Caracol,Belize, and Changing Perceptions of Ancient Maya Society

Archaeological research at Caracol, an ancient Maya site that was rediscovered in 1937, has become a major resource in the interpretation and understanding of the ancient Maya. Caracol, in west-central Belize, is situated in a subtropical region once characterized as being unsuitable for the development or maintenance of complex societies, yet it is one of the largest, if not the largest Classic period Maya site in the southern Maya Lowlands, home to over 100,000 people at its height between AD 600 and 700. The investigations at Caracol underscore the utility of long-term archaeological projects incorporating large-scale settlement study that combine excavation with varied research designs and the use of a contextual approach. By employing Maya epigraphic history, traditional archaeology, and modern technology like LiDAR, research at Caracol details the rise, maintenance, and fall of an ancient Maya city, affording a large window into ancient Maya lifeways. Archaeological work provides evidence of sustainable agriculture, a market economy, city planning that included a road system, the impact of warfare on the site’s inhabitants, the sociopolitical status of women, the role that archaeology can play in refining written history, and the significance of commemorating the cyclical passage of time to the ancient Maya. This article summarizes archaeological research efforts at the site by the Caracol Archaeological Project over the last three decades.     

Assembling the Iron Age Levant: The Archaeology of Communities,Polities, and Imperial Peripheries

Archaeological research on the Iron Age (1200–500 BC) Levant, a narrow strip of land bounded by the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Desert, has been balkanized into smaller culture historical zones structured by modern national borders and disciplinary schools. One consequence of this division has been an inability to articulate broader research themes that span the wider region. This article reviews scholarly debates over the past two decades and identifies shared research interests in issues such as ethnogenesis, the development of territorial polities, economic intensification, and divergent responses to imperial interventions. The broader contributions that Iron Age Levantine archaeology offers global archaeological inquiry become apparent when the evidence from different corners of the region is assembled.     

Abandonment,Authority, and Religious Continuity in Post-Classical Greece

Scholars have frequently invoked the abandonment of Early Christian basilicas in the sixth and seventh centuries as key evidence for the end of antiquity in Greece. The standard narrative treats the archaeological evidence for abandonment as the physical manifestation of decline recorded in textual sources. The neat equivalency between archaeology and text ignores the role that abandonment plays in the narrative strategies of the textual sources. By reexamining the tie between text and archaeology, we can read the life cycle of the Early Christian basilica in Greece more critically and consequently expand our understanding of this dynamic period in Greek history.     

A Review of Ceramics from Tanzania, Malawi, and Northern Mozambique, with Implications for Swahili Archaeology

Typological approaches to locally produced ceramics have played an important role in the archaeology of Eastern Africa. This paper engages with that history as it contextualizes the ceramic material recently recovered from the region around the site of Mikindani on the southern Tanzanian coast with known traditions from the Kenyan and Tanzanian coast, Malawi, and Mozambique. That comparison reveals the shifting connections and interregional relationships the inhabitants of the Mikindani region forged over the past two millennia with other communities in the Indian Ocean world and the African interior. Mikindani's ceramics are shown to provide important evidence of the deep connections between the region and the African interior to the southwest during the early second millennium, at the expense of connections with coastal Swahili sites further north. This pattern is unusual for a coastal site during the florescence of Swahili society and the typical expansion of Swahili involvement in the Indian Ocean world at that time. The typological comparison of the Mikindani material and other regional traditions thus allows us to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the typological enterprise, in terms of what information is brought to light and what information is obscured.     

Archaeology, Myth-History and the Tyranny of the Text: Chaldike, Torone and Thucydides

By focusing on Thucydides'Chalkidic Torone' against the backdrop of modern historians' neglect of archaeological evidence, this paper highlights not only another case of 'history being written by the winners,' but the persistent problem of privileging written documents over archaeological material in Aegean prehistory and classical archaeology. The practice of using literary historical records as direct historic analogues continues to be one of the methodological cornerstones of textual history. Such a neglect of archaeological evidence by historians of early Greece, South Italy and Sicily contributes to the current schism between prehistory and history. Even when the material record is used in historical inquiry, it is in a framework already defined or informed by written sources. By adopting a more integrated approach, this paper echoes Kent Lightfoot's (1995) perspective that archaeology is poised to play a pivotal role in the reconfiguration of historical studies.     

Self-Citation in Archaeology: Age, Gender, Prestige, and the Self

Citation analyses in archaeology have detected prestige tactics, shifts in research agendas, and patterns of gender differentiation. This paper focuses on self-citation in archaeology and systematically analyzes the factors that affect rates of self-citation. Self-citation rates in archaeology are significantly higher than in socio-cultural anthropology but are average for a social science with interdisciplinary ties to the physical sciences. Self-citation correlates weakly with the gender of the citing author and the geographic and thematic focus of research, but correlates strongly with the age of the author. Additional analyses reveal partial evidence for the use of self-citation as a prestige tactic. The paper concludes with a discussion of citations to writers close to the author (mentors, friends).     

A Multi‐disciplinary Approach to the Archaeological Investigation of a Bedrock‐Dominated Shallow‐Marine Landscape: an example from the Bay of Firth,Orkney, UK

Investigation of shallow‐marine environments for submerged prehistoric archaeology can be hampered in many localities by extensive bedrock exposure and thus limited preservation potential. Using the concept of ‘seamless archaeology’ where land‐based archaeology is integrated across the intertidal zone through to the offshore, a multi‐disciplinary approach is essential. This approach taken in the Bay of Firth, Orkney uses geophysics, historical archive and ethno‐archaeology, coastal geomorphology, palaeo‐environmental analyses and sea‐level science, and allows a clearer understanding of the landscape in which prehistoric settlers lived. While acknowledging the limitations of the preserved environment, we are successful in identifying areas of archaeological potential on the sea‐bed for both upstanding structural elements as well as sediment preservation that contains evidence for human occupation. This has wider implications beyond Orkney's World Heritage sites to provide a blueprint for similar studies elsewhere in the coastal zone. © 2012 The Authors     

Magunkaquog Materiality, Federal Recognition, and the Search for a Deeper History

This article explores the manner in which archaeology can address some of the issues that confront contemporary Native American groups trying to gain federal recognition. Often frustrating and at times capricious, the federal recognition process privileges documentary evidence over other forms of information in determining the political and cultural continuity demanded of groups seeking recognition. Demonstrating cultural continuity is hindered by the antiquated, assimilationist views that underpin the recognition process which equate the adoption of European cultural practices with the loss of Indian identity. This issue of authenticity is linked to even broader questions concerning materiality and the construction of identity. Drawing on archaeological and documentary investigations of the Christian Indian community of Magunkaquog, this paper explores the ambiguities of an archival record that can be challenged by material evidence. Archaeological evidence of cultural persistence discussed in the paper supports the political arguments of contemporary Native American groups that their ancestors maintained their political and cultural identity in the face of European colonization.     

Transdisciplinary Archaeology and the Future of Archaeological Practice: Citizen Science,Portable Science,Ethical Science

This paper presents a vision and a pathway for the future of archaeological practice, in which several fields that are currently considered distinct, including community-based collaborative archaeology, indigenous archaeology, and applied archaeology, could become the norm. Inspired by personal encounters with some exceptionally open and collaborative archaeology projects, as well as by recent advances in archaeological science, which are starting to make it more portable, this paper sets out an agenda for a more open approach to archaeological practice. It advocates a method of producing knowledge about the past that does not privilege one investigator over another, but gives everyone who is interested and wants to participate an opportunity to do. Specific methodological challenges that are discussed include the need to ‘flip’ the public outreach element of research designs, to embed open participation from the outset by nurturing relationships of mutual respect and trust, and to take advantage of, and improve, the portability of archaeological science, so that it can be done in and by local communities. It is argued here that the opening of archaeological research, including the archaeological sciences, to a wider range of participants, is the most ethical approach to archaeological practice in a pan-disciplinary research environment.     

Developing a framework of Holocene climatic change and landscape archaeology for the lower Gulf region, southeastern Arabia

Geomorphological and geoarchaeological studies from the lower Gulf region of southeastern Arabia are increasing our knowledge of hydrological, ecological, and aeolian changes during the Holocene. Preliminary analyses of sediment records from two palaeolakes in the United Arab Emirates are presented, highlighting the potential of these sediment sources for providing high-resolution decadal studies of climate change and landscape evolution over the past 10,000 years. In order to study the society-environment relationship in this marginal region, a framework of environmental change is being developed against which the archaeology of the region can be set.     

“The Island of the Clouds”<Emphasis Type="Bold">:</Emphasis> The Archaeology of Life on the Margins in a Small-Scale Caribbean Island Landscape,Bequia (St. Vincent Grenadines) ca. 1700–1900 CE

The study of marginal Caribbean islands and economies remains understated within the wider context of the discipline of Caribbean historical archaeology. Research has tended to focus mainly upon the study of the dominant site form of the colonial period in the region: the industrial sugar plantation, and mainly upon the larger islands. This contribution moves the scale of analysis to the smaller Caribbean island landscape as a whole entity, and attempts to frame an archaeological biography of Bequia in the St. Vincent Grenadines over the last three hundred or so years. Further, we consider how more peripheral economic strategies that developed there over this period impacted upon this island landscape, how they are recognized archaeologically and what they can tell us about wider social and economic processes. Using landscape archaeology survey allied to GIS and historical cartographic analysis, the study presented here charts the emergence and development of a distinctive insular Caribbean socioeconomic identity very much on the margins.     

The role of shellfish in hunter–gatherer societies during the Early Upper Palaeolithic: A view from El Cuco rockshelter,northern Spain

The role of coastal resources in the subsistence strategies of Palaeolithic human populations has only recently become an important topic in Old World archaeology. Information on the exploitation of these resources, both as foodstuffs and symbolic elements, can be used to infer the emergence of modern human behaviour as well as to track the diversification and intensification of human diet over time. The excavations carried out at El Cuco rockshelter, located in northern Spain have provided evidence for the exploitation of marine resources during the Early Upper Palaeolithic. The accumulation of Patella shells at El Cuco provides the largest accumulation and the first clear evidence of collection and consumption of molluscs during the Aurignacian on the Atlantic Façade of Europe. A deposit of ornamental shells appeared in a very homogeneous context dated to the Gravettian, suggesting that the shells belonged to the same item. The analysis of this evidence has allowed us to conclude that marine resources were systematically used at least from the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic in the region. However, a comparison with the Mesolithic shows that intensive shellfish gathering did not occur until the end of the Upper Palaeolithic. Regarding the ornaments, it is interpreted that the identified shell beads were used as social or personal status markers.     

Prometheus Unbound: Southern Caucasia in Prehistory

This paper examines the intellectual traditions and recent advances in the archaeology of the Bronze and Iron Ages of the South Caucasus. The first goal of the paper is to provide an account of the scholarly traditions that have oriented research in the region since the mid-nineteenth century. This discussion provides a detailed case study of an archaeological tradition that arose within the context of Russian and Soviet research—traditions still poorly understood within Western archaeology. Yet archaeology in the South Caucasus was strongly influenced by international research in neighboring southwest Asia, and thus the region’s intellectual currents often diverged from the debates and priorities that predominated in Moscow. The second goal of this paper is to outline the primary issues that orient contemporary work in the region from the Neolithic through the Urartian period. My interest here is both didactic and prognostic. While I am concerned to fairly represent the primary foci of contemporary regional scholarship, I also make an argument for a deeper investigation of the constitution of social life. Such studies are critical to the advancement of archaeology in the South Caucasus over the coming decade.     

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE SEARCH FOR HOMERIC ITHACA: THE CASE OF MYCENAEAN KEPHALONIA

This short article on a large subject is presented as a tribute to Klavs Randsborg, because of his involvement in the 1990s with the archaeology of Kephalonia at the time of the resurgence of the debate over the identification of the island with Homeric Ithaca, to which he himself contributed some thoughts. It briefly traces the history of the controversy about the Homeric geography and topography from its origins and discusses the evidence that has made Kephalonia a contender for the homeland of Odysseus. The intention is not to offer yet another hypothesis about the location of Homeric Ithaca, but to consider and question the role of archaeology in the debate, in view of the high expectations of Homeric realists.     

A Consideration of Public Archaeology Theories

It is possible to identify four approaches to public archaeology: educational, public relations, pluralist, and critical. The most significant divide in the discourse of public archaeology over the last few decades has existed between the educational and public relations approaches on one side, and the pluralist and critical approaches on the other. Today, however, the dividing line in these four approaches is gradually shifting, as the pluralist and critical approaches, which have so far tended to be grouped together as a more theoretical and post-processual category, are progressively splitting apart. What is emerging, as a result, is a new divide between the educational, public relations, and pluralist approaches on the one side, and the critical approach on the other. This shift seems to be caused by economic neo-liberalism which demands that archaeology be more viable in economic terms. The more archaeology seeks economic viability, however, the more it alienates itself from critical reflection. The critical approach is, thus, faced with the danger of being regarded as a detriment to the sustainability of archaeology. What seems to be crucially needed today, then, is to reconfigure public archaeology, so that it can cope with the presently dominant economic paradigm, while at the same time continuing to keep critiquing it.     

Romans and Reducing Recidivism: Archaeology,Social Benefit,and Working with Offenders in Wales (Part 1)

Claims that public and community archaeology can help ‘change lives’ have recently come under criticism. Challenging these critiques, this article explores how archaeology can be socially beneficial in the rehabilitation of offenders. Using a case study from South Wales, this article demonstrates how a prison-based outreach project can offer an innovative trajectory for public archaeology, highlighting the links between archaeology and political agendas. The article challenges the concept of ‘archaeologist-as-social-worker’ and considers the successes and limitations of such an approach, including the challenges of measuring impact. Ultimately, it demonstrates that archaeology-based activities can provide positive life experiences for offenders, but only through a successful partnership between heritage and offender management specialists, as part of a wider programme of support and intervention.     

社区考古学:文化遗产管理还是考古学研究

社区考古学反映了一种全新的文化遗产管理和考古学研究的思路,其实践仍然具有草创性、不平衡性和多元性。社区考古学是作为让本土社会获得考古学权力的工作方式,以权力让渡为核心,主要涉及发掘权、阐释权、教育权和商业开发权。社区考古学理念确立了社区在文化遗产管理的主体观念,廓清了中国的生态博物馆运动对生态观念和文化保护与经济发展的关系的误解。在考古学研究上,社区考古学是情境考古学的表现形式,将通过采取不同的视角揭示传统考古学研究所无法触及的问题。     

The evolution of sociopolitical complexity in prehistoric Hawaii: An assessment of the archaeological evidence

The sociopolitical system of late prehistoric Hawaii was among the most complex of any Oceanic chiefdom, as indexed by such characteristics as scale, rate of energy extraction, degree of functional specialization, and political hierarchy. Various anthropologists and archaeologists have advanced models of how this complex sociopolitical system developed out of an earlier Ancestral Polynesian society. Recent advances in Hawaiian archaeology have now begun to provide a wealth of data on the course of prehistoric change in the archipelago over some 1500 years and, thus, provide evidence which can be used to test alternative models of the evolution of sociopolitical complexity. This paper reviews the major alternative models that have been put forward and provides a synopsis of the archaeological evidence relevant to their testing.     

TROUBLE IN PARADISE? – VIOLENT CONFLICT IN FUNNEL‐BEAKER SOCIETIES

The archaeology of warfare and violent conflict has made many advances over the past three decades. However, the Funnel‐beaker Culture (TRB) is mostly absent from these discussions and the presence of warriors is assigned to the succeeding periods. This contribution takes a new look at a conspicuous object from northern TRB contexts: the so‐called thick flint points or halberds (dan. dolkstaver). Their functionality as a specialized weapon is discussed through their use wear, contexts and European comparisons. Afterwards the evidence for violent conflict in the region is explored thematically, including paleo‐demography, victims, enemies, and fortifications. Based on this it is argued that warfare existed during the TRB culture and that warriors may emerge in a society that seems of a largely egalitarian structure.     

Industrial Archaeology: Its Place Within the Academic Discipline,the Public Realm and the Heritage Industry

Abstract

This paper presents a review of industrial archaeology literature and offers some initial thoughts on how this literature relates to my research on public perception and experience of Cornish mining landscapes. A brief summary of the development of industrial archaeology is given, which reflects on its amateur origins, its 'identity crisis' and its slow integration into university archaeology departments. The reasons for the transformation of industrial sites into industrial heritage is then examined and temporal models of change presented which relate to both an acceleration of the past into the commodity heritage as well as an affective progression from disdain to acceptance. The public's attitude to industrial archaeology is then discussed — which raises complex questions over the nature of such sites including, the importance of time and aesthetics as well as the phenomenological nature of perception and experience.