Hopewell Archaeology: A View from the Northern Woodlands

A tremendous amount of research on Hopewellian societies in the Northern Woodlands of the United States has been conducted within the last decade. This article summarizes the main themes and directions of that current research and presents a general model of Hopewellian societies. Local communities appear to have been small in size and relatively sedentary; sets of these communities shared a greater sense of cultural identity within a lineage and possibly clan organization, with each riverine drainage system occupied by a mosaic of lineages. Each in turn was spatially centered on specific clusters of religious, nonresidential public architecture. Alliances were based on a number of historically shifting variables, including religion, kinship, politics, and economics. It is suggested that future research continue existing methodologies and analyses and consider new ecological, genetic, and ideological research as a means of adding greater local historic nuance to this general model of Hopewellian societies.     

Earthquakes and archaeology

This article examines the use of archaeological evidence for the assessment of historical earthquakes in the Eastern Mediterranean region and Middle East, long before the advent of modern seismology. We ask the questions when and where have large earthquakes happened in the past? How can this evidence contribute to our scientific understanding of earthquake activity? Is it possible on literary and archaeological grounds to distinguish between earthquake damage and damage from other causes? It is found that archaeological evidence for an earthquake is not always clear or unambiguous and that there is a need for collaboration between archaeologists, historians, geologists, engineering seismologists and workers in other disciplines, to evaluate the traces of earthquakes in excavations, both for understanding their effects at the site and for the information they can provide about the nature of the earthquake implicated.     

Touchstones of archaeology

European archaeological collections record hundreds of thousands of stone artefacts from the Early Middle Ages described as whetstones. However, traces of non-ferrous metals, including precious metals preserved on a number of such artefacts. Many of the finds served in fact as touchstones – tools to test the quality of a particular metal. These artefacts are concentrated mainly in Vendel and Viking Age and Slavic coastal settlements and trade centres in the Baltic Sea basin, the coast and islands of Northwestern Europe, at Central and Eastern European fortresses and suburbia. Many finds also come from rural settings. In early medieval graves the touchstones join balance scales and weights as a sign of the buried individual’s access to precious metals. Especially the rural finds with traces of precious metal provide a strong reason for a revision of present views on the social stratification of the early medieval society in Europe. Chemical microanalysis allows identifying the composition of the alloys. Besides new perspectives on the fields of the social history and the circulation of precious metals, the method also provides new information for the field of archaeometallurgy.     

Tremper Mound,Hopewell Catlinite,and Pima Technology

Abstract

Archaeologists have long recognized that the Hopewell period was marked by the movement of exotic raw materials and artifacts across the eastern United States. The use of archaeometric techniques to trace the sources of these materials is well established. However, little work has been done on sourcing the pipestone used in Hopewell pipes. In this research we use Portable Infrared Mineral Analyzer (PIMA) technology to identify the presence of Minnesota catlinite as a raw material used for pipes recovered from the Tremper Mound (33SC4) caches in the Scioto Valley of Ohio. A new radiocarbon date places the deposition of these caches between B.C. 50 and A.D. 79. The presence of catlinite pipes in Ohio and in Wisconsin, but rarely in Illinois, suggests the existence of a direct west-to-east route from the catlinite quarries through Wisconsin to Ohio. This movement of catlinite appears to have been a short-term Hopewellian event and the material was not used again until late prehistoric times.     

The archaeology of place

It is suggested that if archaeologists are to be successful in understanding the organization of past cultural systems they must understand the organizational relationships among places which were differentially used during the operation of past systems. This point is illustrated by observations made among the Nunamiut Eskimo. Against this background it is demonstrated that the two most common forms of archaeological systematics, “assemblage”- versus “type”-based systematics, are not appropriate for the study of places. In the latter case, it is not possible to analyze places as such, while one cannot see places with different “content” as part of a single system in the former. It is concluded that current archaeological systematics are totally inappropriate for studying past systems of adaptation and their evolutionary modification.     

Post-medieval archaeology in Portugal

Abstract

Portuguese post-medieval archaeology corresponds to the period between the early 16th century and the late 18th century, identified in the archaeological record through several distinct artefact categories, of which ceramics are the most abundant. New products such as thin-walled moulded coarsewares and faience are found together with imports from different European countries, China and other Eastern lands. Although sites and finds are mentioned in Portuguese archaeological and art-historical literature from the late 19th century, it only became a scientific discipline in the 1980s. This paper aims to provide a general view of investigations in post-medieval archaeology for more than a century, focusing on contexts and finds, but also looking towards the discipline’s future.     

Settlement models in archaeology

Theory, taken phenomenologically, relates to what it is about not as an equation or a rendering, but as a logos which lets something be seen which is then seen on its own.     

千载难逢的考古发现——记长沙马王堆西汉墓

马王堆位于长沙市东效,距市中心约4公里。这里原有两个土家,相传为五代楚王马殷|公元907至930年|的莫地,故名“马王堆”。又因两堆东西并列,故又名“马鞍堆”。《太平寰宇记》说是西汉长沙王刘发的母亲程姬及姬的“又女冢”,或名“二姬墓”。发掘结果证明,     

Views of traditional archaeology

Gordon R. Willey, ed. Archaeological Researches in Retrospect. Cambridge: Winthrop Publishers, 1974. xix + 296 pp. Maps, figures, illustrations, and glossary. $9.95 (cloth), $5.95 (paper).

Gordon R. Willey and Jeremy A. Sabloff. A History of American Archaeology. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1974. xix + 252 pp. Illustrations, maps, charts, bibliography, and index. $4.95 (paper).     

Experimental archaeology in Denmark

When experimental archaeology began 100–150 years ago, it was carried out scientifically alongside regular archaeology. However, while general archaeology has continued intensively, scientific experimental archaeology has continued very sporadically during this century. The fact that there is a considerable amount of so‐called ‘experimental archaeology’ does not mean that it has been carried out scientifically. This is exemplified by house reconstructions, which despite their great number have only in a few cases added something new to archaeological research. Although these particular house reconstructions serve a pedagogic function, it would be better if, instead, scientific education was made available in the area of experimental archaeology.     

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.     

Experimental archaeology and boats

Experimental archaeology has now a definite place in research and the late Paul Johnstone was a pioneer in organizing such experiments especially with boats. In our February issue we published a reconsideration of his experiment, in collaboration with Professor Marstrander, on building a hide boat. We now welcome a discussion by Mr Christensen and Dr Morrison on the recent publication The building and trials of the replica of an ancient boat: the Gokstad faering Part 1. Building the replica by Sean McGrail. 59 pp. 50 figs. Part 2. The sea trials by Eric McKee. 38 pp. 25 figs. National Maritime Museum. Maritime monographs and reports no. 11, 1974. London. Ed .