough to provide shelter but not deep enough to be called a cave (technically speaking, a cave must have an area of perpetual darkness).

Hypothesis

- A proposition proposed as an explanation of some phenomenon. - Experimental archaeology (also called experiment archaeology and experiential archaeology) is a field of study which attempts to generate and test archaeological hypotheses, usually by replicating or approximating the feasibility of ancient cultures performing various tasks or feats. - Judgment, imagination, past experience, and even guesswork all have their place in forming a hypothesis.

Cultural Anthropology

- A sub-discipline of anthropology that emphasizes nonbiological aspects: the learned social, linguistic, technological, and familial behaviors of humans. - employ participant observation, personally asking questions, living among observed society - study everything people in contemporary societies do, say, or think: rituals kinship religion politics art oral histories medical practices - Archaeology overlaps with cultural anthropology in that some archaeologists conduct research with living peoples to understand the relationships between behavior and material remains. Archaeologists look to ethnographic research when interpreting artifacts found at sites.

Scientific Method (6 Steps)

- Accepted principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of secure knowledge. Established scientific procedures involve the following steps: (1) define a relevant problem (2) establish one or more hypotheses (3) determine the empirical implications of the hypotheses (4) collect appropriate data through observation and/or experimentation (5) compare these data with the expected implications (6) revise and/or retest hypotheses as necessary.

Potlatch as Adaptive Strategy How could the loss of so much property serve useful ecological, technological, or economic purposes?

- Alliances cemented by potlatching, ensured villages with certain resources would not be attacked by villages without those resources. - Wars of "property," not "wars of blood" - despite seemingly competitive display, villages ended potlatches full, but more importantly, with allies - some research suggests that potlatches shifted villagers from less-productive villages to more prosperous - more and more villagers migrating to more prosperous villages brought more laborers to contribute to even more prosperity

Culture is Shared

- Although everyone is an individual with his/her own values and understandings, members of a human group share some basic ideas about the world and their place in it. Anthropology focuses on such shared ideas, rather than on individual variations of those ideas. Many Euro-American homes, for instance, are divided into multiple rooms, including a living room, a smallish kitchen, a family room, and bedrooms. This pattern is considered normal and comfortable by most Euro-Americans. - But, according to George Esber (Miami University), when Apache people were given the chance to design their own homes, they preferred a single large living area that included the kitchen, with only the bedrooms and baths separate. The central living area was to accommodate large social gatherings. In order to cook for those gatherings, Apaches also preferred kitchens with an almost industrial capacity, including large cabinets to hold large cooking pots. Clearly, shared ideas about life are reflected in shared social behaviors that in turn result in patterned sets of material remains—the sort of things that archaeologists recover.

Potlatch

- Among nineteenth-century Northwest Coast Native Americans, a ceremony involving the giving away or destruction of property in order to acquire prestige.

General Systems Theory

- An effort to describe the properties by which all systems, including human societies, allegedly operate. Popular in processual archaeology of the late 1960s and 1970s. - Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to term-77archaeology, and is occasionally referred to as philosophy of archaeology. There is no one singular theory of archaeology, but many, with different archaeologists believing that information should be interpreted in different ways. Throughout the history of the discipline, various trends of support for certain archaeological theories have emerged, peaked, and in some cases died out. Different archaeological theories differ on what the goals of the discipline are and how they can be achieved.

Theory

- An explanation for observed, empirical phenomena. It seeks to explain the relationships between variables; it is an answer to a "why" question. - Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to archaeology, and is occasionally referred to as philosophy of archaeology. There is no one singular theory of archaeology, but many, with different archaeologists believing that information should be interpreted in different ways. Throughout the history of the discipline, various trends of support for certain archaeological theories have emerged, peaked, and in some cases died out. Different archaeological theories differ on what the goals of the discipline are and how they can be achieved.

High-Level Theory

- Archaeology's ultimate objective - relies on Low and Middle-Level Theory - addresses "big questions" of concern to many social/historical sciences "Why did this happen in this way" questions - Theory that seeks to answer large "why" questions. - High-level theory is archaeology's ultimate objective; low- and middle-level research are necessary steps to attain this goal. High-level theory goes beyond the archaeological specifics to address the "big questions" of concern to many social and historical sciences. - High level theory applies to all intellectual inquiry about the human condition, raising questions such as: 1) Why did we humans become cultural animals? 2) Why did hunter gatherers become agriculturalists? 3) Why did social stratification arise? 4) Why did human history take the particular course it did in the New World as opposed to the Old World? 5) Why did aboriginal hunter-gatherers in California not take up agriculture? 6) Why did large civilizations develop in some parts of the world and not in others?

Culture is Symbolic

- Consider the symbolism involved in language: There is no reason that the word "dog" in English means "a household pet," any more than does "chien," "perro," or "alika" (French, Spanish, and Malagasy). - idea of dogs as pets is a cultural idea. Indeed, in many places, such as Micronesia and Southeast Asia, dogs are feast foods. Though this disturbs many Americans, the idea of "pet" is not inherent in a dog—it is a socially constructed, symbolic meaning that a culture gives to dogs. Symbolic meanings of behavior condition what we do—for example, what we eat—which in turn affects the material traces of those behaviors, such as which bones wind up in ancient middens.

Deconstruction

- Efforts to expose the assumptions behind the alleged objective and systematic search for knowledge. A primary tool of postmodernism. - Coined by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), deconstruction refers to efforts to expose the assumptions behind the allegedly scientific search for knowledge.

Canadian Response to Kwakwaka'wakw Potlatches 1885 and 1951

- Euro-Canadian outsiders saw potlatches as barbaric, chaotic, wasteful because they didn't know purpose or stories/legends that made potlatches make sense - saw as hurdle in converting Kwakwaka'wakw to Christianity and Western culture - 1885: Canadian government banned potlatches - 1951: Canadian government allowed potlatches again - (Compare potlatches to American football games. Would Kwakwaka'wakw understand or consider it madness?)

Middle Level Theory

- Hypothesis that links archaeological observations with the human behavior or natural processes that produced them. - Middle-level theory links some specific set of archaeological data with the human behavior or natural processes that produced them. At this middle level, we make a critical transition, moving from the archaeologically observable (the low-level theoretical facts) to the archaeologically invisible (relevant human behaviors or natural processes of the past). - Allows archaeologists to create "if . . . then" statements of Step (3) in scientific method - Archaeologists conducting Middle-Level research seek situations in which they can observe: (1) ongoing human behavior/natural processes (2) material results of that behavior/natural processes - experimenting with manufacture of tools/pottery - studying living populations and how behavior produces material remains - study natural process of carnivores breaking bones of kills - how rivers move bones/artifacts in certain patterns - How does this transition actually take place?

1st Archaeological Dig in America

- Jefferson directed the first archaeological dig in the history of North America. In his 20s, Jefferson was interested in learning about numerous Native American burial mounds near his home in Virginia and organized an archeological expedition, directed fieldwork, and analyzed, wrote, and published what he found. Some have written that Jefferson's use of stratigraphy (studying successive geological layers) and systematic trenching "anticipates the fundamental approach and the methods of modern archaeology by about a full century."

Scientific Approach

- L. "to know" - European Renaissance and Islamic scholarship, but origins much farther back - Archaeological sites show evidence of scientific reasoning: astronomical observations, disease treatment, calendrical systems - cave paintings and bone carvings exemplify early systematizing of knowledge - intellectual endeavor began in 17th century - 1620: Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, scientific method Modern science divided into fields unified by scientific approach: - physical (physics, chemistry, geology) - biological (botany, zoology, etc.) - social (anthropology, etc.)

Trade Language

- Language that develops among speakers of different languages to permit economic exchanges. - A lingua franca, lit. Frankish tongue; also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language or dialect systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages. - Trade languages were common languages used by merchants who did not speak a common tongue. Basic, the largest and most used language in modern galactic history, began as a trade language, but its status as a trade language during the period of the Galactic Republic was ambiguous. Chief among the modern trade languages was Bocce.

What 3 levels of theory does a scientific approach in archaeology entail? How do these relate to paradigms?

- Low-level theory involves observations that emerge from archaeological fieldwork; this is how archaeologists get their "data," their "facts" - Middle-level theory links archaeological data with human behavior or natural processes; it is produced through experimental archaeology, taphonomy (the study of natural processes on archaeological sties), and ethnoarchaeology (the study of living peoples to see links between behavior and material remains) - High-level theory provides answers to larger "why" questions - Paradigms are frameworks for thinking that relate concepts and provide research strategies. They apply to intellectual inquiry in general and are not specific to archaeology.

Science is self-critical and based on testing

- Many people think that science is about white lab coats, supercomputers, and complex equations. Although science may involve such things, it's really about honesty. Scientists propose hypotheses, then the say, "Here is my idea; here is the evidence that will prove it wrong; and here is my attempt to collect that evidence." Scientists acquire understanding not by proving that an idea is right, but by showing that competing ideas are wrong. The best scientists are professional skeptics, always asking themselves: How do I know that I know something? Science, in this sense, becomes the right to be wrong.

Gatecliff Shelter

- Nevada - rockshelter where people camped, beneath shallow overhang 7000 years ago - found by David Hurst Thomas - Robert L. Kelly helped excavate site's deposits - filled with artifacts, ecofacts, features

Feature

- Nonportable archaeological evidence such as fire hearths, architectural elements, artifact clusters, garbage pits, and soil stains.

Ecofact

- Plant or animal remains found at an archaeological site.

Deductive Reasoning

- Reasoning from theory to predict specific observational or experimental results. - Deductive reasoning is required to define these logical outcomes. Deductive arguments hold that the conclusions must be true if the premises are true, typically expressed as "if . . . then" statements: If the hypothesis is true, then we expect to observe the following outcomes. The tricky part is bridging the gap between the if and the then.

Data

- Relevant observations made on objects that then serve as the basis for study and discussion. - Archaeologists attempt to study the archaeological record in order to understand the human interaction at a particular location across the history of time. There are two sources of information that the archaeologist uses from a digging site with the aim of making conclusions about past human behavior.

Science is explanatory and, consequently, predictive.

- Science is concerned with causes. It seeks theories—explanatory statements that not only predict what will happen under a specified set of conditions, but also explain why it will happen.

Science is Empirical or Objective

- Science is concerned with the observable, measurable world. Questions are scientific (a) if they are concerned with the detectable properties of things and (b) if the result of observations designed to answer a question cannot be predetermined by the biases of the observer.

Science is public

- Scientific methods, the observations, and the arguments linking observations with conclusions are explicit and available for scrutiny by the public. The origin or political implications of ideas are irrelevant. What matters in science is that ideas can be tested by objective methods.

Science is Systematic and Explicit

- Scientists try to collect data relevant to solving a problem, and they try to specify their procedures, so that any trained observer under the same conditions would make the same observations.

Science is Logical

- Scientists work not only with data, but also with the ideas that link data to interpretations, and with the ideas that link the ideas together. These linkages must be grounded in previously demonstrated principles; otherwise an argument is a house of cards.

Classic Definition of Culture

- Sir Edward Burnett Tylor - 1871 - first page of first anthropology textbook ". . . taken in its wide ethnographic sense is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." - culture is learned, shared, symbolic

Stelae

- Stone monuments erected by Maya rulers to record their history in rich images and hieroglyphic symbols. - These symbols can be read and dated.

Testability

- The degree to which one's observations and experiments can be reproduced. - One of the key features of science is testability and reproducibility that results in facts. While archaeology does have some testability and reproducibility that results facts, such as carbon dating, this is rarely the be-all and end-all. Rather, these facts are used to support interpretations. Interpretations use various pieces of evidence as support, but they are in the end opinions. Interpretations are what are used in the humanities, whereas testable and reproducible facts are what are used in the sciences. Thus, while archaeology does incorporate some scientific elements, it is firmly in the camp of the humanities.

Low-Level Theory

- The observations and interpretations that emerge from hands-on archaeological field and lab work. - Low-Level Theory - begins with archaeological objects and generates relevant facts or data about those objects. Some data are physical observations. Low-level theory is significant in archaeology because it allows someone to document their initial observation of the finding to later reference. - in Low-Level Theory, archaeologists normally give little thought to the theories that stand behind their basic observations in the field or lab. We record that we found something--a hearth or bison femur or potsherd--without presenting the geochemical, evolutionary, or other theory that gives us the ability to identify something as a hearth, a bison bone, or a broken piece of a pot. - Overall, the important dimensions of low-level theory are the classical ones in archaeology: form and context. (dimensions, basic observations) - when archaeologists move from observing to determining when humans began to use fire intentionally or determining whether come chipped stones are tools or simply rocks naturally formed/broken in fortuitous ways, becomes Middle-Level Theory

Science

- The search for answers through a process that is objective, systematic, logical, predictive, self-critical, and public.

Material Data

- These are the physical items located such as artifacts and include objects like jewelry, pottery, stoneware, tools, weapons, clothing, and architectural items like walls, floors, columns, pillars, lintels, doors, gates, roads, wells, and even holes in the ground for rubbish pits.

Intangible Data

- This is solely information based. Unlike the tangible objects that are classed as 'material remains' descriptive data is an intangible factual reality that helps to lock the artifact in a location with context. Examples of archaeological data are measurements, direction, perhaps orientation, and/or associations.

Inductive Reasoning

- Working from specific observations to more general hypotheses. - Inductive reasoning works from specific facts or observations to general conclusions. The known facts serve as premises in this case, meaning that hypotheses should not only account for the known facts but should also predict unobserved phenomena. - No rules exist for induction (just as there are no rules for thinking up good ideas). - Judgment, imagination, past experience, and even guesswork all have their place in science. It's irrelevant where or how one derives the hypothesis.

Post-processual Paradigm

- arose largely in Great Britain and Europe - Ian Hodder - rejects processual search for universal laws and emphasizes role of individual - universals in behavior do not exist - scientific explanation is inadequate because it downplays historical circumstances in search for universals - consider trajectory of specific societies heavily influenced by their cultural ideas - sees search for grand narrative as meaningless - some post-processual archaeologists think archaeology should be more closely allied with history than anthropology - argues that significant social change typically results from individuals with intentions, desires, goals going about their daily lives - societies don't change culture from external pressure - change comes from internal social tension (competition between men/women, elites/non-elites, political groups) - power and how individuals live lives around it is a central question - reject systemic view of culture and focus more on ideational approaches to culture - see people within a society as competitors, individuals with. differing/competing ideas - when looking at a pot, mindful that things carry symbolic meaning as well as function (Did a pot "stand for" women, hospitality, or the Raven clan?) - seek to understand how material elements of life: house, village, city layout structure human relationships and affect how humans understand their lives - sees knowledge as "historically situated," and not as objective as processual archaeologists argue - emphasize the degree to which our own understanding of the world reflects the time and place in which we live - deconstruction (Jacques Derrida) - efforts to expose assumptions behind allegedly scientific search for knowledge - e.g.: Richard Wilk showed degree to which explanations for the demise of Maya civilization are linked to larger cultural and political context of archaeology. Maya was awesome, powerful, etc., 1300 years ago, then collapsed 1100 years ago. Mayan people are still there. They didn't leave. What happened? Why did it collapse? - current events shaped answers to these questions: 1962: (beginning of Vietnam War) common belief was that Maya ended through battles 1970s: environmental degradation 1974 (aftermath of Watergate, Nixon resignation): abuse of governmental authority - argues that all archaeology is political - A paradigm that focuses on humanistic approaches and rejects scientific objectivity. It sees archaeology as inherently political and is more concerned with interpreting the past than with testing hypotheses. It sees change as arising largely from interactions between individuals operating within a symbolic and/or competitive system. - The postprocessual paradigm is embedded within the larger arena of postmodernism. It arose in archaeology largely in Great Britain and Europe, nurtured by archaeologists such as Ian Hodder (Stanford University), but adherents today can be found on both sides of the Atlantic. We will characterize postprocessual archaeology in contrast to the points we just made about processual archaeology.

What makes an anthropologist and anthropologist?

- belief that a true understanding of human condition arises from a global, comparative, and holistic approach. - looking at only one group/time period gives only partial understanding - every part of human society (extinct/extant) counts - anthropologists specialize, but they do draw upon various subfields

What is an anthropological approach?

- belief that a true understanding of humankind can arise only from a perspective that is comparative, global, and holistic. - 4 sub-fields united by concept of culture: 1) Biological 2) Cultural 3) Linguistic 4) Archaeology - Culture is learned, shared, symbolically based system of knowledge - Culture includes traditions, kinship, language, religion, customs, beliefs

Ideational Perspective

- focuses on ideas, symbols, and mental structures as driving forces in shaping human behavior. - holds that culture is a complex set of conceptual designs and shared understandings that govern the way people act. - ideas, thoughts, shared knowledge, sees symbols and meanings as crucial to shaping human behavior - encompasses material culture insofar as material things manifest symbolic ideas - The ideational theorist insists on "getting inside a person's head" to seek out the shared meanings of a society. According to the ideational view of culture, one cannot comprehend human behavior without understanding the symbolic code for that behavior.

Potlatch as Ideational Message What was it all about? Symbolic message of feasts? How did participants understand it?

- for host, about prestige. Obtained goods to gift through labor and smaller potlatches within their own village - equivalent and more valuable gifts given had to eventually be returned through potlatches given in response = investment banking - "I am so powerful, I can afford to give all this away. You can't do this." - other villagers gained prestige through association with such a powerful man

Culture is Learned

- from parents, peers, teachers, leaders, and others. Note that culture is not biological or genetic; any person can acquire any culture. And under this anthropological definition, all peoples have the same amount of culture. Somebody who can recite Shakespeare and listens to Beethoven is no more "cultural" than one who reads People magazine and prefers Lady Gaga. If a baby born to European parents were raised in China, that individual's appearance would come from its genes (as moderated by environmental factors), but he or she would speak Mandarin or Cantonese, and act and think as other Chinese do. - culture is not biological/genetic - any person can acquire any culture - all people have the same amount of culture - genetically European child raised in China would have Chinese culture - New Guinea men wear nasal ornaments; think it odd that American women wear earrings

Processual Paradigm

- includes new archaeology of Lewis Binford; extends to evolutionary approaches practiced today - concerned with "process," ways cultures change over time, and search for "grand narrative" of how culture changes - Processual archaeology emphasizes evolutionary generalizations, not historical specifics, and often downplays importance of individual - early days of processual paradigm, saw history as opposite of science, description rathe than explanation. Processual paradigm claims to be scientific, not historical. - focuses on regularities, correlations, and patterns - directs attention away from ideology and history and toward environmental change, population growth, food production, trade, and conflict over limited resources as driving force in cultural evolution - views culture from a systemic perspective and takes an adaptive approach to the study of human culture - briefly tapped into established, external general systems theory, because culture provides nonbiological system through which people adapt to their environment. (Explained major parts of any system with rules governing all systems: positive feedback, negative feedback, equilibrium) - focuses attention on technology, ecology, economy, and takes adaptive rather than ideational perspective on culture - focuses on behavior rather than on cultural ideas that stand behind that behavior - religion and ideology are seen as "epiphenomena"--cultural add-ons with little long-term explanatory value - explanation in processual archaeology is explicitly scientific - processual archaeology attempts to remain ethically and politically neutral - archaeology should influence politics, but politics shouldn't influence archaeology - about half of archaeologists subscribe to processual paradigm. Perhaps, because it focuses on technology, economy, environment, and demography--aspects of human existence that leave clearest traces. Perhaps because it suggests cultural change results from orderly, intelligible processes. - generally see artifacts like a pot in terms of function (Was it used for cooking, food/water storage, etc? Serving vessel?) - The paradigm that explains social, economic, and cultural change as primarily the result of adaptation to material conditions. External conditions (for example, the environment) are assumed to take causal priority over ideational factors in explaining change. - Processual archaeology takes its name from its concern with "process"—that is, with the ways that cultures change over time. Processual archaeologists search for a "grand narrative" about how culture changes.

Kwakwaka'wakw Potlatch (Kwak-WAK-a-wak)

- more goods gifted/destroyed, higher the host's prestige - guests would belittle host's generosity, but would eventually have to give an even bigger feast - prior to European contact, subsisted on salmon, halibut, sea mammals, shellfish - depended on salmon runs for winter - lived in large, decorated, cedar-plank houses with several related families - social hierarchy, some families higher than others - occasionally took slaves from raids between villages - many still live in traditional territories; commercial fishermen, computer programmers, teachers, lawyers - potlatch, an example of competitive feasts, common in many societies - term from Chinook, Northwest Coast trade language, means "to flatten" - varied in size, between families or between villages (larger ones, Kwakwaka'wakw called "doing a great thing") - accompanied events: high-ranking marriages between villages, funerals, raising totem poles - ambitious, status-hungry men competed by hosting massive, opulent feasts according to culturally dictated rules - host gave gifts of varying value to guests from other villages: candlefish oil, berries, blankets, animal skins; slaves, canoes; "coppers"--hammered, shiled-like sheets of European copper, often with embossed designs/paintings; copper's had names: "Killer Whale," "Beaver Face," "All Other Coppers Are Ashamed to Look at It" - guests responded with (culturally prescribed) dissatisfaction to show their host was not being generous - very theatrical, bonfires, magic tricks, singing; displays of family heirlooms - elaborate dances, Cannibal dance: audience bitten, wooden bird/whale masks, opened to reveal human in throat - more food given to guests, greater prestige. Over-eating, vomiting. Fish oil from shovel-sized spoons - sometimes involved property destruction, throwing of coppers into sea, burning homes/canoes/money/clothing

Participant Observation

- primary strategy of cultural anthropology, in which data are gathered by questioning and observing people while the observer lives in their society.

Adaptive Persepective

- privileges "culture as a system" - social and cultural differences viewed not as reflections of symbolic meanings, but responses to material parameters of life (i.e. food, shelter, reproduction) - sees human behaviors as linked systematically; change in one area will result in change in another area (technological change leads to social organization change) - emphasizes technology, ecology, demography, and economics as the key factors in defining human behavior. - In the adaptive perspective, culture keeps societies in equilibrium with their ecosystems. Change results from those elements of technology, subsistence economy, and social or political organization most closely tied to life's material needs. - The cultural system--technology, modes of economic organization, settlement patterns, forms of social grouping, and political institutions--articulates material needs of human communities with ecological settings. - Archaeologists working with adaptive perspective link cultural behaviors largely to the environment, demography, subsistence, or technology

What is science and how does it explain things?

- search for answers through process that is objective, systematic, logical, predictive, self-critical, and public. - works through cyclical process that entails constructing hypotheses, determining their empirical implications, and testing those hypotheses with empirical data. - For more than a century, archaeology has been firmly grounded in a scientific perspective, which provides an elegant and powerful way of allowing people to understand the workings of the visible world.

Anthropology

- study of all aspects of humankind—biological, cultural, and linguistic; extant and extinct—employing a holistic, comparative approach and the concept of culture.

Archaeology

- study of the past through the systematic recovery and analysis of material remains. - technology and field methods differ from cultural anthropologists - data through material remains by excavation - techniques provide info living probably couldn't/wouldn't provide - major component in graduate anthropology programs - CRM is most employable part of archaeology, even for undergraduates

Linguistic Anthropology

- sub-discipline of anthropology that focuses on human language: its diversity in grammar, syntax, and lexicon; its historical development; and its relation to a culture's perception of the world. - anthropological linguists evaluate langauge: how sounds are made, how sounds create languages, relationship between language and thought, how linguistic systems change through time, basic structure of language, role of language in development of culture - chart historical relationships, track ancient migrations between now separate, but linguistically-related populations - study how people acquire second languages, work with native peoples to revive dying languages - archaeology overlaps with linguistics when language helps reconstruct when and from where modern populations migrated

Biological Anthropology Physical Anthropology

- sub-discipline of anthropology that views humans as biological organisms; also known as physical anthropology - use human fossils to reconstruct human biological evolution - study modern human biological (genetic) variability - forensic anthropology - biology/behavior of non-human primates - bioarchaeologists study past via human remains - Archaeologists overlap with biological anthropologists because they often encounter human skeletons; bioarchaeologists are essential in recovery/analysis of remains

Culture

- unites all anthropological sub-fields - integrated system of beliefs, traditions, and customs that govern or influence a person's behavior. Culture is learned, shared by members of a group, and based on the ability to think in terms of symbols. - Tylor defined as learned

How do anthropologists study culture?

1) ideational perspective 2) adaptive perspective

Post-processual Paradigm Characteristics

1) postprocessual archaeology rejects the processual search for universal laws and emphasizes the role of the individual. 2) postprocessual archaeology rejects the systemic view of culture and focuses more on the ideational approach to culture. 3) postprocessual archaeology sees knowledge as "historically situated," and not as objective as processual archaeologists argue

Processual Paradigm Characteristics

1) processual archaeology emphasizes evolutionary generalizations, not historical specifics, and often downplays the importance of the individual. 2) processual archaeology views culture from a systemic perspective and takes an adaptive approach to the study of human culture. 3) explanation in processual archaeology is explicitly scientific. 4) processual archaeology attempts to remain ethically neutral and claims to be explicitly nonpolitical.

Sir Francis Bacon

1620: Novum Organum - codified scientific method

Thomas Jefferson

1743 - 1826 - author of Declaration of Independence - 3rd President - musician, inventor, horticulturalist, architect - 1st scientific archaeologist in American - 1778: Notes on the State of Virginia Answered questions of French scholars. Included histories of Native Americans since 1607 settling at Jamestown, listed tribes, etc. - argued that Native Americans were intellectual and physical equals of Europeans, capable of constructing earthworks - conducted excavation of burial mound on his property (strange at time, as most scholars consulted texts, not dirt) - compared bones found within, determined not filled with soldiers who died in battle (didn't find evidence of trauma; bones were obviously of different ages) - concluded that the mound was opened for repeated use over time (supported by modern scholars) - President of American Philosophical Society - 1797: pamphlet calling for systematic collection of information on Mounds - Jefferson was also an expert musician (the violin being his favorite instrument), an inventor, a connoisseur of French cooking, an avid chess player, an accomplished horticulturalist, scientist, architect—and the first scientific archaeologist in America.

Edwin Davis

1811 - 1888 - Chillicothe, Ohio (fascinated esp. by mounds in hometown) - Physician - formed alliance with Ephraim Squier to study Mounds

Ephraim Squier

1821 - 1888 - Connecticutt - Civil engineer, surveyor, journalist, politician - advocated building canal across Central America - formed alliance with Edwin Davis to study Mounds - polygenist: believed humanity made up of different races, created at different times through different creation stories

Cyrus Thomas

1825 - 1910 - Tennessee - lawyer, merchant turned entomologist (bugs) - 1879: chosen by John Wesley Powell to head Bureau of Ethnology's division of mound studies - conducted study over 12 years, 2000 sites, 21 states - 1894: 700 page final report began: "Were the mounds built by the Indians?" - initially supported Moundbuilder hypothesis - tried to evaluate objectively - Asked if the Indians had knowledge of mound building? - considered reports of Spanish and French explorers that described mound construction and use in southeastern U.S. - studied copper objects; noted Indians had no smelting technology; correctly pointed out that copper found in Great Lakes region did not need smelting, and could be shaped with hammer - Conclusion: "the author believes the theory which attributes these works [the mounds] to the Indians to be the correct one." - conclusion came too late. Implied that the mythical Moundbuilders of ancient civilizations never existed and never needed to be avenged. - by 1894, Indian Wars were officially over, and Native Americans confined to reservations

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor

1832 - 1917 - first anthropology textbook - many consider him founder of modern anthropology - Classic definition of culture: ". . . taken in its wide ethnographic sense is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." - culture is learned, shared, symbolic

John Wesley Powell

1834 - 1902 - young Union captain at Shiloh - lost right arm to Confederate miniè ball, giving command to fire - went on to explore West - 1st expedition down Colorado River through Grand Canyon - several federal government positions - interacted with many Indians on expeditions - 1879: made head of Bureau of Ethnology - Congress dedicated 5th of Bureau's budget to mound exploration to satisfy public's interest - Powell chose Cyrus Thomas to head division of mound studies

Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley

1848 - Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis - 1st publication of Smithsonian Institution - claimed they did not mean to uphold any one hypothesis, but find truth - described Mounds in meticulous detail of sites in primarily Ohio River valley, maps, cross sections, artifacts - speculated only in last pages that various mound-building cultures were similar, and agricultural, because agriculture would have been necessary to produce that found within mounds - contrasted Moundbuilders as agriculturalists and sophisticated artists with Native Americans as hunters (ironic because Native Americans had taught colonists to grow maize) - ultimately supported popular hypothesis that Moundbuilders were related to "semicivilized" nations of Mexico and Central America (e.g.: Aztecs)

J. D. Bladwin

1872 Ancient American - considered any relationship between Moundbuilders and Indians "absurd"

Philip Phillips

1900 - 1994 "Archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing." - Most American archaeology departments are within anthropology, not stand-alone - Internationally, archaeology departments are most often associated with humanities department or stand-alone - boundaries between archaeology and other disciplines disappearing

Jacques Derrida

1930 - 2004 - coined term deconstruction - efforts to expose assumptions behind allegedly scientific search for knowledge (e.g.: Richard Wilk showed degree to which explanations for the demise of Maya civilization are linked to larger cultural and political context of archaeology. Maya was awesome, powerful, etc., 1300 years ago, then collapsed 1100 years ago. Mayan people are still there. They didn't leave. What happened? Why did it collapse?)

Ideational vs Adaptive Responses to Kwakwaka'wakw Potlatches

Ideational - shows how humans respond through particular, symbolically-charged behaviors - helps account for how potlatches conducted Adaptive - recognizes that humans must respond to material conditions of environment - helps account for why/when potlatches occurred

Processual-Plus

Michelle Hegmon - melding of post-processual interest in symbols and meaning with processual concerns regarding systematic generalizations - 2 tenets: 1) open-mindedness, a willingness to set theoretical egos aside 2) recognition of the power of theory, words, and labels to shape our understanding of the past

Ian Hodder

Post-processual paradigm advocate

Processual vs. Post-Processual

Processual - emphasizes evolutionary generalizations, not historical specifics, and often downplays importance of individual - views culture from a systemic perspective and takes an adaptive approach to the study of human culture - explanation in processual archaeology is explicitly scientific - processual archaeology attempts to remain ethically and politically neutral Post-processual - rejects processual search for universal laws and emphasizes role of individual - reject systemic view of culture and focus more on ideational approaches to culture - sees knowledge as "historically situated," and not as objective as processual archaeologists argue - argues all archaeology is political

Who wrote the first anthropology textbook?

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor 1871

Science is Reiterative

Step 6 often leads back to step 1

Characteristics of Science according to Lawrence Kuznar, anthropologist

empirical/objective - Questions are scientific if: 1) they are concerned with detectable properties 2) result of observations designed to answer question cannot be predetermined observer's biases systematic/explicit - Scientists collect data, specify procedures so other scientists can replicate under same conditions and make same observations logical - Scientists work with data, and ideas that link data to interpretations, ideas that link with other ideas explanatory and, consequently, predictive - Concerned with causes - Seeks theories--explanatory statements that predict what and why something will occur under specified conditions self-critical and based on testing - honest - scientists acquire understanding by proving that competing ideas are wrong, not by proving an idea right - best scientists are skeptics, asking How do I know that I know? - Science is the right to be wrong public - methods, observations, arguments linking observations and conclusions are explicit, available for public scrutiny - origin or political implications are irrelevant - ideas can be tested by objective methods