UNIT 1. About Archaeologists and Archaeology1. The Awful Truth About Archaeology, Dr. Lynne Sebastian, The SAA Archaeological Record, March 2003
“You’re an Archaeologist! That sounds soooo exciting!” Of course it sounds exciting because of the hyperbole and mystic surrounding archaeologists perpetuated by TV shows, movies, and novels—professional archaeologists know better! The process of discovery is slow, tedious, and frustrating when nothing is found. Digging square holes in the ground and carefully measuring artifacts, cataloging, taking notes, and hopefully something meaningful about the past gets published.
2. Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Communication and the Future of American Archaeology, Jeremy A. Sabloff, American Anthropologist, December 1998
Jeremy Sabloff discusses the role that archaeology should play in public education and the need for archaeologists to communicate more effectively with relevant writing for the public. He further suggests the need to recognize nonacademic archaeologists and to focus on action archaeology or what is more usually termed public archaeology.
3. All the King’s Sons, Douglas Preston, The New Yorker, January 22, 1996
A well-told narrative of modern archaeology, Douglas Preston’s article is based on scientific archaeology. It is not, however, a typical “scientific” or “monograph” report common to academic archaeology. This tale of archaeology is wish fulfillment for students or laypersons of archaeology because it is about a spectacular find—the biggest archaeological site in Egypt since King Tut’s tomb. No "blah, blah Egypt, blah, blah dummy," here.
4. Antiquities Sleuth Has a Fraud Mandate, Jacqueline Trestcott, The Washington Post, March 29, 2005
It is a given that most museums have fakes in their collections. By using certifiably genuine objects as her guide, Jane MacLaren Walsh of the Smithsonian Institute is establishing a database to guide those trying to spot fraudulent antiquities. What complicates the search for authenticity is that some of the forgeries are so old that they too qualify as antiques.
UNIT 2. Problem Oriented Archaeology5. Prehistory of Warfare, Steven A. LeBlanc, Archaeology, May/June 2003
The state of primitive warfare is examined and found to be endemic to all such cultures as seen through archaeology. It is suggested that warfare occurs under conditions of resource stress and poor climates. However, warfare has actually declined over time. Foragers and farmers have much higher death rates, approaching 25 percent of the population, than more complex societies.
6. The Iceman Reconsidered, James H. Dickson, Klaus Oeggl, and Linda L. Handley, Scientific American, May 2003
The so-called Iceman that was discovered more than a decade ago has been reevaluated by more thorough archaeological evidence. It seems that “Otzi’s” secrets include the fact that he did not die on a boulder as first believed. It is now believed he floated there during the temporary thaws that occurred over the past 5,000 years. We have come to know a great deal about the mysterious Iceman.
7. The Littlest Human, Kate Wong, Scientific American, February 2005
An astonishing find in Indonesia suggests that a diminutive hominid, perhaps down-sized from Homo erectus, coexisted with our kind in the not so distant past.
8. Who’s On First?, Anna Curtenius Roosevelt, Natural History, July/August 2000
This article rejects the traditional view that the peopling of the New World was accomplished by a single group of big-game hunters. However, acrimonious public debates continue. Anna Roosevelt’s book review is critical of too much oversimplification and suggests additional alternative scenarios. She is particularly skeptical of the evidence for a pre-Clovis occupation. The roles of NAGPRA and Kennewick Man are noted.
9. The Slow Birth of Agriculture, Heather Pringle, Science, November 20, 1998
This article presents a discussion on the relationship between agriculture and social organization. Heather Pringle suggests that crop cultivation does not necessarily lead to sedentary settlements or village life, as anthropologists have assumed. A larger vision of hunter-gatherer life emerges that suggests that a more complicated process is necessary to cultivate food and to become sedentary settlers.
10. Archaeologists Rediscover Cannibals, Ann Gibbons, Science, August 1, 1997
From digs around the world, archaeologists have unearthed strong evidence of cannibalism. People may have eaten their own kind from the early days of human evolution to the present time.
11. Modern Humans Made Their Point, Ann Gibbons, Science, April 22, 2005
Long before guns gave European explorers a decisive advantage over indigenous peoples, our Paleolithic ancestors had their own technological innovation that allowed them to dominate the Stone Age competition: the projectile point.
12. New Women of the Ice Age, Heather Pringle, Discover, April 1998
By combining research on the roles of women in hunting and gathering societies with recent archaeological evidence, Heather Pringle offers an emerging picture of women of Ice-Age Europe as that of priestly leaders, clever inventors, and full-fledged hunters.
13. Woman: The Toolmaker, Steven A. Brandt and Kathryn Weedman, Archaeology, September/October 2002
Women were not only leaders and hunters in the Ice Age, but ethno archaeology tells us that in modern tribal societies women are also skilled toolmakers. These female flintknappers again defy the stereotypical roles of men and women showing that today’s tribal women, as did women in the archaeological past, excel at toolmaking.
14. Yes, Wonderful Things, William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, from Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage, HarperCollins, 1992
One of the catchiest definitions of the word “archaeologist” is that archaeologists are people who dig up others people’s garbage. Modern garbology is useful in that timely historical reconstruction can be done by direct comparison of what people say they do and what their garbage indicates they in fact do.
15. Bushmen, John Yellen, Science 85, May 1985
This article examines a revealing experiment in which anthropologist John Yellen excavates !Kung Bushmen campsites. Comparing the archaeologicial data with information from living informants and historical resources, Yellen discovers a kind of lyrical “back to the future” experience. A whole way of life and values has disappeared, but the native cannot permit themselves to confront these changes.
16. The Maya Collapses, Jared Diamond, Collapse, Viking Penguin, 2005
The best way to understand the collapse of the Mayan civilization, says Diamond, is to consider such factors as population growth, environmental degradation, climate change, warfare, and the short-sightedness of Maya leaders. Not only did the same kind of precipitating factors bring down other great societies of the past, but they seem to be leading the modern world down the same path. Can we and will we take heed before it is too late?
UNIT 3. Techniques in Archaeology17. Through Dirt to the Past, E. Paul Durrenberger, The World & I, November 2003
In rural Iceland, archaeologists are combining such new technology as electronic resistivity and GPS with tales from the Icelandic sagas in order to locate and better understand the original Norwegian settlements and their society.
18. High-Tech “Digging”, Chris Scarre, Archaeology, September/October 1999
Chris Scarre reports that the greatest advance in techniques used in archaeology over the last 50 years has been in dating sites. More recently, the last two decades have seen dazzling new information about past human societies gained by techniques borrowed from advances in nuclear physics, laser technology, and computers. At the most personal level, DNA studies have put real people into archaeological studies.
19. A Wasp’s-Nest Clock, Rachel Preiser, Discover, November 1997
Most prehistoric rock art is impossible to date because it lacks the organic carbon necessary for radiocarbon dating. However, Rachel Preiser describes an unusual case in which two Australian scientists were able to date an in situ fossilized wasp’s nest that was directly overlying a painting of a human figure. The technique of optical luminescence dating placed the nest and painting at 17,000 years old. This may be the world’s oldest portrait of a human.
20. Profile of an Anthropologist: No Bone Unturned, Patrick Huyghe, Discover, December 1988
Archaeologists have borrowed a method first used by physical anthropologists to develop a technique of learning the age, gender, possible ethnicity, or ancestral relationships, etc. and the cause of death of extant human beings through analysis of skeletal remains. As long as there are bones, there is archaeological information to be gained—whether the person lived in ancient times or the more recent historic past.
21. Simulating Ancient Societies, Timothy A. Kohler, George J. Gumerman, and Robert G. Reynolds, Scientific American, July 2005
Using computer models, archaeologists are now able to simulate the settlement and land-use patterns of the ancient Puebloan peoples. Researchers can even conduct experiments by incrementally adding detail to their models, testing new environmental and social factors to see if they bring the virtual prehistory closer to the archaeological record.
22. What Did They Eat?, Eleanora Reber, Anthropology Newsletter, February 1999
If an unglazed pot is used for cooking food, lipids and water-soluble compounds from the contents are absorbed into the vessel. These residues may be extracted and identified. A gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer then identifies each compound through its molecular fragments. As with most radiometric measures, the samples must be protected from contamination. Eleanor Reber indicates that with this modern technique, much can be learned about prehistoric diets.
UNIT 4. Historical Archaeology23. City of the Hawk, Renée Friedman, Archaeology, November/December 2003
From ancient breweries to the earliest mummies, excavations at Hierakonpolis show that the economic underpinnings of pharoanic civilization were already in place half a millennium before Egypt was unified under a single ruler.
24. The Lost Goddess of Israel, Sandra Scham, Archaeology, March/April 2005
Archaeological evidence indicates that Yahweh, the god of Israel, may have had a wife, Asherah, and that the society may have actually been polytheistic. The writers of the Bible, however, seem to have demoted and demonized her, apparently as a way to promote monotheism in a time of social change.
25. Secrets of the Medici, Gino Fornaciari, Bob Brier, and Antonio Fornaciari, Archaeology, July/August 2005
The Medici were among the most powerful families in the world. An excavation of Florence’s first family reveals clues to the lifestyles of the Renaissance rich, solves a murder mystery, and turns up a lost treasure.
26. Living Through the Donner Party, Jared Diamond, Discover, March 1992
The infamous story of the Donner Party unfolds anew as an anthropologist invokes the dynamics of scientific thinking. In generating a new idea about an old problem, the type of predictability about human behavior necessary for cultural and historical reconstruction of the past is demonstrated.
27. Israel’s Mysterious Stone, Haim Watzman, The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2003
The question of forgeries has plagued archaeologists from the inception of this mysterious field of science. The tablet in question is contested on the basis of its actual authenticity. While it appears, at this point in time, to be authentic, there is a great deal of debate on the actual date the tablet was written and on the content of the tablet.
28. Legacy of the Crusades, Sandra Scham, Archaeology, September/October 2002
Sandra Scham discusses the “Crusader Complex” in the Middle East. This involves the complexities of warfare, religion, and how people perceive each other. The Christian Crusades lasted from 1097-1291 and still have left their impact on the mental and geographic maps of the peoples in the Middle East. Some archaeologists today view the Christian Crusades, and its far reaching aftermath to be the historical basis for the Holy Wars in the Middle East.
UNIT 5. Contemporary Archaeology29. Archaeology from the Dark Side, Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com, August 29, 2005
Critics of mainstream archaeology generally fall into two camps: creationism and alternative archaeology. Whether they are searching for Noah’s ark or the “lost continent of Atlantis,” they do have some things in common: they all long for a discovery that would destroy the credibility of much of modern science, and they seek ultimate answers to the riddles of human existence on the spiritual and supernatural plane—where scientists cannot and should not venture.
30. Ownership and Control of Ethnographic Materials, Sjoerd R. Jaarsma, Anthropology News, October 2002
This essy suggests an alternative viewpoint—that is to concentrate less on the way academic anthropologists approach the community they study and to focus more on how the community they study views “their” anthropologists. Ethnographers and archaeologists go into the field to gather their material, usually for the purported purpose of writing an academic book. But what of their impact on the “native” peoples and how the ethnographer modify what they are observing?
31. Last Word on Kennewick Man?, Archaeology, November/December 2002
So here is the latest word on the controversial 9,400-year old “Kennewick Man” skeleton which addresses the question brought up in the above two essays. Does “Kennewick Man” belong to archaeologists or to “the American Indian?” Or, is this really the latest word? Developments and challenges regarding these controversial bones continue as this book goes to press.
32. Guardians of the Dead, Roger Atwood, Archaeology, January/February 2003
There is a lot more happening in Peru regarding looting. This article presents the looter’s viewpoint. They loot because they need money. A looter states, “Around here there is not other kind of work.”
33. Thracian Gold Fever, Matthew Brunwasser, Archaeology, March/April 2005
Given the fact that Bulgaria has little money available for archaeological field-work or for protection and maintenance of such sites if they are opened to the public, one archaeologist claims that his unorthodox excavation practices and private business deals are necessary as he tries to stay one step ahead of the looters.
34. In Flanders Fields, Neil Asher Silberman, Archaeology, May/June 2004
The citizens of Ieper, Belgium must decide whether to preserve a World War I battlefield as a memorial to the fallen or to build a highway that would bring about economic development. Meanwhile, a pioneering project on the very same land has demonstrated archaeology’s essential role in preserving and understanding the great historical drama of modern warfare, whose gruesome traces lie beneath the surface of a now-peaceful ground.
35. The Past as Propaganda, Bettina Arnold, Archaeology, July/August 1992
What happens when archaeologists lie? Nazi-driven archaeologists manipulated archaeological data to create a propaganda line that was ethnocentric, racist, and genocidal. The Nazi Party machine used this German-centered view of the past to justify expansionism and genocide.
36. Earth Movers, Marion Lloyd, The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 3, 2004
In a challenge to anthropologist Betty J. Meggers’ view that the Amazon region was a somewhat hostile region that supported relatively few people, some archaeologists are now claiming that Brazil’s rain forest fostered large-scale communities—perhaps building cities that rivaled those of the Aztecs and the Mayas.
37. Whither the Neanderthals?, Richard G. Klein, Science, March 7, 2003
The longest continuous debate in paleoanthroplogy is nearing resolution. Modern humans replaced the Neanderthals with little or no gene exchange. Almost certainly, the Neanderthals succumbed because they wielded culture less effectively.
38. The New Neandertal, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Archaeology, July/August 2005
Virtual fossils and real molecules are changing how we view our enigmatic cousins. With the “New Neandertal” we have definitively shed two images, one in which our ancient cousin was brutish and far different from us, the other in which we were nearly identical. But perhaps our new-found knowledge is taking us to a deeper understanding of Neandertals.
39. Space: The Final [Archaeological] Frontier, P.J. Capelotti, Archaeology, November/December 2004
It won’t be long before corporate adventurers and space tourists reach the Moon and Mars. Since there are already dozens of sites on the Moon alone where operational spacecraft have been discarded, there is a need for a set of international procedures and protocols for safeguarding these historical landmarks and artifacts from the profiteers and souvenir hunters and to place these valuable sites under the proper administration of extraterrestrial archaeology.
