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- Convenors:
-
David Robinson
(University of Central Lancashire)
Jamie Hampson (University of Cambridge)
Fraser Sturt (University of Southampton)
- Chair:
-
Wendy Whitby
(University of Central Lancashire)
- Discussant:
-
Dan Hicks
(Oxford University)
- Location:
- Wills 3.32
- Start time:
- 17 December, 2010 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This session highlights current and future research by UK based archaeologists who work on the archaeology of North America.
Long Abstract:
This session focuses on research by UK based archaeologists who work on the archaeology of North America. Research into other continents, especially Europe, Asia, Africa, and arguably to a lesser extant South America, is well represented in UK conferences, publications, and funding, North America remains almost forgotten in UK archaeological discourse. This is due largely to the fact that there has not been a concerted effort by those studying North American archaeology from UK institutions to highlight the importance of North American archaeology within theoretical contexts. This session calls for those working on this somewhat forgotten continent to come to Bristol TAG to remind the UK archaeological community of this apparently forgotten continent. Papers focusing upon the theoretical value of North American archaeology, the Big Questions it addresses, the history of North American research by UK researchers, the place of North America in UK archaeology, and its potential future are all welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Silvia Gonzalez (Liverpool John Moores University)
Paper short abstract:
Archaeological and linguistic research indicates that the Chumash have deep roots in the Santa Barbara Channel region and have occupied the southern California Coast for millenia. We present preliminary ancient DNA and paleodiet research that indicate direct maternal connections dating back 4,500 years.
Paper long abstract:
Previous genetic studies on Modern Chumash populations indicate that some Chumash belong to an ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineage that appears to be coastally distributed along North and South America. Ancient DNA was extracted from 21 individuals, aproximately half of which are from El Monton archaeological site, a large shell midden deposit from Santa Cruz Island, the rest from other Islands from the Channel Islands. Preliminary results indicate direct maternal connections with Modern Chumash populations in mainland California dating back 4,500 years. We also explore potential genetic connections with Pericue Indian populations of the Cape region of the Baja California Peninsula. The possible cultural and genetic similarities between the Chumash, Pericue and other Pacific coast groups has important implications for our understanding of the colonisation and migration processes of the Americas.
Michelle Wienhold (University of Central Lancashire)
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at how UK theoretical discussions concerning landscape archaeology can enhance North American GIS and the archaeological interpretations by using specific examples of my work within CRM.
Paper long abstract:
Cultural resource management (CRM) in the United States has facilitated the expansion of geographic information systems (GIS) within the archaeological community, especially in terms of spatial database management and spatial modelling. Today, for many of the private firms and universities, GIS has become an integral part of the research involved in the study of past human culture. Spatial analysis is becoming more and more of an 'assumed' cost within excavation and survey budgets. This is also enhanced by economical, high resolution datasets available through, for example, the United States Geological Survey. All of these datasets allow archaeologists to readily create environmental variables as input for spatial analyses over large landscapes and use them as a means to gain a better understanding about past environments and cultures. At the same time, UK based archaeological theories have come a long way in their discussion and study of the cognitive landscape and the application of GIS to dynamic human processes. These perspectives can be combined with the high resolution US datasets to allow for a more comprehensive study of past human culture. Drawing on specific examples of my work as an archaeologist and GIS technician for 6 years within CRM in the US and as a UK-based researcher for the past 3 years, I will present how UK theoretical discussions and issues concerning landscape archaeology can enhance North American GIS and the archaeological interpretations.
Claire Halley (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Chaco Canyon, situated in the heart of the American southwest, has been an important testing ground for the development of method and theory in American archaeology for over 100 years. Currently there is a ‘quiet’ crisis in Chacoan archaeology. Using a case study drawing on practice and performance theories this paper argues that it is time for south-westerners to look ‘across the pond’ for inspiration to kick start this stalled research agenda.
Paper long abstract:
Chaco Canyon, situated in the heart of the American southwest, has been an important testing ground for the development of method and theory in American archaeology for over 100 years. Focusing on culture history and latterly on scientific, processual approaches archaeologists have produced voluminous amounts of literature yet, despite this prodigious research, the answers to key questions concerning the nature of Chacoan society; how it was organised, how it began and why it failed remain elusive. The data support a number of contradictory interpretations for the organising principles of Chaco e.g. inequitable/egalitarian, simple/complex, hierarchical/non-hierarchical, secular/religious and corporate/network. Lynne Sebastian (2006) notes that current research and debate is "bogged down in a whole variety of dichotomies".
This paper will begin by reviewing the reasons for this 'quiet' crisis in Chacoan archaeology. I suggest that the perceived hyper-relativism and anti-science approach of post processualism appears to have frightened off south-western archaeologists who remain resolutely scientific and processual in their approach to data, method and theory. I argue that it is time for south-westerners to look 'across the pond' for inspiration and consider the potential of interpretive and humanist approaches as a means of kick starting a stalled research agenda. To demonstrate the potential of this approach I present a case study drawing on practice and performance theories to consider the nature of power and its expression in the early developmental stages of Chacoan society.
Jamie Hampson (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Rock art researchers helped shape the discipline of archaeology. I consider North American rock art historiography and focus on interpretations of a famous multicultural site west of the Pecos River, Texas
Paper long abstract:
Histories of North American archaeology often suggest that, until recently, systematic studies of rock art were non-existent. As early as the nineteenth century, however, rock art researchers not only acquired both archaeological and anthropological data and knowledge, they were also among the first to define the intellectual concepts that continue to drive problem-oriented research today.
In this paper, I do not suggest that there was (or still is) a tidy, single factor that unites rock art researchers. By outlining the aims and successes of some of the early North American studies, however, I demonstrate that rock art researchers helped shape the discipline of archaeology. I situate the few studies that focus on the rock art of west Texas within the broader, continent-wide historiography, and use multicultural Meyers Springs - one of only a handful of well-documented rock art sites west of the Lower Pecos River - as a case study.
Sheila Kohring (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Commercial archaeology is often the poor relative to academic research in North America (and often in Great Britain as well). This paper explores archaeological practices and the presentation of excavation data within the US contract world with specific examples from the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys.
Paper long abstract:
Commercial archaeology is often a primary vocation for fledging archaeologists wanting to "gain experience". However, often the realities of contract work often push to the limit ethics of "best practice" as inculcated in academic discourses. As a result, commercial archaeology is often the poor relative to academic research in North America and other western countries. This paper explores archaeological practices and the presentation of excavation data within the US contract world. The paper follows a narrative of experiences and engagements of one "shovel bum" working in the 1990s in the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys. It then juxtaposes these experiences with academic expectations and practices redefined for research in Great Britain. After 10 years separation and a return to look at contract projects again, has anything changed?
Bruce Bradley (University of Exeter) Dennis Stanford (Smithsonian Institution)
Paper short abstract:
Evidence indicates that people arrived on the eastern seaboard of North America during the LGM, eventually developing into the continent wide Clovis Culture. This was based on the adaptation to and exploitation of the rich ice edge environments of the North Atlantic of the Solutrean Upper Palaeolithic Culture of southwestern France and northern Spain.
Paper long abstract:
The early peopling of the New World has been a topic of intense research since the early twentieth century. While the dominant theory that all people came through Asia is still generally accepted, evidence has accumulated over the past two decades indicating that the earliest origin of people in North America may have been from south-western Europe. In this presentation I outline a model of a Solutrean origin for pre-Clovis and Clovis culture in North America and discuss the archaeological evidence, both positive and negative, supporting this assertion. Beringian archaeology has only pushed back dating to around 13,000 years ago, a time when the Clovis Culture was already well established in North America. There is a growing body of evidence that people were exploiting the eastern seaboard from Maine to South Carolina as early as 22,000 years ago. The material culture from this time is extremely similar to the contemporary assemblages in south-western France and northern Spain and it is our contention that this was the result of a direct historical connection between the two regions. Evaluation of the conditions of the North Atlantic ice edge indicates it was a very rich biotic zone that would have been available to boat-using hunters. We envision a slow westward exploration that ultimately resulted in establishment of interacting populations on both ends of the ice front. This link was broken with the retreat of the glaciers and northward retreat of the ice front between 16,000 and 13,000 years ago.
Jon Bateman (University of York) Stuart Jeffrey
Paper short abstract:
The Transatlantic Archaeological Gateway Project is developing tools for the cross-searching of both US and UK digital archives (the ADS in the UK and tDAR in the US). We will discuss the opportunities the project will provide, and some of the epistemological implications it raises.
Paper long abstract:
On both sides of the Atlantic, the discipline of Archaeology has been a relative early adopter of ICT in teaching and research. Archaeologists routinely create vast quantities of primary digital data. As the only record of unrepeatable fieldwork it is essential that these data are preserved, for re-use and re-interpretation. In the UK the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) has developed into a national repository for digital data from the UK historic environment sector, cross-cutting the academic and public and private sectors. In the USA, it has taken longer to establish a national archival infrastructure but in December 2008 the Digital Antiquity initiative and its digital repository, the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR), was established at Arizona State University. The Transatlantic Archaeology Gateway (TAG) project aims to develop tools for transatlantic cross-searching and semantic interoperability between ADS and tDAR. This paper will explain how the project will be of use to researchers on both side of the Atlantic and explore some of the epistemological implications of opening these geographical discreet datasets to these powerful search mechanisms.
Louisa Pittman (University of Bristol)
Paper short abstract:
Almost all archaeology conducted in the Outer Banks of North Carolina has been focused on the Lost Colony of Roanoke. This paper discusses the challenges and advantages of conducting British academic fieldwork on ordinary contact period colonial sites without a specific Lost Colony agenda.
Paper long abstract:
The Outer Banks of North Carolina is a place of extremes: hundreds of shipwrecks, devastating hurricanes, and the holy grail of American archaeology - the mystery of the Lost Colony. There are hundreds of miles of shoreline in a chain of numerous inhabited islands with a long history of native and English colonial occupation, but to date almost all of the archaeology carried out in the region has been focused on just a few square miles of Roanoke Island in a tireless quest for any evidence of the original 1587 settlement of Raleigh's Lost Colony.
This paper details the challenges of conducting surveys and excavations on contact period sites in Cape Hatteras without a specific focus on the Lost Colony. I will look at how the search for the Lost Colony has deeply affected local opinions of archaeology, has provided unique challenges in coordinating volunteer and professional efforts, and has contributed to a large gap in the archaeological record of both native and later colonial occupation. I will also outline the difficulties and advantages of conducting fieldwork as a Carolina-trained American archaeologist doing British academic research in Hatteras; a place where most American academics and government agents are viewed with suspicion or even outright hostility, but where "outsiders" from across the Atlantic have no stigma attached to there presence.