Middle-range theory,behavioral archaeology,and postempiricist philosophy of science in archaeology

This paper examines middle-range theory (MRT) within processual and postprocessual archaeology. An analysis of the Binford-Schiffer dispute serves as a means of clarifying what MRT in processual archaeology is or is intended to be. Postprocessualists, despite their vigorous criticisms of MRT-based approaches, are found to rely on the same resources and types of reasoning to make their inferences. In their practice they tacitly turn to processualist middle-range principles, and so the justification of postprocessual interpretations is equivalent to that of MRT-based processualist models. If the middle range is functionally defined — a space within a research program occupied by varying theories that are taken from the body of general theory to which the program is committed and that function as background knowledge in the verification of theories — MRT bridges the epistemological gap between processual and postprocessual approaches.     

Evolutionary implications of design and performance characteristics of prehistoric pottery

A Darwinian evolutionary approach offers a powerful means of examining change archaeologically. The approach is based on the tenet that materials contained in the archaeological record were parts of human phenotypes, as were behaviors behind the manufacture, use, and discard of the materials. Engineering-design analysis and performance analysis of material remains — here variously tempered ceramic cooking vessels from the midwestern United States — extend the archaeologist's ability to see and map variation beyond that which is readily apparent and thus are logical points from which to begin examination of human adaptation. The approach is essentially indistinguishable from that used by biologists to study design and function of biologically based features as well as phylogenetic histories of such features.     

Beyond Boundaries: Nature,Culture and a Holistic Approach to Domestication in the Levant

The main objective of this paper is to suggest an alternative approach for the investigation of domestication in the Levant. First, basic data regarding domestication in the Levant are presented. Then the various traditional approaches towards domestication in the prehistoric Levant, labeled (1) environmental, (2) social and anthropological, and (3) cognitive, are briefly reviewed. This discussion forms the basis for a proposal of a “holistic approach,” in which domestication is regarded as a long-term, multidimensional and multirelational phenomenon, including many elements—such as plants, animals, humans, material culture and ancestors—with increasing human manipulation of these various constituents. After a presentation of the theoretical framework, a growth metaphor is used to reconstruct the process of domestication (ca. 20,000–6500 B.P.) as a number of phases: (1) germination in the Kebaran; (2) development in the Early Natufian; (3) retreat/dormancy in the Late/Final Natufian; (4) growth in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A; (5) florescence in the Early- and Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B: (6) further development in the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B; (7) dispersal in the Final Pre-Pottery Neolithic B and the Pottery Neolithic. In each of these phases, relations between the various elements are dealt with, special attention being paid to symbolical relations, as evidenced by “art” and ritual.     

‘Facing the future’: tourism and identity-building in post-socialist Romania

Tourism is an important component of the process of identity-building, representing one way in which a country can seek to project a particular self-image to the wider international community. As such, tourism has considerable ideological significance for the formerly socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe that are seeking to project and affirm distinctly post-socialist identities as part of the process of re-integration into the political and economic structures of Western Europe. This paper focuses on tourism and identity-building in post-socialist Romania. In particular, it focuses on one building — the so-called ‘House of the People’ — which is intimately linked with Romania’s totalitarian past and which is fast becoming Bucharest’s biggest tourist sight. The presentation of the building to tourists seeks to ‘reconfigure’ its past so that it accords better with Romania’s post-socialist identity, and particularly its aspirations to (re)establish itself as a country of ‘mainstream’ Europe.     

Reconsidering the behavioral basis for style: A case study among the Kalahari San

In this paper, it is proposed that there is a behavioral basis for much, but not all, of the formal variation in material culture that has been called style by archaeologists. This aspect of stylistic behavior is founded on the basic human cognitive process of identification via comparison. Such stylistic behavior is argued to be one means by which people negotiate their personal and social identities relative to that of surrounding others. Thus, the process of social, and corresponding stylistic, comparison is proposed as the mechanism underlying stylistic development and change. This behavioral basis for style is explicated in a case study among the Kalahari San, in which the role of style in beaded headbands in regional, areal, and personal identity relations, as well as exchange, is investigated. Finally, the proposed behavioral basis for style is discussed in terms of what it can contribute to interpretation of variability in material culture, current approaches to style, and its implications for the development of a theory of style.     

Lower and middle paleolithic of northern Asia: Achievements,problems, and perspectives

Considerable progress has been made in recent years in the study of the Lower and Middle Paleolithic of northern Asia. There is growing evidence for initial human occupation before 700,000 years ago—as early as elsewhere in Asia—and for a very early adaptation to the arctic desert environment. New models of Lower Paleolithic settlement involve expansion and reduction of occupation in response to climatic variation, rather than simple colonization followed by steady occupation. The Middle Paleolithic of northern Asia is better documented, including actual finds of archaicHomo sapiens. The transition to the Upper Paleolithic seems to involve the survival of earlier cultural traits, but the mechanisms and processes are not well understood. Further significant knowledge concerning these periods awaits the development of common methodologies for classification and analysis.     

Bone density studies in zooarchaeology

Accurate bone density data are essential for assessing the influence of destructive processes in archaeological faunal assemblages. Unfortunately, the diversity of methods employed by different researchers to derive density values has resulted in recent confusion. Two recent publications in this journal [J Archaeol Sci 29 (2002) 883; J Archaeol Sci 29 (2002) 979] exemplify this state of misunderstanding. Both studies argued that the role of bone density in shaping archaeological faunal assemblages has been largely overrated, but both based their conclusions on density values that were inaccurately derived. The former employed a method of calculating bone density that has been largely discredited over the past decade [J Archaeol Sci 29 (2002) 883]. Within a larger discussion of zooarchaeological methodology, the latter provided an assessment of the current state of bone density research that inappropriately characterized the discrepancies between available sets of density data as a reflection of the differences between two technologies—photon densitometry and computed tomography [J Archaeol Sci 29 (2002) 979]. The actual dichotomy exists—irrespective of the technology employed—between studies that account for variation in the shape of bone cross-sections and those that do not. The different sets of density data currently available to zooarchaeologists vary tremendously in their accuracy. We review and evaluate the different techniques employed in the research of bone density patterns of mammalian fauna. Computed tomography produces the most accurate density data. For elements without medullary cavities, photon densitometry may provide density values of similar accuracy but only if a method of cross-sectional shape-adjustment is applied.     

Approaches to style in lithic archaeology

A key issue in lithic archaeology is how to identify the respective roles played by ethnicity and activity—that is, style and function—in the formal variation exhibited by stone tools. This paper argues that style is most profitably regarded as the ethnic idiom imparted to lithic technology in each and all of its aspects due to the culture-historical context of its manufacture and employment. Style is thus a full complement of function, and it is to be looked for wherever artisans encounter options of form and use to “choose” from in pursuing a given task. Because it equates ethnicity with functionally equivalent choice, this is labeled the isochrestic approach to style. Contrasted to this is the iconological approach, which restricts style solely to those aspects of formal variation that artisans purposefully invest with symbolic content reflecting self-conscious social groups. Pottery decoration appears to reveal such investment and therefore ceramic sociology is a feasible enterprise. However, a parallel iconological approach to stone tools is much less promising. At least as it is exemplified by the writings of Lewis Binford, lithic sociology would seem to have little substantive grounding in the relevant empirical data, to be argued within what may be an unsound theoretical frame (including the distinction between curative and expedient technologies), and in any case to resist translation into a workable analytic machinery. Not least among the reasons for this last is the fact that stone tools do not possess formal variation wherein iconologically significant investment can be objectively identified and defined. The archaeological frame of reference within which the isochrestic and iconological approaches are discussed is largely contributed by the classic Paleolithic sequence of the Perigord region of southwestern France.     

Identification and assessment of secondary refuse aggregates

Secondary refuse contains a wealth of information on the people who generated it. This article identifies some means by which archaeologists can identify and characterize secondary refuse aggregates — localized, high-density deposits of artifacts that have been discarded away from their place of use. A variety of studies of archaeological deposits — from prehistoric and historical archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and modern material culture studies — provides hypotheses and a comparative database for discussion. I suggest that socioeconomic and demographic factors operating in a society greatly affect the composition of secondary refuse aggregates and propose some hypotheses regarding the directions and magnitudes of these relationships.     

Evolutionary approaches in archaeology

Two evolutionary approaches in contemporary archaeology, selectionism and processualism, are compared in terms of their theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and empirical contributions. Selectionism is a tightly focused approach that aims to apply a strict Darwinian framework to the study of cultural evolution. The selectionists view cultural evolution as a shift in the relative frequencies of cultural traits; the evolutionary mechanism that brings this about entails undirected variation followed by selection in a manner analogous to biological evolution. Processualism is a more flexible approach that acknowledges the importance of variation and selection but employs these concepts in a broader framework that recognizes fundamental differences between cultural and biological evolution. Among them are the central roles played by directed variation and the hierarchical operation of selection in cultural evolution. As we enter the late 1990s, the selectionists appear comfortably ascendant while the processualists often seem in disarray—they appear less confident, more embattled, more internally diverse. This diversity and dynamism, however, may harbor great potential for further growth and development. It is suggested that processualism's ongoing ferment will spawn the evolutionary archaeology of the future.     

Athanaric the Visigoth: monarchy or judgeship. A study in comparative history

The decision to risk an attempt at functional comparison between two historical figures over a period of more than four hundred years proceded from etymological considerations of various types, but was first suggested by the contrast between Athanaric and Armimus as they are portrayed in modern historical literature. As in the case of the institutional analogy of the judge of the Goths with the vergobretos of the Celts, there exists no historical relationship between the life histories of the two Germanic chieftains, in the sense that Athanaric cannot have been influenced to act as he did by the story of Arminius, nor can we assume a direct dependence of the later institution on the earlier one, any more than we can accept the possibility of arriving at the name for the Gothic judge from Celtic, in a way in which this is possible for reiks. Such an observation, otherwise trivial in itself, serves to characterize the methods and limits of the functional comparison. This yields historical insights which apply to the individual case in question: along with new considerations concerning rex-reiks, an argument is developed against the opinion that Athanaric's judgeship was one of a lower rank than genuine kingship, before which the Gothic chief — for whatever reason — was supposed to have drawn back in fear. This makes his judgeship look more like an ‘institutionalized magistracy’, exercising royal power for a set term, than a mere ethnic dignity. Further, the comparison establishes that the Celtic, as well as the Gothic, judgeship was possibly held in dual fashion, or could be held that way, before the period under observation; however, the pairs to be dealt with here do not represent any ‘Dioscurian’ double chiefdom but rather pairs of chieftains rivalling each other. The archaic experience may serve in this instance only as a model for shaping the tradition.Finally, it is recognized — and this could well be our most important finding — that the judgeship is limited, not only in time but also in territory: it had valid jurisdiction only inside the tribal territory itself. It follows from this that the judge's duties comprised defense of the fatherland as well as the execution of judgments.Along with the ‘external’ comparison among Goths, Celts, and Cheruscans, an ‘internal’ functional comparison is drawn within fourth-century Gothic constitutional history. In so doing, the possibility is opened for reconstructing the family leadership of the Balts three generations before Alaric. Then, within Gothic tradition, we are able to arrive of the ruling and institutional function of the ‘wisdom’, which both the Gothicized Decaeneus and Theoderic, as well as Athanaric     

Long cycle theory and the hegemonic powers' basing networks

One recent focus of research in international relations theory is that of “long cycle theory,” associated primarily with George Modelski and William Thompson, which posits serial cycles of hegemonic dominance — Venice, Portugal, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States — lasting approximately for one century. These hegemonic cycles are highly correlated with, or underpinned by, maritime and commercial dominance. Some aspects of long cycle theory have been contested by the rival “world systems” theory, that has fewer cycles and a disinclination to separate the military and economic dimensions of hegemony. Heretofore, naval power, as reflected in capital ship construction and orders of battle, has been used to measure maritime dominance. This research suggests that data for rival and successive global basing access networks could be used to inform and query the basis of long cycle theory; i.e., to provide a measure of “global reach”. There are additionally, interesting conceptual questions about the basis for basing access, as it has evolved historically; specifically, from a basis in conquest to one dependent upon diplomacy and various quid pro quo. The article suggests the need for more historical data collection on bases.     

Weather variability and conflict forecasts: Dynamic human-environment interactions in Kenya

While conflict prediction has gained considerable attention in recent years, the existing literature has relied mainly upon aggregated data for large administrative areas or even entire countries. Such approaches obscure significant geographic variation of conflict dynamics based on household and individual experiences. Conflicts are highly localized, shaped by social and economic contexts that vary across space and change throughout time. We predict two types of conflict reported by respondents in a 2018 Kenyan population survey (N = 1,400) using an identical survey carried out in 2014 in the same enumeration areas (sample locations). We use a conditional random forest (CRF) machine learning method for forecasting. Due to heavy reliance on agriculture in Kenya, we expect that adding weather variability and vegetation health (“environmental”) predictors to a CRF model with 29 demographic and contextual variables will improve the performance of our baseline forecasts. Against our expectations, adding environmental predictors does not enhance our 2018 predictions. Models with only environmental data have the worst fit. A logical extension of many “climate-conflict” studies is that environmental data should improve our ability to predict the location and timing of conflict, yet we find that they generally do not. We interpret this finding through the lens of human-environment interactions research developed in human geography and political ecology. These studies similarly emphasized that circumstantial and historical political, economic, and social relationships have greater credibility for understanding conflict than the weather.     

‘Las Vegas is not where we are’: Queer readings of the Civil Partnership Act

This article interrogates the United Kingdom's new Civil Partnership Act, which is intended to create a new legal status of ‘civil partner’. The Act confers benefits and imposes legal responsibilities on those same-sex couples who register their relationships. Analysing the Governmental material produced in support of the legislation, as well as Parliamentary debates, the article provides a critical analysis of the ideological underpinnings of civil partnership. A series of dichotomies—marriage/not marriage; sex/no sex; status/contract; conjugality/care; love/money; responsibilities/rights—informs the Government's construction of the category of ‘same-sex partner’. Those dichotomies lend themselves to a deconstructive analysis, applying the insights of queer theory. The result is a skepticism regarding the Act's replication of a marriage model for same-sex couples. Instead, the article concludes by advocating the search for more pluralistic and flexible legal models that better represent the diversity of relationship forms found today.     

Americanist Stratigraphic Excavation and the Measurement of Culture Change

Many versions of the history of Americanist archaeology suggest there was a stratigraphic revolution during the second decade of the twentieth century—the implication being that prior to about 1915 most archaeologists did not excavate stratigraphically. However, articles and reports published during the late nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth century indicate clearly that many Americanists in fact did excavate stratigraphically. What they did not do was attempt to measure the passage of time and hence culture change. The real revolution in Americanist archaeology comprised an analytical shift from studying synchronic variation to tracking changes in frequencies of artifact types or styles—a shift pioneered by A. V. Kidder, A. L. Kroeber, Nels C. Nelson, and Leslie Spier. The temporal implications of the analytical techniques they developed—frequency seriation and percentage stratigraphy—were initially confirmed by stratigraphic excavation. Within a few decades, however, most archaeologists had begun using stratigraphic excavation as a creational strategy—that is, as a strategy aimed at recovering superposed sets of artifacts that were viewed as representing occupations and distinct cultures. The myth that there was a stratigraphic revolution was initiated in the writings of the innovators of frequency seriation and percentage stratigraphy.     

Stable oxygen (δO) and hydrogen (δD) isotopes in ovicaprid dentinal collagen record seasonal variation

Understanding paleoenvironmental conditions, including the frequency and amplitude of seasonal variation, is crucial to understanding a wide array of human behaviors in prehistory. In vertebrate calcified tissue, inorganic oxygen isotopes derived from apatite have been widely used as a proxy for paleoenvironment and seasonality in the archaeological record. However, organic sources of δ¹⁸O and δD in mineralized tissue have remained largely unexplored. Here we measure the oxygen (δ¹⁸O) and hydrogen (δD) composition of dentin collagen sequentially sampled from the lower cheek teeth of four modern ovicaprids from the Baga Gazar'in Chuluu (BGC) region of the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. A significant correlation between trends in hydrogen and oxygen isotope values within individual teeth was identified. The amplitude of isotopic variation observed in sampled tooth dentin is similar to the yearly range of hydrogen and oxygen isotopic variation observed in meteoric precipitation for the region. These data indicate that dentin collagen δ¹⁸O and δD isotopic values reflect seasonal variation in the organic oxygen and hydrogen isotopic composition of diet and ingested water. We argue that paired measurements of dentin collagen δ¹⁸O and δD appear to be reliable seasonal climatic indicators.     

Warriors and blacksmiths: Mediating ethnicity in East African spears

Ethnoarchaeology offers some ability to transform contemporary forms of social constitution into a method for interpreting prehistoric social patterns and for understanding the coevolution of symbolic and utilitarian technologies. In north-central Kenya, one social caste of Lokop pastoralist actors (warriors) interacts with another (blacksmiths) to build a technology for socially constituting gender and social age. Three aspects of this process can help to direct analogous archaeological research in prehistoric contexts. First, this case reiterates that symbols for and symbolic acts of gender and social age continually help actors to constitute or negotiate their places within varied social fields. It is clear, however, that the connection between social prestige—essentially the goal of Lokop personal adornment—and real economic or political power is not necessarily direct. For Lokop herders, foreign traits of spear morphology are the stylistic raw material for constituting internally defined social fields. Ethmic distinctions are more pasively constituted, almost as an epiphenomenon. Second, the constituative significance of material symbols may be grasped without appealing to or understanding the cultural meaning of forms (in an emic sense) from only the archaeological evidence. In fact, prehistorians should not concern themselves with attempts to reconstruct the meaning of cultural phenomena. Rather, archaeological inquiry should attempt to infer the meaningfulness of formal traits within a specific social context, based on significant material patterns in the archaeological record. Third, the items of meaning themselves are constituted with their own material means of production, and these systems may be interpreted through economic models more familiar to archaeology. The Lokop case encompasses producers and users both as specialists. Blacksmiths rely on their marginal positions in herding society to make them the brokers of morphological traits. Warriors, also accustomed to marginal status, effectively collaborate with blacksmiths to set up their own future place as elders. For archaeological applications in prehistory, the exchange and processing of raw materials should reconstitute economic hierarchy in a very clear manner.     

Slavery discourse before the Restoration: The Barbary coast, Justinian's Digest, and Hobbes's political theory

Seventeenth-century natural-law philosophers participated in colonizing and slave-trading companies, yet they discussed slavery as an abstraction. This dispassionate approach is commonly explained with the “distance thesis” that the practice of slavery was at some remove from Northwest Europe. I contest the thesis, with a specific focus on pre-Restoration English discourse and Hobbes's political theory. By laying out the salient context — English experience of Barbary-coast slavery and an inherited neo-Roman intellectual frame — I argue, first, that slavery was hardly a distant phenomenon and, second, that Hobbes's discussion of slavery expressed ideas familiar in ordinary discourse. The conclusion contrasts the English neo-Roman outlook with Spanish neo-Aristotelianism.