New Developments in Archaeological Science: A Joint Symposium of the Royal Society and the British Academy, February 1991.
Beck, Curt W.
This symposium volume is wonderfully free of all the short-comings
that typify the genre. As they have done on several occasions since
1969, the Royal Society and the British Academy have invited a small and
very well chosen group of acknowledged leaders in the discipline of
archaeometry to present and discuss new developments in their special
fields. (I regret that the discussions have not been transcribed and
printed, for they must have been fully as interesting and instructive as
the formal presentations. In addition, if one may judge from the printed
accounts of the 19th century-transactions of the International
Congresses of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology, these
discussions bring to life the characters and idiosyncracies of the
participants. It does seem a pity that all that will be lost to future
historians of archaeology and archaeometry.)
So instead of the usual farrago of too many papers of a wide range
of merit, we have here a a coherent collection of 13 in-depth accounts.
(Two additional contributions, by Craddock on early mining and
metallurgy and by Hare on light isotope analysis, appear only as
abstracts, the contents having been published elsewhere.) The nature of
these accounts also differs from that found in ordinary symposium
publications: instead of narrowly circumscribed research papers, these
are broadly conceived summaries of recent work by the authors as well as
by other scholars that define, in each case, the state of the art --
where we are now and where we may be going.
The division into sessions is in itself a sort of weather-vane of
future winds. The first group of three papers illustrates the growing
trend towards what may be called holistic archaeology: the study of
prehistoric environments. Baillie assesses the uses of dendrochronology for understanding past environmental change; Berglund gives an
impressive example of reconstructing the prehistoric landscape of
southern Sweden that will certainly become a model in other areas; and
Courty demonstrates the potential of soil micromorphology. The session
on artefact studies is almost equally sweeping in scope: Gale &
Stos-Gale report on the current state of the British Academy Project on
lead isotope studies in the Aegean, and Tite on the impact of electron
microscopy on ceramic studies. Orton & Tyers' account of the
successes and problems of mathematically assessing the number of ceramic
objects from an assemblage of fragments has broad implications on the
uses of statistical procedures in archaeology. The only sitespecific
case is the work by Williams-Thorpe & Thorpe leading them to the
conclusion that the Stonehenge bluestone was brought to the Salisbury
plain by glacial, rather than by human, transport. The two papers in the
session on site survey techniques assess the state of the art of remote
sensing (Shennan & Donoghue) and of geophysical prospection
(Aspinall), both with a strong emphasis on the important role of data
processing for future progress. The division of organic archaeometry
into separate sections on food remains and human remains is somewhat
arbitrary: in the former, a broad review by Jones on food webs and
ecosystems includes consideration of human skeletal and faecal evidence,
and in the latter, one by Hedges & Sykes on biomolecular archaeology
includes plants and small rodents. One must continue to hope for a more
rational classification within this rapidly expanding field. There is a
comprehensive and valuable account of methods and problems in the
analysis of food remains by Evershed and his group at Liverpool and an
assessment of light stable isotope analysis for dietary reconstruction
by van der Merwe.
Readers may want to turn to Renfrew's concluding 'meeting
summary' first, but are advised to resist the temptation. Pleasure
delayed is pleasure doubled. And, predictably, this is no mere summary.
In its three parts, Renfrew first takes a brief glance at the history of
archaeometry, then bravely predicts future developments, including
several of those suggested by the papers, and closes with some
cautionary tales of past errors in archaeological science. His point is
not the obvious and churlish one that archaeometry is fallible, but the
subtle and generous one that conformity to Popper's criterion of
falsifiability and a demonstrated history of self-correction are the
marks of a mature science.
This is an enormously valuable collection of important papers. It
does not diminish the merits of Pollard's editorship to note, with
a twang of envy, that moulding such superior material into a superior
product must have been more a pleasure than a chore.
CURT W. BECK Vassar College, Poughkeepsie (NY)
