Classifying Material

1. Classifying Material

2. Classifying Artifacts • In archaeology classification is a research tool and serves as a means of ordering our data. • Much of the work of earlier archaeologist was devoted to the description and classification of the collections. • Although, this is no longer the primary objective of archaeologist, it still remains one of the first steps toward reconstructing the past. • Before archaeologists can interpret the data they collected, they must first place this data into some kind of order. • This is usually based on the sharing of particular characteristics called attributes.

3. The science of classification, known as taxonomy, we developed by CarolusLinneaus the Swedish botanist in 1735 • In archaeology a typology is the result of the classification of things according to their characteristics. • Typology is the classification of types. It is a search for patterns. • What is a type? • A type is a grouping of artifacts based on form, chronology, function, or style or the category in which artifacts being classified are placed.

4. In archaeology there are four objectives in classification: • Organizing data in Manageable Units: Consists of separating artifacts based on raw material (what is it made from…stone, bone, etc) • Describing Types: Grouping these materials based on attributes into relatively smaller groups • Indentify Relationships between the types: Establish a hierarchy that orders the relationship between artifacts • Study Assemblage Variability in the Archaeological Record: or interpret your collection to understand the culture from the site you just excavated and compare to other groups

5. Analogy and Middle Range Theory • After we know what we have, where it is, how old it is, and have tabulated all the specimens and done the description, we next must work on explanation, interpretation, and reconstruction of past human lifeways. • What does this mean? • Essentially that the what, when and whereare used to try to determine the how and the why.

6. Analogy? What is analogy, and why must we use it to explain the past? It is figuring out the unknown by beginning with the known, and we use it because it is the best and often only way we can explain the behavior of people who are not here to explain it themselves (or even to explain it in an alternative way if we want another view beyond that of the people themselves).

7. There are three different uses of analogy in archaeology are called ethnographic analogy, ethnoarchaeology, and experimental archaeology.

8. Ethnographic Analogy • What do we mean by ethnographic analogy? This means explaining the archaeological evidence in terms of behavior recorded in the historic and ethnographic record. • Advantages: The advantage is that human behavior in countless types of cultures all over the world has been recorded in ethnographic and historical documents. • Disadvantages: • The disadvantages are that such records are of course always biased, • That the culture you are investigating archaeologically may not be related to any known culture. • That history and ethnography do not include very much about material culture, which is what you are digging.

9. Ethnographic analogy helps in ascribing meaning to the prehistoric past. Analogy itself is a form of reasoning that assumes that if objects have some similar attributes, they will share other similarities as well. Itinvolves using a known, identifiable phenomenon to identify unknown ones of a broadly similar type. • Most simple analogies are based on technology, style, and function of artifacts, as they are defined archaeologically. Such analogies, however, based as they are on people's beliefs, can be unreliable. • Middle-range research is carried out on living societies, using ethnoarchaeology, experimental archaeology, and historical documents. It is designed to create a body of middle-range theory, objective theoretical devices for forging a link between the dynamic living systems of today and the static archaeological record of the past.

10. Ethnoarchaeology • Ethnoarchaeologyis ethnographic archaeology with a strongly materialist bias. Archaeologists engage in ethnoarchaeology as part of middle-range research in attempts to make meaningful interpretations of artifact patterns in the archaeological record. • What kinds of human behavior can be reconstructed from the archaeological evidence? • The easiest kinds of things to see are those technological/environmental aspects of culture that the cultural materialist perspective perceive as the major constraints structuring cultural systems. We can see what artifact manufacturing methods and raw materials were used, what people ate, where they lived, and how old the sites are. We can do settlement pattern archaeology and see how different kinds of sites, say, camps and villages, are arranged across the landscape, and cultural ecology, relating the cultural behavior to the kinds of natural (and even social) environments the sites are in. This is the major reason that most archaeologists, especially those who do fieldwork often, are cultural materialists, interpreting everything in terms of environments and technology. Because this is what we CAN do best; it is much more difficult to see social behavior, and even more so to find ideological systems, what the people believed.

11. Experimental Archaeology • Experimental archaeology seeks to replicate historic technology and lifeways under carefully controlled conditions. As such, it is a form of archaeological analogy. Experiments have been conducted on every aspect of prehistoric culture, from lithics to housing. Archaeology by experiment provides insights into the methods and techniques used by prehistoric cultures.