If you think that learning the methods professional archaeologists use in the field is difficult, or beyond your abilities, then read this book--> it will change your mind! Progression from mere "collector of things" toward doing true archaeology has never been made easier than through the reading of this text and careful practice of the techniques illustrated therein. Books of this kind are terribly difficult to locate and this is a MUST-HAVE book, actually a tool, that will serve you a long time!

This book's authors do a great job summarizing the logic of methodology by showing how archaeology has evolved as a discipline. The first two chapters will open your eyes to just what an archaeologist does, and you will come to understand the historical and prevailing points of view that make up modern archaeology. You might be surprised to find out that you didn't know much about the topic!

The authors go to great lengths to point out the valuable assistance that amateurs and avocationalists have lent to Archaeology over its history while pointing out  that the "public needs to be cured of its infatuation with the "mystical" side of archaeology."

After reading chapters 3 through 6, you'll be chomping at the bit to get out into the field and try your hand at everything in them! But wait, read the rest of the book! 

Every collector out there needs to read the chapter on Handling and Conservation of Artifacts. The later chapters on mapping are fantastic and cleared up all of my nagging questions about what is, at first, surely the hardest part of doing archaeology. 

I've near worn out my copy, referring to it constantly to answer on-the-fly questions in the field, and the nearly 100 page Appendix, with it's excellent conversion charts and awesome bibliography will never outlive its usefulness to me.

Perhaps the best summary I can leave you with was written by Tom Hester in the book's introduction:
"Our advice--- indeed our warning--- to the reader of this and similar books is that field archaeology cannot be done "cookbook" style. Fieldwork requires much advance planning and the ability to modify strategies in the field if conditions warrant. We intend this book to provide some guidance in certain areas of major concern in field archaeology. We also point out in many of its chapters that the key ingredient to a successful field project is to be a careful observer, a dilligent recorder--- and always to be thinking about what you are doing in the excavation of irreplaceable resources."

The only source I could find for this book was Amazon, where it retails in a range from new, at $88.88, to used, for $51.00     Also try eBay!
Click Here to go directly to Amazon's page for this book.
 

Written with particular focus on Florida, the author, in non-technical language, directs the general public and others as to the particular conditions for general archaeological investigation in the region.

This book, while not as in-depth as the Hester textbook on the topic, nonetheless gives the avocationalist answers to a whole slew of questions about archaeological excavation techniques. The author spends a great deal of time explaining the laws (permit acquisitions), strategies for mapping, testing, fund-raising, basically all aspects of controlled methods for researching sites.

In addition, there are informative chapters relating to the archaeological history of Florida and an excellent Glossary of archaeological terms.

The book is copiously illustrated and annotated, giving the amateur or avocationalist in Florida, and elsewhere, an excellent reference for future inquiry into the topic.

Easier to locate, and cheaper to own than a lot of excavation overviews, you can order this book direct from the publisher by clicking here. The book retails for $29.95. While on the website, note the other interesting books by this author, as well as a large selection of books on both anthropology and archaeology-related topics.
 

Not really a book in the usual sense of the word, the Munsell Soil Charts Book is actually an indespensible tool used in the field to exactly describe the color and texture of soils and sediments, important pieces of information to any archaeologist. Occupational materials are always found in some kind of matrix, soil or sediment, the genesis of which must be explained, since materials could have been shifted over time by the changing landscape, for example. Soil/sediment colors can help determine the entire geohistory of the materials in which occupations are buried. The colors can also be used to determine arability and other cultural, variable activities of the site's occupants over time.

The Charts were developed with cooperation from the U.S. Soil Conservation Service for classifying soil colors into precise international standards free of ambiguous color terms such as "lemon yellow" and "chocolate brown." 

The introductory section of the Chart Book clearly explains basic color properties as well as how to use the Charts. Hue, Value and Chroma are used to describe colors. Hue is where the color is within the spectrum (how red or yellow or blue it is). It has lightness and darkness Values  with zero being white. Chroma identifies how much color there is, from very faded to very colorful. 

Munsell charts are designed to be used for moist samples viewed in natural sunlight. The moist sample requirement is important as dry samples will affect Chroma and Value.

To use the chart, the researcher holds the sample underneath the page that is likely to have the correct Hue. Next, compare the sample to individual color tiles until the best match is reached. If contrast makes the comparison difficult, use the appropriate supplied mask to isolate 4 tiles of a page at a time over the sample. Recording the Hue, Value and Chroma gives you this type of result:  5YR 3/3 (Hue of 5 yellow-red, Value of 3, Chroma of 3). If you need to describe a color in words, you simply consult the name chart opposite the page with the matching colored tile (see illustrations of each page type on left).

Whether or not you already own a Munsell Soil Charts Book you'll appreciate the new 2000 Washable Edition. Not only is it composed of waterproof pages, which is absolutely wonderful, but there are a lot more colors in almost all of the ranges. All total there are over 322 mounted color chips. There are a total of eleven index-tabbed charts: 10R, 2.5YR, 5YR, 7.5YR, 10YR, 2.5Y, and 5Y, plus two Gley (blue and green,  as well as a gray scale for submerged soils). Comes with two washable black and gray masks to help with contrast issues in the field. There also included charts for matching Granular and Crumb Structures, Platy Structures, Blocky Structures, Prismatic and Columnar Structures, as well as proportion estimate charts for mottles and fragments within the matrix.

In addition to its intended use, the Munsell Soil Color Charts can be used for a wide range of color-matching uses from pottery and rocks to skin, hair and eye color.

Under typical use, it is recommended that you replace your Munsell Color Charts every 2 years to ensure correct color identification as they could slightly fade from repeated exposure to sunlight. 

Not inexpensive, but this is a tool you will use every day in the field.
Munsell Soil Color Charts can be purchased individually ($20-$40 ea.) or as a complete set delivered in a looseleaf binder ($123.00) direct from its publisher, gretagmacbeth, by clicking here.
 

Before radiocarbon analysis, investigating the geology of a location might have been the only “sure” method of dating an archaeological site. Analysis of a site’s geology is still important for determining chronology, but geoarchaeology is fast becoming one of the most important factors in describing and ascertaining much more about archaeological sites. Authors Goldberg and Macphail lament that archaeologists are not always as proficient at geology as they should be, even misusing terms such as “soil” to describe what should be called “sediment” in their publications.

Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology is described as a textbook for undergraduate archaeology majors, a basic text which can act as an intermediary course in geoarchaeology. Why would an amateur or avocationalist need to read it? Because any knowledge about landforms and the precious deposits which support archaeological materials is going to help you understand why a site is located where it is, what went on at a site, and how the site was formed.

I found that reading the book while sitting next to a pc was very useful. Each time I encountered a term or concept I didn’t understand, one which was presented within a discussion but with no explanation, I'd just Google the term and generally find enough information to gain understanding enough to return to the text. Using the web with a textbook will free you to challenge yourself with topics such as geoarchaeology--- don’t fear this topic, it’s truly interesting and within your grasp.

The authors of this book do a fantastic job explaining complex ideas, frequently using  key sites to show how geoarchaeology was critical in understanding the full story of what went on there. The book seeks to be practical in its scope, to show directly how geoarchaeology is relevant to all archaeological research strategies and interpretations.

The first section of the book introduces the student to regional scale geoarchaeology. We look first at defining and examining what sediments are, then stratigraphy and soil. Once this basic level of understanding is achieved, considerable time is spent examining hydrological systems effect on landscapes: water runoff down slopes and such, and how rivers meander and lakes come and go. Naturally, before you are through you will also explore wind effects (aeolian) and desert environments. Coastlines are a chapter all to themselves, as are caves/rockshelters. If you find you are getting a shift in your perspective of things, then you are getting into it. 

The earth is "alive" with process, and anyone looking for things within it, must consider its past and present life! It is very interesting to see how science explains landscape, something some folks have an intuitive feel for, but lack any means to communicate. Geologic events affect the cultures you wish to study. Understanding the landscape, knowing what could occur in various events, and what to look for in the geologic record will better help you understand the cultural artifacts you find beneath your feet.

“Geoarchaeology has traditionally been practiced at the landscape/geomorphic and site level, concentrating on site chronologies and regional correlations; less emphasis was placed on the significance of individual strata at the microscale.” Basically, are the larger concepts seen in landform morphologies applicable to say, the stratigraphy in a two square meter section of the wall of a pit? Can we infer other information, such as changes made by people?

Chapters such as “Human impact on landscape; forest clearance, soil modifications, and cultivation”, “Occupation Deposits”, and “Human Materials” are absolutely fascinating. I had never really considered how “dark earth” is formed, or thought about the components of urban stratigraphy and their potential for weathering or any of a hundred other things presented here.

Field-based and laboratory methods, as well as reporting and publishing round out the book and are explored in detail.  The authors are critical of most research publications for the lack of geoarchaeological depth reported in them, and suggests changes in field documentation. 

The extensive bibliography is something else you will appreciate. 

Having read, but not studied this book within a classroom situation, I’m certainly not presenting this review as an expert. Having said that,I like to be challenged with new ideas, and these authors accomplish that by making their topic relevant and approachable. Anyone seriously interested in archaeology needs a copy of this book in their library. 

Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology is might not show up at your local bookstore, so order it direct from the publisher, for $64.95, by clicking here.
 

Avocational archaeology is about context as much as it is about artifacts, and the field of geoarchaeology helps develop a fuller understanding of the context in which artifacts are discovered. Understanding this geological groundwork is an essential instrument in the intellectual toolbox brought to a site, and learning the basic principles greatly repays the effort required. 

This book is used as a text in university level courses on geoarchaeology, and is not a simple or easy read.  It does, however, expand greatly on many concepts that the avocationalist intuitively encounters and broadens them to encompass the sweep of time across terrain and the traces of human existence left behind. 

After opening with an overview of the growth of geoarchaeology as a field of study, the basic foundations of the “three S’s” are established.  Soil, Sediment, and Stratigraphy are the essential elements of the environmental matrix in which artifacts are found, helping to reveal “the dynamic relationship between the landscape and human behavior, and between landscape processes and the archaeological record.” Detailed explanation of these processes affecting deposition of artifacts is concluded with a very useful chapter on turbination phenomena which continue to disturb archaeological contexts after they are laid down.

The avocationalist will recognize many of the geomorphic processes encountered in archaeology.  Waters devotes a number of chapters to discussing them at length, and the extensive of use of diagrams elucidates a more intuitive comprehension of many processes that evade a ready verbal description.  Since this volume lacks a glossary and relies on an archaeology student’s generally strong background in geology, the casual reader needs to pay careful attention to highly specialized terminology as it arises; however the index is useful in leading one back to the needed definitions. 

Descriptions of specific geoarchaeological applications make clear how theoretical models have developed, and the book has illustrations and photographs from field studies which demonstrate the significance of theory in practical applications within site interpretations.  The studies cited are all North American, with a large portion from the Southwest, but ranging from Alaska to South Carolina. 

This is a book that any serious avocationalist should add to their library as a text to be studied.  Material that seems dense and of little immediate use will over time will offer insights leading to a deeper understanding of time’s conspiratorial role with geology in shaping the archaeological environment.  It is available from the University of Arizona Press in soft cover (398 pp) from their website here for $27.95. 
 

The older a site you find, the more its' geological history becomes relevant. You might find that there are younger strata which has, over time, folded itself into an older matrix, for example. Without a thorough knowledge of the site's geomorphology, this would be most puzzling to find.

In later stages of research, an archaeologist seeks to make broader statements about the nature of places where paleoindians settled, hunted, or did other activities. It is within this scope that Vance Holliday put together this comparison of paleoindian sites, examining not only what was found and where on paleolithic sites, but how these locations' geomorphologies compare to each other.

In 1952, E. H. Sellars published a study entitled Early Man in America which, since the author was a geologist, described sites within their geological contexts. What Holliday does is update considerably this older publication, still using some data from the Sellars original, but adding to it the embodiment of all of the latest site excavation data and new technologies and understanding of geoarchaeological methods, focusing on sites within the Southern High Plains (NW Texas & E. New Mexico).

In addition to comparing stratigraphy, soils and geochronology (more than 1/3 of the book with twenty sites covered in depth), and making regional comparisons, this book is an incredible summary of all aspects of what is known generally about paleoindians in the Southern High Plains. Thomas R. Hester, writes, in his introduction to the book, that "... many archaeologists and certainly students of archaeology, both avocational and professionals-in-training, will seek out the summaries of the major paleoindian sites, some of them the best known in the Western Hemisphere."  The "Discussion and Conclusions" section is decidedly worth a read as the author summarizes comparisons between the Northern and Southern Plains.

There are nearly forty pages of references which are also great resources for further inquiry by the reader. This book is a classic and should be in your library.

Paleoindian Geoarchaeology of the Southern High Plains is but one volume of the Texas Archaeology and Ethnohistory Series, edited by Thomas R. Hester and published by the University of Texas Press. It can be ordered direct from the publisher, for a special online price of $16.72, by clicking here. The Texas Archaeology and Ethnohistory Series can be seen in its entirety here.
 

Several of my friends, usually interested in nearly every book I’ve reviewed so far, recoiled in obvious horror when they picked up this book off my desk. Statistics is not the sexiest of subjects for most people, much less avocational, amateur and student  archaeologists, none of whom are as the author puts it “mathematically inclined.” However, this book, while it may not turn you into a statistician, might make you rethink your total avoidance of the topic.

Right from the start, I like this author’s coaching: “… in many ways specific skills are less important than some more general attitudes the book aims to put across. The first  of these is a knowledgeably sceptical attitude to the results of quantitative analyses rather than a “knee-jerk” acceptance or rejection on the basis of uninformed prejudice. The second is a feel for the way in which archaeological questions can be translated into quantitative terms. The third is a basis of knowledge for talking to statisticians about data  analysis problems.” Wow, he makes it sound so easy! And, you know, it’s not the math involved that is the challenge, but the interpretation of the resulting analysis from differing methods of sorting, charting and tabling data which takes some thought. 

By drawing on archaeological experiences for each and every section in the book, and in the exercises at chapters’ end, this book is clearly not statistics as it’s usually taught, and so it manages to hold your interest throughout.

Now, I’m not going to go through each chapter with you, but I can say that several topics, when placed within archaeological contexts are downright interesting. Significance testing, for example, is not something you are going to find explained just anywhere, but would seem to have many merits when trying to decide whether, for example, the distribution of materials found among the wealthy and poor are significant--- ie, can class be determined by the artifact count alone? Gathering data is the most important function of field studies, but who is to determine what data sets are important, or how to draw conclusions from particular sets of raw data? Chi-sqared tests and tests of association of data are also explained--- most of this you are likely to have never considered before even if you have had some math background. there's tons of examples of practical use of statistics for the field archaeologist in this book.

I hadn’t looked at any statistics problems since my sophomore year in college, over 30 years ago, and when I took the GRE,  I slogged through the problems, dreading their appearance on the test (you know, those marble draw problems… arghhh), but I actually enjoyed browsing through this book, stopping here and there to get enough of a grasp of the topic and its presentation to write this review. This is one textbook I’ve vowed I’ll voluntarily study through on my own. I chalk it up entirely to the author’s unique methods of explanation, involving me mentally with problems I’m likely to actually run across in my work.

Quit overlooking the more “difficult” subjects in archaeological research! This is a book you will not only understand, but likely will use! The only thing it lacks, which the independent student would appreciate, is an answer key to the exersises with discussion of the answers.

Order Quantifying Archaeology direct from the publisher, for $34.95, by clicking here.
 

If archaeology is about anything, it’s certainly partly about the spatial relationships of things. All excavations map out finds in three dimensions. Sites are surveyed and analysed with GIS. Most every journal publication and book about any culture has some mention of how a culture viewed its surroundings and the effect this had on them, yet this is the only book I could find which exclusively covered this topic.

Containing thirty-seven papers, the book’s title is that of the Conference, held at the University of Calgary, where they were originally presented in 2002—at least that’s what it says on the inside of the book, back of the cover page… but strangely, the Introduction and back of the book claim the papers were developed from those presented at an earlier conference entitled “2001 Chacmool Conference: An Odyssey of Space.” Whichever conference these papers were presented, we are fortunate that  they have been made available in this book.

Quoting Jeffery Seibert from the Introduction: “One of the attractive aspects of a conference organized around this theme is that space, both as a theoretical and methodological concern, is not constrained by any of the grand theoretical paradigms or meta-narratives of the social sciences or… ‘High Theory.’ Spatial analyses and approaches to space in archaeology are instead… ‘Middle Theory,” because it attempts to explain and account for patterning in the archaeological record. In short, spatial analysis is relevant to scholars pusuing all sorts of ‘higher level’ theoretical questions, insofar as the spatial analysis of archaeological materials allows for the generalizations to be drawn that fuel the higher level theoretical inferences.” 

The papers cover a whole range of methodologies, many of them being new ways of looking at spatial problems. 

Quoting Siebert, “Many of these newer approaches to archaeology represent a departure from the logico-positivist approaches of the processualists to spatial archaeology and introduce a much more interpretive aspect to the whole endeavour.” 

Titles of some of the papers are every bit as intriguing a read as they sound: “Who Put the ‘Haram’ in the Mahram Bilqis?”, “The Symbolic Space of the Ancient Maya Sweatbath” (I didn’t know the Maya had sweatbaths), and “’What You See is Where You Are’: An Examination of Native North American Place Names” are just a few of the offered selections.

Examinations of spaces from around the planet are discussed from every sort of perspective. The book breaks down the topic into eight areas: Theoretical and Conceptual Approaches, Intrasite Spatial Analysis, Architectural Complexes, Urban spaces and Cityscapes, Landscapes and Natural Environment, In Transit: The Archaeology of Transportation, Textual and Iconographic Approaches, and Framework for the Future.

Reading this book just might make you look at sites differently.  It provides models and methods which should inspire new research. This is the kind of topic nearly everyone should firther investigate. Space and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology can be ordered direct from the publisher, for $49.95, by clicking here.

One of the most fascinating books I’ve read in awhile, very well written so that despite the complexity of the topic made remarkably easy to grasp, though perhaps not completely understood (I fear, this was mostly due to this reviewer's ignorance of the topic.) 

I know each and every one of my readers has wondered about the origin of some of the things we take for granted: maize and pigs, horses and dogs and other domesticates. This volume shows very clearly the close association of genetic research and archaeology needed to answer these questions.

I liked the way the editors of the book introduce the material:
“Domesticates and their process of domestication have been central, foundation areas of study in both biology and archaeology for more than 100 years. Although Charles Darwin’s voyage on the HMS Beagle as the source of his theories about natural selection and biological evolution, Darwin opened The Origin of Species (Darwin, 1859) with a chapter on human-induced variation under domestication, later following it with a two-volume work dedicated entirely to domesticated plants and animals (Darwin, 1868). While Darwin was developing his revolutionary theories, Gregor Mendel was conducting experiments in cross-breeding varieties of garden peas at an Augustinian monastery in what is now the Czech Republic. Mendel’s experiments yielded key insights into the inheritance of traits (Mendel, 1865), providing Darwinian evolution with its driving mechanisms and creating the field of genetics.

Domestication was also the focus of the first scientifically oriented archaeological investigations with Raphael Pumpelly’s turn-of-the-century excavations, at the site of Anau in Turkmenistan, that tested his theories about the role of climate change in the emergence of agriculture (Pumpelly 1905). Pumpelly’s work on agricultural origins was to have a profound influence on the later work of V. Gordon Childe, who argued that agricultural origins represented one of the two great transforming revolutions in human history (Childe 1951).

The interdisciplinary investigations of Robert Braidwood in the Fertile Crescent  and Richard MacNeish in Central Mexico in the 1950s and 1960s built on this legacy, and they set the precedent of bringing together researchers from diverse disciplines of botany, zoology, geology, and archaeology to jointly explore fundamental questions of when, where, how, and why humans made the transition from hunting and gathering to herding and farming. The origin of plant and animal domestication has remained among the “big questions” of archaeological inquiry ever since.”

And this book certainly deals with those “big questions”, breaking the subject up into what the editors call “The Four-Celled Matrix for This Volume.” The four “cells” consist of: Archaeological Documentation of Plant Domestication; Archaeological Documentation of Animal Domestication; Genetic Documentation of Plant Domestication; and, Genetic Documentation of Animal Domestication. The introduction spends some time explaining the overall approach of each cell and are quite interesting and effective at setting the stage for the 23 remaining papers/chapters.

This book illustrates the state-of-the-art of genetic and archaeological research in plant and animal domestication. I can find no other book which covers the topic so completely and with such great clarity. Order Documenting Domestication direct from the publisher, for $70.00 (hardback), by clicking here. 

Interestingly, a Downloadable eBook version of the book is available at Adobe E-Reader at ebooks.com  for only $15.95.
 

Archaeological Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are quickly becoming ubiquitous tools for researchers. But like a lot of tools we use, many times there’s not a lot of understanding as to how these tools work--- we use them and trust there are no inherent problems with their usage or in the interpretation or representation of important data. Unfortunately, use of GIS does pose some problems of its own and for a long time remained a tool for experts only who “in the eyes of cynics—chose their archaeological case studies solely to illustrate solutions” to those problems. 

The authors of this in-depth manual for GIS state that “ the widespread adoption of GIS brings with it several attendant dangers. The most problematic is that modern GIS packages offer users a variety of powerful tools that are easily applied, without providing much guidance on their appropriateness for the data or questions at hand. For example, many current GIS software packages require just a few mouse clicks to create an elevationmodel from a set of contour lines, but none that we know of would warn that the application of this method to widely spaced contours is likely to produce highly unsatisfactory results that could lead to a host of interpretive errors further down the line. Conversely, there is a risk that researchers who become overdependent on the data management abilities of GIS may shy away from tackling more analytical questions simply because it is not immediately obvious which buttons to push. It is our ambition that no archaeologist who keeps this manual near his or her computer will make such mistakes, nor be hesitant about tackling the sorts of questions that can only be answered with some of the more advanced tools that GIS packages offer.” 

The authors are not content to just explain “how” to do things, but also clarify “why” things should be done. The manual is not designed to be read from cover to cover, but as an aid to work in-progress, used to look up specific ideas, terms and strategies. However, the authors explain, “we have tried to maintain a logical progression such that topics are introduced in roughly the order that they might be encountered in the course of developing and using an archaeological GIS.”  I think this is one of the book’s strengths in that even with a total lack of knowledge of GIS, a researcher could use this book in a productive fashion by first reading the First Principles, and Putting GIS to Work in Archaeology chapters, and thus getting a rather thorough background in what-it’s-all-about before proceeding further.

There is no stone unturned here--- the manual contains sections for nearly every conceivable use of GIS, and each chapter illustrates the whys and how-tos in clear language with plenty of illustrations and supporting charts. A fifteen page glossary makes it all the easier to parse what can sometimes be pretty dense technical language. And, don’t store away those manuals that came with your software, because although the authors illustrate points and describe the how-tos from most of the major software packages, they declare that in no way, could  every single package-specific problem be possibly dealt with, or foreseen for inclusion in this book.

Those who routinely use Total Stations will appreciate the chapters on Building Surface Models and Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). DEMs, especially, have become critical datasets, yet most researchers do not understand how to assure proper error-free interpolations.

In analyzing regions, this manual provides good definitions of concepts such as intervisiblility as well as the various types of viewsheds in order to understand the various issues in visibility analysis and how they are affected by, and how they affect,  reciprocity, edge effects, DEM quality and sensitivity, to mention a few.

In short, Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology, looks to be an invaluable tool for both the novice and the experienced professional who seeks a better understanding of this important research tool. This manual is but one of a series of handbooks “designed for an international audience of upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, and professional archaeologists and archaeological scientists in universities, museums, research laboratories and field units."

Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology can be ordered direct from the publishers, for $45.00, by clicking here. 

The entire selection of available manuals from the Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology series can be found here.
 

There’s not one single person who is reading this review who would not benefit from reading this book. In its second edition, the original book has become a standard used in classrooms across the globe, for in no other book do parties as diverse discuss the issue from so many relevant viewpoints.

The ethics of collecting artifacts are extremely complicated and the editor has distinguishes all sides of the issue as “The 3 R’s”: “The 3 R’s are claims concerning the restitution of cultural properties to their countries of origin, the restriction of imports and exports of cultural properties, and the rights (e.g., rights of ownership, rights of access, rights of inheritance) retained by relevant parties.”

Messenger further states, “Typically, these claims conceive the debate over ‘cultural properties’ as a debate over ownership of the past, where ‘the past’ is understood not only as the physical remains of the past (e.g., artifacts, places, monuments, archaeological sites) but also “the perceptions of the past itself” (e.g., information, myths, and stories used in reconstructing and transmitting the past)… Many of these questions turn on how one answers the question ‘Who owns the past?’ Three sorts of alternative and competing answers are given: (1)’Everyone owns the past;’ since the past is the common heritage of all; it is ‘humanity’s past;’ (2)’Some specific group (e.g., indigenous peoples, scholars, collectors, museums, nations) owns the past,’ since that group speaks for or represents the important values that are at stake in the debate over cultural properties; and (3) ‘No one owns the past,’ since the past is not really the sort of thing that is ownable.”

So, who “owns the past”, much less ”perceptions of the past”? You will read this book and likely side against the dealers and museums. There’s a definite bias against their ownership within the scope of the arguments, but it’s hard to argue with some of the cases presented because significant artifacts were blatantly smuggled out of countries and offered up for sale to wealthy collectors. 

But what of the ordinary collector of arrowpoints, or salvager of lithics? What of the “small-time” collector who buys a few points at a local artifact show? Other than mention of the fact that the main UNESCO agreement does not include arrowheads, there’s little focused reference to the average person who collects artifacts. However, the reader will infer that the average person is just another degree of the greedy collector who would smuggle or buy a more costly and important article. Only toward the end of the book, with the round table, do we read of the problems with dealing with the “ordinary” or unexceptional artifact which does not represent a culture’s identity and represents no significant loss of information. You are in there somewhere, trust me, keep reading!

Don’t be mislead here, the issue’s emphasis is not on archaeology’s “right” to collect data. There’s much more emphasis on cultural origin and that culture or nation’s right to possess their artifacts and sites. But what does one do when the nation or culture is unable to properly curate items? Sheesh, the problems winds round and round and round.

Is there a simple answer to “Who owns the past?”  In light of the out and out destruction of sites through ranch, farm and public works projects, ethics needs to be an issue revisited over and over again in order to keep up with reality.

Buy this book for yourself, and pick up copies for your friends. Start talking about this important issue!

Order The Ethics of Collecting Cultural Property direct from the publisher, for $22.95, by clicking here.
 

Colin Renfrew, a noted and important archaeologist himself (Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge since 1981, and more recently Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research), has this to say about the author of this book: “The work of Lewis Binford establishes him as the outstanding archaeological thinker of our time. His influence, as the senior and most original figure in the intellectual developments of the 1960’s which came to be called the ‘New Archaeology’, has arguably been greater than that of any other writer this century concerned with the understanding of man’s early past.” Who could resist reading a book by such an author?

First published in 1983, and reissued in paperback by the University of California Press in 2002, this book is a compilation of lectures and classes Binford presented to lucky audiences across Europe in 1980. How fortunate we are that the lectures were taped, because what Binford has to say is remarkable and interesting as hell to anyone who ever attempted to understand the workings of a prehistoric site.

Binford is so very readable! I enjoyed every single lecture presented, even read some of them two or three times, for his insight into the topics is impossible to miss. Does “discovery” alone merit an archaeologist’s time, or is it meaning we’re all after? If it is meaning, then how should we go about decoding what we find in the field? Just how is “meaning” to be inferred out of the material remains of ancient sites, and how can we make inference into fact?

Why, it’s obvious, says Binford, that to gain inference and meaning we must look to living cultures, study their environments and lifeways, look for patterning, and try to apply what we observe to the archaeological record.

Here is where the book will be of value to each and every one who puts trowel to dirt… Binford shows us precise examples of living spaces, hunting camps and more which he observed during his experiences living with people in the far north and in Africa. He used these observations to explore a particular problem but one which most researchers face in nearly every exploration of prehistoric sites: “referral from the present to the past.”

How does one decide how, for instance, a firepit was used within a camp? Was it in a “camp” at all, or was it part of a hunters butchering or stalking site? How do we recognize living spaces? How much space is needed for an individual’s workspace around a fire? How do we interpret any of the material remains we find with any certainty that our assumptions are true? All of this is explored in the book. Binford is telling us all that if we are to interpret “data” recovered from sites, that we need to know “more about the world of small-scale societies in order to think productively about what might possibly stand behind the variability noted in the archaeological record.”

If you had any doubts at all about anthropology’s role in archaeology, this book will set you straight--- without ethnographic studies of living cultures, no real answers can be gained from mere discovery of material remains! Binford presents us with the basic strategies all archaeologists need to do meaningful work and he does it in a way that makes you want to read it--- “Fun to read”, as another reviewer succinctly put it!

This book’s a classic by an author who has written many classics, but this volume contains most all of the ideas and thinking presented in all his other works. Your library simply cannot be complete without this book in it! And furthermore, you can’t really claim to be a serious student of archaeology without reading this volume! 

In Pursuit of The Past can be ordered direct from the publisher for $24.95, by clicking here. 

Behavioral Archaeology 
First Principles
Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry Series
By Michael Brian Schiffer
University of Utah Press   1995 1st ed.   ISBN# 0-87480-501-5   paperback
 

Without theory, there would be no means by which to perform most kinds of research, and archaeology is a hotbed of theoretical research perspectives. Though this kind of material can be difficult for the amateur or avocationalist archaeologist, reading through books such as these two volumes will provide them with a provocative new viewpoint of what archaeologists are really seeking to discover about ancient behavior and technology.  That makes these books essential reading.

Cultural conditioning of behavior is thought to be accomplished through habituation and thus acts through unconscious processes rather than rational deliberation. Many archaeologists find limitations in this definition when they attempt to define specific behaviors, finding the approach too organismal, separating the materials used in behaviors from the overall behavior. “Despite the well-known incompatibilities of method and theory that divide archaeologists into processional, post-processional, and selectionist schools of thought, they all share conceptions of behavior that stem from the organismal research that supported much of the nineteenth-century expansion of method and theory in physiology, psychology, and evolutionary biology.” “Behavioralists, however, dispensed with the concept of culture in order more freely to investigate challenging anthropological topics.” In these volumes the authors “employ a comparative method based in behavior, rather than culture, to address such topics as social power, gender, ritual, material culture, economics, and technology.” 

In short, these volumes examine how behavioral archaeology strives for “general study of the relationships between artifacts and human behaviors as its goal for the discipline.” Behavioral archaeology, in fact, redefines archaeology as “the study of the relationships between human behavior and material culture in all times and places.” It is an “explicit reaction to the naïve optimism and methodological innocence” of Binford’s statement that “The loss, breakage, and abandonment of implements and facilities at different locations, where groups of variable structure performed different tasks, leaves a ‘fossil’ record of the actual operation of an extinct society. This fossil record may be read in the quantitatively variable spatial clustering of formal classes of artifacts.”

It is in the struggle to bridge the gap between data and middle-range theory that the “New Archaeologists” and behavioral archaeologists find conflict, with the behavioralists arguing for a complete reconstruction, that “testing social theory against the archaeological record presupposes the ability to infer behavioral phenomena of the past;  and that , unequivocally is reconstruction.”

Schiffer’s volume, a book you will use as reference and quote time and again, covers the “first principles” of Behavioral Archaeology’s reconstruction of archaeology generally, examining a range of issues from flaws in the way contract archaeology is structured to methodological issues present in ethnoarchaeology to an examination of the critical study of technological change. 

Read both of these volumes and you will understand the basics of behavioral archaeology as well as valid experimental models where the principles and strategies of behavioral archaeology were used in analysis of material remains. 

There is no doubt that these volumes will present a challenging read to those uninitiated to readings concerning anthropological and archaeological theory, but don’t let that stop you from trying.  “To some it might seem as though archaeology has ceased as an organized discipline. ‘Paleoethnology,’ ‘ethnoarchaeology,’ ‘action,’ ‘living,’ ‘experimental,’ ‘contract,’ ‘public,’ ‘processual,’ ‘historic,’ ‘systems,’ and ‘industrial archaeology,’ as well as many other seemingly disparate programs, compete for the attention of modern archaeologists. This diversification of research interests is so far-reaching that it compels us to ask fundamental questions about what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how it relates to what others are doing. We contend that the expansion of archaeology into little-explored domains is an expectable outcome of several long-term processes operating in the discipline. Clearly, these processes are leading to an expanded conception of the nature and aims of archaeology. Archaeology has not ceased to exist as an organized discipline; it is merely reorganizing into a new configuration.”

Expanding Archaeology and Behavioral Archaeology:  First Principles are both part of University of Utah’s excellent Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry series. Both volumes can be ordered direct from the publisher, for $25.00 each, by clicking here.
 

Another volume in the “must have” series Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry published by the University of Utah Press! In Archaeology Beyond Dialog, Ian Hodder probes the methodology and logic of processual archaeology, suggesting that those methods, along with other global trends, are shoving alternative theories and ideas outside of serious research.

Hodder begins by defining dialog from debate: “Archaeology has always involved debate. Indeed, the discipline is partly defined by the ‘great debates’ regarding the ‘antiquity of man,’ or more recently the date of the first spread of humans into the Americas, or the relevance of evolutionary principals for cultural change. The emphasis on dialogue includes such debates but it moves on subtly from ‘defining archaeology’… In order to understand this shift it is helpful to look at some of the ways in which power and influence in arcaeology have to some extent moved away from the white, male Western ‘academy.’… The focus on dialogue in this book partly involves the search for dialectical agreements, by which I mean those that recognize the unity of opposites, that seek tensions in social processes, that see societies as both structured and contingent, and that recognize the role of agency as well as unacknowledged conditions and unintended consequences. But the focus on dialogue more specifically relates to the contention that scientific knowledge does, and should, proceed through debate, both within and beyond the boundaries of the discipline, and including reflexive critique of the assumptions and taken-for-granteds of the academy.”

Hodder contends that we explore material culture without regard for the meaning humans apply to this material. He contends we underplay a human’s inherent responses to material culture--- we disregard the importance of the stories and histories created by people as response to their material cultural environment.

Hodder then methodically dissects basic processual methods and assumptions, revealing in many cases, how little post-processual thinking has percolated into research.

This is a most significant book, one every avocational and professional archaeologist should read and ponder over. Hodder makes some convincing arguments that we are overlooking alternative ideas about nearly every topic in the discipline.

Archaeology Beyond Dialogue is an important book which should be in your library. This volume, as well as the rest of the series, can be viewed here. Archaeology Beyond Dialog is available in either hard cover or paperback, the latter selling for $25.00.
 

The Tall Grass Prairie Peninsula:
Its Role in Shaping American Culture
by Jim Fay with Andrew C. Fortier
Stipes Publishing    2007 1^st ed. ISBN# 978-1-58874-666-5    ringbound paperback

Here’s a cool little book which is comes complete with an online series of tutorials, and a most enthusiastic author. When I emailed Jim Fay to request a review copy, he spent more time trying to convince me to let him assist in the production of my own volume than in pitching his own book! “Just send me the materials and let me do the rest!”—I can almost see him smiling!

What Fay has put together is an eccentric volume about “a rather amorphous geographical area that is not precisely defined by any one characteristic… Indeed, Edgar Transeau, the plant/ecologist/geographer who coined the expression “prairie peninsula” made five different maps of the area… It is true that this book deals largely with the distinctive community of plants and animals that make up the area… But it is also true that in the final analysis the book [is concerned with] the human community of that area and with the cultures of the people who lived in that land. That makes it even harder to nail down exact boundaries.”

The map on the cover shows the region discussed to be in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

The author has a breezy style. I especially like his mnemonic methods for remembering artifact typology, though I think some are a bit of a “stretch,” they’re all fun to read, and by being so, strangely, they “stick”. 

The book, overall, is an example of a broad cultural ecology-type examination of a region, with political-historical and even a bit of philosophical-theoretical discussion thrown in to fill in the background— and it all works.

The chapter “Comprehensive Knowledge” is full of great lines: “The tendency to reframe the world to emphasize what is most important to us is sometimes referred to as the law of the hammer.” And you thought this book was just going to be about grass!!!

And there’s more—Fay put up a web site which contains 5 tutorials and  reminds teachers that he’ll tailor-make this book to fit any curriculum!  This kind of project merits your support. 

Purchase the book directly from the publisher, for $25.80, by clicking here.
Visit the author’s website for more information.