Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook

512 Pages·2007·22.21 MB·English

by  Gary M. Feinman

Archaeology at
the Millennium
A Sourcebook
Archaeology at
the Millennium
A Sourcebook
Edited by
GARY M. FEINMAN
The Field Museum
Chicago, Illinois
and
T. DOUGLAS PRICE
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Archaeology at the millennium: a sourcebook/Gary M. Feinman and T.Douglas Price.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-306-46452-2
1. Archaeology. 2. Antiquities. 3. Anthropology. 4. Civilization, Ancient.
5. Archaeology—Bibliography. 6. Antiquities—Bibliography.
7. Anthropology—Bibliography. 8. Civilization, Ancient—Bibliography.
I. Feinman, Gary M. II. Price, T. Douglas (Theron Douglas)
CC165 .A63 2001
930.1—dc21
00-049783
ISBN-13: 978-0-387-72610-6 softcover
ISBN-13: 978-0-306-46452-2 hardcover
Printed on acid-free paper.
First softcover printing, 2007
© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without
the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street,
New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly
analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation,
computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is
forbidden.
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they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not
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Contributors
Wendy Ashmore • Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadel-
phia, Pennsylvania 19104-6324.
Robert L. Bettinger • Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, Cali-
fornia 95616.
Cathy Lynne Costin • Department of Anthropology, California State University,
Northridge, California 91330-8244.
Jack L. Davis • Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-
0226.
Gary M. Feinman • Department of Anthropology, The Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois
60605-2496.
Jonathan Haas • Department of Anthropology, The Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois
60605-2496.
Brian Hayden • Archaeology Department, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British
Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6.
Richard G. Klein • Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, Califor-
nia 94305-2145.
Linda Manzanilla • Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, México D.F. 04510.
T. Douglas Price • Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis-
consin 53706-1393.
Jeremy A. Sabloff • Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pennsyl-
vania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6324.
Kathy Schick • Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundation of Technology,
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405.
Carla M. Sinopoli • Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michi-
gan 48109.
Bruce D. Smith • Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560.
Gil J. Stein • Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
60208.
Nicholas Toth • Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
47405.
v
Foreword
Possibly because of the event announced in this book’s title—the turn of the century/turn
of the millennium syndrome that is so prominent in the current global zeitgeist – there is an
outpouring of comprehensive compendia in archaeology. Within the past 5 years we have
seen, for example, The Archaeology of Prehistoric North America: An Encyclopedia; En-
cyclopedia of Archaeology: The Great Archaeologists; The Archaeology of Anatolia: An
Encyclopedia; The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East; The Oxford
Companion to Archaeology; and Guide to Historical Literature: Prehistory.
The present volume is different from any of those just listed, however, because the
editors and authors provide a series of substantive chapters organized by archaeological
topics or problems rather than short entries discussing places, periods, sites, people, or
geographic areas. In addition, each chapter includes a hefty bibliography—these alone are
almost worth the price of admission. Most of the syntheses included herein address classic
issues beginning with human origins and Pleistocene prehistory, then moving through time
from Holocene hunter–gatherers, the appearance of agropastoral economies, social inequal-
ity, craft specialization, warfare, archaic states, and empires. All the authors are active
contributors to the research they are summarizing and hence can (and do) comment with
immediacy from the insides of their various scholarly communities. They describe, dis-
cuss, synthesize, debate, and explain their subject matter, sometimes arguing with each
other, but leaving the reader with a sense of knowing where things stand at the millen-
nium—and what is likely to happen next—as regards each topic. The chapter by Jack
Davis situates classical archaeology with respect to Americanist archaeology and is a very
rewarding additional treat.
This book is firmly focused on the solid results deriving from many decades of ar-
chaeological field, laboratory, and archival research. The discussions of all that work are
clear, cogent, optimistic, and not explicitly problematized by sociopolitical concerns, al-
though postmodernist/postprocessualist critiques and studies are noted by many of the
authors. As a sourcebook for archaeology at the millennium, this volume will remain a
landmark well into the 2000s.
PATTY JO WATSON
St. Louis, Missouri
vii
Preface
For a professional discipline, academic archaeology in North America is relatively young,
with firm roots that extend back only to the end of the nineteenth century. Therefore, sev-
eral years ago, as we approached the close of the twentieth century, it seemed an appropri-
ate time to take careful stock of our field, the intellectual progress that we have made over
roughly 100 years, and the existing lacunae in our knowledge and key areas of ongoing
scholarly debate. At the same time, we believed that the rapidly approaching millennial
threshold provided archaeologists (as a community of scholars) with an opportunity to
celebrate how much we have discovered, namely how much more we know and understand
about our distant pasts than we did a century ago. It also afforded the chance to synthesize
some of what had been learned over the preceding decades and to recognize how much
more information we can realize from a well-implemented archaeological study today as
compared to an archaeological field project undertaken a century ago.
With these aims in mind, we commissioned a series of papers (all from renowned
scholars) that have become the major thematic core of this volume. Each chapter was de-
signed to synthesize a major topical or historical subject that is central to the contemporary
archaeological enterprise. Perhaps expectedly, and somewhat unfortunately, a few of the
original set of contracted authors were unable to complete their chapters in the time allot-
ted. Nevertheless, this substantial compendium includes most of the key empirical themes
and issues that have been at the core of recent archaeological practice, interest, and discus-
sion.
As a totality, this collection offers a series of essays by highly accomplished and
recognized professionals that provides an in-depth perspective on the present state and
intellectual vitality of the current archaeological endeavor. Hopefully, the significant gains
in our disciplinary knowledge and the vigor and ingenuity of the pursuit will be conveyed
to both educated lay readers and interested scientists in other disciplines as well as students
and professionals in archaeology. At the same time, it should be clear that human history
and our collective pasts were neither simple nor unidirectional in nature, so that we still
have much more concerted work to do. The utter mysteries of the last century (e.g., evolu-
tionary sequences, lost civilizations, seemingly inexplicable collapses) are now, for the
most part, more clearly defined intellectual puzzles with multiple competing hypotheses.
Yet as we look forward, our magnificent challenge for so many of the key issues explored
in this volume is to marshal the diverse sets of evidence necessary to bridge from alterna-
tive interpretations to greater disciplinary consensus and scientific explanation.
As in any project of this scope, we, as editors, owe great thanks to the people who
helped make this book possible. We gratefully acknowledge and deeply appreciate the
dedicated efforts of each of the authors who undertook to write the synthetic pieces that
compose this work and who willingly agreed to guide their writings through several stages
of the editorial process. We also owe a deep debt of thanks to our editor at Kluwer/Plenum,
Eliot Werner, who agreed to take on this large project and then encouraged and guided it
ix
x Preface
through to completion. It is our good fortune to be able to collaborate closely with some-
one who is also a good and reliable friend. Deep gratitude also is owed Linda M. Nicholas,
whose diligent copyediting and thorough oversight of the production process contributed
in an essential and significant way to this volume. Finally, we dedicate this volume to the
many early archaeologists who forged the intellectual trail that we all are privileged to
follow.
GARY M. FEINMAN
T. DOUGLAS PRICE
Contents
Part I
Introduction
Chapter 1
Archaeology at the Millennium: Of Paradigms and Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Gary M. Feinman and T. Douglas Price
1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Key Research Questions and Metatheory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. The Tempo of Theoretical Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. The Larger Social Milieu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3. Archaeology and Anthropology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. The Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Chapter 2
An Aspect of Archaeology’s Recent Past and Its Relevance
in the New Millennium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Jeremy A. Sabloff and Wendy Ashmore
1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2. Definitions and Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3. The Success of the Settlement Pattern Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4. The Social Context of the Rise of Settlement Pattern Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5. Settlement Pattern Studies as a Mirror of General Archaeological Trends . . . . . . . 21
6. Current and Future Roles of Settlement Pattern Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
7. Concluding Remarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
xi
xii Contents
Part II
First Hominids to Complex Hunter–Gatherers
Chapter 3
Paleoanthropology at the Millennium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth
1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2. Paleoanthropology of the Earliest Hominids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.1. General Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2. Major Taxa and New Discoveries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.2.1. Hominid Origins and Evolutionary Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.2.2. Summary of Ardipithecus and the Australopithecines . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.2.3. Summary of the Genus Homo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.3. Behavioral Aspects of Hominid Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3. The Archaeology of the Earliest Hominids: The Oldowan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.1. The Antiquity of the Stone Age. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2. Overview of Major Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2.1. Stone Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2.2. Use of Other Raw Materials for Tools? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.2.3. Who Were the Tool Makers?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.2.4. Early Oldowan Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.3. Oldowan Technology and Tool Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.4. Nature of the Early Sites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.5. Current Approaches in the Study of Early Sites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.6. Diet and Subsistence of Early Hominids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.7. Environment and Early Hominid Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.8. Social Organization of Early Hominids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4. The Rise of the Acheulean and the Spread Out of Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.1. New Technological Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.2. Early Evidence of the Spread of Hominids Out of Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.2.1. Western and Central Asia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2.2. Eastern Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.2.3. Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.3. General Evolutionary and Technological Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5. Questions Regarding Behavioral and Adaptive Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5.1. Controlled Use of Fire?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5.2. Architecture and Structures?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.3. The Importance of Hunting?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.4. Symbolic and Ritual Behaviors?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6. A Summary of Turning Points in Our Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6.1. Time Depth of Human Prehistory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6.2. Recency of Split with Apes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
6.3. Antiquity of Bipedalism, Predating Flaked Stone Tools,
and Brain Enlargement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89