Engaging Archaeology E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 654

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Bringing together 25 case studies from archaeological projects worldwide, Engaging Archaeology candidly explores personal experiences, successes, challenges, and even frustrations from established and senior archaeologists who share invaluable practical advice for students and early-career professionals engaged in planning and carrying out their own archaeological research.

With engaging chapters, such as ‘How Not to Write a PhD Thesis on Neolithic Italy’ and ‘Accidentally Digging Central America's Earliest Village’, readers are transported to the desks, digs, and data-labs of the authors, learning the skills, tricks of the trade, and potential pit-falls of archaeological fieldwork and collections research. Case studies collectively span many regions, time periods, issues, methods, and materials. From the pre-Columbian Andes to Viking Age Iceland, North America to the Middle East, Medieval Ireland to remote north Australia, and Europe to Africa and India, Engaging Archaeology is packed with rich, first-hand source material.

Unique and thoughtful, Stephen W. Silliman’s guide is an essential course book for early-stage researchers, advanced undergraduates, and new graduate students, as well as those teaching and mentoring. It will also be insightful and enjoyable reading for veteran archaeologists.

Leseprobe

Engaging Archaeology

25 Case Studies in Research Practice

Edited by Stephen W. Silliman

This edition first published 2018© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data

Names: Silliman, Stephen W., 1971– editor.Title: Engaging archaeology : 25 case studies in research practice / edited by Stephen W. Silliman (University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, US).Description: First edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |Identifiers: LCCN 2017030730 (print) | LCCN 2017031283 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119240525 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119240532 (epub) | ISBN 9781119240501 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119240518 (paperback)Subjects: LCSH: Archaeology–Research–Case studies. | Archaeologists–Case studies. | Archaeology–Philosophy–Case studies. | Excavations (Archaeology)–Case studies. | Antiquities–Collection and preservation–Case studies.Classification: LCC CC83 (ebook) | LCC CC83 .E54 2018 (print) | DDC 930.1–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030730

Cover image: © LOWELL GEORGIA/GettyimagesCover design: Wiley

List of Figures

Figure 1.1

World map showing locations of research projects discussed in the volume, marked by chapter number.

Figure 2.1

The western walls at Pucarani, the biggest hillfort in the northwestern Titicaca basin.

Figure 3.1

The ancestral Jemez province and Jemez Mountains obsidian sources.

Figure 4.1

Fieldwork in Glaumbær and Meðalheimur, Iceland.

Figure 5.1

Map of Ganeshwar Jodhpura Cultural Complex survey sites based on 2003 survey.

Figure 6.1

Section of Riwi, Square 1, East and South Walls, Kimberley, Australia.

Figure 7.1

Maps and human population trends for the Kuril Islands.

Figure 8.1

Cliff face with pictograph, northwestern Ontario.

Figure 9.1

Photograph of fieldwork during the Central Amazon Project.

Figure 11.1

Arkona Site Cluster, southern Ontario. This map depicts the cluster of Late Woodland sites excavated in the Arkona area by CRM archaeologists, and the focus of the research program discussed in this chapter. Inset are settlement plans for the two larger sites excavated from this cluster. Map courtesy of Chris Watts.

Figure 12.1

Map of Tigray, Ethiopia.

Figure 14.1

Aerial view and map of Osun Grove, Nigeria.

Figure 15.1

Photograph of collaboration in the Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School, Connecticut.

Figure 16.1

Map of northwestern Honduras showing places mentioned.

Figure 17.1

Location of the excavation areas of the Petra North Ridge Project.

Figure 18.1

Map, photograph, and artifacts of Bonneville Estates Rockshelter in the Great Basin.

Figure 19.1

Trim Castle, Co. Meath (Ireland).

Figure 20.1

Diagrams of classificatory systems.

Figure 21.1

Ford Diagram of 36 lots of Actuncan pottery generated by Tim Hunt and Carl Lipo’s Frequency Seriation Tool 3.0.

Figure 22.1

Plan of Çatalhöyük East and West, showing excavation areas.

Figure 23.1

Both sides of a slate mold from Lincoln, Massachusetts, and exhibition label.

Figure 24.1

Simulation results for the La Draga bow.

Figure 26.1

Diagramming a research question.

List of Tables

Table 1.1

Chart of major topics (other than regions – see

Figure 1.1

) covered by all chapters.

Table 10.1

Excavation samples sizes at select house sites in the ‘Opunohu Valley.

Notes on Contributors

Anna S. Agbe‐Davies is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania (2004). Prior positions at DePaul University and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation led to research on sites of colonialism and plantation slavery in the US Southeast and Caribbean and post‐Emancipation lives in the rural and urban Midwest. The results appear in a range of articles, technical reports, books, and online resources.

Elizabeth Arkush is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where she has taught since 2010; prior to that time she taught at the University of Virginia. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2005. Her field research in the south‐central Andes has been published in her book Hillforts of the Ancient Andes (2011) and several articles and book chapters. She also co‐edited The Archaeology of Warfare (2006).

Jane Balme obtained her PhD from the Australian National University in 1991. She has taught at the University of Western Australia since 1996. She has published over 70 articles on subjects such as the human colonization of Australia, the archaeology of gender, and archaeology education. She has worked with Indigenous groups on Australian archaeological projects in northern and western New South Wales, southern Arnhem Land, the Kimberley, and southwest Australia.

Juan A. Barceló is Professor of Quantitative Archaeology and Head of the Quantitative Archaeology Laboratory at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). His teaching and research activities deal with theoretical and methodological developments in archaeology and in digital humanities, notably in the domain of artificial intelligence, advanced statistics, and virtual reality and computer visualization. He has published extensively about those subjects, and is also the author of Computational Intelligence in Archaeology.

Douglas J. Bolender received his PhD in Anthropology from Northwestern University in 2006. He has held postdoctoral positions at SUNY Buffalo and the Field Museum for Natural History and is currently a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research focuses on the Viking Age North Atlantic, where he has conducted fieldwork since 1998. He has published an edited book and several articles and book chapters.

Brian N. Damiata received his PhD in Geological Sciences‐Geophysics from the University of California, Riverside in 2001. He is a Research Assistant Professor with the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston and also an Assistant Researcher with the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. He has conducted fieldwork in Barbados, China, Dominica, Egypt, Guatemala, Greece, Greenland, Iceland, Turkey, and the United States. He has authored more than 35 articles and book chapters and more than 100 technical reports.

Neal Ferris (PhD, McMaster University, 2006) is Lawson Research Chair of Canadian Archaeology at the University of Western Ontario, cross‐appointed between the Department of Anthropology and the Museum of Ontario Archaeology. He is also Director for Sustainable Archaeology: Western. Prior to his faculty career, Ferris served as a provincial archaeologist for the Ontario Ministry of Culture for 20 years. His research primarily focuses on archaeology of the last 1000 years in Eastern North America, British global colonialism, and the contemporary practice of archaeology.

Ben Fitzhugh received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1996. He has taught in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington since 1997, where he is Associate Professor. He studies the North Pacific Rim from Kodiak Alaska to northern Japan and the Kuril Islands in Russia, with other fieldwork in north Alaska, northeast Canada, eastern United States, Peru, and Ukraine. Publications include one book, four edited books/special issues, and 40 articles, chapters, and essays.

Ted Goebel received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1993. He has held faculty posts at Southern Oregon University, University of Nevada Las Vegas, University of Nevada Reno, and Texas A&M University, where he is currently the Endowed Professor of First Americans Studies and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans. His field‐based research in the western United States, Alaska, and Siberia investigates the dispersal of modern humans.

Rosemary A. Joyce received the PhD in Anthropology from the University of Illinois‐Urbana in 1985. A curator and faculty member at Harvard University from 1985 to 1994, she moved to the University of California, Berkeley in 1994, where she served as Director of the Hearst Museum of Anthropology until 1999 and is currently Professor of Anthropology. She conducted fieldwork in Honduras from 1977 to 2009. She is the author of nine books and editor of nine others.

Jennifer G. Kahn received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. She has taught in the Department of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary since 2012, where she now holds the rank of Associate Professor. She has conducted fieldwork in the Pacific Island region (East Polynesia, Melanesia) and the Southwestern United States. She has published one co‐authored book, three edited books and journals, and more than 45 articles and book chapters.

Lisa J. LeCount received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1996. She has taught in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama since 1999, where she now holds the rank of Associate Professor. She has conducted fieldwork in the American West, Peru, and currently, Belize. She has published two edited books and more than 32 articles, book chapters, and other essays on political dynamics, identity, and pottery.

Matthew Liebmann is the John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University. He served as Tribal Archaeologist and NAGPRA Program Coordinator for Jemez Pueblo from 2003–2005, and received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. He has conducted fieldwork in New Mexico, Arizona, Israel, and Guatemala, and his research interests include historical archaeology, the American Southwest, collaborative archaeology, and the archaeology of colonialism.

Oriol López‐Bultó obtained his PhD in Prehistoric Archaeology in 2015 from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). He specializes in the study of wood technology (timber objects, structural elements, and unworked wood) and functionality using different methodological approaches including dendrology, 3D scanning, tool marks and use‐wear analyses, and experimental archaeology.

Diana DiPaolo Loren received her PhD in 1999 from SUNY Binghamton, arrived at Harvard University in 1999, and is currently Museum Curator of North American Archaeology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. She specializes in the colonial period American Southeast and Northeast, with a focus on the body, health, dress, and adornment. She is the author of In Contact: Bodies and Spaces in the Sixteenth‐ and Seventeenth‐Century Eastern Woodlands (2007) and The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial America (2010).

Diane Lyons has a PhD in Archaeology from Simon Fraser University (1992) and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary. She has participated in archaeological research in Canada, Australia, Hawaii, and South America. Her ethnoarchaeological research focuses on how social identities are constituted in vernacular architecture, spatial order, culinary practice, and craft production in rural communities in Cameroon, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Vera Moitinho de Almeida is a postdoctoral researcher, and honorary collaborator at the Quantitative Archaeology Lab, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). She obtained the PhD from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, focusing on technological and functional analysis of archaeological objects, using 3D digital models and reverse engineering processes. She has authored more than 40 publications in the field of 3D applications to research on cultural heritage.

Eduardo G. Neves received his PhD in Archaeology from Indiana University in 2000. He is Professor of Brazilian Archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo, Brazil. He has been working since the 1980s in the Brazilian Amazon and has supervised more than 30 master’s theses and PhD dissertations on Amazonian archaeology. He has published one authored book, two co‐authored books, one co‐edited volume, and more than 100 articles, book chapters, and other essays.

John William Norder is an enrolled member of the Spirit Lake Tribe and received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2003. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University and currently serves as the Director of the Michigan State University Native American Institute. He has conducted fieldwork in the western Great Lakes Region on issues of Indigenous knowledge and cultural and environmental resources management.

Akinwumi (Akin) Ogundiran received his PhD in Archaeological Studies from Boston University in 2000. He is currently Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology, and History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he also serves as Chair of the Africana Studies Department. He has led several interdisciplinary research projects in Nigeria and has been part of archaeological research teams in Ethiopia and the United States. He has published widely, including authoring or editing five books.

Tadhg O’Keeffe completed his PhD in Archaeology in 1991 at University College Dublin. He is now Professor of Archaeology there, having joined its academic staff in 1996. He is a specialist in medieval European architectural history, but he also maintains research interests in landscape archaeology, “post‐medieval” archaeology, urban history, heritage politics, and intangible heritages. His published work includes nine books (two co‐authored) and more than 100 articles in journals and books.

David Orton received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2008. He has subsequently held postdoctoral positions at SUNY Binghamton, Cambridge, and University College London, before taking up his current lectureship in zooarchaeology at the University of York in 2015. He has worked on faunal assemblages from England, Scotland, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Turkey, and has interests ranging from Neolithic farming in the Balkans to (post)medieval fish trade around the Baltic.

Antoni Palomo received his PhD in Prehistoric Archaeology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) in 2012. He has taught in the Department of Prehistory there since 2013, where he now holds the rank of Associate Professor. He studies Neolithic process in the Mediterranean and has conducted fieldwork in the Iberian Peninsula and Syria. He has published eight authored book, two edited books, and 56 articles, 32 book chapters, and other essays.

Megan A. Perry completed her PhD in Anthropology at University of New Mexico in 2002. She has been a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University since 2003, where she is now a Professor. Her research focuses on paleopathology, isotopic analyses, and mortuary practices in first‐century BC to sixth‐century AD Jordan. She is the editor of one book and has authored more than 30 journal articles and book chapters.

Uzma Z. Rizvi received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. She has taught in the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute of Art and Design, Brooklyn, New York, since 2009, where she now holds the rank of Associate Professor. She has conducted fieldwork in Syria, India, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates. She has one authored book in press, and has published three edited books, and more than 40 articles, book chapters, and other essays.

John Robb received a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1995, and is now Professor of European Prehistory at the University of Cambridge. He has published on Central Mediterranean prehistory, prehistoric art, and human skeletal remains.

Stephen W. Silliman received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000. He has taught in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston since 2001, where he now holds the rank of Professor. He has conducted fieldwork in the Northeastern United States, the American West Coast, Bermuda, and Japan. He has published one authored book, two edited books, and more than 40 articles, book chapters, and other essays.

John M. Steinberg received his PhD in Anthropology from UCLA in 1997. He has worked at the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston since 2006. He is interested in economic problems of colonization, both in New England and across the North Atlantic. As a principal or co‐principal investigator, he has received over a million dollars in National Science Foundation funding.

Kathleen Sterling received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. She joined the faculty at Binghamton University in New York in 2009 where she is Associate Professor of Anthropology and an affiliate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is currently co‐director of research at Peyre Blanque, an open‐air Pleistocene site in the French Pyrénées. Her published work addresses learning, landscapes, and intersectional feminisms in the past and present.

Xavier Terradas is currently Research Scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC‐IMF, Barcelona, Spain). He has mainly worked on the study of socioeconomic strategies in the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition as well as its dynamics of change in the western Mediterranean. He specializes in the study of technological innovations and technical skills in prehistory, especially those related to quarrying activities, raw materials sourcing, and stone tool production.

Heather B. Trigg is a research scientist with the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1999. Her research interests include Spanish colonialism in the American Southwest, paleoethnobotany, and environmental archaeology. She is the author of From Household to Empire: Society and Economy in Early Colonial New Mexico, and has also published articles on foodways, demography, and human parasites.

Acknowledgments

This volume, and the project chapters contained therein, could never have happened without the involvement of many others. Space is limited for extensive expressions of gratitude, but this section provides some by the editor himself about the overall volume and includes acknowledgment sections from those chapter authors who included them.

The editor appreciates the assistance of Natasha Leullier Snedeker with copy‐editing and thoughtful comments on his own chapters and with overall encouragement with this book project. He thanks Kelton Sheridan for her initial copy‐editing, Rosemary Morlin for the final copy‐editing work, and Erica Hill for the indexing. He also appreciates that all of the contributors were willing to take up the challenge of writing about their research in such unique and personal ways and were patient with the sometimes heavy editorial intervention to achieve the volume’s objectives.

Chapter 2. The field research discussed in this chapter was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, UCLA’s International Studies and Overseas Program, and several small grants from UCLA and the University of Virginia. My thanks to Peru’s Instituto Nacional de Cultura and the regional directorate in Puno, CARI (Programa Collasuyo), Chip Stanish, and too many colleagues and crew members to list by name.

Chapter 4. We thank Tim Earle and Antonio Gilman for helping us implement the project. E. Paul Durrenberger, a co‐PI for several of the grants, was invaluable in helping refine the project. Over 70 different crew members have helped on the project, and we are grateful to all of them. This work was funded by the US National Science Foundation (BCS‐9908836, ‐0107413, ‐0453892, ‐0731371, and ARC‐0909393) and the Wenner‐Gren Fund for Anthropological Research. This work was done in conjunction with Sigríður Sigurðardóttir of Byggðasafn Skagfirðinga Glaumbæ and Ragnheiður Traustadóttir of the Hólar Research Project. The SASS project operated under permits granted by Þjóðminjasafn Íslands & Fornleifavernd ríkisins.

Chapter 7. The Kuril Biocomplexity Project was supported by the US National Science Foundation (ARC‐0508109, ARC‐1202879) and NICHD research infrastructure grant, R24 HD042828. I thank Stephen Silliman and William Fitzhugh for helpful suggestions on manuscript drafts. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own.

Chapter 8. As always, my sincere thanks to the members of the Lake of the Woods First Nations communities who have shared their time, knowledge, and wisdom over the years. My prayers and thanks go to those ancestors who placed these sacred places on the world for me to learn from and the privileged opportunity to teach others with. Lastly, my deep gratitude to the late C.S. “Paddy” Reid who pioneered community‐engaged research with First Nations communities in Ontario and inspired me to continue to do so.

Chapter 9. Thanks to all participants of the Central Amazon Project and Urucu‐Manaus pipeline survey for their commitment to Amazonian archaeology and their enduring friendship as well. Unfortunately, for matters of space, their names could not all be presented here. The more than 30 master’s theses, PhD dissertations, and reports produced with data from these projects can be found at http://www.arqueotrop.com.br. Thanks also to FAPESP and Petrobras for their funding of these projects and to Stephen Silliman for the invitation to write this chapter and his superb work as editor.

Chapter 11. With thanks to Jim Wilson and the crew at the time of Archaeologix, Brandy George and the Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation, and all the students who have worked with me and others to help shape a “borderlands” archaeology from these sites. Many thanks to all my colleagues and friends who have helped support this research, and a special shout out to Dr. Christopher Watts who has been involved since the beginning and in effect is really a co‐PI on the project. Research support provided by the University of Western Ontario, Anthropology Department, and the Museum of Ontario Archaeology. Core funding provided by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Chapter 12. I wish to acknowledge Dr. Nicholas David for the opportunity to first conduct ethnoarchaeology as a member of the Mandara Archaeological Project. Thanks also to Dr. A.C. D’Andrea with whom I worked in Tigray between 1996 and 2006. The Tigray Pottery Project was generously funded by the Wenner‐Gren Foundation Post‐PhD Grants 7934, 8449, and 8956; the National Geographic Society Committee for Research & Exploration Grant 9065‐12; Killam Enhancement Award; and the University of Calgary. Permission for research was kindly provided by the Authority for Research & Conservation of Cultural Heritage in Addis Ababa, especially Ato Desalegn Abebaw and ARCCH field inspectors Ato Degene Dandena Gulti and Ato Gezahegne Girma. This project was a team effort of the work of Dr. Andrea Freeman, Dr. Temesgen Burka Bortie, Dr. Bula Wayessa, Getachew Nigus Meressa, Michael Soboka Embaye, Temesgen Tadessa, Tedros Girmay, Mulubrhan G/Sellassie, Degol Fissahaye, Daniel G/Kidane, Goitum Fitsom, Zelealem Tesfay G/Tsedik, Diana Harlow and Autumn Whiteway. I especially thank Joanna Casey for making this a great adventure. However, my deepest thanks goes to the female market potters, the smiths, and the farmers who graciously gave their time and knowledge to this project.

Chapter 14. The Upper Osun Archaeological and Historical Project has been funded by the Wenner‐Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; National Endowment for the Humanities; Dumbarton Oaks‐Landscape and Garden Studies; and the Office of the Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina‐Charlotte. I am grateful to these institutions and to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments for granting the permission for the fieldwork in Osun Grove. My appreciation also goes to all the field assistants and research collaborators.

Chapter 15. Stephen Silliman expresses his deepest gratitude to the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation members, councilors, interns, elders, youth, and friends who have made the field school possible all these years. He also thanks the more than 100 students, both graduate and undergraduate, who have participated in the field and laboratory components as hard workers, team players, and politically astute archaeologists‐in‐training. He apologizes that they cannot all be named individually. The project has been supported by the US National Science Foundation (BCS‐0623532), the Wenner‐Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Post‐PhD Grants (7151, 8526), and various units at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Chapter 20. Thanks to Sara DiPasquale, Matt Liebmann, Steve Silliman, Danielle Spurlock, and Dana Thompson Dorsey for careful and kind criticism of earlier drafts of this chapter.

Chapter 21. Lisa LeCount wishes to acknowledge funding from the US National Science Foundation (BCS‐0923747), the National Geographic Society: Committee for Research and Exploration (9279‐13; 9658‐15) and the University of Alabama’s College Academy for Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity (2014‐58), as well as others, for fieldwork at Actuncan.

Chapter 23. I extend my sincere gratitude to my colleagues at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, and Peabody Essex Museum for their support in my research of colonial button molds and for their continued guidance and insight on the topic of colonial dress. As always, any mistakes in this paper are entirely my own.

Chapter 24. We thank Stephen Silliman for inviting us to contribute to this volume and Raquel Piqué for her support and contributions. We thank the Ajuntament de Banyoles and the Centre d’Arqueologia Subaquatica for their support of the work at La Draga, and to the students, researchers, and professionals who have participated in the excavation since the 1990s. All research has been funded by projects HAR2009‐13494‐C02‐01, HAR2009‐13494‐C02‐02, HAR2011‐25826, HAR2012‐38838‐C02‐0, HAR2012‐38838‐C02‐02, HAR2012‐31036, CSD2010‐00034 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Concurrence, 2015ACUP 00191 from Fundació la Caixa, and SGR2014‐1169 from Generalitat de Catalunya. Archaeological excavation has been funded by Departament de Cultura (Generalitat de Catalunya) (2014/100822). The 3D structured light scanner used on this study has been provided by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC‐IMF, Barcelona). This research also benefited from Vera Moitinho’s PhD Grant (2009‐2013) from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal, co‐funded by the European Social Fund.

Chapter 25. Kathleen Sterling would like to thank Meg Conkey and Sébastien Lacombe for their support and feedback for the project described in her chapter, and Robert Bégouën and Jean Clottes for access to collections.

1Engaging Archaeology: An Introduction and a Guide

Stephen W. Silliman

Introduction

This book is about how archaeologists actually do research. Don’t expect the stories to always be clean, pretty, or graceful; but do expect them to be revealing and beneficial. What you are getting here is the real deal, the rare sighting, the “flaws and all” perspective, the backstage pass. The book presents a cadre of mid‐career and senior archaeologists reflecting honestly on major projects in their professional lives that collectively span many regions, periods, and issues. As candid and sometimes gritty reflections, these chapters intentionally diverge from the standard story that one usually encounters in professional publications – elegant research projects devoid of the personal and frequently laid out in a smooth linear sequence of theory‐method‐data‐results‐conclusion. These chapters are about what things worked, or didn’t, in actual archaeological projects. They are about how to engage archaeological research and how to do so in an engaging manner.

Why do the archaeologists featured in this volume want to reveal the often circuitous routes, false starts, bumpy travels, denied funding, and “things they wish they had known” that characterize their projects? Well, some of them probably didn’t and likely preferred to keep such complexities to themselves until I pitched this book idea to them. These “reveals” aren’t for their own edification, as the rough patches and personal takes don’t tend to offer the same glory and intellectual traction as the otherwise cleaned‐up journal articles and successful grant applications do. Rather, they are designed to offer real‐world insights and tips for those ready to embark on projects, whether advanced undergraduates, graduate students, early‐career professionals, and perhaps even veteran researchers looking for a fresh take.

As anyone who has attempted archaeological research – or any research – knows, making it happen in successful and rewarding ways can be a delicate craft and often involves an unpredictable set of events and discoveries that need reining in to create a reasonable story of interpretation. All know the value of “the research design” that sets up the projects, outlines the process, develops expectations, and charts the way; these remain indispensable foundations to archaeological research. Yet, how often do we get to hear how research designs really came about and what archaeologists might have done to correct them mid‐stream? How did theory, method, region, place, material, politics, and circumstance actually play out in a given project? What is it like for these intersections of life and the real world to inform actual archaeological practice? Admittedly, many who have already undertaken archaeological research know how this tends to go, but those thinking about research for the first time or those already finding themselves overwhelmed in a new or even ongoing project might find a little reassurance, a bit of advice, or a reality‐check useful. Welcome to that rough guide.

Archaeological Practice

To conduct research means to draw together a question needing an answer or a problem needing resolution with a conceptual or theoretical framework to give it meaning, a body of literature that informs the issue, a set of methods to gain access (or rather produce) the necessary information, the data themselves, and the analytical links to pull them all together into reasonable interpretations or conclusions. All of these aspects are required in some form for any research, but projects use components at different strengths and have particular entry points.

Equally important, but frequently left out of anything except perhaps lectures or one‐on‐one discussions with students and colleagues in the field or over drinks, are the personal and political dimensions of research – the passions that lead archaeologists to the regions that they love, the materials they enjoy, the questions that inspire them, and the politics that concern them or that they try to avoid. Remarkable published exceptions can be found in the Atalay et al. (2014) volume on activist archaeology, where “engaging archaeology” takes on yet another meaning as “engaged scholarship,” or in the short reflections in the “Special Forum: I Love Archaeology Because…” in the May 2013 issue of The Archaeological Record. Archaeologists are frequently archaeologists because something in the process calls to them or satisfies them in a very personal way, and not because they sought a lucrative career and decided archaeology would do the trick compared to other options like accounting or computer science. We know the flaws in that reasoning! Notably, these passions, politics, and personal aspects are not as secondary to the research process as the overly scientific, aseptic take on them would argue. Doing archaeology, or any kind of intellectual inquiry or research endeavor, is very much a human affair in the present, not just an empirical pursuit of a long‐gone past.

To engage research, archaeologists mobilize theory, method, and data in innumerable configurations to practice their craft, but understanding those requires a sense of where archaeologists draw their inspiration, why they chose a particular approach, how they frame various project components, and whom they hope to impact with the results. As a consequence, routes into archaeological research are numerous. Some archaeologists and their projects are driven by theory, dedicated to finding the best way to engage a cherished or troublesome model, whereas others are grounded in the development and application of methods that can draw out new data. Some thrive on empirical and physical sciences, some are drawn to evolutionary frameworks, and some find their grounding in the social sciences and humanities. Some have a burning question to answer and will seek whatever data or methods they can to address it; others may have a site or a collection that needs study, and they must figure out what they can learn from available materials. Some work in regions that have inspired them for as long as they can remember, some chose areas of the world that could answer their most exciting research questions, and some developed expertise in geographic regions due to the vagaries of their graduate school experiences. In addition, some seek to acknowledge and often impact the politics of the present, whereas some try to focus mainly on a good‐faith rendering of the past.

Similarly, some archaeologists have a real affection for certain kinds of materials (e.g., projectile points, pottery vessels, dirt itself) and can follow them from project to project, and might even have a hobby built around them such as flintknapping or pottery making, while others delve into whatever materials are necessary to produce the desired outcome and might require the incorporation of specialists. Some projects span many years and multiple sites, whereas others may be completed in relatively short order and concern only one site or even only one set of materials (e.g., animal bones, ceramic sherds, lithic objects) recently excavated or long‐held in a collection. Some projects lend themselves to multiple articles and a book or two, others might generate just enough information for a thesis or an article, and others still might produce a technical report on file in a state archive read mainly by the occasional professional. And, finally, some projects require time in the field with extensive survey or excavation, but others are entirely based in laboratories or museum collections.

All of these are valid ways to practice archaeology. Some may have heard the adage from Sir Mortimer Wheeler (1954: 1): “There is no one right way of digging but there are many wrong ways.” The contributions to this book make this point poignantly (and also demonstrate that archaeology is way more than just digging), but thankfully by representing the former rather than the latter half of that maxim. In addition, these various entry points into archaeology should put to rest any concerns that a recent arrival to the joys of archaeology might feel. Are the best archaeologists those who have known their “calling” since they were five years old and enjoyed digging in a sandbox for their lost toys? Are the most successful archaeologists those who love everything about the geographic region in which they work and have felt that affinity for most of their lives? The answer to both of these is no, contrary to what some personal statements written for graduate school applications might lead you to believe. It is easy to look back in our childhoods to find something to presage our future directions because it is even easier to not include in that story all of the things that lead us nowhere close to our careers. You may have stacked up blocks as a child, but didn’t become an engineer, and you likely wrote on someone’s wall with a colored pencil but never became an artist.

How someone reaches archaeology as an educational or professional pursuit remains highly significant, especially for the personal connections and sustainable ambitions, but the time of arrival is not as important as what one does with it upon arrival. The key is to produce high‐quality research, both in the process and in the product, and to make that research useful to other archaeologists, descendent communities, the general public, and/or students trying to make their way to becoming archaeologists themselves. This book explores that process with a bit of flair.

Finding and Filling a Gap

For those wanting to understand how archaeologists conduct research and practice their craft and especially for those ready to attempt it themselves in a senior project, a master’s thesis, a PhD dissertation, a major grant proposal, a bid for a contract, or even a post‐PhD major new project, few real guides exist. One can read a host of textbooks or more advanced handbooks on research methods to gain a sense of how the techniques work – survey methods, radiocarbon dating, soil analysis, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), petrography, statistics – and when one might apply them (e.g., Banning 2007; Maschner and Chippindale 2005; Sutton and Arkush 2014; see also the “Manuals in Archaeological Method, Theory, and Technique” now published by Springer). Similarly, one can consult a variety of highly‐recommended, quality treatments of theory in archaeology and how it is developed and applied (e.g. Bentley, Maschner, and Chippindeale 2009; Cipolla and Harris 2017; Johnson 2010; Praetzellis 2015). These kinds of resources remain indispensable when teaching students (and often reminding ourselves) about method and theory. However, where does a reader, especially an eager student, turn to see how archaeologists link together methods, theories, practices, and passions in a project?

Of course, one can read any major research article and see the cleaned‐up narrative of how an idea led to a method, which led to some data that could then feed back to the original issue, but how many of those articles provide insight into how that project really worked … or didn’t? Or how many publications talk about how one actually formulated a doable project from the very beginning? Admittedly, major monographs often, but certainly not consistently, have the page space and some of the honesty necessary to recount how a research endeavor came together, but these are widely dispersed, often costly, and not packaged well for conveying take‐away messages about the research process. Some notable, affordable, and very readable exceptions do exist, though (Newman 2014; Spector 1993).

Otherwise, only two published resources have come close to offering the full picture of research process. First, the only offering similar to what the current volume attempts is Archaeology: Original Readings in Method and Practice commissioned by Peregrine et al. (2002) at the turn of the millennium. This is still an invaluable resource for undergraduates relatively new to the discipline trying to learn about theories, methods, and issues, but the very expensive book only offers seven case studies and hasn’t been updated since the original publication. Second, undergraduate and casual readers could refer to books in the now‐defunct (as of 2005) but useful “Case Studies in Archaeology” series, edited by Jeffrey Quilter (e.g., Hayden 1997; Sheets 2005). These offered some important and readable insights, but a student in an archaeology course could never be assigned more than one, or maybe two, of these to provide an example of research process. These case studies also require a bit of commitment to specific projects for even a short book‐length treatment. In the end, though, both of these teaching resources outlined here were written more for a relatively novice undergraduate audience and likely haven’t served graduate students or even advanced undergraduates when they begin to think about how to do a project of their own.

I have become acutely aware of this missing piece of the archaeological puzzle after almost two decades of teaching and advising undergraduate and graduate students. I have regularly felt disappointed that I couldn’t find readings to cover the research process, from inspiration to development through implementation to completion. In the undergraduate archaeological method and theory course I offer, it has been easy enough to teach students about methods for finding, excavating, dating, and analyzing sites and about the historical development of theory to interpret them, but I have wanted something else to anchor those components in real projects by real archaeologists. In addition, I craved these in a language that was accessible, revelatory, and directed not at peers who evaluate published research but rather at the next generation of archaeologists who are trying to figure out where to start and what to do. Original research articles can do the former, but rarely the latter. Similarly, after many years of assisting with and evaluating master’s thesis proposals, I began to realize that the same gap in undergraduate education exists in graduate education as well, especially at that moment when students need a project of their own.

Students, in particular, need to hear more about how research was inspired, conceptualized, implemented, altered, analyzed, revised, and disseminated in cases that may mirror some of their own challenges and potentials. One of the biggest difficulties for both advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students is figuring out how a project even begins, much less how it is carried out and ultimately ends. Some students recognize major concepts or issues that they would like to study, but cannot quite grasp the ways that methods and data might be mobilized to address them. In other words, they can “talk the talk” with the right references and buzzwords, but they often assume that data will just fall into place once they start a laboratory or field project. Other students have a particular artifact category such as ceramics, stone tools, or plant remains, or a specific analytical technique like GIS (Geographic Information Systems), remote sensing, or chemistry that they want to engage, but sometimes need guidance in finding the larger research issue in which to situate those. They tend to think that once they have examined artifacts or quantitative data, they can just inductively build up an interpretation without much theoretical accountability or, worse, that they need not (or cannot) aim for the “bigger questions.” Finally, some students are handed a collection from their advisor, or boss in a cultural resource management firm or government agency, or local museum curator to pursue as a project, and they struggle with how to develop a viable research question for the materials. How much do they need to understand the collection to formulate that question, and how much happens along the way versus at the outset? They often don’t realize that advanced researchers also confront these questions when they inherit collections or when data are generated in contract projects that weren’t able to follow an intellectual lead or grand question.

A Guide to Engaging Archaeological Research

This book aims to fill these gaps in a creative and useful way. It uses the tried‐and‐true case study approach to ground research reflections in real, not hypothetical, projects. In addition, it offers readers those adventures in the words of the ones who made them happen, spanning 25 different chapters, concisely and engagingly written, that can appeal to a wide range of reader, student, and instructor interests. These chapters cannot be found anywhere else, and the authors produced them to meet the specific objectives of this volume – to teach and inform, and to provide both aspirational projects as well as cautionary tales. No chapter is a methods‐only or a theory‐only contribution; these kinds of treatments are available elsewhere and would not serve the purpose here of showing readers how archaeologists themselves (not archaeology broadly speaking) blend, use, or are inspired by these in actual projects. In addition, unlike the case study volumes noted above, no chapter provides a “go‐to” resource for final results or grand contributions of the projects covered. Those are available in other places and easily found in the chapter references. However, to facilitate that accompaniment, each chapter highlights one key already‐published reading as a “pairing” to help readers develop a robust context for understanding the choices, challenges, and considerations in those projects and how the research stories provided in this book result in a professional article, book chapter, or book itself.

Authors had quite a bit of freedom to represent their personal paths through research projects, so each chapter has a unique flow, voice, and set of circumstances and project components. However, each author had to address, in one way or the other, seven key issues to provide some consistency, even if they didn’t follow this order or provide a series of explicit headings other than the “project summary” that opens each chapter. These include:

Short biographical account

. This contextualizes the researcher in terms of interests, background, and aspirations. Some chapters foreground this personal view, while others weave it in more subtly.

Source of project

. The chapters address whether the associated project was a graduate thesis, a long‐term interest, a request from a community, a cultural resource management (CRM) project, a specialist contract, an unexpected and somewhat accidental opportunity, an inherited collection, a collaborative effort, a response to other work in the literature, or other type.

Theoretical framework