What's new in archeology?

What's new in archaeology?

OVER the past two or three decades, archaeology--the study of the human past through the material remains of human activity--has changed profoundly in nature. Archaeology was once widely regarded as some sort of backward extension of recorded history. For times when written records were available it was seen as a useful addition, as simply some sort of illustration of the written narrative. For the prehistoric period, prior to the availability of written testimony, it offered some kind of shadowy reconstruction of the past, an illiterate substitute for a proper historical record.

Today, rather suddenly, archaeology, seems relevant and relevant in a very international way. Every continent has its own rich archaeology record, whether or not it has its own written records into the remote past. Moreover, we can see more clearly that what happened in the Americas, for instance, or in Africa two or three thousand years ago is just as relevant to our general understanding of human history as events occurring at that time in Asia or in Europe, areas with a longer written record.

Several developments have come together to create a new awareness that the archaeology of all these areas--and let us not leave out Australia and the Pacific--is part of our archaeology, the record of the history and achievements of our own species, and a part of the cultural heritage of our world.

In the first place, the development of new dating techniques, especially radiocarbon dating, has allowed the archaeological finds from every part of the globe to be dated reliably, without recourse to written history. The application of other techniques from the sciences, along with more rigorous excavation methods, has given the archaeologist a whole array of approaches which he or she can use to investigate past economies, the development of technology and early social systems (see article page 12).

Secondly, with the development of what has come to be called the "New Archaeology", research workers have redefined their aims. We are no longer simply seeking to reconstruct the past, and form some simple narrative of what happened in early times. We are trying in addition to understand why things changed and why they became what they are. This aim requires the development of a clearer theoretical framework for archaeology and involves the questioning of old beliefs. And if our goal is to understand how and why things change, the study of the processes at work in one part of the world may give us very valuable insights into those operating in another. The New Archaeology is therefore not ethnocentric, or at least it tries not to be.

Thirdly, with the increased pace of development in many parts of the world, both in towns and in the countryside through the mechanization and intensification of agriculture, many components of the archaeological record are under threat. The awareness that his is so has given rise to "rescue archaeology" as a national policy in many countries, sometimes referred to as Culture Resource Management. This implies both the effort to protect important sites against damage, and an acknowledgement of the need to conduct systematic excavations at those whose destruction cannot be prevented, so as to learn what we can from them before the site has been destroyed. Along with the national, public investment in rescue archaeology has come a deeper awareness of the significance of the early past for each nation's own identity. Our past matters: it is a fundamental part of what we have become. And archaeology is the only way we can find out about our early origins.

Up until a century ago, no-one had any very clear idea of how old the world was, and very little notion of the antiquity of humankind. In most countries there were creation stories, often suggesting that the first appearance of humankind was the act of god, or of the gods. But no one could say with any precision how long ago this occurred.

It was not until 1859, the same year in which Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, that the antiquity of man was established. Flint tools were then shown to have been found together with the bones of extinct animals, and it was demonstrated that the animals and the humans who made the tools must have lived many thousands of years ago.

Work over the century following these revelations made many things clear. It was shown that our species had first emerged in Africa and that most of the globe had first been peopled during what is termed the Old Stone Age, well before 10000 BC. Evidence for the local origins of farming was found in several parts of the world. In some of these areas, early cities developed for the first time and writing was invented.

But when? To give a precise date to these developments was extremely difficult. It was not until the 1950s that progress in atomic physics allowed new analytical techniques to come to the aid of archaeology. From the application of potassium-argon dating applied to these two elements found in rocks of volcanic origin, we know that the first tool-making hominids emerged in Africa around two million years ago. They were not, of course, very much like modern humans. But even the earliest hominids, of the genus Australopithecus, had the human ability of walking upright, of using the hand to hold things in a prehensile grasp, of binocular vision, and other abilities distinguishing them from many other species.

By 35,000 years ago, the first members of our own species, Homo sapiens sapiens are seen. Modern humankind dates from then and this date for the appearance of modern humankind is given to us by radiocarbon analysis. This technique of radiocarbon dating is another spin-off from atomic physics, and it allows any piece of organic matter (that is to say, material derived from once living things, whether animal or plant, and which contains carbon) to be dated in the laboratory, so long as it is not more than about 40,000 years old.

For prehistoric Europe, these results have produced a revolution in our thinking. They showed that many of the very early European developments were not derived from the east Mediterranean area, as had once been thought. For instance it is no longer true that the pyramids of Egypt are the earliest stone-built monuments in the world. Some of the stone-built tombs of Europe are earlier, and Stonehenge in England or the temples of Malta are now the contemporaries of the pyramids not their younger relatives.

The broader significance of radiocarbon dating is much wider even than this. It means that for the first time, those areas which did not have an early written history can have their own secure chronology. We know now, for instance, that Australia had a human population, the ancestors of the modern aborigines, as early as 25,000 years ago. We can now date properly the early developments in the Americas, to take another example. It has been shown that the origins of the Maya civilization of Mexico and neighbouring countries date back as early as 2000 BC. We can now begin to understand the African iron age, and recognize properly the true originality of the terracotta and the bronze sculptures of Nigeria, some of them dating back to around 600 BC.

These are just a few examples of the many which could be brought forward from each area of the globe. All of this means then, that it is now possible to speak in terms of a world prehistory. For each area the long sequence of human development can be built up. As a result of this dating revolution, each country can have its own, well-dated prehistory.

Dating techniques represent, however, only one group of the techniques of archaeological science, even though they are probably the most important. Another line of investigation is the laboratory analysis of artefacts--stone tools, for instance, or pottery--which can often give clear indications of the original source of the material used. This allows us to learn something of the trade and exchange of goods among the early populations and of the system of distribution of the goods to the areas where they were used, buried and later discovered by the archaeologist.

The life sciences too have made their contribution. From the study of the rubbish of early societies it is now possible to build up a very clear picture of their diet, and hence of their subsistence economy. For instance, carbonized seeds from rubbish dumps, when studied by a specialist, can reveal precisely what food crops were being cultivated by early farmers. Investigations of animal bones can indicate which wild animals were being hunted, and whether or not domestic animals were being kept and in what numbers and proportions.

Modern archaeology, it has been said, is sometimes just the study of poor man's rubbish. This is often quite true! For by studying these rather modest remains we can build up a whole picture of the developing economy of early societies which may tell us more about life in them than the most precious objects of gold or jade.

In may ways, however, the most exciting recent developments in archaeology have not been those achieved in the laboratory, in the perfection of dating methods or the study of the early environment. They have come rather, from a change in outlook, and of philosophy. The "New Archaeology" begain in the 1960s, in the United States and in Britain, arising from a dissatisfaction with the assumption and outlook of the traditional archaeology, which often seemed to reach conclusions framed in very simplified historical terms. Its leading exponent has been Professor Lewis R. Binford of the university of New Mexico at Albuquerque, and his great achievement has been to show that in order to understand the past it is not sufficient just to dig up the artefacts of past ages and to write some intuitive story based on one's impressions of them.

Instead, our concern should be the study of culture process--that is to say how and why human cultures change. We have to ask much more carefully what is the explanation for all the differences, the variability which we seen in the archaeological record. This means that we have to develop a better theory, a better methodology for archaeological interpretation.

Processual archaeologists, then, seek to understand why things changed, and this means developing explanations through a willingness to generalize. It implies the construction of theories in the same sort of way that the scientist work when understanding the world of nature. These theories can then be assessed, and sometimes they can be tested against new archaeological findings.

To take an example, we may want to understand how a particular city came to be built, and how civilization emerged in an area--whether we are talking of ancient Rome, or of Moenjodaro in Pakistan, or whatever. To do this properly we need to seek some more general understanding of the processes whcih lead to increasing growth and complexity in different human cultures. We can then study how far the case of Rome or Moenjodaro fits into the general picture, and try to examine the special features of each.

The "New Archaeology" is more optimistic than the traditional approach. It does not accept the assertion that we cannot learn through archaeology about the social organization or the religious life of past societies as many traditional archaeologists have asserted. Rather we have to try and develop sound arguments which will allow us to interpret the data about these aspects of society, as well as about diet and about technology and so forth.

Processual archaeology is very concerned also to think more carefully about how the archaeological record itself is formed--about exactly how the sites which we dig up, and the objects which we find in them, come to be found where they are. The new field of ethnoarchaeology has developed in order to investigate these issues. It involves going out to live in a suitable contemporary community, which has a way of life that is in some respects similar to the prehistoric or historic one that one seeks to understand. The ethnoarchaeologist studies how the modern archaeological record in that contemporary society comes about.

Lewis Binford was one of the first archaeologists to go and do this. his interest was in the hunter-gatherers of the Mousterian period, 40,000 years ago. He saw clearly that the best way to understand the archaeological record of those long-dead hunter-gatherers was to go out and study in detail the archaeological record of a living community of hunter-gatherers. He chose the Nunamiut eskimos of Alaska. He lived in a suitable community, taking part in hunting expeditions. And because he was not a very good hunter, he did the butchery for the group. This gave him the opportunity of studying how rubbish is discarded in such a community, and his work has contributed greatly to the study of early hunter-gatherers.

The same techniques of study can be applied to urban communities also. In Tucson, Arizona, the "Garbage Project" under the direction of Professor William J. Rathje has studied the rubbish discarded by families in different districts of the city. Since they do not simply throw rubbish away, but deposit it in trash cans, the Garbage Project has had to turn itself into a rubbish-disposal squad, collecting the garbage from the trash cans and studying it in the laboratory. It may sound odd, but the results are very interesting.

This project illustrates the point that the techniques of archaeology are relevant to the materials culture of human societies at all times and places, ancient and modern. The contemporary archaeologist no longer thinks in terms of "primitive" and "advanced" cultures. The hunter-gatherer of today or yesterday is as interesting as the city-dweller: both are part of the rich variety of human culture--although it must be admitted that hunter-gatherers have contributed to it for a hundred times as long as city-dwellers!

There is another reason why modern archaeology really does deserve its place in the modern world. The traditional archaeology often explained things in terms of the "diffusion" of culture. The assumption was made that the major advances came about only in one or two areas, and were transmitted to the barbarian fringe by the "diffusion" of culture. In recent years, researchers have come to realize that this was sometimes a rather colonialist viewpoint, implying that the interesting developments came about only in a few crucial, privileged centres.

Today we see that, to understand the changes taking place, you have to understand the processes that are operating locally in the area under study. It is necessary to study the changes in social structure, the developing population, the economy and technology. Exchanges with other areas, and the importation of new ideas can admittedly play and do play a part in that process, but they are not necessarily of dominant importance.

To take one example, it was assumed for many years that the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, in the country which today takes its name from that monument, must have been the work of skilled immigrants from the north, or perhaps the result of contacts with Arab traders. It simply was not accepted that they could be the work of the local inhabitants, that is to say, of the African population. Yet today all the evidence (including the radiocarbon evidence) goes to show that this was in fact the case. We don't need immigrants, or a trading mission, to account for the monument, which we can explain better in terms of the local working of the society of the time. Just the same is true of Stonehenge in England which used to be thought of as the product of contacts and skills of the Metiterranean world. Today we think of it in local terms. We don't need Mediterranean colonists to explain it.

This does not mean that we should always think of each land in isolation. But it does encourage us to believe that every nation should encourage the investigation by archaeological means of its own past. Today most countries are proud of their own cultural heritage, and some of them have remarkable museums, like those in Mexico city and in Cairo, to display it.

There is also a growing concern for the conservation of the cultural heritage. unesco is sponsoring a number of projects, such as its major campaign to save the remains of the great early city of Moenjodaro in Pakistan (see article page 32); and most nations have their own programme for safeguarding monuments. These are now seen as international problems. Some of them will be discussed at the World Archaeological Congress, to be held in September 1986 in Southampton and London (see note page 38). The U.K. national secretary, Professor Peter Ucko of Southampton University, is expecting that representatives from most countries in the world will attend. They will discuss problems of conservation and of interpretation, in the light of the newly-emerging international consciousness about our early past.

Archaeology used to be the pursuit of a few leisured amateurs, often based in the more prosperous centres of the industrial west. Today it is a field of great interest to many people in every country in the world. This is partly because it gives each of us an opportunity to understand more fully our own national history. But to focus on one's own nation alone is mere chauvinism. Archaeology also offers us the opportunity to see the early history of each land as one part of the broader history of the human species as a whole. And processual archaeology invites us to try to understand better the greater diversity of human culture, now and in the past. This has been made easier both by the battery of techniques made available by the sciences, and the rigour and the self-awareness which have been part of the "New Archaeology".

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