Introduction to Archaeology: Class 13

ã Copyright Bruce Owen 2002

• Today we cover two basically unrelated topics: experimental archaeology and faunal analysis
• do the readings to get more of the story!
• Experimental archaeology
• reasonably well described by Thomas
• replication studies
• especially stone tools, but other technologies, too
• getting a sense of how stone tools could have been made
• although, as Thomas points out, not necessarily how it was actually done
• gives an idea of what was relatively easy and what was hard
• what objects would have been more or less desirable or valuable
• what objects are overdone for show, ritual, trade, etc.
• what objects suggest specialist craftspeople
• what objects imply procurement of special materials (if it can only be done with certain stone, for example)
• gives an idea of what was possible
• could a given kind of tool be used for a given purpose?
• example: can you tell from looking at a stone point whether it was used as a knife, on a spear, or on an arrow?
• could one person hunt a mammoth, or would it require a group?
• helps identify associated tools, like punches, hammerstones, etc. that might otherwise go unrecognized
• fluted point example: how did they do that?
• once a way (actually, now several have been proposed) was figured out to make the flutes, that raised other questions
• why go to all that trouble and risk of breaking many points?
• mechanical explanations: maybe the flutes allow for a spearhead to be hafted so that the head is not much thicker than the shaft, or rather, so the point is a narrow sharp edge around the end of the shaft
• ritual explanation: maybe successfully fluted points were powerful, blessed, etc., or the maker was
• these are questions and explanations we could not even have thought of without understanding a bit about the technology first
• atl-atl example
• what are these artifacts?
• OK, now we know what they were; what were they good for?
• how effective were they for different kinds of tasks?
• what would they allow people to do?
• historical sources
• experimental approach
• another kind of experimental archaeology: use-wear studies
• make a bunch of replica tools
• use them in the ways they might have been used
• cutting hides
• cutting meat
• cutting wood
• harvesting grain
• digging
• then examine the microscopic patterns of wear on the tools to see if different uses can be distinguished
• then apply the same tests to real artifacts
• also check the marks made on the items being worked
• can you distinguish marks on bone make by stone tools from those made by sharp-toothed carnivores?
• can you tell whether a wooden object was made with a stone tool or a metal one?
• can you tell if repeated marks on bone or antler were made with a single tool or multiple tools (Marshack's calendar work)
• Faunal analysis
• involves getting an expert to
• identify bone fragments as well as possible
• species, genus, sometimes just "large mammal" vs. "small mammal"
• depends on preservation, research goals, etc.
• requires a lot of experience and very good spatial visualization skills
• usually done with the aid of comparative bone collections
• identify age and sex of animals when possible
• used for
• reconstructing meat part of diet
• changes over time
• resources used
• hunting methods
• as in Thomas's example of the Olsen-Chubbuck site
• includes both material technology (spears, bows, etc.) and social "technology" (group coordination)
• herd-management techniques
• based on age and sex composition of the hunted animals
• if they don't match the natural herd composition, then certain ages and sexes were preferentially selected to kill
• if younger individuals and females were spared, this suggests conscious effort to maintain the herd, taking the less necessary individuals for food and leaving the reproducers to replenish the herd
• this may be an initial step towards animal domestication
• determining when people domesticated animals in specific cultures
• based on looking at changes in the animals' characteristics compared to their wild ancestors
• variations in diet may indicate ethnicity or status differences
• Great Zimbabwe example (1250-1450 AD)
• bone from the slopes below the "Acropolis" at Great Zimbabwe was overwhelmingly cattle, with a little sheep or goat
• over 75% killed while still immature: i.e. veal
• so food consumed on the Acropolis was the most valuable kind, presumably eaten by high-status people
• at a smaller settlement (Manekweni)
• the bones in garbage from inside the enclosure were dominated by cattle bones
• remember, in a cattle pastoralist society, cattle and beef are wealth
• while the bones in garbage from outside were dominated by sheep, goat, and game
• presumably lower-status people
• variations in body parts present may indicate processing or trade
• at the Peruvian site of Chavín de Huántar,
• a small town of 2,000 to 3,000 people, large for the region and time period, with an important temple apparently visited by pilgrims from much of the northern Andes
• during the period of around 500 BC to 200 BC, wild animal bone virtually disappeared, replaced by domesticated camelid bone
• with a surprising lack of foot bones and heads
• the bones that are present may correspond to the bones that would be included in portions of dried (actually, freeze-dried) meat
• this freeze-drying process can only be done at higher elevations than Chavín
• so it must have been imported and traded for something at Chavín
• so the faunal analysis suggests a shift from locally hunted meat to domestic, processed meat that was brought to the site from elsewhere, probably in trade
• that is, a much more complex and regional economy
• faunal analysis can fill in details of ritual
• La Cantera pits with smashed blackware drinking cups and llama bones
• the faunal analyst determined that several llamas were represented, at least one not very old
• fits with the idea of a special feast in the upper room of the building
• What to record and analyze?
• NISP: Number of Identifiable Specimens
• problem: many identifiable specimens might come from a single animal's carcass, or each one might represent a different animal
• what if some animals have lots of distinctive, identifiable bones, while others have fewer bones per individual that can be definitely identified?
• the harder-to-identify animals will be undercounted
• what if some animals are brought to the site whole, while others are butchered where they were killed?
• the butchered animals will be undercounted
• MNI: Minimum Number of Individuals
• somewhat better at estimating how many animals were involved in creating the record, but still a rough indicator
• grams of bone of a given species or type
• easy, but has problems similar to NISP
• meat weight
• using MNI or counts of body parts (so many forelimbs, hindlimbs, etc.), estimate the amount of meat represented by each species
• the above are often given as percentages of the total
• but percentage data has the problem that it always adds up to 100%
• it cannot show changes in the overall total
• in the example below, the percentages make it look like cattle became much more important in the diet, but the total weight of the bone shows that there was so little bone of any kind by stratum A that the big percentage differences could be just one fragment more or less - that is, they are not significant

	Cow		Goat		Sheep		All bone
	%	grams	%	grams	%	grams	grams
Stratum A	80	40	10	5	10	5	50
Stratum B	40	40	30	30	30	30	100
Stratum C	10	1,000	40	4,000	50	5,000	10,000

• also, if one thing becomes more common, percentages make it look like the others become less common
• even if in some other measure they remained constant and the one just increased
• in the example below, goat and sheep continued to be deposited at a constant rate, but cow bone increased over time
• yet the percentages make it look like the use of goat and sheep declined

	Cow		Goat		Sheep		All bone
	%	grams	%	grams	%	grams	grams
Stratum A	53	1000	21	400	26	500	1,900
Stratum B	36	500	29	400	36	500	1,400
Stratum C	10	100	40	400	50	500	1,000

• Finally, percentages tell you nothing about other trends outside the subject being studied that might be much more important
• in the example below, cattle did indeed become more important, but the shift towards shellfish was a much more substantial change

	Cow		Goat		Sheep		All bone	Shell
	%	grams	%	grams	%	grams	grams	grams
Stratum A	80	8,000	10	1,000	10	1,000	10,000	1,000,000
Stratum B	40	4,000	30	3,000	30	3,000	10,000	10,000
Stratum C	10	1,000	40	4,000	50	5,000	10,000	100

• grams of bone (or NISP, or MNI, etc.) per liter of soil excavated
• grams of bone (or NISP, or MNI, etc.) per gram of some other common material, like sherds or (in the desert) plant material
• one solution to picking the best measuring method: do analyses using various different ways of counting or measuring the amounts of different animals
• if the conclusions from several different methods are similar, then the conclusion is pretty believable
• if different reasonable methods give different results, whatever pattern is actually present may be too subtle to pick up with any confidence
• Faunal analysts often spend a lot of time amassing their comparative collections
• they disgust their friends and neighbors by collecting road kills
• having strange animals cooked for them
• boiling meat off bones and carcasses
• burying carcasses to allow the meat to rot away, to be dug up later
• establishing dermestid beetle colonies
• these are bugs that eat dead meat
• they clean the bones effectively without the damage caused by boiling, bleach, mechanical cleaning, etc.
• often allowed to live in small, heated, sealed "bug rooms" where samples are left to be cleaned
• See the reading "The dead elephant" to get an idea of the very special sense of faunal analyst humor.