Archaeologists are notorius for, to paraphrase a T-shirt, stalking other disciplines down dark alleys, whacking them across the head, and then rifling through their pockets for loose theory.
There is, it should be said, some benefit to archaeology from this behavior. There are ideas from fields as diverse as physics and literary criticism that have found good employment in the field of archaeology.
However, there are also many times when this results in bizarre concoctions of intellectual puree that make little sense, but are championed by certain practitioners as if they were the height of human intellectual achievement.
Back in 1971, the archaeologists Kent Flannery wrote a perceptive and hilarious article titles Archaeology With a Capital "S" in which he was extremely critical of the tendency of many of the archaeological theorists active at that time to uncritically adopt concepts from physics, mathematics, and biology without thoroughly considering the applicability of these concepts to the archaeological record. Unfortunately, I can not find an on-line copy to which I could direct you - it is really worth a read.
Flannery's complaint was that the archaeology of the 60s and 70s was filled with sciencey-sounding buzzwords and claims, though he was writing 10 years too early to see how many of the post-modern views of humanity would filter into archaeology and displace many of the sciencey-sounding buzzwords with philosophy-sounding buzzwords. In both cases, there was good that came from it - the theoretical changes of the 50s through the 70s provided us with a fairly robust model for developing and testing hypotheses, as well as for checking our ideas against the real world, while the post-modern ideas that began filtering in during the 70s and really came to the fore in the 80s provided ways of looking into behavior that wasn't easily quantifiable, as well as providing reminders of our own biases and the subjective nature of our conclusions when dealing with something as convoluted and open to interpretation as human behavior. There was also a whole lot of pseudo-intellectual posturing that came from it, and more than a few examples of archaeologists mis-applying concepts because they simply did not comprehend them.
For example: one approach to studying changes in material culture is to attempt to find similarities between the way that artifacts types change over time and the ways in which biological entities change over time. While there are some definite issues to be dealt with (people design tools and can do so relatively quickly, while evolution works through a process of random mutation and decidedly non-random selection over many generations), there is some benefit to employing the concept to try to understand how the physical or social environment might result in the selection of certain tool forms over others by the tool's makers and users.
However, this can become problematic when the archaeologist doesn't understand either evolution, or the difference between biological evolution and choices on the part of toolmakers. This was thrown into stark relief for me one day, when I was in a theory seminar, and we were discussing this approach. I commented that one way that the concepts of biological evolution could be applied would be to see which changes survived and became more common amongst tool types, and which only appear on a single or small number of known specimens. The common tools would indicate either a tool well adapted to a variety of uses or tools adapted to a narrow range of common uses (such as an arrowhead - it only serves one purpose, but that purpose is quite common in the life of a hunter/gatherer, so there's a butt-load of the things lying around archaeological sites); the less common tools would either indicate tools that ultimately didn't work or didn't work as well as others, or else were specialized tools for particular niche tasks that were relatively uncommon.
As soon as I said this, one of the other students stated "well, you're forgetting what any biologist could tell you. Evolution happens at the level of the individual!"
No. Any biologist could tell you (and many have told me) that mutation occurs at the level of the individual. Mutations only feed evolution if they spread throughout the population, meaning that evolution is a generational/population-level phenomenon. This is relevant to the application of the idea to archaeology in that it provides a loose framework for trying to make sense of the relative frequencies of both different types of tools and different traits of similar tools. When you assume that evolution=individual change, then you get it backwards and can easily doom yourself into attributing more importance to each individual variation than is warranted.
You see this sort of thing occur with all manner of ideas taken from other fields, however: resistance (from literature and history), identity theory (from history and sociology), carrying capacity models (from biology), etc. Each of these ideas is useful, to an extent, but tends to be at least somewhat misunderstood by many of its adherents in archaeology, and as a result, tends to get somewhat abused and misused.
This is, it should be said, a bit of a shame, as all of these ideas are good ideas, and can be applied to archaeology, but the mis-use by many of the more fervent supporters results in these concepts being misunderstood by other archaeologists, and therefore good ideas get scoffed at due the the enthusiasm of some of the more enthusiastic and misguided.
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Monday, October 1, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
More Pre-Clovis Goodness?
You may have heard that more evidence for extremely early occupation of the Americas has been found. This time in Paisley Caves in Oregon. (look here, here, and here for some of the information, or the original paper is here).
The basic run-down: A type of tool known as the western stemmed projectile point has been routinely found in contexts (or with obsidian hydration rinds consistent with) and age of up to 10,500 years ago. At Paisely Cave, these points have been found in contexts that appear to date to up to 13,000 years ago (depending on the calibration used for the radiocarbon dates), indicating that they are older then had previously been thought, and may indicate a separate cultural tradition existing simultaneously with Clovis. At the same time, new dates on coprolites (ancient human feces*) taken from the cave suggest occupation beginning by 14,300 years ago.
So, pretty old shit...literally.
When the dates were first released from coprolites several years ago, there was, of course, a good deal of debate regarding whether or not the ages were legitimate, and the possibility that the samples had been contaminated was raised. While this appears to have annoyed the researchers at Paisley Cave, it is a legitimate point, and one that needs to be dealt with (and, it should be said, it appears that they have dealt with it).
This got a fair amount of press coverage, and there are, of course, many statements in the press (some by the researchers themselves, others by over-eager reporters) to the effect of "these findings put the nail in the coffin of the Clovis-first hypothesis!"
No, they don't. Understand, I believe that the Clovis-first hypothesis is flawed, and I did before data started coming out that really put it into doubt. But with every individual piece of data, there is the possibility of flaws - ranging from corruption of the data source itself to mis-interpretation of the results. No one piece of data puts the nail in the Clovis coffin. That was the case with Buttermilk Creek, and it is the case with Paisley Cave.
What is making the Clovis-first hypothesis less and less tenable isn't any one result. Rather, it is the fact that results that are in disagreement with the hypothesis continue to show up. It is also the fact that there is no known Old-World precursor to Clovis, making it unlikely that the Clovis culture appeared spontaneously in the Americas - it is much more likely that people already living here developed the material culture that came to be known as Clovis after the migrated to the Americas from Asia.
Older sites, or sites with older components, are being found...not routinely, exactly, but often enough that it no longer surprises me when I hear of Clovis-Age or pre-Clovis dates. That the Clovis-first hypothesis is still around has more to do with the fact that it had been the best hypothesis for a long time, and therefore people are loathe to give it up even in the face of new evidence. This is not proof of some sort of cover-up or refusal to accept "the truth" as many a pseudo-archaeologist would claim. It is simply proof that archaeologists are human, and like all humans, certain of us are unwilling to accept new evidence that disproves old conclusions. Still, the younger archaeologists generally are more than happy to accept this new data, and most of the older archaeologists are willing to do so as the evidence continues to become stronger, so I think that, during the course of my career, the Clovis-first hypothesis will go the way of the dodo.
It is a pretty exciting time to be a North American archaeologist.
More interesting that the data supporting pre-Clovis occupation of the area is the data that suggests that the Western Stemmed Tradition may have developed around the same time as, and in paralel with, the Clovis tradition. This would indicate the possibility of two very different identifiable cultural groups** occupying the Americas, which may suggest that there are artifactual signs of the multiple waves of migration currently suggested by genetic evidence (looking at the types and distribution of genetic markers in the Americas suggests that people arrived here from Asia over three different periods of migration). That being said, this is the early stages of such a hypothesis, and any of a number of different types of data may surface that kills the hypothesis before it can grow.
Still, once again, it is a pretty exciting time to be a North American archaeologist.
*Remember, archaeology is glamorous and exciting...even when you are dealing with fossil turds.
**It should be remembered that both Clovis and Western Stemmed traditions indicate tool types, not people. It is fair to think that the makers of the Clovis points all derived from a related cultural group, and the same of the Western Stemmed manufacturers. However, these were likely not monolithic groups, and the spread of the tools likely represents the spread of increasingly schisming cultural groups. So, just because people in New Mexico and in Texas used Clovis points, doesn't mean that the peoples in these areas would recognize each other as being kin. These tools let us identify the peoples as different, but the people making and using the tools likely saw themselves as having little but their tools in common.
The basic run-down: A type of tool known as the western stemmed projectile point has been routinely found in contexts (or with obsidian hydration rinds consistent with) and age of up to 10,500 years ago. At Paisely Cave, these points have been found in contexts that appear to date to up to 13,000 years ago (depending on the calibration used for the radiocarbon dates), indicating that they are older then had previously been thought, and may indicate a separate cultural tradition existing simultaneously with Clovis. At the same time, new dates on coprolites (ancient human feces*) taken from the cave suggest occupation beginning by 14,300 years ago.
So, pretty old shit...literally.
Stemmed points, from the University of Oregon's website
When the dates were first released from coprolites several years ago, there was, of course, a good deal of debate regarding whether or not the ages were legitimate, and the possibility that the samples had been contaminated was raised. While this appears to have annoyed the researchers at Paisley Cave, it is a legitimate point, and one that needs to be dealt with (and, it should be said, it appears that they have dealt with it).
This got a fair amount of press coverage, and there are, of course, many statements in the press (some by the researchers themselves, others by over-eager reporters) to the effect of "these findings put the nail in the coffin of the Clovis-first hypothesis!"
No, they don't. Understand, I believe that the Clovis-first hypothesis is flawed, and I did before data started coming out that really put it into doubt. But with every individual piece of data, there is the possibility of flaws - ranging from corruption of the data source itself to mis-interpretation of the results. No one piece of data puts the nail in the Clovis coffin. That was the case with Buttermilk Creek, and it is the case with Paisley Cave.
What is making the Clovis-first hypothesis less and less tenable isn't any one result. Rather, it is the fact that results that are in disagreement with the hypothesis continue to show up. It is also the fact that there is no known Old-World precursor to Clovis, making it unlikely that the Clovis culture appeared spontaneously in the Americas - it is much more likely that people already living here developed the material culture that came to be known as Clovis after the migrated to the Americas from Asia.
Clovis points uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Bill Whittaker
It is a pretty exciting time to be a North American archaeologist.
More interesting that the data supporting pre-Clovis occupation of the area is the data that suggests that the Western Stemmed Tradition may have developed around the same time as, and in paralel with, the Clovis tradition. This would indicate the possibility of two very different identifiable cultural groups** occupying the Americas, which may suggest that there are artifactual signs of the multiple waves of migration currently suggested by genetic evidence (looking at the types and distribution of genetic markers in the Americas suggests that people arrived here from Asia over three different periods of migration). That being said, this is the early stages of such a hypothesis, and any of a number of different types of data may surface that kills the hypothesis before it can grow.
Still, once again, it is a pretty exciting time to be a North American archaeologist.
*Remember, archaeology is glamorous and exciting...even when you are dealing with fossil turds.
**It should be remembered that both Clovis and Western Stemmed traditions indicate tool types, not people. It is fair to think that the makers of the Clovis points all derived from a related cultural group, and the same of the Western Stemmed manufacturers. However, these were likely not monolithic groups, and the spread of the tools likely represents the spread of increasingly schisming cultural groups. So, just because people in New Mexico and in Texas used Clovis points, doesn't mean that the peoples in these areas would recognize each other as being kin. These tools let us identify the peoples as different, but the people making and using the tools likely saw themselves as having little but their tools in common.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Genitals of Stone
So, if you have not yet heard, there is a bit of buzz out right now regarding the discovery of 37,000 year-old rock art in France. The discovery, made in 2007 and being published currently, indicates the early presence of Homo Sapien Sapien (ya' know, our species) in Europe, and corroborates a narrative that holds that anatomically modern humans were in Europe by 40,000 years ago.
Also making a bit of a buzz is the claim that the rock art depicts a vulva.
While most of us are interested in this find because of its age, there is a contingent of my colleagues who are fascinated by the proposed subject matter of the image. And get your minds out of the gutter, the interest comes from the fact that for so much of human history, we have had an obsession with either discussing or not discussing sex and genitals, and it is really not understood where this cultural predilection comes from, nor what it means about us as a species. So, when we see early examples of either genitals or sexual intercourse in ancient art, it gives us another piece in the puzzle that (we hope) illustrates just how much our sex obsessions are based in biology, and how much they are based in culture.
Or, at least, it gives us another piece if the rock art actually represents what we think it represents.
See, the problem is that many of the images that we see in rock art are not clear insofar as what they represent. When we deal with recent rock art, we can often ask the people who made it, or their direct descendants, what the images may mean and reach some sort of conclusion. With older rock art, it is much less clear. Even when we know what an image represents, we still have to work out its actual meaning - sure, that's a painting of a wild goats, but does that mean that you were hunting goats? That you were using some form of sympathetic magic to take on some attribute of a goat? That you just like goats?
Often, we can find clues to help us make a bit more sense in the surrounding rock art, or from features and artifacts present at the rock art site. However, even then, our ideas regarding the meaning of the rock art remain preliminary and incomplete.
I wrote, several years ago, about a rock art site in California where we saw images that have typically been assumed to be vulvae. At the time, I was struck by just how amazingly close the rock carvings were to another human body part: the eye. These things seriously looked like human eyes that were just glaring at anyone passing by. However, much of the rock art interpretation written for the area described them as female genitals, which just seemed odd to me. While I am admittedly not an expert on rock art, I really felt like repeatedly writing the phrase "sometimes an eye is just an eye" on the site forms.
The rock art from Europe, pictured below (linked to Gawker media), may represent a vulva. It also may represent some other object, or perhaps even be an abstract representation of a concept. I don't know. I am, again, not an expert on rock art, but when I read about rock art, I often have to wonder just how many experts on rock art actually are experts. While many of the descriptions seem reasonable and make sense, it is just as common to read odd flights of fancy about the alleged inherent human bio-psychology regarding colors or shapes that, frankly, typically makes little sense.
So, does the presence of a circle with a line in it indicate an early human attempt to represent genitals, and thus sexuality? Yeah, maybe, it's a perfectly plausible explanation. However, it is also entirely possible that we're applying our own often loopy post-Freud assumptions about sex onto ancient peoples who were trying to represent something completely unrelated.
Also making a bit of a buzz is the claim that the rock art depicts a vulva.
While most of us are interested in this find because of its age, there is a contingent of my colleagues who are fascinated by the proposed subject matter of the image. And get your minds out of the gutter, the interest comes from the fact that for so much of human history, we have had an obsession with either discussing or not discussing sex and genitals, and it is really not understood where this cultural predilection comes from, nor what it means about us as a species. So, when we see early examples of either genitals or sexual intercourse in ancient art, it gives us another piece in the puzzle that (we hope) illustrates just how much our sex obsessions are based in biology, and how much they are based in culture.
Or, at least, it gives us another piece if the rock art actually represents what we think it represents.
See, the problem is that many of the images that we see in rock art are not clear insofar as what they represent. When we deal with recent rock art, we can often ask the people who made it, or their direct descendants, what the images may mean and reach some sort of conclusion. With older rock art, it is much less clear. Even when we know what an image represents, we still have to work out its actual meaning - sure, that's a painting of a wild goats, but does that mean that you were hunting goats? That you were using some form of sympathetic magic to take on some attribute of a goat? That you just like goats?
Often, we can find clues to help us make a bit more sense in the surrounding rock art, or from features and artifacts present at the rock art site. However, even then, our ideas regarding the meaning of the rock art remain preliminary and incomplete.
I wrote, several years ago, about a rock art site in California where we saw images that have typically been assumed to be vulvae. At the time, I was struck by just how amazingly close the rock carvings were to another human body part: the eye. These things seriously looked like human eyes that were just glaring at anyone passing by. However, much of the rock art interpretation written for the area described them as female genitals, which just seemed odd to me. While I am admittedly not an expert on rock art, I really felt like repeatedly writing the phrase "sometimes an eye is just an eye" on the site forms.
The rock art from Europe, pictured below (linked to Gawker media), may represent a vulva. It also may represent some other object, or perhaps even be an abstract representation of a concept. I don't know. I am, again, not an expert on rock art, but when I read about rock art, I often have to wonder just how many experts on rock art actually are experts. While many of the descriptions seem reasonable and make sense, it is just as common to read odd flights of fancy about the alleged inherent human bio-psychology regarding colors or shapes that, frankly, typically makes little sense.
So, does the presence of a circle with a line in it indicate an early human attempt to represent genitals, and thus sexuality? Yeah, maybe, it's a perfectly plausible explanation. However, it is also entirely possible that we're applying our own often loopy post-Freud assumptions about sex onto ancient peoples who were trying to represent something completely unrelated.
Friday, April 27, 2012
SAA Memphis Part 3 - Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
This here is Part 3, you dig? Part 2 is here, and Part 1 is here.
So, that night I got to bed, fell asleep quickly, and, due to exhaustion, managed to sleep solidly the full night despite the immature pilots of Boeing 747s buzzing my hotel all night long*. This also despite the fact that the hotel began to fill up with the rather rowdy attendees of a party for 15-year-clean members of Cocaine Anonymous**.
The next morning, I took the shuttle over to the convention center again, knowing that I would only have a partial day in which to see what I could at the conference, as well as to take a quick look around Memphis in the daylight.
So, I started by going to the poster session at the conference. Posters, for those unaware, are a way for researchers to present their work without getting up and giving a talk. Although some posters could easily be turned into a 15 or 20 minute talk, most are not quite sufficient material for such a talk, and as a result are better served by the static display of the poster. A great advantage of posters is that the person who did the research is free to talk about it in a way that the people giving papers are not. As a result, the poster presenters are often quite busy discussing results and answering questions with the other conference attendees.
Several of the posters were quite good, but two in particular struck me. The first was from a graduate student at the University of Washington who was presenting on her work at Dutch colonies in the Spice Islands. Her work was interesting in its own right, but struck me especially because her findings (roughly - the Dutch were more acculturated by the people that they forced to work on their plantations than the people of the plantations were enculturated by the Dutch, and there was little effort to eliminate or alter the culture of the workers) held some interesting contrasts and parallels to the history of Spanish and later Mexican colonization of California.
The second noteworthy poster was from a young man whose institution I don't remember, but he was presenting on the work he is doing with sling stones. Sling stones are precisely what they sound like - rocks used in a sling (think of the weapon with which David is said to have killed Goliath). Slings were used throughout North America, but are rarely discussed by archaeologists, who generally focus on other projectile weapons - mostly arrows, darts, and spears. What struck me is that one of the sling stones that the presenter had made looked suspiciously like a common bi-conical stone found in Californian sites usually thought to have been a religious item and called a charm stone. Now, I am not saying that all, or even most, of these items were sling stones, but it is worth noting the similarities, and considering whether or not we may be routinely mistaking one artifact type for another.
After a bit, I went out to wander Memphis just a little bit more. I wandered over to Beale Street, where I found myself in the middle of a Corvette enthusiast gathering. It was quite a site to see, but my time was short, and I couldn't dawdle.
I then moved on to get some photographs of the Mississippi River, which is, it must be said, one hell of a river. It was interesting, it must be said, to look across a river and know that I was seeing Arkansas - there are few places in my home state of California where you can know where one state ends and another begins just by looking at a natural boundary.
Finally, though, I headed back to the shuttle's stop, and got back to the hotel. I found myself Sitting in the shuttle with the wonderfully named Professor Paine. If only my friend Myrtle shock (aka Dr. Shock, on account of her Ph.D.) were there to meet him. Once at the hotel, I collected my belongings, and boarded another shuttle for the airport. However, as I boarded the shuttle back to the airport, I was happy to see that one of the Cocaine Anonymous folks was a dead ringer for Liam Neeson, were Liam Neeson a bearded, long-haired redneck.
Anyway, I got the the airport, and realized that I had not yet purchased a gift for Kaylia, so I got promptly on that, settling on a box of Moon Pies (I have always found them nasty, but Kaylia likes marshmallow more than I do). While doing this, I encountered a man who kept inadvertently knocking things off of shelves with his backpack. He and I got to talking, and it turned out that he was a film distributor from San Francisco who had been traveling the country to attend meetings with possible outlets for a film on the history of Timbuktu that had fallen into his company's hands. He had been in Memphis meeting with people in no way related to archaeology, when he heard that the SAA was there. However, he had no knowledge of how to reach anyone...and then he ran into an SAA member who also had no idea how to reach anyone at the SAA, so there's irony for you.
One pulled prok sandwich later, I had to move to get onto my plane. I was delighted to discover that there were only two people in my row - myself, and a fellow who looked for all of the world like John McCain. As the plane was loading, the honorable senator from Arizona pulled out a large, hardcover sex advice book, and began reading intently, which he continued doing until we touched down in Atlanta (our layover stop). Unlike the flight out, this one was uneventful, and I was able to finish reading my own book (Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley - I highly recommend it).
After we landed, and as we disembarked, it became clear that the former Republican nominee for president had to literally run to catch his connecting flight (perhaps to Wasilla Alaska?). And so he closed up his sex book and took off running as soon as we were off the plane (it was quite a sight to see, I assure you). I strolled at a leisurely towards my plane.
On my way to the plane, I was passed by a family of three - a mother and her two children (a boy of about ten years, and a girl in her early teens). The mother, a very attractive woman with an accent that I have to admit I found quite pleasant, said, rather loudly "well, all of this walking around is making my skirt ride up just ever so much!" Prompting the teenage daughter to say "Ma! What have I told you about too much information!" The son just giggled, whether because he thought it was funny, or out of embarrassment, I could not tell.
You know, it's a shame that sexy John McCain had to take off...I could have introduced the mother to him.
As I kept towards my plane's gate, I also saw a rather corpulent middle-aged white woman being pushed in a wheelchair by a young African American man. The young man had a bored look on his face, as the woman lectured on about how it is necessary to know your place in order to fit in and be happy. While the conversation may very well have had nothing to do with race, I must admit that the scene as I saw it seemed to conform to stereotypes. This, in turn, led me to wonder how often visitors to California see scenes that are not quite what they at first appear, and yet seem to conform to existing stereotypes.
Upon reaching my gate, I realized that I had an hour to kill before boarding. I was not yet hungry, but I realized that I had a four-to-five hour flight ahead of me, and therefore should probably eat. I made my way towards a nearby airport sandwich shop, and found myself at a table next to one filled by a group of female undergrad archaeology students, whose conversation was mostly gossip about who was dating who in their department, peppered with talk of good come-on lines for archaeologists. My favorite line: 'I have a recreated Navajo bow for projectile experimentation,would you like to come shoot it?'"
I am ashamed to admit that it took me about an hour before I realized the true potential for "bow job" jokes.
Finally, I got on my plane, and was on my way to San Francisco. Unlike my previous flights, I had little to report on this one. I was the only person in my row until the last hour or so of the flight, when a Peruvian archaeologist came over in order to work without being harassed by the person in the seat next to her. I finally arrived in San Francisco around 11:30, and got easily to my car, and then off to a friend's place for the night, heading back to Fresno in the morning.
And there ended what is likely my last SAA trip for quite a long time.
*It's like they're just 13-year-olds with jet engines.
**No, I'm not making this up.
So, that night I got to bed, fell asleep quickly, and, due to exhaustion, managed to sleep solidly the full night despite the immature pilots of Boeing 747s buzzing my hotel all night long*. This also despite the fact that the hotel began to fill up with the rather rowdy attendees of a party for 15-year-clean members of Cocaine Anonymous**.
The next morning, I took the shuttle over to the convention center again, knowing that I would only have a partial day in which to see what I could at the conference, as well as to take a quick look around Memphis in the daylight.
So, I started by going to the poster session at the conference. Posters, for those unaware, are a way for researchers to present their work without getting up and giving a talk. Although some posters could easily be turned into a 15 or 20 minute talk, most are not quite sufficient material for such a talk, and as a result are better served by the static display of the poster. A great advantage of posters is that the person who did the research is free to talk about it in a way that the people giving papers are not. As a result, the poster presenters are often quite busy discussing results and answering questions with the other conference attendees.
Several of the posters were quite good, but two in particular struck me. The first was from a graduate student at the University of Washington who was presenting on her work at Dutch colonies in the Spice Islands. Her work was interesting in its own right, but struck me especially because her findings (roughly - the Dutch were more acculturated by the people that they forced to work on their plantations than the people of the plantations were enculturated by the Dutch, and there was little effort to eliminate or alter the culture of the workers) held some interesting contrasts and parallels to the history of Spanish and later Mexican colonization of California.
The second noteworthy poster was from a young man whose institution I don't remember, but he was presenting on the work he is doing with sling stones. Sling stones are precisely what they sound like - rocks used in a sling (think of the weapon with which David is said to have killed Goliath). Slings were used throughout North America, but are rarely discussed by archaeologists, who generally focus on other projectile weapons - mostly arrows, darts, and spears. What struck me is that one of the sling stones that the presenter had made looked suspiciously like a common bi-conical stone found in Californian sites usually thought to have been a religious item and called a charm stone. Now, I am not saying that all, or even most, of these items were sling stones, but it is worth noting the similarities, and considering whether or not we may be routinely mistaking one artifact type for another.
After a bit, I went out to wander Memphis just a little bit more. I wandered over to Beale Street, where I found myself in the middle of a Corvette enthusiast gathering. It was quite a site to see, but my time was short, and I couldn't dawdle.
I then moved on to get some photographs of the Mississippi River, which is, it must be said, one hell of a river. It was interesting, it must be said, to look across a river and know that I was seeing Arkansas - there are few places in my home state of California where you can know where one state ends and another begins just by looking at a natural boundary.
Finally, though, I headed back to the shuttle's stop, and got back to the hotel. I found myself Sitting in the shuttle with the wonderfully named Professor Paine. If only my friend Myrtle shock (aka Dr. Shock, on account of her Ph.D.) were there to meet him. Once at the hotel, I collected my belongings, and boarded another shuttle for the airport. However, as I boarded the shuttle back to the airport, I was happy to see that one of the Cocaine Anonymous folks was a dead ringer for Liam Neeson, were Liam Neeson a bearded, long-haired redneck.
Anyway, I got the the airport, and realized that I had not yet purchased a gift for Kaylia, so I got promptly on that, settling on a box of Moon Pies (I have always found them nasty, but Kaylia likes marshmallow more than I do). While doing this, I encountered a man who kept inadvertently knocking things off of shelves with his backpack. He and I got to talking, and it turned out that he was a film distributor from San Francisco who had been traveling the country to attend meetings with possible outlets for a film on the history of Timbuktu that had fallen into his company's hands. He had been in Memphis meeting with people in no way related to archaeology, when he heard that the SAA was there. However, he had no knowledge of how to reach anyone...and then he ran into an SAA member who also had no idea how to reach anyone at the SAA, so there's irony for you.
One pulled prok sandwich later, I had to move to get onto my plane. I was delighted to discover that there were only two people in my row - myself, and a fellow who looked for all of the world like John McCain. As the plane was loading, the honorable senator from Arizona pulled out a large, hardcover sex advice book, and began reading intently, which he continued doing until we touched down in Atlanta (our layover stop). Unlike the flight out, this one was uneventful, and I was able to finish reading my own book (Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley - I highly recommend it).
After we landed, and as we disembarked, it became clear that the former Republican nominee for president had to literally run to catch his connecting flight (perhaps to Wasilla Alaska?). And so he closed up his sex book and took off running as soon as we were off the plane (it was quite a sight to see, I assure you). I strolled at a leisurely towards my plane.
On my way to the plane, I was passed by a family of three - a mother and her two children (a boy of about ten years, and a girl in her early teens). The mother, a very attractive woman with an accent that I have to admit I found quite pleasant, said, rather loudly "well, all of this walking around is making my skirt ride up just ever so much!" Prompting the teenage daughter to say "Ma! What have I told you about too much information!" The son just giggled, whether because he thought it was funny, or out of embarrassment, I could not tell.
You know, it's a shame that sexy John McCain had to take off...I could have introduced the mother to him.
As I kept towards my plane's gate, I also saw a rather corpulent middle-aged white woman being pushed in a wheelchair by a young African American man. The young man had a bored look on his face, as the woman lectured on about how it is necessary to know your place in order to fit in and be happy. While the conversation may very well have had nothing to do with race, I must admit that the scene as I saw it seemed to conform to stereotypes. This, in turn, led me to wonder how often visitors to California see scenes that are not quite what they at first appear, and yet seem to conform to existing stereotypes.
Upon reaching my gate, I realized that I had an hour to kill before boarding. I was not yet hungry, but I realized that I had a four-to-five hour flight ahead of me, and therefore should probably eat. I made my way towards a nearby airport sandwich shop, and found myself at a table next to one filled by a group of female undergrad archaeology students, whose conversation was mostly gossip about who was dating who in their department, peppered with talk of good come-on lines for archaeologists. My favorite line: 'I have a recreated Navajo bow for projectile experimentation,would you like to come shoot it?'"
I am ashamed to admit that it took me about an hour before I realized the true potential for "bow job" jokes.
Finally, I got on my plane, and was on my way to San Francisco. Unlike my previous flights, I had little to report on this one. I was the only person in my row until the last hour or so of the flight, when a Peruvian archaeologist came over in order to work without being harassed by the person in the seat next to her. I finally arrived in San Francisco around 11:30, and got easily to my car, and then off to a friend's place for the night, heading back to Fresno in the morning.
And there ended what is likely my last SAA trip for quite a long time.
*It's like they're just 13-year-olds with jet engines.
**No, I'm not making this up.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Ancient Americans, Arguments, and Science
I wrote a while back about the Buttermilk Creek site in Texas, a site that has produced dates that may make it the oldest confirmed in the Americas if they are, in fact confirmed, making it a pre-Clovis site if it is, in fact, as old as the dates show. The data from this site comes in addition to the debated early dates from Monte Verde in Chile, Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania, Paisley Caves in Oregon, the temporally borderline Arlington Springs remains from California's channel Islands, and a number of other sites with various pre-Clovis claims of various reliability. And hell, while we're at it, how about this rock art that nobody is claiming is pre-Clovis, but is claimed to be pretty damn old.
All of these sites together would seem to imply that humans have been in The Americas alot longer than had previously been thought, and that the Clovis Cultures were likely not the first peoples of the Americas. In fact, you will sometimes hear people, both archaeologists and members of the lay public alike, claim that the matter is settled, and that those who claim that there weren't pre-Clovis people are being stubborn or stupid.
The people making such charges are, of course, wrong.
Now, don't get me wrong, here. I do think that there is pretty good evidence for pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas. Hell, I think that the fact that the Clovis Cultures appear more or less out-of-the-blue without any clear precursors in the Old World is pretty good evidence that they developed in the New World, necessitating pre-Clovis peoples to develop into the Clovis peoples. While the evidence from the sites listed and linked-to above are a mixed bag (some of the ones in the Wikipedia link are complete fantasy, others are actually pretty good), none of them are, as of yet, clinchers. None seal the deal, proving the existence of pre-Clovis peoples in the Americas.
As a result, it is not being stubborn or wrong-headed to point out that no unambiguous evidence of pre-Clovis peoples exists. To be certain, there are individuals who will take the stance of "we've long known that Clovis was first, therefore you can stuff contrary evidence!" But most of the people who don't buy into the pre-Clovis arguments do so simply because the evidence for specific pre-Clovis claims isn't as solid as many pre-Clovis proponents, including myself if I am to be honest, would like to think it is.
One of the problems that we encounter is that, until fairly recently, and especially until the late 90s, most of the evidence that we like to claim in our favor is circumstantial: look at my own reasoning above - it holds together, it's internally consistent, and it seems reasonable...but it lacks anything in the way of actual physical evidence to support it, it's simply a statement of "X makes sense because of Y."
There are, of course, legitimate explanations as to why there would be little evidence of pre-Clovis peoples even if they were here. There's the fact that they likely were largely nomadic (though there may have been regional sedentism) and probably travelled in small bands, leaving little impact on the landscape. There's the natural destructive processes (erosion, for example) that routinely eliminate portions of the already ephemeral archaeological record. There's the simple fact that we don't know what the pre-Clovis sites would look like, and without datable materials (organics for radiocarbon, obsidian for hydration measurements, etc.) we might be writing them off (though as new dating methods are developed, this is becoming less of a good reason).
But all of these are excuses for why physical evidence is hard to come by, not proof of the existence of such evidence. It is frustrating to see many pre-Clovis proponents fail to grasp this point.
As earlier dates from more sites come to light, the argument gains physical support. But the support isn't sufficient to move the null hypothesis (that is, the position that is assumed to be true in the face of the lack of supporting evidence otherwise) in favor of the position of myself and my fellow pre-Clovisians just yet. It looks like it's getting there, but it isn't at the moment. Some of our favorite sites turned out to be not as old as previously thought, on further examination. Others may, in fact, be that old, but for various reasons the dates are legitimately being called into question (Monte Verde, I'm looking at you!).
There is also something of a cultural shift. As much as we like to claim that archaeology is all about the evidence all of the time, the fact of the matter is that personalities, training, and long-held beliefs and concepts do have influence. And the older generation of archaeologists have long held to the notion that Clovis is the earliest-known culture in the Americas. Now, many of these people will be overjoyed when something earlier is proven beyond question, but many will still be skeptical of the new data, no matter how solid, because that is human nature.
Archaeologists in my generation seem to be a little more open to the pre-Clovis hypothesis - many open to the point of gullibility anytime a pre-Clovis claim is made (again, sometimes human nature trumps actual evidence). Indeed, the generation immediately proceeding mine even developed new hypotheses for the populating of the Americas (the most popular of which is probably the Coastal Migration Hypothesis) that are now often taught to archaeology undergraduates. This indicates that interest in very early sites is more popular than it has been in at least a few decades, though some would dispute that assertion.
But, nonetheless, pre-Clovis hasn't yet been proven in any meaningful way. I think that it will be, it's just a matter of time, but when you see reports claiming otherwise, taken them with a grain of salt.
All of these sites together would seem to imply that humans have been in The Americas alot longer than had previously been thought, and that the Clovis Cultures were likely not the first peoples of the Americas. In fact, you will sometimes hear people, both archaeologists and members of the lay public alike, claim that the matter is settled, and that those who claim that there weren't pre-Clovis people are being stubborn or stupid.
The people making such charges are, of course, wrong.
Now, don't get me wrong, here. I do think that there is pretty good evidence for pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas. Hell, I think that the fact that the Clovis Cultures appear more or less out-of-the-blue without any clear precursors in the Old World is pretty good evidence that they developed in the New World, necessitating pre-Clovis peoples to develop into the Clovis peoples. While the evidence from the sites listed and linked-to above are a mixed bag (some of the ones in the Wikipedia link are complete fantasy, others are actually pretty good), none of them are, as of yet, clinchers. None seal the deal, proving the existence of pre-Clovis peoples in the Americas.
As a result, it is not being stubborn or wrong-headed to point out that no unambiguous evidence of pre-Clovis peoples exists. To be certain, there are individuals who will take the stance of "we've long known that Clovis was first, therefore you can stuff contrary evidence!" But most of the people who don't buy into the pre-Clovis arguments do so simply because the evidence for specific pre-Clovis claims isn't as solid as many pre-Clovis proponents, including myself if I am to be honest, would like to think it is.
One of the problems that we encounter is that, until fairly recently, and especially until the late 90s, most of the evidence that we like to claim in our favor is circumstantial: look at my own reasoning above - it holds together, it's internally consistent, and it seems reasonable...but it lacks anything in the way of actual physical evidence to support it, it's simply a statement of "X makes sense because of Y."
There are, of course, legitimate explanations as to why there would be little evidence of pre-Clovis peoples even if they were here. There's the fact that they likely were largely nomadic (though there may have been regional sedentism) and probably travelled in small bands, leaving little impact on the landscape. There's the natural destructive processes (erosion, for example) that routinely eliminate portions of the already ephemeral archaeological record. There's the simple fact that we don't know what the pre-Clovis sites would look like, and without datable materials (organics for radiocarbon, obsidian for hydration measurements, etc.) we might be writing them off (though as new dating methods are developed, this is becoming less of a good reason).
But all of these are excuses for why physical evidence is hard to come by, not proof of the existence of such evidence. It is frustrating to see many pre-Clovis proponents fail to grasp this point.
As earlier dates from more sites come to light, the argument gains physical support. But the support isn't sufficient to move the null hypothesis (that is, the position that is assumed to be true in the face of the lack of supporting evidence otherwise) in favor of the position of myself and my fellow pre-Clovisians just yet. It looks like it's getting there, but it isn't at the moment. Some of our favorite sites turned out to be not as old as previously thought, on further examination. Others may, in fact, be that old, but for various reasons the dates are legitimately being called into question (Monte Verde, I'm looking at you!).
There is also something of a cultural shift. As much as we like to claim that archaeology is all about the evidence all of the time, the fact of the matter is that personalities, training, and long-held beliefs and concepts do have influence. And the older generation of archaeologists have long held to the notion that Clovis is the earliest-known culture in the Americas. Now, many of these people will be overjoyed when something earlier is proven beyond question, but many will still be skeptical of the new data, no matter how solid, because that is human nature.
Archaeologists in my generation seem to be a little more open to the pre-Clovis hypothesis - many open to the point of gullibility anytime a pre-Clovis claim is made (again, sometimes human nature trumps actual evidence). Indeed, the generation immediately proceeding mine even developed new hypotheses for the populating of the Americas (the most popular of which is probably the Coastal Migration Hypothesis) that are now often taught to archaeology undergraduates. This indicates that interest in very early sites is more popular than it has been in at least a few decades, though some would dispute that assertion.
But, nonetheless, pre-Clovis hasn't yet been proven in any meaningful way. I think that it will be, it's just a matter of time, but when you see reports claiming otherwise, taken them with a grain of salt.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
At Long Last, Publication!
So, finally, the paper that I had been writing and revising and re-writing for the last two years has seen the light of day.
Check it out!
My paper has the scintillating title of Exchange Links between the Coastal and Inland Chumash, and if you are interested in southern and central Californian archaeology, I hope you'll find it interesting...if you're not, it's guaranteed to be better than Sominex and have fewer side effects.
I was also informed by my boss that a paper she is writing for presentation at a conference will have me listed as a co-author as it will be based on a document that I originally wrote. So, on the whole, I'm doing okay on the "sharing information with my peers" front.
It's an important thing to me to do this. So much of the information that CRM archaeologists produce never gets any real circulation, languishing in government offices or regional information centers but unknown except to those who find it during a record search (and, in my experience, rarely read these documents) that one can reasonably wonder why we are bothering. Publishing papers synthesizing our results and speaking at public and professional conferences is probably the best way out of this particular pickle.
Anyway, I'm finally published, will soon have another paper at a conference, and am already working on another (hopefully to be published) paper.
Check it out!
My paper has the scintillating title of Exchange Links between the Coastal and Inland Chumash, and if you are interested in southern and central Californian archaeology, I hope you'll find it interesting...if you're not, it's guaranteed to be better than Sominex and have fewer side effects.
I was also informed by my boss that a paper she is writing for presentation at a conference will have me listed as a co-author as it will be based on a document that I originally wrote. So, on the whole, I'm doing okay on the "sharing information with my peers" front.
It's an important thing to me to do this. So much of the information that CRM archaeologists produce never gets any real circulation, languishing in government offices or regional information centers but unknown except to those who find it during a record search (and, in my experience, rarely read these documents) that one can reasonably wonder why we are bothering. Publishing papers synthesizing our results and speaking at public and professional conferences is probably the best way out of this particular pickle.
Anyway, I'm finally published, will soon have another paper at a conference, and am already working on another (hopefully to be published) paper.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Workin' the Bone
I have been spending my free time working with bone.
I volunteered to help out a friend of mine with a research project. My friend is a professor at a university in England, and has, over the last several years, put together a team of other archaeologists who spend time working on aspects of his principle research project - the excavation and analysis of a series of sites in the south of California's San Joaquin Valley* - and I am his faunal guy. The upshot of which is that I have a box filled with bone, most of it in small slivers due to taphonomic** processes, and I am sorting and doing a basic analysis of it.
It's an odd experience. On the one hand, it is tedious work, sorting through several pounds of bone slivers, most of them less than an inch long, and figuring out what category they belong in (large mammal, small mammal, medium-sized mammal, sea mammal, fish, reptile, etc.), and with large enough pieces, trying to figure out exactly which type of animal it belonged to (deer, skunk, coyotes, and so on). On the other hand, it's also a skill - being able to look at a sliver of bone and see the features that clearly identify it as being from one creature and not another, or knowing how thick a large mammal's cortical bone is vs. a small mammal's, etc., and I have amazingly not lost my skill over the years in which I have primarily written reports and done surveys - in fact, I seem to be getting sharper.
It's also a bit odd for me because this is pure research - there's no resource management angle and no regulatory reason for the work. My friend is an academic, so all of this is done for the sake of generating data, hopefully learning a thing or two about Californian archaeology, and publishing it. So, on the one hand, this means that I do the work on my own time without being able to use company time or resources on it. On the other hand, this means that I am largely free to do what I think is appropriate with the materials, provided that my work meets the needs of the rest of the team working on the research project.
One of the things that this is reminding me of, though, is just how much pains-taking, often monotonous work one must engage in when doing research. It is possible that the analysis of the animal bone will reveal something important about the site...but it is equally possible, perhaps even more likely, that it won't. Still, we have to do it so that we can be certain that we haven't unnecessarily left an obvious route of investigation out***. One of the things that I often hear or read when I see pseudo-archaeologists respond to criticism that they haven't bothered to do basic due-diligence in working out their conclusions is something along the lines of "what, do you honestly expect us to sift through every rock, piece of bone, and scour each part of the ground?" To which I can only respond "why not, we have to."
*The irony of these people leaving a country where the normal summer temperatures are relatively conducive to fieldwork to travel to a hot, arid location where heat stroke is common does not escape me.
**Taphonomy is the study of post-depositional processes - that is, the study of what happens between the time that archaeological materials are discarded and the time that an archaeologist comes along and digs them up. Taphonomic processes include items being moved due to soil movement, broken due to animal and plant activity, eaten away due to soil acidity, etc.
***That being said, there will always be something that you couldn't research, look into, or evaluate, either because you didn't think of it, because doing so would have prevented you from investigating something that seemed more important, or because you simply didn't have the time and/or resources. It's unfortunate, but a fact of life.
I volunteered to help out a friend of mine with a research project. My friend is a professor at a university in England, and has, over the last several years, put together a team of other archaeologists who spend time working on aspects of his principle research project - the excavation and analysis of a series of sites in the south of California's San Joaquin Valley* - and I am his faunal guy. The upshot of which is that I have a box filled with bone, most of it in small slivers due to taphonomic** processes, and I am sorting and doing a basic analysis of it.
It's an odd experience. On the one hand, it is tedious work, sorting through several pounds of bone slivers, most of them less than an inch long, and figuring out what category they belong in (large mammal, small mammal, medium-sized mammal, sea mammal, fish, reptile, etc.), and with large enough pieces, trying to figure out exactly which type of animal it belonged to (deer, skunk, coyotes, and so on). On the other hand, it's also a skill - being able to look at a sliver of bone and see the features that clearly identify it as being from one creature and not another, or knowing how thick a large mammal's cortical bone is vs. a small mammal's, etc., and I have amazingly not lost my skill over the years in which I have primarily written reports and done surveys - in fact, I seem to be getting sharper.
It's also a bit odd for me because this is pure research - there's no resource management angle and no regulatory reason for the work. My friend is an academic, so all of this is done for the sake of generating data, hopefully learning a thing or two about Californian archaeology, and publishing it. So, on the one hand, this means that I do the work on my own time without being able to use company time or resources on it. On the other hand, this means that I am largely free to do what I think is appropriate with the materials, provided that my work meets the needs of the rest of the team working on the research project.
One of the things that this is reminding me of, though, is just how much pains-taking, often monotonous work one must engage in when doing research. It is possible that the analysis of the animal bone will reveal something important about the site...but it is equally possible, perhaps even more likely, that it won't. Still, we have to do it so that we can be certain that we haven't unnecessarily left an obvious route of investigation out***. One of the things that I often hear or read when I see pseudo-archaeologists respond to criticism that they haven't bothered to do basic due-diligence in working out their conclusions is something along the lines of "what, do you honestly expect us to sift through every rock, piece of bone, and scour each part of the ground?" To which I can only respond "why not, we have to."
*The irony of these people leaving a country where the normal summer temperatures are relatively conducive to fieldwork to travel to a hot, arid location where heat stroke is common does not escape me.
**Taphonomy is the study of post-depositional processes - that is, the study of what happens between the time that archaeological materials are discarded and the time that an archaeologist comes along and digs them up. Taphonomic processes include items being moved due to soil movement, broken due to animal and plant activity, eaten away due to soil acidity, etc.
***That being said, there will always be something that you couldn't research, look into, or evaluate, either because you didn't think of it, because doing so would have prevented you from investigating something that seemed more important, or because you simply didn't have the time and/or resources. It's unfortunate, but a fact of life.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The Value of Little-Looked At Spots
So, as noted in a previous post, one of the papers that I have written will be in an upcoming issue of the journal California Archaeology. The subject of the paper is the interaction between the people of the Santa Barbara Channel Coast and the people of the Santa Ynez Valley during the Late Period (roughly 1,100 A.D. to 1780 A.D.). The Santa Barbara Channel area is very intensively studied, largely because the people of this region, the Chumash, had developed a very advanced degree of social organization, and seemed to be on the verge of developing money as we would understand it today. This has, understandably, attracted a butt-load of interest from researchers. But research has been primarily relegated to the coast and the Channel Islands, with very little attention paid to the inland valleys or the interior. The problem is that, if the research models that we are using are even vaguely correct, the largely ignored inland and interior areas were extremely important to the development of social complexity - so the fact that these areas are being ignored means that the models for the development of complexity have never really been thoroughly tested...and yet many a researcher continues to carry on as if they are well-established.
This is a problem common to the archaeology of many regions - areas that are easier to access or more appealing are often examined to the exclusion of other, likely equally important areas. On the one hand, it can create opportunities - I have been told that my MA thesis, on which this paper was partially based - has been used by people working on dissertations and theses of their own simply because I am one of the few people to write about the Santa Ynez Valley - the merits of my thesis become almost moot in the face of the fact that there is very little else available. What's more, I was invited to write and present the papers that have become the one to be published because of the fact that I am one of the few people who has written So, I have benefited from this personally.
On the other hand, it has the potential to undermine the point of archaeological research. It's a given that researchers are going to work only with the information that they have on hand, what else can be done? But when, as tends to happen, there are known large blind spots in the archaeological record, and these blind spots are ignored or essentially pretended not to exist, this will distort the reconstruction of the past that we are trying to create.
I don't think this would get under my skin except that I have too often seen my colleagues essentially state "well, our model indicates that in Region X, we should see Material Record Y" without ever bothering to check up on these assumptions. It's sloppy thinking, and it just kinda' bugs me.
This is a problem common to the archaeology of many regions - areas that are easier to access or more appealing are often examined to the exclusion of other, likely equally important areas. On the one hand, it can create opportunities - I have been told that my MA thesis, on which this paper was partially based - has been used by people working on dissertations and theses of their own simply because I am one of the few people to write about the Santa Ynez Valley - the merits of my thesis become almost moot in the face of the fact that there is very little else available. What's more, I was invited to write and present the papers that have become the one to be published because of the fact that I am one of the few people who has written So, I have benefited from this personally.
On the other hand, it has the potential to undermine the point of archaeological research. It's a given that researchers are going to work only with the information that they have on hand, what else can be done? But when, as tends to happen, there are known large blind spots in the archaeological record, and these blind spots are ignored or essentially pretended not to exist, this will distort the reconstruction of the past that we are trying to create.
I don't think this would get under my skin except that I have too often seen my colleagues essentially state "well, our model indicates that in Region X, we should see Material Record Y" without ever bothering to check up on these assumptions. It's sloppy thinking, and it just kinda' bugs me.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
The Up-Side of Criticism
I wrote a few months back about a site that may be the oldest discovered in North America. Of course, scrutiny of the report, of the methods applied to determine the age of the site, and of the meaning of the results has begun. This is as it should be. I am pursuaded by the results, but there nonetheless remains the possibility that the site is not as old as is thought. The published paper is coming in for criticism, and if it withstands the criticism, or if the criticism forces out more information regarding the site that supports the claim of old age, then it will vindicate the researchers claiming that it is a pre-Clovis site. If it doesn't withstand the criticism, then we may avoid a research dead-end without wasting too much time.
And this is how honest research works. The scientists - be they archaeologists, biologists, physicists, or any other - produce work, which is submitted to their peers for criticism via publication. Sometimes the criticism can be heated, and scientists being human, it can often become personal and even vicious. But it is ultimately constructive, it helps to weed out bad ideas and dead ends, while promoting strong ideas and helping to ensure good data. There are often blips where bad ideas or data continue to be propagated for a time due to the, very human tendency to get attached to ideas, but in the end, these get phased out in favor of better information.
This is probably the principal difference between science and pseudo-science. In pseudo-science there is a tendency to hold on to ideas despite evidence, and there is an over-riding tendency to view any criticism as an attack or an attempt to crush a novel idea under dogma. The problem is, of course, that it becomes impossible to actually forward a research agenda based on anything even vaguely like reality. If criticism is rejected out of hand not because of its validity but because it disproves a pet hypothesis, then no research that comes out of those who reject the criticism is likely to be valid - they may occasionally reach correct conclusions, but it is as likely to be due to accident as to actual insight or information.
So, when I read accounts of various pseudo-scientific individuals complaining that "the Establishment" won't accept their claims, it always rings hollow. whether it's fantasists complaining about history and archaeology, crackpots complaining about physicists, creationists complaining about biologists, or naturopaths complaining about medical science. "The Establishment" doesn't easily accept the claims of "the Establishment." Everybody gets scrutinized, it's not dogma pushing brilliant conclusions away, it's researchers keep themselves and others honest.
And this is how honest research works. The scientists - be they archaeologists, biologists, physicists, or any other - produce work, which is submitted to their peers for criticism via publication. Sometimes the criticism can be heated, and scientists being human, it can often become personal and even vicious. But it is ultimately constructive, it helps to weed out bad ideas and dead ends, while promoting strong ideas and helping to ensure good data. There are often blips where bad ideas or data continue to be propagated for a time due to the, very human tendency to get attached to ideas, but in the end, these get phased out in favor of better information.
This is probably the principal difference between science and pseudo-science. In pseudo-science there is a tendency to hold on to ideas despite evidence, and there is an over-riding tendency to view any criticism as an attack or an attempt to crush a novel idea under dogma. The problem is, of course, that it becomes impossible to actually forward a research agenda based on anything even vaguely like reality. If criticism is rejected out of hand not because of its validity but because it disproves a pet hypothesis, then no research that comes out of those who reject the criticism is likely to be valid - they may occasionally reach correct conclusions, but it is as likely to be due to accident as to actual insight or information.
So, when I read accounts of various pseudo-scientific individuals complaining that "the Establishment" won't accept their claims, it always rings hollow. whether it's fantasists complaining about history and archaeology, crackpots complaining about physicists, creationists complaining about biologists, or naturopaths complaining about medical science. "The Establishment" doesn't easily accept the claims of "the Establishment." Everybody gets scrutinized, it's not dogma pushing brilliant conclusions away, it's researchers keep themselves and others honest.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Paper Publishing Stuff
So, after a couple of years of writing and revising and then sitting and waiting, then more writing and revising, followed by more sitting and waiting followed by several months of break-neck pace edits, changes, and reading the new books that (freakishly) appeared on the subject just months before my submittal date, followed by a period of several months in which I had been told that my paper was cut from the journal, followed by being asked to re-submit it, followed by more break-neck edits to get it in on time, followed by responses to a late-submitted peer-review response, followed by a panic when I was asked for further revisions but thought that my copy of the data that the revisions would need to be based on had gone missing, followed by a final submittal...I have received galley proofs of my paper for the journal California Archaeology today.
The damned paper is finally going to be published. It will appear in the journal's August issue.
This paper began as a portion of my Master's thesis. At the request of a friend who was putting together an edited volume - basically, a book of papers around a central theme - I revised several chapters and condensed them into one paper, and then handed it over. The first publisher fell through, and the editing team then found a second publisher, lined up the papers, got them all submitted, and then the second publisher fell through. This happened at least one more time, and then the project went on the back burner for a couple of years.
About a year ago, I was told that an agreement had been reached with California Archaeology to publish the papers, but after I had revised it one more time and responded to editorial comments, the publisher cut mine due to space limitations. And then it was put back in, and I had to rush to make the necessary changes. And then there was silence for a couple of months, and then requests for further changes. And then silence, and today I received the galley copy so that I can make a few minor changes and it will be off.
It's really quite satisfying.
The damned paper is finally going to be published. It will appear in the journal's August issue.
This paper began as a portion of my Master's thesis. At the request of a friend who was putting together an edited volume - basically, a book of papers around a central theme - I revised several chapters and condensed them into one paper, and then handed it over. The first publisher fell through, and the editing team then found a second publisher, lined up the papers, got them all submitted, and then the second publisher fell through. This happened at least one more time, and then the project went on the back burner for a couple of years.
About a year ago, I was told that an agreement had been reached with California Archaeology to publish the papers, but after I had revised it one more time and responded to editorial comments, the publisher cut mine due to space limitations. And then it was put back in, and I had to rush to make the necessary changes. And then there was silence for a couple of months, and then requests for further changes. And then silence, and today I received the galley copy so that I can make a few minor changes and it will be off.
It's really quite satisfying.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Why Does Archaeology Matter?
After I read the paper discussed in the last blog post, I was on a bit of a high. It's not every day that you get to see something that cool come out of your field of study, and I was excited. As I explained the paper to Kaylia, she asked, as usual, some very good questions about the nature of the research issue, and what other data backed it up, and then she asked a very basic question: "so, why does this matter?"
I explained that it mattered because it improved our picture of how the Americas were first colonized, to which she replied "yes, I understand that, but why does that matter? Why is it an important question?"
I was stumped for a few minutes. Her question is a very, very good one, but one that most archaeologists, in fact most people who are involved in research, rarely, if ever, stop to ponder. Why is a particular research question important? Why is a particular field of study important?
So, Kaylia, this blog entry is for you.
The broad question, the question of why my field of study is important, is simultaeneously easy and difficult to answer. In the late 60s and early 70s, many archaeologists developed answers to this question based on archaeology's ability to answer questions regarding long-term human behavior, and therefore help us to develop practical answers to pressing questions of the day. During the later 70s and the 80s, these answers fell away as archaeology consistently failed to provide such answers. Today, as the global climate changes, there is good reason to think that archaeology can provide good information about how humans dealt (both succesfully and unseccesfully) with climate change in the past, and perhaps use that information to assist us from here on out. Of course, the problem here is that, in my own personal experience, the same people who are likely to press you for an explanation of why archaeology matters are generally the same people who don't believe in global warming, so while it's a valid and correct answer, it's not likely to get you anywhere.
As a graduate student, I discovered that only a few of my fellow grad students ever gave this any real thought. It was obviously important because they were interested in it, and they wouldn't be interested in something that wasn't important. I often heard that "archaeology is inherently interesting" or "archaeology is inherently important", which really just seemed to be begging the question. Most of those who gave that answer also tended to have a rather inflated notion of how the world outside of the university viewed archaeology, which I did not share as I was one of the few who, at that point, had spent extensive time as a professional away from the university*.
For myself, I will give this basic answer: archaeology does have some potential to address practical issues, not as much as some of the 60s/70s researchers claimed, but there is some potential nonetheless. However, the principle reason why archaeology matters is the same as the reason why the related field of history matters - we can more readily make sense of where we are if we have a firm grasp on where we came from, and it does our minds and our culture well to have the perspective that we are the latest in a long line of people, and our ancestors had lives every bit as intricate and interesting as our own. And, hey, maybe we can learn from their successes and from their failures. And, of course, there's my final reason for thinking that there is value in archaeology - it's a field that generates knowledge, and I happen to believe that knowledge, even if for the sake of knowledge, is a good thing.
And, really, either you're going to buy that, or you're not, and I don't think that I can justify the existence of archaeology any farther than that. If you don't, well, then nothing that I write below will matter to you.
So, assuming that you buy that there is value in studying archaeology, you then have the more direct question: why is this site important? Why is it important to confirm that there were pre-Clovis people wandering the Americas? Well, there's a few reasons:
On the most basic level, this helps to set the historical record straight regarding when and how the Americas were colonized. As far as we can tell, the broad variations in culture that were present at the time of European contact all derived, ultimately, from a relatively small number of migrants from Asia**, so having an idea of where and when the spread of humans into the Americas began will help us to better understand what happened from there and how these small, mobile bands became the variety of peoples present when Columbus arrived.
Also, one of the many goals of archaeology is to provide information for figuring out how humans behave on a very basic level. The advantage that archaeologists have in this is that we can look at human behavior over a fairly long span of time and, provided that we are able to make sense out of the material record. This being the case, we are able, at least in concept, to tease out some rather more fundamental information regarding how humans function. While the movement of people into an environment which is currently devoid of humans doesn't seem to be directly applicable to our lives in the modern world, it is somethign that occured during much of our species' history. Understanding how later, anatomically modern humans behaved in such a situation may shed some light into why we behave the way that we do in many other situations, some of which are present in the modern world.
So, there you go, my argument for why the recent discovery matters, and why archaeology matters.
*I always liked the company of both the older graduate students who were re-entering school after time away, and the graduate students who had needed to hold jobs outside of the university, as they seemed to have the best grasp on our place in the world.
**There are some, most notably Bruce Bradley from the University of Exeter, who claimt hat there was also ice-age migration from Europe into the Americas. Tod ate, their evidence has been weak-to-nonexistent, but a new book on the matter will be coming out later this year, so we'll be able to see if they've improved their case at all at that point.
I explained that it mattered because it improved our picture of how the Americas were first colonized, to which she replied "yes, I understand that, but why does that matter? Why is it an important question?"
I was stumped for a few minutes. Her question is a very, very good one, but one that most archaeologists, in fact most people who are involved in research, rarely, if ever, stop to ponder. Why is a particular research question important? Why is a particular field of study important?
So, Kaylia, this blog entry is for you.
The broad question, the question of why my field of study is important, is simultaeneously easy and difficult to answer. In the late 60s and early 70s, many archaeologists developed answers to this question based on archaeology's ability to answer questions regarding long-term human behavior, and therefore help us to develop practical answers to pressing questions of the day. During the later 70s and the 80s, these answers fell away as archaeology consistently failed to provide such answers. Today, as the global climate changes, there is good reason to think that archaeology can provide good information about how humans dealt (both succesfully and unseccesfully) with climate change in the past, and perhaps use that information to assist us from here on out. Of course, the problem here is that, in my own personal experience, the same people who are likely to press you for an explanation of why archaeology matters are generally the same people who don't believe in global warming, so while it's a valid and correct answer, it's not likely to get you anywhere.
As a graduate student, I discovered that only a few of my fellow grad students ever gave this any real thought. It was obviously important because they were interested in it, and they wouldn't be interested in something that wasn't important. I often heard that "archaeology is inherently interesting" or "archaeology is inherently important", which really just seemed to be begging the question. Most of those who gave that answer also tended to have a rather inflated notion of how the world outside of the university viewed archaeology, which I did not share as I was one of the few who, at that point, had spent extensive time as a professional away from the university*.
For myself, I will give this basic answer: archaeology does have some potential to address practical issues, not as much as some of the 60s/70s researchers claimed, but there is some potential nonetheless. However, the principle reason why archaeology matters is the same as the reason why the related field of history matters - we can more readily make sense of where we are if we have a firm grasp on where we came from, and it does our minds and our culture well to have the perspective that we are the latest in a long line of people, and our ancestors had lives every bit as intricate and interesting as our own. And, hey, maybe we can learn from their successes and from their failures. And, of course, there's my final reason for thinking that there is value in archaeology - it's a field that generates knowledge, and I happen to believe that knowledge, even if for the sake of knowledge, is a good thing.
And, really, either you're going to buy that, or you're not, and I don't think that I can justify the existence of archaeology any farther than that. If you don't, well, then nothing that I write below will matter to you.
So, assuming that you buy that there is value in studying archaeology, you then have the more direct question: why is this site important? Why is it important to confirm that there were pre-Clovis people wandering the Americas? Well, there's a few reasons:
On the most basic level, this helps to set the historical record straight regarding when and how the Americas were colonized. As far as we can tell, the broad variations in culture that were present at the time of European contact all derived, ultimately, from a relatively small number of migrants from Asia**, so having an idea of where and when the spread of humans into the Americas began will help us to better understand what happened from there and how these small, mobile bands became the variety of peoples present when Columbus arrived.
Also, one of the many goals of archaeology is to provide information for figuring out how humans behave on a very basic level. The advantage that archaeologists have in this is that we can look at human behavior over a fairly long span of time and, provided that we are able to make sense out of the material record. This being the case, we are able, at least in concept, to tease out some rather more fundamental information regarding how humans function. While the movement of people into an environment which is currently devoid of humans doesn't seem to be directly applicable to our lives in the modern world, it is somethign that occured during much of our species' history. Understanding how later, anatomically modern humans behaved in such a situation may shed some light into why we behave the way that we do in many other situations, some of which are present in the modern world.
So, there you go, my argument for why the recent discovery matters, and why archaeology matters.
*I always liked the company of both the older graduate students who were re-entering school after time away, and the graduate students who had needed to hold jobs outside of the university, as they seemed to have the best grasp on our place in the world.
**There are some, most notably Bruce Bradley from the University of Exeter, who claimt hat there was also ice-age migration from Europe into the Americas. Tod ate, their evidence has been weak-to-nonexistent, but a new book on the matter will be coming out later this year, so we'll be able to see if they've improved their case at all at that point.
Monday, March 28, 2011
The Oldest Site in North America?
You may have read that the oldest archaeological site in North America has been found. Again. This story gets repeated every few years, as an archaeologist finds a site that shows some sign of having been older than the Clovis-era sites that are usually thought of as the first sites in the Americas.
This time, however, they may be correct.
The Clovis culture is the term given to what appear to have been small, highly-mobile bands of hunter-gatherers who produced distinctive "fluted" (the hafting end is thinned by a channel on either side, allowing for easier hafting) spear points. Sites from the Clovis culture have been found throughout North America, and seem to have appeared out of nowhere around 13,000 years ago. In this case, a paper that appeared in the journal Science documents a claimed pre-Clovis site in Texas.
There have been numerous articles produced which purport to show that a site pre-dates Clovis, and the sites that are the subject of these articles become briefly controversial, and then fade away when the evidence is more closely scrutinized...with a couple of notable exceptions (which, while not definitive, are interesting). As a student, I was energetic the first few times that I heard these findings announced, but as they continued to come to nothing, my enthusiasm flagged. I am still interested when I hear such announcements, after all, this could be the real deal this time around, but I am much more cautious in my acceptance of such claims. Now, there are hot emotions amongst archaeologists regarding this subject, so first and foremost, you need to understand something about where I am coming from - the results reported by the authors, if confirmed to be true, would not surprise me. I am one of the archaeologists who thinks that there were "Pre-Clovis" people in the Americas - after all, the Clovis tools seem to appear out of nowhere with no clear old-world antecedents, so it seems likely that their predecessors were kicking around for a little while before the ol' fluted points came into being. However, that doesn't mean that I'm going to accept poor data to back up the argument that I think is correct. In other words, I have no problem buying that there were pre-Clovis people, I do have a problem with dubious data supporting a position, even if it's a position that I agree with.
But this appears to be the real deal. There are multiple lines of evidence from the placement of the artifacts within the site, and their relationship to Clovis-era artifacts in a higher level of the site, which indicate that they are older. And the clays in which the tools were found were dated using a technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) (follow the link for a description) by which the date at which a crystalline material was last exposed to sunlight can be determined.
I'm persuaded, but I will admit that I am reluctant to completely throw my hat in with the research results just yet. I have to admit, though, that my reluctance comes in no small part from the fact that so many of these claims have turned out to be either false or of more dubious quality in the past, and I don't yet trust this one completely. In other words, there's more emotion than rationality in my reluctance.
There are two things that need to be noted about these results, though: 1) the clay around the artifacts was dated, not the artifacts themselves, and 2) the dating technique used is a relatively new one.
So, for point #1 - Dating techniques applied to materials that are not artifactual in nature, that is not man-made, are often tricky to apply to artifacts. The authors of this article appear to have taken great care in evaluating the nature of the sediments in which these tools were found, and they have used multiple lines of evidence to argue that the sediments have not been exposed to sufficient amounts of disturbance to allow the artifacts to have been moved in such a way as to cause confusion. However, while I know enough about stratigraphy to follow the discussion and say that it sounds solid, I am not a geomorphologist, and they might have some criticisms that I am not aware of.
#2 - The dating technique is a new one. It sounds plausible to me, not being a physicist or a chemist, and I am not accusing the authors of the article of using a poor method or applying it badly, in fact everything that I have read indicates that it is a very good method. However, OSL as a dating technique has really emerged in the last decade or so, and there may be some bugs to it that we are not yet aware of. So, again, this work sounds solid, and I have no problem accepting it provisionally, but keep your eyes open for the discussion of the validity of the dates, as there is a fair chance that we will hear more about this.
A third point should also be raised - everybody wants to be the hero. Every now and again, someone asks me what the "Holy Grail" of North American archaeology is, and I usually respond that there isn't one, but that's not entirely true. The search for the oldest site in the Americas is something of an obsession amongst many of my colleagues**. For this reason, it's not uncommon to see an archaeologist, with the best of intentions but more than a bit of the grail-knight's zeal, report data asserting that they have found the oldest site in the Americas without taking into consideration some element of the data that might place some doubt on the result.
You can see some of this zeal in the way that this site is being reported: a press conference was called before the paper could be widely-read by other archaeologists, and one of the report authors, Michael Waters, was talking about this site in bombastic terms:
So, there's every reason, based on the behavior of the team, to think that there may be enough enthusiasm to lead to them jumping to conclusions.
At the same time, a number of sites in both North and South America have produced dates in the range of 14,000 to 16,000 years before present. Some work on the genetics of the first settlers of the Americas has produced similar dates. These dates have been somewhat problematic, and none have been widely accepted as of yet, but it does seem to be consistent with a growing amount of data pushing the colonization of the Americas back earlier than originally anticipated. So, the enthusiasm of these researchers is, perhaps, earned.
So, is this the oldest confirmed site in North America, and solid proof of Pre-Clovis people? Maybe. Hell, I'll go so far as to say that it probably is. But, I would also caution that there is likely to be some continued scrutiny of the techniques used and the deposits dated, and that the issue isn't settled just yet.
Still, it's an exciting time to be an archaeologist.
*Understand, though, that I mean that I suspect that humans had arrived in the Americas at some point before the Clovis tools began production. It may have been a century, it may have been a few thousand years. I am not supporting the rather loopy assertions that pre-Homo sapien homonids were in the Americas. Those arguments have been made, and continue to fail, and the burden of proof lies with the proponents of that one.
**myself, I am more interested in culture change over time, and so later sites with better preserved components and a decent ethnohistoric record tend to be of more interest to me. The early stuff is interesting, and I enjoy reading about it, but it's not a particular passion of mine.
This time, however, they may be correct.
The Clovis culture is the term given to what appear to have been small, highly-mobile bands of hunter-gatherers who produced distinctive "fluted" (the hafting end is thinned by a channel on either side, allowing for easier hafting) spear points. Sites from the Clovis culture have been found throughout North America, and seem to have appeared out of nowhere around 13,000 years ago. In this case, a paper that appeared in the journal Science documents a claimed pre-Clovis site in Texas.
There have been numerous articles produced which purport to show that a site pre-dates Clovis, and the sites that are the subject of these articles become briefly controversial, and then fade away when the evidence is more closely scrutinized...with a couple of notable exceptions (which, while not definitive, are interesting). As a student, I was energetic the first few times that I heard these findings announced, but as they continued to come to nothing, my enthusiasm flagged. I am still interested when I hear such announcements, after all, this could be the real deal this time around, but I am much more cautious in my acceptance of such claims. Now, there are hot emotions amongst archaeologists regarding this subject, so first and foremost, you need to understand something about where I am coming from - the results reported by the authors, if confirmed to be true, would not surprise me. I am one of the archaeologists who thinks that there were "Pre-Clovis" people in the Americas - after all, the Clovis tools seem to appear out of nowhere with no clear old-world antecedents, so it seems likely that their predecessors were kicking around for a little while before the ol' fluted points came into being. However, that doesn't mean that I'm going to accept poor data to back up the argument that I think is correct. In other words, I have no problem buying that there were pre-Clovis people, I do have a problem with dubious data supporting a position, even if it's a position that I agree with.
But this appears to be the real deal. There are multiple lines of evidence from the placement of the artifacts within the site, and their relationship to Clovis-era artifacts in a higher level of the site, which indicate that they are older. And the clays in which the tools were found were dated using a technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) (follow the link for a description) by which the date at which a crystalline material was last exposed to sunlight can be determined.
I'm persuaded, but I will admit that I am reluctant to completely throw my hat in with the research results just yet. I have to admit, though, that my reluctance comes in no small part from the fact that so many of these claims have turned out to be either false or of more dubious quality in the past, and I don't yet trust this one completely. In other words, there's more emotion than rationality in my reluctance.
There are two things that need to be noted about these results, though: 1) the clay around the artifacts was dated, not the artifacts themselves, and 2) the dating technique used is a relatively new one.
So, for point #1 - Dating techniques applied to materials that are not artifactual in nature, that is not man-made, are often tricky to apply to artifacts. The authors of this article appear to have taken great care in evaluating the nature of the sediments in which these tools were found, and they have used multiple lines of evidence to argue that the sediments have not been exposed to sufficient amounts of disturbance to allow the artifacts to have been moved in such a way as to cause confusion. However, while I know enough about stratigraphy to follow the discussion and say that it sounds solid, I am not a geomorphologist, and they might have some criticisms that I am not aware of.
#2 - The dating technique is a new one. It sounds plausible to me, not being a physicist or a chemist, and I am not accusing the authors of the article of using a poor method or applying it badly, in fact everything that I have read indicates that it is a very good method. However, OSL as a dating technique has really emerged in the last decade or so, and there may be some bugs to it that we are not yet aware of. So, again, this work sounds solid, and I have no problem accepting it provisionally, but keep your eyes open for the discussion of the validity of the dates, as there is a fair chance that we will hear more about this.
A third point should also be raised - everybody wants to be the hero. Every now and again, someone asks me what the "Holy Grail" of North American archaeology is, and I usually respond that there isn't one, but that's not entirely true. The search for the oldest site in the Americas is something of an obsession amongst many of my colleagues**. For this reason, it's not uncommon to see an archaeologist, with the best of intentions but more than a bit of the grail-knight's zeal, report data asserting that they have found the oldest site in the Americas without taking into consideration some element of the data that might place some doubt on the result.
You can see some of this zeal in the way that this site is being reported: a press conference was called before the paper could be widely-read by other archaeologists, and one of the report authors, Michael Waters, was talking about this site in bombastic terms:
This is almost like a baseball bat to the side of the head to the archeological community to wake up and say, hey, there are pre-Clovis people here . . . and we need to develop a new model for peopling of the Americas.
So, there's every reason, based on the behavior of the team, to think that there may be enough enthusiasm to lead to them jumping to conclusions.
At the same time, a number of sites in both North and South America have produced dates in the range of 14,000 to 16,000 years before present. Some work on the genetics of the first settlers of the Americas has produced similar dates. These dates have been somewhat problematic, and none have been widely accepted as of yet, but it does seem to be consistent with a growing amount of data pushing the colonization of the Americas back earlier than originally anticipated. So, the enthusiasm of these researchers is, perhaps, earned.
So, is this the oldest confirmed site in North America, and solid proof of Pre-Clovis people? Maybe. Hell, I'll go so far as to say that it probably is. But, I would also caution that there is likely to be some continued scrutiny of the techniques used and the deposits dated, and that the issue isn't settled just yet.
Still, it's an exciting time to be an archaeologist.
*Understand, though, that I mean that I suspect that humans had arrived in the Americas at some point before the Clovis tools began production. It may have been a century, it may have been a few thousand years. I am not supporting the rather loopy assertions that pre-Homo sapien homonids were in the Americas. Those arguments have been made, and continue to fail, and the burden of proof lies with the proponents of that one.
**myself, I am more interested in culture change over time, and so later sites with better preserved components and a decent ethnohistoric record tend to be of more interest to me. The early stuff is interesting, and I enjoy reading about it, but it's not a particular passion of mine.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Peer Review
If you follow the various science-vs-pseudo-science arguments, you will likely have heard someone bring up "peer review", the process by which research papers or other documents are reviewed by experts in the field in order to see if they pass muster and essentially make sense. Peer review is often held up as one of the most important institutions in the sciences and in research fields in general (including history, literary criticism, etc.), and so, as I am currently going through the peer review process for a paper that I have submitted for publication, I thought it might be worth describing and de-mystifiying the process a bit.
To start with, I submitted my paper to the editors of the issue of the journal in which it will be published. They looked it over, determined that my basic arguments and ideas stood up to scrutiny and therefore were publishable, and returned it to me with comments that suggest that I read other books and papers relevant to the topic but not included in my references cited, and that I consider expanding the discussion of certain topics within the paper. For example, the paper discusses interaction between villages in prehistoric California, but only discusses the landscape in terms of geographic obstacles and pathways (valleys, mountains, etc.) and resources available (seeds in grassland, acorns in oak woodland, fish and shellfish at the coast, and so on). Implicit in the discussion was the matter of landscape as a social phenomenon (village territories, family land holdings, do coastal and inland people identify themselves differently?) but it was not explicitly addressed in my original paper, so it was requested that I address that more directly. Also, because of the work schedule that I have had over the last 18 months, there have been two books and a few articles that had escaped my attention but which addressed similar issues, so I was directed towards those and asked to include discussion of and references to them in the paper. They then suggested that I needed to explain why my conclusions were necessarily better or more likely than other possible conclusions derived from the same data, as well as qualify a few weaknesses in the data that weren't as clearly flagged in the original version of the paper, making my argument seem less robust but my paper far more honest (one of the most important services and editor can provide). The editors also commented on the clarity (or occasional lack thereof) of some of my writing, helping me to identify places where I know what I'm trying to get across, but it might be confusing to a reader.
So, with these recommendations in hand, I set about revising the paper. I incorporated their comments (or, in a couple of cases, added material to the paper in such a way as to explain why the type of criticism behind the comments didn't apply to the discussion at hand), gave it another go-over myself and altered some things that I thought needed to be changed but on which the editors did not comment, and handed it back over.
I then received another round of comments. These ones were less about the substance of the paper (as would be expected as this had already been discussed) and more about the clarity of the writing, ensuring that I was saying what I wanted to say and that the paper would be clear to readers unfamiliar with my topic. I incorporated these comments, and re-submitted the paper again. It was bundled up with the other papers for the issue and sent to the journal's main editor.
Okay, so I should explain the multiple layers of editors here. In this particular case, the two editors to whom I initially sent the paper have been trying to get a book published for a couple of years, and a group of archaeologists, myself among them, have been working on material to contribute to the book. When two different book deals failed to materialize, they spoke with the editors of a prominent archaeology journal who agreed to publish the material written for the book. So, now the book editors have become essentially guest editors for this issue of the journal. However, the journal's primary editor still has to do his duties. Also, it should be mentioned that these editors are not literary/journalistic editors - though many journals have such people on staff - they are respected archaeologists with strong research records who have the breadth and depth of knowledge necessary to provide useful criticism.
So, the journal's editor has received the papers. He is in the process of sending them out for external review. What this entails is that he will identify a few archaeologists who are knowledgeable about the geographic area, cultural group, or research topic of each paper, and send the papers to them to see what criticisms they have of them. I will then be sent these comments and will use them to create final revisions to the paper. After all of that is done, the paper will finally be published.
As you can see, the primary activity done by reviewers and editors in this process is criticism. Criticism, as both a concept and a word, gets abused alot in our society - people who are critical are considered undesirable company, critical comments are frowned upon, and we assume that professional critics (of film, literature, etc.) hate the medium that they criticize. But the truth is that criticism is important and valuable, and much of what people call criticism is not criticism at all but rather abuse. Criticism is not the automatic nay-saying or attacking of a subject, but it is rather the thoughtful consideration of a subject, an evaluation that takes into account both strengths and weaknesses, flaws and merits. Some objects, arguments, and ideas are so deeply flawed that there is little to no room for positive criticism, and a much smaller number are so virtuous that it is difficult to make negative criticisms, but most fall somewhere between these two extremes.
To a researcher, negative criticism, while sometimes hard to take, is vital. If I have made a flawed argument or am misunderstanding data, it is important that I know about that, and it is to my benefit that a fellow researcher point it out. It is also vital to a research discipline, as without critical assessment of data and arguments, an "anything goes" attitude develops in which the agenda or ideology of the author can easily take precedence over the reality of the subject being studied. In an environment that prohibits criticism, there is little possibility for advancing study as there is no clear criteria by which the validity of an idea or argument can be measured, and consistency and coherency of arguments, adherence to data, and clarity of thought decay. Criticism is a good thing, a vital thing, and a major force in advancing an area of research.
It is also important that criticism come from multiple experts. Any one expert will have their own view on a given subject, ideally motivated by their valid interpretation of evidence but potentially also motivated by external pressures (their employer, their ideological leanings, their religious beliefs, etc.). When one introduces multiple experts with different views and from different backgrounds, however, non-data driven views will be diluted and can be more easily parsed and dealt with by the author of the work being reviewed as well as the editor(s) of the publication. This doesn't always work, of course, but it works pretty well most of the time.
So, basically, being a responsible and legitimate researcher means leaving yourself open to criticism, and taking criticism into account. That is what the peer-review process is really all about. Research is not a feel-good sand box game in which we promote self-esteem, but a serious investigation of a subject. It can be, and usually is, alot of fun. But is can also be tough, and if you are not able to sustain a bruised ego or give up a cherished idea that doesn't stand up to scrutiny, then you are not cut out for research.
This is not to say that peer-review is a fool-proof enterprise that only ever benefits a field of study. It's a human activity, and as such is not perfect. Sometimes, bad* papers get through, and bad* arguments are not rooted out. But these are the exceptions, and most of the time peer review makes sure that published research is rigorous and well-supported**. Ultimately, this strong effort to adhere to reality as it can be observed rather than as we would like it to be is the difference between scholarship and pseudo-scholarship. And it is telling that the frequent complaint of pseudo-scholars is that they big bad "establishment" researchers criticized them.
*And note, I mean "bad" not as in "I don't like it" or "it makes me uncomfortable" but rather in that "it doesn't make any sense and takes liberties with observable reality."
**Which is different than saying that it is definitely right. All good research is based on information available at the time that it is produced, and new information may disprove existing ideas, no matter how well established, and many well-accepted ideas (stable-state universe, recent [within 2000 years] population of the Americas, and non-moving continents) have been overturned by new information...again, in contrast to pseudo-scholarship where no amount of data can change the minds of proponents (homeopathy, anyone?).
To start with, I submitted my paper to the editors of the issue of the journal in which it will be published. They looked it over, determined that my basic arguments and ideas stood up to scrutiny and therefore were publishable, and returned it to me with comments that suggest that I read other books and papers relevant to the topic but not included in my references cited, and that I consider expanding the discussion of certain topics within the paper. For example, the paper discusses interaction between villages in prehistoric California, but only discusses the landscape in terms of geographic obstacles and pathways (valleys, mountains, etc.) and resources available (seeds in grassland, acorns in oak woodland, fish and shellfish at the coast, and so on). Implicit in the discussion was the matter of landscape as a social phenomenon (village territories, family land holdings, do coastal and inland people identify themselves differently?) but it was not explicitly addressed in my original paper, so it was requested that I address that more directly. Also, because of the work schedule that I have had over the last 18 months, there have been two books and a few articles that had escaped my attention but which addressed similar issues, so I was directed towards those and asked to include discussion of and references to them in the paper. They then suggested that I needed to explain why my conclusions were necessarily better or more likely than other possible conclusions derived from the same data, as well as qualify a few weaknesses in the data that weren't as clearly flagged in the original version of the paper, making my argument seem less robust but my paper far more honest (one of the most important services and editor can provide). The editors also commented on the clarity (or occasional lack thereof) of some of my writing, helping me to identify places where I know what I'm trying to get across, but it might be confusing to a reader.
So, with these recommendations in hand, I set about revising the paper. I incorporated their comments (or, in a couple of cases, added material to the paper in such a way as to explain why the type of criticism behind the comments didn't apply to the discussion at hand), gave it another go-over myself and altered some things that I thought needed to be changed but on which the editors did not comment, and handed it back over.
I then received another round of comments. These ones were less about the substance of the paper (as would be expected as this had already been discussed) and more about the clarity of the writing, ensuring that I was saying what I wanted to say and that the paper would be clear to readers unfamiliar with my topic. I incorporated these comments, and re-submitted the paper again. It was bundled up with the other papers for the issue and sent to the journal's main editor.
Okay, so I should explain the multiple layers of editors here. In this particular case, the two editors to whom I initially sent the paper have been trying to get a book published for a couple of years, and a group of archaeologists, myself among them, have been working on material to contribute to the book. When two different book deals failed to materialize, they spoke with the editors of a prominent archaeology journal who agreed to publish the material written for the book. So, now the book editors have become essentially guest editors for this issue of the journal. However, the journal's primary editor still has to do his duties. Also, it should be mentioned that these editors are not literary/journalistic editors - though many journals have such people on staff - they are respected archaeologists with strong research records who have the breadth and depth of knowledge necessary to provide useful criticism.
So, the journal's editor has received the papers. He is in the process of sending them out for external review. What this entails is that he will identify a few archaeologists who are knowledgeable about the geographic area, cultural group, or research topic of each paper, and send the papers to them to see what criticisms they have of them. I will then be sent these comments and will use them to create final revisions to the paper. After all of that is done, the paper will finally be published.
As you can see, the primary activity done by reviewers and editors in this process is criticism. Criticism, as both a concept and a word, gets abused alot in our society - people who are critical are considered undesirable company, critical comments are frowned upon, and we assume that professional critics (of film, literature, etc.) hate the medium that they criticize. But the truth is that criticism is important and valuable, and much of what people call criticism is not criticism at all but rather abuse. Criticism is not the automatic nay-saying or attacking of a subject, but it is rather the thoughtful consideration of a subject, an evaluation that takes into account both strengths and weaknesses, flaws and merits. Some objects, arguments, and ideas are so deeply flawed that there is little to no room for positive criticism, and a much smaller number are so virtuous that it is difficult to make negative criticisms, but most fall somewhere between these two extremes.
To a researcher, negative criticism, while sometimes hard to take, is vital. If I have made a flawed argument or am misunderstanding data, it is important that I know about that, and it is to my benefit that a fellow researcher point it out. It is also vital to a research discipline, as without critical assessment of data and arguments, an "anything goes" attitude develops in which the agenda or ideology of the author can easily take precedence over the reality of the subject being studied. In an environment that prohibits criticism, there is little possibility for advancing study as there is no clear criteria by which the validity of an idea or argument can be measured, and consistency and coherency of arguments, adherence to data, and clarity of thought decay. Criticism is a good thing, a vital thing, and a major force in advancing an area of research.
It is also important that criticism come from multiple experts. Any one expert will have their own view on a given subject, ideally motivated by their valid interpretation of evidence but potentially also motivated by external pressures (their employer, their ideological leanings, their religious beliefs, etc.). When one introduces multiple experts with different views and from different backgrounds, however, non-data driven views will be diluted and can be more easily parsed and dealt with by the author of the work being reviewed as well as the editor(s) of the publication. This doesn't always work, of course, but it works pretty well most of the time.
So, basically, being a responsible and legitimate researcher means leaving yourself open to criticism, and taking criticism into account. That is what the peer-review process is really all about. Research is not a feel-good sand box game in which we promote self-esteem, but a serious investigation of a subject. It can be, and usually is, alot of fun. But is can also be tough, and if you are not able to sustain a bruised ego or give up a cherished idea that doesn't stand up to scrutiny, then you are not cut out for research.
This is not to say that peer-review is a fool-proof enterprise that only ever benefits a field of study. It's a human activity, and as such is not perfect. Sometimes, bad* papers get through, and bad* arguments are not rooted out. But these are the exceptions, and most of the time peer review makes sure that published research is rigorous and well-supported**. Ultimately, this strong effort to adhere to reality as it can be observed rather than as we would like it to be is the difference between scholarship and pseudo-scholarship. And it is telling that the frequent complaint of pseudo-scholars is that they big bad "establishment" researchers criticized them.
*And note, I mean "bad" not as in "I don't like it" or "it makes me uncomfortable" but rather in that "it doesn't make any sense and takes liberties with observable reality."
**Which is different than saying that it is definitely right. All good research is based on information available at the time that it is produced, and new information may disprove existing ideas, no matter how well established, and many well-accepted ideas (stable-state universe, recent [within 2000 years] population of the Americas, and non-moving continents) have been overturned by new information...again, in contrast to pseudo-scholarship where no amount of data can change the minds of proponents (homeopathy, anyone?).
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Archaeology Blahs
I waiver back-and-forth regarding my views on the state of academic vs. resource management archaeology. The really interesting, exciting work is happening at universities and in museums, where researchers are finding new ways of examining the past and applying them in creative ways. From these efforts, we are learning not only about our collective past, but also about what humans are as a species, and what our problems and promises may be. This is both exciting and valuable.
At the same time, a good deal of academic research is also rather redundant, self-indulgent, or silly. For every paper that I have read which describes something interesting or useful about humanity, I have read another which confirms that yes indeed, people on the southern California coast did eat shellfish after all - just like every other study in the area has always confirmed (whew, I'm glad we got that cleared up!); or that declares that it would be nifty to think of an artifact as something that a person left somewhere (really? I had no idea!); or that archaeology needs a feminist avant-garde to encourage greater political expression within our work (interestingly, the NAZIs and Stalin's regime also wanted greater political expression in archaeology...just not of the feminist variety); or that we should abandon all practical explanations for material culture and focus entirely upon the symbolic explanations (so, you see, peasants didn't live in poor housing and deal with malnutrition because of economic realities, they did so intentionally in order to solidify their identities as peasants!). Yes, I have read papers and books that espouse all of these positions.
Sturgeon's law applies - 90% of everything is crap.
To be fair, most academic papers don't reach grand conclusions, whether profound or inane, but simply provide data. This is, of course, a reasonable thing in any research field. And archaeology is not alone in producing silly work - I meet researchers in chemistry, history, biology, literature, etc. etc. who swear that the same is true in their fields. But, the silliness, as annoying as it can be, is the price we pay for those occasional ground-breaking and brilliant pieces of work.
Still, it can be discouraging to be awash in a sea of silliness looking for the occasional island of profundity.
On the other hand, I believe that my colleagues in resource management archaeology and I are providing a valuable service in doing what we can to protect archaeological sites. We preserve sites that the general public seems to hold are important to cultural heritage, and we preserve sites that may yield information important to anthropology. And I can point to many, many successes.
But we have to choose our battles, we have to work within an often restrictive legal framework, and we have to accept that very often we will lose. Knowing all of that, we still have to get back out the next day and work for it all over again. Very often, I feel like Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down once I near the top. We lose sites because of decisions, both good and bad, from government agencies. We are not able to save everything, as much as we would want to, and it can be frustrating. Moreover, we are typically the red-headed stepchildren of the environmental protection world - developers tend to understand protecting animals and plants (they may not like it, but they understand it), they understand the need to keep air and water clean, they understand the need to keep the viewscape as pleasant as possible, but most of them don't understand why anyone would want to protect what amounts to old garbage. They get it when it's burials or historic buildings, but they don't tend to get it when it's just a flaked stone scatter or a historic campsite.
Most of my clients are good. Some honestly want to protect historic resources, others simply want to build and agree to historic preservation as a permit condition, but the result is the same either way, and that is an encouraging fact. But sometimes we are working not to preserve something, but simply so that a developer can cover their ass and or play a political game. I have dug holes that yielded nothing in too many hard-packed dirt roads to believe that it is always for a reason other than that a developer wants to play politics and make nice with an agency. I have monitored too much construction in archaeologically sterile areas to believe that we are always doing it because it a sense of responsibility rather than a simple way to make it look like responsibilities are being taken care of when they may not actually be.
It doesn't help that, very often, resource management archaeology is brushed off by academic archaeologists as something not worthy of their notice. This is especially frustrating as our fieldwork tends to be at least the equal of (and very often superior to) that of academic archaeologists. It also is frustrating in that the majority of data generated in archaeology is generated by resource management archaeologists, and then ignored by researchers*.
Anyway, this mood will pass, but it is a hard place to be.
*For example, I am reading a book right now on archaeology in the Santa Barbara Channel area of California, and the book states that there has been very little work done on the mainland. This is not true at all, but most of the work was done by resource management archaeologist, and is being ignored despite the fact that it addresses many of the research questions brought up in the book.
At the same time, a good deal of academic research is also rather redundant, self-indulgent, or silly. For every paper that I have read which describes something interesting or useful about humanity, I have read another which confirms that yes indeed, people on the southern California coast did eat shellfish after all - just like every other study in the area has always confirmed (whew, I'm glad we got that cleared up!); or that declares that it would be nifty to think of an artifact as something that a person left somewhere (really? I had no idea!); or that archaeology needs a feminist avant-garde to encourage greater political expression within our work (interestingly, the NAZIs and Stalin's regime also wanted greater political expression in archaeology...just not of the feminist variety); or that we should abandon all practical explanations for material culture and focus entirely upon the symbolic explanations (so, you see, peasants didn't live in poor housing and deal with malnutrition because of economic realities, they did so intentionally in order to solidify their identities as peasants!). Yes, I have read papers and books that espouse all of these positions.
Sturgeon's law applies - 90% of everything is crap.
To be fair, most academic papers don't reach grand conclusions, whether profound or inane, but simply provide data. This is, of course, a reasonable thing in any research field. And archaeology is not alone in producing silly work - I meet researchers in chemistry, history, biology, literature, etc. etc. who swear that the same is true in their fields. But, the silliness, as annoying as it can be, is the price we pay for those occasional ground-breaking and brilliant pieces of work.
Still, it can be discouraging to be awash in a sea of silliness looking for the occasional island of profundity.
On the other hand, I believe that my colleagues in resource management archaeology and I are providing a valuable service in doing what we can to protect archaeological sites. We preserve sites that the general public seems to hold are important to cultural heritage, and we preserve sites that may yield information important to anthropology. And I can point to many, many successes.
But we have to choose our battles, we have to work within an often restrictive legal framework, and we have to accept that very often we will lose. Knowing all of that, we still have to get back out the next day and work for it all over again. Very often, I feel like Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down once I near the top. We lose sites because of decisions, both good and bad, from government agencies. We are not able to save everything, as much as we would want to, and it can be frustrating. Moreover, we are typically the red-headed stepchildren of the environmental protection world - developers tend to understand protecting animals and plants (they may not like it, but they understand it), they understand the need to keep air and water clean, they understand the need to keep the viewscape as pleasant as possible, but most of them don't understand why anyone would want to protect what amounts to old garbage. They get it when it's burials or historic buildings, but they don't tend to get it when it's just a flaked stone scatter or a historic campsite.
Most of my clients are good. Some honestly want to protect historic resources, others simply want to build and agree to historic preservation as a permit condition, but the result is the same either way, and that is an encouraging fact. But sometimes we are working not to preserve something, but simply so that a developer can cover their ass and or play a political game. I have dug holes that yielded nothing in too many hard-packed dirt roads to believe that it is always for a reason other than that a developer wants to play politics and make nice with an agency. I have monitored too much construction in archaeologically sterile areas to believe that we are always doing it because it a sense of responsibility rather than a simple way to make it look like responsibilities are being taken care of when they may not actually be.
It doesn't help that, very often, resource management archaeology is brushed off by academic archaeologists as something not worthy of their notice. This is especially frustrating as our fieldwork tends to be at least the equal of (and very often superior to) that of academic archaeologists. It also is frustrating in that the majority of data generated in archaeology is generated by resource management archaeologists, and then ignored by researchers*.
Anyway, this mood will pass, but it is a hard place to be.
*For example, I am reading a book right now on archaeology in the Santa Barbara Channel area of California, and the book states that there has been very little work done on the mainland. This is not true at all, but most of the work was done by resource management archaeologist, and is being ignored despite the fact that it addresses many of the research questions brought up in the book.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Research vs. Management
I have had the strange experience these last few weeks of being confronted face-on with the difference between research-oriented archaeology and management/compliance-oriented archaeology.
I have been out in the Mojave again - called out at the last minute to help define the boundaries of archaeological sites in order to ensure that they will not be harmed by planned construction activities, in this case, the use of specific dirt roads to get to and from construction locations. This means that I have spent the last two weeks digging 50-centimeter wide holes, sifting the soil through metal mesh screens, and making a catalogue of what was found, and then filling the hole back in.
And those of you who were in the Army probably thought that you were the only people required to continuously dig holes and fill them back in again.
This process is not nearly as arduous as it may sound when you are finding archaeological materials or when the soil is easy to dig and to screen. But digging through it is a bit like digging through concrete. So, we have had long days of hard physical labor. One the one hand, it is commendable that my client is going through such trouble to make sure that it doesn't damage any archaeological sites. On the other hand, my hands, shoulders, and back have probably aged ten years in the last two weeks.
Simultaneous with this field work, I have been working on a paper for publication in an archaeology journal. It is based on my Masters thesis, and represents and effort to reconcile two strands of anthropological data that are frequently at odds with each other. While working on the paper, I have been reminded of both the difficulty of doing the work that resulted in my thesis, and also the intellectual pleasure that I took in analyzing the data and writing the document.
Or, put another way, I have been reminded of what originally attracted me to archaeology in the first place.
It's a bit demoralizing to be working on a project that is regulation/management-driven and so far way from any real archaeology while simultaneously working on a research project. I know that not all of my projects are like this, and that my line of work has allowed me to dig up airplane crashes, cling to cliffsides, climb mountains, get whisked around in helicopters, and all kinds of other groovy things. However, at the moment, I am feeling a bit low, and wondering why I didn't become a dental hygienist.
So it goes.
I have been out in the Mojave again - called out at the last minute to help define the boundaries of archaeological sites in order to ensure that they will not be harmed by planned construction activities, in this case, the use of specific dirt roads to get to and from construction locations. This means that I have spent the last two weeks digging 50-centimeter wide holes, sifting the soil through metal mesh screens, and making a catalogue of what was found, and then filling the hole back in.
And those of you who were in the Army probably thought that you were the only people required to continuously dig holes and fill them back in again.
This process is not nearly as arduous as it may sound when you are finding archaeological materials or when the soil is easy to dig and to screen. But digging through it is a bit like digging through concrete. So, we have had long days of hard physical labor. One the one hand, it is commendable that my client is going through such trouble to make sure that it doesn't damage any archaeological sites. On the other hand, my hands, shoulders, and back have probably aged ten years in the last two weeks.
Simultaneous with this field work, I have been working on a paper for publication in an archaeology journal. It is based on my Masters thesis, and represents and effort to reconcile two strands of anthropological data that are frequently at odds with each other. While working on the paper, I have been reminded of both the difficulty of doing the work that resulted in my thesis, and also the intellectual pleasure that I took in analyzing the data and writing the document.
Or, put another way, I have been reminded of what originally attracted me to archaeology in the first place.
It's a bit demoralizing to be working on a project that is regulation/management-driven and so far way from any real archaeology while simultaneously working on a research project. I know that not all of my projects are like this, and that my line of work has allowed me to dig up airplane crashes, cling to cliffsides, climb mountains, get whisked around in helicopters, and all kinds of other groovy things. However, at the moment, I am feeling a bit low, and wondering why I didn't become a dental hygienist.
So it goes.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
If Your Only Tool is a Hammer...
If you should decide to delve into the "cutting edge" archaeology literature of the 1970s and 1980s (and unless you are an archaeologist, I don't recommend that you bother), you will come across a number of different books and papers promising that archaeology can and/or should study any number of things that archaeology is, to date, rather unsuited to studying.
These sorts of claims come in two basic themes, with each of these containing many different flavors. Theme #1 can be summed up by saying "all human activity leaves behind physical traces, and therefore the study of the physical remains of human activity (that is, archaeology) can examine all human behaviors, provided that we can figure out which questions to ask."
This is, at best, an overly-enthusiastic belief. It is not really true, but it may be a useful delusion. It's open to debate whether or not all human activity leaves physical traces behind, and even for those that do, the traces are often not meaningful. For example, a fist-fight would leave physical traces in the scuffling on the dirt, but even if, through some miracle, these mild surface disturbances were preserved for examination by future archaeologists, it's unlikely that it would be determined that this was the result of a fist fight and not any number of other activities.
However, there are plenty of cultural phenomenon that it was long assumed could not be studied archaeologically that archaeologists, armed with the attitude that everything could be studied archaeologically, figured out ways to study. These range from studying prehistoric economics to socio-political organization to general religious cosmology. The degree to which these things could be studied, and the validity of some of the interpretations offered, is highly variable. But, nonetheless, there has been some success, and without the "we can study anything, we just have to figure out which questions to ask" attitude, and poor explanations have frequently been the starting point down the road towards better explanations.
So, it may be useful for us to fool ourselves into thinking that we can study anything through the archaeological record. But just because it's useful doesn't mean that it is true.
The second theme can be summed up as "all human activities are about/partially about X, and therefore we can use the study of material culture to study X." X can be many things: power relations, gender politics, group or individual identity, etc., etc., etc. Again, there may be a good reason for encouraging this behavior - it encourages people to look at how our material culture and the distribution of materials across the landscape may reflect, and allow the study of, these more ethereal aspects of human behavior. However, it is based on a basic fallacy - the notion that all material remains of human behavior are marked by some ephemeral thing (power relations, gender politics, a desire to pour yogurt on all things), and that this ephemeral thing can be examined through a careful study of the material culture*. Even allowing that most of us don't appreciate the degree to which our material culture does reflect the cultural seas in which we live, and therefore something as seemingly innocuous as a box of breakfast cereal can actually tell quite a complicated tale about the culture that created it, it still doesn't follow that every piece of detritus left behind is useful for examining our lot as a culture.
I have always been amused by what I see as the over-reach of my colleagues. Again, I need to say that I do think that this over-reach can be useful as it may push us to find something new rather than write it off. However, it is still over-reach nonetheless.
Whenever I hear that anything and everything is open to study via material culture, I think of the old saying "when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." When studying people long gone, all that we have is their materials culture, and we don't like that there may be things that will always be unknowable. So, we assert that we can study it all, even though we actually can't. It makes us feel better, even if it is false. And even if it is false, it does push us in some interesting directions.
*It should probably be noted that interest in these subjects is most common on what is often referred to as post-processualist or post-modern archaeology. Much of the research in these areas is quite solid, but some of it is performed by people who are very open about being more interested in forwarding a personal or political agenda than in an accurate reconstruction of the past.
These sorts of claims come in two basic themes, with each of these containing many different flavors. Theme #1 can be summed up by saying "all human activity leaves behind physical traces, and therefore the study of the physical remains of human activity (that is, archaeology) can examine all human behaviors, provided that we can figure out which questions to ask."
This is, at best, an overly-enthusiastic belief. It is not really true, but it may be a useful delusion. It's open to debate whether or not all human activity leaves physical traces behind, and even for those that do, the traces are often not meaningful. For example, a fist-fight would leave physical traces in the scuffling on the dirt, but even if, through some miracle, these mild surface disturbances were preserved for examination by future archaeologists, it's unlikely that it would be determined that this was the result of a fist fight and not any number of other activities.
However, there are plenty of cultural phenomenon that it was long assumed could not be studied archaeologically that archaeologists, armed with the attitude that everything could be studied archaeologically, figured out ways to study. These range from studying prehistoric economics to socio-political organization to general religious cosmology. The degree to which these things could be studied, and the validity of some of the interpretations offered, is highly variable. But, nonetheless, there has been some success, and without the "we can study anything, we just have to figure out which questions to ask" attitude, and poor explanations have frequently been the starting point down the road towards better explanations.
So, it may be useful for us to fool ourselves into thinking that we can study anything through the archaeological record. But just because it's useful doesn't mean that it is true.
The second theme can be summed up as "all human activities are about/partially about X, and therefore we can use the study of material culture to study X." X can be many things: power relations, gender politics, group or individual identity, etc., etc., etc. Again, there may be a good reason for encouraging this behavior - it encourages people to look at how our material culture and the distribution of materials across the landscape may reflect, and allow the study of, these more ethereal aspects of human behavior. However, it is based on a basic fallacy - the notion that all material remains of human behavior are marked by some ephemeral thing (power relations, gender politics, a desire to pour yogurt on all things), and that this ephemeral thing can be examined through a careful study of the material culture*. Even allowing that most of us don't appreciate the degree to which our material culture does reflect the cultural seas in which we live, and therefore something as seemingly innocuous as a box of breakfast cereal can actually tell quite a complicated tale about the culture that created it, it still doesn't follow that every piece of detritus left behind is useful for examining our lot as a culture.
I have always been amused by what I see as the over-reach of my colleagues. Again, I need to say that I do think that this over-reach can be useful as it may push us to find something new rather than write it off. However, it is still over-reach nonetheless.
Whenever I hear that anything and everything is open to study via material culture, I think of the old saying "when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." When studying people long gone, all that we have is their materials culture, and we don't like that there may be things that will always be unknowable. So, we assert that we can study it all, even though we actually can't. It makes us feel better, even if it is false. And even if it is false, it does push us in some interesting directions.
*It should probably be noted that interest in these subjects is most common on what is often referred to as post-processualist or post-modern archaeology. Much of the research in these areas is quite solid, but some of it is performed by people who are very open about being more interested in forwarding a personal or political agenda than in an accurate reconstruction of the past.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Sites, Non-Sites, and Mega-Sites
So, as I said in the previous post, we are finishing the site records and writing the report for the project that had me out in Taft for most of last year. As I am working on this report and these site records, I keep thinking of an issue that came up every day during our time in the field: how do we define what is and what is not an archaeological site?
When I talk to non-archaeologists, this tends to get treated as a straightforward problem - if it has archaeological materials, then it's a site. right?
Well, sort of. The answer to the question is more complicated, and what that answer is depends in no small part on the reason why you are asking the question.
If you are a researcher, then you are faced with a basic problem - the locations where you find archaeological materials were not the only parts of the landscape that were occupied by or important to the people who you are studying. A sacred hilltop is a culturally relevant location, even though it may not contain archaeological materials. A location where leaders met to discuss matters is important to understanding prehistory, but might not contain artifacts. Places that were avoided are certainly important, as the reason why they were avoided will tell us something about how the people who lived in an area occupied the land. An area where young couples go to consummate their unions, so to speak, might also contain no artifacts, yet still be an important cultural location. And what about the locations between sites? Is the spacing between sites important? Is the empty space between villages or between a village and a satellite site relevant?
The point is that there are places on the landscape with limited or no archaeological materials present that are nonetheless important to an understanding of the people being studied. Should these be considered archaeological sites despite the lack of materials? If not, is there another designation that we should give them? Should we simply treat everywhere as a cultural landscape and not rely so heavily on sites? Should we pay attention to sites, but always try to account for why there is not a site in an empty location? It's a complicated question, and much ink has been spilled and many a tree killed in publishing arguments and pontifications regarding issues such as landscape archaeology, "site-less" archaeology, intra-site analysis, etc. Although every now and again someone will claim that a consensus has been reached on how to re-shape archaeology to account for these more difficult types of locations, it nonetheless remains the fact that archaeologists are still reliant on sites that clearly contain archaeological materials, pretty much as we have always been. Hardly surprising, as it is difficult to assess the cultural importance of a site that has no signs of cultural importance, despite some people's dubious attempts to do so*.
Okay, so that's research. What about where I currently occupy my niche - archaeological resource management?
Well, here the issue is somewhat different. We are informed by the academic discussions and debates, and they have helped us to better understand the landscape with which we deal. However, ultimately, we have to develop concrete definitions of the term "archaeological site" so that we can extend what protection the regulations allow to these sites. This means that when we ask the question "what is an archaeological site?" we have to take into account not only the cultural importance or use of a location, but also how that site articulates with standing regulations, case law, regional values and activities, the local landscape, and common practice. In other words, it's something of a Frankenstein's monster of a term.
So, we have to start with a question of age. Even though it can be fairly argued that, from a purely technical standpoint, any physical remains of human activity that is not a standing/functioning constructed feature is an archaeological site (including the remains of a legendary party), the regulations don't generally apply to anything that is less than 50 years old** (45 years old by some agencies' policies).
And then there is the question of artifact quantity. If only one artifact is found, then the location is not considered a site, but an isolate. Although there are exceptions, isolates rarely qualify for protection by themselves (although they are sometimes re-examined to see if there is a buried site). If you have two artifacts, then that may qualify as a site or an isolate, depending on the agency with which you are dealing. Three artifacts, and you typically have yourself a site (although this can get muddied, as some agencies have different thresholds for a site vs. an isolate for historic and prehistoric sites).
Artifact density also comes into play here - if three artifacts are found within a 10-square meter area, then you pretty likely have a legitimate site. If three artifacts are spread across a quarter-square mile, then you probably have three isolates. However, this is also where local landscape comes into play. In one region of California, for example, you can't walk more than 20 feet without finding a historic artifact. Now, if we wanted to get really technical here, we would have to say that a 400-square mile area covering multiple counties is one big archaeological site. Such a definition might be valuable for a researcher (or it might not, depending on what they are doing), but it's pretty damn useless for resource management, not least because most of that area, while covered in materials, isn't going to qualify for listing on state or federal historic registers, and therefore is not going to be protected in any way.
The approach of the government agencies and archaeologists in the area is to treat the entire area as a "cultural landscape" in which it is known that people have been making use of pretty much every square inch of land for a couple of centuries. That being the case, rather than treat the entire area as a giant archaeological site, we locate areas of high artifact concentration and label them as sites, and the rest of the area is treated as "background noise" - valuable for understanding the context of our sites, but not particularly instructive overall.
The end result is that the definition of what is or isn't a site varies greatly across the land - even within the state of California, the term "site" is open to re-definition depending on what's going on in a given locality.
And people wonder why archaeologists are given to alcoholism***.
*You may notice that I am inconsistent with my use of the term "archaeological site" between the linked entry and this entry. This is, unfortunately, typical of much of the archaeological literature. As there is little clear consensus as to what is a site and what is not a site, you'll find that even an individual archaeologist will use the term a bit loosely.
**There are, of course, exceptions. If a resource is of exceptional historic importance, say Cape Canaveral for example, then it may qualify for protections even before 50 years have elapsed.
***Truth - archaeologists are actually notorious for alcoholism. I am something of a weird anomaly in that I rarely drink, and never to the point of inebriation, which leads many of my colleagues to falsely conclude that I am a Mormon (no joke).
When I talk to non-archaeologists, this tends to get treated as a straightforward problem - if it has archaeological materials, then it's a site. right?
Well, sort of. The answer to the question is more complicated, and what that answer is depends in no small part on the reason why you are asking the question.
If you are a researcher, then you are faced with a basic problem - the locations where you find archaeological materials were not the only parts of the landscape that were occupied by or important to the people who you are studying. A sacred hilltop is a culturally relevant location, even though it may not contain archaeological materials. A location where leaders met to discuss matters is important to understanding prehistory, but might not contain artifacts. Places that were avoided are certainly important, as the reason why they were avoided will tell us something about how the people who lived in an area occupied the land. An area where young couples go to consummate their unions, so to speak, might also contain no artifacts, yet still be an important cultural location. And what about the locations between sites? Is the spacing between sites important? Is the empty space between villages or between a village and a satellite site relevant?
The point is that there are places on the landscape with limited or no archaeological materials present that are nonetheless important to an understanding of the people being studied. Should these be considered archaeological sites despite the lack of materials? If not, is there another designation that we should give them? Should we simply treat everywhere as a cultural landscape and not rely so heavily on sites? Should we pay attention to sites, but always try to account for why there is not a site in an empty location? It's a complicated question, and much ink has been spilled and many a tree killed in publishing arguments and pontifications regarding issues such as landscape archaeology, "site-less" archaeology, intra-site analysis, etc. Although every now and again someone will claim that a consensus has been reached on how to re-shape archaeology to account for these more difficult types of locations, it nonetheless remains the fact that archaeologists are still reliant on sites that clearly contain archaeological materials, pretty much as we have always been. Hardly surprising, as it is difficult to assess the cultural importance of a site that has no signs of cultural importance, despite some people's dubious attempts to do so*.
Okay, so that's research. What about where I currently occupy my niche - archaeological resource management?
Well, here the issue is somewhat different. We are informed by the academic discussions and debates, and they have helped us to better understand the landscape with which we deal. However, ultimately, we have to develop concrete definitions of the term "archaeological site" so that we can extend what protection the regulations allow to these sites. This means that when we ask the question "what is an archaeological site?" we have to take into account not only the cultural importance or use of a location, but also how that site articulates with standing regulations, case law, regional values and activities, the local landscape, and common practice. In other words, it's something of a Frankenstein's monster of a term.
So, we have to start with a question of age. Even though it can be fairly argued that, from a purely technical standpoint, any physical remains of human activity that is not a standing/functioning constructed feature is an archaeological site (including the remains of a legendary party), the regulations don't generally apply to anything that is less than 50 years old** (45 years old by some agencies' policies).
And then there is the question of artifact quantity. If only one artifact is found, then the location is not considered a site, but an isolate. Although there are exceptions, isolates rarely qualify for protection by themselves (although they are sometimes re-examined to see if there is a buried site). If you have two artifacts, then that may qualify as a site or an isolate, depending on the agency with which you are dealing. Three artifacts, and you typically have yourself a site (although this can get muddied, as some agencies have different thresholds for a site vs. an isolate for historic and prehistoric sites).
Artifact density also comes into play here - if three artifacts are found within a 10-square meter area, then you pretty likely have a legitimate site. If three artifacts are spread across a quarter-square mile, then you probably have three isolates. However, this is also where local landscape comes into play. In one region of California, for example, you can't walk more than 20 feet without finding a historic artifact. Now, if we wanted to get really technical here, we would have to say that a 400-square mile area covering multiple counties is one big archaeological site. Such a definition might be valuable for a researcher (or it might not, depending on what they are doing), but it's pretty damn useless for resource management, not least because most of that area, while covered in materials, isn't going to qualify for listing on state or federal historic registers, and therefore is not going to be protected in any way.
The approach of the government agencies and archaeologists in the area is to treat the entire area as a "cultural landscape" in which it is known that people have been making use of pretty much every square inch of land for a couple of centuries. That being the case, rather than treat the entire area as a giant archaeological site, we locate areas of high artifact concentration and label them as sites, and the rest of the area is treated as "background noise" - valuable for understanding the context of our sites, but not particularly instructive overall.
The end result is that the definition of what is or isn't a site varies greatly across the land - even within the state of California, the term "site" is open to re-definition depending on what's going on in a given locality.
And people wonder why archaeologists are given to alcoholism***.
*You may notice that I am inconsistent with my use of the term "archaeological site" between the linked entry and this entry. This is, unfortunately, typical of much of the archaeological literature. As there is little clear consensus as to what is a site and what is not a site, you'll find that even an individual archaeologist will use the term a bit loosely.
**There are, of course, exceptions. If a resource is of exceptional historic importance, say Cape Canaveral for example, then it may qualify for protections even before 50 years have elapsed.
***Truth - archaeologists are actually notorious for alcoholism. I am something of a weird anomaly in that I rarely drink, and never to the point of inebriation, which leads many of my colleagues to falsely conclude that I am a Mormon (no joke).
Thursday, February 11, 2010
This Site Makes No Sense...Damn, That's Cool!
I am having fun writing an excavation report.
That's right, it's fun.
The reason why it is fun is that the site makes very little sense. The raw materials for the tools at this site are off - good local stone is barely present, while stone imported from quite a distance is abundant. There is ample evidence of the manufacture and use of flaked stone tools, but the tools themselves are simply not present. The materials present on the site's surface indicate a small site where someone was doing little more than sharpening tools, but three feet below the surface are buried the remains of a residential base with evidence of a wide variety of activities - which is odd as the site is in an area which typically would be deflating (the soil eroding out away from the site) rather than accruing more soil...so there is something interesting happening in the site formation as well.
So, basically, the site is an oddball. The materials don't quite make sense using conventional models of raw material exchange and also of toolstone use. The site's geomorphology is wacky. And what is present on the surface of the site in no way reflects what is present below the surface. The site is an anomaly, it shows me a point of ignorance for myself (and, judging by my coworker's reactions, for them as well), and that is exciting.
Pretty much by definition, it's when we butt up against our own ignorance that we start learning something new. That's where archaeologists want to be, it's where our models and previous knowledge breaks down, and we're off on the trail of something new and more interesting.
Will this site be a ground-breaking discovery? Probably not, archaeological knowledge usually comes incrementally and this is simply one anomalous site, not yet evidence of a pattern. If more sites like this one are found, then they will probably require modifications of existing models of human behavior in the region rather then the whole-sale rejection of those models. Nonetheless, this site doesn't fit in with well-established patterns, which tells us that something was happening that we hadn't previously accounted for - probably something small and subtle, but something new nonetheless.
One of the most common things that pseudo-scientists say about real scientists is that we refuse to accept new information because it would conflict with our previously held beliefs. The opposite is, in fact, true. We love information that contradicts our previous beliefs, because it is only when we find such information that we know we are onto something. While this site is not going to cause anyone to rewrite the books on Californian archaeology, it does show us that even our best reconstructions of the past leave out subtle but important information, that we have been wrong in some way, and that is exciting. It's fun. This is what I got into archaeology for in the first place, and I am happy to have received this reminder when I need it most.
That's right, it's fun.
The reason why it is fun is that the site makes very little sense. The raw materials for the tools at this site are off - good local stone is barely present, while stone imported from quite a distance is abundant. There is ample evidence of the manufacture and use of flaked stone tools, but the tools themselves are simply not present. The materials present on the site's surface indicate a small site where someone was doing little more than sharpening tools, but three feet below the surface are buried the remains of a residential base with evidence of a wide variety of activities - which is odd as the site is in an area which typically would be deflating (the soil eroding out away from the site) rather than accruing more soil...so there is something interesting happening in the site formation as well.
So, basically, the site is an oddball. The materials don't quite make sense using conventional models of raw material exchange and also of toolstone use. The site's geomorphology is wacky. And what is present on the surface of the site in no way reflects what is present below the surface. The site is an anomaly, it shows me a point of ignorance for myself (and, judging by my coworker's reactions, for them as well), and that is exciting.
Pretty much by definition, it's when we butt up against our own ignorance that we start learning something new. That's where archaeologists want to be, it's where our models and previous knowledge breaks down, and we're off on the trail of something new and more interesting.
Will this site be a ground-breaking discovery? Probably not, archaeological knowledge usually comes incrementally and this is simply one anomalous site, not yet evidence of a pattern. If more sites like this one are found, then they will probably require modifications of existing models of human behavior in the region rather then the whole-sale rejection of those models. Nonetheless, this site doesn't fit in with well-established patterns, which tells us that something was happening that we hadn't previously accounted for - probably something small and subtle, but something new nonetheless.
One of the most common things that pseudo-scientists say about real scientists is that we refuse to accept new information because it would conflict with our previously held beliefs. The opposite is, in fact, true. We love information that contradicts our previous beliefs, because it is only when we find such information that we know we are onto something. While this site is not going to cause anyone to rewrite the books on Californian archaeology, it does show us that even our best reconstructions of the past leave out subtle but important information, that we have been wrong in some way, and that is exciting. It's fun. This is what I got into archaeology for in the first place, and I am happy to have received this reminder when I need it most.
Friday, September 5, 2008
In the Bone Room With Screaming Eddie
I am involved in a project that is intended to analyze the archaeological remains of a shaman’s cave in Kern County. My part of the project is the faunal remains – the bone, shell, and other animal parts that provide evidence of ancient people’s somewhat-less-than-vegan activities.
Bone in archaeological sites tends to come from a lot of different animals, and tends to be fragmented. For these two reasons, identifying the source of the bone is rarely a straightforward process, and none but the most experienced faunal analysts can pick up a bone and announce what it is, where it came from, and how old the animal was – and even these most experienced analysts can be stumped from time to time.
Enter the comparative collection.
A comparative collection can best be thought of as a road kill library. It’s a collection of bones, teeth, hooves, shell, and sometimes hair and scales, from whatever animal was unfortunate enough to buy the farm in the general vicinity of an archaeologist. Often the collection also contains human bones – increasingly from willing donors, but many collections contain the now decades-old remains of unfortunates who died in third-world countries and were sold to medical schools and science labs in the U.S. and Western Europe.
So, this morning I entered the faunal laboratory at UC Santa Cruz, and began trying to figure out where the bone in the collection I was examining came from. Entering the room, I was delighted to see that in addition to the bones in cabinets that I had come to make use of and the obligatory articulated skeletons on the walls, the lab also housed a desiccated monkey’s head and an articulated skeleton that had either had the soft tissue surrounding it plasticized, or else had very realistic soft-tissue attached to it. This skeleton was posed in a way intended to allow anatomy students to see how the muscle, nerve, and skeletal systems work together, but also made it look as if the poor fellow were still ambulatory AND had realized that some dick of a medical student had stolen his skin. I decided to nickname the guy “Screaming Eddie.”*
Having taken in the local color, I decided to get to work on my appointed task. I got off to a good start; I chose my first bone – the humerus of a large herbivore of some sort – and opened my first cabinet, thinking that I’d start by comparing it to a mule deer. Amazingly, I pulled the bone out of the collection drawer, and it matched the one from the archaeological site exactly. Nice.
So, feeling cocky, I pulled out my next bone – the articular end (part that connects to another bone) of a scapula (shoulder bone). I compared it to the mule deer’s. No dice. I then compared it to an elk, antelope, several sea mammals, and even a human. No match. I never did find out what animal it belonged to. It was the right size for a deer, but there was a small channel on the bone that is not found on deer Scapulae, so I was at a loss.
Well, sometimes you don’t get a match, so I decided to move on to the next bone. This was a tarsal – a bone from the back foot, again from a mule deer. Okay. Next bone, a radius, again from a mule deer. And so on.
In the end, I identified bones from rabbit, gopher, deer, and mice. I was left with a large number of bones that I could find no match for – unfortunately the UCSC collection is rather small, and so there are numerous animals for which a match is not possible. Still, I think I made a respectable showing.
So, there ya’ go, next time you go thinking that archaeology is all Indiana Jones adventure or amazing discoveries in tombs, think of me in the lab surrounding by road kill, mummified monkey heads, and Screaming Eddie.
*I wanted to get pictures of the mummified monkey (mumkey?) and Screaming Eddie, but it seemed likely that the grad student working in the room would probably find that disturbing and disrespectful. So it goes.
Bone in archaeological sites tends to come from a lot of different animals, and tends to be fragmented. For these two reasons, identifying the source of the bone is rarely a straightforward process, and none but the most experienced faunal analysts can pick up a bone and announce what it is, where it came from, and how old the animal was – and even these most experienced analysts can be stumped from time to time.
Enter the comparative collection.
A comparative collection can best be thought of as a road kill library. It’s a collection of bones, teeth, hooves, shell, and sometimes hair and scales, from whatever animal was unfortunate enough to buy the farm in the general vicinity of an archaeologist. Often the collection also contains human bones – increasingly from willing donors, but many collections contain the now decades-old remains of unfortunates who died in third-world countries and were sold to medical schools and science labs in the U.S. and Western Europe.
So, this morning I entered the faunal laboratory at UC Santa Cruz, and began trying to figure out where the bone in the collection I was examining came from. Entering the room, I was delighted to see that in addition to the bones in cabinets that I had come to make use of and the obligatory articulated skeletons on the walls, the lab also housed a desiccated monkey’s head and an articulated skeleton that had either had the soft tissue surrounding it plasticized, or else had very realistic soft-tissue attached to it. This skeleton was posed in a way intended to allow anatomy students to see how the muscle, nerve, and skeletal systems work together, but also made it look as if the poor fellow were still ambulatory AND had realized that some dick of a medical student had stolen his skin. I decided to nickname the guy “Screaming Eddie.”*
Having taken in the local color, I decided to get to work on my appointed task. I got off to a good start; I chose my first bone – the humerus of a large herbivore of some sort – and opened my first cabinet, thinking that I’d start by comparing it to a mule deer. Amazingly, I pulled the bone out of the collection drawer, and it matched the one from the archaeological site exactly. Nice.
So, feeling cocky, I pulled out my next bone – the articular end (part that connects to another bone) of a scapula (shoulder bone). I compared it to the mule deer’s. No dice. I then compared it to an elk, antelope, several sea mammals, and even a human. No match. I never did find out what animal it belonged to. It was the right size for a deer, but there was a small channel on the bone that is not found on deer Scapulae, so I was at a loss.
Well, sometimes you don’t get a match, so I decided to move on to the next bone. This was a tarsal – a bone from the back foot, again from a mule deer. Okay. Next bone, a radius, again from a mule deer. And so on.
In the end, I identified bones from rabbit, gopher, deer, and mice. I was left with a large number of bones that I could find no match for – unfortunately the UCSC collection is rather small, and so there are numerous animals for which a match is not possible. Still, I think I made a respectable showing.
So, there ya’ go, next time you go thinking that archaeology is all Indiana Jones adventure or amazing discoveries in tombs, think of me in the lab surrounding by road kill, mummified monkey heads, and Screaming Eddie.
*I wanted to get pictures of the mummified monkey (mumkey?) and Screaming Eddie, but it seemed likely that the grad student working in the room would probably find that disturbing and disrespectful. So it goes.
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