Archaeologys Past

1
Archaeologys Past

• A Brief History of Archaeology

2
The Western World Discovers Its Past

• Nabonidus (538 B.C.) the first archaeologist
• Petrarch- early Renaissance
• The British antiquarian spirit (16th century)
• Importance of 1859

3
Nabonidus

• Nabonidus- last king of the neo-Babylonian Empire
  died in 538 B.C.
• Is considered by most historians to be the
  first archaeologist.
• he remains an important figure for one simple
  reason
• He looked to the physical residues of antiquity
  to answer questions about the past.

4
Nabonidus stele
Nabonidus cuneiform
5
Francesco Petrarch

• Italian poet and humanist, b. at Arezzo, 20 July,
  1304 d. at Arquá, 19 July, 1374
• Defined an important intellectual tradition which
  continues to be important for archaeological
  research
• In order to understand the present, one must
  first understand the past.
• Petrarchs approach lead to a rediscovery of the
  past

6
The British Antiquarian Spirit (16th century)

• British Antiquarian Society 1572
• The emphasis of this and later societies was to
  record and preserve the national treasures,
  rather than indiscriminately to acquire curios
  and objects dart
• Archaeological research to this point proceeded
  mostly within the tradition of Petarch, concerned
  primarily with clarifying the picture of
  classical civilizations.
• Major Problems Jacques Boucher de Perthes
  discovers ancient axeheads (1836).
• Acheulian Tradition associated with Homo erectus
  1.8 mya-200,000
• Finding disputed by Usher October 23 4004 B.C.

7
Acheulian Hand Axes
Jacques Boucher de Perthes
8
The Importance of 1859

• Hugh Falconer visits Abbeville and St. Acheul to
  examine the evidence
• A paper is presented to the influential Royal
  Society of London supporting the claims of
  Boucher de Perthes
• Darwin On the Origin of Species

9
No Antiquity in the Americas?
10
Founders of Americanist Archaeology

• Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) A man ahead of his
  time
• One of the first people on the continent to
  excavate.
• First to examine stratigraphy.
• The layering of deposits at an archaeological
  site. Cultural elements and natural sediments
  become buried over time.  The layer on the bottom
  is the oldest and the top layer is the youngest.
• According to the Law of Supposition, the lowest
  stratum is the oldest, and the highest stratum is
  the more recent deposit.
• First to use the scientific method.

11
View of the Mississippi Valley, painted by John
Egan, 1850. This painting shows an early
excavation of a conical mound that is often
erroneously associated with Thomas Jefferson.
Photo courtesy of the University of Alabama
Museums.
12
Clarence Bloomfield Moore

• C. B. Moore was a wealthy man born in
  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and educated at
  Harvard University.
• At the age of 40, Moore purchased a flat bottomed
  steamship, named the Gopher, and navigated the
  Florida rivers during the summer.
• Concentrating on the shell middens and sand
  burial mounds along the rivers of Florida, year
  after year, C.B. Moore carefully excavated sites
  along the waterways.
• While Moore reserved the warmer months for
  traveling along the southeastern waterways and
  excavating sites, the winter months were spent
  analyzing his findings and writing reports that
  were published by the Journal of the Academy of
  Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

13
C.B. Moore (1852-1936)
C.B. Moore and his steamship the Gopher.
Reproduced from Certain Aboriginal Remains of the
Black Warrior River.
14
Nels Nelson (1875-1964)

• Born into a hardworking farm family in Denmark
• Emigrated in 1892 at the age of 17 to the U.S. At
  this time he began his schooling by entering the
  first grade.
• Graduated high school in 1901 at 26.
• B.A. Stanford philosophy 1907
• M.A. Berkeley archaeology 1908
• M.A. thesis was on shellmounds in the San
  Francisco area
• Nelson is best remembered for his contribution to
  stratigraphic techniques.

15
Emeryville mound, 1907.
Steam shovel destruction of shellmound in 1924
16
Southerly wall of areas 34 and 40, looking north
1924 demolition of the mound.
17
Cross-section of the western foot of the shell
mound.
18
Alfred Vincent Kidder (1886-1963) The Founder of
Anthropological Archaeology

• Spent most of his years growing up in New
  England.
• Entered Harvard in 1904 as a pre-med major.
• 1907 decided on archaeology as a profession after
  spending the summer in Arizona and Utah
  performing his first field work.
• 1914 receives PhD. He was awarded the 6th
  American PhD specializing in archaeology and the
  first to focus on North America

19

• Thesis entitled Southern Ceramics (Kidder, 1914,
  unpublished).
• Kidder continued his southwest expeditions under
  the Peabody Museum of Harvard University until he
  was appointed director of excavations at  the
  Pecos ruins for the Phillips Academy at Andover,
  Mass. in 1915, a position he held until 1929. 
• This was the first large-scale systematic
  stratigraphic archaeological excavation in North
  America as well as the largest undertaking of its
  kind. 

20

• It was here that Kidder made use of the
  stratigraphic method on a large scale and
  extended it into a regional strategy of cultural
  chronological steps (Willey, 1974).  The method
  consisted of 5 steps
• (1) reconnaissance
• (2) selection of criteria for ranking the remains
  of sites  chronologically
• (3) seriation into a probable sequence
• (4) stratigraphic excavation to elucidate
  specific problems followed by
• (5) more detailed regional survey and dating
  (Bahn, 1996). 

21

• It was this introduction to a field previously
  unsystemized that led Kidder to write An
  Introduction to the Study of Southwestern
  Archaeology (Kidder, 1924), now a classic in
  American archaeology. 
• This book also provided the basis for the Pecos
  Classification that was derived during the first
  Pecos Conference held in 1927. 
• The classification served as a chronology of the
  cultures in the southwest, starting with the
  early Basketmakers and extending to the Pueblo
  cultures of later historical times.  One such
  culture is the Anasazi of Mesa Verde, Colorado,
  thought to be modern ancestors of the Pueblo
  Indians.