Archeology

Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago . Peter Bellwood.
Recent Advances in Indo-Pacific Prehistory . V. N. Misra and Peter Bellwood , eds.     

Distinguished Lecture in Archeology: Beyond Criticizing New Archeology

This article was presented as the Distinguished Lecture in Archeology at the 91st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, December 4, 1992, in San Francisco.     

Archeology as Long-Term Ethnography

Behavioral variation from year to year is archeologically invisible, yet it may have important effects on the archeological record. Moreover, much of current theory demands that we give attention to such variation. Rather than adopting normative reconstructions from ethnographies, archeologists must view the archeological record as a long-term ethnography, confounded by such variations in behavior. Using an ecological perspective, patterns of behavioral variation can be linked to environmental characteristics, with implications for the archeological record of settlement and subsistence. The Paleolithic and Mesolithic of southwest Germany are used to illustrate this approach.     

Book Reviews: Archeology

Book reviewed in this article:
The Collapse of Complex Societies . Joseph A. Tainter
The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations . Norman Yoffee and George L. Cowgill , eds.     

Chain Mall in Plains Archeology

Abstract

Beginning in the 1880s, chain mail fragments have been found subsurface at five archeological sites in the Central Plains. All were in association with native Indian materials assignable to the Great Bend aspect and datable to the earliest period of European contacts with Central Plains Village Indian communities in the mid-sixteenth century. Among the several types of mail fabric represented, none is inconsistent with a 16th century Spanish provenience. Possible sources from which these items may have reached the Indians by pillage, theft, or trade are considered.     

Archeology and the First Americans

The land! don't you feel it? Doesn't it make you want to go out and lift dead Indians tenderly from their graves, to steal from them—as if it must be clinging even to their corpses—some authenticity.     

Distinguished Lecture: Archeology and Anthropology

This essay was delivered as the Distinguished Lecture to the 86th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 21, 1987, at Chicago, Illinois.     

Shading the Past: Models in Archeology

Archeologists create and interpret the past. Attempts to arrive at the "best explanation" of that past are misguided, ignoring the differing perspectives of those who are looking backward, as well as the imperfections in our cognitive abilities. The latter is the focus of this article: How do we best relate our models, as metaphors, to a presumed real past world? Archeological thought is argued to be embedded in traditional Western dichotomies by which we view the world in general. Different models are not necessarily in competition; rather, they provide different modes of understanding. Several models for the "origin" of agriculture are examined in this light and are then applied to the prehistory of the American Midwest.     

Bighorn Canyon Archeology: A Reply

Abstract

In a review of Bighorn Canyon Archeology (Husted 1969), Kehoe (1972) resorts to misrepresentation and insinuation in an attempt to discredit a differing point of view. The author reiterates his position and replies to Kehoe’s insinuation of unethical practice.     

Archeology of Mind—Obesity and Psychoanalysis

“To tell us that every Species of Things is endow'd with an occult specifick Quality by which it acts and produces manifest effects is to tell us nothing: But to derive two or three general Principles of Motion from Phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the Properties and Actions of all corporeal Things follow from those manifest Principles, would be a very great step in Philosophy, though the Causes of these Principles were not yet discover'd.”