ANTH 235,

PRESERVATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA: FORMATION PROCESSES

“What are fossils, after all, if not vestiges both destroyed and preserved by time?” –Pascal Tassy, paleontologist

“Archaeologists don’t excavate data; they excavate objects” – David Hurst Thomas, archaeologist

Our ability to interpret the material remains of the past is limited more by our theoretical naïveté and a lack of methodological sophisticationthan by the information itself in the ground.

SYSTEMIC CONTEXT (LIVING CULTURES)

FORMATION PROCESSES

(A.K.A. TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESSES)

ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT

(THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD)

Formation Processes (Dr. Michael Brian Schiffer, UA). Includes natural processes and cultural processes.

Taphonomy (Gr. τάφoς[burial] + νόμoς [law]): all of the sciences that seek to understand “the ways in which things become entombed,” including the process of fossilization. See:

Specific factors influencing the differential preservation of archaeological remains:

Climate (including environment)

Geology (including soil and underlying bedrock)

Vegetation(see example below)

Strangler Figroots are slowly tearing apart the late 12th century CE Buddhist temple complex at Ta Prohm, near Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Human behavior (construction, resource extraction, agriculture, etc.)

Woomera, the Australian Aboriginal “Swiss Army knife”

What conditions lead to good archaeological preservation?

Consistency counts! (very dry, very wet, very cold, etc.)

DRY AREAS: Masada, the Judean Desert, Israel

Masada, near the Dead Sea in the Judean Desert, was held under siege by Roman legionnaires from 66-73 CE

WET AREAS: Biskupin, Poland: a fortified early Iron Age settlement (550-400 BCE)

Thelate Lusatian Culture fortified settlement at Biskupin is well preserved through waterlogging, allowing accurate reconstruction (and is sufficiently famous as a national symbol to have been the subject of a postage stamp).

See also:
Iron Age “Bog People” of southern Scandinavia (ca. 400 BCE)

The naturally preserved Iron Age “Tollund Man” from Denmark. Note his well-preserved leather cap and belt and the noose around his neck, the latter having been used to ritually strangle him around 400 BCE.

The head of the “Tollund Man”

See also:

Asingh, P. and N. Lynnerup, editors. (2007). Grauballe Man, An Iron Age Bog Body Revisited. Højbjerg, Denmark: Moesgaard Museum & Jutland Archaeological Society.

COLD AREAS: Siberian mammoths & other Ice Age mammals; Iron Age Scythian culture tombs at Pazyryk, Russia; Inuit settlements in North America and Greenland

Ötzi, the so-called “Ice Man” of the Italian Alps, discovered in 1991

(about 5300 years old; the oldest known preserved human corpse)

SPECIAL CASES OF PRESERVATION: Intentional mummification in Dynastic Egypt and the volcanic cataclysm at Pompeii and Herculaneum, Italy, 79 CE

The intentionally mummified Pharaoh Tutankhamun, ca. 1341-1323 BCE

Pompeii about to be devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, 24 August 79 CE

The watchdog of Vesonius Primuscaptured in his death throes, Pompeii, 24 August 79 CE

discard behavior

modern material culture studies

(sometimes called “contemporary archaeology”)

recycling (e.g., Australian Aboriginal tula-adze and Middle Eastern tells)

Australian Aboriginal tula-adze (left) and tula-adze slug (right); the “slug” representing a worn-out and discarded tula-adze

Jericho Tell in the West Bank, occupied from roughly 9000-1500 BCE

curation (heirlooms)

DESTRUCTION OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD:

  1. World War I trench warfare – impact on western European prehistory
  2. Geometrically increased demand for raw materials, beginning in the first Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century
  3. Highway construction – especially in the US after World War II
  4. Urban sprawl – a global, increasingly severe phenomenon (see composite night map of Earth below)

5. Looting and illicit trade in antiquities – not only a recent phenomenon, but has intensified in the early 21st century to epidemic proportions. This is now the most serious problem we face as regards the preservation of the human heritage.

Fair warning:

We are perhaps the last generation of archaeologists who will be able to study untouched archaeological sites.