Am. Archaeology

PREHISTORIC CULTURES OF NORTH AMERICA

S. Crouthamel, American Indian Studies/Anthropology, Palomar College

I. American Archaeology and American Indians

All ancient cultures shared a common interest in previous cultures and objects based on curiosity, monetary value of ancient objects or even as a source of power. However, field investigation was unsystematic and highly destructive. European enlightenment gave impetus to positivistic thinking that motivated the pursuit of knowledge about the natural and physical world. These antiquarians, as they were called, became interested in socio-cultural evolution and derived chronologies of various civilizations. Eventually, people like Pitt Rivers (1827-1900) applied systematic methods from his military experiences to archaeological excavation. He understood mapping and stratigraphy so he was able to begin to reconstruct objects and features in sequence by maintaining horizontal and vertical control with record keeping in excavation.

Early American antiquarians similarly were interested in ancient cultures in America, but began more systemic field inquiry using surveying techniques. Thomas Jefferson excavated burial mounds on his plantation in the 1780's. In 1845, Squire and Davis surveyed the numerous mound sites in the Ohio River Valley. American archaeology as a professional or academic discipline also took time to develop from amateur antiquarians or pure relic seekers (pot-hunters). This develpoment was compounded by the prejudice toward Native American culture and a bias that actually blinded many early antiquarians from recognizing that the many mounds found in the East were actually components of Native American cultures. To organize the development of archaeology in the America and particularly the United States Willey and Sabloff (1993) produced a chronology for the history of the discipline, which we will summarize here:

Speculative Period (1492-1840)

Europeans came to the 'New World' where Native Americans civilizations had been thriving for more than 15,000 years. Yet their speculation was based on non-scientific conjecture and Eurocentric colonial views with very little data. In 1537 Pope Paul III finally decided Native Americans to be human, which opened the way for missionaries. In the 16th and 17th centuries Spanish chroniclers documented some of the Native American civilizations but were primarily interested in the acquisition of wealth. DeSoto in 1539 journeyed through the SE part of the United States and documented Native American mound cultures of the area. In the 18th and early 19th century English/ American antiquarians and armchair speculators launched a long debate that was misguided and driven by the need to justify removal of Eastern Woodland farming people. They ignored or were ignorant of Spanish and French chroniclers and began to speculate as to what people had built over 100,000 mounds in the Eastern Woodlands and Prairies of North America. Since they would or could not believe that the few meager Indians did it they speculated that Tartars, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Israelites, Atlantians, or even Welsh built the mounds. In the early 19th century the debate was focused at the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia , PA and the American Antiquarian Society, Boston, MA. Many notable Americans like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster were members. Their proceedings are published and are full of interesting speculation. Some change their minds over time, but Thomas Jefferson, because of his excavations was one the few that insisted that Native Americans were responsible.

Classificatory-Descriptive Period (1840-1914)

The Great Moundbuilder Debate actually continued and the United States removed most of the Native American people to West of the Mississippi River; many to the Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). After the Civil War nation building led to continued exploration of the West and the Frontier. John Wesley Powell (a Civil War Veteran who lost his right arm at Shiloh) embarked on many explorations in the West including the running down the Colorado River in wooden boats in 1869. In 1879 Powell became the director of the Smithsonian Institutions Bureau of Ethnology (later Bureau of American Ethnology/BAE) and the U.S. Geological Survey/USGS. Powell assigned Cyrus Thomas to the Division of Mound Exploration in 1882 to resolve the Great Moundbuilder Debate. Thomas' findings were published in 1894. Similar work

N1365: Putnam at Ohio, Foster's
Earthwork, Warren Co., Ohio, 1890

was conducted by Frederic Ward Putnam (1839-1915) the Curator of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology , Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. In both cases results of systematic excavation revealed evidence that there were at least three moundbuilding cultures, American Indian culture traits were present in the mounds, and later mounds had European trade items. Although evidence resolved the debate, it would take the public much longer to realize that these complex cultures were part of ancient American Indian, especially since most had been forcibly removed to Oklahoma on the 'Trail of Tears'. The end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century brought the development of anthropological museums and departments throughout the country. Frederic Ward Putnam was instrumental in establishing a number of anthropology departments including University of California, Berkeley with A.L. Kroeber in 1903.

Classificatory-Historical Period (1914-1960)

Formalization of inductive research to use stratigraphic observation and seriation to produce chronologies of ancient Native American became a major endeavor of the academic institutions in the early 20th century. Typology and artifact classification were part of archival components of labs and museums. The classification of pottery, especially in the East and Southwest, was a dominant activity at a number of institutions. Kidder's classification (1927) of Southwest cultures were based on extensive excavations at Pecos Pueblo and were augmented with the discovery of dendrochronology by A.E. Douglass of the University of Arizona. Also, a number of ancient ice-age kill sites were discovered that revealed that Native American people were present in the Americas before the end of the last ice-age 10,000 year ago. Geologic information coupled with stratigraphic analysis verified the chronology of these sites. Later, radiocarbon (C14) was developed by W. Libby at the University of Chicago in 1949. A basic chronology emerged by 1958 (Willey and Phillips) and is useful in spite of exceptions and variations in specific culture areas.

Paleo-Indian/Lithic : ancient Pleistocene hunters and gatherers (H&G)

Archaic: post Pleistocene hunters and gatherers; early horticulture;

Formative: horticulture/agriculture; village and sedentary lifestyle

Classic: agriculture; urban city states and empire-building

Post- Classic: agriculture; empires becoming imperialistic

Such classifications can be useful but very controversial especially in terms of the Eurocentric evolutionary implications as well as the restrictions imposed by such typologies on entire cultural milieu. Cultural models are also needed to put together a reconstruction of any ancient culture based upon archaeological data. this data is organized in terms of a hierarchy of terms ( see also: Text-Fagan Table 2-2):

COMPONENT: stratigraphic unit from one site

PHASE: similar components from different sites

HORIZON: Common phases from different regions

These all imply data (artifacts, assemblages of tools, structures, sites) in time and space. Larger concepts include :Culture Areas; Sub-Areas; Archaeological Regions. Cultural Tradition implies common lifestyle over time, e.g. Archaic Tradition. However, a Cultural Period, e.g. Late Archaic Period usually has specific time and space limitations (9,000-1,000 bce/11,000-3,000 bp Eastern Woodlands). Unfortunately archaeologists are not always consistent. American archaeologists also began to examine context with functional-structural approaches to cultural assessments.

Explanatory Period 1960-

Ecological, behavioral and evolutionary explanations are common theoretical emphasis that dominates archaeological theory still. However, in 1960 L. Binford proposed a "New Archaeology" that delved into general laws and cognition that has emerged into what was called processual archaeology; changing to specific cases of the process of cultural change and explanation derived from ecological and cultural factors. Further, some archaeologists pushed Binford's concept of 'ideotechnic artifacts' in postprocessual quest for symbols and meaning of everything including trash. Such inquiry led to implications of gender, agency, leadership and further into the realms of organizational networks, power, communication networks and the return of issues such as diffusion. It continues with debates about epistemology, scientific inquiry and even reality. In our course on North America archaeology we will limit ourselves to the best reconstruction of ancient Native American cultures, exemplary sites and some speculation about cultural changes.

Native American groups held different perspectives of the past and of cultural objects. They felt it was sacrilegious to dig up the remains of the dead and to move them to places like museums. Artifacts from houses or trash are in some cases viewed as dangerous or sacred but in some cases as valuable information about the past. Native Americans hold to a variety of views about archaeology and archaeologists. In recent years greater cooperation has been effected by archaeologists consulting in a sincere manner with the Native American community in question. As always some Native Americans and archaeologists manipulate the situation for political and selfish goals.