The Final Exam

Due Tuesday, April 21 (noon)

“We’ll stop torturing you, Dr.
Nicholas, if you promise to
replace the take-home with a
multiple-choice final next
semester”
What We’re Missing Today
ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY:
The Craft of Archaeological Practice
Wrapping Things Up
What is Archaeology?
 What are the Significant
Themes/Theories
in Archaeological Theory?
Is the Past Knowable?
How do we know what we know?
(about things we cannot see)
1) How Much Theory is Enough?
 Think about the breadth of your
knowledge of archaeological theory
What D0 You Know Now?
Final Class Questionnaire?
What Did You Know Then?
First Class Questionnaire
What Else Do You Know Now?
Your New-Found Powers: Journal of World Prehistory
Latin American Antiquity
Canadian Journal of Archaeology
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
American Antiquity
Archaeological Dialogues
Journal of Archaeological Science
Journal of
Archaeological
Method and Theory
Cambridge Archaeological Review
Heritage Management
Archaeologies
Journal of
Social Archaeology
 2) Always Challenging
What We Think We Know
 2) Always Challenging
What We Think We Know
 3) The Personalities of
Archaeological Theory and Practice
Archaeology as Autobiography
Personalizing Archaeology

Mr. Wizard
An early interest
in archaeology

Family Lore:
The Fateful Dinner Table Announcement
The Dinner Story
The Archaeology of the Nicholas Boys

(childhood entoptics?)
The Archaeology of the Nicholas Boys

Land Rover GN Brother Bob

Material culture validating stories
about/from the past
Franklin Pierce College Field School, New Hampshire

Howard Sargent

way

Age 18
BA Honor’s Thesis, Franklin Pierce College
An Examination of the Lineage of Amenhotep III, 18th Dynasty, Egypt:
A Paleopathological Study.
MA Thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia
Variability in the Late Archaic: A Quantitative Lithic Analysis
 Excavating an early 20th-century well, Columbia, Missouri
My great find: a circa-1910 light bulb (recovered unbroken) shovel-skimming
A Fleet of Land Rovers

43
Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The Archaeology of Early Place: Early Postglacial Archaeology at
Robbins Swamp, Connecticut
A Cultural Geography of Theory
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
( aka “U Marx”)

Then
- Dena Dincauze (professor)
- Martin Wobst (professor)
- Robert Paynter (professor)
- Michael Blakey (pre-cohort)
- Joan Gero (pre-cohort)
- Dean Saitta (cohort)
- Stephen Loring (cohort)
- Elizabeth Chilton (cohort)

Now
- Sonya Atalay (professor); Elizabeth Chilton (professor)
- Angele Smith (post-cohort) now Professor at UNBC
SFU-Secwepemc Education Institute - Kamloops
Indigenous Archaeology Program 1991–2005

Seeking a More Representative Archaeological Record by

1. Identifying the pre-5,000 BP archaeological landscape
2. Exploring long-term land-use patterns
3. Addressing Secwepemc heritage resource management needs
4. Recognizing the sociopolitics of archaeology
Personal Revelations

Processual Indigenous archaeology

approaches
to
hunter-gatherers
and wetlands

The Cultural Landscape – A Sense of Place

The Need for Representativeness

An Archaeological Genealogy

BA, Franklin Pierce Collage

Howard Sargent
Marley Brown (sessional)

MA, University of Missouri-Columbia

Raymond Wood

Ph.D. University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Dena Dincauze; Martin Wobst

American Indian Archaeological Institute

Russell Handsman
An Archaeological Genealogy

Howard Sargent
(BA, Yale University, 1950 MA, U. Michigan, 1951)
- Irving Rouse (PhD, Yale, 1938)
- Cornelius Osgood (Yale)
BA, PhD, University of Chicago
Arctic ethnologist, National Museum of Canada
- James Griffin
- Leslie White (MA, Columbia; Ph.D., U. Chicago)
- Ruth Benedict
- Franz Boas
- Alexander Goldenweiser
- Franz Boas
- Julian Steward (BA, Berkeley; Ph.D., Columbia)
- Alfred Kroeber
- Franz Boas
PS.
- Robert Lowie
- Franz Boas Former editor of
- Elman Service Man in the Northeast
- Marshall Sahlins
- Eric Wolf
An Archaeological Genealogy
Marley Brown III
(BA, Brown University, 1969; PhD Brown, 1972)
- James Deetz (BA, MA, PhD, Harvard, 1960)
- A. V. Kidder
- Earnest Hooton
- Leslie Spier
- William H. Howells
- Gordon Willey
- James Fredrickson

Marley is featured in the video “Digging for Slaves” while he was Director
of Archaeological Excavation and Conservation, Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation
An Archaeological Genealogy

W. Raymond Wood
(BA, U. Nebraska; MA, U. Oregon)
- Luther Cressman (husband of Margaret Mead)
- Franz Boas
- John Champe
- William Duncan Strong
- Alfred Kroeber
-Franz Boas
PS.
Former editor of
American Antiquity;
Former president, SAA
An Archaeological Genealogy

Dena Dincauze
(BA, Barnard College; MA, Cambridge; Ph.D., Harvard)
- Richard Woodbury (Harvard)
- Clyde Kluckhohn
- Alfred Tozzer PS.
- Roland Dixon Former editor of
- E.A. Hooten American Antiquity;
- Nathalie Woodbury Former president, SAA
- Grahame Clark (Star Carr) (and undergrad classmate
- Gordon Willey of Alice Kehoe)
- BA U. Arizona 1931-1935
- Bryon Cummings (worked with John Wetherill)
- MA, U. Arizona
- PhD, U. Chicago 1939-
An Archaeological Genealogy

Martin Wobst
(U. Michigan BA 1966; PhD 1971)
- James B. Griffin (BA. University of Chicago; Ph.D., U. Michigan)
- Faye Cooper- Cole
- William Krogman
- Thorne Deuel
- Richard D. Alexander
- Richard I. Ford
- Robert Whallon, Jr. (Ph.D., U. Chicago)
- Lewis Binford
- Gordon Willey
- Albert Spaulding
- James Griffin
- Edwin N. Wilmsen (Ph.D., U. Arizona, 1967)
An Archaeological Genealogy

Russell Handsman
(Ph.D. American University, 1977)
- Mark Leone (BA, Tufts U., 1963; U. Arizona, MA 1966; PhD 1968)
- William Longacre
- Lewis Binford
- James Griffin
- Albert Spaulding
- Leslie White
- Ruth Benedict
- Franz Boas
Now the exciting part…
An Archaeological Genealogy

You are now part of this theoretical lineage!

Martin Wobst, Mark Leone, Lewis Binford, Clyde Kluckhohn,

Gordon Willey, James Griffin, Grahame Clarke, Albert Spaulding,
Fay Cooper-Cole, Luther Cressman, Margaret Mead,
William Duncan Strong,
Elman Service, Marshall Sahlins,
Leslie White, Julian Steward, Alfred Kidder,
Alfred Kroeber, Ruth Benedict,
and
Franz Boas!
Rites of Passage
What are Rites of Passage?
Communally organized religious beliefs and practices:

Rites of Solidarity
– common among clans and other descent groups;
– groups have names and emblems that identify group;
– identifying objects are totems;
– totems associated with ancestral beings, sacred places.

Rites of Passage
– a process or event that marks a change in status of
individuals that affect the community;
– birth, puberty, marriage, death;
– provides communal recognition to new relationships, not
merely changes experienced by individuals.

Marvin Harris, Culture, People, Nature

Australian Aboriginal Rites of Passage
Initiation Rites: Cicatrices
Archaeological Theory as a Rite of Passage?
Archaeological Theory as a Rite of Passage?

How So?
 Rites of Passage

“Many consider their

university-based encounter
with theory as a rite of passage—
something to be endured in
order to achieve new status and
understanding.”
Archaeological Theory as a Rite of Passage?

New Ways of Thinking

Archaeological Theory as a Rite of Passage?

Celebrating Your New Status

 Harlan Smith
in Kamloops

A.V. Kidder
The Anointing of the Trowels at Pecos

Belzoni
at Giza
The Nature of Theory Theory
|
The Nature of Theory Theory
|

You !!
The Essential Questions of Human Existence

Gauguin — D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous

Where Do We Come From?

What Are We?
Where Are We Going?
Making Sense of…

How archaeology developed

How ideas emerge, change, spread

The biographical dimension of archaeology

Whose heritage?: mine, yours, ours

Why any of this really matters

 Key Themes in Your Archaeological Future
New technological advances
Repatriation
Ethics
Heritage management 3.0
The DNA revolution
The Digital revolution
Artifact, data, and digital storage
Yet-unimagined technologies, challenges, opportunities

And the consequences of doing/not doing archaeology

The Essential Questions of Archaeological Practice

Why do we do archaeology?
For whom do we do it?
How best can it be done?
 Enlightenment

Theory permeates the fabric of archaeological existence.

“Use the Theory, Luke”