What is Archaeology?

Hawaiian Archaeology ANTH 464

Definitions

“Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore” ― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

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Basic Definitions

archaeology: the study of artifacts from the past
artifact: any material product of human behavior
site: a location where artifacts are found
assemblage: a collection of artifacts brought forward for analysis and interpretation

In this lecture I will try to answer the question “what is archaeology?”

For those of you with an archaeology background, the lecture will be mostly a review, but from a slightly different perspective than you might be used to.

For those of you without an archaeology background, welcome! The lecture today will introduce you to how archaeologists think about their work and how they talk to one another.

The definitions and distinctions in this lecture will re-appear throughout the course. Do your best to pick them up now, but be prepared to understand them more fully as the course progresses.

Let’s start with the definition of archaeology.

Archaeology is the study of artifacts from the past. The subject matter of archaeology immediately distinguishes it from history, which is the study of documents from the past, and from oral history, which is the study of traditions. However, like history and oral history, archaeology’s interest is in the past.

The important part of the definition of artifact is that an artifact is a material product. It is something that can be discarded, lost, or otherwise deposited in the earth. Other products of human behavior, such as speech or ideas, don’t leave any direct traces behind and so cannot be studied by archaeology.

Finally, we’ll want to distinguish “site” and “assemblage”.

We’ve all heard the term “archaeological site” many times and it is often used in a loose fashion by archaeologists. Strictly speaking, a site is a location on the earth where artifacts are found. It is not the artifacts themselves, it is the location where they are found.

In contrast, an “archaeological assemblage” refers to a collection of artifacts that serve as the basis for an analysis and interpretation. The artifacts that make up the assemblage might derive from one site, or they might all have been observed at different sites.

Comparing Times

contemporaneous: the same age
pene-contemporaneous: about the same age
synchronous: happening at the same time
asynchronous: happening at different times

Words About Time

synchronic: concerned with something as it exists at one point in time
diachronic: concerned with the way in which something has developed through time
anachronism: an act of attributing a custom, event, or object to a period to which it does not belong

Archaeological Excavation

stratification: the layering of the earth, especially the deposits and interfaces that result from human behavior
stratigraphy: the study of stratification
context: a spatially bounded deposit or interface within which time differences can not be distinguished
stratigraphic sequence: a temporal ordering of contexts at a site

One of the main ways an archaeologist studies time is through excavation. One way to think about excavation is that it starts at today’s surface and goes back through time as it extends deeper. The youngest materials are at the top of the excavation and the oldest materials are at the bottom.

Here are some words that good archaeologists use in a careful, precise way.

It is useful to distinguish stratification, which refers to the layers of the earth, from stratigraphy, which is the study of the layers.

I’ve already used the word “context”, and now it is time to give it a precise definition. A context is the smallest space/time unit that can be identified in an archaeological study. This is what we mean when we say that it is not possible to distinguish time differences within it.

There are two basic types of context encountered during an excavation: these are interfaces, which represent old surfaces, and deposits, which can be natural or man-made.

Finally, a stratigraphic sequence orders contexts by time. It is an example of what archaeologists call “relative chronology”.

Context Contemporaneity

deductive correlation: established with artifact similarities
inductive correlation: established with independent dating techniques such as radiocarbon or U/Th.

How do archaeologists determine the time relationship of two contexts that aren’t part of the same stratigraphic sequence? Are two contexts the same age? Is one context older than the other? This archaeological problem is harder to solve than it might seem.

In most parts of the world, archaeologists regularly practice deductive correlation. They discover it is possible to define early and late types of an artifact class, then correlate contexts based on whether they each yielded the early type or the late type. If they both have the early type, for instance, then the contexts are correlated as early contexts; if one has the early type and the other has the late type, then the contexts are not correlated, etc.

Deductive correlation is especially hard in Hawaiian archaeology because there are no artifact types that 1) are widely distributed, and 2) changed form over time. In other parts of the world, pottery is usually used for deductive correlation, but pottery was absent in Hawaiʻi until it was imported in the late 18th century.

Inductive correlation became possible when the first radiocarbon dates were obtained from a deposit in a cave at Kuliouou Valley on Oʻahu. There are now many thousands for radiocarbon dates on materials from Hawaiian archaeological sites.

A radiocarbon date can fix the age of a context, and give a calendar date to when an activity took place. For instance, one might learn that a camp fire was burned sometime between AD 1600 and 1650. However, as we’ll see, Hawaiian archaeologists took a long time to master the craft of dating contexts accurately. Consequently, inductive correlation is still at an early stage in Hawaiian archaeology.

Some Hawaiian Artifacts

artifact: any material product of human behavior

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Tools from Hawaiʻi Island

Let’s take a look at some products of human behavior that a Hawaiian archaeologist would recognize as artifacts.

These are tools recovered from beneath a lava flow at a site on Hawaiʻi Island. Tools such as these are what most people mean when they speak of artifacts.

a-c, volcanic glass whose sharp edges made them valuable cutting tools. Their greenish color identifies them as having come from a source at Puʻuwaʻawaʻa, a cinder cone several miles away but visible from the site.

d and e, abraders made from the spines of a sea urchin. These were likely used to manufacture fishhooks.

f , g, j, and k are pieces of mammal bone, likely pig, that are being fashioned into fishhooks.

h is a lava abrader likely used to smooth the hull of a canoe

i is an unfinished stone adze that, when finished, would have been used to cut and shape wood. m is a piece of a highly polished adze that likely broke during use.

l is is a cowrie shell that was once part of an octopus lure.

A Cultural Deposit on Hawaiʻi

This is a photograph of the cultural deposit that yielded the artifacts shown on the previous slide.

Let’s take a minute to look at this photograph, which is typical of a photograph that an archaeologist takes in the field, but which might not be obvious to a student.

The photograph shows the wall and floor of a trench excavated by a backhoe through a lava flow. The top 2/3 of the photograph show the wall of the trench and the bottom shows the floor of the trench. The photo scale, which is marked in 10 cm increments, sits at the edge of the trench floor next to the wall.

Now, let’s focus on the wall of the trench, so I can describe the stratigraphic sequence. I’ll work from the bottom up, describing processes and events in the order in which they occurred.

The first deposit, which shows above and to the left of the photo scale is clean, pale yellow beach sand. This is the surface that was used by Hawaiians when they lost and/or discarded the artifacts we saw in the previous slide. Most of the artifacts were collected from the dark layer at the bottom, just above the white sand. This cultural deposit is an artifact—a material product of human behavior—whose dark color is due to charcoal particles from a variety of domestic fires.

Above this cultural deposit is a thick layer of white sand with several thin horizontal stripes (an archaeologist might call these lenses). When this sand was deposited, the activities that created the cultural deposit were no longer carried out at this location. The lenses might represent periods when beach vegetation was established.

Finally, at the top of the photograph, is lava from an eruption of Hualalai that buried the beach in 1800 or 1801. The black sand immediately beneath the lava has been burned by the molten flow—it is not a cultural deposit, despite its superficial similarity.

A Temple on Lānaʻi

Petroglyphs at Kaʻūpulehu, Hawaiʻi

Agricultural Landscape on Hawaiʻi

This Google Earth image shows a piece of the leeward Kohala field system, which at one time covered 60 square km of Hawaiʻi Island.

Note the scale at the bottom right. A meter is slightly longer than a yard, so the scale is about as long as two football fields, including end zones, laid end to end.

The top right corner of the image is mauka and the bottom left corner is makai. The coast is a few miles away.

The house lot was developed in the last 20 years. The ranch was developed after private property in land was introduced to Hawaiʻi in the mid 19th century. The traditional Hawaiian field system, which was developed mostly in the 18th century, shows as a grid of lines.

The very many vertical lines in the field system are the low agricultural walls. The long horizontal lines are trails to the coast.

Dimensions of Archaeology

Form, space, and time cover all the bases

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Three Dimensional Inquiry

form: study of the artifacts themselves
space: geographic distribution of artifacts
time: temporal distribution of artifacts

There are three dimensions to archaeological inquiry, which can be called form, space, and time.

Form refers to the study of the artifacts themselves. It is useful to think of artifacts as having a life history.

In a sense, the life of an artifact begins when the raw material for its manufacture or construction is collected. The questions asked at this stage include “where did the raw material come from?” “What activities were involved in its collection?”

With the raw material in hand, the next step is to manufacture or construct the artifact. “What kinds of skills did this involve?” “Were these skills part of a tradition, or were they innovations or inventions?”

Once the artifact is fully formed, it would have been used. “What activities was the artifact used for?” “Were these activities part of a tradition, or were they innovations?”

At some point the artifact was either discarded, lost, or abandoned. An archaeologist would say that it entered the archaeological record. “When did the artifact enter the archaeological record?”

Finally, as we saw with the Lanaʻi Island temple, artifacts can change quite a bit after they enter the archaeological record. “What were the post-depositional changes to the artifact?” This question is important to an archaeologist, because it would be a mistake to consider these changes a result of artifact manufacture or use.

This idea of the life history of an artifact is sometimes called “chaine operatoire” by archaeologists. The literal translation of this French term is “operational sequence.”

The second dimension of artifact study is space, which refers to the distribution of artifacts on the face of the earth. The central question here is “Where was the artifact found?”

The third dimension is time, and this is where archaeology makes a unique contribution to human knowledge. For the long dawn of human history before written records, archaeology provides the only direct evidence. The question here is “What is the age of the archaeological context from which the artifact was recovered?”

Artifact Form

Artifact Function

Geographic Space

Distribution Away From a Source

The Harris Matrix

fig-12-distance-from-4-layer-interfaces-tred-edited.jpg

Because excavation and time are so important to archaeologists, they have a well-developed set of methods they use to record the relative time relationships revealed by excavations. Perhaps the best known of these methods is the Harris Matrix, which was developed in Great Britain to record complex urban sites.

Take a look at the drawing on the bottom left. This is a stratigraphic profile that shows the layers revealed in a trench excavation. You are looking at the layers in the face of the trench so that the top of the drawing is the modern surface and the bottom of the drawing is the base of excavation.

Each context has a unique number so it can be referenced without confusion.

Let’s review this stratigraphic profile working from the bottom up. I’ll describe the processes and events responsible for creating this stratigraphic profile in the order in which they occurred.

At the bottom of the profile is a context labeled “Natural ground” that was here before people left any traces on the landscape. Context 18, an interface, is the ground surface when people first came to this place.

Context 9 is a thick cultural deposit that was laid down on the Context 18 interface. The surface of Context 9 is shown in the profile as Contexts 15 and 16, for reasons that I’ll explain in a minute. This was the surface when Contexts 7 and 8 were deposited, forming the surface represented by Contexts 11 and 14.

The surface represented by Contexts 11 and 14 was where workers excavated a trench, Context 6, down through Contexts 7 and 8 and into Context 9. In this trench, they built a wall, Contexts 5 and 17, and then filled the trench on either side of the wall, Contexts 3 and 4.

When the wall was built, it was likely quite tall. But at some time prior to the process that deposited Context 1, it was broken down to ground level, so that its upper interface, Context 2, was level with the surrounding ground surface, Contexts 11, 12, 13, and 14. Context 1 was deposited on these contexts and it forms the ground surface today, Context 10.

On the right are two diagrams showing the relative chronological relationships of the contexts in the stratigraphic profile. Note that interfaces are represented as parallelograms and deposits are represented as rectangles. In these diagrams, the lines connect contexts that have a direct stratigraphic relationship. For two contexts connected by a line, the older one is below the younger one. So, for example, you can see at the bottom of each diagram that the natural ground has a direct stratigraphic relationship with its surface, the interfacial context 18.

The two diagrams are shaded to show the relative chronological relationships of Context 4, one of the fill deposits around the base of the wall, with all of the other contexts in the stratigraphic profile. First, you can see that Context 4 is immediately younger than Contexts 17 and 6, and that it is immediately older than Context 13. Similarly, the age of Context 4 relative to Contexts 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, and 18 can be determined. However, it is not possible to say whether Context 4 is older or younger than Contexts 2, 3, 11, and 12.

Why are there two diagrams? The one on the left only records observations. The one on the right contains observations and inferences about once-whole contexts. For instance, it infers that Contexts 7 and 8 were once part of a single unit before the Context 6 trench was excavated.

It is important in this work to keep observations separate from inferences, because observations are treated as facts and inferences are treated as ideas.

Thank you for listening through to the end of this long description. You should now have a pretty good idea of how archaeologists establish relative chronology. Next, we’ll see an example of an absolute chronology, one that measures the difference in time between two events or processes.

Timing of Polynesian Introductions

This chart shows information from 31 traditional Hawaiian fire-pits excavated on the sandy Waimanalo Plain at what is today Bellows Air Force Station. Each fire-pit is represented by one dot on the chart.

The position of a fire-pit’s dot is determined by the age of the burning event in the pit and by the proportion of firewood contributed by plants brought to the island by Polynesians instead of native plants that were here before Polynesians discovered and settled the island. The x-axis is radiocarbon age, which is the number of “radiocarbon years” before AD 1950. The oldest fire-pits are on the right and the youngest ones are on the left. Fire-pits where mostly native plants were burned are at the bottom of the chart. Those with mostly Polynesian introductions are at the top of the graph.

The chart makes it clear that before 400 radiocarbon years ago, fires were typically made with mostly native woods. After 400 radiocarbon years ago, fires were often made mostly with firewood introduced to the islands by Polynesians.

Inquiry

“Do not block the way of inquiry.” — C. S. Peirce

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Reasons to Practice Archaeology

greed: profit from the sale of artifacts
antiquarianism: appreciate old things
historicism: interest in events that are determined by history and governed by laws of change
social science: interest in the scientific study of the laws of human behavior

Now that you have an idea of how archaeologists work with time, let’s step back for a moment and consider why someone might want to go to all the trouble of archaeological excavation, which is costly and time-consuming.

First is the greed motive, which is a fundamental value in many modern societies. Very many sites have been excavated by amateurs interested in recovering artifacts for sale. Archaeologists work to discourage markets for artifacts because greedy people don’t record an artifact’s context precisely and thus destroy the information that is the heart of archaeological work.

Antiquarians might carry out archaeological excavations because they appreciate old things, regardless of their value on some market. The first careful excavators were antiquarians, whose publications typically contained hundreds of line drawings illustrating the catalog of finds from an excavation. Archaeologists today discourage antiquarianism because they recognize that excavation is destructive and they believe that archaeological sites should only be destroyed if their excavation contributes information important to a modern understanding of the past and of the peoples who made the past.

Historicism seeks to understand the past from the ground up. It believes that events in the past are best explained by the process of change in which they were carried out.

Social science looks at the past from the top down. It uses laws of human behavior to interpret events in the past.

Most archaeologists today encourage both historicism and social science as complementary efforts. Support for historicism is strongest in Europe, where most archaeologists are studying their own history. Support for social science is strongest in the US, where most archaeologists are colonists who study the past of the colonized. However, wherever they work, archaeologists typically use a mixture of historicism and social science to interpret the artifacts that they study.

Definition of Inquiry

In this course, we will speak frequently of archaeological inquiry. What do we mean by inquiry? And is archaeological inquiry different than other kinds of inquiry?

The account of inquiry that I follow, and that I’d like you think about, was proposed more than a century ago by one of the great American thinkers, Charles Sanders Peirce.

Peirce defined inquiry as the process whereby doubt, which makes one feel uneasy and dissatisfied, is resolved into belief, which makes one feel calm and satisfied. This definition, simple as it is, holds some important truths. First is that one is led to inquiry by doubt. A person who thinks they know everything need not stop to inquire.

Now, there is nothing wrong with holding strong beliefs. Strong belief is a trait of very many successful people. Often, we see such people as resolute and forceful. Also, belief is at the center of many religions, powerful institutions capable of great good.

Still, it is doubt that leads one to inquire, so in this course we will not view doubt as a weakness, but instead as a commitment to inquire.

Please note that part of my job as your instructor is to lead you to inquiry. So, if I’m making you feel uneasy and dissatisfied, please understand that I’m just doing my job.

Note, too, that Peirce’s definition of inquiry is a general one. It wasn’t formulated to describe scientific inquiry or archaeological inquiry. Instead, Peirce believed that all inquiry was fundamentally the same. As a student in this course, you should find this reassuring. The same kind of inquiry you carry out every day is fundamentally the same thing archaeologists do when they engage in archaeological inquiry.

Logic of Archaeological Inquiry

This graphic relates habits and forms of reasoning with the process of archaeological inquiry and shows what kinds of information are used along the way. Stick with me; it’s not as complicated as it looks.

Let’s start at the top left with the habits that archaeologists practice. As we saw on the previous slide, inquiry begins with doubt and ends in belief. In between these two, the archaeologist moves from doubt to a hypothesis, which is then tested. Belief stems from the results of the test.

Next, consider the kinds of reasoning the archaeologist will undertake. The movement from doubt to hypothesis uses hypothetical reasoning. Hypothetical reasoning goes something like this: a surprising observation raises doubt, the archaeologist ponders the surprise and then decides that if circumstances were such and such, then the surprising observation would be a matter of course. Then, given such and such circumstances the archaeologist makes a prediction about the space, time, and/or form of archaeological artifacts and this prediction serves as a hypothesis.

Armed with an hypothesis, the archaeologist sets out to make observations that bear on the hypothesis and that will be used to prove or disprove it. These observations require that space, time, and/or form be measured and observed in a way that can be clearly communicated to other archaeologists, so they can repeat the observations if they choose to do so. This means that space, time, and form need to be classified in a way that is repeatable. The reasoning here is necessary. An example of necessary reasoning would be something like this “large fishhooks have shanks longer than 10 cm, this fishhook has a shank 12 cm long, therefore this fishhook is large.” The reasoning here is necessary, because no rational person can deny the conclusion that the fishhook is large, given the premises.

The last kind of reasoning is probabilistic. Here the archaeologist interprets the results of the test and decides how beliefs about the past should be modified given all that has gone on during inquiry. Because this reasoning is probabilistic, the archaeologist might modify beliefs a little bit or a lot, depending on the test results.

Archaeological inquiry follows the line of reasoning. During acquisition, the archaeologist uses background knowledge to decide if an observation is surprising and to reason through to an hypothesis. The hypothesis is about the space, time, and/or form of artifacts; archaeologists refer to this with the shorthand “archaeological context”. Acquisition bridges the subjects of background knowledge and archaeological context.

In contrast to acquisition, structuration is all about archaeological context. It focuses on space time and form; how to classify and measure the spatial distribution of artifacts, how to fix them in time, and how to classify them into different kinds useful for the inquiry. Structuration ends when the test is carried out.

The final step of reconstitution interprets the results of the test. It forms a bridge from the archaeological context to beliefs about what happened in the past. The archaeological shorthand for this refers to the systemic context of the artifacts. Its focus is on what the artifacts “tell us” about the past.

You might want to bookmark this slide. I’ll be asking you to write a term paper that considers an excavation report from the perspectives of acquisition, structuration, and reconstitution.

Quiz

Check it out!

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What is Archaeology?

Definitions

Basic Definitions

Comparing Times

Words About Time

Archaeological Excavation

Context Contemporaneity

Some Hawaiian Artifacts

Tools from Hawaiʻi Island

A Cultural Deposit on Hawaiʻi

A Temple on Lānaʻi

Petroglyphs at Kaʻūpulehu, Hawaiʻi

Agricultural Landscape on Hawaiʻi

Dimensions of Archaeology

Three Dimensional Inquiry

Artifact Form

Artifact Function

Geographic Space

Distribution Away From a Source

The Harris Matrix

Timing of Polynesian Introductions

Inquiry

Reasons to Practice Archaeology

Definition of Inquiry

Logic of Archaeological Inquiry

Quiz

Quiz: What is archaeology?