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THE EMERGENCE OF IDENTITY AND SOCIETY


The first indications of personal identity so far recognizable in the archaeological record are the beads and
personal adornments dating from the Paleolithic
period. These become much more numerous in the
Upper Paleolithic with the emergence of Homo sapiens
and are particularly evident in burials. There can be
little doubt that a well-defined personal identity is a
general feature of our species, although it is not always
easy to see this from the surviving material remains.
With the onset of sedentism, however, the use of
personal adornments becomes much more marked.
Recent studies have documented the striking increase
in evidence for body ornament in Western Asia at the
onset of the Neolithic, or indeed rather earlier, from the
Natufian period onward.
It is interesting that this upsurge in the use of purely
personal markers occurs at the same time as two other
very important social indicators: the development of
ritual activity and the construction of monumental
buildings. The encircling wall at Pre-Pottery Neolithic
Jericho was clearly intended to regulate inter-group
relations. But it has been effectively argued that at
intra-group level the constructional activity founded
and regulated new types of socio-economic relations.
The new forms of engagement with the material world
were instrumental in the formation of social relationships. Indications of new categories of self-identity in
personal adornments thus appear at the same time as
new intra-group relationships were being formed.
Also in Western Asia at this time new ideologies
were being forged through the practice of new rituals.
Marc Verhoeven has developed the concept of framing,
defined as the way in which people and/or activities
and/or objects are set off from others for ritual, nondomestic purposes. "A difference is being made, a
special moment is constructed." Framing is mainly
achieved by creating a special place and time, and by
the use Df uncommon objects. Burials are among the
most obvious framed and ritual contexts.
Social identities and social groups come into being
through the interactions between individuals in the
performance of shared activities, whether communal
(as in the construction of public buildings) or ritual,
or both. The activities often have what might be
termed an ideational role as well as a functional one,
and the cognitive aspect is often the counterpart of the
practical. The development of new cognitive categories
(see Chapter 10) comes about with the new social relationships.
Comparable processes are at work in the formation
of identities and of social relationships at later periods
also. What goes for Pre-pottery Neolithic Jericho is
equally relevant to Greece at the transition from the
Bronze to the Iron Age. In his discussion of "objects
with attitude" from a rich burial in the ritual or cult
building at Lefkandi in Euboia, Greece, James Whitley
is in effect describing a case of "framing" through the
burial of special objects in a very special context. Here

personal possessions, rituals, and a conspicuous public


building again come together in the process of forming
new individual and group identities which established
the basis for the societies of Archaic Greece.
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However, some preliminary analysis, particularly sorting and classification Of the artifacts, will be made in
the field during the course of the excavation.
Processing and Classification
Like excavation itself, the processing of excavated
materials in the field laboratory is a specialized activity
that demands careful planning and organization. For
example, no archaeologist should undertake the excavation ofa wet site without having on hand team members expert in the conservation of waterlogged wood,
and facilities for coping with such material. The reader
is referred for further guidance to the many manuals
now available that deal with conservation problems
confrontingarchaeo]ogists.
There are, however, two aspects of field laboratory
procedure that should be discussed briefly here. The
first concerns the cleaning of artifacts; the second, artifact classification. In both cases we would stress the
need for the archaeologist always to consider in
advance what kinds of questions the newly excavated
material might be able to answer. Thorough cleaning
of artifacts, for example, is a traditional part of excavations worldwide. But many of the new scientific techniques discussed in Part II make it quite evident that
artifacts should not necessarily be cleaned thoroughly
before a specialist has had a chance to study them. For
instance, we now know that food residues are often
preserved in pots and possible blood residues on stone
tools (Chapter 7). The chances of such preservation
need to be assessed before evidence is destroyed.
Nevertheless most artifacts eventually have to be
cleaned to some degree if they are to be sorted and classified. Initial sorting is into broad categories such as
stone tools, pottery, and metal objects. These categories are then subdivided or classified, so as to create
more manageable groups that can later be analyzed.
Classification is commonly done on the basis of three
kinds of characteristics or attributes:
I surface attributes (including decoration and color);
2 shape attributes (dimensions as well as shape
itself);
3 technological attributes (primarily raw material).
Artifacts found to share similar attributes are grouped
hence the term typology,
together into artifact types
which simply refers 10 the creation of such types.
Tvpology dominated archaeological thinking until
the 1950s, and still plays an important role. The reason
for this is straightforward- Artifacts make up a large
part of the archaeological record. and typology helps
archaeologists create order in this mass of evidence. As
we saw Chapter I , C. J. Thomsen demonstrated early
on that artifacts could be ordered in a Three Age
System or sequence of stone, bronze, and iron. This
discovery underlies the continuing use of typology as a

method of dating
of measuring the passage of time
(Chapter4). Typology has also been used as a means Of
defining archaeological entities at a particular moment
in time. Groups of artifact (and building) types at a particular time and place are termed assemblages. and
groups of assemblages have been taken to define
archaeological cultures. These definitions are also
long established, having first been systematically
defined by Gordon Childe in 1929 when he stated that
"We find certain types of remains
pots. implements,
ornaments, burial rites, and house forms constantly
recurring together. Such a complex of associated traits
we shall term a 'cultural group' or just a 'culture'. We
assume that such a complex is the material expression
of what today would be called a 'people'
As we shall see in Part II, the difficulty comes when
one tries to translate this terminology into human
terms and to relate an archaeological culture with an
actual group of people in the past.
This brings us back to the purpose of classification.
Types, assemblages. and cultures are all artificial constructs designed to put order into disordered evidence.
The trap that former generations of scholars fell into
was to allow these constructs to determine the way
they thought about the past, rather than using them
merely as one means of giving shape to the evidence.
We now recognize more clearly that different classifications are needed for the different kinds of questions
we want to ask. A student oi ceramic technology
would base a classification on variations in raw material and methods Of manufacture. whereas a scholar
studying the various functions of pottery for storage,
cooking etc. might classify the vessels. according to
shape and size. Our ability to construct and make good
use of new classifications has been immeasurably
enhanced by computers. which allow archaeologists to
compare the association of different attributes on hundreds of objects at once,
In a salvage project in the late 1980s involving the
survey, testing, and excavation of some 500 sites along
the 2250-km (1400-mile) route of a pipeline from California to Texas
Fred Plog, David L Carlson, and their
associates developed a computerized system using a
video camera for automatic recording of different
attributes Df artifacts. Four to six people could process
1000 2000 artifacts a day, some 10 times quicker than
normal methods. The standardization of recording
methods allows rapid and highly accurate comparisons to be made between different artifact types.
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Archaeology is partly the discovery of the treasures of
the past, partly the meticulous work of the scientific
analyst, partly the exercise of the creative imagination- It is toiling in the sun on an excavation in the
deserts of Central Asia, it is working with living Inuit
in the snows Oi Alaska. It is diving down to Spanish
vuecks the coast of Florida, and it is investigating
the sewers of Roman York. But it is also the painstaking task of interpretation so that we come to under-

stand what these things mean for the human storyAnd it is the conservation of the world's cultural heritage
against looting and against careless destruction.
Archaeology, then, is both a physical activity out in
the field, and an intellectual pursuit in the study or
laboratory. That is part of its great attraction. The rich
mixture of danger and detective work has also made it
the perfect vehicle for fiction writers and film-makers,
from Agatha Christie with Murder in Mesopotamia to
Steven Spielberg with Indiana Jones, However far
from reality such portrayals may be, they capture the
essential truth that archaeology is an exciting quest
the quest for knowledge about ourselves and our past.
But how does archaeology relate to disciplines such
as anthropology and history that are also concerned
with the human story? Is archaeology itself a science?
And what -are the responsibilities of the archaeologist
in today's world, where the past is manipulated for
political ends and "ethnic cleansing" is accompanied
by the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage?
Archaeology as Anthropology
Anthropology at its broadest is the study of humanity
our physical characteristics as animals, and our
unique non-biological characteristics that We call culcure. Culture in this sense includes what the anthropologist Edward Tylor usefully summarized in 1871 as
"knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any
other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society." Anthropologists also use the term
culture in a more restricted sense when they refer to
the culture of a particular society, meaning the nonbiological characteristics unique to that society which
distinguish it from other societies. (An "archaeological
culture" has a specific and somewhat different meaning, as explained in Chapter 3.) Anthropology is thus a
so broad that it is generally broken
broad discipline
down into three smaller disciplines: biological anthropology, cultural anthropology. and archaeology.
Biological anthropology. or physical anthropology
as it used to be called, concerns the study of human
biological or physical characteristics and how they
evolved.
Cultural anthropology
or social anthropology
analyzes human culture and society, Two of its
branches are ethnography (the study at first hand of
individual living cultures) and ethnology (which sets
out to compare cultures using ethnographic evidence
to derive general principles about human society).
Archaeology is the "past tense of cultural anthropology." Whereas cultural anthropologists will often
base their conclusions on the experience Of actually
living within contemporary communities, archaeologists study past humans and societies primarily
through their material remains
the buildings, tools,
and other artifacts that constitute what is known as
the material culture left over from former societies.
Nevertheless, one of the most challenging tasks for
the archaeologist today is to know how to interpret
material culture in human terms. How were those pots

used? Why are some dwellings round and others


square? Here the methods of archaeology and ethnography overlap. Archaeologists in recent decades have
developed ethnoarchaeology, where like ethnographers they live among contemporary communities,
but with the specific purpose of understanding how
such societies use material culture
how they make
their tools and weapons, why they build their settlements where they do, and so on.
Moreover, archaeology has an active role to play in
the field of conservation. Heritage studies constitute a
developing field, where it is realized that the world's
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The Ecological Approach
One of the most influential new thinkers in North
America was the anthropologist Julian Steward
(1902 1972). Like Childe he was interested in explaining cultural change, but he brought to the question an
anthropologist's understanding of how living cultures
wock. Moreover he highlighted the fact that cultures
do not interact simply with one another but with the
environment as well. The study of ways in which
adaptation to the environment could cause cultural
change Steward christened "cultural ecology." Perhaps
the most direct archaeological impact of these ideas
can be seen in the work of Gordon Willey
(1913 2002). one of Steward's graduate associates,
who carried out a pioneering investigation in the Vir
Valley, Peru, in the late 1940s. This study of 1500 years
of pre-Columbian occupation involved a combination
of observations from detailed maps and aerial photographs (see box, pp. 84 85), survey at ground level,
and excavation and surface potsherd collection to
establish dates for the hundreds of prehistoric sites
identified. Willey then plotted the geographical distribution of these sites in the valley at different periods
one of the first settlement pattern studies in archaeology (see Chapters 3 and 5)
and set them against the
changing local environment.
Quite independently of Steward, however, the
British archaeologist Grahame Clark (1907 1995)
developed an ecological approach with even more
direct relevance for archaeological fieldwork. Breaking
away from the artifact-dominated culture-historical
approach of his contemporaries, he argued that by
studying how human populations adapted to their
environments we can understand many aspects of
ancient society. Collaboration with new kinds of specialists was essential: specialists who could identify
animal bones or plant remains in the archaeological
record to help build up a picture not only of what prehistoric environments were like, but what foods prehistoric peoples ate. Clark's landmark excavation at
Star Carr in northeast Britain in the early 1950s demonstrated just how much information could be gleaned
from what appeared to be an unpromising site without
stone structures and dating to just after the end of the
Ice Age- Careful environmental analysis and recovery
Oj organic remains showed that this had been a camp

on the edge of a lake, where people had hunted red


deer and eaten a wide variety of wild plant foods. Nor
need the insights from an ecological approach be confined to individual sites or groups of sites: in a remarkable work of synthesis Prehistoric Europe: the
Economic Basis (1952), Clark provided a panoramic
view of the varying human adaptations to the European landscape over thousands of years.
Out of this early ecological research has grown the
whole field of environmental and dietary reconstruction discussed in Chapters 6 and 7.
470
What Are We Trying to Explain?
Many of the current debates about archaeological
explanation fail to notice that different workers are
explaining different things. Pronouncements about
valid methods frequently appear contradictory; yet the
contradiction may disappear when we realize the vast
differences between the individual cases. For instance,
an archaeologist seeking to explain the distribution of
humankind during the last Ice Age, using timescales
that are accurate only to within a few thousand years,
will often lean more heavily on climatic and vegetalional factors than on other aspects of community
affairs. Such explanations at first sight lay themselves
that
open to charges of "ecological determinism"
changes in the environment automatically determine
changes. in human society. Certainly, a research
worker studying the designs on glazed tile floors of the
Middle Ages would propose explanations far removed
from the world of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers,
First, therefore, let us distinguish between some of
the different things we may be trying to explain: they
may. in fact, require different kinds of explanation.
Explaining Specific Conditions of Burial and Preservation. Our concern with a particular find or site may
be with the essentially natural processes that have
resulted in burial and preservation. These are the kind
of processes that the American archaeologist Michael
Schiffer has called "N-transforms" (i.e. the work of natural processes) to distinguish them from "C-transforms" (the work of culturally determined processes
resulting from human actions) (see Chapter 2). The
types Of question one might be trying to answer are;
How did these animal bones come to be buried with
those tools? Why are these textiles so well preserved?
Explaining a Specific Event. Our concern may be to
explain why a specific event took place. The philosopher of history R.G. Collingwood used to ask, "Why
did Caesar cross the Rubicon?" Archaeology is less
often concerned with events in the lives of named individuals, but it will still ask such specific questions as,
'*What caused the Classic Maya collapse?" or "Why
was the Second City at Troy destroyed when it was?"
And the answer may well involve the actions and
thoughts of individuals, although these are likely to be
generic individuals, not those whom we can name or
identify from the archaeological record as separate and
recognizable people.

Explaining a Specific Panern of Events. Often, the


archaeologist perceives some pattern in the archaeological record, and it is this pattern rather than a singles
specific occurrence that seems to require explanation.
A good example is offered by the "elm decline" in Neolithic Europe. Pollen sequences in much of northern
Europe show that the percentage of elm pollen
declined markedly, although the absolute date for the
decline is not the same in each area. Why was this? Is
the explanation climatic change? Did some pest attack
the trees? Or was there a change in the pattern of
exploitation by humans? The answer may not yet be
clear: what is clear is that there is a pattern in need of
explanation, (For a possible explanation of the elm
decline. refer to Chapter 6.)
Explaining a Class of Events. Generalization, as We
shall see, is still rare in archaeology. Yet some of the
most interesting explanations of change concern not
just one event or pattern of events, but a whole, more
general class of events. For instance, we might regard
the development of food production in the Near East at
the end of the last Ice Age as constituting a pattern of
change over a wide area. We might say the same of the
development of food production in Mesoamerica.
When we compare the two, and then bring into consideration the inception of food production in China and
in New Guinea, and then in sub-Saharan Africa, we are
dealing with phenomena that may be unconnected,
Yet it is remarkable that food production Seems to have
begun in all these areas within a relatively short timespan in the post-Pleistocene period. Why? Here, then,
is a class of events that demands an explanation. (For
one proposed explanation, see box, p. 478.)
Another example is the emergence of state societies
of cities and "civilization"
in different parts of the
world, when some of these areas were apparently not
in significant contact with each other. How do we
explain such a phenomenon?
The issue of the rise of complex society is one of
the most actively debated in contemporary -archaeology and is discussed further below. Another example.
the phenomenon of system collapse in early state societies, is likewise looked at in some detail later in the
chapter,
Explaining a Process. In some cases, the problem is
not to explain a given event or pattern or even a class oi
events. Instead, insight may be sought into processes
at work in society of a continuous and long-enduring
nature. The phenomenon of the intensification of agricultural production may be of this kind, or the development of ranked society. These processes may be
seen as something common to large parts of humankind, at least under certain conditions. To explain such
471
processes may by no means be an easy task, but their
understanding must be one of the essential goals of
archaeological and anthropological research.
There are many different kinds of explanation on
offer. Some are more suitable for one of these types of

problem than for others. This needs bearing in mind,


MIGRATIONIST AND DIFFUSIONIST EXPLANATIONS
The New .Archaeology made the shortcomings of traditional archaeological explanations much more apparent. These shortcomings can be made clearer in an
example of the traditional method
the appearance of
a new kind of pottery in a given area and period, the
pottery being distinguished by shapes not previously
recognized and by new decorative motifs. The traditional approach. in its own way a systematic one, will
very properly require a closer definition of this pottery
style in space and time. The archaeologist will be
expected to draw a distribution map of its occurrence,
and also to establish its place in the stratigraphic
sequence at the sites where it occurs. The next step is
to assign it to its place within an archaeological culture. defined (following Gordon Childe) as a "constantly recurring assemblage of artifacts." The pottery
may itself be one of its most conspicuous features, but
there will be others with which it is associated.
Using the traditional approach, it is argued that each
archaeological culture is the manifestation in material
terms of a specific people that is, a well-defined ethnic
group. detectable by the archaeologist by the method
just outlined. This is an ethnic classification, but of
course the "people," being prehistoric, have to be given
an arbitrary name. Usually, they will be named after
the place where the pottery was first recognized (e.g.
the Mimbres people in the American Southwest or the
Windmill Hill people in Neolithic Britain), or sometimes after the pottery itself (e.g. the Beaker Folk).
Next it is usual to see if it is possible to think in terms
Of a folk migration to explain the changes observed.
Can we locate a convenient homeland for this group of
people? Careful study of the ceramic assemblages in
adjoining lands may suggest such a homeland. and
perhaps even a migration route.
Alternatively, if the migration argument does not
seem to work, a fourth approach iS to look for specific
features Of the cultural assemblage that have parallels
in more distant lands. If the whole assemblage cannot
be ascribed to an external source, there may be specific
jeatures of it that can. Links may be found with more
civilized lands. If such "parallels" can be discovered,
the traditionalist would argue that these Were the
points of origin. of departure as it were, for the features
in our assemblage, and were transmitted to it by a process of cultural diffusion. Indeed. before the advent of
radiocarbon dating. these parallels could also be used
to date the pottery finds in our hypothetical example,
because the features and traits lying closer to the heart
lands of civilization would almost certainly already be
dated through comparison with the historical chronology of that civilization, The occurrences of these traits
may offer a chronological horizon, which is of great
use in dating the culture,
it would be easy to find many actual examples Of
such explanations. For instance. in the New World, the
very striking developments in architecture and other
crafts in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and with it

Mesa Verde in Colorado. have been explained by


comparisons of precisely this kind With the more
"advanced" civilizations of Mexico to the south- Similarly, for a long time archaeologists in what is now
Zimbabwe attempted misguidedly to explain the great
stone monuments at the site of Great Zimbabwe in this
way. by saying they were built by foreigners. not by
the indigenous Shona people (see box overleaf)
Traditional explanations rest, however, on assumplions that are easily challenged today. First. there is the
notion among traditionalists that archaeological "cub
turee can somehow represent real entities rather than
merely the classificatory terms devised for the convenience of the scholar. Second is the view that ethnic
units or "peoples" can be recognized from the archaeological record by equation with these notional cultures. It isin fact clear that ethnic groups do not always
stand out clearly in archaeological remains (the point
is discussed further in the box, Ancient Ethnicity and
Innguage, p. 193). Third, it is assumed that when
resemblances are noted between the cultural assemblages of one area and another, this can be most readily explained as the result of a migration of people. Of
course, migrations did indeed occur (see below). but
they are not so easy to document archaeologically as
has often been supposed.
Finally, there iS the principle of explanation through
the diffusion of culture. Today, it is felt that this explanation has sometimes been overplayed. and nearly
always oversimplified. For although contact between
areas, not least through trade, can be of great significance for the developments in each area, the effects of
this contact have to be considered in detail: explanation simply in terms of diffusion is not enough.
473
Nevertheless it is worth emphasizing that migrations
did take place in the past, and on rare occasions this
can be documented archaeologically. The colonization
of the Polynesian islands in the Pacific offers one
especially pottery with
example. A complex of finds
incised decoration - known as the Lapita culture provides a record of the rapid movement of islanders eastward across a vast uninhabited area, from the northern
New Guinea region to as far as Samoa, between 1600
and 1000 BC (see overleaf). Also, innovations are frequently made in one place and adopted in neighboring
areas, and it is still perfectly proper to speak of the
mechanism as one of diffusion (see illustration of the
origins of the Roman alphabet overleaf).
THE PROCESSUAL APPROACH
The processual approach attempts to isolate and study
the different processes at work within a society, and
between societies, placing emphasis on relations with
the environment, on subsistence and the economy, on
social relations within the society, on the impact which
the prevailing ideology and belief system have on these
things, and on the effects of the interactions taking
place between the different social units.
In 1967, Kent Flannery summed up the processual

approach to change as follows:


Members of the process school view human behavior as a point of overlap (or "articulation") between
a vast number of systems each of which encompasses both cultural and non-cultural phenomena
often much more of the latter. An Indian group, for
example, may participate in a system in which
maize is grown on a river floodplain that is slowly
being eroded, causing the zone of the best farmland
to move upstream. Simultaneously it may participate in a system involving a wild rabbit population
whose density fluctuates in a 10-year cycle because
of predators or disease. It may also participate in a
system of exchange with an Indian group occupying
a different kind of area from which it receives subsistence products at certain predetermined times of
the year, and so on. All these systems compete for
the time and energy of the individual Indian; the
maintenance of his way of life depends on an equilibrium among systems. Culture change comes
about through minor variations in one or more
systems which grow, displace or reinforce others
and reach equilibrium on a different plane.
The strategy of the process school is therefore
to isolate each system and study it as a separate
variable. The ultimate goal of course is a reconstruc(ion of the entire pattern of articulation, along with
all related systems, but such complex analysis has
so far proved beyond the powers of the process theorists. (Flannery 1967, 120.)
This statement moves at once into the language of
systems thinking, discussed in a later section. But it is
not always necessary to use systems language in this
context. Moreover. Flannery places great emphasis
on what he terms "nonhere on the environment
cultural phenomena." Some critics of the New Archaeology in its early days felt that too much emphasis was
placed on the economy. especially subsistence, and not
enough on other aspects of human experience. including the social and the cognitive. But that does not
diminish the force of what processual archaeology at
once achieved and has retained: the focus on the analysiS of the working of different aspects of societies, and
the study of how these fit together to help explain the
development through time of the society as a whole.
Another important point had already been made in
1958, before the New Archaeology had formally begun
at all. Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips wrote then:
"In the context of archaeology, processual interpretation is the study of the nature of what is vaguely
referred to as the culture-historical process. Practically
speaking it implies an attempt to discover regularities
in the relationships given by the methods of culturehistorical integration." (Willey and Phillips 1958.
5 6.) In other words, explanation involves some
element of generalization, and the discovery of "regularities. "
As we shall see in the next section, much discussion
today concerns the role of generalization in explanation, and how far the historical events we are analyz-

ing were unique and, therefore, cannot be considered


as general instances of any underlying process at all.
514
Social Developments in the Later
Formative (850 BC AD 100)
The research designs for the two long-term projects initiated by Kent Flannery on the one hand and Richard
Blanton on the other had as their ultimate joint goal the
identification of the processes leading to the rise of
societies with hereditary ranking and to the evolution
of the Zapotec state.
Richard Blanton, Stephen Kowalewski, Gary Feinman, and their associates conducted intensive, valley.
wide settlement surveys using the survey methods
originally pioneered in the Valley of Mexico, and then
drew up settlement maps for successive phases. They
also carried out a very detailed survey of the major site
of Monte Albn. This, it turned out, had been a new
foundation sometime around 500 BC. and the site had
at once become the principal center in the region.
Meanwhile, the excavations by Flannery and his associates already mentioned, at no fewer than nine village
sites, provided evidence of the development of houses,
storage pits, activity areas, burials, and other features
throughout the Formative period. Subsistence was
again a special focus of study through work with
charred seeds, animal bones, pollen remains, and site
catchment analysis.
Social organization was investigated by comparing
residences from successive periods. by studying burials, and by considering public buildings in order to
document the growth of various Zapotec state institutions out of the more generalized institutions of earlier
times. Early Zapotec hieroglyphic writing was an
important focus of study. And design element studies
00 pottery, undertaken by Stephen Plog, suggested
that as complex regional networks of sites developed,
certain groups of hamlets shared the services of a local
civic-ceremonial center.
Already in the Early Formative period, as noted
above, the site of San Jos Mogote had grown to preeminence in the valley. It was, however, in the succeeding Middle Formative period (850 500 gc) that a
three-tier settlement hierarchy was observed through
site survey. The site hierarchy was identified by size,
and there are no clear indications of administrative
functions. But the ceremonial functions are much
clearer. San Jos Mogote reached its peak development
as a chiefly center, a focus for some 20 villages, with a
total population of perhaps 1400 persons. It boasted an
acropolis of public buildings on a modified natural hill.
An important find, from Monument 3, was a carved
slab showing a sprawled human figure (see illus.
above).
The carved slab is one of those discoveries which
carries wide implications. For it anticipates the 300 or
more stone slabs carved with human figures that were
found at Monte Albn in the succeeding phase the socalled danzantes, now interpreted as depicting slain

captives. To find a precursor at San Jos Mogote before


500 BC is therefore of particular interest. In addition it
may be taken to imply the sacrifice of captives at this
early time. Between the feet of the San Jos figure
are carved signs that may be interpreted as giving the
date or name-day "One Earthquake." This indicates
that the 260-day calendar was already in operation at
this time.
Monte Albn. The major site of Monte Albn was
founded around 500 BC on a mountain in the "no man's
land" between different arms of the valley. Monte
Albn seems to have been founded by a confederacy
composed of San Jos Mogote and other sites of the
northern and central valley. However, they were
not joined by the rival center of Tilcajete in the southern valley, which fortified itself within walls. Work
done by Charles Spencer and Elsa Redmond shows
that Monte Albn attacked Tilcajete at least twice,
defeating it around 20 BC and incorporating it into a
Zapotec state.
By the time of Monte Albn phase II (200 BC AD 100) ,
the evidence for the existence of the Zapotec state is
clear. Monte Albn had become a city with rulers
living in palaces. Temples staffed with priests were to
be found both here and at secondary and tertiary centers. Ceremonial inscriptions with multiple columns of
texts appeared on buildings. These have been interpreted as listing the more than 40 places subjugated by
Monte Albn.
This view of ihe emergence of the state throws the
spotlight on the earlier phase I at Monte Albn, from
500 to 200 BC. But unfortunately at Monte Albn itself
the evidence is not altogether clear. It can, however, be
established that the site was a large one
by the end of
phase I it was the home of some 10,000 20,000 people.
The 300 danzante slabs belong to this phase. Fortunately the evidence from Monte Albin can be supplemented by indications from contemporary secondary
centers, such as San Jos Mogote.
Conclusion
The key to this analysis of the emergence of state society in the valley of Oaxaca has been a sound chronology, based in the first instance on a study of successive
pottery styles. Radiocarbon dates later provided an
absolute chronology. The successive phases of settlement growth could then be studied.
One component in the success of the Oaxaca projects
was the use of intensive field survey for settlements. In
the end a complete survey of the valley was preferred
to any sampling strategy. The second component was
the ecological approach, most crucial for the earlier
periods when agriculture was developing, but important also in later phases, when systems of intensification such as irrigation were introduced. The emphasis
on social organization, using evidence from settlement hierarchy, differences in residences within settlements, and from burials, was a key feature. So too was
modern cognitive-processual archaeology and the
emphasis on religion and symbolic systems. This is
brought out by the books by Kent Flannery and Joyce

Marcus and their colleagues: The Cloud People (1983)


and Zapotec Civilization (1996), which also exemplify
their commitment to the full and accessible publication
of their research- The Oaxaca projects are thus of great
interest for their methods as well as their results.
................................................................................
...................
Chapter 19
Management of the
Past
AII archaeological excavation is destruction, the destruction of a finite
resource. But, though archaeologists themselves have destroyed thousands of sites in their research, far more damage has resulted from looting,
treasure hunting, and modern agricultural and industrial activity (Fowler,
1982; Schiffer and Gumerman, 1977; King and others, 1977). In this chapter we look at ways in which archaeologists have sought to halt the destrue
tion of sites by legislative means and at the practical problems of managing
cultural resources. *
The inexorable destruction of archaeological sites has accelerated rapidly since the 1960s. Deep plowing, freeway construction, water control
schemes, strip mining, and unprecedented urban development have all
played havoc with the archaeological record. In many areas the situation
has reached crisis proportions. It is estimated that less than 5 percent of
the 1850s archaeological resource base in Los Angeles County is still undisturbed. Charles McGimsey estimated in 1972 that at least 25 percent of
the sites that existed in Arkansas in 1750 had been destroyed by agricultural and other land use, to say nothing of looters, in the previous ten years.
Archaeologists in Britain, worried about the wanton destruction of archaeological sites by industrial development and by treasure hunters using
metal detectors, have formed an organization named RESCUE (Figure
*This chapter is concerned entirely with cultural resource management in North A
merica,
where most OF our readership resides. Unfortunately, space precludes discussion
OF similar
problems in other countries like Canada and Britain; in Japan, very different pr
oblems are
encountered. Interested readers are referred to Ilenry Cleere's edited volume, A
pproaches
to the Archaeological Heritage (1984).*
19.1) that helps fight to save key sites and to prevent looting (Rahtz, 197$
Perhaps the most famous example of "rescue" archaeology was the international effort, sponsored by UNESCO, that resulted in moving the Abu
Simbel temples in Egypt from the banks of the Nile behind the Aswan
High Dam to a new site clear of the rising waters of Lake Nasser. The
Aswan project also resulted in the discovery of hundreds of additional sites
in the areato be Hooded (Macquilty, 1965). (For worldwide surveys, see
Cleere, 1984; Prott and O'Keefe, 1984.)
In this chapter we examine a vital branch of archaeology, the Multifarious activities that come under the title cultural resource management (CRM). Because much of this work is done under contract to government agencies or private companies, it is sometimes called contract
archaeology, to distinguish it from the management of the actual resources.
Cultural resources refers to both human-made and natural physical
features associated with human activity. They are unique. and nonrenewable resources and can include sites, structures, and artifacts significant in

history or prehistory. Cultural resource management is the application of


management skills to preserve important parts of our cultural heritage,
both historic and prehistoric, for the benefit of the public. The concept of
Cultural resource management came into being in the mid-1970s but
stemmed from long anxiety on the part of archaeologists and others over
..
the destruction of archaeological sites and historic buildings. (For a survey
covering both North and South America, see Wilson and Loyola, 1982.)
ANTIQUITIES LEGISLATION
People have worried about the destruction of archaeological sites for a
long time. There were, for example, loud outcries as long ago as 1801,
when Lord Elgin removed the stunning marbles that now bear his name
from the Parthenon and bore them away to London (Bracken, 1975). The
Greek government is still trying to get them back. The early proponents
of historic preservation in the late nineteenth century included not only
architects and historians but also anthropologists and archaeologists, who
realized that American Indian societies and their forebears were vanishing almost without a trace in the face of colonization and vigorous industrial development (Lee, 1970). The Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of
American Ethnology and other organizations struggled valiantly to stem
the tidal wave of destruction that flattened prehistoric mounds all over
eastern North America (Figure 19.2). They also fought a lucrative trade in
brightly painted Pueblo pots in the Southwest, The first formal preservation of America's past began with the passage of the Antiquities Act of
1906. This extended some protection to archaeological sites on land
owned or controlled by the United States government. There matters
remained until the 1930s, when widespread and now classic archaeological surveys in areas threatened by federal darn projects yielded a mass of
information on site distributions and key cultural sequences before the
sites where they occurred vanished forever under human-made lakes.
(For an extended discussion of conservation and legislation, see Fowler,
1986.)
Since World War II, an accelerating destruction of archaeological sites
throughout North America has resul ted in a jigsaw pattern of complicated
but, alas, still inadequate legislation that serves as a framework for cultural
resource management activity. This legislation is now so complex that we
can do little more than summarize the key provisions of each act since
1960 in Box 19.1.
For a long time, federal legislation was concerned for the most part
with site preservation as opposed to protection and management. This has
now changed. In particular, the National Environmental Policy Act of
1969 (NFPA) developed requirements that made it essential for archaeologists to prepare and maintain extremely comprehensive information on
archaeological resources on state, federal, and privately owned land. This
would enable them to assess, at short notice, the potential effects of development on these resources. In addition, states have now developed historic preservations of their own, each headed by a state historic preservation officer, as required by the Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The
result of all these changes was a dramatic explosion of archaeological
..
effort, much of it contracted by government agencies as well as private
companies. It has also resulted in -the emergence of cultural resource
management as a sophisticated phenomenon, its practice surrounded by
an elaborate framework of laws, regulations, and statutes, not only at the
federal and state levels but also at the county, city, and Indian tribe level
Much of it is designed to amplify federal legislation and to adapt it to local
conditions. Such local laws have become essential, to deal both with looting and vandalism and also with such issues as reburial of Native American

skeletons and an explosion of urban development and urban archaeology


throughout North America.
Underlying this jigsaw of legislation is one fundamental difference
between United States law and that, for example, of many European
nations. In many countries, antiquities are considered the property of the
state, whereas American law is ambiguous. This is because of the Fifth
Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids the seizure of public property for private use without just compensation. Private property is almost
sacrosanct, and over the years, archaeological resources on private land
have come to be thought of as part of that land and therefore the private
property of the owner.
While many landowners take the preservation of archaeological resources on their land very seriously, others regard sites as sources of income. The damage done by pothunters to such sites has been incalculable.
Often they lease sites for large sums of money and move in quite openly
with earth-moving machinery and other sophisticated equipment. The
objective is simple to recover as many valuable artifacts as possible. This
nefarious practice continues to this day: witness a recent case at Slack
Farm, Kentucky, where an undisturbed Late Mississippian riverside cemetery and settlement were leased by a landowner to a group of pothunters.
They dug for weeks before the state police moved in, leaving the site
looking like a battlefield (Fagan, 1991a).
There have been several convictions under federal antiquities laws, In
March 1983, two men were arrested on felony charges of illegally digging
up tenth- and eleventh-century Anasazi artifacts and skeletons at Chimney Rock in southwestern Colorado. The artifacts were valued at $7,500,
the damage done to the site at $75,000, and $25,000 was needed to restore
the site. One offender was sentenced to five hundred hours of community
service and ordered to pay $5,000 to the San Juan National Forest. His
colleague was fined $500 and received a year's probation (Eddy and O'Sullivan, 1986).
MANAGING THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD
Cultural resource management, and the archaeological research that goes
with it, is but one component of a much larger enterprise the study of
the effects of human activity on the total landscape (Adovasio and Carlisle,
1988). It is part of a much larger concern for the fragile ecology of North
America, and the finite archaeological record is only part of the context
in which decisions are made about projects that affect the landscape
(Fowler, 1986). As we have learned more about ecology, scientists have
come to realize that archaeological resources are part of the "public
wealth'" (Knudson, 1986). Recent legislation, especially the NEPA, reflects
this realization, as well as the explicitly ecological approaches OF archaeological research in recent years. Indeed, the NEPA provided the legal
framework for environmental impact statements, the studies required for
all major federal and state projects that can affect human life on earth. In
this way, the NEPA may well override the notion of private ownership of
archaeological sites.
A morass of laws and regulations at all levels and a growing body of
legal opinions and court decisions provide an elaborate framework for
..
Box 19.1 ANTIQUITIES LEGISLATION IN THE
UNITED STATES, 1960-1989
This is summary 01 some of the key features of federal antiquities legislation, which built or the Historic Sites Act of 1935. This baseline act gave
the National Park Service a broad mandate to identify, protect. and preserve
cultural properties. It also meant that the federal goVernmcnt acknowledged
broad responsibility for archaeological and historic sites on end off federally
owned land.
It should be noted that numerous state and Native American tribal laws

amplify and complicate this already complex legislative picture. We can


summarize only the most basic provisions of each federal act in the space
available.
RESERVOIR SALVAGE ACT OF 1960
This act authorized archaeologists to dig and salvage sites that were in
danger of destruction. It was e last-ditch measure, but it did make possible
some important surveys. as well as many rough-and-ready salvage operations literally under the blade of oncoming bulldozers (Figure 1 9.3). Two
important surveys were the following.
Navajo Reservoir, New Mexico
The Navajo Reservoir flooded thirty-four square miles. The lake area was
divided into nine sections and surveyed on foot and by jeep (Dittert end
others. 1 951). The archaeologists inventoried as many sites as possible, but
they were never asked to recommend ways of saving sites. nor were they
consulted about the siting of the water project ec that archaeological consicderations could be taken into account.
Glen Canyon, Utah
Glen Canyon lay on the Upper Colorado River in Utah and Arizona before
Lake Powell came into being. Here The archaeologists had more time. They
made "total sampling of all cultures and all the periods to be found in the
area" the first priority (Jennings, 1966). They pieced great emphasis on
accurate records and publication of results. for no one would be able to
check their results in the field later. This was a highly effective form of
salvage, but here again the archaeologists were not expected to make recommendations about management of resources.
HISTORIC PRESERVATION ACT OF 1966
This act set up a national framework for historic preservation, requiring the
federal government to establish a nationwide system for identifying, protecting, and rehabilitating what are commonly called "historic places" (Schiffer
and Gumerman, 1 977). The act called for the Osteblishment cf the National
Register of Historic Places (a "historic place" could include prehistoric and
..
historic archaeological sites) and required federal agencies to protect Register properties when development projects were planned.
NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT OF 1969 (NEPA)
The NEPA laid down e comprehensive policy for government land use planning and resource management. It required federel agencies to weigh environmentel, historical, and cultural values whenever federally owned land is
modified or private land is modified with federal funds. The idea was that the
nature. extent, and significance of archaeological resources should be inventoried, on the assumption that this information would affect land use planning in the future.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 1 1593
Some state surveys of archaeological and historical sites were conducted in
the 1920s and 1930s. Then the Smithsonian Institution developed site
inventories in the late 1940s as pert of the river basin surveys. Executive
Order 11593, promulgated in 1971, made it a requirement that such surveys be made. It was an attempt to develop a sensible federal policy on
archaeological and historic preservation It ordered all federal agencies to
take the lead in historic preservation and to locate properties that might
qualify for the National Register. They were also to develop programs to
contribute to protection of important historic properties on nonfederal
lands.
NEPA and Executive Order 1 1593 developed requirements that made
it essential for archaeologists to prepare and maintain extremely comprehensive information on archaeological resources on state, federal. and privately
owned land. This would enable them to assess. at short notice. the potential
effects of development on these resources. In addition, the states had begun
to develop historic preservation programs of their own. each headed by a
state historic preservation officer, as required by the Historic Preservation

Act of 1966.
AMENDMENT TO THE RESERVOIR SALVAGE ACT, 1974
This amendment authorized all federal agencies to provide funds for the
preservation or salvage of sites endangered by federal projects.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESOURCES PROTECTION ACT OF 1979
(AR PA)
The ARPA gave more stringent protection to archaeological sites over one
hundred years old on federal land. People removing archaeological materials
from federal lands without a permit are committing a felony: they can be
fined up to $10.000 and sentenced to a year in prison. The penalties rise
sharply when more valuable finds-are involved. This legislation is aimed at
commercial vandals: it does not forbid individuals from removing arrowheads "located on the surface of the ground." Unfortunately. it gives no
protection to archaeological resources on privately owned land.
..
AMENDMENTS OF THE NEPA,1980
These amendments had made Executive Order 1 1593 law, rather than just
an executive order. and also made provisions tor the pass-through of some
funds for historic preservation to certified local authorities. They also recognized that Indian tribes should have preservation programs and relationships
with the National Park Service and State Historic Preservation offices.
Amendments to ARPA in recent years have tightened the definition of
what constitutes an "archaeological resource" and have legislated far more
severe penalties for violations of the original law.
ABANDONED SHIPWRECKS ACT OF 1988
This act extended protection to shipwrecks and defined ownership of abandoned vessels in state and federal waters more clearly. It is an important
weapon in the fight against unauthorized locting of shipwrecks, looting that
all too often masquerades as "underwater archaeology."
OTHER LEGISLATION
In 1989 important laws established a National Museum of the American
Indian and charged the Smithsonian Institution both with setting up this
museum and with developing policies for the repatriation of skeletal remains
hold by the institution. The reburial sections of this legislation are likely to
have long-lasting effects on North American archaeology.
In Addition. significant legislation covering the protection of archaeological sites on private lands and the reburial Of Native American burials has
been passed or is pending in many states.
long-term cultural resource management in American archaeology. This
compliance process on even a medium-sized federal project is an attempt
to see that cultural resources threatened by the project arc properly
managed recorded, evaluated, protected, or, if necessary, salvaged
(Fowler, 1982). Conflicting interests and regulations can lead to unforeseen problems, as, for example, when the local Indians insisted that
the Chimney Rock Mesa skeletons disturbed by vandals be reburied. The
archaeologists wanted to conserve and study the human remains, but they
were overruled by the federal land manager on legal grounds. (For an
admirable discussion of the complexities of management, see Eddy and
(YSullivan, 1986.)
The procedure of identification and management in the compliance
process has three phases
l. An overview of cultural resources in an area is compiled, ideally a
description of the environment and the ethnographic background,
a history of previous research, and a description of the known
culture history of the area. Then the authors assess the research
.
potential of the area, identify important research problems, and
make management recommendations.
2. An archaeological assessment report involves further inventory

and assessment, including reexamination of known sites and surveys for new ones. These reports are especially important for areas
where substantial modification of the land is likely to take place as
a result of strip mining, dam building, and other such developments. The finished document discusses known cultural resources
in the area and recommends additional research needed to evaluate their significance, to determine their eligibility for the National
Register of Historic Places, and to establish suitable mitigation measures to protect them. assessment report often forms a preliminary environmental impact report on the area.
3. A management plan proposes measures for protecting, preserving,
interpreting, and using cultural resources. This is a formal part of
the final environmental impact report. To be effective, a management plan should be regarded as a onstantly evolving document,
maintained and changed as archaeologists continue to manage and
monitor the area.
The compliance process, even on simple projects, can be a nightmare,
involving the archaeologist as it does in both recommending management
strategies and conducting delicate negotiations with several government
agencies at once. One of the most interesting examples of a management
plan in action is that for the San Juan Basin in the Four Corners area of
the American Southwest.
The San Juan Basin has been occupied since around 10,000 B.C right
up to modern times. Not only Anglos and Spanish-Americans but also
several pueblo groups and Navajo, Apache, and Ute live in the region,
which has been subjected to extensive energy development, including
strip mining. Still more exploration and mining are planned. Not only that,
but large numbers of people will start depending on the area for recreation and archaeological sites are part of that recreation. At least seven
federal, state, and local agencies have some CRM jurisdiction in the area,
and several of them have joined in a cooperative management effort. The
National Park Service carried out a preliminary assessment study in 1980.
At the time, a database was compiled that contained more than 15,000
sites, with 15 categories of information on each one. An additional 4000
entries made up a survey file (Plot and Wait, 1982). At the time, it was
estimated that this now mactive database contained about 70% of the
known sites in the San Juan Basin. The database was conceived of as a
management tool, with categories of information in it limited to those
conceived of as having management potential.
The compliance process involves both federal and state agencies in
other management duties as well. They have the responsibility for protect.
ing sites against vandalism, a major problem in some areas. Then the value
of each individual resource has to be assessed, either on account of its
scientific value, established within the context of a valid research design,
or because it merits preservation in situ. Agencies also have to consider
how a site can be utilized for the public good. This responsibility means
interpreting it for the public, who may either visit the location, as they do
at, say, Mesa Verde, or learn about it through books, television programs,
popular articles, and so on.
The main goal of cultural resource management in the United States
has been preserving sites and artifacts for the information they have
yielded or may yield. Experts in the field have confronted a number of
management problems:
Because archaeological sites are a nonrenewable resource, which of
them should be saved for future research rather than being investigated now?
Should data from sites acquired for conservation and planning be used
for purc research as well?
How is the significance of archaeological resources to be established

for legal compliance purposes?


MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS
Conservation
Obviously, the basic ethics of archaeology demand that as many sites as
possible be preserved. Under ideal circumstances, the sites are not threatened by development, and the investigator can develop a research design
based on purely scientific considerations. However, many other variables budget, the public interest, possible design alternatives in the development project, and mitigation costs, to mention only a few come into
play when sites are threatened by imminent destruction. Then there is the
problem of "secondary impacts," when unexpected spin-offs of the main
project destroy resources outside the main project area. Don Fowler
(1982) cites the monstrous MX missile project in the Great Basin that
would have affected archaeological resources in no fewer than twentythree valleys in the region. Although the project would have primarily
affected sites in the lowlands, the archaeologists pointed out that most of
the sites lay in the foothills and uplands nearby. These would have been
disastrously affected by secondary activities such as seismic testing, survey
work, and the sheer numbers of construction workers and military personnel brought into the area during the MX project. Whether effective ways
of mitigating these secondary impacts would have been possible is ques.
tionable. Few, if any, agencies consider such impacts, often critical to
archaeologists.
Management Versus Academic Research
The apparent conflict between resource management on the one hand
and academic research in archaeology on the other comes down to a
dilemma. Most CHM contracts involve collecting or developing scientifically useful data from a highly specific area such as the site of an oil-drillin
g
pad or the sites of pylons along a hundred-mile power line. Are such
activities meaningful unless tied to other cultural resources in the region?
Though compliance requirements may be satisfied, scholarly needs often
most emphatically are not (King, 1983; Renfrew, 1983). Although the
Historic Preservation Act requires each state to have a state plan as a
mechanism for management overviews of individual projects, only around
half have allocated funds to create such plans.
One reason for the conflict between contract archaeology, with its
emphasis on compliance and management, and academic archaeology,
which concentrates on basic research, is that most contracting parties
assume that archaeology is an inductive science (see Hester, 1981). Certainly the traditional methods of archaeological research have been inductive. That is, they assume that suffcient facts can eventually be collected
to provide enough data for synthesis and inference from the data. Of
course, inductive research is useful, especially in the sort of general exploratory work thatis carried out in many large survey areas, such as the
Cache River Valley in Arkansas (Schiffer and House, 1976). Until recently,
most contracting agencies thought of archaeology as a discipline able to
conduct piecemeal research. They assurned that the results from each
small project would somehow eventually become part of a grand, final
synthesis. Also until recently, the laws all related to specific projects. This
type of archaeology was in fact attractive to people with some command
of excavation techniques whose final objective was to produce a descriptive site report. Sites or areas were preselected by such criteria as imminence of destruction or availability of salvage funds.
In fact, the 1970s saw much archaeological research become deductive, and archaeologists were now viewing fieldwork and excavation as
activities to be carried out only when a specific problem needed solving
or a hypothesis needed testing. To these scholars, salvage archaeology
for its own sake was an entirely inconsistent activity that simply did not

mesh with the specific problem orientation of deductive research. There


has been a dangerous and often unthinking tendency to segment archaeology into two broad camps the academic, deductive researchers taking on specific problems on one side, the contract archaeologists involved with salvage, management, and compliance on the other. This
insidious distinction is, of course, a gross simplification, for many distinguished academic archaeologists are deeply involved in cultural resource
management. Thus there is often constant feedback between emerging
archaeological theory and methodology and the realities of contract
work, which is always funded on a project-by-project basis and never in
a wider, say, regional, context. And in the final analysis, major cultural
resource management projects are funded at a far higher level than
even the most ambitious academic project not only for just survey and
excavation but For analysis and sometimes publication as well (Adovasio
and Carlisle, 1988).
Can management and research needs be reconciled? Many CRM projects are small-scale operations, involving no more than a small plot of
urban land or a simple inventory of a few acres. Such projects are usually
undertaken by freelance archaeologists, as are many of the test excavations required for more significant sites. The reports on these operations
are usually of relatively limited circulation and are basically descriptive,
even if they are conducted within a sound intellectual context. With largescale projects of regional or even broader scope, the marriage between
managemcnt and rescarch needs is much closer.
In recent years, many CRM projects have involved massive archaeological operations and the expenditure of millions of dollars in survey and
excavation. The Texas-California pipeline,. the Dolores Project in
Colorado, and the Black Mesa project in the Southwest (Gumerman, 1984)
have all yielded important methodological contributions and sometimes
major theoretical perceptions. Most of these projects are conducted by
larger private companies that specialize in environmental impact work or
by CRM organizations with close ties to academic institutions. For instance, the Cultural Resource Management Program of the University of
Pittsburgh has developed an elaborate archaeological organization With
strong academic ties to the university that carries out major CRM projects
in an academic setting. With their excellent technical resources and large
project budgets, they are able to conduct detailed research and finegrained field and laboratory investigations that are beyond the budgetary
scope of all purely academic research projects.
For example, the program carried out a gas pipeline survey for a major
Texas company, a project that involved close cooperation among the pipeline contractor, archaeologists, and government agencies and officials at all
levels. As part of this work, they carried out major excavations at the
Howorth-Nelson site in southwestern Pennsylvania, a large, multicomponent Late Woodland and Late Prehistoric site dating from around A.D.
1000 to 1650. The site could not be avoided by rerouting the gas line, so
the right-of-way over the settlement was tested with hand-excavated pits,
excavations that established that there were deep, undisturbed deposits at
the site. Next, a resistivity survey was carried out, and the site was processed with a shallow disk before all surface artifacts and food remains and
environmental data were mapped in situ with an automatic infrared
mapping device. Using these data, a more comprehensive excavation was
planned, an excavation that eventually uncovered 3,839 square feet of the
site, including remains of houses, storage pits, burials, and other features
(Figure 19.3).
This remarkable excavation was large by North American standards,
even if it was confined by the nature of the contract to the pipeline
right-of-way. It involved the use of sophisticated electronic technology as

well as hand excavation, flotation methods, and carefully controlled


screening, a combination of digging techniques that allowed a large dig
to be completed in minirnurn time. That the investigatin could be conducted at this level was a direct result of access to technology and excavation funds on a scale that far exceed those of any non-CRM excavation
(Adovasio and Carlisle, 1988). The result was the recovery of remarkably
fine-grained data for a Late Woodland occupation in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Virtually all federal and state agencies have strict requirements for the
analysis and reporting of any archaeological data recovered from CRM
projects. Such analysis is, of course, very expensive, and it is certain that
significant advances in knowledge about the human past will come from
major and well-funded CHM projects like the Howorth-Nelson site in
Pennsylvania or the soon-to-be-published large-scale excavations and surveys conducted as part of the space shuttle launch pad construction operations at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
As Adovasio and Carlisle (1988) point out, CRM archaeology is the only
viable way to identify and document rapidly vanishing archaeological
resources in North America. It is also a primary means of assembling large
bodies of basic archaeological data, the very kinds of data required to fulfill
one of archaeology's major objectives, the explanation of cultural processes. Furthermore, CHM activities are also a primary way of gathering
culture historical data, not only chronological sequences but also detailed
records of individual sites and their environments.
"Nowhere else in contemporary archaeology can the methodological
and theoretical challenges raised by the 'new archaeology' be realized
with greater clarity than in CRM work," claim Adovasio and Carlisle
(1988). As they point out, this is not only a matter of economic realities but
also one of perceiving the opportunity to make major intellectual advances in archaeology while still meeting the requirements of individual
contracts. No one can claim that all CRM work is good archaeology, but
"good archaeology stands the best chance of answering the questions upon
which reasonable management decisions about cultural resources depend. '
(In short, CRM archaeology offers unique opportunities for archaeologists to rest and refine basic operational theories in the field, Its legal
mandate requires three-stage investigations. First is the inventorying and
recording of all sites within a project area. Then important sites have to
be tested. Finally, the most significant may be partly or wholly excavated.
This three-stage process often provides unusual opportunities to refine
existing models of ancient human behavior and to develop new ones. In
the 1990s, CRM archaeology, especially when conducted on a large scale,
offers unique opportunities for answering basic questions about the prehistoric past. The challenge is to grasp these opportunities and to exploit
them to the fullest.
Research Designs
In the context of contract archaeology, the research design is best described as a "frame of reference" plans in which basic assumptions, research goals, hypotheses, methodologies, and operating procedures are
laid out (Fowler, 1982). Ideally, there should be a hierarchy of research
designs. The Historic Preservation Act of 1966 required all states to prepare historic preservation plans. In 1976 the secretary of the interior
developed regulations formulating these plans under professional supervision. The surveys, still incomplete, are to include nominations for the
National Register of Historic Places and also inventories and predictions
of where all forms of cultural resources may exist.
States are, of course, political rather than cultural entities, so the best
overall research designs are those for regions, whether defined topographically, ecologically, or culturally. A good example of a region is the San

Juan Basin in the Four Corners area of the Southwest.


Fowler (1982) lists six key elements for a successful research design:
1. A description of the resource base an outline of current knowledge about the area and its culture history.
2. A statement of the implications of previous research, combined
with a statement of basic assumptions, of thc investigators' theoretical approach, whether ecological, materialist, or some other.
9. A statement of general areas of research interest, both general and
specific problems to be worked on. These questions are the basis for
specific hypotheses and related test implications.
4. A description of the kinds of data needed to complete the research
design and specifics on maintaining the quality of the data and on
the standards of data required.
5. A formulation of investigative strategies to acquire data of the quality needed. The vital element here is sampling strategies that reHect the realities of time, contract requirements, available funding,
and size of the research area.
6. For specific project design, a statement of operating procedures
from preliminary fieldwork right up to completion of the final report must be specified.
Research designs may be laid out in many ways, but the critical point is
that they must be dynamic, ever-changing statements, not rigid dogma
but state-of-the-art designs that keep up with new methodological advances and changing circumstances in the Geld and out of it. (For example,
see Cordell and Green, 1983.) A large-scale CRM research design is far
.
more than a plan for archaeological research; it is a management document, an administrative manifesto, and a high-quality control manual in
the bargain. The administrative and legal skills required of a contract
archaeologist arb much further-ranging than anything envisaged by an
academic researcher.
Training and the Crisis of Quality
An archaeologist involved in contract archaeology and the management
of cultural resources requires training in a battery of skills far from the
halls of academe. A contract archaeologist must not only be thoroughly
versed in academic archaeology but also have a background in the legal
requirements of CRM, in antiquities and historic-preservation legislation,
and in methods of administration and conservation. Even the beginning
contract manager requires formidable archaeological and bureaucratic
skills. The situation is somewhat similar to that in which geology and
engineering found themselves some years ago. Archaeology is changing
from a wholly academic discipline to what Fowler calls a real-world profession. But unlike geology, its product is not energy or more water but
knowledge, much of which is not critical to the national interest by any
stretch of the imagination.
No one is happy about the quality of training given contract archaeologists at this time. Some master's programs cater to fledgling contract
archaeologists, but none achieves an ideal balance among academic, business, and management skills. It remains uncomfortably true that many of
the archaeologists involved in CRM projects have received little or no
formal training in anything more than basic archaeological method and
theory and that is simply not enough. We can, however, expect the
situation to improve in the future as archaeology completes the transition
undergone by academic geology some years ago. The curricula of the
future should blend academic and practical management skills in graduate
programs reflecting an employment picture that has most archaeologists
working in government or business rather than in universities, colleges,
and museums.
A number of organizations, most notably the Society of Professional
Archaeologists (SOP A), have started to work on the thorny question of

professional qualifications. The SOPA has drawn up basic ethical guidelines that focus on training and qualifications for archaeologists. But these
ethical guidelines have drawn fire, partly on the grounds that they do not
reflect the reality of carrying out archaeology under commercial conditions (Fitting and Goodyear, 1979). The SOP A guidelines appeared at a
time when the academic discipline of archaeology was busy adjusting to
a completely new environment, in which most financial support came
from federal and state agencies and private companies involved with
projects on government land (Wendorf, 1979).
With CRM now the dominant force in archaeological fieldwork in
..
North America, the problem of ensuring quality research is of major concern.awo basic strategies are used in CRM work:
The conservation approach regards preservation and protection of
the archaeological record for humanistic and scientific purposes as
the first priority (Lipe, 1970). This is a relatively theory-free and
descriptive approach wherein management decisions are based on
a representative sample of resources in an area.
The problem-oriented approach regards CRM as part of contemporary archaeology with all its sophisticated theoretical apparatus for
studying and evaluating the past. In other words, the researcher
relies on contemporary knowledge, belief, and concepts in archaeology to make management judgments about the content of the archaeologieal record in the future (Dunnell, 1985))
The debate about which of these approaches is the most appropriate
rages at a high technical level. Much of the argument centers on the
conflicting interests of management and pure research. Is one justified in
using statistical models that predict the distribution of archaeological sites
as a basis for deciding which areas are to be flooded and which are not?
Could not one's predictions be so false that they might leave our descendants with a completely skewed archaeological record?
For all the debate about conflicting approaches, and, to be frank, a
great deal of dubious research, CRM has brought extensive methodological benefits to basic research, among them a much greater emphasis on
prehistoric settlement patterns, sampling procedures, computer applications, and, above all, remote sensing (Drager and Lyons, 1983). The San
Juan Basin project and others are excellent examples of how sophisticated
research designs and theoretical constructs are blended into a multitude
of small contract projects. But among contract archaeology's worst products is that some agencies and contractors are even today quietly accepting second-rate reports and claiming that even minimal surveys are fulfilling both the requirements and the spirit of the law. Work of such poor
quality led both the Society for American Archaeology and the SOPA to
prepare ethical guidelines and certification procedures for archaeologists.
These steps have helped mitigate the problem of quality somewhat. But
the problem is so large and the amount of activity so great that the only
long-term solution to the crisis of quality lies in a close relationship between the goals and research techniques of a sophisticated scientific arch neology on the one hand and the realities and demands of cultural
management and contract archaeology on the other. (For discussion at a
technical level, see Dunnell, 1984.)
The crisis of quality has taken a new twist in recent years. Proliferating
contract archaeology and CRM have caused an explosion not only of raw
data but also of publications and reports on completed projects (see Hester, 1981; Longacre, 1981). The essence of publishing archaeological data
..
is, of course, to make them available to as wide an audience of archaeologists as needs access to them. This distribution is achieved with many
books and national or international journals, even with regional periodieals such as Plains A nthmpologist, most of which are little concerned with

CRM. But most contract archaeology reports are cither restricted-circulaHon documents buried in the files of government agencies or private
companies or, at best, photocopied publications that have a severely limited circulation. Sometimes within months they are forgotten, even destroyed, and the vital data in them are as good as lost to science. The
problem of failure to publish is enormous. Although efforts have been
made to abstract CRM reports, the results have been patchy at best. The
National Park Service's Archaeological Assistance Division is developing
a national archaeological database, after intensive lobbying by the Society
for American Archaeology. Ironically, now that awareness about destruction of tbc archaeological record is greater than ever before, the results
of much of this anxiety are being buried, almost as effectively as if they
had been destroyed, in inaccessible or temporary publications. The only
solution appears to be some form of organization like a national microfilm
archive, where copies of all reports are required to be deposited by law.
As yet, there is no sign that such an organization will be created.
Then there is the issue of what is called curation, the careful management of artifacts and other data recovered in the course of CRM activities.
The National Park Service, for example, has issued regulations for the
curation of federal collections, as required under the amendments to the
NEPA of 1980. But curation is expensive, and the costs of providing permanent conservation and storage are prohibitive. Many museums and
other designated repositories are grappling with seemingly insurmountable curation problems for the mountains of archaeological finds that pour
in from CRM projects. There are simply not enough funds to pay the real
costs of curation.
Protection and the Public
Although expenditures on contract archaeology may no longer be at the
levels of the late 1970s, arguments rage about the worth of even a tenth
of such expenditure. Though one can argue that knowledge in itself is
valuable and is worth spending money on, one has to show at least something for the money beyond an abundance of technical and often inaccesSible reports. To begin with, one has to convince people that the sites are
worth preserving. Archaeologists may wax lyrical about the scientific signicance of a site within a specific research design, but the public is much
more interested in sites with humanistic significance. Gettysburg has a
supreme place in our national heritage, as does Mesa Verde. Both are
visited by tens of thousands of people each year. The protection afforded
by the National Register of Historie Places covers both sites as in the
.
'significant" category, a significance that provides a basis for management
decisions about cultural resources.
Protection of archaeological sites proceeds through legislation, but
until 1979 the United States had no laws forbidding the export of antiquilies. The Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 gives federal
resource managers and prosecutors access to stringent criminal and civil
penalties that may slow the destruction of sites on public lands. The Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1988 has finally extended a degree of protection
10 shipwrecks in U.S. waters, though not before incalculable damage was
done by professional treasure hunters and amateur divers,
Legislation is not the only protective tool available to archaeologists.
The power of eminent domain, zoning, easements, and even tax incentives are tools that may be used to protect cultural resources on private
land.
The Archaeological Conservancy is a bright hope, a privately funded
membership organization that was formed in the early 1980s to purchase
threatened archaeological sites and manage them as permanent archaeological preserves on hundred-year management plans. The sites that this
organization has purchased include the Hopewell Mound group in Ohio;
Savage Cave in Kentucky, a site with human occupation from Paleo-

Indian to Mississippian times; and San Marcos Pueblo in New Mexico, a


two thousand room pueblo near Santa Fe (You can join by writing to 415
Orchard Drive, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501.)
A great deal of the effectiveness in protecting archaeological sites
depends on public attitudes to the past. The basic question is easily stated:
Is the public benefiting in practical ways from the expenditure of enormous funds on archaeology?
Public Involvement
Many people think of archaeology as a luxury and wonder how much
taxpayer money is spent on cultural resource management. They are very
ambivalent about protecting the past, let alone spending money on it. Yet
thousands of other interested citizens have joined amateur archaeological
societies in many parts of the country.
Ruthann Knudson, an expert on cultural resource management,
points out (1986) that one problem revolves around the ownership of
archaeological sites. Who actually owns them, the finds from them, even
the records that detail the artifacts removed from them? Does the landowner have the right, or does a government agency? To put the question
very simply, are archaeological sites and finds the property of individuals,
or are they the property of the public, as represented by the state, and
recognized as part of our common cultural heritage?
The answer to this question is clear-cut in countries like Australia,
where the Crown owns all archaeological sites, even those on private
land just like mineral rights (Cleere, 1984). Ownership of archaeological
sites tends to be in the hands of the state in countries where there is a
direct tie between the current occupiers of the land and the people who
lived at the site in earlier times. The situation is very different in the
United States, where the dominant political community has no genetic
relationship to prehistoric America (for a discussion, see Fowler, 1986
Trigger, 1986). Furthermore, the right of private ownership of land was
established in the American Bill of Rights, the so-called taking clause of
the Fifth Amendment: "NOT shall private property be taken for public use
without just compensation." Since archaeological sites were virtually unknown in the eighteenth century, ownership of them passed to individuals
by default.
Today, the legal philosophy about the ownership of America's resources is beginning to change, even if case law on the subject has yet to
develop. These resources are increasingly being recognized as part of the
public wealth, so their treatment is a matter of public concern. This is
implicit in much federal legislation since the 1950s and is being addressed
much more specifically in recent planning laws affecting everything from
forests to archaeological sites. As things stand now, current legislation is
beginning to reflect the belief of major policymakers and the people who
elected them that archaeological resources have public significance. In the
long run, all of us, archaeologists or not, will be accountable for the proper
treatment of archaeological resources, regardless of who owns them.
But there is still a long way to go. Almost none of the vast sum spent
on cultural resource management goes to public education and involvement in archaeology. A few projects provide excellent examples of how
to reach a wider audience. A team of archaeologists in Annapolis has
worked closely with historians and the local community to provide walking tours, lectures, and other educational programs that share with visitors
to historic Annapolis the thinking of archaeologists about the past (Leone
and Potter, 1984). In Pittsburgh, the Committee on Pittsburgh Archaeology and History is a nonprofit corporation of archaeologists, historians,
geographers, archivists, and lay people that champions historic preservalion and has promoted the founding of a Pittsburgh history center. The
committee is working closely with the public on the preservation of Pittsburgh's canal system, an important part of the city's nineteenth-century

industrial history (Adovasio and Carlisle, 1988).


American Indians
The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 states that it is "the
policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians
their inherent freedom to believe", express, and exercise the traditional
. . . including but not limited to access
religions of the American Indian
to sites, use and possession of sacred objects and the freedom to worship
through ceremonials and traditional rites" (Fowler, 1982). The act guaran.
tees access to sacred sites, requires federal agencies to adjust management
policies to reflect its provisions, and recognizes the existence of sacred
sites. This legislation is profoundly affecting American archaeology, for it
often involves consultation with tribal and religious leaders if religious
sites are to be disturbed.
Most archaeologists have thought of themselves as objective observers
of the past or as favorably inclined toward Native Americans. But as Bruce
Trigger points out (1986), many archaeologists have been influenced by
popular stereotypes of indigenous peoples. Only recently have they
become aware of the social significance of their studies. They have also
realized that archaeology can no longer be undertaken independent of
society. In recent years, for example, American Indians have protested
strongly about archaeological excavations and surveys in sacred areas in
many parts of the West and the Southwest. Recent legislation has given
them considerable say in the conduct of CRM on public lands, and they
have reacted strongly to development projects destined for sacred, privately owned lands as well.
The Reburial Issue Many Indian cornrnnnities are incensed by the excavation of prehistoric burials and have pushed for laws forbidding such
activity and compelling reburial of previously excavated skeletons. In
several states, archaeologists are now working closely with Indians to
ensure proper recovery and reburial of skeletal remains when development threatens prehistoric cemeteries and burial places. In 1975, bulldozers threatened a prehistoric ossuary (a place where considerable numbers
of people were buried together) on school grounds in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The Indians demanded immediate reburial of the remains, but when they
heard that a bulldozer would be used to scoop up the bones, they agreed
to archaeological excavation instead. Within nine days, the ossuary had
been excavated carefully, and both bones and artifacts had been reburied
in a local cemetery (Anderson, 1985).
Controversy over the reburial of Indian skeletal remains has reached
fever pitch in recent years, fueled not only by increasingly activist policies
by Native American groups but also by a growing public awareness of the
complex moral issues involved. This awareness was heightened dramatically by the unprincipled ravaging of the Late Mississippian site at Slack
Farm, Kentucky, which left a prehistoric cemetery looking like a battlefield. The few salvaged remains were reburied in an emotional ceremony
amid widespread public outrage (Fagan, 1991 a).
The reburial issue has international overtones, for native groups outside North America, notably the Australian aborigines, have striven for
strict control of burial excavations. Increasingly, archaeologists and native
peoples are working together to hammer out long-term agreements, or at
minimum statements of principle, to cover reburials and burial excavations. On the international front, the executive committee of the World
Archaeological Congress has recently adopted an accord that calls on
archaeologists to be sensitive to the concerns of indigenous peoples.
Named the Vermillion Accord, after the town of Vermillion, South Dakota, where it was drafted, the statement calls for respect both for the
dead and for the wishes of the dead, as well as for the scientific research

value of human remains. It establishes the principle that agreement on the


disposition of human remains be established on the basis of mutual respect
for the legitimate concerns for the correct burial of ancestors as well as
those of science and education.
The reburial issue is a complex one in the United States, where the
Native American Rights Fund estimates that there may be as many as
600,000 native human skeletons in museums, historical societies, Universities, and private collections. There are some 18,500 in the Smithsonian
Institution alone. Late in 1989, an act establishing the National Museum
of thc American Indian in Washington, D.C., contained language providing for the return of some skeletal remains to their documented descendants for reburial. This is one culmination of a long campaign by Native
American groups to recover the remains of people removed from their
basic cycles of life and death. This campaign has pitted them against
scientists who point out that revolutionary new research techniques are
beginning to yield a mine of new information about prehistoric North
Americans. To rebury their database would deprive science of a vital
resource, they argue. While the Smithsonian will examine each reburial
application on a case-by-case basis, many states are considering reburial
legislation and extending further protection to prehistoric sites, but they
have no jurisdiction over federal lands. Many museums, universities, and
other institutions are adopting specific reburial policies, and the Society
for American Archaeology has drawn up a statement that defines the
complex dimensions of the problem. Not that these efforts are doing much
to dampen emotion on both sides of the issue. The Native Americans feel
deeply about reburial for many complex reasons, if nothing else because
they are concerned to preserve old traditions and values as a way of
addressing current social ills. The scientists, for their part, are afraid that
they will lose their database, which, from their perspective, is an intellectual crime.
There will be no quick resolution of the reburial issue, however
promptly and sensitively archaeologists and their institutions respond to
Native American concerns and to a controversy that hits at the very moral
core of archaeological research. Only one thing is certain no archaeologist in North America, and probably elsewhere, will be able to excavate
a prehistoric or historic burial without the most careful and sensitive
preparation. This involves working closely with native peoples in ways
that archaeologists have not imagined until recently. And nothing but
good can come of this.
American archaeologists have long regarded their work as a way of
studying ancient American Indian lifeways, but the Indians themselves
have displayed little interest in archaeology. As Fowler (1982) points out,
Western intellectual traditions regard scholarly research as beneficial to
the public. Other societies have entirely different cultural values, prohibiting desecration of sacred sites through study by outsiders, even if this
activity adds to the common knowledge of the outside world Johnson and
others, 1977). For the first time, archaeologists have to forge a working
partnership with American Indians. The influence of this change on archaeology remains to be seen.
Contract archaeology and cultural resource management have come
of age. They dominate American archaeology and will continue to do so
for the foreseeable future. Many OF the prospective archaeologists who
read this book will end up in contract archaeology. The problems of CRM
are a leading issue in contemporary archaeology and will never disappear.
All archaeologists are managers of a finite resource, which is banked in
various ways in the ground, within the pages of a report, or by finds and
records in a museum storeroom. We as a nation have two alternatives for
the future: cither collect and interpret information about our cultural
resources in a useful manner as an activity that contributes to the public

good or take the easy way out and abandon the archaeological record to
extinction.
SUMMARY
In this chapter we surveyed the destruction of archaeological sites
in the United States and outlined some of the federal legislation
designed to protect antiquities.
The 1960s saw the development of the concept of cultural resource
management, overall strategies for conservation priorities and management of a finite resource, the archaeological record. New federal
legislation, notably the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
and the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, laid down
regulations for land use and resource policies and also defined archaeological resources as any artifact more than a century old.
These new laws had a dramatic effect on archaeology and led to a
vigorous expansion of cultural resource management activity all
over the United States.
Much CRM activity is on a small scale. However, larger-scale projects often provide opportunities for major archaeological excavations and surveys that have important bearing on the development
of archaeological methods and theories. CRM is having an increasingly important impact on the future direction of American archaeology, on account of both its large budgets and its unique opportunities for large-scale field and laboratory research. There are two basic
approaches to cultural resource management: a conservation approach that is basically descriptive and a problem-oriented one that
uses the latest methods of contemporary archaeology to make management decisions about the past. These approaches are the subject
of much controversy.
..
As a result of these conflicts, and of the crisis in general, the Society
of Professional Archaeologists has developed a set of ethics for people engaged in field research. These guidelines have drawn criticism, especially from people who have failed to realize that archaeology, as an academic discipline, is adapting to completely new
conditions; under these conditions, most research in North America
is funded as part of a cultural resource management project.
In recent years, Native American groups have demanded that many
Indian skeletons in public and private collections be returned to
them for reburial. This controversy has pitted native peoples against
scientists not only in North America but in other parts of the world
as well. In the future, American archaeologists will have to work
closely with Indian communities when excavating sites where burials are likely to be found.
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
Contract archaeologists and resource managers are still wrestling with the
basic issues OF their work and have yet to generate an extensive methodological and theoretical literature. Many of the best field reports are, for all
intents and purposes, inaccessible to the general reader. Listed here are
useful signpost publications to a complicated literature.
Cleere, Henry, ed. Approaches to the Archaeological Heritage A Comparative
Study of World Cultural Resource Management Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. A series of essays on CRM in different countries
under radically different governments. A fascinating comparative exercise.
Fowler, Don D. "Cultural Resources Management," Advances in Archaeological
Method and Theory, 5 (1982): 1-50. A superb essay on the basic issues of CRM
in the early 19805. Recommended also for its clear exposition and comprehenSive references.

Fowler, Don D. "Conserving American Archaeological Resources," in David J.


Meltzer, Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, eds., American Archaeology
Past and Future, pp. 135 162. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1986. An excellent account Of conservation in North America.
Green, Ernestine, ed. Ethics and Values in Archaeology. New York: Free Press,
1984. A series of essays on the ethics Of studying the past, with a strong
emphasis on cultural resource management.
Knudson, Ruthann. "Contemporary Cultural Resources Management," in David J.
Meltzer, Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, eds., American Archaeology
Past and Future, pp. 395413. Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1986. A brief statement on the state of the art and major issues, with
an excellent bibliography.
Schiffer, Michael B. , and George J. Gumerman, eds. Conservation Archaeology.
Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1977. Essays on basic problems of cultural
resource management. The articles on research design are especially useful.

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