Self-Organized Cultural Cycles and the Uncertainty of Archaeological Thought

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - Contributing to the issue of complex relationship between social and cultural evolution, this paper aims to analyze repetitive patterns, or cycles, in...     

Eating Barrelled Meat in Upper Canada: Cultural and Archaeological Implications

Much of the meat consumed in nineteenth-century southern Ontario (Upper Canada) came in the form of preserved barreled products. The specific ways of obtaining, preparing and consuming these products resulted in unique regional foodways. Through analyses of historical and archaeological evidence, this paper investigates how barreled meat was packed, shipped and purchased in Upper Canada and discusses the various ways its consumption impacted the lives of its residents and contributed to the formation of local identities. An investigation of butchery marks and body portion distributions lead to a possible method for archaeologically distinguishing between barreled and non-barreled meat assemblages.     

Taking the Hill: Archaeological Survey and Excavation of German Communication Trenches on the Summit of Mont St Quentin

The following presents the results of a limited programme of field investigation carried out on the site of German communication trenches running through woodland on the summit of Mont St Quentin, just outside the town of Péronne, in the Somme region of Picardy. The aim of the project was to assess the archaeological potential of features related to the Battle of Mont St Quentin, which took place in August/September 1918 and was co-directed by Tony Pollard and Iain Banks. The fieldwork, which consisted of topographic survey, metal detector survey and limited excavation, was carried out over ten days, between 29 August and 9 September 2011. The action, by men of the Australian Second Division, saw the Germans pushed off their strong position on the hill, and thereafter the recapture of Péronne. As a result, three Victoria Crosses were awarded, and General Rawlinson described the battle as the finest achievement of the war. Given its place in the history of Australian military endeavour on the Western Front, the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne has taken out a fifty-year lease on an area of land within Mont St Quentin Wood, which is an initiative supported by the Australian government via the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. This ground includes a number of German communication trenches, along with other features such as shell holes. The intention is to include this area in a heritage trail (Australian Remembrance Trail), which will incorporate other sites of Australian activity, including Fromelles, Villers-Bretonneux and Hamel. In order to maximise the impact and educational value of the site it has been subject to archaeological investigation, an exercise that will add to our understanding of events there, and also provide information and material for a proposed interpretation centre.     

禹州瓦店 龙山聚落的多学科演练

瓦店遗址自1 980年代初以来,已经进行了四轮十数次考古发掘.这处位于潁河中游的龙山时代遗址,在"中华文明探源工程"大型学术项目中承担了重要的角色.多学科研究思想和新的科技手段被不断应用到该遗址的发掘过程里,不仅将考古学研究领域大为拓展,而且为探索公元前2000年前后中原地区的经济技术、社会精神文化发展水平,文明形成过程中社会发展与人口、资源、环境的密切关系,提供了丰富的资料。发掘者认为,该遗址的龙山时代中心聚落的确定,大型环壕和祭祀遗迹群的发现,以及垄断性高档遗物的出土,再联系到文献记载的夏之阳翟钧台均在禹州,表明这处遗址很可能与禹、启的阳翟城或钧台之享有关。     

Cultural Transmission Theory and the Archaeological Record: Providing Context to Understanding Variation and Temporal Changes in Material Culture

Cultural transmission (CT) is implicit in many explanations of culture change. Formal CT models were defined by anthropologists 30 years ago and have been a subject of active research in the social sciences in the ensuing years. Although increasing in popularity in recent years, CT has not seen extensive use in archaeological research, despite the quantitative rigor of many CT models and the ability to create testable hypotheses. Part of the reason for the slow adoption, we argue, has been the continuing focus on change in central tendency and mode in archaeology, instead of change in dispersion or variance. Yet archaeological research provides an excellent data source for exploring processes of CT. We review CT research in the anthropological sciences and outline the benefits and drawbacks of this theoretical framework for the study of material culture. We argue that CT can shed much light on our understandings of why material technology changes over time, including explanations of differential rates of change among different technologies. We further argue that transmission processes are greatly affected by the content, context, and mode of transmission and fundamentally structure variation in material culture. Including ideas from CT can provide greater context for explaining and understanding changes in the variation of artifacts over time. Finally, we outline what we feel should be the goals of CT research in archaeology in the coming years.     

Cultural Identity and the Archaeological Construction of Historical Narratives: An Example from Chaco Canyon

The Bonito Phase (ca. AD 850 to 1140) in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, is widely assumed by archeologists to reflect the growth and decline of a coherent sociopolitical entity, one of the classic examples of emergent social complexity among ancient indigenous North American populations ending in a societal collapse. This understanding of Chaco is based, in part, on the interpretation of temporal changes in material culture as intentional efforts to maintain cultural identity and continuity in the face of social disruption. In this study, I suggest that the Bonito Phase actually encompassed at least one major episode of cultural discontinuity, calling into question the perception of a distinct “Chaco society.” Instead, patterns of material production in Chaco point to multiple cultural identities linked to serial reoccupation of the canyon.     

Differences in Manufacturing Traditions and Assemblage-Level Patterns: the Origins of Cultural Differences in Archaeological Data

A relationship between behavioral variability and artifactual variability is a founding principle of archaeology. However, this relationship is surprisingly not well studied empirically from an explicitly “microevolutionary” perspective. Here, we experimentally simulated artifactual variation in two populations of “artifact” manufacturers, involving only a single behavioral difference in terms of their “tradition” of manufacturing tool. We then statistically analyzed shape variation in the resultant artifacts. In many respects, patterned differences might not have been expected to emerge given the simple nature of the task, the fact that only a single behavioral variable differed in our two populations, and all participants copied the same target artifact. However, multivariate analyses identified significant differences between the two “assemblages.” These results have several implications for our understanding and theoretical conceptualization of the relationship between behavior and artifactual variability, including the analytical potency of conceiving of artifacts as the product of behavioral “recipes” comprised of individual “ingredient” behavioral properties. Indeed, quite trivial behavioral differences, in generating microevolutionarily potent variability, can thus have long-term consequences for artifactual changes measured over time and space. Moreover, measurable “cultural” differences in artifacts can emerge not necessarily only because of a strict “mental template” but as the result of subtle differences in behavioral ingredients that are socially learned at the community level.     

Walking the Land: Aboriginal Trails,Cultural Landscapes,and Archaeological Studies for Impact Assessment

Aboriginal people have occupied northern Alberta since the end of the last ice age. For most of that time they travelled across the land by foot, producing complex networks of trails, many of which may have great antiquity. Aboriginal people also modified the landscape extensively by the use of controlled burning. Lastly, they are immersed in and “read” the land as places with multiple cultural meanings, which in turn helped shape their cultures and identities. Together, these elements indicate the existence of a series of overlapping cultural landscapes for which the cross-country trails and waterways provide the grid. This article addresses the importance of traditional trails for identifying the cultural landscapes of northeastern Alberta and points to the rapid disappearance today of knowledge about such trails. It considers how archaeological investigations done in Alberta for Impact Assessment purposes fail to consider either trails or cultural landscapes in their surveys or to consult with Aboriginal people. As a result, government Review Panels making recommendations for whether or not an industrial project should be approved are basing their findings on incomplete information about Aboriginal land uses and meanings.     

宁镇地区夏时期的考古学文化结构——兼谈江淮地区的文化变迁

在龙山文化时代,江淮地区河南龙山文化王油坊类型、山东龙山文化、江淮土著遗存以及环太湖流域的良渚文化对宁镇地区产生了影响。夏时期,二里头文化、岳石文化南下成为影响宁镇地区的重要历史事件,催生了本地土著文化因素,同时还传承了部分良渚文化传统,构成了点将台文化的主体。此外,点将台文化中还保留了龙山文化时代的部分遗存,从而表现出了宁镇地区夏时期复杂的考古学文化结构。     

将考古遗址作为独特的文化景观加以复兴和展示的新方法

近年来,贝尔格莱德大学建筑学院开展了一系列学生课题,目的是保护塞尔维亚丰富的罗马时期以来的考卉遗址,研究遗址的展示以及将遗址积极融入现代生活和旅游项目中的可能性。罗马军营遗址TimacumMinus的复兴项目就是其中之一,它表明学生参与解决考古遗址的展示和复兴等复杂问题是卓有成效的,     

Land and Sea Tenure at Erub,Torres Strait: Property,Sovereignty and the Adjudication of Cultural Continuity

Approaching property as social practice, and native title as a confluence of indigenous, ethnographic, and legal discourses, we address two themes: firstly, the ethnocentrism of the state's division of ‘property’ from ‘jurisdiction,’; applied to deny indigenous societies' practice of the latter; and secondly, the contradictions inherent in judicial evaluation of continuity and discontinuity in indigenous law and custom. We explore the relationship of ‘home place’ to tenure at Erub, where island, reef and ocean comprise a cultural and experiential continuum. Rights across a full spectrum of material/symbolic resources involve a dynamic tension between principles of exclusion and incorporative reciprocity. The issue of how to balance more particular against more collective rights is at play with each nesting of more local into more inclusive socio-territorial identities: from households and lineages, through island communities, sub-regional island groups, and Torres Strait regionally, to the encapsulating state and evolving international orders. At Erub, an island community long regarded as a vanguard of creolization for Torres Strait, newcomers have by-and-large been assimilated to indigenous systems of land- and sea-holding and authority. The connection between people and territory is a complex practice of social identities and interests responding to political opportunity, according to cultural forms that manifest substantial and traceable continuities to indigenous arrangements, as innovation has proceeded. The continuities appear sufficient to satisfy criteria for native title recognition as articulated in the Mabo decision, but the criteria themselves are too narrowly based to accommodate the processual dynamics of evolving culture and tradition. A reordering of territorial jurisdiction, predicated on the principle of Islander consent to development activities in their homelands/seas, would provide more authentic conditions for cultural autonomy.     

Archaeological Explorations of Cultural Identity and Rural Economy in the North of Ireland: Goodland,County Antrim

Renewed examination of an enigmatic settlement site perched atop a cliff above Murlough Bay in Goodland Townland, County Antrim, Northern Ireland calls into question long held ideas about Gaelic rural economy on the eve of the Ulster Plantation by reintroducing the complex cultural and political relationships between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles. Long interpreted as temporary post-medieval booley huts associated with seasonal transhumance, recent re-evaluation of the site suggests instead that Goodland represents a permanent seventeenth-century Highland Scottish village. Although the medieval linkages between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles have long been acknowledged, twentieth-century sectarianism has subjugated awareness of the Highland (Roman Catholic) Scots focusing upon the legacy of the in-migration of Protestant Lowland Scots during the Ulster Plantation. Material evidence at Goodland re-introduces the Highland Scot to the contested landscape of contemporary Ulster identity, while also facilitating analysis of continuity, change, and cultural complexity in the rural economy of early modern Ireland.     

The Archaeological Excavations and the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Relation with the Local Society: Experiences in Peru

The archaeological site of Kuntur Wasi is located in the northern highlands of the Peruvian Andes. Excavations at the site were carried out by Japanese specialists in cooperation with Peruvian archaeologists and local villagers. The discovery of 3000 year old gold objects led to the construction of a museum in the village to protect the site and its portable artifacts. The present article describes the process of museum building and administration to throw light on the importance of communication between researchers and local people.     

三峡文物考古成果的旅游转化途径与三峡遗产廊道的时空构建

三峡工程淹没区的文物多达1200余处,三峡文物的保护和抢救性发掘是20世纪世界最大的文物工程。目前,135米蓄水区的文物考古成果已经全面验收。众多的考古成果不仅为认识三峡地区的社会、经济、文化提供了新的视野,也为三峡旅游开发开辟了新的思路。本文以考古学新证据揭示三峡文化的深层结构,提出了考古成果向旅游产品的转化途径,对新三峡遗产廊道的时空构建进行了探讨。