Hopewell archaeology

David S. Brose and N'omi Greber, editors. Hopewell Archaeology: The Cillicothe Conference. MCJA Special Paper Number 3. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1979. xiv + 309 pp., illustrations, bibliography. Paper.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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,     

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.     

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.     

Earth science and archaeology

Rapp, George, Jr., and John A. Gifford. eds. Archaeological Geology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. xvii + 435 pp. including figures, chapter references, appendix, and index. $35.00 cloth.

Stein, Julie K., and William R. Farrand, eds. Archaeological Sediments in Context. Orono: University of Maine, Center for the Study of Early Man, Peopling of the Americas Edited Volume Series 1, 1985. xi + 147 pp. including figures, chapter references, and index. $19.00 paper.