The When, Where, and How of Novices in Craft Production

Archaeologists frequently underestimate the importance of children as well as craft skill acquisition in the formation of archaeological assemblages. Perhaps even more often they conflate the terms “novice” and “child” in ways that oversimplify the factors that are involved in incorporating new producers into craft production. In particular, the skill acquisition involved in stone tool production is influenced by a variety of factors, including danger, raw material value, raw material availability, and raw material recyclability, as well as a variety of social factors. This paper examines the influence of each of these factors and also suggests patterns useful in recognizing and distinguishing between novices and children in the archaeological record.

The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective

This paper explores the materiality of social power relationally through study of social interactions with artifacts. Specifically, it is argued that acquisition of an artifact instantiates social power by imposing interactions on groups taking part in that artifact's life-history activities. We introduce the “performance-preference matrix,” an analytic tool for systematically studying the effects of such acquisition events on activity groups. The use of the performance-preference matrix is illustrated through an example: the acquisition of electric-arc lights for lighthouses in the 19th century. Suggestions are offered for analyzing culture-contact situations and for handling singularized artifacts such as heirlooms and monuments.

Honoring Ambiguity/Problematizing Certitude

In this paper I argue that the practice of archaeology over-emphasizes and over-rewards unambiguous certainty in our interpretations, even though our conclusions are usually drawn from necessarily partial, underdetermined and complex evidence. I argue that full or partial erasure of ambiguity from our data and from our interpretive assertions does not serve the long-term interests of the discipline; that a feminist practice aimed at more nuanced understandings of the past and open to more subtle, multivalenced notions of reality, must accept ambiguity as a central feature of archaeological interpretation. After I review familiar strategies that are used to obscure troubling areas of uncertainty in archaeology, I urge feminist practice to resist employing these “mechanisms of closure” in our work. It is only by openly recognizing and preserving the ambiguity that resides in messy data arrangements today that we stand any hope of fuller and richer understandings in the future.

Social Signaling and the Organization of Small-Scale Society: The Case of Contact-Era New Guinea

Small-scale society furnishes the bread and butter of archeological research. Yet our understanding of what these communities did and how they achieved their purpose is still rudimentary. Using the ethnography of contact-era New Guinea, this paper presents a “social signaling” model of small-scale social systems that archeologists may find useful for contextualizing and interpreting the material record of these societies. It proposes that the organization of small-scale society was oriented, among other goals, towards biological and social reproduction, subsistence optimization, and military defense. To advance these multiple collective interests, however, these communities had to deal with three problems: an optimality problem, a conflict-of-interest problem, and a free-rider problem. The optimality problem was solved with a modular (or segmented) social structure, the conflict-of-interest problem by a process of social signaling, and these two solutions together operated to resolve the free-rider problems they created. In addition to explaining the structure and function of small-scale societies, the model provides a unified framework that can account for the ceremonial behaviors, core cultural conceptions, and leadership forms that these societies generated.

The Archaeology of South Asian Cities

Urbanism in the Indian subcontinent occurred in three distinct time periods in which cultural cohesion over large regions is archaeologically demonstrated through the architecture and artifacts of social, ritual, and economic activity. In the Indus (2500–1900 B.C.) and Early Historic (3rd century B.C. to 4th century A.D.) periods, cities were not necessarily tied to political territories or guided by strong political leaders, but by the Medieval period (after the 9th century A.D.), urban zones were the base for political growth, warfare, and aggrandizement. The comparison of these three eras is undertaken within a framework for defining cities that balances quantitative criteria such as population size and areal extent with two types of qualitative criteria: internal specialization on the basis of materials found within archaeological sites, and external specialization on the basis of data recovered through regional analysis. Cities from the three eras also are evaluated from the perspective of the ordinary inhabitant through the examination of the social, religious, and economic factors that prompted and rewarded urban residence. While the Indus and Early Historic cities were attractive because of the networks of opportunity found there, Medieval cities additionally benefitted from a “push” factor as ordinary inhabitants allied themselves to urban areas in times of political stress and uncertainty.

Maritime Archaeology and Maritime Heritage Protection in the Disputed Territory of Northern Cyprus

Between 1967 and 1974, the island of Cyprus was a centre of maritime archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean. Individuals such as Michael and Susan Katzev, George Bass, Jeremy Green and Richard Steffy were living on and visiting the island, and testing and developing methods still common in the discipline. The hostilities on Cyprus in the summer of 1974 and the implementation of international regulations limiting archaeological work in the northern portion of the island, however, had repercussions still evident today. This article summarizes past maritime archaeological work along the northern coastline, addresses the regulations limiting archaeological activity in the region and discusses a new training program licensed by the Nautical Archaeology Society aiding in the protection of the island’s maritime heritage representing approximately 10,000 years of activity.

An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Hafting and Stone Tool Diversity among the Gamo of Ethiopia

The significance of flaked stone tool variation has been a source of great archaeological debate for over 100 years. Even though evidence for stone tool hafting exists as far back as the Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age, there is a dearth of information concerning how hafting affects stone tool technology. This ethnoarchaeological study of hafted stone scrapers among the Gamo of southern Ethiopia examines why a single cultural group utilizes two different hafts, which generate different lithic morphologies, technologies, and spatial distributions. The relationships between history, environment, and social group membership are explored to demonstrate how these associations create variation in technological practices.

The Evolution of Theory, Method and Technique in Southern African Rock Art Research

Southern African rock art research has progressed from an essentially denigrating social and political milieu, through an empiricist period, to contemporary social and historical approaches. Empiricism, once thought to be the salvation of southern African rock art research, was a theoretically and methodologically flawed enterprise. Attempts to see the art through an emic perspective facilitated by copious nineteenth- and twentieth-century San ethnography is a more useful approach. It began briefly, but was then abandoned, in the nineteenth century. Today, diverse theoretical and methodological approaches are being constructed on an ethnographic foundation. The centrality of the San in South African national identity has been recognized.

Colonialism, Material Culture, and Identity in the Rio Grande and Hudson River Valleys

A comparison of two seventeenth-century colonial encounters in North America, examining the Pueblo–Spanish interaction in New Mexico and the Mohawk–Dutch situation in New York. I focus on material culture flows, the role of women, forms of labor that were extracted in each setting and how each of these contributed to power relations and identity construction.

Training and Maritime Archaeology in a University Context

This paper draws on experience gained by Bournemouth University to consider undergraduate education in maritime archaeology. At Bournemouth maritime archaeology is taught firmly in the context of a broader archaeological education. Archaeological programmes vary with the institutions within which they are taught, each programme thus having an individual character that separates it from that of other institutions and further enriches the subject through the breadth of this education. At Bournemouth the value of teaching archaeology with a high component of practical experience has been long understood. This does not mean that archaeology is taught as a purely practical subject but as one within which experience in the field is seen as a worthwhile focus. Bournemouth’s programme therefore recognises the value of field research projects as learning environments for undergraduates studying maritime archaeology. The programme is subject to a number of constraints, notably the size of the archaeological employment market, levels of pay within that market, questions of ongoing professional development after graduation, and the requirements of other employment markets into which archaeological graduates enter. This paper argues that research project-based learning, and in particular, involvement with amateur groups, provides a way to balance these constraints and supports development of both technical and transferable ‘soft’ skills.

How to Make an Unfired Clay Cooking Pot: Understanding the Technological Choices Made by Arctic Potters

Between about 500 a.d. and the late nineteenth century, clay cooking pots associated with the Thule culture were produced in the Arctic region. Ethnographic and archaeological records indicate that these vessels were typically underfired (often even unfired), highly porous, and easily broken. Despite these characteristics, the evidence indicates that they were used to heat water over open fires. In this paper, we examine how Arctic potters were able to produce unsintered vessels capable of holding liquids without disintegrating. We conclude that the application of seal oil and seal blood to the pot’s surface was the key to their success.

Much More than Gender

Numerous publications on gender archaeology present case studies that incorporate gender in their analyses, but make little use of feminist theory and critique, and are ambivalent or negative to feminism. Aspects of Norwegian, British and American gender archaeology are discussed in relation to a desire for the ‘mainstream.’ The reasons for, and consequences of, a lack of feminist theorizing and engagement are related to Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges.

Coastal societies, exchange and identity along the Channel and southern North Sea shores of Europe, AD 600–1000

This paper explores the functioning of coastal societies against the background of the changing role of coastal ‘contact zones’ on both sides of the Channel and southern North Sea region, between AD 600 and 1100. In so doing, it reassesses aspects of the generalising frameworks of interpretation applied over the past quarter of a century in favour of a more contextual approach, enabled by long known (although sometimes forgotten) and recent archaeological discoveries, together with new geological research. Regional and local complexity is a recurrent feature. A revolutionary increase in our awareness of the extent to which marginal coastal landscapes were occupied and exploited is matched by a commensurate increase in our knowledge of the number and complexity of settlements and seasonally used sites, involved in maritime exchange networks. Ultimately, this contribution confronts the dynamism of regional coastal societies with the wider socio-political structures in which they were incorporated.

Expanding Informal Education in Maritime Archaeology

This paper examines the work of the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology (HWTMA) in developing informal education approaches and initiatives. It introduces the aims and ethos of the HWTMA which focuses on embedding education and learning into all aspects of its work, before exploring ways in which its fieldwork and research programme are utilised to help deliver a range of educational opportunities to a diverse range of groups and individuals. There is a review of the possibilities for skill development through practical involvement which is illustrated with case study examples, followed by discussion of broader approaches, including publications, talks and exhibits. This review underpins discussion of a recent project ‘Maritime Archaeology Access and Learning Workshops’ which aimed to ‘educate the educators’, and has demonstrated the potential for this approach to make a significant contribution to increasing the profile of maritime archaeology within informal learning frameworks. The paper concludes by reviewing the experience of these regionally-based initiatives in relation to the expansion of maritime archaeology within the UK and suggests ways that lessons learned could be drawn upon in the development of emerging national approaches.

The Archaeology of Smuggling and the Falmouth King’s Pipe

This article demonstrates the potential of an historical archaeology of smuggling and the value of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of smuggling and its prevention. By exploring the previously unstudied history of the King’s Pipe in Falmouth, a large chimney used for the destruction of tobacco, a rare survivor of many that once existed in England’s port cities, it demonstrates that archaeology could transform our understanding of smuggling and its prevention, and more broadly the history of crime and punishment in eighteenth century England.

Strontium Isotopes from the Earth to the Archaeological Skeleton: A Review

Strontium isotope analysis of archaeological skeletons has provided useful and exciting results in archaeology in the last 20 years, particularly by characterizing past human migration and mobility. This review covers the biogeochemical background, including the origin of strontium isotope compositions in rocks, weathering and hydrologic cycles that transport strontium, and biopurification of strontium from to soils, to plants, to animals and finally into the human skeleton, which is subject to diagenesis after burial. Spatial heterogeneity and mixing relations must often be accounted for, rather than simply ``matching' a measured strontium isotope value to a presumed single-valued geologic source. The successes, limitations and future potential of the strontium isotope technique are illustrated through case studies from geochemistry, biogeochemistry, ecology and archaeology.

The Historic Port of El Real de Salinas in Campeche, and the Role of Coastal Resources in the Emergence of Capitalism in Yucatán, México

The emergence of capitalism in the peninsula of Yucatán is generally presented as a process resulting from the capitalization of the agricultural sector and the export of products from its sugar, cotton, and henequén plantations in the nineteenth century. In addition to these products, the peninsula also had a dynamic coastal economy in which the harvesting of salt and the extraction of logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum), played a major role and contributed to the flow of goods to international markets. We present a preliminary archaeological survey and historical documentation of El Real de Salinas, a salt-producing port on the north coast of Campeche, which was also involved in the extraction of other coastal products and closely linked to the inland plantation system.

Introduction

The research reported in this special issue details research undertaken at the site of Casselden Place in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to providing specific information about this site, this collaborative effort demonstrates how the theory and practice of the archaeology of the modern city has developed and matured.

Advances in Polynesian Prehistory: A Review and Assessment of the Past Decade (1993–2004)

The pace of archaeological research in Polynesia has intensified in recent years, resulting in more than 500 new literature citations over the past decade. Fieldwork has continued in such previously well-studied archipelagoes as Tonga and Samoa in Western Polynesia, and Hawai’i and New Zealand in Eastern Polynesia, and has expanded into previously neglected islands including Niue, the Equatorial Islands, the Austral Islands, and Mangareva. The emergence of Ancestral Polynesian culture out of its Eastern Lapita predecessor is increasingly well understood, and the chronology of Polynesian dispersal and expansion into Eastern Polynesia has engaged several researchers. Aside from these fundamental issues of origins and chronology, major research themes over the past decade include (1) defining the nature, extent, and timing of long-distance interaction spheres, particularly in Eastern Polynesia; (2) the impacts of human colonization and settlement on island ecosystems; (3) variation in Polynesian economic systems and their transformations over time; and (4) sociopolitical change, especially as viewed through the lens of household or microscale archaeology. Also noteworthy is the rapidly evolving nature of interactions between archaeologists and native communities, a critical aspect of archaeological practice in the region.

Supra-Regional Networks in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia

When prehistoric archaeologists write accounts of the Epi-palaeolithic or Neolithic of southwest Asia, they resort to an archaic narrative style of culture-history that was formulated by Gordon Childe in the first half of the last century. These narratives frame their account of events within the format of a succession of archaeological cultures. In addition, the received form of the narrative is founded within a core-area of the Levant, the Mediterranean corridor zone; it is assumed that all the important social and economic innovations of the Epi-palaeolithic and early Neolithic occurred within that corridor, from where the cultures and their innovations spread through diffusionary processes to dominate wider parts of the region. The first part of this paper is a critique of the unwarranted assumption of the existence of archaeological cultures, and of the Levantine primacy hypothesis. The second part proposes an alternative to the notion of the archaeological culture. First, we review the evidence for wide-area cultural networking through the exchange of goods and materials and the sharing of cultural behaviours that characterises the Neolithic. We can view the Epi-palaeolithic and early Neolithic periods as a time when new cultural processes were being employed to build and maintain novel sedentary, permanently co-resident communities of unprecedented scale. At a higher level, we see communities engaged in the construction and maintenance of more and more extensive networks of communities, in a form similar to, but not identical with, the peer polity interaction sphere model first described by Colin Renfrew in a different context.