Showing papers on "Ethnoarchaeology published in 2011"

The Life-Giving Stone: Ethnoarchaeology of Maya Metates

Abstract: In "The Life-Giving Stone," Michael Searcy provides a thought-provoking ethnoarchaeological account of metate and mano manufacture, marketing, and use among Guatemalan Maya for whom these stone implements are still essential equipment in everyday life and diet Although many archaeologists have regarded these artifacts simply as common everyday tools and therefore unremarkable, Searcy s methodology reveals how, for the ancient Maya, the manufacture and use of grinding stones significantly impacted their physical and economic welfare In tracing the life cycle of these tools from production to discard for the modern Maya, Searcy discovers rich customs and traditions that indicate how metates and manos have continued to sustain life not just literally, in terms of food, but also in terms of culture His research is based on two years of fieldwork among three Mayan groups, in which he documented behaviors associated with these tools during their procurement, production, acquisition, use, discard, and re-use Searcy s investigation documents traditional practices that are rapidly being lost or dramatically modified In few instances will it be possible in the future to observe metates and manos as central elements in household provisioning or follow their path from hand-manufacture to market distribution and to intergenerational transmission In this careful inquiry into the cultural significance of a simple tool, Searcy s ethnographic observations are guided both by an interest in how grinding stone traditions have persisted and how they are changing today, and by the goal of enhancing the archaeological interpretation of these stones, which were so fundamental to pre-Hispanic agriculturalists with corn-based cuisines"

Traditional fishing, mollusk gathering, and the shell mound builders of santa catarina, brazil

Abstract: This article presents results of ethnographic research on modern fishers and mollusk gatherers from the state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil. Information from interviews is correlated with questions regarding the lifeways of groups that built large shell mounds along the Brazilian coast between 6,000 and 1,000 years ago. Ethnoarchaeological research helps deconstruct misconceptions regarding these prehistoric communities, demonstrating that large-scale sedentary groups could have successfully utilized estuarine resources on a year-round basis.

Ethnozooarchaeology: The Present and Past of Human-Animal Relationships

Abstract: Introduction and Methods Ethnozooarchaeology and the power of analogy (Umberto Albarella) A dog is for hunting (Karen D. Lupo) Past and present strategies for draught exploitation of cattle (Niels Johannsen) Animal dung: Rich ethnographic records, poor archaeozoological evidence (Marta Moreno-Garcia and Carlos M. Pimenta) Folk taxonomies and human-animal relations: The Early Neolithic in the Polish Lowlands (Arkadiusz Marciniak) Fishing, Hunting and Foraging The historical use of terrestrial vertebrates in the Selva Region (Chiapas, Mexico) (Eduardo Corona and Patricia Enriquez Vazquez) Pacific Ocean fishing traditions: Subsistence, beliefs, ecology, and households (Jean L. Hudson) The ethnography of fishing in Scotland and its contribution to icthyoarchaeological analysis in this region (Ruby N. Ceron-Carrasco) Contemporary subsistence and foodways in the Lau Islands of Fiji: An ethnoarchaeological study of non-optimal foraging and irrational economics (Sharyn Jones) Ethnozooarchaeology of the Mani (Orang Asli) of Trang Province, Southern Thailand: A preliminary result of faunal analysis at Sakai Cave (Hitomi Hongo and Prasit Auetrakulvit) Food Preparation and Consumption An ethnoarchaeological study of marine coastal fish butchery in Pakistan (William R. Belcher) Ethnozooarchaeology of butchering practices in the Mahas Region, Sudan (Elizabeth R. Arnold and Diane Lyons) Husbandry Social principles of Andean camelid pastoralism and archaeological interpretations (Penelope Dransart) Incidence and causes of calf mortality in Maasai herds: Implications for zooarchaeological interpretation (Kathleen Ryan and Paul Nkuo Kunoni) A week on the plateau: Pig husbandry, mobility and resource exploitation in central Sardinia (Umberto Albarella, Filippo Manconi and Angela Trentacoste) A pig fed by hand is worth two in the bush: Ethnoarchaeology of pig husbandry in Greece and its archaeological implications (Paul Halstead and Valasia Isaakidou)

Bread ovens, social networks and gendered space: An ethnoarchaeological study of tandir ovens in southeastern anatolia

Abstract: Ethnoarchaeology has, from its inception, suffered from the lack of a clear theoretical framework to productively link its two constituent parts: ethnography and archaeology. In this paper, I propose a framework that allows the integration of ethnographic and archaeological datasets at various levels of abstraction. I argue that it is only through innovative combinations of ethnography and archaeology, applied with proper caution and disclosure and at explicit levels of abstraction, that ethnoarchaeologists can hope to construct an ethnoarchaeology that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Practical knowledge and politics of encounter along the Lower Falémé River, Senegambia (c. AD 1500–1925)

Abstract: Beyond the growing entanglement of African and European worlds, the Atlantic era also witnessed transformations in the economic institutions, political regimes, and social identities that inhered between African societies, such as those of the interior of Senegambia. This paper traces how such historical processes both emerged from and shaped the quotidian practices and encounters manifest in the production of earthenware pottery along the eastern frontier of Bundu, an Islamic Fulbe state (almaamate) that arose and grew to incorporate diverse Mande communities from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. Drawing upon recent insights from ceramic ethnoarchaeology in Africa, an analysis of pottery production techniques (clay procurement and processing, shaping, decoration and firing) suggests that potters from distinct cultural traditions, but of similar class, began to share technical knowledge in spheres both public and private during Bundu's expansion. At the same time, patterns of pottery consumpt...

Fractalidad, Materialidad y Cultura: Un Estudio Etnoarqueológico de los Awá-Guajá de Maranhão (Brasil). Fractality, materiality and culture: An ethnoarchaeological study of the Awá-Guajá (Maranhão, Brazil).

Abstract: In this article we argue that there is a relationship of scale (i.e. fractal) and not of determination between the features that characterize a particular culture and those of the people belonging to that culture. We will argue that what we call “cultural change” is in fact a transformation of the way in which people are related to the world. This includes changes in the manifold relations between people and things. We argue that ethnoarchaeology, as a discipline that joins the concerns of anthropology and archaeology (the discipline of things), can significantly contribute to the study of culture and to recent debates in the social sciences. We will use an ethnoarchaeological study among the Awa-Guaja, a group of hunter-gatherers livin in NW Maranhao State, to prove our points.

Lewis R. Binford (1931–2011)

Abstract: On 11 April 2011, Lewis Roberts Binford died of congestive heart failure at the age of 79 in Kirksville, Missouri. An era in archaeology ended with his death. Lew was born in 1931 in Norfolk, Virginia. He attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute until 1952, when he joined the military. While on duty in Japan he became interested in anthropology, and after leaving the service, he attended the University of North Carolina, graduating with a degree in anthropology in 1957. He continued studies in the discipline and received his MA in 1958 and, in 1964, his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, the University of California at the Santa Barbara and Los Angeles campuses, and from 1968 to 1991, he was on the faculty of the University of New Mexico. He then taught at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas until his retirement in 2003. Lew published more than 20 books and 150 papers, dating back to 1959. He lectured throughout Europe, Asia, and North and South America. His many honors included election to the United States National Academy of Sciences, the Huxley Memorial Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, and the Society for American Archaeology's Lifetime Achievement Award. ![Figure][1] CREDIT: HILLSMAN JACKSON/© SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY To say that Lewis Binford was a mover and shaker is putting it mildly. Beginning with his 1962 paper, “Archaeology as Anthropology,” Lew wanted nothing less than to completely change how archaeologists approached archaeology. In the 1950s, many archaeologists saw the purpose of their enterprise as classification and artifacts as reflections of “mental templates,” useful for tracking the migration of “cultures” or the diffusion of ideas. Lew challenged archaeologists to do more by fully participating in anthropology. Kinship, for example, was a hot topic, so two of his first students, William Longacre and James Hill, used ceramics to study kinship in southwestern pueblos. Lew pushed archaeologists to work scientifically with analytical rigor, to create research designs, to pay attention to sampling, and to use statistically analyzed data to test hypotheses. He demanded that archaeologists understand why cultures change over time. Although he ceased traditional archaeological fieldwork by the 1970s, his research among the Nunamiut Inuit, the Navajo, and Australia's Alyawara helped pioneer ethnoarchaeology—the study of living communities—to create ways to interpret archaeological remains. He also pushed forward taphonomy, the study of how natural processes create assemblages of animal bones. As the chief architect of the “new archaeology,” later called “processual archaeology,” Lew focused on the adaptive processes of cultural change. He never found a lost temple, a new hominin species, or the oldest evidence of anything. Nonetheless, Lewis Binford was the most influential archaeologist of the 20th century. Lew thrived on controversy. Challenging orthodoxy, he argued that agriculture was not an inevitable cultural advance, but an adaptation to population pressure. He debated the eminent French archaeologist Francois Bordes, arguing that variation in Mousterian stone tool assemblages reflected functional differences rather than different “tribes” of Neandertals. Reanalyzing faunal assemblages from sites of considerable importance to human evolution, including Olduvai Gorge in Africa and Zhoukoudian in China, he replaced the cherished idea of big game hunting in the Lower Paleolithic with a vision of our human ancestors as lowly scavengers of carcasses. He was a harsh critic and argued with many, but I recall him saying that he only argued with people from whom he thought he could learn something. Lew focused on understanding how prehistoric societies were adaptive organizations. His 2001 magnum opus, Constructing Frames of Reference , used a database of ethnographic information and environmental data to examine the organization of hunter-gatherer societies, his lifelong interest, to understand how group size, food storage, mobility, diet, and social organization were adaptations to the environment. He also focused on what he labeled “middle-range theory,” arguments to make inferences from patterns in archaeological data. His books Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology (1978) and Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths (1981) showed how to interpret patterns in assemblages of animal bones in terms of butchering strategies and natural processes. He developed concepts (residential and logistical mobility, site structure, site furniture, expedient and curated technology) that led archaeologists the world over to think about spatial distributions of artifacts and technology in new ways. Lew was a brilliant speaker and teacher. As his graduate assistant, I would watch him develop lectures as he walked across campus to class. His conference presentations were standing room only, and his courses were routinely attended by non-enrolled students. He gave so willingly of his time to students and visitors that he rarely wrote in his university office. Instead, he wrote at home, where he kept two typewriters (in the days before computers) on two desks so he could work on two manuscripts simultaneously. Some 30 years later, his hunter-gatherer seminar remains vivid in my memory. Lew would often slip into a southern Baptist preacher mode and talk … and talk. One evening, a particular class that began at 7 PM found him still lecturing at midnight—and his audience still listening. Every time we walked out of that seminar, we felt as if the world had changed. Lew taught archaeologists to look at the big picture, to search for patterns, and to realize that our knowledge of the past is limited only by the imagination and effort we bring to creating methods to infer that past from its material remains. He saw the past not simply as a historical record of events, but as a record of adaptation. He moved the field from a largely descriptive effort to a more scientific, explanatory enterprise. And no one will move it as far for a long, long time. [1]: pending:yes

Chalcolithic and modern potting at Gilund, Rajasthan: a cautionary tale

Abstract: By an interesting coincidence the village of Gilund in Rajasthan, north-west India was host to an important Chalcolithic settlement of the early third millennium BC and to some of the last indigenous potters still working in the twenty-first century AD. The author shows how her study of the prehistoric potters was enhanced by what she learnt from their modern successors, pointing out that she was only just in time. These potters will be the last to practice and in this respect ethnoarchaeology is itself under threat

Implications of Bofi & Aka ethnoarchaeology in the Congo Basin for understanding Late Holocene technological change

Abstract: Conventional views of the diffusion or transmission of new technologies are deeply rooted in the principle that people adopt and use the most efficient tool to solve different problems. But a variety of studies show that although performance efficiency underlies the adoption of some technologies, socio-political factors can strongly guide the range and deployment of new technologies and the speed at which items spread (eg, Kim 2001). Socio-political goals and motivations of individuals are especially relevant for understanding the prehistoric and ethnographic technological transfers of interacting, but ethnically diverse, populations in the Congo Basin. The transfer of technologies between these populations encompassed iron items including those with high economic and/or prestige value. Ethnographically, Bantu populations controlled the production and distribution of these high value items and provided a range of utilitarian benefits to foragers who affiliated with them. Under these circumstances, the spr...

The Practice of Archaeology in Nigeria

Abstract: This chapter presents a brief summary of the historical development of archaeology in Nigeria from the first digs at Ile Ife in 1910 by the German anthropologist Leo Frobenius, who searched for buried terracotta figurines, to the accidental discovery of the first piece of what have become known as the Nok terracotta figurines in tin mines on the Jos Plateau in 1928 and finds of archaeological materials in the course of digging foundations in Benin, Ife and Igbo-Ukwu in 1938. Also discussed is the evolution of archaeology from rescue/salvage beginnings to its present purely academic character that had adversely affected its growth. The division of archaeology into academic and non-academic in Nigeria is reviewed to show the inherent problems in such structure, while academic archaeology is shown to be treated differently in universities as it is housed either in the Faculty of Arts or Faculty of Science. The basic theoretical driving force for later archaeologists in Nigeria, as elsewhere in West Africa, had been the deconstruction of the European imposed theories of evolution, migration and diffusion as they affected the interpretation of the African past. In recent studies, emphasis had been on cultural history of some Nigerian people using historical archaeology and ethnoarchaeology.

People, trees and charcoal: some reflections about the use of ethnoarchaeology in archaeological charcoal analysis.

Abstract: The aim of this presentation is to put together the different ethnoarchaeological approaches that charcoal specialists have proposed for firewood management. Analyzing these works within the framework of the theoretical development of both the charcoal analysis discipline and ethnoarchaeological studies, we expect to start reaching a consensus in relation to the possibilities and the limits of ethnoarchaeological studies, and to the issue of interpretation in archaeological charcoal analysis. We propose the orientation of theses studies towards the socio-ecological analysis of firewood management considering the no suitability of ethnoarchaeology to discuss the palaeoecological representativeness of archaeological charcoal analysis (explored in detail from statistics, taphonomy or experimental archaeology) through the universalization of current social behaviour.

From Living Archaeology to Disaster Archaeology

Abstract: (2011). From Living Archaeology to Disaster Archaeology. Ethnoarchaeology: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 187-202.

Designing Experimental Research in Archaeology: Examining Technology through Production and Use, Jeffrey R. Ferguson, editor

Abstract: (2011). Designing Experimental Research in Archaeology: Examining Technology through Production and Use, Jeffrey R. Ferguson, editor. Ethnoarchaeology: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 221-225.

Archaeological Ethnographies by Yannis Hamilakis and Aris Anagnostopoulos, editors

Abstract: (2011). Archaeological Ethnographies by Yannis Hamilakis and Aris Anagnostopoulos, editors. Ethnoarchaeology: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 107-110.

У служби континуитета. Етно-археологија у Србији

Abstract: Ethnoarchaeology as a sub-discipline of archaeology primarily entails survey and research of various aspects of contemporary societies, in order to enable archaeologists to understand the dynamic processes that have created in the past the phenomena we now recognize as archaeological material, i.e. archaeological record. Ethnoarchaeological studies in Serbia have been ill-fated, since almost all the roads leading towards this approach have been jammed by various conceptions of the idea of continuity. In the Serbian archaeology, continuity has been understood as continuation of direct Aegean and Greek influences, as a metaphysical continuity of spirit, inexplicable “idealtypical” continuity, national continuity, or as a transmission of cultural traditions. Common to all these paradigms is the understanding of continuity as a given, and the contemporaneous ethnographic material has been used solely as an illustration of the long life of certain cultural shapes. The true value of ethnoarchaeology as a way of overcoming the statics of the archaeological record and gaining insight into the dynamics of the past has never been realized.