EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Professor Deborah M Pearsall

The Frederick A Middlebush Chair in Social Sciences
Department of Anthropology
University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, MO
USA

Professor Deborah M.Pearsall

Deborah M. Pearsall was born in Detroit, Michigan, USA. She grew up in various places in the upper Midwest and
graduated from high school in Avon Lake, Ohio. She returned to Michigan for college, where she attended the University
of Michigan and majored in Anthropology. It was also at Michigan that she became interested in paleoethnobotanythe
study of plant-people interrelationships through archaeologyand studied with Richard I. Ford.
After graduation from college, she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and
began studying with South American archaeologist Donald W. Lathrap. There she became interested in Ecuador, and
participated in Lathraps excavations at Real Alto, an ancient agricultural village. The study of macroremains and
phytoliths from Real Alto became her dissertation research, and she received a Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1979.
In addition to continuing to work in Ecuador, Deborah has conducted research in Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto
Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Hawaii, Guam, and the Midwestern U.S., and has supervised students
working in these and other regions. She has taught anthropology and carried out paleoethnobotanical studies at the
University of Missouri in Columbia since 1978. She is the author of Paleoethnobotany, A Handbook of Procedures
(Academic Press, 2000), Plants and People in Ancient Ecuador: The Ethnobotany of the Jama River Valley (Wadsworth,
2004), The Origins of Agriculture in the Neotropics (coauthor with D. R. Piperno, Academic Press, 1998), and editor of
this encyclopedia. She enjoys gardeningespecially growing old English rosesand writing, and lives on 80 acres
outside Columbia with her husband Mike DeLoughery.

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Takeru Akazawa
Kochi University of Technology
Kochi
Japan
Pedro Paulo A Funari
Department of History
Universidad Estadual de Campinas
Sao Paulo
Brazil
Julian Henderson
Department of Archaeology
University of Nottingham
Nottingham
UK
Augustin F C Holl
Department of Anthropology
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
USA
Joyce Marcus
Museum of Anthropology
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
USA

M Rafique Mughal
Department of Archaeology
Boston University
Boston, MA
USA
Daniel T Potts
Department of Archaeology
University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW
Australia
Patty Jo Watson
Washington University at St. Louis
St. Louis, MO
USA
Steve Weber
Department of Anthropology
Washington State University
Vancouver, WA
USA
Zhijun Zhao
Institute of Archaeology
Beijing
China

FOREWORD
Archaeology today has become a truly international undertaking, and it has done so by employing what has
become a new and universal language. The record of the human past is a material one, recorded in the earth, in
the buried remains of vanished civilizations and in the material traces which past communities have left behind.
As this book clearly documents, those traces, the carefully excavated settlements and burials of early human
groups and their artifacts, which they made and used, can today be made accessible in what we may call the
language of archaeology.
That language, intelligible in every part of the world, is able to transcend the limitations of written history.
For narrative history, as set down in writing, is inevitably confined to the literate civilizations whose very early
texts come down to us from just a few locations in the Old World. The universal language of archaeology,
however, knows no such bounds. Instead it addresses the human use of material culture wherever human beings
have lived. It draws upon a broad range of techniques from stratigraphic excavation to radiocarbon dating,
from aerial photography to molecular biology which now make it possible to speak of a world archaeology, in
which the experiences of every country and people can take their place. This book sets out in a coherent way to
make that language clearly and directly intelligible to the reader, so that the basic techniques of archaeology can
be understood. It goes on to apply those techniques to the entire human story. Its broad sweep takes us from the
emergence of the first humans, initially in Africa, and their early out-of-Africa dispersals, through the whole
gamut of human experience, dealing with the rise of farming communities, the dawn of civilizations, the
formation of the first cities, and so down to the present, and to the postcolonial era in every part of the world.
The good news is that every land, every inhabited area of the earth, does have its archaeology. Each
community has a past, which today can be investigated with the use of the now-universal techniques of
investigation described here. The scope is vast. The story unfolds here on a continent-by-continent basis.
Only in recent decades has it been possible to put together such a survey. For it was radiocarbon dating that
opened the way for early developments in every part of the world to be dated. Suddenly the chronology of early
Australia or of southern Africa became just as secure and just as available as the comparable chronologies for
Europe or for the ancient Near East. The whole scope of human achievement in every part of the world is
becoming known through the practice of archaeology. The authors of this survey have produced an up-to-date
account not only of the methods which constitute the language of archaeology but also of the principal findings
which now allow us to speak of a world archaeology.
The authorship of the Encyclopedia of Archaeology reflects the cosmopolitan status of archaeology today. It
is truly international, with Chinese scholars writing many of the entries for China, African scholars for Africa.
The coverage is, of course, global, covering every continent (including Oceania) and every period. It is also
multifacetted, giving insights into the different schools of archaeological thought, which flourish today. It
recognizes that philosophical themes (Marxist archaeology; Postprocessual archaeology) must rub shoulders
with social topics (Ethnicity, Rise of political complexity), and both of these with issues of contemporary
concern (Who owns the past?, Politics of archaeology). These in turn are found side-by-side with some of the
key scientific subdisciplines (archaeometry, phytolith analysis, taphonomy), which today provide much of
the vocabulary for that universal language of archaeology.
The outcome is that this work will be read with profit in every part of the world. It will be as welcome in South
America (where the Amazon basin for once achieves necessary coverage) as in Europe, as appropriate in Japan as
in Mesoamerica. It reflects well the changing nature of archaeology, with the fast developing range of new research
methods and the changing realities of a postcolonial world where the past of every area and region is of interest.
Colin Renfrew

INTRODUCTION

Archaeology is a subject that fascinates us. From

Egyptian tombs to a frozen Alpine wayfarer, from
cities buried under volcanic ash to stone arrowheads
turned up by the plow, archaeology is in the news and
in our backyards. It is paradoxical that a subject that
so easily captures the imagination is so difficult to
access. Superficial media treatments and picturebook atlases and site guides on the one hand, jargonheavy scholarly books and narrowly focused articles
on the other there are few ways to learn about the
real world of archaeology outside the university
classroom or the dig site. The aim of the Encyclopedia of Archaeology is to change this, to make all
aspects of archaeology accessible to a broad audience, from educated laypersons and university students eager to learn about the field, to scholars
intent on broadening and updating their knowledge
of the discipline. No existing work provides the
breadth and depth of coverage achieved here.
It has been my privilege and pleasure to work with
over 260 talented archaeologists from around the globe
during this project. In the pages that follow, they will
introduce you to archaeology through contributions
arranged in an easy-to-use, alphabetical format. From
the moment I was invited to undertake this project,
I knew that I wanted the Encyclopedia of Archaeology
not only to showcase archaeological knowledge at the
beginning of the twenty-first century, but to convey
how archaeologists work, and to illustrate the diversity
of issues and theoretical paradigms that drive our research. From this grew an underlying four-part structure for the Encyclopedia of Archaeology:
Archaeology as a discipline
The practice of archaeology
Archaeology at the beginning of the twenty-first
century: A world overview
Geographical overviews
Topics and issues that cross-cut geography
Archaeology in the everyday world

The Contents list by subject, which follows this Introduction, illustrates how individual contributions are
grouped conceptually within this framework.
Each contribution to Archaeology as a discipline
places emphasis on the broad approach and subject
matter of part of the field of archaeology, and provides historical context when appropriate. Here you
will be introduced to schools of thought as distinctive
as cognitive and evolutionary archaeology, learn of
the historic roots and philosophy of the field, and
read overviews of subjects from archaeoastronomy
to forensic archaeology to urban archaeology.
Contributions to The practice of archaeology describe the nuts and bolts of how archaeological research is conducted, and incorporate case studies as
illustrations of modern archaeological practice.
Topics range from fieldwork, through analysis of
artifacts and biological materials, to approaches to
interpreting the archaeological record. Among our
authors you will find experts and innovators in archaeological methodology.
Archaeology at the beginning of the twenty-first
century: A world overview is a wide-ranging review
of our knowledge of the past. Archaeological sites
and cultural traditions are placed in regional and
temporal context in contributions in the Geographical overviews section. Each article is written by an
archaeologist with hands-on research experience in
the region, and includes maps and illustrations of
sites and artifacts. Look up an archaeological site in
the index (or use the search function in the online
version) and you will be guided to the regional and
topical articles that discuss it. Or just browse and
learn the latest on the archaeology of East Africa,
Micronesia, or the Lesser Antilles. Regions are ordered in the Contents list by subject west to east,
and north to south, and within regions contributions
are ordered chronologically or by subregion, as
deemed appropriate.

x Introduction

Contributions to Topics and issues that cross-cut

geography are in-depth articles on cutting-edge research in archaeology. Case studies, often from more
than one region of the world, illustrate each topic.
Here you will be introduced to research on subjects as
diverse as extinctions of big game, social inequality,
and daily life in ancient cities. Contributions on
related subjects are grouped in the Contents list by
subject.
Finally, Archaeology in the everyday world steps
back from the approaches, methods, and findings of
archaeology to look at archaeology as a profession. In
this section are contributions on the ethical and legal
aspects of practicing archaeology today, popular culture and archaeology, and archaeology and stakeholder communities.

The Encyclopedia of Archaeology would never

have come to fruition without the hard work of the
members of the Editorial Board, who assisted in developing the subject list, fine-tuned the geographical
overview sections, suggested authors for contributions, and reviewed completed manuscripts. They
each have my wholehearted thanks. I also thank the
following friends and colleagues for their assistance
and advice: Robert A. Benfer, Jr., J. Scott Bentley, Jane
C. Biers, Christine Hastorf, Janet Levy, Naomi Miller,
Hector Neff, Elizabeth Reitz, Ralph Rowlett, and
Peter Warnock.
Deborah M. Pearsall

A
AFRICA, CENTRAL
Contents
Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists
Great Lakes Area
Sudan, Nilotic
Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas

Foragers, Farmers, and

Metallurgists
Scott MacEachern, Bowdoin College, Brunswick,
ME, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
bantu languages A closely-related group of languages in the
NigerCongo family, now spoken through much of Africa south
of the equator. The Bantu expansion is the process still not
entirely understood through which early Bantu languages
spread to the east and south from their homeland on the
NigerianCameroon border, beginning perhaps 5000 years ago.
Lupemban A Middle/Late Pleistocene stone tool industry, found
in different areas of sub-Saharan Africa and descended from the
Sangoan and eventually the Acheulean traditions. It is
characterized by the extensive use of bifacial and core-tools. It is
often assumed to be associated with forest environments, where
these tools were used for woodworking and other functions.
microlithic Stone tool industries characterized by the use of
small tools, usually made by carefully breaking stone blades into
predetermined shapes or by the production of very small blades.
Microliths are defined as being <3 cm in length, and are often
used as elements in composite tools.
semi-domesticates Plants that are not planted by humans
and that do not need human assistance to reproduce, but yield
products important to the human communities in the area.
Because of their importance, people often protect and encourage
the growth of semi-domesticates, for example, through weeding
of competing species.
tazunu Funerary monuments found in the western Central
African Republic, first built in the early first millennium BC.
They consist of a group of upright standing stones, usually
between 1 and 3 m in length, set in an artificial platform that
often contains one or more rectangular chambers.

Tshitolian A Holocene stone tool industry of western Central

Africa, characterized by a heavy-duty bifacial tool component
originating in the Middle/Late Pleistocene Lupemban industry,
as well as a variety of different types of arrowheads and
microlithic tools.

Archaeologists know less about the prehistory of Central Africa through the last 10 000 years than about
any other part of the continent. This is only in part
because of the difficulties of working in tropical forest:
indeed, some of the least-known areas are in the woodlands along the northeastern fringes of the Congo
Basin. More important have been the effects of decades
of political instability and an underdeveloped infrastructure that goes back to the colonial period. Over
the last decade, however, some parts of Central Africa
especially in the northwest have yielded a great deal of
information on ancient occupations in this period.
Moisture levels in Central Africa increased dramatically from the terminal Pleistocene, much drier than
the present, to the early Holocene, which would have
been generally wetter than today. This corresponded
to a great increase in forests over the same period.
However, models of a uniform expansion of tropical forest out of Late Pleistocene refugia are oversimplified. There seems to have been a great deal of
local diversity in plant associations, as well as significant regional variations in rainfall, temperatures, and
seasonality, through this period. Instead of thinking
about environmentally determined depopulations
and repopulations over Central Africa as a whole,
we must imagine human communities adapting to a
wide variety of circumstances and resources in different areas and at different times.

2 AFRICA, CENTRAL/Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists

The beginning of the Holocene saw all of Central

Africa occupied by foraging communities. Little evidence of these populations is left, aside from their
stone tool industries, which show a good deal of
continuity from the Late Pleistocene. Not surprisingly, in the center of the continent, these industries
are diverse, with stone tool-kits in the northwestern
part of Central Africa showing some similarities
with adjacent areas of West Africa, eastern industries exhibiting some resemblances to East Africa,
and so on.
Perhaps most uniquely Central African is the
Tshitolian industry, found primarily in the west, in
Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic
of the Congo, northwestern Angola, and parts of
Gabon. The Tshitolian seems to be derived from
the Late Pleistocene Lupemban industry, and shares
with the Lupemban an important component of
heavy-duty bifacial tools, as well as arrowheads and
microlithic tools. In other parts of Central Africa,
microlithic industries predominate and the bifacial
tools are rare or absent. We know little about the
lifeways of these populations, but the available
evidence indicates that for the most part they were

Nigeria

broad-spectrum, mobile hunter-gatherers. Late Pleistocene lakeshore sites like Ishango in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, with their extraordinary
bone harpoon points and evidence for fishing and
hunting, exhibit striking similarities to Holocene
sites in similar environments in East Africa, but there
is no firm evidence for the persistence of this lacustrine
adaptation in Holocene Central Africa (Figure 1).
Just after 7000 years ago, significant innovations
appeared in the economic and technical adaptations
of communities in the northwestern part of the region.
On what is now the frontier between southeastern
Nigeria and Cameroon, archaeologists working at
sites like Shum Laka have found evidence for consumption of nuts from the incense tree (Canarium
schweinfurthii), a wild species that would be increasingly exploited by humans over the succeeding
millennia, as well as the first evidence for pottery in
the region. At the same time, larger bifacial (but not
Tshitolian) tools appear among the microlithic stone
tools that earlier dominated in this area, as does the
first evidence for ground/polished stone tools. In later
periods, such tools would be used in horticulture and
forest clearance.

Chad
Sudan

Shum Laka

Tazunu sites

Central African
Republic

Cameroon
Bioko
Eq.
Guinea Pit
Sites
Gabon

Republic
of the Congo
Tshitolian

Ishango

Uganda

Rwanda

Democratic Republic
of the Congo

Burundi
Tanzania

Upemba
sites

Angola

Zambia

Figure 1 Some of the sites and traditions mentioned in the text. The extent of archaeological traditions is approximate.

AFRICA, CENTRAL/Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists 3

The Early-/Mid-Holocene appearance of these new

cultural elements signals the origins of a very different
adaptation to life in Central Africa, one eventually
involving increased sedentism, a concentration on
particular wild plant foods and increased levels of
environmental manipulation. Over the next four
millennia, these elements would come to dominate
archaeological assemblages in this part of the region,
as important semi-domesticates such as oil palm
(Elaeis guineensis) were added to local economies.
This adaptation would culminate in the farming villages of southern Cameroon and Gabon, during the
first millennium BC. These sites are characterized by
the occurrence of large numbers of deep pits, probably used for storage and garbage disposal; these pits
frequently contain pottery, Canarium, and oil palm
remains, and also in some cases the remains of domesticated plants and animals, including millet, banana
(originally a Southeast Asian domesticate), and sheep/
goats. These pit sites are probably related to sites of
a similar period in western Democratic Republic of
the Congo. The spread of these communities into
Central Africa from the northwestern part of the
region is likely associated with the spread of Bantu
languages, since the origins of those languages are in
the Grassfields region around Shum Laka and the
archaeological evidence agrees in general with linguistic evidence for the early expansion of Bantu
languages. After the middle of the first millennium
AD, few pits are found in sites in this area: the reason
for this is unknown, but probably involves changes in
settlement patterning during this period.
The prehistory of other regions is not as well
known through the mid-Holocene, but ground and
polished stone axes similar to those found around
Shum Laka occur in different parts of Central Africa.
In some cases, for example, at Tchissanga and related
sites on the coast of Republic of the Congo and in the
Central African Republic (CAR), these are found with
different kinds of pottery; in other cases, as on the
Uelian sites of northern Democratic Republic of the
Congo, in Angola and elsewhere, they exist as isolated
discoveries, without significant cultural context. In
very few cases have these occurrences been dated,
but those dates that do exist indicate a Mid-/LateHolocene time period, and these sites are probably
evidence of processes of economic intensification similar to those in the northwest which, indeed, may be
their ultimate origin. On the island of Bioko, now part
of Equatorial Guinea, the use of stone tools, especially
axes, would persist until the nineteenth century.
In western CAR, these developments are, by the
early first millennium BC, associated with the appearance of the tazunu sites, megalithic sites in which
upright standing stones are usually set in low artificial

mounds. These are likely to have been funerary

monuments, although not all excavated examples
contain inhumations, and a tradition of tazunu construction may have continued in the area until a few
centuries ago. The construction of these impressive
monuments, and their association with single burials
(where any are found), would seem to imply the
existence of some degree of social ranking in western
Central African Republic through this period (see
Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area).
The appearance of iron artifacts would eventually
transform the economies and even the ideologies of
Central African societies, but this did not happen
immediately. Indeed, the available archaeological
evidence indicates that early iron technologies were
incorporated into the already-existing cultural systems discussed above, and that traditional assumptions of an Iron Age, a sudden break with earlier
practices, seem to be particularly misleading in
this case. The first evidence of iron production (in
fact, very frequently the slag by-products of iron
smelting and forging) appears on sites in northwestern Central Africa during the first millennium BC.
Establishing the precise timing of that appearance is
difficult, in part because of difficulties with radiocarbon calibration during the middle of that millennium. However, both a habitation site associated
with the tazunu of the CAR and one of the pit
sites in southern Cameroon have yielded dates for
iron working of about 2600 years ago, and so between the ninth and the sixth centuries BC. This
generally agrees with dates on some West African
iron-working sites as well, but more work remains
to be done on the origins of this technology in subSaharan Africa.
Sites with iron from this area, in Gabon and in
Republic of the Congo, became more common by
the late first millennium BC, and through the ensuing
centuries in other areas of Central Africa, until by
perhaps AD 800 iron was being used throughout
Central Africa (except on Bioko, as noted above,
and perhaps by isolated foraging groups elsewhere).
Over this same period, the use of stone tools for
the most part ceased, presumably replaced by iron.
In general, this parallels the introduction of iron into
East Africa, although the exact routes by which that
introduction took place are unknown.
Over the ensuing centuries, as iron technologies
became established through the region, we see the
development of larger-scale societies, the extension
of trade networks and evidence for increasing social
complexity in some parts of Central Africa. This is
most strikingly demonstrated in the Upemba Depression of southeastern Democratic Republic of the
Congo, where a remarkable series of high-status grave

4 AFRICA, CENTRAL/Great Lakes Area

sites, dating to between the eighth and eighteenth centuries AD, indicate the processes of social differentiation and ideological development that culminated in
the historically known Luba state. There is scattered
archaeological evidence for significant trading networks and iron and copper production in western
Democratic Republic of the Congo at the same time
period, as well. In other areas the Central African
Republic and northwestern Democratic Republic of
the Congo, for example the village-level societies
that developed in the first millennium BC and early
first millennium AD remained the dominant economic and political units into the colonial period.
As in much of the rest of Africa, there has been little
archaeological investigation of recent centuries, and
still less of the period of European contact.
Over the last two millennia, archaeological data
are increasingly supplemented by data from linguistic and historical research. These sources provide
information on social and cultural processes that
are not easily approached archaeologically the
details of the expansion of Bantu languages, the
developing relations between farmers and foragers
(Pygmy/BaTwa) in Central Africa and the interplay
between ideology and sociopolitical relations across
the region as a whole, for example. Only through
such integrated approaches will researchers be able
to approach a more complete picture of the Central
African past.
See also: Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area; Africa,

Historical Archaeology.

Further Reading
Clist B (2005) Des premiers villages aux premiers Europeens
autour de lestuaire du Gabon: Quatre millenaires dinteractions
entre lhomme et son milieu. Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de
Bruxelles.
Cornelissen E (2002) Human responses to changing environments
in Central Africa between 40,000 and 12,000 BP. Journal of
World Prehistory 16: 197235.
de Maret P (1999) The power of symbols and the symbols of power
through time: probing the Luba past. In: McIntosh SK (ed.)
Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa,
pp. 151165. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Klieman KA (2003) The Pygmies Were Our Compass. Bantu and
Batwa in the History of West Central Africa, Early Times to
c. 1900 CE. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Lanfranchi R and Clist B (eds.) (1991) Aux origines de lafrique
centrale. Libreville/Paris: Centre Culturel Francaise de Libreville,
Sepia.
Lavachery P (2001) The Holocene archaeological sequence of
Shum Laka Rock Shelter (Grassfields, Western Cameroon).
African Archaeological Review 18: 213248.
Lavachery P, MacEachern S, Bouimon T, et al. (2005) Kome to
Ebome: archaeological research for the Chad Export Project,
19992003. Journal of African Archaeology 3: 175193.

Mbida CM, van Neer W, Doutrelepont H, and Vrydaghs L (2000)

Evidence for banana cultivation in central and animal husbandry during the first millennium BC in the forest of southern
Cameroon. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 151162.
Vansina J (1990) Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History
of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Series. Madison,
Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
Zangato E (1999) Societes Prehistoriques et Megalithes Dans le
Nord-ouest de la Republique Centrafricaine. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Great Lakes Area

Augustin F C Holl, The University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
earthwork Any early structure built from a mound or bank of
earth, often created as fortification.
forager Someone who hunts for food or provisions.
iron smelting A process of heating and melting iron ores and
concentrates and then separating the desirable molten metals
such as copper from other elements.
kingdoms Peak periods of development in ancient history.

The Interlacustrine area is flanked on both east and

west by important freshwater lakes; Lake Victoria,
L. Tanganyika, L. Kivu, and L. Albert. It is stretched
over the eastern boundary of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Northern
Tanzania, and the western fringe of Kenya. Several
important Stone Age sites have been excavated at
Matupi cave, Katanda sites of the Semliky valley, as
well as Munyama cave in Uganda. Late Stone foragers using microliths were spread out in small groups
over this vast area. The arrival of iron-using Bantuspeaking farmers in the first millennium BC triggered
significant long-term increase in settlement size and
density. The volcanic soils in this highly humid area
are fertile, productive, and support some among the
highest population density of Africa today. Evidence
for iron smelting dating from the first half to the
middle of the first millennium BC (900500 BC) is
documented at Gasiza I and Mirami III in Rwanda
and the BuHaya region in Northwestern Tanzania.
These Urewe farming communities were later joined
by livestock herders from the Nile watershed. Bananas
and other Southasian species took root and prospered
in the fertile Interlacustrine zone. Bananas, one of
the Malayo-Polynesia plants, were thought to have

AFRICA, CENTRAL/Sudan, Nilotic 5

reached Africa during the first millennium BC or

very beginning of the first millennium AD. Bananas
(Musa sp.) phytoliths from a core drilled at Munsa in
Uganda and dated to the fourth millennium BC point
to an earlier than thought introduction (see Africa,
Central: Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists; Sudan,
Nilotic).
The Great Lakes region and the Savanna-land south
of the equatorial rainforest witnessed the development
of complex chiefdoms and kingdoms during the second
millennium AD. In the Great Lakes region, the development at Ntusi, Munsa, Bigo, Kibiro, Mubende, and
other earthworks sites is remarkable. Large-scale cattle
husbandry is documented at Ntusi. Kibiro witnessed
an impressive intensification in the production of salt
from the local brackish springs. An agricultural colonization took place in western Uganda. However,
tracing the precise evolutionary trajectory of any
of the Great Lakes, past polities is still hampered
by the lack of sustained long-term archaeological
research and terminological uncertainties. Archaeological survey, and the analyses of the ceramic material
collected was used by Robertshaw to develop a model
of the development of social complexity. Four areas,
Nyantungo in the west, Kibale in the north, Munsa/
Kakumiro in the Northeast, and Kasambya in the
southeast, were sampled to document variations in
settlement patterns and pottery shapes, design, and
decoration. Most of the surveyed sites (>90%) are
small homesteads/hamlets measuring less than 1 ha
in size. Large sites without earthworks seem to have
been positioned at defensive locations. While, with a
certain range of variation, earthworks sites may have
been part of small and competing polities. After the
sixteenth century AD, these rival and competing
polities came to be united under the rulership of
the Bito dynasty that created the Nyoro kingdom
in Western Uganda. Rwanda and Burundi on the western side of the Interlacustrine zone also developed
rival but small chiefdoms. In general and all over the
Lacustrine zone, iron working was strongly associated
with rulership.
See also: Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and
Metallurgists; Sudan, Nilotic; Zimbabwe Plateau and
Surrounding Areas.

Further Reading
Connah G (1996) Kibiro: The Salt of Bunyoro, Past and Present.
Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa.
Ehret C (1998) An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern
Africa in World History, 1000 BC to AD 400. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press.

Lejju BJ, Robertshaw P, and Taylor D (2006) Africas Earliest

Bananas? Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 102113.
Reid A (1997) Lacustrine states. In: Vogel JO (ed.) Encyclopedia of
Precolonial Africa, pp. 501507. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Robertshaw P (1994) Archaeological survey, ceramic analysis, and
state formation in Western Uganda. The African Archaeological
Review 12: 105131.
Robertshaw P (2003) Explaining the origins of state in East Africa.
In: Vogel (ed.) East African Archaeology: Foragers, Potters,
Smiths, and Traders, pp. 149166. Philadelphia: The University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Schoenbrun DL (1998) A Green Place, A Good Place: Agrarian
Change, Gender, and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region
to the 15th Century. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Sudan, Nilotic
Kathleen Nicoll, University of Utah, Salt Lake City,
UT, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Acheulian Designating, or of, a Lower Palaeolithic culture
characterized by skillfully made bifacial flint hand axes.
artifact Any object manufactured, used, or modified by humans.
Common examples include tools, utensils, art, food remains, and
other products of human activity.
Aterian A stoneworking tradition that is considered an evolved
style of the Palaeolithic of North Africa; it includes distinctive
tools with shanks (i.e., tangs) for mounting to a handle, and
basically worked leaf-shaped points.
calcareous Containing calcium carbonate minerals.
chert A very fine grained rock formed in ancient ocean
sediments. It often has a semi-glassy finish and is usually white,
pinkish, brown, gray, or blue-gray in color. It can be shaped into
arrowheads by chipping. It has often been called flint, but true
flint is found in chalk deposits and is a distinctive blackish color.
dispersal The process in which an organism spreads out
geographically.
flint A hard, brittle microcrystalline form of quartz commonly
found in sedimentary limestone or in chalk deposits, or otherwise
any kind of stone that can be flaked.
lithic Stone tools or projectiles.
lithic scatter A spatially discrete, though sometimes extensive,
scatter of lithic artifacts recovered from the surface, for example,
by fieldwalking, rather than from a particular archaeological
context.
megalith An arrangement or structure of extremely large stones,
possibly aligned.
microlith Small tools that may be any of a variety of shapes, and
which have been produced from microblades. These are too
small to have been used without hafting, some were set edge to
edge in a groove in a bone or wood shaft and so served as cutting
tools, while others would have been functional as barbs.
Neolithic Refers to the first era of village farmers in any region.
nomad A member of a group of people who move according to
the seasons from place to place in search of food, water, and
grazing land.

6 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sudan, Nilotic

optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) Quaternary
geologic age-dating technique used to determine the depositional
age of sediments by considering mineral grains as dosimeters that
accumulate energy over time as a function of natural
environmental radiation. The technique is based on the
solid-state properties of mineral grains rather than isotopic decay
of constituent elements (like KAr or radiocarbon dating).
pastoralism The form of agriculture specifically known as
animal husbandry; it includes the tending and use of animals
such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, and sheep. It also
contains a mobile element, moving the herds in search of fresh
pasturelands and water resources.
Pleistocene A geologic period, usually thought of as the most
recent Ice Age, which began about 1.8 million years ago and
ended with the melting of the large continental glaciers creating
the modern climatic pattern about 11 500 years ago.
pluvial A term commonly used to refer to a time period
characterized by increased precipitation and reduced
evaporation, resulting in enhanced moisture conditions.
prehistoric The period prior to written records for a given area;
note that the absolute date for the prehistoric period varies from
place to place.
social complexity Refers to patterns in society at levels from
the individual to the group, as it relates to various human
adaptive systems both comprising and surrounding a society.
Complexity can refer to the rituals, culture, and practices of
communities, regional systems, or empires.
stratified A term that refers to sediments with primary
(undisturbed) characteristics, that have been deposited or laid
down in successive layers. Often the succession of layers can
provide a relative chronological sequence, with the earliest at the
bottom and the latest at the top.

Today the central African landscape west of the Nile

River is hyperarid, with <10 mm annual rainfall; the
modern Saharan region generally lacks sufficient surface water to sustain nomadic pastoralism, and settlement is localized around permanent oases and wells.
The prehistoric records discovered in the desert landscape are sparse (Figure 1), and sites are commonly
associated with ancient sources of water, including
streams, springs, and lakes relict from pluvial time
periods of enhanced rainfall. Palaeoenvironmental
evidence suggests that the region has remained arid
with occasional semi-arid periods when the region
received around 300 mm annual rainfall, and the
Sudano-Sahelian vegetation zone extended northward.
The changing climatic conditions and ready availability of water resources were key factors in determining
when this marginal region could sustain life and cultural activities. The geoarchaeological record informs
the emerging spatial and temporal reconstruction of
the alternate aridification and peopling of the Sahara
since the Later Pleistocene, the period
250 000
10 000 years ago.

A Brief History of Explorers

and Archaeologists
Some of the first artifactual finds from the region
called the Western or Libyan Desert and the

Sudan were documented by Ralph A. Bagnold and

members of the Long Range Desert Group, a British
army unit active during World War II. In the 1930s,
excavations on Lake Qarun-Fayum and the Kharga
Oases by Gertrude Caton-Thompson and Elinor
Gardiner provided the first integrated investigations
into the prehistory and palaeoenvironment of the
region; ironically these women were not granted
membership into the Royal Geographical Society, although their reports have stood the test of time and
paved the way for later researchers. Field studies in
the 1970s by the Combined Prehistoric Expedition
discovered some important stratified sites of Middle
Stone AgeEarly/Middle Palaeolithic typology, which
predate the last phase of glaciation. Aterian artifacts
at the site at Br Tirfawi, for example, are interstratified with calcareous lake beds that likely date to
the period 125 00090 000 years ago. Farther to the
north, the Dakhleh Oasis Project has studied the
remains of several prehistoric periods (Aterian
through Graeco-Roman) since the 1980s. Acheulian
hand ax finds older than 300 000 years were documented in the Br Kiseiba and Selima Sand Sheet
regions by Smithsonian Institution researchers conducting fieldwork in the 1990s. Today, various international teams of scientists continue to decipher
prehistoric archives from the Gilf Kebir, the defunct
former tributaries of the Nile in northern Sudan,
the Tibesti and Fezzan, and the Niger and Chad
Basin.

The Fossil Record

Although the Fayum is famous for its Oligocene fossil
ape-like primates such Aegyptopithecus, no hominid
fossils have been discovered from the broader region.
Isolated Late Pleistocene lithic scatters and workshops exist, but related skeletal remains are extremely
rare from Saharan North Africa. One of the most
significant finds dating to the Middle Palaeolithic is
an early anatomically modern human (H. sapiens
sapiens) skeleton discovered along the Nile Valley

250 miles south of Cairo. At Taramsa, an anatomically modern child (aged 810 years) was deliberately
buried in an open-air chert extraction site, which
places the skeleton in direct context with worked
tools and the quarry rock. A series of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates from correlative eolian sands suggests an age for the burial between
49 800 and 80 400 years ago, with a mean age of
55 000. As one of the few well-dated sites in the
region, Taramsa provides insight regarding origin of
modern humans as preserved within the Nilotic region, one of the likely passageways Out of Africa as
modern humans dispersed from East Africa to
Eurasia.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sudan, Nilotic 7

32
Mediterranean Sea

30

Cairo
Fayum
EGYPT

28

Nile
River

Great
Sand
Sea

Taramsa

26

Kharga
Dakhleh
Gilf Kebir
LIBYA

Br
Sahara

24
Br
Tirfawi
Kiseiba Nabta

22

Selima
Sand
Sheet

Gebel
Uwien'at

20

SUDAN

CHAD

18

16
Wadi Howar
White
Nile

map scale

200 km
E 24

Blue
Nile

after Nicoll, 2001

28

32

Figure 1 Location of key sites mentioned from the northeastern Sahara, an area covering 92 000 000 km, and including the Western
Desert of Egypt, northwest Sudan, and the adjacent parts of Libya and Chad, which together are about the size of western Europe.

Geoarchaeological Records from the NE

Saharan Region
Spatiotemporal patterns of prehistoric occupation
suggest changes in the loci where people congregated,
possibly as a function of changing water resource
availability over time as the environment fluctuated
between a habitable savanna and an inhospitable
desert. The earliest occupation is associated with the
artifacts of the Acheulian tradition of the Lower Paleolithic, and these finds are commonly associated

with groundwater-fed lakes, springs, and streams

(wadis) with headwaters at higher elevations in the
Plateaux escarpments. The chronology is inferential
and not well constrained, but likely spans the period
before 500 000 to 300 000 years ago, and is distinct
from the Acheulian tradition of the Nile Valley.
The archaeological record of the Middle Palaeolithic is better known, and several sites contain
in situ living floors and diverse faunal assemblages,
which reflect favorable climatic conditions. Much of

8 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sudan, Nilotic

the Middle Palaeolithic chronology is relative, and

is based on taxonomic comparisons with diagnostic
artifacts defined in units dating from 250 000 to

38 000 BP. The two oldest units, the Mousterian
and the Aterian, occur in both the Western Desert
and Nile Valley, but the comparative local economic patterns are markedly different. Lithics and
faunal remains recovered from valley sites suggest
reliance on fishing and Bos hunting. Alternately, in
the Western Desert, hunting of large game was preferred over the capture of smaller animals. Large
groundwater-supported lakes at Br Tirfawi and Br
Sahara were favored settlement locales, although
other environmental settings also were exploited and
reoccupied.
Within the Western Desert, the Aterian technocomplex is associated with the latest Pleistocene wet
period, which preceded a long hyperarid episode
that persisted until the early Holocene. The precise
duration of the hyperarid interval remains unconstrained. There is no evidence for local rainfall
or spring activity in the region west of the Nile between
40 000 and 11 000 BP, and human activity
was confined to the valley, as preserved in Khormusan variants of the latest Middle Palaeolithic and
other Late Palaeolithic complexes.
The region beyond the Nile Valley was not reoccupied until the onset of suitable climate conditions
12 000 BP, when effective precipitation was
enhanced due to the incursion of monsoonal rains
from tropical Africa. Occasional rains created seasonal ponds and sustained vegetation that attracted game
and people to a region that was otherwise desert.
Savanna grasses, trees, and bushes enabled the subsistence of hares, gazelle, and a few small carnivores. Even during the Early Holocene climatic
optimum
11 0005500 cal BP, however, the region
remained quite dry and drought prone (see Africa,
South: Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers). Characteristic tools and microliths, pottery,
and ostrich eggshell beads are present at wadis,
springs, and small depressions known as pans and
playas, places where rainwater ponded after storms.
Most of the terminal Paleolithic/Neolithic assemblages are located alongside water features fed solely
by rainfall.

Neolithic Pluvials and the Emergence

of Social Complexity: Examples from
Nabta Playa
Evidence across the northeastern Sahara suggests
discrete phases of Neolithic activity during the Holocene climatic optimum. The sequence at Nabta Playa

reveals three wetdry phases bracketed by radiocarbon

dates. The accompanying stratigraphic and cultural
record reflects critical transitions from foraging to
food production strategies involving domestication
and animal husbandry, and points toward emerging
traditions of social complexity.
The first settlements at Nabta Playa date between
11 0009300 cal years ago, and include herders of
domesticated(?) cattle who carried distinctive ceramic vessels decorated with wavy impressed patterns;
this pottery is among the oldest known in Africa.
In a similar manner to modern West African peoples,
the Nabtans may have regarded their cattle as economic units of power, social status and prestige, as
well as walking larders that supplied milk and
blood, rather than meat. Once the playa dried up,
people migrated to areas with more water, possibly
to the Nile in the east or areas further south (see
Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists; Africa, South: Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa).
After 9000 years ago, larger settlements were established at Nabta; small huts were arranged in straight
lines, and walk-in wells were dug to supply the
Nabtan residents with enough water to stay for longer
periods. People survived on a number of wild edible
plants (sorghum, millets, legumes, tubers, fruits) and
small animals, including hares and gazelles. Around
8800 years ago (7800 BP, uncalibrated), pottery was
produced locally. Around 8100 years ago, there is evidence for the domestication of larger animals, goats
and sheep (see Animal Domestication).
Between 8000 and 7000 years ago, Nabta was
abandoned during two major droughts. As hyperarid
conditions developed, the water table dropped, deflation persisted, and conditions became uninhabitable.
The people returning to Nabta after the droughts
were a complex society with an enhanced degree of
organization and control, possibly centered around
some ritualistic belief system associated with livestock. Excavated items supporting this inference
include sacrifices of young cows and their burial in
clay-lined and roofed chambers covered by stone
slabs. Nabtans also constructed 25 complex building structures with surface and subterranean features,
including a shaped stone that could represent the oldest sculpture in Egypt. They also erected megaliths,
alignments of large stones, and an astronomical calendar circle like Stonehenge that marked the solstice
at 6500 BP.
Another significant find near Nabta is the first
Neolithic cemetery in Egypt. A series of richly furnished graves date to
6400 and 6000 radiocarbon
years BP (uncalibrated), and demonstrate patterns of
local pastoralists who practiced transhumance during

AMERICAS, NORTH/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas 9

the later Neolithic period. In this manner, the Nabtan

culture once again reflects that Saharan people had
affliations with, and profound effects upon, the incipient Egyptian civilization that emerged from the Nile
Valley as the region progressively aridified.
See also: Africa, North: Nubia; Sahara, Eastern; Africa,
South: Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South
Africa; Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers;
Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists;
Animal Domestication.

animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant

recourse to the domestication of either.
Indian Ocean trade Monsoon based trade linking the Indian
sub-continent with coastal regions of east Africa and the
southern African hinterland.
slash-and-burn agriculture The cutting and burning of
forests or woodlands to create fields for agriculture or pasture for
livestock, or for a variety of other purposes.
Zimbabwe Culture Refers to the states and material culture
linked with the ancestral Shona speakers between AD 1100 and
1900. Mapungubwe is the earliest Zimbabwe Culture State,
followed by Great Zimbabwe, and the Torwa-Changamire and
Mutapa states. Drystone walls (known as Dzimbahwes houses
of stone), built using the precise placement method (without
mortar) are the best known manifestation of this culture.

Further Reading
Burroughs WJ (2005) Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of
the Reign of Chaos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kuper R and Kropelin S (2006) Climate-controlled Holocene occupation in the Sahara: Motor of Africas Evolution. Science 313:
803807.
Midant-Reynes B (1992) The Prehistory of Egypt. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Nicoll K (2004) Recent environmental change and prehistoric
human activity in Egypt and northern Sudan. Quaternary Science Reviews 23: 561580.
Phillipson DW (1998) African Archaeology, 2nd edn. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Rice M (2003) Egypts Making. The Origins of Ancient Egypt
50002000 BC, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Shaw T, Sinclair P, Andah B, and Okpoko A (eds.) (1995) The
Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns. London:
Routledge.
Wendorf FA and Schild RA (1980) Prehistory of the Eastern
Sahara. New York: Academic Press.

Zimbabwe Plateau and

Surrounding Areas
Innocent Pikirayi, University of Pretoria, Tshwane,
South Africa
Shadreck Chirikure, University of Cape Town, Cape
Town, South Africa
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
agro-pastoral A mode of production that combines field
culture and husbandry with the use of pasture areas.
colonization The act or process of establishing a colony or
colonies. Colonization encompasses all large-scale emigrations
of an established population to a new location, such as
immigration, the establishment of expatriate communities, and
the use of guest workers.
hunter-gatherer society A society whose primary subsistence
method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and

Introduction
The Zimbabwe plateau and adjacent regions (Figure 1)
form part of the southern African subcontinent, south
of the Zambezi, north of the Limpopo Rivers. In physiographic terms, it is part of High Africa, with elevations ranging from 500 to more than 2500 m above sea
level. A moist savannah woodland biome dominates
the plateau, and gives way to a dry woodland scrub
further west, which becomes the Kalahari semidesert.
The climate is largely tropical, although the higher
escarpments to the east could be described as montane
(see Africa, South: Kalahari Margins).

Hunter-Foragers
Stone tools attributed to the Oldowan, Acheulian,
and post-Acheulian traditions represent evidence
of hominid/hominoid hunter-forager activity in southern Africa. Homo sapiens or early modern humans
populated this region from the Middle Pleistocene up
to about 40 000 years ago. They are associated with
the development of abstract forms of human behavior
such as the use of ochre, ostrich egg shell containers,
and distinctive stone tool technologies. Tool assemblages representative of the Bambata (Stillbay) tradition have prepared cores, rare crescents, bifacial and
unifacial points, denticulates, and multifaceted striking platforms. Related traditions include Tshangula
and Zombepata in the western and northern parts
of the plateau. Similar developments occur in the
adjacent Zambezi valley, in the Batoka gorge and the
Gwembe Valley.
The emergence of modern humans 40 000 years ago
witnessed a change toward advanced stoneworking
techniques, evidenced by microlithic technologies.
Such tools robustly assisted humans to cope with increasingly colder climatic conditions culminating with
the Last Glacial Maximum around 18 000 years ago.
Also, they were adapted to the complex hunting and
gathering practices that developed since then.

10 AFRICA, EAST/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas

Kadzi

MUTA

Zombepata
Mutota

PA ST

Zvongombe

llag

t Vi

r
Swa

ATE
Nhunguza

Zambezi

,
Diana s Vow

900
1200

Redcliff

Sawmills

Danamombe

TORWA STATE
Gokomere
Great Zimbabwe

Bambata

12

00

Khami

INDIAN
OCEAN

Tshangula

90

MAKGADIKGADI
PANS
Schroda
Mapungubwe
0

200 km
Key
Middle/late stone age sites

First millennium CE
agro-pastoral sites

State capitals

Figure 1 Map of the Zimbabwe plateau showing archaeological sites associated with important cultural developments from the Middle
Pleistocene.

An important development during the terminal

Pleistocene and continuing into the Holocene relates
to hunter-forager artistic and ritual traditions. These
are paintings and engravings, found in caves, rock
shelters, and open spaces. This art is a product of
shamanistic rituals and ceremonies connected with
healing and rainmaking (Figure 2). Some of this art
played a role in instructive teachings during certain
ceremonies such as initiation, while other art may
have expressed the local cosmological world of myths
and symbolism. Some depict intergroup rivalries or
conflicts. A majority of the art was authored by San
hunter-gatherers, and depicts paintings dominated
by the eland, an animal important to their ritual life.
Other painting traditions are attributed to herder
Khoekhoen and Bantu agro-pastoralists, and these
continue into recent historical periods.

Early Herders
In the western regions of the plateau and adjoining
Kalahari sandveld, sheep, goats, and cattle were
known earlier than the permanent settlements associated with the first crop farmers, and have been
recovered in some later Holocene forager-hunter contexts. They date 20003000 years ago and, given
the absence of their wild prototypes, may have been
introduced in the region from further north.
Events associated with early pastoral societies in the
region are attributed to ancestral San and Khoekhoen
communities, whose languages are related to those of
some hunter-forager groups in eastern Africa. The
spread of their language and other aspects of culture
are, however, still in dispute. The archaeological horizons of sites with Bambata pottery have no signs of

AFRICA, EAST/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas 11

Figure 3 Example of pottery made by agro-pastoralist farmers

between cal CE 400 and 600. This Happy Rest potsherd was
recovered from an extensive village site on the margins of the
plateau in the Tswapong Hills of Botswana. Photo: P. Fredrikson.

Figure 2 Late Stone Age rock art from Dianas Vow, in eastern
Zimbabwe. The painting depicts a Shaman in trance. Photo:
P. Taruvinga. (National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe).

experimentation like those in northern parts of the

continent. Presumably, processes of complex interaction and shifting identities between resident hunterforagers and pastoralists and hunter-herders have
formed the archaeological record that we see. The
depiction of domestic animals on rock art not only
attests to some of these events, but also signifies their
importance in early pastoral economies (see Animal
Domestication).

Agro-pastoral Communities
Settled farmers identified with the speakers of ancestral Bantu languages were established in much of
southern Africa, including the Zimbabwe plateau by
the early first millennium CE. Their origins lie somewhere in the northern Equatorial rain forests. It
remains unclear how they spread over much of the
region in a fairly short period of time. The process
may have involved slash-and-burn agriculture whereby after few years, communities would abandon a
piece of land due to marginal fertility of the soils,
and move on to another. This process is dated from
the third century BCE and continues throughout
the first and early second millennium CE, attesting

to the expansion and spread of farming activities

and iron production in southern Africa.
Archaeological sites yielding well-fired, thickbodied ceramics decorated with either grooved or
comb-stamped designs identify the expansion and
spread of agro-pastoral societies (Figure 3). Most sites
exhibit metalworking, the keeping of livestock, and
pole-and-daub structures of permanent settlement.
This pottery has been recovered from the Lake Victoria
interior and coastal regions of eastern Africa, much of
central Africa, the northern highveld and the eastern
coastal zones of South Africa. This pottery is identical
in both structure and design. Archaeologists have
ascribed it to traditions or cultures which are further
divided into time segments (phases), and geographical
areas (facies). On the Zimbabwe plateau, such traditions include Gokomere-Ziwa, Zhizo, Kadzi, and
Chinhoyi and they are all associated with early farming
and iron-using communities who grew Bambara
groundnuts, cucurbits, sorghum, and cow peas. They
supplemented these with wild grasses and plant foods,
wild animals, and marine resources. Cattle were very
important in the sociopolitical and economic organization of these societies. This significance was expressed
through a binary-coded settlement system known as
the Central Cattle Pattern. Residential units surrounded cattle byres, which were the domain of men.
Archaeologists unveiled this settlement pattern at
Tabazingwe in western Zimbabwe, Kgaswe on the
margins of the Kalahari and Schroda in northern
South Africa (see Plant Domestication).
From CE 600, these early farmers established large
village settlements in the plateau and adjacent areas.
Mainly situated along fertile agricultural soils and
river basins, village sites covered areas averaging at
least 5 ha in extent. Archaeological evidence from sites

12 AFRICA, EAST/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas

such as Kadzi and Swart Village in northern

Zimbabwe, Schroda in the Limpopo Valley, and various sites in the Tswapong Hills of Botswana attest
to these villages as hubs of religious, economic, and
political activities. Craft specialization was well
developed as shown by the ubiquity of concentrated
remains of iron- (Figure 4) and ivory-working. This
was strongly interwoven with the development of intraregional trade and the integration of the Zimbabwe
plateau area into the world system through the Indian
Ocean long-distance trade that connected the interior

Figure 4 Multiple fused tuyeres from a possible specialist iron

smelting village, Tswapong Hills, Botswana.

of southern Africa with parts of Asia and the Persian

Gulf. In this long-distance trade network, local products including ivory and iron were exchanged for
exotic goods such as glass beads.

The Development of Social Complexity

and the Zimbabwe Culture States
During the late first millennium CE, intensive agricultural production and long-distance trade saw the rise
of powerful elites who dominated the economy and
politics of the region. The interplay of these factors
with ideology and ritual led to the establishment of
the early states or kingdoms. Mapungubwe, located
in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin is but one example.
Mapungubwe has dry-stone-walled areas that housed
the elite on the hilltop. Ritual objects were used as
insignia for political office while prestigious gold
objects and glass beads expressed their wealth. Craft
specialization was a hallmark of these early kingdoms
with metal-working, bead-making, and weaving flourishing. After close to a century of prospering, environmental degradation and shifting trade opportunities
occasioned the rise of a more powerful system at Great
Zimbabwe some 300 km to the north.
After eclipsing Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe
controlled long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean

Figure 5 Photograph of the Great Enclosure and Valley enclosures at Great Zimbabwe.

AFRICA, EAST/Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas 13

while the Swahili traders acted as intermediaries in a

world system that linked widely separated geographical areas of the world. Local products such as gold,
cattle, agricultural produce, and ivory, among others,
were exchanged for exotic Persian wares, Chinese
blue-on-white porcelain, and glass beads. The power
and wealth of the ruling elite was invested in very
impressive dry-stone-walled structures, the largest
stone structures south of the Egyptian pyramids
(Figure 5).
Religion was important in the governance of the
state and the recovery of skillfully made soapstone
birds and ritual objects demonstrates this. The existence of abundant exotic and status goods at Great
Zimbabwe when contrasted with the paucity of craft
manufacturing evidence adduces that the elites controlled the distribution rather than primary production of goods. Such mechanisms were well supported
using tributary modes of production. In a question of
history repeating itself, the factors largely responsible
for the rise of Great Zimbabwe led toward its demise.
A rapidly deteriorating environment and the shifting
trade routes led to the emergence of two successor
states, the Mutapa in the north and Khami in the
southwest by the end of the fifteenth century.
The Mutapa state occupied the northern Zimbabwe
plateau and adjacent Zambezi valley lowlands. Archaeology and oral history attest to a continuation of Great
Zimbabwe influence. Early Mutapa kings had access
to large and exploitable quantities of alluvial and
hydrothermal gold, which became an important part
of the economy of the state. The gold wealth was
invested in monumental architecture and former
Mutapa capitals Zvongombe, Mutota, Kasekete,
and Nhunguza were built in the architectural styles
of Great Zimbabwe. The predatory activities of merchant capital represented by the Portuguese traders
became the Mutapas nemesis. The state ceased to
be a significant political player by the late eighteenth
century, and by the nineteenth century, was clearly
just a mere chiefdom, largely subservient to Portuguese
whims.
Another successor state to Great Zimbabwe developed at Khami in the southwestern plateau area. The
Torwa state was built and operated along the lines
of Great Zimbabwe with the kings living on elaborate dry-stone-walled terraces and in enclosures.

Long-distance trade was an important part of the

state and exotic goods have been recovered there.
A civil war and Portuguese meddling sounded the
death knell to the state leading to the rise of the
Rozvi-Changamire state based at Danangombe in
the late seventeenth century. The Rozvi-Changamire
state was an important political entity, which at one
time played the power broker in the Mutapa state.
One of its leaders Changamire Dombo is credited
with expelling the Portuguese from the plateau, for
their gluttonous and belligerent behavior in the
Mutapa state. Like most states that arose on the
plateau, civil wars caused by succession disputes
gradually weakened the state. Successive groups of
Nguni people leaving southeastern Africa hastened
the collapse of the state with the Ndebele occupying the
vacuum arising from the aftermath. On its part,
the Ndebele state was highly militarized to prevent
annihilation by numerically superior opponents.
Using advanced methods of warfare, they managed
to subjugate some groups on the plateau. However,
the influx of guns from the Portuguese meant that
such groups could resist the Ndebele whose state
ended with the colonization by the British South
Africa Company in CE 1890.
See also: Africa, South: Kalahari Margins; Animal
Domestication; Modern Humans, Emergence of;
Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Beach DN (1994) The Shona and Their Neighbours. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Huffman TN (1996) Snakes and Crocodiles: Power and Symbolism
in Ancient Zimbabwe. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University
Press.
Pikirayi I (2001) The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline in
Southern Zambezian States. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira
Press.
Pwiti G (1996) Continuity and Change: An Archaeological Study of
Farming Communities in Northern Zimbabwe, AD 5001700.
Studies in African Archaeology 13. Uppsala, Sweden: Department of Archaeology, Uppsala University.
Walker N (1995) Late Pleistocene and Holocene HuntersGatherers of the Matopos: An Archaeological Study of Change
and Continuity in Zimbabwe. Studies in African Archaeology
10. Uppsala, Sweden: Department of Archaeology, Uppsala
University.

14 AFRICA, EAST/Ethiopia and Eritrea

AFRICA, EAST
Contents
Ethiopia and Eritrea
Foragers
Madagascar and Surrounding Islands
Swahili Coast
The Horn of Africa

Ethiopia and Eritrea

Augustin F C Holl, The University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, MI, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Aksum A kingdom formed from at least the first century AD in
southwestern Ethiopia which developed into an empire including
northern Ethiopia, Sudan, and southern Arabia.
forager Someone who gathers food or provisions, especially
forcibly.
Horn of Africa A peninsula of East Africa that juts for hundreds
of kilometers into the Arabian Sea, and lies along the southern
side of the Gulf of Aden.
Tigray The northern-most of the nine ethnic regions (kililoch) of
Ethiopia.

Paleontological and Stone Age research is particularly

dynamic in Ethiopia. Major Australopithecus sites
are found along the Ethiopian part of the East African
Rift Valley, from the Omo Valley in the south to the
fossils bearing formations of Djibouti in the Northeast. Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands are nonetheless
considered as important centers of African plant domestication and agricultural innovation but archaeological research on this and related topics, even if
seriously improved during the last two decades, is still
lagging behind. Teff (Eragrostis teff ), noog (Guizotia
abyssinica), as well as finger millet (Eleusine coracana)
are part of the locally domesticated plants grown in
association with Near Eastern crops such as wheat,
barley, chick pea, lentil, and fava bean. Food-producing
societies combining agricultural production with livestock husbandry lived in the lowland and Eritrean
plateau as well as Tigray from the Middle Holocene
onward.
During the first millennium BC, South Arabic culture
and influence expanded across the Red Sea and took
roots in Ethiopian highland areas of Eritrea and Tigray.
Archaeologically, this new situation is indicated by

the sudden appearance of writing, monumental stone

architecture, and sculpture. Iron technology may have
been part of this new cultural package that triggered
the sixth to seventh century BC process of urbanization
in Highlands Ethiopia. Urban centers emerged at such
places as Yeha surrounded by at least 30 other known
sites among which the HaweltiMelazzo complex.
Yeha grew out of an earlier mixed farming village and
became the main urban center of the Daamat kingdom
in the fifth to fourth century BC. It was a relatively
small town, 7.5 ha in size, with however spectacular
stone monuments, the temple, and the Great Beal
Gebri. The former is a massive rectangular building,
18.5 m long, 15 m wide, with preserved plain walls
measuring 11 m in height. The latter consists of a series
of square-section massive monolithic pillars that may
have been part of a cultic complex with some affinities
to the Moon Temple at Marib.
The Daamat kingdom collapsed during the later
part of the first millennium BC but very few is in
fact known about the causes and consequences of its
demise. Smaller polities emerged. Stelae were used to
mark elite burials, and exchanges seem to have been
predominantly with the Nile Valley. Aksum was one
of these small polities that developed in the area
during the later part of the first millennium BC
and the early centuries of the first millennium AD.
Aksum appears to have been settled in the first century AD. A few centuries later, in the thirdfourth century AD, it achieved regional primacy, controlled
great amount of wealth, developed a centralized monarchical system, adopted Christianity as state religion, and launched an extensive expansionist policy.
As suggested by Phillipson and Anfray, Aksums
political control extended at several times to regions
beyond the modern borders of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Large areas of southern Arabia were ruled from
Aksum at intervals between the third and sixth century AD. It is likely that Meroe in the Sudanese Nile
Valley was conquered by an Aksumite army under
King Ezana, but the nature and consequences of this
episode remain poorly understood.

AFRICA, EAST/Foragers 15

The town of Aksum, at the foot of two hills, Beta

Giyorgis in the west and May Qoho in the east, was
extended in a deep gorge oriented northsouth. The
surrounding land was rich, water abundant, building
stone ubiquitous. The town itself was stretched along
approximately one mile westeast with its width
along the northsouth axis measuring no more than
500 m. Massive architectural complexes have been
excavated. Some were storage facilities, elite residences, and religious buildings. Elite and royal burials
carved in the bedrock and marked by lavishly sculpted
stelae were located in a central position overlooking
the rest of the town complex. The largest stelae appear
to mark the graves of the kings of Aksum immediately
prior to their adoption of Christianity in the midfourth century. These stelae are the most remarkable
monuments of the Aksum skyline. Now fallen and
broken, the largest of these, was originally 33 m long,
and 520 tons in weight, probably the largest single
block of stone which people anywhere, at any time,
have attempted to stand on end according to Phillipson
(see Africa, East: Foragers; The Horn of Africa).
Very early in its history, Aksum became a trade hub
linking the Red Sea to the Nile Valley and the Roman
world from the north to the rest of the continent. It
was visited by merchants from Egypt, Syria, Arabia,
and even India. Adulis was its main and only harbor
on the Red Sea. The economic growth and expansion
of the Romans was one of the key factors for the
quick pace of development of Aksum as a thriving
economic metropolis. At the peak of its power and
influence, the core of the Aksumite civilization extended over a territory measuring 300 by 160 km,
from 13 /17 latitude north and 38 /40 longitude
east, with an access to the Red Sea at Adulis.
Aksum kingdom collapsed during the eighth century AD partly because of the success and fast expansion of Islam and its corollary political and economic
isolation in a predominantly Muslim world. The
overexploitation of local resources, intensive erosion
of the deforested land, as well as a short arid spell
may have accelerated the depopulation and demise
of the Aksumite metropolis in the eighthninth
century AD.
See also: Africa, East: Foragers; Madagascar and

Surrounding Islands; Swahili Coast; The Horn of Africa;

Asia, West: Arabian Peninsula; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Anfray F (1990) Les Anciens Ethiopiens: Siecles dHistoire. Paris:
Armand Colin.

Bard KA, Coltorti M, DiBlasi MC, Dramis F, and Fattovitch R

(2000) The environmental history of Tigray (northern Ethiopia)
in the Middle and Late Holocene: A preliminary outline. African
Archaeological Review 17: 6586.
Brandt SA (1984) New perspectives on the origins of food production in Ethiopia. In: Clark JD and Brandt SA (eds.) From Hunters
to Farmers: The Causes and Consequences of Food Production
in Africa, pp. 173205. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brandt SA (1986) The Upper Pleistocene and Early Holocene prehistory of the Horn of Africa. The African Archaeological
Review 4: 4182.
Butzer KW (1981) Rise and Fall of Axum, Ethiopia: A geoarchaeological interpretation. American Antiquity 46(3): 471495.
Phillipson D (1998) Ancient Ethiopia: Aksum: Its Antecedents and
Successors. London: British Museum Press.
Phillipson D (2000) Archaeology at Aksum, Ethiopia, 19931997.
London: The British Institute in Eastern Africa.

Foragers
Sibel Barut Kusimba, Northern Illinois University,
DeKalb, IL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Eburran An East African obsidian industry of the central Rift
Valley, Kenya.
forager Someone who hunts for food and provisions.
hunter-gatherer A member of a people subsisting in the wild
on food obtained by hunting and foraging.
Later Stone Age The third and final phase of Stone Age
technology in sub-Saharan Africa, dating from more than
c. 30 000 years ago until historical times in some places.
Middle Stone Age The second part of the Stone Age in
sub-Saharan Africa, dating from c. 150 00030 000 years ago
and roughly equivalent to the Middle Paleolithic elsewhere in the
Old World.
Pastoral Neolithic A general term for the pre-Iron Age
food-producing societies of East Africa.

Introduction
The concept of the forager is derived from ethnographic examples of hunting-and-gathering people.
These lifeways are based on the exploitation of wild
plant foods and in Africa, ethnographic cases include
people from the Botswanan Desert, the San, and
also various Central African groups associated with
tropical forests. Archaeological hunter-gatherers are
different from ethnographic examples, even in the
same environments. Because of the diversity of
cultures bundled under the hunter-gatherer rubric,
rejection of the term hunter-gatherer has been
suggested. It is possible that our trusted cubby holes

16 AFRICA, EAST/Foragers

for hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, or farmers misrepresent a prehistoric world frequently less economically specialized than that of the ethnographic present.
Nevertheless, few would argue that terms like huntergatherer be rejected. Instead, we can try to appreciate
how environment and history have created variability
in hunting-and-gathering societies. Three basic time
periods of African Foragers will be reviewed in East
Africa, including the Middle Stone Age, Later Stone
Age, and transition to food production.

Middle Stone Age

To some archaeologists, Middle Stone Age (MSA)
shows the gradual accumulation of the modern
hunter-gatherer repertoire. The repertoire, as far as
the MSA is concerned, might include: diversity in the
style of lithic artifacts and projectile weapons, backed
microliths and composite tools, bone tools and bone
points, hunting success, exploitation of fish, and
other smaller resources which could represent the
beginnings of a broad-spectrum or intensification
process in the case of evidence of fishing, land use
patterns characterized by a San-like aggregation and
dispersal and repeated occupation of rock shelters,
cultural use of space and activity areas within sites,
increased artifact trade, and the making of beads and
use of ochre. These behaviors and artifact types are
thought to be related to ways of thinking, including
symbolic behavior, innovation, and planning that are
modern, in the sense that they are associated with
Homo sapiens. At Blombos Cave on the southern coast
of South Africa, MSA levels dating to 77 000 years
ago have yielded more than 30 worked bone awls
and points and 8000 pieces of worked ochre, two of
which are incised with parallel lines as well as beads.
However, other sites of the African MSA also show
evidence of artifact design and geographic diversity;
use of microliths, backed tools, and hafted tools; hunting proficiency; worked bone; fishing, mollusk
gathering, and small animal procurement; and use of
symbolic artifacts such as beads and ochre.
The MSA is characterized by Levallois and other
prepared core methods of stone tool manufacture.
A common tool type in the East African MSA is the
Stillbay point, or points from discoidal core reduction. Important MSA sites include the ones in Northern Tanzania, such as Nasera Rockshelter and
Mumba Rockshelter, Mumba Hohle, Olduvai Gorge,
and a recent excavation from Loiyangalani near
Olduvai Gorge, where bone artifacts and fish bone
have been reported. Southwestern Tanzania also has
MSA localities reported along the Songwe River. In
Kenya, sites have been found in the Kenya Rift Valley,
including Prospect Farm and Lukenya Hill, and in

Ethiopia at Porc Epic Cave and Aduma. The East

African MSA is rarely found with ostrich eggshell
beads, as reported from Mumba and the Loiyangalani site, but is quite often associated with the
so-called Kenya Stillbay industry which includes
small and large points which may be spear points.

Later Stone Age

The Later Stone Age (LSA) is marked by the transition from the discoidal and Levallois core reduction
methods to leptolithic or small tools. The sequence of
LSA lithic industries at Lukenya Hill, Kenya documents the appearance and increasing proportions of
time of microlithic tools, also associated with modern
human behavior. Other early LSA sites show increasing use of bone tools, the exploitation of fish using
specialized technology, and the use of bored stones
for plant food gathering. LSA sites also contain early
evidence of artifacts related to personal adornment.
Often these are blade tools. Lukenya Hill contains
at least five early LSA archaeological sites, including
GvJm 62, GvJm 46, GvJm 22, and GvJm 16. Analysis
of these sites shows that the proportions of microlithic tools and the use of nonlocal obsidian from the
Central Rift Valley of Kenya, about 150 km from
Lukenya Hill, increase over time. Other important
early LSA sites include Enkapune ya Muto, whose
assemblages show that ostrich eggshell beads, hafted
microliths, and small round steep scrapers similar
to those made at GvJm62 were made and used there
(see Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and Metallurgists; Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers).
Other significant LSA industries are found in the
Eburran Industry of the Central Rift Valley in Kenya.
The Eburran Industry represents hunter-gatherers
well-adapted to Rift Valley highlands and lake basins
in East Africa, who used abundant obsidian to make
microlithic tools and hunted a variety of ungulates
associated with woodlands and forests. After 3000 BP,
many Eburran sites appear to be associated with the
origins of food production, in particular the keeping
of goats, such as at the site of Enkapune ya Muto.
LSA people are also associated with fish exploitation
and the making of pottery, as evidenced in the
Kansyore midden sites of Lake Victoria.

The Transition to Food Production

The problem of the transition from hunting and
gathering to food production has been approached
by examining how economies changed through diffusion and innovation of domesticated plant and animal species and the interactions of hunters and others
who were herders/farmers. Many reviews of the

AFRICA, EAST/Madagascar and Surrounding Islands 17

origins of domesticated plants and animals in Africa

have emphasized on the early and indigenous development of food production, the impact of cattleborne disease, patterns of indigenous development
and diffusion, the role of arid and unpredictable environment, and the evidence of early domesticated
plant foods in Africa. Several scholars have compared
the ethnographic record of hunter-gatherers and food
producers, both from the perspective of understanding the process of the adoption of food production
and understanding hunter-gathererfood producer
interaction.
Important cases of food-producer/farmer interaction include that of Eburran and Pastoral Neolithic
sites in the Central Rift Valley, that indicates the
association of Eburran sites with domestic stock and
in lower altitude locations, which presumably reflects
interaction with plains pastoralists; the Tsavo case of
southeastern Kenya, where hunter-gatherers known
as the Waata persisted until the twentieth century
by exchanging hunted meat and ivory tusks with
Oromo and Wambisha pastoralists; and the case of
montane hunter-gatherers variously known as Okiek
or Ndorobo whose interaction with Maasai and
other pastoralists involved exchange of honey and
meat for agricultural products and animal secondary
products.
See also: Africa, Central: Foragers, Farmers, and
Metallurgists; Great Lakes Area; Africa, West: Early
Holocene Foragers; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Further Reading
Andah B (1993) Identifying early farming traditions of West Africa.
In: Shaw T, Sinclair P, Andah B, and Okpoko A (eds.) The
Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals, and Towns, pp. 240254.
London: Routledge.
Bellwood P (2004) The First Farmers: Origins of Agricultural
Societies. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Bollig M (1987) Ethnic relations and spatial mobility in Africa:
A review of the peripatetic niche. In: Rao A (ed.) Kolner Ethnologische Mitteilungen Volume 8, The Other Nomads: Peripatetic
Minorities in Cross-Cultural Perspective, pp. 179228. Cologne:
Bohlau Verlag.
Burch ES (1998) The future of hunter-gatherer research. In: Gowdy J
(ed.) Limited Wants, unlimited Means: A Reader in HunterGatherer Economics and the Environment, pp. 201217.
Washington, DC: Island Press.
Cronk L and Dickson B (2000) Public and hidden transcripts in the
East African highlands: A comment on Smith (1998). Journal of
Anthropological Archaeology 20: 113121.
diLernia S and Manzi G (1997) Before Food Production in North
Africa. Forli, ABACO.
Henshilwood C and Marean C (2003) The origin of modern human
behavior: Critique of the models and their test implications.
Current Anthropology 44: 627652.

Kent S (1996) Cultural Diversity among Twentieth Century

Foragers: An African Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kuhn S and Stiner M (2001) The antiquity of hunter-gatherers.
In: Panter-Brick C, Layton R, and Rowley-Conwy P (eds.)
Hunter-Gatherers, An Interdisciplinary Perspective, pp. 99142.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schrire C (1980) An inquiry into the evolutionary status and
apparent identity of San hunter-gatherers. Human Ecology 8:
932.

Madagascar
and Surrounding
Islands
Douglas William Hume, University of Connecticut,
Storrs, CT, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Bantu language Group belonging to the Niger-Congo family.
By one estimate, there are 513 languages in the Bantu grouping.
Borneo Located at the center of the Malay archipelago and
Indonesia. Administratively, this island is divided between
Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
Madagascar Island Nation in the Indian Ocean, off the
southeastern coast of Africa. It is home to 5% of the worlds
plant and animal species (more than 80% of which are
indigenous to Madagascar).

Current archaeological research in Madagascar is

concerned with a relatively narrow band of time
from approximately 2000 year BP, the generally accepted period of first contact, to the seventeenth and
eighteenth century, the advent of historical records
and European contact. Although the peopling of
Madagascar is arguably a recent event, little is
known regarding the early settlements. The lack of
archaeological evidence is due to a variety of factors:
quick environmental decomposition of sites, sparse
use of sites by transient populations, and lack of
funding to research the area. Other forms of evidence,
such as linguistics, and genetic and ethnological data,
are also used to develop the chronology of events
during the settlement of Madagascar. Though early
arguments postulated that the first Malagasy inhabitants were from one origin, historical, linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence suggests multiregional
influences from Southeast Asia, East Africa, South
Asia, and the Near East. A hybridization of many

18 AMERICAS, NORTH/Madagascar and Surrounding Islands

influences is therefore probable, in which several

waves of settlement/colonization occurred and each
group introduced or reintroduced technologies or
other cultural traits.
Prior to settlement, maritime people, who were
exploiting the areas offshore resources, visited
Madagascar and traders used Madagascar for temporary shelter and restocking of supplies. As trading
became more important, the camps temporal and
spatial existence increased over time. This temporary
nature of the early settlements contributes to the difficulty in tracing the sequences of events from first
settlement to permanent settlements and finally a
formation of a distinct Malagasy culture.
Linguistically, there has been difficulty in deciphering the origin of the Malagasy language due
to movement of people, the number of Malagasy
dialects created, and the inability to define a protoMalagasy language. Through comparative linguistics, analysis of loan words, and the phonology, morphology, and vocabulary of the Malagasy language
suggest two possible origins: the Barito Valley of
Borneo and the Bantu language of Eastern Africa.
Genetic analysis shows that both East African and
Indonesian gene frequencies are evident within the
general population at approximately equal ratios
throughout Madagascar. The introduction of the
sickle cell gene indicates an infusion of genes from
people of central or east Africa, north of Zambezi.
The ethnological evidence connecting Madagascar
and other cultures such as Southeast Asia, Africa,
India, and the Near East that have similar traits is
ambiguous. Many similarities are better explained
by environmental constraints than by direct linkage
with a specific group. There are examples of shared
knowledge; for example, growing of millet in dry
areas of Madagascar is thought to have been borrowed from East Africa and the growing of rice in
wetter areas borrowed from Indonesia. Madagascar
has had exposure to a variety of cultural traits, but
the existence of a cultural trait does not imply
genetic relationships, but may rather result from
either direct or indirect trade between two genetically distinct groups.
The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity in Madagascar are the four radiocarbon-dated
dwarf hippopotamus (Choeropsis madagascariensis)
femurs that show human modification. The femurs,
found in southern Madagascar (Lamboharana and
Ambolisatra), yielded two reliable dates, 1970  60
and 1740  50 years BP. What has been most puzzling
in Madagascars ecological history is the extinction of
Madagascars megafauna, such as the dwarf hippopotamus, approximately 2000 years ago. Although a

catastrophic fire event, calamitous drought in southern Madagascar, first-contact overkill, introduction of cattle, and hypervirulent disease have all been
blamed for the extinction of Madagascars megafauna,
it is more likely that the causes worked in synergy:
the introduction of exotic and invasive species, climatic changes, and arrival of humans caused these
extinctions.
Another early archaeological site in Madagascar is
Sarodrano, 1490  90 years BP. However, this early
date is questionable due to site disturbance and further study of the site is impossible due to its destruction by a cyclone. Other early settlements dated to the
ninthtenth centuries AD include the following: Irodo
(Tafianatsirebeka) a northeastern coast settlement
that produced shellfish, farming, and chloro-schistite
vessel production and trade; Andransosoa a southeastern inland cattle pastoralist; and Talaky a southern coastal fishing village. During this early period
(first to tenth century AD), only traces of transient
visits have been found, which may be a reflection
of the limited areas surveyed along Madagascars
coast and not a measure of what settlement sites are
actually there.
After AD 1000, permanent occupation sites along
the entire Madagascar coast and one central highland
site have yielded evidence of rice agriculture, bovid
herding, fishing, iron smelting, and local trading, but
no direct link to Southeast Asia, East Africa, South
Asia, or the Near East. In addition, it cannot be
determined if the economic and technological diversity in evidence from sites of this period is the result
of in situ evolution or imported from another area.
From the twelfth century AD, the settlements in the
west began to grow to significant size and duration.
Mahilaka was the first major port in the region; its
decline in the fourteenth century AD was followed by
settlements developing along the east coast. Cores
taken from lakes and bogs from this time have
found fluctuating levels of grassy and brushy vegetation along with arboreal pollen, showing a negative
correlation. This indicates a variable deforestation
by anthropogenic means and therefore a variable
human population concentration and rate of environmental modification. By the fourteenth century AD,
the archaeological evidence indicates a relatively
uniform cultural pattern in the southern region. It is
currently unknown what caused this explosion of
settlements during this period of history in Madagascar. Settlements during this period were associated
in clusters surrounding a central site, which may
have been the political and/or social elite. In addition, trade goods originating in South China, Southeast Asia, the Near East, and Europe are evident

AMERICAS, NORTH/Swahili Coast 19

throughout Madagascar by this time, indicating

increased external contact.
Of the polities that emerged during the seventeenth
to eighteenth centuries AD, only the Merina of the
central highlands of Madagascar has the archaeological evidence to suggest the formation of a state. In
particular, a hierarchy of a capital, subsidiary centers,
villages, and hamlets along with frontier military sites
provides evidence that a state level system was needed
for control, because the level of control needed for
these sites is more than a loose political unit could
manage. During this period, the effects of European
trading enabled the earliest written accounts of the
Malagasy political situation to be recorded. With
the advent of European trading, political power
became subject to the control of trade goods and
some kingdoms (e.g., the Bara) collapsed while others
increased their influence (e.g., the Sakalava). Beginning
in the sixteenth century, several groups were heavily
involved in trade with the Europeans (mostly French,
Dutch, and Arabs). Others (e.g., Tandroy, Karembola,
and Mahafaly peoples in southern Madagascar) were
not actively involved in trade, yet still received European goods by importing them through their neighbors.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, the beginnings of what has been termed the Bara state collapsed due to disputes between the sons of the dead
ruler and, subsequently, the interior Maroserana ruler,
Andriamanely, captured the area and installed his
family members as local rulers. The southern kingdoms of Madagascar did not consolidate their power
and remained divided from the sixteenth to eighteenth
centuries. The result was their lack of political influence on interior and northern groups. Whether groups
were in direct trade with the Europeans or received
goods through indirect trade, the impact of the goods
that the Europeans brought to Madagascar was felt
throughout the island.
See also: Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area; Sudan,

Nilotic.

Further Reading
Deschamps H (1972) Histoire de Madagascar, 4th edn. Paris:
Berger-Levrault.
Dewar RE (1984) Extinctions in Madagascar: The loss of the
subfossil fauna. In: Martin PS and Klein RG (eds.) Quaternary
Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution, pp. 574593. Tucson,
AZ: The University of Arizona Press.
Dewar RE and Wright HT (1993) The culture history of Madagascar. Journal of World Prehistory 7: 417466.
Marks S and Cray R (1975) Southern Africa and Madagascar
(c.1600c.1790). In: Gray R (ed.) Cambridge History of Africa,
vol. 4, p. 384468. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pearson MP (1997) Close encounters of the worst kind: Malagasy

resistance and colonial disasters in southern Madagascar. World
Archaeology 28: 393417.
Wright HT and Rakotoarisoa JA (2004) The rise of Malagasy
societies: New developments in the archaeology of Madagascar.
In: Goodman SM and Benstead JP (eds.) The Natural History of
Madagascar, pp. 112119. Chicago, IL: The University of
Chicago Press.

Swahili Coast
Adria LaViolette, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
caliphate The Islamic form of government representing the
political unity and leadership of the Muslim world.
city-state A region controlled exclusively by a city, usually
having sovereignty.
colonialism The extension of a nations sovereignty over
territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler
colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous
populations are directly ruled or displaced.
urbanism The study of cities their economic, political, social
and cultural environment, and the imprint of all these forces on
the built environment.

The many towns and hinterland communities of the

Eastern African coast share broad cultural commonalities that emerged in the first millennium AD, in
what came to be called Swahili civilization. The
Swahili coast extended along some 2500 km, from
modern Somalia to Mozambique and incorporating Kenyas Lamu archipelago, Tanzanias Pemba,
Unguja (Zanzibar), and Mafia Islands, the Comoros
Archipelago, and northwestern Madagascar. This
expanse corresponds with the western edge of the
monsoonal wind system, facilitating travel and
communication on the coast itself and among ports
along the Indian Ocean rim. The pre-Swahili history
of the coast is known largely through archaeological
research, augmented by rare documents and interpretations drawn from historical linguistics. In the
centuries prior to the founding of Swahili settlements, the coast was home to an array of smallerscale societies subsisting on pastoralism and mixed
farming and fishing, and who shared archaeological
and linguistic connections with interior peoples. The
use of Urewe and Kwale ceramics in both areas
exemplifies shared lifeways of coastal and interior
regions in the Late Stone and Early Iron Ages.

20 AMERICAS, NORTH/Swahili Coast

Archaeological work at pre-/proto-Swahili sites dating to the first centuries AD, such as Unguja Ukuu in
Tanzania, provides evidence of relatively small mixed
farming settlements, some with impressive trade ties
beyond the coast. The first written document pertaining to the coast is a merchants guide, the Periplus of
the Erythraean Sea. The Periplus was written in AD 40
by a Greek sailor, who wrote of trade along the
Red Sea, Eastern African, and Indian shores while on
a Roman ship. He references places such as Rhapta,
the Romans southernmost port of trade, thought to
have been on the central Tanzanian coast. Rhapta is
described as under the authority of the governor of
Muza in the southwestern Arabian Peninsula, but
subsequent historical and archaeological evidence
have not confirmed this depiction. Exported goods
listed included ivory and rhino horn from the interior
and nautilus and turtle shell from the coast, while
imports included metal implements, glass, and some
foods. Another, second-century source is Ptolemys
Geography, a Graeco-Roman compendium containing
sailing coordinates for coastal locations. Both documents are consistent with archaeological evidence that
some coastal Early Iron Age populations were engaged
in trade and social relations with Mediterranean and
Indian Ocean societies. The documentary record is
then largely silent until the late first millennium,
when Arab and other accounts begin.
By the sixth to tenth centuries AD, archaeological
evidence reveals a distinct coastal Swahili lifeway. Its
characteristics included: (1) use of Tana Tradition or
Triangular Incised Ware ceramics; (2) technologies
such as iron smelting and boat construction; (3) the
building of mostly rectangular earth-and-thatch houses;
(4) household economy based on millet agriculture,
husbandry, and fishing; (5) obtaining imported goods
including glazed ceramics, glassware, metal jewelry,
and stone and glass beads from the Persian Gulf and
beyond; and (6) conversion to Islam from the eighth
century onward. Few of these traits are exclusive to
the coast but the combination emerged as characteristically coastal, and ultimately Swahili. The settlement
of the coast by people with this archaeological signature marks a transition from the previous mosaic of
coast and interior groups, although the early Swahili
maintained many cultural practices of the pastoral and
farming/fishing peoples on the coast and hinterland
from whom they were derived. Nearly all known Swahili settlements were on or within 20 km of the coast.
Islam grew to great importance in Swahili life. The
earliest evidence to date for its practice is from the
excavation of an eighth-century timber mosque at
Shanga in the Lamu Archipelago. A series of mosques
of increasing size and formality were subsequently
superimposed. This sequence attests to contacts

between proto- or early Swahili with Muslim traders

or missionaries. Earlier understandings of the formation of Swahili society presumed that Arab and Persian immigrants colonized and converted coastal
people for the purpose of developing trading opportunities. However, archaeological and linguistic evidence now points convincingly to the African origins
of Swahili culture, while still acknowledging that
some immigration and an openness to select foreign
influences was fundamental to Swahili life.
By the ninth century, economic connections between Eastern Africa and the Middle East had
grown in scale to include the export of thousands of
slaves from the interior. The slaves were transported
through coastal centers including Unguja and Pemba
to destinations in modern-day Iraq where they
labored on drainage projects at the head of the Gulf
of Basra. In AD 868, a massive uprising, the Zanj
Revolt, weakened the Caliphate based in Basra and
led to a downturn in interest in slaves from Swahili
sources. The revolt indicates the presence and influence
of Africans in Asia at that time, but more research is
needed to understand the full texture of this influence.
The spiritual transformation of the Swahili coast
had sweeping effects, but these were neither uniform
nor rapid. Representatives of several Islamic sects
gained influence in different areas. Conversion did
not eliminate but rather incorporated local spiritual
practices. By c. AD 1200, however, all large Swahili
settlements and many smaller ones featured stonebuilt mosques as centerpieces of Islamic practice and
community organization.
The wealth and power of Swahili towns waxed in
the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, as measured by
the scale and number of settlements, material culture,
and expanding trade relationships to the interior and
along distant Indian Ocean shores. Building in stone
became the hallmark of the most elite dwellings and
public and ritual structures. In the ninth century,
Swahili elites adopted a method of mortared and
plastered limestone construction that originated
on the Red Sea shores. The resulting architecture
elaborated, multistoried, more permanent than earth
and thatch may have been critical to anchoring
relationships of certain Swahili lineages with foreign
traders, a practice seen ethnohistorically and which
contributed to the prosperity of towns and regions at
large. However, earth-and-thatch houses continued
to characterize villages, and were even common within the new larger settlements marked by elite stone
buildings, called stonetowns. While stone architecture became the basis of initial reconstructions
of Swahili society, contemporary archaeological research is investigating the full range of Swahili houses
and public buildings in town and countryside.

AMERICAS, NORTH/The Horn of Africa 21

Many Swahili settlements have been described

as urban (even city-states or states) (see Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Urban Archaeology)
marked by complex relations between centers and
their surrounding regions. These centers differed in
their internal class structures and political styles.
Coastal regions became more distinct from one another with localized historical trajectories. The shared
visual icons of Swahili stonetowns are compelling,
but should not overshadow these important differences between regions along the coast.
Major stonetowns that have been investigated archaeologically include Shanga, Manda, and Gede in
Kenya; Chwaka, Ras Mkumbuu, Tumbatu, and
Kilwa in Tanzania; and Mahilaka in Madagascar.
Certain towns created epic histories, passed down
orally and ultimately formalized as written chronicles, such as those known from Pate and Kilwa. The
chronicles, as well as other sources, often discuss
sociopolitical relationships: the ties between Swahili
and interior peoples, marriage alliances with Indian
Ocean families, acts of generosity by local leaders to
their populations. Life in the stonetown polities
continued but with intensified farming, fishing, craft
production, Islamic practice, and long-distance trade.
Gold obtained from Zimbabwe Plateau (see Africa,
Central: Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas)
societies became a leading export from the coast,
along with ivory, iron, animal products, and mangrove poles. Imports featured glazed ceramics from
East, Southeast, and Southwest Asia; a range of personal items such as beads and other jewelry; cloth;
and religious texts. Coins were minted in some of the
largest centers. Rock crystal and other stone was
worked into beads and traded, and iron and copper
alloys were produced locally.
From the sixteenth century onward, the effects of
European and Arab colonizers became increasingly
felt. The Portuguese reached the Swahili coast for
the first time in 1498. Their presence in sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries is known from documentary sources, and architectural remains in Mombasa,
Malindi, Kilwa, and on Pemba and Unguja. The construction of Fort Jesus in Mombasa in 1593 was the
most striking presence the Portuguese achieved in this
period. They were defeated there in 1697 after a long
siege, ending the first phase of their colonialism on
the Swahili coast. Portuguese settlement and cultural
impact is not well understood at present and future
study is warranted. At a regional level, their aggressive intrusions in the Indian Ocean contributed to the
long-term decline of Swahili autonomy and power.
Sections of the Swahili coast came under attack from
Omani Arabs immediately after the Portuguese were
defeated, such that from 1498 onward the Swahili

struggled against colonialist incursions of various

scales and levels of success. Swahili urban and rural
life prevailed, although disruptions in long-distance
trade and losses of regional autonomy weakened the
strength of the entire coast and its ties to the interior
and the Indian Ocean. The Swahili coast was not united
under a single political authority until the Omani
Sultanate colonized it in the early nineteenth century.
See also: Africa, Central: Zimbabwe Plateau and Surrounding Areas; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of;
Urban Archaeology.

Further Reading
Allen J de V (1993) Swahili Origins. London: Heinemann.
Chami FA (1994) The Coast of East Africa in the First Millennium
AD: A Study of the Iron Working Farming Communities.
Uppsala: Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis.
Chittick HN (1974) Kilwa: An Islamic Trading City on the East
African Coast. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa.
Croucher S (2006) Plantations on Zanzibar: An Archaeological
Approach to Complex Identities. Unpublished PhD Thesis,
University of Manchester.
Freeman-Grenville GSP (1962) The East African Coast: Select
Documents from the First Century to the Early Nineteenth
Century. Oxford: Clarendon.
Garlake PS (1966) The Early Islamic Architecture on the East
African Coast. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa.
Horton MC (1996) Shanga: The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading
Settlement on the Coast of East Africa. London: British Institute
in Eastern Africa.
Horton M and Middleton J (2000) The Swahili. London:
Blackwell.
Juma A (2004) Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar: An Archaeological
Study of Early Urbanism. Uppsala: Societas Archaeologica
Upsaliensis.
Kusimba CM (1999) The Rise and Fall of Swahili States. Walnut
Creek: AltaMira.

The Horn of Africa

Rahul Oka, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA
Chapurukha M Kusimba, University of Illinois,
Chicago, IL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Early Common Era Refers to the period between 100 BC and
100 CE that witnessed a significant increase in interregional and
transoceanic trade linking the Indian Ocean world, East and
Central Asia, and the Mediterranean and also the rise of stable
empires and states in Asia, Southern Europe, and Africa.
vertical archipelago effect First described in the Andes but
also in the Himalayas and Hawaii; rapidly changing elevations

22 The Horn of Africa

within a relatively small lateral area causes highly variable
yet circumscribed environment and leads to the development
of interdependent and exchanging settlements along the
vertical landscape practicing a wide variety of subsistence
activities.

The Horn of Africa is a cultural area comprising the

modern nations of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and
Somalia. Archaeological research over the past century
shows an unbroken sequence of human occupation
from the Middle Stone Age to the present. It has also
been blessed with a unique location: on the crossroads
of Asia and Africa, at the mouth of the Red Sea, and
offering easy land access between western ports on the
Red Sea and the Nile River. Epigraphic evidence from
Egypt identifies this region as Punt and an active
trading partner of Egypt during the reign of Queen
Hapshetsut. Archaeological evidence suggests that
the trade links between the Horn of Africa and the
Mediterranean world (Egypt) as well as Southwest
Asia can be traced as far back as 2500 BC.
The Horn of Africa boasts greater geographical
diversity than any other area in Africa: from the
baking plains along the Eritrean and Somali coasts,
the largest and highest land plateau, the cooler
Ethiopian highlands, the lowland tropical Nile headwaters to the north, and the arid dry lowlands to the
northwestern, western, and southwestern regions
along the borders with Sudan and Kenya. The wider
range of geographic and hence climatic variability
creates a vertical archipelago effect allowing for a
larger variety of sustainable resources and related subsistence activities, and the contemporaneous development of a regional exchange network between
settlements. The Somali Coast (that includes the
actual horn or the jutting coastal plain along the
Gulf of Aden and the northwestern Indian Ocean),
the Eritrean (and Djiboutian) Coast along the Western
Red Sea, and the Ethiopian highlands have thus been
interconnected from earliest times and this regional
exchange has played a great role in the development
of social complexity in the Horn from 800 BC onward.
The Horn of Africa is also the region of many
firsts and onlys. Important food crops such as
teff, ensete, finger millet, nug, and coffee were first
domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands and this is
the only region in sub-Saharan Africa to use domesticated cattle and the plow for agricultural purposes.
Geez is one of the three indigenous writing systems
in Africa and was developed during the development
of the Aksumite polity. This region is also home to a
two millennia long development of incipient state
formation in sub-Saharan Africa: from Aksum (also

called Axum) (second century BC to ninth century

CE), Zagwe (tenth century to fourteenth century CE),
Solomonid (fourteenth century to seventeenth century), and Amharic Gondar (seventeenth century to
twentieth century). The monarchs of these polities
have practiced and hailed themselves as the protectors of Christianity from the conversion of King Ezana
of Aksum in CE 330, to the Amhara kings of the
twentieth century, making the Ethiopian highlands
the longest-lived Christian-ruled area in the world.
Consequently, much focus of historical research
has been on this indigenous adoption of and syncretic processes affecting Christianity, regarding the
aforementioned highland states as islands of Christianity pitted against indigenous religions and later
against Islamic incursions from the coasts. This paradigm is now being challenged as the positive contributions of traditional African religions and Islam
are being acknowledged, as are the impacts of nonChristian peoples of the Horn, including the Somali,
the Oromo (formerly called the Galla), the Afar,
and the Saho.
Recent historical and archaeological work on the
antiquity and spread of Islam has underscored the
role played by Asian and African Islamic traders and
settlers in Red Sea ports, including Adulis, Massawa,
the Dahlak Islands on the Eritrean Coast, and
Berbera, Zeila, Ras Hafun, and Mogadishu on the
Somali Coast. The Dahlak Islands, Adulis, Berbera,
and Ras Hafun have been active since the Early Common Era and played a significant role in the rise of
Aksum and the latter highland polities. Trade goods
recovered in both the coastal ports as well as Aksum
(and subsequent states) include products from South
Asia (glass beads, coins, cloth), Rome (ceramics,
amphorae), Egypt, and even China (iron, porcelains,
silk). In return, the highland and coastal ports
provided infrastructure for secondary production
and regional and transoceanic trade in food grains,
animal products such as elephant and hippopotamus
tusk ivory (raw, cut, and carved), skins and hides,
precious stones, rock crystals, gold, slaves, beeswax,
and gum Arabic. Emergent trends and future directions
of archaeological research seem to favor this regional
approach for understanding social complexity.
The rest of this essay will summarize the recent
archaeologicalhistorical work along the three zones
of the Horn of Africa: (1) the Northern Coast along
the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (Eritrean, Djiboutian,
and northern Somali Coasts); (2) the Southeastern Somali Coast, also known as the Benadir Coast (along the
northwestern Indian Ocean); and (3) the Eritrean
Ethiopian highlands. The bulk of archaeological work
in the Horn has concentrated on the highlands but

The Horn of Africa 23

there have been a few projects working on the coasts,

tied into the larger coastal archaeological projects
further south along the East African coast.

Northern Coast
The northern coast of the Horn of Africa is characterized by the ports of Adulis, Massawa, Saad-Din,
Berbera and Zeila, as well as the Dahlak Islands off
the coast of Eritrea. Excavations at these sites have
also underscored the importance of the northern
coast as the forum for contacts with Southern Arabia
as far back as the second millennium BC. Analysis of
similarities in material culture as well as evidence
on constant interaction suggests an interdependent
development of complexity on both sides of the Red
Sea, especially in the pre-Aksumite period. The ports
of Adulis and Massawa were significant for the external connections of the emerging Aksum polity during
the Early Common Era and show evidence of Aksumite
and southern Arabian interactions and trade. Artifacts
recovered include gold, ivory, and a human skeleton
in chains or manacles suggesting the existence of slave
trade. The Dahlak Islands were sources of tortoiseshell and ambergris, but also were known pirate bases
and hence played an important role in controlling the
Red Sea trade until their conquest in the tenth century
CE. The ports of Zeila and Saad-Din show intensive
merging of agricultural and pastoral activities by
providing specialized infrastructure for pastoral exchange and trade as well as being important centers of
transoceanic trade. The north coast was regarded as
part of the territory controlled by the given highland
polity. However, regardless of hinterland influence,
these ports were probably semi-autonomous. From
the eighth century, Islam started to spread across the
Horn but found its strength in the coastal ports of
the northern coast. The aforementioned ports as well
as new ports such as Aydhab and Suakin (further
north) were part of coastal Islamic polities of Shewa,
Falasha, Gojjam, and Damot (late ninth century and
tenth century) and Ifat (Yifat) (eleventh century CE)
are usually seen as engaging in conflict with the highland Christian polities of Zagwe. It is clear from
recent analysis that the religious conflict did not
significantly affect the trading relationships as the
highland states continued to use the aforementioned
ports for their commercial and diplomatic activities.
Trade continued even during the conflicts between
the Ethiopian polity and the emergent Islamic states
of Adal and Harar between and through the fourteenth century to sixteenth century CE. The territorial
conquest of most of the Horn by Imam Ahmad bin
Ibrahim al-Ghazi or Ahmad Gran of Harar between

CE 1529 and 1543 was brought to an end by the

arrival and action of the Portuguese acting as coreligionist partners of the Ethiopian state of Gondar.
Though the late first and early second millennium
periods have undergone historiographic scrutiny,
largely through the lens of the Christianity versus
Islam conflict, this and the subsequent periods
have not been subjected to significant archaeological
research, especially in the hinterland.

Benadir Coast
Archaeology of the Benadir zone has also been confined
to the coastal area and to the large ports. The bulk of
this research has concentrated on Ras Hafun and
Mogadishu. Presence of South Asian, Mesopotamian,
Roman, Early Sassanian, and Egyptian ceramics suggests that Ras Hafun was active in the Early Common
Era trade. However, the main trading port on the
Benadir Coast was the city of Mogadishu and the
articulated settlements of Brawa, Merca, Warsheikh,
and Kismayo. While most of the other ports on the
Somali coast have declined, the Mogadishu port cluster is still active and formed the basis for ongoing
trade between the hinterland and coast of southern
Somalia from the seventeenth century to the present.
Unlike the northern coast, there was no hinterland
polity associated with the ports on the Benadir coast
until the sixteenth century CE. Analysis of imported
Persian, Indian, Egyptian, and Chinese trade wares in
these ports suggests that Mogadishu, Brawa, and
Merca arose between the ninth and tenth centuries
within a similar context as the ports further south
along the Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Mozambique
coasts: The coastal settlements were articulated with
hinterland agricultural and pastoral groups. The ports
provided forums for exchange of hinterland and overseas products. The elites of Mogadishu and other ports
were linked through kinship, blood-brotherhood, and
marital alliances with hinterland pastoral and agricultural groups and depended on these for protection.
It is not inconceivable that the trade boom and demand
for African products c. CE 1500 led to the rise of
the Islamic Ajurann Confederacy (CE 15001700)
and state development among the Somali in the Benadir
hinterland. This period is also known for major
demographic movements in the Benadir hinterland,
including the migration of the Oromo pastoralists and
their wars with the Somali to the northeast and the
Amhara to the north in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, leading to their southerly migration over
the next two centuries. Not only did these migrations
precipitate political changes in the Horn of Africa but
also central and eastern Africa.

24 The Horn of Africa

EthiopianEritrean Highlands

Summary

The bulk of archaeological excavations in the Horn

has focused on the highlands, where the firsts and
the onlys are concentrated, particularly on the site of
AksumTigray in the northern EthiopianEritrean
highlands. Though the early and mid-twentieth
century efforts focused on the stelae, monumental
architecture, artwork, and epigraphic research to
reconstruct the development of the Aksumite state
from the Early Common Era to its demise in the late
first millennium CE, recent work has focused on
tracing the beginnings of pre-Aksumite settlement.
The early development of complexity in the Ethiopian
highlands has now been tentatively traced to the
early first millennium BC and interactions with the
Hadramaut and Southwestern coast of Arabia have
now been traced to the second millennium BC.
Archaeo-botanical and zoological approaches have
also moved away from mere establishment of antiquity to understanding the regional and evolutionary
context of plant and animal domestication in the
Horn of Africa. In particular, recent work in South
Asia dates the African domesticates to 2000 BC. Not
only does this suggest the deep antiquity of interconnections between the Horn of Africa and Asia but
also the larger transregional context of domestication
involving transfer of ideas, products, and technology.
Current reconstructions of the demise of Aksum vary
from blaming the declining climate conditions from
the midlate first millennium CE to the emergence of
Islamic power along the northern coast from the late
eighth century, concentrated in the ports of Massawa,
Adulis, the Dahlak Islands, and Zeila. The latter
argument has also been made for the fall of the
subsequent polities of Zagwe, the Solomonids, and
Gondar. However, it is clear that there are multiple
and path-dependent causes for the decline of the
highland polities and these need to be explored further in a regional context. Recent archaeological and
historiographic approaches have aimed at understanding the post-Aksum polities beyond just establishing king-lists and reigning periods. The difficulty
presented to researchers interested in the latter settlement and political history of the highlands is the shift
in settlement organization and political infrastructure.
Whether in response to conflicts with Islamic polities
such as Adal and Harar and/or pastoral groups such as
the Somali and the Oromo, climate, and environmental changes, the elites of Zagwe, Gondar, and the
Amhara moved their capitals periodically, making
their archaeological signatures ephemeral and difficult
to locate.

Apart from being the home of many firsts and

onlys in Africa, the Horn of Africa has also played
an important role in the development of global, commercial, and religious processes over the last two
millennia. Due to the problems in navigability of the
Red Sea north of Aydhab and Suakin, traders seeking
routes to the Mediterranean had two choices: make
port at Mocha or Jeddah and take the overland routes
up the western coast of Arabia or make port at the
Eritrean ports and take the shorter overland route
to the Nile and sail up the Nile to Alexandria and
Aleppo. The continuity of ports and the overland
routes in the Horn attest to the significance of the
second passage for Indian Ocean and Mediterranean
trade. Though the religious conflict in the Horn is
far more complex than a simple picture of isolated
Christian highland versus the traditional hinterlands,
the Islamic lowlands, and/or the coast, it is also true
that these divisions played a role in the generation of
larger conflicts such as the jihad of Imam Ahmad
Gran and the Portuguese involvement, as well as the
major Oromo and Somali migrations. It could also be
argued that the nineteenth-century Mahdist revolt in
Sudan was linked to similar and concurrent processes
in the Horn of Africa. Current sociopolitical situations are not conducive to archaeological research,
especially along the coasts and immediate hinterlands
of Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. Even so, future
projects (especially those focused on regional approaches and on late first and second millennium
developments) will prove immensely significant in
understanding the role played by the Horn in the
development of African and global modernity.
See also: Africa, East: Ethiopia and Eritrea; Foragers;
Madagascar and Surrounding Islands; Swahili Coast;
Africa, North: Nubia; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Ahmed HS (1996) Exchange, Trade, and the Development of
Urbanism in Somalia. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Ann
Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.
Fattovich R (1990) Remarks on the pre-Aksumite period in
northern Ethiopia. Journal of Ethiopian Studies 23: 133.
Insoll T (2003) The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jama AD (1996) The Origins and Development of Mogadishu
AD 1000 to 1850: A Study of the Urban Growth along the
Benadir Coast of Southern Somalia. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala
University.

AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 25

Kapteijns L (2000) Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. In: Levitzion N
and Pouwels R (eds.) The History of Islam in Africa, pp. 227250.
Oxford: James Currey.
Munro-Hay S (1991) Aksum: An African Civilization of Late
Antiquity. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Pankhurst R (1998) The Ethiopians. Oxford: Blackwell.
Phillipson D (1998) Ancient Ethiopia. London: The British Museum.

Schmidt P (2006) Historical Archaeology in Africa. Walnut Creek,

CA: Altamira Press.
Tamrat T (1990) The Horn of Africa: The Solomonids in Ethiopia
and the states of the Horn of Africa. In: Ki-Zerbo K and Niane
DT (eds.) General History of Africa: Africa from the Twelfth
to the Sixteenth Century, pp. 169180. Berkeley, CA: James
Currey; Paris: UNESCO.

AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Paul J Lane, University of York, York, UK

Introduction

2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Historical archaeology first emerged as a distinct subfield of the broader discipline in North America during the mid-twentieth century. However, many of the
definitions and approaches that now dominate the
field are not entirely suited to the African continent.
This is partly because in many areas, especially away
from the coastal zones, the temporal depth of documentary sources is fairly limited, and a European
presence in these areas only dates from the nineteenth
century. A key feature of historical archaeology, regardless of which definition is preferred, is that it
seeks to integrate and interrogate both strictly archaeological types of sources (such as artifactual,
ecofactual, structural, and architectural remains and
their contextual, spatial, and temporal associations
and characteristics), with other nonarchaeological
sources that can be broadly defined as historical. In
this respect, a useful distinction can be made between
external and internal sources. By the former is
meant sources produced by outsiders, either as direct
observers, or as often in African contexts, transcribers
and copiers of verbal accounts provided by others.
Thus, examples might include the large number of
published first-hand accounts of voyages of discovery
and exploration in Africa by different individuals of
European origin that begin to appear from c. CE 1500
onward, and especially after 1800; the numerous official documents produced by the different European
colonial powers that are now lodged in archives in
Africa, Europe, and elsewhere; the records kept
by different trading companies, ship captains, and
others engaged in commercial activity; personal diaries and letters written by European missionaries,
explorers and administrators; and also the various
pre-1500 CE descriptions and guides to parts of
Africa written in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Chinese.
By internal sources is meant the range of historical
sources produced by, in this case, different African

Glossary
Atlantic slave trade The sale and exploitation of African slaves
by Europeans that occurred in and around the Atlantic ocean from
the 15th century to the 19th century. Most slaves were transported
from West Africa and Central Africa, to the New World.
colonialism A practice of domination, which involves the
subjugation of one people to another.
contract archaeology Archaeological work carried out on
behalf of, and paid by, a commercial firm or public body in
advance of land development that has the potential to impact
on archaeological remains.
emporium A trading center.
entrepot A port through which exports and imports pass, and
thus links a coastal zone with its hinterland.
genealogical reckoning A way of establishing a chronology
based on the history of the descent of families and which
typically assumes that each generation represents between
twenty to thirty years, hence, for instance a family tree that
names six generations could cover between 120 and 180 years
of history.
hieroglyphic symbols Hieroglyphic symbols are a form of
writing which uses little pictures to represent actions or things.
historical archaeology Historical archaeology is a branch of
archaeology that concerns itself with historical societies, that is,
those that had systems of writing.
Holocene An epoch of geological time that began 10 000 years
ago and is the second and current epoch of the Quaternary
period.
littoral The stretch of land adjacent to a coast, in other words,
a coastal belt.
metaphor An implied comparison, normally expressed as a
figure of speech, between two things that are not normally
treated as if they have anything in common; an extension of this
process can lead to the development of a symbol, whereby the
comparison is no longer implied and the second term comes to
stand for the first, as in a cross being a symbol of Christianity.
slavery a social-economic system under which certain
persons known as slaves are deprived of their personal
freedom and compelled to provide their labor or services.
writing system A writing system is a type of symbolic system
used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.

26 AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

societies. Most obviously, these include the oral traditions and histories, myths, and personal memories
that have been transcribed by professional historians
and anthropologists. However, there also exist various texts written in the local vernacular for certain
parts of the continent, as well as some indigenous
writing systems, notably the Vai script developed in
what is now Liberia, the Nsibidi script found in
Cross River State, Nigeria, and the Barnum hieroglyphs that occur in Cameroon.
Just as archaeological sources are subject to a wide
range of processes that can affect their formal, spatial,
biochemical, and contextual characteristics which
may influence the integrity of the scientific information they carry, so too can oral, textual, and documentary sources be subject to a wide range of factors that
may introduce different kinds of bias and selectivity
(see Historical Archaeology: Methods). For the African continent, both the specific and general value of
oral traditions as reliable sources of historical information have been discussed at some length and various
methods of source criticism devised. There is also widespread recognition of the need for detailed source criticism when handling documentary and archival sources.
In terms of the latter, racial bias is obviously one factor,
but many others also came into play. Equally, European
perceptions of and attitudes to Africans were by no
means uniform, varying between individuals, different nationalities, and different kinds of sources.

Attempts to Verify Classical Texts

In common with other parts of the world, much of
what might be considered historical archaeology on
the African continent has been concerned with the
verification of various written historical sources,
especially those concerning the pre-modern era. Outside of Egypt and Nubia, where texts written using
the hieroglyphic script first emerged in an archaic
form perhaps as early as 34003200 BCE, the main
areas where this has been attempted are Libya and
adjacent parts of North Africa, the East African Swahili
coast, and Sudanic West Africa. In the former two
areas, the primary relevant texts are those written by
Greek and Roman authors (although for more recent
centuries, Arabic sources are also of value), while for
West Africa, the earliest documentary sources derive
from the writings of Arabic scholars such as Ibn Batuta
and Al Bekri. In all three areas, scholars have tended to
give primacy, until recently, to the available written
sources, with the result that certain misrepresentations
and distortions within these texts assumed the status
of historical fact (see Writing Systems).
Perhaps the best-known example of this concerns
the use by successive generations of archaeologists of

the text known as The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea,

which probably dates to around CE 40. The Periplus
includes a description of a sea voyage along the East
African coast from a trading emporium known as
Opone just south of the Somali Peninsula, to the ancient
town of Rhapta, as well as details of some of the products exported from Africa, that included ivory, ambergris, and slaves. As these were mostly nondurable raw
materials for which evidence is unlikely to be preserved
in archaeological contexts except under special circumstances, the text provides valuable information about
the trade. Understandably, it has been used from an
early stage in research on the Swahili coast to supplement the evidence gleaned from archaeology of the wide
range of durable products that were being imported.
The Periplus contains much less information about
the societies that occupied the East African coast,
apart from descriptions of various landmarks and
other ports that lay along this route. Some of the
topographic features of the coast, such as the Lamu
archipelago and Mount Kilimanjaro, are readily
identifiable from the descriptions, and using these in
conjunction with the sailing directions that are also
provided, scholars have sought to link some of the
known archaeological sites with the various ports
and settlements named in the Periplus and the other
important early text, Claudius Ptolemys Geography
(c. CE 150). Few if any of these, including Rhapta,
however, have been identified unambiguously. Moreover, the two texts provide conflicting information
about the geographical location of several of the places
named, making it especially difficult to derive an accurate topography of the East African littoral during the
late first millennium BCE to early first millennium CE
from these sources alone. Thus, for instance, Pemba or
Zanzibar would be the best estimates for the location of
the island of Menouthias based on the information
given in the Periplus, whereas the coordinates given in
the Geography would place this island much further
south in the vicinity of Madagascar. This discrepancy,
in turn, has a bearing on the possible location of
Rhapta. From the description provided in the Periplus,
Rhapta lay about 88 miles to the south of Menouthias,
which would place it near Bagamoyo or Dar es Salaam
in modern Tanzania. Whereas, in the Geography,
Rhapta is said to lie far to the north of Menouthias
situated on a small island set in a river, which could be a
reference to the Lamu archipelago close to the modern
border between Kenya and Somalia. In view of such
problems, scholars no longer regard the Periplus and
Ptolemys Geography as detailed guides to site locations, but instead as valuable, but ambiguous, testimony to the existence of long-distance trading links
between East Africa and the Mediterranean world in
the first few centuries of the Christian Era.

AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 27

Uses of Oral History in African

Archaeology
One aspect of historical archaeology in sub-Saharan
Africa that distinguishes it from comparable work in
many other parts of the world, particularly North
America and Europe, is the greater integration of oral
histories. This is partly because the growth of scholarly study of the oral history and traditions of African
societies coincided with a rise in interest in the later
Holocene archaeology of the continent, and especially
that concerning the origins and spread of food
production, metal-working, urbanism, and complex
political systems. As part of this intellectual trend, the
use of such traditions became a common component
of most archaeological surveys, principally as a means
of providing an overview of the more recent history
of the area under investigation. Moreover, a particular characteristic of a great many oral traditions
concerning different African societies is the emphasis
placed on migration as the primary driving force of
social change. The first generation of Africas historians to be trained in the Western academic tradition
were thus often keen to see their archaeological counterparts provide material verification that the routes
and stopping places described in the oral accounts,
were indeed associated with the settlement histories
of specific ethnic groups. It is rare however, to find
unequivocal confirmation of this kind in the archaeological record, and attempts to link the various oral
traditions with specific archaeological sites commonly
encounter several difficulties.
One region where archaeological investigations
were initially guided by oral histories but subsequently generated a complete rethinking of the historical
and metaphorical significance of these is the Great
Lakes area of East Africa. Here, several important
archaeological sites have long been associated in
oral traditions with an elite known as the Bacwezi.
According to at least one set of traditions, the
Bacwezi had been the historical rulers of a large region centered in the lush grasslands of western
Uganda, which, by calculating from genealogical
data, would appear to have existed sometime during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries CE. A number
of extensive complexes of ditched earthworks, including the sites of Bigo, Munsa, Kibengo, and Kasonko,
are known from this area. During the 1950s and the
1960s, various archaeological campaigns were undertaken at some of these in an attempt to provide a
clearer understanding of their date and function,
and their link with the Bacwezi dynasty. The discovery at Bigo of an enclosure similar in form to
that found at some of the later royal capitals in
Uganda, and a suite of radiocarbon dates from the

site suggesting occupation between the thirteenth and

sixteenth centuries CE, led to the conclusion that Bigo
was indeed the capital of the pastoral Bacwezi kingdom, and that the other sites were part of the same
political system. Reappraisals of these investigations,
however, have called into question many of historical
interpretations that were used to guide the archaeological excavations, and highlighted some of the more
general problems associated with trying to substantiate oral traditions archaeologically. Moreover, the
results of more recent field investigations at Munsa
and Kibengo indicate that despite some superficial
similarities these not only differ from one another
but also from Bigo, in terms of their site inventories
and material culture traditions. Thus, rather than
belonging to a single state, each of these sites probably represents the center of an independent polity that
was in competition with its neighbors over resources
and control of the local populace.
Other scholars have argued that the Bacwezi myth
must be seen as a symbolically loaded, metaphorical
account of trends in the regions history and changing
power relations, rather than as a literal description of
actual historical events and relationships. In the
Kagera region of northwest Tanzania, for instance,
oral traditions link the more recent, immigrant
Bahinda ruling dynasty with the Bacwezi, and indicate that the power and authority of the Bahinda
clans was generally associated with control over ironworking, rainmaking, and fertility rites. However,
genealogical reckoning places the period of Bacwezi
rule up to 2025 generations ago and thus significantly
earlier than has been estimated from the Ugandan
traditions. Moreover, excavations at Katuruka, the
former capital of Rugamore Mahe, one of the Bahinda
rulers of the Kiamutwara kingdom during the seventeenth century CE, led to the discovery of iron smelting
remains associated with the very beginnings of settled
farming in the region and dating to around 500 BCE.
Although similar remains of early farming and
iron smelting communities were found at many of the
other ritually important places within the historical
topology of the Bahinda landscape, in other respects
there was a lack of direct settlement continuity as
evidenced by typological differences between the early
farming (or Early Iron Age) ceramics and those associated with the second millennium CE kingdoms.
On the basis of this, it has been suggested that whereas
the Bacwezi may have been indigenous rulers of smallscale polities during the first millennium CE or possibly
earlier, later leaders, unconnected with Bacwezi, subsequently manipulated traditions and appropriated
the archaeological remains of the Bacwezis evident
iron smelting abilities to legitimize their own assumption to power.

28 AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Africa, Europe, and the Age of Exploration

Direct and indirect trading contacts between Europe
and sub-Saharan Africa have been in existence since
at least the first few centuries CE. However, European
contacts only intensified from the early part of the
fifteenth century. Under the sponsorship of Prince
Henry the Navigator (13941460), various Portuguese-led voyages of exploration to the West African
coast took place during the 1430s to 1480s, and in
148788, Bartolomeau Dias vessel arrived at the
Cape of Good Hope, staying there briefly before
returning to Lisbon. He was followed a decade later
by Vasco de Gama, whose fleet of three ships rounded
the Cape in 1497, and moved north along the East
African seaboard over the coming months, stopping
at Mombasa and Malindi, before setting sail across
the Indian Ocean. By c. 1530 there were Portuguese,
British, French, and Dutch outposts on the Gold
Coast, and by 1652 a Dutch colony at the Cape, by
which time Danish and Swedish traders were also
active along the West African seaboard.
Initially, access to Guinea gold was the main
objective behind Portuguese activity along the West
African coast and this lead rapidly to the establishment of a fortified settlement on the coast of what is
now Ghana in 1482, close to a preexisting Akan
settlement. Known initially as Castle Sao Jorge da
Mina, the fortress and trading post that grew up
around it eventually came to be called Elmina (i.e.,
the mine, after its proximity to the gold mines inland). It was the first and largest European trading
post to be built in the region. It was captured by the
Dutch in 1637, and later ceded to the British in 1872,
only to be destroyed the following year by a British
military force following a dispute with the local inhabitants over its control. The settlement was then
abandoned. There is extensive documentation, in a
variety of forms, including maps and illustrations
as well as written accounts and archival sources,
concerning Elmina. These indicate that over time the
population of Elmina became increasingly heterogeneous, as Dyula and Mande traders from further
north, along with members of different ethnic groups
in Elminas hinterland, were drawn to the settlement
adding to the indigenous Akan population. At times
there was also a sizable slave population, drawn
from throughout the region, as well as a range of
Europeans of different nationalities and a growing
mulatto community. As well as attempting to define
the spatial extent and the settlement and architectural
history of Elmina, archaeological research at the
site has focused on tracing the evidence for cultural change and continuity. Somewhat surprisingly,
given the economic importance of Elmina, its role as a

trading entrepot and the increasingly diverse origins

of its population, local cultural traditions appear to
have been more resilient than might have been
expected. Ancestral rituals, the use of space in houses,
domestic building technologies, and local foodways,
all exhibit considerable continuity over almost
400 years of occupation. This is not to deny change
at the time of its destruction, Elmina was a far more
urban, cosmopolitan place linked to the wider world
through trade and international politics, and home to
new social classes of Africans, than had been the case
when the Portuguese arrived. The detailed analyses of
artifact and building traditions, burial practices and
related evidence, nevertheless, do caution against
the simple assumption that significant material culture change, and especially the increased presence of
goods of foreign manufacture, necessarily equates with
culture change.

The Impacts of Slavery

While there is evidence, such as documented at
Elmina, that many African societies and cultures
were quite resilient in the face of increasing contact
with Europeans, the incorporation of these societies
into the Atlantic world system that this brought about
did have profound changes. In West Africa, one of the
main effects was a change in the orientation of trade
routes from the older northsouth, trans-Saharan axis
to an eastwest one with a coastal focus. The transSaharan routes had operated for centuries, and were
under direct or indirect control of the Islamic
empires of North Africa, and, the steady redirection
of trade away from these areas had economic consequences there as well. European demands for raw
materials and local produce also encouraged intensification of trading and a consequent commodification
of local West African economies. These developments,
coupled with an increased importation of firearms
stimulated changes in the nature of local political
systems. These included the establishment of more
centralized kingdoms, such as those of Dahomey
and Ashante. Gold was rapidly replaced as the main
commodity by slaves it is estimated that at least
11 million Africans were exported from the continent
during the Atlantic slave trade until its abolition,
and some scholars put the figures even higher (see
Enslavement, Archaeology of).
In contrast to the amount of historical research on
the Atlantic slave trade, the historical archaeology
of slavery across the continent has only recently
begun to be addressed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given
the low status of slaves and circumstances behind
their presence at a site, archaeological investigations
at most of the European trading posts on the West

AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 29

African coast have typically produced only ephemeral

material traces of the trade. At Elmina, the most systematically investigated of all such trading posts, and
despite considerable documentary evidence concerning
Elminas position within the system and over 100 000
artifacts recovered from the excavations, the material
testimony of slavery amounts to little more than a
few items. The excavation of a slave lodge at the early
eighteenth century site of Vergelegen, built as the residence for the governor of Cape Town, South Africa,
similarly failed to produce much in the way of material
evidence that could be linked to the lives of those who
had occupied the lodge, other than the burial of a
middle-aged slave woman. Although ongoing research
at slave collection points such as Goree Island, Senegal,
is beginning to recover a wider range of material items,
it is possible that the main material culture legacy of
Africas slaves may reside more in the stylistic traditions
that developed in the New World, than in actual artifacts recovered from the different places of collection
and embarkation on the African coast.
Archaeological studies of sixteenth to eighteenth
century CE sites in the interior, on the other hand,
frequently offer more concrete evidence for the
impacts of slavery on local communities. In parts of
Togo, for instance, the increased availability of iron
products of European manufacture helped precipitate
a decline in what had previously been a flourishing
and specialized iron-smelting industry practiced on a
large scale. Detailed investigations of the shifting
trends in material culture production and consumption in the vicinity of Begho and Banda, west-central
Ghana, provide some of the clearest indications of the
long-term consequences of the growth of trade and
West Africas incorporation into the Atlantic world
system, and its impact on local material culture traditions. Comparisons between sites and stratigraphic
levels that date to the periods before the arrival of
Europeans, the initial century of contact (albeit indirect), and subsequent centuries have shown that several significant changes took place. At sites such as
Namasa, Begho, Nyarko, and Kuulo Kataa, founded
(and in some cases also abandoned) prior to the
Portuguese arrival at Elmina, differentiated craft
production in iron, pottery, and textiles appears to
have developed but was not uniformly distributed
between different villages. This uneven distribution
was offset by regular exchange of local products
between villages, and settlements were linked into
the trans-Saharan trade networks. By CE 1590, the
cultivation of maize and tobacco, both New World
crops, had been incorporated into local farming practices, and stimulated the creation of a new class of
locally produced ceramic artifact in the form of
clay smoking pipes. At this stage, these exhibit

considerable stylistic diversity, and they may well

have served as emblems of certain social distinctions.
Localized specialization in textile manufacture was
beginning to break down, however, with more households engaging in the craft. Imported glass beads had
also become more widely available. By the end of the
eighteenth century, industrially produced beads and
textiles, with highly standardized forms were steadily
replacing their local equivalents, and by the end of the
nineteenth century the earlier, stylistically diverse
tobacco pipes had been replaced by highly uniform
imported clay pipes of European manufacture. New
aesthetics of taste also emerged, although in many
cases they involved a reworking of older practices.

Archaeology of Colonialism
Another strand of historical archaeology in Africa
encompasses the issues of colonialism. This has mostly been approached from the perspective of European
expansion, especially in South Africa. This is partly due
to the greater numbers of trained archaeologists there,
who tend to be better resourced than many of their
counterparts elsewhere on the continent (outside of
North Africa), and the longer established tradition
of contract archaeology which, especially in urban
areas, provided an important stimulus to the growth
of historical archaeology. It is also because compared
with other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa
has a much longer history of European colonialism,
commencing with the establishment of a staging-post
in Table Bay by the VOC (Dutch East India Company)
under Commander Jan van Riebeeck in 1652. Consequently, not only have more traces of colonialism
survived, but also there has been a much longer history of transformation of relations between colonial
powers and indigenous inhabitants. Since at least
the 1970s, the archaeological traces of Dutch, British,
and Afrikaaner colonialism have been the subject of
increasingly intensive study from a variety of perspectives. The body of material on the historical archaeology of South Africa and the broader region,
consequently, is significantly larger than for elsewhere.
Subthemes that have been addressed within the region
include the archaeology of impact, the creation of
distinctive colonial architectural styles, Christian missions, military encounters, industrialization, and class
distinctions. Whereas much early work focused on
documenting the archaeological remains of the colonizing powers, more recently, attention has been given
to documenting the archaeology of the colonized, and
the various ways in which African societies resisted or
tried to lessen the impacts of colonial rule.
Excavations at Oudepost I, a small VOC outpost
situated c. 120 km north of Cape Town on the edge of

30 AFRICA, HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Saldanha Bay in the Western Cape, for instance, were

explicitly designed to measure the degree of impact
on local societies on the frontier of the Dutch colony
and the variable nature of interaction between colonized and colonizer. The site was occupied from 1669
to 1723, and structural remains comprised a small,
irregularly shaped stone fort, a two-roomed rectangular building that probably served as the main dwelling for the forts garrison, and a small rectangular
structure of indeterminate function, all built of
stone. The excavated remains provide insights into
the conditions in such outposts, and the diets and
material possessions of the soldiers. The composition
of the artifact and faunal assemblages and their spatial patterning also raised issues concerning the nature of the interactions between the occupants of the
fort and local indigenous populations, and the identity of those indigenes. The high percentage of wild
fauna represented in the assemblage, despite the
availability of livestock from colonial centers further
south, for instance, led the excavators to challenge
the archival evidence and suggest that over time the
occupants of Oudepost would have had a significant
impact on the wild food base of the surrounding
indigenous Khoikhoi population. Although Khoikhoi
were principally pastoralists, the material culture
recovered from the site was more similar to that
found on pre-contact Late Stone Age hunter-gatherer
sites in the region. To the excavators, this further
suggested that the colonial presence ultimately undermined the subsistence strategies of local stock-keeping
communities, who had always relied on hunting to
supplement their diet especially during droughts and
other periods of climatic stress, forcing them to abandon herding and into bondage on white settlements
and farms.
Comparable studies have demonstrated that the
impacts of colonialism were sometimes more muted
and that new forms of practice often emerged within
African societies that helped to subvert colonial ideologies. There is also evidence to suggest that older
material practices often proved more resistant than is
implied by the available documentary sources. A good
example of the latter is provided by recent work on the
nineteenth century Tswana towns of Phalatswe and
Ntsweng in Botswana. Specifically, despite the existence of documentary and pictorial sources which
would seem to imply widespread changes in daily
practice as a consequence of Protestant evangelism,
it is evident from the material remains of houses, pots,
metal tools, and other items, that at least in these contexts members of the local Tswana polities retained a
degree of control over their material world, and were
able to accommodate the new religion and direct it
toward achieving their own political goals.

Conclusion
Historical archaeology as practiced on the African
continent is a diverse and varied subfield of the
broader discipline. Whereas some favor an emphasis
on the integration of oral histories and testimonies
with material remains, on the grounds that the former
are more authentically indigenous than written texts,
others consider that the focus of historical archaeology should be on the consequences of European
contact and subsequent colonialism. Between these
two poles, there are many other approaches that
place greater value on the interpretive possibilities
offered by the existence of multiple sources of information about the past for any period, rather than on
placing limits on the temporal or conceptual boundaries of the subfield. Others still have observed that
the concept of historical archaeology is not only redundant, since all archaeology should be concerned
with addressing historical questions, but also serves
to reinforce an artificial divide, and the prejudicial
baggage that comes with such a distinction, between
history and prehistory, which much archaeological
practice on the continent seeks to counteract. Rhetoric
aside, and whether one uses the appellation historical
archaeology or not to describe the kind of studies
outlined above, two things are abundantly clear. First,
recovery and analysis of the archaeological traces of
the last 500 years of human activity on the African
continent has the potential to provide novel insights
into the histories of the continents diverse populations, while simultaneously providing an important
testament to their successes and failures, their struggles for equity and recognition, and the ways in which
they gave meaning to their lives. Some of these
insights could perhaps have been gleaned from careful reading of other historical sources, but most could
only have been exposed by sustained archaeological research. Without a concept such as historical
archaeology, however defined, to inspire and guide
this research it is questionable whether archaeologists would have devoted, and continue to devote, as
much attention to these time periods as they clearly
deserve. Second, whether investigating the archaeology of the last 500 years or that of earlier time periods, the interpretation of archaeological remains is
always enriched when alternative sources are available to interrogate. The challenges archaeologists
face are first, how to develop methodologies and
theoretical frameworks that are appropriate to each
of these different classes of historical information, and
second, how to maintain a critical and questioning
perspective so as avoid taking too much of that
evidence for granted. Many of the studies outlined
above indicate how archaeologists have attempted

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 31

to do this, and whether these approaches have stood

the test of time or have now been superseded. Whether
one considers these types of study as exemplars of
historical archaeology, or not, they have clearly made
significant contributions to our understanding of the
substantive history of different parts of the continent.
See also: Africa, West: Villages, Cities, and States;
Enslavement, Archaeology of; Historical Archaeology: Methods; Writing Systems.

Further Reading
Boone J, Myers E, and Redman C (1990) Archaeological and
historical approaches to complex societies: The Islamic states
of medieval Morocco. American Anthropologist 92: 630646.

DeCorse CR (2001) An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and

Europeans on the Gold Coast, 14001900. Washington:
Smithsonian Press.
DeCorse CR (ed.) (2001) West Africa during the Atlantic Slave
Trade. Leicester: Leicester University Press.
Edwards DN (2004) The potential for historical archaeology in the
Sudan. Azania 39: 1333.
Hall M (1993) The archaeology of colonial settlement in southern
Africa. Annual Reviews in Anthropology 22: 177200.
Pikirayi I (1993) Acta Arkeologica Upsaliensis, Studies in African
Archaeology 6: An Archaeological Identity of the Mutapa State:
Towards an Historical Archaeology of Northern Zimbabwe.
Uppsala.
Reid DAM and Lane PJ (eds.) (2004) African Historical Archaeologies. London: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Schmidt PR (2006) Historical Archaeology in Africa. London:
Altamira Press.
Stahl AB (2001) Making History in Banda: Anthropological Visions
of Africas Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wessler K (ed.) (1998) Historical Archaeology in Nigeria. Trenton,
NJ: Africa World Press.

AFRICA, NORTH
Contents
Egypt, Pharaonic
Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic
Nubia
Sahara, Eastern
Sahara, West and Central

Egypt, Pharaonic
Thomas Hikade, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, BC, Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Book of the Dead Funerary texts on papyrus or sometimes
amulets that were usually placed inside the coffin. The collection
of some 200 spells was derived from the earlier Pyramid and
Coffin Texts. Called spell for coming forth by day by the ancient
Egyptians.
cartonnage Material made of linen or papyrus mixed with
plaster. Cartonnage was most commonly used for mummy
masks, coffins, and other funerary equipment. The earliest
catonnage mummy masks date to the First Intermediate Period.
Coffin Texts Collection of funerary texts written on coffins and
introduced during the First Intermediate Period. More than 1000
spells should guarantee survival in the afterlife.
Maat Egyptian goddess symbolizing order or connective justice.
She is shown as a seated woman with an ostrich feather on her head.

nome Greek term used for Egyptian provinces. Lower Egypt

consisted of twenty nomes and Upper Egypt of twenty-two.
nomarch Provincial governor of a nome with increasing power
and influence from the end of the Old Kingdom to the Middle
Kingdom.
Pyramid Texts Earliest Egyptian funerary texts that could be
found in some royal pyramid chambers and corridors from the
Fifth to the Eighth Dynasty. Some scholars have argued that the
spells were a description of rituals during the funeral of the king.
serdab Arabic word for cellar. It was a chamber inside an Old
Kingdom private mastaba-tomb that housed a statue or statues
of the deceased but could also be found in the royal mortuary
complex of King Djoser of the Third Dynasty.
vizier Highest official in the Egyptian administration after the
king. The office is first attested in the Second Dynasty.

Introduction
In 1798 when Napoleons troops landed in Egypt
they were accompanied by 167 scientists whose
task was to document not only the geography, flora,
and fauna of modern-day Egypt but also the remains
of Ancient Egypt. With the publication of the

32 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

Description de lEgypte almost 20 years later, the

foundation stone for Egyptology was laid. The expedition by the German Egyptologist Richard Lepsius in
184246 to Egypt and Nubia yielded further knowledge about Ancient Egypt. During the first half of the
nineteenth century, however, field work in Egypt was
still primarily the search for curiosities and treasures
and lacked scientific method. It was not until 1881
when W. M. F. Petrie set out to survey the Great
Pyramids at Giza and subsequently excavated dozens
of sites throughout Egypt with a clear concept and
methodology of excavating that Egyptian archaeology truly began. It is the connection of archaeological
material and the evidence from thousands of inscribed
objects from Ancient Egypt that makes modern Egyptology such an intriguing subject. Today there are
more than 300 foreign missions working in Egypt
and many countries even have their own national
research centers and institutions in Cairo.
Early excavation work often concentrated on cemeteries that were easily accessible as they were often
situated in the dry sand of the lower desert or cut
into the limestone cliffs along the Nile Valley. Thus,
Egyptian archaeology is best known from its burials.
Yet, in the last decades more and more settlement
archaeology has taken place and our knowledge of
the daily lives of Ancient Egyptians has been improved widely.

Old Kingdom (ThirdEighth Dynasty,

c. 26862160 BC)
The Old Kingdom, also called the Pyramid Age, is a
continuation of the Early Dynastic Period. It was a time
of long, uninterrupted economic prosperity and political stability. The central administration was at the
capital at Memphis under a vizier who was the highest
official. Upper Egypt, the land south of the capital, and
Lower Egypt, the Nile Delta to the north, were divided
into nomes that were governed by nomarchs who
maintained strong ties with the court. The state was
able to consolidate its borders in the south and north
and maintained long-distance trade with the Levant
and Nubia. A redistributive economic system with
palaces, temples, royal domains, and mortuary complexes served as centers for collecting, storing, and
distributing mainly agrarian produce. The long reign
of Pepi II (c. 22782184 BC) at the end of the Sixth
Dynasty has often been seen as a time of stagnation and
decline that ultimately brought down the regime of the
central government but other factors such as worsening
climatic conditions causing droughts and famine may
have contributed to the fragmentation of the centralized regime and the growth of regional power in the
hands of the nomarchs.

At the top of Egyptian society stood the divine

king. His funerary complex became the focus of royal
ideology and ignited large-scale building programs
never seen before. More than a dozen pyramids, as
stairways to heaven for the deceased king, were built
close to the capital in the area of Giza and Saqqara.
Royal Tombs

Royal tombs of the Early Dynastic Period were built

almost entirely of sundried mud-bricks, wood, and
reed with the use of stone limited to the interior of
tomb chambers and stelae which were large stone
slabs with the kings name on them. It was at Saqqara
in the Third Dynasty that Egypts first monumental
stone structure was erected for King Djoser (c. 2667
2648 BC). His funerary complex, including the Step
Pyramid and ceremonial buildings, transformed the
organic building materials into their limestone equivalent (Figures 1 and 2). The enclosure wall of the
complex measured 544  277 m and was 10.5 m
high. The Step Pyramid itself, located to the north of
a large courtyard measured 121  109 m and its six
steps stood 60 m tall. The pyramid was actually begun
as a mastaba, the Arabic word for bench, which the
tomb resembled. It was enlarged twice before it was
altered into a four-step pyramid and finally augmented to six steps. Underneath the pyramid lay a shaft
(7 m square and 28 m deep) culminating in the burial
chamber. Originally made of limestone with stars on
the ceiling it was later replaced by a granite chamber.
Nothing of the kings interment was found. Also
underground was a system of about 400 rooms
and corridors, totaling almost 6 km in length. The
whole gigantic royal complex at Saqqara symbolizes
the focal point of Egyptian society and culture in the
Old Kingdom: the divine king.
There were at least two more step pyramids of the
Third Dynasty before, at the beginning of the Fourth
Dynasty under King Snofru (c. 26132589 BC), the
final design of a true pyramid was realized. The design
of the pyramid complex is very standardized. Each has
an axis with an eastwest orientation, which underlines the structures solar aspect. From the valley temple at the eastern entrance (Figure 3), a causeway leads
further to the west and ends in the mortuary temple,
situated at the foot of the east side of the pyramid. This
temple has several chambers including an inner sanctuary furnished with a stela, which is set directly
against the pyramid. Despite this standardized pattern, however, no two pyramids were exactly alike.
The interior chambers and ascending and descending
passages were always different. Starting in the Fifth
Dynasty, the walls of these chambers and corridors
could be decorated with the so-called Pyramid Texts, a
collection of funerary texts of about 800 spells.

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 33

Figure 1 Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara (Third Dynasty).

Figure 2 Festival court of Djoser complex at Saqqara (Third Dynasty).

The main building material for the pyramid was

limestone although granite was also used for the
lower casing blocks. In the pyramid temples basalt
was also sometimes used for the floors. Separate
smaller pyramids were erected for the queens while
higher officials, often blood relatives, were buried
in the limestone mastaba tombs in the necropolis
nearby.
Private Tombs

To date, dozens of Old Kingdom cemeteries have

been found throughout the country. The major cemeteries for officials, however, were at Saqqara,

Helwan Dahshur, Giza, and at Abusir, where they

could remain close to the king in the afterlife also.
While the majority of the Egyptian population was
buried in simple pits in the desert sands, the wealthier
could afford rock-cut tombs or mastaba tombs. An
early mastaba tomb comprised a subterranean structure with a shaft, a burial chamber and store rooms
(Figure 4). The store rooms disappeared by the
Fourth Dynasty. The superstructure was made of
mud-brick or stone and its layout became more and
more elaborate with the addition of multiple rooms
which effectively turned it into a funerary chapel.
Scenes of daily life, mostly related to farming, herding, and craftwork, were depicted on the walls of

34 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

Pyramid

Satellite
pyramid

Pyramid temple

Causeway

Valley temple

Figure 3 Standard pyramid complex of the Old Kingdom.

Shaft
Serdab
with
statue

Chapel with
false door

Facade sealed
with casing
blocks

Burial chamber
with sarcophagus

Figure 4 Mastaba tomb of the Old Kingdom.

these rooms, along with representations of the tomb

owner, his relatives, and his household members.
During the funerary cult the family could bring their
offerings to the deceased which they presented on an
altar in front of the false door. In a hidden chamber,
called a serdab, a statue of the deceased was placed,
thus allowing him to accept these offerings symbolically. An offering formula on the wall next to the false
door secured the eternal sustenance of the deceased.
Sun Temples and Provincial Temples

A special temple, which was built in addition to the

pyramids, developed during the Fifth Dynasty. It was
a temple dedicated to the sun god Re. It had similar
architectural features to the pyramid complexes
including a valley temple functioning as a gate or

entrance and a causeway leading to an upper temple

which formed the main focal point of the compound:
an obelisk-like structure erected of stone blocks
rising up on a pedestal. In one case the pedestal was
20 m high and the obelisk 36 m tall. An open space in
front of the obelisk contained an altar where offerings
were presented. Located on one side of the large
courtyard were magazines and rooms that have been
interpreted as slaughterhouses. Parts of the upper
temple were decorated with royal jubilee scenes and
scenes from nature. The whole structure was surrounded by an enclosure wall. Outside the wall a
brick-built model of a solar boat for the god was
found. Six sun temples are known from texts but
only the ones of King Niuserre and Userkaf from the
Fifth Dynasty have been found at Abu Gurob, 10 km
southwest of Cairo.

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 35

While royal building activities were concentrated

around the capital at Memphis, temples in the rest
of the country largely comprised sanctuaries which
were built and maintained by local communities.
Provincial temples followed no specific design and
were often of modest size. The Old Kingdom temple
on the island of Elephantine opposite modern Aswan,
for example, consisted of mud-bricks enclosing a
niche between granite boulders and measured only
c. 7  7 m.

First Intermediate Period (Ninthearly

Eleventh Dynasty; c. 21602055 BC)
At the end of the Old Kingdom large-scale royal
building programs came to a halt. Yet, with the increasing prosperity of the provinces and a rise in
population, it became necessary for the provinces to
be administered locally rather than from the royal
residence at Memphis, and the nomarchs lived and
were even buried in their nomes. Ultimately, the central government collapsed and foreign trade seems to
have ceased. The Ninth/Tenth Dynasty established a
power basis at Herakleopolis some 100 km upstream
from the old capital at Memphis. However, these
dynasties never controlled the whole country and civil
war broke out. In Upper Egypt Ankhtifi, nomarch of
the third nome of Upper Egypt, tried to gain control
over neighboring territories by force. The fragmentation of the country and violence only ended when one
of these regional rulers, Mentuhotep II, defeated all
others and united Egypt again. Based on texts the First
Intermediate Period has often been seen as a very
unstable period with civil war and even cannibalism
caused by famine.
A different picture emerges from excavations of
cemeteries from the First Intermediate Period, however, which indicates a redistribution of wealth as
well as cultural innovations. All the archaeological
evidence points to an increased effort to prepare
tombs of the deceased for the afterlife rather than a
decline in tomb-building caused by economic hardship. In general, mastaba tombs and rock-cut tombs
had already become larger at the end of the Old
Kingdom and this process continued. Tombs contained several chambers for multiple burials. Grave
goods took the form of wooden offering bearers,
statues, and even whole miniature copies of workshops. The cartonnage mask, a colored mask made
from linen and gypsum to cover the head of the
mummy, was introduced. Religious texts, the socalled Coffin Texts, were inscribed on the coffins of
the elite and stressed the importance of social ties,
these mirroring the change in tomb architecture
allowing for multiple burials.

Middle Kingdom (later EleventhThirteenth

Dynasty; c. 20551650 BC)
The Middle Kingdom dates from the victory of
Mentuhotep II of Thebes over his rivals at Herakleopolis and the re-unification of Egypt. Initially residing
in Thebes, the Twelfth Dynasty (c. 19851773 BC)
moved to a new capital called Amemenhet Itj-tawj,
possibly in an area south of the old residence at
Memphis, close to the Fayum Oasis. Archaeologists
have yet to find and excavate this new capital. Passing
on from father to son, the Twelfth Dynasty stayed in
power for almost 200 years. The central administration followed in the footsteps of the Old Kingdom
with a vizier at the top, a treasury, a ministry for
supervising the harvesting and managing of the
crops, a ministry for cattle and fields, and a ministry
for labor, responsible for the building programs of the
state. The king was still the absolute divine ruler but
his legitimacy was based on representative theocracy and not on direct rule as in the Old Kingdom.
Foreign affairs were dominated by the conquest of
Lower Nubia and various raids into the Levant,
which brought back Asiatics as slaves. Asiatics also
moved voluntarily to the Nile Delta and settled there.
Domestically the Twelfth Dynasty is credited with
an irrigation program in the Fayum Oasis for new
cultivation. Regarding religion, a new concept of the
underworld, the kingdom of Osiris, saw the rise of
this god. In addition, the concept of Maat (translated
often as order or connective justice), a guideline of
how Egyptians should live and treat each other,
became popular. A wealth of literary texts was composed during the Middle Kingdom, and many of these
were later considered classics. The language of
these texts, Middle Egyptian, remained in use for
sacred texts until the end of the Pharaonic period.
All the achievements of the Middle Kingdom made
it the classical Egyptian age that was revered in
later periods. Yet the Middle Kingdom ended in fragmentation when the Thirteenth Dynasty had to give
way to pressure from the Hyksos, Asiatic rulers in the
eastern Nile Delta, and moved their residence to
Thebes in the south.
The Mortuary Complex of Mentuhotep II

Under Mentuhotep II a unique mortuary temple was

erected in the limestone escarpment of Deir el-Bahri
on the west bank at Thebes (Figures 5 and 6). The
complex once had a valley temple near the edge of
cultivation and from there a causeway more than
1 km long led to a huge court in the west surrounded
by a sandstone wall. Inside the courtyard, the discovery of the roots of sycamores and tamarisks in tree
pits indicates that an alley once existed here. It was

36 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

Figure 5 Mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II at Western Thebes (Eleventh Dynasty).

Bab el-Hosan
Upper hall
Middle
court
Central
core

Ramp

Alley of trees

Hypostyle
hall

Causeway

Amun
sanctuary

Lower hall

Figure 6 Mortuary temple of King Mentuhotep II (Eleventh Dynasty).

also in the courtyard that the initial royal tomb, today

known as Bab el-Hosan, was found. A ramp at the
end of the alley led to a platform topped by a core
building and an ambulatory. The core building might
have been crowned in different ways. A pyramid
(for which there is no archaeological evidence), a
mastaba-like structure, or a mound of soil resembling
the primeval mound from which the land of Egypt
once emerged, are all possible options and would all
be in accordance with Egyptian beliefs. A further
arrangement of courtyards and a hypostyle hall
continued to the west until finally, the sanctuary and
the royal tomb itself were cut into the rock escarpment. Foundation deposits in the four corners under
the platform and the core building, which consisted
of food offerings, ceramic, and wooden models of

people and objects like bread and vessels, as well as

mud-bricks with tablets with the royal name on them
give an intriguing glimpse into the rituals accompanying the construction of the temple.
Middle Kingdom Pyramids

The kings of the Twelfth Dynasty deliberately repeated the Old Kingdom tradition of pyramid building
along the desert edge west of the Nile Valley. The new
construction method, however, consisted of a mudbrick core with a grid of stone walls. The finish was
still done with limestone casing blocks. Although the
new construction method was far more economical, it
is no indication that the Egyptian kings could not
afford solid stone pyramids. Today the limestone casing blocks have been stripped away and the Middle

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 37

Figure 7 Pyramid of King Amenemhat III at Hawara (Twelfth Dynasty).

Kingdom pyramids are in a very bad condition with

the mud-brick core exposed to the elements (Figure 7).
The Settlement of Lahun

About 1200 m east of the pyramid of Senusret II

(c. 18771870 BC), W. M. F. Petrie discovered the
remains of a pyramid town called Lahun. A pyramid
town is essentially the settlement that housed the
workmen building the pyramid complex along with
the officials overseeing the work. Subsequently, it
became the home for those responsible for the royal
funerary cult. Lahun was a planned town with a rigid
grid system. It included an enclosure wall and a wall
that divided the settlement in half. One side contained
about a dozen large houses with as many as 70 rooms
and covering up to 3000 m2. The other side had more
than 200 houses, but their maximum size was less
than 200 m2. This size disparity clearly reflects the
hierarchy in the town, with a few elite individuals
living in luxury while the majority lived in modest
dwellings. Based on the size of granaries at Lahun, a
population of up to 9000 persons has been proposed,
but according to a papyri archive found at the site
which sometimes lists six persons per household, the
population might have been much smaller. Lahun is
also important for the discovery of Minoan sherds
and Egyptian imitations of Minoan pottery.
Nubian Fortresses

In the wake of its aggressive foreign policy in the

south, a string of fortifications were built during the
Twelfth Dynasty in order to secure trade routes and to
protect the border. According to textual evidence,

Egypt built at least 17 military installations starting

c. 100 km south of Egypts border at Elephantine.
Fifteen of these mud-brick built fortresses were excavated during several rescue campaigns. Following the
construction of the High Dam at Aswan, the fortresses now lie beneath the waters of Lake Nasser.
The forts are all very close to each other, often only
310 km away or just lying across the narrow stretch
of the Nile. Their proximity to one another made
signaling by smoke or beacon quite simple. There
were two types of fortresses: first the plain type
which had an almost square layout that bordered
the Nile on one side. Some of the outer walls, which
measured up to 460  215 m and were more than 5 m
thick, contained towers with loop holes for archers
and were possibly topped by crenellations. Inside
these mud-brick walls, a system of ditches and ramparts formed the first line of defense around the citadel, which had storage facilities and housing for the
soldiers and officials. The second type of fortress was
built on granite formations which could not be easily
leveled. Thus, they had not a straightforward rectangular layout but possessed a more irregular shape.

Second Intermediate Period

(FifteenthSeventeenth Dynasty;
c. 16501550 BC)
During the Thirteenth Dynasty dynastic stability
ended and dozens of kings reigned in quick succession. They came from different lineages and some
of them were possibly even of Asiatic origin. Royal
mortuary cults for the Twelfth Dynasty kings ceased.

38 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

Yet, contacts with the Levant were maintained and

more and more Asiatics came to Egypt. When the
central government finally fragmented, several rulers
emerged with authority over small kingdoms in the
Nile Delta. One group of these rulers, the Hyksos
(Rulers of Foreign Lands), of the later Fifteenth Dynasty, gained power, conquered Memphis, and established
their residence at Avaris (modern Tell el-Daba) in the
eastern Nile Delta. The rulers of the Seventeenth
Dynasty in Thebes, the successors of the Thirteenth
Dynasty, started what they saw as a war of liberation
against the Hyksos who had sealed an alliance with
the Kushite kings of Nubia and had sandwiched
Upper Egypt between the two powers. In a series of
battles, the Theban rulers were finally able to defeat
the Hyksos and the first king of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, Ahmose (c. 15501525 BC), drove them out
of Egypt.
The Hyksos Capital at Avaris

Although only limited areas of the Hyksos capital at

Avaris have been excavated, they have revealed an
occupation that possibly stretches from to the First
Intermediate Period to the early Eighteenth Dynasty.
The earliest archaeological settlement remains stem,
however, from a workmens village of the early
Twelfth Dynasty. The remains of an enclosure wall
that were found to the north led to the assumption
that the whole settlement was once surrounded by a
mud-brick wall. The settlement was home for more
than one thousand people. A hiatus separates this
settlement from the end of the Twelfth Dynasty
when the site was resettled by Canaanites. The houses
had a central wide room typical of a style prevalent in
Syria from the fourth millennium BC. Furthermore,
there were cemeteries attached directly to the houses,
a custom derived from Middle Bronze Age SyroPalestine. Surprisingly, foreign pottery from the
Levant makes up only 20% of the assemblage, although burials of males showed that half of them
had weapons of Levantine origin and possibly indicate that they were in the service of the Egyptian
crown. The layers dating to the Thirteenth Dynasty
revealed an Egyptian palace in layout with attached
gardens and a cemetery with donkey, goat, and sheep
burials. The donkey burials especially are a foreign
element in Egypt but are well known during the Middle Bronze Age in the Levant. This evidence clearly
shows that the administration of the palace was in the
hands of Asiatics. By the middle of the eighteenth
century BC the site was partially abandoned, most
likely due to an epidemic, before being resettled. Foreign ceramics now made up to 40% of the assemblage
and the site increased dramatically, covering an area
of 250 ha, three times the size of the contemporary city

of Hazor in modern Israel. International trade flourished in the Hyksos period with imports from the
Aegean and the Levant. In the Hyksos period, Avaris
also had a huge citadel with vineyards and gardens.

New Kingdom (EighteenthTwentieth

Dynasty; c. 15501069 BC)
After the expulsion of the Hyksos the pharaohs of the
Eighteenth Dynasty set out to form one of the most
powerful states in the Eastern Mediterranean and the
Near East. Internal reforms and a restructuring of the
administration and military enabled Egypt to march
into and occupy foreign territories where she installed
her own administration. Dozens of military campaigns in the Levant are recorded by pharaohs such
as Amenophis II and especially Thutmosis III, who
ruthlessly exercised his imperialistic policy. The eastern desert of Upper Egypt and increasingly Lower
Nubia became the classic gold sources of Egypt.
Large-scale expeditions were sent out to mine turquoise and copper in the Sinai Peninsula. The southern border of Egypt was set as far south as Gebel
Barkal, a trading and religious center near the fourth
cataract. Trade relations were maintained throughout
the Mediterranean and pottery from Cyprus, Crete,
Mycenae, and the Levant can be found at many sites
in Egypt. By the time of the reign of Amenophis III
(c. 13901352 BC), a prosperous, wealthy, and influential Egypt had reached its first New Kingdom
zenith. This period, however, also saw domestic turbulence and turmoil arising from the religious
reforms of Akhenaten (c. 13521336 BC), the son of
Amenophis III, who abandoned the old pantheon and
installed the god Aten as the sole god for Egypt. Early
in his reign Akhenaten severed all links with the religious capital of Thebes and its principal god Amun by
relocating the capital to Akhetaten (Horizon of Aten),
modern Tell el-Amarna. Worshipping one god only
was a profound disturbance for ordinary Egyptians
who had always been used to having direct contact
with many gods. Consequently, when Akhenaten
died, so also died his religion of the Aten. Under
Tutankhamun (c. 13361327 BC), the first attempts
at a religious restoration of the old cults were
launched while during the subsequent Nineteenth
Dynasty, there ensued an active persecution of the
Aten cult. In the administration many civil officials
were replaced by military personnel and the army
became the most influential domestic power. Internationally, Egypt was faced with the expansionist
Hittite empire and they finally clashed at the Battle
of Qadesh where the army of Ramses II met theHittite troops of Muwatalli. Ramses II did not achieve
his goal of driving the Hittites out of Qadesh and

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 39

the whole campaign ended in a stalemate that resulted

in a peace treaty in the twenty-first regnal year of
Ramses II. After this Egypt had a relatively calm and
prosperous period until the so-called Sea Peoples
caused serious turmoil in the eastern Mediterranean
at the end of the thirteenth century BC. First Pharaoh
Merenptah (c. 12131203 BC) and later Ramses III
(c. 11841153 BC) had to fight battles against the
Sea Peoples on land and at sea in order to secure
Egypts sovereignty. These international disruptions
were too great, however, and combined with internal
economic problems Egypt began losing her international power. At the end of the New Kingdom Egypt
had to withdraw from the Levant altogether.
Tell el-Amarna

The city of Amarna was built on virgin soil and

covered an area of about 13  5km (Figure 8). The
city was made up of palaces, houses, and temples
which had to be built quickly to accommodate the
many thousands who were to move there from
Thebes. A major royal road running northsouth
was built and it was flanked by palaces and temples.
Some temples like the so-called House of the Sun Disk
were up to 750 m long and 230 m wide. They housed
hundreds of altars for the offerings to Aten. Palaces
were lavishly decorated and spread throughout the
city. Private houses were located in the suburbs to the
north and south of the Central City. Some larger
houses or villas had more than forty rooms covering
more than 1000 m2. The standard design was tripartite with two public sections consisting of a vestibule,
long hall and central hall. The third section was the
private area with bedrooms and bathrooms. Around
these villas were clusters of smaller houses. Remarkably, the houses at Amarna differ in size rather than
design, and most features were constantly repeated.
By no means should Amarna be seen as an organic
settlement however, since its standardization was
mostly due to the time pressure of building the city.
Deir el-Medineh

The workmens village of Deir el-Medineh was

founded under King Thutmosis I (c. 15041492 BC)
in order to house the men who built the royal tombs
in the Valley of the Kings (Figure 9). It was a state-run
community where almost all supplies for daily life
were provided by the crown. At its peak the village
consisted of some 70 houses alongside the main road
and was surrounded by a 67 m high enclosure wall.
Forty to fifty houses were built outside the compound. An average house had four rooms with an
entrance room 4050 cm below street level. The original houses were complete mud-brick structures without foundations. Later houses had a basement of

stones and sometimes stone walls extending up to

2.5 m in height. The major feature in the entrance
area was the mud-brick bench-like structure, possibly a small shrine. The next room had one or two
columns and it contained a kind of divan. At the
rear were the bedroom, the kitchen, and storage facilities. A staircase also gave access to the roof providing further living space. The inhabitants of Deir
el-Medineh were buried in tombs on the hill slope
nearby. The tombs had a superstructure with a chapel
which was sometimes crowned by a small pyramid
and a substructure with a shaft and a burial chamber
that was often colorfully decorated. Next to the village around 5000 limestone flakes and broken pottery sherds were found with many inscriptions from
the villagers. They consist, among others, of contracts,
files of lawsuits, prayers, and school texts. In conjunction with the archaeological evidence and other papyri
concerning Deir el-Medineh, the settlement has become the best-known village of the Late Bronze
Age. The village was abandoned under Ramses XI
(c. 10991069 BC) when the Valley of the Kings was
also abandoned as the royal burial ground.
Luxor and Karnak Temple

During the early New Kingdom building activity was

conducted on all major temples such as Karnak and
Luxor Temple. Both temples were located in Upper
Egypt at Thebes. The temple at Karnak goes back
to the time of Sesostris I and was the major cult center for the Theban triad of the gods Amun, Mut,
and Khonsu. From the Middle Kingdom until the
Thirtieth Dynasty Karnak remained a site under
permanent construction as each pharaoh added and
extended to this temple called The most select of
Places (Figure 10). The continuous addition of pylons
(tower-like entrance gates), courtyards, columned
halls, obelisks, and chapels means that the temple
has to be read archaeologically from the inside out
with the oldest part not at the front of the first pylon
but almost in the middle of the compound. One of
the most impressive buildings at Karnak is the Great
Hypostyle Hall with 134 papyrus columns rising up
to 21 m (Figure 11). The hall was once roofed and
illuminated through windows placed high up the wall
right under the ceiling. The foundation of the great
hypostyle hall goes back to Amenophis III (c. 1390
1352 BC), but the decoration was initiated under
Sety I (c. 12941279 BC) and finished under Setys
son Ramses II (c. 12791213 BC). The Great Hall has
both raised relief dating to the time of Sety I and
sunken reliefs which were generally used on the outside walls to increase the effect of shadow and sunlight. The latter, more economical technique was used
during the immense building program of Ramses II.

40 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

STELA V
TELL EL-AMARNA
NORTH CITY

NORTH TOMBS

NORTH PALACE

STELA U

NORTH SUBURB

om

T
al

to

GREAT ATEN TEMPLE

Ro

CENTRAL CITY

GREAT PALACE
SMALL ATEN TEMPLE

WORKMENSS VILLAGE
MAIN CITY

Nile
River

SOUTH TOMBS

Royal Road
KOM EL-NANA

MARU-ATEN

STELA N
STELA M

0
0

2 kms
1 min

Figure 8 Capital of Pharaoh Akhenaten at Tell el-Amarna (Eighteenth Dynasty).

The inner walls were reserved for the depiction of

rituals and processions while the outer facades were
decorated with the campaigns of Sety I and Ramses II
to Palestine and Syria.

The temples of Karnak and Luxor were linked

through a system of roads, each flanked with
sphinxes. As with Karnak, Luxor temple was dedicated to Amun or Amun-Ra and dates back to the reign

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 41

Niche

Workroom
/bedroom

Shrine
Street

Kitchen
Reception room

Second room
Cellar
Cellar

M
01

10

15

20

Figure 9 Workmens village at Deir el-Medineh (New Kingdom).

Figure 10 View over Karnak Temple from east.

42 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

of Hatshepsut (c. 14731458 BC) (Figure 12). The

core at the southern end was built under Amenophis
III. Under Akhenaten work was interrupted at Luxor
but resumed under Tutankhamun (c. 13361327 BC).

The giant pylon was erected by Ramses II and decorated with scenes and texts of the Battle of Qadesh
against the Hittites. In the first millennium further
additions were made by Shabaka (c. 716702 BC)
who built a kiosk outside the temple, and by Nectanebo I (380362 BC) who embellished the sphinx
alley with hundreds of statues. Under Alexander the
Great the worship of the emperor was established
here and this tradition was continued until the Roman
period, when the temple finally became a military
camp from the fourth to sixth century AD. While
the cult at Karnak focused on the worship of the
gods, Luxor temple focused more on the worship
of the king and his relationship with the gods. Later
on, several churches were built in Luxor temple and
in the thirteenth century AD, the mosque of Abu
el-Hagag, which is still in use today, was built in the
first courtyard.
Western Thebes

Figure 11 Great Hall at Karnak (Nineteenth Dynasty).

On the west bank at Thebes in the Valley of the Kings,

the New Kingdom pharaohs established their final
resting place. As a point of departure from earlier
periods, however, the mortuary cult was separated
from the kings actual burial place. Thus, the mortuary temple of each king, with the classic design of a
gods temple with pylons, courtyards, columned halls
and inner sanctuaries, was erected at the edge of the
river plain. Although the scenes on the walls of these
temples show overwhelmingly rituals and cultic activities, they also commemorated historical events such

Figure 12 Luxor Temple from the south with pylon of Ramses II (left), colonnade of Amenophis III/Tutankhamun (right) and the mosque
of Abu al-Hagag (center).

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic 43

as the Battle of Qadesh of Ramses II and the battle

against the Sea Peoples by Ramses III.
The tombs consist of a series of descending
corridors and chambers cut into the limestone cliff.
While earlier tombs have a bent axis, later tombs
possess a straight axis echoing the topography of the
underworld. The wall decorations show scenes and
texts from afterlife books such as the Book of the
Dead or the Book of Caverns. Most of the royal
mummies were relocated to safer places in the Theban necropolis by the end of the New Kingdom and
today many are in the Cairo Museum on display. The
most famous tomb in the Valley of the King is that of
Tutankhamun. In 1922 it was found largely intact
and unplundered and it gives a good insight into the
riches that once went into the tombs of the New
Kingdom pharaohs, especially in view of the fact
that this king was a relatively insignificant ruler.
In western Thebes thousands of higher and lower
officials and priests possessed rock-cut tombs. The
standard layout during the Eighteenth Dynasty comprised an open courtyard and possibly a shaft, and it
was surrounded by a wall (Figure 13). Inside was a
broad hall and a corridor giving the whole a T-shaped
form. From here sometimes a sloping passage led
to the burial chamber underground. During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties the courtyard often
had a pylon and columns while the tomb structure
was topped by a pyramid, crowned by a capstone
(pyramidion), and attached chapel (Figure 14).
A Theban specialty were the so-called funerary cones.
They were made of clay and placed on the facade above
the tomb entrance. They were stamped on the top with
the name of the tomb owner and his titles.
In contrast to Thebes, in the north at Saqqara,
tombs of high officials were designed like temples
with pylons, courtyards, and columned halls. Scenes
of daily life and mortuary rituals characterized the wall
decoration at the beginning of the New Kingdom, but
over time only religious and mortuary themes tended
to prevail.

Third Intermediate Period

(c. 1069664 BC)
The Third Intermediate Period comprises the TwentyFirst to Twenty-Fifth Dynasties. The Libyans played a
dominating role in the time of the Twenty-First to
Twenty-Fourth Dynasties. Their homeland was the
Cyrenaica where they originally had an economy
based on pastoral nomadism. Major areas of Libyan
settlements in Egypt were located between Memphis
and Herakleopolis, and in the oases of the Western
Desert, but most were situated in the western Delta.
While there is no distinct material culture linked to

Frieze of
funerary cones

Statue niche

Courtyard

Entrance

Shaft

Courtyard
wall

Rock

Figure 13 Early New Kingdom Theban tomb.

Pyramidion

Pyramid chapel

Pyramid

Portico
Rock
Pylon

Figure 14 Late New Kingdom Theban tomb.

the Libyans in Egypt, their very un-Egyptian names,

such as Takelot, Sheshonq, and Osorkon, make it
clear that they maintained their ethnic identity. The
first king of the Twenty-First Dynasty was Smendes
who ruled in the new northern capital at Tanis, while
the south was controlled by the High Priest of Amun.
Seeing the weakening power and influence of the
High Priest in Thebes Sheshonq managed to install his
son there and to some degree Egypt was united again
under his rule. Subsequently, however, rival dynasties
fought for the crown, and in fact the Twenty-Second
to Twenty-Fourth Dynasties ruled simultaneously in
different parts of the country. Major sites were Tanis,
Bubastis, and Sais. Since these Delta sites have been
little explored, however, our knowledge is rather
poor. The Third Intermediate Period ended with the

44 AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pharaonic

Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, a house of rulers that came from

Kush in the South who conquered Egypt and ruled
Egypt without rivals from c. 715656 BC.
Tanis

The city is strategically well located in the eastern

Nile Delta, just north of the former capital of the
Ramesside kings. Many stone blocks were taken
from that earlier site to erect the new residence.
Even statues and reliefs from the Old and Middle
Kingdoms were re-used at Tanis. The new rulers of
the Twenty-First Dynasty abandoned the Valley of the
Kings and had their tombs built within the sacred
precinct of a temple. In general, the idea of lifelong
planning for a tomb disappeared and many private
and sometimes royal burials were placed in existing
New Kingdom tombs or mortuary temples. Nevertheless, the richer burials contained beautifully
decorated coffins of the highest quality.
When French Egyptologist Pierre Montet started to
excavate at Tanis in the 1920s, he was convinced that
he had discovered the capital of the Ramesside kings
and wanted to find documents and monuments that
would confirm the Biblical account of the Exodus.
Surprisingly, he came across the royal tombs of the
Twenty-First and Twenty-Second Dynasties, which
were situated in the large mud-brick enclosure
(430  370 m) of the Amun temple. Of the six subterranean tombs, all but the one of the third ruler of the
Twenty-First Dynasty, Psusennes I, were robbed. The
tombs were built of stone and mud-brick and were of
modest size. The tomb of Psusennes contained not only
the body of the king but the mummy of his successor,
Amenemope, as well as the body of a general. With a
golden mask on his face the king was placed in a silver
coffin. This in turn was put inside an anthropoid
sarcophagus of black granite which itself was placed
in a rectangular chest of pink granite. Many precious
objects of silver, gold, and lapis lazuli were discovered
at Tanis in the spring of 1939. The outbreak of World
War II, however, meant that these treasures are less
well known than those of Tutankhamun.

Late Period (Twenty-Sixth Thirtieth

Dynasty; 664332 BC)
The rulers of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, with the help
of Assyria, drove the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty out of
Egypt and reunited the country. Egypt maintained
good connections with Assyria and also established
trade contacts with the Levant. Egypt also opened up
international trade with the Mediterranean world
and with such positive economic prospects, many
foreigners made their way to Egypt. King Amosis

(570526 BC) established flourishing contacts with

Greek cities such as Delphi, Corinth, and Samos. In
560 BC Egypt even occupied Cyprus, and Amosis
made alliances with Babylon and Croesus of Lydia
against the Persian Empire. Many Greek mercenaries
were employed by the Egyptian pharaoh and were
stationed throughout the country. The kings of the
Twenty-Sixth Dynasty made their capital at Sais in
the western Nile Delta. Due to the utilization of
ancient mud-bricks as fertilizer on fields today and
the proximity of the modern village of Sa el-Hagar,
few remains of this capital have survived. Nonetheless, recent archaeological work has traced the beginning of the settlement as far back as the fourth
millennium BC.
In 525 BC Egypt became a satrapy of the Persian
Empire. The Persian king Cambyses was crowned as
Pharaoh in Memphis and became first king of the
Twenty-Seventh Dynasty. Although Persian troops
were garrisoned throughout Egypt, the administration remained in the hands of the Egyptians and in general, Egyptian culture and religion remained intact.
King Darius even erected a temple in the el-Kharga
Oasis in honor of Egyptian deities. Nevertheless, antiPersian sentiments were growing in Egypt and by
405 BC the Persians were driven out of Egypt. Significant building programs stretching from the Delta to
the southern border at Elephantine were not resumed
until the reign of the founder of the Thirtieth Dynasty,
Nectanebo I (380362 BC), determined to bring back
Egypts old glory. Between 360 and 342 BC several
attempts by the Persians to re-conquer Egypt failed.
In 343 BC, however, the Persians were ultimately successful and they ended the rule of Egyptian pharaohs
once and for all. In 332 BC Egypt fell prey to Alexander the Great and between 30 BC and 395 AD Egypt
was part of the Roman Empire.
See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic; Nubia;

Sahara, Eastern; Sahara, West and Central.

Further Reading
Arnold D (2003) The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egyptian
Architecture. Princeton: University Press.
Baines J and Malek J (2000) Atlas of Ancient Egypt. Oxford:
Phaidon Press.
Bard KA (1999) Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient
Egypt. London/New York: Routledge.
Bietak M (1996) Avaris, Capital of the Hyksos. London: British
Museum Press.
Kemp BJ (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of Ancient Civilization.
London/New York: Routledge.
Lehner M (1997) The Complete Pyramids. London: Thames and
Hudson.
Reeves N (1996) The Complete Valley of the Kings. London:
Thames and Hudson.

AFRICA, NORTH/Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic 45

Schulz R and Seidel M (eds.) (1998) Egypt: The World of the
Pharaohs. Cologne: Konemann.
Shaw I (ed.) (2000) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Shaw I (2003) Exploring Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic
Fekri Hassan, University College London,
London, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Maadi-Buto Twelve sites, named after the type site of Maadi in
the western Delta.
Naqada A district and town about 30 km north of Luxor on the
west bank of the Nile in southern Egypt (Upper Egypt), including
villages such as Toukh, Khatara, Danfiq and Zawayda.
Predynastic Period Traditionally the period between the Early
Neolithic and the beginning of the Pharaonic monarchy
beginning with King Narmer.

Communities settled along the banks of the Nile from

the border with Nubia to the shores of the Mediterranean were brought together 5000 to 4700 years ago
to form a single state under the rule of powerful kings,
who were later referred to as Pharaohs. The Egyptian state depended on the agricultural productivity
of the Nile Valley and the Delta. Agriculture was
introduced in Egypt 2000 years earlier (see Plant
Domestication).
The earliest food-producing (Neolithic) communities in Egypt were established on the western margin of the Delta at Mermida Beni Salama and around
the Faiyum Depression (Figure 1). These sites indicate
that wheat and barley were cultivated and that domestic sheep, goat, and cattle were herded. Except for
a breed of cattle which was kept in the Eastern
Sahara around Nabta Playa and Bir Kisseiba, domesticated species of animals and plants were introduced
from Southwest Asia.
Initially, a small community sheltering in flimsy
huts, the inhabitants of Merimda Beni Salama developed into a well-organized community living in a
large village with mud huts. Graves were found with
the settlements, but grave goods were rare. The repertoire of the last occupation at Merimda which
lasted until about 4100 BC included polished dark
red/black pottery, bifacial tools, figurines, and other
bone, ivory, and shell items. At El-Omari, near
Helwan, burials included an individual with a scepter

and valuable grave goods, perhaps indicative of the

rise of local paramount chiefs.
In Upper Egypt, the earliest food-producing communities are in the Badari region where small
encampments, probably of herders, date back to
44004200 BC. These sites signal the beginning of
the period commonly referred to as the Predynastic.
The Badarian Early Predynastic sites contain a variety
of brown, red, and occasionally black pottery with a
shiny, burnished surface with ripples. This Rippled
pottery is produced from very fine untempered Nile
silt. The Badarian pottery is a variant of a burnished
pottery present in Late Neolithic sites of the Egyptian
Sahara. Badarian personal items included hairpins,
combs, bracelets, and beads made out of ivory and
bone. Palettes were also found. A variety of clay and
ivory figurines are also represented in the Badarian.
A component of the Badarian is known as the Tasian
which perhaps represents greater affinities with highly mobile groups that moved between Nubia and the
Assyut region via desert routes.
South of Badari, in the Nagada region (between
Danfiq and Ballas), are numerous Middle and Late
Predynastic village settlements and remnants of two
towns (North Town and South Town) as well as
extensive cemeteries dating from 3800 to 3500 BC.
Two archaeological units on the basis of pottery types
are identified during that period (Figure 2). The earliest ceramic assemblage zone called Naqada I (or
Amratian) is generally characterized by a high
frequency of Black-Topped Polished Red and White
Cross-Lined pottery. This zone marks the Middle
Predynastic dating from 3950 to 3650 BC. It was succeeded by the Late Predynastic Naqada II (also known
as the Gerzean), dating from 3650 to 3300 BC, which
is characterized by Rough pottery, and marked by
the presence of Decorated and Wavy-Handled pots
(Figure 3). Naqada I and Nagada II sites extend from
Badari to Hierakonpolis.
The majority of Predynastic sites in the Nagada
region belong to Naqada I. The sites range in size
from a few thousand square meters to 3 ha. They
represent overlapping occupations of scores of huts
in small villages and hamlets in a string along the edge
of the former floodplain. Small postholes and the
wooden stub of a post suggest flimsy wickerwork
around a frame of wooden posts. The abundance of
rubble and mud clumps indicates that many dwellings
were constructed from local Nile mud and desert
surface rubble. The houses contained hearths and
storage pits. In some cases graves were dug into the
floor of houses. Trash areas were interspersed with
domestic dwellings. The houses included animal enclosures as indicated by thick layers of dung. The faunal
remains indicate exploitation of cattle, sheep/goats,

46 AMERICAS, NORTH/Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic

Figure 1 Location map of principal Predynastic sites in Egypt.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic 47

Sequence date
80
Nagada IIICD
Early dynastic
Emergence of unified state
ca. 3200 BC
Late

72
71

Nagada III A1-A2

Protodynastic
Formative stage of unification
Late
ca. 3300 BC

63
62

Nagada IIcd (Gerzean)

Development of regional polities and states
51
Rough

50

43

ca. 3500 BC
Decorated

42

Nagada IIab
Emergence of petty states
ca. 3650 BC

35

Nagada I (Amratian)
Wavy handled Formation of provincial polities

34

31
White cross-lined Black polished

30
Black top pottery Polished red

ca. 3895 BC

Figure 2 Changes in the material, form, and decoration of PredynasticEarly Dynastic pottery have been used to generate pottery
types and pottery assemblage zones. The absolute chronology of the assemblage zones, Nagada I, II, and III (called after Nagada, also
known as Naqada in Upper Egypt), span the period from c. 3950 to c. 3000 BC. This period was characterized by significant political
transformations that led c. 3200 BC to the emergence of a unified Egyptian state (please refer to http://www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk for colored
photographs and an excellent introduction to the pottery and other objects found in Predynastic tombs).

and pigs. Hunting was limited. However, fishing and

fowling were important.
Nagada I and II sites in Upper Egypt reveal pronounced progressive transformation of social organization and increasing complexity (Figure 4). The tombs
yielded a rich variety of grave goods including copper
objects, flint knives, amulets, stone vessels, pendants,
hairpins, combs, and slate palettes. Only a few graves
contain large numbers of special goods, and the distribution of grave goods indicates the emergence of
tiered social hierarchy by Nagada I. By Nagada II, the
elite segregated their burial grounds from those of the
commoners. Their graves were larger and well
endowed with grave goods (see Social Inequality,
Development of).
The rise of a local elite was embedded in a religious
ideology linked with mortuary rituals as indicated
by the standardization of the placement of the dead
who were buried in a flexed position with heads to
the south facing west. However, there were regional
differences in the prevalence of this orientation. The
iconography of Nagada II pottery and a variety of

figurines from mud and vegetable substances suggest

that the incipient ideology included notions of female
male duality associated with concepts of life, death,
and apparently life after death. Centered on grave
goods and funerary rituals, the ideological technology
of the emerging elite promoted trade within and beyond Egypt for elite mortuary goods. Hierakonpolis
in the south was a conduit for trade with Nubia,
whereas Maadi and later Buto in the Delta provided
trade links with Southwest Asia.
During the period when the Nagada I and II pottery
types were emerging and spreading in Upper Egypt,
communities in the Delta shared a distinct pottery
assemblage, referred to as the MaadiButo Horizon.
By the middle of the Late Predynastic, the pottery
types common in Upper Egypt became prominent in
the Delta. It is unlikely that this is an indication of a
population replacement or a military conquest. It is
most probably a result of the adoption by the Delta
elite of the funerary ideology and practices of Upper
Egypt with its intricate rituals, elaborate burials, and
fancy grave goods. This was facilitated by the close

48 AMERICAS, NORTH/Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic

Figure 3 A diagnostic type of pottery (Decorated) that became

common in Nagada II (Gerzean). Painted in red over a buff background, the decorations show a variety of motifs and themes.
Many, as in the case of this pot, show zigzag lines suggestive of
water, trees, and boats with many oars and two cabins. These
pictorial representations reveal the first steps toward writing and
are most probably symbolic of religious beliefs concerning the
journey from the land of the living to the land of the dead. Source
Petrie WMF (1974) Prehistoric Egypt, London: Aris and Phillips.

Figure 4 Detail from Narmers palette (now in the Egyptian

Museum, Cairo) showing Narmer, the first or second king of a
unified Egypt, in a ceremonial procession. The procession is led
by standard-bearers who may represent the domains or main
allies of the king. The palette has been interpreted in many
ways, but is most likely symbolic of the emergence of a powerful
king who commands the Delta and Upper Egypt. The palette also
shows well-developed hieroglyphic signs as a part of a writing
system that emerged 200 years earlier.

trade links between the two main trade centers of

Hierakonopolis and Buto and by the use of boats
bypassing overland donkey routes.
It appears that the Middle Predynastic was a period
of incipient state formation on a regional scale, with

at least two prominent states or petty kingdoms

namely Hierakonpolis and Nagada in Upper Egypt,
and perhaps several town-principalities in the Delta.
By about 3300 BC, Hierakonopolis seems to have
extended its power over Nagada so that it began to
dominate the area north of Nagada from a new
stronghold at Abydos, establishing a far more suitable
strategic geopolitical position within a shorter distance from Middle Egypt and the Delta than that of
Hierakonpolis at the southern border of Egypt. Considering the narrow floodplain at Hierakonpolis
and access to a more extensive floodplain north of
Abydos, the leaders of Hierakonpolis would have
buffered themselves from droughts which appear to
have become more prevalent as Nile flood discharge
began to diminish c. 33003200 BC, coincident with
the transition to hyperarid conditions in the Eastern
Sahara. It is also likely that the residents of the desert
regions surrounding the Nile Valley and the Delta
who struggled through the transition from wetter
conditions before 6200 to 4100 BC might have been
forced to raid the prosperous villages in the Nile Valley
and the Delta giving rise to occasional skirmishes.
This would have provided the elite with another legitimizing opportunity the portrayal of the chiefs as
warriors smiting enemies. This was expressed in the
use of the mace-heads as symbols of authority and in
the depiction of battle scenes on commemorative
ceremonial palettes. There is also the possibility that
some of the ferocious desert warriors were integrated
within settled agrarian communities.
Given the benefits to small communities either for
defense or food security against droughts and food
shortages, and for the tendency of elites to aggrandize
and strengthen their position through bigger tombs,
more and more costly grave goods of rare materials
and better artisanship, a trend was set for large
political entities like the expanding Hierakonpolitan
kingdom to get bigger by annexing small polities.
This perhaps demanded no or little use of force or
intimidation since an alliance with a larger power
may be conceived as beneficial to small polities.
The transition from the level of regional complexity to that of multiregional complexity, extending
from Hierakonpolis to Abydos and perhaps beyond,
made it imperative to co-opt regional chiefs and
rulers within the demonstrative structures of the
expanding kingdom thus attenuating the grip of kinship as a social bond among the elite. This also necessitated syncretic religious ideologies that incorporated
a pantheon of regional and local deities. Alliances
may have also been fostered by inter-regional royal
marriages. This may explain the important role of
royal wives in the development of the Egyptian state
and the role of women in the ideology of kingship.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia 49

Royal wives were perhaps the link between the king

and his allies, and their position as mothers of future
kings consolidated their role, within religious ideology, as divine mothers. Although the bull might be a
more likely religious entity in hunting societies, the
cow is perhaps equally important, or even more important, in a herding community. Cow burials were
already manifest among cattle keepers of the Eastern
Sahara before 5000 BC. Narmers palette depicting
the king as a bull is surmounted by two large cow
heads.
During this formative stage of Egyptian kingship,
writing was developed within a ritual, royal context
and is attested on ivory labels predating Narmers
palette which carries phonetic signs of his name.
Narmer was succeeded by Aha who together with
his successors began to lay the foundation of a unified
Egyptian state heralding the Dynastic Period. They
established an administrative capital at Memphis
close to their Delta allies while maintaining Abydos
as a religious capital and a royal burial ground. The
unification suffered periodic setbacks, especially during the Second Dynasty. By the time Zoser established
his reign, he was able to build a monumental steppyramid of unprecedented dimensions as his royal
tomb, a clear indication that a mighty Pharaoh ruled

Africa, North/Greek Colonies

over a state society with an elaborate administrative

structure.
See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pharaonic; Plant Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of; Writing Systems.

Further Reading
Adams B (1988) Predynastic Egypt, Aylesbury: Shire Egyptology 7.
Bard K (1999) Predynastic period, overview. In: Bard K (ed.)
Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, pp. 2330.
London: Routledge.
Hassan FA (1988) The Predynastic of Egypt. Journal of World
Prehistory 2: 135185.
Hassan FA (1999) Epipalaeolithic cultures, overview. In: Bard K
(ed.) Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt,
pp. 1516. London: Routledge.
Hendrickx S, Friedman RF, Cialowicz KM, and Chlodnicki M
(eds.) (2004) Egypt at its Origins. Studies in Memory of Barbara Adams. Brussels: Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta. Peters
Publishers.
Maisels CK (1999) Early Civilizations of the Old World. London:
Routledge.
Midant-Reynes B (2002) The Prehistory of Egypt. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Wenke RJ (1999) Neolithic cultures, overview. In: Bard K (ed.)
Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, pp. 1722.
London: Routledge.

See: Europe, South: Greek Colonies.

Nubia
Donatella Usai, Istituto Italiano per lAfrica e lOriente
(IsIAO), Rome, Italy
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
African cattle The ongoing discussion about cattle
domestication in Africa envisions the existence of an indigenous
species, Bos opisthonomous, froh the domesticated form
have originated.
alternately pivoting stamp technique Pottery decoration
technique realized with a comb impressed into the clay and lifted
alternately on the extremities of the edge.
Bucrania (sing. Bucranium) From greek boVB (cow) and
wranion (skull).
Pise Building material composed mainly of mud or clay not
molded in bricks.

The Nubian contribution to the Nile Valley cultural

development has been considered, for quite a long
time, secondary to that of Upper and Lower Egypt
(Figure 1). Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars, strongly influenced by the size and extent of
archaeological remains scattered along the Nile,
regarded Nubia, at the southern periphery of the
Egyptian world, only as a corridor to Africa. This
middle-land was, in fact, the theater for remarkable
cultural changes that preluded to the formation of
complex societies and were the precursors of the later
urban pharaonic theocracy (see Africa, North: Egypt,
Pre-Pharaonic).
For a more detailed geographic description of the
area a distinction between Egyptian and Sudanese
Nubia seems to be appropriate. Egyptian Nubia, or
Lower Nubia, encompasses the area from Jebel es

50 AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia

EGYPT
Sodmein Cave

Elkab
Jebel es Silsila
I Cataract

Gilf Kebir
Plateau

LOWER NUBIA

Kiseiba
Nabta
II Cataract

Abka IX

UPPER NUBIA
III Cataract
Kerma-EI Barga
Kawa-R12

SUDAN

IV Cataract

V Cataract

South Dongola Reach

ra

Esh shaheinab

Ghaba
kadada

ba

dam
VI Cataract

At

uqad

Multaga

M
Wadi

Wadi Howar

Kabbashi

Khartoum Hospital
Site 10W4
ue
Bl
le
Ni

ile

eN

400 km

Whit

Figure 1 Location map of sites mentioned in the text. 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Silsila to the frontier between Egypt and Sudan, or the

II Cataract, and the Sudanese Nubia, or Upper Nubia,
from the II Cataract to the Southern Dongola Reach.
It is from the core of this region that new archaeological

data arrive which motivated new thoughts on the overall Nile Valley recent prehistory cultural sequence.
The Mesolithic is a key period in the prehistory of
man, one when the seeds of the transition from a

AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia 51

hunting-gathering-fishing economy to food production were laid down.

Among the archaeological evidence left by Near
Eastern Mesolithic communities are the first permanent structural remains, sometimes related to ritual
activities, and faunal assemblages bearing the earliest evidence of domesticated species and cereals
remains produced by more systematic gathering
activities. This evidence may be interpreted as the
beginning of a process that will produce a fully
Neolithic economy.
The Nile Valley was and is still considered to be
peripheral to the areas where this process took its first
steps but, without denying a possible contribution
to the neolithization of Nile Valley coming from
Near Eastern regions, it seems that also Mesolithic
Nubians were involved in a process of social and
economic changes evidenced, apparently, by successful animal domestication.
The Mesolithic population, in Nubia as well as in
Central Sudan, is made up by hunter-gatherer-fisher
communities that were producing pottery vessels
some centuries before their appearance in the Near
East where a Pottery Neolithic dates to around
6800 BC.
The first discovery of Mesolithic pottery in the
Sudanese Nile Valley was made by A.J. Arkell at the
Mesolithic site of Khartoum Hospital. Two types of
decoration, among others, characterize Mesolithic
pottery production: incised Wavy Line (Figure 2)
and impressed Dotted Wavy Line (Figure 3). During
the years of the Nubian Salvage Campaign (19601968)
a site, Abka IX, with similar material was found also
in Nubia and radiocarbon dated 8260  400 BP. At
the time the date was considered too old and rejected

because of the high range, but recent archaeological

discoveries in much more controlled contexts proved
its being reliable. It is now accepted that a ceramic
Mesolithic culture behind regional character was widespread along the Nile Valley and adjacent areas, from
Central Nubia down to Central Sudan and further
south, during the VIIIVII millennium BC. Nothing
which can firmly be related to this culture has been
found, until now, in the Upper and Lower Egyptian
Nile Valley, neither in the adjacent deserts and oases.
A VII millennium BC site, Elkab, located in the Nile
Valley, between Luxor and Aswan, produced a lithic
industry with an Epipalaeolithic character, some bone
tools but no pottery.
The adoption of pottery technology within Sudanese
Mesolithic societies has been correlated with an
increased sedentary lifestyle. Until recently no evidence, other than the pottery itself, suggested such
a reduction in mobility. Most Mesolithic sites along
the Nile Valley have been, in fact, deeply affected by
postdepositional natural and human disturbances.
Nevertheless, very recent and still largely unpublished
excavations revealed semi-subterranean huts at El
Barga, in the Kerma Basin, at a seasonal Late Mesolithic site near Khartoum (Figure 4) and pise walled
dwellings at a VII millennium BC Mesolithic settlement along the left bank of White Nile again south of
the Sudan capital.
Nile river-versus-desert seasonal movements and
vice versa were practiced by the Mesolithic huntergatherer-fishers at the beginning of the Early Holocene
when, according to palaeoenvironmental data, deserts, to the west and the east of the Nile, became less
inhospitable with the formation of many seasonal
water pools.

Figure 2 Sample of Early Mesolithic potsherds with typical Wavy Line incised decoration, realized with a Nile catfish spine. 2008
Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

52 AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia

Figure 3 A fragment of Late Mesolithic pottery decorated with Dotted Wavy line impressed pattern. This decoration is realized with the
alternately pivoting stamp technique. 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 4 Excavation at a Late Mesolithic prehistoric seasonal camp south of Khartoum. The site, 10-W-4, revealed a series of semisubterranean huts with refusal pits. 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The pioneering researches conducted by F. Wendorf

at Nabta Playa and Kiseiba Plateau sites in the Western
Desert, 100 km to the west of the Nile, at the height
of the II Cataract, produced the most interesting,
although debatable, data concerning these Mesolithic
groups. The structures excavated at these desert sites,
and the faunal and palaeobotanical assemblages suggest that strictly scheduled seasonal movements may
have provided a semi-sedentary life in a sort of residential mobility congruent with pottery production.

Fishing activity, whose practice is strongly evidenced

especially in Mesolithic Central Sudan sites, may
also have encouraged a less mobile lifestyle. Demographic growth may also have been responsible for
an increased territorial control and, as a consequence,
of less mobility.
It is important to underline that, as suggested for
the Near Eastern Mesolithic societies, this increased
sedentary way of life may have favored experimentation in animal domestication, as in the case of the

AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia 53

African cattle. Most reliably these first experiments

took place in Nubia at the end of the VIII-beginning
of the VII millennium BC. The first evidence for
cattle domestication comes from different sites in the
NabtaKiseiba Western Desert. Few fragments of possibly domesticated cattle recovered at these sites date
to the beginning of the VIII millennium BC. Some
scholars reject this ancient occurrence, for different
reasons, not least the questionable contextual associations. The presence of a few domestic cattle bones at
Western Desert sites led the excavators to speak of
an Early Neolithic phase, but the overall faunal
assemblage is made up of wild species suggesting
more caution is necessary.
However, evidence of domestic cattle was recently
found in Sudanese Nubia, in the Kerma Basin, at
the Mesolithic site of El Barga and dated to the
VII millennium BC.
Domestic sheep and goat appeared in the Nile Valley
and in Nubia later on, around the VI millennium BC, as
witnessed by sites like Sodmein cave in the Red Sea
Mountain, NabtaKiseiba, in the Western Desert,
and El-Barga, in the Kerma Basin. As it is genetically
proved that sheep and goats originate in the Near
East, it is probably here that we have to envisage
influences from outside the valley.
Cattle herding became increasingly important in
Nubian societies; hence, pastoralism became the basic
subsistence economy of these populations.
The emergence of cattle domestication seems limited, up to now, to the Nubian region. No evidence has
been produced by sites along the Nile Valley north
Chronology

Lower-Upper Nubia

7000 BC
6000 BC

Mesolithic
(Western Desert-EI Barga)

6000 BC
5500 BC

Early Neolithic
(Western Desert-EI Barga)

5500 BC
5000 BC

5000 BC
4500 BC

Middle Neolithic A
(Kadruka 13-21, R12)

and south of Nubia. Moreover, no evidence of this

kind was produced by the many prehistoric sites
located in the desert north and south of the Nabta/
Kiseiba region.
Central Sudan societies seem to retain their hunting-gathering-fishing economy until the middle of the
V millennium BC.
When the first Neolithic groups appear in Central
Sudan (see Africa, Central: Sudan, Nilotic), they
show a material culture which displays strong similarities with that produced by Nubian groups whose
socioeconomic structure had already changed to a
pastoral one more than a millennium before. If this
picture will be confirmed by future archaeological
investigations it will be interesting to work out whether the long-lasting Mesolithic social and economic
way of life in Central Sudan has been culturally or
environmentally determined. Palaeoenvironmental
studies documented a climatic deterioration around
the VI millennium BC. It affected firstly the Nubian
region and only many centuries later the Central
Sudan and may have produced, at the same time, an
acceleration in subsistence economy transformation
in Nubia as well as favoring the maintenance of the
hunter-gatherer-fisher subsistence model of Central
Sudan Mesolithic populations. At present the Early
Neolithic of Central Sudan seems to correspond to the
Middle Neolithic of Nubia (Figure 5).
Some of the social and cultural aspects of these
V and IV millennium BC Neolithic groups are so similar that there is no wonder that all along the valley
there were strong and permanent interrelations.
Central Sudan

Mesolithic
(Khartoum Hospital, Saggai etc.)

Late Mesolithic
(Kabbashi, 10-W-4 etc.)

Early Neolithic
(Shaheinab, EI Ghaba, Kadero etc.)

4500 BC
4200 BC

Middle Neolithic B
(Kadruka 1, R12, Multaga)

4200 BC
3100 BC

Late Neolithic
(EI kadada)

3100 BC
2700 BC

Pre-Kerma

Figure 5 Nubian and Central Sudan chronological sequence according to new data provided by recent excavations in the region.
2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

54 AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia

G. 110
Figure 6 One of the richest graves excavated at the Middle Neolithic cemetery R12, in Lower Nubia, close to the Egyptian town of
Kawa. The body, of an adult male, was covered by 108 objects. 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 7 A sample of valuable stone axes recovered at R12 cemetery. 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Nubia 55

Figure 8 Tools made from animal bones or containers made from a hippopotamus tooth are very common at Middle Neolithic Nubian
cemeteries. 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 9 Caliciform beakers are considered ritual containers as they have been found only in cemeteries. They are characteristics of
Nubian and Central Sudan Neolithic. 2008 Donctella Usai. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Nubias Neolithic is known mainly from the excavation of few of the many mound-like burial grounds
dotting the Nubian landscape. These cemeteries produce the image of a ranked society with some form
of incipient elite. A few graves (Figure 6), in each
cemetery, are accompanied by an exceptional number
of objects: pots, stone axes, mace-heads, ivory bracelets, necklaces made of semiprecious stone beads, containers made from hippopotamus teeth and bucrania
(Figures 7 and 8). The number of bucrania varies
according to the individuals social position, whether
achieved or acquired though kin relationship. Red and
yellow ochre was often used to cover the body, which
sometimes lay on an animal skin. Some graves also
contain complete skeletons of an ovicaprine.
One pot, in particular, seems to have had a ritual
character. It is the caliciform beaker (Figure 9). This
container, decorated in different ways, probably
according to different regional tastes, is present only
in grave contexts.

Many of the Nubian Neolithic settlements, seemingly, were destroyed by erosion or Nile flooding. They
appear, in fact, as dense scatters of archaeological
material. The lack of structural remains at Neolithic
sites, in contrast with the evidence provided by
hundreds of burial grounds sometime of very large
size, has been considered as attesting the high mobility
of these Neolithic herders and their living in rather
ephemeral dwellings. However at Kerma, an extensive
excavation revealed the structural organization of a
Neolithic village, dating to 4500 BC, witnessed by
thousands of postholes. While no stratified deposits
survived at the site the study of postholes distribution
has made possible the reconstruction of the plan of an
otherwise lost ancient and complex settlement.

See also: Africa, Central: Sudan, Nilotic; Africa, North:

Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic; Sahara, Eastern; Animal Domestication.

56 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern

Further Reading
Arkell AJ (1949) Early Khartoum. London: Oxford University Press.
Blench RM and MacDonald K (2000) The Origins and Development of African Livestock: Archaeology, Genetics, Linguistics,
and Ethnography. London: University College London Press.
Guilane J (ed.) (2003) Aux marges des grands foyers du Neolithique.
Peripheries debitrices ou creatrices? Paris: Editions Errance.
Honegger M (2004) Settlement and cemeteries of the Mesolithic
and Early Neolithic at el-Barga (Kerma region). Sudan & Nubia
8: 1419.
Honegger M (2005) Kerma et les debuts du Neolithique Africain.
GENAVA LIII. 239249.

Salvatori S and Usai D (2004) The cemetery R12 and a possible periodisation of the Nubian Neolithic. Sudan and Nubia
8: 3337.
Usai D and Salvatori S (2005) The IsIAO archaeological project
in the El Salha area (Omdurman South, Sudan): Results and
perspectives. AFRICA LX (34): 474493.
Vermeersch PM (1978) Elkab II: Epipaleolithique de la vallee du
Nil e`gyptien. Leuven: University Press.
Wendorf F, Schild R, and associates (eds.) (2001) Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara. New York: Kluwer Academic/
Plenum Publishers.
Wengrow D (2006) The Archaeology of Early Egypt. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Africa, North/Roman Eastern Colonies

See: Asia, West: Roman Eastern Colonies.

Sahara, Eastern

Introduction

Elena A A Garcea, University of Cassino, Cassino,

Italy
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Aterian A North African tradition with lithic assemblages, often
made with the Levallois technology, consisting of side-scrapers
and denticulates, as well as end-scrapers, perforators, and burins.
Tanged tools and bifacial foliates are considered as the diagnostic
features, but other, more frequent, elements include bulbar basal
thinning and bifacial retouching.
cultivation Any form of human activity that increases the yield
of harvested or exploited plants without domestication.
delayed return strategy A long-term system of resource
exploitation based on delayed and planned consumption,
involving food processing and storage.
dotted wavy line pottery Ceramic impressed decoration
made with a rocker technique using a toothed comb to
produce alternately upwards and downwards fans of dotted
curved lines.
Middle Stone Age (MSA) A specific African age/stage system,
which comprises the Early Stone Age (ESA), the Middle Stone
Age (MSA), and the Later Stone Age (LSA). European-based
terms such as Middle Paleolithic and Mousterian are often used
to describe North African industries, even though they relate
to specific cultural units and particular stratigraphic positions
that do not apply to Africa.
pastoralism The economic subsistence strategy that relies on
the exploitation of domestic livestock for food production. It
implies raising and moving herds for grazing according to
seasonal availability of pasture.
Western Desert This is a desert located west of the Nile River
that occupies western Egypt and eastern Libya. Its main regions
are the Great Sand Sea and several oases, including Siwa, Farafra,
Baharia, Dakhleh, and Kharga.

The most thorough and detailed studies on the prehistory of North Africa come from the land included
within the present borders of Egypt and northern
Sudan. The Eastern Sahara is presently almost uninhabited by people or animals, but it has not always
been so. The Nile River and the Sahara Desert have
affected each other on both cultural and environmental levels and Eastern Saharan populations have often
acted as intermediaries between Central Saharans and
Nilotic peoples, often even linking populations and
traditions between East and North Africa.
The Eastern Sahara covers a surface of more than
2 million square km, which is the same size as western
Europe, and is often referred to as the Western Desert,
being located west of the Nile River. However, the
Eastern Sahara also extends east of the Nile River,
reaching the coast of the Red Sea, and to the west it
extends to eastern Libya.

Environment and Climate in the

Eastern Sahara
The main geographic features of the Eastern Sahara
are the Great Sand Sea and several oases, the main
ones being, from north to south, Siwa, Farafra, Baharia,
Dakhleh, and Kharga. The Fayum Oasis, which was
formerly a lake, has been another very important
water reservoir. Unlike in Lower (northern) Egypt, in
Upper (southern) Egypt, the flood plain of the Nile is
only a few kilometers wide and the desert extends near
the river. The desert is not as flat as one may think:
mountains and deep depressions exist in several parts,

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern 57

including the Gilf Kebir plateau, south of the Great

Sand Sea, which has an altitude of about 2000 m. In
spite of the elevated areas, no rivers or streams fed by
precipitation, drain into or out of the Western Desert.
Nevertheless, the oases live, thanks to freshwater
provided by the Nile or local groundwater.
Important environmental changes affected the
Eastern Sahara during the shifts corresponding to the
glacial and interglacial stages in continental Europe.
Although there were no glaciations in most of North
Africa, the environment dramatically changed as
the sea level of the Mediterranean withdrew by up to
70 m and precipitation totally disappeared. Consequently, the Sahara became a hyper-arid desert, drier
than at present. During the Penultimate Glacial,
corresponding to oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 6, dated
between about 186 000 and 127 000 years ago, a
series of sand sheets, formed by winds, covered the
Eastern Sahara. Later, lacustrine and fluvial sediments
were recorded at Bir Tarfawi, indicating the occurrence of lake basins and a moist climate during
the Last Interglacial of OIS 5, dated to 127 000
71 000 BP. Furthermore, a significant drainage network was active during various periods of OIS 5 in
southwestern Egypt and northwestern Sudan. The
following Last Glacial period of OIS 4, dated to
71 00057 000 BP, witnessed abrupt climatic changes
with the formation of sand sheets again, as clearly
shown in the Selima region, across the Egyptian
Sudanese border. The remaining part of the Upper
Pleistocene featured a harsh environment and dry climate. Although the climate during OIS 3 (57 000
24 000 BP) improved, it was not as temperate as OIS 5,
and OIS 2 (24 00011 000 BP) was much more arid
than at present. Considerable climatic ameliorations occurred only in the Eastern Sahara at the beginning of the Holocene. Groundwater levels started to
rise about 9300 years BP and the aquifers rose to levels
as much as 25 m higher than today. Freshwater lakes
and swamps formed in the lowlands and a fluvial
system developed in the uplands, attracting animals
and favoring human occupation in many areas of the
Eastern Sahara. Rainfall decreased from south to
north, forming lacustrine sediments in the south,
below 22 N, and playa sediments between 10 and
22 N. Such favorable conditions lasted until about
6000 years ago, when the landscape started to dry up
again and, by 3000 BP, the Sahara became the desert we
know today.

and the oases in the Western Desert played an essential role by offering water and food resources to the
humans who ventured into a landscape that was much
drier than their native land. A series of water springs at
Kharga Oasis, central-western Egypt, about 150 km
west of the Nile, sustained various Middle Stone Age
(MSA) human groups using the Levallois technique
and producing side-scrapers, Mousterian points, and
some denticulates (Figure 1). A later complex was also
found at Kharga Oasis, which included tanged tools
and bifacial foliates that could be assigned to the
Aterian. Tanged pieces were recorded further southeast, at Wadi Dungul, which seems to be the easternmost Aterian site. In fact, the Aterian, which takes its
name from the type of site of Bir el Ater, in northeastern Algeria, is a typical late MSA tradition of
the Sahara and the Maghreb and does not occur in
the Nile Valley. Lithic assemblages are often made
with the Levallois technology and comprise typical
Middle Paleolithic tools, such as side-scrapers and
denticulated, as well as Upper Paleolithic tools, such
as end-scrapers, perforators, and burins. Tanged tools
and bifacial foliates were considered as the diagnostic
features, but other more frequent elements include
bulbar basal thinning and bifacial retouching.
At Bir Tarfawi, in southwestern Egypt, between
175 000 and 70 000 years ago, a sequence of five

The Spread of Early Anatomically

Modern Humans
Anatomically modern humans are found earlier in
southern and eastern Africa then in northern Africa,
dating to 250 000 years BP or earlier. The Nile Valley

Figure 1 Map of sites cited in the text.

58 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern

lacustrine events indicated the successive expansions

of a lake where people could live and hunt a variety of
large animals that are now extinct in the area, including gazelle, warthog, and ostrich, living in a wooded
savanna with rainfall of 500 mm per year. They produced a typical MSA industry which included some
bifacial foliates that were not significant enough to be
assigned to the Aterian. Another MSA site was found
at Bir Sahara East, not far from Bir Tarfawi, which
revealed a long human occupation, as indicated in a
long stratigraphic series. As the age of the earliest
level associated with the MSA belongs to the early
OIS 6, it is clear that human groups were skilled
enough to cope with the severe environmental conditions of the Penultimate Glacial in the Sahara. The
age of these populations, their development of MSA
technologies, and their abilities to adapt to dry environments and live in open grassland suggest that they
were fully modern humans. The technological shift
from the production of Acheulean to MSA industries,
with a correlated replacement by modern humans,
occurred in the late OIS 8 and the cultural progression
toward modern behavior took place during the MSA.

The Reoccupation of the Sahara after

10 000 Years Ago
The Aterian was the latest Upper Pleistocene cultural
entity in the Sahara and the Maghreb, but it did not
last until the end of the Pleistocene or the beginning of
the Holocene at 10 000 BP. The dated stratigraphic
series from Bir Tarfawi and Bir Sahara East show that
no human occupation survived after 70 000 BP in the
Eastern Sahara and other dated sites in the Central
Sahara confirm that the region became a hyper-arid
desert that had to be abandoned for a very long time,
until wetter conditions returned. These populations dispersed around the northern and, possibly, southern margins of the Sahara, definitely disappearing around
40 000 BP, but did not go in the direction of the Nile
Valley. Smaller groups with different industries were
settled in the Maghreb and the North African littoral
between 40 000 and 20 000 BP. Later, between 20 000
and 10 000 years ago, the population considerably
increased and produced various technocomplexes in
the Maghreb, North African Mediterranean coast, as
well as the Nile Valley, but still no human resettlement
occurred in any place of the Sahara during this period.
At the end of the Pleistocene, around 12 000 years
ago, the Nile suffered catastrophic inundations that
caused a dispersion of Nilotic peoples toward the
Eastern Sahara. During the Early Holocene, water
was largely available from the Nile and its tributaries
and rains were sufficiently frequent to keep permanent playas located in various places of the Western

Desert, from Siwa Oasis to Nabta Playa. Nevertheless, humid and dry phases still alternated throughout
the Holocene. Systematic reoccupation of the Eastern
Sahara took place after 10 000 years BP, when the
first Early Holocene humid phase supported milder
conditions. During the Holocene, humid and arid
phases continually alternated, displaying eight humid
and eight dry phases from the beginning of the Holocene until today at Nabta Playa. It has been suggested
that, after every dry episode, the area was completely
abandoned, and new people moved back again into
the southwestern desert of Egypt at the onset of
humid phases.
In the area of Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba, the earliest cultural horizon of the Early Holocene is the
El Adam variant, which is dated between 9500, or
possibly 9800, and 8900 BP. The lithic tool-kit includes
a large quantity of backed bladelets, struck from single
and opposed platform cores, followed by end-scrapers,
perforators, and notches. The microburin technique is
frequent. Lower and upper grinding stones and ostrich
eggshell containers and beads are common. The
subsequent variants are El Kortein, dated from 8800
to 8500 BP, and El Ghorab, dated from 8400 to
8200 BP, the latter corresponding to an important lacustrine episode. Scalene triangles become a dominating aspect of the El Ghorab variant and backed
bladelets are still frequent. Grinding stones are common and pottery is present, but is still very rare. This
cultural unit has some affinities with the Masara phases
at Dakhleh Oasis. The latest Early Holocene variant
is El Nabta, dated between 8200 and 7900 BP, which
flourished during the maximum humid interphase
recorded in the area and dated between 8050 and
7300 BP. Burins dominate in the tool-kit, together
with continuously retouched tools, backed bladelets,
notches, and denticulates.

The Earliest Cattle Herding

The North African aurochs (Bos primigenius ssp. or
Bos primigenius mauritanicus) is a wild endemic species that could live in the Maghreb and the Nile
Valley, but not in the Sahara. Genetic mtDNA evidence has indicated that the ancestors of African and
Eurasian cattle separated at least 22 000 years ago. As
the Egyptian cattle is morphologically different from
the Eurasian humpless cattle (Bos taurus) and the
zebu (Bos indicus), the earliest African domestic cattle could not originate from either Europe or Asia, but
was domesticated independently.
The Eastern Sahara has provided chronological,
paleoecological, and linguistic clues to assert domestication of aurochs in the Western Desert, which

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern 59

definitely occurred earlier than in the Nile Valley. The

earliest domesticated cattle bones are associated with
the El Adam variant and are dated from 9500 BP
at Nabta Playa, and from 8840 BP at Bir Kiseiba. As
these dates are older than those of the earliest cattle in
the Near East, they corroborate the independent domestication of cattle in the Eastern Sahara. Second,
paleoecological evidence shows that large herbivores,
including cattle, could not survive in a wild state
in the dry environment and scarce vegetation of the
Eastern Sahara without management by herders, who
brought their livestock into the desert oases after the
summer rains. Third, linguistic arguments show that
the Nilo-Saharan language family had root words
related to pastoralism and food production in the
languages known in the Eastern Sahara and the Sahelian belt. In the Proto-Northern Sudanic language,
there are root words referring to cattle pastoralism
that go back to 10 000 years ago, and in the ProtoSaharan-Sahelian language, words for pastoralism, as
well as cultivation, date from 9000 years ago.
Although domestic cattle existed at Nabta Playa
and Bir Kiseiba beginning from the El Adam variant,
remains of wild game were more frequent in the archaeological sites, as cattle were rarely killed, whereas wild
animals, such as small gazelle, hare, and occasionally
large gazelle, were hunted for meat consumption.
Cattle could be exploited for milk and blood, which
represented almost inexhaustible supplies for proteins.
For these reasons, cattle were defined as a walking
larder. Furthermore, they could have another role,
not directly related to diet, but to socioeconomic prestige and property, establishing the first social differentiation based on material possessions.

The Earliest Production and Spread

of Pottery
The earliest pottery in the Eastern Sahara was found
at Bir Kiseiba and Nabta Playa, dating to the tenth
millennium BP. It first appeared at a few sites of the
El Adam variant and showed impressed decorations
on the outside surface forming simple impressions and
dotted zigzags made with the rocker technique. It has
been suggested that pottery was unusual when it was
first invented and that its function was not related to
ordinary use, but to social status, symbolizing luxury
possessions. Pottery became more frequent in the El
Nabta variant, dated between 8200 and 7900 BP. This
increase in ceramic production has been related to
an intensified use by larger groups that occupied the
area for longer periods. The ceramic decorative types
from El Nabta also include a typical Saharan decoration exhibiting dotted wavy lines. This type of decoration appears in the earliest pottery of the Central

Sahara, also dating from the tenth millennium BP,

whereas in the Upper Nile Valley it is present, but
appears from the middle of the eighth millennium
BP, suggesting that it was introduced there from the
Sahara. Its occurrence in the Eastern Sahara at a later
period than the earliest pottery, but before the Nile
Valley, corroborates a westeast movement of some
Saharan traditions, such as dotted wavy line pottery.
Further considerations on the distribution and
spread of early pottery and the populations who produced it come from the Gilf Kebir and the Great Sand
Sea. A potsherd from the Wadi el Akhdar in the Gilf
Kebir was dated to 9080 BP, whereas another one
from the same site was dated to 6400 BP. Other
dates obtained on more reliable materials span from
7700 BP. The earliest pottery in the Great Sand Sea is
undecorated and dates to 7200 BP. These two areas
are in an intermediate position between the Central
Sahara and the Nile Valley. As the ecological conditions in the Gilf Kebir were slightly better than in the
surrounding lowland areas, even during the phases of
climatic deterioration, they could have encouraged
contacts with Central Saharan groups and often
acted as a refugium for populations coming from
the Central Sahara. The location of these areas and
their availability of resources contributed to the diffusion of Central Saharan traditions toward the Nile
Valley, through the Eastern Sahara.

Caprine Herding
The origin of caprine domestication in North Africa is
different from that of cattle. Domestic caprines were
introduced from the Near East as no wild forms of
sheep or goat existed in North Africa. Domestic sheep
(Ovis aries) is descendant from the Asiatic mouflon
(Ovis orientalis), and domestic goat (Capra hircus)
originates from the scimitar-horned Capra aegagrus of
western Asia. They were brought into North Africa as
domesticates around 70006700 years ago. Although
some zooarchaeologists question the early chronology of cattle domestication in the Western Desert and
consider the first uncontroversial dates for domestic
cattle in the Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba area at
7700 BP, caprine herding was still later than cattle
herding. Even if we take the later date for cattle
domestication, it was still earlier in the Western
Desert than in the Nile Valley.
The earliest domestic caprines appeared in Mediterranean North Africa between 7000 and 6400 years
BP, at Haua Fteah (Cyrenaica, Libya), and in the
Fayum at the end of the sixth millennium BP. In
the Western Desert, they were dated, at Dakhleh
Oasis, from 6900 to 6500 BP, and at Sodmein cave,
in the Red Sea hills, between 7000 and 6300 BP.

60 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, Eastern

At Nabta Playa, they appear during the El Ghanam

variant, which is dated from 7100 to 6600 BP, although they do not seem to be present from the
beginning of this phase. It has been suggested that
they were introduced into the Eastern Sahara either
directly from the Near East or from coastal North
Africa where they arrived from the Levant and from
there spread into the Eastern Sahara.
Caprines have different herding necessities than
cattle: they can survive in drier environments and
are better adapted to cope with reduced grazing
lands. As a matter of fact, an impoverished environment in the Eastern Sahara is reflected in the significant reduction of living sites dating to the El Ghanam
variant and in the increase of dug-out water wells that
indicates a lowering of the water table in the region.
Herders were forced to develop a highly mobile nomadic settlement pattern, supplementing their diet
with the gathering of tubers and fruits. At the same
time medium and large size herbivores decreased and
gazelle-hunting was reduced and could no longer be
the major source of meat.

The Development of Sedentism

Several stone-built structures, forming circular huts,
were found at Dakhleh Oasis associated with the
Masara C cultural unit dated to 87008600 BP. They
were strategically located on a sandstone ridge that
was protected from seasonal floods so that they could
be occupied during the wet seasons. The area they
occupied was significantly smaller than the territory previously exploited, suggesting a contraction of
resources in some selected locations. The Masara C
unit has been paralleled with the El Kortein variant at
Bir Kiseiba.
Furthermore, at both Bir Kiseiba and Nabta Playa,
a complex settlement system with habitation structures was developed during the El Nabta variant,
dated to 82007900 BP. The largest site at Nabta
Playa is E-756, which yielded about 20 huts, more
than 30 storage pits, 3 wells, and numerous hearths.
The huts were either oval or round, with shallow
basin floors, encircled with postholes. Their shape
suggested that they were built with wooden poles
tight in the center at the top of the roof, and the
walls were covered by reeds, skins, or mats. The huts
contained several hearths that were seasonally reused.
The chronology of this site indicated that it remained
in use for more than 800 years.
Sedentism in North Africa was not a form of preadaptation leading to agriculture. It was a typical
strategy adopted by foragers, or forerunning pastoralists as in the case of Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba,
associated with the exploitation of a broad spectrum

of wild resources. These people continually occupied

the same sites for long periods of time in restricted
areas with concentrated water and food resources.
Sedentary lifestyle favored an increased social organization and the rise of sociopolitical complexity with
a delayed-return economy. Such an economic strategy
implied the intensification of resource exploitation
and scheduled consumption with considerable investments of capital, labor, and skills. It was a particularly
efficient subsistence practice for North African populations as it allowed them to cope with irregular precipitations and to manage drier periods of reduced
rainfall. Scheduled consumption increased awareness
of predictable access to locally available food resources
and generated techniques of delayed consumption of
seasonally available products with the development
of storage facilities.
As sedentism with a delayed return strategy grew,
local wild resources became unable to sustain the
increased needs for set-aside provisions, and North
African dwellers had to switch to nomadic pastoralism as the only sustainable form of food production in
their environment. In the Eastern Sahara, this happened during the El Ghanam variant, when pastoralism became the predominant subsistence base and
was extended to caprine herding.

The Origins of Cultivation and Farming

The process leading to agriculture was very slow in
the Eastern Sahara and farming, progressing inevitably to plant domestication was not the final goal. At
least two important stages of selective cultivation
without farming or genetic modification were successfully reached. They represent, respectively, cultivation with small-scale clearance and minimal tillage,
and cultivation with larger-scale clearance and systematic tillage. Thus, cultivation is an elaborate form
of plant exploitation without domestication.
At Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba, a new economy of
intensive plant collection came into being, during the
El Nabta/El Jerar humid interphase dated from
around 8000 to 7300 years BP. During this period,
numerous large, bell-shaped storage pits indicated
intensive exploitation and preservation of fruits,
tubers, and seeds, including large quantities of wild
sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and two kinds of millet
(Panicum turgidum and Echinochloa colona). In
some particularly favorable years, sorghum may
have been cultivated with the decrue, or dry farming,
technique. This system requires sowing seeds over
flooded land without irrigation, and collecting with
a technique that implies cross-pollination, which,
unlike self-pollination, prevents the propagation of
the genetic changes typical of domestication. Such a

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sahara, West and Central 61

technique could have required shaking the harvest

into baskets, instead of using sickles or removing the
entire plant.
At Farafra Oasis, a site in the Hidden Valley was
located on the shore of an ancient water basin and
exhibited numerous habitation structures with hearths
containing numerous plant remains, including burnt
cereal grains that have suggested independent protoagricultural activities. Three main occupation phases
were identified, the earliest being dated between 7670
and 7320 BP, the second around 6750 BP, and the
latest at 6190 BP. Grasses include Brachiaria, Cenchrus, Digitaria, Echinochloa, Panicum, and Setaria,
belonging to the millet group, and Sorghum, which
represents 40.6% of the paleobotanical samples. The
high frequency of Sorghum may be due to the large
size of its grains, which could have been preferred for
their size and better nutritional properties. Furthermore, Sorghum is particularly suitable for this semidesert environment as it can tolerate hot and dry
conditions, as well as salty soils. The area with circular structures, stone-lined hearths, and over 180 plant
samples, most of them belonging to Sorghum, was
dated between 7100 and 6700 BP. As there are no
signs of genetic change, it is most likely that the plants
were collected by hand and exploited using soft material artifacts, such as wood, whereas stone tools
were only used later. Tamerix and Acacia, which
were exploited for fuel, could also have been used
the manufacturing of wooden implements.
Cultivation practices began in the Western Desert
at a significantly earlier date than in the Nile Valley.
On the other hand, full domestication of sorghum
and pearl millet took place in Africa in a still undetermined time, but not before the fourth millennium BP,
whereas barley and emmer wheat were not local
domesticates, but imported from southwest Asia
into the Nile Valley. They are attested to in the
Delta and lower Nile Valley from the end of the
seventh millennium BP. However, as they required a
humid habitat with constant fresh water, which was
not available outside the Nile Valley, they were unsuitable for the Eastern Sahara.

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Dakhleh Oasis (South Central Egypt). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17: 124142.
Nelson K (2002) Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara,
Vol. 2: The Pottery of Nabta Playa. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Stahl AB (ed.) (2005) African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
van der Veen M (ed.) (1999) The Exploitation of Plant Resources in
Ancient Africa. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Vermeersch PM, VanPeer P, and Moeyersons J (1996) Neolithic
occupation of the Sodmein area, Red Sea Mountains, Egypt. In:
Pwiti G and Soper R (eds.) Aspects of African Archaeology.
Papers from the 10th Congress of the PanAfrican Association
for Prehistory and Related Studies, pp. 411419. Harare: University of Zimbabwe.
Wendorf F and Schild R (1998) Nabta Playa and its role in northeastern African prehistory. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17: 97123.
Wendorf F and Schild R (eds.) (2001) Holocene Settlements of
the Egyptian Sahara: The Archaeology of Nabta Playa. Vol. 1.
New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press.
Wendorf F, Schild R, and Close AE (eds.) (1993) Egypt during the
Last Interglacial: The Middle Paleolithic of Bir Tarfawi and Bir
Sahara East. New York: Plenum Press.

See also: Animal Domestication; Modern Humans,

Emergence of; Plant Domestication.

Glossary

Further Reading
Barich BE (1998) People, Water and Grain: The Beginnings of
Domestication in the Sahara and the Nile Valley. Roma:
LErma di Bretschneider.
Close AE (ed.) (1984) Cattle-Keepers of the Eastern Sahara: The
Neolithic of Bir Kiseiba. Dallas: Southern Methodist University.
Garcea EAA (ed.) (2001) Uan Tabu in the Settlement History of the
Libyan Sahara. Firenze: AllInsegna del Giglio.

Sahara, West and

Central
Barbara E Barich, University of Rome La Sapienza,
Rome, Italy
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Aterian Prehistoric culture dating to the middle Palaeolithic

(30 000 BC) in the region around the Atlas Mountains, north and
west Africa, and Sahara.
climatic oscillations Refers to the drastic variation in the
Earths global climate or in regional climates over time. It
describes changes in the variability or average state of the
atmosphere over timescales ranging from decades to
millions of years.
Tenerian culture Saharan Neolithic culture in the Tenere
Desert and extending from northeastern Niger into western
Chad, Africa, dating from 6500 to 4500 BP.

62 AFRICA, SOUTH/Sahara, West and Central

Western and Central Sahara

animal husbandry, which led to the rise of pastoralism; the rock art works that appeared within the
mountains of Tassili nAjjer, Acacus, Ar, and Tibesti,
and, finally, the first copper metallurgy which is
found alongside evidence for social complexity.
During the Pleistocene the Sahara underwent several phases of aridity alternating with periods of
better climatic conditions, which were related to the

The western and central Sahara, which extends from

Libya to Mauritania, enclosing the modern countries
of Algeria, Niger, and Mali (Figure 1), was at the
center of important cultural phenomena that were
of fundamental importance to the history of the entire
African continent. Among the most important of such
phenomena we can mention the early experiments in

N
S

Tripoli
Jado
Garian
Ha

mm

ad

ae

lH

om

ra

ALGERIA
Sebha

-N

jer
Ti-n-Hanakaten
Meniet

Hoggar

Lo
Abu M

Ubari

-Aj

sili

Siwa
at S
and

Gre

LIBYA

Acacu

Tas

Tobruk

Bengazi

Ti-n-Torha

Tazerbo

Edeyen
Murzuk

EI Gatrun
Cufra

Amekni
Tamanrasset
Gabrong

J.Auenat

Tibesti

Djado
Adrar Bous
Tnr
Bilma

Air

CHAD

Fachi
Agadez

NIGER

Borkou
Ennedi
Dlbo

owa

W.H

L.Chad
500 km

Figure 1 Map of the western and central Sahara. Adapted from Barich BE (1998) People, Water and Grain The Beginnings of
Domestication in the Sahara and the Nile Valley. Rome: LErma di Bretschneider.

AFRICA, SOUTH/Sahara, West and Central 63

European glacial phenomena. This was mainly due to

the fact that during the glaciations, cold intrusions
from the Arctic stopped the tropical monsoon from
rising above the equator, thereby blocking the mechanism that brought the rains to the Sahara.

The Beginnings of Human Occupation

The oldest documented human occupation in the
western and central Sahara belongs to the Acheulean
industry. Acheulean hand axes from the now dry
basin of the ancient Lake Shati, in southern Libya,
have been dated to 125 000 BP, and were deposited
during a wet phase (corresponding to the oxygen
isotopic stage 5 OIS 5). An arid phase, seen in
dune formation, separates the Acheulean occupation
from the first traces of the Aterian, a Middle Stone
Age industry whose presence in the Sahara has
been dated to OIS 4 (70 00059 000 BP). The Aterian
represents an important occupation phase of the
Saharan area by communities that hunted large mammals (buffalo, elephant, rhinoceros, antelope), as well
as carrying out marginal gathering activities, and who
made their temporary bases near water sources, such
as springs, lakes, and rivers. It is thought that the
Aterian was the last documented occupation of the
Sahara before a further very severe arid crisis, contemporary with the Wurm glaciation in Europe, and
this caused the Aterian hunters to abandon the area,
probably in order to push on toward wetter lands,
toward the coast, and the tropical regions.

From Hunter-Gatherers to
Food-Producers
The Wurm glaciation is evident throughout the large
extent of the Sahara as a long arid episode, which
reached its peak around 20 000 years ago, causing
a severe contraction of human occupation, if not a
complete abandonment of the area by human groups.
In the Sahara, therefore, the beginning of a marked
transformation in lifestyle, a prelude to food production activities, coincided with the return of the rains
at the end of Pleistocene (12 00010 000 BP) and with
the resettlement of the region. In the transitional
phase between the Pleistocene and the Holocene,
cultural groups were strongly based on the exploitation of aquatic resources, a life style that the archaeologist Sutton called aqualithic culture. In Mali a
lacustrine phase, between 8500 and 6900 BP, can be
seen in the stratigraphic sections of the ancient lakes
that lie next to the extensive dunes. Finely stratified
sediments, which contain the remains of aquatic
fauna, shells, and diatoms (freshwater plants), are
clear signs of the presence of permanent lakes in the

past. The huge cemeteries that have been discovered

in the Taoudenni region (Hassi el Abiod, Ine Sakane)
have permitted notable observations to be made
regarding, in particular, palaeoanthropological characteristics. An important cultural sequence is also evident
in the mountainous regions of Algeria, where huntergatherer groups left remains of their material culture,
in particular a characteristic pottery type, in temporary
camps such as Amekni and Ti-n-Hanakaten. Other
human settlements in the central Sahara appear in the
area of the modern state of Chad, but are only known
from surface scatters and ceramics collected by French
and German archaeologists.
In contrast, in Libya and Niger there are full stratigraphic sequences that allow the transformation
of lifestyle to be studied: from a wide range of environmental exploitation strategies (including hunting,
gathering, and fishing activities) to an economy that
was specialized in pastoralism (cattle, sheep/goat).
The Tadrart Acacus Massif in Libya that, along with
the Algerian Tassili nAjjer, is one of the most important rock art (see Rock Art) complexes in the Sahara,
has provided the various phases in this sequence,
allowing light to be shed on the initial stages of
domestication, which is not always visible in archaeological research. The lower layers (c. 9100 BP) of
Ti-n-Torha East, in northern Acacus, show occasional occupation and a wide range of environmental
exploitation strategies with a strong incidence of
plant food linked to the first appearance of ceramics
(Figure 2). Other sites, such as Uan Afuda and Uan
Tabu, show instead a lesser interest in the exploitation of floral resources and, on the other hand, a
greater specialization in the exploitation of fauna.
For example, Uan Afuda was laid out as a specialized
camp for Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) hunting
and herding. In the upper layers (85008000 BP),
Ti-n-Torha East becomes a real proto-village, with
a series of hut foundations built against the rock
walls of the wadi that was suitable for the needs of a
semi-permanent settlement (Figure 3). The composite
sequence obtained from the three sites of Ti-n-Torha
(East, North, and Two Caves Shelters) covers the entire period from Early to Middle Holocene (Figure 4).
On the basis of material culture and archaeozoological evidence, the author suggests an autochthonous
transition model (i.e., a local development model,
without external influences) from pre-domestication
to forms of incipient domestication.
The Libyan situation finds notable parallels, stratigraphic and chronological, to the situation seen in
Niger. The first discoveries made here, in the Ar region,
were by J. Desmond Clark in the 1970s. A full reconstruction of the regional sequence is due to the subsequent research of J. P. Roset who, in the 1980s, made

64 AFRICA, SOUTH/Sahara, West and Central

Figure 2 Ceramics with impressed decorations from Ti-n-Torha East (Libya). Photo Barbara Barich, unpublished.

Saharan ceramic production in the Early Holocene.

The faunal remains found have been attributed to
wild animals and even fish, while the abundance of
grinding stones is evidence of the importance of plant
gathering.
Hydrogeological studies in Niger have shown that
an initial climatic recovery with the return of the
rains, came at the end of the Pleistocene, around
13 000 years ago. It was then followed by a further
dry phase in 9500 BP, just at the beginnings of
the Holocene sequence. These data give support to
the existence in Niger of a Palaeolithic (or Epipalaeolithic) occupation phase, as had been suggested by
J. Desmond Clark.
Figure 3 The Ti-n-Torha East settlement (Libya). From Barich
BE (1998) People, Water and Grain The Beginnings of Domestication in the Sahara and the Nile Valley. Rome: LErma di
Bretschneider.

known the more-or-less contemporary sites of Temet 1

(96509450 BP), Ti-n-Ouaffadene (93609080 BP),
and Adrar Bous 10 (92208840 BP), which are all
tied to the lake expansion in the wet phase of the
Early Holocene. The lithic complex of these contexts,
as seen in Temet 1, continues the Epipalaeolithic tradition which, however, is already associated with
pottery. The oldest examples have been found in
Tagalagal, in the Bagzanes mountains (Ar) and dated
to between 9500 and 9200 BP. The Tagalagal ceramics
have a variety of forms and well-developed decoration.
Among these the dotted wavy line decoration is noteworthy, as it is the most characteristic motif of the

Pastoralists and Saharan Rock Art

During the 60005000 BP period (cal. 50004000 BC)
the pastoral culture was widespread throughout the
central and western Sahara. The presence of pastoralists was everywhere associated with elaborate rock
art works that seem to have had, at least partly, the
role of marking sacred places, where particular initiation ceremonies were carried out. In Niger, the sites
of Dogomboulo in the Fachi area (71006600 BP) and
Rocher Toubeau (56505500 BP), are the first examples of the Tenerian, a pastoral culture of the Middle
Holocene. It is characterized by thick bifacial tools,
such as gouges (flaked axes), discs, arrow heads, and
polished hand axes. The Tenerian economy included
animal husbandry, hunting, and gathering of wild
cereals. An almost entire skeleton of a domestic ox

AFRICA, SOUTH/Sahara, West and Central 65

Figure 4 Panoramic view of the Auis and Ti-n-Torha wadis, in northern Acacus. Photo Barbara Barich, unpublished.

(Bos taurus), found in Agorass nTast, was dated

to 62505250 BP. In the same area evidence for
gathering of wild plant species has been found, imprints
in clay vessels show the presence of Brachiaria and
Sorghum. The Tenerian reached its peak around
5000 BP and was particularly widespread along the
eastern side of Ar, between Adrar Bous and Areschima.

The Spread of Pastoralism in the

Late Holocene
There is a clear chronological gap in the distribution of
pastoral sites outside those areas discussed so far, both
toward the Sahel and in the sub-Saharan regions. On
the basis of the available data there is no evidence of
domesticated animals (see Animal Domestication) on
the northwestern edges of the Sahara, in the area between the Algerian and Moroccan lands of Atlas and
Aure`s to the north, and Tanezrouft to the south, along
the border between Algeria and Mali. This area seems
to have been inhabited by mobile groups who continued in the hunting/fishing/gathering tradition (the
culture of Hassi el Abiod).
Based on this evidence, it can be stated that the
northwestern part of the Sahara did not act as a
corridor for the movement of domesticated livestock
from the north (Aure`s) toward western Africa. In
the Middle Holocene (60005000 BP) the greatest
concentration of pastoral sites, such as the famous
Adrar Bous, is seen along the western side of the
Tenere, and it was probably from here that the
Saharan pastoralists spread out toward the south
and southwest, reaching the Atlantic coast of the
western Sahara at Tintan and Chami, the Adrar des

Ifoghas and Tilemsi Valley in Mali, Azawagh Valley

in Niger, pushing on to Dhar Tichitt in Mauretania,
Kintampo and Ntereso in Ghana, where they introduced sheep/goats and decorated ceramics, developing new dynamics that led to the first agriculture in
the region.
Between the mid-fifth and the mid-fourth millennium BP (cal. 35002500 BC) Niger (Azawagh, the Ar
region, Ighazer-Tigidit, and the Termit Massif) saw
the immigration of new groups with an organizational
structure, including the presence of elites who built
monumental tombs; these pastoral warriors were
distinct in their palaeoanthropological profile from
the previous population. Since the funerary monuments were primarily intended for males, we can
argue that they were created for prestigious figures
leaders within an aristocratic organization similar to
a chiefdom. For the groups in the Agadez region there
is evidence, from the third millennium BC, for the first
attempts at copper metallurgy, which makes that area
one of the oldest metalworking centers in Africa.
See also: Africa, North: Sahara, Eastern; Animal
Domestication; Rock Art.

Further Reading
Aumassip G (2001) LAlgerie des premiers hommes. Paris: Ibis Press.
Barich BE (ed.) (1987) British Archaeological Reports, International Series 368: Archaeology and Environment in the Libyan
Sahara: The Excavations in the Tadrart Acacus, 19781983.
Oxford: BAR.
Barich BE (1998) People, Water and Grain The Beginnings of
Domestication in the Sahara and the Nile Valley. Rome: LErma
di Bretschneider.

66 AFRICA, SOUTH/Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa

Cremaschi M and Di Lernia S (eds.) (1998) Wadi Teshuinat,
Palaeoenvironment and Prehistory in South-western Fezzan.
Firenze: Edizioni allInsegna del Giglio.
Garcea EAA (ed.) (2001) Uan Tabu in the Settlement History of the
Libyan Sahara. AZA Monographs N.2. Firenze: Edizioni allInsegna del Giglio.
Hassan FA (ed.) (2002) Droughts, Food and Culture Ecological
Change and Food Security in Africas Later Prehistory. New
York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow: Kluwer Academic/
Plenum Publishers.

Holl AFC (2004) Holocene Saharans, An Anthropological Perspective. London, New York: Continuum.
Kuper R and Klees F (eds.) (1982) New Light on the Northeast
African Past. Koln: Heinrich Barth Institut.
Lequellec J-L (1998) Art rupestre et pre`histoire du Sahara. Paris:
Editions Payot.
Paris F (1996) Les sepultures du Sahara nigerien du Neolithique a`
lIslamisation (2 vols.). Paris: Orstom.
Tillet Th (ed.) (1997) Sahara Paleomilieux et Peuplement
Prehistorique au Pleistoce`ne Superieur. Paris: LHarmattan.

AFRICA, SOUTH
Contents
Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa
Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers
Kalahari Margins
Late Holocene Foragers
Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers

Herders, Farmers,
and Metallurgists of
South Africa
Simon Hall and Shadreck Chirikure, University of
Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Bantu A large group of related languages spoken over much of
sub-Saharan Africa.
hunter-gatherer A way of life in which subsistence is based
on the hunting of animals and the collection of wild plants rather
than settled agriculture.
Iron Age The period during which iron was utilized by
people from about 3000 years ago, that in Europe, followed
the Copper and Bronze Ages. In southern Africa the Iron
Age was introduced and did not develop from the local
Later Stone Age and it was not preceded by a Copper or
Bronze Age.
Mapungubwe A World Heritage site in northern South Africa
at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo Rivers. It was
the capital of an ancestral Shona-speaking Kingdom that
flourished between AD 1220 and 1290 and which had influence
over parts of modern-day eastern Botswana and southern
Zimbabwe.
mixed farming A form of intensive agriculture consisting of
domesticated animal and crop production as food sources where
the maintenance of soil fertility results from the use of animal
manure as fertilizer.

Introduction
Archaeological research into the origins of food production in South Africa was only placed on a systematic footing from the 1960s. Radiocarbon dating
that helped establish a well-dated 2000-year ceramic
sequence was a significant contribution to this shift.
The chronology of Early Farmers refuted a dominant
apartheid narrative that asserted a shallow time depth
for Bantu-speaking farmers in South Africa. Since
the early 1990s the exposure of this suppressed
archaeology has become an important part of a new
democratic history. Research themes over this period
have emphasized refining ceramic culture history
sequences, settlement patterns and lifeways, and
cognitive archaeology using ethnographic models
to understand settlement space and the scale of
political power (Figures 1 and 2).

The First Mixed Farmers between AD 400

and 1000
The earliest good evidence for full mixed cereal and
livestock farming is dated to between AD 400 and 600.
Livestock associated with pottery known as Bambata,
however, predates unequivocal agropastoralism by
200300 years and is known from Southwestern
Zimbabwe, Botswana, and northern South Africa.
This Bambata Pottery is enigmatic and some suggest

AFRICA, SOUTH/Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa 67

next to rivers on deep alluvial soils. Where preservation allows, villages comprised a central cattle enclosure associated with metal working and ash dumps
surrounded by a domestic, ring of huts and granaries.
This was surrounded by a domestic ring of huts and
granaries. There has been much debate as to whether
this settlement layout can be interpreted through an
ethnographic model called the Central Cattle Pattern,
derived from late ninteenth- and twentieth-century
Nguni-speaking ethnography. Huffman argues that
cattle were probably socially and politically a key
resource, particularly as a medium for bridewealth,
from the inception of the early first millennium AD
mixed farming package. Others have suggested that
cattle only developed social importance toward the
end of the first millennium.
Hunter-gatherers were drawn toward settlements
and entered into exchange and barter relationships with Early Farmers. Most farmers were selfsufficient in terms of basic livestock, cereal, ceramic,
and metal production, but some settlements were
larger and others had dumps associated with central
cattle enclosures and which contained the debris of
prestige craft work and fragments of ceramic helmet

that it is the start of the Early Farmer sequence

while others link it to pioneer pastoralists or huntergatherers. It may be part of a general process that
resulted in the appearance of early sheep and pottery
in the Cape.
Whatever the case, food production did not evolve
from the local Later Stone Age. A package comprising village life, cattle, sheep, and goats, domesticated
crops such as sorghum and millet, pottery, and iron
and copper metallurgy was introduced from north
of the Limpopo River. This is evident because the
ceramics are the southernmost expression of a much
wider Early Farmer ceramic style found in central
and East Africa called the Chifumbaze Complex.
The Chifumbaze Complex is the archaeological
expression for the complex southward movement of
speakers of Bantu languages.
Early farmer settlements are only found in the
northern and eastern areas of the country (Figure 1).
This distribution falls within the summer rainfall
region and reflects the rainfall and temperature tolerances of the primary cereal crops, sorghum, and
millet. Farmers sought warm, lower altitude tree,
and grassland habitats and built their homesteads

Zambezi

KZ

LAN

go

an

zi

ub

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ene

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MOSU
SCH MFL
TKM TTW
im
KG
MAT
KAF
MAU
HR
BLY
ELD
PHA
SL
BDH
THA
BRT
JS LHS
RIV
BRS
l
MS
Vaa
NDW
WOS
KT MC

DUN

Vilanculos
Bay

Lim

po
po

po
po

CHI

Atlantic
Ocean

Gariep

p
ie

ar

ENK
MAM
NTK MAG
NAN
C
LIK
CHS
EW
BEL
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KGG
Se
SHO
NTS
UB MPB
e
al

do

Indian
Ocean

DR

CP
N
0

200

400

600

800 km

Figure 1 Distribution of Early Farmers. Taken from Mitchell P (2002) The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

68 AFRICA, SOUTH/Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa

masks. The ethnographic model infers that these

central zones were male activity areas and suggest
shallow political hierarchies in which some production and ritual were centralized.

The Rise of Social Complexity between

AD 900 and 1300
Between AD 900 and 1000, the junction of the
Shashe and Limpopo Rivers saw a significant shift
in political hierarchy within the Zhizo phase. A settlement known as Schroda was far larger than contemporary Zhizo settlements in the region and can be
identified as the capital of an emerging chiefdom.
This correlates with the intensification of trade links
with entrepots such as Chibuene and Sofala on the
southeast African coast. The Shashe/Limpopo area
supported large elephant herds. Ivory and probably
gold were exported where they entered complex trade
networks with Swahili, Arab, and Indian centers
around the Indian Ocean rim. Many of the thousands
of glass trade beads at Schroda originated in Indonesia.
At AD 1000, a new ancestral Shona-speaking
chiefdom entered the Shashe/Limpopo valley, wrested
power from Schroda and intensified trade links with
the coast (see Political Complexity, Rise of). A new
and larger capital was established at K2 and the number of smaller contemporary settlements increased
significantly. Increasing political power and wealth
was underwritten through the control of exotic
trade goods that now included cloth. This is reflected
by changes in the organization of the capital, where
the central cattle enclosure was moved out of the
town and suggests that political power was no longer

based only on cattle. James Denbow has shown that

contemporary Toutswe farmers in Eastern Botswana
to the west of K2 were also deeply enmeshed in trade
relationships. These extended deep into the Kalahari
and connected with the Okavango area of North Western Botswana and both pastoralists and hunter-gatherers
were involved in commodity production and exchange.
Despite this regional trade, however, Toutswe political
hierarchies never matched those of the Shashe/Limpopo
because access to exotic trade goods was limited.
Early in the thirteenth century, K2 was abandoned
and the town moved only 1 km away to Mapungubwe
Hill (Figure 2). The status of elites found full expression with their occupation on top of the hill, deliberately separated from the commoner section of the
town below. The establishment of the Mapungubwe
state initiated the Zimbabwe Culture sequence. This
represents a class-based system in which ruling elites,
as sacred leaders, centralized political and ritual
power, particularly rain making. Gold was assimilated into an elite value system and expressed in the
thousands of gold beads, gold-plated rhino, bowl, and
sceptre found in the royal cemetery on Mapungubwe
Hill (Figure 3). The state extended its control into
eastern Botswana though the boundaries are not yet
fully established. Agricultural production was extensive, and the distribution of commoner homesteads on
the edges of the Limpopo indicates that floodplain
agriculture was important. The Mapungubwe State
collapsed around AD 1300, possibly because of climatic and political factors. The main continuity in
the Zimbabwe Culture was north of the Limpopo
River with the rise of Great Zimbabwe, the capital
of the Zimbabwe State that dominated much of
present-day Zimbabwe.

Figure 2 Mapungubwe, the capital of the thirteenth-century Mapungubwe state.

AFRICA, SOUTH/Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa 69

Figure 3 The gold rhino from the royal cemetery at Mapungubwe.

Za

Zambezi

m
zi

ba

be

Cu

nen

ng

Ku

OLB
ZH

Lim

MESL

im
p

IC

o
op

p
po

PHA
GG ELD
PN HMY MSR
RK
MH OFP UJSESK BPM
KAD
MBY KM
Delagoa Bay
MOL IF BRS
TS
BUK Vaal
DIT
MGU IT
Indian
BKK
MKG NTT MZ
Ocean
OND
DF
DP TDBMGD RP BUL
KT
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OFD VEN TB
BLB
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Se
GL

Gariep

Gha

Atlantic
Ocean

Platep
au

MTS

ie

ar
G

NK
MPM
N
0

200

400

600

800 km

Figure 4 Distribution of Later Farmers. Taken from Mitchell P (2002) The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Later Farming Communities in the

Second Millennium AD
There is a significant break in the ceramic sequence
south of the Limpopo River, dating to the eleventh
century AD in present-day Kwazulu-Natal, and in
the fourteenth century in the areas just south of the
Limpopo River. New ceramic styles and different

settlement preferences mark the appearance of new

Bantu-speaking farmers (Figures 4 and 5). The newcomers were ancestral Nguni and Sotho/Tswanaspeakers who initiated the history of the majority of
contemporary South Africans. On linguistic and cultural grounds, the origins of these new groups are in
East Africa.

70 AFRICA, SOUTH/Herders, Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa

Figure 5 The central area of Molokwane, a stone wall western Tswana town dating between the eighteenth century and 1827.

By the fourteenth century, ancestral Sotho/Tswanaspeakers were established in the Limpopo region. By
the end of the fifteenth century, they had expanded
southwards to the edge of the southern grasslands. In
the north, Sotho combined with Shona-speakers who
had moved south across the Limpopo River, and by
the sixteenth century had intermarried and melded to
develop Venda as a language and an identity. Below
the escarpment to the east, ancestral Nguni-speakers,
known as Blackburn, had first settled the coastal area
by the twelfth century AD. From AD 1300 a second
phase had developed known as Moor Park. They
moved beyond the mixed habitats of the major river
valleys and expanded onto the higher grasslands over
the escarpment to the west, as well as southwards
along the coast to the edge of the viable summer rainfall zone. These Nguni farmers were the first to use
dry stone walls to mark homestead boundaries and
internal activity areas. Moor Park settlements are frequently found on steep-sided hills that may indicate
the defense of agricultural resources in the harsher
climatic conditions at the beginning of the Little Ice
Age. Climatic downturns may also have encouraged
dispersals by Nguni-speakers, one at AD 1600 and
another at AD 1700, over the escarpment into the western Sotho/Tswana dominated interior. Here they initially resisted Sotho/Tswana-speakers but were soon
culturally assimilated.
From the sixteeenth-century, Sotho-Tswana speakers had pushed further south across the Vaal River
and onto the grassland habitats of the Eastern Free
State and by the seventeenth century had reached the
climatic and environmental limits of sorghum and
millet farming. The use of dry stone walls to delineate
settlements was widespread by this time, particularly
on the treeless habitats of the southern grasslands.
There is a relatively direct historic relationship

between this archaeology and the ethnographic

present, and analogy allows settlement structure to
be read in some detail. In addition, as Tim Maggs
has shown, this period comes within the reach of oral
records which attach specific identities to settlement
types and individual settlements. Archaeological evidence, including rock art, ethnohistoric records, and
linguistic research show that complex interactions
between hunter-gatherers and farmers continued
well into the nineteenth century.
In the second half of the eighteenth century a process of political centralization gathered momentum
among western and eastern Tswana-speakers. The
oral records describe considerable tension between
competing chiefdoms. The archaeological correlate
is the aggregation of homesteads into large towns,
some of which were clearly defensive (Figure 5).
The first Europeans to visit some of them recorded
populations of up to 20 000 people. The factors
responsible for political centralization vary between
demographic surges, drought, the introduction of
maize, and the colonial frontier pushing from the
Cape Colony in the south and from the south east
African coast. Toward the end of the eighteenthcentury elephant ivory was a major trade item, and
competition over ivory, cattle, women, and other
resources for local use and trade were intense. The
best-known response to colonial pressure came in the
early nineteenth century when the Zulu state, under
Shaka, rose to power in the east. Colonial historians
of early nineteenth-century history blamed Shaka for
the mfecane, a period of political instability between
the early 1820s and the late 1830s. Revisionist historians see African state formation and increased militarism as a response to colonial pressures of which the
Great Trek northwards from the Cape Colony was an
inseparable process. With this event, the frontier

AFRICA, SOUTH/Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers 71

started to close and by the end of the nineteenth

century South African farmers had all but lost their
independence.
See also: Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area; Zimbabwe

Plateau and Surrounding Areas; Africa, South: Kalahari

Margins; Political Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading
Hall M (1987) The Changing Past: Farmers Kings and Traders in
Southern Africa, 2001860. Cape Town: David Philip.
Hammond-Tooke WD (1993) The Roots of Black South Africa.
Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball.
Huffman TN (1996) Snakes and Crocodiles: Power and Symbolism
in Ancient Zimbabwe. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University
Press.
Leslie M and Maggs T (eds.) (2000) African Naissance: The Limpopo Valley 1000 years ago. South African Archaeological Society
Goodwin Series 8. Cape Town: South African Archaeological
Society.
Mitchell P (2002) The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Interaction of Farmers,
Herders, and Foragers
Andrew B Smith, University of Cape Town, Cape
Town, South Africa

animals (cattle, sheep, goats) or traditional African

grains (sorghum, millet) to be found in southern Africa,
but how these were transferred is still disputed.
It used to be thought that the introduction of domestic food products was initially done by immigrant
Iron Age farmers into South Africa, but it is now clear
that these farmers only arrived about 1800 years ago,
and the sheep bones found mostly in cave sites of the
Western and Southern Cape predate their arrival by at
least 200 years.
The Khoekhoen (Hottentots) are known historically as the herders of the Cape, and were some of the
earliest sub-Saharan Africans to be met by European
travelers in the fifteenth century. Their wealth in cattle
made them a focus of attention, as their animals were
used to refresh the ships plying the East India trade.
Once sheep were excavated from sites at the Cape
dating to 2000 years ago, and especially when excavations began at Kasteelberg on the west coast of
South Africa, north of Cape Town, and dates of over
1800 years emerged in association with large numbers of sheep bones, it was immediately assumed
that the shepherds were ancestors of the historic
Khoekhoen. Today, not everyone agrees with this
assumption, so there is some debate on the development of pastoral society in South Africa.
There are thus two components to the arguments
on the origins of food production in southern Africa:
(1) how the animals and plants got there, and by
whom; (2) what happened once these commodities
arrived and spread to the Cape.

2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Khoisan Herders
Glossary
farmer Someone who works on or operates a farm.
forager Someone who hunts for food and provisions.
herder A worker who lives a semi-nomadic life, caring for
various domestic animals.
Khoekhoen A general name which the herding people of the
Cape used for themselves.
Khoisan A collective name that originally referred to the linguistic
and biological groupings of aboriginal people of southern Africa.
It has now taken on a cultural meaning in the popular literature.
Soaqua A name given to hunters by the Khoekhoen of the Cape.
The word means people different from ourselves and became
associated with those without livestock, or people who stole
livestock.

The Debate on Early Food Production

in Southern Africa
The arrival of food producers to southern Africa was
the end of a long process of gradual dispersal. The route
of domestic animals into the subcontinent had to be
from the north, as there are no wild progenitors of the

Khoisan people are the aboriginal inhabitants of

southern Africa. Although they must have formed a
single genetic population at one time, linguistically
there are three distinct groups whose click languages
are mutually unintelligible. This suggests separation
over a considerable period of time. Recent physical
anthropological work by Morris has suggested that
there are no Khoisan skeletons to be found north of
the Zambezi River, so any involvement of Khoisan
people with domestic animals had to take place either
along the Zambezi, or the rivers systems to the west,
such as the Kavango River. This immediately implies
the movement of domestic stock to southern Africa
by non-South Africans, either farmers or pastoralists
coming most probably from East Africa via a tsetsefree corridor (Figure 1), although movement via
Angola from the Congo cannot be ruled out. The
reason for this lack of clarity is due to large areas
of Central Africa being poorly understood archaeologically, and small groups of migrating pastoral
people may leave very little signs of their passing

72 AMERICAS, NORTH/Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers

Ngamuriak

Proposed route of sheep

circa 2000 B.P.
Distribution of ripple-rim ceramics
c. 2000 B.P.
Bambata
Lowland rain forest

Geduld
Falls Rock

Distribution of species of
morsitans tsetse

Spoegrivier
Kasteelberg Die Krans Boomplaas
Witklip
Die Kelders Blombos

Figure 1 Possible route of movement of domestic stock in Southern Africa 2000 BP. Taken from Smith AB (2006) Excavations at
Kasteelberg and Origins of the Khoekhoen in Western Cape, South Africa.

(see Africa, East: Foragers; Africa, North: Sahara,

Eastern; Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers).
Support for an East African connection comes from
linguistic work by Ehret which indicates that words
for ram, young ram, and milk ewe in Khoe languages came from a putative East Sahelian language
that existed in East Africa. Khoe-speaking hunters
still live along the Kavango River in the Caprivi, and
the river systems of northeastern Botswana south of
the Zambezi. This is also the base of the language
spoken by the Khoekhoen of the Cape. Thus, it would
appear that the Khoekhoe ancestors probably came
from the area of the Kavango and Zambezi. The
questions is: when did this happen?
One scenario would have domestic sheep arriving
in Caprivi via pastoralists or agriculturalists from
East Africa and transferred to Khoe-speaking hunters
who adopted sheep herding, and who spread southwards, eventually reaching the Cape some 2000 years
ago. The initial arrivals were small groups who are
difficult to see archaeologically, and it is from this
population that the early sheep bones and pottery
were transferred to hunters who occupied the small
rock shelters (Figure 2). Once the herders became
established, and their flocks grew, Smith suggests
they used Kasteelberg as an aggregation point for
harvesting seals, and at the same time used the fat
mixed with ochre in ceremonies.

An alternative is suggested by Sadr that the people

inhabiting such sites as Spoegrivier Cave, Die Kelders
Cave, Blombos Cave, and Kasteelberg G open-site
were indigenous hunters of the Cape who occupied
these sites before and after the introduction of sheep
and pottery, and who obtained sheep via internal exchange systems to become independent herders. This
scenario would further suggest that the Khoekhoen, as
known historically, were later arrivals at the Cape,
and who were the people who introduced cattle and
lugged pottery.

Southern African Iron Age Farmers

The arrival of Iron Age farmers to South Africa brought
the widest range of domestic plants and animals. These
people have been divided into three groups; (1) the
Kwale branch of East African Urewe Tradition;
(2) the Nkope branch of the Urewe Tradition; and
(3) the Kalundu Tradition from the Congo. They
brought with them ceramics whose designs can be
traced further north. They also brought an African
language, known as Ntu, which is part of the Niger
Congo family, and has its roots in the Cross Rivers
area of West Africa. They introduced iron technology which was crucial for making tools to clear
fields in the slash-and-burn system used, and for
weapons. Huffman believes that the layout of the

AMERICAS, NORTH/Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers 73

Figure 2 Excavated sites at Kasteelberg, Vredenburg Peninsular, Western Cape province, South Africa. Taken form Smith AB (2006)
Excavations at Kasteelberg and the origins of the Khoekhoen in the Western Cape, South Africa.

homesteads, which he calls the Central Cattle Pattern,

with huts surrounding the cattle kraal, and with
burials in the central cattle area, can trace its origins
to the earliest arrivals. Not everyone agrees. Lane
is skeptical that such a tradition can survive without
change for such a long period. Huffmans system of
decorative symbols on ceramics currently has the
strongest voice, and adherents would say the system
also carries through to the present.

Relations between Hunters and

Food Producers
Since the evidence indicates that food production
was introduced from the north, and that the ancestors
of modern Bantu-speaking farmers also came from
the north, we can assume at least a partial connection,
certainly as far as domestic plants are concerned.
The impact of the arrival of Iron Age farmers some
1800 years ago on the aboriginal Khoisan hunting
population along the southeast coast of southern
Africa may initially have been minimal, as the first
farmers needed to adjust to local conditions. This
would have been particularly true of the introduction of cattle which Gifford-Gonzalez says needed to
deal with epizootic diseases carried by wild animals,
such as buffalo and neonate wildebeest, and which
are potentially fatal to cattle. By 1500 years ago, the
highveld of South Africa was being colonized, and
the biological evidence suggests that aboriginal hunters were subsumed into Iron Age populations as
African farmers took wives from among the hunters.
This resulted in hypergyny (one-way gene flow),
since few hunters could have had access to the cattle

needed for bride-wealth payments to obtain farming

wives.
At the Cape, the historical evidence hints that
hunters (called Soaqua) continued to maintain a separate existence to the Khoekhoen, right up to the
colonial period in the seventeenth century. This leads
to the Dutch perceived separation of Bushmen and
Hottentots, as hunters and herders respectively, with
the Khoekhoen being the dominant group. In fact, a
description by the governor of the Cape, Simon van der
Stel, in 1685 epitomizes their relationship: We find
that these Soaquas are just the same as the poor in
Europe, each tribe of Hottentots having some of
them and employing them to bring news of the
approach of a strange tribe. They steal nothing from
the kraals of their employers but regularly from other
kraals . . . possessing nothing . . . except what they acquire by theft. The historian Elphick challenged this
separation, and suggested by the colonial period there
was only one group of Hottentots, and that the
Soaqua were Khoekhoen who had lost their stock
through theft or disease, and were on the downward
part of a cycle of fortune.
The separation between Khoekhoen and Bantuspeaking farmers was ecological. The Cape is a winter
rainfall area, so was not available to agriculturalists
with summer rainfall crops. Iron Age people never
spread to the Cape, leaving the southwest and Atlantic coastal areas open for pastoralism, while in the dry
interior the hunters held sway until later in the historic
period when deep underground water could be
tapped using wind-driven pumps.
See also: Africa, East: Foragers; Africa, North: Sahara,

Eastern; Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers.

74 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Further Reading
Ehret C (1998) An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern
Africa in World History, 1000 BC to AD 400. Oxford: James
Currey.
Elphick R (1977) Kraal and Castle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Gifford-Gonzalez D (2000) Animal disease challenges to the emergence of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa. African Archaeological Review 17(3): 95139.
Huffman TN (1980) Ceramics, classification and Iron Age entities.
African Studies 39: 123174.
Huffman TN (1986) Iron Age settlement patterns and the origins of
class distinction in southern Africa. Advances in World Archaeology 5: 291338.
Lane P (199495) The use and abuse of ethnography in Iron Age
studies of southern Africa. Azania 29/30: 5164.
Morris AG (2002) Isolation and the origin of the Khoisan: Late
Pleistocene and Early Holocene human evolution at the southern
end of Africa. Human Evolution 17(34): 231240.
Sadr K (2003) The Neolithic of southern Africa. Journal of African
History 44: 195209.
Smith AB (2005) African Herders: Emergence of Pastoral Traditions. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Smith AB (2006) Excavations at Kasteelberg and origins of the
Khoekhoen in Western Cape, South Africa. Oxford: BAR International Series 1537.

Kalahari Margins
James Denbow, University of Texas at Austin, Austin,
TX, USA

OkavangoZambezi and Limpopo Rivers. In the

north, the Okavango Delta, one of the largest inland
deltas in the world, provides a counterpoint to the
otherwise flat and thirsty sands of the Kalahari sandveld
into which it drains. From the Makgadikgadi salt pans
to the Limpopo River, greater physiographic relief prevails on the more fertile soils of the hardveld, which
today support over 80% of the regions population.
While the climate of the Kalahari has remained
relatively stable over the past two millenniums, the
archaeological record indicates that a number of
important cultural and economic transformations
have occurred, first as domesticated livestock were
introduced to supplement forager subsistence strategies
and, later, as more sedentary agropastoral communities
settled the more productive regions of eastern Botswana and along the margins of the Okavango Delta
(Figure 1). By CE 1000 changes in the internal dynamics of subsistence production, enhanced by the establishment of local trade networks that carried game
products, metal goods, and other valued objects, led
to more regional political formations and the appearance of the first chiefdoms (see Political Complexity,
Rise of). Connections with longer-distance trade networks in luxury goods that reached, through intermediaries in the Limpopo valley, eastward to the Indian
Ocean accompanied these internal changes, eventually
underwriting the more complex political and social
formations of the historic period.

2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Foragers to Herder-Foragers:

100 BCECE 700
Glossary
Great Zimbabwe The name given to the remains of stone,
sometimes referred to as the Great Zimbabwe Ruins, of an
ancient Southern African city, located at 20
160 S 30
540 E in
present-day Zimbabwe which was once the center of a vast
empire known as the Munhumutapa Empire (also called
Monomotapa or Mwene Mutapa Empire).
chiefdom Any community led by an individual known as a
chief. Chiefdoms are characterized by pervasive inequality of
peoples and centralization of authority.
Iron Age The stage in the development of any people where the
use of iron implements as tools and weapons is prominent. The
Iron Age is the last principal period in the three-age system for
classifying prehistoric societies, preceded by the Bronze Age. In
sub-Saharan Africa this system must be modified because no
Bronze Age comes between the Late Stone Age and the Iron Age.
Instead, the Iron Age follows directly from, and in some areas
overlaps with, the Late Stone Age.

Introduction
This chapter discusses the period between approximately 100 BCE and CE 1700, encompassing those
parts of the Kalahari region lying between the

The Appearance of Sheep and Cattle

Beginning around 2000 years ago archaeological data

from the Okavango region at sites such as Toteng 1
and Lotshitshi indicate that domesticated cattle and
sheep were added in small numbers to the subsistence
economy of Late Stone Age (LSA) populations living
by hunting, gathering, and, in some cases, fishing.
While early dates for herder-foraging in northern
Botswana were once viewed with skepticism because
of potential problems of association between charcoal samples and the domestic animal bones they
were meant to date due to mixing in the loose
Kalahari sand, the most recent calibrated AMS (accelerator mass spectroscopy) dates from Toteng, done
directly on cattle and sheep bones, place the appearance of both in northern Botswana between 200 BCE
and 100 CE. The domesticated animal remains at the
site predate levels containing Bambata ceramics by
several hundred years, indicating that the economic
changes associated with herder-foraging spread independently from pottery making and/or use.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins 75

Serondella
Tsodilo
Hills

Divuvu
and
Nqoma

Okavango
Delta

Lotshitshi

Toteng
Hippo
Tooth

Makgadikgadi
Pans

Tora
Nju

Kaishe
Toutswe

Bosutswe
Botswana

Kgaswe
K2 and
Mapungubwe

Los

Gaborone

0
0

50 100 km
50

100 mi

Administrative
districts
Geographic
features
Sandveld/
hardveld
boundary
Figure 1 Selected archaeological sites in northern and eastern Botswana. 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc.
All rights reserved.

Bambata Ware

Calibrated dates for the appearance of Bambata ware

at Toteng range between CE 215 and 555, which
brackets a date between CE 250 and 530 for a few
Bambata ceramics from the Late Stone Age site of
Lotshitshi near Maun. A bone apatite date of CE
7901010 for Bambata ware from the site of Hippo
Tooth extends this distribution eastward along the
NgamiBotletli River System to the southern edge of
the Makgadikgadi salt pans (Figure 2). Bambata ware
has also been collected from the surface of several
other, presently undated, sites in the Makgadikgadi
where it accompanies LSA materials.
Since cattle and sheep are not indigenous to southern
Africa, there has been debate about the ultimate source
of these domesticates for hunters and gatherers living
below the KuneneOkavangoZambezi Rivers. Some
argue for a source in the earlier pastoral Neolithic
of East Africa, while others propose more western
origins either in the Early Iron Age of northern Angola

and the Congo, or perhaps even the Cameroon. Debate

also surrounds the nature of the ceramic assemblages
classed as Bambata, with some arguing for indigenous
production of these ceramics by local hunter-gatherers
while others suggest that the ceramics were obtained
through trade with Early Iron Age communities, perhaps even as fragments used for ritual purposes or
curiosities rather than as functional vessels. Apart
from generalized stylistic resemblances to some ceramics from Benfica in western Angola, however, no
presently known Iron Age sites north or south of the
OkavangoZambezi Rivers appear to be definitive.
Sources for these early wares are unknown.
What is certain is that a diversity of hunting,
gathering, fishing, and herding adaptations developed
along the rivers, deserts, swamps, and other ecological
zones in Botswana at the beginning of the Common
Era. Precisely how stone-using foragers and herderforagers interfaced and interacted with arriving
agropastoral populations after CE 500 is uncertain,

76 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Figure 2 Bambata ceramics recovered from the LSA site of Hippo Tooth. 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc.
All rights reserved.

but it is likely that a variety of interactive forms developed that ranged from intermarriage and assimilation,
to fleeting interaction and trade and perhaps even
competitive or antagonistic relationships especially
along the western parts of the Boteti River where
the presence of Khoi-speaking herder-foragers appears
to have inhibited Iron Age settlement until 400
500 years ago. During the mid-nineteenth century, historic accounts indicate that some indigenous Khoe
populations in this region, such as the Deti, kept large
herds of cattle that might have put them in direct
competition with Bantu-speaking agropastoralists for
grazing and water rights. Further east, along the southern and eastern margins of the Makgadikgadi salt pans,

Early Iron Age settlements such as Kaishe were well

established by the tenth or eleventh centuries; ruins at
Tora Nju and other locations extend agropastoral settlement, social stratification, and Zimbabwe hegemony
into this region during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries.

Early Iron Age Communities on the

Eastern Margins of the Kalahari
Between CE 600 and 800 settled communities of
mixed farmers and herders appeared along the western
and southern fringes of the Okavango and Chobe
Rivers at sites such as Divuyu and Serondella, the

AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins 77

southeastern margins of the Makgadikgadi at Kaishe,

and in the hardveld of eastern and southern Botswana.
Studies of cave sediments in the Tsodilo Hills, along
with changes in prehistoric site distributions in central
and eastern Botswana over the past 2000 years, suggest that climatic conditions were wetter during the
last half of the first millennium CE. While agropastoral
communities had considerable overlap with indigenous hunters and gatherers in their use of wild plants
and animals, water points, firewood, and other natural
resources, they also introduced more intensive systems of land use as fields were cleared for sorghum,
millet, cow peas, and a variety of other crops. More
regulated systems of land rights were also needed to
manage growing herds of cattle, goats, and sheep, with
their increased labor, grazing, and water demands.
Cattle Wealth and Early Chiefdoms in Eastern
Botswana: CE 7001000

Between approximately CE 600 and 800 most settlements were small, mixed farming communities that
combined animal husbandry and agriculture with a
significant input from game and wild plants. Ceramic
styles link these communities culturally to settlements
known as Zhizo in Zimbabwe. Local distinctions in
ceramic style, however, suggest they were a separate
facies known as Taukome. By CE 700 domestic herds
were large enough to leave an easily recognizable
imprint on village layout in the form of centralized
deposits of unburned and vitrified dung, surrounded
by houses constructed of pole and a mixture of dung

and mud known as daga. This pattern recurs widely

across southern Africa and is known, as the Central
Cattle Pattern (CCP). Over the next 500 years, herds
continued to prosper and grow, producing dung
deposits over 2 m deep and 60 m in diameter in the
centers of some villages. These animals provided the
economic capital that permitted social and political
differentiation between CE 900 and 1100. Increased
social stratification based upon differential holdings of cattle and small stock is reflected in regional
settlement patterns as large, long-term settlements
such as Toutswemogala (Figure 3) and Bosutswe were
surrounded by smaller, more ephemeral satellite communities whose locations shifted when fertile land, firewood, and other productive resources were exhausted.
In concert with the increasing scale of political centralization and emerging chiefly authority exercised on a
regional level, as reflected in these regional changes in
settlement structure, ceramic assemblages become more
standardized in form and decoration and are known as
the Toutswe tradition (see Africa, South: Herders,
Farmers, and Metallurgists of South Africa).
Trade in Specularite and Social Differentiation
in Northwestern Botswana

Social differentiation based upon intensification of

commodity production and wealth accumulation was
also occurring at the Tsodilo Hills in northwestern
Botswana (Figure 4a and 4b) where intensive specularite mining took off between CE 800 and 1100.
Control of the specularite mines at Tsodilo enabled

Figure 3 Aerial view of Toutswemogala showing the characteristic Cenchrus-covered midden that commonly developed in association
with the animal kraals at deeply stratified Early Iron Age settlements in the eastern Kalahari. A smaller Cenchrus midden can be seen at
the base of the hill. 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

78 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Divuyu
Nqoma

(a)

DIvuyu

1000 m 500 m

Nqoma

10 m

20 m

Location of Iron Age sites in the Tsodilo Hills

(b)
Figure 4 (a) A view of the female hill at Tsodilo taken from the top of the male hill showing the locations of Divuyu and Nqoma.
(b) Topographic map of the Tsodilo Hills showing the locations of Divuyu and Nqoma. 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier
Inc. All rights reserved.

the Iron Age occupants at Nqoma to procure unparalleled quantities of iron and copper jewelry. Even
glass beads, cowry, and conus shells from the east coast
reached the site, making it the most distant inland
entrepot in eastern and southern Africa to have
obtained luxury goods from the Indian Ocean trade
in the first millennium (Figure 5). Finds of Nqoma
style ceramics in the lower levels of Bosutswe suggest
that at least some of these luxury goods were directed
westward through emerging Toutswe chiefdoms rather
than following routes along the Zambezi River. By

the beginning of the second millennium, however,

specularite sources in eastern Botswana may have
replaced those of Nqoma, leading to an attenuation
of these trans-Kalahari connections. Perhaps in
consequence, Nqoma was abandoned as an elite
settlement around CE 1100.
East Coast Trade and Early Chiefdoms in
East-Central Botswana: CE 10001200

Glass beads, marine shells, and even chickens

imported from the east coast begin to appear in

AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins 79

small numbers after CE 800, but apart from the differential distribution of livestock holdings there is
little other material evidence for social stratification
other than a tendency for the longer-term elite settlements to be established on rocky hilltops. Whether

Figure 5 An eleventh century ivory copy of a Conus shell bead

recovered from the excavations at Nqoma. Nqoma, more than
1500 km from the coast, is the most distant interior settlement so
far known to have been able to import luxury items such as glass
beads and cowry shells from the Indian Ocean. 2008 Dr. James
Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

rocky hilltops were chosen for defensive purposes,

or for their symbolic associations with power and
rainmaking, or a combination of both, is not
known. Caches of glass beads and other status
goods found at small sites such as Kgaswe indicate
that access to luxury goods was not restricted to the
elite on hilltop settlements and suggest that status
differentiation was more fluid than it was to become
later. Although more than 60 Toutswe period burials
have been excavated, none has been found with distinctively rich grave goods that would attest to more
developed class distinctions, such as those that make
their appearance after CE 1200 (Figure 6).
The presence of central animal kraals (a term now
widely used in southern Africa to denote animal
pens or byres) at all sites from the smallest to the
largest during the Toutswe period contrasts with
what is found after CE 1200 when only smaller sites
continue to be organized according to the CCP.
Kraals disappear from elite centers such as Bosutswe,
suggesting that an important change in herd management had occurred, with animals being shifted from
high-status locations to smaller, commoner settlements. Whether this was in response to ecological
difficulties brought about by overgrazing around
large centers, or it represents a symbolic shift associated with the establishment of more rigid social
hierarchies and class differentiation, is presently unclear. But there is no doubt that new spatial and

Figure 6 Toutswe burial from Bosutswe. Analysis of the skeletal material from Bosutswe indicates a population with better nutritional
health than that from Mapungubwe at the same time period. 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

80 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Figure 7 The site of Bosutswe on the eastern edge of the Kalahari. The large mound in the center of the site is formed from the remains
of substantial elite houses that date to the period after CE 1200 when most of the commoner Toutswe population was moved off the hilltop.
2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Bosutswe
Bronze bangle with glass bead
Gold bangle

through the wearing of quantities of glass beads,

copper and bronze jewelry, and cloth apparel
(Figure 8). Metal production, rainmaking, trade in
specularite, and other activities imbued with ritual
and economic significance become more centralized
at elite centers at this time (see Social Inequality,
Development of).

Class Formation: Political and Economic

Restructuring after CE 1200

2 cm

Figure 8 The elite at Bosutswe used metal jewelry to index their

social status. While they were able to acquire small quantities of
gold, they were not powerful enough to compete with the elite at
Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe for this commodity. In consequence, they turned to the use of high-tin bronze bangles that,
if kept polished, mimicked the appearance of gold. 2008
Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

material coordinates were mapped onto social distinctions and evidence from Bosutswe indicates that
the elite now lived alone on the hilltop, spatially
separated from their subordinates (Figure 7). They
ate from distinctively decorated ceramics patterned
after those from Mapungubwe and known as Lose
ware, and differentiated themselves in other ways

At the beginning of the thirteenth century a political

change occurred as the Bosutswe elite living in the
center of the hilltop aligned themselves with the elite
at Mapungubwe by adopting new ceramic styles that
evoked those of Mapungubwe. They further differentiated themselves from their followers by constructing
large, double-walled houses with sunken interiors
similar to those found at Mapungubwe. Commoners,
on the other hand, continued to use Toutswe ceramics until approximately CE 1300. Remains of burned
structures containing Toutswe ceramics on top of
Boutswe date this period of transition to around
CE 1200 and suggest that force may have been
involved in the transformation of the hilltop from a
Toutswe village, replete with houses and animal
kraals, to the secluded residence of a small number
of elite families (Figures 9 and 10). Late thirteenth
century dates for Toutswe ceramics at CCP villages
in the surrounding area suggest that a more rigid
system of class differentiation developed that was
similar to that now attested between Leopards
Kopje and Leokwe peoples in the Limpopo valley.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins 81

Figure 9 Remains of a burned house containing Toutswe ceramics at Bosutswe. The burning, which dates to the thirteenth century,
could suggest that the removal of commoner residences from the hilltop after CE 1200 involved the use of force. 2008 Dr. James
Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

100 W ceramic seriation

0%
10% 20%

Level
1
2
3
4
5, 6, 7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14, 15
Class 1e Class 1f Class 1c

Level
1
2
3
4
5, 6, 7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14, 15
Class 12

Class 2b

Class 2a

Class 1a

Class 2c

Class 1b

Class 13 Class 9 Class 6 Class 6b Class 5a

Class 3a Class 7 Class 4a 4b Class 11 Class 8 Class 2d Class 2e Class 3b Class 4d

Figure 10 Changes in ceramics over time at Bosutswe. The dramatic change in ceramic classes above level 4 date to the period when
elite residences inspired by Mapungubwe were built at Bosutswe. Ceramics of Class 4d originate in the Okavango region and indicate
trade westward across the Kalahari. Classes 4a and 4b, on the other hand, belong to the Leopards Kopje and Eiland traditions in South
Africa and suggest that changes in trade networks from west to east occurred after CE 1000. 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

82 AMERICAS, NORTH/Kalahari Margins

Imported glass beads, along with locally made

gold, bronze, and copper jewelry, were worn by the
new Bosutswe elite as an index of their status. The
earliest spindle whorls date from this period and suggest that cotton cloth was worn by the elite as another
mark of social distinction. Finds of bronze prills,
along with the crucibles used in melting copper and
with remains of iron forge bases, further suggest that

Figure 11 Agate disks recovered from a fourteenth century

cache of more than 100 at Bosutswe. Such stones may have
figured in rainmaking and other rituals. 2008 Dr. James
Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

the Bosutswe elite had centralized control over metal

production and exchange. The high tin content of
some of the Bosutswe bronze indicates it was locally
produced rather than manufactured from reworked
Mapungubwe bronze.
Metalworking has a well-known association with
the spiritual realm in the ethnographic record and
smelters, who were often associated in Central African tradition with kingship, played important roles as
spiritual mediators and sometimes diviners. Other
evidence suggesting that the Bosutswe elite now controlled spiritual resources include the recovery of a
cache of over a hundred thin, snow-white agate disks
from the floor of an elite structure in the center of the
hilltop along with glass beads, bronze bangles, and
the canine teeth from at least four hyena an animal
often associated with the supernatural (Figure 11).
Such agate disks would not be out of place in contemporary divination kits or rain-controlling paraphernalia and it is possible they served these functions in
the past as well.
The period between CE 1300 and 1500 saw the
rise and then collapse of Great Zimbabwe to the
east. While ruins of Zimbabwe type occur northeast
of the Bosutswe region, and even to the west along
the margins of the Makgadikgadi pans, none are
known in the region running from Bosutswe to
Toutswe. Bosutswe and other Lose-affiliated sites
appear to have been able to maintain their distinct cultural identity while interacting with Zimbabwe communities from which rolled-rim, graphite
burnished wares of Zimbabwe style, along with a
leadtin ingot, and other unusual commodities were
obtained.

Figure 12 Remains of a large, circular stonewall located on an island in the Makgadikgadi pans. Local Khoe-speaking populations still
leave offerings of coins and other objects at the site. 2008 Dr. James Denbow. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Late Holocene Foragers 83

The Forging of Contemporary Identities:

the Proto-Historic Period between 1500
and 1700
The impact of the political restructuring that occurred in the Bosutswe region as Great Zimbabwe
and then Khami rose to power is presently poorly
known. In the Francistown area south of the Shashi
River, the presence of Zimbabwe and Khami stonewalled settlements suggests that political and cultural
developments there were closely aligned with southwestern Zimbabwe. Related ruins on the southern
and eastern edges of the Makgadikgadi pans, however, suggest a more divergent historical trajectory one
that incorporated Khoe-speaking as well as Bantu
peoples into a more complex and multiethnic political
matrix (Figure 12). Bosutswe continued to be occupied by households using a cruder form of Lose
ceramics. But at the end of its occupation around
CE 1700, the remains of seven widely spaced
stone-walled ellipses were constructed that probably
served as household windbreaks the hilltop was no
longer the preserve of an exclusive elite. Similar stone
ellipses are found on hilltops far to the west along the
southern margins of the Makgadikgadi, but these are
yet to be investigated by archaeologists. Their relationship to the cultural sequence at Bosutswe, and to
the Zimbabwe and Khami period ruins in this area is
also unknown. In addition, walled-off promontories
that dominate the eroded headlands of the sandveld
hardveld boundary between Toutswe, Bosutswe, and
the Makgadikgadi suggest that some eighteenth century settlements were sited with defense as a consideration. But the political and economic context of
such unrest is uncertain, leaving the historical relationship of these ruins to contemporary constructions
of social and cultural identity along the margins the
Kalahari tantalizingly close, but unresolved.
See also: Africa, South: Herders, Farmers, and Metallur-

gists of South Africa; Interaction of Farmers, Herders,

and Foragers; Animal Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of.

Denbow JR (1990) Congo to Kalahari: Data and hypotheses about

the political economy of the western stream of the Early Iron
Age. African Archaeological Review 8: 139176.
Denbow JR (2002) Stolen Places: Archaeology and the politics of
identity in the later prehistory of the Kalahari. In: Falola T and
Jennings C (eds.) Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies
Across the Disciplines, pp. 345374. Transaction Publishers
Rutgers: Summerset.
Denbow JR and Thebe PC (2006) Culture and Customs of Botswana. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Denbow JR and Wilmsen EN (1986) The advent and course of
pastoralism in the Kalahari. Science 234: 15091515.
Huffman TN (2005) The stylistic origin of Bambata and the spread
of mixed farming in southern Africa. Southern African
Humanities 17: 5779.
Lane P, Reid A, and Segobye A (1998) Ditswa Mmung: The Archaeology of Botswana. Gaborone: Pula Press and the Botswana
Society.
Leslie M and Maggs T (eds.) (2000) Goodwin Series, Vol. 8:
African Naissance: The Limpopo Valley 1000 years Ago. Cape
Town: South African Archaeological Society.
Miller D (1996) The Tsodilo Jewellery: Metal Work from Northern
Botswana. Rondebosch: University of Cape Town Press.
Miller D (2001) Metal assemblages from the Greefswald sites,
South Africa: K2, Mapungubwe southern terrace, and Mapungubwe hill. South African Archaeological Bulletin 56: 83103.
Robbins LH, Murphy ML, and Campbell AC (1998) Intensive
mining of specular hematite in the Kalahari ca. AD 8001000.
Current Anthropology 39: 144149.
Robbins LH, Murphy ML, Brook GA, et al. (2000) Archaeology,
palaeoenvironment, and chronology of the Tsodilo Hills White
Paintings Rock Shelter, northwest Kalahari Desert, Botswana.
Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 10851113.
Robbins LH, Campbell AC, Murphy ML, Brook GA, Srivastava P,
and Badenhorst S (2005) The advent of herding in southern
Africa: Early AMS dates on domestic livestock from the Kalahari
Desert. Current Anthropology 46: 671677.

Late Holocene Foragers

Judith Sealy, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch,
South Africa
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Further Reading
Calabrese JA (2000) Interregional interaction in southern Africa:
Zhizo and Leopards Kopje relations in northern South Africa,
southwestern Zimbabwe, and eastern Botswana, AD 1000 to
1200. African Archaeological Review 17: 183210.
Campbell AC, Denbow JR, and Wilmsen EN (1994) Paintings like
engravings: Rock art at Tsodilo. In: Dowson T and LewisWilliams D (eds.) Contested Images: Diversity in Southern
African Rock Art Research, pp. 131158. Johannesburg:
Witwatersrand University Press.

forager Often used synonymously with hunter-gatherer (see

below). Some authors, following Binford, restrict the term to
groups who move frequently to new sources of food or other
resources, such as the Kalahari San.
Holocene Geological period that extends from the present day
back to about 10 000 radiocarbon years, approximately
11 430  130 calendar years BP (between 9560 and 9300 BC).
hunter-gatherer Society whose primary subsistence method
involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals
from the wild, using foraging and hunting, without significant
recourse to the domestication of either.

84 AMERICAS, NORTH/Late Holocene Foragers

Introduction
Our knowledge of past foragers in southern Africa is
geographically uneven (Figure 1). Most work has
been done in coastal areas, where the high visibility
of shell middens attracts attention, and where wavecut caves and rock shelters provide attractive sheltered camping sites for ancient and modern people
alike. A few such areas have been the subjects of
intensive study, but the archaeology of large areas of
the subcontinent is known poorly, if at all. Despite
efforts to correct this bias, our reconstructions continue to be heavily dependent on long sequence cave
sites, where good preservation of organic materials
allows for study of a wider range of remains than is
the case at most open sites. These problems notwithstanding, the study of foraging people in southern
Africa offers special opportunities, due to the preservation of a rich archaeological record and to the
continuing existence of Khoisan groups, descended
from these Late Holocene populations, who pursued a foraging lifestyle into the second half of the
twentieth century.

The Mid-Holocene
In mid-Holocene times, between about 8000 and
4000 BP, the arid central parts of South Africa were
thinly populated, probably because warmer and likely
drier conditions made already marginal environments
unattractive. People were, however, living in the

coastal areas of South Africa, in the northern parts

of the country, and in Namibia, Botswana, and
Zimbabwe. Stone artifact assemblages from this time
are characterized by very small, highly standardized
artifacts, especially tiny scrapers, and in many places,
crescent-shaped segments that may have been used
in arrowheads and/or as general-purpose small cutting tools (Figure 2). The composition of assemblages
changed over time (segments were especially timerestricted) but the small size of the artifacts, the relatively high proportion of retouched pieces, and a
preference for fine-grained stone raw material was
maintained. In the southern Cape, this tradition is
called the Wilton; these assemblages extend into
Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, where other
names have been used. The similarity of these microlithic artifact assemblages over long distances shows
that people subscribed to a shared set of social norms,
at least as far as the accepted way to make tools
was concerned.
Wilton artifacts include types very similar to items
collected from recent San or Bushmen, including
ostrich eggshell beads and beaded items, ostrich eggshell flasks, and bored stones used as digging stick
weights, among others. Archaeologists are confident
that the lifestyles of mid-Holocene foragers shared
many similarities with those of people who continued
to live by hunting and gathering into the twentieth
century. Striking parallels have been demonstrated by
David Lewis-Williams and others who have drawn

KALAHARI

BOTSWANA
NAMIBIA

LIMPOPO

MAGALIE
SBERG

Jubilee Shelter
Cave James

MPUMALANGA

Johannesburg

NORTH WEST GAUTENG

SOUTH AFRICA

Thu

kela

FREE STATE

ER

NORTHERN CAPE

Rive
r

KWAZULUNATAL
Durban
B

DR

AK

EN

EASTERN
CAPE

Cape
Town

WESTERN CAPE

Wilton Large
Rock
Shelter

cea

nO

ia
Ind

Figure 1 Map showing major geographical features of South Africa and sites mentioned in the text.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Late Holocene Foragers 85

Mid-Holocene artifact assemblages are not, however, uniform. Lyn Wadley has excavated two approximately contemporary sites in the Magaliesberg,
north of Johannesburg. Jubilee Shelter yielded many
standardized, formal, microlithic stone artifacts, often
made from carefully chosen, fine-grained stone not
available in the immediate vicinity of the site. These
were found together with bone tools, ostrich eggshell
beads and bead-manufacturing debris, and other
items. Cave James contained a very different kind
of artifact assemblage with informal tools, made
mostly from local raw material, suggesting much
more ad hoc manufacture. There were few nonlithic
artifacts, and much less evidence of craft activities.
Wadley has interpreted this difference as the result of
seasonal aggregation and dispersal of hunter-gatherer
groups, with formal artifact assemblages and formal
rules of behavior characteristic of aggregation-phase
campsites.

4000 to 2000 BP
Figure 2 Microlithic Wilton stone artefacts: segments (top) and
scrapers (bottom). Scale in mm.

Figure 3 Rock painting from Game Pass Shelter, Drakensberg,

showing eland, large cloaked figures and (at top) small running
humans.

from beliefs and practices of recent San communities

to gain insight into the world views expressed in the
complex and often very beautiful rock paintings
found in many mountainous areas of southern Africa
(Figure 3). Most of these paintings have not, so far,
proved amenable to direct dating, but portable cobbles with paintings on them have been recovered from
excavations, and can be dated by association with the
levels in which they were found. Some are more than
6000 years old. Rock-painting traditions continued
into the last few centuries, as images of colonial settlers and soldiers attest.

After about 4000 BP, populations grew substantially,

and the interior of South Africa was re-occupied. In
areas where detailed studies have been done, notably
the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces and the
Thukela River Basin of KwaZulu-Natal, we can see
that lower-ranked food sources were added to the
diet, including freshwater fish and shellfish, and
there was greater emphasis on plant foods. Hilary
Deacon has suggested that people may have practiced
fire-stick farming burning the veld to promote the
growth of geophytes, whose starchy corms were an
important food item. These are just the type of changes
one would expect if there were more people needing to
be fed. In at least some areas, growing population
density led to competition for resources, the emergence
of more settled, territorial lifestyles and, no doubt, restructuring of earlier networks of trade and communication. At the same time, we also see evidence of
increasing regional differentiation in artifact-making
traditions. At some sites, microlithic tool-kits persisted, while at others, they were replaced by macrolithic assemblages. In a broad sense, this variation is
likely to be one facet of the greater social and economic
complexity of the last few millennia, but there is
still much to explore in the links between material
culture, economy, and identity (see Africa, South: Interaction of Farmers, Herders, and Foragers; Kalahari
Margins).
These groups may not have been foragers in the
strict Binfordian sense. Storage pits, a feature of sites
in the southern and Eastern Cape in the last few
millennia, point to elements of delayed return strategies. Those pits whose contents are preserved seem

86 AMERICAS, NORTH/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers

to have been used mainly to store the oil-rich fruits of

Pappea capensis. It is unclear just how economically
important these were the fruit is edible, but the oil
was also used as a cosmetic, which may have been its
main use. In the Eastern Cape, infants and young
children who died were sometimes richly endowed
with grave goods, especially ostrich eggshell beads.
Simon Hall and Johan Binneman have suggested that
these items may have been given in gift exchanges,
and/or they may indicate a degree of ascribed status.
These features hint at emerging complexity among
Late Holocene hunter-gatherers in more productive
environments.
Mid- and Late Holocene hunter-gatherers were
physically similar to their recent Khoisan descendants:
small, lightly built people at the most gracile end of the
range of documented human variation. Why this
should be so is something of a mystery. It has been
suggested that recent Kalahari foragers were short in
stature because populations had had to adapt to scarce
resources, but this clearly does not apply to equally
small populations in resource-rich areas of the subcontinent; it is, therefore, probably not a major factor in
the Kalahari either. People were particularly short between 4000 and 3000 BP, for reasons that are not yet
well understood, but are likely to be linked to competition and conflict associated with increasing population density and the drive to intensify production.
Examination of Late Holocene human skeletons has
yielded remarkably little evidence of disease or trauma.
Accidents or falls that resulted in broken bones or
other injuries to the skeleton seem to have been rare.
There are a few documented cases of interpersonal
violence, all of which date to the third millennium
before present perhaps also related to conflicts to
do with the re-configuration of society at that time.
Overall, emerging reconstructions of Late Holocene
hunter-gatherers indicate a dynamic society, with different trajectories in different regions. As in late
hunter-gatherer communities in other parts of the
world, there is evidence of intensification; there is no
way of knowing whether this might eventually have
developed into domestication, if food production had
not been imported into the region.

saw the first iron-using agriculturists, who also kept

sheep and cattle, move in during the first few centuries AD. Relations between food producers and foragers were complex, with evidence of interaction
ranging across the spectrum from cooperation to
clientship to conflict. In time, independent foragers
were largely excluded from regions settled by farmers, although they continued to live until very recently
in less contested areas.

New Ways of Life

Glossary

The foragers world was altered forever around

2000 years ago by the importation of food production
from further north in Africa. In the western and
southernmost parts of Africa, the first domestic sheep
appeared around 2000 years ago, and by 1600 BP
herding had become an important new way of life.
The northern and eastern parts of the subcontinent

Early Holocene The early part of the geological Holocene

period that extends from the present day back to approximately
11 430  130 years BP.
forager Someone in search for food, in the context of
huntergatherer interactions.
Middle Stone Age (MSA) Period in the development of human
technology between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the
Stone Age.

See also: Africa, Central: Great Lakes Area; Africa, East:

Foragers; Africa, South: Interaction of Farmers, Herders,
and Foragers; Kalahari Margins; Hunter-Gatherers,
Ancient.

Further Reading
Deacon HJ and Deacon J (1999) Human Beginnings in South
Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town:
David Philip.
Hall S (2000) Burial and sequence in the Later Stone Age of the
Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 55: 137146.
Hall S and Binneman J (1987) Later Stone Age burial variability in
the Cape: A social interpretation. South African Archaeological
Bulletin 42: 140152.
Mitchell P (2002) The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Pfeiffer S (in press) The health of foragers: People of the Later Stone
Age, southern Africa. In: Cohen MN and Crane-Kramer G (eds.)
Ancient Health. Gainesville: University of Florida.
Sealy J (2006) Diet, mobility and settlement pattern among Holocene hunter-gatherers in southernmost Africa. Current Anthropology 47: 569595.

Late Pleistocene and

Early Holocene
Foragers
Colin A Lewis, Rhodes University, Grahamstown,
South Africa
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

AFRICA, WEST/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers 87

Late Pleistocene (also known as Upper Pleistocene or the
Tarantian). Latter part of the geologic timescale from 1.8 million
to 11 550 years BP.
Later Stone Age (LSA) Period in the development of human
technology that is traditionally the last part of the Stone Age.

Middle Stone Age

Parts of southern Africa were occupied by peoples of
Middle Stone Age (MSA) cultures during the Birnam
Interstadial (35 000 to 24 000 year BP) of the latter part of the Late Pleistocene. Characteristically, the
stone tools of the later MSA were triangular and
irregular flakes, blades, points, knives, scrapers, and
cores, as at Rose Cottage Cave in the Caledon Valley
of the Free State, near the Lesotho border (Figures 1
and 2). Comparable tools have been discovered in
unconsolidated deposits at Sehonghong in the Senqu
(upper Orange River) Valley in Lesotho, in Strathalan
Cave B near Maclear in the foothills of the Southern
Drakensberg in the Eastern Cape, and elsewhere.

Middle Stone Age/Later Stone

Age Transition
At Sehonghong, tools that are considered transitional
between the MSA and the Later Stone Age (LSA) were
discovered in deposits dating between 27 500 and
23 000 year BP (Figure 3). These and all other dates
are calibrated radiocarbon dates, the sigma ranges
are not shown. At Strathalan Cave B longer and

broader flake-blades were produced toward the

end of the MSA and date to between 28 250 and
27 250 year BP (Figure 4).
Occupation floors excavated at Strathalan Cave
B and dated to 33 900 and to between 28 250 and
27 250 year BP, contained patches of packed grass
that were presumably used as bedding and were
located near hearths, as well as twigs, corm scales,
other plant debris, and bone fragments (Figure 5).
These remains indicate that the inhabitants ate
corms of Watsonia as well as other plant foods, and
meat derived from rock hyrax (dassies) and from
various antelopes including eland, blesbuck, wildebeest, springbuck, and klipspringer. The MSA dwellers
of the area probably used fire to stimulate the production of edible corms and to encourage the growth
of new and sweet grass in order to attract game to
the area.
Fire was also important for warmth at a time
of deteriorating climate. Strathalan Cave B was
occupied at 25 000 year BP but was abandoned by
24 000 year BP, when extremely cold conditions
existed in the adjacent Drakensberg during the
Bottelnek Stadial, which began 24 000 year BP but
ended before 15 000 year BP. Palaeoclimatic conditions are evidenced at altitudes above 1800 m by rock
glacier and gelifluction (head) deposits and, although
dated less certainly, by moraines and protalus ramparts. No further evidence of human occupation of
the Southern Drakensberg exists until 12 000 year BP,
when the Ravenscraig rock shelter, near Barkly East
(Figure 1), was occupied. Lesotho and the interior

Rose Cottage
Cave
Bloemfontein
LESOTHO
Sehonghong
B
NS

AT

Ravenscraig

SOUTH AFRICA

ER

Durban

30

LAN

E
AK
DR Strathalan

TIC
EA
OC

The Karoo

Melkhoutboom

N
Boomplaas

Havens Cave

Wilderness

Cape Town

Nelson Bay
Cave

Grahamstown
Howiesons Poort

Port Elizabeth
Klasies River Mouth

20
Figure 1 Places mentioned in the text, with the addition of Cape Town, Durban, and Bloemfontein.

IN

A
DI

CE

AN

200
Km

30

88 AFRICA, WEST/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers

Figure 2 Stone tools characteristic of the later Middle Stone

Age, from Rose Cottage Cave, Free State, South Africa. 1, flake;
2, 3, point; 4, blade; 5, 6, core reduced piece; 7, point with reduced
butt; 8, scraper; 9, knife; 10, spall; 11, adze; 12, core rejuvenation
flake; 13, blade. Reproduced from L Wadley (1991) Rose Cottage
Cave: Background and a preliminary report on the recent excavations. South African Archaeological Bulletin 46: 125130, with
permission from the South African Archaeological Society.

Figure 4 Long and broad flake blades from Strathalan Cave B,

produced toward the end of the MSA: 1, flake-blade; 26,
retouched flakes; 7, point. Reproduced from Opperman H (1996)
Strathalan Cave B, north-eastern Cape Province, South Africa:
Evidence for human behaviour 29,00026,000 years ago. Quaternary International 33: 4553, with permission of Elsevier/INQUA.

Figure 3 Formal stone tools of the later MSA, Sehonghong, Lesotho. 14, scrapers; 5, flake; 69, knives. Reproduced from PJ Mitchell
(1994) Understanding the MSA/LSA transition: The pre-20 000 BP assemblages from new excavations at Sehonghong rock shelter, Lesotho.
Southern African Field Archaeology 3: 1525, with permission from the Board of the Trustees of the Albany Museum, Grahamstown.

AFRICA, WEST/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers 89

of South Africa were apparently unoccupied during

the Bottelnek Stadial and earlier part of the succeeding Late Glacial, which lasted from 15 000 until
11 500 year BP.

Areas at lower altitudes and on the coastal side

of the Great Escarpment (Drakensberg) were occupied during the Bottelnek Stadial, as at Howisons
Poort near Grahamstown, Nelson Bay Cave near
Plettenberg Bay, Melkhoutboom Cave between
Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, and Boomplaas
near Oudtshoorn.

Howiesons Poort: A Problem Type-Site

Figure 5 Plant remains on an occupation floor dating to 33 900

year BP, Strathalan Cave B. Photographed and reproduced by
permission of H. Opperman.

Excavations in a rock shelter in Howisons Poort

(misspelt Howiesons in the archaeological literature)
revealed the presence of artifacts of both MSA and
LSA character (Figures 6 and 7) and the whole artifact assemblage was named the Howiesons Poort
industry.
Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from excavations
at the Howiesons Poort type-site in 1965 (Figure 8)
indicated that the artifacts had accumulated between
23 000 and 10 500 years ago (the calibrated dates are
here rounded to the nearest 500 years). These dates
were initially considered too young, since artifact

Figure 6 Artifacts of mixed MSA/LSA character from the Howiesons Poort type-site: (a), obliquely backed blades; (b) retouched
unifacial points. Reproduced from Deacon J (1995) An unsolved mystery at the Howiesons Poort name site. South African Archaeological
Bulletin 50: 110120, by permission of the South African Archaeological Society.

90 AFRICA, WEST/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers

Later Stone Age Industries

Figure 7 Segments, such as occur both in a restricted time

slot in the MSA. . .and in the middle Holocene during the LSA
(Deacon, 1995): Howiesons Poort type-site. They were probably
mounted onto handles to form cutting tools. Reproduced from
Deacon J (1995) An unsolved mystery at the Howiesons Poort
name site. South African Archaeological Bulletin 50: 110120, by
permission of the South African Archaeological Society.

assemblages of similar character at Klasies River

Mouth and elsewhere in Africa are thought to center
on 70 000 year BP.
Geomorphological examination of fluvial sediments in Howiesons Poort, supported by radiocarbon dating, has shown that flood plain deposition
began on the floor of the Poort around 10 750 year
BP, as fluvial and associated processes reworked sediments from the valley sides in the Early Holocene.
This time period was apparently moister than the preceding Late Glacial and Bottelnek Stadial. The sediments at the Howiesons Poort type-site have not been
reworked into the valley floor deposits, presumably
due to their favored location within the rock shelter.
The stratigraphic layer within which the artifacts
occur (Figure 8, layer 4) is the thickest unit at that
site and includes roof spalls such as might have taken
place under cold and frosty conditions during the
Bottelnek Stadial. There is no geomorphological reason to doubt the radiocarbon dates from the
archaeological type-site. The Howiesons Poort industry, at least at the type-site, may be much younger
than was previously believed and possibly form part
of the LSA rather than the MSA.

Three LSA industries have been widely recognized

in South Africa: Robberg, Oakhurst Complex, and
Wilton, the last of which is younger than the Early
Holocene.
Backed tools, scrapers of various sizes, unretouched microlithic bladelets, and bladelet cores
are characteristic of the Robberg industry (Figure 9).
This industry was identified at Nelson Bay Cave on
the Robberg Peninsula (after which it has been
named), near Plettenberg Bay, where it post-dates
22 000 but pre-dates 14 000 year BP. The same industry dates from somewhat before 18 000 but ended
before 12 250 year BP at Melkhoutboom and from
after 24 000 but before 17 000 year BP at Boomplaas.
Artifacts typical of the Robberg have also been found
at some sites inland of the Drakensberg, as at Rose
Cottage Cave where they pre-date 15 000 year BP. The
Robberg industry apparently existed more recently in
Lesotho and adjacent upland areas than elsewhere in
the subcontinent. Non-stone tools associated with
the Robberg include bone and ostrich eggshell beads,
tortoise-shell bowls and polished bone points.
At Nelson Bay Cave the fauna associated with
the Robberg industry was animals typical of opencountry, grassy habitats, including giant buffalo, an
equine that may have been a quagga, springbok, and
alcelaphine antelopes: blesbok/bontebok, wildebeest,
hartebeest, and a giant alcelaphine. They indicate that
after 22 000 but before 14 000 year BP there were
extensive grasslands on the coastal plateau in the
Plettenberg Bay area and not the present climax vegetation type of closed evergreen forest. Virtually no
remains of sea mammals occur in Robberg industry
levels at Nelson Bay Cave, presumably because sea
levels were much lower than at present and the cave
was therefore located too far from the coast for them
to be exploited by its human inhabitants.
The Oakhurst Complex is named after a type-site
near Wilderness on the southern Cape coast. End,
round, and D-shaped scrapers; duckbill scrapers
with parallel sides and outward splay toward their
terminus; wide-ranging polished stone tools, and few
microliths are typical of the complex (Figure 10). At
Ravenscraig, in the Southern Drakensberg, Oakhurst
assemblages date from 12 000 year BP but are at least
2000 years older at sites that include Bushman Rock
Shelter in Mpumalanga. They have also been reported
from the south and west coasts of the subcontinent
as well as from the Free State, Lesotho, KwaZuluNatal, and elsewhere. The Albany industry is a regional variant of the complex in coastal and adjacent
areas, while the Lockshoek industry is a variant in
the Karoo.

AFRICA, WEST/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers 91

Figure 8 View of excavation into deposits of the Howiesons Poort type-site, showing the position of radiocarbon-dated charcoal
samples with their calibrated dates and laboratory analysis numbers. The stratigraphic layers are also shown as is the compass
orientation of the section. Layer 4 contained most artifacts. Layer (5) was sand of decomposed bedrock. Reproduced from Deacon J
(1995) An unsolved mystery at the Howiesons Poort name site. South African Archaeological Bulletin 50: 110120, by permission of the
South African Archaeological Society, but with calibrated dates.

Figure 9 Distribution and characteristic artifacts of the Robberg industry showing bladelet cores and bladelets (left), large and small
scrapers and backed tools. Reproduced with permission from Deacon HJ and Deacon J (1999) Human Beginnings in South Africa:
Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town: David Philip.

The Albany industry dates from 14 000 to 10 000

year BP at Nelson Bay Cave, 12 250 to 8000 year
BP at Melkhoutboom, pre-dates 17 000 but ended

before 7250 year BP at Boomplaas, and existed before

11 250 but ended before 7500 BP at The Havens Cave
in the Baviaanskloof, some 50 km inland from the

92 AFRICA, WEST/Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Foragers

Figure 10 Sites at which the Oakhurst Industrial Complex has been dated, with typical artifacts. After Deacon HJ and Deacon J (1999)
Human Beginnings in South Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town: David Philip, by permission of HJ and
J Deacon, with map after Wadley L (2000) The Early Holocene layers of Rose Cottage Cave, Eastern Free State: Technology, spatial
patterns and environment. South African Archaeological Bulletin 55: 1831, by permission of the South African Archaeological Society.

coast west of Port Elizabeth. The Albany industry

has also been reported from many sites in the
Grahamstown area and elsewhere.
Seals were an important source of food during
Albany times at Nelson Bay Cave, indicating that
sea level had risen and the sea was near the site by
14 000 year BP after reaching a low of 130 m
below that of the present during the Last Glacial
Maximum (LGM). Other important sources of
meat were rock hyrax, Hippotragus spp., grysbok/
steenbok, bushpig, reedbuck, and Cape buffalo. The
last reported occurrences of eland and warthog
in deposits at the cave, which are associated with
Albany industry levels, and the advent of bushbuck,
indicate that open grasslands were being replaced
by more bushy vegetation, probably as a result of
increasingly wet climatic conditions as the Late Glacial was succeeded by the Early Holocene. An increase in bushy vegetation at this time also occurred
on the highlands of the Free State, as near Rose
Cottage Cave, possibly due to increasingly moist conditions associated with the extension of the summer
rainfall region into the area in the Early Holocene.
Shellfish were an important part of the diets of Albany
industry foragers at Nelson Bay Cave and elsewhere in
coastal areas.
During Robberg and Oakhurst Complex times the
inhabitants of southern Africa were foragers who
may have followed seasonal migratory patterns in
order to exploit the available food resources, and
who occupied established (but temporary) dwelling
sites. They probably lived in family/kin groups that
varied in size from season to season. The population
of the subcontinent, as judged from the number of

sites at which archaeological evidence has been found,

was probably thinly spread and low in numbers.
Major environmental changes took place during
Robberg and Oakhurst Complex times, as earlier in
the Quaternary. The detailed response of the human
inhabitants of southern Africa to those changes,
during the Late Glacial and the Early Holocene,
remains to be established.

Acknowledgments
Stephan Woodborne and Marc Pienaar of the Quaternary Dating Research Unit in Pretoria are thanked for
calibrating dates for this overview.
See also: Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers.

Further Reading
Deacon HJ (1976) Where Hunters Gathered. South African
Archaeological Society Monograph Series, 1, 229 pp. Cape
Town: South African Archaeological Society.
Deacon HJ and Deacon J (1999) Human Beginnings in South
Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age. Cape Town:
David Philip.
Deacon J (1995) An unsolved mystery at the Howiesons Poort
name site. South African Archaeological Bulletin 50: 110120.
Inskeep RR (1978) The Peopling of Southern Africa. Cape Town:
David Philip.
Klein RG (1972) The Late Quaternary mammalian fauna of Nelson
Bay Cave (Cape Province, South Africa): Its implications for
megafaunal extinctions and environmental and cultural change.
Quaternary Research 2: 135142.
Lewis CA (2005) Late Glacial and Holocene palaeoclimatology of
the Drakensberg of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Quaternary
International 129: 3348.

AFRICA, WEST/Early Holocene Foragers 93

Mitchell PJ (1994) Understanding the MSA/LSA transition: The pre20 000 BP assemblages from new excavations at Sehonghong rock
shelter, Lesotho. Southern African Field Archaeology 3: 1525.
Opperman H (1996) Strathalan Cave B, north-eastern Cape
Province, South Africa: evidence for human behaviour
29,00026,000 years ago. Quaternary International 33: 4553.
Singer R and Wymer JJ (1982) The Middle Stone Age at Klasies
River Mouth in South Africa. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Wadley L (1991) Rose Cottage Cave: Background and a preliminary report on the recent excavations. South African Archaeological Bulletin 46: 125130.
Wadley L (1997) Rose Cottage Cave: Archaeological work 1987 to
1997. South African Journal of Science 93: 439444.
Wadley L (2000) The Early Holocene layers of Rose Cottage Cave,
Eastern Free State: technology, spatial patterns and environment.
South African Archaeological Bulletin 55: 1831.

AFRICA, WEST
Contents
Early Holocene Foragers
Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists
Villages, Cities, and States

Early Holocene
Foragers
Joanna Casey, University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
terra cotta cigars Flattened, elliptical items made of sandstone
or, rarely, clay that are often scored or pecked on one or both
sides. They are known only from Kintampo Complex Sites
(30004000 years ago) in Ghana. Their function has never been
determined, but abrasion on many specimens suggests
grating or rasping.

The end of the Pleistocene brought dramatic climate

change to West Africa. During the last glaciation in
the Northern Hemisphere, Africa underwent a period
of extreme aridity when the Sahara Desert expanded
well beyond its current limits, and savanna and forest
zones were compressed toward the coasts. Much of
West Africa was unpopulated during this time, but
during the early Holocene a humid phase brought
plants, animals, and people back to the region.
Understanding the Holocene foragers is made difficult by a number of factors. Certainly the archaeological evidence over this vast region is not as complete as
one would prefer due to preservation problems and
the difficulty of acquiring adequate research coverage. Equally significant is the nature of the data itself.
Artifact types such as ceramics, grinding stones, and

ground stone tools that are usually associated with

farming communities appear early in sequences, long
before there is any evidence for domestic crops. When
domestic plants and animals do appear, foraging continues to play an essential role in subsistence activities, and it is often unclear whether we are seeing
mixed economies, or the interactions of subsistence
specialists.
With the return of humidity to the Sahara, there
were no major geographical barriers to the movements of people throughout West Africa, yet researchers have tended to specialize in one of three areas: the
Sahara, the sahel, or the forests and savannas (see
Africa, North: Sahara, West and Central). Although
the differences in these areas may be more perceived
than real due to a lack of communication among
researchers, there is increasing evidence that contact
between these regions was infrequent until relatively
late in antiquity.
The terminal Pleistocene arid episode ended at
around 12 000 BP with geological and palynological
evidence indicating the appearance of rivers and lakes
with their attendant flora and fauna. The earliest
evidence for human reoccupation of the Sahara
comes from small lithic scatters, characterized by
blades and bladelets and sometimes shouldered
Ounanian points. Little is known about the people
who made the artifacts that are found in the central
Sahara, but the resemblance of their artifacts to
materials from North Africa suggests that they had
a northern origin. At around 9500 years ago, ceramics
appear at the sites of Amekni, Ti n Torha, and Tagalagal in the central Sahara (Figure 1). These are the

94 AFRICA, WEST/Early Holocene Foragers

Hoggar

Ti n Torha
Uan Afuda
Uan Muhugggiag

Amekni
Tibesti

Adrar Bous

Air

Dhar Tichitt
Tilemsi
Valley
Ounjougou
Kourounkorokale

Yagala
Kamabai

Tagalagal

Lake Chad

Rim
Maadaga

Rop
Dutzen Kongba

Birimi
K6

Yengema
Kokasu

Agarade
Bosumpra

Sopie

Kpone
Bingerville

Figure 1 Location of sites mentioned in the text.

Mejiro
Iwo Eleru

Sumpa

Shum Laka

Afikpo
Map
Area

AFRICA, WEST/Early Holocene Foragers 95

earliest known ceramics on the continent, indicating

that they developed independent of outside influences. Grinding stones are also in abundance at
most sites and suggest an intensive use of wild grains.
Faunal evidence from all sites indicates exploitation
of local fish and game. Selective hunting techniques
were used at Ti n Torha, and the penning of Barbary
sheep is documented at Uan Afuda.
At around 7500 years ago, a short but intense dry
period caused a readjustment in many parts of the
Sahara. Parts of the eastern and central Sahara appear
to have been briefly abandoned, while in other parts
people shifted their settlements with the shrinking
shorelines of the lakes. In the central Sahara, people
increasingly settled around the permanent water
sources from which they exploited both aquatic and
terrestrial resources (see Africa, North: Sahara, Eastern; Sahara, West and Central). Sites from this time
are characterized by the presence of bone harpoons,
numerous fish bones, and ceramics bearing wavy line
motifs. Initially, the broad similarity among the sites
led researchers to consider it to be one vast culture
complex stretching from Senegal to the Red Sea and
lasting for 3000 years. Recent research however indicates that the similarities among the sites are very
superficial and can largely be attributed to similar
subsistence orientations. Variations in the contributions of various plants and animals, and in the raw
materials, techniques of manufacture, and styles of
lithics and ceramics indicate significant regional differences that have been obscured by the focus on
wavy lines and fish.
The return of humidity is marked by pastoralists entering the Sahara. The earliest cattle date to
59505700 years BP at Adrar Bous and Uan Muhuggiag, but cattle spread rapidly throughout the Sahara
and by 4000 years ago were in the Tilemsi Valley and
Mema regions of Mali, and as far south as Lake
Chad. Over much of the Sahara, the appearance of
cattle, sheep, and goats is not accompanied by a
significant change in material culture. While this
may indicate the adoption of domestic animals by
the settled foragers, it is also likely that the foragers
and herders developed reciprocal relationships similar to those witnessed today between farmers, fishers,
and herders in the inland delta of the Niger River, and
among farmers and herders right across West Africa
(see Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and Crafts
Specialists). Identifying the sites of mobile pastoralists is notoriously problematic because they leave so
few remains, and in West Africa it is complicated by
the difficulty of distinguishing early domestic cattle
from indigenous West African buffalo (Syncerus caffer). Domestic animals are attested to by the presence
of bovid bones in archaeological sites, but at many of

these sites, wild animals continue to play a crucial role

in the subsistence economy.
South of the Sahara a different scenario prevails.
During the terminal Pleistocene dry phase, forests and
savannas continued to exist along the coast and probably as far north as 11 . While the area could have been a
refuge for people who had abandoned the Sahara, there
is little evidence for this. The post-Pleistocene rise in sea
levels may have obliterated the evidence for coastal
sites, but it is notable that there is little reliable evidence elsewhere for occupation between 20 000 and
13 000 years BP. Shum Laka, in Cameroon, may be an
exception. Here cultural deposits go back 30 000 years,
and the environment appears to have seen only minor
change during the terminal Pleistocene. The earliest
Holocene occupations south of the Sahel contain microliths, although it is sometimes difficult to determine
whether individual authors are referring to formed,
geometric microliths or simply to the small size of the
lithic material. Microliths occur at many early sites
in Central Africa, starting at around 40 000 BP, and
appear at Shum Laka around 30 000 BP, presenting the
possibility that the spread of microliths south of the
Sahel came from the east. The earliest microlithic sites
in West Africa include Bingerville-Highway (Cote
dIvoire), Iwo Eleru (Nigeria), and Rim (Burkina Faso)
which date to 13 00011 000 years ago. Similar assemblages are found at Maadaga (Burkina Faso), Rop,
Afikpo, Mejiro Cave, Dutzen Kongba (Nigeria), and
Kourounkorokale (Mali). Some of these sites are overlain by microlithic assemblages bearing ceramics and
ground stone tools, a trend that appeared throughout
sub-Sahelian West Africa around 6000 years ago and
continued until the first millennium AD. Shum Laka
and Ounjougou (Mali) have early occurrences of this
sort, while Iwo Eleru and Bosumpra (Ghana) are slightly
later. Other sites from this period include Sopie, Kokasu
(Sierra Leone), Yengema, Yagala, Kamabai (Liberia),
Sumpa (Cameroun), Agarade Rock Shelter (Togo),
and Kpone Shell Midden (Ghana).
Nonmicrolithic occurrences with large format
flakes, core tools, and prepared core technologies
also occur at a small number of sites south of the
sahel from the Late Pleistocene through the midHolocene. These sites were thought to be further
evidence for central African affinities, but the wide
and patchy distribution of these sites, along with their
variability, suggests that they relate to specialized
heavy-duty activities and adaptation to poor-quality
raw material rather than to cultural migrations.
At around 4500 years ago, the climate became arid
again, and people started to leave the desert. The
most dramatic response to the increasing aridity is
witnessed at Dhar Tichitt in Mauritania where cattlekeeping people increasingly fortified their settlements

96 AFRICA, WEST/Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists

with stone enclosures and moved closer and closer

to the shrinking water sources. Seed impressions on
ceramics show an increasing reliance on wild and
ultimately domestic millet by 3700 years BP.
Some time after 4000 years ago, settlements start
to appear in sub-Saharan West Africa. The Kintampo
Complex, known only from Ghana, is the earliest of
these. Kintampo sites share a material culture characterized by ground stone tools, grinding stones, ceramics bearing comb-stamped decoration, and projectile
points styles that resemble those found farther to the
north. The fossile directeur of the Kintampo Complex
is the terra-cotta cigar, a flattened elliptical object
of unknown function, made from fine-grained sandstone and scored, pecked, and/or abraded on both
sides. Individual Kintampo sites have produced fishhooks, beads, and figurines. Reliable subsistence
information has been scarce. The best evidence is
from K6 Rock Shelter where the assemblage was
dominated by wild species with evidence for an
increase over time in species that prefer settlements
and cleared areas. Much has been made of the domestic animal bones found at some Kintampo sites. While
the cattle bones have been dismissed, the bones from
one or two domestic caprines have been confirmed
at K6. While these bones demonstrate that domestic
animals were present during Kintampo, their contribution to the economy is unclear. Domestic millet
found at Birimi in northern Ghana indicates that the
Kintampo people did cultivate domestic crops, but
Kintampo sites are found in diverse ecosystems,
some outside of the area in which millet will grow.
Furthermore, Kintampo sites are characterized by the
presence of tools specific to the extraction of local
resources. Both these factors, and the high incidence
of wild plant and animal species in Kintampo sites
suggest that farming was most likely only a part of a
complex subsistence strategy.

Monographs in African Archaeology No. 51; BAR International

No. 906. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Casey J (2005) Holocene occupations of the forest and savanna.
In: Stahl AB (ed.) African Archaeology, pp. 225248. London:
Blackwell.
Cornelissen E (2003) On microlithic quartz industries at the end
of the Pleistocene in Central Africa: The evidence from Shum
Laka (NW Cameroon). The African Archaeological Review
20(1): 124.
Garcea EAA (2004) An alternative way towards food production:
The perspective from the Libyan Sahara. Journal of World
Prehistory 18(2): 107154.
Haour AC (2003) One hundred years of archaeology in Niger.
Journal of World Prehistory 17(2): 141179.
Huysecom E, Ozainne S, Kaeli F, Ballouche A, Rasse M, and Stokes S
(2004) Ounjougou (Mali): A history of holocene settlement at the
southern edge of the Sahara. Antiquity 78: 579593.
Lavachery P (2001) The Holocene archaeological sequence of
Shum Laka rock shelter (grasslands, western Cameroon). The
African Archaeological Review 18(4): 213247.
MacDonald KC (1997) Kourounkorokale revisited: The Pays
Mande and the West African microlithc technocomplex revisited. The African Archaeological Review 14(3): 161200.
Mohammed-Ali AS and Kabir ARK (2003) The wavy-line and
dotted wavy line pottery in the prehistory of the central Nile
and the Sahara-sahel belt. The African Archaeological Review
20(1): 2558.
Muzzolini A (1993) The emergence of a food-producing economy
in the Sahara. In: Shaw T, Alexander J, and Opoko A (eds.) The
Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns, pp. 227239.
London: Routledge.

See also: Africa, North: Sahara, Eastern; Sahara, West

and Central; Africa, South: Late Pleistocene and Early
Holocene Foragers; Africa, West: Herders, Farmers, and
Crafts Specialists; Animal Domestication.

Neolithic A period in the development of human technology that

is traditionally the last part of the Stone Age.
herders Workers who live a semi-nomadic life, caring for
various domestic animals, especially in places where these
animals wander unfenced pasture lands.
cultigens Organisms, particularly cultivated plants, that do not
have a wild or uncultivated counterpart. These are species that
were domesticated (grown and selected by humankind) from so
far back in antiquity, and have undergone such drastic
transformation under prehistoric human selection, that the plant
ancestry is essentially unknown.

Further Reading
Breunig P and Neumann K (2002) From hunters and gatherers to
food producers: New archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence from the West African sahel. In: Fekri H (ed.) Droughts,
Food and Culture: Ecological Change and Food Security in
Africas Later Prehistory, pp. 123155. New York: Kluwer
Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Casey J (2000) The Kintampo Complex: The Late Holocene
on the Gambaga Escarpment, Northern Ghana. Cambridge

Herders, Farmers, and

Crafts Specialists
Peter Breunig, J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt,
Germany
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary

West Africa is bounded on the north by the Sahara,

on the east by Lake Chad, on the south by the Gulf
of Guinea, and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean.
Distinctive vegetation zones running in an eastwest

AMERICAS, NORTH/Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists 97

direction are the result of decreasing precipitation

from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahara in the north.
Between the tropical rain forest along the southern
coastline and the Sahara Desert, the vegetation
changes from Guinean to Sudanian to Sahelian savanna. This relatively close proximity of rather different
environments and their considerable shift during the
last millennia most likely influenced the appearance
and development of herders and farmers in West
Africa. During early Holocene times, vast areas of
the Sahara resembled todays Sahelian vegetation
zone. It is in this region that important cultural innovations like the manufacture of pottery and the development of pastoral economy took place. Whether
pastoral beginnings go back to the eighth millennium BC, as presumed on the basis of finds from the
eastern Sahara, has been questioned. However, its
existence in the central and eastern Sahara during
the fifth millennium BC is beyond dispute. At this
time, domesticated cattle appeared along with ovicaprids. While cattle might have been domesticated
autochthonous, domesticated ovicaprids (sheep and
goat) are believed to come from the Near East,
because the fossil record and modern biogeography
both indicate that their wild progenitors never lived
in Africa.
After a flourishing period, the Saharan livestock
herders were affected by the final desiccation of the
Sahara caused by the southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. As a consequence, herders
migrated into the moister southern regions. Archaeological data indicate that they started expanding into
West Africa at around 2000 BC. Formerly existing
disease barriers like the tsetse belt also shifted further
south so that the vast grasslands in West Africa
became suitable for pastoral occupation. The migration from the Sahara to West Africa is conclusive for
several reasons. First, the dates for the earliest evidence of cattle get younger the more southerly the
sites are located. Then, since the earliest domesticated
animals have no local counterparts in sub-Saharan
Africa, they must have been imported to West Africa.
Finally, in some cases, the cultural material from the
Sahara and the new homeland further south show
similarities. How far farming and the beginning of
plant cultivation were part of these migrations is one
of the most important questions of sub-Saharan
archaeology. With regard to the location of the
wild progenitors of the African cultigens and theoretical considerations on the cultural context of initial
farming, the southern Sahara is seen as the key area
where the most important food crops of sub-Saharan
Africa, pearl millet and sorghum, were originally
cultivated.

Like anywhere else on earth, the appearance of

herders and farmers with their food-producing economy constitutes a fundamental break in the prehistory
of West Africa. Its occurrence is considered the prelude to a new era classified as the West African
Neolithic. Herders and farmers are represented differently in the archaeological record. While the pastoral activities of herders are generally less visible,
farmers and their sedentary communities usually
produce abundant archaeological remains.
Contrary to other Neolithic centers in the world,
for instance, the Near East, the African evidence indicates a considerable time gap between the appearance
of herders and farmers. However, this cattle before
crops pattern is not very pronounced in West Africa.
Here, in most cases, domesticated animals and plants
(see Animal Domestication; Plant Domestication) appear almost simultaneously or with only a slight time
difference.
The early food-producing communities must have
met favorable conditions in West Africa, because
both herding and farming activities spread very rapidly in manifold ways. One of the areas where comparably intensive research on early herders and
farmers has been carried out is the TichittWalata
escarpment in Mauritania (Figure 1). The dry-stone
architecture and the considerable size of the villages
along the escarpment are unique among contemporaneous settlements in West Africa. Not only is it
the northernmost food-producing complex in West
Africa, but recent investigations have also shown
that the area is among the earliest evidence of farming
activities, dated to about 1800 BC. Another example
for an early agropastoral society is the Kintampo
culture in Ghana, located in the forest fringe and
woodland savanna zones. The Kintampo people settled in rock shelters or hamlets consisting of huts
spread over areas of up to 2 ha. They possessed
domesticated animals, in particular sheep/goat and
probably cattle, and cultivated pearl millet. In addition, there is evidence for the exploitation of the oil
palm and a range of wild resources typical for the
environment of the forest fringe and woodland savanna. Whether Kintampo emerged as a result of Saharan
migration or represents a case of local intensification
is discussed controversially. The floodplains and margins of the Inland Niger Delta constitute another
focal point of agropastoral origins in West Africa.
This region was home to a variety of cultural groups
with different economic adaptations, appearing in the
archaeological record during the second and early
first millennium BC. One group is known as the
Kobadi Neolithic of specialized fishers without
domestic livestock or cultigens. Other groups have

98 AMERICAS, NORTH/Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists

Figure 1 West Africa: geographic zones and archaeological areas mentioned in the text.

pastoral components, for example, Ndondi Tossokel,

which originated from the Tichitt tradition in
Mauritania or Winde Koroji. Early food-producing
groups can also be found in the Sahelian zone of
the Chad Basin in northeast Nigeria. Mobile herders
arrived here in the early second millennium BC
and became sedentary farmers or agropastoralists as
documented by numerous village-like settlements
dating from about 1500 BC onwards. In addition
to such key areas of early food production, there
are regions of marginal significance, where traces of
herding cannot be detected by archaeological means
or only appeared after the farming economy had
established.
After a period of prospering development in the
second millennium BC, the early herders and farmers
apparently were faced with a crisis in the first millennium BC, probably stimulated by another severe
drought. In many regions, cultural sequences faded
away and gave way to completely new developments.
Among the economic innovations of the first millennium BC were new cultigens. While pearl millet was
the only cultivated plant before, other important
crops such as sorghum, African rice, cowpea, bambara groundnut, and okra as well as agro-forestry activities appeared between 500 BC and AD 500. They
formed the basis of a productive Iron Age subsistence
system where food security was more predictable
than before. During the same period, large settlements,
partly fortified, and site-size hierarchies emerged, followed by the development of urban centers, social

stratification, and inter-regional trade during the latter

half of the first millennium AD.
As a concomitant phenomenon of increasing cultural complexity, craft specialization is supposed
to have developed during the first millennium BC
(see Craft Specialization). Different concepts of craft
specialization are discussed. Some accordant aspects
highlight that craft specialization requires an economy able to produce surplus commodities in order to
support craftsmen. It also intensifies the inequality
among the members of a community, and thus favors
the development of rank or class systems. But apart
from these theoretical considerations, it is important
to identify the existence of craft specialization in the
archaeological record. Craft specialization can appear at the household level, as a form of part-time
specialization concerning objects of daily use such as
pottery, bone tools, mats, and basketry. In West
Africa, this form of specialization possibly originated
among the early herders and farmers of the second
millennium BC, or even earlier in a hunter-gatherer
context. A more complex craft specialization beyond
the household level appears to have developed only
during the first millennium BC. From this period onwards, evidence for concentrations of manufacturing
by-products in specific sections of settlements is
found. Another important innovation of the first millennium BC is iron metallurgy. While its origin and
spread in sub-Saharan Africa is a matter of a longrunning debate, there is no doubt about its technological advancement and the demand for specialists to

AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States 99

conduct iron smelting and processing. Together with

early iron metallurgy, art appears as another impressive case of craft specialization. Undoubtedly, the earliest art of West Africa, the expressive terracottas of
the Nok culture in central Nigeria, were created by
specialists belonging to a stratified society and not by
herders and farmers as a result of leisure activities.
As a conclusion, the first millennium BC was a
period of crises, discontinuities, and innovations
with paramount importance for subsequent times.
Fundamental economic, technological, and social
changes took place and were the basis for developments which led to the formation of civilizations and
empires only a few centuries later.
See also: Animal Domestication; Craft Specialization;
Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Breunig P and Neumann K (2002) Continuity or discontinuity? The
1st millennium BC Crisis in West African prehistory. In:
Lenssen-Erz T, Tegttmeir U, Kropelin S, et al. (eds.) Africa Praehistorica 14: Tides of the Desert. Contributions to the Archaeology and Environmental History of Africa in Honour of Rudolph
Kuper, pp. 491505. Ko ln: Heinrich-Barth-Institut.
Holl AFC (1998) Livestock husbandry, pastoralisms, and territoriality: The West African record. Journal of Anthropological
Archaeology 17: 143165.
MacDonald KC (1996) The Winde Koroji complex: Evidence for
the peopling of the eastern Inland Niger Delta (2100500 BC).
Prehistoire et Anthropologie Mediterraneennes 5: 147165.
Magnavita C, Kahlheber S, and Eichhorn B (2004) The rise of
organisational complexity in mid-first millennium BC Chad
Basin. Antiquity 78, no. 301, project gallery. http://antiquity.ac.
uk/projgall/magnavita/index.html.
McIntosh SK (2001) West African Late Stone Age. In: Peregrine PN
and Ember M (eds.) Encyclopedia of Prehistory 1, Africa,
pp. 323338. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Munson PJ (1971) The Tichitt Tradition: A Late Prehistoric Occupation of the Southwestern Sahara. PhD Dissertation, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Neumann K (2005) The romance of farming: Plant cultivation and
domestication in Africa. In: Stahl AB (ed.) African Archaeology,
pp. 249275. Malden: Blackwell.
Smith AB (1992) Pastoralism in Africa: Origins, Development and
Ecology. London: Hurst.
Stahl AB (1993) Intensification in the West African Late Stone Age:
A view from Central Ghana. In: Shaw T, Sinclair P, Andah B, and
Okpoko A (eds.) The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and
Towns, pp. 261273. London: Routledge.
Van Neer W (2002) Food security in Western and Central Africa
during the Late Holocene: The role of domestic stock keeping,
hunting and fishing. In: Hassan FA (ed.) Droughts, Food and
Culture: Ecological Change and Food Security in Africas Later
Prehistory, pp. 251274. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Watson DJ (2005) Under the rocks: Reconsidering the origin of the
Kintampo tradition and the development of food production
in the savanna-forest/forest of West Africa. Journal of African
Archaeology 3(1): 355.

Villages, Cities, and

States
Susan Keech McIntosh, Rice University, Houston,
TX, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
flotation Use of water to separate plant materials from
archaeological deposits.
Holocene A geological epoch covering the period from the
retreat of the ice sheets at the end of the last glacial period
between 11 000 and 12 000 years ago to the present.
lineage A group tracing descent from a common ancestor.

In West Africa during the later Holocene, villages

occupied by multiple family or lineage-based groups
appeared, enabled by new subsistence technologies,
including agriculture, that increased output and supported a larger number and density of people. Greater
sedentism, either seasonally or year round, is reflected
by labor investment in durable construction technologies and large quantities of items that are not easily
portable, such as grindstones and pottery. Although
the development and spread of village life associated
with food production has been a source of interest
and detailed investigation in the Near East since the
1950s, comparable studies in West Africa involving
excavation and recovery of archaeobotanical samples
are relatively recent and rare (see Paleoethnobotany).
Our understanding of early village life and subsistence in West Africa is therefore fragmentary at present and likely to change significantly as new data
become available. This applies equally to the development of cities and states (see Africa, West: Herders,
Farmers, and Crafts Specialists).
The earliest unambiguously identified villages in
West Africa were built between 3500 and 2500 BP
(1800800/400 cal BC) on the 60100 m high escarpment (dhar) that extends for c. 400 km from Tichitt to
Walata and Nema in southeast Mauritania (Figure 1).
These settlements had multiple, dry-stone-walled compounds large enough to accommodate several huts
or houses, granaries, and livestock (Figure 2). Some
of the dhar settlements are extremely large, measuring 3095 ha, with 200600 compounds, suggestive
of towns or central places in an emergent urban/
political hierarchy (Figure 3).These agropastoralists
hunted, herded cattle, sheep and goats, and cultivated
pearl millet, a drought-tolerant African cereal that
was first domesticated in the Sahel of Mauritania or
Niger, according to DNA analysis.

ALGERIA

Atakor

TASS
ILI

SAHARA

TEGDAOUST

Senegal

JA

mb

ig

er

ia

Ba

GUINEA-BISSAU

ni

JENNEJENO

FUTA
JALLON

CHAD
Lake Chad

MOUHOUN
BEND

HAUSA

BURKINA
FASO

LIBERIA

NIGERIA

BIRIMI

SIERRA
LEONE

IVORY GHANA
COAST
Lake Volta

GAJIGANNA
ZILUM
KURSAKATA
GE
ME

KANO

Lake
Kainji
Nig
er

NOK

OLD OYO

nue

Be

IFE

MANDARA
MOUNTAINS

YORUBA EDO
BENIN CITY

Ch
ari

ne
go
Lo

GUINEA

BENIN

Ga

KAWKAW

TOGO

GAMBIA

GHANA

ME
MA
IN
L
N A
DE IGE ND
LT R
A

SENEGAL

NIGER
BEND

KUMBI
SALEH

NIGER

AI
R

MALI
NEMA

TAKRUR

MSV

LIBYA

R
RA AS
AD IFOR
S
E
D

MAURITANIA

TICHITT

AC

TROPIC OF
CANCER

AC
U

100 AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States

CAMEROON
Mount Cameroon

2000 m
1000 m
500 m
0m

COUNTRIES
SITE

NATURAL FEATURES AND REGIONS

Lakes and Rivers
EARLY
STATE

Figure 1 Sites and regions mentioned in the text.

Figure 2 Dry-stone compound walls at the site of Louedi (c. 900 BC) atop the Tichitt escarpment. P. Munson.

At the village settlement of Birimi in northern

Ghana, pearl millet was also cultivated by 3500
3000 BP, and was the dominant plant species recovered from flotation samples. Three dozen burnt clay
house floors have been mapped in this extensive

site belonging to the Kintampo complex. Further

south in central Ghana, Kintampo is also associated
with the appearance of villages and subsistence intensification involving oil palm exploitation. In northeastern Nigeria, on the Bama Deltaic soils that once

AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States 101

Figure 3 Plan of walled compounds at Dakhlet el Atrouss, one of the largest villages on the Tichitt escarpment. R. Vernet.

bordered Lake Chad, small, ephemeral pastoralist

camps occupied between 3500 and 3000 BP were
replaced by larger, more sedentary settlement mounds
up to 7 ha in extent occupied by agropastoralists
who cultivated pearl millet. Several of the mounds
have been excavated and over 100 have been surveyed
and identified as part of the Gajiganna complex. As the
shore of Lake Chad retreated after 3000 BP, settlers
moved onto the newly exposed lakeplain in northern
Nigeria and Cameroon and southern Chad, and established village settlement mounds (e.g., Kursakata,
Mege) with a subsistence economy based on herding,
fishing, and millet cultivation. To the northwest, older
Gajiganna settlement mounds were abandoned, and
larger, fortified villages with extensive storage pits,
such as Zilum, were built in the same area (Figures 4
and 5). It seems that with the appearance of iron
c. 25002200 BP and the addition of new domesticates,
such as African rice and fonio, permanent village settlements were established in the Mema and Inland
Niger Delta of Mali (Ja, Jenne-jeno), and in the Nok
area of Nigeria, where first millennium BC sites with
stone walls have recently been found. Village settlements were well established in many areas of West
Africa by the first millennium AD.
In some of these areas of early village settlement,
sites continued to expand and develop center-andhinterland articulated systems of urban character.
The Inland Niger Delta and its margins have been
the focus of considerable fieldwork on these systems,
which frequently involve closely clustered mound
sites on the floodplain. At Ja, and in the Mema, the
development of larger-scale settlement systems is
claimed to have occurred in the first millennium BC.

At Jenne-jeno, it seems to date to the mid-first millennium AD (Figure 6). Clustered settlement mounds
are not restricted to the Middle Niger; they have
also been documented on the Mouhoun Bend in
northern Burkina Faso in the first millennium AD.
Based on excavations and survey at the mounds of the
Jenne-jeno Urban Complex (Figure 7), it has been
suggested that the distinct mounds were inhabited
contemporaneously by different groups of functionally integrated economic specialists who resisted
assimilation into a single town settlement. In this
scenario, political power was weakly centralized, a
view that is at odds with earlier theories that locate
cities exclusively within state systems. The field
research necessary to fully evaluate this hypothesis is
still in its early stages.
The development of new ideas about urban origins
in West Africa has occurred at a time of increasing
interest by archaeologists in the nature of the premodern city. It is now understood that many earlier
ideas about urbanism, such as V. G. Childes wellknown trait-list of essential features that included
writing and monumental architecture, were developed with reference to Western sequences of historical development and excluded much of sub-Saharan
Africa from consideration. Investment in monument
building, for example, is now seen to be a common,
but not inevitable aspect of early cities. The absence
of monumental architecture in large areas of West
Africa likely reflects lack of suitable building materials (such as stone) in some areas and the prevalence
of extensive, slash-and-burn agricultural systems
that required settlement relocation after several decades, thus working against permanent installation of

102 AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States

Figure 4 Magnetic anomalies at Zilum show a ditch and rampart encircling the settlement, plus hundreds of large pits. Courtesy
of P. Breunig and C. Magnavita.

Figure 5 Outline in section of a large storage pit at Zilum. C. Magnavita.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States 103

Figure 6 Aerial view of the settlement mounds in the Jenne-jeno Urban Complex. Jenne-jeno is in the foreground. The town of Djenne
is on the upper left. R.J. McIntosh.

NN

JE

- Ancient sites
0

km 1.0

BANI R
.

JENNEJENO

Figure 7 Plan of the settlement mounds of the Jenne-jeno Urban Complex.

populations at one location for long periods. In some

areas, the location of the capital city frequently
shifted. Ecological constraints linked to a value system
that conceived of space as social (rooted in kin groups
and genealogical proximity), rather than as a particular physical place, produced some early African urban

configurations that looked quite different than the

cities of the West.
The vast system of earthen embankments (iya)
demarcating settlement boundaries in the YorubaEdo region of Nigeria is a prime example of a
very non-Western configuration. Over 16 000 km of

104 AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States

UTE IYA
Ikokhan

Ihovbor
Oria

Idumwowina
Ute
Ugbowo

1 km

Urora

Uselu

Lwogban
Aduwawa

Uzama villages

Ohovbe 1

Oregbeni
old
canoe
port

Ogbesan

palace

BENIN
CITY

Ikpoba Stream

Ihimwirin
Ugbeku

10 km

Figure 8 Map of earthworks (iya) around Benin City and Ute in southwestern Nigeria. From Darling P (1984) Archaeology and History
in Southern Nigeria: The Ancient Linear Earthworks of Benin and Ishan, p. 89. Oxford: BAR, P. Darling.

embankments enclosing more than 500 interconnected settlements in a 6500 km2 area have been mapped
around Benin City (Figure 8). These systems enclosed
villages/towns/capitals and the agricultural lands that
supported them. The total vertical height of ramparts,
measured from the bottom of the ditch to the top of
the bank, generally ranged from 3 to 9 m, and occasionally up to 20! The massive labor inputs required
to create them imply that substantial populations
were involved. Initial construction is thought to have

begun in the later first millennium AD, and multiple

episodes of wall construction have been documented
at the early city-state of Ife, which had inner and outer
embankments enclosing an area of 20 km2. Neither
the chronology, settlement layout, nor the political
organization of most of these enclosured settlements
has been documented, with the exception of Ife, Old
Oyo, and Benin City. At the center of each of these
three cities was an extensive palace inhabited by a
powerful divine king, with a marketplace opposite.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Villages, Cities, and States 105

In northern Nigeria, fired brick city walls up to 20 km

in length surrounded the cities and towns of Hausaland from at least the sixteenth century, but their
antiquity has not been investigated archaeologically
(see Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life).
Historical written and oral sources speak to us of
powerful kings, states, and trading empires in the late
first/second millennium AD in both savanna and forest. The archaeological research needed to illuminate
the early development of these polities and to provide
details on the forms of political economy, and the
social and religious institutions they incorporated is
still in its infancy. Ritual practice involving lifelike
brass heads depicting royalty was important at Ife,
and clearly involved sophisticated craft specialists
attached to the royal families. Ifes role as a powerful
ritual center may have been an important key to its
growth and influence. In other areas, such as the early
states of Takrur, Ghana, and Kanem, trade may have
been the most influential factor. In the first millennium
AD and even earlier, copper moved considerable
distances from sources in the Sahara and southeastern
Nigeria. Salt almost certainly moved long distances as
well along trade networks that extended eastwest
and northsouth. Ultimately, as pack camels became
widely used in the desert, and with the arrival of the
Arabs in North Africa in the seventh century, regular,
trans-Saharan trade routes were established. These
extended deep into West Africa to the sources of gold,
incorporating earlier exchange networks. Trade
entrepots and political centers, such as Tegdaoust
(probably the site of Audaghust, mentioned by early
Arab authors) and Kumbi Saleh (presumed to be the
capital of Ghana), developed on the southern margin
of the desert, strategically placed to service and to
levy taxes on the trade.
There is a great deal that we still do not know
about the earliest emergence of towns and states in
West Africa, including detailed comparative chronologies and contexts, specific historical trajectories,
associations between degree of urbanization and
specific political forms, and the nature of relations

between towns and their hinterlands as well as among

interacting polities. That research is sure to continue
to provide some surprises, including significant discoveries in unsuspected areas. Archaeologists have
only begun to reconstruct the rich and diverse history
of complex societies in West Africa.
See also: Africa, West: Early Holocene Foragers;
Herders, Farmers, and Crafts Specialists; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life; Paleoethnobotany.

Further Reading
Andah B (2003) Genesis and development of settlements in
the Guinea and savanna regions. In: The Development of
Urbanism from a Global Perspective, electronically published
by Uppsala University. http://www.arkeologie.uu.se/afr/projects/
BOOK/Andah/Andah.htm.
Casey J (2005) Holocene occupations of the forest and savanna. In:
Stahl AB (ed.) African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction,
pp. 225248. Oxford: Blackwell.
Connah G (1980) Three Thousand Years in Africa : Man and His
Environment in the Lake Chad Region of Nigeria. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Connah G (2001) African Civilizations, 2nd edn. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Darling P (1984) Archaeology and History in Southern Nigeria:
The Ancient Linear Earthworks of Benin and Ishan. Oxford:
BAR.
Holl A (1986) Economie et Societe Neolithique du Dhar Tichitt.
Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations.
Holl A (2002) Land of Houlouf: Genesis of a Chadic Polity,
1900 BCAD 1800. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Museum.
LaViolette A and Fleisher J (2005) The archaeology of sub-Saharan
urbanism: Cities and their countrysides. In: Stahl AB (ed.)
African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction, pp. 327352.
Oxford: Blackwell.
McIntosh RJ (2005) Ancient Middle Niger: Urbanism and the
Self-Organizing Landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
McIntosh SK (ed.) (1995) Excavations at Jenne-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), the 1981 Season.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ogundiran A (2005) Four millennia of cultural history in Nigeria
(ca. 2000 BCAD 1900). Journal of World Prehistory 19(2):
133168.

106 AGENCY

AGENCY
Tamara L Bray, Wayne State University, Detroit,
MI, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
habitus Concept originally introduced by Marcel Mauss but
later to become closely associated with work of Pierre Bourdieu;
can be understood as those aspects of culture that are anchored in
the body or daily practices of individuals, groups, societies, and
nations, including the totality of learned habits, bodily skills,
styles, tastes, and other non-discursive knowledges.
modernity Term used to describe the condition of being
modern; typically viewed as the historic period beginning in the
nineteenth century associated with the Enlightenment, notions of
progress, and the quest to rationally understand, master, and live
comfortably in the world that came to dominate western thought
and action of this era.
new archaeology See processual archaeology.
post-processual archaeology A movement within
archaeology developed in the late twentieth century in reaction to
perceived sterility of processual archaeology; label indicates both
an engagement with postmodernism, its parent theory, as well as
emergence from processual archaeology; rather than signifying
any new orthodoxy, post-processualism encompasses a diversity
of approaches, including structural-symbolic, contextual,
feminist, phenomenological, and Marxist archaeologies; while
differing in significant ways among themselves, what these
different post-processual approaches share is a rejection of the
idea of scientific objectivity, recognition of the indeterminacy of
archaeological data, and the relevance of ones standpoint or
position with regard to the interpretation of the past.
practice theory Seeks to explain the relationship between
human action, on the one hand, and the extant system, or
structure, on the other, by focusing on how the system shapes
practice and how practice changes or reproduces the system.
processual (new) archaeology Refers to both a phase and a
theoretical orientation in American archaeology that dominated
the field in the 1960s and 1970s; emphasized a systemic and
adaptive view of culture, the search for general laws to explain
human behavior and culture change, a positivist approach to
science, and the rigorous use of the scientific method.
praxis Understood as a theory of knowledge concerning peoples
practical engagement with the world that has Marxist roots.
structuration Concept and theory developed by Anthony
Giddens in an attempt to reconcile fundamental dichotomies
bedeviling the social sciences (e.g., agency vs. structure,
subjective vs. objective, and micro vs. macro perspectives);
approach focuses not on individual actors or the social totality
but rather on social practices ordered across space and time that
bridge these realms.
structure Refers to a particular and complex organization of
relations that both enable and constrain agency and social action.
systems theory A trans-disciplinary meta-theory that gained
currency in archaeology in the early 1960s; sought to discern
rules governing the behavior of complex entities conceptualized
holistically as configurations of interacting parts; provided
a nomenclature for describing the organization and
interdependence of any given configuration of parts connected
and joined together by webs of relationships.

Introduction
Over the past 20 years, agency has become an important concept in the toolbox of archaeological theory. Understood generally, if rather simplistically, as
emphasizing the role of the individual in the creation
of social conditions and outcomes, agency theory has
had a common-sense appeal to archaeologists from a
variety of theoretical backgrounds. With the collapse
of consensus regarding a unitary approach to the past
that has left in the wake of processual archaeology,
agency theory became de rigueur in the discipline beginning in the late 1980s. As various scholars have
noted, however, the concept of agency has been uncritically adopted by many as good to think with. As a
result, there is considerable ambiguity surrounding
the notion of agency as used within archaeology.
Generally speaking, agency may be understood as
an umbrella term for the more subject-centered
approaches to archaeological inquiry. The focus in
agency theory is on the individual, human action,
intentionality, and indeterminacy. While the concept
has been fairly malleable in the hands of archaeologists, there are a few common elements within its
various constructions that help to define a general
sense of the term. These include a recognition of the
importance of actions and motivations of agents; the
idea that agency must be a socially significant quality
of action rather than being simply reducible to action
itself; that social life is materially and historically
enabled and constrained; and that agency and structure exist in a dialectic relationship. Overall, agency
may be understood as a key element in action-oriented
social theory that views people as active agents in
prehistory.

General History of Concept

The significance of the concept of agency for social
analysis and theory was most thoroughly explicated by
Anthony Giddens. A sociologist by training, Giddens
work was not aimed at anthropologists, yet his ideas
held strong appeal as his account of agency was seen
as a way of overcoming various two-headed monsters
with which anthropology had wrestled for years.
Among these central problems, to use Giddensphrase, were the relationships between structure and
agency, society and the individual, free will and determinism, and social change versus social reproduction.
In his writings, Giddens investigated the concept of
agency in relation to structure, action, and power.
These terms and notions comprise the core elements of

AGENCY 107

a new orientation that began to emerge in anthropology

in the 1970s, which came to be labeled practice theory.
The roots of contemporary practice theory can
be traced to Marx, his concern with production, and
the idea of praxis. The notion of praxis may be understood as a theory of knowledge concerning peoples engagement with the world. In seeking to
explain the relationship(s) between human action and
systems or structures, e.g., how the system shapes
practice and how practice changes or reproduces
the system, practice theory provides for an actionoriented account of social organization.
Within this framework, structure (or the system) is
understood as both the medium and the outcome of
action. In other words, structure is the unintended
outcome of the agents bringing about of effects at
the same time that it is the medium through which
those effects are achieved. As such, structures do not
exist at any point in time or space but are always in a
process of becoming (rather than being). This process
of becoming is what Giddens refers to as structuration. Power, and the social relations through which it
is manifest, are directly related to the agents transformative capacity, or her ability to produce form
through work upon the world. Power is a necessary
implication of the logical connection between human
action and transformative capacity.
In an insightful analysis of emerging theoretical
trends in anthropology written two decades ago,
Sherry Ortner identified practice (or praxis or action)
as the key symbol of a newly developing disciplinary
paradigm. She suggested that the interest in practice
theory noted in the early 1980s related to increasing
disenchantment with the normative views of culture
and societies that had held sway within the discipline
for generations. Highlighting the work of Anthony
Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, and others, she outlinedhow the study of practice was not to be viewed as an
antagonistic alternative to the study of systems or
structures but rather as a necessary complement to
such work.

History of Use in Archaeology

As with most things theoretical in archaeology, interests in agency first took hold in anthropology and subsequently trickled down. Like many elements of the
post-processual program that emerged in archaeology
in the 1980s, concern with the role of human agency
can be traced directly to dissatisfaction with various
tenets of the new archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s.
Given the systems-theory framework within which
processual archaeology was constructed, its empirical
orientation, and its principal concern with long-term
processes, there was little room for the individual

or intentionality in archaeological investigations

of this period (see Processual Archaeology).
In the wake of the various critiques of behavioralism, ecosystems, and cultural evolutionary theory
that were subsequently developed, a variety of alternative, post-processual approaches began to coalesce
around an explicit concern with individual agents and
agency. As a reaction to the functional and deterministic emphases of the new archaeology, agency was
initially conceived in opposition to the view of prehistoric peoples as simple pawns in some highly
orchestrated game. It took as its starting point the
idea that humans are able to monitor the effects of
their actions and act in novel and creative ways as
opposed to being simple stimulus-response reactors
caught up in larger, pre-existing sets of processes
and systems. Among the different post-processualists
contributing to an interest in agency-oriented questions in archaeology were the structural-symbolic,
feminist, and Marxist contingents. Others who followed a more continuous trajectory from processual
archaeology to the present and maintain a strong neoevolutionary bent have also embraced the concept of
agency. Given the range of interest in the idea
of agency as a useful explanatory device, it is little
surprise that the concept has developed in so many
different directions within the field.

Practice and Agency in Archaeology

The concepts of practice and agency are closely bound
up in the literature and often seem to be used interchangeably. While human agency is necessarily realized through practice, the notion of practice cannot
be simply reduced to action because it has a strong
element of political and social significance built into its
definition. In practice theory, social agents are typically
understood as individuals with goals, intentions, and
subjectivities who operate within materially and historically given circumstances only partly of their own
making. People are assumed to be competent and
knowledgeable social actors who may conduct their
daily affairs and relations both in strategic and intentional ways, and in routinized, nondiscursive ways.
Their actions have both intended and unintended consequences. In the dialectical relationship between the
structure within which social actors operate and the
consequences of their action, or agency, both structure
and agent are continuously and interactively remade.
Several key terms are found within the lexicon of
practice theory, the most important among these being
agent, agency, structures, and structuration. Agents are
the active subjects, the individuals, and social collectivities whose actions are typically understood to be purposive, determined, and knowledgeable. Agents enact

108 AGENCY

rather than possess agency and do so in the context of

the socially, materially, and historically given structures
of daily life. Agency is the dynamic process through
which people construct and express their identity, participate in social life, and materially shape their existence. While agency constitutes a form of involvement
with the world expressed through the material practices of mindful agents, it is important to note that not
all agents possess the same skills, competence, knowledge, awareness, or foresight. Agency is best understood not as a thing but rather as a quality of many
things and the relationships among these.
The structures within which agents and agency
operate are constituted by the principles and resources
that orient social conduct, including the cognitive and
cultural ordering of the world. The structures that
shape human agency are visible only through the
effects of that agency as translated into social action.
In the mutual interdependence of structure and agency, or what has sometimes been called the duality of
structure, the structural properties of a system are
seen as both the medium and the outcome of the
social practices they organize and orient. The concept
of structuration, or the process of a structures becoming through the action and agency of knowledgeable actors, describes this recursive relationship and
underscores the virtual quality of structures, which
do not exist at any point in time or space but rather
exhibit tendencies in action. The idea of structuration
refers to the ongoing production, maintenance, and
transformation of societal institutions as well as the
material, social, and symbolic conditions within
which people exist and through which they reproduce
and transform themselves (Dobres 2000: 133).
Archaeologists who take practice theory as their
analytical framework tend to divide into one of two
camps fissuring along the dimension of intentionality. On one side are those who view the intentionality of agents and their actions as the key aspect of
agency. Within this school of thought, individuals are
typically assumed to act strategically to advance their
own interests. The social agents in these scenarios
tend to be portrayed as rational actors interested in
maximizing some element of their economic, political, or symbolic capital, their motives often taken
to be autonomously constructed and universal. An
extreme version of this view informs some of the
Darwinian and evolutionary ecology approaches
that have adopted the concept of agency.
At the other end of the spectrum are those who
stress the nondiscursive qualities and unintended outcomes of mindful human action as most significant.
From this perspective, what agents want or intend is
often irrelevant to the real social consequences of

their actions. The most important effect is rather

seen to be the unwitting reproduction of the social
structures within which agency is enacted. While it is
recognized that social agents do often act with explicit intent and goals, it is simultaneously understood
that they also often act in routinized, habitual ways in
the course of everyday life. Acknowledgement of both
kinds of agency in archaeological investigation comes
closest to the theoretical concerns and analytical
frames developed by Bourdieu and Giddens.
As various scholars have noted, the study of agency
cannot be separated from a study of structure. Agency
only exists in a dialectical relationship to structure. In
other words, one cannot talk about the agency of
individual social actors without simultaneously taking into account the cultural background of those
actors and the cultural structures within which those
actors operate. While agency and structure are analytically distinct, they are nevertheless entwined each
can be seen as the product of the other when viewed
at different points in time. To understand human
agency in the past, it is critical that archaeologists
engage the mutuality of structure and agency, focusing equally on the antecedent historical conditions
the habitus from which the actor draws, as well as on
individual action and intent.

Archaeological Studies Using the

Agency Theory
In North America, archaeologists have utilized practice theory and the concept of agency in a variety of
research contexts ranging from the study of prehistoric technologies to concerns with the emergence of
social inequality to the negotiation of social identities.
Various recent studies of the Mississippian period and
the rise of chiefdoms in the American bottomland, for
instance, have made explicit use of agency theory in
attempts to explain the transition from egalitarian to
hierarchical societies in this region. Archaeologist
Timothy Pauketat, who emphasizes the mutually enabling and constraining nature of the relationship
between practice, agency, and structure in his work
at the site of Cahokia, offers a particularly good
example. In looking to explain the construction of
the enormous mounds that characterize Mississippian
centers and the massive amounts of labor they
represent, he focused on the interests and agency of
different segments of society. He argues that the
practices associated with mound building were based
in a pre-existing social structure but that as the scale
and materiality of these practices changed, so too did
the structures within which they were enacted.
The end result for the Mississippian peoples was the

AGENCY 109

hardening of social differences, the emergence of

a hereditary elite, and the creation of a powerful
chiefdom unforeseen consequences of the interplay
of agency, practice, and structure.
In another archaeological study focused on the
politics of identity and resistance, Stephen Silliman
explores the role of agency in interpreting indigenous
responses to the colonial enterprise in nineteenthcentury California, emphasizing both the agency of
the native population and the material practices
of everyday life. Archaeological excavations at the
Mexican land-grant site of Rancho Petaluma in northern California produced a wealth of both westernmanufactured and traditional native goods that were
found in close association with one another across the
site. Attending to the large quantities of lithic debris
and stone tools recovered, the investigator argued that
the continuing reliance on this category of material
culture represented a political choice on the part of
native residents one that speaks to processes of contestation and negotiation as well as the agency of native
peoples within the changing structures and practices of
everyday life. Focusing on the role of lithics as material
agents, he concludes that their presence at this historic
period site signified a conscious strategy on the part
of indigenous workers to activate or solidify precolonial identities and associations.

Critiques of Agency Theory

in Archaeology
One of the most important critiques of agency theory
to date has been the anti-essentialist argument brought
to bear by feminist scholars in particular. Most often,
the active agents with whom our models of prehistory
are populated are conceived as a homogeneous lot
having similar basic traits, skills, and goals. Typically,
these agents are constructed as essentialized acultural,
ahistorical, and atomistic beings with rational, capitalist, cost/benefit analyzing impulses. As Joan Gero
notes, though it is not often articulated, it also seems
to be commonly assumed that since these individuals
have agency by definition, they are gendered male and
colored powerful. In answering this critique, some
have called for historicizing the notion of agency,
identity, and the individual by situating these notions
in their own unique culture historical context. A taking
to heart of the dialectical relationship within which
agency and structure exist would seem to obviate this
problem as structures are not uniform across time or
cultural space and hence we would not expect agency
to be either.
As is true for most forms of archaeological interpretation, agency-centered models are also vulnerable

to the projection of our own values onto the past.

Such concern has been expressed with regard to the
inherent emphasis placed on the autonomy of the
individual and individual agency in practice theory.
Various scholars have suggested that such an orientation simply mirrors contemporary western society
and politics. Similarly, while the issue of having and
constructing personal identities is a pervasive theme
of modernity, it has not necessarily been so prevalent
a concern in other times and places. From an epistemological standpoint, the privileging of agency as the
most significant element in theories of social change
necessarily grants individuals and their self-interested
actions primacy at the expense of other modes of
social interaction such as empathy or concordance.
In sum, the uncritical application of agency theory in
archaeology runs the risk of reproducing, if not naturalizing, the political relations and asymmetries that
structure our present lives.
Another point of concern revolves around the
tendency to conflate agency with the actor and thus
assume that evidence of agency is evidence for individuals or subjects in the archaeological record. It
has been noted that while agency is a socially significant quality of action, it must be understood as both
more and less than mere action. As with gender studies, becoming caught up in the search for individuals
risks displacement of what should be the primary
objectives of identifying and understanding the contexts, structures and intersubjective dynamics through
which agents expressed themselves. The task is not
so much to recover agency archaeologically as to recognize that human agency is inherent in the material
remains. As Marcia-Anne Dobres has repeatedly pointed out, we do not have to find individuals in order to
theorize about processes of agency in prehistory.
Many scholars have argued for the central importance of agency in archaeological interpretation and
the productive utility of working within this paradigm is attested by numerous recent studies. It should
be clear, however, that the study of agency cannot be
divorced from the study of the structures, systems,
and habitus within which past lives were lived. It is
also clear that archaeologists need to generate more
nuanced understandings of agents and agency by
incorporating concerns with social heterogeneity,
gender, and identity into their analytical frameworks.
Agency-based theories also need to broaden the
concept of the individual beyond the liberal western
sense of free agents to include a more relational
perspective. Agency should not be understood as
simply located within bounded human bodies but
rather within the wider sets of human relationships
that make up the social person.

110 AGRICULTURAL FIELDS, IDENTIFICATION AND STUDY

Beyond human agency, such a theoretical orientation also holds much promise for furthering our models and understandings of material culture. Given that
social agency is not co-terminous with the human
body, we may begin to consider how objects, as material extensions of the agency of those who produced
them, participate in this system of social relationships. Following Alfred Gells pioneering work in
this area of investigation, we may begin to think
about how personhood is augmented, extended,
and distributed among the many objects fashioned
and employed in social action.
See also: Engendered Archaeology; Evolutionary Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading
Bourdieu P (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Dobres M-A (2000) Technology and Social Agency: Outlining

a Practice Framework for Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
Dobres M-A and Robb J (eds.) (2000) Agency in Archaeology.
London: Routledge.
Gell A (1998) Art and Agency. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gero J (2000) Troubled travels in agency and feminism. In: Dobres
M-A and Robb J (eds.) Agency in Archaeology, pp. 3439.
London: Routledge.
Giddens A (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Giddens A (1981) A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Vol.1: Power, Property, and the State. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Giddens A (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory
of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Johnson M (1989) Conceptions of agency in archaeological interpretation. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8(2): 189211.
Ortner S (1984) Theory in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26: 126166.
Pauketat T (2000) The tragedy of the commoners. In: Dobres M-A
and Robb J (eds.) Agency in Archaeology, pp. 113129. London:
Routledge.
Saitta D (1994) Agency, class, and archaeological interpretation.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 13(3): 201227.
Silliman S (2001) Agency, practical politics, and the archaeology of
culture contact. Journal of Social Archaeology 1(2): 190209.

AGRICULTURAL FIELDS, IDENTIFICATION

AND STUDY
M G Elgar, Washington State University, Pullman,
WA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
anthrosol A soil horizon created by human activities such as
cultivation, irrigation, middening or mining.
biolipid A hydrocarbon-containing organic compound derived
from plants or animals that is relatively stable over time. Analysis
of biolipid residues may be used to help identify the original
source of decayed plant or animal material.
bioturbation The disruption and mixing of soils and sediments
by organisms, especially by burrowing or boring (e.g., roots,
earthworms), which has the effect of homogenizing the original
strata.
lynchet A bank of earth commonly formed at the edges of fields
from plowing.
midden A prehistoric refuse deposit that may contain artifacts as
well as organic remains such as plants, bones and shell.
plaggen soil A surface anthrosol formed by long-term
manuring and mixing of the soil, usually from cultivation.
soil micromorphology The study of soil morphology by
microscopic methods, usually by studying thin-sections under a
polarizing microscope.

Introduction
The study of agriculture incorporates natural variables (e.g., climate, geology) with cultural variables
(e.g., technology). The off-site emphasis of field systems requires different methodological and theoretical frameworks to the overall study of agriculture.
Detailed investigations of fields reveal the practices
behind agricultural production and contributes to
understanding human agency and long-term human
landscape interactions. These inquiries also place
agriculture in its ecological setting revealing relationships between fields, topography, and environmental
conditions. For instance, we frequently find terraces
in hilly regions, whereas irrigation networks are
found in arid lands. Practices of this kind transform
natural land into agricultural substrates following
culturally defined blueprints. Alterations to the landscape landscape modifications are generally
enduring and are frequently cumulative in their
impacts. These qualities lend regional investigations
of fields to questions of agricultural intensification
and the long-term maintenance of farming systems.

AGRICULTURAL FIELDS, IDENTIFICATION AND STUDY 111

Table 1 Methods and applications for the study of agricultural fields by scale of analysis
Scale

Primary methods

Archaeological features

Human practices

Region/
Landscape

Aerial photography
Geographic Information Systems
Pedestrian survey
Published maps (e.g., political,
property, geological, soil)
Regional palaeoclimate reconstruction
Remote sensing
Satellite imagery

Field systems: walls, raised or ridged

fields, terraces, lynchets, leveled land
Water management: irrigation
channels, aqueducts, drainage,
water storage features
Occasionally: furrows, plow marks

Adaptation to local conditions

Degree of landscape modification
Extent of bounded land
General production capacity
Land units where field units visible
Water management and
catchment area

Garden/Field

Architectural analysis
Feature mapping
Pedestrian survey

Architectural style
Artifact assemblages (e.g., hoe tips)
Construction materials
Dimensions of field features such as
raised platforms or furrows
Evidence of reconstruction

Cultural associations
Construction techniques and
material sources
Landscape history (construction,
remodeling, abandonment)
Planning
Tillage methods

Seed bed

Coring and excavation

Botanical: pollen, phytoliths,
macrobotanicals
Dating methods
Geoarchaeology: bulk soil analyses
(e.g., organic matter, nutrients,
particle size, biolipids); soil
micromorphology

Exposed soil to reveal: plowzone,

amendment and depletion,
anthropogenic soils, plow features
Botanical remains
Buried artifacts, crop, furrow and
irrigation features
Dates of architectural features
Infilling and disruption of irrigation
features
Soil properties

Climate change
Crops
Cultural associations
Long-term landuse impacts
Soil amendment (e.g., burning,
fertilization, middening),
Soil depletion or overuse
Tillage methods

Field system research strategies are scalar and three

levels of analysis are considered here: (1) regional/
landscape, (2) garden/field, and (3) the seedbed
(Table 1). These strategies are not exhaustive and
the primary literature offers additional approaches.

Identifying Field Systems

Intensive agriculture frequently involves the construction of landscape architecture such as field
walls, terraces or lynchets, raised or ridged field features, and irrigation systems (e.g., canals, aqueducts,
wells, water storage features) (Figure 1). These
features enclose natural land, aid crop production,
and engender land tenure. Field boundaries may
appear in political and property maps and, as they
are frequently maintained for generations, historical
maps may identify archaeological fields in regions
with long agricultural histories.
Aerial photography and satellite imagery capture
landscape architecture where it is still standing or is
near the surface and modern vegetation is minimal
(Figure 2). Remote sensing (e.g., ground-penetrating
radar, magnetrometry) can identify subsurface field
systems, particularly buried field walls and irrigation
features. Geological and soil maps help evaluate
natural resources. The value of these proxy records
should be evaluated through reconnaissance and

survey of actual field systems on the ground. Geographical information systems (GISs) are employed
to integrate these multiple spatial data sets, speed
mapping of landscape architecture, and calculate the
cultivated area.
Irrigation systems rely on natural rainfall and hydraulic patterns, which should underpin their archaeological investigation. Changing water tables and
tectonics may complicate the reconstruction of irrigation systems and need to be addressed in field
investigations. Abandoned irrigation features can be
excavated to help deduce why they failed (e.g., gradual silting up, catastrophic infill). In a study that
critically applies many of the methods highlighted
here, Tony Wilkinson (2003) investigated Near
Eastern agricultural landscapes and the role of irrigation. Divergent agricultural adaptations were identified in the rain-fed northern uplands and the irrigated
fields of southern Mesopotamia. Reflecting the role
of agriculture in complex polities, this study provided
insight into different configurations of community
organization, political inequality, and authority systems. This exemplifies the potential contribution
of field system research to central questions in
archaeology.
The identification of extensive agriculture (i.e.,
swidden or slash-and-burn) provides a greater challenge to archaeologists. Scarce landscape architecture

112 AGRICULTURAL FIELDS, IDENTIFICATION AND STUDY

Figure 1 Inca terraces at Moray, Peru.

Figure 2 Aerial photograph of a Later Bronze Age field with plaggen A horizon defined by dark soil mark at Welland Bank Quarry, south
Lincolnshire, UK. Copyright Charles A. I. French.

limits the utility of aerial images and maps. Short

occupation may leave little trace on the soil. When
abandoned, extensive fields may blend into the surrounding uncultivated ecology. In some instances,
burning and fertilization alter vegetation and soils
aiding in identification. In other instances, rare
constructed features within areas of swidden cultivation support the identification of cultivated areas.

Gardens and Fields

Pedestrian survey, feature mapping, and assessment
of architecture are used to study gardens and fields.

Ideally, a statistically representative number of fields

will be selected for study from the total cultivated
area. Variations in elevation, topography, architecture, and associations to other archaeological features
should be considered in field selection.
As in other kinds of architecture, variations in design, construction materials, and quality of field architecture can provide information into such issues
as planning, labor, and prestige. The collection of artifact assemblages from fields may shed light on farming
implements and cultural associations. The surface vegetation in old fields is another line of evidence as it often
differs from adjacent uncultivated land.

AGRICULTURAL FIELDS, IDENTIFICATION AND STUDY 113

The Seedbed

Crops

In ancient fields, excavation and coring reveal the

seedbed (plowzone or A horizon), which may be on
the modern surface or buried. Agricultural soils are
impacted by soil type, environment, crops, cultivation
regime (e.g., intensive or extensive), tools, and cultural
traditions. Geoarchaeological techniques are employed
to determine the fertility and stability of palaeosols.
Common bulk soil analyses include quantification of
crop-limiting nutrients (e.g., organic matter, phosphorus, nitrogen), soil particle size, and magnetic susceptibility. Intact soil blocks are analyzed through soil
micromorphology (thin section analysis) to reveal preservation conditions by identifying soil structure, the
distribution of soil constituents, and bioturbation.
Geoarchaeological analyses of fields are best compared to uncultivated lands for accurate assessment
of human impacts. Triplicate replication of soil conditions (i.e., collecting samples from three fields with
similar physical settings) further controls for variations across agrarian landscapes (Figure 3). When
preservation is outstanding, excavation may unearth
anthropogenic features such as plow marks and
furrows (cf. Figures 2, 4a, and 4b).
Differences in soil color, nutrient concentration,
and soil particle size are used to identify land-use
impacts. Long-term soil management is seen from
the development of plaggen soils, dark nutrient-rich
anthropogenic soils resulting from repeated applications of fertilizer-like dung (Figure 5). In arid regions,
nutrients such as phosphorous may be retained for
millennia. In contrast, overuse and erosion are
revealed by reduced concentrations of silt, clay,
and soil nutrients when field soils are compared to
uncultivated controls.

Studies of cultigens often originate in settlements

where macrobotanical remains indicate the consumption and use of cultivated plants (see Plant Domestication). In contrast, macrobotanical remains
excavated from within fields are only reliable from
intact palaeosols because of the potential for modern
contamination, augmented by industrial tillage, bioturbation, and organic decay. Pollen and phytoliths
may be more stable in fields and can provide in situ
confirmation of cultigens when recovered from secure
contexts. Phytoliths are preserved under different
conditions than pollen and may also reflect different
crop species than pollen (see Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis). Regional palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, contemporary agronomic studies, and
surface vegetation provide additional insight into ancient cropping regimes. Increasingly, research into
cultigens combines several methods with attention
to sampling and preservation conditions.
Dating

Bioturbation, poor preservation of macrobotanicals,

and modern disturbance also impact dating strategies.
Dating may be further complicated by the sequential use of fields for different activities (see Dating
Methods, Overview). Buried contexts under standing
features, such as field walls or aqueducts, may provide
secure contexts for recovering datable material. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) is increasingly
used to date humic acids in soil (see Luminescence
Dating). Surface and excavated artifact collections
from gardens and fields provide additional chronological information.

Figure 3 Schematic of triplicate sampling pattern (S sample collection point). Copyright Chris Stevens.

114 AGRICULTURAL FIELDS, IDENTIFICATION AND STUDY

Figure 5 Plaggen soil in terraced field (highlands of Yemen).

Copyright Charles A. I. French.

Figure 4 Thin sections of soils from ancient fields. (a), Plow marks
in well-preserved buried palaeosoil, Welland Bank Quarry, south
Lincolnshire, UK. Copyright Charles A. I. French. (b), Bioturbated
palaeosoil from a pre-Columbian terrace (Paca, Peru).

Agriculture, Landscape, and Society

Field system research reveals the human ingenuity
behind food production systems adapted to diverse
ecosystems. For instance, tropical adaptations include
Asian rice paddies, Mesoamerican chinampas, and
raised fields in South America. Each system provides
a signature on the landscape. This can be illustrated
by rice paddy fields which are made by leveling and
walling to pond water, dramatically changing natural
topography and soils. In contrast, responses to arid
lands, limited by water and soil nutrients, are seen
in an array of different technologies. For instance,
abandoned grid-like landscape features in Arizona
were found through an intensive multidisciplinary
study to have produced agricultural crops in a desolate landscape. Cultural and environmental contexts
are therefore essential components of field system
research.
Additional lines of evidence may be found in art,
historic documents, and modern correlates. Egyptian

farming methods are recorded in art and hieroglyphs

(e.g., collections of the British Museum). The Romans
employed centurion field systems and recorded field
allocations. Experimental farming with replica tools
and old crops provide heuristic models to reconstruct
annual yields, labor requirements, and soil responses
to different treatments (e.g., the experimental Butser
Ancient Farm, United Kingdom). Ethno-archaeological
studies with nonindustrial farmers provide further
data for reconstructing crop rotation cycles, labor
allocation, and natural constraints on farming.
Research methods for off-site agricultural landscapes reflect analytical scale, environmental conditions, field architecture, and palaeosol preservation.
Ground reconnaissance to verify published data in
maps and aerial images provides a baseline for regional studies and also detailed assessments of individual
fields. Field system research is multidisciplinary and
often requires specialist research methods to provide
evidence for specific cultivation practices.

Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to Charly French and Chris Stevens
for permission to use figures.
See also: Dating Methods, Overview; Geoarchaeology;
Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Phytolith Analysis; Plant Domestication; Pollen Analysis;
Soils and Archaeology.

AGRICULTURE/Biological Impact on Populations 115

Further Reading
Doolittle WE and James AN (2004) The Safford Valley Grids:
Prehistoric Cultivation in the Southern Arizona Desert. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press.
Hastorf CA (1993) Agriculture and the Onset of Political Inequality before the Inka. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Goldberg P and Richard IM (2006) Practical and Theoretical

Geoarchaeology. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Miller NF and Gleason KL (1994) The Archaeology of Garden and
Field. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Thomas K (ed.) (1990) Soils and early agriculture. World Archaeology 22(1).
Wilkinson TJ (2003) Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

AGRICULTURE
Contents
Biological Impact on Populations
Social Consequences

Biological Impact on
Populations
Patricia M Lambert, Utah State University,
Logan, UT, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
bioarchaeology The study of the human biological component
of the archaeological record.
dental attrition The wearing or grinding down of teeth.
fertility Birthrate of a population.
malocclusion Abnormality in the way the teeth of the upper
and lower jaw fit together.
morbidity Disease rate, proportion of diseased to healthy in a
population.
morphology Shape, form.
mortality Death rate of a population.
occlusal Chewing surface of a tooth.
palaeopathology The study of disease in former/ancient times
as evidenced in human remains from archaeological contexts.
robusticity Expression of relative size and strength of bones or
teeth, or of a skeleton more generally, for example, increased
robusticity of long bones.

Introduction
Questions concerning the biological impacts of the
economic transition from foraging to farming have
formed a central focus of research in bioarchaeology
since the late 1970s. Researchers examining this transition have generally compared diet, health, and workload of mobile/semimobile forager antecedents and
later sedentary agriculturalists to identify differences

and therefore changes associated with the adoption

of an agricultural mode of subsistence. The groundbreaking volume, Paleopathology at the Origins of
Agriculture, published in 1984, represents the first
major effort to gather together such studies from
a number of world regions to address questions
concerning the impetus for and biological consequences of agriculture. Much of the research available at that time focused on skeletal samples from
the Americas, particularly North America, and these
studies still predominate in the literature. However,
research efforts over the intervening years have
expanded this geographic purview to include different
types of agriculture and agricultural transitions in
many world regions. As research accumulates, some
general trends are emerging in certain aspects of
health and workload, but it is also becoming apparent
that the transition and consequent health impacts
were not uniform in all times and places, or even
unidirectional. This growing awareness of variability
in the agricultural experience has led to an increasing
research emphasis on how different environmental
and behavioral correlates of agriculture influence
the skeletal markers used to reconstruct the different
lifeways and health impacts associated with this
economic transition.

Osteological Evidence for Dietary Change

One of the important challenges of studying the transition from foraging to farming has been documenting
the timing and nature of this transition. Traditionally,
archaeologists have studied palaeobotanical, faunal,
and artifactual evidence to document the types of

116 AGRICULTURE/Biological Impact on Populations

food resources available and presumably consumed

by people at a particular locale. Bioarchaeology
adds a different dimension to the study of diet and
dietary change through the analysis of the biological
impacts different subsistence regimes had on the teeth
and bones of ancient practitioners (see Osteological
Methods; Paleopathology). Dental indicators and
bone chemistry are the most important lines of skeletal evidence for diet. These are discussed in greater
detail below.
Reconstructing Diet from Dental Indicators

Figure 1 Carious lesions in the mandibular molars of a farmer

from North Carolina.
100
90
80
% molars with cavities

A number of dental indicators are used to gain

insights into the nature of foods consumed. These
include dental disease (dental caries, periodontal disease, alveolar abscesses, and antemortem tooth loss),
tooth wear, chipping, dental calculus (plaque), and
patterns of dental occlusion and associated craniofacial robusticity. These are not necessarily mutually
exclusive and indeed are often interrelated. This discussion focuses on worldwide patterns of three indicators that have proven particularly useful for
assessing changes in diet: dental disease, dental wear
(attrition), and craniofacial morphology.
Dental caries is a disease process caused by the bacterial fermentation of dietary carbohydrates, which
produces acids that erode tooth enamel (Figure 1).
Because caries-causing oral bacteria such as Streptococcus mutans thrive on carbohydrates, dental caries
is more prevalent in individuals and populations consuming carbohydrate-rich foods (Figure 2). Such
foods tend to be more heavily processed and thus
do not have the cleansing properties of greens and
other fresh foods that require heavy chewing, which
also contributes to dental disease. Cereal food production in particular is a primary factor in declining
dental health with the transition to agriculture;
grains are valuable cultigens because they store well,
but properties such as hard texture and low water
content that enhance storage result in the need for
hulling, grinding, and/or cooking before consumption. Highly processed foods stick to the teeth and
feed the oral bacteria such as S. mutans that adhere to
tooth surfaces.
Although changes in dental disease with the advent
of agriculture are far from uniform, a general trend
toward increasing dental caries and antemortem
tooth loss is evident in both New and Old World
contexts. In the New World, maize is the most important cause of increasing rates of dental disease due
its relatively high sugar content, and observed changes
in dental health throughout the Americas are often
marked when people make the shift from foraging to
maize farming. For example, this pattern of declining

Southeast farmers
Southwest farmers
California fisherpeople

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

Figure 2 Comparison of dental caries rates in foragers and

farmers.

dental health with agricultural intensification has

been documented in northern Chile and coastal Peru
in South America, in Mesoamerica, and in various
regions of North America including the Southwest,
Great Basin, Great Plains, and Eastern Woodlands.
Hence, an increase in dental disease has often been
used as a proxy measure of corn consumption and the
shift to maize agriculture in New World contexts.
In the Old World, the agricultural base was often
more diversified, potentially including several grains
or legumes and domesticated animals; the consequences to dental health were correspondingly more
varied. In the Levant, for example, there is little evidence for increasing prevalence of dental caries at the
Neolithic transition, though a considerable decline in

AGRICULTURE/Biological Impact on Populations 117

dental health is evident later in the agricultural sequence. On the other hand, when prehistoric farmers
(wheat, rice, barley) of western India made the reverse transition to foraging, there was a substantial
reduction in dental caries prevalence, evidence for
the cariogenic nature of the agricultural diet there.
Overall, dental health decline is more prominent than
stasis or improvement in the Old World, but the
changes are not uniform or generally as severe as
those documented in the New World.
It should also be noted that other diets can also
result in an increase in dental disease, so it is important to seek corroborating evidence that agricultural products were responsible. For example, on
the offshore islands of the Santa Barbara Channel,
California, a region where agriculture never took
hold prehistorically, early inhabitants had relatively
high rates of dental caries that subsequently declined
through time. It is uncertain what led to dental disease in this environment, but one possibility is the
consumption of sugary roots and tubers, a hypothesis
supported by the presence of digging apparatus in
archaeological sites of the time. In Portugal, foragers
had fairly comparable rates of dental disease relative
to later agriculturalists, probably due to the consumption of cariogenic wild foods such as sticky fruits and
honey. These cautionary tales illustrate the importance
of multiple lines of evidence in reconstructing diet
and identifying agriculture from visual examination
of teeth.
Unlike dental caries, dental wear shows a decline in
most world regions with the transition to agriculture.
This is because processed foods are softer and require
less chewing, which reduces the loss of enamel on the
occlusal surfaces of teeth, although use of sandstone
mortars and metates for processing grain crops may
introduce grit into these staple foods and lead to
increased wear. The form of dental wear also tends to
differ between foragers and farmers: the worn molars
of foragers tend to be flat, whereas those of agriculturalists tend to be angled and often have a cupped appearance attributed to the consumption of softer foods.
This change in degree and type of wear is evident at
the foragingfarming transition in the southern Levant,
for example, although wear rates tend to track the stage
of transition and earlier farmers show more comparable wear to foragers than later farmers.
Other dental signs of an agricultural diet observed
in skeletal series worldwide include a reduction in the
size of the jaw and concomitant malocclusion of
teeth. Chewing hard-textured foods tends to stimulate growth of the jaw bones, producing jaws that can
accommodate the permanent teeth. Soft-textured
foods require little chewing, on the other hand, resulting in narrower dental arches, tooth crowding, and

misalignment of teeth. In consequence, facial form

tends to change with the transition to agriculture,
with agriculturalists having less robust facial features
than their forager antecedents. This pattern is evident
in the Eastern Woodlands of North America, in the
Balkans region of central Europe, in the Nile Valley
of Africa, and in the southern Levant region of the
Middle East, where a reduction in craniofacial robusticity is evident from the Natufian to Neolithic transition with the adoption of agropastoralism.
Bone Chemistry

Studies of bone chemistry have added an important dimension to the study of diet and dietary transitions because they provide an independent line of
evidence and document the relative importance of
certain types of food for individuals and populations. Stable isotopes of several elements (carbon,
nitrogen, strontium), as well as a number of trace elements (e.g., barium, calcium, strontium, zinc), have
been used to track changes in diet. These elements are
important components of the foods we consume and
are incorporated into our bone tissues during normal
bone growth and maintenance.
The two elements that have proved to be most
useful in bone chemistry research on dietary transitions
and agricultural origins are carbon and nitrogen.
Each element has two stable forms (stable isotopes)
that differ in proportion according to types of foods
consumed. Carbon-13 (13C) is a very small proportion of the total carbon in foods (12C predominates),
but is more abundant in tropical cultigens (C4 plants)
such as corn, millet, and sorghum, and in coastal and
estuarine sea grasses due to the manner in which
carbon is incorporated into the tissues of these plants.
Consumers of these foods also have relatively more
13
C in their bone (and dental) tissues than those consuming most other foods (plants that follow the C3
photosynthetic pathway and the animals that consume them). Nitrogen-14 (14N) is the more common
form of nitrogen, but 15N is relatively more abundant
in marine versus terrestrial food chains and also tends
to concentrate up the food chain. When carbon and
nitrogen values are used in combination, it is possible
to derive more nuanced interpretations of diet and
dietary change because it becomes possible to differentiate marine resources such as fish and sea mammal
meat from terrestrial plant resources like corn, and
thereby identify the role of cultigens in the diet.
Stable isotope studies have probably been more
important for documenting the agricultural transition
in the New World than Old World due to the primary
importance of a single, C4 grain crop (maize), and
the rarity of domesticated animals that led early
Americans to depend more heavily on this storable

118 AGRICULTURE/Biological Impact on Populations

cultigen. For this reason, carbon-13 enrichment can

generally be taken to reflect a transition to maize
agriculture in most American contexts, except in
coastal regions such as those of the Georgia Bight or
southern Peru, where nitrogen values are needed to
differentiate corn from marine foods. Studies of stable
isotopes from several midcontinental regions in North
America have also shown, however, that the timing
and duration of this economic transition were far
from uniform, and these differences are likely important for understanding extant and emerging data on
the health consequences of farming in the New World.
Peoples of the Old World had a number of important grain crops, most of them C3 plants (e.g., wheat,
rye, barley, rice), although millet and sorghum were
tropical cultigens important in some regions and time
periods. Here, the shift toward enriched carbon-13
values signals either the increasing use of millet and/
or sorghum, or increased emphasis on marine foods.
In northern China, for example, 13C values indicate
a substantial emphasis on millet (13C enrichment)
during the Neolithic that later shifted to rice and
wheat (decrease in 13C) and more recently to maize
(13C enrichment). A shift in coastal regions of the
Old World from enriched to less-enriched carbon-13
values, on the other hand, may signal increased
emphasis on C3 cultigens such as wheat, barley, rye,
or rice, as has been documented in Neolithic samples
from coastal Scandinavia and Greece.

Changes in Patterns of Health and

Disease with Agriculture
Reconstructing Health from Osteological
Indicators

A number of skeletal indicators are used by bioarchaeologists to reconstruct patterns of health and disease associated with agricultural transitions. These
include linear enamel hypoplasia, porotic hyperostosis/cribra orbitalia, periosteal lesions, juvenile and
adult stature, and mortality patterns. Linear enamel
hypoplasia refers to depressed bands that form in
tooth enamel when childhood growth is disrupted
by nutritional insufficiency, infectious disease, or
other significant stressors that interrupt the metabolic
process (Figure 3). These dental markers serve as a
general indicator of health during infancy and childhood. Porotic hyperostosis refers to porous lesions of
the cranial vault and eye orbits (cribra orbitalia) that
form in response to iron deficiency anemia, although
in recent years palaeopathological research has
demonstrated a link between porous cranial lesions
and scurvy (Figure 4). These lesions also tend to form
in childhood due to dietary deficiencies or blood loss

Figure 3 Enamel hypoplasia in a maxillary canine tooth. Photo

credit: Korri D. Turner, Soil Systems, Inc.

Figure 4 Cribra orbitalia.

due to parasites and bacterial infection, and thus

provide another but more specific indicator of childhood health experience. Periosteal lesions (Figure 5)
are plaques of bone that form on external (cortical)
bone surfaces when the connective tissue that covers
bone (the periosteum) becomes separated from the
cortex due to various biological processes. Although
there are numerous conditions that can cause these
lesions (e.g., trauma, scurvy, vascular disease), bacterial infection is among the more prominent, and periosteal lesions therefore tend to be viewed (albeit not
quite correctly) as a proxy measure of infectious disease experience. In combination, these lesions provide
a reasonably good measure of childhood stress levels,
particularly when used in a comparative framework.
Periosteal lesions can also provide information on the
disease and injury experiences of adults.
Stature estimates based on long bone measurements and mortality patterns based on age distributions of cemetery samples have also been used to

AGRICULTURE/Biological Impact on Populations 119

Figure 5 Periosteal lesion on the midshaft of a tibia.

assess health status of individuals and populations at

economic transitions. People who experience poor
nutrition and ill health during the growth years do
not achieve their genetic height potential, and adult
stature can therefore provide a good measure of
cumulative health experience during the growth years.
Growth curves for juveniles have also been used to
characterize subadult health, but can be difficult to
interpret for cemetery samples. This is because the
curve is necessarily based on the measurements of
children who died at a particular age rather than all
the children of that age in the living population, and
therefore reflects the stature of the least healthy members of each age group. Ratios of subadults (especially, infants and young children) to adults in cemetery
samples can provide information on age-based differences in mortality and offer insights into patterns of
morbidity in a population. However, there are a number of challenges to reconstructing mortality profiles
from death assemblages that are discussed below.
Almost everywhere in both New and Old World
contexts, the osteological indicators described above
provide a cumulative picture suggesting greater decline than improvement in health with agriculture,
although this difference is often most evident in
comparisons of foragers and full-scale, sedentary
agriculturalists. Health changes associated with the
actual transition period are much more variable due
to differences in how quickly the transition took
place, how much the agricultural diet differed from
that of earlier foragers, and the degree to which
demographic factors such as sedentism and growth

rate altered with the introduction of agricultural

production.
The general pattern of health decline observed in
many settings has led to the conclusion that disease
risk increased with agriculture, and there are certainly
reasons to believe this might be so. When people
begin to grow their food, they become tethered to a
particular place in a way that foragers are not. Sedentism increases disease exposure through accumulation
of food refuse and human waste, both sources of
parasitic and bacterial infection. These accumulations
also attract vermin such as rats, known to carry bubonic plague, hantavirus, typhus, rabies, and other
diseases transmissible to humans. In tropical environments, clearing of agricultural fields or construction
of irrigation systems can create breeding grounds for
mosquitos and the infections such as malaria and West
Nile virus they can transmit. Such health problems
were apparently created in ancient Bahrain with the
transition from nonirrigating to irrigation agriculture.
In addition, agricultural populations often rely heavily on storable staple foods such as corn and wheat that
do not contain the range of vitamins and minerals
available from the mixed diet of most foragers, potentially rendering agriculturalists more susceptible to
pathogens as a result of poor nutrition. Food storage
itself can also lead to increased problems with gut
infection due to spoilage from bacteria and molds.
There are, however, also health advantages of an
agricultural economy. The production of surplus,
storable foods can reduce the impact of lean periods
that for foragers may lead to malnutrition and death.
This may account for the lack of stature decline, or in
some cases even an increase in stature, documented
in some regions of the southeastern United States
and elsewhere with agriculture. Surplus food can
also permit incapacitated members of a society that
cannot contribute to subsistence efforts due to sickness, injury, or old age to survive where they might
not in a mobile society. In addition, the injured
and ill need not be mobile to survive, but can rest
and regain strength. Food production also permits
shorter birth spacing, resulting in increasing fertility
rates and therefore relatively more children each
generation.
Some researchers question whether the health
risks among prehistoric agriculturalists were actually
greater than their foraging antecedents, despite osteological evidence suggesting that this was the case. For
example, age distributions of agriculturalist samples
frequently show a higher ratio of infants and young
children to adults, a pattern interpreted to reflect
an increase in infant mortality and a decrease in
life expectancy at birth. However, it has become
clear that, while age distributions can provide a

120 AGRICULTURE/Biological Impact on Populations

good measure of fertility, they are a poor measure of

mortality. This is because changes in birthrate have a
much greater impact on demographic profiles than
changes in death rate. Fortunately, alternative methods have been developed to derive more accurate
estimates of fertility and mortality from archaeological cemetery samples. One method designed to
eliminate problems associated with the underenumeration of infants and inaccurate estimation of age
in older skeletons uses the proportion of individuals
over 30 years to the proportion of individuals over
>5 years to estimate fertility. Another method uses
birth rates calculated from age distributions of skeletal samples and growth rates based on settlement data
to estimate fertility and mortality. Estimates based on
these revised methods suggest that early American
horticulturalists experienced an increase in both fertility and mortality rates relative to contemporaneous
foragers. However, similarly high rates appear to have
been experienced by both foragers and farmers living in
the Americas between about 1500 and 500 years ago
(when most groups made the transition to sedentary
agriculture), and it has been argued that population
growth and high mortality may have been the impetus
for agriculture rather than a consequence of it.
Increasing morbidity also appears to generally
characterize the transition to agriculture, but some
scholars have argued that this too is a product of
changing patterns of infant survivorship. In foraging
societies, it is hypothesized that at-risk infants may
not survive infancy due to limiting factors such as the
need for greater birth spacing and annually occurring
lean periods, and thus be eliminated from the population before developing any skeletal record of ill
health. Survivors in these societies are therefore the
healthiest born and would be expected to fare better
in life. On the other hand, if at-risk infants in agricultural societies survive due to better provisioning and
stability, they may nonetheless suffer the consequences of greater frailty. These survivors thus may
develop the signs of ill health that osteologists use
to reconstruct patterns of health and disease. Agricultural skeletal samples would thus look sicker because
they include sickly survivors, whereas foragers would
look healthier because susceptible infants died before
they could develop these signs. However, although
these problems (the osteological paradox) introduce
challenges to estimating life expectancy and mortality
accurately, skeletal samples nonetheless provide a record of disease experience for those who did survive.
In this sense, agriculturalists generally show more
signs of ill health and disease than their forager antecedents (or contemporaries), and illness thus appears
to have been a more prominent aspect of everyday life
in these societies.

Infectious Disease

The skeleton provides only a very limited picture of

infectious disease experience with the transition to
agriculture. This is because most diseases do not
affect the bones and those that do tend to affect them
in nonspecific ways. However, what evidence there is
suggests that infectious disease generally increased
when people made the shift from foraging to farming.
We can see this pattern most clearly in the changing
prevalence of two chronic infectious diseases that
commonly affect the skeleton in distinctive and therefore identifiable ways: treponemal disease and tuberculosis (TB). Treponemal disease, a bacterial infection
that affects the bones in some (reports vary from 1 to
50%) cases, tends to result in periosteal lesions of
the long bones (especially, the tibias; Figure 6) and
destructive lesions of the cranial vault (caries sicca)
and nasal region. TB, a mycobacterial infection, may
stimulate periosteal lesions of visceral (internal) rib
surfaces in pulmonary TB and tends to affect the
vertebrae, hips, and knees with destructive lesions in
the skeletal form of the disease (Figure 7). Though
neither disease causes bone lesions in all or even
most cases, knowledge of the likelihood of bone
lesions in each disease can facilitate a more accurate estimation of morbidity levels in the population. Emerging studies of pathogen DNA will likely
enhance our understanding of the impact of these
diseases prehistorically.
The history and antiquity of treponemal disease is
best known from sites in North America, and primarily serves as a disease index in New World contexts.
This is because its appearance and prevalence in the
Old World to date is less well documented and understood. In North America, evidence for some form of
the disease predates the transition to agriculture by
several thousand years. However, most evidence derives from population samples postdating AD 1000.

Figure 6 Anterior bowing and disfiguration of the tibias due to

chronic periosteal reaction in a case of treponemal disease.

AGRICULTURE/Biological Impact on Populations 121

Figure 7 Destructive lesion of a lumbar vertebra in a probable

case of skeletal tuberculosis.

The link in this increasing prevalence appears to be

one of increased population density and sedentism,
important demographic correlates of both agriculture
and infectious disease.
The earliest cases of tuberculosis have been found
in the Old World at sites in the Mediterranean and
North Africa, where the domestication of herd animals such as cattle, a well known carrier of the pathogen, may have brought people into contact with the
disease as early as 80009000 years ago. Early on, it
was probably not crowding and sedentism that led
to infection, but rather proximity to animal reservoirs
of the disease. In the New World, the earliest, well
documented cases of tuberculosis occur in South
America, where the initial mode of transmission
remains unclear, although domesticated camelids in
some Andean regions may later have served as a
reservoir for tuberculosis initially introduced by
humans. However, the greatest visibility of tuberculosis in the New World is very late in the prehistoric
sequence, much of it postdating AD 1000. An opportunistic infection, tuberculosis differentially affects
those with compromised health and tends to thrive
in crowded living conditions. Its apparent association
with agriculture, especially well documented in North
America, again may reflect the health risks that tend to
occur when people become sedentary, increase in
number, and live in closer proximity to one another.
Perhaps the most direct evidence for the impact of
agriculture on infectious disease rates is the increase
in dental caries rates noted above. The health consequences of dental disease are often underestimated
due to modern perceptions of its minor impact on
overall health relative to other diseases. However, in
the absence of modern dental care, dental caries progresses from superficial tooth erosion to invasion of

the dentin, death of the tooth, abscessing, and eventual tooth loss. This process is painful, produces a
foul odor, and can be dangerous. The proximity of
the teeth to major blood vessels connecting to the
heart and brain means that bacteria can more readily
be transmitted to these organs than from most other
regions of the body. Once dental disease sets in, the pain
and fragility of diseased teeth also limits a persons diet
to foods that require less chewing. When the teeth are
gone, the diet is further restricted to foods such as
gruels that lack essential nutrients and that can act as
a medium for bacterial growth. Thus, the increased
tooth decay and loss commonly seen in agriculturalist
samples, particularly in the Americas, was likely associated with a decline in nutrition that rendered people
more susceptible to infectious pathogens. In this way,
dental disease likely played an important role in the
patterns of morbidity and mortality we see archaeologically with the agricultural transition.

Change in Workload with Agriculture

One of the big questions concerning the transition
from foraging to farming is how this transition impacted workload: did farming offer a relief from the
constant quest for food or did it impose a heavier
burden on those now responsible for its production?
Answers to these questions lie in the study of the
skeletal changes associated with mechanical stresses:
degenerative joint disease and structural changes in
bone morphology an area of study known as biomechanics. Degenerative joint disease (osteoarthritis)
refers to destructive changes of joint surfaces that
primarily occur in response to mechanical stress and
physical activity, although other contributing factors
such as age, sex, and weight also play a role in the
development and severity of joint damage. Biomechanics refers to the application of engineering principles to the study of living tissue; in other words, the
functional properties of bone are understood in terms
of the same loading modes that affect steel beams and
other building materials (e.g., tension, compression,
bending, sheer, torsion). These two indices account
for the majority of studies focused on changes in workload with agriculture, although there is growing interest in a third method involving study of muscle
attachment sites (musculoskeletal markers, or MSMs).
Degenerative Joint Disease as an Indicator of
Workload and Activity Patterns

Comparative studies of degenerative joint disease are

more limited than other types of studies described
above, but those available have generally documented a decline in osteoarthritis in both New and Old
World settings with the transition to agriculture.

122 AGRICULTURE/Biological Impact on Populations

In western Europe, for example, Mesolithic samples

tend to show more osteoarthritis particularly in the
back and upper limbs than Neolithic samples, suggesting that foragers experienced greater biomechanical stress than later farmers. In North America and
particularly in the Southeast, where many of these
studies have been conducted, osteoarthritis has been
shown to decline in a number of joint surfaces with
this economic transition. In Alabama and the Georgia
Bight, declines are evident in the bones of the neck
and lower back, the elbows, and knee joints. Within
the Georgia Bight, the skeletal remains of upland
agriculturalists show more osteoarthritis than those
of lowland agriculturalists, suggesting that topography influenced workload, and thus the mechanical
stresses placed on the joints of agriculturalists living
in this region. Several studies from the American
Southeast also document a shift to greater sexual
dimorphism in the severity and patterning of osteoarthritis with the transition to agriculture, as well as a
tendency for males to be more affected than females.
These data imply that, although workload or at least
mechanical loading of joints may have declined overall, the sexual division of labor became more pronounced with food production.
There are exceptions to this pattern of decline in
osteoarthritis, however. In Portugal, Mesolithic foragers show few signs of osteoarthritis, whereas several
severe cases are present in a sample of Neolithic farmers, particularly in the bones of the neck perhaps
from carrying heavy loads on the head. At the Dickson
Mounds site in Illinois, degenerative joint disease
(DJD) increased in the vertebras with agricultural
intensification in comparison to earlier agriculturalists, indicating that changes in the intensity of production could result in rising prevalence of osteoarthritis.
These cases once again illustrate the variability that
exists in samples classified as agriculturalists.
Biomechanical Measures of Workload and
Activity Patterns

Studies of biomechanical properties of long bones

provide an independent means of assessing workload
and activity patterns, and have often been used in
conjunction with patterns of osteoarthritis. Crosssectional geometry is arguably the most accurate
method for identifying activity-based changes from
bone morphology, although external measurements
have also produced useful results. In cross-sectional
geometry, cross-sectional data on bone mass and distribution relative to the long axis of a bone are
obtained from computed tomography images or actual cross sections of bone. These measurements provide insights into mechanical loading of bones and
therefore types and levels of physical activity. Much

of the data currently available derive from studies of

North American samples, and indicate that bone
mass and distribution differed between prehistoric
foragers and farmers, but not always in predictable
ways. In Georgia Bight populations, for example,
the transition to agriculture was accompanied by a
decline in bone strength (and thus, mechanical loading), whereas in northwestern Alabama bone strength
increased with agriculture. Emerging research on
European populations has documented a decline in
bending and torsional strength of femurs and tibias
with the Neolithic transition, a pattern consistent
with many American agriculturalist samples and one
supporting archaeological evidence that mobility
declined with the transition to agriculture.
Studies of cross-sectional geometry in North American samples also indicate that men and women did not
always experience this economic transition equally
in terms of workload. Male foragers, for example,
tend to have greater torsional strength of the femur
midshaft (larger midshaft diameters) than male agriculturalists, whereas females show no consistent difference according to subsistence strategy. These data
suggest that the decline in mobility evident with food
production is particularly reflective of changes in the
activities of men. Women, on the other hand, tend to
have structural properties that correlate with ruggedness of the local terrain, supporting the hypothesis
that women in both contexts were more tethered to
the home base and domestic tasks performed there.
The humeri of agriculturalists also show sex differences
in structural properties that appear to reflect distinct
gender roles. Samples from prehistoric Alabama and
Georgia Bight populations generally show a decline in
left/right asymmetry with agriculture, but this pattern
is particularly evident for females. One likely explanation is an increasing emphasis on two-handed tasks
such as maize pounding and grinding that were habitually performed by women.
These examples document the variable impacts that
the transition to agricultural production could have on
different members of the same society. They illustrate
another aspect of the complexity that emerges when
attempts are made to characterize the biological
impacts of agriculture in a broad comparative manner.

Conclusion
There is a large and growing body of literature on the
biological impacts of economic transitions, although
many world regions have yet to be explored in this
way. As studies accumulate, it becomes increasingly
possible through more inclusive intra- and interregional comparisons to refine our understanding of
the causal mechanisms behind observed changes in

AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences 123

diet, health, and workload. These causal mechanisms

are not always the same or as straightforward as originally envisioned, but with a greater knowledge of the
variability that characterized the agricultural transition comes a better understanding of how the physical
and social environment can influence human biology
and a greater appreciation of the human capacity for
biocultural adaptation in an ever-changing world.
See also: Agriculture: Social Consequences; Animal
Domestication; Health, Healing, and Disease; Paleodemography; Paleopathology; Plant Domestication;
Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element Analysis.

Further Reading
Buikstra JE (1994) Diet and disease in late prehistory. In: Verano JW
and Ubelaker DH (eds.) Disease and Demography in the Americas.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Cohen MN and Armelagos GJ (eds.) (1984) Paleopathology at the
Origins of Agriculture. Orlando: Academic Press.

Agriculture/Origins

Cohen MN and Kramer GC (eds.) (2007) Ancient Health: Skeletal

Indicators of Agricultural and Economic Intensification.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Eshed V, Gopher A, and Hershkovitz I (2006) Tooth wear and
dental pathology at the advent of agriculture: New evidence
from the Levant. American Journal of Physical Anthropology
130: 145159.
Lambert PM (ed.) (2000) Bioarchaeological Studies of Life in the
Age of Agriculture: A View from the Southeast. Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press.
Larsen CS (1997) Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the
Human Skeleton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McCaa R (2002) Paleodemography of the Americas: From ancient
times to colonialism and beyond. In: Steckel RH and Rose JC
(eds.) The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the
Western Hemisphere, pp. 94126. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Powell ML and Cook DC (2005) The Myth of Syphilis: The Natural History of Treponematosis in North America. Gainesville:
University Press of Florida.
Roberts CA and Buikstra JE (2003) The Bioarchaeology of Tuberculosis: A Global View on a Reemerging Disease. Gainesville:
University Press of Florida.
Wood JW, Milner GR, Harpending HC, and Weiss KM (1992) The
osteological paradox: Problems of inferring prehistoric health
from skeletal samples. Current Anthropology 33: 343370.

See: Plant Domestication.

Social Consequences
Brain D Hayden, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby,
BC, Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
aggrandizers People who excessively promote their own
self-interests over the interests of other community members,
thereby attempting to acquire more power, wealth, and privilege
than others.
chiefdoms Political organizations in which one central
authority (the chief) in a dominant community exerts political
control over other authorities and communities in a hierarchical
fashion. Hereditary social and economic classes typify chiefdoms
although they sometimes also occur in transegalitarian societies
without political hierarchies.
complex hunter-gatherers Societies that generally can
extract resources via hunting, fishing, and gathering wild foods
in enough abundance to establish higher population densities,
greater sedentism, surpluses, private ownership of resources and
prestige items, and social and economic inequalities.
complexity Fundamentally refers to levels of political and
socioeconomic specialization and differentiation that occur

to varying degrees beyond egalitarian societies. Typically, the

magnitude of socioeconomic inequalities, centralization of
political power, and craft specialization indicate levels of
complexity. Complexity does not refer to relative
elaboration of linguistic, kinship, or artistic products.
corporate groups Groups of people (often related) who
identify themselves as a social entity persisting over time and who
share rights and responsibilities in the control of resources and
relationships with other groups, for example, a landowning
descent group.
egalitarian societies Societies in which basic access to
resources and produce is shared and in which no family is subject
to hierarchical control from another family, although individuals
may exhibit hierarchical relationships in terms of age, sex,
marriage rights, or ritual knowledge.
heterarchies Sociopolitical organizations in which multiple
social groups (often corporate groups) share equally in the
exercise of power within a community, in contrast to
hierarchical organizations where there is a single center of
power that dominates.
prestige items Items that function primarily to achieve social
or political goals. In contrast to practical items, prestige items
often have no practical function and involve excessive costs
in their manufacture or procurement.
secret societies Voluntary ritual societies that typically
involve the most powerful or ambitious members of a
community who claim to protect the communitys supernatural

124 AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences

interests. Various supernatural secrets are divulged to members
as they progress from lower to higher ranks with ever-increasing
costs of taking on new ranks.
sedentism A relatively permanent year-round residence, in
contrast to mobile settlements that move from place to place over
the course of a year. More appropriately, one should refer to
relative degrees of sedentism or residential mobility.
transegalitarian societies Societies that are between true
egalitarian societies and the stratified societies characteristic of
chiefdoms and states. Transegalitarian societies exhibit private
ownership, significant socioeconomic inequalities, although
these are often not hereditary, prestige items, and surplus
production. These societies can be based on hunting and
gathering wild foods, fishing, trading, horticulture, or herding.

Neolithic societies ... must also be defined by their

social values based around sedentary existence, the
acquisition and storage of produce and goods, close
kin groups and descent from ancestors, and a symbolic
division of the world into constituent and often
opposing parts. (Whittle 1994:136137)

Even at the time of Alisdair Whittles synthesis, there

were strong dissenting opinions about the underlying
essence of the Neolithic as is clearly evident in the
chapters in the same volume that preceded his
(see Europe: Neolithic). In these chapters, Stephen
Mithen documents the development of sedentism,
storage, and cemeteries (therefore the importance of
corporate kin groups and ancestors) in the Mesolithic. Similarly, Paul Mellars compares Upper Palaeolithic population densities in southwest France to
later agricultural population densities, while Olga
Soffer has shown that large-scale storage of food
really begins in the Upper Palaeolithic. In addition,
Nicholas Cauwe has argued that Neolithic burial
practices can be traced back to the Mesolithic and
even the Palaeolithic, while Andre Leroi-Gourhan
long ago established a very strong case for the symbolic division of the Upper Palaeolithic symbolic
world into constituent and often opposing parts.
Moreover, Whittles subsequent claim that Neolithic
myths became somehow more complex is difficult to
assess, much less substantiate, especially given the
complex symbolism that characterized the Upper
Palaeolithic in southwestern Europe.
I wish to argue that population levels, sedentism,
storage, permanent architecture, pronounced socioeconomic inequalities, ancestor worship, corporate
social groups, complex myths and symbols all typify
complex hunter-gatherers well before the Neolithic.
They are not new elements introduced with the
Neolithic, and they cannot be used to distinguish or
define the Neolithic. A major division persists in the
discipline of archaeology between researchers like
Whittle (Ian Hodder, Richard Bradley, Julian Thomas),

who view the Neolithic as a fundamental change in

cognition that created changes in other domains of
culture (notably in the economic, social, and political
domains), versus those researchers like Mellars and
the author who view the Neolithic as essentially a
continuation of complex hunter-gatherer technology,
values, practices, and social structures with the eventual addition of more intensified means of production
such as domesticated animals and plants which eventually made even more complex types of organization
and ideology possible. The question arises that if
these social and ideological aspects were well established in the Mesolithic or even the Upper Palaeolithic, how could they represent a new cognitive
revolution that could have created the Neolithic?
Obviously, how the Neolithic is defined results
from the outlook one adopts. From the authors perspective, the cognitive revolution as a cause for, and
core of, the Neolithic has serious shortcomings. The
more traditional (and generally accepted) view is that
the Neolithic was essentially a technological (domestication) phenomenon that brought about other
changes in culture and created the first complex cultures. Yet, as we shall see, this view is not quite
accurate either.

Cultivation, Food Production,

and Domestication
A key issue is determining precisely when cultivation and domestication actually began. There is
considerable uncertainty concerning when both cultivation and domestication began as well as what
the economic impact that these practices had during
the initial 10002000 years after they appeared. As
David Harris argued over 15 years ago, the distinction between these two concepts is important.
Domestication involves some genetic changes from
wild forms (e.g., the larger sizes of grains and changes
in their dispersal structures). These changes can be
readily observed in archaeological botanical remains
(see Animal Domestication; Plant Domestication).
The archaeological occurrence of domesticated
forms clearly implies that some form of cultivation
or planting existed as well as the selective use of seeds
for planting (or animals for breeding). However, a
number of palaeoethnobotanists now suggest that
prior to the appearance of domesticated forms,
many complex hunter-gatherers were involved in
forms of cultivation that did not result in the creation
of domesticated forms. That is, complex huntergatherers were tilling the soil and planting crops just
as later groups practiced, but without seed selection

AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences 125

which could result in detectable genetic changes. Similarly, as we shall see later, complex hunter-gatherers
frequently raised wild animals for pets or for ritual
feasts without breeding them or changing their genetic characteristics.
Unfortunately, cultivation or other intensified
food production practices are much more difficult
to establish for prehistoric communities when there
is a lack of indication for domestication. However,
clues sometimes do exist such as the occurrence
of species at sites outside their normal ranges, the
occurrence of weed species typical of cultivated
fields, types of sickle gloss that indicate disturbed
earth (as in prepared fields), construction of terraces
or simple irrigation or drainage features, changes in
the species of animals exploited as well as emphasis
on certain ages and on males, erosion patterns on
animal teeth from bits, settlement pattern shifts to
areas of prime farmland, as well as higher population
densities and greater sedentism. These characteristics
all seem to indicate the likelihood that food production and cultivation, and perhaps animal rearing,
may have been taking place for centuries or millennia
before the first definite indications of domestication. Nevertheless, the occurrence of domesticated
forms has been the defining hallmark of the Neolithic
since V. Gordon Childe first proposed this definition
in 1953.
Food production is another term often used in discussing or defining Neolithic societies. It is frequently
used as a synonym for domestication. However, it
would probably be more logical to view cultivation
(without domesticated forms) as a type of food production as well. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this
section, food production is used in its more usual
sense, as implying the use of domesticated species.
Palaeoethnobotanists have increasingly entertained
concepts and interpretations of pre-Neolithic cultivation and animal rearing (without any genetic morphological changes in species) documented back to
13 200 BP and even suggested that these practices
may extend centuries or milleniums further back in
the Near East. Such views correspond well to what is
known about cultivation and animal-rearing practices (without domestication) of ethnographic complex hunter-gatherers which can be viewed as similar
to the complex hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic
in Eurasia. In Japan and Siberia, the Ainu and other
complex hunter-gatherers captured bear cubs and
raised them for a year before sacrificing and consuming them at their winter bear feasts. Evidence for
bears being held in captivity has also emerged from
the European Mesolithic, while in the Near East,
bulls appear to have been held in captivity before

domestication (presumably for feasts, as in Japan).

Similarly, even among simple horticulturalists in the
Amazon basin, Warren DeBoer reports that wild
peccaries and tapirs are captured, kept, and fattened
for feasts. The Lillooet complex hunter-gatherers of
the northwest interior captured and kept birds, foxes,
marmots, and bears as pets.
On the Northwest coast of North America, groups
of complex hunter-gatherers constructed terraced
gardens in which they grew clover and cinquefoil
roots for feasts. The gardens were owned, guarded,
and tended using all the techniques of later horticulturalists without resulting, as far as we know, in
genetically modified domesticated plant varieties.
The same techniques were used by complex huntergatherers of the Northwest interior, resulting in larger
sizes of roots due largely to the reduction of soil
compaction, weeding out of plant competitors, and
spacing plants for more optimal growth. No genetic
changes have been established as the result of
these practices even though the techniques used may
go back thousands of years. Similarly, no genetic
changes resulted from the capturing and raising of
bears in Japan or Siberia, even though these practices
probably extend thousands of years back into the
prehistory of Asia.
But even after the first genetically modified domesticated plants appear in the Near East and the New
World, their role in the overall economy of early
Neolithic communities appears to be almost inconsequential for the first 10002000 years in terms of the
proportion of domesticated to wild plant and animal
remains. In fact, some of the most widely recognized
early Neolithic communities in the Near East failed
to produce any evidence of domesticated plant or
animal use (e.g., Jerf el Ahmar, Asikli, Gobekli,
and Nativ Hagdud). Similar patterns occur in the
Japanese Jomon.

Complex Hunter-Gatherers
Increasingly, it now appears that food production
(with domesticates) was only one strategy among
many intensification techniques that characterized
complex hunter-gatherer and subsequent horticultural subsistence. To understand what social, political,
and cultural changes actually took place as the result
of food production and domestication, we must first
develop a better understanding of the cultures that
these developments emerged from. In the Near East,
in Japan, and perhaps elsewhere, domestication
developed among complex hunters and gatherers,
notably the Natufian and Jomon cultures. However,

126 AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences

the first well-documented complex hunter-gatherers

to appear in the archaeological record lived in the
periglacial savannahs of Upper Palaeolithic of southwestern Europe, about 35 000 years ago. These were
exceptionally rich environments for hunting, unparalleled anywhere in the world for their biomasss and
diversity. Upper Palaeolithic technology was well
adapted to taking large numbers of animals. While
these regions were too cold to support the domestication of plants, some archaeologists like Paul
Bahn have argued that horses were probably tamed,
bridled, and kept. However, with the disappearance of the southwestern European savannahs after
the Ice Age, these savannah cultures collapsed and
reverted to more simply organized societies with
lower populations and minimal art or prestige items.
Some people argue that the Upper Palaeolithic cultures migrated north and developed into the historic
Saami reindeer hunters and herders.
Elsewhere in the world, complex hunter-gatherers
only began to appear with the advent of the Mesolithic, some 10 00015 000 years ago when new technological developments rendered other environments
highly productive. Some of these technological developments included the first systematic forms of fishing
(using hooks, nets, and weirs) and the first effective
use of grass seeds (procured and processed with
grinding stones, sickles, and probably baskets).
These and other similar technological developments
opened up vast quantities of new resources in some
environments, making it possible to establish economic, social, and ritual structures based on the production of dependable surpluses. Some of the most
common types of environments where these complex
forms of societies developed were riverine or coastal
areas in which large quantities of fish could be procured, or areas like the Near East where large quantities of cereal grains could be harvested. The result
was a more widespread emergence of complex types
of hunter-gatherers than had previously existed (only
in periglacial savannahs during the Upper Palaeolithic). These cultures are referred to as complex
hunter-gatherers to distinguish them from the simpler
forms of hunter-gatherers that existed in the Middle
and Lower Palaeolithic, and in some cases continued
to exist in less productive environments up until contemporary times.
Whether food producing or not, archaeological
and ethnographic complex hunter-gatherers had a
number of resource and social characteristics in
common, including:
. intensified techniques of food production and usually storage;

. a predictable production of surpluses;

. recognition of private ownership of some resources
and products (especially stored produce);
. pronounced socioeconomic differences within communities (including hereditary elites and slavery, in
the more developed cases; see Social Inequality,
Development of);
. heterarchical sociopolitical structures with inverted
social pyramids; and
. the rise to prominence of some aggrandizers using
an array of strategies including transegalitarian
types of feasting, wealth exchanges, use of wealth
to obtain marriage partners for elite families (via
bride-prices or dowries), investments of wealth
in offspring, wealth-based alliances and conflicts,
development of prestige items (for social and political transactions), and a wealth-based restriction of
access to supernatural powers (often via secret
societies).
None of these traits appear to any significant
degree among simpler hunter-gatherers. In fact, many
of these traits are the complete antithesis of simple
hunter-gatherer values and practices. Simple huntergatherers eschew any idea of social classes, slavery,
economically based hierarchies, private ownership of
essential resources, or wealth. Rather, they emphasize
communal ownership and unrestricted access to essential food resources, sharing, egalitarian practices,
and freedom of movement.
Complex hunter-gatherers with the above social
and material characteristics appear to have emerged
before food production in key areas like the Near
East, Japan, and Europe and to have continued their
basic form of sociopolitical organizations fundamentally unchanged during the first several thousand
years of the Neolithic. In fact, it can be argued that
it was the competitive social and political forces in
the early complex hunter-gatherer communities that
provided the relentless driving force behind increasing surpluses via food production (with or without
domesticates). In this respect, it will be especially
useful to examine the role of prestige items and feasting in terms of the pressures that they created for
intensifying production.

Feasting and Prestige Items

How can surplus food production be used to anyones
benefit? There are a number of possibilities, but two
of the most important and recurring ethnographically
documented strategies involve using surplus food to
create prestige goods and to hold feasts, both of

AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences 127

which are central features among almost all complex

hunter-gatherers.
In terms of prestige items, one can use surplus food
to pay or support other individuals to produce finely
crafted items or to travel to distant places to procure exotic materials. Thus, obsidian, shells, beads,
and exotic stone materials occur at many complex
hunter-gatherer sites, even if they are hundreds of
kilometers from the sources of raw materials.
Among ethnographic transegalitarian societies, prestige items were used in five important ways, and we
may expect that they were used in similar ways
among prehistoric complex hunter-gatherers. The
functions of prestige items included:
1. as a means to establish debts (due to the essentially
reciprocal contracts involved in gift giving and the
high investments entailed);
2. as a means of displaying economic and social
success;
3. as a means of confirming, validating, or emphasizing the value of important social transactions
(especially marriages, alliances, the taking of important positions, and peacemaking);
4. as a means to convert surplus food into other
desirable materials (wealth) or relationships; and
5. as a substitute for human life (payments for brides
or as compensations for injuries or deaths in lieu
of revenge killings or the reciprocal transfer of
children in marriages).
The traditional models of cultural complexity and
technological advances (as reflected in the opening
quotation of this article) consider features such as
sedentism, monumental architecture, pottery, metal
use, calendars, record-keeping, slavery, and various
forms of wealth as the result of the domestication of
plants, animals, and agriculture. However, it is evident from both ethnographic and archaeological
remains that all of these features actually occur first
among complex hunter-gatherers and are related to
the development of the kinds of prestige economies
discussed above. Thus, most of the major technological and social changes usually considered as resulting
from domestication are clearly not the result of domestication but stem from much more fundamental
transformations that begin in complex hunter-gatherer
societies and also continue into agricultural societies,
becoming even more developed in the most productive
agricultural contexts.
Because of the advantages conferred by prestige
items for the five purposes mentioned above, there
should have been significant pressures within complex
hunter-gatherer societies to increase food production

in order to produce or acquire prestige items on an

ever-increasing scale. Once surplus production became the basis for acquiring mates, military allies,
and decision-making power, people must have
begun to compete in order to see who could produce
the most surpluses. And this appears to be a new
cultural phenomenon beginning with the appearance
of complex hunter-gatherers. However, aside from
increasing surpluses in order to produce more prestige
items, an even more effective way of using surplus
food was in feasts. In fact, the most valued foods used
in feasts can be considered prestige items. It is no
coincidence that the usual context in which almost
all types of prestige items were displayed was in
feasts, often as gifts creating debts.
Feasts were used for a wide variety of purposes,
including all of the purposes prestige items were
used for (see Food and Feasting, Social and Political Aspects). Above all, feasts constituted extremely
effective means of converting surplus food production into other desired materials or relationships
(whether debts or alliances). The ability of individuals to marry and reproduce, survive hostile attacks,
and defend their own interests in the community
depended, to a large degree, on the successful cultivation of support networks within and between
communities. The production of surpluses for feasting was the most important means of creating
these networks, and it is not surprising that considerable competition among support groups (usually
loosely kin-based) and communities characterized
a great deal of feasting. People tried to outdo competing groups in terms of the size and lavishness of
feasts in order to obtain the best marriage partners,
the most wealth, the most influence in decisions
or disputes in villages, and the best military assistance. There are repeated references in the ethnographic literature of complex hunter-gatherers and
simple horticulturalists to the effect that the most
powerful forces that intensified production were
not periodic food shortages, but the social and political competition between factions and communities
over desirable marriages, alliances, and decisionmaking roles.
Because surplus production and the control of the
most productive resource sites (whether fishing sites,
patches of fertile land, or hunting locations) conferred
so many advantages for people in complex huntergatherer societies, it is to be expected that these sites
would have been owned or controlled by the most
ambitious families and that these rights would have
been passed down from generation to generation. In
this context, ancestor worship and the establishment

128 AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences

of corporate kin groups would be very advantageous.

Not surprisingly, ownership of resource sites and
the importance of ancestors characterize most ethnographic complex hunter-gatherers, whether on the
Northwest coast or elsewhere. Thus, the type of
religious, social, and mythological structures that
are often thought to characterize food-producing
Neolithic societies (strongly centered on ancestor
worship and corporate kin totems) occur among
complex hunter-gatherers and probably appeared well
before domestication.
In sum, complex hunter-gatherers and simple horticulturalists share many important basic characteristics. While it is not possible to discuss all of these in
detail in this short section, some of the most salient
features include similar or overlapping population
densities, settlement sizes, levels of sedentism, technologies, use of prestige items, types of feasts, socioeconomic inequalities, secret societies, human
sacrifice and slavery, ancestor worship, corporate
kinship groups, cemeteries, and a heterarchical type
of sociopolitical organization. The only aspects that
seem to distinguish simple horticultural societies
from complex hunter-gatherers are the techniques
that they use to intensify production: some groups
include cultivation and domestication among the
array of intensification techniques used, others such
as fishing or reindeer-herding societies do not. Thus,
at a general level, we may refer to both complex
hunter-gatherers and simple horticulturalists as a
single type of society. The term transegalitarian
societies is used herein. Transegalitarian societies
exhibit the characteristics listed as well as the previously discussed features of prestige items. Most pastoral nomad societies also fit the characteristics of
transegalitarian societies, although their economic
base is different from both complex hunter-gatherers
and simple horticulturalists.

The Real Consequences of Food

Production
If most of the social and technological changes typically viewed as the outcome of food production and
domestication really began earlier in Mesolithic or
complex hunter-gatherer contexts, then what were
the real consequences of food production and domestication? It could be argued that for the first millenium or two after the appearance of domestication,
there are not any fundamental changes. At most,
there may be some intensification of production
(with initial domesticated forms) and elaboration of
social, ritual, political, and technological trends

begun in Mesolithic types of societies as well as shifts

in settlement patterns to take advantage of the best
food-producing areas.
However, over the long term, it was possible to
gradually modify and increase the productivity of
plants and animals through genetic manipulation
and labor investment (weeding, tilling, watering,
fertilizing, mulching). In this fashion, food production using domesticates eventually provided the potential of expanding the resource base in an elastic
fashion (almost without ultimate upper limits) that
other forms of intensified collection of wild foods did
not. Certainly, fishing and the production of nonfood
prestige items could not be modified in this fashion.
Thus, the immediate social consequences of food
production (using domesticates, especially for occasional feasts) may not have changed the basic way of
life from that of complex hunter-gatherers to any
significant extent. However, ultimately, with refinements in the genetic productivity of crops, food
production made it possible to support denser populations, larger communities, greater surpluses, and
more complex sociopolitical systems.

The Near Eastern Example

More archaeological and biological research devoted
to the study of early domestication has been conducted in the Near East than anywhere else in the
world (see Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East:
The Levant). Although far from complete, the
sequences and conditions pertaining to initial domestication in the Near East are the best that are currently available. Thus, it is worth examining the
archaeology of this area to illustrate some of the
points presented in the preceding section.
While there are a few indications of special burials
and prestige items in the Upper Paleolithic sites of the
Near East, it is not until the Mesolithic Natufian
cultures that very clear indications of complex
hunter-gatherers emerge in the area. The Natufian
culture emerged about 13 000 years ago and lasted
until 10 500 years ago. It exhibited a wide range of
complex hunter-gatherer characteristics, including:
. settlements in unusually rich environments encompassing endless vistas of vast supplies with
250 riparian and other plant food species, and
meat in whatever amounts were needed (Hillman
2000, 366, 370371, 384; Moore et al., 2000, 480);
. relatively high population densities;
. large settlements of several hundred people;
. permanent architecture and indications of high
levels of sedentism;

AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences 129

. many prestige objects including shells, carved basalt objects, obsidian, raptor bird wings and claws,
and other exotic stone materials (some transported
over hundreds of kilometers);
. corporate kin groups and burial areas;
. heterarchical organization;
. socioeconomic inequalities; and
. elaborate feasting.
Settlements in the core Natufian area constitute some of the best examples of transegalitarian
hunter-gatherers that have been archaeologically documented. It is especially significant that there are good
indications of relatively large-scale feasting by corporate kin groups (especially in funeral contexts), and
considerable sociopolitical competition, all before any
significant occurrence of domestication. On the other
hand, several authors have argued that cultivation
(without domestication) and the ownership of prime
cultivation plots probably characterized these Natufian
communities.
The Natufian cultures develop into Pre-Pottery
Neolithic A cultures with more substantial plastered
architecture but no perceptible change in practical
technological tools. Unfortunately, there are no
plant remains from this period to assess the status of
domestication in these societies.
In the succeeding (and derivative) early Pre-Pottery
Neolithic B (PPNB) sites (from 10 500 to 8500 years
ago), domestication is clearly attested in many sites.
However, domesticates were of only very minor significance in most of these early PPNB sites and
appear to be completely absent from some of them
(Gobekli, Jerf el-Ahmar, Asikli, Nativ Hagdud). By
the end of the PPNB, domesticated goats, sheep,
pigs, and cattle appear at many sites. Clearly they
were being kept, herded, and bred by this time, and
we might expect that the raising of wild animals
(arguably for feasting) predated their domestication
by several centuries, if not more. The change in
settlement patterns, at or before this time, to site
locations associated with fertile soils suitable for
growing crops is a strong indication that some cultivation was taking place and that the products were
of considerable importance, at least in terms of their
values if not in terms of the quantities of food
produced. The basic PPNB economy appears to have
been similar to earlier complex hunter-gatherer subsistence regimes, emphasizing intensified techniques
for collecting plants, including, in some cases, their
cultivation. These aspects are consonant with interpretations mentioned previously concerning surplus
production and the role of feasting, prestige economies, and competition between aggrandizers or corporate kin groups.

By the end of the PPNB, there was a veritable

explosion of sites together with a major increase in
the importance of domesticated plant forms in the
subsistence economy. I suggest that genetic selection
of the previous centuries and millenniums culminated
at this time in new varieties that were much more
productive than their wild counterparts. As a result,
growing domesticated crops could finally compete
with (or outcompete) the gathering of wild foods in
terms of returns for effort invested. Thus, domesticates began to be grown as the major staples, since
they provided the greatest return, whereas previously
they were more labor intensive to produce and thus
used only for special occasions like feasts.
The increased productivity of domesticated varieties eventually provided a decisive turning point in
making possible larger political organizations and
more complex societies. The major forces of change
had been established in the Mesolithic, and the
development of genetically modified cultivation and
breeding varieties whose productivity could be ever
increased, provided the means to catapult social and
political complexity to new levels. With each increase
in social and political complexity, a concomitant
but geometrical increase in surplus production was
required to fund the ever-augmenting needs of the
political apparatus which continued to be based on
feasting, prestige items, and status.
At first, few important changes occurred in the Near
East, even after the adoption of domesticates which
probably only provided marginally better returns
than wild resources. At this time, the pottery-using
Hassunan culture (58005000 BC) emerged in the
north Mesopotamian Plain in the Baghdad region.
Evidence for domestication comes from the charred
remains of several basic plants which may have become
staples such as barley, einkorn and emmer wheat,
linseed, as well as goats and sheep (probably always
used for feasts). Hassunan settlements were restricted
to areas where dry farming could be practiced,
although some evidence of very simple irrigation
occurs at a few sites. As with the preceding PPNB
and Natufian cultures, there were significant prestige
objects. At Hassunan sites, these included jewelry
of turquoise and shells, the earliest true seals, and
quantities of obsidian. However, there were no pronounced differences in house sizes or grave goods
in the communities or any significant monumental
architecture such as fortifications or large temples.
All these characteristics fit the models of transegalitarian horticultural societies at their simple or
intermediate levels (despot or reciprocator forms)
with no fixed leadership, monumental architecture,
or entrenched stable economic inequalities. In terms

130 AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences

of general levels of complexity and organization, they

might be compared to traditional communities in
New Guinea or the Amazon.
The following Halaf culture (50004300 BC) provides a number of significant indications of increasing
complexity, albeit still in the realm of transegalitarian
types of cultures, perhaps at the more complex, entrepreneur level. The subsistence base does not seem
to change dramatically, although one might expect
some genetic improvements in crop yields over time.
What clearly does change is the quantity and diversity of prestige items as well as the appearance of
monumental architecture. The prestige items take
the form of increased amounts of jewelry, obsidian,
seals, stone bowls, as well as the appearance of native
copper jewelry, and fine pottery manufactured by
full-time specialists. Monumental architecture occurs
in the form of rock-cut fortification ditches and apparent ritual structures (tholloi) up to 6 m in diameter.
Fortifications might be expected to reflect an increase
in conflict and competition due to the increased production of surpluses, wealth items, trade, and the
advantages to be gleaned from controlling such
commodities.
However, it was not until the succeeding Ubaid
period (43003500 BC) that the first good indications
of socially and politically stratified societies appeared
in favorable locations, especially where this culture
spread into the south. Wherever water could be
brought to the soils of the southern plains, the land
was transformed into the most productive among any
in Western Asia. These areas are composed of fertile
silts laid down by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers,
much in the way that the Nile annually deposited
fertile silts in its lower reaches. In lower Mesopotamia, when combined with irrigation technology and
crops capable of high yields, unparalleled surpluses
could be produced. These conditions produced chiefdoms that rapidly developed into the first civilizations
of the Old World, the Sumerians. Indications of chiefdoms can be detected during the Ubaid period in
terms of the enhanced prestige items (including the
first true smelted copper items with axes as well as
jewelry), substantial use of irrigation (although still at
a basic technological level), much more significant
monumental standing architecture (at Tepe Gawra,
20 buildings surround a central sanctuary and courtyard 20 m on a side), rich burials for some families in
plastered tombs, numerous seals, and sites up to 25 ac
in size. In neighboring Khuzistan, separate clusters of
sites occur, each containing a somewhat larger central
site indicating the existence of separate polities (each
displaying a political hierarchy such as typifies chiefdoms). This is a pattern that became much more

pronounced at the end of the period and became

much more elaborated in the Sumerian period with
the formation of city-states.
With the move into the very productive niche of the
lower floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers,
surpluses based on domesticated food production
rapidly escalated and cultural changes occurred so
fast that that some scholars even question whether a
chiefdom phase of development really preceded state
formation in Mesopotamia. In the authors opinion,
this is an extreme and unwarranted interpretation of
the archaeological record. Whether one wishes to
term the aggrandizers who were pushing their selfinterested proposals for changes, big men, great
men, entrepreneurs, chiefs, or some other epithets,
is irrelevant to the argument that it was these individuals who were responsible for creating the cultural
changes that emerged before, during, and after food
production based on domesticates. These individuals
created the strategies that took advantage of surplus
production and created the intense pressures for ever
more intensified surplus production.
It seems clear that over the millenniums, food production based on domestication did eventually create
a much more productive subsistence base than food
production based on wild species could ever achieve.
When combined with favorable environments and
technology, domesticates made it possible to produce
food surpluses on a scale unprecedented among complex hunter-gatherers. These food surpluses in turn
could be used to produce ever more prestige goods,
sponsor ever more lavish feasts, and support ever
greater political complexity. The upshot was the creation of the first state-level polities: the Sumerian
city-states that Samuel Noah Kramer has likened so
eloquently to contemporary industrial societies.
While it may be true that Sumerian states provide
our first glimpse of modern types of societies replete
with high degrees of social and economic complexity,
specialization, writing, law codes, commerce, and
social ills, at a more basic level, the values and
practices that laid the foundation for these kinds of
features really appeared first among complex huntergatherers. It was domestication that permitted
the full development of the potential of this new
type of culture. However, the basic logic of private
ownership, surplus production, investment, and use of
prestige goods, has not changed since complex
hunter-gatherers first pioneered these developments.
As we emerge today from the industrial period
and enter a new nuclear/cybernetic period, we have
yet to realize the full potential of the type of cultural
and ecological system that began with complex huntergatherers. The forms of surplus energy that we

AGRICULTURE/Social Consequences 131

now use have expanded from food production to combustible fuels, wind, water, solar, and nuclear fuels,
but the fundamental strategy of producing surplus
energy and devising strategies to convert that energy
into desirable commodities and relationships has
not changed. Today, it is impossible for growth and
change to continue at the present pace. Our cultures
must create a more stable equilibrium in the coming
centuries. Exactly what form culture will take at that
future time is difficult to predict, but it will ultimately
owe its existence to the expanded production of surplus energy that domestication initially made possible.
The increase in the level of complexity beyond
transegalitarian communities is the real legacy of
food production and domestication. It opened a
Pandoras box of productive potential that continuously stretched the system established by complex
hunter-gatherers to ever more complex limits. We are
still expanding that same basic system and its limits in
our own society. It is worth reflecting on the pervasive
role prestige goods play in our own social system
today and how this system will develop in the foreseeable future. The authors argument here is that in
the last 30 000 years, especially the last 10 000 years,
we have created a new type of ecological system
without parallel in the natural world around us.
There is no other species that can readily convert
available surplus production into other survival and
reproductive benefits. Other species may be able to
adapt genetically in order to convert extra resources
into bodily appendages or displays that confer selective advantages, but none can convert extra resources
to benefit themselves in an immediate fashion. Only
humans can do this.
See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, East: Japanese
Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers; Asia,
West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant;
Mesolithic Cultures; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad;
Europe: Neolithic; Europe, Northern and Western:
Mesolithic Cultures; Food and Feasting, Social and

Political Aspects; Paleoethnobotany; Plant Domestication; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading
Deur D (2002) Rethinking precolonial plant cultivation on the
Northwest Coast of North America. The Professional Geographer 54: 140157.
Deur D (ed.) (2005) Keeping It Living. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.
Hayden B (1995) Pathways to power. In: Price T and Feinman G
(eds.) Foundations of Social Inequality, pp. 1586. New York:
Plenum.
Hayden B (1998) Practical and prestige technologies. Journal of
Archoeological Method and Theory 5: 155.
Hayden B (2001) Richman, poorman, beggarman, chief: The dynamics of social inequality. In: Feinman G and Price T (eds.)
Archaeology at the Millenium, pp. 231272. New York: Kluwer/
Plenum.
Hayden B (2004) Sociopolitical organization in the Natufian:
A view from the Northwest. In: Delage C (ed.) BAR International
Series: The Last Hunter-Gatherers in the Near East, pp. 263308.
Oxford: Archaeopress.
Hayden B (2007) Une societe hierarchique ou egalitaire? In:
Beaure S de (ed.) La vie quotidienne au Paleolithique Superieure, pp. 197208. Paris: Editions CNRS.
Hillman G (2000) The plant food economy of Abu Hureyra 1 and
2. In: Moore A, Hillman G, and Legge A (eds.) Village on the
Euphrates, pp. 327398. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore A, Hillman G, and Legge A (2000) The significance of Abu
Hureyra. In: Moore A, Hillman G, and Legge A (eds.) Village on
the Euphrates, pp. 475526. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Peacock S (1998) Putting Down Roots: The Emergence of Wild
Plant Food Production on the Canadian Plateau. PhD Dissertation,
University of Victoria.
Peacock S (2002) Perusing the pits: The evidence for prehistoric
geophyte processing on the Canadian Plateau. In: Mason S and
Hather J (eds.) The Hunter-Gatherer Archaeobotany, pp. 4563.
London: Institute of Archaeology.
Pringle H (1998) The slow birth of agriculture. Science 282:
14461450.
Whittle A (1994) The first farmers. In: Cunliffe B (ed.) The Oxford
Illustrated Prehistory of Europe, pp. 136166. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Willcox G (1998) Archeobotanical evidence for the beginnings of
agriculture in southwest Asia. In: Damania A, et al. (eds.) The
Origins of Agriculture and Crop Domestication, pp. 2538.
Aleppo, Syria: ICARDA.

132 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN
Contents
The Greater Antilles and Bahamas
The Lesser Antilles

The Greater Antilles and

Bahamas
Mary Jane Berman, Miami University, Oxford,
OH, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
anthropomorphism The attributing of human attributes to
non-human beings or inanimate objects.
archipelago A chain of islands.
colonization The establishment of permanent settlements in a
new area, a special form of migration in which migrant groups
settle in previously uninhabited locales.
hallucinogen A psychoactive substance that induces altered
consciousness and sensory experiences.
lipidary The cutting, shaping, polishing, and finishing of
materials such as stone, mineral, and gemstones to produce
functional or decorative items.
migration The movement of people from one locale to
another.
rain shadow Dry region on the surface of the earth that is
leeward or behind of a mountain with respect to the prevailing
wind direction.
raptorial Any of numerous carnivorous birds that hunt and kill
other animals.
shaman A religious practitioner who possesses the
power to communicate with supernatural forces
on behalf of individuals or groups to heal or
malign them.
zoomorphism The attributing of animal attributes to humans
or inanimate objects.

Introduction
Geography

Located in the northern Caribbean basin, the Greater

Antilles (Figure 1) consists of the islands of Cuba,
Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola (Haiti and the
Dominican Republic). The Bahamas archipelago consists of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas and the
Turks and Caicos, BWI. Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica,
and Puerto Rico, the Caribbeans largest, oldest, most
geologically complex, and most physiographically
and environmentally diverse islands, are characterized by topographically varied landforms created by

metamorphic, volcanic, and sedimentary activity. In

contrast, the Bahama archipelago is made up of a series
of low-lying carbonate islands composed of Pleistocene
and Holocene eolianite ridges and swales formed by
sedimentary processes.
Climatically, the area is characterized as the subtropics. The greatest amounts of precipitation fall
JuneNovember, coinciding with the hurricane season. Dry seasons occur FebruaryMarch and in May.
Precipitation varies greatly. More precipitation falls
on the islands higher elevations and the northern and
eastern sides; the southern and western sides, and the
mountains leeward side receive less precipitation
(rain shadow effect). In Hispaniola the mean rainfall
varies between 1000 and 5000 mm, whereas in the
Bahama archipelago mean rainfall ranges from 350
to 1250 mm. There is little annual change in mean air
temperature. Diversity in vegetation is attributed to
latitude, elevation, rainfall amounts and seasonality,
topography, and edaphic conditions. There are 13
life zones ranging from tropical desert scrub to subtropical rainforest; the dry forest life zones dominate.
Marine (beach, intertidal, reef, deep-water) environments support shellfish, fish, marine mammals, and
turtles. Estuaries serve as marine fauna nursery
grounds. Terrestrial environments support mammals,
reptiles, invertebrates, and amphibians. Birds inhabit
a variety of habitats.
TimeSpace Systematics

Caribbean archaeologists use different schemes to

name, classify, and systematize the temporal, spatial,
and cultural relationships of the prehistoric people
they study. The most widely used system was conceived by Irving Rouse who created it to chart the
migratory routes and culture histories of the people
who colonized the Caribbean. In his system, prehistory is divided into periods; each period is characterized by archaeological cultures defined by lithic or
ceramic assemblages grouped on the basis of shared
traits (see Time and History, Divisions). In an assemblage, the most inclusive cultural unit is the series
(designated by -oid), which is divided into a subseries (designated by -an). The minimal unit is the style,
which represents a local expression of a subseries. The
style is typically named for the first site in which it was

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 133

Florida
Atlantic Ocean

Gulf of Mexico
San Salvador
Middle Caicos
Grand Turk
Cuba
Hispaniola
Belize

Jamaica

MESOAMERICA

Puerto Rico

Caribbean Sea

Trinidad

Venezuela
0

400 km

SOUTH AMERICA

Figure 1 Map of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas archipelago. Courtesy of Perry L. Gnivecki.

found and described. Critics believe the system simplifies and obfuscates the range and sources of cultural
variation present in the archaeological record. Cuban
archaeologists use an evolutionary scheme based on
stages consistent with Marxist cultural materialism
(see Marxist Archaeology). Chanlatte Baik has developed a system for Puerto Rico, while Dominican
archaeologists employ one based on local sequences.

Period I: Peopling of the Caribbean

Throughout prehistory, the peopling of the Caribbean
was due to multiple migrations from more than one
place and by people of varying ethnic and linguistic
affiliations. The earliest evidence of human occupation of the Caribbean, which dates to 5500 BC, comes
from the Banwari Trace site in southwestern Trinidad.
These people, who entered the Antilles from mainland
South America, are known as the Ortoiroid culture.
They practiced what archaeologists call an Archaic
subsistence economy characterized by fishing and
gathering. They manufactured and used groundstone,
shell, and flaked stone tools, and lived in small
mobile or semi-sedentary communities. By 2500 BC,
the Ortoiroid had made their way through the Lesser
Antilles, bypassing some islands (see Americas, Caribbean: The Lesser Antilles) to Puerto Rico.
At 4200 BC or thereabouts, Cuba was the first
island of the Greater Antilles to be settled. The

colonizers, who are known as the Casimiroid peoples,

settled in Cuba and then migrated to Hispaniola.
These first settlers probably came from Belize in
Central America, since there are similarities between
stone tools found there and in Cuba that date to this
time period. A computer simulation that employed
wind and water currents and other variables important to maritime travel suggests though that these
people may have come directly from South America.
The Casimiroid people made tools that include
large macroblades, core tools, scrapers, burins, and
awls, anvils, and hammerstones. Their perishable
technology, which likely constituted most of their
material culture, has not been recovered. They lived
in open-air sites and rock shelters and many of their
sites appear to be workshops where they made stone
tools. In Cuba, people occupied the coast and inland
river valleys; rock shelter and open-air sites have
been found in the Seboruco and Levisa River Valleys.
The Levisa Rock Shelter (3190 BC) is one of the
best studied sites from this time period. Sites on
Hispaniola include the Vignier III site (3630 BC) in
Haiti and the Barrera-Mordan (26102165 BC),
Casimira, Honduras del Oeste, and Tavera sites in
the Dominican Republic. The Maruca and Angostura
sites in Puerto Rico indicate that the island was settled
around 40005000 BC.
We know little about the subsistence practices of
these people, other than they hunted terrestrial

134 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

species such as hutas (a Capromyid rodent), iguanas,

and snakes. Although the people also collected shellfish, it did not constitute a large part of the diet and
there is no evidence for fishing. In Cuba, overpredation resulted in the extinction of the giant sloth. Sites
dating to this time period or attributed to this culture
have not been found in Jamaica, or the Bahamas.
By around 2000 BC to about 200 BC, the descendants of these people engaged in fishing, shellfish
collecting, and plant gathering, and manufactured
groundstone tools. Like their predecessors, they, too,
lived in open-air sites and rock shelters. They probably
also managed or tended fruit trees. Inter-island variation in material culture, settlement patterns, and
dietary choices emerged. Such differences can be attributed to a combination of local cultural, environmental,
and functional factors.
In Cuba, sites dating to this time period are located
along the coast and in the interior. These people
manufactured distinctive Strombus gigas shell artifacts, including gouges, cups, and hammers; groundstone artifacts such as unique polished stone balls
(spheroliths) and groundstone daggers, which served
as burial accompaniments; polished ovoid stones,
corazones, which have not been reported elsewhere
in the Caribbean (Figure 2); stone rings, wooden
objects, and pendants. They made blade tools, which

Figure 2 Heartstones (corazones). Cuba. Stone. 12.5 cm (white),

12.3 cm (yellow). Collection of the Montane Anthropological Museum, University of Havana. Photograph by Kristine Edle Olsen.

were smaller and of poorer technical quality than

those from the earlier period and flake tools eventually
replaced them. Microlith tools have been found at a
few sites. Complex, abstract, highly imaginative, geometric pictographs occur at the Punta del Este caves
located on the Isla de la Juventud. Other important sites
include Cayo Redondo and Cueva Funche (2050 BC);
later occupations of the Levisa rockshelter, and burial
sites from caves and open-air sites such as Cueva de
El Purial (1110 BC) and Canmar Abajo (2750 BC). In
western Cuba, people practicing an Archaic economy
were not supplanted by later ceramic-making groups
as they were elsewhere on the island; these communities persisted until the fifteenth century or later.
Sites in Haiti (2660 BC AD 240) and the Dominican
Republic (2030 BCAD 145) are located in river valleys
and coastal areas. Here the people hunted sloths,
manatees, crocodiles, sea turtles, and whales, and collected shellfish. They made large stemmed spearheads,
backed blades, and end scrapers, which they used to
hunt these animals. It is believed that they are responsible for the local extinction of the sloth. They also made
and used a wide array of groundstone tools including
conical pestles, single- and double-bitted axes, rectangular hammer grinders, balls, hook-, fan-, and pegshaped objects, metates, mortars, incised bowls, and
body adornments such as beads, and pendants. The
people gathered or casually cultivated plants and fruit
trees. Dried Zamia sp. leaves, Clusea rosea seeds, palm
nuts, and maize pollen have been identified from sites
in the Dominican Republic.
There is considerable regional diversity in the material culture from Puerto Rico during this time period and it resembles both Casimiroid and Ortoiroid
cultural traditions. Some archaeologists have attributed this variation to the presence of culturally distinct peoples, differences in site function, or varying
raw material properties and availability.
The people were mobile fisher-foragers who lived in
small, open-air sites or rock shelters. A few larger
communities may have been semi-sedentary. Settlements are located in coastal settings adjacent to mangrove swamps. The people engaged in low-level or
casual root, seed, and tree crop cultivation and management. Food remains such as avocado and yellow
sapote have been found at the Mara de la Cruz site. At
Maruca and Puerto Ferro, starch grain analysis of
groundstone artifacts has revealed evidence for
domesticated maize, manioc, beans, sweet potato,
and yauta (cocoyam). There is support from the Maisabel site that these people burned the landscape to
create horticultural plots or regenerate natural areas
with wild plants. Animal foods included shallowwater mollusks, marine fish, land crabs, and minor
amounts of reptiles, turtles, and birds. The diet varied

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 135

by locale. Terrestrial resources seem to have been

favored at rock shelter sites such as Cueva Tembladera
and Cueva Gemelos, while the occupants of coastal,
open-air sites such as Maruca and Cayo Cofres
emphasized foods from marine or littoral sources.
The people manufactured flake tools and groundstone tools that included small mortars, and conical
manos, which are highly diagnostic of this time period. Use-modified stone tools include edge grinders,
manos, and discoid nutting stones. At Maruca, some
of the chert used to make the flaked stone tools has
been sourced to Long Island (Antigua) (see Americas,
Caribbean: The Lesser Antilles) and there is evidence
from other sites of stone materials from other islands.
The people also made tools from Strombus gigas such
as celts, gouges, and picks that resembled those from
Cuba. They also manufactured shell and bone points,
net weights, and carved and drilled shell ornaments.
Sites in eastern Cuba [e.g., Caimanes III (AD 200),
Belliza], eastern Dominican Republic [Punta Cana
(340 BCAD 830), Honduras del Oeste and el Barrio
(230 BCAD 420), and el Caimito (305 BCAD 120)],
and throughout Puerto Rico contain low densities of
plain, small, low-fired ceramics that are globular and
boat-shaped in form. Undecorated and decorated
sherds (with incisions and punctation, mirroring
designs found on stone bowls and wooden objects)
have been found. It has been argued that people
from the Middle Orinoco, coastal Columbia, or elsewhere in northern Latin America introduced pottery
to these islands. Another argument claims that these
people adopted ceramics from the Cedrosan Saladoid
peoples who settled eastern Dominican Republic (see
below). Some archaeologists propose that these people borrowed and incorporated ceramic technology
from neighboring societies or other areas in the circum-Caribbean. It has also been suggested that ceramics evolved independently of external causes.

Period II: Early Ceramic Age

Around 500 BC, new groups of people entered the
Caribbean from the Orinoco and other river basins of
Venezuela and Guiana. These ceramic-making and
-using, full-time sedentary horticulturalists are known
as the Saladoid. It is believed these people came
from the Lower Orinoco, then went to Trinidad and
ultimately made their way to the Greater Antilles,
establishing sites in the Lesser Antilles along the way.
In the Greater Antilles, evidence for Saladoid peoples
can be found in Puerto Rico and at least one site in
eastern Hispaniola. It appears that the Saladoid
peoples bypassed the Windward Islands and moved
directly to the Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, and
Puerto Rico. By 300250 BC, they had settled Puerto

Rico. Chanlatte Baik suggests that a separate group

migrated directly to Puerto Rico from another portion
of the Orinoco River Valley around this time.
According to Rouse, there are at least two Saladoid
groups or subseries: the Cedrosan and Huecan Saladoid. The Huecan is believed to be a variant of the
Cedrosan Saladoid that diverged from the Saladoid
somewhere in the Orinoco region. Chanlatte Baik
and others regard the Huecan materials as a separate
and unrelated cultural phenomenon that consists of
the La Hueca complex dating to 200 BC and AD 200.
In Puerto Rico, Cedrosan Saladoid components are
present at the Hacienda Grande, Maisabel, Paso del
Indio, and Tibes sites, among others. Huecan materials are found exclusively at the Sorce site (Vieques
Island) and Punta Candelero (on mainland Puerto
Rico within view of Sorce). In the Lesser Antilles,
Huecan and Cedrosan Saladoid assemblages cooccur in the same deposits, but in Puerto Rico they
are spatially separate. At the Sorce site, Saladoid
materials overlay the Huecan materials. The relationship between the Cedrosan Saladoid and the La Hueca
complex is poorly understood; neither is found elsewhere in the Greater Antilles nor the Bahamas.
Cedrosan Saladoid ceramics are characterized by
elaborate painted designs in white-on-red (WOR),
white-on-red with orange slip, black paint, and
negative-painted designs, in a variety of vessel shapes.
These are considered to be the finest example of
Caribbean ceramics (Figures 3 and 4). Vessels often
had modeled and incised zoomorphic adornos and
strap and loop handles. Cedrosan Saladoid potters
also produced zone-incised cross-hatched (ZIC) wares.
In contrast, the Huecan Saladoid ceramic assemblages
lack painted wares and are characterized by ZIC pottery and modeled handles (Figure 5). In some examples,
the incisions were filled with white or red paint.
A variety of flaked and groundstone artifacts unique
to the La Hueca complex have been found exclusively in Huecan deposits and flaked stone and groundstone manufacturing techniques differed between
Cedrosan and La Hueca peoples. While both Cedrosan
Saladoid and La Hueca complex people produced
carved stone figurines made from nonlocal materials,
bird-head pendants (Figure 6) resembling raptorial
birds (condors, king vultures, or combinations of these
species) have only been found at Punta Candelero,
where they were manufactured, and at Sorce, which
is thought to have served as the port-of-trade. The
unique flake tool and lapidary traditions lend further
proof of the distinctiveness of the Cedrosan and
La Hueca complex peoples and to the possibility of
separate origins. During this period, three-pointed
stone, shell, and coral artifacts known as zems, a
designation describing spiritually-imbued objects

136 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

Figure 3 Saladoid (WOR) bowl. Puerto Rico. Ceramic. Height:

7.7; width: 15.2 cm. Centro de Investigaciones Arqueologicas,
Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Figure 6 Bird-beak pendant. La Hueca Culture. Puerto Rico.

Jadeite and serpentine. Height: 5.1; width: 4.1 cm. Centro de
Investigaciones Arqueologicas, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Figure 4 Saladoid (polychrome) bell-shaped vessel. Puerto

Rico. Ceramic. Height:15.2; width: 27.9 cm. Centro de Investigaciones Arqueologicas, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Figure 5 Huecan-Huecoid zone-incised cross-hatched (ZIC)

tabular-shaped rim handle sherds. Puerto Rico. Ceramic. Centro
de Investigaciones Arqueologicas, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

associated with the later Chican Ostionoid and Tano

cultures, appeared, suggesting the onset of zem worship. Snuffing vessels, believed to have been used to
ingest hallucinogens, have been found, too.
Cedrosan Saladoid sites were located on coastal
plains and in interior alluvial valleys. Sites consisted
of a central plaza surrounded by multiple domestic
structures, believed to house extended families. It is
believed that Saladoid society was egalitarian. Burial
groupings located in the plazas are thought to represent
lineal descent groups. The two known Huecan sites
are smaller than their Cedrosan Saladoid counterparts
and are also inferred to have been organized along
egalitarian lines. The Sorce site is made up of seven
small mounds arranged in a horseshoe pattern.
Little perishable technology has been recovered,
although archaeologists infer that the people used
gourds as containers, made cordage and netting, wove
baskets, and manufactured wood canoes, paddles,
and other items. Polished and groundstone axes
and adzes were made from fine-grained materials,
including various kinds of greenstone. Axes and adzes
were also manufactured from Strombus shells. During
this period, three-pointed stone, shell, and coral artifacts known as zems, a designation describing spiritually-imbued objects associated with the later Chican

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 137

Ostionoid and Tano cultures, appeared, suggesting the

onset of zem worship. Snuffing vessels, believed to
have been used to ingest hallucinogens, have been
found, too.
Archaeobotanical remains indicate that the Cedrosan Saladoid and Huecan peoples practiced arboriculture and cultivated or collected herbaceous plants and
seed crops such as Panicum grasses (see Paleoethnobotany). The cultivation of root crops, such as manioc,
has been inferred from ceramic objects believed to be
griddles. Manioc was believed to have been brought to
the Antilles by Saladoid peoples from South America;
we now know that it was grown by earlier peoples
practicing on Archaic subsistence economy. The diet
consisted further of huta, fish, turtles, shellfish, iguanid lizards, and land crabs. Marine mammals may have
contributed to the diet. The huta, which is found at
both Cedrosan and Huecan sites, represents an imported
species. The dietary remains from Vieques also include
remains of the spiny rat and a possible peccary, which
represents a South American import, as well as a
variety of aquatic and terrestrial species of birds.
The Saladoid persisted for almost 1000 years in
Puerto Rico. Rouse believes that the Casimiroid of
Hispaniola created a frontier that prevented the
Saladoid from expanding westward. Evidence for
Saladoid intrusion exists in the eastern Dominican
Republic (c. AD 240) There are no Saladoid sites in
Cuba, the Bahamas, or Jamaica.

Period III: Population Expansion

and New Ceramic Traditions
Around AD 600, changes in ceramic and lithic assemblages occurred on Puerto Rico. Rouse attributes
these to the Ostionoid series that emerged from the
Saladoid series. In contrast, Chanlatte Baik and others
argue that the Ostionoid resulted from the interaction
of the Huecan and Cedrosan Saladoid peoples with
Archaic populations; others believe the Ostionoid
represents a separate migration from South America;
another recent argument places the origins of the
Ostionoid among the Archaic cultures of Hispaniola.
By the end of the seventh century, the Ostionoid
culture had expanded westward to the Dominican
Republic; by the eighth century, it had spread to
Grand Turk, BWI; and by the mid-ninth century, it
was present in Jamaica and central Cuba. In Puerto
Rico, Ostionoid culture is known from the Punta
Ostiones, Maisabel, Tibes, and Bronce sites, among
others, and from Paso del Indio, Puerto Ricos deepest,
best-stratified site. The Coralie site (Grand Turk),
thought to be an Ostionoid colony or outpost, was occupied and reoccupied by people from AD 7001100.

The earlier occupation represents an early, if not the

first, peopling of the Bahama archipelago.
Archaeobotanical evidence indicates that Ostionoid peoples harvested wild plants, tended or managed fruit trees, and cultivated root-tuber crops. For
many years, it was argued that a dietary shift took
place between the Saladoid and Ostionoid periods
whereby terrestrial resources (Saladoid) were supplanted by marine resources (Ostionoid). This is also
known as the crab-shell dichotomy. While zooarchaeological and carbon isotope evidence is contradictory, it
is generally agreed that where such subsistence change
is observed, local factors are responsible and that marine resources contributed significantly throughout
both periods. Guinea pigs, recovered from several
sites, including Tibes, represent a faunal import
from South America.
Terracing and raised fields (montones) are found
during this time period in Puerto Rico. People
established settlements in new areas; in some regions,
residences decreased in size, suggesting that they were
occupied by nuclear families. On the eastern side of
Puerto Rico, there is evidence of centralized settlement
patterns. Civic-ceremonial and ballcourt sites, mostly
in the southeastern part of the island, appear. There is
also an increase in the number and size of zems. Architectural settlement and artifact changes are believed to
relate to the emergence of institutionalized social hierarchy. Tibes (Figure 7) is the oldest civic-ceremonial
and possibly the first prehistoric political center in
the Caribbean. Located in south-central Puerto Rico,
it contains nine ballcourts, three dance plazas, causeways, and residences believed to have been occupied
by emerging elites. Anadenanthera sp. wood and seeds
of evening primrose (Oenothera sp.), a mild narcotic,
were both found dating to the ceremonial occupation.
Anadenanthera sp. is one of the possible sources of
cojoba, the primary hallucinogenic substance used by
the Tano to induce visions. This is the earliest archaeological evidence of the plant in the Caribbean.
Ostionoid pottery consists of red-slipped boatshaped, straight-sided, and open vessels that often
contain loop handles, sigmoid appliques, and simple
modeled head lugs (Figure 8). Red paint and black
smudging on vessel exteriors is sometimes present.
New kinds of flaked stone tools and different methods of tool production also differentiate the Ostionoid from the Saladoid. The people also made stone
and shell artifacts with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images.
Sometime during the AD 600s, another pottery
subseries, the Meillacan Ostionoid, emerged in the
Cibao Valley of northern Hispaniola and is believed
to represent an in situ development from the Ostionoid.

138 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

Figure 7 (a) Central section of the southern stone row of the main plaza of Tibes (Structure 6). Ball Court 2 is visible in the background.
Puerto Rico. Photograph courtesy of L. Antonio Curet. (b) Ball Court 1 of Tibes facing east. Puerto Rico. Photo courtesy of L. Antonio
Curet.

Figure 8 Ostionan Ostionoid boat-shaped vessel with strap

handles. Puerto Rico. Ceramic. Height: 41; width: 32; thickness:
21.1 cm. Museo de Historia, Antropologa y Arte, Universidad de
Puerto Rico.

Contrasting views suggest, though, that the Meillacan

diffused from the Guyana Highlands, that it emerged
centuries earlier from the Punta Cana tradition of eastern Dominican Republic (see below), and that it is
unrelated to the Ostionoid series. The Meillacan and
Ostionan cultures overlapped temporally in the Turks
and Caicos and elsewhere; moreover, Ostionan pottery
has been found in association with Meillacan sherds
at sites in Hispaniola, suggesting that the latter did
not necessarily supplant the former.
Meillacan pottery is thin, hard, and unpainted.
Decorations include modeling, punctuation (Figure 9),
zoned incision, and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic applique figures located on the shoulder or rims
of hemispheric and boat-shaped vessels. Some argue

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 139

Figure 9 Meillacan Ostionoid sherd with punctation. Illustration

courtesy of Mary Jane Berman.

that Meillacan ceramic decoration drew upon Courian

Casimiroid stone work designs; such an argument
lends support that the Meillacan were direct descendants of Archaic cultures, with no links to the
Ostionoid or represents the merging of Archaic and
Ostionoid cultures.
Meillacan ceramics or local versions with Meillacan
designs appear almost contemporaneously in the ninth
century in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, eastern
and central Cuba, and the central Bahamas. A combination of exploration, colonization, and high levels of
interisland interaction (trade, exchange) is likely responsible for the extensive spread of the Meillacan
style. The earliest evidence of Palmetto ware, a locally
made Bahamian pottery with Ostionan and Meillacan
traits, signifies the appearance of a distinct Lucayan
culture at AD 700900 at the Three Dog and Dune
#2, Pigeon Creek sites on San Salvador Island. Ceramic
assemblages from northern and eastern Cuba exhibit
both Meillacan and Ostionan traits, as does the White
Marl pottery of Jamaica.
Meillacan peoples and people influenced by
Meillacan culture practiced root crop and seed horticulture in home gardens and mounded fields, tended
or managed fruit trees, gathered wild plants, and
fished and collected shellfish from marine and estuarine waters. Starch grain analysis on chert microliths
from the Three Dog site has revealed evidence of maize,
chili peppers, and several root and tuber crops, suggesting that the peoples who settled the central Bahamas
brought these plants with them from their homelands
in Hispaniola and Cuba (see Starch Grain Analysis).
Sites in the Bahamas, Cuba, and Jamaica are small,
reflecting the activities of horticultural-fishing groups.
Meillacan outposts, including specialized shell bead
production sites, were established on Middle Caicos
and Grand Turk, BWI. The Meillacan culture did not
penetrate Puerto Rico.

Figure 10 Chican Ostionoid bowl. Dominican Republic. Ceramic. Height: 14; width: 20.6; thickness: 18.7 cm. Collection of El
Museo del Barrio, gift of Brian and Florence Mahony. El Museo del
Barrio, New York City (PC92.1.4). Photograph by Bruce Schwarz.

Around AD 800, a new pottery, Chican Ostionoid,

emerged in the southeastern Dominican Republic. By
AD 1200, this ceramic style and its regional variants
became widespread in Hispaniola (except for the
southwestern peninsula), Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the
Turks, and Caicos, and ultimately eastern Cuba,
which the Chican peoples settled in (approximately)
AD 1450. It has been argued recently that Chican
pottery, like Meillacan pottery (see above) can also
be traced to Punta Cana pottery due to resemblances
in decorative characteristics. According to this argument, the Meillacan and Chican traditions are unrelated to the Ostionoid and should be referred to by
their own series (rather than subseries) names (Meillacoid, Chicoid).

Period IV, AD 12001500

By AD 1200, Tano culture on Hispaniola was fully
established; most of the characteristics observed by
the Spanish, who arrived three centuries later, emerged
during this period. Both Chican Ostionoid and
Meillacan pottery and their local variants persisted
into the fifteenth century in northern Hispaniola,
central Cuba, Jamaica, and the central and northern
Bahamas (which was settled by this time). Chican pottery is characterized by constricted open, boat-shaped,
or constricted bottle-shaped vessels with carved or
broad-lined curvilinear incisions sometimes in line
and dot patterns (Figure 10). After AD 1200, pottery
became more elaborate. Modeled-incised lugs depicted
zems, animals, gods, and caciques wearing ear
spools and elaborate headdresses adorned the sides of
vessels. At numerous sites in Hispaniola, Meillacan
and Chican ceramics are found in the same strata.

140 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

Basketry-impressed Palmetto ware, which appears after

AD 1100 in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, reflects
complex Lucayan basketry traditions (Figure 11).
Throughout Hispaniola, Cuba, the Bahamas, and
Jamaica, there was an increase in the number, type,
and size of settlements. Except for western Cuba
where a foraging subsistence economy was practiced,
people grew manioc (the staple crop), maize, gourds/
squashes, varieties of peppers, tobacco, sweet potato,
papaya, avocados, peanuts, yauta and other roots
and tubers, engaged in arboriculture, and collected
wild plants. Terraced fields are reported from Puerto
Rico; irrigation was practiced in parts of Hispaniola.
In the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, fields were
created in low-lying interdune areas. During this time,
fish and shellfish dominated the meat portion of the
diet, with minor contributions from iguana, huta, and
other animals.
By the late fifteenth century, the Greater Antilles,
Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos consisted of many
linguistic and ethnic groups that interacted with
one another through trade, exchange, marriage, and
political alliances. Although culturally diverse, the
people who lived here are known collectively as the
Tano, meaning good or noble in classic Tano. The
Indians of Hispaniola used this term when speaking
to the Spanish in order to differentiate themselves
from other groups. At the onset of Spanish entry into
the Americas, the people of the Greater Antilles, the
Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos spoke at least three
languages (classic Tano, Ciboney Tano, and Macors)
and two dialects, Ciguayo and Guanahatabey.
Hispaniola was organized into five large and several smaller stratified chiefdoms or cacicazgos made up
of: caciques (paramount ruler-chiefs) and their immediate families; nitainos, believed to be nobles, who
assisted the caciques; and naborias or laborers. The
behiques (shamans), who served as advisors and healers, were considered nitainos. A cacicazago consisted
of 70100 villages made up of several thousand people. Inheritance was matrilineal; residence patterns

may have been avunculocal. Caciques were invested

with religious and political power, controlling economic, craft, and artistic labor, production, and
distribution. Puerto Rico, eastern Cuba, and Jamaica
were divided into smaller-sized, less politically complex polities, but more and bigger ballcourts were
constructed during this time in Puerto Rico suggesting
some form of social restructuring from the previous
period. The Turks and Caicos and Bahamas may
have been organized into small, less stratified cacicazagos. Hunting-gathering populations (Guanahatabeys)
lived in western Cuba and southwestern Hispaniola.
The Tano cosmological system consisted of a pantheon of deities such as Yucahau, the god of cassava,
Attabeira, the fertility goddess, and 12 lesser deities.
Zems were ancestor-gods and/or shamanic spirithelpers who possessed spiritual, political, and/or
healing powers. They were made from stone, shell,
bone, coral, wood, ceramic, woven cotton, and other
materials and resembled a combination of human,
animal, and supernatural creatures drawn from a
pantheon of spirits and ancestors (Figure 12). The
objects often differed in material, style, and decorative treatment from island to island. Zem were often
depicted in rock art. The ingestion of hallucinogens
such as cojoba was an integral part of spiritual life
facilitated by the use of elaborate paraphernalia including inhalers, vomiting sticks, snuff tables, and
spoons. Shamans (behiques) and shaman-caciques
served as the expert translators of these experiences
and were sometimes depicted in their altered states
(Figure 13).
The Tano and their Chican Ostionoid predecessors
of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola played a ballgame
on leveled courts or plazas (bateyes). Differences in
shape, appearance, size, and number reflect interisland political and cultural differences. For example,
there are fewer ballcourts on Hispaniola, but they are
larger than those found on the other islands. Two
teams made up of about 2030 players vied with

Figure 11 Mold and cast of Lucayan basketry-impressed pottery. San Salvador, Bahamas. Photograph courtesy of Mary Jane
Berman.

Figure 12 Three-pointer zem with shell inlay. Puerto Rico.

Stone. Height: 20.0; width: 8.3; thickness: 7.9 cm. Museo de
Historia, Antropologa y Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas 141

Figure 13 (a) Zem of Deminan Caracarakol effigy jar (frontal view). Dominican Republic. Ceramic. (b) Zem of Deminan Caracarakol
effigy jar (back view). Dominican Republic. Ceramic. Height: 40.5 cm. Collected by Theodoor de Booy. National Museum of the American
Indian, Smithsonian Institution (05/3753). Photograph by David Heald.

one another to send the ball toward its goal. Hands

and feet were not allowed to come into contact with
the ball, nor was it permitted to touch the ground.
The ball was made from rubber and other materials.
In Puerto Rico, ballgame participants wore elaborately decorated stone artifacts known as stone collars
and elbow stones on their waists and arms that helped
keep the ball afloat (Figure 14). The competitions
helped to resolve social tensions, serving also as occasions for feasting, trading, and alliance creation.
Women-only teams were known to play. In recreating
Chican mythology and ancestral genealogies, the
petroglyph-zems lining the Caguana (Puerto Rico)
ball court, served as visual reminders of history and
social organization.
Low stools (duhos), which conveyed caciques and
behiques position, wealth, prestige, authority, and
power were used during ceremonies and other special
occasions, including ballgames (Figure 15). They also
served as gifts and elite burial accompaniments and
caciques and behiques sat on them during the ingestion
of cojoba. It is believed that the caciques sat on the
stools with curved backs, while the behiques sat on
ones that lacked backs.

The Tano also expressed themselves in music and

dance. Ceremonies (areytos) signaling battles, marriages, and deaths of important personages and other
significant events took place in the central plaza of
the caciques village, which was larger than the
surrounding ones.
The arrival of Columbus and the Spanish in 1492
brought devastation and upheaval. The earliest evidence of Spanish presence in the Americas, known
from glass beads, European ceramics, and a variety of
metal objects, comes from the Long Bay site on San
Salvador, Bahamas. After visiting several Bahamian
islands and eastern Cuba, Columbus left a garrison of
men at En Bas Saline in northern Hispaniola in December 1492. Upon his return in December 1493,
there was no sign of them. A few weeks later, he
established a settlement to the east at La Isabela.
Within a few short years, other settlements and a
chain of forts were built. Initially the two groups
exchanged gold and food for European trinkets, but
Spanish abuses soon triggered Indian resistance that
was matched in 149495 by brutal Spanish reprisals,
resulting in the eventual, near-universal enslavement of the Tano. Then, in 149597, the Spanish

142 AMERICAS, CARIBBEAN/The Greater Antilles and Bahamas

Figure 14 Collar with decorated panel. Puerto Rico. Stone.

Height: 9.5; width: 21.1 cm. Museo de Historia, Antropologa
Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

warfare, and relocation, severely decimated the population. The Spanish conquered Puerto Rico (1508),
Jamaica (1509), and Cuba (1510), establishing the
encomienda system. Indian women married Spanish
men or served as their concubines. Indian plant foods
were incorporated into the European diet.
On each of the large islands, unknown numbers of
Indians fled to the mountainous interior, where they
established maroon communities. With the exception
of these groups, by the mid-sixteenth century or earlier,
the Tano and the Lucayans had virtually disappeared
as cultural entities. Their biological and cultural heritage survive today in the people of Hispaniola, Cuba,
and Puerto Rico; many aspects of diet, medicinal
knowledge, crafts, spiritual beliefs, and vocabulary
draw on Tano culture. By 1511, Africans were systematically imported to replace the Indians as slave labor.
The beginning of contemporary Caribbean culture,
drawing on Amerindian, African, and European beliefs,
practices, and lifeways was established.
See also: Americas, Caribbean: The Lesser Antilles;
Animal Domestication; Marxist Archaeology; Paleoethnobotany; Plant Domestication; Starch Grain Analysis;
Time and History, Divisions.

Figure 15 High-backed wooden duho. Puerto Rico. Wood.

Height: 38.0; width: 20.3. Museo de Historia, Antropologia Y
Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

commanded that tribute (gold, cotton, food, labor),

organized and negotiated through the caciques, be
paid them every 3 months. The system was unsuccessful. In 1497, repartimiento, a system of forced Indian
labor, was instituted, whereby the Crown gave land
to the Spanish to be used for farming and ranching.
Indians were assigned to Spaniards for whom they
worked and received education in Christianity and
civilization. In 1503, the encomienda system was
established on Hispaniola; Indians paid tribute,
worked in the mines for 46 months, and returned
to their villages for the rest of the year (demora).
The intentional and accidental import of Old World
animals (cows, pigs, rats, mice) and plants (e.g.,
wheat, sugarcane, weeds) and deforestation due to the
establishment of settlements and forts all contributed
to major ecological changes. Within two decades, diseases (e.g., measles, smallpox, influenza), for which
the aboriginal populations lacked immunities, physical abuse, overwork, food shortages, malnutrition,

Further Reading
Bercht F, Brodsky E, Farmer JA, and Taylor D (1997) Tano, PreColumbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean. New York:
The Monacelli Press.
Curet LA (2005) Caribbean Paleodemography: Population, Culture History, and Sociopolitical Processes in Ancient Puerto
Rico. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press.
Dacal Moure R and Rivero de la Calle M (1984) Arqueologa
aborigen de Cuba. La Habana: Editorial Gente Nueva.
Granberry J and Vescelius GS (2004) Languages of the PreColumbian Antilles. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama
Press.
Keegan WF (2000) West Indian archaeology 3. Ceramic Age. Journal of Archaeological Research 8(2): 135167.
Newsom LA and Wing ES (2004) On Land and Sea: Native American Uses of Biological Resources in the West Indies. Tuscaloosa,
AL: The University of Alabama Press.
Pagan Jimenez J, Rodrguez M, Chanlatte Baik LA, and Narganes
Storde YM (2005) La temprana introduccion y uso de algunas
plantas domesticas, silvestres, y cultivos en Las Antillas precolombinas. Dialogo Antropologico 3(10): 733.
Rouse I (1992) The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People who
Greeted Columbus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Siegel PE (ed.) (2005) Ancient Borinquen: Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Native Puerto Rico. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of
Alabama Press.
Wilson SM (1990) Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of
Columbus. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles 143

The Lesser Antilles

Corinne L Hofmann, Leiden University, Leiden,
The Netherlands
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
cross hatching Fine line incision in a cross-hatched pattern.
caliviny Buff or black painted circular motifs on a plain or red
slipped surface, in use throughout the entire Troumassoid
sequence in the southern Lesser Antilles, notably on St. Vincent,
where more than 20 sites have been documented yielding Caliviny
pottery. This pottery has also been found on St. Lucia,
Martinique, the Grenadines, and Barbados.
Cayo Late Ceramic Age pottery style on Grenada, St. Vincent,
St. Lucia, Dominica, and Guadeloupe with affiliations to the
Koriabo complex of the Guianas, itself a member of the
Koriaban subseries of the Polychrome Tradition of Amazonia.
head lugs Modeled zoomorphic or anthropomorphic
representations, added to vessel as handles or lugs when both
were in a plastic or leather-hard state.
Huecan Saladoid subseries Pottery style identified in
Puerto Rico, Vieques, and the northern Lesser Antilles as far
south as Marie-Galante. The origin of this Early Ceramic Age
style, the so-called Huecan problem, has been debated since its
first discovery. Some scholars view it as a separate Huecoid
series, resulting from an independent migration from the
South American mainland, others as Huecan Saladoid, a
separate subseries that developed independently out of the
Saladoid series. Recently, also affiliation to Central America
has been suggested.
incision Linear or curvilinear grooves applied to the vessel
surface once the clay was leather-hard.
Kalinago Island Carib of colonial times who refer to the Guianas
as their original homeland. Cayo pottery has been correlated to
the Island Carib.
Maloca Large communal house known from Tropical Lowland
peoples of South America. The maloca accommodates a wide
range of activities such as living, sleeping, food preparation,
working, storing, meeting, dancing, and worshipping.
modeled applique Pre-modeled clay sometimes of a geometric
shape attached to the vessel, when both were in a plastic or
leather hard condition.
Ortoiroid Series that extends from the coastal zone of Venezuela
and the Guianas through the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico
during the Archaic Age. The toolkit consists of ground stone and
shell tools as well as flint.
Series Cultural complexes or ceramic styles that developed from
a common ancestor. A subseries is a spatial and/or temporal
division of a series.

Introduction
Archipelagic Environment

The Lesser Antillean archipelago separates the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean, forming a series of
stepping-stone islands between South America and

the Greater Antilles (Figure 1). The Lesser Antilles

include Trinidad, the Windward (Tobago to Dominica) and Leeward Islands (Guadeloupe to Saba),
and the Virgin Islands. Most islands are intervisible;
there are only two wider straits of sea, the Grenada
passage and the Anegada passage, both c.150 km
wide (see Americas, Caribbean: The Greater Antilles
and Bahamas).
Natural Island Setting

The arc comprises volcanic and limestone islands

situated on the margin of the Caribbean Plate. The
inner arc, from Marie-Galante northward after outer
arc, encompasses geologically younger islands consisting of active and recently extinct volcanoes. The
geologically older islands of the outer arc are made up
of marine sediments overlaying the volcanic foundation. This divergence affects the ecological and climatological characteristics of the islands. Trinidad and
Tobago sit on the continental shelf and their terrestrial flora and fauna reflect this South American mainland allegiance. The many islets located near the main
islands play an important role in the exploitation of
natural resources.
Communicating Communities: Mobility and
Exchange in the Lesser Antillean Archipelago
between 6000 BC and AD 1492

The discontinuous distribution of subsistence

resources and great variability in the availability of
raw materials are the driving forces behind the highly
mobile nature and diversified procurement strategies
of the Archaic Age groups and the establishment and
maintenance of the intensive insular contact networks
during the Ceramic Age. The favorable position of the
Lesser Antilles between the mainland and the Greater
Antilles stimulated exploratory voyages and migration processes, linked two major centers of cultural
development and encouraged the establishment of
interconnecting exchange networks. Both regions
were of great importance for the sociocultural development of the Lesser Antilles throughout the preColumbian era (Figure 2). Mobility patterns and
material distributions evidence that the archipelagic
interaction networks evolved through time as a result
of the shifting and expansion of group territories,
fission and fusion of local groups, and the increasing
complexity of sociopolitical organization. This complicated web of social relationships also involved the
sharing of myths, tales, songs, dances, and ritual
knowledge.

144 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Dominican Republic

Puerto Rico

Virgin Islands
Anguilla
St. Martin

St. Barths

Vieques
St. Croix

Saba
St. Eustatius
St. Kitts

Barbuda
Nevis

Antigua
Guadeloupe
La Dsirade
Marie-Galante

Les Saintes
Dominica

Martinique

St. Lucia
Barbados
St. Vincent

Aruba
Curaao

Grenadines
Bonaire
Grenada

Los Roques

Margarita

Tobago
Paria
Trinidad

Orinoco Delta
Venezuela

Or

o
inoc

100

200

300 km
Guyana

Figure 1 Map of the Lesser Antilles.

Archaic Age (6000 BC500 BC)

Early Occupation by Seasonal Hunter-FisherCollectors

Archaic Age groups came into Trinidad from northern South America by 6000 BC and by around
2500 BC various islands of the Lesser Antilles had
seen human occupation. Archaic Age sites are to be

found from Trinidad to the Virgin Islands. Antigua

was the most densely occupied island, likely due to
the presence of major flint sources.
Lifeways and Settlement

Early island dwellers were well adapted to the varied

environmental conditions and differential distribution

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles 145

Northern South America

Orinoco

Coastal Guyana

Trinidad

Antilles
Windward islands

Leeward islands

Virgin
islands

Puerto Rico

2000
Cariban and Arawakan
speaking peoples
1500

Koriabo
Macapaima
Arauquinoid

1000

Mon Repos

Mayoid

Bontour

Island Carib
Cayo
Suazan Troumassoid
Anse Trabaud

Morne Cyble
Freeman's Bay
Mamoran
Mamora Bay
Troumassoid
Mill Reef

Troumassan
Paquemar
Troumassoid
Esprance

Chican Ostionoid
Magens BayEsperanza, Cap
Salt River II
Santa Elena Modified Ostiones
Elenan/Ostionan
Magens Bay- Ostionoid
Salt River I
Monserrate

500

cal AD
0
cal BC

Palo Seco

Barrancoid
Los Barrancos

Coral Bay-Longford

Diamant

Cuevas

Cedrosan Saladoid
Indian Creek

Cedros
Viv
Barrancas

Ostiones

Erin

Guarguapo

Mabaruma

Prosperity

Hacienda Grande/La Hueca

Morel/Hope Estate

500

1000
Ortoiroid

Casimiroid

Ronquinan
Saladoid
2000

Colonial period

3000
Ortoiroid
4000

Neoindian epoch/Ceramic Age

Mesoindian epoch/Archaic Age

6000
10 000

Paleo-Indian epoch/Lithic Age

Figure 2 Chronological chart of Archaic and Ceramic Ages covering northern South America, Lesser Antilles, and Puerto Rico (after
Rouse 1992).

of resources throughout the archipelago. On the

coast they relied heavily on reef fish and shellfish
exploitation while in inland locations they foraged
crabs and birds in combination with plant gathering
or managing. The combination of flint, groundstone, and shell artifacts at sites of this period has
been defined as the Ortoiroid series (Figure 3). The
apparent co-evality of the Archaic populations and
the earliest Ceramic Age settlers indicate possibilities
for transfer of information and knowledge between
these groups.
Resource Mobility

The Archaic Age hunter-fisher-collectors moved

around the islands adapting to a subsistence and
settlement system living semi-permanently and alternately in coastal and inland settings. They adopted
an annual mobility cycle encompassing multiple
islands, each representing a unique resource patch

within the environmentally heterogeneous region

(Figure 4). Communities relied upon seasonality
markers as animal cycles, the succession of xeric,
moderately humid and wet seasons, and hurricanes
to structure their activities through time and across
place.

Early Ceramic Age (400 BCAD 600/800)

Intensification of Island Occupation by
Horticultural Sedentary Groups

By 400 BC Puerto Rico and the northern Lesser Antilles saw the appearance of two Ceramic subseries,
Huecan and Cedrosan, of the Saladoid series, a pottery tradition originating in South America. The
remaining Lesser Antilles beyond Trinidad were
only occupied from AD 200 on and the continuous
influx of local groups from the mainland totally
transformed the natural and cultural landscape

146 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Figure 3 Ortoiroid toolkit.

March

September

December

June
Figure 4 Yearly Archaic archipelagic resource and mobility cycle in the northern Lesser Antilles.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles 147

Early Ceram
mic Age

Morel

Golden Rock

Late Ceram
mic Age

Anse la Gourde

Kelbey's Ridge II

Figure 5 House structures and burial practices between 400 BC and AD 1500 in the Lesser Antilles.

of the islands. By AD 350/400 all the islands had seen

occupancy and sites increased considerably in number and size.
Lifeways and Settlement

Communities lived in more or less permanent settlements in diverse ecological settings, people taking
on a broad-spectrum subsistence economy consisting of a combination of horticulture, hunting, fishing,
and food collecting. Excavations at Golden Rock,
St. Eustatius, revealed house plans of various shapes
and sizes, including a large 19 m2 roundhouse, which
recalls Amazonian malocas for extended families
(Figure 5).
Human and dog burials were located outside the
houses (Figure 6). Grave inventories comprise beads
and amulets of quartz, amethyst and greenstone,
conch shells, and ceramic vessels.

Figure 6 Morel dog burial.

Huecan and Cedrosan Saladoid ceramics are characterized by a large variety of vessel shapes including
hemispherical, bell-, boat-, and kidney-shaped bowls,
occasionally provided with D-shaped handles and

148 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Figure 7 Huecan and Cedrosan Saladoid ceramics (not to scale).

highly decorated with curvilinear incising, zonedincised crosshatching (ZIC), white-on-red painting
(WOR), and modeled-incised head lugs representing
a mainland faunal imagery. A so-called Saladoid
veneer masks the underlying heterogeneity of pottery
styles, evidencing the complicated nature and diverse
origin of the series (Figure 7).
Social Organization and Establishment of Regional
and Local Contact Networks

Saladoid society was egalitarian; communities participated in ceremonial activities on a household

level. Exotic items, semi-precious raw materials, and
mainland iconography reflect the existence of regional networks linking South America to the Lesser
Antilles. Local networks for the distribution of raw
materials existing from the onset of occupation
gained importance over time. Such interaction networks spreading Antiguan flint and St. Martin greenstone were present in the northern Lesser Antilles
from the heydays of island occupation.

Late Ceramic Age (AD 600/800AD 1492)

Consolidation of Independent Local Polities

Over time, the stabilized conditions afforded by island adaptation and increased population density
resulted in the formation of more localized microregions, acting independently with respect to resource
procurement and social matters. Local ceramic styles
developed but still evidence the enduring influence
of the mainland in the southern Lesser Antilles.
Those in the northern Lesser Antilles show affiliations to the Greater Antilles, Puerto Rico, and the
Virgin Islands.
Lifeways and Settlement

Site structure at Anse a` la Gourde, Guadeloupe, shows

a doughnut-shaped midden encircling a habitation
area and a plaza with houses of various shapes
between 5 and 12 m in diameter (Figure 8). The
deceased were buried within the residential space
and under the house floors indicating a shift from

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles 149

N
0
Atlantic Ocean
Midden area
Ivlidden

Midden area
Vacant area
Habitation area

Midden area
Contourline, 0.5 m interval
Contourline, 2.5 m interval

Anse la Gourde, Troumassoid settlement

Figure 8 Settlement structure at the site Anse a` la Gourde, Guadeloupe (AD 10001350).

Figure 9 Postholes and human burials under house floor at Anse a` la Gourde.

25 m

150 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Figure 10 Late Ceramic Age pottery in the Leeward Islands.

earlier practices. Burials reflect varied mortuary practices, internal differentiation, and personalized treatment (Figure 9). In the Leeward Islands red-painted
ceramics with incised and modeled appliques of the
Mamoran Troumassoid subseries replaced the bicolor
and polychrome painting of the Cedrosan Saladoid.
Ceramics affiliated to the Chican Ostionoid subseries
of the Greater Antilles, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin
Islands also characterized the complexes in the
Leewards around AD 1200. Ceramic decoration
included incised designs and anthropo-zoomorphic
modeling on nonpainted surfaces (Figure 10). In
the Windward Islands, the Saladoid ceramics were
replaced by the Troumassan and subsequent Suazan
Troumassoid subseries. White-on-red painting was
replaced by monochrome red-painted ceramics with
incised motifs and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic modeling. Caliviny-painted scrolls accompanied the Troumassoid sequence between Grenada
and St. Lucia. The Suazan Troumassoid subseries,

distributed from Tobago to Guadeloupe, was long

regarded as the crudest pottery in the Antilles, but
also comprises a finer ware. In a final stage these
islands witnessed the appearance of Cayo and other
ceramic styles related to the mainland. Trinidad
remained under continual influence of coastal Venezuela with the advent of the Arauquinoid series. Its
final ceramic style, Mayoid, may have originated in
the Guianas (Figure 11).
Social Organization and Exchange Relationships

Long-distance exchange diminished over time; lapidary items decreased in number and were replaced by
objects made of local rock types. The level of sociopolitical integration oscillated between both extremes
in the range of tribal organization. A number of sociopolitical polities were established encompassing several
settlements or islands. One of these polities was
formed around the island of Anguilla. Interisland

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles 151

Figure 11 Late Ceramic Age pottery in the Windward Islands.

trade and exchange networks existed in which lithic

materials, ceramics, and ceremonial paraphernalia
circulated between the islands but also between the
Lesser and the Greater Antilles. On the southern
Lesser Antilles similar networks existed with South
America. At the end of pre-Columbian occupation
there was a pan-regional interaction sphere in which
exotic items circulated between elites of the Greater
Antilles and both South and Central America in which
the northern and southern Lesser Antilles operated
jointly (Figure 12).

Epilogue
The Demise of the Native Population
of the Lesser Antilles

After European colonization, diseases and slavery

rapidly decimated the native population of the Lesser
Antilles. Nonetheless, missionary accounts from
the mid-seventeenth century still attest to a sizeable

indigenous population on several islands of the southern Lesser Antilles. Ties with the mainland were
secured until colonial times with the intrusion of the
Kalinago or so-called Island Caribs historically
documented but archaeologically only tenuously
attested, who held the assertion to have conquered
the islands out of the Guianas. Various chroniclers
note intensive inter-island interactions, as well as
long-distance voyages undertaken by Carib from the
mainland to Dominica and vice versa. Carib live to
this day on Dominica and several other islands of the
southern Lesser Antilles (Figure 13).

Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge Arie Boomert and Alistair Bright for their useful comments and linguistic
improvement of the text. Alistair Bright has provided
some of the photographs of the ceramics and made
the scheme in Figure 3. Medy Oberendorff made the
drawings of Figures 1 and 4.

152 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/The Lesser Antilles

Figure 12 Ceremonial paraphernalia (coral face, shell mask, lithic threepointer, diorite and quartz beads, and bone snuff inhaler).

Figure 13 Carib Territory, Dominica.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 153

See also: Americas, Caribbean: The Greater Antilles and
Bahamas.

Further Reading
Boomert A (2000) Trinidad, Tobago and the Lower Orinoco Interaction Sphere. An Archaeological/Ethnohistorical Study. PhD
Disseration, University of Leiden. Heerhugowaard: Plantijn
Casparie.
Crock JG (2000) Interisland interaction and development of chiefdoms in the Eastern Caribbean. PhD dissertation, University of
Pittsburgh, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.
Drewett P (2000) Prehistoric Settlements in the Caribbean: Fieldwork in Barbados, Tortola and the Cayman Islands. For the
Barbados Museum and Historical Society. London: Archaeotype
Publications.

Delpuech A and Hofman CL (eds.) (2004) Late Ceramic Age

Societies in the Eastern Caribbean. BAR International Series
1273. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Hofman CL, Bright AJ, Boomert A, and Knippenberg S (2007)
Island rhythms: The web of social relationships and interaction
networks in the Lesser Antillean archipelago between 400 BC
and AD 1492. Latin American Antiquity (in press).
Keegan WF (2000) West Indian archaeology 3. Ceramic Age. Journal of Archaeological Research 8(supplement 2): 135167.
Knippenberg S (2006) Stone artefact production and exchange
among the Northern Lesser Antilles. PhD dissertation, Leiden
University.
Righter EC (ed.) (2002) The Tutu Archaeological Village Site:
A Multi-Disciplinary Case Study in Human Adaptation. London: Routledge.
Rouse IB (1992) The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who
Greeted Columbus. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Wilson SM (ed.) (1997) The Indigenous People of the Caribbean.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL
Contents
Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya
Early Cultures of Middle America
Historical Archaeology in Mexico
Lower Central America
Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica
The Olmec and Their Contemporaries

Classic Period of
Mesoamerica, the Maya
Anabel Ford, University of California, Santa Barbara,
CA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
agroforestry A collective name for land-use systems and
practices where woody perennials are deliberately integrated
with crops and/or animals on the same land management unit.
anthropogenic Caused by human activity.
chert A variety of silica that contains microcrystalline quartz,
often called flint.
cultivar A cultured variety of plant.
ecological diversity A variety of biological communities or
ecosystems in a given area.
hieroglyphics A system of ancient writing using a combination
of logographic, syllabic, and pictographic elements.
Milpa A multicrop planting system based on maize, beans and
squash on the same plot-turns into a treasure hunt.

obsidian A volcanic glass and fine raw materials for the

chipping of stone tools.
polyculture An agricultural system where different crops are
planted at the same time in the same space.
prismatic blade A long, narrow, specialized lithic flake with
parallel margins that may derive from a polyhedral blade core,
often triangular in cross section with several facets or flake
scars on the one surface.
smallholder A farmer who lives on and works cultivating
a small portion of the lands.
stelae A stone slab with an inscription or design which was used
as a monument.

Introduction
Mesoamerica in the Classic period was a time of
great political and economic development from the
Mexican Highlands in the north to the Maya lowlands in the south (Figure 1). There were wide
regional interactions among the elite leadership and
extended trade relationships all within the context
of an essentially agrarian Stone Age economy.
Major centers of power emerged around the region,

154 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya

Chichen Itza

Tajin
Teotihuacan

MESOAMERICA

Monte Alban

Tikal

250

El Pilar

Kaminalijuyu

500

Kilometers

Figure 1 Mesoamerican with major sites indicated. Courtesy of the Anabel Ford.

including Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico,

Monte Alban in the Oaxaca Valley, and Tikal in the
Maya lowlands. This overview focuses on Maya civilization, situating it within a framework of the overall
developments of the Classic period.
Mesoamerica was a world without animal husbandry, without metals for agriculture, and without
roads for commerce. Without all these attributes,
often deemed essential for the development of complex societies, the ancient Mesoamericans thrived.
What they did have an intimate knowledge of landscape, a dynamic management of water, a fabulous
repertoire of cultivars provided a substantial
foundation for organization and growth. This is the
story of Classic Mesoamerica.
Our knowledge of Classic Mesoamerica has been
enriched over the past decades by research addressing
some of the more complex and subtle components:
the social, political, and economic aspects of the cultures. Importantly, while early on only the most glamorous aspects of culture were investigated, current
research has brought in fieldwork and interpretations
of rural as well as urban sectors. While there is still
much focus on the development of centers and the
elite process of the evolution of civilization, our understanding of Mesoamerican societies has become

Table 1 Major centers of Classic Mesoamerica

Region

Culture

Time period

Main center

Central Mexico
Oaxaca
Gulf Coast
Volcanic
Highlands
Maya Lowlands

Teotihuacan
Zapotec
Huastec
Maya

AD 100600
AD 200750
AD 8001200
AD 400700

Teotihuacan
Monte Alban
Tajin
Kamilnaljuyu

Maya

AD 250900

Tikal

more balanced when compared to the initial focus

on only the sensational and monumental. Nonetheless, the basic definitions and characteristics of
Mesoamerican cultures rely heavily on the elite and
ceremonial characteristics relegating the adaptive
characteristics to a lesser role.
Classic period Mesoamerica emerged in the first
millennium of our current era (Table 1) within a
complex and heterogeneous ecological landscape
from contemporary central Mexico, down through
Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras embracing the arid highland plateaus of Mexico and
Oaxaca, the dramatic volcanic highlands of Guatemala, and the lowlands of the Gulf Coast, the Pacific,
and the Yucatan. Within this diverse setting, all below
the Tropic of Cancer, major archaeological civilizations

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 155

evolved to become large population centers and regional economic powers with far-flung exchange relationships across the Mesoamerican landscape. In the
Classic period, political and economic institutions of
the region reached a level of complexity that incorporated all the basic qualities of civilization: centralized
administration, major public works, sumptuary rules,
military readiness, occupational specialization, and
political intrigue.
The region embraces considerable environmental
diversity. The Valley of Mexico and the large Valley of
Oaxaca dominate the core of Mesoamerica. These
areas are characterized by temperate climate. The
valleys are flanked by mountains and punctuated by
active volcanoes that played an important role in the
prehistory of the region. Tropical lowlands typify
the Gulf Coast plains of Veracruz and extend to the
Yucatan Peninsula in the south. The Maya lowlands
are situated on limestone bedrock dominated by tropical forests. The area includes the greater Yucatan, the
adjoining Peten of Guatemala and Belize as well as the
Caribbean zone of Honduras. The Pacific volcanic
highlands complete the complex setting presenting an
agriculturally fertile and seismically active geography.
Mesoamerica is well known for the cultures that
arose in this dynamic context, each taking advantage
of facets of their locale to build their regional presence. The Classic period is traditionally linked to the
Maya long count as it appeared and was read on
ancient Maya stelae. It was in the Maya area that
the full development and use of writing and mathematics was honed to a level that is understood now to
reveal political relations, alliance building, intercenter genealogies, and standard styles. Other areas
of Mesoamerica clearly used stylistically similar iconographic representations to make historic statements,

but were cursive and with subtle meanings. They were

broad icons that were used across space and time. The
mat, for example, signified the throne and it is recognized before the time of the Maya, used throughout
the Classic period, and it was understood throughout Mesoamerica.
Developmentally, the Classic period is most esteemed for its elite traditions that hold stylistic sway
across the varied landscape. The Classic was a time of
spectacular investments of art and architecture and,
while each area has distinctive means of rendering
these features, they all display exuberance in stone
work, painting, mosaics, ceramics, and most particularly in the monumental architectural undertakings of
temples, plazas, and palaces.
The region shares one important additional foundation, the subsistence system known as milpa with the
important cultivar, maize. From the Mexican Plateau
to the Maya Lowlands, maize formed a fundamental
part of the Mesoamerican diet. Recognized at the time
of Spanish invasion as the staple, grain yields per hectare in the Valley of Mexico were greater than that
known in Europe at the same time (Figure 2).
The Mesoamerican subsistence strategy, called
the high-performance milpa, is an agroforestry polyculture based on the triad of maizebeanssquash
intercropped with other edibles and a myriad of useful
herbs and shrubs. Proficiently developed as cultivated
fields within a context of managed regeneration, the
system imitated the natural ecological cycle, whether
it was in the arid highlands or the humid lowlands.
These adaptations resulted in an astonishing array
of approaches, many without any visible land modifications and largely dependent on rainfall, and all
providing support for developing the hierarchical
societies found among the Classic period civilizations.

Figure 2 Contemporary mano and metate for grinding corn from the Peten, Guatemala. Courtesy of Anabel Ford.

156 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya

Characterization of the
Mesoamerican Classic
While the foundation of Mesoamerican civilization is
based on agriculture; art, architecture, and exotic
exchange goods form the great constellation of attributes used to identify Classic Mesoamerica in general and it is the rendering of details that is used to
distinguish the main areas.

Figure 3 Plazas flanked by palaces and temples such as this

one at El Pilar. Courtesy of BRASS/El Pilar Program.

Art is one of the most identifiable aspects of

Mesoamerican traditions. So wonderfully resplendent
are the portable art objects that they have become the
focus of intense collection, degrading the archaeological contexts of the ancient pieces. The archaeological
source of objects is universally from regal settings: tombs and caches, dedications of temples and
buildings, and in other royal sectors. The awesome
polychrome vases, the delicately carved jade, the remarkable polished pendants, and other crafted stone,
shell, and coral items and adornments make up the
glamor of the elite assemblages. When recovered in
careful excavations, these artifacts provide vital information from personal histories to general standards.
When removed from the archaeological context and
collected as art, the objects lose their inherent cultural
value and lack all the critical contextual data that
could have garnered.
The public architectural form of Mesoamerica employs the basic platform to compose pyramidal structures, terraces, patios, and buildings arranged around
plazas (Figure 3). This tradition dates back before the
Classic period and holds for all the major areas of the
region, the theme playing out in major and minor
constructions as well as residential forms. A longstanding tradition was to construct a new edifice over
an old one, at once honoring the ancient place and
constructing a current statement. The construction
layers are reminiscent of an onion, earlier phases
capped by later ones with the ultimate result of something higher and wider than the last (Figure 4).
The components of Mesoamerican public architecture relied on local materials, represent major construction projects, and include dedicatory offerings within

LC: Late Classic period

EC: Early Classic period
LPC: Late Preclassic period
MPC: Middle Preclassic period
2 Building episodes

245 m
244 m
243 m
2 LC
1 4C
3 EC
5

4 LPC

6 LPC

7 MPC
8 MPC

Bedrock
9 MPC

1m

10

15

20

25 m

Figure 4 Multiple superimposed layers of construction typical of Mesoamerican public architecture. This example is from El Pilar.
Courtesy of BRASS/El Pilar Program.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 157

the buildings. The constructions typically consisted

of open and paved plazas, pyramid temples with
rising platform terraces, multi-roomed buildings
or palaces with internal rooms, and monolithic

Figure 5 Stela and altar of Twin Pyramid complex at Tikal.

sculptures, stelae and altars commemorating important events (Figure 5). Outer surfaces were usually
plastered and painted. Red was a dominant color,
and multicolored iconographic representations could
adorn the surfaces harking to the ideological and
political importance of the building.
Major displays of control and power are embedded
in public architectural presentations. The overall
footprint of the Mesoamerican center and the height
of the structures within the center played significant
roles as an ostentatious demonstration of power and
are a rough reflection of population control. Centers
like Teotihuacan, in the northern Valley of Mexico,
could not be missed on the landscape where the main
public monuments sprawled over more than 900 ha
(hectares), dominating every view and commanding
the area (Figure 6). This contrasts with the Zapotec
center in Oaxaca, Monte Alban, covering 200 ha, yet
situated visibly high on a striking hilltop dominating
the three arms of the valley (Figure 7). The prominences of the public features of highlands civilizations
are distinct from the lowland Maya area. Tikal, covering about 150 ha, is large by any standard, but the
landscape does not emphasize the size in the same way
as the centers of the highlands.
Long-distance trade and exchange is another important feature of Classic period Mesoamerica. It is
recognized most prominently for minerals that are
procured from specific highland sources and found
at distant locations in special ceremonial contexts.
Materials include obsidian, jade, pyrite, hematite, and
other stones polished for masks, mirrors, plaques,
scepters, pendants, mosaics, and beads. Shells and
corals from the sea also circulated and appear as garment decoration and as necklaces, belts, and other
adornments. All these products were restricted to
elite use and ritual disposal. They are recovered in
tombs and recognized in paintings and carvings.
From the ancient artistic representations, many
perishable items, primarily derived from lowland
tropical resources, were also exchanged and circu-

Figure 6 Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico. Photograph by Macduff Everton 04328.

158 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya

Figure 7 Monte Alban overlooking the Valley of Oaxaca. Photograph by Macduff Everton 04228 m.

Figure 8 Obsidian prismatic blade core and blades. Courtesy of BRASS/El Pilar Program.

lated among the elite: feathers, pelts, incense, honey,

and cacao.
Obsidian, a volcanic glass, is one of the most
widely distributed items, and occurs in the form of
prismatic blades (Figure 8). Artifacts of obsidian have
been recovered farther than a 1000 km from the
volcanic sources. This is most evident with the green
Pachuca obsidian mined outside of Teotihuacan and
recovered at Maya centers such as Tikal and El Pilar.
Other sources from the Mexican Volcanic Belt (e.g.,
Orizaba, Otumba, and Ucarea), and the Central
American Volcanic Axis (e.g., Chayal, Ixtepeque,
and San Martin Jilotepeque) are well known from a
variety of archaeological contexts. For example, the
distinctive Pachuca as well as the Otumba obsidians
have been recovered in dedicatory deposits at Tikal,
even though the majority of the obsidians were from

the nearer sources of Guatemala, such as Chayal.

Intriguingly, special caches and burials at major centers in the Maya area, such as Tikals splendid Burial
116 enshrined in Temple 1, were strewn with obsidian
waste flakes as the final cap of the offering.
Jade, jadeite, and greenstone were an especially
prized resource revered by the elite and used in
many regal and ritual contexts. Jade is highly restricted and rarely recovered outside of ceremonial contexts. Jade carvings come in many forms human
figures, delicate ear spools, composite belts, elaborately carved pectorals, mosaics for masks, as well
as beads for necklaces and clothing adornment.
Many jade objects maintained their value across
time and space. Objects were curated long after their
production and Preclassic Olmec antiques have been
recovered from later Classic sites or at distances as far

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 159

south as Costa Rica. The best-documented jade

sources are from the Montagua Valley of Guatemala.

Cultural Regions Founded on Stone Age

Technologies
The magnificent Mesoamerican achievements attributed to the Classic period are all developed in the
context of Neolithic Stone Age technologies, without
draft animals, metal tools, and the plow, so familiar
to Indo-European civilizations. This may appear to be
a great disadvantage, but it was not. Maintaining
animals is an additional production burden for farm
families, and without that burden, the Mesoamerican
farmers were able to focus entirely on their landscape.
The domesticated plants from Mesoamerica include a
shrub that produces chocolate or cacao and the orchid that produces vanilla. More plants in todays
markets have their origin in Mesoamerica than
Europe, and maize is now a fundamental staple all
over the world. The strength of the Mesoamerican
agricultural strategy was founded on maize polyculture, relying on an intimate knowledge of the immediate habitat for subsistence. Working the landscape
with both intensive infield home gardens and extensive outfield high-performance milpas shaped this
subsistence system.
The dynamics of the Mesoamerican subsistence
system utilized a rotational sequence for maintaining
production. The system employs cutting and burning
used as an environmental management tool at the
outset. Then selecting, planting, and growing native
plants, managing volunteer plants and cultivars to
promote a managed regeneration dependent on the
indigenous ecosystem. The high population levels of
the Classic period correlate with an intensive agricultural and natural resource management scheme that
was integrated into the subsistence system. This is a
system still found today among traditional farmers. It
relies on the smallholder farming strategy of investing
knowledge and skill to increase the productivity of
scarce fertile land versus the large-scale strategies of
investing in capital improvements to increase the
productivity of scarce labor. The result is a complex
managed field design with domesticated crops and
managed tree growth on fields once the maize crop
cycle was complete.
The intensification of this essential system took on
varied forms depending on the region and resources.
Teotihuacan evolved a system in part employing irrigation of the arid plateau on which it is situated.
Similarly, the Zapotec of highland Oaxaca relied on
investments in flood water irrigation. In contrast, the
humid lowlands of the Maya relied principally on

rainfall agriculture with few land modifications such

as at the great population center of Tikal. There are
notable exceptions where either steep slopes required
terracing or perennial swamps justified draining.
The Classic Maya

The Maya area, unlike the highland valleys in

Mexico, is spread out across the tropical ridge lands
and hills of lowlands, today a forested landscape
rarely higher that 300 msl. Local topography of the
absorbent limestone bedrock creates well-drained
ridges interspersed with perched lakes and wetland
depressions. Rain falls mainly between June and
December and varies annually from 30004000 mm
in the south to less than 500 mm in the northwest
Yucatan. Drinking water during the dry season is
scarce as there is little rain. The ancient Maya constructed reservoirs, or aguadas, to accommodate their
dry season drinking water needs.
The Classic period has traditionally been hinged to
the stone carving of the Maya calendar. The majority
of the Classic period stelae have carved hieroglyphs
and appear to commemorate marriages, alliances,
meetings, and wars and could be viewed as the official
history. The nature of this official history is fast being
revealed with the combined research of linguistics,
art, and archaeology. Once thought only to commemorate the worship of time, we now know that important political information is canonized on these stelae.
The source of strife, the importance of coalitions, and
the ritual of marriage highlight the reported regal
relationships. Fractious and fragile, information on
the stelae underscore the impact of the distant relationships, where centers were dispersed and the independence readily exerted in the absence of a strong
capital as with Teotihuacan or Monte Alban.
Farming settlements are distributed across the
Maya area, clustering in the best agricultural zones
of the well-drained upland ridges and hills that are
unevenly dispersed across the lowlands. Centers are
situated in prominent extensions of well-drained
uplands, and the greater the extents, the higher settlement density, and the larger the centers (Figure 9).
Nohmul, with 15 ha of public architecture, is one of
the largest centers in Northern Belize. Settlement
density is around 79 structures per sq km and the
uplands cover only 15% of the local zone. The large
center of El Pilar, located north of the Belize River,
covers about 60 ha, has an average of 160 structures
per sq. km distributed within the surrounding uplands
that represent 39% of the zone. In contrast, Tikal,
among the largest centers of the Classic period
Maya covering more than 150 ha, supports up to

160 AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya

200 structures per sq km found predominantly in

uplands that make up 49% of the local zone. Farmers
were attracted to the good soils of the uplands and
that was where the centers grew.
The Maya cultivated the forest as garden with
maize polyculture and orchards with important fruit
and hardwood tress as well as palms, managing
cultivated fields in an orchestrated system of regeneration. Traditional Maya farmers today, drawing on
their legacy, have one of the most diverse domestic
systems on the planet. Signatures of their former gardens abound in the feral forest of today where 90% of
the dominant plants of the forest are useful to people:
avocado, allspice, vanilla, mahogany, cedar to name a
few. This was created by millennia of accumulated
knowledge and skill in the forest.
The economic landscape of the
central Maya Lowlands
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
North
Belize

Belize
River

Central
Patn

Settlement density (km2)

Ridge lands (%)
Center size (in hectares)
Figure 9 Economic landscape of the central Maya Lowlands
BRASS/El Pilar Program.

Many perishable elite materials such as colorful

feathers for headdresses, resins for incense and gum,
pelts for adornment, honey for sweetener, as well
as cacao as a medium of exchange were produced in
the lowlands. Most of these resources that would
have balanced the trade between the highlands and
lowlands could only dependably thrive in forested habitat. Consequently, the vitality of the Mesoamerican
trade and exchange system, as well as Maya subsistence, depended on the management of the Maya
forest as a garden.
The Maya lowlands are known for many centers,
but Tikal was the largest by far (Figure 10). Tikal
established its dominance in the Classic period
around AD 250. By AD 600, the center held considerable sway over most of the southern lowlands. As
Tikal was growing early on, the center embraced
Mexican Teotihuacan themes that were prominently
displayed on stelae and in architecture, yet these
appear, like those of Zapotec of Monte Alban, to be
translated into the local vernacular. Despite its evident influences, Tikal was subject to checks by neighbors, such as Uaxactun, Caracol, Naranjo, and
Calakmul vying for power. The growing interpretations of the hieroglyphic record attest to the delicate
balance of power and alliance that was the charge of
Classic Maya rulers. Texts carved in stone on stelae
suggest tenuous coalitions punctuated by startling
acrimony twisting and turning political events. These
official texts were only one aspect of the story.
The juggling of power noted in the readings of the
stelae of major centers can be seen in the lower-order
settlements as well. Major centers have conspicuous
temples and monuments to demonstrate their control
of labor. Not so for the community level elite; it was
their community production that would link them
to the hierarchy.
The culmination of the Classic period Maya dates
to around AD 9001000. This is called the Classic
Maya Collapse and is known for the abandonment
of building and maintenance of the major centers,
such as Tikal and El Pilar. It is said that the collapse

Figure 10 Tikal and the Peten Rainforest. Photograph by Macduff Everton 04505 m.

AMERICAS, CENTRAL/Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya 161

was based on poor resource management and that

today we are witnessing the repeat of those errors.
Pollen and sediment data from lake cores south of
Tikal have been interpreted as supporting this proposition. Yet today, the dominant plants of the Maya
forest are replete with economic uses. Such a coincidence cannot be by chance. It is difficult to imagine
that the Maya civilization, after having developed
over more than 2000 years in Maya forest and supporting substantial populations, could have turned
around to destroy it in only 100 years. New data
demonstrate that the Maya adaptation was innovative
and that the biodiversity of the Maya forest today is
entirely anthropogenic.
The Maya Collapse represented a major change in
Maya cultural traditions, but this did not occur all at
one time or uniformly across the area. It has been
assumed that the population underwent a major decline, but what is more likely is that the society transformed. There is no doubt that the maintenance of the
major architecture and the support of the regal ritual
traditions so elaborated in the Classic Period were
indeed jettisoned, but there is no evidence that the
populations disappeared. Major centers flourished
north of the Tikal area after AD 1000. These include
many of the major centers of the Yucatan, such as
Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Sayil, and Becan.
Far from disappearing, the Maya were present
when the Spanish invaded Mesoamerica in the
1500s. Today, vital communities of Maya exist, impacted, as with all traditional communities, by the
great changes wrought by globalization. Among
them, traditional Maya farmers manage hundreds
of plants in their own forest gardens and their
knowledge of the forest demonstrates that it abounds
with useful plants. Given these facts, it is obvious that
the forest was not destroyed.

Classic Mesoamerican Traditions

We have begun to unravel the remarkable prehistory
of Mesoamerica. The diversity of the geography and
the common themes of the region demonstrate its
importance in the history of civilization. Early interpretations about the ancient Mesoamericans are constantly being challenged and refined with new data
and perspectives.
Once it was thought the Maya were peaceful while
the central Mexicans were bellicose. The discovery of
the graphic murals of Bonampak in 1945 squelched
that idea forever. Teotihuacan was thought to have no
writing systems, yet recent research has proposed that
the large murals revealed on pyramid and platform
facades are actually iconic glyphs. Writing systems

were thought to have been confined to the Maya;

however, now earlier systems are known.
Once the Mesoamerican environment, and especially the tropical Maya lowlands, were thought to
have been stable so that any changes would have
necessarily been caused by humans. Today, with
new palaeoclimatic studies, it is clear that there has
been significant climatic change and that the prehistoric cultural innovations and adaptations were more
likely a response to, not the cause of, these changes. In
addition, ever more precise laboratory methods have
provided greater access to radiocarbon dating for
settings that initially were thought to be impossible.
These are but a few of the new developments that
promise to challenge our current interpretations and
bring more interdisciplinary thinking to the understanding of Mesoamerican prehistory.
See also: Americas, Central: Postclassic Cultures of
Mesoamerica; The Olmec and their Contemporaries;
Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading
Blanton R, Kowalewski S, Feinman GM, and Finsten LM (1981)
Ancient Mesoamerica: A Comparison of Three Regions. London: Cambridge University Press.
Bray F (1994) Agriculture for developing nations. Scientific American 271(1): 1825.
Campbell DG, Ford A, Lowell KS, et al. (2006) The feral forests of
the eastern Peten. In: Erickson C and Balee W (eds.) Time and
Complexity in the Neotropical Lowlands. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Fedick S (2003) In search of the Maya forest. In: Slater C (ed.)
Search of the Rain Forest, pp. 133164. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fedick SL and Ford A (1990) The prehistoric agricultural landscape
of the central maya lowlands: An examination of local variability in a regional context. World Archaeology 22(1): 1833.
Macri MJ and Ford A (1997) The Language of Maya Hieroglyphs.
San Francisco, CA: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute.
Martin S and Grube N (1995) Maya superstates: How a few
powerful kingdoms vied for control of the Maya lowlands during
the Classic period (A.D. 300900). Archaeology 48(6): 4146.
Netting RM (1977) Maya subsistence: Mythologies, analogies,
possibilities. In: Adams REW (ed.) Origins of Maya Civilization,
pp. 299333. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Sabloff JA and Andrews PA (1981) Handbook of Middle American
Indians: Archaeology. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Voorhies B (1982) An ecological model of the early Maya of
the central lowlands. In: Flannery KV (ed.) Maya Subsistence:
Studies in Memory of Dennis Edward Puleston, pp. 6595.
New York: Academic Press.
Warman A (2003) Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard
Grew to Global Dominance. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of
North Carolina Press.
Wilken GC (1987) Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource Management in Mexico and Central America. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.

162 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

Early Cultures of
Middle America
Robert N Zeitlin, Brandeis University, Waltham,
MA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
atlatl A Nahuatl (Aztec) word describing a compound throwing
weapon consisting of a shaft with a hook at one end into which a
spear or dart is inserted. The shaft acts as an extension of the
hunters arm, providing much greater force and velocity to the
thrown dart. Use of the atlatl in the New World extends back at
least 12 000 years, when it enabled Native Americans to more
effectively hunt large Ice Age animals. Much later the Aztecs
found it more effective than the bow and arrow in penetrating
the metal armor of the Spanish conquistadors.
maize Commonly referred to as corn or more properly Indian
Corn, maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) was first domesticated in
Middle America and then spread throughout much of the
Americas where it became a staple pre-Columbian food. Because
there is no known wild form of maize its origin has been a matter
of long-standing inquiry. Although several theories have been
offered, it is most widely believed that the progenitor of maize
was an annual race of teosinte (Z. mays ssp. Parviglumis), a wild
grass native to the Balsas River drainage of southern Mexico.
However, the specific process of genetic mutations that produced
what we know as the maize cob is still disputed by botanists.
Under one reconstruction the teosinte tassel spike, the plants
male reproductive organ, evolved into the maize ear; another
claims that the maize ear developed directly from the teosinte ear.
The earliest known archaeological remains of domesticated
maize cobs, dated 6250 BP, were found at Guila Naquitz Cave in
Mexicos Oaxaca Valley.
mano and metate A paired tool set used throughout Middle
America to grind maize and other seeds. The mano (hand in
Spanish) is a coarse-grained cylindrical or rounded stone which is
rubbed back and forth on the metate, a stone slab or basin on
which the seeds are placed. Manos and metates are first found
with Early Archaic archaeological remains when seeds and other
plant foods became a more important dietary component; they
continue to be familiar household implements in rural Middle
America.
Middle America Refers to the areas of Mexico, upper Central
America, and the neighboring islands. The term encompasses
and is often used coterminously with the culture area of
temporally varying boundaries known as Mesoamerica, the locus
of pre-Columbian high civilization, bordered on one side by the
semi-nomadic hunting and gathering societies of northern
Mexico and on the other by the chiefdoms of lower Central
America.
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Unlike most DNA which is
located in the cell nucleus, mtDNA is located in the mitochondria
(organelles in complex cells that convert food molecules into
energy). In mammals mtDNA is inherited only from the mother
and mutations are passed from mother to child. Because of its
high mutation rate mtDNA can be employed to trace
matrilineage over many generations. Research has revealed that
mtDNA of Native Americans falls into four lineages called A, B,
C, and D as well as a residual X lineage also found in some
European populations. Another mutation occurring in Native

American as well as Southeast Asian, Melanesian, and

Polynesian populations has suggested that between
600012 000 years ago people migrated across the Pacific or
up the east coast of Asia into the Americas.
phytolith Rigid deposits in many plants resulting from
absorption of groundwater containing dissolved minerals. The
most useful for archaeology are opal phytoliths, consisting of
silica deposited between or within the plant cell walls and often
preserved as mineralized copies of the cell long after the plant
dies. Consequently they can serve to identify plant species when
all other parts have decayed.
Pleistocene The geologic epoch, commonly referred to as the
last Ice Age, extending from approximately 1.65 million to
10 000 years ago. It precedes the current Holocene epoch. Four
major cycles of global glaciation occurred during the Pleistocene,
within each of which there were numerous minor advances
(stadials) and retreats (interstadials). At its maximums, glacial ice
in North America extended as far south as the 40th parallel and
sea levels were lowered worldwide by more than 100 m.
stable isotope analysis Differing quantities of isotopes are
incorporated in animal tissue from the foods consumed over a
lifetime. Consequently, measuring the ratios of the stable
isotopes of carbon (13C and 12C) and nitrogen (15N and 14N) in
preserved bone collagen and dentin can provide insight into the
diets of ancient peoples. For example, the photosynthetic
pathway in tropical grasses such as maize (referred to as the
C4 pathway) differs from that of trees and shrubs (the C3
pathway), the latter of which discriminates against 13C. The
resulting differences in 13C/12C ratios between C4 and C3 foods
consumed by the Archaic period inhabitants of Middle America
and incorporated in their bones and teeth have been used to
estimate the date at which maize became a dietary staple.
Similarly, 15N/14N ratios have served to identify diets with a
primarily marine versus terrestrial food component.

Introduction
When, how, and why the first native people arrived
in Middle America and the story of their transformation from itinerant hunters and wild food gatherers to
the architects of imposing states and empires are subjects that intrigue archaeologists and the lay public
alike. Beyond questions about initial entry, some of
the most interesting, albeit baffling, issues involve the
early periods of the areas prehistory, when the idea of
farming originated as a subsistence alternative to hunting and gathering and when permanent villages, with
the social and political arrangements that living within
them entailed, began to dot a landscape that had previously hosted only temporary encampments. Definitive answers to these questions are still elusive, but
recent archaeological research is beginning to provide
insight into the patterns and processes of development.

Dating and Chronology

Methods and Conventions

Essential to understanding the pre-Columbian evolution of Middle American culture and society is
the construction of a reliable chronology. To do so

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 163

depends on accurate age determinations, and while a

number of methods are available to archaeologists,
radiocarbon (14C) dating stands out as the technique
most widely applied whenever organic materials are
available for analysis. Unfortunately the accuracy of
this method is affected by temporal variations in cosmic radiation and radioactive atmospheric carbon,
resulting in dates that can be hundreds of years
more recent in time than their actual calendar equivalents. Calibration formulae have been developed, but
until recently they were not applied to published
dates. Moreover, calibration for the earliest periods
of Middle American prehistory is still imprecise. Consequently, even today some published dates are calibrated while others are not. To avoid confusion, in
this article uncalibrated dates will be differentiated
by use of the lower case suffix, bc or bp (before
present) while calendar dates will be denoted by
upper case BC or BP Where no other indication is
given, terms such as years ago used in the text refer
to uncalibrated dates.
In addition to calibration errors, older methods of
14
C determination, because of their sample size requirement, could not directly date small plant, bone,
or other organic fragments but instead relied on the
stratigraphic association of these materials with larger quantities of datable carbonized substances, such
as charcoal from cooking areas. The inability to date
materials directly led to significant errors where the
archaeological specimens had been vertically displaced
by animal burrowing, human activity, or other forms
of soil disturbance. Accelerator mass spectroscopy
(AMS), a newer radiocarbon dating technique, has
solved the problem by enabling very small organic
samples seeds and even pollen, for example to be
directly dated. Many archaeological specimens have
been re-analyzed by AMS technology, sometimes
resulting in significantly altered dates.

Paleoindian subperiod begins, and may extend

35 000 years back in time, or even earlier.
The Paleoindian period ends and the Archaic, subdivided into Early, Middle, and Late subperiods,
begins somewhere between 9000 and 7000 bc, at the
onset of the Holocene, the epoch following the last
major glacial advance. During this interval worldwide temperatures at times averaged up to 2  C.
warmer than today, the glaciers that shrouded the
higher latitudes of North America retreated to the
sub-Arctic, seawater levels rose dramatically and, in
Middle America, generally drier conditions prevailed.
Profound changes in plant and animal life also occurred, perhaps the most conspicuous being the disappearance of many species of Ice Age megafauna,
a phenomenon that had begun toward the end of
the Paleoindian period and ended around 7000 bc
with the extinction of the indigenous American
horse. Although the evidence for any kind of causal
relationship is ambiguous, loss of these large animals
occurred at a time when the inhabitants of Middle
America were abandoning their nomadic hunting and
wild-food gathering way of life for an agriculturebased subsistence economy, with most people eventually residing in permanent settlements.
By 2300 bc pottery was being manufactured in
Middle America, which by definition marks the end
of the Preceramic era and its final Archaic period.
Some archaeologists, however, prefer to extend the
Archaic to 1500 bc or later, by which time agriculture
provided the bulk of food and the previously nomadic
hunter-gatherers had settled in permanent villages. The
variance in dates delineating the Paleoindian and
Archaic periods, while having the appearance of imprecision, denotes ranges of years extending over centuries,
rather than discrete points in time. As an example, there
is no single date pinpointing when agriculture was
adopted.

Periodization

Archaeologists refer to the years from the time of

earliest human presence in the Americas to the development of fully sedentary, agricultural societies as the
Lithic or Preceramic era, based on the fact that a stone
tool technology dominated and pottery had not yet
been invented. This era is commonly divided into two
chronological periods, known as the Paleoindian and
Archaic (Figure 1). The Paleoindian period, divided
into Early and Late subperiods, commences toward
the end of the last Ice Age, with the first evidence of
human habitation. The beginning date of the Early
Paleoindian subperiod is a matter of ongoing controversy, but is now generally agreed to have occurred
earlier than 12 500 calendar years ago, when the Late

The Path to Middle America

Answers to questions about how, why, and from
where Middle America was initially populated require
the overall colonization of the New World to be considered. An Asian source of emigration is strongly
indicated by biological relationships between its inhabitants and Native Americans. One line of evidence
shows that both ancient and modern Northeast Asians
and Native Americans, including those living in
Middle America, share a number of unique nonmetric
dental characteristics, including shovel-shaped incisors, single-rooted upper first premolars, and threerooted lower first molars, all indicative of a common
genetic origin.

164 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

Date

Period

Typical Events

Formative/Preclassic

Settled village life

throughout
Mesoamerica

Late Archaic

Pottery appears
Collecting subsistence strategy
Maize pollen in Tabasco

Middle Archaic

Maize pollen in lowland Belize

Maize cobs at Tehuacn
Maize phytoliths at Chantuto
Earliest maize at Guil Naquitz

Early Archaic

Manos and metates

Domesticated bottle gourd
Domesticated squash
Avocado cultivation
Foraging subsistence economy
Holocene epoch

Late Paleoindian

Extinction of Pleistocene megafauna

Carved Tequixquiac camelid sacrum
Tepexpan human burial
Clovis and fishtail Points
Iztapan mammoth kill sites
Mobile microbands
Ice free corridor through Alaska

Early Paleoindian

Peon III woman

Earliest migrations to America
Bering Land Bridge
Pleistocene epoch

2000 bc

3000 bc

5000 bc

7000/9000 bc

10 500 bc
12 500 years bp

35 000 years bp
or earlier
Figure 1 Chronological table for the Paleoindian and Archaic periods.

A few archaeologists argue for a European source of

pre-Columbian immigration, based on perceived technological similarities between stone implements of the
Solutrean tradition of southern France and Iberia and
those of the Clovis toolmakers, variants of whose distinctive fluted lanceolate projectile points are found
throughout North and Central America. Other shared
traits include a custom of pebble decoration and burial
of lithic artifacts in red ocher filled caches. This hypothesis drew fleeting support from the notoriously
misinterpreted characterization of an ancient human
skull from Kennewick, Washington, 14C dated 7300
7600 BC, as morphologically Caucasoid-like, similar
to some European populations. Although migrations
by boat dating back 50 000 years or more are known
for places such as Australia and Melanesia, the 5000 km
of stormy ocean separating the European and American
continents would have been daunting, even if a route

along the North Atlantic ice rim that then connected

Ireland and the Grand Banks had been taken. Another
difficulty with a hypothesis of direct European origin
stems from the fact that the Solutrean tradition ended
some 16 500 years ago, over 4000 years prior to the
appearance of Clovis points. Proponents of the European origin hypothesis have recently proposed that preClovis American sites such as Meadowcroft and Cactus
Hill bridge this gap.
New radiocarbon dates on bone samples from four
skulls that had languished for years in a collection
housed at the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology have added to this controversy. The oldest,
dubbed Penon Woman III, was shown to be 12 700calendar years old. Particularly interesting is that,
like the Kennewick Man, these ancient skulls are
dolichocephalic (long and narrow headed) in contrast
to the typically brachycephalic (short and wide) Native

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 165

American crania. Their resemblance to native Southeast Asian, Polynesian, Australian, and Japanese populations has led some scholars to speculate that the
skulls indicate a discrete wave of immigration into
the New World following the Pacific coast and islands,
a movement that also would have entailed the use of
watercraft.
Ongoing studies of Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA),
nuclear DNA, and Y-chromosomes may eventually
help to resolve these questions. MtDNA analyses
consistently reveal genetic relationships between modern Native American, Asian, and Siberian peoples.
One study, however, has isolated a lineage of mtDNA
in modern Native Americans not found in ancient
individuals of Asian origin. Named X, it occurs in
Europeans but also shows a partial relationship to
Mongolian lineages. Overall, the current data favor an
Asian versus European origin of New World peoples,
either as a single wave of migration or, strengthened by
estimates of mtDNA mutation rates, a series of separate
migrations beginning as early as 40 000 years ago.
Discounting the dubious likelihood of oceangoing
voyages directly across the Pacific, the entryway for
Asian migrants into the Americas would almost certainly have been through the narrow Bering Strait
from Siberia into Alaska. During the final Wisconsin
stage of the Pleistocene, c. 70 000 to 10 000 years ago,
worldwide climate was much colder than today for
long stretches of time. Ocean levels were lowered by
as much as 150 m during these frigid intervals, as
surface water became locked up in glacial ice. At
those times the beds of the shallow Bering and Chukchi
seas were exposed, resulting in a 1500 km wide land
bridge, known to geologists as Beringia, connecting
Siberia to Alaska. The verdant tundra that developed
in this broad area offered an attractive habitat for
herds of large, cold-adapted herbivores as well as
for the hunter-gatherers that exploited them and, in
so doing, wandered unwittingly to its Alaskan border.
Once on the Alaskan mainland it is not clearly
understood how and over what routes the early
migrants moved onto the rest of the continent. This
dilemma stems partly from the difficulty in recovering
archaeological evidence in the inhospitable Alaskan
environment and partly from the fact that, with rising
sea levels, confirmation of human habitation along
what was the Ice Age coast now lies deeply submerged.
Until recently it was believed that the main route south
was by way of an ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets, following the Yukon and
McKenzie river basins (Figure 2). But recent geological
evidence indicating that this area was probably glaciated until about 12 000 years ago casts doubt on this
hypothesis. Furthermore, for centuries afterwards the
succeeding wetlands may not have supported enough

food resources to sustain the wandering Paleoindian

hunter-gatherers.
An alternative hypothesis, which posits a maritime
route into the Americas, is gaining increasing attention as archaeologists evaluate the abundant subsistence potential of the fish, sea mammals, shellfish,
and birds along the Pacific coast. A littoral highway
is envisioned that may have become ice-free long before interior regions. Tantalizing evidence in support
of this hypothesis includes human femora, radiocarbon dated 12 960 years BP recovered on Santa Rosa
Island, located over 60 km off the coast of Southern
California, along with chipped stone artifacts and
marine shells found at Daisy Cave on the adjacent
San Miguel Island, dated c. 12 000 BP. Further south,
on the Peruvian coast, stone tools, hearths, and associated marine fauna are reported from Quebrada
Jaguay and Quebrada Tacahuay, two prehistoric fishing camps with radiocarbon dates in the range of
12 500 to 12 700 calendar years ago.
Proponents of the coastal migration hypothesis
recognize that early migrants would have had difficulty traversing the rugged Pacific littoral entirely on
foot, and posit the use of boats. Although there is no
direct archaeological evidence of watercraft in the
Americas for this early period, certainly they would
have been required to reach the Santa Rosa and
San Miguel Island sites. Linguistic theory lends
another line of support to the maritime hypothesis,
inasmuch as the high diversity of mutually unintelligible aboriginal languages along the Pacific coast of
North and Central America suggests a lengthy process of divergence from an ancestral tongue. It is
altogether possible that the early immigrants to the
New World made use of a coastal route and somewhat later in time, after the Yukon-McKenzie River
corridor became free of ice and wetlands, an inland
pathway.

The First Paleoindian Migrations

While we will never know the precise day the first
hunter-gatherer set foot in the Americas, the idea of
initial entry by 30 000 to 40 000 years ago is considered possible by some archaeologists. One serious
impediment to verification is the fact that the earliest
human skeletal remains so far recovered from
New World archaeological sites are no more than
13 000 calendar years old. Given the paucity of skeletal evidence the dating of earliest migration relies
primarily on artifactual material. Until recently the
oldest such evidence fully endorsed by the archaeological community was a widespread distribution of
North American sites associated with the Clovis projectile point technology, the earliest of which date

166 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

SIBERIA

Chukchi
Sea

GR

Beringia

EE

NL

Alaska

ime
l a ntic Marit
Route

r
orrido
ie C
enz
cK
illeran
Cord eet
h
Ice S

ifi c

astal Route
Co

Pa
c

AN

Laurentide
Ice
Sheet

At

Bering
Sea

Kennewick
Meadowcroft
Cactus Hill

Santa Rosa
and San Miguel
Islands

ATLANTIC
OCEAN

Clovis

l
sta
oa
P a c ifi c C

PACIFIC
OCEAN

rat
Mig

Quebrada Jaguay
Quebrada Tacahuay

ion Route

0
0

1000 mi

Monte
Verde

1000 km

Tierra del
Fuego

Pleistocene Migration
Routes
Archaeological site
Migration Route

Figure 2 Map of possible Pleistocene migration routes.

c.11 00012 000 years bp. Named after the locale in

New Mexico where in 1932 it was first identified, the
bifacially flaked, lanceolate-shaped Clovis point is
distinguished by a flute or channel at its base, probably used to facilitate fastening to the tip of a thrusting
spear or atlatl (spear thrower) dart.
The longstanding claim by Clovis first proponents
that it was the New World mother culture has been
quashed by the recent dating of archaeological
sites with unequivocal evidence of earlier human
occupation. In addition to the early coastal habitation

noted above, prominent among the pre-Clovis sites is

Monte Verde, located about 20 km inland from the
Pacific Ocean in southern Chile. Settlement at Monte
Verde by 13 000 14C years bp (11 50010 500 BC) is
well documented, with wood, bone, ivory, cordage,
and simple stone artifacts, along with food remains
and the vestiges of timber structures, all recovered
in good archaeological context from waterlogged
deposits that inhibited organic decay. Lower stratigraphic levels of the Monte Verde excavations, provisionally assigned a date of 33 000 years bp, are still

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 167

under investigation. At the far end of the age spectrum, but treated with a degree of skepticism by most
archaeologists, is the Topper site in South Carolina,
where artifact-bearing sediments are claimed to be at
least 50 000 years old.

The Earliest Archaeological Sites

in Middle America
Paleoindian sites in Middle America dating to the
earliest time of occupation are scarce, hindered by
the fact that population density was low, residence
was transitory, and material possessions minimal
(Figure 3). Perhaps equally significant, the small number of known sites may be attributed to the relative
lack of attention paid to Middle Americas Early
Paleoindian prehistory, given the allure of the areas
more spectacular later periods.
One of the best known, though still controversial,
Early Paleoindian occupations is located in highland
Mexico, near the present-day city of Puebla, where
a cluster of what appears to have been transient hunting camps was discovered adjacent to the Valsequillo
Reservoir. Excavations at five of the sites, which
the investigators designated Hueyatlaco, Tecacaxco,
El Mirador, El Horno, and Cualapan, resulted in the

recovery of numerous stone tools alongside the fossilized remains of various large, Ice Age animals, including mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, four-horned
antelopes, saber-tooth tigers, and dire wolves.
The Hueyatlaco excavations exposed ten stratigraphic layers of alluvial deposits ranging in age
from modern times back to the Pleistocene. Below
the top stratum of recent debris were two levels of
deposit, the upper of which contained a bifacially
flaked stemmed projectile point along with a variety
of percussion- and pressure-flaked cutting, piercing,
and scraping implements, reflecting a well-developed
lithic technology. In association with these implements were abundant bone remains of Pleistocene
megafauna.
The lowest artifact bearing unit at Hueyatlaco,
along with equivalent levels at other Valsequillo sites,
revealed a cruder tool-making technology in which
fragments were simply smashed off one side of a
stone flake to produce a sharp edge that was then
marginally retouched by pressure-flaking into an implement of desired form. Along with these tools were
the remains of mastodon, camel, horse, and other
animals. At the adjacent El Horno site, similar stone
tools, some showing signs of use, were found alongside
a butchered mastodon. The simple, unifacially flaked

SIE
RR

S IE

San Isidro,
Calsada

Middle America
Paleoindian Sites

RR

AM

Tamaulipas

AD

AM

Highland areas
(Altitude over 1000 meters)

AD

RE

Site

IEN

D
CI
OC

OR

RE
Rancho la
Amapola

TA
L

EN

Gulf of
Mexico

TA

Plateau
of
Mexico

Tequixquiac
Tepexpan,
Ixtapan

Loltn
Cave

Yucatn
Peninsula

Tlapacoya
Valsequillo

MEXICO

August
Pine
Ridge

Tehuacn

SI
E

RR

AM

AD

Cueva
Blanca

RE

D EL

SUR

Caribbean
Sea

Ladyville

Isthmus
of
Tehuantepec

PACIFIC
OCEAN

Actun
Halal

BELIZE

GUATEMALA
Quiche
Basin

HONDURAS

La Esperanza
El Bosque

EL SALVADOR
N
0
0

300 mi
300 km

Figure 3 Map of Middle American Paleoindian sites mentioned in the text.

168 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

stone implements, along with the absence of spear or

projectile points, are thought by some archaeologists
to be part of an early lithic tradition, with roots
extending as far back as 40 000 years in time, antecedent to the production of bifacially flaked tools.
Questions arise as to how mastodons, mammoths,
and other formidably large animals could have been
hunted without projectile or spear points, given the
simple stone tools found in the lower levels of
the Valsequillo excavations. One explanation is that
the early inhabitants and their contemporaries elsewhere in Middle America were foragers whose principal diet consisted of smaller animals and plant
foods, the remains of which were not preserved as
they were at Monte Verde. Only when a mastodon or
mammoth had been handicapped by sickness, injury,
or other impediment would it have been pursued.
Alternatively, it is possible that the excavations at
Valsequillo failed to recover existing evidence of
points, or that they had been produced from bone,
wood or other perishable materials.
A series of five radiocarbon dates were obtained
from fossilized freshwater mollusks recovered from a
stream-eroded gully adjoining the Valsequillo Reservoir. The dates, in stratigraphic sequence, span the
period from approximately 35 000 years bp at the
lowest level to 9150  500 years BP near the surface
of the gully. Midway down the stratigraphic profile, a
shell sample in direct association with a flake scraper
was dated to 21 850  850 years bp, which the investigators proposed as representative of the sites time
of occupation.
In 196266, when the Valsequillo project took
place, pre-Clovis sites were typically greeted with disbelief. Although that is no longer so, the Valsequillo
dates are still considered problematical by many
archaeologists on grounds that the shell used for radiocarbon dating is an unreliable medium, and the integrity of the streambed stratigraphy is problematical.
A project underway at the Mexican National Institute
of Archaeology (INAH) and the National Museum of
Anthropology proposes to validate these dates. Other
dates from the Valsequillo excavations obtained
through an experimental tephra hydration assay of
volcanic pumice, from fission track analysis of obsidian, and from uranium series analysis of bone, range
from 245 000 to 600 000 years BP and are universally
rejected, as they would connote the implausible existence of a New World population antecedent to the
evolution of modern Homo sapiens.
In 2005 a British geoarchaeological team working under the shadow of the Toloquilla Volcano,
in the vicinity of Valsequillo, announced the discovery of what they claimed to be a large cluster of
fossilized human footprints imprinted in volcanic tuff

(concretized volcanic ash) at an abandoned quarry.

Optically Stimulated Luminescence, a technique that
calculates when sediment grains were last exposed to
heat or light, was used to date what appeared to be
burnt clay fragments within the Cerro Toloquilla tuff,
leading to assertions that the footprints were more
than 40 000 years old. Later, samples of the tuff were
taken to the Berkeley Geochronology Center where
they were dated at 1.3 million years BP by 40Argon/39Argon and Palaeomagnetic techniques, which
would make the Toloquilla footprints if that is
really what they are impossibly ancient.
Another questionable Early Paleoindian occupation in Middle America is the El Bosque site, in
Nicaragua, near the southernmost periphery of Middle
America. Excavations uncovered crudely flaked stone
tools along with mastodon, giant sloth, and horse
remains. Radiocarbon dates extend from 18 100 to
over 35 000 years in the past. One of the lithic implements has been classified a primitive chopper, a
simple bifacial implement type some prehistorians
profess to be characteristic of the earliest tradition of
New World toolmaking, preceding in time the unifacially flaked tools found in the lower stratigraphic
levels at Valsequillo. Doubts have been expressed
about the early dates for the site and even whether
the lithic finds are actual artifacts.
A more probable Early Paleoindian occupation is
reported at Tlapacoya, located near Lake Chalco in
highland Central Mexico. Eight seasons of interdisciplinary fieldwork at the site from 196573 produced
a large number of stone tools, animal bones, and
plant remains, some recovered in or around what
appear to be ancient hearths. From a suite of radiocarbon determinations, a sample from a circular
hearth dated 21 700  500 years bp was selected as
an indication of the age of the site. Two other cooking
areas, replete with the remains of stone tools and
animal bones, many from now extinct Pleistocene
mammals, suggest a series of temporary campsites
along the ancient lakeshore. Many of the artifacts
from the earliest dated locality were crudely made
flakes and blades similar in form to those from the
lowest Hueyatlaco excavation levels. Several bifacially flaked obsidian implements were also found
in association with the animal bones and hearths.
Remarkably, the nearest source of obsidian is located
more than 50 km from the site, indicating that the
Tlapacoya hunter-gatherers either ranged widely or
had established exchange relationships with adjacent
groups. However, the more sophisticated obsidian
flaking technique used to produce the implements,
atypical of Early Paleoindian toolmaking, raises
reservations about their association with the early
radiocarbon dates.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 169

Also in Central Mexico, the Rancho La Amapola

site in San Lus Potos was, at the time of its occupation, situated in an area resplendent with lakes,
marshes, streams, and springs, making it an attractive
habitat for humans and other animals. Several seasons of excavation between 1977 and 1980 produced
remains of mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel, dire
wolf, short-faced bear, glyptodon, giant sloth, and
other now-extinct megafauna, but only three definite
artifacts: a point carved from a horse tibia, a limestone hammerstone, and a discoidal chalcedony
scraper. A charcoal sample from what was believed
to be a cooking area was dated at 31 850  600 years
bp; another radiocarbon determination from the
stratigraphic level in which the scraper was found
produced a date of 33 300  27001800 years bp.
In the lowlands of Middle America, only two sites,
both in caves on the Yucatan Peninsula, offer insights
into possible Early Paleoindian occupation. Neither
have the confirmation of radiocarbon dating. Loltun
Cave, in the Puuc Hills of northern Mexico, is dated
solely by the association of crude stone and bone
tools with the remains of mastodon and other Pleistocene age animals in the lowest stratigraphic levels
of excavations. Projectile points are lacking. Upper
strata have evidence of occupation by pottery-making
peoples. Analysis of the stone tools and their faunal
association has led to speculation that occupation
may extend back in time as early as 40 000 years.
Actun Halal Cave in western Belize also relies on
the association of stone tools with the remains of
extinct megafauna for its Early Paleoindian assignment. Among the lithic artifacts associated with the
fragmentary remains of horse, spectacled bear, and
peccary are a crude, bifacially flaked cobble, possibly
a chopper, and a discoidal-flaked core. The core,
however, is reported to be similar to artifacts found
in fluted biface assemblages elsewhere in Middle and
North America, which would suggest that the site
may actually date to the Late Paleoindian period.

lifeways of the people that made them can only be

inferred from sites further north in the United States.
The dozen or so Clovis finds from highland regions
of Middle America area are distributed geographically from Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon,
and Durango in northern Mexico, to San Lus Potos,
Queretaro, Tlaxcala, Puebla, and Oaxaca in the
Mexican central and southern highlands, down to
Guatemala and Costa Rica. In the lowlands only
three Clovis finds have been reported, all from Belize.
Two are from Ladyville, north of Belize City, and the
other was found near August Pine Ridge (Figure 4).
As noted above, the Actun Halal Cave site might also
date to this period.
Another diagnostic Late Paleoindian artifact, contemporaneous and morphologically akin to Clovis,
are the so-called Fishtail projectile points. Also fluted,
they are distinguished from Clovis points by a characteristic stemmed base. Their origin appears to have
been in South America, where they were first encountered at Fells Cave in the Tierra del Fuego region of
Chile. Four are currently known from Belize, all surface finds, where they have been provisionally dated
c. 90007000 years bc, based on their resemblance to
better known examples at Madden Lake in Panama
and the Quiche Basin of Guatemala (Figure 5). The
August Pine Ridge Clovis point exhibits a degree of
fishtail-like basal narrowing, suggesting that southern Middle America may have been the meeting point
of the two traditions. Although no faunal remains
have been associated with the Belize points, the
open savanna environment where some of the specimens were found would have provided an appealing
habitat for large, grazing animals. At the Fells Cave

The Late Paleoindian Period

A hallmark artifact of the Late Paleoindian period is
the Clovis point. So effective for hunting was this
implement that its design proliferated among Paleoindian peoples throughout much of North and Middle America. For the first time a tool was available to
confidently confront the large animals that had previously been an attractive but elusive and often dangerous source of food. In Middle America scattered
Clovis points have been recovered from both highland and lowland regions, although all are isolated
surface finds. Lacking context, their use, age, and the

cm
Figure 4 Fluted Clovis point from August Pine Ridge, Belize.
Courtesy of Fred Valdez, Jr., drawn by Dee Turman.

170 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

site, radiocarbon dated 9050 and 8770 years bc, Fishtail points were recovered in association with the
remains of horse, mylodon, and other now-extinct
Pleistocene animals.
Appearing somewhat later in time than Clovis
and Fishtail points are a variety of large, unfluted
lanceolate-shaped projectile points and knives, many
of them dazzling in their technological refinement.

They are best known from the North American Southwest and Plains under such type names as Angostura,
Dalton, Plainview, and Scottsbluff, but variants extend
into other areas, including Middle America. At the
La Calsada Rockshelter in the highland Mexico state
of Nuevo Leon, similar tools have been radiocarbon
dated to the beginning years of the Late Paleoindian
period. While still associated with the hunting of Ice
Age megafauna, these implements are increasingly
found at sites with bison, antelope and other modern
prey, reflecting the changing composition of animals
on the post-Pleistocene landscape during the final
millennia of the Late Paleoindian period.
Also exemplifying this complex in Middle America
are the Santa Isabel Iztapan finds, where the dismembered skeletons of two mammoths were discovered
along the shores of ancient Lake Texcoco in the Valley
of Mexico. Spear points comparable to Lerma,
Scottsbluff, and Angostura types were found near
the animals, along with an assortment of chert and
obsidian knives and other butchering tools that were
probably responsible for the many cut marks found
on the fossil bones (Figure 6). As at the earlier Tlapacoya site, the fact that the obsidian and chert from
which many of the tools were manufactured were
procured from sources many kilometers away indicates the mobility of these hunters or their participation in an early network of exchange with other
bands. The location of the kill site suggests that the

5
cm

Figure 5 Fishtail point from the Lowe Ranch Site (BAAR 35E),
Belize. Reproduced with permission of the Robert S. Peabody
Museum of Archaeology, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA.

(b)
(a)
cm

(c)

Figure 6 Projectile/spear points found in association with the Santa Isabel Iztapan mammoths. a. Scottsbluff point; b. Lerma point;
c. Angostura point.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 171

animals were driven into or had attempted to escape

along the swampy shore of the lake and were butchered on the spot.
In the North American Southwest and Plains regions
the recovery of many large animal bones in Late
Paleoindian period archaeological sites suggested that
a big game hunting tradition had evolved, a tradition that was ultimately shown to be inapplicable to
Middle America. The initial negative evidence was
provided by the Tehuacan Archaeological-Botanical
Project, a ground-breaking interdisciplinary study
based in the highlands of Puebla, Mexico. The ambitious objective of the project was to reconstruct in
a single place the Tehuacan Valley a complete
sequence of social and cultural development, from the
time of earliest human settlement to the beginning of
urban civilization.
Excavations at Tehuacan revealed that the earliest
human occupants of the valley, between 12 000 and
9000 years ago, manufactured a variety of bifacially
flaked stone tools, including Lerma- and Plainviewlike projectile points. Judging from the association of
these implements with the remains of animals such as
horse and antelope, it was apparent that big game
hunting had indeed been practiced by these early
settlers. But notably, analysis of the many bones recovered from birds, gophers, jackrabbits, rats, and
turtles revealed that smaller animals actually constituted the bulk of the diet for the Tehuacan inhabitants. Recovered from an early stratigraphic zone in
the valleys Coxcatlan Cave, for example, were nearly
400 jackrabbit bones, including in a one square meter
unit, the feet of over 40 animals that had been slaughtered in a single session.
The tendency of jackrabbits to congregate suggested that they were hunted in communal drives,
involving people from several otherwise independent
bands. However, as the environment changed during
the Holocene, social species of animals, such as jackrabbits and pronghorn antelopes, appear to have been
supplanted by more solitary types, such as cottontail
rabbits and white-tailed deer, a population shift that
would have entailed the abandonment of communal
hunting for the stalking of single animals by individuals or small groups of hunters.
Along with the fauna, the recovery in the Tehuacan
Valley of food remains from wild plants such as avocado, agave, and opuntia further indicates a much
broader spectrum of subsistence than that implied
by a big game hunting model. Subsequent archaeological excavations at Cueva Blanca, several hundred
kilometers further south in the Oaxaca Valley, corroborate the Tehuacan reconstruction. Overall the
Late Paleoindian mode of subsistence in highland
Middle America appears to have involved generalized

foraging, with small game constituting the bulk of the

diet, supplemented by the occasional larger animal
and the seasonal availability of wild food plants.
Population density is estimated to have been very
low, clustered into small, mobile microbands consisting of four to eight related individuals. Mostly
independent, several bands may have temporarily
joined each year for hunting and perhaps social activities. The need to not overexploit the limited wild
food carrying capacity of the habitat in places such
as the Tehuacan and Oaxaca valleys would have induced the small bands to remain dispersed for most
of the year.
Another of the defining attributes of the Late Pleistocene period is the dramatic disappearance of over
32 genera of large Ice Age animals, among them the
mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel, tapir, ground
sloth, dire wolf, saber-tooth tiger, and glyptodont.
Since prior environmental fluctuations during earlier
phases of the Ice Age had not resulted in similar
extinctions, the growth of human population and
the attendant development of more efficient hunting
techniques have been proposed as the principal causal
factor. Support for this Pleistocene Overkill hypothesis is strongest on the North American Plains where
there is archaeological evidence of a shift in hunting
strategy from the stalking of solitary prey to the often
wasteful slaughter of entire animal herds in a single
episode. Critics of the hypothesis respond that many of
the species that became extinct were not hunted and
some that were, such as the modern bison, did not
perish. Evidence from the Tehuacan ArchaeologicalBotanical Project indicates that at least for Middle
America predation of Pleistocene megafauna was
not intense enough to have accounted for their
extermination. Overall, the explanation for the extinctions may lie in a combination of climatically induced
environmental change and more intensive hunting.

The Origins of Middle American Art

and Ideology
The delicate pressure flaking that produced the superbly made lanceolate projectile points and knives of the
Late Paleolithic reveals a degree of attention to manufacture that far exceeded purely functional requirements. Archaeologists do not know whether the
diversity and refinement of the implement types resulting from this extra effort is accounted for by an aspiration for greater creativity and beauty or by a more
utilitarian need, such as a desire by indigenous groups
to differentiate themselves through a distinguishing
signature as they became more territorially bounded.
Whatever the case, to the extent it can be called art,
the effort was applied to practical implements.

172 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

Figure 7 The Tequixquiac carved camelid sacrum.

The earliest known example in Middle America and

indeed one of the oldest in the New World of what
would be a purely aesthetic work, is a carved camelid
sacrum, fashioned in the shape of what appears to be
the head of a peccary or canid (Figure 7). The object
was discovered in 1870 at Tequixquiac, in the Central
Mexican state of Hidalgo, deeply buried in a thick
layer of Late Pleistocene sediments known as the
Upper Becerra formation. For many years the carvings
antiquity was questioned, but subsequent investigation
at the Tequixquiac site revealed its association with
Late Paleoindian stone and bone tools and the remains
of camel, ground sloth, mammoth, mastodon, and
other Ice Age animals.
Also found in the Upper Becerra deposits, adjacent to Lake Texcoco at a location less than two
kilometers away from the Iztapan mammoth finds,
was a female skeleton, buried in a face-down, flexed
position. Because it was felt that the pit in which the
skeleton was placed might be intrusive from a more
recent stratigraphic level, the antiquity of the burial,
like that of the carved camelid sacrum, was questioned. Subsequent fluorine and nitrogen analyses of
bone samples tended to verify the contemporaneity
of the Tepexpan skeleton with the nearby mammoths
but more recent radiocarbon analysis indicates that
the bones may be only 2000 years old. If the earlier
date is correct Tepexpan Woman would be the earliest example of an intentional human burial, suggesting that by the Late Paleoindian period belief in an
afterlife was part of Middle American ideology.

The Archaic Period in General

The long Archaic period, beginning sometime after
9000 bc, can be divided into Early, Middle, and Late
subperiods (see Figure 1). Comparable to the Old

World Mesolithic, it was a time of profound transformation, culminating in the appearance of permanent
settlements supported by a subsistence economy primarily based on agriculture. In Middle America
domesticated animals and only the turkey, Muscovy
duck, dog, and honeybee can be included in this
category never figured significantly in the PreColumbian diet. Maize, beans, and squash, three of
the early plant domesticates, became Middle Americas staple foods, although by the sixteenth century,
when the Spanish arrived, over forty other cultivated
species were being consumed.
In Middle Americas highlands the first steps
toward agriculture can be traced to the Early Archaic,
when wild plants appear to have become an increasingly important component of the diet. At this time
populations settled into more defined territories,
replacing a mobile lifeway with scheduled rounds
of shorter moves to take advantage of the seasonal
availability of locally available plants and animals. By
the Late Archaic, in some highland regions, particularly where resources were sparse, foraging of this
kind gave way to a collecting strategy, where small
task groups made transient forays to specific food
sources, leaving the main community behind in
more permanent settlements. Food collecting strategies may have developed in lowland regions as well,
although there is not yet enough evidence to be
certain.
The practice of food collecting promoted cultivation when non-local plants were brought back to the
settlement where they could be watered, weeded, and
better protected from predators. In addition, accidentally dropped seeds from wild food plants would have
sprouted in the disturbed soils around the camp.
From there it was only a short step to creating domesticates by selecting seeds, cuttings, and issue from the
most productive cultigens. The resulting domesticated plants (see Plant Domestication) addressed
human needs, but often at the cost of their ability to
survive in the wild. Once agriculture was fully embraced, it permitted (some prehistorians would argue
that it required) those of its practitioners who were
not already doing so to forego their mobile lifeway.
Contrasted to subsistence dependent on a finite supply of wild plants and animals, the intensifiable nature of horticulture allowed for the support of densely
populated villages and, eventually, for the large towns
and cities that appeared in later periods.
The Archaic transformation in Middle America
was not uniform, but varied in timing and possibly
in process from region to region. Like the previous
Paleoindian period, most of what we currently know
about it derives from investigations in highland
regions where the more arid environment is more

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 173

conducive to preservation. Practical difficulties of

research in the hot, often wet and densely forested,
lowlands of Middle America are exacerbated by the
three-meter post-Pleistocene rise in sea level that
has inundated early coastal sites; by higher groundwater levels and encroaching wetlands that frustrate
excavation; by stream and river erosion that has
destroyed some sites while deeply burying others
under alluvial sediment; and by a paucity of cave
sites where archaeological remains tend to be better
preserved (Figure 8).
Only in the last few decades has this unbalanced
perspective begun to be rectified, often through sophisticated collection and analytical techniques.
Even so, almost nothing is known about the lowland
Early Archaic, particularly in the more interior tropical forest regions, although from evidence of Paleoindian occupation it could be inferred that at least
some of these places were inhabited. The emerging
picture from the better known lowland Middle and
Late Archaic suggests that the path its inhabitants
took to a horticulture-based economy was, with the
possible exception of tropical domesticates such as
manioc, conditioned by earlier developments in the
highlands.

SIE

To fully appreciate the changes that occurred during

the Archaic, it is instructive to first examine their earliest manifestation on Middle Americas northeastern
periphery. There, at Frightful Cave, Fat Burro Cave,
and Nopal Shelter in Coahuila and Calzada Rockshelter in Nuevo Leon, a Mexican extension of the
North American Desert Culture has been found. Beginning as early as 9000 bc, these caves, and undoubtedly many others in this harshly rugged area, were
occupied seasonally by small bands of mobile foragers
who left behind a bountiful array of artifacts. Utilitarian items included small, percussion flaked projectile
points for attachment to darts propelled by wooden
atlatls, along with stone scrapers, choppers, hammerstones, fiber cordage, sandals, baskets, mats, fire drills,
and tongs. Hinting of a rich ceremonial life were scarifiers for bloodletting or tattooing, musical rasps, ornamental shell beads, and hallucinogenic plants. Food
remains, some recovered from grass-lined storage pits,
indicate a diet heavily dependent on wild plants, supplemented by meat from small and medium sized animals of modern species. Cobblestone manos (grinding
stones) along with fragments from flat milling bases for

Middle America
Archaic Sites

Coahuila
Cave Sites
Calsada

RR

RR

AM

S IE

Highland areas
(Altitude over 1000 meters)

AD

AM

Site

RE

AD

Tamaulipas

TA

IEN

D
CI
OC

OR

RE

Gulf of
Mexico

EN

San Blas

The Early Archaic

TA

Pl a t e a u
of
M e xi co

Valsequillo

AM

AD

Puerto Marquez

Yuzan

RE

San
Andres

Tehuacn

Middle
Balsas Basin

RR

Yuc atn
Peni ns ul a

Santa Luisa
Zohapilco

MEXICO

SIE

Loltn
Cave

D EL

Isthmus
of
Tehuantepec

Valley of Aguatenango
Oaxaca

SUR

PACIFIC
OCEAN

Caribbean
Sea

Cob Swamp
Betz Landing
Blue
Pulltrouser Swamp
Creek
Colha, Cobweb
Lowe Ranch, Sand Hill
Ladyville Swamp
Lake
Petenxil
BELIZE

Santa
Marta

Chantuto

GUATEMALA
Quiche
Basin
Sipacate

HONDURAS

La Esperanza

EL SALVADOR
N
0
0

300 mi
300 km

Figure 8 Map of Middle American Archaic sites mentioned in the text.

174 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

more efficient processing of seeds and other plant parts

were used for the first time by people who retained a
nonagricultural subsistence regime but who showed an
increasing interest in plant foods.
Further south, in the Sierra de Tamaulipas, the
lowest, Infiernillo phase excavation levels at several
cave sites dated c. 70006000 bc reveal an Early
Archaic artifact inventory similar to that of the Desert
Culture, including a food complex that relied primarily on wild plants such as runner beans, agave, and
opuntia. A critically important distinction was that
by the end of the Archaic period, at around 2400 BC,
maize (Zea mays) was being cultivated. The discovery, first published in 1958, but with a now corrected
sequence of dates, stimulated a still ongoing search
throughout Middle America for earlier places of plant
domestication. A number have been found, among
them the Santa Marta Rockshelter and Aguacatenango
IIIII in Chiapas, Mexico, some surface surveyed locations in Guatemalas Quiche Basin, and a series of
habitation sites near La Esperanza, Honduras. However, to this day, much of what has been learned since
the Tamaulipas project has been a product of investigations in just three highland regions: the Tehuacan
Valley, the Valley of Oaxaca, and the Basin of Mexico.
From the Tehuacan Valley, information about the
Archaic derives from the Tehuacan Archaeological
Botanical Project, previously noted for its Paleoindian
period research. Several hundred cave and open-air
archaeological sites were surveyed, nine of which
were chosen for excavation. Along with the many
artifacts, copious food remains were recovered, including both macrobotanical specimens and human
coprolites (fossilized feces). Based on their stratigraphic position and the typology of artifacts, the
materials were originally assigned to one or another
of three sequential Archaic phases, El Riego (7000
5000 bc), Coxcatlan (50003400 bc), and Abejas
(34002000 bc), mirroring the division of the Archaic
into Early, Middle, and Late subperiods. Although the
specific dates assigned the excavated materials and their
cultural implications have been extensively amended
since the 1960s when the project took place, the general
sequence of developments is still widely used to
model the transition from hunting and gathering to
horticulture in highland Middle America.
The earliest Archaic food plants recovered from the
Tehuacan excavations consisted exclusively of wild
species such as foxtail millet, mesquite, and acacia,
from which seeds and pods were harvested; pochote,
which has edible roots and seeds; maguey leaves and
hearts, collected for roasting; and chupandilla, cosahuico, ciruela,and opuntia (prickly pear), desired for
their fruit. Along with the appearance of manos and
metates the grinding stones and basins that were

to become the ubiquitous plant processing tools in

Middle America the food remains indicated the
increasing importance of plants in the diet of the
Tehuacan foragers (Figure 9).
By 7000 BC, the first tentative step toward plant
domestication at Tehuacan was taken in the form of
attention the Valleys Archaic foragers paid to avocados (Persea americana). Because these trees required
regular watering, they appear to have been transplanted to locations where they could be better
tended, a procedure amounting to simple cultivation.
By 5960 BC, toward the end of the Early Archaic
period, morphologically domesticated squash (Cucurbita pepo) was being cultivated in the Valley; by
5200 BC there is evidence for the domesticated bottle
gourd (Lageneria siceraria); and somewhat later, chile
peppers (Capsicum frutescens).
Some tiny fossilized maize cobs from the Tehuacan
caves were also determined to be domesticates, as it
was observed that they were unable to disperse their
tightly attached seed grains without human assistance. The survival of this maladaptive morphology could only have been the product of purposeful
selection for a set of genetic traits that made the plant
more attractive for harvesting and consumption,
but which had the effect of preventing its reproduction in the wild. Charcoal from the archaeological
strata in Coxcatlan Cave from which the primitivelooking cobs were recovered was radiocarbon dated

cm

cm
Figure 9 Archaic period oblong mano fragment (above) and
metate-milling stone from Tehuacan.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 175

Figure 10 Maize cob remains from Tehuacan. From left to right: Middle Archaic Coxcatlan phase; Late Archaic Abejas phase; Late
Formative/Early Classic; last two on the right date to the Postclassic period. Photograph courtesy of the R.S. Peabody Museum of
Archaeology, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA.

c. 5500 BC and until recently that terminal Early

Archaic date was accepted as marking the initial domestication of maize in Middle America (Figure 10).
Recent analysis of bottle gourd samples from the
same level at the cave verified their domestication
at a date just a few hundred years later. However,
subsequent direct AMS determinations on maize
cobs from the Valleys San Marcos and Coxcatlan
caves, produced a suite of revised dates, none earlier
than 3555 BC, well into the Middle Archaic. Consequently, most archaeologists now reject the original
5500 BC date, attributing it to post-depositional intrusion of the cobs into earlier stratigraphic levels of
Coxcatlan cave.
Excavations at Guila Naquitz and Cueva Blanca, two
cave sites in the Valley of Oaxaca, have greatly augmented the Tehuacan archaeological record. At Guila
Naquitz (Figure 11), nine AMS determinations on seeds
and fruit stems of squash (C. pepo) indicate that a
domesticated variety was being cultivated by 8000 BC,
over 2000 years prior to the Tehuacan specimen,

making it Middle Americas earliest dated domesticated

plant. Domesticated bottle gourds (L. siceraria) followed shortly thereafter at 7970 BC Nevertheless, the
more than 20 000 plant specimens recovered at the site
reflect an Early Archaic diet consisting mainly of wild
plants. Acorns appear to have been most important, but
runner beans, maguey, seeds and pods of mesquite,
prickly pear cactus leaves and fruit, pinon and susi
nuts, hackberries, and onions were also among the
wild plants eaten (Figure 12). In addition, faunal
remains show that deer, cottontail rabbits, mud turtles,
collared peccary, raccoons, and a variety of birds were
hunted by the small family bands that occasionally
occupied the cave during fall seasons.
Flaked stone tools, classified as belonging to the
Early Archaic Naquitz phase in the Oaxaca Valley,
show little standardization. Among them are crude
blades, notched flakes, and denticulate scrapers, typically produced from locally available chert (Figure 13).
Metates and manos for processing plant foods were
made from local ignimbrite and stream-borne cobbles.

176 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

Figure 11 Guila Naquitz Cave. A person is standing in front of the cave entrance. Photo courtesy of Kent V. Flannery and Joyce
Marcus, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Figure 12 Wild plant food remains from Guila Naquitz Cave. ab: acorns; cf: pinon nuts; gi: West Indian cherry seeds; jm: yak susi
hulls; n: mesquite seeds; o: hackberry seeds; p: prickly pear cactus fruit; q: wild onion bulb; rs: chewed agave fiber quids. Photograph
courtesy of Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 177

(b)
(a)

(c)
0

1 cm 2

10

Figure 13 Early Archaic period stone tools from the Oaxaca Valley. a: notched flake; b: denticulate scraper; c: crude blade. Redrawn
from K.V. Flannery (ed.), Guila Naquitz. Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Figure 14 Net bag fragment from Guila Naquitz. Photograph

courtesy of Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus, Museum of
Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Knotted netting fragments, cordage, coiled basketry,

fire drills, a drill hearth, and some roasting sticks
round out a typical Early Archaic artifact assemblage
(Figure 14).
The Middle and Late Archaic in the Highlands

The Middle and Late Archaic were times of growing

reliance on horticulture among the highland populations of Middle America. At Tehuacan, coyol palms
and sapote trees, like avocados, alien to the region,
were brought into the Valley and domesticated. Other
domesticated plants were two additional varieties of
squash (C. moschata and mixta), bottle gourds, common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), and, as indicated

above, maize. By the Late Archaic, tepary beans

(P. acutifolius) and jack beans (Canavalia ensiformis)
were added to the list. Toward the end of the Archaic,
maize, initially a primitive grass of marginal food
value, had evolved into a nutritious and storable
grain staple.
In the Oaxaca Valley increasing residential permanence is inferred from Gheo-Shih, a Middle Archaic
open air camp where occupation has been dated
c. 8600 years BP Excavation at the 1.5 ha site revealed
an unusual architectural feature interpreted as a
dance ground, similar to those found among historic
period Great Basin hunter-gatherer bands. The feature consists of two parallel rows of boulders, twenty
meters in length, bounding a seven meter-wide space
that had been kept clean of the projectile points,
grinding stones, scrapers, pebble ornaments, and
other lithic remnants of occupation found elsewhere
at the site. Gheo-Shih appears to have been an encampment where several family microbands, totaling
2530 individuals, congregated for ceremonies and
other social activities during the rainy season, when
food supplies were ample. Still lacking was a food
source adequate to enable year-round residence.
That the occupants of the Oaxaca Valley had
begun to experiment by the Middle Archaic with the
cultivation of maize has been confirmed by a series of
direct AMS dates on some primitive-looking but
domesticated cobs from excavations at Guila Naquitz
Cave (Figure 15). The dates, averaging 6250 calendar
years ago (approximately 4250 BC), are the earliest
currently recognized for domesticated maize, predating by as much as 800 calendar years the oldest
Tehuacan specimens. The absence of wild maize in

178 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

Figure 15 The two oldest maize cobs in the New World, from excavations at Guila Naquitz Cave, dated c 6250 calendar years ago.
The lower cob is approximately 2.5 cm long. Photo courtesy of Dolores Piperno, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

deeper excavation levels at the site has led to the

conclusion that the initial place of maize domestication lay outside the Oaxaca Valley. Currently favored
is the region around the middle Balsas River Basin, in
the states of Guerrero and Michoacan, where DNA
and isozyme studies point to a local variety of teosinte
(Z. mays ssp. parviglumis), a wild annual grass with
naturally disarticulating grains, as the probable ancestor of domesticated maize.
Indications of a continuing movement toward residential permanence in the Oaxaca Valley appear at
the Late Archaic Cueva Blanca site, near present-day
Mitla. From artifacts and faunal remains it appears
that the seasonal inhabitants of the rockshelter were
all-male deer hunters. Whereas the previous foraging
lifeway had entailed an annual cycle of movement
requiring entire bands to travel from one seasonally
available food source to another, a collecting strategy is inferred from the Cueva Blanca remains. Under
this strategy, deer hunters, as well as other small task
groups, made transient forays from a semi-permanent
base to specific locations of food and other resources,
camping temporarily at places like Cueva Blanca.
An alternative path to highland sedentism that
circumvents the transitional collecting strategy was
theoretically possible in regions of rich, locally available resources. Zohapilco, in the highlands of Central
Mexico not far from the Paleoindian Tlapacoya
encampments, may exemplify this alternative. Its
setting on the shore of Lake Chalco, surrounded by
abundant wild plant and animal populations, is
thought to have enabled Zohapilcos Middle Archaic
inhabitants to remain in one location throughout the
year. The limited archaeological excavation, consisting of a single long trench, failed to expose evidence

of permanent structures, so the actual nature of occupation remains to be verified. Excavation strata,
dated 50594250 bc, revealed pollen and seeds from
wild plants such as teosinte, amaranth, portulaca,
goosefoot, tomatillo, and squash, along with the
bones of fish, waterfowl, deer, rabbits, turtles, snakes,
and the amphibian axolot. With the exception of
dogs, there is no evidence of domestication. The associated lithic assemblage included obsidian projectile
points and flakes, large bifaces, macroblades, notched
flakes, scrapers, mullers, and metates. Not until the
Late Archaic do domesticates appear at Zohapilco, in
the forms of maize, amaranth, tomatillo, pumpkin,
chile pepper, and chayote. Elsewhere in the highlands
of Middle America there is no indication at present of permanent, year-round villages until the beginning of the Formative/Preclassic period.
The Lowland Middle and Late Archaic

Future archaeological investigation will be required

to determine whether the lack of evidence for Early
Archaic occupation in the lowlands of Middle America
is simply a failure of discovery or, less likely, whether
those regions had been abandoned by their previous Paleoindian inhabitants, only to be resettled
thousands of years later. Although this remains an
open question, research in coastal and near coastal
regions is at least beginning to cast light on the
subsequent Middle and Late years of the Archaic.
During that time plant domestication and farming
spread throughout much of the area and, at the end
of the period, permanent villages were established.
Whether lowland village life arose without the support
of horticulture, as some scholars have argued, or
was tied to a developmental sequence that ran from

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 179

foraging to collecting, and finally to horticulture,

as exemplified by the Valley of Oaxaca, is another
debated question.
A sedimentary core drawn from a small freshwater
lake at San Andres, near the Gulf Coast of Tabasco,
Mexico, was aimed, in part, at addressing this issue.
Pollen in the core sediment indicating the appearance
of domesticated maize along with forest clearance,
presumably for agriculture, was initially dated
c. 5000 bc The C14 dates were obtained from fossil
clams, which appeared at the same level in the core as
the maize pollen and were therefore assumed to be
contemporaneous with it. This would have put the
development of agriculture long before any known
permanent settlement in Middle America. Doubt
about the date was cast by the subsequent AMS analysis of another sedimentary core from the adjacent
Veracruz coastal plain. In this sample the maize pollen itself was analyzed, producing a date c. 2500 BC,
2500 years more recent than the Veracruz determination and over 1700 years later than the highland
Oaxaca domesticated maize cobs. The discrepancy
in the two Gulf Coast dates has been attributed to
soil bioturbation in the Tabasco core, resulting in
a flawed association between the clams and maize
pollen. The Veracruz date is corroborated by another
pollen sequence from the nearby Tuxtlas region.
Together these dates support the hypothesis that
maize was initially domesticated in the Balsas Basin,
then diffused to a number of highland regions, and
only later spread to the lowlands. The small number of
archaeological sites currently providing evidence
of early plant domestication, however, makes any
model of diffusion very provisional.
A lowland site whose inhabitants appear to have
lacked an early interest in horticulture is located on
the northern Veracruz coast. At Santa Luisa, where
occupation seems to have been comprised of multiple
deltaic island encampments, the resource rich coastal
habitat apparently was the source of subsistence. Plant
remains are missing from the Middle-Late Archaic
Palo Hueco phase, dated 40002400 bc, nor were
there any of the grinding implements commonly used
for plant processing. Scatters of fire-cracked cobbles
are thought to have been used in cooking the oysters,
fish, land crabs, and small mammals whose remains
were found in abundance. Obsidian nodules, obtained
from a geological source several hundred kilometers
away in Queretaro, along with locally available sandstone, served to produce crude blades, flakes, and
bifaces, probably used in food preparation. The evidence of Middle Archaic obsidian procurement at
Santa Luisa is an indication that long-distance contacts
had been established with the highlands.

Although the concentration of nearby resources

and density of food remains at Santa Luisa led the
sites investigator to describe it as a permanent
village, it is equally likely that occupation was only
seasonal, by foragers making their annual food gathering rounds, and later as either base or satellite camps
for people engaged in a system of food collecting.
If the latter, it remains to be determined if and
when more inland sites within the system engaged
in horticulture.
Further insight into the relationship between lowland horticulture and settlement might be drawn
from a more comprehensively studied cluster of Middle and Late Archaic sites on the Pacific coast of
Chiapas, Mexico. The inhabitants of these sites,
known as the Chantuto people, were probably collectors who exploited the lagoon estuarine environment
from inland base camps. Six of the sites consisted of
massive shellmounds, and at Cerro de las Conchas,
the earliest of them, a series of radiocarbon dates
brackets occupation between 7500 and 5300 calendar years ago (c. 55002300 BC), squarely within the
Middle Archaic. Excavation indicated that the site
consisted of accumulated refuse from consumption
of the marsh clams (Polymesoda radiata) that grew
in abundance in the lagoon estuarine environment.
Aside from the voluminous burned and unburned
clamshells, the limited cultural remains were comprised of waterworn cobbles, believed to have been
heated by the Chantuto inhabitants to boil or steam
clams, along with ark shells (Anadara spp.) that
served as multipurpose cutting and scraping tools.
No evidence of plant use was found dating to the
sites Middle Archaic occupation.
Tlacuachera, the largest of the Chantuto shellmound sites, was dated to the Late Archaic, although
occupation may have begun earlier, as excavations
never reached the bottom levels of debris. The
mound consisted mainly of layer upon layer of
burned and unburned shells, the litter from years of
clam consumption. Excavation within one of the bedded layers uncovered a clay floor, estimated to have
measured 24 by 48 m, with a thickness of 1020 cm.
The labor investment in transporting the large quantity of clay to the site would have been substantial.
Nevertheless, the untrampled clamshells suggest that
the encampment was not occupied for extended periods of time. A pattern of postholes on the floor
marks the location of two oval-shaped structures
that may have served as temporary shelters. Although
no supporting evidence was found, the investigator
proposed that another activity at the site might have
been the drying of shrimp, a practice common along
the coast today.

180 AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America

(b)
(a)

3 cm

Figure 16 Late Archaic/Early Formative lithic artifacts from Pulltrouser Swamp, Belize. a: Lowe/Pedernales-like projectile point,
C14 dated 2210 BC; b: constricted/sole-shaped uniface, C14 dated 1275 BC Drawings courtesy of Mary D. Pohl, Department of
Anthropology, Florida State University.

Phytoliths from plants indicating forest clearance

as well as from maize were dated c. 3500 BC at
Tlacuachera. With regard to maize, stable-carbonisotope analysis of bone samples from two human
skeletons buried in the clay floor stratum suggests
that by 2000 BC it was making a substantial contribution to the Chantuto diet. From the lowest cultural
level at Vuelta Limon, another Chantuto site located some 20 km inland, phytolith analysis broadens the evidence for a gradual Late Archaic adoption
of maize farming in the region. Several hundred kilometers southeast, on the Pacific coast of Guatemala,
near Sipacate, fossil maize pollen from a sediment core
echos the Chantuto findings. Other Late Archaic sites
have been identified on the Pacific coast northwest of
the Chantuto region at Puerto Marquez, Guerrero and
San Blas, Nayarit; a number of shellmound sites in
Sinaloa and Sonora may also date to this period.
On the opposite coast of Middle America, an effort
to reconstruct a comprehensive picture of cultural
change, from Paleoindian hunting and gathering
through the introduction of agriculture and settled
village life, was initiated in 1980 by the Belize Archaic
Archaeological Reconnaissance. The BAAR project
was envisioned as a companion to the Tehuacan
ArchaeologicalBotanical Project under the premise
that lowland and highland cultural developments
would have followed similar paths. During four
field seasons, about 150 possible preceramic sites
were recorded, several of which were selected for
excavation. With few samples recovered for radiocarbon analysis, a provisional chronology of developments, spanning the years from 9000 to 2000 BC,
was constructed by cross-dating projectile points
and other lithic artifacts with better known equivalents from other regions.
Subsequent investigation at other sites in the Belize
region, primarily through the Colha Project, has
shown a number of the BAAR artifact assignments

to be erroneous. Lowe projectile points and adze-like

constricted unifaces, for example, originally employed
to identify the Early Archaic, are now known to
have been produced much later in time, with specimens radiocarbon dated at 2210 BC and 1275 BC,
respectively (Figure 16). Consequently, there remains
a long gap in knowledge about cultural developments
in the Belizian lowlands, extending from the end of
the Paleoindian period until the final centuries of the
Middle Archaic.
The known sequence of development in Belize
resumes around 3400 BC, when remains of domesticated maize and manioc (Manihot esculenta) are
found in the northwestern part of the country at the
Blue Creek site, corresponding in age to the earliest
Chantuto evidence. Additional radiocarbon dates
from Kob Swamp, adjacent to the Hondo River,
reveal maize and manioc there at about the same
time. At Cobweb Swamp, near the archaeological
site of Colha, manioc pollen is reported c. 2500 BC.
There is also evidence throughout the region of deforestation, probably to clear land for agricultural use.

From Nomadic Hunting and Gathering to

Village Based Farming Societies: Toward
Explaining the Processes of Development
Despite the current paucity of data, some tentative
generalizations can be made about cultural developments in the periods immediately following the first
Paleoindian arrivals in Middle America. What is
securely known is that a subsistence economy initially
founded on hunting and wild plant gathering evolved
by the end of the Archaic period into a dependency on
agriculture, just as a pattern of group mobility was
supplanted by residence rooted in permanent villages.
As agricultural productivity approached a threshold
where it could provide a relatively reliable, storable,
and intensifiable source of food, it enabled the small

AMERICAS, NORTH/Early Cultures of Middle America 181

bands of loosely affiliated families to coalesce into

larger, more permanent entities and, early in the Formative/Preclassic period, into chiefdoms, some incorporating hundreds of people in villages and towns,
interacting within a hierarchical social and political
system where ones status was ascribed at birth rather
than by personal achievement.
While present archaeological knowledge is inadequate to provide definitive answers to questions
about the cultural and environmental processes that
drove these developments, a number of hypotheses
are worth examining. To begin with it must be understood that horticulture, more labor-intensive than
hunting and wild-food gathering in most Middle
American regions of the time would have afforded
no purely economic advantage to its practitioners
unless something happened to undermine theestablished equilibrium between population and habitat.
Although the number of Middle Americas inhabitants had indeed increased by the Middle Archaic to
the point where group mobility was commonly
replaced by a loose territorialism, there is little evidence that population pressure played a direct role in
the adoption of agriculture. On the contrary, while
there was feedback between the growth of population
and agriculture, rapid population increase did not
occur until much later, after agriculture had become
well established, and then for other reasons. Nor do
post-Pleistocene vegetation alterations, animal extinctions, and climatic change, despite transforming the
habitat, seem to have been sufficient in themselves to
turn Middle Americas inhabitants into farmers.
A broader utilization of available wild resources
would have been a far more effective response.
Alternatively, a desire to better cope with year-toyear inconsistency in plant food availability due to
drought and other natural events, particularly in marginal post-Pleistocene habitats, has been proposed as
having encouraged experimentation with plant cultivation. That the first such experiments apparently
occurred in low productivity thorn-scrub-cactus
habitats of highland Middle America supports this
hypothesis. Somewhat later, on the Pacific Coast,
periods of reduced rainfall are cited as having intensified the shift to a horticultural mode of subsistence.
As indicated above, the initial step toward domestication may have occurred unintentionally when
early collectors brought wild food to their campsites,
in the process inadvertently scattering seeds or plants
in the disturbed soils where they tended to flourish.
From that point, recognizing the advantage of relocating and nurturing desirable species would have
been fairly obvious. The appearance of avocados
and other non-local plants in the Early Archaic
Tehuacan Valley exemplifies this rudimentary stage

of plant cultivation. Intentional selection of seeds,

cuttings and offspring from plants with economically
beneficial traits would have been the next step toward
domestication.
The process of maize domestication is of particular
interest to paleobotanists and archaeologists as it is
believed to have involved a series of fortuitous genetic
mutations that transformed a wild grass of marginal
economic value into Middle Americas premier food
plant. Although the details continue to be argued, the
most widely accepted reconstruction holds that a
subspecies of teosinte (Z. mays subsp. parviglumis),
a plant with small seed heads, each loosely holding no
more than 12 kernels, was the progenitor of the modern maize plant, with its several hundred kernels
tightly attached to a cob. Lacking a cob, the ancestral
teosinte was designed to shatter its seeds which,
encased in tough glumes (fruitcases), were able to survive the digestive tracts of consuming animals and,
once deposited in the soil, self-propagate. By selecting
for the characteristics that produced soft glumes and
multiple large, tightly attached kernels, Archaic period
horticulturalists fashioned a nutritious, bountiful food
plant (Z. mays subsp. mays), easy to harvest, store and
digest, but by definition a consummate domesticate,
unable to reproduce on its own.
Regional time differences in the appearance of
maize horticulture in Middle America raise questions
about whether the processes of adoption were the
same in resource-rich localities as has been outlined
for more patchy highland environments. From the
small number of archaeological sites with dated evidence of domesticated maize one can at least begin
to speculate about the pattern of diffusion. In the
highlands the earliest known appearance of domesticated maize is in the Oaxaca Valley at 4250 BC; evidence is found further to the northwest c. 3555 BC
at Tehuacan, and by 2400 BC in Tamaulipas. By
35003400 BC maize is reported at a number of
coastal lowland locations, from Blue Creek on the
Caribbean to the Chantuto sites on the Pacific, although not until 2500 BC on the Gulf Coast. Its
delayed appearance at places such as highland
Zohapilco and on the Gulf Coast seems anomalous,
but might be attributed to the reliable year-round
abundance of wild food if not gaps in research. By
2000 BC, at the end of the Late Archaic, maize horticulture is widespread throughout most of Middle
America.
The appearance of maize in Pacific and Caribbean
coastal sites raises questions about a longstanding
hypothesis that in such well-endowed habitats the
initiation of settled village life would not have
depended on an agricultural economy. Under this
premise it is appealing to consider another pathway

182 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico

to agriculture. In one version of the process, leaders of

complex hunter-gatherer societies are deemed to have
initially adopted agriculture not to fulfill subsistence
needs but to produce food surpluses for the purpose
of sponsoring feasts and other forms of conspicuous
consumption. Through these displays ambitious leaders would have gained prestige, followers, allies, and
authority.
In an extension of this model, exchange of prestige
goods with highland peoples, illustrated by the widespread presence of highly valued highland obsidian in
Archaic period coastal sites and the concomitant ornamental marine seashell found in the highlands,
would have brought maize seed along with other
high-status goods to the coast where they were redistributed by status-hungry leaders to individuals within and beyond their community. The precocious
appearance of chiefdom societies, religious complexity, and architectural sophistication in the ensuing
Early Formative period along Middle Americas
Pacific lowlands lends support to this hypothetical
reconstruction. Once adopted on the coast, agriculture would have spread to lowland localities further
inland where it provided the subsistence basis for
later Olmec and Maya societies. More research will
be needed to determine whether this model is valid for
the lowlands and perhaps other regions of Middle
America.
See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Meso-

america, the Maya; Lower Central America; Postclassic

Cultures of Mesoamerica; The Olmec and their Contemporaries; Extinctions of Big Game; New World,
Peopling of; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Bonnichsen R and Turnmire KL (eds.) (1999) Ice Age Peoples of
North America: Environments, Origins, and Adaptations of the
First Americans. Corvallis, Oregon: Center for the Study of the
First Americans. Oregon State University Press.
Doebley J (2004) The genetics of maize evolution. Annual Review
of Genetics 38: 3759.
Jablonski NG (ed.) (2002) The First Americans. The Pleistocene
Colonization of the New World. San Francisco, CA: Memoirs of
the California Academy of Sciences, No. 27.
Lohse JC, et al. (2006) Preceramic occupations in Belize: Updating
the Paleoindian and Archaic record. Latin American Antiquity
17(2): 209226.
MacNeish RS (1981) Tehuacans accomplishments. In: Sabloff JA
(ed.) Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians,
Vol. 1. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.
Marcus J and Flannery KV (1996) Zapotec Civilization. How
Urban Society Evolved in Mexicos Oaxaca Valley. London,
England: Thames and Judson Ltd.
Meltzer DJ (2003) Peopling of North America. Development in
Quaternary Science, vol. 1, pp. 539563.

Pearsall DM (1995) Domestication and agriculture in the New World

tropics. In: Price TD and Gegauer AB (eds.) Last Hunters First
Farmers, pp. 157192. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of
American Research Press.
Pohl MP, et al. (1996) Early agriculture in the Maya Lowlands.
Latin American Antiquity 7(4): 355372.
Smith BD (2005) Reassessing Coxcatlan Cave and the early history
of domesticated plants in Mesoamerica. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United State of America
102: 94389445.
Straus LG, Meltzer DJ, and Goebel T (2005) Ice Age Atlantis?
Exploring the Solutrean-Clovis connection. World Archaeology 37(4): 507532.
Voorhies B (2004) Coastal Collectors in the Holocene. The Chantuto People of Southwest Mexico. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.
Zeitlin RN and Zeitlin JF (2000) The Paleoindian and Archaic
cultures of Mesoamerica. In: Adams REW and MacLeod MJ
(eds.) The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the
Americas, Vol. II, Mesoamerica, Part 1, pp. 45121. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.

Historical Archaeology
in Mexico
Thomas H Charlton, University of Iowa, Iowa City,
IA, USA
Patricia Fournier, Escuela Nacional de Antropologa,
Mexico City, Mexico
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
audiencia Spanish imperial administrative unit for political,
judicial, and fiscal ends.
capilla (English, chapel). Usually associated with a church
complex or with a section of a community.
Casa de Cultura Regional museum of archaeology, history, and
contemporary art and handicrafts.
Ciudadela (English, citadel). Large building in Mexico City
built in the late eighteenth century to house a state monopoly on
tobacco. Later used for other activities.
Classic period period from CE 300 to 900; subdivided into
Early (c. CE 300600), and Late (c. CE 600900).
Colonial period Culture period from c. CE 1521 to 1820.
Precise starting date varies from region to region. May be
subdivided into Early (c. CE 15211620), Middle
(c. CE 16211720), and Late (c. CE 17211820).
convent (Spanish, convento). Meaning varies by context.
Residential section of a church or Mission complex housing male
regular or secular clergy. Also refers to the complex in which
cloistered nuns live (nunnery).
hacienda Large and often ostentatious rural residential estate
associated with animal husbandry and agricultural activities.
Generally, late appearance in central Mexico but may be earlier
in northern regions.
Independence period Also known as Republican period.
Culture period from CE 1821 to the present.
indios principales Indigenous community leaders.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 183

palaces Large, luxurious elite residential structures of the
Colonial period and the nineteenth century, particularly in the
Historic Center of Mexico City, are often referred to as palaces
even though they had no direct governmental functions.
Postclassic period Preconquest indigenous culture period
from c. CE 900 to c. CE 15191520.
presidios Fortified sites usually in the northern borderlands,
most dating from the eighteenth century.
ranch (Spanish, rancho). Small rural residential complex
associated with animal husbandry and agricultural activities.
Occurs in all three Colonial periods and during the Independence
period where small ranches were associated with large haciendas.

Introduction
For background on the history of historical archaeology in Mexico, three articles are useful starting points.
One of these, by Patricia Fournier and Fernando
Miranda, published in 1992, presents a general overview of the development of historical archaeology
in Mexico until the early 1990s, emphasizing its relationship with the conservation of Colonial and
Republican period monumental buildings, as well as
salvage projects. The second (by Elsa Hernandez
Pons), published in 1998, in the memoir edited
by Enrique Fernandez Davila and Susana Gomez
Serafn, presents a well-thought-out statement of the

development and current (pre-1998) status of Mexican

historical archaeology.
A third article by Araceli Peralta, also in the
Fernandez Davila and Gomez Serafn edited memoir,
presents a geographically and typologically organized
summary of some studies in historical archaeology
in the Basin of Mexico. Religious, civil (secular),
and production (industrial, ranching, and farming)
archaeological site categories are included in the
Peralta paper. In our treatment of Mexican historical
archaeology, we expand on the format in this paper
by including studies from outside the basin, and by
elaborating on the categories used. We have included
six tables with this article, organizing by area and
identifying by topic the papers included in the abovementioned memoir. These papers probably present
the best current cross-section of approaches and topics
under active consideration in Mexican historical
archaeology.
Of the total papers published in the Memoir of
the First National Congress on Historical Archaeology, eighteen are on investigations in Mexico City
(Table 1); ten on investigations in the Basin of Mexico
and adjacent areas in the central plateau (Table 2);
eight on investigations in the highlands of Oaxaca

Table 1 Studies in Mexico City

Reference

Area

Theme

Banos Ramos (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center

Flores and Perez Rivas (1998)

Fournier (1998)

Mexico City, Tlatelolco

Mexico City, the Templo
Mayor and Tlatelolco
Mexico City, the Templo
Mayor
Mexico City, Historic Center
Mexico City, Historic Center
Mexico City, Historic Center

Salvage archaeology and historical study of the old Convento de

la Concepcion
Documentary sources and maps related to Tlatelolco
Interpretations of the ceramics recovered from the two sites

Fournier and Charlton (1998)

Garca Samper (1998)
Gonzalez Leyva (1998)
Hernandez Pons, Nieto, and Feria
(1998)
Lopez Palacios (1998)
Nieto (1998)
Peralta (1998)
Perez Rivas and Flores (1998)
Perez and Corona (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center

Mexico City, Historic Center
Mexico City and the adjacent
Basin of Mexico
Mexico City, Historic Center
Mexico City, Historic Center

Sala and Santaella 1998

Salas (1998)
Santa Cruz and Moreno (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center

Mexico City
Mexico City, Historic Center

Temple (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center

Tovar (1998)

Mexico City, Historic Center

Zapata 1998

Mexico City, Tlalpan

Majolica chronology
Historical study of the iconography of a church
Documentary studies of the architecture of a chapel
Excavations in the old Convento de Betlemitas
Chronology of glazed candeleros
Analysis of hooded figurines recovered from various sites
Archaeological and documentary studies of religious and
industrial public structures
Documentary study and salvage exploration of urban zones
Salvage archaeology in the Biblioteca de Finanzas Publicas in the
National Palace
Excavations in the old Convento de San Jeronimo
Historical and archaeological study of an industrial structure
Historical and archaeological study of the old Convento de Santo
Domingo
Study of lebrillos recovered in salvage excavations and in the
Metro
Study of historic documents related to a guild in the Convento de
Santo Domingo
Connections between archaeology and history with a proposal for
investigation in the parish of Tlalpan

In Fernandez Davila E and Gomez Serafn S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologa historica, memoria. Mexico City:
Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.

184 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico

Table 2 Studies in the Basin of Mexico and adjacent Central Highlands
Reference

Area

Theme

Alvarez Santiago (1998)

Brambila and Avilez (1998)

Puebla, Puebla
Jilotepec, Hidalgo

Cedilla Ortega (1998)

Puebla, Puebla

Cedillo Vargas (1998)

Tepozotlan, State of
Mexico
Otumba, State of Mexico

Urban and industrial studies related to urban renewal

Historical and architectural studies of religious and secular structures of the
sixteenth century
Salvage archaeology and historical studies related to religious and
industrial structures
Hydraulic construction in religious structures

Charlton and Otis Charlton

(1998)
Contreras (1998)
Cordova (1998)
Martnez Magana (1998)
Oviedo (1998)
Pastrana and Fournier
(1998)

San Francisco Tlaxcala,

Tlaxcala
Huejotzingo, Puebla
Huichapan, Hidalgo
Pachuca and Real del
Monte
Sierra de las Navajas,
Hidalgo

Historical and archaeological studies of the sixteenth century

Historical and architectural studies related to salvage archaeology in an old
convent
Historical and archaeological studies of the convent group of Huejotzingo
Historical and archaeological studies of a religious architectural group
Industrial archaeology of mining
Exploitation of obsidian during the Colonial period

In Fernandez Davila E and Gomez Serafn S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologa historica, memoria. Mexico City:
Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.

Table 3 Studies in Oaxaca and Veracruz

Reference

Area

Theme

Alvarez Franklin (1998)

Fernandez and Gomez (1998b)

Cuilapan, Oaxaca
Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Fernandez and Gomez (1998c)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Fernandez and Gomez (1998d)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Gomez and Fernandez (1998a)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Gomez and Fernandez (1998b)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Herrera (1998)

Oaxaca City, Oaxaca

Matadamas (1998)

Teotitlan del Valle,

Tlacolula, Oaxaca
Cordoba, Veracruz

Historical studies of a ruined religious building complex

Archaeological studies in the old Convento de Santo Domingo de
Guzman
Archaeological studies of the hydraulic works in the old Convento de
Santo Domingo de Guzman
Studies of lime production in the old Convento de Santo Domingo de
Guzman
Studies of local majolica recovered from the old Convento de Santo
Domingo de Guzman
Studies of the ceramics recovered from the old Convento de Santo
Domingo de Guzman
Studies of the botanical remains recovered from the old Convento de
Santo Domingo de Guzman
Archaeological salvage of the historical architecture, with preColumbian and historical archaeology
Salvage archaeology and historical documents

Miranda and Becerril (1998)

In Fernandez Davila E and Gomez Serafn S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologa historica, memoria. Mexico City:
Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.

and one on the highlands of Veracruz (Table 3); six

refer to investigations in the northern and western
areas of Mexico (Table 4); six lack a specific geographical association, with one being on nautical
archaeology, three being analyses of documents (historiography and/or interdisciplinary), one an ethnohistoric study of Spanishindigenous interaction,
and one a brief history of historical archaeology in
Mexico (Table 5), and finally three papers deal with
research in the Maya area and one in the State of
Tabasco (Table 6).
Strictly speaking, archaeological scholars investigating the Late Postclassic civilizations of the central
(Aztec) and southern (Zapotec, Mixtec) Mexican

highlands or the Classic and Postclassic Maya civilization in eastern Mesoamerica (Yucatan Peninsula
and the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala extending into parts of Honduras and all of El Salvador,
as well as the Belize lowlands) can be said to be
conducting historical archaeological research, insofar
as they use available relevant textual documentary
sources in conjunction with traditional archaeological materials. Indeed, some of the earliest historical
archaeology carried out by Mexican scholars was a
by-product of research into the Templo Mayor in
Mexico City. Nogueras research in the 1930s perceptively identified and described some of the diagnostic ceramics for the Colonial period but the main

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 185

Table 4 Studies in north and west Mexico
Reference

Area

Theme

Arciniega (1998)
Brown (1998)
Crespo and Cervantes (1998)
Mendoza (1998)

San Blas, Nayarit

El Carrizal (northern border)
The states of Queretaro and
Guanajuato
Guanajuato, Guanajuato

Moguel and Carballal (1998)

Valencia (1998)

Culiacan, Sinaloa
Aquascalientes, Aguascalientes

Historical and archaeological studies of urban structure

Historical and archaeological studies of the Spanish expansion
Studies of historical religious structures and documents related to
otom families
Historical architecture and interventions for the conservation of
religious structures
Salvage archaeology in various areas in and near Culiacan
Salvage archaeology and historical studies

In Fernandez Davila E and Gomez Serafn S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologa historica, memoria. Mexico City:
Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.

Table 5 Studies in Veracruz related to underwater archaeology, historiography, the history of historical archaeology, and ethnohistory
Reference

Area

Theme

Luna (1998)
Spores (1998)
Hernandez Aranda (1998)
Corona (1998)
Hernandez Pons (1998)
Martnez Torres (1998)

Coastal waters

Underwater archaeology and documentary studies of the colonial period

Historiography, guide to the documents
Historiography, use of documents
Historiography, use of documents
Short history of historical archaeology
Ethnohistory; the monks and the natives based on the use of indigenous plants

In Fernandez Davila E and Gomez Serafn S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologa historica, memoria. Mexico City:
Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.

Table 6 Studies in Chiapas, Quintana Roo and Tabasco

Reference

Area

Theme

Lee Whiting (1998)

Chiapas and
Guatemala
Chicomuselo, Chiapas
Quecchula, Chiapas
Chetumal, Quintana
Roo
Tabasco

Documentary and archaeological studies along the Camino Real

De la Cruz and Lee Whiting (1998)

Navarrete (1998)
Cortes de Brasdefer (1998)
Ledesma (1998)

Archaeological studies of a foundry

Historical and archaeological studies of the church of Quecchula
Historical and archaeological studies in Oxtankah
Historical studies of the Franciscan foundations in the Sierra Tabasqueno

In Fernandez Davila E and Gomez Serafn S (eds.) (1998) Primer congreso nacional de arqueologa historica, memoria. Mexico City:
Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.

orientation of the study was on the Aztec Late Postclassic main temple buildings.
In this paper, however, we restrict the practice
of historical archaeology to the period of initial
European contact and conquest (c. 151921) continuing through the Colonial period (to 1820) and
the period of Independence (1821present), within
the borders of Mexico today.

Historical Archaeology in Mexico:

An Overview

origin, from sites occupied during the Colonial and

Independence periods and found within the modern
boundaries of Mexico. The problem orientations of
investigations into these data generally include one or
more of the following: (1) a study of the variable contact period interaction situations between indigenous
and intrusive cultures, (2) a study of subsequent continuities and changes within both the indigenous and the
intrusive European cultural traditions, and (3) a study
of the emergence of new cultural and ethnic traditions,
throughout the Colonial and Independence periods.

Subject Matter

Research Trends and Disciplinary Origins

The subject matter of historical archaeology in

Mexico includes archaeological remains and relevant
historical documents, both indigenous and European in

There are many different research approaches within

postconquest historical archaeological investigations practiced in Mexico today. Such a diversity of

186 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico

approaches is common in the current worldwide burgeoning field of historical archaeology and reflects,
according to K. Kelly in 2005, a dynamic and a recently
emerging field, in Latin America in general, and for this
article, in Mexico specifically. In Mexico, the field of
historical archaeology has multiple origins, domestic
and foreign, and multiple disciplinary backgrounds. As
we suggest later on, the majority of foreign influences
come from North American archaeology.
As practiced, Mexican historical archaeology contains varying proportions of the disciplines of history,
ethnohistory, cultural and historical geography, archaeology, and anthropological archaeology in the mix. The
amount of each in any investigation depends upon
(1) the time period addressed, (2) the cultural functions and structures under investigation, and (3) the
disciplinary backgrounds and institutional affiliations
of the investigators. As a result, Mexican historical
archaeology is not a monolithic structure in origin,
practice, or theory. There is considerable variation
between the investigations carried out within the
borders of the national state and we may speak of
many historical archaeologies (with apologies to
Leslie Byrd Simpson).
Since the late 1970s, Mexican scholars have increasingly reflected on the relevance of historical
archaeology for increasing our level of knowledge of
the past by combining, in various ways, archaeology
and history, and by increasing protection of Mexicos
cultural heritage. Such reflections form part of their
search to validate and integrate this still-evolving field
of research. Some considerations have focused on the
terminology or nomenclature to be used to denote
the field. Names suggested within these discussions
include archaeohistory, the archaeology of capitalism,
colonial archaeology, historical archaeology, world
systems archaeology, and industrial archaeology (see
Industrial Archaeology), all reflecting aspects of a
multi-faceted Mexican historical archaeology which
takes into consideration the significant political and
economic changes in a worldwide setting following
CE 1492.
Despite this war of words over the designation of
a recent development in Mexican archaeology in general, it is generally understood that what is practiced
as historical archaeology in non-Mexican settings is
what is practiced in Mexico today.
Historical archaeology in Mexico is a discipline
which makes use of both archaeological and historic
data studying the material remains of any postcontact
historical period. This is possible whenever there is a
documentary record providing additional information about the materials and contexts recovered in
archaeological investigations. Historical archaeology
in general, and in Mexico in particular, studies the

materials related to European cultural expansion

throughout the world beginning in the fifteenth century and ending with industrialization or the present
day, depending on local conditions.
As so defined, historical archaeology can make important contributions to contemporary anthropology
by examining the processes of European expansion,
exploration, and colonization as well as those of
culture contact and imperialism. These processes
form a basis for one of the most dynamic periods
in world history, reflected both in documents and
material culture, recovered by archaeological investigations (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline).
Discussions have also addressed the relationships
of Mexican historical archaeology to current archaeological theoretical perspectives ranging from historical particularism, to culture history, processual
(new archaeology) (see Processual Archaeology), postprocessual (see Postprocessual Archaeology), and Marxist archaeology (see Marxist Archaeology), alone or in
various combinations. In some projects, theoretical
positions have included critical theory and Iberoamerican social archaeology.
In addition, there have also been debates about
legal issues related to the national patrimony as well
as more mundane, but relevant, topics such as artifact
taxonomic systems.
Historical Archaeology Institutional
Contexts INAH

As noted above, investigations in Mexico are varied in

part because of their many different institutional contexts. Today the major institutional context includes,
as mandated by law in 1972, the Instituto Nacional
de Antropologa e Historia (INAH), whose relevant
dependencies in Mexico City and in the regional
state offices are obligated to carry out archaeological
salvage and rescue operations, not only for preconquest remains but also for those of the Colonial
and post-Independence periods whenever archaeological deposits and structures would be adversely
affected by contemporary activities. Examples of
such activities include Mexico Citys still ongoing
Metro construction, along with, there and elsewhere,
the maintenance and construction of roads, sewer and
water systems, dams, reservoirs, canals, and water
supply systems. Also included are architectural restoration projects, building expansion, and building
demolition.
Site reports from such operations in salvage and
rescue historical archaeology in Mexico, although
not widely distributed, provide valuable information on associated artifacts and architecture, and on
laboratory and technical analyses of the materials
recovered. Initially, the results of such research were

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 187

not always fully published. However, there are now

increasing numbers of books and articles presenting
the results of research, thus enriching the record for
Mexico and for Hispanic America as well. At times,
many of these data have been used to examine general
theoretical questions of culture contact and acculturation along with the construction of Colonial and
Independence period social systems, identities, and
meanings. Such questions would be addressed by
both documentary records and archaeological material
correlates.
Historical Archaeology Institutional Contexts
Academic Settings Domestic and Foreign

Although academic historical archaeology in Mexico

does include the salvage and rescue of historical
archaeological materials, more frequently archaeologists from academic settings try to combine such
salvage and rescue operations with problem-based
research projects tied to a variety of theoretical perspectives on social and cultural dynamics and evolution. In general, these would be related to studies of
those processes leading to the modern world and to
capitalism. In Mexico, the rise of national systems
and national identities as well as the appearance of
new social and ethnic identities would characterize
these studies.
Formal academic training in historical archaeology
in Mexico is relatively rare. Undergraduate courses
in historical archaeology have occasionally been
offered at the National School of Anthropology and
History in Mexico City, and at the University of
the Americas in Cholula, Puebla. The Autonomous
University of San Luis Potosi will include historical
archaeology as part of the bachelors program. However, there is only one graduate program in historical
archaeology at the National School of Anthropology
and History. There are very few active full-time professional historical archaeologists in Mexico, most
being Prehispanic archaeologists who have extended
their interest through chance or design into the
historic periods.
Regional Cultural and Administrative Variability
in Time and Space

Further differentiation in the subject matter of Mexican

historical archaeology is introduced by the great degree
of Prehispanic regional cultural variability within
Mesoamerica between various state systems such as
the Maya, the Zapotec, the Aztec, and the Tarascans.
In the immediately adjacent culture areas to the north
such as the Greater Southwest, the peninsula of Lower
California, and northeastern Mexico, there were many
non-state-level cultures ranging from hunting and
gathering nomadic people to sedentary agrarian villages.

The Spanish empire governed these areas, from

Panama to what is now the Southwest United States,
through three audiencias (Guatemala, Mexico, and
Guadalajara) with political, judicial, and fiscal powers.
Although they overlap, the borders of Mesoamerica,
with complex state systems, the Greater Southwest
with village agriculturalists, and the peninsula of
Lower California and northeast Mexico with hunters
and gatherers, do not coincide completely with those of
the audiencias or of Mexico today. Communities may
have participated in several larger cultural, political,
and economic systems during their existence.
Beyond the variations present in indigenous cultures
and imperial administrative structures, additional complexity was provided by the different regional origins of
Spanish settlers from the Iberian Peninsula. Many of
these regional cultural variations and their impact on
Hispanic America have been discussed in detail by
George Foster in his 1960 monograph on culture and
conquest. In addition, there was extreme variability in
the kind of church institutions introduced initially for
Christian conversion and subsequently maintained
for the spiritual care of the indigenous people as well
as Spanish settlers. Variations occurred in the order of
regular clergy present and the nature of the transition
to secular clergy in some areas.
Additional regional and local differences in Mexico
were brought about by demographic decline due to
disease, the acquisition of land and the introduction
of Spanish-owned ranchos and haciendas, and the
exploitation of metal ores and petroleum resources.
The impact of these too would vary according to the
time period and political situation in the imperial
center of Spain, and during the Independence period,
in Mexico City, capital of the new republic.

Themes of Historical Archaeological

Investigations in Mexico
Recent urban expansion and economic development have severely impacted the physical remains
of Mexicos past, both Prehispanic and postconquest. Given the almost five centuries of Colonial
and Independence period construction in Mexico,
major population increases during the twentieth century associated with urban renovation, expansion,
and industrialization, along with an underlying pervasive concern for the preservation and rehabilitation
of the cultural heritage of Mexico, it should not be
surprising that historical archaeology has come of age
in Mexico during the last half of the twentieth century.
These processes are especially true for all areas within
the orbit of Mexico City, but also increasingly relevant for provincial cities and small towns in the
countryside, also undergoing similar population and

188 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico

economic growth. In one sense, historical archaeology

is most abundant in urban settings where most of the
religious, secular, and private buildings occur.
Much recent historical archaeology has accompanied, in various guises, the saving, restoration, refurbishing, and recycling of imperiled buildings, some
religious, some governmental, some industrial, and
some private residences (the latter when especially
luxurious and occupied by members of Mexicos
colonial elite, being referred to as palaces). In many
cases, such structures are located in the older sections
of cities in Mexico, such as the Historic Center (Centro Historico) of Mexico City.
Religious Institutions through Their Buildings

Of all the themes of historical archaeology in Mexico,

a shared, widespread interest in the preservation and
investigation of religious buildings from the very
beginnings of Mexico through the nineteenth century
is the greatest unifier of the practitioners of historical
archaeology today. Mexico is the legal owner of all
religious buildings in the country, and they are everywhere, throughout the country, in various stages of
use and disintegration. They range in time from the
early sixteenth century to the twentieth century.
These buildings are a legacy of anticlericalism
which can be seen in the expulsion of the Jesuits and
the appropriation of their possessions, through the
Liberal Reforms of the nineteenth century, the socialist revolution of the early twentieth century, and the
subsequent closing of the churches. The recognition
in the twentieth century that many of these monumental structures could be refurbished and used to
attract tourists marks the beginning of an official
positive interest in those buildings. Although archaeology is usually carried out at such sites, frequently
the archaeological part of the investigations has been
subordinated to the architectural rehabilitation of the
structures.
Missions, their convents, and indigenous residential
areas Early interest in missions and their associated
convents was expressed by American scholars after
the acquisition of substantial areas of Mexico by the
United States in the nineteenth century. Such interest
continues today as demonstrated by the three volumes
edited by D. H. Thomas. Archaeological investigations were in part stimulated by cultural geographers
under the tutelage of Carl Sauer in the Southwestern
US and in northern Mexico during the 1920s and
1930s. Elizabeth Graham in her 1998 article on mission archaeology has detailed many of these studies,
including the Maya areas in the Yucatan Peninsula of
Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, along with those
borderlands from California to Florida once under

Spanish and later, in places, Mexican control before

being ceded to the United States.
Studies of missions often emphasize first-contact
and conversion contexts because of the importance
of the Church in converting the indigenous peoples.
As first-contact contexts, these are linked with those
historical and archaeological studies interested in contact within a broader cultural framework. Research
on a sixteenth century town church and associated
residential convent in central Mexico by Charlton
in 1969 and published in 1973 deals essentially with
the same topic. In central Mexico, when many towns
were abandoned at the end of the sixteenth century
due to depopulation as a result of introduced epidemic diseases, the churches and residential complexes were also abandoned. Since these missed out
on later Colonial and Independence period modifications such as towers and facade updates in eighteenth
century style, they preserve the structure of the church
when it had a major conversion mission-like function.
Examples of continuing studies of mission sites and
artifacts occur in northwestern and northern Mexico
at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. Similar studies of mission sites have been carried out in the Mexican state
of Durango, the peninsula of Baja California, and in
the American state of New Mexico. Many mission
studies have been part of current consolidation of
standing buildings related to efforts to increase tourism in Mexico. There are some additional studies in
D. H. Thomas edited volume I for these regions, and
in volume III for the Maya area in Mexico and Central
America. Ledesma in 1998 reported on research and
consolidation at a mission site in the Sierra de Tabasco
founded in 1537 but occupied sporadically until 1709
when it was permanently abandoned (Table 6). Carlos
Navarrete investigated another similar site in Chiapas
in the 1960s, while Fernando Cortes de Brasdefer
investigated Oxtankah, a mission site in Quintana Roo.
It should be remembered that mission archaeology
is in part evidence of the initial spread of Spanish
culture in Mexico (and areas to the south and north
now outside of Mexicos borders). Such missions are
generally later in time in the northern and southern
areas than those churches that began as missions in
central Mexico. Today, such sixteenth century mission churches or chapels, when they have survived,
are usually treated as parish churches rather than as
missions (see Table 4).
Mexico City convents (nunneries) Since the 1970s,
Mexico City has been the locale of major conservation projects that included as part of the research
the architectural history of the affected buildings as
well as information about the different archaeological materials recovered, mostly human burials and, in

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 189

some cases, ceramics and other artifacts. As noted

previously, we have summarized in six tables the
Mexican archaeological and historical investigations
published in a memoir on Mexican historical archaeology, edited by Fernandez Davila and Gomez Serafn
in 1998. The studies have dealt with numerous convents (nunneries) including that of San Jeronimo,
home of the famous seventeenth century nun, Sor
Juana Ines de la Cruz. Fournier carried out studies
of the European and oriental tradeware and published these in 1990. Other examples of nunneries
studied in Mexico City include La Concepcion (see
Table 1) and the Colegio de San Joaqun of the
Carmelite Order.
Mexico City convents (monasteries) Monasteries
have also recently been studied in Mexico City. The
Convento de Betlemitas was founded in the final third
of the eighteenth century and entrusted to the Order
of Nuestra Senora de Bethlem whose main charges
were the care of ill but convalescing patients and
the education of children from poor families. Architectural restoration of the extant structures was combined with extensive archaeological excavations. The
remaining architecture of Santo Domingo, a Dominican foundation, has also been investigated through
archaeology and documents (Table 1).
Convents (monasteries and nunneries): Investigations
in other regions of Mexico Outside of Mexico City
(see Tables 2 and 3), but still in the Basin of Mexico,
studies of hydraulic works were carried out at the
Jesuit monastery complex of Tepozotlan. Outside of
the Basin of Mexico, but still in the Central Highlands,
there have been similar recent studies at the monasteries of San Francisco, Tlaxcala, and Huejotzingo,
Puebla, in the high plateau of Mexico, directly east
of the Basin of Mexico. In the city of Puebla, archaeological excavations were carried out exposing the
remains of the sixteenth century Convento de San
Francisco as well as at the Convento (Nunnery) de
San Jeronimo. We may also include here rescue
archaeology described by Mendoza Garca in the city
of Guanajuato in architectural studies accompanied
by archaeology at the Templo de San Diego.
To the south, in the City of Oaxaca, major restoration and investigation were conducted at the
Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzman. The Casa
del Artesano in Huichapan, Hidalgo, to the north,
is another provincial example of archaeological
research during the refurbishing of part of the complex for a Casa de Cultura.
Mexico City churches Mexico City has had numerous historic preservation projects which included

the architectural histories of church structures and

information from the associated archaeological materials, including burials and ceramics and other artifacts. These are mostly stand-alone churches but
often have convent-like residences attached to them.
Hernandez Pons has noted that archaeological
research located the first cathedral of Mexico City,
the Capilla de Necatitlan, as well as complementing
engineering work during attempts to stabilize the
present cathedral. Other churches of note in Mexico
City are Santa Teresa La Antigua, La Santa Cruz y
Soledad de Nuestra Senora, San Juan de Dios, the
parish (in Xochimilco) of San Bernardino de Sena,
and the Jesuit chapel of San Pedro and San Pablo.
Hernandez Pons et al. list many others (Table 1).
Although not a church, the Palacio de la Inquisicion did carry out church-related business and has
also been investigated archaeologically.
Churches and chapels in other regions of Mexico
These include churches in many different areas (see
Tables 3 and 4). In San Luis Potos, there have been
minor archaeological operations at the Chapel of
Aranzazu. Alvarez Franklin describes the search for
documentation on a now-ruined church in Cuilapan,
Oaxaca. Also in Oaxaca, Matadamas carried out
salvage archaeology at a Prehispanic mound behind,
and possibly extending under, a sixteenth century
church in Teotitlan del Valle. Crespo and Cervantes
have carried out an ethnoarchaeological and documentary study on household oratorios among Otom
families in Queretaro and Guanajuato.
Secular Institutions through Their Buildings

The structures mentioned here include Colonial and

Independence period governmental structures, hospitals, private residences (often referred to as palaces),
presidios, and monuments. There is uneven archaeological treatment of these structures with heavy
emphasis being placed upon those in Mexico City,
and much less on similar structures in other areas.
As is the case for religious structures, the historical
archaeology carried out is usually associated with
major restoration and maintenance of these structures and is always in a secondary role to the restoration and architectural history.
Secular structures: Governmental, medical,
and residential
Mexico City These include the Palacio Nacional, on
the east side of the Zocalo near the Metropolitan
Cathedral. This site was a center of governmental
power before and during the Colonial and Independence periods. The Castillo de Chapultepec has
served as a fortified hilltop, a military school, and

190 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico

the residence of Maximilian and Carlota before

becoming a present-day museum.
Other structures examined archaeologically are the
Hospital Real de los Naturales and the Hospital del
Amor de Dios, which at the end of the Colonial
period was converted into the Fine Arts Academia de
San Carlos. Residences studied include La Casa del
Marques del Apartado. Research by Eduardo Matos
Moctezumas in the Centro Historico of Mexico City
has extended to include excavations to provide information on the urban character of the city as well as
to identify many houses whose occupants are known.
Monuments archaeologically investigated in Mexico
City (see Table 1) include that of the Molino del Rey,
erected to commemorate the Mexican heroes of the
war with the United States in 1847.
Secular structures: Urban archaeology
Outside Mexico City We have included here a study
of the evolution of a town plan in San Blas, Nayarit,
described by Arciniega, and the circular town plan of
Culiacan, Sinaloa, reported by Moguel and Carballal.
The archaeology undertaken by INAH in the city of
Aguascalientes as part of a modern urban project
designed to develop an underpass system for traffic
and reported by Valencia also falls into the category
of urban salvage or rescue archaeology, some of
which did more than merely define areas of previous
occupations based on test pits. In the city of Guanajuato, excavations were conducted around the Teatro
Juarez (187394) preparatory to carrying out restoration plans. Research was also carried out in the
Palacio de Cortes in Cuernavaca during the restoration of the building. In Merida, the Casa Montejo has
been investigated and restored.
Presidios in the northern borderland and the northwest of Mexico have been focal points of archaeological investigation, often emanating from across
the United StatesMexico border, similar to the impulse for the study of religious buildings, especially
missions, and as we shall note, ceramics. Not only
were northern presidios studied archaeologically but
so were some nineteenth and twentieth century forts
in Puebla and Veracruz (see Table 4).
Secular structures: The archaeology of industry Industrial archaeology as part of historical archaeology
is taking its first few steps in Mexico (see Tables 13
and 5). More historians than archaeologists have
shown an interest in Mexican industrial development.
In part, this is due to the absence of legal protection
and required archaeological investigations at sites
from the late nineteenth and the twentieth century
unless they are in a historic district or are important
time-markers on their own.

Some recent research incorporating studies of industrial sites have been published in the Fernandez
Davila and Gomez Serafn edited volume. Salas carried out investigations at the tobacco factory of the
Ciudadela in Mexico City on the foundations of
the late eighteenth century structure. Archaeological
research in the city of Puebla by Alvarez Santiago
encountered the foundations of textile factories first
established there in 1884.
Mining, a major Colonial and Independence period
activity, has been studied by Oviedo Gamez at
Pachuca and Real del Monte in the northeast Basin
of Mexico. Another industrial site, Molino de Papel
in the southeast of the Basin of Mexico, is mentioned
by Peralta. The production of lime and ceramics at
the Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzman should
be considered an industrial site, albeit of a much
smaller scale than the nonhousehold industries of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The same is true
for the production of Colonial period obsidian
scrapers (probably for cattle hides) at the famed
Cerro de las Navajas obsidian mines used in the
Prehispanic period, as related by Pastrana and Fournier. Although greater than household production,
the level of scraper production is not in the same
league as that of nineteenth and twentieth century
industrial production.
In northwest and northern Mexico, mining facilities including towns have been surveyed in the
PimaOpata region of Sonora as well as in Chihuahua,
Durango, and the state of New Mexico. In the state
of Chiapas, De la Cruz and Lee (Table 6) have reported
on the archaeology of a foundry.
Secular structures: The archaeology of ranching
and farming
Ranches and haciendas Ranches and haciendas in
rural areas are the physical manifestation of a system
which ensured that land and labor were available for
food production for the cities. The buildings were
the residences and working areas of Spaniards or
members of the Indian elite. These buildings today,
where they are extant, belong to individuals or to
towns. Although the land was nationalized after the
191020 revolution, the buildings were, for the most
part, not taken over by the government, being included in a small parcel of land left with the former
owners. They differ from religious buildings in another way; the system they represent was and is detested
by the local village farmers who had to work in the
system because of land shortages.
There is great regional variability in the scale and
timing of such buildings. Of interest are the ranches
and haciendas where the laborers were housed instead of commuting daily to their work. The owners

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in Mexico 191

of these enterprises had taken control of land either

by renting it through compliant indios principales or
by purchasing it outright. Although we have a good
sequence of such ranches and haciendas in the northeastern Basin of Mexico, we lack excavation of a
single structure at any one time. At the moment,
Harold Juli is conducting excavations at a nineteenth
century hacienda in Puebla.
Underwater archaeology The underwater or nautical archaeology of Colonial period sites has become a
valuable adjunct to terrestrial historical archaeology
because of the ability to date with some certainty the
ships being excavated. This is important because of
the good associations between the dated shipwreck
and the artifacts, including ceramics, found on board
as Marken has noted in 1994. The main proponent of
these studies has been Pilar Luna Erreguerena. She
includes a brief overview of Mexican underwater
archaeology in a paper in the Fernandez Davila and
Gomez Serafn edited volume with an example of the
search for the 1631 fleet. Later, in 2001, she co-edited
a volume of papers on underwater archaeology.
Regional Projects

These types of projects, surveys, and excavations

undertaken by Mexican and American archaeological
teams, working individually or in collaboration, in
central and northern Mexico as well as in the Maya
lowlands and other regions, are usually derived from
avowedly scientific research agendas, based on a
variety of theoretical frameworks. Such projects include those directed by Fournier in the Mezquital
Valley and Charlton in the Teotihuacan Valley. Rani
Alexander carried out similar research in the Yucatan
as did R. B. Brown and Fournier in Chihuahua, and
Janine Gasco in the Soconusco.
The basic point of these projects is to recover archaeological materials from indigenous sites at the time of
contact and beyond, in some cases up to the time the
project was carried out. This means dealing with
the reaction of the indigenous people to the new economic, social, and political order brought by the
Spanish conquerors. The key to understanding these
developments are the settlement patterns which include
the native communities and the introduction of ranches
and haciendas as a means whereby the Spaniards, and
the Mexican elite after Independence, appropriated
labor and land at the expense of the indigenous people.
At times, missions, forts, and road systems are important as well.
Artifact Analyses

One of the trends leading to historical archaeology in

Mexico was an interest by collectors, and then by

archaeologists, in gaining a solid ceramic chronology,

especially from majolicas. This led such scholars as
John Goggin to carry out excavations in the 1940s
in Mexico at various historic sites, usually church
and convent complexes. Studies of majolicas continue
today with the use of neutron activation analyses.
Studies of all kinds of materials, such as ceramics
including figurines, obsidian, and metal tools, are
represented in the Fernandez Davila and Gomez
Serafn edited volume (Tables 13).
Osteological Studies of Burials

Human skeletal remains have been located in

Colonial period cemeteries in both rural and urban
contexts. Descriptive osteological analyses have been
carried out defining the age structure and health status of the deceased. Added to these studies have been
analyses for lead poisoning and dietary data through
isotopic analyses (see Stable Isotope Analysis).

Conclusions
Mexican historical archaeology is alive and well.
Although it is necessary to combine two disciplines
in innovative ways to develop research questions
and to interpret data recovered, this does not seem
to be an impediment in its growth. The growth
of Mexican historical archaeology is tightly linked
to salvage archaeology when buildings or urban
streetscapes are being modified. Such a link will
undoubtedly continue for the foreseeable future. At
the same time, archaeologists are increasingly recognizing that the inclusion of a postconquest component in regional studies will enlarge upon the written
word alone in understanding how today is linked
to the past.
See also: Africa, Historical Archaeology; Americas,

North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods; Industrial Archaeology;
Marxist Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology;
Processual Archaeology; Stable Isotope Analysis;
Underwater Archaeology; Urban Archaeology.

Further Reading
Andrews AP (2006) Historical Archaeology in the Maya Area:
A Working Bibliography. http://faculty.ncf.edu/andrews/
research/habib.htm accessed Feb 2007.
Charlton TH (1973) Post-Conquest Developments in the Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico, AD 14001969, Part I, Excavations. Report

192 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

No. 5, Office of the State Archaeologist. Iowa City: Office of the
State Archaeologist.
Fernandez Davila E and Gomez Serafn S (eds.) (1998) Primer
congreso nacional de arqueologa historica, memoria. Mexico
City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.
Foster GM (1960) Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology 27:
Culture and Conquest, Americas Spanish Heritage. New York:
Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc.
Fournier P (1990) Evidencias arqueologicas de la importacion de
ceramica en Mexico, con base en los materiales del exconvento
de San Jeromino. Coleccion Cientfica 213. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia.
Fournier P and Miranda F (1992) Historic sites archaeology in
Mexico. Historical Archaeology 26: 7583.
Graham E (1998) Mission archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 27: 2562.
Hernandez Pons E (1998) Arqueologa historica en Mexico: Antecedentes y Propuestas. In: Fernandez Davila E and Gomez
Serafn S (eds.). pp. 126. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de
Antropologa e Historia.
Kelly KG (2005) Historical archaeology. In: Maschner HDG and
Chippindale C (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Methods
vol. II, pp. 11081137. New York: AltaMira Press.
Luna P and Roffiel R (coordinators) (2001) Memorias del congreso
cientfico de arqueologa subacuatica ICOMOS. Coleccion Cientfica 435. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologa
e Historia.
Marken MW (1994) Pottery from Spanish Shipwrecks 15001800.
Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Noguera E (1934) Estudio de la ceramica encontrada donde estaba
el Templo Mayor de Mexico. Anales del Museo Nacional de
Arqueologa, Historia y Etnografa 1, 5th Epoca, pp. 267282.
Mexico: Talleres Graficos de la Nacion.
Thomas DH (ed.) (19891991) Columbian Consequences (3 vols.).
Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Lower Central America

Anthony Ranere, Temple University, Philadelphia,
PA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Holocene A geologic time period from c. 10 000 BC to the
present when the climate approximated to that witnessed today.
Intermediate Area An archaeological culture area that includes
Lower Central America and northwestern South America; so
named because it sits between the Mesoamerica and Peru culture
areas.
Late Pleistocene A geologic time period from c. 16 000 to
10 000 BC at the end of the last glaciation when mean annual
temperatures were c. 58 C below modern values.
swidden A form of agriculture where forest patches are cleared,
burned, and planted for a short time period (25 years is
common) and abandoned when crop yields drop; also known
as shifting cultivation or slash-and-burn cultivation.
terrane A geological unit that has been transported from a
distant location and then accreted onto the edge of another
plate during subduction.

Introduction
Central America (CA) is normally considered to encompass all countries south of Mexico and north of
Colombia that is, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
While this is a convenient definition in terms of
modern political boundaries, it does not serve us
well in looking at the regions prehistory. During the
Late Pleistocene, Early Holocene, and Middle Holocene (c. 15 0003000 BC) (all dates mentioned in
this article are calibrated unless specifically identified as 14C dates) an argument could be made that
a discussion of Central American prehistory should
encompass an area extending from the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec to the southern end of the Panama Isthmus and perhaps beyond. During the Late Holocene
(3000 BC to present), the cultural trajectories in the
northern and southern portions of CA diverged into
the widely recognized Mesoamerican cultural pattern and a less well-defined Intermediate Area cultural pattern. These patterns, of course, extended
both north and south of CA. The boundary between
these two areas initially falls in western Honduras but
late in prehistory, the southern boundary could be
extended along the Pacific Coast as far south as the
Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica.
In this overview, the territory from the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec to the PanamaColombian border will be
under review for the early portion of Central American
prehistory. Once the division between Mesoamerican
and Intermediate Area cultures becomes clear, this review will focus on the southern part of CA or what is
often referred to as Lower Central America (Figure 1).

The Landscape
Central America has only been a terrestrial bridge
between the North and South American continents
for about 2.5 million years. Previously, much of CA
was a narrow peninsula at the southern end of North
America and earlier in the Miocene, an island arc that
existed in the area where eastern Nicaragua, Costa
Rica, and Panama are today. The geology of CA owes
many of its features to its placement in the region
where there are a number of geological plate boundaries. The subduction of one plate under another has
led to uplifting and folding of the crust to form highlands and the volcanic arc that gives much of CA
its distinctive character. The sliding of one plate by
another along the Motagua Fault in Guatemala and
Honduras results in frequent earthquakes, some of
them quite massive. Earthquakes are also common
along the volcanic arc in CA where the Cocos Plate
is diving down below the Caribbean Plate.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America 193

Lower
Central
America

Northem Central
America

Figure 1 This digital image of Central America shows both landscape topography and ocean bathymetry. Northern Central America
falls within the Mesoamerican cultural area while Lower Central America falls within the Intermediate cultural area. Reproduced with
permission from NASA. Image can be found at http://visibleearth.nasa.gov.

Volcanic rocks
Marine sedimentary
basins

Nicaragua

Old subduction zones

Exotic terranes

Nicoya
Trench

30

60

mi

Volcanoes

Costa
Rica

South
America

Panama
Osa

COCOS RIDGE

Burica
Coiba
Trench
Panama
Transform
Fault

Azuero

Figure 2 A geologic map of Lower Central America that shows the location of exotic terranes and part of the Panama transform fault
that separates the Cocos and Nazca plates. From Coates AG (1997) The forging of Central America. In: Coates AG (ed.) Central America:
A Natural and Cultural History, pp. 137. New Haven: Yale University Press. Reproduced with permission.

Plate movements have also carried exotic terranes

(a geological unit that has been transported from a
distant location and then accreted onto the edge of
another plate during subduction) into this area between the North American and South American
plates adding to the diversity of geological formations
in CA. Some of these terranes, like the Maya Terrane,
which extends from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

to the Motagua Fault, and the Chortis Terrane,

which extends south from the Maya Terrane into
central Nicaragua, are large and make up significant
portions of CA. Other terranes, like those that form
the core of the Pacific Coast peninsulas of Nicoya,
Osa, Burica, and Azuero in CR and Panama, are
much smaller additions to the Central American landscape (Figure 2).

194 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

The closing of the seaway between the Caribbean

and the Pacific 2.5 million years ago led to what is
know as the Great American Faunal Interchange in
which the faunas of North and South America
that had been isolated for millions of years were suddenly provided the opportunity to expand into new
territory and did so in quite dramatic ways. North
and South American floras, equally isolated, also
intermingled for the first time in millions of years.
The emergence of the Central American Isthmus
had equally dramatic effects on the character of the
oceans on either side of the isthmus and the life forms
that each supported. The initiation of strong glacial
cycles shortly after the closure of the Central America
seaway (and perhaps triggered by this closing) also
affected the character of the region. Sea levels varied
as much as 180 m and, at times of maximum glaciation, exposed the continental shelf and greatly
increased the land area of CA.
The geologically recent uplifting of oceanic crust
and repeated volcano activity have created the highland core of the PanamaCosta Rica corridor. The
relatively low ranges east of the Panama Canal give
way to increasingly high mountains moving west into
the Talamancan Range of western Panama and Costa
Rica where numerous peaks exceed 3000 m in elevation. In Panama, coastal lowlands tend to be more
extensive on the Pacific side of the isthmus than on
the Caribbean side, while the situation is reversed in
Costa Rica. Extensive lowlands along the Caribbean
coast of Honduras and Nicaragua extend across the
isthmus to the Pacific Coast in the Nicaraguan depression that holds the large lakes of Managua and Nicaragua. The continental divide dips to only 45 m above
sea level (asl) in this region, even lower than the 180 m
asl is found where the Panama Canal is now located.
North of the Nicaraguan depression, the interior of
CA consists of highlands whose cores are ancient
uplifted deposits of the Chortis and Maya terranes
with more recent additions resulting from the volcanic eruptions that formed the southern portion of
the highlands bordering the narrow Pacific coastal
plain. The highlands end at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a lowland depression where the continental divide dips below 250 m. The great limestone platform
that forms the lowlands of the Peten, Belize, and the
Yucatan peninsula was raised above sea level at
the end of the Cretaceous by the collision between
the Maya and Chortis terranes. The susceptibility of
limestone to dissolution by water has produced the
distinctive karst topography of this vast lowland
region with its cenotes, vast underground caverns,
and dearth of surface water.
The diversity of landscapes from coastal lowlands to
mountainous interiors of diverse geological substrates

support an equally diverse biota. CA, as described by

Spanish chroniclers in the sixteenth century, was a
mosaic of forests, savannas, and agricultural fields; a
landscape that had been modified by humans over the
course of thousands of years. In the absence of human
interference, the current climate of CA would support a
range of vegetation formations from tropical rain forests and various seasonal forest formations to savannas
and thorn scrub formations. All of CA lies between
7
130 at the PanamaColombia border to 21
360 at
the northern tip of the Yucatan peninsula, firmly within the tropics. Seasonal variation in temperatures is
modest; over the course of a year, average monthly
temperatures vary only by 16
C. Mean annual temperatures vary from 2027
C as one moves upwards
from the lower elevations of tierra caliente (hot lands
up to 1000 m in elevation) to 1519
C in the midelevations of tierra templada (temperate lands from
1000 to 2000 m asl) to below 15
C at the highest
elevations of tierra fria (above 2000 m asl).
Rainfall amount and distribution are highly variable across the Central American landscape, with
some areas receiving upwards of 5000 mm annual
rainfall evenly distributed throughout the year, and
others receiving less than 1000 mm annually concentrated in a 67-month wet season. Rainfall tends
to be higher and more evenly distributed throughout the year in Caribbean watersheds. Pacific watersheds tend to have lesser amounts of rain that is
more seasonally distributed. During the months
from December through April, the northeast trade
winds blowing out of the BermudaAzores highpressure cell sweep over the warm Caribbean and
bring moisture-laden air to the region. As these
warm, moisture-laden winds are forced upward by
mountain slopes, they cool and drop their moisture on the Caribbean side of the Central American
Isthmus. As the air mass warms on its descent down
the leeward side of the mountains, it has no excess
moisture to yield as rain and, as a consequence, much
of the Pacific side of Central America has a 46month dry season when little rain falls.
Differences in bedrock geology, soils, elevation,
rainfall, vegetation, and oceans have resulted in landscapes with highly diverse resources and equally diverse adaptations that human populations have made
to them over time.

History of Archaeology
Early attention to archaeological remains in Central
America focused on the architecture and statuary of
the regions ancient cities and towns and on the handsomely crafted gold, shell, semiprecious stone, and

AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America 195

elaborate ceramics that often accompanied the burials of important people. Early researchers writing in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made
contributions that can still be profitably consulted.
Works by Walter Lehmann (all of CA), Carl Hartman
(Costa Rica), E. G. Squier (Nicaragua and Honduras),
Carl Bovallius (Nicaragua), J. F. Bransford (Nicaragua
and Costa Rica), Earl Flint (Nicaragua and Costa
Rica), Anastacio Alfaro (Costa Rica), William
H. Holmes (Panama), and Sigvald Linne (Panama)
fall within this category. A focus on chronology with
an emphasis on ceramics characterized much of the
archaeological research in CA during the first twothirds of the twentieth century and beyond. Over the
course of his long career, Samuel Lothrop wrote
major monographs on ceramic sequences in Nicaragua,
Costa Rica, and Panama, but is perhaps best known
for his two-volume report on excavations at the
Sitio Conte cemetery in Panama. Other researchers
contributed to building regional chronologies in CA:
among them are Doris Stone (Honduras, Costa
Rica), Wolfgang Haberland (El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica, Panama), Claude Baudez (Honduras,
Costa Rica), Michael Coe (Costa Rica), Stanley
Boggs (El Salvador), and Matthew Stirling (Costa
Rica, Panama). This work focused almost exclusively
on the last 2000 years of prehistory when populations
were living in permanent settlements with agriculturebased subsistence economies that generated highly
visible refuse and often above-ground architectural
features. The excavation of the Monagrillo site in
Panama, reported by Gordon Willey and Charles
McGimsey, extended the age of pottery production
in Central Pacific Panama back an additional
2500 years, to 3000 BC. Charles McGimseys excavation of the nearby Cerro Mangote (6810  110 BP
(c. cal 5700 BC)) was the first stratified Preceramic
site excavated in CA.
The transformation in archaeological approaches
that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s was reflected in a host of new orientations for archaeological
projects undertaken in Lower Central America by a
cohort of then young archaeologists, many of whom
are still active in the field. Settlement patterns, the use
of animal and plant resources, exchange systems,
the first colonizers, the origins of agriculture, and the
evolution of social complexity are just some of the
topics that came under investigation. Our current
knowledge of Central American prehistory, as outlined in the following sections, owes a great deal to
the research of Richard Cooke, Francisco Corrales,
Robert Drolet, Pat Hansell, Paul Healy, John Hoopes,
Fred Lange, Olga Linares, Dolores Piperno, Anthony
Ranere, Michael Snarskis, and Payson Sheets, among
others.

Early Human Occupations

Central America landscapes have changed in many
important ways since the first human groups entered
the region during the last major glaciation (Figure 3).
Temperatures were c. 56
C lower than they are
today and rainfall was reduced by perhaps 3040%.
The massive glaciers in the worlds polar regions
held enough water to lower sea levels over 100 m
and expose the continental shelf, which for parts of
CA, added significant areas of dry land, particularly
along the Pacific site of Panama and the Caribbean
side of Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Reconstruction of Late Pleistocene vegetation at coring localities in
Panama (La Yeguada, El Valle, Monte Oscuro, and
Gatun Lake), Costa Rica (La Chonta), and the Peten
region of Guatemala (Lakes Salpeten and Quexil) indicates that areas now receiving in excess of c. 2000 mm
of rainfall annually would have been forested during
the last glacial stage, whereas areas with annual rainfall
below c. 2000 mm were likely to have had open savanna or low scrub vegetation. These more open formations would have been located on the Yucatan
Peninsula, including the Peten and Belize, along the
Pacific coastal plain from El Salvador to northwestern Costa Rica, and the Pacific coastal plain along
Panama Bay. Still in all, large areas on the Pacific
side of CA receive over 2000 mm of rain annually,
including an area stretching from central Costa Rica
to Central Panama and the area near the Colombian
border. Most of the Atlantic watershed of CA receives
well over 2000 mm of rain annually. While it seems
clear that the late glacial landscape of CA contained
more extensive open habitats than at any time during
the Holocene (that is, until massive forest clearing
for cultivation was underway), it was still a largely
forested landscape.
The Late Pleistocene landscape in CA was populated by at least 15 genera of large herbivores that
did not survive to see the Holocene. These include
the mastodon-like gomphotheres (Cuvieronius tropicus and Haplomastodon), mammoth (Mammuthus),
megalonychid and megatheriid giant ground sloths,
including the huge Eremotherium, glyptodonts (Glyptodontidae), giant armadillos (Pampatherium and
Chlamytherium), a horse (Equus (Amerhippus)), the
rhinoceros-like Toxodon, the camel-sized Macrauchenia, Paleolama, giant capybara (Neochoerus),
flat-headed peccary (Platygonus), and bear (Arctodus). Included in this list are browsers, grazers, and
omnivores adapted to a range of forest, forest edge,
and open thorn scrub/savanna environments. While
none of these taxa has been found in association with
human artifacts in CA (bone was not preserved in the
sites excavated to date with Late Pleistocene cultural

196 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

1000

San
Andres

km

20 N
Lakes Salpeten and Quexil

Huehuetenango
Los Tapiales
San Rafael
Turrialba

Coring locality
Paleo-Indian locality

Lake Arenal

Lake Gatun

La
Yeguada

Lake
Alajuela

Deciduous forest
La Chonta

Low scrub and grass

Evergreen forests

La Mula West and Vampiros

Montane forests

El Valle

Monte
Oscuro

Figure 3 A map showing the reconstructed vegetation of Central America during the Late Pleistocene and the coring localities that
provided the information for this reconstruction. The location of major Paleoindian localities are also indicated. Adapted from Ranere AJ
and RG Cooke (2003) Late Glacial and Early Holocene occupation of Central American tropical forests. In: Mercader J (ed.) Under the
Canopy. The Archaeology of Tropical Rain Forests, pp. 219248. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Reproduced with permission.

deposits), some have been found in archaeological

sites of northern South America (see Americas,
South: Northern South America). At the site of Tibito
in the Bogata Basin, Cuvieronius, Haplomastodon,
and Equus (Amerhippus), as well as extant fox (Cerdocyon) and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus), were
associated with human activities 14C dated to
11 740  110 BP (11 638 BC). Haplomastodon was
found in association with an El Jobo lanceolate point
at Taima-Taima, Venezuela, dated c. cal 13 400 BC.
The same layer as the mastodon and El Jobo point also
yielded glyptodont, mylontid sloth, horse, bear, and
felid remains. Elsewhere in Venezuela (at the site of
El Vano), El Jobo points have also been found in direct
association with the giant ground sloth Eremotherium
rusconii.
We can say very little about the nature and timing
of the earliest migrants into and through the Central
American Isthmus; those who were ancestral to the
groups documented further south in sites like Monte
Verde in Chile, Taima-Taima in Venezuela, and Tibito
in Colombia, among others. There are no firm
archaeological sites that reflect the presence in CA
of any groups older than the Paleoindian Clovis
populations.

Diagnostic Paleoindian fluted points of the Clovis

and Fluted Fish-tail types have only been found in
two stratified sites in CA that have reported radiocarbon dates, Los Tapiales in the Guatemalan Highlands and Cueva de los Vampiros in the Pacific coastal
plain of Panama. Los Tapiales is an open-air site
located at an elevation of 3150 m in what is currently
an alpine meadow. 14C dates of 11 170  200 BP
(c. cal 11 200 BC) and 8810  110 BP (c. cal 7960 BC)
bracket deposits from which 100 tools and nearly
1500 flakes were recovered, including a fluted point
base and a channel flake. The excavators, Ruth Gruhn
and Alan Bryan, view the occupation as short term
and believe that the 14C date of 10 710 170 BP (c. cal
10 700 BC) is the best estimate of its age. At Vampiros,
cave deposits bracketed between 14C dates of
11 550  140 BP (c. cal 11 460 BC) and 8970  40 BP
(c. cal 8150 BC) contained the blade portion of a
Fluted Fish-tail point and overshot thinning flakes
characteristic of Clovis-reduction techniques (but
not Fish-tail-reduction techniques). Similarly aged
deposits have been excavated at three other Central
American sites; La Piedra de Coyote (14C dates of
10 650  1350 BP (10 250 BC) and 10 020  260 BP
(9680 BC)), located in the Guatemalan Highlands

AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America 197

near Los Tapiales, Aguadulce Shelter (14C dates of

10 725  80 BP (c. cal 10 825 BC), 10 675  95 BP
(c. cal 10 785 BC) and 10 529  284 BP (c. cal
10 490 BC)), located in the coastal plain of Central
Pacific Panama near Vampiros, and Corona Shelter
(14C date of 10 440  650 BP (c. cal 10 115 BC)),
located in the foothills of Central Pacific Panama.
Although no clearly diagnostic tools were recovered,
all three sites yielded bifacial thinning flakes consistent
with those produced in manufacturing fluted points.
Although undated, a number of Clovis and Fluted
Fish-tail points have been found in Central America,
some as part of surface site assemblages and some as
isolated finds. The site of Turrialba (also known as
Finca Guardiria), at 10 ha in area, is by far the largest
Paleoindian site known for CA. It is located at an
altitude of c. 700 m on terraces of the Reventazon
River in the Atlantic watershed of Costa Rica. The
region receives 4000 mm of rain annually and would
be covered in evergreen forest if not for human intervention. The entire site area has been cultivated and
all of the over 28 000 flakes and tools have been
recovered from the surface or the plow zone. Large
numbers of fluted Clovis points were recovered, as
well as bifacial preforms and other tools often found
with other fluted point assemblages, that is, snubnosed keeled scrapers, end-scrapers with lateral
spurs, burins, and large blades.
Another important Clovis site is the La Mula West
workshop, Central Pacific Panama, where erosion
has left workshop debris and the rare finished tools
exposed on the ground surface or buried in reworked
deposits. Over 80 biface fragments were recovered
from the site, including 12 basal fragments that
had been either fluted or basally thinned. Spurred
end-scrapers, burins, gravers, and blades were recovered at La Mula West as well. The only near-complete
specimen recovered would be lost in a collection of
early North American Clovis points. The lithic reduction sequence reconstructed on the basis of the broken bifaces and manufacturing debris, including a
number of overshot flakes and hundreds of thinning
flakes, is nearly identical to the sequence reported for
North American Clovis workshops. Although there is
no direct date for the La Mula West assemblage,
15 years before its discovery, an isolated hearth
14
C dated to 11 300  250 BP (c. cal 11 215 BC) was
found eroding out of sediments near the site. This
seems an appropriate age for an assemblage that
shares the same lithic reduction sequence and projectile point form as the early Clovis assemblages in
North America (Figure 4).
Two additional sites in Panama have yielded
bifaces and workshop debris that can be assigned
to the Paleoindian period. One, the Neito quarry/

workshop, is located in the Azuero Peninsula west

of La Mula West and contains the same translucent
chalcedony material preferred by the La Mula West
Clovis flintknappers and evidence of similar reduction techniques. The second site, the Westend workshop, is located in the Chagres River drainage near
the Panama Canal on the shores of an island in Lago
Alajuela (Madden), an artificial lake that stores water
to supply the operation of the Panama Canal locks.
At low water, workshop debris covering an area
c. 1 ha in size is exposed on the eroded surface.
Although thousands of thinning flakes are present
(most with small, heavily ground platforms) only
two preforms and no finished points were recovered.
However, elsewhere on eroded shorelines of Lago
Alajuela, six Fish-tail points and one waisted Clovis
point have been picked up. The preponderance of
Fish-tail points in the lake basin and the absence of
overshot flakes in the Westend assemblage indicate
that Fish-tail points and not Clovis points were the
desired end product.
Additional isolated fluted points of both Clovis
and Fish-tail varieties have been found in a number
of different contexts in CA, including the Belize Lowlands, Guatemala Highlands, both the lowlands and
highlands of Costa Rica, and the foothills and coastal
plain of Pacific Panama. While Paleoindian sites and
isolated finds are relatively few in number, they are
found in a wide range of geographic and ecological
settings. Paleoindian lithic remains have been found
above the Late Pleistocene tree line (Los Tapiales and
Piedra de Coyotes) in highland Guatemala, in montane closed-canopy forests elsewhere in Guatemala
(Guatemala and Ocozocoautla valleys) and Costa
Rica (Turrialba and the Arenal region), in lowland
closed-canopy forests (Lago Alajuela in the Chagres
Basin), and in open savanna/thorn scrub lowlands
(Belize, northwest Costa Rica, and Central Pacific
Panama). Paleoindian groups were clearly able to
move about through the entire range of geographic
and environmental settings found in CA during the
Late Pleistocene. This ability may have more to do
with an emphasis on hunting rather than on gathering
by these populations; Clovis and Fish-tail points are,
after all, hunting weapons and no specialized plantprocessing tools have been found at Paleoindian sites.
Hunting techniques are relatively easy to transfer
from one environment to another and meat eating
is not a hazardous undertaking. On the other hand,
learning what plants can be safely consumed in newly
encountered environments, or learning how to render
the plants safe for human consumption can be a timeconsuming process. The picture that is emerging of
CA Paleoindians is one of small mobile groups
moving though a range of environments in pursuit

198 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

(b)

(a)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

cm

(g)

(h)

(i)
Figure 4 Artifacts from the Clovis workshop of La Mula West, Panama: a and b, point preforms broken in manufacture; cf, overshot
flakes, a characteristic feature of Clovis point manufacture where the opposite side of the preform is removed in the thinning process; gi,
late-stage fluted preforms broken in the manufacturing process.

of game but perhaps tethered to high-quality sources

of stone for manufacturing their skillfully made
projectile points.

Archaic HunterGatherers and the

Introduction of Agriculture
Palaeoenvironmental records from lake cores in both
northern and southern regions of CA document the
changing landscapes resulting from the warmer and
moister climate that marked the Late Pleistocene/
Early Holocene transition. Mean annual temperatures increased 56
C while annual rainfall increased
3040%. As a result, forests expanded into previously open habitats in many parts of CA and

plant species moved 600900 m higher in elevation

(Figure 5). At least 15 genera of megafauna that once
roamed through CA were now extinct, including the
mastodont-like gomphotheres (Cuvieronius tropicus
and Haplomastodon), mammoth (Mammuthus),
megalonychid and megatheriid giant ground sloths,
including the huge Eremotherium, glyptodonts
(Glyptodontidae), giant armadillos (Pampatherium
and Chlamytherium), a horse (Equus (Amerhippus)),
and, perhaps, the rhinoceros-like Toxodon, the
camel-sized Macrauchenia, Paleolama, giant capybara (Neochoerus), flat-headed peccary (Platygonus),
and bear (Arctodus).
The cultural response to this changing landscape
was a gradual increase in the importance of plant

AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America 199

Tropic of Cancer

20

Isthmus of
Tehuntepec

Yucatn
Peninsula
Petn

MEXICO

BELIZE
Tropical evergreen
forest

HONDURAS

Caribbean
Sea

Chiapas

Tropical semi-evergreen
forest

GUATEMALA

Tropical deciduous
forest

NICARAGUA

EL SALVADOR

Pine woodland
and savanna

COSTA RICA

10
Pacific
Ocean

Nicoya
Peninsula
Cordillera
de Talamanca

Mostly cactus
scrub and desert
0

1000

PANAMA

Panama
Bay

COLOMBIA

Low scrub, grass,

desert

km

Figure 5 A map showing the vegetation types potentially supported by modern climates of Central America in the absence of human
interference. Adapted from Ranere AJ and RG Cooke (2003) Late glacial and early Holocene occupation of Central American tropical
forests. In: Mercader J (ed.) Under the Canopy. The Archaeology of Tropical Rain Forests, pp. 219248. New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press. Reproduced with permission.

foods in the diet. Emphasis is on gradual here since

tool assemblages during the period from 10 000 to
6000 BC were still dominated by bifacial projectile
points and other tools important in hunting and
butchering activities. Archaic sites are found in the
same regions that have yielded Palaeo-Indian sites,
but in larger numbers. In a probabilistic survey of
seven 500 m-wide transects covering a total distance
of 74.5 km in the Santa Maria Valley of Central
Pacific Panama, 16 Archaic components have been
identified compared to seven Palaeo-Iindian components. Although more impressionistic, this same
pattern appears to hold elsewhere in CA.
The overall population of CA remains small during
the Early Holocene and hunting remains important,
to judge by the lithic assemblages. Faunal remains are
generally not preserved in these sites, but at the Santa
Marta Rockshelter, Chiapas, at the northern boundary of CA, white-tailed deer, red deer (or mazama),
peccary, tapir, squirrel, agouti, and armadillo were
recovered in layers with 14C dates of 7320  300 BP
(c. cal 6180 BC) and 6910  310 BP (c. cal 5795 BC).
Nonetheless, there are clear signs of an increased
emphasis on plant foods by the middle of this period

in the form of specialized plant-processing tools,

palaeobotanical evidence for forest clearing, and
microfossil remains of both wild and domesticated
plants.
The initial cultivation and domestication of plants
was early and remarkably widespread in tropical
America. Archaeologists, palaeobotanists, and molecular biologists are still trying to determine the time,
place, and ancestral species for many of the crops
brought under domestication in the Americas. We
do know, however, that this process was underway
both in north and south of CA by the ninth millennium BC and that a number of these crops were being
cultivated in CA shortly thereafter.
Our earliest evidence of agricultural activities in
the form of actual plant remains comes from the
Aguadulce, Carabali, and Ladrones shelters as well
as from other sites in Central Pacific Panama. Microfossil remains of several domesticates including maize
(pollen, phytoliths, starch grains), squash (phytoliths), arrowroot (phytoliths, starch grains), leren
(phytoliths, starch grains), manioc (starch grains),
and bottle gourd (phytoliths) have been recovered in
multiple contexts dating from the sixth and seventh

200 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

Figure 6 Maize (Zea mays) starch grains from Gran Cocle sites:
a, Rio Cobre; b and c, Cueva de los Ladrones; d, Aguadulce
Shelter; e and f, Zapotal. Scale bars 10 mm. From Dickau
R (2005) Resource Use, Crop dispersals, and the Transition to
Agriculture in Prehistoric Panama: Evidence from Starch Grains
and Macroremains. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology,
Temple University, Philadelphia. Reproduced with permission.

millennium BC (Figure 6). A 16 700-year long record

from the Yeguada Lake core preserves a record of
vegetation disturbance by human populations beginning around 11 000 BC in changes in pollen, phytolith, and charcoal flux. Gradual increases in the
amount of forest burning reflected in the Yeguada
sequence from c. 11 000 to 6000 BC, with a noticeable jump in charcoal influx around 7600 BC, is consistent with the archaeological survey and excavation
data that indicate modest increases in the population
density over this time period in the region and early
cultivation of at least one domesticate (arrowroot) by
7600 BC.
The escalation of burning likely represents the use
of small kitchen or house gardens in a still primarily
forested landscape. A major increase in charcoal along
with secondary forest and open-terrain taxa in the
pollen and phytolith records at 6000 BC identifies
the initiation of intensive slash-and-burn agriculture

in the area. Yeguada Lake is located at 650 m asl in

the Santa Maria River watershed, the setting for a
probabilistic archaeological survey that identified a
twofold increase in sites during the Early Preceramic
time period (96006000 BC) relative to the previous
Palaeo-Indian Period and a nearly eightfold increase
in sites (from 16 to 124) between the Late Preceramic
Period (60003900 BC) and the previous Early Preceramic Period. A second core from Monte Oscuro on
the Pacific coastal plain also gave clear indication of
extensive forest clearance for swidden agriculture.
Maize phytoliths from the Monte Oscuro core at
6000 BC and maize pollen from the Yeguada core
at 5630 BC complements the microfossil records of
maize and other early domesticates from archaeological
sites in the region.
Excavated sites and lake core sequences that extend
back into the Middle and Early Holocene (i.e., before
c. 4000 BC) are not common in CA. Rockshelter excavations in western Panama have sequences going
back only to 55006000 BC. However, they do provide evidence of plant cultivation in the way of starch
grains for many of the same plants identified from
Central Panama. Lake core sequences in eastern
Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize
and Tabasco, Mexico all show that forest clearance
and swidden agriculture was widespread in CA by
2000 BC or earlier.
A shift away from complete reliance on terrestrial
resources to the use of coastal resources is first
recorded at around 6000 BC at opposite ends of the
region. The site of Cerro Mangote, located on the
Pacific shores of Central Panama, contained abundant remains of fish, mollusks, and crabs as well as
mangrove-associated species of birds and raccoons.
Maize starch grains recovered from Cerro Mangote
tools indicate that like other Central Panama sites,
farming was part of the subsistence package. Moreover, marine shell and faunal remains from marine
and estuarine species are found in a number of coastal
plain and foothill sites up to 40 km inland during this
60003900 BC Late Preceramic period. This evidence, plus the fact that Cerro Mangote appears to
have been seasonally occupied in the Late Dry Season/Early Wet season, points to a settlement system of
seasonal transhumance for the region during the
Late Preceramic. On the Pacific coast of Chiapas,
the earliest Chantuto phase shell middens date to
5500 BC. Because the early Chantuto phase sites
were primarily shellfish-collecting stations, with some
additional exploitation of coastal lagoon/estuary system resources to be sure, they too probably represent
groups who are farming away from the coastline in
Chiapas; maize phytoliths dating to 3500 BC were recovered from one of the Chantuto middens.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America 201

There is a major shift in technology as Central

American populations turn to a greater reliance on
plant species, both cultivated and collected, after
6000 BC. In many parts of CA, best documented in
Panama and the Pacific coastal zone of Chiapas, bifacial flaking disappears from the technological
repertoire of these populations to be replaced by industries characterized by random reduction of cores to
produce flakes that are used with little or no modification. Bipolar reduction is used when the raw material
consists of small pebbles. Various kinds of handstones
and bases also appear in assemblages as early as
7000 BC in Panama and perhaps as early in Chiapas
to judge from the assemblages recovered from the
Santa Marta Rockshelter. The dominant tools in
Panama are edge ground cobbles and associated
cobble/boulder bases, tool types that are also widespread at this time in parts of northern South America.
The archaeological record for CA becomes very
much richer with the introduction of ceramics into
the material culture of its inhabitants. In part, this is
simply a consequence of the ease with which ceramic
sites can be located compared to earlier sites that only
preserve stone tools. However, in part this richness
reflects the increasingly sedentary communities and
productive economies based on agriculture that subsidized a range of activities and interactions beyond
those dictated by subsistence requirements. This is
not to say that the introduction of ceramics is everywhere associated with major sociocultural changes in
societies. The earliest pottery yet documented in CA,

the 39001250 BC Monagrillo pottery type from

Central Panama, is found associated with the same
lithic assemblages in use during the earlier Late Preceramic period. Indeed, many of these Late Preceramic sites continue to be occupied during the Early
Ceramic. Sites do tend to be larger, and are found in
larger numbers in the Caribbean watershed, but the
pattern of seasonally occupied settlements, swidden
agriculture, and the exploitation of a wide range of
terrestrial and aquatic resources carries over from
earlier times with little change (Figure 7).
The timing of the appearance of pottery in CA
is quite variable, as is the character of the pottery.
Monagrillo pottery is rather poorly constructed: lowfired pottery made of local clays in limited shapes
with infrequent incised and red-painted decorations.
It cannot be definitively linked with any of the earlier
pottery types from South America. In contrast, the
early Tronadora pottery complex found from Central
Costa Rica to the Pacific coastal region of Nicaragua,
partially contemporary with Monagrillo ceramics at
c. 25001250 BC, looks like it has evolved from some
as-yet-unidentified predecessor. Contemporary or
near-contemporary ceramic complexes (La Montana,
Chapparon, Los Suenos, Curre) are documented from
other regions in Costa Rica (Figure 8). Yet the first
appearance of pottery moving north from this region
gets younger. The Bara complex found along the
Pacific coast of Guatemala dates from 1600 BP, and
complexes in the highlands of Guatemala and along
the Atlantic watershed are younger still. Interaction

Figure 7 Aerial photograph of Monagrillo, the type site for the earliest pottery in Central America. The site is on a peninsula currently
extending into a salt flat, but when the site was occupied (c. 35001200 BC) the peninsula was surrounded by water.

202 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

Figure 8 Sherds from early ceramic complexes in Costa Rica: an, La Montana; oz, Chaparron. Photo Maritza Gutierrez. From
Snarskis MJ (1981) The archaeology of Costa Rica. In: Benson E (ed.) Between Continents/Between Seas: Pre-Columbian Art of Costa
Rica, pp. 1584. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

among groups throughout CA and beyond was clearly a long-standing and ongoing process. The adoption
and passing on of South American domesticated
plants to Mexico and Mexican domesticates to South
America is an easily documentable consequence of
this interaction. One senses, however, that while
Central American communities appreciated the utility
of pottery, they chose to manufacture pots to their
own standards. Moreover, given the variation in timing
for the first appearance of pottery in adjacent areas
Central Panama adopted pottery by 3900 BC, western
Panama not until 650 BC not all groups were
immediately convinced of its utility.

Settling Down
Widespread permanent settlements in CA were not
established until after groups had been growing crops
for several thousand years. Productive agricultural
systems capable of supporting permanent villages
are found throughout the region dating back to
between 4500 and 2500 years ago. By this time, the
alignment of the northern sector with Mexico above
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and that of the southern
sector with northern South America, give meaning
to the concepts of Mesoamerica and, perhaps to a
lesser extent, the Intermediate Area. In the area now

AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America 203

designated Mesoamerica, the development of stratified societies first into chiefdoms (see Americas, Central: The Olmec and their Contemporaries) and later
into ancient states (see Americas, Central: Classic
Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya) occurred relatively rapidly. In contrast, settled village agriculture did
not lead immediately to stratified societies in Lower
Central America; indeed, in some regions like the
western Costa Rican Highlands and the lowlands
along the Atlantic coasts of Nicaragua and eastern
Panama, the egalitarian nature of these agricultural
societies continued right up until contact. Stratified
societies or chiefdoms did evolve in a number of Lower
Central American regions from Central Honduras
through Atlantic Costa Rica to Central Pacific
Panama, but this emergence did not follow fast on
the heels of the appearance of large permanent settlements. The different cultural trajectories witnessed
between the northern and southern sectors of CA
almost certainly had their roots in the Late Preceramic
Period (c. 60003900 BC). Genetic and linguistic divergence among modern Chibchan-speaking populations
in Lower Central America both point to a time depth
of c. 7000 years for the initial isolation of populations
and languages. The cultural boundary between Gran
Cocle (Central Panama) and Gran Chiriqu (western
Panama/eastern Costa Rica) is clearly identifiable in
the archaeological record by 5500 BC (Figure 9).
The emergence of large sedentary agricultural villages is the most obvious indication that a major
threshold had been crossed in CA. Other indications
include the introduction of well-made ceramics, differential treatment of the dead (specialized cemeteries
for social elites situated apart from the villages), the
appearance of craft specialization, and the initiation
of regular intra- and inter-regional exchange. The
explosion of craft specialization and the production
of luxury goods has no precedent in Late Preceramic/
Early Ceramic periods even in places like Gran Cocle
where a number of such sites have been recorded and
excavated. Specialization is not limited to esoteric
goods like shell ornaments and various object and
adornments of semiprecious stone. Utilitarian objects
like polished stone celts, metates, manos, and chipped
stone stemmed points and blades also appear to be in
the hands of specialists. Even so, most scholars see
this first period of permanent settlement as representing egalitarian tribal societies where status was
achieved, much like the Big Man societies of highland New Guinea, rather than ascribed or inherited as
would be the case for chiefdoms.
While most researchers working in Lower Central
America see continuity in the cultural sequences and
presumably in the populations responsible for them,
there are clear influences from both Mesoamerica

and South America where craft specializations have

longer histories. In some cases, prestige goods recovered
from Lower Central America can be traced to neighboring regions. Such is the case for obsidian blades
and other tools recovered in Northeast Honduras and
the Greater Nicoya region of Pacific Nicaragua, and
some of the jade objects recovered from sites in Costa
Rica. The use of spiny oyster (Spondylus) shell as the
raw material of choice for prestige goods along the
Pacific coast of Panama was likely inspired by a similar but earlier use of Spondylus along the coasts of
Ecuador and Peru. Some of the gold pieces recovered
from Panama and Costa Rica may have been fabricated in Colombia, although it now seems clear that
most of the gold objects found in Lower Central
America were manufactured there.

The Emergence of Hierarchical Societies

Full-blown chiefdoms, similar in most details to
those described by the early sixteenth-century Spanish
chroniclers, make their appearance over much of
Lower Central America during the first millennium
AD, a judgment based on a wide range of archaeological evidence. Estimated sizes of a chiefly territory
based on either ethnohistoric or archaeological data
range from 60 to 300 km2 and estimated populations
from 1000 to 10 000 persons. Chiefs and the chiefly
elite lived in large villages or towns inhabited by upwards of 2000 persons. A number of features distinguished chiefly centers from other settlements in
addition to size. While these distinguishing features
varied from place to place, they include specialized
residences for the chiefs and chiefly elites, often built
on raised platforms, monumental stone statuary, and
accumulation of wealth in the form of prestige goods.
Nowhere is the wealth accumulated by the elite
in Lower Central America more visible than at the
famous Sitio Conte cemetery in Gran Cocle first
excavated in the 1930s by Samuel Lothrop. The
cemetery was in use over the 200-year period between
AD 750 and 950. The personages buried here are predominantly adult males including all the central figures.
The amount of funerary ceramics, gold, worked semiprecious stone, jewelry, the accompanying skeletons
of numerous males and females (sacrificed captives
and concubines?) all point to the accumulation of
luxury items in quantity as markers of high social
status. Grave 74, excavated by J. Alden Mason,
contained the following items: 3496 beads, 188 ear
rods, 91 stone and gold ear rods, 45 gold appendages
for ear rods, 87 bells, 29 medallions (repousse disks
with geometric designs), 17 chisels, 13 plaques
(repousse disks with figurative designs), 4 cuffs, 2 pendants, 23 overlays for bone, resin, and ivory objects,

204 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

90W

85W

80W

Gulf of
Mexico

75W

BAHAMAS

Havana

CUBA

20N

Cayman
Islands
(UK)

MEXICO

Kingston
JAMAICA

Belmopan

BELIZE

Mesoamerica
15N

Northeast Honduras

GUATEMALA

Caribbean Sea

HONDURAS

Guatemala City

Tegucigalpa

Nicaraguan
Atlantic watershed

San Salvador

NICARAGUA
EL
SALVADOR

Managua

PACIFIC
OCEAN

Intermediate Area

Gran
Nicoya

COSTA RICA Atlantic watershed Panama

Canal
and Central Highlands

10N

San Jese

Gran
Chiriqui

Panama City

Gran Darien

PANAMA
Gran Cocle
0
0

100
100

200 miles

200 Km

SOUTH
AMERICA

Figure 9 A map showing the approximate boundaries between the subregions of Lower Central America. The base map is from the
Houghton Mifflin website http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/cent_amer_pol.pdf

6 wristlets or anklets, 30 miscellaneous overlays, 4

nose ornaments, 2 nose clips or ear-rings, 1 bar, and a
copper bell. Sitio Conte along with the contemporary
ceremonial center El Cano just across the river, with
its monolithic columns, paved causeway, and earthen
burial mounds, represents an elite precinct without
parallel in Gran Cocle. It is the uniqueness of the Sitio
Conte/El Cano complex that has led Cooke to propose the emergence of a larger social group than the
chiefdom.
The central place that wealth accumulation held as
a marker of elite status in Gran Cocle can be seen in

cemeteries associated with other chiefly centers of the

region. Grave goods in these cemeteries include many
of the same items recovered at Sitio Conte albeit on a
more modest scale. Most of these cemeteries have
been looted and the associated grave goods widely
dispersed in both private collections and museums.
An exception is the cemetery at Cerro Juan Diaz
along the east coast of the Azuero peninsula, a site
that served at various times during the last 2000 years
before contact as a major settlement and ceremonial
center as well as a cemetery. Although badly looted,
archaeological fieldwork carried out over a 10-year

AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America 205

(b)

(c)
0

10
cms

(a)

(d)

(f)
(e)
Figure 10 Late Preceramic polychrome vessels from Gran Cocle, Panama: ae, Macaracas style vessels from the site of Cerro
Juan Daz; f, Montijo Transitional Style vessel from Las Huacas cemetery. From Cooke RG, Sanchez HLA, and Udagawa K (2000)
Contextualized goldwork from Gran Cocle, Panama. In: McEwan C (ed.) Pre-Columbian Gold, pp. 154176. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn
Publishers.

period has resulted in proper chronological placement for luxury items like gold, semiprecious stone,
and shell as well as ceramics and more utilitarian
objects (Figures 10 and 11).
Elsewhere in Lower Central America, large stone
sculptures are a hallmark of chiefly centers. At the
western Panama highland site of Barriles, the hierarchical character of the society is embodied in the
sculpture of a man wearing a conical hat, a gold
pendant suspended from his neck, and a human trophy head in each hand seated on the shoulders of
another man, perhaps a captive (Figures 12 and 13).
Other monumental stone sculptures from Barriles
include large (2 m long) legged metates adorned with
human heads and large barrel-shaped forms that gave
the site its name. Barriles also contained a 30  50 m
raised platform paved with stone slabs and boulders,
paved causeways and petroglyphs.
Further west in this Gran Chiriqu region, large
sites with ceremonial precincts first appear around
AD 400600, as was the case with the Barriles site in
the highlands of western Panama. These sites contain
mounds, carved stone barrels, anthropomorphic and
zoomorphic statues, and ceramic figurines wearing
conical hats similar to those recovered in western

Panama. A unique addition to the ceremonial furniture are symmetrical stone spheres ranging up to
2.5 m in diameter and 15 tons in weight. The large
ceremonial center of Rivas and associated Panteon
de la Reina ridge-top cemetery in the Rio General
watershed yielded evidence that indicated the presence of some sort of social network or alliance that
incorporated multiple chiefdoms. Rivas was initially
a habitation site, but sometime after AD 1000 it was
transformed into a ceremonial center whose apparent
use was in mortuary ritual culminating in the burial
of elite personages in graves dug into the ridge that
rose above the Rivas site. The uniqueness of this
ceremonial centercemetery complex recalls the
Sitio ConteEl Cano ceremonialcemetery complex
in Gran Cocle (Figure 14).
In the Central Highlands and Atlantic watershed regions of Costa Rica, evidences of social stratification
are found in a number of burial sites dated between
AD 300 and 700. The cemetery El Tres de Guacimo,
tentatively dated between AD 400 and 500, contained
at least 25 elite burials marked by low stone mounds
along with another 100 or more additional graves.
These elite burials contained a large number of jade
objects, gold ornaments, tubular beads, mace heads,

206 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

0

(b)

(a)

cm

(c)

(d)

(f)
(e)

(g)

(h)

(k)

(i)

(l)

(j)
1 cm

(m)

Figure 11 Gold objects from Gran Cocle, Panama: a, from El Cano excavations; bd, from Tomb 2 at Mira Flores; e, from El Cafetal;
f, from Tomb 47 at Las Huacas; gi, from El Cano; jm, from Cerro Juan Daz, Operation 3. From Cooke RG, Sanchez HLA, and Udagawa
K (2000) Contextualized goldwork from Gran Cocle, Panama. In: McEwan C (ed.) Pre-Columbian Gold, pp. 154176. Chicago: Fitzroy
Dearborn Publishers.

slate mirror backs, ceramics, and over 60 metates.

The gold objects in this site suggest ties to Gran
Cocle and northern Colombia, and the jade objects
to Mesoamerica. Other cemeteries in this region have
yielded reworked Olmec jades and Maya artifacts like
slate mirror backs, some with hieroglyphic inscriptions. After AD 1000 a number of large villages with
mounds and other architectural features are found in
the Atlantic watershed. The largest site, Guayabo,
was 1 km2 in size and contained over 50 mounds
(many of them stone lined), paved causeways, stone
statues, and an underground water system. The
cobble-lined circular mounds, paved causeways,

and stairs of these Costa Rican sites recalls similar

architectural features of the Tairona sites of the Sierra
Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia and serves to
reinforce the shared cultural features among groups
stretching from Costa Rica south into Colombia
(Figure 15).
Northwest Costa Rica and the Pacific lake districts
of Nicaragua form the archaeological region of Gran
Nicoya. This area is sometimes considered part of
Mesoamerica and, in fact, three groups speaking
Mesoamerican languages, the Chorotega, Nicarao,
and Subtiaba were in residence in Gran Nicoya
when the Spanish arrived. The timing of the arrival

AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America 207

for these groups is not entirely clear, but they were in

the area long enough to adopt many of the local
traditions. Nonetheless, until the arrival of these
Mesoamerican groups, perhaps as late as the fourteenth century, the cultural patterns in Gran Nicoya
seem very much a part of the Lower Central America/
Intermediate Area sphere. As was the case in some
other Lower Central American areas, the strongest
evidence for the emergence of hierarchical societies
comes from large elite cemeteries. Las Huacas, located on the Nicoya Peninsula and first excavated by

Hartman at the turn of the twentieth century,

contained graves with jade pendants, mace heads,
and large numbers of metates dating to the period of
AD 300500. Although the details of the grave associations have long been lost, Las Huacas has been
interpreted as a specialized cemetery for the elite
from several settlements and perhaps more than one
polity.
In northeastern Honduras, at the northern boundary of Lower Central America, social complexity is
most clearly seen in villages with large-scale public
architecture. Located on a terrace above the Talgua
River, the Talgua Village site, dated between AD 600
and 900, contained 80 house mounds, the largest
reaching 2.5 m in height. Some of the mounds were
faced with cobbles, recalling the pattern seen in the
Atlantic watershed of Costa Rica. An unusual feature
of this site was the discovery of a plaza covering at
least 1000 m2 constructed of river cobbles to a depth
of 2 m. The Altas de Subirana site in the Culm Valley
contains house mounds, stone causeways, paved plazas, and stone monoliths, all features that predated
AD 600. Unlike the rest of Honduras, there is little
evidence of Maya influence in this northeast region at
the time large village sites make their first appearance. This is equally true of later centers like the Rio
Claro site, dated between AD 1000 and 1400. The
site included over 50 mounds constructed of clay and
faced with boulders in an area of 8.5 ha. Some of the
long low mounds held long houses up to 50 m in
length. The site had a central mound 7 m in height
with two opposing boulder ramps overlooking the
larger of two plazas at the site. The elaborately carved
large-legged metates, stone sculptures, and pottery of
Northeast Honduras all suggest southern rather than
Mayan/Mesoamerican influences.

Summary
Figure 12 Stone sculpture from Barriles, Panama of one man
wearing a conical hat and holding two trophy heads sitting on the
shoulders of another. From Stone DZ (1972) Pre-Columbian Man
Finds Central America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

The results of archaeological, linguistic, and genetic

research to date in Lower Central America point
to cultural continua over much of the area from a

Figure 13 A large ceremonial metate with human trophy heads carved around the perimeter of the sculpture. From Stone DZ (1972)
Pre-Columbian Man Finds Central America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

208 AMERICAS, NORTH/Lower Central America

Figure 14 A plan view of a portion of the Rivas site, Gran Chiriqu, Costa Rica showing the use of boulders on the edges of house
mounds, plazas, and other enclosures. Adapted from Quilter J (2004) Cobble Circles and Standing Stones: Archaeology at the Rivas Site,
Costa Rica. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Reproduced with permission.

11
12
13
14A

36

3
6

10

14B

9
15
18 19
20

16

37

35

28

31 32

17
8

30

21
23

29

33

34

24

22

25
26

27

38

13

39
40 12
11

18B

44

40

50

100 m

18A
16
17

Figure 15 A plan view of the Guayabo de Turrialba site showing cobble-faced house mounds, cobble-delineated enclosures, paved
causeways, and artificial watercourses. From Fonseca ZO (1981) Guayabo de Turrialba and its significance. In: Benson E (ed.) Between
Continents/Between Seas: Pre-Columbian Art of Costa Rica, pp. 104111. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Reproduced with permission.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica 209

common source, presumably the Paleoindian Clovis

culture that once existed throughout the area over
12 000 years ago. The increase in population, decrease in mobility, increased reliance on local plant
resources, and the addition of cultivation to the
subsistence base all fostered divergent cultural trajectories in different subregions of CA. The archaeological cultures of Gran Cocle and Gran Chiriqu,
for example, are clearly differentiated by at least
6000 BC. By the sixteenth century, Gran Cocle and
Gran Chiriqu and all other Lower Central American
subregions held numerous autonomous polities, oftentimes speaking mutually unintelligible languages,
yet they remained valid cultural areas. This suggests
that groups within each subregion interacted with
each other to a greater extent than with groups in
neighboring subregions. Nonetheless, Central American populations embraced new technologies from
outside the region, including agriculture, ceramics,
metallurgy, shell and lapidary arts, while preserving
their cultural traditions.
See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Early Cultures of Middle America;
Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; The Olmec and
their Contemporaries; Americas, South: Northern South
America; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction in the
Lowland Neotropics; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Coates AG (ed.) (1997) Central America: A Natural and Cultural
History. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cooke RG (2005) Prehistory of native Americans on the Central
American Land Bridge: Colonization, dispersal, and divergence.
Journal of Archaeological Research 13(2): 129187.
Hoopes JW (2005) The emergence of social complexity in the
Chibchan World of Southern Central American and Northern
Colombia, AD 300600. Journal of Archaeological Research
13(1): 147.
Lange FW (ed.) (1992) Wealth and Hierarchy in the Intermediate
Area. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks.
Lange FW (ed.) (1996) Paths to Central American Prehistory.
Niwot, CO: University of Colorado Press.
Lange FW and Stone DZ (eds.) (1984) The Archaeology of
Lower Central America. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press.
Linares OF and Ranere AJ (eds.) (1980) Adaptive Radiations
in Prehistoric Panama. Peabody Museum Monographs, 5.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Piperno DR and Pearsall DM (1998) The Origins of Agriculture in
the Lowland Neotropics. San Diego: Academic Press.
Ranere AJ and Cooke RG (2003) Late Glacial and Early Holocene
Occupation of Central American Tropical Forests. In: Mercader J
(ed.) Under the Canopy. The Archaeology of Tropical Rain
Forests, pp. 219248. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Sheets PD and McKee BR (eds.) (1994) Archaeology, Volcanism,
and Remote Sensing in the Arenal Region, Costa Rica. Austin:
University of Texas Press.

Postclassic Cultures
of Mesoamerica
Susan Toby Evans, The Pennsylvania State
University, University Park, PA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
altepetl Pronounced ahlTAYpeht, a Nahuatl (Aztec) word
meaning water-hill which signified the city-state in the Aztec
empire.
animatism A belief that inanimate things (objects, landscape
features, natural phenomena) are imbued with a living spirit.
This concept was fundamental to the belief systems of the
peoples of ancient Mesoamerica.
Aztec Empire The polity forged by the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan
(which later became Mexico City) and its allies. At its height, at
the time of the European intrusion into Mexico in AD 1519, it
drew wealth from city-states from much of the area covered by
modern Mexico.
calpulli A land-holding social unit in Aztec society of Postclassic
Mesoamerica. Each calpulli consisted of families with shared
rights to farmland, and a local civic-ceremonial focus consisting
of an administrative headquarters (usually the palace of the local
lord) where policy matters would be discussed and tribute
accumulated, a shrine, a young mens house (telpochcalli) to
coordinate training for military and public service.
Mesoamerica An archaeological culture area consisting of
much of the extent of modern Mexico, all of Guatemala and
Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. It is one of the six
areas in the world where civilization and state-level political
organization arose independently.
Quetzalcoatl Pronounced KETZahlCOHaht, a Nahuatl (Aztec)
word meaning feathered serpent and referring to an important
deity in Mesoamerica from the Olmec culture of the Formative
period through the Late Postclassic period. Quetzalcoatl was a
bringer of life to humankind, and patron of the fine arts.
Templo Mayor The Great Temple of the Aztecs in their main
capital, Tenochtitlan. Recent excavations have revealed seven
construction stages, and these remains and associated buildings
form an archaeological park in the heart of Mexico City.

Mesoamerican Culture History

The Postclassic period (AD 9001521) in Mesoamerican culture history is the final pre-Columbian era in a
long sequence that extends back to the first humans in
the geographical region we know as Middle America.
Middle America comprises the modern countries of
Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador,
Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama. Middle Americas
northern boundary is defined by the arid reaches of
northern Mexico and its southern boundary is the
junction of Panama with South America. Mesoamerica is a culture area, and it lies completely
within Middle America, and consists of most of
modern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and
parts of Honduras and El Salvador.

210 AMERICAS, NORTH/Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is defined by the widespread presence

of a set of shared traits, but perhaps the most important of these was the cultivation of maize (corn) as a
staple crop. The cultural limits of Mesoamerica are
the same as the cultivation limits of maize over consistently large areas. The high caloric and protein
value of maize permitted the development of large
and dense population aggregates, farming villages,
and, eventually, diverse and sophisticated cities. Crop
surpluses supported the growth of nonfarming specialists, artisans who created material goods, and administrators who organized the economic, political,
and spiritual sectors of society.
Mesoamericas culture history began before maize
was cultivated, with the nomadic hunters of the
Palaeoindian period. By the end of the succeeding
Archaic period, mobile hunter-foragers were experimenting with cultivation of progenitors of domesticated maize. The next period, the Formative, is
initiated by the establishment of farming villages
with maize cultivation. By AD 1000, the Olmec culture had established societal and artistic complexity
in Mesoamerica, and by the close of the Formative
period, in the third century AD, Mesoamericas first
true cities were rising. The next period, the Classic,
was first defined by the sequence of dates in the native
calendar of the Maya culture. The dates were carved
onto standing monuments (stelae) that extolled the
accomplishments of Maya kings, and this practice
was thought to begin at around AD 300 and continue
until AD 900. Although the definition of this Classic
period was based on limited information, subsequent
archaeological research found that it was a time of
cultural accomplishment all over Mesoamerica. Not
only were there Maya kingdoms, but, in the Central
Highlands of Mexico during the Early Classic period,
the great city of Teotihuacan was in its prime, as was
the city of Monte Alban in the Oaxaca Valley (see
Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica,
the Maya). By the Late Classic period, these legendary
places were losing power, and political importance was
shifting to other centers, such as El Tajn in the lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico and Xochicalco in the
Central Highlands. By AD 900, the great Maya ceremonial centers were being abandoned.
The Postclassic period was thus first defined in
contrast to the presumed idyllic cultures of the Classic, and Postclassic traits such as militarism and
mercantilism were thought to represent a kind of
cultural degeneration. We now know that peoples
of the Classic period were enthusiastically and frequently engaged in hostilities and in trade, so these
traits seem to be long-term trends in Mesoamerican
culture history, and not specific to the Postclassic

period. Most scholars use AD 900 as the point

at which the Postclassic period begins, and use
AD 1521 as the end date, because in that year the
dominant political confederation, the Aztec Empire,
was defeated by combined forces of the armies
of native societies antagonistic to the Aztecs, and
the Spaniards led by Hernan Cortes.

Phases of the Postclassic Period

This span of time of over 600 years encompassed
three distinct phases. The Early Postclassic, AD 900
1200, was the era during which the great cities of Tula
and Chichen Itza dominated the cultural landscape,
both apparently strongly influenced by the cult of
the Feathered Serpent (Quetzalcoatl in Nahuatl, the
Aztec language), which spread over Mesoamerica.
During the Middle Postclassic, AD 12001430, citystages flourished in many regions, and in some areas,
such as Michoacan and the Central Highlands of
Mexico, ambitious rulers began to consolidate these
small polities into larger confederations. The Late
Postclassic, AD 14301521, saw these aggregates
grow to empires known, respectively, as the Tarascan
empire (ruled from the city of Tzintzuntzan in
Mexicos Michoacan region), and the Aztec empire
(ruled principally from the city of Tenochtitlan,
which became Mexico City). A large part of the territory of what is now modern Mexico came under
the sway of one or the other of these major capitals,
and the rest of Mesoamerica interacted with them
through trade or war.
The Late Postclassic period is sometimes called the
Aztec period because Aztec culture dominates our
view of this time. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital,
was conquered in 1521 but remained the most important city in Colonial period New Spain (as Mexico
was then called), and remained the capital, its present
name (Mexico City) being derived from the name of
the dominant Aztec group, the Mexica (pron. maySHEEkah). Furthermore, Aztec history and customs
were amply documented, which is not true of
other Late Postclassic cultures. We have eyewitness
accounts by the Spanish conquistadores themselves
(Hernan Cortess letters, Bernal Daz del Castillos
accounts), and later accounts by Spanish clergy and
laymen interested in Aztec culture (e.g., by Fray
Diego Duran, Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Alonso
de Zorita). Most books in the native style were
destroyed as promoting heresy against the Catholic
religion of the Spaniards, but a few were saved as
oddities or were copied, providing another important
source of information, and are widely available today

AMERICAS, NORTH/Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica 211

in facsimile editions (e.g., Codex Borgia, Codex

Mendoza, Codex Telleriano-Remensis). Members of
Aztec noble families also wrote histories in this Early
Colonial period (Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitls
Obras Historicas; the Annals of Cuauhtitlan).
Because information about Aztec culture dominates the repertoire of sources, scholars tend to use
it often to interpret the customs and history of other
cultures in Mesoamerica, those of the Postclassic, and
those much earlier. This practice is sometimes necessary because of the difficulty of interpreting the
material culture record recovered by archaeology, in
cases where no written documentation exists. Thus,
for many reasons, the once-mighty Aztecs have cast a
long shadow over Mesoamerican culture history.
Their empire flourished a mere 90 years, however,
which puts into perspective the importance of understanding other cultures of the 600-year-long Postclassic period.
Early Postclassic Period, AD 9001200

In the Early Postclassic period, Mesoamericas Classic

period regionalism was overcome by shared cultural
trends that spread quickly over vast areas. This process is exemplified by the emergence of two dominant
sites: Tula in the Central Highlands of Mexico and
Chichen Itza in the lowland Yucatan peninsula. The
sites are nearly at the same latitude, but 1000 mi
apart. They share an architectural style which is characteristic of Tulas locale, the Central Highlands of
Mexico, but it is far from clear that Chichen Itza was
built under Toltec influence. In fact, some scholars
argue that Chichen predates Tula, but because we do
not have the same kind of chronometric dates from
both sites, the issue cannot, at this time, be resolved.
Tula In Tulas period of greatness, AD 9001150,
the site covered nearly 16 km2 (c. 6.4 mi2) and had a
population estimated at 60 000. The city had been
constructed on a new grid that obliterated an earlier
and much smaller settlement. Its ceremonial center
echoed certain features of Teotihuacan, but the
architecture was innovative in its use of massive
blocky pyramids, colonnaded buildings, and huge
sculptures. Pyramid B is topped by enormous figures,
males in battle gear, and also by columns with
attributes of important Postclassic deities such as
Tezcatlipoca, the all-powerful trickster god, and
Quetzalcoatl (quetzal-bird serpent or feathered serpent), bringer of life and patron of fine craft work
and important aspects of knowledge, such as keeping
the books of history and divination. Other deities
known from Tula who are important throughout the
Postclassic period are Tlaloc (the storm god), Xipe

Totec (flayed skin god who represented agricultural

renewal), Tlazolteotl (the wise old woman to whom
confessions were made), and Xochiquetzal, a goddess
who oversaw human sexuality and textile arts. The
importance of ritual human sacrifice is stressed in bas
relief sculpture depictions, and by the free-standing
chacmool form, a reclining figure used as a sacrificial altar.
Tulas size and grandeur was probably based on a
combination of militarism and trade. Trade routes
ran to the West Mexico and north as far as the
Puebloan cultures of what is now the United States
Southwest. Those cultures flourished at the same time
as did Tula, and show traits such as the use of the ball
court and certain trade goods that indicate contact
with Mexican cultures, but do not show that the
Toltecs of Tula had an empire that inspired the development of Puebloan cultures.
The Toltecs carried distinctive trade goods by
which we can track their contacts, direct or indirect,
with areas to the south and east. One item diagnostic
of Toltec trading patterns, and also found in later
cultures, was the wheeled ceramic figurine, typically
depicting a dog or other animal, its feet pierced to
accept front and rear axles that bore wheels. These
figurines have been called toys, but they almost certainly served a sacred rather than an entertainment
function. Mesoamericans revered any object or phenomenon that seemed to possess a lifelike vitality,
because they believed that the world around them
was animated by spiritual forces, and anything that
moved had this energy. The use of the wheel in
Mesoamerica was never extended to practical applications, as it was in the Old World. For one thing,
there were no domestic animals large enough to pull a
conveyance like a cart (all goods were carried in packs
by human porters, or, where possible, in canoes),
and so there was no springboard for the inventive
design of gears and machinery, as happened in the
Old World.
Another item diagnostic of Toltec trade was Plumbate ware, with a distinctive glossy deep gray finish. It
was produced along the Pacific coast of Chiapas and
Guatemala, but was found at both Tula and Chichen
Itza, as well as at countless other sites contacted by
Tula in the Early Postclassic period.
A further stimulant to trade was the development,
in West Mexico, of metalworking. This was apparently a set of techniques first introduced from South
America by sea contacts along the Pacific Coast.
In the first stage of Mesoamerican metalworking
(AD 600/8001200), copper was smelted and poured
into casts. Simple forms were further worked by hammering, and more complicated forms were cast using

212 AMERICAS, NORTH/Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica

the lost-wax technique. The most popular items produced by the lost-wax method were bells, small
spherical tinkling devices that were worn in groups
in the costumes of lords, deity impersonators, and
long-distance traders. Metals ability to produce sound
was one of its most important features in Mesoamerican culture. Another was its reflective brilliance, and
in the second stage of metalworking (AD 1200
1521), gold and silver were used to produce a range
of decorative devices. Alloys of several metals were
developed. Thus, Mesoamerica can be said to have
achieved a Bronze Age technology, but it was seldom
used to produce utilitarian objects, in contrast to the
metalworking traditions of the Old World.
Metal objects were widely traded, and while Toltec
merchants may have strongly influenced the flow of
trade in western and northern Mexico, trade along
the lowlands edging the Gulf of Mexico was in the
hands of Maya ethnic groups variously known as the
Chontal, Putun, and Itza. These traders took goods
along the coast around the Yucatan peninsula and
also into the interior. In 1502, on his fourth voyage
to the New World, off the east coast of Yucatan,
Christopher Columbus saw a canoe at least 15 m
(c. 50 ft) long, with 25 oarsmen plus the traders and
their families, and goods including woven cotton
mantles, obsidian blades, copper ax forms (thin sheets
of copper used as currency), and cacao beans to be
processed into chocolate. Thus the goods included
tropical lowland products (cotton, cacao) and those
from the highlands far to the west (obsidian, copper),
indicating that these traders were handling a wide
variety of goods from all over Mesoamerica.
Chichen Itza This other great center of the Early
Postclassic was a Maya site colonized by the ethnic
Itza group in the ninth century AD. Its name means
mouth of the well of the Itza and the well probably
refers to the great Sacred Cenote (sinkhole), or Well
of Sacrifice, 24 m (c. 80 ft) in diameter, with its water
level an equal distance below the ground surface. Into
this well were thrown all manner of precious materials such as carved jades, copper bells, and carved
wooden items, and also human sacrifices, but forensic
methods are powerless to determine whether or not
the skeletal remains are those of beautiful virgins, as
popular legends report.
Chichen Itzas architecture reflects two distinct traditions, Maya and Central Mexican, and in some
cases a fusion of the two, such as in the Caracol, a
circular structure with features permitting tracking of
astronomical events. Other buildings are more clearly
in the Central Mexican style, and these huge structures dominate the area extending south from the

Sacred Cenote. The Castillo is a 23 m (c. 75 ft) high

four-sided stepped pyramid decorated with feathered
serpent motifs. The Temple of the Warriors and its
associated buildings are of the same style as Tulas
Pyramid B complex, and show the same use of
columns on top of the pyramid, and colonnaded
halls at its base. Surviving murals at the Temple of
the Warriors show battle scenes, and also canoes in use
that are of the same type as the one Columbus saw.
The Great Ball Court at Chichen Itza is Mesoamericas largest, 146 m (c. 479 ft) long and 37 m
(121 ft) wide, and it is one of 13 at the site. The ball
game was played all over Mesoamerica, and the action was somewhat like that of soccer: teams or solo
players moved a rubber ball around a court, trying to
score goals. Europeans would not know about rubber-ball-centered sporting events until the sixteenth
century, when an Aztec team toured Europe, but in
Mesoamerica this ancient tradition dates back to at
least 1500 BC, the time of the earliest known formal
ball court (Paso de la Amada, in Chiapas, Mexico).
Countless games were probably played on any
cleared field, however. We know from Late Postclassic sources that teams and equipment had become
formalized and that gambling on the outcome was
common. It should be noted that in Mesoamerica the
ritual component of these games was essential, and
that the rubber ball was an expression of vitality that
was critical to this spiritual aspect. Mesoamericans
believed in animatism: objects, landscape features,
and natural phenomena that are regarded as passive
or inanimate to the Western mind were regarded as
having sacred living spirit, and the rubber ball, with
its capacity to move would be regarded as sharing in
the animatism that enlivened the world, and which
must be revered.
Elsewhere in the Early Postclassic Chichen Itza is
thought to have gone into decline at about the same
time as did Tula, in the latter part of the twelfth
century AD. The Itza established a new center at a
Yucatan site called Mayapan, which had a smaller
and shabbier copy of the Castillo pyramid. Mayapans
wall enclosed a closely packed area of mostly residential buildings, covering 4.2 km2 (1.7 mi2), with a
population that may have numbered 12 000. Members of the Itza group also pushed into the Guatemala
Highlands, establishing sites among groups such as
the Quiche Maya. Toltecized groups also pushed into
southern Mesoamerica, establishing Nahuatl-speaking
enclaves as far south as El Salvador.
Cholula was located in the Puebla Valley in the
eastern Central Highlands of Mexico, and had a
long history before becoming a major capital in the

AMERICAS, NORTH/Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica 213

Postclassic. Its Postclassic identity was shaped by the

arrival of migrants from the north, who defaced its
Great Pyramid, though it remained, by volume, the
largest structure in the pre-Columbian New World.
The major ceremonial focus at Cholula became the
Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl (demolished after European
intrusion), marking the city as the pre-eminent center
for worship of the feathered serpent god, and drawing
pilgrims to the site.
The migrations that brought adherents of the cult
of Quetzalcoatl to Cholula were part of what seem
to have been widespread population displacements.
Ethnohistorical accounts written down in the native
tradition, but after the European intrusion, said that
Cholulas established ethnic groups were displaced
by migrants from the northwest. These migration
accounts figure in the ethnic histories of many groups
in the Postclassic, and some scholars believe that such
migrations were exaggerated in order to glorify the
courage and hardiness of tribal ancestors. However,
overwhelming archaeological evidence indicates that
there were many significant shifts in cultural patterns
all over Mesoamerica, ranging from ceramic styles
and mortuary practices to agricultural techniques
and layouts of residences. Furthermore, some languages became widespread over many areas, and these
include Nahuatl and its close variants, and also Mayan,
which became important along the eastern gulf
lowlands which border the Central Highlands of
Mexico. These changes are typical effects of migrations. Many migration accounts dealing with the
Central Highlands cite a place of origin called Aztlan,
whose heart was a cave called Chicomoztoc. In
Mesoamerica, caves were regarded as sacred apertures of the living earth, perfectly suitable for the
origin point of revered progenitors.
In fact, Cholula, which is geographically placed
between Tula and the gulf lowlands, seems to have
been influenced from both directions, and also by its
proximity to the increasingly important city-states of
the Mixteca, whose territory extended from the
southwestern Puebla plain down into the Valley of
Oaxaca and to the Pacific coast. These Mixtec
regions were never strongly unified; their political
system was based on the independence of small cities,
each ruling its surrounding hinterland, the rulers
related to each other through generations of marriage
alliance, and all claiming divine descent. The Mixtecs
kept track of genealogical matters through their painted
books (see, for example, the Codex Borgia), and the
masterful cartoon-like style of their illustrated writing
system became a kind of symbolic shared script over the
Central Highlands in the Postclassic period. The association between Mixtec towns and Cholula was close,

and Cholula became an important center of ceramics in

this style, which became known as Mixteca-Puebla
style.
Middle Postclassic Period, AD 12001430

This stretch of over 200 years marks a transition

between the proliferation of small states focused upon
modest cities, and the beginning of the Aztec Empire,
centered upon the Basin of Mexico in the Central
Highlands of Mexico, and Tarascan Empire, based
in the Michoacan region of western Mexico. These
were to become two huge and complex states that
transformed the territories they conquered, and
influenced many others beyond their reach. Aztec
is a modern word, a shorthand term developed by
scholars to refer to the Nahuatl-speaking ethnic groups
who saw themselves as descended from migrants from
Aztlan. Thus, there were Aztecs all over the Central
Highlands of Mexico by AD 1200, but the Aztec
Empire of the Late Postclassic was in great part the
work of one of these groups, the Mexica, mentioned
above. Specifically, the most powerful segment of the
Mexica was the group called the Tenochca, who
founded the city of Tenochtitlan in about AD 1325,
and since that time their city has grown from a modest
temple pyramid surrounded by a few huts to the
largest metropolis in the Americas, Mexico City.
But in AD 1200, the Mexica was just one of many
ethnic groups that had moved, over many years, from
a homeland that had become inhospitable. Their migration accounts describe many stops where they settled and worked for a while, and Tula in its prime was
among them. After these stops of several years each,
they would move on, finally reaching the Basin of
Mexico, where, unfortunately, other groups before
them had claimed all the arable land. So they camped
on a barren abandoned lava flow and lived off the
lizards that flourished there. In time their toughness
and their willingness to serve existing city-states as
mercenary soldiers impressed their neighbors, and
they were given permission to settle in other more
comfortable locales, but in each case their aggressiveness frightened their hosts into rescinding hospitality. Finally, they occupied a swampy island in the
Basin of Mexicos central lake and there established
Tenochtitlan. By about AD 1376, they had permission to establish their own noble dynasty; their first
ruler, Acamapichtli, was descended from a union
between a Mexica and a noble from Culhuacan, a
basin town that claimed a line of descent from the
rulers of Tula.
For about 50 years, the ennobled Mexica flourished on their island, establishing closer ties with
other noble lineages in the basin and serving as highly

214 AMERICAS, NORTH/Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica

regarded mercenaries for the Tepanecs, the most

powerful ethnic group in the basin. The Tepanec
confederation was comprised of sets of local citystates, the Mexica among them. But tensions arose
between the Tepanecs and the Mexica, and the latter
joined forces with other disaffected client states and
overthrew Tepanec authority in about AD 1430, taking over the confederation that would become the
core of the Aztec Empire.
The Aztecs are among the most familiar of preColumbian cultures; the Tarascans are not. In part,
this is because the Aztecs controlled much of the area
first encountered by the Spaniards in AD 1519, the
gulf lowlands. Their influence was very widespread,
and their language, Nahuatl, had become a lingua
franca over a large area. However, while the Aztec
empire expanded in many directions, in the late
fifteenth century it was blocked, one valley west of
their heartland, the Basin of Mexico, by the eastern
outposts of the Tarascan domain, whose history during the Middle Postclassic bears parallels with that
of the Mexica. The Tarascan core area, Michoacan,
was an ethnically mixed region, and the Tarascans
established themselves near Lake Patzcuaro in the
Early Postclassic. The founder of the Late Postclassic
dynastic line, Taracuri, unified the core region around
Patzcuaro in the early fourteenth century.
The Tarascan language, Purepecha, is something of
an isolate, resembling no other Mesoamerican language. However, the Tarascans shared in many typically Mesoamerican traits: a solar vague year (365
rather than the modern 365.25 day solar year); a
calendar of 18 months of 20 days each, plus 5 extra
days at the end; the veneration of caves, mountains,
and springs; veneration of serpents and butterflies;
the importance of human sacrifice, and autosacrifice
(self-infliction of penitential wounds); and the ball
game. Another trait that they shared with the Aztecs,
to the east, was the practice of forging tribute empires
out of city-state confederations.
Late Postclassic Period, AD 14301521

In the Early and Middle Postclassic periods, over

much of Mesoamerica, the dominant political format
was the city-state. In the Nahuatl language the term
was altepetl, water-hill, conveying the geographic
ideal of a towns location, on a hill near water. In a
larger sense, the altepetl concept was similar to
the Classical Greek polis in that it encompassed an
independent political unit consisting of a central
community and the hinterland it governed. Each
such city-state was basically self-sustaining, though
exploitation of local resources would encourage
specialization in craft production and trade. In the

altepetl, tributes from local farmers sustained the central towns governing elite, including the hereditary
nobles who ran the government and markets, and the
priests who ran the temples and schools.
These tributes were the profit from the local political system, and any ambitious ruler could see that if
several city-states could be joined into a confederation, part of their tribute profit would be channeled up
to the city-state heading the confederation. In the
Basin of Mexico, this is what the Tepanecs had done,
and the Late Postclassic begins when this confederation was taken over, after the Tepanec War, by the
Mexica of Tenochtitlan and their close allies, the Acolhua of Texcoco (another city in the Basin of Mexico)
and Tepanec separatists, the three ethnic groups forming a Triple Alliance that would forge an empire.
Social structure and ownership of resources One
important transformation of traditional culture occurred among the Mexica at the time of the Tepanec
War, and this was the institution of private ownership
of farmland by individual nobles. As the Mexica
rulers told the story much after the fact, the commoners were reluctant to fight the Tepanec War,
so the lords promised that if the effort was unsuccessful, they would henceforth serve the commoners.
However, if the war was successful, the commoners
would relinquish their rights to conquered lands. This
alleged pact highlights an important turning point:
the spoils of war, the lands of Tepanec commoners,
were not distributed among the Mexica commoners as
had been the custom, but seem to have become a kind
of private property of individual Aztec lords.
Prior to this, and in common with many ancient
civilizations, land and other property were held by
corporate groups (such as the Aztec commoners calpulli land-holding groups), or land would be held by a
temple dedicated to a god, or by the government, to
be used by rulers and lords to support the costs of
office. But in the case of the spoils of the Tepanec War,
land became a commodity for an individuals use and
choice of disposition: it could be conveyed as an
inheritance, or gambled away on a ball game or
board game (patolli). Of course, the lands confiscated
after the Tepanec War advantaged the elites, not the
commoners, but the arrangement also insured that
Tenochtitlans character would be firmly urban,
because its resident commoners did not have the opportunity to establish farms on the mainland, but
stayed in their island city.
The commoners in Aztec society constituted
the vast majority of the population, by far the most
numerous social class. There was considerable variation in affluence and privilege within this class, with

AMERICAS, NORTH/Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica 215

most commoners working at farming and artisanry;

they would tend the fields assigned to them in their
calpulli rural village, and each household would produce the simple goods required for day-to-day life
(wooden and stone tools, textiles). Some households
would specialize in the production of items like ceramic vessels or votive figurines, and trade these in
local and city markets, where other goods and specialty imported items could be obtained. Some farmers, such as those whose lands were confiscated by
victorious nobles in war, became reduced in status to
the level of tenant farmers.
A few commoners were as wealthy and powerful as
nobles. In fact, some commoners who distinguished
themselves in warfare were awarded noble status
with its privileges, which included the rents from
farms worked by tenant farmers, the right to wear
certain insignia and garments, and the right to attend
the daily gathering of nobles in the main courtyard
of the local palace. Other important commoners were
the long-distance traders, the pochteca, who not only
moved valuable goods (jaguar skins, jade, precious
metals, and fine textiles) over great distances, but also
served as spies when the Triple Alliance lords wanted
to expand the empire into some unpenetrated part of
Mesoamerica. Native histories recount several instances
of pochteca merchants being killed in the line of duty,
upon which the Aztec empires armies would march
to the scene and annex the territory, sometimes sending the local population back up to Tenochtitlan to
carry the loot and end their lives as human sacrifices.
Aztec society also encompassed slaves, people who
were owned by others and were servants, but there
was no class of slaves; these were individuals who had
been reduced to this status through criminal activity
or plain bad luck. If their families could afford
it, their freedom could be purchased. If not, they
risked being purchased to serve as a human sacrifice
(see Social Inequality, Development of).
During the Late Postclassic periods first 89 years,
from 1430 to the arrival of Cortes in 1519, the
Mexica and their allies would expand the original
confederation of a few city-states into an empire
drawing tribute from dozens of regions extending
from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast. They
would also expand the political structure of the citystate, first into the simple amalgamation of city-states
into confederations, and then, as the organization
grew and became more complicated, the Mexica
streamlined it so that the political empire of the
Aztecs was a vast profit-making enterprise, its provinces ruled by tame local lords or Mexica military
governors, overseen by accountants and bureaucrats,
and kept intact by fear of Mexica reprisals.

Customs of Aztec warfare, for example, dictated

that vanquished warriors be captured alive so that
they could be sacrificed to the gods. Human sacrifice
was ostensibly a means of repaying the gods for the
gift of life to humankind, but it was also an important
means of maintaining respect for the power of the
Aztec empire to inflict pain. The major venues for
human sacrifice in the Late Postclassic period were
the temple pyramids in each city. One of the largest
was Tenochtitlans Great Temple (Templo Mayor).
The temple itself has recently been excavated and is
now visible in Mexico City, and its seven episodes of
building, starting in the early fourteenth century,
were occasions for human sacrifice on a massive
scale. The major expansion that was dedicated in
1487 probably brought the temple-pyramids height
close to 100 ft (c. 30 m), with two temples topping
the pyramid, dedicated to Tlaloc and to Huitzilopochtli, the Mexica patron deity of war. The dedication ceremony is said by one source to have involved
over 80 000 victims, though others put the number
at 20 000, which is far more likely, given the logistics of guarding, feeding, and sacrificing such a large
number of people.
The victims would have been war captives and
other unfortunates sent by allies as human tribute,
and also civilians from towns that resisted incorporation into the empire. Watching from pavilions in the
area surrounding the temple were rulers from citystates both allied and hostile. The latter would have
been brought to the city under cover, to avoiding
alerting the commoners who fought the wars that
there was collusion between rulers. While the ostensible motive for the ceremony was spiritual, to honor
the gods, the political message was clear: the fate
of those who resisted the Aztec Empire was death,
sacrifice to Aztec gods.
The spectacular size of this 1487 ceremony and the
pomp associated with it would have made it the
largest celebration in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica,
yet like many displays of political propaganda from
all of human history, this ones glitter and gore hid an
uneven conquest record and an uncertain future. The
emperor at the time was Ahuitzotl, who vigorously
pushed out the boundaries of the Aztec empire. He
was also responsible for the last great construction
effort to beautify Tenochtitlan. The lake-bound city
was subject to periodic flooding, and after extensive
damage by one during his reign, Ahuitzotl rebuilt it,
taking care to include gardens and plantings among
the temple complexes and palaces. By AD 1519,
when the Spaniards arrived, the city held about
125 000 people, twice the size of contemporaneous
cities in Spain.

216 AMERICAS, NORTH/Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica

The emperor who succeeded Ahuitzotl was Motecuzoma the Younger (aka Montezuma), who reigned
from 1502 until 1520. In 1519, when Cortes and his
company arrived, they were lodged in the second
greatest palace in Tenochtitlan. They had Motecuzoma
live with them as a protected hostage, and although
many Tenochca and Texcocans wanted to rise up
against the Spaniards and kill them, Motecuzomas
fatalism and compromised position made action
difficult. The Spaniards and Motecuzoma and his
courtiers lived together for six months and their
shared pastimes consisted of feasting, gambling,
hunting, and being entertained by courtesans; these
were patterns of courtly life that were familiar in Late
Postclassic Mesoamerica and Renaissance Europe.
The eyewitness accounts that the Spaniards wrote
of life among the Aztecs emphasize the many familiar
aspects of this civilization. The Iberian Peninsula
had just undergone a long series of battles to drive
Moslem populations back to Morocco in northwestern Africa, and the conquistadors often likened
the Aztecs to the Moors, as they called Moroccan
Moslems. The palace architecture was similar, as was
the practice of polygyny (many wives for one husband), and the general social order, with its large group
of farmer-artisans supporting a much smaller and
wealthy group of bureaucrats and scribes, merchants,
luxury artisans, and nobles.
But for all these societal parallels, the Spaniards
possessed certain advantages in the battle of one
great civilization against another. One obvious advantage the Europeans had was metal and simple
machinery, including guns. This suite of technologically sophisticated devices and implements was probably of less importance than the diseases they brought
to a people with no resistance to them. Smallpox and
measles raced ahead of invading armies, destroying
and demoralizing the natives. The Spaniards also
brought horses, much larger than any Middle American
mammal, and fierce war dogs. They also fought battles differently; the Aztecs fought to take captives, not
to kill, and grouped whole cadres of soldiers under
the direction of standard bearers. The Spaniards
killed Aztec standard bearers and as many soldiers
as they could, thus removing Aztec officers, who were
also nobles.
The conquest of the Aztec empire was finalized
with the fall of Tenochtitlan in the summer of 1521,
after a siege lasting 3 months which destroyed much
of the city. Cortes successfully lobbied to make the
Aztec capital the site of the new capital of the Spanish
colony, New Spain, and the Spaniards organized their
newly conquered vassals into work parties to build
the city. The organization of the Aztec empire was,
however, left largely in place, a workable means

of drawing taxes from a huge conquered population

that persisted at least until the end of the sixteenth
century.
Elsewhere in Mesoamerica, the Spaniards continued the conquest, with the fall of the Tarascan
empire in 1530. Some areas, however, resisted conquest. Deep in Yucatan, the last remnant of the Itza
remained independent at their capital of Tayasal until
1697. In time, however, all of Mesoamerica became
Spanish provinces, and the concerted efforts toward
conversion to Christianity, eradication of ancient cultures, and isolation of New Spain from contacts with
nations other than Spain worked toward making the
ancient cultures there a shadowy presence.
See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Early Cultures of Middle America; Lower
Central America; The Olmec and their Contemporaries.

Further Reading
Berdan FF, Blanton RE, Boone EH, Hodge MG, Smith ME, and
Umberger E (1996) Aztec Imperial Strategies. Washington, DC:
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Codex Borgia (1993) (c. 1500) The Codex Borgia. Daz G and
Rodgers A, restorers, Byland BE, intro- and commentary. New
York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Codex Mendoza (1992) (c. 154142) Codex Mendoza. Volume 3:
A facsimile reproduction of Berdan FF and Anawalt PR (eds.)
Codex Mendoza. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Codex Telleriano-Remensis (1995) (1563) Codex TellerianoRemensis, Manuscrit Mexicain 385, Bibliothe`que Nationale of
Paris. Facsimile reproduction, Part I of Codex TellerianoRemensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec
Manuscript, by Keber EQ, pp. 1104. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
Cortes H (1986) (151926) Letters from Mexico. Pagden A (trans.
and ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
de Landa FD (1978) (1566) Yucatan before and after the Conquest.
Translated with notes by Gates W (orig. 1937) New York:
Dover.
de Sahagun FB (1569) (195082) General History of the Things of
New Spain (Florentine Codex). Anderson A and Dibble C
(transl.), 13 vols. Santa Fe, NM: The School of American
Research and the University of Utah.
de Zorita A (1994) (156670) Life and Labor in Ancient Mexico:
The Brief and Summary Relations of the Lords of New Spain.
Keen B (trans. and intro.) Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma
Press.
Daz del Castillo B (1956) (1560s) The Discovery and Conquest of
Mexico. Garcia G (ed.), Maudslay AP (trans.), Leonard IA,
intro. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy.
Duran FD (1994) (1581) The History of the Indies of New Spain.
Translated, annotated, and introduced by Heyden D. Norman,
OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Evans ST (2004) Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History. London: Thames and Hudson.
Pollard HP (1993) Taracuris Legacy: The Prehispanic Tarascan
State. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Smith ME and Berdan FF (eds.) (2003) The Postclassic Mesoamerican World. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries 217

The Olmec and Their

Contemporaries
Mary DeLand Pohl and Christopher von Nagy,
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
complex (ceramics) A term used to denote a recurring pattern
of association of pottery vessel types, decoration, pot color, or
technical attributes found within a region. Pottery complexes are
demarcated both temporally and spatially.
Early Formative period A period in Mesoamerican history
marked by sedentism, social ranking, and inter-regional trade
networks that culminate in the Early Horizon.
Epi-Olmec During the Late Formative period, after the
abandonment of the influential center of La Venta c. 400 BC,
Soke populations both continued earlier Olmec traditions and
exhibited cultural variability at sites such as Tres Zapotes
and El Marquesillo in southern Veracruz.
Formative period (Mesoamerica) Generally the first two
millenniums of settled life in Mesoamerica, the second and first
millennium BC, when villages, towns, and, later, cities and other
features of Mesoamerican cultural and political-economic life
begin to appear. The initial blush of sedentism is associated with
mixed economies in many areas of Mesoamerica with maize
playing a variable part. By the second half of the first millennium
BC, however, the agrarian economy was focused on the
traditional dependence on maize and lysine-producing beans.
horizon Distinctive cultural traits such as art styles and
architectural plans appear over a wide area. The Olmec horizon
style occurs from West Mexico to El Salvador. Archaeologists
recognize an Early Horizon primarily influenced by San Lorenzo
and a Late Horizon primarily influenced by La Venta.
interfluve A region, generally of elevated terrain, between two
drainage systems.
isotopic data Several isotope systems preserved in human
osteological material are of relevance to archaeology. Plant and
marine metabolic processes are characterized by isotopic
fractionation, that is the discrimination of one kind of isotope or
element over another. Isotopic variants of carbon (12C and 13C),
nitrogen (14N and 15N), and strontium substitution for calcium
are example systems. In some environments, the degree of
dependence on maize, a xeric tropical grass, on marine resources,
and the general tropic level of the population may be tracked.
logograph A component of a writing system that represents a
phonetic word as a single graphical sign.
Middle Formative period A period in Mesoamerican history
marked by the formation of small to medium-scaled, rank-based
societies with polity centers marked by an emerging architectural
tradition characterized by the creation of plazas, platform
structures, and pyramids. The cultural foundations of
Mesoamerican political economies, including concepts of
kingship, the calendar, writing, among others, develop during
this period if not earlier.
palaeodistributary A senescent distributary channel of a river
delta often still visible on the surface to some degree
demonstrating various stages of infilling and lateral erosion by
younger distributaries. Deeper palaeochannels may be
completely buried. Ancient levees associated with palaeochannels
are often associated with older settlement systems.

palaeolevee An ancient levee associated with a buried or

partially infilled palaeodistributary.
quincunx An arrangement of five dots within a square or
rectangle such that the four apexes of the quadrangle are each
associated with a dot and the remaining dot is positioned in the
center equidistant from the apex points.
settlement hierarchy Archaeologists deduce modes of
sociocultural integration by examining patterns of settlement on
the landscape. A hierarchy of site types exhibiting at least three
tiers (e.g., primate center, regional center, farming village) marks
a state-level society.

Introduction
Shortly before the Spanish Conquest, Aztec priests
buried an ancient Olmec carving as an offering in
their paramount temple, the Templo Mayor, at the
heart of their capital Tenochtitlan in central Mexico.
This small greenstone figure, a 2000-year-old object
originally from distant Gulf Coast lands, symbolizes
the fundamental place that the Olmecs held in Mesoamerican culture. It represents the crystallization of a
constellation of cultural traits that first appeared in the
Formative period and were to continue as the foundation of indigenous culture in Mesoamerica as late as
Aztec times. These cultural traits were tangible signs of
significant social changes that took place in Formative
Mesoamerica. This was the time of a transition in social
structure that led to the emergence of rulers who centralized power and institutionalized social hierarchy.
Traditionally, scholars have considered the Olmec to
have represented an advanced chiefdom type of society.
Nevertheless, evidence emerging for multi-tiered settlement patterns, imposing palace structures, and gifting relationships with elites in distant lands strongly
suggests that the Olmec had a state-level society.
Here we trace the emergence of core Mesoamerican
social structure and cultural traits and examine the role
of the Olmec in shaping their development. We focus
on the Olmec sites of the Mexican Gulf Coast region.
There is disagreement over the role played by the
Olmec polities of southern Veracruz and western
Tabasco during the roughly thousand year-long period
during which the Mesoamerican (see Americas,
Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya;
Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica) cultural framework of rulership, gift economics, trade, gaming,
religiosity, literacy, and historical praxis emerged.
Over the course of the twentieth century, one group
of scholars came to favor a mother culture model
giving the Olmec preeminence in the formation
of Mesoamerican cultural patterns. Another group of
scholars has favored a more decentralized vision of
inter-regional cultural hybridization whereby emerging
polities across the central core of Mesoamerica mutually contributed to, and participated in, the discourse

218 AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries

Olmec archaeology began in earnest with the

work of Mathew Stirling. Stirling began in the Gulf
Coast Olmec region in 1938 with the intention of
investigating major sites, including Tres Zapotes in
Veracruz. Later work at Tres Zapotes was undertaken by Christopher Pool. Philip Arnold and Susan
Gillespie, among others, have worked at a variety of
Early and Middle Formative Olmec sites within the
Tuxtlas Mountains. San Lorenzo became the focus
of an intensive project during the late 1960s under
the direction of Yale Universitys Michael Coe and
Richard Diehl. Coe and Diehl were the first to develop
a well-researched ceramic chronology tied to radiocarbon dates. Ann Cyphers and her coworkers undertook later work at San Lorenzo. Stacy Symmonds,
Carl Wendt, and others have conducted systematic
research in the Coatzacoalcos basin adjacent to San
Lorenzo. The nearby ritual shrine site, El Manat, with
its sequence of spring-focused caches of ceremonial celts
and wooden busts, was excavated by Ponciano Ortz
Caballos and Ma. del Carmen Rodriguez.
Following Frans Bloms initial visit to La Venta in
Tabasco, Stirling excavated the site and was followed
by Heizer, Drucker, and the Mexican archaeologist
Pina Chan. More recently, work at La Venta was
renewed by Rebecca Gonzalez Lauck and coworkers.
William Rust documented a network of settlement
beyond the polity core, possibly similar in organization to that documented by Cyphers and colleagues
around San Lorenzo. Work at several sites subsidiary
to La Venta by archaeologists, including Mark Raab
at Isla Alor and Mary Pohl and Kevin Pope at San

of creation of statecraft and its attendant systems of

rituality and symbol. The most important of the Olmec
contemporaries are the sites of Coapexco, Tlapacoya,
and Tlatilco in the in the Basin of Mexico, Chiapa de
Corzo, San Isidro, and Libertad in Chiapas, Chalcatzingo in Morelos, Teopantecuanitlan in Guerrero,
La Blanca in west Guatemala, and Chalchuapa in
El Salvador. The investigations are the work of
archaeologists such as Grove, Gillespie, Cyphers,
Niederberger, Tolstoy, Paradis, Martnez Donjuan,
Love, and Clark and other New World Archaeological Foundation archaeologists.

Background of Olmec Studies

Scholars recognize that the Olmec were a key factor
in the foundation of Mesoamerican culture, but
there is disagreement about what the term Olmec
refers to and who the Olmec were. Historically, the
term Olmec has signified a particular art style, a
constellation of cultural traits, the materialization
of an emergent rituality associated with developing
Mesoamerican political economies, and a regional
archaeological culture that developed within the Gulf
coastal lowlands of the Mexican state of Veracruz and
adjacent Tabasco during the centuries between roughly
1500 and 400 BC (Figure 1). The first recognition
of the distinctive complex of art associated with the
archaeological Olmec is attributed to Jose Melgar who
published an account of a colossal carved head at Tres
Zapotes in 1871.

22N

20N
Chalcatzingo

18N

Tres Zapotes

La Venta
San Lorenzo

Juxtlahuaca

16N

Pijijiapan
Mazatan
14N
Chalchuapa
500 km

12N
104W

100W

96W

92W

88W

84W

80W
CvN

Figure 1 Map of the Olmec region within Mesoamerica showing important sites mentioned in the text. The three major Olmec sites, San
Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes are shown with 50 km radius circles, approximations of possible zones of primary economic
interaction. La Venta acquired resources, boulders and cobbles for grinding stones, larger stone for sculpture and architectural elements,
and volcanic ash for pottery temper, from as far or further afield than the 50 km circle shown here. Both San Lorenzo and La Venta
acquired raw materials for sculpture from the Tuxtla Mountains. Secondary and tertiary centers associated with each Olmec capital are
well contained within these circles.

AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries 219

Andres, has provided detailed ceramic, palynological,

and subsistence history for the La Venta region. Further east, following initial work by Edward Sisson,
Christopher von Nagy undertook a systematic survey
of the Plan Chontalpa region documenting a network
of ancient Olmec settlement along a series of ancient
distributary channels. Significantly, these projects
have provided robust palaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, and palynological data on subsistence systems. Historical linguists such as Terrence Kaufman
have determined that speakers of the Mixe-Soke language group, specifically the Soke, are the probable
descendents of the ancient Olmec.

Olmec Political Economies

The Olmec represent the culmination of milleniums
of lowland Mesoamerican cultural development that
resulted in a burst of sociopolitical change during
the course of the second millennium BC, reaching an
apogee during the Early Horizon period that saw San
Lorenzos dominance and participation in the foundations for later Mesoamerican political and economic systems during the Middle and into the Late
Formative periods. During the roughly 1600 years
represented by these developments, the societies of
the southern Gulf lowland region of Veracruz and
the adjacent Tabasco Coastal Plain underwent fundamental economic and cultural transformations that
saw the rise of a mixed agrarian economy in the
rich, seasonally flooded lowlands of the region, followed later by shifts toward the classic Mesoamerican
maize-based subsistence economy, the emergence of
complex social and political-economic networks
reflected in archaeological settlement hierarchies,
the differentiation of society into a ranked and

occupationally differentiated population, the emergence of kingship, political rituality, and the development of the foundations of writing. A diverse
subsistence base, consisting of wild plant and tree
use, a range of domesticated species, wild mammal,
reptile, and fish species, as well as coastal shellfish,
constituted a rich, cyclic resource base that provided a
calorie and protein base that allowed for the florescence of complex culture in the region. Within the
exceptionally rich region of the riverine and deltaic
lowlands (Figure 2), this resource base fueled the
emergence of complex networks of communities ranging from small hamlets located along natural levees,
larger villages and village clusters, some with evidence
of community structures, to towns and polity capitals
such as San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes.
Though the complexity of the San Lorenzo region
appears unmatched during the Early Horizon, later
developments in the Olmec region are part of the
developing mosaic of Mesoamerica and demonstrate
multifaceted linkages with other regions. Stylistic
links, commodity and gift exchanges, and outright
expansions out from the Olmec Gulf Coast lowlands
suggest a complex picture of interrelationships and
rivalries.
Chronology of the Olmec Heartland

In general terms, the chronology of the Olmec can be

divided into the Initial Formative, Early Formative,
Middle Formative, corresponding to the Olmec proper,
and the Late Formative, characterized by a series of
Epi-Olmec societies that continued to experiment
and innovate. Archaeological evidence for very early
populations is largely absent, either buried under
meters of alluvium, laterally eroded by meandering
channels, or lying unremarked and potentially deflated

Figure 2 Modern canoe in a palaeodistributary of the Grijalva River delta. Photograph by Christopher von Nagy.

220 AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries

in upland areas where erosion may have dominated

long-term landscape processes. The earliest evidence
for a ceramic-using population corresponds with
the Ojochi or Pellicer ceramic complexes of the
Coatzacoalos river basin, El Manat, and the western
Grijalva delta in Tabasco (see Table 1 and Figure 3).
This pottery tradition demonstrates significant stylistic
links to southern Chiapas paralleling the linguistic suggestion of a northern immigrant group of Sokean
speakers. Cultural patterns, such as ritual beverage
consumption, are an important aspect of the pottery
tradition from this early period through to the beginning of the post-La Venta Epi-Olmec period.
The apogee of San Lorenzo and the Coatzacoalcos
River region coincides with the last part of the Early
Formative period and, due to the widespread appearance of Olmec iconography on pottery and other artifacts, is sometimes termed the Early Horizon. Early

Formative populations are present but poorly understood in the area of Tres Zapotes and are present in low
density in the Tuxtlas. Like the Coatzacoalcos floodplain, the western Grijalva delta has a substantial
Early Formative occupation to the east of La Venta.
The Middle Formative period marks a population expansion into new areas, such as Laguna de
los Cerros, the fringe of the Grijalva delta where
La Venta is located, but a general collapse in the
Coatzacoalcos lowlands. Dense populations are documented along a number of distributary channels in the
Grijalva delta. The Middle Formative Olmec region
is marked by several ceramic horizons, which like the
Early Horizon complexes, document connections
ranging from coastal Chiapas to the south, the Usumacinta region to the east, and Central Mexico to the
west. In the east, an increasingly evident Maya presence is noted at the end of the Olmec period. This

Table 1 Overview chronology of the Olmec Complex

15001250 BC 17751500 cal BC

Pre-Early Horizon complexes

Figure 3 column A
Early Ojochi complex pottery around San Lorenzo and Pellicer complex pottery in Tabasco
mark the beginning of the documented ceramic traditions of the Olmec region. Bottles,
simple to slightly complex bowls, simple dishes, plain and red slipped vessels dominate
collections at this point. Tecomates are very common. Reduplication of botanical forms
squash and gourds is an important aspect of this tradition. Rimmed vessels similar to
Ocos examples from southern Chiapas are common. Increasingly common use of
differential firing of, in particular, bottles for ritual beverage consumption.

1250900 BC 14501005 cal BC

Early Horizon complexes

Figure 3 column B
Early Horizon phase pottery from the Olmec area manifests a series of changes linked to the
formation of an extensive horizon marked by distinctive gouge-incised and Olmec
iconography and curvilinear, often pars pro toto references to elements of the broader
emergent Early Formative signary. Drop in the frequencies of bottles indicating important
changes in the social use of fancy pottery. Dishes with flared sides, outcurved dishes, plain
and striated tecomates, and rim bolstering manufactured of white-clear through, black
clear through, white-slipped, and differentially-fired pottery are typical elements of
assemblages. Some areas of interior Chiapas, such as the Grijalva corridor at the now
flooded site of San Isidro demonstrate strong similarities to coastal pottery traditions.

900400 BC 1005400 cal BC

Middle Horizon complexes

Figure 3 columns C, D, and E
Ceramically, the Middle Formative can be divided into successive complexes. Initial Middle
Formative complexes are characterized by flared bowls and dishes, some with massively
everted rims, and commonly decorated with variations on the double-line break motif,
plain smaller tecomates, and larger cooking tecomates, later ollas, are common forms
(column C). Perhaps as early as 700 BC a ceramic shift occurs with the appearance of
composite silhouette dishes with flared walls and a variety of other novel forms
(column D). A wide range of forms was produced, including flared wall serving dishes
and plates linked to public feasting and rituality. Sometime around 500 BC shifts in
bowl and plate design occur with the introduction of saddle-rimmed bowls (column E),
wide-rimmed, flared-wall dishes, and changes in surface decoration. Repeated, close
stylistic similarities to coastal Chiapan pottery.

400BC 400cal BC

Epi-Olmec complexes
The failure of La Venta around 400 BC marks the end of the thousand year period generally
understood as Olmec. Sites such as Tres Zapotes continued as major focal points of
population. Innovations in the Late Formative or Epi-Olmec period such as the
development of a fully developed writing system occurred during this period. At Tres
Zapotes and other sites around the Tuxtlas there is an essential continuity in the types and
forms produced. In Tabasco, the collapse of La Venta coincides with the spread of Maya
ceramics into western Tabasco.

AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries 221

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

Figure 3 Ceramics of the Olmec region. (a) Pre-Early Horizon bottles and contemporary forms. (b) Early Horizon gouge-incised and
selected contemporary forms. (c) Selected Early Middle Formative forms associated with Early La Venta and neighboring sites. (d) Middle
Formative forms associated with the apogee of La Venta. (e) Middle Formative forms associated with the terminal Formative occupation at
La Venta with design similarities to Tuxtla and Tres Zapotes forms. Redrawn from von Nagy 2003 and (vessel B3) Coe MD and Diehl RA
(1980) In: The Land of the Olmec. The People of the River. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press.

phenomenon is also evidenced in the Isthmus focus

of Epi-Olmec societies such as Tres Zapotes and the
society that produced the La Mojarra stela, lasting until
the arrival of increasingly strong Central Mexican
influence ultimately tied to Teotihuacan.
Calendar dates for Olmec ceramic phases and complexes are based on an increasingly large and reasonably well-contextualized set of radiocarbon assays,
including samples from well-delineated middens in
bell-shaped or larger pits or on palaeobotanical
remains using accelerator dating. Nonetheless, many
dates still derive from charcoal recovered in fill and
less ideal contexts. Early Olmec dates calibrate well,
but Middle Formative date calibration presents a particular and yet unresolved challenge due to changes in
the production of upper atmosphere 14C. Dates in the
range of roughly 800400 BC (c. 1005400 cal BC)
are exceptionally difficult to use. Calibrated probability ranges allow for errors of a hundred years or
more. A date in the uncalibrated range of 750400 BC
has a high probability of falling within any portion of
this range. Due to this problem, phase and complex
boundaries should remain tentative.
Olmec Subsistence Strategies and Food Ritual

Olmec foodways comprised a varied diet. Patterns of

consumption of maize, sunflower, and manioc as well
as wild foods such as squash and nuts of the corozo
plam established in the Archaic period by c. 5000 BC
underwent elaboration during the Early and Middle
Formative periods after 1500 BC. Domesticated beans
(Phaseolus vulgaris) were added to the menu. Domesticated dog (Canis familiaris) was the single most
important source of meat (10% of the vertebrate

remains) at San Lorenzo in the Early Formative period. Early Formative Olmec also focused on aquatic
resources, particularly snook (Centropomus or robalo),
an estuarine fish that would have been available
near San Lorenzo during the rainy season floods,
and mud turtles (the closely related species Claudius,
Kinosternon, and Staurotypus). Larger terrestrial
mammals such as deer were scarce.
A shift in the Middle Formative period set the
course for dietary preferences characteristic of later
Mesoamerican cultures (Figure 4). Data available for
the La Venta client site of San Andres show a new
focus on white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus),
especially in deposits that represent remains of feasting. This shift might have had ritual symbolic significance in terms of an Olmec predator/prey or victor/
vanquished ideology with deer representing the
prey. Later elites, such as the Maya, would copy this
hallmark of the Olmec diet.
Maize was a significant element of the diet as
well as the iconography and early glyphs though its
position was more restrained than seen in later
Mesoamerican cultures. San Andres excavations uncovered maize cobs radiocarbon dated to the seventh
century BC, and maize starch grains and residues
have been detected on grinding stones from Middle
Formative feasting contexts at the site. Nevertheless,
carbon isotope data from human bone found in the
same feasting refuse indicates that maize made up
only about 50% of the diet. The Classic period
Maya, by comparison, ate a diet of up to 90% maize.
Maize and sunflower consumption may have been
a marker of Olmec ethnic identity. Some present-day
Nahuatl-speakers believe that consumption of maize

222 AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries

Figure 4 Formative period botanical remains from San Andres,

Tabasco. (a) Maize (Zea mays); (b) Chile pepper (Capsicum
annuum); (c) sunflower achene (Helianthus annuus); (d) calabasa
silvestre (Cionosicyos macrantha). Identifications and photographs by David Lentz.

is a way of taking in the energy of the sun, and past

sunflower seed consumption might have had similar
connotations. Unequivocal representations of maize
and sunflower are unexpectedly rare in Olmec iconography as well as in well-preserved archaeological
deposits, however. One iconographic example of
maize is an engraving on a royal scepter that shows
maize poking out of the belly of a composite crocodilian animal, and the same element appears transformed into a glyph on a serpentine block from
Cascajal that is inscribed with early writing.
Actual remains of Olmec offerings yielded a different emphasis, namely the abundance of the natural
land. Botanical remains that Ponciano Ortiz and
Mara del Carmen Rodrguez recovered from the
sacred spring at El Manat included offerings of
local wild vegetation (leaves, fruit pits, nuts) rather
than cultigens.

The Settled Landscape

Mesoamerica is a geographically diverse region in
which a mosaic of early polities and regional populations participated in inter-regional connections
manifested by the exchange of goods and spread
of representational systems and political-economic
structures embodied in the appearance of Early Horizon style and later Middle Formative, motifs, icons,
and design conceptualizations. These early polities
and centers of population are frequently associated

with riverine floodplains, valley floors, and other

landscape zones of relatively high natural productivity
and fertile soils that could support the emergent agricultural economy. In lowland coastal Mesoamerica,
Early Formative sedentary populations are often associated with swamp and estuary environments where
resource availability was relatively high. In Chiapas
along the Pacific Coast, for instance, archaeological
settlement, macrobotanical, ground stone, iconographic, and isotopic evidence indicate that the rise of sedentism and the formation of small polities were associated
with these high productivity ecozones. Only later during the Middle Formative period did the subsistence
economy begin to assume its classic Mesoamerican
form. Current research in the Olmec region strongly
supports the implications of this historical model.
The Olmec inhabited a diverse and enormously
productive natural landscape, a mosaic of landforms,
soil types, and risk factors comprising seasonally
flooded, subsiding deltaic and river floodplain lowlands, generally lateritic rolling coastal plain interfluve and upland, and the volcanic highlands of the
Tuxtla Mountains. A diversity of resources and challenges characterize the region. Current settlement
data demonstrate that during the Early Formative
period most of the regions population was probably
concentrated along river corridors where the combination of rich, annually renewed soils, migratory
birds, floodplain and delta-inhabiting mammals, and,
importantly, seasonally and annually available fisheries resources made these ideal locations for a population pursuing a mixed economy based on a variety
of crops, fisheries, and other resources. Later, during
the Middle Formative period, population appears to
have expanded onto adjacent upland areas.
A series of major rivers disgorges waters from highland and coastal plain watersheds across the Gulf
Coastal plain. North to south these rivers include the
Papaloapan, the San Juan, the Coatzacoalcos, the
Uspanapa, the Tonala, the Grijalva, and far to the east
beyond Olmec territory, the Usumacinta. In Veracruz,
rivers cut through a rolling terrain of laterized uplands
forming interfluve-demarcated river floodplains with
complex riverine depositional features that, towards
the coast, are of late Holocene date and correlate with
the stabilization of sea-level rise. The Tabasco Coastal
plain is a vast low lying deltaic plain composed primarily of Late Holocene deposits of the Grijalva and
Usumacinta rivers, along with a series of smaller rivers
such as the Tonala.
Documented Olmec settlements are present within
the western portion of this delta in a region of surfaceexposed, relatively undisturbed palaeodistributaries
of the Grijalva delta of second through first millennium BC dates. Fragments of settlement systems that

AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries 223

escaped later erosion through active channel meandering document Olmec settlement configurations at
various points in time. Conspicuous by its absence is a
robust sample of Olmec households. Little is known
about the density of houses on or off of welldocumented sites in the many small tells, or accretions of settlement, of the Coatzacoalcos floodplain
and Tabasco Coastal Plain.
San Lorenzo and the Coatzacoalcos Floodplain

The major polity capital of San Lorenzo is embedded

in a landscape composed of Holocene floodplain
features, in particular, palaeochannels with attendant
meanders, cut-offs, and other typical river floodplain landforms. Archaeologist Stacy Symonds conducted extensive survey of the sustaining area of San
Lorenzo, documenting surviving components of the
settlement system. Settled localities include the San
Lorenzo plateau and points along the boundaries of
the floodplain, as well as numerous locations along
levees. Many hamlets were raised above nominal
flood stage either through accretion of the house lot
or hamlet mound or through the deliberate construction of raised flood platforms, palafitos in local
parlance. By the apogee of San Lorenzo, a three- to
four-tiered settlement hierarchy evolved in the area.
Sculpture is associated with the primate center, as
well as with second-tier settlements, such as Loma
del Zapote. San Lorenzo spreads some 500 ha across
the plateau with a central core of dense occupation
approximately 300 ha in area. Within this core were
palaces such as the Red Palace and ritual areas. Loma
del Zapote may have encompassed an area of as much
as 400 ha.
Work around San Lorenzo has revealed some data
on Olmec households. Ann Cyphers work on the
main plateau documented the development of terracing associated with Olmec domestic architecture.
Within the hinterland, individual houselot locations
associated with artificial platforms on palaeolevees
were common in some areas. These small artificial
or accretional mounds range from 1840 m across
and probably represent the accumulated deposits of
single successive households. Unfortunately, little is
known about the structure of Olmec houselots and
households in these lowlands. Augering and excavation of a handful of houselots suggests that a central
house structure may have been surrounded by a
cleared lot of up to 50 m in width. Large, shallow
excavated hearths are a feature, perhaps common,
of such households.
La Venta and the Tabasco Coastal Plain

La Venta is embedded in a dynamic deltaic environment constructed over the course of Late Holocene

following the deceleration and stabilization of sealevel rise. Cyclically deposited delta distribution
channels, upland margins, salt-dome rises, and estuary flanks served as focal points of settlement. In
Tabasco, the dominant site form is a low tell, locally
known as an isla, comprised of successive midden,
house floor, house collapse, and platform deposits.
A three to four tier settlement system around La
Venta focused on the Bar and Blasillo palaeodistributaries. San Andres is one of the larger sites in
this system. The presence of sugar and other extensive
cultivation to the east of La Venta in the Plan Chontalpa area allowed for a detailed study of tell density
and distribution along a single major distibutary
channel. Archaeologist Christopher von Nagy demonstrated a high density of slightly clustered tells along
this channel. These tells range in height from tens of
centimeters to meters above the crest of channel levees.
A significant proportion of occupations is shown to be
embedded in the matrix of the levee and are invisible in
surface survey, however. Buried sites are common,
as are zones were channel activity that postdates the
formation of sites has largely obliterated traces of
occupation.
Data from San Andres, near La Venta, suggest that
houses may have been placed on low earthen foundations as high as several tens of centimeters. They may
also have had floors raised slightly over the exterior.
Shallow, excavated hearths are present in the floors
at this site. Also present at San Andres are a series
of deep, large pits. These may have been used for
storage, although some evidence suggests their use
for the creation of high temperature fires. Large pits
similar to those at San Andres are also present at
La Venta. Small pavements of extensively reburned
sherds are also a feature at San Andres.
Tuxtlas Settlement

Settlement in the Tuxtlas paints a different picture

from that associated with major lowland polities.
Here, a settlement hierarchy was lacking until the
Late Formative period. Amber VanDerwarker has
shown that the nature of the broad-based subsistence
system was a significant factor in the lack of development of hierarchy in the Tuxtlas. Hierarchy developed in conjunction with emergence of a strongly
maize-focused subsistence economy and after recovery from a series of Early and Late Formative volcanic
eruptions that devastated the region.

The Ritual Landscape

The Olmec were the first in Mesoamerica to institutionalize kingship with elites closing rank at the top of
a hierarchical social order. Olmec material culture,

224 AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries

including ceremonial offerings of precious imported

materials, large-scale urban architecture, and monumental sculpture, provides a road map to that fundamental social process, demonstrating the stages by
which it evolved.
A sacred landscape formed the platform upon
which early kings founded their authority. The juxtaposition of an area of high ground with a water
source characterized this landscape, which the Aztecs
were later to call Water Mountain. It represented the
place of creation, the source of life, or the navel of the
world, the moral locus of royal power.
In the Gulf Coast region, worship at hills associated
with springs have been traced back to the early third
millennium at El Manat, according to Ortiz Caballos
and del Carmen Rodrguez, coincident with the spread
of agricultural communities and the evolution of
crops such as maize. By the Early Formative period
(16001200 BC) offerings of highly polished celts of
exotic greenstone, some oriented to the cardinal directions, had been deposited together with rubber balls in
the spring, which symbolized the point of entry into
other worlds.
Emergent kings co-opted this sacred template at San
Lorenzo (San Lorenzo Phase, 1150900 BC), commandeering what was then a high island plateau strategically located in the middle of a Coatzacoalcos River
tributary according to data produced by Michael
Coe, Richard Diehl, and Ann Cyphers. The heart of
the ritual center was a royal processional way aligned
along the northsouth axis of the plateau. Lining this
processional way were at least 10 colossal stone heads
representing portraits of past and present rulers.
Sarcophagus-shaped thrones linked living kings directly with their ancestors, who are visible from cave-like
openings in the stone.
The founding of Middle Formative centers marks a
departure from the glorification of individual rulers
and their royal bloodlines and the new objective of
creating a heavenly place notes John Clark. As kings
consolidated political power in the Middle Formative
period (900400 BC), they used the force of mimesis
or mimicry to capture the ritual power of a sacred
landscape. These Late Phase Olmec centers featured
the ambitious construction of huge pyramids replicating the primordial sacred mountain. La Ventas elites
built atop a prominent salt dome that already dominated a now-extinct riverine environment. The pyramid is 30 m (98 ft) high and has a volume of about
100 000 sq. m (130 800 sq. yd). Carolyn Tate notes
that the salt dome, now carrying its human-made
mountain, was aligned to three real mountains arrayed
in a triangular configuration to the south. The number
three, expressed everywhere in the world (for example
in majestic mountains, the celestial star cluster

of Orions Belt, down to the humble stones of the

domestic hearth) was itself a magical entity that
infused the Olmec world-view.
La Ventas plan accessed all three levels of the
Olmec universe. The pyramid touched the heavens.
Serpentine mosaic pavements in the form of the quincunx, comprising the four directions and the center, as
well as mirror-studded, cruciform caches of celts symbolizing the world tree, represented the surface of the
earth. Huge pits filled with many layers of massive
serpentine blocks represented seas deep within the
earth according to Kent Reilly. La Venta Olmec innovated with stone stelae carved with images of deities
and royal narrative scenes, which they inserted into
the earthly plane. Sacred directionality and verticality
encoded within the architecture of La Venta is reduplicated in incised and carved scenes throughout
the Olmec world on larger sculpture and smaller
ceremonial items such as greenstone celts.
Following the sacred water-mountain template,
Olmec royal ceremonial plans included constructed
water features to symbolize access to the earths fertility. Drains made of imported basalt must have had ritual
as well as utilitarian uses, judging from associated
sculpture. A San Lorenzo drain system went through
a stone deity figure and led to a boulder carved into a
basin in the shape of a huge duck. La Venta sculptors
chose a more explicit image of fertility, fashioning a
large basin in the form of a womans vulva.
Olmec ceremonial precincts were alive with color.
Traces of plaster and paint on one of the San Lorenzo
stone heads and in the mouth of a Teopantecuanitlan
deity together with the presence of an uncarved stela
excavated by Rebecca Gonzalez Lauck at La Venta
indicate that artisans painted their stone monuments.
San Lorenzos stone sculptures were arranged in ensembles and set in a huge plaza paved with red sand and
yellow gravel. La Ventas color scheme was stunning.
Brown soil shot through with thousands of tiny bits
of greenstone shimmered. Blue-green serpentine pavements were filled with clays and sands in olive green,
blue, yellow, black, gray, pink, cinnamon, and purple
hues, all imbued with symbolic meaning. Many of
these offerings were buried soon after their construction and were invisible to ritual celebrants. Red paired
with its contrasting color green was a dominant color
combination. Red cinnabar covered jadeite offerings,
and the whole site was covered in a cap of red clay in
its final construction phase.
La Ventas cosmic character derived from its celestial orientation. The hallmark Olmec site orientation
to 8 west-of-north, its significance still obscure, was
an ancient alignment that appeared early and persisted through the Olmec period. Olmec kings chose
to found a ceremonial center on La Ventas salt dome

AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries 225

because its long axis is oriented to this sacred principle. The line that ran through the center of La Ventas
ceremonial precinct also matches this orientation and
points directly to the central mountain of the cluster
of three south of the center. The mountain is visible
from the top of the pyramid. The central bars of each
of La Ventas mosaic pavements further parallels this
alignment, and the four elements of the quincunxes
are positioned at the intercardinal points where the
sun rises and sets at the solstices.
Olmec ceremonial centers also had a strong orientation to the sun as the principal animating force
of nature. Most importantly the elevated ground,
the plateau at San Lorenzo and the salt dome at
La Venta for example, would catch the first rays of
the sun at sunrise. The Enclosure at the heart of Early
Formative (1000800 BC) Teopantecuanitlan featured
Olmec-style monumental sculptures positioned so that
the shadows cast by two of them passed through the
center as the sun rose and set on the spring equinox.
Loma del Zapote, located on the river below the San
Lorenzo summit, featured sculptures of a kneeling
humans facing the rising and setting sun. Backs of
colossal carved heads at San Lorenzo itself are angled
so that the kings portraits faced upwards towards the
sky. The present-day Mije term for the annual time
periods and stations in the calendar, wi:npeht, means
eye rising, perhaps explaining the orientation of the
sculptures eyes.
A key new solar feature of great significance in the
La Venta cosmic city (Complex D) was an E-Group
configuration that was designed to track movements
of the sun. A long platform and a radial structure
were arranged opposite each other on the east and
west sides of a plaza. Standing on the radial platform
looking east, an observer could track the solstices at
either end of the long structure and the equinoxes in
the center. This architectural arrangement was widely
copied at Soke sites along the Grijalva such as Chiapa
de Corzo and at Maya sites in the Mirador Basin in
northern Guatemala, according to John Clark. The
E-Group is central to Classic Maya site planning,
including to the site of Uaxactun, where the construction was first identified in the area archaeologists
designated as Group E.
The Olmec kings posed as shamans dressed up as
the sharp-eyed harpy eagles, allies of the storm and
sun gods, a conceit that embodied the rulers insight
into unseen forces of fecundity. The Olmec eagle-king
painted sitting on a sarcophagus throne over the
entrance to Oxtotitlan cave has huge eyes. Olmec
elites may have enhanced their vision with psychotropic substances that produced ecstatic trance. The
snuffing trays were likely greenstone spoons with a
central depression, scored or incised with a figure in

flight, a common vision associated with ingestion of

drugs, or topped with the crenellated eyebrow of the
harpy eagle, another reference to supernatural vision.
A San Lorenzo sculpture (Loma del Zapote Monument 11) shows male figure wearing such a spoon
suspended from his neck, ready for use.
The ballgame, so central to all Mesoamerican cultures, mimicked the suns cosmic cycle into and out
of the Underworld. Olmec kings politicized the ballgame, adding human sacrifice, probably including
war captives. A San Lorenzo carving depicts a jaguar
mauling a probable ballplayer, and La Venta Stela
2 shows the king with a harpy eagle on his back attacking rival players with animal guises, one the whitetailed deer. These carvings support the idea suggested
above that Olmec kings had adopted a theory of history
expressed as the relationship of the victor to the vanquished (or predator/prey) known for the later Maya.
Blood needed to be drawn to ensure plenty of lifegiving water as well as sun. Children and infants were
sacrificed during the Early Formative San Lorenzo
phase at the El Manat spring and in the Middle
Formative period in the pillared enclosure in the
sacred compound at La Venta (Monument 7, Tomb A).
Human remains were placed as offerings under monuments at San Lorenzo. La Ventas Altar 4 shows an
eagle-clad king holding a captive tied to a rope, and
human bones occurred in feasting refuse at its client
site San Andres. Kings performed autosacrifice to
draw their own blood on behalf of the community as
well, judging from real and jadeite effigy stingray
spines deposited in caches in La Ventas sacred precinct.
Pilgrimage to sacred hotspots was a core attribute
of Olmec ritual life. At the height of San Lorenzos
power, pilgrims traveled to El Manat springs to deposit sacred insignia of kingship such as wooden
busts of male and female ancestors accompanied by
precious jadeite jewelry and scepters, one with a
sharks tooth and a bird effigy at either end. A finely
carved dark greenstone footprint effigy captures the
essence of the journey. La Ventas sacred spot was
probably Ro Pesquero, the now-destroyed Veracruz
site from which many gorgeous jadeite objects have
come. The jadeite representations of the king from
Ro Pesquero constitute a radical departure from
the ancestral wooden busts or even the royal colossal heads of the Early Formative period. The Ro
Pesquero engravings show the king as a divine
being. One celt shows him as the embodiment of
the world tree in the center of the quincunx holding
the harpy eagle as a ceremonial bar.
Caves as well as springs were pilgrimage destinations to enhance the kings divine status. Both natural
features provided portals to other worlds and access
to supernatural power and abundance as well as

226 AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries

Monument 13

Celts from cache

Tombs A, B, and E

Structure A-2
Basalt column
fence

Adobe platform
Mottled sandy clay fill
Mosaic pavement

Necropolis
Complex A

Serpentine block offering

Tomb C

Figure 5 Perspective view of Complex A, La Venta. After Drucker P (1952) La Venta, Tabasco: A Study of Olmec Ceramics and Art.
Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, figures 10, 14, 19, 20, 22, 47, and 61.

sacred, life-giving water. Murals in Juxtlahuaca and

Oxtotitlan caves in Guerrero preserve a record of
Olmec painting traditions in the service of pilgrimage
and ritual. A male striding figure is an iconic image in
Formative Mesoamerican art; it occurs on early stelae
with evidence for writing and the calendar at sites
such as La Venta and Takalik Abaj, for example.
Middle Formative La Venta elites expanded the
pilgrimage phenomenon, notes John Clark, installing
royal Olmec images all along routes of travel as well
as in remote locations. Along the ancient eastwest
intercoastal Pacific overland route with access by
river to the Grijalva Basin, they carved the rock face
at Pijijiapan with the image of a ruler flanked by two
women in front of a cave entrance for instance.
An example of a remote location is a sculpture of an
eagle-helmeted ruler raising a four-segmented pole
representing the world tree way at the top of San
Martn Pajapan volcano in the Tuxtla Mountains.
The image of the ruler duplicates that of one (Monument 44) found at the Stirling Acropolis, the royal
palace at La Venta, establishing the mountain top as
the kings royal domain.
La Ventas rulers understood that enactment of ceremonies on sacred stages kept the universe in play and

kept them in power as divine kings (Figure 5). They

likely designed La Ventas sacred landscape to draw
pilgrims to worship at the ceremonial center itself.
Many participated in the animation of the world.
The feet of pilgrims wore down a pavement at the
center of La Ventas ceremonial precinct. Music,
drinking, and feasting were core elements of the
action. La Venta Offering 3 contained miniature
greenstone flutes along with beads in the shape of
brewing pots. At San Andres, the La Venta client
site 5 km to the northeast of the ceremonial center,
feasting refuse contained large platters, drinking
cups, and brewing jars.
La Ventas Altar 7 (Figure 6) brings the oracular
element from the caves to the ceremonial precinct.
The central image is a huge duck-billed head projecting form a cave niche. To the ducks right is a
figure with bubble-like speech signs floating up to a
sacred crossed band sign in a cartouche, a glyph-like
element probably referring to portals to the gods. The
condition of the altar and the associated imagery
suggest night ceremonies. On the back of the altar,
nocturnal kinkajou and owl figures join the diurnal
harpy eagle. The surface of the altar was flaked off as
though by strong heat, perhaps from torches staked

AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries 227

Figure 6 La Venta Altar 7. Most altars have a seated figure in the niche. This altar is unique because it has a masked colossal head with
a ducks beak mask in the niche. The use of such masks may have been linked to oracular speech in the context of ritual or dance. The
bucal mask is compared to a pottery waterfowl beak from the nearby site, San Andres. Line component after Follensbee (2000:
figure 105).

nearby. Numerous grooves over the top of the

altar suggest that the celebration involved the ritual
sharpening of axes.
Olmec kings built their palaces within the ceremonial precincts. Ann Cyphers has excavated the impressive
Red Palace at San Lorenzo, a substantial construction
with its platform substructure, red floors, and basalt
roof support, steps, and drain. The Stirling Acropolis
is believed to have been the residence of La Ventas
paramount elites, but it remains unexcavated. The
difference between the Red Palace and the Stirling
Acropolis was that the Red Palace was a royal residence while the Stirling Acropolis, surrounded by
the pyramid, E-Group, and the ballcourt, was a
sacred one.
The colossal heads have captured archaeologists
attention as the portraits of male Olmec rulers. The
figures helmets have been thought to denote male
ballplayers. La Venta figurines and sculpture demonstrate that women as well as men wore helmet-style
headgear, however, and one must recognize that some
of the colossal heads may represent royal women as
well as men, suggests Billie Follensbee. There is a
good possibility that the Olmec may have been bilateral, as were most pre-Columbian Mesoamerican
societies. Several images portray a male ruler flanked
by one or two women. The Pijijiapan relief, La Venta
Stela 5, and La Venta Offering 4 are examples. The
older women may represent the founding lineage.
A tumpline carried by the woman on Stela 5 makes
multilayered reference to her as both a nurturing
bearer of food as well as the sacred relics that planted
La Venta as a sacred center.
This description of Olmec ritual precincts underlines
the thematic commonalities among sites but demonstrates how Mesoamericas first kings advanced their

status from royal to divine through their architectural

and iconographic programs. Olmec elites played on
basic human psychological instincts such as desire for
communion with higher powers, altruism towards the
community, and attraction to memorable events in a
world that is essentially unmemorable. Anyone who
has witnessed the pull of the present-day regional,
now Christian pilgrimage to Tila, La Ventas successor,
can attest to the compelling, even coercive, power that
such phenomena exert. Olmec kings used monumental
constructions to advertise their power and monopolize
labor and material resources, thereby preventing contenders from mounting any serious challenge to their
authority.
Competition played a part in driving the evolution of
royal power. The Early and especially the Middle Formative periods saw the growth of royal pilgrimage
centers competing with San Lorenzo and La Venta.
Teopantecuanitlan and Chalcatzingo offered access to
alternative versions of sacred landscape, caves and the
water-mountain topography. The evidence for captives
and sacrificial victims in the context of feasting and the
ball game suggests that physical coercion, warfare, and
raiding were a factor in the political landscape. In this
regard, the Olmec differed from their contemporaries
in Oaxaca, where warfare played a significantly more
overt role in state formation. The Oaxaca pattern of
physical coercion was to become the dominant one in
Mesoamerica culminating in the Aztec state.
Writing and the Calendar

Olmec elites developed writing in connection with their

ritual practices, including the celebration of calendrical
cycles. Mesoamerican people devoted enormous effort
to developing and observing calendrical events, which
focused on divination and prophecy. Olmec religious

228 AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries

Figure 7 San Andres roller stamp. Date indicative signs are compared to the Epi-Olmec Long Count initial series glyph from Stela C at
Tres Zapotes. San Andres is a subsidiary elite site of the Olmec polity capital, La Venta, located some 5 km from the center. Redrawn after
Pohl, et al. 2002.

art is filled with iconographic messages. The evolution

of writing involved the conversion of these images
to language messages whereby the reader gets the
writers precise message through representations of
words, syllables, or consonants and vowels of a language. Writing was an important tool of early kings
because it allowed them to capture and transmit the
power of a message in a manner similar to their ability to capture the power of the sacred landscape by
reproducing it (Figure 7).
The representation of walking provides a good
example of the process. The Early Formative greenstone carving of a footprint from El Manat is essentially a proto-glyph. The image conveys the action,
and the medium conveys its sacredness. The footprint
sign then appears transformed into a written verb
accompanying a striding figure on Middle Formative
Monument 13 from La Venta.
Early iconographic and writing technology relied
heavily on the roller stamp, which acted as a small
printing press. The inked stamp would leave its mark
when rolled across the human body, cloth, or bark
paper. A Middle Formative greenstone mask from Ro
Pesquero demonstrates how the living human body
was a prime medium for the transmission of written
messages, which were also considered to have a life of
their own. The fact that most early writing was probably applied to skin and other perishable materials
accounts for the scarcity of evidence for its existence.
Another early illustration of the evolution of
writing occurs on an Early Formative roller stamp
from Tlatilco in the Basin of Mexico dating to
c. 1100 BC. The stamp shows a possible early Venus
glyph aside a canonic Olmec-style head, all aligned
with the quincunx and an early version of the flowershaped kin glyph, a logograph denoting the word for
sun or day. Through iconographic image and written word, the roller stamp conveys the message of
the sacred center of the world in connection with
calendrical ritual. The stamps message summarizes
the essence of Olmec religious culture.

Data from San Andres are significant given the

fragility of evidence for Formative period writing
and the shaky context of most early finds. San Andres
has yielded firmly dated evidence for writing on a
roller stamp and on greenstone plaques that formed
jewelry, perhaps an earspool. The artifacts occurred
in the context of ritual feasting refuse that could be
dated through both radiocarbon assay and pottery
chronology to c. 650 BC. One greenstone plaque
features the royal double merlon motif inside a cartouche signifying its status as a written word. These
glyphs are logographs, signs that represent words or
concepts.
The writing demonstrates that the Olmec had the
260-day divinatory almanac, which they were probably instrumental in developing and disseminating
throughout Mesoamerica. This sacred calendar was
comprised of a sequence of 13 numbers and 20 named
days, whose permutations took 260 days to cycle
through. The San Andres roller stamp shows the
glyph for the day sign three ajaw. In addition to the
San Andres find in a feasting deposit, calendrical
notations have also been reported from other special
contexts, Oxtotitlan cave and Teopantecuanitlan, where
one of the monoliths in the ceremonial Enclosure
bears a flower and two bars, possibly a very early
record of the 10-Flower day sign.
The Olmec used one or more logographs to advertise special messages and events in public contexts,
and they also wrote longer texts, perhaps for more
esoteric purposes. The Cascajal serpentine block,
26 cm by 21 cm, found in a quarry north of San
Lorenzo and El Manat, contains strings of glyphs
that in some cases demonstrate patterned structure.
Many of the pictograph-like glyphs represent objects
of ritual significance, such as the maize cob, flaming
bundle of faggots, spoon, and throne. The fact that
the block had a concave face suggests that its text
was erased and re-inscribed, perhaps many times. The
block probably dates to the end of the Early Formative
period or the Middle Formative period.

AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries 229

Early Mesoamerican writing is characterized by

variability in form. Many glyphs are idiosyncratic
and evidently went extinct. Others such as the
calendrically-oriented ajaw and kin glyphs persisted
and were adopted by other groups such as the Maya,
who went on to develop Mesoamerican writing and
the calendar most fully.
Local, Regional, and Extra-regional Exchange
through Trade and Gifting

Olmec social, political, and religious structure

demanded that energy be focused on importing substantial amounts of material into this stoneless, Gulf
Coast floodplain habitat. Tons of basalt came to San
Lorenzo, by river raft and overland, from the Tuxtla
Mountains some 60 km to the northwest where remains
of stone working have been found at Cerro Cintepec
volcano. Stone masons carved high-quality, finegrained porphyritic basalt into royal sculptures while
coarser stone went for utilitarian technologies such as
maize-grinding tools known as manos and metates.
La Ventas elites expanded on San Lorenzos stone
sources. To the north, the island of Roca Partida
in the Bay of Campeche provided naturally formed
basalt columns for the sacred enclosures in Complex A. Most of the stone sources for monuments
and offerings came from the south, however. Cerro
Zempoaltepec provided schists, andesites, and diorites for sculptures.
Olmec elites were the first to designate greenstones
(jadeite, serpentine, schist, gneiss, green quartz) as the
standard of sacred preciousness symbolizing the life
force in water and vegetation in Mesoamerica. The
standard evolved over time according to Olaf Jaimes
study of over 1000 artifacts from El Manat
(1600 BC), El Macayal (12001000 BC), La Merced
(1000600 BC), and La Venta (1000400 BC). The
Olmec used distinctive blue-green, black, and dark
green jadeite and serpentine in the Early Formative
period (16001200 BC). Sources for these stones occurred at a distance of up to 1000 km from the Gulf
Coast region in eastern Guatemalas Motagua Valley,
especially the Tambor River area. Craft workers
carved beads, celts, and representations of animals
out of this extremely hard stone, transforming them
into sacred objects of power through their labor.
In Middle Formative times (1000400 BC), as
Olmec elites at La Venta engaged in conspicuous
consumption by constructing earthen mounds accompanied by massive serpentine offerings and caches,
the dark greenstones gave way to serpentine and
yellow-green jadeite. The Middle Formative sources
were closer, that is, the Oaxaca-Puebla area (Cuicatlan,
Sierra de Juarez, Tehuitzingo), perhaps influenced
by rise of competing polities and balkanization of

frontiers Jaime suggests. Quality of stone working

declined significantly in many cases. Many of the
greenstone artifacts were deposited in an unfinished
state. William Rust uncovered evidence of serpentine
working areas in Complex E, to the northeast of
La Ventas sacred Complex A.
Olmec elites at La Venta monopolized the most
desirable yellow-green stone, leaving their client supporters to make do as best they could in the face of
poor supply lines. Allison Perretts study of greenstone from the subsidiary site of San Andes showed
that the material was unexpectedly abundant but was
inferior in color and texture, exhibiting a blue-green
hue compared with La Venta. Evidence for serpentine
debitage at San Andes, though scarce, demonstrates
that the material was worked locally, however.
Complex networks of long-distance trade and exchange define Formative period Gulf Coast urban
societies. Obsidian and ceramics provide the best opportunity to gauge the extent of these connections
because the material is plentiful, many sources are
known, and scientists can trace the sources accurately.
The data indicate that the Olmec drew on diverse
resources from a broad geographical area and probably
used social alliances to facilitate these supply lines.
Sharp-edged obsidian was in high demand in
Mesoamerica, and trade in prismatic obsidian blades
is closely associated with the emergence of elites. The
obsidian data, which are based on systems of visual
identification assisted by neutron activation analysis,
demonstrate that the Olmec drew on a surprising
number of sources though only a few dominated.
Robert Cobean showed that the obsidian from the
Early Formative San Lorenzo phase at San Lorenzo
came predominantly from Guadalupe Victoria,
Puebla, in Central Mexico, which at c. 300 km to
the northeast was the closest source to the site.
Other obsidian came from El Chayal, Guatemala, perhaps with participation of inhabitants of Kaminaljuyu.
The probable route for the El Chayal obsidian was
along the Soconusco coast and over the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec.
The La Venta obsidian data indicate major changes
in obsidian production and procurement in the
Middle Formative period. As many as nine sources
were represented at La Venta. Travis Doering reports
that the dominant sources changed to Paredon in
Central Mexico and to San Martn Jilotepeque in
Guatemala, each more than 500 km from La Venta
in opposite directions and not the closest available.
Obsidian may have moved from Central Mexico
south via the trade center of El Viejon on the Veracruz
coast. The Guatemalan obsidian indicates a change in
route along the Motagua river to western Guatemala
and then down the Grijalva river via the trading site

230 AMERICAS, NORTH/The Olmec and Their Contemporaries

of San Isidro to the Gulf Coast. Whereas obsidian

blades had previously been manufactured near the
quarry sites, now macrocores were traded and manufactured into blades in elite-controlled workshop
areas such as at La Venta Complex D. The La Venta
site had high quantities of the golden-green Pachuca
obsidian from Central Mexico, confirming the fact
that it was a highly prized commodity.
There is strong circumstantial evidence of elite
involvement in obsidian manufacture and distribution at La Venta. A spent obsidian core incised with
the sacred insignia of a harpy eagle was placed in a
royal offering (Tomb C) in the most holy precinct of
Complex A. Moreover, the obsidian from the subsidiary site of San Andres, 5 km northeast of the
paramount center, came from the same sources as
those at La Venta. The San Andres obsidian showed
no evidence of local manufacture, and it was a scarce
commodity, occurring primarily in the ritual feasting
context. Inhabitants of San Andres completely utilized what obsidian they were able to obtain from
La Venta using bipolar flaking techniques.
Recent neutron activation analysis by Jeffrey
Blomster of carved white ware fine paste ceramics
and source clays from San Lorenzo and six other
regions in Mesoamerica indicates the presence of
long-distance trade in ceramics extending from the
Olmec region to the Highlands. In this study, fine
paste Early Horizon ceramics were demonstrated to
be both of local manufacture and imported from the
San Lorenzo region. The implications of this study
place Early Formative San Lorenzo in a paramount
position vis a` vis the social interaction, gifting and
trade systems that underpinned the formation of the
Early Horizon beginnings of Mesoamerica.
There are clues to the social impact of this geographically extensive, labor-intensive economic activity,
for example, in the formation of alliances along trade
routes. The enactment of social relations typically
involved gifting of pottery in Mesoamerica, and the
neutron activation data tracing the movement of
pots out of the Gulf Coast heartland are tangible
testimony to alliance corridors. Middle Formative
Grivalva sites with strong Olmec influence provide
hints that these alliances might have involved
marriage between royal Olmec women and local
lords. For example, New World Archaeological
Foundation excavations at Chiapa de Corzo uncovered the burial of a woman, possibly an imported

Americas Migrations

royal female lineage founder, accompanied by La

Venta-style pottery. Ephemeral pieces of evidence
from sites such as this in the Grijalva drainage provide hints of complex social relationships generated
by Olmec trade and exchange.

The Olmec in Mesoamerican History

The Olmec are significant because they show the
evolution of complex society in Mesoamerica. The
urban centers, multi-tiered settlement systems, monumental constructions, craft production, and elaborate trade and exchange systems document the fact
that the Olmec were developing the state. A comparison between San Lorenzo and La Venta reveals how
Olmec kings advanced their status from royal to divine, as they redesigned their centers as cosmic cities,
expanded their settlements, and widened their trade
networks. The dynamic of competing pilgrimage centers was a key factor in centralization of power, one
that was eventually to feed warfare on and offstage in
the Late Formative and especially the Classic periods.
Later Mesoamerican rulers, particularly the Soke and
the Maya, were to model themselves on the Olmec by
copying their architectural plans, including pyramids, stelae, altars, and E Groups, adopting their
writing systems, and mining their sites for jadeite
paraphernalia with which to purchase holiness.
See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Writing Systems.

Further Reading
Benson EP and de la Fuente B (1996) Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico.
Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.
Clark JE and Pye ME (2000) Olmec Art and Archaeology in
Mesoamerica. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Coe MD and Diehl RA (1980) In the Land of the Olmec. The
People of the River. Austin, Texas: The University of Texas Press.
Diehl R (2004) The Olmecs. Americas First Civilization. New York:
Thames and Hudson.
Drucker P (1952) La Venta, Tabasco: A Study of Olmec Ceramics
and Art. Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology,
Smithsonian Institution.
Grove D (1970) The Olmec Paintings of Oxtotitlan Cave,
Guerrero, Mexico. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks.
Grove D (ed.) (1987) Ancient Chalcatzingo. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
Pool C (2007) Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica.
New York: Cambridge University Press.

See: New World, Peopling of.

AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region 231

AMERICAS, NORTH
Contents
American Southwest, Four Corners Region
Arctic and Circumpolar Regions
California and the Sierra Nevada
Eastern Woodlands
Great Basin
Historical Archaeology in the United States
Plains
Plantation Archaeology
Rocky Mountains
Sub-arctic

American Southwest,
Four Corners Region
Paul F Reed, Center for Desert Archaeology,
Bloomfield, NM, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Archaic period Archaeologically defined period of human
occupation in Four Corners region, from 5500600 BC.
Chaco Canyon Ancient center of Puebloan society and culture
in northwest New Mexico, which reached its peak from AD
10501100.
Clovis culture (also Llano culture) A prehistoric Native
American culture that first appears in the archaeological record
of North America around 11 000 years ago, at the end of the last
Ice Age.
Dinetah Ancestral homeland of Navajo people, located in
northwest New Mexico.
Dinetah phase Earliest period of Navajo residence in Four
Corners region, from AD 14501630.
Folsom complex An early archaeological complex of North
America characterized by a distinct leaf-shaped projectile point
called a Folsom point.
Four Corners The survey point at the intersection of the four US
states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona and the high
desert plateau region surrounding that point in the southwestern
United States.
Gobernador phase Period of Navajo occupation in Four
Corners region from AD 16301755.
Palaeo-Indian period Earliest archaeological period of
human occupation in the Four Corners Region, from
ca. 10 0005500 BC.

In this article, we will explore the lives of ancient

peoples in the Four Corners region of the American
Southwest from about 10 000 BC until AD 1755. This
region is illustrated in Figure 1. We will do this in a
logical fashion by starting with the beginning of

human occupation (which archaeologists describe as

the Palaeo-Indian period) and ending with the latest
archaeological period of occupation (by the Navajo
people). We will discuss the archaeological findings
and lifeways of four cultural groups or periods over
this 12 000-year span of human occupation: PalaeoIndian groups, Archaic groups, ancient Puebloan
people, and the Dine or Navajo tribe. The first two
groups Palaeo-Indian and Archaic are not discrete
ethnic or cultural groups. Rather, archaeologists use
Palaeo-Indian and Archaic to refer to discrete periods
of time in the early history of North America. Because
of the great antiquity of Palaeo-Indian and Archaic
sites and the sparse nature of their archaeological
remains (consisting primarily of worked stone tools
and lithic chipping debris), it is difficult to identify
discrete ethnic or cultural groups in these periods.
Acknowledging that we cannot specify ethnic groups
for these early periods, we will nevertheless discuss
these periods in a similar fashion to the later sociocultural and ethnic groups (the ancient Puebloans and
the Navajos) in this article.

Palaeo-Indian Period (10 0005500 BC)

The Palaeo-Indian period (c. 10 0005500 BC) represents the first conclusive evidence of human
occupation in the Four Corners region of the
American Southwest. In comparison to other areas
of the West and Southwest (e.g., the Middle Rio
Grande Valley of New Mexico or Colorados Western
slope), the Four Corners region has seen little in the
way of Palaeo-Indian research. Although PalaeoIndian sites have been found throughout the region,
very few have been excavated. Thus, the general
discussion of Palaeo-Indian lifeways and archaeology that follows is based largely on evidence from
surrounding regions of North America.

232 AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region

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Figure 1 Map showing the Four Corners region of the ancient American Southwest. Map by author.

The Palaeo-Indian period is characterized as a time

when the ancient inhabitants depended primarily on
hunting of large game animals. During this time,
archaeologists believe that the dominant subsistence
strategy involved hunting a limited number of large
mammals what archaeologists describe as megafauna
including mammoths, mastodon, giant sloths, and
ancient bison. This is not to say that plants were not
gathered and eaten they were. Nevertheless, residential sites were located primarily in areas on the
migration routes of the megafauna. Gathering and

use of plant materials occurred as a secondary activity

in these locales. Thus, the majority of Palaeo-Indian
sites represent areas where large mammals were killed
and butchered. These sites contain large spear points
and other tools are found in association with the
butchered bones of large mammals.
Four complexes or temporal phases have been
defined for the Southwest Palaeo-Indian people:
Clovis (10 0009000 BC), Folsom (90008000 BC),
Plano (80007000 BC), and Cody (70006000 BC).
Figure 2 illustrates Clovis period stone tools. General

AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region 233

Figure 2 Photograph of Clovis period tools, including distinctive fluted spear points. Photograph by Jonathan Mabry.

changes in adaptation and stone tool kits occurred

during the transition from one phase to the next.
Distinctive projectile point styles are used to separate these phases. In general, the Clovis complex is
marked by the hunting of large and currently extinct
megafauna (e.g., mammoth, mastodon). The Folsom
complex continued the tradition of big game hunting
except that large and now-extinct bison was the usual
prey. During the Plano phase, a continuation of Folsom traits continued. In fact, some researchers believe
that the Plano complex is not temporally separate
from the Folsom. The Cody complex is viewed as a
time when hunting essentially modern bison comprised the primary subsistence pattern.
Some Palaeo-Indian sites are known from across
the Four Corners region, including southeast Utah
and southwest Colorado. Similarly, a few Clovis and
Folsom projectile points have been reported from
northeast Arizona: near the Hopi villages and in
the Cow SpringsWhite Mesa area. The San Juan
Basin of northwest New Mexico also has several
documented Palaeo-Indian sites.

Archaic Period (5500600 BC)

Many archaeologists understand that the succeeding
Archaic period (5500600 BC) in the Four Corners
region developed out of the existing Palaeo-Indian
adaptation. However, archaeologist Cynthia IrwinWilliams suggested that the Palaeo-Indian occupants
abandoned the region when bison herds could no
longer be supported and migrated east. In this
view, Archaic people of the northern Southwest
were immigrants to the area. In another view, archaeologist Jesse Jennings suggested that the Archaic
period dates back to 8000 BC in some areas and that

Archaic folks were contemporaneous with the PalaeoIndians. At this point, sufficient evidence does not exist
to prove or refute any of these alternatives. IrwinWilliamss Archaic sequence is presented below, as it
is most specific to the Four Corners region. In addition,
other Archaic sequences have been proposed, most
notably Alan Schroedls for the northern Colorado
Plateau, which is briefly discussed below.
In general, the Archaic period is characterized by the
replacement of the previous big-game hunting adaptation with a subsistence (food gathering) strategy focused on a mixed utilization of a large variety of plants
(wild grasses, seeds, nuts, fruits, roots, or tubers) and
animals (including deer, elk, antelope, bison, rabbits,
and a variety of rodents). Plant resources were particularly important and a seasonal pattern of exploitation, with groups moving frequently, is inferred. In
1973, archaeologist Cynthia Irwin-Williams developed a cultural sequence for the Archaic occupation
of the northern American Southwest based on her
work in the Arroyo Cuervo area of northwest New
Mexico (Table 1). The sequence is called the Oshara
tradition and has five phases (periods of time): Jay phase
(55004800 BC), Bajada phase (48003200 BC), San
Jose phase (32001800 BC), Armijo phase (1800
800 BC), and En Medio phase (800 BCAD 400).
Figure 3 illustrates the changes in projectile points and
other stone tools through the phases defined as part of
the Oshara tradition.
During the Jay phase (55004800 BC), people
located their habitation sites predominantly at or
around canyon or drainage heads. These sites were
generally small and seemed to represent a full range of
activities: hunting, plant gathering, and stone tool
manufacture. A wide variety of stone tools have been
found on Jay sites, including well-made projectile

234 AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region

points. According to Irwin-Williams, ground stone

was absent. However, more recent research in the
Four Corners area has documented the presence of
ground stone artifacts on Jay phase sites. The basic
Table 1 Cynthia Irwin-Williamss 1973 Oshara Tradition
Phase

Dates

Jay
Bajada
San Jose
Armijo
En Modio

55004800 BC
48003200 BC
32001800 BC
1800800 BC
800 BCAD 400

Jay adaptation appears to have involved a mix of both

hunting and plant gathering activities. Numerous Jay
phase sites are known in the Four Corners region.
As envisioned by Irwin-Williams, the following
Bajada phase (48003200 BC) represents continuous
development from the preceding Jay phase. Regional
population increased, as indicated by an increase in
the number of occupied sites. Sites used by people in
the Bajada phase seemed to show task-specific organization; that is, groups of people went on short-term
trips from home base camps to gather plants, find
suitable raw material for stone tools, hunt, or undertake other activities. Cobble and rock ovens and
Material culture

Absolute
chronology

Cultural
identity

Projectile
points

Chipped stone implements Ground stone implements

non-projectile point

Semi-sedent
macrobands
Exploit. NAT.
and domestic
flora

Collect

(Late)
A.D.
B.C.

Agric
hunt
Anasazi

500

Suggested Suggested
subsistence organization

En
Seasonal macrobands
exploit. Natural and
domestic flora;
seasonal microbands
Expl, NAT, flora,fauna

Medio
500
(Early)
1000
Armijo
1500

San

Jose
3000
3500

OSHARA

2500

Microbands
exploit. NAT.
floral resources,
med-small
fauna

2000

(Late)

4000
Small microbands
exploit.
Large and
medium
fauna

Bajada
4500
(Early)
5000

5500

Jay

Cody
complex

Paleo
indian

6500

Small microbands
oriented toward
exploit. Large and
extinct
fauna

6000

Figure 3 Chart showing changes in Oshara Tradition phases. From Irwin-Williams C (1973) The Oshara Tradition: Origins of Anasazi
Culture. Contributions in Anthropology 5(3). Portales: Eastern New Mexico University, figure 7, with permission.

AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region 235

roasting pits made their first appearance during this

phase and stone tools were more refined, perhaps
suggesting a better adaptation to the plants and animals used as food resources. Bajada phase sites are
known from across the Four Corners region.
During the San Jose phase (32001800 BC), dramatic changes occurred in relation to earlier phases.
The number and size of sites, and, thus, people on
the landscape, increased dramatically. Larger, more
specialized activity sites with numerous fire pit or
hearths and underground ovens were used for the
first time during the San Juan phase. The tool assemblage was diversified with the appearance of large
chopper tools, pounders, and basic grinding stones
(i.e., shallow basin metates and one-hand manos).
Quite a few San Jose phase projectile points (mounted
on darts and throw with an atlatl) were serrated (with
jagged edges), suggesting that a sharp cutting edge
was important. Figure 4 illustrates the use of the atlatl
in the ancient Southwest. Overall, the distribution of
sites and tools suggests that a mixed subsistence strategy was practiced, using both plant and animal foods.
Resource exploitation became more systematic, intensive, and inclusive. Numerous San Jose phase
sites have been found in the Four Corners region.
During the subsequent Armijo phase (1800
800 BC), a critical change in subsistence occurred that
was to influence the later course of Archaic and Early
Puebloan development across the region: the introduction of maize or corn agriculture. Corn represented a

Figure 4 Figure illustrating use of the atlatl to throw darts. From

Fagan, B. (1991) Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a
Continent. London: Thames and Hudson, with permission.

dependable, seasonal resource that provided sufficient food for large numbers of people, and that also
had the potential to provide a surplus. Interestingly,
although corn was introduced to the Four Corners
region by at least 1200 BC (and probably earlier), the
basic Archaic period subsistence pattern did not
change dramatically (see Puebloan section below for
a more thorough discussion of maize agriculture).
Habitation sites during the Armijo phase were very
large and the number and density of sites documented
indicates substantial population growth across the
region. Tools increased in variety and number and
ground stone became common. An elaboration of
ceremonial items is also apparent. Most important,
perhaps, is that a pattern of seasonal aggregation first
appeared during the Armijo phase. Groups of people
who were normally dispersed across the landscape
through the winter months began to aggregate into
larger settlements in the summer. Although practiced,
maize agriculture was not critical to the subsistence
pattern during this phase. In relative terms, Armijo
phase sites occur frequently in the San Juan Basin,
New Mexico, and across the Four Corners region.
Although the succeeding En Medio phase (800 BC
AD 400) was included in Irwin-Williamss Oshara
tradition, many Southwest archaeologists believe
that the latter portion of the phase (c. 600/400 BC
AD 400) represents the Basketmaker II occupation
of the Early Puebloans (see discussion below). IrwinWilliams believed that the people of the Oshara
tradition evolved into the Early Puebloans but she
never identified the precise period for this transformation. During the early portion of the phase
(800100 BC), agriculture became increasingly important and population continued to grow. Use of
ground stone tools (basin-shaped metates and onehand manos) increased proportionately with increasing dependence on agriculture. Also, the presence of a
strong seasonal, annual cycle of movement is clear by
this time, as groups moved across the landscape to
find and exploit different resources (e.g., gathering
pinon nuts at higher elevations in the fall and harvesting grasses at lower elevations in the late spring).
En Medio phase sites are common across the Four
Corners region.
In 1976, Alan Schroedl developed a cultural
sequence for the Archaic period on the Colorado
Plateau that differed significantly from Irwin-Williamss
formulation. Schroedls sequence has four phases:
Black Knoll (63004200 BC), Castle Valley (4200
2500 BC), Green River (25001300 BC), and Dirty
Devil (1300 BCAD 500). The phases are differentiated based on diagnostic projectile points and perceived changes in population. The Black Knoll phase

236 AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region

is characterized by Pinto and Northern Side-notched

points. During the latter part of the phase (5000
4200 BC), Schroedl postulated a dramatic increase in
population, as evidenced by an increase in the density of
artifacts on sites. The subsequent Castle Valley phase
saw the widespread occurrence of Rocker, Sudden,
and Hawken Side-notched points early in the period.
Schroedl suggested that the population increased
after 3000 BC, following a slight decrease earlier in
the phase. During the latter portion of the phase,
Humboldt and McKean projectile points became
common. The third phase is the Green River, which is
characterized first by San Rafael Side-notched points,
and later by Gypsum projectile points. Finally, the
Dirty Devil phase witnessed the continuation of
Green River point styles. Schroedl postulated a low
population during this final phase. Schroedls sequence
was built largely upon data from several cave sites in
southern Utah and northern Arizona: Danger Cave,
Hogup Cave, Sudden Shelter, and Cowboy Cave.
Before discussing the ancient Puebloan sequence, a
perspective on the Archaic is offered here that differs
considerably from both Irwin-Williams and Schroedl.
In 1986, archaeologists Mike and Claudia Berry
undertook a critical review of the Archaic period in
the American Southwest. They made several important points: (1) most of the Archaic models currently
used in the Southwest are deficient in one way or
another, (2) models currently used are of little utility
in understanding change through time, (3) models
currently used are not supported by the chronological
evidence, and (4) the premise of in situ cultural development is simply not supported by the data. Berry
and Berry did not undertake a comprehensive review
of Irwin-Williamss sequence because very little of the
relevant data had been published. Berry and Berry
were skeptical that the Oshara tradition data would
support Irwin Williamss concept of in situ, gradual
evolution from Jay phase hunter-gatherers to Later
Puebloan agriculturalists.
With regard to the northern Colorado Plateau
Archaic sequence, Berry and Berry noted that a plot of
absolute chronological dates produced a pattern that is
more indicative of intermittent occupation than gradual increase in occupational intensity through time.
Specifically, they highlighted a 1000-year gap in the
occupation of the Colorado Plateau from 4000 to
3000 BC. Schroedl also evidently observed this gap
but nevertheless chose to define a phase (Castle Valley)
to fill the gap. This is a clear example of what Berry
and Berry called phase-stacking to achieve the illusion
of continuity. Another discontinuity is present in
Schroedls Dirty Devil phase, from 1000 BC to AD 1.
Berry and Berry suggested that Schroedl ignored this
gap to allow for continuity.

As an alternative to models of gradual evolution

and in situ development for the Archaic period, Berry
and Berry offered a punctuated (or intermittent)
model. They argued that the Southwest is essentially
an arid and inhospitable environment that invited
exploration by Archaic hunter-gatherers only during
specific periods of increased effective moisture and
proportionately greater biotic productivity. Thus, to
believe that any area in the Southwest was continuously occupied throughout the period is incorrect.
Rather, Archaic groups came and went as conditions
allowed. In this view, Archaic peoples are seen as
adapting to local environments and making small
adjustments in their use of various stone tools and in
their seasonal migrations. Also inherent in this view is
the belief that, at certain times, large portions of the
Southwest were simply not hospitable to human
groups. Thus, temporary abandonment of many
areas across the Southwest is to be expected.
Berry and Berry constructed a basic summary of
the Archaic era using period designations only as
organizational devices. Period I, dated from 8000 to
3000 BC, is characterized by sparse population of the
entire Southwest. The period is correlated with a
general time of decreased moisture, the Altithermal,
which limited the productivity of the area. Culturally,
the groups that occupied the area are unknown. The
culmination of the period was a widespread abandonment from 4000 to 3000 BC.
Period II, dating from 3000 to 1000 BC, saw an
intensive occupation across the Southwest. A reversal
of effective moisture levels occurred and resource
productivity was high. Unprecedented levels of cultural activity were achieved during this period.
Period III lasted from 1000 BC to AD 500. Berry
and Berry characterized this period as post-Archaic
because of the introduction of maize agriculture.
Although agriculture did not have an immediate
impact, it set into motion a cycle that completely
revolutionized the Archaic way of life and set the
stage for Formative (Puebloan) developments. Nevertheless, hunting-gathering continued to be of considerable importance during this period, as well as
later in the Puebloan period. In what is perhaps
the most significant deviation from conventional
southwestern wisdom, Berry and Berry posited a
major influx of people during this period, as represented by stylistically diverse projectile points. They
suggested that the inception of maize agriculture
probably represents an influx of people from some
external (and unknown) source area. This suggestion
is in sharp contrast to the model of continuous
in situ development that has been postulated for the
Archaic to Puebloan transition by other Southwestern
archaeologists.

AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region 237

The work of Berry and Berry is important, as it

adds a new perspective on the Archaic period and
encourages archaeologists to examine their data
and their preconceived notions of the archaeological
record. In a general sense, their work parallels that of
other Southwest archaeologists who have expressed
dissatisfaction with traditional and gradualistic interpretations of the archaeological record. Given the
incomplete nature of the Archaic database, however,
alternative interpretations are clearly possible. The
gaps that Berry and Berry have identified may represent actual abandonments or discontinuities, or they
may merely reflect the differential nature of the data.
Similarly, the inception of agriculture is not necessarily attributable to the influx of new people. Indeed,
some archaeologists postulate that hunter-gatherers
took to agriculture to maintain their lifestyle and
remain foragers.
Phil Geibs recent summary of the radiocarbon record for the central Colorado Plateau evaluated both
the traditional view of Archaic occupancy of the area
and Berry and Berrys punctuated model. Geib plotted more than 130 radiocarbon dates from 64 sites
and weighted the raw data to produce a bar graph.
Geib considered the influence of different factors (including preservation and sampling factors) on the
distribution of dates, concluding that although preservation was not a significant factor, sampling bias in
the form of lower visibility of certain sites may be
responsible for some of the patterning seen in the
chronology. Biases aside, Geibs analysis did not identify the gaps in the record observed by Berry and
Berry. The Middle Archaic gap, identified by Berry
and Berry between 6000 and 5000 BP is not evident in
the record for the central portion of the plateau. The
decrease in radiocarbon-dated sites does reflect, in
Geibs view, a change in settlement pattern and
lower population density but does not constitute a
complete abandonment of the plateau, as suggested
by Berry and Berry. A second occupation hiatus described by Berry and Berry, and interpreted as another
complete abandonment of the area, occurred between
3000 and 2500 BP. During this period, the number of
radiocarbon dates dips but some sites are still occupied. In sum, Geibs work provided support for a
model of long-term continuity in Archaic occupation
of the central Colorado Plateau and he saw no evidence to support the idea that the Archaic period as a
sequence of major population abandonments and
intrusions on a pan-regional scale (as proposed by
Berry and Berry). Nevertheless, he did not discount
the importance of migration as a factor influencing
changes during the Archaic period, and Geib acknowledged that more data are needed, particularly for the
Middle Archaic.

Ancient Pueblo (Anasazi) Cultural

Sequence
The arguments of Berry and Berry notwithstanding,
many Southwest archaeologists support the position
that the Early Puebloan people developed from
Oshara tradition and other Late Archaic groups
who practiced incipient agriculture across the northern Southwest. Although local temporal sequences have
been developed for a number of areas, the generalized Pecos Classification (developed by A. V. Kidder in
1927) is still used by most archaeologists to provide
regional consistency and for reference (Table 2). The
first period defined for the ancient Puebloans is
Basketmaker II, which, as discussed above, overlaps
the latter portion of the En Medio phase as defined by
Cynthia Irwin-Williams.
Basketmaker II Period (600 BCAD 500)

The Basketmaker II period is dated between 600 BC

and AD 500 in different parts of the northern
Southwest. Basketmaker II, as currently defined at
maximum, then, is as long as the remainder of the
ancient Puebloan sequence. Basketmaker II is a critical stage in Puebloan development because it was
during this time that the use of cultigens became a
significant part of subsistence. The spread of agriculture, in turn, led to a more sedentary lifestyle. General
traits of the period include construction and use of
small pit houses, large storage cists, shallow grinding
slabs, corner and side-notched dart points, the atlatl,
one-hand manos, and cradleboard burials. The importance of agriculture, along with the initial use of
ceramic containers, is what separates the Puebloans
during the Basketmaker II period from earlier and
contemporary Archaic populations. Figure 5 illustrates Early Pueblo corn agriculture with use of a
digging stick.
Various models relating to the adoption of agriculture among the Puebloans have been proposed, many
of which have overlapping elements. From an evolutionary point of view, the adoption of agriculture may
be seen as providing a selective advantage for the
Puebloans that the gathering of wild plant foods did
Table 2 A. V. Kidders 1927 Pecos Classification. Modified for
the Four Corners region of the American Southwest
Period

Dates

Basketmaker II
Basketmaker III
Pueblo I
Pueblo II
Pueblo III
Pueblo IV and V

600 BCAD 500

AD 500750
AD 750900
AD 9001150
AD 11501300
Post AD 1300

238 AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region

Figure 5 Depiction of early Puebloan corn agriculture using a digging stick. Salmon Ruins Museum collection.

not. In the absence of strong selective pressure, explaining why the use of cultigens would have become
important is difficult. The most important selective
advantage of cultigens is their dependability and predictability as contrasted with natural plants. Thus, initial use of cultigens probably relates to their seasonal
predictability in given areas. It has also been suggested
that hunter-gatherers who could most easily fit the
demands of cultivation into their seasonal rounds
would be most likely to practice agriculture. There
are, of course, other parameters involved in the adoption of agriculture, but for the present discussion, understanding that the predictability of cultigens was a
key factor is sufficient. In any case, there is good
evidence that the Early Puebloans in certain areas
(e.g., Cedar Mesa, Utah and Black Mesa, Arizona)
were largely dependent on maize agriculture by the
Early Basketmaker II period.
Recent work has broadened our understanding of
the Late Basketmaker II period, and the transition to
Basketmaker III and Pueblo I. Using data from a
project on the Rainbow Plateau of Arizona, Phil
Geib and Kimberly Spurr identified perhaps the earliest use of pottery in the northern Southwest at
AD 200. They also found good evidence of the transition between Basketmaker II and III between AD
200 and 450, filling a gap that Mike Berry and other
archaeologists had identified. Geib and Spurr identified maize-dependent groups during the Basketmaker
II interval. Other findings were related to turkey domestication and early use (by about AD 200) of the
bow and arrow. Perhaps the most important contribution Geib and Spurr made is the understanding that

the transition from Basketmaker II to III was not a

smooth, coordinated process. The traits they discussed initial manufacture of pottery, dependence
on maize agriculture, use of the bow and arrow,
turkey husbandry, and the introduction of beans
into the Puebloan diet were not linked together as
a suite and were not all introduced at the same time.
Rather, these traits developed at different rates on the
Rainbow Plateau and across the northern Southwest.
Studying early pottery production, Lori Reed,
Dean Wilson, and Kelley Hays-Gilpin contributed
significantly to a new understanding of the Late
Basketmaker II and Early Basketmaker III interval.
Although archaeologists have observed brown ware
pottery at Puebloan sites for at least 40 years, Reed
and her colleagues were among the first to address the
brown ware problem regionally. Archaeologists in
the Southwest are accustomed to a simple dichotomy
in pottery: brown is Mogollon and gray is Puebloan.
In reality, a Puebloan brown ware tradition underlies
the gray in most areas. This research documented the
widespread occurrence of Puebloan brown ware and
proposed combining many types previously split out,
offering a few combined types that bring coherence to
our understanding of brown ware pottery across the
region.
A large Basketmaker II population is inferred for
Black Mesa, Arizona; a dramatic increase from
Archaic times is apparent. By 600 BC, a firm commitment had been made to agriculture on Black Mesa.
Basketmaker II settlements across the Southwest generally occur on terraces above major drainages and
have been documented throughout the greater San

AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region 239

Juan Basin and across the Four Corners region. These

sites date in the interval from 800 BC to AD 400 and
most contain maize. Lithic tool kits at these Early
Basketmaker sites are indicative of an Early Puebloan
adaptation, with debitage, cores, and tools showing
use of local raw materials. The use of stone raw materials and the core reduction strategies reflect a more
constricted range of movement in the region relative to
earlier Archaic people, with fast, efficient reduction of
locally available stone raw materials to produce usable
tools.
Basketmaker III Period (AD 500750)

Recent work suggests that the Basketmaker III

(AD 500750) period was different than portrayed in
conventional southwestern wisdom. Perhaps because
of the contrast in A. V. Kidders original 1927 Pecos
Classification (Basketmaker vs. Pueblo), southwestern
archaeologists have viewed both Basketmaker periods
(II and III) as transitional between the huntinggathering cultures of the Archaic period and the agricultural Puebloans, beginning in Pueblo I. In contrast,
some Basketmaker II sites represent the remains of
groups dependent on agriculture. Furthermore, by
Basketmaker III, sedentary agricultural populations
were living across the region. Such adaptations have
been documented in the Mesa Verde, Colorado, area,
in the La Plata Valley, New Mexico, on Cedar Mesa,
Utah, and at several locales along the eastern and western slopes of the Chuska Mountains, among other
areas. This revised view of Basketmaker III, with fully
sedentary populations dependent on maize agriculture,
is supported by recent stone tool and lithic studies,
studies of pottery production and technology, and the
latest rock art research. Figure 6 shows two Early Pueblo
corn granaries in a rock shelter in southeastern Utah.

Basketmaker III remains in many areas of the

northern Southwest apparently represent in situ continuity from Basketmaker II. Important characteristics of this period across the Southwest include large,
formal pit houses, the introduction and use of the
bow and arrow, two-hand manos and trough metates,
gray ware and early red and unslipped white ware
ceramics, and an increasing dependence on agriculture. Long, linear blocks of adobe rooms are associated with Late Basketmaker III sites. Figure 7
illustrates the floor of an abandoned Basketmaker
III pithouse.
Basketmaker III sites are relatively common on
southern Black Mesa and in the Low Mountain area
of Arizona, but are apparently absent from northern
Black Mesa. In the San Juan Basin, Basketmaker III
sites are relatively common and are scattered
throughout the area.
Pueblo I Period (AD 750900)

The Pueblo I period (AD 750900) in the Southwest

is generally characterized by the extensive use of surface rooms and pueblos, constructed mostly of
masonry or jacal. Kivas of various sizes where religious ceremonies were presumably held became common during this period. The widespread production
and use of both neckbanded gray ware and early
black-on-white painted ceramics is also a defining
trait of the period. Agricultural production continued
to be of importance for Puebloan subsistence. Areas
with significant Pueblo I populations include Mesa
Verde, Dolores area, the upper La Plata River Valley,
and Chaco Canyon.
In the Western Pueblo area, Pueblo I is viewed as an
elaboration of patterns established during the preceding period. This period apparently represents a time of

Figure 6 Photograph of early Pueblo granaries in a rock shelter in southeastern Utah. Photograph by author.

240 AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region

Figure 7 Early Puebloan (Basketmaker III period) pithouse at Cove, Arizona. Photograph by author.

continued low population density in the Glen Canyon

area. Site frequencies are low, much as they are in
areas further to the north and east. It is possible, of
course, that many Pueblo I sites are obscured by the
more obtrusive Pueblo II deposits and simply have
not been identified. In the San Juan Basin, Pueblo I
sites, although not as common as those of earlier
or later periods, are present in moderate numbers;
because of this, little population change is inferred
for the Four Corners region during this period.
Pueblo II Period (AD 9001150)

The period from AD 900 to 1150, described as the

Pueblo II period, is thought by many archaeologists to
represent the apogee of ancient Puebloan cultural development. This view is due largely to the impressive
remains found in Chaco Canyon (centrally located in
the San Juan Basin, southeast of our Four Corners
region) and the system that evolved around it. However, Pueblo II represents the time of greatest population dispersal across the entire Southwest, and much of
this activity was clearly beyond the Chacoan realm.
Across the Southwest, Pueblo II is a period of
dramatic increase in site frequency and population.
Salient traits of the period are multiple-room masonry
structures with associated kivas and formalized middens, numerous black-on-white, red, orange, polychrome, and corrugated ceramics, extensive exchange
networks and the development of alliances, sophisticated agricultural practices, and large complex sites.
Figure 8 shows a Gallup black-on-white ceramic bowl.
This basic pattern is apparent in the Western
Puebloan area of northeast Arizona and southeast

Figure 8 Photograph of Gallup black-on-white ceramic bowl,

distinctive of the Pueblo II period. Photograph by Lori Stephens
Reed.

Utah. The majority of sites in lower Glen Canyon

date to this period, indicating an intensive occupation. Site location in the canyons and valleys was
apparently linked to the presence of alluvium and
arable land. These lowland sites appear to be relatively limited functionally. Highland sites, in contrast,
exhibit more evidence of a broad range of functions
and activities, and appear to have been occupied yearround. Puebloan settlement on Black Mesa peaked
during this period and then declined; the area was
effectively abandoned by Late Pueblo II.

AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region 241

Chacoan Society during the Pueblo II Period Ancient

Puebloan society in Chaco Canyon at its peak
(AD 10501100) was characterized by a number of
traits that set it apart from previous, contemporary,
and subsequent Puebloan communities and sites. First,
Chacoan structures, known as great houses, were built
in a monumental style (with three or four stories typical) similar (but unrelated) to the European Medieval
castles of the same period in the Old World. Pueblo
Bonito is the largest and grandest of all the great
houses (Figure 9). Chacoan great houses are distinct
from the majority of Puebloan structures of earlier and
later periods because of their symmetrical construction
and massive architecture described as core-veneer.
The massive walls (up to a meter thick) consisted of a

rubble, dirt, or masonry core with inner and outer

veneers of carefully selected, shaped sandstone slabs
(Figure 10). The imposing size and height of these
structures, and other factors, support the idea that
the great houses were landscape monuments (in addition to having other functions). As monuments, the
great houses were intended to impress and awe local
residents, as well as outsiders.
One of the more compelling aspects of the Chacoan
landscape was the network of roads that were constructed between about AD 1050 and 1100. Perhaps
400 miles of roads have been detected using aerial
photography and many segments have been groundtruthed, confirmed by a field inspection. Typically,
the roadways are very wide (up to 9 m or about 30 ft)

Figure 9 Photograph of Pueblo Bonito (Chaco Canyon) in 1921, prior to major excavations by Neil Judd and the National Geographic
Society. Salmon Ruins Museum collection.

Figure 10 Photograph of fine Chacoan masonry in wall of Tower Kiva (built at AD 1090) at Salmon Pueblo. Photograph by author.

242 AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region

Blanding
Cottonwood Falls

Lowry
Escalante
Bluff

Far View

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ARIZONA

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Durango
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Yucca
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COLORADO
NEW MEXICO

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An

Salmon

sh

Chuska Mountains

Hopi
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Li

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Zuni
Pueblo

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Acoma
Pueblo

LEGEND
Modern Town
Chacoan Era Great
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Figure 11 Map showing extent of the ancient Puebloan society of Chaco Canyon at AD 1100. Modified from map by author, Reed 2004.

across, and run straight across huge expanses of territory, climbing steep mesas and descending directly
into canyons.
Moving beyond the confines of Chaco Canyon
proper, we see that the flourishing society centered
at Chaco was quite far-flung (Figure 11). Archaeologists are literally finding new Chacoan-affiliated sites,
outliers, every few years in increasingly remote areas.
Nevertheless, at the present time, perhaps 150 Chaco
outliers dating between AD 1050 and 1125 are
known. As a group, these sites are similar to those
found in Chaco, but are generally smaller in size, have
fewer rooms, fewer kivas, many do not meet Chacoan
standards for architecture, and most are surrounded

by clusters of smaller sites (villages, smaller pueblos,

and nonresidential, farming, and other special-use
areas). Notable exceptions include the ancient Aztec
and Salmon communities in the Middle San Juan
region, both of which were as large and well
constructed as any great house in Chaco Canyon.
Figure 12 is an historic photograph of Salmon Pueblo,
taken by Timothy OSullivan in 1874.
In extent, Chacoan outliers are found across four
modern American states. Chimney Rock Pueblo lies
several miles west of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and
represents the northeastern outpost of Chacoan settlements. Guadalupe Pueblo lies far to the south of Chimney Rock in New Mexico, in the southeastern portion

AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region 243

Figure 12 Historic photograph of Salmon Pueblo in 1874, taken by photographer Timothy OSullivan of the Wheeler Expedition. Note
the photographer posing in the middle of frame. Salmon Ruins Museum collection.

of the Chacoan world. Moving across New Mexico to

the northwest, the Cottonwood Falls great house in
southeast Utah lies near the northwest edge of Chacoan
influence. Lastly, Wupatki in northeast Arizona is the
westernmost example of a site that shows evidence of
Chacoan contact and influence. This far-flung area was
larger than New England, and illustrates the vast
spread of Chacoan material culture (things like architecture and pottery) and religious-ceremonial influence
in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.
Although they share traits in common with each
other, and with great houses in Chaco Canyon,
almost every outlier identified thus far has unique characteristics. Thus, understanding the relationship between Chaco Canyon and outlying sites of Chacoan
age and affiliation is one of the challenges for Puebloan
archaeologists. In fact, the very word itself outlier
implies a relationship between a center (Chaco
Canyon) and a site outside the center (an outlier) that
was probably highly variable from site to site. In recent
years, Chacoan archaeologists have begun to question
these relationships and concentrate more of their research on the outlying sites. This new work has led
some to question the existence of an integrated
Chacoan system. In place of an integrated, centrally
controlled society, some archaeologists have proposed
that the Chacoan world is better described as a confederation of largely independent political entities. Outside Chaco Canyon itself, and an area referred to as
the Chaco Core, this is the view adopted here: that
the larger Chacoan system was a loose confederation
of affiliated but mostly independent Puebloan villages
that looked to Chaco Canyon as a religious-ceremonial
and economic center.

Pueblo III Period (AD 11501300)

The Pueblo III period (AD 11501300) across the

northern Southwest is characterized by aggregation,
continued production of black-on-white and corrugated ceramics, an increase in the production of polychrome ceramics, continued importance of agriculture,
and perhaps minor population decreases throughout
the period. During Pueblo III times, most of the Colorado Plateau saw the culmination and termination of its
Puebloan occupation. Early in the period, a continuation of the earlier Pueblo II adaptation is apparent.
Later, after AD 1250, several new patterns emerged.
Population was consolidated and aggregated into fewer
and larger sites, and the total number of sites decreased.
Defensible locations were occupied in the Kayenta region and elsewhere, and there are indications that warfare was ongoing. Figure 13 shows Cliff Palace at Mesa
Verde National Park, Colorado.
The collapse of the Chacoan system occurred in
Early Pueblo III, by AD 1150. Later in the period
(c. AD 1200), many sites experienced a resurgence in
population. In the Middle San Juan region, Aztec Ruins
and Salmon Ruins reached their peaks in the mid1200s as local and regional population boomed. The
greater Mesa Verde region also reached its zenith during the Late Pueblo III period, by AD 1260. Finally,
many other former Chacoan sites, including Chaco
Canyon itself, were revitalized with new populations
and growth in the mid-late-1200s. The end of the
Pueblo III period is marked by widespread abandonment of most areas across the Colorado Plateau
(for habitation purposes) and concentration of population into a few areas (e.g., the Hopi mesas and Little

244 AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region

Figure 13 Photograph of large defensible Pueblo III site of Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Salmon Ruins Museum
collection.

Colorado areas in Arizona, the area around Zuni,

New Mexico, and the many pueblos located along
the Rio Grande and its tributaries in New Mexico).
Pueblo IV and V (post-AD 1300)

During the Later Pueblo IV and V periods, Western

Puebloan groups aggregated in a few locations Hopi,
Zuni, Acoma, and the Little Colorado River area. The
Eastern Pueblo area received many of the people emigrating from the Four Corners region, and large villages
grew along the Rio Grande and its tributaries.
Little or no evidence of Pueblo IV or V occupation
is present in the Four Corners region of the American
Southwest. Although wandering groups of Puebloans
probably made limited use of the area, no permanent
occupation of the area occurred until Navajo groups
arrived in the AD 1400s.

Navajo Cultural Sequence

At the present time, archaeological discussion of
Early Navajo remains in the San Juan Basin and
adjacent areas is complicated by the absence of a
current, accurate model for the arrival of Athabascan
peoples (Navajo and various Apachean groups) in
the Southwest. Nevertheless, early tree-ring dates
derived from recent excavations at Early Navajo
locales in the upper San Juan area make it clear that
older models placing the Navajos in the Southwest
after the time of Spanish contact, after AD 1540,
must be revised. Recent work by archaeologist John
Torres-Nez (among others) suggests that Early Navajo

folks entered the northern Southwest in the AD 1400s

and took a migration route (from the north) along
the western slope of the Rocky Mountains through
the modern state of Colorado (see Americas, North:
Rocky Mountains).

Dinetah Phase
The earliest period of Navajo occupation in the San
Juan drainage area is termed the Dinetah phase, defined as the period during which the Navajo settled
in the Southwest. Although extensive work in the
Navajo Reservoir District (Dinetah area) was conducted during the 1950s and 1960s, no indisputable
evidence of Navajo occupation prior to AD 1700 was
uncovered. Thus, in the final report, archaeologist
Frank Eddy chose not to use the Dinetah phase,
instead identifying the period from AD 1550 to
1700 as Indeterminate Navajo. Nevertheless, more
recent research has confirmed the original definition
of the Dinetah phase, and extended its beginning.
Briefly sketched, the Navajo occupation of the upper
San Juan area began between AD 1400 and 1500. This
topic remains a controversial one, although most Early
Navajo researchers now agree that the Navajo were
present in northwestern New Mexico by AD 1500.
Our view is that the Navajo probably entered the
northern reaches of Dinetah early in the fifteenth
century, but were not established before the late
AD 1400s. Site LA 55979, a Navajo habitation located in Dinetah that is tree-ring dated to AD 1541,
certainly supports this interpretation.

AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region 245

Figure 14 Photograph of early Navajo Gobernador phase forked-pole hogan, Redrock Valley, Arizona, with Prayer Rock in the
background. Photograph by author.

Dinetah phase sites (between AD 1450 and 1630),

are characterized by brush structures, forked-pole
hogans, light ceramic and lithic artifact scatters, and
hearths. Dinetah structures often contain east- or
southeast-facing doorways and frequently have associated ash piles to the east or southeast, similar to
modern Navajo structures and homestead layouts.
Although the Navajo of the Dinetah phase were assumed by Navajo Reservoir Project archaeologists
to have been nonagricultural hunter-gatherers who
lived in highly mobile bands, recent research indicates
that at least some Dinetah phase groups were
practicing agriculture and were perhaps as agriculturally dependent as were later Gobernador phase populations. Of particular significance is that the earliest,
best-dated Dinetah phase site (LA 55979) contains
abundant evidence of corn, including burned cobs,
and some evidence of beans, which indicates that
maize, at least, and perhaps beans, were grown by
the inhabitants.
Contact with other groups, such as the Eastern
and Western Pueblos, began during the Early Dinetah
phase and continued on a limited basis into the
Gobernador phase. During the 1500s and early 1600s,
the Spanish were apparently uninterested in the more
mobile inhabitants of the Dinetah region. Spanish
attention was focused on the sedentary Pueblo villages along the Rio Grande. NavajoPuebloan interaction and exchange in the Early Dinetah phase
has been demonstrated by the presence of Jemez
Black-on-white and Jeddito Yellow Ware ceramics
on several dated sites. Other materials such as Pedernal chert from the Jemez-Abiquiu District, obsidian
from the Jemez Mountains and the Flagstaff, Arizona
area, and copper pigments from the Ojo Caliente

District have been recovered from Dinetah phase

sites. These raw materials were undoubtedly obtained
through trade networks or by means of procurement
expeditions. As suggested by Reed and Reed the
social contact and exchange relationships established
between the Navajo and Puebloan groups during
the Dinetah phase provided a means for Puebloan
people to seek refuge with the Navajo during the
Pueblo Revolt (AD 1680) and Spanish Reconquests
(AD 1692 and 1696). Figure 14 shows an Early
Navajo forked-pole hogan in northeastern Arizona.

Gobernador Phase
The Gobernador phase (AD 1630 and 1755) was
originally defined as a period of extensive Puebloan
influence manifested by the influx of Pueblo refugees
fleeing the Spanish Reconquest. This phase is evidenced by the presence of high numbers of northern
Rio Grande and Hopi ceramics, the manufacture of
Gobernador Polychrome ceramics (which resemble
Puebloan ceramic styles), the construction of defensive structures or pueblitos (which resemble Puebloan
architecture), and the appearance of Puebloan-style
masked dancers and kachina-like figures in Navajo
rock art. This evidence of Puebloan influence is augmented by historical documentation of increased
NavajoPuebloan political interaction and trade and
by the presence of Puebloan groups among the Navajo
following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
Beginning in the early 1600s, Navajos began producing a polychrome ceramic now known as Gobernador
Polychrome (in addition to their characteristic utility
ware, Dinetah Gray). The occurrence of this polychrome ceramic at Navajo sites is considered one of

246 AMERICAS, NORTH/American Southwest, Four Corners Region

the primary temporal markers for the Gobernador

phase. The similarity of Gobernador Polychrome to
contemporary Puebloan polychrome vessels (e.g., Rio
Grande Glaze Ware, Tewa Polychrome, and Sikyatki
Polychrome) prompted early researchers to suggest
that it was produced by Pueblo refugees. Considering
that Gobernador Polychrome occurs at sites dating at
least 50 years prior to the Pueblo Revolt, it is unlikely
that it was initially produced by Pueblo refugees. The
multistylistic character of Gobernador Polychrome,
incorporating design styles, design layouts, and color
patterning present on both Eastern and Western Pueblo
pottery, further supports Navajo production and innovation. Given the social ties that probably existed
between the Navajo and Pueblo and the fact that
Navajo tradition acknowledges intermarriage between
the two cultural groups, we recognize the potential
influence resulting from a Puebloan potter marrying
into a Navajo family. Nevertheless, Gobernador Polychrome ultimately represents a Navajo ceramic type
produced over a period of approximately 150 years in
the Dinetah region.
Along with defensive pueblitos, Gobernador phase
sites exhibit a wide range of variability in habitation
types. Dwellings may include any combination
of forked-stick hogans, masonry-walled pueblitos,
lean-tos, and ramadas. The range of site complexity
for habitations is difficult to specify, but pueblito sites
range from 1 to 35 rooms and may have as many as
eight associated hogans. A great variety of traded
ceramics is found at habitation sites, as well as at
associated limited activity, non-habitation sites.
These ceramics include Rio Grande Glaze Ware, Rio
Grande Biscuit Ware, Jemez Black-on-white, Tewa
polychromes, and Eastern Keres, Zuni, and Hopi
wares. Obsidian from the Abiquiu and Jemez areas
is also present.

Evidence of imported ceramics (e.g., Rio Grande

Glaze Ware and Biscuit Ware, Jemez Black-on-white,
Tewa Polychrome) and lithic raw materials (e.g., obsidian from the Abiquiu and Jemez, New Mexico
areas) is more abundant during the Gobernador
phase than during the Dinetah phase; this has been
attributed both to exchange and to the presence of
Pueblo refugees at Navajo pueblito sites. Gobernador
phase sites contain ceramics produced by both Eastern
and Western Pueblo groups. However, no archaeological data beyond the presence of trade ware ceramics and Puebloan-like architecture demonstrates that
the pueblito sites were built or occupied by Pueblo
refugees. The only data that support this inference
are from historic Spanish documents. Figure 15
shows an Early Navajo pueblito site from the early
eighteenth century.
Many researchers of Navajo archaeology and culture have focused on the acculturative processes
operating during the Gobernador phase and the
changes that took place in Navajo population and
culture. James Hester and Joel Shiner discussing
their work on Gobernador phase sites in the Navajo
Reservoir in the 1960s, explained Navajo acceptance
of Puebloan traits as a fusion of Puebloan and Navajo
characteristics that changed Navajo culture forever.
Ethnologists Bailey and Bailey echoed this theme,
suggesting that Gobernador phase Navajo were
biological and cultural hybrids, neither Athabascan
nor Puebloan, but a product of both. As discussed
above, there is little evidence to support the largescale, permanent presence of Puebloans among the
Navajo that would have been necessary to constitute
a site unit intrusion and a truly hybridized culture.
By contrast, we, and other researchers, explain the
presence of Puebloan pottery and architecture, and
the resultant influences on Navajo culture, largely as

Figure 15 Photograph of early Navajo site, Frances Canyon pueblito, northwest New Mexico. Photograph by author.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 247

a result of interaction and diffusion, along with migration of small numbers of Puebloans who became
part of Navajo groups. The origin of at least two
Navajo clans is attributed to Puebloan refugees the
Black Sheep clan (with refugees from San Felipe) and
the Coyote Pass clan (with individuals from Jemez).
Such an interpretation accords well with the hypothesis presented here and, again, does not provide
support for a complete transformation of Navajo
culture and hybridization with Puebloan culture.
Rather, Navajo culture incorporated Puebloan people,
ideas, and certain customs, but remained essentially
Athabascan.
The entire concept and definition of the Gobernador phase is undergoing revision. Archaeologists
Reed and Reed have discussed the evidence indicating
that the manufacture of Gobernador Polychrome
began as early as the 1630s in some areas, more
than 60 years prior to the purported beginning of
the Gobernador phase. Ron Towners work on the
dendrochronology of the area suggested that most of
the pueblito sites were not constructed until the
1720s, more than 30 years after the main exodus of
Puebloan people from the Rio Grande area is assumed to have occurred. Thus, it is probably a misnomer to describe these sites as refugee phenomena.
In addition, a study of pueblito location and visibility
has suggested that the pueblito system was largely a
defensive response to Ute raiding that is ethnohistorically documented to have increased in scale and
intensity after 1720. The suggestion that the construction of the pueblitos was a response to Ute pressure is not, however, new. Roy Carlson made such a
suggestion in 1965 while reporting on Earl Morriss
work from the 1920s. In sum, recent work has
changed our understanding of the Early Navajo
Gobernador phase and the cultural evolution and
history of the Navajo people.
See also: Americas, North: California and the Sierra
Nevada; Great Basin; Plains; Rocky Mountains.

Further Reading
Cordell LS (1997) Archaeology of the Southwest. San Diego:
Academic Press.
Dykeman DD (ed.) (in press) Navajo Lifeways. Boulder: University
of Colorado Press.
Frison GC (1991) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains, 2nd edn.
San Diego: Academic Press.
Hogan P (1989) Dinetah: A Reevaluation of the Pre-Revolt Navajo
Occupation in Northwestern New Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Research 45(1): 5366.
Irwin-Williams C (1973) The Oshara Tradition: Origins of Anasazi
Culture. Contributions in Anthropology 5(3). Portales: Eastern
New Mexico University.

Judge WJ (1973) The Paleo-Indian Occupation of the Central Rio

Grande Valley, New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press.
Matson RG (1991) The Origins of Southwestern Agriculture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Pitblado B (1994) Paleoindian Presence in Southwest Colorado.
Southwestern Lore 60(4): 120.
Reed PF (ed.) (2000) Foundations of Anasazi Culture: The
Basketmaker-Pueblo Transition. Salt Lake City: University of
Utah Press.
Reed PF (2004) The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press.
Towner RH (1993) Defending the Dinetah: Pueblitos in the Ancestral Navajo Homeland. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah
Press.
Towner RH (ed.) (1996) The Archaeology of Navajo Origins. Salt
Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
Varien M and Wilshusen RH (eds.) (2002) Seeking the Center
Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in the Mesa
Verde Region. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
Vierra BJ (ed.) (1994) Archaic Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology in
the American Southwest. Portales: Eastern New Mexico
University.

Arctic and Circumpolar

Regions
William W Fitzhugh, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
biface A stone tool formed by removing flakes from both faces
or sides.
burin A tool flaked into a chisel point for inscribing or grooving
bone, wood, leather, stone or antler.
colonization Colonization occurs whenever any one or more
species populates a new areas. Colonization encompasses all
large-scale emigrations of an established population to a new
location, such as immigration, the establishment of expatriate
communities, and the use of guest workers.
ethnography The branch of anthropology that deals with the
scientific description of specific human cultures.
Eskimo/Inuit The indigenous people of the Arctic, from eastern
Siberia to Greenland.
lithic analysis The analysis of stone tools and other chipped
stone artifacts using basic scientific techniques to determine
source of the raw material and function of stone tools.
permafrost Soil or rock that remains below 0  C throughout the
year, and forms when the ground cools sufficiently in winter to
produce a frozen layer that persists throughout the following
summer.
potlatch An elaborate ritual of redistribution and gift-giving
practiced by the peoples of the Northwest coast.
ungulate Mammals with hoofs, in the Arctic this includes the
Siberian staiga antelope, musk-ox, and caribou and reindeer
(reindeer are domesticated caribou).

248 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Introduction
In 1576, when Martin Frobisher landed on Baffin
Island in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, he was welcomed by a hail of arrows from Inuit. (The term
Inuit is used in this article to refer to the current
native residents of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland
and their immediate ancestors, formerly called
Eskimos. Eskimo is a term of uncertain origin but
probably derives from a northern Algonquian Indian
group which later came to be applied to Labrador
Inuit and by extension to all native peoples of the
Arctic from Alaska to Greenland. The term Eskimo
remains in use to refer collectively to prehistoric
peoples and cultures of the North American Arctic
and as a term referring to all native groups, including
Sugpiak, Yupik, Siberian Yupik, Inuit, and Kalladlit
(Greenlanders) where no other term exists.) Their
physical features, reinforced bows, iron tools, and
copper ornaments encouraged the Cathay Companys
search for a northwest passage to the Orient (Figure 1).
Frobishers discovery of an Asian population living
successfully in an Arctic environment raised questions

that intrigued Europeans of the time, and historians

and anthropologists ever since. Who were their
ancestors? Where did they come from? How long
have they lived in the Arctic? And how did they manage to survive even flourish in one of Earths most
hostile environments?
During the past century, anthropologists and
archaeologists have discovered some answers. Some
have come from the Inuit themselves; however, most
come from archaeological finds in frozen Arctic soils.
From these remains we have learned how Arctic
peoples adapted to and occupied the harshest regions
on Earth for thousands of years, making unique contributions to society through such inventions as the
kayak, insulated clothing, snow goggles, toggling harpoons, etc. Studies of northern peoples also have led to
better understanding of human origins and history.
Paradoxically, Eskimos one of the last people to be
drawn into contact with Western society retained
traditions established by humans adapting to Arctic
conditions during the last Ice Age. Consequently,
Eskimos, northern Indians, and Siberians are our

Figure 1 Martin Frobishers encounter with Inuit near Kodlunarn Island, outer Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island, in 1576. Drawn by John
White. (British Museum Library).

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 249

only ethnographic analogs for interpreting human life

in the Upper Palaeolithic, when Arctic environments
extended far south of their modern boundaries and
covered most of Europe and Central Asia. Much of
human history in Eurasia during the past 70 000 years
was lived under arctic and subarctic conditions, and
this experience became a prerequisite for entering the
Americas via Bering Strait. Not only were Americas
first peoples arctic-adapted, but the residue of their
experience and that of subsequent Beringian immigrants is part of the cultural and biological heritage
of all New World peoples, past and present.
This article summarizes the history of arctic cultures
and modern research themes in the North American
sector of the circumpolar region. Survival in Arctic
regions requires special technological, social, economic, and spiritual systems. In the following sections,
we consider how these conditions have been met to
sustain humans and their cultures over thousands of
years. Geographic coverage conforms primarily to the
tundra, but includes some subarctic coastal regions in
Alaska and Labrador occupied by Eskimo peoples
(Figures 2 and 3).

The Arctic Environment

To the uninitiated, the Arctic is a vast expanse of featureless tundra, mountains, or sea ice that seems at first

3 2
0 8

32

34

0
4
34
32

28

28
6
2 8
2

30

18

Ocean currents

18 14
16
12
10
8
6

10

(a)

4
2 20

34

16

4
2

0
2

28

10

Some Arctic boundaries

36
0

24
26 30

2
20
18
16

4
26
2

Jan mean daily temperature

glance inimical to human life. Yet, within this sea of

uniformity is a surprising diversity of landforms, geography, biota, marine conditions, and climates. The region itself is huge. Ranging from 51 N in southern
Labrador to 83 N in North Greenland, Arctic tundra
and shrub tundra encompass mountains, plains,
deserts, and bogs, and host a diverse biota of land and
sea mammals, avifauna, invertebrates, fish, and not
least a plague of insect pests. These resources are
not distributed evenly, spatially or seasonally. While
humans can easily starve in winter on the interior barrens, the nearby coast may be alive with food resources.
Some areas devoid of life for months erupt into a
cornucopia of food during a brief season of abundance
each year, while others are permanent ecological hot
spots (see Seasonality of Site Occupation). In addition
to seasonality, weather always the Arctic wild card
has a huge impact on animals and their availability
to hunters. Although Arctic regions are less diverse
than temperate and tropical regions, some species are
present in great concentration. Subarctic and Arctic
marine zones have more diverse food chains and greater number of species than northern forest and Arctic
tundra regions, and therefore have greater ecological
and cultural stability, while the latter have simple
food chains, low species diversity, and frequent disruptions from fire and winter icing, and their boom-andbust population cycles make human life precarious.

20

22

22 20

Tree line
July 10 8C
Permafrost

(b)
Sea ice
Ex

t en
to

fs
um

m
p
er

ac

ki

ce
E xt e n

of

s p ring

ce

pac
ki

Usually ice-covered

(c)

(d)

Usually ice-free
for several months

Figure 2 Physical parameters of the North American Arctic (courtesy of Smithsonian HNAI 1984/Arctic, vol. 5, p. 30, fig. 1).

250 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Aleutian
Islands

Pacific
Coast &
Kodiak I

Southwest
Alaska

Chukchi
Peninsula

North
Alaska

Thule Tradition

1500

Central
Arctic

High Arctic
Greenland

(Neo-Eskimo)

Labrador

Norse

1000
AD
BC
1000

Aleutian
Tradition

Kodiak
Tradition

Norton Tradition
( P a l a e o-E s k i m o )
Arctic Small Tool Tradition

Dorset Tradition

( P a l a e o-E s k i m o )

2000
3000
4000

Ocean Bay Tradition

5000

Palaeo-Arctic tradition
6000
7000
8000

Figure 3 Culture history of the North American Arctic region (after Dumond 1977, figure 118).

To survive under these conditions, Arctic peoples

developed variants of four major ethnographic adaptation types: (1) specialized adaptations to caribou hunting on the northern interior (Nunamiut and Caribou
Inuit); (2) specialized adaptations to coastal and marine
resources (Aleut, St. Lawrence Island Yupik); (3) generalist adaptations involving dual economies with winter
hunting on the interior and summer hunting and fishing
on the coast (Inupiat Eskimos, Central Inuit); or
(4) herding of domestic reindeer, a technology not
practiced in North America but prevalent in Eurasia.
Resource-rich areas like the Bering and Chukchi
Seas, Foxe BasinHudson Strait, and Davis Strait
Labrador Sea have supported human populations on
a long-term basis and fostered some of the highest
levels of Arctic cultural development. River outlets
where fish, seals, and white whales congregate also
have high population potential. Other areas, including much of the Canadian High Arctic and northern
Greenland, have few resources and little or episodic
settlement history. Over-hunting by humans either
by itself or superimposed on natural animal or climatic cycles that resulted in freezing of polynias (ice-free
zones) or icing of ungulate foraging grounds has
been a frequent cause of human extinction or abandonment in High Arctic regions. Similar catastrophes
occurred in Alaska due to severe storms, volcanism,
earthquakes, and tidal waves.
Resource variation that results in ecological patchiness has led archaeologists to use ecological and

biogeographical concepts like hot spots, core areas,

peripheries, and voids to help interpret Arctic culture
history. In general, long-term settlement and continuity occurs in areas where animal resources are more
predictable and abundant. In contrast, resource-poor
or unstable regions tend to have episodic settlement
history and less cultural and demographic continuity.
For these reasons, human communities in the Arctic
tend to be widely spaced and have low populations,
except in the most productive resource zones. Early
contact population sizes closely follow scaling factors
determined by resource abundance and predictability,
and these gradients also determined limits on cultural
complexity and sociopolitical development. Extremely
high population levels, complex art, social hierarchies, warfare, and presence of craft specialists found
among Northwest Coast and Pacific Eskimo cultures
are more weakly expressed north of the Aleutians in
Alaska and are even less well-developed in the Central
Canadian Arctic and Greenland. However, these
patterns are only general tendencies; variation in technology, social conditions, human response, leadership,
and a host of other conditions intersect ecological
constraints (see Cultural Ecology). Instances of artistic
florescence have occurred in the midst of economic
and social privation, as seen during a period of starvation at Ammassalik in East Greenland in the late
1800s, or the blossoming of Late Dorset art during a
period of climatic change and cultural upheaval
c. AD 10001300.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 251

Western Arctic: Alaska

Palaeo-Alaskans

The North American Arctic (including Greenland)

was the last large continental area except Antarctica
to be occupied by humans (Figure 4). Considering
that Arctic-adapted humans migrated from Asia into
Alaska c. 20 00015 000 BP across the grassy Arctic
tundra of the Bering Land Bridge, it is remarkable
that the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, and northern
Labrador remained uninhabited until 4200 BP. (Unless otherwise stated, dates given as BP or years ago
are in uncalibrated radiocarbon years; AD or BC
dates indicate calendar or calibrated radiocarbon
years. In general, dates are given as BP except for
the last thousand years, when calendar dates areused to facilitate comparison with historical records.)
Similarly, while Palaeo-Indian archaeological sites
are abundant south of the retreating ice sheets
11 000 years ago, the Eastern Arctic was not colonized until well after the disappearance of glacial ice
and establishment of modern conditions 5000
6000 years ago. This delay in occupation is mirrored
in much earlier times by the east-sloping trend in
Eurasian Arctic colonization: 40 00060 000 years
ago in Western Siberia, 35 00028 000 in the Lena
and Yana River basins, 15 00013 000 in Alaska,
and 4200 in Greenland.

Following the initial peopling of Alaska from Siberia,

probably between 15 000 and 13 000 BP, a variety of
complexes appear in central and southern Alaska
between 11 000 and 7000 BP. Although having different names (Beringian, Denali, Palaeo-Arctic, PalaeoIndian, Nenana, Late Tundra) and slightly different
meanings, these complexes or traditions (whose organic assemblages are rarely preserved) share small
microblades, various biface styles, and burins, slotted
bone points, and a variety of unifacial scrapers and
knives. Complications of dating, small sample size,
and classification history make it difficult to extract
cultural information from these assemblages, and
some have suggested they may all be seasonal, functional, refuse, or chane-operatoire variants of a single cultural tradition. All of these groups descend
generally from Late Dyuktai Palaeolithic and Early
Sumnagin Mesolithic traditions of Siberian big game
hunters and lived in mobile camps primarily in forested regions. These assemblages form the basis for later
interior Alaskan and Northwest Canadian traditions
that continue using bone points armed with microblade insets and include bifaces that begin to be
broadly side or corner notched. Known as Northern
Archaic in Alaska and Northwest Microblade in the

Chukotka

Pe
ary
l

Arctic Ocean

hS

ort

Axel
Heiberg l.

lop

High Arctic Islands

s
nd
la
Is

Beaufort Sea

Cook Inlet

Mackenzie
Delta

Kodiak l.

Mackenzie

Katchemak
Bay

Parry Channel

Victoria l.

Greenland

Thule/Qaanaaq

Cape York

Melville l.

Banks l.

Amundsen
Gulf

S mith Sou
nd

L. Hazen

eN

Alaska

Iceland

Ellesmere l.

Th

n
tia
eu
Al

Anangula
Margaret
Bay

Cape Denbigh

an
d

Independence Fiord

Ch
uk
ch
iS
Bering Strait
a
ea
Se
Point Hope
g
Norton
Akmak
in
r
Sd.
Barrow
Be

St. Lawrence l.

Devon l.

Upernavik

Lancaster Sound

Baffin Bay

Disko Bay

Central Arctic
Baffin l.

River

Boothia
Pen.
King
William l.

Great
Bear L.

The Barren Grounds

PR

Igloolik
Melville
Peninsula

Foxe
Basin
Southampton l.

ES

Great Slave L.

T
EN

Davis Strait
Cape Dorset

To

EE
LI

Ungava

NE

L. Athabaska

Frobisher Bay

Hudson Strait

TR

Canada

Ammassalik

Maximum extent
of Eskimo occupation

Hudson Bay

rn

ga

tM

ts

Labrador Sea
.

Labrador

LAnse aux
Meadows

Port au Choix
Gulf of St. Lawrence

Newfoundland

Figure 4 Map of the North American Arctic showing greatest extent of Eskimo occupation and geographic places noted in text.

252 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Yukon, their sites are found at interior lake, river,

and forest locations where large game and fishing
provided resources for peoples whose lives were
probably similar to ethnographic Athapaskans.
The major exceptions to this pattern are the
Anangula and Akmak sites, from radically different
settings. Akmak, a northern interior riverine site
probably dating about 9500 BP, has a large core,
blade, and burin assemblage similar to Anagula but
also has a microcore industry, large bifaces, and disk
scrapers. Anangula, by contrast, is a marine-oriented
site in the Eastern Aleutians dating c. 8000 BP whose
setting required a sea mammal economy supplemented by coastal foraging; its unifacial technology based
exclusively on a macrocore and blade industry may be
a local version of Siberian Mesolithic industry (see
Maritime Archaeology).
Anangula and other early sites along the Pacific
coast of Alaska and northern Northwest Coast were
occupied by core and blade-using people who exploited a wide range of coastal and marine resources,
probably using barbed harpoons. Anangula is larger
and was occupied for a longer period than contemporary interior sites, and by 8000 BP its people used oil
lamps and lived in large multiseason coastal base
camps similar to those of most other ethnographic
North Pacific peoples. Further, this implies a strong
distinction between coastal and interior peoples in
adaptation and settlement patterns, a feature which
has also continued, culturally, linguistically, and to
some extent biologically, until the present. It also suggests that maritime-adapted coastal communities, now
inundated, must have been present along the Pacific
coasts of Alaska at even earlier dates.
Clovis-like fluted points are found occasionally in
northern and western Alaska and northwesternCanada where they are thought to date to 11 000
9000 years ago; however, their context and associations
are poorly understood, and most archaeologists consider them a late northern variant of classic Clovis
culture.

model that links development of cultural complexity

to economic intensification in a predictable, highproductivity marine resource zone.
Laughlin also tackled the Eskimo origin problem
from the perspective of Aleut cultural geography.
Whereas Collins and Jenness had emphasized the
Bering Strait and its Siberian connection as the nexus
for Eskimo origins, Laughlin proposed Aleuts descended from early maritime peoples of the southern
coast of the Bering Land Bridge who retreated to
the Alaska Peninsula and from there colonized the
Aleutian Chain. The Anangula blade site was a crucial
link in his argument and became the foundation for his
belief in the movement of proto-Eskimo populations
north along the Bering Sea coast, thereby founding
the Eskimo maritime cultural tradition that later spread
to Chukotka, Canada, and Greenland.
Laughlins Eskimo theory, now discounted in
favor of a SiberianBeringian origin, was developed
before much was known about the prehistory of the
Aleutians or mainland southwest Alaska (Figures 5
and 6). Recent work in both areas reveals a 9000 year
history of occupation by a succession of increasingly specialized sea-mammal-hunting societies whose

Aleutian Islands and Pacific Coast

The idea of long-term cultural continuity in the

Aleutian Islands was vigorously promoted initially
by William S. Laughlin, who not only envisioned
10 000 years of continuity in maritime technological
development and subsistence technology but also saw
persistence in religious ritual, human biology, and language. Laughlins Aleut survival model based on gradual culture change, limited population influx, isolation
from Asia, and slow cultural diffusion from the Alaska
mainland has proven a convincing application of biogeographic theory to Arctic prehistory. Today, these
ideas are expressed in terms of a maritime stability

Figure 5 Aleutian barbed harpoon for hunting whales with

aconite poison, c. AD 1000 (23.6 cm; SI-NMNH A395958, 395999).

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 253

Figure 6 Ivory figures with Asiatic facial features, seal effigy crest, hair topknots, and marked limb joints. Found at Port Moller, Alaska,
but of unknown age and function (SI-NMNH A492418, 6, 7, left to right).

Figure 7 Natives of Oonalaschka, and Their Habitations, by John Webber, artist on Captain James Cooks expedition to the North
Pacific in 1778 (courtesy of Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, SI-NMNH).

peoples lived in large central-place villages (Figures 7

and 8). Developing out of an Anangula base with
the addition of a ground slate (in Kodiak), biface
industries (in the Aleutians), and use of atlatl/spear
thrower-propelled harpoon darts and nontoggling
harpoons by at least 7000 BP, these early maritime
cultures soon displayed signs of social hierarchy,

political complexity, and artistic traditions comparable

to Northwest Coast cultures. These features are strongly expressed in the Margaret Bay and Kachemak phases
in which dwellings and settlement size increase together with signs of warfare and ritual (perhaps cannibalistic) treatment of human remains, probably slaves,
are evident. The last thousand years display increasing

254 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Radiocarbon
years BP

Glacial
advances
Prince William
Sound

0
LIA

Eastern
Aleutians

Late
Aleutians

Kodiak
Archipelago

Alutiiq
Koniag

1000
2000

Amaknak

3000
Margaret
Bay
4000
5000

Late
Anangula

6000

Late
Kachemak
Early
Kachemak
Ocean
Bay II

Ocean
Bay I

7000
Early
Anangula

8000
9000
10 000
11 000

Remnant
ice

Palaeo-Arctic (presumed across entire region)

Figure 8 Culture history of southwest Alaska. LIA stands for Little Ice Age.

population growth, multifamily dwellings, chiefly hierarchy, and other results of social, economic, and political intensification later documented by European
explorers and Russian traders and missionaries. Growing success in maritime adaptation is documented by
progressive expansion of settlement westward, requiring increasingly longer water passages from the Alaska
Peninsula, reaching Umnak and Fox Islands by
8000 BP, Amchitka and Rat Islands by 4500 BP, and
Near Islands by 2500 BP.
The existence of distinct archaeological traditions
in the Aleutians, Kodiak, Bering Sea, and Northwest
Coast suggests that the divisions seen today in ethnicity, language, and human biology are rooted thousands of years in the past. Rough conformity with
environmental zones affirms the influence of geography on origins and maintenance of cultural traditions
in this region. At the same time, migration, diffusion,
and other types of culture contact occur across these
boundaries. Similarities in harpoons, spear-throwers,
graphic styles, wooden bowl and ladle forms, house

types, kayaks, ceremonial hats, labrets, and other

personal ornaments indicate cultural borrowing was
widespread across porous, shifting IndianAleut
Eskimo borders, driven by institutional warfare,
slave-taking, potlatch ceremonialism, trade in exotic
materials, craft and art specialization (see Interpretive
Art and Archaeology; Craft Specialization; Figure 9).
Language borrowing and genetic mixing is also documented. More distant influences like slat armor, fortified village and refuge sites, and sinew-backed bows
reached this region from Siberia and Bering Strait.
Throughout this sequence, continuity and gradual
elaboration of cultural forms are dominant features
of the southern EskimoAleut tradition.
Despite mixing on its southern border with
Indians, the Kodiak and Aleutian traditions remained
Eskimo/Aleut in general type and were subject to
periodic influences from the Bering Sea. Following
introduction of microblades with the earliest Asian
settlers, the next major intrusion occurred shortly
after 4000 years ago when Arctic Small Tool tradition

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 255

(ASTt) peoples appeared on the Alaskan Peninsula

and in Cook Inlet from the north. Although not
penetrating Kodiak Island, its influence reached the
Eastern Aleutians. This Siberian Neolithic-related tradition, including a tool kit based on microblades and
delicate collaterally flaked bifacial arrowpoints, knives,
and bipoints, as well as burins, arrived in Alaska so

suddenly that it almost certainly reflects the movement

of Siberian people into Alaska. Known as Western ASTt
in Alaska, its expansion into southwest Alaska comes
with cooling climate and a southward expansion of sea
ice to the Alaska Peninsula, and lasted until c. 3300 BP,
coincident with a major phase of volcanism, after
which it amalgamated with the pre-existing Aleutian
and Sugpiak traditions of the Pacific coast.
Western Alaska

Figure 9 Funerary mask from the Unga Island whalers burial

cave in the Shumagin Islands, collected by William Healy Dall in
the early 1870s (NMNH A13002).

Siberian ASTt people appeared a few hundred years

earlier, c. 4500 BP, in Norton Sound, carrying the first
bows and arrows to appear in Western North America
(Figure 10). Known here as the Denbigh Flint
Complex, the new armament helped them spread
rapidly, exploiting caribou and salmon. At least initially, marine mammal hunting was not an ASTt specialty; however, sealing, including sea-ice hunting
(which is suggested at a few sites), may also have
been practiced and became common by Choris times.
The largely aceramic Western Arctic Small Tool
tradition (Figure 11) establishes the basis for the ceramic Norton Tradition and its Old Whaling, Ipiutak,
and Norton/Near Ipiutak phases until the onset of
Western Thule tradition about AD 1000. Norton
lithics display evolved Denbigh styles with delicate
arrowpoints and harpoon endblades, skin scrapers,
and ground burin-like tools; decorated Asian-derived
ceramic vessels also appear for the first time, suggesting longer periods of coastal settlement, sufficient
firewood, and sea mammal hunting. Toggling harpoons, darts, and antler arrowheads are present, and

Figure 10 Arctic Small Tool tradition artifacts from the Cape Denbigh, Seward Peninsula, Alaska (University of Alaska Museum).

256 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Alaska
Northern
Kotzebue-Barrow

Bering Strait

Western
Kusk./Norton Sd.

RC yrs BP

Thule

Thule

Thule

1000

Birnirk
Punuk
Ipiutak
Norton

1500
Norton

Old Bering
Sea/Okvik
2500

Choris
Denbigh flint
Denbigh flint

Northern
Archaic

4000

Northern
Archaic
5000

SiberianAmerican

Figure 12 Old Bering Sea harpoon counterweight or winged

object, depicting semi-human spirit-controller (SI-NMNH).

Palaeo-Arctic
10 000

Figure 11 Prehistory of Western Alaska.

lip labrets another Asian introduction appear.

Large coastal and interior settlement sites with cemeteries are found for the first time, and a growing
seasonal specialization on sea mammal hunting begins
to rival the importance of caribou. Toward the end of
this period, c. 1500 BP, Ipiutak village and cemetery
sites at Point Hope exhibit an elaborate burial cult
with strong links to Siberian shamanism and masking,
and artistic elaboration of tools, implements, and ritual objects bearing images of fantastic creatures. Not
least, forged iron traded from Siberia makes its first
appearance in America in the form of tiny slivers used
for engraving tools. This seemingly small technological
change accelerated the development of one of the
worlds greatest native art traditions and may have
contributed to the Thule movement into Canada.
Beginning about 2000 BP, concurrent with Late
Norton tradition sites on the Alaska mainland, a
highly specialized maritime hunting tradition known
as Thule or Northern Maritime began to emerge at
sites on St. Lawrence and Punuk Islands and along
the shores around Bering Strait, appearing first in
Chukotka. After developing for nearly 1000 years,
about AD 1000, it suddenly spread east into Canada
and Greenland where it is known as Eastern Thule.
The origin of Eskimo culture is most closely linked to the Western Thule tradition and its ASTt
predecessors.
The early phases of this tradition display implements
with highly decorative fine-line engraving depicting

beastly helping spirits, animal spirit masters, and

semi-human transformational spirit beings to aid the
hunt and protect the hunter from harm (Figure 12).
Similar tattooed designs have been found on frozen
human bodies dating to the Okvik/Old Bering Sea
cultures that initiate this tradition. Ivory engraving
was initially done with stone tools at Okvik sites,
but in later OBS, Punuk, Ipiutak, and Thule phases
forged Siberian iron was universal. Deep middens and
large sod house villages signify large populations
and a flourishing economy based on the huge migrating herds of walrus that pass annually through Bering
Strait. However, whaling harpoons and float gear
in OBS sites indicate that shortly after 2000 BP,
people began to hunt large whales, and by Punuk
times (c. 15001000 BP) whaling had become the
economic mainstay for many communities, enabling
population growth and clan-based sociopolitical development. Punuk also brought an increase in
warfare, signaled by the appearance of Asian bone
slat armor, sinew-backed bows, execution burials, fortified sites, and other trappings of conflict (Figure 13).
Punuks successor, Western Thule, become increasingly enmeshed in a growing cycle of trans-Beringian
trade, raiding, and warfare fueled by pressure from
Cossacks in Western Chukotka and, after 1750, by
direct ship-based Russian and European trade to
coastal native groups (see Ships and Seafaring).
Beginning about 2000 years ago, another economic
revolution took place. While North Pacific and
Beringian peoples were learning to hunt large marine

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 257

mammals, peoples of the Siberian interior began

herding reindeer and using dog- or reindeer-drawn
sleds. More than just a novel technology, reindeer
herding and animal-powered sleds transformed
Siberian peoples from hunters to herders and reverberated throughout every aspect of their lives (see Animal
Domestication). Freed from precarious lives as hunters,
sled traction enabled people to travel long distances in
both winter and summer, and by the sixteenth century
Chukchi herders had become skilled warriors and
traders who successfully resisted the incursions of
Russian Cossacks, with whom they fought as well

Figure 13 Armor vest of bone slats and walrus hide from nineteenth century Bering Strait Eskimo. Slat armor first appears
about 2000 years ago in Chukotka Old Bering Sea sites
(SI-NMNH CL-596).

as traded. Chukchi became powerful middlemen, exchanging Russian and Chinese iron, tobacco, tea,
beads, and other goods with Bering Strait Eskimos in
return for Alaskan furs, jade, hides, and ivory. Despite
its rapid spread throughout northern Eurasia, probably
from a South Siberian origin about 2000 years ago,
reindeer herding never crossed Bering Strait until the
1890s, when it was introduced in a government experiment to alleviate Eskimo starvation resulting from the
near extermination of whales and walrus by American
vessels.
While these developments were taking place,
Northwest Alaskan Eskimos were experiencing more
centralized leadership and social control that came
with manning whaling crews and dealing with
Siberian traders and warriors. One result was that
hunting art and ceremony lost its artistically based
spiritual value in the communities north of Norton
Sound and began a slow decline, until by historic
times it survived mainly in southwest Alaska and the
Aleutians (Figure 14). South of Bering Strait, the
coast was too shallow for large whales, and Thule
and Siberian influence was diminished, although
warfare became prevalent here also in the late
prehistoric period. Somewhat isolated in the resource-rich YukonKuskokwim delta, Bering Sea
Central Yupik Eskimos fished and hunted seals and
walrus, and by historic times had the highest density
of any Eskimo population in the Arctic. Living in
permanent villages, they maintained a complex ceremonial life, created world-class art comparable
to Pacific Eskimos and Northwest Coast Indians
(Figure 15), and continued to produce elaborately decorated hunting implements styled in an evolved form
of Old Bering Sea art that shows little influence from
Punuk or Western Thule culture. Unfortunately, there

Figure 14 Toggling harpoon heads from Ipiutak, Punuk, Old Bering Sea, and Late Punuk cultures (left to right) illustrating decline in
decoration of hunting implements in Western Alaska Eskimo cultures between AD 500 and 1000, coincident with the advent of whaling
(SI-NMNH A346914l , A346907, A353767; Univ. of Alaska UA851501261).

258 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Figure 15 Yupik Bering Sea Eskimo tunghak festival mask from Lower Yukon River depicting the spirit-controller of game who lived
in the moon. Collected in 1879 by Edward Nelson (SI-NMNH 33118).

is almost no archaeological record of the intervening 1500 years in this deeply sedimented, permafrost
delta region.

Eastern Arctic: Canada and Greenland

The appearance of Punuk whalers in Bering Strait
set the stage for the second major cultural wave to
wash out of Alaska into the Canadian Arctic and
Greenland, disrupting and eventually replacing the
Palaeo-Eskimo tradition that had migrated from
Alaska 3000 years earlier (Figure 16). Set against the
cultural and environmental diversity of Alaska, the
Eastern Arctic sequence of Pre-Dorset, Dorset, and
Thule cultures appears unilineal and deceptively
simple. The Eastern Arctic also exhibits considerable
regionalism and cultural diversity, with periods of
parallelism in Canada and Greenland and a varied
history of European contact. Its independence from
Alaska, relative lack of engagement with subarctic
Indian cultures, and long periods of cultural stability
are its most distinctive features. Excepting the Thule
revolution, its prehistory is dominated by a gradualist
approach to change, perhaps a cultural response to
tightly constrained environmental conditions.
Unlike Alaska, where forest cover, submergence,
volcanism, earthquakes, tidal waves, and coastal
erosion have hindered site discovery, geology and
botany in the Eastern Arctic have been friendlier to
the archaeologist. Postglacial isostatic uplift has
preserved sites associated with former shorelines;
absence of shrub and forest cover facilitates site discovery; and limestone bedrock, permafrost, and low

summer temperatures have preserved organic remains

throughout much of the region. Culturally and environmentally, the Eastern Arctic is a very different
world from the trans-Beringian and Pacific Alaska
region. The coast from Barrow to the Mackenzie
River, although having abundant caribou, is poor in
coastal shelter and marine mammal resources and has
long been known as a population void and a cultural
and linguistic boundary. Alaskan cultures rarely penetrated further east, and Eastern Arctic cultures rarely
influenced Alaska. Once across this threshold, a new
ecological basin of attraction opens, drawing people
eastward. The Mackenzie Delta offers rich fish and
beluga resources, and the Canadian Arctic coasts and
islands have herds of musk-ox and caribou. The Arctic
islands and mainland both have char and other fish.
Seals are widely available but lack concentration except in Foxe Basin, Hudson Strait, and the Davis Strait
and Labrador Sea coasts, where harp seals, walrus,
and sea birds also are abundant. Beluga are present in
river mouths and along the southern Arctic coasts,
whereas narwhal frequent High Arctic waters. Large
whales bowheads and Greenland right whales
frequent the larger island passages and Davis Strait
Labrador Sea regions, while humpbacks have a
subarctic Atlantic range.
All of these resources are subject to fluctuations and
periodic collapse from factors such as changes in climate, ocean temperature, and sea ice distribution;
closing and opening of ice-free polynias; icing of
caribou and musk-ox pasture; and forest and tundra
fires, predation, and other disruptions. Lacking the
insurance policy of Alaskas large fish runs, Eastern

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 259

Date
1500

North
Alaska

Northeastern
Siberia

Central
Arctic

Thule

Thule

Thule

Punuk

Birnirk

Late Dorset

High
Arctic

West
Greenland

Thule

Thule

Labrador Newfoundland
Thule

1000
Late Dorset

Late Dorset

Late Dorset

500
AD
BC

Ipiutak

Old Bering Sea

Nor ton

Early Dorset

Choris

Trans. Dorset

500
?

Middle Dorset (Unoccupied)

Middle Dorset

Early Dorset
Ind. II

Early Dorset

Middle Dorset Middle Dorset

Early Dorset
Groswater

Groswater

1000
(Pre-Dorset)
1500
2000

Neolithic
Cultures

Denbigh
Flint
Complex

Pre-Dorset

Ind. I

Saqqaq

Late
Pre-Dorset
Early
Pre-Dorset

Early
Pre-Dorset

2500
Key:
Neo-Eskimo (Inuit) Culture
Palaeo-Eskimo Culture
Greenlandic Norse
Figure 16 Culture classification of North Alaska and Eastern Arctic prehistory.

Arctic peoples had to solve subsistence problems with

their wits and their feet. Wide-ranging transport, interregional social and economic networks for informationsharing, dispersed demographic structure, flexible
social organization, adaptable technologies, intimate
knowledge of environmental conditions, and other
cultural practices were prerequisites for survival. In
the Western Arctic, these characteristics were often
overshadowed by trade, politics, and military issues.
For human exploitation, this ecological structure
created a patchwork of local environments ranging
from core or focal resource zones with relatively longterm sustainability, to resource-poor zones where
human survival was possible only for short periods
or under favorable conditions. This characteristic is
best exemplified in Greenland, where Christian Vibe
demonstrated correlations between animal population
levels, climate, and drift ice cycles, with profound
implications for cultural history. Similar models have
helped explain episodic, short-term occupations of
High Arctic Canada and Greenland, where occupation
sequences correlate with warm climate, open polynias,
and presence of driftwood and musk-ox or caribou. In
these locations, a small pioneering group may exploit
local resource capital for a few generations during
a warm period, only to face an eventual crisis from
unsustainable hunting practices, colder climates, or
changed ocean currents.

Eastern Palaeo-Eskimo Tradition

About 4200 BP, small bands of ASTt hunters expanding east from northern Alaska colonized Canadas Arctic Islands, northern Hudson Bay, Greenland, and
northern Labrador. Known in three regional variants,
Early Pre-Dorset in the central Arctic, Independence
I in the High Arctic (Figure 17), and Saqqaq in West
Greenland, they hunted caribou and musk-ox with
spears and bows and arrows and took sea mammals
with small barbed male-socket and open-socket harpoons. Climatic conditions were warm, and driftwood
from Siberia and Alaska was widely available. Winter
and summer dwellings were simply tents bisected with
axial pavements with central fireplaces for roasting and
cooking with boiling stones. During the late Early
Palaeo-Eskimo period, soapstone oil lamps and slab
box boiling stone hearths begin to appear (Figure 18).
In addition to harpoons and leisters, stone tools were
flaked from colorful cherts and agates and had ritual
and aesthetic as well as functional qualities. Over the
roughly 1500 year tenure of the Early Palaeo-Eskimo
tradition, tool styles changed gradually: serrated edges
gave way to straight edges and facial grinding on burins
and bifaces increased, and in West Greenland Saqqaq
became a dominant feature of lithic technology.
Toward the end of this period, Early PalaeoEskimo culture evolved into a new complex known

260 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Figure 17 Independence I culture artifacts from Peary Land (courtesy of Smithsonian HNAI 1984/Arctic, vol. 5, p. 530, fig. 2).

in northern Greenland as Independence II and in

Labrador and Newfoundland as Groswater; it is
also sometimes known as Transitional Palaeo-Eskimo
(c. 28001800 BP). Continuities in axial house form
and tools link this phase with Pre-Dorset and
Independence I cultures, with whom it also shared
subsistence and settlement systems based on winter
land hunting and summer coastal hunting of seals and
walrus. Soapstone lamps became more common; box
hearths were rare; and in Newfoundland a burst of
spectacular artistry developed in the manufacture
of delicate bifacial points. A remarkable feature of
the period is its horizon-style distribution. Nearly
identical architecture and tool styles occurred
throughout the Eastern Arctic; lithic materials and

other commodities were traded great distances; and

territorial boundaries reached southern Hudson Bay,
southern Labrador, Newfoundland, and eastern
Quebec, where it lasted as an outlier until 1800 BP.
The centuries after 2500 BP in northern Hudson Bay
gave rise to the first phase of the Late Palaeo-Eskimo
Dorset culture. With continuity from late Early
Palaeo-Eskimo technology and housing, Early Dorset
produced several innovations, including improvements
in harpoon technology, ground burin-like gravers,
tip-fluted points, and introduction of rectangular
soapstone cooling vessels. While axial architecture
continues, shallow semi-subterranean houses appear
for the first time, and their seaward location indicates
winter hunting of seals and walrus at the off-shore

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 261

C4

C3

1m

C2
C1
C5

Hearth
cover slab

F1

4N 6E
N mag.

F2

F3

2N 2E

2N 6E
Chert flake
Crystal quartz flake
Utilized flake
Microblade core
Microblade
Biface
Burin
Burin spall
Scraper
Adz
Grindstone
Vertical slab

Figure 18 Late Pre-Dorset axial pavement house with box hearth and central oil lamp hearth at Nukasusutok-2 site near Nain,
Labrador.

ice edge. Concurrently, hunting of land game declines

and a growing economic focus on maritime resources
begins, coincident with the onset of the coldest period
in the Holocene.
Middle Dorset (22001200 BP) appears earliest
in the Central Arctic core area and replaces or
transforms Early Dorset in Labrador about 1800 BP,
lasting until c. 1400 BP. Except in Newfoundland,
where a regional Groswater-influenced variant develops, Middle Dorset technology changes are largely
stylistic. Winter sod houses become larger, deeper,
and sometimes have shallow entrance passageways
(Figure 19). Intensification of sea mammal hunting
from fall to spring from sina-oriented land-based
villages reaches its peak, producing thick middens
filled with the bones of seals, walrus, ducks, divers,
and sea birds, sometimes caribou. Middle Dorset
middens often contain ritual objects like masks, effigies, bone shamans teeth, and art pieces carved from
soapstone, ivory, antler, and sometimes wood, as well
as complex multi-ply cordage made from musk-ox
hair. During this period, Dorset sites shift southward,
disappearing from High Arctic Canada and northern

Greenland, and large village sites like Port au Choix

develop in western Newfoundland near winter harp
seal-hunting grounds.
Late Dorset (1300700 BP) brings warmer climate
that induced a resurgence of Dorset people back to
the High Arctic islands and western Victoria Island,
probably by population expansion from Central
Arctic and Baffin core areas, and initiated changes in
housing and settlement patterns. In Labrador, Middle
Dorset sod dwellings are replaced by large fall tent
camps with axial pavements having two or three
hearths, and lithic tools document stylistic change
from Middle Dorset implements. Abandonment of
winter-long dwelling sites suggests people had developed a more specialized adaptation to winter ice
hunting and were living in snow-house dwellings at
the ice edge. As a result, Late Dorset middens are
thin and often lack organics due to absence of permafrost. Where preservation occurs, especially in the
Central Arctic, Late Dorset exhibits an explosion of
animal carvings, human figurines (Figure 20), amulets,
human-face mask petroglyphs, shamans paraphernalia, and ornaments, in addition to finely crafted boxes,

262 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Skin

Entryway

PIT
B1
0

2m

Scale
PIT
PIT

Koliktalik 1
Bone
Concentrations

HdCg - 2

Dorset winter house plan

-Key-Rounded rocks
-Flat rocks

Kitchen

-House boundary
-Bone

Soapstone lamp

-Baleen

A1
25

4 West profile

A1

B2.40 s/4 W

Entryway profile
4 S/2 W

B1

Whalebone

RK
Whalebone

10 s

Charcoal
laness

Soopitone pot
fragment

RK

XXX

Frost wedges

Charcoal

Skin

RK
Balean

Wood
lensen

Figure 19 Plan of Middle Dorset winter house at Koliktalik, near Nain, Labrador.

containers, harpoons, and other implements. This period also exhibits a striking new settlement type: large
summer gathering sites containing multifamily longhouses with rock walls and internal hearth alcoves,
or sometimes just wall-less open-air hearth rows
(Figure 21). Scores of longhouses, interpreted as seasonal gathering sites to affirm social solidarity, facilitate
trade and spouse exchange, and conduct religious ceremonies, have been found throughout Dorset territory,
absent only in Labrador, where this phase is missing
until after 900 BP due to Indian occupation of the coast.
Late Dorset people also began to obtain meteoric iron
from the Cape York meteor fall in Greenland for use as
knife and harpoon blades, and occasional pieces of
smelted Norse copper and iron.
Ronald Nash once described the Palaeo-Eskimo
tradition as a tightly constrained system. This is an

apt description for a culture that adapted to harsh

environmental pressures by fine-tuning its program
rather than exploring new approaches, technologies,
or subsistence strategies. Palaeo-Eskimos were highly
traditional people whose house architecture, tool types
and styles, and general way of life changed little over
hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. Some of
their customs were strangely maladaptive, like the disappearance of the bow and arrow and the twist drill,
both present in Early Palaeo-Eskimo culture. What did
change was a gradual shift from a land- to a marinedominated economy, from surface tents to sod houses,
and, in Late Dorset, introduction of snow-house dwellings. Dorset people also developed an increasingly
integrated social network involving trade and ritual
exchange, and more elaborate shamanistic art evolved.
Dorset people seem not to have interacted with Indians,

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 263

even when they occupied southern Labrador, Newfoundland, and Quebec territories where Indian groups
were close neighbors. Other than possible Choris
influence in the Early Dorset Lagoon Complex in the
Western Canadian Arctic, there is little evidence of
interactions to the west and marginal contact with the
Norse. Pre-Dorset and Dorset people seem to have
lived in a self-circumscribed world, interacting only
with each other and their spirits. That they did so successfully for 3000 years is a remarkable achievement

for a network of small societies inhabiting a vast region

linked only by tenuous threads of social contact and
economic exchange.
Archaeologists have sought to explain both continuities and discontinuities in Palaeo-Eskimo cultural
sequences with the aid of ecological and biogeographic
models. Although research and debate continue, archaeological evidence supports the general validity of
a biocultural core area and core pulsation models in
Eastern Arctic prehistory. Long-term cultural continuity and evolutionary development is most evident in
the resource-rich Central Arctic corridor from Igloolik
to the Atlantic coast, while discontinuous sequences
and voids are documented in peripheral regions, including Greenland. Secondarily, the causes of culture
change in the northern peripheries is usually absence
or depletion of resources due to climate change or
unsustainable hunting, whereas abandonment and
repopulation of extended southern peripheries like
Labrador and Newfoundland is a function of interethnic (Indian) competition.
Eastern Neo-Eskimo Tradition

Figure 20 Middle Dorset soapstone figurine from Shuldham

Island, Saglek, Labrador (The Rooms/Newfoundland Museum).

Sometime after 1000 BP, the archaic spiritual prism

through which Dorset people viewed their world
shattered. The sudden arrival of groups of Alaskan
whale-hunters may not have been catastrophic initially, because the Alaskans were few and their settlements were confined to the northernmost waterways
of the Central Arctic. Successful bowhead hunts provided huge stores of meat, oil, and dog food, making
it unlikely that Early Thule people competed directly
with Dorset hunters at first. However, the appearance
of outsiders with sinew-backed bows, large umiaks,
sleds drawn by teams of wolf-like dogs, capable of
taking large whales, and having different beliefs and
spirits and a more competitive style of interaction

Figure 21 Late Dorset longhouse foundation, Ellesmere Island (photograph by Peter Schledermann).

264 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

(c)

(a)

(b)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6
m

Figure 22 Neo-Eskimo traditional house types from West Greenland: (a) Classic Thule; (b) eighteenth-century Communal house;
(c) developed Thule.

honed by the more intense Alaskan social scene must

have sent shock waves through Dorset society.
First identified by Therkel Mathiassen at village
sites in the Thule District of northwest Greenland,
Mathiassen later found Thule sites throughout the
Central Canadian Arctic (Figure 22). Later, after
sites with similar tools and house types were found
in Alaska, the Thule designation was applied to the
entire group, subdivided into Western Thule and
Eastern Thule. With the discovery of Western Arctic
harpoon heads and pottery in the earliest Thule villages in Canada and Northwest Greenland, Bering
Strait was quickly identified as the original NeoEskimo homeland. Later studies in Barrow showed
the Birnirk culture, c. eighth to tenth century, to be
the most likely parent for the eastward Thule
migration, which was then thought to have taken
place between AD 900 and 1000.
Re-analysis of radiocarbon dates by David Morrison
and Robert McGhee have refined earlier views of
the Thule migration. Rather than being a massive influx, evidence now suggests movements by one or
more small Alaskan founding groups over a century
or more beginning about AD 1200. The earliest Thule
culture sites in Canada and Greenland date to 1300
and probably originated, not from Birnirk sites at
Barrow, but from Punuk sites in Bering Strait. McGhee
and Allen McCartney had earlier suggested that the
Thule movement was initiated by climatic warming
that opened leads in the formerly ice-bound Canadian
Arctic islands, allowing Pacific bowhead whale migrations and their Thule pursuers to move east. Biologists
have documented genetic exchange between the Pacific
and Atlantic stocks dating to this period; but proof
that Punuk whalers moved east only to access new
whaling opportunities is circumstantial. While this
remains a likely scenario, the Thule movement may
have resulted from a desire by Alaskan whalers to

replace expensive Siberian iron with a cheaper commodity from the Cape York meteor fall in northwest
Greenland, or from reports of Norse trade.
This revision has required rethinking the muchdebated DorsetThule transition, which posited a
two-stage model: avoidance and acculturation. The
first stage explained the absence of DorsetThule
contact from AD 1000 to AD 1300 as the result of
mutual avoidance, Dorset extinction, or complete
Dorset assimilation by Thule people. After AD 1300,
the appearance of Dorset Parallel harpoon heads,
snow-knives, soapstone lamps and pots, and other
Dorset tool types in modified or developed Thule
sites suggested a second phase of contact dominated
by acculturation. Inuit oral traditions speak about
contacts with Tunit, a large, clumsy people who
first inhabited the country and hunted walrus and
built large stone structures. These stories are often
thought to describe Dorset longhouses; but they
may as likely be late Thule survivors, whose sites
were constructed with large rocks. This issue has
been connected with the ancestry of the Sallirmiut
(Sadlermiut), an Inuit people of northern Hudson
Bay who some believe was a Thule-acculturated
Dorset group. At present, the best evidence for
ThuleDorset chronological overlap comes from
East Hudson Bay, Ungava, and Labrador, where Dorset sites continued until AD 140050. The later Thule
migration dates shorten the period of DorsetThule
overlap to little more than a century, providing a
better explanation for the limited evidence of contact
and exchange. It also helps explain why Norse did not
encounter Thule people in West Greenland until
c. 1350 (Figure 23). In both Canada and Greenland,
a case can be made for Dorset elements persisting in
Thule and later Inuit societies in what Gullv calls
the parallel tradition the persistence of ancestral
Alaskan and Dorset harpoon head styles and other

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 265

AD 900

AD 1300

Greenland

Greenland

ffi
Ba

Is

Is

ffi
Ba

.
Labrador

Hudson
Bay

Labrador

Hudson
Bay

Qubec
N

Qubec

Newfoundland

Newfoundland
AD 1500

AD 1100

Greenland

Greenland
?

ffi
n

Is

Is
Labrador

Hudson
Bay
N

Qubec

Newfoundland
Dorset
1000 km

Thule

Labrador

Hudson
Bay

Qubec

Ba

ffi

Ba

Newfoundland

Norse

Ancestral Beothuck

No information

Ancestral Innu

Figure 23 Culture distributions in the Eastern Arctic between AD 900 and 1500.

elements from Early Thule to the modern day. (This

characteristic of dual styles has been described in
other archaeological instances as a co-tradition.)
First European Arrivals: The Norse

Unlike Europe, nineteenth-century North America

never experienced a period of romantic nationalism
celebrating the historical origins of its people,
language, and culture in the 183070s. (However,
emergence of the mound-builder myth that began
in this period responded to a romantic recreation of
a lost Pre-Columbia Indian culture.) At that time still
a nation of immigrants, there was little conception of
a distinct Canadian or American identity. Nevertheless, immigrant groups searched for ways to reconnect with their former European homelands, and for

Scandinavian immigrants this meant discovering

Vikings in America. (Although the term Viking is
often used interchangeably with Norse, the former
properly refers to marauding, non-Christian Scandinavian warrior-farmers of the eighth to tenth centuries
in Europe, who were known in their Nordic homelands as Danes, Norwegians, or Swedes. Those who
settled in Iceland and Greenland and visited North
America (Vinland) in the tenth to thirteenth centuries
are more properly known as Norse, who by this
time were Christianized and rarely went a-Viking.
Nevertheless, popular usage of Viking continues in
North America even though it is culturally and chronologically incorrect; see <http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/
vikings>. By the 1840s, the Icelandic Vinland sagas
had been translated into English and Norse sites were

266 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

thought to exist in New England; in 1893, a replica

Viking ship crossed the Atlantic and visited the World
Columbian Exposition in Chicago; and in 1898 the
Kensington rune stone was found in Minnesota by
Swedish immigrant farmer Olaf Ohman. Although discounted by archaeologists and linguists, the Kensington Rune Stone continues to find support among
ScandinavianAmerican avocational scholars.
So far, the only verified Viking site west of Greenland
is at LAnse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland.
Arguably occupied by Leif Erikson and subsequently
by Thorfin Karlsefni and his wife Gudrid around
the year 1000, the site was used as a staging location
or gateway for exploring the region Norse called
Vinland, notably, Newfoundland and the Gulf of
St. Lawrence. Although saga accounts describe both
friendly and hostile relations with skraelings, the
only archaeological evidence of Native American contact at LAnse aux Meadows is a Late Dorset soapstone lamp found in the sites smithy. A Norwegian
coin dating to the reign of Norwegian King Olaf
Kyrre (AD 10651080), minted seven decades after
the Vinland voyages, found at the Goddard site on the
coast of Maine is the only authentic Norse artifact
south of Newfoundland.
By contrast, excavations at Dorset and Thule sites
in Arctic Canada and Greenland have produced
scores of Norse materials and implements, most dating to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These
pieces include artifacts made from Norse copper and
iron, a figurine depicting a Norseman wearing a long
tunic (Figure 24), bronze bowl fragments, a bronze
trade balance arm, cordage spun from sheep wool,
and from a single site on Ellesmere Island across from
Thule, Greenland, a trove of Norse goods including woven wool sailcloth, a carpenters plane, iron
rivets, pieces of chain mail, and other objects that
Thule Inuit probably scavenged from a wrecked
Norse expedition. The wide distribution of these
finds (Figure 25) suggests a pattern of Norse contacts
with Late Dorset and Early Thule people between
AD 1250 and 1350, when Norse were seeking ivory
for European trade. These contacts ceased when the
Norse Western Settlement was abandoned around
1350, when the Little Ice Age began to set in, reducing farm and wool production, restricting navigation
and trade with Europe, and bringing seals and Inuit
hunters south into Norse territories. By 1450, the last
remaining Norse holding, the Eastern Settlement, was
abandoned and taken by Inuit, and Greenland disappeared from European history for 300 years.
Until recently, studies of Norse Greenland had a
strong medievalist and historical orientation. New
findings based on anthropological, interdisciplinary,
and international approaches have turned past theories

Figure 24 Eskimo carving of a European in a long tunic found

in a fourteenth-century Thule house in southern Baffin Island
(Photograph by Peter Harholdt, NMNH CMC Je-Dq-7: 325*).

like Norse demise from InuitNorse hostility, Inuit

absorption, miscegenation, or migration to the New
World on their heads. Greenland Norse were Christian farmers, not pagan Vikings, and in their heyday
(c. AD 10001300) developed a society that flourished on the outer fringe of Europe, raising scores
of churches and delivering wool, ivory, falcons, narwhal tusks, polar bears, and other Arctic commodities
to European markets, churches, and courts. Their expansion across the North Atlantic took place in
AD 8001000 during a warm climatic period that
made even Greenland suitable for Nordic animal
husbandry. Discovering Southwest Greenland unoccupied, Erik the Red established two settlements
in 985 and within 15 years his son Leif embarked on
his Vinland explorations. When this venture failed
due to its distance from Greenland and resistance
from Native Americans, the Norse turned to building their Greenland colony into a thriving Christian

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 267

ICELAND
Ellesmere
Is.

GR

Axel Heiburg Is.

EE

NL

un
Am

Bathurst Is.

AN

ds

Devon Is.

en

Somerset Is.

Cornwallis Is.

Ba

lf
Gu

ffi

Ba

Ba

ffin

Sandnes
d
an
Isl

Huds

on Str

ait

Ungava

CANADA

Hudson Bay

La

d
on
hm lf
ic u
R G

Indian artifact

br

Norse artifacts
Quebec
0

L'Anse aux Meadows

ad

or
Newfoundland

1000 km

Figure 25 Distribution of Norse artifacts found in Dorset and Thule sites in the Eastern Arctic. An Indian arrowhead from the
NewfoundlandLabrador region was found in the Sandnes Viking graveyard in Greenland. Not shown is the Goddard site, in Maine,
which produced a Norwegian penny in a Late Woodland Indian context.

society with a peak population of 30005000. Although there were no further attempts to colonize Vinland, ships from Greenland and Iceland traveled to
Markland (Labrador) periodically for timber, fur,
hides, and other products trading or losing a Norwegian penny to Natives in the process and some voyages
must have been made to Baffin, Ellesmere, and the
Thule District to account for Norse finds in Dorset
and Thule sites in these regions.
As the warm climate turned cooler in the 1300s, life
became more difficult and the northernmost Norse
farms began to be abandoned. Western voyages to
Canada ceased and the Norse implemented new agricultural practices and supplemented their diet with
marine resources. The appearance of sea ice, seals,
and walrus soon brought Thule people south into the
Norse districts, and while Norse and Inuit interacted,
as they had earlier in the Disko-Upernavik walrus
hunting grounds the Norse called the nordrsetur,
they did not adopt Inuit technology or dress, and
until the very end of the Eastern Settlement, remained
European and Christian, maintained their churches,
and imported the latest in European clothing fashion.

But by this time the Norse and their animal numbers had grown too large to be sustained under the
deteriorating climatic regime. Their decline and eventual disappearance resulted from production losses,
isolation from Iceland and Europe, and unwillingness
to adopt an Inuit-style hunting way of life.
Outside their colonies, Norse presence did not
transform the cultures or lives of Dorset or Thule
or Indian groups. Other than introducing highly
sought-after new materials copper, bronze, and
iron for refashioning into their own cultural types;
colored woven cloth and beads for use as accents in
adornment and clothing styles; hardwoods for certain
tools, and possibly stave construction for buckets and
pails Norse impact on Inuit material culture was
minimal. Even the Norse-influenced Inussuk (Inugsuk)
culture of West Greenland (c. AD 14001600) that
utilized artifacts (spoons, shears, buckets, bodkins)
traded or scavenged from abandoned Norse sites
remained squarely in the Thule tradition. More
important than artifact imports was Inuit recognition
that Europeans could supply novel and useful raw
materials. The military danger was minimal for

268 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

well-armed Thule people; however, Dorset were severely disadvantaged by their lack of bows, dogs, and
large boats.
Like DorsetThule and NorseThule contact studies, Norse interactions with Dorset culture have become a topic of recent study. Patricia Sutherland
has begun exploring the possibility that fabric weaving, European wood and wood-working techniques,
metal, carved images of Europeans, and twisted cordage found in Dorset sites result from exchange or
contact with Norse. While Norse materials are found
with some regularity in twelfth- and thirteenthcentury Dorset sites and have been attributed to
both direct and indirect contact, the idea that Dorset
adopted Norse technologies like fabric weaving and
wood-craft skills remains unproven.
Historic Period

Toward the end of the fourteenth century, major culture changes were underway throughout much of
the Eastern Arctic. The Norse colonies were in final
decline; an Inussuk Thule variant was forming in
West Greenland; and Thule people in the Central
Arctic were finding it difficult to hunt whales as
the Arctic passages became choked by ice. Loss of
whale products needed for dog food and winter survival required a subsistence shift toward winter
breathing-hole sealing and snow-house settlements
on the ice. The new summer land-based and winter
ice-hunting pattern remained the basis for Inuit life in
the Central Arctic until the twentieth century. Elsewhere, in Baffin, Labrador, and Greenland, Thule
people continued to hunt whales in the more open
Atlantic waters but changed radically in other ways
as a result of European engagement. In the mid1500s, as Thule culture expanded south along the
Labrador coast, displacing Dorset and Innu (Indian)
groups, they became attracted by European activities
in southern Labrador and Newfoundland. Sixteenthcentury Basque records tell of Inuit raids and sporadic
encounters that mark the earliest instance of Inuit
engagement with modern Europeans in the Eastern
Arctic, 200 years before post-Norse European contact
began in Greenland and 300 years before Europeans
began to regularly visit the Central Arctic or Alaska.
Nevertheless, in West Greenland, Baffin, and
Labrador, the Thule whaling economy persisted into
the eighteenth century (Figure 26), when these societies entered a period of reorganization stimulated by
European contact, despite Little Ice Age conditions. By
this time, Eastern Inuit were involved in a flourishing
trade in baleen, whale oil, walrus ivory, and sea mammal hides with Dutch and other European vessels
operating in the Davis StraitLabrador Sea region.
The introduction, first, of metal tools and wooden

boats and, later, of a widening array of European

products resulted in major changes in economy, settlement patterns, housing forms, and social and, eventually, religious life. Inuit communities increased in
number and size, and despite demographic reversals
from epidemics, achieved population peaks during
the late eighteenth to nineteenth century.
Indian Cultures in Labrador

While Palaeo-Eskimo and Neo-Eskimo groups have

lived along Labradors tundra coast for the past
4000 years, their occupancy of this Arctic/Subarctic
transition zone represents only a part of the geographic
and chronological scope of this Arctic transition region
(Figure 27). With the exception of the Torngat Mountain range of northern Labrador which was a glacial
refugia during the late glacial period, the entire region
was covered with glacial ice at the end of the Pleistocene. When ice retreated into the interior, Indian groups
moved north into the ice-free coastal zone of southern
Labrador by 9000 years ago and by 7000 BP had
reached northern Labrador and discovered the Ramah
Bay quarries, whose unlimited supplies of distinctive,
high-quality chert made it the favored stone tool material for almost all later Labrador cultures.
The early Indian cultures dating to 90003500 BP
are known as the Labrador Maritime Archaic tradition. Allied with a closely related tradition reaching
south to Maine, these were a seafaring people who
developed a complex maritime-based culture at the
edge of the Arctic. Even without Arctic adaptations
such as oil lamps and skin boats, they were successful
hunters of land and sea mammals and developed toggling harpoons, made large wood boats, and displayed
elaborate artistic and ceremonial traditions, including
rock mound burials and in later times cemeteries containing red ocher graves furnished with large deposits
of tools and ornaments of potlatch proportions. Ceremonial intensification in mortuary traditions was paralleled by developments in settlement patterns from
single-family dwellings to large kin-based longhouses
accommodating 2530 family units and long-distance
trade in Ramah chert, copper, and other exotic
materials.
About 4200 BP, their world was shaken when
Palaeo-Eskimos arrived in northern Labrador from
the Central Arctic, moving into the central coast
and displacing Maritime Archaic peoples who had
been using the north coast Ramah chert quarries for
two millennia. Despite this setback, Late Maritime
Archaic people reached an accommodation with
Pre-Dorset people and for 500 years maintained a
summer settlement enclave in the midst of Pre-Dorset
territory where they hunted caribou and quarried
Ramah chert, which they used and traded to others

AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions 269

Figure 26 Greenland Inuit whaling in Greenland from 1925 reprint of Hans Egedes Description of Greenland, 1741 (courtesy of Joseph
F. Cullman 3rd LIbrary of Natural History, SI-NMNH).

far to the south in one of the most remarkable trade

distributions of any material known in prehistoric
America.
After 3500 BP, the Maritime Archaic disappeared
from Labrador and was replaced by a succession of
Dorset, Inuit, and Indian cultures ancestral to the
regions modern Innu peoples. When temperatures
were warm, these Indian cultures expanded to the
coastal tree limit in northern Labrador and utilized
Ramah chert; during cooler periods (28001500 BP)
the Labrador coasts were taken over by southward
expanding Dorset Palaeo-Eskimo groups, and Indian
groups retreated into forested regions. After 1300 BP,
proto-Innu peoples moved onto the coast again, and
Dorset people withdrew from Newfoundland and
Central Labrador, initiating a long period of Indian
occupancy and Ramah chert use that continued until
Thule whale-hunters moved south and replaced them
throughout the coast after AD 1400.

The culture and environmental history now available makes Labrador a model region for studies of
long-term culture and environmental interactions at
the Arctic/Subarctic border. In many instances, climate and environmental change appear to have
stimulated shifts in Indian and Eskimo boundaries
and culture areas. The growth of Maritime Archaic
complexity between 9000 and 3500 BP during a period of warm, stable climate contrasts strongly with the
succeeding 3000 years of cooler conditions in which
a succession of Indian cultures experienced many
technological, stylistic, and settlement shifts. Most
territorial changes in this IndianEskimo territorial
see-saw resulted from periodic Eskimo expansions
during which Indians lost access to the resource-rich
coastal zone and were confined to the interior and its
unpredictable caribou economy. At other times, Indian groups took over coastal regions and forced
Eskimos to retreat into Arctic regions of Labrador.

270 AMERICAS, NORTH/Arctic and Circumpolar Regions

Years
BP

Climate

Culture
C. Labr.

History
N. Labr.

Warm

Labr. Inuit

Cool
1000

Warm

Recent
Indian

(cool)

Warm

Dorset

2000
Cold

Cooling

Groswater

3000
Warm

4000

Cool

5000

Warm

Intermediate
Indian
Pre-Dorset
Late

Maritime
Middle
Archaic

6000
Cool?
Indian

Early

7000
Warming
8000

Glacial
ice

Figure 27 Culture history of Labrador demonstrating tundraforest zone history and shifting boundaries of Eskimo and Subarctic Indian cultures (after Fitzhugh 2002, p. 129).

Less clear is why later Indian cultures exhibit

300400-year cycles of culture change perhaps
from resource instability, ethnic conflict, and repopulation from different cultures to the south. One thing
is certain: many of the changes seen in the culture
history of the Arctic have been strongly influenced by
environmental and climatic change. (See http://forces.
si.edu for a presentation accompanying the Smithsonians exhibition, Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely,
illustrating interactions between climate, environment, animals, and human cultures and activities in
the Arctic over the past 15 000 years.)

Conclusion: North America and

the Circumpolar Arctic
This entry is not complete without reference to the
rest of the Arctic world. Ultimately, all native peoples
of the Americas have Asian origins, but as the foregoing discussion has documented, Alaskan cultures
have a long history of direct and indirect contacts

with Asia. All of Alaskas earliest cultures with the

exception of fluted points have Siberian antecedents.
Asian-derived Mesolithic microblade traditions dominated Alaskas mid-Holocene cultures, and Alaskas
cultural development after 4000 BP exhibits many
instances of Asian contacts, influences, and population
movements. Unlike other areas of the Americas, its
Arctic peoples and cultures have participated in circumpolar Eurasian Arctic and Far East cultural history
for thousands of years, and owe more to these influences than to other Native North American cultures.
Arctic peoples in Eurasia as well as in the Americas
have been dynamic and highly resourceful. They developed new technologies, pioneered new territories,
and found ways to broaden or intensify their resource
base by adding specialized strategies for exploiting
climatically harsh but ecologically productive Arctic
seas. Proceeding from terrestrial hunters to generalized coastal foragers, to hunters of seals, sea lions,
walrus, and eventually highly specialized hunters of
large whales and in Eurasia, herders of domesticated
reindeer Arctic peoples not only learned to support
larger, more permanent communities, but they also
expanded contacts with neighbors and other cultures,
and in Alaska, Chukotka, and Scandinavia developed
complex social and political systems, engaged in regional warfare, and interacted with their southern
neighbors. Even though the Eastern Arctic had
harsher climate and fewer resources and opportunities, its cultures survived for 4500 years, produced
world-class art, and successfully engaged Europeans for 1000 years, and it is they through their contacts with Martin Frobisher and later explorers and
scientists who gave us the concept, Eskimo.
See also: Americas, North: Sub-arctic; Animal Domesti-

cation; Craft Specialization; Cultural Ecology; Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Maritime Archaeology;
New World, Peopling of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology;
Seasonality of Site Occupation; Ships and Seafaring.

Further Reading
Crowell AL, Steffian AF, and Pullar GL (eds.) (2001) Looking Both
Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People. Fairbanks:
University of Alaska Press.
Damas D (ed.) (1984) Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 5:
Arctic. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Dumond DE (1987) The Eskimos and Aleuts, rev. edn. London:
Thames and Hudson.
Dumond DE (ed.) (2001) University of Oregon Anthropological
Papers, Vol. 58: Archaeology in the Aleut Zone of Alaska: Some
Recent Research. Eugene: University of Oregon Museum of
Natural and Cultural History.
Fitzhugh WW (2002) Yamal to Greenland: Global connections in
circumpolar archaeology. In: Cunliffe B, Davies W, and Renfrew C

AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada 271

(eds.) Archaeology: the Widening Debate, pp. 91144. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Fitzhugh WW and Ward E (eds.) (2000) Vikings: The North Atlantic
Saga. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Giddings JL and Anderson DD (2006) National Park Service
Publications in Archaeology, No. 20: Beach Ridge Archaeology of Cape Krusenstern. Washington, DC: Department of the
Interior.
Gilberg R and Gullv HC (eds.) (1996) Ethnographic Series 18:
Fifty Years of Arctic Research: Anthropological Studies from
Greenland to Siberia. Copenhagen: The National Museum of
Denmark.
Grnnow B (ed.) (1998) The Paleo-Eskimo cultures of Greenland:
New Perspectives in Greenlandic Archaeology. Copenhagen:
Danish Polar Center.
Gullv HC (1997) Meddelelser om Gronland. Man and Society 23:
From Middle Ages to Colonial Times. Archaeological and
Ethnohistorical Studies of the Thule Culture in South West
Greenland 13001800 AD. Copenhagen: Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland.
Gullv HC (ed.) (2003) Greenland Prehistory (in Danish). Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Maxwell M (ed.) (1976) Memoirs of the Society for American
Archaeology 31: Eastern Arctic Prehistory: Paleoeskimo Problems. Washington, DC: Society for American Archaeology.
Maxwell M (1985) Prehistory of the Eastern Arctic. Orlando:
Academic Press.
McGhee R (1996) Ancient People of the Arctic. Vancouver:
University of British Columbia Press.
Schledermann P (1996) Komatik Series 5: Voices in Stone.
A Personal Journey into the Arctic Past. Calgary: Arctic Institute
of North America, University of Calgary.

Relevant Websites
http://forces.si.edu Forces of Change, Smithsonian National
Musuem of Natural History.
http://www.mnh.si.edu/ Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History
(NMNH).

California and the Sierra

Nevada
Michael R Walsh, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Bison antiquus Extinct Pleistocene ancestor of the American
buffalo, Bison bison.
California pattern Hunting and gathering lifestyle
fundamentally dependent on the acorn as a food staple.
logistical strategy Settlement system that features a permanent
or semipermanent residential village which serves as a home base
from which seasonal resource collecting excursions are
carried out.

metate Stone slab with a coarse, flat-to-slightly concave surface

used for grinding and pulverizing seeds and other plant products.
Stationary compliment to the mano. Word of Uto-Aztecan
origin.
mano Hand-held stone used to grind seeds and other edible plant
materials. Compliment to the metate. Word derived from
Spanish hand.
protoagriculture Purposeful manipulation of wild plants to
increase their productivity. Includes culling, watering, pruning,
and intentionally burning tracts of land to promote new growth.
site furniture Artifacts purposefully left at selected site
locations in anticipation of future use during scheduled return
visits. Typically heavy or cumbersome tools. Firmly suggests
habitual seasonal movements within a defined territory.
tomol Ocean-going canoe of the Chumash, southern California.
Permitted deep-sea fishing and long-range trade, and was thus a
significant source of wealth and prestige for its owner. Word
derived from Chumash language.

Humans have been in all parts of modern California

since at least the end of the Pleistocene Era, 10 000 to
14 000 years ago. Extinctions and other factors
brought to an end the Ice Age focus on hunting of
large game animals, and for the next 6000 years or
more hunter-gatherers in California diversified their
ways of life in adaptation to increasingly variable local
environmental conditions. Regional cultural and technological adaptations were so successful that steady
population growth was essentially universal, and population growth encouraged inventive measures to
increase environmental productivity. Without the practical option of agriculture, many of Californias huntergatherers turned to the acorn 3000 to 4000 years ago.
Until that time the acorn was little-used in California,
perhaps as a starvation food, but regional population
growth eventually warranted the complex leaching
process needed to render the acorn edible. Thus
began what archaeologists refer to as the California
Pattern. This way of life is unified by the economic
significance of the acorn, but is expressed in regional
cultural histories and local adaptations so varied that
California has become a premier location for studying
hunter-gatherer diversity not just through time, but
also over space. Geographic divisions of the sort
shown in Figure 1 have a tendency to lump general
culture histories, although it must be emphasized that
significant intra-regional variability characterizes the
prehistory of California.

Ice Age Hunters

All Pleistocene Californians are known as PalaeoIndians, with a benchmark provided essentially by
the appearance of the Clovis spear point: PalaeoIndian sites are either Clovis sites or pre-Clovis sites.
Pre-Clovis sites are assumed to be greater than
10 00014 000 years old, and are inevitably the

272 AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada

North
Coast
Ranges

ge
Ran
ade
Casc

Klam
ath
R

0
Modoc
Plateau

100 Kilometers

100 Miles

Great Basin
North

Sacramento
Valley

R u s si a n R

Borax
Lake
Sacramento

Sierra
Nevada

o
Fo

S.F.

lls

thi

Delta
San Francisco

Yosemite

Bay
Great
Basin

Central
Coast

San
Joaquin
Valley

PACIFIC
OCEAN
Santa
Barbara
Region
Point Conception
Santa Barba

Tulare
Lake

Santa
Barbara

ra C
han

Mojave Desert
Calico Site

Los Angeles/
Orange
Los Angeles

an

Ch

n el

China Lake

Colorad
o

Monterey Bay

ds

lan

l Is

ne

Southern
Deserts

R.

San Diego

Salton Sea

San Diego

Figure 1 Regional divisions and selected California localities in California.

subject of heated controversy. Nowhere is the controversy more apparent than at Calico, perhaps the most
famous archaeological site in California. Located in
the Mojave Desert, the Calico Site (Figure 1) has
revealed deeply buried sediments yielding thermoluminescence and uranium/thorium dates of 135 000 and
200 000 BP, respectively, among the oldest dates ever
proposed for occupation of the New World. Despite
their apparent extravagance, it is not the dates themselves that are at issue. The controversy revolves
around whether more than 20 000 stones recovered

from these mid-Pleistocene strata are indeed tools

manufactured by humans. The overwhelming consensus among professional archaeologists today is that
they are not, but instead are geofacts, rocks that
were cracked and faceted by natural processes. An
assemblage of undisputed stone tools has been recovered from Calico, but from substantially later deposits
near the sites surface. Most archaeologists today
believe that Pre-Clovis discoveries will eventually be
made in California, but almost certainly not at the
Calico Site.

AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada 273

Less nebulous is Californias Clovis Period

(c. 14 00010 000 BP) but there is still room for controversy. Most of the evidence for Clovis comes from
the shores of long-dead lakes, suggesting a distinctive
lacustrine focus on the hunting of large game animals.
However, archaeologists recognize that a dramatic
rise in sea level over the last 10 000 years may have
obscured an untold number of ancient sites along
the Pacific coast, and that historical disturbances
(mining, agriculture) and natural processes of erosion
may have concealed or destroyed ancient sites in
Valley and Foothill contexts. So it is perhaps the lack
of data, or rather a bias in the data that has led to the
characterization of a technologically and economically
unified Ice Age in California. Moreover, problems
plague many or most of the 400 Clovis points confirmed statewide. This is because the majority of Clovis
points have been isolated finds, lacking in additional
archaeological associations, or surface finds lacking
stratigraphic context. More vexing still, the majority
of Clovis points from California have been recovered
by private collectors, and many points have come to
the attention of archaeologists only some years after
their initial collection.
Perhaps the most significant region for the study of
Clovis people in California is at Tulare Lake in the
southern San Joaquin Valley (Figure 1). An overwhelming majority of the Clovis points discovered
in California have come from the shores and near
vicinity of this extinct, ancient lake. In addition,
a wide variety of stone tools have been recovered,
especially scraping tools and tools presumed to be
used for working wood and bone. Extinct mammal
species abound, including Colombian mammoth,
sloth, and Bison antiquus. In combination, Tulare
Lake has a remarkable potential for study of Clovis
hunting, tool manufacture and use, typology, and raw
material selection. Unfortunately, nearly all of the
Clovis materials at and around Tulare Lake have
been churned and displaced by twentieth-century
agricultural practices, and a wide majority of Clovis
artifacts including all of the points were collected
privately. To date, reports of extinct fauna in association with Clovis remains are anecdotal at best, and
extensive, intact Clovis deposits have yet to be investigated by professional archaeologists from start to
finish. Still, no place in California holds the promise
of Tulare Lake for further understanding of Clovis
people in California.
Two additional regions have yielded multiple Clovis finds: 20 fluted points have been recovered from
the Borax Lake region of the North Coast Range and
15 have been reported from the shores of China Lake
in the northern Mojave Desert (Figure 1). Although
these finds have a better record of controlled recovery

than is the rule at Tulare Lake, many are from surface

contexts. These lakes also reveal Pleistocene fauna
but, as at Tulare Lake, none is unambiguously associated with Clovis artifacts. So far, the ancient shores
of Tulare, Borax, and China Lakes have provided by
far the best window to the Clovis Period, but the view
is far from clear at this time.

Early Holocene Diversification

At the close of the Pleistocene, warmer temperatures
and decreased precipitation led to desiccation of
ancient lakes and widespread extinction of megafauna. This begins the Early Holocene epoch, in
which native Californians diversified their lifestyle
in accordance with minor differences in local environmental conditions. While archaeological assemblages
suggest continued emphasis on hunting of large
modern mammals, diet diversified to include increasing amounts of regionally distinctive plant foods,
smaller mammals, and small amounts of freshwater
and marine shellfish. Increased numbers of sites, as
well as discovery of limited-use sites, suggest a highly
mobile lifestyle, probably of small family groups foraging far and wide over the course of the year, rarely
returning to the same location twice.
Among the best known of these Early Holocene cultures are the San Diegito who plied the coastal regions, hills, valleys and deserts of southern
California between about 70008000 and 10 000 BP.
Large, coarse stone knives and projectile points suggest continued emphasis on large mammals such as
deer; but bone assemblages from San Diegito sites
suggest greatly increased hunting of small mammals,
especially rabbits. Additional crude stone implements
include drills and engraving tools, perhaps used to
work bone or wood. Although bone tools are not
characteristic of San Diegito sites until the later stages
of the era, wooden objects are not expected to preserve, and may have been present throughout the time
frame. The potential for wooden tools, as well as a
wide variety of heavy scraping and chopping tools,
hints at increased levels of plant exploitation, or something more than focused butchering of game. By the
end of the San Diegito Period, grinding implements of
stone (manos, metates) appeared, suggesting expansion of the diet to include hard seeds; bone awls indicate basket-making, a craft probably designed to
assist in gathering plant foods; and the San Diegito
expanded their diet to include small quantities of marine shellfish. In all, the San Diegito entered the time
frame as focused hunters of large game and exited as
generalized hunter-gatherers. The expansion of habitat and dietary breadth was probably encouraged by,

274 AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada

and in turn permissive of, steady population growth

despite what was, from the Clovis perspective at least,
a deteriorated environment.
Synonyms for the San Diegito time frame include
the statewide designations Early Holocene, Early
Archaic, and the Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition;
the Lake Mojave Tradition of the deserts; Buena
Vista of the Central Valley; and the Borax Lake
(Post) Pattern of northern California.

Middle Holocene Elaboration

and Innovation
Where Early Holocene cultures entered new ecological
niches, the Middle Holocene (c. 40007000 BP) developed elaborate and innovative strategies and technologies designed to more fully exploit those niches. The
Middle Holocene lifestyle gradually came to revolve
around gathered plant foods. In most regions, hunting
of small mammals surpassed deer and other remaining
large mammal species in importance. It is also during
this timeframe that evidence is found for the first concerted efforts to methodically exploit the Pacific littoral, especially for shellfish. But particularly noteworthy
is that, by the end of the phase, the acorn began to be
exploited, around 4000 BP.
The general time frame 40007000 BP is here designated as the Milling Stone Horizon, and represents a
time when Californias hunter-gatherers first became
gatherer-hunters. As the designation implies, Milling
Stone sites are dominated by large grinding slabs,
basin metates, manos, and significant numbers of
hammerstones, choppers and large scraper-planes,
all of which are known ethnographically as plantprocessing tools. Significantly, projectile points and
other flaked stone tools greatly diminished in frequency. In coastal regions, shellfish were gathered in
great quantities, while parts inland increasingly saw
rabbits and other small mammal species supplant deer
as the usual target species. Emphasis was on gathering
(plants, shellfish) while taking of game appears to
have been largely opportunistic. But the Milling
Stone is characterized by more than a general shift in
subsistence resources: it witnessed significant changes
in social and economic organization.
Milling Stone sites suggest increased size of the basic
social group. Whereas Early Holocene assemblages
suggest at most two or three families in brief residence,
and often just a single family group, traveling groups
of the Middle Holocene Milling Stone may have
numbered 510 families or more (2050 people). In
addition, Milling Stone gatherer-hunters appear to
have returned time and again to preferred locations,
leaving behind at each campsite entire tool kits, or site
furniture. Formal cemeteries with multiple interments

first appeared during the Milling Stone and further

suggest repetitive and anticipated reoccupation of
habitual territories. These sites also record the first
significant amounts of nonutilitarian items, including
shell and bone beads, shell and stone pendants and
perforated cog-stones. Cog stones, also called donut
stones in view of their size and appearance, often
feature the toothed circumference of a gear, and rival
the metate as the type artifact of the Milling Stone
south of Santa Barbara County. Their function is enigmatic, although many archaeologists suspect they are
weights for digging sticks or, in delicate examples,
symbolic representations of digging stick weights.
That a digging stick weight should become emblematic of a culture clearly demonstrates the primacy of
the collecting strategy in the Milling Stone economy.
Evidence from the central Pacific coast (Figure 1) further suggests the primacy of plant gathering, which
may have been so important that gender-based division
of labor disappeared. In particular, there appear to be
no clear gender distinctions in the nature of grave
goods or other aspects of human interment. Stereotypical gender divisions may have become obscured
in the face of the primacy of plant collection and the
diminished role of hunting in the diet.
The statewide pattern of the Milling Stone emphasis on gathering of plant foods is truly violated only in
the desert regions of the state, but only in the sense
that Milling Stones never outnumber presumptive
hunting gear. The timeframe in the desert is referred
to as the Pinto Period, named for the Pinto Basin in
the eastern Mojave Desert where it was first defined.
Nevertheless, Pinto people shared changes in overall
organization with their Milling Stone contemporaries, including repetitive site visitation within habitual territories, increased size of the traveling group,
and increased reliance on small mammals and plant
foods.
Regional synonyms for the Milling Stone include
the state-wide designations Middle Holocene and the
Middle Archaic Period, the Early Milling Stone and
the Encinitas Tradition of southern California in general, the Pauma Culture of inland San Diego County,
the La Jolla Period of coastal San Diego and Orange
Counties, the Topanga Culture of Los Angeles County, the Oak Grove Period of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, the Borax Lake Pattern of the North
Coast Range and, as noted, the Pinto Period in the
deserts.

Late Holocene Intensification

The success of the Milling Stone adaptation is
measured by steady population growth which, despite the technological mastery of plant and other

AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada 275

collectable foods, eventually outran productivity. In

order to maintain the status quo, gatherer-hunters
investigated alternative resources to supplement the
diet. One of these alternatives was the acorn, and the
Milling Stone lifestyle came to an end. But certain
changes and innovations effected during the Milling
Stone carried over, and indeed in greatly increased
scale. These changes included developments in social
and political organization represented by increased
size of the traveling group, as well as in scheduled
reoccupation of preferred localities and notions of
territoriality.
The adoption of the acorn as a food staple was by
no means a statewide simultaneous event. In certain
regions, the shift to an emphasis on acorns coincided
directly with the advent of the Late Holocene Period,
c. 35004000 BP. In other regions, the Milling Stone
strategy prevailed for another thousand years or
more. This argues strongly that the development was
driven by population growth. Population thresholds
were met at differing times in different places. Only
then were the labor-intensive requirements of an
acorn economy adopted. Once adopted, however,
the acorn economy had dramatic effects on social
structure, settlement and mobility patterns, and political organization. As a cumulative effect, intensified
resource acquisition both permitted and encouraged
continued population growth, necessitating still more
intensified labors, including reinvigorated hunting
and, where possible, extensive use of littoral resources,
especially shellfish.
Because the acorn ripens in the fall, acorn dependence required wholesale change in the nature of
scheduling, and Californians became more fully
organized along logistical principles. The notion of
the home base grew into one of the home village
that transcended generations, and villages were placed
logistically at locations within reasonable distance
to many different resource-collecting locales. Collecting expeditions forayed from villages to these various
resource patches in their season, an efficient strategy
that allowed surplus to be gathered and stored for use
during the lean winter months. The logistical strategy
thus placed a high value on prime collecting localities,
many at some distance from the home village, and
encouraged further the previously introduced concept
of territory. It is during this time frame that archaeologists begin to see assemblages that are clearly attributable to specific ethnographic groups, suggesting that
territories carved out in the beginning of the Late
Holocene were maintained for numerous generations.
Among the first Californians to show the logistical strategy and to exploit the acorn were the Windmiller of the Sacramento River Delta (Figure 1).
Windmiller People (named for a site located on

the Windmiller farm) first appeared around 4500 BP,

but their peak occupation of the Sacramento Delta
appears to have been between 25004000 BP. The
Windmiller are primarily known from excavations of
large cemeteries, which were placed on high ground
above the Delta flood levels. Although the focus
on grave goods may bias the data somewhat, the
Windmiller interred their dead with quantities of everyday items in addition to nonutilitarian artifacts,
which has provided a wealth of information about
their overall material culture.
Windmiller material culture suggests a distinct divergence from the Milling Stone emphasis on hard
seeds and other plant foods as well as from the strategy of continual mobility. Large quantities of projectile
points as well as a wealth of faunal remains (deer, elk,
pronghorn, rabbits) suggest a re-emergence of hunting as a significant occupation. Additionally, tridentform bone spears, shell and bone fishhooks, and
baked-clay netsinkers suggest three distinct methods
for obtaining salmon and other fish from the Delta.
In combination, seasonality in selected animal and
fish species suggest that the Windmiller wintered in
the Delta, and summered in the Sierra foothills. But
more significantly, certain Windmiller sites show
numbers of crude stone mortars and cobble pestles,
type artifacts for an acorn-based economy. Since the
Delta region is practically devoid of oak trees, it is
clear that the Windmiller practiced logistical forays
for Central Valley and Sierra foothill acorns in the
fall, as a supplement to winter fishing in the Delta and
summer hunting in the Sierra Nevada.
Windmiller divergence from Milling Stone patterns
was more than merely dietary. Windmiller grave lots
show huge quantities of ornaments and other nonutilitarian items. Among the latter are enigmatic
charmstones, polished cigar-shaped objects of finegrained stone such as alabaster, marble, or schist.
Although their function is far from clear, charmstones
were apparently highly treasured, and are typically
found in only the most opulent grave lots. These and
similar wealth items such as steatite pipes, stone and
bone beads, and shell pendants tend to be concentrated in male graves, suggesting gender-based status
differentiation, which may reflect the reemergence of
hunting as a significant pursuit. However, occasional
discoveries of women, children, and even infants with
immense quantities of grave goods suggests ascribed,
or inherited status, a clear and further divergence
from the more egalitarian Milling Stone.
Windmiller burials are occasionally observed with
nightstick fractures to the forearms, skull fractures,
and points embedded in bone. This evidence for interpersonal violence may be a corollary to the logistical strategy, which may have occasioned a heightened

276 AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada

sense of territoriality and defense of property or

stores. A further corollary of the logistical strategy is
purposeful acquisition of surplus for storage, which
often results in an unequal distribution of food and
other items, and which may in turn translate to
wealth. Inequalities in wealth may account for
dramatic differences observed among individuals in
the abundance of associated grave goods. In short,
Windmiller graves suggest there were haves and
have-nots. While by no means inevitable, both
heightened territoriality and the concept of wealth
may be viewed as a consequence of the shift to an
intensive, logistically organized acorn-based economy.
The Windmiller Culture provides a provocative example of the shifting economy in California and its
consequences. Although not always precisely contemporary, regional synonyms for the development of the
logistical, acorn-based economy, with frequent local
variations, include the state-wide designation Early
Pacific Period; the Campbell Tradition of coastal
southern California; the University Village Complex,
the West Berkeley Facies, and the Early Bay Pattern of
the San Francisco Bay area; the Early Horizon of
central California; The Martis Complex of the high
Sierra Nevada; the Middle and Upper Archaic of the
north coast; and the Gypsum Period of the deserts.

Late Holocene Specialization

and Complexity
The final prehistoric period is here labeled the specialization and complexity phase. This development
was extremely variable across the state, in both
timing and in the degree to which it was expressed.
With the notable exception of the desert regions, the
spread of the acorn economy was completed during
this timeframe, and most groups saw continued population increase. In all cases Californias natives continued to hone their technologies in order to increase
the efficiency of resource extraction within a given
territory. Among the most significant developments
was the practice of actively managing resources to
improve productivity. Sometimes referred to as protoagriculture, resources were manipulated by selective culling, pruning, and even watering of wild
plants. One common form of resource manipulation
took the form of wholesale burning of entire tracts of
land, setting into motion natural forces of ecological
succession that produces a bounty of new shoots,
greens, and seeds. With increased overall productivity
came increased yields for storage, which fostered
continued population growth. This phase also witnessed manufacture of local goods for the specific
purpose of interregional exchange. As territories
became more and more stringently protected, control

over the distribution of prized but highly localized

resources such as obsidian or salt was possible, and
could be turned to local advantage as trade items. The
second facet of this phase complexity is considerably less widespread statewide, but far more pervasive than previous generations of anthropologists
have considered. In selected cases notably in coastal
areas disparities among individuals in the distribution of surplus resources, as well as in access to
monopolized goods and crafts were put to the task
of creating a true society of haves and have-nots.
Using surplus to personal advantage is one road to
the rise of chiefly society, a level of political complexity that is uncommon among hunter-gatherers,
yet characteristic of selected regions of California.
The earliest evidence for highly complex political
organization in California is found in the San Francisco
Bay area, where great mounds of shell, bone, charcoal,
artifacts and human remains have intrigued archaeologists since the early twentieth century. University
Village near Stanford University, and the West Berkeley
and Emeryville mounds on the eastern Bay shore
(Figure 1), along with over 100 smaller mounds have
revealed literally tons of archaeological remains. The
contents of these mounds have contributed to an
understanding of San Francisco Bay area material culture that is perhaps unparalleled in California. Only
recently, however, have archaeologists begun to explore the sociopolitical implications of the mounds
themselves.
Many archaeologists now believe that the shell
mounds were not simply accumulated, but were purposefully built. One line of evidence for this notion
is that the mounds are not in fact simply undifferentiated piles of debris, but instead contain intact features including residential architecture, sweathouses,
and hearths. Ceremonial activities are indicated by
cemetery areas, as well as purposeful caches of nonutilitarian items such as charmstones, whistles, pipes,
and obsidian knives. Ritual interments of mammals,
such as bears, and large birds, including condors are
found, and reflect some form of ceremonialism.
Finally, there are stratigraphic indications that soil
was purposefully deposited as fill to expand the sizes
of the mounds. The mounds thus appear to be mixtures of living and ceremonial space, not mere piles of
trash but landmarks along the Bay, visible for miles
around as sociopolitical landmarks.
The timeframe c. 25001000 BP was the Golden
Age for shell mounds in the San Francisco Bay area.
During this time mounds were occupied year-round,
and logistically organized expeditions ranged inland
for acorns and game and to the Bay waters for shellfish, fish, and sea mammals. Burial evidence suggests
that violence peaked at this time, perhaps reflecting

AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada 277

the importance of territorial claims. Elaborate grave

treatment accorded a few individuals suggests
dramatic status and/or wealth distinctions. Population size steadily increased along with increased
political complexity, until the scale of resource acquisition that fostered the lifestyle could no longer be
maintained. For instance, there is firm evidence for
human over-predation on shellfish species, land mammals, and sea mammals until existing human populations were forced to disperse, leaving the mounds
behind.
Many people moved inland, where foothills surrounding the Bay saw a distinct rise in regional population size. Those that remained broke into smaller
groups, coming down to us as the Costanoan-Ohlone,
an ethnographic group that, in the historic era, had
no sociological or political analogs to the complex
political systems represented by the mounds of San
Francisco Bay. Although people survived, the prehistoric system evidenced by the San Francisco Bay
mounds simply collapsed when high population densities could no longer be maintained.
At about the same time that the Bay area culture
was undergoing population dispersal, the coast along
Santa Barbara, Ventura, and northern Los Angeles
Counties began to show distinctive signs of increasing political and social complexity. Over the next
700 years until the time of European contact the
ancestors of the Chumash developed intricate social,
ceremonial, economic, and political networks that
are unparalleled among hunter-gatherers anywhere
in the world. The ancestral Chumash shared with
their Bay area counterparts an exceedingly productive natural environment, combining rich inland
resources acorns and other plant resources, plentiful
game with a bountiful littoral zone teeming with
shellfish, fish, and sea mammals. Where the San
Francisco Bay area saw skyrocketing population numbers lead to overpredation and resource depletion,
however, the ancestral Chumash found a technological solution that opened several previously untapped
(or little-used) ecological niches.
The Chumash designed and built perhaps the most
sophisticated watercraft found in North America,
and from these they accessed the resources not only
of the open sea, but of the largely untapped Channel
Islands as well. Where the San Francisco Bay area saw
greatly intensified resource acquisition during the
Golden Age of mounds, Chumash resource acquisition became not just more intensive, but more extensive as well.
The larger ramifications of the canoe on Chumash
society can hardly be overstated. The Chumash canoe
(or tomol) was made of redwood planks retrieved as
driftwood, held together with sinew and dowels and

caulked with tar and pitch, reaching lengths of 7 m

or more. Canoes were exceedingly difficult and timeconsuming to manufacture, and essentially required
the full-time efforts of expert engineers and apprentice laborers. The tomol-makers developed their own
hereditary guild, passing down specialized tools and
painstaking techniques from one generation to the
next: a social class. The extensive effort necessary to
tomol manufacture required a form of patronage in
order to free the specialists from daily resource collection activities, and only the wealthiest individuals
could wield the surplus necessary to commission a
canoe. In the end, canoe owners were rewarded with
valuables obtained in exchange with the Channel
Islands as well as high-prestige open-sea resources
such as swordfish, tuna, and dolphin. Canoe owners
thus turned wealth into prestige, and in turn into still
more wealth. Where newly gotten wealth is turned
to still more sponsored labor, the cycle is selfperpetuating, and an elite class is born.
At the time of European contact, Chumash society
featured specialized classes of craftsmen engaged not
only in manufacture of the tomol, but also in manufacture of special stone tools (microdrills), stone bowls,
and a host of nonutilitarian items. Among the latter
were beads which came to serve as a standardized form
of currency, an extremely rare development among
hunter-gatherers. Although the archaeological record
is largely silent on the subject, it is logical to assume
that specialists may have dominated other facets of
Chumash society, such as hunting, fishing, and perhaps
canoe navigation. Not only responsible for sponsoring
manufacture of specialists goods, tomol owners were
responsible for distribution of goods across the Channel as well as up and down the coast, giving canoe
owners enormous control over the growth and development of Chumash society. Eventually, the Chumash
came to be organized around hereditary chiefs who
held sway at the village as well as regional levels,
a form of political organization that is truly anomalous among hunter-gatherers. Much of the wealth
and prestige that eventually spiraled into hereditary
power is probably attributable to control over the
tomol.
It is fascinating but ultimately futile to speculate
about the political and social developments that were
truncated by the arrival of the Spanish in 1769. But in
addition to the Chumash, several Native California
groups were beginning to turn surplus into wealth,
and wealth into power during the general time frame
from AD 1000 to historic contact. These groups included the Gabrieleno, or Tong-va of the Los Angeles
coast and basin, the Yokuts of the southern Central
Valley and southern Sierra foothills, the Pomo of the
North Coast Ranges, and the salmon-fishers of

278 AMERICAS, NORTH/California and the Sierra Nevada

the northwestern state, including the Hupa, Yurok,

and Karok. In each case, a wealthy natural environment and specialized technology, combined with a
focus on resources that could be stored, promoted
both population growth and inequality in the
distribution of surplus.

economic intensification, and technological specialization. But this generality masks a tremendous
amount of cultural diversity, as economic systems
and technological adaptations were distinctively tailored to local conditions. It is important to recognize
that the trends presented above are accurate in their
sequencing but highly variable in their timing as well
as their expression. Not all of the developments presented above were simultaneous across the state; nor
did all of the developments presented above take
place in equal intensity everywhere in the state. For

Summary
At the broadest level, the entire prehistory of
California is one of steady population growth,

OREGON
Tolowa
Karok
Shasta

Yurok

North

KlamathModoc

Hupa

Achomawi

Chimariko
Wiyot
Bear River
Mattole
Lassik
Sinkyone
Wailaki

Wintu

Atsugewi
Yana

Nomlaki

Yahi

Yuki

Kato

Maidu
Pomo

NEVADA

Patwin

N
SI
BA

Interior Miwok

T
EA

Wappo

N
VI

PR

Coast Miwok

Panamint Shoshone

Costanoan/Ohlone
Yokuts

Tubatulabal

Esselen
Salinan

Kawaiisu
Vanyume
PACIFIC
OCEAN

Kitanemuk

Chumash

Chemehuevi

Alliklik
Serrano

Cahuilla

0
0

100 Kilometers
100 Miles

Figure 2 California Native cultural/linguistic groupings in the historic era.

Juaneo
Cupeo

Kumeyaay
MEXICO

ARIZONA

Luiseo
Gabrielino

AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands 279

instance, Milling Stone foragers in the North Coast

Range and in the southern Sierra foothills continued
to hunt to a degree unknown or impossible in
southern California; Central Valley Californians
such as the Windmiller began to exploit the acorn
hundreds of years earlier than their northern California counterparts, and perhaps thousands of years earlier than those in the southern reaches of the state; and
desert hunter-gatherers almost certainly never developed the sorts of wealth distinctions inferred for the
San Francisco Bay or the Santa Barbara coast. Regional variations, both large and small, in the nature
of resources, of resource timing and productivity, and
in local population dynamics have resulted in a range
of cultural variability that is unmatched for any
California-sized region in the New World (Figure 2).
It is this staggering degree of cultural variability,
noted in the ethnographic era and demonstrated by
linguistic variability, that has thwarted archaeologists century-long effort to generate a state-wide
chronology and a common culture-historical nomenclature. Despite recognition of a common California
Pattern, in the end Californias Native populations
defy all but the broadest of generalities.

Epilog
At the time of European contact in 1769, California
was more densely populated than any region of
comparable size anywhere in North America. Most
anthropologists agree that at least 310 000 people
lived in the state, with credible estimates ranging to as
many as 710 000 people. It took at least 10 000 years of
steady growth to reach this number. Less than
150 years after the Spanish arrived, in 1911, a starving
and exhausted Yahi Indian named Ishi wandered into a
northern California town looking for food. At the time
he was heralded as the Last Wild Indian in California.
Disease and other privations visited by Spanish missionaries, Mexican ranchers, and American gold
miners had taken a terrible toll on Native Californians.
But Ishi was not the last Indian in California. An
energetic Native American community exists today
and appears to be strengthening as elders are encouraging young Indians to learn the native language and
lore, reinvigorating pride in ancestry and curiosity
about tribal history. It cannot be said that a century
or more of cultural decimation has not left its
mark on Native Californians. But Native Californians
have shown themselves to be a highly resilient people,
weathering and drawing strength from every
challenge that has arisen since the Ice Age.
See also: Americas, North: Great Basin; Rocky Mountains; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Further Reading
Arnold JE, Walsh MR, and Hollimon SE (2004) The archaeology of
California. Journal of Archaeological Research 12: 173.
Chartkoff JL and Chartkoff KK (1984) The Archaeology of
California. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Erlandson JM and Colten RH (eds.) (1991) Hunter-gatherers of
Early Holocene Coastal California. Los Angeles: UCLA Institute
of Archaeology.
Erlandson JM and Glassow MA (eds.) (1997) Archaeology of the
California Coast during the Middle Holocene. Los Angeles:
UCLA Institute of Archaeology.
Erlandson JM and Jones TL (eds.) (2002) Catalysts to Complexity:
Late Holocene Societies of the California Coast. Los Angeles:
Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA.
Fagan B (2003) Before California: An Archaeologist Looks at
Our Earliest Inhabitants. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and
Littlefield.
Moratto MJ (1984) California Archaeology. (Reprinted with a new
Introduction by Coyote Press, Salinas, CA. 2004.) Orlando:
Academic Press. (Reprinted with a new Introduction by Coyote
Press, Salinas, CA. 2004.)

Eastern Woodlands
Timothy R Pauketat, University of Illinois, Urbana,
IL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
adze A hafted wood-shaping tool used to, among other things,
hollow out dugouts.
American Bottom A 120-km-long expanse of floodplain
wherein sits the Cahokia site, between present-day St. Louis and
Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.
Archaic In eastern North America, the Early Holocene period
during which food collectors settled into regional landscapes,
residing at least part of the year in base camps, and, later in the
period, built the first mounded centers (c. 8000500 BC).
band A social and economic group of hunter-gatherers who tend
to be united by kinship and marriage ties.
base camp A semi-permanent or seasonally reoccupied
settlement of hunter-gatherers from which smaller groups of
hunters or collectors organize more focused forays.
biface A chipped-stone tool with opposing flat sides and one or
more sharp cutting edge.
chiefdom A small centralized society with a government based
on hereditary chiefs whose power is believed legitimate by most
of the population.
confederacy A loose political alliance of formerly autonomous
societies lacking a strong central government.
corporate kin group People related by blood who identify with
each other and share in work activities.
geoglyph A nonportable symbolic motif of monumental
proportions, such as an effigy mound.
gorget A two-holed ornament worn suspended around the neck
or sown onto a garment.
Mississippian A cultural complex and time period denoted by
historically contingent territorial and hierarchical societies,

280 AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands

maize agriculture, monumentality, and readily identifiable
politicalreligious imagery (AD 10501500s).
monumental architecture Any construction of earth, wood,
or stone built for public or religious not domestic reasons.
mortuary center A place that owes its cultural significance to
its use in interring the dead.
Palaeo-Indian In North America, the Late Pleistocene period
during which Clovis-making people hunted big game and filled
up the continent (c. 10 20010 000 BP).
proto-state An urban or urbanizing centralized society
characterized by a division of labor, cultural pluralism, and a
complex central government.
sedentism The condition of living in single permanent
settlements for an entire year, year after year.
shaman A religious specialist or medicine man or woman able to
communicate with the spirit world.
tumuli Elevated earthen constructions.
Woodland A period of time, usually subdivided into early,
middle, and late subunits, following the Archaic in eastern North
America that saw the widespread adoption of pottery
technology, the domestication of native cultigens, the
efflorescence of Hopewellian mortuary cults, and, later, the
adoption of the bow and arrow and maize agriculture (c. 500
BCAD 1050/1500s (depends on location)).

Introduction
Centuries after the early eleventh century Norse
settlement of LAnse Aux Meadows, in Newfoundland,
Jacques Cartiers wooden ship sailed up the St.
Lawrence River. It was 1535, and Cartiers men
encountered a thousand sedentary horticulturists living
at Hochelaga, a large Iroquoian longhouse village
within present-day Montreal, Quebec. To the north,
between these horticulturalists and the Arctic Inuit
(who would chase off the Norse settlers) were bands
of Montagnais-Naskapi hunter-gatherers who traded
with, and kept their distance from, the French. To the
east and south, from Prince Edward Island to New
England, were territorial Algonquian-speakers
Micmacs, Pasamaquoddy, Penobscots, and Abenakis
who did things differently and would later form a
confederacy administered by elected district leaders
and war captains. Playing the European powers off
against each other, the Iroquois also confederated and
waged war on their neighbors to achieve dominance
and control over the burgeoning fur trade. The reach of
their war parties stretched hundreds of kilometers, as
their later attacks on the westward-migrating Miami
in the Illinois country attest.
Twenty-two years before Cartiers arrival at
Hochelaga, ocean-going Spaniards led by Ponce de
Leon had discovered peninsular Florida. Afterward,
and given the successes of Pizarro in Peru and Cortes
in Mexico, the Spanish began to colonize the coastal
Southeast in the 1520s. This was, in turn, followed in
1539 by a major entrada into the heart of the Southeast, led by veteran conquistador Hernando de Soto.

Southeastern North America would never be the

same. De Soto and later representatives of New Spain
brought disease, missionaries, ranching, and slave
traders that drained the interior southeast of its native
life. Mississippian polities collapsed, their remnant
populations migrating to other locations. Some,
such as the Timucuans of peninsular Florida, were
completely eradicated. In the succeeding two centuries, accommodation and resistance to the colonial
powers, now including France and Britain, took the
form of political reconsolidations or confederations,
relocations, reassertions of traditional identities,
and infrequent violent rebellions.

The First Americans

Of course, the emplacement of Europeans in North
America was not the first colonization of the continent. The first Americans were probably a disparate
lot of immigrants arriving during the Ice Age (or
Pleistocene epoch) in the eastern Woodlands by way
of western North America. Before that, most believe,
the original immigrants had arrived in boats from
Asia. An ancient European Palaeolithic origin for
some of them remains a possibility, in part because
one of the earliest Palaeo-Indian settlements in
North America is in Virginia.
Actually, various archaeologists now believe that
these earliest human colonists arrived before the
Palaeo-Indian period, more than 16 000 years ago;
their remains were found deeply buried in places
such as Meadowcroft Rockshelter in western Pennsylvania (and other New World sites; see Figure 1).
Because they were first, they were few in number and
their sparse populations make their remains, for all
archaeological intents and purposes, virtually invisible. If correct, then the Palaeo-Indians, those people who made the well-known Clovis projectile
points at c. 10 20010 000 years BP, were not the
first Americans (Figure 2). Instead, Clovis culture
represents the beginning of the archaeological visible
portion of the peopling of eastern North America.
In the eastern Woodlands, their readily identifiable
fluted projectile points (specially thinned at their
bases for hafting) come in a variety of sizes and have
been found in direct or suggestive association with the
remains of caribou, elk, bison, and mastodon, among
other extinct animals from sites as distant as the
sinkholes of Florida to the glacial fronts in New
York, Ontario, and southern Michigan. Whether
the Pleistocene megafauna were driven extinct by the
Palaeo-Indians remains an open question, but there
is regional settlement evidence that these huntergatherers did not merely radiate across a virgin landscape, killing megafauna as they went. Instead, the

AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands 281

Figure 1 Select archaeological sites in eastern North America.

Palaeo-Indians ranged hundreds of kilometers within

identifiable territories. Some bands, for instance,
traveled annually between base camps and outlying
retooling sites places where they made new
chipped-stone bifaces in Illinois and Indiana or
Ohio, Michigan, and southern Ontario.
While archaeologists will continue to debate the
peopling of the continent until incontrovertible evidence is found, they have paid less attention to an
equally significant research question highly relevant
to todays warming world: the relationship of the late
Palaeo-Indian people to the beginning of the warmer
Holocene (at c. 9000 BC), with its rising sea levels and

disappearing megafauna. Inland, there are various

regional manifestations of the Late Palaeo or earliest
Early Archaic peoples, one of which is the midcontinental Dalton culture. Large Dalton period base
camps probably sported a series of surface dwellings
that housed a number of families. In Arkansas,
archaeologists observe that the Dalton people abutted
their Plains Plano-period contemporaries who made
fluted Folsom points.
Unlike their Clovis culture precursors, the Dalton
people and other Early Archaic folks ranged far less
widely. In addition, for the first time, the ancient
people made and used numerous groundstone and

282 AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands

Figure 2 Clovis point (length c. 10 cm).

woodworking tools, notably including Dalton adzes,

probably indicating the increased reliance on local
plant foods and the construction of dugout canoes,
respectively. There were also formal cemeteries, although the best-known Early Archaic cemeteries are
not in Arkansas. They are in coastal Florida, where
bodies were staked to the bottom of charnel ponds
or bogs of the drowned seacoast. Buried with the
dead at sites such as Windover were items of clothing,
atl-atls (spearthrowers), beads, engraved bird-bone
tubes, and other bone tools, projectile points, and
assorted wooden objects.

Archaic Developments
While population densities probably varied widely
across the eastern Woodlands, dramatic social
changes were underway by the sixth millennium BC,
changes that justify the identification of a Middle
Archaic period. Undoubtedly, these social changes
were related to a nearly two-millennium-long dry
and warm period the Hypsithermal. Some have
posited that, for certain regions, the climatic regime
necessitated concentrations in lower well-watered
locations. For other regions, the correlation is less
certain. What is clear, however, is that base camps
grew larger and more permanent in many areas.
In Kentucky and Tennessee, clear evidence of interpersonal violence, such as scalping marks, appears
during the Middle Archaic period.
At Koster, along the Illinois River, the first permanent housing also dates to the Middle Archaic period,
as do low burial mounds on the bluff above (also

known as the Elizabeth site). Under those mounds

were group burials of men and women presumed to
have been members of important corporate kin
groups. Something similar is seen at sites in southern
Illinois, and along the Green and Tennessee Rivers in
Kentucky and Tennessee, where burials of single bodies interred with sex-specific objects (including, here
or there, a shaman buried with unusual bundles of
objects) were interred in formal cemeteries. In the
mid-South, the Middle (and Late) Archaic burial
mounds were sometimes built of mollusk shells.
These and other Middle Archaic mounds are most
common from Florida westward across the Gulf
Coast. Some, as at Tick Island in Florida, are formal
layered burial mounds consisting of layers of burials
alternating with mollusk shell midden. They were, in
short, the first true monumental architecture.
The earliest dated earthen mound complex is found
in southern Louisiana, at Monte Sano, and dates to
5000 BC, or the beginning of the Middle Archaic
period. Ten other related Middle Archaic mound
sites are known in northern Louisiana, the largest
being Watson Brake, dated to 3600 BC. The sites
11 earthen tumuli vary in height, one reaching 7.5 m.
These were built around an oval 370
260 m2 plaza,
the construction and experience of which may have
instantiated social inequalities within and between
corporate groups. All 11 sites might have been pieces
of a larger planned regional complex, the construction
of which ended by 2500 BC, well before the next
significant monumental construction in Louisiana,
called Poverty Point.
The most enigmatic of Archaic places, Poverty
Point appears to have been a planned reinvention
of the earlier Middle Archaic tradition. Built between
1600 and 800 BC, it was a huge earthen complex
covering 5 km2 and composed of 750 000 m3 of
mounded earth. The sites semicircular central plaza
is surrounded by concentric rings of loaf-shaped
mounds, probably used to elevate houses. Behind
its amphitheater-like loaf mound and plaza core is a
looming 20-m-high bird-effigy mound. Other mounds
mark key points in the distance.
Poverty Point was, in short, the first sedentary
town site in the eastern Woodlands. The refuse of
the many hundreds of sedentary residents at this
complex includes the debris from manufacturing a
variety of bodily ornaments, tools, fetishes, and
fired clay Poverty Point objects. The latter were
superheated and used to cook food indirectly, perhaps
in large central gatherings. Incised on some of these
objects, carved into ornaments, or etched onto steatite bowls are representations of upper-world birds,
underworld monsters, and the plants, animals, and
spiders webs that existed between these worlds.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands 283

Along with the craft objects, these appear to have

been made on-site for use on-site. Some ended up in
outlying regions. However, it is possible that pilgrims
visiting this anomalous central place dispersed the
Poverty Point objects by carrying them back to their
own homelands.
Other Late Archaic sites near Poverty Point appear
to replicate the great center, albeit at smaller scales.
Perhaps these were small-scale pilgrimage centers in
the Poverty Point mould and, if so, Poverty Point and
its outliers could have had profound historical impacts
on the entire mid-South. Minimally, the people of
Poverty Point appear to have acquired exotic materials
from across the mid-continent and South, from Texas
and Indiana to Alabama. A few Poverty Point objects
turn up at sites as far north as southern Illinois.
Numerous cultural complexes that date to the Late
Archaic period (c. 2000500 BC) also feature evidence of long-distance exchange from the Benton
sphere in Mississippi to New Yorks Lamoka culture
and the St. Lawrence Basins Maritime Archaic. The
exchanged goods from groundstone ax-heads to
projectile points and atl-atl weights often assume
hypertrophic (larger-than-life) or exaggerated proportions. Hence, researchers reason that these objects
were more than ordinary tools with practical use
values. The exchanged objects were meant to be conspicuous, seen as well as used.
This is the period of the Old Copper culture, Great
Lakes region people who made and traded copper
tools, some hypertrophic. Perhaps such expansive
exchange networks, if not the socially complex relations that each exchanged item objectified, were simple functions of the larger numbers of people living at
sometimes large base camps around the eastern
Woodlands (see Exchange Systems). Possibly, group
territories and ethnic boundaries segmented the eastern Woodlands, with groups producing styles and
hypertrophic goods that projected the veneer of traditional continuity. Perhaps increased populations
and territorialization, in turn, encouraged people to
tend wild plants in portions of the Midwest and midSouth (or vice versa). Squash cultivation is known to
date from 5000 BC, while other starchy and oily
seeded plants chenopodium, amaranth, sunflower
were brought under cultivation by the second or third
millennium BC (see Plant Domestication).
There are also some indications of another sort of
social change near the end of the Late Archaic period
in some portions of the mid-continent: fewer or smaller base camps and more or larger mortuary centers.
Pottery appeared first at about 2500 BC at Stallings
Island, South Carolina, although it took a millennium
for the technology to be adopted across the Souths
Coastal Plain, finally picked up by Midwesterners

after 1000 BC. Perhaps this was because, initially,

ceramic pots here or, earlier, in the Coastal Plain were
not ideal cooking containers. Many were not used
over open fires, as often presumed, but might have
served in social gatherings or feasts.
In the North, the sociality of pot making and using
might have been related to mortuary gatherings. At
this time, low mounds were increasingly used to bury
human remains, some bedecked with stone pendants
or gorgets, some interred with caches of skillfully
chipped bifaces, and some sprinkled with red pigment.
Archaeologists have named certain regional manifestations of these burial cultures Red Ocher, Glacial
Kame, and Meadowood. In the South, the Tchula
period people succeeded Poverty Points grandeur
with, at best, modest mound centers populated by few
people who ate, as best we can tell, few of the cultigens known elsewhere from eastern North America,
save squash.

Woodland Gatherings
These subcontinent-wide developments have in the
past been identified as the Early Woodland period
(500150 BC), owing in part to the settlement
evidence and in part to the appearance of pottery.
But there is considerable diversity of cultural practices until the subsequent Middle Woodland period
(150 BCAD 400), when a transregional horizon,
sometimes called the Hopewell Interaction Sphere,
was established across the Midwest, down the Mississippi River valley, and up the St. Lawrence (where it is
called Point Peninsula). The nomenclature remains
vaguely informative, as the period seems to have been
defined by a heightened traveling of people to far-off
places, if not also, especially around the Great Lakes,
the establishment of distant marriage alliances. In Illinois, the common occurrence of ephemeral Middle
Woodland sites along remote interior corridors might
signal the existence of overland trails (Figure 3).
There was an economic basis to this cultural expansion. Midwestern horticultural practices had, by
the Early Woodland period, resulted in the domestication of a suite of starchy and oily seeded crops,
identified as the Eastern Agricultural Complex. The
intensification of horticultural production is clearly
evident in present-day Illinois, where Woodland people also innovated small chipped-stone hoe blades.
The human populations in certain portions of the
Midwest reached a new maximum, particularly in
the Illinois River valley. There, the Havana tradition
people lived in hamlets around special mortuary sites
where the socially prominent were buried in log
crypts that were, after some period of time, mounded

284 AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands

Figure 3 Middle Woodland conical mound, Illinois.

over with earth (see Social Inequality, Development

of). At or shortly after this same time, the Adena
people of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia followed suite, and began to raise accretional burial
mounds to great heights, some reaching 20 m.
These were not insular people. Their society
appeared built on gatherings of outlying people to
commemorate corporate ancestors via elaborate mortuary rites that were, primarily, ceremonies of the
living. The smoking of high-nicotine tobacco, domesticated in the Caribbean and grown in eastern North
America by the Middle Woodland period, was central
to the ceremonies, possibly indicating the emphasis
(also seen in Middle Woodland art) of transcendental
experience. By 50 BC, the mortuary gatherings appear to have reached a pinnacle, drawing into them
the people of the Mississippi valley and adjacent
portions of the Deep South, whose Marksville and
Copena traditions reinvented or emplaced versions of
the Midwests Hopewellian cults in the South.
At that time, the native Ohioans of the Scioto tradition, at the type site of Hopewell and at hundreds of
other sites around southern Ohio, constructed great
earthen enclosures circles, squares, and polygons
connected, at times, with enclosed processional
avenues (or bounded linear spaces). The individual
enclosures were great unroofed open-air gathering
sites, not residential settlements. Each was bounded
by embanked earth, the outer embankments standing
up to 3 m high, blocking views if not also constraining bodily movements (Figure 4). The largest enclosures covered 20 ha. Openings at their corners or side
walls allowed passage into and out of the sacred interior. Some of these openings, or other key points within

the embanked spaces, were punctuated by small platform mounds veritable earthen stages for some performance at that spot. Certain of these stages and the
associated enclosures were constructed in such a way
as to make the entire space a virtual uterine or Mother
Earth geoglyph, the experience of which would merge
peoples sensibilities with mythic events. Hopewellian
cosmology, that is, was a lived cosmography.
Presumably, great processions passed from one to
another, the longest avenue, the Great Hopewell
Road, stretching 48 km from the Newark earthworks
to the numerous enclosed spaces of Chillicothe, Ohio.
Some are also aligned to celestial events movements of the sun, moon, and stars affirming a
grand design intended to be experienced by pilgrims.
Presumably, persons who embodied the social collectivities hosted such gatherings. Perhaps it was their
bones that were later kept in Ohios charnel houses
and, later, buried under huge Hopewellian burial
mounds. Finally, perhaps it was such hosts who, late
in this mere two- or three-century span, formed a
unique political alliance or confederation. The construction of composite geometric enclosures in the
Scioto valley, rather than isolated squared, circular, or
polygonal embankments, may have created through
mound-building a political-ritual confederation, a
veritable triple alliance in Ohio.
Fantastic hoards of ritual objects were uncovered
at the Hopewell site, in Ohio, from burials or from
the floors of dismantled and mounded-over charnel
houses. There were things made out of mica from
North Carolina, copper from the Appalachians, pipestone from Ohio and Illinois, and grizzly bear teeth
and obsidian (a black volcanic glass) from Wyoming.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands 285

a c c oon c

ree
k

a
G
Area 50 acres

a
Area 20 acres
Lock
Road

Po
nd

a
Area 20 acres
Sandy loam

or

Sections

th

So

Area 30 acres
Lock

Scale
1300 ft to the inch

Figure 4 Embanked earthworks at Newark, Ohio. From plate XXV, Squier EG and Davis EH (1848) Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley : Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.

As noted earlier, the means whereby such exotic materials were acquired probably included occasional forays
or expeditions of acquisition. Given the concentrations
and provenience of some such material, such as obsidian, it is likely that trade relations between Illinois,
Ohio, and Louisiana communities did exist up until
AD 400 (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology).
The accumulations and ritualized deposition of the
valued materials or craft objects manufactured from
them characterized many Hopewellian mortuary
sites from Ohio west across Illinois and south into
the Marksville homeland. Emphases on select exotic
or colorful raw materials pervaded daily life as well,
seemingly indicating the centrality of ancestral observances and reckonings to personal and collective
identities. As indicated by the elaborate abstract decorations on pots, fabric, bone tools, and more, those
identities were intimately associated with a cosmos
comprised of upper and lower worlds and supernatural animals, including falcons and the long-necked
spoonbills and flamingoes (Figure 5).
However, by AD 400, the Middle Woodland experiments were subverted, abandoned, or in some other
way brought to a close. From the Scioto south to

Pinson mounds, Tennessee and Marksville, Louisiana,

the construction of burial crypts, elaborate charnel
houses, earthen platform mounds, and embanked
enclosures ceased as sites of Hopewellian happenings. The reasons are not known with any degree of
certainty. However, there is renewed general agreement among archaeologists that what followed did
involve a de-emphasis of the mortuary commemorations and panregional gatherings, if not also a
collapse of long-distance alliances or trade relations.
With the exception of the Deep South, the subsequent Late Woodland period used to be described,
perhaps appropriately, as bland and uninteresting,
comprised of Good Grey cultures. However, south
of the Appalachians in Georgia and northern Florida,
the formation of community identities through the
promotions of apical ancestors continued, albeit
untethered to the now-terminated Hopewellian Interaction Sphere. Major MiddleLate Woodland cultural
phenomena are termed by archaeologists Weeden
Island and Swift Creek, dating from about AD 300
to 850, with central sites featuring large platform
mounds including Kolomoki, Swift Creek, Mandeville,
and Napier. At the small short-term three-mound site

286 AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands

Figure 5 Carved stone effigy-bird smoking pipes, left, and

earthware pot showing abstract long-necked bird motif, right.
From plate XLVI[2] and figures 173174, Squier EG and Davis
EH (1848) Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley : Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

of McKeithen, archaeologists found evidence of a

planned center of 100200 people living around an
open oval plaza. One platform mound elevated a scaffold or space for the disarticulation of dead bodies.
Another was a burial mound. The third elevated a
communal building or leaders house. As discovered
atop that platform mound, the final events of the
McKeithen center involved the dead leader, red-dyed
hair and arrowhead in hip, lying in state on the floor of
the surmounting building.
Perhaps comparable to such Weeden Island centers
are the post-Marksville Baytown (c. AD 400700)
and later Coles Creek (c. AD 7001100) mounded
centers in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Some of
these, such as the now-destroyed Troyville site, possessed singular qualities: layout, mound shape, or
mound size. Coles Creek sites are compact centers
with well-defined four-sided pyramidal mounds
around rectangular plazas, at least some of which
were themselves constructed (i.e., land-leveled) features. For many, it is unclear how many people lived
on site. Hamlets, presumably home to sedentary food
producers, surrounded them within a days walk or
so. In many cases, what was grown by such people
seems limited to some part of the Eastern Agricultural Complex. Maize was not a staple in the Lower
Mississippi valley before AD 1000.
The Coles Creek centers of the mid-South are significant in part for how many there were and, related to
this, how insular they appear. As with Late Woodland
societies generally, there is little evidence of a program
of cultural outreach of the sort seen in preceding periods. Each center, that is, appears isomorphic with localized community identities. Substantial communal
labor was invested in each center, but the basis of

labor mobilization is unclear. From the Coles Creek

components at some sites, there are hints of once-powerful corporate persons, perhaps ceremoniously buried
political leaders who embodied community identity.
These seem indicated by the skeletons of extended
adult men who were buried with the bodies of women
and children, in one case including 13 infants. In another case, an adult male was buried on the surface of a
platform mound wearing a deer-antler headdress. Next
to him were the bodies of three adolescents and two
adult females, one of whom had a chipped-stone projectile point still embedded in her right arm.
At about the same time, far to the north in
and around present-day southern Wisconsin, equally
insular but more transient Late Woodland peoples
maintained special mortuary sites, burying bones in
or near low-effigy mounds. The mound sites of these
semi-sedentary Effigy Mound culture people appear
to reveal corporate identities tethered to zoomorphic
mythical ancestors thunderbirds, waterspirits, and
bears (earth creatures). Territories seem marked by
concentrations of one or another supernatural entity,
and the distribution of different sorts of effigy
mounds across this northern region is uneven.
The transregional pattern of localized or insular
communities, and the occasional projectile pointembedded body, might suggest that much of eastern
North America was an increasingly divided and
dangerous landscape. Perhaps not surprisingly, in
the midst of the Late Woodland period, around AD
600, people in most eastern locations adopted the
stealthy bow and arrow (over the traditional atl-atl
and spear) as the weapon of choice. The timing of this
adoption suggests a relationship to some larger set of
social conditions, not the least of which might have
been territorialization and the negotiation of tensions
between evermore circumscribed groups. These
changes seem to have led, in New York and Ontario,
to the rise of corporate villages better known at contact as the longhouse settlements of maize-growing
northeasterners. Here, after AD 800, maize emerged
as a staple crop.
Maize, a Mesoamerican crop, had actually been
introduced during the Middle Woodland period
centuries earlier. However, maize production initially
seems to have had little impact, and it was not significantly intensified until c. AD 800 in the central
Mississippi valley. There, maize intensification seems
to closely correlate with the growth of populated sedentary villages, some of which, particularly in southeast
Missouri, southern Illinois, and adjacent portions of
southern Indiana, western Kentucky, and Tennessee,
grew large as the centers of farming communities.
Between AD 800 and 1050, two of the largest such
centers were situated within 30 km of each other in

AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands 287

the American Bottom region of southwestern Illinois:

Pulcher and old Cahokia. Both comprised contiguous clusters of houses around small courtyards and
both were populated by hundreds of terminal Late
Woodland maize-, squash-, and starchy seed-growing
farmers. One to several modest platform mounds
modest versions of contemporaneous Coles Creek
tumuli farther south occupied centerstage at Pulcher
and, presumably, old Cahokia by the beginning of the
eleventh century. Whether corporate leaders, similar
to those of their southern mound-building neighbors,
existed at that time is unclear.

Mississippianization
Less unclear is what happened next. The decades of
the middle eleventh century witnessed tremendous
social and political change, sparked apparently by
unique events or people in the American Bottom. At
that time, Cahokians rebuilt their village into a veritable planned urban center, eastern North Americas
only pre-Columbian city, around oversized earthen
pyramids and a 19 ha plaza. In outline, the new central complex is reminiscent of Coles Creek centers,
perhaps indicating historical linkages between the
two. However, Cahokia far exceeds in scale and internal organization anything known up to that time in
the lower valley.
Extensive excavations in and around Cahokia
since the late 1950s verify great central festivals, construction projects, new (wall-trench) house styles,
feasts, and theatrical mortuary rites featuring
human sacrifice from the earliest phase of this
earliest and archetypal Mississippian polity. The
population of this proto-urban place swelled rapidly,
reasonable estimates for the late 11th century ranging
from about 10 000 to 15 000 people at Cahokia proper. From the beginning and over the next century and
a half, approximately 120 earthen pyramids were
built at new Cahokia. An art style developed that
emphasized the relationship of gendered human or
superhuman characters, agricultural production, and
cosmic forces (Figure 6).
More people lived in a series of outlying towns
and two nearby sister complexes, East St. Louis and
St. Louis, each with 45 and 26 earthen pyramids,
respectively. Surrounding this entire central complex,
and within 50 km radius, were rural farmsteads and
farming villages. Interspersed among them were
nodal sites farmsteads and villages that appear
to have assisted in the administration of a Cahokiacentric tributary economy. At least some of these
farmers of greater Cahokia, if not significant numbers
of the early Cahokians themselves, were immigrants or

Figure 6 Mississippian ceramic bottle depicting mother and

nursing child, found near the Cahokia site, Illinois.

the children of immigrants farmers who moved in

from outlying areas including far-off southern Indiana
and southeast Missouri.
Archaeologists studying the Eastern Plains, midSouth, and northern Midwest recognize changes in
local cultures simultaneous to the construction of
new Cahokia. The largest impact might have been in
the Illinois River valley due north of greater Cahokia.
There, Cahokian settlers or affiliates founded places
such as the Eveland site and its cemetery (called
Dickson Mounds). The effects were equally profound
farther north, in southern Wisconsin, where centuries
of Effigy Mound building ceased and collared-wareusing people migrated from old homelands to new
southern Wisconsin locations.
Most notably, after AD 1050, a few prominent
Cahokian or Middle Mississippian outposts, ritual
centers, colonies, or copy-cat sites were built, especially in the unglaciated Driftless Area along the
upper Mississippi river. Although located further to
the east, the unusual Aztalan site is most famous. This
settlement was superimposed over an earlier Effigy
Mound landscape and very nearly hidden along the
Crawfish River. Its two small platform mounds,
extensive palisade system, wall-trench architecture,
and hybrid artifact assemblages seem a mix of local
Late Woodland and Mississippian peoples. But there
are other such sites that also look like physical intrusions into northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
Of these, the Trempealeau site is located near the

288 AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands

northern edge of the Driftless area, its terraced platform mound built on a high blufftop overlooking
the surrounding landscape. The John Chapman site
sat at the southern end of the Driftless area, its singleplatform mound (that contained some sort of beaded
human burial perhaps in association with a Mississippian temple) and village area built in the midst of
pre-Mississippian Effigy Mounds and even older
Woodland burial mounds.
There was nothing quite so obviously intrusive
among the early Mississippian settlements south of
Cahokia. There, towns appeared after AD 1050 at
places such as Angel in Indiana, Kincaid in southern
Illinois, and Obion in Tennessee. The pottery and
lithic assemblages from all of these sites suggest
that, minimally, the local people were in contact
with or emulated Cahokia to the north.
Farther south, there are less obvious signatures of
such contact or sustained intercourse. In Alabama
and northern Georgia, the terminal Late Woodland
period leading up to the twelfth century saw palisade
constructions and pervasive small-scale violence. In
the Black Warrior and Tombigbee valleys of Alabama
and eastern Mississippi to the Etowah valley in northern Georgia, the first glimmers of Mississippianism
began as the founding of modest towns with one or
two earthen platforms: Lubbub Creek, Moundville,
and Etowah among them. Elsewhere in Georgia,
the earliest Mississippian towns appear to have been
site-unit intrusions entire populations moving into
new localities and building unprecedented pyramidand-plaza complexes surrounded by palisades;
Macon Plateau and Cool Branch are the best known
cases. Their founding populations probably derived
from Tennessee or northern Alabama, respectively.
The transformations of southeastern society that
accompanied the Mississippian period may be best
understood at Moundville. Recently redated to the
early twelfth century, the Moundville I phase followed the pre-Mississippian intensification of maize
production (at c. AD 1000). This first Mississippian
phase saw the appearance of the same wall-trench
architectural styles and shell-tempered pottery
seen to the north, a century earlier. Yet these were
merely harbingers of the regional political consolidation to follow (during Moundville II) at or just after
AD 1200.
As at Cahokia, Moundville underwent a massive planned reconstruction that saw establishment
of a 20 ha plaza and the construction of some 30
earthen pyramids around its perimeter (Figures 7
and 8). Built at the same time and enclosing the entire
complex was a massive circumferential palisade
wall with large evenly spaced bastions. Inside, highstatus Moundvillians were arrayed around specific

Figure 7 Plan map of the Moundville site, Alabama. Adapted

from Pauketat TR (2007) Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological
Delusions. Walnut Canyon, CA: AltaMira.

platform mounds in substantial houses, where they

used discrete sets of ritual materials in cultish performances, each perhaps the exclusive prerogative of
specific kin groups.
Like all such southeastern Mississippian places,
Moundvilles preeminence eventually faded, replaced
by other towns elsewhere, a process sometimes
described as cycling. All across the Southeast, polities large and small and more or less hierarchical rose
and fell every century or two. Early on, the people of
many such places drew inspiration from Cahokia as a
founding city and, some would argue, art style. By the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, the
political cults, formerly known as the Southeastern
ceremonial complex(es), that seemed to mobilize
communal labor (and politicize community identities) had begun to lose their meaning, even as interpolity war making reached new levels in parts of the
Southeast. Entire histories, or cycles of chiefdom
development, could be truncated by war parties
from another polity.

Historical Ends
Hernando de Soto witnessed the fragility of it all on
his entrada in 153943, his passage and the swirl of
historical circumstances to follow bringing down the
curtain on the larger purely native history of the
Southeast. Native historic-period chiefdoms or confederacies described in European accounts may or
may not have been typical of the earlier Mississippian

AMERICAS, NORTH/Eastern Woodlands 289

Figure 8 View of Moundvilles plaza and perimeter mounds.

period. There was great variability in their subsistence base, historical trajectories, and linguistic
background. Many Southeastern polities were made
up of Muskogean speakers. But far to the west were
Caddoan speakers. In the Midwest, perhaps around
Cahokia, Siouan languages might have been prevalent. Even farther north, around the Great Lakes,
Algonquian and Iroquoian speakers predominated.
In any event, it seems likely that various colonialera polities, from the Natchez of southern Mississippi
to the Powhatan of northern Virginia, created powerful governments based on ancient principles. Like
them, great native confederacies and proto-states,
such as the League of the Iroquois, were not mere
reactions to European contact. Instead, the political,
ritual, and communal diversity of ancient forerunners, from the Hopewellian Scioto valley and insular
Coles Creek provinces to proto-urban greater Cahokia, indicates that an archaeological understanding of the complexity of eastern Woodlands history
needs to be understood in similar terms as those
known to historical accounts: as ancient contacts,
colonies, wars, alliances, and identity formations.
Understood in that way, the ancient history of the
eastern Woodlands has immediate and sometimesprofound implications for native and non-native people today and is essential for any fuller appreciation
of world history.
See also: Agriculture: Social Consequences; Americas,
Central: Lower Central America; Craft Specialization;
Exchange Systems; Image and Symbol; New World,
Peopling of; Plant Domestication; Ritual, Religion, and
Ideology; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading
Adovasio JM and Pedler D (2005) The Peopling of North America.
In: Pauketat TR and Loren DD (eds.) North American Archaeology, pp. 3055. Oxford: Blackwell.
Anderson DG (1994) The Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political
Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. Tuscaloosa: University
of Alabama Press.
Carr C and TroyCase D (eds.) (2005) Gathering Hopewell: Society,
Ritual, and Ritual Interaction. New York: Kluwer Academic/
Plenum.
Doran GH (ed.) (2002) Windover: Multidisciplinary Investigations
of an Early Archaic Florida Cemetery. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Farnsworth KB and Emerson TE (eds.) (1986) Early Woodland
Archaeology. Kampsville, IL: Center for American Archeology.
Hall RL (1997) An Archaeology of the Soul: North American
Indian Belief and Ritual. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Knight VJ, Jr. and Steponaitis VP (eds.) (1998) Archaeology of the
Moundville Chiefdom. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Milanich JT, Cordell AS, Knight VJ, Jr., Kohlern TA, and
Sigler-Lavelle BJ (1984) McKeithen Weeden Island: The
Culture of Northern Florida AD 200900. Orlando, FL:
Academic Press.
Minnis PE (ed.) (2003) People and Plants in Ancient Eastern North
America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Pauketat TR (2004) Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pauketat TR (2007) Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions. Walnut Canyon, CA: AltaMira.
Sassaman KE (2004) Complex hunter-gatherers in evolution and
history: A North American perspective. Journal of Archaeological Research 12: 227280.
Smith BD (2002) Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in
Eastern North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Squier EG and Davis EH (1848) Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley: Comprising the Results of Extensive Original
Surveys and Explorations. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

290 AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin

Great Basin
William R Hildebrandt and Kelly R McGuire, Far
Western Anthropological Research Group, Inc., Davis,
CA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
adobe Building material of sun-dried earth and straw.
aggregation Aggregate: a group of many distinct parts or
individuals.
alluvial Composed of alluvium clay, silt, sand, gravel, or
similar material deposited by running water.
atlatl A device for throwing a spear or dart that consists of a rod
or board with a projection or hook at the end to hold the weapon
in place until released.
cal BP Calibrated radiocarbon years before present, adjusted
to match tree-ring dates and correspond more closely to
calendar years.
intermontaine Situated between mountains.
lanceolate Shaped like a lance with a tapering point and
sometimes a tapering base.
megafauna Animals of very large size (such as bison or
mammoths).
playa The flat bottom of an undrained desert basin that becomes
a shallow lake when it rains.
pluvial lake A lake which experiences significant increase in
depth and extent as a result of increased precipitation and
reduced evaporation.
sedentism Sedentary: staying in one place, not migratory.

Introduction
The Great Basin occupies about 165 000 square miles
of the intermontane West, encompassing most of
the state of Nevada, as well as parts of California,
southern Oregon, western Utah, and small portions
of Idaho and Wyoming (Figure 1). As its name implies,
it has no outlet to the sea, with its rivers and streams
generally emptying into low desert lakes and playas,
such as the Carson Sink and Great Salt Lake Desert,
or simply disappearing through evaporation or absorption into the ground. In addition to its desert
valleys, much of the Great Basin is rippled with a series
of massive northwestsoutheast-trending mountain
ranges, many with peaks in excess of 10 000 ft. The
abrupt shifts in elevation, and their corresponding rainfall and temperature regimes, produce a spectacular
range of plant communities and habitats, with vast
expanses of sagebrush and shadscale in lower valleys,
stands of pinyon and juniper at mid-elevations, and
pockets of conifer forests on the highest peaks.
The Great Basin is the home of the ethnographic
Paiute and Western Shoshone, whose simple but exquisitely adapted desert lifeways loom large in the
development of American anthropology. The Great

Basin provided the theoretical backdrop for Julian

Stewards pioneering work on cultural ecology, as
well as his conception of the family band. This
extraordinary landscape, and the people who have
inhabited it over the last 13 000 years, continue to
provide a laboratory for the study of human adaptation and the environment, and more specifically for
the relationship between simple hunter-gatherer
societies and the deserts they inhabit.
The natural and cultural histories of the Great Basin,
however, have been far from static. Major shifts in Late
Pleistocene and Holocene climate regimes, with their
concomitant effects on environmental productivity,
have long been recognized. At the close of the last Ice
Age, for instance, immense lakes such as Lahontan
and Bonneville covered vast tracts of the Great Basin
(Figure 2). These lakes shrank and in some cases
completely evaporated, as warmer and dryer conditions set in during the Early Holocene. The Middle
Holocene, dating to about 80004000 years ago, was
marked by even more severe droughts that altered
major hydrological and ecological systems, fundamentally shifting the course of landscape evolution. By the
Late Holocene, with shorter but often still extreme
droughts, climatic conditions were greatly improved.
Through all of this, human beings have attempted
to wrest a living from this landscape, changing and
adapting to this challenging desert realm.
The following presentation tracks the chronological progression of prehistoric lifeways in the Great
Basin within this dynamic natural context. We emphasize general themes and patterns, at the expense of
more detailed local examples and explanations.
Chronology

While archaeologists have proposed several regional

chronological sequences and schemes, we divide
time into five broad periods (cal BP calendar years
before present):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Palaeo-Indian 13 5008000 cal BP,

Early Archaic 80004000 cal BP,
Late Archaic 40001400 cal BP,
Formative (Fremont) 1400600 cal BP,
Recent Prehistoric Post-600 cal BP.

The Palaeo-Indian period (13 5008000 cal BP) While

there have been occasional claims of a more ancient
Pleistocene occupation, most archaeologists now
agree that the earliest definitive human use of the
Great Basin is reflected by the fluted projectile points
recognized across the New World as Clovis points
(Figure 3), named for the place in New Mexico where
they were first found. These artifacts have been
recovered almost exclusively from the surfaces of

AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin 291

Oregon
California

Idaho
Nevada

Wyoming
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P a c ifi c
Oc

ea
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Figure 1 Map of the Great Basin. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

Oregon
California

Idaho
Nevada

Si e r r a

Lake
Lake
Lahontan
Lahontan

Lake
Bonneville

Wyoming
Utah

Nev
ad

fic

ou
aM

Paci

nta

ea

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Oc
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Figure 2 Location of Lakes Lahontan and Bonneville. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

Arizona

292 AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin

Figure 4 Stemmed points. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

Figure 3 Clovis point. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

ancient landforms, such as playa margins, rather than

from intact buried deposits. Thus they have not been
found in the Great Basin in contexts suitable for
radiocarbon dating and cannot be directly dated; instead they are assumed to date in the range of Clovis
points found elsewhere in North America, that is,
between 13 500 and 11 500 years old.
In western North America, Clovis points have been
found in association with the bones of now-extinct
megafauna (e.g., mammoth and large bison), suggesting that these early populations were focused on biggame hunting. This also may have been the case in the
Great Basin, but it has not yet been demonstrated.
Great Basin Clovis peoples are thought to have been
highly mobile, traveling in small groups and settling
around lakes and along rivers where game also tended
to congregate. Millingstones, the hallmark of Archaic
and other, later-dating prehistoric occupations, are
generally absent from Clovis sites.
Prehistoric occupation of the Great Basin toward the
latter end of the Palaeo-Indian Period (between 11 500
and 8000 cal BP) is documented by various large
lanceolate and stemmed projectile points (Figure 4)
which typically occur with a variety of heavy coretools, cores, stone knives, domed scraping tools, and
chipped-stone crescents. Often referred to as the
Western Pluvial Lakes tradition, and like the Clovis
pattern that preceded it, archaeological assemblages
dating to this time generally occur around the former
shores of now-extinct pluvial lakes and other ancient
landforms. Evidence of this later pattern, however, is
found throughout the Great Basin, suggesting larger
populations. While archaeologists have tended to view
Western Pluvial Lakes peoples mostly as big-game
hunters, many sites from this period have a wide
variety of artifacts that reflect both hunting (projectile
points, flaked stone cutting implements) and plantfood processing (grinding slabs, handstones). These

tools have been found with significant concentrations

of small game, fish, and shellfish remains, clearly
reflecting a wider subsistence focus than just the
hunting of large game.
There is no question, however, that Western Pluvial
Lakes populations wandered far and wide in pursuit of
the plant and animal resources they so depended on.
Evidence for this is provided in the obsidian source
profiles of projectile points and other tools dating to
this time. Obsidian is a volcanic glass that was preferred by prehistoric stone workers for making their
tools. Each obsidian flow exhibits its own distinct
chemical signature, which can be identified using techniques known as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) mass spectrometry or instrumental neutron activation analysis
(INAA). By matching the proportions of trace elements in an obsidian artifact with those from a
known volcanic glass flow, archaeologists can determine the quarry where the material was obtained, and
how far the toolmaker carried it before eventually
discarding it. This information is then used to reconstruct broader settlement patterns, on the assumption
that the distribution of the discarded obsidian reflects
the travel patterns of the particular group of people
who discarded it. Archaeological sites of the Western
Pluvial Lakes Tradition usually contain a wide variety
of obsidians from different, far-flung source locations.
This pattern, which has been seen throughout the
Great Basin, is interpreted as evidence of a populations high mobility and large geographic range.
Although no one knows the origin of these earliest
inhabitants of the basin, recent discoveries of human
skeletal remains and re-analyses of older museum
collections have shed new light on this old question.
Radiocarbon dating of human remains and associated
artifacts found in the Carson Sink area during the
1940s showed them to be in excess of 9000 years
old. One of these burials, recovered from Spirit
Cave (Figure 5), represents one of the oldest and

AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin 293

Oregon
California

Idaho
Nevada

Wyoming
Utah
The Great Basin
Spirit Cave
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Figure 5 Location of Spirit Cave. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

best-preserved sets of human remains ever recovered

in North America. What is even more noteworthy,
however, is that these skeletal remains, as well as
some found elsewhere in North America, are morphologically different from those of the ancestors of modern Native Americans. These findings probably
indicate that there were multiple migrations of different groups from northeast Asia into North America
and eventually into the Great Basin. This line of scientific inquiry is somewhat controversial, because many
contemporary Native American tribes who call the
Great Basin home believe that their direct ancestors
were the original inhabitants of these lands, and that
their people were created here.
The Early Archaic (80004000 cal BP) As we have
noted, there is compelling palaeoenvironmental evidence indicating that the transition into the Early Archaic (Middle Holocene) period was marked by a shift
to both warmer and dryer climates in the Great Basin.
A number of archaeologists have speculated that this
Middle Holocene warm period may have either reduced human populations or led them to totally abandon the central Great Basin during this interval. As
evidence, they point to a series of caves and rock shelters in the region that have human occupation
sequences at least 9000 years long, but show evidence
of abandonment during parts of the Middle Holocene
warm period. This drought may have been more severe,

and its effects on human populations more extreme, at

the early end of this period (c. 80005500 cal BP), but it
is likely that dry conditions prevailed until about
4000 cal BP. In this scenario, better-watered areas
along the western, northern, and eastern portions of
the Great Basin may have sustained occupation during
this time or even acted as refuges for populations who
were forced to abandon the central Basin. Other
archaeologists, while acknowledging that this was a
time of severe environmental stress and declining
populations, argue that large tracts of the Great
Basin were never completely abandoned.
Early Archaic artifact assemblages, and the lifeways they represent, show more regional variation
than their Palaeo-Indian counterparts. In the southwestern Great Basin, many of the sites dating to this
time are characterized by Pinto-series projectile
points (Figure 6) and increasing numbers of milling
tools, but retain many of the large, percussion-shaped
cores, knives, and scraping tools characteristic of
the earlier Western Pluvial Lakes tradition. It follows
that lifeways associated with these two assemblage
types those of small, mobile bands with geographically extensive foraging ranges were also little
changed. Along the northern tier of the Great Basin,
however, a completely different pattern emerged at
this time, marked by the presence of Northern
Side-notched dart points (Figure 7). As nearly as can
be reconstructed, these points are distributed in a

294 AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin

Figure 6 Pinto Series points. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

Figure 7 Northern Side-notched Point. By Tammara Ekness

Norton.

fan-like pattern across the Columbia Plateau and the

northern Great Basin, suggesting cultural influences
from the north during this period.
The best known of these site complexes is located
in Surprise Valley, California, in the northwestern
part of the basin (Figure 8). They contain formal,
semi-subterranean house structures which date to
between 6500 and 4500 years ago. Stylistically, distinctive artifacts found in these deposits include large
side-notched projectile points, antler wedges, mortars
with V-shaped bowls and pointed pestles, T-shaped
drills, tanged blades, and flaked stone pendants.
All of these artifacts and features appear to be of
northern derivation, with comparable forms identified at numerous sites on the Columbia Plateau.
The Late Archaic (40001400 cal BP) A major
restructuring of the subsistence-settlement strategies
used by Great Basin peoples occurred during the Late
Archaic period. The small, highly mobile groups that
characterized much of the Early Archaic were
replaced by larger aggregations of people living in
more permanent settlements. These settlements result
in an archaeological record characterized by large
accumulations of midden (organic-rich sediments

created by human occupation) and artifacts, as well

as elaborate house structures and storage facilities.
This higher degree of sedentism was probably supported by a more intensive collection and storage of
plant foods, which is evidenced in the archaeological
record by an increased frequency of milling equipment and the recovery of a wide range of wild seeds.
A good example of a Late Archaic village was discovered in Owens Valley, within the southwestern portion of the Great Basin. Excavations at CA-INY-30
(Figure 9) revealed the presence of house structures
made from frames of wooden poles covered with
thatched roofs made from tule reeds. The houses
contained a rich assortment of tools, including caches
of obsidian knives, projectile points, and bone awls.
Several storage pits were also found, one with a large
accumulation of pinyon nuts. Midden deposits adjacent to the houses produced food remains indicating a
multiseason occupation. Fall was marked by pinyon
nuts, winter by migratory water fowl, while spring
and summer were indicated by a variety of smallseeded plants like Indian rice grass.
This new village-based pattern was accompanied
by the emergence of several other settlement types,
including specialized hunting camps. Excavations at
these sites indicate that large-game hunting became
more important than at any other time in Great Basin
prehistory, and much of this hunting was focused on
bighorn sheep killed high in the mountains. One of
the best examples of this comes from the White Mountains, where projectile points, knives, and butchered
sheep bones were discovered at sites located more
than 10 000 ft above sea level. These remote habitats
had rarely been used until the Late Archaic, when
small groups of hunters armed with atlatls and darts
tipped with Elko points (Figure 10) began killing
sheep among the craggy alpine peaks, and transporting the meat down to the lowland villages.
The focus on large-game hunting expanded well
beyond the simple goal of providing food for people
living in the lowland villages. Archaeologists interpret this from the explosion of ritualistic behaviors
associated with hunting that emerged during this period. Perhaps the most obvious example of this behavior can be seen in the increased production of
petroglyphs (artistic images pecked into natural rock
outcrops), most of which portray bighorn sheep,
often associated with human hunters (Figure 11).
Sheep petroglyphs are found throughout the Great
Basin, but the highest concentrations are located in
the volcanic Coso Mountains of southeastern California, where thousands of engravings were created during the Late Archaic period. Other ritual activities
were indicated by the severed heads of mountain
sheep cached in remote mountain caves, and the

AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin 295

Oregon
California

Idaho
Nevada

Surprise
Valley

Wyoming
Utah

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Figure 8 Location of Surprise Valley. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

Oregon
California

Idaho
Nevada

Wyoming
Utah
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Paci
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Arizona

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Figure 9 Location of CA-INY-30. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

manufacture of split-twig sheep figurines found at

many sites in the southernmost reaches of the basin.
This period of cultural elaboration was accompanied
by the interregional exchange of many commodities,

the most conspicuous being obsidian. As we have

noted, obsidian occurs naturally at a limited number of locations, and these places can be identified
with XRF or INAA analysis. Obsidian can also be

296 AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin

dated, because when a new surface of the material is

exposed to the atmosphere by a stone worker, it
begins to absorb small amounts water, forming a
hydration rim. The longer an artifact is exposed,

Figure 10 Elko points. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

the thicker the hydration rim becomes. Measuring

these hydration rims, and calibrating them against
radiocarbon dates on organic remains (e.g., an obsidian artifact found in a burnt house structure), allows
archaeologists to estimate how quickly the hydration
rim develops on a particular type of obsidian. This
in turn allows us to convert a hydration rim reading (measured in microns) to an approximate date
range. The data that have already been generated by
these techniques show that the Late Archaic stone
workers produced thousands of obsidian blanks,
which were exported across hundreds of miles to
meet the demands of hunters throughout the region.
Some of the obsidian artifacts were traded over
the Sierra Nevada and across the Central Valley of
California, and ultimately reached the Channel
Islands off the Santa Barbara coast, more than
50 miles out to sea.

Figure 11 Petroglyphs of hunters and bighorn sheep. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin 297

The Formative Period (1400600 cal BP) For a brief

period between about 1400 and 600 cal BP, a farming
culture known to archaeologists as the Fremont,
occupied significant portions of the Great Basin
(Figure 12). They ultimately settled in much of what
is now Utah, and appear to have borrowed many of
their farming techniques from neighboring Anasazi
populations living in the Southwest. Although some
Fremont groups focused on the cultivation of maize,
constructed extensive pit-house villages with adobewalled granaries, and created elaborate forms of pottery and rock art, others lived in smaller settlements
and used a mixed economy reliant on both hunting/
gathering and agricultural production.
The first hints of Fremont culture can be found at
sites dating between 2500 and 1400 cal BP, which
begin to show evidence of a few pit houses with
slab-lined pits containing corn, though it was not
until after about 1400 cal BP that full-scale village
life emerged among these people. A good example
of a major Fremont settlement is the Nawthis Village,
located in Utah just east of Salina. Many of the houses
there were composed of deep, circular pits covered
with superstructures of timber and mud (Figure 13).
Storage facilities were usually built above ground,
and consisted of several rectangular rooms made of
adobe and lined with large slabs of stone (Figure 14).
Typical Fremont artifacts include the bow and arrow
tipped with Rose Spring points (Figure 15); grayware

Oregon
California

pottery, sometimes painted with geometric designs;

rod and bundle basketry; leather moccasins; polished
stone balls; and ceramic human figurines. As with
Late Archaic peoples, rock art was important to the
Fremont. A signature icon of this culture is the
engraving of broad-shouldered humans wearing elaborate necklaces, earrings, and headdresses.
Subsistence remains from these sites indicate that
maize, beans, and squash were important staples, but
were supplemented with wild foods such as pinyon
nuts, chenopod seeds, cattails, Indian rice grass, and
various types of game. Ditches were sometimes constructed to irrigate crops, beginning at the mouth of
a canyon and directed downstream across an alluvial
fan and into the cultivated fields. Many of the canyon
sites also contain pole and mud-walled granaries
built into overhangs and crevices in hard-to-access
places. These facilities probably indicate that people
living in even the largest villages took to a more
mobile hunter-gatherer lifeway from time-to-time,
and used these caches to help secure their stored
resources while they were away.
The Fremont also occupied much smaller settlements, particularly along the northern and western
margins of their territory. These sites often contain
two or three houses, representing just a few families,
or small deposits in caves and rock shelters created by
part-time hunter-gatherers traveling away from their
home villages. Why the Fremont chose to farm at

Idaho
Nevada

The Great Basin

Fremont
Culture

Wyoming
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Figure 12 Location of the Fremont culture. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

298 AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin

Figure 13 Circular pit from Nawthis Village. From Exploring the Fremont by David B. Madsen.

Figure 14 Storage facilities from Nawthis Village. From Exploring the Fremont by David B. Madsen.

Figure 15 Rose Spring points. By Tammara Ekness Norton.

certain times and be hunter-gatherers at others

remains an important research issue for Great Basin
archaeologists. Most researchers believe that the
decision to farm was based largely on the changing
availability of the most lucrative wild foods in the

region, such as pine nuts and mountain sheep. If

these resources were readily available, then people
would spend little energy farming. But if human
populations over-harvested these wild commodities,
or their productivity dropped due to climatic changes,
then people would focus on the more labor-intensive
cultivation of domesticated plants.
Sometime around 600 BP, the Fremont culture disappeared from the archaeological record. No one really
knows why this occurred. Many archaeologists think
that severe droughts associated with what is known as
the Medieval Climatic Anomaly or the Medieval Warm
Period (1000600 cal BP) made it impossible to irrigate
crops on a regular basis, and that a new group of

AMERICAS, NORTH/Great Basin 299

huntergatherers moved in and took over the territory.

This new group, which spoke languages belonging to
the Numic family (Paiute, Shoshone, Ute), either
pushed the Fremont back toward their agricultural
neighbors in the Southwest, or assimilated them into
the new lifeway through intermarriage. While we cannot be sure which of these actually happened, analysis
of ancient DNA from Fremont skeletal materials
shows greater affinities with the Anasazi than with
the Numic, providing some support for the Fremont
being displaced from the Great Basin.
The Recent Prehistoric Period (post-600 cal BP)
The Recent Prehistoric period was marked by major
shifts in land use resulting from the rapid spread of
Numic populations across the region. Linguistic data
indicate that Numic speakers originated in the southwestern corner of the Great Basin and spread quite
quickly. By the time non-native people entered the
region, much of it was occupied by people speaking
similar (Numic) languages. If these people had lived
here for a very long time, their languages would have
diverged in the way that Latin, which spread over
much of Europe during the Roman Empire, evolved in
different areas into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. That a Northern Paiute person
living just east of Yosemite could speak to someone
living on the Snake River indicates a relatively recent
spread of a single population, perhaps occurring
during the last 500 years or so.
Unlike the large, centralized villages that characterized much of the Fremont and Late Archaic cultures,
Numic peoples used smaller settlements inhabited
by one or a few independent households on a seasonal basis, and are marked by brownware pottery
and new projectile point types (desert side-notched/
cottonwood triangular points; Figure 16). Increased
amounts of milling gear and specialized basketry,
including a new type of seed beater, indicate a greater
reliance on small-seed resources, while animal bones
from these sites reveal that rabbits contributed much
more to the diet than mountain sheep or deer. The
declining importance of big-game hunting was also
evidenced in the uplands, where the specialized hunting camps of the Late Archaic Period fell into disuse,
or were replaced by the small family settlements.
These changes in subsistence and settlement were
accompanied by declines in the production of rock art
and in the inter-regional exchange of obsidian. Petroglyphs portraying human figures and elaborate hunting scenes were no longer made and, in many cases,
the older engravings were defaced by a style known to
archaeologists as Numic Scratching. Late Archaic obsidian production sites at the quarries were also abandoned and replaced by small-seed processing stations

Figure 16 Desert side-notched and cottonwood points. By

Tammara Ekness Norton.

in places that were never used for this purpose before.

Not surprisingly, obsidian hydration data from the
California coast show no evidence that obsidian
tools entered the region after about 800 years ago
providing additional evidence for the collapse of the
earlier commerce between the western Great Basin
and populations living west of the Sierra Nevada.
Great Basin archaeologists do not have a clear understanding of why these changes occurred during
the Recent Prehistoric period. Some have argued that
people living in the Numic homeland (probably the
Owens Valley of southeastern California), one of the
most arid parts of the basin, developed an adaptation
that could deal successfully with the harsh desert conditions in the local area. When the climate deteriorated
during the medieval climatic anomaly, making life
much more difficult for the Late Archaic and Fremont
people, the door was left open for the Numic and their
small-group desert adaptation, allowing them to take
over much of the Great Basin. The success of this
mobile lifeway was clearly evidenced at historic contact, as every habitat was occupied by people using
simple but ingenious forms of technology and social
organization to make a living in one of the most challenging parts of the North American continent.
See also: Americas, North: American Southwest, Four

Corners Region; California and the Sierra Nevada;

Plains; Rocky Mountains; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Further Reading
Barlow KR (2005) A formal model for predicting agriculture
among the Fremont. In: Kennett DJ and Winterhalder B (eds.)
Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture,
pp. 87102. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

300 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in the United States

Beck C (ed.) (1999) Models for the Millennium: Great Basin Anthropology Today. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
Bettinger RL and Baumhoff MA (1982) The numic spread: Great
Basin cultures in competition. American Antiquity 47(3):
485503.
DAzevedo WL (1986) Great Basin. In: Sturtevant WC (ed.)
Handbook of North American Indians 11. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution.
Grayson DK (1993) The Deserts Past: A Natural Prehistory of the
Great Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Heizer RF and Baumhoff MA (1962) Prehistoric Rock Art of
Nevada and Eastern California. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Madsen DB and Rhode D (1994) Across the West: Human Population Movement and the Expansion of the Numa. Salt Lake City,
UT: University of Utah Press.
Madsen DB and Simms SR (1998) The Fremont complex: A behavioral perspective. Journal of World Prehistory 12(3): 255336.
McGuire KR and Hildebrandt WR (2005) Re-thinking Great Basin
foragers: Prestige hunting and costly signaling during the Middle
Archaic period. American Antiquity 70(4): 693710.
OConnell JF (1975) In: Bean LJ (ed.) The Prehistory of Surprise
alley, Anthropological Papers 4. Romona, CA: Ballena Press.
Stine S (1994) Extreme and persistent drought in California and
Patagonia during Mediaeval time. Nature 339: 546549.
Willig JA, Aikens CM, and Fagan JL (1988) Early Human Occupation in Far Western North America: The ClovisArchaic
Interface, Anthropological Papers 21. Carson City, NV: Nevada
State Museum.

Historical Archaeology
in the United States
Barbara J Little, National Park Service, Washington,
DC, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Cultural Resource Management (CRM) A branch of
archaeology that is concerned with developing policies
and action in regard to the preservation and use of cultural
resources.
ethnicity A sense of being different than other groups because of
cultural tradition, ancestry, national origin, history, or religion.
material culture The buildings, tools, and other artifacts that
includes any material item that has had cultural meaning
ascribed to it, past and present.
modernism International cultural movement after World War
I expressing disillusionment with tradition and interest in new
technologies and visions.
National Historic Preservation Act A federal statute that
established a federal program to further the efforts of private
agencies and individuals in preserving the Nations historic
and cultural foundations.
National Register of Historic Places The United States
official list of cultural resources worthy of preservation. Such
resources include districts, sites, buildings, structures, and
objects significant in history, architecture, archaeology,

engineering, and culture. The National Park Service, which is

part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, administers the
National Register.
preservation The act of sustaining and maintaining cultural
and natural resources identified as significant and/or threatened
and that warrant protection.
reconstruction the act or process of reproducing by new
construction the exact form and detail of a vanished building,
structure, or object, or a part thereof, as it appeared at a specific
period of time.

Roots of Historical Archaeology in the

United States
Very early instances of historical archaeology in the
Americas begin with the 1796 search for evidence of a
settlement on St. Croix Island to fix the boundary
between the United States and Canada. Half a century
later James Hall excavated the foundations of Miles
Standishs home and in 1897 the Association for the
Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), which
owned portions of James Island, uncovered the brick
foundations of the 1639 church at Jamestown, the first
permanent English settlement in the Americas.
In the United States, the preservation movement
started during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and led to passage of the Antiquities Act which,
in 1906, established the basic preservation policies of
the federal government. In 1935, the Historic Sites
Act built upon the ideals of noncommercial value and
public benefit. Historical archaeology has been associated with the preservation movement and the needs
of historic places since at least the 1930s. As it flourished in the context of the preservation movement,
its early use was mainly confined to discovering
architectural remains.
When historical archaeology got its start in the
1930s, it joined the social history of the time in creating and supporting national mythology. Jamestown
and Williamsburg, in particular, provide examples
of government and private interest in the historic
past. The work done at each and the interpretations
offered have greatly influenced the shape of colonial
historical archaeology. The 1920s and 1930s saw
Rockefellers establishment of Colonial Williamsburg,
which set new standards for historic preservation and
used excavations to inform architectural restorations
and reconstructions. Jamestown and Yorktown became part of the National Park Service in 1934.
Some of the first large-scale excavations in historical
archaeology in the country took place in Jamestown in
the 1930s, alongside quite a few other projects, many
of them funded by Federal relief monies.
During the 1940s and 1950s, historical archaeology was not tied to the intellectual pursuits of

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in the United States 301

prehistorians who worked in museums and academic

departments but to the commemorative pursuits of
preservationists and park interpreters. The preservation movement provided a home to archaeologists
whose work on historic period sites was not valued by
academic colleagues. In addition to undertaking salvage work, historical archaeologists excavated sites
mainly for the purposes of reconstruction and visitor
interpretation, in some cases rewriting the details of
history. For example, Hale Smiths excavations at the
Scott Miller site near Tallahassee and John Griffins
work at San Luis de Talimali comprised the first
archaeology of Spanish missions in Florida. Archaeology systematically dismantled the local mythical
identification of certain ruins as missions as research
revealed sugar mills and plantation buildings instead.
JC Harrington excavated Fort Raleigh and Fort
Necessity National Battlefield in the late 1940s and
early 1950s. Accurate reconstruction of the forts
relied upon archaeological information. The 1950s
excavations at Jamestown were done in preparation
for the 350th anniversary celebration in 1957.
In the 1960s the new social history emerged and
had a lasting impact on the field. One of the defining
debates for historical archaeology during the 1960s
raged as its practitioners struggled to define their
work and create a separate profession. Would that
profession be historical or anthropological? At times,
that debate threatened to destroy the field because it
was treated as the primary theoretical issue facing the
discipline. However, the founding of the Society for
American Archaeology (SHA) in 1967 brought some
measure of academic legitimacy to the field.
During the 1970s anthropology as a whole was
moving closer to history, although prehistoric archaeology was not following suit. In turn, historians
became enamored of anthropology, discovering culture, but not necessarily material culture. Growing
awareness of pluralism and social history influenced
the topics taken up by historical archaeologists. Much
of the research starting in the 1960s and particularly in
the 1970s was focused on subcultures of American
society. Ethnicity was embraced as a subject to which
historical archaeology could make real contributions
in anthropology. Charles Fairbanks initiated the historical archaeology of AfricanAmericans with his
investigations of plantation slavery. While historical
archaeology continued to work on the contact between
Native and European Americans, it also developed
strong interests in plantations and plantation slavery,
the frontier, subsistence, ethnicity, and method.
Within the Preservation Movement, the most
influential legislative developments occurred during
the 1960s and 1970s. The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), passed in 1966, established the

National Register of Historic Places and created the

field now known as Cultural Resource Management
(CRM). The new requirements of the NHPA stimulated the growth not only of history and architectural
history but also of historical archaeology because of
requirements for survey and excavation of archaeological sites from all time periods.
The volume of historical archaeology done in the
United States increased dramatically with the legislated needs of CRM. The sheer volume of projects
driven by legal requirements to evaluate sites in terms
of their proven or potential information value (criterion d of the National Register eligibility criteria)
stimulated the field to define important questions of
historic period sites that can be addressed fully only
by incorporating archaeology. There would be far
fewer archaeologists and far less archaeology done
without the organizing structure of CRM. Given
the dearth of historical archaeologists in American
universities, it is unlikely that archaeologists would
have turned their attention toward the research
domains of social history without the surge of research supported through CRM. With this impetus,
the topics addressed by historical archaeologists
increased dramatically to embrace urban settings,
occupational categories, landscape, mining, ranching,
households, farmsteads, industry, consumer choice,
burials, and battlefields along with methodological
developments.
In the 1980s archaeology as a whole was beginning
a new period of critical self-examination and, in
response, reactionary entrenchment. Since then numerous debates have taken place about the pros and
cons of processual and post-processual archaeology.
Historical archaeology has gone through its own periods
of growth and change, and its practitioners have often
been the most successful with approaches that seek to
uncover intention, social relations, and ideology along
with economy, function, and structure.

Approaches and Subject Matter

Both the geographic and analytic scales at which historical archaeologists work vary considerably. Scholars have argued for fruitful scales of analysis from
the global world system, to regions, to communities,
to household, and even to individual artifacts.
Because historical archaeology in the United States
is somewhat fragmented, practitioners struggle to
define unifying questions, looking for questions
that count. Some archaeologists look to social historians and cultural anthropologists to define important
questions. Certainly some of the questions concern
race, class, and gender and are of current political and
sociological import.

302 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in the United States

One of the unifying commonalities in the discipline

is the inevitable focus on material culture. Historical
archaeology in the United States has matured into a
diverse discipline using a wide range of material culture, historical documents, and theoretical frameworks. The range of issues is broad. Practitioners
experiment with the methodologies and theoretical
approaches needed to address topics such as ideology,
resistance, ethnic and gender identity, power relations, and capitalism, beyond but not abandoning
traditional concerns like chronology, subsistence,
and land use. Whatever the approach or topic, artifacts lie at the core of the discipline. Interpreting
material culture depends upon archaeological context. Without such context, artifact analysis is limited
to aesthetic opinion and market value. Every archaeology student trained in the United States is told
repeatedly that without context, artifacts are meaningless. Similarly, the contexts themselves are broadened to encompass not only stratigraphic levels and
features, but also societies and cultural patterns. As
the questions become more complex, broader contexts are required. Historical archaeology makes
significant contributions to material culture studies
as it broadens the sources for writing history.
Several disciplines beyond archaeology, such as the
history of technology, materials science, and art
history are interested in artifacts. Because things are
central to human expression, Material Culture Studies has emerged as a new discipline. Under this
umbrella, many disciplines are making the leap from
studying isolated objects to a more comprehensive
look at meanings of objects in broader contexts. The
influence of anthropology is at least partly responsible for this transition but material culture studies in
many disciplines are broadening the contexts they
study. The focus on material culture invites interdisciplinary cooperation and synergistic research.
Several archaeologists suggest that capitalism be
considered the proper primary focus of the discipline
and argue that such a focus solves a long-standing
problem of an atheoretical and eclectic stance in the
discipline. Capitalism is recognized as important
because it focuses on the development of the current
dominant ideology of the modern Western world.
There are weaknesses though, not the least of which
is a Western/European centered viewpoint that may
serve to omit cross-culturally relevant work incorporating written documentation such as that on Old
World precapitalist states, political maneuvering between Native American groups, medieval Europe, or
African cultures documented through oral history.
The European emphasis comes from the history parentage of historical archaeology. The anthropology
parent provides an emphasis on the other. Historical

archaeology need not shortchange either outlook but

may examine the dynamic interplay between and
within societies and social groups in various positions
of power and powerlessness. In the United States such
a historical archaeology is nearly always centered on
time periods and people embedded in or buffeted by
the complex context of capitalism.
Research on the culture of capitalism seeks to
understand the most pervasive changes of the past
half-millennium: how did people make sense of capitalisms economic, technical, and social transformations and their cultural effects? A focus on capitalism
in this case begins with mercantile capitalism from
the fifteenth century rather than solely on forms of
industrial capitalism from the eighteenth century.
Capitalism as world system serves as a way to keep
myriad issues connected. Within the world system
of capitalism there are different spatial and temporal
scales of analysis and different foci for research. Within
the United States the phenomenon of capitalism is not
limited by region or time period; it is not unique to East
Coast industrialism. Although capitalism supports and
is supported by dominant cultural ideologies, neither it
nor the ideologies are transcendent or all-encompassing; they are challenged, changed, and embraced.
An archaeology of capitalism cannot be confined
within the United States. Instead it is worldwide in
scope. Therefore, historical archaeology considers the
development of the modern world system, with all
the haunts of modernism, in cross-cultural perspective. In looking to capitalism and the development of
contemporary society and the modern world as unifying concepts, historical archaeologists turn their attention around the globe to areas colonized or otherwise
affected by Europeans. Capitalism is not monolithic,
as regional differences in indigenous culture, historical
contingencies, and ecological setting are understood
to influence as well as be influenced by Europeanled economic conquest. The cross-cultural approach
is needed to understand the contemporary modern
world that is truly diverse.

Goals of Historical Archaeology in the

United States
As a social science, historical archaeologys goals are
to systematically investigate, describe, and explain
human activities in the past through the study of
material culture, broadly conceived. As one of the
humanities, historical archaeology seeks knowledge
of the past in order to gain insight into the human
condition. As a practice, historical archaeology in the
United States is situated within the private sector in
CRM firms, the government sector at all levels of
government, and the academic sector, although it is

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in the United States 303

weakly represented in the latter. Because so much

historical archaeology is done as public archaeology
that is funded or mandated by legal requirements, it is
meant to provide public benefits. Therefore, its goals
must reach beyond professional research goals toward the needs of the many participants and the
public who use and value it. Public benefits involve
not only the knowledge and understanding gained
through research, but also the use of sites and collections for such purposes as entertainment, education,
community cohesion, and economic development.
Research goals of historical archaeology include preservation and site interpretation, historical supplementation, reconstructions of past life ways, understanding
modernization and globalization, and contributions to
archaeological science. Each of these is particularly
challenging in a discipline that often struggles to be
truly interdisciplinary.
Partly due to its development in tandem with historic
preservation and historic places, historical archaeology
is often used to document architectural and landscape
details for management and public interpretation.
Excavated artifacts also provide information for historic furnishing specialists who select material for display,
for example, in historic house museums.
Historical archaeology supplements history in the
sense that it can fill in gaps created by biased and
incomplete records. Archaeology, often, may correct
history derived from documents by providing alternative questions and interpretations. Supplementing
history by filling in gaps calls attention to those gaps
and to an appreciation of their importance. The goal
of supplementation, then, is more usefully thought of
as historical challenge. History thus supplemented is
history re-conceptualized.
The details of everyday life must be considered in
the reconstruction of lifeways, which can be thought
of as historical ethnography. There are parallel goals
with prehistoric archaeology in describing life in the
past in terms of foodways, settlement patterns, domestic life, economic relationships, social structure,
and ideology.
The reconstruction of past cultures and lifeways
and the description of processes such as acculturation
or Creolization and frontier adaptation intersect
with global processes of imperialism, colonialism,
and capitalism and contribute to the histories of
disenfranchised people as well as to those of the
privileged. Thus, understanding modernization and
globalization is a goal that is firmly embedded in the
approach that sees the investigation of capitalism as a
useful unifying approach in the discipline.
As historical archaeology was being defined professionally, there were high hopes for its potential as a
laboratory for anthropology, particularly concerning

processes such as colonization and acculturation.

Potential for consideration of such processes continues
to expand in the discipline. The idea of colonization,
for example, may be dissected into dynamically
related packages of power, domination, hegemonic
negotiation, and resistance on many levels. Acculturation or Creolization, as it more accurately may be
conceptualized, may be investigated as complicated
economic, political, and symbolic negotiations.
Historical archaeology has been used as a laboratory for more general archaeological science to be
perfected through ethnoarchaeology and a science
of material culture. At times, similar goals have
been expressed for modern material culture studies.
Such work includes tests of seriation, refuse patterning as a mirror of ethnicity, status indicators, and the
observation and prediction of the effects of formation
processes upon the archaeological record. Some historical archaeologists work to develop methods that
will further the aims of prehistory and contribute to
cross-cultural research, particularly among complex
societies.

Time Periods, Issues, and Representative

Sites
Major issues include formation and maintenance of
separations based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender.
The archaeology of the AfricanAmerican experience
has expanded considerably. There is also research on
historic sites occupied by Native Americans, often in
conflict or other contact with EuropeanAmericans;
Asians, especially Chinese immigrants; and Dutch,
English, French, Spanish, and other European nationalities. Archaeology is increasingly common at historic
house museums, typically expanding from an initial
focus on the great man history of the place to examine the rest of the household and settlement. Domestic
sites of all time periods, locations, and economic class
yield insights into the transformations of everyday life.
Workers housing and boardinghouses provide the
opportunity to investigate the effects of industrialization and the changing face of work and labor.
Gender presents a special challenge that is being met
in innovative ways.
An explosion of archaeology of AfricanAmericans
has often focused on plantation slavery but has
expanded to consider the changing roles and situations of black Americans as slave and free, rural and
urban. Plantation studies have undertaken to provide accounts of single plantations, experiment with
Stanley Souths pattern-recognition technique, illuminate unique material expressions, and critique
the archaeological treatment of slavery. Post-Civil
War tenant plantations and Southern farms and the

304 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in the United States

varying situations of free blacks provide opportunities for theorizing, analyzing, and describing strategies of power, expressions of all levels of ideology,
and dynamic interactions among those attempting to
dominate and those attempting to resist. The archaeology of slavery documents both covert slave resistance on plantations and overt resistance through
sites of the Underground Railroad.
Dividing time within historical archaeology in the
United States results in relatively short periods
marked approximately by centuries. Some issues are
specific to particular time periods, but most continue
through several periods, ranging from the earliest
explorations and effects of inter-cultural contact and
ethnic diversity fueled by immigration, from the sixteenth century through the era of the Great Depression and until today to include modern material
culture. Many types of sites are common to all the
time periods, including domestic sites, farms, shipwrecks, gardens and other landscapes, and Native
American settlements.
Exploration and Early Settlement

This time period of approximately the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries covers diverse issues, directly
related to contact between native groups and both
Europeans and Africans as well as adaptations that
settlers from the old world made to new physical and
social environments. Plantations and missions were
established immediately when Europeans settled in
the new world. Some notable site types are failed or
abandoned colonies, early plantations, missions, fur
trading posts, and early settlements along the East
coast and in the Southwest.
The Grand Village of the Natchez on the Mississippi
River was the main village of the Natchez society occupied before 1682 until 1730. Two platform mounds

held the home of the leader known as the Great Sun in

the main temple. French colonists described this village
and some of the rituals they observed in this highly
stratified society, providing accounts that help interpretations of Mississippian cultures in the Southeastern US.
In 1565 the Spanish founded St. Augustine, which
served as capital of Spanish Florida for most of the
period until it was ceded to England in 1763 under
the Treaty of Paris. The second Spanish occupation
lasted from 1784 until 1821, when La Florida became
a US territory. Archaeology has been particularly
important for interpreting womens roles as culturebrokers in Native American and Spanish interaction.
It has also revealed the adoption of aboriginal diet
and food ways in the development of a Creolized
culture. In addition, archaeologists have documented
the decline of local indigenous people and the influx
of other native groups from Georgia and South
Carolina. These and many other investigations have
made it clear that ceramic assemblages indicate far
more than functional use; they may inform about
symbolic interaction and group competition.
On Jamestown Island, in 1893 the APVA acquired
more than 20 acres surrounding the old church tower
and in 1934 the National Park Service acquired the
rest of the island to establish Colonial National
Historical Park. Projects of the 1930s and 1950s are
well known (see above). Since 1994, APVA has discovered remains of the triangular 1607 James Fort,
including the palisade wall lines, the east cannon
projection, several cellars, a building, and several
graves (Figure 1). Only a portion of the fort has
been eroded away by the James River, although it
was accepted for years that the fort had been lost.
Analyses of hundreds of thousands of artifacts dating
to the first half of the seventeenth century reveal
details and patterns of the early colony, including

Figure 1 Reconstruction in progress of the barracks and palisade of James Fort, Jamestown, Virginia, in preparation for the 400th
anniversary in 2007.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in the United States 305

the discovery that the Virginia Company supplied the

colony with up-to-date medical supplies and copper
stock with which to fashion jewelry to trade with the
Powhatan Indians.
The work on Martins Hundred by Ivor Noel Hume
is a well-known excavation in the Chesapeake region.
Within these 20 000 acres along the James River, the
administrative center known as Wolstenholme Towne
consisted of a palisade fort and several domestic buildings. Native Americans attacked settlements along the
James River in 1622, devastating the European population. The burning of Wolstenholme Towne sealed a time
capsule of early seventeenth-century plantation life that
has been extensively excavated and has been interpreted
for the public by Colonial Williamsburg.
Virginias first governor, Sir George Yardley, established Flowerdew Hundred in 1619 as one of many
plantations along the James River. Archaeological
surveys located dozens of sites related to European
settlement and have yielded important insights into
early relationships between European and African
Americans. Excavations also revealed a previously
unknown small-scale iron smelting industry operating
in the last quarter of the seventeenth century.
Excavations of St. Marys City revealed Popes Fort,
dating to 1645 and related to the English Civil War
and the Protestant rebellion against Lord Baltimore;
investigations of the 1630s Jesuit Chapel uncovered
burials of some of Marylands founders. Analysis of
the town not only located several structures, including the 1635 governors residence and state house, a
lawyers lodging, private homes, and public inns, but
also indicates that Marylands first capital did not
develop haphazardly but was a planned settlement
incorporating concepts of Baroque urban design.
Eighteenth-Century Life

The character of European settlement in several

regions changed from frontier to settled community.
Plantations continued to be important but cities
became increasingly so. This century saw the development of the Age of Reason, including new rules of
behavior and hence new material culture, and the
beginning of the industrial revolution within AngloAmerican colonies. Plantations continued to be vital
parts of the economic and social landscape until the
end of the Civil War. Spains missions continued to be
vital to their colonies in California and the Southeast.
Some notable site types include missions, fur trading
posts, cities, and battlefields and forts of the French
and Indian War, and of the American Revolution.
The African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan in
New York City was the burial site for that citys
enslaved population throughout the 1700s. The
1990s excavation, study, and reburial of over 400

individuals marks a watershed in historical archaeology in the United States in terms of public involvement. Analysis of the skeletal remains and burials
reveal some direct connections to African cultural
practices and symbolism as well as the physical hardships and effects of enslavement.
Fort Necessity in Western Pennsylvania was the
1754 scene of a pivotal conflict between England and
France in the French and Indian War. Archaeology
revealed that long-held assumptions about the forts
precise location, size, and shape were wrong. Excavation identified the stockade and outer entrenchments
and permitted an accurate reconstruction as a circular
fort, which is managed by the National Park Service.
The Archaeology in Annapolis project excavated
over 20 sites in Marylands capital, including formal
gardens, colonial mansions, a print shop and artisans
dwelling, and evidence of the baroque town plan. The
project has explicitly focused on the development of
the culture of capitalism and an innovative and influential public program.
Archaeology at Monticello, Thomas Jeffersons
plantation, and at Poplar Forest, Jeffersons other
plantation, has provided insight into lives, work conditions, and accomplishments of white and black servants and slaves. As on other plantations, the analysis
of food remains has been important for understanding
ethnic and economic variability. Of particular importance is the analysis and understanding of a distinct
culture that developed among AfricanAmericans.
In addition, the archaeology investigates Jeffersons
landscape design and the purposeful shaping of these
places.
Nineteenth-Century Life

While manufacturing and iron production began in

the colonies during the seventeenth century and crafts
began to turn into industries in the eighteenth century, it is during the nineteenth century when full-blown
industry and accompanying commerce appear. Industry changed the structure of wage labor, yet slave
labor continued in agricultural, industrial, commercial, and domestic settings. The California gold rush
stimulated migration West within the continent and
also stimulated Chinese immigration. Notable site
types include plantations, railroad sites, and many
other types of sites associated with Manifest Destiny,
Chinese terraced gardens, industrial sites including
workers housing, battlefields, encampments, and
other locations directly associated with the American
Civil War and the Indian Wars.
Work at the early nineteenth-century Russian colony
of Fort Ross in California goes beyond traditional
studies of acculturation. Analysis in the context of
mercantile colonialism reveals that Native American

306 AMERICAS, NORTH/Historical Archaeology in the United States

workers did not buy European goods, but acquired

them as discarded items. They recycled materials
such as nails and ceramic and glass sherds into objects
that were useful in the Native American context and
within a complex set of Native cultural strategies
Investigations at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia show
peoples responses to changes in industry as the armory
was transformed from a work place run by artisans
to a factory of wage laborers run by the military
(Figure 2). Workers were not silent about their disintegrating social and economic position. Reactions on
the job to harsher work conditions and longer hours
included work slowdowns, sabotage and, in one
extreme case, murder. Families also made different
consumer choices in this chaotic environment. During
the early nineteenth century, when the lives and
livelihoods of craftsmen appeared unthreatened and
secure, the households of management and labor
tended to follow the same fashions in choosing their
domestic goods. Later, in mid-century, the managers
continued to adopt new styles. In contrast, laborers
re-adopted old styles even while both cost and availability made the new and fashionable household goods
accessible to the average armory worker.
At the Boott Mills industrial complex in Lowell,
Massachusetts, excavations of the mill girls
boardinghouses reveal that workers frequently disregarded corporate rules about behavior, particularly

Figure 2 Stratigraphic layers at the nineteenth-century Harpers

Ferry Armory in West Virginia.

concerning the consumption of alcohol. Other

artifacts indicate that the mill workers sought to create
distinct individual identities for themselves.
In 1865 the Steamboat Bertrand, bound from
St. Louis for the newly discovered goldfields of Montana, sank in the Missouri River north of Omaha,
Nebraska. In 1969 the vessels hull was completely
excavated, yielding tools, clothing, food, and equipment which were in remarkably good condition because they had been preserved in an anaerobic, only
slightly acidic, environment. Visitors to the DeSoto
National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa may view the collection storage area that protects the cargo collection of
200 000 artifacts. The objects bound for the mining
towns may not be what one would expect to find on
the raucous nineteenth-century American frontier. In
addition to necessities, there was olive oil and mustard
from France, bottled tamarinds and a variety of canned
fruits, several varieties of alcoholic bitters, powdered
canned lemonade, and brandied cherries. Such an inventory challenges assumptions about merchants on
the frontier and provides an important resource for
researchers of frontier life and consumer culture.
Like-a-Fishhook Village on the Missouri River in
North Dakota was occupied c. 184585 by Hidasta,
Mandan, and Arikara people who farmed and traded
with Europeans. Excavations of this multicultural
village revealed both traditional and modified
housing built by members of these three distinct tribes
and extensive evidence of the fur trade as well as the
presence of Fort Berthold.
In 1983 an accidental grass fire exposed the surface
of Little Bighorn Battlefield, providing the opportunity to examine the ground surface and to conduct
archaeological investigations into this battle, which is
one of the most famous of many conflicts over control
of land and life in the American West. On June 25,
1876 the Seventh US Cavalry, led by Lieutenant
Colonel George Armstrong Custer, engaged the Sioux
and Cheyenne Indians in a battle that was part of the
United States governments military campaign against
the tribes who refused to live within the boundaries of
the Great Sioux Reservation and who were struggling
to continue their traditional way of life. Because none
of the 7th Cavalry combatants survived, there were
no eyewitness accounts from whites. Historians had
long held that the extensive Indian testimony was not
accurate. Specific questions concerned where the
participants of the battle took up positions and how
they moved about the field. The archaeologists used
geophysical techniques and excavation to translate
artifact patterning into behavioral dynamics through
the use of modern firearm identification procedures. The innovative archaeological methods created during these investigations changed the way that

AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains 307

battlefield archaeology is done and raised expectations for results. Archaeological discoveries challenged historical details and versions of the battle
and the findings support the idea that the Indian
battle accounts are more accurate than those of the
soldiers who buried the dead.
In another example of archaeology supporting
alternative history and challenging an accepted perspective is provided by an archaeological project commissioned by the Northern Cheyenne to document
escape routes taken during the Outbreak from Fort
Robinson, Nebraska, in 1879. Archaeological results
successfully challenged official Army-based accounts
of the escape by providing data that bolstered Cheyenne oral tradition. This is one of many examples
where oral history and archaeology are mutually supportive in providing data and perspectives that contribute to a more accurate history in which biases and
the politics of knowledge are acknowledged.
Excavations at the Millwood Plantation on the
Savannah River in South Carolina provide insight
into the transition between plantation slavery from
the 1830s until the Civil War to post-war tenant
farming lasting into the 1920s. Changes in settlement
pattern reveal the search for greater freedom among
formerly enslaved workers as quarters were replaced
by clustered housing which was in turn replaced by
more dispersed and independent houses.
Twentieth-Century Life

The economy of the United States continued to change

after the upheavals of the Civil War and Reconstruction
and with the impact of the Depression of the 1930s.
Demography continued to change with immigration,
anti-immigration laws, and internal migration. Notable
site types include tenant farms, sites associated with
mining, including mines themselves and mining
camps; saw mills, logging camps, boom towns, work
camps, and sites of conflicts between labor and capital.
Historical archaeology of mining spans several centuries and documents not only the extraction and
refinement processes, but also the social life and culture of miners. The early twentieth-century remains
of Reipetown in eastern Nevada reveal interesting
anomalies of a mining town without evidence of
internal class distinctions. No material culture evidence indicates consumer differences among documented households of ethnic Slavs, Greeks, Italians,
Mexicans, and Japanese.
The Ludlow Massacre of striking coal miners and
their families by the Colorado National Guard in
April 1914 sparked an important turning point in
labor relations in the United States. Archaeologists
of the Ludlow Collective investigate this site not
only to document the material evidence of the tent

colony and its destruction but also to revive the

memory of working class struggle.

Disclaimer
The views expressed here are those of the author and
do not represent any official position of the US
National Park Service.
See also: Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in
Mexico; Americas, North: Plantation Archaeology; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology; Historic Preservation Laws; Industrial Archaeology.

Further Reading
Crowell AL (1997) Archaeology and the Capitalist World System:
A Study from Russian America. New York: Plenum Press.
Deagan K (1983) Spanish St. Augustine: The Archaeology of a
Colonial Creole Community. New York: Academic Press.
Deetz J (1993) Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia
Plantation, pp. 16191864. Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press.
Feguson L (1992) Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early
Africa America, 16501800. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
Hardesty DL and Little BJ (2000) Assessing Site Significance:
A Guide for Archaeologists and Historians. Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira Press.
Little BJ (2007) Historical Archaeology: Why the Past Matters.
Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Mullins PR (1999) Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African
American and Consumer Culture. Klewer Academic/Plenum.
Orser CE, Jr. (2002) Encyclopedia of Historical Archaeology.
London: Routledge.
Orser CE, Jr. (1988) The Material Basis of the Postbellum Tenant
Plantation: Historical Archaeology in the South Carolina
Piedmont. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Shackel PA (1996) Culture Change and the New Technology: An
Archaeology of the Early American Industrial Era. New York:
Plenum Press.
Wall DD (1994) The Archaeology of Gender: Separating the
Spheres of Urban America. New York: Plenum Press.

Plains
W Raymond Wood, University of Missouri
Columbia, Columbia, MO, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
earthlodge An earthlodge refers to a kind of semi-permanent
house, supported by four or more center posts and covered with a
layer of earth and sod with a covered entry hall.
fluted point A projectile point with a distinctive longitudinal
groove on both faces, left after removal of a channel flake from
the base of the point.

308 AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains

wickiup Hut used by the nomadic Indians of the arid regions
of the western and southwestern US, usually with an oval
base and a rough domed frame covered with reed mats, grass,
or brushwood.

Introduction
The Great Plains of North America encompass the
vast grasslands that lie between forested eastern
North America and the Rocky Mountains; to their
north the region is bounded by the boreal forests of
Canada, and to the south by the Gulf Coastal Plain.
The region is subject to climatic extremes of the continents interior, plus the aridity resulting from lying
in the rain shadow of the Rockies. This vast region
nonetheless is environmentally very diverse, containing forested montane areas as well as large river
systems. Major streams drain from the Rockies toward the east, and provide valley-bottom habitats
that bisect this great grassland, and in the east their
expansive riverbottoms provided fertile land for the
gardens of later peoples (see Figures 1 and 2).
The region provided a perfect setting for the
American bison, an animal that remained the preferred
choice of prey for Native Americans for 11 000 years,
though pronghorns and other smaller game were not
neglected. Estimates of the historic bison population
on the plains range from some 30 million upwards
to twice that number. These huge beasts, though
smaller than their Clovis- and Folsom-era ancestors,
provided raw material for an astonishing range of
needs: food, shelter, tools, and weapons from housing to fly swatters. Folsom hunters were the first to
develop techniques for killing bison in large numbers,
techniques that were refined over the succeeding generations, and that included driving them over cliffs
and into corrals and natural enclosures. For generations killing weapons were spears, or darts cast using
an atlatl, or spear-thrower. The bow and arrow did
not arrive on the plains until about the time of Christ.
Historically, a bison-skin tipi was used by every
group on the plains, though some semi-sedentary late
farmers used it principally while they were away from
their villages on the hunt. Archaeological evidence for
use of the tipi goes back perhaps 5000 years, though its
perfect adaptation to the needs of nomadic life on the
Great Plains suggests that it has far greater antiquity.
Except for differences between three-pole and fourpole foundations, there is astonishingly little variation
in these conical dwellings across the plains, which were
quickly erected and even more rapidly dismantled (see
Figure 3).

Palaeo-Indian Cultures
The earliest soundly documented inhabitants of the
Great Plains were Clovis hunters, living between

about 9900 and 9200 BC, though tantalizing but inconclusive suggestions of prior human occupations
persist (Figure 2). Most readily identified by their
distinctive fluted lanceolate points, Clovis sites denote
a mobile hunting and gathering society best known for
its exploitation of mammoths (more recently, mastodons have been added to their prey), though they
depended on lesser game for most of their subsistence.
In the Eastern Plains and in southeastern United
States, the Clovis point appears to have evolved into
the fluted Dalton point. On the Western Plains, however, Clovis points were replaced by Folsom points,
which were made using a different fluting technique,
in which a single flake was detached from each side of
the base, rather than multiple flakes (see Figure 4).
Folsom hunters ranged the plains between about
9000 to 8000 BC. Their sites reveal an abrupt change
in hunting: kill sites now contain large numbers of an
extinct species of bison instead of animals that were
stalked individually.
These Palaeo-Indian hunters lived during a time
of dramatic environmental and climatic change.
During Clovis times the glacial climate of North
America was slowly warming. Mammoths, mastodons, giant bison and ground sloths, and other giant
ice-age fauna had vanished by Folsom times, probably due to changes in their food supply because of
changing vegetational patterns, though human hunting may also have contributed to their demise.
Though little is known of their social life, the presence of high-quality stone for making chipped-stone
tools that originated hundreds of kilometers away
implies either highly mobile bands or the genesis of
long-distance trade.
A succession of peoples who made a wide range
of new and different kinds of unfluted lanceolate projectile points occupied the plains between about 8000
and 6000 BC. Collectively, these cultures are called the
Plano complexes, and the points they made include
Agate Basin, Plainview, Milnesand, and Hell Gap
points. A group of sites in the Northern Plains containing materials known as the Cody complex includes
points of varying form described as Alberta, Scottsbluff, Eden, Firstview, and Kersey points. Other terminal Palaeo-Indian complexes include Allen/Frederick.
Many of these sites consist of localities where large
numbers of bison were killed and butchered, a continuation of the Folsom practice of collective kills.

Plains Archaic Cultures

Hunting and gathering continued to be important for
the next several thousand years, during what is sometimes called the Archaic period, dating between about
6000 and 500 BC (Figure 5). Global temperatures had
been increasing since the retreat of glacial ice and,

AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains 309

we
rt h
No
rn
ste

No
rth
ea
s
Mi

te
rn

dd

le

s
Plain

Mis s o

ur

s
Plain

Central
plains

Southern

Plains

Figure 1 Spatial divisions of the Plains area. After Lehmer (1971) Introduction to Middle Missouri Archeology. National Park Service,
Anthropological Papers No. 1. Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior.

Figure 2 Typical Plains view showing the interfingering of stream-bottom vegetation and upland grasslands. In the foreground is the
Ray Long site, southeast of the South Dakota Black Hills. Photo by Richard P. Wheeler, National Anthropological Archives.

310 AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains

Figure 3 A Skin Lodge of an Assiniboin Chief. After Karl Bodmer.

cm

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Figure 4 Clovis and Folsom points: (a, b) Clovis points; (c, d) Folsom points. From Jack L. Hofman and Russell W. Graham, The
Paleo-Indian Cultures of the Great Plains. In W. Raymond Wood, editor, Archaeology of the Great Plains (1998), Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas.

though the timing varies with geography, temperatures peaked in what is known as the Hypsithermal
climatic episode, some 5000 to 3000 BC, then gradually began to cool to modern conditions. The effects of
this warming peak and its accompanying droughts on
human and animal activities must have been locally
very severe, but people never abandoned the region.
The record for this period is quite patchy because
of poor preservation and inadequate sampling, but
across the plains we nevertheless find an increasing
number of distinctive complexes, largely defined on
the basis of a rapidly expanding inventory of very
diverse projectile points that include Logan Creek,

Gore Pit, McKean, and Pelican Lake. Lifeways were

adjusting to a time of rapidly changing climate that
led to striking modification in the flora and fauna
upon which humans depended. Bison remained a
staple in their diet, but there is now more evidence
for the use of plant resources because, as opposed to
the rare presence of grinding tools in late PalaeoIndian times, there is the almost universal use of
manos and metates for grinding seeds and other vegetal foods. In the Eastern Plains, simple fiber-tempered
pottery that dates to between 2600 and 1000 BC
was unexpectedly found at the Nebo Hill site, near
Kansas City.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains 311

Time

Period

Historic

Plains
villagers

Plains
nomads

Coalescent

1500
1250

Taxon

Plains
village

Middle Central Southern

Oneota
Missouri Plains
Plains

1000
750
Keith
Besant

500
Woodland
250
Kansas City
Hopewell

AD 1
500

Pelican Lake
1000

McKean

2000
Archaic
3000
Gore Pit

4000
5000

Logan Creek

6000
7000

Plano

Agate Basin Hell Gap

Cody

8000
Folsom
9000 BC

Palaeolndian

Clovis

Figure 5 Chronological periods on the Great Plains, with a few representative cultural units.

Plains Woodland Cultures

Beginning about the time of Christ or a little earlier,
the eastern part of the plains began to witness
the development of a wide variety of cultures that
made elongate pottery vessels with conoidal bases,
corner-notched projectile points, and that sometimes
erected small burial mounds, elements that had their
ultimate origin in eastern United States and, indeed,

these were presaged in scattered late Archaic sites in the

American Midwest. Some of these emerging plains
Woodland complexes, including the so-called Kansas
City Hopewell, clearly were inspired by Middle Woodland influences in northeastern United States. Still other
Woodland elements appear to have diffused onto the
plains and were overlaid on a variety of pre-existing
Archaic bases. These Woodland complexes extend west

312 AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains

to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, up the Missouri River into Montana, north into southern
Canada, and south into Oklahoma and Texas. Archaeologists believe that a good case can be made in many
instances for a continuum between the indigenous
Archaic peoples and Woodland populations, but a
dramatic change in hunting took place with the introduction of the bow and arrow, and in cooking by the
widespread use of pottery.
Good examples of architecture appear during this
time. Oval house patterns, probably resembling small
dome-shaped structures covered by hides or bark,
like wickiups, probably sheltered a nuclear family,
and we may presume small hamlets of such structures
typified their settlements. Representative complexes
include Besant in the Northern Plains, and the Keith
Phase in the Central Plains. Wild plant foods continued
to be gathered, as always, but in about AD 250 the
Kansas City Hopewell began the limited cultivation
of maize, squash, and marshelder. Other groups and
later Woodland sites in the Eastern Plains also contain
sunflower seeds, though the cultivation of maize and
other cultivated crops apparently did not extend into
the western High Plains (see Figure 5).

Plains Village Traditions

About AD 900 this pattern of incipient agriculture was
overturned by settled peoples who lived in the valleys
of major streams, built substantial dwellings capable
of housing an extended family, and maintained a
developed agricultural system. Gardens were prepared
and tilled using sharpened bison scapulas lashed to a
wooden handle. River floodplains supported small
gardens containing maize, squash, and marshelder, to
which were everywhere added beans, sunflowers, and
gourds that contributed significantly to their diet,
though bison hunting remained important. People
were now tied at least seasonally to their fields though,
like their historic descendants, they surely went on
long-distance hunts on the High Plains, principally
west of their villages.
Three major traditions may now be seen among
the newly developed semi-sedentary gardeners along
the eastern rim of the Central and Northern Plains.
Each of them is believed to have developed, in
ways that are not yet clear, from local Woodland origins. Their houses are larger than those of earlier times,
and are capable of housing an extended family.
In the Central Plains small hamlets and the individual
homesteads of these gardeners are known as the Central
Plains Tradition, dating between about AD 900 and
1300. The tradition encompasses three major subdivisions: Upper Republican, along the NebraskaKansas
boundary; Nebraska, along the Missouri River in

Nebraska and Iowa; and Smoky Hill, in north-central

Kansas. Their hamlets of nearly square houses, set on
terraces or hills above river floodplains, were supported
by four or more center posts, and had a covered entry
extending from one side; they were probably covered
with earth. Bell-shaped pits were used for storing household goods and garden produce. Well-made globular
pottery vessels and a wide range of utilitarian and nonutilitarian artifacts distinguish between these three subdivisions. Their small communities apparently enjoyed
relative peace with their neighbors, for none is known
to have been fortified.
During the same time, to the north, along the
banks of the Missouri and its major tributaries in
northwestern Iowa and in North and South Dakota,
was the Middle Missouri Tradition. Characterized by
long rectangular gabled houses with extended entries
on one end, they were clustered in villages of varying
size, usually built on the rim of high terraces overlooking the river. The walls of their houses probably
were banked with earth, but their roofs do not appear
to have been covered with earth as were those in
the Central Plains. Villages often were fortified by a
ditch that enclosed the town margins not facing the
riverbank, and was reinforced along its inner rim by a
palisade of closely set posts, often augmented by bastions. It is clear that these people were menaced by some
of their neighbors: perhaps by nomads, or perhaps by
other villagers competing for the same resources. These
communities evolved through three consecutive stages:
the Initial, Extended, and Terminal Middle Missouri
stages. Some Terminal Middle Missouri towns consisted of one hundred or more houses, tightly packed
within bastioned defensive ditches (see Figure 6).
Sometime after about AD 1350 the distinctive
architecture and artifacts of the Central and Middle
Missouri Traditions become blurred, in what is
known as the Coalescent Tradition. The architecture
of the gardening tribes from Nebraska to North
Dakota soon consisted of circular earth-covered lodges
supported on a four-post foundation, and retaining a
covered entry (see Figure 7). Dwellings of many early
Coalescent sites are scattered and without visible
defenses, but later ones are uniformly large and heavily fortified (Figure 5). The nature of the processes that
led to these changes is obscure, but there is little doubt
the Arikaras were responsible for introducing the
new circular earthlodge in the north. The arrival of
the Dakota Sioux from the Eastern Plains is presumed
to be a major stimulus for their defensive measures.
The historic Siouan-speaking Mandan and Hidatsa
Indians are lineal descendants of the Middle Missouri
Tradition; the historic Caddoan-speaking Arikara and
Pawnee Indians developed from the Central Plains Tradition. The Crows broke away from the Hidatsas in

AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains 313

Figure 6 Aerial view of Double Ditch State Historic Site, North Dakota, a prehistoric to historic Mandan Indian site. Photo by Russ
Hanson, courtesy of National Park Service.

Figure 7 Early historic Arikara earthlodge floor, Cheyenne River site, South Dakota. (National Anthropological Archives, negative
39ST1-84).

late prehistoric times to become nomads. Historically,

a number of tribes along the eastern rim of the plains
adopted the same general lifestyle just described for
the earthlodge-dwelling tribes, including the Omahas,
Poncas, and Otos. So did the Cheyennes and some of
the Eastern Dakota Sioux such as the Santees and
Yanktonais but in the historic period they abandoned
this way of life for a fully nomadic one.
Though it is somewhat marginal to the Great
Plains, in the late prehistoric period another major
complex occupied the region extending from Lake
Michigan to the Missouri River, and from southern

Minnesota to central Missouri, roughly centered

on the state of Iowa. Sometimes called a pottery
culture because of its distinctive if highly variable
ceramics, the Oneota Tradition emerged in about
AD 900, probably having its antecedents in regional
Woodland groups. They share many elements with
village groups on the plains, including agriculture
that used hoes made from bison scapulae.
Many Oneota sites are very large, some covering
more than one hundred acres. Earthen enclosures are
known at a few of them, and other sites are associated
with burial mounds, though there are extensive

314 AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains

cemeteries along the Missouri River, such as at the

Blood Run site. The people were hunters, fishers, and
gatherers who depended heavily on seasonally available resources near their villages. Maize was their
major crop, but beans, squash, and sunflowers also
were grown. Oneota culture persisted in many variants
into the historic period, and has been identified as
ancestral to the historic Chiwere Siouan-speaking
Winnebago, Ioway, Otoe, and Missouri; and as the
Dhegiha Siouan-speaking Osage, Kansa and, probably,
the Omaha and Ponca tribes in the Central Plains and
its margins.

Southern Plains
Small village groups also began to appear on the
Southern Plains in about AD 800 or 900. Living in
permanent houses and practicing both agriculture
and hunting and gathering (focusing on bison), they
possessed a rich inventory of tools and weapons
befitting a sedentary life. Set near the floodplains
of major streams, and growing maize, beans, and
squash, their homes assumed various forms: some
had stone-slab foundations, while others were wattleand-daub structures. Thousands of these villages are
scattered across the Southern Plains, differentiated by
their architecture, pottery, and other possessions. It
is believed that most or all of them developed from
indigenous Woodland groups, with the architecture of
the western groups borrowed from Puebloan groups
to the southwest, and the more easterly ones borrowing
from the eastern woodlands. Many of the groups are
believed to be related to historic Caddoan groups who
lived further to the east and north.
Upper Canark Complex villages, scattered across
the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and adjoining regions, were characterized by houses having
stone-slab foundations, some of them having several

Figure 8 The American bison. Photograph by W. Raymond Wood.

rooms. The best-known subunit of that complex is

the Antelope Creek Phase, centered in the Texas panhandle. Isolated homesteads, small hamlets, and large
unfortified villages denote peaceful times, though
their westernmost villages in southeastern Colorado
are built in defensive settings.
A number of other village complexes are known in
central Oklahoma and northern Texas, several of
which are assigned to the Redbed Variant. Dating to
about AD 800 or 9001450, their hamlets or small
villages of rectangular or oval wattle-and-daub homes
were confined to the valleys of major rivers. Like their
earlier western neighbors, they depended heavily
on bison, though the abundance of this animal
appears to have fluctuated through time. Some of
these groups are surely related to the historic Wichita
Indians.
The Wichitas emerge into history as the descendants
of the Great Bend Aspect of south-central Kansas.
Dating between AD 1450 and 1700, their large villages were built on terraces or hillsides near streams.
Circular or oval homes were built on the surface or in
shallow pits; they are believed to represent the kind of
pole and grass-thatched structures described by Francisco de Coronado and Juan de Onate in the 1500s.
Fragments of chain mail and other metal goods from
some Great Bend sites identify them as the Wichita
villages known to the Spaniards as Quivira.

Transition to the Historic Tribes

Nomadic bison hunters continued to live on the High
Plains in the west throughout prehistory, though the
bison they were hunting after about 8000 BC were
now of modern size (see Figure 8). Though we have
little information on these people in late prehistoric
times, their way of life was a very ancient one, and
persisted with remarkably little change from Archaic

AMERICAS, NORTH/Plains 315

times until the historic arrival of guns and the Old

World horse. Things were to change dramatically
with the arrival of these two elements. Native North
American horses had become extinct after Clovis
times, but their re-introduction by the Spanish in the
southwest soon led to their diffusion north into the
Great Plains and thence west into the Columbia River
area by the early 1700s. Horses meant that burdens
could be pulled more easily than by the dogs previously used, and hunters could range over vastly greater areas in search of game.
The introduction of guns by French traders furthered this revolution in hunting and in warfare.
Because the Spanish in the American southwest prohibited the sale of guns to Indians, Native American
markets on the plains especially in the north saw a
brisk trade as the guns obtained from French traders
to the northeast were traded for horses that originated in the Spanish settlements. Plains Indians now
had great mobility and the ability to kill game and
enemies at heretofore impossible distances. This led
to the historic stereotype of the mounted Indian
warrior. These new elements radiated throughout
the plains, leading to such diverse changes as larger
tipis, and the ability of a man to have multiple wives.
Profits made by such middlemen traders as the
Mandans made them extremely wealthy.
By historic times there was a plains-wide trading
system, interwoven with relations with far-flung groups
that, indeed, formed a pan-continental trading network. In the plains this trade was fostered by the famous
plains sign language, a pidgin that permitted easy communication between groups who spoke radically different languages. Trade was also facilitated by the Calumet
Ceremony, which involved the adoption of individuals
across tribal boundaries, and placed trade in a social setting that was familiar and comfortable to both parties.
Exchanges between the gardening tribes and the
nomadic hunters and gatherers was one of the mechanisms that led to such striking similarities between the
tools and weapons of these two groups who were, on
the face of matters, so distinctive in their way of life.
Another effect of white contact was the precipitous
decline in population that resulted from the introduction of several diseases that were previously unknown
in North America and to which they had no immunity. The principal killer was smallpox, as it
often led to the deaths of more than 90% of its Indian
victims. The number of deaths from smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, and other diseases
across the plains cannot be calculated, but between
about 1750 and 1837 the number of Arikara villages
was reduced from perhaps 33 villages to a single
town, and the number of Mandans (see Figure 9)
declined from some 12 000 to about 125 individuals.
Nomadic tribes such as the Sioux and Cheyennes

Figure 9 Mandeh-Pahchu, a young Mandan Indian. After Karl

Bodmer.

were less affected, for they were not tied to crowded

and disease-prone villages as were the sedentary
tribes. Population reduction led to many social
changes from marriage patterns to political organization. Reduction in the numbers of the villagers living
along the Missouri made it simpler for the Dakota
Sioux to expand from the northeastern rim of the
plains west across that river into the Western and
Northwestern Plains, radically altering the balance
of power on the plains.
European-made goods, or artifacts fashioned from
European materials, quickly entered the lives of Native
Americans from the instant that Europeans arrived on
the scene. These introduced items had an accelerating
effect on traditional native crafts, ultimately eliminating many of them by the substitution of new goods.
Replacement took place either as a raw material for
traditional goods, or the traditional good was abandoned in preference to newly acquired implements like
steel knives and metal cooking pots. The arrival of
guns, horses, new technologies, and alien diseases
had irreversible effects on plains Indian life changes
that culminated when they were confined to reservations following the Indian Wars in the late 1800s.

Historic Sites Archaeology

Archaeologists have not neglected historic sites across
the plains. Documented historic Indian sites have
been systematically excavated in efforts to tracehistoric groups into the prehistoric past. In addition,
early efforts by historic site archaeologists such as
Smithsonian scholar G. Hubert Smith and his colleagues led to the excavation of military and furtrading posts in reservoirs that were to be flooded

316 AMERICAS, NORTH/Plantation Archaeology

by federal dams in the mid-1900s. Among such sites

were Fort Stevenson, North Dakota (a post-Civil
War military post), and Forts Pierre and George (furtrading posts, mid-1800s). State historical societies
and universities soon began investigating other such
sites, and with the advent of federal legislation in the
mid-1900s, mandated cultural resource surveys were
locating many additional kinds of sites, and follow-up
excavations were taking place in such diverse sites as
stage stops and abandoned pioneer towns. Historians
have been full-fledged partners in planning and interpreting such projects, and the murky corners of the
history of the Great Plains continue to be illuminated
by these interdisciplinary studies.
See also: Americas, North: Eastern Woodlands; Great

southeastern United States. The term is inappropriate for similar

pottery recovered from Caribbean sites.
diaspora The scattering or dispersal of a people. African
diaspora usually refers to the forced dispersal of Africans from
Africa to other places in the world, including the Americas,
Asia, and Europe.
ethnogenesis Often defined as the making of an authentic
culture. It refers to a process in which a new cultural group
emerges from the mixture of two or more, displaced cultural
groups.
panopticon An observation tower or other device used for
surveillance. The ideal panopticon is designed so that those being
observed never know when or by whom they are being observed.
Some panopticons were subtly built into a landscape by placing
an owner or managers house on an elevated area making it
possible to observe field or factory workers in both their living
and working areas. Panopticons emerged during the industrial
revolution, and emanated from capitalism. They were placed in a
variety of institutions, including prisons, factories, even schools.

Basin.

Further Reading
DeMallie RJ (ed.) (2001) Plains Vol. 13: Handbook of North
American Indians. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Frison GC and Mainfort RC (eds.) (1996) Archeological and
Bioarcheological Resources of the Northern Plains. Fayetteville:
Arkansas Archeological Survey, Research Series No. 47.
Hofman JL (ed.) (1996) Archeology and Paleocology of the Central
Great Plains. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey, Research Series No. 48.
Hofman JL, Brooks RL, Hayes JS, et al. (1989) From Clovis to
Comanchero: Archeological Overview of the Southern Great
Plains. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey, Research
Series No. 35.
Holder P (1970) The Hoe and the Horse on the Plains. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press.
Lehmer D (1971) Introduction to Middle Missouri Archeology.
National Park Service, Anthropological Papers No. 1. Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior.
Wood WR (ed.) (1998) Archaeology on the Great Plains.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

Plantation Archaeology
Theresa A Singleton, Syracuse University,
Syracuse, NY, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
agency An analytical concept used widely in the social sciences
to examine how people either act individually or collectively to
influence the social conditions within which they are enmeshed.
colonoware Term used to describe a broad category of handproduced earthenware found on eighteenth-century sites in

Archaeologists have conducted investigations of

plantations in North America since the 1930s. Early
studies, however, were primarily undertaken either to
recover archaeological data used in the architectural
restoration of plantation buildings or to determine
whether or not extant ruins dated to the plantation
era. The systematic study of plantations as agricultural factories or settlements that could provide insights
into understanding the living conditions and cultural
lives of plantation residents began in earnest in the
1970s. Although archaeological studies of plantations were first undertaken in the United States, plantation archaeology is no longer limited to or primarily
undertaken within the United States. Archaeologists
are studying plantations throughout the world. In the
Americas, the Caribbean ranks second to the United
States in the number of investigations, and is now a
major region for new and innovative studies of plantation archaeology. Increasingly, studies are being
undertaken in South America, particularly in Brazil,
and preliminary work has begun on haciendas (a type
of plantation) in Peru and Argentina.
A plantation is typically defined as an agricultural
enterprise in which some form of bound labor produces a crop for someone else that is sold in a market,
usually an international one. Philip Curtin uses the
term plantation complex to include the economic,
political, and social order that emanated from the
development of plantations. He places the origin of
the plantation complex following the Crusades when
sugar produced on plantations in the Eastern Mediterranean was sold for consumption in Europe. Plantation archaeology seeks to understand the cultural,
economic, political, and social dimensions of the plantation complex through the study of material culture.
In North America, archaeologists have studied numerous, plantations, primarily in the southern United

AMERICAS, NORTH/Plantation Archaeology 317

States and dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, that were engaged in the production of
various staple crops: cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo,
sugar, and hemp. Despite the diversity in plantations
investigated, the work is still uneven as some areas
have received a great deal of more attention than
others. For example, more plantation sites have been
studied in Virginia than any other state while some
states like Texas, Alabama, or Mississippi have had
very few studies. Although the vast majority of plantations in North America were in the southern United
States, archaeologists have begun to study northern
plantations in New York and Rhode Island, once
a part of the northeastern breadbasket. These plantations produced grains and other food crops often
earmarked for provisioning Caribbean plantations.
Most plantation archaeology focuses on the
workers, usually enslaved laborers, or tenant-andwage laborers of post-emancipation plantations. While
archaeologists utilize diverse theoretical perspectives,
two general ways of conceptualizing plantations predominate. The first framework approaches the plantation as a birthplace of African diaspora cultures. These
studies examine identity formation, cultural interaction, and exchange among enslaved people, and with
other ethnic and racial groups. A major emphasis of
these studies is to interpret the cultural traditions and
practices of African diaspora communities; therefore,
these studies are more often thought to be studies of
the African diaspora rather than strictly of plantations.
The second framework approaches the plantation
as a capitalist mode of production, and seeks to untangle the complex social and political relations characteristic of plantation production. These studies
analyze the ways in which plantation laborers whether slave or free, were subjugated into subordinate
social positions. Some studies highlight power struggles between plantation owners and laborers, as seen
in slave/worker resistance to planter hegemony. Most
studies of plantation archaeology consider both conceptions of a plantation to some degree, because
plantations were at once a capitalist enterprise as
well as a setting for the ethnogenesis of African diaspora cultures (see Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South:
Historical Archaeology).
Plantations studies in the United States that give
primacy to understanding African diaspora interpret
a variety of archaeological materials as evidence indicative of African-American identity or cultural
practices. Clay-walled housing, handcrafted pottery
and pipes, and other objects have been interpreted
as exhibiting African influences. Studies of colonoware (a category of pottery made during the colonial
period) have been of paramount importance in

developing this line of inquiry. These undecorated

earthenwares are found on plantation sites in
South Carolina and Virginia. It appears that both
Native Americans and African-Americans made
colonoware, and those associated with AfricanAmericans were formed into globular shapes that
were used for cooking, preparing, and serving food.
The use of these wares suggests that enslaved Africans
and their descendants influenced some culinary practices on plantations.
Another group of artifacts pierced coins (possibly
worn as amulets), cowries, cosmograms on pottery,
even the contents in some below-ground storage pits
found in slave houses have been interpreted as
African-influenced religious practices. These objects
recovered from slave houses and trash deposits singularly may not have been important, but when combined
with the oral testimony left by those who were formerly
enslaved, these kinds of objects were used in a variety of
African-American conjuring and healing practices that
were a part of African-American folk religions.
Some studies of the African diaspora are less
concerned with analyzing continuities and changes
to African heritages in the Americas, but more in
interpreting the everyday lives of Africans and
African-American on plantations. While all studies
of slave quarters ultimately contribute to the study
of slave living conditions, some studies are specifically directed toward the examination of living conditions and enslaved peoples access to personal and
household possessions. One goal of these studies is
to understand the lived experiences of enslaved people by evaluating slave agency, defined here as the
capability of enslaved people to take some control
of their situations on their own terms. Examples of
slave agency inferred from archaeological findings
are seen in efforts of enslaved people to shape their
material lives beyond the meager plantation rations
and other items provisioned to them. These efforts
include: cultivating gardens, hunting, and fishing;
recycling broken or discarded objects to make other
kinds of tools and implements; crafting objects for
sale or for their own use; and purchasing household
and personal objects.
In studies of plantation archaeology framed to
analyze social relations associated with capitalist production, the layout of plantations and the use of
plantation space has been a major focus. This research has shown that social inequalities and hierarchies of plantation societies were incorporated into
plantation design. Plantations were designed to
maximize productivity and control laborers and, at
the same time, appeal to the esthetic sensibilities of
the planter class. On some plantations, slave/worker
quarters were removed or screened from commanding

318 AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains

views of the planter house, gardens, and administrative

buildings. Whereas in other cases, a panopticon a
watchtower or some other device was built into the
landscape to observe areas where enslaved people lived
and worked at any time. Linear arrangements of slave
houses permitted easy access and inspection of
premises, and became the standard layout for most
antebellum (183060) plantations.
Enslaved people responded to slaveholder control
of slave living spaces by creating their own sense of
space, both inside and outside their dwellings.
On many plantations in the Upper South (Virginia,
Tennessee, and Kentucky), enslaved people dug storage pits below earthen floors or floorboards within
their dwellings to store food and valuables. On occasion, these storage pits became a source of conflict
between slaveholders and enslaved people because slaveholders were concerned that these storage areas
were being used to hide pilfered goods. The ubiquitous
presence of storage areas, however, particularly in
eighteenth-century slave houses in Virginia, suggests
that slaveholders accommodated slave laborers desire
to make and use these pits. Enslaved laborers also
designated outdoor places for social gatherings away
from the watchful eye of slaveholders and overseers,
whenever possible. Archaeologists are just beginning
to investigate such places which could be located in or
near slave cemeteries, places of worship, or wooded
areas not far from slave houses or agricultural fields.
Plantation archaeology continues to grow and
provide new and important information on many
aspects of plantation life, organization, and production. Current studies are analyzing slave household
formation and gender, among other themes. Perhaps
the greatest contribution this research has made is to
document the lives of enslaved and other bound
laborers who left too few written records of their
own so that their stories could be told.
See also: Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in
Mexico; Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the
United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology.

Further Reading
Berlin I (1998) Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of
Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University.
Curtin PD (1998) The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex:
Essays in Atlantic History, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Epperson T (2000) Panoptic plantations: The garden sights
of Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. In: Delle JA,
Mrozowski SA, and Paynter R (eds.) Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, Gender, pp. 5877. Knoxville:
Tennessee.

Ferguson L (1992) Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Colonial

African America, pp. 16501800. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
Fritts R (1998) Inventing New Englands Slave Paradise: Master/
Slave Relations in Eighteenth-Century Narragansett, Rhode
Island. New York: Garland Publishers.
Galle JE and Amy LY (eds.) (2004) Engendering African-American/s
Archaeology: A Southern Perspective. Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press.
Kelso W (1984) Kingsmill Plantations, 16201800: An Archaeology of Rural Colonial Virginia. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Orser CE, Jr. (1988) The Material Basis of the Postbellum Tenant.
Plantation. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Otto JS (1984) Cannons Point Plantation, 19741860: Living
Conditions and Status Patterns in the Old South. New York:
Academic Press.
Singleton TA (2005) Before the revolution: Archaeology of the
African diaspora on the Atlantic Seaboard. In: Pauketat T and
Loren D (eds.) North American Archaeology, pp. 319336.
Boston, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Wilkie L (2000) Creating Freedom: Material Culture and AfricanAmerican/s Identity at Oakley Plantation, Louisiana, 1840
1950. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

Rocky Mountains
Bonnie L Pitblado, Utah State University,
Logan, UT, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
archaic As traditionally defined, the period of North American
prehistory from c. 75002000 (dates vary somewhat by region),
when humans continued hunting and gathering, but intensified
and diversified their subsistence base versus the earlier
Palaeoindian period.
forager In this chapter, the term forager is used as a synonym for
hunter-gatherer (see definition, below). Sometimes this term is
used to refer more specifically to hunter-gatherers with a
residential mobility strategy (a group moves frequently from
camp to camp to camp; rather than establishing a base camp and
sending out task forces to bring resources back to the base, in a
pattern called collecting). The term forager is used
synonymously with hunter-gatherer in this chapter because
Rocky Mountain hunter-gatherers used the landscape flexibly,
with the same group potentially foraging at one time of year
and collecting at another.
hunter-gatherer An adaptive strategy that entails to various
degrees in various settings, the hunting of large and small game,
gathering of vegetable resources, and sometimes fishing. This
lifeway contrasts with a horticultural or agricultural strategy,
which emphasizes cultivation of plants and/or animals and
typically sees reduced mobility.
mobility A general term for human movement across a
landscape. Understanding mobility requires documenting how
far a group moves, but also the particular way in which it utilizes
a landscape. Over the course of a year in the mountains, a group
might simply migrate up and down a mountain, or they might
move in a large circle around it. A group might camp at a large

AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains 319

base camp for an extended period of time, sending out small
parties to gather resources and return them to camp. Or, an entire
group might move frequently from camp to camp to camp.
Palaeoindian The period of North American prehistory from
c. 11 500 to 7500 (dates vary somewhat by region), when
humans lived alongside now-extinct forms of megafauna,
including mammoth, mastodon, camel, and after about
11 000 years ago, giant bison. The term Palaeo-American is
synonymous with Palaeoindian.

Introduction
Within the context of the American West that encompasses them, the Rocky Mountains are unique. The
structure of the Rocky Mountain landscape, patterns
of human use over the past 11 000 years, even the
history of archaeological inquiry all of these distinguish the Rocky Mountains from their archaeologically better-known neighbors: the grasslands of the
Columbia Plateau and Great Plains (see Americas,
North: Plains) and the deserts of the Great Basin
(see Americas, North: Great Basin) and Colorado
Plateau (see Americas, North: American Southwest,
Four Corners Region).
In a way that the lowland Far West and Great
Plains by definition do not and cannot, the Rocky
Mountains encompass tremendous environmental
variability in a highly compressed physical space a
structural difference with important implications
for prehistoric human use of these dynamic settings.
For example, whereas Plains residents throughout
11 000 years of prehistory organized their subsistence
and land-use strategies around the hunting of large
grazing mammals (see Americas, North: Plains) on a
flat landscape (and sometimes in the adjacent mountains), Rocky Mountain-based hunter-gatherers always exploited a highly varied faunal and floral
resource base and moved extremely flexibly up,
down, and around the mountain landscape. Agriculture, which revolutionized prehistoric subsistence
and mobility on the Colorado Plateau and played a
crucial role in parts of the Great Basin and along
some Plains river systems, was never adopted to any
significant degree by prehistoric Rocky Mountain
hunter-gatherers, and thus rarely if ever influenced
their decisions about when and where to move.
As for archaeological research itself, the Rockies
have only recently been subjected to intensive investigations. The first systematic archaeological research
in the western United States focused on Southwestern
agricultural sites and began well over a century
ago (see Americas, North: American Southwest,
Four Corners Region). Plains archaeology likewise
registers a long history of inquiry, with classic
Palaeoindian sites like Folsom and Clovis documenting by 1927 that the first Americans lived alongside

now-extinct ice-age animals (see Americas, North:

Plains). The remarkable preservation of textiles, subsistence debris, and even ancient human remains in
dry caves of the Great Basin have for many decades
lured professional archaeologists to work in that
setting as well (see Americas, North: Great Basin).
The Rocky Mountains, on the other hand, were
traditionally viewed by archaeologists as marginal
to a broad-scale understanding of the prehistory of
western North America, a point punctuated by the
dates of the first archaeological conferences focusing on subregions of the west. The first Pecos
Conference, an informal gathering of Southwestern
archaeologists, was held in 1927; the first Plains
Anthropological Society meeting in 1931; and the
first Great Basin Anthropological Conference in
1954. Rocky Mountain archaeologists, however,
had to wait until 1993 to attend the first-ever Rocky
Mountain Anthropological Conference in Jackson,
Wyoming.
The overarching goal of this contribution is to
summarize what archaeologists have learned not
just since 1993, when the subdiscipline could finally
sustain its own conference, but from the earliest inklings that the Rocky Mountains may have been more
to prehistoric people than a snow-capped backdrop
to daily lowland activities and an impediment to
travel. The chapter first introduces the Rocky Mountain region and environment, and then discusses elements that make the archaeological record of the
Rocky Mountains unique: its prehistoric chronology
and general observations about land use through
time and site types and the many reasons why prehistoric people used the Rocky Mountain landscape.

Defining the Rocky Mountains

and Their Environments
Geologically speaking, the Rockies are young landforms, having emerged about 65 000 000 years ago
when colliding continental plates drained an inland
Cretaceous sea and uplifted the earth to elevations
exceeding 4000 m above sea level (m asl). Volcanic
activity, some in the ancient past and some more
recent, has further shaped the Rocky Mountain
landscape. Streams carved and continue to carve
drainages that originate at the Continental Divide
the backbone of the Rockies and carry rainfall and
snowmelt east to the Atlantic Ocean or west to the
Pacific. During the Pleistocene (Ice Age), 1.8 million
to 11 000 years ago, powerful mountain glaciers
sculpted craggy Rocky Mountain peaks and gouged
out giant U-shaped montane valleys, putting the finishing touches on a dynamic and rugged landscape.

320 AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains

investigation. With a few notable exceptions, such

as Denver University archaeologist E.B. Renaud,
who conducted surveys in the Southern Rockies in
the early 1930s, most early archaeologists implicitly
and sometimes explicitly concluded that a region
so rugged and treacherous could not have supported
prehistoric human occupations. Their turn-of-thecentury mindset was not equipped to reconcile that
a region that claimed the lives of westward-bound
European-American settlers, could have sustained
substantive, even year-round occupations by indigenous
Americans.
Archaeologists have since recognized, however, that
the very ruggedness the steep vertical rise that
inspires and intimidates, also translates to a diverse
resource base for a host of plants and animals
including humans. Ascending Mount Elbert (or any
other Rocky Mountain peak) reveals ever-changing
ecological communities as one traverses the mountains flanks to its summit. Table 1 lists the environmental zones of the Rocky Mountains, their elevation

Extending approximately 4800 km (3000 miles)

from Alberta and British Columbia south to northern New Mexico, the Rocky Mountains encompass
large portions of eastern Idaho, western Montana,
central and western Wyoming, and central Colorado
(Figure 1). The highest individual Rocky Mountain
peaks are located in Colorado, with 4401 m (14 440 ft)
asl Mount Elbert the highest of all. Elevations of
peaks at northern latitudes are more modest in absolute terms than those located farther south. In the
Canadian Rockies, for example, the highest mountain
is 3954 m (12 972 ft) asl Mount Robinson, 447 m
(nearly 1500 ft) lower than Mount Elbert.
When most people conjure an image of the Rocky
Mountains, they envision the jagged, snowcapped
peaks of the towering giants that inspired innumerable pioneer stories, paintings, and songs (Figure 2).
This pervasive, imposing image may be the single
most important reason why it took archaeologists
so long to recognize that the Rockies were a viable
home for prehistoric people and a viable region for

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Cartography by T. Grim May 2006

Figure 1 Map showing the location of the Rocky Mountains.

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AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains 321

Figure 2 Rocky Mountain grandeur: The sort of imposing vista that convinced early archaeologists that throughout prehistory, the
mountains were more a backdrop to the life of grassland and desert people than a viable region to make a living.

Table 1 Environmental zones and characteristic resources of the Rocky Mountains

Zone

Elevationa

Florab

Fauna

Other resources relevant

to humans

Foothills

15002400 m
50007900 ft

Mule deer, rabbit, coyote, fox, fowl,

lizard, snake

Rock outcrops forming

overhangs for shelter;
sandstone for grinding tools

Montane

24002900 m
79009500 ft

Moose, elk, mule deer, black bear,

bobcat, marmot, porcupine, fowl

Outcrops of chert, quartzite (and

occasionally obsidian) to
quarry for stone to make tools

Parks

18003000 m
600010 000 ft

Often dense herds of bison and

pronghorn, elk, mule deer, rabbit,
rodent, game and other birds

Chert and quartzite outcrops and

cobble sources to quarry for
stone to make tools

Subalpine

29003500 m
950011 500 ft

Elk, bighorn, mountain goat, mule deer,

black bear, lynx, weasel, hare,
rodentc

Respite from scorching heat of

lowland summer

Alpine

> 3500 m
> 11 500 ft

Elk, bighorn, mountain goat, mule deer,

marmot, weasel, pika, ptarmigan

Passage across the continental

divide

Riparian
(Streams,
lakes,
etc.)

All elevations
and zones

Pinon pine, juniper,

oak, prickly pear,
thistle, blue grama,
milk vetch
Ponderosa,
lodgepole, and
limber pine,
Douglas fir, aspen,
strawberry,
blueberry,
gooseberry,
dandelion
Grasses (including
edible ricegrass),
shrubs, bistort, wild
plum and rose,
sego lily,
chokecherry
Engelmann spruce,
aspen, bristlecone
pine, glacier lily,
elderberry
Mosses, alpine
anemone, dwarf
clover, scarlet
paintbrush
Water birch,
cottonwood,
mountain alder,
willow, cattail

Beaver, fish, swan, goose, duck, frog,

toad

By definition, water; stream

cobbles to quarry for stone to
make tools

Elevations are approximations, and those given are more typical for the Southern (higher) Rockies. The same life zones and resources
characterize peaks at more northerly latitudes, but they occur at somewhat lower absolute elevations.
b
Thousands of plants and animals occupy the various life zones of the Rocky Mountains. A very few characteristic examples are listed in
this table.
c
Most of the larger species are seasonal (summerearly fall) residents of the high country; smaller species survive the winter by
hibernating.

322 AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains

Figure 3 Schematic diagram representing the variability in Rocky Mountain resources by environmental zone. Table 1 complements
this figure, listing approximate elevations of Rocky Mountain environmental zones, as well as typical flora, fauna, and other resources
(relevant to prehistoric humans) of each zone.

ranges, and a few examples of the literally thousands

of species of flora and fauna that occupy them.
Figure 3 illustrates these data visually, with icons
representing the plants, animals, and other resources
relevant to human survival (e.g., sources of raw
material for chipped stone tool and groundstone
production) of the major Rocky Mountain life zones.

The Rocky Mountain Archaeological

Record
Having provided a sense for the unique physiographic
and environmental properties of North Americas
Rocky Mountains, we turn now to archaeologists
current understanding of when, how, and why prehistoric people occupied them.
Prehistoric Chronology and Land Use

Archaeologists have known since the 1960s, when

National Park Service Archaeologist Wilfred Husted
first proposed the theory, that humans have occupied
the Rocky Mountains on a sustained basis for at least
10 000 years nearly as long as people are known to
have occupied North America generally. The first
archaeologically recognizable North American culture, Clovis (see New World, Peopling of), penetrated
the Rockies, but left only a light signature of their
tenure, 11 50010 800 radiocarbon years before present. Clovis spear points have been recovered as
isolated surface finds throughout the Rocky Mountains, but Rocky Mountain Clovis sites are limited in
number, type, size, and elevation (they are particularly rare in the subalpine and alpine zones, probably

because some though not all Rocky Mountain

peaks were still glacier-covered during the latest
Pleistocene).
By subsequent Folsom time, 10 80010 200 radiocarbon years before present, evidence suggests that
Palaeo-Americans had started to move into the Rocky
Mountains on a more sustained basis. Though many
archaeologists associate them intimately with the
High Plains, Folsom people and their contemporaries
frequently hunted bison in large Rocky Mountain
parks (e.g., Figure 4), including Colorados Middle
Park, San Luis Valley, and Gunnison Basin. A few of
their kills occurred during the winter months, suggesting that some of these early occupants may have
utilized the Rocky Mountains on a year-round basis.
Folsom folk also occasionally camped in rockshelters
in the Bighorn Mountains of northern Wyoming, and
in open foothills settings farther north, in the Elkhorn
Mountains of west-central Montana.
If there is any doubt as to whether or not some
Folsom bison hunters utilized the Rockies on a yearround basis, there is no doubt that after Folsom time,
prehistoric groups moved into this niche and never
looked back. A few residential sites, most exceptionally
two large rockshelters in the foothills of northwestern
Wyoming Mummy Cave in the Absaroka Range
and Medicine Lodge Creek in the Bighorn Mountains
show human occupation beginning in the very early
Holocene and continuing through the recent historic
past. Such deeply stratified, continuously used sites
have played an immeasurably important role in characterizing 10 000 years of human use of the Rocky
Mountains.

AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains 323

Figure 4 High altitude (c. 3100 m (10 170 ft) asl) mountain meadow reasonably considered a park in the Upper Rio Grande Basin of
southern Colorado. This photograph was taken from the Black Mountain Folsom site, a hunting camp nestled today at the fringes of
subalpine forest. Margaret Jodry excavated the site in the 1990s.

From approximately 10 0007500 radiocarbon

years before present, Palaeoindians utilized all
environmental zones of the Rocky Mountains,
exploited local Rocky Mountain stone raw materials,
and manufactured spear points that differed from
those of their contemporaries living either on the
Plains to the east or in the Far West. In addition to
hosting what seminal Central Plains and Rocky
Mountain archaeologist George C. Frison has termed
Foothill-Mountain groups (year-round late Palaeoindian residents), the Rockies were also used seasonally by lowland late Palaeoindian people needing
or wanting such resources as chipped stone and
groundstone raw material, vegetable and nut crops
(notably pinon) that grow only in the mountains,
and large game (perhaps because it is more pleasant
to hunt bighorn by a columbine-ringed alpine lake
than bison by a desiccated Plains playa in August).
Archaeologists lack sufficient numbers of sites to
offer well-substantiated models for how late Palaeoindians moved around the mountain landscape, but
available evidence suggests that like subsequent Archaic hunter-gatherers, late Paleoindians organized their
mobility strategies according to seasonal constraints
and resource needs of both the short and long term.
The Archaic era is, throughout North America,
traditionally defined as the period of prehistory
ushered in by an intensification and diversification
of resource use by hunter-gatherers as the last of
the megafauna went extinct; and ushered out when
groups adopted agriculture. Neither of these defining
phenomena was particularly noteworthy in the
Rocky Mountains. Earlier mountain-based, postFolsom Palaeoindians used the same broad spectrum

of plant and animal resources that later Archaic people did, and Rocky Mountain residents never adopted
agriculture to an appreciable degree. Nonetheless,
because the term Archaic is so ensconced in the
North American archaeological literature, Rocky
Mountain archaeologists use the term, but view it as
a chronological designation (for the period c. 7500
2000 radiocarbon years before present), rather than
as a label for a unique adaptive posture.
During the Rocky Mountain Archaic, huntergatherers left behind increasingly obvious signatures
of a year-round presence on the landscape. Numerous
foothills-zone rockshelters with long histories of occupation, and a significant number of subterranean
house structures often located in parkland settings
and some reflecting winter occupation represent
residential mountain base camps. Palaeoclimatic research at Rocky Mountain localities from Canada to
New Mexico indicates that environmental conditions
fluctuated over the course of the Archaic. Changing
environmental conditions engendered concomitant
shifts in land-use strategies of Rocky Mountain
hunter-gatherers. For example, winter residences in
mountain parks are more commonly associated with
intervals of warmer or more equable temperatures,
whereas foothills rockshelters were preferred winter
base camps during colder spells. Under all environmental conditions, site types, sizes, and distributions
suggest that mountain-adapted, Archaic foragers utilized the landscape flexibly, sometimes foraging logistically from residential base camps for up to a season
at a time and at other times moving residentially
from campsite to campsite (see Hunter-Gatherers,
Ancient).

324 AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains

Archaeologists refer to the period immediately

following the Archaic as the Formative or Late
Prehistoric; and to the period following that as the
Protohistoric. The term Formative connotes the
adoption of corn agriculture and is misleading when
invoked to label Rocky Mountain people who only
rarely cultivated plant species of any kind (although
some mountain archaeologists still use it). In any
event, the terms Formative and Late Prehistoric both
refer to post-Archaic residents who lived alongside
others, such as the Hisatsinom (Anasazi) and Fremont, who did engage in agriculture or horticulture
(and who in some cases notably the Fremont used
the Rockies occasionally or regularly); and prior to
the arrival of the first Europeans in North America.
Once Europeans began recording their encounters
with indigenous cultures of North America, including
in the Rockies, archaeologists refer to the period as
the Protohistoric. Throughout the Formative/Late
Prehistoric and the Protohistoric, Rocky Mountain
residents continued flexibly exploiting a diversity of
plant and animal resources. The major change for
them as for so many Native Americans came
with the adoption of European-introduced horses
in the 1700s. The horse not only permitted mountain-dwellers who embraced it to use their land
differentlytypically much more expansively but
also for theretofore pedestrian-based tribes from
adjacent regions to penetrate the Rockies either for
the first time or to a greater extent than they had
previously. Adoption of the horse caused such profound changes in the fabrics of mounted societies that
trying to glean insights into settlement patterns of
pedestrian Rocky Mountain foragers from later,
mounted counterparts even of the same ethnicity
is problematic at best.
On the other hand, early European explorers who
entered the Rocky Mountains for various reasons
(passage west, trapping, prospecting, ethnographic
interest), encountered Rocky Mountain populations
that either never embraced the horse (as in the case of
the Toyani, a Shoshone band of the Middle Rockies)
or whose members could recall how the group made a
living prior to the adoption of the horse (as in the case
of many Ute bands of the Southern Rocky Mountains
and the Kootenai of the Northern Rockies). Such
accounts provide concrete evidence for how some
groups of Rocky Mountain hunter-gatherers occupied the mountain landscape. They demonstrate that
different bands and even the same bands in different
years utilized Rocky Mountain resources in an extremely flexible and local-resource-dependent fashion. First Nations in the Rockies and beyond often
rendezvoused to nurture social ties and exchange

resources, but they also frequently fragmented into

groups of small sizes and varying age and gender
compositions, to take advantage of mountain
resources available at different times of year and in
discrete places.
Even before indigenous people of the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere adopted horses, some bands of
the Shoshone and Ute used the Rockies on a seasonal
basis, spending other parts of the year hunting bison
on the Plains, or hunting and gathering in the Far
West. Such groups interacted regularly with mountain-based bands, in some cases visiting the Rocky
Mountains expressly for this purpose. This historically documented flexibility in resource use, settlement
strategy, and group membership by populations
based in the mountains year-round and their contemporaries (often relatives) based elsewhere but using
the mountains on a seasonal or occasional basis is
highly consistent with the archaeological evidence of
human use of the Rocky Mountains for 10 000-plus
years.
Predominant Rocky Mountain Site Types

Having summarized who occupied the Rocky Mountains during the latest Pleistocene and Holocene and
discussed how hunter-gatherers used the mountain
landscape for over ten millennia, it remains to relate
common archaeological site types of the Rocky
Mountains, and to discuss how they pertain to the
above chronology.
As a result of their geologic history, the Rocky
Mountains are rich in accessible tool stone (e.g.,
Figure 5). Sandstone, chert, and quartzite represent
uplifted sedimentary (sometimes metamorphosed)
sea beds. Obsidian deposits resulted from volcanic
flows in the Rockies of Northern New Mexico, Yellowstone National Park, and Southern Idaho. When
prehistoric people found and used primary (outcrop)
or secondary (e.g., stream-cobble) deposits of any of
these rock types, the resultant site is called a quarry.
Macroscopic, petrographic, and geochemical fingerprinting of artifacts made of various stone types has
permitted archaeologists to trace the movement of
ground stone (typically sandstone or basalt) and
chipped stone (usually chert, quartzite or obsidian)
tools within the Rockies and in some cases, well
beyond their borders.
Documenting at Rocky Mountain sites the use of
stone that occurs naturally only in that region has
bolstered the argument that some prehistoric groups
used the Rockies on a year-round basis (the presence
of stone that originated elsewhere would weaken
such an argument). On the other hand, documenting

AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains 325

Figure 5 Primary outcrop of high-quality Windy Ridge quartzite. The Windy Ridge quartzite quarry is located about 10 km from Rabbit
Ears Pass in the Gore Range of northern Colorado. The quarry extends to elevations as high as 3050 m (10 000 ft) asl. Diagnostic artifacts
of this raw material span 11 000 years of prehistory, indicating the quarry was long-known and long-used.

the presence of Rocky Mountain stone at sites outside

the Rockies as commonly occurs reveals the importance of Rocky Mountain raw material to others
who visited the Rockies to obtain the stone themselves, or traded to get it. An extreme example illustrating the value placed on some Rocky Mountain
stone comes from Midwestern Moundbuilder sites,
where Yellowstone obsidian has been recovered as
far east as the Hopewell heartland (see Americas,
North: Eastern Woodlands).
The uplifted sandstones (and sometimes other rock
types) common in many Rocky Mountain foothills
settings were not only quarried for the manufacture
of groundstone tools, they also form natural overhangs that prehistoric people used for shelter sometimes for extended periods of time, and often in
winter. Only the earliest Clovis people appear not
to have availed themselves of the natural protection afforded by textured geological formations of
the Rockies. From Folsom time on (although perhaps only occasionally in Folsom time), archaeological rock shelters from the Northern to Southern
Rockies served residential functions for mountainbased hunter-gatherers. Many such sites, including
Mummy Cave and Medicine Lodge Creek (Figure 6),
mentioned previously, enjoy better preservation
conditions than open sites, and have afforded archaeologists glimpses of sometimes numerous storage
pits which can indicate both long-term and winterseason occupation as well as plant and animal
remains that can and have revealed season(s)-of-use
of the sites.

Although prehistoric mountain residents often

mitigated difficult winter conditions by seeking out
naturally sheltered long-term residential camps, they
also frequently camped in open settings throughout
all the environmental zones of the Rocky Mountains.
Sometimes these camps, like rock shelters, were used
over the longer term; sometimes, the occupations
were ephemeral. Camps occupied for longer periods
of time and/or in winter show greater architectural
investment than those used for the short term or
during milder times of year. At the high-investment
end of the spectrum, for example, the central-Colorado
Yarmony site was occupied repeatedly between 7000
radiocarbon years before present and the Late Prehistoric period and includes two 65006000 yearold pit houses. One of the pit houses is associated
with the burial of a 60 year-old woman, and both
pit houses and the burial represent winter base camp
activities.
The Rockies contain a plethora of other prehistoric
house styles as well, including particularly common
basin structures, which represent a lower labor investment than deeply excavated pit houses. And, the
mountains are home to many thousand short-term
camp sites, where hunter-gatherers rested for a matter
of days and either did not build shelters at all, or built
shelters so ephemeral that they do not register in
the archaeological record. Ethnographically documented wickiups, brush structures used by recent
indigenous foragers of the Great Basin and Rocky
Mountains, are examples of structures with little
chance of being preserved in open mountain settings

326 AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains

Figure 6 The Medicine Lodge Creek site, located in the foothills of the Absaroka Range, northwestern Wyoming. Note the natural
overhang produced by the sandstone outcrops characteristic of many foothill regions throughout the Rocky Mountains. Prehistoric people
used Medicine Lodge Creek and other rockshelters in the vicinity repeatedly for 10 000 years.

for more than 50 years, much less for several thousand. However, they were probably as commonly
used throughout Rocky Mountain prehistory as
nylon pup-tents are used today by Rocky Mountain
backpackers.
A vital source of sustenance for year-round and
seasonal Rocky Mountains residents from 11 000
radiocarbon years before present through the Protohistoric period were the regions large mammals.
Full-time residents hunted species like mule deer,
pronghorn, elk, moose, bison, and bighorn in all
zones ranging from the foothills through the treeless
alpine. Seasonal residents from adjacent grasslands
and deserts may have taken particular advantage of
the pleasant conditions of the Rocky Mountain high
country in summer and early fall to hunt elk and
bighorn, and/or of dense congregations of large grazers in mountain parks and foothills in the winter
months. How mountain hunters harvested their prey
depended on the target species, environmental structure, and season, but a site type common in the
Rockies though highly varied in form is the
game drive. One of the most efficient ways to obtain
large quantities of meat at once, without horses, game
drives assume a variety of forms ranging from long
stone walls above timberline to wooden fences with
corral catch-pens at their terminus in lower zones.
Many drives have associated hunting blinds made of
stone or brush (the latter must often be inferred for
lack of preservation), where members of the hunting
party positioned themselves to nudge the animals
along a drive system or dispatch them (Figure 7).

Rocky Mountain archaeologists James Benedict and

E. Steve Cassells have meticulously documented
many alpine game drives in the Colorado Front
Range, demonstrating how intricate and extensive
such systems can be.
When archaeologists encounter a game blind at a
high elevation with panoramic views, they must consider the possibility that the feature truly represents
that economic function, and is not, instead, the site of
a vision quest. Even today, many Native Americans
view particular loci, and sometimes whole Rocky
Mountain landscapes, as sacred places. From an
archaeological perspective, vision quest sites take
many forms, and are sometimes identified as much
by what is not present at the site as by what is present.
Vision quest sites are typically located in high, remote
places with commanding views. When present, artifacts tend not to represent the mundane debris of
everyday life (as one might see at a short-term
camp site), but are likely instead to be special objects,
such as complete pottery vessels or never-launched
projectile points. Many vision quest sites show evidence for prehistoric use, sometimes over long time
frames. Some show use by contemporary First
Nations people.

Conclusion
This chapter has provided a flavor for the prehistory
of the Rocky Mountains, both in terms of the archaeological record that prehistoric people left behind and
the lifestyles they led. A key theme of the chapter has

AMERICAS, NORTH/Rocky Mountains 327

Figure 7 A game blind associated with an alpine game drive system in the Devils Thumb Pass area of the Indian Peaks Wilderness,
west of Boulder, Colorado. This blind, like the many others associated with game drives in the vicinity, provided cover for hunters waiting to
ambush elk and bighorn sheep. Sites associated with Devils Thumb game drives have been dated to older than 9000 radiocarbon years
before present through the recent past.

been flexibility. From the time people first occupied

the Rocky Mountains over 10 000 years ago, they
have taken full advantage of the suite of subsistence
resources available on a vertically oriented landscape
and of the many potentially successful land-use
options available for exploiting those resources at
any given moment.
Archaeological evidence suggests that from the
dawn of human use of the Rockies, some groups
chose to live there full-time, occupying all environmental zones (though not always in the same way
from culture to culture, or even from year to year).
Evidence also suggests that again, even during the
earliest period of use, other groups viewed the
Rockies as a seasonal retreat from the grasslands to
the east or arid lands to the west. This pattern of
multiple-use continued throughout the Archaic, Formative/Late Prehistoric, and Protohistoric periods,
culminating in historic and ethnographic accounts
of Shoshone, Ute, and other indigenous mountain
groups that mesh neatly with reconstructions of prehistoric land use.
Reasons why prehistoric people used the Rockies
were as varied as the environmental zones that morph
so dramatically with elevation and latitude. For some,
the Rocky Mountains were home-sweet-home, meeting every conceivable human need during every season of the year. For others, the Rockies were a place
to temporarily rendezvous with friends and family,
escape the heat of a Plains or Great Basin summer,
hunt bighorn or elk via communal game drives or
bison in mountain parks, procure raw materials for

making chipped stone and groundstone tools, harvest

pinon or other pine nuts to store for winter consumption back at a Far Western residential base, or pay
homage to the spirits who dwell there. In fact, as any
resident of Jackson, Wyoming or any Plains, or Far
Western travel agent will attest, although the details
may have changed a bit, the mountains continue
to play a vital and dynamic role in the lives of contemporary westerners who rely on them for economic,
social, and spiritual fulfillment.
See also: Americas, North: American Southwest, Four

Corners Region; Eastern Woodlands; Plains; Sub-arctic.

Further Reading
Cassells ES (1997) The Archaeology of Colorado, 2nd edn.
Boulder: Johnson Books.
Frison GC (1991) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains, 2nd edn.
San Diego: Academic Press.
Husted WM and Edgar R (2002) National Park Service, Midwest
Archaeological Center and Southeast Archaeological Center,
Special Report No. 4, Technical Report Series No. 9: The Archaeology of Mummy Cave, Wyoming: An Introduction to
Shoshonean Prehistory. Lincoln: National Park Service.
Janetski JC (2002) Indians in Yellowstone National Park. Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press.
Madsen DB and Metcalf MD (eds.) (2000) University of Utah
Anthropological Papers 122: Intermountain Archaeology. Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Pitblado BL (2003) Late Paleoindian Occupation of the Southern
Rocky Mountains. Niwot: University Press of Colorado.
Stanford DJ and Day JS (eds.) (1992) Ice Age Hunters of the
Rockies. Niwot: University Press of Colorado.

328 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

Sub-arctic
Bryan C Gordon, Canadian Museum of Civilization,
Gatineau, QC, Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Barrenlands Treeless tundra north of the Prairies, west of
Hudson Bay, east of the Mackenzie River and south of the Arctic
Ocean. Dene call it dechinule, land of little sticks.
beamer Long bone split lengthwise and sharpened along its
length to remove hair from skins.
blade Pressure-removed parallel-sided stone flake less
(microblade) or greater (macroblade) than 10 mm in width.
burin (spalls) Small grooving or planning tool for shaping bone
and antler. Sharpened by removing spalls to create a new
cutting edge.
chitho Flat oval scraper of lightly abrasive stone, used to soften
hides for clothing.
core Roughly chipped rock or bone mass used to make flakes
from which tools are made.
eulachon From Chinook language. Also candlefish because it
contains so much oil it can burn, is a small anadromous smelt
(Thaleichthys pacificus) caught during Northwest Coast
spawning, and an important human food source and trade
item when processed as an oil.
flesher Long bone with diagonally cut and serrated end for
removing fat from a hide.
hammerstone A cobble used to break cores for flakes or long
bones to extract marrow fat.
point Tip attached to a lance, spear, or dart used to kill game.
pushplane Steep-sided, turtle-shell-shaped stone tool used to
plane wood.
scraper Steep-sided tool for stripping membrane from a hide;
precedes chitho use.
Taltheilei Named after Taltheilei Narrows draining the East
Arm into Great Slave Lake.
thrusting lance Lance kept in the hand and used for jabbing
caribou to mortally wound.
uniface Artifact chipped on one or both (biface) sides, usually
applied to stone knives.
wedge Tapered flaked stone for splitting bone, antler,
or wood.

Introduction
The Western and Central Canadian Subarctic,
stretching from Alaska east to Hudson Bay and
north to south from the Beaufort Sea to the northern
parts of the four western provinces (Figure 1), has
been home to Indian peoples for at least 12 000
years in the west and for somewhat less time since
deglaciation in the east. Some archaeologists believe
humans entered the New World 14 00016 000 years
ago, just before the 11 000 year-old Clovis fluted projectile points found in New Mexico. Clovis points
occur across North and Central America but not in
South America, where some earlier sites occur, leading
other archaeologists to believe a pre-Clovis population

crossed Alaska before 20 000 years ago. The reality is

unclear because archaeological sites that old often
have unclear associations between their artifacts and
radiocarbon dates. The presence of fluted points (see
Glossary) at Charlie Lake Cave and Pink Mountain
100 km farther north, Old Crow Flats and many Alaskan sites, suggests a reverse or northward migration of
hunters bearing Clovis-like points (Figure 1).
Three migration routes from Asia into the New
World through the Subarctic have been proposed,
none of them well documented and none of them
having the earliest Clovis fluted points, although
later fluted points occur. Peoples using the Mackenzie
Valley route may have ascended the Yukon River
west through the unglaciated interior of Alaska,
then north around the Continental Divide and south
along the Mackenzie Valley. But this valley was too
heavily glaciated at the time of the expected first
arrivals. A similar Intermountain route through
Alaska but southeast through the southern Yukon
would also have encountered closed mountain and
continental glaciation. Lately, interest has been
sparked in a proposed pre-Clovis movement by boat
down the West Coast. But finding archaeological
sites on the ocean floor became almost impossible
when postglacial meltwater inundated the route
milleniums ago.
About 6000 years ago, the early people of the
southwest Yukon and northern British Columbia
lived in small fishing camps and hunted for mixed
game as well as caribou. There they developed
into the Dene (the people) or Athabaskan culture.
From 10 000 to 8000 years ago in the District of
Mackenzie, Palaeoindians from the south followed
retreating ice and caribou herds north into the Barrenlands to be later replaced by a possible amalgamation of Palaeoindian and Archaic forest peoples
(Shield Archaic) as the climate warmed. These Shield
Archaic people retreated south during a cold climatic
interval, leaving the Barrenlands open to Inuit-like
Pre-Dorset coastal hunters arriving from the northwest. The Pre-Dorset hunted migrating herds, just as
had the Indians before them. When the climate
warmed, the Pre-Dorset probably returned to the
north and Indians again hunted caribou on the Barrenlands, this time in groups related through language
and archaeology to the Dene, who from 4000
6000 years ago had evolved in Alaska, the Yukon
and British Columbia. These Dene, predecessors
of the tribes of the Mackenzie Valley, Northwest
Territories and northern Prairie Provinces, began to
move east 2600 years ago. Mirroring the migration
paths of the early Dene, the archaeology of all cultures will be discussed from north to south in the
Yukon and British Columbia, down the Peace River

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 329

Beaufort
Sea

AS
AL

Bering
Sea

KA

Bluefish Cave
and Old Crow

Yuko
Sw
n Riv
er
14 an Po
000 int
mic
rob bp
lad
es

at
Gre

e L.

Slav

on
Huds
Bay

Peace
River

Charlie L.
Cave

ALBERTA

's

Bryan Gordon

IES

Mt. Edziza

B.C.

500
km

THW
E
TERR ST
ITOR

00

0
km

NOR

10

PACIFIC
OCEAN

oute
lley R
ie Va

Tlingit
and
Haida

Grea
Bea t
r L.

enz
Mack

in
ounta oute
R
Interm

e
out
al R
ast
Co

Gulf of
Alaska

The Earliest Cultures

bp = years before present

bp

Hell G
ap a
Points nd Plano
10 000
bp

Thompson
River
CA
NA
DA
USA

ice

SASKATCHEW

MANITOBA
ma

rgin

AN

Figure 1 The earliest cultures. 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

to northern Alberta, up the Mackenzie Valley, and

then east to the Northwest Territories and northern
Prairie provinces.
Linguistic and genetic data supplement Dene prehistory and define historic Dene location: Gwichin in
northern Yukon, Han and Tutchone in central and
southern Yukon, Tahltan-Kaska-Tsetsaut in northern
British Columbia; Sekani-Beaver, Carrier, Chilcotin
and Nicola in its Central Plateau, Chipewyan-SlaveyYellowknife in the northern Prairie Provinces and
Northwest Territories; Dogrib-Bear Lake, Mountain
or Nahanni and Hare in the northern Mackenzie
District; Sarsi in southern Alberta, and Navaho and
Apache in the American southwest. Greatest linguistic
divergence is in the northwest, the proposed area of
Dene emergence. From there the Dene migrated south
and east via the Peace River to the Mackenzie Valley
and Barrenlands (2600 years ago), to the coast of
Oregon and California (l500 years ago), and south
on two migration routes: to the American Southwest (8501150 years ago) and to southern Alberta
(250 years ago). Their language group came to occupy
the largest area of all North American Indians.

Northern Yukon
The earliest occupation of Canadas subarctic was in
the Bluefish Caves, northern Yukon, while older Old
Crow, Yukon, Pleistocene exposures are secondary
depositions (Figure 1). Bluefish Caves were used sporadically by a few hunters from 25 000 to 12 000 years
ago. Possibly humanly altered mammoth bone in the
Old Crow area is twothree times older than
that in the 12 000-year-old non-microblade Nenana
complex in Alaska. Microblades and their cores, and
burins and their sharpening spalls (see Glossary)
found at Bluefish Caves resemble those in the more
recent 10 500 year-old Denali complex in Alaska and
are also reminiscent of similar artifacts in Siberias
Dyuktai culture. Whether the microtools in Bluefish
Caves are associated with the earliest occupation is
controversial. If they are, they may be tied to interior
Alaskas 11 000 year-old Healy Lake and 14 000 yearold Swan Lake microblade sites.
Microblade-using cultures existed from central
Siberia to eastern Great Bear Lake in the Northwest
Territories, their Siberian ancestors reaching central

330 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

Alaska 14 000 years ago, the southern Yukon and

northern British Columbia before 6000 years ago,
and the western Mackenzie District by 4500 years
ago. Three cultural traditions (historical and technological), accounting for their presence and based on
their use of microblades, have been proposed by
archaeologists: Northwest Microblade, Northern
Archaic, and Palaeo-arctic. The fact that different tool
types exist within each tradition at different times
and locations makes them awkward markers through
which to coordinate cultural interpretations. This
is shown in the overall archaeological sequence
(Table 1) by the absence of firm dividing lines or the
use of hatched lines.
In the northern Yukon at a time later than microblade cultures, archaeological sites along the Porcupine
River show greater affinity with southwest Yukon
than with central Alaska. Ancestral Gwichin stratified
sites are Rat Indian Creek, Old Chief and Klo-Kut.
Lithics include whetstones, maulheads, hammers,
notched and contracting stemmed small Klo-Kut or
Kavik arrowheads (so named from two northern sites
where they have been found; see Figure 2a), adzeblades, axheads, boiling stones, scrapers (Figure 2c),
and wedges. Bifacial stone tools (shaped on their
two faces or sides) were less common in later phases
when more bone and antler tool manufacturing took
place (Figure 2).
Rat Indian Creek is one of the Yukons bestcontrolled excavations, with 17 radiocarbon dates in
seven levels spanning 2430  60 years ago to White
Contact. Early and late uses of boulder spalls, chitho
scrapers (Figure 2d) and bone, antler and pebble cores
are similar, but bifacial chert tools decrease and scrapers and cores change 1200 years ago. The level 6/6A
components lack burins but correlate with many sites
in western and central Alaska and the pre-800 yearold Taye Lake phase in the southwest Yukon. It
has similar points and bifaces to Aishihik. Its post1220 year-old tools resemble those found in Alaska,
southwest Yukon and northwest Mackenzie District.
The Old Chief sequence resembles that of Rat
Indian Creek, with Klo-Kut contracting stemmed
points appearing in the Old Chief phase 1300 years
ago, indicating the adoption of the bow and arrow
and suggesting continuity from the Old Chief phase
to the Klo-Kut site. The latter is located just downriver at Old Crow. Klo-Kut, a Gwichin spring caribou water-crossing site beginning 1700 years ago,
includes artifacts like those in the upper levels of
Rat Indian Creek and continues the Dene sequence
forward to White Contact in the 1800s. Continuity
within the archaeological sequence in Porcupine River
sites supports a hypothesis of in situ development.
Ancestral Gwichin adopted their bifacial stone

technology and contracting stem Klo-Kut (Kavik)

arrowheads from Alaskan tribes, the Klo-Kut arrowhead being an excellent marker for tracing Dene to
the southwest Yukon and to the Interior Plateau of
British Columbia.
Some archaeologists tie Yukon Dene outmigration
with land temporarily affected by 1200 year-old
White River ashfall from a nearby Alaskan volcano,
an event concurrent with the Tanana-Gwichin language split. But the ashfall never reached the Porcupine Gwichin, and would not have affected their
movement.
Indications of heavy pre- and post-Contact fishing
exist at the nearby Dechyoo Njit camp. There, Dene
used long, round-fronted snowshoes for hunting on
fresh snow and short, pointed, upturned snowshoes
for breaking trails. Subsistence came from ice fishing
and hare- and ptarmigan-snaring in late winter, and
hunting for porcupine, spruce grouse, caribou, and
moose. In the far northwest, the Gwichin hunted
the Porcupine caribou herd in spring and summer,
and sub-herds and other animals in winter. They
extensively used wooden caribou fences, but only
mid-Contact period fence remains have survived.
A Black Fox Creek fence had protohistoric stoneadze-cut stumps, but older ones are inferred because
8000 years of stable spruce forest-tundra may have
allowed stable caribou migration routes and provided
wood for fence construction. For this, two long rows
of poles, oriented transversely across low valleys,
converged in a brush corral interlaced with rawhide
snares where 80150 caribou were trapped and killed
with arrows and lances.

Southern Yukon
The occurrence of extinct bison bone in the southwest
Yukon led early researchers to believe that grassland
dominated the post-glacial landscape, but forest pollens show a lengthy stable forest environment. A nonmicroblade Northern Cordilleran tradition (Figure 3)
is the earliest documented human group and precedes
the 80004500 year-old Little Arm phase, which has
microblade cores, burins and microblades, but no
notched points. Microblades like those at Little Arm
occur in the Otter Falls, Canyon and Moosehide sites.
Dating between the Little Arm and Taye Lake phases,
the Annie Lake site has microblades and distinctly
styled concave-based points. Microblades disappear
in the 45001600 year-old Taye Lake phase (4500
1600 years ago), but it has notched points, large
barbed bone points, stone wedges, boulder spalls,
several endscraper types, discoidal scrapers, burins,
and extensive use of obsidian occur. The side-notched
points resemble those at Mummy Cave, Wyoming,

Table 1 Generalized archaeological sequence of the Western and Central Canadian Subarctic

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 331

332 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

(a)

(b)
50 mm (a and b)

(c)
100 mm (c and d)

(d)

One Dene Klo-Kut or Kavik (a) and four Late Taltheilei (b)
arrowheads, scraper (c) and three chithos (d)
Figure 2 Dene Klo-Kut (Kavik) arrowhead, Taltheilei arrowheads, scraper and chithos (clockwise from top left). 2008
Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

their style probably diffusing north from the Plains via

northern British Columbia, as such points are absent
in northern Alberta and the Mackenzie Valley. Technologically continuous toolkits that extend in time
from Taye Lake phase through the Aishihik phase
until White Contact suggest all represent Dene
(Table 1 shaded area) (Figure 3).
The 1600 to 150 year-old Aishihik phase marks the
introduction of the bow and arrow. This phases nine
components include copper artifacts, small barbed
bone points, Klo-Kut arrowheads, bifaces, and
ground adzes, like those at Rat Indian Creek and
Klo-Kut. While all three later phases have tabular
bifaces, chitho scrapers, concave-based points, and
wide endscrapers, Aishihik phase has thinner, rounder
endscrapers, more unifaces, and more stone wedges
than Taye Lake. Diagnostic of Dene are chitho scrapers and Klo-Kut arrowheads, while hearth traces
surrounded by artifacts and boiling stone fragments
are all that remain of most camps, suggesting that
families boiled some of their meat or fish. People
depended on salmon but took woodland caribou and
upland game. Archaeological continuity and linguistics agree with the concept that Dene developed in situ
in eastern Alaska and the southwest Yukon, developing from the Little Arm phase over 6000 years into the
Dene-speaking tribes. In the Yukon, these tribes included Gwichin, Han, Tutchone, Kaska and Tagish.
European goods are found in the most recent levels of
many sites.

The 1200 year-old White River ashfall was 35 cm

thick in populated areas of the southwest Yukon
several hundred kilometers from the volcanic vent
(Figure 4). Some archaeologists maintain that this
eruption caused a Dene exodus, with a populationdisplacing domino effect all the way to the American
Southwest, where the Navajo-Apache formed from a
Dene root (see Section on Move Through Saskatchewan). However, any major displacement based on
this winter ashfall is unsubstantiated. Research after
Washingtons Mount. St. Helens eruption shows that
distant volcanic effects were tolerable to aquatic
invertebrates and flora. While fish decreased initially
due to ash suspension in the water affecting the
fish food chain, spawning recovered in less than
23 years. In the Yukon, humans and game were several hundred kilometers away, far enough to be clear of
any catastrophic consequences from the eruption itself. The level above the ash in the Tatlmain Lake site
north of Carmacks had fewer fish remains (9%) than
the level below the ash (25%), but fish recovered soon
thereafter. World history does not record a terrestrial
volcanic event capable of fully disrupting extensive
human resources where flexible cultural mechanisms
could counteract it, but such an event may have
indirectly fostered a change in human technology.
Post-ashfall firing of trees killed by ash accumulation
may have opened the forest, favoring the adoption
from Alaska of the arrow over the dart for hunting.
New Ice Patch research in the Kluane region of the
southwest Yukon suggests an abrupt switch to the
bow and arrow, with little overlap of darts or spears
spanning the period of ashfall on 10 AMS dates.
The youngest dart dates 1260  60 years, the oldest
arrow; 1300  60. While darts were tipped with stone
points, arrows were made of bone and antler, some
archaeologists suggesting this was done using copper
carving tools. The southwest Yukon Dene also mined
native copper nuggets along the White River, both to
make arrowheads and for trade. Before and after
White Contact in the early 1800s, eulachon oil (see
Glossary) was traded from the coastal Tlingit by the
Kaska and Tutchone for copper and furs. The Tagish
were drawn into the fur trade as middlemen, and over
time, adopted Tlingit social customs (Figure 4).

West of the Continental Divide

Northern British Columbia

Microblades began in north coastal British Columbia,

their makers moving up the rivers and over passes to
the undated Callison site with its many Taye Lake
traits, and Grizzly Run on Mount Edziza, Stikine
drainage, with its many microblades (Figures 1 and 5).

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 333

Bering
Sea

Beaufort
Sea

The Early Cultures

bp = years before present

Gre

500
km

Bryan Gordon

sh
8 eet
65 rem
00
bp nant

Ice

sit 34 N
es -P
7 lan
80 o
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1
sit 2 Ac
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ordille
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L.

Charlie
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km

ear

d
re ts
te in
at po
sc n
te dia
La oin
le
Pa

Arm
Little se
pha

Gulf of
Alaska

at B

Sout
hern
pla
6600 teau
400
0 bp
USA

Lake
Athabasca

Plano
bison hunters
CANADA

Figure 3 The early cultures. 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This was a quarry site, high and far from water,

where microblades were made, but taken elsewhere
to be used. Contemporaneously, the Rattlesnake Hill
fishing station far to the south on the Thompson River
has fish remains, but no microblades. Some rare cases
of microblades older than 7000 years occur on the
Interior Plateau, but their use ended 40005000 years
ago, contemporaneous with those of Yukons Little
Arm phase and Mount Edziza and the appearance of
pithouses probably derived from the south (Figure 5).
Almost nothing is known about the ancient people
of British Columbias rugged interior, especially
between HazletonLower Liard and the Rockies. Unlike the coast, the interior ranges could not support
many people. The rivers with salmon were mainly
controlled by coastal people, but some degree of
accommodation with the interior Dene likely occurred,
especially far upriver. Along these eastwest ecotones
leading to the coast, midsized early-looking points are
ubiquitous but undated. It is likely some were ancestral to Early Taltheilei points that occur after 2700

years ago along the Peace River. Taltheilei points (see

section on the Barrenlands) are a distinctive marker
for Dene that were first defined around Great Slave
Lake. They are ubiquitous east of the Continental
Divide and occur occasionally in northern British
Columbia. A better understanding of Taltheilei shouldered points and artifact associations is needed by
archaeologists studying British Columbia, if they are
to identify them confidently. Too large for arrows,
many may have been dartheads until their makers carried them down the Peace River to the Barrenlands,
where they would have been used to tip thrusting lances
at caribou water-crossings. Complicating interpretations, some Late Palaeoindian-like points persist long
after small notched and stemmed forms are found elsewhere. Notched and stemmed forms are in the 3600
3200 year-old Skeena River Kitselas Canyon site, the
40002400 year-old Shuswap Horizon on the Plateau
and the 56003500 year-old Plains McKean complex.
Tracing pre-Contact Dene movements in British
Columbia is tenuous because the tribes at Contact

334 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

lnuit

Ho

Bering
Sea

huk

Ing
alik

c
lika

Beaufort
Sea
Koyukon
Kutchin

Kolchan

Ta
n

an

Tanaina

Ah
tna

Moun
tain

ane

Klu

ska

Sla
vey

Sekani

tsau

Tse

lnuit

Yellowknife
Dog
rib

Ka

an
Tahlt

git

Chipewyan

Bea
ver

Ca

rrie

Sa

rs

CAN

ADA

Sites
with
chithos

c. 800 AD

PACIFIC COAST
ATHAPASKANS

and

Ta

Tlin

PACIFIC
OCEAN

Tutchone

gisn

803 AD White River

ash distribution east

0
500
km
km
Bryan Gordon

Har
e
Lak & Be
ar
e

Han

Gulf of
Alaska

NORTHERN
ATHAPASKANS

Proposed origin
of the Navajo-Apache
from Chipewyan c. 800 AD

Algonkian
(Cree?)

USA

APACHEAN
ATHAPASKANS

Navajo-Apach
e
arrival in Sout
hwest
after 1200 AD

Figure 4 Proposed origin of the Navajo-Apache from the Chipewyan c. AD 800, including the distribution of the White River ashfall.
2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

are too difficult to differentiate through their toolkits.

Kaska artifacts in the far north of British Columbia
resemble those of the Beaver, Sekani and Slave. For
example, Late Fisherman Lake material from the
southwest Mackenzie District of the Northwest Territories could be Kaska or Slave because the Kaska
were Fort Simpson traders before the Slave pushed
them up the Liard River to British Columbia. To the
west, the rugged Stikine and Cassiar Ranges were
occupied only by scattered, seasonal Tahltan Dene
hunters. Along the Stikine River, the Tahltan caught
seasonally abundant fish using nets and weirs. They
hunted caribou with the aid of traps, snares and
fences, the last extending 516 km to prominent
headlands. To augment their construction, fences
were interlaced with deadfalls and branches. Snares
were placed in open portions. In 1821, Fort Halkett
was built on the upper Liard River, followed in 1838
by a Hudsons Bay Company post on Dease Lake.

We know little about Interior Plateau Dene, although Klo-Kut arrowheads occur in the early phases.
The Ulkatcho and Chinlac site pithouses north of
Anahim Lake have barbed bone points, eared endscrapers, bone beamers and awls, and birchbark, but
their Carrier occupants were recent immigrants. They
ate caribou, then moose when caribou retreated
west into the mountains. Taltheilei-like points were
replaced by side-notched arrowheads, but the only
preserved Dene bow is a 50  5 cm Tahltan, for example, tapered at each end with flat inner and round
outer surfaces. It had been rubbed with beaver castor
and wrapped in hide for toughening. Twisted caribou
sinew was used to make bowstrings. It is associated
with 75-cm-long saskatoon berry cane arrows with
notched caribou bone, antler or obsidian points.
Late Taltheilei Dene spread south to the Oregon
and California coasts to form the Pacific Dene about
1500 years ago (Figure 6), but little can be said until

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 335

Bering
Sea

Beaufort
Sea

The Early
Intermediate Cultures
bp = years before present

Whi
rl
Lake

121
Arc Shie
ld
h
650 aic sit
es
03
500
bp

Gulf of
Alaska

Pre
sou Dorset
th c
. 35 moving
NT
00 b
p
Do
ck
s
Microblade
Nor thwest
Tradition
Pointed
Mtn.
ins
N. Pla s
Cal
ion
s
lis
incur
site on
C
middharlie L.
le pr
4
ehis bur 000 bp
Kit
i
t
o
s
r
i
c ns & m Bezya
Ca ela
icro
ny s
blad
on
es
No
Ar r the
ch rn
aic

Re
tre
h

Bryan Gordon

CAN
ADA
USA

ut

500
km

so

0
km

at

PACIFIC
OCEAN

Pla
i
bis ns Ar
on
c
hu haic
nte
rs

Figure 5 The early intermediate cultures, including their movements. 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.

more excavation reveals their routes. Bridging the gap

somewhat are similar Interior Plateau and central
California rectangular houses. Unfortunately, Interior
Plateau pithouses have mixed components and mixed
radiocarbon estimates because older soil from the pit
was often piled upon younger soil around its edge
during house construction. In both Interior Plateau
and Pacific Dene in the White Contact period, there
were unique puberty and curing rites. A warrior status from raiding was initiated and focus switched
from group to individual, a widespread Dene trait.
Coquille arrowheads in the Standley site in Oregon
are reminiscent of Klo-kut ones, but their context in
large coastal villages with highly visible shell middens
does not compare well with small single-family
dwellings in the interior. New British Columbia research should be continued away from pithouses,
with a view to tying Plateau and Pacific Dene by focusing on hide smoothers like chithos, Klo-Kut arrowheads, stylistic artifact differences, and sequential
radiocarbon dates (Figure 6).

East of the Continental Divide

Northeast British Columbia and Alberta

On the east side of the Rockies near Fort St. John, the
earliest signs of Palaeoindians are at Charlie Lake
Cave in a Palaeoindian level dating about 10 500
years ago, with lanceolate, fluted spear points and
square-stemmed Cody-Alberta points (Figure 1). They
were found on the surface and likely diffused from the
contiguous Plains. At Charlie Lake cave and the Farrell
site, 50006000-year-old stemmed and notched points
precede 29002500 year-old points suggestive of
the Oxbow type on the Plains, followed by smaller
post-1500 year-old notched arrowheads. In northeastern British Columbia, the pre-1830 Beaver people
hunted bison on the Peace River prairie and woodland
zones, and moose, woodland caribou, sheep and goats
in the hills.
The oldest artifacts in northern Alberta may be
macroblades similar to Clovis culture specimens found
farther south. Later lanceolate points resembling

336 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

Ing

al i k

k
chu
lika
Ho

Bering
Sea

Beaufort
Sea

Inuit

Proposed Dene movement south

across B.C. Plateau to become
Pacific Dene (Athabaskan) c. 500 AD

Koyukon
Kutchin

Kolchan
n
na
Ta

Tanaina

tn
Ah

Har
e
Lak & Bea
e
r

Han

ntain
Mou

Gulf of
Alaska

Tutchone
ish

Tag

500
km

Bryan Gordon

ska

Sla
vey

Chipewyan

ut

tsa

Tse

NORTHERN
ATHAPASKANS

CANAD

PACIFIC COAST
ATHAPASKANS
APACHEAN
ATHAPASKANS

Inuit

Yellowknife
Dog
rib

c. 500 AD

PACIFIC
OCEAN

tan
Tahl

0
km

Ka

and

USA

Pacific Coast Dene

Figure 6 Proposed Dene movement South across the British Columbia Plateau to become the Pacific Dene (Athabaskan) c. AD 500.
2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

the Agate Basin Northern Plano and Hell Gap points of

the northern Plains were found on the surface of the
Gardiner Narrows and Beaver River Quarry sites, as
was an Alberta-Scottsbluff point found near Fort
Mackay south of Lake Athabasca (Figure 1). All date
about 10 000 years ago on the Plains, but are probably
much younger in northern Alberta. A notched burin
(see Glossary) and spalls from burin sharpening,
microblades and cores came from the 4000 year-old
Bezya site, while a microcore came from near Fort
Vermillion (Figure 5). These may show ties to the
southwest Yukons Little Arm phase and to the southwest Mackenzie Districts Pointed Mountain site. The
Middle Prehistoric phase along the southern forest
fringe includes 55002500 year-old notched Oxbow
points, representing diffusion, trade or actual Plains
people. The Eaglenest Portage site has stemmed and
notched points, some being Middle Prehistoric projectiles, others Late Taltheilei arrowheads. The Gardiner

Narrows and Satsi sites, with 35002700 year-old

Arctic Small Tool tradition points, demonstrate that
their Inuit-like bearers came quite far south and even
adapted to game other than tundra caribou. Gardiner
Narrows and Satsi are not that far from the Karpinsky
site, where all Taltheilei phases are represented.
The Taltheilei tradition originated in northern British
Columbia from a Yukon Na-Dene tradition and went
east via the Peace River to Alberta (Figure 7). This is
the only viable portal through the Rockies for groups
larger than small, scattered mountain bands and is
in the right location for these events. The presence of
large sites, like Peace Point on the Peace River gives
credence to the importance of waterways to human
movement. Unfortunately, most sites have been buried
or washed away, although a number of Albertan sites
point to derivation from the west by way of the Peace
River drainage. A precursor to 24502600 year-old
narrow, thick, Earliest Taltheilei lanceheads has not

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 337

but none is well stratified and few are radiocarbondated. The fact that some points resemble those of
Late or Middle Taltheilei and also resemble points
found farther south in the Alberta foothills has been
the basis of a postulated Rockies foothills route of the
Yukon Dene to the American Southwest. A protohistoric foothills migration by Dene hunters is better
documented, when Dene left western Lake Athabasca
through Beaver territory to cross the far Northwest
Plains along the Rockies foothills to become the Sarsi
(Figure 8). Indeed, Sarsi and Beaver are close relatives, sharing oral traditions even after Sarsi became
Plains hunters. Early historic Sarsi took advantage of
annual bison migrations, following them south to
amalgamate with and finally dissolve in the dominant
southwest Alberta Blackfoot (Figure 8).
A pre-1650 location for Sekani was just north of
the Sarsi on the Alberta Plains, while Carrier and

been found on the Peace River, but one thin, wide,

shouldered point found in British Columbia in the
late nineteenth century by Morice resembles Early
Taltheilei points. Perhaps looking for Taltheilei origins
in the earlier Taye Lake phase in the Yukon is logical
because both Taltheilei and Taye Lake have similar
overall toolkits, with the exception that side-notched
points (in Taye Lake) are absent in Early Taltheilei.
And there are the Taltheilei-like points mentioned
earlier on the Northwest Coast and Interior of British
Columbia. More survey is needed (Figure 7).
The Karpinsky site in western Alberta is pivotal in
tying Taltheilei origin to the Peace River and British
Columbia. Judging from the form and non-parallel
flaking of unprovenanced Early and Middle lanceheads, it has points of all phases, suggesting the
Peace River was a regularly used route. The heavily
surveyed northern Alberta Oil Sands have 1000 sites,

Inuit

alik
Ing

chu

lika

Ho

Bering
Sea

Beaufort
Sea

Koyukon

Pre-600 BC Dene movement

from British Columbia
down the Peace River

Kutchin

Kolchan
n
Ta
a

an

Tanaina
Ah

re
HaP
re Lak & Bea
e
r

tna

Han

Pre-tain
n
Mou

Gulf of
Alaska

Tutchone
ish

and

Yellowknife
Dog
rib

Tag

Bryan Gordon
PACIFIC
OCEAN

NORTHERN
ATHAPASKANS
PACIFIC COAST
ATHAPASKANS

ut

ska

Pr
Sla evey

Chipewyan

500
km

ta
Tahl

km

Ka

Inuit

tsa

Tse

c. 6 00 B C

Ca

rrie

CAN
ADA
USA

APACHEAN
ATHAPASKANS

Figure 7 Pre-600 BC Dene movement from British Columbia down the Peace River to the Barrenlands. 2008 Bryan Gordon.
Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

338 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

Ing

al i k

k
chu
lika
Ho

Bering
Sea

Inuit

Proposed Dene movement south

to become Sarsi c. 1650 AD
Beaufort
Sea

Koyukon
Kutchin

Kolchan
n
Ta
an

Tanaina

ntain
Mou

Gulf of
Alaska

Tutchone
ish

Tag

i
Sekan

PACIFIC
OCEAN

ska

ta
Tahl

0
500
km
km
Bryan Gordon

Ka

ut

tsa

Tse

Ca

rrie

NORTHERN
ATHAPASKANS
PACIFIC COAST
ATHAPASKANS
APACHEAN
ATHAPASKANS

and

Inuit

Yellowknife
Dog
rib

Sla
vey

Chipewyan

Bea
ver
c. 16
50 A
D

tn
Ah

Har
e
Lak & Bea
e
r

Han

Sarsi

- Blac
kfoot

Cree

CANADA
USA

Figure 8 Proposed Dene movement South to become the Sarsi c. AD 1650. 2008 Bryan Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.

Sarsi were adjacent to one another east-west, a condition requiring the Beaver to be farther east than at
present. Linguistic data show southern disruption of
Sekani and Sarsi, who share enough traits to indicate
extensive earlier contact, something they have in
common with the Carrier. Evidence also exists for
the Sekani being farther east, later to be forced up
the Peace River from the Alberta Plains by the Cree.
If the Sarsi, on their movement south, carried the
chitho or hide abrader, it disappeared or changed
completely because it is absent in the Old Womens
phase of Alberta.
Northwest Territories-Western Mackenzie District

East of the Yukon and British Columbia, microblade technology occurs only in the late Northwest
Microblade tradition and is often associated with
flake burins (made by spalling the edge of a flake).
Mackenzie Valley and Great Bear Lake microblade
assemblages are variants of earlier Alaskan and

Yukon cultures. Simultaneous to the Middle Shield

Archaic in the Beverly range of the Thelon River, the
50003500 year-old Great Bear River and Franklin
Tanks sites near Great Bear Lake have lanceheads,
knives, choppers, endscrapers, and microblades
mixed with an Arctic Small Tool burin. The nearby
NT Docks site has a bladelike assemblage related to
the lower level of the Whirl Lake site and dating
about 5000 years ago (Figure 5). The lower level at
Whirl Lake shows more southern as well as Alaskan
and Yukon influence. It and the NT Docks, Pointed
Mountain, and Bezya (Alberta) sites all could be defined as 40005000 year-old Northwest Microblade
variants. But in all assemblages, composition is inconsistent; some have microcores, others have stemmed,
notched, and leafshaped points under possible Plains
influence. The Great Bear Lake Taltheilei people
made lance and arrow heads like those in the Eastern
Mackenzie District, plus scrapers, knives, adzes,
whetstones, drills and small native copper awls, and

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 339

knives. Bone, wood, antler, hide, and fur items have not
survived the acid soil. Permanent White contact was
established when the Hudsons Bay Company built
Fort McPherson on the lower Peel River in 1840, followed two years later by La Pierre House on the
Yukons Bell River and seven years later by Fort
Yukon at the junction of the Porcupine and Yukon
Rivers.
The reputed co-occurrence of notched points, burins
and microblades continues to obscure the definition of
the Northwest Microblade tradition. The Pointed
Mountain site has Taye Lake burins, plus microblades; other sites do not. Tenuous ties have been
drawn across the Continental Divide between the
15002300 year-old Mackenzie complex and late
Taye Lake-early Aishihik point types, notched endscrapers and burins. The 1400 year-old Fish Lake complex retains side-notched points, but its microblades
may, in fact, be parallel-sided flakes. The co-occurrence
of crudely flaked notched points with microblades
taken from cores using a refined technique seems odd.
They occur in thin soils and may represent separate
technologies.
Contiguous with Yukon Gwichin sites are those
in the Mackenzie Delta and Anderson Plain. Whirl
Lake near Arctic Red River and the Anderson Plain
have similar dwellings. The Whirl Lake dwelling
lacks timbers and was probably covered with birchbark and skin, while Anderson Plain pithouses had
beams supporting a low turf roof. Both areas have
birchbark trays for holding fish, while Whirl Lake
shows a varied subsistence of pike, waterfowl,
moose, caribou, muskrat, beaver, and dog or wolf.
A 10 cm bone snowshoe netting needle decorated
with stylized beavers represents a rare Dene art
object.
East of the Rockies, thrusting lances partially replace the atlatl because they were better tools for
killing caribou at close range, as was necessary at
water-crossings and corrals. Where rapid-fire hunting was needed on frozen lakes and in open space,
the bow and arrow was superior for small subherds,
but prior to the bow, the atlatl was used in winter. The
change to side-notched arrowheads spread east of the
Rockies, down the Peace River to the Northwest
Territories to form part of the AD 8001200 Late
Taltheilei phase. Early Taltheilei began 2100 years
ago on Great Bear Lake, eventually evolving into
the Hare, who used lance and arrowheads until
White Contact. Little is known about the Mountain Dene on the Nahanni River, as epidemics and
famine reduced them. Up the Liard River as far
as Fisherman Lake, Spence River points resembling
Prairie Side-Notched arrowheads are interpreted as
Slavey Dene.

Northwest Territories-Central Mackenzie District

The Mackenzie District includes the Bathurst caribou

range north of Great Slave Lake and east of Great
Bear Lake. Its earliest inhabitants were a 60003500
year-old Archaic group called Acasta, its side-notched
lanceolates being a possible southern modification
(Figure 3). A link may exist between its edge-burinated
flakes, called Donnelly burins, and multi-gravers and
those in Little Arm phase. Other items are large
bipointed knives, scrapers, planes, gravers, burins,
wedges and a whetstone. Acastas 1525 huge 34 m
diameter hearths were used in heat-treating quartzite
to make it more suitable for flaking. One hearth had
charred caribou, bear, beaver, hare, and fish bone.
Rare Oxbow, narrow concave-based Duncan and
larger convex-based side-notched Pelican Lake points
found near Great Slave Lakes East Arm represent
Middle Plains influence.
Dene prehistory is recognized throughout the subarctic by generalized toolkits: bifacial knives, scrapers, wedges, hammerstones, pushplanes, and chithos.
Points are the most diagnostic tool for differentiating
phases. But most Barrenland surface sites have collections mixed from two or more phases because they
are situated at caribou water-crossings used over and
over again for millennia. Stratified sites are rare in the
Bathurst caribou range, so attempts were made to
separate assemblages through estimating the age of
raised beach ridges and dating charcoal in isolated
hearths. As these were too crude to properly separate
the 10 complexes in the 2500160 year-old Taltheilei
Shale tradition, the complexes were assigned to the
three well-dated Taltheilei tradition phases in the
Beverly caribou range (Table 1). Thus, the Central
Mackenzie phases translate as follows: Hennessey is
Early Taltheilei; Taltheilei and Windy Point are Middle Taltheilei; and Waldron River, Narrows, Lockhart
River, Fairchild Bay, Snare River, and Reliance are
Late Taltheilei. Earliest Taltheilei lanceheads are
absent in the Bathurst caribou range, casting doubt
on Dene movement across the Mackenzie Mountains
via the Liard River and strengthening the theory of
migrations via the Peace River. Early Taltheilei points
are shouldered. Middle Taltheilei lanceheads are
stemmed. Late Taltheilei is characterized by notched
arrowheads, indicating introduction of the bow and
arrow. The last prehistoric phase in the Bathurst caribou range is ancestral Yellowknife, but it would also
include Dogrib. In historic times, both Dogrib and
Yellowknife built caribou fences on lake ice in March
and April, and both hunted migrating Bathurst caribou
in the spring. The Bathurst range was taken over by the
Dogribs in the mid-nineteenth century after years of
friction and two battles with the Yellowknife.

340 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

Eastern Mackenzie District (Barrenlands), Northern
Saskatchewan, and Manitoba

Hearne was first to record Dene groups following

the caribou when he crossed the Barrenlands in
1771. Later ethnographic reports and archaeology
confirmed that caribou was the controlling factor in
the development of Dene groups on the Barrenlands,
in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. All Dene
groups had to follow the caribou within its wintering
area and migration corridor to and from the calving
grounds if they were to survive. Alternative food was
insufficient to sustain them. Distance between herd
ranges and the timing of each respective herds migration prevented any one human group from hunting
more than one range. Such is the nature of joint
culture and herd occupancy that tools and dialects
reflect this dependence. Within each caribou range,
tools become more homogeneous with time, and differ from those in adjoining ranges because of limited
contact between groups. This pattern has been evident since the first peoples entered the Barrenlands.
Within the Beverly Range, stratified sites provide a
cultural sequence from then until Contact. The association of the Dene tribes with caribou ranges
continued into historic times. From northwest to
southwest, and with respect to tribal division and
range, the Satudene (Hare and Dogrib) occupy the
Bluenose caribou range; the Dogrib and Yellowknife
occupy the Bathurst range; and the Western and Eastern Chipewyan occupy the Beverly and Kaminuriak
ranges (Figure 4).
The earliest people to enter the Barrenland range of
the Beverly caribou were Northern Plano who followed the retreating continental ice sheet north.
They occupied 34 water-crossings, each having at
least one Northern Plano lancehead and dating to
80007000 years ago (Figure 3). Northern Plano artifacts are also seen to the south, at Black Lake in
northern Saskatchewan. Northern Plano may have
merged into Shield Archaic people 65003500 years
ago, as 121 Beverly sites show no substantial interruption in artifact frequencies, particularly in knives
(Figure 5). But their earliest radiocarbon-dated
(6120 years ago) small, crude, side-notched point
looks nothing like the elegant, long, unnotched Plano
points. In time, the Shield Archaic people retreated
with incoming very cold climate from the Arctic
coast. Hard on their heels were 35002700 year-old
Arctic-adapted Pre-Dorset people who moved south
during this cold period. They left distinctive microblades and cores, burins and spalls, and other refined
tools at many Bathurst, Beverly (246 sites), and
Kaminuriak caribou range sites (Figure 9). To the
southeast, Pre-Dorset artifacts are found at Black

Lake, Saskatchewan, and near Churchill, Manitoba, at

the Twin Lakes and Seahorse Gully sites (see Americas,
North: Arctic and Circumpolar Regions) (Figure 9).
With climatic warming, Earliest and Early Taltheilei people moved into the Beverly range via the Peace
River (Figure 7), leaving 190 sites in the Beverly
range. From 2600 to 1800 years ago, they used long
thick lanceheads, then thin shouldered lanceheads.
The 1800 to 1300 year-old Middle phase expanded
to occupy 355 Beverly sites, reflecting a cultural efflorescence. It also spread east to the Kaminuriak
range of Manitoba and southern Nunavut leaving
well-made stemmed points as evidence of mass hunting at water-crossings. The 1300 to 200 year-old Late
phase people adopted the bow and arrow that is
recognized in crude notched arrowheads. These people evolved directly into protohistoric Chipewyan,
met by Hearne on the lower Dubawnt River and
on the Thelon Rivers Arctic Oasis at its junction
with the Hanbury, where the richest stratified sites
occur. The Chipewyan used the bow horizontally, as
probably did their Late Taltheilei ancestors. Along
the Dubawnt and Thelon rivers, upturned stone slab
shooting blinds and stone pile or brush fences used
by these bowmen, mark the Beverly caribou migration corridor. The Thelon corridor was especially
depended upon, as seen in 16 blinds and 15 fences
near water-crossings on the upper Thelon River.
The high quality quartzite, dominant in Taltheilei
toolkits, was collected on the tundra and carried
hundreds of kilometers south in the fall when the
people migrated into the forest. By winter, local
stone was under several meters of snow and was of
poor quality. Thus, repeated sharpening over the winter of the tools they had carried from the tundra
reduced the size of tools in forest sites. Scrapers and
knives were serrated and four-sided in the forest zone
for easier winter handling and use on frozen hides and
meat. Chithos either became more worn because of
use on frozen hides or from prolonged winter use
before they could be replaced in summer.

Dene Move through Saskatchewan

to the Southwestern United States
Three routes from Subarctic Canada to the American
Southwest have been proposed. The Intermountain
one is the least promising because the Hare, Bear
Lake, Dogrib, Yellowknife and Chipewyan are not
mountain Dene and there is little supporting data.
A Foothills route has been suggested because some
arrowheads are supposedly similar along Albertas
foothill sites, but others disagree on their specific
traits. Furthermore, notched quartzite cobble axes

AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic 341

Beaufort
Sea

The Late
Intermediate Cultures
bp = years before present

500
km

Bryan Gordon

son riak
t
350 al mo carib
01 vem ou
700 en
bp ts

blade
micro
west
n
Nor th
traditio

Cha
rlie
La L.
Preh te
istor
ic

PACIFIC
OCEAN

0
km

L.
ye p
Ta 0 b nts
rly 450 oi
Ea m L. p
fro nie
An

Gulf of
Alaska

P
se Bat reas hu Do
on rst rs
35 al
c e
00 mo arib t
1 ve ou
70 m
P
0 b en
p ts
se Bev re-D
as erl or
on y c se
t
a
a
35
0 0 l mo r ibo
1
v
u
70 eme
0b
nts
p
Kam Pre-D
sea inu orse

Ol
Ch d
De ief
ne

CAN
USA

ADA

Figure 9 The late intermediate cultures, including seasonal movements of Barrenland hunters and caribou herds. 2008 Bryan
Gordon. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

and adzes like those of the northern Yukon Dene are

present in Saskatchewan sites, but are absent in
Alberta. These and unproven arrowhead similarities
mitigate against a Foothills route. The most plausible
route for southern Navajo-Apache migration is via
the open Plains (Figure 4).
Evidence of a Plains route south appears in Late
Taltheilei times, as indicated in Plains Side-Notched
arrowheads mixed with Taltheilei side-notched arrowheads and other artifacts at Black Lake near Lake
Athabasca. The Plains path crosses the Churchill
and Saskatchewan Rivers via an archaeologically
unknown area west of AD 5001000 Laurel and AD
1250 Selkirk peoples of Manitoba, and it remains
unknown if the Dene contacted them. Crude quartzite
Late Taltheilei side-notched arrowheads (Figure 2b)
merge into fine chert Plains Side-Notched arrowheads
across Saskatchewan. This is the first suggestion of
Late Taltheilei fading into the dominant Plains culture, as Taltheilei knappers honed their skills using

superior Plains chert. On the North Saskatchewan

River, Taltheilei is inferred to be present by Middle
Plains Period ovoid and notched knives and gouges
and pushplane-shaped endscrapers very like those of
Late Taltheilei.
Over a millenium ago, at the northern edge of
the Saskatchewan parkland and prairie, some Late
Taltheilei or ancestral Chipewyan bands became
more dependent on bison and less on caribou. Gradually being drawn to the seasonal movements of the
bison going south to the short grass prairie of southern Saskatchewan, some bands adjusted fully to the
bisons spoke-and-rim migrations, often ending in
winter far from where they started in spring. Bison
move into the short grass prairie in summer and out
to the aspen parklands to the north, the foothills to
the west, or the woodlands to the east in autumn.
Hunters beginning their seasonal hunts may move
into the short grass prairie from one direction and
out another, especially after a drought. In the process,

342 AMERICAS, NORTH/Sub-arctic

and likely being driven by drought effects on moving

bison, several Chipewyan bands kept moving south,
rather than north, west or east. The stable AD 900
1200 Neo-Atlantic Episode grassland may have first
attracted ancestral Chipewyan to the Plains, while the
AD 12001550 Pacific Episode climatic deterioration
may have hastened their move south (see Americas,
North: Plains).
Supporting this hypothesis of a southern Chipewyan movement via the archaeological record is their
speech, which most clearly resembles Navajo. Navajo
has the greatest retention of Chipewyan words. Minimal Chipewyan linguistic divergence puts the Navajo
within the AD 8001200 date range of Taltheilei
side-notched arrowheads (Table 1). The relationship
between Chipewyan and Navajo is also supported by
three skeletons excavated near Colorados Trinidad
Reservoir. They have Dene-specific first molars, suggesting the Navajo or ancestral Chipewyan were there
from AD 7501000. If so, they arrived in the southwest
well after the Avonlea phase of the Northern Plains,
and well before the Dismal River phase of the Central
Plains, the previously accepted indicators of Dene
or Athapaskan presence. They arrived well before
Coronados 1541 notations of Apache in his journal.
The Apache, diverging similarly to Navajo from
Chipewyan, moved south as a unit. The Navajo and
Apache split in eastern Colorado, the Apache retaining a Plains orientation while the Navajo evolved into
a new Southwest-adapted culture. Some linguists say
the split was farther north based on the Chipewyan t
and d sounds diverging and reappearing later and
separately in Navaho and Apache.
Ancestral Chipewyan may be found in the American
Southwest using a testable Preceramic Dene phase. To
do this, one must ignore the earliest pottery of the
Navajo and their five-pole hogans and ubiquitous
triangular arrowheads. Instead, one should consider
side-notched arrowheads and look for the remains of
simple brush shelters or tipis, arrowshaft smoothers,
hide abraders, bone fleshers and beamers, large
retouched flakes and knives, dog transport, and the
sinew-backed double-curved bow released horizontally. Drawn to the chest, this archery technique reduced
accuracy, pull and range by two-thirds, but favored a
hidden approach and gave the Apache-Navajo distinct
military advantages when entering new areas.

There are many gaps in the prehistory of the Subarctic Dene. The Dene west and east of the Continental Divide and north and south of the 49th Parallel
appear on first impression to be so different. Yet there
is an underlying similarity, not just in their language
and social structure, but in the fact that they were
inveterate borrowers from other cultures. This has
presented immense challenges to archaeologists, but,
hopefully, we can make them more visible by examining their whole culture area, the largest in North
America.
See also: Americas, North: American Southwest, Four

Corners Region; Arctic and Circumpolar Regions; Eastern Woodlands; Plains; Rocky Mountains; New World,
Peopling of.

Further Reading
Clark DW (1991) Archaeological Survey of Canada, Canadian
Prehistory Series: Western Subarctic Prehistory, 152. Yukon:
Archaeological Survey of Canada.
Fladmark KR (1986) British Columbia Prehistory. Yukon: Archaeological Survey of Canada.
Gordon BC (1996) Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury
Series 19: People of Sunlight, People of Starlight-Barrenland
Archaeology in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Yukon:
Archaeological Survey of Canada.
Hare PG, Greer S, Gotthardt R, and Farnell R (2004) Ethnographic
and archaeological investigations of alpine ice patches in
SW Yukon, Canada. Arctic 57(3): 247259.
Krauss ME and Golla VK (1981) Northern Athapaskan Languages.
In: Helm J (ed.) Handbook of the North American Indians.
Subarctic Vol. 6, pp. 6785. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution.
Kroeber AL (1959) Reflections and tests on Athapaskan glottochronology. University of California Publications in American
Archaeology and Ethnology 47: 241258.
LeBlanc R (1984) The Rat Indian Creek Site and the Late Prehistoric Period in the Interior Northern Yukon: Archaeological
Survey of Canada, Mercury Series 120.
MacNeish RS (1964) Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Paper 6: Investigations in the southwest
Yukon: Archaeological Excavations, Comparisons, and Speculations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Noble WC (1981) Prehistory of the Great Slave Lake and Great
Bear Lake Region. In: Helm J (ed.) Handbook of North American
Indians. Subarctic, vol. 6, p. 97106. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Workman, W (1978) Prehistory of the AishihikKluane area,
southwest Yukon Territory, Canada. Archaeological Survey of
Canada, Mercury Series 74.

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin 343

AMERICAS, SOUTH
Contents
Amazon Basin
Early Cultures of the Central Andes
Early Villages
Historical Archaeology
Inca Archaeology
Inca Ethnohistory
Northern South America
Southern Cone

Amazon Basin
Anna C Roosevelt, University of Illinois at Chicago,
Chicago, IL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Archaic period Early Holocene period of often-complex
hunter-gatherer cultures.
diffusion The spread of archaeological cultures.
Formative period Period between about 5000 and 2000 years
ago when people first used cultivated plants as staple foods.
hypoplasia A horizontal line of reduced enamel formation that
forms in a childs teeth when growth slows because of an illness
or period of famine.
interfluves Nonflooded land between the main rivers.
Manioc Tropical shrub of the Euphorbiaceae family whose
fibrous, starchy roots are a staple food in Latin America and
the Caribbean.
New Archaeology A period of theoretical and methodological
innovation in American archaeology that emphasized the
formation and testing of explicit hypotheses.
Oriente Eastern Ecuador, which lies in the Amazon basin.
osteology The study of bone morphology.
palaeoindian period New World cultural period of early
hunting and gathering cultures dating to the later Pleistocene
and Early Holocene.
paradigm An overarching theoretical approach to scientific
causality from which a group of related theories and hypotheses
is derived.
photogrammetry Three-dimensional mapping carried out by
binocular resolution of dual, offset photographic images.
phytolith A silica-rich, plant-cell wall structure that can be
preserved in soil, recovered, and identified to species.
Pleistocene Geological period of the Ice Age between
c. 2 million and 10 000 years ago.
pressure-flaked a method of flaking stone to shape artifacts
by pressing the rock surface.
radiometric dating Dating methods that use the behavior of
radioactive materials to measure the amount of time since a
material was used or buried.
stable isotope analysis Study of vegetation cover or diet by
mass spectrometric analysis of nonradioactive isotopes extracted
from plants, fauna, or soils.

varzea Brazilian Portuguese term for alluvial floodplain land.

Xanthosoma Tropical South American root crop of the Aroid
family distantly related to Asian taro.

Interpretive Themes in Amazonian

Archaeology
The dominant theme of archaeologists interpretations
of Amazonia is the question of the role of the tropical
forest in human cultural and biological evolution.
Environmental determinism was the explicit paradigm
of the first archaeologists to espouse a theory; Betty
J. Meggers and Clifford Evans of the Smithsonian
Institution. Like many early scientific archaeologists,
they believed that the tropical forest environment
strongly limited human cultural evolution. Influenced
by theoreticians such as Julian Steward, they considered the habitat so poor in resources that early foragers could not have penetrated it. The archaeological
sequence thus only could have begun in late prehistory when pottery-using migrants from agricultural
Andean civilizations invaded Amazonia. In the tropical
environment, their cultures would have deteriorated
into horticultural village societies and foraging bands.
Their small, shifting settlements and limited subsistence activities would have left the forest essentially
virgin of human impacts.
Archaeologists who came to work in Amazonia after
Meggers and Evans suggested variations to the environmental determinist hypotheses. They argued that,
although poor interfluvial resources might have limited
cultural developments, humans in the rich alluvial
floodplains could have intensified agriculture and fishing and developed complex cultures. Donald Lathraps
idea was that manioc had been the staple, whereas
Anna Roosevelt thought that maize would have been
a staple in some areas. Lathrap felt that competition
over floodplain resources had led to migrations into the
interfluves, where peoples cultures would have deteriorated in the poor environment. Roosevelt thought

344 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin

that the deterioration only happened after the European conquest of Amazonia. For earlier occupations,
Lathrap doubted that Palaeo-Indian hunter-gatherers
could have survived on Amazon resources, whereas
Roosevelt thought that they could.
The early theoretical thinking of scientific archaeologists about Amazonia was consistent with the
main paradigm of the New Archaeology movement
of the 1970s, itself an extrapolation from Julian
Stewards ideas. Like New Archaeologists, the early
Amazonianists assumed that the environment shaped
the trajectories of local cultural evolution. In their
explanations, agriculture was the basis for village
sedentism and the evolution of state societies involved
agricultural intensification, population growth, monumental public works, and high art.
The phase of field and lab research that followed
the early phase of theory making in Amazonia has
motivated the revision of many early theoretical ideas
and the formulation of some significantly different
understandings of human history and prehistory
there. By the 1990s, archaeological field research had
revealed an unexpectedly long and complex cultural
sequence for Amazonia. The discovery of tropical
forest Palaeo-Indians and Early Holocene ceramic foragers and farmers constituted problems for neoevolutionary optimal foraging theory and for diffusionary
explanations that attributed Amazonian cultures to
Andean intrusions. The diverse complex cultures unexpectedly found in interfluves as well as floodplains
complicated 1970s theories about the role of intensive
agriculture in social evolution, and the apparent lack
of stratification and centralized rulerships in some of
the complex cultures encouraged alternative explanations from heterarchy theory. Moreover, recognition
of the historical role of the European conquest in
the disappearance of the complex societies undermined adaptationist explanations of ethnogenesis in
Amazonia. Finally, evidence that the environment
itself might have coevolved with prehistoric humans
has placed in doubt aspects of theory and practice in
conservation biology.
Since the first and second phases of systematic
theoretical thinking, however, the debates among
Amazonian archaeologists have not really moved
into new directions. Although a few archaeologists
are addressing issues from historical ecology, critical
theory, and heterarchy, many continue with assumptions from New Archaeology theory. Current theoretical arguments often focus on minor refinements of
conclusions, rather than questions about the appropriateness of paradigms. Such questions include:
whether a particular Palaeo-Indian group lived in
savanna or rainforest, whether a complex societys
site catchment was varzea or interfluvial forest,
whether it had manioc or maize as a staple, whether

certain complex societies had classes and central rule,

and where certain cultures originated.
However given the role of the tropical forest as
an archtype in determinist evolutionary theory, the
new evidence for more mutual causality, greater
complexity, and more lines of development than
expected makes Amazonian prehistory a potent stimulant for major new paradigms. A new paradigm that
acknowledged the human role in the evolution of
habitats and cultures and recognized the dynamic character of the interrelationships might well transform
general theory not only in anthropology but throughout the natural sciences and beyond.

Research Methodology
The methodology of research in Amazonia has had a
trajectory somewhat comparable to that of North
American archaeology. It begins with an early prescientific period of free-ranging observation and inference. Then comes an early scientific period of
theoretical writing whose research is not explicitly
oriented to theoretical problems. There is a final period
of field research with explicit problem-oriented design
and an expansion of research for cultural resource
managment. In each period, however, there are many
researchers who do not fit into the trajectory.
During the prescientific period, scholars working in
Amazonia noted a diversity of archaeological sites
and materials but did not use systematic research
methods or relate their findings to general theories.
However, their important, open-minded empirical
observations were the basis of an eventual rethinking
of early modern scientific theory by scholars of the
first phase of scientific interpretation and the subsequent period of problem oriented research. For
example, Charles Hartt, Alfred Russel Wallace, and
H. H. Smith, and Joao Barbosa Rodrigues were all
aware of preceramic sites and rockpaintings. Domingos Soares Ferreira Penna, Joseph Steere, and Hartt
all recognized that there had been early pottery cultures subsisting on fishing, rather than agriculture;
and Ladislav Netto, Orville Derby, and Hartt all
recognized that there had been populous indigenous
prehistoric complex cultures with high art, urban-like
centers, and extensive earthworks.
In the subsequent early scientific period, work by
the Smithsonian group and their affiliates as well as
by Lathrap and his associates (c. 1948 through 1975)
focused mainly on excavating and descriptively analyzing pottery styles to define archaeological cultures,
despite the fact that the New Archaeology had developed a quiver of refined archaeological methods
and systematic measurement techniques. The narrow
research interests of the early scientific archaeologists

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin 345

in Amazonia prevented them from exploiting the

theoretical implications of prescientific researchers
observations and interpretations. Thus, neither the
Smithsonian group nor Lathraps group realized at
that time that there had been Palaeoindian cultures
and early Pottery Archaic cultures in Amazonia.
When the Smithsonian Institution began producing
radiocarbon dates, the dates definitely contradicted
their presumption of late human arrival and prehistoric cultural deterioration. But the institutions scholars found it impossible to integrate the early dates
into their short chronology of the human occupation.
Lathraps group, although aware of some of the early
dates, nonetheless concentrated on late prehistory. So
it was that only in the 1980s and 1990s were new
groups of archaeologists able to establish the outlines
of a long archaeological sequence by discovering
new cultural phases with stratigraphic excavation
techniques and intensive dating of multicomponent sites. Only then, too, were sites systematically
instrument-mapped, allowing community analysis
for the first time.
The archaeologists who created this longer
sequence were inspired by the US New Archaeology
(or processual archaeology) movement of the 1960s
and 1970s to broaden data gathering with techniques
from archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, and human osteology and to sharpen analysis by the application of
accelerator dating, geoarchaeology, geochemistry,
computerized topographic mapping, informatics,
and statistical analysis. It was this quiver of techniques that revealed the types of settlements and
subsistence technologies not envisioned by the environmental determinists. By the 1980s, critical theory
archaeologists opposed to processual archaeology
had raised questions about the organizational mode
and economic base of complex societies, and in
Amazonia, these questions stimulated the use of
methods that could better define prehistoric organization and economy. Within-site settlement subsurface
mapping, regional settlement surveys, subsistence
analysis, and cemetery analysis all have been recruited
to test hypotheses. Of special theoretical significance
have been the complex site plans and corpus of dated
and biological remains that archaeologists have recovered in stratigraphic context with the new data gathering techniques. Aggregate information from pollen,
macroscopic biological remains, as well as skeletal
analyses has allowed more informed inferences about
change in environment, subsistence, socioeconomic
differentiation, and health patterns. Osteological techniques pioneered in the New Archaeology period have
showed in the Amazonian populations a persistence
of robust good health through prehistory, with a
decline only in postconquest times. This sequence of
data, along with the settlement data, did not support

the idea that the Amazon lacked sufficient subsistence resources for prehistoric populations.
Not all Amazonian researchers buy into the idea of
problem-oriented research or operationalized field
methods. Many do not use the methods of data collection and analysis popularized by the New Archaeologists, and many do not subject their theoretical
arguments to empirical tests. For example, some researchers argue for particular chronologies but do not
carry out systematic radiometric dating and statistical
analysis to make their case. Some researchers define
land-use areas without justifying them with remote
images or empirical soil classifications. Others make
claims about ancient subsistence but do not feel the
need to test them with fine-screening, quantified
biological identifications, or stable isotope analysis
for palaeodietary information. Others making claims
about settlement patterns do not make instrument
maps of sites to justify their arguments. Researchers
on rock art do not use photogrammetric or laser
mapping to record images precisely nor chemical
analyses to trace pigments.

History of Research at Sites

In the period from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth
century, researchers mainly from natural science fields
and cultural studies took great interest in the archaeology of the Amazon. They traveled widely, made
astute observations, carried out excavations, reached
insightful interpretations, and published extensively.
However, their use of theory was unexplicit and their
data gathering and analysis unsystematic. Their work
was ignored until the late twentieth century, when it
became the basis for a critical review of theories and a
new stage of problem-oriented field research.
The early natural science researchers described a
wide range of materials in sites, including diverse
biological remains, and already recognized most of
the cultures now accepted by archaeologists at the
time of this writing. Alfred Russel Wallace and
Charles Hartt published on the rock paintings at
Monte Alegre; J. Barbosa Rodrigues, Hartt, and
H. H. Smith noted the existence of projectile points in
the TaperinhaMonte Alegre area. Domingos Soares
Ferreira Penna and his invitees, Hartt and Joseph
Steere, reported on research at early pottery shellmounds at Taperinha, the mouth of the Amazon, and
elsewhere. Hartts research team excavated on Marajo
Island, at Taperinha near Santarem, and at Monte
Alegre in Para. Ladislav Netto published an ambitious
analysis of iconography and social organization at the
Marajoara culture. Curt Nimuendaju surveyed and
collected extensively, documenting the incised and
punctate pottery horizon near Santarem and ceramic
and standing stone sites just north of the mouth of

346 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin

the Amazon. He also ventured a still-influential reconstruction of the ethnohistoric Tapajo society of
Santarem, which he associated with the Santarem archaeological pottery culture. Unfortunately, important
early reports were published in Portuguese and stayed
generally unknown to North Americans, but erudite
scholars such as Helen Constance Palmatery disseminated important excerpts in their own English
syntheses on Amazon archaeology.
Also writing in English, Erland Nordenskiold synthesized lowland South American archaeology and
ethnology in comparative schemas, pioneered
research at lowland mound sites in the Llanos de
Mojos, Bolivia, and inspired many others to work in
the area. The materials collected by them from that
area have mostly lain unpublished in European
museums. The Peruvian and Columbian Amazon
regions have less recorded work from this period.
By the end of World War II, scientific archaeology
had become established as a discipline, and government funding for foreign area studies supported archaeological research abroad. As mentioned above, in
Amazonia, the early scientitific archaeologists of the
postwar period focused on the definition and analysis
of pottery cultures. Despite their theorizing on the
history of human adaptation to Amazonia, they did
not do systematic empirical research on settlement
pattern, chronology, or human ecology.
Meggers and Evans wrote their dissertations on
their mid-twentieth century research on archaeological sequences at the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil.
Their theory about the invasion and deterioration of
Andean cultures was framed before radiocarbon
dating. In the late 1950s they expanded research to
British Guiana and in the 1960s to Venezuelan Guyana.
Meggers and Evans then worked in the Napo River
valley of the Ecuadorian Amazon, finding a local
sequence that only later was understood to demonstrate a sequence contrary to their theory of the colonization of the Amazon. Their proteges in Brazil, British
Guiana, and Uruguay carried on their effort by identifying cultures at many new sites in Amazon. The
new cultural phases they found in eastern Amazonia
included presumptive Formative and Archaic cultures,
which by definition embodied a longer human occupation in the Amazon than their theories allowed for.
In addition, dates from their excavations on Marajo
suggested that the Polychrome horizon was older in
Amazonia than in the Andes and that some mound
constructions there dated back to Formative times.
However, Meggers and Evans expressed doubts about
those dates and argued against the idea that there had
been early ceramic fishing cultures and early preceramic cultures.
Lathrap wrote his dissertation on his late 1950s
excavations at sites in the vicinity of Pucallpa in the

Ucayali River valley of the Peruvian Amazon. He

argued, despite very incomplete dating, that these
showed an indigenous cultural development, rather
than foreign invasions and collapse. His PhD students
at the University of Illinois, Urbana, added to his
data by focusing on specific cultures. Together, they
pushed the beginnings of the Upper Amazon sequence
back into the first 1000 years before Christ, and they
documented the existence of complex, populous
societies at least by the time of the first European
accounts. Although the Smithsonian group limited
access to dig permits in the Brazilian Amazon, Lathrap
students were able to use Brazilian museum collections and archives on the Marajoara culture to document that the area had a richer resource base and
longer indigenous sequence than Meggers and Evans
had hypothesized.
Numerous Brazilian researchers of the later twentieth century carried out regionally focused research for
museums, universities, and public archaeology contracts. In advance of the Carajas region iron-mining
development, a team led by Marcos Magalhaes of the
Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi excavated caves and
rockshelters and defined and dated new Early Archaic
and Late Formative cultures at Gruta do Gaviao and
other sites. Archaic zooarchaeological finds from
Gaviao were analyzed for subsistence information by
Mara Imazio da Silveira. In the lower Tapajos River
area, Denise Cavalcante Gomes excavated late Formative period sites for her dissertation. On Marajo Island,
an interdisciplinary team from the Museu Goeldi
did geophysical survey and test excavation at several
sites. Their research, though illuminating for methodology and culture history, was not explicitly problemoriented. Edith Pereira, also of the Goeldi, conducted
intensive long-term research and publication on the
rock art of Para, a necessary first step allowing for
interpretive analysis in the future. Researchers Vera
Guapindaia at the Museu Goeldi and Denise Cavalcante Gomes at the University of Sao Paulo have systematically analyzed the technology and style of
pottery from Santarem in museums.
At the same time North American archaeologists
and Brazilians began long-term problem-oriented research inspired by processual archaeology concepts
and methods. Roosevelts team conducted long-term
research on the history of cultures and habitats in
the Lower Amazon. They used detailed instrument
mapping, geophysical survey, extensive stratigraphic
excavations, and exhaustive soil processing to test
theories on the history of human adaptation in
Amazonia. Their research sites include Santarem,
Taperinha, Monte Alegre, Marajo Island, and the
Curua River. A major focus of that research has been
dating and analysis of biological remains and artifacts
in stratigraphic context. To augment excavation data,

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin 347

the team also sampled, dated, and chemically analyzed biological collections in museums.
Renato Kipnes has excavated and synthesized
information from Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene
sites throughout the southern Amazon and southeastern Brazil. Delores Piperno, with collaborators
including Deborah Pearsall, has analyzed sediment
cores from water bodies in Ecuador and Brazil to
collect microfossils for data on subsistence and environmental change. In aid of transportation planning,
Brazilian Denise Schaan then of the University of
Pittsburgh headed a team that carried out the first
extensive regional surveys, geophysical mapping, and
test excavations on Marajo at the mouth of the
Amazon. Her dissertation assessed the sociopolitical
organization of the Marajoara culture as a possible
complex chiefdom. Also in the lower Amazon, Vera
Guapindaia has researched open sites and cave urnburial cemeteries of the late prehistoric Maraca culture.
Her inventories reveal that the famous burial urns
depicting humans seated on effigy stools include men
and women in equal numbers. Dirse Kern has led teams
that systematically investigated the chemistry of anthropogenic black Indian soils for the first time. In
the upper Xingu, Eduardo Neves of the University of Sao Paulo and Michael Heckenberger now of
the University of Florida investigated the settlement
pattern of a cluster of large, late prehistoric round
village sites, as units of a possible complex chiefdom. The team also has carried out preliminary testexcavation and site survey at terra firme sites near
extensive varzea at the mouth of the Rio Negro, looking at the nature and production of the black Indian
soils as elements of prehistoric land management.
In the upper Amazon, several Peruvian researchers,
including Monica Teixeira, mapped and test-excavated
architectural, funerary, and habitation sites along the
Andean slopes of the Amazon drainage. In Bolivia,
Clark Erickson established a long-term research on
agricultural earthworks and habitation sites of the
Llanos de Mojos. European researchers have worked
both on the history of Inca contact in Andean slopes of
the Bolivian Amazon and also on large enigmatic earthworks in the Bolivian Llanos. In Ecuador, researchers
led by Ernesto Salazar have mapped and test-excavated
numerous diverse mounds in the rich archaeological
zone of the Faldas de Sangay area, studied earlier by
Pedro Porras, a collaborator of Betty Meggers.

The Human Developmental Sequence

in Amazonia
Palaeo-Indian foragers 11 000 to c. 9000 in main
floodplain and 10 0004000 BP elsewhere

The earliest human occupation discovered as yet in

Amazonia is Late Pleistocene in age but is distinct

from the Clovis big-game-hunting, fluted-point culture

of North America (see Figures 1 and 2). The occupation
consists of small and widely dispersed groups with a
culture of broad-spectrum foraging on tropical forest
and river resources. Identified environmental plant
remains document humid tropical forest vegetation,
not grassland. Vegetation around campsites seems to
have been disturbed, possibly by purposeful burning,
and by Late Paleoindian times, people may have
cultivated a few trees, roots, shrubs, and herbs.
The most detailed evidence on their culture comes
from the multicomponent site of Cavern of the Painted
Rock at Monte Alegre in the Lower Amazon (see Figure
3 and 4). The preceramic layers of the 2-m deep deposit
produced over 60 radiometric dates between c. 11 000
and 10 000. The food remains recovered there document consumption of very numerous palm and tree
fruits and seeds, abundant, mostly-small fish, turtles,
a small amount of shellfish and small game. No grass
was identified among the plants remains.
The material culture is dominated by red pigment
and numerous flaked stone tools of both fine- and
coarse-grained siliceous rocks. The occurrence of
such tools at Polychrome rock art sites and the fact
that nearly all the pigment of the same chemical
composition is in the Palaeoindian layers suggest
that Palaeoindians were responsible for many of the
paintings. These early Amazonians made finely pressure-flaked triangular and/or stemmed two-faced
points and limaces (unifacial endscapers) more comparable to Late Paleolithic Eurasian and Beringian
cultures than to Clovis cultures. They also flaked
heavy cutting tools from coarse, tough rocks. Such
tools may have been for woodcutting or digging.
On the Caqueta River in Colombia, test excavations
at Late Paleoindian Pen
^a Roja, a ninth millennium
preceramic site, found abundant palm fruits, phytoliths
of a starchy root crop, Calathea allouia, curcurbits such
as bottle gourd, but no faunal remains. Grinding tools
were abundant, and flaked ones were rare, but the
latter included bifacial pressure flaking. Phytoliths
revealed the presence of forest but not grasses.
Surface finds of lithics and rock paintings have
been made both in interfluves and floodplains of the
Brazilian Amazon and from stratified sites in central
and southeastern Brazil. The radiocarbon dating of
these sites is comparable to the Amazonian Palaeoindian dates: c. 11 0008000 BP. Skeletons from those
Brazilian sites closely resemble Palaeoindian and early
Archaic skeletons documented in the Andes coast and
western North America.
In interfluvial Amazonia, the preceramic stage
continues until the Formative, between c. 4000 and
2000 BP, in contrast to parts of the main floodplains,
where the pottery stage has already begun by 7500.
Compared with floodplain sites, sites relying on the

348 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin

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Figure 1 Map of locations and archaeological sites.

BOLIVIA

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AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin 349

Figure 2 Quartz crystal projectile point from Cachoeira do

Chacorao, Tapajos River Brazil. Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi,
Belem, Brazil.

dispersed resources of the interfluves have a wider

range of plant and animal species in them. The Early
Holocene interfluvial preceramic culture of Carajas
is particularly well known. Wide area excavations at
Gruta do Gaviao (see Figure 5) and other sites have
revealed a very broad-spectrum economy of broad
collecting, fishing, and hunting. There, small fruits
of diverse trees and palms, numerous fishbones, shellfish, bones of diverse small game, and rare larger
game were recovered. The artifact tradition was characterized by coarse flaking of white or colored crystalline quartz.
Recently discovered Early Holocene preceramic
sites in the interior of French Guiana also have abundant grinding stones, but food remains and flaked
lithics have not been reported yet.
The Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene preceramic
cultures were not foreseen in traditional Palaeoanthropological theory about Amazonia, which assumed that
Palaeoindians would be exclusively adapted by hunting big game in cool open habitats and thus would
not colonize Amazonia, where game is comparably
rare. Considered with the Late Pleistocene Patagonian small-game hunters and newly discovered southern Peruvian marine foragers, the new cultures of the
Amazon are further evidence that early Palaeoindians
developed the kinds of diverse regional cultures that
theoreticians had only expected to see in the Early
Holocene, when the big game went extinct and modern climates had formed. The diversity and regionalism of these new early cultures have inspired a
rethinking of the role of environment and subsistence
in the evolution of Palaeolithic cultures worldwide.
Archaic shellfishing and fishing cultures
with pottery, c. 75003000 BP

Figure 3 Monte Alegre Hills, Brazil. By Nigel Smith.

Another new group of Amazonian cultures are the Pottery Archaic cultures of the Amazon floodplains and
estuary. These unexpected cultures, the earliest pottery

Figure 4 Cavern of the painted rock and rock painting details, near Monte Alegre, Brazil. By Anna Roosevelt.

350 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin

Figure 6 Incised and punctate EarlyMid Holocene Archaic

Pottery, Taperinha, near Santarem, Brazil.

Figure 5 Caverna do Gaviao, Early Holocene Preceramic Site,

Carajas Region, Brazil. By Marcos Magalhaes.

cultures yet known in the Western Hemisphere, appear

to have been supported not by agriculture but by intensive harvesting of aquatic resources. Spatially, the sites
are associated with river floodplain lakes and coastal
estuaries. One possible interpretation, then, is that after
most local regions of Amazonia had been colonized
by Paleoindian cultures, some local populations solved
the problem of increasingly constricted catchments
by intensifying their exploitation of local resources.
Nine sites of pottery-making fisherpeople, dated
to the Early Holocene by more than 30 radiometric
assays, some of them directly on the pottery, have
been excavated along the flooplains of the Lower
Amazon, Amazon mouth, and the Guianas coasts.
The Taperinha culture was found at the mouth of
the Tapajos River in the Lower Amazon (see Figure 6
and 7); the Mina culture was defined in the Salgado
area just south of the Amazon mouth; and sites of the
Alaka culture occur along the coast of Guyana north
of the mouth of the Amazon. The sites of these cultures tend to be shell middens, several of them relatively large, from 5 to more than 20 ha in area and
5 to more than 10 tall.
These fishing peoples subsisted mainly on intensive
aquatic foraging focused on small fish and shellfish.
Carbonized plant remains are much less common at
these sites than in earlier and later sites. (Shellfish are
one of the few faunal food sources with considerable
carbohydrate content.) Pollen cores of the period from
Prainha on the edge of the Amazon opposite Taperinha

show human disturbance of the forest but no evidence

of cultivation in the form of cultivated-plant pollen.
Despite the apparent lack of agriculture, people made
substantial cultural achievements, including the firstknown Amazonian villages, structures with prepared
floors, artificial mounds (of shell), and pottery. The
pottery is predominantly tempered with sand and decorated only occasionally, with paint in some regions and
incision and punctation in others. Stone tools are not
common, but include flakes, boiling stones, and rocks
used for grinding. Both bone and shell tools and ornaments also were made. Flexed burials have been found
at several sites and so have turtle-feasting areas. One
skeleton analyzed at Taperinha was a pre-teen whose
excellent teeth showed no dental caries associated with
starchy food nor hypoplasias from severe or repeated
childhood diseases or famines.
The existence of large, apparently sedentary settlements of very Early Holocene fishing peoples using
pottery in Amazonia has encouraged revision of
thinking about the role of subsistence in the evolution
of human technology and of settlement pattern in the
Americas. The new Amazonian Pottery Archaic cultures seem quite parallel to early pottery-making cultures along coasts, lakes, or rivers in the southeastern
US, north central Africa, Southeast Asia, south coastal China, and Japan.
Following the hypotheses of geographers and botanists, it seems likely that the relatively sedentary settlements of the intensive fisherpeople caused landscape
changes encouraging weedy types of species that were
the forebears of domesticated plants. But since the
plant remains of only a few sites have been studied
systematically, tracing the origins of Amazonian staple
crops archaeologically is an important task for future
work. In addition, osteological and chemical analyses

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin 351

Figure 7 Taperinha shellmound, near Santarem, Brazil. By Anna Roosevelt.

need to be carried out on skeletons from Mina and

Alaka phase sites, for comparison with those from
Taperinha and Monte Alegre.
One or two microfossil specimens in Ecuadorian
Oriente lake pollen cores have been claimed to represent staple maize cultivation at 6000 BP, but the core
levels with the maize were not directly dated. Future
research that directly dates a whole suite of botanicals
from such sequences can help clarify this important
economic transition. The total lack of maize-type
isotopic chemistry in Amazonian human skeletons
until after the time of Christ, however, seems clear
evidence that maize, if present as early as 6000, could
not have been a staple food. In experimental tests,
when humans or animals have eaten appreciable
quantities of maize, their bone chemistry always
shows the isotopic effect of the maize. People whose
bones show no such effect cannot, therefore, have
been staple maize eaters.

Figure 8 Formative period pottery effigy pipes and stamp, decorated with Zoned Incised Hachure, from Sambaqui Ponta do
Jauari, near Alenquer, Brazil, Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi,
Belem.

Formative Horticultural Cultures, c. 40002000 BP

Formative pottery cultures, which have been found

throughout Amazonia, are thought to have subsisted
by horticulture, supplemented by foraging, especially
on fish, turtles, other small game, and tree fruits.
The particular role of different crops is not yet welldocumented and seems to have varied from site to site
and region to region. Numerous maize pollen exines
and phytoliths have been identified in Upper Amazon
pollen core levels from about c. 3000 years old, but
maize carbon patterns have not been detected in any
Formative human skeletons yet analyzed in the
Amazon. For example, two Aroxi-culture Formative
skeletons dated between c. 3600 and 3200 BP (on a
palm fruit, a human molar, and a human cranium)
from Cavern of the Painted Rock at Monte Alegre
lacked any maize signal, as did three skeletons from
the Olaya site in the Ucayali, Peru, dating to about
2000 years ago. All these individuals had carbon
signals typical of people who eat plants of a large

group that includes manioc, an important staple in

the Amazon today. Other crops of similar carbon signature may also have been cultivated in the Formative:
the minor root crops, such as sweet potato and
Xanthosoma, local seed crops, and shrub, palm, and
tree fruits. In Formative sites of this apparent transition
to reliance on cultivated plants for calories, shellfish are
no longer common among excavated food remains,
presumably because cultivated plants are a more productive and storable carbohydrate source. Also, palm
fruits, so common in Palaeoindian sites, were rarer in
Formative sites. Like pottery Archaic skeletons, the
Formative skeletons from Monte Alegre have excellent
teeth that have no caries or hypoplasias.
However, Formative sites have been mapped and
excavated in few regions. Only a handful have been
screened and floated for food remains, and only a
couple have had skeletal studies. Most seem of moderate size, but site like Faldas de Sangay in the Upper

352 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin

Amazon of Ecuador and the Castanheira site of the

Ananatuba culture on Marajo Island at the mouth of
the Amazon have artificial earth mounds, sometimes
in structured groupings. In fact, many late prehistoric
Polychrome horizon Marajoara mounds have Formative pottery in their basal layers, as does the late
prehistoric Santarem site of the Incised and Punctate
horizon. Some Marajo Island Formative sites, such as
Castanheira, also have large adobe semitubular stoves
common later on in Marajoara mounds. Such substantial built facilities are considered evidence for relative
site permanence and complexity at this time. Researchers at Sangay have documented the existence of
large, organized mound centers with both residential
and ritual constructions and a rich material culture.

While the dating at Sangay is still preliminary, there

seems a possiblity of a Formative age for some of
the mounds.
Many local pottery styles of the Amazonian Formative are linked to regional pottery traditions/horizons
related to the Saladoid and Barrancoid horizons of
northern South American and the Caribbean. Among
these Amazonian Formative pottery styles, two supraregional groupings have been defined: the Zoned
Incised Hachure horizon (see Figures 8 and 9) and
the Incised Rim Horizon. Formative pottery, regardless
of horizon, tends to be rather complex in form and
elaborately decorated, especially by incision and
modeling on rims and shoulders. Among the forms
are griddles, keeled and flanged bowls and jars,

Gallery forest
Savanna
Abondoned house
Test pit
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Figure 9 Sketch map of Formative period earth mound, Ananatuba phase (Zoned Incised Hachure Pottery), Castanheira site, Marajo
Island, Brazil. By Mario Simoes.

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin 353

Figure 10 A Marajoara Polychrome horizon burial urn, Guajara,

Brazil. By Sal Catalano.

adorno-rim bowls with geometric and zoomorphic iconography, carved pottery paint stamps, tobacco effigy
pipes, and other ritual objects possibly associated with
rituals of shamanism.
Although there is continuity from Palaeoindian
cultures to indigenous cultures today, the Formative
is the most important cultural influence for the late
prehistoric complex cultures. Of all the archaeological stages in the Amazon, too, the Formative seems
the one most similar to modern ethnographic cultures there. Some Formative settlements were more
complex architecturally than modern ones, a difference could be elucidated when archaeologists excavate sites of the ethnohistoric period of ethnogenesis.
Polychrome Mound-building Cultures,
c. 20001000 BP

The Polychrome horizon links a series of diverse,

long-lived cultures with elaborate and often largescale decorated pottery with geometric, zoomorphic,
and human imagery (see Figure 10). All share a characteristic style of bold, complex polychrome painting,
often combined with modeling, incision, and excision.
Despite lacking evidence of statelike or imperial political organization, many Polychrome cultures had
large spheres of interaction, extensive residential
mound complexes, shamanic female figures, diverse
ritual objects, drug-paraphernalia, feasting facilities,
and numerous, large urn-burial grounds. The secondary urn burial cults could represent ancestor worship,
and some authors think that the female images and
some rich female burials may reflect matrilineal descent myths and female ritual and political roles.
Although the horizon was assumed to represent an
invasion from the Andes, radiocarbon dates are earlier in the eastern basin, not in the western, Andean

Amazon headwaters. It seems to begin about the time

of Christ in the east, the late first millennium AD in
the Middle Amazon, and not until the early second
millennium AD in the west. Some Polychrome cultures in the Upper Amazon, Northwest Amazon, and
Guianas survived the European invasion. Records of
the conquest period mention not only polychrome
pottery but also elaborate polychrome robes, and
indigenous people in many parts of the basin today
still make and use pottery, clothing, and ornaments in
related styles.
In some regions Polychrome horizon prehistoric
sites are numerous and very large, indicating relative
population density (see Figure 11). Most details about
the lifeways come from the mouth of the Amazon.
Subsistence economies based on agroforestry, plant
collecting, fishing, and horticulture appear highly intensive. Bones of very small fish and nourishing seeds
of common trees, shrubs, and herbs dominate residential facilities and garbage dumps, but valuable
cultivated tree fruits, such as the palm, acai Euterpe
oleraceae), and the bones of huge fishes (more than
12 m long) are common in feasting facilities. Only a
few seeds of maize have been identified, and they
come from a hard-kerneled, pod-pop race.
Large skeletal collections in museums show a rather healthy, muscular population relying on a varied
diet. In contrast to earlier periods, some skeletons
bone chemistry is shifted toward maize and away
from C-3 tropical forest plant groups. This change
may reflect an increased deforestation and possible
low-level maize consumption. The bone chemistry
varies from person to person, possible evidence of
socioeconomic differentiation. The plants and isotopes nonetheless indicate much better-preserved forest cover than in the current cattle pastures. Peoples
jaws show evidence of gum inflammation but not
pyorrhea. Most crania have all their teeth, and,
though teeth are worn, very few bear enamel hypoplasias from famine and childhood sickness. Skeletal
infectious lesions also are mostly lacking. Many
people are as tall as modern North Americans, and
the only notable bone pathology is occasional cribra
orbitalia, considered to indicate moderate intestinal
parasite infections. Crania are narrow with projecting
occiputs, a long-term Amazonian pattern unlike
Andean morphologies. A few peoples crania have
been purposely shaped in the Bishops Miter pattern,
a possible symbol of rank.
Incised and Punctate Horizon, c. AD 10001600

By about 1000 AD the influential incised and punctate

cultural horizon known for its elaborate modeled
representational pottery and fine-line polychrome
painting had spread widely in Amazonia and beyond.
In its greatest extent, the horizon reached from the

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354 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin

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GUAJARA MOUND GENERAL AREA
Maraj island, Par, Brazil

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Location: Lat S 057'05
Approx.3 km at 341 from campo lime fazenda
Refernce elevation: N100, E200 = 9.54 m
(referenced to mean low water,nov 28,19987 = 0)
Grid azimuth:magnetic north Declination:1703'44
Contour interval:25 cm

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Project director:A.C Roosevelt

Data collection instruments:topcon GTS-3,HP71B
Survey:M.W.perry, L.Mathews<C.Miranda (1987)
Cartagraphy:M.W.perry (1988):data errors corrected and1988
test excavations added by J.E.Douglas and L.J.Brown (2006)

Figure 11 Laser Theodolite map of Guajara Mound, Monte Carmelo Mound Group, Marajo Island, Brazil. By John E. Douglas.

Isthmus and Caribbean to the Guianas and Andes foothills, and throughout the Amazon basin. In Amazonia,
styles of the horizon are found as far as the southern
Amazon tributaries in Brazil, the southwestern
Amazon tributaries in Bolivia, and eastern Ecuador.
The earliest dates for the horizon, c. AD 500,
are from the Middle Orinoco, but most regional styles
have not been dated in detail. In some areas, such
as the frontier zone between Brazil, Bolivia, Peru,
Ecuador, and Colombia, forms of the earlier Polychrome horizon continue, and in others people seem
to have developed independent local sytles, like
Maraca culture, famous for cave urn cemeteries, and
the Arua culture on eastern Marajo. In other areas,
such as the Lower Tapajos, no sites of the period
have been dated, suggesting abandonment after

the Formative. Along the Guianas coasts and Upper

Amazon in Peru, cultures combine features of several
horizons. Although archaeologists tend to assume that
different cultural horizons coincided with different
language families, early ethnohistory does not show
that coincidence. Within particular horizons, different unrelated languages were spoken, and distinct
horizons could speak languages of the same family.
The best-known Amazonian style of this horizon is
named after Santarem city in the Lower Amazon.
This local culture began about AD 1200 and ended
at about 1500, just before the European conquest,
contrary to common assumption that it was a
conquest-period phenomenon (these dates are treering-calibrated). As in other styles of the horizon,
large and small female figures (see Figure 12) and

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin 355

Figure 12 Incised and Punctate Horizon pottery effigy Jar, Santarem, Brazil. Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Belem, Brazil.

adorno bowls, jars, and bottles comparable to earlier

local cultures continued to be popular in pottery
wares, but new images of raptors, predatory animals,
and large terracotta images of males were present,
accoutred with feather crowns, rattles, and shoulder
bags. Both male and female figures are shown with
alter ego animals on their shoulders, an apparent
reference to shamanic spirit possession. Burials are
rare at sites, perhaps because most were bowl cremations. Elaborate carved stone weapons, tools, figures,
and fine lapidary works were produced in quantity.
New ground-stone weapons, such as arrow-points,
axes, and semicircular, may represent an increase in
organized armed conflict, like that described by
European chroniclers passing through the area in
15401541. Contact sources also suggest that greenstone ornamental carvings functioned as womens
ornaments and were widely traded.
In many parts of Amazonia, late prehistoric people
built major constructions, regardless of their cultural
affiliation. At Santarem, people laid out roads, erected
house mounds (see Figure 13), and dug wells. Early
contact travelers describe large turtle corrals, too. In
the lowlands of Bolivia and the Guianas, large mounds
and causeways were built, and tens of thousands
of hectares of floodplain were raised and ridged for
cultivation, apparently. Such developments indicate
the need to expand food production. In Ecuador large
centers with numerous ritual, figurative, and residential mounds and elaborate pottery of the horizon date
to this period. On Marajo, earlier mounds continued to
be occupied and added to, and new, independent styles
develop. In the Upper Xingu and central Brazil, people
built very large round villages, some of which had
defensive moats and raised connecting roads. In the

largest, there were multiple concentric rings of houses.

In many such areas, full cultural sequences are not
yet worked out, so regional cultural affiliation and
sequence of subsistence and political organization
remain obscure.
In the better-known regions, human pressures on
ecosystems seem to increase in late prehistory. Site
sizes, site clustering, Indian black-soil deposition,
and facility-construction rates increase in many
areas. Skeletal evidence from the Ucayali Valley in
Peru and pollen evidence from eastern Ecuador suggest
a narrowing of daily subsistence to maize and small
fish. Without detailed studies of human skeletons of the
period, though, it is not known whether dental health
and stature changed because of these pressures. At
Santarem, small fish were common daily fare, but,
skeletal isotopes, the role of staple plant foods at
Santarem remains uncertain. By the time of the conquest there, tithes of maize beer had become a necessity
for communal feasts there, according to early chronicles. In the prehistoric site, turtles, large fish, and
valuable cultivated fruits were reserved for feasting or
elite activites. Prehistoric vegetation isotopes near
major sites in many parts of the Amazon: Marajo,
Santarem, Manaus, and Pucallpa in the Ucayali, indicate appreciable thinning of forest during the period,
presumably for fuel, building material, and agricultural
clearing around the large population centers.
Ethnohistoric Transition and Ethnogenesis,
c. AD 1540Present

The period following the European invasion saw

rapid change in the nature of archaeological materials
and sites as indigenous cultures and populations were
eliminated or transformed by contact in the Brazilian
mainstream and part of Atlantic coasts. Groups in the
interfluvial and Andean foothill areas changed more
slowly than mainstream ones. In early ethnohistoric
times, many mainstream groups were brought into
missions, where they were subect to acculturation,
miscegenation, poor health, corporal punishment,
and forced labor. Explicit policies aimed at eliminating indigenous males and mating the females with
white male settlers were enforced, and indigenous
languages eliminated. By the mid-nineteenth century,
many mainstream populations in the Brazilian Amazon
had become Portuguese-speaking peasants and smallholders, of whom DNA studies reveal a predominance
of female indigenous and male Europen genetic patterns. In some areas, such as eastern Marajo, religious
orders and settlers took the land for ranches, and local
people became tenants and unpaid laborers. Military
leaders of the conquest gained baronies over large
properties, such as the municipality of Santarem.
The interfluves and foothills became refuge areas
where indigenous societies dispersed and survived.

356 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Amazon Basin

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Figure 13 Theodolite map of mounds and borrow pits, the Port Site, Santarem, Brazil. By Bruce Bevan.

Ethnographic accounts of their lifeways depict smaller sites, more nomadic populations, less intensive
food production, and more ephemeral material culture than was seen in the late prehistoric archaeological cultures. For example, in the Ecuadorian Amazon,
small, ephemeral house compounds of Jivaroan or
Quechua speakers are thinly dispersed over large
nucleated archaeological mound complexes rich in
pottery and stone artifacts. In the southern Amazon,
ethnographic round villages have been reduced to single rings of houses or incomplete rings, and some no
longer farm, make pottery, or make stone artifacts, and
none build mounds. Thus, ethnographic life patterns
once explained as adaptations to the environmental
limitations of tropical forest seem more likely to be
adaptations to life in postcolonial nations.

Despite the systematic changes in indigenous lifeways after the conquest, there is much continuity between ethnographic and prehistoric societies. Manioc
and maize are still important plants, larger game and
tree fruits still figure in feast food, and fish are often
the main daily protein source. Personal and object
ornamentation, although less elaborate today, includes
elements clearly depicted in ancient designs.
The complex, nonlinear history of human ecological adaptation in Amazonia has some unexpected
implications for the future of conservation biology
in Amazonia. In most areas, indigenous people live
much more lightly on the land than their ancestors
did. There is thus little ecological justification for
removing them to protect reserve land, and once
vacated, park land is difficult to protect from settlers

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes 357

and extractive businesses. Rather, reserves need to

help indigenous people stay on, both for the sake of
their survival and for the continuation of their cultural knowledge, an indispensible source of expertise on
the habitat for the future.
See also: Americas, South: Early Cultures of the Central
Andes; Early Villages; Historical Archaeology; Northern
South America; Southern Cone.

Early Cultures of the

Central Andes
Danie`le Lavallee, CNRS UMR 8096
Archeologie des Ameriques,
Nanterre Cedex, France
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Further Reading
Bevan B and Roosevelt AC (2003) Geoarchaeological exploration
of Guajara, a prehistoric Earth mound in Brazil. Geoarchaeology
18(3): 287331.
Erickson C (1980) Sistemas agricolas prehispanicos en los llanos de
mojos. America Indigena 40(4): 731755.
Hartt CF (1885) Contribuicao para a Ethnologia do Valle do
Amazonas. Archivos do Museu Nacional 6: 1174.
Heckenberger M and Neves E (1999) Village size and permanence
in Amazonia: Two archaeological examples from Brazil. Latin
American Antiquity 10(4): 535576.
Imazio da Silveira, M (1994) Estudo Sobre Estrategias de Subsistencia de Cacadores-Coletores Pre-historicos do Sitio Gruta do
Gaviao, Carajas, (Para). Masters Thesis, Arqueologia, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Lathrap D (1970) The Upper Amazon. New York: Praeger Publishers.
McEwan C, Barreto C and Neves E (eds.) (2001) Exploring the
Amazon, explaining the unknown: Views from the past. In: The
Unknown Amazon: Culture in Nature in Ancient Brazil,
pp. 232251. London: The British Museum Press.
Magalhaes M (1994) Archaeology of Carajs: The Pre-historic Presence of Man in Amazonia. Rio de Janeiro: Companhia Valle do
Rio Doce.
Meggers BJ (1971) Amazonia: Man and Nature in a Counterfeit
Paradise. Chicago: Aldine Publishers.
Meggers BJ and Clifford E (1957) Bureau of American Archaeology
167: Archaeological Investigations at the Mouth of the Amazon.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Nimuendaju C (2004) In Pursuit of a Past Amazon: Archaeological
Researches in the Brazilian Guyana and in the Amazon Region
(a posthumous work compiled and translated by Stig Ryden and
Per Stenborg and edited by Per Stenborg) Ethnological Studies
45. Goteborg Ethnographic Museum.
Roosevelt AC (1992) Early Pottery in the Amazon: Twenty Years
of Scholarly Obscurity. In: Barnett WK and Hoopes J (eds.)
The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in
Ancient Societies, pp. 115131. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution.
Roosevelt AC (1999) The development of prehistoric complex
societies in Amazonia, a tropical forest. Archaeological Papers
of the American Anthropological Association 9: 1333.
Roosevelt AC, Douglas E, and Brown L (2002) Migrations and
Adaptations of the First Americans: Clovis and Pre-Clovis
Viewed from South America. In: Jablonski N (ed.) Memoirs
of the California Academy of Sciences No. 27: The First
Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World,
pp. 159236. Berkeley: University of California Press and the
California Academy of Sciences.
Schaan, DP (2004) The Camutins Chiefdon: Rise and Development
of Social Complexity on Marajo Island, Brazilian Amazon. Ph.D.
Dissertation, Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, PA.

Andes A mountain system of western South America extending

more than 8045 km (5000 miles) along the Pacific coast from
Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego.
Ayacucho Basin A valley in southern Peru, north of the
city of Ayacucho, with a series of caves notably
Pikimachay (Flea) Cave and Jayamachay (Pepper) Cave which
were the site of a complex of unifacial chipped tools
(basalt and chert core tools, choppers, unifacial projectile points)
and bone artifacts (horse, camel, giant sloth) dating between
15 000 BC and 11 000 BC. A human presence has been
suggested in the Ayacucho Basin at that time, which
would correspond with the first wave of immigrants to
the New World.
bioindications Indications by organisms used for biological
monitoring.
geomorphology A branch of geology concerned with the form
and development of the landscapes.
highlands A mountainous or hilly section of a country.
sedentism The process of settling down, that is, one of
becoming more sedentary.

Introduction
Under the term Central Andes, we include the ensemble of territories extending from southern Ecuador to
northern Chile, including Bolivia and northwest
Argentina, between approximately the second and
twentieth southern latitude degrees. This ensemble is
structured by the Andes Cordillera, the second largest
mountain range in the world after the Himalayas,
whose highest summits attain between 6000 and
7000 m.
On each side of this formidable barrier extend two
completely opposed worlds: to the west a semidesert
piedmont and narrow coastal band that is gradually
being transformed into desert by an increasingly dry
climate from north to south, and to the east a warm
and humid piedmont that is covered by tropical forest.
Despite different but equally strong environmental
constraints from west to east, the desert, high altitudes, and warm and humid forest this mosaic of
territories has never been an obstacle to human occupations or movements. According to present knowledge, the earliest peopling of this region probably
began around 15 000 years ago.

358 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes

Current and Past Environments

A desert climate, which is surprising at these latitudes, occupies the whole Pacific border of the central Andes zone. This situation originates from a very
particular climatic phenomenon: under the influence
of trade winds that continually blow from the southeast, superficial ocean masses (warm) are pushed
from the south to the north, but due to the Coriolis
force, are deviated to the west at the level of the
PeruEcuador border. This drifting of waters to the
open sea is known as the Humboldt Current. Along
the coast, this movement is compensated by the
rising of deep waters with temperatures 5 to
8 lower than those usually measured on the surface
at these latitudes. Upon contact with these cold
waters, the air coming from the ocean cools down
and its humidity is condensed. A sea of clouds is
formed, covering the coastline with a very dense
fog during much of the year. Rainfall is nonetheless
very rare, occurring only episodically when the warm
equatorial current, called El Nino because its effects
are generally felt around Christmas, approaches
the continent and brings warm water to the coast.
Torrential showers can then result. More generally,
the absence of rainfall explains the aridity of the
ground, though the humidity of the air allows the
growth of numerous epiphytes on the sand, and in
some sectors, the formation of fog oases, or lomas,
which live on thin air. To the south, on the borders
of Peru and Chile, this aridity increases and attains
higher altitudes. Extending from the coast until nearly 3000 m, the Atacama Desert is the most arid in the
world.
Following the coastal desert plain and the dry
mountainous foothills of the western piedmont of
the Cordillera, the highlands correspond to the
ensemble of territories located above 3000 m and constitute a geoclimatic unit in which the altitude plays
an essential role. Between the more or less parallel,
NS oriented chains, vast, high plateaus extend at
altitudes between 3800 and 4800 m, reaching their
maximum amplitude in Peru and Bolivia. Called
paramo in Colombia and Ecuador, and altiplano or
puna in Peru to the south, this undulating high steppe,
cut by deep valleys and bordered by bald mountain
peaks and ice-covered summits, constitutes the archetypal Andean landscape. The vegetation is sparse and
not very variable: clusters of graminae grouped under
the generic name Ichu, low, thorny bushes, and in the
sheltered depressions a few thin coppices of quinuales
(Polylepis). Below the puna level, a shrubby steppe
carpets the slopes and basins located between 2300
and 3800 m altitude. In Peru, this is the quechua
level, which is well watered, wooded, and green. It

is the most habitable, and perhaps earliest occupied

level of the Andean region.
Finally, the climate of the eastern Andes piedmont,
with its uneven relief, is permanently hot and humid.
Between 1800 and 3000 m, this cloud forest (selva
nublada) level is carpeted with an almost impenetrable maze of bamboos, ferns, and vines, dominated by
a few large trees. Rainfall occurs almost daily and is
often violent.
Due to their extension, multiple levels and variable
relief, expositions and rainfall amounts, the central
Andes present a great diversity of landscapes and
climates, resulting in a mosaic of ecological contexts
that are both very different and close to each other.
But was this true in the past, when humans first began
to occupy the region?

Climatic Changes during the Final

Pleistocene
The landscapes described above have changed relatively little since the beginning of the Holocene, that
is, since 10 000 years ago. Paleoclimatic studies have
nonetheless revealed a somewhat warmer and more
humid period between approximately 8000 and
3000 BP, related to what is known as the Climatic
Optimum. In contrast, major environmental modifications occurred at the end of the Pleistocene, between 14 000 and 10 000 BP. We will explore those
that had a direct influence on the modes of human
occupation.
In the high Andes, before 14 000 BP, and even during the last great glacial advance of the Quaternary
between 21 000 and 14 000 BP, the ice fields never
formed an uninterrupted barrier. From Ecuador to
northern Peru, where the altitude is largely compensated by the latitude, the ice-covered sectors remained
separated from each other by basins or plateaus with
more temperate climates. Only the central Andes of
Peru, above 4000 m, were covered with ice. The
Andes of Bolivia, northern Chile, and northwest
Argentina remained free of ice except for a few
isolated massifs above 4500 m. During this time, the
high plateaus and intra-mountainous basins had open
landscapes, which were usually treeless and, depending on the latitude and altitude, covered with prairies,
savannas, deserts, or tundras. The eastern piedmont
of the Cordillera was also covered with savannas,
punctuated by a few wooded enclaves.
Beginning in 14 000 BP, the glaciers began to
retreat. After the last short cold phase of the Late
Glacial period, around 11 000/10 000 BP, the general
climatic warming gradually leads to our current climatic conditions. Accompanied by the re-establishment

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes 359

of a seasonal rhythm of precipitations, this warming

led to a general increase in vegetal cover at high
altitudes. In the northern Andes, paramos developed,
while the eastern piedmont was progressively invaded
by tropical forest. In the Andes of Peru and Bolivia,
the deglaciation cleared vast extensions of high
plateaus where a climate less humid than that of the
north favored the extension of vast carpets of puna
and altiplano graminae. Further south, this rapid
warming resulted in the extension of high altitude
deserts, the Dry Puna and Salt Puna of Atacama and
southern Bolivia.
Along the Pacific coast, the sea level during the last
glacial maximum was around 100 m lower than it is
today and the coastal plain was probably 2 times
wider. Beginning in 12 000 BP, the sea level began to
rise and coastal zones were gradually submerged. We
must remember, however, that while the melting of
Andean glaciers was rapid (a few centuries or even a
few dozen years), that of the inlandsis glaciers extended over several thousands of years. For this reason,
while the Andean glaciers attained their current limit
everywhere around 10 000 BP, the level of the Pacific
was still 50 m lower than its current level. This slow
rise in sea level continued over thousands of years
until around 6000 BP when it exceeded the present
level by 24 m. This transgression, though compensated in part by the slow elevation of continental
masses liberated from the weight of glaciers (isostasy),
resulted in the submersion of all human occupations
older than 6000 BP along the low coasts.
Though the climatic fluctuations that occurred
from 14 000 to 10 000 BP led to only moderate landscape modifications, we can easily imagine that human occupations were largely dependent on them. At
the time when the maximum extension of the glaciers
stretched over vast cold and humid surfaces, the
valleys and intra-mountainous basins of the lower
altitudes remained sheltered and relatively dry. They
thus constituted favorable zones for occupation by
small huntergatherer groups, while the higher zones
remained uninhabitable. During the phases of glacial
regression, on the other hand, the increase in herbaceous vegetal cover at high altitudes contributed to the
multiplication of faunal species, notably herbivores,
cervidae, and camelidae. The vast open spaces of the
high plateaus thus presented advantageous conditions
for mobile hunter groups.

First Researches, First Milestones

Our knowledge of Andean prehistory is still imperfect, and research specifically aimed at identifying the
oldest traces of human occupation began only around
60 years ago. In 1946, the work of Junius Bird at

Huaca Prieta on the northern coast of Peru revealed

the existence of a preceramic period during which,
around 2500 BC (Huaca Prieta was shortly after one
of the first Andean sites dated by the C14 method,
invented by Willard Libby in 1949), early horticulture was already practiced. The same year, Harry
Tschopik excavated test pits in rock shelters in the
central Andes of Peru, at 3340 m altitude. This work
revealed knapped stone industries, and those found in
the deepest levels were not found in association with
ceramic remains. In 1961, Robert Bell excavated the
site of El Inga in the highlands of Ecuador at 2550 m
altitude. Finally, in 1958, Augusto Cardich published
the results of his first excavations at Lauricocha in
Peru (4100 m) and announced to a stupefied scientific
community the oldest absolute date then known in
the Andes: 9525  250 BP. This discovery clearly
marks the beginning of prehistoric research in the
Andean highlands.

The First Occupations (Before 10 000 BP)

Given the environmental conditions described above, it
is not surprising that the oldest traces of human presence, prior to the definitive retreat of the glaciers, were
detected in moderate altitude regions that were never
directly affected by glaciations. These were either
regions where the glaciers were small, such as on the
Colombia plateaus, or valleys and intra-mountainous
basins not attained by the extremities of the glaciers, all
located at an altitude below 3000 m. The first traces
date to around 15 000 BP: Pikimachay Cave (2850 m),
in the Ayacucho basin of Peru, yielded an occupation
sequence that appears to begin around 14 000 BP with
the Ayacucho phase (14 150  180 BP). We must note,
however, that Richard MacNeish wanted to push the
occupation nearly 10 000 years back. According to him,
during a first Paccaicasa phase (25 00015 000 BP),
crude stone tools (choppers and large flakes) associated
with Quaternary fossil fauna (toothless Scelidotherium
and Megatherium, horse Equus Amerhippus, fossil
cervidae and a large carnivore) indicate the passage of
small bands of hunters that would have tracked down
this large prey in their den before butchering and consuming them. However, this phase remains very hypothetical for several reasons. First, the C14 dates were
obtained, not from charcoal (the level contained
no evidence for the use of fire), but from the bone
of a Scelidotherium, a large toothless animal that
inhabited the cave at the time, as is proved by the
presence of its excrements. This evidence shows that
the carcasses could have been present there without
necessarily being brought in by humans, and perhaps
even long before the passage of humans. Second, the
tools attributed to this phase (with the exception

360 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes

of four objects that could have fallen from the upper

levels) consist of more or less amorphous, chipped
fragments of volcanic tuff, which is the same material
in which the cave is hollowed out and which is not apt
for stone knapping. According to numerous specialists, these unlikely tools are probably no more than
simple flakes detached from the cave wall. During the
following Ayacucho phase (14 150  180 BP), on
the other hand, a more abundant and clearly identifiable lithic industry more than 200 tools, including
choppers, crude bifacial pieces, and large flakes,
sometimes retouched (but no projectile points)
made on exogenous (thus imported) materials indicates that the site was occupied by hunters whose prey
still included not only a few Pleistocene species (megatheridae, horse and the fossil camelidae, Palaeolama),
but also, already, smaller, modern species (camelidae
and rodents). Meanwhile, in this phase, as in the
precedent, no traces of fire were discovered.
One other site that must be noted is Guitarrero
Cave, also in the Peruvian Andes, at 2580 m, in the
Callejon de Huaylas. At this site, Thomas Lynch
established one of the longest sequences in Peruvian
prehistory. However, the oldest date obtained for the
lower occupation level complex I, 12 560  360 BP
is still strongly debated since the two other dates
obtained for the same complex do not exceed 9500 BP.
Moreover, this deep level yielded only modern fauna, to
the exclusion of all Pleistocene megafauna species. For
these reasons, we do not retain this site among those
occupied 10 000 years ago.
At Pikimachay Cave, on the other hand, Pleistocene
megafauna, which begins to disappear at 11 000 BP
and whose extinction is complete in the Andes at
9000 BP, is well represented. At present, this site is
thus the only one that could attest to a peopling of the
Andean mountains during the Final Pleistocene, as
well as the utilization of a tool industry lacking projectile points. However, both of these propositions
are strongly contested by many specialists of prehistory in the Americas. This extreme rarity of ancient
sites in the central Andes (as in the northern Andes of
Colombia and Ecuador), despite a recent multiplication of research projects, thus tends to indicate that
the Cordillera was peopled relatively late and that the
population density remained low for a long time. This
is also true on the Pacific coastal plain where, as we
will see later, the first traces of occupation also do
not exceed 10 000 years. It is still surprising that if
humans were indeed present in Brazil more than
20 000 years ago, they did not reach the Andean
regions until 10 000 years later. Specialists have not
yet found a satisfactory explanation for this, except
perhaps and this remains hypothetical that movements along the low zones of the Atlantic coastal

plain, after an obligatory passage by the Panama

isthmus, would have presented fewer natural obstacles than a passage along the Andean Cordillera or
by a maritime route along the coast. Another possibility is that over thousands of years, the sporadic
passage of probably very small human groups left
only scarce traces in the Andes, which are today
barely perceptible.
The lifeways of this period remain difficult to characterize. Current evidence indicates the presence of
small, very mobile groups with relatively crude tools
reflecting the use of simple techniques. The use of
projectile points, and thus of projected arms, seems
to have been unknown (or perhaps forgotten?), unless
only clubs or wooden spears with fire hardened
points, or bone points, were used. It is also probable,
though we have no preserved evidence, that humans
knew very early on how to successfully exploit a
natural environment rich in diverse resources.
Depending on the season, they could have complemented hunted resources with trapped ones, as well
as with the collection of edible berries, seeds, and
tubers where they could be found.
Finally, no human skeleton or skeletal part older
than 11 00010 000 BP has been discovered in the
Andean zone (as is also true in the rest of Latin
America), and the physical appearance of these first
occupants thus remains unknown.

Early Archaic: The Time of Specialized

Hunters (10 0008000 BP)
The rapid climatic warming, accentuated from
10 000 BP on, marks the beginning of a new phase
of Andean prehistory, which is much richer in evidence and presents clearer milestones than the preceding one. It is possible that the sudden proliferation
of sites discovered indeed reflects a true increase in
population density.
Occupation of the Highlands

The paramos of Ecuador Only a few ancient occupations have been discovered in the Ecuadorian
Andes. Only three sites at middle altitudes were occupied between approximately 10 000 and 8000 BP:
Cubilan (between 10 300  170 and 9100  120 BP),
Chobshi (between 10 010  430 (?) and 8430 
200 BP) and El Inga (around 9000 BP?). At Cubilan
(3100 m), Mathilde Temme revealed the remains of
an open-air camp and a knapping workshop, both
containing high-quality lithic tools made on jasper
(flake tools and stemmed or foliate bifacial points),
but lacking fauna. Chobshi Cave (2400 m), which
was probably occupied a little later, was excavated

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes 361

by Thomas Lynch. It yielded a similar lithic assemblage in association with cervidae (Odocoileus virginianus) and rodent remains. The site of El Inga, a vast
obsidian knapping workshop, is more problematic.
Its stratigraphy is unclear and, worse, it was excavated in the early 1960s by artificial levels. More than
80 000 knapped lithic objects were collected there,
including beautiful bifacial points whose so-called
Fishtail form incited its discoverer, Robert Bell, to
attribute an age of 9000 years or more to the site,
despite C14 dates all later than 8000 BP. This ancient
date is now highly contested.
The basins and punas of Peru The most significant
increase in population density seems to have occurred
in the Peruvian Andes at the beginning of the postglacial period. On the high plateaus newly liberated
from their ice, the extension of the great grassland
steppes favored the growth of ungulate populations.
In this context, starting at approximately 9000 BP, the
caves and rock shelters located between 4000
and 4500 m on the puna of Junn in central Peru
Lauricocha (4100 m), Pachamachay (4250 m), Telarmachay (4420 m), Panaulauca and Uchumachay
(4050 m) began to be intensively utilized by hunters
of cervidae (O. virginianus and Hippocamelus antisensis) and camelidae (Lama vicugna and Lama guanicoe). These groups gradually became specialized
hunters of the latter (vicunas and guanacos), as is
demonstrated by the studies of Jane Wheeler at Telarmachay. At the same time, between 10 000 and
8000 BP, human occupation also increased in the
moderate altitude (25003000 m) basins and valleys,
though in this context environmental modifications
played a less significant role than on the high plateau.
As already discussed, the only site probably occupied
since the preceding period (Pikimachay Cave, Ayacucho
phase) is located in the Ayacucho basin of southern
Peru. During the phases Puente (11 0009000 BP) and
Jaywa (90007800 BP), the same location seems to
have been more intensively populated and occupations
in caves and rock shelters continued and multiplied
(Pikimachay, Puente, and Jaywamachay). According
to MacNeish, these occupations were seasonal and corresponded to, within the different microenvironments
defined, the presence of microbands associated with a
season and subsistence strategy favoring, depending on
the case and the time, hunting, trapping, or vegetal
resource collection.
In the large valley of Santa, or Callejon de Huaylas,
in northern Peru, Guitarrero Cave (cited above) was
more certainly occupied by camelidae and cervidae
hunters at around 9000 BP (Complexes II and IV)
than during the preceding period, though an older
date of 12 560  360 BP has been advanced by

Lynch. Its occupants used a classic tool kit for the

period, including foliate and lozenge-shaped points,
end scrapers and side scrapers on flakes, and bone
tools. The originality of Guitarrero is that the remains
of cultivated chili peppers (Capsicum chinense) have
been identified as early as 9000/8000 BP (Complex
IId, 88008200 BP), along with two species of beans
(Phasaeolus lunatus then, a little later, Phasaeolus
vulgaris), making these the oldest known cultivated
species in the Andean zone. However, as we will see
later, these dates have recently been questioned.
Guitarrero is also one of the rare Andean sites
where it was possible to collect certain elements
that are usually absent in the highland sites: fragments of cords and ties made from diverse vegetal
materials, a scraper still enveloped in a skin and
several intensively used fire drills. Another site, this
one in the open-air, signaled by the same author in the
same region at Quishqui Puncu, yielded more uncertain remains of an occupation between 10 500 and
8500 BP. These dates must be considered with caution, however, due to the disturbed nature of the
deposits, in which fragments of wood and glass
were found.
Dry Punas and Salt Punas in the central-south
Andes At the other extremity of the central Andean
zone, the cold and arid highlands of the Andes in the
extreme south of Peru, Bolivia, and northern Chile
were little affected by the final glacial maximum,
though climatic conditions dryer than those in the
north led to the formation of high altitude deserts.
In this context, no trace of human occupation dating
to the end of the Pleistocene has yet been found.
Human occupation seems to have begun little before
10 000 BP, and was apparently associated with two
distinct adaptive strategies in rather different environments: from the north to the south in the Dry Puna
of the PeruvianChilean borders, and in the Salt
Puna of Atacama in Chile, scattered with large salares. The natural refuges of the latter, more southern
zone Tuina 1 (10 820  630 BP), Pichasca (9890 BP),
San Lorenzo (10 400  130 BP), and Chulqui (9590 BP)
in Chile seem to have been occupied a little
earlier than the former Toquepala (9580  160 BP)
and Caru (8190  130 BP) in southern Peru, Las
Cuevas (9540 BP), Tojo-Tojones (c. 9500 BP), and
Patapatane (8160 BP) in Chile. In both cases the occupation is attributed to vicuna (Lama vicugna), guanaco (L. guanicoe), and especially rodent (Lagidum
viscacia) hunters who completed their meat diet with
the intensive collection of wild plants. Also in both
cases, the human groups seem to have practiced
some sort of seasonal transhumance between the
different ecological niches of the western slope of

362 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes

the Cordillera. The two cases are differentiated by

their choice of camp locations, a little lower in
the Dry Puna (2500/3000 m) than in the Salt Puna
(3000/4000 m), and by the types of bifacial points
used, most small and triangular. In both cases, these
points are associated with a highly comparable
flake tool kit that is classic for the period (scrapers,
knives, denticulates, etc.) and numerous bone tools.
Not far away, on the high plateaus of northwest
Argentina, the first known human occupations are
similar and contemporary. At the natural refuges of
Inca Cueva and Huachichocana, located between
3500 and 3800 m and occupied from 9600/9000 BP,
the cultural inventory is nonetheless richer. In the
deepest level (9230  70 BP) of shelter no. 4 of the
Quebrada Inca Cueva, Carlos Aschero found, in
association with a lithic industry similar to that of
Tuina in Chile, numerous rodent bones and, especially, the remains of diverse constructions, such as postholes, hearths, and pits filled with vegetal remains.
In Huachichocana Cave, where occupation began at
9620  130 BP, Alicia Fernandez-Distel also notes, in
association with a banal lithic industry for the period
(foliate and triangular bifacial points, flake tools),
numerous remains of wood and basketry objects,
along with vegetal remains. Among the latter are
beans and chili peppers (Capsicum sp.), which botanists believe were cultivated at the beginning of the
occupation (level E3). These would thus be among the
oldest domesticated vegetal species in the Andean zone,
along with those found at Guitarrero Cave in Peru at
around the same time.
Finally, the site of Asana, located in southern Peru
at 3430 m, excavated by Mark Aldenderfer, is exceptional for several reasons. First, because it is an
open-air camp, while all the other sites we have described, with the exception of Cubilan and El Inga in
Ecuador, and perhaps Quishqui Puncu in Peru, are
located in natural refuges (caves or rock shelters).
Second, because its occupation sequence covers nearly six thousand years (9820  150 to 4000 BP) and is
thus currently the most complete known for this
southern mountainous part of Peru. Finally, because
excavations over large surfaces revealed the remains
of habitation structures (circular structures enclosing
hearths) and differentiated activity zones.
Activities and lifeways during the Early Archaic The
human occupations during this period are thus much
more numerous than in the preceding one (and we
have only cited the most representative and welldocumented ones) and certain common traits that
characterize the Central Andean Hunting Tradition
can be distinguished:

1. Almost all the sites yielded evidence for an intensive exploitation of animal resources of a variable
nature depending on the region: cervidae and numerous rodents in the north; cervidae, and especially
camelidae in the central Andes; cervidae and rodents
again in the south. The majority of the activities
identified in the habitats is related to the treatment
and utilization of animal materials (butchery, culinary activities, skin working, fabrication of hunting
instruments and appropriate tools). Stone scrapers
are among the most frequent tools, along with bone
spatulas and scrapers, often with traces of red ochre,
used to scrape and soften skins.
2. Almost all the sites, but especially those located
in the basins and middle altitude valleys, also show
evidence for the exploitation of various vegetal species
for technical and alimentary purposes. This is shown
by the frequent presence of grinding instruments in the
rock shelter sites, as well as rare, but well-attested
remains of vegetal material productions, such as
cords, weaving and basketry, at Guitarrero (Peru),
Inca Cueva 4, and Huachichocana (Argentina).
3. Most of the habitat structures (when they could
be observed) show evidence for long, repeated occupations: low stone walls or aligned posts, diverse
types of hearths and pits were all constructed and
reshaped many times.
4. The data collected suggest a seasonal exploitation of the territory, whether through the large herbivore hunting, small animal trapping, or the collection
of vegetal resources. Moreover, the practice of an
annual cycle of nomadic movements seems to be
well attested, while its limited amplitude indicates
an objective to optimally exploit the diverse resources
accessible within a range of some dozen kilometers.
5. Human burials were found in a few natural
refuges. They are the oldest known in the Cordillera,
though they do not exceed approximately ten thousand years. Their presence demonstrates that the dead
were respected and that their burial was sometimes
accompanied by an elaborate ritual ceremony. The
burials are most often single, as at Lauricocha and
Telarmachay. The bodies were deposited in extended
or flexed position in pits located in the back of the rock
shelters and accompanied by body ornaments or tools.
At Telarmachay, a woman around 20 years old was
buried in this way with an assemblage of skin working tools (stone end and side scrapers, bone smoothers and awls still covered with red ochre). Nearby,
the skeleton of a child a few months old was halfcovered with a necklace of marine shell beads
(showing evidence for long distance exchanges already during this period) and a series of polished
bone pendants. At Lauricocha, a 12-year-old child

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes 363

was buried with several stone and bone tools and

turquoise beads. Another child was covered with a
brilliant iron ore powder. Most of the burials also
contain traces of red ochre, which was sprinkled
over the bodies either for ritual purposes that are
unknown to us, or more mundanely, to prevent
them from rotting. Our knowledge of the human
type of this period is still poor. The adult individuals
were generally dolichocephalous with a high face.
They seem to have been very muscular but rarely
more than 1.6 m tall.
6. Starting at 10 000 BP, the lithic industries become more elaborate and diverse than before, including bifacial armatures of various forms: foliate or
pentagonal (especially in the central Andes); triangular (southern Andes), stemmed, or exceptionally,
Fishtail points (Ecuadorian Andes). Foliate points
of the Ayampitin type are the most largely and
abundantly represented. They were identified as
early as 1940 in the eponymous site of the eastern
Argentinean piedmont, where they are nonetheless
more recent. This diversity of armature forms suggests the existence of differentiated traditions, or
perhaps social units, as much as it indicates different adaptations to the available materials and
hunted prey.
The Fishtail points found at El Inga are particularly
problematic. These points are more or less oval with a
large stem that indeed resembles a fish tail. On one of
their two faces, most have a small, thin, vertical and
proximal removal scar, or fluting. While they are
characteristic of numerous ancient sites in the extreme south of Chile and Argentina, dated to between
11 000 and 10 500 BP, in the central Andes they have
been found only at El Inga, and, in very small numbers in the Paijan region on the northern coast of Peru
(cf. infra). Therefore, along with their unquestionable
technical originality, these points present a distribution that is difficult to explain at the scale of the
subcontinent. Many specialists believe they derive
directly from the Clovis points of North America,
which characterize the Llano Paleoindian tradition
between 12 000 and 10 000 BP. For the most conservative specialists, they would thus provide direct evidence for the arrival, from the Great Plains of North
America, of the first hunters that peopled South
America approximately 11 000 years ago. Others
take a more nuanced stance, seeing only the diffusion,
still from North America, of a technical trait adopted
by populations already present in South America. Still
others, though very few, believe they reflect a sort of
synthetic product originating in South America: to
the proximal fluting technique arriving from North
America would be added the basal narrowing already

known in the extreme south where bifacial shaping

and projectile points would have been invented
independently, the combination resulting in the famous
Fishtail points. It is not difficult to guess that the
adherents of the first explanation are the same as
those who continue to deny the appearance of
humans in South America earlier than 11 000 BP,
while the others have since accepted without restriction the idea of a more ancient peopling (see New
World, Peopling of).
Finally, for this period we must note the few
isolated finds of apparently cultivated vegetal species.
Though this evidence is still fragile, the importance of
these remains will become exceptional if their authenticity is confirmed and if other discoveries are made.
The cultivated chili peppers at Guitarrero at 8800 BP,
along with the beans and chili peppers at Huachichocana at the same time, would attest to the very early
practice of a primitive horticulture in a few favorable
biotopes, while in all other zones a predation economy dominated. Due to the disturbed stratigraphies of
both of these sites, however, we cannot rule out the
hypothesis that these remains are intrusive. Moreover, several of the dates announced for these vegetal
remains, which were obtained indirectly (not on the
vegetal remains themselves, but on elements in their
context thought to be associated), have recently been
revised through the AMS technique.
According to Lawrence Kaplan, the cultivated beans
identified by him at Guitarrero have a maximum
age of 5000/4500 BP.
Occupation of the Coastal Plain and Pacific Littoral

Though we are beginning to have a good knowledge

of the hunter-gatherer occupations in the mountainous regions where natural refuges are numerous,
finding and reconstructing their occupation modes is
more difficult in open zones, such as the Pacific coastal plain. This task is highly complicated by a paleoclimatic element: the slow postglacial rising of the sea
level probably submerged many occupations near the
shore, and only those located more inland or at sufficiently elevated points along the coast would have
been preserved. In addition, this sea level rising
affected more or less extended surfaces according to
the width of the continental shelf. The sectors most
submerged were those where the shelf extends the furthest offshore and where the coastal plain is the lowest,
as on the northern coast of Peru in the central Andes.
In the extreme south of Ecuador, only one site dated
to around 10 000 BP is currently known, but it has
furnished very rich information. On the semidesert
peninsula of Santa Elena, Karen Stothert studied the
remains of the stratified camp of Las Vegas OGSE-80,

364 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes

today located 4 km from the shore but probably less in

the past. According to Stothert, during the Early Las
Vegas phase (10 0008000 BP), in an environment
close to the modern one savannas inland and mangrove swamps on the coast a small group of 2550
individuals lived by fishing and mollusk collection, especially the mangrove species Anadara tuberculosa,
complemented by terrestrial hunting (cervidae, fox,
and small fauna) and the collection of wild vegetal
species for alimentary (Opuntia cactus, prosopis sp.,
algarrobo berries) and technical (rush, wood) purposes. Because all these resources were accessible in
close proximity during the whole year, Stothert proposed that this was a permanent occupation. The
groups occupied circular huts composed of a wooden
frame and rush covering. In contrast to what we observe in the sites of the Cordillera occupied at the same
time (El Inga, Cubilan), the material culture developed by the inhabitants of Las Vegas 80 is surprisingly
poor. The barely specialized technical equipment
includes lithic flakes with little or no retouch, used
cobbles (hammerstones and grinding stones) and a
few bone and shell instruments, but no bifacial tools
or projectile points. Complex fishing tools are also
absent, unless the more elaborate objects made from
perishable materials baskets, mats, nets, wooden
tools were not preserved, as is the case in the highland sites, except for Guitarrero.
In the extreme north of Peru, in a similar environment
at the foot of the Amotape hills, James Richardson
revealed the tenuous remains of surface occupations
that correspond to a similar lifeway combining terrestrial hunting and the collection of mangrove mollusks.
However, the dates obtained (between 11 200  115
and 8125  80 BP, on shell) must be confirmed by further research.
Further south, in the Cupisnique region, Claude
Chauchat discovered and conducted a detailed study
of a cultural and industrial complex contemporary
with, but totally different from, the Paijanian complex, dated to between 10 720 and 7490 BP. Dozens
of open-air occupations, including lithic raw material
quarries, knapping workshops, and camps, were
identified on the interior of the coastal desert plain,
during a period somewhat less arid than today.
According to Chauchat, small groups of very mobile
hunter-gatherers moved between the first foothills of
the Andes and the coastline, currently around 15 km
away but probably 30 at the time (the sea level was
then 50 m lower than today). These human groups
lived by fishing, as well as hunting, trapping, and
collecting small desert species (rodents and lizards).
Their lifeways were similar to those observed in the
north but differed in that they possessed a very elaborate lithic industry, including very well made flake

tools and bifacial tools. Among these, Paijan points

long, narrow-stemmed pieces with a very sharp
distal extremity were unique in America. Their
high wounding capacity, along with their fragility,
suggests that they could have been used for fishing
with a harpoon rather than for hunting. According to
Chauchat, this type of point could be the result of a
local adaptation of Fishtail points, which are well
represented in the southern part of the continent
(the Fell points of Patagonia) but until then present
in the central Andes only at El Inga (Ecuador). However, in the Paijan workshop of Quebrada Santa
Maria, located rather far from the coast at the foot
of the western Cordillera, Jesus Briceno discovered
several fragments of Paijan-type points associated
with Fishtail points. For Briceno and Chauchat, this
demonstrates that Paijan points represent a local adaptation of Fishtail points to a new form of resource
exploitation (coastal fishing replaced terrestrial hunting), but the evidence is still not fully convincing. The
Paijanian cultural complex seems to have extended
over a large part of the Peruvian coastal desert to the
south, and even until 2000 m altitude on the western
piedmont. As at Cupisnique, most of the occupations detected were open-air sites (El Volcan in the
Huarmey Valley, lomas de Ancon on the central
coast, Pozo Santo near Ica). Only one stratified rock
shelter site was recognized by Paul Ossa at Quirihuac.
Finally, at Paijan, Chauchat also discovered a human
burial dated to 10 200  180 BP, which is one of the
oldest human remains known in South America.
If we continue to descend along the Pacific coast,
we arrive in southern Peru where diverse coastal
occupations of a different type, dating from around
10 000 BP, were recently studied. From north to
south, these are the sites of Quebrada Jaguay, Ring
Site (or El Anillo), and Quebrada de los Burros. All
three of these sites are fisher-gatherer camps located a
few kilometers from the shore. At Quebrada Jaguay,
detected in 1970 by Frederic Engel, then re-excavated
and studied by Daniel Sandweiss starting in 1996,
the first occupation dates to between 11 200 and
10 500 BP and continues until 8000 BP. During the
entire sequence, the economy seems to have been
based on the exploitation of marine resources consisting mainly of mollusks, especially the beach species Mesodesma donacium (wedge clam), as well as
on fishing. Sandweiss notes the existence of domestic structures such as postholes and hearths, which
would be evidence for the construction of a house.
The lithic material includes abundant knapping waste
products but few shaped pieces and no bifacial projectile points.
Ring Site was excavated from 1983 to 1985 by
James Richardson and Daniel Sandweiss. Its deep,

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes 365

stratified shell midden with a circular form (hence its

name) indicates an occupation by a small community
that exploited the same resources during the same
period. The deepest levels, however, did not yield
lithic tool remains or fishing instruments. A date of
10 575  105 BP, obtained (on shell) for the earliest
level, is questioned by the excavators themselves. The
other dates obtained do not exceed 9000/8000 BP.
Further south, not far from the Chilean border, the
camp of Quebrada de los Burros has been excavated
since 1996 under the direction of Danie`le Lavallee. It
was occupied from 9500 BP in a similar economic
context where fishing was the principal alimentary
resource, associated with the collection of mollusks
(mainly M. donacium and Concholepas concholepas). The domestic structures are numerous and
varied, including constructed terraces, windbreaks,
and hearths. The lithic industry is also abundant,
providing evidence in particular for the fabrication
of bifacial weapons. Specialized fishing instruments
are also present from the beginning, including shell
and bone barbs, weights of composite fishhooks or
lines, and harpoon foreshafts.
Finally, in northern Chile, several occupations of the
same type and age are known. From north to south,
Acha 2 (8900  150 BP), Tiliviche-1b (9760 BP), and
La Chimba (9680  160 BP) attest to a well-established
occupation by fisher-gatherers.
The data provided by all of these more or less
contemporary coastal camps are difficult to synthesize because the scope of the excavations conducted
is very unequal. All demonstrate the predominance
of an economy based on marine resources, but each
site also yielded a small quantity of terrestrial faunal
remains (mammals and birds), showing that terrestrial hunting was a secondary activity. For most of the
sites, a seasonal occupation during the austral summer is suggested, leading to the hypothesis that the
groups migrated to the highlands during the winter
months. Meanwhile, no proof for such a long distance transhumance has yet been found. Moreover,
it seems to be well demonstrated that the occupation of the Pacific coast probably occurred as early
as that of the central Andean inland territory. If
we consider the perfect mastery of the maritime environment demonstrated in the earliest stages of all the
sites cited here, along with the presence of very
specialized technical equipment and the probable
use of boats, suggested by the nature and size of
some of the pelagic fish captured, the hypothesis of
an arrival of human groups by a maritime route, independent of the terrestrial paths, cannot be ruled out,
though further research is indispensable to confirm
this hypothesis.

Middle Archaic: The Beginnings of a

Production Economy (80005000 BP)
Following the period between 10 000 and 8000 BP,
during which a rich diversity of elaborate strategies
were implemented by human groups in order to adapt
and exploit environments that were also very diverse,
the cultural development of the central Andean zone
began to follow a new rhythm at 8000 BP. New lifeways were gradually developed, though those based
on hunting and gathering did not immediately disappear. The innovations, which nonetheless concerned
only a few regions, were of two types: a progressive
generalization of horticulture and the appearance of
animal husbandry.
In southern Ecuador, the site of Las Vegas was most
densely occupied between 8000 and 6500 BP (Late
Las Vegas phase). Marine resources played a less
important role than before (50%) while the collection
of vegetal species intensified. Some, such as Cucurbitaceae and perhaps a primitive maize, began to be
cultivated. The space covered by habitations and
domestic waste augmented, indicating an increase in
population size. The large dumping areas also served
as cemeteries: one of them contained the primary or
secondary burials of at least 192 individuals, making
it the largest ensemble of skeletons known in the
central Andes during this period. The most famous
one, a double sepulture of a man and woman buried
together and apparently embracing, has become
famous as The Lovers of Sumpa.
On the Peruvian coast, the fisher-gatherer camps
already occupied for nearly 2000 years show a significant population increase from 7000 BP. This is
demonstrated at Ring Site and Quebrada de los
Burros by an enlargement of domestic areas and
increased in deposit densities. But it is on the coast of
Chile that the occupation density is greatest (it is also
here that the most research has been conducted). The
numerous shellfish collector camps of the Camarones
Complex (78005600 BP), which extend along the
southern littoral of Arica Quiani, Chinchorro,
Camarones 14, Pisagua, and Punta Pichalo, among
the most important were occupied by a population
of fishers with sophisticated fishing equipment, notably fishhooks shaped from the valves of the large
mussel Choromytilus chorus. This is the origin of
the name Shell Fishhook Culture first given to this
complex by Junius Bird. A little later, the occupants
of Tiliviche and Aragon, though located nearly 40 km
from the shore, lived mainly on marine resources
and used similar equipment.
The Camarones Complex, and the succeeding
Quiani Complex (56003200 BP), in which fishhooks

366 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes

made from cactus thorns replaced those made from

shell, constitute the successive phases of the Chinchorro Tradition. This tradition, present from the Antofagasta latitude in Chile to the Ilo in Peru, is defined
by its mortuary practices. Following extremely complex processes, the bodies were eviscerated, dried,
and then stiffened with wood elements and ligatures.
They were then covered with a coating of painted
clay, which depending on the period was first black
and then red. A black mummy, recently dated to
7800 BP, confirms that the Chinchorro mummies,
more than 2000 years older than the first known
Egyptian mummies, are the oldest in the world.
In the highlands, the natural refuges of the Cordillera
continue to be occupied during this time by bands
of seminomad hunter-gatherers whose lifeways remain astonishingly similar to those of the preceding
period. Meanwhile, it is during the same period that
horticultural practices were developed and generalized,
though they perhaps first appeared as early as the
Early Archaic in northern Peru (Guitarrero) and
northwest Argentina (Huachichocana). The stratigraphic contexts of these sites are, however, questionable
(cf. supra). Also at Guitarrero, more reliable evidence
of squash (Cucurbita sp.) and gourd (Lagenaria sp.)
cultivation appears at around 7000 to 6000 BP, as
well as in the Ayacucho basin (Piki phase, 7700
6300 BP).
Meanwhile, the role of these plants was never as
significant as that of maize, which, though it was not
the first cultivated, rapidly became of singular importance. Later, all of the Andean high civilizations,
which first appeared during the second millennium
BC, would be based on the intensive cultivation of
this plant. A primitive domestic maize was again
observed at Guitarrero between 7600 and 4000 BP
(Complex III) and, less certainly, at Ayacucho between 6500 and 5000 BP (Chihua phase). In both of
these regions, these elements provide evidence for the
manipulation of several vegetal species and already
elaborate horticultural practices, if not true agriculture. Meanwhile, in all regions, the majority of alimentary resources continued to be obtained through
hunting, trapping, and the collection of wild edible
plants, still in a nonsedentary context.
The history of maize is complex and its origin is
still far from clear. Though there is near consensus
that this plant originated in Mexico, its diffusion and
domestication are still poorly understood. For certain
researchers, the diffusion of an already-domesticated
maize would have occurred very early starting from
Mexico. For others, it was a still wild maize that
attained the central Andean zone, where it would
have been independently domesticated, one or more

times, in the central and southern Andean zones. In

any case, all of the available data suggest that in the
central Andean zone the culture of three essential
plants beans, squash, and maize known as the
American trilogy, would have begun earlier in the
Cordillera than on the coast. The history of the species whose mountainous origin is certain potatoes
(Solanum tuberosum) and other exclusively Andean
tubers such as oca (Oxalis tuberosa), olluco (Ullucus
tuberosus), and mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum),
as well as maca (Lepidium meyenii) and quinoa
(Chenopodium quinoa) is still poorly known. The
distinction between wild and cultivated species is
sometimes difficult and palynological analyses are
still lacking. Paradoxically, the only concrete evidence of cultivated potatoes comes from the coast
and is no older than 4000 BP (at Huynuma in the
Casma Valley of Peru), indicating a more ancient
domestication than in the highlands.
Unlike the vegetal species, the Andean animal species suitable for domestication were very rare: two
camelidae, vicuna (Lama vicugna) and guanaco
(L. guanicoe), and guinea pig (Cavia sp.). Of these
three species, only the first two would later play a
significant role in the cultural development of the
central Andes.
We have seen that as early as 8000 BP on the punas
of central Peru, the hunting of camelidae existed as a
result of the behavior of these animals themselves:
vicunas and guanacos live in small family groups
that, in contrast to cervidae, circulate within a stable,
defined territory from 1 year to the next. For the
hunters, they were thus a certain and regular source
of food. A growing familiarity between the hunters
and these animals is almost certainly at the origin of
the control that seems to have been exercised over
wild herds from 6500 BP. At Telarmachay, where this
in situ process of camelidae domestication was first
revealed, a first domestic species, the alpaca (Lama
pacos), was present between 6000 and 5500 BP, and
a second, the lama (Lama glama) between 5500 and
3800 BP. Meanwhile, it is very likely, though the
archaeological evidence is still lacking, that similar
experiments leading to the same results occurred at
different locations in the highlands, notably on the
Bolivian altiplano. In the southern Andes, a few
elements suggest that an independent, but somewhat later, zone of camelidae domestication could
have existed in Chile on the border of the Atacama
desert basin (Puripica-1 and Tulan-52, between 5000
and 4000 BP), while in the northwest Argentinean
puna, alpaca is present in the Tomayoc rock shelter
at 3500 BP. We must nonetheless ask whether the
appearance of domestic camelidae in these two

AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Cultures of the Central Andes 367

regions could have been the consequence of migratory movements that transferred pastoral practices
from the central Andean punas.
According to MacNeish, guinea pigs were first
tamed in the Ayacucho basin as early as the Piki phase
(77006300 BP) and then fully domesticated in Peru
during the Cachi phase (50003700 BP). It is moreover surprising that this animal, which exists in a wild
state throughout the highlands, is not represented in
any of the high-altitude Peruvian sites (Lauricocha,
Pachamachay, Telarmachay, etc.). It is also absent
from the alimentary remains of sites in the Andes of
Chile and Argentina, but could later have been independently domesticated in the Colombian Andes.
The first villages

It is finally during the Middle Archaic that the first

sure signs of sedentarization appear in a process that
seems to have first developed along the Pacific Coast.
Though it is a little later than the possible semisedentary occupation of the site of Las Vegas in Ecuador
(Early Archaic), the village site of the fishers of
Paloma 613, studied by Frederic Engel, Robert
Benfer, and Jeffrey Quilter, on the central coast of
Peru, is better attested. In the beginning of its occupation, from 7800 to 7000 BP, this site was still a seasonal camp like so many others, before becoming
fully sedentary at around 7000 BP. The habitat consisted of around 100 hemispherical huts made from
reeds and rush, and more than a thousand burials
were found in proximity or even within the habitations themselves. Multiple analyses conducted on this
site have shown that 90% of the diet was composed
of small fish, marine mammals, and mollusks. Vegetal
resources were first exploited for nonalimentary purposes (combustibles, hut covers) and it was not until
5500/5000 BP that a primitive horticulture was
practiced (squash, gourds, and perhaps beans),
which contributed only a minor complement to a
diet that remained essentially marine based. Paloma
was abandoned a little before 5000 BP, without having developed a true agrarian economy. Between
6000 and 5300 BP, the village of Chilca 1, also discovered by Frederic Engel, was established not far
from Paloma. Here also, the beach was not far away
and spontaneous vegetation was abundant, particularly in the nearby lomas. The occupation included
ensembles of grouped huts like those at Paloma. The
mode of life was also analogous and the horticulture
of squash and beans is attested.
We thus cannot deny the importance of the ocean in
the lifeways of the coastal populations and their role
in the early process of sedentarization. But it is also
true that the ocean, in spite of its rich resources, could
not assure these populations a level of security equal

to that provided a little later by agricultural products.

No one can challenge the fact that within the coastal
societies already sedentarized or in the process of
becoming so, it was not until the use of domestic
plants became systematic that a qualitative advance
occurred, which, within a few centuries, would lead
to the appearance of complex societies.
At the end of the period considered in this article,
the central Andean zone thus presents a contrasted
scenario. On the coast, fixed villages appeared with a
territorial attachment that undoubtedly led to new
ways of life, a new perception of daily space, and
new relationships between the members within a
community. At the same time, alongside these societies, hunter-gatherer groups organized in (apparently)
egalitarian societies subsisted. As we saw, in the highlands the first sedentary occupations seem to have
appeared at a later date, though, paradoxically, certain vegetal species were cultivated earlier.
It is finally during the succeeding Late Archaic period
(50003800 BP) also called Final Preceramic that
a new type of occupation will appear. An economy
dominated by agriculture, from then on well established, and the beginnings of a social hierarchy will
be reflected in the edification of spectacular, public
architectural complexes, marking a prelude the
dawning of the Andean Civilization.
See also: Americas, South: Early Villages; Northern
South America; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Aldenderfer M (1998) Montane Foragers: Asana and the SouthCentral Andean Archaic. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Arriaza B (1995) Beyond Death: The Chinchorro Mummies of
Ancient Chile. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Benfer R (1990) The Preceramic Period site of Paloma, Peru: Bioindications of improving adapatation to sedentism. Latin American
Antiquity 1: 284318.
Bonavia D (1997) La domesticacion de las plantas y los origenes de
la domesticacion de las plantas en los Andes centrales. Revista
Historica 37 (Lima): 77107.
Chauchat C (1992) Prehistoire de la cote nord du Perou: le Paijanien de Cupisnique. Bordeaux: CNRS Editions.
Clapperton C (1995) Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology of
South America. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Dillehay T (2000) The Settlement of the Americas. A new Prehistory. New York: Basic Books.
Lavallee D (dir) (1985) Telarmachay. Chasseurs et pasteurs prehistoriques des Andes. Paris: Editions ADPF-ERC.
Lavallee D (2000) The First South Americans.The Peopling of a
Continent from the Earliest Evidence to High Culture. Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press.
Lynch T (1980) Guitarrero Cave. New York: Academic Press.
Macneish R, et al. (198083) Prehistory of the Ayacucho Basin (3
vols.). Ann Arbor: R.S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology,
University of Michigan Press.

368 AMERICAS, SOUTH/Early Villages

Nunez L and Santoro C (1988) Cazadores de la puna seca y salada,
Estudios Atacamenos (9). Antofagasta: Universidad del Norte.
Pearsall D (1992) The origin of plant cultivation in South America.
In: Cowan CW and Watson PJ (eds.) The Origins of Agriculture:
An International Perspective, pp. 173205. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Rick J (1980) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Andes. New York:
Academic Press.
Silverman H (ed.) (2004) Andean Archaeology. Blackwell.
Stothert, K (1988) La Prehistoria temprana de la Peninsula de
Santa Elena, Ecuador. Cultura Las Vegas, Museo del Banco
Central del Ecuador, Guayaquil and Quito.

Early Villages
Robert A Benfer, University of Missouri-Columbia,
Columbia, MO, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Ayllu An extended family unit for the Inca, whose history was
traced through ancestral mummies.
BP Radiocarbon years before the present, which is set by
convention to 1950. Since the number of radiocarbon years is not
always the same as the number of calendar years, it is possible to
adjust them into years calibrated by comparison of tree-rings
from long-lived Bristlecone pine trees.
catchment The region used for obtaining resources. In coastal
Peru, a village catchment could extend from beneath the ocean to
altitudes in excess of 3500 m.
Cribra orbitalia A special kind of pitting in the upper part of the
frontal bone that forms the back of the eye socket; the pitting
may become smooth with healing. It is associated with childhood
anaemia as a response of the body in producing more red cells in
this region, the most available one, of the body skeleton during
early childhood.
ENSO El Nino Southern Oscillation. The interaction of the
tropical Pacific ocean with the global atmosphere that results in
sporadic episodes of changing ocean currents and hence climate,
especially along the western coast of South America.
fog oasis In Peru, the coastal hills between 200 and 800 m above
mean sea level are shrouded in fog from about June until
November. Trees, before nearly all have been cut down in
modern times, condensed the fog and in many years, the hills had
a savana-like appearance. Such foggy hills are called lomas in
Peru.
lomas See fog oasis.
palaeodemgraophy Modeling demographic properties such as
estimated remaining life expectancy and fertiilty from the
distribution of the dead. Since emigration or immigration can
dramatically effect the relation between the properties of the
dead and living, assumptions of stability or other data, such as
living floor areas, are necessary to support such reconstructions.
parental investment The varying economic investments
parents might make in children with respect to their own
maintainance; investment might vary by gender where there are
economic differences in their values.
periosteal lesions Additional bone on the surface of a bone
that has a woven appearance; it is usually the results of infection,
either mechanically from punctures in the skin or from some
chronic infectious diseases.

Preceramic period Alternatively called Archaic, in Peru, is the

time between the end of the Holocene until 1500 BC. The Late
Preceramic overlaps the Initial Period of Ceramics in the north
and central coastal regions, as Tom and Sheila Pozorski have
demonstrated and Leonid Velarde has recently shown for even
the early part of the Late Preceramic in central Peru. Needed
changes in periodization will not be discussed here.
stable isotopes As used here, the concentrations of carbon and
nitrogen isotopes, which exhibit a pattern across varied food
sources and can be reliably measured in human osseous tissue.
village As used here, a settlement in which more than 50 persons
are usually in residence. We use both floor area and
palaeodemography to estimate village size.
virtual reality Three-dimensional structures from digital
models, which can be entered and manipulated. In Paloma World
(available at my web site: http://rcp.missouri.edu), wire-frame
models were covered with texture from photographs of a
reconstructed house and the background at the site. Details were
modeled separately.

Introduction
With the onset of the Holocene, sedentary village life
appeared in widely scattered locations around the
Earth. Farming, facilitated by domesticated animals,
produced a diet that, when supplemented by hunting,
gathering, and fishing, describes one path from a
nomadic life to a settled one. Full-time fishing is
another possibly more ancient path. There are wellknown examples of both economies in the Neolithic
of Asia and in the Middle East. The earliest villages
from the Archaic (Preceramic) stage of the Western
Hemisphere are those of fishermen.

Earliest Villages
One can define the archaeological signature of a village
as one left by multiple, clustered domestic structures of
between approximately 80 and 1500 inhabitants.
Larger settlements are more conveniently referred to
as towns, smaller ones as hamlets. Early dispersed
settlements would be difficult to distinguish from
hamlets without very widespread excavation.
The end of the last glacial period saw the first
agglutinated villages in the archaeological record in
the Eastern Hemisphere. Farming villages emerged at
Xinglongwa sites such as Jiahu in inland China, by
9000 years ago. These sites are characterized by having large domestic structures and ceramics. In the
Middle East, Pre-Pottery inland Neolithic sites, such
as Biedla in Jordan, were also occupied by 9000 BP.
Jomon fishing ceramic-using villages in Japan date to
10 000 BP.
In the Western Hemisphere, the Peruvian preceramic site of Paloma, Peru, was a small settlement
at 7800 BP, growing to a peak of several hundred
before abandonment after 5000 BP, when monumental
aceramic Late Preceramic sites began to be constructed
to the north. Valdivian sites from Ecuador, such as

ASIA, EAST/Early Villages 369

Real Alto, began to appear at about that time with

pottery and a variety of cultigens. James Zeidler and
Deborah Pearsall have shown that Valdivian peoples
moved up the middle valleys from the earliest settlements in coastal Ecuador, suggesting initial and perhaps continuing association with fishing.
Andean villages today are derived from long established patterns. They are divided into at least two
allyus, between or among which marriages are typically arranged, so villages tend toward endogamy.
A single village may also exist in two physically different locations, often separated by altitude, so that
resources from different ecological zones are available
to a single group. Households vary in success with
those having the richest nexus of kin from which reciprocal aid is available doing better than less successful neighbors. Today in the Andes, a complete nuclear
family with reciprocal relations among kin and nonkin is vital to sustain life. Modern villages may have
elaborate social interactions with other groups such as
herders. Multiple ethnic groups may have settlements
close to one another in the same valley.
Persistence of any village requires successful reproduction. Since half of the children born in preceramic times would die before the age of four years,
and the last-born children would have to be cared
for by someone other than the mother whose life
would usually end during her reproductive period
considerable community investment would have been
necessary in child rearing. Unlike modern customs,
preceramic village burial was often in or adjacent to
domestic structures in early villages, presumably by
family. Thus, early villages, before monumental architecture, display the domestic architecture of families.
Conditions for Sedentism in Early Villages

Early Jomon fishermen lived year-round in their villages; shells show daily and seasonal growth increments. Early settled village life can appear variously
with or without intensive cultivation of plants, domestication of animals, or the pottery needed to store
and process produce. The preceramic Paloma fishing
village was occupied throughout the year, at least in
some years.
Environmental Factors of Early Sedentism

In the Early Holocene, improvements in food production would have been stimulated by increasing carbon
dioxide from the carbon released by melting glaciers. The establishment of modern patterns of ocean
currents sometime after 5000 BP produced stable
beaches. Flood plains and hills above the beaches
would also be fruitful for collecting and hunting,
and for cultivation of plants. By 5000 BP, the long
period of warm, humid environment, the Holocene

Global Climatic Optimum (GCO), was ending. The

result was an increased unpredictability of a new cooler
and dryer climate. People had to adjust no longer sustainable systems of subsistence to these more variable
conditions. These cultural changes were important
and can be compared with adjustments to later climatic shifts as discussed by DeMonocal. They may
have led to the abandonment of fog oasis sites like
Paloma for river valley settings. Villages arise from
hamlets during the beginning of the GCO.

Early South American Settlements

Earlier Pleistocene hamlets, such as Monte Verde,
Chile and early Paijan sites in Peru reported by Tom
Dillahay, may have had substantial wooden dwellings. In central coastal Peru, Frederic Engel excavated
well-preserved but isolated structures close to beaches
at Paracas and Quipa with dates between 9000 and
10 500 BP. Other early fishing camps on the Peruvian
coasts are this old or older but lack visible domestic
structures. Early fishing settlements are known for
the length of the Chilean coast. In Ecuador, Karen
Stotherts excavations at OGSE-80 in the Santa Elena
Peninsula possibly suggest early agglutinated households by 8000 BP. However, these sites more likely
represent hamlets than villages, probably occupied
seasonally, as Piperno and Pearsall note.

Paloma, Chilca Valley, Peru

The Middle Preceramic site of Paloma, Peru, is one of
the most intensively studied sedentary villages from
the Middle Holocene of the Americas. The site is
situated 3.5 km from the modern beach on an alluvial
fan at an elevation of 200 m above mean sea level, just
below a fog oasis. Paloma lies 8 km from the Chilca
River (Figures 13). Frederic Engel conducted the
first excavations. The author directed subsequent
excavations in four more seasons between 1976 and
1990 in cooperation with Engel, Alice N. Benfer, and
Glendon F. Weir.
Paloma presents three important archaeological
resources: (1) its preservation of organic materials is
good to excellent, (2) its well-stratified deposits show
clearly separable village occupations over time, and
(3) it was extensively excavated and analyzed. A list
of 25 theses and partial list of publications is available
at the PalomaWorld web site at http://coas.missouri.
edu (hereafter, PalomaWorld).
There were excavations of parts of 50 structures,
400 storage pits, 35 hearths, and 201 human interments over four field seasons. A series of 26 radiocarbon dates registers earliest occupation at 7800 BP, with
a series of subsequent stratified villages occupied until

370 ASIA, EAST/Early Villages

about 4700 BP. The final occupation at Paloma was

one in which the population began to relocate to a
nearby river valley at the site of Chilca 1.
Paloma is the largest site excavated from this time
period; however, Engel has located two other similar,
but unexcavated villages, closer to the coast in the
same valley. The Paloma site is comprised of oval pit
houses, three mortuary structures, and shell middens.

Many structures were in the low shell mounds. A few

of the earliest domestic structures at Paloma are small
and perhaps do not indicate year-round village sedentism. Large, sturdy houses in clusters were widespread
by 6500 BP. Figure 4 shows what a domestic structure
(S. 103) looked like during excavation; in it some
burial pits and storage pits have been excavated but
one storage pit is awaiting excavation. Excavation in
this structure, but not in most, continued below the
floor to the cut originally made by its builders to
create an oval depression for the house.

10

Design of the Excavation

Per

Lima

The design combined two major strategies, a small

probability sample of test pits stratified by depth of
deposits and extensive lateral excavations (Figure 3).
We were surprised to find that domestic structures
were buried throughout the alluvial fan, whether
there were surface indications or not, and pleased to
learn that structures encountered in the probability
sample were not distributed differently from those
found in lateral excavations. The total excavations
were of approximately 2500 m2, which is approximately 10% of the alluvial fan on which the site
is situated.

12
Rio Chilca

Paloma

14
Figure 1 Location of Paloma in Peru; latitude is indicated.

20

San Bartolo
12 24
0
40

20
Pacific Ocean

0
a

om

Pal

20

ca

hil

C
da

ra

b
ue

Chilca I (Pantano)
12b VII 613
Paloma
0
1
2
3 km

7648
Fog nourished vegetation
Figure 2 Paloma location in a fog oasis. Map by Bernardino Ojeda E.

B.O.E.

ASIA, EAST/Early Villages 371

00.25 m deposit depths

0.250.5 m deposit depths
0.51.0 m deposit depths

Probability square

Block excavation
N

meters
1

25

50

Figure 3 Map of Paloma showing 6  6 block excavation in black and smaller probability samples in gray with black subdivision. The
sample was stratified by depth of deposits determined by shovel test. Map by B. Ojeda E.

Subfloor fill

S. 103
Storage pit
with contents

Floor

Figure 4 Photograph of S. 103 during excavation; ruler is 1 m.

Stratigraphy

We were able to establish three well-defined strata

located throughout the alluvial fan below the fog
oasis. Two domestic structures from earlier strata
had to be grouped into a single level #400 for the
purpose of analysis since they were from strata that
were not widely distributed across the site.
Dating

Of 26 radiocarbon determinations, only one did not

correspond to the level assigned by our stratigraphy;

another sample from the same structure did. The

three site-wide recognizable zones are dated as
follows:
. #100 Reoccupation, 4000 BP. It had rectangular
subterranean stone structures and open areas with
scattered living areas indicated by midden to the
north and east of the Paloma alluvial fan; this
occupation is not discussed here.
. #200 47005100 BP. A level whose presence was
announced by a layer of rotted, often purple, shells,
the decay of which suggests abandonment.

372 ASIA, EAST/Early Villages

. #300 51005300 BP. A level topped by thick

caliche (calcium carbonate) in areas and always
containing more grass than either level above or
below; the soil was most often orange in color.
. #400 53007800 BP. A level of darker soil containing large hearths.
The earliest date (7800 BP) applies to only a few
small structures from nonsite wide strata. The later
strata suggest occupations of persistent villages.

Settlement Pattern
The settlement pattern makes clear why good stratigraphy was obtained in what is normally a difficult
context, that of a stratified series of villages. The reason
is that, once abandoned, structures were never disturbed. Burials within the structures were also never
drastically disturbed; abandoned houses were abandoned household cemeteries.
Figure 5 shows the central core of the structures from
our virtual reality representation of Paloma, which can
be visited at a web site, http://coas.missouri.edu, and
hereafter, Paloma World. These more structures show
a settlement pattern of agglutinated structures that
never intrude upon earlier ones. Other structures,
presumably a part of other complete clusters, were
also encountered.
Vradenburg and his associates found an interesting
shift in total house floor area over time. Using a figure
of 9.4 m2 of roofed area per person and a 50-year
maximum life for a house suggested an average
population of about 60 between 6500 and 5300 BP,

the time of the site-wide occupation of level #400.

Using the same procedures, we calculated a population of about 450 in level #300, the level whose
abundant grass suggests maximum moisture. We estimate the lower bound for #200 as about 200 inhabitants who, over time, moved to the nearby river
valley. Not surprisingly, palaeodemographic study of
the human remains showed a decrease in growth rate
in the final occupation at Paloma even though the
actual local population of fog oasis and river valley
was expanding. Other evidence of sedentism includes
the more than 400 storage pits, many containing
plant or animal food. For example, one grass-lined
pit was full of anchovies with heads removed; others
contained ground anchovies, and many contained
stored plant materials, all suggesting a sedentary life
dependent upon stored foods (see Figure 4).

Architecture at Paloma
We found three special mortuary structures, but living
structures were the most common structures at
Paloma.
Domestic Architecture

All structures were semi-subterranean in profile. The

original excavated area was flattened by filling it with
sand and then laying down small, fine mats twined
from wild plant fibers. Most structures were round to
oval, with some tending to rectangular. Roof supports
were occasionally of willow poles but more often
groups of cane bound together and set into trenches.
Roofs were covered with fine mats over which grass

Figure 5 Paloma core excavations showing parts of three villages; plans superimposed over virtual reality reconstruction; excavation
units are 6  6 meter squares. S. 101 in level 200 is discussed in the text.

ASIA, EAST/Early Villages 373

was interlaced. Although it virtually never rains at this

elevation, a fine mist from the winter fog, garua, can
wet all exposed surfaces in the winter. The roofs of
structures would have condensed water from the fog
in this rainless land; excavated house poles were often
encased in caliche at their base. Stone-lined wells of
unknown antiquity are found in the nearby fog oasis.
Abandoned houses formed depressions, sometimes
visible on the surface; condensing water turned the
collapsed roofs to caliche. The depressions were used
later for discard of garbage. Large basaltic passive
grinding stones, batanes, were sometimes cached on
or under the roof of houses that had been abandoned.
Human burials were found under the floors or sometimes on the floors of dwellings.
Mortuary Structures

In addition to the more common practice of burial

within the household, several special mortuary structures were found. One, S. 137, is associated with #200
but lies south of the core #200 group and is not
depicted in Figures 5 or 6 (see the virtual reality
interactive site dig for details at Paloma World).
S. 137 resembled a domestic structure in construction
technique except that it was only about 60 cm in
height. Inside were four burials, the only four not
buried in a fetal position. One had been disarticulated
before reburial, the only instance of this practice. The
other three appear to have been buried in a state of
rigor mortis. One explanation for all four individuals
dying together could be poison from a red tide. Another, structure, S. 28, contained seven infant burials
but no adults, which, if not due to very bad luck in
raising babies, suggest that it may have had a special
mortuary function. An unusual burial, one extremely
well preserved (Tomb 159), was that of a juvenile
male missing one leg and exhibiting deep grooves in

Figure 6 Paloma virtual reality reconstruction of S. 101 and nearby dwellings looking to the south.

the corresponding fore arm and hip. He had died

from wounds probably inflicted by a shark. He was
buried in a miniature structure made in the same
fashion as a full-sized domestic structure.
A Paloma Household

S. 101 was found just west of a low shell mound

(Figure 6). It and adjacent S. 129 (Figure 7a) are the
two best-preserved structures at the site. They were
both from level #200. Over 14 person-months were
devoted to the excavation of S. 101; extensive field
notes are available at Paloma World (where it is listed
as H. 101). S. 101 and S. 129 together comprise a
domestic household. One is a larger living unit
(S. 101), and the other smaller structure, whose presence marked the edge of a shell mound, is the kitchen
(S. 129). S. 101 is shown in plan and profile view in
Figures 7b and 7c. A reconstruction (Figure 7d) by
Bernardino Ojeda is in the Museo de la Nacion, Lima,
Peru. That reconstruction lacks the covering grass, as
do our representations here and elsewhere, in order to
show architectural details. Figure 7e shows a similar
modern living unit/kitchen pair from the Andes. S. 101
was somewhat unusual in that it was the only structure
that we could be sure had a flat roof, which was
preserved by its charring in a fire. We were able to
trace ash over a caliche lens from S. 101 to the nearby
structure, S. 129. The two structures returned the same
radiocarbon date, 5010  60 and 5010  80 BP.
Most houses had a patio area delimited by posts, and
S. 101 is no exception. It is possible that an outer oval
of posts might have functioned as the outer wall of the
dwelling with the inner more circular row of posts
being for support. However, study of partially burned
but largely intact poles, mats, and grass from S. 101
suggest that the area was really a patio for the house. At
Paloma, there were hearths both within the central oval
of posts and outside them but within the outer ring.
Larger communal health areas are sometimes found
among clusters of houses. We encountered more than
35 hearths. Storage pits averaged about eight per
household, and many had preserved grass linings and
storage contents, such as headless anchovies.
Some domestic structures showed re-occupation,
with several living floors; S. 101 had three floors,
each with indications of partial coverage by fine
mats. This pattern argues that the dwelling was
being used for multiple years, perhaps abandoned
temporarily in an ENSO year when much of the
marine biomass shifted to the north. Our finding
of five cached batanes in a domestic structure could
indicate an abandonment that was meant to be
temporary but, in fact, became permanent for an
extended family. There was an average of four burials interred in and around each of the 55 domestic
structures. Few completely excavated houses lacked

374 ASIA, EAST/Early Villages

X 200
group B

X 200
group C

X 200
group D

(a)

Paloma
12 b_VII_613.HC, HCI
0
0.50 cm

H.CI

(b)
(c)

ESE
50 cm

Bojeda
1975

12 b_VII_613
H.C.I.

B.O.E.

(d)

(e)

Figure 7 S.101/129 domestic cluster of living and cooking structures at Paloma and similar household above Huaraz, Peru (a) Map
of site area containing S.101 (domestic structure) and S.129 (kitchen), in black; (b) plan of S 101 omitting most interments and some
storage pits to show architectural details; (c) profile of S.101; (d) reconstruction of S.101 by Bernardino Ojeda, in the Museo de la Nacion,
Lima, Peru (grass covering omitted to show details); (e) Modern sleeping structure and kitchen, on road to Chavn de Huantar above
Huaraz, Peru.

burials. Palaeodemographic study showed that, due

to high infant mortality, approximately one-half of
an extended family of eight might die in a generation
(see Paleopathology).
The kitchen structure S. 129 contained a burial of
a woman more than 50 years old when she died.
She was suffering from a chronic infection indicated
by periosteal lesions on her lower limb bones. There
were extensive food remains in S. 129, which is why
we identified it as a kitchen. S. 129 was architecturally interesting in that posts were found only in the
northern extension shown in Figure 7a. Between that
small circle and the longer open oval-shaped, main
cooking area, we found a packed earth step. More
intensive processing of food appears to have required
a separate kitchen structure in the #200 village.

The treatment of the dead also changed in #200.

There appeared a new pattern, one that suggests the
beginning of what would become a continent-wide
emphasis on ancestor veneration. At the same time,
treatment of the deaths of children was elaborated.
Ancestor Veneration

Tomb 100 (shown at the bottom of Figure 7b) had

small hearths just outside the limits of the burial pit.
Remains of fire inside burial pits were more common.
Fires had frequently been set before the body was
placed in the grave, resulting in the burning of mats,
skin, and even scorching of bone. Claude Cauchet
reported a burial from the north coast dated to
10 200 BP that had been placed on a layer of embers

ASIA, EAST/Early Villages 375

Jeffrey Quilter, a crew chief in the 1976 excavation,

published a description of Paloma burials. In a nonmetric multidimensional scaling of interments coded
for mortuary content by Sharon S. Brock, the author
found statistically significant differences in the dimension weights by strata that quantified an increasing emphasis on children that Quilter had also
indicated. More elaborate burials for children may
have reflected an increasing investment in them.
An unusual orientation of the young, and the pattern
of interment by gender in the last major occupation at
Paloma, may be another reflection of cosmological
belief systems imported from the tropical lowlands.
Male/Female Dualism

In an analysis by Kate Pechenkina and Robert

A. Benfer it was found that males in #200 were buried

T20

F
F

T17

T18

T118

F
I I I
F I
T102

T58

M
M T104

T101
M T22

T109

T114

3
T10

Increasing Investment in Children

Line separating
males/females

M
T204

3
T20

with another layer of charcoal and ashes covering the

body. At Paloma, we found embers and burned areas
under sides of burials but not ashes covering the body.
In Late Preceramic La Galgada, Terrence Grieder and
his colleagues also reported burials interred over a
layer of charcoal.
Another use of fire, one that suggests ancestor veneration, was the case in which a male was placed on
the floor mat or in a shallow depression, and the
house was then burned down over him. In the case
of the best-preserved example, Tomb 109 in S. 101, a
coiled basket was placed on top of the body, and
a large metate put on top of the burned roof. The
Shuar of Ecuador buried an important male in a
house in which he had lived and then burned it to the
ground. At Paloma, burned houses may have served to
mark the claims of lineages to the few highly productive beach sites. These would be the ones with good
fishing and access to sweet water and carbohydrateproducing lomas or river.
Besides venerating ancestors with special treatment
involving fire, relatives attempted to preserve the
dead. We have found that salt comprised more than
one-half of the volume of some burial fills through
research at the Missouri Research Reactor by Jeremy
Edward (MU dissertation; MU theses are available
online). These fishermen lived only a few kilometers
from coastal salt deposits. At La Galgada, distant
from salt mines, in the Late Preceramic, large salt
crystals covered by a layer of charcoal served as the
base for two burials.
These rituals for venerating and preserving ancestors are related to modern tropical lowland belief
systems and are thus suggested as ancient for the continent. They prefigure the mummy cult of the Inca by
4000 years. They can be compared with the Chinchorro cult of far southern Peru and northern Chile.

I
114 azimuth
Males

T100

Females

N (declination
adjusted)

Children

Figure 8 Composite # 200 Paloma burials. Note males and

females are separable by an imaginary line through the infant
burials. The hypothetical house is approximately 3  4 m in dimensions. (The 114 azimuth marks the austral summer solstice.)
Drawing by Ekaterina Pechenkina.

in the eastern part of houses, females, in the west,

with most infants along a northeast/southwest line
dividing the two (see Figure 8). The dimension of
gender is a powerful indicator of dualism at Paloma,
but this pattern was restricted to #200 burials. The
line along the orientation of most infant burials could
be viewed as tracing the nightly extreme of the Milky
Way. We know that later Andeans would see the
Milky Way as representing fertility. Could these new
mortuary customs emphasizing dualism and the
Milky Way have been brought by new peoples to the
coast at the beginning of the #200 occupation?
Coastal Relations with Other Peoples

Maria Rostworworski has suggested from ethnohistoric and linguistic studies that there was complete
population replacement of central Peruvian coastal
peoples by highland peoples at an early time. Highland incursions of the coastal valleys are known from
later periods.
Studies of the dental traits of the human remains
from Paloma by Christy Turner III suggested that the
last Paloma occupation before abandonment was by
people whose dental characteristics were very different from those of earlier inhabitants. It is possible that
the new mortuary customs came from the lowlands
through highland intermediaries.
Other relations with distant peoples are shown by
trace element analysis of obsidian. Mike Glascock
found that all but one piece of obsidian from Paloma
came from the Quispisisa source near the headwaters
of the Pisco River. From that location, the highland
river systems are directly accessible from the coast.

376 ASIA, EAST/Early Villages

A bone implement from a monkey suggests contacts

to the far north or the lowlands over the Andes. In
palaeoethnobotanical studies, Glendon Weir found
no significant plant remains at Paloma originating
from more than 1000 m, so movement of obsidian
or monkey bone was most likely due to chance
encounters with highlanders as either group foraged
the lower western slopes of the Andes.

Other Biological Studies at Paloma

The primary research for the excavations was toward
study of the evidence for early sedentism in a system
of human/environment interactions in a fragile habitat. Fuelwood was one organic material that was critical in the arid environment, and it serves as a useful
indicator of anthropogenic and natural changes.
Fuelwood and Construction Materials

The fog oasis, which provided water and plant

resources to these early villagers, became degraded
over time. We can demonstrate this by changes in
fuelwood, charcoalized twigs, and building material.
Glendon Weir and Philip Dering found a significant
decline in average diameter and variance as well as
in quality of the fuel wood. Figure 9 shows results of
a midden excavation. Both fuel wood and wood for
construction show the same pattern, increasing use
until the last village in #200, when use of wood for
construction dramatically decreased as its use in fires
increased.
The environmental degradation suggested overexploitation of fuelwood at Paloma. A region-wide
100

80
Firewood
Construction

80

60
40
40

Construction

Firewood

60

20
20

0
100

200

300

400

500

600

Strata
Figure 9 Fuelwood and construction wood frequency by test
pit into a midden at Paloma.

trend of decreasing moisture at this time has been

documented by glacial cores from the Huascaran
glacier. Thus, inhabitants were forced to remove
more of the shrubs from the fog oasis rather than
continuing a sustainable harvest of dead twigs and
branches. However, no wood from tree trunks was
ever used as fuelwood at Paloma. Had the trees themselves been used for wood, the fog oasis vegetation
would have quickly collapsed. This is because the
trees condense the moisture from the fog that permits
the lomas to bloom. In response to a dryer and more
variable climate, both maritime and terrestrial resources became more intensively exploited. Changes
in the lomas were consequential for water production, perhaps the major reason for abandonment. The
beginning of more frequent ENSO events after
5000 BP is known from, among other evidence,
changes in mollusks reported by Daniel Sandweiss,
and changes in the frequency of different species of
fish reported by Elizabeth Reitz.
By 4700 BP, the last Paloma families had moved
to the nearby river valley site of Chilca 1 where
year-round water was available. The sister sites were
occupied simultaneously for centuries, prefiguring
some later Andean village settlement patterns.

Health, Diet, and Activities from

the Skeleton and Teeeth
Health

Surprisingly, despite the hygienic challenges of living

in a permanent settlement, health improved over time
at Paloma. Stature, one of the best indicators of childhood health, increased significantly over time at
Paloma. Kate Pechenkina and her associates found
through study of limb bone lengths that Paloma fishermen were taller as adults than any later peoples
were. Cross-sectional growth of limb bones during
childhood was always faster at Paloma than at three
comparative sites, suggesting that the stature increase
in adults was due to improving childhood health and
diet at Paloma. Stature was significantly greater at
Paloma (males 165 cm, females 155 cm) than at Real
Alto (males 162 cm, females 151 cm). The inhabitants
of the larger Valdivian villages probably suffered from
more hygienic problems of sedentism than did Paloma.
Another useful indicator of adult health is anemia,
which registers first in the bones of children. Anaemia
declined over time at Paloma only to become more
prevalent in subsequent time periods. Periosteal lesions
on bones, caused by either a treponemal agent or
infection following wounds, decreased between levels
#300 and #200 but increased in sites from following
time periods.

ASIA, EAST/Early Villages 377

Diet

Palaeodemography

Dan Edwards and the author of this article found that

dental wear decreased significantly over time at
Paloma, probably as more processed small fish were
eaten. The dental wear pattern of Paloma fishermen
was easily distinguished from the cusp-like wear of
farmers by Peer Moore-Jansen. Carious lesions, cavities, were nearly absent in the teeth of these fishermen. Lesions were more frequent at Real Alto where
almost 9% of individuals had at least one, a value
typical of a high carbohydrate diet. Bone chemistry
confirms the dental patterns at Paloma. Stable isotopes furnished by Michael J. DeNiro are presented in
Figure 10. The average suggests a diet almost exclusively from the sea. Ba/Sr elemental concentrations
in bone (analysis by J. H. Burton) provide identical
findings based on a different set of factors. Levels
of fluoride measured by Jeremy Edward at MURR
were high at Paloma, as was expected. He also showed
an intriguing change in fluoride levels, with sexual
dimorphism in earlier levels, to about equivalent consumption of the two genders in level 200. Gender
differences in diet appear to have disappeared. In an
MU thesis, Eric White found that more than 70% of
the batanes were recovered in #200 despite the number
of structures being approximately equal among the
strata. Glendon Weirs study of the contents of the
surfaces of the batanes showed their use for both grinding plants but also small fish. Ground fish, with the
meal stored in grass-lined pits, would have provided
food for both men and women, especially in ENSO
years when marine yields would have been lower.
Apparently, the adjustment was successful. The #200
peoples show improved health. Such improved health
could be translated into higher fertility and longer lives.

We estimated life expectancy from the distribution

of the dead by age groups, using plausible levels of
population growth rates. Fewer infant burials in #200
argue for greater investment in children, who, as discussed above, showed less stunting of growth. The
lack of scars of pregnancy in the public and ilium
bones of women younger than 24 years suggests that
marriage was delayed, reducing fertility. High levels
of cadmium in human bone samples likely reduced
male fertility, perhaps most strongly in #200. Adult
life expectancy increased over time at Paloma only to
decrease in subsequent time periods at other sites. In
Ecuador, Ubelaker also found a decline following the
Preceramic period. A recent compilation of studies
by Mark Cohen shows a similar decline in health
and life expectancy of adults is associated with initial
experiments with intensive agriculture in prehistoric
peoples widely scattered around the earth.

d 15N and d 13C in bone collagen

d 15N (per mil)
Marine
+25.0
vertebrate
eaters
+20.0

+15.0

Paloma

+10.0
Terrestrial
plant
eaters
25.0

20.0

15.0

Elizabeth Reitz found that the diet was one typical of

fishermen, an interpretation that accords with that
from the bone chemistry and dental patterns. Fish
and sea lions were important components of the
diet, augmented by shellfish.
Remains from juvenile sea lions are found. These
animals are resident in summer, whereas guanaco
(ancestral to llamas), deer, and fulmar (a gull-like
bird), also present, would have been attracted to the
fog oasis in the winter when it blooms. The single
bone from a monkey was from Atelles spp. Reitz
concluded that overall, most calories were obtained
from the sea. She noted a shift over time toward
smaller animal species. Nevertheless, plants constituted a minor but important component of the diet.
Palaeoethnobotany

Marine
invertebrate
eaters

+5.0

Zooarchaeology

d 13C (per mil)

10.0

5.0

Figure 10 Human bone carbon and nitrogen isotope levels

for Paloma. Data from analysis by Michael J. DeNiro; figure by
Ekaterina Pechenkina.

The identification of the plant macrofossils has been

completed by Deborah Pearsall following the earlier
work of Glendon Weir and Philip Dering. Pearsall
studied plants from over 100 storage pits and other
contexts from levels #200 and #300. She found plant
remains more ubiquitous in #200 than #300. Charred
begonia plants were the most common edible plant in
#300. Glendon Weir had found evidence that the tuberous begonia was cultivated; its masticated roots were
common. Amancay (Hymenocallis amancaes), a lily,
was also important. Uncharred begonia and charred
bottle gourd were equally common, with rare examples
of charred cotyledon pieces. There is also an unknown
charred tuber/root. Gourds became less common over
time. Maize was found in two areas: one was an intrusive offering (dated to more recent times), the other, a

378 ASIA, EAST/Early Villages

single cupule. One important new food plant appears

in #200, Phaseolus, the common bean. Much smaller
seeds appeared to be secondary to root and tuber foods
in the samples collected from 1 and 0.5 mm screens,
possibly because they passed through them.
Human Coprolites

Study of plant and animal remains from several hundred desiccated human fecal remains was made by
Glendon H. Weir and Phillip Dering. These demonstrated that grass caryopses (grass fruits of seeds) in
fact were one of the major plant foods consumed. The
smaller seeds apparently passed through our fine
screens. Seeds of plants other than grasses in the
coprolites included chenopods (Chenopodiacaea),
solanaceous (Solanacae), and composites (Compositae). Evidence of the preparation of these foods is
observed in finding charcoal and fragments of stone
in coprolites, perhaps from grinding.
Parasitological studies of large samples of coprolites by two specialists (Karl Reinhard and Michael
Kliiks) produced no ova or other indications of intestinal parasites. Fishermen may have unusually good
sanitary habits. Frequent immersion in the sea would
have reduced fecal transmission from person to person. At the site, we found a latrine area composed of
coprolites. Some coprolites were adhering to a shell
that experiments showed made an adequate substitute for toilet paper.
Taken together, the coprolites, macrofossils of
plants, faunal remains, and bone chemistry identify
the diet as one of fishermen who were extracting as
much from the fragile terrestrial environment as possible. Indicators of diet predict habitual subsistence
activities necessary to produce and process food.
Habitual Activities

Anna McNair studied humeral and femoral shape at

Paloma (MU Honors Thesis). She found significant
shifts over time in humeral shape. Humera were wider
at the elbow in the early levels and associated with
more robust muscular development. This robustness
decreased over time at Paloma, a trend stronger in
males than in females. This decrease is associated,
surprisingly, with an increase in large grinding stones.
More recently, Alexander Robling in an MU dissertation confirmed that there was a decrease in the
amount of physical work at Paloma over time from
studies of bone turnover rates and geometric properties of the femur. Sexual dimorphism was also
seen to diminish so that in #200 women show almost
as heavy development of musculature as men. Another
recent MU dissertation by Mathew Rhode showed
that entheses, muscle markings on bones, at Paloma

produced a pattern similar to preceramic Chilean fisher populations.

Women could have been hauling nets, carrying
babies, carrying shellfish the 3.5 km uphill to the
village, swimming while pushing nets, or managing
plants and collecting. Men would have fished, hunted
larger marine prey, and dived for shellfish. Auditory
osteomas, bony growths produced by exposure to
cold water (surfers ear), were restricted to males,
which correspond to the pattern observed on the west
coast of South America, where men and not women
dived for mollusks.
Dancing is implied by the widespread presence of
rattles. The custom became more evident in later
Initial Period with the construction of numerous
sunken circular platforms. Habitual activities could
be reflected in aspects of technology; however, the
material technology at Paloma was a simple one.

Technology
Artifacts were scarce, with nonfiber objects averaging
only a few per cubic meter of excavation.
Lithics

Eric J. White found no difference in the frequencies of

types of laurel leaf-shaped stone points over time.
However, higher-quality lithic stone points became
less common. Stone points were not frequent at the
Paloma villages, and, indeed, they are infrequent in
fishing sites from middle and late coastal preceramic
periods from Ecuador to southern Peru. White also
noticed a dramatic decline in wood polish in scrapers
from #200. This finding is congruent with decrease in
wood use for construction shown in Figure 9. Manos
and smaller grinding stones were common. Boiling
stones for cooking in gourds were sometimes found
in hearths with their inferior surface caked with carbon. There was usually one batan per household.
Obsidian flakes were encountered throughout the
deposits, and their source was in the highlands, as
discussed above. In a single pit, rocks of all the types
observed at Paloma were cached together, in the
house of the presumed village knapper. A few stone
beads were found in other contexts.
Fiber Objects

Two reports on fiber objects are available in English at

the Paloma World web site. Twined mats and netted
apparel were found around the head and waist of
buried individuals. Apart from string and rope, these
were the most common fiber objects. All of the fiber
was from wild plants, except for the intrusive cotton
offering dated much later.

ASIA, EAST/Early Villages 379

Of special interest is the charred simple basket in

the shape of flat circular tray discussed above with
S. 101 (upper right corner of Figure 7b). Its date of
5010 BP suggests that it may be one of the oldest examples of a true coiled basket known for the Western
Hemisphere, which can be distinguished from earlier
simple twined objects often reported as basketry in
North America.

a consumable artifact has been discussed above. Split

cane was also used for fire starters and to construct wall
coverings and sleeping/mortuary mats. Penguin feathers were relatively common in burials, presumably as
adornments; other feathers were probably from birds
that were eaten.

Summary
Bone Implements

Paloma bone artifacts include points, needles, bullroarers, and fishhooks. Thirty-three bodkins, flat
spatula-shaped bone objects with a perforation at
the proximal end, varied in size and amount of polish.
Most were found with burials. Bone spatulas, flat,
polished bones lacking a perforation, were sometimes
made from sea mammal bone, perhaps reflecting
the scarcity of land mammal bone, which has more
compact bone. We recovered pendants, punches,
and fragments of barbs, as well as atlatls or spear
throwers. Awls were present. Individual tubular
bone beads were flat with a wide range in size. Twenty-four beads were found as a necklace in an interment, all of which are tubular avian bones. Two
bone objects were recovered that may have functioned as knives.
Gourds

Bottle gourds (Lagenaria siceraria) were found principally in burials. Most were undecorated. One fragment, from S. 36 is over 6500 years old, which is older
than other reported decorated gourds. The fragment
has a painted design of brown over an orange background. Gourds were fashioned into rattles, sometimes with a stick handle, worn shell fragments and
pebbles from the beach, and seeds. Rattles are found
in about 20 of the 201 burials and the frequent presence of gourd fragments in other burials suggests that
the practice of interring rattles was actually more
common. One infant burial had a complete rattle;
other fragments were found in burials of children
and adults of both genders. Some gourds had been
broken and repaired by sewing segments back together, suggesting the maintenance of an important
heritage treasure.
Shell, Wood, and Feathers

Large shell implements showed abrasion from use.

Shell beads, pendants, and necklaces were found. Complete and fragmentary fishhooks were recovered.
Wooden stoppers or floats and a handle that may
have given purchase to a fishing net were excavated.
One piece of wood was used as a fire drill. Fuelwood as

Villages do not require pottery or intensive plant production to grow and prosper. Paloma fishermen
cultivated some plants. Villages more focused on farming came later, as represented by Valdivian sites such as
Real Alto in Ecuador. Valdivia culture persisted over a
long time, whereas in central Peru dramatic changes in
settlement pattern and monumentality of structures
followed abandonment of the earliest fishing villages.
Early Ecuadorian villages were larger than early
Peruvian ones. The Valdivian sites are associated
with larger numbers of species of domesticated plants
and represent more densely settled populations,
and people were less healthy as adults than were the
Paloman fishermen.
Findings from the Paloma Project support the celebrated hypothesis by Michael Moseley that maritime
resources were the critical ones in the development
of Andean civilization, at least at the level of the
first permanent villages. The larger Valdivia sites support Moseleys more recent reformulation of the
hypothesis, that fishing and farming resources formed
necessary parts of a dual economy. In Peru, the large,
complex monumental sites that followed Paloma date
to earlier times than equivalent ones in Ecuador.
Thus, early villages in Ecuador and Peru suggest two
paths that permitted populations to grow from villages to towns. Present evidence favors the hypothesis
that resources from the sea and the land were necessary for the precocious construction, between 5000
and 4000 BP, of large, monumental Peruvian sites
such as Chupacigarro/Caral, Aspero, and El Paraso.
Adjustment to the dryer and more variable climate
encountered at the ending of the GCO may have been
the stimulus for important changes in subsistence practices. Cotton, essential for construction of large nets,
was domesticated after the abandonment of fog oasis
sites and resettlement in river valleys. Increased farming of agricultural food products may also have been
simultaneously pursued. With large cotton nets, yields
of fish could have been dramatically increased over
a wider variety of beach habitats. Subsistence level
fishing at Paloma was replaced by fishing that produced the large surpluses necessary to tide agriculturalists and fishermen over during ENSO years when all
their food crops could be lost to flood or drought and
marine foods would also be scarce.

380 ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology

Acknowledgments
The field and laboratory work was made possible
by four awards from the NSF and additional awards
from the University of Missouri-Columbia that provided vital bridging support. The author especially
thanks the laboratories that conducted analysis of
Paloma materials through their own resources.

Prehistoric Population, pp. 150151. Occasional Paper No. 24,

Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
Weir G and Dering P (1986) The lomas of Paloma, human
environment relations in a central Peruvian fog oasis: Archaeobotany and palynology. In: Matos MR (ed.) Andean Archaeology,
pp. 1844. Los Angeles: UCLA.
Zeidler JA and Pearsall DM (eds.) (1994) Regional Archaeology in
Northern Manab, Ecuador. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology, No. 8.

See also: Americas, South: Early Cultures of the Central

Andes; Northern South America; New World, Peopling

of; Osteological Methods; Paleodemography; Paleopathology; Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element
Analysis.

Relevent Website
http://coas.missouri.edu University of Missouri-Columbia, The
College of Arts and Science.

Further Reading
Benfer RA (1990) The Preceramic period site of Paloma, Peru:
Bioindications of improving adaptation to sedentism. Latin
American Antiquity 1: 284318.
Benfer RA (1999) Proyecto de excavaciones en Paloma: El
Valle de Chilca, Peru, El Periodo Arcaico en el Peru. Hacia
una definicion de los orgenes. Boletin de Arqueologia PUCP
3: 213237.
Cauchet C (1988) Early hunter-gatherers on the Peruvian coast. In:
Keatinge RW (ed.) Peruvian Prehistory, pp. 4166. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Damp J (1984) Architecture of an Early Valdivia village. American
Antiquity 49: 573585.
DeMonocal PB (1991) Cultural responses to climate change during
the Late Holocene. Science 292: 667673.
Engel F-A (1987) De las begonias al Maiz. Lima: Centro de Investigaciones de Zonas Aridas, Universidad Nacional Agraria, La
Molina.
Grieder T, Mendoza AB, Smith CE, Jr, and Malina RM (1988) La
Galgada, Peru: APreceramic Culture in Transition. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Moseley MM (2003) The Incas and Their Ancestors. London:
Thames and Hudson.
Pechenkina EA, Vradenburg JA, and Benfer RA (n.d.) Disease
and the effects of intensive agriculture on the central coast
of Peru. In: Cohen, M (ed.) Recent Investigations into Paleopathology and the Origins of Agriculture. Gainesville: University of
Florida Press.
Piperno DR and Pearsall DM (1998) The Origins of Agriculture
in the Lowland Neotropics. London: Academic Press.
Quilter J (1989) Life and Death at Paloma: Society and Mortuary
Practices in a Preceramic Peruvian Village. Iowa City: University
of Iowa Press.
Reitz EJ (1988) Faunal remains from Paloma, an Archaic site in
Peru. American Anthropologist 90: 310322.
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco M (1998) Ensayos de Historia
Andina II. Lima: Institute de Estudios Peruanos.
Sandweiss DH, Richardson JB, Reitz EJ, Rollins HB, and Maash
KA (1996) Geoarchaeological data from Peru for a 5000 year BP
onset of El Nino. Science 273: 15301533.
Shady R, Hass J, and Creamer W (2000) Dating Caral, a preceramic site in the Supe Valley of the central coast of Peru. Science
292: 723726.
Vradenburg JA, Benfer RA, and Sattenspiel L (1997) Evaluating
archaeological hypotheses of population growth and decline
on the central coast of Peru. In: Paine RR (ed.) Integrating
Archaeological Demography: Multidisciplinary Approaches to

Historical Archaeology
Andres Zarankin, UFMG, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Melisa A Salerno, DIPA-IMHICIHU-CONICET,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
historical archaeology The archaeological study of
historically documented cultures.
diffusionism An anthropological theory of spread of culture
stating that similarities in tools, practices, or other features
between cultures result from their being spread from one culture
to another rather than being arrived at independently.
post-processualism A form of archaeological theory which is
related to the broader development of postmodernism.
urban archaeology The milieu of old and new artifacts
populating the urban landscape.
ethnicity A sense of being different from other groups
because of cultural tradition, ancestry, national origin, history,
or religion.

Introduction
Historical archaeology in South America has experienced an accelerated growth since the mid-1980s, a
process which was particularly intensified during the
1990s. This growth has been reflected in the creation
of several projects of investigation, the appearance of
specific courses in college curricula, the spread of
national and international meetings, and the increasing number of papers published by different South
American archaeologists in the first years of the
third millennium.
This article intends to offer an overview of the
history and development of historical archaeology in
South America. In order to accomplish this objective,
we discuss among other topics the relationship
between historical archaeology in South America and

ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology 381

historical archaeology in the rest of the continent,

its origins, theoretical frameworks, problems of
investigation, and local achievements.

conformation at a local level, highlighting the role of

agents in the definition of the practices they use to
construct their identities.

Historical Archaeology in America

South America

The development of historical archaeology in South

America is closely connected to the history of the
discipline in the United States. Since the second half
of the twentieth century, American historical archaeology defined itself as a distinct field of study oriented
towards the discussion of Europeans past in the New
World. As a consequence, it managed to take distance
from prehistoric archaeology, related to anthropology and the analysis of cultural others (aboriginals).
Historical archaeology in South America rapidly
adopted this perspective.
Historical archaeology was conceived in all manners of ways along time, generating a lot of controversy within the discipline. Some authors considered
that historical archaeology represented the study of
material culture associated with historical or literate
periods. In the meantime, other researchers defined it
as a methodology which combined the interdisciplinary use of archaeological and documentary evidence.
This perception limited the specificity and autonomy
of the field, transforming it into the handmaiden of
history.
In recent bibliography, historical archaeology has
been understood as a discipline concerned with the
analysis of modernity associated to European expansion and the consolidation of capitalism. Specifically,
conformation of modern society has been explained
as a result of changes involving everyday life. Ideas
used to describe this social order stemmed from the
analysis of nineteenth-century English colonies in
North America. Finally, they were completed with
the study of Georgian Orders genealogies in England,
where archaeologists sought to extend modernitys
time and space boundaries to understand its origins.
Nowadays, modern society is associated with the
appearance, spread, and maintenance of capitalist
practices. It implies a change in relationships among
individuals, as well as between individuals and things.
It has been proposed that individualism, segmentation, standardization, and consumerism are key concepts to analyze transformations in practices during
modernity. Following this idea, some archaeologists
try to identify sets of rules which might be applied
to understand material culture and lifestyles in
recent past. This theoretical perspective along with
its variants is commonly used to explain conformation of modern society in different geographical
contexts.
In recent years, several South American archaeologists have started to discuss the singularities of social

There have been investigations in historical archaeology since the very beginnings of professional archaeology in South America, but these projects only
became systematic in the 1960s. Nevertheless, studies
in historical archaeology during the 1960s and 1970s
were usually restricted to excavations conducted by
nonarchaeologists such as amateurs, historians and
architects. In general, their investigations looked
forward to finding correlations between material
and documentary data, rescuing valuable historical
objects and structures, supplying information to restoration activities, or simply satisfying researchers
personal curiosity.
It was not until the 1980s that archaeology acquired a
program of investigation of its own. As a consequence,
it became understood as a distinct discipline, specialized
in the study of material culture and interested in offering
an alternative way to construct discourses about the
past considering or not the existence of written documents. On the other hand, historical archaeology
enjoyed an independent status for the first time. In this
way, archaeologists began to create multiple visions of
recent history, which could be opposed to or different
from master narratives.
Historical archaeology has shown a heterogeneous
development in South America. According to Pedro
Funari, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay have traditionally stood out in this field of study. As a matter
of fact, professionals from these three countries have
written most of South American modern literature on
historical archaeology. The heterogeneous development of South American historical archaeology
might also be recognized in the nationality of the
authors who published their papers in any of the 16
volumes of Historical Archaeology in South America,
the only specialized magazine that has ever been
published for the region.
Historical Archaeology in South America was edited
by Stanley South in 1994, 1995, and 1996 (University
of South Carolina), and presented articles written by
South American archaeologists in Spanish, Portuguese,
and English. Ninety percent of them were produced by
Argentinean, Uruguayan, and Brazilian archaeologists.
Pedro Funari explains this situation, pointing out that
in some South American countries such as Peru,
Ecuador, Bolivia and, to some extent, Venezuela the
lack of interest in historical archaeology might be
closely associated with the use of archaeology as a
privileged tool to build national identities based on
the search of precolonial splendor.

382 ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology

There are few authors such as Pedro Funari or

Gustavo Politis concerned in explaining the development of historical archaeology in South America. But
there are plenty of professionals who discuss the state
of affairs of historical archaeology in particular
countries such as Tania Andrade Lima, Pedro
Funari, and Mara Gaspar in the case of Brazil;
Andres Zarankin and Mara Ximena Senatore in
Argentina; Julio Sanhueza in Chile; Nelsys Fusco
and Jose Mara Lopez Mazz in Uruguay; and Monika
Therrien in Colombia.

Theoretical Frameworks in South

American Historical Archaeology
Problems of investigation, as well as the way in which
scientists approach them, are intimately bound to
the selection of theoretical frameworks. In South
America, several conceptual currents have been popular along time: diffusionism, processualism, and
post-processualism, among others (Table 1). Their
characteristics are briefly summarized below:
The main objective of diffusionist investigations
was to provide spatial, chronological, and technological orderings of past cultural groups. As a consequence, archaeologists coined several concepts such
as phase, horizon, cultural area, or industry to
describe them. Within a normative idea of culture,
people were defined as bearers of fixed cultural characteristics. In general, identification of cultural traits
in the archaeological record led to the recognition
of different identity groups. Moreover, transformations in objects were explained as results of specific
mechanisms which spread cultural features from

nuclear centers where they were invented to

marginal areas.
Diffusionism in historical archaeology was associated with investigations which classified findings
according to biological criteria (European, aboriginal, African, or mestizo artifacts), or ended up
justifying even in an explicit manner European
conquest through the use of concepts such as acculturation. As Charles Orser Jr. stated, diffusionist perspectives thought of archaeology as an appropriate
tool to help history. In this way, numerous researchers accounted for things recovered in archaeological
sites and did not propose larger discussions. It was
characteristic of diffusionism to present exhaustive
descriptions of artifacts and structures found in excavations. This was considered the only way to insert
archaeological sites within previously defined culturehistory sequences.
In the 1980s, investigations in historical archaeology turned to use different processualist models, such
as Stanley Souths pattern recognition, Susan Spencer Woods consumer choice, or Pam Cressey and
John Stephens city-site approaches. On the other
hand, post-processualist ideas became popular in the
late 1990s for instance, Mark Leone, Randall
McGuire, and Robert Paynters neomarxist models,
or Ann Yentschs proposals for the analysis of gender.
There are some historical archaeologists who,
despite taking into account world theoretical
contributions, prefer to generate their own conceptual
frameworks to deal with the conformation of local
societies. In this respect, it is relevant to distinguish
the efforts made by some South American researchers,
such as Pedro Funari, Tania Andrade Lima, Marcos

Table 1 Development of main theoretical frameworks in South American historical archaeology

Time span

Theoretical
framework

Place of birth

Main idea

Some other features

1970. . .

Diffusionism

Europe

Diffusion centers

1980. . .

Processualism

USA

1990. . .

Postprocessualism

Although its origins

might be found in
England, historical
archaeology in South
America uses North
American authors as
references for this
theoretical framework

Universal laws of
behavior.
One and only real
past
Individual actions.
Multiple and
subjective pasts

Diffusionism is associated with the process

of European colonization (acculturation)
and its justification
Processualism keeps on looking for
universal patterns of behavior (now inside
European society)
In most cases, postprocessualism has been
aimed to propose critical analysis of
difference and exploitation inside first
world societies

It is necessary to make it clear that marks next to dates indicate coexistence of different theoretical currents along time. Nowadays,
although investigations in historical archaeology generally adhere to a normative and traditional conception of archaeology, the three
conceptual frameworks presented in this table coexist at the same time.

ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology 383

Abuquerque, Veleda Lucena, Luis Symanski, Mara

Ximena Senatore, Carmen Curbelo, Marcos Torres de
Souza, Andres Zarankin, and Monika Therrien.

Subjects of Investigation
South American historical archaeology has traditionally focused on several subjects of investigation, which
emerged bound to different theoretical frameworks.
Nowadays, historical archaeology shows a heterogeneous production, ranging from investigations interested in studying Europeans settlement strategies to
projects involved in analyzing todays garbage. In this
section, we present an overview of South American
investigations in historical archaeology, bearing in
mind that most part of these studies have been conducted by Argentinean, Brazilian, and Uruguayan
archaeologists.
South American Colonial Archaeology

Historical archaeology has already proved its potential for the study of European settlement in
America. From different perspectives and in several
geographical locations, historical archaeology has
been able to shed light on social, economic, ideological, and ecological aspects of the process of colonization. Archaeological analyses on the subject have
usually focused on Hispanic urbanization, daily life
in religious missions, colonial enclaves, and the relationships between Europeans and native populations.
Urban centers The origins of historical archaeology
in the American continent were associated to the
study of valuable historical sites, often related to
European colonization. As a consequence, first investigations on the subject usually directed by historians, architects, and amateurs were oriented
towards the analysis of city foundations (see Urban
Archaeology). In Argentina, there have been relevant
antecedents of these investigations since the 1970s.
Among them, it is important to take note of the
archaeological project developed by Agustn Zapata
Gollan in the Spanish city of Santa Fe la Vieja
(15731660). Although Zapata Gollan was not an
archaeologist, his work was pioneering and might
be taken as the starting point of colonial historical
archaeology in Argentina. Zapata Gollan used archaeology as a methodology to validate historical
data regarding location and identification of Santa
Fe. His investigations on different aspects of the citys
daily life were published one year after his death.
Many archaeological remains were recovered in
excavations conducted by Zapata Gollan. These artefacts represent the material base of the site and have
been the object of several partial studies over a period
of time. Particularly, Carlos Cerruti studied the origin

and characteristics of Santa Fes wine containers in

order to become acquainted with regional production
and internal channels of communication during the
colonial period. Additionally, he studied the characteristics of Hispanicaboriginal contact, taking into
account the analysis of archaeological polychrome
pottery. After Cerruti, other archaeological projects
were conducted by Mara Teresa Carrara, Nelida
de Grandis, Andres Zarankin, and Mara Ximena
Senatore.
Another archaeological site which was intensively
excavated is Las Ruinas del Km75, usually associated
with the old city of Concepcion del Bermejo (1585
1632). As in the case of Santa Fe la Vieja, first works
on the site were conducted by nonarchaeologists
mainly, Eldo Morresi who started systematic
investigations in the late 1960s.
Buenos Aires has become a subject of intense investigations. Since the 1980s, architect Daniel
Schavelzon has excavated different areas of the city.
He has published several works, describing and classifying archaeological remains, as well as discussing
Buenos Aires past cultural life. Besides Schavelzon,
other archaeologists studied specific problems of investigation in the city, such as fauna (Mario Silveira),
industry (Marcelo Weissel), architecture (Andres
Zarankin), and pottery (Mara Ximena Senatore).
At the present time Mara Ximena Senatore is analyzing different urban projects intended to integrate
Patagonia with Spanish domains. Her project focuses
on a comparison between European and aboriginal
strategies for the use of space and contact. Her case
studies are the eighteenth-century village of Floridablanca in San Julian, Santa Cruz, and the sixteenthcentury settlement of Nombre de Jesus in Cabo
Vrgenes, Santa Cruz (Figure 1).
In Brazil, several Portuguese colonial cities which
still remain inhabited have developed their own

Figure 1 Archaeological excavations at Floridablanca (eighteenth

century, Patagonia).

384 ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology

archaeological projects. Among them, it is possible to

take note of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, San Pablo,
Recife, and Porto Alegre. For instance, Salvador
capital of the state of Bahia and first capital of
Brazil has been object of many excavations headed
by Carlos Etchevarne. His investigations have been
mainly interested in analyzing Bahias history from a
material point of view.
Other cities, which, due to their accelerated
growth, have developed remarkable archaeological
programs, are San Pablo and Porto Alegre. In San
Pablo, the work of Margarida Andreatta has been
prominent since 1980, when she started to conduct
several rescue excavations in different areas of the
city. In the case of Porto Alegre, Fernanda Tocchetto
has run an interesting study on the transformations of
local society, focusing on consumer choice, discard
patterns, urban growth, and pottery typologies,
among other subjects.
Uruguay has been a pioneer in colonial urban studies. Since the 1980s, two different cities have
been studied in detail; Colonia del Sacramento and
Montevideo. In the case of Colonia, Nelsys Fusco has
analyzed the succession of Portuguese and Spanish
occupations, supplying information about the history
of the city and broadening the importance of cultural
tourism in the area. On the other hand, Carmen
Curbelo has developed her investigations and rescue
works in Montevideo and Punta del Este.
In Chile, despite Omar Ortiz Troncoso and
Mauricio Massones early investigations in colonial
sites like Rey Don Felipe, studies in the field have
been sporadic. It was only in the 1990s that new
systematic projects, generally associated rescue archaeology (such as the widening of Santiagos subway service or the excavations at the cemetery of Pampilla),
took place.
There are other case studies of colonial cities in
South America. For instance, it is important to consider the investigations of Monika Therrien in
Bogota, Carlos Lopez and Marta Cano Echeverri in
Pereira (Colombia), Ross Jamieson in Cuenca (Ecuador), and Jose Mara Cruxent in Cubagua (the most
ancient colonial city of Venezuela).
Jesuitical missions Investigations on Jesuitical missions (particularly, in the area surrounding the limits
of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil) date back to
exploratory trips headed by Argentinean researcher
Juan Bautista Ambrosetti in the early years of the
twentieth century. Nevertheless, in spite of their magnificence and importance, missions were not considered by archaeological projects until the 1980s.
At that time, Beatriz Rovira conducted her PhD
project applying analytical models proposed by
Stanley South and Bernard Fontana to the study of

Jesuitical villages. She focused her work on Nuestra

Senora de la Candelaria Mission. Her goal was to
study the expansion of European societies over guarani populations. As a conclusion, she proposed the
existence of a village despotic or communitarian
despotic mode of production in the missions during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the
1980s, Brazil developed new archaeological projects
in Jesuitical villages. In this way, Arno Kern offered
an overview of the historical, ethnographical, and cultural nature of guarani groups who lived in reductions.
At the present time several archaeologists are
working in the missions, taking part in restoration
activities or ethno-archaeological investigations.
Colonial Archaeology: Other Subjects

Archaeology of ethnicity Since the expansion of

post-processual theoretical frameworks, the discipline started to discuss the role of social minorities
in history. We refer to ethnic, age, and gender groups
who were not considered by official narratives. In this
context, the analysis of African American populations became relevant in South American historical
archaeology. Without the shadow of a doubt, the
most important project developed on the subject
was the study of Palmares Quilombo (Alagoas,
Brazil), which constituted a long-lasting example of
slave resistance in the American continent. This project was directed by Pedro Funari, Charles Orser, Jr.,
and Michael Rowlands during the 1990s. The results
obtained by these professionals allowed them to
discuss new problems in South American Historical
Archaeology, such as identity, material culture (understood as an active element in the construction and
negotiation of identities), public archaeology, and
social use of the past.
Camila Agostini was one of the first archaeologists
to study African pipe collections excavated in the
region of Vassouras (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), as well
as the permanence of African cultural traditions in
present Brazilian society. Another researcher interested in studying African American groups in this
case, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina was
architect Daniel Schavelzon. In his book Buenos
Aires Negra, he analyzed Buenos Aires archaeological collections in order to distinguish a characteristic
African type of artifacts. He also took note of the
importance of African American ethnic groups
nowadays, almost invisible in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. On the other hand,
Terrance Weik worked with the idea of African diaspora in Latin America. In his opinion, archaeological
research focused on maroon and slave societies has
contributed to broaden the understanding of complex
processes of cultural production.

ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology 385

Interest in ethnicity does not exclusively refer

to African American groups, but to diverse postcontact identities, including relationships between
conquerors and conquered societies, usually analyzed
by an archaeology of contact. In general, most studies conducted in colonial urban centers and religious
missions consider these problems of investigation.
Nevertheless, there are other projects which deal
with contact at a regional level, such as Rafael Gonis
studies in Neuquen (Argentina), Alicia Tapias in
la Pampa (Argentina), Franz Scaramelli and Kay
Tarbles in Orinoco (Venezuela), among many others.
In recent years, some archaeologists adopted an
ethno-historical perspective to analyze ethnic processes of integration and transformation. These investigations often use written documents as their most
important source of evidence, considering material
culture as a mere correlate of hypothesis generated
by other media.
Archaeology of mining sites Investigations in historical mining sites have traditionally discussed strategies of economic exploitation including extractive
techniques or site organization and, on rare occasions, ideological and social aspects of workers daily
life. Nowadays, archaeology of mining sites is attracting archaeologists attention more than ever.
In Brazil, investigations on the subject have
mainly focused on a series of structures known as
encanados, which consist of stone alignments used
during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
centuries to divert water courses in search of gold.
Some years ago, Marcos Torres de Souza developed
an archaeological project to analyze the social construction of space in an urban mining center in Goias.
At present, Carlos Magno Guimaraes and the members of his team are studying several systems of
mining exploitation in the area of Minas Gerais.
Their objective is to discuss production and daily
life in colonial mining communities.
One of the first antecedents of mining archaeology
in Argentina was Humberto Lagiglias work on colonial mineral exploitation in Mendoza. At present,
Vctor Durand is studying nineteenth-century mineral
production in the same area. In the case of Chile,
Bente Bittmann has headed the only archaeological
study concerned with analyzing the nitrate plants
which flourished throughout Atacama Desert from
the late 1800s to the 1940s.
Archaeology of wine production This subject was
mainly taken into account by Prudente Rice in Peruvian
sites. Wine cellars, kilns, and other structures were
excavated to study wine production during Spanish
colonial period. Some time before Rices investigations,
another group of American archaeologists, including

Collin Beck, Eric Deeds, Shelia Pozorski, and Thomas

Pozorsky studied traffic routes in the region.
Archaeology of fortifications The colonial period
might be characterized by the need to protect conquered territories from aboriginal or other European
groups. As a consequence, thousands of fortifications
were built along coastlines with the aim of protecting
newly founded cities. Other forts, even though in lower
proportions numerically, were established in the continent. Many of these structures were excavated, and
some of them were restored to be used as tourist attractions. Marcos Albuquerque is probably the most prominent South American archaeologist in this field of
study. Since the 1970s, this archaeologist and a group
of collaborators have excavated several fortifications in
the northeastern area of Brazil.
Archaeology of materials In order to study a specific period or social group from an archaeological perspective, it is important to know and identify its
cultural remains. Having this objective in mind,
archaeologists created several typologies and classifications, which, in the case of colonial artifacts, took
into account the information given by different kinds
of written documents (from inventories to paintings
or photographs). Until the end of the 1980s, Kathleen
Deagan, John Goggin, and Robert Lister and Florence
Listers works were used as the basic bibliography for
the classification of archaeological materials in South
America.
After the development of several historical projects
in the region, local classifications of archaeological
remains were produced by different researches, such
as Daniel Schavelzon, Marcos Albuquerque, Fernanda
Tocchetto, and Monika Therrien. On the other hand,
hundreds of papers were published with the results of
the analyses performed on specific types of materials
mainly glass, china, and metal (Figure 2).
Archaeology of South American Modern Society

In this section, we discuss different problems of

investigation regarding the construction of modern
societies and national states in the area. Among
them, we consider the expansion of country boundaries towards the end of the nineteenth century, the
appearance and consolidation of the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie, industrial archaeology, twentiethcentury archaeology, and archaeology of repression.
Since the 1990s, and generally under the postprocessualist umbrella, archaeology of modern
society has been one of the topics that has attracted
more attention among researchers.

386 ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology

Figure 2 Nineteenth-century whiteware recovered from archaeological excavations in Buenos Aires.

Figure 3 Archaeological excavations at Club Atletico clandestine center of detention (Buenos Aires).

Archaeology of discourses, practices, and identities

Without social identity there is no society. As a
consequence, to understand modern society it
becomes necessary to have an idea of the changes
experienced in the use of objects and the construction
of new identities including ethnicity, status, gender,
and age in different times and spaces. These transformations express new hierarchies and power relationships. Interest in material culture and identity
forces archaeologists to develop investigations
concerned with discussing the singularities of local
contexts within the process of capitalist expansion. It
also makes it possible to deconstruct macro-identities
generated by hegemonic discourses, meaning white
occidental discourses, rescuing the multiple identities
on which modern South American society was built
and still works.
One of the most outstanding studies within this
theoretical framework is currently conducted by
Tania Andrade Lima. This archaeologist analyzed
the conformation of bourgeoisie and gender relationships during nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, as
well as food consumption, hygiene, and mortuary
practices. Other investigations which deserve to be
mentioned are conducted by Fernanda Tocchetto,
who studies Porto Alegres society; Claudia Plens,
who takes into account the organization of space in
San Pablos nineteenth-century workers villages;
Monika Therrien, who considers the structuring of
consume in Bogota; Andres Zarankin, who analyzes
transformations in domestic and scholar architecture
in Buenos Aires; and Melisa Salerno, who discusses
the diversity of dress practices in modern society.

researchers is the expansion of national states internal boundaries during the second half of the nineteenth century. In Argentina, several forts have been
excavated with the aim of understanding conquer
strategies over aboriginal populations and their
territories, as well as ethnic relationships between
aboriginals and white groups. For instance, we
can mention Rafael Gonis investigations in Fuerte
Blancagrande (Buenos Aires) and Facundo Gomez
Romeros in Fortn Minana (Buenos Aires).

Archaeology of the expansion of national boundaries

Another subject which is gaining importance among

Archaeology of repression Archaeology in South

America has proved its political commitment with
human rights causes. Particularly, it has supplied
tools for the study and elucidation of dictatorships
consequences in the region. The Equipo Argentino de
Antropologa Foresense (EAAF) gives us a clear example. Excavating common graves in cemeteries and
army bases (not only in Argentina, but also in several
countries of the continent) it was able to shed light on
the killing of thousands of people during military
regimes, giving back the remains to their families.
At present, different archaeological projects are
excavating clandestine centers of detention (Figures 3
and 4). With that aim, they seek to construct a material
memory of genocide, analyze repressive strategies
expressed in spatial organization, and study unnoticed
practices of resistance.
Underwater archaeology It is worth noting the
development of underwater archaeology (with a historical orientation) in South America. It was not until
the 1990s that this field became a serious part of
archaeology in some South American countries.
Today, two particular projects stand out for their
capacity and work. They are directed by Dolores

ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology 387

Figure 4 Picture painted by survivors at an archaeologically

excavated clandestine center of detention.

Elkin (Argentina) and Gilson Rambelli (Brazil). These

researchers and their collaborators have excavated
dozens of shipwrecks from different time periods,
offering valuable information on consumption,
goods transport, ships traffic, and sailors daily life.

Funari P and Zarankin A (eds.) (2004) Arqueologa Historica en

America del Sur: los desafos del siglo XXI. Bogota: Uniandes.
Funari P, Zarankin A and Stovel E (eds.) (2005) Global Archaeological Theory: Contextual Voices and Contemporary Thoughts.
New York: Kluwer/Plenum.
Funari P and Zarankin A (eds.) (2006) Arqueologa de la Represion
y la Resistencia en America Latina en la Era de las Dictaduras
(Decadas de 19601980). Cordoba: Brujas.
Schavelzon D (2000) The Historical Archaeology of Buenos Aires:
A City at the End of the World. New York: Kluwer.
Tocchetto F, Oliveira A, Cappelletti A, Symanski L, and Ozorio S
(2001) A Faianca Fina em Porto Alegre: Vestgios Arqueologicos
de uma Cidade. Porto Alegre: Unidade/SMC.
Zanettini P (2002) Arqueologia e Reconstituicao Monumental do
Parque Estadual de Canudos. Salvador: Centro Euclydes da
Cunha.
Zarankin A and Senatore M (eds.) (2002) Arqueologia da Sociedade Moderna na America do Sul. Buenos Aires: Del Tridente.

Inca Archaeology
Michael A Malpass, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Conclusion
Nowadays, South American historical archaeology is
fully integrated with the investigation agenda of the
region. As a matter of fact, almost every meeting in
archaeology offers the opportunity to attend a symposium on historical archaeology. On the other hand,
historical production has been intensified and archaeologists have been able to spread their investigations
out from the continent. In spite of these achievements, South American historical archaeology is still
searching for its own identity. Particularly, it is trying
to transform itself into a tool of social change, which
might be able to construct a critical history of the
exploitation and poverty of the region.
See also: Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in
Mexico; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Historical
Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Urban
Archaeology.

Further Reading
Albuquerque M and Lucena V (1988) Forte Real do Bom Jesus:
Resgate Arqueologico de um Sitio Historico. Recife: CEPE.
Andrade Lima T (1993) Arqueologia Historica no Brasil: Balanco
Bibliografico (19601991). Anais do Museu Paulista: Historia
e Cultura Material, Nova Serie 1: 225262.
Funari P (1997) Archaeology, history and historical archaeology in
South America. International Journal of Historical Archaeology
1: 137148.

Glossary
Acllacunas Conquered women who worked full time for the
Incas doing a variety of domestic and/or religious activities.
Ayllu The basic political unit of pre-Inca and Inca life, these
were essentially extended family groups but they could adopt
non-related members, giving individual families more variation
and security of the land that they farmed.
Chasquis (or chaskis) Message carriers who relayed
information from anywhere in the Incan empire.
Huaca A sacred place in the landscape.
Mita Obligatory labor service owed the Incas by their conquered
people.
Mitima A person separated from her/his place of birth, typically
a colonist moved by the Incas for economic or political reasons.
Panaca A corporate group consisting of a dead king, his wives
and descendants, exept for the son who succeeded him as king.
Quipu (or khipu) Recording devices used in the Inca Empire and
its predecessor societies in the Andean region. A quipu usually
consists of colored spun and plied thread from llama or alpaca
hair or cotton cords with numeric and other values encoded by
knots in a base 10 positional system.

Introduction
Environments

The Incas were the last and greatest civilization to

exist in South America before the arrival of European
conquerors in the sixteenth century. They both drew
on institutions of the existing cultures that they conquered and developed their own unique practices

388 ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology

that allowed them to create the most extensive empire

in the New World. Their rule extended from the modern border between Ecuador and Colombia to south
central Chile, including large segments of Ecuador,
Peru, Bolivia, northwest Argentina, and Chile (see
Figure 1).
To appreciate the Inca achievement in conquering
this vast area, one has to note that western South
America includes many distinct environments, from
coastal deserts to tropical forests. These environments can be grouped into three major types, highland, arid coast, and tropical forest. The highland
is a broad term for the regions that lie above 1000 m.
For much of central Peru, the heartland of the Inca
empire, the Andes mountains run in northsouth
trending chains, with deep valleys separating the
high peaks of the chains. Altitudinal variation can be
extreme, with the bottoms of the valleys lying at altitudes of around 1500 m while the adjacent peaks
are well above 6500 m. Rainfall occurs during the
southern hemisphere summer, between October and
May though the number of months and quantity of
rain is variable from north to south. During the austral
winter, skies are sunny, but night temperatures may
drop below zero, especially in the higher altitudes.
Because of the proximity of the area to the equator,
day temperatures can still reach relatively high levels,
making the daily temperature variation in the winter
quite high.
One distinctive part of the highland zone is the
region known as the Altiplano, a high, flat region
that lies in southern Peru and northern Bolivia, centered on Lake Titicaca. This entire region lies near or
above 4000 m, so is above the tree line, making it a
vast grassland. The region is near the limits of plant
agriculture, but it is ideal for the herding of camelids, llamas and alpacas. The arid coast extends
along the western margin of South America from
the PeruEcuador border to south central Chile, and
from sea level to roughly an altitude of 1000 m. This
zone is wide in far northern Peru, narrows considerably through central Peru, and then broadens out
again in southern Peru and northern Chile. The
Atacama Desert in the latter region is the worlds
driest, with less than 10 mm of precipitation falling
yearly. Cutting across this arid region is a series of
rivers that have their sources in the western cordillera
of the Andes. In central Peru, these rivers are approximately 2530 km apart, but the intervalley distance
widens in both far northern Peru and in Chile. The
rivers are also much more deeply incised in southern
Peru and Chile, restricting agriculture to a narrow
strip on either side of the rivers.
Rainfall does not typically fall in the arid coastal
zone. During the winter, fogs come in over the coast

from the ocean, blanketing the region below 800 m.

During the summer, the warmer coast causes the cool
onshore moisture to rise against the western slopes of
the Andes. Because rain originates in eastern South
America, the Andes catch most of the rain before it
can reach the western coast, which also contributes to
the latters aridity.
The third environmental zone is the tropical
rainforest. This region extends along the eastern
flanks of the Andes from Ecuador to Bolivia. The
rainforest proper lies below 300 m in altitude, but
the zone that extends upward from that altitude to
around 1500 m is called montana, a thickly forested
region. High year-round temperatures and summer
rainfall make this region one with very high
biological diversity.
People

The societies that occupied these three environments

were as varied as the environments. There were
simple fishing communities in the Lake Titicaca area
of southern Peru, and powerful state-level societies
such as the Chimu of the north coast of Peru. These
represent the extremes, and in most areas, both the
early Spanish documents and archaeological work
done indicate that societies were organized into
groups of villages under the control of a powerful
chief or chiefs. Some of these could be quite large,
such as the Colla and Lupaca of the Altiplano, while
most were considerably smaller.
Coastal communities of northern and central Peru
appear to have been at the higher end of the complexity scale during the period just prior to Inca expansion. As noted above, the Chimu was an empire that
stretched from northern Peru to the central coast,
near modern Lima. On the central coast, the Chincha
society developed a hierarchical organization that
was based on highly specialized occupations. In contrast, the societies of southern Peru and Chile were
small and lacked significant political integration.
Chronology

The period of Inca expansion occurred just prior to

the appearance of Spanish explorers along the western coast. The generally stated dates for the empire
are from CE 14281532. These dates are from the
Inca king list that was recorded by Spanish officials
after their conquest of the Incas. They represent a best
guess at the beginning of Inca expansion, as the Incas
did not keep track of a persons age. Archaeological
work in recent decades suggests the conquests
began earlier than this, but perhaps decades, not centuries, earlier. All evidence points to a relatively rapid
expansion.

ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology 389

In the most commonly used central Andean chronological scheme, the period of Inca expansion is
called the Late Horizon. A horizon is a period when
a large area displays evidence of a common influence,
be it a religion or conquest. The Late Horizon succeeds the Late Intermediate Period, the time when
there was regional development of local polities
but little large-scale integration. This period dates
between CE 10001428.

Sources on the Inca

Ethnohistory

No pre-Hispanic culture in South America, including

the Incas, developed a writing system, so there are no
indigenous records of what life was like prior to the
arrival of Europeans. When the Spaniards arrived
along the coast of South America in CE 1532, the
Inca empire was at its largest extent, though in the
throes of a civil war between two half-brothers (see
below). During and after their conquest of the Incas,
Spanish officials and priests began to record information about the Incas, both through observations and
interviews with surviving Inca individuals. The important point about this is that the history that was
recorded was the Inca version, and that of the dominant faction of the Incas. There are relatively few
documents that deal with non-Incas, although as
time wore on, litigation brought by non-Incas began
to show up in court records. In addition, there are
some chronicles that discuss what life was like before
the Incas came. Still, what we know from these early
Spanish documents is one version, and one that was
an oral tradition as well. When Inca society is described below, it is well that the reader remembers
that this is a skewed view; if a history had been
written by a conquered people, or a member of the
lower social groups, it might have looked very different (see Americas, South: Inca Ethnohistory).
Another drawback to using ethnohistorical documents is the limitations of the writers. Spanish officials were writing about a culture that was very foreign
to them, and they described it in terms that they understood from their own experiences. They also chose to
write about those aspects of the Inca society that were
important to them, like economic activities, politics,
and religion. Daily life and material culture were less
important. Spanish writers could also be opinionated,
and take the sides of certain factions of the Inca, a point
noted by recent authors on the Incas. Still, these documents provide a wealth of information that is not available about the earlier cultures, despite the cautions
needed in taking them as the truth. DAltroy provides
a useful guide to the best of the sources on the Inca.

Archaeology

A complementary source of information on the Incas

is the archaeological record. Archaeology can provide
information about those aspects of culture that ethnohistorians neglect. What kinds of tools, houses,
settlements, items of personal adornment that cultures used are the principal data of archaeology.
Less accessible are things like religious beliefs, social
structure, marriage patterns, and language. As is evident in other articles in this encyclopedia, the archaeological record has its own drawbacks, the most
obvious being that the understanding we gain from
it about past cultures is fundamentally one of interpretation. Scholars can look at the same evidence and
come to different conclusions. Much of this is due to
the incompleteness of the record, but some is also
due to the viewpoint of the archaeologist. Archaeology provides a good test of the ethnohistorical
record. The book entitled Provincial Inca. Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Assessment of the Impact
of the Inca State provides several case studies of
how the two sources of information used together
provide a better understanding of the nature of the
Inca impact on its vassal polities than either source
individually.

Historical Overview of the Inca Expansion

Early Inca History

Most early Spanish chroniclers agree that the Inca

expansion occurred during the reigns of three Inca
kings: Pachakuti Inca Yupanki, Thupa Inca Yupanki,
and Wayna Qhapaq, kings 9, 10, and 11 on the
conventional king list. (Inca names are spelled using
Quechua orthography, while other terms use more
traditional Spanish orthography.) It is with the reign
of Pachakuti, designated as occurring around CE
1428, that the empire is said to begin. Their exploits
will be recounted later. What is much less certain is
what happened prior to this time, and in fact what the
origins of the Inca as a distinct political and ethnic
entity were.
Inca oral traditions state that the Incas were
founded by the first king, Manqo Qhapaq, who
emerged from a cave in the town of Pacariqtambo
along with his three brothers and their wives, who, in
some accounts, were also sisters. They traveled north
to find a place to settle along with other people who
came out of adjacent caves. When a golden rod was
flung into the air and embedded itself deep in the
ground, the Incas knew they had found their new
home. They proceeded to displace the inhabitants of
the region, and set up their capital of Cuzco. The
history of the next seven kings is one of local affairs,

390 ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology

often mentioning conflicts with groups nearby. Contradictory reports in different chroniclers accounts
indicate that the actual triumphs and defeats that
occurred for these early Incas may never be known.
It is precisely at this point that archaeology
becomes useful. Two major pottery styles, Imperial
Inca and Killke, or pre-Inca, are associated with sites
in the Cuzco region. The former was associated with
the last four Inca kings, beginning with Pachakuti.
The Killke was said to date earlier, though it was only
later after radiocarbon dating was invented that
the dates of approximately CE 1000 for this style
were assigned. The general idea was that the Killke
style was associated with the first eight kings, and
the imperial style with the later kings.
Archaeological research by Brian Bauer and Alan
Covey in the Cuzco Valley and regions to the north
and south has advanced our understanding of early
Inca political history beyond the Spanish documents.
In the Cuzco valley during the Late Intermediate
Period, there are a few much larger settlements
among the smaller ones, indicating a developed political landscape. In addition, the sites in the vicinity of
Cuzco are located on low hills or in the valley itself,
suggesting little concern for defense.
Outside the Cuzco Valley, Bauer and Coveys work
indicates that some regions, like Paruro, south of
Cuzco, were incorporated early, without any evidence
of conflict. Sites are not located in defensible positions, nor is there evidence of a marked change from
pre-Inca to Inca times. Other areas, like the region of
the Quilliscaches to the northwest, apparently fought
the Incas until they were subjugated. Here, fortified
sites are located on high ridge tops for defense. Taken
together, the archaeological and ethnohistorical
evidence argues for an earlier political development
of the Killke people around Cuzco. The conclusion of
these researchers is that the Incas used different strategies of coercion, alliance building, and marriage
exchange to consolidate the region around Cuzco
before they began their imperial expansion outwards. The lessons they learned set the stage for the
imperial expansions of the fifteenth, or perhaps late
fourteenth, century.
The Inca Expansion

Most sources on the Incas suggest that a critical battle

fought at the capital of Cuzco between the Incas and
their powerful neighbors from the west, the Chanka,
was the critical point that set the Incas on the road to
expansion. In this battle, Wiraqocha Inca and other
lords had abandoned Cuzco in the face of the Chanka
approach, and it was the prince Inca Yupanki who
rallied support to drive the Chankas away. After the

battle, Inca Yupanki took the political power from

his father and also the new name Pachakuti Inca
Yupanki.
Upon securing the throne, Pachakuti traveled
south to secure the lands around Lake Titicaca, no
doubt to prevent an attack from the powerful groups
who lived there. Some sources suggest alliances with
the groups in this region were already made by
Wiraqocha Inca, in which case, it is possible that
Pachakuti formalized the alliances. Others state that
Pachakuti conquered them. He then conquered
other groups farther south and east, before returning
to Cuzco.
Subsequently, Pachakuti and his generals conquered north along the spine of the Andes, bringing
the agricultural core of the central Andes into the
empire. Sometime during this period, the mighty
Chimu were defeated, and much of the central and
north coasts were brought into the empire. At some
point the chroniclers state that he turned the armies
controls over to his designated heir, Thupa Inca, and
returned to reorganize the capital of Cuzco. Upon
his fathers death, Thupa Inca assumed the fringe
(a tassel worn on the forehead as symbol of the kingship) around CE 1470, and continued the expansion
north with his generals into Ecuador, founding a second capital at Tumipampa. Around the time of his
fathers death, Thupa began a series of expeditions
into the eastern lowlands that generally were unsuccessful, due to the inhabitants habits of not facing the
Inca armies head on, but by fighting and fleeing into
the jungle. During one of these, the Altiplano groups
staged a major rebellion, which brought Thupa Inca
out of the jungle to face the threat. Over a series of
campaigns and many years, the Qolla and Lupaka
were defeated. Thupa then continued the conquests
southward, annexing much of southeastern Bolivia
and northwestern Argentina, then crossing over the
Andes into Chile. The southward expansion stopped
at the Maule River, either due to Thupa Incas desire
to return to Cuzco after several years absence or
sufficient resistance from groups south of the river.
Much of the central and northern parts of Chile were
conquered on the trip north, either by Thupa himself
or his generals. Whether the far south coast of Peru
and far northwestern Chile fell at this time or some
other is not certain. There are relatively few ethnohistorical documents that deal with this region, and the
archaeology is likewise sparse.
Sometime during the final decade of the fifteenth
century, Thupa Inca died and his heir, Wayna
Qhapaq, succeeded him. This eleventh king spent
most of his rule in the northern provinces, first subduing the fiercely resistant Chachapoyas of the northern Peruvian montana, and then fighting the groups

ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology 391

of central and northern Ecuador. It took him decades

to move the northern border to its final location near
modern Colombia. Sometime around CE 1528, he
contracted a virulent disease, probably an introduced
European one that had moved down into South
America from Mexico, and died, along with his designated heir. This set up a war of succession between two
rivals to the fringe, to be discussed in the final section.
Basic military gear consisted of spears, spear
throwers, shields, slings, and war clubs. Bows and
arrows, while known, were apparently not used in
most instances. Andean warfare was mainly fought
by hand-to-hand combat, so the group with the largest army was likely to emerge victorious. After a
certain time, the Inca almost certainly could field a
very large number of warriors, enough to tip the scale
in their favor. They also had a series of excellent
generals to lead their armies, and the chronicles are
full of the stories of how these generals won battles
through skillful strategies, trickery, and other means.
The Inca also practiced a carrot-and-stick approach
to conquest. They would send emissaries into regions
to be annexed, offering the terms of subjugation. The
local groups could either submit or be conquered, and
it is apparent that in some circumstances, diplomacy
won the day.
The other factor that allowed the Incas to achieve
their imperial success was their effective administrative system. It is one thing to conquer a large and
powerful political enemy; it is quite another to keep
that enemy subjugated and doing the activities you
demand of them. The system to be described below,
whose development is attributed to Pachakuti Inka,
apparently was largely successful in this goal, though
rebellions and resistance were frequent.

The Incas of the Early Sixteenth Century

The following sections are a composite reconstruction of the way the Inca empire existed at its height.
Due to the large amount of archaeological work done
on Inca occupations in their provinces, variation in
Inca practices can be identified. It is now clear that
the monolithic view of the Inca as having a one-sizefits-all imperial rule is incorrect. The Incas tailored
their ideal model of statecraft to the particular circumstances of individual conquered ethnicities. Still,
discussing the model as it has been generated from the
ethnohistorical records is useful as a starting point.
Social Structure

The basic unit of Inca society and most others that they
conquered was the household. This was a residential
unit that lived together, and typically consisted of a

nuclear family and unmarried adults. Households

belonged to ayllus, groups of families that shared a
common ancestor and place of origin, and often shared
labor in subsistence activities. Ayllus were typically
grouped into two parts, in Quechua, the language of
the Incas, called hanan (upper) and hurin (lower).
These divisions were largely for ritual purposes, though
they also allowed larger groups within a community to
participate and divide labor equitably, such as to clean
out an irrigation canal or reservoir.
For the Incas of the Cuzco region, social structure
and status were based on the relationship to the
founding kings. Each king founded a new ayllu that
included the king, his wives, and their children, then
subsequently, all their childrens children, etc. The former kings ayllu became a panaca, a kind of corporate
group charged with taking care of the kings mummy
and all his estates and possessions. This occurred
because the kings were semi-divine, so required their
material goods even after death. The ten royal panaca,
each with its kings mummy, were the highest elite in
Inca society.
Below the ten royal panaca were ten non-royal
ayllus, which were said by some chroniclers to be the
descendants of the people who accompanied Manqo
Qhapaq from Pacariqtambo to Cuzco. They enjoyed
the status of being elites in Inca society, which allowed
them certain privileges not available to commoners.
A final elite group in Inca society consisted of the
Incas by Privilege. These were ayllus of ethnic groups
who lived in the vicinity of Cuzco, and had been drawn
into the Incas sphere of influence early on. They were
treated as Inca nobility, and were therefore able to
serve in specific posts in the empire, which is one
possible reason for their elevation to Inca status (see
below). Below the Inca elites were a level of conquered
leaders, called curacas, who served posts in the Inca
political hierarchy. They had duties that were related to
the numbers of households under their command, but
the more powerful ones had a status that could rank
nearly as high as an Inca by Privilege. They could own
land, have servants and wear particular kinds of high
status clothing. Finally, at the bottom of the social
hierarchy were the commoners, the great mass of conquered people with no political leadership positions.
Political Structure

The Incas called their empire Tawantinsuyu, the Four

Parts Together. The empire was divided into four
parts, Chinchaysuyu, the northern part, Collasuyu,
the southern part, and Antisuyu and Cuntisuyu, the
eastern and western parts, respectively (Figure 1). As
can be seen, the parts were highly unequal, both in
terms of geographic area and population. The capital

392 ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology

Chinchaysuyu

Antisuyu
Cuzco

Cuntisuyu

Collasuyu

500 km

Figure 1 Map of Inca empire at its greatest extent, with four

divisions (suyus) included.

was Cuzco, the navel of the universe, located at the

intersection of the four parts.
Within each suyu, there was a series of provinces,
each corresponding roughly to the territory of a conquered group. However, the Inca used a decimal system of administration, and each province was
supposed to have either 20 000 or 30 000 households.
If a conquered ethnicity had that number, they could
form a single province. If it were smaller, it might be
lumped with other small ethnicities to make a province; if it were larger, it could be broken into more
than one province.
Administratively, the political hierarchy was also
organized in decimal units. At the top was the king,
the ruler of the entire empire. Below him were four
apos, or suyu heads. Each province had a governor, or
tocricoq. Below the governor were heads of different
decimal units of households, in descending order of

10 000, 5000, 1000, 500, 100, 50, and 10. These

were the curacas mentioned in the previous section.
It is in the administrative hierarchy that the Incas
combined social and political aspects. The curacas
were hereditary leaders who served as the decimal
official for the appropriate sized number of households that he had ruled before the Inca conquest, if
possible. The most able son of a curaca followed his
father in that role. However, this only applied to the
curacas; the apos were typically close relatives of the
king, brothers or uncles, and this was the one position
that was not hereditary. Because the intrigues surrounding the designation of a new heir were considerable, the king needed apos who he knew he could
trust. Since the descendants of previous kings apos
might be in opposing factions, this position had to be
one made by appointment. Governors were typically
of the Inca class and were appointed at first, but then
the position became hereditary.
The large number of political officials that were required by this administrative system suggest the reason for the inclusion of local leaders: there simply
were not enough capable members of the Inca elite
to fill all the positions. With approximately 80 provinces in the empire, this would have meant thousands
of individuals were needed. This might also indicate
a rationale for the Inca by Privilege group, to help
fill the higher levels of the bureaucracy with loyal
members of the Inca elite.
The inclusion of local lords was also an effective
means to rule, because it meant a local, familiar leader would be in charge of fulfilling the responsibilities
of the empire. Local leaders were required to learn
Quechua, and their sons, who would inherit their
positions, were taken to Cuzco for training in imperial policies, including Quechua, quipu use (see below)
and other duties. When their fathers died, the Incas
returned new leaders who had better experience and
skills to do the empires bidding.
Economic Structure

DAltroy and Earle discuss two kinds of finance systems that were employed by the Incas, staple finance
and wealth finance. The former involves the production of food and basic services that allow the empire
to maintain itself. The latter refers to special kinds of
goods, luxury items mostly, that are restricted to the
elite segments of society. Understanding the different
ways these two financial systems operated is a key to
comprehending the Incas success at empire building.
Upon the conquest of a group, the land was divided
into three parts, one for the use of the state, one for
the Inca religion and one remained for the use of
the local population. Camelid herds were divided

ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology 393

similarly. It is likely that in many cases this policy was

implemented slowly, by using the local population
to increase productivity through the construction of
new fields and irrigation systems. One part of the
conquered peoples responsibility to the Incas was to
work the fields of the state and religion first, assuring
that the productivity required by the empire was fulfilled. Collectively, this staple finance production is
often called an agricultural tax on the conquered
people, though it could also be called tribute.
Another part of the responsibility owed to the Incas
was labor, an obligatory amount that was called
mita. Every household owed the Incas mita every
year: this was always done in rotation, and directed
through the local curaca. What the person did
depended on the needs of the empire and the skills
of the individual. Much mita was fulfilled by simply
delivering food from its point of origin to an Inca
administrative center. Many men served their mita
in the army, and it was this system that allowed the
Incas to field the large military that achieved success
in warfare. Other jobs included construction worker,
wood collector, potter, toolmaker as well as many
other occupations. All households were required to
provide one piece of clothing to the empire as well.
This cloth was used by the army and other state
officials.
An important feature of mita was that a person
simply showed up to do the required work. All the
necessary materials and tools were provided by the
state, and food and drink were provided as well.
Thus, no one was required to provide anything of
her/his own. When ones rotation of work was done,
one returned home and was replaced by someone else.
While much work was locally done, other activities,
such as warfare, might require a person to be gone for
long periods. To reduce the negative effect this might
have on agricultural productivity, other community
members were required to do the fieldwork of mita
laborers.
All of the above refers to the staple finance of the
empire. Wealth finance was conducted in a different
way. Luxury items, such as jewelry, fine cloth, high
quality pottery, and gold and silver objects, were
produced in workshops controlled by the Incas.
Many of these were in Inca administrative centers,
built along the Inca highway as service centers for the
empire. The best craftspeople were taken to Cuzco to
work directly for the Inca elite of the capital.
Regarding craft production, most crafts were produced either in the households of conquered people,
or in the administrative centers. There were some
specialized communities where everyone worked in
one craft, such as the weaving center at Milliraya
northwest of Lake Titicaca. Crafts were generally

standardized, both in forms and decorations. Cloth

was the most important craft, and three different
qualities were made. Decorations included geometric
designs, and checkerboard patterns on the finest
grade. Pottery had several basic forms, among them
the aryballos, or storage vessel; plates with duck
heads and tails, for eating; and beakers for drinking.
Designs were largely geometric, as with the textiles,
including diamonds and triangles, the fern or feather
motif, and bands of decoration separated by large
open zones of color. Silver and gold metallurgy was
mostly for jewelry and eating utensils, such as plates
and cups. Small silver and gold llama figurines were
often included in important burials (see below).
Copper and bronze were also used, the latter for tools.
All of this economic activity generated enormous
amounts of information. In the absence of a writing
system, the Incas used a device known as a quipu to
maintain their records. A quipu is a system of knotted
strings that hang from a central cord. The location of
the knots, the number of knots and the color of the
string all provided information about what was being
tracked and where it was from. Special individuals, called quipu camayoqs, were in charge of this
important activity.
Special Categories of People

Both staple and wealth finance required the development of specialized groups of individuals by the
state, groups who were full-time workers, not mita
laborers. The quipu camayoqs were one of these
groups. Yanacuna were a special group of individuals
who were attendants to the Inca elite. These people
were not just servants, but could be given positions of
responsibility as well. They were recruited from the
ranks of conquered people, though using what criteria is unknown. A particularly rebellious group, the
Chachapoyas of northern Peru, were often used as
yanacunas by the Incas, suggesting it was a way of
breaking down ethnic loyalty.
A group of women were selected from among conquered peoples at a young age to serve as acllacuna.
The women did a variety of tasks for the Incas, including food and beer preparation, spinning and
weaving of fine cloth and even entertainment. They
were schooled in special sectors of administrative
centers, and also functioned in religious activities.
Acllacuna could also be given as wives to officials as
rewards for service well done.
A final special group of workers for the Inca state
was the mitimaes. These were people living away
from their place of birth. The Inca moved groups
around their empire, both for economic and political
reasons. If a region was underutilized for food

394 ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology

production, mitimaes might be brought in to increase

it. Villages that were rebellious could be moved across
the empire to separate them from their ancestral
homes, religious places and neighbors. Such mitimaes
would also serve economic purposes, generally agricultural work. Mitimaes were not required to do
mita labor.
Inca Infrastructure

A successful empire must facilitate communications

and logistical support for its armies and outposts, and
provisions for all its subjects. This requires both food
and material to be provided along the main lines of
travel. As the empire expanded, the staple and wealth
finance systems had to be planned and developed.
Like the Romans and other Old World civilizations,
the Incas created a large road system, which at its
height included over 40 000 km of marked roadway.
The road system actually consisted of two main
trunks, a highland one and a coastal one (Figure 2).
Connecting roads linked the two across the Andes
from north to south. In swampy regions, the roadbed
was elevated by infilling with rocks and soil. Chasms
formed by rivers were crossed with suspension bridges,
and the road rose up the mountainsides with wellplaced stone steps. Along the coast where there were
fewer obstacles and the terrain was more level, the
road might have markers only indicating the direction
of the road between river valleys, with more clearly
marked entrances and exits from the valleys.
All along the highland trunk was a series of large
administrative centers that were in effect small cities.
The best preserved of these is Huanuco Pampa, located in the northern highlands west of the modern city
of Huanuco. Research there indicated the city had a
hospitality center for people coming into the city, a
large ceremonial plaza in its center, complete with an
ushnu, a platform where rituals could be conducted.
Other parts of the city included housing for mita
workers, craft workshops, an area where acllacuna
are thought to have lived and worked, and over 4000
storehouses on a hill overlooking the city. An area of
exquisitely fitted stone marks the location of the
kings quarters, a place that included baths and food
preparation areas.
The administrative centers were located where they
could draw on populations from a wide area, but
also provide goods and services for those regions.
Huanuco Pampa, for example, served five different
ethnic groups. While the usual flow of goods and
labor was into the centers, they also served as buffers
against agricultural failure. If a group suffered a severe
frost or drought, such that insufficient food was produced to feed the population, they were given food

from the storehouses, though they were supposed to

repay the food in a year of greater abundance.
The administrative centers were located several
days walks from each other along the highland
trunk. No major center has been found along the
coastal road, although there are centers like Incawasi
in the Canete Valley which was created to provide
support for the conquest of the valley. In the region of
Chile, there are very few administrative centers the
size of Huanuco Pampa, likely because the population density of conquered people was much less in this
desolate vicinity.
Located approximately every 20 km along the
roads between the major centers were tambos, smaller centers that provided some services but on a
smaller scale. Travelers along the roads, located about
one days journey apart, could stop at these centers
for food and rest.
The roads were strictly for the use of people on
official business, not just anyone. They were used
for communications, at least along the main highland
road. A system of runners, called chasquis, was used
for sending messages along the road system. Every
69 km was a small structure where the runners
stayed, and as one approached, he would call out,
and another runner would get up to hear the message,
then set out running for the next outpost. It is said a
message could be sent from Lima to Cuzco in a week,
though how messages were prevented from becoming
muddled is unclear.
Archaeology of the Provinces

The preceding information is a description of a static

system, a snapshot of the empire as it has been described by various Spanish sources. Archaeological
research in different regions has indicated that this
model is more difficult to corroborate archaeologically than one might expect. The typical indicators of
an Inca presence square houses with trapezoidal
niches and doorways, ceramics in the form of aryballos with diamond or feather patterns, finely fitted
stonework are sometimes difficult to identify. Two
examples will serve to illustrate the issues.
John and Theresa Topic found that the presence of
the Inca highway running through the province of
Huamachuco in northern Peru was the best indicator
of the Inca presence, and that new Inca settlements,
both tambos and storeroom complexes, were located
along the route. They were able to identify the provincial capital as having been located in the modern
city of Huamachuco, on several subtle architectural
and artifactual pieces of evidence. However, differentiating occupations dating to the Late Horizon, when
the Inca had conquered the region, was daunting

ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology 395

82 W.
Long.

64 W.
Long.
Guaca

Equator

Quito

Ecuador
Hatun Canar (Ingapirca)
Tomebamba (Cuenca)
Tumbez

Peru

Sechura Desert

Cajamarca
Chiquitoy
Viejo
Moche Valley
&
Chan Chan

Huanuco Pampa

Peru

Jauja

Lima
Pachacamac

Cuzco

Inkawasi
Tambo Colorado
Nasca

Pacific
Ocean

Bolivia

Vilcas
Huaman

Chala
Atico

Hatun
Colla

Chuquiabo (LA PAZ)

Chucuito
Cochabamba

Arequipa

Paria

Pica

Bolivia

Tupiza

Chile
Catarpe
San Pedro de Atacama

MT
Acay

Tilcara
Salta
La Paya

Argentina
Copiapo

Pucara de
Andagala
Chilecito

Inka Site
Ranchillos

Modern Town or City

Mendoza

Town or City over Inka Site

34 S. Lat.

0
82 W.
Long.

500
km

Santiago

Argentina
34 S. Lat.

Chile
64 W.
Long

Figure 2 The Inca road system. Reprinted from The Inka Road System, Hyslop J (1984), with permission from Elsevier.

396 ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology

because there were so few good Inca-style ceramics,

and so much continuity from earlier styles. The inclusion of ethnohistorical information allowed the
Topics to understand the subtle way that the province
was organized by the Incas, which would have been
difficult without the written sources.
Thomas Lynch identified the major Inca occupations in the region of the Atacama Desert in northern
Chile. There he found the highway was again the
major indication of Inca presence, and that Inca sites
tended to be located along it. Local settlements were
found near, but not on, the road. There were no fitted
stone constructions anywhere, and the main site,
Catarpe Tambo, had relatively few Inca ceramics. In
contrast, Inca pottery was common in tambos along
the road. The importance of Catarpe was indicated
more by the presence of architectural features such as
long halls called callancas and the orientations of
major buildings. With few ethnohistorical records for
this region, the fine nuances of imperial control were
not able to be distinguished as they could be in areas
with more documents, like Huamachuco.
Inca Religion

The Incas had a complex set of religious beliefs, including a host of deities, sacred places, oracles, and
ancestor worship. Like many ancient societies, life
was a set of actions dictated in large part by religious
beliefs. No major decision was made without consulting with the priests about possible outcomes.
The Incas, like many of their contemporaries, had a
belief that founding ancestors played a role in the
daily affairs of their descendants. For the Incas,
these ancestors were the early kings, and their bodies
were mummified and maintained by their panacas. As
semi-divine, the kings were brought out at important
ceremonies, given food and drink, and treated as if
they were alive. The ancestors were important in
providing good harvests, so their veneration was particularly important to assure the food supply. The
major deities of the Incas included a creator god,
Wiracocha, Inti, the sun god, and Mama Quilla, the
moon goddess, Inti-Illapa, the thunder god, and several celestial gods associated with stars and planets.
While Wiracocha created the world, and the other
gods, he was not a major figure of reverence, having
few if any rituals or temples dedicated to him. In
contrast, Inti appears to have been the most important god, at least during the reign of the last few kings.
Inti was the god of harvests, which explains something
of his importance, and also of warfare. The sun temple
in Cuzco, the Coricancha, was the most important
temple in the empire, and all administrative centers

likewise had sun temples. Mama Quilla, the moon

goddess, was the wife of Inti, and was served by priestesses. Inti Illapa was the god of thunder and lightning,
and was associated with rainfall.
Another aspect of Inca religion, and one shared
again with many of their contemporaries, was the
idea that certain places, called huacas, were sacred.
Many things could be huacas springs, large rocks,
tombs, fields, mountains and not all of them were
sacred to all people. Huacas could be of local or
national importance. The Incas linked many of the
huacas in the vicinity of Cuzco into a complex sacred
landscape called the ceque system. This system
was a set of imaginary lines that originated at the
Coricancha and radiated out in all four directions.
According to Brian Bauer, the lines were not necessarily straight, although that might have been the ideal.
The lines were also associated with the four suyus
and linked huacas; particular social groups in Cuzco
conducted rituals at the huacas along the lines. The
schedule of rituals defined a complicated calendar
that even experts do not understand well.
In addition to the huacas near Cuzco, there were
many others spread across the empire. Many high
peaks were considered the homes of powerful deities
by local people, and the Incas often co-opted these by
placing shrines at their summits. Especially in the
southern part of the empire, special shrines including
human sacrifices of children and adults, were located
at the summits of the highest mountains. Oracles
were also important parts of the Inca and pre-Inca
religions of the Andes. There were four major oracles,
including one near Cuzco, where people could go to
get advice. The Oracle of Pachacamac, located near
modern Lima, was an ancient one, dating at least to
CE 500. The Incas took control of it, and allowed it to
continue as an oracle, but built their own sun temple
and other structures nearby.
Rituals Great and Small

Rituals were extremely common in Inca life, and

could involve something as simple as burning some
coca leaves or as complicated as sacrificing a child after
ascending a mountain peak above 6000 m. Rituals
were conducted to assure that deities were pleased or
to ward off malevolent spirits. Some rituals were daily
events, like the offering of llamas and cloth to Inti every
morning at the Coricancha, while others were only
conducted at special occasions, like the investiture of
a new king. All rituals involved some kinds of sacrifice,
though the great majority were either llamas or guinea
pigs. Food, chicha, or corn beer, and coca were also
used, and fine cloth, seashells, gold and silver could

ASIA, EAST/Inca Archaeology 397

be used as well. The ceremony defined the material

to be sacrificed.
There was a full calendar of ceremonies marking
out the Inca year, although there were two major
festivals: Capac Raymi in December and Inti
Raymi in June. These fell on the summer and winter
solstices, respectively. Both involved several days
festivities and ceremonies, including male puberty
rites during Capac Raymi, and great displays of the
present and past rulers (in the latter case, their
mummies) during Inti Raymi. Large quantities of
llamas, chicha and coca were sacrificed to assure the
successful completion of the rituals.
One of the most important rituals was called
the Capac hucha, a ritual conducted in Cuzco, but
then in every part of the realm, to glorify the Inca
gods. Children of about ten years of age were summoned from villages all over the empire to Cuzco,
where they were dressed in the finest clothes and
paired as if they were husband and wife. They were
paraded through the streets from the Coricancha,
past the royalty, both living and dead, and to one
of the main plazas in town. Some of the children
were sacrificed to Wiracocha and Inti, then to other
gods and huacas in the vicinity of Cuzco. Priests then
took other children and items throughout the empire,
making subsequent sacrifices along the way. Particular attention was given to the powerful huacas of high
mountains, as mentioned above.
Technology

The Incas are probably best known for their extraordinary stonework, where rocks weighing many tons

were fitted together very tightly. Such stonework was

exceptional, but no less impressive were other aspects
of their technological achievements, such as their
agricultural and irrigation systems.
High-quality Inca stonework was restricted to the
most important buildings in the empire, and served to
both emphasize the functions of such structures and
the importance of the Inca system that constructed
them. Huanuco Pampa is a good example of this,
as the majority of the buildings are of fieldstone and
no great effort was put into their construction, but at
the main entry buildings and the royal residence are
found, the fitted stones and architectural embellishments, such as carved pumas, to impress the person
entering them of their importance. The Coricancha in
Cuzco has some of the best stonework in the empire, as
befits its importance in Inca ideology, and many of the
residences of the kings and their panacas also were of
finely dressed stone. The foundations of many of these
still can be seen in Cuzco, where they continue to
stand, despite five hundred years of seismic activity, a
tribute to the skills of Inca engineers.
Inca agricultural systems are equally impressive.
Everywhere the Inca went, they constructed or
reconstructed agricultural terraces to maximize productivity (Figure 3). Systems were designed to distribute water from canals many kilometers long
that came down from springs or glacial melt water
higher up and then flowed down feeder canals to the
systems. Sometimes reservoirs were built to store
water into the dry season. These systems, like the
buildings just described, continue to function to the
present day.

Figure 3 Inca agricultural system at Pisac. Note projecting rocks used as steps from one terrace to another. Photo by author.

398 ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory

The Spanish Conquest

To understand how a group of 168 Spaniards could

bring down the Inca empire, it is necessary to briefly
discuss the events leading up to their appearance.
With the death of Wayna Qhapaq and his heir from
a European disease, the empire was left with no
king. Two main rivals soon emerged, Washkar, a son
who lived in Cuzco, and Atawalpa, a son by a different mother who lived in Ecuador. Washkar sent
armies north to Ecuador to defeat Atawalpa, but the
latters armies were much better seasoned, having
spent many years in wars of expansion against
local groups. The armies of Atawalpa defeated the
forces of Washkar repeatedly, as the latter retreated
down the spine of the Andes toward Cuzco. In a final
series of battles fought outside Cuzco, Atawalpas
generals decisively defeated Washkar and took him
prisoner. In a grisly display of retribution, nearly all of
Washkars kin were killed, and Washkar himself was
brought north to face Atawalpa, who was now coming south to take control of the empire. The year
was 1532.
As Atawalpa was resting in Cajamarca, in northern
Peru, word came to him that the Spaniards had arrived and were killing and robbing the northern
coastal provinces. He sent a contingent of forces
under a loyal general to bring them to Cajamarca.
He agreed to meet them in the main plaza of the
town, a place where such meetings of important
leaders would typically occur, but also a location
that was perfect for an ambush. There were few
entry or exit streets from the plaza, and the callancas
on the sides were well suited to hiding soldiers and
horsemen. When Atawalpa and several thousand of
his personal guard arrived, they were met by a priest,
who offered Atawalpa a book of prayers. When
Atawalpa threw the book down and rose from his
litter, Pizarro gave the order to attack. In the ensuing
carnage, most of the Inca warriors were killed, and
Atawalpa was captured. Not a single Spaniard died.
Atawalpa agreed to fill a room half-full of gold and
twice fill it with silver for his ransom, an offer the
Spaniards could not refuse. As the months passed,
reinforcements arrived from Panama, and the Spaniards made exploratory trips to the coast. However,
after the ransom was paid and melted down, it
became apparent that something had to be done
about the Inca king. Pizarro ordered Atawalpa garroted, and buried unceremoniously. He placed a son
of Washkar on the throne and began to travel to
Cuzco. After both victories and defeats, Pizarro and
his troops entered Cuzco unchallenged, exactly a year
after they had arrived in Cajamarca.

See also: Americas, South: Inca Ethnohistory; Northern

South America; Southern Cone.

Further Reading
Bauer B (1992) The Development of the Inca State. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bauer B (1998) The Sacred Landscape of the Inca: The Cusco
Ceque System. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bauer B and Covey RA (2002) Processes of state formation in the
Inca heartland (Cuzco, Peru). American Anthropologist 104(3):
846864.
Burger R, Morris C, and Matos Mendieta R (in press) Variations in
the Expression of Inka Power. Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks.
DAltroy T (2002) The Incas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Hyslop J (1984) The Inka Road System. New York: Academic
Press.
Hyslop J (1990) Inka Settlement Planning. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
Malpass M (1993) Provincial Inca. Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Assessment of the Impact of the Inca State. Ames:
University of Iowa Press.
Morris C and Thompson DE (1985) Huanuco Pampa: An Inca City
and Its Hinterland. London: Thames and Hudson.
Parsinnen M (1992) Tawantinsuyu: The Inca State and Its Political
Organization. Helsinki: Societas Historica Finlandiae.

Inca Ethnohistory
R Alan Covey, Southern Methodist University, Dallas,
TX, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
imperial provinces Peripheral populations or territories
administered directly or indirectly by the central government of
the empire.
historiography The study of the practice of history, including
the study of historical method and the historical development
of history as an academic discipline.
religious integration The use of ritual activity or religious
belief to incorporate and govern peripheral populations
Spanish conquest Colonization of the Americas with the
arrival in the Western Hemisphere of Christopher Columbus
in 1492. From early small settlements in the Caribbean, the
gradual expansion to include Central America, most of South
America, Mexico, and southern and central portions of todays
United States.

Sources and Historiography

All known written accounts of the Inca realm were
produced after Europeans arrived in the Andean

ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory 399

region in the early 1530s. Although the Incas used

a record-keeping device the khipu, a system of
knotted cords for bureaucratic functions, it remains
debatable to what extent it was employed in a standard fashion for encoding historical content, or to
what degree modern researchers might expect to decode such information. Complicating questions of
precontact historicity is the fact that more than one
Inca ruler is said to have destroyed existing khipu
records, purged the specialists who kept them, and
commissioned the production of new imperial narratives. The malleability of accounts of the Inca past is an
important starting point for considering the different
sources of Inca ethnohistory and their appropriate use
for modern scholarship. In considering written sources
produced in the 1530s and after, distinction may
be made between eyewitness accounts made at the
time of the European invasion, chronicles assembled
in the first century after conquest, and administrative

documents written throughout the Colonial Period

(Table 1).
Eyewitness Accounts

In June and July of 1533, members of the Pizarro

expedition melted down and distributed gold and silver
that had been brought to the Inca city of Cajamarca to
ransom Atahuallpa, the ruler held by the Spaniards.
Some members of the Pizarro expedition returned to
Spain from Cajamarca bringing treasure and news of
the Inca realm to royal officials. Eyewitness accounts
of the Inca empire reached European readers soon
after the Pizarro expedition and its Andean allies
had arrived in Cusco, the Inca capital, at the end of
1533. Accounts of Spanish activities in Andean South
America continued to be written for decades afterward. Some (e.g., the chronicles of Pedro Pizarro and
Diego de Trujillo) were not produced until 1570 or

Table 1 Twenty-five important published sources of Inca ethnohistory

Author [date]
Eyewitness documents
Hernando Pizarro (1533)
Francisco de Xerez (1534)
Pedro Sancho de la Hoz (1543)
Inca Diego de Castro Titu Cusi Yupanqui
(1570)
Diego de Trujillo (1571)
Pedro Pizarro (1571)
Witness-aided chronicles
Pedro de Cieza de Leon (c. 1550)
Juan de Betanzos (15511557)
Bartolome de Las Casas (1550s)
Polo de Ondegardo (1571)
Diego Fernandez (el Palatino) (1571)
Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572)
Miguel Cabello de Balboa (1586)
Martn de Murua (1590 and later)
Jose de Acosta (1590)
Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca (1609)
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (c. 1615)
Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui
Salcamaygua (c. 1615)
Bernabe Cobo (1653)
Administrative/Other
Cristobal Vaca de Castro (1543)
Domingo de Santo Tomas (1560)
Polo de Ondegardo (c. 1560)
Hernando de Santillan (1563)
Juan de Matienzo (1567)
Cristobal de Molina (1573)

Title

Letter to Oidores of Santo Domingo, Panama, 23 November, 1533

Verdadera relacion de la conquista del Peru y provincia del Cuzco
Relacion para S. M. de lo sucedido en la conquista y pacificacion de estas provincias de
Nueva Castilla y de la calidad de la tierra
Relacion de la conquista del Peru y hechos del Inca Manco II. . .
Relacion del descubrimiento del reyno del Peru
Relacion del descubrimiento y conquista de los reinos del Peru
Segunda parte de la cronica del Peru. . .
Suma y naracion de los incas
Apologetica historia sumaria
Relacion acerca del linaje de los Incas y como conquistaron y acerca del notable dano que
resulta de no guardar a estos yndios sus fueros
Primera y segunda parte de la historia del Peru
Historia indica
Miscelanea austral, pt. 3: Historia del Peru
Historia general del Peru
Historia natural y moral de las Indias
Primera parte de los comentarios reales de los Incas
Nueva coronica y buen gobierno
Relacion de antiguedades deste reyno del Piru
Historia del Nuevo Mundo
Ordenanza de tambos, distancia de unos a otros, modo de cargar los indios y obligaciones
de las justicias respectivas
Lexicon o vocabulario de la lengua general del Peru
Instruccion contra las cirimonias y ritos que usan los indios conforme al tiempo de su
infidelidad
Relacion del origen, descendencia, poltica, y gobierno de los Incas
Gobierno del Peru
Relacion de las fabulas y ritos de los Incas

400 ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory

later, and should be seen as projects intended to justify

the Conquest and mitigate its effects.
Descriptions of functioning Inca institutions are
invaluable for modern scholars, but eyewitness information falls far short of ethnography. Spanish writers
were principally concerned with detailing their own
experiences in a hostile and strange world, using
terms picked up from Moors and Caribs to fashion
a lens for viewing an Andean Other. Some eyewitness
accounts employ the language of the Reconquista,
referring to the invading Spanish force as cristianos
and describing native temples as mosques (mezquita).
Aspects of circum-Caribbean culture provided another means of conceptualizing the Andean world, as
seen in the use of terms for local elites (cacique),
their houses (bohio) and seats of authority (duho),
and maize beer (chicha) served during ceremonial
encounters. It would take years for Spaniards to
begin to understand the natural and cultural world
of the Incas on its own terms.
Witness-aided Chronicles

The earliest extant Inca histories that draw on extensive native testimony were produced around 1550,
part of a second-generation historiography that capitalized on an improving knowledge of Quechua and
an interest among political and religious figures in
Inca history and customs. The fact that Inca histories
were not published widely in the sixteenth century
indicates that the native past was of more interest
to officials at the Spanish court than to the literate
public of Europe. The most detailed sources (viz., Juan
de Betanzos, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, Polo de Ondegardo) relied principally on accounts of Inca elite men
living in Cusco. These chronicles provide a great deal
of culturally sensitive information regarding Inca

customs and accounts of the past, although narratives

are heavily colored by the interests of the chronicler
and the experience of his witnesses. Spanish writers in
the 1550s and 1560s assembled information on elite
life at the Inca capital, religious activity, political administration, and the relationship between the imperial capital and provincial regions.
The year 1570 marks a crucial point in the production of Inca historical narratives. As part of his
program of administrative consolidation, the viceroy
Francisco de Toledo and the royal cosmographer
Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa gathered Andean and
Inca elites and administered questionnaires regarding
Inca history and customs. Sarmiento de Gamboa produced a historical narrative that synthesized the often
conflicting accounts of the elite Inca lineages, and he
linked key points in the Inca past to European calendar dates and the reigns of Spanish monarchs and
Catholic popes. Chronicles produced after 1570
tend to follow the same general sequence of rulers,
suggesting that a more standardized version of the
Inca past one that was developed with the participation of elite Inca lineages that were prominent in
Cuscos early Colonial society coalesced as time
went on (Table 2).
Native Andeans recounted historical narratives to
Spanish administrators in the years following the
Conquest, but the first substantial treatments of
Inca culture by Andean authors were produced in
the first years of the seventeenth century. The factual
accuracy of these chronicles is often questioned by
modern scholars, and the authors often emphasize
their identities as good Christians and loyal Spanish
subjects. Still, the chronicles of Garcilaso de la Vega,
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, and Joan de Santa Cruz
Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua provide some interesting perspectives on Andean cultural organization.

Table 2 A list of Inca rulers, with calendar dates

#
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

Ruler

Khipukamayuq account

Cabello Balboa

Sarmiento de Gamboa

Vazquez de Espinosa

Manco Capac
Sinchi Rocca
Lloque Yupanqui
Mayta Capac
Capac Yupanqui
Inca Rocca
Yahuar Huaccac
Viracocha Inca
Pachacutic
Inca Yupanqui
Tupa Inca
Huayna Capac
Huascar

Start
AD 1060

Ruled to age 70
Ruled 50 yrs
Ruled 50 yrs
Ruled 60 yrs
Ruled to age 80
Ruled 40 yrs
Ruled 70 yrs
Ruled to age 80

AD 9461006
10061083
10831161
11611226
12261306
13061356
13561386
13861438
14381474

AD 565665
665675
675786
786890
890980
9801088
10881184
11841285
12941397a

14731493
14931525
15251532

13971464a
14641524
15241532

AD 10311071
10711105
11051141
11411171
11711211
12111261
12611291
12911351
13511411
14111441
14411481
14811523
15231532

Ruled to age 80
Ruled 50 yrs
Over 2 yrs, 4 months

a
Not the dates given by Sarmiento de Gamboa (who lists AD 10881191 and 11911258), which overlap with earlier rulers. Dates listed
are the length of rule given by Sarmiento de Gamboa and subtracted from the final ruler date.

ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory 401

Bernabe Cobos 1653 chronicle provides a convenient point for marking the commencement of secondary syntheses of primary source material. The Jesuit
priest consulted a wide range of published sources and
manuscripts, and also interviewed Andean informants.
His writing is structured as a scholarly work on Inca
culture, but its relevance is hindered by the feedback of
European cultural values onto the subject material.
Descriptions of primogeniture, anthropomorphic divinities, and the importance of creator worship and afterlife are but a few concepts that are not prominent in
the earliest chronicles.
Archival Documents

A wide range of administrative documents can be

brought to bear on Inca society. The earliest include
encomienda grants, Cabildo records, and legal proceedings over lands and native labor. The consolidation of Spanish colonial rule particularly under the
viceroy Francisco de Toledo in the 1570s led to the
collection of witness testimony on the Inca empire
(informaciones), as well as census documents and tribute records (tasas). Standardized provincial reports
(relaciones geograficas) were conducted in several
regions in the 1580s, and the 1590s saw Spanish
administrators visiting lands held by native Andeans
and criollos to establish boundaries (composiciones de
tierras). Wills, lawsuits, and other legal documents are
sometimes useful for tracing descent and land tenure in
the final years before the European invasion.
Use of Documents

A detailed documentary record of Inca culture and

history began to be produced about 20 years after the
Conquest. As John H. Rowe observed in 1946, this
resource informs us most consistently about elite life
in the Inca capital in the years bracketing the European invasion; projecting this material outward onto
the Inca provinces or back into the imperial past can
be problematic. Regional approaches to archival
documents and the systematic collection of archaeological data will put future researchers in a position to
reconsider aspects of Inca ethnohistory, and the
published chronicles should not necessarily be given
interpretive priority.

Ethnohistoric Descriptions of
Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire
Inca ethnohistory provides incomplete but often colorful descriptions of Tawantinsuyu, including myths of
ancestral origins and the rise of imperial society,
descriptions of expansion and provincial administration, and accounts of elite life in the imperial heartland.

The Rise of Inca Civilization

The Incas identified themselves as highland maize

farmers whose founding ancestors came from a distant
origin place and settled in the Cusco Basin, where they
introduced the fundamental features of Inca social
order and established dominance over autochthonous
groups. Accounts of the earliest Inca rulers often have a
legendary element, featuring acts of superhuman
strength, miraculous birth, and a permeable boundary
between the mundane and the supernatural.
Although no clean divide exists between myth and
history in Inca narratives, accounts of rulers from the
Hanan (Upper) Cusco moiety that is, from the sixth
ruler and after on the traditional dynastic list
describe qualitative changes in Inca society in the generations leading up to the first imperial campaigns. The
most detailed chronicles describe how Inca elites
extended their control over the Cusco Basin and established many features of a centralized state government.
They then began to conquer and administer new territory in the neighboring Sacred Valley and along caravan routes to coca-producing regions in the lowlands.
Inca rulers used marriage alliances with elite women
from neighboring groups to limit conflict and simultaneously increase the pool of labor tribute available
to intensify maize agriculture throughout the Cusco
region. While the Inca elite forged alliances with some
groups, they conquered others militarily and reduced
them to subordinate status. By the reign of Yahuar
Huaccac, or Viracocha Inca, all but the strongest
regional rivals had been brought under Inca hegemony
or direct administration, and the Inca state began to
incorporate non-Quechua speakers living in the upper
Vilcanota Valley and Titicaca Basin (see Americas,
South: Inca Archaeology).
Many chroniclers and modern scholars have credited Pachacutic Inca Yupanqui with the innovation of
the imperial order, although archaeological research
in the Inca heartland now suggests more gradual
processes of state formation, territorial expansion,
and administrative consolidation. When the Cusco
region was invaded by a neighboring ethnic confederation (the Chancas), Pachacutic is said to have successfully defended the Inca capital with the help of a
few friends and the divine aid of the creator deity. He
then personally crafted the essential elements of Inca
imperial society, much like the first Inca ancestors
who brought Inca culture to the Cusco Basin.
The great man account of Inca imperial origins
was firmly fixed in contemporary Inca scholarship by
John H. Rowe. In a series of influential publications
in the 1940s, Rowe noted that the ethnohistorical and
archaeological records indicated that most Inca provincial regions had been annexed or conquered only

402 ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory

in the last century or so before the Conquest. These

observations challenged the interpretation of Philip
Ainsworth Means, who had argued that accounts of
late, punctuated expansion were the result of Spanish
propaganda aimed at challenging the temporal depth
of Inca good government. Rowes late expansion
paradigm is still upheld by the archaeological evidence in provincial regions, although the glorification
of a single individual obscures the dynamic processes
occurring in the Cusco region in the 150200 years
before the first imperial campaigns.
It is worth making an observation regarding the
gradualist chronicles, whose substantive weaknesses
are now so well known. The gradualist paradigm is
most common among native Andean writers in
particular, the khipukamayuq narrative and the
chronicles of Guaman Poma de Ayala, Pachacuti
Yamqui, and Garcilaso de la Vega who credit
Manco Capac, the founding ancestor, with the establishment of Inca cultural order and the initial organization of the imperial heartland. These chronicles are
rather late, and some authors are from Inca provincial
regions, raising the question of whether the gradualist
paradigm represents an official imperial history that
was promoted in provincial regions even as royal
lineages preserved and performed contradictory narratives glorifying their own ancestors in the imperial
capital.
Patterns of Imperial Expansion

Inca imperial expansion campaigns began around AD

1400 with the conquest of highland farming and herding groups living outside of what the Incas considered
to be their imperial heartland (Figure 1). The conquest and administration of the first imperial provinces followed strategies that were developed as
the Inca state expanded in the Cusco region between
c. 1250 and 1400. Chronicle descriptions suggest that
military intervention was justified when rulers of
other groups used titles that contradicted the peerless
status of the Inca ruler, or in instances where they
rejected the offers of friendship or, more precisely,
peaceful subordination that his messengers brought.
Early campaigns targeted areas with compatible social structures and political economy, and the prospect of lavish gifts and marriage alliances was often
enough to win new allies, although areas with multiple competing groups frequently saw one group align
itself with the Incas while the other resisted militarily.
The incorporation and administration of highland
valleys was relatively straightforward for the Incas,
but imperial strategies had to be modified to deal
with lowland groups of different degrees of political
complexity. The south-central coast was ecologically

marginal and sparsely populated, and the Incas contented themselves with a more indirect presence by
developing colonies in the piedmont where new
hydraulic works brought new tracts of maize land
under cultivation. By contrast, the south and central
coast of Peru was divided among several small states.
These had centralized administrative hierarchies,
specialized economies based on intensive maize agriculture and fishing, and religious systems that were
integrated with pan-regional pilgrimage centers such
as Pachacamac and Pariacaca. To the north of these
polities lay the Chimu empire, which dominated
the lower valley and flood plain areas along a stretch
of roughly 500 km of coastline. As with earlier campaigns along the axis of highland valleys, Inca expansion to the coast involved diplomacy and warfare,
but imperial administration was more limited than
in the highlands, and established as a parallel to local
hierarchies.
At the time of the European invasion, Inca armies
were involved in protracted campaigns to consolidate control over rebellious provinces and extend
imperial control over lowland areas on the eastern
Andean escarpment. Inca military organization was
evolving into a more permanent standing fighting
force, and campaigns along the northern frontier
occupied Tupa Inca Yupanqui and Huayna Capac personally for 40 years or more. The documentary record
indicates that the final decades of Inca expansion
involved the time-consuming sequence of (1) military
invasion, (2) establishment of a system of fortifications,
(3) resettlement of local populations, and (4) introduction of colonists to implement provincial rule.
This signals a developmental trajectory for Inca
expansion policies, a departure from earlier practices
of establishing an initial phase of indirect rule while
intensifying resources for funding provincial administration. Reliance on an experienced fighting force
and the permanent colonization of settlers from pacified provincial regions suggests a distinct imperial
relationship with the occupants of regions targeted
for later phases of territorial annexation. The Incas
described the Amazonian piedmont as culturally and
environmentally foreign, yet they invested heavily in
the gradual resettlement of highland farmers into
lower elevations while maintaining an uneasy interaction with native groups.
Accounts of the Imperial Heartland

Because Cuscos Inca elite served as informants for

many of the chronicles and administrative documents
available today, descriptions of life in the imperial
capital and its hinterland are much more detailed
than those of provincial regions. The lineages of Inca

ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory 403

Cusco

Viracocha Inca
0

500 km

Inca Yupanqui
(Pachacutic)
0

500 km

Tupa Inca Yupanqui

Huayna Capac

500 km

500 km

Figure 1 Reported conquests during the reign of Inca emperors. Based in part on Parssinen 1992.

rulers dominated the economic and social life of the

region lying within about 5070 km of Cusco. The
imperial heartland was radically transformed by provincial territorial expansion. Many (but not all) local
groups were granted honorary Inca status, and, as
Quechua speakers, were drawn on heavily to serve as

colonists in provincial regions. An influx of temporary

labor colonists (mitmaqkuna), retainers (yanakuna),
and production specialists complemented the transfer
of population between heartland and province, and
the Cusco region in the early sixteenth century was
ethnically diverse and densely populated. For example,

404 ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory

at least 10 ethnic groups lived on the estate of Huayna

Capac at Yucay at the time of the Conquest.
The imperial heartland was economically variegated; honotary Inca groups retained certain rights to
traditional lands, while royal lineages and the state
religion possessed and managed improved farmlands
for intensive maize agriculture, as well as substantial
tracts of pasture for herding. Inca rulers and their wives
also owned plots of coca lands in low-lying valleys near
Cusco. Local groups provided labor tribute to the Inca
elite, but mitmaqkuna and yanakuna accounted for the
bulk of the work on a system of royal estates where
production focused on high-yield varieties of maize, as
well as the cultivation of exotic foods for elite enjoyment. Estates were putatively managed by the royal
Inca lineages on behalf of the dead rulers who had
developed them, and the mummies of dead Inca lords
and ladies played important roles in ceremonial and
administrative life in and around the capital. These
estates were inherited following a system of split inheritance, where the ruling title was inherited by one son
and his sister-wife while all other descendants possessed the resources comprising the royal estate.
The state religion focused on veneration of the sun
as the ancestor of the Inca elite, and the ritual calendar and regional shrine system organized water and
land resources, emphasizing a maize agriculture
schedule. Important ritual events in the capital
involved demarcating divisions among the Inca elite,
as well as distinctions between Incas and provincial
groups. Sacred objects from provincial regions were
kept in Cusco, and provincial elites and sacrificial
victims traveled to the capital to be vested with administrative power or sanctified. Some rituals were
celebrated in Inca cities in the provinces and culminated with a pilgrimage to the capital.
Ritual occasions helped to maintain an economic
link between the imperial heartland and provinces.
Staples produced in the provinces tended to be stored
there and used to maintain administrative and ceremonial life and imperial infrastructure, but wealth goods
were brought to the capital where they were stored,
worked into prestige goods, and redistributed to loyal
subjects. Craft specialists resided in the capital, and
Inca rulers would give gifts of fancy cloth, precious
metals, as well as special privileges. Eyewitness
accounts of Cusco at the time of the European invasion
attest to the vast wealth of the empire and the extent to
which it was concentrated in the capital.
Imperial Interactions in Provincial Regions

Recent studies of the Inca empire emphasize the

variability of provincial strategies, but some general
features can be identified for the empire as a whole.

Basic infrastructure consisted of a highway system

(qhapaq nan) that linked highland and lowland
regions (Figure 2). Posts for messengers (chaski)
were placed at intervals along the highways, and
waystations (tampu) were built about a days travel
apart. These facilities were maintained by local populations and stocked with stores for the use of Inca
officials and traveling armies. Larger complexes of
storage structures (qollqa) were found at important
installations and new administrative cities that were
built every 100 km or so along the principal highland
highway. Higher-order administrative sites often
were built around a large open plaza and included
an administrative palace, a sun temple, and an akllawasi a cloister where select provincial girls were
taught by female specialists to weave state textile
designs and prepare ceremonial foods and maize beer.

Religious Organization
Religion provided a critical link between Cusco and
provincial regions, and religious organization varied
substantially throughout the empire (Figure 3). To
promote its intensive maize economy in directly administered provinces, the Inca state established its own
sun cult in new cities along the royal road, constructing temples and akllawasi compounds. The reverence
of local numina and sacred objects (waka) continued
in these regions, as did veneration of ritual elements
associated with extensive polycropping and herding.
The state required that some local waka be housed in
Cusco, and underwrote festive activities for others.
Pilgrimage centers at Pachacamac, Pariacaca, Raqchi, and Titicaca provided a region-wide religious
integration along parts of the coast in the Lake
Titicaca area. In these areas the Incas co-opted creation myths and took steps to control pilgrimage by
constructing religious facilities at established centers.
Female ritual specialists (mamakuna) were established at pilgrimage centers and at some highland
oracles, although local priests appear to have retained
their positions. The transformation of the Copacabana Peninsula and nearby islands in Lake Titicaca
signals a more direct control over highland pilgrimage than was achieved along the coast.
The southern half of the Inca empire lacks documentary references to sun temples and akllawasi. In
this region the Incas appear to have made direct sacrificial appeals to important mountains (apu) by leaving human sacrifices on their peaks. Such sacrifices
may have been conducted as part of the qhapaqhucha
ritual, although it is difficult to correlate the documentary record with the archaeological evidence. In
general, the establishment of the sun cult is strongly

ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory 405

Quito
ECUADOR
Tomebamba
BRAZIL
Cajamarca
Huamachuco
Hunuco Pampa
PERU
Pump
Xauxa Vilcashuamn
Pachacamac
CUSCO
La Centinela (Chincha)
Hatun Qolla
Chucuito
Chuquiabo
Chan Chan

Paria
PA

CIF

IC

OC

EA

BOLIVIA

New administrative
center

ARGENTINA

Established local center

500 km

Figure 2 The Inca road system, with some new administrative cities and existing local centers shown.

correlated with regions where the documentary record also describes the establishment of provincial
infrastructure and decimal administration. Areas
under more indirect administrative control also saw
a less marked presence of the imperial cult.

Administrative Organization
Inca administrators governed the most directly
integrated provinces those located beyond the
boundaries of the imperial heartland but generally
in highland valleys to the northwest and southeast
by means of decimal administration that was imposed
when a province was (re)conquered. The decimal hierarchy consisted of nested administrative positions (kuraka) staffed by local elites and supervised
by Inca governors and inspectors. Subject populations

provided labor service, and Inca officials monitored

population levels and service requirements, punishing
a local kuraka who failed to meet state demands.
Service was worked in rounds by a proportion of the
population, and it appears that local elites were
responsible for deciding who would satisfy a given
service category. Canny local elites were able to
increase their wealth and prominence through the implementation of imperial labor demands, organizing
caravan transport and pursuing their own exchanges
and resource extraction alongside the imperial system.
While provincial decimal officials managed local
labor tribute mobilization, the principal administrative activities took place in Inca cities, which reproduced essential open spaces and administrative and
religious institutions that moderated encounters between Inca administrators and local elites. Decimal

406 ASIA, EAST/Inca Ethnohistory

Catequil

Pachacamac
Chinchacamac

Pariacaca
Raqchi
Titicaca

Sun Temple
with Akllawasi

Important Wak'a
High Elevation
Sacrifice

500 km

Sun Temple
0

500 km

Figure 3 Religious integration in the Inca empire. Information on high elevation sacrifices from DAttroy, TN (2002).

administration appears to have been linked to population movement between the imperial heartland and
provinces Quechua-speaking colonists from Cuscos
Inca-of-Privilege groups were settled into some provincial regions to facilitate consolidation strategies,
while provincial populations were resettled as labor
colonists and retainers.
Coastal regions do not appear to have been as
affected by decimal reorganization or obligate resettlement. Ethnic Incas were not heavily settled into
coastal state territories, nor did coastal polities provide large populations of mitmaqkuna or yanakuna
for service in the imperial heartland. Craft specialists
(e.g., Chimu silversmiths) are known to have been
relocated to the capital, and the production and distribution of craft goods and wealth objects changed in
coastal regions under Inca governance. According to
some documents, Inca administration on the coast
was limited to state interests while the local political
economy remained under the existing ruler. Imperial
officials were established at important coastal centers
and looked after whatever new agricultural lands
could be developed particularly in the mid- and
upper-valley areas as well as retainers and female
ritual specialists (mamakuna) placed in the valley.
Coastal elites tended not to control significant territories beyond what was needed to protect irrigation

intakes that watered the flood plain of their valleys,

and the Incas were able to invest in economic intensification further inland, employing strategies similar
to those already described for highland valleys.
Patterns of decimal administration in highland
provinces and parallel administrative structures in
coastal states indicate that the fiction of local economic autonomy was important throughout the empire, while the Inca state invested labor tribute in
improving farmland and developing intensive agriculture in areas that were unused or under-utilized. Such
a system reduced the prospect of conflict during the
initial annexation of a new province, but gradually
made local elites redundant or dependent on the state
for their status and its communication. Provincial
rebellions were common, particularly after an Inca
ruler died, and local uprisings justified the state in
confiscating resources and imposing a more extractive administrative apparatus.
The degree of military investment on the imperial
frontier indicates that the Incas were in no hurry
to consolidate administration along the coast, but
also suggests an important development in imperial
strategies. A direct occupation was required in the
highland valleys of the frontier zones, but the Incas
left local exchange networks in place in some areas to
acquire lowland goods whose provenance lay outside

ASIA, EAST/Northern South America 407

of direct administrative control. Highland groups like

the Canaris were massively reorganized, with large
proportions of the population resettled as mitmaqkuna, brought to Cusco as yanakuna, or pressed into
more or less permanent military service.
Conquest and Colonialism

The documentary evidence provides our most complete means of reconstructing the Spanish Conquest
and imposition of colonial administration in Inca
territory. Eyewitness accounts present important
discrepancies, and, with the exception of the 1570
account of Titu Cusi Yupanqui, the Andean voice is
almost completely absent in the reconstruction of the
story. Although the story of the Pizarro invasion was
told by Spaniards, administrative documents from the
Cusco region provide important details for reconstructing the decades-long process of administrative
reorganization that transformed the Inca imperial
heartland into a Spanish provincial region.

Prospects for Future Study

The study of Inca ethnohistory remains dynamic, as
long as certain intellectual constraints are recognized.
First, the discovery (and subsequent transcription and
publication) of previously unknown eyewitness documents and chronicles is likely to remain as rare as it
has been in the past century. While this corpus
remains relatively static, administrative documents
still hold a vast unrealized potential, and Inca archaeology is proceeding at an unprecedented pace. Archaeological analytical techniques have advanced
dramatically, and the present database permits important regional perspectives that surpass the accuracy of
documentary observations. These conditions encourage new historiographic practices gleaning regional
perspectives through the careful study of personal
names and toponyms in administrative documents
as well as new interdisciplinary relationships.
See also: Americas, South: Inca Archaeology; Ethno-

history.

Further Reading
DAltroy TN (2002) The Incas. New York: Blackwell.
Parssinen M (1992) Tawantinsuyu: The Inca State and its Political
Organization. Helsinki: Societas Historica Finlandiae.
Pease F (1995) Las cronicas y los Andes. Lima: Instituto RivaAguero, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru-Fondo de Cultura Economica.
Porras Barrenechea R (1986) Los cronistas del Peru (15281650) y
otros ensayos. Lima: Banco de Credito del Peru.
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco M (1999) History of the Inca
Realm. H. Iceland, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rowe JH (1946) Inca culture at the time of the Spanish Conquest.

In: Steward J (ed.) Handbook of South American Indians, Vol. 2:
The Andean Civilizations, pp. 183330. Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin, 143. Washington, DC: US Goverment Printing Office.
Zuidema RT (1995) (1964) El sistema de ceques del Cuzco: La
organizacion social de la capital de los Incas. Lima: Pontificia
Universidad Catolica del Peru.

Northern South
America
J Scott Raymond, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB,
Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Chavin A religious cult of Peru, dating to the first millennium
BCE, and characterized by a distinctive iconographic art style.
Clovis tradition A North American, Late Pleistocene cultural
tradition, believed to have been associated with the hunting of
large game animals and with distinctive fluted spear points.
fluted spear points Distinctively shaped spear points
associated with the Clovis tradition in North America and the
Magellan Tradition in South America. A flute (or channel) was
created by the removal of a flake from one or both faces of the
point. South American variants usually have a narrow base
resembling the tail of a fish.
Holocene The present epoch in the geological timescale,
beginning at the end of the Pleistocene approximately
10 000 years ago.
mangroves Trees and shrubs that grow in tropical lagoons
and estuaries.
megafauna Large animals such as mammoths, mastodons, and
giant ground sloths of the Pleistocene.
Magellan tradition A South American cultural tradition,
believed to have been associated with the hunting of large
game animals and with distinctive fishtail-fluted points.
obsidian hydration A dating method that relies on the
measurement of the diffusion of atmospheric water
into obsidian.
Olmec A Mesoamerican religious cult, dating to the first
millennium BCE and associated with a distinctive iconographic
art style.
Pleistocene The geological epoch that began about 3 million
years ago and ended approximately 10 000 years ago with the
beginning of the Holocene. It is sometimes called the Ice Age.
tapir The largest native game animal of South America. Tapirs
are solitary forest herbivores, distantly related to the horse and
rhinoceros.

The Setting
Northern South America comprises a diverse and varied tropical landscape that extends from the island of
Trinidad in the east to the Pacific shores of Colombia
and Ecuador (Figure 1). The northern coast is bathed

408 ASIA, EAST/Northern South America

Caribbean Sea
24
20
5
Panama
19 6
8

Ve

18

16

2
3
12
4

z
ne

ue

la

15
14
Pacific Ocean

Colombia
23

21
17

13
22

9 11
Ecuador
10

Figure 1 Map of northern South America. The following correspond to the numbers on the map: 1, Paria Peninsula; 2, Goajira
Peninsula; 3, Gulf of Venezuela; 4, Lake Maracaibo; 5, Sierra de Santa Marta; 6, Magdalena River; 7, Cauca River; 8, Sinu River;
9, Esmeraldas River; 10, Guayas River; 11, El Inga; 12, Taima Taima; 13, Las Vegas; 14, Bogota; 15, El Abra; 16, Santa Maria Valley;
17, Santa Elena Peninsula; 18, Cerro Mangote & Monagrillo; 19, San Jacinto 1 & San Jacinto 2; 20, Puerto Hormiga; 21, Valdivia; 22, Real
Alto; 23, San Agustn; 24, Tairona culture.

by the Caribbean Sea and backed across northern

Venezuela by an eastward extension of the Andes
mountains, which embrace a series of fertile highland
valleys. From the Paria Peninsula in the east to the
Goajira Peninsula in the west the Caribbean coast is
a semi-arid desert, the native vegetation consisting
mainly of cactus and thickets of thorny shrubs and
trees. The Gulf of Venezuela, which opens onto the
Caribbean near the Colombian frontier, connects to
the south with Lake Maracaibo, South Americas
largest lake, which is surrounded by tropical forests,
savanna grasslands, and swamps. Rising more than
6000 m above the Goajira Peninsula stands the Sierra
de Santa Marta, snow-topped mountains with a vista
of the Caribbean. To the west lie the extensive alluvial
lowlands of northern Colombia, comprising swamps,
lakes, savannas, forests, and dissected by the lower
courses of the Magdalena, Cauca, and Sinu Rivers.
The landscape rises again in northwestern Colombia
where a low chain of the Andes extends northward
to form the Isthmus of Panama. This region, where
North America meets South America, is the wettest
part of the Western Hemisphere, with annual rainfall
ranging between 6 and 8 m. Heavy rainfall, with associated forests, lagoons, and swamps, continues south
along the Pacific coast to the central littoral of Ecuador, where drier conditions prevail (see Americas,
Central: Lower Central America).
The interior of western Ecuador is a wet tropical
lowland region, dominated by two river systems, the

Esmeraldas River in the north and the larger Guayas

in the south. The Andes in Ecuador form a narrow
chain, trending northsouth, punctuated by a series of
highland basins and snowcapped volcanoes. Tropical
forests cover the mountain slopes to the west and to
the east. Passing north into Colombia, the Andes are
divided into three separate chains by the Cauca and
Magdalena River Valleys. The eastern chain contains
the high grassland region known as the Sabana de
Bogota and continues eastward into Venezuela.

Pleistocene Ecology
The Pleistocene environment encountered by the first
migrants to northern South America differed in some
important respects from that of today. In the mountainous regions, cooler average temperatures meant
that plant and animal communities were situated at
lower elevations than they are today. The most dramatic difference, however, was along the coast. At the
time of maximum world glaciation, c. 18 000 years
ago, sea levels were nearly 120 m lower than today
and broad segments of continental shelf were exposed.
Average rainfall was less, meaning that some of
todays forested areas were more open and that savanna areas were more expansive, possibly making the
environment more attractive to large ungulate fauna
such as mastodons and horses. Missing in northern
South America were the large herds of grassland

ASIA, EAST/Northern South America 409

animals such as the bison in North America or the

wild camelids of southern South America.

The First Migrants

The Isthmus of Panama is the gateway to South
America, but because of the dense vegetation and
the swampy terrain of the region south of the Panama
Canal, archaeologists have struggled to understand
how the first human migrants to South America,
usually envisioned as hunters of big game, managed
to survive their journey through an environment perceived as inhospitable to hunters. The current archaeological evidence, however, not only attests
clearly to the presence of humans in South America
during the last few millenniums of the Pleistocene,
but also to the presence of human settlers in the
forests of Panama. These humans, whose ancestors
had traversed the Bering Land Bridge from Asia and
spread across North America and down through
Mexico and Central America, had adapted their technologies and their economies to a wide variety of environments, and they capably exploited the resources
of the forests and savannas that existed in Panama in
the Late Pleistocene.
The earliest evidence of human presence in Panama,
which dates to about 11 000 years ago, is not as early
as the earliest evidence from southern South America.
Monte Verde, for example, a site in south-central
Chile, dates to 12 500 years ago. To explain this discrepancy, some archaeologists have suggested that
the first migrants to the continent practiced a maritime economy and settled along the shore. Rising sea
levels in the Holocene would have erased the evidence
of their campsites, except in instances where the
shoreline was elevated or, as in the case of Monte
Verde, when they established campsites away from
the coast. Alternatively, of course, it may be that
the population density of the first humans in Panama
was not sufficient to leave lasting evidence of their
presence.
The earliest cultural remains from Panama are not
as yet firmly anchored in time. They consist of fluted
spear points in the North American Clovis tradition
and fishtail-fluted or Magellan tradition of South
America, as well as assemblages of waste flakes from
the manufacture of such points. The spear points have
not yet been found in excavated contexts, but rather
as surface finds on the eroded shores of the tropical
lakes. The conclusion that they date to about 11 000
years ago is based on their distinctive shapes and
manufacturing technology which are closely similar
to the dated Clovis and Magellan traditions. The
flake assemblages, however, are from excavated contexts and are a current focus of archaeological

research in Panama, research which very likely will

yield reliable radiocarbon dates. Fishtail points, many
of which are fluted, have been found elsewhere in
northern South America, including Colombia, Ecuador, and Trinidad. Most of the finds are from undated
surface contexts. The El Inga site in the northern
highlands of Ecuador is a rare exception. El Inga,
however, lacks reliable stratigraphic context and
appears to have been a workshop where stone points
were manufactured over several thousand years,
using volcanic glass from a nearby outcrop. Obsidian
hydration analysis of some of the fishtail points suggests a date in the range of 9000 years ago. None of
these sites, including those from Panama, has yielded
clues about the subsistence practices of the early
migrants. The inference that they were big-game hunters is based on the extrapolation of evidence from
Patagonia where fishtail points have been found in
association with Pleistocene megafauna.
The only evidence of the hunting of megafauna in
northern South America comes from the site of Taima
Taima, situated in the Maracaibo Basin of Venezuela.
At Taima Taima, the remains of a mastodon were
excavated and found to be in association with a
stone spear point. The animal had apparently become
stuck in a bog and was dispatched by humans. The
point belongs to the El Jobo tradition, which is distinctively different from that of the fluted-fishtail
points and limited in its distribution to northern
Venezuela. Stomach contents of the mastodon dated
to about 14 000 years ago, slightly older than Monte
Verde. Taima Taima is hardly strong support for the
idea that the first settlers of northern South America
were big-game hunters in fact, quite the opposite. It
would seem that the people occupying the Maracaibo
Basin in the Late Pleistocene were opportunistic hunters, who took advantage of a trapped mastodon
to have a rare feast or temporarily fill their larder,
much like the historically recorded peoples of the
southern Chilean coast who, on the rare occurrence
of a beached whale, seized the opportunity to gather
together in multifamily groupings and practice communal rituals. In the absence of further evidence, we
can only speculate about their food economy, but it is
possible that the El Jobo hunters were exploiting a
broad range of plant and animal foods and that the
use of spear points to kill game constituted only a
small part of their economic activities.
Further evidence of broad-spectrum huntergatherers in northern South America during the Late
Pleistocene and Early Holocene has been found in
western Ecuador and highland Colombia. In Ecuador,
the Las Vegas culture, which dates from the Late
Pleistocene to the Mid-Holocene, is characterized by
a simple stone-tool technology. Rather than spending

410 ASIA, EAST/Northern South America

the time and effort to manufacture finished stone

tools or weapons, the Las Vegans used an expedient
technology. They collected the locally abundant cobbles and nodules of stone, smashed them, and then
picked out flakes that could be used as tools. Most of
the flakes were almost certainly used to make more
refined tools out of wood, bone, tooth, and cane, none
of which has survived in the warm tropical climate.
Modern-day hunter-gatherers of the Neotropics, however, make a range of tools from organic materials,
including cane arrow points that are sharp enough to
cut through the thick, elephant-like hide of a tapir.
Evidence of Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene human
occupation in Colombia comes principally from the
region surrounding Bogota, the middle Magdalena valley, and the highland region near Popayan, and also in
the Amazonian lowlands of Colombia, discussion of
which is beyond the scope of this article. The Abriense
complex, first discovered at El Abra cave in the Sabana
de Bogota, exemplifies a stone tool technology similar
to that of Las Vegas, in that the tools are stone flakes,
expediently removed from cobbles and used without
further modification. Again, the assumption is that
they were used to produce more refined implements
and weapons from organic materials. Tequendamiense,
a second stone industry dating to the late Pleistocene,
has also been discovered in the region of Bogota. The
Tequendamiense industry made use of stone material
imported from the Magdalena Valley and, in contrast
to Abriense technology, used bifacial retouch to shape
and sharpen the edge of flakes. Among the rolling
hills and valleys of the middle Magdalena Valley, the
probable source of the Tequendamiense raw material,
assemblages with stone projectile points have been
found. The points are triangular with a stemmed
base, and do not resemble either the El Jobo or
the fishtail points. In the Ecuadorian highlands at El
Inga yet another point type, a long narrow point
with a bulbous stem, occurs in apparent association
with some of the fishtail points. In the terminal
Pleistocene, then, there seems to have been a diversity
of stone-working technologies and styles in northern
South America.
Evidence of subsistence is absent or minimal at these
Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene sites. Las Vegas, however, which is represented by more than 30 sites in the
Santa Elena region of Ecuador, has yielded remains of
bone and shell. The people were hunting, fishing, and
collecting a very broad range of food resources that
included near-shore and shoreline sea life, as well as
land game, including deer, peccaries, giant anteaters,
and several species of small rodents and birds. A large
number of wild plants were without doubt also
exploited, and some plants were undergoing morphological changes indicative of domestication. Direct

evidence of plant foods has not survived in the early

archaeological record of southwestern Ecuador, but
microscopic bits of silica, known as phytoliths, have
been recovered and identified with respect to the plant
genera (and sometimes species) from which they
derived (see Phytolith Analysis). The large size of
squash and bottle gourd phytoliths suggests that
both plants were being intensively cultivated by
humans and well on their way toward domestication.
Squash was probably initially exploited for its tasty,
nutritious seeds. The phytoliths also indicate that
Calathea allouia, a tropical root crop commonly
known as lleren, was also being cultivated. It seems,
then, that as early as the terminal Pleistocene, populations in the tropical regions of northwest South
America were practicing horticulture as a complementary adjunct to their broad-spectrum hunting,
fishing, and collecting economy.

Holocene Environmental Changes

The worldwide warming of temperatures at the end
of the Pleistocene led to a gradual rise in sea level
and inundation of the coastal plains. Rivers, which
had deepened their channels during the Pleistocene,
began flooding annually and filling in their lower
channels. By the time the sea level began to stabilize
c. 6000 years ago, vast alluvial wetlands had been
created in northern Colombia and western Ecuador,
and thousands of tropical lagoons existed along the
littoral zones. These ecological changes expanded
the habitats for crustaceans, mollusks, fish, and
amphibians, creating new subsistence opportunities
for humans. In the mountainous regions, there was a
vertical shift in the distribution of biological communities to higher elevations, which probably only minimally enhanced hunting in the northern Andes, but
had more significance for the eventual development
of highland farming. Tropical forests expanded as
rainfall increased, but significant grassy savannas survived, most notably in the lowlands of northeastern
Colombia.

Social and Economic Changes during

the Early to Middle Holocene
The social and economic changes that occurred during the Early and Middle Holocene are most clearly
documented in the archaeological records of the
tropical lowlands of western Ecuador, northern
Colombia, and in the Santa Maria valley of Panama.
In all three regions, a broad range of food resources
was being exploited, from both land and sea, but
through time there was greater concentration on

ASIA, EAST/Northern South America 411

particular resources especially calorie-rich plant

foods. At the same time, it is evident that territoriality
was important, as well as community solidarity.
The people of the Las Vegas culture (c. 10 500 to
6500 years ago), established a centrally located base
camp on the Santa Elena Peninsula of Ecuador. The
camp was strategically located near water, in what
was a seasonally dry landscape, and near areas of
enriched plant growth. From that camp, individuals
or small foraging groups could set out to exploit
various resource patches that were mostly within
less than a days hike from the camp. Mangrove
lagoons, rocky sea cliffs, sandy beaches, hunting
areas, and seasonally productive seed, berry, fruit
and root localities were within range. Exploitation
of these resources is attested by the remnants of small
lunchtime or overnight camps that were apparently
visited repeatedly by the human groups. During the
dry season, it is likely that groups of foragers trekked
deeper into the interior valleys, but the archaeological
evidence of those journeys has not yet been discovered. By 8000 years ago, the phytolithic record indicates that maize had been added to the inventory of
plants cultivated by the Las Vegans. Grinding stones
were used for processing some foods, but food storage containers have not survived in the archaeological
record.
The base camp of the Las Vegans not only served as
a logistic depot for the foraging groups but also as
sanctified ground that represented the existence and
continuity of their society. Nearly 200 skeletons were
excavated from the site, most of them apparently
buried beneath the floors of small huts. Funerary
rites, at least, and probably other periodic and/or
seasonal rituals were carried out at the site, some
rites probably drawing together all members of the
community and reaffirming their common heritage.
Such solidarity would have become increasingly important as population density increased, which would
have intensified competition for resources, in turn
requiring defense of territorial boundaries.
In Panama, a similar scenario was unfolding.
About 7000 years ago, a camp was founded at the
site of Cerro Mangote, which was situated near the
Pacific shore. Because of the abundance of mollusk
shells in the midden, the site was initially interpreted
as a shellfish-collecting camp, but subsequent more
detailed investigations have revealed that at least half
of the foods consumed at the site were from plants
and game collected and hunted from the terrestrial
environment. Contemporary sites and small encampments have now been identified in nearby caves and
more distant hills to the east. The sites in the hills
have been linked to progressive deforestation of the
region, resulting from successive small-scale fires

believed to have been set by humans wishing to expand game grazing areas and/or practicing slash-andburn agriculture. The latter inference is based on the
discovery of microbotanical remains of maize, arrowroot, and other domesticated plants extracted from
grinding stones that archaeologists have excavated
from the cave sites. Many human burials have been
excavated at Cerro Mangote, and the chemical
analysis of their bones indicates that their diet was
composed partly of maize.
The economic picture in Panama, then, during the
Early to Middle Holocene, is one in which human
groups were highly mobile, ranging over a considerable territory, exploiting a wide range of resources
from sea and land, and at some point beginning to
incorporate domesticated plants into their food base.
Cerro Mangote may have been a base camp from
which daily treks were made to nearby resource hot
spots, but the nearby temporary campsites are not as
evident as those associated with Las Vegas in Ecuador.
The concentration of human burials, however, suggests that Cerro Mangote was consecrated as a place
of the ancestors and that, although its community
members trekked over a wide area in pursuit of food,
they gathered together to venerate and bury their dead
and to reaffirm their common heritage.
In Colombia, the most detailed record for this segment of time comes from the San Jacinto hills and the
alluvial plains of the lower Magdalena River Valley.
This is a large area extending from the Caribbean
coast to the savannas 180 km inland, an area that
probably encompassed the territory of more than
one social group. The excavated record begins in the
hills at the site known as San Jacinto 1. Recorded in
the stratigraphy of San Jacinto 1 are a series of seasonal occupations ranging in time from c. 6000 to
5300 years ago (Figure 2). The excellent preservation
and clear delineation of each stratum is unique for
sites of comparable age from the Neotropical lowlands. The site was situated on the point bar of a small
stream and was occupied during the dry season; annual floods buried the occupation debris. The salient
features of the site are shallow pits that were renewed
with each occupation. The linings of the pits were
burnt, and many of the pits were associated with
fire-cracked stones and carbonized plant residues.
An abundance of wild grass seeds was recovered from
the carbonized remains, but as yet no domesticated
species have been conclusively identified. The broken
remains of ceramic vessels and grinding stones were
also found in significant numbers.
The function of San Jacinto 1 clearly differs from
that of Cerro Mangote or the main site of the Las
Vegas culture. All the evidence points to it having
been a seasonal camp, occupied annually for the

412 ASIA, EAST/Northern South America

Figure 3 A ceramica adorno in the shape of a bird head from

San Jacinto 1. The fabric of the pottery is fiber-tempered. (Photo
by Vic Krantz)

Figure 2 Excavations at San Jacinto 1, Colombia. (Photo by

Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo)

purpose of harvesting, processing, and possibly storing wild plants, particularly wild grass seeds that
grew on the point bar. Heated rocks were used in
the pits to steam the grass seeds. With the exception
of the Taperinha pottery of the Central Amazon, the
San Jacinto ceramics are the oldest yet discovered in
the Americas. The ceramic vessels show no evidence
of having been used for cooking; rather the large jars
were probably used to detoxify, ferment, and/or store
the seeds after processing. A high percentage of the
vessels is elaborately decorated with incised, excised,
and modeled motifs, indicating that pottery played a
social-symbolic role (see Image and Symbol; Pottery
Analysis: Stylistic); the vessels were likely used in
feasting and rituals that accompanied the harvest
(Figure 3).
No base camp or network of temporary camps
has yet been found contemporary with San Jacinto 1.
Within less than 1000 years, however, San Jacinto 2,
which may qualify as a base camp, but is as yet
unexcavated, and a number of other sites were established in the region, some near the coast, associated
with wetland environments. The distinctive ceramic

style of San Jacinto continued. Vessels were manufactured, in greater quantities and with still more elaborate motifs. The people of the wetland sites focused
on shellfish, turtles, and other local resources. No
domesticated plants or other evidence of agriculture
have yet been found in association with these sites,
but it is plausible, given the record from Panama,
that they were linked with as yet undiscovered farming communities situated in the San Jacinto Hills.
Puerto Hormiga, the best known of these sites, was
organized in a doughnut shape, with a central cleared
area with household garbage around the periphery.
Other sites of the same period, including San Jacinto
2, show evidence of similar planning, suggesting
that settlements were organized according to a culturally determined pattern. Whether or not there
were permanent villages at that time (c. 5000 years
ago) in northern Colombia, however, remains to be
investigated.

Mid-Holocene Sedentary Villages

In Ecuador, the Middle Holocene saw the establishment of permanent villages. Beginning around 5500
years ago, villages were established in the small tropical valleys of the southwestern corner of the country.
Farmers also settled the floodplains of the Guayas
Basin about that time. The northern lowlands of
Ecuador may have experienced similar settlement,
but that evidence, if there was any, was buried several
millenniums ago by layers of volcanic ash strewn over
the region from eruptions in the Andes.
These earliest recorded villages ranged in size from
2 to 12 ha in area. They were commonly situated on

ASIA, EAST/Northern South America 413

Figure 4 Sherds from the rims of early Valdivia ceramic bowls,

Loma Alta site, Ecuador. (Photo by Gerald Newlands)

low hills. Like the Colombian site of Puerto Hormiga

noted above, the settlements were arranged in an oval
pattern, with huts distributed around a cleared central arena. In some instances, there was a break at
one end of the oval, giving the settlement a horseshoe
shape. Well-made ceramics of the Valdivia style occur
in abundance at each of the sites. Again, like the
Puerto Hormiga ceramics, a high percentage was
decorated, suggesting that ceramic vessels played
an important social role (Figure 4). For the first time
in the archaeological record of South America, figurines, made of stone and slightly later of ceramic, also
occur and in large numbers (Figure 5). Some were
found in probable ritual contexts, but the majority
come from domestic trash heaps, suggesting that they
were mainly used in household rituals that occurred
with some frequency.
Judging by the varied locations of the sites, a variety of resources was exploited, but all of the village
settlements are associated with rich valley bottom
land, signaling a common reliance on agricultural
produce. The warm wet conditions have not been
conducive to the preservation of plant remains, but
microscopic botanical remains have been recovered
from the floors of the houses, from storage pits, from
food-grinding tools and residues of pottery, indicating
that maize, manioc, arrowroot, beans, and other

Figure 5 Valdivia stone figurines from the Loma Alta site, Ecuador. Thousands of these figurines have been recovered from early
Valdivia sites. (Photo by Gerald Newlands)

tropical staples were being farmed. Those living in

the interior parts of the valleys probably relied mainly
on hunted game such as deer or peccary for their
meat, while those living near the ocean ate more
seafood. The presence of shells and fish bones at the
interior sites, however, attests to the transport of
some seafood inland, and it seems likely that commodities were being exchanged between communities
up and down valley.
Between 5000 and 4000 years ago, hierarchies
emerged among sites within and between valleys. At
some of the larger sites, for example, Real Alto, the
central arena became a ceremonial precinct. Small
mounds and other ceremonial facilities were constructed within the central plazas. Among the rituals
conducted were funerary rites. Some individuals
were still buried beneath house floors, but there was
also community-wide veneration of some of the dead,
who were buried in a funerary mound. Satellite hamlets
have been discovered and were probably connected
through a social network to the ceremonial centers.
The relative size and patterned distributions of houses
within the larger settlements suggest the existence
of status differences associated with kinship and
residence (see Social Inequality, Development of;
Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites).

414 ASIA, EAST/Northern South America

Over the next two millenniums, there was a steady

increase in population size and density throughout
most of the western Ecuadorian lowlands. Efficient
agricultural systems were established; craft specialization developed, and intraregional exchange expanded, as well as long-distance trade with populations
in the highlands and along the coast. Prestige goods,
including spondylus shells and obsidian, were among
the goods traded over long distances. Monumental
earthen mounds associated with fancy pottery hint at
the rise of an elite class. Unfortunately, archaeology
has only begun to explore the remains of these hierarchical societies, so we can only guess at their size
and structure.
The pace of change toward sedentary villages
in Panama seems to have been slightly slower than
that in Ecuador. Monagrillo, which replaced Cerro
Mangote around 2500 BCE, is the only possible candidate for a sedentary village. Covering an area of
1.4 ha, it is 8 times the size of Cerro Mangote. Fishing
nets were in use, enabling the fishermen to catch a
range of fish species that were inaccessible to the
Cerro Mangote residents. The presence of pottery
suggests a degree of sedentism, but in contrast to the
San Jacinto and Valdivia pottery, Monagrillo pottery
was poorly fired and plain clearly pottery played a
different social and symbolic role in Panama at this
time than it did in northern Colombia or western
Ecuador. The sites in the hills continued to exhibit a
pattern of small, temporary settlements, probably
associated with the expansion of slash-and-burn agriculture. It was not until 500 BCE that settlement
in the river valleys is evident, and then, based on
research in the Santa Mara Valley, suddenly large
sedentary villages were established, associated with
well-made pottery and containing abundant carbonized remains of maize. The suddenness of the change
may be more apparent than real, in that earlier, smaller settlements in the Santa Mara Valley may as yet
lie undiscovered under the alluvial bottomlands.

Regional Development in the Common Era

By early in the Common Era, a mosaic of polities
ruled by hierarchies of local elites existed over most
of northern South America in both the highlands and
lowlands. Although details of this pattern varied
through time, probably reflecting the waxing and
waning of the power and influence of local lords,
regional diversity and local political independence
continued until the time of Spanish contact. There
is no evidence that any of the polities developed
state-level bureaucracies. Until the conquest of the
Ecuadorian highlands by the Incas in the sixteenth

century, there were no conquest states. At odds with

the pattern of local independence and diversity are
systems of symbolic imagery and linguistic relationships that point to a common cultural heritage and
persistent contact over a large part of northern South
America and Lower Central America.
Populations speaking Chacoan, Paezan, and Misumalpan languages occupied parts of Colombia and
Panama, and Carib and Arawak speakers occupied
northeastern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela;
however, Chibchan languages constituted the core
and dominant language family of northern South
America and their populations were distributed
from Ecuador to Costa Rica at the time of Spanish
contact. Bioanthropological studies also indicate that
there was a high degree of genetic affinity among
Chibchan speakers.
There were no great art styles or religious iconographies that linked the pre-Hispanic populations of
northern South America. Beginning around 700 CE,
however, the use of gold and tumbaga as a medium
for representing symbols of status and power became
common throughout the region. Many of the gold
objects were body adornments such as necklaces,
breast plates, and nose ornaments, which signaled
the status of the wearer (Figure 6). Although distinct
regional styles emerged around 900 CE, common
themes are shared among all of the styles, many of
which can be traced back to images formerly represented in stone and pottery. The wide distribution
of common themes may be explained in part by a
widely shared ideology derived from a common cultural heritage, but some ethnohistoric evidence from
Colombia and Panama suggests that local lords
traveled to distant locations to acquire knowledge
and brought back golden images and other objects
to symbolize their command of esoteric knowledge
and strengthen their authority at home. Early Hispanic chronicles also report that the native lords of the
northern Ecuadorian and southern Colombian highlands retained exchange specialists known as mindales, who traveled long distances to acquire goods of
high prestige for their lords. Archaeology attests to
widespread distribution of precious metals, shells,
emeralds, and other gem stones throughout northern
South America.
The San Agustn culture of the upper Magdalena
Valley in Colombia has long drawn the attention
of archaeologists. San Agustn is best known for
its megalithic carved images of anthropomorphic
and zoomorphic creatures. Its iconography has been
compared to that of the Chavin in Peru and the Olmec
in Mexico, and sometimes used to support arguments that there was a direct historical connection
between the two (see Americas, Central: The Olmec

ASIA, EAST/Northern South America 415

and their Contemporaries). San Agustn, however,

seems to be a largely independent development in
Colombia, and beginning no earlier than the last
century BCE, it postdates the development of Olmec

Figure 6 A gold icon in the Tairona style of northeast Colombia.

(Photo courtesy of Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen
zu Berlin -Preussischer Kulturbesitz. V A 62459)

and Chavin by nearly a millennium. San Agustn

comprised several polities in the upper Magdalena
region. Populations were concentrated near the clusters of stone statuary and were associated with burial
mounds. The veneration of ancestors is a familiar
theme in northern South America, a practice, as
noted earlier, that can be traced back to the Early
Holocene. It seems that the elite of the polities legitimized their status through claimed descent from real
or mythical ancestors.
The Tairona culture, ancestral to the ethnographically documented Kogi of the Santa Marta Mountains
in northeastern Colombia, exemplifies what some
anthropologists have called theocratic chiefdoms.
The Tairona built terraced sites interconnected with
stone-paved pathways and stairways throughout
mountainous landscape. Ciudad Perdida, hidden in
the cloud forest, is the best known of the Tairona
sites (Figure 7). Drawing on the studies of the Kogi,
religion was probably the source of power and authority among the Tairona, and the leaders were probably
priests. Ciudad Perdida and other similar sites would
have served as ceremonial retreats managed by the
priests and occupied only on ritual occasions.
Among the most important technological achievements of the people of the northern Andes was the
development of raised-field agriculture. Thousands of
hectares of swampy wetlands were converted to agricultural lands in the lower Sinu, Magdalena, and
Guayas Basins through the construction of earthen
ridges and platforms elevated above the floodwaters.
Similar features were built in the Sabana de Bogota

Figure 7 Ciudad Perdida, a site of the Tairona culture in the Sierra de Santa Marta, Colombia. Note the stone masonry and the
terracing. (Photo by Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo)

416 ASIA, EAST/Northern South America

for the purpose of raising the level of agricultural

lands and for draining inundated areas. These highly
productive fields greatly increased the carrying capacities in their respective areas and account for concentrations of populations in those areas.
There is little evidence of warfare in the archaeological record of northern South America. Some sites
are situated on hilltops which would have served as
good defensive locations, but evidence of fortifications or other hints of warfare is rare. We know
from the early Spanish chronicles, however, that warfare was rampant within the region. Despite their
common heritage and shared ideologies, many polities seem to have been engaged in almost constant
competition and warfare; yet, there is little evidence
of territorial expansion. It has been said that leaders
use warfare to remind their subjects of the need for
powerful leadership; perhaps the lords and chiefs of
northern South America were using warfare as a
political device, presaging the modern world.

ruler, were actively pushing their frontier into what

is now southern Colombia. In previous years, they
had succeeded in conquering several polities of the
Ecuadorian highlands, some of which, most notably
the Canares, put up strong resistence. Possibly because
the pre-Hispanic peoples of Ecuador were not accustomed to centralized rule, Paz Inca was difficult to
sustain, and the Inca rulers found it necessary to
put down frequent insurrections. Nevertheless, they
established several administrative centers in highland
Ecuador and extended the Inca highway as far north as
present-day Quito (Figure 8). The largest centers were
at Tomebamba, today mostly covered over by the city
of Cuenca, and at Quito. Each center was constructed
according to standard Inca settlement plans and built in
their distinctive stone masonry. Although the Incas had
relationships with some of the polities of the western
lowlands of Ecuador, they did not succeed in conquering that region.

Conclusion
Inca Conquest
In the decade before the Spanish arrived, the Incas
under the leadership of Huayna Capac, their eleventh

Nunez de Balboas discovery of the Pacific Ocean in

1513 came after more than a decade of Spanish exploration of northern South America, and it initiated

Figure 8 Ingapirca, an Inca administrative/ceremonial site in the southern highlands of Ecuador. Note the dressed stone masonry
distinctively associated with Inca architecture. (Photo by J. Scott Raymond)

ASIA, EAST/Southern Cone 417

an intensified exploration and conquest of the region.

The gold ornaments and icons possessed by the
natives had initially attracted the Spaniards to the
region, but within less than two decades they turned
their attention to Peru, where looting and pillaging
was a much more profitable enterprise. Although the
native societies of northwestern South America suffered dramatic declines and deculturation following
the conquest, many have survived to the present day
and represent a cultural continuity that extends back
to prehistoric times. Ethnographic and historic data
potentially constitute an important means of fleshing
out the scant evidence derived from the archaeological record and some archaeologists have begun
to carry out such research. Much more needs to be
done, especially on the archaeological side. Despite
the many decades of research, our knowledge of these
ancient societies remains superficial. Looting continues to outpace archaeological research, and the
native societies are mostly in rapid decline. Within a
few decades, it will be too late.
See also: Americas, Central: Lower Central America; The

Olmec and their Contemporaries; Americas, South:

Early Villages; Image and Symbol; Phytolith Analysis;
Plant Domestication; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic; Social
Inequality, Development of; Spatial Analysis Within
Households and Sites.

Further Reading
Helms MW (1979) Ancient Panama: Chiefs in Search of Power.
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Lathrap DW, Collier D, and Chandra H (1975) Ancient Ecuador:
Culture, Clay and Creativity 3000300 BC. Chicago: The Field
Museum of Natural History.
Oyuela-Caycedo A and Bonzani RM (2005) San Jacinto 1:
A Historical Ecological Approach to an Archaic Site in Colombia. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.
Oyuela-Caycedo A and Raymond JS (eds.) (1998) Recent Advances
in the Archaeology of the Northern Andes. Los Angeles: UCLA,
The Institute of Archaeology.
Quilter J and Hoopes JW (eds.) (2003) Gold and Power in Ancient
Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia. Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Ranere AJ and Cooke RG (2002) Late Glacial and Early Holocene
occupation of Central American tropical forests. In: Mercader J
(ed.) Under the Canopy: The Archaeology of Tropical Rain
Forests, pp. 219248. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Raymond JS and Burger RL (eds.) (2003) Archaeology of Formative Ecuador. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection.
Reichel-Dolmatoff G (1988) Goldwork and Shamanism: An Iconographic Study of the Gold Museum. Medelln, Colombia:
Editorial Colina.

Southern Cone
Gustavo Politis and Patricia Madrid, Universidad
Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires
and Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
biface A two-sided stone tool, manufactured through a process
of lithic reduction, that displays flake scars on both sides.
bolas A throwing weapon similar to the surujin made of weights
on the ends of interconnected cords, designed to capture animals
by entangling their legs. They are most famously used by the
South American gauchos, but have been found in excavations of
pre-Hispanic settlements, especially in Pampa and Patagonia,
where indigenous peoples used them to catch guanaco and
nandu.
hypsithermal period The period about 4000 to 8000 years ago
when the Earth was apparently several degrees warmer than it
is now.
uniface A specific type of stone tool that has been flaked on one
surface only. Such tools can be placed into two general classes:
(1) modified flakes and (2) formalized tools, which display
deliberate, systematic modification of the marginal edges and
were often formed with a definite purpose in mind.

The Southern Cone

The Southern Cone includes the territories of Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and southern Brazil. This region
was probably the last colonized by Homo sapiens at
the end of the Pleistocene. Current evidence indicates
a human presence in the region no earlier than the
very end of the Pleistocene, at around 12 500 years BP.
Late Pleistocene foraging societies evolved through
the Holocene in different ways, producing distinct
historical trajectories. Foraging was the main subsistence strategy until the arrival of Europeans in
Patagonia, the pampas, and in most parts of the campos and Chaco. In some places, especially in the south
and central Andes at around 5000 years BP, the domestication of plants and camelids occurred, producing important changes in demography, settlement
patterns, technology, and social organization. Some
of these societies reached a chiefdom level of sociopolitical organization and in the fifteenth century,
became part of the Inca Empire.
The cultural development of the Southern Cone
societies is organized in this work following climatic,
environmental, and chronologic criteria: Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene, Middle Holocene, and Late
Holocene. In order to better understand the complexity and diversity of social processes that took place
during the Late Holocene in certain geographic areas

418 Southern Cone

of the Southern Cone, this period is also divided considering significant cultural changes (i.e., Formative
Period, Regional Developments, etc.).

The Environment
The Andean mountain range runs the full length of
the western side of South America forming the backbone of the Southern Cone. To the west, there is a
strip of land between the Pacific coast and the mountains. Rainfall decreases from south to north, reaching extreme aridity in northern Chile and southern
Peru. East of the Andes there are extensive plains and
a plateau (the planalto) that reach the Atlantic coast,
forming a mosaic of environments.
Major uninterrupted South American grasslands
stretch from southern Brazil through Uruguay and
Argentina. There are two main subregions: the campos of southern Brazil and Uruguay (northeast of the
Ro de Plata) and the pampas of Argentina (southwest
of the Ro de Plata). Between the Andes and the
campos is the region known as Chaco a flat and
dry forested landscape and a gallery tropical forest
of the Uruguay and Parana Rivers. In the lower portion of the Southern Cone is the Patagonian region,
located between 39
and 55
south latitude. Most of
this space is a treeless plateau which is deeply cut by
several major rivers with courses flowing in a mainly
west to east direction. The Straight of Magallanes
separate continental Patagonia from Isla Grande of
Tierra del Fuego. This island is the largest of an archipelago in the southern Chilean territory which is
composed of hundreds of smaller islands.
The southern Andes are part of the Andean Cordillera. They comprise several subregions: the subtropical forest (a narrow band which extends along the
foothills of the eastern mountain ranges), the puna (a
high altitude dry plain located between 3400 and
4500 masl), and the valleys and quebradas (located
below 3000 masl). In the south, below 38
south
latitude, the cordillera is covered by a dense forest
of Notophagus (Figure 1).

Early Peopling
The earliest secure evidence for human occupation of
the region east of the Andes is the open-air site of
Arroyo Seco 2 (Figure 2), where initial occupation
dates to c. 12 200 years BP. A large number of sites
have been detected in the pampas especially in the
Tandilia mountain range (Cueva Tixi, Cerro La China,
Cerro El Sombrero, etc.). These sites are small caves or
rockshelters with an early component in association
with fishtail projectile points (Figure 3). These sites
have been consistently dated between 10 000 and
11 000 years BP. West of the cordillera, the oldest

evidence of human occupation is at the Monte Verde

site, dated between c. 12 300 and 12 800 years BP.
This component has been interpreted as a forestadapted economy, based primarily on the collection
of wild plant foods and secondarily on the scavenging
and/or hunting of large and small animals. Both
Monte Verde and Arroyo Seco 2 sites indicate that
humans were in the Southern Cone on both sides of
the Andes reaching south of 38
south latitude before
12 000 years BP. Moreover, a number of sites in the
pampas as well as in the Cordillera and in the Central
Valley of Chile (such as TaguaTagua) indicate that
humans were well established in this latitudinal belt
between 10 500 and 11 000 years BP.
In the Patagonian plateau, the oldest secure group
of dates come from archaeological sites in rockshelters and caves the Rio Deseado basin (Los Toldos,
Piedra Museo, El Ceibo, Cerro Tres Tetas, etc.). These
sites indicate a human presence in the 47
to 50

latitudes around 11 000 years BP. At the end of the
Pleistocene in the southern tip of Patagonia, the
South American mainland and the island of Tierra
del Fuego were connected and formed a continuous
mass of land. This area was occupied roughly at the
same time, indicating that humans arrived shortly
after de-glaciations, at c. 10 500 to 11 000 years BP.
In this area, fishtail projectile point was also a distinctive tool in many sites (Fells Cave, Palli Aike, Cueva
del Medio, etc.).
In the campos of Uruguay, the occupation of early
hunter-gatherers has been dated c. 11 000 years BP. All
reported sites are open-air sites located in three areas:
the Uruguay-Cuareim River, the middle basin of the
Ro Negro, and the Atlantic Coast. During the Late
Pleistocene, the campos of Uruguay and the pampas
of Argentina shared several common features, such
as the fishtail projectile point technology and other
technological traits (i.e., reduction sequences, type
of lithic raw material). This suggests some kind of
relationship or shared knowledge between these two
sub-regions. In the Brazilian campos, the sequence
of hunter-gatherer occupation known as the Umbu
Tradition began with the Urugua Phase and dates
between c. 10 800 and 8500 years BP. In terms of technology, small bifacial stemmed chalcedony projectile points associated with side and end scrapers,
retouched flakes, and unipolar and bipolar (flaked
in both ends) artifacts made on basalt, chalcedony,
quartz, and chert are typical.
During the Late Pleistocene and into the Early
Holocene, a variety of herbivores were hunted by
early foragers in the region. Among them, guanaco
(Lama guanicoe) was the main resource in the pampas, Patagonia, and in the Andean Cordillera, while
deer (Ozotoceros and Blastoceros) was principally

Southern Cone 419

PA

South-Central
Andes
LE
I
CH

RA

Be
rm
ejo

GU

BRAZIL

AY
Planalto

N.O.A.
Campos
URUGUAY

ARGENTINA

Ro

Pampas

rad

Neg

a Pla

ta

ro

Colo
Rio

de L

NT IC
OCEA

PACI

FIC O
CEA

Ur

ug
ua
y

Paran

Chaco

ATLA

Patagonia

250

500

1000

Kilometers
Figure 1 Map with the main areas of the Southern Cone.

hunted in the campos. Extinct megafauna such as

giant ground sloth, ground sloth, extinct horse, and
glyptodonts were secondary or occasional resources
in the pampas and in Patagonia. West of the cordillera,
mastodon and extinct species of horse were hunted
and consumed. The timing and cause of Pleistocene
fauna extinction are still part of an open debate,
although increasing data from pampas sites suggest
the survival of some species until the Early Holocene
(between c. 7000 and 8000 years BP). It is likely that
the impact of early foragers on large herbivores, not
only by hunting but also by fires in the grasslands and
forests, would accelerate this process of extinction.
At the end of the Early Holocene, pampas huntergatherers began to exploit marine resources and to

occupy, at least seasonally, the Atlantic coast. The

first evidence came from the La Olla 1 and 2 sites
(i.e., seal processing loci) and the Monte Hermoso 1
site (with human footprints) which date between
6640 and 7920 years BP and are located on the Atlantic coast. At c. 6000 years BP, the first evidence of
marine adaptation is recorded in southern Patagonia
in the Beagle Channel (the Tunel site), where shell
middens have been found.

The Middle Holocene Changes

During the Middle Holocene period, significant environmental and cultural changes occurred. This period
is characterised by climatic changes related to what is

420 Southern Cone

Lpez

Turi
Chiu-Chiu

Casabindo

Toconte

Sn. Pedro de Atacama

RA

GU

Los Amarillos
Tastil
Las Cuevas IV

Tuln

CHIL

PA

Inca Cueva

AY

Be

BRAZIL

rm

La Paya

Tebenquiche
Casa Chvez Monticulo
Tolombn
La Cienaga
Taf
Condorhuasi
El Alamito
La Aguada
Watungasta
Beln Ambato
Via del Cerro
El Shincal
Sanagasta

ejo

Goya

Malabrigo

ay

gu

ru

Ce
rri

to
s

Pa
ra
n
l
de
ta
el ran
pa

PACI

ARGENTINA
Chena

FIC O
CEAN

Angualasto

Agua da la Tinaja

Tagua-Tagua

URUGUAY
Rio

de L

a Pla

ta

Cueva del Indio

Cerro La China
Cueva Tixi

Arroyo Seco

Co

La Olla
Mte. Hermoso

lora

Ne

do

gro

EA

Rio

AT

LAN

TIC

OC

Monte Verde

Piedra Museo
Los Toldos

Cerro Tres Tetas

250

500
Kilometers

Figure 2 Map with the main sites mentioned in the text.

1000

Southern Cone 421

known as the Hypsithermal (a period when higher

temperature and/or humidity are recorded): a time at
c. 7000 years BP, when the sea level rose above the
current level. However, there is no consensus on its
magnitude (between 2.2 to 12 masl. depending on the
author) and the chronology of the maximum ingression. During the Middle Holocene in both the cordillera and tropical lowlands, nomadic foragers reduced
their mobility in many areas and started to cultivate
domesticated plants. In the Andes, management of

Figure 3 Fishtail projectile points from the Tandilia hill range.

Photo courtesy Nora Flegenheimer.

camelids may have started milleniums before, resulting in true domestication by this time.
After the extinction of megafauna, guanaco continued to be the primary game-animal resource until the
Late Holocene, especially in the pampas, Patagonia,
and in the cordillera. Besides meat and fat, guanaco
also provided excellent hide for making clothes and
shelter, bone for tool raw material, bone marrow with
high nutritional values, and even blood which might
have been consumed during drought periods. The
camelid was a fast and agile animal and these characteristics support the idea that a cooperative hunting
strategy must have been employed. A variety of projectile points and the bola stone (boleadora) were the
main hunting weapons.
In the eastern campos of Uruguay and southern
Brazil, the Middle Holocene human occupation is characterized by hunter-gatherers-fishers who specialized
in exploitation of the palm fruit butia (Butia capitata)
(Figure 4). On the Atlantic coast, subsistence was
complemented by seal-hunting and the gathering of
mollusks. The first evidence of a shell midden on
the coast of Uruguay dating to the Middle Holocene
(c. 4000 years BP) would suggest an incipient adaptation to the exploitation of marine resources. On the
inland grasslands, hunting was oriented toward deer
(Blastoceros and Ozoteceros) and complemented
with coypo (Myocastor). Alochtonous siliceous raw
material was used to manufacture distinctive mid-size
stemmed triangular projectile points. During this
period, the first evidence for mound construction
comes from the eastern sector of the campos, mostly

Figure 4 Relict of a forest of Butia palm in the border of the Uruguay River.

422 Southern Cone

Figure 5 Typical cerrito in the Laguna Merim Basin (Uruguay) during excavation. Photo courtesy Jose M. Lopez Mazz.

in the Laguna Merim Basin. The mounds, locally called

cerritos de indios (in Uruguay) or aterros (in Brazil),
are circular or elliptical earth structures of about
2040 m in diameter and up to 7 m high (Figure 5).
Some occur alone and others are found in clusters
with up to 50 in one locality. The function and construction process of these mounds are currently under
debate. A few decades ago, Brazilian archaeologists
proposed that mounds were some kind of platform
constructed for habitation during seasonal flooding.
More recently, Uruguayan researchers propose that
the mounds were mainly funerary structures for complex hunter-gatherers due to the recurrence of human burials in several locations. For Lopez Mazz,
the older structures (c. 40003000 years BP) seem to
be oriented to mark and order territory as well as
to legitimate the exclusivity of the resources, while
after c. 2500 years BP. some structures began to specialize toward ceremonial activity and funerary practices. Iriarte and collaborators recently proposed that
as early as 4190 years BP., the Los Ajos site became a
circular plaza village which grew as a result of multiple overlapping domestic occupations associated with
a wide range of activities. In some sites they found
phytoliths and starch grains of squash (Cucurbita sp.),
maize (Zea mays), beans (Phaseolus sp.), and Canna
sp. rhizomes. This evidence indicates an early domestication at c. 3600 years BP. In the rest of the campos,
and in the southern planalto, the archaeological
record of hunter-gatherers during the Early and Middle
Holocene was subsumed under the Umbu Tradition.
This concept encompasses a variety of lithic material
which includes some distinctive projectile points

and an economy based on hunting, gathering, fishing,

and collecting mollusks. Since the nuts of two genera
of palms, Arescastrum and Butia, have been consistently recovered in these sites, it is considered that
these species would have been managed by these
populations. It was also proposed that the Humaita
Tradition integrated a group of sites, basically located
in the forest of the planalto, with a distinctive technology of big bifacial artifacts including the curved clavas.
However, for some authors both traditions seem to be
very similar and differences would be related to site
functionality rather than to two different populations.
In general terms, the archaeological evidence shows
continuity between the Early and Middle Holocene
population although there is some intraregional
differentiation. Most researchers interpret the main
changes that occurred in the Middle Holocene a result
of the transformation that happened within the Early
Holocene populations in several dimensions. This has
been the explanation for the emergence of the cerritos
and the continuity of basic adaptive patterns and technology of the hunter-gatherers of the pampas, the
campos, and Patagonia.

The Late Holocene Diversification

(c. 3000500 BP)
During the Late Holocene, the process of regional
differentiation which began to become visible during
the Middle Holocene produced a wide variety of historical trajectories and adaptive patterns. Moreover,
several significant changes occurred, such as reduction in residential mobility and the development of

Southern Cone 423

wide intraregional interaction networks. Along with

other important innovations, such as pottery and
horticulture, this suggests the development of social
complexity. This process is well exemplified in the
cerritos of the eastern campos and in the Andes.
During this time at least three main subsistence
strategies can be identified among the pampas foragers: the hunter-gatherer of the xerophitic forest,
the hunter-gatherers of the open grasslands, and the
hunter-gatherers-fishers of rivers and lagoons. During
this period, guanaco was the main food resource in
addition to pampas deer, armadillo, and rhea. Plain
and incised pottery is also present in this area at
c. 3000 years BP although in low frequencies. During
the Late Holocene, changes in mobility, subsistence,
and technology would indicate a process of economic
and social intensification. In Patagonia, the Late
Holocene hunter-gatherers were heavily dependent
on guanaco although on the slopes of the cordillera,
the gathering of pinones (the fruits of the pehuen
Araucaria araucana) from the forest was a significant,
although seasonal, resource.
In the Delta and in the lower Parana and Uruguay
Rivers, the archaeological record shows some peculiarities in the basic hunter-gatherer-fisher adaptive
pattern. In one way, it could be partially explained
by the penetration of a branch of the Dominio
Amazonico, region which forms a subtropical forest
in the delta and along shores of the main rivers. Plant
resources, especially fruit of the pindo palm (Syagrus
romanzoffiana), were exploited recurrently on the
island of the Delta. Moreover, the historical record
of the sixteenth century indicates that the lower
Parana and Uruguay Rivers were occupied by several
ethnic groups (Chana, Chana-Timbu, Mbegua, etc.)
and some of them practiced small-scale horticulture.
In the lower and middle ParanaUruguay region,
several changes occurred during the Late Holocene.
Between 2500 and 5000 years BP, pottery entered into
the area and around 2000 years BP, the first canoe
people are recorded in this fluvial area. It seems that
horticulture also became a part of their subsistence
during this time, probably in the last 2000 years and
related to the expansion of the Tupi-Guarani people.
In the lower Parana-Uruguay region, a rich pottery
tradition known as the GoyaMalabrigo Culture
appeared c. 1000 years BP. Well represented in many
sites on the floodplain and islands, this pottery is characterized by abundant zoomorphic representations
(i.e., mainly birds). Subsistence patterns were based
on a mixed economy of small and medium mammals,
birds, fish, mollusks, and products from the forest
(i.e., especially palm fruits). Small-scale tropical horticulture might also have been practiced although archaeological evidence is still inconclusive.

In the southern planalto, several traditions have

been proposed (Itarare, Casa de Pedra, and Taquara)
which would reflect the regional continuities of the
Humaita Tradition as a result of the adoption of pottery, horticulture, the construction of pit-houses, and
certain techniques of lithic polishing. However, the
recent work of Noelli challenges this interpretation
by proposing that this Late Holocene population was
the southern expansion of the Ge linguistic family,
being ancestors of the ethnographic Kaingang and
Xokleng groups. The early Ge population of the
area would have been displaced from the proximity
of the main rivers to the higher and colder region of
the planalto by the Guaran Indians between 2000
and 1000 years BP. The Guaran are a group of populations, well known in archaeological, historical,
linguistic, and ethnographic terms, belonging to a
Tupi cultural matrix. The origin of these populations
would be in the Madeira-Guapore Basin, in the
southwest of Amazonia. In a process of continuous
demographic growth and territorial expansion, they
spread through several regions of southeastern South
America, including most of the campos and the planalto, part of Chaco, and the northeastern part of the
pampas. They reached their southern limit, the lower
Parana-Plata Rivers, at least at c. 700 years BP. In
terms of socialpolitical organization and kinship,
the Guaran formed several nuclear families around
a political/religious leader. The subsistence of the
Guaran population was quite generalized, based on
horticulture, gathering of plants and insects, hunting,
and fishing. They cultivated about 39 plant genera
subdivided in at least 159 cultivars; among them were
manioc (Manihot esculenta), sweet potato (Ipomea
batata), maize, and beans. In spite of the great
geographical expansion and the tendency to systematically incorporate non-Guaran people, pottery
maintains a great uniformity. The typically painted
and corrugated pottery is found in distant locations,
thousands of kilometers apart and with very little
variation indicating that it was produced in the context of a rigidly stylistic and highly standardized pattern. The chronological span of dated Guaran sites
in the region is between c. 2000 and 200 years BP but
it has to be taken into account that well-established
Guaran populations are still living in the region. The
Guaran expansion into the tropical and temperate
lowlands of the Southern Cone produced significant
cultural changes. They introduced several cultigens,
and some technological and stylistic patterns, but
overall, they spread a new mode of life among the
local population.
When the European Conquest began at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the life of foragers
of the pampas, campos, and Patagonian foragers

424 Southern Cone

changed dramatically. Adoption of the horse, a new

relationship with a neighboring group, and the disarticulation of the traditional economic cycle were
some of the results of this asymmetrical interaction.
When wild horses and cattle flooded the pampas, the
Chilean Araucanos arrived as they were attracted to
this new marketable resource. By then, the local foragers remained trapped between the well-organized
Araucanian chiefdom and the slow advance toward
the south of the colonial frontier. By mid-eighteenth
century, the few campos foragers became extinct and
the pampas foragers that still existed were integrated
with the Araucanos and disappeared as a distinctive
ethnic group. At the end of the nineteenth century,
with military campaigns organized by the Argentinean government, the Patagonia Indians known as
the Tehuelches, as well as the Araucanos, were either
killed by the military or, after a period in prison,
relocated to marginal and poor areas.

The Agricultural and Herder Societies

from Southern Andes
The first societies that began to domesticate plants
and animals in the Southern Cone inhabited a diversity of environments in both the highlands and lowlands. In the highlands these environments include
deserts, quebradas, river valleys, and the subtropical
forest of the eastern slope of the Andes (the sierras
subandinas). The first practice related to animal domestication is linked with camelids, medium-sized
animals that are adapted to arid environments. This
family has four South American species: two nondomesticated (guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and vicuna
(Vicugna vicugna)) and two domesticated (llama
(Lama glama) and alpaca (Lama pacos)). Recent
genetic studies suggest that the llama descended from
the guanaco and the alpaca resulted from an interbreeding between guanaco and vicuna. The llama had
a central place in the Andes not only for its meat and
wool but also for its capacity for carrying burdens.
Related to this domestication process in the
highlands, during the archaic period (10 000 to
30002500 years BP), important changes occurred:
reduction in the range of mobility, the development
of residential areas with the emergence of the first
villages, and the adoption of new technologies.
However, many societies, especially the llama herders, maintained some dimension of mobility in
order to move their herds on a seasonal basis. The
domestication of camelids in the highlands implied a
long process of intensification which includes predationprotectiondomestication before the full establishment of agro-pastoral societies. Some evidence

from northern Chile and northwest Argentina suggest

an independent center of camelid domestication, between 5000 to 3000 years BP, probably earlier than
in the Central Andes. In sites such as Quebrada
Seca 3, Inca Cueva 7, Huachichocana III, Tulan 52,
Puripica 1, camelid bones, fibers, guano, and corrals
for maintaining them in captivity, have all been found.
Clear evidence of agro-herder societies in the puna
and quebrada are dated at c. 2500 to 1200 years BP.
However, the archaeological record of caves in the
Argentine northwest suggests that the process started
earlier at c. 5000 years BP in places with extreme
aridity but with a diversity of microenvironments. In
northern Chile there is also early evidence at sites such
as Chiu Chiu 200 and Turi-Toconte which suggests a
pastoral way of life with seasonal mobility between
the high vegas and canadones, and the precordillera
and puna.
The incorporation of domesticated camelids produced important changes in settlement patterns which
generated some degree of sedentarism although at the
same time maintaining a high logistic dynamic. Hunting and fishing remained an important economic
complement on the coast.
While camelid domestication would have a local
development in the southern Andes, plant domestication had a strong alochtonous influence since the first
domesticated species are from the tropical lowlands
east of the cordillera. The domestication of plants was
a complex process which becomes visible archaeologically at around 4000 years BP in caves of the high
quebradas. However, both the domestication of wild
species and introduction of already domesticated
plants appeared at different times in each region and
they also included a variety of species. Evidence is
found in sites such as Casa Chavez Montculo and
Tebenquiche in the southern puna, and in Quebrada
de Inca Cueva-IC c.7-(more than 4000 years BP) in the
headwater regions of quebradas and valleys above
3000 m a.s.l.. Remains of squash (Lagenaria siceraria), which were used as containers, together with
textiles and basketry were found at these sites. At the
Huachichocana cave site, remains of chilli (Capsicum
baccatum), beans (Phaseolos vulgaris), and maize
(Zea mays) where found. In the Cuyo region (south
central Andes) remains of squash (Cucurbita sp.)
and qunoa (Chenopodium quinoa) were dated at
c. 45003700 years BP (i.e., sites of Los Morrillos,
Agua de la Tinaja, and Gruta del Indio). Only around
2300 years BP did maize arrive in this region. In central
Chile, there is evidence for Chenopodium sp. at around
3000 years BP. After this period, there are remains of
domesticated plants on the Pacific coast, in the valleys,
and within the cordillera.

Southern Cone 425

In the Pacific coastal valleys (Chile) between 9000

and 4000 years BP, there is certain continuity and
stability in societies along with a clear maritime
economy. This is represented by the world famous
Tradition of Chinchorro, whose elaborated human
burials are extremely well preserved due to aridity in
this area. After 4000 years BP, these people began
to slowly experiment with plants. In this context,
there was a shift toward the settlement of valleys,
suggesting a search for new residential space and
better land for cultivation in a desert environment.
Nunez Atencio proposed that the first cultivars were
adopted from primary domestication centers in the
tropical lowlands and adapted to the narrow slopes
of the mesothermic valleys west of the Andes. This
is the case for bean remains found at the site of
San Pedro Viejo de Pichasca dating between 8000
and 6000 years BP. However, other sites on the coast
of Arica such as the cemetery Morro 2/2 (dated c. 2800
years BP) still maintained a subsistence based on marine resources. Around 1700 years BP, complex cemeteries are recorded in tumuli such as Alto Ramrez, in
the Azapa valley, where several cultivated plants
(squash, chilli, cotton, manioc, maize, and beans) are
found placed as offerings.

The Formative Period in the Southern

Andes (c. 30001000 years BP)
At around 2000 years BP, there was a transition
toward a settlement subsistence pattern related toagro-pastoral societies. Early villages integrated
more complex systems linking settlement with different functions. This new organization is known as the
Formative Period and was characterized by a high
degree of sedentarism and intensive pottery production. Little is known about the causes which produced
the emergence of pottery in the southern Andes. At
around 3000 years BP, there was a diversification of
pottery shapes and styles on both sides of the Andes.
Pottery appears in sites with a maritime economy
such as the Faldas del Morro site (northern Chile,
ca. 2800 years BP.) and in agro-pastoral societies
such as Inca Cueva-Alero 1 (northwest of Argentina,
c. 2900 years BP). It is not clear yet if this is a technology of local origins, alochtonous, or both. Munoz
postulated that the origin of pottery is related to two
different traditions; one on the coast and the other
on the altiplano. Pottery with geometric designs and
feline figures dates to between 3000 and 1700 years BP
in northern Chile and shows strong similarities with
the altiplano tradition from the north of the Titicaca
Lake. These stylistic patterns along with other evidences show a major social interaction in the context

of these early villages. Toward the east of the cordillera

in the tropical forest slope at around 2600 years BP,
there is an intensive use of pottery known as the San
Francisco Tradition. For Ventura, this tradition has
a long local development and was utilized for early
long-distance exchange between the valley of Tarija
(Bolivia), the puna, and other eastern tropical valleys.
Around 3000 BP, pottery occurred in the heads of
the Quebrada de Humahuaca (in the northwest of
Argentina) and in the neighboring puna.
Pottery allowed new and more efficient modes
of food processing. It also became a useful means
for transport and storage which amplified the spectrum of the exploited resources, both wild and
domesticated. Along with other technologies such as
metallurgy, textiles, and basketry, which not only
had a utilitarian function, but they were also used
as bases for symbolic representations. Between
3000 and 1400 years BP, agro-pastoralist society,
which favored more stable and complex villages, was
established in many areas of the highland. Around
2500 years BP, pottery was associated with this village
pattern and began to diversify in multiple decorative
techniques (incised, painted, and modeled) and styles
which where used to define archaeological sequences
in several sectors of the highlands of the Argentine
Northwest. In general terms, these groups had circular
houses dispersed throughout cultivated fields as well
as houses which aggregated around a central patio
and typically included tombs and a granary. In the
valliserrana area of the Argentine Northwest, several
styles or cultural entities were defined: Saujil (2400
to 1300 years BP), Tafi (2100 to 1100 years BP) and
in the mesothermic valleys, Condorhuasi (2200 to
1500 years BP) and Cienaga (2200 to 1400 years BP).
Among them, Alamito (18001500 years BP) stands
out due to the distinctive pattern of its villages. This
pattern contains mounds, platforms, and enclosures
which were made on stone and adobe and situated
around communal or ritual plazas. It is not clear yet
if the Alamito sites are villages with a specific and
complex pattern or cultic centers related to the
Condorhuasi.
Intense long- and short-distance trade of raw material, manufacture, as well as both ordinary objects
and ceremonial items, characterize these village societies. This interaction favored information exchange
and connected very distant groups from the Pacific
coast to the sub-Andean hills and to the tropical
forest. This exchange network was very ancient but
during this period it became well established. The San
Pedro de Atacama oasis in the puna of Chile, was
probably the most important center of this network;
from here llama caravans traveled widely across the

426 Southern Cone

south central Andes and Pacific coast. Exchange items

included salt, obsidian, lithic shovels, pottery, as
well as clay pipes and cebil (Anadenanthera sp.), a
hallucinogenic drug from the tropical forest.
Late Formative societies developed during the first
centuries of the Christian era, when there was an
increment in demography and in the exchange network. During this period, there was a clear development of ritual practices. Fine pottery (polished and
painted like the Vaqueras Style) appeared in a variety
of sites and in different environments associated with
the llama caravans and with long-distance interethnic contacts. This pottery is associated with a cultic phenomena represented by the use of hallucinogens in association with ritual paraphernalia such as
tablets, tubes, clay and stone pipes, and mortars with
feline motifs. The use of arsenical bronze as a sort of
technology of power at a grand scale can be seen in
objects such as plates with high symbolic value.
Between 1500 and 1000 years BP, there was a
clear manifestation of social regional integration
which included chiefdoms with increasing inherited
social inequalities. A representation of this is found
in the cultural group known as Aguada (c. 1600
to 1000 years BP) centered in the Ambato Valley
(Catamarca, Argentine northwest), whose symbolic
and ideological pattern expanded in the valleys of the
Andes. Among this group, the feline complex plays
a central role and was probably the expression of a
shared pan-Andean cosmology. It has been proposed
that the Aguada were linked with the Tiwanaku
expansion, basically based on contacts via the San
Pedro de Atacama oasis between these two areas.
However, it seems that the Aguada cosmology is a
local development related to the early cultic phenomena of El Mollar and El Alamito.

The Regional Developments and the

Inca Expansion (c. 1000 Years BP
to Hispanic Conquest)
Between c. 1000 years BP and expansion of the Inca
Empire into the southern Andes during the fifteenth
century, many political centers in dense and conglomerate settlements, articulated with dependent
villages, emerged. This process was associated with
a high differentiation in the organization of the
village pattern composed of residences, workshops,
storage places, and formal areas for human burials
(cemeteries). An intense production as specialization
characterizes this period, which also resulted in
multiple pottery styles (i.e., Santa Mara, Belen in
Argentine northwest) (Figures 6 and 7). Between
c. 900 and 1430 years BP, several sites of Quebrada

Figure 6 Pottery style Santa Mara, Ampajango (Catamarca,

Republica Argentina). Collection Muniz Barreto, Museo de La
Plata. Photo courtesy Mara Delia Arena.

Figure 7 Pottery style Belen, Azampay (Catamarca, Republica

Argentina). Collection Muniz Barreto Museo de La Plata. Photo
courtesy Mara Delia Arena.

de Humahuaca (i.e., Estancia Grande, CAL-20, Los

Amarillos, San Jose, La Isla, Juella, Campo Colorado,
Volcan), the north-central Calchaqu valley (i.e.,
Borgatta-SSalCac 16-, Valdez-SsalCac 12-), central
Chile (i.e., Aconcagua Culture), and of the Norte
Grande of Chile (i.e., Caserones 1, Pica-Tarapaca)
are representative of this period. Agricultural practice
was intensive and included terraces or andenes in the
mountain slopes and cultivated fields in the valley
bottom. New varieties of maize, beans, and squash
were introduced, which resulted in the production of a
food surplus. Corporative enterprises developed in
order to maintain larger populations with centralized
and marked hierarchies. This period is known in the
regional cultural sequence as regional developments,

Southern Cone 427

based on the existence of many political centers that

emerged in this period having alliances and conflict
between them. Some examples include Humahuaca,
Calchaqu and Yocavil, Belen, Sanagasta, Angualasto
in the Argentine northwest; Salar de Atacama in
northern Chile and Lpez in southern Bolivia. The
increase in size and number of settlements and the
development of a settlement hierarchy produced
social tension which in turn derived in conflicts
that generate population displacement toward higher
and better-protected localities. These changes are
well documented at the quebradas and valleys in the
Argentine northwest. As a result, defensive walls were
built to create well-protected fortifications such as
Quitor en el Salar de Atacama (Chile); Tucute in
Casabindo, La Huerta in Humahuaca, and the urban
center of Tastil in Quebrada del Toro (Argentine).
Upon the foundation of these hierarchical societies,
the Inca Empire expanded its domain during the fifteenth century and transformed their structure and
organization as they became part of the southern
province of the Tawantinsuyu, the name of the Inca
Empire whose capital was in Cuzco (Peru). The imperial expansion sought to increase their mineral
resources, which were especially abundant in northern Chile. They also sought to add more local labor
force which was needed by the estate during the
expansion phase. The Inca created an infrastructure
which integrated settlements specialized in the production of certain items (i.e., Potrero-Chaquiago),

Figure 8 Inca site Tolombon. Photo courtesy Veronica Williams.

defensive stone structures known as pukara (such as

Pucara de Andalgala, Fuerte de Tolombon-Argentina-,
El Tartaro-Central Chile-), waystations or tambos
(i.e., Las Cuevas IV-Argentina-, Ojo de Agua-Central
Chile-), administrative centers (i.e., Cortaderas,
Shincal, Potrero-Chaquiago-Argentina-, Cerro la
Cruz-Central Chile-), and a complex road system that
crossed thousands of kilometers (Figures 8 and 9).
They also re-used and rearranged previous villages
imposing architectural traits such as the rectangular
enclosure, trapezoidal entrance (vanos), and small
niches (i.e., Casa Morada de La Paya, Guitian in
Salta, Fuerte Quemado in Catamarca). The incorporation of the Inca throne a platform known as
ushnu is a singular archaeological indicator not only
of the Inca domination but also of the strategic
importance of the site where it is placed. Some examples of ushnu are Vina del Cerro and Chena in Chile,
and Watungasta, Nevado del Aconquija, and Potrero
de Payogasta in Argentina.
Many objects, such as pottery, show the integration of local elements with Inca shapes and/or motifs
(Imperial Inca style) and result in mixed styles, such
as Inca Paya, widely distributed in northwestern
Argentina, northern Chile, and southern Bolivia
(Figure 10).
During the sixteenth century, these populations
were decimated by the Spanish Conquest and many
were incorporated into a form of slavery known as
the encomienda. Episodes of intense resistance from

428 Southern Cone

La Solana

RVII
RVIII RIX

B
RVI
A

RV

D
RX

RXI

IX

XII

RIV RIII RII RI

XI
VIII
C
VII
A
VI

I
II

VI

IV
B

Los Abregos

IV

III

Retambay
II
0

100 m
I

Figure 9 Plan of Inca administrative center Potrero-Chaquiago. Courtesy Veronica Williams.

most of these people blended into the criollo populations and lost their ethnic identity. Only in some
places, such as the high puna, do some groups still
maintain their traditional way of life.
See also: Americas, South: Inca Archaeology; Animal
Domestication; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; New World,
Peopling of; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading

Figure 10 Aribaloide Inca, Aguada orilla norte (Catamarca,

Republica Argentina). Collection Muniz Barreto, Museo de La
Plata. Photo courtesy Mara Delia Arena.

local groups, such as the Quilmes, occurred in the

early years of conquest, resulting in brutal repression
by the Spaniards. In many cases, the surviving indigenous populations were relocated hundreds of kilometers away or placed in Reducciones. As a result,

Berberian E and Nielsen A (eds.) (2001) Historia Argentina Prehispanica, 2 vols. Cordoba: Editorial Brujas.
Duran Coirolo A and Bracco Boksar R (2000) Arqueologa de
Tierras Bajas Tropicales. Uruguay: Ministerio de Educacion y
Cultura, Montevideo.
Hidalgo J, Schiappacasse V, Niemeyer H, Aldunate C, and
Solimano I (eds.) (1989) Culturas de Chile. Prehistoria. Desde
sus Origenes hasta los Albores de la Conquista. Santiago de
Chile: Editorial Andres Bello.
Kern A (1999) Prehistoria do Rio grande do Sul. Porto Alegre,
Brasil.
McEwan C, Borrero L, and Prieto A (eds.) (1997) Patagonia.
London: The British Museum Press.
Pearsall D (1992) The origin of plant cultivation in South America.
In: Cowan CW and Watson PJ (eds.) The Origins of Agriculture:
An International Perspective, pp. 173205. Washington DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
Politis G and Alberti B (eds.) (1999) Archaeology in Latin American.
London: Routledge.
Tarrago M (ed.) (2000) Nueva Historia Argentina. Tomo I. Buenos
Aires: Editorial Sudamericana.

AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING 429

AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING

Rainer Grun, The Australian National University,
Canberra, ACT, Australia
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
amino acid Used for the synthesis of proteins. There are about
20 different amino acids in nature, consisting of four building
blocks attached to a central carbon atom at angles of about 120

in respect to each other: a carboxylic group (COOH), an amino
group (NH2), a hydrogen atom and a radical group (e.g., H in
glycine, CH3O in serine or C2H3O2 in aspartic acid).
chiral A three-dimensional form that consists in two
configurations that are not superposable on their mirror images.
chiral atom Central atom, onto which chemical groups can be
attached to form isomers or stereoisomers.
dextrorotatory Turning a plane of polarized light to the right.
dromaius Extant emu.
epimerization The process when a stereoisomer has two or
more chiral carbon atoms but only one is changed in the
conversion.
genyornis Extinct giant flightless bird in Australia.
isomer Consisting of the same elements in the same proportions,
with the same molecular weight, but, as a result of a different
arrangement of their constituents, forming different substances
with different properties.
lvorotatory Turning a plane of polarized light to the left.
racemization The process in which one optically active
stereoisomer is converted into a mix of lvorotatory and
dextrorotatory forms.
ratite Belonging to a class of birds with a keel-less sternum, such
as ostrich, emu, and cassowary.
stereoisomer Isomers differing in their spatial arrangement.

Amino acid racemization (AAR) dating is a technique

that is based on chemical reactions. Amino acids
occur in two chiral forms (they are not superposable
on their mirror images, see Figure 1). Amino acids are
optically active, which means that a plane of polarized light will be rotated while passing through the
substance. The chiral forms are labeled L (lvorotatory: turning a plane of polarized light to the left) and
D (dextrorotatory: turning a plane of polarized light
to the right). The symmetries are similar to left and
right hands and, informally, L-amino acids are called
left handed and D-amino acids right handed. Nearly
all living organisms exclusively produce L-amino acids;
therefore, in living tissues the ratio of D-amino acids
over L-amino acids (D/L ratio) is zero. After the death
of the organism, L-amino acids convert into D-amino
acids by a reversible process called racemization. For
some amino acids, the racemization process takes
place over geological time frames. As a result, the D/L
ratio can be used for dating until equilibrium is

achieved (usually D/L 1). In ideal circumstances,

AAR dating may be applicable to samples as old as
1 million years.

Basic Principles
Amino acids are formed from four basic building
blocks, which are attached to a central carbon atom
at angles of about 120
in respect to each other
(Figure 2): a carboxylic acid group (COOH), an
amino group (NH2), a hydrogen atom, and a radical
group (in the simplest case of glycine this radical group
is a hydrogen atom, others are CH3O for serine,
C2H3O2 for aspartic acid, etc.). A given amino acid
can occur in two, nonidentical mirror images (except
for glycine, which has two H-atoms), in which the
central carbon is a chiral atom. The two forms are
called stereoisomers (Figures 1 and 2): they have the
same composition and molecular weight but differ in
their spatial orientation. Racemization is the process,
in which one optically active stereoisomer is converted
into a mix of lvorotatory and dextrorotatory forms.
Epimerization is the process when a stereoisomer has
two or more chiral carbon atoms but only one is
changed in the conversion (see Carbon-14 Dating;
Dendrochronology).
The calcified tissues (bones, teeth, shells, egg shells,
etc.) and proteins of living organisms are closely

COOH

COOH

R
NH2

R
NH2

Figure 1 Amino acids contain four different building blocks

linked by a central carbon atom: a carboxylic group (COOH), an
amino group (NH2), a hydrogen atom, and a radical group, which
determines the specific amino acid. Except for glycine, which has
two hydrogen atoms, amino acids have two chiral forms, which are
not superposable. They are stereoisomers, that is, molecules with
the same composition and molecular weight, but different spatial
orientations.

430 AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING

L-aspartic

Carbanion

acid

H+

C2H3O2

C2H3O2

H2N

acid

COOH

COOH

COOH

H2N

D-aspartic

C2H3O2

NH2

(a)

L-isoleucine

D-isoleucine

COOH

COOH

H2N

H3C

Racemization

NH2

CH3

CH2

CH2
Ep

CH3
n

io

L-alloisoleucine

at

iz

er

im

CH3

D-alloisoleucine

COOH

(b)

H2N

CH3

COOH
H

NH2

H3C

CH2

CH2

CH3

CH3

Figure 2 Racemization and epimerization of the two most commonly used amino acids in geochronology. a, L-aspartic acid changes
into D-aspartic acid via an intermediate step, where the hydrogen atom is removed, forming a carbon anion (carbanion). The hydrogen
atom can be re-attached in two near equivalent positions, if it is on the opposite side, the D-aspartic acid is formed. With time, the resultant
solution will become a racemate, that is, contain an equal mixture of L- and D-forms. The solid lines present bonds lying in the paper plane,
while the blue triangles connect groups projected forward and the red-dashed triangle groups behind the paper plane. b, Racemization
and epimerization of L-isoleucine. The rate constants of the two directional epimerization reactions are different; therefore, the solution will
equilibrate at an A/I (alloisoleucine/isoleucine) ratio of about 1:3. a, After Hare PE, von Endt DW, and Kokis JE (1997) Protein and amino
acid diagenesis dating. In: Taylor RE and Aitken MJ (eds.) Chronometric Dating in Archaeology, pp. 261296. New York: Plenum Press.
b, After Miller GH and Brigham-Grette J (1989) Amino acid geochronology: Resolution and precision in carbonate fossils. Quaternary
International 1: 111128.

associated. There are about 20 different amino acids

used in the synthesis of proteins. Virtually, all living
organisms produce exclusively L-amino acids. Enzymic reactions during life prevent D-amino acids from
forming in most tissues, with the notable exception of
eye lenses and teeth. There has been some interesting
work attempting to establish the time of death
of people based on the degree of racemization in
teeth in forensic and archaeological contexts. After
the death of the organism, the proteins break down,

resulting in a mix of free amino acids, peptides (containing a small number of amino acids), and fragments
of proteins.
If the initial D/L, or A/I (alloisoleucine/isoleucine)
ratio is zero (or close to zero; typically <0.02), and
if the geological reaction rate is known, an age can be
in principle derived until the reaction reaches equilibrium (usually D/L 1; for A/I 1.3). Like all chemical
reactions, the racemization rate is temperature dependent; geological reaction rates can be deducted from

AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING 431

high-temperature heating experiments. The general

effect of the time/temperature dependence of the
racemization of a geological sample is shown in
Figure 3. Because of the nonlinear relationship
between the D/L ratio and time, D/L ratios change
rapidly in young samples and more slowly in older
ones. This means that the precision of AAR, assuming
more or less constant analytical errors, diminishes
with the age of the samples. An additional problem
arises with the fact that the temperature at a given
locality may have changed dramatically over Quaternary timescales. This necessitates calibration of
the AAR results by independent isotopic dating techniques (see below). On the other hand, if the ages
of samples are independently known, AAR values
can be used to reconstruct the climatic history of a
geographical area.

Measurement
Amino acids are quantitatively measured with
chromatographical methods: there is a range of technical variants, such an ion-exchange high-pressure liquid
chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography (GC),
and more recently, reversed phase liquid chromatography (RPLC). Each method has specific advantages and
disadvantages in sample preparation and measurement
resolution. All measurement techniques have a fact in
common that the analysis, compared to other dating
techniques, is very fast and relatively inexpensive. This
allows the analysis of a large number of samples within
a reasonably short time.

different reaction rates and geographical areas with

different temperature histories.

Errors
Figure 4 shows the principles of error calculation for
amino acid age estimations. It is assumed in this
example that a sample with a D/L ratio of 0.3 and an
independent age of 125 000 years was used as the
calibration point, a certain time/temperature function
was fitted to the calibration point and a temperature
uncertainty of 1.5
C was assigned to the average
storage temperature. A measured D/L ratio of 0.5
would result in an age of 350 000 years, a typical
measurement uncertainty of 5% would result in
an age error of 40 000 years. The error from the
temperature envelope results in age error of about
60 000 years; the overall error would be in the
90 000 years range. The correct error may be significantly larger because of uncertainties in the measurement of the D/L ratio and independent age estimate of
the calibration point. Because of the large uncertainties caused by extrapolations, it is usually advisable
to produce several calibration points with different
ages. This allows age interpolations, which are usually
associated with significantly smaller errors.

AAR Dating of Bones

During the 1970s a large number of papers were
published reporting amino acid dating results on
bones using either isoleucine or aspartic acid. Rutter

Calibration
1.0

18 C

0.8

14 C

ratio

11 C
D/L

If the racemization rates over time were precisely

known, AAR could be used as an independent,
numerical dating technique. However, the temperature at a given locality may have changed dramatically over its archaeological history. To address this
problem, calibration points are obtained by dating
samples with independent geochronological methods,
such as radiocarbon or U-series. To minimize effects
of the unknown temperature history, it is usually
attempted to obtain a series of calibration points of
different geological age (Figure 6c, below). It has
to be noted that the calibration curves apply only
to one species and to a limited geographical area
with closely similar temperature histories. For dating
or correlating samples of unknown age, it is usually
assumed that these experienced the same thermal
history as those samples of the calibration curve.
Wehmiller and Miller discussed in detail how calibration data of one species and one geographical
area may be transferred to other species with

0.6

8 C

0.4
0.2
0
0

100

200

300 400
Age (ka)

500

600

700

Figure 3 Principles of age and temperature dependency of the

D/L ratio. At a constant temperature the D/L ratio is a function of
time; on the other hand, if the age of the sample is known, the D/L
ratio can be used for estimating the average storage temperatures. After Wehmiller JF and Miller GH (2000) Aminostratigraphic
dating methods in Quaternary geology. In: Noller JS, Sowers JM,
and Lettis WR (eds.) Quaternary Geochronology Methods and
Applications, pp. 115120. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union.

432 AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING

T+

0.7

Glycymeris violescens

0.56
Analytical
uncertainty

ratio

0.5

D/L

0.51
E

Data point

0.6

0.4

Age error caused by

analytical uncertainty
Age error caused by
temperature uncertainty
Age error caused by
combined uncertainties

Calibration
point

0.3
0.2
0.1

A: Apex, mid-layer
B: Apex, all layers

A B
0.57 0.55
0.47 H
C
0.47

C: Mid-apex, growth edge (all)

F D: Growth edge (all)
0.57 E: Umbo
F: Right growth edge
G: Left dentition

D
0.65
H

H: Upper layer only

0
0

100

200

300

400 500
Age (ka)

600

700

800

Figure 4 Principles of error calculation of an amino acid age

estimation. A sample with a D/L ratio of 0.30 and an independent
age estimate of 125 000 years is used as calibration point. The
data point is fitted with a kinetic model for the current mean annual
temperature or estimate of the average temperature for the last
125 000 years. The kinetic equation may have been derived from
heating experiments (in this case a parabolic function was applied). Errors of the age estimate arise from the analytical uncertainty of the D/L measurement and the uncertainty, in the average
storage temperature (here 1.5
C). Additional random errors
would arise from any uncertainty in the measurement of the calibration point, systematic errors from the application of alternative
kinetic functions. After Wehmiller JF and Miller GH (2000)
Aminostratigraphic dating methods in Quaternary geology. In:
Noller JS, Sowers JM, and Lettis WR (eds.) Quaternary Geochronology Methods and Applications, pp. 115120. Washington, DC:
American Geophysical Union.

Figure 5 The varying A/I ratios show that the epimerization in

shells is influenced by structural differences. For site-to-site comparisons, samples have to be analyzed from exactly the same
position within the shells. After Hearty PJ, Miller GH, Stearns CE,
and Szabo BJ (1986) Aminostratigraphy of quaternary shorelines
in the Mediterranean basin. Geological Society of America Bulletin
97: 850858.

samples can be used for geochronological purposes.

This may be due to the fact that samples from caves
have experienced less temperature and humidity
changes than those in open-air sites.

AAR Dating of Mollusk Shells

and Blackwell provided a comprehensive compilation
of AAR data, including a large variety of age estimates on hominids, for example, from Border Cave,
Swartklip, and Eyasi and those of the palaeoindians
from Laguna, Del Mar, San Jacinto, and Sunnyvale.
In particular, the results from the palaeoindian samples with ages of up to 70 000 years caused some
controversy, perhaps because other, independent dating methods yielded significantly younger ages for
these samples. Hare et al. discussed in detail that
AAR ages of bones are notoriously unreliable and
may deviate from independent age estimations by
up to an order of magnitude. This has been attributed to the porosity of bones, which allows for a
number of chemical processes to interfere with the
AAR process (leaching, algal and bacterial contamination, precipitation of secondary minerals, variable
geochemical conditions in the surrounding matrix,
inhomogeneity of D/L ratios in different bones from
the same skeleton, etc.).
Some newer studies on cave bear teeth seem to
imply that the D/L ratios extracted from dentine

AAR of mollusk shells is complicated because shells

contain different structural layers. While the amino
acid composition of each layer may be constant, there
are significant differences between structural layers.
As a result, protein degradation and racemization
may proceed at different rates for the structural layers
of a single shell sample (see Figure 5). Nevertheless,
when collecting and analyzing samples from specific
locations of a single species, it is possible to discriminate amino acid zones for the various oxygen isotope
stages. However, for samples older than the last interglacial (marine isotope stage 5, 125 000 years ago),
AAR analysis is usually not able to distinguish one
interglacial from another.

AAR Dating of Ratite Egg Shells

The 1990s has seen a rapid expansion of AAR dating
of ratite (a class of birds with a keel-less sternum,
such as the ostrich, emu, cassowary, etc.) egg shells.
This is due to the fact that these have been recognized
as approximating a closed system, with respect to

AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION DATING 433

100

Frequency

80
Dromaius
(n = 508)

60
40

Independently
dated site

20
0
0

20

40

(a)

60
80
Age (ka)

100 120

140
Frequency

120
100
Genyornis
(n = 505)

80
60
40
20
0
0

20

40

(b)

60
80
Age (ka)

100 120

See also: Carbon-14 Dating; Dendrochronology; Elec-

tron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating;

Obsidian Hydration Dating.

AMS 14C
OSL
TIMS U-series

1.2
1.0

A/I

ratio

0.8

Further Reading

0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
0

(c)

the A/I calibration curve for both Genyornis and

Dromaius eggshells (Figure 6c). The flat part of the
D/L ratio between about 20 000 and 60 000 years as
such would prevent any stand-alone AAR dating attempt in this range. However, Miller et al. went to
great lengths to independently date the geomorphologically youngest units in the various areas of study,
finding that independent ages on Genyornis eggshells
were always older than 40 000 years.
Ostrich eggshells are ubiquitous in African archaeological sites, from Egypt to South Africa, and their
AAR dating analysis may provide a powerful tool
to unravel African archaeology and palaeoanthropology. In a recent compilation of AAR data from
Boomplaas, Apollo 11, and Border Cave, Miller et al.
concluded that the age of the Howiesons Poort industry was bracketed by limiting dates of 56 000 and
80 000 years and was most likely centered on 66 000
to 5000 years.

20

40

60
80
Age (ka)

100

120

Figure 6 a, Amino acid age estimates for the extant Dromaius

(emu). The data spread over the last 120 000 years with peaks
around the Holocene and 60 00070 000 years. Superimposed
are the number of independently dated sites. b, Amino acid age
estimates for the extinct Genyornis. No samples independently
dated to younger than 45 000 years were found. c, Calibration
curve for the amino acid age estimates. After Miller GH, Magee
JW, Johnston BJ, et al. (1997a) Pleistocene extinction of Genyornis newtoni: Human impact on the Australian megafauna. Science
283: 205208.

leaching/uptake of organic solutions. In one of the

most elaborate AAR studies on more than 1000 different eggshell samples, Miller et al. showed that the
giant bird Genyornis, a member of the extinct Australian megafauna, disappeared around 50 000 years
ago. They found that samples of Dromaius (extant
emu) from widely scattered sites yielded AAR ages of
between 0 and 120 000 years (Figure 6a), whereas
Genyornis yielded only AAR ages of >45 000 years
(Figure 6b). The AAR age estimates were based on

De Torres T, Ortiz JE, Garcia MJ, et al. (2001) Geochemical Evolution of amino acids in dentine of Pleistocene bears. Chirality
13: 517521.
Hare PE, von Endt DW, and Kokis JE (1997) Protein and amino
acid diagenesis dating. In: Taylor RE and Aitken MJ (eds.)
Chronometric Dating in Archaeology, pp. 261296. New York:
Plenum Press.
Hearty PJ, Miller GH, Stearns CE, and Szabo BJ (1986) Aminostratigraphy of quaternary shorelines in the Mediterranean
basin. Geological Society of America Bulletin 97: 850858.
Miller GH, Beaumont PB, Deacon HJ, Brooks AS, Hare PE, and
Jull AJT (1999) Earliest modern humans in southern Africa
dated by isoleucine epimerization in ostrich eggshell. Quaternary Science Reviews 18: 15371548.
Miller GH and Brigham-Grette J (1989) Amino acid geochronology: Resolution and precision in carbonate fossils. Quaternary
International 1: 111128.
Miller GH, Magee JW, Johnston BJ, et al. (1997a) Pleistocene
extinction of Genyornis newtoni: Human impact on the Australian megafauna. Science 283: 205208.
Miller GH, Magee JW, and Jull AJT (1997b) Low-latitude glacial
cooling in the Southern Hemisphere from amino acids in emu
eggshells. Nature 385: 241244.
Rutter NW and Blackwell B (1996) Amino acid racemization dating. In: Rutter NW and Catto NR (eds.) Pleistocene Dating
Methods: Problems and Applications, pp. 125166. Geotext 2,
Ottawa: Geological Association of Canada.
Wehmiller JF and Miller GH (2000) Aminostratigraphic dating
methods in Quaternary geology. In: Noller JS, Sowers JM, and
Lettis WR (eds.) Quaternary Geochronology Methods and Applications, pp. 115120. Washington, DC: American Geophysical
Union.

434 ANIMAL DOMESTICATION

ANIMAL DOMESTICATION
Hans-Peter Uerpmann, University of Tubingen,
Tubingen, Germany
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
animal domestication Adapting animals to close coexistence
with humans for serving as pets or suppliers of animal products
(e.g., meat, milk, wool, etc.) or for providing labor and other
services.
cultural anthropology The scientific study of the development
of human cultures based on ethnologic, ethnographic, linguistic,
social, and psychological data and methods of analysis.
morphological character An aspect describing the form and
structure of an organism or any of its parts.
tameness Status of animal behavior where humans are
conceived like conspecifics without fear or aggression.

Introduction: What Is Animal

Domestication?
In its proper sense, animal domestication means the
process of transformation from wild to domestic animals. However, the term is also used to denominate
the domestic status of animals. It derives from the
Latin word for house domus and indicates that
domestic animals are incorporated into the human
household. This means that important aspects of
their livelihood (like behavior, nutrition, reproduction, range of movements, life span, etc.) are under
human control and that humans at their will can use
domestic animals for whatever is possible. In contrast, wild animals are independent in all these
respects. While freedom to us appears as a very important aspect of life, it should not be forgotten that
domestic animals also have enormous advantages
over their wild conspecifics. Human control also
includes protection against predation, starvation, uncontrolled population growth, negative climatic
influences, and so on. Well-managed domesticates
can reach population levels far above those of their
wild conspecifics using similar environments. In
addition, they often can expand with human support
to geographical regions and environments, which are
not accessible for the wild forms. Therefore, within
the biological system of concepts, animal domestication can be described as a special form of symbiosis
between humans and certain animals, which has
advantages for both participating species.
Scientific explanation of the evolutionary processes
leading to the development of symbiotic relationships
is always a challenge for the biologist. In the case of

explaining the origins of animal domestication this

is even more complex, because those who want to
understand the domestication processes are themselves
involved as domesticators. Therefore the biological
system of concepts is not sufficient for a scientific
approach to the historical understanding of animal
domestication. Such an approach must be compatible
with the concepts of cultural anthropology as well.

Animal Domestication in the Context of

Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology
Within the archaeological context, the term animal
domestication is often reduced to the processes leading to the domestication of food-producing animals
during what is called the Neolithic revolution. This is
understandable, because the development of active
food production had the most profound impact on
the development of mankind after the invention of
tools and the use of fire. The fundamental impacts of
animal domestication on human history are today
mainly dealt with by cultural anthropology, but
were part of human self-awareness from early on.
The distinction of herder and hunter as part of the
dichotomy between civilized and wild is already
found in the cuneiform literature of Mesopotamia.
Indeed, the domestication of certain animals is part
of the transition from a foraging life to that of farming, which also includes the domestication of certain
plants. There is no doubt that questions of when,
where, why, and how people first domesticated these
particular plants and animals are central to the understanding of the history and development of mankind and have received the attention of scholars and
philosophers throughout the formation of human
self-understanding. The present contribution will,
however, not concentrate on these anthropocentric
aspects of animal domestication. It will instead deal
with domestication as a series of processes between
humans and specific animals, which strongly depended on particular environments and on special ways
of biological interference between the two sides and
which had different results depending on the involved
animal species.

The Role of the Domesticator

The role of humans as domesticators has to be
addressed first, because it seems that this role is basically
identical regardless of the animal counterparts involved
in particular domestications. As a general attitude,

ANIMAL DOMESTICATION 435

many archaeologists consider animal domestication as

a process consciously initiated by humans for special
purposes. As a common notion, the domestication of
meat-producing animals is considered as human reaction to a shortage of protein supplies provoked by a
range of potential causes. The dog was domesticated
as hunting companion, and the horse for pulling
the chariot just to mention a few examples of
purpose-oriented reasoning for causes of domestication
processes. The likelihood that such reasons initiated
domestications is very low, however, because as a general rule the usefulness of a particular domestic animal
could not be imagined beforehand, when that species
was only known as a fugitive and in some cases even
dangerous wild animal.
When looking into the known details of actual
domestication processes, and when taking into
account the available knowledge about biology and
behavior of the species involved, explanatory scenarios can be developed for specific situations, which
lead to the domestication of particular animals without postulating a purpose. In plain words, this means
that domestications may just have happened when a
very particular set of circumstances allowed it. The
specific usefulness of the respective domestic animal
could then be recognized and would have been the
reason for its further propagation.
A major reason for skepticism against considering
humans as active, purposeful domesticators should
be the fact that so few animals were domesticated.
Situations of protein shortages must have happened
many times during all periods of early human history.
Among the rich variety of African ungulates there
would most certainly have been species which were
appropriate for domestication. The argument that
humans themselves first had to develop particular
capabilities for managing domestic animals must be
considered, but does not explain the actual observations. These questions will be taken up again when
discussing the evidence for the earliest domestication
of meat-producing animals.
The alternative to purposeful domestication is the
unconscious development of close man/animal connections leading to a symbiotic relationship. As
humans are the only mammals who have domesticates, the basic behavioral features must be looked
for on the human side. They can easily be found in a
common attitude toward very young animals, which
almost inevitably triggers nursing instincts in
humans. The relevance of this feature for animal
domestication has long been realized, but in spite
of more recent reconsiderations has not really been
recognized in its fundamental importance for animal
domestications. Complete taming of animals usually
can only be achieved when it starts very early during

their individual development. Together the nursing

instinct on the human side and the potential for
complete taming on the side of very young animals
provide a starting point for a close man/animal relationship on an individual basis.

Basics of the Domestication Process

Tameness is a fundamental precondition for domestication. Among the mammals exceptions are only
found in some recent domesticates, like minks or
other species bred for their pelts. In such cases, the
necessary control over the animal is achieved by
caging. Taming on the other hand provides mental
control over the animal, which nevertheless must
usually be supported by fencing or other suppressive
means of physical control. However, many animal
species can be tamed, but only a few of them became
domesticates.
Domesticates are different from their wild relatives. A tamed wolf is not a dog. This indicates that
taming is only a first step in the direction of domestication. For its completion it is necessary that tame
individuals start to reproduce and that their offspring
remain and breed under human control over several
generations. During this time, both the circumstances
of living together with humans and the direct results
of human control will more or less consciously influence reproductive success of particular individuals.
Thus, a selection of special biological traits will
soon become manifest in an animal population,
which is breeding under human control. As soon as
clear differences can be observed, the respective population can be recognized as domesticated.
The domestication process thus requires the following steps:
1. gaining complete control over individual animals,
preferably by taming;
2. assembling tamed (or otherwise controlled)
groups of animals containing both sexes and
keeping them together over periods long enough
to start intra-group breeding; and
3. continued intragroup breeding of the tame (or
otherwise controlled) stock and avoiding largescale cross-breeding with the wild population.
The easiest way to achieve step 1 is the nursing
of very young individuals taken from the wild population. The second step is the most difficult one,
because it requires keeping the raised animals till
sexual maturity and beyond. In addition these animals
must be kept in a way, which allows for their repertoire
of reproductive behavior to be performed successfully.
Once these difficulties are overcome, the third step will
become easier and easier with each successful breeding

436 ANIMAL DOMESTICATION

cycle, because there will be a very efficient natural

selection for animals that are capable to survive and
reproduce under these particular circumstances. In
addition, human selection will favor particular external features, which help to distinguish domestic and
wild stock like aberrant colorations, hanging ears or
twisted horns, etc. Early breeders will soon have realized that cross-breeding with wild animals is not
desirable, because such crosses will have hampered
the accumulation of those inherited behavioral features which are favorable for a close coexistence with
humans.
A widespread hypothesis of how step 1 might have
been achieved during the domestication of meatproducing animals is based on the assumption of
some kind of management of wild animal populations through human hunters. This has remained a
theoretical concept, though, lacking reflections on
the practicability of such management. Actually,
specialized hunters must have had some sort of control over their favorite prey animals. This control,
however, is achieved by monitoring, not restricting,
the movements of a wild animal population. Selective
pressures exerted by specialized hunters will have
favored better avoidance on the animal side, not a
mutual approach. Real physical control of hunters
over a mature wild population is absolutely illusive
in the case of wild sheep or goats in their natural
mountainous habitats, because their ability to move
in such terrain is by far superior to that of humans.
Other animals, like wild cattle, are simply too strong
as adults to be physically controlled. Only in theory,
fencing would have been a way to obtain control over
a mature population of wild herbivores, because a
fenced area would either have been too small to provide fodder for a long enough period, or too large to
sufficiently restrict the movements of the animals. In
conclusion, it remains difficult to imagine realistic
scenarios for a domestication process starting from
a mature wild animal population within its natural
habitat.

How to Identify Domestication?

Research into the beginnings of animal domestication
requires methods for a distinction between the
remains of wild and domestic animals. These need
to be orientated at detecting the changes, which differentiate the archaeological leftovers of hunters from
those of early animal keepers. In principle, there are
two sets of data potentially yielding information
about the wild or domestic status of the animals,
whose remains are found at an archaeological site.
One of them are the data yielding information about
morphological characters of the individual animals,

which are known to change during the domestication

process. The other one concerns the whole population of animals, which was exploited for meat by
those who left the bone finds behind. This last approach is based on the assumption that an accumulation of bone finds as leftovers of meals will reflect the
demographic structure of the live animal population
from which the consumed animals were taken.
The Demographic Concept

For an explanation of the demographic concept of

identifying domestication the following scenario
should be imagined. A group of hunter-gatherers regularly exploits the wild ungulates living in their surroundings for venison. Whenever meat is needed or
wanted, hunters leave the camp and shoot the first
animal which comes into their reach. This kind of
hunting at random is repeated over and over again.
After a larger number of cycles, every individual animal of the exploited wild population would have had
the same chance to end up on the skewer over the
campfire of the hunters. Those which actually did
would presumably form a random sample of the
whole population.
The next assumption is that the dumped bone offal
of these animals will still reflect their taxonomic
identity and their ages and sexes. The archaeozoologist, who would later evaluate these finds, would then
be able to reconstruct the species, age, and sex composition of the population of wild ungulates, which
was exploited by the hunters and gatherers who left
the bone-finds behind. The results would finally reflect the demographic structure of the exploited animal population. Thus, demographic results for the
animal remains from archaeological sites at the
verge of animal domestication can be compared
with expectations based on the results from other
sites of older or younger date, or with expectations
based on the demographic features of modern wild
animal populations from comparable environments.
If the archaeological sample yields a demographic
result, which does not seem compatible with that of
a hunted fauna, one may argue for a pattern, which
depended on slaughtering early domesticates.
The application of this concept can be difficult due
to the nature of the animal remains found at sites
from the periods of incipient animal domestication.
Often such materials do not provide samples large
enough to obtain results of statistical significance.
A more theoretical difficulty derives from the extreme
plasticity of wild animal populations and the wide
range of demographic changes which may occur naturally under the influence of predation, environmental change, or other natural causes. Attempts to prove
domestication through the demographic approach

ANIMAL DOMESTICATION 437

need to demonstrate a deviation from the wild status

in great detail. All the influences must be considered,
which might have had an effect on the respective
prehistoric animal populations. Particular difficulties
are to be expected, when incipient domestication
in the form of keeping some few tame animals cooccurs with normal subsistence hunting (see HunterGatherers, Ancient). In principle, though, this is a valid
approach, which also has a potential to identify
domestication in its very early stages.
The Morphological Concept

The other way to identify domestication is based on

the changes which are caused by domestication in the
respective animals. These changes will only become
evident after the domestication process is well on its
way. Depending on the nature of the changes implied,
this may be a span of five to ten generations, for
which the respective animal population must have
lived under human control. In absolute time, this
may be a span between 15 and 50 years, depending
on the reproductive cycle of the species involved.
Compared to the accuracy of the available methods
for dating the archaeological contexts, from where
the respective animal remains come, this time span
is almost negligible. Therefore the temporal disadvantage of this approach seems less important than
the increased security of the results as compared to
the population approach.
There are many characters in animals that change
under the influence of domestication. However, most
of them do not affect the skeletal system, which is the
primary source of information with regard to archaeological periods. Nevertheless, there are a number of
features that can be recognized in the skeleton as well.
The skull for instance is very sensitive to changes in
the neural system under the influence of domestication. The reduction in brain size recognizable in most
modern domesticates also affects the skull and its
proportions. But often skulls are not well enough
preserved at early sites to provide the necessary
evidence; and if a well-preserved specimen is found,
it only represents one single animal and does not
provide insights into changes at the population level,
which are required as a basis for valid extrapolations.
Horn cores, the inner bony support of the horns of
sheep, goat, cattle, and other bovids, are more often
preserved in numbers large enough to be of statistical
significance. Under the influence of the human preference for individualistic characters among the animal companions, horns become variable in form and
size during the domestication process. This is reflected in the horn cores as well. Twisted and medially
flattened horn cores of Neolithic goats have often
been used as evidence for their domestic status.

However, changes in the horns do not have a required

function during domestication. They are accepted,
both by the humans and the animals if they occur,
but do not occur by necessity. Therefore, these
changes can only be used as evidence for domestication in the positive case. The negative case does not
exclude domestication.
According to empirical observations, the overall
size of animals is the best indication for their wild or
domestic status, at least during the early stages of
their relationship with humans. As a general rule
animals become smaller during the initial phase of
domestication. Many reasons have been discussed
for this observation, but it must be admitted that the
dependencies of body size at a population level are
not yet fully understood by paleobiology. The major
factors explaining size reduction in early domestication will be suppression of the natural selection of
partners during reproduction and increased tolerance
of smaller animals to temporary shortages in the
supply of fodder. A preference of the humans for more
docile animals may have acted in the same direction.
In any case, a clear decrease in size during early stages
of domestication is visible in dogs, sheep, goats, cattle,
horses, and other animals. Later, after the herders and
farmers had learned how to manage and breed their
animals well, the size of domestic animals often
increased, reaching the sizes of the wild ancestors
again or even surpassing them.
The initial appearance of domestic dromedaries in
southeast Arabia will be used as an example for this
kind of approach to identify domestication based on
animal size. Columns 2 and 3 of Figure 1 represent
the marked drop in the sizes of dromedary bone finds
from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in the respective
layers of Tell Abraq, a stratified site in the United
Arab Emirates. While the sizes of the finds from the
Bronze Age levels correlate with the sizes of dromedary finds from Umm an-Nar (column 1), a slightly
earlier site further south in the UAE, the finds from
the Iron Age levels are comparable in size to the
dromedary finds from Muweilah (column 4), another
Iron Age site not far from Tell Abraq. It is obvious
that the dots in columns 3 and 4 represent populations
of smaller dromedaries than those in columns 1
and 2. The indicated shift in dromedary size from the
Bronze to the Iron Age is interpreted as transition
from hunting wild dromedaries before about 1200/
1000 BC to using domestic ones in the period
thereafter.
Some further explanations are necessary to understand Figure 1. Dromedary sizes are indicated there in
the form of size index values. The LSI or logarithmic
size index is calculated from bone measurements by
relating them to the respective measurement of the

438 ANIMAL DOMESTICATION

0.1

Umm an-Nar
bronze age

Tell Abraq
bronze age

Tell Abraq
iron age

Muweilah
iron age

0.08
0.06

2
Wild

0.04
0.02

Bigger than standard

0.12

Wild ?

0
Smaller than standard

LSI

0.02
0.04

0.06
0.08

1 = Danish excavations 1 = Umm an-Nar phase

2 = Al-Ain excavations 2 = Wadi Suq phase

0.1
Figure 1 Diminution of logarithmic size-index values for dromedary bone finds from archaeological sites in the United Arab Emirates at
the shift from the Bronze to the Iron Age.

skeleton of a so-called standard animal. The skeletal

size of the standard animal defines the zero line of
the graph marked by the arrow on the right side.
Symbols above the zero line indicate animals larger
than the standard animal, and those below are from
smaller dromedaries. Calculation of the size index is
simple, because it is defined as the difference between
the decadal logarithms of a measurement x of a bone
find and the respective bone measurement s of the
standard animal:
LSIX log x
log s
The advantage of using size indices for the evaluation
of animal size as represented in archaeological bone
finds lies in their comparability throughout the different skeletal elements. Otherwise individual bone
measurements would only be comparable with their
exact homolog in other series of measurements. It is
important to use this method on a population base
and not to overinterpret individual deviations as for
example the lowest value in column 1 of Figure 1,
which might be considered to represent a domestic
dromedary, but probably only represents an exceptionally small wild animal. The applicability of this method
will of course always depend on the presence of a
sufficient number of measurable bone finds and on a
standardized way of measuring both the archaeological
finds and the skeletons of standard animals.

A Short History of Animal Domestication

Dog (CANIS)

The oldest domestic animal is the dog. Its wild ancestor is the wolf, Canis lupus. (The scientific nomenclature of domestic animals is not regulated by the
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The
system applied in this article is based on Uerpmann
(1993).) There are indications for increasing approaches
between humans and wolves at Upper Paleolithic sites
in Central Europe. For instance, wolf bones are quite
frequently found at mammoth hunters sites in
Moravia. While hunting and killing animals does not
appear to be an approach leading into domestication,
it has to be assumed that hunting the adults would
often have led to catching the very young ones alive.
Wolf puppies are wonderful pets. As said before, raising young animals probably was the basic cause of
animal domestication. However, domestication must
not be seen as the inevitable outcome of this activity.
At first, the raising of young ones only creates tame
animals animals that know how to behave in human
society. Domestication may follow, but only if the
adaptations to coexistence with humans are inherited
to further generations.
In the case of the assumed tame wolves of the
Upper Paleolithic, reproductive isolation from the
wild wolves does not seem to have been complete.
Differences between tame and wild individuals,

ANIMAL DOMESTICATION 439

caused by human preferences for particular properties

of the pre-dogs, will have accumulated but slowly.
Therefore, it remains difficult to detect these differences in the fossil record consisting of scattered bone
finds. Good osteological evidence for dogs is not available before the Mesolithic. On the animal side, this
must have been due to increased genetic isolation between tame and wild wolves an isolation which had
to be due to changes in the relation between humans
and early dogs. We may speculate that increased importance of tame wolfs or pre-dogs for finding game in
a more vegetated landscape was a reason for paying
more attention to these hunting companions. There is
evidence for early dogs from Britain, Denmark, and
other parts of Europe, and from the Near East as
well, where we also find indications for an affective
relation between humans and early dogs. Skeletal
remains of young wolves or dogs are sometimes found
in human graves.
Particular evidence for the process of domestication is also stored in the genetic code of animals.
Comparative analysis of the DNA sequences of
dogs and wolves yielded the most important information that contrary to former assumptions the
North American wolves were not domesticated. PreColumbian dogs in America derive from animals
which came from Asia together with the human population. Whether all dogs derive from East Asia, as
also suggested from DNA evidence, remains questionable. The assumption that dog domestication
should have happened in an area where the local
wolves had a gene pool broad enough to contain
most of the basic genetic variation of dogs would be
plausible only if domestication was a natural evolutionary process. However, the primary cause for the
approach between wolves and humans was the interspecific social capabilities of the latter. How would
these people have been capable to realize which wolf
population had enough genetic variability to encompass more than 95% of the respective variability of
modern dogs? A polycentric or widespread origin
of dogs throughout the former mammoth steppes of
Eurasia would also be compatible with the DNA
patterns of modern dogs (see DNA: Ancient; Modern,
and Archaeology.
From the fossil record, it is difficult to reconstruct
what the very early dogs looked like. They were
smaller than wolves, but may not have looked very
different. The manifold differences between recent
dogs and wolves will have evolved after this initial
phase when it became important for dogs not to be
mistaken for a wolf. Wolves became enemies when
humans started to have other domestic animals than
dogs. Domestic sheep and goats are easy prey for

wolves, but humans were not willing to share this

base of their subsistence with the wolf.
Sheep (OVIS) and Goats (CAPRA)

Sheep and goats were the next animals to become

domesticated after the dog. Again, a lot of speculation is necessary to imagine a probable scenario for
this process. The usual answer is that for whatever
reason people at a certain point of their development needed additional or more secure sources of
animal protein and that they therefore started to
domesticate meat-producing animals. This answer is
insufficient, however. Early hunters and gatherers
experienced food shortages all the time, and apart
from the meat-eating dog did not domesticate any
meat-producing animals. The subsistence of the
Magdalenian culture in western Europe, which flourished during the Late Pleistocene and created marvelous works of art found in the caves of southern
France and northern Spain, was mainly based on
hunting wild reindeer and horses. These large herbivores populated the open landscapes created by the
cold and dry climate of the final Ice Age. The spread
of forests at the transition to the Holocene dislodged
these animals to the north and east. Severe shortages
must have resulted for the Magdalenian hunters.
They did, however, not react by domesticating reindeer or horse, although both species can be domesticated, as was proved much later when other
conditions led to their incorporation into the human
sphere. Looking at the long history of hunting and
gathering as subsistence strategy, periodic shortages
must have occurred many times and under many
different sets of environmental conditions.
Actually, the conditions which lead to the domestication of sheep and goats were unique and very special. The same changes of global climate, which
brought an end to the Magdalenian base of subsistence, favored the expansion of grasslands in the part
of the Near East which is called the Fertile Crescent.
These changes were not only favorable for the grasseating animals of that area, which in turn could be
used by human hunters, but also yielded direct profit
for the humans, because among the grasses of that
area were the wild cereals. Rich stands of wild barley,
rye, and wheat provided enough corn not only for the
harvest season, but also for storage through larger
parts of the year. These provisions lead to increased
sedentism, including the origin of villages and even
larger agglomerations of more or less permanent
houses. The house being part of the domestication
concept came into existence.
While the cereal harvest provided a carbohydrate
base for human nutrition, animal protein still had to

440 ANIMAL DOMESTICATION

be obtained by hunting. The whole fauna of the area

was exploited by the sedentary harvesters. Animal
bones found in their settlements range from the
large aurochs to turtles, fish, and even snails. The
fact that even minor sources of protein were exploited
is an indication that sedentism is not really compatible with efficient hunting. In particular, the larger and
more fugitive prey would soon avoid the vicinity of
permanent settlements. Nevertheless, these communities would also have brought back very young animals to the settlements when their mothers had been
taken during a hunt. Actually, structured villages are
much better for bringing up orphaned animal babies
than ephemeral camps of hunters and gatherers. Particularly in the more mountainous and therefore more
ecologically diverse areas of the Fertile Crescent, the
Protoneolithic villages of the hunting harvesters probably will soon have housed a veritable zoo of tame
young animals. While growing older, their fate will
have depended on their compatibility with humans.
It should be reminded that young animals reared
by hunters and gatherers are generally not considered
as economic resources. Depending on their specific
patterns of behavior, adolescent animals might leave
their foster communities on their own probably
soon falling prey to carnivores or hunters of other
communities due to a lack of knowledge about living
in the wild. The more social ones might try to stay,
but human tolerance for an adolescent aurochs or
stag would have been limited. Thus the duration of
time during which reared animals could stay with
their foster communities depended on factors like
size, aggressiveness, required food, etc. Among the
animals taken by the hunting harvesters of the Fertile
Crescent, sheep and goats are the ones which had
the potential to stay long enough with their human
foster communities to reach sexual maturity and to
actually breed in this sort of deliberate captivity.
The conscious observation of spontaneous breeding
and proliferation of these herd animals within human
communities must have been the trigger for the
Neolithic revolution of human subsistence.
While the above considerations only highlight the
preconditions on the animal side of the domestication
process, it is obvious that more or less conscious but
in any case complex processes on the human side
had to accompany the incorporation of beloved
household animals into a revolutionary new subsistence strategy. A prolonged period of several generations of coexistence with tamed animals, where
compunction hampered slaughtering and conscious
exploitation, may have been necessary for these
processes to develop. However, once the potential of
controlled breeding of animals for meat production
was recognized, a whole set of new social possibilities

and necessities had to be managed and adopted on

top of the changes brought about by the prior adaptation to harvesting and incipient cereal cultivation. It
is obvious, however, that a unique coincidence of
particular biogeographical factors and climatic conditions was necessary to trigger these adaptations.
Apart from the Fertile Crescent, similar situations
seem to have existed at the Pleistocene/Holocene
transition in parts of Southeast Asia and in Central
America. There, however, the final step of animal
domestication was less successful due to the local lack
of suitable middle-sized animals. While in Southeast
Asia the domestic pig became a provider of meat on
the level of small communities, the little animals like
guinea pigs and turkeys first domesticated in Central
America and northern South America could only reach
this position on a family level.
Cattle (BOS) and Pig (SUS)

In the Near East, the incorporation of domestic sheep

and goats into human subsistence economies was
soon followed by the domestication of cattle and
pigs. However, little is known about the actual processes leading to the addition of these animals to the
livestock. One may assume that having domestic
sheep and goats created the intellectual space for
consciously adding other animals to the existing
herds. Where this happened first within the Fertile
Crescent is still unknown. The best available evidence
for early pig and cattle domestication at present
comes from the vertex of the crescent in the river
systems of Euphrates and Tigris (Figure 2). When
the Neolithic economy started to spread into Europe,
a complete set of domestic animals consisting of
cattle, pig, sheep, and goat provided a highly adaptable base of meat production, which could easily be
adjusted to different local conditions and which
provided the best possible insurance against catastrophic events, which rarely affect the different species to the same extent. It is interesting to read from
the genetic evidence carried along by European livestock, that the European aurochs was not domesticated by the Neolithic farmers. Mitochondrial DNA,
which is exclusively carried along the maternal line of
inheritance, reflects a Near Eastern origin of European
domestic cattle. A separate domestication is suggested
for African cattle, and well documented for the humped
or zebu cattle in South Asia.
For modern domestic pigs, there is genetic evidence
for multiple domestications. It seems that the basic
Neolithic stock of pigs in Europe was later replaced
by locally domesticated animals. In South and East
Asia, early pig domestications may have contributed
to the independent development of food-producing
economies.

Sh
ee
pG
oa
t

500 km

Goa
t

ANIMAL DOMESTICATION 441

le
att

500 km

Horse ?
Pig
Do

nk

ey

Don
key

500 km

500 km

Figure 2 Assumed centers of domestication.

Donkey (ASINUS) and Horse (CABALLUS)

Based on cattle, swine, sheep, and goats, the subsistence economy of the Neolithic period flourished in
Europe, the Near and Middle East, and North Africa
for several thousand years without other animals
being added to the stock. In Europe, it is the appearance of the horse which marks the first important
addition. This is different in southwest Asia and
northeast Africa, because there the donkey initiated
the expansion of the domestic squad. Apart from
donkey and horse, these additions later also included
the Bactrian camel and the dromedary. All these additional animals were mainly used as beasts of burden
and for riding.
The domestication of the donkey is still poorly understood. The wild ass, Equus africanus, occurred in
arid to semi-arid regions throughout northern Africa
from Somalia in the east to the coast of the Atlantic in
the west, but also on the Arabian Peninsula including
the dry parts of the Levant and Mesopotamia up to the
foothills of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains. For a
long time, palaeozoologists were not aware of the
Asiatic part of the range of the wild ass, because its
fossil remains were confounded with those of the socalled Asiatic wild ass, Equus hemionus. Therefore,
the older literature considers Egypt as the only center
of donkey domestication, and the donkey is sometimes seen as the only African species among the domestic mammals. However, up to now, the earliest
finds of donkey bones are from the famous site of
Uruk in Mesopotamia, where they are dated to the
last quarter of the fourth millennium BC. This indicates

that Mesopotamia was one center of domestication

of this species. The other one certainly was in the
Nile valley (Figure 2), where ancient Egyptian sources
also illustrate how donkey domestication might have
taken place.
Ancient Egyptian art gives insight into many
aspects of the natural environment. Animals are
quite prominent in all sorts of illustrations and the
accuracy of animal depictions is most impressive. It is
often possible to identify particular species of wild
birds or fish from the pictures, and it is therefore not
astounding that various wild mammals can easily be
recognized. From such sources we know that the
ancient Egyptians kept asses, ibex, Oryx antelopes,
various gazelles, and other wild species in captivity.
As these depictions usually belong to particular social
contexts, it may be assumed that these motifs represent activities of outstanding members of the society.
From Mesopotamia, there is evidence for special gardens where wild animals were kept. What can be
inferred from depictions in Egypt and from texts in
Mesopotamia might well be interpreted as a reaction
to the alienation from nature at a time when villages
started to become towns or even cities. Whatever the
reason was to have captive wild animals at that time,
it will in any case have had the potential to add new
animals to the domestic stock, because breeding
animals in captivity must inevitably always have
been the first step toward their domestication (see
above). However, with regard to domestication of
the donkey, the last word has probably not yet been
written.

442 ANIMAL DOMESTICATION

It seems most likely that the horse was domesticated after the example of the donkey. Wild horses
did not exist in the centers of early civilization where
the donkey was domesticated. Their natural adaptation to the continental steppes of the Northern
Hemisphere gave them a huge range during the cold
phases of the Pleistocene, reaching from the Iberian
Peninsula through Central Europe to Russia and
Siberia and even across the then existing Bering
Land Bridge over to Alaska and farther into North
America. The spread of forests in the Post Pleistocene
confined the wild horses to areas which retained
an open, grass-dominated vegetation. The extent of
such areas varied quite a lot during the Holocene,
and therefore it is still difficult to determine exactly
where wild horses would have been available for
domestication. Obviously, there is a core area of
steppes from Eastern Europe into Central Asia
where wild horses always lived until they were exterminated in recent historic times. But in addition to
that, more or less isolated populations existed on the
Iberian Peninsula, temporarily in France and Central
Europe, but during cool and dry climatic phases
also in the Danube Plains and in the highlands from
Central Anatolia to Armenia and northwestern
Iran (Figure 2). If the assumption is correct that the
donkey was the example for the domestication of
the horse, the area mentioned last is crucial for the
beginning of this process. However, actual research
has been very limited until recently. There is evidence
for the presence of domestic horses in Armenia at
the beginning of the last quarter of the third millennium BC (unpublished results of recent research
by the author). It is still not known, however,
whether these animals were domesticated locally or
imported from an earlier center of horse domestication elsewhere. In any case, the domestic horse made
its appearance in ancient Mesopotamia at the very
beginning of written history at the shift from the third
to the second millennium BC. In Central Europe, it
arrived during the second millennium BC, while on
the Iberian Peninsula an independent domestication
may have happened before. These views are in contrast to the older assumption that the horse was
domesticated in the east European steppes during
the fourth millennium BC. However, the evidence
for this assumption is now widely considered
as insufficient.
The Camelids: Bactrian Camel (BACTRIANUS),
Dromedary (DROMEDARIUS), Llama (LAMA),
and Alpaca ( ALPACA)

The Bactrian or two-humped camel is the most enigmatic domestic species with regard to its early history.

Assumptions about the beginnings of its close connection to humans reach back into the Neolithic period,
but there is no real evidence available. Its wild ancestor,
Camelus ferus, is still found in remote parts of the
Central Asian deserts, but was formerly more widespread, reaching west to the shores of the Caspian Sea
and into Iran. One of its earliest appearances as a
domestic or at least tame animal is documented by a
Mesopotamian seal-cutter, who carved a schematic
animal with a curved neck and two cylinders on its
back into a seal sometime before the middle of the
second millennium BC. Two persons are sitting face
to face on the two cylinders on the back of the animal,
indicating that the animal, which the seal-cutter
apparently had not seen himself, could be ridden.
There are other indications in the glyptic tradition of
southwest Central Asia and Iran which indicate that
the Bactrian camel may have been domesticated in
that part of the world, perhaps as early as the third
millennium BC. For the time being, however, no
biological evidence is available for this process.
The dromedary or one-humped camel is slightly
better known than the Bactrian camel. It appears in
the historical record and art of the Near East toward
the end of the second millennium BC. From the same
time onward, its bone remains become more and
more common among the faunal remains studied
from the same area. The problem about this species
for a long time was its wild ancestor. There are no
wild dromedaries today. Assumptions went as far as
to believe that the one-humped dromedary was but
a domestic variant of the Asiatic two-humped camel.
However, the lack of evidence for wild dromedaries is
only due to the bad conditions for fossil bone preservation in the Arabian deserts, which were the ecological niche, to where wild dromedaries retreated
during the final Pleistocene. In the Pleistocene, they
occurred in a very large form (Camelus thomasi) not
only in southwest Asia but also in North Africa. As a
real desert animal, the wild dromedary lost a large
part of its former habitat, when climatic conditions
became moister toward the Holocene. Therefore, the
better-explored areas of North Africa and the Near
and Middle East, which are also the areas preferred
by the human inhabitants, became void of wild dromedaries. With progressing archaeological research
in some parts of Arabia, this gap in our knowledge
has started to close.
Apparently, the dromedary was the latest addition
among the large mammals to the domestic stock. The
historical, pictorial, and morphological evidence indicate domestication toward the end of the second
millennium BC. Why and how this happened is still a
matter of speculation. Apart from the general fact

ANIMAL DOMESTICATION 443

that this must have been on the Arabian Peninsula,

the exact whereabouts are also still unknown. The
morphological evidence, used as an example earlier
(Figure 1), does not indicate a transitional period in
the area of southeast Arabia from where the data
come. Whether this indicates that domestic dromedaries arrived there fully domesticated, or whether
their morphological changes happened too fast to
be visible on the archaeological timescale, is not yet
known.
The domestic South American camelids llama
(LAMA) and alpaca (ALPACA) were also quite enigmatic
with regard to their domestication history for a long
time. It seems fairly well established now that they
originated from the two local wild species guanaco
(Lama guanicoe) and vicuna (Vicugna vicugna),
respectively. Their domestication may have started
as early as the fourth millennium BC, but the circumstances of this process are not clear at all. The role of
the camelids within the early prehistoric development
of the human populations of the respective areas in
the South American Andes is difficult to assess at a
regional level. Changes observed at individual sites
are difficult to interpret as long as it remains difficult
to correlate them to the general environmental history of the area and to more widespread changes in
human subsistence and settlement patterns. Nevertheless, the domestic South American camelids must
have played an important role during the development of advanced civilizations in that part of the
world.
The Cat (CATUS) and Other Small (Semi-)
Domesticated Carnivores

Among our domestic animals, the cat has remained

the most independent creature till today. In particular,
with regard to reproduction, human control over this
species is not too efficient. This independence sheds
some light on the process of domestication of this
species as well. As young cats are very attractive
pets, one may well assume that cat domestication
started in the same way as the domestication of the
dog. Rearing young wild cats would have created a
tame population living within human settlements, but
without genetic isolation from the wild population
in the surroundings. Therefore morphological and
other changes due to domestication would not have
accumulated. This goes well with the observation
that the many mummified cats found in old Egyptian
contexts cannot really be distinguished from the
North African wild cat, Felis silvestris libyca,
although one may well assume that they lived tame
among the humans. Transformation of the cat into a
real domestic animal will therefore have depended

on the disappearance of the wild cats within the range

of the tame ones. This would have happened when
human settlements became towns or cities and thus
too large for the tame cats to reach the surrounding
wilderness where the wild tomcats would have waited
for them. Another important factor may have been
the introduction of domestic fowl in human settlements. As a wild cat would not have hesitated to
consider a chicken as prey, the tolerance for these
animals within settlements will have disappeared
quickly after the domestic chicken arrived in the
Middle and Near East, from where it spread farther
to the Mediterranean and Europe (see below).
Taming of wild cats may have happened anywhere
in the huge range of the wild cat. Cats will have been
welcome in settlements because they act as control
of rodent pests. Their domestication will, however,
have depended on genetic isolation from the wild
surroundings. Therefore the appearance of real domestic cats is fairly late in the archaeozoological record. For Europe, this is generally the time of the
Roman Empire.
Another small carnivore, the mongoose Herpestes
edwardsi, lives in South Asia in a semi-domestic
condition till today. There is no control over its
reproduction. Therefore the animal has not developed
domestic characters, but can be considered as a candidate for real domestication as soon as contacts will
be lost between the tame and the wild population.
The ferret is a domestic polecat (Mustela putorius),
and has passed the line between tame and domesticated, because it displays obvious differences from
the polecat, like a whitish color, and also has skull
characters which can be interpreted as domestication
changes. Its domestication seems to have occurred
during the Middle Ages. Other members of the mustellid family, like the mink, are among the very recent
domesticates. They owe their status not so much
to conscious domestication, but simply to the fact,
that these species were bred in captivity for the production of pelts. Captivity not tameness achieved
genetic isolation from the wild population in these
cases. The isolation produced changes in coloration
which are sufficient to consider these animals as domestic, because they live under human control and
they are different from their wild relatives.
Domestic Fowl: Chicken (GALLUS) and Other Small
Domestic Animals

The wild ancestor of domestic chicken, the Bankiva

hen (Gallus gallus), lives in South Asia from India to
Vietnam and southern China. Its domestication must
have started in that area and is not yet really known.
It must have spread from India to the west during the

444 ANIMAL DOMESTICATION

second millennium BC, because there is a historical

document from the time of Tuthmosis III in Egypt,
which mentions the bird which lays an egg every
day. It is unknown how the domestic chicken
reached Egypt so early, because the known harbor
sites on the shores of the Arabian Peninsula have not
yielded chicken bones among the faunal remains from
the second millennium, although maritime contacts
to the Indus civilization are indicated there in large
style by all sorts of transported goods.
Early in the first millennium BC, chicken spread
from the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean to the
Aegean and as far west as southern Spain. In Central
Europe, it appears as indication of Mediterranean
contacts during the final phase of the Hallstatt civilization soon after 500 BC. Obviously, it filled a niche
at that time of transformation from rural to township
life. As small animals, which can make their living on
what remains as offal from the human table, chicken
could even be kept in cities.
Another small animal which could give a city
dweller the feeling that he was in charge of some
food production himself is the domestic rabbit (CUNICULUS). This is clearly a European addition to the
domestic stock, because its wild ancestor, Oryctolagus cuniculus, occurred only in the southern and
eastern coastland of the Iberian Peninsula and in
southern France. Among the small wild animals
kept in Roman times in so-called leporaria, it was
the only one that started reproduction in captivity.
Breeding under human control in isolation from the
wild population was again the starting point of domestication. Like few other animals, the rabbit took
enormous advantage from its close companionship
with humans, because with human help it could
spread its range almost worldwide.
Recent Domestications

Since the beginnings of city life in the Near East and

the wider Mediterranean, more small animals like the
carp, doves, ducks and geese, and also the bee and the
silk worm have entered the human sphere and more
domestications are going on today. Quite a number of
species have become domesticated under the eyes of
modern science, but this is rarely verbalized. There is
no doubt that the guppy fish and many other species
which populate the fish tanks of the civilized world
are now domestic animals. The same is true for budgerigars, canaries, and some other popular species of
birds, and also for some small mammals, which have
developed forms under human control, which do not
occur in the wild. None of these domestications were
planned. They just happened because people started

to keep animals for momentary reasons not with the

aim of transforming them into something that could
not be foreseen. Those animals which were able to
reproduce under the man-made conditions became
domesticated. Others, which did not, have remained
wild, because reproduction in isolation is the most
important precondition of domestication.
This is also the case for the largest animal, which
lives close to humans: the Indian elephant is the best
example, that tameness is not domestication. There
are no domestic elephants, because breeding these
animals in captivity is difficult. It is also not necessary in the case of the elephant, because the tame
females are easy to handle, have a long life expectancy,
and up to now could easily be replaced by taming a
new young wild elephant. It will be interesting to
observe, if someone will have the idea to really domesticate the Indian elephant, when it becomes more and
more difficult to find reproducing wild herds.
The observation of modern domestications is an
important reason for being sceptical about intentional domestications in the past. Favorable conditions of
human life are a plausible reason for changing relations with particular animals in terms of keeping
them alive for some time instead of eating them immediately. On the other hand, food shortages and
the dubious human capacity to foresee what will be
needed in the future together with the fact that
the economic success of domestication could not be
predicted are unlikely to have stimulated a process
which in any case took too long to produce an immediate response for the individual who started it.
See also: DNA: Ancient; Modern, and Archaeology; Plant
Domestication; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient.

Further Reading
Benecke N (1994) Der Mensch und seine Haustiere. Stuttgart:
Theiss.
Cauvin J (1994) Naissance des divinites, naissance de lagriculture.
La revolution des symbols au Neolithique. Paris: CNRS.
Clutton-Brock J (1999) A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davis SJ and Valla FR (1978) Evidence for the domestication of
the dog 12 000 years ago in the Natufian of Israel. Nature 276:
608610.
Galton F (1865) The first steps towards the domestication of
animals. Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London
NS 3: 122138.
Levine M, Renfrew C, and Boyle K (2003) McDonald Institute
Monographs: Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse.
Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Lewis-Williams D and Pearce D (2005) Inside the Neolithic Mind.
London: Thames & Hudson.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 445

Savolainen P, Zhang Y, Luo J, Lundeberg J, and Leitner T (2002)
Genetic evidence for an East Asian origin of domestic dogs.
Science 298: 16101613.
Serpell J (1989) Pet-keeping and animal domestication:
A reappraisal. In: Clutton-Brock J (ed.) The Walking Larder:
Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism and Predation, One
World Archaeology 2, pp. 1021. London: Unwin Hyman.
Uerpmann H-P (1993) Proposal for a separate nomenclature of domestic animals. In: Clason A, Payne S, and Uerpmann, H P (eds.)
Skeletons in Her Cupboard. Festschrift for Juliet Clutton-Brock,
Oxbow Monographs, 34, p. 239241. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Animal Remains

Uerpmann H-P (1996) Animal domestication Accident or intention? In: Harris DR (ed.) The Origins and Spread of Agriculture
and Pastoralism in Eurasia, pp. 227237. London: UCL.
Uerpmann H-P and Uerpmann M (2002) The Appearance of the
Domestic Camel in South-east Arabia. Journal of Oman Studies
12: 235260.
Vigne J-D, Dollfus G, and Peters J (1999) Les debuts de lelevage au
Proche-Orient, donnees nouvelles et reflexions. Note editoriale.
Paleorient 25/2: 510.
Zeuner FE (1963) A History of Domesticated Animals. London:
Hutchinson.

See: Archaeozoology.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Patricia A McAnany, Boston University, Boston,
MA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
agency The ability of humans, operating singly or collectively,
to shape their social circumstances and effect change in their
social and physical environment.
anthropology The study of humanity across space and through
time. Throughout most of the Americas, archaeology is classified
as one of four subfields of anthropology (along with
sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, and biological/physical
anthropology).
archaeological culture A constellation of material remains
across space and through time for which there is an observable
redundancy in stylistic and technological characteristics.
archaeological surface survey A systematic study of the
distribution of archaeological materials across a landscape that
generally is conducted by a team of archaeologists who traverse
an area on foot and maintain a constant distance from each other.
Chaco Canyon Located in the northwestern corner of the state
of New Mexico, the canyon was occupied by Pueblo peoples
around AD 1000 who built large multiroomed and multistory
architectural complexes with associated great kivas
(subterranean ritual structures).
Colonial Period Era (roughly 15001900) of expansion of
western European peoples around the globe and colonization of
parts of Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas.
direct historical approach Method of working back in time
from ethnographically known groups of people to the
archaeological past. This method was utilized widely in the
United States by cultural historians, particularly in the Great
Plains and the Southwest.
gender The social construction of roles and tasks associated
with a particular sex.

ideology Thought processes and beliefs materialized in ritual

and social practices.
indigenous peoples Generally but not always refers to
colonized peoples with a demonstrably long history of
occupation within a region and generally but not always with a
language, dress, and traditions that are distinct from a politically
and economically dominant culture also living within the
boundaries of a single nation-state.
Maya region The area in which Mayan speakers lived in the past
and also today; includes southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala,
and western Honduras.
Mesa Verde Located in the southwestern corner of the state of
Colorado, this region was occupied by Pueblo peoples who,
between AD 1100 and 1300, often lived in compact villages
constructed within large rockshelters.
Mississippian culture Term that refers to people living along
the Mississippi River and its major tributaries between AD 800 and
1300 and who constructed massive platform mounds. The largest
Mississippian site is located on the east side of the Mississippi
River across from St. Louis, Missouri, and is called Cahokia.
pottery seriation The archaeological method of building a
relative chronology by studying stylistic changes in pottery and
correlating these changes with stratigraphic sequences observed
through excavation.
prehistoric archaeology The investigation of material
remains from the time before written texts.
scientific method The formal logic and methods of scientific
investigation of phenomenon that generally emphasize
empiricism and hypothesis-testing.
sedentism The act of becoming sedentary; within archaeology
it generally, but not always, is correlated with the transition from
a lifestyle of hunting, gathering, and collecting that involves
frequent residential moves to a pattern of residing in a more
permanent residence for part or all of an annual cycle.
social practice The full constellation of activities by which
humans engage with each other and their material world.
subjectivity Interpretation based on personal opinions or
feelings rather than on external facts or evidence.

446 ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Historical Background
The codification of archaeology as a distinct field of
study apart from history was established in Europe
by the nineteenth century. Likewise, the discipline of
anthropology broadly construed as the study of
humanity can be traced to the post-Enlightenment
period and the colonial encounters of Europeans with
peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. But blending the broad theoretical issues of anthropology with
the archaeological study of specific material remains
of the past took place in the Americas during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout
most of the Americas, archaeology is classified as one
of four subfields of anthropology (along with sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, and biological/
physical anthropology). Likewise, within American
universities archaeology generally is taught as part
of the curriculum of a department of anthropology.
Archaeology as practiced in Europe and many
other parts of the globe has a less anthropological
and a more historical bent. This proclivity is particularly apparent in classical and biblical archaeology
where historical texts can play a large role in determining the location of archaeological research and
often lead the interpretation of excavated materials.
Even prehistoric archaeology (the investigation of
material remains from the time before written texts)
within Europe often is viewed as a tool with which to
investigate the deep history of historically known
cultural groups. The goals of this type of archaeology,
therefore, tend to be historical and somewhat particularistic.
In contradistinction, anthropological archaeology
tends to focus on broad themes such as social identity or the domestication of plants and animals which
are investigated with archaeological information
from one or more parts of the world. Cross-cultural
comparisons are encouraged within anthropological
archaeology and are not thought to violate the historical uniqueness or singularity of a culture. Here,
culture is used to refer to a constellation of material
remains across space and through time for which there
is an observable redundancy in stylistic and technological characteristics that, by convention, allow
archaeologists to refer to such a bundle of material
things as a culture.
An argument can be made that anthropological
archaeology arose in the Americas because early scholars pursuing archaeological research in this part of
the world largely were of European ancestry with
insufficient appreciation for the deep history of indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere. Indeed,
many American archaeologists/physical anthropologists of the early twentieth century such as Ales

Hrdlicka spent their entire career disputing evidence

that indigenous peoples had a presence in the Americas
for more than a few thousand years. During the nineteenth and even the early twentieth century, the monumental structures that had been built in the Americas
before sixteenth century European incursions the
soaring pyramids of the Maya region or the massive
platform mounds of the Mississippi Valley were
routinely credited to shipwrecked Egyptians or some
other circum-Mediterranean classical culture. Cultural
evolutionists of the Victorian era were of the opinion
that civilization had arisen only in Europe and the
classical world and so reasoned that evidence of
colossal pyramids or elaborate palaces in the Americas
must have been the result of ancient migrations from
areas of acknowledged civilizations. Of course, we
now know that the peopling of the Americas was
well underway by the close of the last Ice Age (the
Pleistocene, generally thought to have ended about
12 000 years ago) and that, over the course of the
deep history of the western hemisphere, plants and
animals were domesticated and civilizations merged
and were eclipsed in a manner that was independent
of events that took place in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Nevertheless, the earlier, erroneous notion of a
shallow time depth to the first peopling of the Americas
favored the investigation via archaeological techniques
of broad comparative topics over the construction of
deep and chronologically controlled local prehistories,
such as were under construction in other parts of
the world.
Although anthropological archaeology germinated
in the milieu of Colonial Period bigotry and racism, it
soon outgrew its questionable origins. As knowledge
of the temporally deep occupation of the Americas
grew through the first half of the twentieth century,
anthropological archaeologists began to refer to their
study of the past as culture history and some employed
an approach called the direct historical approach to
link ethnographically known groups such as Southwestern USA Pueblo peoples with earlier Pueblo
ruins such as Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. In
this way, archaeology in the western hemisphere
came to be anthropological because of its use of ethnography as a starting point of inquiry. At the same
time, this research was decidedly historical in focus,
more particularistic in its goals, and employed and
further refined many archaeological techniques, such
as pottery seriation, that had been pioneered by
European archaeologists.
The flowering of a distinctly American anthropological archaeology that privileged broad research
issues over historical sequences and embraced the
scientific method began in the late 1950s and

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 447

continued through the 1970s. This brand of anthropological archaeology often called processual or
new archaeology reengaged with the broad themes
of cultural evolution but rejected the prejudicial, unilineal schemes of earlier evolutionists. Asking why
societies had changed, anthropological archaeologists
of this era investigated remains of the past in order to
test theories regarding mobility and settlement patterns as well as major social transformations such as
the advent of sedentism, plant and animal domestication, social ranking within societies, civilization, and
urbanism (see Processual Archaeology). Realizing
that archaeological sites were a skewed sample of
what had once existed, archaeologists concerned
themselves with issues of sampling, designed their
studies so as to minimize bias, and elevated archaeological surface survey to a recognized stage of field
research. During this era, the emphasis on theorybuilding and quantitative techniques lent a tone of
abstraction to archaeological interpretations. Moreover, in the search for explanatory theory priority
was accorded to environmental and technological
factors the forces of production as per Marx
while ideology and religious beliefs (in Marxian fashion) were considered epiphenomenal and not central
to social change (see Marxist Archaeology). Through
the 1960s and the 1970s, social change within the
USA the rise of feminism as well as black and red
power movements began to infiltrate anthropological archaeology and had an impact on both contemporary practice and interpretations of the past.

Anthropological Archaeology at the

Twentieth Fin de Sie`cle
The excesses and trans-Atlantic impact of the processual brand of anthropological archaeology resulted
in a critique of this approach beginning in the 1980s
by more historically trained British archaeologists
who argued that beliefs and symbol systems played
a central role in structuring archaeological remains.
Labeled postprocessualism, this type of archaeology
tends to privilege the interpretation of specific
archaeological contexts over cross-cultural comparison. Closer scrutiny of archaeological interpretations
of the past from a feminist perspective also revealed a
constructed past in which females were underrepresented and female-gendered labor somewhat
denigrated. This critique gave rise to the study of
gender within archaeology and more broadly to the
study of the means and methods by which social
identities were constructed and expressed materially.
Likewise, there is a concern among contemporary
anthropological archaeologists (regardless of whether

they self-identify as processualists or postprocessualists) to understand the past on more human and
less abstract terms, to see the past as having been
inhabited by a diverse array of persons with agency
and social practices that are somewhat knowable. In
effect, the archaeological definition of culture has
been socialized and can include a focus on practice,
subjectivities, and human engagement with a materiality that colloquially is referred to as the archaeological record. Current research can be characterized
as combining the strengths of both processualism and
postprocesualism and to embrace a variety of topics
such as hierarchy, trade, religion and ritual practice,
economic and political forms, gender, identity, the
human body, and landscapes (both experiential and
reconstructive approaches). Methodologically, the
role of scientific techniques (often called archaeometry) within anthropological archaeology continues to
grow as DNA, chemical, and molecular techniques of
analysis mature.
The current atmosphere within which North
American anthropological archaeology is conducted
has been influenced greatly by the 1990 passage of the
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This legislation mandated that
museums curating Native American skeletons and
associated grave accoutrements (and in receipt of federal funding) make a complete inventory of their holdings and notify descendant tribal leaders in order to
initiate consultation and possible repatriation of the
remains and artifacts to tribal jurisdiction. The effect
of this law changed the balance of power between
archaeologists and Native Americans and ushered in
a new era of consultation and dialogue between North
American archaeologists and the descendents of
those whose artifactual and architectural remains are
studied by archaeologists. This enfranchisement of
indigenous peoples into the practice of archaeology,
likewise, has led to an emphasis on less destructive
techniques of investigation, an avoidance of mortuary
contexts, and a concomitant emphasis on both the
ethics of archaeological research and the preservation
of cultural heritage. As self-appointed stewards of the
past, many North American anthropological archaeologists have oriented their work towards preservation of the past through enhanced programs of public
and community education. In this regard, anthropological archaeology as practiced within the milieu of
twenty-first century globalism exhibits an applied
edge as archaeologists engage with descendent and
local communities and also struggle to combat the
adverse impact of rampant tourism, unstoppable looting of archaeological sites, and site destruction caused
by urban and industrial expansion.

448 ANTIQUITIES AND CULTURAL HERITAGE LEGISLATION

See also: Agency; Biblical Archaeology; Classical Ar-

chaeology; Culture, Concept and Definitions; Engendered Archaeology; Marxist Archaeology; Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act;
Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading
Binford LR (1962) Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28: 217225.
Daz-Andreu M (ed.) (2005) The Archaeology of Identity:
Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity, and Religion.
London: Routledge.
Hodder I (ed.) (1982) Symbolic and Structural Archaeology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hodder I and Hutson S (2003) Reading the Past: Current

Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kehoe AB (1998) The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of
American Archaeology. New York: Routledge.
OBrien MJ, Lyman RL, and Schiffer MB (2005) Archaeology as a
Process. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Patterson TC (1995) Toward a Social History of Archaeology in the
United States. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.
Scarre C and Scarre G (eds.) (2006) The Ethics of Archaeology:
Philosophical Perspectives on Archaeological Practice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Trigger BG (2006) A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd edn.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wolf E (1997) Europe and the People without History, 2nd edn.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

ANTIQUITIES AND CULTURAL HERITAGE

LEGISLATION
Don D Fowler, Reno, NV, USA

Introduction

2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Ethical concerns in archaeology have become increasingly important since the 1970s. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines ethics as a set of moral principles ...
rules or standards of right conduct that define
a body of obligations and duties for individuals in
a society or in a particular profession or area of life.
Archaeologists adhere to codes of ethics that define
professional research standards and obligations and
duties to the cultural heritage and all peoples associated with that heritage. After 1945, many nations
developed new or additional heritage legislation. In
archaeology, the focus was on salvage operations
saving objects and data before destruction by largescale projects such as dams and highways. By the
1970s, a conservation ethic became pervasive and
new national legislation developed to reflect conservation principles. New archaeological codes were
written to incorporate those principles. After 1990,
the globalization of archaeology required that archaeological ethics be developed that are applicable in both international and national contexts.
Contemporary archaeological codes of ethics may
be considered in five contexts: (1) legal instruments,
(2) relationships with indigenous peoples, (3) professionalism, (4) conservation principles, and (5)
archaeology and partisan politics.

Glossary
antiquities Archaeological objects from ancient cultures, e.g.,
stone tools, pottery vessels, metal objects, and items of personal
adornment.
architectural conservation The process through which the
material, historical, and design integrity of mankinds built
heritage are prolonged through carefully planned interventions.
cultural heritage (national heritage or heritage) The
legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a
group or society that are inherited from past generations,
maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future
generations.
indigenous peoples Cultural groups (and their descendants)
who have a historical continuity or association with a given
region, or parts of a region, and who formerly or currently
inhabit the region. They maintain, at least in part, their distinct
linguistic, cultural and social and organizational characteristics,
and in doing so remain differentiated in some degree from the
surrounding populations and dominant culture of the
nation-state.
salvage archaeology (sometimes called preventive or
rescue archaeology) Archaeological survey and excavation
carried out in areas threatened by, or revealed by, construction or
other development, such as the building of a dam to flood an area
where sites of interest might exist; or even before the onset of
war. Unlike traditional survey and excavation, salvage
archaeology must be undertaken at speed.

ANTIQUITIES AND CULTURAL HERITAGE LEGISLATION 449

Legal Instruments
Archaeology is increasingly conducted in a global
context defined by international legal instruments.
These are promulgated by organizations such as
the United Nations and the European Union. The
instruments provide a superstructure of public international law and ethics that functions on a consensual
and confederate basis. The instruments relating to
cultural heritage give organizational, procedural,
and ethical guidance for developing heritage laws
and policies at international and national levels. The
codes of ethics and practice of most archaeological
associations increasingly reflect international instruments relating both to cultural heritage and human
cultural rights.

Relations with Indigenous Peoples

International declarations, beginning with the 1948
UNESCO Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
have set forth basic human rights. These include the
right to full access to, and control by, the individual
and her/his self-defined group over their cultural
heritage and its expression in sites, buildings, structures, objects, rituals, and traditional knowledge (see
Native Peoples and Archaeology). Archaeological
ethical codes and standards of practice respect those
rights. The World Archaeological Congress (WAC)
1991 First Code of Ethics: Members Obligations to
Indigenous Peoples states that members are (see
World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws):
1. to acknowledge the importance of indigenous cultural heritage, including sites, places, objects,
artifacts, human remains, to the survival of
indigenous cultures;
2. to acknowledge the importance of protecting
indigenous cultural heritage to the well-being of
indigenous peoples;
3. to acknowledge the special importance of indigenous ancestral human remains, and sites containing and/or associated with such remains, to
indigenous peoples;
4. to acknowledge that the important relationship
between indigenous peoples and their cultural heritage exists irrespective of legal ownership;
5. to acknowledge that the indigenous cultural heritage rightfully belongs to the indigenous descendants of that heritage;
6. to acknowledge and recognize indigenous methodologies for interpreting, curating, managing,
and protecting indigenous cultural heritage;

7. to establish equitable partnerships and relationships between members and indigenous peoples
whose cultural heritage is being investigated;
8. to seek, whenever possible, representation of
indigenous peoples in agencies funding or authorizing research to be certain that their view is considered as critically important in setting research
standards, questions, priorities, and goals.
The WAC Code incorporates by reference the 1989
WAC Vermillion Accord on Human Remains:
1. Respect for the mortal remains of the dead shall be
accorded to all, irrespective of origin, race, religion, nationality, custom, and tradition.
2. Respect for the wishes of the dead concerning
disposition shall be accorded whenever possible,
reasonable, and lawful, when they are known or
can be reasonably inferred.
3. Respect for the wishes of the local community and
of relatives or guardians of the dead shall be
accorded whenever possible, reasonable, and
lawful.
4. Respect for the scientific research value of skeletal,
mummified, and other human remains (including
fossil hominids) shall be accorded when such value
is demonstrated to exist.
5. Agreement on the disposition of fossil, skeletal,
mummified, and other remains shall be reached
by negotiation on the basis of mutual respect for
the legitimate concerns of communities for the
proper disposition of their ancestors, as well as
the legitimate concerns of science and education.
6. The expressed recognition that the concerns of
various ethnic groups, as well as those of science,
are legitimate and to be respected will permit acceptable agreements to be reached and honored.

Professionalism
Archaeology as a science creates new knowledge
about the human situation and how it came to be.
New knowledge becomes part of the human commons, available to everyone. This requires the preservation of, and access to, knowledge in publications,
documents, and records held in libraries and archives,
and artifacts and associated documentation held in
trust by public institutions for exhibit and restudy.
Archaeologists have an ethical obligation to comply
with this requirement, and current codes reflect this
commitment.
Public support of archaeology brings with it
public scrutiny of expenditures of funds and expectations of professionalism. Thus, professional ethical

450 ANTIQUITIES AND CULTURAL HERITAGE LEGISLATION

concerns in archaeology center on expertise, integrity,

intellectual honesty and accountability. The ethical
codes of contemporary archaeological associations
reflect these concerns. For example, the American
Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA 2006)
states, Archaeology is a profession, and the privilege
of professional practice requires professional morality and professional responsibility, as well as professional competence, on the part of each practitioner.
The RPA code and those in other countries go on to
spell out what professional ethical responsibilities
and levels of professional competence should be.

Conservation of Cultural Heritage

The ethical concerns relating to conservation are how
to avoid or minimize the loss of archaeological data in
the face of land-altering developments, looting, or
ideologically motivated destruction of sites and
monuments. The conservation ethic states that, if at
all possible, extant archaeological sites should be left
intact and held in stewardship for future study. All the
professional archaeological codes of ethics include
statements about the corporate and individual responsibility to conserve the archaeological heritage.
In reality, ethical judgments about what constitute appropriate mitigation measures for each
threatened site must weigh the financial and legal
feasibility of achieving de facto long-term conservation against excavation costs. When an intact site is
judged to be particularly at risk from looting, the
decision usually is to excavate at least a significant
portion and thus conserve the information.

Looting and Trafficking in Antiquities

A major ethical, legal, and conservation problem is
the looting of archaeological sites to satisfy the intense, worldwide demand for antiquities on the illicit
antiquities market. Because looting destroys context
and information, archaeologists have a professional
and ethical responsibility to combat it. Since 1970,
many museums and museum associations have
promulgated codes of ethics stating that objects must
have proper provenance before they are purchased.
But, there is simply too much money and demand
worldwide to stem the flow of artifacts and art
objects to wealthy collectors and unscrupulous
museums. UNESCO and various nation states have
tried to slow or stop the looting and trafficking, but
with little success. A basic ethical principle centers on
archaeologists, museum staff members, or professional journals not providing authentication to collectors
or antiquities dealers for objects lacking clear and
uncontested provenance.

Archaeology and Partisan Politics

Archaeology has often been used in support of
nationalist ideological, or other partisan political
agendas. Archaeological sites, objects, and data are
used by partisan groups as evidence of prior possession of lands or as symbols for negotiation of conflict.
There are many extant examples, for example,
Israelis and Palestinians, and various minority groups
in Europe, Africa, India and the USA. All use archaeology to advance their ideological, social, and political agendas, especially claims of precedence and prior
occupation. Partisan politics pose difficult ethical
issues for archaeologists. Archaeology has standards
of acceptable evidence, and, like other sciences, is
self-correcting. Data are collected and vetted, and
hypotheses formed to account for them; as contrary
data accumulate, hypotheses are changed. Data are
not objective or value free, but seen as valid within a particular theoretical framework. Partisan political groups take archaeological data and transmute
them into true statements to support demonstrations
of legitimacy, authenticity, autochthony, or other
causes. In such situations, archaeologists first ethical
responsibility should be to make their data, and interpretations thereof, as objective and accurate as possible
within current archaeological practice and theory.
Although archaeologists have an ethical responsibility
to oppose egregious misuse of their data and interpretations, how those data and interpretations are used by
others, once they enter the commons knowledge base,
cannot be controlled.
See also: Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Illicit
Antiquities; Native Peoples and Archaeology; World
Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading
Fowler DD, Jolie EA, and Salter MW (2007) Archaeological ethics
in context and practice. In: Maschner H and Bentley A (eds.)
Handbook of Archaeological Theory, pp. 3148. Lantham: Altamira Press.
Zimmerman LJ, Vitelli KD, and Hollowell-Zimmer J (eds.) (2003)
Ethical Issues in Archaeology. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.
Brodie N, Doole J, and Renfrew C (2001) Trade in Illicit Antiquities: Destruction of the Worlds Archaeological Heritage. Cambridge: McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge.
Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA) (2006) Code of
Conduct and Standards of Research Performance. http://www.
rpanet.org/conduct.htm (see also for links to other professional
archaeological codes of ethics.
Scarre G and Scarre C (2006) The Ethics of Archaeology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
UNESCO (2006) Conventions and Declarations Relating to
Cultural Heritage and Ethics. http://portal.unesco.org.
World Archaeological Congress (WAC)(1990) First Code of Ethics.
http://www.wac.uct.ac.za/archive.

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 451

Applied Archaeology

Archaeology.

See: Ethnoarchaeology; Forensic Archaeology; Interpretive Art and

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY
David H Kelley, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB,
Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
alignment Physical markers on the ground pointing towards a
definable astronomical phenomenon.
deity A supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part
of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification
of a force.
archaeoastronomy The study of ancient alignments and other
aspects of the archaeological record and their relationship to
ancient astronomical knowledge and events.
ethnography The branch of anthropology that deals with the
scientific description of specific human cultures.
myth A story which has deep explanatory or symbolic resonance.

The Phenomena, Their Relationships to

Events on Earth, and Interpretations of
Their Meaning
Life on Earth is conditional on and conditioned by
the Sun. Perceptually, to those on Earth, we are at the
center with Sun, Moon, planets, and fixed stars
revolving around us with variations which are difficult to explain. The Sun maintains a fixed path relative
to the stars, but seasonally different paths relative to
the Earth. We can define the ecliptic, the horizon, the
galaxy, and see how these vary relative to each other
and to the planets. Eclipses of the Sun and Moon
return with sufficient regularity to be predicted even
without understanding the causes. Such erratic phenomena as meteor showers and comets nonetheless
have some regularity. Meteorites, novas, and supernovas do not show such patterning. Weather patterns
are geographically intermediate between heaven and
earth, patterned both seasonally and geographically,
yet notoriously difficult to predict in detail.
Many human and animal activities are directly affected by Sun and Moon. No one ignores the alternation of day and night, and seasonal changes alternate
rainy and dry periods, cold and warm periods, affecting plant growth, seasonal birth and mating patterns,

and even deaths. Light at night was provided in a

changing pattern by the Moon, appreciated by poachers and other night life. The moons gravitational
effects, especially tides, were important to marine
life, shore dwellers, and mariners. Gravitational
effects on plants have been little studied by modern
biologists, but are a strong part of the belief systems
of small farmers. Eleven-year sunspot cycles affect
temperature and probably precipitation. Finally, those
most noticeable of lunisolar phenomena, eclipses, have
direct results. Solar eclipses are accompanied by temperature changes, often followed by cloud formation
and rain; bird and animal behavior changes abruptly.
People have also noted temporally associated
phenomena stars or planets becoming visible at
sunrise or sunset mark different daily and seasonal
activities. Even the correlation of the 60-year Jupiter
cycle with 60-year peaks in rain activity may have
been noted.
Interpretations of the phenomena we are considering have been varied but important in many cultures
around the world. A religious interpretation, attributing volition, personality, and wilful action to planets
and stars (including Sun and Moon) was widespread.
Visible phenomena were regarded as analogs of human
behavior, carried out by deities, following all too
human motivations.
In an astrological approach, the movements of the
heavenly bodies were regarded as entirely mechanical
and predictable but causality was attributed to temporal association in many inappropriate ways, and
it became far too particularistic in its application
to individuals.
Scientific studies try to determine which relationships are producing what behavioral effects including
everything from physical damage to social pressures.

Relationships of Astronomy to
Archaeologically or Ethnographically
Determinable Activities and Beliefs
There are three major problems in our knowledge of
astronomy in much of the world. First, the knowledge

452 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

itself was often regarded as a secret which should only

be imparted to those willing to abide by the rules and
capable of learning. This was true in many parts of
Africa, in some areas of inner Asia, in Australia,
Micronesia, parts of Polynesia, and much of North
and South America. Second, the ignorance of those
who recorded the data, whether ancient Greeks and
Romans, Jesuits in China, or modern anthropologists is
often appalling. A third problem is that those geometrically or mathematically inclined individuals who
would best understand a straightforward statement
seem least equipped to recognize mythical statements of
astronomical data, openly presented. Saturn, sleeping
for a year with each of his 28 daughters, is regarded as a
ribald tale or a moral warning against incest, rather
than an account of the planet passing through defined
segments of the sky in its sidereal revolution. When
each of Saturns daughters is assigned an animal form,
associated with a kinship group and a specified geographical location, the observer may deny that there is
any astronomical intent possible.
It is precisely such linkages of heavenly phenomena
with earthly phenomena which provide the basis for
archaeoastronomy. Kin groups are frequently related
to specific stars of asterisms. They have acknowledged obligations to their communities in terms of
ritual sometimes related to myths about their
associated stellar group. Specific art forms may be
produced only by specified kin groups and the
iconography may identify figures of myths. The identification of deities may depend upon minor characteristics used in identifying their kin group. Such
factors cannot be studied adequately except in the
context of the social group which produced them,
insofar as it is known.
It is widely accepted that astronomy in the tropics
was conceptualized differently than in more northernly areas. The horizon was more important and
zenith passage was often noted. The nadir was sometimes calculated. The gegenschein was more obvious
and rainbows were related to planetary phenomena. It
is maintained that east and west were more important
than north and south and that solstices were regularly
observed while the equinoxes were less important or
ignored. The rising and setting points of the planets
both north and south of the equator were sometime
incorporated into calendars. Some scholars maintain
that interest in the stars was largely restricted to
tropical stars.
In terms of emphasis, these views have some validity, but tropical areas share most characteristics with
nontropical areas.
Archaeoastronomy started with the study of alignments. These may be recognizable either as repeated

phenomena or as occurrences in special situations

for example, forming an outline of an asterism such
as the wall of Chang An, or in a defined camping
situation such as that of some Siouans, or in connection with a solstitial ceremony, or a particular temple
deity. Shapes in art and architecture may reflect patterned planetary movements or asterisms.
At some periods in some areas the colors had
clearly defined astronomical connotations. In other
times and other areas, these may have been adjusted
to other symbolic values of colors. Continuities in
color associations may reflect either continuous
knowledge of persisting astronomical conditions or
acceptance of tradition. As we recognize particular
connotations, we should be able to determine usages
appropriate for specified times and places. This
should indicate specifiable historical relationships
and dates. Changes in color may have reflected either
changes in the astronomical conditions or cultural
differences in color connotations.
All of these factors produce a potential for much
better understanding of archaeological cultures, for
recognizing cultural contacts, and sometimes for
dating particular remains, occasionally with high
precision.

Culture History
Paleolithic

Although there have been a number of attempts

to demonstrate that astronomy was associated with
Paleolithic ritual and belief, none are fully satisfactory. Alexander Marshack showed that certain bones
from Paleolithic sites were incised periodically at
short intervals. His explanation was that nights were
being counted, measuring lunations and ultimately
determining ritual activities. The general interpretation seems plausible but the details lack adequate
confirmation. A number of scholars, notably Michael
Rappengluck, have claimed that cave paintings represent asterisms. Unfortunately, a substantial subjective
element enters into such identifications unless there
are very obvious arbitrary components which are
hard to find in the paintings of hunting groups.
Australia

In much of aboriginal Australia, there was a close

linkage between art, myth, kinship, and astronomy,
and it is the one place in the world where continuity
from the Paleolithic is probable. Astronomical details
are rarely attested and may differ between tribal
groups but may usefully be mentioned as indicators.

Table 1 The World Chronology

4600 BCE to the Present
N.B. Australia has nothing definitely datable in this time range.
EuropeMesopotamia

4600

4500

4400

4300

4200

4100

4000

3900

3800

3700

3600

3500

Lacmariaquer
Menhirs

3102 Kaliyuga
era

2700

2600

2400

2300

Chinese Pole
Star

Megalithic yard
Stonehenge,
eclipses?

2100

Gnomon
Gudea, of
Lagasheclipse?

North America

South America

4600

4500

4400

4300

4200

4100

4000

3900

3800

3700

3600

3500

4500

4400

4300

4200

4100

4000

3900

3800

3700

3600

3500

3400

3300

3200

3400

3300

3200

3000

Medicine Wheels

2900

2800

2767: Sirius
calendar,
Pyramids
stellar alignments

2500

Egyptian Sun
Worship

2400

2300

365 day calendar

2200

2100

3100

Egyptian Lunar
Calendar

3000

2700

2600

Inanna in Sumer
Crucuno:
Pythagorean
Triangles
all Tropical Year
Points

Mesoamerica

4600

2900

2800

Early Stonehenge

2200

Africa

2700

2600

Cantograndeequinoxes,
solstices

2400

2300
Fox Temple,
winter solstice

Star Clocks

2500

2200

2100

Continued

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 453

2500

MicronesiaPolynesia

3100

Brugh-na-Boinne

3000

2900

2800

China-JapanKorea

Dissignac,
Midwinter
Solstice

3400

3300

3200

3100

India-Tibet, S.E.
Asia

4600 BCE to the Present

N.B. Australia has nothing definitely datable in this time range.
EuropeMesopotamia

India-Tibet, S.E.
Asia

2000

1900

1800

1700

China-JapanKorea

1952: Mass
Conjunction

Mull and Argyll

S. declination of
moon

1600

28 lunar
mansions

1500

1400

Enuma Anu Enlil

1200

astrolabes,
culmination
stars.

762: Solar
Eclipse
Eclipse prediction

400

200

100
0

Babylonian
influence
Eratosthanesmeasured
sphere of the
earth
Hipparchos,
Eudoxosepicycle
precession
system

Alexandrian
Greek
Techniques

433 Jupiter
cycles, comets,
star maps

Chang-An

Mesoamerica

North America

South America

2000

2000

1900

1800

1700

1900

1800

1700

1600

1600

1300

Extensive stellar
mythology

700

600

500

300

Africa

1500

1400

1300

1100

1000

900

800

MicronesiaPolynesia

1321: Sothic
Cycle (Sirius)

1500

1400

Alignments,
Tropical Year,

1300

Zenith Passage

1257: Abu
Simbel

1200

1200

1100

1000

900

800

1100

1000

900

800

Chavin-sculpture,
light play,
alignments.

700

600

500

700

600

500

400

400

300

300

200

100
0

Namoratunga
alignments,
lunar-stellar

New Fire
Ceremonies

Siouan earth
topography
reflects sky
and kin groups
Hopewelliancardinal points,
solstice
shadowcasters

200

100
0

454 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

Table 1 Continued

100

Claudius
Ptolemyeclipses,

200

planetary cycles,
astrology

Ujain as the
Tropic
Observation
Point; eclipse
prediction,
planetary
cycles,
epicycles,
era count

300

Buddhist
cosmology
expanding

Izapa

200
Star maps?

Abu Mashar

Cosmological
Temple
Architechture

900

100 to present
1000

1054: Supernova

1100
1200

1400
Copernicus

650: MocheSaturn

400

500
600
700

Star Navigation

800

Xochicalco

800

Named lunar
nights,
eclipse
prediction?

900

Tikal, Palenque

900

Haamonga-aMaui
ChaucerAstrolabe

Tihuanacu

700
Borobudur and
Angkor Wat

300

Nazca Linessolstices,
equinoxes

500
600

Korean
Observatory

800

Stellar alignments
of
temples

1000

1100
1200

Flying ceremony

1054: Supernova

Kogi-new fires,
winter
solstices,
solar eclipses

Chichen Itza,
serpent
hierophany

1300
1400
1500
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000

1000

1100
1200

1300
Aztec

Hopi

Pole-climbing
with new fire.
Rigel, Pleiades
Inca

1400
1500
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 455

1500
1600
1700
1800
1900
2000

200

100

major and minor

lunar
standstills

400

500
600

1300

Planetary tables
of mean
motion, Eclipse
calculation
Ball-games

300

400

700

100

456 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

Names often cross linguistic boundaries. Paintings of

supernatural figures in red, black, and yellow may go
40 000 years or more into the past but are being
produced and renewed today. Repainting is regarded
as vital in permitting a particular class of sprits to be
reborn again as humans or related animals or plants.
Only humans related to the particular spirit may
repaint it. The land of the dead is a defined section
of the Milky Way sharply divided into the Eagle
Hawk moiety (in Aquila, the Eagle) and the Crow
moiety associated with Canopus (in Ursa Major).
Crow stole fire from one of the Pleiades girls, or
stole the missing Pleiad, herself, who became Alcor
(in Ursa Major). The Rainbow Snake of daytime
becomes the Milky Way at night, which may also be
conceived as a river or (among the Tasmanians) a
pathway.
Brothers who are culture heroes ascended to the
sky either by a chain of spears or a pine tree, which
burned down. The brothers were forced to stay in the
sky as alpha and beta of Gemini.
One of the most remarkable sets of paintings of
spirit beings are associated with a moon goddess,
Wandjina, in the Kimberleys. The oldest paintings
here include Pleistocene animals and may be as old
as 30 000 years, but modern initiates can still identify
many spirit people.
Another version of the dualism of EagleHawk and
Crow maintained that they were chiefs among the
birds who ruled the land before humans were present.
European Megalithic

For more than 3000 years, seafarers of Europe built

gigantic monuments with large stones (sometimes
many tons in weight). These began with burial tumuli,
with openings to the southeast, occasionally precisely
aligned on the winter solstice. A passage grave at
Dissignac in Brittany, about 4500 BC, contains grave
goods and is decorated by designs of shepherds
crooks and axes (Table 1). The chamber would have
been lit up at the winter solstice. At Loc Mariaquer,
around 3500 BC, two giant menhirs were created, the
taller more than 600 high and weighing more than
340 tons. Such massive monuments had symbolic
value, could have served as major navigational markers, and could have been used to measure the movements of anythng visible in the sky. Geometric figures
(especially circles, near circles, stone lines, and rectangles) were common.
Thom defined a measuring unit, the Megalithic
Yard, on British evidence and found that it was used
at Crucuno in Brittany to build a rectangle of 30  40
units, with a diagonal of 50 units. The diagonals
marked the rising and setting points of the solstitial

sun, the 40 unit sides marked due east and west, and
the 30 unit sides marked true north and south. This is
the simplest of Pythagorean triangles, with alignments dependent entirely on the latitude. In terms of
Thoms ideas, this was ideal verification. The date
was about 2600 BC.
In Ireland, the Brugh-na-Boinne complex of about
3100 BC has three major burial mounds with a great
deal of decoration, closely related to Brittany. A long
window passage leads to the great interior dome of
Newgrange, lit by the winter solstice rising sun.
A quartzite covering makes a glittery palace for the
reborn Sun God. Equinoxes and the summer solstice
are also marked at the complex and a sun dial is
present.
Somewhat later, construction at Stonehenge
continued from about 3000 to 1100 BCE. Summer
and winter solstices are marked as well as major and
minor standstills of the Moon. Whether there was
an interest in predicting eclipses continues to be a
disputed issue.
The northern site of Callanish in the Outer Hebrides was buried deep in peat accumulating from
about 1000 BCE. The monuments date from about
2200 to 1500 BCE. There is a very clear NS alignment, with roughly cruciform angles extending from
a central circle. Lunar extremes are more doubtful
and claimed stellar alignments much disputed.
Thoms claims of very high precision in Megalithic
sites are rejected by most specialists in Megalithic
astronomy, but it is more widely accepted that the
extreme positions of the Moon were being observed
on the basis of independently studied Scottish sites.
Similar results have been found with North European and Mediterranean sites; the range of phenomena is similar. The most distinctive of local Megalithic
cultures is that of Malta (c. 36002600 BC) where
large Megalithic temples show stellar alignments
and numeracy was obviously central to astronomy.
Charlemagnes cathedral at Aachen (Aix) duplicates the dimensions and latitude of Stonehenge.
The intended astronomy at either site is still poorly
known. Neither do we know whether Aachen copies
Stonehenge, or whether common astronomical interests determined comparable measurements. In either
case, Aachen provides evidence which may eventually
be crucial for interpreting Stonehenge and other
Megalithic monuments.
The Far East

In China, the earliest evidence shows that the North

Pole and the equator were conceptually much more
basic than the ecliptic. Several abandoned pole stars
retain old names. The movements of the Moon were

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 457

tracked by the lunar mansions, unequal sections of

the sky marked by asterisms, and roughly paired on
opposite sides of the sky. The size of the pairs seems to
fit best with the equator of about the twenty-fourth
century BCE. Among the changes caused by precession, the complete elimination of the mansion of the
Weaving Girl (Vega) is particularly noteworthy long
separated from her lover, the Ox Herd (Altair). Seven
mansions together formed one of the four great directional animals, the Dragon (associated with blue,
east, wood, Jupiter), the Bird (red, south, fire,
Mars), the Tiger (white, west, metal, Venus), and
the Turtle (or Black Warrior, north, water, Mercury).
Monumental representations of Dragon and Tiger
suggest the possibility that the entire system was
present in pre-Shang times.
In Chinese tradition, an ancient calendar began
with a conjunction of Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn in the Great Square of Pegasus
and Andromeda. There was such a conjunction on
3 March 1953 BC (Julian), indicating a genuine astronomical tradition. Another astronomical tradition
says that the fourth Xia (Hsia) emperor beheaded
the astronomers Hsi and Ho for failing to prevent a
still unidentified eclipse. Their heads now appear as
the double cluster in Perseus.
During the Shang dynasty, the kings predicted both
the lunar and solar eclipses (thirteenth and twelfth
century BCE) involved in rituals, sacrifices, and warfare. Later, many eclipse cycles were in use, ranging
from 23 eclipse seasons (3984 days) to 31 920 years
(which incorporated eclipses, the tropical year, the
60 day cycle, and other phenomena). Planetary cycles
were supposed to repeat in 138 240 years.
The Chinese were using armillary spheres in the
late centuries BC and a continuous tradition of putting star maps on tomb walls began about that time.
The walls of the Han capital city, Xian (Chang-An),
were a gigantic star map of parts of Ursa Major and
Sagittarius, emphasizing the association of the polar
region and imperial power. Tremendous observatories and measuring devices were used to improve
precision.
Marked western influence on Chinese astronomy
came with Buddhist missionaries who introduced the
western zodiac and Indian conceptions of time and
space. Some Indian families joined the Chinese Bureau of Astronomy.
In Korea, the seventh-century Star Tower built of
365 stones and 28 rows of stones showed lunar interest. It is accepted as the oldest standing observatory.
A Buddhist form of Chinese astronomy was introduced into Japan, also strongly influenced more
directly by Chinese ideas from Korea.

The Middle East

The goddess Inanna, the Sumerian equivalent of Ishtar

and Astarte, was the planet Venus in two guises
an armed warrior goddess in the morning, a tavern
keeper in the evening. She is regularly depicted with
Shumash, the Sun God, and with the Pleiades. The
extent to which other planetary deities and constellations can be recognized in this material is still strongly disputed. There is also no agreement on the dates
of eclipses before the one of 763 BC which played a
crucial role in establishing the chronology of the
first millennium BCE. However, Utu-hegal, King of
Uruk, conquered the Gutian people at the time of a
lunar eclipse, possibly 2163 BCE, or 2049 BCE. The
Gutians particularly worshipped Inanna and Suen
(Sin), the Moon.
Astronomical depictions on Kassite boundary
stones and some later monuments dating from the
thirteenth to the seventh centuries BCE have still
received little attention in terms of critical analysis of
possible datings. Many of these depictions clearly
correspond with later depictions of constellations
and are often similar to earlier scenes which could
refer to constellations. The Greek and modern zodiacs
derive largely from Mesopotamian constellations.
Early Mesopotamian texts differentiate the paths of
Anu, Enlil, and Ea. The path of Enlil seems to approximate the Tropics, but a precise definition, chronologically, mythically, or astronomically, eludes modern
scholars.
Mathematical astronomy in the west is first attested
in Mesopotamian documents from about 300 to
50 BC, including elaborate lunar tables and less elaborate planetary tables. The average motion of the
planets was measured by two different techniques.
The planetary tables emphasize horizon phenomena.
The nature of the relationship of these documents to
Greek astronomy and Euclidean geometry is vigorously disputed.
It is generally supposed that the notion of the celestial sphere arose among the Greeks in the sixth century BC and led to ideas of concentric spheres. The idea
that the circle was a perfect geometric figure and
that heavenly bodies were, of necessity, perfect, was
harmful to a proper understanding of astronomy,
causing completely unnecessary problems for nearly
2000 years.
The works of Hipparchus and Claudius Ptolemy
established precession. The Earth was recognized as a
sphere, and a reasonable approximation to its size
was determined. The size of the Moon was substantially underestimated, and the Sun was grossly underestimated. However, a mechanistic understanding

458 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

of astronomy was introduced and nonpersonal astrology became largely acceptable. A few scholars argued
for a heliocentric system. Descriptive refinement, especially by Islamic scholars, continued to modern
times. Buildings were oriented to the cardinal points,
and many churches were aligned so that the sun shone
onto the high altar on the day of the patron saint.
Egypt

Clearly, astronomy is crucial to understanding the

story of the constant struggle between Osiris and his
twin brother, Seth, the murder and cutting up of
Osiris with his wife Isis putting the pieces back together and replacing his lost penis and resurrecting
him; the birth of their son, Horus, who eventually
killed Seth and the resurrection of Seth and his
reconciliation with Osiris. The actors are identified astronomically, sometimes inconsistently (Isis as
Sirius, Osiris as the Moon, Seth as Mercury, Horus
as the Sun, and sometimes Mercury), but the identifications do not lead automatically to an understanding of the astronomy. Neither are other myths much
more understandable because of these and other
identifications.
Time measurement was very important in Egypt
and water clocks were in use both of inflow and
outflow types. These were used in astronomical contexts, and the night was early divided into 12 h. In the
day, shadow clocks (including sundials) measured
another 12 h. There was also an 8  13 grid used in
observing stars at night. The sky was divided into a
set of 36 decans, of ten [degrees] each, including
named asterisms, largely unidentified. The Boatman
in Orion, the Foreleg of the Bull identified as the Big
Dipper, the Archer Goddess as Sirius are among the
few accepted. This is surprising since star maps are
well attested from the time of Hatshepsut to the
Romans. The Sky Goddess, Nut, is prominently associated with death and rebirth, often appearing as a
coffin lid.
The Egyptian civil year consisted of 12 months of
30 days each plus five added days. No attempt was
made to adjust for leap years. A Sothic year of
365 1=4 days based on the heliacal rising of Sirius
was recognized and was valid from pre-Dynastic to
Roman times. The degree to which it was recognized
and formalized is much disputed. For this cycle to
return to the same point of the Egyptian civil year
took 1460 years. 1508 Egyptian years are equivalent
to 1507 tropical years. This means that the sun shone
into the Temple of Ra-Hor-Akhty at Abu Simbel on 1
Tybi of the Egyptian civil calendar for 4 years. Coupled with the evidence of the 25-year solarlunar
calendar, this identified the 34th year of Ramses II

as 1257 BC The 25-year lunarsolar cycle is attested

in the only known document of mathematical astronomy from ancient Egypt.
The winter solstice sun shown into temples of the
Sun God, Amun, and stellar alignments are attested in
inscriptions from some temples. There have been
many preposterous claims in connection with Egyptian stellar alignments, often by people inadequately
trained in either astronomy or Egyptology. However,
some scholars competent in both disciplines are now
working on these problems.
India and Related Cultures

From Mongolia to Sumatra, a wide variety of cultures

differing in language, economic base, clothing, and,
often, religion, share related astronomical myths
and rituals. Tibet, India, and Southeast Asia share
massive elaborately decorated temples regarded as
cosmograms and showing identified astronomical
figures (often deities) acting roles known in recorded
myths. Simple village sand paintings may depict
such temples and gods. Star maps show most of the
known sky and are found in temples. Literature
describes the role of deities both in myth and in
historical events; technical astronomy is described in
great detail.
This area has been a major originator of cultural
ideas and a transmitter of Chinese ideas to the west
and of Mediterranean ideas to the Orient. Hindus,
Jains, Buddhists, and Muslims share stories and
representations.
Astronomy in Sanskrit shows borrowings from
Dravidian, including items related to the 28 sidereal
lunar mansions. The world ages, trees, directions,
birds, animals, and colors were widespread. Magic
squares were sometimes associated. In some cases, the
proportion of the ages was 4:3:2:1, and the last or
Kaliyuga age began in 3102 BCE a date probably
back-calculated, regarded as a mass conjunction at a
spring equinox. For astronomical purposes, a count
by days from that base was in use.
A Tamil scholar calculated an eclipse of 1825
by memorized tables combined with calculations
using shells to mark numbers. The techniques were
Babylonian of the second century BCE.
The Khmer temple complex at Angkor Wat was
built in the early twelfth century CE. It shows alignments to equinoxes, solstices, minor and major standstills of the Moon, iconography of planetary gods,
and of the lunar mansions; measurements incorporate
numbers of the local cubit which are relevant to the
World Ages and various astronommical units. Placements of the various scenes make them relevant to
light and shadow plays. Our understanding of the

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 459

integration of iconography, visual alignments, measurements, and light and shadow play is probably
greater at Angkor Wat than at any other site, but
there is still much which is unknown.
Micronesia and Polynesia

In Micronesia, the expert astronomers were navigators and their knowledge was secret. Training was
done with 32 rocks either surrounding a model
canoe or conceptualized as a canoe with the trainee
in the center; these marked the rising and setting
points of particular stars. Apparently, similar devices
were used in Polynesia, and may be archaeologically
recognizable. Micronesians also used maps made of
sticks and shells, indicating geographic relationships
of islands, reefs, and currents. In Micronesia and
Polynesia, month names were derived from stars.
In Eastern Polynesia, lunations were measured by
the named nights of the Moon and associated with
deities.
In Polynesia, shared myths, astronomical names,
navigational techniques, calendrical structure, and
ideas about temples recorded by many different
observers in different times and places mean that
our understanding of the astronomy should increase
substantially. We know that myths are tied to deities,
to sacred features of the landscape, to astronomical
geography, and to sacred constructions and alignments. Nearly all of the characteristics postulated
for Megalithic astronomers in Europe are attested in
one part or another of Polynesia with a wealth of
accompanying myth. Mauis canoe was in Orions
Belt and his fishhook in Scorpio with which he fished
up the Earth, identified with Mokoroa, Long Lizard
and the Milky Way. The Tongan monument called
Haamonga-a-Maui is the weight bearing pole with
which Maui lifted the sky. It marks the equinoxes
and possibly the solstices. All are attested in alignments at Easter Island; there are less certain lunar and
stellar alignments. Stellar alignments can seldom be
verified by repetition but are directly in rare cases in
Polynesia. The Milky Way as the Talking Tree, identified as frangipani, was cut down by Maui to make
his canoe.
North America

Medicine wheels is a descriptive generalization for

structures of heaped up stones laid out like megaliths,
of a variety of shapes and possibly varied functions.
Concentrated in Alberta, they were built between
2500 BCE and the eighteenth century CE. The most
famous may have been aligned on calendrically important star risings. Some mark true north.
The fullest collection of myths about Sun, Moon,
planets, stars, and seasons are North American. Some

are widespread. Moieties and clans are related to

asterisms and sometimes to astronomically based
calendars. Descriptions are seldom astronomically
comprehensive and often technically inadequate or
wrong. Notable exceptions are our view of Arctic
skies known to the Inuit, and the extensive data
from the Navaho.
Observational practices included widespread use of
various types of shadow-casters, fixed observation
points, and rarely, sighting tubes.
The massive and precise use of geometrical patterns
among the Hopewelliams included frequent marking
of true north, but many claimed alignments are
false. The Kern effigies of the Fort Ancient Culture
(c. 11001200 CE) show two giant snakes, one aligned
on the winter solstice rising sun, and the other on the
summer solstice rising sun.
The most sophisticated alignments recognized so
far are from the Southwestern United States. At
Fajada Butte, a single design is used to mark the
equinox and both solstices. Massive evidence from
Chacoan pueblos shows buildings and sites with
reciprocal alignments demonstrating interest in equinoxes, solstices and the major and minor standstills
of the moon.
Among the Chumash, a Sun-Stick was raised by a
priest and his 12 assistants, a pole symbolizing the
center of the Earth, at the winter solstice. The poles
had condor/eagle feathers above and crow feathers
below.
Common Californian mythical identities were
Condor as Altair, Castor and Pollux as Twins (boy
and girl), Orions Belt as Mountain Sheep. The Pomo
kept bundle records, 13 sticks for a year; bundles
marked 8, 64, and 512 years.
Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica was the only part of the New World

which had a full panoply of all aspects of astronomy
as a major factor in human behavior. The deities Sun,
Moon, and Venus played major roles in society from
birth to death. Human sacrifice in many forms, warfare, and imperial conquest, monuments, sculpture,
and paintings all emphasized the constant interrelationship of human and astronomical actors. Above
all, literary documents demonstrate technical knowledge of astronomy linked to divination.
Crucial to the details of our knowledge is the
Mesoamerican calendar. Cycles of 13 numbers and
20 days gave a 260-day sequence which provided
birth date names to gods and humans. Eighteen
months of 20 days each supplemented by five other
days provided a year of 365 days. The 260-day cycle
and the 365-day cycle ran concurrently requiring
18 980 days (52  365) before a day of the 260-day

460 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY

cycle repeated in the same position of the 365-day

cycle. Among the Mayas, the 18 980-day cycle ran
concurrently with an era count which years of
360 days counted from a specified base. The correlation of the Maya calendar with our calendar is defined by the number of days needed to be added to a
Mayan era date to convert it to a Julian day number.
Most Mesoamericanists prefer one of two proposals
of Eric Thompson, 584 283 or 584 285. The Dresden
Maya codex contains an eclipse table, a Venus table, a
more disputed Mars table, and other probable planetary tables. Partly parallel tables are found in other
Maya codices and in the Borgia group from central
Mexico.
Monumental alignments to Venus phenomena are
generally accepted and the Temple of Kukulcan gives
the illusion on the equinoxes that the giant carved
Feathered Snakes are descending the stairs.
An inner chamber at Palenque is illuminated at the
winter solstice, and other solstitial alignments have
been accepted by many scholars. Possible Jupiter
alignments are more disputed. At Teotihuacan, an
alignment on the rising of the Pleiades is probable.
Other stellar alignments are more disputed. Direct
identifications of Mesoamerican asterisms include
the fire drill in Orion, the scorpion in Scorpio, and
the tail of the Rattlesnake in the Pleiades. Finally, at
Xochicalco, a tube drilled to a cave below provided
sunlight in the cave at the zenith passage, also
marked, less clearly, at Monte Alban.
South America

A very important discovery for the history of astronomy in the New World is the alignment of the Temple
of the Fox at Buena Vista in the Chillon Valley, Peru,
excavated by Robert Benfer, dated at about 2200 BC.
A painted Fox and Llama are aligned with the
December (summer) solstice at dusk. In Quechua
communities today, it is said that all foxes are born
on Christmas Day and the Fox constellation is setting
in the west marking the same alignment and the
same mythic associations about 4000 years later. Interest in determining equinoxes, solstices, and zenith
passage with high precision at about this date is
attested by the lines of large boulders immediately
to the south at Cantogrande, stretching for several
kilometers.
On the other side of the Andes is the temple of
Chavin de Huantar of about 800 BCE. Here, a monument called the Lanzon, a monstrous figure with
snake belt and mouth ornaments, is lit up by the rising
sun at the December solstice. Imagery at Chavin
includes conch shell trumpets from Ecuador and Amazonian jaguars, harpy eagles, anacondas, caymans,
and monkeys. The Tello obelisk shows a Sky Cayman

(father) associated with agriculture including gourds,

achira, peanuts, and manioc carried on the penis. This
iconography is matched by a modern myth from
Surinam telling of a Fishwoman who got manioc
from her alligator father, who carried it on his penis.
Another Amazonian tale tells how Star-Woman
(sometimes Jupiter) introduced agriculture.
The Moche culture of northern coastal Peru (particularly Phase V, c. 550700 CE) contains specifically astronomical scenes, both from murals and
ceramics. These include the Sun litter and Moon
Fox. Mythic scenes include the Revolt of the Artifacts, an associated flood scene, the Spider Path to
Heaven, and many others. Specific generally accepted
interpretations are few.
The site of Tiahuanaco (Tiwanaku) on the high
plains of Bolivia includes the Akapana monument
aligned to the equinoxes, dating from about the
sixth century CE. Many other monuments seem to
have astronomical connotations, but there are no
agreed on interpretations.
The famed Nazca lines include several plausible
alignments of biomorphs with constellations, but
none are definitive.
Amazonian star myths and rituals are closely tied
to kin groups, often divided into Sun and Moon
moities. Venus, Jupier, and Rigel of the Sun Moiety,
Mars, and the Pleiades brothers of the Moon moiety
appear as actors in ritual and in myth. Fire is stolen
from Jaguar. New Fire ceremonies involve climbing a
pole, the Road to the Sky. In another group, the
Pleiades are the eight red and black fire sticks.
Recently an Amazonian Stonehenge has been discovered at Calcoene, Brazil, from about the first century BCE. The diameter of the circle is about 1000
and there are 127 stones. One casts no shadow at the
December (winter) solstice.

New Perspectives
The publication of the San Bartolo murals west wall
supplies us with a wealth of new information which
may be integrated with the Borgia group codices,
Mayan codices and ceramics, Olmec sculpture and
murals, and with other areas, especially Egypt
(Table 2).
The west wall shows a series of trees, birds, and
sacrifices indicative of world ages, most closely paralleling the Borgia codex pp. 4952. The last of the
San Bartolo images is accompanied by the date 3 Ik.
This is the day before Maya 4 Akbal, corresponding
to 4 House, a name day for one of the Borgia World
Ages. The associated tree of the Borgia is conceptually identical with that of San Bartolo, and the
other trees also show similarities. This makes it

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 461

certain that the world ages are named for their beginning days and that the year names corresponded with
Maya 1 Pop. The sequences of dates of the World
Ages are separated by 13 years of 365 days and an
unspecified number of Calendar Rounds. The structure is one-fourth of the 29 CR in which the wandering year (365 days) returns to the same position of
the tropical year (1508 wandering years 1507
tropical years) (Table 3). If 3 Ik/4 Akbal is a World

Age date, one would expect it to be an equinox or a

solstice. In continuity correlations, this is true of 3 Ik
5 uayeb/4 Akbal 1 Pop only at 23 June 182 CE, the
summer solstice (n  1507 tropical years). It is not
archaeologically feasible to place this date later at
7.19.4.12.2 (when early Maya were flourishing),
so the 3 Ik date should go back at least one 52 year
cycle to 7.16.11.17.2. This would put the end of the
Classic Period at 1117 CE, 208 years later than the

Table 2 The San Bartolo 3 IK date and the Maya correlation dates
Chiapa de Corzo
ST.1
7.16.3.2.13
6 Reed
1784538
19 Oct 173 C.E.
Tres Zapotes
St. C
7.16.6.16.13
1 Reed
1785898
10 July 177 C.E.
San Bartolo 23 June 182 C.E. 3 Ik [5 Uayeb]
In Correlation:
679185 / 679183
Vaillant #1
7.13.19.4.2

660205 Wells
7.16.11.17.2

[16 Xul]

[16 Pop]

641225
7.19.4.12.2

584285 Thompson
8.7.2.15.2
909 C.E.
10.4.0.0.0

1168 C.E. 10.4.0.0.0

1065 C.E. 10.4.0.0.0

1117 C.E. 10.4.0.0.0

Table 3 The Tropical Year Cycle in the Mediterranean and Mesoamerica

L.
2905, 17 July
Sun 89
#
754 Tropical Years
#
M.
2151, 7 Oct
Sun 177
#
2  1507 Tropical Years
#

A.
2766, 16 July
Sun 90
#
1507 Tropical Years
#
#
B.
1259, 4 July
Sun 90

D.
1325, 6 July
Sun 90
#
1507 Tropical Years
#

#
G. 182 C.E., 24 June
Sun 91
#
753 Tropical Years
#
H. 936 C.E., 15 March
Sun 360

I.
752, 21 April
Sun 22
#
753 Tropical Years
#
J. 0, 26 December
Sun 273
#
1507 Tropical Years
#

#
N. 863 C.E., 14 Sept
Sun 175

#
K. 1507, 15 December
Sun 273
Continued

462 ARCHAEOASTRONOMY
Table 3 Continued
A.
2766 (2767 B.C .E.), 16 July (Jul.), 23 June (Greg.)
J.D.N. 710973, Sun 90 , Mars 66 , Venus 73 , Jupiter 69 , Saturn 72
Heliacal rising of Sirius at Heliopolis, 1 Thoth.
The Horoscope of Eternity.
B.
1259 (1260 B.C.E.), 4 July (Jul.)
J.D.N. 1261393, Sun 90 , 1 Thoth.
C.
1256 (1257 B.C.E.), 31 Oct. (Jul.), 18 Oct. (Greg.)
J.D.N. 1262608 Mercury 188 , Saturn 188 .
Sun shone into the Abu Simbel Temple, 34th year, Ramesses II.
D.
1325 (1326 B.C.E.), 6 July (Jul)
J.D.N. 1237288, Sun 90 , 4.0.3.0.3 4 Akbal 1 Pop
E.
1321 (1322 B.C.E.), 19 July (Jul)
J.D.N. 1238763
Heliacal rising of Sirius.
F. 139 C.E. 20 July (Jul)
J.D.N. 1772028, The Phoenix Era ff. Censorinus
(1460 Julian years after date E), heliacal rising of Sirius.
G. 182 C.E. 24 June (Jul)
J.D.N. 1787708, Sun 91 , 7.16.11.17.3 4 Akbal, 1 Pop
H. 936 C.E. 15 March (Jul)
J.D.N. 2063006, Sun 360 , 9.14.16.12.1 1 Imix, 9 Zec (a famous beginning date of Mixtec chronology)
(cf. 9.14.16.7.13 4 Ben, 1 Pop, beginning of a World Age subdivision, J.D.N. 2062918
18 December, 935, (Jul), Sun 272 ).
I.
752 (753 B.C.E.) 21 April (Jul)
J.D.N. 1446501, Sun 23 , Traditional date of founding of Rome, alleged planetary phenomena impossible.
J. 0 (1 B.C.E.) 26 December (Jul)
J.D.N. 1721418, Sun 273 , Mercury 276 , Mars 8 , Jupiter 189 .
I had postulated that a mythico-astronomical date for the birth of Quetzalcoatl was at 12.8.10.2.13 with
the Sun and Mercury in conjunction; Mars and Jupiter in opposition, with Jupiter also in conjunction with
the Sun. This much later date shows the Sun and Mercury in conjunction and Mars and Jupiter in opposition.
K. 1507 (C.E.) 15 Dec (Jul.) JDN 2271838.
Sun 273 , Mercury 277 , Mars 268 . Aztec year 2 Reed, day 1 Reed (Mixtec year 1 Reed, day 1 Reed)
(a traditional date for the birth of Quetzalcoatl.)
Aztec 1 Acatl 20 Panquetzaliztli, equivalent to 11.3.16.10.13 1 Ben, 1 Mol was the date of the new
Fire ceremony proceeding the first year of Moctezuma as Emperor.
L.
2905 (2906 BCE) 17 Jul (Jul.) J.D.N. 660205
Sun 89 , 23 June (Greg.)
13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumku, Maya era base
M.
2151 (2152 BCE) 7 Oct (Jul.) J.D.N. 935685
1.18.5.4.0 1 Ahau 13 Mac Sun 177 , Jupiter 33 , Saturn 39 (Sun and Venus in Conjunction 25 days earlier)
Nine Wind descended (birth) 18 days earlier.
N. 863 CE 14 Sep (Jul.) J.D.N. 2036525
9.11.3.2.0 1 Ahau, 13 Mac, Sun 175 , Venus 174
Implicit, year 52, of Pakal of Palenque; should be the 1 Ahau, 13 Mac date of the Dresden Venus table.

Thompson correlation. If 182 CE were put 52 years

earlier in the Maya long count at 7.13.19.4.2, the end
of the Classic Period would be 260 years later than
the Thompson correlation which gives a very short
Post-Classic period. The 660205 correlation is therefore correct, although it is nearly 400 years later than
the Saturno interpretion of the radiocarbon dates.
About half of the difference is due to the error of
using the Thompson correlation.
If one goes back 1507 tropical years from 3 Ik
at the summer solstice (90 ), one reaches 1237387
5 July 1325 (1326 BCE) with the Sun at 89 . The
one-day shift is due to the inequality of the seasons.
This puts the year beginning date at 4 Akbal 1 Pop at
4.0.3.0.3, July 6,
1325 JDN 1237288 at the summer

solstice and followed 14 days later by the enthronement date, 5 Caban 15 Pop partly equivalent to Egyptian 1 Thoth and the rising of Sirius (see Table 4).
The Sothic cycle of 1460 years began with the
4 years, including 1322 BCE (
1321)and 1320 BCE
(
1319). It might more appropriately according to
Greek writers have begun in the preceding 4 years.
They associate the summer solstice, the Nile flooding,
and the rising of Sirius, which would have been together about 4000 BCE. They were still together
in 2767 BCE (
2766) at JDN 710973, the heliacal
rising of Sirius on 1 Thoth at the summer solstice.
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus were within 7 .
1507 tropical years later, in 1260 BCE (
1259), 1
Thoth of the wandering year was again at summer

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 463
Table 4 Correlation of one Egyptian day with one Mesoamerican day

Local time affected by

longitude, latitude and
altitude
Julian Day Number
Civil Day

Time of beginning of day

Egypt

Mesoamerica

Sunset
Sunrise

1 Thoth (365) [(12  30)5]

Thursdaya (7)

15 Pop (365) [(18  20)5]

5 Caban (260) (13  20)

Noon
Midnight Local civil timeb
measured from Greenwich

1237302
Julian Calendar 19 July (often
used in back calculations)

Era

1325
1326 BC
1326 BCE

Gregorian Calendar 5 July (often

used in back calculations)
4.0.3.0.17

Later began at midnight.

Local civil time roughly approximates local time measured astronomically by the location of the sun or stars.

solstice and had shifted by 1257 BCE to 89 , 120 days

before the sun shone into the Abu Simbel temple,
dating the 34th year of Ramses II. At about
2000 BCE, the solstice and the flooding of the Nile
were about 14 days before Sirius rising. This seems
to be reflected in the Mesoamerican situation, with
New Years Day on the summer solstice and the
enthronement date 14 days later.
According to the Aztecs, the inventor of the
calendar was Cipactonal, or Crocodile-Sun. The
consonants of this name, Spktn, correspond with
Egyptian Sbktn as closely as is possible in Aztec
which had no b-. s-b-k is Egyptian crocodile and
t-n is Aten or Aton, the sun disk. Cipactonal is depicted
in the Borbonicus associated with animal-headed
staves. In Egypt, Crocodile-Sun was written sbkr
(Sobek-Ra) and was one of the gods who carried the
animal headed power staff. The first day of the Aztec
calendar was Cipactli, Crocodile. The equivalent day of
the Maya calendar was Imix, earlier *Imox, in some
dialects Moxi, which occasionally has the meaning
beetle. In Egypt, Kheperra was Beetle-Sun, associated with sunrise.
The date 7.7.7.14.13 1Ben 1Mol (a date 1 Reed of a
Mixtec year 1 Reed, an Aztec year 2 Reed) was December 26, 1 BCE (astronomical year 0). The sun was
in 274 , 4 days past the winter solstice with Mercury
in conjunction in 278 , Mars in 9 in opposition with
Jupiter in 189 . I had suggested that an original One
Reed Quetzalcoatl should have been born on a winter
solstice with Mercury and Jupiter in conjunction with
the Sun and Mars in opposition to Jupiter. This much
later recurrence is a reasonable astronomical approximation which fits a Toltec tradition that Quetzalcoatl
was born on a day 1 Reed of a year 1 Reed. Here
Mercury was in conjunction with the Sun and Mars
in opposition to Jupiter, but Jupiter was not in conjunction with Mercury and the Sun. One Reed was
again nearly at the winter solstice 1507 years later
on the 20th of Panquetzaliztli, the great New Fire

ceremony emphasized in the Aztec Borbonicus

codex, the year before the accession of the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma. This was December 15, 1507 CE,
JDN 2271838 with the Sun in 273 and Mercury
in conjunction in 277 (3 days past the winter solstice). The relationship of the date for the birth of
Quetzalcoatl in 1. BCE with Egyptian ideas of Horus
and with the date for the founding of Rome is iconographically tied to Judaic representations of Iaw in the
form of Egyptian deities. These include snake footed
gods, the god holding a decapitated head, the snakeheaded feline, heads growing on a tree and a bird with
a deity head on its breast. These are segments of a
more general correspondence of the Mesoamerican
and Egyptian pantheons. Many Mesoamerican gods
are astronomically identifiable, and the meanings of
associated iconography may be clear. The astronomy
is sophisticated. The correspondences with the Egyptian pantheon are so extensive that a sophisticated
astronomy must be equally involved in Egypt.
The similarities between Mesoamerica and Egypt
include more than 30 common deities. These include
Crocodile-Sun; Monkey scribes; Frog Goddess of childbirth; Grain God as catfish and as acrobat; Direction
Gods who support the sky; Vulture, Queen of Heaven,
Mother, Sky-supporter; Human or Skull-headed Birds;
The Star-Scorpion Deities; The Double-headed Node
Passage Snake; The Infinity Snake; The Feathered
Snake; and The Black God of Medicine.
Representations of these gods include many shared
artistic features. Among these are color bands and
indicators that color was being used astronomically
to indicate sky locations and temporal changes. Parallels for planetary deities and constellations appear
with color coding from India to France. The western
lunar goddesses of Mexico are similar in colors and
associated symbols to those on the early Nazca textile
from Peru. It has become apparent that many more
small details united different archaeoastronomical
traditions than anyone has suspected.

464 ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW

See also: Image and Symbol; Ritual, Religion, and

Ideology.

Further Reading
Brotherston G (2005) Feather Crown: The Eighteen Feasts of the
Mexica Year. British Museum Publication No. 154. London:
British Museum.
Chamberlain VD, Carlson JB, and Young MJ (2005) Songs from
the Sky: Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions
of the World. Bognor Regis: Ocarina Books with the Center for
Archaeoastronomy.
Davies, HA (1969) Those Annus Vague Calendar Mysteries Again.
Roanoke, Virginia. Ms in the possession of David H. Kelley.

Archaeobotany

Faulkner RO (2000) The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, 2nd

edn. rev. In: Andrews C (ed.) Austin: University of Texas and
British Museum.
Hart G (2005) The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and
Goddesses, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Jairazbhoy RA (1974) Ancient Egyptians and Chinese in America.
London: George Prior.
Kelley DH and Eugene FM (2005) Exploring Ancient Skies: An
Encycloepedic Survey of Archaeoastronomy. New York: Springer.
Wilkinson RH (2003) The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames and Hudson.
Wirth DE (2003) Parallels: Mesoamerican and Ancient Middle
Eastern Traditions. St. George Utah: Stonecliff.

See: Paleoethnobotany.

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW

Edward B Banning, University of Toronto, Toronto,
ON, Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
arrangement A procedure that orders data into units, such as
classification into categories.
B72 An acrylic soluble in acetone that is used as an adhesive and
consolidant for archaeological conservation.
classification A set of abstract categories defined by rules for
assigning membership in classes unambiguously, as well as the
process of assigning items to those classes.
condition monitoring Regularly scheduled checks on artifacts
in a collection to document any changes that may have occurred
in their condition, as well as to check on their environmental
conditions (temperature, humidity).
data:ink ratio A term coined by Edward Tufte to describe the
extent to which a graphic emphasizes the data, rather than
unnecessary decoration.
diameter chart A chart with nested arcs or circles that
archaeologists use to measure the diameter of rim sherds and
bases of pottery.
EVE Estimated vessel equivalent is a term coined by Clive Orton
for a measure of pottery abundance based on the accumulated
preserved proportions of sherds. Generally its use is restricted to
rims, bases, or both, with preservation measured by the
preserved circumference (thus rim EVE or base EVE).
flat-file database A type of database in which records are
stored in a single file, much like a large table or a set of file cards.
GHS Globally harmonized system of classification and labeling
of chemicals.

graphical information language A set of conventions used in

the illustration of items, such as artifacts, that encodes
information in a standard way. Typically it includes rules for
orientation as well as standard symbols for materials and other
attributes.
hazard labels Standardized warning labels for materials, such
as chemicals, and equipment or activities that entail any risks to
health or safety. They include those of ANSI and OSHA (in the
United States), WHMIS (in Canada), and ISO and GHS
(internationally).
interval scale A measurement scale in which values are ordered
and arranged at fixed intervals or units, but in which the zero
value may be arbitrary. The Centigrade and Fahrenheit scales
of temperature are examples of interval scales.
MNI Minimum number of individuals is a measure of abundance
used most often for faunal assemblages that simply accounts
for the absolute minimum number of whole entities (usually
animals) that must have contributed bones or fragments to a
sample. For fauna, it is equal to the number of the most abundant
element.
NISP Number of identified specimens is a simple count of
identifiable items and fragments of a particular type, such as
bones and bone fragments or sherds.
nominal scale A measurement scale that consists simply of
unordered categories, such as artifact types or raw material types.
paradigmatic classification A type of classification in which
categories or classes are defined by the intersection of ordinal- or
nominal-scale dimensions, as in a table or a verb conjugation.
ratio scale An interval scale that has a nonarbitrary zero point
(i.e., zero indicates an absence of some quality).
relational database A more complex type of database in which
data of different kinds are stored in separate files but there are
links, or pointers, between files to make information in linked
files available at the same time.

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW 465

structure chart A diagram that illustrates a databases structure
by showing files, their attributes names and types, and relations
(attribute pointers) between files.
systematics The methods or tools for defining classes or
categories in a system of classification or the rules for creating
groups.

Introduction
Archaeological data are not given or received. Nor
are they simply facts. They are hard-won products
of archaeologists working in the field and in the
laboratory. This article briefly discusses the activities
that archaeologists carry out and methods they use
after fieldwork. Some of the individual activities are
discussed elsewhere within the present encyclopedia.

Basic Lab Activities

Archaeologists carry out many observations on their
finds while still on-site. Once archaeologists have
brought artifacts and other materials, such as sediment samples, back to the lab, however, they can
usually carry out much more detailed work.
The variety of laboratory activities ranges from
simple cleaning, sorting, labeling, and counting of
artifacts through water-separation of plant remains
from sediments and microscopic examination of tool
edges to chemical, metallurgical, and isotopic analyses. Many of these activities require specialized training or expensive equipment, leading archaeologists
to send some of their materials to the laboratories of
non-archaeological colleagues in geology, chemistry,
or physics departments, for example. Despite this
variety and compartmentalization, all participants
in the archaeological enterprise, from lithic analysts
to palaeoethnobotanists and archaeometrists, share a
common set of analytical problems, methods, and
vocabulary. These commonalities are not always
obvious, in part because of the way universities train
specialists, but they are still important. Archaeometrists specialize in what might seem to be highly
technical aspects of dating deposits or analyzing the
chemical and isotopic characteristics of artifacts, for
example, yet they still rely on basic archaeological
units of context and basic archaeological artifact
types, and they are still contributing to the solution
of basic archaeological problems. Here, the focus is
on laboratories for this basic work.

Lab Organization
The physical arrangement of space and facilities in an
archaeological laboratory is important to the efficient
use of staff and resources. Although academic and

private-sector archaeological laboratories differ in some

respects, such as the need for teaching space in some of
the former, they have many needs in common.
General Space and Furnishings

A general archaeological lab, in both academic and

CRM settings, needs to be spacious enough and have
adequate facilities to accommodate a large variety of
archaeological analyses and curatorial needs. In general, the lab needs to be dry, clean, and secure, with
moderate and stable temperature and humidity. Storage and work areas should be away from major
traffic but easily accessible by lab carts. The layout
of the lab should be amenable to the work flow,
minimizing the chance that lab carts or personnel
will interfere with one another. Work areas should be
well lit yet avoid excess direct sunlight, while storage
areas should usually be dark or have low-UV lighting.
Work and storage areas, and individual cabinets,
should be lockable and only authorized lab personnel
should have access to keys or combinations.
The most critical furnishings for a general archaeological lab are tables or lab benches for working space
and shelving, cabinets, or both, for both temporary
and long-term storage.
Many archaeological labs have benches identical to
those used in chemistry or biology labs, with a smooth,
washable work surface at a height that is suitable for
working while standing (3738 in), while seated on a
stool (3840 in), or while seated at a computer keyboard (c. 28 in). Cabinets and drawers beneath the
work surface provide space for storage of small equipment and supplies, and sometimes also for the temporary storage of artifacts or other samples that are in
the processing or analytical queue. To accommodate
the legs of seated workers, the cabinetry needs kick
spaces at intervals, while the fact that the benches are
permanently fixed in place makes them unresponsive
to changing spatial requirements.
Other labs have tables in lieu of, or in addition to,
lab benches. Tables have two principal advantages:
they provide more leg room for seated workers, and
one can move the tables around as needs change.
However, they also have the disadvantage of lacking
space to store items out of the way, except to stack
boxes on the floor underneath. Consequently, many
archaeological labs employ mixtures of benches and
tables, of varying heights.
Both benches and tables should be deep enough to
accommodate the trays or removable drawers used in
the laboratory storage cabinets without hanging over
the table edge. Otherwise there is risk of bumping
into a tray and upsetting the artifacts or other specimens on it. Since bench and table tops are hard, they

466 ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW

should be equipped with padded sheets, such as thin

sheets of polyethylene foam, both to protect their
surfaces and especially to guard against breakage of
fragile artifacts dropped on surfaces.
Where cleaning very dirty artifacts is a substantial
laboratory activity, some labs employ specially built
tables or racks with heavy mesh in place of the table
top. This allows loose dirt to fall through into a basin
below during artifact cleaning, or facilitates drying of
artifacts after washing. In some cases, compartmentalization of such mesh tables or racks by adding a
raised grid of wood or metal both strengthens it and
allows easy sorting of artifacts or prevents the mixing
of artifacts from different bags or contexts.
Since archaeological analysis is often timeconsuming and the quantities of material to analyze
are often very large, the laboratory needs to be able to
accommodate at least temporary storage of material
waiting for, or in the process of, analysis. Storage systems should organize specimens in a way that facilitates
their location, retrieval, and return; minimizes physical
jostling and friction; discourages theft or unauthorized
access; facilitates monitoring of contents and their
condition; and maintains a stable, safe environment.
One excellent means of accomplishing this is by
equipping the lab with secure cabinets with numerous
shallow trays. Particularly when the materials needing storage are sensitive to fluctuations in humidity
and temperature, and also to minimize dust levels in
the lab, the cabinets and drawers should ideally be of
metal, with lockable doors that close and seal tightly.
The contents of such metal cabinets will thus be
somewhat isolated from the laboratorys airspace.
Wooden cabinets or shelving may be acceptable in
some circumstances for example, storage of chert
and other very stable artifacts where conservation
issues are forgiving, but the acidic fumes that some
wood and glues will slowly exude are particularly damaging to metal artifacts. Putting any wooden shelving in
a well-ventilated area, rather than keeping it airtight as
in the metal cabinets, will help prevent fumes from
accumulating.
Other things to consider in planning shelving or
cabinetry for storage of artifacts pertain to both
conservation and practicality. Repeated sliding of
drawers or trays in and out shifts specimens so that
friction and rattling can damage fragile artifacts and
bone fragments. Lining the drawers or trays with a
membrane made of an inert material, such as polyethylene foam, will help reduce this friction effect.
Meanwhile, drawers or trays should be sturdy, easily
removable, reasonably light (particularly given the
weight of the specimens they will carry), and not unduly large. It is helpful if the cabinets allow very flexible spacing of the trays or drawers, to accommodate

both small and large specimens. Each tray or drawer

should have drawer pulls, to facilitate withdrawal while
also helping to orient the drawer on its return from a
bench top. Trays or drawers should also have slots
on front to hold labels that indicate their contents.
In general, the storage system should make sense
archaeologically and conservationally. Often, this
means organizing collections in a way that separates
specimens that we need to access frequently from ones
in long-term (dead) storage, and often it also means
separating specimens by their various environmental
needs. For example, very unstable materials, such as
iron, need close environmental control and monitoring
in sealed containers, while less sensitive materials have
less restrictive but still real requirements.
Each laboratory should have a wheeled table, lab
trolley, or cart with which to move trays and boxes of
artifacts. In order to minimize the chance of dropping
and damaging artifacts, lab staff should always use this
cart rather than carrying large or multiple artifacts by
hand. For moving heavier boxes, it is also a good idea
to have a decent dolly or hand-cart with good tires.
Generally, the laboratory will need at least one
large bookshelf unit to keep field notes, photo logs,
slides, and other hard-copy documentation, as well as
laboratory manuals and reference books.
Stools and chairs are also essential furnishings.
Given the long hours that some staff will spend
seated, it is essential to take proper ergonomics into
consideration. Make sure that the chairs heights are
adjustable to make work comfortable at the particular tables or benches in the lab. Good lighting is also
an essential aspect of laboratory furnishings, particularly considering the close and detailed work that
lab staff must carry out. Typical fluorescent lighting
is not very satisfactory, unless supplemented with
many table lamps and with natural light from large
windows. It is important to position the work spaces
for particularly eye-straining work, such as drafting
or lithic recording, close to such windows, both to
ensure adequate light and to allow those carrying out
the work to look out of the window periodically.
Changing the focus of ones eyes from time to time
in this way reduces eyestrain. Small, goose-neck table
lamps with halogen bulbs make it easy to direct light
onto small objects and to cast shadows that make it
easier to observe small details of relief.
Most archaeological laboratories also need at least
one deep sink and faucet, which is useful for washing
artifacts, washing up some of the tools, beakers, and
pens used in the lab, and for lab staff to wash their
hands. If artifact washing or sediment processing is
among the lab activities, it is important for the sinks
drain to be equipped with a silt trap. Most often, the
sink will be set into a cabinet to allow storage of

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW 467

basins and the like below. It is also good to have some

wall shelving above the sink.
Many archaeological laboratories also need some
kind of refrigeration. Zooarchaeology labs that carry
out skeletal preparation, for example, will either need
several large deep-freezes or a walk-in freezer to store
animal carcasses prior to their preparation. Others
will instead need a cool-room or small refrigerator
to store film, some kinds of specimens that would
degrade faster at room temperature, or even archival
photographs.
Even though archaeological projects have been
moving increasingly toward digital imagery, it is still
almost essential for an archaeological lab to have at
least one steel map cabinet. This serves to store oversized maps and drawings flat, which is generally preferable to the alternative of keeping rolled-up maps
and illustrations in plastic tubes. Archaeological labs
also sometimes have a drafting table (often still used
at least to prepare preliminary drawings of artifacts
for later digitizing) or a light table (useful for sorting
slides and transparencies, as well as for object
photography and tracing maps and drawings).
Since most of todays archaeological labs are thoroughly computerized, it is necessary to ensure that
some of the cabinets or, alternatively, dedicated computer workstations are set up for data entry and analysis. These should be positioned in such a way as to
minimize glare on the monitor, have chairs and keyboard surface set at ergonomically appropriate heights,
and ideally have high-speed Internet access and their
own, surge-protected electrical circuits or uninterruptible power supply. Where there are several computers,
it is good to set up a local area network with a shared
laser printer and scanner accessible to all users.
Some archaeological laboratories, especially those
that employ hazardous chemicals, require at least one
fume hood and an explosion-proof chemical-storage
cabinet.
Small Equipment

Specialized archaeological laboratories have their

own needs, but most archaeological labs require a
number of basic tools and instruments. These include
electronic balances with a variety of capabilities in
terms of the maximum mass they can measure and the
precision of measurement (e.g., up to 6 kg to nearest
2 g or up to 500 g to nearest 0.1 g). The lab should
have standard brass weights with which to calibrate
the balances. They also include several inexpensive
manual calipers and usually at least one electronic
caliper, preferably able to interface with a computer
for automatic uploading of measurements. The jaws
of the calipers, if made of steel, could damage the
surfaces of fragile artifacts, so plastic ones are

preferable. Putting masking tape on the jaws to cushion the hard metal is unacceptable because of the bias
it causes, except in the case of electronic calipers that
one can re-zero. Other small tools include dental
picks and tweezers for fine work. Most archaeological laboratories also need at least one low-power
binocular microscope and a number of hand lenses,
such as jewellers loops. Table lamps, including swingarm lamps with magnifiers built-in, and a fiber-optic
light source for each microscope are essential, even
where there is fairly good natural light. A tripod and
copy stand with a pair of strong lamps is very useful
for object photography. Some labs will have a power
drill, Dremel tool, or geological saw for removing
samples from artifacts or bones for chemical analysis
or thin sections. Munsell soil-color charts, standard
mineral sets for determining hardness, and pH meters
are also common items of small equipment in archaeological labs. Routinely, the lab will have at least
one desktop computer, flatbed scanner, printer, backup (removable hard drive, CDs, flashcards), and fast
Internet connection.
Laboratory Supplies

The most common archaeological laboratories require

a variety of basic supplies for the storage, cleaning,
recording, and maintenance of collections, and safety
of lab personnel (Table 1).
Temporary storage, unpacking, and sorting When
artifacts and other archaeological samples arrive at a
lab, a first step is to move them into a space where lab
workers can unpack them, do preliminary sorting,
and carry out a kind of triage: deciding which
items need immediate attention and which can be
moved into longer-term storage.
These activities require something like a staging
area near the lab entrance, tables or lab benches
where staff can open boxes, sort artifacts, and arrange
them on trays. Either spacious and sturdy shelves or
cupboards under the benches are essential for temporary storage and to help sort unopened boxes.
Note that it is important, at this stage and throughout the analysis process, to minimize the chance of
breaking or damaging artifacts as they are moved,
sorted, or handled. Consequently, staff should always
use a lab cart, rather than just their hands or arms, to
move trays and artifacts from one part of the lab to
another.
Basic processing Apart from samples that can safely
wait in longer-term storage, most materials that
arrive at the lab require fairly immediate attention
by way of sorting, cleaning, and labeling.

468 ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW

Table 1 Basic supplies commonly needed in an archaeological
laboratory
Health and safety
First-aid kit (esp. bandages)
Dust masks
Goggles or face shields
Spill kits
OSHA or WHMIS manual, material
safety sheets, hazard labels
Latex gloves (several boxes)
Work gloves
Lab coats and/or aprons

Measurement
Diameter charts for
pottery
Measuring charts for
lithics
Recording forms
pH litmus paper
Calibrating tablets for pH
meter

Collections management
Polyethylene bags, various sizes
Silica gel
Humidity indicator strips
Plastic boxes with see-through lids
Polyethylene foam sheets
Pens with stable ink
Artists paint brushes
Acryloid B72 and Acetone
Stick-on labels
Printed labels for cabinet drawers
Staples
Binders
Archival photo pages
Small brushes for cleaning artifacts
Acetic acid for removing CaCO3
Distilled water

Office and Drafting

Printer paper
Printer toner
Writable CDs or DVDs
Writing pads
Clear tape, masking tape
Staples
Pens, pencils, technical
pencils
Erasers
Drafting vellum or mylar
film
File cards
Manilla envelopes
Rubber stamps and ink
pads

Cleaning and labeling are critical in an archaeological lab. Archaeologists are well aware of the importance of archaeological context; consequently, any
sorting that might separate an artifact from its original bag or label would be disastrous unless an accurate label accompanied it. In addition, while cleaning
and labeling, staff will pay close attention to any
adverse preservation issues associated with samples,
so that they can send them for conservation before
they proceed to analysis.
Ideally, the ethics of artifact conservation call for
us to alter artifacts only in ways that are reversible.
At the same time, the priority on preservation of
contextual information calls for us to ensure that
any labeling we use is reasonably secure and permanent. We do not want labels that are easily separated
from the artifact or likely to wear off. In order to
balance these competing demands, a good practice is
to apply a strong yet reversible base layer to a clean,
dry surface on each artifact, apply a label on top of
this surface, and then seal the label with another
transparent layer. Traditionally, archaeologists used
India ink and a crow-quill pen to apply the labels, but
today they tend to favor fine-point commercial pens,
whose ink composition is often unknown because of
patent protections. A commonly used material for the
base and cover layers is 10% acryloid (paraloid) B72

in acetone, which is soluble in acetone and therefore

easy to remove. The main drawback to its use, especially for the top coat, is that most of the commercially available inks that archaeologists use to write
labels on the base coat are also soluble in acetone,
so that the labels tend to smear or get erased when we
apply the top coat of B72. If we are unable to use
suitable inks that are stable in acetone (India ink is
one), possible solutions to this problem are to adhere
small, printed paper labels to the bottom layer of B72
and seal them with the top coat, or to use a transparent
top-coat that is soluble in mineral spirits instead of
acetone.
One of the reasons for cleaning at least a portion of
the surfaces of artifacts is to ensure strong cohesion
of the label. Cleaning is also necessary to allow some
kinds of analysis, while, at the same time, there are
also many circumstances in which analysis demands
uncleaned and uncontaminated surfaces. During the
triage stage, lab personnel must separate out any
items for which cleaning would not be appropriate,
including ones that cleaning might damage, and
ensure that each gets its own labeled polyethylene
bag. A labeled bag is not as secure a labeling medium,
since there is always the risk that the artifact and bag
could be separated, or different artifacts get mixed
up, but careful use of labeled bags is often our only
reasonable alternative to direct labeling of artifacts
and other samples. Furthermore, it is important to
avoid condensation inside the bag. Where this is a
possibility, pierce the bag with small pinholes to
allow excess moisture to escape.
Basic conservation and cleaning As mentioned
above, it is not appropriate for all artifacts and samples to undergo cleaning. One of the most common
reasons to avoid cleaning is to avoid contamination
that would undermine chemical or isotopic analysis,
including radiocarbon dating and analysis of chemical residues on lithics or in pottery fabrics. Another is
to preserve microscopic traces for use-wear analysis.
In addition, cleaning, especially cleaning that involves
immersion in water or ultrasound, could damage or
even destroy fragile specimens, and some artifacts,
such as metal ones, should only be cleaned by trained
conservators.
Most artifacts, however, can withstand careful,
gentle brushing to remove loose dirt, and many artifacts can withstand immersion in water and cleaning
by gentle brushing. Lab personnel should avoid vigorous brushing, as it can erode artifact surfaces or
even cause breakage. If they use water-washing, they
should also take care to ensure that they do not leave
some artifacts, especially smaller ones, at the bottom
of the water basin. This is especially important if they

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW 469

reuse the basin to wash another batch of artifacts

from a different context, thus risking contamination
of one batch with artifacts from another.
Note that there can be special requirements for
the disposal of dirt removed from artifacts, notably
if the artifacts are imported from another country.
Rather than disposing of removed dirt down the
drain or in regular garbage, preventing possible
import of crop diseases requires its disposal by incineration or after baking in a kiln.
Sometimes dripping a mild acid (e.g., 5% acetic
acid) on the surfaces of artifacts that have calcareous
encrustations will loosen these and make them easier
to remove mechanically. Take care, however, not to
damage the artifacts surface below. Also make sure
that you neutralize any remaining acid afterward or
rinse the artifact thoroughly with distilled water.
Some classes of artifacts that casual cleaning could
severely damage include most metallic ones, such as
coins, wood, textiles, and even bone tools. They
almost always require consultation with a trained
conservator.

Classification and Sorting

As in any science, in the broadest sense of the term,
archaeologists need to have meaningful categories
for classifying and sorting the entities they study
or searching for patterns in their observations (see
Classification and Typology). We cannot even count
things until we decide how to classify them. However,
no particular system, or arrangement, for classifying
phenomena or grouping similar phenomena is demonstrably true or natural, and this sometimes leads to
considerable debate among archaeologists about such
things as whether the traces at a particular site belong
to one or another culture or industry, whether a particular artifact is one or another kind of tool, and so on.
Such disagreements can arise because archaeologists classify or partition their observations on the
basis of some selection of characteristics or attributes
among an infinity of attributes that they conceivably
could record. They also vary in their strategies and
methods for making use of these attributes in the
construction of conceptual categories. Consequently,
the resulting systems of groups or categories can differ and, in some sense, are arbitrary. They are arbitrary not because all systems are equally useful or
justifiable but because different archaeologists, with
different goals, different methods, or different sets of
entities to organize, will likely come up with quite
different groups or categories that nonetheless serve
their purposes. It is also quite unlikely that the categories that archaeologists use are very similar to,
let alone identical to, the categories that prehistoric

people would have used to describe their surroundings and material culture (their ethnotaxonomy).
However, archaeologists also want to provide reasonable justification for the categories and groups
they use to organize observations. They use a variety
of procedures to help them devise observation units
that are useful, practical, and reproducible. These specific procedures belong to the domain of systematics.
As in other aspects of systematics, archaeologists often
disagree about terminology or use terms inconsistently.
To reduce confusion, the following discussion mainly
follows the terminology of Dunnell.
This section will leave aside those kinds of systematics based on grouping objects by their attributes
in favor of the conceptual approach to systematics
called classification. Because this involves defining
mutually exclusive categories (classes) of ideal phenomena by specifying the conditions or rules that
dictate which phenomena belong, and which do not,
to each class, we can create classification in advance
of actually examining the artifacts, layers, sediments,
or any other entities we want to classify. Not surprisingly, it is usual to have at least some idea what
to expect before creating the specifications for the classification. We might, for example, study a pilot sample
of our study group in the hope of identifying the attributes that we think might be useful in the classification.
Archaeologists usually employ one of two different
arrangements to create classifications. One of these
involves defining classes by the intersection of two or
more dimensions, while each dimension itself consists
of a classification of a single attribute (such as color,
shape, or size). This kind of classification, called paradigmatic, will be familiar to readers who have studied
languages, as we often classify verb forms by the
intersecting dimensions of gender, number, and
tense. The other proceeds by the successive subdivision of major classes into subclasses, and is called
taxonomic. Taxonomies are familiar to those who
have studied biology.
By establishing classificatory schemes and the rules
for assigning artifacts to each class in advance,
archaeologists can set up templates that help lab
staff, including relatively inexperienced volunteers in
some cases, sort artifacts quickly and accurately.
Sorting

Sorting of artifacts is a common laboratory practice

in archaeology, with archaeologists often doing at
least preliminary sorting almost from the moment
they remove artifacts and other materials from their
archaeological contexts (e.g., deposit in a site). As this
involves assigning items to preconceived categories,
it entails use of classification.

470 ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW

It is easy to set up the lab in ways that help lab staff

sort artifacts properly. For example, many labs that
need to sort lithic debitage dedicate a table to this
process and mark the table surface with a grid of
painted or taped lines to create a series of labeled
rectangles, one rectangle for each class in a classification. A set of instructions taped to the table makes it
clear how lab staff should decide where to assign each
artifact by outlining the rules that dictate membership
in each class. For example, one class in a paradigmatic classification could be marked on the table by
the rules: flake, incomplete, platform present, unretouched. Alternatively, a similar class in a taxonomic
classification can be clearly marked as a subset of unretouched flakes, which are in turn a subset of unretouched debitage in a grid of nested boxes (Figure 1).
Lab workers can then quickly place each artifact,
as they remove it from a bag or tray, on its appropriate square. After they have placed all the artifacts
from a given context, it is then easy to count the
number in each category and enter that information
on a paper form or in a computer database.
Measurement

Sorting and typology involve a kind of measurement

at the nominal scale, but archaeologists are often interested in measuring differences in magnitudes: for
example, comparing the lengths of projectile points in
millimeters, the densities of inclusions in pottery fragments, or the ratios of barium to aluminum in samples of pottery fabric. These involve measurements
at the interval and ratio scales, which archaeologists
can use to group artifacts, summarize the characteristics of groups, or define the rules for classes, among
other purposes. Calipers and balances are among the
most common tools they use to make such measurements (e.g., analysis of artifacts: lithic analysis).

Other common, simple tools are paper or acetate

lithic recording charts, and diameter charts (see
Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear).

Quantification
As noted above, archaeologists use classifications
whenever they want to count things, a process called
enumeration. But what are they counting? Obtaining
some reasonable estimate of the relative abundances
of different classes of lithics, pottery, animals, or some
other entities is one of the most common archaeological laboratory activities. However, it is not always
obvious what the best measure of abundance is.
The reason for this problem is that the things archaeologists would like to count are typically fragmentary,
and counting bone fragments, for example, is not the
same thing as counting live animals. Two different
bone fragments could come from the animal, or even
the same bone. So, if we are interested in comparing the
percentages of caribou at two sites, or the proportions
of red-slipped pottery, what do we do?
Archaeologists have developed quite a variety of
options for counting things, but selecting the most
appropriate one for a particular problem is not always
easy. It depends on what indirect measurement is really of interest. For example, is our purpose in counting
bone fragments to compare the relative frequencies of
some species, among live animals, that the people at
two different sites hunted? Or is it to estimate how
much that species contributed to site occupants diet
(in meat or calories)? Or is it to discover something
about what they were doing with the carcass, in terms
of butchering and selection of meat portions? Or are
we just trying to learn something about site-formation
processes by studying the degree of fragmentation of
our faunal sample? Of course, we might be interested

Unretouched debitage

Incomplete
Proximal

Figure 1 Example of a sorting table for a taxonomic classification of unretouched flakes and blades.

Distal

Length >5cm

Complete
Length <5 cm

Fragments

Platform present

Random
dorsal
scars

Incomplete
Radiating dorsal scars

Parallel dorsal scars

Complete

Blades

Medial

Flakes

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW 471

in more than one of these questions, but each calls for

a somewhat different approach to quantification of
abundance. How we answer them helps us decide
among such measures as number of identified
specimens (NISP), minimum number of individuals
(MNI), or estimated vessel equivalent (EVE).

Databases and Data Management

Archaeologists employ many media to record and analyze their observations, including handwritten field
notes, computer spreadsheets, videotapes, and digital
images. However, the sometimes massive amounts of
data that result from the sorting, grouping, and measuring activities of archaeologists today call for complex systems to organize them. Typically these consist
of relational databases. In some cases, archaeologists
use spatially referenced databases in geographic information systems (GIS) and, increasingly, they use hypermedia, including web sites, to organize and present
their results.
A flat-file database is a simple form of database
that, like an old-fashioned card-file system, consists
of a number of records, each of which, much like a
paper form, is used to document various kinds of
information in a set of fields. For example, in a file
for recording information about stone tools, each
record would be used to describe a particular tool, and
each field would be used to record a different attribute,
such as the tools length or position of retouch.
A relational database similarly employs records
and fields, but is more complex and useful because
it also has connections, or relations, between files.
By controlling redundancy, relational databases are
more efficient than flat-file ones because information
of different kinds (and therefore requiring quite different fields) is partitioned into different files, while the
relations allow reference to information in two or more
files at once. To illustrate with an example, it would
be inefficient to document details of contextual
information in a file describing stone tools. If, during
excavation, we happened to find, say, 50 stone artifacts in a particular context (layer or pit), each of these
artifacts would have identical contextual information.
It would not make sense to record this information
repeatedly on every artifact record. A relational database more sensibly records the contextual information
in one file, the information on lithic artifacts in another,
and uses a relation to tie the artifact records in the latter
to the contextual records in the former. Figure 2 depicts
a structure chart that illustrates this example. Both files
have key attributes, here Context number and Artifact
number, that uniquely identify each record. Each of
the context records in the Context file, contains information about a particular context, organized among

Contexts
Context no.
Site no.
Grid coord.
Top elev.
Bottom elev.
Sed. texture
Sed. color
Context type
Strat. below
Strat. above

A
N
N
C
C
C
A
A

Lithics
Artifact no.
Context no.
C
Type
Completeness C
B
Retouch
C
Platform
N
Length (mm)
N
Width (mm)
Thickness (mm) N
A
Material

Figure 2 Example of a structure chart for the files Contexts

and Lithics in a relational database. The codes next to each field
label indicate the data type (e.g., A for alphanumeric, B for
boolean, C for character, and N for numeric fields).

a number of fields, such as sediment texture and grid

coordinates. Each record in Lithics similarly records
information about a particular artifact in fields such
as length, width, and platform type. In addition,
the Lithics file has a special field, called an attribute
pointer, that connects it to the key attribute, Context
number, in the Context file. All of the records describing artifacts from the same context would have the
same context number in their key attribute field. This
allows the software to refer back to the Context file if
we need information about the context of any of the
artifacts, or want to search for all specimens with
particular contextual characteristics. For example,
we might want to find all the bone fragments that
were found in pits, or all the lithics found below
layer 6 (Figure 2).
Today, archaeologists have a number of software
options for their relational databases, and most of
these have tools to help them design useful and efficient ones. However, a common mistake is to sit
down in front of a computer and begin defining files
and fields without giving adequate attention to the
databases design. It will save a lot of time and frustration in trying to fix inadequacies of the database if
you instead think carefully about your database
requirements in advance, and plan it out on paper.

Illustration and Object Photography

Documenting artifacts and other archaeological
objects is not only a matter of taking measurements
and recording observations in a database. Typically
some subset, at least, is documented graphically, and
even computerized databases can include graphic

472 ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW

documentation. Consequently, drawing, digitizing,

and photography (both film and digital) are common
activities in archaeological laboratories.
Despite what most people think, archaeological
images are not simply artistic or naturalistic representations of objects. Archaeological illustration in fact
constitutes a graphical information language, with
very standardized, and not necessarily realistic, conventions for representing the characteristics of artifacts
and other archaeological phenomena. Illustrations,
including even photographic images, are actually
interpretations, not simply neutral representations
of objects.
The conventions for drawing artifacts allow
archaeologists to encode information about objects,
for example, their form, cross section, material, or
surface texture, all attributes that might be obscured
or distorted in a conventional photograph. Such conventions typically involve the orientation of the object
illustrated, the number of distinct views, line thicknesses, stippling or hatching, cross sections or cutaways, and marks to signal manufacturing details,
surface features, or colors. Furthermore, archaeologists
attempt to show undistorted, scaled representations
of artifact shapes in specific views, while most photographs, by contrast, distort these shapes unless they are
corrected digitally.
For pottery, glass, and other vessels, archaeological
illustrators often use the evidence from individual
sherds to reconstruct as much as possible of a whole
vessel, showing its exterior on one side of a center line,
and a radial cutaway view (interior of pot and cross
section of vessel wall) on the other side (Figure 3).
Various conventions signal slips, paints, incised or
impressed decoration, and so on.
Similarly, lithic illustrations are usually not realistic pictures of flakes or cores; they are standardized
representations of such things as flake shape, position
of flake scars and retouch, position of burination,
distribution of polish, and so on. There are conventions for the orientation of each piece, generally with
flakes oriented platform-down, and curving lines on
the flake scars give an impression of relief while, more
importantly, indicating the direction of flake removal.
Each flake or blade merits at least dorsal and ventral
views, while some also have end-on views of proximal
or distal retouch or side views.
Aside from pottery, lithics, and other artifacts, the
most commonly required archaeological illustrations
are maps, plans, and stratigraphic sections. Important
characteristics of good ones are clarity, simplicity,
and consistency. In fact, all maps and plans are both
standardized and highly simplified representations of
spatial relationships, designed to emphasize some

Figure 3 A conventional illustration of a ceramic sherd, reconstructed to show the exterior, interior, and radial cross section in a
cutaway on one side.

information at the expense of others. Things to keep

in mind when drawing maps and similar illustrations
are to ensure that there is a scale and orientation
(usually a North arrow, sometimes a key map), that
the features of greatest interest are clear and obvious
(often by placement near the center of the illustration), that the line thicknesses have at least some
variety and can withstand reduction of scale, that
the labels are clear and large enough, and that the
map is not too cluttered or busy. It is also useful,
when preparing the map, to think carefully about
how much accuracy and precision is really necessary;
at some scales, an error of 10 cm in a site map, for
example, will be less than a line thickness in the
published version. For graphs and charts, key issues
are making sure that you use the correct kind of graph
for the pattern you intend to show and scale of
measurement on which it is based, avoiding confusing
or misleading features, and keeping things simple
so as to keep the emphasis on the data. Tufte argues
for maximizing the data:ink ratio, or using no more
ink than necessary to present relevant results.
Some guidelines are relevant to all line art that you
will submit for publication. Lines should be bold
enough that they will not disappear upon expected
reduction, yet not so bold as to be distracting. Testing
your line art by photocopier reduction to the expected
published size is a good idea. Similarly, you should

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW 473

select a clear, simple font and a point size that will

appear no smaller than seven points, but no larger
than about 12 points, when reduced for publication.
You should avoid the temptation to use busy fonts or
too many fonts. Typically a simple hierarchy of point
size and consistent use of a convention, such as the
convention to label bodies of water in italics, is sufficient. Avoid distracting or overly ornate features on
the graphic unless they have clear purpose.
Although hand-drawing and hand-inking of archaeological illustrations is still common, increasingly
archaeologists take advantage of graphical software
to prepare artifact illustrations and maps. It is difficult
to provide very detailed guidelines about this topic
without risk of falling very quickly out-of-date. However, the key is to think carefully about what you want
to accomplish with a computer graphic, and to use
dedicated software, such as Adobe Illustrator, that is
capable of tracing scanned drawings or the poorer
graphical output of statistical software with smooth
lines and curves, adding clear fills and hatching, and
adding proper fonts (not the jagged text that some
software outputs). Most archaeological publishers
require hard copy, as well as electronic files of graphics in a small range of useful formats, such as PostScript (eps) and press-ready pdf. Ask editors about the
file formats publishers support and how much resolution they require.
Although most scale archaeological illustrations
are accomplished through frequent, careful measurements and the use of some time-saving instruments,
such as formaguages with fine teeth that can trace
the profile of an object, others use photography as an
aid in the production of drawings. To eliminate the
distortion and parallax that photography introduces,
it is necessary to rectify the resulting drawings (now
generally with software) by reference to some measured planimetric points. Some archaeologists also
advocate a hybrid approach that combines photography with the best features of line drawings.
Although technical drawings remain extremely important in archaeology, photographic documentation
has long supplemented them. Artifact photography
with film or digital camera has the advantage of
showing tonal range and texture effectively, but sometimes the disadvantage of shadows or color differences
that obscure details of form and outline.
In the laboratory, a sturdy, vibration-free copy table
with a pair of strong lamps, often tungsten, and preferably positioned near bright but indirect, natural
light, helps archaeologists prepare photographs of
individual artifacts and other objects. One lamp is
the main light source, conventionally placed at top
left, while the other and any natural light is diffused

or less intense, for fill-in illumination. The copy stand

should be equipped with a variety of non-distracting
background cloths, and clear, professional-looking
scales. Eliminating harsh shadows is important, and
either using a very dark background or photographing
over a light box usually accomplishes this for artifacts
that contrast with these backgrounds. Some archaeological photographers recommend placing artifacts on
a clean sheet of glass suspended over the background,
so that shadows do not appear and the background is
out-of-focus and less distracting, with the artifact and
scale appearing to float over it. The copy table may
have a built-in mount for the camera, or be used with
a tripod, and the camera should have a cable release
(or you should use the timer) to keep the camera still
during exposures.
As surface mottling and color of artifacts can sometimes obscure the features that archaeologists want to
show, it sometimes helps to eliminate this type of
variation prior to photography. For example, lithic
analysts sometimes dust lithics with powdered aluminum chloride or some other material or smoke them
with ammonium chloride fumes. This gives them a
consistent color and thus makes it easier to see flake
scars. Similarly, epigraphers use aluminum chloride
on cuneiform tablets, and numismatists sometimes
photograph plaster casts of ancient or mediaeval
coins, rather than the coins themselves, to avoid
reflection or the obscuring effects of patina and corrosion. Making embossing or other fine details on
glass visible also requires special techniques. Aluminum chloride appears to be a relatively safe material,
but smoking with Ammonium chloride can involve
use of hydrochloric acid and ammonia, while aluminum powder is associated with Alzheimers disease
(see the Health and Safety section ahead).
Sometimes archaeologists want close-ups, or even
extreme close-ups, of small details, such as use-wear,
or need to produce enlarged views of small artifacts,
such as beads or coins. To accomplish this, they use
photomacrography or photomicrography. The former, which is suitable for magnification up to about
40, uses bellows or extension rings and supplementary lenses to increase the distance between the lens
and the film (or digital scanner), at the expense of
sharpness and depth of detail. It also requires increased
exposure and is much more successful when a largeformat camera is used. Generally small, high-intensity
lamps, such as microscope lamps, are preferable for
close-up photography. Photomicrography involves use
of a microscope to magnify the image, typically for
images of thin sections or lithic use-wear.
Another use of archaeological photography is
the digital enhancement of faint or obscure images,

474 ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW

such as those on cuneiform tablets or charred papyrus

documents.
Today, archaeologists are also increasingly experimenting with three-dimensional digital imagery.
Because it is even possible to take accurate measurements from such digital representations, these preserve much more information about the form of
scanned artifacts than traditional two-dimensional
photographs or drawings. It is important to remember, however, that even these precise representations
are models interpretations of complex entities with
an infinity of possible attributes (see Pottery Analysis:
Stylistic).

Curation and Condition Monitoring

As mentioned above, adequate preservation of archaeological specimens requires storage under conditions that minimize the rate of processes which might
cause them to deteriorate. Consequently, it is important
to maintain a stable, moderate environment, to minimize mechanical impacts, and to monitor collections
regularly to ensure that they are not deteriorating.
Two of the environmental factors that need to
be controlled and monitored are temperature and
humidity. Higher temperatures accelerate chemical
reactions, such as oxidation, so artifact storage should
be in a climate-controlled space with temperature
stabilized around 20 oC or 70 oF. High humidity is
particularly damaging to metal artifacts, but frequent
fluctuations in humidity are damaging to most kinds
of archaeological specimens. Perforating any polyethylene bags that are used to contain artifacts prevents moisture from condensing inside. Specimens
that require particularly stringent protection from
humidity should be in sealed polyethylene boxes
equipped with silica-gel, which absorbs atmospheric
moisture until its micropores become saturated. It is
necessary to reset the silica-gel every few months by
heating it in a lab oven at 105 oC (220 oF) for about
ten hours to drive off the accumulated moisture, then
returning it to the sealed container after it cools. An
indicator strip in the box will signal when the silicagel needs replacement, while putting a hygrometer in
the container or sealed cabinet makes it easier to monitor humidity and make sure it stays within a safe
range. For iron artifacts, for example, it is necessary
to use enough fresh silica-gel to keep their relative
humidity between 10% and 20%.
However thorough the attempts to provide artifacts with acceptable environments, deterioration
of their condition is always a risk. Condition monitoring is our tool for alerting us of such risks. It
involves regular checks on archaeological collections,

recording any change in condition that artifacts may

have experienced, changing silica-gel when needed,
and ensuring that the artifacts environments are
within acceptable ranges. The record that results is
called a condition census. Note that having clear
lids on any boxes used for artifact storage facilitates
monitoring.
It is important to note that archaeological laboratories must not only preserve their collections of artifacts and other specimens; they must also preserve the
documentation of excavations and analyses, including the records of conservation itself. In addition to
paper hard copies, such as archaeological field notes
kept in binders and maps and plans kept in map
cabinets or tubes, archaeological laboratories typically have substantial collections of slides, negatives, and
digital data and images. Archiving these safely, including making sure that old digital files are transferred
to new formats as these change, is very important.
One important component of lab documentation is
a leave log to track any specimens or documents that
anyone has removed from the collections for outside
analysis, photography, copying, or teaching. Those
borrowing specimens should sign them out and sign
them back in.

Laboratory Health and Safety

It may not be as obvious as in chemistry or biology,
but laboratory work in archaeology requires basic
precautions to protect lab workers health and safety.
Most of these precautions concern hygiene, eye protection, respiratory problems, and avoiding cuts.
Some kinds of archaeological laboratory work make
use of chemicals that require additional precautions.
Every archaeological laboratory should be equipped
with a first-aid kit that contains the supplies, such as
bandages, that are most likely to be needed in an
archaeological accident. Everyone working in the
lab should know where to find it.
Hygiene

It is important to remember that artifacts, bones, and

other objects that archaeologists collect and bring
back to the lab were once buried in dirt, often in
contexts that are far from sanitary. Consequently,
they could be infested with bacteria, molds, or fungi
that someone could pick up while handling them.
While handling archaeological materials, whether in
the field or in the lab, lab workers should wear latex
gloves or make sure that they wash their hands with
soap and hot water before handling food or eating.
In addition, one should avoid rubbing ones eyes or
touching ones mouth while handling artifacts.

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW 475

Eye Protection

Getting particles and other small objects in the eyes is

a potential hazard of some archaeological laboratory
activities. Transferring dirt from artifacts and ecofacts to the eyes by ones hands is a common, but
easily prevented, hazard. More serious is the possibility of eye damage from flying flint flakes during
experimental flintknapping and similar activities.
Meanwhile, the close observation, long microscopic
work, and careful drawing that some lab activities involve can cause extreme eyestrain. One should take
steps to eliminate or minimize all these risks.
Experimental flintkapping presents one of the greatest dangers to the eyes. Inevitably, small, sharp-edged
flakes of flint, glass, or other raw materials fly in all
directions after the impact of both hard and soft
hammers. Consequently, experimental flintknappers
should always wear safety glasses when flintknapping.
Safety glasses will also provide some protection
from dust particles while screening sediment samples.
Flintknapping labs should post clear hazard labels for
flying debris and the need to wear gloves and eye
protection.
A less obvious aspect of protecting eyesight is to
avoid stress on your eyes through uninterrupted focus
on short distances. Whether you are sorting plant
macrofossils under a microscope, drawing artifacts
at a drafting table, working at a computer, or making
many close measurements on lithics, it is a good
idea to place your work area in such a way that you
can look up periodically and focus your eyes on
something in the distance, such as the scene out of
a window.
Respiratory Protection

Dust particles and airborne fungi or molds that are

frequently the by-product of archaeological work can
wreak havoc on archaeologists lungs unless they protect them by wearing a dust mask. Some laboratory
activities, such as flintknapping, recharging silica-gel,
or dry-screening sediments, can also create unhealthy
dust levels. In addition, some lab activities involve
chemicals that exude potentially dangerous fumes.
While screening sediments or even handling very
dry soils or similar materials with small particle sizes,
one should wear an adequate dust mask. At a minimum, the mask should fit the face properly so that
particles cannot get around its edges. In order to fit
properly, the mask will need to have two, not just one,
pairs of straps (top and bottom) that hold it snugly
against the face.
If using acids or solvents (e.g., to clean artifacts),
a dust mask will not give adequate protection

against respiratory damage. Such chemicals should

only be used under the conditions specified by occupational safety and health administration (OSHA), in
the United States, Canadian workplace hazardous
materials information system (WHMIS), or the equivalent, which usually include a fume hood that extracts
dangerous fumes from the laboratory environment. In
some cases one can wear a respirator mask instead of a
simple dust mask for protection against toxic gases.
Hazard labels should be posted in lab areas where dust
or respirator masks are necessary.
Cuts and Burns

Some kinds of archaeological lab work can cause cuts

or burns. Flintknapping, especially when obsidian or
some other glass is the raw material, produces extremely sharp flakes and frequently calls for bandages.
Some other kinds of experimental archaeology, such
as firing or refiring pottery, and some kinds of sample preparation, such as boiling faunal specimens,
present opportunities for burns.
Lab workers should protect themselves from cuts
and burns by wearing protective clothing, such as a
protective apron during flintknapping, or insulated
gloves when handling hot items.
They should also make sure that they know the location of the nearest first aid kit (usually mounted on the
wall somewhere in the lab), where they will be able to
find disinfectant, bandages, and burn ointments.
Biological Hazards

Processing dead animals to create comparative collections for faunal osteology can pose biological hazards,
and no one should dispose of decaying animal parts in
regular garbage. University zooarchaeology labs can
check with their counterparts in biology departments
or the faculty of medicine to find out the appropriate
and legal procedures for disposing of the unpleasant
by-products of skeletal preparation.
Radiation Hazards

Most archaeological laboratories have no radiation

hazards. However, some archaeometric laboratories
employ X-ray fluorescence, instrumental neutron
activation analysis, or other methods that require
radiation protection and monitoring.

Handling Chemicals
Most of the chemicals that archaeologists use routinely are relatively innocuous, but all chemicals entail
some level of risk, and it is important for those who
use them to know the safe labeling, handling, disposal, and cleanup of chemicals. They should consult

476 ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW

the OSHA, WHMIS, or equivalent manual or material safety data sheets (MSDS) on each of the chemicals used in the laboratory (see below). Lab activities
that involve potentially hazardous chemicals range
from cleaning and labeling artifacts, changing and
recharging silica-gel, through digesting sediments
for pollen or phytolith analysis.
Keep chemicals away from children and hightraffic parts of the lab, and never leave unlabeled
flasks or beakers around the lab. This is an extremely
dangerous practice as the next person using the lab
will have no way to know what they contain or how
to clean or dispose of them safely. Use bilingual
labels, where appropriate, and standard hazard symbols, such as those of the global harmonized system
(GHS) of classification and labeling of chemicals
(see ahead). Minimize the amount of acids and solvents in the work area by only taking what you need,
and keep them away from the edges of counters or
tables, or anywhere where someone might knock
them over. In addition, ensure that you know the
location of the OSHA, WHMIS, or GHS manual
and how to interpret it.
Never smoke or eat while using chemicals or allow
others to do so. Some chemicals are flammable and
others very toxic. Keep solvents away from flames
and motors or switches that might cause sparks.
Work in well-ventilated areas and avoid inhaling
solvents and acids.
Always wear protective clothing, such as gloves
and apron or lab coat, and do not wear contact lenses
when handling or using chemicals. Always wash your
hands thoroughly afterward.
Always wash out beakers or jars that you have used
for chemicals, especially acids, immediately after use.
One of the chemicals that archaeologists use frequently is acetone, a solvent. It is one of the key
ingredients in some of the adhesives and consolidants
used to conserve artifacts, such as B-72, an acrylic
dissolved in acetone. At a minimum, acetone should
be used only in an extremely well-ventilated space,
but it is much better to use it under a fume hood, and
you should try to keep your exposure as low as possible. Acetone is a significant fire hazard and a moderate
explosion hazard and, if ignited, should be extinguished with a chemical or CO2 fire extinguisher and
not with water. Acetone is stable under normal
storage conditions.
Other chemicals that archaeologists commonly use
are acids, such as acetic acid (vinegar), citric acid, and
hydrochloric acid (HCl). Generally, archaeologists
use these acids only at very low concentrations, such
as 5%, to remove calcareous encrustations from artifacts. If a flask of acid has been sitting around for
a while, however, evaporation may have caused its

concentration to increase substantially over that

stated on the label. Whatever the acids concentration, one should get into the habit of handling acids
with respect.
Always wear protective clothing, including gloves
and chemical splash goggles, when pouring acids,
and always have a source of running water nearby.
When diluting acid, always pour the acid into water;
never pour water into an acid, as it may sputter and
splash.
Some kinds of laboratory work in which archaeologists engage use more dangerous chemicals and procedures. For example, extracting pollen or phytoliths
from sediment involves chemically digesting the sediment with rather aggressive acids, such as hydrofluoric (HF) and (HCl) acids and separating the silicates
with tetra-bromide ethylene, zinc bromide, cadmium
potassium iodide, or sodium polytungstate, of which
only the last is non-toxic. To prepare quartz crystals
from pottery for a thermoluminescence date, similarly, may require use of HF acid and the even more
dangerous aqua regia, which even eats through
glass. One must have the material safety sheets on
all the chemicals in use at work, post appropriate
hazard labels for them, and consult the literature on
their safe use.
Chemical Storage

Store chemicals in well-ventilated, cool, locked cabinets away from most people. Never store acids and
bases together, or oxidizing agents with solvents, as
their respective fumes will chemically react with one
another. Some chemicals that are particularly flammable should be in special cabinets that prevent explosions. All chemical-storage cabinets should be labeled
on their doors to indicate which is for acids, which for
solvents, and which for other materials, including use
of standard hazard labels. The chemicals should be in
sealed containers, preferably of plastic or plasticcoated glass and in safety carriers that minimize the
chance of breakage. The containers themselves should
also be labeled with their contents and concentration,
along with appropriate hazard symbols. Avoid reusing
old containers, but remove all old labels if it is necessary to do so.
Chemical Disposal

Never pour laboratory chemicals down the drain.

This is not only illegal in most jurisdictions and polluting, but also could lead to nasty chemical reactions
in the drain, some of which might corrode through
the pipes or even cause an explosion. It is best to have
leftover chemicals removed by specialists in chemical
waste disposal, as are found at universities and

ARCHAEOLOGY LABORATORY, OVERVIEW 477

hospitals, but small amounts of less dangerous chemicals can sometimes be disposed as follows.
When disposing of a small amount of acid, dilute it
by adding it to a large volume of water and neutralize
it with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) or soda ash
(sodium carbonate). The solution will give off heat
and effervesce until the acid is neutralized, so be sure
that it is in a large, open container. It is then safe to
dispose of it on carbonaceous soil in an isolated area
along with large amounts of water. Tissues or towels
containing acid should be washed out with lots of
water before disposal.
Small amounts of solvent, such as acetone, can be
left to evaporate in a shallow, labeled bowl under a
fume hood, away from any source of flame or sparks.
The solvent in resins and acryloid B72 can similarly be
allowed to evaporate, leaving a container with a hardened block of resin or B72 inside. It can then simply be
disposed of in the garbage. Preferably the container
should be one that no one would be tempted to reuse,
such as the cut-out base of a plastic water bottle or a
damaged beaker. Tissues or towels that might contain
traces of solvent should also be left in a glass container
under a fume hood for evaporation before disposal.
Any glass vessels that contained chemicals should
be washed thoroughly before disposal, while plastic
containers should be holed to prevent their reuse.
Chemical Spills

Any lab that uses chemicals should have a spill kit.

A spill kit is a set of labeled boxes containing material
that you can use to absorb and neutralize spilled
chemicals safely, each box meant for a different category of spill or a particular kind of chemical.
If you spill an acid, you should wear rubber gloves
and splash goggles, then spread the contents of the
appropriate box from the spill kit, or soda ash or
sodium bicarbonate over the spill to neutralize the
acid. Slowly add enough water and mix it with a
shovel or dust-pan. The effervescence will stop once
the acid is neutralized. Mop up the spill using lots of
water, and use a great deal of running water to rinse
out the mop.
If you spill acetone, alcohol or other chemicals that
dissolve in water, shut off any potential source of flame
or sparks and mop up the spill with large volumes
of water. Ventilate the area thoroughly afterward to
evaporate any remaining traces.
If you spill a solvent that does not dissolve in water,
such as toluene, again shut off any potential source
of flame or spark, and sprinkle the appropriate box
from the spill kit, or vermiculite, sand, or kitty litter
over the spill. Once this has absorbed the spill, shovel
the mixture into a metal bucket and put it under a

fume hood or in an isolated, well-ventilated place

where the solvent can evaporate. Ventilate the room
where the spill occurred until all traces of solvent
have evaporated and the smell is gone.
Other Chemical Emergencies

Sometimes, in spite of protective clothing, you may

splash a hazardous chemical on your skin or in your
eyes, or accidentally inhale or ingest something
dangerous.
For splashes on skin, rinse the exposed skin with
large amounts of running water until the chemical is
completely removed. For chemicals that do not dissolve in water, use soap and water. Remove any clothing on which the chemical splashed and do not wear it
again until it has been thoroughly washed. If the
splash has caused burning or corrosion to your skin,
you will need medical attention, and should inform
healthcare workers what chemical was involved and
what first aid was given.
Splashes in the eye also require irrigation with large
amounts of running water, and many labs have special eye-wash stations for this purpose. Hold eyelids
open to wash the entire eye, and then seek immediate
medical attention, providing information on the
chemical and first aid to the healthcare workers.
If someone in the lab inhales a dangerous vapor, you
should remove the victim from the affected area,
loosen his or her clothing and, if breathing stops,
give artificial respiration. Seek medical attention and
report the chemical involved and any first aid given.
If someone ingests a chemical, rinse out the mouth
with large amounts of water, which the victim should
not swallow. If any of the chemical was swallowed,
the victim should also drink a large amount of water
to dilute the contents of the stomach. Do not induce
vomiting. Get immediate medical attention and tell
the healthcare workers the quantity, concentration,
and type of chemical that was ingested.

Hazardous Materials Manuals

Each laboratory that has chemicals should be equipped
with a manual issued by OSHA (in the United States),
WHMIS (in Canada), or the equivalent in other
countries. This is a binder that contains descriptions
of all the chemicals used in the lab, how they should
be handled and stored, what lab workers need to
know to avoid any health hazards associated with
them, and how to clean them up if they are spilled.
It has standard codes that indicate, for example,
whether a given chemical is flammable, acidic, explosive, or corrosive, and lab workers should learn to
understand these codes.

478 ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

Hazard Labels
Standardized labels for hazardous materials, activities, and equipment, and for the need for protective
clothing, should appear in the lab and on equipment
or materials, including the doors of chemical-storage
cabinets, that pose any risks to people in the lab.
A large variety of standards exist for such labels,
some of which are now obsolete. In the United States,
current standards are set by American National
Standards Institute (ANSI) and OSHA. International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) 3864 sets
international standards in labeling hazards. Relevant
standards are set in Britain by British Standards Institution (BSI), and in Canada by WHMIS. For chemicals and other hazardous materials, the GHS provides
standard symbols for international use and EU Directive 67/548/EEC for use in Europe. This no doubt
seems confusing, but there is actually fairly widespread agreement over the main symbols that these
systems use, such as skull-and-crossbones for toxic
substances or a fire for flammable ones. Most of the
differences lie in colors, shape of the symbols frame
(triangle, diamond, circle), and accompanying text.
Some icons used in labels, such as a glove to indicate
the need to wear gloves, are fairly self-explanatory.
Lab directors or administrators should consult the
standards relevant to their own country or buy commercially available labels there, and make sure that
employees, students, and volunteers working in the
lab know how to interpret the labels. In universities,
science departments or human resources offices generally offer training in laboratory safety that includes
interpretation of these labels.

See also: Archaeozoology; Artifacts, Overview; Cera-

mics and Pottery; Classification and Typology; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Ecofacts,
Overview; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Manufacture;
Phytolith Analysis; Pollen Analysis; Pottery Analysis:
Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic.

Further Reading
Adkins L and Adkins RA (1989) Archaeological Illustration.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Banning EB (2000) The Archaeologists Laboratory: The Analysis
of Archaeological Data. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum
Publishers.
Bradley S (ed.) (1990) A Guide to the Storage, Exhibition, and
Handling of Antiquities, Ethnographia and Pictorial Art. London:
The British Museum.
Dunnell RC (1971) Systematics in Prehistory. New York: Macmillan (The Free Press).
Foster GV and Barker NJ (1996) Close-up photography of archaeological objects. Journal of Field Archaeology 23: 369375.
Howell C and Blanc W (1995) A Practical Guide to Archaeological
Photography, 2nd edn. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology,
University of California.
Kenworthy MA (ed.) (1985) Preserving Field Records. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Sutton MQ and Arkiush BS (1998) Archaeological Laboratory
Methods, an Introduction, 2nd edn. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/
Hunt Publishing.
Thompson JM (ed.) (1992) Manual of Curatorship, a Guide to
Museum Practice, 2nd edn. London: ButterworthHeineman.
Tufte ER (1983) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press.
US Department of Labor (2006) A Guide to the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS).
http://www.osha.gov/dsg/hazcom/ghs.html.

ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY
Kris Hirst, Iowa City, IA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
cultural resource management (CRM) The process of
decision making that balances the needs of the public against the
preservation of cultural resources, including buildings, sacred
sites, archaeological sites, and documents, among other things.
digital publishing The publishing of edited and reviewed
articles and making them available for download, specifically
on per-article fee basis.
folksonomies An information retrieval system used on the
Internet in which the user assigns keywords (called tags) for a
given webpage, photograph, or other piece of data.

Geographic Information Systems A combination of

computer hardware and software used to tie data to
geographic locations.
geophysical prospection Also called remote sensing, is any of
several methods of seeing what is beneath the surface of the
ground, without actually disturbing the ground.
Global Positioning System A mechanical method of using
combined satellite data to locate oneself on the planet.
open source movement The general movement in sciences to
freely publish and disseminate research data and results on the
World Wide Web.
Making Archaeology Teaching Relevant in the
XXIst Century (MATRIX) A curriculum development
project from the Society of American Archaeology and
funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), to produce
course outlines and information for college-level
archaeology classes.

ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY 479

repatriation The return of human remains, grave goods, sacred
objects, or objects of cultural patrimony to the individuals,
groups, or nations that represent the original owners.
stable isotope analysis A method by which researchers
measure isotopic ratios to identify the results of ecological
processes, and then interpret them to construct a history of the
animal, human, or plant.

Status of the Profession

Recent past decades have seen vast changes in the
study of archaeology, in its goals; in its methods and
practices; in its practitioners; in the laws governing it;
and in its relationship with the public. The profession
has seen many theoretical developments since the
mid-1970s, and there have been many new discoveries and much learned about the past. However, the
most remarkable alterations in archaeology include
the technological advances used in the course of field
and laboratory research; the context of the research
within the modern world of developing nations; and
the gender, age, and ethnicity of those who conduct it.
These changes have significantly altered the profession far beyond its content.
As in the past, much field and laboratory research
throughout the world continues to be conducted
through academic field schools and government and
university-funded projects. Long-running universityor museum-based projects are well situated to answer
specific research questions and develop multidisciplinary international programs that press forward
the field while at the same time training the next
generation of archaeologists. Recent changes in the
field affecting academic research have been by and
large technologically driven, by improvements in
communication and data collection and analysis.
One significant change has been the increase in the
frequency of joint international research projects;
today it is expected that a university-based program
working in a foreign country will partner with academics from that country.
However, from a primarily academic and museumoriented profession of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, the field of archaeology as a whole
has begun to evolve primarily into a heritage management profession. This is not a result of the decrease of
the number or complexity of academic projects, but
rather the promulgation of non-academic-based research in the form of cultural resource management
(CRM).
The developed world has seen increases in population, education, and communication over the past
30 years. These increases have led people and governments in the developed countries to recognize both
the importance of cultural heritage and the damage
caused by continuing construction. As heritage

management tasks preserving archaeological and

other cultural resources increase, they take in an
ever-growing number of employed archaeologists,
conducting an ever-growing number of excavation
projects and absorbing an ever-increasing amount of
funding. The shifting needs of the profession are
increasing the demand for a different set of skills to
operate in this new climate. Changes in pedagogy
have been slower to develop but show some progress
in recent years.
In addition, the vast changes wrought in the world
by the development of the World Wide Web and the
Internet have also altered the profession of archaeology, including everything from how data is recorded
to how information is shared with colleagues and
with the public at large (see Internet, Archaeology
on). These changes permeate the profession, not
only making new demands on data storage but also
changing how archaeology is perceived and practiced
in ways both unforeseen and unforeseeable. Access to
information previously kept within the walls of academe has empowered people outside the profession to
affect archaeology, whether it is in funding, materials
handling, or interpretation. Alternative viewpoints
from underserved populations such as minorities
and indigenous peoples in the developed world and
governments and communities in the developing
world have enriched archaeology. At the same time,
these changes have posed great challenges to longstanding museum collections and the publication of
created information streams.

The Growth of the Cultural Resource

Movement
The first heritage laws laws placing the care of
ancient monuments within the purview of the federal
government are thought to have been created at
the end of the French Revolution, after a debate
concerning whether it was best to obliterate or preserve the architectural evidence of lancien regime
(see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation).
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
heritage legislation included Britains Ancient Monuments Act of 1882 and the American Antiquities Act
of 1906 (see Historic Preservation Laws).
Current Employment Trends

Since then, the growth of CRM as an employer of

archaeologists has been phenomenal. Only approximately 30% of all persons employed as archaeologists are in traditional academic positions. The
remainder are either in governmental jobs, protecting
government-owned resources, or in private sector

480 ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

positions, created by the market to complete investigations as part of state and national environmental
impact studies. Private sector archaeologists are typically located in small businesses or as segments of
larger environmental or engineering firms. As a percentage of the total archaeological employment, local
and national government roles today account for approximately 25% in the United States and Australia.
In the United Kingdom, a full 45% of the working
archaeologists are currently employed by either local
or national government. Another large percentage of
employed archaeologists today are in private sector
CRM roles. Private sector jobs account for approximately one-quarter of the archaeologists employed in
the United States, one-third in the United Kingdom,
and nearly one-half in Australia.
Interestingly, studies continue to indicate that the
majority of archaeologists working today would prefer to be engaged in teaching at the university level,
even as the percentage of these roles in employing
archaeologists decreases. Table 1 lists the percentages
of employment identified by four recent surveys of
professional archaeologists in the United Kingdom,
the United States, and Australia.
Demographics

From the beginning, most archaeologists have been

male. However, recent statistics indicate a steady increase in the percentage of women participating in the
field. According to recent surveys, women are still
overall a minority part of the archaeological population in the United States (36%) and the United
Kingdom (35.5%). However, the younger generation
appears to be leveling the field. In the United States,
51% of the students surveyed were female, and in
the United Kingdom, survey respondents between
the ages of 20 and 29 were 42% female. Contrary
to this trend, in Australia gender balance is near equal
(48% female and 52% male), and there is no difference between younger and older respondents, a fact
Table 1 Results of employment surveys
Employer

USA
1994

USA
2004

Academic
CRM
Government
Museum
Other
Total

35%
18%
23%
8%
16%
100%

33.6%
27.7%
25.3%
4.8%
8.6%
100.0%

UK
1998
13.2%
32.3%
45.0%
9.5%
100.0%

USA 1994: Zeder, 1999.

USA 2004: Association Research Inc., 2004.
UK 1998: Aitchison and Denison, 1998.
Australia 2005: Ulm et al., 2005.

Australia
2005
25.1%
47.9%
22.7%
4.3%
100.0%

researchers attribute to the relative newness of the

field in Australia.
Statistics indicate that the average age of an archaeologist working in the United States is approximately
50 years old, an average older than any of the other
populations surveyed. Also evident in the data from
these American surveys is a decrease in the number of
archaeologists in each of the age groups younger than
50. By contrast, in the United Kingdom, the average
age is 36 years old, and in Australia, 57.2% of the
respondents in a recent survey were younger than
45 years of age. In addition, neither the British nor
Australian surveys seem to indicate a sharp decrease
in sheer numbers of archaeologists among younger
cohorts. It is possible that, since the surveys were
conducted of the memberships of professional societies, the demographic anomaly seen in the American
statistics may be a function of the enrollment (or
rather lack of it) in those professional societies. This
should be a matter of concern to the SAA/SHA as they
attempt to address its disaffected younger membership if indeed that is what is being reflected, and not
a true demographic problem. Certainly, the numbers
of graduate degrees conferred increased throughout
the 1990s a point that is addressed later.
The participation of indigenous and minority people in the conduct of archaeological studies appears to
be growing, but very slowly. Ethnic heritage cited in a
recent survey of American archaeologists indicated
that 97.9% claimed EuropeanAmerican ancestry,
0.1% African American, 0.3% Asian, 1.0% Hispanic
(including about one-third of the total from Latin
America), and 0.7% stated they were Native American. Australian archaeology appears to be better at
involving indigenous people; results report that 2.3%
of working archaeologists designate themselves as
indigenous Australians.
It is possible to be involved in CRM without being
an archaeologist, of course, and one measure of
Native American participation in archaeology in the
United States is the number of Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs) which have been established.
THPOs are government agencies established by
Native American entities to manage archaeological,
architectural, and cultural resources within their purviews. Of the 582 tribal entities listed in the Tribal
Leaders Directory of January 2006, 59 (or 10.1%)
have established THPOs, most of these within the
past decade (see Native Peoples and Archaeology).

Archaeology of the Present

The biggest change promulgated by the refocus of the
profession toward heritage management is situating
archaeology in the present. Research conducted in the

ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY 481

field as part of CRM processes involves an underlying

triage. Archaeology has always been a destructive process, and triage deciding what is important to save
during excavations and what is not has always been
part of that process. But today, the triage process must
include decisions concerning whether to preserve large
pieces or whole sites, based on their importance to
the public at large. The value of a given archaeological resource must often be weighed against such
things as public safety, improved transportation,
private landowner rights, tourism dollars, environmental preservation, and in some cases, human lives.
These decisions are not in the hands of the archaeologist alone nor should they be. But the requirements of making such a decision have created a larger
and more pressing need for public archaeology for
the communication of the value of the past.
The relationships between indigenous peoples and
archaeologists continues to slowly improve, with
some sharp setbacks. While an increase in the number
of indigenous archaeologists is in evidence over the
past decade, these numbers are still comparatively
few, as reported above. Although there have been
experiments reported in the gray literature with collaborative or parallel indigenous and traditional
scientific interpretations of archaeological events or
elements, by and large these efforts are rare, and
when they do occur are often not visible to the public.
When such collaborations do escape the gray literature, they are often cloaked in secrecy, with names
and places changed to protect indigenous peoples
rights. It may be that the conflict between the archaeological urge to publish and the indigenous
right to privacy will prohibit any truly collaborative
studies.
In Australia, aboriginal input into archaeological
studies is more common, particularly since the resolution of the Hindmarsh affair of the 1990s, when the
violation of the secrecy of a set of tribal activities led
to a political disaster. Recent studies involving the
direct input of aboriginal peoples in archaeological
research include an ongoing cooperative project
between archaeologists and Yarrawarra Aboriginal
Corporation. In Africa, the Marothodi Institute for
Archaeology has been created to provide scholarships
and collaborative studies assisting African students to
become involved in archaeological studies.

Education and Training

The increase in heritage management roles as places of
employment for archaeologists has not gone unnoticed
in the profession. Traditional training schemes, which
emphasize cultural history and field techniques, do

not include classes in heritage law or preservation

management, not to mention budgeting and business
skills. A movement toward providing the next generation of archaeologists with the set of skills necessary to
succeed in this new form of career has become of
interest to some leaders in the field.
For the most part, education remains within the
control of the university systems in each country, and
this probably will continue to be the case. By and
large, professional archaeology as a profession is
taught at the graduate level (MA or PhD), and, not
surprisingly, a professional career for the most part
demands a post-graduate degree. Up until the prevalence of heritage management, a typical job in archaeology was a university position; most of these
positions require a doctorate.
However, today, most of the nonteaching archaeology positions in the world do not require a PhD. This
situation may have resulted from the rapid rise of the
CRM field, as the demand for these jobs initially took
students out of their degree programs early. Two
recent surveys conducted in the United States indicate
a rise in the number of archaeologists holding
masters degrees vis-a`-vis those with PhDs; this is
probably a function of the rise of CRM and the
relative flatness in the growth of university positions.
Vocational schools such as the Archaeological
Technology Program at Cabrillo College has begun
to create CRM degrees at the associates degree level;
such programs may eventually impact educational
requirements for future generations (see Careers in
Archaeology).
PhD Degrees and Degree Earners

In light of long-standing traditions about the purpose

of a graduate school department, it is perhaps not
surprising that surveys have concentrated on gathering information about PhD earners rather than MA
students. A survey conducted for the American
Anthropological Association indicated that the number of anthropology PhDs has remained static at
approximately 400 per year since 1974, with the
number of archaeological PhDs constituting between
24% and 30% of that total. Graduate enrollments in
anthropology departments have increased sharply,
however, with enrollments in 1997 up more than
35.5% over 1987. Undergraduate enrollments in
1997 were up 78% over 1987. Minority representations in anthropology PhD programs was cited as
15% in 1997, with most of these in cultural anthropology; only 16% of the total minority PhD students
were in archaeology. Gender representation in the
1997 cohort indicated that only 36% of archaeology
PhDs were female.

482 ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

However, a 1994 survey of archaeologists in the

United States indicated a huge growth in the number
of PhDs granted over time, with the largest increase
beginning in the 1970s with 244, in the 1980s with
321, and by the end of the first quarter of March
1994, 182 PhDs had been already awarded in the
1990s; these statistics also indicated a growing number of women in the programs.

for Professional Archaeologists. Membership currently stands at approximately 1800, primarily in

the United States; membership is restricted to professionals meeting a specific level of experience and
education. A code of professional conduct was first
ratified by the membership in 1998; and a comparatively brief standards and practices guideline has been
developed.

Training in CRM and Heritage Management

Curriculum Development Initiatives

While the creation of pedagogical training courses

has not kept pace with the rapid rise of the heritage
management movement, several masters level programs in heritage management have been started at
universities throughout the world. In the past ten
years, Heritage Management MAs have been established at Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Leicester,
York, Glasgow, and Lampeter in the UK, and New
England and James Cook in Australia. Some directed
CRM programs at the masters level have been created
in the United States notably at Sonoma State University and Texas A&M but since masters degrees in
North America are almost without exception research
degrees, the movement has been very slow to develop.
Specialized training, such as short courses in cultural
resource laws and specialized field techniques, have
been developed for online and classroom-based educational venues. Some of these such as the US National
Park Services Section 106 training classes, are
completely outside the university setting.

Making Archaeology Teaching Relevant in the XXIst

Century (MATRIX) is a project developed by the
Society for American Archaeology, funded by the US
National Science Foundation, and was, according to
the NSF grant, a

Professionalization of the Field: Standards

and Practices

As the field of archaeology continues to expand away

from the academic realm and into the business realm,
many in the profession have sought to professionalize
the discipline, through the creation of professional
organizations and the development of codes of
conduct and a mechanism for the policing of their
membership.
Based in the United Kingdom, the Institute for Field
Archaeology was founded in 1982; it has five grades
of membership based on experience and education.
The IFA developed a code of conduct and ratified it in
1985; amendments have been made and accepted by
the membership, and the current code was signed
by the members of the IFA in 2002. An extensive
standards and practices handbook developed for the
IFA is unparalleled in the field. The current membership consists of approximately 2000 archaeologists,
primarily working in the United Kingdom.
The Register of Professional Archaeologists is the
American equivalent of the IFA; it was established
in 1998, as an outgrowth of the now-defunct Society

three-year pilot project to design, test, and evaluate

core aspects of a new curriculum based on these principles at eight academic institutions across the United
States and to produce a complete set of flexible course
materials suitable to replace or implement extant curricula in any higher educational setting.

The result has been a store of lesson plans and course

materials suitable for use in most colleges, including
introductory courses to archaeology, museum studies,
and fieldwork, as well as content courses in North
and South American archaeologies. One of these
courses was developed explicitly as an introduction
to cultural resource management; at the moment,
MATRIX resources are only available in English.

Ethical and Legal Issues

Cultural Heritage and the Law

Many of the earliest laws in Western countries affecting archaeologists were created to protect monuments; the most recent have been passed to effect
the repatriation of human remains, artifacts, and
other pieces of cultural heritage to the countries of
their origin and/or descendants (see Antiquities and
Cultural Heritage Legislation).
As more countries continue to gain economic and
political footholds in the global economy, many more
today are in a position to create their own cultural
resource programs, train their own archaeologists, and
maintain their own museum collections. Academic
research projects are today multi-institutional, with
many more countries outside of the West originating
projects or at least acting as equal partners with
Western universities. Many countries now have legislation that limits foreign excavations or the ability
for foreign researchers to remove artifacts from their
home countries. One result is an increase in the number
of scientific archaeological publications are appearing

ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY 483

in languages beyond the traditional triumvirate of

English, French, and German; some as required by
host countries, others as part of public archaeology
vehicles. Statistics on these new programs are not readily available today, but their influence is already readily
apparent in entries within this encyclopedia today.
One effect of the World Wide Web is that information about museum collections is now effectively
public. The enormous stores of Western museums
collected from around the world by nineteenth century explorers are now recognized on a global scale.
In addition, the force of public opinion may be
brought to bear on the behaviors and situations involving artifacts and archaeologists that in the past
may not have been considered. Museums have been
established in home countries, and they, not unnaturally, are lobbying for the return of their cultural heritage.
Recent calls for the repatriation of artifacts to Greece,
Egypt, Italy, and Peru have made international headlines and involved extended court battles. They are
surely only a harbinger of things to come.

Human Skeletal Material

In the United States, the repatriation movement has

been most successful with the return of human
remains and artifacts associated with burials. Early
application of the United States NAGPRA reburial
laws has meant that scientifically valued human skeletal material has been reburied prior to complete
investigation. Interestingly, the limits on testing in
terms of time and the amount of material that may
be destroyed in the process have been ameliorated by
the use of new less-intrusive tests such as AMS dating
and computer imaging, in which digital storage of
information on human remains may be preserved
long after the materials are reburied.
To date in the United Kingdom and Australia, repatriation has been a matter of policy and negotiation,
rather than legislation. Both countries are actively
seeking input from indigenous communities to proceed (see Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act).
Protection of Monuments

Repatriation

After centuries of collecting, whether completed under

the rubric of archaeology or not, museums and repositories in the developed world hold much of the
cultural heritage of the developing world. While many
of these collections were made under contract with the
governments of origin, many were not; and developing
governments would like these materials back as icons
of cultural heritage. However, simply returning cultural materials is not a particularly straightforward process. Many collections were not completely recorded
and thus require extensive negotiation and sometimes
costly investigation assuring proper ownership rights.
In addition, resistance to the return of the objects is
strong in some areas, since much time and money
has been invested in the repositories, and many
museums rely on income related to the ability to
exhibit objects which by rights belong elsewhere.
Some legislation has been passed, such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Act of
1982 in Australia, and the United States Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
(NAGPRA) of 1990, and other countries are working
on policy changes or laws. International conventions
such as UNESCOs Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and
Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and the
UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally
Exported Cultural Objects are also useful tools for
assisting with the repatriation of artifacts to their
native countries or people (see Illicit Antiquities).

Archaeological sites which have been deemed important to the world in general have been given World
Heritage status since 1972, with the establishment
of the international treaty called the Convention
Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural
and Natural Heritage. Between 1978 and 2006, the
committee named 830 properties World Heritage
Sites. Listing a property carries with it the benefit
of technical advice and financial assistance to a member country to safeguard, repair, and develop historic
and natural monuments. Unfortunately, naming a
monument part of world heritage can also make it
a target in the cultural wars of a member state. Recently targeted World Heritage Convention (WHC)
properties include the Bamiyan Valley monuments
of Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the Taliban
in 2002 (see World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws).
Looting and the illegal antiquities trade The looting
of archaeological sites around the world continues,
despite the passing of several national and international laws, and the active involvement of Interpol
and other national and international police systems.
The reasons looting continues unabated largely lie
within the economic factors inherent in the system:
there is a large demand for authentic antique artifacts, from artifact dealers, collectors, and art museums. International borders are more porous than
ever today, and the ready availability of international
transportation coupled with political instability make
trafficking in stolen artifacts a lucrative business.

484 ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

Unfortunately, technological advances which have

made so many changes in the study of archaeological
science have also assisted in the illegal antiquities
trade. Internet auction sites are difficult to police,
and the remote sensing techniques such as ground
penetrating radar, satellite imagery, and metal detectors assist looters, as well as archaeologists.
Thefts from museums and art collections are
tracked by Interpol, which maintains a database of
stolen objects. Estimates on the amount of money
traded in the antiquities market are very difficult to
make, since countries do not often track losses, do not
pass on that information to Interpol, and are not
necessarily aware of thefts until the objects appear
on the market.
One way countries have begun to fight back against
illicit looting is the development of archaeological
permitting processes. In some countries, archaeologists must present credentials to be permitted to
excavate, negotiate whether they may take artifacts
out of the originating country and for how long a
period, and what tests may be accomplished. Additionally, many countries such as Egypt, Peru, and
Italy have begun to sue museums for the return of
artifacts taken illicitly (see Antiquities and Cultural
Heritage Legislation).

of computers has become de rigueur, collection of

digital data has steeply increased in the field of archaeology, beginning with laboratory analyses, and more
recently extending to locational data collected using
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global
Positioning Systems (GPS) technology, as well as
increasing use of desktop research using online bibliographies and databases. Publishing of technical
reports, brochures, websites, podcasts, and other vehicles of communication to colleagues and the public are
also readily available from desktop applications.

Protection during armed conflict Armed conflict is

prevalent in many places in the world today, and
looting and the destruction of historic monuments is
one of the costs. The United Nations Convention for
the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of
Armed Conflict was enacted at the Hague in 1954, in
the wake of the massive destruction of cultural monuments seen during World War II. A protocol was set at
that time to prevent the export of cultural property
from occupied territory. In 1999, a second revised
protocol was established to broaden the definition
of cultural property and to help member countries
take steps to prevent problems during peacetime.
While the UN is aware that protecting cultural monuments is not of paramount importance during time of
warfare, the convention was constructed because it
was felt that cultural heritage reflects the life of
the community, its history and its identity. Its preservation helps to rebuild broken communities, reestablish their identities, and link their past with
their present and future.

Computer-aided Research

Computing and Communications

Technology
Many of the changes in archaeology over the past few
years have been driven by technological advances in
computing and global communications. As the use

GPS/GIS Data Collection

Standard procedure in many archaeological surveys

and excavations involves the collection of locational
data using GPS equipment. Hand-held GPS receivers
are used in conjunction with GIS networks in the
mapping of sites within a landscape and features within a site. These maps may be used to interface directly
with topographic maps and satellite imagery. Mapped
data can then be used as an interpretive database, to
better understand site layouts and resource patterning. The use of GPS/GIS has also greatly facilitated
landscape archaeology, allowing multiple views of
objects and features within a landscape.

As the Internet matures, computer-aided research continues to increase in its utility. Although the capacity to
conduct archaeological background research solely
online is not as yet feasible, in many universities
in the developed world access to scientific journals
and historic data has become far more simplified of
late, a direct result of the growth in the use of keywords. Writers and editors embed keywords into the
coding of their articles; these keywords are collected
by search engines (such as Google and Yahoo).
A researcher inputs keywords into a search engine,
which then retrieves articles marked by those keywords. Keywords are problematic, as any librarian
can tell you, because what a writer comes up with
for keywords and what a reader searches for may
not match. As a result, some modern search engines
mechanically collect text from webpages (using different algorithms) for possible search strings. One
very recent and promising development has been
the introduction of folksonomies, in which the user
may attach new keywords (known as tags) to a
document written and produced by someone else.
Folksonomies (word formation from taxonomies)
are not as yet widespread.
Many public and university libraries have their
catalogs online for publicly available searches and
these may be used to search for books and journals,

ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY 485

although not generally for articles. Electronic library

catalogs in general use traditional Library of Congress
classification systems. Journal article access can be
gained using keyworded searches; in fact a researcher
may have wider access to articles in many more journals today than in the past. Enormous bibliographic
catalogs, such as Academic Search Elite, ISI Web of
Knowledge, and LexisNexis Academic by and large
restrict access to paid subscriptions. Subscription
costs are prohibitive to any but large city or university
libraries. Primary online catalogs recently developed
specifically for archaeology and anthropology include
Anthropology Plus, AnthroSource, and the eHRAF
Collections of Archaeology and Ethnology.
In addition, specialized topical bibliographic databases are blossoming on the Internet, through the
collaborative work of interest groups. These include the ABIA South and Southeast Asian Art and
Archaeology Index, the British & Irish Archaeological Bibliography, and the Annual Egyptological
Bibliography.
Data Repositories

The reasons for adoption of electronic data collection

are clear: an increase in efficiency in time spent
mapping in the field and map accuracy; the ease of
generation of summary tables and cross-comparison
of analytical results; the ease and lowered costs of
research and publication; and the ability to store
data in an efficient manner.
Although the collection of electronic forms of data
has become a fairly common occurrence throughout
archaeology, the reposing of that data explicitly for
sharing by others is less common. The logical place
to archive data generated during archaeological investigations might be with artifact repositories, historic
preservation offices, and cultural ministries; however
these offices are often government institutions that
rarely have the funds to support the technology and
personnel required to classify and store the data. Because in most of the world the data collection has been
developed by each company or each individual archaeologist, standards have been slow to be developed and
implemented at the regional, provincial, or state level.
There are exceptions. The Archaeological Data Service (ADS) has collected archaeological data throughout the United Kingdom since the late 1980s. The ADS
maintains a user-accessible catalog, and has developed a set of Guides to Good Practices which are
invaluable as a model of progress in this area. The
Archaeological Data Archive Project at the Center for
the Study of Architecture was one of the pioneers of
data archiving in the United States, but is no longer
active. There are many other smaller project-oriented

data collection entities, too many to discuss here, but

an example would include the Perseus Project Database, which maintains images and data on art objects,
sites, and buildings from archaic and classical Greek
history, from many of the largest museums in the
world.
Open Source and Digital Publishing

The Open Source movement has had a slow growth in

archaeological sciences. The nonprofit Open Source
Initiative was a project borne of the computer science
industry, originally to allow free collaboration on
software engineering projects including coding
methodologies via the World Wide Web. The results
of this collaboration were that no one owns the copyright on the code, and anyone can use it in whatever
capacity they choose. The main vehicle for Open
Source editing is a Wiki, an electronic database developed in the 1970s that may be added to or edited by
any user given access; the Wikipedia is the best
known Wiki application, although not the only one.
In scientific publication, the Open Source movement promotes free access to the data and results of
scientific research by way of the placement of articles
and research data online and available for download
for no or little cost to the user. While the Open Source
movement has made some inroads into the hard
sciences such as physics and biology, the cost of publication, the requirements of the review process, and
the entrenched bureaucracy of long-standing academic journals have slowed the growth of the movement
in archaeology. Most difficult, perhaps, are the struggles over copyright issues; a recent initiative called
Creative Commons is attempting to resolve some of
these issues.
Digital publishing Digital publishing, where edited
and reviewed articles are available for download,
specifically on a per-article fee basis, has made some
progress in archaeology. In addition to the electroniconly journal Internet Archaeology, the content of
some long-established traditional journals, such as
Antiquity, the Journal of Archaeological Science,
and the American Journal of Archaeology, are presently available for download on a per-article basis.
Many more physical anthropological journals, which
are closer to the hard sciences, are at least a halfdecade ahead of archaeological journals.
However, most journals now use electronic forms
of prepublication; and this has made interscholar
communications far easier, even if this data is not
publicly available. Although most archaeological
journals do not participate in Open Source publishing
of their entire journals (called Gold Open Access),

486 ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

permission is commonly given to individual authors

to share and in some cases post their completed articles online elsewhere (called Green Open Access).
While limited, this does provide for communication
among scholars. It is difficult to say why journals do
not provide per-copy access to their contents; and it
is quite possible that per-article downloads may
proliferate in the coming years, particularly as university libraries continue to feel the pinch of budget cuts.
Public Archaeology and the Internet

Until the last decade, mass communication of archaeological information to the public had been limited to the mainstream press or general public magazines
such as Archaeology and Current Archaeology. However, in recent years, multiple venues providing public
access to archaeological findings and political issues
have opened. This stream of data has the potential to
influence the publics perception of archaeology for ill
or for good, as a creator of relevant (or irrelevant)
information, as a protector (or destroyer) of cultural
heritage, and as proponent (or foot-dragger) in terms
of repatriation of artifacts and skeletal material.
Interaction with the public has become far more
widespread than in previous eras, a change resulting
directly from the popularity of the Internet. Archaeology-related e-mail discussion lists, newsletters, and
usenet groups have been in use for over a decade.
Websites for academic departments, professional associations, and cultural resource management firms
have become the standard for groups in the developed
world. Often these venues post public-oriented articles on current research. Podcasting, webcams, and
online excavation diaries have become fairly common
in the recent past. Most recently, weblogs and photo
exchange sites such as Flickr have begun to provide
day-to-day insights into archaeological investigations
as they occur; short films, documentaries, and podcasts have gained a much wider audience for archaeology via The Archaeology Channel and similar
programs (see Internet, Archaeology on).

Technological Advances
Over the past few years, technological advances in
laboratory analysis promise new pathways to learning
many things about the past. Breakthroughs in DNA
studies, in stable isotope analysis, and in remote sensing are but a few of the most recent methodologies
readily embraced by the archaeological community.
DNA and Molecular Studies

Molecular archaeology is the application of molecular

chemistry to archaeological objects or investigations.

An outgrowth of the bioarchaeology of the 1970s, the

study of molecules has included the examination of
lipids and other organic deposits inside pottery vessels
and other objects, blood residue analysis, and opal
phytoliths, as well as the study of DNA, the main
building block of life.
The first attempts to identify intact fragments of
truly ancient DNA appeared on the surface to be
possible, and these tests became quite well known,
including that of the insects trapped in amber used by
Michael Crichtons Jurassic Park. Unfortunately,
these materials proved unworkable, as ancient DNA
is easily contaminated and decays within a maximum
of 50 000100 000 years.
Although DNA does not survive longer than
100 000 years, the process of evolution can be used to
discern more distant events by examining the molecular chains of modern DNA. Human, animal, and
plant evolution occurs at extremely variable rates:
diseases evolve faster than we can invent medications
for them, while certain species of brachiopods have
remained essentially unchanged for millennia. But at
the molecular level, undetected morphologically, evolution occurs at a fairly fixed rate. An examination of
DNA strands of modern-day beings can be used to
determine the length of time since the last change.
Important studies incorporating DNA include
much new information about human evolution,
including the recognition of the Mitochondrial Eve,
and the relationship of Neanderthal to Homo sapiens.
Other studies involving molecular DNA have included
the search for location of the originating plants of
the worlds first domesticated crops, including einkorn
and emmer wheat, maize and rice. These studies also
have identified elements of the process of domestication, how closely related strands of the current crops
are and how many times and when the plants were
domesticated. Animal domestications have also been
examined using DNA, including searches for the original domestication processes of dogs, horses, goats,
and camelids (see DNA: Ancient).
Bone Chemistry and Stable Isotopes

Developed in the late 1970s by South African

researcher Nikolaas van der Merwe and colleagues,
the use of stable isotope research to investigate
ecological processes in once-living tissue has mushroomed in the past decade. Stable isotope analysis
measures the ratios of different forms of chemicals
to identify the progress of ecological processes and
interpret the processes, building a history of the living
plant or animal. Chemicals frequently used in isotope
analysis include carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen,
strontium, lead, and sulfur. Stable isotopes have been

ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY 487

investigated in traces of organic residues found inside

pots and on the edges of stone tools, and in animal
bone, tooth enamel, and hair. Identified processes
include dietary components, including the relative
use of marine fauna such as seals, fish, and shellfish,
domesticated plants such as maize and millet, cattle
dairying, and age of weaning. Other studies have used
stable isotopes to identify the geographic origin of
plants, animals, and humans. Studies have examined
nearly every time period including hominins, from
Homo habilis and the Australopithecines to modern
days (see Stable Isotope Analysis).
Remote Sensing

Geophysical prospection, also called remote sensing,

is any of the several methods of seeing what is beneath the surface of the ground, without actually
disturbing the ground. Aerial photography of archaeological sites has been used since the first decade
of the twentieth century. The first extensive aerial
remote sensing project was carried out in the 1920s
when French geographer Pierre Paris took aerial
photographs of Oc Eo and Angkor Borei in the
Mekong Delta of Cambodia and Vietnam, revealing
an intricate network of canals in the floodplain. Since
that time, in addition to aerial photographs and satellite photos, a huge range of technology-assisted
methods have been used to search for crop marks, to
identify buried structures, or to map chemical or
electrical variances within soils.
The use of aerial photographs and topographic
maps has become a standard background research
step on many if not most archaeological studies;
these are today supplemented by satellite photography in most places in the world. Ground-penetrating
radar and magnetometer surveys are used in many
different venues as part of an excavation strategy to
reduce costs, minimize damage, or amplify subsurface testing methodologies.
Satellite imagery came of age as a result of the
release of images produced by NASAs Jet Propulsion
Laboratory and LANDSAT in the 1980s. Today, five
satellites regularly produce images of the Earth for
NASA. The application of GIS and its vast mapping
capabilities have come close to revolutionizing the field
of archaeology, allowing the projection of accurately
scaled maps over large distances. The first extensive
projects to use large-scale mapping are now over
30 years old Rene Millons Teotihuacan Mapping
Project of the mid-1960s and Carole Crumleys
Burgundy landscape project of the early 1970s.
Today, fairly high resolution satellite imagery is easily
accessible to researchers via such tools as Google Earth,
including large land surveys.

Several newer methodologies have become available for use on archaeological sites, many developed
in other disciplines and adopted for use in archaeology. Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) is an outgrowth of medical diagnostic techniques such as
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which was adopted by geophysicists to collect extensive electric current and electric potential data sets in multiple
dimensions. ERT has been used successfully in several
projects, including identifying structures and voids
beneath the Temple of Apollo in Hierapolis. Geophysical diffraction tomography (GDT) involves burying a
set of microphones in a grid across a site and firing
8 caliber shotgun shells at the earth, then using the
soundwaves to identify buried masses. Lidar uses
laser-driven pulses of light and multispectral cameras
to scan and process digital information about a landscape. Used originally to map environments, lidar has
been of demonstrable use in archaeological survey and
mapping of monuments. Enhanced satellite imagery
from DigitalGlobes QuickBird satellite contains both
multispectral and panchromatic imagery which has
enabled archaeologists to map crop marks with more
precision (see Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial;
Geophysical).
Computer-assisted Imaging

Akin to remote sensing are the advances in imaging.

Like remote sensing, these techniques use methods
developed from the medical and geographic fields of
endeavor; but they are focused on enhancing artifacts
rather than landscapes; since these objects are smaller
they are more likely to use traditional methods, such
as computer tomography (CT) scanning. CT scanning
builds a three-dimensional image of an object from a
series of two-dimensional X-rays established in a radial pattern. CT has been used to examine mummies
and heavily encrusted artifacts prior to, or instead of,
invasive procedures.
Some initial tests have used geo-referencing of aerial photographs to map artifacts and features at the
site and excavation unit level; combining these data
with quantitative analysis has allowed some researchers to examine patterning of artifacts. Digital images
of such fragile objects as rock art and ancient documents allow researchers to enhance images without
endangering the objects themselves, such as the recent
work on the Archimedes manuscript.
Three-dimensional virtual reconstructions of ancient buildings have been undertaken as object studies, both to preserve fragile remnants, to consider
different possible reconstructions, and to educate
the public about what structures looked like in the
past. Still a fairly expensive project, three-dimensional

488 ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

reconstructions have been successful in reconstructing

buildings in Egypt and the American Southwest.

Toward a Relevant Archaeology

Many problems face the world today: global warming and possible climate change, ongoing regional
conflicts, manmade and natural disasters, endemic
diseases such as HIV/AIDS and bird flu, crushing
poverty and famine. In such a world, the study of
archaeology and the preservation of cultural heritage
can seem trivial when compared with human losses
sustained by other pressing needs. However, many of
these issues can be addressed with the assistance of
archaeologists, whether by looking to the past for
successes and failures of our ancestors or by applying
the excavation methodology to modern problems.
Global Warming and Climate Change

Adaptation to climatic change is in many respects

archaeologys stock in trade. Where early theoretical
studies placed the causation of social changes perhaps
too much on climatic fluctuations, more recent studies
have emphasized archaeological evidence for climatic
instability and cultural adaptations to it. Recent studies of cultural reactions to climate change include
the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition in England, the
Middle HoloceneLate Holocene climatic change in
the Great Basin, the Early/Late Natufian boundary in
the Levant, Early Mesolithic settlements in northern
Sweden, and the colonization of the island of Rapa
Nui. Periglacial studies have examined the patterns of
glaciers and ice patches in the Arctic, extended
droughts in the Great Basin of the United States,
and the impact of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation
(ENSO) on Australia, Fiji, and South America.
Speaking to the worldwide interest in global warming, several popular books by archaeologists and
others have addressed this issue, most recently Brian
Fagans The Long Summer: How Climate Changed
Civilization and Steven Mithens After the Ice:
A Global Human History 20 0005000 BC.
Disease Studies

Continuing studies in ancient epidemics promise

to provide useful information about the progress
and spread of disease, as discussed in The Archaeology of Disease, by Charlotte Roberts and Keith
Manchester. Investigations have included identifying
the evidence of disease in human skeletal material,
discerning mortality rates, and the regularity of disease outbreaks. Several recent studies have focused on
the spread of smallpox resulting from its use as a
chemical weapon in the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries of North America. Recently, several papers

have investigated leprosy in Medieval Europe; salmonella bacilli have been discovered as the cause of a
pandemic in the fifth century BC Athens; and the onset
and spread of the Black Death has also been traced
archaeologically. The dietary component of diabetes
was traced in historic period Omaha peoples of the
American Midwest, and the prevalence of parasites
has often been used in archaeological data to identify
modern-day health situations. Other disease histories
investigated by archaeologists in the recent past include syphilis, hantavirus, and tuberculosis.
Agricultural Origins and Methods

Investigations into ancient methods of agriculture have

the potential to assist in creating sustainable growth
progress. Applied archaeology projects are exemplified by the Lake Titicaca project, where researchers
worked with indigenous peoples to recreate raised
field agriculture in highland Bolivia and Peru. Other
studies include the use of differential techniques on
fluctuating crop variability in central India beginning
in the Chalcolithic period, and research into the origins of agricultural crops including rice, emmer and
einkorn wheat, millet, and maize.
Desaparecidos and Disasters

In the recent past, archaeologists have been called in

to use their special skills in the wake of disasters, and
in searching for evidence of genocide. The term desaparecidos is the Spanish term for the disappeared
and it has been used to refer to the thousands of
Argentineans who were murdered under Pinochets
military junta between 1976 and 1983. Studies of
the desaparecidos of Argentina by Clyde Snow were
the first of the genocidal events and mass killings
studied by archaeologists; others have taken place in
Rwanda and Yugoslavia. In addition, archaeologists
have assisted at modern-day natural and manmade
disasters such as the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in
December 2004, the World Trade Center bombings of
2001, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf
Coast region of the United States in 2005. Tasks have
included excavations, identification of the victims
using DNA and other information, processing of massive amounts of data, and preservation techniques on
damaged documents.
See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation;
Careers in Archaeology; Cultural Resource Management; DNA: Ancient; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Historic Roots of Archaeology; Illicit Antiquities;
Internet, Archaeology on; Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act; Native Peoples and

ARCHAEOMETRY 489
Archaeology; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial;
Geophysical; Stable Isotope Analysis; World Heritage
Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading
Aitchison K (1999) Denison S (ed.) Profiling the Profession:
A Survey of Archaeological Jobs in the UK. Council for British
Archaeology, English Heritage, Institute of Field Archaeologists.
Cornwall, UK: TJ Press. http://www.britarch.ac.uk/training/
profile.html accessed Mar 2007.
Archaeological Data Services (19962006) Guides to Good
Practices. http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/policy.html. accessed
Mar 2007.
Association Research Inc (2005) 2005 Salary Survey Conducted
for the Society For American Archaeology in Cooperation
with Society For Historical Archaeology. Association Research
Inc., Rockville, MD. http://www.saa.org/membership/survey/
accessed Mar 2007.
Fagan B (2003) The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization. New York: Basic Books.
Fforde C and Parker LO (2001) Repatriation Developments in the
UK. 2001. Indigenous Law Bulletin 10. http://www.austlii.edu.
au/au/journals/ILB/2001/10.html accessed Mar 2007.
Givens DB, Evans P, and Jablonski T (1997) 1997 AAA Survey
of Anthropology PhDs. American Anthropological Association,
Arlington, VA. http://www.aaanet.org/surveys/97survey.htmaccessed Mar 2007.

Interpol (2006) Property Crime: Works of Art. 2006. Interpol.

http://www.inte rpol.int/Public /PropertyC rime/Default.asp
accessed Mar 2007.
Jones M (2001) The Molecule Hunt: Archaeology and the Search
for Ancient DNA. New York: Arcade Publishing.
Roberts C and Manchester K (2005) The Archaeology of Disease,
2nd edn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Ulm S, Stephen N, and Dalley C (2005) Mapping the shape
of contemporary Australian archaeology: Implications for
archaeology teaching and learning. Australian Archaeology 61:
1123.
United States, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian, Affairs
(2006) Tribal Leaders Directory. http://www.doi.gov/leaders.pdf
accessed Mar 2007.
United States National Park Service (2006) Archaeology Laws:
A Guide for Professionals. http://www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/
tools/laws/index.htm accessed Mar 2007.
United States National Park Service (2006) Tribal Preservation
Program. http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/tribal/thpo.htm accessed
Mar 2007.
Zeder MA (1999) The American Archaeologist: A Profile. Walnut
Creek, CA: Altamira Press.

Relevant Websites
http://creativecommons.org/ Creative Commons.
http://www.opensource.org/ Open Source Initiative.
http://whc.unesco.org/ UNESCO World Heritage.

ARCHAEOMETRY
Michael D Glascock, University of Missouri,
Columbia, MO, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
archaeomagnetic dating A dating method that relies on
measuring the magnetic orientation of an object when heated by
fire and comparison to the known movement of the Earths
magnetic field.
Bayesian statistics Bayesian statistics is a statistical method by
which observations are used to infer the probability that a
hypothesis may be true.
correspondence analysis Correspondence analysis is a
statistical analysis technique which measures the correspondence
between the rows and columns of a table and allows one to
explore the structure of the variables in the table.
discriminant function analysis Discriminant function
analysis involves the prediction of dependent variables by one or
more independent variables.
Egyptian blue A blue-colored pigment used by the Egyptians
for thousands of years. The pigment was produced by grinding
sand, copper, natron and heating the mixture in a furnace.

emission spectroscopy A spectroscopic technique which

relies on discrete emissions of electromagnetic spectra radiated
from each element.
factor analysis Factor analysis is a statistical technique used to
explain the variability of a set of measured random variables in
terms of a smaller number of unobserved random variables called
factors.
fission track dating A radiometric dating method based on
analysis of the damage trails left by fission fragments in certain
uranium bearing minerals and glasses.
geographic information systems (GIS) A geographic
information system is used to collect, store, analyze, and manage
data and associated attributes which have been spatially
referenced to the earth. A GIS relies on a computer system
capable of managing the data, displaying it geographically, and
facilitating interactive queries.
ground-penetrating radar Ground penetrating radar is a type
of geophysical survey relying on radar signals to locate artifacts
and structures below the surface of the ground.
inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry An
analytical technique based on combining an inductively coupled
plasma as a method for producing ions (ionization of the sample)
with a mass spectrometer as a method of identifying the ions
(isotopes) through their masses. Samples for ICP-MS are usually
analyzed following digestion into liquid form. A procedure using

490 ARCHAEOMETRY
a laser to study solids is known as laser ablation-inductively
coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS).
lead-isotope analysis Analytical methods are used which
measure the distribution of stable lead isotopes in a sample
matrix and may link an artifact to a specific isotope.
magnetic survey A magnetic survey is a type of geophysical
survey relying on the contrast in magnetic properties between
certain types of artifacts and their surroundings.
materials characterization The application of physical and
chemical analytical techniques to obtain information about the
distribution and amounts of elements and minerals in the
archaeological specimens.
neutron activation analysis An analytical technique relying
on bombardment of the sample by neutrons which causes the
sample to become radioactive. Radioactivity is emitted in the
form of gamma-rays which can be measured to determine
the identity and amounts of elements present in the analytical
sample. Each element has its own discrete suite of gamma rays.
particle induced X-ray emission An analytical technique
based on the emission of characteristic X-rays from a material
that has been excited by bombardment with energetic charged
particles (usually protons). Each element has it own discrete set
of X-rays.
petrographic analysis The detailed analysis of minerals by
optical mineralogy in thin section.
potassiumargon (or KAr dating) A radiometric dating
method based on the decay of the radioactive isotope 40K which
decays into 40Ar with a half-life of 1.26  109 years. Because the
argon is a gas, it will escape from a molten rock. However, when
the rock solidifies, the decayed 40Ar will be trapped in the crystal
lattice. Mass spectrometry is used to measure the accumulated
40
Ar and atomic absorption spectroscopy is used to measure the
amount of 40K. The ratio between the 40Ar and the 40K isotopes
is related to the time elapsed since the rock was cool enough to
trap the argon.
principal components analysis Principal components
analysis (PCA) is a technique for simplifying a dataset, by
reducing multidimensional datasets to lower dimensions for
analysis. By making a linear transformation of the original data,
PCA leads to a new coordinate system which explains the
majority of the variance in a dataset using a small number of
variables.
prospection The application of a wide range of scientific
techniques to study the near-surface environment for the
presence of artifacts and structures.
provenance (also called sourcing) Determining the origin of
an artifact or other archaeological specimen through chemical or
physical analysis of its constituents.
quantatitive analysis Measurement of the quantities of
substances, elements, minerals, etc. in the object subjected to
analysis. Quantities are usually expressed in concentrations with
units by weight given in percent, parts per million, parts per
billion, etc.
radiometric methods Dating methods that rely on the
knowledge of decay rates of naturally occurring isotopes are
radiometric.
resistivity survey A resistivity survey is a type of geophysical
survey relying on the contrast in electrical properties between
certain types of artifacts and their surroundings.
Samian ware A kind of bright red Roman pottery also known
as terra sigillata generally found in the eastern Mediterranean.
stable isotope analysis The analysis of stable isotopes of
oxygen and their relative abundances are used to obtain
information regarding diet and migration of humans and other
organisms.

thermoluminescence dating A dating method that relies on

measuring the accumulated radiation dose in a material as a
means of determining the time elapsed since the material was last
heated.
underwater sonar Underwater sonar is a type of geophysical
survey relying on the detection of sonar signals to locate artifacts
and structures underwater.
uranium series dating A radiometric dating method that relies
on the decays of isotopes from uranium and its daughter
isotopes.
X-ray fluorescence An analytical technique based on the
emission of characteristic secondary (or fluorescent) X-rays
from a material that has been excited by bombardment with
higher energy X-rays or gamma rays. Each element has it own
discrete set of X-rays.

Introduction
The term archaeometry was invented in the mid1950s, by Martin Aitken and Christopher Hawkes at
Oxford University, to assign a name to a publication
of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the
History of Art. The first issue of Archaeometry was
published in 1958, and it is now a well-recognized,
international research journal. Today, however,
archaeometry represents considerably more than the
name of a journal. Archaeometry has become the umbrella term used to describe an interdisciplinary field of
archaeological research in which techniques and
approaches from the physical, chemical, biological,
geological, and statistical sciences are employed to
extract more information from the material record of
past human activity. The range of research conducted in archaeometry is so broad that any attempt
to describe the field in a comprehensive summary is
difficult. A number of practitioners have suggested
that archaeometry includes the following activities or
themes: (1) materials characterization; (2) dating;
(3) prospection; (4) conservation; (5) the study of
man and his environment; and (6) the handling and
modeling of data (Figure 1). Major developments within the field of archaeometry have relied on the development and improvement of new scientific techniques
in conjunction with their application to significant archaeological problems. A history of archaeometry in
relation to the above-mentioned themes is described.

Materials Characterization
The first scientific discipline to engage in a study of
artifacts was almost certainly chemistry. A history of
chemistrys early involvement in archaeology would
not be complete without mentioning the names of
famous chemists such as Martin Heinrich Klaproth
(17431817), Sir Humphry Davy (17781829),
Michael Faraday (17911867), and Carl Christian

ARCHAEOMETRY 491

Chemistry
Physics
Geology
Biology
Statistics

Archaeometry

Characterization
Dating
Prospection
Preservation
Man and environment
Data modeling

Figure 1 Archaeometry the link between scientific techniques and archaeological applications.

Traugott Friedemann Gobel (17941851). The primary motivation for their work was curiosity as a
consequence of their interest in studying and identifying matter and the changes induced by chemical reactions. The earliest recorded paper to describe a
chemical investigation of antiquities was read before
the Royal Academy of Science and Belles Letters of
Berlin in 1795 by Martin Heinrich Klaproth.
Klaproth devised a procedure using gravimetry and
used it to measure the compositions of several Greek
and Roman coins.
During the first half of the nineteenth century,
about 25 reports were published on the quantitative
analysis of copper-based coins, glass, and pigments.
Among these were a paper by Humphry Davy on the
examination of ancient pigments from Rome and
Pompeii in which he identified a synthetic pigment
later called Egyptian blue, formed by combining
copper, silicon, and natron. Faraday was the first to
identify lead as an intentional component in the glaze
on ancient pottery. However, it was Gobel who first
explicitly stated that the results obtained from the
chemical analysis might be used to answer archaeological questions. Gobels results were published in
1842 in the form of a pamphlet with the very descriptive title: On the power of chemistry in identifying
peoples of ancient times, or results of a chemical
investigation of metallic antiquities, especially those
occurring in the Baltic provinces, for the purpose of
identifying the peoples from which they came.
Because Gobels work involved analysis of statistically significant numbers of samples, he was also the first
to establish chemical properties for a group of specimens, as opposed to reporting individual analyses.
Another individual who contributed significantly
to the characterization of archaeological specimens
was the French mineralogist Alexis Damour. Through
his studies of jade from different sources around the
world, Damour came to recognize the differences
between the sources. Damour also published an
extensive investigation on the density and chemical
composition of stones from known sources with the
end view of providing fundamental data useful for

determining the place of origin of such objects. Thus,

it can be inferred that Damour was the first to recognize the concept of sourcing proof of origin through
similarity of physical and chemical analyses.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the
character of archaeology began to change from the
discovery of buried treasure toward increasing scientific knowledge. This change led to increasing cooperation between archaeologists and chemists. Two
individuals who stood out were Marcelin Berthelot
and Heinrich Schielmann. Berthelot made it a point
to analyze artifacts not only for their chemical identification but also to investigate their significance from
the standpoint of the history of early technology.
Schielmann, who is recognized for his excavations at
Mycenae and Troy, frequently included the results
from chemical analysis of materials in his archaeological reports.
During the first half of the twentieth century,
advances in the ability to characterize archaeological
materials were beginning to gain recognition by
archaeologists as useful for studying models of trade
and exchange and explaining the changing distribution of materials over time and space. One of the
pioneers was Anna O. Shepard who was active in
the study of ceramics by petrographic analysis during
the 1930s through 1950s. Many will agree that her
classic book Ceramics for the Archaeologist set the
standard and established a vocabulary for discussing
the analysis of ceramics. During approximately the
same period of time, Earle Caley was using emission
spectroscopy to study the compositions of glass and
metal artifacts.
The discoveries of radioactivity by Becquerel in
1896, the atomic nucleus by Rutherford in 1909,
and the neutron by Chadwick in 1932 set the stage
for the development of several analytical techniques
based on atomic and nuclear properties. In 1936,
George Hevesy discovered the technique of neutron
activation analysis (NAA). But the NAA technique
was not ready for routine application in archaeology
until 1956, when Robert Oppenheimer assembled a
group of archaeologists and chemists at the Princeton

492 ARCHAEOMETRY

Institute of Advanced Studies to discuss the possibility

of applying the method to the study of archaeology.
Following the meeting, Edward Sayre and Robert
Dodson, chemists from Brookhaven National Laboratory, conducted a study of Samian ware from
different locations in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy
using NAA.
The results of the NAA investigation showed that
trace element impurity patterns for the pottery within
a region were correlated and that different regions
could be distinguished from another. The project was
judged to be such an outstanding success that it laid
the foundations for chemical analysis of thousands of
archaeological samples including pottery, obsidian,
flint, marble, turquoise, and limestone by laboratories
established at Brookhaven National Lab, Lawrence
Berkeley Laboratory, the University of Michigan, and
elsewhere. Although many of the original NAA labs
no longer exist, increases in the use of automation are
allowing more samples being analyzed by NAA today
than ever. In addition to NAA, other techniques
such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and proton-induced
X-ray emission (PIXE), inductively coupled plasma
(ICP), and lead isotope analysis have been employed
in artifact characterization studies. Gradual improvements in the analytical techniques over the years have
enabled the measurement of greater numbers of elements and isotopes with more sensitivity and better
precision.
By the 1980s, techniques from the biological
sciences were being employed to analyze organic
materials such as bone, waxes, resins, food remains,
and textiles. And, during the past decade, surface
analytical methods such as laser ablation ICP mass
spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) and scanning electron microprobe (SEM) have become popular techniques for
examining glazes, paints, mineral inclusions, etc.
Materials characterization studies have changed
the way that archaeologists interpret how trade and
exchange operated in the past. They also help to
explain the distribution of archaeological material
across the landscape, changes in distribution over
time, and changes in the economies and organization
of societies. It is not unreasonable to estimate that
several tens of thousands of archaeological samples
are being chemically characterized every year in
laboratories around the world for studies of provenance, technology, and authentication.

Dating
Use of dating techniques to determine the age of an
artifact or dates of occupation for a site or dates for a
sequence of events is one of the most fundamental

archaeometric activities conducted by archaeologists

and is essential to organizing archaeological evidence.
Prior to the twentieth century, archaeologists were
limited to the use of relative dating techniques such
as stratigraphy and seriation. However, the twentieth
century saw the development of a number of absolute
dating techniques, many of which have improved to
the point that it is now possible to determine dates
from fewer to hundred years back to several million
years.
The first absolute dating technique was developed
in the 1920s by Andrew Ellicot Douglas who discovered that the widths of annual rings in trees from the
American Southwest were related to the climatic variation during antiquity. Douglas applied his new technique to pine beams from a twelfth century building
at Pueblo Bonito, thus giving rise to dendrochronology. Use of dendrochronology has been extended
to other regions of the world, but each region is
somewhat different due to climatic differences (see
Dendrochronology).
The development of radiocarbon dating by Willard
Libby in the late 1940s has probably had the greatest
impact on archaeological science. The technique is
based on the premise that all living organisms have
a continuous uptake of radioactive carbon-14 until
they die (see Carbon-14 Dating). By measuring the
amount of radiocarbon present in their remains, it
is possible to estimate the time elapsed since the
organism died. For the first time, chronologies for
different parts of the world could be compared back
to about 50 000 years. The impact of radiocarbon
dating on archaeology cannot be overestimated.
Libby was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry in
1960, and radiocarbon labs were established around
the world.
Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, a number of other absolute dating methods were
developed, including accelerator mass dating of carbon-14 which requires less sample and extends the
range to about 100 000 years, thermoluminescence
dating and archaeomagnetic dating which can be applied to materials that have been heated in antiquity
such as pottery or stone, and radiometric methods
such as uranium series, fission-track, and potassiumargon dating which can be used to date much older
archaeological materials such as those associated
with the formation of corals and stalactites or the
occurrence of volcanic events, etc. (see Electron Spin
Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating). The suitability of an individual dating technique for a particular
application depends upon the types of archaeological
material available for dating, the range of ages, and
other factors.

ARCHAEOMETRY 493

Prospection
Curiosity about the past has long stimulated our
desire to discover the remains of our past and has
become a significant part of the archaeological endeavor. Archaeological prospection is the general
term used to identify the collection of nondestructive
methods used to locate and characterize the surviving evidence of human activity. Prospection began
early in the twentieth century with the use of aerial
photography to locate archaeological sites in Britain.
From the 1950s up to the present time, geophysical
prospection techniques employing magnetic and
resistivity surveys as well as ground radar and underwater sonar have been popular. The techniques are
used to locate hidden features such as kilns, hearths,
pits, walls, roads, cemeteries, and shipwrecks. Geochemical methods have also been employed to analyze anthropogenic and geochemical signatures in
the soil. The addition of satellite photography in the
1960s has enhanced our ability to study noninvasively almost any place on the face of the earth.

Conservation
Conservation science encompasses restoration (activities that seek to return a damaged artifact to its
original form) and preservation (activities involved
in keeping an object from deteriorating further).
Reconstruction of artifacts often uses knowledge
from chemistry to understand how artifacts were
made and how they undergo deterioration due to
usage and exposure to the environment (i.e., corrosion, weathering, pollution, etc.) Preservation also
involves knowledge obtained from chemistry to identify the materials most likely to protect artifacts and
least likely to cause future damage.

Handling and Modeling of

Archaeometric Data
The expanded usage of archaeometric techniques and
the ever larger amounts of data collected give rise to a
greater need for data management and the need for ever
more sophisticated mathematical and statistical techniques. Investigation and interpretation of data would
be an extremely tedious exercise were it not for more
powerful computers and software developed since the
mid-1950s. Data sets are being examined to find patterns in bivariate plots, cluster analysis diagram, etc.
Other methods such as correspondence analysis, factor
analysis, principal components analysis, and discriminant function analysis have made it possible to
examine ever larger data sets. Data modeling based on

geographic information systems (GISs) and Bayesian

statistics are also being used more frequently.

Man and His Environment

Environmental archaeology seeks to reconstruct the
past flora, fauna, landscape and climates through the
examination of animal, fish, plant, pollen, and insect
remains. Other archaeometric research subsumed
under this category includes stable isotope analysis
to investigate ancient diets and the spread of agriculture and analyses of DNA to study the migration of
modern man.

Future of Archaeometry
Advances in science and technology over the past half
century have given archaeologists access to unique
insights into the social and economic development
of societies through the identification of trade and
exchange, as well as time depth. These advances
have been supported by the development of institutional laboratories, the proliferation of journals,
societies, and groups covering many different types
of archaeometry. In addition to Archaeometry, several other journals and newsletters reporting archaeometric research were started including the Journal
of Archaeological Science, Geoarchaeology, SAS
Bulletin-Newsletter of the Society for Archaeological
Sciences, etc.
Although access to methods from the sciences has
made it possible for archaeologists to seek answers for
questions concerning past human behavior and development, not all applications of these methods over the
past half century have produced relevant information.
In some instances, archaeometric data may have been
published journals, but no corresponding archaeological interpretation was presented, and, at other times,
the data may have appeared in the appendix of an
archaeological report with little or no comment on
the reasons for which the analyses were performed.
In most of the archaeometric studies where relevance
is lacking, the cause has been due to poor communication between the archaeologists and the scientists. The
reasons for performing the analyses were not adequately articulated, and, hence, the product failed to
advance the field of archaeological science. In particular, this has been noted by archaeologists such as
Robert C. Dunnell who were extremely critical of the
proceedings volumes generated from conferences such
as the International Archaeometry Symposium, Materials Research Society, and others.
Discord and separatism between archaeologists
and scientists have also surfaced, on occasion, in the

494 ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY

literature and at conferences when evaluating one

anothers contributions. The first step in repairing
this situation is recognizing that the objectives of the
specialists from different disciplines differ in more
than just methodology. When archaeologists formulate a research question, their research objectives are
often stated in the context of their archaeological
discipline such that data and techniques are treated
secondarily to cultural interpretation. On the other
hand, scientists will emphasize the techniques and
data but may be unfamiliar with the archaeological
context. The second step is to encourage joint formulation of research design in order to give direction to
the work to be undertaken. The research design must
address the logic used in deciding the type(s) of data
to be collected. Finally, the products of the research
must give all involved parties recognition for their
contributions such that the interdisciplinary research
can be considered a success.
Archaeometric studies should enhance our understanding of the archaeological record. It is clear that
archaeometry depends upon close cooperation between the archaeologists and the scientists, with
both learning about each others problems and limitations and the exchange of mutual respect. The future
of archaeometry depends on the development of people who cross the traditional boundaries of science
and archaeology such that they understand the rudiments of the techniques they are using and the purpose for conducting the analyses. Fortunately, some
universities have been making progress (e.g., universities in Britain, Turkey, and Peru; the IGERT program at the University of Arizona) by working in this
direction. The number of scientists interested in archaeological applications has grown, and the number
of archaeologists interested in embracing methods
and techniques from other disciplines has also

grown. Undoubtedly, the discipline of archaeometry

has a very bright future.

Acknowledgments
The author thanks the National Science Foundation
for providing continuous support to the Archaeometry Lab at the University of Missouri Research Reactor since 1988.
See also: Carbon-14 Dating; Chemical Analysis Tech-

niques; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials;

Dating Methods, Overview; Dendrochronology; Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating;
Neutron Activation Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Remote Sensing Approaches: Geophysical.

Further Reading
De Atley SP and Bishop RL (1991) Toward an integrated interface
for archaeology and archaeometry. In: Bishop RL and Lange FW
(eds.) The Ceramic Legacy of Anna O. Shepard pp. 358380.
Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press.
Dunnell RC (1993) Why archaeologists dont care about archaeometry. Archeomaterials 7: 161165.
Harbottle G (1982) Chemical characterization in archaeology.
In: Ericson JE and Earle TK (eds.) Contexts for Prehistoric
Exchange pp. 1351. New York: Academic Press.
Pollard AM (1995) Why teach Heisenberg to archaeologists?
Antiquity 69: 242247.
Pollard AM and Heron C (1996) Archaeological Chemistry. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry.
Shepard AO (1956) Ceramics for the Archaeologist. Washington:
Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Tite MS (2004) Archaeometry an overview. In: Martini M,
Milazzo M and Piacenti M (eds.) Physics Methods in Archaeometry, pp. 347356. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Wagner GA and Schiegl S (1998) Age Determination of Young
Rocks and Artifacts: Physical and Chemical Clocks in Quaternary Geology and Archaeology. New York: Springer.

ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY
Karl J Reinhard, University of Nebraska, Lincoln,
NE, USA
Adauto Araujo, Escola Nacional de Saude Publica,
Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
acanthocephalan Any of various worms in the phylum
Acanthocephala, also called thorny-headed worms, living in

intestines of vertebrates having a retractile proboscis covered

with many hooked spines.
anthelminthic A compound that affects and causes the
expulsion of parasitic intestinal worms.
archaeoparasitology The study of parasite evidence from
archaeological sites.
cestode Any of the parasitic flatworms of the class Cestoidea,
including the tapeworms, having a long, segmented, flat
body equipped with a specialized organ of attachment at
one end.
ectoparasite Parasites such as lice and flies that live on the
bodys outer surface.

ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY 495
endoparasite Parasites such as blood flukes and pinworms that
infect the internal parts of the body.
helminth Worm that is parasitic on vertebrates, especially
roundworms and tapeworms, thorny-headed worms, and flukes.
host An organism that provides food and shelter to a parasite.
microparasites A microscopic organism of medical importance
including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa.
infestation Parasites that are present on the outside of the hosts,
such as ectoparasites, or the contamination of a habitat with
arthropods such as mosquites, bed bugs, and ticks.
infection Parasites that are present inside the host organism,
including helminths and miocroparasites.
nematode Any of phylum Nematoda of elongated cylindrical
worms some of which are parasitic in animals and plants, and
others of which are free-living in soil or water.
parasite An organism that lives at the expense of its host by
taking energy from the host and sometimes causing pathology in
the host.
prevalence Number of hosts in a population infected with a
parasite at any one time.
protozoa (parasitic) Single-cell organisms, some of which are
parasitic and can only reproduce within a host organism.
Malaria is caused by a protozoa, Plasmodium. Other protozoan
parasites are Giardia and Toxoplasma.
trematode Referring to flukes, phylum Trematoda, which are
parasitic flatworms having external suckers for attaching to a
host.
vector An animal, usually a biting insect, that is responsible for
the transmission of a parasitic organism.

Introduction
Parasites are the major cause of ill health and early
death in the world today. Malaria, sleeping sickness,
amoebic dysentery, and hookworm infection are
examples of commonplace parasitic diseases that
are endemic in most parts of the world (see Health,
Healing, and Disease). They were significant threats
in prehistory, especially in cultures whose social
complexity outstripped the development of effective
sanitation, hygiene, and germ theory awareness.
Parasites are organisms that live in or on other organisms called hosts. Parasites derive sustenance and
shelter from their hosts and carry out reproduction
in host tissues and structures. There is a wide amount
of taxonomic diversity among parasites. They range
from single-celled protozoa, such as amoeba, to multicelled arthropods such as fleas. Strictly defined,
parasites do not include bacteria and viruses. However, some epidemiologists refer to bacteria and viruses
as microparasites. There are two general types of
parasites: ectoparasites such as lice and endoparasites
such as intestinal worms.
All types of parasites can be found in archaeological sites. Protozoa can be identified by traces of antigens and also by certain gross pathology they left in
their mummified hosts. Helminths are parasitic
worms including nematode roundworms, cestode
tapeworms, trematode flukes, and acanthocephalan

thorny-headed worms. Helminth eggs from some species are laid in thousands within their hosts. Helminth
eggs from humans and domestic animals contaminated ancient villages. The eggs are very durable and
are easily retrieved from archaeological sediments,
coprolites, and mummies. Fleas and lice can be found
on mummies and also in archaeological sediments.
Lice are especially important in mummy studies
because the eggs are cemented on hair shafts. Therefore, examination of scalps from mummies provides a method of quantifying infestations between
individuals and sites.
The discipline that focuses on the relationships
between behavior, environment, and parasite infection is archaeoparasitology. This field developed from
the need for a fine-tuned analysis of prehistoric ecological and behavioral conditions to assess the factors
that affected disease. Archaeoparasitology depends
on archaeological information regarding community
size, trade patterns, water sources, subsistence practices, social stratification, environment, medicine use,
and many other lines of modern archaeological investigation. It also depends on biological understanding
of complex parasite life cycles and other dimensions
of parasite ecology. When broadly applied, archaeoparasitology defines the rise in parasitic disease
associated with the development of complex societies
and changes in subsistence strategies. In a more restricted application, archaeoparasitology sheds light
on the health impact of urbanization and empire
expansion. When tightly applied to a single burial or
mummy, archaeoparasitology shows how habits promote disease on an individual basis.

History and Major Themes

Aidan Cockburn explored the origins of disease and
generated interest in archaeoparasitology. Cockburn
theorized that there was a relation between human
cultural development and the evolution of infectious diseases. In the first archaeoparasitological
study, Reinhard compared Colorado Plateau Archaic
parasitism to agricultural Puebloan sites. Reinhard verified Cockburns hypothesis that occasional huntergatherer infections became major agricultural health
hazards (Figure 1). The reasons for the emergence of
parasitic disease were many. Parasitism was limited
in hunter-gatherer societies, called bands. Huntergatherer parasitism was limited by small band size,
diffuse regional populations, high band mobility, and
presence of natural anthelminthics in hunter-gatherer
diets. The one factor that could have promoted huntergatherer parasitism was the consumption of uncooked
vertebrate meat and insects. Parasitism was promoted
in descendent agricultural Puebloan communities by

496 ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY

Enterobius
vermicularis
(1%)
Taeniid cestodes
(2%)
Moniliformis clarki
(2%)

Hunter-gatherer incidence

Taeniid cestodes
(0.6%)

Enterobius
vermicularis
(15%)

Strongyloides
stercoralis
(0.6%)
Strongylate worm
(1.4%)

Ascaris lumbricoides
(0.02%)

Moniliformis clarki
(0.08%)
Agriculture
incidence

Hymenolepidid
cestode
(0.2%)

Figure 1 The relative prevalence and diversity of parasite infections between archaic hunter-gatherers and more recent agricultural
ancestral Puebloans on the Colorado Plateau. The archaic people were rare host to just a few parasites. Ancestral Puebloans hosted
many more parasites species at higher prevalences (from Reinhard 1996).

contaminated water sources, concentrated populations, more sedentary life, apartment-style living,
absence of effective sanitation, activities centered on
water (agriculture), and activities that expanded
wetlands including irrigation of all types.
Reinhard recognized that the parasite variation between agricultural Puebloan villages nearly equaled
the variation between agriculturalists and huntergatherers. This means that some settlements managed
to control their parasite burden very effectively while
others were simply overwhelmed by their pathogens.
This topic was explored by a comparison of pinworm

(Enterobius vermicularis) prevalence in coprolites by

a group of specialists in pinworm disease. Pinworm
was chosen as an indicator of general infectious disease because it is transferred from person to person
and by contamination of living quarters and food
(Figure 2). Some ancestral Pueblo communities were
extremely parasitized. In a clinical setting, only 5%
of feces from pinworm-infected people are positive
for pinworm eggs. The percentages of coprolites positive for pinworm from several sites exceed this and
range up to 29% (Figure 3). The lowest prevalence
was found in small cave sites not containing walled

ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY 497

Eggs are transferred by direct

contact between humans and also
eggs in air currents are inhaled

Nocturnal egg laying

results in retroinfection
as some eggs hatch
and larvae enter the
same host used by
the mother worm
Eggs on air currents contaminate
water, food, and general environment
with infective eggs

Figure 2 Pinworm infection in ancestral Pueblo villages involved several basic modes of transmission: air contamination and inhalation
of infective eggs, air contamination of the living area with infective eggs, person-to-person transmission of eggs, and retroinfection by
larvas that hatch on or in the host and re-enter the same person that hosts the maternal worm.

0.45
0.40
Colorado

Utah
29%

10%
7%

0.30
0.25

0%

Arizona

0.35

19% 25% 8%

0.20

21%

0.15
New
Mexico

Figure 3 The prevalence of pinworm infection varied greatly

between ancestral Pueblo villages showing that lifestyle variation
and population crowding influenced pinworm prevalence.

Small
villages,
no stone
wall

Large,
stone-walled
villages
in caves

0.10
0.05

Large,
stone-walled villages

0.00
F2.14 = 5.883 (p = 0.014)
Figure 4 This graph shows that village size, construction,
and location inside or outside the caves influenced pinworm
prevalence (modified from Hugo et al. 1999).

villages. The highest prevalence came from large,

walled villages built in rock shelters (Figure 4).
Hugot et al. concluded that poor air circulation in
large populations living in complex apartment-style
communities resulted in truly impressive levels of
pinworm parasitism. In fact, some sites have the
highest levels of pinworm infection recorded for ancient or modern peoples.
The data indicate that pinworm parasitism was
unavoidable and that in some villages people had
heavy infections. In such populations, pinworm infection prevalence reflects serious health risks, when one

considers that other pathogens are spread by the same

means. Reinhard showed that the prevalence of parasitism co-varied with porotic hyperostosis prevalence
at ancestral Pueblo sites where both coprolite and
skeletons were studied (Figure 5). Porotic hyperostosis is a general skeletal pathology indicator long used
to assess maternal-infant health.
In Brazil, the cultural transfer of parasites has been
a focus for many years. The discovery of hookworm
and whipworm in prehistoric South American

498 ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY

% Pinworm prevalence in coprolites

30

Canyon de Chelly
Chaco Canyon

20

Inscription House

10
Salmon Ruin

0
40

50
60
70
80
% Porotic hyperostosis prevalence in crania

90

Figure 5 Although pinworm does not cause significant disease,

pinworm prevalence is a good gauge of the general level of
infection with other parasites and microparasites. Therefore, it
can be compared with skeletal evidence of infectious disease. In
this graph, the pinworm prevalence in coprolites has a positive
correlation with the skeletal frequency of anemia in ancestral
Pueblo sites.

mummies and coprolites was sensational. These are

human-specific nematodes that cannot parasitize
humans in the Arctic and subarctic because they
require warm, moist soils for maturation once the
eggs are defecated. Therefore, the discovery of these
parasites in prehistoric South America indicated that
there was a nonarctic migration of humans from the
Old World to the Americas.
The most long-standing debate in archaeoparasitology revolved around the discovery of hookworms
in prehistoric sites. One species of hookworm, Ancyslostoma duodenale, was diagnosed from examination of adult worms in prehistoric Peruvian
mummies, and later larvas were discovered in coprolites and mummies from Brazil, and the United States.
Hookworms are host specific, which means that one
species of worm only infects one species of host.
Ancyslostoma duodenale only infects humans. Hookworms require tropical or subtropical environments
for their eggs to hatch and larvas to mature to infective
stage. Finally, hookworms have their evolutionary
origins in the Old World. Therefore, to reach the
New World, they had to migrate with human populations from a tropical or subtropical environment
(Figure 6). The conventional wisdom of the twentieth
century was that hookworms arrived in the New
World in historic times with European colonists and
African slaves. This conventional wisdom has been so
strong that over a dozen papers have appeared in
anthropological and parasitological journals debating
the validity and meaning of the hookworm finds.

Figure 6 The presence of hookworm and whipworm in the prehistoric Americas indicates a non-Beringean migration to the New
World at some point in time. This could have been a coastal
migration or an oceanic migration.

In historic archaeology, archaeoparasitology focuses on sociological and urbanization concerns. Historic archaeologists can define the ethnicity, economic
level, and social status of people associated with
archaeological features. Therefore, archaeoparasitologists have the opportunity to examine the effect
of social differentiation on parasitism. The role of
urbanization on the emergence of parasitic disease is
a common theme in historic context along with the
development of sanitation in controlling parasitism.
Ascarid roundworms (Ascaris lumbricoides) and
whipworms (Trichuris trichiura) are the main indicators for assessing the parasitic state of historic sites.
These two species are most associated with fecal contamination, crowding, and poor sanitation. These
parasites are used for comparative evaluation of the
threat of parasitism between neighborhoods, villages,
and cities. Other parasites, especially tapeworms and
flukes associated with different types of meat, are
useful indicators of ethnicity.
In the twenty-first century, the discipline of archaeoparasitology became global. Researchers published
parasitological finds from Japan, Korea, Germany,
Peru, Chile, Brazil, and many other countries. The intellectual foci of these studies are diverse. In Japan,
parasites were analyzed in context of the development of sanitation and food practices. They were
also used to identify areas used by foreign ambassadors who hosted parasite species exotic to Japan
but endemic to China. In Korea, archaeoparasitology

ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY 499

was used to trace the origins of indigenous species,

especially trematodes. The impact of the expansion
of the Inca Empire was defined in Chile. There, the
Inca compelled indigenous people to move from
small, scattered communities to large towns, resulting
in increased infection with certain parasite species.
Also, parasitism of the oldest hunter-gatherers, the
Chinchorro, was characterized. Chinchorro consumption of undercooked fish resulted in heavy
cestode infection. Archaeoparasitology in Peru examines the diseases of humans and domestic animals,
and especially the transfer of deadly protozoa from
animals to humans via insect vectors.
One theme that crosscuts the global diversity of
modern archaeoparasitology is defining the distribution of parasites. In a Brazilian mummy, Sianto et al.
discovered eggs of hookworm and of a trematode
genus, Echinostoma. Echinostoma has never been
found in people from the Americas and shows that
an indigenous species has the ability to infect humans.
This adds to the medical knowledge of the diversity
of parasites infective to humans. On the Texas
Coahuila border, Reinhard et al. discovered the
gross pathology of megacolon which is often associated with Chagas disease. Infection with Trypanosoma cruzi causes Chagas disease. Previously,
Chagas disease was thought to have originated in
the high Andes and then spread to lowland South
America in historic times. The discovery of Chagas
disease in prehistoric border of Mexico and Texas
shows that the disease spread further and earlier
than generally believed.

Figure 7 Moche ceramics depict facial lesions consistent with

the pathology caused by one form of the protozoan Leishmania
brasiliensis which is transmitted by a sand fly vector.

Data Sources and Methods

Archaeoparasitologists find their data in a variety
of archaeological contexts. Historical medical texts
provide information about ancient parasitological
knowledge and treatment. Artifacts provide rare
glimpses of the pathology caused by certain parasites.
For example, potters of the Peruvian Moche culture
portrayed the facial disfigurement resulting from
Leishmania infection (Figure 7). This protozoan parasite can cause destruction of the soft and hard tissue
of the face.
Skeletal remains can reveal hard tissue pathology
caused by parasites. Calcification of soft tissue of the
urinary tract often results from Schistosoma hematobium (blood fluke) infection. Cysts of the tapeworm
Echinococcus granulosis calcify and are preserved in
burials (Figure 8). Destructive bone lesions resulting
from Leishmania infection are evident in skeletal
remains from Peru (Figure 9). Sediments such as
soil within burial pelvic girdles (see Burials: Dietary
Sampling Methods) are an important source of

Figure 8 This is a drawing of hydatid cyst disease excavated

from Medieval Denmark. Hydatid disease is caused by a parasitic
infection by a tapeworm of the genus Echinococcus. The brown
nodules are the mineralized cysts cause by the tapeworm larvae.

information about parasites. For example, German

researchers were able to recover liver fluke (Fasciola
hepatica) from the sediment of human and cattle pelvic girdles. This showed that this debilitating parasite
was a threat to humans and their domestic livestock.
Mummies preserve the hard tissue and soft tissue
pathology caused by parasites as well as the parasites
themselves. Ectoparasites such as fleas, head lice,
body lice, and crab lice are easily recovered from

500 ARCHAEOPARASITOLOGY

Figure 9 This pathology from a skeleton in Peru could be the

result of infection with Leishmania brasiliensis. (Reprinted with
permission from Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz.)

to coprolites, mummies, and all types of archaeological sediments. So far, protozoa have been effectively
diagnosed. This is very important because protozoa
cysts are ephemeral in archaeological remains and are
only rarely found with the microscope. Molecular
biological characterization of ancient parasite DNA
is very useful in making definitive diagnosis of ancient
parasites and identifying genetic strains of a single
species.
The power of modern archaeoparasitology is based
on its ability to quantify infections for comparative
evaluation of disease. There are a variety of methods
for quantification of eggs per milliliter or gram of
archaeological sediments and coprolites. These include dilution methods derived from clinical techniques and concentration methods derived from
palynological techniques. Quantifying eggs allows
comparative evaluation of parasitism between sites
and features within sites.

The Future of Archaeoparasitology

mummies and the clothing buried with mummies.
Parasites of the lungs, intestinal tract, liver, and urinary tract are evident. Molecular biological diagnosis
can recover the DNA of ancient parasites from
mummified tissue, even when the parasites themselves have decomposed. Therefore, each mummified
corpse is extremely important in the analysis of parasitic diseases. Also, mummified animals are a wonderful source about parasites that may have threatened
the vitality of domestic animals.
In the twentieth century, coprolites provided most
of the information about parasitic disease. The eggs
and larvas of parasites that disperse their offspring
are easily found in coprolites. However, Bain
describes the increasing importance of analysis of
domestic archaeological sediments in archaeoparasitology. Sediments from latrines, sewers, drains, streets,
yards, and living floors contain parasite eggs. Parasites were so abundant in medieval and colonial villages that hundreds of parasite eggs per milliliter of
house sediments are commonly found. In latrines,
drains, and sewers, the numbers of eggs range into
hundreds of thousands per milliliter of sediment. The
analysis of sediments from domestic context will be
increasingly important in the future.
The microscope is the main tool of the archaeoparasitologist. Most diagnoses of helminths and arthropods have been made with compound or binocular
microscopes. However, molecular biology and enzyme
diagnostic methods have expanded the range of parasites identified from archaeological sites. Enzymelinked immunoassay is a new, proven method for the
identification of parasite antigens that can be applied

Several trends in archaeoparasitology are evident by

comparing the nature of studies in the last century
and the current century. Many studies from 1960 to
1990 focused on the recovery and diagnosis of ancient
parasites. With the exception of Brazilian research
into migration and Southwestern research into epidemiology, few researchers answered behavioral
questions with archaeoparasitological data. This preliminary stage is over. Now archaeoparasitologists
place their data in behavioral context to reveal aspects
of migration, food preparation, effect of social status
on disease, cross-infection between humans and animals, and many other topics of anthropological interest. There is also a new interest in the influence of
parasitic disease on the vitality of cultures and site
abandonment. Finally, there is now a solid nexus between biological parasitology and archaeoparasitology in exploring questions of parasite biogeography
and endemicity that have relevance to modern health.
These areas will continue to expand as archaeoparasitology becomes a standard archaeological discipline.
See also: Americas, North: American Southwest, Four

Corners Region; Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods;

Health, Healing, and Disease; New World, Peopling of.

Further Reading
Aidan CT (1971) Infectious diseases in ancient populations.
Current Anthropology 12: 4562.
Bain A (2001) Archaeoentomological and archaeoparasitological
reconstructions at lot Hunt (CeEt-110): New perspectives in
historical archaeology (18501900). In: BAR International,
pp. 153. Series 973, Oxford: Archaeopress.

ARCHAEOZOOLOGY 501
Fisher CL, Reinhard KJ, Kirk M, DiVirgilio J, and Miller TS
(in press) Archaeoparasitology of Historic Albany, New York.
Historic Archaeology.
Goncalves MLC, da Silva VL, de Andrade CM, et al. (2004) Amebiasis distribution in the past: First steps using an immunoassay
technique. The Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical
Medicine and Hygiene 98: 8891.
Hugot JP, Reinhard KJ, Gardner SL, and Morand S (1999) Human
enterobiasis in evolution: Origin, specificity, and transmission.
Parasite 6: 201208.
Montenegro A, Araujo A, Hetherington R, Ferreira LF, Weaver A,
Eeby M (2006) Parasites, paleoclimate and the peopling of the
Americas: Using the hookworm to time the Clovis migration.
Current Anthropology 47: 193198.
Reinhard KJ (1988) The cultural ecology of prehistoric parasitism
on the Colorado Plateau as evidenced by coprology. American
Journal of Physical Anthropology 77: 355366.

Reinhard KJ (1990) Archaeoparasitology in North America.

American Journal of Physical Anthropology 82: 145162.
Reinhard KJ (1992) Parasitology as an interpretive tool in archaeology. American Antiquity 57: 231245.
Reinhard KJ (1996) Parasite ecology of two Anasazi villages. In:
Reitz EJ, Newson LA, and Scudder SJ (eds.) Case Studies in
Environmental Archaeology. New York: Plenum.
Sandison AT (1967) Parasitic diseases. In: Brothwell D and
Sandison AT (eds.) Disease in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diseases, Injuries, and Surgery of Early Populations, pp. 178183.
Springfield: Charles C. Thomas.
Sianto L, Reinhard KJ, Goncalves MLC, and Araujo A (2005) The
finding of echinostoma (Trematoda: Digenea) and hookworm
eggs in coprolites collected from a Brazilian mummified body
dated of 6001,200 years before present. Journal of Parasitology
91: 972975.

ARCHAEOZOOLOGY
Elizabeth J Reitz, University of Georgia, Athens,
GA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
commensal animal An animal that lives in a mutualistic
relationship with people.
dental cementum A hard tissue deposited in layers around the
outer surface of some teeth and serves to hold the teeth in place.
diversity An information theory measure that combines
information about the number of categories present (such as the
number of plants and animals) and the abundance of each
category (the relative abundance of each plant or animal) to
describe heterogeneity of a system.
equitability An information theory measure based on the degree
to which a category, such as a specific plant or animal within a
list of several plants or animals, is equally abundant.
medullary bone A calcified storage tissue found in bird bones;
the calcium and fat are used during the period when eggs are
formed.
optimal foraging theory A theory proposing that humans
develop subsistence strategies based on energy expenditures such
as distance traveled, time spent, and the size of the items
acquired.
otolith A calcium carbonate structure, in the form of aragonite,
located in the inner ears of fishes. These function in hearing and
equilibrium.
reciprocal exchange An economic exchange of goods or
services in the form of a gift given to a person or group by
another person or group. Acceptance of the gift bears the
obligation to reciprocate at some future date.
redistribution An economic exchange in which goods are
collected from a group of people by a centralized administrative
body. The goods are then reallocated throughout the group.
scute A horny, bony, or chitinous scale such as the outer
covering on a turtle shell.

utility index An index that ranks animal body parts according to

the utility of each body part. Utility generally refers to the
amount of fat and meat that can be obtained from various parts
of a carcass.

Broadly defined, zooarchaeologists (also known as

archaeozoologists) study animal remains from archaeological deposits. The field traces its roots to the nineteenth century when the major scientific questions
focused on the antiquity of life. Thus, zooarchaeology
shares research traditions with what subsequently
developed into anthropology, archaeology, ecology,
palaeontology, and zoology. The combination of theories, methods, and data from these and other fields
focused on archaeological animal remains is the defining characteristic of zooarchaeology. Common interests
include site-formation processes; subsistence strategies
and human health; animal domestication and health;
technical and social uses of animals; and palaeoenvironments. These topics are examined through time
using animal remains from single sites and over space
among sites, regions, and even globally.
The diverse applications of zooarchaeology reflect
shifts in prevailing theories, methods, and research
interests in allied disciplines and within zooarchaeology itself. The development of zooarchaeology owes
much to an awareness of the importance of environmental relationships on human behavior and of the
human impact on the environment. Despite a diverse,
global, and interdisciplinary heritage, zooarchaeologists share two related goals: to understand the biology and ecology of animals, especially humans, and
to understand the interactions of humans with their

502 ARCHAEOZOOLOGY

biotic and abiotic environments through time and

space. These topics are briefly reviewed here. To
begin a more comprehensive study of zooarchaeology, the reader is referred to the references listed in
Further Reading section, The Journal of Archaeological Science, Environmental Archaeology: Journal
of Human Paleoecology, and other entries in this
encyclopaedia.

Methods
Although research into the strengths and weaknesses of field and laboratory methods is not usually
the primary objective of zooarchaeologists, most
zooarchaeological results are quantified in some fashion. The scientific method requires that theories be
testable, hypotheses be evaluated, and results be
independently verifiable. Consequently, zooarchaeological methods should be scientifically sound, appropriate to the materials, compatible to the research
questions, applied so as to avoid introducing further
bias, and thoroughly described. For these reasons,
critiques of archaeological and zooarchaeological
methods are common in the literature.
Field Methods

Quantification requires that all of the materials

which might be used to address research questions
should have an equal and random (in the statistical
sense) opportunity to be recovered using a consistent
recovery technique and that the samples be adequate
in size. Only through adherence to these principles
can it be argued, for example, that domestic mammals were more common in one context than in another or that warm-water mollusks were more
common than were cold-water ones. Although the

number of biases that can be traced to poor field

decisions appears infinite, many are related to the
placement of excavation units and the size of the
screen or sieve used to recover animal remains.
The composition of animal remains from different
activity areas (e.g., house floors, trash heaps, temple
complexes, etc.) may be quite different. This bias is
compounded by field protocols that use inappropriate screening methods. With few exceptions, animal
remains should be recovered by passing the excavated
soil through a screen with a mesh dimension suitable
to sample the full range of animals formerly present
at the site.
Laboratory Methods

Zooarchaeologists primarily study the bones and teeth

of vertebrate animals (other than humans) and the
exoskeletons of mollusks, crustaceans (crabs and
lobsters), and echinoderms (sea urchins). Other vertebrate tissues and other animals are less frequently
studied because they either are uncommon in most
archaeological deposits or are more common in samples studied by palaeoethnobotanists and soil scientists. These include skin, feathers, hair, eggshell, horn,
fur, insects, foraminifera, and endoparasites. In most
cases, zooarchaeologists study the remains of animals
which are members of the modern environment.
However, it is common to find animals which are
extirpated from their former range or which are now
extinct.
The preliminary laboratory study involves recording primary data such as those in Table 1. Not all of
these observations are available for all specimens and
additional data may be required by some research
designs. Primary data are used to estimate secondary
data such as body size and conformation, age classes

Table 1 Primary data and attributes of animal remains which may be recorded during a zooarchaeological study
Taxonomic identification of the specimen
Element represented by the specimen
Side (e.g., left, right, axial, unknown, or some other description)
Portion (e.g., proximal, distal, anterior, lateral, medial, shaft, unknown, or some other description)
Sex (description of morphological evidence for sex such as dental attributes, presence of sexually diagnostic features such as antlers
or the shape of a turtle plastron, or other characteristics)
Age (e.g., fused or unfused long bone, degree of wear on teeth, stage of tooth eruption, or other characteristics)
Count (number of specimens referred to the taxon, often abbreviated as NISP)
Weight (weight of specimens referred to the taxon)
Minimum number of individuals (abbreviated as MNI)
Modification (description of the modification(s) including: state of preservation; gnawed by a human, rodent, carnivore, or artiodactyl;
evidence for passing through a digestive system; butchering marks such as cut, hacked or chopped, sawed; evidence that the
specimen was burned, worked, trampled, weathered, or pathological; description of where the mark is located and evidence that the
mark was made by a metal or stone implement; other characteristics)
Measurements (definition of the dimension measured, or source of the description; actual measurement of the defined dimension)
Other data as required by the research design (e.g., incremental growth patterns in dental cementum, or mollusk valves; stable isotopes;
trace elements; DNA and molecular evidence, etc.)
Explanatory notes

ARCHAEOZOOLOGY 503

and sex ratios, relative frequencies of animals, frequencies of skeletal portions, dietary contributions,
and the cause and function of modifications. The
success of deriving data is dependent upon sampling
designs and sample size. The choice of which method
to use is related to the research question and the
materials being studied. Each method has serious
flaws, and interpretations derived from one method
should be verified with data obtained using other
methods. Methods are inter-related and build upon
each other. Thus, a single method is unlikely to serve
all analytical needs.
Identification is a multi-faceted procedure during
which the animal and the element represented by each
specimen is identified in terms of the part of the
animals skeleton or exoskeleton represented and
the animals taxonomic classification. Identification
requires professional training and access to a good
reference collection of modern skeletons. Skeletons in
a reference collection should be from animals whose
identification was confirmed before the skeleton was
prepared. During identification, each archaeological
specimen should be compared to the appropriate
reference materials. Only in extreme cases should
illustrations or archaeological specimens be used
to identify materials. In the case of rare or extinct
animals, it may be necessary to consult two or more
reference collections. In addition to the reference collection itself, biological information about current
and former ranges and zooarchaeological reports for
similar sites occupied recently or in the distant past
may be helpful. Some identifications are based on, or
confirmed by, DNA and molecular evidence.
Estimates of body size and conformation are based
on measurements of dimensions defined in published
protocols. Often one dimension of a specimen, such
as greatest length, is plotted against another dimension, such as greatest width; or a ratio is established
among dimensions. Body size or conformation may
be estimated from measurements using formulas
derived from modern animals or from descriptive
biological data for animals whose size or conformation is known. Such estimates support interpretations about animals in the past and variation within
populations but they require the consideration of
individual, regional, and breed variations. A change
in dimensions might suggest that the size or conformation of an animal, or of an entire population, had
responded to changes in climate, predation, or food
availability. Body size may also influence human
choices about which animals to capture or avoid capturing, which habitats to exploit, or how and when to
capture the animal. Changes in dimensions, body size,
or conformation are the primary signs of early animal
domestication.

Estimates of age-at-death and age classes are approached in different ways depending upon whether
the animal has determinate growth (grows toward an
optimal adult body size as in birds and mammals) or
indeterminate growth (grows throughout its life as in
mollusks, sharks, rays, bony fishes, amphibians, and
reptiles). In animals with determinate growth,
sequences in long bone maturation, tooth development and attrition, and growth increments such as
those in dental cementum may indicate the age at
which an individual animal died. In animals with
indeterminate growth, age-at-death is estimated
from body size and characteristics of growth increments in otoliths, vertebras, scutes, scales, and other
hard tissues. If several members of a species are represented, these observations can be used to create age
classes and to derive mortality or survivorship curves.
As with body size, estimates of age-at-death and age
classes require the consideration of other sources of
variation. Shifts in age classes, particularly if they
coincide with shifts in body size and sex ratios, may
indicate a population-wide response to phenomena
such as environmental change, predation rates, capture technologies, or domestication.
Estimates of the sex ratios are based on sexually
diagnostic features and the size of specimens. Sexually diagnostic characteristics include shape and the
presence of features typical of a specific sex. These
include horns and antlers in some male mammals,
spurs in some male birds, medullary bone in female
birds, the shape of horn cores in cattle, sheep, and
goats, and the shape of the pelvic girdle in some
mammals. In some animals, members of one sex may
be much larger than members of the other sex. Body
size or conformation may suggest the presence of
intact males, castrated males, and females, thereby
indicating domestic animals. As with body size and
age, estimating sex ratios requires the consideration
of multiple sources of variation. Changes in sex ratios
may signal changes in environmental variables, predation decisions, or domestication, especially if a
change in sex ratios coincides with changes in age
classes and body size.
Estimates of relative frequencies of animals are
usually based on the number of different animals
identified in the sample (richness), the number of
archaeological specimens referred to a specific animal
in the sample (NISP), estimate of the smallest number
of individuals necessary to account for all of the specimens referred to a specific animal (MNI), or the
weight of the specimens referred to a specific animal.
Unlike NISP, which describes the actual number of
specimens in the sample studied, MNI is an analytical
product and the estimate should not be confused with
actual individuals. To estimate MNI, it is necessary to

504 ARCHAEOZOOLOGY

consider not only the taxonomic identification and

the elements represented for the animal in question,
but also measurements, age, sex, and archaeological
context.
These measures or relative frequency may have
little to do with human behavior or the environments
in which people lived. Each method assumes that all
animal remains are equally influenced by chance
events, human behavior, site-formation processes,
field techniques, laboratory methods, and analytical
decisions, an assumption which is unlikely to be true.
Rarely can the interdependence or independence of
the specimens be assessed. Furthermore, it is unlikely
that any of these variables are uniform among animals, between sites, between temporal components of
the same site, or even among excavation units. On the
other hand, changes or continuities in relative frequencies are associated with environmental and cultural
phenomena which often can be evaluated in no other
way. Estimates of relative frequencies can be used to
assess diversity, equitability, optimal foraging strategies, social complexity, social identity, belief systems,
political alliances, and environmental change.
Frequencies of skeletal portions and utility indices
are based on the identity of the elements represented
in samples and their relationships to anatomical
regions, body parts, or butchering units. Most
methods quantify specimens in terms of the NISP
from various parts of the skeleton, a ratio between
the number of specimens observed and the number of
specimens expected, rank order of body parts represented, and indices based on the utility of carcass
portions. The specimens may also be evaluated in
terms of the minimum number of elements (MNE).
Such values distinguish between animals used for
food and those that were not and between samples
created by nonhuman scavengers and those created
by humans. Differences in skeletal frequencies may
indicate which animals were killed some distance
from the excavated deposit and which were killed
nearby, an important aspect of subsistence strategies
and a way to distinguish between domestic and wild
animals. This principle extends to the association of
skeletal frequencies with distinctions between sacred
and secular animals, site function, culture change
(acculturation and assimilation), trade, as well as
social hierarchies in complex societies and urban
environments.
Estimates of dietary contribution are used to assess
social and economic systems. These estimates are
most frequently based on ratios of skeletal weight to
body weight, estimates of weight for whole animals
multiplied by the MNI for that animal in the sample,
estimates of body size derived from measurements,

or data from reference collections and the literature.

Distinctions are made between whole animal weight,
edible meat weight, and nutritional contributions
measured as vitamins, minerals, protein, and fat.
Dietary value guided decisions about which animals
and resource areas to use most frequently, how much
effort to expend in finding and capturing a particular
animal, and which portions of a carcass to transport
from where it was acquired to where it was used.
Such studies are important when assessing human
demographic and health potentials.
The causes and functions of fragmentation levels,
fracture types, and other modifications provide information on many aspects of human and nonhuman
behavior. In combination with skeletal frequencies,
fragmentation and other modifications may distinguish between human and nonhuman uses of animal
parts or between food and nonfood animals. They
also provide evidence for site function, the nutritional
status of the human population, skinning, the ethnic
identity of the butcher, the social affiliation of the
consumer, butchery for household use instead of
trade, and the presence of specialist butchers producing standard cuts for a discriminating market
compared to a local householder intent on maximizing the amount of food and other products obtained
from the carcass. Modifications also provide evidence
for tools, ornaments, ritual sacrifices, displays, and
other uses.

Interpretation
Interpretations are based on the premise that an ecological relationship exists between humans and their
environment, especially between humans and other
animal populations, and that cultural, biological, and
physical aspects of this relationship are reflected in
animal remains. To study these relationships, however, one must appreciate that animals, including
humans, are never random scavengers. Instead, animal remains in archaeological samples reflect a complex, systemic, selective relationship which balanced
many interrelated components. These include the
structure and function of the natural environment, resource management preferences, technology,
material culture, site functions, settlement patterns,
human biology, social institutions, value systems, and
cultural history. It is due to this complexity that interdisciplinary collaboration, archives, ethnographic
observations, and experimental archaeology are important to zooarchaeologists. Many interpretations
rely upon similar observations in modern animal
populations, which are likely different from those in
the past for both domestic and wild animals.

ARCHAEOZOOLOGY 505
Site-Formation Processes

Much of what originally occurred at a site left no

evidence and what is recovered is altered from what
was originally deposited as animals are transformed
from a living creature into a human resource, garbage, an archaeological deposit, and, finally, an archaeological specimen. Ironically, some of what is
recovered may not represent human behavior at
the time the site was occupied and some of the
material may not represent human behavior at all.
These concerns are broadly lumped under the heading site-formation processes, the processes by which
an archaeological sample is formed. The primary outcomes of these processes are inaccurate representation of materials in relationship to their original
availability and use compounded by changes in the
relationships of the materials relative to each other
and noncomparable samples. Such processes are not
simply biases, they also provide information on former environments and on variations in the development, organization, and function of the site, and
other aspects of human behavior. Many primary
data are studied for information about this aspect of
human behavior; chief among these are the identity
and relative frequencies of specific animals, their age
and sex, frequencies of skeletal portions, nutritional
potential, and modifications.
People make many decisions about where to collect, hunt, trap, or fish and how to manage the
resources these actions acquire. After an animal is
acquired, the carcass steadily disintegrates into
smaller and smaller units due to food processing,
manufacturing, and trade until the surviving specimens are discarded, and long afterward. The first decision regards what parts of the resource are worth
the effort to transport from where they are acquired
to where they will be used. This decision balances the
cost in time and effort to transport all or part of the
animal against its potential nutritional, economic,
and social value. The outcome of these decisions
is that some parts of the animal never reach the
archaeological site.
Food preparation and redistribution practices
eliminate animal remains from the archaeological
record. Most of this destruction occurs as carcasses
are processed by removing invertebrate exoskeletons
or fracturing bones to render fat or to make them fit
into the available cooking vessel. Processing and
cooking creates increasingly smaller, less diagnostic
fragments. If small animals such as mice or insects
were eaten, their remains may enter the archaeological record only in coprolites, or not at all. Some
pieces of large or even small animals probably were
distributed throughout the community, a pattern that

may not be observed if the excavation focuses on

only one activity area. Additional scattering occurs
if skeletal parts were used for tools, rituals, or other
purposes. None of these practices was uniform for all
animals, between sites, or through time.
After use, humans play a role in determining which
animal remains survive the ravages of time. People
enhance preservation by burying refuse, thereby
decreasing the amount of exposure to forces such as
weathering, scavenging, and trampling. By discarding
vertebrate bones with mollusk valves, the length of
time vertebrate remains survive in acidic soils
increases. Unfortunately, burial does not ensure that
animal remains will be preserved where they were
deposited or that they will survive at all.
Other activities introduce animal remains into the
archaeological record which were not used by people
at all. Although some of these nonfood animals are
discarded in contexts that indicate their nonfood
uses, frequently the remains of nonfood animals are
mixed with those of food animals. Scavenging and
commensal animals are special types of nonfood animals to which the human-built environment offers
ideal habitat. Samples from cave sites, rock shelters,
and structures may contain remains of animals simply
seeking food and shelter. Such animals are not just
inadvertent inclusions in the archaeological record,
but may be site-formation agents and important indicators of prevailing environmental conditions from
the time the site was active until it was excavated.
Subsistence Strategies and Human Health

Subsistence strategies are the products of dynamic

interactions between people and their environments.
They are the ways by which people obtain nutrients
and other resources while ensuring that the costs
required to find, catch, transport, process, distribute,
and use them do not exceed their biological and social
benefits. Subsistence strategies also encompass the
manner of food preparation, the style of cooking,
the social rules governing when, how, by whom they
are prepared and eaten, and the circumstances under
which they are eaten.
People combine knowledge about the life histories
of animals to develop strategies that are energetically
efficient, provide a good return for effort, and balance
return against risk. Food preferences, site functions,
settlement patterns, human nutritional needs, the
number of people available to participate in the
effort, the means of capture, other benefits the resource might provide, and social obligations are also
considered in subsistence strategies. Although some
strategies are specialized and focus on one or a few
resources, others are generalized or diffuse, using

506 ARCHAEOZOOLOGY

many different resources. Most strategies are characterized by flexibility within a range of resources
defined as such by cultural standards. People develop
strategies on the basis of daily, monthly, seasonal, and
annual schedules and may alter the settlement size,
location, and density in response to opportunities
to acquire or manage resources at a given time and
place using a particular technology. These resource
choices may be interpreted from the identity of the
animals used, the body size of animals with indeterminate growth, age classes and sex ratios, relative
frequencies of animals, dietary contributions, and
incremental growth structures. Of particular importance is supporting evidence from oxygen isotopes,
which may provide information about the prevailing
temperature when the animal died and support inferences about season of death. Season of death may,
in turn, lead to information about the role of seasons
in settlement patterns, exchange systems, and other
activities.
Methods of disarticulating animals often correlate
with distance of the acquisition point from the consumption point, domestication, storage options,
exchange systems, social or ethnic affiliation, ritual
uses, and site function. Exchange might be through
reciprocity, redistribution, or markets, but it influences how much of an animal and what portions
were available to and used by a given household.
Exchanges over greater distances, especially trade in
food stuffs, raw materials, and finished products,
may be difficult to determine at the site of origin but
obvious at the endpoint in the exchange system. Both
trade and storage require processing the meat source
for long-term survival and this also may be evident.
Such interpretations are derived from the identity and
relative frequencies of the animals used, skeletal portions, dietary contribution, and modifications. Site
function (e.g., ritual center, military outpost, trading
post, hunt camp, farmstead, urban center) and evidence for colonization and migrations can also be
interpreted from such evidence.
Capture technology may be interpreted from the
identity and body size of prey animals combined with
knowledge of their preferred habits and habitats. The
presence of animals which are active at night, live in
deep waters, prefer solitary lives, have different strategies as young animals than they do as adults, raid
gardens, or avoid traps all provide information about
the techniques, schedules, and locations used by people to acquire them.
Although part of the diet can be observed in the
zooarchaeological record, ethnographic studies show
that plant rather than animal foods are generally
more frequently consumed. It is plant foods that provide the water-soluble vitamins that need to be

replenished daily. Therefore, a complete dietary study

should include human, plant, and nonhuman animal
remains. Human health is more typically studied by
human biologists, but the information about human
nutritional status, population size, age and sex ratios,
trace elements, stable isotopes, and activity patterns is
often critical to zooarchaeological interpretations. In
turn, the identity and frequencies of the animals used
(particularly if they might be famine foods), unusual
aspects of their size, age, and sex composition, skeletal portions used, dietary contributions, and some
aspects of modifications augment interpretations of
human health.
Animal Domestication and Animal Health

The impact of taming, management, and domestication on animals, human society, and the environment
was and continues to be great (see Animal Domestication). The study of animal domestication focuses
on defining the multiple origins of domestic animals,
identifying their wild progenitors, the processes and
stages of domestication, the spread of animal husbandry, and the cultural conditions that promoted
these economic changes. In some cases, close affiliation has resulted in an exchange of diseases between
domestic animals and people.
The characteristics of domestic animals which distinguish them from wild ones are reflected in their
size, conformation, variability, social behavior, and
the contexts within which they occur. Many of these
features do not survive in the archaeological record,
especially those associated with attributes of coat and
behavior, although exceptions do occur. Instead,
domestic animals are usually identified by virtue of
being outside the known range of their wild progenitors, from their size and conformation, age and sex
profiles, the relative frequencies of animals, the frequencies of skeletal portions, especially in the degree
of skeletal completeness, and evidence of congenital
abnormalities or diseases associated with domestication. Such evidence is augmented by DNA and
molecular studies which provide important insights
into their ancestry and affiliations (see DNA: Ancient;
Modern, and Archaeology). Indirect evidence of animal domestication, such as corrals, harnesses, and
artistic renderings, are also used. Tracing the routes
over which early domestic animals spread from centers of domestication to other parts of the world also
documents exchange routes, the spread of cultural
influences, migration routes, and colonization.
Technical and Social Uses of Animals

Animals also provide materials which may be used for

clothing, shelter, containers, tools, ornaments, and

ARCHAEOZOOLOGY 507

many other purposes. The feathers, wool, hair, fur,

hide, horn, and shell used for these purposes usually
do not survive archaeologically, but when they do
they greatly expand our understanding of the technical and social uses of animals. Some animals, usually
domestic ones, also provided dung used for plaster,
fertilizer, and fuel. The presence of some animals,
even scavengers and commensals, may provide indirect evidence for animal husbandry if they are associated with habitat alteration, grazing lands, or
animal fodder.
Gender, social identity, social hierarchies, and ideology were undoubtedly major influences in the use of
animals. High status in a ranked society may be signified by the use of rare or exotic animals, large animals,
a diverse range of animals, or portions of the carcass
that were more highly valued than were others. Animals serve as symbols of political authority, special
skills, and sacred precincts or events. They also are
totems of an age class, ritual society, or kin group.
Many animals with symbolic meaning have a higher
caloric cost or risk potential to capture, maintain, or
process. Social distinctions may be reflected by the
identity of the animals involved, their size, age, and
sex, relative frequencies of animals, frequencies of
skeletal portions, dietary contributions, and modifications associated with unusual butchering or food
preparation techniques. Such interpretations are
greatly assisted by indirect evidence such as figurines,
murals, ancient texts, ethno-historic accounts, and
ceramic motifs.
Similar evidence supports interpretations of cultural attitudes toward animals and food. Cultural attitudes include definitions of animals as preferred
foods, nonfoods, famine foods, funeral foods, feasting foods, and sacrificial foods. Pets are a form of
ritual relationship with animals, but many other sacred uses of animals are known. Sometimes animal
remains are associated with communal eating or
feasting or ritual sacrifices and offerings. Sacred uses
of animals are indicated by the presence of animals
not found in other contexts, relative frequencies of
animals, skeletal completeness, modifications, and
archaeological context. Such interpretations are
strengthened by burial offerings, association with ceremonial or communal structures, and by textual or
graphic evidence. Food taboos are worldwide and
may serve functional purposes in the communities
where they are found, but they are difficult to verify
because food taboos may result in the absence of
the taboo animal from the archaeological site. In
fact, all symbolic or ideological interpretations are
difficult to confirm because they are the product
of cultures and belief systems which are different
from our own.

Palaeoenvironments and Environmental Change

The study of palaeoenvironments and environmental

change is an important aspect of zooarchaeological
research (see Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction,
Methods). Humans are, in part, responsible for
some environmental changes because their activities
destroy, modify, and create habitats. People also overuse preferred resources and may force some animals
to be extirpated from their range or to go extinct. In
other cases, humans were not responsible for the
changes but their responses to alterations in available
resources are part of the environmental history of the
site and the region. Evidence of palaeoenvironments
and environmental change is primarily derived from
the presence of indicator animals, relative frequencies
of key animals, their size, growth habits, and age
classes, incremental growth structures, and body
part frequencies, all of which are also markers of
changes in seasonal periodicity, site function, settlement patterns, capture technologies, and other cultural behaviors. Because these are archaeological
materials, the product of human behavior, alternate
cultural interpretations must be eliminated as an explanation before concluding that changes in animal
remains are evidence for environmental change.
Separating the evidence for cultural changes, especially those related to seasonal periodicity, from evidence
for environmental change is particularly challenging.
As with all other interpretations, the accumulation of evidence pointing to the same conclusions
strengthens characterizations of former conditions,
whether the changes occurred during or as a consequence of occupation, and whether changes were
brought about by environmental conditions beyond
human control or by people as agents of change.
It is particularly important that interpretations of
environmental change be substantiated by evidence
from palaeoethnobotany, geomorphology, and soil
science. Geochemistry, particularly oxygen isotopes,
add the possibility of palaeothermometer proxies to
the tool kit.
As evidence for the impact of human behavior on
the environment grows, zooarchaeologists are made
aware that archaeological sites contain a record of
Holocene environmental history that often is not
available from any other source. Zooarchaeological
data are used in wildlife conservation, heritage management, and policy decisions. These applications
require that zooarchaeologists pay particular attention to methodological and interpretive flaws in order
to avoid unintended political and economic consequences when their data are used by conservation
advocates, resource managers, and other groups to
support or refute policy decisions and political

508 ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW

agenda. Such users are unfamiliar with the nuances of

the field and easily may use zooarchaeological data
inappropriately.

Ecofacts, Overview; Insect Analysis; Invertebrate

Analysis; Organic Residue Analysis; Preservation,
Modes of; Stable Isotope Analysis; Taphonomy; Trace
Element Analysis; Vertebrate Analysis.

Conclusion
This survey only touches the surface of this diverse
field. Although the interpretive aspects of zooarchaeological analysis are exciting, the animal remains themselves and the pathways they followed to become part
of the archaeological sample obstruct this goal. The
choice of method should be guided by the research
question. The forces which created the sample being
studied and the methods used to study it must be
considered when judging the merits of the interpretations. Changes begin to accumulate when the animal
enters the cultural setting and increase as the animal
becomes part of the archaeological deposit. Recovery,
identification, quantification, and interpretation also
introduce biases. In order to reach their full potential,
zooarchaeological interpretations should be based on
multiple lines of evidence and placed in their environmental and cultural contexts. Nonetheless, zooarchaeologists contribute important information to studies
of former environments, relationships between humans
and those environments, and the impact people have
had on the world in which they live.
See also: Bone Tool Analysis; Butchery and Kill Sites;
Coprolite Analysis; Cultural Ecology; DNA: Ancient;

Art

Further Reading
Bar-Yosef D (ed.) (2005) Archaeomalacology. Oxford: Oxbow
Books.
Claassen C (1998) Shells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davies J, Fabis M, Mainland I, Richards M, and Thomas R (eds.)
(2005) Health and Diet in Past Animal Populations. Oxford:
Oxbow Books.
Lauwerier RCGM and Plug I (eds.) (2004) The Future from the
Past: Archaeozoology in Wildlife Conservation and Heritage
Management. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Maltby M (ed.) (2006) Integrating Zooarchaeology. Oxford:
Oxbow Books.
Miracle P and Milner N (eds.) (2002) Consuming Passions and
Patterns of Consumption. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Mondini M, Munoz S, and Wickler S (eds.) (2004) Colonisation,
Migration and Marginal Areas: A Zooarchaeological Approach.
Oxford: Oxbow Books.
ODay SJ, Van Neer W, and Ervynck A (eds.) (2004) Behaviour
behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status
and Identity. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Reitz KJ and Wing ES (2008) Zooarchaeology, 2nd edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ruscillo D (ed.) (2006) Recent Advances in Ageing and Sexing
Animal Bones. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Vigne JD, Helmer D, and Peters J (eds.) (2005) The First Steps in
Animal Domestication. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

See: Interpretive Art and Archaeology.

ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW
Jane Balme, University of Western Australia,
Crawley, WA, Australia
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
core In stone tool manufacture, the core is the stone nodule or
fragment from which flakes are removed. Some of the removed
flakes are then used as tools or modified further. The core may
also be used as a tool.

flake In stone tool manufacture, a flake is a fragment removed

from the core.
blade In stone tool manufacture, a blade is a long thin flake
usually defined as at least twice as long as it is wide.
point In stone tool manufacture, a blade that has been created
or modified to form a point at one end.
Solutrean A term used to refer to a stone tool making tradition
of the European Upper Palaeolithic existing from about 21 000
to 16 000 years BP.
australopithecine A member of the genus Australopithecus,
the oldest species of which lived about 4.2 million years ago and
the most recent became extinct about 1 million years ago.

ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW 509

knapper An individual who makes stone tools by percussion or
pressure.
Dong son A Bronze Age culture dating from about 800 to
200 BC. Originally centered on the Red River Valley in Vietnam,
it spread to other areas in Southeast Asia and southern China.
Lapita pottery A pottery type, some of which are distinctively
decorated. Lapita pottery is associated with the eastward
colonization of the Pacific from about 3500 years ago.

Introduction
Archaeology is commonly defined as the study of the
human past through the analysis of the material
remains left behind. These include plant and animal
remains as well as our ancestors bones, all of which
can reveal much, for example, about our ancestors
physical appearance, food choices, and the environment within which they lived. The other main kind of
material remains studied by archaeologists are artifacts. The simplest definition of an artifact is anything
that has been modified, made or used by humans or
their ancestors. Thus an artifact can be string made
from fibrous bark, a basket woven from the string, or
simply a piece of unmodified bark that has been used,
for example, to carry water.
In combination with other archaeological evidence,
the study of artifacts can provide information about
many things including our ancestors technology
(why things were made in the way that they were),
their cognitive abilities, the kinds of activities they
undertook, how they organized themselves socially,
whether they traded with other groups, how they
moved around their landscape, and some aspects of
their ideology. The problem for archaeologists is how
to get such information from objects that cannot
speak for themselves.

Survival of Artifacts
When considering the history of artifacts and their
development at different times and in different places,
it is important to appreciate how few of the artifacts
used by our ancestors have survived to be found
today. All artifacts are subject to decay, but the
speed at which they decay depends on the materials
from which they are made and the environment in
which they are left. Some of the decay is caused by
physical processes such as wind, rain, and sun exposure. Fragile items are particularly susceptible to these
processes. Chemical processes also cause decay. For
example, iron artifacts rust when exposed to oxygen
and moisture and acids contained within surrounding
soils dissolve artifacts made from plant and animal
products. Biological processes actively decay artifacts
made from plant and animal products that attract
scavengers, insects, and bacteria.

Survival of artifacts in the archaeological record

therefore depends on the extent to which they are
protected from all of these elements. Bacteria thrive
in moisture, and biological organisms depend on
oxygen. Rapid burial or enclosed spaces such as caves,
protect artifacts from physical processes (see Caves
and Rockshelters; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded).
Very dry sites without moisture and places that restrict access to oxygen, such as bogs and frozen sites
(see Frozen Sites and Bodies; Sites: Waterlogged), protect organic artifacts.
Sometimes artifacts survive because people in the
past have taken steps to deliberately protect them
from decay. Good examples of these are the ancient
Egyptian practice of mummification of important
people and the protection of their goods by building
elaborate tombs. It is important to recognize, however, that such circumstances are exceptional and,
although some of the situations mentioned above will
protect artifacts for thousands of years, only those
artifacts made of the most durable materials will
survive for long periods. All of this means that, although our knowledge of the variety of artifacts made
and used in the very recent past is relatively complete,
the further we go back in time the less likely we are
to recover the full range of artifacts made and used
by people. In addition, the kinds of artifacts available to investigate the deep past is biased toward only
the most robust materials, in particular those made
of stone.

A Short History of Artifacts

It is easy to think of technological change as evolving
in unidirectional manner from simple stone artifacts
to the complex variety present today. There is also the
tendency to equate technological change with technological improvement. Neither of these two statements
is true. Technological change has not been unidirectional as not all groups of people develop or make
use of all technologies available to them and there are
many examples where the use of specific technologies
has ceased altogether or for long periods. Some of
the reasons for peoples choices in the use of technology are discussed under the next section, but it is
important to stress the role of ideology in the direction of artifact change. The use of particular artifacts
is the result of peoples perceived needs, some of
which may not lead to the use of the most efficient
artifacts. For example, seeking strictly economic reasons for the cessation of pottery production despite its
earlier established presence in some regions of prehistoric Britain and Ireland may not be fruitful.
Having said all of that, it is possible to make the
generalization that, over time, the variety of artifacts

510 ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW

in the world has increased. The oldest recognizable

artifacts are made from stone and were found at
Gona, Ethiopia (Figure 1). They date to about 2.6
2.5 million years ago. No fossils of human ancestors
were found with these artifacts, and there are several
possible candidates for their makers. The most likely
is the early hominin Australopithecus garhi, the
fossils of which have been found in contemporary
sites elsewhere in Ethiopia. It is hard to know exactly
what the artifacts were used for, because there is little
associated archaeological material to provide clues.
However, stone artifacts dated to about 2.5 million
years ago from another Ethiopian site, Bouri, have
been found associated with fossil animal bones that
appear to have cut marks, suggesting that these artifacts may have been used to remove meat from bone.
The Gona stones are recognizably artifacts because
they have fractured in such a way that their deliberate modification is not in doubt (see Lithics: Manufacture). It is possible that stones were used as tools
well before this time but that, because they were not
modified, they are not recognizable as artifacts. It is
also very likely that tools were previously made of

organic materials such as wood and have not survived

to be discovered today.
These oldest stone artifacts are simply either pieces
of stone flaked from a larger piece (core) and the
cores from which they derive. The flakes were made
by striking a hand-held pebble against another piece
to produce flakes that were then used as tools, although the core itself could also be used as a tool.
Only a few flakes were removed from each core
before it was then discarded. The resulting artifact
assemblage is relatively unpatterned. Although it is
not exactly clear which hominin species made the
very oldest artifacts, it is almost certain that Homo
habilis, a species that lived in Africa from about
2.4 million years ago to just after 1.8 million years
ago, made stone tools because their fossils have been
found in clear association with stone artifacts.
These early stone artifacts may appear rudimentary
and we cannot be sure what they were used for, apart
from the removal of meat at some sites, but their
presence nevertheless tells us many things about our
ancestors living that that time. First, the artifact
makers understood the different flaking properties

2
1

3
4

7
8

0
cm

10

Figure 1 The words oldest stone artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia. Reprinted from Journal of Archaeological Science, Vol. 27, Semaw S,
The worlds oldest stone artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their implications for understanding stone technology and patterns of human
evolution between 2.61.5 million years ago, 11971214, Copyright (2000), with permission from Elsevier.

ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW 511

of various stone sources available. The selection of

raw materials to make artifacts was not random.
Stones for making artifacts were selected because
they were especially good for flaking to make sharp
edges. Flaking also requires good handeye coordination. In addition, studies have shown that most of
the artifacts from these old assemblages were made
by right-handed knappers. Right-handedness is a
uniquely human trait in the modern world, and
appears to have been present in this early stage of
our evolution. Other aspects of life are demonstrated
by the fact that many artifacts have been found several
kilometers away from the rock source suggesting that,
rather than moving around the landscape randomly,
activities were planned.
Over time, and possibly associated with increases
in brain size, our ancestors learned more about the
properties of different types of rocks and developed
new ways of modifying them, resulting in a great
diversity in the kinds of tools created. For example,
rather than concentrating on flakes struck with a
single blow from a core, more blows were used to
deliberately shape the core so that blades and points
could be produced. New techniques, including pressing to remove very small flakes, began to be used to
control the shape of artifacts producing tools such as
the refined leaf-shaped Solutrean points made in
Europe by about 20 000 years ago (Figure 2). Over
time, these artifacts became increasingly diverse both
between and within regions as new techniques for
modifying artifacts were developed and as groups
produced their own distinctive styles and techniques.
Although there are no surviving artifacts made
from plants at any of the early australopithecine and

Figure 2 Pressure-flaked Solutrean point.

H. habilis sites, some of the fossil animal bones present at these sites may have been used as tools in a
relatively unmodified form. Perhaps the sharp point
made on a broken bone may have been used to pierce
skin, or a sharp edge may have been used as a knife.
However, it is extremely difficult to identify wear
patterns from use on such fragmented materials. Microscopic wear patterns on bone tools from the Swartkrans and Sterkfontein sites in South Africa, occupied
between about 1.8 and 1.0 million years ago, resemble
experimental bone used to probe termite mounds suggesting that Australopithecus robustus ate termites as
part of their diet.
The oldest surviving incontrovertible tools made
from plant material are four wooden tools from
400 000-year-old sediments at Schoningen in Germany,
presumably made by Homo heidelbergensis. Three
of these are long (1.812.25 m), slender poles and
have a sharpened point at one end, suggesting that
they may have been used as spears. The fourth wooden
tool has both ends sharpened and is 78 cm long.
As far as it is possible to tell, all artifacts made
before the appearance of our own species, Homo
sapiens, appear to be for obtaining food. As well
as creating a greater diversity of these extractive
tools in a variety of raw materials, H. sapiens began
to decorate tools and to create artifacts such as beads,
pendants, and carved objects that were not directly
associated with food extraction. Some of the earliest
have been recovered from Blombos Cave on the southern cape shoreline of South Africa. Artifacts excavated
from this site include a group of 41 perforated (presumably so that they can be strung as beads) estuarine
tick shells dated to about 76 000 years ago. Beads and
pendants seem to be ubiquitous wherever modern
humans have been found. They occur in western and
eastern Europe from about 40 000 years ago and in
Australia from before 30 000 years ago (Figure 3).
Other early decorative objects include an incised
piece of ochre from Blombos Cave dated to about
70 000 years ago and, from European sites, animal
carvings dated to over 30 000 years ago. Particularly
abundant in western and eastern Europe between
about 25 000 and 23 000 years ago are small human
figurines most of which appear to represent females
(Figure 4).
As people dispersed throughout the world, the
artifacts that they made increasingly diversified. People who continued to move around the landscape
undoubtedly used containers made from plant material such as bark or woven fiber and animal skin.
Although very old examples of these have not survived, impressions of cordage and textile items on
burnt clay were found in hearths from Upper Palaeolithic sites in Germany, Russia, and Moravia, some as

512 ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW

Figure 3 More than 32 000-year-old beads from northwest Australia. Photo courtesy: Kate Morse.

Figure 5 Clay tokens suggested to be the earliest evidence

for record keeping.

Figure 4 Figurine about 25 000 years old from Willendorf,

Austria (height about 11 cm).

old as 27 000 years ago from Moravian sites. The

plasticity of clay also made it a suitable material to
fabricate bricks for structures by some societies that,
from about 10 000 years ago in some parts of the
world, began to stay in one camp for longer periods
and, rather than hunting and collecting all their
foods, began to produce some of their own food.
In food-producing societies, the tasks associated
with food production could be undertaken by fewer
people, thus allowing greater specialization in craft
production. Growing populations in these societies

placed new demands on technology. For example,

soil tilling of a large field requires ploughs and growing
villages require sanitation technology. The centralized
production of food also instigated the production of
new kinds of artifacts needed to symbolize the measurement of quantities of food for exchange. It has
been suggested that small tokens (Figure 5) that occur
from about 9000 years ago in public buildings on
many sites in the Middle East may represent counters
or symbols for particular quantities of materials such
as grain. Writing, another symbolic development,
required the fabrications of specific pointed tools (styluses) to make marks.
Technology changes as human societies evolve. In
societies with little economic change, there is often
less pressure for technological change. Instead, technology changes to provide greater efficiency in already-established practices or as a response to social
demands (which may or may not result in greater
efficieny). Artifacts diversify as new technologies are
developed and new materials and new ways of
making traditional artifacts are created. Which artifacts are made reflect the histories and needs of the

ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW 513

society making them. For example, fishing technologies are made and used by groups who live on the
coast, and grinding technology by groups who rely on
seeds. Once again it is important to recognize that the
relationship between environment and technology is
not always straightforward. A well-known example is
the cessation of fish eating and associated technology
by coastal Tasmanians about 3500 years ago.
It is also important to recognize that the driving
force for technology development is not necessarily
directly linked to food collecting. For example, it has
been argued that metallurgical technology in west
Mexico between AD 600 and 700 was driven by the
function of the artifacts as ritual and status items, so
that qualities such as color and sound rather than
utilitarian properties such as hardness and durability
were the drivers of the technological development.

Explaining the Diversity of Artifacts

Societies needs vary according to their economic
bases and these in themselves are inextricably intertwined with their historical and social development.
People who live near resource-rich coasts are likely
(although not always) to make equipment to extract
marine foods but which equipment they use to catch
fish, for example, will depend on their other technologies (do they have a fiber technology needed to make
nets?) and social decisions such as whether they want
to catch large numbers of fish cooperatively with nets
and traps or individually using spears or lines.
But, clearly there are factors other than economy
that influence the diversity of artifacts over time and
place. Even artifacts made at the same time and for
the same purpose vary just think about the variety
of corkscrew designs. Some of this variety is linked to
the fact that different raw materials behave in different ways and so the shape of the artifact is affected by
the raw materials from which it is made. Other variations are the result of different design solutions for the
same functions and style differences, such as decoration, that are not necessarily associated with the function of the artifact. Artistic tradition may also play a
role in the design of objects, and the creative philosophy of the culture affects the variety of designs made.
In summary, artifact diversity depends on the functions
for which the makers intend the object to be used
(which is in turn dependent on historical and social
circumstance), the raw material with which the artifacts are made, the technology associated with production, and the styles chosen by the artifact makers.
Different raw materials have different physical
properties that make them suitable for some designs
and not others. An object made to contain water must
be steep-sided to hold the water and should be made

of relatively nonporous material. Which nonporous

material the artisan selects then depends on what is
available (and at what cost), their skill at manipulating different raw materials, and ultimately how they
want the artifact to appear. All of these factors are
affected by the social context in which the artifact is
made. Social context affects raw material use because
it dictates fashions and because it influences access to
raw materials through internal politics and through
political associations with neighbouring communities
that might provide access to specific raw materials
in their region.
Technology associated with production affects the
final form of an object. There are some objects that
can only be made when a particular technology is
available but objects with the same function can
be made using different technologies. A bottle can be
made with glass, animal hide, or clay. A ceramic bowl
can be shaped by hand, with a coil technique or by
using a potters wheel. A potters decision about
which technique to use will depend on not only the
technology available but also on individual choice
that will be influenced by their social situation.
Within societies, individuals and groups also affect
how objects are made. If they are the makers themselves, how the object is made is influenced by such
factors as economic circumstances (what materials
they have access to) and how they want to be perceived by others. Do they want to express their status
or association within a particular subgroup in a society? Is the artifact being made for themselves or are
they making it for someone else? In modern industrial
societies, changes in technology, design, and fashion
are in the interests of manufacturers. But the essential
social influences on artifact design have not changed
much since the emergence of H. sapiens.
As in all human societies, the makers of objects are
influenced by their teachers. Groups of people who
interact frequently develop designs and ways of
making objects that are characteristic of their own
social circles. With the dispersal of people throughout
the world, there are a great variety of approaches to
the same technological problem but styles and motifs
are often instantly recognizable. In addition to how
artisans learn to make objects, there are circumstances
in which they may choose to emphasize affiliations
for example, to demonstrate their belonging to a
particular social group. Sometimes belonging might
be expressed by the use of a particular kind of artifact.
For example, the decorated bronze cast Dong Son
drums of Southeast Asia (Figure 6) were first made
probably in north Vietnam sometime before the sixth
century BC and quickly spread (through local manufacture and trade) to south and southwest China,
Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Indonesia. This dispersal

514 ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW

in culturally different regions does not necessarily

indicate that the drums were used for the same purpose but it does indicate a shared ideology between
these disparate groups.
Sometimes a shared ideology is expressed in the
ways that people make a variety of artifacts. For
example, about 3000 years ago, Chavin, a distinctive
art style originating at the site of Chavn de Huantar,
spread across what had previously been highly
regionalized valleys in what is now Peru. This style
was apparent in many different types of artifacts in
the region including pottery, sculpture, and textiles.
The common style expressed a unification of disparate groups that made it possible to encourage
trade between the various highland valleys.
There are also circumstances where people choose to
emphasize difference. This may be expressed by groups
of people deliberately choosing to produce one artifact
rather than another or deliberately spurning artifacts
used by other cultures. Consider, for example, the use
of Christian crosses and Buddha statues.
With the advent of globalization, regional differences in artifacts are no longer as obvious. This is
particularly so for industrialized countries where
most people have access to the Internet and to material goods from all over the world. There seems to be
an emphasis on unification between these countries.

Figure 6 Dong Son drum (height about 26 cm).

Figure 7 Viking comb made from antler.

In developing countries or isolated places, where this

outside access is not readily available or where
emphasis is placed on maintaining traditional customs, the cultural derivation of the artifacts is much
more obvious.

The Challenge for Archaeologists

Knowing why artifacts vary gives some idea of the
kinds of questions about the past that can be answered from the artifacts. Perhaps the most common
question asked is what was an artifact used for?
Sometimes the answer is relatively easy because the
artifact is similar to something used today. For example, the frequency of occurrence of items such as that
in Figure 7 in Viking sites and their similarity to our
hair combs means that such items can be convincingly
argued to be used for the same purpose. However, the
older the artifact, the more difficult it is to make such
convincing analogies. Interpretation of the function
of, for example, a stone artifact from the deep past
depends on analogies made with modern stone tool
using groups (see Ethnoarchaeology), experiments
(see Experimental Archaeology; Lithics: Analysis,
Use Wear), and identification of residues on the
artifact (see Blood Residue Analysis; Chemical Analysis Techniques). The context of the artifact, in particular its association with other materials, can also
help identify its function.
One of the difficulties in asking the function question is that not all artifacts are used for a single
purpose. A stone artifact may be made initially to
remove the bark from a stick but it can be subsequently used in its initial form to do other tasks, or it may
be remodeled to suit some other purpose. The more
durable the raw material the more often it can be
reused, either for its original purpose (such as modern
recycling of roofing iron) or for a new use (such as the
milk powder tin recreated as a childs toy) (Figure 8).
The display of excavated artifacts in museums today
could also be considered another example of recycling (from their original function to an educational
function).
The recycling example highlights the importance of
context in the interpretation of artifacts. An artifact

ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW 515

Figure 8 Toy roller truck made from sugar can, wire, and fabric collected at Balgo community by Peter Bindon and Moya Smith. Photo
courtesy: Moya Smith, Western Australian Museum.

sitting on someones mantelpiece with no information

about the context in which it was found says something about the person on whose mantelpiece it stands
(why do they choose to place this artifact in this
place?) but very little about the people who made the
object. Context is important, then, not only because it
helps provide information about artifact function, but
because it is possible to say something about the people who made it. In addition, knowing where the
artifact was positioned in a site can reveal its age
relative to other artifacts (see Sites: Formation Processes). Spatial analysis can tell us what structures and
other artifacts it is associated with (see Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites) and perhaps who it
was used by.
Artifacts found in the same context are referred to
as an assemblage. For example, a silver bowl might be
used for many purposes, but if the bowl is found with
tableware it may be concluded that it was used for
serving food or drink. If the bowl was found with
objects of ritual, it might be concluded that the bowl
was used as part of ritual behavior. Objects made of
rare materials, especially when they occur in patterned contexts, and the presence of rare items
whose only function is symbolic might suggest status.
Knowledge of context in which the artifacts were
found and the variables that affect the shape, style,
and materials used in the artifacts are guides to
the types of questions that can be answered. There
are questions of cognitive abilities such as those associated with making the first stone artifacts, of technology available, and, depending on the varieties of
technologies evident in an assemblage, whether

all technologies were available to the entire community. There are questions about access to raw
materials as evidenced by the rarity or otherwise of
high-quality materials and the use of recycling, and
there are questions of social networks of which the
Chavin art style and Dong Son drums are examples.
Differences in status or roles within groups are determined by interpreting patterns in the types of
artifacts found in association with each other. For
example, societies with hierarchical divisions would
be indicated by the presence of rare materials used
especially in symbolical artifacts such as jewelry.

Analysis and Interpretation

It should be clear that the first step in extracting
a story about the past from artifacts is to think about
what it is that you want to know from the artifacts
the research question. Examples of questions and
approaches to extracting information from different
types of artifacts can be found in the sections in this
encyclopaedia dealing with different kinds of material remains. (see Bone Tool Analysis; Fiber Artifacts; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Pottery Analysis:
Stylistic; Vitreous Materials Analysis). The main
general point to be made is that questions are not
really worth answering unless they are set in some kind
of theoretical context. Different kinds of theoretical
approaches account for differences between the questions asked by archaeologists and the way in which
they go about answering them. Remember that,
whatever your approach, there has to be a reason for
asking the question.

516 ARTIFACTS, OVERVIEW

It is also important to remember that, although

popular archaeology books often concentrate on
spectacular and rare artifacts, it is often mundane
and common objects such as stone tools and pottery
that enable a more complete story to be told. One
example is the suggestion that the apparently mundane change from haphazard to ordered rows in
toothbrush bristle placement in the late eighteenth
century reflects an increasing importance of discipline
and order in Western society at that time.
Using artifacts to answer a question almost
involves all three steps of data gathering, analysis,
and interpretation. Obviously, these are linked in
that the data gathered and the analyses conducted
have to be able to answer the question. Imagine you
have an assemblage of pottery from a site and want to
know about trade networks. You might divide the
assemblage into pottery made locally and that made
in other places. You need to select a series of attributes
to distinguish different types in the pottery
(see Classification and Typology). The source of pottery may be identifiable by style or raw material (see
Pottery Analysis: Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis). The result would be a set of types based on one or
both of these selected attributes. The proportions of
each type present at the site could then be compared to
answer the question. If only locally made pottery is
present at your site, the people living there in the past
did not trade (or at least not in pottery). The same
assemblage could be used to answer a question about
status. This time the assemblage would need to be
sorted by attributes indicative of status. These might
include the quality of clay (whether coarse or bone
china), the maker, or possibly the design. Decisions
about which attribute best indicates status will, of
course, depend on the historical context of the site
and your theoretical outlook but the principle is the
same. Take note, however, that for most of our past it
is very difficult to draw a direct analogy between what
we might consider to be a style or object of high status.
The analysis approach described above is a very
simplified version of what actually happens. In practice, archaeologists use as much evidence as possible
to answer their research question. A study of status
will not rely on one kind of artifact but several analyses of the various artifacts represented at the site as
well as analyses of other kinds of archaeological evidence represented at the site. For example, the timing
of the settlement of the central Pacific has been suggested by analyzing the distribution of dates associated with finds of a finely decorated type of
pottery known as Lapita.

Conclusion
Our record of artifacts used in the past is far from
complete, but it is our main source of knowledge
about our ancestors. There are many reasons why
artifacts have varied over time and place including
differences in availability of raw material, technologies, and the choices people have made about what
they want to make and how they want to make them.
As individuals or groups of individuals ultimately
make artifacts, their relationship within the society
in which they live clearly affects the way in which
they make objects.
By themselves and out of context, artifacts can say
little about the past. They can only speak when they
are analyzed and interpreted to answer questions
asked in the present. Although we cannot have the
same experiences as the artifact makers of the past,
studying the variety of artifacts recovered from the
past can nevertheless say a lot about how human
culture came to be as diverse as it is today.
See also: Blood Residue Analysis; Bone Tool Analysis; Caves and Rockshelters; Chemical Analysis
Techniques; Classification and Typology; Ethnoarchaeology; Experimental Archaeology; Fiber
Artifacts; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Lithics: Analysis,
Use Wear; Manufacture; Metals: Chemical Analysis;
Primary Production Studies of; Pottery Analysis:
Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic; Sites: Mounded and Unmounded; Waterlogged;
Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites;
Vitreous Materials Analysis.

Further Reading
Andrefsky W (1998) Lithics: Macroscopic Approaches to Analysis.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Balme J and Paterson A (eds.) (2006) Archaeology in Practice: A
Student Guide to Archaeological Analyses. Blackwell Publishing.
Banning EB (2000) The Archaeologists Laboratory. Analysis of
Archaeological Data. New York: Kluwer/Plenum.
Blackwell LR and dErrico F (2001) Evidence of termite foraging by
Swartkans early hominids. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98: 13581363.
Henshilwood C, dErrico F, Vanhaeren M, van Niekerk K, and
Jacobs Z (2004) Middle Stone Age shell beads from South
Africa. Science 304(5669): 404.
Hosler D (1994) The Sounds and Colors of Power: The Sacred
Metallurgical Technology of Ancient West Mexico. Chicago:
MIT Press.
Loney HL (2000) Society and technological control: A critical
review of models of technological change in ceramic studies.
American Antiquity 65(4): 646668.

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS 517

Orton C, Tyers P, and Vince A (1993) Pottery in Archaeology.
Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Semaw S (2000) The worlds oldest stone artefacts from Gona,
Ethiopia: Their implications for understanding stone technology
and patterns of human evolution between 2.61.5 million years
ago. Journal of Archaeological Science 27: 11971214.
Shackel P (1993) Personal Discipline and Material Culture: An
Archaeology of Annapolis, Maryland, 16951870. Knoxville,
TN: University of Tennessee Press.

Soffer O, Adovasio JM, Illingworth JS, Amirkhanov HA, Praslov

ND, and Street M (2000) Palaeolithic perishables made permanent. Antiquity 74(286): 812.
Thieme H (1997) Lower Palaeolithic hunting spears from Germany. Nature 385: 807810.
Toth N and Schick K (1993) Making Silent Stones Speak: Human
Evolution and the Dawn of Technology. New York: Simon and
Schuster.

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS,

AND FORESTS
William Honeychurch, Yale University, New Haven,
CT, USA
Joshua Wright, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA,
USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
absolute dating Any form of dating material remains that
yields a calendar-based date range and as used here, usually refers
to radiocarbon dating of organic materials.
bit wear analysis Macro and microscopic study of the lower
premolars of ancient horses to determine the presence of
abrasion marks suggestive of bitting and therefore, use of horses
for transport.
Eneolithic A technology-based period of time between the
terminal Neolithic and early Bronze Age when copper metallurgy
was practiced. This period is also sometimes referred to as the
Chalcolithic in western Eurasia and more broadly as the Early
Metal Age in eastern Eurasia.
kurgan Term associated with Eurasian steppe archaeology
referring to an artificial mound made of earth or stone, or both,
and covering a burial.
mobile pastoralism Also known as nomadic pastoralism and
defined as a subsistence economy based on the herding of
animals by way of periodic residential movement.
Scythian A term used to refer to a specific Iron Age group of
steppe peoples in western Central Eurasia but also refers to a
material culture horizon having artifact types, styles, and cultural
and technological practices in common and found across Central
Eurasia.
steppe Diverse forms of grassland that characterize major
vegetational zones across Central Eurasia ranging from forested
or alpine steppe to desert or arid steppe.

Eurasia encompasses a majority of what archaeologists refer to as the Old World. Its heartland, known
as Central Eurasia, is a broad belt of steppe grasslands
fringed by tracts of coniferous forest to the north and
to the south by high mountains and deserts punctuated

with inland seas. Beyond these mountains and deserts

are the temperate regions of Eurasia that gave rise to
pristine civilizations built upon intensive agriculture,
urban centers, and aggregated populations. In contrast, Central Eurasia is arid and cold, having extreme
shifts in seasonal temperature, low population densities, animal centered subsistence economies and cultures adapted to this harsh setting. With time, the first
Central Eurasians adapted and prospered under these
conditions, such that their descendants eventually
epeopled the New World, forged roads of communication between Old World civilizations, and assembled
some of the most impressive empires in human history.
The sociocultural strategies that opened the
Eurasian steppe lands to human habitation provide
an underlying commonality to the prehistory of this
diverse macro-region. We focus on the eastern flank of
Central Eurasia, an area where pastoral nomads still
drive their herd animals among grasslands, forests, and
deserts today. The historical geographer, Owen Lattimore, used the term Inner Asia for this area which
overlaps the borders of several contemporary nations.
For our purposes, Inner Asia comprises Mongolia and
Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia provinces of northwestern China, Eastern Kazakhstan,
and the South Siberian regions of Altai, Minusinsk
basin, Tuva, Baikal, and Buriatiia (Figure 1). When
influential developments occur on the periphery of
Inner Asia, we expand our discussion to include
those regions.

Palaeolithic Adaptations of Inner Asia

Major issues in the archaeology of the Palaeolithic in
Central Eurasia concern the entrance and adaptation
of hominid groups in the region. Foremost is the

518 ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS

RUSSIA

14

16

12
8

21
15
5 41
7

KAZAKHSTAN

19

Minusinsk

24 Altai

Tuva

UZBEKISTAN

30

11

32

MONGOLIA

6 31
18 10

Xinjiang

2536
2

27
22
Inner Mongolia

20

KYRGYZSTAN
Tarim Basin

TAJIKISTAN

13

33
26

29
Lake
Zabaikal'e
Baikal 35

23

500

Kilometers

17 28

Gansu

Ordos

9
Ningxia

CHINA

34

Figure 1 The geography and major archaeological sites of Inner Asia and peripheral regions, as numbered: (1) Ulalinka, (2) TeshikTash, (3) Obi-Rakhmat, (4) Denisova Cave, (5) Okladnikov Cave, (6) Tsagaan Agui, (7) Kara-Bom, (8) Malta, (9) Shuidonggou, (10)
Shabarak Us, (11) Tamsagbulag, (12) Ust-Ida, (13) Budulan, (14) Botai, (15) Suchanicha, (16) Arkaim/Sintashta, (17) Zhukaigou, (18)
Zuukh, (19) Atasu, (20) Qizilchoqa, (21) Karasuk cemetery, (22) Nanshangen, (23) Arzhan, (24) Pazyryk, (25) Issyk, (26) Uushigiin Ovor,
(27) Xiaobaiyang, (28) Maoqinggou, (29) Khujir, (30) Egiin Gol/Burkhan Tolgoi, (31) Tebsh Uul, (32) Noyon Uul, (33) Tsaram, (34)
Daodunzi, (35) Ivolga, (36) Tuzusai.

problem of the initial peopling of the cold grassland

environment of Central Eurasia. At what point did
human ancestors first appear in the region, from
where, and what technologies supported their existence in this novel setting? Having arrived, how did
they adapt and interact, particularly as evidenced by
the lithic technologies they left behind? These are
basic questions that concern early human mobility
and its development, a topic critical to the archaeology of Central Eurasia during all periods.

Pleistocene pebble industries at the sites of Kuldara and

Karatau represent the early evidence of hominid dispersals along the edges of Inner Asia. Early sites in Siberia
at Ulalinka, Mokhovo I, and Diring Yuriakh have
flaked stone assemblages thought to date prior to
300 000 years ago, however, whether these assemblages
are actually human-made has been disputed. The current evidence for hominid entry into Siberia is younger
than 200 000 years and is marked by Middle Palaeolithic technologies (see Siberia, Peopling of).

The Lower Palaeolithic

The Middle Palaeolithic

Discovery of early hominids at the site of Dmanisi

(1.8 MYA) in the Caucuses and finds in Northeast Asia
approaching 1 MYA has greatly strengthened the understanding and possible explanations of Lower
Palaeolithic finds in Central Eurasia. With the exception of the skull fragment discovered at the site of
Salkhit (northeastern Mongolia) in 2006 and now
under intensive study, no other early homined fossils
have yet been found in the steppe lands. However, the
artifact sites of the earliest steppe inhabitants have been
discovered, demonstrating that the range of early hominids expanded to include most of Eurasia. The artifact
record is not without problems. Questions arise as to
whether artifact assemblages claimed as evidence for
Middle Pleistocene manufacture are not in fact the
results of geological processes. In other cases, lithic
assemblages may be indisputable, but were found
from geological contexts which make their periodization uncertain. In south Tajikistan, Lower and Middle

The Middle Palaeolithic archaeological record of

Inner Asia is more detailed. It is part of a Eurasiawide technological and cultural sequence. Three
major divisions of stone tool technology have been
identified at Middle Palaeolithic sites: Mousterian
forms, Levallois type technologies, and incipient large
blade industries with connections to Upper Palaeolithic
technologies. These technologies form a chronological
separation among sites, and also demonstrate the relationship of Inner Asia Middle Palaeolithic technologies
with those of Western Eurasia where the same broad
sequence has long been known. Further links to Western Eurasia were the discovery in 1939 of a Neanderthal sub-adult skeleton at the cave site of Teshik-Tash
and the 2003 excavation of sub-adult teeth and cranial
fragments from the Obi-Rakhmat rockshelter, which
may also be related to Neanderthal populations. Both
sites are located on the western slopes of the Tian Shan
Mountains of Uzbekistan.

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS 519

Some of the most important Middle Palaeolithic sites

of Inner Asia are those of the Anui River valley in the
Altai Mountains. The principal Middle Palaeolithic
sequence is found at the sites of Denisova Cave and
Okladnikov Cave with the former providing the bulk
of the record. The Denisova cave habitation dates back
possibly as early as 130 000 years ago and covers the
extent of the Middle Palaeolithic. Also recovered at
Denisova Cave were teeth from a hominid identified
as Neanderthal-like. This evidence and the skeletal
finds from Teshik-Tash and Obi-Rakhmat, lend credence to the argument that much of this region was
inhabited by hominids akin to the Neanderthals of
Europe or other archaic human species, though this
question is still controversial. Other cave sites such as
Ust Kan, Kara-Bura, and Obi-Rakhmat, as well as
open air scatters and flint quarries such as Kapchigai,
located in the Altai and Tian Shan Mountains, testify
to the effective adaptations of Middle Palaeolithic
groups of the region.
Middle Palaeolithic artifacts are found on the eastern flanks of the Altai and Tian Shan Mountains as
well, though no sites of the depth and scale of the
western Altai sites are known. The recently excavated
cave at Tsagaan Agui in central Mongolia and the
Tolbaga site near Lake Baikal represent the Middle
Palaeolithic technologies of central Inner Asia. The
transition to new stone tool technologies of the
Upper Palaeolithic occurred by 40 000 years ago.
Many major sites, such as Tsagaan Agui, Obi-Rakhmat,
and Okladnikov Cave, contain continuous sequences
from Middle Palaeolithic to Upper Palaeolithic materials. There are also new transitional sites such as
Kara-Bom, the earliest Upper Palaeolithic site yet
discovered at 43 000 BP.
The Early Upper Palaeolithic

Upper Palaeolithic technology is based upon blade

manufacture and prepared cores. Other finds include
art objects and habitation structures. Typical Early
Upper Palaeolithic sites are on terraces with good
visibility overlooking the surrounding landscape.
When these sites are large, they have hearths, pit
features, and stone rings that supported structures.
Smaller sites have unlined hearths and work areas,
but few signs of long-term habitation. Cave sites
continue to be used in this period, but are not the
main focus of habitation. A number of cache sites,
places where stone tools and raw materials were
stored, have also been discovered. On the west
Siberian plain, open-air sites with the remains of tundra and boreal megafauna including bison, reindeer,
woolly rhinos, and mammoth are found, such as the
mammoth-kill site at Tomsk. In Anui valley of the
Altai Mountains, Okladnikov Cave continued to be

used during this time and contains Early Upper

Palaeolithic layers dated to 42 00033 000 BP, while
the open air site of Ust Karakol nearby dates to
31 000 BP.
In south central Siberia, Upper Palaeolithic sites date
no earlier than 30 000 BP. The most famous of these
sites is Malta of the Angara river basin, which dates to
23 000 BP. A large area of this site has been excavated
and tens of thousands of lithic and bone tools, and
faunal remains were found along with organized habitation structures. The site is interpreted as a seasonal
reindeer hunting camp that was used repeatedly.
Other notable sites in the greater Baikal region include
the stratified sites of Krasny Yar and the riverside bluff
site of Kamenka in the Lower Selenge river valley.
Farther afield, the cave site of Tsagaan Agui at the
northern edge of the Gobi desert continued to be
used. Shuidonggou, south of the Gobi and north of
the Yellow River is the southernmost major site of
the Inner Asian Upper Palaeolithic type.
There are scores of Upper Palaeolithic sites recorded
from Inner Asia and based on their chronology and
distribution, it is possible to observe how Pleistocene
climate fluctuation and glacial cycles created variable
biogeographic conditions that affected when and
where human groups lived. Expanding glaciers and
cold regions pushed people southward while retreating glaciers re-opened formerly inaccessible areas.
The final iteration of this long-term process followed
the conclusion of the last glacial maximum (18 000 BP)
and brought populations back into Siberia by
14 000 BP, and across Beringia to North America.
The End of the Upper Palaeolithic

Following the last glacial maximum, the Holocene

environment of Inner Asia stabilized close to the conditions we know today, initiating the terminal stage of
the Palaeolithic. The final innovation in lithic technology across Inner Asia was the invention of microblade technology. Developing out of local Upper
Palaeolithic traditions, this technology centered on
interchangeable and easily replaceable lithic components in many types of compound tools. The material
remains of microblade technology are distinctive core
forms and very small bladelets (Figure 2). Also during
the Holocene, site locations shifted to emphasize
riverine valleys, river banks, and confluences. Site
composition, the animals hunted, and artifact assemblages all suggest that these people were more mobile
than their mid Upper Palaeolithic predecessors. Sites
were inhabited for short periods and revisited repeatedly, rather than occupied for longer spans of time.
Microlithic tool users began to inhabit high elevation regions such as the upper Altai and the Tibetan
Plateau, and a notable fluorescence of habitation

520 ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS

Figure 2 Prismatic cores for the production of microblades, north central Mongolia.

appeared around Lake Baikal in South Siberia and in

the desert oases of the Tarim Basin, Xinjiang.

The Domestication of Inner Asia

The Neolithic of Mongolia is dated from 8000 to
4500 BP and is best known from sites located in the
Gobi desert and the eastern steppe where mixed microlithic assemblages and fragments of low fired, gray
and red coarse ware ceramics are found, often with
corded and painted decorations. The term Neolithic
in the case of Inner Asia is not always defined by the

domestication of plants and animals as in most other

regions of Eurasia, but instead by the advent of
ceramic technology. The initial indication that hunter-gatherer groups began exploiting local environments in novel ways is the appearance of grinding
stones at sites having typical Neolithic artifact assemblages, such as Shabarak Us (Bayanzag Culture), in
the South Gobi of Mongolia. Shabarak Us is located
in an area of playas and stabilized sand dunes subject
to wind erosion that exposed 18 sub-sites having
microlithic industries, ceramics, polished adzes, bifacial projectile points, and ostrich eggshell artifacts.

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS 521

The site is described in the Russian literature as an

early to middle Neolithic temporary camp, probably
inhabited by semi-mobile groups from 60005000 BP.
Based on the evidence for grinding slabs and pestles,
Shabarak Us is thought to represent either incipient
agriculture or a greater specialization in the use of wild
grains. In either case, the appearance of such artifacts
at a number of sites in the Gobi region suggests an
important investment in a broader range of subsistence
activities.
During the mid to late Neolithic of eastern Mongolia
(52004500 BP), there is material evidence suggesting
simple agricultural production, sedentism, and exploitation of large herbivores such as wild cattle and horse.
The site that best characterizes Neolithic agricultural
production is Tamsagbulag located in Dornod province
on the eastern Mongolian steppe. Broad horizontal
exposures at this site revealed a large number of rectangular pit-houses, the largest of which encompassed
an area of 42 m2. Small pit burials with interred
individuals positioned in crouching or sitting positions
and covered with red ochre powder were discovered
below the floor levels of these houses, along with
composite tools and shell beads. The combined artifact
assemblage of both houses and burials provides a
unique perspective on a small-scale steppe group
employing simple agricultural techniques to grow millet
and specialized hunting to obtain large grazing animals.
The artifact inventory from Tamsagbulag consists of
wedge-shaped prismatic cores and a wide variety of
blade-based implements, an advanced bone industry,
and ceramic vessels. Tools related to agriculture are
numerous and include grinding stones and pestles,
circular quern stones, hoes, and weights for digging
sticks. Indications of extensive and specialized use of
wild animals are based on the faunal remains recovered from habitation deposits, including evidence for
fishing. In addition to human interments beneath pit
house floors, excavations also revealed pits containing
large numbers of horse and cattle bones, including
several conspicuously large bullhorns. Other intentional deposits of cattle bones are known from the
eastern Mongolian steppe and have been interpreted
as cult practices to ensure agricultural success.
Tamsagbulag provides evidence that simple agriculture was practiced on the northeastern steppe, however, many contemporary areas have no such evidence.
One example is Serovo period hunter-gatherer groups
(62005000 BP) known from late Neolithic cemeteries
such as Ust-Ida, along the shores of Lake Baikal and
the Angara river of Siberia. These groups included a
specialization in seals as well as a number of ungulate
species in their local hunting adaptation. Hunting
and gathering subsistence practices also characterized the high Altai Mountain and Gobi-Altai regions

of western Inner Asia and seem to have been followed

directly by simple herding economies. Southeast of
Lake Baikal a pattern more similar to that of the Gobi
Neolithic is present. Short-term campsites such as
Budulan on the banks of the Onon river were inhabited
during the fifth millennium BP by semi-mobile huntergatherers using a microlithic tool kit, thin-walled ceramics with rounded bases, grinding stones, stone pestles,
and mortars. As in the case of Shabarak Us, archaeologists argue that the occurrence of grain processing
stone assemblages at Budulan and other such sites
may represent increasingly specialized gathering
practices or experimentation with domesticates.
Recent archaeological evidence suggests that Neolithic groups of eastern Inner Mongolia experienced a substantially different subsistence trajectory
from those regions described above. The traditional
model for the rise of agriculture across China is one
of diffusion outward from the Yellow River basin.
This explanation for agricultural origins has been
challenged by radiocarbon dates from Inner Mongolia and northeastern China where two indigenous
agricultural traditions emerged at very early periods,
the Xinglongwa (80006800 BP) and Zhaobaogou
(68006000 BP) cultures. These cultures relied upon
hunting, simple cultivation, and probably domesticated pigs. By the fifth millennium BP, when initial
changes in food production are thought to have occurred on the northern steppe, Inner Mongolian
groups of the Hongshan/Xiaoheyan (65004200 BP)
cultures resided in permanent dispersed villages of
one to two hectares having pit and surface dwellings
along with numerous storage pits for grain. East Inner
Mongolian subsistence at this time consisted of animal husbandry, especially of pigs, simple hoe-based
agriculture, and deer hunting. Craft production included microlithic and polished stone industries as
well as bone, ceramic, and impressive jade object
manufacture.

The Eneolithic and Initial Forest-Steppe

Herding
By the fifth millennium BP, the Inner Asian steppe was
characterized by substantial variation in subsistence
and lifeways, from hunting-gathering-fishing groups
to sedentary village communities relying primarily on
domesticated grains and animals. Across this patchwork of Neolithic economies, more extensive forms
of domestic animal use occurred gradually throughout the eastern steppe zone. The Eneolithic period
is transitional between the Neolithic and Bronze
Age. Botai, an Eneolithic site in northern Kazakhstan,
provides an important window on changing relationships between human beings and animals. The

522 ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS

Botai culture (56005100 BP) developed a sedentary,

village-based lifeway relying on the intensive exploitation of wild horses as game animals. Long-term use
of and familiarity with horses may have resulted in
both the domestication and possible riding of horses
in order to track and hunt wild equids, though the
evidence for this argument is still debated.
The earliest credible evidence in Inner Asia for
Eneolithic food producing economies involving herd
animals is found in the Yenisei region of south central
Siberia. Peoples of the Afanasevo culture were originally thought to have entered the Russian Altai Mountains and middle Yenisei river valley from regions
farther west, bringing with them the first herd animals
as well as mortuary rituals and ceramic styles similar to
those of the western Yamnaya culture (51004200 BP).
Ceramics and burials of this culture have also been
described from western Mongolia, the Russian Altai
region, and from northern Xinjiang. A series of early
absolute dates from mortuary contexts in Minusinsk
has recently redefined the chronology of the Afanasevo
(5500/51004500 BP) and now casts doubt on the migration theory, perhaps supporting instead a model for
indigenous development, though this is controversial.
The economic and organizational character of
Afanasevo culture is quite different from cultures
using domestic stock in western Central Eurasia.
Afanasevo peoples had an economy based primarily
on hunting and the use of domestic sheep, cattle, and
later on, horses, as well as simple copper industries.
Only a small number of settlements are known from
this period, one example being Tepsei-X. These habitations have cultural remains very similar to those
recovered from Afanasevo burial sites, such as
Suchanicha, Afanasevo Mountain, and Karasuk-III.
Afanasevo groups did not have well-developed techniques for herd exploitation and lacked many of the
secondary resources that were to be used at later
times, such as dairy production and animal traction.
Burial inventories include artifacts with potential agricultural use, such as stone pestles and wooden mortars, though as mentioned above, such finds may also
suggest increasingly specialized gathering of local
grasses and plants.
Afanasevo subsistence was primarily a huntinggathering adaptation which included the keeping of
domesticated animals, and is therefore often described as transitional in character between food acquisition and food production. These patterns were
continued and intensified by the subsequent Okunev
culture (46004000 BP) of the Minusinsk basin which
had a different style of ceramics, new burial practices,
and more elaborate metallurgy, including the limited
production of bronze implements. The Okunev period

is also known for its striking repertoire of artistic

iconography which appears on stone slabs used to
construct tombs and on stone stelae, initiating a long
tradition of standing stone monument construction
across the eastern steppe.

The Mature Bronze Age: Inner Asian

Mobility, Metallurgy, and Interaction
The Middle and Late Bronze Age of eastern Central
Eurasia is associated with the Andronovo cultural
horizon dated in its entirety to 42003000 BP. Several regional variants of this extensive and diverse
cultural complex appear initially in the southern Uralic
mountain and steppe region and extend over time to
the south and east as far as eastern Kazakhstan,
Xinjiang, Altai, and the Minusinsk basin. Underlying
similarities in material culture based upon ceramic
styles, mortuary constructions, and bronze industries
tie three major regional phases together: SintashtaPetrovka (42003800 BP, southern Urals, northwestern
Kazakhstan); Alakul (37003300 BP, southern Urals,
northwest and north central Kazakhstan, forest-steppe
boundary up to the northern bend of the Irtysh river);
Fedorovo (35003200 BP, northeastern Kazakhstan
with later extension into southeastern Kazakhstan,
the Russian Altai, and Minusinsk basin). These main
phases were followed by a number of localized cultures
during the terminal Bronze Age. The technological and
organizational changes associated with the Andronovo
cultures had impact across Inner Asia and as far as the
early dynastic states of the Chinese Central Plain and
the ancient Near East.
Andronovo Subsistence and Settlement

The peoples of the various Andronovo subcultures are

thought to have practiced settled agro-pastoralism during the early periods and gradually transitioned to a
greater dependency on herd animals and increased
mobility by later phases. Very little direct botanical
evidence for agriculture has been discovered, though
researchers believe agricultural production was practiced based on the presence of grain-processing toolkits
having mortars and pestles and occasional finds of
millet and barley, especially at larger habitations. The
settlement record for the Mature Bronze Age in eastern
Central Eurasia is substantial and lends support to
the model of village-oriented lifeways, at least until
the Fedorovo period when many settlement sites had
intermittent occupations, possibly related to seasonal
movements of peoples and herds. Interlaced with settlement sites are Andronovo cemeteries of monumental kurgan burials.

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS 523

Although much of the Andronovo period is characterized by small- to moderate-sized settlements

located near water sources and having a number of
rectangular house structures, large settlements up to
3 ha in size are known from the Sintashta-Petrovka
phase. These settlements are clearly defensive sites with
oval, circular, or rectangular layouts which were preplanned and comprised walled fortifications and
cellular domicile arrangements. Several sites from the
eastern slopes of the Ural mountains, called by archaeologists the Country of Towns, could be considered
type sites, including Bersuat, Stepnoe, and the best
known of the circular variety, Arkaim. In all, there are
approximately 20 known fortified settlements in this
region which stretches along the eastern base of the
Urals for 400 km. A number of these settlements have
extensive remains of smelting ovens, bronze slag, copper
ore, crucibles, and molds, providing evidence for highly
specialized and intensive bronze artifact and copper
ingot production, leading some researchers to describe
these settlements as Bronze Age industrial centers.
Dispersals of Steppe Bronze Technology

Simple copper or small-scale bronze technologies

emerged among peoples of the western Yamnaya culture, the Botai-Tersek cultures, Afanasevo/Okunev
cultures, and around Lake Baikal among Glazkovo
hunter-gatherer groups (53003300 BP). During the
course of the Andronovo cultural period, bronzemanufacturing techniques, arsenic and tin alloy formulas, and artifact types spread across much of
Kazakhstan, Western Siberia, and Inner Asia. Regions
where metallic ores existed were visited or occupied
by diverse groups and heavily exploited, as with the
copper mining sites of Kenkazgan, north central
Kazakhstan, and Vorovskaya Yama in the upper
Ural river basin. Other ancient copper and tin sources
are known from the Altai Mountains, the Yenisei
river basin, Xinjiang, and Uzbekistan. Due to the
geographical dispersion of resources, manufacturing
centers, and areas of bronze consumption, the social
dynamics of bronze in eastern Central Eurasia necessitated cultural networks of exchange, interaction,
competition, and movement.
For example, long distance interaction was initiated between steppe groups and the urban oasis
centers of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological
Complex (BMAC) in the Kara Kum desert region
(42003800 BC). Though somewhat controversial,
current evidence suggests that cultural contact between the steppe and Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia
may have contributed to the appearance of initial
bronze industries along the periphery of China. Such
contacts are thought to have contributed a number of

implement types, alloys, and production techniques

to this region by 4200 BP (e.g., Qijia and Siba cultures). These early technological developments from
Chinas northwest subsequently influenced the appearance of local bronze industries and exchange regimes
in the Ordos region (early Zhukaigou) and eastern
Inner Mongolia (Lower Xiajiadian) by 4000 BP.
Across Mongolia archaeologists have found artifacts
related to bronze work, such as two-piece stone molds,
ore pounders, and crucibles as well as several copper
mining and bronze production sites such as Zuukh
(southwestern Mongolia), Oyu Tolgoi (South Gobi),
and Erdenet (northern Mongolia).
Metallurgical production during the Late Bronze
Age became increasingly sophisticated in resource
transport, alloying and casting, and in the wide diversity of decorative items, tools, and weapons created in
bronze. The Seima-Turbino technological horizon
of the Late Bronze Age marks the widespread adoption of a highly developed tin alloy bronze culture
across eastern Central Eurasia that includes specific
artifact types (curved dagger-knives, socketed axes
and spearheads, and associated nephrite jade axes)
and stylized depictions of steppe and forest animals.
Though this highly refined bronze culture was
practiced over a tremendously large region, it drew
upon copper, tin, and jade sources located in the
Sayan-Altai Mountains based on exchange networks
between the Altai and production sites like Atasu in
Central Kazakhstan and Rostovka on the Irtysh river.
Dispersals of Transport Technology

The movement of material culture, its styles, and

production methods across large geographical areas
suggest both contact and interaction and the development of similar systems of symbolic meaning across
dispersed communities. The mobility made possible
by herd-based subsistence and supported with animal
transport using wagons and carts probably played
an important role in maintaining steppe interaction.
Wagons pulled by oxen were initially employed as
part of the steppe adaptation during the Yamnaya cultural period of western Central Eurasia. By 4000 BP,
Andronovo-Sintashta period kurgan cemeteries have
the earliest evidence for lightweight, spoked wheel
carts or chariots, as well as the horses which pulled
them and their harness equipment. This provides
solid evidence for traction using domesticated horses
and further suggests that the complex and labor intensive kurgan burials in which these vehicles were found,
likely marked the differentiated social status of their
owners. Beyond marking high status and having ceremonial or display value, chariots may also have been
involved in the proliferation of warfare across the

524 ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS

steppe. Evidence for a period of heightened conflict

includes the heavy fortifications at early Andronovo
sites and the widespread manufacture of specialized
weapons, such as pick-axes and stone mace-heads,
which have no function as tools.
Chariots were the first rapid transport land vehicle
and chariot technology using horse traction spread
quickly from the northern steppe southward, and
possibly as far as the ancient Near East. Between
the Kazakh steppe and the Central Plain of China
there is little direct evidence for chariot use during
the Bronze Age, though by 3250 BP fully developed
chariot culture appeared in the royal Shang dynasty
tombs at Yinxu, Anyang. So far, only a corridor of
Bronze Age petroglyph sites document knowledge of
chariots in vivid images across the Russian and Mongolian Altai Mountains, the Tian Shan of Xinjiang,
and the Inner Mongolian Yinshan range (Figure 3).
Solid wooden wheels dated to 3200 BP have been
recovered at the cemetery site of Qizilchoqa near
Hami, Xinjiang and a spoked wheel is reported
from the animal corral site of Nomhong in Qinghai
(mid-fourth millennium BP). Neither of these contexts is associated with evidence for horse traction
and these particular wheel specimens were probably
designed for use with carts.

In addition to the emergence of chariot use, several

archaeologists argue for the development of horseback riding during or prior to the Andronovo cultural
period. It is notoriously difficult to archaeologically
differentiate human groups practicing horse hunting
from those who had domesticated horses and to date
the most convincing evidence has been provided by
bit wear analysis (the identification of beveling on
horse teeth from metallic bit use), for example, at
the Eneolithic site of Botai. However, there are good
arguments questioning the reliability of bit wear evidence for indicating horse husbandry. One problem
with this analysis is that soft material bits made
from thong or rope do not cause reliably detectable
beveling.
Bit wear is a good source of indirect evidence for
horse control when combined with other lines of
supporting evidence. These include the identification
of bridle equipment in contexts with horses, reconstruction of horse herd demographics, and high numbers of horses associated with other domestic herd
animals. The best direct evidence for horse management is to be found in historical references or clear
artistic depictions, the earliest of which date to the
very end of the fifth millennium BP. Likewise, burial
contexts in which horses are unmistakably associated
with traction equipment, as at the Sintashta site, also
date to the late fifth and early fourth millennium BP.
Since the management of horse herds would be logistically difficult on foot or by vehicle, horse riding
must have emerged prior to horse traction sometime
before 4100 BP, though there exists no unquestionable evidence for this early practice as of yet.

Rise of the Steppe: Monuments, Art,

and Politics

Figure 3 Pecked image of a spoked, two-wheeled cart or

chariot from the site of Tebsh Uul, southwest Mongolia.

During the Terminal Bronze and Early Iron Age

(34002300 BP), Inner Asia began to share in
steppe-wide symbolic, ideological, and elite status
systems referred to archaeologically as Early Nomad
or Scythian culture. Significant features of this period
were herd animal dependency, pervasive horse riding
and specific styles of harness gear, a bronze weapon
set that included short swords, three winged arrow
points, and decorative craft goods with animal style
ornamentation. The Scythian horizon was first
thought to have originated in western Central Eurasia
spreading eastward through migration into Inner
Asia. This model has been revised based on a series
of radiocarbon dates from South Siberian kurgan
sites suggesting that diagnostic Scythian (or ScythoSiberian) features probably emerged from local innovation, cultural diffusion, and migratory processes
initiated in the east and elaborated across multiple

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS 525

steppe centers. Throughout the third millennium BP,

regional cultural dynamics were driven by greater
access to mobility, intra-steppe interaction, and increasing interchange with state societies on the
periphery of the Eurasian grasslands.
Herd Animal Dependence and Developed
Horseback Riding

Subsistence related changes observed at Siberian and

Mongolian sites over the Eneolithic, Bronze, and
Early Iron Ages involved the initial appearance of
stock animals followed by growing presence of cattle
in forested regions and smaller stock (sheep/goat) in
open grasslands. Both cattle and sheep/goat herding are
found with increasing evidence for horse use. Increase
in herd size generally correlates with increases in
mobility since more animals deplete pasture at a greater
rate and must move more frequently in order to
feed. Such provisioning might be accomplished by an
entire household and its herds moving every season
to a new locale or just as well by a few members
of a sedentary household moving the family animals
to highland pastures for a limited time before returning to their settlement. In both cases, some degree
of mobility was required to support larger numbers
of cattle and small stock. Both patterns were employed
in parts of Inner Eurasia, however, the availability
of domesticated horses favored the first strategy on
steppe grasslands. Horses are a source of meat and
dairy products, but they also facilitate extensive mobile
pastoralism through mounted herd management, traction and packing during residential movement, and
by instinctive grazing behaviors which help to support
other large and small herd animals, especially during
winter.
Combinations of evidence for horse use, horse riding equipment, cattle or small stock-based herd composition, and temporary habitation are used to
support arguments for increased mobile pastoralism.
For example, the Minusinsk basin along the middle
Yenisei river was the center of the terminal Bronze
Age Karasuk culture (33002900 BP) which had
extensions into the Altai region, eastern Kazakhstan,
and northwestern Mongolia. The Karasuk culture
shows geographical variation, though it is primarily
identified by distinctively styled and well-made
bronze artifacts, stone slab and cist burial constructions, and hand-built, rounded pottery, with geometric incised decorations. Local groups of the Minusinsk
basin exploited mountain pastures and rich soils of
the river valley bottoms by farming and practicing
seasonal transhumance to support cattle based livestock holdings. In the beginning of the first millennium B.C., there is a marked increase in the presence

of sheep and goats in Karasuk archaeological contexts as well as the first appearance of horse riding
equipment that Russian archaeologists accept as evidence for increased pastoral investment and mobility
which continued into the subsequent Tagar culture
(28002100 BP).
Similar faunal patterns showing marked increases
in cattle and sheep/goat and horse occur at roughly
contemporary habitation sites across South Siberia,
from the Kulunda steppe of the western Altaiskii krai
(e.g., Gridino and Kaigorodka-III) to the Shevinskaia
site on the Kuenga river of Chita province, eastern
Zabaikale. Once again, the subsistence activities
represented at these sites are diverse, but they do
have in common a core subsistence strategy with
herd animals as an emerging focus. Some areas have
evidence for residential mobility in addition to pastoral investment. The stratified Dvortsy habitation of
Chita province as well as several contemporary habitation sites in the region have multiple occupations
from the fourth millennium BP. The later habitation
strata at these sites show decreasing deposit depth
and artifact densities over time, potentially related
to increased seasonal mobility.
The earliest dates for developed horse riding in
most parts of Inner Asia are still relatively late. The
best direct evidence is the discovery of preserved
saddles in the frozen tombs of the Pazyryk culture
(25502250 BP), Altai Mountains. Earlier evidence
includes sacrificial horses in full harness gear interred
in the Arzhan kurgan of the Uyok basin, Tuva, and
dated to 2800 BP. On the Mongolian steppe, horse
crania appear in ceremonial contexts as early as
3300 BP and a burial context in the Egiin Gol valley
contained three horse skulls, antler cheek pieces, and
evidence from the interred human skeleton for joint
stress potentially related to riding at 2900 BP. The
earliest direct material evidence for riding known
from Inner Mongolia is bronze work with an artistic
depiction of riders mounted on horses from the
Nanshangen site, 28002700 BP. Horse riding was
not adopted by Chinese state societies until 2350 BP
when the need arose to compete militarily with the
archer-horsemen of Inner Asia (see Asia, East: Chinese
Civilization).
Steppe Elite, Monuments, and Political Ideologies

The transition to more mobile lifeways was also associated with the emergence of differentiated political
and economic relationships. These organizational
changes had origins in the Andronovo period along
with early chariots, specialized bronze work, and
kurgan style burial mounds. Novel political relationships involved both the hereditary right to leadership

526 ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS

and greater control over group labor, resources, and

military activities. How and why these sociopolitical
transformations towards institutional inequality and
individualized leadership occurred among steppe
peoples is still poorly understood, though the material indications for these changes are pervasive. During
the Early Iron Age, leadership systems involving individual prestige and steppe-based cultural identities
were increasingly expressed through material media
such as monumental mortuary constructions and
decorative artistic styles.
The marking of elite status by mortuary wealth and
great expenditures of labor on elaborate burial constructions grew from preceding burial practices that
were often monumental in scale but may not have
been associated with hereditary status. For example,
the khirigsuur stone monuments of Mongolia required substantial labor, though it is still unclear
why early communities created these massive sites.
Khirigsuurs date from 33502800 BP and are large
stone mounds with rectangular or circular stone
enclosures surrounding them and multiple stone
piles beyond these enclosures in the form of satellite
features (Figure 4). These smaller stone mounds
sometimes contain horse crania and vertebrae and
occasional fragments of ceramics or bronze items. Approximately 40% of such monuments contain some
evidence for human interment though in many cases
they seem to be non-mortuary, ceremonial constructions which may have marked local landscapes, territories, and community gatherings.
Khirigsuurs are related to the Central Eurasian tradition of building stone or earthen kurgan mortuary
mounds and they have similarities to burial constructions in the Sayan-Altai region, Minusinsk, Tuva and
perhaps as far east as Manchuria, though further work
is needed on khirigsuur variability and dating. By the
initial Early Nomad/Scythian period (2800 BP) a widespread mortuary emphasis on individual status occurs
across much of Inner Asia. In Zabaikale and central
and eastern Mongolia, individual interment in burials
made of large standing stone slabs in rectangular
arrangements replaces khirigsuur construction. Slab
burials show great variation in size of construction,
amounts of ceramics, animal bones, bronzes, and exotic items included in each assemblage and in this way
suggest different ranks of status for those buried. However, this period of Inner Asian prehistory is best
known for the impressive royal kurgans, especially
the Arzhan site, the Pazyryk kurgans, and the Golden
Warrior kurgan of Issyk, southeastern Kazakhstan.
Each of these Inner Asian mortuary sites is notable
for size, labor expenditure, rich and exotic assemblages and their marked differences from burials of
commoners, which are modest in comparison. The

Saka culture Issyk kurgan (25002400 BP), an earthen and timber mound of 60 m diameter and 6 m in
height, is famous for a 1618 year-old youth buried
with an entire coat of gold discovered in an undisturbed southern side chamber. The Pazyryk cemetery
kurgans (2300 BP) are known for their permafrost
preservation conditions which have provided a spectacular record of wooden objects, textiles, the coat
and skin of interred horses, and preserved human
bodies with intricate tattoo designs. A number of
recent discoveries and excavations of frozen tombs
in the Altai Mountains are adding to our knowledge
of the intermediate elite and commoners of the
Pazyryk period. These include work at the sites of
Ak-Alakha on the Ukok plateau and the 2006 excavation of a similar complex on the Mongolian side of
the Altai Mountains at the site of Olon Guuriin
Goliin Hondii.
The Arzhan kurgan located in the Uyok basin of
central Tuva is important evidence for monumental
interment of an elite individual whose burial assemblage contained diagnostic material culture of the
Scythian cultural horizon at an early period. The
radiocarbon dates from Arzhan gave researchers
the first indication that one of the earliest centers
of the Scythian cultural horizon was in fact, Siberia.
The kurgan is a circular stone mound, 120 m across
and 4 m high with a complex internal timber construction dividing the feature into 70 chambers. Excavations revealed a central burial chamber with
elaborate log coffins associated with the elite occupants, 160 harnessed riding horses, a number of
accompanying human interments described as attendants, bronze weapons and tools, horse tack, early
iron implements, items of personal adornment in gold
and turquoise, examples of Scytho-Siberian animal
style bronzes, and fragments of deer stones.
Archaeologists believe that the artistic motifs found
at Arzhan are emblematic of a set of symbols associated with the ideology of elite leadership which
eventually become part of the symbolic vocabulary
of steppe peoples from Inner Mongolia to the Black
Sea. Central Eurasian animal style is an art form in
which predators and ungulates of the forest-steppe
are depicted in semi-abstract design emphasizing intertwinement and flows of movement (Figure 5). The
designs are rendered in wood, bone, textile, metals,
and stone, as well as on human skin in the form of
tattoos, such as those known from the Pazyryk cemetery. Early examples of animal style are the deer
stone stelae known from Mongolia, Altai, Tuva,
and Buriatiia which consist of a four-sided standing
stone of up to 2.5 m height and carved images of stylized deer, belts with hanging weapons and recurved
bows, and at the top, circular designs or very

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS 527

Figure 4 Schematic plan of a khirigsuur monument from the Egiin Gol valley, Mongolia and photograph of a khirigsuur complex at
Tebsh Uul, Mongolia.

occasionally, a human face. One interpretation is that

deer stone monuments are anthropomorphic representations depicting the head, deer tattooed body, and
weapons of a high status individual. Current estimates date the beginning of deer stone construction
on the eastern steppe at 3000 BP (Figure 6).
Animal style was adopted rapidly across Inner Asia
and further westward during the first half of the third
millennium BP. Its geographical spread shaped the
interaction sphere of the nomadic world at a time
when distinctions between steppe and sown became
strongly emphasized. This process was particularly

notable in the regions north and west of the Chinese

Central Plain, known as the Northern Zone. As early
as 34003300 BP, bronzes in a style similar to
the Karasuk of Siberia appear at the settlement and
cemetery site of Zhukaigou in the Ordos Loop, Inner
Mongolia. Zhukaigou is thought to be a copper trade
and production center with contacts to both steppe
groups in the north and the Middle Shang dynasty
centers of the south. By the third millennium BP, these
initial steppe contacts were radically restructured by
groups of the Northern Zone who affiliated themselves
with steppe cultural identity through the adoption of

528 ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS

Figure 5 Bronze animal style decorative piece of a wild horned

sheep from the Middle Gobi site of Baga Gazaryn Chuluu,
Mongolia.

animal style decorations. These changes in burial practice are evident at the Upper Xiajiadian (31002600 BP)
Xiaobaiyang cemetery, Chifeng region, and in western
Inner Mongolia at the cemetery of Maoqinggou of the
Ordos Bronze culture (27502250 BP). Mortuary sites
of Gansu and Xinjiang also show the adoption of steppe
material cultural assemblages.
These transformations along the frontiers of Late
Shang and Zhou period China have parallels in South
Siberia. On the northwestern shore of Lake Baikal
and on Olkhon Island, slab burial mortuary culture
appears from the south and with it, the first evidence
for domesticated herd animals in what was, until
3000 BP, a region of bronze producing huntergatherers (Glazkovo culture). Excavation of slab burial cemeteries on Olkhon Island at Khujir indicates
either that indigenous peoples adopted the material
culture and subsistence systems of neighboring pastoralists or that southern steppe groups entered the
region. In either case, these interactions on the frontier of the taiga forest of Siberia may have been due
to the valuable exchange opportunities that existed
for taiga furs and medicinal plants, products with
high exchange value to both steppe and Chinese
groups. These observations from the Northern Zone
and Siberia during the third millennium BP argue
for relatively swift transformations in culture and
identity among outlying groups choosing to be
involved within the exchange, status, and ideological
systems of the pastoral nomadic steppe. These long
distance inter-connections among diverse groups
having a variety of lifeways created the integrative
foundations of the first nomadic states and empires
in Inner Asia.

The Xiongnu Polity and Steppe Civilization

Figure 6 Deer stone complex at Uushigiin Ovor, Khovsgol

province, northwest Mongolia.

material, ideological, and political cultures of the steppe

nomads. Evidence consists of changes in burial structures and assemblages reflecting an emphasis on individual prestige through steppe artifact types (knives,
daggers, arrowheads, buttons, and belt plaques) and

By 2200 BP, much of Inner Asia became integrated in

large-scale nomadic polities having names such as
Wusun and Xiongnu which appear in the historical documents of neighboring states. These historical
records often portray steppe peoples as uncultured
and predatory, an enduring stereotype that masks the
intricacies of nomadic cultures across Central Eurasia.
To the contrary, the rise of these regional polities,
some would argue, initiated a distinctive steppe civilization which became fully developed under the
imperial Mongols (800 BP). The Xiongnu was a
mounted, iron-, bronze-, and ceramics-producing,
pastoral nomadic group under whose name the first
nomadic state was organized during a period contemporary with the Qin and Han dynasties of China
(22211800 BP). Chinese historical accounts have
been the major source of information on the society,
culture, and politics of the Xiongnu, though the

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS 529

process by which they founded their extensive polity is

still little known.
Two bodies of theory explain Xiongnu emergence
as occurring either by way of economic and political
dependence on Chinese states or through the creation
of an indigenous political economy of internal agropastoral production and long-distance sources of
trade and tribute. In either case, the Xiongnu polity
was constructed from diverse political and economic
traditions through the integration of distinctive
Inner Asian peoples. Xiongnu archaeological culture
has been identified from Manchuria to Kazakhstan,
and from Minusinsk to Ningxia. The heartland of
the Xiongnu state was most likely in north central
Mongolia and Buriatiia, along the drainages of the
Selenge, Orkhon, and Tuul rivers. This region holds
the major Xiongnu cemetery sites and most of the
known settlements. Based on recent absolute dating,
the time-span of recognizable Xiongnu occupation in
this area (24001850 BP) precedes and postdates
their appearance in the Chinese historical sources.
Xiongnu Mortuary Culture

From its beginning in the late nineteenth century,

Xiongnu archaeology has consisted mainly of cemetery excavations. The mortuary perspective has
provided evidence for the internal complexity of the
Xiongnu state since burials reveal a hierarchy of different scales and mortuary styles. Xiongnu cemeteries
range from a few burials to hundreds of graves ranging over various size groups. In Mongolia and South
Siberia, these cemeteries appear to follow a four-level
size/type hierarchy based on the kind of burials present and their numbers. The two main types, of
Xiongnu burials are simple stone ring pit burials
and large dromos style burials distinguished by a
sloping passageway used to furnish the mortuary
chamber. Cemeteries can generally be grouped into
four types, comprised of 530 ring burials, 65110
ring burials, 200400 ring burials, and one or more
dromos style burial having varying numbers of associated ring burials and unmarked interments. Recent
DNA analysis of skeletal samples from the Burkhan
Tolgoi ring burial cemetery (Mongolia), shows that
these cemeteries were internally organized according
to local lineage groups. In addition, variability in
burial type, size, and assemblage seems to be related
to a number of identity markers including gender,
age, and individual status, though widespread looting
in antiquity makes such analysis difficult.
Ring burials are thought to be of local or intermediate level elite, and are identified on the modern surface
by a ring of sedimented stones, 514 m in diameter,
with a slight depression in the center (Figure 7). Below

this ring feature, an oval or rectangular burial pit

descends to a depth of up to 23 m and houses one of
eight varieties of internal construction. Among these,
the most common contain a wood plank coffin, or a
full wooden chamber and coffin, or a chamber constructed from stone slabs, with or without a coffin.
The interred individual is commonly placed in a supine
position and oriented to the north. Burials are often
single interments, though there are also many examples of paired burials consisting of a female and child
or a male and female adult interred within a double
wooden chamber. Grave furnishings include three to
four main types of slow wheel constructed ceramics,
compound bow pieces, bone and iron tools, iron cheek
pieces and bits, semiprecious stone beads, animal style
decorations, and the remains of sheep/goat, cattle, and
horses. Nonlocal artifacts include Chinese lacquer
ware, bronze mirror fragments, and coins as well as
items from northern Siberia and western Central
Eurasia. Prominent ring burial sites include Tebsh
Uul and Morin Tolgoi in Mongolia and the Derestui
cemetery of Buriatiia.
Royal Xiongnu burials are large structures and have
long, sloping corridors or passageways known as dromos/dromoi, so-called because of their similarity to
Black Sea Scythian kurgans which are thought to draw
upon Greek designs. The sloping entryway is also
known from Shang and Zhou tombs in China but
was probably independently derived in each area as
a functional way of provisioning a deep burial chamber. Several sites known to have these burials are
Tsaram in southern Buriatiia, and Noyon Uul, Gol
Mod, and Takhiltyn Khotgor cemeteries in central
and western Mongolia. On the surface, these burials
consist of a rectangular or trapezoidal earth and stone
platform mound up to 30 m on a side and 12 m in
height. The tombs are oriented northsouth and on
the south side appears the dromos entryway up to
22 m in length and often with internal wooden structures and artifacts included in the passage. The burial
pits of these tombs reach 10 m or more in depth and
the construction overlying the chamber consists of
soil, stone, and wooden layers, as well as partitions
built of articulated logs. The burial chamber includes
an inner and outer wooden enclosure of hewn timbers
and wooden planks. Within the innermost chamber, a
wooden coffin holding an interred individual is found,
though disruption from pillaging has often destroyed
the internal contexts of these sites.
The artifact assemblages of the Noyon Uul dromi
burials, excavated in the 1920s, are exceptionally well
known due to the preservation of organic materials
by water seepage into burial chambers. The Noyon
Uul tombs were richly furnished with large ceramic
vessels, felt carpets, wooden carvings, clothing, silks,

530 ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS

1m

Figure 7 Plan of an excavated Xiongnu period ring burial with internal stone slabs, wooden coffin planks, and human skeletal fragments
in disarray from early pillaging, Egiin Gol valley, Mongolia. Originally published in: T. Torbat, Ch. Amartuvshin, and U. Erderebat (2003)
Egiin Goly sav nutag dakh arkheologiin dursgaluud. Ulaanbaatar: Mongolian Institute of Archaeology, p. 256.

jade objects, bronze mirrors, lacquer containers, and

horse riding equipment. Animal remains included
horse, cattle, camel, and deer, and domestic grain
was recovered as well. Recent excavations at the
Tsaram and Gol Mod cemeteries have both produced
the complete remains of two-wheeled horse drawn

carriages of Han dynasty design. Such elite contexts

provide important evidence for a high degree of status
differentiation among individuals within the Xiongnu
polity. The excavations at the site of Tsaram have
provided further evidence for status differentiation
in the form of eight individual male interments

ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS 531

arranged according to age around a central dromos

burial, suggesting a pattern of intentional human
sacrifice. Such monumental burial sites have been
discovered throughout central Mongolia and southern Buriatiia. The Inner Mongolian sites of Xigoupan
and Budonggou, and Daodunzi of Ningxia are contemporary with, and share some affinities with, the
Xiongnu mortuary culture of Mongolia and Siberia,
though no sites similar to the royal Xiongnu tombs
have been discovered.
Xiongnu Settlement Archaeology

The geographic range of Xiongnu archaeological culture encompasses a great diversity of ecological environments including desert, oases, steppe, and the forest
steppe regions of Siberia. Locales vary as to the availability of productive soils, water, protected winter pasture, and other critical resources for agricultural and
pastoral subsistence alike. Historical texts describe the
Xiongnu as specialized mobile pastoralists, however,
the extent to which specialized herding, transhumance,
and settled cultivation were combined as subsistence
strategies within the larger state is still not clear. Nor
is it clear how production varied chronologically or
whether differences in subsistence were the result
of adaptations to local environment or whether the
Xiongnu economy was purposefully differentiated to
support the needs of the state elite. The Xiongnu settlement record gives strong evidence that the productive economy within the Xiongnu polity was more
complex and differentiated than historical accounts
would suggest. Excavations of the Ivolga settlement,
occupied from 23002100 BP, indicate that some portion of the Xiongnu population was settled and engaged in cultivation, craft production, and herding.
Ivolga was a fortified settlement located on a terrace
above an older course of the Selenge river in the foreststeppe of Buriatiia. A large cemetery of unmarked
graves contemporary with settlement was found nearby. The settled area was approximately 7.5 ha in size
and included a system of ditches, earthen ramparts, and
a palisade. A portion of the settlement was excavated
revealing 51 dwellings, a number of storage structures,
and possible animal pens. Most of the dwellings were
found to be semi-subterranean houses ranging from
946 m2 in area and having rectangular pits covered
by a pitched roof with a sophisticated fireplace and
heating system. A single structure near the center of
the settlement was much larger in area (150 m2) and
built on the ground surface, suggesting some differences in function or residential status. Ivolga inhabitants engaged in the cultivation and storage of grain
and semi-specialized craft manufacture including iron

and bronze metallurgy and ceramic production.

A range of Xiongnu material culture was recovered
from the site such as metallic items, bronze mirror
fragments, split bone arrow points, compound bow
pieces, sickles, grinding stones, and digging tools.
Archaeologists discovered millet, barley, and wheat
grains and a faunal assemblage of sheep/goat, horse,
cattle, yak, camel, and several wild species.
These patterns of production are similar at the
Dureny settlements in Buriatiia, south of Ivolga. Botanical evidence for wheat and millet use at seasonally
occupied pastoral campsites of the Xiongnu in the
Egiin Gol valley appears at an early date and further
supports the hypothesis of a more differentiated regional economy. Recent research on the Wusun period in southeastern Kazakhstan (23001800 BP) at
the habitation site of Tuzusai shows a shift in agropastoral investment towards a greater emphasis on
producing millet, wheat, and even rice. Researchers
argue that this period of more intensive agriculture
may have been linked to political consolidation
under the Wusun polity and the need to increase and
control critical resource production. In the Xiongnu
case, such control may have been accomplished by
the construction of walled centers, such as Ivolga.
Recent reports of new Xiongnu walled settlements
in Mongolia have increased the number of such
central places to between 15 and 20 sites. These
settlements have rectangular earthen walls enclosing
areas from 2 to 13 ha, traces of internal structures,
and many are spatially integrated within networks of
associated cemeteries. Though more work is still
needed, the archaeological record shows a preliminary pattern across Inner Asia of large-scale political
organization associated with regional economies
involving both mobile and sedentary sectors.
Steppe Civilization and Empires to Come

As the archaeological record shows, Inner Asian

peoples, from a very early time, developed cultural
traditions that functioned within an environment of
movement and social diversity. The Xiongnu polity
was the first experiment in applying these traditions
to the creation of an extensive political organization
across most of Inner Asia. This experiment was surprisingly successful, lasting almost 400 years before
the first state itself dispersed across the steppe. The
Xiongnu established a model for politics that would
be remembered, emulated, and elaborated over the
next two milleniums as numerous steppe empires
mobilized their peoples and expanded across Eurasia.
In the process of building their distinct empires, the
Turks, Uighurs, Khitan, and medieval Mongols who

532 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

followed upon the Xiongnu, integrated tremendous

swathes of the Old World and created cultural, economic, and political innovations that would become
the legacy of a genuine steppe civilization.
See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, Central, Steppes;
Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; China, Paleolithic
Cultures; Chinese Civilization; Asia, Northeast, Early
States and Civilizations; Plant Domestication; Political
Complexity, Rise of; Siberia, Peopling of.

Further Reading
Boyle K, Renfrew C, and Levine M (eds.) (2002) Ancient Interactions: East and West in Eurasia. Cambridge: McDonald Institute
for Archaeological Research.
Derevianko AP, Shimkin DR, and Powers W (eds.) (1998) The
Paleolithic of Siberia: New Discoveries and Interpretations.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Fairservis W (1993) Archaeology of the Southern Gobi of
Mongolia. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Honeychurch W and Amartuvshin C (2006) States on horseback:

The rise of Inner Asian confederations and empires. In: Stark M
(ed.) Asian Archaeology, pp. 255278. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Linduff K (ed.) (2002) Metallurgy in Ancient Eastern Eurasia from
the Urals to the Yellow River. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen
Press.
Mei J (2000) Copper and Bronze Metallurgy in Late Prehistoric
Xinjiang: Its Cultural Context and Relationship with Neighboring Regions. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Rudenko SI (1970) Frozen Tombs of Siberia; The Pazyryk Burials
of Iron Age Horsemen. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Shelach G (2008) Prehistoric Societies on the Northern Frontiers of
China: Archaeological Perspectives on Identity Formation and
Economic change during the First Millennium BCE. London:
Equinox Publishing.
Tsybiktarov AD (2002) Eastern Central Asia at the dawn of the
Bronze Age: issues in ethno-cultural history of Mongolia and
the southern Trans-Baikal region in the late third-early second
millennium BC. Archaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology of
Eurasia 3: 107123.
Weber A, Link D, and Katzenberg MA (2002) Hunter-gatherer
culture change and continuity in the Middle Holocene of the
Cis-Baikal, Siberia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21:
230299.

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

Jeannine Davis-Kimball, American-Eurasian
Research Institute, Ventura, CA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Achaemenid Persians Founded by Cyrus the Great (599522
BCE) after uniting the Medes and Persian, two nomadic tribes
who had originated in the Eurasian States. After his death east of
the Oxus, at the hands of Tomyris queen of the Massagetae tribe,
Darius the Great usurped the throne (522486 BCE) and became
the greatest Achaemenid ruler. Under Darius, the empire
extended from Egypt to India. The last Achaemenid king, Darius
III, was defeated by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE.
aimag The political and geographic equivalent of a state in
Mongolia.
aul A small village consisting of 35 yurts.
Bactria A satrapy or province of the Achaemenid Empire located
in present-day northern Afghanistan.
balbal Anthropomorphic stelae belonging to the Early Turkic
period.
Bronze Age The period when people began manufacturing
bronze items. The first bronzes were arsenical bronzes, smelted
from the natural inclusion of arsenic in copper. True bronze is
copper mixed with tin. The Bronze Age (40003000 BCE) did
not arrive in Eurasian until c. 2000 BCE.
Chalcolithic Age Also known as Eneolithic, this is the time of
cultural development, c. late seventh millennium BCE, when the
Neolithic (Stone) Age ended and people began to incorporate
hammered copper objects into daily life.

Djungar Also spelled Jungar and Dzungar; also known as Oirat

and Kalmyk. In the early 1600s, Khalka Mongols drove the Oirat
Mongols westward into the Ili River region and Djungar Basin in
western China. In the fifteenth century the Djungars controlled
and plundered a huge territory stretching from the outskirts of
Beijing to western Turkistan.
Early Nomads The first Eurasian nomadic tribes, specifically
the Scythians, Sauromatians, Sarmatians, and Saka, who
practiced transhumance.
Getae A Thracian tribe who lived in what is present-day Bulgaria.
Golden Horde The Russian designation for the Ulus of Jochi,
the eldest son of Genghis Khan. The Golden Horde attained its
power and prestige under Batu, Jochis son. Batu founded his
capital Sarai Batu on the lower reaches of the Volga River. Over
time the Horde became Turkified, adopting Islam under Khan Oz
Beg. The population was composed of Turkic and Mongol tribes,
with the latter being the aristocracy. The decline of the Golden
Horde occurred with the outbreak of the Plague (Black Death) in
13461347.
Hsiung-nu Confederacy of aggressive mounted warriors, possibly
of Hunnic ethnicity, who maintained supremacy in Mongolia,
north to around Lake Baikal, and southern Kazakstan into the
Tien Shan Mountains beginning in the third century BCE, and
whose pressure against the Chinese caused them to begin
construction of the great wall. Later the Hsiung-nu confederacy
split into an Eastern tribe, which submitted to China and a
Western tribe, which ultimately was driven into Central Asia.
Iron Age The time when iron was smelted into weaponry. This
varies from 1200 BCE in Anatolia to c. 500 BCE in the Eurasian
steppes.
Kalmyks Oriat Mongols driven in the seventeenth century into
steppe lands north and east of the Caspian Sea. Many returned to

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 533

pastures in the high Tien Shan Mountains in Xinjiang, western
China.
Khatun Wife of the Khagan, equivalent to a queen.
Kazaks Also known as Khazaks, this confederacy was
historically the Kirghiz-Kazaks. They were a huge tribe that
separated from the Uzbeks c. 1465 and divided into three hordes.
Until the advent of Soviet collectivization c. 1935, their
homeland ranged over the modern territory of Kazakstan, into
the Djungar Basin of western China from where, c. 1850, they
migrated into the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia. Pockets
of Kazaks also live in autonomous regions of Xinjiang, China.
Khagan Highest-ranking Turkic or Genghis Khanite Mongol
leader, equivalent to a king.
khereksur A cultic monument composed of piled stone with
additional stone features. Sometimes found in connection with
olenniye kamni.
kurgan Nomadic burial mound.
Massagetae A Saka tribe living in the vicinity of the Aral Sea
who under the leadership of their queen, Tomyris, defeated and
killed Cyrus the Great, Achaemenid Persian king, when he tried
to invade her lands in 530 BCE.
Medes Nomadic tribes in Central Asia in the first millennium
BCE. These, along with the Persians, formed the Achaemenid
Persian Empire in the eighth century BCE.
Neolithic Period New Stone Age. The stage of human
development when stone tools shaped by polishing and grinding
were used. Animals and plants were domesticated, people lived
in permanent villages and developed pottery and weaving. This
time period varies in different parts of the world.
nomads Descending from Bronze Age sedentary population, small
extended family groups who practiced transhumance while herding
sheep, goats, horses, camels, and yak in the higher altitudes.
olenniye kamni Large elaborated cultic stelae with
anthropomorphic, zoomorphic (especially stylized images of
deer), or floral motifs found primarily in north-central Mongolia.
Paleolithic Period Early Stone Age. The stage of human
development when people made and used rudimentary, chipped
stone tools. The Stone Age is divided into three periods:
Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic.
Parthians A nomadic dynasty (c. 141 BCEAD 224) in Iran and
extending into southern Turkmenistan, famous for its combat
cavalry and fine archers, and for breeding the Heavenly Horses
highly sought after by the Han Dynasty emperors. The Parthians
amassed significant wealth by controlling the Silk Route between
Rome and China.
Pazyryk The name given to the Saka confederacy that inhabited
the region of the same name in southern Siberia from c. 450 to
300 BCE. Their frozen tombs, excavated by S.I. Rudenko in the
1950s, revealed an elaborate assortment of normally lost organic
material including carpets, felt textiles, and wooden carvings,
human remains, and sacrificial horses.
Pokrovka An archaeological site in the southern Ural steppes
in Russia that had many Kurgan cemeteries that were used over
800 years by Bronze Age people, but primarily by Early Iron
Age Sauromatians and Sarmatians.
phalerae Large breastplates, part of horse harnesses, carved
from bone or cast from metal, including gold and bronze.
Saka A loose confederacy of Early Iron Age nomads who
practiced pastoral transhumance in the Tien Shan and Altai
Mountains, the Ferghana Valley, and the Syr Darya delta region
in Kazakstan from the eighth to third century BCE. The Saka
were Caucasoids and spoke an Indo-Iranian language.
Sarmatians Nomadic pastoralists, who between the fourth and
sixth century BCE maintained summer pastures and kurgan
cemeteries in the southern Ural steppes and along the Volga and

Don rivers. These Caucasoid people spoke an Indo-Iranian

language and varied significantly in physical types. They are
subdivided into Early, Middle, and Late Sarmatians.
Sauro-Sarmatians An abbreviation for Sauromatians and
Sarmatians.
Scythians Caucasoid, Indo-Iranian speaking pastoral nomads
who lived north of the Black Sea between the seventh and third
century BCE. They developed a symbiotic relationship with the
Greek colonists who had established cities in the same region.
Over time some Scythians became agriculturists, producing grain
for export to mainland Greece; other maintained the pastoral
status.
Shan-yu Highest-ranking Hsiung-nu leader, equivalent of a king.
Sogdiana Also known as Sogd and Sogdia. A satrapy or
province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire located in the
vicinity of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
sum A political subdivision of an aimag in Mongolia.
transhumance The practice of following animals from pasture
to pasture as required for feed and shelter.
Tuvans A Turkic tribe living in the Tuva Autonomous Region in
southern Siberia. A few Tuvans live in the Altai Mountain in
western Mongolia.
Uygurs Known in central Mongolia from the eighth century,
they adapted their vertically written alphabet to the Mongol
language and became the traditional scribes for the Genghis
Khanite court. In the twelfth century, they migrated into the
Tarim Basin in western China. The Uygurs are a Caucasian and
Mongol admixture and speak a Turkic language.
Uzbeks A tribe descended from the Golden Horde who took
their name from Khan Oz Bek (13121341). In 1428, Khan
Abul Khayr led the Uzbeks from southern Siberia to the north
bank of the Syr Darya, where many tribes broke away and took
the name Kazak. In 1468, Abul Khayr was killed and the Uzbek
were defeated in a battle with Djungars. By 1495, the Uzbeks had
recovered and migrated to the territory known as Uzbekistan
where they occupied Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva. During
the next century, Uzbek hegemony extended eastward into the
Badakhshan region of Afghanistan and into Turkestan and
westward to Khorasan, Iran. Since their arrival in the fertile Amu
Darya region they have been agriculturists.
Yu eh-chih Confederacy of nomads in southern Kazakstan and in
the Tien Shan Mountains, who were driven from this region by the
Hsiung-nu, and migrated into northern Afghanistan, and about a
century later formed the Kushan Empire that was instrumental in
spreading Buddhism into Central Asia, India, and China.

Geographic Ecology of Eurasia The

Steppes and Deserts
The dominant feature of Eurasia is its steppes, the
largest unified area of flat land in the world. The
steppes stretch from the plains of Hungary eastward
to Manchuria. The northern border extends to the
tree line of southern Siberia, and the south is defined
by massive mountain ranges including the Tien Shan
and the high Pamirs. However, some mountain ranges
such as the Tien Shan and Altai have at times been
integral to current steppe societies so that these
expanses, and those beyond, were culturally or politically allied with the steppe cultures. Thus, oasis villages adjacent to the vast Taklimakan Desert in

534 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

western China came under the sway of mobile tribes

while the Altai Mountains in western Mongolia
provided rich summer grazing for nomadic herds.
The flatness of the steppes, with the paucity of natural
barriers had immense cultural and political effects on
adjacent regions.
From the small sedentary Bronze Age farming
villages, beginning around 900 BCE, the earliest nomadic cultures exploded from all directions, developing discrete although economically similar lifestyles
throughout the steppes. As these societies developed
into confederacies toward the end of the first millennium BCE and in subsequent centuries, their
powerful militaries allowed them to control multiple
Silk Roads that crossed Eurasia. Some centuries
later the Genghis Khanite Mongol hordes were able,
in a few short decades, to create one of the largest
Empires ever that encompassed the vast territory from
Manchuria to Hungary (see Asia, Central and North,
Steppes, Deserts, and Forests).
The steppes, although connected, are divided
into three zones intersected by deserts and mountains
(Figure 1). The western steppes extend through southwestern Russia, along the northern shores of the
Black Sea, and east to the Ural River. In the southwest, the Karakum (Black Sand) Desert encircles the
northern Caspian Sea. The central (Kazak) steppes
extend through southeastern Russia to encompass
northern Kazakstan, moving further southeast through
the Djungar Pass that lies between the Tien Shan and
Altai Mountains into western China. The eastern
steppes begin in the northern Xinjiang province of
western China skirting the fringes of the Taklimakan
Desert, eastward into the Mongol steppe lands
that border the Gobi desert, ending at the Khingan
Mountains on the western borders of Manchuria.
In southwestern Kazakstan, the steppes are semidesert. The northerly regions around the Aral Sea that
once supported seminomadic animal husbandry populations, in recent years, have become wastelands as a
result of the intense agricultural diversion of the Amu
Darya (historical Oxus River) and the Syr Darya.
Eurasian continental climatic conditions have always been extremely harsh. Without seas to moderate
the vast expanses the temperatures can range from
well above 100
F in summer and below 50
F in winter. Strong winds and sand storms, sudden flooding
rainstorms, and burning sun are the norm. Plant life,
however, had adapted to the climatic conditions so
that the herds found adequate pastures that included
the waist-high coarse steppe grass. In addition to the
larger rivers, that is, the Don, Danube, Dniester, the
Amu Darya, Syr Darya, the Volga, and the Ural, many
smaller tributary rivers meander throughout the
steppes. These provided ample protein in the form

of fish when small villages were established along

their banks and water for herds when the nomadic
herders appeared.
Southern Siberia, although not included in the Eurasian steppes, has had significant cultural interaction
and diffusion with steppe people and cultural evidence points to times of migration from the steppes
into the taiga.
The time divisions used in the following paragraphs are only approximations; they also differ
from the similarly named divisions in Africa and
Europe. Moreover, they diverge within the various
ecological regions of Eurasia and are used here only
as an approximate guide.

Palaeolithic and Mesolithic

(750 0007000 BCE)
Although Homo erectus appears to have evolved in
Africa about 1.8 million years ago and remains dating
to 1.6 million years ago have been found in Georgia,
the harsh climatic conditions in the steppes, and lack
of significant nutritional sources, for example, the
gathering-type foodstuffs, prevented permanent incursions into the Eurasian interior until much later. The
earliest evidence for human habitation is found along
the southern fringes of Eurasia. Although Oldowantype tools (c. 750 000 BP) were recorded in the Caucasus, and habitation sites dating to c. 250 000 BP
were excavated in Tajikistan, during the early and
middle Palaeolithic, human habitation in Eurasia
was insignificant.
About 130 000 BP, Neanderthal populations, with
the ability to adapt to cold climate, appeared in Europe but had disappeared by 50 000 BP although they
continued to flourish in Asia until 30 000 BP. Between
90 000 and 80 000 BP, in the only relatively benign
Eurasian climatic region encompassing Uzbekistan,
the North Black Sea territory, and along the Dniester
River, Neanderthal habitation sites have been found.
Following a colder period after 65 000 BP, a second
wave of Neanderthals colonized the less-hostile areas
between the great Eurasian rivers and the intermountain valleys. They hunted, gathered, and most probably lived in subsistence groups. Some burials indicate
a limited ritual belief system. From c. 40 000 BP climatic conditions continued to deteriorate and the
Eurasian steppes no longer entertained habitation
until about 20 000 BP when the first evidences of
modern humans appear. This society is defined by
complex housing and refined utilitarian implements
as well, drilled stone, bone- and animal-teeth pendants, and art, for example, Venus figurines, cave
paintings, and petroglyphs. Hunting techniques
became more complex, which signaled a higher

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 535

Figure 1 Map of the Eurasian steppes.

536 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

societal organization. Early in the Holocene Period,

c. 12 000 BP, temperatures were similar to those of
today, permitting postglacial communities to thrive in
the southern Ural steppes where they hunted horse
and elk. Emigrating from the south, sedentary fishing
communities in the Volga, Dnieper, and Pontic steppes
used huge nets for fishing. Such activity signals the
beginnings of an organized society. Hissar Culture
hunting camps, dating from the seventh to the fifth
millennium BCE, were found along the base of the
mountains ranges from the Amu Darya to Issyk Kul
(lake). And the earliest signs of the Neolithic with the
domestication of goats and sheep, appeared in caves
east of the Caspian Sea.

Neolithic (70003500 BCE)

During the Neolithic Revolution, societies banded
together to build small villages supported by primitive agriculture and rudimentary animal husbandry
that was based on goats and sheep. These societies
developed primarily in oases, along the river deltas,
and around the Aral Sea. Huntinggathering communities lived in tandem with village farmers for
hundreds of years, yet cultural centers rose and new
ideas were disseminated. Horses, that play a great
role in the development of the Early Iron Age cultures, were hunted first during the Paleolithic before
they were later domesticated, not for riding but
for their unusually high food value. Massive horse
bone finds are known from Dereivka, belonging to
the Srednyi Stog Culture in the Ukraine and Azov
region north of the Black Sea as well as at Botai, in
north-central Kazakstan.
The earliest Eurasian agricultural communities,
known as the Djeitun Culture, began to form in the
seventh millennium BCE at the base of the Kopet
Dag Mountains just south of the Karakum Desert.
Houses contained hearths with niches that probably
had a ceremonial function and courtyards were work
areas and living spaces. Hand-molded pottery vessels
were rudimentary; placing hot stones in the foodstuff
rather than roasting over the hearth probably accomplished cooking. Ornaments were made from fired
clay, carved from bone, and incorporated semiprecious
stones including turquoise. There is evidence of communal participation in an egalitarian society. Grain
crops required irrigation in the region but water was
easily diverted from small rivers flowing from the
Kopet Dag. Onager, gazelle, and wild pig were hunted
for food; fox, wildcat, and wolf provided fur.
Population geneticists noted a specific haplogroup
(R1a1 defined by the M17) that indicated an eastto-west migration between the fifth and third millennium BCE in the western steppes as far east as the

southern Ural steppes. Known as the Yamnaya,

Timber Grave, Pit Grave, or Kurgan culture (the latter because of their single burials in kurgans), the
people are associated with the Proto-Indo-European
language. They lived in settlements that became more
advanced over time. In the rubbish heaps near the
villages, bones of horse, cattle, sheep, goats, and
occasionally pig have been found, indicating they
practiced animal husbandry as well as farming. As
the culture advanced they constructed hill-forts adjacent to the steep riverbank and used wagons with
large wheels. Oxen heads have been found buried
with wheels.
In the fifth to fourth millennia BCE, metallurgical
development, characterized by pure copper objects,
spread to southeastern Europe and the most westerly
steppe region.

Bronze Age (35001000 BCE)

Many significant events took place in Eurasia at the
beginning of the Bronze Age, which is marked by a
general population expansion. By the early second
millennium BCE metal objects of similar form and
function in pure copper and mold-cast arsenical
bronzes were produced in a Circum-Pontic metallurgical province extending from the Balkans around the
North Black Sea into the southern Urals. The largest
copper ore mine was located at Kargaly in the southern Ural steppes. The mid-second millennium BCE
saw innovative metallurgical technologies that most
probably originated east of the Ural Mountains and
became known as the Seima-Turbino phenomena.
Production included thin-walled casting of tin bronze,
a technology that spread from the Altai Mountains to
the Dnieper River. At the turn of the second to first
millennium BCE, metallurgy was advanced and concentrated in the Ural Mountains, throughout most of
Kazakstan into western Siberia and the Altai Mountains
where production was surprisingly uniform. Iron technology was not introduced into the Eurasian steppes
until around the middle of the first millennium BCE.
Developing in the early second millennium BC, the
Andronovo Culture was a loosely related sedentary
population inhabiting the central steppes south to the
Kopet Dag, the Pamir and Tien Shan Mountains, and
extending north into Minusinsk Basin. Andronovo
settlements were situated on the banks of small rivers
and in low flood plains. Both small villages, with up
to 20 houses, as well as larger ones with up to 100
timber-built houses are known from the earlier period. Settlements grew to accommodate the increasing
populations and in the later development phase,
houses were roomy, rectangular semi-dugout dwellings ranging from 100 to 135 m2 placed in line along

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 537

a river. A particular feature of the Andronovo is the

great mounds of ashes that accumulated as the settlements grew. The Andronovo Culture economy was
based on animal husbandry supplemented by some
agriculture, hunting, fishing, and gathering. Around
the turn of the second to first millennium BCE, the
settlement economy transformed from sedentary to
nomadic, characterized by annual cyclical animal
herding and a shared portable material culture.
Dating between 2000 and 1600 BCE, the SintashtaArkaim Culture has been recently recognized in the
central steppes and along the eastern slopes of the
Ural Mountains. The settlements were round or rectangular fortifications covering between 6000 and
30 000 m2 Village were protected by walls constructed
from a wooden frame reinforced with unfired clay
brick as well as ramparts and moats. Towers guarded
the entrances and access to water. Within the fortification rectangular houses 25130 m2 that contained pitstorage, open fire hearths, and wells faced an internal
circular street but were abutted against the exterior
fortification. Some buildings also featured furnaces
for forging metals. It is assumed that cities such
as Arkaim were administrativeceremonial centers
where up to 1000 aristocracy/metallurgists assembled
periodically to perform specific rituals.
Archaeological evidence has revealed that throughout the central steppes, west to the Don River and
beginning around 1000 BCE, a severe drought occurred, at which time the affected populations withdrew probably to the south from the traditional

Figure 2 Kazak horseman in the Altai Mountains.

habitation centers. With the reappearance of a lesshostile climate c. 900800 BCE, the economic lifestyle dramatically shifted from small village farming
complemented by animal husbandry to developed
pastoral nomadism in which animals form the basis
of survival. This also marks the commencement of the
Early Iron Age.

Early Iron Age (900800 BCE to AD 300)

As the drought receded in the steppes, villagers living
along the rivers (where their burial mounds are
found) returned and more or less simultaneously
began experimenting with pastoral nomadism. This
entailed driving their herds further into the steppes
lands, a mode of life also precipitated by horse riding,
which provided greater mobility (Figure 2). Thus,
herders returned less frequently to the home base.
Innovative portable housing culminated in the yurt
(ger in Mongolia), a lattice structure covered on the
exterior with heavy felt and lined on the interior walls
with colorful carpets, which also covered the floor.
By adopting this lifestyle, the population was no longer dependent upon hunting, gathering, and minimal
agriculture but rather on their animals goats, sheep,
horses, camels, and, in the higher-altitudes, yak
(Figure 3) Their diet consisted primarily of meat, generally sheep but also horsemeat was prepared for
ceremonial occasions and dairy products, particularly sheep and yak milk, the ceremonial koumiss (fermented mares milk), and various cheeses that they

538 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

Figure 3 Kazaks at summer pasture in the Altai Mountains with their yurts and herds.

produced. Tanned leather was fashioned into heavier

winter clothing as well as horse accouterments.
On the steppes, nomads may have migrated more
than 1000 km during a single year, leaving their winter home in very early spring, moving to a clean,
warm locale to lamb-out the herds. A short time
later their migration began, generally northward
across the steppes, reaching the fulcrum in late spring,
and remaining there until the rains of autumn forced
them to retrace their route to the winter home. This
pattern is also consistent with nomads who migrate
into the mountains for summer pasture although the
trek may be much shorter a few up to several
hundred kilometers. It has recently been discovered
that nomads buried in the Siberian Pazyryk region
were infested with hookworm. The closest endemic
zones to this infestation were along the shores of the
Caspian and Aral seas or in Iran, indicating they had
summer migrated over 1200 km.
The shift from a sedentary lifestyle to one of
nomadism is noted in the Chowhougou cemeteries
located between the Tien Shan foothills and the
Taklimakan desert in western China. The earliest
rock-lined tombs, located closed to the oasis village,
contained a single skeleton whose mortuary items
included painted pottery and artifacts relating to a
sedentary society. Later dated but similarly constructed tombs in the same cemetery were located
closer to the foothills. These, however, held several
skeletons. Pottery was coarser and undecorated while
offerings now included bronze knives of the type from
the Minusinsk Valley in southern Siberia as well as
horse accouterments. It would appear that traders on

horseback from the northern reaches had made their

way through the Tien Shan Mountains to encounter
the oasis villages. There they traded bronzes, sheep,
and wool for agricultural products and exquisite textiles woven by the oasis women. Before long the younger villagers realized the stress of herding was far less
than that of planting and hoeing and soon emulated
the northerner nomadism. Nomads normally buried
their dead in the summer pasture; here in reverse, they
returned to their winter home for the burial ceremony,
now placing their deceased in communal pits and including objects from their nomadic lifestyle.
The nomadic winter home and corrals were frequently constructed at the base of a great stone outcropping that provided solar warmth and also
protected from the harsh northerly winds that swept
the steppes of snow so that some grazing was possible
throughout the winter. The home was also in proximity to a small river that provided water and stretches
of tall grass along the banks for emergency feed.
Nomads traveled in small support groups, known
as auls made up of extended families. Clan and tribal
auls commingled at summer and other rites of passage
were performed. Tribal alliances were formed as
needed for administrative requirements and military
expediency as well as for apportioning grazing lands
that were never personal property. Under charismatic
leadership, confederacies composed of many clans
and tribes controlled vast territories. Others, employing large-scale military migrations, created empires
(e.g., the Genghis Khanite).
Because of their mobility, military prowess, and
ability to rapidly mobilize, nomads had a major

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 539

impact upon bordering sedentary societies. The major

tribal alliances of the first millennium BCE, known
from Greek, Achaemenid Persian, and other sources,
and further identified by Russian archaeology beginning in the late nineteenth century, are known as
(1) the Scythians, occupying southeastern Europe,
north of the Black Sea to the lower Don River;
(2) the Sauromatians, whose burials are from the
Kuban region east of the Black Sea, along the lower
Don and Volga rivers, and throughout the Ural River
system; the slightly later (3) Sarmatians, who congregated from the lower Dniester River east, particularly
along the Volga and Ural interfluvials. Further to the
east, (4) the Saka ranged from central Kazakstan
through the Tien Shan Mountains and the Ferghana
Valley, northeast through eastern Kazakstan into the
Altai Mountains in present-day southern Siberia and
Mongolia. All the Early Iron Age nomads spoke variations of Indo-Iranian languages and were ethnically
Caucasoids until a Mongoloid admixture was introduced as noted in skeletal material in the central
steppes dating from the fourth century BCE, and in
southern Kazakstan in the third century BCE. The
people now known as the mummies of western
China, until at least the fourth century BCE, were
also Caucasoids.
The economy of Early Iron Age nomads varied
within regions and was dependent upon several factors including climatic conditions as well as the extent
of contact between the nomads and their particular
sedentary neighbors. As an example, some Scythian
tribes in direct contact with Greek colonies north of
the Black Sea became sedentary, raising grain for export to the Greek mainland while the Sauromatians
and Sarmatians, inhabiting vast stretches of steppe
land, increased their wealth by controlling and/or raiding the northerly Silk Routes. The Pazyryk Saka in the
Gorny Altai of southern Siberia lived a nomadic lifestyle with minimal migration yet increased their wealth
through long-distance trade with the Achaemenid
Persian satrapies.

Scythians (fifth to third century BCE)

Most of the written history about the Scythians
comes from Herodotus Histories, Book IV, written
when he visited Olbia in the mid-fifth century BCE.
The earliest mention of the Scythians, however,
occurs in Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform tablets of
the late seventh century BCE. At this time, as the
Scythians grew powerful in the Ancient Near East
they made alliances with the Medes, Manneans, and
later with the Assyrians. A Scythian hegemony
resulted in their ruling Asia Minor for 28 years.

According to Herodotus, they devastated everything

through violence and overindulgence. Shortly thereafter, the Median King Cyaxares (625585 BCE)
annihilated the Scythian hierarchy in battle and the
surviving Scythians were forced to return to their
former lands north of the Black Sea. In 514 or 512
BCE, the Persian troops of King Darius I invaded the
Scythian lands. Accounts of their battles by Herodotus (Book IV), Ctesias (Fr. 13 2021), and Strabo
(VII, 3, 14) vary but it is thought that the wars contributed to the consolidation and development of the
Scythian national identity. The Scythians invaded
Thrace (modern Bulgaria), which resulted in conflicts
that were frequently resolved by dynastic marriages
between Scythian chieftains and Thracian princesses.
In the fourth century BCE before perishing at the
age of 90, in battle with Philip II of Macedon, King
Atheas united the Scyths from the Danube to the Don
rivers.
Hugely rich burials, such as Chertomlyk and
Solokha, dating to the final third of the fourth century
BCE indicate no significant weakening in the Scythian
society after their defeat by the Macedonians. Moreover, in 331 BCE, they killed Zoppyrion, Alexander
the Greats vice-regent, and defeated his army
(Justini, xii, I, 4). By the third century BCE the
Scythians faced a continual crisis as massive Sarmatian movements pushed upon them from the Don
River region, and Celts and the Getae (a Thracian
tribe) assaulted them from the Danube. The Scythians
were forced into the Crimean foothills and along the
lower Dnieper River where they lived in fortified
settlements until the fourth century AD at which
time they were assimilated by the Hunnic tribes that
came from the east during the era of mass migrations.
Scythian Burial Customs

The first nomadic burials to be excavated by the

Russians were those of the Scythians located in southeastern Europe and the Crimea. Great chieftains were
buried with much ceremony and feasting in massive
kurgans, often accompanied by retainers, horses, and
a variety of portable art as well as less-portable items
secured in trade with the Greek colonies along the
north Black Sea. Portable art cast in bronze and precious metals included pole finials, a variety of horse
accouterments, including phalerae (breast plaques),
and belt plaques indicating status. Men were buried
with complete defensive and offensive armament,
which by the fourth to third centuries BCE included
long swords as well as ceremonial akinakes (short
swords) in gold sheaths. Women also held elevated positions in society, as illustrated by gold headdresses and plaques, exquisitely worked gold jewelry

540 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

encrusted with semiprecious stones, and elaborate

bronze cultic mirrors. According to the Soviet archaeologist E. P. Bunyatyan, 2729% of the female burials
contained armament. Greek craftsmanship is apparent in the luxury gold items as well as in amphorae,
kantaroi, and kylix. Occasionally burials were
marked with stone funerary sculpture.

Sauromatians, Sarmatians, Alans

The Sauromatians, Sarmatians, and Alans have been
differentiated archaeologically by burial artifacts and
by the orientation of the deceased (Figure 4). The
Soviet archaeologist B. N. Grakov defined four chronological periods for these tribes:
. Sixth to fourth century BCE Sauromatian (type
site, Blyumenfeld)
. Fourth to second century BCE Sauro-Sarmatian
(type site, Prokhorovskaya)
. Late second century BCE to second century AD
Sarmatian (type site, Suslova)
. Second to fourth century AD Alan (type site
Shipovskaya).
According to Herodotus and Hippocrates (24), the
Sauromatians, who were eastern neighbors of the
Scythians, spoke an earlier version of the Scythic
language. The Sauromatians maintained a nomadic
lifestyle independent of sedentary cultures. According
to Herodotus, social statuses of Sauromatian and
Early Sarmatian women were different from those

Figure 4 Reconstruction of the skull of a Sarmatian woman.

of the Scythian women. Many of the former dressed

like men, rode horses, shot bows and arrows, hunted,
and took part in military campaigns.
Based on archaeological data, Soviet archaeologist
K. F. Smirnov, believed that the Sauromatian culture
developed from the sedentary Bronze Age TimberGrave Culture (located in the Volga River region)
and the Andronovo Culture (in the southern Ural
steppes). Tribal units associated with the Sauromatians include the Issedones, Daha, and Massagetae.
Although it is not clear where they wintered, their
burials and, therefore, their summer pastures, were
from the Don River to the southern Ural steppes.
Before the turn of the fifth to fourth centuries, the
Sauromatians in the Volga interfluvials maintained
good relations with the Scythians. The balance of
power soon changed in fourth century BCE as the
Sauromatians pushed westward into Scythian territory along the lower reaches of the Don River.
Sauromatian westward migrations were no doubt
the result of impinging eastern migrations by different
ethnic but still Indo-Iranian-speaking nomads. Greek
authors referred to these tribes as the Sarmatians who
probably originated in the forest-steppe trans-Ural
region and northwestern Kazakstan. However, recent DNA studies have revealed that certain female
Sarmatians in the southern Urals, in the fourth
century BCE, introduced a Mongol admixture. The
Sarmatians first asserted themselves in the southern
Ural steppes, continuing to move westward into the
lower Volga River region and the Volga-Don interfluvials. Sarmatian military burials of the third to
second century found deep in Scythian territory indicate that their warriors had penetrated the Scythian
territory along the lower Don-Dnieper interfluvials.
The campaigns of Alexander the Great also undermined the symbiotic relationship that the nomads and
sedentary populations had maintained, thus creating
further turmoil.
Sarmatian tribal unions mentioned in Geography
of Strabo include the Rhoxolani, Aorsi, Siraki, and
Yazigs. By the middle of the first century BCE, these
unions had moved into the plains between the
Danube and Tissa rivers as well as into the eastern
Azov Sea region, the Kuban River area, and part of
central pre-Caucasus. In AD 49, first an alliance and
then further struggle over the Bosporus throne weakened the Siraki. Shortly thereafter this tribe as well the
Aorsi disappear from written sources. Archaeological
material indicates, however, that both the Siraki and
the Aorsi lived in the steppes between the Don and
Volga rivers until the late first century BCE.
Around the middle of the first century AD the
Alans, a large nomadic union, emerged from north
of the Black Sea and conquered or assimilated the

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 541

remaining Sarmatian tribes. From the mid-first century AD through most of the fourth century AD, the
Alans constantly raided the trans-Caucasus and the
eastern Roman provinces, keeping the sedentary
populations in a constant state of terror.
Diversity in burial customs indicates that the Alans
of the second to third century AD were ethnically more
diverse than those of the third to fourth century AD.
In the late fourth century AD when Huns from the
east swept into the Alan territory, some Alanic tribes
were absorbed into the Hunnic union. Others settled
in the North Caucasus while other unions became a
component of new ethnic confederacies of the early
Middle Ages. After the Hunnic invasion, independent
unions of Indo-Iranian-speaking nomads no longer
existed. The north Caucasus Alans migrated into the
foothills and mountains and in conjunction with indigenous tribes established the land of Alania that
existed to the twelfth century AD. Other Alans settled
in the Don River region intermingling with the indigenous culture. The known Alan settlements that have
been excavated were both fortified and unfortified.
Along with their kurgan burials, they were constructed along the Kuban River, north of the Azov
Sea delta, and along the Terek River in the north
Caucasus.

be either in a pit, often with ledges along the side and

dug to a depth of ca. 2 m.; in a deep catacomb; or in a
podboi , a pit with niche along the side. The deceased,
probably wrapped in a felt blanket, was often further
protected from the earth with organic material, such
as cane or wooden planks (Figure 5).
Ritual artifacts in female burials signaled a rich
spiritual life, noted initially in the Sauromatian burials. The role of priestesses became increasingly important on both the clan and the tribal levels as
determined by their burial accoutrements. These included zoomorphic amulets in precious metals or
carved from boars tusks, ritual stone-carved and
fired-clay altars, bronze mirrors for divinations, and
fossilized seashells serving as containers for painting
or tattooing. Bronze arrowheads, swords, daggers,
and armor elements were provided for both male
and female burials. The latter social group, female
warriors, was small but was still a prominent group
among Sauromatians and earliest Sarmatians (Figure 6).
The earliest use of spears is also attributed to the
Sarmatians.

Sauromatian and Sarmatian Burial Rituals

Similarity in burial customs consolidated the Sauromatian and Sarmatian tribes in the Volga region and
southern Ural steppes. In addition to some diversity in
burial artifacts, Sauromatian burials, oriented east,
differ from those of the Sarmatians that are orientated
south. Nomads were buried at summer pasture after
the ground thawed, permitting them to dig deep pits
and catacombs, and to construct the kurgan overmound. In the southern Ural region, where cemeteries
and kurgans were closely clustered, a few very large
100 m in diameter and known as tsar kurgans
reveal the nomadic societal hierarchy as they interred
aristocracy. Because of their prominent profile against
the horizon, the tsar kurgans were easily spotted from
a great distance and, thus, were robbed, some shortly
after the interment but many later during the Russian
expansion in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.
The vast majority of the kurgans are relatively small,
measuring from c. 1 to 30 m in diameter. Artifacts in
these burials also provide insight into social rank
within the society.
Although the kurgan was constructed for the primary burial, it was often reused with the secondary
burials being placed laterally around the central burial.
Only occasionally were multiple Sarmatian burials
encountered in a single tomb. The interment could

Figure 5 Pokrovka male with child in situ.

542 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

Figure 6 Armament and cultic artifacts from an Early Sarmatian

female warrior burial (Pokrovka cemetery 2, kurgan 8, burial 5).

Plaques incorporating the ubiquitous Animal Style

functioned as amuletic decoration for the bearer
while diverse types of psalia (cheekpieces), bridle
bits, and belt hooks provided horse accouterments.
As the Sarmatian tribes become militarily stronger
and acquired greater wealth, a diversity and increased
value of burial offerings is noted. A large kurgan at
the Filippovka Cemetery in the southern Urals yielded
several secret troves containing beads, a large bronze
mirror, hundreds of gold plaques, and over 20 threedimensional carved deer covered with gold and silver
foil (Figure 7). In the Don River interfluvials the
jewelry worn by high-status women was fashioned
from gold and semiprecious stones (Figure 8).
Alan settlements as well as catacomb and podboi
burials have been excavated along the Kuban and the
Terek rivers. The entrance chambers to catacombs
placed near the right bank of the Terek were orientated latitudinally while their chambers were placed
meridionally. Grave offerings included bronze and
silver fibulae, occasionally gold plaques, buckles,
and arrowheads. Pottery containers are of the same
shape as those of the earlier period but were wheelthrown, often burnished, and gray fired.

Figure 7 Plaque from the Filippovka tsar burial in the form of

fighting camels.

Figure 8 Diadem from a high-ranking female burial, Khokh, Don

River interfluvial.

Russian archaeologists. As the Saka had little direct

contact with sedentary societies, there is a paucity of
textual information and, therefore, their lifestyle is
primarily deduced from burials and artifacts.

The Saka

The Tasmola and other Tribes in

Kazakstan

The generic name Saka has been applied to Early Iron

Age tribes that had common, yet distinct cultural
affinities. They nomadized throughout Kazakstan,
into the rich Ferghana Valley (now divided between
Uzbekistan, Tadjikstan, and Kyrgyzstan), into the
Tien Shan and Altai mountains. Although there
were no known direct contacts between the Saka
and the Scythians, the Early Iron Age culture in southern Siberia was termed Scytho-Siberian by the early

In the steppes of western and central Kazakstan, Saka

burials remained unchanged from the seventh to the
third century BCE. This would indicate that the ethnic
populations generically known today as Tasmola, remained relatively stable. M. K. Kadyrbayev theorized
that Saka tribes could be equated with three that
were known from historical sources: the Agrippeans
in northwestern Kazakstan, the Issedonians in the
central steppes, and the Arimaspians in eastern

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 543

Kazakstan. The principal characteristic of Tasmola

burials was the presence in the necropolis of a formation denominated kurgan with mustache. Each
burial consisted of one large and two smaller kurgans
connected by a semicircular ridge of stones (Figure 9).
The large kurgan contained a human burial, one, smaller, held a horse burial and the other pottery. Male
burials contained a horses head wrapped in a horsehide, horse trapping, and meat offerings. Females
were buried in pits that had niches blocked with
stone slabs, an architectural structure lacking in male
burials. The types of plaques and poletops indicate
contact with Sarmatians in the northern Urals and the
Siberian Saka. Mirrors and cultic altars reveal a spiritual belief system that may have paralleled that of the
Sauromatians and Sarmatians.

Tuvinian sites extend north into the Sayan Mountains

and west into Pazyryk and northwestern Mongolia in
the Altai Mountains. The earliest known Scythiantype burial (eighth to seventh century BCE) is the
massive tsar Arzhan Kurgan measuring 120 m in
diameter, 4 m in height, and cylindrical in form
(Figure 10). In the periphery, 70 burial chambers
with c. 160 harnessed riding horses were found in
separate cells. A log house in the center was constructed
for two nobles, a man and women, who were placed in
the central chamber. In the outer chamber of the log
house, six riding horses and seven retainers, richly
dressed and of the same elderly age as the nobles,
were interred. Armaments including daggers, knives,
and arrowheads. Horse tack and bronze phalerae in the
form of coiled felines were included as accoutrements
for the next world.
Stone-carved stelae, known as the olenniye kamni
(deer stones), are predominately found in the fareastern and northern Saka regions. In addition to
deer, other animals including boar, horses, and felines
as well as various plant forms are among the iconographic images on these large stones (Figure 11).
Incising images on the surface of earrings, necklaces,
and belts that display daggers and whetstones has
anthropomorphicized many of the olenniye kamni.

Tuva and Eastern Kazakstan

Kurgan burials in the northern regions, from southern
Siberia to Kazakstan east of the Ural Mountains,
reflected the Bronze Age Karasuk Culture, yet grave
offerings are analogous with those in Central Asia.
The physical appearance of the Saka was essentially
the same as Bronze Age inhabitants although the
northern and southern inhabitants were distinct. The
northern Saka in the Irtysh River valley of Kazakstan
gravitated toward the Altai regions while the southern populations intermingled with those from the
Semirechiye region of southern Kazakstan and south
into the oases of western China. Primarily Caucasoid,
a Mongoloid admixture is noted particularly among
the female skeletons beginning around the third
century BCE.

Southern Kazakstan and Western China

(Ancient Turkestan)
In the Semirechiye (Seven Rivers) in southern
Kazakstan, large stone-covered kurgans measuring
up to 100 m in diameter are represented by those
constructed in the Chilikta Valley and at Issyk just

5m

(c)

(d)

(a)
8m

10 cm

(f)

(b)
(e)
Figure 9 Tasmola burials in western Kazakstan.

1m

544 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

Figure 11 Various styles of olenniye kamni associated with the

Arzhan Kurgan.

Figure 10 Schematic and details of the Arzhan Kurgan.

north of Almaty. These yielded prolific Animal Style

iconography wrought in gold and frequently decorated with semiprecious stones. Women also played
prominent roles in this nomadic society particularly
in religious or cultic matters, an influence transmitted
into western China (Figure 12). Burial rituals while
constructing the large kurgans often included feasting,
particularly on horsemeat cooked in large cauldrons.
Bronze Age anthropomorphic fertility dancers
recorded in stone at Kangjiashimenji in western
China give way to sun gods and Early Iron Age
Shamanic images of ritual horned horses and the
ubiquitous zoomorphisms at sites such as Tamgaly
near Almaty, Kazakstan, and Saimaly Tash in the
Kyrghyz Tien Shan (Figure 13).
Oases cemeteries at Chowhougou at the northern
edge of the Taklimakan Desert and the base of the

Tien Shan Mountains reveal that nomadism was

introduced into the high Tien Shan c. 900 BCE when
multiple burials replaced a single interment. During
the Bronze Age the deceased had been placed on the
right side in a flexed position but this custom soon
changed to the typical Early Iron Age supine position.
Horse harnessing, including snaffle bits of a type
from southern Siberia, was added to the list of grave
goods and crude pottery was substituted for the villagers fine painted ware. Bronze-casting techniques
were introduced into western China at this time,
probably from smithies known to have had workshops east of the Ural Mountains or in the southern
Siberian Minusinsk Valley. The sophisticated castbronze artifacts from the Semirechiye and the Tarim
Basin included altars and immense cauldrons, mirrors,
knives, whetstone handles, and horse accouterments.
Around 400 BCE, burials ceased at Chowhougou,
possibly signaling that the Saka were being forced
from their territories by the Hsiung-nu and Yueh
Chih confederacies.
Burnished gray pottery from oasis cemeteries near
Hami along the eastern Taklimakan Desert reflects

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 545

pottery styles and techniques from northeastern

Iran, suggesting population incursion from that region. Caucasoid mummies, dressed in finely woven
woolen fabrics, have been excavated from cemeteries
south of the Taklimakan Desert. The quality of
the textiles suggests that the villagers traded wool
from nomads living in higher elevations where the
animals produce finer quality wool than they can
in the intense desert heat. Artifacts associated with
several female mummies also indicate a cultic belief
system similar to that practiced by the Saka.

Pazyryk and the Scytho-Siberians

Figure 12 Contemporary Kazak nomads in their yurt in western

China.

S. I. Rudenkos seminal excavations in 1929 of huge

frozen, but robbed, kurgans at Pazyryk in the Gorny
Altai, Russia, revealed that these nomads followed a
rich nomadic lifestyle. Finely carved wooden horse
accouterments, multicolored horse blankets fashioned from felt, elaborated Animal Style motifs, and
a wall hanging with a repeat motif depicting a woman
of high status, probably a priestess, confronted by an
male rider, all speak of a complex ritual life. Sacrificial
horses masked and wearing horns imply cultural ties
with Tamgaly in southern Kazakstan. From another
Pazyryk kurgan a trade piece, a woolen carpet with
a design that parallels the carved images of Medes
bringing horses as tribute to the Great King at Persepolis (Iran), discloses the Pazyryks contact with the
Achaemenid Persians. On the Ukok Plateau, Natalie
Polosmak excavated a frozen burial containing a

Figure 13 A ceremonially horned horse with shaman, Tamgaly petroglyphs, Kazakstan.

546 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

priestess wearing the nomadic high-pointed hat, caftan,

and skirt. From another kurgan at Berel, located in
the northeastern Kazakstan Altai Mountains, examination of the frozen remains of a high-ranking man
and woman revealed the presence of hookworm infestation that could only have occurred on the shores of
the Aral or Caspian Sea or in Iran, some 750 miles
(1200 km) from the burial site. This confirms the practice of long-distance nomadizing during the Early
Iron Age.

Early Medieval Nomadic Confederacies

The Hsiung-nu, Yueh-chih, and Tung-hu

Known to the Chinese in the fifth century BCE, the

Hsiung-nu (also known as Xiongnu) were the largest
of three Eurasian nomadic confederacies; the other
two were the Yueh-chih in the Chinese Gansu province and the Tung-hu in eastern Mongolia. The
Hsiung-nu headed a powerful alliance of cattlebreeding tribes in the late third to the early second
century BC, dominating eastern Central Asia for two
centuries. They laid the foundation for the emergence
of the powerful tribal alliances of the Middle Ages.
The Hsiung-nu, as for all nomadic confederacies,
were made up of various tribes, many with similar
languages and traditions. Although some Hsiung-nu
were reported to have red hair and big noses, it is
unlikely that the ruling elite was Caucasoid or spoke
an Indo-Iranian language. The tribes were noted for
their deliberately deformed heads. By the middle of
the third century BCE, the Hsiung-nu had formed a
powerful confederacy and their leader was the great
shan-yu. Pressure from the Chinese Chin emperor
Shih-huang-ti in 214 BCE forced the confederacy
from their traditional pastures in the Ordos region
(northern loop of the Huang He River) and greatly
weakened their force. Following the emperors death
and the collapse of Chinese dynasty four years later, the
Hsiung-nu regained the Ordos. At this time the continual Hsiung-nu pressure against the Chinese forced
them to begin construction in Gansu of the Great Wall.
Shan-yu Tumen, had previously sent his son and
heir, Motun, as political hostage to the Yueh-chih.
Chinese chronicles written by Ssu-ma Chien reveal
that Tumen attacked Yueh-chih hoping that Motun
would be killed, as the shan-yu did not want this son
to be his successor. Motun escaped during the battle,
returned home, thus forcing Tumen to give him his
military rank as heir as well as his 10 000 military
forces. Motun began training his men to shoot at the
exact same target that he shot at; if they failed to
obey, they were executed. When his troops were
completely loyal to him, Motun took his father on a

hunting expedition. He fired a whistling arrow at his

shan-yu as did his troops and Motun was assassinated. In 209 BCE, Motun became the new shan-yu
after executing his stepmother and any dissenters.
Motun then attacked the Tung-hu, who tested
Motuns authority by demanding gifts. The shan-yu
granted their requests until they demanded territory
in the Gobi, which overstepped their bounds. The
Hsiung-nu attacked the Tung-hu, gained the advantage, killing the men, and taking the women and children prisoner before assuming their herds. The shan-yu
then turned westward, attacked the Yueh-chih, taking
traditional lands along the western loop of the Huang
He River, before pushing into the Chinese Han defensive lines that crossed the Ordos. Moving northward,
Motun dominated the Siberian fur trade and metals
of the Mongolian Altai. Although he had considerable power, he still needed the vast wealth of the
Chinese Han to fund a durable pastoral state. The
Hsiung-nu and Han Chinese established a costly
exchange of goods in which the Chinese obtained
Heavenly Horses from the Ferghana Valley and the
Hsiung-nu received foodstuffs, silks, and other luxury
items.
By the middle of the second century AD, following
attacks by several rising tribal groups, the effective
authority of the shan-yu had collapsed both in the
northern and southern regions and regional tribal
chieftains regained power. It is assumed by some
scholars that the Huns, located near the Black Sea as
noted in Ptolemys geography c. AD 160, were remains
of the Hsiung-nu who had integrated with local tribes.
At Pokrovka in the southern Ural steppes, more than
100 kurgans with a very low profile contained skeletons with deliberately deformed skulls. These are dated
post-Sarmatian (after fourth century AD). It is possible
that these tribes may have been some of the Hsiung-nu
who appear not much later in the Roman world as
the Huns.
Hsiung-nu archaeology Burials in southern
Kazakstan with skeletons containing deformed
skulls dating to c. 300 BCE reveal the incursion of
Hsiung-nu from the Ordos region before the confederacy moved northward. In Buryatia (autonomous
region in southern Siberia) the earliest Hsiung-nu
archaeological monuments were discovered in 1896
by J. D. Talko-Grinzevich near the town of Kyachta.
In 19241925, P. Koslov excavated the rich burials at
Noin Ula in northern Mongolia that contained silver
plates, nephrite carvings, silk textiles, and carpets.
In recent years further excavations were undertaken
at Noin Ula. In the same region fortresses at Huret-tov,
Terelgiin, Gua-Dov, Bars-Hot, Haralty, and Gargalanty were explored, and cemeteries at Hunuy,

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 547

Tebsh-uul, Edergol, and Darchan were excavated. The

French-Mongol Archaeological Mission, commencing
in 2000, located a cemetery of 400 burials at Gol Mod,
450 km NW of Ulaanbaatar. In 2001, the Mission
excavated a funerary chamber 16 m deep in which
they found rich artifacts, including a bronze mirror,
rock crystal beads, and gold decoration suggesting that
the burial belonged to a Hsiung-nu chieftain who died
c. AD 40.
In the Trans-Baikal region of southern Siberia, the
Hsiung-nu Ivolga complex included a large fortress,
smaller fortifications, and a cemetery. Other recent
archaeological excavations in this region included
the settlements of Dureny-1 and Dureny-2, Enchor,
Hariatzk, and Bargay. In addition to the Bayan-Under
fortress, the following cemeteries were excavated:
Derestui, Ilmovaja, T cheremuchovaja, Enchor, and
Zaoziornaja. Many small Hsiung-nu cemeteries are
located south of Trans-Baikalia around Kyachta.
Hsiung-nu skeletons are generally found supine but
the burials vary in type as follows: (1) no inner grave
or over-grave structure; (2) in a pit; (3) in a pit with a
coffin and no over-grave structure; (4) in a pit with
a coffin within a timber frame with no over-grave
structure; (5) in a pit with a wooden coffin placed in
a stone cist with an over-grave stone structure; (6) in a
pit with a coffin placed in a timber frame and with an
over-grave structure; (7) in a pit up to 1015 m deep
with a coffin, a timber frame, and a chamber several
logs high enclosed in a square stone construction;
the pit is partitioned by 45 stone walls. In the three
latter groups, the coffin or the timber construction may
be lined with stone slabs placed vertically. Change in
the burial ritual within a given cemetery indicates the
chronological development of Hsiung-nu customs and
also implies increased wealth.
The Derestui cemetery, investigated by Sergei
Minyaev, has yielded the most important evidence
relevant to Hsiung-nu social history. Each kurgan
complex was composed of a central barrow holding
a male, with satellite barrows in which were interred
women and children, apparently sacrificed. Many
funerary artifacts were placed in the burials; most
common were belts, bronze plaques in the Ordos
(often fantastic) animal style, ceramics, and beads.
Decorative plaques, either solid bronze or metal
over wood, adorned both womens and mens belts.
The discovery and excavations of Hsiung-nu fortresses and settlements have given new insight into
the Hsiung-nu that was thought to have been nomadic and completely dependent upon animal husbandry.
However, because the Hsiung-nu Empire occupied
a vast territory with a relatively large population,
cattle-breeding alone could not sustain their lifestyle. Thus, in addition to the military strategies of

conquest and assimilation, agriculture, commerce,

metallurgy, and other handicrafts were necessary to
sustain the empire.
The Yueh-chih After being routed by the Hsiung-nu
from Gansu, the Yueh-chih confederacy pushed into
western China. Chinese archaeologists excavated a
Bronze Age stone house near Barkol, along the most
northern Silk Route northeast of Urumqi. In addition
to skeletal remains probably those of nomads killed
in a skirmish artifacts abandoned on the floor of
the dwelling included a large bronze cauldron of the
Yueh-chih type, indicating that they had celebrated
feasts and burials while there. Yu. Zadneprovsky
noted podboi burials in the Ili Valley and near Lake
Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan. He tentatively identified
these as Yueh-chih on the basis of their similarity to
other podboi tombs at the Gansu site of Haladun near
Minqin. The Issyk Kul region is rich in nomadic
burial sites; by 1960, 370 tombs had been identified.
Of these, 80% were in pits attributed to the Saka, and
17% in podbois, tentatively identified as Yueh-chih.
As the Yueh-chih moved westward, podboi burial are
also noted in the Ferghana Valley where they may
have wintered until they could continue their march
westward through mountain passes to eventually
arrive in northern Bactria (present-day Afghanistan).
In the early first century AD, it appears that from the
types and iconography of the some 10 000 gold artifacts found in six burials at Tillya Tepe (excavated by
Afghan archaeologists and the Soviet archaeologist
V. Sarianidi), the Yueh-chih had interred high-status
priestesses and a priest. By the turn of the millennium,
the Yueh-chih had become increasingly sedentary.
One of the chieftains was responsible for establishing
the Kushan Empire that ultimately spread Buddhism
into India.

Mongolia in the Bronze Age

Mongolia is a vast country situated in central Asia
with changing geographical zones. Steppe lands are
bordered by mountain chains: the high Altai in the
west, the Hangai in the north central region that
meets the Sayan in the east, and the Hentei that rises
in the northeastern region. The northern Gobi, a
semidesert/dry steppe land, covers the southern part
of the country. In the west below the Altai Mountain,
a great depression holds the salty Great Lakes that
have no outlets. This area is the most northerly dry
desert in the world (Figure 14).
In spite of high altitudes and fluctuating continental temperatures, the vast steppes and highland
valleys offer extremely favorable conditions for the
early and successful development of animal husbandry,

548 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

Figure 14 Stone-carved representation of a female, probably a

priestess, wearing a pointed hat and holding a cup, standing
adjacent to Uureg Lake in the Great Lakes Depression, Mongolia.
Probably first millennium BCE.

which led to pastoral nomadism. The Bronze Age is

represented by chance finds of cast bronzes of the
Seimo-Turbino type, and bronzes with close affinities
to the Karasuk Culture of Southern Siberia as well as the
Chou Dynasty in China. The Late Bronze Age is identified with the Early Nomads who made extensive use of
the bridled horse to forge contacts with neighboring
tribes as well as more distant populations.

Early Turkic Empires

The Turks were the first Inner Asian people whose
language could be precisely dated. Their language
also linked Turkic-speaking peoples throughout
Inner Asia and beyond. Turkish-speaking nationalities in the Eurasian steppes and Turkestan today
are many and include Kazaks, Kyrghyz, Uzbeks,
Bashkorts, Tatars, Altais, Sakas, Tuvans, Uygurs,
and Turkmen.
The first Turkic Empire, that of the Gokturks, was
established in Mongolia and dated from the sixth to
eighth centuries AD. No doubt the Turkic state included
nonspeaking as well as nonethnic Turks. In addition,
not all ethnic Turks belonged to the ruling class and
some probably also lived beyond the Turkish State.

Archaeologically it has been established that before

AD 550 the Gokturks were nomadizing on the southern edge of the Altai Mountains, having descended
from the northern Hsiung-nu. During this era they
were vassals of the Mongol Juan-juans. Fomenting
for independence, the Gokturks chieftain, Bumin,
increased his military force by allying with the Toles
tribe, and gained prestige with the Chinese Emperor
of the Western Wei by marrying his daughter. In 552
his forces defeated the Juan-juan and their khagan
committed suicide. Bumin became Il Khagan and his
wife took the title of Khatun.
Bumin gave his brother, Istemi, the western sections
of the country from Hami in Xinjiang Province, western China, to the Black Sea, territory that he ruled
from 552 to 576 under the title of yabghu. The
Gokturks, allied with the Sasanians and together
they defeated the rival Turkish Akhuns in 545. The
division of territories placed the Gokturks in control
of much of Turkestan and Transoxiana as well as the
Silk Road and the Sogdians came under the controls
of Istemi. Gokturk influence within the Sogdian state
is noted in the murals at their capital city, Afrosiab,
near Samarkand. Continual wars and inner struggle
within the Khaganate resulted in a split between 581
and 603 in which the Eastern Turkic and Western
Turkic Khaganates developed.
The Eastern Gokturks, under leadership of the
charismatic Khagan Ishbara, developed diplomatic
relations with the Chinese Chou and later with the
Sui dynasties, becoming a vassal of the Chinese emperor in 585. By 593 the Gokturks having gained
strength, refused to pay tribute to the Chinese. The
Chinese retaliated; the influential Chinese princess
Chien-chin (also known as Tai), wife of Ishbara,
was murdered. To maintain stability the majority of
the tribes under the Eastern Gokturks sent thousands
of horses, camels, and cattle to the Chinese as tribute.
During the ensuing years Gokturk and Chinese
relations continued to be stormy with factious intrigues, diplomatic intermarriages, and harsh military
battles. In 630, Bagatur Shad, the last Il Khagan, was
taken prisoner while on a hunting expedition in the
northern Chinese mountains and died in China. Thus
ended the Eastern Gokturk Empire.
Beginning in 678, a second Turkish state was
founded under the leadership of Khagan Kutlug, a
descendant of the Eastern Gokturks, and continued
under Khagan Qapghan who became the strongest
emperor in Central Asia at that time. After Qapghan
was ambushed and killed, Bilge Khagan, whose homeland was in Irtish River region, fought many battles
with other Turkic tribes before ending this strife in
718. However, as he was an excellent administrator
with wise advisors, the Turkic union prospered. After

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 549

his death in 731, turmoil again arose among the various factional tribes. The Uyghurs left the khaganate,
elected their own khagan, and founded their state
in central Mongolia. Although Gokturks continued
to be mentioned in Chinese annals until 941, the
records indicate they never again regained their previous power.
Turkic Political Structure

Upon formation of the Turk state, the person who

embodied the state was the great khagan; his wife was
khatun. Throne succession was from elder brother to
younger brother or from younger uncle to older nephew. Waiting their turn, the princes received their own
principalities and appropriate titles. The dispersal of
power in nomadic states served two purposes: it
provided stability of government and extended defensive powers. As nomads without a continuous habitation spot, their economic lifestyle was based on
animal husbandry with each family allotted a specific
grazing territory.
Turkic Archaeological Monuments

The three earliest known monuments with Turkic

inscriptions were erected in the eighth century near
the Turkic homeland on the Orkhon River in Central
Mongolia. Two were dedicated during the Khaganate
of Bilge Khagan to Tonyukuk, his state advisor, Kol
Tegin, his beloved brother, and the third to Bilge
Khangan after his death. The most ubiquitous Turkic
monuments, balbals, are found throughout the
steppes (Figure 15). These are stone carving representing a warrior who wears a weapon and frequently
holds a bowl to his chest. Occasionally women are
also characterized with similar accoutrements. These
stelae are thought to be representative of the person
whose burial they mark. Many other stone complexes, either cultic or burial, are found throughout
the steppes, particularly in western Mongolia. These
are only beginning to be archaeologically explored.
Small finds from burials are primarily horse trappings,
small decorative plaques, and undecorated pottery,
typical artifacts of nomadic populations. Khans and
khagans were buried with great ceremony and feasting
but rarely have their burials been encountered.

The Genghis Khanite Era (Thirteenth

Century)
The Mongols are believed to have originated in the
forest steppes of northeastern Mongolia, but ranged
over what is now Mongolia and Chinas Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region. Then, as today, they
spoke an Altaic language related to the Turkic

Figure 15 Turkic period balbal in western Mongolia.

language. For most of the twelfth century, a plethora

of ethnic and linguistic Mongol and Turkic tribes, including the Tatars in east, the Keraits in the center, the
Merkits to the north, the Naimans to the west as well as
ngguts,
lesser tribes known as the Qonggirats, the O
and Kirghiz tribes controlled the Mongolian steppes.
The tribes were divided into the noble ruling clans and
subordinates, the latter resulting from military defeat
or the need for protection. Within the ruling clan
(oboq) kinships were the principal means of organization, yet a provision for free choice also existed. Thus,
chieftains were determined by their superb abilities
while incompetence meant inevitable disqualification.
The Mongol Empire established by Genghis Khan
was not an autocracy determined by primogeniture.
The Khagan (supreme khan) and successors were
chosen or acclaimed at a quriltai, a great assemblage
of Mongol notables held in the region south of Ulaanbaatar that Genghis Khan had declared his homeland.
By 1206, the Turko-Mongol tribes were largely
united and a quriltai was held that acclaimed Temumjin Khagan of all these tribes. He took the title of
Genghis Khan (Universal Ruler).

550 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

When just a child, the Tartars had killed Temumjins father, who was a minor chieftain. His mother,
with her children, fled into the Hentei Mountains
where, through great perseverance, they survived.
These and other tales, some of bravery and others of
treachery, are related in the Secret History of the
Mongols commissioned by Genghis heirs shortly
after his fathers death and written by the Uyghurs.
As a charismatic and bold leader, successful in raiding, Temumjin attracted like-minded warriors, many
of lower status, who began to swear tribal allegiance
to him. This group grew to become the nucleus of his
imperial guard, the generals who led the raids across
Asia and Europe. Continuing to use his strength and
shrewd intelligence, Temumjins power increased until
he was finally able to marry his long-betrothed wife,
Borte, and form an alliance with the Keraits, their greatest Tatar enemy. One by one, Genghis Khan subdued
the remaining tribes and for the most part incorporated
them into the Mongol military, ever increasing his
strength. Unfortunately, the Merkits kidnapped Borte;
nine months later she gave birth to her first son, Jochi.
Although his paternity was never questioned, it
remained to trouble the royal house.
Many women, beginning with Genghis Khans
mother, Hoelu Ujin, and subsequently, Borte, held
relatively high positions within the Mongol society.
In the interregnums widows of the khagans ruled the
Mongols. Perhaps the finest example was Khatun
Sorqaghtani Beki, the strong and forceful wife of
Tolui, Genghis Khans youngest son. In addition to
her husbands appanages that she managed even
before his death, she owned two estates (small cities)
in China that provided her with adequate wealth.
Moreover, she held a vast orda, a summer encampment in the Altai Mountains, where her great herds of
sheep, horses, and yak were maintained under an
entourage of over a thousand families. Sorqaghtani
Beki also controlled the military prowess of 12 900
soldiers. Other khans frequently lauded the Katun
and her three sons as exemplary examples of honesty
and loyalty.
godeis wife, was de facto ruler for
Torogene, O
12 years due to the fact that her husband, the Khan,
was alcoholic. She was a Makrit princess when Gen godei
ghis Khan captured her and then gave her to O
as his sixth wife. Due to her astuteness and extraordinary competence, she rose from this lowly position
(outsider and sixth wife) to become regent following
her husbands death in 1241. She so earned the respect of lesser khans that she continued to command
the empire for another four years, not permitting a
quriltai to convene until she had formed the necessary
alliances to have her son, Guyuk, elected Khagan.

Karakorum
Nomadic Turkic tribes had inhabited the area in the
vicinity of Karakorum since the first century AD. In
1220, Genghis Khan established as his residence the
large ger city of Karakorum. On a papal mission,
Carpini visited the capital c. 1247. In 1267, the city
was abandoned and later destroyed after Kublai
Khan, grandson of Genghis, transferred the Mongol
capital to Khanbaliq (modern Beijing). In 1889, the
Russian explorer, M. Yadrinstev, discovered the ruins
of Karakorum. (Yadrinstev also discovered the Turkic
Orkhon inscriptions.) Karakorum is also the name of
a nearby site that in the eighth to ninth century AD
was the capital of the Uyghurs who later became
scribes for the Mongol. In 1586, Erdeni Dzu, the
large and currently functioning Lamaist monastery,
was built in the vicinity of Karakorum.

The Empires of the Genghis Khan

Descendants
From Karakorum, Mongol hordes swept eastward
into China and westward into Europe. By c. 1260
the Genghis Khan sons and grandsons ruled the farflung Eurasian empire that was divided into four
khanates: the Great Khanate that comprised all of
China and most of eastern Asia, including Korea
and which, under Quibilai (Kublai Khan), came to be
known as the Yuan Dynasty; the Chagadai Khanate
in Turkistan under Genghis Khans second son,
Chagadai; the Empire of the Golden Horde in southern
Russia was founded by Batu Khan, with its capital
at Sarai along the Volga River; and the Ilkhanate
in Persia founded by Hulegu. Monke was elected
khagan of all the Mongols and is considered the
most astute of all Mongol leaders (see Figure 16).

Religions of the Mongols

The Mongols religious beliefs began in ancient times
as Shamanism and what we know of this comes from
the Secret History as well as from observations by
early European travelers, especially Giovanni Carpini
goand Rubruck. Following Genghis Khans death, O
dei called upon representatives of various religions to
present themselves at his great tent at Karakorum.
Ultimately, the Mongols embraced Lamaism, based
on Tibetan Buddhism but with shamanic elements, in
Mongolia and China. The Golden Horde and the
Ilkhanates in Persia became Islamic. However, some
tribes were Nestorian Christians or Manichaeans.
Many Shamanic beliefs, such as the worship of high
places noted in the Secret History, have come down

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 551

Genealogy of the Genghis Khanite Khans and Katuns
Yesgei Hel Ujin
Temmjin (Genghis Khan)

Jochi

Chagadai

gdei Trogene
Khan
Regent
122941 124851

ToluiSorqaghtani Beki
Khan
Regent
122727 12321252

Gyk Oghul Qaimish

124648 Regent 124851

Batu
Golden Horde
d. 1255

Mnke Quibili Hlg

Khans of
Mongolia China Persia

Figure 16 Genealogy of the Genghis Khanite Khans and Khatuns.

through the centuries and are still practiced by contemporary nomadic Mongols.

A General Survey of Archaeology in

Mongolia
Under the direction of Roy Chapman Andrews, the
American Museum of Natural History in New York
conducted field expeditions in Mongolia during the
1920s investigating prehistoric remains. The material
remains unpublished.
In Western Mongolia in the Altai Mountains, burial
mounds and other monuments relate to cultures from
the Bronze Age through the Turkic period. The eastern border of the Altai Mountains along the Great
Lakes Depression marks the western boundary of the
seventh to third century BCE Slab Grave Culture,
identified by vertical flat stone slabs that mark each
grave. Burial rituals for the Slab Grave Culture were
uniform with the dead placed supine in ground pits
or in stone boxes. Although generally robbed, they
occasionally contain tripod vessels, bronze knives,
celts, and arrowheads. Personal adornment includes
stone beads; bronze bosses were sewn on clothing.
A grave in the Gobi yielded massive gold Siberiantype fibulae embellished with mountain goat heads
and turquoise insets. In Uvs aimag, near the town of
Ulaangom, Mongolian archaeologists excavated a
Saka site in the 1970s. Animal-style carvings are
noted nearby in the Chandamane Mountain as
well as on rock outcropping throughout the Altai
Mountains in the steppes.
Since Mongolias return to autonomy following the
breakup of the USSR, the country has attracted a
plethora of international archaeologists (in 2002

over 100 international and Mongolian specialists participated). Also in 2002 the Mongolian government
officially inaugurated the Institute of Archaeology
which consists of the following research organizations: Palaeolithic Period, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and
a research section of Ancient States period, a research
team of the Mongolian Middle Ages period, an
archaeological and anthropological laboratory, and a
library and manuscripts fond. About 30 monographs
and 600 scientific articles have been published with
some having been presented at regional conferences.
Currently the Institute of Archaeology houses over
5000 artifacts in its research laboratory, which is
open to Mongolian and foreign students and scholars.
Artifacts such as Palaeolithic stone tools from
Tsagaan agui (750 000 BP), funerary furniture from
the Noin Ula Hsiung-nu aristocrats tomb, and decorative items from the Turkic Empire King Bilges
burial are included in the holdings.
The Institute has noted that gold and other mining
is now extensively exploited in Mongolia and such
activities are destructive to the ancient heritage.
A major role for the Institute is to regulate the
archaeological sites, together with international and
other domestic institutions, in order that they are
conserved.

Recent Joint MongolianInternational

Projects
Mongolian archaeological and historical research has
always been fields of interest for both national and
international scholars. One of the earliest, long-term
MongolianRussian archaeologicalethnographical
historical expeditions was established in 1920. In

552 ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

1990, research cooperation broadened with various

international scientific institutional participations
that included groups from the US, Japan, Russia,
Korea, Germany, France, Turkey, Belgium, and Italy.
Between 1990 and 1993 the joint MongolianJapanese
team Gurvan gol researched a variety of archaeological sites, burials, and ruins dating from the
Palaeolithic to Late Historic periods at Onon,
Herlen, Tuul, the Tree River basin.
In 1993, UNESCO sponsored the Dialogue of
the Silk Road in which 50 international and Mongolian scholars participated, traveling by land from
Hovd in western Mongolia to Ulaanbaatar. The scholars presented lectures at each stop. The project culminated with an international conference in the
capital city.
Between 1992 and 1996 the Mongolian Institute
and the South Korean Dankuk University conducted the Oriental Mongolia expedition that investigated ancient relations and interaction between these
two nations. The research report was published in
Mongolian, Korean, and English languages in five
volumes. Among other accomplishments, the research
indicated that the Mongolians were making paper in
thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Beginning in 1997
the Mongolian Institute of Archaeology and the
Korean National Museum archaeologists have organized the annual Mon-Sol project with the object
of understanding the interactions between culture
and genealogy of both nations. Japanese archaeologists also have been consistently concerned about
Mongolian history.
In 1996, the AmericanEurasian Research Project
surveyed surface finds, kurgans, and other archaeological monuments in Bayan Ulgii aimag (Altai
Mountains) while studying contemporary Kazak
nomads in the region. In 1999, Mongol archaeologists and the AmericanEurasian Research Project
team excavated a khereksur, a large stone-covered
cultic site, located at Beiram (Uvs aimag, Altai Mountains), probably dating to the Bronze Age. A cultic
offering was found near the center top of the mound
that included a wooden box containing a ceramic pot
filled with wheat, a Djungar bronze arrowhead,
and a thin piece of wood with an inscription that
dated this find to shortly after AD 1645. Included in
a wide variety of artifacts were carved-wood zoomorphic figures and more than 4000 astragals. After excavation, the mound was restored to its original
configuration as local nomads continue to make cultic
offerings as they cross the mountain pass. An undated
iron smelter was also found in the vicinity of Beiram.
Since 1995, the Mongolian, Russian, American/
The University of Arizona/ joint Palaeolithic expedition has unearthed evidence that c. 700 000750 000

years ago early hominids lived in present-day Mongolia. Before this discovery Mongolian and Russian
archaeologist dated the earliest hominids in northern
Asia some 200 000 years later.
The Altai Project, studying petroglyphs in the Altai
Mountains since 1995, has discovered a substantial
number of rock art sites, most notably those at
Tsagaan Salaa and Baga Oigor. The remote Altai
Mountains and valleys are also rich in surface archaeology: burial mounds dating to the Late Bronze
Age and Iron Age, khereksur, and olenniye kamni
deer stones. The olenniye kamni sculptures have
been divided into two groups: those with zoomorphic
depictions and those without. Both groups display
other iconography such as incised necklaces, fighting
and festive belts, and the short Scythian akinakes
(sword). The Altai Project also noted Turkic period
ritual sites; and balbal, the Turkic anthropomorphic
stelae. Extensive petroglyphs provide significant cultural and artistic value to contribute to the understanding of these ancient societies, particularly of the
Bronze Age in western Mongolia and the Altai region.
Beginning in 202, the Deer Stone Project was conducted by the Smithsonian Institution and various
Mongolian government entities. Studies, including
mapping, cataloging, scanning, and excavations adjacent to a number of the large elaborated olenniye
kamni, have revealed varying iconographic styles.
The stelae in this study are primarily in north-central
Mongolia at the border of the steppetaiga, although
their distribution extends far westward in Eurasia.
Preliminary results indicate that the monuments are
thought to be the result of a transformation in religious and social changes, which took place after the
first animal domestication and the development of
new military technology. The iconography on the
deer stones is probably the precursor of the ubiquitous animal-style art, a hallmark of the early Eurasian
nomads. In association with the deer stone are
khereksur, large stone mounds that have additional
stone features incorporated into an extensive complex. Horse head burials, feasting ovals, and occasionally human burials are associated with these
ritual complexes. Preliminary calibrated dates range
from 3330 to 2150 BP, placing the olenniye kamni
much earlier than previously believed.
The Smithsonian Center for Materials Research
and Education (SCMRE) has sponsored the Archaeological Conservation Program that included collaborations with three archaeological projects. In the
spring of 2005, they were involved for the third field
year with the San Bartolo Archaeological Project
(Peten region, Guatemala). Primary conservation
activities with the Deer Stone Project in Hovsgol
aimag were followed by a short stint with the Khanuy

ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES 553

Valley Project on Early Nomadic pastoralism in

Arkhangai aimag.
One of the most important joint emergency surveys
and excavations, the Egiin Gol Project, was conducted in the Egiin River valley in north-central
Mongolia. Work began prior to 1997 and the project
has registered and excavated whole archaeological
heritages in the zone. Further north in Mongolia,
the University of Michigan excavated a Bronze Age
funerary complex. In the same valley the Mongolian
Institute of Archaeology, in conjunction with the
Regional Archaeological Center of the French Ministry
of Culture, conducted Palaeolithic surveys, discovering
eight new Palaeolithic sites in the area.
Since 1999, the Mongolian Institute of Archaeology,
the German Archaeological Institute (KAVA), and the
University of Bonn have managed the Karakorum
Project located near the Orkhon River southwest of
Ulaanbaatar. In addition to archaeological excavations,
they also conducted Geomagnetic and Geological
surveys.
Since 1992, under the direction of William Honeychurch, AmericanMongolian collaboration has conducted surveys and small-scale excavations in order
to test ideas concerning the emergence of nomadic
sociopolitical complexity at Baga Gazaryn Chuluu
in the desert-steppe zone of the Middle Gobi.
Bioarchaeological excavations are planned for this
region.
The Mongolian Institute of Archaeology and the
Musee Guimet in France are also studying the
Hsiung-nu Period. Since 2000 they have excavated
tombs in Arkhangai aimag. The study and conservation of Turkic stone statues in Mongolia is being
conducted in conjunction with the Turkish International Cooperating Agency (TICA). Their research
has been successful in the Orkhon River valley at
the Bilge Khaan and Kultigen sites.
The Mongolian Institute of Archaeology and the
University of Pittsburgh Anthropology Department
conducted multidisciplinary collaborative research

in the Khannui River basin, Undur-Ulaan sum (county),

Arkhangai aimag. Recently, the Richard Lug Foundation and Belgium Chinese Study Institute began the
Mongolian Iron Age Project. The Italian National
Research Institute has also commenced a GeoArchaeological study of the Gobi.
From 2001 to present the multiparty project, New
Century, have excavated at the Aurag site, dating to
the Genghis Khanite era.
See also: Asia, Central and North, Steppes, Deserts,

and Forests; Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and

Sasanian Persian Civilizations.

Further Reading
Baratova LS (2002) Turkic Khaganate in middle Asia (VIVIII
Centuries A.D.). In: Guzel HC (ed.) The Turks, Vol. 1, p. 357
363. Ankara: Yeni Turkiye.
Barber EW (1999) Mummies of Urumch. New York: WW Norton.
Christian D (1998) A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia,
Vol. I: Inner Asia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire. Maiden,
MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Davis-Kimball J (ed.) (1995) Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the
Early Iron Age. Berkeley, CA: Zinat Press.
Davis-Kimball J and Mona Behan (2002) Women Warriors: An
Archaeologists Search for Historys Hidden Heroines. New
York: Warner Books.
Fitzhugh W (2005) The Deer Stone Project: Anthropological Studies
in Mongolia 20022004. Washington, DC: Arctic Studies Center.
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institute and
Ulan Bator: National Museum of Mongolian Hisory.
Mair VH (1998) The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age People of
Eastern Central Asia, Vol. 1. Archaeology, Migration, Nomadism,
and Linguistics. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man.
Morgan D (1986) The Mongols. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
Rosenthal JM (1957) The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Rudenko SI (1970) Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials
of Iron Age Horsemen. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.
Sarianidi V (1987) The Golden Hoard of Bactria: From the TillyaTepe Excavations in Northern Afghanistan. New York: Harry
N Abrams.
Wood F (2002) The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of
Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

554 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures

ASIA, EAST
Contents
China, Neolithic Cultures
China, Paleolithic Cultures
Chinese Civilization
Early Holocene Foragers
Historical Archaeology
Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures
Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers

China, Neolithic
Cultures
Anne P Underhill, The Field Museum, Chicago, IL,
USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
flotation Use of water to process soil from features to recover
plant remains or tiny artifacts.
lacquer A coating made from resin for wooden and other
objects, often to create a more polished appearance.
phytoliths Particles of silica formed in leaves, roots, and other
parts of plants.
radiocarbon dating A radiometric dating method that uses the
naturally occurring isotope carbon-14 to determine the age of
carbonaceous materials up to about 60 000 years.
tapa cloth Pounded bark cloth traditionally made in the Pacific
islands.
urbanism The study of cities their economic, political, social,
and cultural environment, and the imprint of all these forces on
the built environment.

Introduction
The Neolithic period of China encompasses several
thousand years over a large, diverse area including
mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. This area
is within the current political boundaries of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC; including Hong Kong
and Macau) and the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Distinct cultural traditions developed in north and
south China. Beginning c. 8000 BC, Early Holocene
era peoples developed diversified subsistence practices, including initial steps toward domestication
of plants and animals (see Animal Domestication;
Plant Domestication). Varied subsistence technologies,
crafts, and housing styles continue to characterize
these regions.

At the same time, similar technological and social

changes took place in different regions. Some settlements began to be occupied for longer periods of
time, rather than on a seasonal basis. People used different kinds of material items to express both group
and individual social roles. Striking ceramic traditions emerged, and ground stone tools began to be
used. There is material evidence for early ritual practices and belief systems. During the Middle Neolithic
period after c. 5500 BC, numerous farming cultures
developed all over China. Permanently occupied villages became common, and craft production became
more diversified. Social status was symbolized in burials and in residential remains. There are striking
remains of public rituals and artifacts intended to
display group ideology. During the Late Neolithic
period after c. 3000 BC, marked social changes took
place. These include the development of settlement
hierarchies, the emergence of regional polities, more
labor-intensive craft goods (pottery, fine stone) produced by specialists, and greater emphasis on display
of individual social status in burials. During the final
Neolithic period, c. 26001900 BC, these trends intensified. Regional polities became larger, urbanism began
to develop, there was more intercommunity violence,
and social differentiation increased. Incipient states
may have formed in more than one region. The
subsequent Early Bronze Age is known for its powerful
states, large-scale bronze metallurgy, the first known
writing system, rigid social stratification, and urban
centers.
Archaeology in China

Archaeology is a well-established field in both the

PRC and Taiwan. Active field research is being carried
out in diverse areas, including research and rescue
excavations. Every year, numerous, well-illustrated
reports of excavations and surveys are published as
monographs and in archaeological journals. On the

ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures 555

mainland, professional archaeologists can be found

in history departments at universities, the National
Institute of Archaeology in Beijing, provincial institutes
of archaeology, in museums, or in city government
units. In Taiwan, archaeologists work at universities
(including anthropology departments) and the key research institution called Academia Sinica (in Taipei).
Collaborative fieldwork with foreign archaeologists
has taken place in Taiwan for decades, while it was
first permitted on the mainland during the mid-1990s.
On the mainland, rescue excavations have become
particularly important during the past 20 years as
economic development has intensified. Hundreds of
Neolithic sites are found each year when new roads
and buildings are constructed. The largest-scale rescue
project has been in the Three Gorges area of the central
Yangzi river valley. Archaeological teams from all over
the PRC are excavating numerous Neolithic, Bronze
Age, and later sites in advance of the rising water levels
in association with the massive new dam being built
at Sandouping in Hubei province. Several reports on
these excavations have already been published. In
addition, considerable government funding is devoted
to museums at the national, provincial, and local levels
in the PRC and Taiwan. Another priority is the protection of archaeological sites. On the mainland, for
example, there are Bureaus for the Management of
Cultural Relics at the local, provincial, and national
levels of government.

Environmental and Cultural Diversity

in China
An important characteristic of historic and modern
China is environmental and cultural diversity. It is
likely that this diversity characterizes the prehistoric
period as well. As a point of comparison, mainland China is roughly the same size as that of the
United States, with similarly diverse environmental
and climatic zones. Most scholars refer to the areas
north of the Yangzi (Yangtze, or Changjiang) River as
northern China. Millet agriculture is more common
in the north, while rice is grown more extensively in
the south.
Archaeologists have focused their research in three
areas of north China: the northeast, the central Yellow River (Huang He) valley, and the lower Yellow
River valley. Increasingly, more fieldwork is taking
place at Neolithic sites in mountainous areas further west. Northeast China, formerly referred to as
Manchuria by some, is environmentally diverse.
There are deciduous forests, steppes, mixed conifer
and hardwood forests, and boreal forests. In comparison to areas further south, the growing season is
short, with harsh winters. Northeast China includes

the modern provinces of Liaoning, eastern Inner

Mongolia (Nei Menggu), Jilin, and Heilongjiang.
The central and lower Yellow River valley areas
have deciduous broadleaf forests, fertile loess soil
(yellowish silt), and a temperate climate.
A distinctive topographic zone where intensive
archaeological research has taken place is the North
China Plain (including parts of eastern Shaanxi,
southern Shanxi, southern Hebei, Henan, and western
Shandong provinces). Many archaeologists refer to a
distinct cultural area called the Central Plain, focusing
on Henan, where the early Bronze Age states developed. They contrast the Central Plain area with the
Haidai (eastern seaboard) area (including Shandong,
northern Jiangsu, and northern Anhui). In recent years,
however, stunning discoveries have been made in
several areas of China, showing that diverse cultures
contributed to the development of early Chinese
civilization.
Research has been conducted primarily in three
areas of south China: the central Yangzi River valley,
the lower Yangzi River valley, and southernmost
China (here, including Hong Kong and Taiwan).
The Neolithic cultures of mountainous southwest
China are not as well known at present. Judging
from the major discoveries of Palaeolithic and Bronze
Age sites there (see Asia, East: China, Paleolithic
Cultures), the area will provide more information
on life ways during the Neolithic period. The Yangzi
River valley has both mixed deciduous broadleaved
evergreen forests and subtropical broadleaved evergreen forests. There is more rainfall than in the north,
and the climate is warmer. Other distinctive features
include bamboo forests and large, freshwater lakes.
The central Yangzi River valley includes the modern
provinces of southern Hubei, northern Hunan, and
northern Jiangxi. The lower Yangzi River valley
includes the modern provinces of southern Anhui,
southern Jiangsu, and northern Zhejiang. Southernmost China is characterized by subtropical broadleaved evergreen forests and striking limestone
mountains. The climate ranges from subtropical to
tropical, and crops can be grown all year. Taro is an
important root crop that is not found further north.
There is abundant rainfall, and typhoons are common
in the summer months. In these areas of south China
and the Yangzi River valley, fishing is particularly important. The Republic of Taiwan includes the island of
Taiwan, as well as other small islands.
The largest ethnic group of mainland and insular
China is referred to as the Han. Several ethnic minority groups have been known to reside in all areas
since the early historic era. These historically known
ethnic minority cultures are similar to those in neighboring countries to the north, west, and south. On the

556 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures

mainland, most ethnic minority peoples live in western areas. Many of these peoples have had nomadic
lifestyles, moving seasonally with their herds. In several areas, ethnic minority peoples still speak their
own languages, while written languages have been
recorded for some. It is likely that diverse peoples,
languages, and cultural traditions characterized the
Neolithic period as well.

The Early Neolithic Period

The term Neolithic commonly refers to cultures
with the following traits: farming as the main method
of subsistence, fully sedentary communities (occupied
all year round, rather than seasonally), and the production and widespread use of pottery vessels and
ground stone tools. As elsewhere, the archaeological record of China shows that these traits did not
develop at the same time during the Early Holocene
period. Research during the next decade no doubt
will reveal more variation in subsistence practices
and community organization, partly due to more systematic recovery of plant remains through flotation
and the collection of animal bones. Evidence is accumulating to show that the transition from a hunting
and gathering subsistence economy to domestication
of plants and animals took place in both north and
south China. The earliest phases of the Holocene,
beginning c. 8000 BC, are not well understood at
present. By the end of the Early Neolithic period,
defined here as c. 5500 BC, an agricultural economy
was firmly established in more than one area. There
also is evidence for increase in size of settlements
and development of craft production (see Craft
Specialization).
Northern China

There is more than one area of interest for the incipient Neolithic period in northern China. The earliest
site is Nanzhuangtou, located in central Hebei province (Figure 1). Radiocarbon dates place the occupation of this open-air site during both the Late
Pleistocene and Early Holocene periods, with a span
from c. 10 000 to 8000 BC. No plant remains were
recovered, but the appearance of grinding stones in
this early context probably indicates growing reliance
on plant foods in northern China. Another significant
finding was low-fired pottery, with a variety of surface decorations (plain, incised, and cord-marked). It
is likely, then, that pottery vessels were produced
prior to the first cultivation of plants. The excavators
also report the presence of the domesticated dog at

this early date, before any evidence for cultivation of

plants. The early date for the domestication of dogs
may represent a change to a more sedentary lifestyle.
Dogs would have been useful for protection of residential areas and for hunting. Reports mention the
discovery of another early site in the vicinity called
Hutouliang. More research at northern sites dating to
the critical Late PleistoceneEarly Holocene period is
needed in order to trace the origins of millet agriculture in China. Millet clearly was a mainstay of the
diet throughout the later Neolithic and historic eras.
There is more evidence for plant cultivation at later
sites in northern China dating from c. 62005500 BC.
There are undisputed domesticated millets (foxtail,
broomcorn varieties) at Peiligang culture (c. 6200
5000 BC) sites in Henan and at sites from related
cultures such as Cishan in southern Hebei. Large
quantities are reported for this site, indicating considerable reliance on the crop. Early reports for Cishan
mention evidence for domesticated chicken, in addition to dog and pig. Clay models of pigs also have
been found. The excavations at Cishan yielded evidence for a mixed economy, from bones of wild animals and seeds of wild plants and nuts. There are other
relatively early sites further west, such as Dadiwan
in Gansu.
There were well-established, at least semi-permanent
communities in these areas, judging from the presence
of numerous houses, pottery kilns, burial areas, and a
variety of pottery vessels. Painted pottery is evident
at more than one site from this phase. At this point,
another key pattern is evident that characterizes later
phases of the Neolithic in several areas elaboration
of individual burials. In comparison with the few
known Late Pleistocene burials, the changes are substantial and probably represent stronger beliefs about
territoriality, kinship ties to land, and the importance
of ancestors. Differences in status between families
were minimal, judging from the quality and quantity
of grave goods at the Peiligang site of Shuiquan.
Other material evidence for rituals from this era has
been found in northern China. At the Beifudi site in
Hebei, archaeologists found pottery masks of humans
and animals with numerous pottery vessels and ornaments. These objects may have been used when people
made sacrifices to their ancestors.
There is mostly indirect evidence for agriculture at
early sites in other parts of northern China. At Houli
sites in north-central Shandong (c. 63005600 BC),
plant-processing tools were recovered, possibly for
millet, as well as bones of domesticated pig and
dog. These too were substantial settlements, judging
from the presence of houses, pottery kilns, and burials. At Xinglongwa sites (c. 62005400 BC) in Inner

ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures 557

Figure 1 Early Neolithic sites in China. 1, Nanzhuangtou; 2, Peiligang; 3, Cishan; 4, Dadiwan; 5, Shuiquan; 6, Beifudi; 7, Houli;
8, Xinglongwa; 9, Yuchanyan; 10, Xianrendong; 11, Diaotonghuan; 12, Zengpiyan; 13, Pengtoushan; 14, Jiahu.

Mongolia, chestnuts and bones of domesticated pig

were found, as well as possible agricultural tools.
There is new, direct evidence for early millet at the
site of Xinglonggou, dated to c. 5700 B.C. Remarkable settlement remains were found during excavations at the Xinglongwa site, including a surrounding
ditch and several well-preserved houses. The houses
were situated in neat rows, indicating planning. The
ditch, the earliest known of its kind, could have served
to contain domesticated animals or protect residents

from wild animals. Another significant aspect of

Xinglongwa sites is the presence of a few large structures (over 100 m2) that may have been communal in
function. The jade ornaments from the Xinglongwa
site are the earliest known in China, and perhaps in the
world. At Xinglongwa, some graves were found in
houses, rather than in formal cemeteries. Important
ritual remains were found here as well, especially a
human skull with a design of a face made by carving,
drilling, and incising.

558 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures

Southern China

Cave sites in southern China are providing intriguing

clues about the origins of rice agriculture. Given
the tremendous importance of rice in historic and
modern Asia as a whole, considerable research has
been undertaken. One of the most intriguing sites
is Yuchanyan in Hunan province. The deposits span
the period from the Late Pleistocene to the Early
Holocene period, c. 12 0008000 BC (and possibly
later). A number of wild plant and animal species
(fruits, mammals, birds, fish, shellfish) have been identified. Notably, remains of cultivated rice are reported,
in the form of rice grains and phytoliths. Although the
specific date of these remains is not known, the site
is likely to produce more key information about the
origins of rice farming. The dating of the low-fired,
cord-marked pottery there also needs to be clarified.
Several kinds of bone tools and ornaments were
recovered, too. More research is needed to reveal the
variety of subsistence methods during this period and
possible causes for the onset of rice cultivation in
some areas.
Other important cave sites where archaeologists
have sought to find evidence for early rice cultivation
are Xianrendong and Diaotonghuan (or Wangdong)
in northern Jiangxi, and Zengpiyan and Miaoyan in
Guangxi. Phytoliths of wild and domesticated rice
have been reported for Xianrendong and Diaotonghuan. These sites also span the Late Pleistocene
and Early Holocene, roughly c. 12 0008000 BC,
and later. The dates of the domesticated rice need to
be clarified. Plant-processing tools such as grinding
stones have been found. At Zengpiyan, there were
early reports of domesticated pig. A recent, comprehensive reanalysis of the site indicates that the prior
interpretation about pig domestication was wrong.
Fishing and hunting are evident from these four sites,
judging from the recovery of bone harpoons and
bones of wild animals. Hopefully future researchers
will devise methods to recover evidence in southernmost China for the origins of root crop agriculture,
given the historic importance of taro in these areas.
Low-fired and relatively thick pottery was recovered at these other early sites. Here too the early
vessels exhibit a range of surface treatments, including
incisions, linear impressions, and smoothing. At
Miaoyan, the pottery is said to date to c. 13 000 BC,
or older. According to the most recent report, the earliest pottery at Zengpiyan dates c. 900010 000 BC.
There are other preliminary reports of early pottery in
southern China, providing more evidence for the conclusion that hunting and gathering peoples began
making and using pottery vessels, prior to the onset
of plant cultivation, as in northern China. The use of

pottery also probably indicates longer occupation periods at sites. This shift toward increased sedentism
would have fostered more ties to land and rituals for
ancestors. At Zengpiyan, mourners placed red ochre
on the bodies of the deceased.
Later sites provide better evidence for rice cultivation. Rice grains inside pottery sherds were found at
the Pengtoushan site from deposits dating to the earlier Pengtoushan culture (c. 69006200 BC) in Hunan
near Lake Dongting. The grain was identified as wet
rice. The people probably planted rice in fields that
could be flooded naturally. The Pengtoushan settlement was relatively large, including several houses,
burials (mostly secondary), and pits. The houses
are pile-dwellings (raised houses on wooden posts),
illustrating how people adapted to an aquatic environment. Another site called Jiahu, classified as a
Peiligang culture site, is located in southern Henan
and dates from c. 7000 to 6000 BC. In addition to
domesticated rice, archaeologists found remains of an
extensive settlement with numerous houses, pits, burials, and stunning artifacts. The unusual preservation
of organic remains in the wet deposits yielded several
items of ritual significance. These included bone
flutes in burials (Figure 2) and modified turtle shells
(some with incised symbols) containing pebbles
possible divination tools. Music may have been an
important part of rituals (see Ritual, Religion, and
Ideology). The graves contained a variety of goods,
revealing evidence for mortuary ritual and multiple
social roles of the deceased. The different phases
associated with the several styles of burial (primary
vs. secondary, multiple vs. single) should be examined
further. Pottery production was well established, judging from the discovery of painted vessels and what
appears to be the earliest kiln in China.

The Middle Neolithic Period

Hundreds of sites from the Middle Neolithic period,
defined here as c. 55002500 BC, are known from
most areas of China, signaling population increase
and occupation of a greater range of environmental
zones. Excavations have shed light on farming villages
illustrating diverse cultural traditions with respect
to housing styles, crafts, and rituals in both residential and mortuary contexts. There were dramatic social changes. One change was the development of
social inequality, such that a minority of individuals
had privileged social position or status (see Social
Inequality, Development of). At the same time, there
is evidence for the continued importance of group
rituals. In some regions, individual social position
was not expressed to the same degree as in other

ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures 559

Figure 2 Bone flute from Jiahu. Adapted from Henan Province

Cultural Research Institute (1989) Henan Wuyang Jiahu Xinshiqi
shidai yizhi di er zhi liu ci fajue jianbao (Short report of the 2nd to
6th excavations at the Neolithic site of Jiahu in Wuyang, Henan).
Kaogu 1: 12, figure 28.

regions. Another change was that regional polities

began to develop, indicated by the emergence of
regional centers (see Political Complexity, Rise of).
Northern China

Three areas in northern China illustrate these changes

well: northeast China, the central Yellow River valley,
and the lower Yellow River valley. There is direct
evidence for millet farming at Xinle culture sites in
Liaoning province c. 55004800 BC in addition to
pig domestication (Figure 3). Other cultures developed after the Xinle culture in northeast China, but
the Hongshan culture is the most intriguing. The
remains from the Late Hongshan culture, c. 3500
3000 BC, provide large-scale evidence for public ritual and skilled craft production, most likely involving
specialists. At present, few settlement areas have been
identified, so little is known about daily life.
At the huge ritual complex of Niuheliang (roughly
8  10 km2), there are numerous stone platforms

interpreted as altars and stone foundations of structures interpreted as temples. Apparently some walls
were plastered and painted as well. Excavators were
amazed to find a large clay head depicting an adult
female with inlaid jade eyes. They hypothesize this
head was originally mounted on a wall (Figure 4).
Parts of large animals in clay also were found. In
addition, workers found large quantities of unusual,
painted pottery cylinders. At another Hongshan site
called Dongshanzui, there were smaller clay figurines
of obviously pregnant women. A distinctive feature of
both sites is several forms of jade animals, both real
and mythical (some dragon-like), and a few depicting
humans. The ritual areas include rich graves for individual adults many of which seem to be male with
finely made jade items. There are many debates about
the significance of these sites. Some scholars argue
that rituals were centered around females, thus indicating relatively high social standing of women at the
time. Others emphasize the special burials containing
jades as evidence for hereditary social inequality and
for a complex society. Public rituals involving people
from more than one community in the region would
have been an important means for social integration.
Most archaeological research in northern China
has focused on the central Yellow River valley. The
first Neolithic culture to be investigated was the
Yangshao. Now it is realized that the Yangshao culture persisted over 2000 years and encompasses considerable regional variation. Early (c. 51003700 BC),
Middle (c. 37003500 BC), and Late Yangshao
(c. 35002800 BC) sites are located over an extensive area, especially Shaanxi and Henan Provinces.
During the Early Yangshao period, the basic pattern
of agricultural villages based on millet and animal
husbandry became established. Subsistence practices
included hunting and gathering, given the remains
of animal bone, fish bone, and wild plants. Early
Yangshao villages such as Banpo were quite extensive,
with evidence for many circular house foundations,
a wide variety of ceramic vessels (fine painted wares
and plain wares), and spindle whorls, probably for
preparing cloth from hemp.
Yangshao sites have provided considerable information about social organization and ideology
from both residential areas and burials. At early settlements like Jiangzhai, clusters of houses faced a
central plaza area within a circular, protective ditch.
Scholars speculate that these clusters represent social
groups such as lineages. At these sites, residential
areas were separated from burial areas and kilns.
During the later Neolithic period, there were increasingly more villages surrounded by ditches. It is
likely that protection of resources was an increasing
concern.

560 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures

Figure 3 Middle Neolithic sites in China. 1, Xinle; 2, Niuheliang; 3, Dongshanzui; 4, Banpo; 5, Jiangzhai; 6, Xipo; 7, Dahecun;
8, Baligang; 9, Yuanjunmiao; 10, Xishuipo; 11, Xishan; 12, Beizhuang; 13, Wangyin; 14, Dawenkou; 15, Lingyanghe; 16, Jianxin;
17, Dazhujia; 18, Yuchisi; 19, Bashidang; 20, Hemudu; 21, Dapenkeng; 22, Chengtoushan; 23, Yaoshan, Mojiaoshan, Fanshan,
Fuquanshan; 24, Zhuangqiaofen; 25, Shixia; 26, Fengbitou.

At more than one site such as Jiangzhai, there are a

few unusually large structures. Given their central
location, they probably were used by the community
as a whole. Two have been discovered in middle
Yangshao deposits at Xipo. The one excavated structure there is exceptionally large, over 200 m2, with
traces of a red pigment on the flooring. The hearth
inside is located close to the entranceway. This too
may have served as a locus for communal rituals.

Some houses from relatively late contexts at Dahecun

in central Henan have more than room. Yet another
house form was discovered at two other Yangshao
sites. Excavators found row houses, some with more
than one room, in Early Yangshao contexts at the
Dahecun site in north-central Henan. This same
house form was also found in later Yangshao contexts at the Baligang site in southwestern Henan.
There, archaeologists discovered row houses of roughly

ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures 561

Figure 4 Clay head from Niuheliang, hypothesized original

mounted appearance. Adapted from Liaoning Provincial Institute
of Archaeology and Cultural Relics and Cultural Bureau of
Chaoyang City (2004) Niuheliang yizhi. Niuheliang Site, p. 18,
figure 15. Beijing: Academy Press.

equal size with separate rooms, each containing tools

of stone and bone as well as pottery vessels. This style
of structure seems to emphasize group status rather
than individual social status.
Early Yangshao sites contain more than one form
of burial, generating much debate. One debate concerns the meaning of a few individual graves of young
girls at Yuanjunmiao. These graves contain relatively large quantities of stone ornaments and pottery
vessels. Rather than symbolizing wealth, such graves
may symbolize some aspect of gender instead. Multiple burials of adults are more common at early
Yangshao sites. These may have been opened up as
needed to bury people from the same kin group. More

burials for individuals are found in later Yangshao

sites such as Dahecun in central Henan. A desire
to mark individual social position is more clearly
evident for the later phases, when greater variation
in grave goods, especially ceramics (some painted),
is evident.
A very unusual Middle Yangshao phase burial was
found at the site of Xishuipo in northeastern Henan.
Situated around the grave of an adult male were
skeletons of three youths (both males and females)
that have been interpreted as sacrifices. On either side
of the adult were life-sized images made from shells
that seem to represent a tiger and a dragon (Figure 5).
It has been suggested that the animals represent
features of constellations. It is likely that the deceased
was a ritual specialist whom the ancient people
believed could communicate with the heavens. Furthermore, this ritual specialist was highly regarded
and was a kind of village leader.
Only a few sites in the central Yellow River valley
from the middle and Late Yangshao periods have
material evidence for increase in social inequality. In
comparison with other areas, differences in the quantity and quality of grave goods among graves are not
dramatic. Numerous fine, painted pottery vessels are
known from residential areas. It appears that a wide
range of households had access to these vessels. The
site of Xishan in central Henan, however, represents
a new form of settlement. This Late Yangshao settlement was surrounded by a wall of rammed earth a
form of settlement that became more common during
the final Neolithic period in northern China. Here
archaeologists excavated over 200 houses and a central plaza, along with two burial areas. The surrounding wall would have served to protect the inhabitants
and their resources from raiding. A number of fine,
painted vessels were found. During the later Yangshao
period as well, some settlements that were much larger
than others nearby, signaling the emergence of settlement hierarchies. Although the functions of the regional centers remain to be investigated, they indicate the
emergence of inequality at the community level and
the emergence of regional polities.
There were similar changes in the lower Yellow
River valley. Millet farming and domesticated animals formed the basis of the subsistence economy in
Beixin culture communities, c. 53004100 BC, in
several areas of Shandong Province. There were primarily individual graves, exhibiting little differentiation. During the subsequent Dawenkou period,
c. 41002600 BC, there were significant changes in
both settlements and burials that reveal variation in
social organization. A much larger area was occupied, and boat travel was known, given the extensive settlement found at Beizhuang on an island off

562 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures

Figure 5 Xishuipo burial. Adapted from Puyang City Cultural Management Bureau, Puyang City Museum, Puyang City Cultural Relics
Work Team (1988) Henan Puyang Xishuipo yizhi fajue jianbao (Short report on excavations at the Xishuipo site in Puyang, Henan).
Wenwu 3: 4, figure 5, and Yang XN (2004) New Perspectives on Chinas Past. Chinese Archaeology in the Twentieth Century, Vols. 1 and
2, p. 23, figure 19. New Haven and Kansas City: Yale University and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

the Shandong coast. Surveys in Shandong reveal evidence for the emergence of settlement hierarchies.
The most telling evidence for social differentiation,
though, is found in the striking burials. In contrast
to burials from the central Yellow River valley, they
reveal increasing efforts to display individual social
status.
There is little differentiation among Early Dawenkou
period (c. 41003500 BC) burials in Shandong, as
seen from the site of Wangyin. There were both multiple and individual burials at this site. The single graves
exhibited minor differences in the nature of grave
goods on the basis of age and sex, rather than individual status defined by wealth or power. During the
Middle Dawenkou period (c. 35003000 BC), more
differences in mortuary treatment for individuals
emerged. At more than one site, a few graves, for

both females and males, contain greater quantities of

finely made objects than others.
For the Late Dawenkou period (c. 30002600 BC),
differences among graves are dramatic. The Dawenkou
site is the most famous, with a minority of burials
containing finely made pottery vessels, symbolic jade
tools (no sign of use), ornamental objects of elephant
ivory, and pieces of alligator hide that probably were
used to fashion drums. The rare materials would have
been acquired through exchange networks. Many of
these goods probably were made by craft specialists,
and some were made just for burial. In addition, some
grave pits were more elaborate than others, with special earthen ledges to hold artifacts, and with wooden
coffins. A common feature of most cemeteries is a
tremendous quantity of pottery as grave offerings. At
the Dawenkou site, one grave for an adult female

ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures 563

contains 90 vessels, and one grave at Lingyanghe in

eastern Shandong contains 160 pots. Different functional types are included, for cooking, storage,
serving, and drinking. Drinking cups in rich burials
are common, although there are interesting differences among contemporary cemeteries. At Jianxin,
some rich graves contain large quantities of small
jars called ping instead. Some scholars argue that
particular vessels in Late Dawenkou graves were the
result of funeral feasts, while others were intended for
use by the deceased in the afterlife. A funeral feast
seems particularly likely for one grave at Dazhujia in
eastern Shandong. This grave contains a large zun
jar on the ledge, and several finely made, stemmed
cups, carefully laid out on the chest of the deceased.
Remains of pigs, notably the skulls, are other common
features of Late Dawenkou period graves.
For other areas, however, symbolizing social position with material goods may not have been a priority.
At the Late Dawenkou site of Yuchisi in northern
Anhui, archaeologists found row houses similar to
those from Dahecun and Baligang. Some contained
over 40 rooms, including many objects used for daily
life (pots, tools). As at Baligang, there was excellent
preservation of the clay house walls, since they were
burnt. It appears that the burning was a deliberate
construction technique to harden the walls. Another
intriguing finding was the large jars called zun with
incised symbols (some covered in red pigment). Some
of these symbols (including the sun and moon) are
very similar to those found at late Dawenkou period
sites in Ju county, Shandong, to the northeast. Unlike
those found in Shandong, however, a few of these
vessels served as burial jars for children. The row
houses seem to emphasize group membership, as elsewhere, although differences in wealth may have begun
to emerge, judging from the fine ceramics (some with
red pigment) and jade ornaments found in a few graves.
Protection of the whole community was a concern,
since a moat was discovered around the entire settlement. Excavations at Yuchisi, located in the southern
extent of the Dawenkou culture area, revealed a diet
based on rice as well as millet. As noted for Jiahu,
the historic dividing line between rice-growing areas
and those for millet does not always characterize the
Neolithic period. Initial studies show that the environment during parts of the Neolithic period was warmer
and moister than at present.
Southern China

There is abundant evidence for fully sedentary communities that relied on rice farming in more than one
area of southern China during the middle Neolithic
period, c. 55002500 BC. Large quantities of rice

grains have been recovered from sites in the central

and lower Yangzi River valleys. Late Pengtoushan
culture (c. 55005100 BC) deposits at the Bashidang
site in the central Yangzi river valley also yielded a
surrounding ditch interpreted as a moat and traces of
a small earthen wall. This tradition of surrounding
residential areas with protective walls increases over
time in China, especially in the north. At Zaoshi
culture sites in Hubei (c. 55004500 BC), bones of
water buffalo, an animal commonly used for plowing
in southern China, were found. Huge amounts of
rice were recovered from the Hemudu site (c. 5000
4500 BC) in the lower Yangzi river valley, thanks
to the waterlogged deposits there. Other aquatic
domesticated and wild plants as well as wild animals
were also found, providing a fuller picture of the diet
at the time. The excellent preservation conditions
enabled archaeologists to find a variety of craft goods,
too. These included wooden artifacts, a boat oar,
fragments of reed mats, bone whistles, and the earliest known lacquer container. Other, well-preserved
sites from the Hemudu culture have been discovered
recently with equally impressive remains.
Different subsistence practices developed during
the Dapenkeng period in coastal areas of Taiwan,
c. 50002500 BC. Similarities to the cultures of
the Pacific islands are evident, from the discovery of
artifacts for fishing and grooved stone beaters for
making tapa cloth. These peoples probably grew
root crops such as taro, but at present there is no
physical evidence.
Sites in the central Yangzi River valley provide evidence for important changes in settlement organization
and in craft production during the Middle Neolithic
period. As in the north, there is evidence for increase
in social inequality. The site of Chengtoushan in
Hunan demonstrates that a new form of settlement
emerged during the Daxi period (c. 45003000 B.C.).
This site continued to be occupied during part of
the subsequent Qujialing (c. 30002500 BC) period.
Like Xishan in the north, this settlement was surrounded by an earthen wall and moat. The size and
remains inside the walled enclosure make it likely the
site was a regional center. Some houses were built on
rammed earth platforms, a labor-intensive style of
housing associated with elites during the Late Neolithic
and Early Bronze Age periods in more than one part
of China. The settlement exhibits planning, with a
pottery production area in the west and cemeteries to
the northwest. The excavators identified a ritual area,
where they propose sacrifices were made, anticipating practices known from the historic period in more
than one area of China. Other Daxi and Qujialing
period sites in the central Yangzi River valley demonstrate significant development of ceramic technology.

564 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures

A variety of labor-intensive ceramics were produced,

such as elegantly shaped, thin-walled, and finely
painted vessels. These relatively rare vessels have been
found in both residential areas and burials.
At present, little is known about residential areas at
later sites in the lower Yangzi River valley. Numerous
burials have been found near Shanghai from the
Majiabang (c. 45003700 BC) and Songze (c. 3700
3300 BC) periods. Songze period ceramics include
finely decorated (painted, incised) jars and serving
stands. Mourners also displayed the social position of
the deceased by placing jade ornaments in a minority
of graves.
The most elaborate graves discovered in the lower
Yangzi River valley, without a doubt, are from the
Liangzhu (c. 33002200 BC) period. Although these
graves contain finely made pottery vessels (elegant
shapes, some black and polished), it is the jade objects
that have received the most attention. There is an
amazing variety of finely made jade ornaments, with
respect to size, shape, and color. Many have no
known function. The intriguing taotie (animal
mask) design on some jades (Figure 6) also appears
on later, historic period bronze vessels in the Yellow
River valley to the north. A few rich graves at sites
such as Fanshan contain large jades; large size may be
another symbol of high social status. Other jade
objects include symbolic weapons (no signs of use)
that probably once were hafted with wooden handles. These probably served as symbols of power
and authority.

Figure 6 Liangzhu jade from Yaoshan. Adapted from Zhejiang

Province Institute of Archaeology (2003) Yaoshan, p. 216, plate
13. Beijing: Wenwu Press.

Jade is an extremely labor-intensive rock to work

with, requiring extensive grinding and polishing. In
addition, many pieces are very finely incised. The
quantity and variety of pieces, in addition to the
material itself, point to production by specialists.
The sheer quantity in some graves (often over 100
pieces) might have necessitated production before an
individual died. Little is known about how individuals used these items during their lifetimes. The
difficulty of workmanship, the necessity for exchange
networks to acquire the raw jade, and the quantities
in graves all point to the high social position of the
individuals in these graves. Several of the interred
skeletons have been identified as males, but there is
not always sufficient preservation to identify the sex
of the deceased. Typically, a large quantity of jade
items is distributed from the head to the foot of the
deceased.
The highest concentration of Liangzhu sites is
found near the Lake Tai area in Zhejiang. Many cemeteries, such as Yaoshan in Zhejiang, only contain a
dozen or so graves, each very rich in terms of interred
goods. In addition to large quantities of jade, the
burials include fine lacquer items, some inlaid with
jade. Items made from elephant ivory have been found
in more than one Liangzhu grave as well. Sites such as
Yaoshan and Fanshan have been interpreted as elite
cemeteries, with the location of graves of commoners
unknown. An important exception is the recently
excavated site of Zhuangqiaofen in Zhejiang. At present, this is the largest known Liangzhu cemetery, with
over 200 burials, representing a wider range of the
community.
Yaoshan and other elite cemeteries from the
Liangzhu period were first constructed as humanmade, earthen platforms several meters high over
the floodplain. Many Liangzhu site names end in
shan, meaning mountain or hill. This would have
provided a dramatic setting for funeral ceremonies.
It is likely that ceremonies continued to take place
periodically after burial of the deceased. At Yaoshan
and the Fuquanshan site closer to Shanghai, archaeologists found altars made of earth and stone. At
Fuquanshan, they also found sediments that they believe resulted from sacrificial offerings with fire. At
the Mojiaoshan site in Zhejiang, the large platform
construction has an area of over 3 ha, with a height
of 10 m. In addition, there were remains of smaller
rammed, earthen platforms and a large structure.
Some of these platforms were constructed partially
by fired adobe bricks, indicating even greater labor
expenditure. Large structures also could have been
used for public rituals around the graves of individuals who were important ancestors to the whole
group. If additional excavation of the site reveals

ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures 565

more of these structures, the structures may have been

elite residences. The entire site covers an area of
nearly 40 km2. It is likely to be a regional center for
the numerous Liangzhu sites in the Lake Tai area.
In southernmost parts of the mainland, Neolithic
communities (c. 35002500 BC, and later) relying
on rice farming and fishing have been identified, particularly in Guangdong and Fujian provinces. The
best-known culture is Shixia, located in southern
Guangdong. This culture developed c. 3000 BC and
is represented primarily by burials. Like Neolithic
cultures further north, there was a tradition of producing prestigious goods such as fine ceramics and
jade items, in addition to items for daily use. Some of
the same forms of pottery and jade items were found
in the Shixia burials. Fieldwork at sites in Fujian thus
far indicates similarities with cultures to the east in
Taiwan. The Dapenkeng culture continued in coastal
areas of Taiwan, and other cultures become evident
such as Fengbitou in the south. In Hong Kong, a
number of rescue projects have taken place during
the past decade in advance of construction projects.
They also have uncovered rice farming and fishing
villages, a cultural pattern that has persisted in
southern China for millennia.

The Late Neolithic Period

The Late Neolithic period is characterized by marked
social changes that paved the way for the subsequent
era of powerful Bronze Age states. Major changes in
the nature of settlements took place. Clear settlement
hierarchies developed in several regions, revealing the
presence of regional polities. The kind(s) of regional
polities that developed is under debate. There also
were changes in the form of individual settlements.
A minority of settlements became much larger in size,
and increasingly more were surrounded by walls and
moats. Emerging urbanism is evident from changes
such as increase in the density of sites on a regional
basis. Intercommunity violence took place, but the
extent of warfare is not known. Burials indicate
more rigidly defined positions of social status. High
social status is marked by different kinds of laborintensive, prestigious goods including thin-walled
pottery vessels and jade items. Traces of metal at
Neolithic sites indicate experimentation with metallurgy, but the process is not perfected until the
Erlitou state era, after c. 1800 BC. Most archaeological research has taken place in the north, particularly in the Yellow River valley. The final Neolithic
period here, c. 26001900 BC, is referred to as the
Longshan period. Ever year, however, stunning discoveries take place in other areas. It is clear that more

than one area contributed to the rise of early Chinese

civilization.
Northern China

Regional surveys have been indispensable for identifying the presence of settlement hierarchies in the
Yellow River valley. Longshan period sites range in
size from a few hectares to c. 300 ha. Large centers
supported by networks of smaller settlements have
been identified in several regions in the central and
lower Yellow River valley. Few traces of elite architecture, such as palaces, that could be identified from
surveys survive in the area. In most cases, however,
surveys and excavations reveal concentrations of
labor-intensive, prestige goods such as thin-walled
pottery and jade items in the relatively large sites.
Thus far, systematic, regional surveys have taken
place primarily in two areas: the Yi-Luo river valley
in central Henan, and the Rizhao area in southeastern
Shandong. This method of survey, systematically
checking for traces of settlements over the entire
landscape, provides a more complete picture of settlement patterns than traditional reconnaissance methods. The traditional method, however, has provided
valuable clues for the existence of settlement hierarchies in several other areas during the Longshan
period. These areas include northern Henan, southeastern Henan, southern Shanxi, western Shandong,
and north-central Shandong.
Much research has focused on the numerous sites
from the Longshan period that have surrounding walls
of rammed earth. This method of making a solid wall
from the silty soil prevalent in northern China is
very time consuming, requiring excessive pounding
and compressing with wooden tools. Although it is
often assumed that elites supervised construction of
such walls, there could have been cooperative work
teams managed by kin groups like lineages. Sites
with rammed earth walls (Figure 7) have been found
in northern Henan (Mengzhuang, Hougang), central
Henan (Wangchenggang, Guchengzhai), southern
Shanxi (Taosi), eastern Henan (Haojiatai, Pingliangtai),
western Shandong (Jingyanggang), north-central Shandong (Dinggong, Chengziyai, Tianwang, Bianxianwang), and southeastern Shandong (Dantu, first built
during the Late Dawenkou period), and northern
Jiangsu (Tenghualuo). Although it is often assumed
that these sites are regional centers, some are relatively
small in size. In order to ascertain the role of a site
within its region, other methods such as systematic
survey and excavation are needed. It is intriguing
that no Longshan period sites surrounded by walls
of rammed earth were found in the Yi-Luo region
where the first undisputed state, Erlitou, developed.

566 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures

Figure 7 Late Neolithic sites in China. 1, Wangchenggang; 2, Guchengzhai; 3, Pingliangtai; 4, Haojiatai; 5, Mengzhuang; 6, Hougang;
7, Baiying; 8, Jiangou; 9, Taosi; 10, Xinhua; 11, Chengziyai; 12, Dinggong; 13, Tianwang; 14, Bianxianwang; 15, Zhufeng; 16,
Jingyanggang; 17, Yinjiacheng; 18, Liangchengzhen; 19, Dantu; 20, Tenghualuo; 21, Dadianzi; 22, Karuo; 23, Sichuan basin sites; 24,
Shijiahe; 25, Beinan; 26, Lajia.

In southeastern Shandong, Dantu is clearly not the

largest settlement; Liangchengzhen is much larger.
The presence of a surrounding, earthen wall at a
Longshan site is often regarded as an indicator of a
city. Scholars have argued that cities in more than one
historic era of China are large, walled settlements.
Abundant archaeological research in other areas of
the world has shown, however, that the rise of urbanism cannot be understood simply by the presence of

a single feature such as a wall. For one thing, occupation debris has been found beyond the extent of
the walls at some sites. Urbanism is a process involving changes in the distribution of settlements within
a region (see Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of).
Nucleation of population occurs in certain areas,
while other areas may experience a decline in population. Although features such as ceramic drainage
pipes and moats (at Pingliangtai, for example) point

ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures 567

to a new form of settlement, regional survey data are

needed to trace the rise of urbanism in China as well.
In addition, the possible economic, political, or ideological reasons for population nucleation need to be
investigated. This can only be investigated by identifying all the contemporary settlements within a given
region, not just the ones with walls. The social, political, and economic relations between the walled sites
in each region (Wangchenggang, Guchengzhai, for
example) cannot be investigated adequately without
more survey or excavation data.
The variation in settlements and supporting data
from excavations demonstrate that several regional
polities developed in the Yellow River valley during
the Longshan period. Although more excavations
are needed to identify the nature of these polities,
some important aspects of these polities can be
noted. The presence of more powerful elites than
during the Middle Neolithic period is evident from
striking variation in housing, craft goods, and burials.
There are clues that more than one form of competition between elites took place during the Longshan
period. Some valuable information comes from excavated sites with no surrounding walls. More projects
focusing on regions, not just individual sites, are
needed to understand key social changes from the
early phases of the Longshan period to the late. It is
important to keep in mind that each walled site was
occupied for at least 200 years. Interpretations about
social change need to refer to specific phases of the
Longshan period.
Rammed earth platforms that formed the foundation of structures used by elites have been found at
several sites, including Wangchenggang and Jingyanggang. These would have included elite residences
and structures for public affairs managed by elites
such as rituals. The most convincing elite residence
has been found at the site of Guchengzhai. Archaeologists uncovered a unique structure for the Longshan
period. It is large in size (c. 380 m2), with traces of
a long corridor along the entranceway that would
have ensured more privacy for the activities inside.
It appears that large, rammed earth platforms at
Jingyanggang were used for ritual activities such as
feasting. As seen for the Middle Neolithic period,
elites had key roles in ritual activities for the welfare
of their communities (see Food and Feasting, Social
and Political Aspects). Similarly, at Taosi in Shanxi,
remains of a structure interpreted as a palace were
found. Another major discovery was an earthen feature interpreted as an astronomical observatory and
locus for sacrifices to the gods.
More labor-intensive goods have been found
in burials than in habitation areas. The Longshan

period is famous for its rare, extremely thin-walled,

eggshell-thin pottery vessels. The thinnest of these
vessels are found in Shandong province and represent
the epitome of labor-intensive production. Probably
these were made for burial, since they were too fragile
to use in life. They have been found in burials at sites
such as Yinjiacheng and Zhufeng, along with other
highly polished, black, thin vessels. Fewer quantities
of vessels were buried with the deceased at Longshan
sites, although there still was an effort to include
more than one functional type of vessel for use in
the afterlife. In the Shanxi area, elites valued other
kinds of pottery vessels. At the Taosi site, elite burials
contain beautiful painted vessels with various designs,
including a dragon. In each area, it is likely that
elites sponsored the production of fine wares in some
way. It appears that some elites attempted to find new
methods of displaying status with material goods.
Traces of copper or bronze were found at a few sites,
indicating efforts to produce bronze items vessels,
tools, or both.
Jade also was highly valued during the Longshan
period. Jade items are relatively rare and found mostly in burials. Specialist crafts people made a variety of
ornaments, but symbolic weapons such as long, thin
knives (no traces of use) are predominant. These
likely served as symbols of power. Unfortunately,
many such jade weapons were recovered without
proper excavations. Thus more specific information
on dating and use cannot be obtained. A variety of
beautiful jades were found in high-ranking burials
at Zhufeng, Yinjiacheng, and Taosi. An exceptional
array of jade symbolic weapons (knives, scepters,
battle-axes) and ornamental items was found recently
at the Xinhua site in Shaanxi. Most of the jades were
found in a pit within a cemetery area, probably a
ritual offering pit.
The variation in the nature of sites, housing, craft
goods, and burials provides a picture of increasing
social stratification during the Longshan period in
comparison to preceding periods. The excavated
cemeteries such as Yinjiacheng and Taosi show that
the majority of graves were small and contained few,
if any, items, in contrast to a minority of graves with
wooden coffins and exquisite, prestige goods. At the
same time, a few sites, such as Hougang and Baiying,
show that a range of households had access to some
prestigious ceramics (thin-walled, polished).
More research is needed to identify how craft production was organized for prestige goods versus utilitarian goods. It is likely that part-time specialists
made both kinds of goods. Little is known about
the nature of exchange systems during the Longshan
period. Styles of pottery vessels and jades reveal

568 ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures

interactions between regions. These stylistic similarities might be explained by the movement of peoples,
local production imitating foreign styles, or exchange
of finished products (see Exchange Systems).
Competition over resources (such as land, agricultural labor, food, raw materials for prestige goods,
or finished prestige goods) probably was one factor
driving social change during the Longshan period.
Although the increase in walled sites during the Longshan period prompts many scholars to argue for a
high prevalence of warfare, more evidence is needed.
At least occasional raiding took place, given the
walled enclosures and potential weapons in residential areas (projectile points). One walled enclosure,
Pingliangtai, has features interpreted as guardhouses.
The specific evidence for warfare in individual regions
needs to be assessed, including careful consideration of dating within the long Longshan period.
Physical evidence for violent death is rare. One convincing case is the remains at Jiangou in southern
Hebei. There excavators found jumbled bodies in a
pit, and a few skulls bearing signs of scalping.
The next decade promises to be an exciting one, as
archaeologists uncover more evidence for the development and nature of regional polities that developed
in northern China during the Longshan period. Scholars are divided as to whether these polities represent
chiefdoms, or early states. There is no consensus
among those who argue for early states, either. Both
city-states and larger, territorial states have been proposed as appropriate models. Given the prevalence of
warfare during the historic period, many scholars
expect that warfare was a key factor in state formation during earlier periods. Prowess in warfare was a
characteristic of leaders in Early Bronze Age states
and was no doubt valued during the Late Neolithic
period. At present, however, there is much more evidence for warfare in northern China after known
states developed, rather than before.
Other Areas of China

It is clear that complex societies developed during

the Late Neolithic period in other areas of China,
too. In northeast China, a number of post-Hongshan,
walled sites made from stone were built at the time
of the Late Dawenkou and Late Yangshao periods,
and occupied through the equivalent of the Early
Longshan period. Late Neolithic cultures in some
regions here persisted after early states had developed
in the Yellow River valley. Recent research on sites
such as Dadianzi from the Lower Xiajiadian period
(c. 22001600 B.C.) has identified high-ranking

burials on the basis of intricately painted pottery

vessels and jade items. Thus, there were similar values
about prestige goods in mortuary ritual from distant,
and very different areas of China during the Late
Neolithic period. This also is evident from excavations at the Beinan site in southern Taiwan. Here,
beautiful jade ornaments were included in the graves
of high-ranking individuals. An interesting local feature was the use of stone coffins instead of wooden
coffins as seen on the mainland.
Excavations of settlement areas in other southerly
areas of China point clearly to the development of
complex societies. In the central Yangzi River valley,
archaeologists have defined a Hubei Longshan culture c. 25002000 BC that is similar in many respects
to the more northern variants of Longshan culture.
Excavations at the large, walled settlement (including moats) of Shijiahe have revealed some unusual
remains. Within the walled enclosure, excavators
found thousands of small, red pottery cups in the
Sanfangwan area to the south, probable remains of
ritual activities. In the Dengjiawan cemetery to the
north, there were over 1000 small clay figurines of
people and animals (domesticated and wild) in two
pits. These also probably were used in rituals. Some
large structures at the site appear to be elite residences. As seen elsewhere, a common theme in more
than one area is the association of ritual activities
with elites. Management of ritual was an important
aspect of leadership, probably providing individuals
the authority to rule. The enormous area around
Shijiahe actually includes several separate sites,
many of which were first occupied during the Late
Qujialing period. In the Xiaojiawuji cemetery, numerous jade items were found, including some stunning
pendants with finely carved human faces (Figure 8).
Most recently, there have been discoveries of late
prehistoric, walled sites in the Sichuan basin as well.
These are important because they indicate the likelihood of a local complex society before the spectacular Sanxingdui Early Bronze Age culture developed.
At the same time, excavations in more westerly
areas of China are informing us about different
kinds of lifestyles during the Neolithic period. Excavations at the Karuo site in eastern Tibet uncovered a
small, farming village with a variety of tools and
pottery vessels not seen in other areas. Jade items
were found, though, indicating some shared values
with more easterly areas. More excavations in westernmost China ought to reveal traces of nomadic
peoples, as known from historic times.
Lastly, the findings that reveal the lives of ordinary
people during the Late Neolithic period of China are

ASIA, EAST/China, Neolithic Cultures 569

See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, East: China,

Paleolithic Cultures; Chinese Civilization; Civilization

and Urbanism, Rise of; Craft Specialization; Exchange Systems; Food and Feasting, Social and
Political Aspects; Plant Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social
Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading

Figure 8 Jade from Xiaojiawuji. Adapted from Shijiahe Team

(1999) Xiaojiawuji, Vols. 1 and 2, plate 2.1. Beijing: Wenwu Press.

equally as important as the remains of elites. Recently, one bowl of preserved, millet noodles from a Qijia
culture site in Qinghai province called Lajia, dated to
c. 2000 BC, captivated the world. Before this discovery, the Qijia culture was better known from burials
in the upper Yellow River valley. This famous site
demonstrates the value of archaeology for informing
us about the full range of lifestyles in prehistory.

Conclusions
The rich archaeological record of the Chinese Neolithic period is providing valuable data about the
origins of Chinese civilization. A diversity of life
ways has been revealed, but there are common
threads from area to area. Clearly, early Chinese civilization stems from multiple areas. At the same time,
Neolithic sites provide an extraordinary opportunity
to investigate key social changes such as the development of an agricultural way of life, social ranking,
specialized craft production, urbanism, and regional
polities. Comparative studies about early civilizations
will continue to require inclusion of the important
results from the extensive fieldwork in the PRC and
Taiwan.

Acknowledgment
The author thanks Jill Seagard, Department of
Anthropology at The Field Museum, for preparing
Figures 18.

Guojia Wenwu Ju (National, Bureau of Cultural Relics) Editorial

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(Short report of the 2nd to 6th excavations at the Neolithic site
of Jiahu in Wuyang, Henan). Kaogu 1: 114.
Li WX (2000) Zhongguo shi nian bai da kaogu xin faxian. Top 100
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Liu L (2004) The Chinese Neolithic. Trajectories to Early States.
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570 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

China, Paleolithic
Cultures
Chen Shen, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON,
Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
acheulean A term referring to an archaeological industry of
stone tools, represented by bifacial handaxes, created by
hominids in the Lower Palaeolithic across Africa, much of
Europe and Asia,
bifacial technology A special flintknapping technique to
manufacture stone tools by sequentially flaking two sides
of a block or a large flake. A final produce through this
core reduction technique shows extensive flake scars on
both sides.
ESR Standing for Electron Spin Resonance, as a spectroscopic
technique, for use of dating application, that enables trapped
electrons within bones and shells to be measured without the
heating that thermoluminescence requires.
flake tools Stone tools that were made on flakes removed from a
prepared core, and then by retouching or modifying work edge of
the flake.
lithic technology In study of human prehistory, lithic
technology refers to adaptive behaviors that specifically involve
in production and use of stone tools.
microblade technology A special flintknapping technique to
produce a series of small blades (normally less than 50 cm in
length) from specially prepared core such as wedge-shape or
boat-shaped core. This lithic technology was invented by modern
hunter-gatherers around 30 000 BP, and wildly spread across
Northern Asia and Northeast North America.
OSL Standing for Optically Stimulated Luminescence, a dating
technique by measuring doses from ionizing radiation
(commonly known as radioactive radiation), based on the
principle that electrons trapped between the valence and electron
band in the crystalline structure of matter.
palaeomagnetic dating A dating technique based on the
principle of Palaeomagnetism that study the record the Earths
magnetic field preserved in various magnetic minerals through
time.
palaeolithic Referring to the period of old stone tool cultures
created by human beings, also called the Old Stone Age. It
began with the introduction of the first stone tools by hominids
such as Homo habilis (around 2 000 000 years ago) and lasted
until the introduction of agriculture.
pebble-core tools Stone tools that were made on pebble blocks
or cores by chopping large flakes off around the edges.
Pleistocene Referring to a geologic timescale is the period from
1 800 000 to 11 550 years BP, followed by the Holocene epoch of
today. The Pleistocene is a period when hominis created
archaeological cultures that is usually referred to Palaeolithic.
refitting analysis An application of stone tool analytical
method that entails attempting to put stone tools and flakes back
together again, and provides invaluable information on core
reduction procedures and site formation.
use-wear analysis An application of stone tool analytical
method that examine, under either lower power or high power
microscopes, microfractures and abrasions on the working edges
of stone tools for determination of tool functions.

Introduction
In the history of Chinese archaeology, the foreign
scientists Emile Licent (18761952), Pierre Teihard
de Charlin (18811955), Johanson Andersson (1874
1960), Davidson Black (18841934), and Henri
E. Breuil (18771961) are indisputably regarded as
the pioneers of Chinese Palaeolithic study. Their
investigations in the Ordos area of the Upper Yellow
River, excavations at the Shuidonggou site, and
discovery of the sensational Sinanthoropus pekinensis
fossils at the Zhoukoudian (also spelled as Cho-KouTien), all in the 1920s, marked the beginning of
Palaeolithic research in China. These early discoveries were published in Le Paleolitque de la China in
1928, the first book on Chinese Palaeolithic cultures.
Research prior to 1949 focused solely on the excavations of sites at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing. The
international collaboration at Zhoukoudian trained
the first generation of Chinese Palaeolithic archaeologists: Dr. Pei Wenzhong (also known as W. C. Pei,
19041982) and Jia Lanpo (also Chia Lan-po, 1908
2001). Today, their students, including Lu Zener,
Zhang Senshui, Wei Qi, and Huang Weiwen, among
others, are leading scholars active in the field. They are
responsible for the discovery of hundreds of Palaeolitihc sites between the 1950s and 1980s (Figure 1). The
findings from these discoveries are summarized in
an edited volume Paleonanthropology and Paleolithic
Archaeology in the Peoples Republic of China published by Academic Press in 1985. The book became
a major reference tool for western scholars and students studying Chinese Palaeolithic in the following
decades.
By the end of the last century, Chinese Palaeolithic
study entered a new era when a new generation of
Chinese archaeologists, who received their training
in the West, started evaluating old data, applied new
techniques in field investigations, and offered alternative interpretations on human evolution in China.
International collaborations, after a half-century long
hiatus, once again played a vital role in the development of Chinese Palaeolithic framework. This article
summarizes our current knowledge of Palaeolithic cultures based on the data sets accumulated over the last
two decades.

An Overview: Palaeoenvironment and

Chronology
The uplift of the Himalayan mountains, along
Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and appearance of Eurasian
steppe deserts had a unique and significant impact on
the palaeoenvironment on East Asia. These environmental changes inhibited the direct interaction of

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 571

RUSSIA

Herbin

MONGOLIA

Changchun
Shenyang

34
29

30
10

Beijing
8
41

36

KOREA

CHINA

31
37 38
32
33
39
20 Zhengzhou

Taiyuan
35
14

Xi`an

21

15

Chengdu
27

28

40

19
17

24
22

18

21

Yellow Sea

East
China Sea

23

Changsha

11

INDIA

Shanghai

Wuhan

25

12

13

Fuzhou

Taipei

Kunming

16

26

Guangzhou
Hong Kong

Bay of Bengal

South China Sea

Figure 1 Major Palaeolithic sites in China. 1, Shuidonggou; 2, Sjara-osso-gol (Ordos); 3, Zhoukoudian (Locality 1, Locality 15, the Upper
Cave, Tianyuandong); 4, Yuanmou; 5, Longgupo; 6, Xihoudu; 7, Lantian; 8, Nihewan (Goudi, Majuangou; Donggutuo, Xiaochangliang,
Banshan, Cenjiawan, Maliang, Youfang); 9, Quyuanhekou; 10, Jinliushan; 11, Guanyindong; 12, Dadong; 13, Sanming Lingfengdong; 14,
Dali; 15, Luonan (Longyadong); 16, Baise; 17, Maozhushan; 18, Hexian; 19, Tangshan; 20, Dingcun; 21, Ranjialukou; 22, Gaojiazheng; 23,
Jingshuiwan; 24, Jigongshan; 25, Maba; 26, Liujiang; 27, Ziyang; 28, Zhijidong; 29, Shiyu; 30, Xianrendong; 31, Xiaonanhai; 32, Xiachuan;
33, Xueguan; 34, Hutouliang; 35, Shizitan; 36, Jiqitan; 37, Qingfengling; 38, Fenghuangling; 39, Wanghailou; 40, Lingjing; 41, Dongfang
Plaza.

hominids on both sides of the Old World. Nevertheless, these geological and environmental barriers did
not prevent early African hominids from entering
East Asia as early as 1.71.6 million years ago. The
earliest occupations were distributed in the central
China between 25 and 40 N latitude. During the
Lower Pleistocene (1.80.78 million years ago), the
palaeoenvironment in central-northern China was
much warmer and moister than today, similar to the
subtropical climate that comprised early hominids
living habitats. Most of these earliest hominid settlements were found in open-air sites near water sources
in what is today a hilly environmental setting. The
lithic technology of these early hominids in the new

land was noticeably different from their counterparts

in the West.
Geological tectonic movements and temperature
fluctuations during the Middle Pleistocene started to
create a geological boundary through what are today
the Qinling Mountains. Northern China became drier
and colder, resulting in temperateprairie zones,
while southern China retained the same subtropical
climate as before. By this time, Asian hominids
seemed well adapted to different environments, and
Early Palaeolithic sites have been found almost everywhere across the vast landscape of China. Their decision to locate in cave sites and open-air sites was
probably based on survival strategies. During this

572 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

time, there is evidence for intentional use of fires, and

the formation of two different technologies (flaketool industries in the North and pebble-core tool
industries in the South) occurred.
During the late Middle Pleistocene to early Upper
Pleistocene, Mousterian industries (represented by
Neanderthal cultural remains) dominated the western
side of the Old World, but had little impact on cultural changes in China. Here, the cultural remains of the
early Upper Pleistocene show a continuous development from its preceding cultures. Thus, the term
Middle Palaeolithic, once used to identify Palaeolithic sites dated to this period, now seems irrelevant
when discussing lithic industries that have little difference from the early period. For the purpose of
comparison, however, our summary of these sites
will still be under a separate heading, but designated
as late Early Palaeolithic.
The most significant environmental event that occurred during the Upper Pleistocene was the climate
change from the Last Inter-Glacial to the Last Glacial
period. The climatic influence was once again greater
in North China than in South China, and as a result,
the northern flake-tool industries were pushed southward, replacing the pebble-core tool industries in
Middle-Lower Valley of Yangtze (Changjiang) River.
This transition, or cultural interaction between the
North and the South, was evinced by the Palaeolithic
remains recovered in recent investigations in the
Three Gorges area.
Another environmental change was the quick accumulation of Malan Loess across northern China,
which resulted in the northern lithic industries being
more adaptive to loess environments. The Malan
Loess is the best chronological indicator, and provides
Palaeolithic researchers with an opportunity to examine the human behavioral changes of the late Early
Palaeolithic in response to environmental changes,
although such studies in China are still in its infancy.
By 40 00035 000 BP dramatic cultural changes
occurred in China, evinced by the sudden appearances of blade technology, bifacial technology, and
especially microblade technology. These new technologies mixed with the indigenous lithic industries,
thereby forming unique Late Palaeolithic cultures.
These cultural changes were directly related to the
migration and subsequent spread of anatomical modern humans in China. Whether or not modern
humans also originated independently in East Asia
is still open to debate; nevertheless, the spread of
modern humans from the West via the vast Eurasian
Steppe and Eastern Siberia undoubtedly contributed
to the complexity and variability of Late Palaeolithic
lithic industries. Clearly, China, especially northeastern China, at the end of Pleistocene was part of a

cultural intersphere that eventually reached the New

World during 20 00011 500 BP.

Early Hominid Occupations of the Lower

Pleistocene (1.80.78 Million Years Ago)
It is claimed that the oldest stone tools in China date
to more than 2 million years ago and came from
Renzidong site, Fanchang County, Anhui province
in southern China. But whether these so-called stone
tools were caused by nature or by hominids is highly
debated among Chinese archaeologists. The abundance of Pliocene/early Lower Pleistocene faunal
remains indicates that this site could have great potential for hominid living habitats. The well-known
Yuanmou Shangnabang site in Yunnan province and
Longgupo site in Chongqing Municipality, where
Homo erectus teeth and questionable Homo habilis
(or more likely Fufengpithecus) lower jaw were recovered, respectively, also have controversial dates older
than 1.8 million years ago. Identified in 1960, Xihoudu
site in southern Shanxi province was reported as one of
the oldest sites dated to before 1.8 million years ago,
but the nature of stone tools is still in doubt due to the
heavy abrasion on the artifacts by hydrodynamic forces
at the site, and a recent palaeomagnetic study redated
this site to 1.27 million years ago.
Other sites of such antiquity include Lantian
Gongwangling in Shaanxi province and Yuanxian
Quyuanhekou in Hubei province. At both sites hominid fossil remains were recovered in association with a
few stone tools. While identifications of Longgupo and
Yuanxian fossils are still under debate, the oldest fossil
skull of Asian Homo erectus found in China (dated to
1.1 mya by palaeomagnatic dating) is from Lantian
Gongwangling. These aforementioned sites have very
limited cultural remains like stone tools. However, the
Nihewan Basin has yielded a number of Lower Pleistocene sites with abundant cultural materials, and is no
doubt a prime focus for study of early hominid behavior in East Asia (see Modern Humans, Emergence of).
The Nihewan Basin

The Nihewan Basin, located in Hebei province, about

300 km northwestern Beijing, is a large extinct lacustrine basin with extensive Pliocene and Pleistocene
deposit containing hominid activity sites with associated faunal fossils and stone tools. These sites are
indicative of the earliest hominid occupations in East
Asia researching 40o north latitude landscape. So far
more than a dozen sites dated to the Lower Plesitocene, concentrated on the eastern ends of the basin,
have been identified within a 5 km radius of the
Donggutuo village, Yangyuan County. The number
will likely increase as the investigation is ongoing,

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 573

and suggests that the region was the most populated

area for the earliest hominids in East Asia. Recently, a
series of palaeomagnetic studies took place in the
region, establishing the following relative chronology: Goudi (also named as Majuangou III) has magnetostratigraphic age of 1.66 million years, Majuanagou
site 1.55 million years, Xiaochangliang and Dachangliang (also reported as Xuantai) 1.36 million years,
Banshan 1.32 million years, and Donggutuo and
Cengjiawan 1.1 million years (Figure 2).
The most recent exciting discovery at Nihewan is
the Goudi site, first excavated in 2001 by the Chinese
Academy of Sciences Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology (the IVPP). Three additional field sessions were carried out by Hebei
archaeologists in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Researchers
from the IVPP named the site as Goudi, while latter
Hebei scientists refer to this site as Majuangou III
based on the fact that the site sediment was directly
below the later 1.55 million year old Majuangou site.
Goudi is located about 1.5 km from Donggutuo
village at an elevation of 821 m above sea level.
Faunal remains from the reported earliest excavation include fragmentary bones identifiable as birds
(including ostrich), rodents, cainivores, elephantids,
Equus sp., rhinocerotids, and cervids. Later excavation
sessions revealed a floor of elephantids foot imprints.
The cultural remains of hominid activities are evident
from lithic artifacts that include cores reconstructed by
refitting pieces of flakes discovered in the surrounding
area (Figure 3). According to use-wear examination,
flakes were used without retouching. This evidence
suggests that the Goudi site, dated to close to the
onset of the Olduvai subchron, is the earliest archaeologcal site where hominids activity can be unambiguously identified.
Identified in 1978, Xiaochangliang was the first
known Lower Pleistocene site in the basin. At the
time of discovery, the site attracted great attention
from international scientists (including archaeologists, geologists, and palaeontologists) because of
its great antiquity, but no systematic excavation
was carried out until the 1990s. Research based on
site survey and surface-collected materials indicated
the site to be a hominid activity area. In 1998, a SinoCanada research team excavated the sites exposing
16 m2. The study of the faunal taphonomy suggests
that the distribution of artifacts was the result of
a jumble of hydraulically processed lithics and
fauna. The evidence indicates that the site was located
on the shoreline of an Archaic lake. Microscopic examination of lithic artifacts for tool functions reveals
that Xiaochangliang hominids employed unmodified
flakes as expedient tools, the use-wear of which
suggests that they were used in scavenging of

dead animals for food and potentially other uses (see

Dendrochronology).
Following the discovery of Xiaochangling, the
Donggutuo site was identified in 1981 and excavated
during 19811985 at five testing localities (T1T5).
Donggutuo is the only known Lower Pleistocene site
with multiple layers (layers AE). The cultural deposit at the site is about 35 m thick. Between 2000 and
2001, the Sino-Canada term carried out two field
sessions, excavating one 2  3 m2 unit at T1 and one
2  2 m2 unit at T4 (Figure 4). A total of 2412 artifacts including faunal remains were recovered from
the five layers, although the greatest proportion of
material came from Layer C. Distribution of patched
artifacts concentrations on site indicates minimal
disturbance. Detailed study of these recently recovered materials is still in progress, and includes spatial
analysis, taphonamy study, and use-wear examination,
among other studies. The preliminary observations on
the lithic assemblages suggest that Donggutuo occupants produced flake tools for expedient tasks by
employing a bipolar reduction technique, similar to
those at Xiaochangliang. Like its precedents (Goudi,
Majuangou, Xiaochangliang, Banshan), Donggutuo
hominids employed poor-quality quartzite raw materials which are abundant locally. However, many flake
tools were modified by secondary retouch, indicating a
purposeful manufacturing of tools at this site.
The Cenjiawan site, located northeast of the
Donggutuo site, was previously considered an early
Middle Pleistocene site but a recent palaeomagnetic
study redated the site to be contemporary with the
Donggutuo site. Cenjiawan was excavated in 1986
and 1992, and a total of 1383 lithic artifacts were
recovered. Cenjiawan assemblages yield a number of
modified flake tools including end-scrapers, sidescrapers, and notches, although unmodified flakes
were still predominant. An international team carried
out a refitting analysis of Cenjiawan lithic artifacts,
and the results show a clear pattern of skillful flake
removals with continuous rotation of cores. Cenjiawan cores were utilized efficiently and effectively to
obtain maximal flakes by employment of multiple
platform reduction (Figure 5). Another implication
of the high refitting rate is that it suggests minimal
postdepositional disturbance of the site, particularly
in the light of the fact that refit artifacts were plotted
in close distance. The data undoubtedly point to
on-site core-reduction activities, as well as the primary context of site formation.
Archaeological evidence from the Nihewan Basin
clearly points to continuous development of Asian
hominids in northern China starting 1.7 million
years ago. These hominids utilized local recourses of
lake water sources and raw materials for tool making.

574 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

Susceptibility (105 SI)
0 50 100 150

Dec (8)

Inc (8)

MAD

VGP Lat. (8)

90 90 270 90 0 90 0 5 1015 90

90 Polarity

GPTS

Last glacial loess

5

Last interglacial
soil
Greyish-white clay

10

Depth (m)

15

Greyish-green
silty clay
Mottled clay

20

15

Maliang artifact layer

Brown sands

25

E1

Greyish-yellow silts
interbedded with clay
30

30

Mottled clay
with sands

40

45

Paleosol

0.99 Ma
Jaramillo
1.05 Ma
Punaruu

N2

Donggutuo artifact layer

45
(b)

Loess

Kamikatsura
Santa Rosa

E2

Greyish-yellow silts

(a)

B/M 0.78 Ma

R1

Mottled clay
35

B
R
U
N
H
E
S

N1

Thin-bedded calcareous
layer

R2

E3
(c)

Clay

(d)

Silts

(e)

Sands

(f)

(g)

(h)

Breccia Calcareous Artifact

layer
layer

B
Figure 2 Lithostratigraphy and magnetostratigraphy of the Nihewan Basin. A, Palaeomagnetic diagram of the Donggutuo and Maliang
sites ((a) lithostratigraphy; (b) low-field magnetic susceptibility; (c) delination (Dec.); (d) inclination (Inc.); (e) maximun angular deviation
(MAD); (f) virtual geomagnetic pole (VGP) latitude; (g) magnetic polarity zonation; and (h) geomagnetic polarity time scale (GPTS)).
B, Palaeomagnetic sampling at the Xiaochangliang site.

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 575

A
0

2 cm

C
A
C B

Figure 3 Reconstructed core from the Goudi site.

9192 Excavation

8185 T4

64 m

N131
E110

N131
E174

31 meters

16 m to SW of 00 CC4T
220o

0001 Excavation
CC4T

8185 T5
97 Excavation
N96
E98

9192 Excavation
DATUM 00

N100
E100

N100 E110
0001 Excavation 933.350 m asl.
CC1T
8185 T1

48 m to Datum
190o

51.5 m to Datum
161o

8185 T3
8185 T2

10 m

Figure 4 Excavations at the Donggutuo Site, the Nihewan Basin, in 20002001.

Use-wear of tools suggests that the occupants engaged in various activities for survival.
Regional variation of the Lower Pleistocene hominids is also evident through comparisons with other
early Early Palaeolithic lithic industries in southern
China. Lithic assemblages from the Lantian Gongwangling, Yunxian Quyuanhekou, and Longgupo

sites are represented by large choppers and points

(Figure 6), indicating that the inhabitants at these
sites clearly adapted different strategies from those at
the Nihewan Basin. Overall, the Lower Pleistocene
lithic technology in China is different from its counterparts in the West that are represented by the Acheulean
industries.

576 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

C

D
A

B
(a) Refitting-set #11986

D
B

different environments are reflected by regional variations in the lithic industries. During this period, cave
sites were significant settlement locations for hominids, and important cave sites are often found in
central-northern, northeastern, and southwestern
China. Open-air sites along river valleys and lake
shorelines, like those in the Nihewan Basin, were
continuously occupied. The most important innovation for the Middle Pleistocene hominids was the
intentional use of fires.
Cave Sites

(b) Refitting-set #31992

Figure 5 Reconstructed cores through refitting from the Cenjiawan site.

Figure 6 Choppers from the Yunxian Quyuanhekou site.

Early Palaeolithic Settlements of the

Middle Pleistocene (780120 Thousand
Years Ago)
Cultural remains, along with a few hominid fossils,
dating to the Middle Pleistocene are found in most
parts of China, although they are concentrated on
lowlands and river plains. Hominid adaptations to

Major cave sites during this period include Zhoudoudian Locality 1 in Beijing, Jinliushan and Miaohoushan
in Liaoning province, Longyadong in Shaanxi province, and Panxian Dadong in Guizhou province.
These cave sites yielded some of the most important
evidence of hominid behavior, technology, and settlement pattern.
Located southwest of Beijing, Zhoudoudian Locality 1 is famous for the discovery of five Homo erectus
skulls in 1929. At one time it was the most celebrated
Palaeolithic site in the world and still is a national
monument in China. After three-quarters of a century, the cave site is still the Palaeolithic site that yielded
the most abundant Homo erectus fossils remains in
China (more than 40 individuals). Considered as a
home base, the cultural deposition in the cave is over
30 m thick, and is divided into 13 layers (Figure 7).
Investigations of its cultural chronology suggest that
the cave was at least repeatedly occupied for at least
three different phases, the first from 500 to 400 thousand years ago, the second 400 to 300 thousand years
ago, and the third from 300 to 200 thousand years ago.
Faunal assemblages from occupations in the cave and
dating to different times, indicate climatic changes in
the region throughout the Middle Pleistocene period.
There is rich evidence of fire ash deposits within the
cave; however, whether the fire was caused intentionally by hominids or was the result of natural fires is
currently under debate.
The lithic industry at the Zhoukoudian Locality 1
cave may be characterized in general as having small
flake tools (most less than 40 mm in length) produced
by the bipolar technique. However, lithic assemblages
from the Early, Middle, and Late occupational phases
clearly differ: large-sized tools like choppers and
points decreased in number over times, while the number of small tools like scrapers, burins, and notches
increased through time. Tool-making technique was
also changed with bipolar flake removal being replaced
with direct percussion at the Middle Phase. Noticeably,
good-quality local raw materials like chert were used
in increasing quantities at the Late Phase, although

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 577

Figure 7 The Zhoukoudian Locality 1 Cave site with deposit stratigraphy (right).

Figure 8 The No. 9 ash patch in Layer 8, Level 7, at Jinniushan. The scale is in centimeters.

quartz and quartzite were still predominantly selected

by Zhoukoudian hominids.
During the Late Phase of Zhoukoudian occupations, hominids with different biological features,
namely Archaic Homo sapiens, are found to have
lived at the Jinniushan cave near Dashiqiao city
in southern Liaoling province. Identified in 1978, the
Jinnuishan Locality A cave, measuring roughly 13.5 m
long eastwest and 9 m wide northsouth, was excavated completely over the course of a multiyear field
project that ran from 1986 to 1994 by the Peking
University. The site is exposed with 11 layers of sediments with geological age dated to the Middle
Pleistocene.
Jinnuishan cultural remains were found in Layer 8,
and included more than 200 lithic artifacts, 9789
faunal remains (nearly 200 with burnt marks), and

nine well-preserved fire-use ash features (Figure 8).

The most important discovery was more than 50
specimens of hominid fossils, all found within 2 m
of the southern wall of the cave. These fossils belong
to a single female, approximately 2022 years old,
now known as the Jinnuishan hominid (Figure 9).
Uranium-series dating suggests a date range of between 300 and 230 thousand years ago, with an
average date of 263 thousand years ago.
The Jinnuishan hominid cultural remains suggest
that two different hominids coexisted in northern
China during the Middle to Late Pleistocene. The
associate fossil faunal remains of rhinoceros and
macaque suggest a warmer and wetter environment.
The Jinniushan hominid might have lived in small
groups (of probably less than a dozen), inhabited
caves seasonally, and used as well as preserved fire.

578 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

Figure 9 Fossil remains of the Jinnuishan Archaic Homo sapiens.

The discovery of Guanyingdong cave in 1964 was

a breakthrough in that for the first time Asian hominid cultural remains were well represented in the
Southwest where Early Palaeolithic sites were still
limited. Rich cultural materials recovered from the
cave indicate a southern lithic industry different
from the Zhoukoudian industry during late Middle
Pleistocene to early Upper Pleistocene. Hominid fossil
remains recovered from this area include a few teeth
from cave sites of Tongzi Yanhuidong and Panxian
Dadong. These teeth show biological features more
closely related to Archaic Homo sapiens than to
Homo erectus.
Dadong is a large karst cave located 50 km southwest of Panxian city, at an altitude of 1630 m above
sea level. The caves main chamber with an average of
35 m width and extending over 200 m in length
covers roughly 8000 m2 in area. Several field excavations were carried out in the 1990s, yielding a large
number of lithic artifacts as well as faunal remains
that represent the AiluropodaStegodon faunas of
Middle Pleistocene southern China. Uranium-series
dates and electron spin resonance (ESR) dates of
tooth enamel place the majority of the archaeological
deposits between 130 and 250 thousand years ago
(see Electron Spin Resonance Dating).
Studies of lithic assemblages suggest that Dadong
hominids utilized poor quality but locally available

limestone for tool-making, while basalt and chert

were increasingly used in later times as hominids
extended their explorations of the area. It is suggested
that an anvil-chipping technique was possibly employed as a mode of core reduction to make flake-tool
blanks, evident by large limestone blocks in the cave.
Dadong hominids might have modified and used animal teeth of suitable size and shape as working tools
as an alternative to the poor-quality local limestone.
Taphonomic study of faunal remains from the cave
yields a high quantity of large-bodied animal teeth,
especially those of rhinoceroses. These must have
been intentionally selected and transported to the
cave by hominids for functional purposes.
Hominid fossils, associated with abundant faunal
remains, are also recovered from caves in southern
China (especially along the Middle and Lower Reaches
of Yangtze River) such as Hexian Longtangdong and
Chaoxian Yingshan in Anhui province, and Nanjing
Tangshan in Jiangsu province. These archaeological
deposits of Homo erectus (Hexian and Nanjing fossils)
or Archaic Homo Sapiens (Chaoxian fossils) are roughly
dated as contemporaneous to the Zhoukoudian occupational period. The recent discovery of Sanming
Lingfengdong in Fujian province has proven to be the
largest and richest late Middle Pleistocene cave occupation in southeast China, although no hominid fossil
was found.

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 579

In the Nihewan Basin, the Middle Pleistocene sites

are represented by Maliang, Qiuergou, and Qingciyao.
A study of Maliang lithic artifacts, recovered from the
1984 excavation session, suggests that Maliang hominids have developed more skills in tool-making skills
than their predecessors, an example being the increased sophistication of multidirectional core reduction. Flake tools were modified into standard shapes of
scrapes and notches, which are not seen in other earlier
assemblages (Figure 10). They learned to select finequality chert which is available but rare in the region,

Open-air Site

One of the important open-air sites during this period

is Lantian Chenjiawozi site where the famous Homo
erectus lower jaw was recovered in 1963. In general
this jaw, together with the skull recovered from Gangwangling, have been identified as Lantian hominids.
But the Chenjiawozi jaw is dated to 700600 thousand
years ago, later than those fossils from Gangwangling.
Another open-air site, Dali in southern Shaanxi province, yielded a well-preserved skull belonging to a
30-year-old Archaic Homo sapiens individual.

(b) ML038
(c) ML084

(a) ML060

(d) ML085

(e) ML076
(f) ML046

(h) ML049

(g) ML001

5 cm
(i) ML043

(j) ML042

(k) ML045

Figure 10 Lithic artifacts from the Maliang Site. (cores: f, k; end-scrapers: a, d; side-scraper: b; tablet-shaped object: i, j; modified flake: g;
flakes: c, e, f)

580 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

suggestive of developing hominid cognition and their

procurement strategies. Use-wear analyses indicate
that tool use at Maliang probably emphasized on
bone scraping/shaving functions (Figure 11) (see
Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear).
Most open-air sites are usually found in clusters
along river valleys. Some are located on upper lands,
at the third to fifth terraces of mountainous regions,
such as those in the Luonan Basin in southern Shaanxi
province and in the Baise (or Bose) Basin in Guangxi
province. In the past two decades, a large number of
Early Palaeolithic sites are found at lower elevations
on river flood plains in southern China. The important Early Palaeolithic complexes include those from
Hanzhong Basin in Hubei/Shaaxi provinces, the
Lishui Valley of Middle Yangtze River in Hunan

province, and the Shuiyangjiang Valley of Lower

Yangtze River in Anhui province. Within each of
these complexes, dozens of open-air sites are found
in close proximity, embedded within the same geological deposit, and share similar features of lithic assemblages. These complexes present a unique local
industry adapted to river valley settlements over the
time of the Middle Pleistocene.
Recent investigations in the Shuiyangjiang Valley
have identified more than 20 palaeolithic sites, representing the earliest Palaeolithic settlement concentration in the Lower Reach of Yangtze River. These sites
have a date range between 817 and 126 thousand
years ago based on ESR dating. Within the complex,
the discovery of the Maozhushan site in 1996
revealed an important open campsite, with a pebble

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Figure 11 Use-wear of Miliang lithic artifacts. (a) ML085, 14. Heavily rounded edge with used polish along the working edge, scattered
scars are moderate to large in size with stepped and hinged termination, unifacially distributed on the dorsal surface. The wear type is
indicative of scraping hard bone. (b) ML001, 28. Moderate to large scars bifacially distributed along the edge of 1015 mm. Scars are
directional but most are vertical to the edge, heavy rounding and rare polish. Interpreted as cutting/sawing hard bones use-wear. (c) ML060,
dorsal side, 56. small-to-moderate-sized feathered or hinged scars, unifacially distributed along the edge on dorsal side. (d) ML060, Ventral
side, 28. Heavy rounding and polish along ventral-sided working edge (opposite to that in previous photo). A few striations parallel or
perpendicular to the edge are noted. The combination of wear patterns is suggestive of scraping wood use-wear.

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 581

semicircle structure that could be the earliest structure created by early hominid in China (Figure 12).
The Maozhushan site is located 4.5 km northwest
of Ningguo City, Anhui province, on riverine terrain
about 65 m above the sea level. The settlement lies on
the second terrace of the Shuiyangjiang River covering a hilly landscape of nearly 4000 m2, of which an

N
0

1m

Figure 12 Plan view of pebble semicircle at the Maozhushan site.

area of 13  15 m2 was exposed in the 19971998

field season. The stone structure is made of more
than 1100 pebbles, featuring a semicircular shape
with a 10 m long eastwest axis and a 6 m north
south axis. What is more interesting about this structure is that 20 small pebble circles, ranging from 20 to
30 cm in diameter, were found on the edge of the
pebble semicircle (Figure 13). Although the current
evidence is insufficient for identifying the function of
this structure, it is suggested that all of the pebbles for
the semicircle structure were purposefully collected
by hominids elsewhere, and those pebble stones also
served as raw materials for tool making. It has
been speculated that some small circles together
with stone artifacts could be evidence of the use of
post molds, thus a possible implication of the earliest
wooden shelter known in China. However, lack of
faunal remains and the organic components of the
sediment are due to acid earth in the study region of
southern China.
A total of 154 stone artifacts were recovered from
the pebble semicircle at the Maozhushan site. They
were scattered evenly throughout the structure and
no patterned clusters of lithic artifacts could be identified. Typologically, the lithic assemblage primarily
consisted of chunks, cores, and flakes. Tool types
included scrapers, hammers, choppers, points, picks,
spheroids, and drills. Some tools showed traces of
possible use. The pebble semicircle might have been a
seasonal living structure where tool-making activities
were conducted; however, the specific function of this
structure needs further investigation. Judging from the
evidence at present, the Maozhushan site may have
been a central campsite of the Shuiyangjiang River
Paleolithic complex.
Palaeolithic Settlements at the Luonan Basin

The Luonan Basin is located in the Qinling Mountains

which form a geographic boundary between northern
and southern China. The basin contains caves

Figure 13 Examples of small pebble circles at the Maozhushan site.

582 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

and open-air sites that date to at least 350 000

180 000 years ago, distributed over the second to
sixth terraces of the river valleys. Archaeological
surveys for Palaeolithic sites started in 1995, and
by 2004, a Sino-Canada research collaboration identified a total of 268 open-air sites and one cave site
of Early Palaeolithic (Figure 14).

Excavated between 1995 and 1997, the Longyadong

cave is relatively small, about 20 m2 in area. The cultural deposits are about 3.5 m in depth, and contain
three cultural layers. Fired ash remains were clearly
identified on these layers. Artifacts from these living
floors were in substantially high density (the average
1000 pieces (>10 mm) per m3), and over 77 000 lithic

Figure 14 The Luonan Basin landscape (upper) and the Lower Palaeolithic sites.

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 583

artifacts were recovered from the cave. Cores, nodules,

anvils, and other breccia rocks were arranged along
the circumference of these floors, while numerous
flakes and fossil remains were concentrated in the
center. Refitting study was successful in conjoining
thousands of artifacts within the cave to document
site formation and hominid spatial use of the cave
(Figure 15).
The difference between the open-air sites and the
cave sites are analyzed in terms of the raw materials
and tool-making technology. The study shows that
stone tool types from Longyadong cave site are dominated by small modified flake tools like scrapers,
points, and burins. Large choppers made on pebble
stone are present but in a very low number. In contrast, 13 581 pieces collected from 268 open-air sites
consists of large tool types that are not seen from the

cave sites, such as hand axes, picks, cleavers, spheroids, and choppers in relatively high numbers. It is
implied that the Longyadong cave may have been one
of the central sites of occupation where early hominids visited repeatedly over a long period of time,
while the open-air sites were loci of their temporary
activities. The differences in tool assemblages show
that there might have been different site functions
between the cave and open-air sites.
Lithic Technology

During the Middle Pleistocene, two main lithic technologies were established as strategic adaptations:
flake tools in northern China and pebble-core tools
in southern China. Flake tools were produced with
directly percussion or bipolar percussion by expedient core reduction. Based on the current data, no

8m

Cores

Flakes or retouched flake tools

Flaking debris

Conjoining refitted sequences

Joining broken pieces
3

Figure 15 The horizontal distribution of refitted artifacts in the Longyadong cave.

6m

584 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

standard core platform preparation has been detected

as yet. Predominant flake blanks were modified into
scrapers, notches, and burins. Raw materials mainly
consisted of poor-quality quartz and quartzite which
were common locally available resources. Goodquality cherts were also selected during the later
period at some sites.
The majority of pebble-core tools were found at
riverside sites in southern China, and were made by
either freehand percussion or anvil-chipping methods. The difference between pebble-core tools and
flake tools is that the former were bifacially or
unifacially made on cores or large flakes. These
types of tools often included large cutting implements
like choppers with either bifacially or unifacially
chipped edges, large bifacial or unifacial points, and
other heavy-duty tools like spheroids.
However, differences between the two lithic industries were also observed in comparisons of cave sites
and open-air settlements, especially in southern
China. Some caves, like Dadong and Guanyindong,
yielded primarily flake tools that contrasted with the
lithic assemblages from contemporaneous sites in
adjunct areas. These differences could be direct reflections of site functions, as representations of hominid behavior. In fact, the difference between the
lithic assemblages of the Longyadong cave and other
open-air sites, as mentioned above, could also be
explained as the result of cultural interaction between
southern and northern hominids, particularly in light
of the fact that the location of the Luonan Basin was
on the boundary where the two lithic technologies
could have met. Clearly, further study on the Luonan
lithic assemblages in terms of dating and chronology,
site formation, stone tool functions, will shed new
lights on the diversity of hominid behaviors in the
Middle Pleistocene China.
Handaxes in China

Another important aspect of the Luonan Basin

Palaeolithic is the discovery of over 200 handaxes
from open-air sites (Figure 16). This is one of the
largest clusters of so-called Acheulean-like handaxes
in China. The other areas yielding a large number
of handaxes are the Baise Basin in Guangxi province
and the Danjiangkuo Reservoir area in northern
Hubei province. A few handaxes are also reported,
in lower numbers, from other open-air sites, in both
northern and southern China.
At present well-known handaxes assemblages are
reported from Baise, where the Palaeolithic complex
consisted of nearly 100 sites and localities, distributing
mainly on the fourth terraces of the 100 km-long
Youjiang River valley. About 25100 m above the

present river level, the artifact-bearing deposits of the

fourth terraces are associated with tektites dispersed
across the basin. The age of these large cutting tools
were established by 40Ar/39Ar analyses on collected
tektite samples, and yielded an average age of 803
thousand years ago. Thus, Baise handaxes are claimed
to be the oldest large cutting tools in East Asia.
It is suggested that the both Luonan and Baise
handaxes exhibits all the traits of the Acheulean technology from western Eurasia/Africa. These handaxes
were made of pebble cores, bifacially chipped to
straighten the working edge towards the tip, but
leaving cortex and rough working surface near
proximal (butt) end. It is also evident that handaxes
with similar morphological traits to Chinese tools
are found in Chongokni, Korea. Compared to the
classic Acheulean handaxes in the West, these eastern
versions seem to be crudely made prototypes. However, technologically, they share similar attributes of
human modification to those in the West. The difference in their appearance may be caused by use of
different raw materials, and possibly by different
functions as a result of adaptive behaviors to the
East Asian environment.
The discovery of handaxes has always stirred sensational discussion focusing on the concept of the
Movius Line that drew developmental differences
between elaborate handaxe culture in the West and
crude chopper-chopping culture in the East. Since the
first identification of handaxes from the Dingcun site
in southern Shanxi province in 1954, Chinese scholars
were trying to claim that Palaeolithic cultures were not
from the cultural backwaters as implied by H. Movius
syntheses in the 1940s. Today, it is clear that Chinese
hominids produced cultures quite different to those of
their counterparts in Europe and Africa. Regardless of
whether the large cutting tools (including hand axes,
cleavers, and picks) are similar or dissimilar to those
in the West in terms of measurement or attributes,
the reasons why handaxes in such form appeared
in China would be of interest to Palaeolithic research
for years to come. For example, archaeologists working on the Baise assemblages believe that production of
handaxes could be a behavioral adaptation to an episode of woody plants burning and widespread forest
destruction due to tektite events that resulted in local
cobble outcrops becoming available.

Palaeolithic Cultures of the Early Upper

Pleistocene (12035 Thousand Years Ago)
Northern China

Entering the Upper Pleistocene period, northern

China continues to be an area of favorable settlements

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 585

5 cm

Figure 16 Examples of handaxes collected from Luonan open-air sites.

for hominid living. The number and scale of archaeological sites, in forms of both caves and open-air sites,
are greater than that in previous periods, indicating
expansion of hominid activities. In some regions, materials cultures were developed continuously from early
occupations, such as in Zhoukoudian and Nihewan.
Located about 70 m southeast of Locality 1, Zhoujoudian Locality 15 is one of the most important
Palaeolithic sites during this period. The site was
identified in 1932, and completely excavated between
1935 and 1937. More than 10 000 stone artifacts and
abundant faunal remains of at least 33 mammalian
species were recovered over the course of the excavations, but due to historic reasons, these artifacts were
never studied until the 1990s. Recent examination of
these lithic assemblages suggests that the lithic technology of the hominids at Zhoukoudian Locality 15

was more developed than that of their predecessors at

Locality 1. The Zhoukoudian hominids in the early
Upper Pleistocene effectively mastered sophisticated
core-reduction modes, represented by multidirectional flaking and alternate flaking. Compared to earlier
occupants at the Zhoukoudian Locality 1, these later
hominids were able to successfully employ free-hand
percussion to craft quartz flakes tools, which previously at Locality 1 could have been done only by
bipolar flaking.
However, the lithic industry of Locality 15 is suggested to continue the technological traditions of the
Locality 1. The majority of tool types are scrapers of
various different types (including straight sidescraper,
convex sidescraper, concave sidescraper, endscraper,
thumbnail scraper, double-edged scraper, and multiedged scraper), which together account for 93% of

586 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

the 1283 total tool assemblage. Although overall the

tool kits are similar to those found at the Locality 1,
retouched tools were more elaborate at the Locality
15. Some specimens do exhibit well-controlled fine
retouch, evidenced by even and parallel modification
scars and sharp, regular, smooth, or denticulate
cutting edge. Overall, the Zhoukoudian Locality 15
industry clearly is still a part of the flake tool technocomplexes of northern China.
Archaeological investigations suggest the Zhoukoudian Locality 15 was once a cave site, but during
the period of hominid occupation, the roof of the cave
appears to have collapsed and the inhabitants were
therefore living in conditions better described as a
rock shelter. Faunal and palynological evidence
suggest that the local environment was probably characterized by warm-temperate and forest-steppe conditions. Archaeological deposits were associated with
geological formation dated to later Middle Pleistocene and early Upper Pleistocene, which were dated
by Uranium-series and ESR methods to establish an
age range between 140 and 110 thousand years ago.
During this transitional period, the Nihewan Basin
continued to be an important area for late Early
Palaeolithic open-air settlements. Among these sites
in the basin, the Xujiayao site has been a focus of
study. Located on the northern side of the Nihewan
Basin, by the Liuyi Creek, a branch of the Sangan
River, the site yielded over 20 000 lithic artifacts and
included cores, flakes, and various retouched tools.
Within the lithic assemblages, spheroids (numbering
in the thousands) are the most characteristic artifacts
recovered from Palaeolithic sites in China. The most
important materials recovered from the site were 18
pieces of human fossil fragments. The identity of
the human remains, or so called Xujiayao Man, is
still under debate, has been determined as either
Archaic Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens.
One skull fragment showed evidence of healed hole,
9.5 mm in diameter. Specialists suggest that this is
the earliest evidence of human brain surgery. The
date of the remains is determined to be roughly
104 000125 000 years old.
The Dingcun complex is the largest open-air site
cluster known in northern China that dates to this
period. These sites are located at the east side of Fenhe
River in southern Shanxi province. Identified in the
1950s, the Dingcun complex is comprised of 14 localities (namely site 54:90103), 11 of which yielded
substantial cultural materials. Later investigations
recovered a few more site locations. The common elements of the lithic assemblages of this complex are
represented by large-sized core tools including choppers, picks, unifaces, and bifaces in most sites. Unifacial
points were made on thick and large-size flake blanks,

and were retouched abruptly on the ventral side along

both working edges toward the tip, to form the so-called
triangular-sectioned points of Dingcun lithic industry.
Recent studies also suggest that a few sites within the
complex also represent the flake-tool industry of northern China, with its standardized notches and denticulates. The coexistence of large pebble-core tool and
flake-tool industries at Dingcun is again seen at the
Beiyao site near Luoyang of Henan province. The lithic
assemblages from this multiple-component site reveal a
general trend in which large pebble tools were gradually
replaced by small flake-tools throughout the region.
Southern China

In recent years, the most important field investigations of Palaeolithic cultures in southern China was
undertaken in the Three Gorges area of the middle
Yangtze River. The existence of Palaeolithic settlements remained uncertain until the early 1990s
when the Three Gorges Dam project (the worlds
largest reservoir) began. Archaeological surveys conducted in 19931994 identified 24 palaeolithic sites
below 175 m above sea level within the area to be
inundated. Most sites are located in the second and
third terraces along the 75 km long riverbank stretch
in the western part of the gorges.
The ongoing salvage excavations revealed rich cultural materials, especially at Gaojiazhen, Jingshuiwan,
and Ranjialukou, all in the Fengdu County of the
Chongqing Municipality. Ranjialukou is located on
the upland fourth terrace, whose geological age is
dated to about 125 thousand years ago, thus marking
it the oldest Palaeolithic site in the reservoir. The
study of Ranjialukou lithic assemblages, especially
from the results of the 2005 field session, suggests a
throwing technique of tool-making at the site. The
technique, now claimed as the Yangtze Technique by
its excavators, is to acquire large tool blanks, which
exhibit characteristics of a semirounded and fully
cortex dorsal surface and a pointed striking platform,
by throwing a flat river cobble at anvil stones. This
kind of technique has been recognized as a common
practice in making large chopping tools in southwestern China, as well as at the Baxiandong Cave site
in Taiwan. If the date claimed for Rojialukou is reliable, then it is the oldest site where this tool-making
technique has been recognized. A similar technique
was recognized from lithic assemblages from the
Shuicheng Xiaohuidong cave site in southwestern
China that dated to 50 thousand years ago.
The cultural deposits at both Jingshuiwan and
Gaojiazhen were at the lower strata of the third
terraces, dating to before 40 thousand years ago.
Five sessions of field excavations at Jingshuiwan

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 587

uncovered thousands of artifacts dominated by

modified flake tools and debris as well as possible
hearths, indicating on-site multiple-facet living activities (Figure 17). The Gaojiazhen site, about 17.5 km
down the riverbank from Jingshuiwan, yielded a
distinctly difference artifact assemblage that was
represented by large chopping tools made from
cobbles. The function of Gaojiazhen may be that of
a tool-making location given a large number of nodule and core occurrences. Difference of lithic technologies between both sites could be related to the
different functions of the sites.
Recent field investigations have increased the number of open-air sites in southern China to several
hundreds; however, only a few of these sites have
been excavated. Jigongshan, excavated in the early
1990s, is the most representative site of this period
in southern China. The site is located 5 km northeast
of the ancient city of Jingzhou, Hubei Province, on a
small earthen mound on the second terrace of the
north bank of the Yangtze River. The site clearly
reveals two cultural strata in which an abundance of
lithic artifacts were recovered. Layer 4 in the lower
stratum dates to the end of Middle Pleistocene, and its
lithic assemblage is similar to those from the older
Quyuanhekou site in the same region, which is represented by large pebble-core tools like choppers, picks,
and spheroids. Notably, Layer 2 in the upper stratum,
dating to the late Upper Pleistocene, reveals a lithic
technology different from previous period, one that is
characterized by small flake-stone tools such as scrapers and drills.
Most importantly, a living floor was identified from
the Layer 4. Measuring roughly 30  20 m2, it consisted of five stone rings intentionally constructed

using cobbles and pebbles as well as stone artifacts.

Tens of thousands of lithic were found scattered on the
living floor, and the area of the densest artifacts concentration was in the center and to the north of the site.
The sterile areas associated with the stone circles are
also circular with diameters of 1.52.5 m surrounded
by unmodified stones about 1 m wide (Figure 18).
Clearly these stone circles are related to human activities, but more research is needed to determine their
functions. However, current evidence suggests that
they might have been used as tool-manufacturing
areas, given the concentrated distributions of byproducts associated with discarded retouched tools,
hammerstone, stone anvils, and other artifacts.
The evidence from the Jigongshan lithic assemblages suggests a new, previously unidentified, cultural development in southern China. During the early
Upper Pleistocene, southern China, especially in the
area around the middle of Yangtze River, underwent
changes in lithic technology the traditional pebblecore tool industry was replaced by small flake-tool
industry. Concurrent with this technological shift,
some degree of cultural changes also took place. Use
of cave settlements during this period increased
whereas open-air sites decreased, probably as a result
of colder temperatures. Site distributions and use of
landscape were greatly expanded, with many more
sites being discovered in surrounding mountains, suggesting an enhanced ability in human adaptation during this period. There is no difference between lithic
assemblages from caves and that from open-air sites,
but cave site deposits are very thick, possibly as a
result of longer occupations or repeated use, or perhaps also due to the better preservation of archaeological deposits in cave sites.

Figure 17 Excavations at the Jingshuiwan Site in the Three Gorges area.

588 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

50cm

Figure 18 Stone ring from Jigongshan site.

Most cave sites were located in the southwestern

plateau as well as in the southern mountainous areas,
as in both regions karst formations were well developed. Notably, human remains were recovered from
two small caves in southern China (Maba in Guangdong province and Liujiang in Guangxi province),
both of which became well known to the world in
the years following their recovery in 1958. These
fossil remains include well preserved and complete
skulls and other measurable fragments. Maba fossils
were identified as Archaic Homo sapiens, morphologically closest to Dali fossils in northern China, and
dated to around 120 thousand years ago based on
Uranium-series dates. A recent study suggests that
while most features of Liujiang fossils fall within a
range of modern human variations, they retain a few
Archaic characters. Before the new century (see
below), this male (Liujiang) individual was once
regarded as the oldest example of modern human in
China, dated to about 50 thousand years ago in age.

Origins of Modern Humans in China

From a global perspective, biological, archaeometric, and genetic evidence together appear to support
the out-of-Africa model for the origin of anatomically modern human. This model suggests Africanevolved modern humans arrived in East Asia and
replaced Asian hominids around 40 thousand years
ago. However, the last decade of investigations revealed

new data from southern China that continues to

encourage some scholars to advocate a model of independent modern human evolution in China, namely
the multiregional model. Clearly, no matter which
origin theory one ascribes to, the Upper Pleistocene
fossil remains recovered in China are of critical
importance.
At present, there are up to nearly 40 archaeological
sites in China where fossil remains of anatomically
modern humans have been recovered, among which
fossils from the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave, Ziyang,
and Liujiang are the most important. Conventionally,
modern humans from the Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian
were once believed to be continuously evolved from
the Zhoukoudian Locality 1 Homo erectus. Although
this notion has been long discarded, some scholars
still insist that Asian modern humans shared some
biological features of their precedent Homo erectus,
such as mandibular torus, shoveling upper incisors,
and nasal breadth, which are usually considered to
be part of the physical identity of todays Asian
Mongoloid race. Liujiang fossils present more features
that can be related to Homo erectus, while fossils from
both the Upper Cave and Ziyang are regarded as the
best examples of Homo sapiens sapiens in China. The
new discovery of modern human fossils including a
lower jaw was made at Tianyuandong cave about
6 km southwest of the Zhoukoudian Locality 1, and
the Uranium-series dating gave the age of cave deposit
at 25 thousand years ago contemporary with that of
the Upper Cave. However, the problem is that so
far most of these fossils are incomplete causing difficulties in statistical comparisons. As almost all of these
well-known fossils under study are younger than 50
thousand years ago, the lack of fossil samples dated to
between 10050 thousand years ago in China is a
critical weakness in the indigenous development
theory. In other words, current fossil data point to
discontinuity of local human evolution (see Paleoanthropology).
However, this situation may change in the near
future. Over the past decade, full-scale field investigations and extensive fieldworks have been undertaken
in the western Hubei province and in the Three
Gorges area as part of cultural heritage management
associated with the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir and
the subsequent South-to-North Water Transfer Project. As a result, dozens of Pleistocene faunal locations
as well as human cultural remains were identified.
Today, central-western China, with 16 locations, has
become the richest area for recovering hominid and
modern human fossils in East Asia, most of which are
in western Hubei (Figure 19). These fossils range
from possible Lufengpithecus, to Homo erectus,
Archaic Homo sapiens, to Homo sapiens sapiens.

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 589

108

110

112

Dali

Luoyang

Chenjiawo

Xi`au

Gongwangling

Longyadong

34

HENAN
SHAANXI
Nanzhao
Huanglongdong

Shiquan

Bailongdong

Yunxian Longgudong

Nanyang

Y uanxian Quyuanhekou

An`kang

32

Fangxian

Shennongjia Forest

CHONGQING
Y an
g
Leipingdong

HUBEI
tz
e

Migongdong
Longgupo

er

Xinglongdong
Jianshi Longgudong

Enshi

Changyang

30

Legend
Capital city
Modern city
Archaeological sites

Figure 19 Human fossil sites in western Hubei and the Three Gorges areas.

HUNAN

Jingzhou

Xic hn
u
a

590 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

What is more significant is that for the first time

modern human fossils dating back to around 100
thousand years ago are being recovered from four
newly identified sites.
At present, Yunxian Huanglongdong site yielded
the earliest examples of modern human fossils. The
site is a limestone cave more than 100 m deep and
10 m tall (Figure 20), with Palaeolithic deposits more
than 2 m. In 2004, five teeth (left second upper incisor, canine of upper jaw, third molar of upper jaw,
right second molar of mandible, and left third molar
of mandible) were recovered from Layers 46, in
association with stone tools and faunal remains. The
teeth belong to different individuals, all well preserved with clear features of the crown and root.
The excavators believe that the morphological features of these teeth fall in between Archaic Homo
sapiens and modern Chinese. The faunal assemblage
features the South China giant PandaStegodon
fauna indicative of the late Middle Pleistocene, in
conjunction with a calibrated date of Uranium-series
date that suggest the rather antique age as early as 94
thousand years ago or at least within the range of
10344 thousand years ago in age based on uranium-series and ESR samples.
The Xinglongdong cave at the western end of the
Three Gorges also yielded four modern human teeth
embedded in Stegodon fossil deposits that point to
geological dates of late Middle Pleistocene (c. 150
120 thousand years ago). According to the excavators
conducting the 20022004 fieldwork session, cultural remains at the site are rich and include rare
stone animal figurines. These could be the earliest
examples of Palaeolithic art in China. The other two

new sites, Migongdong and Leipingdong, both in

Wushan County, retain well-preserved late Middle
Pleistocene (or early Upper Pleistocene) deposits in
the caves where skull fragments as well as teeth
were recovered. All of these fossil remains have yet
to be studied as the ongoing research continues, but
they will undoubtedly shed new light on the study of
early modern human in China.
New archaeological findings near Zhengzhou city
of Henan also seem to suggest cultural continuity in
central China. Identified in the 1980s, Xingyang
Zhijidong is a rock-shelter type cave with deposits
more than 20 m deep and covering periods from
Early Upper Pleistocene to Early Holocene (see Asia,
East: Early Holocene Foragers). The site was excavated in the early 1990s, and then again in 20012004
by Peking University (Figure 21). A series of AMS
14
C date and OSL dates taken from Layers 27 suggests an occupational age ranging from 50 to 35 thousand years ago, when the cold and dry climate during
the Last Glacial Period took place. Cultural remains
tends to be continuous in terms of technological development, although a trend of small flake tools in the
later occupational time, possibly developed from
pebble-core tools in early times, is observed from lithic
assemblages. The archaeologists working on the materials suggest that such transitions could be adaptive to
climate changes. Continuous occupations of the cave
retain evidence of modern human behavioral such as
hearths, activity floor, and procurement strategies. The
raw materials used for stone tools are dominated by
quartzes and chert that had to be transported from
long-distance sources. Toolkits are represented by
side-scrapers and burins, which are clearly the same

Figure 20 Images of the Huanglongdong cave site in western Hubei province and associated modern human teeth and stone tools.

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 591

Zhijidong cave

Figure 21 The Zhijidong Cave near Zhengzhou City, and its deposit (insert).

cultural manifestation as small flake tools of northern

China in early periods.
Therefore, while there is not yet enough evidence to
refute the out-of-Africa theory for the origin of modern humans in East Asia, new data accumulated over
the last decade, both biological and archaeological,
suggest that the possibility of independent evolution
cannot be ruled out. New findings from China will
continue to stimulate what hopes to be a fruitful
debate on the issue of human origin. Chinese archaeologists and anthropologists regard this evidence
supportive of a new model, namely the continuity
with hybridization, originally proposed by palaeoanthropologist Wu Xinzhi in the middle 1990s as a
variation of the multi-regional origin theory.

Late Palaeolithic Technologies at the End

of Upper Pleistocene (35 00010 000 BP)
Until around 35 000 BP, traditional lithic industries
continue to be present in areas where cultural manifestations were well developed. After this point in time,
a number of new lithic technologies (including blade
technique, bifacial technique, microblade technique,
as well as wide-employment of bone tools) appeared
to blend together to create the Late Palaeolithic cultures. This technological diversity resulted from cultural
interactions when waves of human migrations from
Western Europe spread out across Eurasian. The
impacts this had on Chinese Late Palaeolithic cultures
were enormous. Diversified technologies clearly replaced the conventional homogeneity in most parts of
China during this period; the results may be regarded as

a southward intrusion of cultural manifestations from

the North and Northwest. Similar technological diversity is also observed in the northwestern coast of North
America as a result of the peopling of America around
20 00011 500 BP (see New World, Peopling of;
Siberia, Peopling of).
Small-flake-tool Technology

During this period, flake tools from northern Late

Palaeolithic sites tend to be small in size but delicately made mostly on fine quality cherts. Small
flake industries of northern China were well represented by the Shiyu site in Shanxi province, the Xianrendong cave site of Liaoning province, and the
Xiaonanhai cave site of Henan province. Compared
to previous flake-tool technology, these lithic assemblages produced flake tools that show better designed
and standardized forms. Toolkits included scrapers,
burins, small projectile points, drills, notches and denticulates, which were made from various raw materials
and by different techniques including hard-hammer
and soft-hammer percussion. Pressure technique was
also developed for making tools that required intensive
surface retouching such as bifaces and projectile
points. Standardizing toolkits were clearly adapted
to northern hunting strategy that mobilized human
societies.
Shiyu, identified and excavated in 1963, yielded
thousands of flake tools predominated by various
shapes of scrapers: most of them were between 20
and 30 mm in length. Their working edges were finely
retouched, probably by soft-hammers. Most flake
blanks were also observed to be of regular size.

592 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

A large quantity of faunal remains was recovered from

the site, animal teeth alone counting for roughly 5000
pieces. Faunal analysis suggests most animal species
are adapted to a prairie environment there were at
least 200 individuals of wild horses and wild donkeys.
It seems that the Shiyu occupants, who lived around
29 000 BP, were wild horse hunters.
Flake-tool industries became more frequent in
southern China; but typologically and technologically
these flake tools were distinctive from these in northern China, suggesting a local technological innovation.
The development of this trend is well documented
from the Three Gorge assemblages, through the
Ziyang Locality B assemblage, to the Tongliang lithic
assemblages. The best examples of the southern flaketool industry are from the Hanyuan Fuling site of
Sichuan province, as well as two cave sites, Maomaodong and Baiyandong. Flake-tool blanks were made
from large pebble/cobble raw materials by anvilchipping or throwing techniques, and then altered
along the working edge by retouching in order to
make them into suitable tools. However, flake-tool
modification was not as extensive as those in northern
China, and the toolkits there were not as diverse.
Blade Technology

Blades were occasionally reported or cataloged from

the lithic assemblages of early sites, but they were
likely a by-product of flake production. During
this period, blades as primary products of a special

reduction technique appeared in northern China, but

archaeological sites with blade production were very
limited in numbers so far. The origin of blade technology in China is difficult to trace to local flake-tool
technology, thus it is probably derived from western
influences. There are nearly two dozen sites where
blades have been reported, all of them situated in
northwest and north-central China. However, true
presentations of blade technology are from only two
sites, Shuidonggou and Youfang.
Shuidonggou, located at southwestern part of the
Ordos area about 18 km east to the Yellow River, was
the first Palaeolithic site excavated in China by
French palaeontologists E. Licent and P. Teihard de
Chardin. They reported five locations at the site and
excavated the Locality 1 in 1923. Because of classical
blade production, the findings from Shuidonggou
made an immediate connection between remote Chinese cultures to the western ones; thus, the site has
been a focus of study and most of the collection is
now housed in western institutes and museums.
Follow-up excavations at the site took place in 1960,
1963, and 1980, and produced a large quantity of
lithic artifacts and faunal remains. Unfortunately,
like many of other sites investigated prior to 1990,
this site was not systematically studied with a multidisciplinary approach until 2002. Recent surveys
reported that the site complex consisted of 20 localities. Excavations during 20032004 were concentrated at Localities 2, 7, and 8 (Figure 22). Besides
lithic artifacts and faunal remains, the site also yielded

Figure 22 The landscape of the Shuidonggou Site and ornaments (insert) recovered from the 20032004 excavations.

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 593

fired clay floors and ash deposit indicative of purposeful fire use. Most importantly, dozens of finely
polished ostrich shell ornaments (rings) were recovered from Localities 2 and 8. A skull fragment, found
at Locality 4, was identified as Homo sapiens sapiens.
The Shuidonggou lithic assemblage is dominated by
blade cores and blades, made on local cherts and quartzite. Core platforms were well prepared before blade
removal indicating standard reduction procedures.
Notably, 21.9% of cores recovered from the 1980
excavation session were classified as Levallois cores,
which were also found from other excavation sessions.
Although Levallois-like products were reported from
the Panxian Dadong cave, the true Levallois technique
seems to be only from Shuidonggou. Unfortunately,
there is no detailed study on these Levallois cores and
flakes yet, but their appearance at the Shuidonggou
site is a clear indicator of western influences. Most
of the retouched tools, represented by side-scrapers,
were made on long narrow blade blanks. Samples of
Uranium-series dating and conventional 14C dating indicate the age of Shuidonggou fall in between 38 000
and 15 000 BP, but recent AMS 14C dating suggests a
narrower range of between 29 000 and 24 000 BP.
According to faunal analysis, pollen, and sediment studies, Shuidonggou was a part of cool and dry semi-steppe
and prairie environment during this time, thus the site
might have served as a base camp for a group of
specialized hunters.
Shuidonggou blade technology seemed to remain
the sole manifestation in China until the middle of the
1980s, when the Youfang site was excavated. The site
is located in the east side of the Nihewan Basin, and
slightly later in age than Shuidonggou. Youfang blade
technology coexisted with microblade technology;
however, most of the flake tools were made on classic
blade blanks. Single platform cores display parallel
long and narrow blade flaking scars, some with evidences of direct percussion. The discovery of the
Youfang lithic industry suggests that such blade technology continued to spread eastwards in northern
China at the end of Pleistocene.
However, the lack of detailed study on Chinese
blade technology keeps scholars from understanding
statistical data that might be able to assist in a comparative study with western assemblages. Until then,
how blade technology was developed and why its
distribution was so limited remains unknown.
Microblade Technology

The Youfang lithic assemblage is to date the only

example in China, where both blade and microblade technology were employed within a given

hunter-gatherer society. Archaeological evidence suggests that early microblade industries were found in
the southern Shanxi province, about 500 km south of
Shuidonggou, suggesting an independent emergence
from the blade technology. Both Dingcun 77:01 and
Xiachuan sites were regarded as the earliest examples
of microblade technology, dated to around 26 000 BP
and 24 00016 000 BP, respectively. The later microblade industries are represented by the Shizhitan site
in Shanxi province and Hutongliang site in Hebei
province.
At present, there are over 50 sites reported to be
associated with microblade technology. They were
distributed over three microregions: the north-central
plain, the northeast and northern steppe, and the
southeastern plateau, but the majority of the microblade sites were located in north-central China. Current knowledge of Chinese microblade technology is
derived only from a few well-known sites such as
Xiachuan, Xueguan, and Hutouliang. Hutouliang is
an archaeological complex consisting of a number of
the Upper Palaeolithic sites, located in the east side of
the Nihewan Basin, about 35 km west to the Early
Pleistocene site Donggutuo (see above). Nine localities were excavated between 1972 and 1974, and
yielded a large quantity of lithic artifacts. Based on
a series of 14C dates the sites were dated to around
11 000 BP. Analyses of these microblades identified
four microblade techniques at the site, which have
corresponding Japanese counterparts known as
Yangyuan (or Togeshita), Sanggan (or Oshorakko),
Hetao (or Yubetsu), and Xiachuan (Saikai). A recent
study indicates that two types of wedge-shaped core
technology existed as by-products of the modes of
production at the Hutouliang site.
Studies on microblades from both Xiachuan and
Xueguan in southern Shanxi province were based
on limited excavated and surveyed materials, and
suggested technological differences existed in the
manufacture of microblade between Xiachuan and
Xueguan. The Xiachuan industry is represented by
conical microblade cores while the Xueguan microblade industry is dominated by boat-shaped and
wedge-shaped cores. It is proposed that microblade
technologies at both Xueguan and Hutouliang were
developed directly from the Xiachuan technology,
implying that Xiachuan may be responsible for the
origin of Chinese microblade technology. Data from
other excavated sites like Shizitan, Dingcun 77:01,
Youfang, Jiqitan, and especially Qingfengqing and
Fenghuangling in Shandong province would have
merits that may challenge traditional views on microblade technological development. For instance,
microblades from the East Coast like Shandong

594 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

Peninsula display distinct technological characters so

that it may be possible to recognize regional microblade variation. Unfortunately, materials from these
sites have not been systematically studied yet.
Microblade technology in China is still poorly understood in terms of its origins and spread throughout
northeastern Asian. Most Chinese scholars tend to
favor a north China origin model. Data from the
region clearly indicate technological similarities between northern China industry to those from Eastern
Siberia, Japan, and Korea. A recent study suggests an
eastward spread of microblade technology that originated at Xiachuan, through northern and southern
routes, but the hypothesis is not yet tested. It is worth
noting that some scholars have started to hypothesize
that wedge-shaped core microblade technology might
have first emerged in Siberia and spread southward
into northern China.
Bifacial Technology

Bifacial technology appeared in northern China as a

result of cultural interactions with northern huntergatherer societies during the peopling of the Americas.
Northern China lithic assemblages produced tools
that were made through bifacial-thinning techniques;
but again, this technological catalog unfortunately
has not yet been recognized in Chinese Palaeolithic
studies. Bifaces and projectile points, a major component of stone toolkits in the North American assemblage around 11 50010 000 BP, also appeared in the
Xiachuan, Xueguan, and Hutouliang sites, but their
significance has not been yet given much attention.
A recent study on Upper Palaeolithic sites in Shandong
Peninsula shows that biface products have high frequency in lithic assemblages at the Fenghuangling,
Qingfengling, and Wanghailou sites, suggesting bifacial
techniques existed as a technological innovation at the
end of Pleistocene.
These three sites (Fenghuangling, Qingfengling,
and Wanghailou) are located in southern Shandong
province, near the Yi-Shu Rivers valley. Both
Fenghuangling and Qingfengling were floodplain
sites and were excavated in 1984. The Wanghailou
site, located in the hilltop about 68 km south of Fenghuangling, was surveyed in 1984, and excavated in
2001 by a Sino-Canada collaborative team. The three
assemblages belong to two Shandong microblade
industries. Lithic analyses of the assemblages suggest
that bifacial thinning flakes from Fenghuangling,
Qingfengling, and Wanghailou may serve as a kind
of index-fossil of by-products of bifacial techniques,
and account for 30.3%, 20.3%, and 14.7% of all
lithic artifacts recovered, respectively. Bifaces and
biface performs as types in the toolkits comprise

Figure 23 Bifaces from the Wanghailou site in Shandong

Peninsula (scale in mm).

between 520% of shaped tools. It is possible that

Shandong microblade cores were primarily produced
through bifacial techniques the wedge-shaped cores
were made on small bifacial splits that also occurred
in the assemblages. Large-sized projectile points, finely made on quartzite were distinct at the Wanghailou
site (Figure 23), while bifaces and projectile points
were relatively small at the other two sites. During an
investigation in 2004, a special point (one where a
channelled flake was purposefully removed from the
bottom so as to be called as fluted point) was identified from the Qingfengling site. Fluted points had
never been identified previously in China; however,
fluted Clovis points are well known as an early industry in North America. The fluted point industry was
clearly associated with wedge-shaped microblade
core industries in British Columbia, Canada, at the
end of the Ice Age. If a true fluted bifacial technology is proven to have existed in northern China, the
technological connection between the Old World and
the New World can be explored in addition to the
microblade technology.
Bone Tool-making Technology

Another technological innovation in the Late Palaeolithic cultures is bone tool-making. In fact, bone tools
must have appeared during the Middle Pleistocene,
or much earlier, as they were seen in Jingliushan,
Zhoukoudian Locality 1, and Xujiayao sites. However, only at the end of the Pleistocene did using
animal bones (including antlers) as raw materials for

ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures 595

manuacturing various tool types appeared widely and

bone tools became one of the major components of
hunting-gathering toolkits. The bone tool industries
were well represented by following sites: Shiyu in
Shanxi province, Xianrendong Cave in Liaoning
province, Lingjing in Henan province, and Dongfang
Plaza in Beijing.
The Dongfang Plaza site was identified in 1996
when the Plaza complex was under construction in
downtown Beijing, and excavated in the following
year. The site is approximately 2000 m2, and yielded
thousands of artifacts including bone tools. According
to the excavators, 411 bone tools were cataloged and
classified into various manufacturing stages. Shaped
types, indicated by retouched working edges, included
scrapers, point, burins, and spades. Most of the tools
were made from the long bones of large mammals. The
stone and bone tools were associated with floors with
evidence of fire-use. Some bone tools and by-products
displayed burnt marks, indicating that the site might
have served as a homebase camp for late Palaeolithic
hunter-gatherers. Carbon-14 dates suggest that the
site was occupied for two phases between 25 000 and
24 000 BP.
Recent excavation at the Lingjing site near
Zhengzhou city yielded significant bone-tool assemblages that previously have been rarely seen. The
Lingjing site was first identified in 1965 during local
water-storage construction, and the survey collection
included an assemblage of wedge-shaped microblade
cores. As a result, the site was referred to as the
Mesolithic period in northern China in many publications, but full-scale investigations were not able to
be carried out due to underwater inundation until
2005. The 2005 field session recovered 2452 lithic
artifacts and over 3000 faunal remains. However, no
microblade products were recovered from excavated
layers; most lithic artifacts were typical of the flake
tools from northern China, and made from quartzite
and quartz. At present, according to the excavators
observation, this site represents a Late Palaeolithic
occupation.
Some bones display clear secondary retouch for
modification. Samples were taken for use-wear examination, and the preliminary study suggested a
number of possible use-wear features that may be
differentiated from natural abrasion. Similar to use
traces of stone tools, the use-wear on Lingjing bones
were likely that of cutting, scraping, and penetrating.
The use-wear also shows traces of soft, moderate, and
hard-worked materials. Mostly importantly, 3 of 11
samples were determined to have hafting wear, suggesting that these objects had been used as composite
tools. However, study of Palaeolithic bone tools in

China is still very poor, and caution needs to be taken

in understanding how to distinguish purposeful usewears from fracture/abrasion marks caused by natural agencies at sites. The fact that bone tool-making
technology existed in Upper Palaeolithic assemblages
has merits to provide new directions of research in
the future (see Bone Tool Analysis).

A Summary: Cultural Continuity and

Interactions
The last two decades of investigations have enriched
our understanding of Chinese Palaeolithic cultures,
which used to be based solely on the Zhoukoudian
and a few other sites well known in the early days.
Before 1985, the focus of investigations was to discover the nature of site distributions in order to establish a Chinese Palaeolithic chronological framework.
Today, the accumulated data are sufficient for us to
begin interpreting issues of Palaeolithic technology
and cultural materials. Until recently, studies of
Palaeolithic technology in China have been limited
to generalizations about the nature of lithic industries
in comparison to European or other Old World localities. From the chopper-chopping tools tradition to
the simple coreflake technology, these broad characterizations emphasized the non-Acheulean features
of Early to Middle Pleistocene lithic industries in
East Asian, and now seem no long valid for characterizing Chinese materials. New data suggests that the
Chinese Palaeolithic technology, starting with arrival
of the first hominids in East Asian around 1.7 million
years ago, formed its own unique characteristics as a
result of adaptive strategies to local environment.
Continuity of technological development was persistent throughout the Pleistocene age until the emergence of modern humans in East Asia. The Nihewan
Basin, given its resourceful landscape, was a homeland for both hominids and modern humans during
the entire Pleistocene era. Although nearly 50 Palaeolithic sites were distributed across the basin, all of
Early Pleistocene sites were located in clusters at the
eastern end of the basin, suggesting that explorations
were expanded as adaptive technology was enhanced.
The technological development continued slowly but
steadily; however technological variations over time
can be observed in examples from Xiaochangliang
and Dongguotou of the Lower Pleistocene to Shiyu
and Hutouliang of the Upper Pleistocene. The similar
technological continuity is suggested from lithic
assemblages of Locality 1, to Locality 15, then to
Upper Cave, at the Zhoukoudian area.
Cultural continuity of the Chinese Palaeolithic can
also be seen in examples from southern China. Given

596 ASIA, EAST/China, Paleolithic Cultures

Bohai Bay

Hebei

w
llo
Ye

r
ve
Ri

Jinan

Shandong
iver
Wen R
Shu
Rive

Fenghuanling Microblade Industry

Si River

Wen-Si Small Flake Tool Industry

Yellow Sea

Yi Rivre

Heilongtan Flake-Core Industry

Henan

An

hu

Jiangsu

Wanghailou Microblade Industry

Figure 24 The Late Palaeolithic lithic industries in Shandong Penninsula during the end of the Upper Pleistocene.

the increasing numbers of archaeological sites with

human fossils found in the Three Gorges/western
Hubei mountainous region, this area has become a
focus of research on the local evolution of anatomically modern human in East Asia. Overall material
cultures from southern China remained more homogenous than in any other region.
Cultural interactions throughout the time, on the
other hand, gave way to regional variations in Palaeolithic technology, as we have seen in the examples
from the Luonan Basin and the Three Gorge region.
In these regions, the two distinct technocomplexes
between northern China (flake tools) and southern
(pebble-core tools) were employed at given times but
their cultural impacts were surely beyond the areas
under investigation.
The most significant cultural interactions took
places at the end of the Pleistocene, when western
cultures penetrated into northern China and resulted
in the complexity of technological manifestations.
The influence of cultural interactions was expanded
to parts of southern and eastern China. Our investigations in the Shandong Peninsula suggest that the
Late Palaeolithic industries were more complex than
we previously thought (Figure 24). Within this region,
two microblade traditions (Fenghuangling and Wanghailou), one flake-tool tradition (Helongtan), and one
small-tool tradition, coexisted in the region and there
probably appeared a few large pebble-core industries
at the southern end. Although we cannot at presently

ascertain whether the Shandong microblade industry

was an indigenous development or a foreign invention,
the current evidence may be in favor of a migration
mode because the Shandong microblade traditions
seem to represent cultural manifestations from both
the northern and southern regions.
Therefore, the formation of the Palaeolithic technology overall appears to reflect two aspects of
material cultural development throughout the Pleistocene era: continuity and interaction. However, this
explanation may be reinterpreted and enhanced as field
investigations are ongoing. Certainly, we have much
more to expect from the research results on Chinese
Pleistocene archaeology in the years to come. Joint
projects conducted between Western and Chinese colleagues will raise more serious questions and hopefully
stimulate future investigations that, in turn, will
lead to in-depth examination of the data relating to
human origins and behavior in East Asia.
See also: Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; Early

Holocene Foragers; Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic

Cultures; Asia, South: India, Paleolithic Cultures of the
South; Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, Southeast: Preagricultural Peoples; Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures;
Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Bone Tool Analysis;
Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Europe: Paleolithic
Raw Material Provenance Studies; Lithics: Analysis, Use
Wear; New World, Peopling of; Paleoanthropology;
Siberia, Peopling of.

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 597

Further Reading
Aigner JS (1981) Archaeological Remains in Pleistocene China.
Munich: CH Beck.
Fang YS, Huang YP, and Shen C (2004) Pebble semicircle structure
from a Lower Paleolithic site in Southern China. Eurasian Prehistory 2(2): 312.
Lu LD (1998) The microblade tradition in China: Regional chronologies and significance in the transition to Neolithic. Asian
Perspectives 37(1): 84112.
Olsen JW and Miller-Antonia S (1992) The Palaeolithic in southern
China. Asian Perspectives 31(2): 129160.
Shen C and Keates SK (eds.) (2003) Current Research in Chinese
Pleistocene Archaeology. BAR International Series 1179. Oxford:
Archaeopress.
Shen C and Wei Q (2004) Lithic technological variability of the
Middle Pleistocene at the eastern end of the Nihewan Basin,
northern China. Asia Perspectives 43(2): 281301.
Tang C and Gai P (1986) Upper Palaeolithic cultural traditions in
north China. In: Wendorf F and Close AE (eds.) Advances in
World Archaeology 5, pp. 339364. New York: Academic Press.
Wu RK and Olsen JW (eds.) (1985) Palaeoanhropology and
Palaeolithic Archaeology in the Peoples Republic of China.
New York: Academic Press.
Zhu RX, An ZS, Potts R, and Hofman KA (2003) Magnetostratigraphic dating of early humans in China. Earth Science Reviews
61: 341359.

Chinese Civilization
Yun Kuen Lee, Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Erligang culture (16001400 BC) The term used by
archaeologists to refer to a Bronze Age archaeological culture
in China.
Erlitou culture (20001500 BC) A name given by
archaeologists to an Early Bronze Age society that existed in
China. The culture was named after the site discovered at Erlitou
in Yanshi, Henan Province.
Longshan culture A Late Neolithic culture centered on the
central and lower Yellow River in China. It is dated from about
3000 to 2000 BC.

Civilization is understood as entailing a high level of

social complexity, marked by the division of people
into a ruling class and the ruled, and a state-level
organization backed by coercive force. All of the six
pristine civilizations of the world share these characteristics; however, each of them exhibits particular
patterns in the political, social, economic, and cultural fields. This chapter is about the processes leading
to the formation of the most distinctive patterns that

structured the Chinese civilization, which include

a robust lineage system, an institution of ritual and
the vast continuum of a tradition of writing.

Unique Characteristics of
Chinese Civilization
Kinship is an important feature of all human societies.
However, Chinese kinship is exceptionally robust.
During the early periods of Chinese civilization, kinship was integrated into the political system. Clearly
by the late Shang (c. 12501050 BC), and most likely
much earlier, access to power and wealth was regulated by a kin-based system. This system continued to
structure the Chinese society until the modern times.
All civilizations used ritual, especially religious ritual, to legitimate and maintain social order. However,
ritual in Chinese civilization is remarkably secular.
Although sacrifice to heaven and earth was seen as
an obligation of the state to maintain the cosmological order, the most frequently practiced ritual was
offerings to the ancestors. In fact, ancestral ritual in
Chinese civilization was an apparatus to maintain the
kinship system and thus the social order.
Writing is a symbol system that enables communication in the absence of face-to-face interaction.
Messages and memories can be stored and retrieved
across space and through time. Although writing
seems to have emerged in the Longshan era of the
third millennium BC, examples have been found in
small numbers only and are not yet deciphered; indicating that they have no connection to modern Chinese writing. On the contrary, the writing of late
Shang by the end of the second millennium BC was
immediately deciphered after its discovery, because the
writing system of modern Chinese is its direct descendent. The continuity of a writing system, in effect,
sustained the development of lineage organization
and ritual institutions. Wealthy lineages compiled geneology books to precisely specify their relations
through patrilines. In any particular time, people
could refer to the ideal forms of ritual advocated by
Confucianism, which had been elevated to the stature
of state ideology since the second century BC. These
gave rise to a unique feature of Chinese civilization: an
uninterrupted civilization from the first day of its formation to the modern era (see Writing Systems).

Interface of Written History

and Archaeology
The simultaneous availability of both written and
archaeological information is a luxury in the study
of an early civilization, though each has its own

598 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

biases. When these two complementary classes of

data are used together, it allows a reconstruction of
the past fuller and richer than which can be achieved
with either body of information alone.
Early written materials from China can be partitioned into three broad classes of information: (1) the
original documentation of the time, which includes
the divination record on bone and turtle shell and
passages cast on bronzes; (2) the oral traditions,
legends, and myths recorded in transmitted texts at
a later time; and (3) the historical texts started from
the first millennium BC. Each of these three classes of
information has its own biases; therefore, a critical
perspective on the source material is a prerequisite in
using the written evidence.
The prevalent traditional perspective based on the
written texts is that civilization first developed in
the Central Plains of the middle Yellow River valley
and diffused into the other regions of modern China
like ripples in water. The ripple model, albeit oversimplified, is not without merit. Neolithic archaeology indicates that modern-day China could be
partitioned into several historic-cultural regions that
each had its own unique characteristics and continuities (see Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures).
Many of these regions sustained the emergence of
complex societies; however, many of these declined
and even disappeared altogether prior to the beginning of the Bronze Age during the early second millennium BC. The cultural traditions in the Central
Plains, on the contrary, became increasingly complex
and supplied the clearest evidences of the emergence
of state societies. Moreover, the three distinctive
Chinese patterns in kinship, ritual and writing also
first became highly developed in the Central Plains.
The archaeological findings of recent years supply
much information to enrich this model and to help
us unravel the complexity of the processes.

Prelude to Chinese Civilization

The third millennium BC witnessed the emergence of
highly complex societies all over the landscape of
modern China. For instance, the Taosi tradition was
represented by a group of smaller settlements aggregated around a large walled settlement at Taosi in
modern Shanxi. The site yielded a large-scale semicircular structure, probably related to astronomical
observations, and several graves were richly furnished
with lacquer wares, stone charms, crocodile-skin
drums, lavishly embellished painted pottery, etc. One
of these graves is even designated by archaeologists as
that of the king. However, one after the other, these
highly complex societies were extinguished. The large
structure of Taosi was sacked and some of the rich

graves were plundered. These early regional centers

were replaced by villages and hamlets.
The causes of the decline and collapse of these
complex societies are not clear. Because the decline
occurred within the span of a few hundred years,
an increasingly popular hypothesis is that the deterioration of climate lower temperature, drought,
frequent flooding, and aggression of the coast line
brought them down. Yet, this model cannot explain
why the first states emerged in the mid-Yellow
River valley.
In fact, studies in other parts of the world indicate
that these pre-state, ritually organized societies were
inherently unstable; therefore, their collapses are predictable. State formation involves a series of experiments in the building of an internally specialized
government that can effectively rule a large subject
and territory, levy tax to sustain the government, and
build a coercive force to back the ruling. Not all
complex societies were successful in this pursuit.
According to the traditional historic scheme, the
development of early Chinese civilization was punctuated by the linear succession of three dynastic states
Xia, Shang, and Zhou in the Central Plains, as
the Mandate of Heaven changed hands. Guided by
this overly simplified scheme, Chinese archaeologists
have concentrated on finding the corollaries of the
seats of the sage kings of the Xia and the Shang (the
Zhou has more reliable written records). The archaeological information of the early Chinese civilization, therefore, is a biased representation in favor of
the three dynasties, and lack in information of other
polities in the mid-Yellow River valley.
The archaeological search for Xia first started in
1959. After much works and debate, it has become
increasingly clear that the Erlitou tradition in the YiLuo valley was in the right place at the right time.
More importantly, it yielded evidence indicating that
it has developed into a state society.

The Core of Early Chinese Civilization

The core of early Chinese civilization was located in
the mid-Yellow River valley. Its development contributed to the formation of particularities of Chinese
civilization. Later Chinese states often claimed to be
the legitimate descendents of the mid-Yellow River
civilization.
First State in the Yi-Luo Valley

The Erlitou site, dated to 18001500 BC, is located in

the center of Yi-Luo valley (Figure 1). It occupies
some 400 ha of rich alluvial field. The focus of the
site is a walled precinct of several hectares, which
contained some 30 large spatially discrete compounds

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 599

Liulihe
Zhukaigou
Ye l lo w R.

Zhouyuan

Subutun
Yinxu

Zhengzhou
Erlitou & Yanshi

Yan g z

R.

Xin'gan

1000 km

Figure 1 Sites of early Chinese civilization.

built on rammed earth platforms. Half a dozen of

them have been completely or partially excavated
(Figure 2).
The first excavated compound, referred to as
palace I, occupied nearly 1 ha of area (Figure 3). The
whole compound was built on a 0.8 m raised rammed
earth terrace. The main feature was a large raised
rectangular hall facing a large courtyard. The compound was then surrounded by walls with roofed
corridors. The main gate was located on the south.
The large open courtyard and the raised hall platform suggest observances of public functions. In
addition, the walls not only delimited the dimensions
of the structures, they also indicate differential access
to the activities performed inside. Most likely, only
privileged individuals were allowed to enter. The
nesting of walls suggests the secrecy of decisionmaking within the walls.
Some of the rammed structures had different plans.
Palace III was built on an elongated rammed platform

of about 150 m50 m, partitioned into three equalsized courtyards and room blocks compartments.
This architectural complex was very likely the residence of elite family households. Two small clusters
of the most richly furnished burials at Erlitou were
found in rows in the courtyards. The graves showed
traces of wooden casket and cinnabar-lined floor.
Grave goods included rare handicrafts made of bronze,
jade, lacquer, turquoise, shell and white pottery, and
scores of cowrie from the ocean.
Rare materials of bronze and jade were made into
sumptuary ritual objects at Erlitou. In addition to small
utilitarian tools and weapons, the bronze technology
was also used to cast vessels by using the piece-mold
technique for the first time. They included a variety of
drinking vessels, which were important ritual paraphernalia in the Shang and Zhou at a later time
(Figure 4). In the jade assemblage, there was the
zhang, a large blade-like artifact with no apparent
utilitarian function (Figure 5).

600 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

Figure 2 Excavation at Erlitou (Institute of Archaeology, CASS, with permission).

Post hole
Post stone
Destoryed post hole
Wood-framed wall foundation
Burial
0

20
Meter

Figure 3 Plan of Palace I, Erlitou (adapted from Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 178, Figure 2, with permission).

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 601

Figure 4 Bronze drinking vessels of Erlitou (Institute of Archaeology, CASS, with permission).

resources to sustain the urban population, craft and

administrative specialists, as well as the luxury lifestyles of the elite.
The Erlitou site shows traits of an early civilization
that were never seen in earlier sites. To build the
walled precinct, public resources were levied. However, the nesting of walls suggests that the general
populace was being excluded from access to the structures they built. The burials not only show a high
degree of social stratification; they also indicate the
presence of institutionalized violence. The Erlitou
people were clearly divided into the rulers and the
ruled, and this order was supported by coercive force.
The rows of burials in the walled precinct indicate the
elite used the occasions of death to further cement
their kinship ties. The differential distribution of
sumptuary ritual objects suggests that ritual was
organized according to class. Finally, the placement
of local centers in the countryside indicates that the
Erlitou elite had started to build an administrative
system to rule a polity much larger than any polities
seen before in China.
Polity Competition and Regime Change

Figure 5 Jade zhang, Erlitou (Adapted from Zhongguo kaoguxue

Xia Shang juan: Plate 132, with permission).

In contrast to the elite graves, about 20% of the

other interments bore signs of violent death. Five
burials were deposited in the rammed terrace of
palace I; they were likely ritual-related human sacrifices. These burials lacked furnishings. The interments were tied up with ropes, and limbs were
severed in one case. Other examples of violent death
were scattered around the site. They were usually
found in trash pits, and sometimes several individuals
were interred together. Moreover, isolated human
bones were also found in the cultural layers and ash
pits. Postures of the skeletons suggest that they were
being restrained by ropes and even buried alive. Decapitation and dismembering were common. Violent
institutions were evidently pervasive.
To sustain the construction and daily operation
of the political center at Erlitou, the elite mobilized
the population in the countryside by placing local
controlling centers on strategic locations. A recent
full-coverage regional survey to the east of Erlitou has
found a secondary and a tertiary centers (Figure 6).
These control nodes were systematically placed on
the landscape so to effectively levy the material

By the end of the sixteenth century BC, the once

grandiose palatial structures at Erlitou, one after the
other, were abandoned. The occupation of Erlitou
dramatically shrunk to the size of a large village. At
this critical juncture, a large fortification enclosing
200 ha emerged in Shixianggou of Yansi county, just
6 km northeast of Erlitou. This site was later named
as Yanshi Shangcheng, literally the Shang walled settlement at Yanshi. It tells a story of the competition
between the state of Erlitou, or Xia, according to
many Chinese archaeologists, and the state of Shang.
The most astonishing characteristic of Yanshi
Shangcheng is its nested walls (Figure 7). The whole
site was enclosed by an outer circumferential wall,
which was in average 20 m thick, and an inner circumferential wall of 67 m thick. Inside the inner
circumferential wall, there were three rectangular
walled complexes.
Walled complex I was the largest, occupying
about 5 ha of land, was the palatial-temple precinct
(Figure 8). It underwent several episodes of expansion and rebuilding. Nonetheless, at least nine large
rammed earth structures were contemporary at any
particularly time. The plans of the large structures
were different, suggesting they had different functions.
For example, Palace IV had a large hall and more than
a dozen of smaller rooms, was most likely a residential quarter of an elite household (Figures 9). Palace II
was a cluster of several features (Figure 10). The

602 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

Erlitou 10 km
Ri

ve

Lu

Yi-

Wu

luo
Rive

Gangou

She
Caohe

er
Riv

er
Riv

ngs

hui

R.

Wuluo
Reservoir

Tianpo
Reservoir

Sanggou
Reservoir

Legend
N

Elevation

Erlitou sites

Zhaocheng
Reservoir

200 m
400 m

Large site
Medium site
Small site
Survey area

2
km

600 m
800 m

Figure 6 Distribution of Erlitou sites in the Yi-Luo valley (adapted from Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 189, Figure 13,
with permission).

Rammed wall

Drainage

Sacrificial pit
D10
D8

Rammed wall
D2

D4
D1

Walled
complex III
D3

Underground
drainage

D5

D7

Walled
complex II

Moat

Walled
complex I

D6

Rammed wall
Pond

500
meter

Figure 7 Plan of Yanshi Shangcheng (adapted from Journal of

Anthropological Archaeology 23: 181, Figure 4, with permission).

0
D8

Meter

50

Palatial feature

Figure 8 Plan of Walled Complex I, Yanshi Shangcheng

(adapted from Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 181,
Figure 5, with permission.)

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 603

Rammed
wall

Postholes

Rammed posthole foundation

0 Meter 5

Figure 9 Plan of Palace IV, Yanshi Shangcheng (adapted from Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 182, Figure 6, with
permission).

Palace I

Palace II

Palace III

Postholes

Meter

25

Figure 10 Plan of Palace II, Yanshi Shangcheng (adapted from Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 183, Figure 7,
with permission).

main structure was a 75 m long nonpartitioned

rammed terrace. Three other component features had
evenly-spaced rows of postholes but no trace of living
floor, making some to argue that the stilts were used to
shore up above-ground structures like pile-buildings.
One of these structures was connected to a rammed
earth terrace in the open area in the south. Palace II was
more likely a ritual facility. To the north of the rammed
structures were two rectangular pits. The silt deposit on

the northern pit indicates that it was once filled with

water. The unusual high density of pollen grains found
in the pond suggests that it was a landscaping project.
The other pit was possibly used for open-air sacrificial
activities. Complex I was the political and ritual centers
of the polity and the residential area of the high elite.
The functions of Complex II were different from
that of Complex I. Close to 100 rammed earth terraces were organized in six rows in the 4 ha of

604 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

cultural tradition. For instance, the predominant

cooking pot of Erlitou was the ding, three independently made legs were attached to a semi-globular jar
(Figure 12). The predominant cooking pots of Yanshi
Shangcheng were the li, tripod vessels, but the legs
were somewhat hollowed-out. This was a typical
Shang-style cooking ware found in the contemporary
Shang site at Zhengzhou.
In addition, the large structures, including the
circumferential walls, the palaces and temples, of
Yanshi Shangcheng and other Shang sites faced southsouthwest. On the contrary, those of Erlitou faced
south-southeast. The difference in the preference of

occupation. In between the rows was a grid of

shallow ditches, probably used for the drainage of
runoff. Only 15 of the terraces have been excavated;
but these features had almost identical plans. They
were rectangular buildings with two partition walls
inside (Figure 11). It is not entirely clear about the
functions of these homogeneous structures; some
argue they were storehouses of critical resources and
some argue they were barracks for soldiers. In any
event, they show the organizational capacity of state
society.
Yanshi Shangcheng yielded a ceramic assemblage
different to that of Erlitou; it represents a different

m
Figure 11 Plan of feature F2004, Yanshi Shangcheng (adapted from Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 183, Figure 8,
with permission).

ding-vessel

li-vessel

Figure 12 Typical cooking wares of the Erlitou and Shang traditions (adapted from Erlitou Jicui: Figures 264, 293, with permission).

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 605

orientation was attributable to the difference in their

religious beliefs.
It is increasingly clear that these two regional centers in the Yi-Luo valley pertained to two different
polities. The decline of Erlitou and the concurrent rise
of Yanshi Shangcheng perhaps are the corollaries of
the first regime change depicted in written texts,
the overthrow of the Xia by the Shang. They also
indicate that more than one polity coexisted and
competed during the period of early civilization in
the mid-Yellow River valley.
Erligang and Zhengzhou Shangcheng

Zhengzhou Shangcheng was a regional center contemporary to Yanshi Shangcheng. Geographically,

the site was located at where the rolling hills of the
loess formation and the flooded plains of the Yellow
River met. The modern city of Zhengzhou is one of the
busiest transportation depots in China. Its strategic
location allows Zhengzhou to regulate the traffics

between North and South China, and along the

Yellow River. Unfortunately, modern urbanization
has limited archaeological study.
The discovery of the Shang city at Zhengzhou is
inseparable from the discovery and excavations of
the Erligang locality. Erligang, located on the southeast corner of the site, was the first Shang locality
ever excavated at Zhengzhou. The ceramic seriation
derived from the Erligang assemblage became the
yardstick of the relative chronology of early Shang,
which spanned from the sixteenth to the fourteenth
centuries BC. Therefore, the early Shang period is
often referred to as the Erligang Phase.
The Shang site at Zhengzhou was a walled settlement like that of Yanshi (Figure 13). The center of the
site was an area of about 300 ha enclosed by a rectangular circumferential wall. A palatial complex was
located in the northeastern corner of the enclosure.
An outer wall was found about 1000 m south of the
enclosure, but the two ends of the outer wall did not

Bone workshop
N
Zijingshan bronze foundry

Bronze casting area

Jinshui

Inner city wall

River

Pottery kilns
Renmingongyuan
Cemetery area

Bronze hoard
No. 1

Palaces

Bronze hoard
No. 3

Baijiazhuang
Cemetery area

Bronze hoard
No. 2
Xiong

er

Zhengzhou Yanchang
cemetery area

River

Yangzhuang
cemetery area

Erligang

Nanguanwai
bronze foundry
500 m

Figure 13 Plan of Zhengzhou Shangcheng.

Outer city wall

606 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

join. Some archaeologists argue that the marshy and

swampy land to the northeast of the site already formed
a natural barrier sheltering the Shang settlement.

Figure 14 Excavation of the bronze cache pit H1 at Nanshun

Street locality, Zhengzhou (adapted from Zhenzhou Shangdai
Tongqi Jiaozang: Color plate 1, with permission).

Industrial localities, including bronze foundries,

ceramic and bone tool workshops, were located
outside of the inner city. The Nanguanwai foundry
locality was situated in between the south inner
wall and the outer wall. It occupied slightly less
than 1 ha of area. Findings include a mold-baking
kiln, a casting locality with storage pits, many copper
ore and lead nuggets, fragments of crucibles, bronze
slag, charcoal, pottery molds, and tools made of
bronze, pottery, stone, bone, and shell. The distribution of these material remains suggests an industry of
large-scale operation with a division of labor. The
scale of bronze production of the early Shang can be
illustrated by the increased volume of bronze artifacts
found in archaeological sites.
The Erlitou bronze production was limited. To
date, dozens of small bronze objects were recovered,
and they were exclusively found in the Erlitou site.
The early Shang bronze industry adopted the moldcasting technique of Erlitou, but the quantity, quality
and variety of the bronze ritual objects increased
through time. Bronze artifacts as well as foundries
were found in multiple sites. The vessel walls became
thicker and had multiple layers of embellishments.
More than a dozen types of ritual vessels were available
by the end of the Erligang phase.
In Zhengzhou, three separate caches of bronze
artifacts found in between the inner settlement and
the outer wall (Figure 14). Each of the three caches
yielded considerable amounts of bronze artifacts,
both in number and total weight (Figure 15). The
biggest assemblage was the one located in the construction site of the Xiangyang Muslim Food

Figure 15 Bronzes yielded from the upper level of bronze cache pit H1 at Nanshun Street locality, Zhengzhou (adapted from Zhenzhou
Shangdai Tongqi Jiaozang: Color plate 2, with permission).

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 607

Yin was the capital of the late Shang. Chinese scholars knew about Yin from the transmitted texts.
Bones used for divination by the Shang royalties at
Yin were sold as an ingredient of herbal medicine for
years. From this link, archaeologists located Yin. The
site is called Yinxu, literally the ruins of Yin. Yin was
built along the banks of the Huan River. The entire
site covers an enormous area of 3000 ha, which
consists of a 70 ha palace-temple complex, a royal
cemetery, many residential precincts of various ranks
of elite and commoners, lineage cemeteries, and
industrial workshops (Figure 18).
The study of Yinxu is qualitatively different from
the study of the other Shang sites because it yielded
the written texts of the time. They were the divination records inscribed on animal bones and turtle
shells (Figure 19). Modern Chinese writing is the

descendent of the late Shang writing; so deciphering them was never a problem, albeit debate among
scholars is common. The more than 160 000 inscribed
pieces reveal a late Shang world from the twenty-first
king Wu Ding to the twenty-ninth and the last king
Di Xin (c. 12501045 BC), which could not possibly
be monitored with archaeological data alone.
One of the many aspects of the Shang civilization
revealed by the oracle inscriptions is its religion. The
pantheon of the late Shang was comprised of many
gods, spirits, and the royal ancestors. Dead kings and
their consorts became powerful supernatural figures
who had influence on the outcome of every aspects
of life. Through offerings the Shang kings monopolized the communication with the royal ancestors
(Figure 20). This was a representation of the idealized
order of the social world that power distribution was
based on kinship proximity to the royal line. The
kings gained the jurisdiction over other people, especially their competing kin lines, by claiming they were
the direct descendents of past kings. The royal ancestors became increasingly so important in the Shang
religion that rituals for them became calendric but
divination to the other gods became increasingly rare
and finally disappeared altogether.

Figure 16 Bronze lei-vessel recovered found in the construction site of Xiangyang Muslim Food Processing plant, Zhengzhou
(adapted from Zhenzhou Shangdai Tongqi Jiaozang: Color plate
15, with permission).

Figure 17 Bronze rectangular-bodied ding-vessel found in the

construction site of Xiangyang Muslim Food Processing plant,
Zhengzhou (adapted from Zhenzhou Shangdai Tongqi Jiaozang:
Color plate 11, with permission).

Processing plant near the outer southeast corner of

the inner circumferential wall. Thirteen bronze vessels weighing 210 kg were recovered from the cache
(Figure 16). The largest was a rectangular-bodied
ding vessel, which measures 81 cm in total height
and weighs 75 kg (Figure 17).
Yin: The Late Shang Royal Capital

608 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

Workshop site

Xiaoying

Burials
Sanjiazhuang

Qianxiaoying

Residential site
Sacrificial pit

Huyuanzhuang

Other sites

Royal cemetery

Fanjiazhuang

Xiaosikong Village
Wuguan Village
Houjiazhuang
Beixinzhuang

Dasikong Village
Huan River
Sipanmo

Fuhao
Xiaozhuang tomb

Commoners
cemetery

Hao Family Shop

Royal
palaces &
temples

Xiaotun

BeijingGuangzhou
Railroad

Yubei
Textile
Factory

Huayuanzhuang

Baijiafen

Gaolouzhuang

Wangyukou
Xuejiazhuang
Huayuanzhuang
Iron Buddha Monastery

Plant nursery

Guozhuang

Anyang
city

Figure 18 Plan of Yinxu, the late Shang capital site (adapted from The Formation of Chinese Civilization: Figure 6.19, with permission).

Upon death, proper funeral treatment was required

to transform the royal persons into living ancestors.
The funeral rite mirrored the idealized secular world
of segregation and conspicuous consumption of
wealth and resources. The royal cemetery, occupying
an area of about 11 ha, was located on the north bank
of the Huan River (Figure 21). All the large tombs had
been plundered in antiquity (Figure 22); however, the
discovery of the tomb of Fu Hao shed some light on
the magnitude of wealth consumption.
Fu Hao, a consort of King Wu Ding, was previously
known in the oracle inscriptions. She was quite
important in the politics of late Shang, was involved
in several military campaigns and conducted ritual
ceremonies. Her tomb was located 200 m to the
west of the palace-temple complex and had never
been looted. Her identity was positively confirmed
on the inscriptions of some of the bronze offerings
(Figure 23). The offerings included 1600 kg of bronze
and the largest assemblage of jade ever unearthed. The
inventory consisted of nearly 2000 artifacts, including
210 bronze vessels, 130 bronze weapons, 590 jade
artifacts, and handicrafts made of bone, shell, and
ivory. In addition, some 7000 cowry shells were found.
Sixteen humans had been sacrificed to the tomb.

Figure 19 A cache of oracle bones at Yinxu (adapted from The

Formation of Chinese Civilization: Figure 6.32, with permission).

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 609

The number of human sacrifices in Yixu was shocking. Some of them seem to be loyal entourage who
followed their master in death. The majority of human
sacrifices, however, were found in the fills of the

Figure 20 Divination records inscribed on an ox scapula

(adapted from The Formation of Chinese Civilization: Figure 5.7,
with permission).

tombs. No grave offering was associated with them,

their hands were often tied on the back, and their
bodies dismembered or decapitated. In addition,
about 2500 sacrificial pits organized in rows were
found in the royal cemetery (Figure 24). These were
collective burials of up to dozens of individuals, mostly males between the ages of 15 to 35. These pits
confirm the descriptions of sacrificial activities
recorded on the oracle inscriptions indicating that
they were offerings to the royal ancestors at calendrically prescribed intervals. The human sacrifices were
very likely captives taken in raids against the nonShang people, mostly the Qiang.
The divinations of late Shang refer to various kin
groups. Archaeology at Yinxu yielded bronze ritual
artifacts with the emblems of their names distributed
in spatially discrete clusters of tombs. Each of these
tomb clusters was associated with a residential
cluster.
The power structure of late Shang was based on the
kinship system. On the apex of the pyramid of power
was the king, who was not only the head of the state,
but was also the head of the royal lineage. The first
son of the king succeeded to head the royal line;
wherein the other sons became the heads of the collateral lines. The several collateral lines and the affinal lineages of the king were located at the second
level of status. Each of these collateral lines had
their own estates and they were actively involved in
the kings sacrificial ceremonies, military campaigns,
and hunting expeditions. The collateral lines of
the collateral lines occupied the third level of status,
and so on and so forth. Theoretically, the access to

1500

1443
1003
1004

1400

1567
1129

1001

1002
1550

1217

0 10 20 30 40 m

Excavated
before 1949

Excavated
after 1950

Identified after 1950

(still not excavated)

Figure 21 Plan of the royal cemetery, Yinxu (adapted from The Formation of Chinese Civilization: Figure 6.21, with permission).

610 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

Figure 22 Excavation of royal tomb 1001 at Yinxu (adapted from Cambridge Illustrated History of China: 23, with permission).

Figure 23 Ink rubbing of inscriptions of the glyphs of Fu Hao (adapted from Kaogu Xuebao 1977(2): 65, Figure 5, with permission).

power was based on the kinship proximity to the

king, or the number of generations removed from
the royal line. In practice, it would also involved
intensive negotiation and charismatic capabilities
of individuals.
Succession to the throne was governed by two
rules: from brother to brother and from father to
son. Thus, the paramount power was altered between
first collateral lines of the royal line. However, by the
25th king Kang Ding, a succession based in primogeniture seems to have become established.
One of the major characteristics of Chinese civilization, that kinship is inseparable from power and

wealth, developed no later than the late Shang, and

possibly much earlier.

The Greater Mid-Yellow River

Civilization Sphere
Early civilizations, more precisely, early state societies,
supported by their superior organizational capability,
could easily expand into the territories occupied by
pre-state polities. In China, the civilization of the Central Plains rapidly spread into neighboring areas, creating a larger sphere controlled by a network of related
states. Sites in this broader sphere were comprised of

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 611

Figure 24 Headless interments of human sacrificial victims in tomb 1001 at Yinxu (adapted from Cambridge Illustrated History of
China: 24, with permission).

the regional sub-traditions of Erlitou, Erligang, and

Yinxu. On the one hand, they were political entities
transplanted from the core civilization so that they
were unmistakably Erlitou or Shang. On the other
hand, interaction with the local indigenous traditions
made them increasingly different from the core civilization. This greater sphere of societies with a common
organizational pattern should not be viewed as a continuous geographic zone; they were mostly nodes and
routes in a landscape otherwise occupied by simpler
indigenous groups. The responses of indigenous
groups varied from cooperative to hostile. Nonetheless, the expansion created an environment in which
cultures of different origins made direct contact. Their
interaction forged an increasingly homogeneous cultural entity within the bounds of modern China.
The rulers of the states of the core civilization do
not seem to have had jurisdiction over the people
in the greater civilization sphere. Bone inscriptions
indicate that the late Shang king had direct control
over a considerable number of people, who he could
command to do many tasks. However, political
authority of the king was heavily based on the allegiance of leaders of the various lineages. The area
directly controlled by the king and the loyal lineages
was the area within which the late Shang king could
move with safety and was not particularly large.
Beyond that limit, the settlements bearing Shang cultural characteristics acted like independent polities
and may not have had regular relationships with the

Shang kings. This contention of limited jurisdiction

can be further demonstrated by the history and archaeology of the early Zhou.
Military Colonization of Early Zhou

The Zhou was an agricultural group distributed in

the Wei valley (Figure 1), 600 km west of Yin. By
1050 BC, the Zhou army had won a decisive victory
over the Shang. Facing a vast terrain of over 1000 km
stretching from the Wei valley to the east coast, the
Zhou employed two strategies to rule: military colonization and forced relocation of the Yin people. After
the conquest, the Zhou king created 71 new fiefdoms
in strategic locations along the Yellow River. As many
as 53 of these polities were governed by the heads of
the collateral lines of Royal Zhou. These kin fiefdoms
were relatively autonomous entities, although they
had certain obligations to the Royal Zhou house.
To quell the resistance of the Shang people, the Zhou
uprooted the Shang lineages residing in Yin and
allotted them to the new fiefdoms.
The fief-building process in the new land involved
the erection of a walled settlement, which was called
guo: the people who lived inside the walls called
themselves guoren, or citizens. The vast territory
outside the walls was mostly occupied by the indigenous population; they were called the yeren, or countrymen. The relationship between the citizens and
countrymen was sometimes hostile. For instance,
the Qi fiefdom was constantly threatened by the

612 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

Laiyi group, so that during a period of five generations, they had to send the bodies of the deceased
dukes back to the Wei valley for burial. The people
of the Yan fiefdom seemed to have faced a more
friendly reaction from the indigenous people. At
least they were not concerned with burying deceased
dukes outside the walls.
In fact, the archaeology of the walled settlement
of the Yan at Liulihe, 40 km southwest of Beijing,
indicates that the relationship between the groups
of different origins was often collaborative. Material
remains of the Zhou and Shang origins were
about equally represented and were often found in
the same ash pits within the settlement. In addition,
excavations also yielded small numbers of artifacts of
the indigenous style. The patterns of material remains
indicate that early citizens of the Yan comprised
the Zhou people from Wei valley and the Shang people from Yin. They were either residing side-by-side
within the walls, or engaged in intensive collaboration in the cultural and economic fields. The rare,
but nonetheless present, indigenous material remains
indicate that they traded material resources with the
local population.
As predicted by the written texts, the countryside of
the Yan was occupied by the indigenous population.
However, in their settlements the material remains
bearing Shang-Zhou traits increased through time.
It is observed that during the early Western Zhou
period, artifacts of Shang-Zhou styles were found
only within a radius of 30 km from Liulihe. This area
expanded through time and could have reached a
radius of 7090 km in the late Western Zhou. For
instance, three wood-chambered burials were excavated in Baifu Village, Changping County, about
60 km north of Liulihe. The structures and furnishings of these three graves are comparable to the mid
Western Zhou elite graves at Liulihe. They were either
burials of elite figures from Liulihe, or of indigenous
elite figures highly acculturated by the Liulihe group.
Textual and archaeological studies of colonization
by early Zhou rulers painted an ambiguous picture of
territorial occupation and control of the expansion of
early civilization. According to the Zhou texts, all the
land to the coast was the land of Royal Zhou. In
reality, Royal Zhou and its kin fiefdoms had limited
jurisdiction over this vast territory; they shared it
with the indigenous groups. Moreover, Royal Zhous
control over the kin fiefdoms was based on the kinship ties and charisma of the Zhou king. Because of
the difficulty in communication and the weakening of
kinship ties with time, the kin fiefdoms acted more
and more like autonomous states. Eventually the
Royal Zhou house lost all but a token title. After

Shihuangdi (the First Emperor) conquered all the

other states, he levied immerse labor forces to build
a network of roads in a campaign to unify China
Proper. Before an effective communication system
was established, the decrees of the kings in China
could have reached only a very limited core area.
Offshoots of the Central Plains Civilization

The evidence of the early Zhou expansion shows that

the relationship between the budding polities in the
greater civilization zone and the core polity was
mainly a loose alliance and became increasingly
weakened. However, there is indication from the
written texts that Dixin, the last Shang king, was
concerned about the eastern territories and raised
a military campaign against an indigenous polity
called Tufang that lasted for 200 days. Campaigns
like that would have renewed the tie between polities
in the greater civilization sphere and the core polity.
The archaeological record in Shandong complements
these written texts.
In Shandong, some large sites show strong late
Shang characteristics in many aspects, while some
sites yielded only small numbers of late Shang
bronzes. Subutun was one of the typical Shang cemetery sites. The sites had been looted for decades before
archaeological excavation. Only ten tombs of the
Yinxu phase were found, but three of them had
ramps like those of the Yinxus royal cemetery, albeit
the ramps at Subutun were shorter. Tomb M1 was a
four-ramped tomb (Figure 25). Despite being looted,
it still yielded two large ceremonial bronze axes
(Figure 26), one inscribed with the emblem of
Ya Chou (Figure 27). Fragments of other bronze
artifacts also bear the same emblem. Of the 48
human sacrifices, nine of them received proper burials
in caskets in the floor of the chamber and the ledge.
The remaining sacrifices were mostly young males in
their teens, many consisting of skulls only, were buried
without offering on the floor of south ramp. If the
standard of Yinxu burials could be applied at Subutun, M1 was the burial of a ruling family member,
who was probably the head of the Ya Chou collateral
line. Subutun seems to share similarities with the Yin
in ideology, social organization and material culture.
Yet, it is located some 400 km east of Yinxu.
The expansion of the early Shang civilization
reached as far south as the Yangzi basin, over 600 km
from Zhengzhou. The southward expansion was very
likely motivated by the opportunities of copper trade.
The Wucheng tradition was one of these early Shang
offshoots. It was distributed in the lower and middle
reaches of Gan River and the drainage of Poyang

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 613

Ceremonial ax

Looter's
hole

South ramp

Figure 25 Partial plan of tomb M1, Subutun (Shandong Provincial Museum, with permission).

Lake. The pottery and bronze assemblages of

Wucheng shared startling similarity with those of the
Central Plains of the late Erligang and Yinxu phases,
indicating that the formation of Wucheng tradition
was strongly stimulated by the civilization of the Central Plains. The political entity embodied by the
Wucheng tradition very likely had strong political
tie to, or was a fiefdom of the Shang. However, the
Wucheng tradition became increasingly strong in its
local cultural characteristics so that it developed some
unique features by the late phase. Nevertheless, the

overall similarities between the material culture of

Wucheng and Shang suggests that contact with the
Central Plains had not been interrupted.
The most spectacular findings of the Wucheng tradition were yielded from the large tomb at Dayangzhou,
Xingan (Figure 28). The Dayangzhou tomb, yielded
more than 1900 artifacts made of bronze, jade
and pottery, is the second richest Early Bronze Age
burial ever excavated, surpassed only by the Fu Hao
tomb. The 50 or so bronze vessels are dated from
the Erligang phase to the Yinxu phase, indicating

614 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

Figure 26 One of the two ceremonial bronze axes yielded

from tomb M1, Subutun (Shandong Provincial Museum, with
permission).

the tomb was used in the late Shang period. The

earlier bronzes must have been treasured for generations before being placed in the tomb. The earliest
bronzes are almost exact copies of those found in
Zhengzhou. Later bronzes show the gradual emergence of local stylistic features. For instance, one
of the rectangular-bodied ding is, in most respect,
similar to that found in the caches of Zhengzhou,
but it differs by the addition of a pair of tigers standing
on the tops of the handles (Figures 29 and 30). This is
a local feature repeated on at least ten other bronzes
from the tomb. The tomb also yielded a unique
bronze mask not seen in the mid-Yellow River valley
(Figure 31). Among the bronze offerings were more
than 100 specimens of bronze utilitarian tools, such
as farming and woodworking tools, which were
seldom used as grave offerings in the Central Plains.
The Wucheng civilization was sustained by a copper mining industry. Some 120 shafts and galleries

Figure 27 Ink robbing of the Ya Chou emblems on bronzes believed to be looted from Subutun (adapted from Kaogu Xuebao 1977(2):
24, with permission).

Figure 28 Excavation of the Shang tomb at Dayangzhou (Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, with
permission).

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 615

Figure 29 A rectangular-bodied ding-vessel found in the Shang

tomb at Dayangzhou (Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics
and Archaeology, with permission).

Figure 30 Close-up of the tiger motif of Dayangzhou (Jiangxi

Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, with
permission).

were found in Tongling, a copper mine operated from

the Shang to the Warring States period. The site also
yielded remains of two smelting furnaces, indicating
an industry included mining and smelting on the site,
and the shipping of copper ingots at a later time. It is
not clear if the copper ore mined from Tongling was
one of the sources of the bronze industry of the midYellow valley; but it is almost certain that it was used

Figure 31 Front and side view of the Bronze mask found in the
Shang tomb at Dayangzhou (Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, with permission).

locally. Copper slag, molds of utilitarian tools, and

bronze weapons were found in the Wucheng site.
The Wucheng civilization shared the Poyang basin
with an indigenous group represented by the archaeological tradition of Wangnian. The pottery assemblage of Wangnian tradition was rooted in the earlier
indigenous Neolithic traditions and was different
from that of the Wucheng. For instance, the li was
the major pottery kitchenware of Wucheng; but
the ding was the typical cooking pot found in the
Wangnian sites. Nonetheless, some Wangnian pottery
and bronze vessels were decorated with the spiral
pattern typical of the Shang. Interaction between the
Wucheng civilization and the indigenous Wannian
tradition certainly occurred.

Civilizations Independent of the

Mid-Yellow Civilization
The early Bronze Age civilization that originated in
the mid-Yellow gained considerable success in the
expansion into the south and the east, but was not
as successful into the north and the west. In fact,
Bronze Age civilizations that arose in the northwest
and southwest matched the level of sophistication

616 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

of the mid-Yellow civilization. These civilizations

stemmed from sources different from the mid-Yellow
civilization. They maintained low interaction intensity
with the mid-Yellow civilization, and contributed little
to the formation of the later Chinese civilization.
Sanxingdui

The Sichuan Basin, being locked in by towering

mountains, was the home of unique cultural entities
in prehistoric and historic times. A poet compared the
road to Sichuan to the road to heaven. However,
the basin was not entirely isolated from the rest of
the world. Communication through mountain passes
was limited but possible. The discovery of Sanxingdui
tradition demonstrates that as early as the second
millennium BC, Sichuan had contact with the civilization of the Central Plains or its offshoots.
The pre-Sanxingdui Neolithic traditions show evidences of increasing complexity through time. Their
people built large walled fontifications and their
smaller settlements aggregated around these newly
emerged centers. The Sanxingdui tradition developed from these indigenous Neolithic traditions and
reached a new level of cultural complexity.
The political center of Sanxingdui society was the
Sanxingdui site, located on the western edge of the
Chengdu Plain. The center of the site was a walled
and moated area of about 360 ha, but smaller occupations sprawled to a wider area of about 1200 ha
around the center. Three connected 10 m high oval
mounds, stretching 400 m from one end to the other,
were located in the southern part of the walled area.
They were structures built for public observance. The
most spectacular findings of Sanxingdui were found
in caches. Caches 1 and 2 are two of the richest caches
among the ten excavated (Figure 32). Together, they
contained more than 1100 artifacts made of bronze,

gold, jade, pottery, and bone. Large numbers of elephant tusks and animal bones were also found. The
animal bones, as well as some of the sumptuary artifacts, had been burned before disposal. Reasons
for their disposal were perhaps religious. Most of
the sumptuary artifacts are unique, having no
parallels outside of the Sichuan Basin. For instance,
the bronze assemblage included life-size standing statues (Figure 33), masks with protruding eye-balls
(Figure 34), human heads with gold foil covering
(Figure 35), and models of altars, shrines and trees.
The Sanxingdui people used the casting technology
to produce artifacts different from those of the midYellow valley, and they seem to have practiced a
different religion.
Although most of the sumptuary artifacts were
developed locally, a handful of them show similarities with artifacts found in the Central Plains. They
included bronze vessels in the shapes of zun and lei
(Figure 36) similar to those of the late Shang. The site
also yielded some five dozens jade zhang (Figure 37)
bearing similarities to that of Erlitou.
The material culture assemblage of Sanxingdui tradition indicates that communication with the midYellow valley civilization did occur, but on a limited
basis. It seems that the elite members of the Sanxingdui society monopolized the contact as an additional
means to legitimize their status. On the contrary,
the domestic pottery from Sanxingdui maintained its
indigenous identity. Most of the ceramic vessels had
very small bases or pointed bases, a unique feature
of the pre-Bronze Age traditions in Sichuan. The
commoners did not seem to have directly involved
in the cultural exchange with civilizations outside of
Sichuan.
Previous archaeology of the Sanxingdui tradition
has yielded sumptuary handicrafts of extremely

Figure 32 Excavation of cache pit 2, Sanxingdui (Sanxingdui Museum, with permission).

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 617

Figure 34 Bronze mask with protruding eye-balls, Sanxingdui

(Sanxingdui Museum, with permission).
Figure 33 Bronze life-sized standing statue, Sanxingdui
(Sanxingdui Museum, with permission).

complex technology and skill. Nonetheless, we lack

evidence of the organization of the government and
the presence of a coercive force. Whether the Sanxingdui society was organized as a state needs to be demonstrated by future archaeological work.
The Northern Zone

The land north of the Great Wall has mixed economy

of farming and pastoralism in modern China. The
northern zone, therefore, is a cultural frontier where
farming and nomadic groups interact. The nomadic
lifeways of pastoral groups enabled the northern zone
to maintain regular contact with cultural groups farther north and west through the steppes. By the second millennium BC, people of the northern zone had
established a material culture recognizably distinct
from that of the mid-Yellow River civilization. Their
bronze industry is often referred to as the Ordos
complex. The Ordos bronze assemblage comprises
of a large number of utilitarian artifacts, such as mirrors, ladles, daggers, knives, axes, etc. The Ordos
daggers and knives are distinctive in that the blade
and hilt were cast in one piece, and had hollowed-out
hilts and ringed pommels. Tubular sockets were cast

Figure 35 Bronze head with gold-leaf mask, Sanxingdui

(Sanxingdui Museum, with permission).

618 ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization

Figure 36 Bronze lei-vessel, Sanxingdui (Sanxingdui Museum,

with permission).

for the hafting of tools; wherein flat tangs were used

in the mid-Yellow bronze technology. Only a few
bronze vessels were found in the northern zone, and
they bear a striking resemblance to the mid-Yellow
River vessel styles, indicating that they were imports
from the mid-Yellow River valley. On the other hand,
a few Ordos bronzes were found in the mid-Yellow
sites, such as the mirrors and knives found in the
tomb of Fu Hao (Figure 38), and the daggers found
in the Zhou tomb at Baifu (Figure 39). It is uncertain
whether the bronze technology of the northern zone
and the mid-Yellow River valley had the same origin,
but it is unequivocal that they used the technology to
fulfill different social goals.
One of the well-studied cultural traditions of the
northern zone is the Zhukaigou tradition. The core of
Zhukaigou tradition was distributed between the
Great Wall and the large Ordos bend in the Yellow
River in modern south-central Inner Mongolia. The
Zhukaigou tradition is said to appear by 2000 BC,
developed from the local Longshan tradition. It
abruptly ceased about 1200 BC, which is a prehistoric
puzzle.
South-central Inner Mongolia had been settled by
farming groups from farther south, no later than the
fourth millennium BC. Sedentary village communities
farming millet with Miaodigou and Longshan style

Figure 37 Jade zhang, Sanxingdui (adapted from Zhongguo

kaoguxue Xia Shang juan: Plate 311, with permission).

Figure 38 Diagnostic Northern style bronze knife and mirrors

found in the tomb of Fu Hao, Yinxu (adapted from Studies of
Shang Archaeology: Figure 51, with permission).

pottery appeared. Throughout the course of the

development of Zhukaigou, it continued to be strongly influenced by the various traditions of the midYellow River basin. The Zhukaigou people maintained the sedentary adaptation living in permanent
settlements, practicing farming and burying their
dead in cemeteries. However, they had contact with
the nomadic groups of the steppes. Ordos style small

ASIA, EAST/Chinese Civilization 619

high-collared, deep hollow-legged li tripod cooking

ware: many of them have decorative applique around
the orifices. Two of these li were found in the Erlitou
site. Although the Zhukaigou tradition disappeared
in south-central Inner Mongolia by the twelfth century BC, its diagnostic artifacts were then widely
dispersed in the northern zone, as far north as the
Lake Baikal area in Russia.
The Forging of Chinese Identity

Figure 39 Diagnostic Northern style bronze daggers found in

the Zhou tomb at Baifu (adapted from Studies of Shang Archaeology: Figure 49, with permission).

bronze objects, such as daggers, knives, armlets,

finger rings, started to appear in the early phase of
Zhukaigou occupations. By the late phase of the
Zhukaigou tradition, small numbers of Shang style
artifacts, such as the typical Erligang style pottery li,
dou and gui vessels decorated with the spiral pattern,
and bronze ding, jue, ge and arrowheads, appeared.
Most intriguingly, a burial at the Zhukaigou site
yielded a unique set of Erligang style ceramics and a
bronze ge halberd.
It is apparent that south-central Inner Mongolia
was a cultural frontier during the 2nd millennium
BC where people of different cultural traditions met
and interacted. It is interesting to see that the exotic
artifacts of Ordos and Erligang origins in small proportions co-occurred at the same site. This suggests
the mid-Yellow River civilization gained access to the
Ordos nomads through the Zhukaigou communities.
Perhaps more extensive trading activities occurred.
One of the commodities that the mid-Yellow River
civilization badly needed was horses for chariots,
which were widely available in the steppes.
The Zhukaigou tradition itself was not a one-sided
recipient of influence from other civilizations. One of
the unique pottery vessel types of Zhukaigou is the

The processes leading to Chinese civilization also

led to the formation of a Chinese identity. The later
Chinese civilization was characterized by an uninterrupted written tradition, a ritual institution of ancestors and kinship organization. These cultural features
were all formed in the early mid-Yellow River civilization. This civilization itself was not a monolith;
three ethnic groups took turns as the hegemonic
political and cultural powerhouses. The dynamics of
interaction between them eventually erased their differences and identities. By the mid-first millennium
BC, the distinction between Shang and Zhou was in
name only.
The expansion of early civilization also incorporated
indigenous groups outside of the mid-Yellow River
basin into a greater civilization sphere. This sphere
was a melting pot of people of different origins and
cultural practices. After centuries of interaction with
the offshoots of the mid-Yellow River group, and
in the face of the military conquest of Qin and Han
Empires, they gradually became Han Chinese.
See also: Asia, Central and North, Steppes, Deserts,

and Forests; Asia, Central, Steppes; Asia, East: China,

Neolithic Cultures; Asia, Northeast, Early States and
Civilizations; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Food and Feasting, Social
and Political Aspects; Political Complexity, Rise of;
Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Violence and
War; Writing Systems.

Further Reading
Allan S (ed.) (2005) The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An
Archaeological Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Chang KC (1980) Shang Civilization. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Chang KC (1986) The Archaeology of Ancient China. 4th edn.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Chang KC (ed.) (1986) Studies of Shang Archaeology. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Hsu C and Linduff KM (1988) Western Chou Civilization.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Keightley DN (1978) Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone
Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley: University of
California Press.

620 ASIA, EAST/Early Holocene Foragers

Keightley DN (2000) The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and
Community in Late Shang, China. Institute of East Asian Studies
and Center for Chinese Studies, Berkeley: University of California.
Liu L and Chen X (2003) State Formation in Early China. London:
Duckworth.
Loewe M and Shaughnessy EL (eds.) (1999) The Cambridge History
of Ancient China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shaughnessy EL (1991) Sources of Western Zhou History.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

Early Holocene
Foragers
Mark J Hudson, University of West Kyushu, Kanzagi,
Saga, Japan
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Chulmun A Postglacial hunter-gatherer and agricultural culture
of the Korean peninsula.
Holocene Period of time between the present and 10 000 years
before present.
hunter-gatherer A member of a people subsisting on food
obtained by hunting and foraging.
Jomon Late glacial and postglacial culture of hunting and
gathering in Japan (14 500 to 400 BC).
microliths Small stone flakes, normally used as part of a larger
tool such as a sickle.

Since the end of the Pleistocene, East Asia has been a

world with China at its center. Two major developments in China had profound affects on the prehistoric hunter-gatherers of East Asia and surrounding
regions. These developments were the emergence of
farming societies at the beginning of the Holocene
and then the rise of states and Chinese dynastic civilization after 2000 BC.
Agriculture began initially along the Yellow and
Yangzi Rivers by about 10 000 years ago, but quickly
expanded across much of central China. For many
scholars of China, the history of Chinese civilization
begins with these early agricultural societies and their
gradual evolution into the ancient Shang state of the
second millennium BC. For this reason, there has
been comparatively little research on hunter-gatherer
populations in China during the Holocene. Huntergatherers were, however, present in the northern and
southern peripheries of China up until recent times.
These peripheral areas, also comprising modern
Korea, Japan, and the Russian Far East, provide the
main evidence for East Asian hunter-gatherers during
the Early Holocene.

During the Pleistocene, large areas of East and

Southeast Asia that are now under the ocean were
exposed by lowered sea levels. As well as the huge
Sunda shelf that connected mainland and island
Southeast Asia, the present Yellow Sea between northeast China and the Korean Peninsula would also have
been dry land. The Late Pleistocene archaeology of
East Asia is characterized by a widespread microlithic
technology that is thought to have been used in hunting large and medium-sized mammals. With the onset
of a warmer climate in the Holocene, however, microliths disappeared in most regions and human populations seem to have shifted to a broader spectrum
subsistence pattern that included a range of fish, shellfish, and plants. Early Holocene coastal foraging
became most developed in the Chulmun and Jomon
cultures of the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese
Islands, respectively (see Asia, East: Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers).
Ceramic containers were developed very early in
East Asia. Pottery is known from sites of the terminal
Pleistocene in Japan, China, and the Russian Far East.
At present, it is not clear if this pottery began independently in each of these three areas or spread from
one original source. From a world perspective, however, this early East Asian pottery is remarkable not
only for its great antiquity but also for its association
with hunter-gatherer societies. In Southeast Asia, in
contrast to East Asia, pottery arrived much later in
the Holocene with the spread of farming. In Russia
and Korea, the term Neolithic is applied to early
Holocene foraging cultures with pottery. The Jomon
cultures of Japan could also be classified in this way,
though Japanese archaeologists rarely use the term
Neolithic. In China and Southeast Asia, Neolithic refers to agricultural societies (see Asia, East: China,
Neolithic Cultures).

China and the Russian Far East

Although north China had been settled by Homo
erectus, the cold, dry interior of Siberia was only
occupied much later by modern humans after about
40 000 years ago. Despite its harsh climate, much of
northern Siberia comprised a productive tundra
steppe biome that supported large herds of mammoths, reindeer, and other animals. The microlithic
technology of the Upper Palaeolithic cultures of
this region seems to have been designed for hunting
these mammals, but the warmer conditions after
the Last Glacial Maximum led to a growing emphasis on marine and plant foods. Pottery has been
reported in sites of the Osipovka culture along
the Amur River by about 14 000 cal BC. In China,
early pottery has been reported from several sites,

ASIA, EAST/Early Holocene Foragers 621

including Miaoyan in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous

Region where pottery has been radiocarbon-dated
to before 16 000 cal BC. Although many of the early
pottery sites in China are from the south of the
country, recent excavations at Donghuling in Beijing
and at Nanzhuangtou and Hutouliang in Hebei
Province have shown that early ceramics also exist
in the north. While debate continues over the
precise chronology and cultural context of such
early ceramic sites, there seems little doubt that pottery began in Late Pleistocene contexts in several
areas of East Asia.
In central and especially north China, microblades
continued well into the Early Holocene, showing that
hunting still remained an important economic activity even for societies that were engaged in farming or
livestock herding. Microlithic technology seems to
have been associated with a northward spread of
settlement in northeast China (Manchuria) in the
Early Holocene. In the mountainous coastal areas
of the Pacific Russian Far East, Holocene huntergatherers engaged in river and ocean fishing, hunting
of marine and terrestrial mammals, and gathering
nuts and other plant foods. In later periods, trade in
animal furs was also of great importance in this region. Salmon fishing was probably one of the earliest
Holocene adaptations, as in Korea and Japan. Evidence for shellfish gathering and seal hunting is
known from the Boisman sites near Vladivostok at
about 5000 cal BC. Cultivated foxtail millet (Setaria
italica) makes its first appearance in the southern
Russian Far East after 3000 cal BC.
Except for a few sites in Yunnan Province, microliths are rare in southernmost China where Early
Holocene stone tools were part of the Hoabinhian
pebble tool industry that extended into Southeast
Asia. Rice farming spread widely in south China
during the Early Holocene, but the hunting and
gathering of wild resources also continued to be of
great importance in many areas. Fishing groups along
the coast of southeast China are known from sites
such as Hungguashan in Fujian Province. Upland
societies such as the Dulong of Yunnan, who combined hunter-gathering with swidden cultivation,
continued in southwest China until the twentieth
century.

Korea and Japan

Unlike in China, where hunting and gathering was
often combined with farming, in Korea and Japan
specialist foraging societies with only small-scale cultivation or management of wild plants developed in
the Early Holocene. These societies are usually called

Chulmun in Korea and Jomon in Japan. Both terms

mean cord-marked, referring to a widespread type
of pottery decoration. Chulmun (c. 60001500 BC)
and Jomon (c. 14 500400 BC) cultures share many
features, such as villages with semi-subterranean pit
houses, maritime adaptations evidenced by numerous
shell midden sites, and sophisticated ceramic traditions. The long duration and broad geographical distribution of these cultures, however, also means that
they were characterized by considerable internal
diversity.
On the Korean Peninsula, sites from the PleistoceneHolocene transition are relatively scarce. This
has been interpreted as evidence that hunters followed game north with the climatic warming, the
peninsula then being resettled by new Neolithic
migrants. While some such population movements
may have occurred, many earlier coastal sites were
probably inundated by rising sea levels. Neolithic
sites become much more common on the peninsula
after about 8000 years ago. In Japan, sites of the
Incipient Jomon phase (c. 14 5008000 BC) are sometimes seen as representing an intermediate stage
before the establishment of typical Jomon culture
in the Initial phase (c. 80005000 BC). The Odai
Yamamoto I site in Aomori has produced the earliest
pottery from Japan with dates of around 14 500 cal
BC. However, pottery is relatively rare in Jomon sites
until the Initial phase. Shell middens only become
common in the Initial phase, but evidence of salmon
fishing is known from the Incipient phase Maedakochi site in Tokyo.
The Jomon tradition tends to be marked by much
more elaborate artifacts and sites than those found in
the Chulmun cultures. This may reflect greater social
complexity in Jomon Japan, though further work on
this question is needed. Large Initial Jomon sites are
known at Uenohara in Kagoshima and Nakano
B in Hokkaido, but most of the evidence for Jomon
complexity comes from the Late Holocene (i.e., after
5000 BC).
In Korea, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was replaced
by farming in the Bronze Age that began on the
Peninsula around 1500 BC. In Japan, this transition
occurred after about 500 BC in the Metal Age Yayoi
period. In the northern island of Hokkaido, however,
foraging by the Ainu people continued until Japanese
colonization in the late nineteenth century, although
from medieval times the Ainu had also been heavily
involved in trade and other economic contacts with
Japan and China.
See also: Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures; China,

Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric

Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers.

622 ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology

Further Reading
Aikens CM and Rhee SN (eds.) (1992) Pacific Northeast Asia in
Prehistory: Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers, Farmers, and Sociopolitical Elites. Pullman: Washington State University Press.
Barnes GL (1993) China, Korea and Japan: The Rise of Civilization
in East Asia. London: Thames and Hudson.
Habu J (2004) Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kuzmin YV (2002) Radiocarbon chronology of Paleolithic and
Neolithic cultural complexes from the Russian Far East. Journal
of East Asian Archaeology 3: 227254.
Lu TLD (1999) BAR International Series 774: The Transition from
Foraging to Farming and the Origin of Agriculture in China.
Oxford: Archaeopress.
Nelson SM (1993) The Archaeology of Korea. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Shnirelman VA (1999) Introduction: North Eurasia. In: Lee RB and
Daly R (eds.) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, pp. 119125. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shnirelman VA (1999) Archaeology of north Eurasian hunters
and gatherers. In: Lee RB and Daly R (eds.) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, pp. 127131. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Historical Archaeology
Gwen P Bennett, Washington University in St Louis,
St Louis, MO, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
East Asia The eastern end of the Eurasian continent, comprised
of territory occupied by the present-day nation-states of China
and Korea on the mainland, and the island archipelago of Japan.
Koguryo A state that straddled the present-day ChinaKorea
border region during the protohistoric and historic Three
Kingdoms period (c. first century BCE to 668) on the Korean
Peninsula.
Kyongju, Kyongsang province, South Korea Location of
pre-Silla (Saro), Silla, and Unified Silla capital cities.
Nara A capital city from the time period of the same name
(710794), located in the Kinai region of the island of Honshu,
Japan.
oracle bones Prepared turtle plastrons and oxen scapulae
whose cracks, resulting from subjection to fire, were interpreted
as oracles. Use started in northern China by c. 4000 BCE;
by late Shang period c. 1200 BCE, they were inscribed with both
question and answers.
Paekche A state in the southwestern corner of the Korean
Peninsula during the protohistoric and historic Three Kingdoms
period.
protohistory The time period when only secondary or
extremely fragmentary primary sources are available.
Silla a state in the southeastern corner of the Korean Peninsula
during the protohistoric and historic Three Kingdoms period, it
defeated Paekche and Koguryo to unite the Peninsula in a state
known as Unified Silla (668935).

the Yinxu site, Anyang, Henan province, China Location of

important late Shang Dynasty settlement with royal tombs,
palaces, workshops, and oracle bone cache.
Yamato Protohistoric polity on Japanese archipelago, noted in
Chinese historical sources. Location as yet undefined.

Introduction
Definitions of historical archaeology range from the
archaeology of literate societies, of societies with
written records, of historically documented cultures,
and the branch of archaeology that supplements written history to create a more complete account of the
past. Each definition has nuances that allow slightly
different understandings and approaches, and all are
applicable to practice in East Asia, where archaeology
is, in general, characterized by its historiographical
approach.
Written records are generally regarded as the key
factor dividing the historic period from the prehistoric, yet where this division falls is anything but clear
in East Asia. Literacy may have been achieved by
c. 2000 BCE in the Yellow River Valley of China,
and unquestionably attained by c. 1200 BCE in the
same region by a few elite members of society. Slowly,
writing spread to other areas of East Asia, to different
levels of society, and was used in the service of broader
goals. Within the modern nation-state of China, there
are areas that were not mentioned until very late in the
historical record, as well as regions that, while being
mentioned earlier in the records of their neighbors, took
considerable time to produce their own. Korea and
Japan first appear in Chinese records before they themselves adopted the Chinese writing system sometime
between the fourth and sixth centuries CE. Later, both
developed sophisticated writing systems of their own
while also retaining use of Chinese characters.
While it is clear that the regions of East Asia entered
the historic period at very different points, many
scholars tend to take the beginning of the historic
period as the first textual mention of a region, regardless of where or when the document was produced.
The concept of protohistory, or the period when a
region is known through secondary sources or extremely fragmentary primary sources, is resisted in many
instances, partly due to tradition, but also to nationalistic desires to extend a historical presence back in time.
Further complicating both the interpretation of the
historical record itself and its use in archaeology is the
complex interweaving of ancient myth and oral tradition into the historical record. Chinese, Korean, and
Japanese historical traditions all incorporate ancient
mythological and supernatural origin stories, written
by early ruling clans to legitimize their emergence and
right to power. Again, traditionalism and nationalism

ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology 623

contribute to some scholars resistance to recognizing

both the mythological strains in accepted history and
the inability of archaeology to recover evidence of
these phenomena.
This complex historical background in tandem
with many recent or ongoing historical events gives
historical archaeology its particular approach in East
Asia. Twentieth-century East Asia has seen episodes
of militarism, aggression, colonization, humiliation,
modernization, and nationalism. These events have
greatly affected the regions historical archaeology, its
goals, and the interpretation of results. While the nature of East Asian historical archaeology has changed
much over the course of the twentieth century and
continues to do so in the twenty-first, Fumiko IkawaSmiths statement that East Asian archaeology is not
a generalizing and comparative discipline such as
anthropology, but is national history or it is nothing
still rings true.

Theoretical Orientations in East Asian

Historical Archaeology
The search for ancestral roots is common to the historical archaeologies practiced in Korea and Japan
where each population views itself as racially homogeneous. Questions of archaeological interest include
where the Korean and Japanese peoples came from
(a question that has led to the sponsoring of archaeological work in Mongolia, Central Asia, and in
Northwestern China along the Silk Roads); how
their unique cultural practices came into being;
and the formation of the states that they consider
ancestral to their present-day nations. While they
have disagreed on the direction and timing of cultural
transmission and influence between the Korean
Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago, they share
a common striving to better understand their pasts by
using archaeology to invalidate the layers of foreign
interpretation imposed through their earliest recording in Chinese histories, and in Koreas case, Japanese
colonial-period interpretations.
The deep time depth of Paleolithic remains in
China precludes concern over where Chinese ancestors came from, but archaeologys early twentiethcentury discoveries ensured the disciplines historical
approach. Lothar von Falkenhausen has called
archaeology in China a handmaiden to history, and
much effort is spent on locating and investigating
the remains of historically documented locations,
events, and people (see Historical Archaeology: As a
Discipline; Methods).
The historical archaeology of all three nation-states
shares one common characteristic: while its use to investigate the distant historical past is now recognized

and its discoveries of previously unknown texts have

revolutionized understandings of these early periods,
textual approaches are still the preferred avenue for
study of the later historical periods. In the search for
earlier deposits, historical remains from more recent
periods are commonly stripped from archaeological
sites without thorough examination, except where
finds are spectacular in nature. Because of their perceived ubiquity, remains of the recent past will be
endangered in the future.

Sources of Historical Evidence

Sources utilized by East Asian historical archaeology
have affected its interpretations and conclusions.
Written sources vary from transmitted texts such as
the second century BCE Shiji (Sima Qians Records of
the Historian) that have circulated since first produced, to archaeologically recovered records such as
wooden slips dating to the seventh and eighth centuries and discovered in twentieth-century excavations
of ancient Japanese capitals (Figure 1). How literary
sources have come through time and the material
on which they are recorded affects their reliability
and completeness, and therefore their uses by historical archaeologists. Before the development of mass

Figure 1 Wooden tablets recovered from excavations at Nara

Palace, Nara, Japan.

624 ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology

printing techniques, hand-copying ensured that circulating texts existed in different editions or were altered through copyists error, while cast bronze
inscriptions have survived without distortion. In
China, the First Emperor of Qins destruction in
213 BCE of all philosophical works and histories
not sanctioned by the state drastically reduced the
availability of pre-Qin records. Without a doubt,
scientifically excavated archaeological finds in twentieth and twenty-first century have greatly supplemented the quantity and character of historical data
available for consultation throughout East Asia.
Chinese written sources are the oldest in East Asia.
Marks on Yangshao period pottery (c. 5000 BCE) in
north China are not considered true writing, but at
several sites in eastern China, including Taosi in
Shanxi, Dinggong in Shandong, and Longqiuzhuang
in Jiangsu, pottery of c. 2000 BCE bears strings of
character-like marks that, while still undeciphered,
more closely resemble true writing and may represent
the beginnings of literacy. East Asias first decipherable writing comes from late Shang period (c. 1200
1045 BCE) eastern China. Oracle bones prepared
turtle plastrons and cattle scapulae used for divination by the late Shang kings were found at the Yinxu
site in Anyang, Henan (Figure 2). These bear characters incised prior to pyromantic divination which
cracked the bones. Of the 5000 characters identified
to date, 40% can be read, and record the divination
and its response. Names and brief inscriptions are
also cast onto bronze ritual vessels of the same period.
In the Western Zhou period (1145771 BCE), such
inscriptions become longer and more frequent, producing what Jessica Rawson has called memorials of
political events and social relationships essential to
the structure of Zhou government and society. Some
Shang jades also bear brush-written characters, implying other unpreserved media and tools of writing
for the Shang and Western Zhou periods. The first
surviving examples of brush-writing on bamboo and
wooden slips come from archaeological contexts
of the Eastern Zhou period (770222 BCE), primarily tombs. Inscribing records on stone and brushwriting on silk also began during this time. Written
documentation multiplied with the bureaucratically
organized government of the Han Empire (202 BCE
CE 220), but texts are still fragmentary. Paper was
invented in the Eastern Han dynasty (25220) and
used for writing, painting, and making rubbings
of inscribed stone tablets, which was the earliest
form of copying before invention of woodblock printing during the Tang Dynasty (618907) allowed
mass production. While the keeping of dynastic
histories started in the Han, it was not until the

Figure 2 Turtle plastron oracle bone with incised characters

from excavations at Yinxu, Henan Province, China.

Song Dynasty (9601276) that preservation and

commercial developments conspired to provide an
explosion in the amount of source material for the
historical record.
The first textual references to either Korea or Japan
come from Chinese histories, the Wei Shu (Wei
History), a section of the Sanguo Zhi (History of the
Three Kingdoms) dated 280, and the Hou Han Shu
(History of the Later Han), compiled between 398
and 445. These accounts are limited, but as Gina
Barnes writes, they are intentional ethnographic
reconnaissance by embassies of the Han court, and
provide much information about cultures and peoples
that can complement the archaeological record of
development and change.
Koreas earliest extant records consist of archaeologically recovered wooden tablets used for recordkeeping in the Silla period (c. 300668) and two
transmitted texts, the twefth-century Samguk Sagi
(History of the Three Kingdoms) and the thirteenthcentury Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three

ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology 625

Kingdoms), both compiled from earlier records no

longer extant. Traditional historical understandings
rest on the Samguk Sagis dates for the formation of
Koguryo, Silla, and Paekche in the first century BCE,
but archaeology is challenging this view. A new
text, the purportedly eighth-century Hwarang Segi
(Annals of Hwarang), was recently discovered, but
scholarly debate continues about its veracity.
Japans earliest extant records are also archaeologically recovered wooden tablets used for recordkeeping in the early capitals in the Kinai region, and
two transmitted texts, the eighth-century court
chronicles, the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Things),
dating to 712 and the Nihon Shoki (The Chronicles of
Japan) of 720. These two books, also complied from
earlier nonextant documents, are the sources for the
idea of an unbroken historical succession of divine
emperors extending back to the mythological past.
Excavated and transmitted artifacts, such as images
on bronze, pottery and porcelain vessels, tomb
walls, pottery figurines and models, sculpture, textiles, and later ink and watercolor paintings with
images of the court and daily life; cosmology; clothing; and even leisure activities also supplement written texts with very important evidence for the
understanding of past activities and beliefs in China,
Korea, and Japan.

Historical Archaeology in China

The first scientific excavations in China led by
Chinese scholars occurred in 1928 at the late Shang
(c. 12001045 BCE) site of Yinxu, Anyang, Henan
Province. Intellectuals recognized early Chinese

Figure 3 Li Ji at Yinxu excavations, Henan Province, China.

characters on inscribed dragon bones sold in late

nineteenth-century Beijing pharmacies and traced
them to Anyang, spurring excavations by Li Ji, a
Harvard-trained anthropologist, considered to be the
father of Chinese archaeology (Figure 3). Excavations
continued intermittently in the 1930s and 1940s because of war, but uncovered oracle bones inscribed
with the names of the last nine Shang kings. At a
time when many intellectuals blamed blind adherence to tradition for Chinas nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century humiliations, the correspondence of
the kings lists in oracle bones to the names documented in the transmitted histories was considered a welcome indication of the truthfulness of tradition. This
coincidence is largely responsible for archaeologys historical approach throughout much of the twentieth
century and its attempts to find places, people, and
events named in the texts. At the end of the 1970s and
1980s, when economic reforms gave the provinces
greater independence, more archaeological effort was
directed outside the Central Plains, but the royal tombs,
palaces, and workshops found at Yinxu still kept archaeological attention and resources focused on the
Central Plains region for much of the twentieth century.
It remains a major research center producing new and
exciting finds.
Recently, the 5-year Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology
Project concluded. Funded by the Chinese government, the multidisciplinary project aimed to improve
the accuracy of dates related to the first three historical dynasties in the Central Plains (Shang and Zhou
are known from their own records; the Xia Dynasty
is first recorded in the second century BCE Shiji).
Although criticized as politically motivated, the

626 ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology

project did much research, including archaeological

work, and its results are now being published.
Dynastic capitals have also been a major focus
of archaeological exploration. The Xian region of
Shaanxi Province is the location of many capitals,
including the Western Zhou period Feng and Hao centers (c. eleventh century BCE), mentioned in descriptive
poems from the period; the Qin (221206 BCE) city
of Xianyang on the north bank of the Wei River; and
the Han (202220 BCE), Sui (581618), and Tang
(618907) capitals on the south (Figure 4). Xians
economic development has driven much of this archaeology over the past 30 years, and the general
plans for the Han, Sui, and Tang capitals are now
known. Walls, building foundations, residential quarters, roads, gates, and markets have been identified
and excavated. Xianyang, the First Emperor of Qins
(Qin Shi Huangs) capital city, is eroded on its south
by the river, but the purported Afang palace foundation has been uncovered along with other building
remains. Capital cities for other dynasties have also
been excavated including those of the Eastern Zhou
period Qi and Lu states in Shandong; the Eastern
Zhou and Eastern Han capital of Luoyang; the
Northern Song capital at Kaifeng; and the Yuan
(Mongol), Ming, and Qing capitals at Beijing. Several
northern walled cities of non-Chinese dynasties have

also been excavated including the Liao Dynasty (907

1125) Middle Capital in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia,
and the Mongol Yuan Dynastys (12721368) summer city at Shangdu (Xanadu), in Zhenglan Banner of
Inner Mongolia.
Mortuary archaeology is dominated by royal and
elite tombs. Chinas first large-scale tomb excavation
was that of Ming Emperor Wanli, in the cluster of
royal Ming tombs north of Beijing, undertaken in
1957 at the start of the Communist era and now an
important tourist site. In Xian, the 1974 discovery of
the pit containing the First Emperor of Qins ceramic
army brought Chinese archaeology to the world
stage, with figures and replicas traveling in goodwill
exhibitions around the world (Figure 5). Ongoing
excavations have uncovered two more pits with
smaller armies of figures, and improved conservation
and preservation techniques have retained some of
the original pigments on their surfaces. The First
Emperors tomb still awaits investigation, but Han
and Tang period royal tombs in the Xian region have
also been excavated. Legions of smaller ceramic figures also standing in rank were found in the Han
Emperor Jings tomb of Yang Ling, and one Tang
princesss tomb contained well-preserved wall murals.
Many tombs of nobility have also been excavated;
including the 433 BCE mausoleum of Marquis Yi of

Figure 4 Plan drawing of the Tang period capital of Changan, Shaanxi, China.

ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology 627

Figure 5 Excavations on figures guarding the tomb of the First

Emperor of Qin, Xian, China.

Zeng in Hubei Province, who was buried with a full set

of bronze bells and other court musical instruments,
and the Han period Mawangdui tombs in Changsha,
Hunan Province that contained numerous silk maps
and documents and painted lacquer ware with cosmological representations.

Historical Archaeology in Korea

Archaeology in the Korean Peninsula (and Manchuria) was introduced by Japan after its victory in
the Sino-Japanese war of 189495, and intensified
after victory in the Russo-Japanese war of 190405.
In the course of annexing and finally colonizing the
Peninsula in 1910, much anthropological, archaeological, ethnological, and historical work was carried
out, aimed at manifesting the Japanese ancestral
claim to this territory. Interaction between the polities
of Koguryo, Paekche, Silla, and Kaya on the Peninsula
during the Proto-Three Kingdoms period (c. firstcentury BCECE 300) and then between these states
and Yamato/Wa, the dominant kingdom on Japan
during the Three Kingdoms period (c. 300668), led
each to develop increasingly complex forms of organization. Japanese imperialist goals supported the
idea that Japanese influence on the Peninsula was
responsible for the kingdoms developing into complex states. Much archaeological effort was expended
by Japanese scholars in the colonial period to prove
this theory, and then by Korean scholars in the postcolonial period to disprove it. Nevertheless, Japanese

researchers were responsible for many major excavations and surveys on the Peninsula where fieldwork
and documentation set a standard for scholars following them. Japanese investigations include Torii
Ryuzos 1905 excavation at a Koguryo hill fort in
the Tonggou, Jian region on the Yalu (Ch)/Amnok
(Kr) River (now in Jilin Province, China), and his
1911 survey of the third Koguryo capital at Pyongyang.
Other scholars conducted excavations at Wunushan
(Ch)/Onyeosan (Kr), the first Koguryo capital (now
in Liaoning Province, China), and in 1911 at the
Koguryo tombs in the Pyongyang region. There was
also meticulous excavation and documentation of the
tombs at Lelang (Ch)/Nangnang (Kr), a Pyongyang
region commandery established by the Han Dynasty
in 108 BCE and lasting until 313. In the south, many
other important Silla, Paekche, and Kaya remains
were also unearthed, and by the end of colonial
rule, over 2000 sites had been recorded and several
hundred dug. While colonial-period archaeology
aimed to further Japans imperialistic goals, it did
record and preserve many sites which otherwise
would have remained undocumented.
After colonization ended in 1945, Koreas intellectuals largely subscribed to a nationalist historiography and aimed to use historical, archaeological,
and anthropological data to demonstrate Korean
identity, purity, and state legitimacy since antiquity.
With the NorthSouth split imposed on Korea in
1945, archaeology in the DPRK North and ROK
South has followed different theoretical orientations,
but both were still conducted in line with nationalist
historiographical goals.
South Korean Three Kingdoms period archaeology
has focused on Paekche and Silla simply because most
Koguryo ruins are in the DPRK. While both North
and South agree that the Three Kingdom period states
are ancestral to Korea, their restricted access to predominantly Koguryo remains in the North and Silla
remains in the South has resulted in differing interpretations as to which state was more important for
the formation of modern Korea. Unified Silla (668
935) has also been an extremely important focus of
research. Important ongoing excavations are being
done at the pre-Silla (Saro), Silla, and Unified Silla
period capital at Kyongju in southeast Korea. They
have included excavations of several royal and noble
tombs, which were not looted due to their construction; the burial chambers are covered by large
mounds of boulders capped with earth (Figure 6).
Several gold crowns and belts have been recovered
here, as well as a painting of a flying white horse on
a birch bark mudguard (Figure 7). A gridded city
based on Chinese models was laid out in the seventh
century, just north of the earlier settlement at the

628 ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology

Figure 6 Silla tomb park, Kyongju, Korea.

Figure 7 Gold crown recovered from excavations of royal Silla

tomb, Kyongju, Korea.

asymmetrical, walled Panwolsong. Within the

gridded city the foundation stones of several large
buildings all conform to the grid layout (Figure 8).
To the northeast lies the Anapchi Garden Pond,
where excavations have contributed many unexpected objects, including wooden slips with writing, that
have rounded out the picture of life at the Silla court.
The Kyongju capital region is a World Heritage Park.
Paekche period archaeology is more limited than
Silla because of the destruction that followed its many
battles with Koguryo, Silla, and Tang China. This
periods architecture is best known from Japan,
where many Paekche artisans were sent to practice
their craft. Paekche horizontal chamber tombs were
easily looted, but tomb styles were not unified.
Square or keyhole-shaped mounded tombs were common in Kofun period Japan (c. 300710), but the
numerous early examples in the southwestern Korean
Peninsula suggest this may be where this style of
burial originated. The unlooted royal Paekche tomb
of King Muryong and his queen was discovered in
1971, and contained gold floral ornaments that were
described in the Chinese text, the Old Tang History
(Jiu Tang Shu).
Koryo Dynasty (9181392) prominence in East
Asian celadon porcelain production has directed
much archaeology towards excavations of several
Koryo period porcelain kilns in Cholla Province,
especially at Kangjin and Puan and along the southeast coast. Another important project has been the
excavation and reconstruction of the Choson period
(13921910) walled fort at Suwan, an excellent, complete example of this type of construction and now a
World Heritage site.

ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology 629

Figure 8 Foundation stones of Silla period Hwangyongsa Temple, Kyongju, Korea.

North Korean efforts have focused on the numerous

Koguryo, Koryo, and Choson dynasty remains in the
Pyongyang and Kaesong regions. Excavations include
Koguryo tombs and remains of its third walled capital
in Pyongyang, along with tombs from the Lelang/
Nangnang Commandery. Tombs from both periods
contain numerous wall murals showing a mixture of
Chinese and indigenous influence and have provided
much information for the relationship between China
and people on the Peninsula. Koryo royal tombs near
Kaesong have also undergone excavation.

Historical Archaeology in Japan

Studies of ancient court traditions and etiquette by
Edo period (16031868) literati provided the foundation for the introduction of modern archaeology
to Japan during the late nineteenth century by
E. S. Morse. Even before this the concentration of
ancient capital remains in the Kinai region (the
NaraOsakaKyoto region) of Honshu led interested
Edo scholars to conduct studies there, ranging from
the measurement of tombs to the topographic reconstruction of the Heijo Palace site. The subsequent
development of protohistoric and historic period
archaeology in Japan uses a historiographical approach like that of Korea and China. Post-World
War II Japan saw the de-mythologizing of the imperial house, which gave Japanese scholars new freedom
to question the textual picture of Japan as having
been ruled by a single dynasty from the start of time.
However, ideology still influences archaeology, as
seen in the current enforcement of the late eighteenth-century ban by the Imperial Household Agency

Figure 9 Tortoise and snake tomb murals from (top) the Great
Tomb at Kangso, near Pyongyang, North Korea, early seventh
century; (bottom) from the Takamatsu Tomb, Nara Prefecture,
Japan, late seventh to eighth century.

630 ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology

on the excavation of over 100 tombs predating the

eighth century because they may contain the remains
of emperors or other once-sacred royals. Japans rapid
postwar economic development in tandem with strong
archaeological protection laws ensure that much data
pertaining to the historic period has been, and continues to be recovered.
William Farris has noted several topics that dominate historical archaeological research in Japan: the
question of Yamatai, the relationship between ancient
Japan and Korea, the influence on Japans urban development of the adoption of the Chinese city model
in the Nara period (710794), and the general influence on indigenous Nara period culture of adopting
many Chinese political and economic institutions.
Yamatai, a protohistoric polity ruled by Queen
Himiko known from the Chinese Wei Shu, has been
the focus of scholarly debate for centuries. The
Wei Shu gives directions to Yamatai, but different
interpretations lead to locations either on Kyushu or
in Kinai, each with its own camp of supporters and
distinctive political overtones. Before 1945, the Kinai
position signified acceptance of the ancient origins for
the imperial family with its ties to the Kinai region,
while the Kyushu position signified rejection of these
origins. Yamatais entry into general public discussion

and the various overtones it has taken on there have

made many scholars retreat from the debate. Although textual evidence for this debate is exhausted,
and no conclusive archaeological evidence has yet
come to light, the archaeological work done in
the quest to answer this question has significantly
contributed to knowledge of late Yayoi period
(c. 400 BCECE 300) society.
Since late prehistoric times Japan, Korea, and
China have interacted with varying intensity and
directions of influence. Many elements that contributed to Japans early development were introduced
from China via the Korean Peninsula after first undergoing Korean acculturation. Japan has always admitted its cultural debt to China, but the extent of its
debt to Korea did not gain acceptance until the later
twentieth century (Figure 9). The traditional view of
early Japan based on the Nihon Shoki and fueled
by imperialistic goals was that Yamato (c. fourth
to seventh century) played a dominant role among
the Korean states from its outpost in Mimana, a
colony established in the southern Peninsula. Critical
postwar re-interpretation included Egami Namios
Horserider theory in which the islands were suddenly invaded by militaristic, horse-riding nomads
from North Asia in the fourth century, who crossed

Figure 10 Plan drawing of the Heian period capital of Heian (Kyoto), Japan.

ASIA, EAST/Historical Archaeology 631

the Korean Peninsula, entered Japan, and established

kingdoms in both. Postcolonial and civil war Korean
reaction to these theories was intense and included
many archaeological investigations. This work, along
with much by Japanese archaeologists, indicates the
extent of cultural imports from the Peninsula to
the Archipelago, such as iron and improved pottery technology, horses and mounted warfare, new
burial methods, use of gold and silver ornaments,
writing and mathematics, silk weaving, advanced

bureaucratic methods and organization, Buddhism

and Buddhist architecture, and Chinese-style law. It
has also shown that Yamato presence on the Peninsula is not indicative of a colony, and that the horse
trappings contained in fourth-century tombs forming
the foundation for the Horserider theory date to the
end of the century, later than the phenomena the
theory is meant to explain.
Excavation of early capital cities and palaces in
the Kinai region such as Fujiwara, Nara, Naniwa,

Figure 11 Overview of Nara City and the Nara Palace, Japan.

Figure 12 The Second Great Imperial Hall and Residence at Nara, Japan.

632 ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures

Nagaoka, Heian, and several smaller ones, as well as

of their associated Buddhist temples and other
remains has been an important focus of historical
archaeology. New textual materials wooden slips
used in bureaucratic record-keeping were found at
many of the sites and have shed much light on the
nature of pre-Nara and Nara period society and
government (see Figure 1). Research has also shown
the Japanese adaptation of the Chinese gridded-city
model for their own needs, and clarified chronological
sequences of capital-city building and developments
in infrastructure (Figure 10). Architectural features,
facilities, or wooden slips have even identified several
structures by their function, such as the Sake Bureau
compound at Nara. Details in the palace layouts indicate the organization of rule, and transportation and
field systems have also been identified (Figures 11
and 12). While these investigations are not politically
charged like the debates on Yamatai and Korean influences, archaeology has uncovered the dissonance
between the grand images of the royal courts found
in the texts and the reality of imperial rule and its
ability to organize labor and finances for its projects.
These circumstances are seen in the re-use of roof tiles
and beams from the old palaces and capitals in new
buildings, and the phased or even unfinished nature of
some construction due to labor shortages.
See also: Asia, East: Chinese Civilization; Asia, North-

east, Early States and Civilizations; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Methods; Writing Systems.

Further Reading
Barnes, GL (1988) Protohistoric Yamato: Archaeology of the First
Japanese State. Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies, No. 17;
Anthropological Papers Museum of Anthropology, University of
Michigan No. 78. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan
Center for Japanese Studies.
Barnes GL (1999) The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: The
Archaeology of China, Korea and Japan. London: Thames and
Hudson.
Farris WW (1998) Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures: Issues in the
Historical Archaeology of Ancient Japan. Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press.
Kim WY (1986) Art and Archaeology of Ancient Korea. Seoul:
Taekwang.
Loewe M and Shaughnessy EL (eds.) (1999) The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Murowchick R (ed.) (1994) China: Ancient Culture, Modern Land.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Pai HI (2000) Constructing Korean Origins: A Critical Review of
Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean StateFormation Theories. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Portal J (2000) Korea: Art and Archaeology. New York: Thames

and Hudson.
Tsuboi K and Tanaka M (1991) The Historic City of Nara: An
Archaeological Approach. Hughes DW and Barnes GL (trans.).
Tokyo: The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies.

Japanese Archipelago,
Paleolithic Cultures
Fumiko Ikawa-Smith, McGill University, Montreal,
QC, Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Aira-Tanzawa One of the most famous Japanese tephra, first
identified by Machida and Arai in 1976. Resulting from a
massive eruption that occurred sometime between 26 000 and
29 000 years ago at the southern end of the island of Kyushu,
the distinctive pumice is found all over the archipelago as well
as in the adjacent parts of the continent.
Japanese Palaeolithic A series of cultures that end with the
first appearance of pottery about 15 00010 000 uncalibrated
radiocarbon years ago in the late glacial period.
Tephra Air-fall material produced by a volcanic eruption
regardless of composition or fragment size. Tephra is
typically rhyolitic in composition as most explosive
volcanoes are the product of the more viscous felsic or
high silica magmas.

Until the excavation in the fall of 1949 of the Iwajuku

site, about 90 km north of Tokyo (see map in
Figure 1), the Palaeolithic cultures of the Japanese
archipelago was not a subject of serious inquiry by
professional archaeologists. Even though reports of
discoveries were made from time to time by enthusiasts, the evidence brought forth was not convincing,
either in terms of artifactual nature of the specimens,
or the stratigraphic contexts from which they were
recovered. Since much of the Pleistocene soils of the
archipelago were of volcanic origin, it was believed to
have been unfit for human and animal existence during
the Pleistocene due to constant volcanic eruptions and
falling ashes and volcanic debris. The situation changed
entirely when a team of archaeologists from Meiji
University, prompted by a report by a young amateur
archaeologist, recovered some 160 pieces of stone,
unmistakably modified by human hands, from two
different levels of Pleistocene deposits at Iwajuku (see
Figure 2). Once it was established that the Pleistocene
formations do contain cultural remains, discoveries

ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures 633

Figure 1 Map showing the sites mentioned, the extent of Aira-Tanzawa Tephra Fall, and the area exposed during the Last Glacial
Maximum.

634 ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures

Figure 2 Artifacts from the Iwajuku Site. A: Retouched blades and flakes of agate and obsidian from the upper level: B: Ovate axe with
polished edge and blades of shale from the lower level. After S. Sugihara, The Stone-age Remains found at Iwajuku, Gumma Prefecture,
1956.

were made at a very rapid rate: nearly 100 sites were

identified in the 10 years following the Iwajuku excavation, and now over a half century later, there are over
5000 Palaeolithic sites in the archipelago.

Search for the Earliest Evidence

of Human Presence
Two of the stone tools recovered from the lower
layer of the Iwajuku site were bifacially flaked oval
axes (Figure 2b). These were first described as
hand axes, with the implication that they may be

comparable to Lower Palaeolithic specimens elsewhere. As the Palaeolithic research progressed, and
quaternary geology of the archipelago was studied in
greater detail, it became clear that the Iwajuku hand
axes were situated in a layer of buried humus, representing a period of volcanic acquiescence, not older
than 30 000 BP. In fact, the overwhelming majority of
some 5000 Palaeolithic assemblages known today are
from Late Pleistocene formations, dating to what is
now known as oxygen isotope stage 2 (OIS2).
Nevertheless, the search for the oldest evidence of
human occupation of the archipelago continued. After

ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures 635

all, humans were in northern China (see Asia, East:

China, Paleolithic Cultures) by about 1 million years
ago, if not earlier, and land bridges connecting the
archipelago with the continental Asia existed during
the Middle Pleistocene OIS16 (about 0.63 million years
ago) and OIS12 (about 0.43 million years ago) allowing the passage of large mammals like Stegodon orientalis and Paleoloxodon namadicus naumanni.
Excavations were conducted during the 1960s at such
sites as Sozudai in northern Kyushu and Hoshino near
Iwajuku (Figure 1), north of Tokyo, but the large number of lithic specimens meticulously recovered from
formations dating to 40 000130 000 years ago at
these and other sites failed to meet general acceptance
as artifacts.
Starting about 1973, a series of sensational finds,
purporting to attest to a very early presence of
humans in the archipelago, were made, mostly in
the area of the City of Sendai in northern Honshu. It
was sensational, because, in Japan, as in most other
countries in Asia, archaeology contributes to construction of national history, and the evidence for
the early human presence in the archipelago translates as the answer to the question, How long have
our ancestors been living on these islands?. In
this social context, front-page treatments of Early
Palaeolithic discoveries in the mass media reflected
the avid public interest in the subject. Unlike the finds
made in the 1960s, these artifacts were clearly products of human activity, and they were sometimes
unearthed in front of witnesses by an amateur archaeologist, Shinichi Fujimura, from layers whose ages
can be unambiguously determined in relation to welldated horizon-marker pumice deposits. As Fujimuras
reputation for his uncanny ability to spot Early and
Middle Palaeolithic localities increased, so did the
antiquity of human occupation of the archipelago, the
oldest finds being the bifacial tools recovered from
the lowest layer at the Kamitakamori site, dated to be
between 0.58 and 0.60 million years old. Archaeologists began talking about the need for a paradigm shift
in Japanese Palaeolithic studies, when in November
2000 Fujimura was caught on video burying artifacts
at Kamitakamori. He has since confessed to having
manufactured the evidence by placing genuine, but
later, stone tools from his collection in much older
geological layers at 42 sites. The actual number could
very well be larger.
Discounting all the assemblages in whose excavations Fujimura participated, we are back to what we
had before 1973, when there was a handful of
assemblages which were thought to date to the earlier
part of the Upper Pleistocene (OIS 5 and OIS 4),
and whose artifactual nature remains controversial.
New additions in recent years include the stone
tools and bone flakes, associated with fossils of

P. namadicus naumanni and Sinomegaceros ordosianus yabei, from sediments in Lake Nojiri in central
Honshu (Figure 1), dated to be 41 516 radiocarbon
years old.

Late Palaeolithic Assemblages

Almost all of the Palaeolithic remains from the archipelago date to the latter part of OIS3 and OIS2, from
about 35 000 BP until the appearance of pottery
about 16 000 BP. Morphology, production techniques
and spatial distribution of stone tools, and their
by-products are the major clues in reconstructing
human activities, because the nature of the soil is
not favorable for preservation of human fossils and
other organic material, such as animal bones and
plant remains.
It is convenient to divide the Late Palaeolithic of
the archipelago into three parts: Late Palaeolithic I,
from 35 000 to 28 000 BP; Late Palaeolithic II, from
28 000 to 20 000 BP; and Late Palaeolithic III, after
20 000 BP. The earliest segment is represented by a
small number of assemblages. They typically consist
of long flakes of blade proportions with minimum
retouch, amorphous flakes, perforators, heavy duty
tools with partial polish on one end (edge-ground
axes), and sometimes grinding stones. The assemblage recovered from the lower level of the Iwajuku
site in 1949 (Figure 2b) is a good example. The
occurrence of the edge-ground axes in Palaeolithic
context is an unusual feature of these assemblages.
More than 300 of these tools have been recovered
from over 30 sites, and they often occur in clusters
and circles near lakes and springs.
At about 28 000 years ago, there was a massive
volcanic eruption at the southern end of Kyushu,
which sent forth ashes and pumice that fell all over
Japan as well as on the adjacent parts of the continent
(see the extent of AT fall in Figure 1). The distinctive
pumice, called Aira-Tanzawa Tephra (or A-T for
short), is the horizon marker, dividing Late Palaeolithic I and II of the archipelago. The complete disappearance of the artifact clusters with the edge-ground
axes probably indicates the shift in subsistence strategy after the environmental disaster. There was also an
indication of a temporary thinning of human population, as indicated by a decrease in the number of
archaeological sites, followed by a dramatic increase
soon thereafter. These growing populations were
equipped with new kinds of stone tools. Tool blanks
were produced by the blade technique, by which
regularly shaped, parallel-sided pieces of stone were
systematically detached from a carefully prepared
core. These were then made into a variety of tools to
perform specific functions. In addition to functional
variability, there was a large range of what appears to

636 ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures

Figure 3 Late palaeolithic artifacts from Shirataki, Hokkaido, Japan. Wedge-shaped micro-blade cores (Nos. 2 and 4); core preparation
tablet (No. 1); burin (No. 3); micro-blades (Nos. 5 and 6); shaft-smoother (No. 7), bifacial foliate (No. 8), end-scraper (No. 9). All made of
obsidian. After M. Yoshizaki, in Minzokugaku Kenkyu, 26(1): 17, 1961.

be stylistic variability in the stone tools. Several style

zones could be distinguished by the ways tool blanks
were retouched into backed blades. As the Late
Palaeolithic II was the time of cooling climate, and
the depressed sea level made the Japanese archipelago
into a long peninsula projecting southward encircling
a much reduced Sea of Japan, the increase in the
number and the diversity of assemblages may be due
in part to the population shift out of the continental
Northeast Asia, where some scholars detect indications of depopulation. The new arrivals would have
brought their own tool-making habits, and, being
pressed into the narrow oceanic margin, human
groups would have developed ways to increase productivity and maintain group identity.
The predominant artifact types of the Late Palaeolithic III, after the last glacial maximum (LGM) of
about 20 000 years ago, were microblades slotted into
shafts made of bone or antler, used as spear heads.
Recent excavation results, supported by a large suite
of radiocarbon determinations, suggest that the complex reduction sequence for producing microblades
from wedge-shaped cores such as those found at the
Shirataki site in Hokkaido (Figure 3) had been present in this outer margin of the continent before the
LGM, to continue through the Late Palaeolithic III.

Several different types of microblade cores and detachment methods have been distinguished. Bifacial
leaf-shaped points were also present, sometimes in
association with microblades. To this assemblage
diversity is added the baked clay vessels.
The linear-relief pottery of Fukui Cave in Kyushu,
associated with microblades and radiocarbon dates
which calibrate to about 15 300 years ago, have been
known for several decades. Since then, radiocarbon
dates older than 10 000 years have been obtained
from over 80 early ceramic sites. The oldest one so
far comes from the Odai Yamamoto I site at the
northern tip of Honshu. Determinations obtained
on carbonized remains adhering to fragments of
plan pottery averaged to a calibrated age of about
16 000 BP. Since similar pottery is often found with
very different stone tools through the archipelago, the
ceramic technology, wherever it was first invented,
seems to have been introduced to the archipelago, to
be adopted by some of the Palaeolithic groups of the
archipelago with different tool-making traditions.
The ceramic use for the first few thousand years was
sporadic. Although the appearance of pottery about
16 000 years ago heralds the beginning of the end of
the Palaeolithic in the archipelago, it was not until
about 10 000 years ago that the pottery use became

ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers

widespread and well established, ushering in the fully

ceramic Jomon Period of Japan.
See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Early
Holocene Foragers; Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric
Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers; Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples; Pseudoarchaeology and Frauds.

Further Reading
Bleed P (1977) Flakes from Sozudai, Japan: Are they man-made?
Science 197: 13571359.
Bleed P (2002) Cheap, regular, and reliable: Implications of design
variation in Late Pleistocene Japanese microblade technology. In:
Elason RG and Kuhn SL (eds.) Thinking Small: Global Perspectives on Microlithization, pp. 95102. Arlington, Virginia:
American Anthropological Association.
Ikawa-Smith F (1986) Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene technologies. In: Pearson RJ, Brnes GL, and Hutterer KL (eds.)
Windows on the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and
Prehistory, pp. 199216. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan.
Ikawa-Smith F (2004) Humans along the Pacific margin of
Northeast Asia before the last glacial maximum: Evidence
for their presence and adaptations. In: Madsen DB (ed.) Entering
America: Northeast Asia and Beringia before the Last Glacial
Maximum, pp. 285309. Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press.
Kaner S (2002) Trouble in the Japanese Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. Before Farming 2: 123. http://www.waspjournals.com.
Matsumoto N (2002) Update on the Japanese Early and Middle
Palaeolithic problem. Before Farming 2: 2425. http://www.
waspjournals.com.
Matsuura S (1999) A chronological review of Pleistocene human
remains from the Japanese archipelago. In: Omoto K (ed.) Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese,
pp. 181197. Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese
Studies.

Japanese Archipelago,
Prehistoric HunterFisher-Gatherers
Gary W Crawford, University of Toronto Mississauga,
Mississauga, ON, Canada
Hiroto Takamiya, Sapporo University, Sapporo,
Hokkaido, Japan
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Epi-Jomon The last manifestation of the Jomon found only in
northeastern Japan dating to about 200 BC to AD 500.
Fukui Cave One of the sites of the Jomon Culture, located on
the southern island of Kyushu, Japan (Yoshii-town, Nagasaki),

637

Jomon The time in Japanese pre-history from about c. 14 000

to 1000 BC in most regions of Japan and to AD 500 in the
northeast.
Okhotsk Culture A continental culture that migrated to
Hokkaido about AD 500 with a predominately coastal
orientation, and a subsistence based on maritime resources, a few
crops and pigs.
Satsumon The decedents of the Tohoku Yayoi who eventually
spread throughout most of Hokkaido, established dry-field
millet, wheat, barley, and other crop production there and who
became the Ainu people who still live in Hokkaido.
Shellmidden Period In Okinawa, instead of Jomon and/or
Yayoi periods commonly used for the mainland Japanese
prehistoric chronology, some archaeologists prefer to use this
term in order to stress the uniqueness of the prehistoric culture
developed on the islands. The Shellmidden periods are the Jomon
through the Yayoi-Heian Periods.
Tohoku Yayoi The Final Jomon in northeast Japan that had
taken on most aspects of Yayoi culture, including agriculture but
mainly only dry-field production, and whose populations were
not replaced by migrating Yayoi people.
Yayoi-Heian Period The period in Okinawa between c. 300 BC
to AD 1100 is tentatively called the Yayoi-Heian period. The
subsistence economy was gathering, fishing, and hunting. This
period seems to be a continuation of the Jomon. Thus some have
suggested that this period be called the Epi-Jomon of the
Southern Islands.

The Jomon refers to the period of time from c. 14 000

to 1000 BC in southwestern Japan and to about AD
500 in northeastern Japan (the Jomon period) as well
as to the Jomon culture in the Japanese archipelago.
As a culture the concept refers to a set of material
traits rather than a shared belief set; nevertheless, the
Jomon is a heterogeneous entity. The generally agreed
upon shared trait set consists of low-temperature
fired pottery (none is kiln-fired or wheel-thrown)
that is often cord-marked (Jomon translates as cord
pattern), clay figurines, stone tools, and pit house
communities. A minority of sites, probably fewer than
5%, is associated with shell mounds but these mounds
are usually garbage heaps associated with hamlets and
villages. Monumental architecture such as large earthen circles called kanjodori are part of the Jomon landscape, particularly in south-central Hokkaido.

Definition
The Jomon is difficult to define because the traits used
to characterize it are not unique to the archipelago,
nor are they unique to a particular period in Japan.
The range of styles encompassing Jomon pottery
designs through time is unique, however. Even so,
some attributes such as cord-wrapped stick impressions and rouletting are found on pottery in many
settings throughout the world. Furthermore, aspects
of technology shared by most Jomon sites include
bone fishhooks, net sinkers, tanged stone knives,
as well as grinding stones and manos, indicating a

638 ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers

generally shared set of subsistence practices that

included the use of inland and coastal resources.
Dogs and a narrow suite of crops were raised in
addition to hunting and collecting a wide range of
other plants and animals. A number of specialized
items such as jadeite, asphalt, salt, and lacquer were
extracted or produced in some regions. Sites are
found throughout what is now modern Japan from
subtropical Okinawa through temperate latitudes including Hokkaido and many offshore islands. The
Jomon did not spread beyond Okinawa to the
Sakishima region, the southernmost part of modern
Japan.

Chronology
The chronological subdivisions are generally found
throughout Japan (Figure 1). Northeastern Japan and
Okinawa have subdivisions that deviate from the
general pattern. The earliest pottery appears during
Cal. years
AD 1000

Hokkaido Northern SW Japan

Tohoku
Ainu
Satsumon
Nara-Heian
Okhotsk

500
1
BC

Yayoi-Heian

Kofun

Epi-Jomon

Okinawa
Gusuku

Tohoku Yayoi
Yayoi

500

Final Jomon

Final Jomon
1000
Late Jomon
2000
Middle Jomon
3000
4000

Early Jomon

5000
6000

Early Jomon

Initial Jomon

Initial Jomon

7000
8000

the Incipient Jomon, an Upper Palaeolithic assemblage in all other characteristics. Radiocarbon dates
associated with the earliest pottery range from
13 800 BP at Odai Yamamoto I in northeastern Japan
to 12 700 BP at Fukui Cave in Kyushu (15 000
13 000 cal. BC). Archaeologists debate whether the
pottery was a local invention or whether it diffused
from the mainland. The diffusion question may not
be resolvable. Nevertheless, pottery was coming into
use throughout East Asia by 12 000 BC indicating a
rudimentary knowledge of technology. More fruitful
questions relate to the impact this new technology had
on the final Upper Palaeolithic cultures.
The round and pointed-based pottery of the Initial
Jomon was superseded by the Lower Ento flat-based
pottery of the Early Jomon (Figure 24). Pottery in
northeastern Japan is normally cylindrical. Similar
forms of pottery are found in northeastern China at
the same time but the context and decorative styles
bare little resemblance to those of the Early Jomon.
The similarities are probably coincidental, although
some archaeologists view the similarities as evidence
of direct contact between the regions. The subsequent
Middle Jomon pottery is extremely diverse, the earliest
being elaborated Early Jomon pottery. Upper Ento
(Middle Jomon) pottery in Hokkaido is substantially
identical to Lower Ento (Early Jomon) but has castellated rims and applique. Other noncylindrical forms
mark a period of extreme variation throughout Japan
including the fire-flame pottery of central Japan.
At least six style zones are recognized throughout
the archipelago during the Middle Jomon indicating
zones of habitual interaction or communication.
The number of significant spheres of interaction is
reduced to 2 by Late to Final Jomon times indicating
more integrated interaction compared to earlier periods. One is in northeastern Japan and the second is
in southwestern Japan where Late and Final Jomon
pottery is simplified and quite plain, mirroring developments in the adjacent Korean Peninsula.

9000
10 000
11 000

End of the Jomon

Incipient Jomon
Upper
Palaeolithic

12 000
13 000
14 000

Upper Palaeolithic/Incipient Jomon

Upper Palaeolithic

Figure 1 Chronology of the Japanese archipelago illustrating

the main periods and cultures. Dashed lines indicate unclear
boundaries. The Okinawa Jomon and Yayoi are referred to by
some as the Shellmidden period.

The Final Jomon in southwestern Japan ended as a

result of immigration and diffusion from the mainland marking the beginning of the Yayoi culture. The
Yayoi brought intensive wet rice-, wheat-, barley-,
millet-, and soybean-based agriculture, metallurgy, and
a new sociopolitical organization from the mainland.
Studies on human bone indicate clear differences
between the migrant Yayoi and native Jomon populations. Still under debate are new radiocarbon dates
of residues on Yayoi pottery are pushing back the

ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers

639

Figure 2 Excavation of an Early Jomon pit house at the Yagi site, Minamikayabe, Hokkaido.

Figure 3 Pit houses at the Early Jomon Hamanasuno site, Minamikayabe, Hokkaido.

earliest Yayoi pottery to about 1000 BC from 500 BC.

This means that the Yayoi began only a few centuries
after similar changes in the Korean Peninsula had
taken place. Recent research disproves that rice was
introduced to Japan from the south through Okinawa
and the Ryukyu Islands. Current evidence is for a
route from the mainland through Kyushu.
The demise of the Jomon was not synchronous
throughout the archipelago. While the Yayoi

developed quickly in the southwest where Jomon

populations were not particularly dense, it continued
in the northeast. Final Jomon people made adjustments in the face of developments on their margins
and experimented with a southwestern style of agriculture that included wet rice production at locales
such as the Tareyanagi site in Aomori prefecture. Rice
production was not successful but they continued to
grow crops such as barley, wheat, millet, and hemp.

640 ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers

Figure 4 An Early Jomon cylindrical pot (Ento Kaso phase)

showing prominent cord-marking.

Ultimately, cultures in the northeast that adopted

agriculture became the Tohoku Yayoi, a descendent
of the Final Jomon rather than a substitution of it by
migrants. The Emishi, a people mentioned in early
historic documents in Japan as foreigners in the
northeast, likely refers to the Tohoku Yayoi, the nascent Satsumon, and perhaps even the Epi-Jomon
cultures. Supporting this view are data demonstrating
that the Ainu are physically similar to the Jomon
people rather than the Yayoi. The Ainu ancestors
are known as the archaeological Satsumon culture.
At the northern extremes of Honshu and in
Hokkaido, the Jomon lasted until at least AD 500
when the ancestral Satsumon people moved into
Hokkaido from northern Tohoku, displaced by political events to the south. The post-Final Jomon cultures in Hokkaido contemporary with the Tohoku
Yayoi are the Epi- or Zoku-Jomon. Epi-Jomon life
appears to have been relatively simple compared to
that of earlier Jomon periods. Most known sites such
as the Sapporo Eki Kita-Guchi site (Sapporo Station,
North Entrance) consist of cemeteries and short-term
occupations (Figure 5). The Fugoppe cave site is an
important spiritual space with nearly every rock surface covered in art. A few crops have been recovered
from Epi-Jomon sites but they were likely obtained
through exchange with the Tohoku Yayoi. Similar
population movement might have taken place in the
Ryukyu archipelago either at during latter part of the
Yayoi-Heian or immediately prior to the Gusuku
period. Linguistic and osteological data suggest population movements from mainland Japan. Finally, the

Figure 5 Earthen ridge forming part of a circular enclosure (kanjodori) around a cemetery at the Kiusu site, Hokkaido.

ASIA, EAST/Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers

Okhotsk culture occupied the northern coast of

Hokkaido, having emigrated from the continent
sometime around AD 500. This culture had a maritime adaptation but also grew a few crops as well as
raised pigs. They appear to have been absorbed by the
Satsumon culture.

Subsistence
Jomon resource procurement strategies included
hunting, gathering, fishing, and some food production. Food production was not as intensive as it was
in cultures contemporary with the Jomon in China
but may resemble that of the earliest agricultural
peoples in northeastern China. Despite similar Upper
Palaeolithic and Epi-Palaeolithic heritages on the
mainland and on the Japanese archipelago, cultures
in the two regions diverged dramatically by 7000 BC
when people in what is now China were making a
commitment to agriculture. The Jomon made no
similar commitment. However, to call Jomon people
strictly hunter-gatherers does not adequately characterize their economic system that lies partway along
a continuum of hunting-gathering through agriculture. That is, they had a mixed economy of lowlevel resource production, hunting, gathering, and
fishing. Some archaeologists believe that the Jomon
were indeed agricultural. Nevertheless, Jomon people were able to call upon a variety of strategies to
subsist depending on the habitats in which they were
living. Identifying the specifics through time and
region in Japan is difficult because most archaeology
in Japan is a civil service endeavor meant to rescue
ancient material ahead of modern development
projects.
In regions where techniques such as flotation have
been carried out to recover charred plant remains, a
rich plant resource procurement regime is evident. In
Hokkaido, for example, flotation has been conducted
since the mid-1970s. Nuts are prevalent in the Initial
Jomon subsistence but Early Jomon people collected
fewer nuts. Instead small-grained seeds of grasses and
annual plants were utilized, much as in Early Neolithic cultures in China and elsewhere. Several plants
such as barnyard millet were planted in gardens. Bottle gourd, buckwheat, and azuki bean may also have
been crops. By 1000 BC millets and rice from China
were present as far north as northern Honshu at the
Kazahari site. Most important plants for the Jomon

Asia, East/Peopling of Siberia

641

flourished in human impacted and modified habitats

by the Early Jomon period. Familiarity with plant
management and gardening likely facilitated the
adoption of Chinese cultigens and their rapid incorporation into the economy. The Satsumon and their
descendents, the Ainu, had a substantially agricultural
economy that was derived from the Tohoku Yayoi
agricultural system. Similar interdisciplinary research
in Okinawa, at the extreme southernmost end of the
Japanese archipelago, shows that the island was first
successfully colonized by people through the latter
part of the Middle and Late Jomon periods. Archaeobotanical data so far indicate that they succeeded
there with a strictly hunting-gathering-fishing economy. It is quite rare for people to colonize small islands
such as Okinawa without agriculture. They were able
to adapt successfully by exploiting coral reef fish and
probably nuts. This subsistence economy lasted for at
least three thousand years.
See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Chinese
Civilization; Early Holocene Foragers; Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures.

Further Reading
Aikens CM and Higuchi T (1982) The Prehistory of Japan. New
York: Academic Press.
Crawford GW (1983) Paleoethnobotany of the Kameda Peninsula
Jomon. Ann Arbor, MI: Museum of Anthropology, University of
Michigan.
Crawford GW (1997) Anthropogenesis in Prehistoric Northeastern
Japan. In: Gremillion K (ed.) People, Plants, and Landscapes:
Studies in Paleoethnobotany, pp. 86103. University of Alabama
Press.
Crawford GW and Takamiya H (1990) The origins and implications of late prehistoric plant husbandry in northern Japan.
Antiquity 64: 889911.
Habu J (2004) Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hanihara K (1990) Dual structure model for the population history
of the Japanese. Japan Review 2: 133.
Imamura K (1996) Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular
East Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Kidder JE and Esaka T (1968) Prehistoric Japanese Arts: Jomon
Pottery. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
Pearson RJ, Barnes GL, and Hutterer KL (eds.) (1986) Windows on
the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory. Ann
Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.
Takamiya H (2001) Introductory routes of rice to Japan: An examination of the southern route hypothesis. Asian Perspectives 40:
209226.

See: Siberia, Peopling of.

642 ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND

CIVILIZATIONS
Sarah Milledge Nelson, University of Denver,
Denver, CO, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Lower Xiajiadian culture An archaeological culture in
Northeast China, found mainly in southeastern Inner Mongolia,
northern Hebei and western Liaoning, China.
Upper Xiajiadian culture A Bronze Age archaeological culture
in Northeast China derived from the Eurasian steppe bronze
tradition, and roughly contemporaneous to the Western
Zhou Dynasty.
Yayoi period An era in the history of Japan from about 300 BC
to AD 250.

Northeast Asia includes the Chinese northeast, or

Dongbei (formerly known as Manchuria), eastern
Inner Mongolia, the Russian Far East south of the
Amur river, the Korean peninsula, and the Japanese
islands (Figure 1). This region is varied in geology,
but connected by long coast lines, and much early
contact was probably by boat. Japan was completely
cut off by the Holocene period, and its largely volcanic islands were somewhat isolated but never
completely out of touch. The Korean peninsula is a
block of tilted granite, with a relatively steep eastern
side with few bays but many small islands on the
south and west (Figure 2). The sea between Korean
and Japan was probably a meeting ground of cultures, especially the southern end where islands are
visible from the peninsula to Kyushu Island of Japan.
The Dongbei and its surroundings are more continental. Chonji, the Heavenly Lake, occupies a large crater in mountains called Changbaishan (Ever White
Mountains) in Chinese and Paektusan (Whitehead
Mountain) in Korean. Lower mountains separate
northeastern China from the Russian Far East, and
eastern Inner Mongolia from the Dongbei. None of
the mountains made impenetrable barriers.
Due to the long tradition within China of recording
not only their own history but geographic and cultural information about surrounding polities, the archaeological record sometimes can be enriched by
contemporaneous accounts. Distinctive polities and
perhaps states formed earlier in Dongbei roughly at
the same time as the Xia dynasty in central China
(c. 22061550 BCE), then contributed bronze metallurgy and domesticated horses to groups to their east,

south, and north. Each state had its own form of

organization, and each civilization its unique culture;
nevertheless common threads ran through them,
making a rich tapestry of related cultures.

Complexity in Inner Mongolia and

Liaoning Province
Social and political complexity emerged in the northeastern part of the Asian continent first in Inner
Mongolia and Liaoning Province. The Hongshan
period demonstrates early social stratification, followed by a little-known culture called Xiaoheyan,
and the better studied Lower Xiajiandian and Upper
Xiajiadian. These are followed by Bronze Age societies in Liaoning and Jilin Provinces, including the
Liaod ong peninsula, containing some high status
burials but no known central places.
Hongshan (40002500 BCE) is best known for its
ritual building with life-sized statues in an elaborate
ceremonial area, another ritual area featuring smaller
pregnant figurines, and elite burials containing no
burial goods except highly polished jades. The jades
take specific shapes, such as pig-dragons, clouds,
birds, and tortoises, suggesting that they might mark
ranks or craft specialties. The pig appears to have
been venerated, suggested not only by pig-dragon
jades, but also by a life-sized pig statue in the ritual
building, and a hill which, viewed from the Goddess
Temple, resembles a pig head, with pointed ears.
Several archaeologists describe the leaders of
Hongshan to be wu, a Chinese word which describes
shaman-like characteristics and duties. Xiaoheyan
(28002100 BCE) overlaps with Hongshan, but its
distinctive pottery assemblage sets it apart.
Lower Xiajiadian (LXJD) and Upper Xiajiadian
culture (UXJD) were named from a single stratified
site where both were first discovered. Since that time,
many sites of each period have been located and
excavated, and the distinction between them is clear,
both in terms of time and cultural characteristics.
Lower Xiajiadian is dated 23001600 BCE, almost
contemporaneous with Erlitou on the Yellow River in
China, which is thought by many to be the remains of
the Xia, Chinas earliest dynasty. Although a gap
appears in C-14 dates between the Hongshan period
and LXJD, some Hongshan jades have been found in
LXJD burials, and some LXJD sites directly overlie
Hongshan layers.

Russian Far East

ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS 643

RUSSIA

Dongbei

TOKYO

PYONGYANG

Nara

SEOUL

S. KOREA
Ye
Se llow
a

BEIING*

Upper and Lower

ea n)
t S apa
Xiajiadian
s
J
Ea of
n
ya
a
on
s
e
o
e
ch
oh
an
(S
Ka
sh
Xia
N. KOREA Lelang
ng
o
H
Bo
Ba hai
y

M Inn
on er
ga
lia

MONGOLIA

JAPAN

Sam

Han

Yoshinogari

Kofun
Kyushu Island

Yayan

CHINA
Pacific
Ocean
Figure 1 Northeast Asia, with archaeological cultures located.

Because Xia was described as the first dynasty

in China in Chinese histories, the discovery of a contemporaneous complex society far to the northeast
was surprising to Chinese archaeologists and historians. Polychrome pottery from LXJD contexts, withpainted designs that appear to be forerunners of the
decoration on Shang dynasty bronzes, was another
surprising discovery (Figure 3). Baggy-legged tripods
are new in LXJD, comprising most of the cooking pots.
Small tripod pitchers are also new in the region, but
otherwise LXJD continued to produce and use many
of the same stone tools and much of the same types of
pottery as before, in spite of having some small bronze
artifacts.
LXJD remains are found mostly in Inner Mongolia,
although a few sites have been found to the south and
east in Liaoning Province. The most conspicuous sites
loom on ridges above major rivers, marked by still
extant extensive stonewalls and fallen towers, with
stone circular footings for buildings inside the walls
on the hilltops. In addition to these high sites,
unwalled villages have been unearthed. Sites of three
sizes are distributed in a central place type hierarchy,
suggesting political centralization.
A burial site with about 800 graves was completely excavated at Dadianzi, displaying conspicuous

gradation of ranking by both the depth of the burials

(the richest are up to seven meters deep) and the richness of the grave goods, including small bronze objects.
Wooden coffins were used for the larger and richer
burials. Red and black lacquer layered on bamboo and
wooden artifacts, as well as abundant seashells, may
well indicate trade with the south. Animal scapuli
prepared by boring holes were used to divine the will
of the spirits and ancestors according to the way cracks
formed in the fire. Such oracle bones with inscriptions are well known from the Late Shang, around
1250 BCE. However, uninscribed oracle bones are a
Dongbei development dating back some two millennia
earlier than LXJD north of the Xilamulun River, and
presumably continuously used for about 4000 years
(see below).
Although the rich graves belong to both men and
women, a gender distinction in placement is evident.
All the burials are flexed and on their sides with their
heads to the northeast, but the males face the village
and the females face away from the village. Another
gender difference is that women tend to be accompanied by spindle whorls while men are more likely to
have stone axes.
It has been argued that LXJD is just as complex as
Erlitou, in terms of economy, ranking, extent of the

644 ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

Lake
Khanka

ve

Nongan

Tu

en

Ri

Changchun

ryo

Kogu

Yan

Chaoyang

Later Wel

Kungnae Fortress
Cholbon Fortress
Yodong Fortress r
East Sea
ve
Ansi Fortress
Ri
u
l
Ya
ng
a
hw
s
ng
Pyongyang Fortress
Po rtres
o
F
Fushun

Bohai Bay
Silla
Sabi Kumsong
ong
Koryya
Ka
Kumgwan

Yellow Sea

Pa

ek

ch

Ungjin

Tamna

Figure 2 Korea and Manchuria, with sites located.

polity, craft specialization, and intensive agriculture.

Certainly it seems that the two polities were directly
or indirectly in contact.

Upper Xiajiadian
By 1600 BCE UXJD appears, with apparent connections with the archaeology of the Eurasian steppes,
especially in the styles of small bronze artifacts. The
locally cast bronzes include knives with upward
points and handles cast with rings or animals, and
small horse trappings. The large stone constructions
of LXJD were no longer built. UXJD depended on
herding sheep and goats in addition to agriculture.
Ridden horses may have been an aid to herding. Slab

graves near the surface are characteristic of UXJD.

The burial style suggests steppe affiliations, as well as
shapes and motifs on the bronzes.
In Jilin Province, Bronze Age archaeological remains
are labeled the Xituanshan culture (1200400). Although there are no central places, large villages
with cemeteries imply more than a simple agrarian
society. Each person is buried in a stone slab burial
with a few pots, stone tools, and heads or other bones
of pigs and dogs. Elite burials are not in cemeteries,
but found singly. Typically they contain a bronze
dagger with a blade in the shape of a pair of curly
brackets ({}), having a T-shaped handle constructed
of different materials. Mirrors of geometric design
are frequently found in elite burials, along with

ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS 645

stone cists magnified many fold. In the few dolmens

that escaped total pillaging, it seems that these giant
constructions were used for burials of the high elite.
No complete burial has been excavated, but a composite picture would suggest that contents typically
include two polished small red jars, a bronze or polished stone dagger, and a necklace consisting of tubular stone beads, sometimes with a single curved bead
(called gogok in Korean, magatama in Japanese) in the
center. It is reasonable to suppose that the gogok is a
symbol of authority at this time, since it was abundantly associated with later elites in Korea and Japan.

Bronze Age Korea

Figure 3 Painted pottery from Lower Xiajiadian.

Figure 4 Liaoning dagger and bone with chariot drawing.

necklaces of green tubular beads. An etched bone

clearly depicts a chariot with driver being pulled by
two horses (Figure 4).

Eastern Dongbei and the

Korean Peninsula
In southern Jilin and on the Liaodong and Korean
peninsulas, dolmen-like constructions are conspicuous on the landscape. They probably date to as early
as 1000 BCE. Made of stone slabs weighing several
tons, they have been suggested to reflect the concept of

The Bronze Age in Korea has some large population

aggregates, which are often interpreted as chiefdoms.
Bronze Age pottery styles in the Korean peninsula
vary by region, but they are essentially similar
consisting of jars with relatively plain exteriors, flat
bases, and wide mouths, called Mumun. They also
resemble pottery of the Dongbei and the southern
Russian Far East. Rice pollen, phytoliths, and grains
impressions, as well as evidence for millets and
barley, have all been found in the paste of Mumun
pottery, confirming that this was a fully agricultural
society. Houses are roomier than those of the Neolithic, and grouped into larger aggregates. Instead of
being placed in river valleys, Bronze Age villages
were built on hill slopes, presumably to allow for
terracing of rice paddies with water diverted from
small streams. Agricultural fields have been uncovered in several southern Korean sites, with rice,
barley, and millets identified as dominant crops.
In the southern part of the Korean peninsula, most
dolmens consist of only a large monolith lying on the
ground, covering a burial. The burials are most often
in stone cists, but sometimes they are in pits with or
without wooden coffins, and sometimes large jars
contain the bodies, especially in the southwest. Daggers are often made of polished limestone instead of
bronze, but Liaoning-style bronze daggers have been
found all over the Korean peninsula, especially in the
southeast and southwest. The bronze daggers appear
in Korea at least by 800 BCE.
The nature of the society in Bronze Age Korea has
been a subject of much discussion, but no consensus
has formed. Most would propose that they were small
polities with local leaders who are buried under dolmens, which are often glossed as chiefdoms.

The State of Old Chosun

Histories of the Han dynasty in China relate the
establishment of a state called Chosun (Chaoxian)
in the northern part of the Korean peninsula. Some

646 ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

Korean historians claim an earlier state in this region

which they refer to as Kija Chosun, founded around
1000 BCE by a relative of the last Shang king who
was conquered by the Zhou. No archaeological evidence supports the interpretation of such a state in the
Korean peninsula.
According to later Chinese historical writings, the
state of Chosun was founded by Wiman in the location of a walled city, and archaeological evidence
suggests complex society in northern Korea by
the fourth century BCE. For example, knife-shaped
coins from the Warring States period in China
(450221 BCE) are found in clusters and sometimes
hoards from the Yalu River to the Taedong River.
In addition, some burials near Pyongyang contain
artifacts with Chinese inscriptions, including dates
in the third century BCE, contemporaneous with the
Chinese Qin dynasty. These discoveries confirm the
literacy in Chinese of some inhabitants of Chosun.
Han dynasty documents describe the battles through
which Wiman, who himself was from Liaoning,
became the leader of that state of Chosun. Later
when both an army and navy from the Chinese Han
dynasty conquered his grandson Ugos city, Chinese
documents provide corroborating detail for the existence of such a state, including the lengthy siege and
strong armies that were needed for the conquest.
Archaeological evidence includes a walled city across
the Taedong River from Pyongyang, which possibly is
the remains of the original capital of Wiman Chosun,
since it has the irregular walls of a Korean city rather
than the rectangular shape of a Chinese city. Shortly
after the Han conquest a census recorded the population, with many locations having the name of Tosong,
or earthen fortress, suggesting walled towns. Many of
these have been located by archaeological survey.
The Han leadership was not content with merely
conquering Chosun; it set up governing commanderies in the northern part of the peninsula, using both
native and Chinese administrators, some of whose
tombs have been excavated. The longest lasting of
these commanderies was called Lelang (Nangnang
in Korean). The Han interest in the peninsula was
partly a matter of protecting Chinese borders, but
trade was also an important impetus. The Han had
declared a state monopoly on both salt and iron, and
may well have been seeking these commodities in
Korea. The presence of Chinese officials and local
nobles during the Lelang period is reflected in the
burials, with both local and imported artifacts.

Korean States after Nangnang

Some Chinese documents referred to the southern
regions of the peninsula contemporaneous with

Nangnang as Samhan, or three Han states (a different

character from that of Han China). However, multiple states are named as part of each of the three
Hans, suggesting that the term meant something like
a walled and possibly self-governing city with an
agricultural hinterland. To confuse posterity further,
one Chinese document refers to the whole south of
the peninsula as the Chin State. Archaeological discoveries demonstrate that the south was developing
under the stimulus of Nangnang. For example, a
burial in the first century CE in the coastal region
where one of the Kaya states was founded contained
a writing brush, suggesting that literacy was known
in the south of the peninsula during the Chinese
Han dynasty. Other archaeological discoveries include southern coastal sites containing Chinese Han
dynasty coins and oracle bones without inscriptions.
Korean histories refer to the time period from
57 BCE to CE 668 as the Three Kingdoms Period.
The three kingdoms are Koguryo, Paekche, and
Silla. In addition six city-states were called Kaya,
and coexisted with these warring kingdoms before
being conquered or absorbed by Silla. Archaeological
discoveries do not entirely confirm the early beginnings of the southern states of Paekche and Silla,
although a large city has been unearthed in the southwest, and early rich burials were found in Silla territory. Whenever each crystallized into a state, polities
of some sort were forming in the north, southwest,
and southeast of the peninsula respectively.
Koguryo was probably the earliest of the Korean
kingdoms to become a true state, as we would now
employ the term. The kingdom of Koguryo arose first
in valleys of northern tributaries to the Yalu (Amnok)
River. In Chinese writings Koguryo is described as an
offshoot of Puyo, a polity in northern Manchuria
and the Russian Far East, described in Qin dynasty
records as the result of an expedition to that region.
Archaeologically, Koguryo is characterized by large
stone tombs. They are mostly in Jian, although many
contemporaneous burial sites are also found across
the river on the North Korean side. As Koguryo
expanded by conquest, a large walled city defended
by a hill fort was constructed in Jian, in presentday China (see Asia, East: China, Neolithic Cultures;
China, Paleolithic Cultures) on the north bank of the
Yalu River. Within Jian, the development of large
burials begins with stone-mounded tombs, followed
by one unique tomb with monolithic stones shaped
like a stepped pyramid, to tombs made of stone slabrooms covered with earthen mounds. These last are
the famed painted tombs, providing a wealth of information about the lives of the elite. Several murals
depict a couple, presumably the tomb occupants,
sitting side by side on a raised and covered platform.

ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS 647

In one such painting, servants prepare a feast, and

wrestlers and dancers perform. A scene of hunting
tigers and deer from horseback using the Parthian
shot, twisted in the saddle to shoot with a long bow,
is well known.
An inscribed stele found in the vicinity of Jian
boasts of the exploits of King Kwanggaeto. The stele
details the conquest of many towns in the fourth and
fifth centuries. Kwanggaeto extended his realm
far into the Dongbei, including sites in the current
Liaoning and Jilin provinces. It is thought that the
stone pyramid tomb, noted above, was his funerary
monument. Buddhism and literacy were well established within the reign of King Kwanggaeto.
Later Koguryo kings drove the Han dynastic overlords from the Korean peninsula, and moved the
capital to present-day Pyongyang. Painted tombs
are found in large cemeteries, with Chinese influence
visible in the style of the tombs, as well as in the use of
the four seasonal animals (blue dragon, red bird,
white tiger, and black tortoise). Both Buddhist and
shamanic images are found painted on the walls of
tombs (Figure 5).
Korean histories relate that Paekche was founded
by two brothers who were younger sons of a Koguryo
king. The archaeology near Seoul seems to reflect this
tale, as stone mounded graves in pyramidal style have

Figure 5 Tomb painting ox cart, armored horse, and noble

ladies.

been excavated along the Han River. Unsuccessful

battles with Koguryo forced Paekche farther and farther south, while Koguryo occupied the Han River
from the current location of Seoul to its mouth at
Inchon. The kingdom of Paekche is known archaeologically from early fortresses at Inchon on the Yellow
Sea coast and along the Han River in central Korea,
and from later tombs and Buddhist monuments
farther south, at Kongju and Puyo.
Near the final Paekche capital at present-day
Kongju, an enormous Buddhist temple is under excavation, as well as part of a large palace and its extensive grounds. Several pagodas still stand, as well as
miruks, which are life-sized human stone figures with
a flat hat made from a separate stone. Although the
name indicates they represent the matreiya, the
Buddha of the future, they are unlike other Buddhist
sculpture and probably antedate the adoption of
Buddhism in the region.
A group of earth-mounded royal tombs occupies an
area outside Kyongju. Inside they resemble small late
Koguryo tombs, sometimes with faded painting on
the stone-slab walls. They were all looted in antiquity,
but a brick tomb was concealed underneath, and was
entirely intact when it was discovered in 1971. This
was the tomb of King Munyong and his wife, complete with inscriptions giving their names and the
years of their deaths. Each wore a gold headdress of
cut-out floral design, and gilt-bronze burial shoes. It
is interesting that although Buddhism was flourishing
at the time in Paekche, the burial has little Buddhist
iconography. However, the tomb was constructed of
bricks impressed with lotus designs, with a barrel
vault ceiling and flame-shaped wall niches, reflecting
Chinese styles.
The Silla kingdom developed around the city of
Kumsong (meaning Gold Fortress), which is presently
known as Kyongju. The history/mythology of Silla
describes six tribes in the valley joining forces for
strength against enemies nearby. The main city arose
within a plain surrounded on three sides by rivers,
protected by a hillfort on the southern river and fortresses ringing the higher mountains on all sides. The
archaeology of Silla can be divided into three periods.
Remains of some hilltop fortresses may partly derive
from the earliest era, and documents would include
the hill fort known as Panwolsong, or Half Moon
Fortress. During the early period the polity was
known as Saro. It may not have been yet a monarchy,
although the king lists, based on a lost history of Silla,
contain names of kings and queens as well as their
parents, continuously from 57 BCE to CE 9xx.
The era of huge mounded tombs (fourth to sixth
centuries) is well published, for the mounds were not
easy to rob, and when first excavated in the 1930s

648 ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

Figure 6 Gold crown from Silla.

they were found to contain rich grave goods. Most

spectacular were the royal tombs, each of which included a gold crown, gold belt, and other gold jewelry
such as necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and in some
cases finger and toe rings (Figure 6). On the south
mound of Tomb 98 in Kyongju, the gold weighed
almost five kilograms. Horse trappings are prominent
in these burials, especially bronze saddlebows with
cut-out and gilded decoration. The crowns are tall,
with uprights in the shape of antlers and stylized
trees. Many scholars have related these shapes to
shamanism, and indeed one of the early titles applied
to the ruler is thought to mean shaman. The crowns
are covered with dangling birch-leaf-shaped gold
pieces and jade and glass gogok attached with twisted
gold wire. Burial goods include artifacts made of
birch bark, having painted designs including white
horses and the red bird of the south. Exotic goods,
such as Mediterranean glass containers, Central Asian
silver bowls and an inlaid dagger also came to Silla
from afar. Trade must have been conducted both over
sea routes from the south and across the silk road
through Central Asia. Although Silla is mentioned
in Chinese writings of the time, Chinese artifacts
are rare, consisting of only one small glazed bottle.
As the kingdom farthest removed from China within
the Korean peninsula, Silla resisted Chinese influence longest. This is particularly evident in the burial
style, for both Koguryo- and Paekche-built Chinese

style tombs with entry passages intended to be reentered for postmortem ceremonies, which made
them inviting to loot, while Silla tombs were impossible
to re-enter, covered having several meters of boulders
topped by more meters of earth.
Silla society was divided into endogamous groups
called bone ranks, and sumptuary rules applied to
each group, with restrictions specified for men and
women separately. Only members of the Holy Bone
were eligible to rule, but women could be selected
as rulers as well as men. The largest and most
spectacular of the mounded burials belonged to a
queen. The True Bone were high nobles, with three
other ranks of lesser nobles below them. Interestingly,
the common people, both men and women, were
allowed to own and ride horses, but they were restricted in the amount and kind of saddles and horse
trappings they could display.
Buddhism was accepted in Silla by the fifth century,
and burials became less lavish, as cremation became
more commonplace. Mounded tombs were often surrounded by the 12 zodiacal year-signs of China, and
some even had spirit paths leading up to them, guarded by life-sized stone animals and warriors. As in
Paekche, enormous Buddhist temples were endowed,
and the hills around Kyongju became filled with
Buddhist carvings on stone boulders, which are still
objects of pilgrimage.
Kaya is the name given to a group of city-states that
never coalesced into a larger polity, and they were
gradually conquered by Silla. They are often seen as
allied with Paekche because of the written history, but
in terms of artifacts such as pottery and weaponry they
are closer to Silla. Six Kaya polities were distributed
along the Naktong River valley and along the southern
coast. The Kaya region was extremely rich in iron.
Almost all cemeteries contain iron armor and iron
weapons, and the richest burials have iron ingots laid
out for a floor. It is likely that the large iron ingots
were an important export. One Kaya tombs is reminiscent of multiple interment tombs in Liaoning, with
a central burial and others radiating around it, separated by stonewalls. One burial hill has overlapping
double mounds, in which one persons head points
north and the other northeast, suggesting that the
husband and wife came from groups with different
burial orientations.
The stonewares from Kaya are closely related to
those of Silla. Kaya stoneware vessels in the shape of
everyday objects allow unusual insights into the material culture. They include houses, carts, sandals,
boats, and drinking horns. Three of them depict men
on horseback, showing their complete clothing and
the rigging of the horses, including stirrups. Of two
found together, one is thought to be the noble, and the

ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS 649

other the servant, due to differences in clothing. The

third one is a soldier and horse both in armor.
After Silla conquered the Kaya states and other
unaffiliated towns in the southeast, inscribed boundary stones that are still extant were set up on the
mountain ridge dividing Silla from Paekche, in the region of the Han River, and far to the north on the east
coast. Silla was able to conquer first Paekche and then
Koguryo with the aid of the Tang Dynasty. In CE 668,
all but the northernmost part of the peninsula was
ruled by United Silla, with its capital still at Kyongju.

Yayoi and Kofun Periods in Japan

In the meantime, in the Japanese islands, other complex polities developed, reflecting local changes
as well as contact from the peninsula, Lelang, and
mainland. After the long period known as the Jomon,
which was characterized by cord-marked pottery, new
plainer pottery ushered in a period known as Yayoi,
although more important in the distinction between
Jomon and Yayoi is the intensive growing of rice.
A series of AMS dates, as well as tree rings, confirm
that Yayoi is much earlier than was once thought.
Yayoi appeared first in Kyushu, the major island nearest to the Korean peninsula, as early as 900 BC, and
spread eastward and northward. The earliest Yayoi
pottery is related in both shapes and manufacturing
technology to Mumun in Korea, but it is not identical.
Whether this represents migration of peoples from the
Korean peninsula or diffusion of ideas, or some combination, is the subject of debate. The consensus among
archaeologists who work in Japan is that some migration from the peninsula occurred, but the previous
Jomon inhabitants also contributed to the continuing
population. The new dating of the elaborate Final
Jomon of Kamegoaka in northern Honshu and the
Initial Yayoi in Kyushu are contemporaneous.
While rice is a hallmark of Yayoi, some rice is
found in Jomon sites as early as Early Jomon: it
does not appear that Jomon sites practiced agriculture as their subsistence base. On the other hand,
large rice paddies, with remains of wooden clogs,
hoes, and spades, have been excavated in the Yayoi
period. Domesticated pigs were raised, and one site
even contains evidence of chickens.
Bronze technology and bronze weapons derived
from those of the Korean peninsula are characteristic
of the Yayoi period. Although both iron and bronze
were imported, they were used as prestige goods and
for dedication to the gods. Bronze swords, mirrors,
and bells were developed from Korean prototypes,
although models developed in the islands diverged
dramatically from those of the peninsula. Large daggers and swords appear to be ceremonial, since they

are too unwieldy to have been used in battle. Bellshaped objects called dotaku must have had ceremonial functions as well, as they are found in caves and
other isolated places, as if they were ritual deposits
(Figure 7). Mirrors were also important, both the
fine-lined geometric type developed in the peninsula
and Chinese-style mirrors. Sword, mirror, and curved
jewel became symbols of the emperor.
The presence of megalithic burials in Japan suggests
another cultural connection with Korea. Southern
style dolmens (large capstones lying on the ground)
are found in Kyushu, as are jar burials, sometimes
under dolmens. Polished stone knives are found in
such burials, as well as tubular beads with a single
curved bead.
The 25 ha site of Yoshinogari on Kyushu is surrounded by a ditch, and the periphery is guarded by
watchtowers standing on gigantic posts. A fortified
inner area contained a burial mound in the center.
A burial in two large jars joined at the mouths was
furnished with tubular blue beads and a bronze
sword. Han dynasty chronicles describe a queen in
Kyushu named Himiko, who lived in a defended
compound. The Yoshinogari site is too early to have
been the domain of Himiko, but she is described as
living in just such a place. However, queens ruling
alone and as co-rulers were known in the subsequent
Kofun period, the time of mounded tombs.

Figure 7 Dotaku bronze bell from Yayoi period.

650 ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

Figure 8 Haniwa of shaman from Kofun period.

The Kofun, or Old Tumulus period, is characterized by large and elaborate tombs. The most spectacular and largest are shaped like old-fashioned
keyholes, with a high circular mound and a foursided lower platform. Often the entire construction
is surrounded by a moat. The tumuli vary in size, with
the largest being 486 m long. Hollow terracotta figures encircled the grave mounds on the outside. These
haniwa depict warriors, shamans, farmers and other
livelihoods, as well as houses, boats, horses, and even
a quiver full of arrows. Some indicate tattooed faces,
and many depict ear-spools and bead necklaces. The
houses resemble Shinto shrines, which are rebuilt
every twenty years but retain the ancient architecture
(Figure 8).
Groups of kofun are found in several places, and
are interpreted as rival centers of power, with evidence of highly stratified societies. They include
northern Kyushu, Izumo on the southwestern coast
of Honshu, Kibi in the southern part of Honshu, the
main island of Japan, on the north side of the Inland
Sea, and Yamato east of the Inland Sea. The very large
tombs that define the Kofun period demonstrate the
existence of leaders who commanded an enormous
amount of labor, and documents show that a division
of labor by family and village was firmly in place.
The appearance of horses, horse-trappings, and
armor has led to a theory that horse riders suddenly

appeared from the continent to form a new warrior

culture in the Late Kofun period. Horses were not
native to Japan, but they are not the most significant
element in the changes in the Late Kofun. However, it
is clear from many lines of evidence that a close
relationship existed between parts of the peninsula
and the islands, and that elite as well as artisans
from Koreas Three Kingdoms were involved in the
establishment of the state in Japan. Artifacts from
the Kofun period are very similar to those of Korea.
In the Fujinoki tomb, the use of gold is lavish. It
was used for crowns, sword hilts, burial shoes, and
saddlebows, in much the same style as those found in
the Silla Kingdom. The tomb of Takamatsuzuka near
Nara contained wall murals with women dressed like
some of those in Koguryo tombs, suggesting that
styles for elite women were widespread. In spite of
these correspondences, the strongest impact on the
Kofun period came from the Paekche kingdom.
The early Buddhist art and architecture of Nara is
acknowledged to be made by artisans from Paekche.
This relationship between the peninsula and the
islands intensified with the introduction of Buddhism
from Paekche. Koguryo in the fourth century was the
first of the Korean Three Kingdoms to accept Buddhism, but it was followed within the century by
Paekche. Although Paekche was destroyed in 668 by
the combined forces of Silla and Tang China, much of
Paekche art can still be seen in the early Buddhist sites
around Nara. Capital cities were laid out in a grid
pattern like that of Changan, the Tang capital.
The growing states of East Asia became more similar to each other as China became the model for
government and culture. However, they were never
identical. Each polity developed and maintained individual styles of material style and governance, while
participating in trade and interaction throughout
northeast Asia.
See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, East: China,

Neolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Prehistoric

Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers; Asia, South: Buddhist Archaeology; Plant Domestication; Political Complexity,
Rise of.

Further Reading
Aikens CM and Rhee SN (eds.) (1992) Pacific Northeast Asia in
Prehsitory; Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers, Farmers, and Sociopolitical Elites. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press.
Barnes GL (1999) The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: Archaeology of China, Korea and Japan. London: Thames and Hudson.
Barnes GL (2001) State Formation in Korea: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
Hudson M (1999) Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese
Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 651

Imamura K (1996) Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular
East Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Nelson SM (1993) The Archaeology of Korea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nelson SM (1995) The Archaeology of Northeast China: Beyond
the Great Wall. London: Routledge.
Nelson SM (2003) Korean Social Archaeology. Seoul: Jipmoon Press.

Shelach G (1999) Leadership Strategies, Economic Activity, and

Interregional Interaction, Social Complexity in Northeast
China. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Takamiya H (2002) Introductory routes of rice to Japan: An examination of the southern route hypothesis. Asian Perspectives
4092: 209226.

ASIA, SOUTH
Contents
Baluchistan and the Borderlands
Buddhist Archaeology
Ganges Valley
India, Deccan and Central Plateau
India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South
Indus Civilization
Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier
Megaliths
Neolithic Cultures
Paleolithic Cultures
Sri Lanka

Baluchistan and the

Borderlands
Ute Franke, DAI, Berlin, Germany
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Baluchistan An arid region located in the Iranian Plateau in
Southwest Asia and South Asia, between Iran, Pakistan, and
Afghanistan.
Indus Civilization The Indus Valley Civilization (c. 26001900)
was an ancient riverine civilization that flourished in the Indus
and GhaggarHakra river valleys in what is now Pakistan and
northwest India.
urbanization The increase over time in the population of cities
in relation to the regions rural population.

Introduction
Baluchistan is a huge landmass that extends from
western Pakistan into southeastern Iran and southern
Afghanistan and separates the open alluvial plains of
the Indian subcontinent from the Iranian Plateau
(Figure 1). It is the largest part of the Indo-Iranian
borderlands which also include parts of the NorthWest Frontier Province, Kandahar, and Hilmand Provinces in Afghanistan, and Sistan/Baluchistan in Iran.

These regions formed, at times, a cultural landscape

linked through traits such as architecture and artifact
styles, interpreted as evidence for exchange, shared
technologies, values, and ideas.
In Baluchistan, human development from the seventh millennium BC onwards, from mobile food
hunters and gatherers to sedentary communities based
on farming and animal husbandry, has been uncovered. Increasing levels of complexity in economy and
technology, social and political organization, accompanied by a population growth and settlement expansion, fostered the development of villages, towns, and
cities and provided the basis for urbanization and state
formation. Throughout, this tradition maintained a
distinctive character, notwithstanding regional differences and changing patterns of interaction.
The purpose of this paper is to outline this development, with a focus on Baluchistan. In order to
understand the preconditions and to assess its role,
we will first discuss the natural conditions that govern
human life and then look at the cultural communities
that formed the conceptual landscape.

Natural Environment
Baluchistan can be divided into three main landforms
plus a small coastal belt: (1) inland basins, (2) deserts,
and (3) mountains rising to 3500 m in the north.
Dissected by narrow river valleys, the mountains

652 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

Bamyan

KABUL
Mardan

Herat

Peshawar
ISLAMABAD

Birjand

Mundigak

Yazd

Kandahar

Shahdad

Kerman

Multan

Quetta

Shahr-i Sokhta

Nausharo
Bam

Zahedan

Mehrgarh
Surab

Tepe Yahya

Jiroft
Sohr Damb/Nal
Mohenjo Daro

Bampur

Khasab
Shimal
Ras al-Khaimah
Lima
Umm al-Quwain
Ajman
Sharjah
Masafi
Dubai
Fujairah
Mleiha
Sohar
Hill

Jodhpur
Turbat
Shahi T., Miri Q.
Hyderabad
Gwadar

Pasni

Karachi

Figure 1 Map of the region with sites. Ute Franke. Map: H. David. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.

run in parallel northsouth folds along the western

fringe of the Indus plain and turn west near the sea,
making access to the Indus plain and the shore difficult. The northerly movement of the Indo-Pakistani
Plate and its collision with the Eurasian Plate shifted
the coastline southward for up to 25 km during the
Holocene and lifted the whole shore.
These geographical barriers direct communications
and the hydraulic system. In the east, large perennial
rivers, such as the Hab, Porali, and Hingol/Nal, drain
the mountain flow-off into the sea, while the western
river systems often discharge into deserts and salt pans.
The mountains comprise several ecological zones
that vary greatly in terms of climate and availability
of soil and water. Climate is, in general, arid with
a precipitation of c. 100 mm yr
1 in the south and
400 mm in the north. Agriculture depends on irrigation and the availability of soils but less than 4% of
Baluchistan is arable. The mountains are barren and
valley floors built with gravel. Only in wider valleys
did a fertile alluvium composed of silt and sand accumulate. In dealing with diversified ecological conditions, flexible subsistence strategies were developed:
while cultivars and domesticated animals remained
much the same throughout, their stake and supplementary dietary measures varied. The need for irrigation
has prompted channel building at an early stage, but
the most remarkable human response to environmental
conditions are the sophisticated dam systems (gabarbands) of southeastern Baluchistan. A prehistoric

population density that exceeds present figures attests

the success of these adaptations.
Baluchistan is rich in mineral resources (copper,
lead, zinc, barite), stones (gray chert, lime- and sandstone, alabaster, marble), and semiprecious stones
(agate, vesuvianite-grossular, lapislazuli).

History of Research
After an intensive post-war period of research in
Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, and
elsewhere, work in Pakistan focused on the Indus
plains (Sindh, Punjab) and its fringes (Gomal,
Bannu). Virtually all archaeological information on
interior Baluchistan was collected between 1880 and
1965. Surveys conducted by A. Stein, B. de Cardi,
W. A. Fairservice, R. Mughal, and others produced
regional data sets that to date form the basis for
settlement analyses, while soundings at Kile Ghul
Mohammad (hereafter: KGM), Quetta, and Anjira
provided a typological and comparative framework.
R. Mughals restudy of this material supported the
concept that an Early Harappan horizon existed in
the Greater Indus Valley, thereby implying the autochthonous development of the Indus Civilization,
notwithstanding interaction.
Research carried out in Central Asia, Afghanistan,
and southeastern Iran, particularly excavations at
Mundigak (J.-M. Casal), Bampur (B. de Cardi),

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 653

Tepe Yahya (C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky), Shahr-e

Sokhta (M. Tosi), and Shahdad (A. Hakemi), widened
cultural horizons and introduced new research perspectives. By 1970, the Indo-Iranian Borderlands had
emerged as a region with distinctive cultural patterns
and new models on human development and interaction were developed. Foreign fieldwork ended in
197879, but Iranian teams continued excavations
and both Afghanistan and Iran have reopened their
borders recently.
In Pakistan, the French Mission working in the
Kacchi Plain at the foot of Bolan Pass proved the
hypotheses of an indigenous cultural development in
Pakistan and particularly in Baluchistan to be truer
than anticipated. At Mehrgarh, Nausharo, Sibri, and
Pirak, a sequence from the aceramic Neolithic Period
through the first millennium BC excavated under
the direction of J.-F. Jarrige, produced new sets of
information that carried cultural complexes beyond
mere pottery styles and facilitated the development of
a wider chronological scheme (Figure 2). In southern

Baluchistan, work was more limited and only now is

the region gaining its proper place in history, mainly
through the French Mission working in Makran since
1985 (R. Besenval, Miri Qalat, Shahi Tump, Dasht
plain) and the German Mission to central (Sohr
Damb/Nal) and southeastern Baluchistan, established
in 199697.
This research is now gradually facilitating the
building of models of past life on a more solid footing,
but it also reveals the limits of such an endeavor: too
many areas remain unexplored, too much information is inadequately published, and too many questions cannot be answered by the old data. However,
no matter how much further information is needed,
Baluchistan is crucial for understanding cultural
development within the Indo-Iranian Borderlands
until the abandonment of settled life in the second
millennium BC and for assessing its role in the wider
interaction spheres: was it a border, frontier, or an
intermediary?

The Cultural Landscape through Time

Figure 2 Mehrgarh: Bolan section with Neolithic levels (with

J.-F. Jarrige, M. Tosi and M. Vidale). Photo: Ute Franke 1983.
2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.

Considering the geographical barriers described, the

question arises as to whether they went along with
cultural isolation. At a first glance, the number of
archaeological assemblages, mostly pottery, supports
this idea. The wide distribution of certain styles, however, points to a different direction. Its implications
are difficult to assess since unlike imported exotic
commodities and materials, such as sea shells, semiprecious stones, and metals which were exchanged,
looted, or paid as tribute, and even unlike the copying
of new technologies, the adaptation of pottery
designs, figurines, or other artifact styles inherits a
semantic dimension which is difficult to assess (see
Pottery Analysis: Stylistic).
With regard to the amount and nature of archaeological data, we have to define descriptive units.
The Balochistan Tradition is the overarching geographically and temporally continuous heuristic system composed of multilinear archaeological entities
which are linked in space and time. Eras are developmental stages, such as food-producing and regionalization. A phase combines a number of cultural
complexes within a broadly defined region and time
trajectory. Cultural complexes or horizons are
recurrent configurations of features within archaeological assemblages, at present mostly pottery styles.
Per definitionem they reflect human abilities, requirements, stylistic, and technological choices and
preferences, but are not a priori considered to represent particular social or even ethnic groups. Their

654 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

distribution patterns form the cultural landscape and

outline mental, or conceptual, maps. Recent research has shown that these styles and horizons are
still badly defined and dated which makes the reconstruction of these processes through time and the
assessment of interaction and its impact on development difficult. Accordingly, we refrain from merging
styles and horizons into larger units that have little
analytical value, but rather discuss the smaller entities,
paying tribute to regional stylistic diversity notwithstanding shared features.
Early Food Producing Era: First Settlements
(Mehrgarh I, II, KGM I, II, Anjira I, II, Miri I?)

After around 7000 BC in northern Baluchistan, mobile hunters and gatherers had gradually settled down.
The adaptation of einkorn, emmer, wheat, and barley
as staple crops, and a successful animal husbandry
(cattle, goat, sheep), facilitated the development
and growth of villages (see Animal Domestication;
Plant Domestication). Mehrgarh is the type site for
understanding the formation of a tradition that was to
last for nearly seven millenniums (Figure 2). Sevenmeter high deposits and nine building levels for the
Neolithic Periods reveal alternating shifts of the habitation and cemeteries over a long time. Altogether, 77
well-planned houses with two, four, and later six
rooms and separate communal storage facilities were
excavated (Figures 3 and 4). 320 burial chambers
contained ochre-covered bodies of all sexes and age
classes (Figure 5). On 11 out of 225 examined bodies,
signs of ancient dentistry were found. Elaborate shell,
stone, and copper ornaments, lithic objects, sometimes
bitumen baskets, human figurines, and goat sacrifices
accompanied the dead. While in Period I, heat-treated
steatite, turquoise and lapis lazuli beads, and shell
bangles probably arrived as finished objects, several
workshops and wasters indicate an intensive local
production during Period II, marking the beginning of
technologies that remained characteristic throughout
time. Pottery appears for the first time in Period II,
along with stone vessels, but it is in Period III that
these technologies were greatly advanced.
Incipient farming and animal husbandry, and the
first introduction of pottery were also noted at KGM
near Quetta and, albeit at a later stage, further south
at Anjira. The oldest settlements in southeastern
Baluchistan date to the later fifth millennium. While
in northern Baluchistan an interaction network
developed, the picture in Makran is different. The
lowermost aceramic levels at Shahi Tump I and a
few other sites are, if at all, related to the Iranian
Plateau. The faunal material indicates a change in

subsistence strategies after Period I, and further research will show whether this site belongs to the Early
Food Producing Era.
Incipient Regionalization: The Expansion
of Settlements. The Kile Ghul-Mohammad/Togau
Horizon (Mehrgarh III, KGM III, Anjira II, Sohr Damb
I?, South Eastern Baluchistan I, Makran: Miri I?, II,
Mundigak III)

The time of Mehrgarh III (late fifth and early fourth

millennium) was marked by a considerable rise in
the number of settlements in northern Baluchistan.
Many were new foundations, indicating a population
growth that reflected the success of subsistence
economies. Settlements now also appeared in central
and southeastern Baluchistan (Adam Buthi, Niai
Buthi). Some sites are small (<1 ha), others, including
Sheri Khan Tarakai in the Bannu Basin, are 1621 ha
large. At Mehrgarh, Period III pottery (Figure 6)
was scattered over about 100 ha, but the area was
probably not inhabited at the same time.
This development was accompanied by a marked
increase in the manufacture and varieties of goods
produced. The raw materials processed in a bead
workshop in Mehrgarh III include resources that are
not locally available, such as turquoise, lapis lazuli,
agates, jasper, marine shells, and copper. Despite an
increased production, the number of grave goods
decreases further, particularly in male burials, a shift
that, along with the absence of ochre treatments and
partial or secondary burials, reflects a change in the
conception of death and afterlife.
The introduction of the potters wheel and high
temperature updraft kilns predate the first appearance
in Central Asia by almost 1000 years. Large quantities
of a very well-fired, thin-walled, red-slipped and
black-painted pottery were now produced. These
KGM, Togau, and related types are truly amazing in
terms of technology. Their distribution extends from
northern and central to southeastern Baluchistan,
the Bannu Basin, Mehrgarh, Mundigak I, and Amri
in southern Sindh. One motif of the Togau painting style as defined by B. de Cardi characterizes stylistic development from c. 4000 BC to the mid-third
millennium: a row of stylized caprids (Togau A), subsequently reduced to the forepart (Togau B), a hook
(Togau C, D) and, in southeastern Baluchistan, to a
mere stroke (Togau E). Recent excavations at Sohr
Damb/Nal have shown, however, that its use as a
chronological marker is problematical.
The tombs of Period I at Sohr Damb contain
remains of multiple fragmentary burials, accompanied by pottery vessels, carnelian, agate, lapis lazuli,

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 655

A

C D

G H

C D

G H

C D

8
9

9
AF
M

10
1

10
O 1

AG
N

7
8

8
MR.03
North

9
10

9
10

4
Cliff 1997

Cliff 1985

MR.03
South

9
LC
KB

10
1

9
D 10
A 1

IIA

9
10

10
JI

m 5

25

IIB

50

Period I (Levels 19)

Period IIA
Period IIB

5
6

5
6
7

7
A

C D

G H

C D

G H

C D

Figure 3 Mehrgarh, Plan of MR3 Periods I-IIB. Courtesy, French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige. 2007 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt.
Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

656 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

Figure 4 Mehrgarh, view of houses (MR3, levels 49). Courtesy, French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

Figure 5 Mehrgarh IB: burial , with basket. Courtesy, French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

Figure 6 Mehrgarh: bowl from Period III. Courtesy, French

Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

and steatite beads, shells with red pigment, grinding

stones, and stone weights (Figure 7). Togau D bowls
are standard inventory, but they are associated with
Togau AC and even Togau E bowls, KGM, and Kechi
Beg (hereafter: KB) vessels (Figures 8 and 9), styles previously considered to represent development through
time. The use of white pigment provides a link to
the Bannu Basin and Punjab, but the chronological
frame for this ware is not well established. C14 dates
are not yet available, but parallels with Mehrgarh
IIIIV and Miri IIIIIa point to a date from c. 3800
to 3300 BC. The dancers on the small bowl from
Sohr Damb (Figure 10) have a close parallel at Mehrgarh III, but also resemble the Sialk III painting
style from the Iranian Plateau (late fifth/early fourth
millennium BC).

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 657

Figure 7 Sohr Damb/Nal: tomb 739/740, Period I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc.
All rights reserved.

Figure 8 Sohr Damb/Nal: pottery from tomb 711, Period I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In Makran, the settlement and cemeteries of Miri

Period II date to the first half of the fourth millennium
BC (Figure 11). The bodies were treated with ochre,
buried on a mat or wrapped in cloths. Grave goods
include stone and a remarkable variety of metal
objects, for example, axes, spearheads, mirrors, and
tools, some of them made of pure copper. The use
of almandine garnet for bead making indicates advanced craftsmanship since it is a very hard material
to work and elsewhere attested only at Mehrgarh III.
Likewise exceptional are objects made from sea
shells and fish bones (Figure 12). The graves have

no pottery, but the assemblage from the habitation

is still rather isolated from the rest of Baluchistan.
Terracotta bulls with and without humps match the
faunal record that shows a predominance of cattle
and caprines. This occupation is compared to chalcolithic Iran, Susa I, Tall-I Bakun, Sialk II, Tappe
Hissar IA-C, and Susa I, while links to Tappe Yahya
V are few.
The wide distribution of objects, goods, and
technologies witnesses the movement of people
through a large area. Whether styles traveled with
or without their semantic value is open to question.

658 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

Figure 9 Sohr Damb/Nal: KB beakers from tomb 740, Period I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 10 Sohr Damb/Nal: Bowl with dancers, Tr. IIIb, l. 749, Period I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt.
Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Notwithstanding expanding interaction, differences

in style, economy and, for example, burial customs
imply persistent local patterns.
Widening Horizons in a Patterned Landscape
(Mehrgarh IVVI, KGM IV/Damb Sadaat III, Anjira
IIIII, Sohr Damb III, South Eastern Baluchistan II,
Makran Miri IIIa, Shahr-e Sokhta I, Tappe Yahya
IVC, Mundigak IIIII)

The subsequent period corresponds to Mehrgarh

IVVI, dated to c. 3500 2900/2800 BC. At the
beginning of this time, the habitation was moved for
the last time. A significant change was the abandonment of communal in favor of individual storages

within now larger houses. Irrigation channels facilitated an intensified cultivation of wheat and other
plants needed to feed a growing population. The
shift from cattle to sheep and goat keeping possibly
indicates the integration of larger grazing areas and
wider seasonal movements of people.
At Sohr Damb/Nal, Period II is marked by many
changes. The typical Period I pottery is replaced by
the buff Nal ware, although highly fired, blackslipped KB white-on-dark slip bowls, which form
c. 15% of the inventory, reveal that firing technology
survived a hiatus evident in stratigraphy, architecture,
and burial customs. These vessels carry the earliest
graphemes known in this region, one or two engraved
or painted in white signs. The houses are small, but

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 659

Figure 11 Shahi Tump Tr. IV, period II architecture. Courtesy,

French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

Figure 12 Shahi Tump, period II, mother-of-pearl fish. Courtesy, French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

well equipped with kitchen utensils and installations

for food preparation. Among these tools, simple bull
clay figurines and personal ornaments are most frequent. The tombs contain just one skeleton in a flexed
position, and the grave goods comprise of only a few
pottery vessels and personal ornaments. The same

tendency toward lower-status objects in tombs was

observed at Mehrgarh III. The only later cemetery
found at that site was devoted to infants and had
almost no grave goods.
In Makran, the Shahi Tump Period IIIa, dated to
35003000 BC, yielded a rich funerary culture with
pottery, shell containers with ochre, stone vessels,
beads, and copper seals, associated here, as elsewhere,
predominantly with female bodies, and a 15 kg copper weight inlaid with shell and carnelian, similar in
shape to stone weights from Sohr Damb/Nal Period I
(Figure 13). The appearance of Togau and Bichrome
sherds and the use of white pigment reflects links with
the rest of Baluchistan. Still, comparisons with sites in
Iran (Susa IIIa, Sialk IV.2, Tall-e Iblis IVVI) are stronger. Shell bangles with a ridged decoration have almost
identical counterparts in a late fourth/early third millennium tomb at Sarazm in Tadjikistan. Forty thousand
heat-treated steatite beads made with a technology
known in Baluchistan since early Mehrgarh were also
found in that tomb, showing that interaction started
earlier and was much more extensive than previously
thought. At the same time, the discovery of beveled-rim
bowls from layers just above manifests the presence of
features that hallmark the proto-Elamite horizon in
Iran (see below).
The expansion of settlements, their further growth
in number and size, the emergence of monumental
architecture, perimeter walls, platforms, seals, and
first graphemes, advanced technical diversity and
craft specialization indicates an increasing economic,
cultural, and social complexity. A similar development is witnessed in the eastern lowlands, where the
spread of certain pottery types and other features
first the Hakra and Ravi wares in Punjab and, from
c. 3000 BC onward, of the Kot Diji horizon
indicates an increased mobility between the highlands
and the plains.
Another hallmark of this time is the appearance of
a large variety of pottery styles, such as KB, Togau
C/D, Quetta, Nal, and gray wares. They link Baluchistan (Kacchi Plain, Quetta, Zhob, Loralai, Pishin,
central and southern Baluchistan) with the Bannu
Basin, Sindh, and beyond. Yet, the lack of stratified
assemblages that are large enough to account for
functional variation, hampers patterning their temporal and spatial distribution, a preposition to the
formulation of generic relationships.
The Kechi Beg horizon comprises a number of
pottery styles discovered by Fairservis and de Cardi
between Quetta and Kalat, and subsequently at
Mehrgarh. Three of the nine wares are considered to
be horizon markers. KB black-on-buff slip (MR V)
shares many motifs with KB bichrome that has a very

660 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

Figure 13 Shahi Tump, period IIIa: burial with copper weight. Courtesy, French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

delicate black design and a red band or infill painted

on buff (Figure 9) , while the additional use of white is
only attested at Mehrgarh (Figure 14). At Mehrgarh
(IV, V) and KGM (IV) it occurs stratigraphically later
than KGM and Togau AC pottery, but these types
overlap at Surab (Surab II.i Anjira III). Despite differences in fabric, the fine brush painting and patterns
such as hatched lozenges and ladders link this pottery
with Amri Period I in Sindh. The typological and chronological range of this type is not defined well enough
to understand its genesis and spread, not to speak
of regional variants and their development through
time. At Sohr Damb, it co-occurs with KGM-pottery
in Period I, but is absent in Period II, although KB
white-on-dark slip vessels are common, indicating
that not all KB types are contemporary.
Although, as discussed above, the Togau C/D bowls
with the stylized hook pattern appear already in Sohr
Damb Period I, they are nevertheless a significant
marker of the early third millennium sites. They were
found at Mehrgarh VVI, at most sites in central and
southeastern Baluchistan (Anjira IIIII, Balakot IA/B),
in the piedmont area in eastern Sindh, at Amri I, and
Miri Qalat IIIa. Most probably, this ware originated
in the central highlands and spread from there to, for
example, Kirthar Piedmont. There, it co-occurs with
Nal and late Quetta pottery, but it was not found at
the Quetta sites and Sohr Damb II.
The Quetta horizon as defined by Piggott and
Fairservis is marked by a buff or red ware painted
in black with a fine brush with complex geometric patterns based on blackwhite contrasts and
arranged in friezes that cover large parts of the body
(Figures 1517). This geometric pottery occurs at
Damb Sadaat in Periods II and III, together with

Figure 14 Mehrgarh, period V, polychrome beakers. Courtesy,

French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

figurative and floral motifs, simple linear designs,

and unpainted vessels. It is the hallmark of a horizon
that extended as far as Gumla II, Namazga III (handmade), Mundigak III, and Shahr-e Sokhta I. The use
of red and yellow pigments noted at Namazga and
Shahr-e Sokhta is unknown in Quetta, but provides a
link to polychrome Nal pottery.
Simple lines and the bracket motif are hallmarks of
the later stages (late Quetta, late Damb Sadaat III
Sadaat). Although the criteria for a proposed stylistic
development from Damb Sadaat IIII are far from
clear and the excavations at that site were small, in
Mehrgarh typical Quetta ware appears in Period VI
and late Quetta pottery in Period VII/Nausharo IAC,

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 661

Figure 15 Mehrgarh, period VII, Quetta ware. Courtesy French Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

Figure 16 Mehrgarh, period VII, Quetta ware. Courtesy, French

Mission to Mehrgarh, C. Jarrige.

a distribution that supports this scheme. At Sohr Damb

II, few typical Quetta sherds were found, but Sadaat
types are common in Period III (Figure 18, lower left).
The bracket motif is particularly common in southeastern Baluchistan, where it overlaps with Early Harappan wares. A date into the later third millennium
can thus be ruled out.
Since its discovery just after 1900, Nal pottery has
been divided into an earlier polychrome ware,
marked by the application of yellow and turquoise
after firing in addition to black and red, and a later
monochrome series. Both share complex geometric
patterns characterized by multiple contour lines, geometric designs with stepped borders, arranged in
friezes and metopes, but the designs are more elaborate on the polychrome vessels (Figure 19). Realistic
or abstract figurative motifs such as felines, bulls,
birds, and hybrid creatures, and floral ornaments
are also common (Figure 20). Despite the occurrence
of repetitive designs, their composition and execution
reveals many individual traits, and hardly two pieces
are identical in detail, betraying artistic freedom and
craft specialization of the potters, and probably a

highly symbolic meaning. Some of these motifs and

structural principles can be seen on Quetta ware, but
the polychromatic nature, the particular addition of
structural elements into complex patterns, and the
figurative motifs underline its originality.
Recent excavations at Sohr Damb/Nal, where this
pottery occurs exclusively in Period II, have finally
placed it into a cultural and chronological context.
As a result, the notion of the polychrome ware as
older and of its use a funerary ware has to be abandoned: it was found in vast numbers in domestic
contexts, along with monochrome pottery. It appears
fully fledged in Period II, but stylistic evolution is
apparent. The discovery of a late Nal assemblage
in 2006, marked by the lack of turquoise, a more
careless execution and the use of a wider brush, confirms this impression. The new motifs and design are
closely linked to Mehrgarh VII, Balakot, and other
sites of the late Early Harappan Period in southeastern Baluchistan.
Nal pottery, or similar types, occur at Mehrgarh
VI, Miri Qalat IIIa-b (Figure 21), Shahr-e Sokhta III
(Figure 22), Tappe Yahya IVC1, and in the Kandahar
region, where it was probably intrusive. Considering
this wide distribution, its lack at the nearby Quetta
sites, and vice versa, indicates the persistence of distinctive cultural zones. A similar pattern is reflected
by painted gray wares. The Faiz Mohammad and the
Emir Gray Ware share the distinctive technology of
high temperature firing in a reduced atmosphere, but
have distinctive shapes and motifs, and are rather
localized with exclusive distribution patterns, notwithstanding overlaps. While the Emir Gray Ware
predominates in the southwest, Shahr-e Sokhta I-III,
Tappe Yahya VAIVB5 (few), and Makran (Miri IIIb),
the former was mainly found at Mehrgarh VIVII and
from Quetta to Surab, but rarely further south. At
Sohr Damb, one vessel was found in a Period II tomb,
carrying a pattern identical to that on a buff ware
pot from Mehrgarh VII (Figures 16 and 17). The

662 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

Figure 17 Sohr Damb/Nal, period II: gray ware beaker, tomb 768. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. Photo: A. Lange.

Figure 18 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III, pottery from Trench 9. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

co-occurrence of both gray ware types at Mundigak

IIIIV.1 revealed continued links of this site with both
regions.
These patterns reflect the presence of two larger
cultural regions within Baluchistan, a southern one
which has connections with northern Baluchistan,
but is also still oriented toward Iran, and a northern
one that extends from Khuzdar to the Kachi plain and
has affinities with southern Afghanistan and the western fringes of the Indus plains. Before we discuss

the final centuries predating the rise of the Indus

Civilization, we will have a look at southeastern Iran,
where these horizons intermingled and urban centers
developed.

Baluchistan and Its Neighbors: Shifting

Relations
The third millennium BC is a time of strong cultural
dynamics, evident in archaeological record from

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 663

Figure 19 Sohr Damb/Nal, period II: polychrome pottery from Trench II. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt.
Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 20 Sohr Damb/Nal, period II: polychrome pottery from

Trench II. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt.
Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 21 Makran Miri IIIb: polychrome bowl. Courtesy, French

Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

Sistan, Afghanistan, Tadjikistan, and Turkmenistan.

In southeastern Iran, urbanity emerged around
3000 BC. In addition to borderland interactions, the
appearance of proto-elamite features, such as inscribed
tablets, seals, and sealings, as well as diagnostic pottery types (beveled-rim bowls, nose-lug jars, Djemdat
Nasr pottery types) signals that political entities in
Khuzestan and Fars extended their economic and
political interest to the east, as far as Shahr-e Sokhta
(I), Tappe Yahya (IVC2), and even Miri Qalat (late
Period IIIa, beveled-rim bowls only). Whether the
moving force behind this development was economic
and/or political, it marks the beginning of a new, very
dynamic era in human interaction at the very beginning
of the third millennium BC.
Shahr-e Sokhta, located in an inland basin in Iran
Sistan at a seasonal lake, is the central place in a
settlement chamber that was occupied for more than
1000 years. It has 11 phases divided into four periods. Starting from a 1015 ha site around 3000 BC
(Period I.109, then destruction), it reached c. 115 ha
during Periods II (Phases 85) and III (Phases 42)
when it developed into an urban center with monumental architecture, nucleated residential areas, craftsmens quarters with alabaster, semiprecious stone and
metal workshops, a 20 ha graveyard, and a hinterland
with more than 75 sites.
At Shahr-e Sokhta Period I, a strong affinity with
Central Asia and Baluchistan is present alongside
these western elements: 40% of the painted pottery
at Shahr-e Sokhta carry geometric patterns that
also characterize Namazga III, Mundigak III, and
the Damb Sadaat II horizon in the Quetta Valley.
Human figurines and compartmented seals confirm
these links and indicate that this style was more
integrated into the local repertoire than the western
features. Nal pottery occurs in Periods I and II and is

664 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

Figure 22 Chronological chart. Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 665

probably intrusive, but its patterns were copied to

local shapes.
Following a destruction, new pottery types and
simple figurative motifs appear in Period II, especially
the pear-shaped beaker that remains a diagnostic
type throughout the sequence. Simple geometric patterns continue, but the complex Quetta pottery is
not present any more. However, an increasing number
of compartmented seals and certain pottery types (e.g.,
imported Faiz Mohammad Gray pottery (SiS III,5b-4))
reveals that links with Central Asia (Namazga IV) and
Baluchistan continued. Many features of the pottery
from Period III.5 to 2 and Rud-e Biyaban 2 are also well
known from Mundigak IV.13, northern (Mehrgarh
VIIA-C, Nausharo IA-D, Sohr Damb III) and southern
Baluchistan (Miri IIIc), linking these sites just before
the formation of the Indus Civilization.
In Period IV.1, the site was already small and urbanity had come to an end. Pottery from the Burnt
Building shows close links with Bampur V/VI, Miri
IIIc, and across the Persian Gulf. The latter region
actually owes its pottery tradition to Sistan, and Potts
has recently suggested that both formed the ancient
kingdom of Marhashi, a land referred to in Mesopotamian cuneiform documents after 2400 BC. Following another destruction and a gap before Phase 0, it
was abandoned at c. 1800 BC.
Tappe Yahya, a mound in the Soghun Valley close
to the Bampur Valley and Makran, is a small, but
important site. Period V dates to the fifth millennium
BC, Periods IVCA to c. 3000 1900 BC, following a
gap of unknown length. In Period IVC2, the protoelamite horizon is present, but it lacks the strong
Namazga III/Quetta affiliation of Shahr-e Sokhta I.
It has rather become known for its production of
intercultural-style chlorite vessels, a commodity in
high demand in Early Dynastic II and III Mesopotamia, although with a peak of production at the very
end of Period IVB the workshops were rather late.
Period IVB is, in general, contemporary with the
Indus Civilization and Shahr-e Sokhta III-IV.
The relative isolation of Tappe Yahya has become
even more apparent through the discovery of the
Jiroft civilization. Following illegal excavations, recent research brought to light a large city, Konar
Sandal, center to more than 200 settlements and
cemeteries, which contained hundreds of elaborately
carved and inlaid chlorite vessels with a figurative
iconography amalgamates local, Central Asian, elamite, and Mesopotamian features. Along with seals
and sealings, pottery and alabaster vessels, as well
as metal artifacts, they represent a highly symbolic
iconography, superb craft specialization, and wealth.
Konar Sandal dates back to the earlier third millennium

BC, but the majority of objects belong to the second

half of the millennium. Whether Jiroft is the ancient
kingdom of Aratta, mentioned in the Sumerian cuneiform texts, or ancient Marhashi, the discovery of
this civilization is certainly crucial for understanding
political, cultural, and economic relations and developments.
Two hundred kilometers further north a similarly
profuse culture was discovered at Shahdad. Little is
known about the earliest occupation with an extensive copper working area and bead workshops (late
fourth and early third millennium BC), but objects
from almost 400 tombs mirror a highly advanced
complex society with a profuse art and iconography
that reflect its integration into the horizon that during
the second half of the third millennium BC linked
Susa, Sistan (Yahya IVB, Shahr-e Sokhta IV, Jiroft,
Bampur VVI), southern Baluchistan (Miri IIIcIV,
Mehi), the Arabian Peninsula (e.g., Tell Abraq, Hili
Tomb A), Central Asia (Namazga IVV, Mundigak
IV.23, BMAC), and northern Baluchistan (Quetta
hoard, Sibri, Mehrgarh VIII).
With the rise of the Indus Civilization after 2600 BC,
a centralized state emerged in the Indus Valley
that extended its sphere of interest to the resourcerich areas in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and Oman.
The cuneiform documents reflect episodes of contact
and conflict between Agade Meluhha, and the lands
in between, but archaeological traces are rare, both in
southeastern Iran and at the Indus, notwithstanding
mutual links with southern Baluchistan (Miri Qalat
IIIcIV, Kulli). Considering the large-scale exposures
at Shahr-e Sokhta, in Jiroft, Shahdad, and in the Indus
Valley, this negative evidence cannot be adduced to
the randomness of the archaeological record. It rather
evokes the picture of directed encounters, at least as
far as the Indus Civilization is concerned.
While the comparative chronology of the horizon
that links Shahr-e Sokhta (Phases 51), Miri Qalat
IIIbIV, Mundigak IV, Mehrgarh VIIBC, Nausharo
IBD, and Sohr Damb III is relatively well established, the absolute chronological framework of this
particular time, and thus that of the end of urbanization, is controversially discussed, with implications
on questions such as which entities participated in
these cross-cultural relations, what impact did that
have on their development, and how long did these
cities exist. If the end of the urban phase at Shahr-e
Sokhta dates to the late third millennium BC, as
suggested by the Italian mission, it overlapped with
the Indus Civilization and the Akkadian empire. If
dated to the mid-third millennium, as suggested by
the French Missions, this horizon ended at the very
beginning of the Indus Civilization, and thus before

666 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

the rise and expansion of the Akkadian empire. The

rather few radiocarbon dates from Shahr-e Sokhta
are not very helpful, despite the recent reassessment.
However, new evidence from Baluchistan, particularly Miri Qalat IIIcIV and Sohr Damb IIIIV, throws
new light on this question, in favor of the later dating
(Figures 2326).

Figure 23 Miri Qalat IIIC: incised gray ware. Courtesy. French

Mission to Makra, R. Besenval. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt.
Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 25 Miri Qalat IV: black slipped Indus jar. Courtesy,

French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

Figure 24 Miri Qalata IV: painted black-on-red Indus ware.

Courtesy. French Mission to Makran, R. Besenval.

Figure 26 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III, necklace from Trench IX.

DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. Photo: A. Lange 2008 Dr. Ute
Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 667

Figure 27 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III and IV (2nd from right, lower row), pottery from Trenches IV and IX. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke.
Photo: A. Lange. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Early Harappan Horizon: Prelude to Civilization

(Mehrgarh VIIA-C, Nausharo I, Damb Sadaat III,
Anjira IVV, Sohr Damb III, southeastern
Baluchistan, Makran Miri IIIbc, Shahr-e Sokhta
IIIII, Tappe Yahya IVC-B?, Bampur IIV, Mundigak
IV.13)

Although some of the cultural horizons described

above continued to exist to c. 2600/2500 BC, these
centuries also witnessed the appearance of new styles,
technologies, and an increasingly complex economic,
social, and political organization, just before the rise
of the Indus Civilization around 2600/2500 BC. This
development is very clear in the Indus plains, especially in Punjab (see Asia, South: Indus Civilization). The
gradual replacement of Balochi features at Harappa
2 (28002600) and the appearance of Kot Diji traits,
the major Early Harappan lowland cultural complex, in Baluchistan and the borderlands seems to
signal the expansion of this horizon. However, as
already noted by Mughal, some Kot Dijian features
are known from Mehrgarh V and Siah Damb II.i,
that is, from levels that predate the type site and
Harappa 2. Therefore, these discriminatory cultural
traits also need to be better defined and dated before
the directions of movements, and their implications,
can be assessed.
At Mehrgarh VIIAC and Anjirah IV, Nal and Faiz
Muhammad Gray wares are still present, but not
Togau D pottery. Sadaat ware, mainly represented
by the bracket and simple linear designs, is now widely distributed. Mehrgarh was abandoned after Period
VIIC, but occupation continued at the nearby site
Nausharo to the Indus Period and beyond (Nausharo

Figure 28 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III, bowl from Trench 1. DAI,

Eurasien, Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

IIV). In Period IC, the gradual replacement of

Balochi through Kot Dijian features was also noted,
foreshadowing the integration of the site by the Indus
Civilization in Period II, after a short transitional
period (ID). A similar development was observed at
Miri Qalat, where in Period IIIc new technological
and stylistic features were introduced (Figure 24).
Many of the new and old elements continued into
Period IV, marked by the arrival of a Harappan occupation (Figures 25 and 26). Typical for the former
horizon are flat basins, painted pipal and fish
patterns, dishes with raised cordons and painted wavy
lines, as well as incised, burnished, and painted gray
wares (Figure 23). This horizon links Mundigak IV, late
Quetta, Nausharo ICD, Miri Qalat IIIbc, Shahr-e
Sokhta III.52, and now also Sohr Damb III.

668 ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands

Figure 29 Sohr Damb/Nal, period III, cylindrical pot with caprides, Trench I. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. Photo: A. Lange. 2008 Dr. Ute
Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

There, Period III marks the building of a new settlement at a time when the previous buildings were
already in ruins and covered with sand or ashes. Sixmeter high deposits revealed four building phases. The
architecture, artifact styles, and technology once more
reflect many changes. Tombs have not yet been found,
but the houses and rooms grew larger, walls were
more solid, with a foundation of gravel and beams.
In the largest building, the Burnt Building (AK6),
hundreds of vessels and objects, such as grinding
stones, pestles, tools for leather working and potting,
unbaked and baked clay figurines, mostly of humped
bulls, and beads were found (Figure 27). Miniature
clay vessels, crucibles, and moulds as well as lead
cores indicate metal working, but finished objects
are rare. The Nal pottery is replaced by more simple
and plain shapes and motifs. Pear-shaped storage jars
with linear decoration, similar to Complex A pottery
from Quetta, footed beakers, s-shaped vases and shallow bowls reveal a change in pottery technology: bodies are more thick, lower bodies often molded and
bases string-cut (Figure 28). Designs include linear
and simple geometric patterns, pipal leaves, bulls
(Figure 29), and caprines, which have identical counterparts in Mundigak IV.1 (Figure 30). The few surviving Nal motifs, most prominently the omega, are
present in a degenerated form (Figure 31). Stylistic
development is present, but a great deal of variability
is related to spatial distribution and function.
From Sohr Damb III, 59 radiocarbon dates that are
relevant to the chronological problems discussed
above are available now from well-stratified deposits.
They show a clear cluster from c. 2700 to 2400 BC,
leaving no doubt that the terminal phase of Period III
falls to the very early rather than the later Indus
Period (Figure 22). This date also leaves room for
the subsequent Period IV, a very eroded occupation
which belongs to the KulliHarappan horizon, the

Figure 30 Sohr Damb/Nal, Period III, stand from hoard, degenerated Nal motif. DAI, Eurasien, Ute Franke. Photo: A. Lange. 2008
Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

hallmark of southern Baluchistan during the later

third millennium BC.
The Kulli Complex developed as a regional style
around 2600 BC and was later marked by a strong
Harappan touch, which reflects the westerly expansion of this civilization and its merger with local

ASIA, SOUTH/Baluchistan and the Borderlands 669

Figure 31 Table showing shared artifact styles during the second half of the third millennium BC. Ute Franke. 2008 Dr. Ute FrankeVogt. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

traditions after 2400 BC. This dating is supported by

C14 dates which range from 2500 to 2300 BC. This
evidence also corresponds well with the sequence and
dates from Nausharo, where the transitional horizon
ID is followed by an earlier (Period II) and a later
Indus settlement (Period III). At Miri Qalat, the early
date of the Indus occupation (Period IV), which
shares many local features with Period IIIc, is mainly
based on stylistic criteria. The assemblage from Miri
Qalat IV reveals that local and Kulli features were
absorbed and that a style is present during the second
half of the third millennium was found not only at
Bampur, Shahdad, Jiroft, Susa, northern Baluchistan,
Bactria, and on the Arabian Peninsula, but also
at Shahr-e Sokhta IV, then already a small site
(Figure 22). In short, the review of the evidence indicates that the horizon attested to at Sohr Damb III,
Nausharo ICD, Miri IIIc, and Shahr-e Sokhta III
dates to the time that ended just when or shortly
after the Indus Civilization began to rise.
After 1900 BC, the political constellations changed
again. Magan lost its importance as supplier of copper
to Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization disintegrated
as a centralized state, and large regions in southeastern
Iran, Baluchistan, and Sindh were abandoned for
almost 1000 years for reasons as yet unknown.

Conclusion
It has become evident that human development is
manifested in Baluchistan from the seventh millennium onward. While this development was, in general,
continuous, regional differences and changes in the
material culture through time were present. The
emerging picture does not reflect a monocultural
region, but a patterned landscape, marked by the
appearance and disappearance of particular cultural
styles. Looking at the cycles of growth, expansion,
and abandonment, it becomes clear that in cultural
terms, prehistoric Baluchistan was neither a border
nor a frontier, but a dynamic interaction zone. Nevertheless, the communities that made the processes
described above happen did not become integrated
into a large scale, coherent entity, notwithstanding
the fact that smaller regions, such as southeastern
Baluchistan and Sindh Kohistan, were closely interrelated during the early third millennium BC. One
likely reason why a large-scale merger did not happen
probably is the rugged topography. The importance
of terrain as determining factor becomes clear when
we look at the regions more recent history. As in
Afghanistan, expanding conquerors and empires, be
it Dareios or Alexander the Great, nomadic tribes

670 ASIA, SOUTH/Buddhist Archaeology

from the north, or the British army, had their hold

on Baluchistan because it was important as a trespass. But they never ruled it for long and they left
very few archaeological traces. Whenever possible,
preference was given to the maritime route and
waterways, or the open plains. Only then, it was
considered a barrier and it never regained the economic and cultural prosperity of its prehistoric past
when it was a center in its own right which participated in and contributed to regional development
processes.
See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, South: Buddhist
Archaeology; India, Deccan and Central Plateau; India,
Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Indus Civilization;
Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Megaliths; Neolithic
Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Sri Lanka; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic; Plant Domestication; Spatial Analysis Within
Households and Sites.

Further Reading
Besenval R (1997) Entre le Sud-Est iranien et la plaine de IIndus: le
Kech-Makran. Recherches archeologiques sur le peuplement
ancien dune marche des confins indo-iraniens. Arts Asiatiques
52: 536.
Besenval R (2005) Chronology of Kech-Makran. In: Jarrige C (ed.)
South Asian Archaeology 2001. Paris: ADPF Editions Recherche
sur les Civilisations.
Fairservis WA (1975) The Roots of Ancient India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Franke-Vogt U (2000) The Archaeology of Southeastern Balochistan. http://www.harappa.com/baluch.
Franke-Vogt U (2005) Sohr Damb/Nal, Baluchistan, Pakistan.
Ergebnisse der Grabungen 2001, 2002 und 2004. In: Archaologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan Band. 3536, 2003
2004, 83141.
Hakemi A (1997) Shahdad Archaeological Excavation of a
Bronze Age Center in Iran. Rome: IsMEO.
Jarrige C, Jarrige J-F, Meadow RH, and Quivron G (eds.) (1995)
Mehrgarh Field Reports 1975 to 1985 From the Neolithic to
the Indus Civilization. Karachi: Dept. of Culture and Tourism,
Govt. of Sindh, and the French Foreign Ministry.
Kenoyer JM (1991) The Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and
western India. Journal of World Prehistory 5/4: 331385.
Mughal MR (1971) The Early Harappan Period in the Greater
Indus Valley and Northern Baluchistan (c. 30002400 BC).
PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Possehl GL (1999) Indus Age. The Beginnings. New Delhi: Oxford
and IBH.
Potts DT (2001) Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 19671975:
The Third Millennium. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Musuem
Press.
Potts DT (2005) In the beginning: Marhashi and the origins of
Magans ceramic industry in the third millennium BC. Arabian
Archaeology and Epigraphy 2005 16: 6778.
Salvatori, S, Vidale, M (1997) Shahr-e Sokhta 19751978: Central
Quarters Excavation. Rome.

Shaffer JG (1992) The Indus Valley, Baluchistan and Helmand

traditions: Neolithic through Bronze Age. In: Ehrich R (ed.)
Chronologies in Old World Archaeology 3rd edn., pp. 441464.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tosi M (ed.) (1983) Prehistoric Sistan. Rome: IsMEO.
Wright RP (1984) Technology, Style and Craft Specialization:
Spheres of Interaction and Exchange in the Indo-Iranian Borderlands, Third Millennium B.C. Ph.D. Dissertation. Ann Arbor.

Buddhist Archaeology
Janice Stargardt, University of Cambridge,
Cambridge, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
aksara A letter in one of the Indian systems of writing, it may
combine the values of consonant and vowel.
ayaka A platform projecting from the base drum of the stupa
at or near the cardinal points, facing the gateways in the stupa
railing. Especially common in Southeast India. Also pillars,
inscribed and or decorated pillars installed on the ayaka
platforms.
bodhisattva Variously, a being destined to be a Buddha in
a future existence; an enlightened being [Buddha] who
delays his extinction to help other beings progress towards
that state.
chakravartin Literally lord of the wheel (of the law), that is,
world ruler.
chattra Umbrella, with multiple tiers a symbol of status : 13 for
a minister, 7 for a king, 911 for a chakravartin, an infinite
number for a Buddha.
dakshinapatha The southern trade route leading from the
GangesYamuna basin into the Deccan.
dhamma [also dharma] Literally law, symbolized by a
many-spoked wheel, but in Buddhism denotes the whole
system of Buddhist thought and rules for righteous living.
harmika Quadrangular structure on top of stupa dome and
below the umbrella or spire.
karma Sum of actions and inactions influencing the states of
rebirth of all beings.
Nibbana [also Nirvana] State of extinction after death when
the chain of rebirth is broken; attainable only by enlightened
beings Buddhas and bodhisattvas.
sangha The community of monks in both Buddhism and
Jainism.
samsara The cycle of existences, of births and rebirths.
sikhara A tower of multiple stories and bearing architectural
ornaments on each storey in a diminishing scale, developed as the
superstructure of Buddhist temples in the second half of the first
millennium CE.
sima Boundary of the consecrated land of a Buddhist
establishment, that is, of an individual monument or a complex
of associated structures.
triratna Literally three jewels, in Buddhism, the Buddha,
dhamma, sangha.
uttarapatha The northern trade route leading from the
GangesYamuna basin to the Indus Valley and Afghanistan.

ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology 671

vinaya The rules of conduct for Buddhist monks and nuns, of
which several traditions survive. The Pali tradition is thought
to be the oldest.
yasti The wooden pole implanted on the summit of early stupas
and, in the northern tradition penetrating into the solid core of
the stupa with its base resting on the relic chamber. The part of
the pole emerging from the top of the stupa could be decorated
with flags and the tiers of umbrellas both symbols of high
status.

Introduction
The geography of early Buddhist archaeological sites
is in general associated with rivers, ancient coastlines,
and trade routes by land and water. There is also
a more nuanced geography, economic, political, and
religious aspects of which will be discussed in the
following sections. A fundamental feature of its economic geography will, however, be mentioned immediately: Buddhism has always been associated with
societies which, through agricultural intensification
or through trade, possessed enough surplus food to
be able to support the variable, but sometimes considerable numbers of men who formed its monastic
communities. Buddhist monks were required by
their disciplinary rules (the vinaya) to refrain from
providing for their own food and other material
needs, and instead to offer the laity the opportunity
of making merit by supporting them.
Originating in Northeast India, the geography of
the spread of early Buddhism was particularly associated with sites belonging to the developed Iron Age,
undergoing urbanization and the crystallization of
states in the GangesYamuna and Indus Valleys, and
along the valleys of the Mahanadi, Godavari, and
Krishna Rivers and their tributaries which drained
a central area of peninsular India from the northwestern Deccan, all the way to the coast of Southeast
India. Thus the geography of Buddhism in the five
centuries following the Buddhas death (his nirvana),
encompassed a wide spatial extent but was very uneven in its intensity (Figure 1).
The life of the historical Buddha also known as
the Sakyamuni, sage of the Sakya people provides
some of the earliest dates in Indian history. Towards
the end of the twentieth century there were controversies and downward revisions of these dates which
have major implications for Indian historical archaeology and ancient history as a whole and in particular
for the apparent discontinuities in early Buddhist
archaeological evidence. A combination of archaeological and cross-textual evidence does indeed suggest that the Buddhas birth and death took place
approximately 100 years later than previously supposed, that is, that he was born in the first half of

the fifth century BCE and died eighty years later

between c. 400 and c. 380 BCE. The importance of
these revised dates will become evident when we
consider below the typology and chronology of
early Buddhist monuments in India.
This article will not consider Buddhist thought, but
will focus on those aspects reflected in the material
remains of Buddhist sites. Aspects of Buddhist thought
have antecedents in earlier, Upanisadic traditions.
They concern concepts of central importance to the
three great Indic religions: Buddhism, Jainism, and
Hinduism. Two of these are, karma (which loosely
equates to destiny) and samsara (the chain of birth
and rebirth). Karma is not conceived as an indifferent,
impersonal fate but rather as an individual fabric
woven out of the accumulated actions (especially
merit-making) of a being over many past existences
samsara which will determine the level and fortunes
of that individuals future incarnations. The desire of
all sincere Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus is to be released from the chain of existences and to become
united with the Universal force. The many differences
among and sectarian divides within these three Indian
religions concern how that release may be achieved,
as an individual or as a group, and how both the
agents of release and what one is released into are
conceptualized: in the form of many gods or god-like
beings and multiple heavens, as a void or as a universal force. Of these three great Indian religions, only
Buddhism has become a powerful, enduring influence
outside India. Hinduism was adopted in parts of
Southeast Asia for a limited period in the late first
millennium CE, only to be merged with Buddhism
(in Bali, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos) or Islam (in
most of Indonesia and Malaysia). Buddhism is said to
be the fastest growing religion in the West today and
is enjoying some resurgence in China.
The historical Buddha was contemporary with
Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. Thus the revisions
of the chronology of the Buddhas life and death
affect Jainism equally. Both lived and taught in the
Ganges Valley during the fifth to fourth century BCE,
in the area that became the state of Magadha in
the fourth century BCE (mainly present-day Bihar),
whereas the collection of Indic beliefs and practices
known as Hinduism crystallized some centuries later
and is still evolving. Buddhism became distinctive for
its focus on the three jewels (triratna) of its teaching:
the Buddha, dhamma (rules for righteous living), and
sangha (the monastic community). All three elements
played a central part in the strength of Buddhism in
South Asia, c. fourth century BCE to twelfth century
CE, and are the foundations of Buddhisms continued
appeal to large populations outside India in the world

672 ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology

14

12
13

11

II
C

10

2 1

A
I 5
15

6
7

28
III
16

30

27
25 26

24
E

29

19 22
17 F
18

20

VI

IV
23

21

I Magadha
II Gandhara
III Western Deccan
IV Andhra-Kalinga
V Pyu Kingdoms of Burma
VI Suvannabhumi Mon
kingdoms of Burma

A Ganges R.
B Yamuna R.
C Five Rivers (Indus)
D Narmada R.
E Godavari R.
F Krishna R.
G Mahanadi R.
H Kaveri R.
I Irrawaddy R.

1 Lumbini
2 Kapilavasthu
3 Kusinagara
4 Vesali
5 Pataliputra
6 Rajagrha
7 Nalanda
8 Sanchi
9 Mathura
10 Kalsi

11 Taxila
12 Urasa
13 Puskalavati
14 Bamiyan
15 Sagaram
16 Nasik
17 Jaggayapeta
18 Nagarjunakonda
19 Gummadidurru
20 Amaravati

21 Bhattiprolu
22 Guntupalli
23 Vengi
24 Thotlakonda
25 Sankaram
26 Ramatirtham
27 Salihundam
28 Tamralipti
29 Sri Ksetra
30 Pagan

Figure 1 Early Buddhist sites of India and Burma.

today. It has often been argued that, by the time of

Buddhisms eclipse in India, such long processes
of reciprocal assimilation between Hinduism and
Buddhism had taken place that it was possible

for Buddhists to become Hindus without abandoning

key concepts and practices of their religion. One must
also consider however that, in the face of the Muslim
invasions of the sub-continent from the twelfth and

ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology 673

thirteenth centuries onwards, religious identities on

both the Islamic and anti-Islamic sides hardened in
the process and the pressures on Buddhists to support
the Hindu and Sikh kings leading the resistance to
Islam probably became irresistible. Throughout its
history, Buddhism has been equally dependant on
the patronage of rulers and the loyal adherence
of the lower classes of every society it has touched.

The Chronology and Geography of Early

Buddhist Archaeology
There are no specifically Buddhist archaeological
remains contemporary with the Buddhas lifetime.
It is possible, however, to sketch some contextual
archaeological features. There was an archaeological
period of between eight and five hundred years
between the Mohenjo Daro-Harappan civilization
(c. 24001800 BCE), which spread along the Indus
River Valley and into a considerable area of Northwest India and the rise of Gangetic sites in Northeast
India. At present this period can only be characterized
by phases of material culture for example, the
Chalcolithic and Iron Ages and by specific pottery
types. Two of these, in particular, are of great
importance to Indias Iron Age and early historic
archaeology to which early Buddhist archaeology
belongs: the Painted Grey Wares [PGW] of western
India c. 800350 BCE, and the slightly later Northern
Black Polished Wares [NBP]. Magadha in Northeast
India was probably the core area in which NBP developed as an elaborate and highly distinctive form of
early historic pottery. The production techniques and
use of this ware gradually spread to all of northern
India during the Mauryan period. Although there is
at present no universal consensus among scholars
about NBP chronology, the majority view assigns it
to the period from c. 500200 BCE. Thus it is a pottery
associated with the developed Iron Age and early
urbanization of Northeast India. In his lifetime, the
Buddha would have used utensils made of both NBP
and simpler ceramics, along with those of metal and
wood. The processes of cultural contact, transport, and
trade whereby NBP spread over the whole of northern
India in the fourth and third centuries BCE are probably linked to the spread of Mauryan power at this
time and of Buddhism from the third century BCE
onwards. If the early history of Buddhism was deeply
imbedded in Magadhan territory and the vicissitudes
of Mauryan power, it later struck deep roots in other
territories and polities inside and outside India.
All but one of the urban sites closely associated in
the Discourses of the Buddha with his life and death
have been identified and at least to some extent excavated: Lumbini (where he was born), Bodh Gaya

(where he attained Enlightenment), Sarnath (where

he began to teach the dhamma), Rajagrha, Sravasti,
Kausambi, and Vaisali near or in which he sojourned
and Kusinagara where he died and was cremated.
Only Kapilavasthu (the capital of the Sakya oligarchy
to which he belonged) lacks certain identification. All
these sites lie within a fairly confined area of Northeast India, in territory that became the Magadha
state. There are several reasons for the dearth of
direct archaeological evidence from the time of the
Buddhas life: firstly only rammed mud, mud-bricks,
timber, and thatch were in use as construction materials at this time (possibly also stone rubble in a mud
matrix). These materials do not survive as a welldefined archaeological horizon, although future
refinements of archaeological analyses may make it
possible to trace them. Meanwhile, the presence (or
absence) of NBP is often a valuable indicator of the
age of a layer but provides only indirect evidence on
Buddhist archaeology itself. The second reason for
the rarity of direct evidence on the earliest phases of
Buddhist archaeology is that all the sites associated
with the Buddhas lifetime became sites of renewed
veneration and monumental construction as a result
of the upsurge in Buddhism under the reign of the
great Mauryan Emperor Ashoka (273232 BCE) if
not before. Archaeologists have generally been reluctant to disturb remains of the Ashokan era in order
to investigate what may lie below them. The third
reason is that in the period between the death of
the Buddha and Buddhisms resurgence under the
Emperor Ashoka, it (like Jainism) was only one of
several traditions of wandering ascetics in Northeast
India, all of whom left no trace or only very faint
traces in the archaeological record.
Before the revisions of the dates of the Buddhas life
and death already mentioned, there seemed to be a
very long hiatus of some two centuries between the
Buddhas death and the earliest known archaeological
remains of Buddhist sites. The revised dates, however, narrow the gap between the Buddhas death in
Magadha territory, c. 380 BCE and the beginning of
the Mauryan power there in c. 328 BCE to some fifty
years. Candragupta, the first Mauryan emperor, consolidated the nascent state forms of Magadha. The
Mauryans probably learnt from the well-articulated
state institutions of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia,
which included territories on the northwest frontier
of South Asia. In 330 BCE, Alexander of Macedon
defeated Darius III, the last Achaemenid Emperor
and pursued his conquests into these Achaemenid
territories. Thus the newly powerful Magadhan state
so significant for Buddhism took shape under
the challenges presented by the momentous events
reshaping the history of the Eastern Mediterranean

674 ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology

and Western Asia. Greek Satrapies established in the

wake of Alexander the Greats conquests renewed and
redirected the long traditions of commercial and cultural exchange between South Asia, Western Asia and the
Mediterranean that had existed since the Mohenjo
Dara-Harappa civilization some two thousand years
before. In Gandharan Buddhist art, these several traditions Persian, Greek, and Indian merged to produce
some remarkable regional art styles.

The Impact of Ashoka on Early Buddhism

Ashoka was the grandson of Candragupta Maurya. He
violently seized the throne of Magadha in 273 BCE,
and eventually extended some kind of Mauryan overlordship to most of India. He also decisively defeated
Greek attempts to regain their colonies in the northwestern territories. After a brutal campaign against
Kalinga (Orissa and northern Andhra), Ashoka became
a Buddhist in 262 BCE and from that time on exercised
a decisive influence on Buddhist history by extending
his powerful patronage to its teachings, renewing its
institutional structures and supporting its spread.
The Buddha himself had commanded that his
remains be cremated, and a stupa be erected over
them. In fact his cremated remains were divided into
eight parts and given to eight rival claimants in
authority at the following towns and cities on the
territory that was to become the Mauryan state of
Magadha: to Ajatasattu at Rajagrha, the Licchavis
at Vesali, the Sakyas (the Buddhas own clan) at
Kapilavasthu, the Bulis at Allakappa, the Kolis at
Ramagama, a Brahman at Vethadipa, the Mallas
at Pava, and the Mallas at Kusinagara. The Brahmin,
Drona, who divided the corporeal remains kept the urn
and the Moriyas at Pipphalivana who arrived late on
the cremation site received some ashes from the funeral
pyre. All of these objects were treated as sacred relics
over which stupa mounds were heaped up. The multiplicity of claimants to the Buddhas remains in c.
380 BCE throws light on how weak and localized
power was on Magadha territory at the time of the
Buddhas death. Only some fifty years later this situation began to change under Candragupta with the creation of the Mauryan state, while just over a century
later, Ashoka, as the unchallenged ruler of the most
powerful state in India, exercised an undisputed right
to open up the stupas containing the Buddhas cremated remains and make further distributions of his relics.
At Kusinagara the place where the Buddha died a
huge stupa called the Cremation Stupa still exists and,
if the attribution is correct, it may be the earliest
surviving Buddhist monument. While it is extremely
likely that it has been enlarged and rebuilt many
times a common occurrence in Buddhism it may

indeed contain a mud or mud-brick core with relics

dating back to the time just after the Buddhas death.
Ashokas purpose in opening the original stupas was
to subdivide the relics and distribute them as sacred
objects in conversion missions to the regions of his
empire, as well as to those outside it. Ashokas stone
inscriptions record missions to the Middle East, Egypt,
and Macedonia, as well as to Sri Lanka and Suvannabhumi (probably the Mon kingdoms of Lower Burma).
Ashokan-era conversions to Buddhism at the last two
are supported by local chronicles and legends but not as
yet by firm archaeological evidence.
The monuments of Ashokas reign associated with
Buddhism fall into the following categories: about
twenty magnificent stone pillars and pillar fragments
(out of some forty mentioned in texts); his imperial
edicts inscribed on these pillars, on caves, rock shelters and rock faces; a flat stone throne base now at
Bodh Gaya; the mud core of a stupa at Vesali containing a reliquary; the core of the Dharmarajika stupa
at Sarnath, and possibly some small votive stupas at
Lumbini. In addition there are fragmentary structural
remains fortifications and other non-religious monumental remains-at Pataliputra (Candraguptas capital),
Rajagrha (Ashokas capital), Ganwaria, Sonkh, and
Sravasti that are Mauryan (some possibly pre-Ashokan)
in origin but not directly related to Buddhism.
Many of Ashokas stone pillars were provided with
lotus and animal capitals which contributed enduring
symbols to the iconography of early Buddhism: the
lion, bull, elephant, deer, lotus, wheel, and the pillar
itself. If, as seems likely, this last represented a link
between the realms of the Earth and the sky, it prefigured the yasti pole going from the pinnacle of the
stupa in the northern Indian and Nepalese traditions,
through its core with its base resting on the relic
chamber. A distinguishing characteristic of Mauryan
stone artifacts is that the stone has been brought to a
fine polish that still survives. The very concept of
erecting imperial pillars and inscribing imperial edicts
on stone, the format and style employed in these
inscriptions, the technique of stone polishing, as
well as some of the sculptural styles (especially in
the lions) all appear to be practices of the Achaemenid
empire adopted and thoroughly assimilated by the
Mauryan rulers. From this time onwards, these symbols entered the mainstream of Indian Buddhist art.
As a powerful ruler, Ashoka would certainly have
patronized the other religions practiced within his
empire, but his own statements in the edicts reveal
that his commitment to Buddhism was profound.
During the some hundred years that elapsed between
the Buddhas death and Ashokas conversion,
Buddhism was merely one of several loosely structured
ascetic movements in the Magadha area. Internal

ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology 675

dissensions arose quite quickly which the Second

Buddhist Council, held in this interval, failed to resolve. Ashoka summoned the Third Buddhist Council
(c. 250 BCE) which had a lasting impact on the development of the religion. While it is believed that
the vinaya rules governing the structure and life of
the monkhood (the sangha) were laid down by the
Buddha, it may well be that the clear codification of
the vinaya, its systematic adoption and, perhaps most
significant, the creation of disciplinary procedures
within the sangha to enforce it were the result of the
work of the Third Buddhist Council. A codification
of generally accepted versions of the Discourses of
the Buddha began, which were then rigorously committed to memory. Numbers play a recurring role in
this core of early Buddhist texts. Concepts, objectives,
rules, attributes, people, spirits, actions, and heavens
are listed in this way. Numbers are a mnemonic device
which effectively supported the accuracy of the oral
tradition. As we shall see below, Pali texts inscribed
on gold and deposited in a relic chamber in Burma in
c. the fifth century CE do not differ significantly from
those transmitted orally and collected in Sri Lanka in
the nineteenth century by the English founding members of the Pali Text Society.
After the Third Buddhist Council but possibly also
before, it became obligatory for monks to be resident
in one place at least during the rainy season every year
and, in practice, communities of monks who were
largely sedentary can be traced in the rock shelters
and cave shrines of the Vidisha area from the second
century BCE and perhaps from the time of Ashoka
himself. Similar claims have been made on the basis of
the palaeography of very early Buddhist inscriptions
on the drip ledges of monastic cave sites in northern
Sri Lanka. Thus the three jewels of Buddhism
Buddha, dhamma, sangha emerged as profoundly
renewed and mutually reinforcing influences in Indian
society from the third century BCE as a result of the
powerful patronage of the Emperor Ashoka and the
activities of the Third Buddhist Council. In particular
it seems that the strong, self-regulating structures of
the sangha became the central prop to the effective
preservation and propagation of the meaning of the
Buddha and his dhamma. The further history of Buddhism inside and outside India is ineluctably bound up
with the forms and fortunes of the sangha in the
various sects of Buddhism that emerged after the first
century BCE. In turn, these relied on the patronage of
rulers and the devoted support of the people.

The Links between Buddhism and Trade

The impact of the Emperor Ashoka on Buddhism
may serve as a paradigm of its dependence on the

patronage of rulers and the loyal devotion of ordinary

people throughout its history. The geography of
Buddhism sketched above shows that its links with
traders also deserve attention. The Discourses of the
Buddha preserve many instances of his accepting
converts, close disciples, and merit-making gifts from
all classes and castes of ancient Indian society, many of
them traders. Thus itinerant merchants moving along
the early Indian trade routes mentioned, and later
making much longer journeys by land and sea, had
no fear of becoming isolated from the Buddhist sources
of religious inspiration as their Hindu counterparts
may have done in the early centuries CE. The Emperor
Ashoka himself had sent proselytising Buddhist missions to the limits of the then known world.
Still other links existed at times between sangha and
traders. Merit-making gifts to support Buddhism were
not usually spent. They were invested and the proceeds
from the investments were used to support the sangha
and its activities. Since the vinaya rules precluded
monks from handling financial affairs, there were
councils of the laity to do this on their behalf. Members
of the whole social spectrum supported Buddhism:
short donatory inscriptions show that kings, queens
and princesses, royal treasurers, bankers and their
families, generals, royal scribes, superintendents of
water houses, caravan leaders, heads of renovation
works, artisans, stoneworkers, village leaders, farmers,
leaders of the cowherds, sandalmakers, carters, and
traders (including foreign traders) made gifts for the
monumental and monastic buildings and the upkeep of
the monastic communities. Similar people also served
on the lay committees administering the gifts. Traders,
in particular, had a specialized knowledge of how and
where best to invest donations on behalf of the sangha.
Thus the guestrooms of the monasteries dotted along
major trade routes provided safe places where traders,
their goods and their animals could stop on their
journeys, affording them simultaneously with shelter,
opportunities to make merit through donations or services to Buddhist foundations and also, on occasion, to
receive loans from their committees to support their
trading ventures. This draws attention to the particular
character of the economic geography of Buddhism,
which accounts in many ways for both the pattern of
dispersal of ancient Buddhist sites and for many of the
variations in their density.

The Geography of Early Buddhist

Sites in India
As Figure 1 shows, early Buddhist sites occurred in
distinct clusters along ancient trade routes following
rivers and coasts. The densest cluster of early Buddhist
archaeological sites is on the territory that was to

676 ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology

become the Magadha Kingdom the GangesYamuna

basin. From this starting point and moving northwest
along the uttarapatha (the northern trade route) leads
one to the Gandhara cluster along the upper reaches of
the Indus and Jhelum Rivers with a linked cluster over
the Khyber Pass in what was once Achaemenid and
Greek Satrapy territory in Afghanistan. These clusters
include Taxila (whose name became synonymous with
a university in many languages of South and Southeast
Asia), Bimaran (where one of the earliest depictions
of a Buddha image was found on a golden reliquary of
c. first century BCE) and Begram.
Returning to the GangesYamuna basin of
Magadha and moving southwest along the daksinapatha (the southern trade route) brings one to the
early Buddhist stupas, railings and relief sculptures
of Bharhut, Sanchi, and the cluster around Vidisha,
on the tributaries of the Vetravati River, itself a tributary of the Yamuna. Further still to the southwest, are
the cluster of Buddhist rock-cut shrines and monastic
cells of the western Deccan at Ajanta, Nasik, Karle,
Junnar, and Kanheri among others inland from, but
parallel to, the West Coast and its trading kingdoms.
Going further south and crossing to the East Coast,
one reaches the Andhra clusters of sites that rival
Magadha in density and have produced some of the
most prolific and beautiful Buddhist art in India as a
whole. They are grouped along both the great trading
arteries of peninsular India, the Krishna and Godavari Rivers and their many tributaries that rise
close to the western Deccan sites and flow down to
the East Coast, as well as along the Andhra coast up
to the delta of the Mahanadi River in Orissa. The
apparently isolated site of Tamluk (Tamralipti) in
Bengal is in fact also associated with trade sites on
the Ganges Delta. This greater Andhra area includes
Kalinga, the kingdom conquered by Ashoka immediately before his conversion to Buddhism. The distribution pattern of early Buddhist sites in Andhra
reveals a striking congruence with late prehistoric
Megalithic burial structures, suggesting that, in this
region at least, there may be a sacred geography with
prehistoric origins working together with the economic geography already mentioned (Figure 2).
Claims have been made that Buddhism in Southeast
India goes back to the Buddhas lifetime and that it
was established there as a result of his visits and
teaching. The area is well away from the Magadha
territory known to be associated with the Buddha. Evidence generally to support this claim of conversion
during the Buddhas lifetime is not secure. On the other
hand, there is good reason to believe that the area
received missions during Ashokas reign since fragments
of his pillar inscriptions with Mauryan polish have

been found at Amaravati, Erragudi, Rajulamandagiri

and the palaeography on some of the relic caskets of
the Mahachaitya at Bhattiprolu appears to date back to
the Ashokan era. Moreover there is also a possibility
that Buddhism was established in this area before
Ashokas efforts to spread Buddhism, as suggested
by the presence of NBP sherds in the foundations of
many early Buddhist structures in Andhra. The names
of some of the early rulers of territories (preAshokan
and Ashokan era) along Andhras coast and rivers have
been recovered in the past two decades in Buddhist
foundation inscriptions together with silver Mauryan
punchmarked coins: Gobhada, Kamvayasiri, Samagopa, Narana, and Raja Kumariyya Sammliya who
was probably responsible for the third to second century stupa at Amaravati before the powerful Satavahana
dynasty of the Northwest Deccan established itself
in Andhra from c. the first century BCE to the late
second century CE.
Andhras numerous and well-endowed Buddhist sites
confirm the existence of a political as well as an economic geography of Buddhist archaeology: while the
two great river basins, the Krishna and the Godavari
provided the highways where the cloths and metal artifacts of the Deccan were assembled and transported to
the East Coast, the East Coast ports themselves were
pivots where multiple movements took place: for the
landing of the spices, incenses, and metal ores native to
Southeast Asia as well as the exit of Indian goods and
above all, Indian ideas to the ports and kingdoms further south and east. Whoever controlled Andhra had
access to immense economic resources. They are
reflected in the density and beauty of its Buddhist
remains and its key role in the transmission of Buddhism
to Burma and Thailand from c. first to sixth century CE,
after which other regions of India, notably Bihar and
Orissa as well as Sri Lanka, developed deep reciprocal
relations with parts of Southeast Asia.

The Origins and Forms of the Stupa

As a commemorative earth mound heaped up over
the cremated remains of an outstanding individual,
king or hero, the stupa may have had pre-Buddhist
origins. It may also have sometimes had non-funerary
commemorative functions. However, the Mahaparinibbanasutta (2631) makes it clear that the Buddha
ordered his disciple Ananda to arrange for the cremation of his mortal remains and the creation of a stupa
mound over them which should be venerated as the
point of direct contact with his teaching and example.
Significantly, he instructed him to follow the same
procedure as for a Universal Monarch (cakravartin).
In the extension of this tradition, many stupas seem

ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology 677

80

78

Adtlabad
1
2

M AD H YA
PR AD ES H

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Warangal

Srikakulam
Salihundam

Ramatirtham
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18

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Visakhapatnam

Bavikonda
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Sankaram

av

Mangamaripeta

kottur

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23

Khamam
HYDERABAD
10
Tirumalgiri
Kodavalli
24
25 Jaggayapet
MAHBUBNAGAR
Panigiri
18 ELURU
Yelleswaram
Amaravati
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26
15
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Vijayawada 19
ri s hn
27
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16 Nagarjunakonda
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GUNTUR
28
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17
Ghantasala
R . Tu n g a b a d h r a
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14
KURNOOL
29
ONGOLE

Kakinada

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16

S A
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Sarapally

18

3 4
5
1
57
Pashigam
8
11
Nizamabad 12 13 9 10
14 15
16 17
Karimnagaro 18 19
Dhulikaatta 2 20
4
Sangareddy
3
21
22
6
9
8 7

20

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84

H T R
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A

20

82

16

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1. Kesalpur
2. Asifabad
3. Modera
4. Karnemamidi
5. Yelkanti
6. Jainal
7. Rayapatnam
8. Kotilingala
14
9. Vemunur
1. Pochampad
10. Medipally
2. Kadambapur
11. Munulagutta
3. Budigapally
12. Paidichintalapally
4. Singapur
13. Rachapally
5. Hanumakonda
14. Khadim Kanagarti
6. Siddipet
15. Bodaguttapally
7. Moula Ali
16. Kachapur
8. Hashmatpet
17. Bompally
9. Lingampally
18. Dhulikatta
10. Polakonda
19. Goureddypet
11. Peddamarur
20. Peddabankur
12. Chinnamarur
12
21. Kondapur
13. Uppalpadu
22. Kandi
14. Satanikota
23. Devaruppala
15. Yeleswaram
24. Vardhamanakota
16. Nagarjunakonda 25. Gajula Banda
17. Chandavaram
26. Vaddeman
18. Tenneru
27. Amaravati
19. Agiripally
28. Mallepadu
20. Jonnavada
29. Satanikota
21. Hulikal
30. Sasanakota
84
82

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20

Ramatirtham

NELLORE

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30

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BANGALORE

TA M I L N A D U

12
Reference:
Neolithic
Megalithic
Buddhist Stupa
Satavahana
District HQ
Railway line

Scale 1 cm. = 18 km.

100 km.

Drawn by

100 km.

78

200 km.

M.Sharief & S.Hussain

80

Figure 2 Megalithic burials and early Buddhist sites in Andhra.

themselves to have been regarded as reliquaries

whether they contained corporeal remains in
reliquary containers of various types or not and to
have been offered the same veneration. While the

earliest stupas were simply mounds of mud, perhaps

stabilized by compression, they were succeeded by
mud brick, fired brick, and stone-faced mounds
and by combinations of all these components.

678 ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology

The architectural elements of the Buddhist stupa

are the following: the circular later also squared
base (the drum), the dome (the egg); the pole (yasti)
protruding from the top which might bear flags or the
superimposed rings of the umbrella (both symbolizing high status and perhaps also the dhamma). The
pole was surrounded by a small square railing on top
of the dome and later by a box (harmika) of similar
size. The height and bulk of the original pole on top of
a stupa became greatly elaborated in the course of
time into huge umbrellas (chattra), towers (sikhara)
and other ornaments. It was essential that the sacred
territory around the stupa be defined by a railing with
entrances. The railing was originally of wood, later of
stone, and it enclosed a lower paved devotional pathway running between the railing and the drum of
the stupa. The impressive sculptures on the stone
gateways and railings of early stupas like Bharhut
and Sanchi (second to first centuries BCE) as well
as the shapes of the gateways and railings themselves, are all adaptations from still older traditions
of railings, gateways and sculptures made of wood
(Figure 3). As such, they throw a precious light further back in time onto the high artistic achievements
of wooden ceremonial gateways and sculptures for
cities, palaces, and stupas that have themselves rotted
away. Many stupas (e.g., at Sanchi) also had an upper
devotional pathway running on top of the drum around
the dome.
Regional variations were numerous. In the north
and northwest, many stupas contained small hollow
chambers. These were spaces carefully reserved in
the otherwise solid structures of drum and dome,
which often contained reliquaries with relics, but
which sometimes contained inhumation burials. In
the rock-cut shrines and monasteries of the Northwest Deccan, the principal object of devotion was a
small, completely solid rock-cut stupa. Sometimes
these rock-cut spaces faithfully reproduce, carved
into stone, the appearance of timber rafters, bindings
and thatch of still earlier monuments built of organic
materials.
In the highly developed Buddhist cultures of the
southeast, in Orissa, Andhra, and Tamil Nadu,
stupas with relic chambers were less common but
reliquaries were installed in many locations of the
stupa, pathway, and railings. Some southeastern stupas were constructed over wheel-shaped foundations,
sometimes with sacred symbols in the hub of the
wheel. Stupa drums were built both with and without
rectangular projections (ayaka platforms) at approximately the cardinal directions, facing each entrance in
the railing. Ayaka platforms became a main focus for
Buddhist art and the installation of reliquaries. In the

Figure 3 Eastern gateway of the Great Stupa at Sanchi. By

courtesy of the British Museum, secondfirst century BCE.*

late twentieth century, numerous reliquaries containing relics and offerings were found in early Andhra
stupas near these ayaka platforms, where they had
remained undetected even in sites like Amaravati
that had been worked over many times. Donatory
inscriptions were carved on the railings, or on stone
pillars set up on top of the ayaka platforms. These
pillars, reinscribed over centuries, thus provide a long
and precious record of the range of donors supporting
the stupas (Figure 4).
In all its variations, the stupa is a commemorative
structure worthy of veneration because it symbolizes
the life and teaching of the Buddha. When it contains
relics (or is believed to do so), it possesses still greater
sanctity and commands still greater devotion.

Stupas and Relics

The objects deemed suitable to be treated as relics
included, the cremated remains of the Buddha (especially tooth and hair relics); the objects of his personal
use (robe, begging bowl); somewhat later, texts representing his teachings; bodhisattvas (future Buddhas)
and the cremated remains of his principal disciples
were also treated as relics. Later still c. third century

ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology 679

Buddhist Art
Buddhist art in South and Southeast Asia has produced some of the masterpieces of the region. Here it
is only possible to list some of the most important
traditions and times before moving on to a more
detailed consideration of the Buddhist art of Andhra.

Figure 4 Stone slab carved in high relief showing an Andhrastyle stupa with decorated areas, ayaka platform and pillars
(from the drum of the Amaravati stupa. By courtesy of the British
Museum, c. third century CE.

CE, the cremated remains of distinguished abbots and

monks were deemed suitable. This last remains a
living tradition in Thailand today, where most of the
cremated remains of particularly venerated abbots or
monks are interred as relics in stupas of medium size
c. 4 m high in conspicuous locations within the
sacred sima territory of the monastery (e.g., beside
the Ordination Hall). A part of the ash and bone,
however, is set aside to be mixed with clay and
fired, forming terra cotta votive tablets identified
with that monk, which are worn and venerated by
the laity as protective relics. The cremated remains
of the laity, by contrast, are interred in quite small
stupa-shaped urns c. 50 cm high arranged along
the perimeter of the sima territory. Pairing this information with the evidence from early stupas in Northwest
India and Afghanistan and slightly later ones in
Andhra, it becomes clear that in Buddhism at certain
times and places, there has been a long and permeable
boundary between relics and burials, whether in stupas or other sacred places.

. The Sunga second to first century BCE, Sanchi

and Bharhut, stupas, carved gateways and railings;
Bhaja and Pitalkhora, rock-cut shrines and monastic cells with relief sculptures;
. the Satavahanas second to first century BCE,
Western Deccan Nasik and other rock-cut shrines,
and cells, first century BCE to third century CE,
Andhra, enlarged and decorated the Amaravati
Great Stupa, numerous stupas, monastic complexes
and highly developed art;
. the Saka-Kusana age late first century BCE to
third century CE, numerous Gandharan sites of
Northwest India, major built complexes containing
stupas and monasteries, stone reliefs and votive
objects in gold, stone, and ivory; North India
beginnings of splendid Mathura tradition of stone
statues of Buddha; also rock-cut shrines of Karle
and other sites of Western Deccan;
. the Iksvaku and Vakatakas third to sixth century,
Andhra, Nagarjunakonda, Amaravati (cont.), Ajanta
painted and rock-cut caves, Vengi strong influences
on Pyu Buddhism in Central Burma;
. Imperial Gupta fourth to sixth century CE,
centered in North India influenced most areas of
India and mainland Southeast Asia. Sanchi (cont.),
superb Buddha images of Mathura (cont.), Sarnath
(cont.); post-Gupta, numerous local kingdoms
under influences of late Gupta style Aurangabad
and Ellora rock-cut shrines, cells and statuary;
. Pala-Sena eighth to twelfth century CE, North and
Northeast India, peak of late Buddhist culture in
India, Nalanda, Paharpur, Sultanganj, Tapandighi
very strong influences on Borobodur, Sumatra, and
Pagan, and received endowments from Southeast
Asian as well as Indian kings, for example, for monasteries at Nalanda and repairs to the Mahabodhi
temple. Pagan became the largest ancient city dominated by Buddhist stupas and temples (Figure 6).

Andhra Buddhist Art

A great mastery of the peculiar properties of stone in
early Indian art is found in the Buddhist relief sculptures of Amaravati. The stone carvers yard at this site
must have been an art academy where leading sculptors practiced and taught apprentices during the
successive phases of construction, enlargement and

680 ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology

renewal, c. second to first century BCE third to

fourth century CE. The soft contours of Andhra art
style can be seen at numerous Buddhist sites along the
East Coast and up the great river valleys, at Nagarjunakonda, Ghantasala, Jaggayapeta, Ramatirtham,
Salihundam, Sankaram. Bavikonda. Thotlakonda,
and many others. While high aesthetic levels were
achieved at a number of Andhran Buddhist sites,
especially Nagarjunakonda (third to fourth centuries),
at Amaravati in the second to third centuries CE quite
exceptional levels of stone carving skills were paired
with dynamic visions of iconic incidents from the
Buddhas life. They have been compared with the highest aesthetic levels reached in classical Greek relief
sculpture (cf. the Alexander sarcophagus, now in the
Archaeological Museum, Istanbul or the side panels of
the Pergamon altar, in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin).
Typically the main figure or object in an Amaravati
sculpture in high relief is depicted on a larger scale but
off-center in the scene, while supporting figures move
in a clockwise swirl around that focal point (Figure 5).
The concentration on the focal point is emphasized by
the orientation of each member of the scene and the
angles their bodies present to the viewer, by many
graceful contrasts among arm and leg positions and
by draperies in movement. At their best, the Amaravati sculptors produced elegant solutions to the perennial challenges in relief sculpture. For example,
worshipping figures are presented partly, largely and
entirely from the back following the rhythms of this
sweeping circular vision; persuasive depictions are
made of human anatomy and its relative proportions;

Figure 5 Amaravati Buddhist sculpture carved in high relief (from

the inner face of the stupa railing). By courtesy of the British Museum, second to third century CE.

there is strikingly effective foreshortening of the feet

of humans and animals, linked technically with an
extraordinary mastery of the diminishing scale of the
bodies of horses, elephants and humans emerging
from the stone at a three-quarter angle in high relief;
in crowded scenes, bodies and objects are skillfully
superimposed in varying depths of relief while individual components are in movement.
Figure 4 is one of many surviving drum slabs
which, though not identical, nonetheless give a general idea of the appearance of the Great Amaravati
Stupa at its peak, c. second to fourth century CE,
and of its principal decorative elements. This monument of some 49 m in diameter and perhaps some
16 m in height, together with its railing, was the
focus of an immense amount of superb Buddhist
sculpture in high relief as well as (from c. the third
century onwards) some standing Buddha figures in
the round. Relief sculptures were placed on the outer
and inner surfaces of the railings; on the drum, especially on the four ayaka platforms projecting from the
drum opposite the gateways; and on the lower half of
the dome-shaped superstructure.
There is an unresolved debate among art historians
as to whether there was an aniconic phase in early
Buddhist art, succeeded by an iconic one and whether
this marked a change in Buddhist thought and the
worship addressed to the person of the Buddha as
reflected in his images. Meanwhile, it can be noted
that depictions of the Buddha go back at least to
the first and possibly second century BCE (e.g., the
Bimaran reliquary) and that such representations
overlap in time with sculpture in which his presence
was denoted symbolically through his footprints, an
empty throne, the Bodhi tree, and the stupa itself. At
Amaravati there are many such sculptures of the second to third century CE showing veneration being
offered by monks and laity to these symbols of the
Buddhas presence, while standing Buddha figures
carved in the round appear there c. early third century
CE. On a reduced scale, the decorative scheme of the
Amaravati Mahachaitya was reproduced on the very
numerous smaller stupas nearby extending over
the plain on the south bank of the Krishna River.
The royal city of the Satavahanas, Dhanyakataka lay
close by with a wharf on the riverbank testifying
to the linkages between royal patronage, Buddhism
and trade.
The deeper roots of Amaravati and many other
Andhra Buddhist sites in prehistoric and protohistoric sacred geography also reveal themselves in the
presence of numerous megalithic burials within and
close by the stupa area. Evidence at other Andhra
sites indicate that megalithic-type burials continued
to be practised up to c. third century CE, clearly

ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology 681

overlapping with and at least in some cases interacting with Buddhism. A total of 214 megalithic burials
sites have been identified in Andhra some of them
containing hundreds of individual locations and
c. 118 early Buddhist sites were established there
before the third century CE. There appears to be a
striking correlation between these sacred geographies
(Figure 2). Earlier scholars noted the occurrence of
megalithic sites within such iconic Buddhist sites
as Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Yelleshwaram, and
Jaggayapeta and some linear cultural continuity has
been proposed from late prehistory into the early
historical era. This is well founded and important.
But this article argues that is even more significant
to recognize the contemporaneity of megalithic
burial practices and early Buddhism in Andhra over
c. a further four centuries and that there are sites
where there is evidence of their interaction, as in the
megalithic burial chambers and their art at Chagatur
(Mahaboobnagar District, Andhra) as well as the
burial chambers inside stupas of Northwest India.
Such evidence compels one to consider anew the
complexities of cultural assimilation and change
taking place in early Buddhist societies to which late
prehistoric and early historic archaeology, art and
inscriptions provide the only doorways.

Pyu Buddhism in Burma

The Pyu civilization of Central Burma was one of the
earliest in Southeast Asia to adopt Indian alphabets
and Buddhist thought. Pyu archaeological evidence
shows a complex union and interaction of preBuddhist and Buddhist ritual similar to that of
Andhra. The earliest Pyu fragmentary inscriptions
show a knowledge of Indian palaeography from
c. first century CE mixed with letter (aksara) types
that date from the third century. From at least the first
century BCE, however, there had been Pyu technical

borrowings from India, revealed especially in brick

making of Mauryan and Sunga types, without any
sign of the adoption of Buddhism. Instead the earliest
ceremonial buildings in the cities of the Pyu were
large brick and timber halls devoted to multiple burials, probably of rulers and their consorts, cremated
and installed in groups in urns that replicated in terra
cotta the shape and often the decor of bronze drums.
From the third century CE onwards there is abundant evidence of the adoption of Buddhism among
the Pyu and the construction of monumental complexes of stupa, shrine, and monastic cells that reveal
the influences of Andhra assimilated to a local style.
At the same time, the Pyu tradition of urn burials
inside and in direct proximity to brick monuments
persisted in the context of a flourishing Buddhist
civilization up to the ninth century and possibly
longer. Indeed Buddhist archaeological finds in the
major Pyu urban sites, Beikthano, Halin, and Sri
Ksetra, have contributed precious insights to our
understanding of the history of Buddhism in general.
For instance, a complete replica of a palm leaf manuscript in solid gold (Figure 7) was found in the relic
chamber of a ruined stupa mound (the Khin Ba
mound) in Sri Ksetra, dating from c. mid-fifth to
early sixth century CE. This relic chamber also
contained one of the largest reliquaries ever found,
made of silver partly gilded, and decorated in high
relief with some of the earliest Buddha images of
Southeast Asia (Figure 8), and the largest treasure of
gold and silver objects ever found in a relic chamber in
South or Southeast Asia, The manuscript consisted of
18 gold leaves inscribed with excerpts of varying
lengths from eight core texts of the Pali canon, two
end covers in gold and the whole was bound together
by gold wires.
These samples of canonical Pali are considered to
be the oldest and certainly the most extensive surviving examples in the world so far known. They have

Figure 6 Panoramic view of Pagan, the largest ancient Buddhist city, tenth to thirteenth century CE.

682 ASIA, WEST/Buddhist Archaeology

Figure 7 The golden Pali manuscript from Sri Ksetra. By

courtesy of the Archaeological Department Myanmar, fifthsixth
century CE.

the additional value of a securely identified archaeological and chronological context. For these reasons,
they not only provide a privileged glimpse of the
extent of Buddhist knowledge outside India in this
non-Indic city at this time, but the characteristics of
the palaeography indicate that the Andhra coast was
the hearth of the Buddhist learning of all but one of
the monks who inscribed their chosen excerpts on the
gold leaves. The exerpts also provide a unique basis
for assessing the integrity with which the same Pali
texts were preserved in the largely oral tradition in
Sri Lanka and elsewhere and collected in the nineteenth century. Pali texts in Thailand of c. sixth
seventh century age, which reflect the existence of
early Buddhist cultures there as well, are short and
fragmentary inscriptions. Though valuable evidence,
they cannot provide such extensive insights into the
state of Buddhist culture in Thailand at that time. It
is arresting to note that the wider context of Sri
Ksetra reveals the largest burial fields of pre-Islamic
Southeast Asia and includes urn burials placed inside
major Buddhist shrines inside the city, buried under
their paved courtyards, as well as thousands of urn
burials encased in small funerary stupas and large
stepped burial terraces outside the city walls.
Thus in its spread outside the area of its origin
in Northeast India, Buddhism appears to have preserved its precious core message while presenting
porous boundaries to the pre-existing cultures it
encountered. Locally specific styles and practices
emerged early to diversify and enrich the appeal of
the Buddhist eucumene.
See also: Asia, South: Ganges Valley; Indus Civilization;

Megaliths.

Further Reading

Figure 8 The great silver reliquary from Sri Ksetra. By courtesy

of the Archaeological Department Myanmar, fifth to sixth
century CE.

Bechert H (ed.) (1991) The Dating of the Historical Buddha. Gottingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht.
Huntington S (1985) The Art of Ancient India, Buddhist, Hindu,
Jain. NY: Weatherhill (with contributions by John
C. Huntington).
Lamotte E (1988) History of Indian Buddhism: From the Origins
to the Saka Era. Trans. from French by Sara Webb-Boin under
the supervision of Jean Dantinne Louvain-la-Neuve: Universite
catholique de Louvain, Institut orientaliste.
Mahaparinibbanasutta. (from the Dighanikaya). Trans. From Pali
by SisterVajira Francis Story (1998). The Last Days of the
Buddha. (Rev. ed.) Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society.
Misra BN (1998) Nalanda. 3 vols. Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corp.
Schwartzberg J (ed.) (1992) A Historical Atlas of South Asia.
NY: Oxford University Press.
Rea A (ed.) (1894 repr. 1969) Archaeological Survey of India, New
Imperial Series: South Indian Buddhist Antiquities, Vol. 15.
Madras: Superintendant Government Press and Varanasi:
Indological Book House.

ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley 683

Stargardt J (200203) City of the Wheel, city of the ancestors:
spatial symbolism in a Pyu royal city. Indo-Asiatische Zeitschrift
(6/7): 14467.
Stargardt J (2005) Death rituals of the late Iron Age and early Buddhism in Central Burma and Southeast India whose norms,
whose practices? In: Schalk P, Deeg M, Freiberger O, Kleine C,
and van Nahl A (eds.) Im Dickicht der Gebote; Studien zur
Dialektik von Norm und Praxis in der Buddhismusgeschichte
Asiens. [In the thicket of the rules; studies in the dialectics of norm
and practice in the history of Asian Buddhism.] Uppsala: Acta
Universitatis Upsaliensis, Historia Religionum 26.
Williams J (1982) The Art of Gupta India: Empire and Province.
Princeton: University Press.

Ganges Valley
Nayanjot Lahiri, University of Delhi, Delhi, India
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
alluvium Sand, clay, silt, etc., gradually deposited by moving
water, as along a river bed or the shore of a lake.
Sunderbans At the mouth of the Ganga river and spread across
areas of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, the largest
mangrove forest in the world.
doab A tract of land between two confluent rivers.

Introduction
The crescentic alluvium that constitutes the Ganga
valley is the dominating topographical feature of
north India, in much the same way as the Ganga
river is of special significance in the lives and traditions of the inhabitants of India. (Readers should here
note that both Ganga and the Ganges refer to the
same river, with the former term used traditionally
in India.) The lie of the land is deceptively simple: the
river flows through and across an immense plain, a
stretch of alluvium that covers more than a million
square kilometers from the Yamuna river in the west
to the Bay of Bengal towards the east. Although its
topography appears to be fairly homogeneous, in
fact, the valley is marked by physiographic and historical complexity. Some preliminary issues may be
clarified at the outset.
First, a clarification about terminology needs to be
offered. Much of the Ganga valley, so called because
it represents the infilling between the Himalayas to
the north and the central peninsular revetment to the
south, is low and flat. For this reason, it is frequently
described as the Ganga plain. The terms valley and
plain will be used interchangeably here. The Ganga
valley itself, in terms of geology, structure, relief, and

physiography forms part of a larger macrodivision

the Great Plains of India. This seemingly featureless
plain covers some 700 000 km2 with the Ganga and
Brahmaputra forming the main drainage axes and a
physiography that varies from the semi-arid landscape
of the Rajasthan plain to the humid Assam valley in
the east (Figure 1). The flat terrain of the Ganga valley,
in turn, has generally been subdivided into three segments made up of the upper Ganga plain, the middle
Ganga Plain, and the lower Ganga plain.
No marked physical breaks which would provide a
rational basis for its demarcation into these tracts can
be identified in the Ganga valley. Generally, the upper
Gangetic plain which includes the YamunaGanga
doab (land between two rivers) has a drier climate
with a greater concentration of wheat cultivation
while rice predominates in the middle Gangetic zone.
The humid lower Ganga valley extends from the foot
of the Himalayas in the Darjeeling area to the Bay of
Bengal, with the bulk of it forming a deltaic plain that
extends across eastern India and Bangladesh. There
are also differences in the nature of the soil. Although
this is alluvium-based throughout the valley, more
loam and clay can be observed in the upper Ganga
plain. The loams increase and the sands decrease in
the central plain, while further east, the soil is marked
by finer textural sequences from loams to very fine
silty clays with some tracts of the old alluvium in the
Bengal delta having lateritic clay. These three tracts
are further subdivided into smaller units. For instance, in the lower Ganga valley, the Mahananda
plain is marked by old alluvial formations and historical links with Tibet and the Brahmaputra valley. This
makes it a different subregion from the coastal and
related estuarine regions that dominate the lower
Ganga tract, through which the whole of the Ganga
plain was open to the traffic from the coast. It is
perhaps unnecessary to delineate all these subregions
in a geographical overview of this nature. What needs
to be remembered is that regional divisions and subdivisions within the valley have been based on a
variety of factors that include landforms, climate,
and location.
Second, the cultural gradients that make up the
archaeology of the Ganga plain can be as varied as
the physical subdivisions. For one, its various segments were colonized at different points of time and
by groups occupying diverse subsistence and cultural
niches. In the middle Ganga segment that stretches
from Allahabad to Banaras, the first settlement clusters were those of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the
Early Holocene, while further north and south, the
pioneer colonizers were advanced agricultural communities. In the case of the YamunaGanga doab, a
broad-based subsistence pattern coincides with the

684 ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley

Thar
Gujarat
tract

im

ala

ya
4

2
3
Peninsular India

Figure 1 Divisions of the Great Plains (after Singh 200102): 1, PunjabRajasthan plain; 2, Upper and middle Ganga plain; 3, Lower
Ganga plain; 4, Assam Valley.

presence of sites related to the Harappan tradition of

the late thirdearly second millennia BC. On the
question of the evolution of a productive iron technology as well, the chronological spectrum is fairly
wide. In the upper Gangetic plain, iron was present in
an early second millennium BC context while in the
lower Gangetic valley, iron-bearing horizons become
visible from c. 1200 BC and later. Similarly, the evolution of early historic cities was uneven. In the Indian
state of Bihar, the antiquity of urban sites along the
Ganga in the south, going back to c. sixth century BC
if not earlier, seems to be much clearer than for those
that are clustered north of the Ganga.
This archaeological complexity does not make for a
straightforward, unified picture; on the contrary, there
are multilineal lines of development. The variety and
depth is impressive and amply documented in the relevant archaeological literature. It is also one which cannot be seamlessly integrated into what is known from
the earliest stratum of Indian literature. The Ganga
valley and its colonization figures prominently in
what are described as the texts of the later Vedic tradition. The large corpus is poorly dated (suggested dates
range from c. 2000 BC to 600 BC) but it certainly goes
back to the time period of many advanced agricultural
communities that will be described here. The problem
is that Vedic images of early colonization and agriculture cannot be satisfactorily integrated into what is
known about the archaeology of this region. So, for
example, while there are allusions in the Satapatha
Brahmana (c. 700 BC) about agriculture being carried
to the banks of the Gandak river in Bihar by the putative Aryans in the first half of the first millennium BC,
excavations have revealed that in the third millennium BC itself, there were rice-cultivating agricultural

communities in that area. For understanding the ancient settlement geography of the Ganga valley, it is
better to focus on the various features of the archaeological column and its various branches, rather than
seek confirmation for religious texts.

Geography and Environment

The Ganga river, which gives the valley its name,
emerges from the icy Gaumukh cave in the central
Himalayas and is known at that point as the Bhagirathi. In its early course, it resembles a mountain
torrent, which assumes the name Ganga after its confluence with the Alaknanda river at Devaprayag.
After crossing Hardwar, the river flows out of the
mountains into the plains that it has helped to create.
These plains stretch for hundreds of kilometers and
become deltaic in the east of the Indian subcontinent,
where the Gangas waters enter the Bay of Bengal,
combined with those of the Brahmaputra and Meghna
rivers. Along the way, the meager river which emerges
into the plains becomes majestic and swollen as it
receives the waters of major and minor rivers across
north India: the Yamuna, Ramganga, Tons, Gomati,
Ghaghara, Gandak, Sai, Kali Nadi, Sarayu, Kosi, and
their numerous tributary systems. More than 60 percent of the water flowing into the Ganga plains comes
from Himalayan sources, while 40 percent comes
from the peninsula. Unlike the Indus system where
the five Punjab rivers combine to form a united stream,
the Ganga system is constantly enriched by tributary
rivers as it flows towards the direction of increasing
rainfall.
The deeply entrenched river that today makes
its way across the north Indian plains is a Late

ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley 685

(a) 128 ka

(b) 64 ka

(c) 20 ka
Figure 2 Evolution of the Ganga plain (after Singh 200102): (a) 128 ka; (b) 64 ka, marked by the creation of lakes; (c) 20 ka, drying
out and siltation of lakes and depressions.

PleistoceneEarly Holocene development (Figure 2).

This was when the Late Pleistocene pattern of weak
summer and strong winter winds witnessed a shift
towards a vigorous southwest monsoon bringing
summer rain. Consequently, the Ganga river which
used to be a low-sinuosity, shallow braided drainage
line, developed its present high-sinuosity meandering
channel, cutting deep into its present bed.
An important hydrographic feature of the middle
Ganga plain is the large number of horseshoe lakes or
marshy depressions known locally under the name of
tal. Apparently, as the Ganga started cutting its bed
and receding further south of its present bed, in the
course of its withdrawal, many of the meanders of the
old courses were converted into oxbow lakes. It is
along the edges of such lakes, rich in aquatic fauna
and marked by wild grasses including those with edible
grains, that the locales of early Stone Age settlements in
the valley have been identified (Figure 3). Today, a large
number of these lakes have been filled up and converted
into farmlands, although their morphology still allows
them to be identified as extinct lakes.

There have been major shifts in the configuration

of the drainage lines as well. The course of the Ganga
itself, for instance, has undergone major alteration,
especially marked in the lower section of its valley.
Presently, the Ganga meets the sea in two channels:
the BhagirathiHoogly in the west and the Padma
in the east. The Padma is the major channel of the
Ganga, receiving the waters of the Brahmaputra and
the Meghna rivers which carry between themselves the
entire drainage of the northeast. However, till the
twelfth century, the Padma was only a spill channel of
the BhagirathiHooghly. Between the 12th and 16th
centuries the significance of the two flows was more or
less even, but from the sixteenth century onwards, the
flow of the Padma became more significant.
Along with climatic and hydrographic shifts, the
vegetational history of the Ganga valley has also been
a shifting one. Today, forests and woodlands have
practically disappeared but till the 1840s, a large
part of the area was densely forested. Pollen analysis
together with archaeozoological evidence for the
presence of wild boar, a number of species of deer,

686 ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley

DAMDAMA
SULEMAN PARBATPUR

SHALHIPUR

MAHADAHA

MANDAH

26

PILI N
.

PRATAPGARH

SARAI-NAHAR-RAI

SA

AT

IR

IN

45

KURHA

GA
NG
A

30

R.

ALLAHABAD

GARHWA
UNA R.
YAM

AHIRI
2515

VARANASI

Epipalaeolithic
Mesolithic
8

16

24

32

KM
8145

82

15

30

45

83

Figure 3 Mesolithic sites in the middle Ganga plains (after Chakrabarti 2006).

elephant, rhinoceros, and water buffalo in the middle

Ganga valley suggest an environment made up of
forests, grasslands, and marshes. The magnitude of
the ecological shift can be gauged in relation to the
Rhinoceros unicornis, which lives in open country,
well adapted to a swampy habitat. This animal was
present at archaeological sites in eastern Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar, underlining the existence of a conducive
climate and vegetation cover. Changes in the forest
cover extend into the deltaic region. The immense
estuarine Sunderbans forest, named after the Sundari
(Heritiera formes) plant which is endemic in the region, has a shifting history. Palynological investigations of a series of profiles have shown that a forest
resembling the current mangroves of the Sunderbans
extended up to Calcutta about 2640 and 7030 years
ago. The general picture of the area in and around
Calcutta is that of a landscape frequently transgressed
by sea water but also getting fresh water from rivers.
Finally, a general point about the minerally poor
character of the Ganga valley needs to be addressed.
Geographers and historians have frequently emphasized this as a permanent disability of this large
stretch of alluvium. What has not been sufficiently
highlighted is that this lack of resources is compensated by the presence of resource-rich highlands towards the north and the south. The Chhotanagpur

plateau, for instance, provides a kind of backdrop,

from the Gaya region till the western section of the
Bengal delta. This mineral-rich plateau has always
been the most important source of raw materials
to the protohistoric and historic Gangetic segments
that are adjacent to it. Similarly, a large area of the
middle Ganga valley is marked by the presence of
the Kaimurs and the Sonabhadra plateau on its
south. The interaction of the stone-devoid riverine
plain with the southern plateau goes back to the
Early Holocene when Mesolithic settlements using
microliths and other stone objects become sharply
visible. Again, the use of iron in the Lucknow region
of the upper Ganga valley in the early second millennium BC has to be understood in relation to the rich
iron ore-bearing area at the fringe of Banaras. There
seems to have been a distributive network in place
which articulated the supply of smelted bloomery
iron from the southern hill fringe to a section of the
Ganga plains. So, even though the Gangetic alluvium
lacks stone and metal ore, it could and did easily
access resources from the hilly outliers that fringed it.

Archaeological Geography
A great deal of archaeological research has been done
on the sites and sequences in the various segments of

ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley 687

the Ganga plain. This section provides a broad overview of the geographical distribution of the sites,
dates, and associated artifacts from the Palaeolithic
till the early historic period.
Upper Ganga Valley: Palaeolithic Presence

The Gangetic alluvium is fringed by hills and plateaux where Palaeolithic sites and long stratigraphic
sequences are fairly common. The Ganga valley, however, has only one documented Palaeolithic site. This is
Kalpi which lies on the right bank of the Yamuna river,
in the southern segment of the upper Ganga plain.
There is nothing specifically noteworthy about the
flora or fauna of Kalpi. Its importance is locational;
the town of Kalpi guarded a main crossing of the
Yamuna and was the starting point for expeditions
from the valley section towards the north into central
India and the Deccan. The lithological succession
recorded in the Kalpi section of the Yamuna river is
composed of three units or events which reveal a
changing Palaeo-environment. Event I (76 11 ka
to 69 13 ka) was marked by a moderate to dry
climate. It does not contain any humanly modified
material, although the calcrete conglomerate at the
contact of Events I and II contains quartzite pebbles
with broken faces and worked-bone artifacts. The
sediments of Event II (mid-point dated to 45 9 ka)
underline humid conditions. They have yielded rich
vertebrate fossils an elephant tusk and its shoulder
blade, molars of Equus, Bovids, Bos, elephant, hippopotamus, and skeletal remains of crocodiles and
turtles. Several specimens of human femur have been
retrieved and humanly modified bone pieces with
flake scars and sickle-shaped edges, and a bone splinter
with black patina and three parallel lines which are
Event III sediments (basal section date 43 7 ka) reveal
that, towards the upper part, the climate had become
increasingly dry. The Event II lithic and bone industry
seems to be Middle Palaeolithic; pebble tools comprise
79.4 percent of the total lithic assemblage.
Similar fossil-rich horizons have also been recorded
at Phaphamau in the Allahabad area, in the cliff
section of the Ganga river near Banaras, and in a
well section of a bridge near Bhagalpur in Bihar.
These horizons, however, did not yield human artifacts. Kalpi, for the first time, has revealed Palaeolithic artifacts in association with such fossils, and
has added a new dimension to the distribution of
Palaeolithic sites in northern India.
Specialized Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers

Mesolithic clusters in and around the Ganga plains

are mainly in the AllahabadBanaras zone. There are
a large number of contemporaneous open air and

rock shelter occurrences on the eastern fringe of the

Kaimurs/Vindhyas, but since these are not in the valley itself, they cannot be treated as part of the Ganga
sequence. In the Ganga alluvium, there are around
200 open-air sites, generally small and marked by a
handful of microliths. There are, however, some larger settlements Damdama, Mahadaha, and Sarai
Nahar Rai which have provided extensive evidence
of a deep-rooted Mesolithic occupation of the central
Ganga alluvium. These are not temporary camp sites
but settlements that were continuously inhabited.
Three separate areas have been demarcated at
Mahadaha: a burial-cum-settlement area occupying
the central position within the settlement, a butchering area between the settlement and the western margins of the lake where it was situated, and a lake area
where excavations have revealed a significant amount
of occupational debris in what was once the bottom
of the lake. Several circular and oval hearths were
found inside the burial-cum-settlement section; the
excavated hearth yielded charred bones. The butchering area was used for butchering animals like cattle,
hippopotamus, pig, turtle, and most frequently, deer.
It was also used for making bone tools and ornaments.
That the lake area yielded thousands of bones suggests
that the debris was pushed deliberately into the
lake. Damdama is located at the confluence of two
branches of a drainage line called the Tambura Nala.
Like Mahadaha, it has yielded various species of animals, with as many as six varieties of deer. There are
plant remains from the site as well, mostly of different
wild varieties, with a recent analysis also suggesting
the presence of domesticated rice. Hearths, in addition
to their use for cooking, were also connected with the
manufacture of stone and bone tools.
Extensive evidence of burials containing skeletons
of males, females, and children has been revealed
from within settlements. Those at Sarai Nahar Rai
are in the form of shallow, oblong pits with tapering
sides, with microliths as grave goods. A microlithic
arrowhead was also found inside the rib bones of a
skeleton, indicating in this case, the cause of death of
the individual. Osteoarthritis was the major pathological feature of these skeletons; stress markers indicate activities like spear-throwing, stone-throwing,
and using sling shots. The Mahadaha graves are shallow and elliptical and the grave goods fairly extensive.
These comprise arrowheads, animal bones, pieces of
hematite, necklaces, ear ornaments, and bone rings.
There are two double burials, a male and female
together, and a young adult male and an adult male
in another. There are many more double burials at
Damdama, as many as six, of which five contained
a male and female together. The sixth grave provided skeletal remains of two males and a female.

688 ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley

Incidentally, year-long burial and habitation has been

assumed on the basis of the occurrence of bandicoot
rats at Mahadaha and Damdama, and on the basis
of the study of the orientations of these graves in
relation to azimuth.
The Ganga Mesolithic, as has been pointed out, is
geographically concentrated around meander lakes
and streams which were formed around 8000 and
6000 BP. It is likely that large-scale Mesolithic habitations coincided with the formation of these lakes.
The C-14 date from Mahadaha and the TL date from
Damdama of the sixth and fifth millennium BC support
this hypothesis. At the same time, the beginnings of
the Mesolithic can go as far back as the beginning
of the Holocene. Damdama, for instance, is situated
on a rivulet which must have been a flowing channel
at the time of occupation. Such channels are known
to have ceased by 8000 BP. If this is correct, then
Damdama had to be occupied much before this date.
The dates from the central Ganga plain have important implications in relation to the early evidence
of agriculture from the same geographical zone. This
evidence will be discussed in detail below. At this
point, it may be underlined that there are indications that it is not a stagewise evolution that is witnessed here with incipient agriculturists replacing
hunter-gatherers. On the contrary, Mesolithic huntergatherers and the first agricultural communities were
coexisting in this tract, with the former marked by
a degree of sedentism and an intensive exploitation
of plants that is usually associated with groups practicing agriculture.
Early Agriculture

An early transition from food gathering to food production has recently been established in the middle
Ganga plains, around the Sarayu valley of Uttar Pradesh. This concerns the early cultivation of rice but
before spelling out the nature of the evidence, related
issues concerning the beginning of food production in
the subcontinent in general and the Vindhyan edge of
the Sarayu and its contiguous alluvial plains in particular, need to be clarified.
South Asia saw the emergence and evolution of
agriculture and animal domestication in multiple
zones. The earliest center for the cultivation of wheat
and barley (and the independent domestication of the
latter) from c. eighth millennium BC onwards, is at
Mehrgarh in Baluchistan (see Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands). The possibility of an early
transition from hunting-gathering cultures to agriculture and pastoralism in certain other areas may also
be considered, although the evidence is ambiguous.
For instance, in the Ladakh region, the Neolithic
site of Giak is as early as the sixth millennium BC

(calibrated radiocarbon date), although another site

of the same cultural complex has yielded a c. 1000 BC
date. Another such case is that of Rajasthan, where
several salt lakes have yielded a cerelia type of pollen
in a c. 7000 BC context, along with comminuted charcoal pieces. This is apparently indicative of forest
clearance and the beginning of some sort of agriculture. However, to archaeologically confirm the lake
evidence, food-producing cultures of similar antiquity
will have to be discovered in Rajasthan.
In the case of the Ganga valley, it was the peninsular edge of the central plains, marked by the sites
of Koldihwa and Kunjhun which showed earlyNeolithic stratums representing rice-producing communities. There were problems, though, concerning
the chronology of cultivation since, of the nine radiocarbon dates of Koldihwa, only three go back to
the seventh and sixth millennia BC. However, there
is now much clearer evidence from recent excavations
at Lahuradeva (Sant Nagar district) in Uttar Pradesh
which, importantly, suggests that such early rice cultivation was not confined to the Vindhyan hills but
extended into the Gangetic alluvium.
The microcharcoal recovered from the 2.8 m thick
sediment succession of the lake on the edge of which
Lohuradevas mound is situated, suggests fire caused by
slash-and-burn cultivation in the area from 10 000 BP.
The lowest archaeological deposits of the site have
yielded domesticated rice a little later; these are dated
to 8259 BP (calibrated). This occurs in the lowest level
in association with both wild rice (Oryza rupifogon)
and foxtail millet (Setaria sp.). Husk marks of rice are
also embedded in the core of a number of potsherds
in this earliest phase of cultural occupation there
IA-which is marked by coarse red ware and blackand-red ware, with cord impressions on its exterior.
The beginning of food production in the Indian
subcontinent is a multihued tapestry in which the
early presence of rice in the central Ganga plains
forms an important strand, underlining that this zone
was part of an early nuclear center of agriculture.
Advanced Agriculturists

The first stage of sustained village growth in and

across the Ganga valley is chronologically later than
the beginning of agriculture witnessed in its central
segment. Generally speaking, there is widespread
growth of agricultural communities in the upper and
central Ganga plains from the late third millennium
early second millennium BC, while in the lower
Ganga valley, the radiocarbon dates are squarely in
the second millennium BC. The term used to describe
these cultures is Neolithic Chalcolithic. This is not
a particularly logical classificatory label but has been
extensively used in Indian archaeological literature to

ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley 689

describe early village cultures in areas that are outside

the geographical ambit of the Harappan civilization
(see Asia, South: Indus Civilization). The term
includes pure Neolithic communities with a predominantly stone technological component and those
groups that are Chalcolithic , in the sense that they
use both stone and copper.
Additionally, early iron-using advanced agricultural communities and groups are also discussed here. In
many instances, the use of iron entered into the productive system without producing any major changes
in those early contexts. In eastern India, for example,
the Chalcolithic black-and-red ware culture became
iron-using towards the end of the second millennium
BC. Bahiri, Mangalkot, and Pandu Rajar Dhibi in
Bengal are examples of this and, as we know, the
birth of cities in that zone was several centuries later.
Moreover, there is remarkable continuity in terms of
crop patterns and settlement locales. Therefore, it is
logical to discuss Neolithic Chalcolithic and ironusing agricultural societies as part of the same protohistoric agricultural horizon. The impact of the use of
iron on the Gangetic valley was slow and steady; it
does not seem to have had consequences that are
visible in the archaeological record. On the contrary,
there is a gap of more than a thousand years between
the appearance of iron in this region and the emergence of urban horizons.
Multiple regionally distinctive archaeological cultures dominate the Ganga valley; their presence can
only be mentioned in passing here. In Bengal, a primarily rice-cultivating horizon of black-and-red ware
sites roughly 70 Chalcolithic and iron age blackand-red ware sites spread across valleys west of
the Bhagirathi. The river valleys are several, from
Dwaraka to the Kasai as one moves north to south,
where the rivers flow from the west to the east into
the Bhagirathi. Moving along the Ganga into Bihar, in
its southern segment which is known to have a long
prehistoric segment, no early Neolithic or farming
community is known. On the other hand, in the
alluvial plains of northern Bihar there are several
such sites Chirand, Chechar-Kutubpur, Senuar,
Maner, and Taradih are some of the important ones.
These are riverbank sites with Chirand, Maner, and
Chechar-Kutubpur on the Ganga itself. Their cultural
deposits indicate a secure, long presence. Chirand is
an example of this; its Neolithic stratum (Period 1) is
3.5 m thick. It is marked by Neolithic axes, bone and
antler implements, along with a rich microlithic industry. The ornaments are equally diverse in bone,
ivory, agate, carnelian, jasper, steatite, and faience.
The farming pattern is a broad-based one with the
remains of crops like rice, wheat, barley, and lentil
while the animal remains include domesticated cattle

as also wild animals like elephant and rhinoceros.

Most importantly, this represents pre-metallic agricultural villages that largely thrived in the late third
millennium BC, possibly continuing into the first century of the second millennium BC. Subsequently, they
were to become metal-using cultures marked by
black-and-red pottery.
Towards Uttar Pradesh, in its eastern segment,
Lohuradeva which marked, as we saw, a very early
rice-cultivating site, in this phase (Period 1B, late 3rd
and early 2nd millennia BC) saw a profuse occurrence
of black-slipped ware, which has been described as the
hallmark of the developed farming phase of the central Ganga plains. In the middle of the second millennium BC, the southern segment of this region saw the
emergence of a long archaeological sequence at places
like Imlidih, Narhan, and Sohgaura marked by preNarhan, Narhan, and black-and-red ware horizons.
Basically, what one witnesses is the consolidation of a
broad-based plant regime which includes rice, barley,
varieties of wheat and millet, and also other cultivars
like lentil and gram. Further west, in the upper Ganga
valley and the YamunaGanga doab, it is again late
third millennium BC cultures which mark the beginning of long archaeological sequences that eventually evolved into a phase marked by urban centers
(Figure 4). These cultures are: the late Harappan culture, ochre-colored pottery culture, black-and-red
ware culture and the painted gray ware culture (the
last two are iron-bearing horizons). The ochrecolored pottery culture is possibly a late manifestation
of the same complex in the Rajasthan plain.
A clarification about the plethora of cultures that
are mentioned here is necessary. These are cultures
that have been named in a number of ways: the designation of late Harappan suggests successor groups
that devolved from the mature urban Harappan tradition; others are designated on the basis of the sites
where they were first discovered (Narhan is an example), while a few are named after the pottery that is
typical of the said culture (painted gray ware and
ochre-colored pottery are some such cultures). In the
case of cultures that are named after a pottery type,
this does not mean that this was the only type of
pottery that was used and manufactured by such a
society. For example, painted gray ware that gives its
name to first millennium BC Iron Age culture of the
upper Gangetic plain, in most cases, constituted less
than 15% of the total ceramic assemblage and coexisted with plain gray, black-and-red, black-slipped,
fine red-slipped and unslipped and coarse red wares.
But the reason why it has been used to designate
this cultural phase is because it is its archetypal pottery. On the question of pottery cultures, a clarification about one of them the black-and-red ware

690 ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley

77 0

30

78 0

N
5

5 10 15 20
Km

Bargaon

GANGA

30
0

HI

ND

AN

KALI

Hulas

MUZAFFARNAGAR

30
Mandi

AMU N A

KRISHNI

Site
Other place
Road
River
Area of map
DELHI

29
0

Alamgirpur

MEERUT

BAGHPAT

Figure 4 Important late Harappan and ochre-colored pottery ware sites in the YamunaGanga doab (after Tewari 2004).

culture is necessary. On the one hand, black-and-red

ware gives its name to a specific culture of the upper
Gangetic plains, as also to a culture in the middle and
lower Gangetic plains. This does not mean that the
protohistoric farming cultures that used this pottery
were a homogeneous cultural entity. The shapes and
designs are different as is the time range. For instance,
the black-and-red ware culture of the upper Gangetic
plains is an early second millennium BC phenomenon
while the black-and-red ware culture of Bengal is a
secondfirst millennia BC phenomenon.
The picture is one of great diversity made up of
Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and iron-bearing farming
cultures. This is a diversity which has important
implications for understanding the evolution of the
agricultural geography of the Ganga valley. It clearly
underlines that that no one culture or one society can
claim to be the harbinger or pioneer in the creation of
a strong agricultural base there. The situation in the
doab is qualitatively different from that in eastern

Uttar Pradesh. Again, the communities in the latter

region, in their trajectory of cultural development
are qualitatively different from the manner in which
village cultures in Bihar evolved.
What is common to them is that, in more ways
than one, they represent a kind of watershed for the
advent of stable agricultural societies in their respective tracts. It is from this period onwards that long
columns of archaeological cultures become visible
and the fact that there are few gaps in the sequence
also means that we are looking at fairly continuous
occupations. One aspect that emerges clearly from
the archaeology and geography of the Neolithic
Chalcolithic and Iron Age farming communities is
the growth in population and the evolution of a complex settlement pattern. In the Kanpur district (Uttar
Pradesh), for instance, whereas there were only nine
black-and-red ware sites, the number of sites of the
succeeding painted gray ware culture is 46. Moreover,
there is a clear hierarchy in the settlement sizes. While

ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley 691

as many as 38 of them can be considered as small

villages, four seem to be large villages while four of
them would be considered as regional centers. Generally speaking, this kind of multi-tiered settlement
hierarchy with settlements that range below one hectare to a few that are around five hectares or so is
considered as a reliable index of the evolution of a
complex society. From this base, eventually cities and
state structures would emerge.
Another key variable that one sees emerging in
this period is an organized articulation of trade networks which brought various kinds of resources to
the Gangetic plain. This can be clearly seen in the
painted gray ware phase. The painted gray ware
phase, incidentally, provided the base for the emergence of urban centers in the upper Gangetic plains.
An important site which reveals the kind of raw
materials that were used in this period is Atranjikhera. Here, there are agate, carnelian, quartz, and
marble beads; also objects of ordinary stone like pestles and whetstones of red sandstone and limestone; a
shell fragment; almost two dozen copper objects; as
many as 135 iron objects including iron slag (which
shows local metalcrafting/smelting); and chir pine
(Pinus Roxburghii) . None of these stone, metals,
pinewood is locally available. It is likely that there
was already a class of traders that was procuring such
raw materials so that local manufacture could be
sustained.
Territorial States and Urban Centers

Till now, this essay has used modern geographical

and political designations to describe the different
units and subunits that make up the Gangetic valley.
What, though, were the ancient names of the geopolitical orbits in this vast tract, and how can they be
delineated? This is essential for understanding the
political geography of the Ganga valley.
Ancient territorial designations are mentioned in
Indian literary sources ranging from later Vedic to
Buddhist literature. Their presence coincides with
the process of early historic growth which can be
dated from c. 700 BC onwards. In the archaeological
record, the marker of the advent of the historical period
in the Gangetic plains is the Northern Black Polished
Ware which appears after the painted gray ware in the
upper Ganga valley and after the black-and-red ware in
the middle Ganga valley. Early historic city sites have
been identified across the valley as have been the communication lines and networks that connected them
with each other and the valley as a whole.
In the first phase of state formation in India (c. sixth
century BC), multiple states called janapadas can
be identified in this valley. As many as 16 early states
are mentioned in Buddhist sources, an overwhelming

number of these situated in the Ganga plain. These

are: Kasi, Kosala, Anga, Magadha, Vajji/Vrijji, Malla,
Vamsa/Vatsa, Kuru, and Panchala. While sacred geography cannot be explored here, it is worth remembering that this is also where religions like Buddhism and
Jainism established early roots and in the same time
period, under their founders Gautama Buddha and
Vardhamana Mahavira respectively. Substantial support for them came from the urban centers of the
Ganga valley and the mercantile prosperity that
marked them.
In all these polities, urban centers have been identified, several of which were also political capitals of
their respective states. Kuru and Panchala were firmly
entrenched in the upper Ganga plain marked by cities
like Indraprastha, Hastinapura, and Ahichchatra.
The city of Kasi is identified with the area of modern
Varanasi on the left bank of the Ganga and would
have been situated between the Varuna and Asi streams.
The Kasi region extended from the Ganga towards
the east up to the Ghaghra, and on the north up to
Jaunpur and (part of) Sultanpur. Kosalas successive
capital cities were Ayodhya/Saketa and Sravasti., while
the state covered both banks of the Ghaghra/Saryu
river. Malla janapada lay to the west of the Gandak
river, with its capital in Kusinara, and included the
modern Padrauna and Deoria areas as well. The territory of Vatsa was focused around cities like its capital
Kausambi on the right bank of the Yamuna, ancient
Prayag or Jhusi on the left bank of the Ganga, and Bhita
and Kara on the banks of the Yamuna and Ganga
respectively. Magadha radiated in a linear fashion
between the Kiul and Karamanasa rivers which separate modern Bihar from Uttar Pradesh as far as the point
where the Hazaribagh area begins. Its earlier capital
was Rajagriha and later Pataliputra. Anga janapada
lay spread between Rajmahal in the south and Kiul/
Lakhisarai in the north with Champa on the northern
outskirts of Bhagalpur as its capital. Finally, a conglomeration of republican janapadas, known as the Vajji or
Lichchhavi confederacy, dominated the modern plain of
north Bihar with its capital at Vaisali.
From a geopolitical perspective, the primary focus
of early state formation was the middle Gangetic
valley. It was a middle Gangetic state, that of
Magadha, which eventually become the nucleus of
an empire under the Nanda dynasty . Its first king
Mahapadmananda (c. 355 BC) ruled virtually all of
north India up to the YamunaGanga doab on the one
hand, and the Deccan on the other (see Asia, South:
India, Deccan and Central Plateau). Again, under
the Mauryan dynasty (c. 324187 BC), with their
base in Magadha, a pan-Indian empire extending
from south Afghanistan to the Chittagong coast and
from Kashmir to peninsular India was established. The

692 ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley

subcontinental domination of an empire with a

Gangetic valley power base did not survive the end
of the Mauryan dynasty. Subsequently, the Sunga
dynastic orbit shrank back to the earlier orbit, from
Magadha to central India. In the early centuries AD,
the Gangetic valley was brought within the empire of
the Kushanas, as they extended their OxusIndus
base. By the beginning of the fourth century AD, the
focus shifted back to a middle Gangetic power base,
with the advent of the Gupta dynasty that was based
in Magadha (Figure 5).
Political units and urban centers also extended beyond the upper and middle Ganga valley. The ancient
geographical units there ranged from Samatata and
Pundravarddhana in the trans-Meghna area of Bangladesh and the Barind northern tracts respectively
to Vanga and Suhma in the deltaic coastal tracts
of Bangladesh and Bengal. In the estuarine and coastal
belt, there were around ten urban sites; their general
configuration was largely riverine. Chandraketugarh
appears to be the largest among them, a fortified settlement measuring one mile square, with occupational
remains outside it as well. Going back to the Mauryan
period, the most spectacular antiquities from this city
are its thousands of terracottas marked by erotic, religious, and narrative themes. Chandraketugarhs location in relation to a river is not obvious, although the
general area itself is crisscrossed by numerous drainage channels. Among the drainage lines, it was along
the old channel of the Ganga, known as Adi Ganga
or the original Ganga, that settlements dating to the
Mauryan period were clustered (Figure 6). The sites
are mainly riverine. Boral, near the Adi Ganga in
the southern section of the Calcutta area, yielded

antiquities from the late centuries BC till the end of

the first millennium AD.
It is at Gangasagar that the Ganga pours into the
sea, with such force that her muddy waters are distinguishable for six hundred kilometers into the Bay of
Bengal. Naturally, this area has an ancient and modern significance. Where the original Ganga joined the
sea, is Mandirtala (on the Sagar island) which has
yielded antiquities that go back to early centuries
AD. Again, there is a modern temple at or near the
spot where the Ganga was supposed to have entered
the sea where, annually on the day of winter solstice,
pilgrims from all over India gather to worship. This
temple has had to be shifted from time to time in
response to the encroachment by the sea but the sanctity attached to this place of confluence is abiding.

Concluding Observations
Three issues emerge from a study of the ancient landscape of the Ganga valley. First, the Ganga plain,
from the time when pioneer settlers first occupied it,
has been integrally linked with the zones that fringe
it, from the Rajasthan plain to the Chhotanagpur
plateau. While the cultural ramifications of those links
become much sharper during the historical period,
this was an expansion of the preexisting connections
that were established during the protohistoric phase.
Second, in terms of agricultural geography and settlement archaeology, a secure village base across the
Ganga plain was created by NeolithicChalcolithic
farmers. In several instances, the crops that continued
to be cultivated in the various areas till recently, were
first farmed by thirdsecond millennia BC cultivators.

Figure 5 Gupta period sculptures on the Jahangira rock in the middle of the Ganga river.

ASIA, WEST/Ganges Valley 693

888

89

Bh

agi

Ajay

Da

rat

hi

BURDWAN

od

ar

23

23

BARRACKPUR
AREA

CHANDRAKETUGARH

CALCUTTA AREA
i
sa
Ka

BORAL

MIDNAPUR

Da
mo
r
da

Rup

ATGHARA

na

aya

nar

TAMLUK
AREA

BAYERCHAK
DEULPOTA

MATHBARI

HARINARAYANPUR

Su

DAKSHIN BISHNUPUR

ba
rna

CHATRABHOGKHARI AREA
KANKANDIGHIJATARDEUL
AREA

KULPI

rek

22

22

ha

PAKURTALA

TILDAH

BHUBANESWARI

DANTAN

KAKDVIP AREA
BAHIRI
MANDIRTALA
(SAGAR ISLAND)
MANIKABASAN
JAI KALIR CHAK AREA

INDIA

Km 10

10

30

50 Km

88

Figure 6 Distribution map of urban sites in the lower Ganga plains, especially around the old channel of the Ganga river.

89

694 ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau

The nucleated village form is also a legacy of that

phase, with continuous occupation at a large number
of settlements which were first occupied by these
advanced agriculturists. This does not mean that the
successors of the people who first inhabited these
spots continued to live there for centuries on end.
All that it means is that new groups of people came
and settled in the very areas, and frequently at the
same sites, where farmers had first established their
villages in the third and second millennia BC. Finally,
political authority has location. The cartography of
the political landscape of ancient India reveals the
centrality of the middle Ganga plain in the process
of early state formation. Eventually, political unification and the first subcontinental empire of India also
came to be based in the Magadha section of that tract.
See also: Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands;
Buddhist Archaeology; India, Deccan and Central Plateau; India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Indus
Civilization; Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Megaliths; Neolithic Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Sri Lanka.

Further Reading
Bose S (2003) Forests and Fields in the Middle Gangetic Plains.
MPhil. Thesis Delhi: Department of History, University of
Delhi.
Chakrabarti DK (2001) Archaeological Geography of the Ganga
Plain. Delhi: Permanent Black.
Chakrabarti DK (2006) The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Saith S and Kesavan M (1989) A Journey Down the Ganga. New
Delhi: Lustre Press.
Tewari R (20012002) Excavation at Lahuradeva, District Sant
Nagar, Uttar Pradesh. Puratattva 32: 5459.
Singh IB (2002) Late quaternary evolution of the Ganga Plain and
proxy records of climatic change, neotectonics and anthropogenic activity. Pragdhara 12: 125.

India, Deccan and

Central Plateau
Dorian Q Fuller, Institute of Archaeology, University
College London, London, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
ashmounds Large mounds of ash resulting from Neolithic cattle
dung accumulation and burning, which are characteristic of
parts of South India.
Buddhism A historical religion of ancient India which remains
an important religion in many parts of Asia today.

Deccan A plateau of south-central India between the Eastern

Ghats and the Western Ghats.
Dravidian languages A large family of languages spoken
especially in southern India and northern Sri Lanka that includes
Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada.
historical linguistics The study of language change over time
in a particular language and the relationships between languages
and reconstruction of ancient ancestral languages.
hominin Evolutionary ancestors and relatives of humans.
Jainism A historical religion of ancient India.
palaeoenvironmental records The record of the prehistoric
environment of an archaeological site, using the methodologies
of geology, botany, palynology, and archaeozoology.

The term Deccan derives ultimately from the ancient

Sanskrit dakshina, which referred to the South.
By the colonial period it came to be used to refer to
the Indian Peninsula, south of the river Narmada, as
opposed to Hindustan for the regions north of
the Peninsula. Sometimes it is used to indicate the
interior plateau of the peninsula as opposed to
Concan or coastal plains. Authors will sometimes
include Central India in the Deccan and anything
separated from the northern Ganges plains by the
Vindhya hills and demarcated from the west by
the Aravalli hills of Rajasthan.
Central and peninsular India can be distinguished
on the grounds of cultural and physical geography.
Central India and the Peninsula are often considered
together as the Deccan region. The core of the Deccan
then is the modern states of Maharashtra, Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka, while some consideration will be
given to adjacent Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Chattisgarh
in the north, and Tamil Nadu in the southeast. This
peninsular region, south of the Tapti River, and Central India between Tapti River and the Vindhya hill
ranges, that fringe the Ganges basin, is geographically
distinct from the wide alluvial plains of the Indus and
Ganges. In terms of culture history the peninsular
region is dominated by languages in the Dravidian
family distinct from the Indo-Aryan (Indo-European)
languages of northern and northwestern South Asia
(Figure 1). Even in Central India (Madhya Pradesh)
and the northern peninsula (Maharashtra), where
Indo-Aryan languages are spoken today there is evidence from place names, vocabulary, and marriage
traditions to suggest the former presence of Dravidian
languages. On the northeastern part of the region is
the center of diversity of the distinct Munda language
family.
Geologically, it differs in being composed of
ancient metamorphic rocks together with the large
volcanic bedrock of the northern Deccan Traps.
This geology forms hills with plateau areas between
in the south (Karnataka and Andhra) and the north
(Madhya Pradesh), and in middle the Deccan Traps

ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau 695

ey

all

Brahui

v
us

Santhali

Ga

nge

d
In

lls

i
li H

va

a
Ar

Vindhya
Hills

s ri

Kurux
Mundari
Kharia

Korku
Nahali

Gondi
Naiki
Kolami

Dravidian Languages

Parji

Malto
Ho

Santhali
Bhumji
Juang

Kui, Kuwi

North
Telugu
Central
South-Central

Khasi

ver

Gutub, Gta, Remo

Gadba, Pengo, Manda, Konda

Kannada
Munda languages

South
Tulu
Northern edge
Kodagu
of Maharati
Toda and Kota
and Gujarati
Badaga

North
Tamil

South

Malayalam

Figure 1 A map of South Asia showing the recent distribution of non-Indo-European languages, including the subfamilies of Dravidian
languages that dominate the Deccan and the Munda languages found mainly in eastern India. The important geographic boundaries of
the Aravalli and Vindhya hills are indicated.

(mainly Maharashtra) have produced a plateau in

which rivers have carved out their valleys. Central
India and the southern and eastern Deccan are
dominated by Archaean (Pre-Cambrian) granites
and gneisses, while in between the Maharashtra
region is mainly Cretaceous basalt (the Deccan
Trap) (Figure 2). In general, the Deccan Trap has
decomposed into clay-rich, thick, black soils, while
the granitic zones are dominated by red and brown
sandy soils. The granitic zones are broken up by other
smaller geological regions, such as The Dharwar
Schists in the southwest, which contain exploitable
deposits of iron, and sporadic siliceous rocks favored
for prehistoric flaked lithics. Other schist belts in
Karanataka contain deposits of gold. A group of
important geological regions are the Purana basins,
or Gondwana formations. These geological zones are
characterized by sedimentary rocks, especially limestones, sandstones, and shales, with some quartzites
and igneous intrusions. The resulting soils are patchy,
but with generally more water-retentive clays forming
over shales and limestones, and sandier patches

around quartzitic sandstone. They are locations of

rich Palaeolithic archaeological records, probably in
part due to the favorable local conditions that they
engendered, such as springs and raw-material availability. They also are good sources for favored
raw materials for lithic tool production, including
quartzite and limestone used in the Lower to Middle
Palaeolithic and finer siliceous materials such as chert
favored from the Late Palaeolithic through the
Neolithic.
The climate of the Deccan is determined by the
Indian Ocean monsoon cycles and regional topography. During the summer months moisture-laden air
flows from the Indian Ocean to the southwest,
dropping rainfall over most of India (the Southwest
Monsoon). Rainfall (Figure 3) is heaviest along the
west coast which is characterized by steep hillslopes
and cliffs of the Western Ghats, which separate
the interior Deccan Plateau from the coastal plain.
Along the Western Ghats tropical rainforests occur
(Figure 4). Further east the Western Ghats create
a rainshadow making the interior of the Deccan

696 ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau

Deccan traps
Gondwanas
Vindhya system
(including Kurnool
supergroup)
Cuddapah system
Dharwar system
Basement complex,
including granites

Figure 2 Simplified geological map of peninsular India, showing the distribution of the younger volcanic Deccan Traps, which produce
fertile black soils, and the very ancient granites and gneisses of the southern and eastern peninsula, which produced sandy soils. Some of
the smaller formations are found in basins which have been foci of Palaeolithic finds.

20
Karachi

40
20

20
Hyderabad

60

Cuttack

40
20
Mumbai
40
20

Rainfall in cm
<20

Chennai

4080

20

>320

20

60
40

160320

Gulbarga

20

2040

80160

20

Nandi hills
20

Raichur
Kodaikanal

Kozhikode

Kurnool

20
Bellary

40

20

20
Tumkur
Colombo

Figure 3 A map of rainfall zones of peninsular India, with the seasonal distribution of rainfall indicated for particular locations.

ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau 697

Figure 4 Western Ghats rainforests view towards coastal plain near Amboli, Sindhudurg District, Maharashtra.

Plateau semi-arid and characterized by scrub-savanna

vegetation in its driest tracks and open deciduous
woodlands elsewhere (Figure 5). Trees in these woodlands are deciduous due to the long, hot dry season
from February to June. Toward the eastern side of the
peninsula, rainfall again increases favoring more
woodland than scrub. East of the Western Ghats
the interior plateau has gradual eastwards drop in
elevation indicated by the drainage of all the major
rivers towards the eastern side of the peninsula.
The archaeological record of South India goes back
to the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic (see Asia, South:
India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South) (Figure 6).
While this may represent as much as 2 million years,
which is argued to be the case for the Lower Palaeolithic in Pakistan, current dating evidence for the
Deccan region normally puts back the earlier Palaeolithic about 250 000350 000 years, although one
important site, the Isampur quarry, has been suggested
to be 1.2 million years old. The only hominin fossil

yet found in India is a cranium from Hathnora in

the Narmada Valley, suggested to represent Homo
heidelbergiensis at about 250 000300 000 years ago.
This find could suggest a separate dispersal from
Africa, associated with middle Acheulean tools, as
opposed to the earlier Acheulean of Isampur that is
presumed to have been made by Homo erectus.
Recognition of a distinct Middle to Upper Palaeolithic
transition remains problematic but can be argued
to have occurred probably in the past 75 000 years.
Some authors have preferred to call these industries
the Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age, as comparisons with African materials are generally closer
than those of the European Palaeolithic. A biological
transition from early humans to anatomically modern
humans is inferred to have occurred between 70 000
and 100 000 years ago as a result of immigrant populations from Africa, although archaeological evidence to
document this evidence is still lacking. Throughout
these long periods archaeology suggests low human

698 ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau

Figure 5 Typical Acacia scrub of interior Deccan with pastoralists, Cuddapah District, Andhra Pradesh.

(or hominin) population densities and economies that

are likely to have been mainly extractive rather than
transformative of the landscape.
The Deccan region boasts some of the most important Lower Palaeolithic sites in India. Focused Palaeolithic surveys have found high site densities, such as
those in the Hungsi and Kaldagi valleys of Northern Karnataka as well as the Raisen district in
Madhya Pradesh. Among important excavations is
the 1.2 million years-old Isampur site in northern
Karnataka, which represents a quarry and manufacture site for early Acheulean tools, in which all
stages of production from bedrock quarrying can be
detailed, and from which average transport distances
of finished tools can be estimated from regional survey. Transport distances are surprisingly low with
most tools apparently being discarded within 3.5 km
of the quarry. Another important site is Attirampakam
in Northern Tamil Nadu, where excavations in recent
years have situated the Acheulean in stratigraphic
context and environmental context.
Late Pleistocene sites in peninsular India are significant for having Microlithic tool technology. While
Microlithic industries found in surface survey have
often been called Mesolithic with reference to European
tradition, there is perhaps more to suggest comparison with later Pleistocene (Late Middle Stone Age)
Africa. Finds from excavation in Sri Lanka, such as
Badatomba-lena cave, indicate microliths and beads
back to c. 30 000 BP. Recent excavations of a rock
shelter at Jwalapuram (Kurnool District, western
Andhra Pradesh) similarly indicate Microlithic industries beginning before 25 000 BP. Similar material
was previously found further north at Patna. Such

industries are presumed to be associated with anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens), although skeletal finds are few. Studies on genetics of
modern groups, including indigenous populations of
south India, suggest that some of the most ancient and
diversified genetic lineages outside of Africa are to be
found in the Deccan region, suggesting that modern
humans had dispersed from Africa to southern India
50 000100 000 years ago.
In general, global palaeoenvironmental records
suggest that it is in the Late Pleistocene and later
Palaeolithic when humans began to use fire to modify
the landscape, as suggested by various sedimentary
records of microcharcoal. Evidence from the Sandynallah swamp in the Nilgiri Hills of South India suggests
anthropogenic burning of vegetation from at least
35 000 BP, but a marked increase at c. 3500 BC, associated with late Mesolithic. Similarly, evidence from
lakes in the Thar Desert (Rajasthan) suggests that
anthropogenic burning peaks in the Early Holocene
period, associated with Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
With the Neolithic the advent of four important
changes in technology and land use took place:
animal herding, plant cultivation, sedentism, and pyrotechnology (initially ceramics). The earliest archaeologically recognized villages on the Indian Peninsula
provide evidence for an economy incorporating
domesticated animals and plant cultivation. They
have tended to be studied as two distinct traditions,
one in the northern Deccan, focused on Maharashtra
and adjacent Madhya Pradesh, called the Deccan
Chaloclithic, while the other focused on the Southern
Deccan, mainly Karnataka and adjacent Andhra
Pradesh and northwest Tamil Nadu, which is labeled

ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau 699

Raisen
Bhimbetka
Hathnora fossils

Patne

Hungsi: Isampur

Kaladgi
Jwalapuram

Lower Palaeolithic
Middle Palaeolithic
X Upper Palaeolithic

Attirampakam
Sandynallah
swamp

1000 m
500 m
Betatomba-lena

Figure 6 The general distribution of Palaeolithic sites or sites groups, with selected sites labeled.

as the Southern Neolithic (see Asia, South: Neolithic

Cultures) (Figure 7). In terms of settlement pattern
and aspects of cultural tradition, these are indeed distinct manifestations, with the Deccan Chalcolithic sites
focused on the upper courses of rivers and their tributaries, while the core portion of the Southern Neolithic
(Figure 8) tends to have sites placed away from the
major rivers, and often on hilltops.
The Southern Neolithic of India has long attracted
attention as an early food-producing village culture
in South Asia. Thanks to its distinctive ashmound
sites, and the pioneering fieldwork of the geologist
R. Bruce Foote, it was the first-documented Neolithic
culture in South Asia, from the 1860s. Sites of this
culture provide the earliest pastoralism in peninsular
India, from c. 3000 BC. This early pastoralism is
associated with the distinctive ashmounds, which
are the sites where animal dung accumulated at

ancient penning sites and was episodically burnt, leading over a period of several decades to a few centuries
to sometimes massive mounds, which have been
discussed by some as Neolithic monuments. Within
this tradition there are additional sites of human
occupation with archaeobotanical evidence for a recurrent agricultural package based on two small millets
(Brachiaria ramosa and Setaria verticillata) and two
pulses (Vigna radiata and Macrotyloma uniflorum),
all potentially domesticated from wild populations in
South India. This Neolithic tradition continued to develop through the second millennium BC, during which
time the first evidence for new crafts, including copper
and textiles, and increasing evidence for trade occurs.
Evidence of historical linguistics suggests that the
Southern Neolithic and perhaps adjacent cultures can
be connected to the ancestral speakers of South and
Central Dravidian languages.

700 ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau

North
Deccan
Chalcolithic

>2500 BC
25002000 BC
20001200 BC

20 N

>600 m
600 m
100 mi
100 km

Southern
Neolithic
16 N

12 N
74 E

78 E

Figure 7 The distribution of Neolithic/Chalcolithic sites in peninsular India indicating the distinct cultural zones, and foci of research, of
the northern Deccan Chalcolithic and the Southern Neolithic. Within the Southern Neolithic the dashed line demarcates the distribution
of the Ashmound Tradition, characterized by burnt dung mounds.

Further north in the Deccan Traps zone of Maharashtra and southwest Madhya Pradesh, early village
sites show a somewhat different character and a
different agricultural basis. Early sites occur on the
lower Narmada and Tapti Rivers and date to 2300
2000 BC. These archaeological cultures, such as the
Kayatha, are often linked or thought to derive from
earlier developments in Rajasthan connected with
the Ahar tradition which can be taken back to
before 3000 BC at the site of Balathal. In the second
millennium BC sites become much more widespread, over a wider part of western Maharashtra,
especially during the Malwa phase (17001500 BC)

and subsequent Jorwe period (15001200 BC). On

sites of these phases, where systematic archaeobotany
is available agriculture shows a mixture of summer
crops, including those of the Ashmound Tradition to
the south and winter crops, such as wheat, barley, and
lentils, which had been the staple crops of the Indus
Valley to the northwest. On the eastern side of the
peninsula, along the northern Andhra Pradesh coast
and in Orissa, a distinct Neolithic tradition is known
from the second millennium BC, which has a different
agricultural combination that included rice.
Important social and technological changes occurred
across the peninsula between 1400 and 800 BC. This

ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau 701

Figure 8 South Deccan granitic landscape near Piklihal Neolithic site, Raichur District, Karnataka.

Figure 9 Denuded megalithic cemetery surface near Patupadu, Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh, 2004.

period is associated with the emergence of the

Megalithic tradition, in which impressive stone-built
burial monuments were constructed for selected individuals, probably elites (Figure 9). It is also during
this period that iron metallurgy became established,
with its new demands on extracting mineral resources
and charcoal from woodlands. The construction
of Megalithic may have emerged first in northern
Karnataka and eastern Maharashtra (Vidarbha).
In the South there is clear continuity from the Ashmound Neolithic tradition, whereas in Maharashtra
Chalcolithic village sites toward the western part of
the state appear to be largely abandoned, while new
village sites emerge in the east together with Megalithic

burials (Figure 10). The Megalithic transition needs

to be seen in the context of the development of political economies with new systems of wealth creation
including craft production, and long-distance trade
increased. This period provides the first good evidence for cash crops such as cotton, flax, and seasonal tree fruits. In addition, the period witnessed the
spread and adoption of rice by some groups on the
peninsula. It may only be during this period, with
the spread of rice agriculture, that settled agricultural
communities emerged in the far South, including
coastal and southern inland Tamil Nadu. In addition,
rice agriculture went to the island of Sri Lanka during
this period.

702 ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau

Figure 10 Remnents of Megalithic cist and outer circle, Kodumanal, Tamil Nadu.

The Megalithic of South India is really a mosaic of

local cultural traditions that shared traditions of constructing burial monuments from large stones and the
use and production of iron tools and weapons. Earlier
megaliths consisted of circles of large boulders (pit
circles), while later forms included quarried and
worked stone slabs that often lined a central cist.
Burials were most often secondary, indicating the
collecting together and depositing bones represented
the end of a long and elaborate death ritual. Bones
were sometime placed in a ceramic sarcophagus or on
a bed and were normally accompanied by quantities
of ceramics, mostly necked jars and bowls, suggesting
association with larger-scale drinking, as well as iron
weapons. The weapons, including swords, as well as
some parts of bridles indicate associations with a
warrior ideology. One important excavated site is
Brahmagiri in Karnataka, where Mortimer Wheeler
first placed the megaliths in clear chronological context. Megaliths are too few to account for most of the
population and thus must represent monuments associated with elites and the emergence of more complex
social hierarchies. In social evolutionary terms, many
scholars have suggested that the Megalithic period
represented chiefdoms.
The Early Historic Period marks the beginnings of
historically documented state polities, the emergence
of selected urban centers in parts of South India, and
the connected process of a more widespread hinterland of agricultural villages. This period can be
defined as starting c. 250 BC, since during the reign
of the emperor of Ashoka (of the Mauryan empire
focused in the Ganges Valley, 273232 BC), conquered parts of the peninsula, and left behind numerous edicts inscribed in the Brahmi script in parts
of the Deccan (Figure 11). These include a pillar at

Amravati in the Godavari basin, and numerous rock

inscriptions in northeastern Karnataka and adjacent
Andhra Pradesh, such as those at Sannathi, Maski,
and Brahmagiri the latter two near significant
Neolithic and Megalithic sites. North Indian sources
at this time refer to regions in the south and suggest
emergent polities. The first local dynasty documented on the Northern Peninsula with the rise of the
Satavahana kings may date to c. 100 BC. In the far
South, where later historical sources refer to the states
of the Pandyas, Cholas, and Cheras, it might be suggested that these kingdoms emerged also around this
time, and began to utilize their own TamilBrahmi
script to write an early form of the Tamil language.
It is during this period that North Indian religious
traditions get established in the South, including
Buddhism, Jainism, and some elements of Hinduism
(which are mingled with local traditions). This period
is also characterized by a significant level of longdistance trade across the Indian Ocean toward the
West, which included the trade with the Roman
Empire. Forest products, including the spices and lac
(produced by scale insects feeding on certain tropical
deciduous trees), were in demand as well as cotton
textiles, pearls, and semiprecious stone beads. Black
pepper and cotton in particular were major imports
of the Roman world obtained from South Indian
or West coast (Satavahana) ports, obtained in turn
from interior areas. Finds of Roman coins, including hoards, are common from the first century AD
in South India. Mostly, black pepper was probably
traded from rainforest hunter-gatherers in the Western
Ghats, while cotton was grown in the interior of
Deccan. In subsequent centuries the volume of
trade and interconnections with Southeast Asia also
increased, as indicated by the appearance of Buddhist

ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau 703

KALINGA
Ajanta
Ellora
Nasik

Sisulpalgarh

Paithan
SATAVAHANAS

Terr

Sannathi

ANDHRAS
Amravati

Maski
Vijayanagara
(Hampi)

Brahmagiri
Ashokan edicts
Roman coin finds
Important city
sites (selected)
Major cave shrine
CHOLAS

Arikamedu

CHERAS
PANDYAS
1000m
500m

Figure 11 A map of early historical South India, indicating evidence for Ashokan inscriptions (of the Gangetic Mauryan Empire),
representative finds of Roman coins or coin hoards, and carved cave shrines. A few important city sites are labeled. Names of some
important early polities are indicated. The location of the much later Vijayanagara (fourteenth to sixteenth century) is indicated.

iconography and architectural styles in Southeast

Asia.
While there have been some important settlement
site excavations from the early historic period,
archaeology from that period onward focuses more
on the study of monuments, their architecture, art
history, and inscriptions. A widespread type of small
monument is the hero-stone (Figure 12), an engraved
slab commemorating the hero of a battle, often
involving cattle-raiding. While some of these include
inscriptions, many are simply figural. The Satavahana
dynasty (focused in Maharashtra with a capital at
Paithan on the Godavari River) began the northern
Deccan tradition of carving shrines in caves. These
may have begun already by the second or first century
BC at Karla, while many more temples were created

out of rock in the early centuries AD, as at Nasik.

Some of the best-known complexes of cave shrines
date from the fifth to eighth century, including the
painted caves of Ellora and the carved and heavily
sculptured shrines of Ajanta near modern Aurangabad.
These early cave shrines were largely Buddhist and
sometimes Jain, in religious inspiration, although
these religions were to decline and largely disappear
from the sixth century. Free-standing temples also
began to be built of stone or brick in the Early Historic
period, although many of the better-known and preserved temples date from the eighth or ninth century
onwards and are dedicated to Hindu gods and goddesses. Major Hindu temple building was also carried
out in the South between the fifteenth and eighteenth
century, when the Hindu-ruled South was culturally

704 ASIA, WEST/India, Deccan and Central Plateau

Figure 12 Three early hero-stones, Shimoga District, Karnataka, 1998.

opposed to northern India, which was under a series

of Islamic rulers (especially, the Delhi sultanate and
the Mughals). Of particular note is the evidence from
the Vijayanagara kingdom, with its center at Hampi
in Karnataka near modern Hospet. Founded in 1336
and lasting until the sack of its capital in 1565, the
Vijayanagar kingdom has left a legacy of remarkable architecture and sculpture. Its capital city was
described in glowing terms by an early Portuguese
traveler, Domingo Paes, who visited in 1522. Architectural and epigraphic research on the monuments of
its urban core and immediate hinterland has been,
and continues to be, a major focus for research,
while in the late 1980s and 1990s this was complemented by a large-scale intensive regional archaeological survey, studies of land use and ceramics.
The trends of increased agricultural production,
including that for craft, and extraction of wild
products from woodlands for trade continued into
the subsequent medieval periods and indeed into the
colonial era. States throughout this period tended
to encourage the creation of new settlements and
the conversion of wooded jungles into agricultural
land, as indicated in land-grants and irrigation works
(such as tank building). In the later medieval period,
marked by the Delhi Sultante in northern India (from
the thirteenth century), and Vijayanagara centered
near Hospet in central Karnataka (from the midfourteenth century), urban centers and their craft
producers grew as more efficient systems for the
extraction of agricultural resources (through taxation)
were devised, in addition to use of more intensive
agricultural techniques. Such systems paved the way
for the taxation and commercial organization of the
Mughal empire and later colonial powers including
British India. Through the medieval period there is
increasing textual evidence for the establishment of

orchards. The process of converting wild woodlands

into plantations increased greatly during the colonial
period with demands for cinnamon, pepper, and later
coffee and tea. Subsequently, especially from the nineteenth century, this plantation approach to wooded
areas was extended to the production of key timber
species, such as teak, for use in nineteenth-century
British ship-building.
For most of the last 2000 years, archaeological
research in the Deccan has more of an art-historical,
epigraphic, and architectural bent, with the notable
exception of the work on the Vijayanagara capitols
hinterland. For earlier prehistoric periods, excavation, survey, and artifact studies are the norm. In
some areas important rock art concentrations are
associated with the Mesolithic (e.g., in Kurnool
District) and the Neolithic (e.g., in the Bellary and
Rachiur areas). It should be noted that Neolithic and
Iron Age cultures are often called Protohistoric
although there are no indigenous written sources.

See also: Africa, South: Late Pleistocene and Early

Holocene Foragers; Asia, South: Baluchistan and the

Borderlands; Buddhist Archaeology; Ganges Valley;
India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Indus Civilization;
Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Megaliths; Neolithic
Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Sri Lanka.

Further Reading
Allchin FR (1963) Neolithic Cattle Keepers of South India. A Case
Study of the Deccan Ashmounds. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Allchin FR (1995) Early cities and states beyond the Ganges Valley.
In: Allchin FR (ed.) The Archaeology of Early Historic South
Asia. The Emergence of Cities and States, pp. 123151.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 705

Asouti E and Fuller D (2007) Trees and Woodland in South India:
An Archaeological Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast
Press.
Champakalakshmi R (1996) Trade, Ideology and Urbanization.
South India 300 BC to AD 1300. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Fuller DQ (2005) Ceramics, seeds and culinary change in Prehistoric India. Antiquity 79: 761777.
James HV and Petraglia MD (2005) Modern human origins and the
evolution of behaviour in the Later Pleistocene record of South
Asia. Current Anthropology 46(S): S3S27.
Korisettar R, Venkatasubbaiah PC, and Fuller DQ (2001) Brahmagiri and beyond: the archaeology of the Southern Neolithic.
In: Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) Indian Archaeology in
Retrospect I. Prehistory, pp. 151238. Delhi: Manohar.
Michell G (1997) The Blue Guide: Southern India. New York:
WW Norton.
Petraglia MD (2005) Hominin responses to Pleistocene environmental change in Arabia and South Asia. In: Head MJ and
Gibbard PL (eds.) EarlyMiddle Pleistocene Transitions: The
Land-Ocean Evidence, pp. 305319. London: Geological Society
of London.
Ray HP (2003) The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South
Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

India, Paleolithic
Cultures of the South
Shanti Pappu, Sharma Centre for Heritage
Education, Chennai, India
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Acheulian The name given to an archaeological industry of
stone tool manufacture associated with prehistoric hominins
during the Lower Palaeolithic era across Africa and much of Asia
and Europe.
burin A special type of lithic flake with a chisel-like edge which
prehistoric humans may have used for engraving or for carving
wood or bone.
chopper Pebble tools with an irregular cutting edge formed
through the removal of flakes from one side of a stone.

Introduction
India is rich in Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic sites, situated in diverse environmental contexts, and spanning the Middle to Late Pleistocene.
The Indian Lower Palaeolithic is generally thought
to consist of two technological traditions; viz. the
Acheulian, which has bifacially flaked tools (handaxes and cleavers), along with others; and the Soan
tradition comprising predominantly unifacial or bifacial pebble tools; and which is concentrated in northwest India and the adjoining region of Pakistan. The

Acheulian, distributed widely over Peninsular India

concerns us here; and is generally bracketed between
>350 kyr to around 150 kyr BP. This is succeeded by
the Middle Palaeolithic (15030 kyr BP), marked by
an abundance of scrapers, points, and borers, along
with the appearance of specialized flaking techniques.
The Upper or Late Palaeolithic (3010 kyr BP) in the
Terminal Pleistocene, is marked by a technology
dominated by blades and tools on blades and burins.
This section focuses on South India, an artificial political division (a distinct geocultural region), comprising the modern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, and Kerala (Figure 1).
The first stone tool to be identified in the subcontinent (a Lower Palaeolithic artifact) was found at the
site of Pallaveram, near Chennai, Tamil Nadu, by the
British geologist Robert Bruce Foote in 1863. Foote
discovered more than 400 prehistoric sites in southern
India, documented their stratigraphic contexts, classified artifacts, and proposed hypotheses on prehistoric behavior. Discoveries by Foote (with his son,
H. B. Foote) led to documentation of bone artifacts
in the karstic cave complex of Kurnool in the state of
Andhra Pradesh, which he believed resembled the
Magdalenian of France, and which were later classified as belonging to the Upper Palaeolithic phase.
The first systematic attempt to place these industries
in an environmental and chronological framework
was initiated in the 1930s, by L. A. Cammiade and
M. Burkitt. Working with artifacts from sites along
the southeast coast of India (in the modern state of
Andhra Pradesh), they divided the Indian Palaeolithic
into four series (series I to IV) or cultural phases;
roughly corresponding with the Lower, Middle, and
Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic; and associated
these with climatic cycles of pluvials and interpluvials. Around the same time, H. De Terra and
T. T. Paterson, working in northwest India as part of
the YaleCambridge Expedition, placed Stone Age
cultures within stratigraphic sequences associated
with a sequence of river terraces, which in turn were
correlated with Alpine glaciations. This scheme was
later extended to the Kortallaiyar River basin, Tamil
Nadu, among others, and Paterson chose to term
Acheulian industries in this region as constituting
the Madras Palaeolithic after the city of Madras
(modern Chennai) located nearby. Around the same
time, V. D. Krishnawamis studies in this region led to
a clear distinction between the Lower Palaeolithic
Acheulian or Madrasian industries, found over
most of India; as compared to Soan traditions of
northwest India. Later workers such as F. E. Zeuner,
K. V. Soundara Rajan, and B. Allchin contributed
further to understanding these cultures. The systematic study of various river basins was carried forward

706 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

0
0

200

400 km
200

400 miles

PAKISTAN
Nepal

Delhi

R.Ganga
Bangladesh

R.Narmada
R.Mahanadi
BAY OF BENGAL

R.Godavari

R.Bhima
1
R.Krishna 2
15
Karnataka
ARABIAN SEA
13
Kerala

11
6

10

Hyderabad
7
R.Krishna
8
9
Andhra Pradesh
5 4
3
R.Koratallaiyar
12 Chennai
R.Palar
Tamil Nadu

Key
1. HunsgiBaichbal complex
2. MalaprabhaGhatprabha complex
3. Rallakalava complex
4. Nellore complex
5. Cuddapah complex: Sagileru & Gunjana
complexes
6. Kurnool complex: Kurnool complex;
Giddalur complex
7. Nalgonda complex
8. Nagarjunakonda complex
9. Paleru complex
10. Vishakhapatnam complex
11. KrishnaTungabhadra complex
12. Palar complex: Kortallaiyar/Arani/Coom
complex
13. Kerala complex

SRI LANKA
75

90

Figure 1 Some important site complexes of southern India.

by H. D. Sankalia and his students trained at the

Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute,
Pune, and ongoing research is being carried out by the
next generation of scholars.
Theoretical and methodological studies of the
Palaeolithic in South India include at one level the
discovery of sites, documentation of culture sequences, and typological studies. At another level, in the

Hunsgi-Baichbal basins of Karnataka, K. Paddayya

initiated settlement pattern studies using ecological
and processual approaches, while subsequent work
along with M. Petraglia focused on studies of siteformation processes, cognition, and behavior. Studies
by M. L. K Murty in the Kurnool complex of sites
also involved adoption of regional perspectives along
with ethnoarchaeological and ecological approaches.

ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 707

Geomorphological and settlement pattern based

approaches were also adopted by R. S. Pappu in
parts of Karnataka. S. Pappus work in the Kortallaiyar river basin, Tamil Nadu, involved studies of site
formation processes, palaeoenvironments and prehistoric behavior. In recent years, large-scale excavations
by S. Pappu at Attirampakkam; K. Paddayya and
M. Petraglia at Isampur; and trenches taken by
R. Korisettar and M. Petraglia at Lakhmapur; are utilizing advances in scientific techniques of excavation,
along with multidisciplinary approaches involving new
dating methods, palaeoenvironmental investigations,
and lithic analysis to understand prehistoric behavior
(Table 1).

The Lower Palaeolithic

Lower Palaeolithic sites are distributed almost all
over South India, with the exception of Kerala and
the extreme southern portion of Tamil Nadu. In these
regions, environmental constraints and paucity of
raw material are considered factors detrimental for
occupation. Acheulian industries predominate, with
the exception of a few sites in Kerala, Nittur in
Karnataka; and Rishikonda in Andhra Pradesh, where
predominantly pebble tool assemblages were discovered. A few chronometric dates are available for the
Indian Lower Palaeolithic, of which only five come
from South India (Table 2). These range from around

Table 1 Principal site complexes of South India

Some important site complexes

Cultures and excavated sites

HunsgiBaichbal complex, Gulbarga district, Karnataka

Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic

Acheulian: Hunsgi Localities V, VI; Isampur

Upper Palaeolithic: Salvadgi, Meralbhavi

GhataprabhaMalaprabha complex, Belgam, Dharwar,
and Bijapur districts, Karnataka

Rallakalava complex, Chitoor district, Andhra Pradesh

Sagileru complex, Cuddapah district, Andhra Pradesh
Kurnool complex, Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh

Giddalur complex, Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh

Nalgonda complex, Nalgonda district, Andhra Pradesh
Nagarjunakonda complex, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh
Nellore complex, Nellore district, Andhra Pradesh
Gunjana complex, Cuddappah district, Andhra Pradesh
Paleru valley, Prakasam district, Andhra Pradesh
Vishakhapatnam complex, coastal Andhra Pradesh
KrishnaTungabhadra complex: Mahbubnagar, Nalgonda,
and Kurnool districts, Andhra Pradesh
Palar river basin including the Kortallaiyar, Arani, and Coom
river basins, Tamil Nadu

Kerala complex

Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic

Acheulian: Anagwadi
Middle Palaeolithic: Kovalli
Acheulian and Middle Palaeolithic: Lakhmapur East and West
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic
Lower Palaeolithic: Nandipalle and Vadamanu
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic
Upper Palaeolithic: Kurnool caves: Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi, Billa
Surgam, and Kottala Polimera Gavi
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic
Lower, Middle Palaeolithic
Lower Palaeolithic, possible Middle Palaeolithic
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic
Upper Palaeolithic: Vodikallu
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic
Non-Acheulian pebble tool complex: Rishikonda
Middle Palaeolithic: Ramayogi Agraharam
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic
Middle Palaeolithic: Moravakonda
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic
Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic: Attirampakkam
Lower Palaeolithic: Vadamadurai, Srikrishnapuram
Lower and Middle Palaeolithic: Poondi, Neyvelli, Gudiyam along slopes.
Middle Palaeolithic: Gudiyam rockshelter
Non-Acheulian Lower Palaeolithic

Table 2 Summary of Lower Palaeolithic dates from South India (after Misra 1989; Mishra 1995; Petraglia 1999)
Site complex

Material dated
230

234

/U

on travertines

Kaldevanhali in the Hunsgi basin (Acheulian assemblages overly travertine

Th

Sadab in the Hunsgi basin (in association with Acheulian assemblages)

Teggihalli in the Hunsgi basin (in association with Acheulian assemblages)
Teggihalli in the Hunsgi basin (in association with Acheulian assemblages)
Yedurwadi in the Hunsgi basin in association with Acheulian assemblages)
Isampur, in the Hunsgi basin (in association with Acheulian artiefacts)

Th230/U234 Elephas sp. molar

Th230/U234 Bos sp. molar
Th230/U234 Elephas sp. molar
230 234
/U
on calcretes
ESR heribivore teeth

Age
174
35
166 15/13
290 21/18
287 27/22
>350
>350
1.2
0.17 mya

708 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

166 and 174 kyr to >350 kyr. In general, the Indian

Acheulian is bracketed between 150 kyr and >350 kyr,
with a few dates from Isampur and Bori exceeding
this. Relative dating based on stratigraphic sequences along river terraces and laterites has also been
used to provide a chronological framework. Fluorine/phosphate ratios (which assign relative ages to
fossil faunal remains) revealed that f/p of fossils associated with the Early Acheulian show ratios of 6.8
while Late Acheulian bones revealed a ratio of 5.6 in
Karnataka. On grounds of artifact technology and
assemblage composition, the Acheulian has been
divided into Early and Late phases, while some scholars also used degrees of artifact abrasion/rolling and
patination to establish a relative chronology. Thus,
Attirampakkam and Vadamadurai in the Kortallaiyar
basin, sites in the Rallakalava valley, as well as the
Paleru and Gunjana complexes are attributed to
the Late Acheulian. However, recent excavations at
Attirampakkam indicate a sequence of evolution
within the Acheulian (Figure 2). Similarly, excavations at Hunsgi and Isampur place these sites within
an Early phase, while Lakhmapur is categorized as
very Late Acheulian and transitional to the Middle
Palaeolithic.
Although palaeoecological data is sparse, geomorphological studies point to regional variability in site
location and sedimentary contexts. Taking into consideration settlement patterns it is seen that Acheulian
sites are distributed in a wide range of environmental
contexts, along the Eastern coastal plains, the Eastern
Ghats, and the Deccan Uplands (see Asia, South:
India, Deccan and Central Plateau). No Acheulian
rock shelter has been documented in South India.
Investigations in the HunsgiBaichbal valleys in Karnataka resulted in documentation of numerous sites,
largely confined to the valley floor. Based on artifact
density, sites are divided into small, medium, large,
and very large. Of these, the most important localities
include the sites of Hunsgi and Isampur which were
excavated. In the neighboring Baichbal valley, sites
also occur along the sloping sides of interfluves,
of which most appear clustered within a stretch of
34 km around the Fatehpur Nala (stream), of which
Yediapur was excavated. In northern Karnataka,
most sites are concentrated in the Kaladgi region in
the basins of the rivers Ghataprabha and Malaprabha. These are clustered primarily in the lower
reaches of the former river which is rich in quartzites
suitable for tool manufacture; rather than in regions
geologically comprising Deccan Traps and which are
poor in raw material. A recent re-examination of the
Malaprabha-Ghataprabha site complex indicates
that the artifact-bearing conglomerates in the middle
courses of these river systems represent a series of

coalescent alluvial fans. In this region, sites are buried

under Late Quaternary alluvial deposits, postdate the
formation of alluvial fans, and also occur on pediment surfaces in association with ponds and lacustral
clays and fine-grained silts deposited by now extinct
water courses. In the Lakhmapur complex, sites are
clustered around the fan system north of the Kaladgi
escarpment and away from the river. In Karnataka
scholars attribute site distribution to relate primarily
to raw material availability. A detailed study of the
KrishnaTungabhadra Doab revealed that all sites
save Kuduvalli, are located 2025 m above the present riverbed and 0.51.5 km away from the river.
Moving to Andhra Pradesh, in the Gunjana complex,
Acheulian groups occupied small ephemeral channels, streams, and braided runnels situated 12 km
away from the main river channel, and in scrub
woodland, scrub savanna, and thorny thicket zones
near low hill ranges where there was access to food
resources and perennial water. In Tamil Nadu, most
Acheulian sites in the Kortallaiyar, Arani, and Cooum
basins are deeply stratified within laterites and
clays, and extend from the foothills of the Allikulli
and Satyavedu ranges to the coast, apparently concentrated in regions rich in quartzite cobble and
boulder beds.
Lower Palaeolithic sites occur in varied sedimentary
contexts. Most sites in southern India are surface
scatters. Artifacts occur on weathered bedrock, on
the surface of laterites and lateritic gravels, on gravels
derived from fluvial or colluvial processes, on the
eroded surface of high-level gravels, or in the foothill zones. Surface sites range from those in secondary contexts, to those which are regarded as being
primary to relatively in situ, being exposed only
owing to recent erosion. Thus, in the Kortallaiyar
basin, sites designated as type 2a have artifacts which
are exposed owing to deflation or sheet wash and
are in a relatively undisturbed context. In northern
Karantaka, open-air surface sites in association with
outcrops of raw material and which are rich in
manufacturing waste, are relatively undisturbed.
In almost all regions, sites occur within fluvial
conglomerates, once again not necessarily transported over long distances. Thus, Anagwadi in Karnataka
is designated as a semi-primary open air channel occupation site, where excavations revealed Acheulian
artifacts in the upper half of a well-cemented pebbly
gravel, with a sandy silty matrix, and ferruginous
cementing material. Similar channel occupation sites
in a semi-primary context are documented in the
GhataprabhaMalaprabha complex, located 37 m
above the riverbeds (with relatively unabraded tools).
In the Kortallaiyar river basin, Tamil Nadu, sites of
type 1a have a high integrity and comprise sites which

Surface

T7A, datum, SW corner, 37.89 m AMSL

0m

0.5 m

Key
1

1m
Middle
Palaeolithic
1.5 m

Layer 1: clayey-slit
Layer 2: ferricrete gravel
Layer 3: clayey-slit
Layer 4: clayey-slit

Ferruginous gravel lense

2.5 m
Acheulian
3m

Layer 5: ferruginous gravel

Layer 6: laminated clay
Not excavated
Mud balls
Calcrete nodules
Burrows
Brick intrusions

Area excavated
(2002)

Acheulian
3.5 m

6m

5.5 m

5m

4.5 m

4m

3.5 m

3m

2.5 m

2m

1.5 m

1m

0.5 m

0m

Geomatics Solutions Development Group

(GSDG), CDAC-Pune

ATM, Trench T7A, South wall

Scale
0.25 0

Figure 2 Attirampakkam: the stratigraphic sequence. Sharma Centre for Heritage Education.

0.25

0.5

0.75

1.25

1.5 xx

ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 709

2m
Transitional
to Middle
Palaeolithic

710 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

were buried within ferricretes/laterites and ferruginous

gravels and exposed only recently owing to quarrying,
construction, and section scrapings. Excavations at
Attirampakkam in this region revealed Acheulian assemblages in fine-grained ferruginous gravels where
evidence of on-site lithic manufacture and conjoining
pieces point to a high degree of preservation. Sites
occurring in colluvial deposits are noted again in
most regions, and are relatively undisturbed. In the
Hunsgi valley, such sites occur close to the foothill
zone of the tableland, where the deposit measures
more than 1 m across, and artifacts are unabraded.
In the GhataprabhaMalaprabha complex, sites occur
on gently sloping pediment surfaces at the foot of the
Kaladgi hills, in deposits formed by a mass-wasting
process. These are unstratified, located either close
to the river or 13 km from the present stream
channels, as well as in talus and colluvial deposits
where they are relatively undisturbed. Later studies
in this region led to the demarcation of sites within
and on the surface of alluvial fans, and a reinterpretation of sites such as Anagawadi and Kovalli, as
representing a series of coalescent alluvial fans. In
the Lakhmapur complex, sites are clustered around
the fan complex north of the Kaladgi escarpment and
away from the river.
Among primary sites, those resting on weathered
bedrock and sealed by later deposits are noted in
excavations in the Hunsgi complex, where Acheulian
occupation on bedrock is sealed by gruss derived
from weathering of granites. Recent excavations at
Isampur in the Hunsgi valley revealed a primary site
located on a siliceous limestone pediment capped by
13 m of silts. In the Hunsgi valley, some primary
sites occur in soft sediments, on the surface of travertine deposits and covered by black soils. Several sites
in the Baichbal valley occur as distinct lenses in a
brownish clay deposit in a 3 m section comprising
locally derived granite/basalt detritus. A detailed study
of the KrishnaTungabhadra Doab led to the discovery of sites found on limestone beds and covered by
0.300.50 m of thick yellowish-brown soil.
Sites associated with laterites/ferricretes and elements associated with lateritic landscapes are common all over the southeast coast, in the Kortallaiyar
complex of Tamil Nadu, and in the Nellore and
Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh. In the Kortallaiyar basin, Acheulian sites occur within ferricretes
and ferruginous gravels as revealed by field studies
and excavations at Attirampakkam, where tools occur
in layer 5, overlying clays also bearing Acheulian tools
(Figure 3). Recent studies in the Malaprabha basin,
Karnataka, at Lakhmapur West, revealed Acheulian
tools in unit III, a stone line, and in the Malaprabha
valley as a whole; the buried and well-developed

nodular laterites are linked with Acheulian occupations. In the case of the nonbiface assemblages, at
the site of Rishikonda, 250 m inland along the east
coast, pebble tools occur at the junction of a pebblybouldery gravel on a lateritic gravel resting on bedrock, on a wave-cut terrace. A unique context noted
at Attirampakkam was the presence of Acheulian
tools, within clays, which were previously assigned
to the Cretaceous period (Figure 4).
Taking into account lithic technology, on typotechnological grounds assemblages consist of the
Acheulian biface complex, marked by handaxes, cleavers, scrapers, knives, retouched light and heavy duty
flakes, chopper-chopping tools, a few borers and burins, cores and debitage. Pebble tool assemblages lacking
the biface element, and comprising chopper-chopping

Figure 3 Attirampakkam: Acheulian artifacts in ferruginous

gravels.

Figure 4 Attirampakkam: Acheulian artifacts in clays.

ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 711

tools, scrapers, borers on pebbles and large flakes are

noted at several sites in Kerala, at Rishikonda along
the east coast, and at Nittur in Karnataka. It is as
yet unclear as to how these industries relate to the
Acheulian, either in terms of chronology or technology, although some scholars believe these represent a
pre-Acheulian phase.
In the Acheulian complex, the predominant raw
materials used were a variety of quartzites derived
from local geological formations, generally within a
radius of 14 km of the site. These occur in the form
of river gravels, high-level gravels, talus, and colluvial
deposits or outcrops from which nodules and chunks
were utilized. Recent excavations at Attirampakkam,
point to transport of tools from within a radius of
around 3 km in the lower levels of layer 6; whilst
in the overlying ferruginous gravel horizon (layer 5),
on-site manufacture of tools, as well as localized
transport of boulder cores is noted (Figure 5). In the
Hunsgi complex, studies point to caching of handaxes,
evidence of curation, as well as long-distance transport
at Mudnur X, and greater transport of bifaces as compared to cores and hammers (although in all cases this
is less than 1 km).
A small percentage of other raw materials were
also used, such as quartzitic sandstones or sandstones
(in the Kortallaiyar basin) or chert, quartz, and sandstone (Anagawadi). In the Lakhmapur complex in the
Malaprabha basin, mineralogical studies indicate
that tools are on quartzites sourced from neighboring
quartzite outcrops. An interesting feature seen in the
Kurnool complex is that in the eastern and western
parts of the Nallamalais of the eastern division, finegrained quartzites from water worn river pebbles
were preferred, while in the adjoining Erramalais, of
the central division, siliceous raw materials were
used, with little effort made to import raw material
from adjoining regions. In the HunsgiBaichbal basin,
the most notable feature is the predominant use of
limestone, of the Bhima series which occurs in the

Figure 5 Acheulian tools at Attirampakkam.

form of nodules or blocks eroding out of the conglomerates on the valley floor. The site of Isampur is
the first-known Acheulian quarry site in South Asia.
This has evidence of choices exercised in raw materials used for hammerstones, and evidence of levering
action by hominins to extract slabs. Interestingly, in
the adjoining Baichbal basin, tools were principally
on granite gneisses and schistose rocks as compared
to the use of limestone in the Hunsgi valley. In the
pebble tool complex of Kerala, tools are on quartz
and gneissic rocks, and at Nittur, on dolerites. In
the KrishnaTungabhadra Doab region, site locations
are tied to raw material sources, and variability in
these sources determines whether pebbles, cobbles, or
chunks were used as blanks. Similarly, in the Middle
Krishna basin, the paucity of sites is linked to raw
material constraints.
As elsewhere in India, the Acheulian has been divided
into an Earlier and Later Phase, with early scholars
referring to cruder Abbevillian industries; and in
some cases with both Early and Late technological
trends often occurring in the same region or locality. In
these cases, scholars have often divided an assemblage
into groups based on artifact rounding, abrasion, patination, and flaking technology into older or younger
phases. Acheulian tools were on pebbles and cobbles,
chunks, slabs, nodules, and flakes. Evidence of both
hard hammer techniques as well as more refined flaking, prepared core techniques, Victoria West and Vaal
techniques are documented. Rolled artifacts termed
as crude, with pebble-based tools, deep flake scars,
predominance of choppers are seen at Rallakalava A,
Sagileru Group 1, (Nandipalle and Vadamanu) and
Nalgonda Group 1, some localities in Nagarjunakonda
and Giddalur, where evolution of the Acheulian is
also noted. Evolved Acheulian traditions are also
noted at these sites. The predominant use of pebble
tools, or tools on pebble blanks is seen in the Nellore
and Bellary regions, and at Kurnool. It is argued
that the chopper-chopping element is an intrinsic
part of the Acheulian, and regional variability seen
here is largely a matter of raw material constraints.
Variability in handaxe types is also noted by scholars,
both within and between regions, both in the nature
of blanks used and in the degree of flaking, standardization, and symmetry. At several excavated sites
such as Lakhmapur and Attirampakkam, evidence
of industries transitional to the Middle Palaeolithic
is noted, and observations of surface scatters also
indicate this trend (Figure 6). V. Jayaswal singles out
the Nittur complex as resembling other chopperchopping tool complexes of India, which also include
the Soan industries. She also situates the site of Vadamanu in the Sagileru complex as part of a group
constituting a high percentage of chopper-chopping

712 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

finished tools to the site for resource exploitation and

did not manufacture bifaces on site. In later levels,
on-site manufacture and use of tools is documented.

The Middle Palaeolithic

Figure 6 Middle Palaeolithic artifacts at Attirampakkam.

Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, India.

tools as contrasted with handaxes and cleavers. The

rest of the sites in South India are classified within the
handaxe-cleaver group, with the exception being
Nagarjundakonda-1, which has a predominance of
cleavers, and is compared with the excavated sites of
Chirki-Nevasa and Lalitpur, in western and northern
India, respectively.
Inferences on hominin behavior are drawn from
settlement pattern studies in the HungsiBaichbal
basins, which have led to a classification of sites into
occupation sites, scavenging or food-processing localities, tool caches, and sites with single episodes of
activities. This pattern is noted in other regions and
sites are divided into base camps, workshops, and
transient camps, based on site size, artifact density,
and assemblage composition. Drawing on ethnographic and ecological models, K. Paddayya suggested
seasonal movements of hominin groups in the Hunsgi
valley involving dry season aggregation in the valley
where water was available in the form of springs and
in streams; and wet season dispersion, in accordance
with the movement of game and seasonality of plant
resources. Excavations at Isampur revealed hominin
quarrying of limestone slabs for tool manufacture;
raising issues of sociality and cognition. The importance of site-formation studies has also contributed to
new approaches toward examining behavior in this
region. In the Lakhmapur region, behavior in terms of
exploiting raw material resources has been examined.
Excavations at Attirampakkam revealed that during
the earliest Acheulian occupation, hominins brought

The distribution of Middle Palaeolithic sites in South

India roughly parallels that of the Lower Palaeolithic.
For the first time, there was an expansion into southern Tamil Nadu, as also the first occupation of rock
shelters such as Gudiyam in the Allikulli hills of
Tamil Nadu, and the karstic cave of Belum in Kurnool
district. In the HunsgiBaichbal complex, settlements
expanded outside the valley floor into the surrounding
plateaux. In the Kaladgi basin, in the Ghataprabha
Malaprabha complex, most Middle Palaeolithic sites
occur in the same locales as the Acheulian, in the
semi-arid lower reaches of the valley and much less
than in the subhumid middle and upper reaches,
and proliferate in regions with good development of
chert formations. In the KrishnaTungabhadra Doab,
for the first time, hominins entered the savanna
woodland zone.
There are very few chronometric dates for what is
termed the Middle Palaeolithic in India. Nandipalle
in the Sagileru basin (1.111.26 m in clayey silts;
from gastropod shells) dates to 23 670
640, 690;
(half-life 5568
30 years) and 24 360
660, 710 (halflife 5730
40) (PRL 293). However, the Indian Middle
Palaeolithic is in general bracketed between 150 kyr
BP to around 30 kyr BP.
Stratigraphically, most such sites in southern India
are surface collections, often found in a mixed context
with the Acheulian. However, stratified sites show that
they overlie Acheulian horizons, and occur in a wide
range of sedimentary contexts. In most areas, sites occur
in finer fluvial gravels, termed gravel II, and sometimes
separated by fine sediments from gravels bearing
Acheulian artifacts (e.g., Sagileru complex and Kurnool
complex). In the HunsgiBaichbal complex, they occur
in a brown silt overlying the Acheulian, and often associated with it. In the GhataprabhaMalaprabha complex, sites occur on the eroded surface of high-level
gravels, in alluvial or channel gravel beds, on the surface
of pediments, in talus and colluvial deposits, and as
surface sites near raw material. In the Lakhmapur complex, Middle Palaeolithic tools were identified in black
clays, palaeovertisols (unit II) resting uncomfortably
over a nodular laterite (unit III), as also in the top of
the unit III, but are reworked. In another complex, tools
were noted in laterite (unit III) resting on the top of
an indurated portion of the section (unit IV), along
the distal margins of a pediment slope. In the Middle
Krishna valley, sites were in association with highlevelgravels and the first major occupation of this

ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South 713

region occurred owing to the abundance of raw material in these gravels.The unique occurrence of
Middle Palaeolithic artifacts in red beds at a depth of
3.2 m is noted at the site of Ramayogi Agraharam,
along the Visakhapatnam coast, Andhra Pradesh. In
the Kortallaiyar river basin, Tamil Nadu, artifacts
occur eroding out of ferruginous gravel deposits, and
on the surface of eroded bedrock. At Attirampakkam,
tools are noted in layer 2, a fine ferruginous gravel.
Over most of South India, quartzites continued to
be used, with a preference for fine-grained rocks.
Some regions witnessed a shift toward siliceous raw
materials (chert, jasper, quartz) available in the form
of nodules eroding from chert veins, outcrops, river,
and high-level gravels. This is seen in the Krishna
Tungabhadra basin, the Cuddappah complex, and the
Kurnool region, where there is the additional use of
indurated shale, slate, quartz, and basalt; as also in
the HunsgiBaichbal basins, and sites in the Kaladgi
basin. Regional variability within complexes is also
noted. Thus, in the Sagileru complex, while quartzites
continued to be used, a complete switch to siliceous
raw materials is seen at the site of Vemula. Similarly,
in the KrishnaTungabhadra Doab, distinct regional
variability is seen in the use of quartzite, chert, and
jasper at different sites. At Ramayogi Agraharam,
khondalites were used.
The Middle Palaeolithic is generally characterized
by a predominance of flake tools: scrapers, borers,
and points, along with a continuation of handaxes
(which become diminutive), and chopper-chopping
tools. However, tools were also made on chunks and
nodules, and many authors note a decline in standardization and refinement of tools as compared to
the Acheulian. The prepared core technique and
blade techniques predominate along with use of simple flakes and minimal retouch, although along the
southeast coast the Levallois element is thought to
be negligible. In excavated sites such as Kovalli, evidence of the prepared core technique was noted with
predominance of cores and debitage and fewer scrapers, borers, scrapers-cum-borers, and points. At a
number of sites, tools were on nodules as well as on
flakes struck from nodules. Shouldered tools, tanged
points and miniature handaxes, blunting on flakes
and flake blades are also noted at several sites. With
the exception of the Gunjana complex of sites (with a
high percentage of handaxes), scrapers and points
predominate in most regions. In the Kortallaiyar
river basin, hominins exploited locally available raw
material sources (cobbles, pebbles, thermal fracture
flakes) in an expedient manner, with minimal retouch
and trimming. Prepared core and blade techniques
are noted as also a continuation of tool types and
techniques associated with the Acheulian.

Inferences on behavior are sporadic. In the Krishna

Tungabhadra Doab, sites are classified into base
camps and transient sites, or factory sites. Similarly,
Kovalli in the Kaladgi region is designated as a factory
site. In the Kortallaiyar basin, technological strategies
and assemblage composition along with studies of
site-formation processes were used to infer site functions and suggest possible alternate mobility patterns
across the landscape.

The Upper Palaeolithic

The Upper Palaeolithic cultures of South India are
distributed in a wide range of ecozones. Although,
the Terminal Pleistocene was a period of greater
aridity in South Asia, evidence from the Kurnool
caves as well as from other sites in the Krishna and
Godavari valleys indicates a grassland ecosystem with
forest cover, swamps, and pools. The same pattern of
tropical semi-arid monsoon climate is thought to have
prevailed in southern India during this phase. Faunal
remains from the Kurnool caves with Rhinoceros karnuliensis, Boselephas tragocamelus, Gazella gazella,
Antelope cervicapra, Tetraceros quadricornis, Cervus
unicolor, Axis axis, and Tragulus cf. memmina, point
to scrub-to-tree jungle type of thick vegetation with
open expanses of grasses and a source of water in
streams. Cave sediments in the Kurnool region were
deposited under somewhat humid conditions. Fluvial
changes in river regimes have been documented.
A number of chronometric dates available from
sites in India bracket this phase between 40 kyr and
10 kyr BP with regional variability. In South India
dates from Nandipalle on freshwater gastropod shells
are 24 260
600, 710 and 17 390
10%. Burnt clay
samples from a fireplace in the Upper Palaeolithic
levels at the cave site of Muchchatla Chintamanu
Gavi II gave a TL date of 17 390
10 BP. A date
from Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu, on freshwater shells
is around 25 160
850.
Sites are distributed all over southern India, with
once again a few noted in Tamil Nadu and none
in Kerala. In the Gunjana complex, sites occur as
surface scatters, but excavations at Vodikallu revealed
that artifacts occur in a fine loam possibly deposited
by a sluggish stream, which covered cultural material
lying exposed on the adjacent land surface. In the
Rallakalava complex, artifacts occur on the eroded
surface of the first aggradational terrace of the stream,
and sites are found in association with sands. At sites
in the Shorapur Doab, a black brown silt with lenses
of loose pebbly granular gravel yielded blade tools.
The best-known complex of sites lie in the Kurnool
karstic cave complex, where Muchchatla Chintamanu
Gavi (MCG) was excavated as also were Billa Surgam

714 ASIA, WEST/India, Paleolithic Cultures of the South

and Kottala Polimera Gavi. The MCG complex

yielded the best evidence of the Upper Palaeolithic,
both within caves and in the surroundings. Here,
Upper Palaeolithic tools were noted below an upper
cave earth in brown and chocolate brown poorly
sorted deposits consisting of rockfall in a brown clayey
sediment resulting from disintegrated limestone bedrock. Upper Palaeolithic site sizes vary greatly, and
extend up to 20 000 m2 as seen in the southeastern
fringes of the Eastern Ghats. In the Eastern Ghats,
the sites are concentrated around riverine zones, marked by high artifact densities pointing to long-term
occupation. Siliceous raw materials as well as quartz
were now preferred, although fine-grained quartzites
continued to be used. Regional variability is marked. In
the Rallakalava complex, fluted cores and tools on
blades are noted along with cores, scrapers, and choppers. The distinctive features include large-sized blades
and blade tools and robust burins. Along the eastern
coastal plain, the blunted backed blade element forms a
significant part of the tool kit at some sites. Variability
is also seen in the form of a tendency toward microlithization at some sites, indicating a trend toward the
Mesolithic. In the Eastern Ghats, the blade tool complex comprises long parallel-sided blades, irregular
blades, flake-blades, flakes, burins, borers, blade and
flake cores, and debitage. The predominance of unmodified blades, flake blades and flakes, and the presence of an amorphous element are notable, with a low
backed blade component. In the southeastern outliers
of the Eastern Ghats, irregular and pointed blades,
scrapers on blades, and flakes, denticulates, horse
hoof scrapers on blade cores, prismatic curved back
points, backed knives, macro lunates, macro triangles,
and burins predominate. The burins, backed blades,
and end scrapers are refined and are almost microlithic in form. Here, the presence of bored stones (possible
net sinkers) and grinding slabs is notable. The sites
of Salvadgi and Meralbhavi in the Shorapur Doab,
Karnataka, are termed as workshops with two distinct stone working traditions: one characterized by
manufacture of scraper-point-borer category of tools
on flakes and flake-blades and the other by the production of blade tools. In the Gunjana complex,
manufacturing sites could be identified with a high
percentage of cores and debitage, a predominance of
backed blade variants and scrapers, and a few burins,
with tools tending toward microliths and representing
a possible Late Upper or Epipalaeolithic phase. Excavations at the site of Vodikallu in this region yielded
grinding stones and rubbers which testify to processing of plant food. Within the Kurnool cave complex,
excavations at MCG yielded a wealth of blades and
blade tools, along with a significant component of bone
tools including perforators (some with fire-hardened

tips), scrapers, chisels, scoops, shouldered points, spatulae, worked bones, and bone blanks. This complex
also has a paucity of retouched tools on blades or
flakes, while backed blade variants, several burin
types and other forms are absent or rare; and the culture is assigned to an incipient facies of the Upper
Palaeolithic. In terms of behavioral implications, it
was suggested that the cave was possibly neither a kill
site nor a permanent settlement, but a transient camp,
used when it received sufficient light. The scatters of
sporadic artifacts in the surrounding region suggest a
nomadic lifestyle. Ethnographic parallels are drawn
on to explain seasonality in movement across this
landscape.

Conclusion and Future Trends

The South Indian Palaeolithic has yielded evidence of
Early Acheulian sites which may date back to as old
as 1 myr BP. Evolution within the Acheulian is noted
from stratified sites, as well as from surface collections. Regional variability in raw material usage,
site location and hominin behavior is also clear. Sites
such as Attirampakkam display a stratified sequence
of industries in well-preserved contexts, with the
potential for informing on long-term adaptations to
changing environments. Excavations at Isampur have
revealed the first Acheulian quarry site in South Asia
(see Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures). The place of
non-biface Acheulian industries requires further
study. Industries transitional with the Middle Palaeolithic have been documented from numerous surface
sites, as also from excavations at Lakhmapur and
Attirampakkam. Regional variability in terms of raw
material and tool types is seen in this phase. The origins
of the Upper Palaeolithic are relatively less clear, although distinct trends in blade and burin industries
are seen, with the best-documented sites located in the
karstic cave complexes of Kurnool district. Recent
multidisciplinary efforts in the Kortallaiyar basin
and in the HunsgiBaichbal and Lakhmapur complexes, point to new approaches toward understanding these cultures. Future studies need to focus on
generating more chronometric dates and on multidisciplinary studies for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. Questions related to hominin dispersals,
evolution of the Acheulian, position of the pebble
industries, transitional industries, and origins of the
Middle and Upper Palaeolithic require to be addressed
and placed within a global perspective.
See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Asia,
South: India, Deccan and Central Plateau; Paleolithic
Cultures; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples.

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 715

Further Reading
Allchin B (1997) The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mishra S (1995) Chronology of the Indian stone age: the impact of
recent absolute and relative dating attempts. Man and Environment XX(2): 1116.
Misra VN (1989) Stone age India: An ecological perspective. Man
and Environment 14: 1764.
Murty MLK (1979) Recent research on the Upper Palaeolithic
Phase in India. Journal of Field Archaeology 6(3): 301320.
Murty MLK (1985) Ethnoarchaeology of the Kurnool cave areas.
World Prehistory 17(2): 192205.
Paddayya K (1982) The Acheulian Culture of the Hunsgi Valley
(Peninsular India): A Settlement System Perspective. Poona:
Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute.
Paddayya K (1984) India: old stone age. In: Bar-Yosef O (ed.) Neue
Forschungen zur Altsteinzeit. Sonderdruck, pp. 345403.
Munich: Verlag C.H Beck.
Pappu RS (2001) Acheulian Culture in Peninsular India. New
Delhi: D.K. Printworld.
Pappu RS and Deo SG (1994) Man-Land Relationships During
Palaeolithic Times in the Kaladgi Basin, Karnataka. Pune:
Deccan College.
Pappu S (1999) A study of natural site formation processes in the
Kortallaiyar Basin, Tamil Nadu, South India. Geoarchaeology,
An International Journal 14(2): 127150.
Pappu S (2001) BAR-International Series 1003:. A Re-examination
of the Palaeolithic Archaeological Record of Northern Tamil
Nadu, South India. Oxford: BAR.
Pappu S (2001) Middle Palaeolithic stone tool technology in the
Kortallaiyar Basin, South India. Antiquity 75: 107117.
Pappu S, Gunnell Y, Taieb M, Brugal J-P, and Touchard Y (2003)
Ongoing excavations at the Palaeolithic site of Attirampakkam,
South India: Preliminary findings. Current Anthropology 44(4):
591597.
Pappu S, Gunnell Y, Taieb M, and Kumar A (2004) Preliminary
report on excavations at the Palaeolithic site of Attirampakkam,
Tamil Nadu (19992004). Man and Environment XXIX(2): 117.
Petraglia MD (1998) The Lower Palaeolithic of India and its bearing on the Asian record. In: Petraglia MD and Korisettar R (eds.)
Early Human Behaviour in Global Context. The Rise and
Diversity of the Lower Palaeolithic Record, pp. 343390.
London: Routledge.
Petraglia MD, LaPorta P, and Paddayya K (1999) The first Acheulian quarry in India: Stone tool manufacture, biface morphology
and behavior. Journal of Anthropological Research 55: 3970.

Indus Civilization
Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, WI, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Dholavira One of the largest and most prominent archaeological
sites in India, belonging to the Indus civilization. It is located on
the Khadir island in the Kutch district of Gujarat.
Mehrgarh One of the most important Neolithic (70003200
BCE) sites in archaeology, lies on the Kachi plain of Baluchistan,

Pakistan, and is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming

(wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in South
Asia.
Great Bath The earliest public water tank in ancient South Asia
is one of the most spectacular features of Mohenjo-daro.
Indus script (Harappan script) Refers to the undeciphered
writing system consisting of short strings of symbols found
on pottery and seals. Used between 26001900 BC and
associated with the Harappan period settlements of the
Indus civilization.

Indus Civilization
Introduction

The Indus civilization is a general term that refers to

the first urban society that emerged in the greater
Indus valley of Pakistan and northwestern India, between 2600 and 1900 BC. This urban society was first
discovered in the 1920s and has also been called
the Harappa culture after the type site of Harappa,
Pakistan where it was first discovered.
Other common names that are found in the literature include the Indus valley civilization and the
IndusSaraswati civilization.
Another common terminology that will be used in
this essay uses the framework of long-term cultural
traditions to examine the origin, character, and eventual decline of a civilization. The Indus tradition (also
called the Indus valley tradition) refers to the wide
range of human adaptations in the greater Indus
region over a long span of history, approximately
10 000 to 1000 BC. The Indus tradition encompasses
all adaptive strategies that contributed to the emergence and decline of the first phase of urbanism,
including hunting-foraging the origins of agriculture
and specialized crafts, the emergence of cities and
state-level society, and finally the transformation
and decline of the Indus cities (Figure 1).
In addition to the Indus, three other major cultural traditions relating to the initial emergence of
urbanism can be identified for the northwestern
subcontinent: the Baluchistan, Helmand, and the
Bactro-Margiana Traditions. These cultural traditions are linked in different ways to processes of
socioeconomic and political developments in the subcontinent, beginning as early as the Palaeolithic and
continuing through the Early Historic period.
The Indus tradition can be subdivided into eras
and phases that are roughly correlated to major
adaptive strategies and regional material cultural
styles (Table 1). A brief summary of each major era
is provided below in order to provide a larger
context in which to discuss the urban Harappa
phase, of the Integration era, which is the main
focus of this essay.

716 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

Chronological Framework: Origin

to Decline
Earlier models for the origin of the Indus civilization proposed that it was the result of direct or indirect influence from urban societies in Mesopotamia
or Iran to the west. Over the past several decades,
new excavations and better radiocarbon dating have
resulted in more complex models for interpreting
the origins and transformations of this early urban
society. The Indus region was clearly not isolated
from the events going on in other parts of West
Asia; nevertheless, the origin of Indus cities such as
Harappa and Mohenjo-daro can be traced to indigenous socioeconomic and political processes. Continued

archaeological excavations in both India and Pakistan

have revealed the presence of numerous different types
of sites that provide a more complete understanding of
the origins and decline of the Indus civilization.
While most scholars look to the Early Neolithic as
the foundation of later urban centers, it is important
to include a discussion of hunting and foraging communities who have continued to coexist and interact
with settled communities throughout human history.
With the retreat of glaciers in the northern subcontinent around 12 00010 000 years ago and changes in
climate, major changes in the species and distributions of fauna and flora in the South Asian subcontinent resulted in the establishment of new strategies of

Oxus (Amu Darya)

Bactro-Margiana
tradition
Kabul R.

Indus R.

m
elu nab
Jh Che
.
vi R
Ra
.
jR
tle
ti
wa
Su
ras
Sa

Helmand R.
Helmand
tradition
Indus
tradition

Baluchistan
tradition

s R.

Bea

ra

G
an
Ya
ga
m
R.
un
a
R.

ak

In
du
s

H
ar-

gg

Gh

INDO-GANGETIC
TRADITION
Malwa
tradition

Ancient
coastline

Arabian Sea

Ganga-Vindhya
tradition

Narmada R.

Godavari R.
Deccan
tradition
Krishna R.

Figure 1 Major traditions in South Asia.

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 717

Table 1 Indus Tradition
Foraging era
Mesolithic and Microlithic

10 0002000 BCE

Early Food Producing era

Mehrgarh Phase

70005500 BCE

Regionalization era
Early Harappa phases
Ravi, Hakra, Sheri Khan Tarakai,
Balakot, Amri, Kot Diji, Sothi

55002600 BCE

Integration era
Harappan phase
Subdivided at the site of Harappa into
Period 3A 26002450 BC
Period 3B 24502200 BC
Period 3C 22001900 BC
Localization era
Late Harappan phases
Punjab, Jhukar, Rangpur

26001900 BCE

19001300 BCE

foraging and hunting. The Foraging era represents a

relatively long period of time and broad geographical
area where mobile and semisedentary foraging and
hunting communities began focusing on intensive
exploitation of specific plants and animals. In parts
of Afghanistan and the edges of the Indus valley these
adaptive strategies eventually contributed to the
domestication of humped zebu cattle and possibly
other species of animals and plants.
During the Neolithic or Early Food Producing
era, which dates to around 70005500 BCE at sites
such as Mehrgarh, Pakistan, there is evidence for the
emergence of wheat and barley agriculture and the
herding of domestic cattle, along with sheep and goat.
These plants and animals became the primary subsistence base for the development of larger towns and
eventually cities in the Indus region. Major trade
networks were also established during this period,
connecting small agro-pastoral communities with distant resource areas. These networks extended from the
Arabian Sea along the Makran coast to the highlands
of northern Afghanistan, and from the Baluchistan
hills to the deserts of Sindh and Rajasthan.
In the subsequent Chalcolithic or Regionalization
era, 55002600 BCE, distinctive regional cultures
became established in the northern and southern alluvial plain, as well as in surrounding regions. Small
villages became established in agriculturally rich areas
and larger villages grew up along the major trade
routes linking each geographical region and resource
area. Some settlements, such as Mehrgarh, which is
situated at the base of the Bolan Pass, became important craft production and trade centers. At Mehrgarh a
wide suite of specialized crafts were developed for
local use as well as for regional trade: pottery making,
stone bead making, shell ornament production, copper

working, and eventually bronze working, as well as

glazed steatite and faience bead making. Distinctive
pottery styles and painted designs, along with regional
human and animal figurine styles can be seen in other
regions at sites such as Rehman Dheri (Gomal Plain),
Sheri Khan Tarakai and Tarakai Qila (Bannu Basin),
Sarai Khola (Taxila Valley), Harappa and Jalilpur
(central Punjab), Siswal (Haryana), Kot Diji (Sindh),
Amri and Ghazi Shah (southern Sindh), Nal/Sohr
Damb (southern Baluchistan), and Balakot (Makran
coast). Different regional cultures of phases have been
named after the regions or sites where they were first
discovered, such as Hakra, Ravi, Sothi, Amri, and Kot
Diji phases. These cultures are collectively referred to
as Early Harappan, because they set the foundation
for the development of major urban centers in the core
agricultural regions and at important crossroads.
In addition to the developments in the core areas
of the Indus and SaraswatiGhaggarHakra valleys,
recent excavations in Gujarat, India reveal the establishment of Early Harappan cultural traditions in Kutch
and Saurashtra. The sites of Dholavira, Loteshwar, and
Nagwada appear to have links to Amri and Kot Diji
phase cultures in Sindh, but also reflect a local tradition
from Gujarat, sometimes referred to as the Anarta culture. Many of the raw materials traded during the Early
Harappan period derive from Gujarat, but the degree
to which local cultures in Gujarat contributed to the
Early Harappan and subsequent Harappan cultural
traditions is still under investigation.
At the end of the Regionalization era, during
the Kot Diji phase, the first urban centers began to
emerge in the Indus and SaraswatiGhaggarHakra
plain. At the site of Harappa, which is the bestdocumented settlement, the early urban phase dates
from around 2800 to 2600 BCE (Figure 2). This settlement grew to more than 25 ha in area and was
divided into two walled sectors. Smaller villages dating to the same time period have been discovered in
the hinterland around Harappa and reveal that the
site was a central place in an urban network and also
had links to distant resource areas.
At Harappa there is evidence for the first use of the
Early Indus script, standardized weights, writing,
and square stamp seals that were used to stamp clay
sealings on bundles of goods or store rooms. Other
small and large sites dating to this period reveal local
developments in artifact styles, stamp seal styles, graffiti on pottery, and settlement planning. Standardized
mud bricks used for building city walls and domestic
architecture also appear at this time. The use of cardinal directions for orienting streets and buildings,
and the use of bullock carts for transport of heavy
commodities into the settlement begins during the
Kot Diji phase at Harappa and numerous other sites

718 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

60

50

70

Am

80

USSR

Da

38

ry

36

Key
34

Sanghao

Aq Kupruk
N

32

36

Palaeolithic/foraging era sites

Early food producing era sites
Regionalization era sites

AFGHANISTAN
Bannu Sites

ola u
Kh atea
i
ra Pl
Sa ar wat
w i
t
Po . R .

34

Himalayan Mts
R
R
ab
um
el hen
R.
h
.
i
J
C
v
R
Ra eas
B
.
Harappa
lej R
Zhob
Sut
i
vat
Jalilpur Saras
PAKISTAN
Kunal

32

Rehman Dheri
Gumla

an

ist
hol

OF

Lu

Ba

Dholavira
OM

AN

GULF OF
KUTCH

MUSCAT

KUTCH

Ras
Al Junayz

OMAN

56

58

R.

INDIA
24

Na

GUJARAT

rma

da

R.

22

DECCAN
20

GULF OF
KHAMBHAT

28

26

SAURASHTRA

ARABIAN SEA

na

Tapti R.

AND

54

ni R

.
22

LF

rmati

GU

t
lako

Saba

24

20

Jerruk

s
Da

Ya

RAJASTHAN

Amri
RAN

Kalibangan

mu

SINDH

MAK

.
tR

Site

Rohri
Kot Diji

Ghazi Shah

Bampur R.

R.
ra
ak
-H

R.
Ar
av
all
iR
iR
an
.
ge

Mohenjo
Daro

r
ga
t
ien hag
nc
G

ah

BAL
UCH
ISTA
N

LF

Nausharo

GU

Mehgarh

aR

Chagai Hills

ng

28

Kili Gul
Mohammad

30

Ga

H
IRAN

R.

an

elm

Ind
us
R.

Seistan

R.

30

100

100

60

200 300 400

Kilometers

Goda

vari R

500
68

70

72

74

76

18

Figure 2 Major geographical regions and prehistoric sites.

throughout the greater Indus region. Together these

developments confirm the emergence of hierarchical
social, economic, and political systems associated
with early urbanism.
Kot Diji phase sites have been found in the Gomal
plain (Rehman Dheri), Kacchi plain (Nausharo),
Taxila valley (Sarai Khola), along the bed of the
GhaggarHakra river (Jaliwali, Gamanwala, etc.), in
the southern Indus region (Mohenjo-daro, Kot Diji,
and Ghazi Shah), as well as in Kutch (Dholavira). The
precise nature of regional interaction and chronology
of local cultural developments is still unclear, but
taken as a whole, these sites set the stage for the rise
of large urban centers that came to dominate the
greater Indus valley region.
The Integration era, Harappa phase, dates from
around 2600 to 1900 BCE, and it is during this long
time span that cities such as Harappa, Mohenjo-daro,
Rakhigarhi, Dholavira, and Ganweriwala grew to
their largest extent (Figure 3). This 700-year period
can now be divided into three subphases on the basis

of changes in pottery, use of seals, and architecture as

seen at the site of Harappa and other major settlements. Although the precise dates may differ from
one site to another, at Harappa, these subphases
are referred to as period 3A (26002450 BCE), 3B
(24502200 BCE), and 3C (22001900 BCE). Some
scholars still refer to this long time span as the
mature Harappan period (or Mature Harappan),
but excavations and radiocarbon dating at the site
of Harappa indicate that the artifact types generally associated with the so-called mature Harappan
period actually only occur during the last half of this
700-year time span.
During the Harappa phase, the largest urban centers may have directly controlled their surrounding
hinterland, but there is no evidence for hereditary monarchies or the establishment of centralized territorial
states that controlled the entire Indus region. Cities,
such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and Dholavira were
clearly being ruled by influential elites, probably a
combination of merchants, landowners, and religious

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 719

60

50

70

80

Am

38

Da

ry

Shortugai

+ 36

34

Rehman
Dheri

R.

R.

Mundigak

Al Junayz

Dholavira

Desalpur

AN

GULF OF KUTCH
KUTCH

Nageshwar
ARABIAN SEA

Ras
Al Junayz

ni R

a
ad

Balakot
Allahdino

100

200 300 400

Kilometers

da
rma

Na

70

22

Bhagatrav DECCAN
20
Goda

veri R

500

68

R.

Tapti R.

GULF OF
KHAMBHAT
100

24

Lothal

Rangpur
Rojdi

R.

26

R.
Ar
av
all
iR
iR
an
.
ge

OM

22

Key:
Integration era sites
Other important sites
Major trade/exchange routes

Lu

Sutkagen Dor

na

ah

OF

SINDH

Ghazi
Chanhu Daro
Shah Amri

28

mu

Hill

Sotka Koh

Ya

RAJASTHAN

ot

LF

R.

Kot Diji

rk

GU

ht

s
Da

Rakhlgarhi

us

BAL
UCH
IST
AN

Shahi Tump
24

Mohenjo
Daro

Kulli

Bampur R.

R.
ra
AN
ak
IST
H
OL
H
r
C
nt gga
cie
Ganweriwala
An Gha

30

LF

aR

Tepe Yahya
GU

Nausharo

Rupar
l
an wal
g
n
a
a
n
b
all
Ba
.

lej R

Sut

PUNJAB

Dabarkot

Chagai Hills

as

Be

32

ng

28

lm

Ra

R.

Ind

He

R
vi

Ga

Shahr-l-Sokhta

Himalayan Mts

bR

na

e
Ch

Harappa

Zh o b

d
an

R.

rmati

Seistan

Saba

30

Jh

u
el

Su

32

72

74

76

18

Figure 3 Integration era, Harappa phase sites.

leaders. Smaller towns and villages may have been

run by corporate groups such as town councils or
individual charismatic leaders, but there is a conspicuous absence of central temples, palaces and elaborate elite burials that are characteristic of elites in
other early urban societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt,
and China. Hierarchical social order and stratified
society is reflected in architecture and settlement patterns, as well as artifact styles and the organization of
technological production. A vast network of internal
trade and exchange and a shared ideology united the
greater Indus valley. There was widespread use of
similar styles of pottery, figurines, ornaments, the distinctive Indus script, seals, and standardized weights.
Massive mud-brick walls surrounded most large settlements, and appear to have functioned primarily for
control of trade access into the cities. These walls also
would have served as formidable defenses, but there is
no evidence for major conflict or warfare at any major
center. A more detailed discussion of the Harappa
phase will be presented below.

During the Localization era, Late Harappan phases,

from 1900 to 1300 BCE or even as late at 1000 BCE,
the major cities and their supporting settlements
began to lose power due a number of factors. Shifting
river patterns and the eventual drying up of the
SaraswatiGhaggarHakra River resulted in the abandonment of many sites and migration into the Indus
valley, Gujarat or to the GangaYamuna valley. The
disruption of agriculture and the eventual breakdown
of trade and political networks led to the decline of
urbanism and the disappearance of many distinctive
features of the Indus culture. The Indus script and
inscribed seals were no longer used, and writing
disappeared along with the use of cubical stone
weights and many forms of symbolic objects. Other
social and religious factors also contributed to the
gradual reorganization of trade and technology and
the emergence of new cultural, political and religious
traditions.
Although changes in material culture and socioritual traditions are well documented, there are also

720 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

significant continuities. Even though cubical stone

weights disappeared, the weight system used during
the Early Harappan and Harappan periods continued in use in later periods and is still used in South
Asia today. Other continuities are seen in pottery
styles and technology, some symbolic objects, overall site layout, the use of standardized bricks, etc.
These continuities justify the use of the term Late
Harappan to characterize many of these traditions.
The Punjab phase, Cemetery H culture spread throughout the Punjab and GangaYamuna region, the Jhukar
phase and related cultures were found in Sindh and
Baluchistan, and the Rangpur phase includes the
Lustrous Red Ware and associated Black-and-Red
ware cultures that were present in Gujarat, Rajasthan,
and the Malwa Plateau.
In the northern Indus valley and parts of Baluchistan
some sites show an overlap between Late Harappan
and Bactro-Margiana material culture. In the Gangetic
region there is overlap with the Copper Hoards culture, the Ochre Colored Pottery, and Painted Gray
Ware culture. Some of these cultures may be associated with Indo-Aryan speaking Vedic communities
mentioned in the sacred hymns of the Rig Veda and
later Brahmanical texts, but there is little consensus
among scholars on this point. Considerable research
still remains to be done on this transitional period,
but some answers should be forthcoming from the
many new sites that have been discovered in northern
Pakistan and India.

Geographical Setting
The greater Indus valley refers to a vast area drained
by the various tributaries of the Indus River and a
parallel (now dry) river that is variously referred
to as the SaraswatiGhaggarHakraNara River.
The Indus tributaries emerge from the Kirthar and
Suleiman mountains of Baluchistan on the west, the
Hindu-Kush and Karakorum to the northwest, the
Pamir and the Himalaya to the north and east. All
of these mountainous regions have played an important role in providing minerals, timber, and trade
routes to adjacent cultural centers in Baluchistan,
Afghanistan, and Central Asia. The second major
river has different names along its length. In the
north are several tributaries, one of which is today
called the Saraswati. Some scholars suggest that this
was the sacred Saraswati River mentioned in the Rig
Veda and other Brahmanical texts, but so far it has
not been possible to confirm this identification. In
the midsection it is called Ghaggar or Hakra and the
depression where it appears to have flowed in the
south is called the Nara. This ancient river, which
will be referred to as the GhaggarHakra, flowed

to the east and generally parallel to the Indus River.

The Sutlej (ancient Satadru), which now flows into
the Indus, appears to have been a tributary of the
GhaggarHakra system. The GhaggarHakra appears
to have reached the Rann of Kutch during the Regionalization era, but began drying up and eventually
disappeared in the middle of the Cholistan desert
toward the end of the Harappa phase or during the
Late Harappan period.
To the east, the greater Indus valley is bordered by
the Thar Desert and the Aravalli mountains, both of
which are rich in mineral resources used by communities of the Indus region. On the southeast lie the
islands of Kutch, the peninsula of Saurashtra, and
the mainland of Gujarat. The combined deltas of the
Indus and the GhaggarHakra Rivers extend from
the Greater Rann of Kutch in the east to the rocky
coast of Baluchistan near modern Karachi in the west.
The coastal settlements in the Makran, Kutch, and
Saurashtra appear to have had connections across the
Arabian Sea to the coasts of modern Oman and the
Persian Gulf. Although no purely Harappan site has
been found on the Arabian Peninsula, many Indus
artifacts have been found in coastal and some inland
settlements.

Climate of the Greater Indus Region

The Indus valley and adjacent regions are dominated
by two major weather systems, the winter cyclonic
system of the western highlands and the summer
monsoon system of the peninsular subcontinent.
The winter cyclonic system produces snowfall in
Baluchistan and rainfall in parts of the Indus valley.
The summer monsoon brings scattered rainfall to
Sindh and Gujarat and heavy rainfall to the northern
Indus plain, with rain and snow in the high mountains in the north. These two systems overlap in the
Indus valley and if one system fails the other usually
provides sufficient precipitation to support large populations throughout the region. The main crop cycles
in the Indus valley region are aligned with the winter
rains and the summer monsoon rains.
Recent models of global climate indicate that, at
18 0009000 BP, southern Asia would have been cooler and drier than today, with a weak summer monsoon. From 9000 to 7000 BP, there appears to have
been a stronger summer monsoon, warmer summers,
and cooler winters. Although these models work at
the macrolevel, they cannot be confirmed through
detailed analysis of specific sites or regions. Generally
speaking, there is no evidence for major changes
in climate or rainfall since at least 9000 BP. Specific
regional environmental changes that directly impacted human settlement in the greater Indus region can

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 721

generally be attributed to changing river-flow patterns

and humanly induced erosion or soil degradation.

Subsistence Strategies
Indus cities and villages were provisioned through a
combination of intensive and extensive agriculture,
combined with animal husbandry, and supplemented
by fishing and hunting. During the Harappa phase,
two major crops could have been harvested in some
regions provided there was sufficient winter rain and
summer flooding or rains. Agricultural fields were
watered primarily by annual rainfall and seasonal
flooding, but water-diversion channels, and dams
for trapping soil and moisture are common along
the Baluchistan piedmont and in parts of Kutch.
Irrigation canals have been found at the site of
Shortughai along the Amu Darya or Oxus River in
Afghanistan, but there is no evidence for the construction of large-scale irrigation channels as was common
in Mesopotamia at the time. Smaller fields and vegetable plots would have been watered by wells,
which are found at most Harappa phase sites, and
reservoirs like those found at Lothal and Dholavira.
The brick-lined tank at Lothal was filled with river
overflow during the monsoons, and at Dholavira a
series of interconnected stone-lined reservoirs were
filled by a combination of river run-off, and rainfall
collected from rooftops and the city wall by an elaborate system of drains within the city itself.
The main winter or rabi season crops in the core
regions of the Indus were wheat and barley, supplemented by pulses, sesame, peas, and vegetables.
Perennial cotton could have been grown during the
winter season and harvested in the spring. The kharif
crops, including rice, sorghum, and various millets,
would have been sown during or at the end of the
summer monsoon and harvested in the fall. Rice was
not common in the Indus valley itself and is found
only in Gujarat during the Harappa phase. Cotton,
mustard, sesame, dates, melon, and peas were also
cultivated, possibly as kharif crops.
The most important domestic animals were cattle
(humped Bos indicus and nonhumped Bos taurus) and
water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), followed in importance by sheep and goat. Although domestic pig is
found in the cities, it was not a major source of meat.
The domestic dog is well attested from animal bones
as well as figurines, some of which depict small house
pets, while others show mastiffs used in hunting.
Many different types of wild animals were hunted
and brought to the cities. Large game, such as elephant, rhinoceros, wild water buffalo, and various
types of elk, deer, antelope and wild ass were hunted
for food or for other products such as horns, antlers,

tusks and possibly their hides. Smaller animal may

also have been hunted, and numerous terracotta
figurines suggest that some of these small animals,
such as Macaque monkeys, squirrels, and a variety
of birds, were also captured for use as pets. Fishing
and shellfish collection was important along the
coasts and at the many settlements located along rivers and oxbow lakes. Marine shells were used for
making ornaments and some riverine shells were
used as tools. At the site of Harappa, which is more
than 800 km from the coast, there is evidence for
the trade of dried marine catfish, even though local
riverine catfish were also being consumed. This trade
in salted fish underscores the importance of preserved foods in the subsistence strategies of large
urban centers (see Asia, South: India, Deccan and
Central Plateau).

Settlement Patterns
Many of the largest Indus cities were continuously
occupied from the Early Harappan through the
Harappan period. Consequently, the Harappa phase
buildings and city walls often rose high above the
surrounding plain, being constructed on top of earlier
buildings and city walls. In some settlements, new
suburbs were constructed out on the plain or on old
city dumps, resulting in a higher older town and a
lower newly built areas. At sites such as Harappa and
Kalibangan, two distinct walled areas or mounds were
created, and at other sites such as Mohenjo-daro,
several different mounded areas were established.
The landscape was dominated by large cities located at strategic positions along trade routes and in the
core area of agricultural production. Mohenjo-daro,
Harappa, Rakhigarhi, and Dholavira are major cities,
all of which are over 100 ha in area. Ganweriwala
may represent a fifth major city at around 80 ha in
area. The actual size of a settlement would have
changed considerably over 700 years, but based on
surveys of mounded ruins it is possible to identify
an hierarchy of five settlement tiers: cities (greater
than 80 ha), towns (1050 ha), villages (510 ha),
and hamlets (15 ha), camps (<1 ha). In addition,
many people may have lived in floating villages or
along the many rivers and lakes that surrounded the
major cities.
Over 1500 sites have been identified from this
time period located in many different geographical regions, including coastal areas, alluvial plains,
and remote mountain valleys. Estimates of the total
area of the Indus civilization range from 680 000
to as much as 800 000 km2, but it should be clearly
understood that there were large stretches of uninhabited wasteland between many of the sites and

722 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

the total area does not represent a territory of centralized political control or one that has distinct
boundaries.
Population estimates for the Indus period are difficult to determine, because it is not possible to accurately define how much of a city was occupied at any
given time or which settlements were inhabited during the 700-year time span of the Harappa phase. The
site of Harappa, which covers around 150 ha, could
have held between 60 000 and 80 000 people at the
height of the urban phase, but the total urban population may have fluctuated seasonally. Nomads and
merchants may have come to the city during trading
seasons, and many urban dwellers may have left to
help in the fields during the agricultural or herding
seasons.

major urban centers as well as smaller settlements.

Most settlements were laid out on an irregular gridoriented northsouth and eastwest. The use of
cardinal directions for settlement planning began in
the Early Harappan period and continued through
the Late Harappan period. Massive perimeter walls
were constructed of mud brick, sometimes faced with
fired brick, or stone. Gateways located near the corners or in the middle of the city walls provided controlled access into the settlements. The city walls and
gateways were regularly maintained and modified
over time, indicating that they had an important function throughout the life of each settlement. This
function may have changed over time, but they would
have provided defense from attacks from enemies or
bandit raids, they allowed for the control of trade,
and they protected the city from flooding. While
some smaller sites have evidence for localized fire
and conflagration, there is no evidence that any
major settlement was attacked or destroyed by warfare (Figures 46).

City Planning
One of the hallmarks of Harappan or Indus culture is
the highly developed city planning that is seen in
E1400

E1600

E1800

E2000

E2200

E2400

E2600

E2800

N2000

N2000
Perimeter Wall
Dry Bed of the Ravi River

?
Perimeter Wall

Mound F
N1800

Harappa Town

N1600

N1800

Tomb

39

N1600

Mosque
Harappan
Wall

Mound AB

N1400

?
Pottery Kilns ?

Low
Western
Mound

N1200

Perimeter Wall

rim

Pe
Harappa
Museum Gateway
e
ous

Cemetery R37

tH

200 m

N800
N1600

Figure 4 Harappa site plan.

Wall

to

N1200

l
iwa
Sah

Gateway
N1000
Vats

Mughal Sarai
to

N1400

al
rW

et

Res
100

Walled Sector

?
Old Police Station

Cemetery H

N1000

Mound ET

Mound E
?

? = Walls not excavated

N1400

atni
haw
Chic

N1800

N800
N2000

N2200

N2400

N2600

N2800

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 723

Mohenjo-daro, Sindh, Pakistan

Mod

ern

Museum campus

leve

DKg
Site continues
DKb

SD
W

Modern
levee

Lower Town
DKc

Citadel
L

Washed
out by
river
M

VS

HR
D (UMP)

Key
D (UMP)
DH
HR
L
M
SD
VS
W

Dales (University Museum, PA)

Dikshit
Hargreaves

Siddiqui
Vats
Wheeler

vee

rn Le

Mode

Site continues
100

200 m

Site continues

Figure 5 Mohenjo-daro site plan.

Within the settlements, streets and buildings were

oriented on a northsouth and eastwest grid. The
layout of streets and the placement of houses were
often maintained for hundreds of years, either as
the result of city ordinances or simply for functional
purposes. Major northsouth and eastwest streets
were between 4.5 and as much as 9 m wide allowing
for two-way traffic using ox carts. Smaller streets
were around 23 m wide, allowing only one-way
cart traffic. Gateways were generally only 2.5 m
wide that would allow only one-way cart traffic and
more control of movement into and out of the city.
Wide streets were constructed to allow ox carts carrying goods to access each major neighborhood and
also to cross through the entire settlement. In Mesopotamian cities, the main streets went from the city
gate to the temple or palace, but did not provide equal
access to all parts of the settlement.

Fired brick-lined drains were located along the

edges of the street, and some streets had large covered
drains down the center of the street. Corbelled arches
were used to carry drains under buildings or streets.
The streets were not paved, but the accumulation of
crushed pottery and nodules compacted by use
resulted in hard surfaces similar to modern gravel
roads. Large potholes and ox cart ruts were periodically filled with additional debris to level the streets
out. Even with periodic maintenance, the accumulation of debris on the streets resulted in clogged drains
that were eventually filled in and new streets and
drains were built at a higher level to allow proper
drainage. Streets in neighborhoods where there was
less maintenance rose faster than the main streets,
resulting in an uneven topography. Eventually, the
highest parts of the cities were 1820 m above the
surrounding plain.

724 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

Dholavira,
Kutch, India

r stream

Mansa

Dam
Lower town
lds

Irrigated fie

Middle town
ation

nd habit

Streets a

nd
Streets a
n
o
ti
a
habit

Plaza

Citadel
Bailey

Stadium

Dam

Reservoir
with
steps
Earliest
reservoir

Dam

Dam

150 m

eam

ar str

Manh
Figure 6 Dholavira site plan.

Private Architecture
Indus cities were made up of both small and large
private houses and larger public structures. Many
buildings were built on top of earlier ruins or newly
constructed mud-brick platforms that raised the level
of the house above the street level to protect it from
flooded streets. Over time, this construction practice
resulted in neighborhoods that were much higher
than the streets and as noted above, cities as a whole
rose high above the plain. At Mohenjo-daro the highest walled mound is located in the west with a series
of lower mounds on the east, and one or two habitation areas to the north and south of the high mound.
The site of Harappa has a high mound in the west
and much larger mound that is almost as high extending to the east. Lower suburbs are located to the
north, northeast, south, and east of these two main
mounds. Dholavira has a unique layout with three
nested rectangular city walls and a higher citadel
located on a hill in the south. Some of the smaller

settlements are also divided into separate mounded

areas, or have a single large walled area divided by an
internal wall. The segregated habitation areas associated with a single city may indicate competing economic or political groups, and with the exception of
Dholavira, no single area appears to have dominated
the total settlement.
Bricks used for constructing buildings and city walls
were of a standardized ratio of 1:2:4 (thickness:
width:length). The absolute size of unfired mud bricks
for city walls and large platforms was approximately
10 cm  20 cm  40 cm. The size for bricks used in
the construction of houses was approximately 7 cm 
14 cm  28 cm. Over 700 years, these ratios did not
change and there was very little variation in absolute
size. Most houses in the large cities were constructed
with smaller fired bricks, while unfired small bricks
were used for temporary walls and foundation repairs.
In regions where stone was plentiful, such as Kutch
and Saurasthra, roughly hewn and carefully dressed

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 725

stone blocks were also used in architecture. While

some effort was made to maintain the 1:2:4 ratio,
this was not rigorously imposed in stone construction.
There is no standardization in the layout of
Harappan houses, but private houses were generally
laid out with a central space surrounded by living and
storage rooms. Many houses had entryways from a
side alleyway rather than from the main street, and
usually windows were maintained only on the second
storey. The roof and second floor were made with
wooden beams and covered with reeds and plaster
to create a sturdy floor. Doors and windows were
made with wood and some windows had wood or
stone latticework to allow airflow, and at the same
time a degree of privacy.
Although there are numerous large building complexes in the larger cities, most appear to be the
result of growth and remodeling over time. The core
building may have belonged to a wealthy merchant
or landowner, with numerous smaller units inhabited
by relatives or servants. None of these structures
appear to have been used as a central palace or temple. Many smaller private buildings as well as some
of the larger structures are associated with manufacturing debris from specialized crafts, and small craft
workshops are often found in association with domestic architecture. At sites such as Chanhudaro and
Lothal, some buildings and open areas may have served
as specialized factories for bead making or copper
working, but most crafts associated with kilns were
located at the edges of the sites (see the section on
specialized crafts) or in what appear to be abandoned
structures.

Monumental or Public Architecture

Large buildings that do not appear to be domestic
in nature have been identified at Mohenjo-daro as
well as at Harappa. The famous Great Bath of
Mohenjo-daro may have been used for public rituals
and consists of a specially constructed water tank
(12 m northsouth and 7 m wide, with a maximum
depth of 2.4 m), surrounded by a colonnade with
entries at both ends. Smaller rooms, one of which
contains a well, are located on the eastern side of
the tank, and may have been used for visitors or for
storage. Just to the north of this tank are eight small
rooms with bathing platforms, where people may
have cleansed themselves before coming to the main
tank for special rituals.
To the southwest of the Great-Bath is the so-called
Granary, which consists of a monumental brick foundation (50 m eastwest and 27 m northsouth) with
narrow passageways and sockets for holding what

may have been a wooden superstructure. Although

it is referred to as a granary, there is no archaeological
evidence for the storage of grain in this building. Its
precise function may never be known, but it was
clearly an impressive monumental building or public
hall in a prominent area of the city.
At Harappa a monumental building complex, also
mistakenly called a granary, has been the focus of
recent excavations in an attempt to determine its
precise function. This structure was originally constructed on a massive mud-brick platform with fired
brick facing (50 m northsouth and 40 m eastwest).
Two rows of six long rectangular rooms were separated by a central passageway. These rooms had brick
foundations and narrow hollow floors, and were
thought to have been used for storage of grain. Careful analysis of several unexcavated portions of this
structure in 1997 did not reveal any evidence of storage vessels, or grain and the precise function is still
unknown. When it was first excavated in the 1930s, it
was thought to be associated with equally enigmatic
circular working platforms interpreted as grainprocessing areas and located to the north of the granary New excavations and radiocarbon dating have
shown that the circular working platforms were not
used for processing grain and that they date some
200 years after the so-called granary was constructed.
The precise function of these circular platforms is still
being investigated.
Recent excavations at the site of Dholavira have
found large buildings in the highest citadel area of the
site, but once again there is no conclusive evidence for
their function during the Harappan period. The excavators suggest that they may have been administrative
or ritual structures that were eventually abandoned
and reused by later inhabitants.

Wells and Latrines

The construction of wells made with specially designed
wedge-shaped bricks reflects the high level of technical expertise achieved by Indus architects and the
overriding need for reliable sources of water in
large urban centers. Wedge-shaped well bricks were
the same length as normal rectangular bricks (28 cm)
but one edge was constricted to create a tight fitting
tubular construction. As wells were sunk into the
ground, the surrounding pressure of the soil made the
construction even stronger. Wells range in size from
around 1 m internal diameter to over 2 m in diameter
and were excavated below the water table to provide
freshwater in the heart of the cities. Many houses,
particularly at sites such as Mohenjo-daro, had private
wells, but in other sites a single well was used for a

726 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

larger neighborhood. Public wells were located along

major streets or in public courtyard areas.
Most houses in larger cities had separate bathing
areas with paved floors made with bricks set on edge
and closely fitted to make them water tight. A separate latrine area was usually located next to the bathing platform. The latrines were in the form of a
commode made from an old storage jar, which usually
had a hole punched into the base and was buried up
to the rim in the floor. These commodes would have
been regularly emptied and the waste taken outside of
the city. Small drains discharged wastewater from the
bathing area and latrine overflow into a sump pot in
the street or into a neighborhood drain. When houses
were remodeled, a new jar would be placed on top of
the old commode and the surrounding floor was
raised with rubble or debris.
The larger city drains were generally not used for
removal of human waste, but rather to take away
water from bathing areas and wells, and excess rainwater. Major drains emptied the wastewater onto the
plains outside the city. Many streets in the larger cities
had garbage bins for the accumulation of nonliquid
waste that would have been collected and dumped
outside the settlement.
Although the Indus cities were equipped with the
most sophisticated drainage system of any contemporaneous ancient city, these drains and garbage collection areas and latrines had to be maintained
continuously to function effectively. Excavations at
Harappa have shown that while some areas of the city
were being maintained, streets and drains in other
neighborhoods became filled with refuse, and even
rotting animal carcasses. Eventually, the city or more
likely neighborhood committees refurbished these
streets and new drains were constructed above the
old ones, indicating a fluctuating and possibly
decentralized process of civic order and maintenance.

Specialized Crafts
The emergence of urban centers is closely linked to
the development of specialized technologies. Due to
the fact that the Indus script has not yet been deciphered, the study of specialized crafts provides one
of the most important sources of information on
the nature of Indus trade, technology, and socioeconomic and political organization. Cities were located
at crossroads of interaction and trade that stimulated
the development of distinctive technologies. Withthe increase in urban populations, many crafts were
developed to create status items to differentiate specific
communities and meet the demands of increasingly
complex urban needs. While many crafts practiced in

the large urban centers can be traced back to earlier

village communities in distant resource areas, others
were the result of innovative urban craft specialists.
For example, chipped stone tools, shell working,
stone bead making and even copper metallurgy
began long before the emergence of cities. In contrast,
complex metal casting and joining, drilling of hard
stone beads with specialized drills, finely carved steatite seals, the production of compact glassy faience,
and the manufacture of stoneware bangles, are technologies that were invented or developed in the cities.
The technology of writing itself can also be seen as a
specialized craft that was refined and standardized
during the urban phase. Some of these technologies
were exclusively developed for creating status items
for elites, in order to communicate and reinforce
social, ritual, and probably political hierarchy.
Many of the crafts practiced in the cities were not
directly controlled by elites, but any craft located
within the city walls could have been indirectly controlled through taxation of raw materials coming into
the city or finished goods leaving the city. Stone tool
making, shell working, the production of grinding
stone, and steatite and agate bead making were carried out in many different parts of the city. These
crafts involved local as well as nonlocal materials
and relatively simple extractive or reductive technologies, that involve processes such as chipping, grinding, carving, spinning and twisting, etc., to process
raw materials into finished objects. Transformative
technologies were generally more important for the
creation of trade and status items and involved pyrotechnological or chemical processes using either local
or nonlocal materials. Copper/bronze working, some
pottery firing, and the manufacture of faience and
steatite seals are transformative crafts and were
often practiced in isolated or sometimes highly
controlled areas of the city.
During the Harappa phase, pottery was generally
made on the fast wheel, though molds and handbuilding techniques were used for some vessels.
Most of the pottery was either undecorated or simply
ornamented with red slip and black bands. Around
10% of the pottery was elaborately decorated with
black-painted motifs on red slip or occasionally
with polychrome decorations. Stoneware bangles
were finely crafted high-fired ceramic ornaments
whose production was restricted to the largest cities
of Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and possibly Dholavira
(Figure 7).
The faience produced in the Indus cities was
extremely strong and made from reground frit or
melted silica. It was colored with copper or other
minerals to create a range of colors and was used

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 727

4

24b

24a

25

19

11

11

15

37a & b

43c

57a
57b

59
9

8a

37d

12

8b

58b

58a
10

12

65

60

37c
62

65
39
2

63
50
45a

70
71

49

61

cm
10 20 30
5

45b

38 a & b

68

46

47

40

72

51

32
64

48

41

43b

34

43a

44

35

17a
1

23c

17b

66

42a

52

23b

42b

53
16

21

38b

38c

27

29a

29b

56

54

55

67
18

38a
26a

36c
26b

26c

26d
36 a & b

Figure 7 Mohenjo-daro pottery types. From Dales GF and Kenoyer JM (1986). Excavations at Mohenjo Daro, Pakistan: The Pottery.
Philadelphia, University Museum Press, fig. 102.

to make bangles, beads, pendants, and also seals and

inscribed tablets. Fired steatite or soapstone was
used to make beads as well as square inscribed
seals. While bead making and seal production were
usually undertaken in different areas, recent excavations at Harappa found a highly restricted faience and
steatite seal workshop where beads were also being
manufactured.
Indus ornaments were made in similar styles but
from different qualities of materials that would have
had different relative value. For example, bangles
were made in terracotta, faience, shell, ivory, alabaster and a high-fired stoneware, as well as copper/
bronze and gold (Figure 8). Beads and pendants were
made out of stone, shell, ivory, terracotta, faience,
and precious metals (Figure 9). The similarity in ornament style is thought to reflect shared ideologies,
but the hierarchy in material quality may have been
used to define different social or economic groups.
Similar patterns can be seen in the manufacture
of identical shaped containers made of terracotta,
copper, or silver.
Copper metallurgy was highly developed, and included the use of pure copper, tin bronze, and
arsenical bronze to make tools, weapons, mirrors,

ornaments, figurines, and a variety of vessels. The

different compositions and alloys resulted in objects
with different colors as well as functional capabilities
such as hardness or flexibility. Silver was used to
make ornaments and vessels, while gold was used
primarily for ornaments.
Textiles were also an important industry in the
Indus cities and though the preservation of fabrics is
rare, it is possible to identify the use of cotton and
different qualities of wool to make cords and weave
both coarse and fine fabrics. These fibers were being
spun on hand-turned spinning wheels as well as drop
spindle whorls. The most important recent discovery
from Harappa is evidence for the earliest use of wild
silk at around 2450 BC, to manufacture threads used
in beaded ornaments. On the basis of decorated textiles depicted on figurines, such as the famous PriestKing sculpture from Mohenjo-daro (Figure 11d) and
one sample of fabric with traces of dye, fabrics were
probably dyed or stamped with different colors, such
as red (from madder) and blue (from indigo) or
bleached to create contrasting white patterns.
All of these crafts would have been important
for both everyday existence as well as for trade and
the creation of status items to differentiate the many

728 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

Terracotta

Faience

Gold

Painted
terracotta

Decorated
faience

Decorated
terracotta

Copper and
bronze

Stoneware
Marine shell

Figure 8 Harappan bangle styles.

Terracotta, soft and hard stone

Natural stone and

faience

Carnelian

Bleached and painted

Gold and copper/bronze

Spacers

Segmented
Coix

Selected phase beads from Harappa: 26001900 BC

Figure 9 Harappan bead styles.

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 729

different communities and social classes. Specialized

crafts were also used to create distinctive ritual objects
such as figurines, ornaments, and narrative seals.

Trade and Economy

The overall economic organization of the Indus cities
can be reconstructed through a study of the distribution of resource areas, sites with specialized production of semifinished goods, and the presence of
raw materials, workshops, and finished goods in
major settlements. These data reveal a highly stratified economic interaction system. Many of the larger
towns and cities were directly connected with external
regions and to each other by inter-regional networks.
The long-term stability of this system would have been
essential for merchants to make profits from raw
materials and goods after traveling hundreds of
kilometers to the major cities. Cities were connected
to towns and villages through regional networks of
exchange, and more local networks were used to
redistribute food items and essential commodities
between a city and its immediate hinterland.
Although no coinage system has been discovered, a
highly standardized system of stone weights was used
throughout the entire area of the Indus civilization.
The base weight may have been two seeds of barley or
moong bean, or possibly the wild licorice seed (Abrus
precatorius or gunja), which is red and black and
weighs approximately 0.109 g. Indus weights use a
combination of both a binary system (doubling in
size from 1:2:4:8:16:32:64) and a decimal system of
160, 200, 320, 640, etc. The smallest weight is equal
to 8 gunja or 0.871 g, and the largest weight at
Mohenjo-daro is 10 865 g. Cubical stone weights
were probably not used for everyday exchange, but
are found primarily in the gateway areas of large
cities and may have been used for taxation. Another
possible form of accounting or credit may have been
the use of inscribed tablets or molded faience tablets
that begins around 2450 BC (period 3B) at Harappa
and continues through the end of the Harappa phase.
Stamp seals with Indus script and distinctive animal
motifs were used to mark bundles of goods with clay
sealings, and provide conclusive evidence for elite
control of trade within the Indus region as well as in
long-distance trade. Indus weights, seals, and sealings
have been found in the Arabian Gulf and distant
Mesopotamia, as well as in Central Asia. Special
trade goods produced in the Indus, such as beads,
shell objects and figurines have been recorded from
Mesopotamian sites, but so far there is no evidence
for Mesopotamian produced items in the Indus sites.
Trade goods from Mesopotamia may have been perishable materials such as textiles or consumables, or

raw materials that were reworked into new forms.

The only exotic finished goods found in Indus cities
originate in Baluchistan or Afghanistan and include
copper and stone tools, cylinder seals, carved stone
figurines, stone vessels and ornaments, and possibly
some pottery vessels.

Indus Script
During the Harappa phase, the Indus script appears
to have been standardized throughout the Indus
region and used in a wide variety of contexts and
forms. This script emerged out of earlier forms of
writing found during the Kot Diji phase at Harappa
and other sites throughout the greater Indus valley
region (Figure 10). Beginning around 26002450 BC,
the most widespread context for writing is seen in
cursive graffiti incised onto pottery that was used
for storage and trade, as well as for personal or ritual
use. Other forms of cursive script are seen on personal
ornaments used to indicate ownership or dedication.
The most formal type of writing is seen inscribed on
square steatite seals that were also carved with animal
motifs. The various iconographic motifs include the
mythical unicorn, multiple headed animals, as well as
the bull, elephant, bison, goat, tiger, and rhinoceros.
The inscriptions were made in reverse and stamped
into clay sealings to create a positive text indicating
ownership or destination. Beginning around 2450
2200 BC, a complex system of inscribed tablets or
tokens was developed for keeping accounts and maintaining trade contacts throughout the Indus valley.
Toward the end of the Harappa phase, c. 2200
1900 BC, distinctive copper tablets with incised script
and animal motifs were produced at Mohenjo-daro,
and a different style of copper tablet with raised script
on both sides was produced at Harappa. These copper tablets were relatively standardized in terms of
shape, weight, and inscriptions, and may have been
used for special accounting or rituals. During this
same time period, rectangular seals with writing, but
no animal motif began to be used, and writing came
to be used in conjunction with elaborate narrative
depictions of myths and religious ceremonies found
on seals, tablets, or pendants.
The Indus script has not yet been deciphered, due
to the absence of bilingual tablets and the lack of long
inscriptions. More than one language may have been
spoken in the Indus settlements and therefore the
Indus script was probably used to write words or
short sentences in more than one language. The
major language families that may have coexisted in
the greater Indus region include Dravidian, AustroAsiatic, Sino-Tibetan, and Indo-Aryan. While some
individuals have proposed that the Indus script was

730 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

Inscribed stoneware bangle

Intaglio steatite seals

cm

Inscribed terracotta cone

Inscribed
steatite
tablet

Molded terracotta

Molded
faience
tablet
0

cm

Inscribed
pottery

Terracotta
sealings

Figure 10 Indus script and seal types.

not a writing system and was not used to encode a

language, this opinion is not widely supported.
Most inscriptions are made up of only a few signs,
with the average being five signs. The contexts of its
use allow archaeologists to reconstruct the function
and importance of writing in the economy, politics,
and ideology of the Indus cities. The script was quite
versatile and could be used to encode a range of
messages. The general function of the inscriptions
would have been to identify ownership of goods or
economic transactions, accounting, the recording of
sociopolitical or ritual events and less formal graffiti.
Approximately 400450 different signs have been
identified, but not all were used at the same time.
The number of signs and the sequences in which
they occur has led many scholars to suggest that the
writing system is logo-syllabic, though some signs
appear to have served as pictographs or even as ideographs. Most inscriptions were written from right to
left, though some longer inscriptions were written in
both directions, alternating from right to left on each
succeeding line.
As noted above, the use of the Indus script and the
types of objects being inscribed can now be divided

into three phases corresponding to the major chronological developments at Harappa. Although there
may have been some use of graffiti on pottery during
the Late Harappa phase (19001300 BC), inscribed
Indus seals were no longer made or used after around
1900 BC. The relatively abrupt disappearance of a
writing system that had existed for over 700 years
suggests that the Indus script itself was closely linked
to the ruling elites of the Indus cities and that the
writing system had economic, religious, and political
significance.

Religion
Given the large geographic area of the Indus cities and
the hierarchy of settlements, it is surprising that distinctive shared symbols and distinctive ritual objects
are found in all major settlements. These symbols are
thought to reflect a shared ideology that in conjunction with economic strategies helped to integrate the
many different communities living in the major cities
and surrounding settlements. Some of the more common artifacts and symbols are similar styles of terracotta figurines of animals that may have been used for

ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization 731

symbolic sacrificial purposes. Human figurines of

males and females with ornaments and elaborate
headdresses may represent fertility or other specific
deities (Figure 11) Various geometric symbols such as
the stepped cross, swastika, endless knot, and intersecting circle motif are found on pottery as well as
pendants and seals. Narrative scenes on seals depict
outdoor ceremonies that took place under the sacred
pipal or fig tree, worship of deities in trees or seated in
yogic position on a throne, processions with sacred
animals, the practice of animal sacrifice, and possibly
even human sacrifice. Other scenes depict what may
be important myths and stories. Local cults may have
been practiced in specific regions while a more established state religion appears to have emerged in the
major cities. At Mohenjo-daro and Dholavira, stone
sculptures of male figures have been found that may
represent clan leaders. In the past, these were incorrectly called priest-king images.
The most direct evidence for ritual practice is found
in the cemetery burials at major sites such as Harappa,
Dholavira, and Mohenjo-daro, as well as some smaller settlements such as Lothal, Rupar, and Kalibangan.
Most burials were made in a northsouth-oriented
rectangular pit with the head to the north. The body
was placed in a wooden coffin or wrapped in a
shroud, and laid out on top of or surrounded by
burial pottery and other offerings needed for the

(a)

after-life (Figure 12). Although these burials do not

contain large amounts of material wealth, they do
contain distinctive pottery and ornaments that would
not have been available to common people. The
health status and mature age profiles of the buried
individuals also indicate that they were a privileged
class. The delicate shell bangles found buried with
many of the women also indicate that over time they
became less and less involved in manual labor, clearly
an indication of elite status. Although there are no
royal burials, the recent excavation of a burial complex at Dholavira suggests that some individuals were
interred with gold ornaments, a tradition that was not
practiced in the major cities and towns. Cemeteries
that have been discovered represent only a small
portion of the population, and the rest of the urban
population would have been disposed of by other
means that have left no archaeological trace. This
burial pattern is one more indication of social differentiation and hierarchy.

Social and Political Organization

Without the aid of written texts, the sociopolitical and
ritual character of Indus cities is difficult to understand.
Nevertheless, the various types of artifacts and the
patterns of their use discussed above provide insight
into the ways in which these cities and the society as a

(b)

(d)
(c)

(e)

Figure 11 Harappan figurines and sculpture. (a) Terracotta female figurine, Mohenjo-daro; (b) terracotta female Figurine, Harappa;
(c) bronze female figurine, Mohenjo-daro; (d) steatite priest-king figure, Mohenjo-daro; (e) terracotta male figurine, Harappa.

732 ASIA, WEST/Indus Civilization

Harappa: Female burial, 127a
+

Harappa: Male burial 196a

+

Unfired pottery

.11

.10

.10
.12

.13

.9
.6

.8
.21

Burial pottery
Lot 114

.2
.12
.4

195.1

.7

.7
.11

.4

.8

N 987

.5

.20

.9

195a.1

.6

.3
.5

N 987

Burial pottery
Lot 195

.13

.19
196a

Shell bangles

.3

Lapis lazuli,
carnelian beads

Steatite
bead necklace

N 986

Three
stone
beads

.15
Grave pit

N 986

Edge of excavations

Mud brick
t/c cake
fragment
Copper bead

Bottom of coffin

Coffin

Grave pit

Coffin
lin

Steat
ite
disc be
ads

.14

N 985

N 985

Top of coffin
.2

N
N

.16
Burial pottery

Faience
bangle fragment

+
E 1998

Grave pit

N 984

E 1999

E 2000

E 1996

E 1997

1 meter

1 meter

N 984

Figure 12 Harappa burials with pottery and ornaments.

whole was organized. Urban populations would have

included administrative and service classes such as
sweepers and garbage collectors. Wealthy landlords
and merchants along with their service groups and
craftsmen may have occupied the large multiroomed
houses. Numerous specialized craftspeople would have
been employed by the merchants or worked as entrepreneurs in the urban market places and craft workshops. The gateways would have been staffed with
gatekeepers and tax collectors, while guards would
have kept watch at the gateways and on the city walls.
Many farmers may have lived inside the city walls in
addition to maintaining hamlets close to their fields.
Herders, fisher folk, and hunters may have lived in
the city periodically in order to participate in urban
markets and to provision the large urban population. Rural populations would have been made up of
farmers and herders, fisher folk, and hunters. Miners
and specialized craftspeople would have lived near

major resource areas, and long-distance traders would

have moved between cities and resource areas to market
their goods.
It is not difficult to reconstruct the many different
occupations that are necessary to run a city, but the
actual political organization is more difficult to
define. The lack of palaces, temples, and extravagant
burials of hereditary monarchs has led some scholars
to argue that this urban society was not organized as a
state, but rather as a complex chiefdom or some other
form of nonstate society. Without the aid of written
texts, it would be quite difficult to differentiate a
complex chiefdom and an early state-level society.
Nevertheless, other scholars, including this author,
argue that these cities were organized as state-level
societies with highly stratified and hierarchical social
organization.
The support for this model is seen in the hierarchy
of settlement patterns, the relatively limited use of

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 733

seals, weights and writing by some communities living in the city, and the presence of relatively small and
intensively used cemeteries that contain individuals
who represent elites.
Instead of a single dominant group, the rulers of the
various cities would have controlled through a corporate structure, similar to that seen in the republics and
confederacies of the subsequent Early Historic period. The major ruling communities would have been
made up of landlords, merchants, or ritual specialists
who shared a common ideology and economic system
as represented by seals, ornaments, ceramics, and
other artifacts. The cities were probably more rigidly
stratified and segregated than the rural settlements,
but the social organization of the society as a whole
would have been loosely stratified. While the largest
cities may have been relatively independent, they
were integrated with other settlements though political and economic interaction based on the trade and
exchange of important subsistence goods as well as
socioritual status items.
See also: Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands;
Ganges Valley; India, Deccan and Central Plateau;
Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Sri Lanka; Cities,
Ancient, and Daily Life; Civilization and Urbanism,
Rise of; Craft Specialization; Exchange Systems;
Writing Systems.

Further Reading
Allchin R and Allchin B (1997) Origins of a Civilization: The
Prehistory and Early Archaeology of South Asia. Delhi: Viking.
Bisht RS (2005) The water structures and engineering of the
Harappans at Dholavira (India). In: Jarrige C and Lefevre V (eds.)
South Asian Archaeology 2001, vol. 1, p. 1126. Paris: CNRS.
Dales GF and Kenoyer JM (1986) Excavations at Mohenjo Daro,
Pakistan: The Pottery. Philadelphia: University Museum Press.
Kenoyer JM (1998) Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Karachi: Oxford University Press.
Kenoyer JM (2003) Uncovering the keys to the Lost Indus Cities.
Scientific American Jul.2003: 6775.
Kenoyer JM (2006) The origin, context and function of the Indus
Script: Recent insights from Harappa. In: Osada T and Hase N
(eds.) Proceedings of the Pre-symposium and the 7th ESCA
Harvard-Kyoto Roundtable, pp. 927. Kyoto: Research Institute
for Humanity and Nature, RIHN.
Lal BB (1997) The Earliest Civilization of South Asia (Rise,
Maturity and Decline). New Delhi: Aryan Books International.
Law RW (2005) Regional interaction in the Prehistoric Indus
Valley: Initial results of Rock and Mineral Sourcing Studies at
Harappa. In: Jarrige C and Lefevre V (eds.) South Asian Archaeology 2001, vol. 1, p. 179190. Paris: CNRS.
Meadow RH and Patel AK (2003) Prehistoric pastoralism in
Northwestern South Asia from the Neolithic through the
Harappan Period. In: Weber S and Belcher WR (eds.) Ethnobiology and the Indus Civilization, pp. 6594. Lanham, ML:
Lexington Books.

Mughal MR (1997) Ancient Cholistan: Archaeology and Architecture. Lahore: Ferozsons.

Parpola A (1994) Deciphering the Indus Script. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Possehl GL (1999) Indus Age: The Beginnings. New Delhi: Oxford
and IBH Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd.
Possehl GL (2002) The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Weber SA (2003) Archaeobotany at Harappa: Indications for change.
In: Weber S and Belcher WR (eds.) Ethnobiology and the Indus
Civilization, pp. 175198. Lanham, ML: Lexington Books.
Wright RP, Schuldenrein J, Khan A, and Mughal MR (2005) The
emergence of satellite communities along the Beas Drainage:
Preliminary Results from Lahoma Lal Tibba and Chak Purbane
Syal. In: Jarrige C and Lefevre V (eds.) South Asian Archaeology
2001, vol. 1, p. 327336. Paris: CNRS.

Kashmir and the

Northwest Frontier
Robin Coningham and Mark Manuel, Durham
University, Durham, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Early Historic Refers to the second emergence of urbanization
in South Asia, dating to the early part of the first millenium BCE
through to the mid-first millenium AD. Its historic references are
derived from Vedic texts such as the Rig Veda and Mahabharata,
texts. The period ends with the establishment of the Gupta
Empire, which witnesses massive changes in both political and
administrative structures.
Gandhara The name of one of the early Historic
Mahajanapadas, situated in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Gandhara was located primarily within the Kabul River valley,
the Vale of Peshawar, Potwar Plateau, but had strong links to the
Swat Valley. The main cities are Charsadda and Taxila. The name
has been utilized throughout history to refer to this region and its
inhabitants.
Janapada (and Mahajanapada) Janapada or territory refers to
the emergence of a number of settlements and their hinterlands
during the first millenium BCE. Competition and internecine
fighting between these settlements, resulted in individual centers
expanding their control over neighboring janapada resulting in
the establishment of the classic sixteen Mahajanapadas or Great
Territories.
philhellene Someone who was an admirer of Greek culture, but
not necessarily of Greek origin. In this sense, refers to a series of
communities within Central and Southern Asia who adopted
Greek architecture, coinage, religion, and script or language, but
were not of Greek descent.
satrapy A territory or province that was governed by a governor
or client-king. Originating in the Persian Empire, conquered
lands were run as politically and economically semi-autonomous
states, whilst military aspects were centrally controlled and
annual tributes/taxes were paid to the Empire. Satrapies were
used by later philhellene empires in Central, Southern, and
Western Asia.

734 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

transhumance A method of subsistence in which livestock
(sheep, goat, cattle) and humans move between different
geographical and/or topographical regions on a seasonal basis.
Generally, summers are spent in upland areas, whilst winters are
spent in lower-lying regions.

southern plains, whilst in the northern valleys snow

can remain on the ground for 9 months of the year.
Part of the catchment of the Indus, the Valleys of
Swat, Chitral, Dir, Hunza, Gilgit, and Leh join the
Indus system high in the mountains whilst foothills to
the east feed the Jhelum, Chenab Ravi, Sutlej. Before
opening onto the plains of the Punjab, a series of
large vales are encountered, including Kashmir and
Peshawar, the former with its well-known lakes. The
southernmost areas of this study are the Bannu Basin,
within the watershed of the Kurram River, and the
western plains of the Indus until it meets Dera Ismail
Khan and two regions with very different characters
Sindh and Baluchistan (see Asia, South: Baluchistan
and the Borderlands) (Figures 2 and 3).
Bitterly contested by states with nuclear capability,
this region has a patchwork of languages and religions, but its archaeological and historical context
has been shaped by its stark physical features. However, this is not a marginal area but one of innovation,
and although impassable for many months of the
year, its valleys have facilitated the movement and
exchange of goods, peoples, and ideas between southern Asia and the lands to its north, east, and west for
millennia.

Introduction
Although partitioned for the last 60 years, the geography, archaeology, and history of the Northwest
Frontier and Kashmir present a distinct regional unit
within South Asia. This is most clearly demonstrated
by its geography, which is part of the great barrier
defining the northern limits of the subcontinent.
Formed by the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountains,
its foothills are dissected by a series of meandering
valleys, whose deep-cutting rivers conjoin in vales
before disgorging onto the fertile plains of the
Punjab to the south (Figure 1).
Despite this unity, the regions topography is diverse
and ranges from eight peaks over 7500 m down to the
alluvial plains of the Indus River less than 200 m
above sea level. Corresponding diversity is found in
its temperatures, where it can reach over 45  C in the

Ox

us

Ka

sh
Rakaposhi

ra

Hunza

ko

Kalako deray
at
Sw

K2

and

Karakoram pass

In
du
s

Ka

bul
Nangar Parbat

SRINAGAR
Burzahom
Sarai Khola
Gufkral

Khyber Pass

Helm

ms

Gilgit

Begram
KABUL

ra

Ku

Di

Hi

du

Charsadda
Shahbazgarhi

In
du
s

Taxila
ISLAMABAD
BANNU

LEH

Riwat

Akra

helum

Gomal Pass

ena

Ch

Rehman dheri

CHINA

TA

FG

IS

TA

LAHORE

IS

Bolan Pass

INDIA

100
km

Figure 1 Map of the Northwest Frontier and Kashmir.

200

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 735

Figure 2 The Hunza Valley with Karakoram mountains beyond.

Figure 3 General view of the Kashmir Valley.

Early Prehistory

Despite the discovery of the early primates, Sivapithicus and Ramapithicus, in the strata of the northern
mountains in the late nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, no remains of early hominids have been found
in this region (Figure 4). These early discoveries led to
the mission of De Terra and Paterson, a geologist and
an archaeologist, who surveyed possible occupation
sites in the 1930s. Although tasked with providing

evidence of an Asian origin for humans, they concluded that early humans migrated from Africa. However, their findings have provided the foundations
of our understanding of the earliest phases of South
Asian prehistory.
New exploration and excavation in recent decades,
particularly an analysis of the Soan Valley where De
Terra and Paterson worked, have pushed back the
established date for early human occupation in the

500 CE

OCE

500 BC

1000 BC

1500 BC

2000 BC

2500 BC

3000 BC

3500 BC

4000 BC

4500 BC

5000 BC

736 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

Rehman Dheri

Southern Plains

Hisam Dheri
Sheri Khan Tarakei

Bannu Basin

Akra
Charsadda

Vale of Peshawar
Ghaligai
Kalako-deray
Bir-kot-Ghundai

Northern Valleys
Sarai Khola

Upper Indus

Taxila
Burzahom
Ranihat

Kashmir
Thapli

Traditions:
Indus Valley
Early Historic

Regionalization

Integration

Localization
Regionalization

Integration

Achaemenid
Mauryan

Empires

Kushan
Gupta

Figure 4 Timeline.

region to 1.9 million years ago, and have necessitated

the reformulation of many of the concepts regarding
the character of the Asian Palaeolithic. Our evidence
comes from two key areas, the Potwar Plateau, and
the Valleys of Swat and Kashmir. Rather than representing the distribution of Palaeolithic occupation in
the region, they reflect the most intensively examined
areas (see Asia, South: Paleolithic Cultures).
The Soan Palaeolithic

The Palaeolithic occupation of the region is best known

from the Potwar Plateau where the Soan River has cut a
deep gorge into early strata and includes the earliest
known human artifact in South Asia. The latter, a
flaked quartzite pebble, was recovered from a gully
close to the site of Riwat, where it was embedded in
a conglomerate dating to 1.9 million years old. While
there has been some debate over the authenticity of
the find as well as questions regarding the lack of
chronometric dates, this artifact is yet to be successfully
refuted. Somewhat younger, hand-axes have been recovered from sites in the Jhelum river basin within
securely dated geological deposits of 700500 ka.
The most extensive corpus of Palaeolithic occupation comes from Riwat itself. Dated to 45 ka, excavations have revealed remains of a small stone-lined pit
associated with a low wall-footing and lithic blades.
A high proportion of the stones found at the site
appear to be flakes, flaked cores, and blades; however, despite extensive excavation no evidence of animal bones, charcoal, burnt stones, or burnt clay was
identified, leaving the excavators to suggest that the
site was not an habitation site but a manufacturing
site, possibly for skin working (Figure 5).

Figure 5 Flaked quartzite pebble from Riwat.

Elsewhere on the Potwar Plateau, manufacturing

sites predominate in areas where water and raw
materials are abundant. Scrapers, trimmed points,
small cleavers, and axes dominate the assemblages,
most of which are manufactured from quartzite. The
dating of loess deposits immediately above these finds
from the Soan River provides a terminus ante quem of
between 20 and 60 ka.
Northern Valleys

Sanghao Cave, situated on a tributary of the Swat River

in the Vale of Peshawar, has yielded 3 m of cultural
deposits with a degree of continuity in occupation.

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 737

Excavated in the 1960s and poorly published, its scrapers, blade-flakes, tanged and triangular points, burins
and small-hand ax have been loosely attributed to the
Middle Palaeolithic. Again, quartzite predominates the
assemblage, unsurprisingly as there is a source less than
100 m from the cave entrance. Occupation at the site is
thought to have continued, although not continuously,
until the Early Historic period. Further Palaeolithic
tools have been identified in the Alakananda Valley
near Garhwal in Kashmir. Quartzite is the most commonly utilized raw material, but there are also some
isolated uses of jasper. Although difficult to date, it is
likely that many of the hunters and prey depicted on
boulders and rock shelters in Chilas and Hunza in the
upper Indus and Dungri in the Vale of Kashmir relate to
this period (Figure 6).

First Food-producing Communities

While it is extremely difficult to identify a distinct
Mesolithic phase across the Northwest Frontier and
Kashmir region, pollen analysis from peat deposits
in the central Himalayas suggests that the period
between c. 4000 and 2500 BC was one of increased
temperature and rainfall a result of enhanced monsoon strength. Associated with the frequent growth
and decline of pine forests, these changes coincided with the emergence and spread of Neolithic
communities within the valleys and vales of the region. Notably later than the sites of Mehrgarh and
Kili Ghul Muhammed to the west (see Asia, South:
Baluchistan and the Borderlands), the Neolithic of the
Swat Valley, and Vale of Kashmir possesses its own
distinct regional character.

Kashmir Valley

One of the most extensively excavated sites is

Burzahom, the place of Birch, in the Vale of
Kashmir. Situated 16 km southwest of Srinagar on
a saddle above the lakes, it was identified in the
1930s but not extensively excavated until the 1960s.
Burzahoms first phase, IA, is aceramic and dates
to between 3000 and 2850 BC. Phase 1B, dating to
between 2850 and 2250 BC, is associated with the
introduction of coarse, thick-walled, and over-fired
ceramics with mat impressions. This phase also
witnesses a steady increase in the number of domesticated animal bones and a corresponding decrease
in the presence of wild species.
The type site of a corpus of over 40 similar settlements, Burzahoms Neolithic levels are associated
with an assemblage of bone, antler, and polished
stone tools, the latter including ring stones, axes, and
rectangular sickles. However, the most characteristic
feature of the site is the 37 bell-shaped pits dug into
the loess. The largest of these was 2.74 m wide at the
top and 4.57 m wide at the bottom, with a depth of
3.95 m. Some deeper pits have steps, while others had
their floors painted with red ochre and their walls
plastered (Figure 7).
Evidence from Gufkral, 25 km southwest of
Burzahom, has provided rather fuller evidence for
subsistence and suggests that farming, herding, and
hunting supported its inhabitants. Certainly, this is
likely from the assemblage of wild ibex, bear, sheep,
goat, cattle, wolf, and deer alongside with domesticated sheep, goat, wheat, barley, and lentils. The
discovery of jade beads from these sites also indicates
the movement of materials over long distances.

Figure 6 Petroglyphs of Markhor and hunters on the Sacred Rock of Hunza.

738 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

Figure 7 General view of the site of Buzahom.

Swat Valley

Despite the presence of occupation dating to the

third millenium BC in the cave of Ghaligai, evidence
of food-producing communities in Swat is somewhat later with the majority of sites occupied from
c. 1700 BC onward. Remarkably similar to the evidence from Kashmir, the Pakistani-Italian team have
provided a greater corpus of knowledge, ranging from
the chronology of sites to their location within the
landscape and the seasonal mobility of their occupants.
Additionally, there are many more radiocarbon dates
from Swat than from Kashmir.
Aceramic in its earlier phase, ceramics are introduced in Period II of Ghaligais sequence in c. 1810 BC
alongside limestone mortars whose presence in these
levels is suggestive of food-processing strategies, but
most evidence has been recovered from the sites associated with pits, many of which are also bell-shaped and
located on saddles above the river Swat. Loebanr III,
for example, has nine large pits and numerous smaller
pits containing ceramic vessels, bone objects, terracotta
figurines and its faunal record includes wild cat, tiger,
deer, Himalayan goral, markhor, hare, and porcupine
as well as domesticated dog, pig, zebu, goat, and sheep.
Taxila Valley

Not all Neolithic occupation was restricted to the

northern valleys and it is possible that alluvial deposition has masked the presence of earlier sites down
on the plains. One known site is Sarai Khola, some
3 km southwest of the Early Historic city of Taxila. Its

earliest period with ground-stone axes, stone-blade

industry, bone points, and burnished pottery with
mat-impressions has been characterized as Neolithic
and dated to c. 3000 BC. The presence also of a
number of pits suggests a link with the early foodproducing communities to its north (see Asia, South:
Neolithic Cultures).
Dwelling Pits or Granaries?

The pits at Buzahom, Gufkral, Kalako-deray,

Loebanr III, Aligrama, and Ghaligai have traditionally been interpreted as underground dwellings
occupied during the cold winter months. However,
experiments demonstrate that fires would have created a reduced atmosphere, making living conditions
untenable. It now seems likely that the pits were used
to store grain over the winter when the transhumant
inhabitants of the region relocated to the lower
valleys or plains. When sealed, the pits reduced
atmosphere created ideal conditions for storage,
protecting grain against microorganisms, humans,
mammals, and rodents (Figure 8).

Indus Valley Tradition

Originally considered to be a distinct and abrupt
phenomenon, the intensive urbanization of the Indus
Valley, often referred to as the Indus or Harappan
Civilization, is now considered to be the culmination
of a number of indigenous regional traditions and
cultural developments (see Asia, South: Indus Civilization). This developmental period, referred to as the

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 739

Figure 8 General view of the Swat Valley during the winter months.

Regionalization Era by Shaffer, stretched as far north

as the valleys of our study region.
One of these regional traditions, the Hakra, is
dated to between 3300 and 2700 BCE and is located
primarily in the GhaggarHakra river basin. However, the discovery of Hakra-ware ceramics in the
cave of Ghaligai in Swat suggests that there was a
high degree of inter-regional trade and exchange
present at this period. Furthermore, the presence of
later Kot Dijian ceramics at Burzahom and sites within the northern valleys suggests an integral role in the
growing social and economic complexity witnessed in
the floodplains of the Indus to the south.
Although demonstrating continuity with the regions
early food-producing settlements, a number of significant cultural changes occur such as the cessation of
use of storage pits. These features are abandoned in
Kashmir from 2250 BC and replaced with rectangular
mudbrick structures, a sequence also encountered in
the Swat Valley. The presence of Kot Dijian ceramics
within Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier is also
accompanied by the presence of metal objects and
beads of agate and carnelian, suggesting access to
long-distance trade and sufficient agricultural surplus
to allow the accumulation of luxury goods.
Rehman Dheri

While most sites, such as Burzahom in Kashmir, Sarai

Khola in the Taxila Valley, and Sheri Khan Tarakai
and Lewan in the Bannu Basin may have participated in
the exchange of goods and ideas, it is only in the very
south of the study region that urbanization occurs and
complexity is fully demonstrated. Located on the western bank of the Indus River close to Dera Ismail

Khan, Rehman Dheri was established c. 3300 BC.

Enclosed by a massive mudbrick wall, the town measures 550  400 m and is subdivided by cardinal streets
to form a rigid grid-plan layout, making it one of the
earliest planned settlements in South Asia (Figure 9).
Despite its role in the development of the regional
cultures, which converged to form the urbanized
Integration Era (c. 25001900 BC), the Northwest
Frontier and Kashmir remained detached from this
later development. For example, unlike the sites of
Kalibangan and Harappa to the east, Rehman Dheri
does not appear to have been incorporated into the
wider networks of the Harappa Phase only a very
small terracotta bangle-making site (Hisan Dheri)
was established next to the old abandoned town.
The northern valley sites also appear to have
remained unintegrated, but this is not to suggest
that there was no cultural and economic interaction
between the two communities.

The End of the Indus Valley Tradition

The causes of the decline of the Indus Valley cities at
the beginning of the second millennium BCE are still
debated. Despite this debate, and that over the correct
term for its demise, it is widely agreed that this period
was one of de-urbanization associated with the loss
of long-distance trade, written scripts, weights, measures, and monumental architecture. Traditionally
attributed to incursions of Indo-European speakers
from Central Asia, it is now recognized that there
were many more complex and multifaceted factors
involved not all of which are fully understood, and
that concepts of an Aryan invasion were more

740 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

Figure 9 Exposed house foundation on the surface of Rehman Dheri.

driven by British imperial motivations than archaeological fact. These points notwithstanding, as the
Northwest Frontier and Kashmir were never fully
integrated into the Indus urbanized system, they did
not suffer from the symptoms of systems collapse
witnessed in the Indus floodplains; yet the vacuum
precipitated the re-emergence of a distinct tradition
in the region associated with the adoption of new
influences from Western and Central Asia. It is important to note, however, that the region still remained
connected with the Punjab, as illustrated by the discovery of Cemetery H motifs on sherds from
Bir-Kot-ghundai in the Swat Valley.
Gandharan Grave Culture

One of the newly emergent traditions is termed the

Gandharan Grave Culture within the Northwest
Frontier and the Megalithic within Kashmir, but the
sequences of the two are yet to be fully integrated. It
was first identified in Swat by Italian archaeologists
and has continued to be studied by the University of
Peshawar. A homogenous tradition of burial practices
with associated ceramic and artifact assemblages, it
appears to have emerged in the upper Indus Valley
c. 1700 BCE and then spread across the Valleys of
Swat, Dir and Chitral, and into the Vale of Peshawar
and survived until the middle of the first millennium
BC (Figure 10).
Its most distinctive feature is the stone-sided cists,
some of which are surrounded by stone circles. Usually contain one or two inhumations, the body commonly on its side with the legs drawn up and the arms
raised and bent. A small number of graves contain
cremated remains deposited in an anthropomorphic

Figure 10 Anthropomorphic urn from the Gandharan Grave

Culture.

vessel but almost all are associated with burnished

gray- or red-ware vessels and human terracotta figurines, although later examples have more numerous
and elaborate grave goods. A number of horse burials
have also been recovered from the burials of this
tradition as well as items of horse furniture.
Kashmir Valley

Contemporary with this tradition, similar cist burials

with associated Megalithic architecture have been
identified within Kashmir at the sites of Devidhoora
and Gwaldam in the Alakananda Valley as well as at

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 741

Burzahom and Gufkral. This similarity is also present

at Malari where human and horse burials were exposed, the former buried prostrate with their knees
flexed, and at Baseri with its cist burials. These common elements, combined with the presence of spouted
goblets in both Swat and Kashmir, have led some
scholars to advocate an expansion of Gandharan
Grave Culture right across the region but others have
questioned the contemporaneity of the two.
While cemetery sites are numerous on account of
their visible stone remains, there are few contemporary habitation sites. However, evidence from one of
the most recently identified, the Bala Hisar of Charsadda, suggests that communities from the northern
valleys had moved southwards to colonize the Vale of
Peshawar by c. 1300 BC and were already associated
with the manufacture of iron objects. Whether these
communities were seasonal, following a transhumant
way of life between valleys and plains is unclear with
the present data set (Figure 11).
Equally significant is the appearance of related ceramic vessels at Hathial in the Valley of Taxila to the
south. When compared with the burnished wares
from Charsadda, it becomes clear that a process of
convergence was unifying the northern valleys and

leading to the establishment of larger settlements on

the plains by the beginning of the first millennium BC.
This southward movement was soon to be augmented
by the introduction of open form vessels from the
Ganga Valley to the east, a northward pattern shared
with appearance of Painted Gray Ware at Thapli
in the Alakananda Valley and Purola in the upper
Yamuna Valley (see Asia, South: Ganges Valley). Frequently characterized as a dark age between urbanizations, this was clearly a period of steady growth,
innovation, and interaction between the Northwest
Frontier and Kashmir.

Age of Empires
This phase of increased complexity resulted in the
emergence of nascent polities in the Northwest, centered on Taxila and Charsadda but augmented by
the dramatic growth of the settlement of Akra in
Bannu to the south. However, their success was not
unnoticed and led to its dramatic annexation by
Darius the Great in 520 BC. Renamed the satrapy
of Gandhara, the newly partitioned region saw the
imposition of Achaemenid garrisons, coinage, and
script. Now part of a political and economic identity
stretching from the Aegean to the Indus, annual tribute and levies of conscripts were drained, as illustrated on the bas-reliefs of Persepolis.
In contrast with the textual evidence, archaeological evidence of Achaemenid occupation is limited
even in the regional capitals of Charsadda and Taxila,
although Achaemenid levels have been postulated at
Balambat in the Dir Valley. Suggesting that the new
satrapy enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, the ceramic
and artifactual corpus of Taxila and Charsadda indicate that strong links with the Gangetic states were
retained throughout this period. The same is true of
the regions later incorporation into the empire of
Alexander the Great. The fact that, despite a century
of searching, none of his newly founded cities has
been identified suggests that Alexander was no more
than a temporary interruption and it was left to his
successors to spread Hellenistic art and architectural
styles 200 years later.
The Mauryan Empire

Figure 11 View of excavations at the Bala Hisar of Charsadda.

As Alexanders generals were fusing personal empires

after his death, the Selucids readily ceded the
Northwest Frontier to a relatively unknown raja
from the Ganges in exchange for 500 war elephants.
The raja, Chandragupta Maurya, used the exchange to
confirm the ascendancy of his kingdom of Magadha
and began the elimination of his competitors (see Asia,
South: Ganges Valley).

742 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

Whilst Greek and Achaemenid evidence is sparse,

Mauryan occupation is readily available at the Bhir
Mound in the Valley of Taxila. Capital of Gandhara,
Taxilas location at the bifurcation of the routes to
Central and Western Asia was so important that its
Viceroy was one of Chandraguptas grandsons
Asoka. The Bhir Mound was an unfortified stonebuilt settlement of narrow streets covering an area
of 1100 by 670 m. While there is evidence of limited
civic control, it is only at the Dharmarajika stupa
beyond the town that monumental investment is
found in the construction of a 15 m wide Buddhist
stupa (Figure 12).
Ashokas Edicts

Figure 12 Curving drain and residential structures at the Bhir

Mound, Taxila.

The presence of a similar monument in the Swat

Valley at Butkara indicates the impact of Mauryan
influence into the valleys, as does the scatter of sites
with access to Northern Black Polished Ware, such as
Bir-kot-ghundai in the Swat Valley, the Bhir Mound,
and Charsadda in the Vale of Peshawar. Finally, it
is indicated by the presence of three Asokan rock
edicts in the Northwest Frontier. The first at Sirkap
in the Taxila Valley, the second at Manshera on
the way to Kashmir and Central Asia, and the third
at Shahbazghari on the route to Afghanistan and
Western Asia. All are written in Aramaic, indicating
the Mauryan Empires Achaemenid inheritance and
its desire to unify its own disparate communities
(Figure 13).

Figure 13 The Asokan rock edict at Shahbazghari in the Vale of Peshawar.

ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier 743

Although there are no edicts in Kashmir, it is

recorded that the monk Majjhantika was tasked by
Asoka and the third Buddhist Council to introduce
Buddhism to both Gandhara and Kashmir, confirming
the linked nature of the two. Although of less magnitude than the Northwest, evidence of a Mauryan
horizon in Kashmir is becoming clearer with contemporary brick-built structures at Ranihat on the eastern
bank of the Alakananda River and at Semthan. Similarly, the presence of North Black Polished Ware,
elite Mauryan tableware, at Ranihat and Moradhwaj
indicates the close links between the imperial center
in the Ganges and its northern periphery.

Hellenes and Philhellenes

This brief integration of South Asia ended in 189 BC
with the dissolution of the Mauryan Empire and the
absorption of the Northwest Frontier and Kashmir
into the sphere of expansionist Central Asian polities.
Best known from their coinage, the first of these the
Indo-Greeks were descendants of Alexanders colonists in Bactria. Copying the architectural modes of
their homeland, they established new colonies in the
Northwest Frontier such as at Sirkap in the Taxila
Valley and Shaikhan Dheri in the Vale of Peshawar.
They introduced a rigid plan to urban centers,
with straight streets lined with shops, temples, and
monasteries subdivided by smaller lanes into residential blocks. The most fully excavated of these, Sirkap,
has clear evidence of civic authority with over 100 ha
of unencroached streets and 5 km of stone walling

Figure 14 The main street of Sirkap, Taxila.

surround the acropolis and its lower town. Founded

in the second century BC, it was also selected by
successive philhellenic dynasties of Parthians and
Sakas as their capital. Their presence in the mountain
valleys to the north is also recorded on rock inscriptions in Chilas in the upper Indus (Figure 14).

The Kushan Empire

This patchwork of city-states and petty dynasties was
to be reintegrated by a Central Asian nomadic people
known as the Yuezhi or Kushans. Partly responsible
for pressuring the Greek communities of Bactria southwards into the Northwest Frontier, they expanded
rapidly from this base into Kashmir and by the second
century AD had established control from the Oxus to
the Ganges acting as a buffer between the Roman
and the Han empires.
Highly dependent on the movement of trade
between east and west, they developed a series of
major fortified strong points along the trade routes
from Mathura on the Jamuna to Sirsukh in the Taxila
Valley and on to Begram in Afghanistan and Dalverzintepe in Uzbekistan as well as within the Kashmir Valley.
While Begram was strengthened by the building of a
12 m wide wall with bastions holding catapults and
ballista, Sirkap was abandoned in favor of a site within
the valley Sirsukh. Sirsukh was a massive rectangle
measuring 1375  1000 m with 5.5 m thick stonewalls
strengthened by a rounded berm to prevent undermining. Its walls were regularly punctuated by stirrup
bastions with arrow-slits providing a wide range of

744 ASIA, WEST/Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier

fire but the absence of occupation deposits suggests

that a mobile force occupied the site (Figure 15).
The discovery of ivory objects from the Ganges,
Roman glass and metalwork, and Chinese lacquer
work in a storeroom at Begram illustrates the success
of Kushan trade routes a success that also facilitated
the spread of Buddhism along the Silk route. Although
Kushan rulers patronized many religious traditions,
there was a dramatic rise in the number of Buddhist

monasteries established in the Northwest Frontier and

Kashmir. These ranged from the emperor Kanishkas
stupa complex at Shah-ji-ki-dheri in Peshawar to
the hundreds of individual religious complexes in the
Taxila Valley, such as at Pippala, and within the Vale of
Kashmir, such as at Moradhwaj (Figure 16).
Associated with some of the earliest depictions of
the Buddha in human form, Kushan rule saw the blending of local and exotic cults, styles, and traditions,

Figure 15 One of the stirrup-bastions at the city of Sirsukh, Taxila.

Figure 16 The Kushan period quadrangular monastery at Morha Moradu in the Valley of Taxila.

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 745

culminating in the emergence of the Mahayana movement. Depictions of the Kushans and the presence of
their inscriptions at Chilas and Hunza in the upper
Indus Valley and near Leh in Kashmir indicate that
their influence was not just urban but was felt high in
the mountain passes as well (see Asia, South: Buddhist
Archaeology).

The End of the Early Historic World

Partitioned again, the Sasanian kings Ardashir I and
Shahpur I drew the Northwest Frontier back into
their Western Asian empire in the third century AD
and, with the loss of their access to Silk Route traffic,
Kushan rule contracted. Losing Kushan-dominated
territories in the Ganges to Chandragupta in the
fourth century AD, their independence in Kashmir
was only to last another hundred years. The conquests of Chandragupta and his son, Samudragupta,
ended once more the cycle of regional fission and
fusion and, with the creation of new Gupta Era in
320 AD, ushered in a new era of social and political
organization based on a core polity run by royal
officials surrounded by a periphery of client rulers
a model which was to serve Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier, as well as South Asia more widely, until
the Mughal period.
See also: Asia, Central, Steppes; Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands; Buddhist Archaeology; Ganges
Valley; Indus Civilization; Neolithic Cultures; Paleolithic
Cultures; Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations; Civilization and Urbanism,
Rise of.

Further Reading
Allchin FR (ed.) (1995) The Archaeology of Early Historic
South Asia: The Emergence of Cities and States. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Coningham RAE (2006) South Asia: From early villages to
Buddhism. In: Scarre C (ed.) The Human Past, pp. 518551.
London: Thames and Hudson.
Dani AH and Masson VM (eds.) (1992) History of Civilisations of
Central Asia, Vol. I. The Dawn of Civilisation: Earliest Times to
700 BC. Paris: UNESCO.
Harmatta J, Puri BN, and Etemadi GF (eds.) (1994) History
of Civilisations of Central Asia, Vol. II. The Development of
Sedentary and Nomadic Civilisations: 700 BC to 250 AD. Paris:
UNESCO.
Jettmar K, Konig D, and Thewalt V (eds.) (1989) Antiquities of
Northern Pakistan, Reports and Studies, Vol. 1. Mainz.
Marshall JH (1951) Taxila. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Nautiyal KP and Khanduri BM (1991) Emergence of Early Culture
in Garhwal Central Himalaya: A Study Based on Excavations at
Thapli and Ranihat. Srinagar: University Museum of Himalayan
Archaeology and Ethnography.

Rendell HM, Dennell RW, and Halim MA (1989) Pleistocene and

Palaeolithic Investigations in the Soan Valley, Northern Pakistan. BAR International Series 544. Oxford: BAR.
Stacul G (1987) Prehistoric and Protohistoric Swat, Pakistan
(c. 30001400 BC). Rome: IsMEO.
Wheeler REM (1962) Charsadda: A Metropolis of the North-West
Frontier: Being a Report on the Excavations of 1958. London:
Oxford University Press.
Young RL (2003) Agriculture and Pastoralism in the Late Bronze
Age and Iron Age, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan. BAR
International Series 1124. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Megaliths
U S Moorti, American Institute of Indian Studies,
Gurgaon, Haryana
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
alignment A series of menhirs arranged in lines on some definite
system.
avenue Two or more alignments approximately parallel with
one another.
chamber burials A box-grave (normally rectangular on plan)
built of stone-slabs/boulders containing skeletal remains and
burial goods of the interned person(s). It may be with/without
a passage and porthole, and is normally enclosed on surface by
cairn/boulder circle(s).
dolmen A single slab of stone supported by several orthostatic
boulders/slabs built on the surface of the ground in such a way
as to enclose a space or chamber beneath the capstone. It may or
may not be wholly or partially covered by a barrow or cairn.
A dolmen may be with or without a porthole.
hat stone (Topi-kal) Urn burial capped by a slab and marked on
the surface by a topi-kal. The topi-kal rests upon four
quandrantal clinostatic stones joining up together at the base into
a square, and dressed so as to give the shape of a truncated
paraboloid to the entire monument. The topi-kal or the hat stone
rests on the truncated surface.
legged and unlegged urn burials Baked earthenware/
terracotta urn/sarcophagus (placed within a pit with/without
a ramp) containing skeletal remains and burial goods of the
interned person(s). It may be enclosed on the surface by an
earthen mound/cairn/boulder circle(s).
menhir Simplest of all the megalithic monuments, consisting of
a single monolith set up, as a rule, at or near a burial/memorial/
commemorative spot. The monolith may be small or gigantic in
height with its base fixed into the earth. It may be either
sepulchral, memorial, or commemorative.
pit burials A pit (circular/oblong/oval/rectangular on plan)
containing skeletal remains and burial goods of the interned
person(s). It may be with/without a ramp/capstone(s), and is
normally enclosed on surface by an earthen mound/cairn/boulder
circle(s).
rock-cut chamber burials Chamber (single or multiple) cut
out of the lateritic rock containing skeletal remains and burial
goods of the interned person(s).

746 ASIA, WEST/Megaliths

sarcophagus A cist, often with legs or feet, made of baked
earthenware or terracotta containing skeletal remains and burial
goods of the interned person(s).
umbrella stone (kudai-kal) Passage urn burial capped by a
slab and marked on the surface by a Kudai-kal (Umbrella stone).
The Umbrella stone is a dome-shaped dressed lateritic stone
resting with its flat face directly on the ground.

The Megalithic culture of South Asia is mainly represented by burials of many varieties. Although some of
these burial monuments are not strictly megalithic
(i.e., built of large stones) in their nature, the usage
of the term Megalithic can be justified because of its
antiquity and continued popular use. However, the
term denotes in the present context a socio-religious
expression of burying the deceased in a grave (which
may or may not have lithic appendage) accompanied
by certain specific cultural traits of the period under
reference. The use of iron coincides with the cultural
period and forms an adjunct of Megalithic culture.

Terminology and Typology

While studying the sepulchral and nonsepulchral
monuments of this period, at a first glance one
comes across variety of monuments that is quite
bewildering. Attempts to evolve a suitable classificatory system for incorporating all the known burial
types lead the earlier researchers to recognize five
basic types, namely pit burials, urn and sarcophagi
burials, rock-cut burial chambers, cist burials, and
stone alignments. To this list were added some more
types such as dolmen, menhir, topi-kal, and kudai-kal.
However, ignoring some of the minor variations in
the construction methods and by taking into account
instead the basic concepts of the nature of the tomb
itself, the list can be contracted still further, and can
be grouped under the following two broad categories:
(1) sepulchral monuments, and (2) nonsepulchral
monuments. The first category is essentially a burial
proper, whereas the second can be considered as commemorative or memorial in nature. Within the ambit of
these two main categories, the following classification
may help understand the basic types along with their
numerous subvarieties (Table 1 and Figures 113); and,
if new varieties are brought to light, these can also be
accommodated within this main classificatory system.
The mutual influence of those basic types on each
other in certain architectural features such as passage,
capstone, porthole, and even in the use of a nonsepulchral monument such as a menhir is certainly evident.
While it has to be conceded that there are difficulties
in explaining the specific socio-religious concepts
governing these four basic types, it may be noted that
variations do occur in these basic types because of

spatiotemporal factors: this was but natural since it

depended on the modulations in socio-religious
expressions.

Distribution and Spread of Megalithic

Custom in the Old World
Probably the most astonishing fact about the megaliths is their occurrence almost throughout the Old
World. Their occurrence from the shores of England
to that of Japan unquestionably catches ones imagination and may be seen as a world phenomenon.
It may be somewhat safer to outline the distribution
of megalithic sepulchral/nonsepulchral monuments
but forming opinions on their spread is nothing less
than walking on a hotbed of controversies.
The European megaliths are considered as the earliest in the chronological sequence. The basic tomb
types noticed there are megalithic temples (found in
the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo), burial
chambers (subdivided into dolmen, passage graves,
court tombs, and gallery graves), single upright stone
or menhir, and lastly grouped standing stones, placed
either in rows or in elliptical range. (The last three
tomb types are noticed in Spain, Portugal, France,
Britain, southern Sweden, and northern Germany).
Traditional views derived the whole megalithic
complex of Europe from the East Mediterranean
which trace the spread of this custom by a seafaring
people moving northward, through Spain, up the
coast of Western Europe and into Scandinavia. Considering the long span of the prevalence of this custom from Neolithic to Bronze Age (from c. 5000 to
2000 BC) and its continuation even in Iron Age,
majority of the European archaeologists believe that
the development was indigenous, probably having
different independent centers. However, many of
them tend to agree with Mackies version of modified
diffusionism in the diffusion of ideas and think that
it occurred along the seaboard from Atlantic coast
toward the interior.
Coming down to the South Asian theater of
megaliths, parallels have been drawn from south
Russian/Caucasian (the main tomb type being a long
barrow), portholed cists of Tepe Sialk IV (in Iran),
sarcophagus tombs of Philistan (located along the
southern coast of Palestine), the rock-cut caves of
Kunama in north Ethiopia, cists and stone circles of
Makran coast which have been taken either as the
areas of inspiration or wherefrom migration of people took place having this megalithic trait. The main
burial types occurring in the aforementioned areas
are chamber tombs and pit circles.
The principal megalithic sepulchral and nonsepulchral monuments noticed in South Asia are pit circles,

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 747

Table 1 Types of sepulchral and nonsepulchral Megalithic monuments in South Asia
Sepulchral
1. Pit burials
1a

Pit burial enclosed by an earthen mound

1b

Pit burial enclosed by cairn packing

1c

Pit burial enclosed by boulder circle(s)

1d

Pit burial enclosed by cairn packing and bound by boulder circle(s)

1e

Pit burial capped by a slab and enclosed by boulder circle(s)

1f

Pit burial enclosed by boulder circle(s), having flat slabs at the center

1g

Pit burial with a ramp and enclosed by cairn stone circle(s) (Figure 1)

1h

Pit burial with a passage and enclosed by cairn stone circle(s)

2. Chamber burials
Chamber burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s)
2a
2b

Passage chamber burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s) (Figure 2)

2c

Portholed chamber burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s) (Figures 3 and 4)

2d

Passage, portholed chamber burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s)

2e

Chamber with a sarcophagus burial and with/without a passage/porthole and with/without cairn
packing and boulder circle(s)

2f

Rock-cut chamber burial (Figures 5 and 6)

3. Legged and unlegged Urn burials

Urn burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s) (Figure 7)
3a
3b

Urn burial capped by a slab and with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s)

3c

Passage urn burial capped by a slab and covered by a Kudai-kal (umbrella stone)

3d

Urn burial capped by a slab and covered by a Topi-kal (hat stone) (Figure 8)

3e

Urn burial capped by a slab and marked by a menhir

3f

Unlegged sarcophagus burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s)

3g

Legged sarcophagus burial with/without cairn packing and boulder circle(s) (Figure 9)

Nonsepulchral (either commemorative or memorial (?) monuments)

Dolmen (Chamber open on one side) (Figure 10)
1
2

Portholed dolmen (A closed chamber) (Figure 11)

Menhir (A monolithic slab) (Figure 12)

Stone alignment

Avenue (Figure 13)

chamber tombs, urn burials, and monolithic upright

slabs (either single or in rows). However, notwithstanding the chronological difficulties, some of the
regions mentioned in the preceding paragraph have
been pointed out as the probable areas wherefrom
the megalithic custom spread. Lasting for over
1000 years (from c. 1500 BC to early centuries of
Christian era) the majority of megalithic burials is
certainly associated with the Iron Age communities
of South Asia. As noted earlier, either land-borne or
sea-borne cultural impulses have been considered in
academic circles as probable routes for the spread of
this custom.
Here may also be noted the various tomb types
of the rest of Asia which are spread out in Japan,
Korea, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other parts
of Indo-Pacific region. The main types of megaliths

are menhirs (erect stones), dolmens (flat stones resting

on two stone pillars), stone seats, stepped stone pyramids, various types of stone tombs, and sarcophagi. The prevalence of the megalithic custom has
been noted here from Late Neolithic to Iron Age. In
any case, they are chronologically much later than
European and South Asian megaliths, since they belong to the middle centuries of the first millennium BC.

Chronology and Related Problems

One of the most crucial aspects in building up a
coherent picture of any archaeological culture period
is a substantial dating base. Although after the advent
of C14 dating method, the picture for the period
with which we are concerned has given a broad
understanding of the time sequence involved in it;

748 ASIA, WEST/Megaliths

Figure 1 Pit burial with a ramp and enclosed by cairn stone circles. Brahmagiri (Chitradurga district, Karnataka, India). Courtesy:
Archaeological Survey of India.

Figure 2 Passage chamber burial with cairn packing and boulder circle. Bhagimohari (Nagpur district, Maharashtra, India). Courtesy:
Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute.

nevertheless, it is far from satisfactory. The observation

becomes comprehensible when one looks at the absolute dates available for these sites. For a total of
more than 2000 known sites of Megalithic culture of
South Asia, absolute dates are available only for about
30 sites. In very few cases, dates have been obtained
both for the Megalithic habitational layers and the
adjacent cemetery area. On the basis of available C14
dates, the dates/chronological range for the following
geographical regions are as follows: Gufkral, Kashmir
valley (c. 18881671 BC), Gagrigol, Kumaun area
(c. 26662562 BC), Vindhyan region, Mirzapur area
(c. 1300 BC), Rayalaseema plateau, Kalyandurg
area (c. 18801595 BC), Upper Tungabhadra valley,
Davanagere area (c. 1440930 BC), Cuddapah basin,
Tadpatri area (c. 13751230 BC), Upper Tungabhadra

valley, Hirekerur area (c. 1385825 BC), Tambraparani

plain, Palayankottai area (c. 905780 BC), Nagpur
plain, Nagpur area (c. 800405 BC), Javadi Hills,
Vellore area (c. 425155 BC), Baramahal, Tirupputtur
area (c. 80525 BC), Upper Cauvery valley (c. 225 BC),
KrishnaTungabhadra doab, Kurnool area (c. 1670
BCAD 35), Warangal plateau (c. 185 BCAD 35),
Upper Krishna valley (c. 160 BCAD 70), Kongunad
upland, Tiruppur area (c. 300 BCAD 100). Considering the limited information on absolute chronology for
such a vast area, the difficulties in building up a coherent regional chronological sequence are innumerable.
Although it is hazardous to make precise generalizations about the time sequence of this period at
regional levels, it is obvious from the available data
that the total span of this culture extends for more

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 749

Figure 3 Portholed chamber burial with cairn packing and boulder circle. Brahmagiri (Chitradurga district, Karnataka, India). Courtesy:
Archaeological Survey of India.

Figure 4 Portholed chamber burial with cairn packing and boulder circle. Sankarapuram (Chengalpattu district, Tamilnadu, India).
Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

than 1200 years. Its beginning can now be securely

pushed back to around c. 1500 BC. The terminating
phase of this culture seems to be around c. 300 BC, as
the evidence of script, coinage, and growth of urban
centers is seen (although not uniform throughout
South Asia) from this time onwards. Obviously, the
megalithic tradition continues in later centuries
also and it forms a part of early historical cultures in
the beginning.

Settlement Sites of the Megalithic

Communities: Myth and Reality
Of the many myths prevalent in certain quarters of
archaeologists is the notion of absence of identifiable
habitational remains of Megalithic communities of

South Asia. Attached with this notion is another

myth of flimsy deposits in habitational layers of
Megalithic people, wherever there is evidence of
dwelling sites. A comprehensive and critical analysis
of the excavated material of the Megalithic communities from several zones shows that there are undeniable similarities between the material of habitation
and burial sites, and wherever the cultural deposit
of Megalithic communities is noticed, the average
thicknes of the deposit ranges between 1.5 and 2.5 m.
However, wherever there is real evidence for the
thinness of occupational deposit and sporadicity
of dwelling sites, those need to be understood in
terms of local site formation and postdepositional
processes as also the locational advantages or stresses operative in the particular eco-zones.

750 ASIA, WEST/Megaliths

Figure 5 Rock-cut chamber burial. Umichipoyil (Kasaragod district, Kerala, India). Courtesy: Deccan College Postgraduate and
Research Institute.

Figure 6 Rock-cut chamber burial. Kattakampal (Thrissur

district, Kerala, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

Revisiting Iron Age Megalithic Arena:

Recent Researches on the Megalithic
Material Culture
In spite of a vast body of literature on the Megalithic
material culture, hitherto no comprehensive effort
had been made to collate the data against an ecologic
and systemic framework. The priorities and perspectives of the earlier researchers different as they were,

devoted much of their efforts to the reconstruction of

culture histories. The complex questions related to
the Megalithic modes of production, relations of production, aspects of social differentiation, and societal
organization remained largely unfocused.
However, the recent quantitative evaluation of the
material data of the Megalithic period, as also its
collation against an ecologic and systemic framework, has indicated that a combination of specialized
strategies, that is, agriculture and cattle pastoralism, was adopted at the societal scale of production.
The Megalithic sites located in the physiographic
zones of WardhaPenganga plain, Wainganga basin,
Middle Krishna valley, Rayalaseema plateau, Andhra
Ghats south, Dharwad plateau, Bangalore region,
Mysore region, South Malnad, MetturVellore region,
Coimbatore uplands, the PalarPonnaiyar basin, the
VaigaiTambraparani basin, and South Malabar unambiguously indicate these subsistence strategies. It
is important to note here that a majority of their
settlement sites are located either on the banks of
major rivers or on their major tributaries and most
of the burial sites are situated within a distance of
1020 km from the major water resources. The following facts may also be suggestive of this substistence
strategy: (1) the maximum concentration of their sites
in river valleys and basins and preference shown toward occupying black soil, and red sandy-loamy soil
zones; (2) the distributional pattern of these sites in
rainfall zones where the average annual precipitation
ranges from 600 to 1500 mm; as also (3) the occurrence of maximum number of their sites mainly in
tropical dry deciduous, tropical thorn, and tropical
moist deciduous forest zones avoiding as they did
other dense forest zones.

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 751

Figure 7 Urn burial with cairn packing and boulder circle. Madavilagam (Chengalpattu district, Tamilnadu, India). Courtesy:
Archaeological Survey of India.

Figure 8 Urn burial capped by a slab and covered by a Topi-kal (hat stone). Cheramanangad (Thrissur district, Kerala, India). Courtesy:
Archaeological Survey of India.

Figure 9 Legged sarcophagus burial with cairn packing. Pallavaram (Chengalpattu district, Tamilnadu, India). Courtesy: Archaeological
Survey of India.

752 ASIA, WEST/Megaliths

Figure 10 Dolmen (Chamber open on one side). Padavigampala (Kegalle district, Sri Lanka). Courtesy: Deccan College Postgraduate
and Research Institute.

Figure 11 Portholed dolmen (A closed chamber). Rajanakoluru (Gulbarga district, Karnataka, India). Courtesy: Deccan College
Postgraduate and Research Institute.

However, the predominance of pastoral traditions

which is seen in the present distribution of Kuruvas
(who are mainly sheep/goat pastoralists), and Gollas
(who are mainly cattle pastoralists but also keep
small number of sheep/goats) in southwestern Andhra
Pradesh, northwestern Karnataka, and northwestern
Andhra Pradesh comprising Telangana, Rayalaseema
peneplain, Andhra Ghats south, and North Maidan
regions may indicate greater inclination toward pastoral subsistence strategy. This may be due to ecological stresses and greater economic advantages
provided by this subsistence strategy. Although there
is a very strong evidence of cattle pastoralism in these
regions, currently archaeological evidence lacks concerning sheep/goat pastoralism. This lacuna seems to

be mainly due to the lack of efforts for finding out

evidence. However, this can be taken as a working
hypothesis and future investigations must seek them.
Nonetheless, these aforementioned divergent economic patterns, which seem to have then prevailed,
as is the case even now, were not isolated but had
a symbiotic relationship with each other.
Their subsistence base was a specialized agropastoral economy dominated by cereal, millet, and pulse
production: there seem minor variations in the
agroeconomy of the area. There is evidence for the
occurrence of wheat, rice, barley, kodo millet, and
pulse crops in Vidarbha (WardhaPenganga plain,
Wainganga basin); barley, rice, kodo millet, and
pulses in the Middle Krishna valley and Andhra

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 753

Ghats south area; and, the remaining parts of South

India have mostly produced the evidence of rice, ragi,
kodo millet, and pulses. The cattle (including buffalo)
predominates over other domesticated species and

Figure 12 Menhir (A monolithic slab). Anapara (Thrissur

district, Kerala, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

invariably, in all these sites it accounts for more

than 60% of the total faunal assemblage; whereas
sheep/goat accounts for only 1015% and was next
only to cattle in importance. This suggests that first
the earlier Neolithic tradition of cattle keeping was
continued and second it clearly brings home that
cattle pastoralism and not sheep/goat pastoralism
formed a major preoccupation of the Megalithic society. Thus, irrespective of the variations in agriculture,
cattle herding seems to have formed a major preoccupation of the Megalithic society in all these areas.
There is enough evidence that many of the known
400 settlement sites of this period testify that industrial activities such as smithery, carpentry, bead making,
and pottery manufacturing were carried out, displaying as they do a highly developed tradition in these
crafts. The items of exchange seem to have consisted
mainly of iron tools and weapons, copper and gold
ornaments, semiprecious beads, and pottery. Although
it is not possible at this juncture to give a clearer
picture of exchange network of various items in this
area, the following areas seem to be major zones of
industrial activities.
Kumaun area for iron working; Wainganga basin
(or Nagpur plain) and WardhaPenganga plain for
iron, copper, silver, and semiprecious bead working; Telangana peneplain, Rayalaseema peneplain,
Gulbarga plain, Bijapur region, Dharwad plateau,
and Raichur plain for iron, copper, and gold working; Bangalore region, MetturVellore region, and
Coimbatore uplands for iron, gold, and semiprecious
bead working.
The location of several large Megalithic sites on the
known early historical trade routes leaves a strong

Figure 13 Avenue: Vibhutihalli (Gulbarga district, Karnataka, India). Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India.

754 ASIA, WEST/Megaliths

possibility of these acting as places/centers for exchange. Although the gravity of exchange mechanism
and patterns of consumption still need to be understood, the hierarchical nature of sites and occurence
of nonlocal prestige goods such as gold, marine shell,
lapis lazuli in Megalithic burials leave little doubt
about the inter-regional circulation of these goods.
Besides indicating long-distance trade, it also shows
growing acquaintance with new areas of the resourcerich zones of South Asia.
The above synthesis of the material conditions of
Megalithic society may help us to comprehend its
ideological manifestations also. Although no comprehensive attempt has so far been made to understand
the Megalithic religion and ritualism, the basic objective here is to know the role of religion and ritualism
as part of ideological system of the Megalithic society.
The main source of information invariably are the
burials as they form a prominent feature and are
crucial in understanding some of the ideological
facets of the Megalithic society. A casual survey
of the cemetery sites shows that megaliths typically
cluster in groups, showing continued use of the
same burial area for several centuries. However, it is
becoming increasingly clear that the megalithic burial
monuments were meant to hold only a very restricted
number of persons, and the burial took place in them
rather rarely, once or twice in a generation. It is also
likely that these burials reflect only a certain (upper?)
segment of the society.
It may be contextually useful to recapitulate here
the nature of burial practices of the preceding periods,
that is of the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic phases.
Excavations at many Neolithic, and Chalcolithic sites
of South Asia have clearly shown the practice of pit,
and urn (kept horizontally, mouth-to-mouth) burial
methods for disposing of the dead in primary condition. The dead were buried invariably within the
settlement and mostly inside the living premises.
In contrast to this practice, during the Megalithic
period in general, the dead were buried outside and
away from the settlement area. Both primary and
secondary burials occur in this period. The three
main sepulchral categories which were in vogue during
this period, namely the pit burials, chamber burials,
and legged/unlegged urn burials have already been
emphasized earlier. Certain structural features such as
passage, capstone, porthole, and even menhir (a nonsepulchral monument type) served as interchangeables
within the aforementioned tomb types and evolved
numerous subvarieties in the course of time.
However, what deserves attention here is the continuation of earlier Neolithic/Chalcolithic burial traditions (but now with a stone appendage over the
burial). Leaving aside the sharp differences noticed

in the actual treatment of the dead, and also the

placement of the remains of the dead in an urn placed
verticaly, these two burial methods, namely pit burials and urn burials, strongly indicate continuality of
an earlier tradition. That this change was gradual and
was definitely an indigenous development can be
discerned from some of the earliest Megalithic sites
such as Ramapuram, Gandlur, and Piklihal. However, same cannot be said about the chamber burial
type. In the event of this being a borrowed mortuary
practice, it is not clear whether the advent of this new
mortuary element signifies the arrival of new people
or was it just a borrowed ritual custom. This important aspect needs further investigation. It is also not
clear whether the aforementioned sepulchral types,
namely the pit burial, chamber burial, and legged/
unlegged urn burial methods, indicate different ritualistic concepts connected with the burying of the
dead or different ethnic groups.
A brief note regarding the occurence of anthropomorphic figures found in association with Megalithic
burials may not be out of context here. The occurrence of these anthropomorphic figures in Megalithic
sites right from Central Godavari valley to Tamil
Nadu Hills is interesting. So far, from at least 15
Megalithic sites these have been reported. The shape
and symbolic sculptural features greatly vary in these
anthropomorphic figures. However, one striking feature is that they are invariably associated with chamber tombs and dolmens at most of these sites.
Although their significance in the cult of the dead
is yet to be comprehended, their close association
with burial monuments indicates a connection with
ancestor worship.
More importantly, a significant shift in the societal
attitude toward certain age categories is discernible during the Megalithic period. In the preceding
Neolithic/Chalcolithic period, a large number of
infant/child burials and comparatively less adult burials are reported. But, as against this fact, in the
Megalithic period very few child burials have been
noticed and a majority of the burials are of the youngto-mature adults. Infant burials have not at all been
found. Even within the adult category, the percentage
of adult males is very high which in all probability
strongly indicates the patriarchical nature of Megalithic society as also the dominant status of its male
members.
It has been suggested that ritual activities form an
active part of the social construction of reality within
social formations and may be conceived as a particular form of the ideological legitimation of the social
order, serving sectional interests of particular groups.
That the construction of these monumental structures, both sepulchral and nonsepulchral, ultimately

ASIA, WEST/Megaliths 755

depended on the social mobilization of resources and

societal cooperation is clearly implied.
Detailed ethnographic studies available for some of
the ethnic communities such as Savaras, Gadabas,
and Bondos, and Kodis practicing megalithism clearly
show that these are closely connected with production
feastalliance cycle. The occurrence of nonlocal prestige goods in limited number of megalithic burials
of superordinate social dimension may suggest the
control of long-distance trade by local elite groups,
the procurement of which eventually depended on
alliance and gift exchange. Thus, burials of superordinate category provide a clue as to how surplus
production entered the local cycle of prestige building, embedded as it was in alliances and exchange.
It is also widely noticed that the ritualized chiefly
organization of land and lineage through ancestor
worship in megalithic tombs is a recurrent phenomenon in different parts of the world and occurs both
in small-scale and more developed societies. There
is a lack of conceptual studies of this genre for the
study area, but these analogs do offer insights into
the functional and organizational framework of the
Megalithic monuments. If we can understand their
functional role, it is quite clear that they do not represent burials as we understand them but may have
served as living entities. The dead were not separated from the living, but lived as ancestors in their
houses among the living and could be approached
when opening the chamber or contacted through
rites and offerings. In this way the megaliths symbolized the collective efforts of the community as also the
heroic leadership of ancestor chiefs, legitimizing and
sustaining the power of their successors. Thus, ritual
and religion clearly served material functions in the
social organization of production and the tombs
formed part and parcel of the reproduction of power
relations.
Significantly, the use of iron in these communities
seems to have been limited in its initial phase. It is
rightly observed that, in the beginning, the use of iron
was mostly confined to the production of weaponry
and did not contribute much to handicrafts and agriculture and that the weapons were probably in the
sole possession of elites. Iron seems to have started
playing a significant and effective role in these areas
only after c. 500 BC as there is clear evidence in the
increase of agricultural and craftsmans tools during
this phase.
The rise and growth of occupational divisions in
these areas seems to have contributed to the beginnings
of social differentiation. The aspect of social differentiation and ranking in the Megalithic society is clearly

brought out in the analysis of their burial monuments.

However, more importantly, the Megalithic society
shows a chiefdom-level organization and there are no
indications either of a regular taxation system or a
regular standing army, which are characteristics of
the succeeding state societies.
An augmentation in the intensive field agriculture
and greater utilization of mineral resources as
evidenced in the increase of agricultural and craftsmans tools seems to be characteristic of the later
phase (after c. 500 BC) of the Megalithic society.
Probably, rice cultivation acquired new dimension
because of improvement in technology, that is, an
advance in the production techniques, and this seems
to have led to demographic expansion. An increase in
the number of sites and colonization of new areas
was certainly an outcome of much consequence to
the succeeding phases of historical developments.
See also: Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands;
Buddhist Archaeology; Ganges Valley; India, Deccan and
Central Plateau; Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier;
Neolithic Cultures; Sri Lanka; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Image and Symbol; Political Complexity,
Rise of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading
Banerjee NR (1965) The Iron Age in India. New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal.
Chakrabarti DK (1999) India: An Archaeological History (Palaeolithic Beginnings to Early History Foundations). New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Childe VG (1948) Megaliths. Ancient India (Bulletin of the Archaeological Survey of India) 4: 413.
Kim B-m (ed.) (1982) Megalithic Cultures in Asia. Seoul: Hanyang
University.
Krishnaswami VD (1949) Megalithic types of South India.
Ancient India (Bulletin of the Archaeological Survey of India)
5: 3545.
Leshnik LS (1974) South Indian Megalithic Burials The Pandukal Complex. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.
Moorti US (1994) Megalithic Culture of South India: SocioEconomic Perspectives. Varanasi: Ganga Kaveri Publishing
House.
Mohanty RK and Selvakumar V (2002) The archaeology
of the megaliths in India: 19471997. In: Settar S and
Korisettar R (eds.) Indian Archaeology in Retrospect, Vol.:
Prehistory, Archaeology of South Asia, pp. 313351. New
Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research and Manohar
Publishers.
Ramachandran KS (1971) A Bibliography on Indian Megaliths.
Madras: State Department of Archaeology, Government of
Tamil Nadu.
Thapar R (2002) Early India (From the Origins to AD 1300).
London: Allen Lane.

756 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures

Neolithic Cultures
Dorian Q Fuller, Institute of Archaeology, University
College London, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Anarta A kingdom of ancient India, roughly forming the
northern Gujarat state of India. It was ruled by Yadavas after
they fled from Mathura of Surasena Kingdom, due to the attacks
of Jarasandha, the king of Magadha. The site of Anarta also has
prehistoric remains which have given their name to a local
Neolithic tradition.
Neolithic (New Stone Age) A period in the development of
human technology that is traditionally the last part of the
Stone Age.
sedentism A term applied to the cultural transition from
nomadic to permanent, year-round settlement.

The Neolithic period marks a major watershed in

economy, social organization and technology. Although
the Neolithic was initially recognized on the basis of a
change in lithic technology, the production of ground
stone axes, it soon came to be seen to relate to major
changes in subsistence (food production), settlement
pattern (sedentism), in cooking and food container
technology (ceramics), and in the production of textiles. In India, as in other parts of the world, various
traits of the Neolithic did not evolve simultaneously
and thus research has begun to clarify the ordering
and interrelationships of these changes. Through
most of South Asia there is not a clear cultural or
economic change associated with the beginnings of
copper-working and an understanding of early food
production invariably must consider sites from periods when copper is in use. Thus, scholars often talk of
the Neolithic-Chalcolithic cultures and distinguish
these from the earlier Mesolithic and the later Iron
Age. In general terms, seven distinct Neolithic traditions can be defined in South Asia (Figure 1), and the
development of settled village farming societies can be
understood as developing from these regional traditions or interactions between them. In general, the
emergence of Neolithic societies is recognizable by
groundstone axes, food production, and/or ceramic
manufacture during the Middle Holocene, as early as
the late seventh millennium BC in the northwest and
as late as c. 2000 BC in other parts of India (Figure 2).
Despite the different dates at which the Neolithic
began in various parts of India and Pakistan, many
of these developments must be seen in terms of
local processes of social evolution and environmental
change.

An important context for considering these changes

in provided by the environmental variability across
south Asia and how this has been affected by climatic
changes in the past (Figure 3). Much higher monsoon rainfall occurred in the Early Holocene, and to
a lesser extent mid-Holocene, as is recorded in pollen
and sedimentary evidence from the Thar Desert,
Rajasthan, and from sea core records in the Arabian
Sea. The mid-Holocene wet period is also characterized by higher winter rainfall in the northwest, which
would have affected areas like Punjab, Rajasthan,
and perhaps parts of central India. This is suggested,
for example, by the strong shift toward C-3 vegetation indicated in carbon-13 isotope measurements
from Lunkaransar lake. A drying trend toward modern rainfall conditions had started before the end
of the fourth millennium BC and reached levels of
near-modern aridity by 2000 BC. Marked events of
sudden aridity are numerous but those at c. 6200 BC,
34003200 BC, and 2200 BC might be pointed out as
potentially significant for understanding transitions
to the Neolithic.

Crops, Livestock, and Centers

of Domestication
The basis of food production is a direct involvement
of humans in the management of the lives and life
cycles of certain plant and animal species, termed
domesticated. The management of these species has
led to changes in their form, genetics and behavior
which define the process of domestication. Several
important domesticated species came to South Asia
from early origins in the Near East, including staple
crops such as wheat, barley peas, and lentils, as well
as livestock such as sheep and goats (Table 1). Nevertheless, numerous species were also domesticated
within South Asia (Table 2). This includes plants as
well as livestock, including humped zebu cattle, water
buffalos and chickens. While zebu cattle underwent
domestication in the northwest, it remains unclear
whether there was another domestication elsewhere
in India. Water buffalos appear to have been domesticated somewhere in the lower Indus Valley region by
the time of Harappan civilization, while chickens
may have been domesticated in the middle Ganges
or the eastern Indus regions.
The domestication of local plants was also important for the beginnings of agriculture in parts of
monsoonal India. With summer rains, many regions
of India are not well-suited to the winter-grown crops
of Southwest Asia, which were established early in
Baluchistan, unless winter irrigation is provided by

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 757

Glg
Bzm
Glk

Hrp

Blu

Knl

Mgr

Hls

Lhd

Dmd

Dlv

Ltw

Bgr
Btl

2
Snr

Mhg
Kjn

4
Rjd

Bnb
Kch
Gpr

Pdr

Gbsn

5
Bdl
Wtg
Hlr

Utr
Ngr

Sgk

Figure 1 The major independent Neolithic zones of South Asia, with selected archaeological sites. For each zone the solid outline
indicates best guess region(s) for indigenous domestication processes and/or earliest adoption of agriculture. The dashed lines indicates
the expanded region of related/derivative traditions of agriculture; selected sites plotted. 1. The northwestern zone, with the disjunct area
of the Northern Neolithic shown: Mgr. Mehrgarh, Glg. Ghaleghay, Bzm. Burzahom, Gfk. Gufkral. 2. The middle Ganges zone with two
possible rice domestication areas: Dmd. Damadama, Lhd. Lahuradewa, Mhg. Mahagara, Kjn. Kunjhun, Snr. Senuwar. 3. Eastern India/
Orissan zone: Bnb. Banabasa, Kch. Kuchai, Gpr, Gopalpur, Gbsn. Golabai Sassan. 4. Gujarat and southern Aravalli zone: Ltw.
Loteshwar, Rjd. Rojdi, Pdr. Padri, Btl. Balathal, Bgr. Bagor. 5. Southern Indian zone: Bdl. Budihal, Wtg. Watgal, Utr. Utnur, Sgk.
Sanganakallu and Hiregudda, Hlr. Hallur, Ngr. Nagarajupalle.

perennial rivers or artificial sources. Instead native

species, including numerous minor millets and pulses
such as mungbean, urd, horsegram, and pigeonpea,
offered local populations with suitable local crops.
While horsegram is native to the savanna zone of
western and Southern India, pigeonpea derives for a
limited region of moist deciduous forests in eastern
India. The wild forms of mung and urd are rather
more widespread with patchy distributions in the
wetter deciduous zones along either side of the peninsula, in the highest hills of Rajasthan, as well as part

of the Western Himalayan foothills. Six significant

millet crop species were also domesticated in India,
either as local savanna grasses or as wetland species,
although some of them may represent secondary
domestications of early rice field weeds. Although
further archaeological research is needed to clarify
what happened, it appears that, in the Southern
Deccan, cultivation began perhaps c. 3000 BC based
native millets and pulses. Similarly, native small
millets may have provided the initial agriculture in
Saurashtra during the same general period. In the

758 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures

Figure 2 Chronological chart of selected Neolithic/Chalcolithic archaeological regions of South Asia, indicating the likely horizons of the earliest crops, livestock, ceramics, and possible
regions/periods of important domestications.

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 759

750
700
650
600
550
500
2.5

2.2

2.0

2.0
1.8
1.6

1.5

1.4
1.6
1.4

1.0

1.2
1.0
0.8

13 000

12 000

11 000

10 000

9000

8000

7000

5000

4500

4000

3500

3000

2500

2000

1500

Years
BP

1000

0.4

6000

0.5

0.6

500

Log varve thickness

18 (G. ruber)

2.4

Lunkaransar
relative lake level

Didwana
relative lake level

YD

Harappan civilization

LH

MH

II

IB

Mehrgarh 1/2

EH

Thar fringe ceramics/livestock

Lahuradewa
Southern Neolithic

IV III II

IA

Figure 3 Correlation between various palaeoclimatic proxies from northwestern south Asia, and selected archaeological phases. From
top to bottom: global atmospheric methane as measured in the Greenland GISP core, O-18 isotopic variation from Pakistan continental
margin; 5000 years of Indus discharge inferred from Karachi delta varve thickness, lake level data from Lunkaransar, lake levels from the
Didwana lake, selected archaeological phases.

Vindhyan hills and tributaries of the middle Ganges,

Neolithic village communities appear to have developed around cultivation of indica rice (a separate
strain from japonica rice of Neolithic China), millets
and native pulses certainly by the third millennium
BC, although the process may have begun as much as
two to four millennia earlier. Parallel processes may
have happened independently in Orissa.
Another important source of crops for South Asia
was sub-Saharan Africa. Throughout much of the drier
tracts of India today, sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), pearl
millet (Pennisetum glaucum), and finger millet (Eleusine coracana) are staple grains, while cowpea (Vigna
unguiculata) and hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus) are

important pulses. These five species were domesticated

in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa and had dispersed to South Asia via Indian Ocean contact by
sometime in the early second millennium BC. The earliest direct dates come from South India, c. 1500 BC,
although these species may have first come into South
Asian subsistence on the Harappan periphery in
Gujarat, perhaps even by 2000 BC.
The Northwest: Aceramic Introductions,
Local Addition and Intensification

An important Neolithic tradition that started out without pottery is found in Pakistan west of the Indus
Valley. In general, this Neolithic tradition is found in

760 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures

Table 1 Important domesticates in South Asia originating in the Near East
Species

Region and period of origin

Earliest occurrence in
South Asia

Comments

Wheat(s)
Triticum spp.

Near Eastern fertile crescent,

97008000 BC

Mehrgarh, ca. 7000 BC

Barley
Hordeum vulgare

Near Eastern fertile crescent,

97008000 BC. Additional
domestication further east
is possible.
Near Eastern fertile crescent
(Southern Levant),
97008000 BC.
Near Eastern fertile crescent,
97008000 BC.

Mehrgarh, ca. 7000 BC

Mehrgarh finds include primitive glume

wheats (Triticum monococcum,
T. diococcum) as well as derived freethreshing breadwheats (T. aestivum)
Wild barley also reported at Mehrgarh,
probably as a field weed

Pea
Pisum sativum
Lentil
Lens culinaris
Chickpea
Cicer arietinum
Grasspea
Lathyrus sativus
Flax
Linum usitatissimum
Safflower
Carthamus tinctorius
Goat
Capra hircus
Sheep
Ovis aries
Cattle
Bos taurus

Near Eastern fertile crescent,

(Northern Levant)
97008000 BC.
Greece(?), Anatolia(?),
80007000 BC(?)
Near Eastern fertile crescent
(Northern Levant),
97008000 BC.
Near East
Near East, 85008000 BC
Near East, 85008000 BC;
and Baluchistan?
Near East, 85008000 BC

Indus valley sites, Kashmir,

3rd M. BC

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Indus valley sites, Kashmir,

3rd M. BC; 4th M. BC
Makran
Indus valley sites, 3rd M. BC

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Indus valley sites, 3rd M. BC

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Indus valley sites, 3rd M. BC

Earlier sites lack adequate sampling

Balathal, Rajasthan,
c. 3000 BC
Mehrgarh, c. 7000 BC
Mehrgarh: domestication
process, 70005000 BC
(?)
Indus valley sites, 3rd M. BC

the hilly regions west of the Indus Valley as far north

as the Bannu Basin. This tradition is best known
through the site of Mehrgarh, which has been extensively excavated. The chronology of Mehrgarh has
been problematic. The second ceramic phase at
Mehrgarh seems well-dated, beginning c. 6000 BC,
and the site is estimated to have begun by c. 7000
BC, or even earlier, although radiocarbon dates are
inconsistent. There is no good evidence for crop domestication here, and most evidence suggests the
spread of crops from the Near East, although barley
might have grown here wild. Possible connections with
Neolithic cave sites in Afghanistan, which might have
earlier occupations, require clarification through further archaeology. As evidenced at Mehrgarh, these
Neolithic settlers built substantial square and rectangular mud-brick buildings. It is from their use of
cereal processing by-products (chaff) that identifications of their crop repertoire have been made,
indicating a focus on the cultivation of winter crops
that had their ultimate origins in Southwest Asia,
that is, barley, emmer wheat, possible einkorn, and

May have more than one domestication

in Near East
More than one origin in West/Central Asia

Separate origins of zebu (Bos indicus),

which has domestication process at
Mehrgarh, 70005000 BC

free-threshing (bread) wheat. In terms of animal exploitation, hunting of gazelles dominated the economy, but
at least some domesticated goats were also present,
indicated by their size and by the sacrificial burial of
their kids together with human burials. Goats, like the
cereals, had arrived before the site was founded, plausibly from the west.
Other species of both plants and animals appear to
have been brought under human management locally.
The evidence from animal bones indicates both a dramatic shift in dependence away from hunted game
animals (such as gazelles) toward goats, sheep and
especially cattle over the course of the first two phases
of Mehrgarh, that is, from c. 7000 to 4500 BC. In
addition to this change in the faunal spectrum, clear
morphological change is documented in the cattle,
which suggests the local domestication of humped
Indian zebu cattle (Bos indicus). Similar evidence for
sheep raises the likelihood of local domestication processes as well. By the end of period I, early in the fifth
millennium BC, finds of cotton seeds and cotton thread
suggests that this fiber crop had been brought under

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 761

Table 2 Selected domesticates of South Asian Neolithic origin
Species

Region and period of origin

Comments

Zebu cattle
Bos indicus
Water buffalo
Bubalus bubalis
Chicken
Gallus gallus
Tree Cotton
Gossypium arboreum
Sesame
Sesamum indicum
Long-grained rice
Oryza sativa ssp. indica
Little millet
Panicum sumatrense

Baluchistan, e.g. Mehrgarh donmestication process,

70005000 BC
Lower Indus region (Sindh, Kutch), by Harappan period
2500 BC
Northern India and/or Kashmir: present on Indus valley and
Gujarat sites by Harappan period.
Pakistan: present at Mehrgarh by 5000 BC; cultivated by
Harappans in Indus valley (3rd M. BC)
Indus valley(?); cultivated by Harappans in Indus valley, by
2500 BC
Ganges valley. In use by 7000 BC (Lahuradewa),
domesticated by 3rd M. BC
Saurasthra Peninsula, Gujarat; staple grain by 3rd
Millennium BC; also upper Punjab(?) present at Harappa
by 3000 BC
South India; staple grain of South Indian Neolithic by 3rd
Millennium BC

A second domestication in India is

possible.
A second domestication in India is
possible.
Probably a separate origin from
Chinese Chickens
Wild ancestor extinct(?)

Browntop millet
Brachiaria ramosa
Urd bean, black gram
Vigna mungo
Mungbean, green gram
Vigan radiata
Horsegram
Macotyloma uniflorum
Pigeonpea
Cajanus cajan
Ivy gourd
Coccinia grandis

Gujarat or northwest Peninsula; present in Saurashtra by

2500 BC
South India; important pulse by 3rd M. BC; Also upper
Punjab, present by 3rd M. BC on Harappan sites
South India; important pulse by 3rd M. BC

Domestication process poorly

understood
Domestication process poorly
understood. Two domestications
(?).
May also be present as a crop in
Gujarat and Ganges during the
Neolithic.

Additional domestication in Western

India possible

Eastern India: Orissa Neolithic sites by 1500 BC; spread to

South India by 1500 BC
North India, Himalayan foothills; on Late Neolithic sites in
Ganges by 1800 BC

cultivation from local, but now extinct, ancestors.

Sesame and a local variety of the date palm may also
have been brought under cultivation during this period, although undisputed finds only come from several
milleniums later. Early archaeobotanical evidence for
the pulses domesticated in southwest Asia (peas, lentils, chickpea, and grasspea) is similarly missing from
the Neolithic, but is likely a product of limited sampling. It is clear that these species were important
cultivars in the Indus region by the third millennium
BC during the Harappan civilization. It was the food
production established at Mehrgarh by the seventh to
sixth milleniums BC, based on wheat, barley, wintergrown pulses, and cotton, as well as livestock that
formed the basis on which settlement of the Indus
Valley and the Later Harappan civilization developed.
Over the course of the fourth and third milleniums
BC, which represent the Early Bronze Age, agricultural settlement proliferated in the greater Indus Valley
region. Agricultural intensification through simple
forms of irrigation and cattle-drawn ard tillage are
likely, and such intensification is likely to have been
important in increasing agricultural output in the face
of declining rainfall and for providing the food surpluses on which the emergence of Harappan urbanism
in the mid-third millennium BC depended. By the time

of the Harappan civilization long-lived perennial crops

were grown, notably fruits such as dates and grapes.
One the eastern margins of the Harappan zone, the
cultivation of the Near Eastern winter crops, was
constrained by climatic conditions, in particular the
predominance of summer rainfall. The perennial rivers of the Ganges system, however, offered a means to
grow winter crops as well as monsoon crops. Such
mixed season agriculture is evident from the foundational levels of the site of Harappa (c. 3200 BC) and
from the earliest known agricultural settlements in the
Upper Ganges plain, such as Kunal, starting from
c. 3000 BC. The presence of rice, millets, and native
Indian pulses on this site implies that the monsoon
crops were already available as cultivars, perhaps
from this region, in an as yet undocumented presedentary agricultural period, or else from areas to the east,
such as the middle Ganges.

A Late Extension of Agriculture to

the Far North
A rather different Neolithic tradition is documented
from Kashmir and the far north of Pakistan (the Swat
Valley), although it appears to have derived its crops
from the same suite of winter crops of Near Eastern

762 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures

origins. Generally known as the Northern Neolithic,

this tradition is best represented by sites in the Kashmir
Valley, although related sites can be identified in
Swat (Northwest Pakistan). Here sites occupy the
milder valley bottoms and began to be occupied
between 3000 and 2500 BC, represented by the sites
of Burzahom, Gufkral, and Ghaleghay, but with more
evidence and sites dating closer to 2000 BC. The earliest phases are characterized by broad deep pits, with
bell-shaped profiles, and lack pottery. While these
have conventionally been interpreted as pit houses,
recent debates have raised the likelihood that they
were large storage features. Whatever the case, it is
clear from these sites that the dominant crops were
winter wheat, barley, peas, and lentils. It is possible
that these crops had diffused to local hunter-gatherers
from the Indus region to the south or from Central
Asia, together with domesticated animals. Impressions in pottery from Ghalegay suggest some localized
rice cultivation as well which must have diffused from
the Gangetic region to the southeast.
The West: Hunter-Herders to Millet Farmers
and Traders

The areas to the south and east of the Thar Desert, the
Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan, are likely to
have been regions both of the extension of the wintercrop agriculture and livestock from Baluchistan as
well as local traditions of cultivation based on indigenous domestication. Gujarat is likely to have been
a center for the domestication of local, monsoonadapted crops, perhaps after livestock was adopted
into this area from the Indus region to the west in the
fourth millennium BC. Archaeobotanical evidence for
the beginnings of cultivation in this region is not yet
available from the earliest ceramic-bearing sites, of
the Padri and Anarta traditions (c. 35002600 BC),
but the extensive sampling on Harappan period sites
in the region after 2600 BC indicates the predominance of small millets, in particular, little millet (Panicum sumatrense) but probably also Setaria spp. and
Brachiaria ramosa. Nevertheless, these sites and contemporary sites further north on the Thar Desert fringes
of northern Gujarat and Rajasthan have produced evidence for some domestic fauna in the earliest ceramic
levels, including cattle bones from the mid-fourth millennium BC at Loteshwar and probable domestic fauna
from Padri. Other sites, such as Bagor, are often cited as
evidence for the adoption of livestock by mid-Holocene
hunter-gatherers, although current knowledge highlights the need for more systematic archaeobotanical
and archaeozoological investigations.
East of the Thar Desert there is clear evidence
for establishment of agricultural villages before the
end of the fourth millennium BC. Demonstrated by

excavations at the site of Balathal, more or less sedentary ceramic-producing farmers became established in this region alongside hunter-gatherers such
as those of Bagor. Limited archaeobotanical data
suggest that Balathal agriculture was based on the
winter crops from further west, together with livestock, rather than indigenous crops. These crops were
then taken up further east in central India and on the
northern Peninsula in the second half of the third
millennium BC. On the northern peninsula the winter
cereals and pulses were markedly important but they
seem to have been part of a mixed cultivation strategy
which included significant frequencies of the native
species, such as the pulses and millets that featured
prominently in the Southern Neolithic.
The North and East: Potting Foragers
to Rice-Growing Villagers

The Ganges Basin, the adjacent Himilayan foothills

to the north, and the hill zones of Bihar and Orissa
taken together delimit an important zone of probable
plant domestications. Evidence has long been clear
that a number of cucurbit crops originate in this general area, including cucumbers, luffas and various
gourds, although only the ivy gourd has an archaeological record. Of special interest is, of course, the
predominant staple today, rice, which is also native
domesticate of this region. Rice is consistently present
at all these sites from the earliest documented phases
together with various small millets (B. ramosa, Setaria
vertcillata, and Setaria pumila). Native Indian pulses
are also present but only from later phases, which
could indicate dispersal of native pulses from elsewhere prior to 2000 BC. Still to be clarified is whether
there was one main trajectory toward agriculture or
dispersed parallel trajectories in different local traditions, and what role interactions between early
farmers and hunter-gatherers played.
At present three distinct cultural traditions can
be defined, each of which passed through two or
three economic stages. First there is a tradition located
in the eastern part of this region, represented by
Lahuradewa and Senuwar. Its earliest stage, represented by occupation of the lake margin area at
Lahuradewa, shows ceramic production by sometime in the fifth millennium (and perhaps as early as
7000 BC), and rice was part of the diet from 7000 BC,
although clarification is needed on its cultivation status and the earliest rice material is plausibly wild.
Later levels at Lahuradewa and at Senuwar indicate
more sedentary settlement and clear rice cultivation
after 2500 BC. Some winter crops, especially wheat
and barley, were added to the agricultural system by
2200 BC, and pulses from elsewhere in India were

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 763

added shortly thereafter. Livestock were also adopted,

beginning perhaps as early as 2500 BC and certainly
by c. 2000 BC. A second tradition that shows parallel
economic developments was in the northern Vindhyan
hills and the Son and Belan river valleys, represented
by sites such as Mahagara, Koldihwa, and Tokwa,
although here the founding of sedentary villages with
mixed agro-pastoralism occurred mainly after
c. 2000 BC (Figure 7). Once again the initial agriculture
was rice and millets, with winter crops and pulses
adopted shortly thereafter. Earlier evidence in the
region suggests seasonal settlement, rice use, and probably some production of ceramics among huntergatherers. A third distinct cultural tradition to take up
agriculture was the Mesolithic of the central Ganges
plains, represented by the site of Damdama. Here there
has been a long tradition of semisedentary hunting and
fishing focused on the oxbow ponds and former meanders of the Ganges plain. Despite the absence of pottery,
crops, including rice and barley, were adopted after
2500 BC, but this distinct aceramic tradition ceased to
be recognizable by the early second millennium BC.
After 2000 BC agricultural villages became more
widespread in the Gangetic region. They seem to have
consisted of small villages of round huts and possible
communal animal pens (Figure 5). While it is not yet
clear that these sites were truly year-round sedentism, it
is clear that they were much more permanent and longlasting than anything that had been before. It is also
clear that cultivation was established before this phase
of sedentarization. Indeed, finds of probable Gangetic
domestics in the Eastern Harappan zone suggest that
the beginnings of cultivation date to before 3000 BC.
The recent discovery of Lahuradewa dating back to
before 4000 BC suggests that future work may indeed
be able to elucidate the plant economies of less settled

societies that saw through the transition from foraging

to food production.
During the course of the second millennium BC,
agriculture diversified as did other aspects of the
society. It is during this period that the first evidence
for aboriculture of native tropical trees occurs. This
includes evidence from wood charcoal suggesting the
planting of trees in the Gangetic Plains such as jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), mango (Mangifera
indica), bael fruit (Aegle marmelos), the citron (Citrus
medica), and tamarind (Tamarindus indicus). Fruittree cultivation may have begun early in the second
millennium BC but was widespread by the second half
of the millennium. It is also during this period that the
first finds of possible fiber crops, including flax and
hemp, occur, together with probable spindle whorls,
suggesting the beginnings of textile production.
The Lesser Known East and Northeast: Orissa,
Assam, Bangladesh and Burma

Areas in Eastern India and the far northeast, including

Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma), are still poorly
explored in terms of Neolithic archaeology. In the
past few years a few Neolithic sites in lowland Orissa
have been studied. In the lowlands of Orissa, along the
coastal plain and the Mahanadi River substantial
archaeological settlement mounds exist. This provides
evidence for Neolithic settlement based on the cultivation of rice and Indian pulses as well as herding of
domesticated livestock, including introduced sheep
and goat. Rice, some of the pulses, and water buffalos
are all candidates for domestication in this region,
although there is not yet clear archaeological evidence
documenting this. While some of these sites, such as
Golabai Sassan, may have been founded before

Figure 4 View north across the Belan river from Koldhiwa Neolithic site to Mahagara (on left), Uttar Pradesh, 2001.

764 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures

Post-hole
Hut floor
Cattle hoof-prints

N
0

5m

10 m

Belan River
Figure 5 Plan of the Gangetic Neolithic settlement of Mahagara, c. 1700 BC, indicating the distribution of huts in relation to a small
animal pen.

2000 BC, most of the substantial occupation seems to

start later closer to 1500 BC and continue perhaps a
thousand years into the Iron Age (Figures 6). In the
upland regions of Orissa the Neolithic is known mainly from surface collections of ground stone axes,
although ceramics from the site Kuchai, which are
tempered with rice husk, suggest some rice cultivation. Possible precursors to the Neolithic settlements
may be sought in the many rock shelters of northwest
Orissa, which are rich in rock art, and sometimes
include ceramics in their surface collections.
Similarly, in the northeastern states of India, such
as Assam, and neighbording Myanmar, the Neolithic
is known only from surface collections of groundstone axes and ceramics. The Neolithic remains unidentified in Bangladesh. There is not yet any clear
evidence for dating the Neolithic in these areas, nor
for inferring the economic basis. Scholars have long
noted that in this zone shouldered axes are typical,
and that this tool type suggests possible links with
Orissa and parts of Southern China. While this typological linkage has featured in several models of Neolithic population dispersal, it remains undocumented
through excavated archaeological contexts.
The South: Millet and Pulse Farming Cattle Keepers

The Southern Neolithic, of northern Karnataka

and southwest Andhra Pradesh, provides the earliest

evidence for pastoralism and agriculture in Peninsular

India, starting by 2800 BC. A well-known site category
of the Southern Neolithic is the ashmound (Figures 7,
8, and 9). These sites form a prominent part of the
archaelogical landscape of Southern India and consist
of large accumulations of burnt cattle-dung reduced
to ash and in some cases to a slag-like consistency.
Excavations, especially at Utnur and Budihal, have
revealed these to be ancient penning sites that have
been episodically burnt, probably as part of seasonal
communal rituals. The centrality of cattle in this symbolic aspect of life is also suggestsed by a rich rock art
corpus associated with some Neolithic sites in the region, which are dominated by pecked images of cattle.
While these sites were seasonal encampments, in many
cases they developed over time into village settlements.
This is indicated by ashmound deposits buried under
village occupation at sites such as Sanganakallu
(Figure 10), and by the development of a village adjacent to the ashmound at Budihal (Figure 11). These
transitions are part of a protracted regional process of
increasing sedentism between 2200 and 1800 BC.
After 1800 BC the distribution of ashmound sites
had reached their maximal extent in northwestern
Karnataka, and other traditions of village settlement
began to be established in adjacent regions, of West
and South Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and northwest
Tamil Nadu. Agriculture further South, throughout

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 765

Figure 6 The Neolithic/Chalcolithic settlement mound at Golabai Sassan, Orissa. The site is cut through by the road, 2003.

Figure 7 Kudatini, the largest Neolithic ashmound, west of Bellary, Karnataka, 1998.

Tamil Nadu for example, appears to have only become

established during the Iron Age and in some regions
of Southwest Tamil Nadu as late at the end of the
first millennium BC. Here agriculture included rice,
which had diffused from northern India, perhaps
along the eastern coast early in the first millennium BC. Similarly, rice-based agriculture came to
Sri Lanka, perhaps by c. 900 BC. This long regional
transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculturalists is also characteristic of the hill tracts of peninsular
India, where in some areas hunter-gatherers became
specialized forager-traders tied to agricultural societies in the plains, and some of these forager-trader

communities persisted into the ethnographic present.

The subsistence of the Southern Neolithic combined
indigenous crops with introduced livestock. Animal
bones indicate the dominance of cattle in the animal
economy with a smaller presence of sheep and goat.
While the latter species must have been adopted from
the north, this also seems likely for the cattle. Recent
archaeobotanical research has provided a picture of
recurrent staples and occasional secondary crops of
the Southern Neolithic. The staples include two native
species of millets (B. ramosa and Setaria verticillata)
and two pulses, mungbean and horsegram (Vigna
radiata and Macrotyloma uniflorum). The existing

766 ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures

Figure 8 The Southern Neolithic ashmound site of Palavoy, showing exposed stratigraphy of durg ash layering, Anatapur District,
Andhra Pradesh, 1998.

Figure 9 Two ashmounds at Palavoy seen from above, looking West, the ashmound at right is shown close-up in Figure 8.

evidence indicates dependence on a group of species

that are native to the peninsula, with non-native
species being rare (on a minority of sites) or occurring
only in the latest Neolithic period, including crops of
African origin by c. 1500 BC. In addition, evidence
from this later phase of the Neolithic suggests the
adoption of fiber crops, cotton and flax, as well as
some fruit trees such as mango and citrus. In all, this
indicates increasing diversity and links between agriculture, craft production, and trade.
Concluding Remarks: Directions in South Asian
Neolithic Research

Throughout most of India, the agricultural foundations

of early Historic cities and states drew upon the rich

mixture of native species and adopted species that had

been assembled by regional Neolithic and Chalcolithic
societies. While some important species are known to
have diffused from the Near East, several important
species are native to India. Unfortunately, archaeological evidence is listed for documenting the use of these
native species in a wild form by hunter-gatherers, followed by their transformation under cultivation into
domesticated crops. In most cases our earliest finds
come from communities where cultivation was already
established. It would appear that most of the known
Neolithic sites in South Asia come from periods of
settling down for the long term and becoming more
sedentary. The fact that these sites already show clear
agriculture suggests that the origins lie earlier in more
mobile societies, and less archaeologically visible sites.

ASIA, WEST/Neolithic Cultures 767

Figure 10 The granite inselberg of Sannarachamma near modern Sanganakallu, a typical hilltop location for a South Indian Neolithic
village site, view to Southwest, 1998.

Ashmound

Pen edge
(stone fence)

Butchery floor

Huts

N
0

25 m

Figure 11 Plan of the Southern Neolithic site of Budihal, indicating the substantial ashmound developed atop a large penning area,
c. 2200 BC, and a small area of huts, 22001700 BC.

Also, further research on the biogeography of the wild

progenitors of most native species is needed and more
efforts at producing quantitative data through longer
regional sequences of both botanical and zoological
remains are also needed. Other emerging directions
of research are the study of later hunter-gatherers
and their interactions with established agricultural
neighbors, and the study of the role of later Neolithic

communities in the development of craft specialization,

specialized crop production (such as fruits and fiber
crops) and the regional trajectories toward social complexity. While there remains much research to be done,
it is now clear that South Asia has several Neolithic
traditions which participated in the recurrent social
processes of domesticating plants and animals and creating economies of food production.

768 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

See also: Agriculture: Social Consequences; Animal
Domestication; Asia, South: Baluchistan and the
Borderlands; Ganges Valley; Paleolithic Cultures; Asia,
West: Mesolithic Cultures; Ceramics and Pottery; Plant
Domestication.

Soan culture A Palaeolithic culture found along the Soan river

valley in the Potwar region of the Punjab and dated to the Middle
Pleistocene.

Further Reading

South Asia as an ancient culture area is inconceivable

without consideration of the firm foundations provided by the prehistoric phase spanning more than a
million years of hunting and foraging way of life.
The terminal stage of this preliterate life, called the
Mesolithic, is dated to the early part of the Holocene
and merges into the succeeding agro-pastoral stage
comprising various NeolithicChalcolithic cultures
and the Indus civilization. The present essay seeks to
provide a review of the existing evidence pertaining to
the preceding Palaeolithic stage, which comprises
three phases (Lower, Middle, and Upper) and is
dated to the Pleistocene.

Ajithaprasad P (2004) Holocene adaptations of the Mesolithic and

Chalcolithic settlements in North Gujarat. In: Yasuda Y and
Shinde V (eds.) Monsoon and Civilization, pp. 115132. New
Delhi: Lustre Press/ Roli Books.
Chattopadyaya UC (2002) Researches in archaeozoology of
the Holocene period (including the Harappan tradition in India
and Pakistan). In: Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) Researches in
Archaeozoology of the Holocene Period (Including the Harappan Tradition in India and Pakistan). New Delhi: Manohar.
Fuller DQ (2002) Fifty years of archaeobotanical studies in India:
Laying a solid foundation. In: Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.)
Indian Archaeology in Retrospect III. Archaeology and Interactive Disciplines, pp. 247363. Delhi: Manohar.
Fuller DQ (2003) Indus and non-Indus agricultural traditions:
Local developments and crop adoptions on the Indian Peninsula.
In: Weber SA and Belcher WR (eds.) Indus and Non-Indus
Agricultural Traditions: Local Developments and Crop Adoptions on the Indian Peninsula. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Fuller DQ (2003) An agricultural perspective on Dravidian historical linguistics: Archaeological crop packages, livestock and dravidian crop vocabulary. In: Bellwood P and Renfrew C (eds.) An
Agricultural Perspective on Dravidian Historical Linguistics:
Archaeological Crop Packages, Livestock and Dravidian Crop
Vocabulary. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research.
Fuller DQ (2006) Agricultural origins and frontiers in South Asia:
A working synthesis. Journal of World Prehistory 20(1): 186.
Meadow R and Patel AK (2003) Prehistoric pastoralism in Northwestern South Asia from the Neolithic through the Harappan
Period. In: Weber SA and Belcher WR (eds.) Prehistoric Pastoralism in Northwestern South Asia from the Neolithic through
the Harappan Period. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Singh BP (ed.) (2004) Early Farming Communities of the Kaimur.
Jaipur: Publication Scheme.
Singh Purushottam (2001) The Neolithic cultures of Northern and
Eastern India. In: Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) Indian Archaeology in Retrospect I. Prehistory, pp. 127150. Delhi: Manohar.

Paleolithic Cultures
K Paddayya, Deccan College, Pune, India
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
palaeomagnetism The study of the record of the Earths
magnetic field preserved in various magnetic minerals through
time.
thermoluminescence (TL) The determination by means of
measuring the accumulated radiation dose of the time elapsed
since material containing crystalline minerals was either heated
(lava, ceramics) or exposed to sunlight (sediments).

Introduction

Geographical Features

South Asia occupies a middle position among the

three peninsular projections marking the southern
margin of the Asiatic landmass. It comprises the
Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, the island nation of Sri Lanka, and the sovereign states
of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In the north,
South Asia is separated from the main Asiatic landmass by the high Hindukush and Karakoram ranges,
and the Himalayan massif proper. On the western,
southern, and eastern sides, the Indian peninsula is
neatly marked off by the Arabian Sea, the Indian
Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, respectively. Notwithstanding its status as a distinct geographical unit,
outside influences did reach the South Asian region
by both land and sea from the very beginnings of
human life, such that its cultural make-up is a combined product of both outside stimuli and internal
development.
Within this larger geographical entity, there is tremendous regional diversity. The major topographic
subdivisions include the arid zone of Rajasthan in
the west; the high snow-clad Himalayas in the
north; the hill-tract of northeastern India supporting
a rich tropical rainforest ecosystem; the vast Indus
and Gangetic alluvial plains which served as the
springboards of First and Second Urbanizations,
respectively; and the triangular-shaped plateau of
peninsular India. The peninsular block is flanked on
the western and eastern sides by narrow hill-chains
running close to the seaboard and is drained by eastor west-flowing rivers. Sri Lanka is situated some
20 km off the tip of the peninsula; central highlands,
northern lowlands, and southern rolling plains are its
chief geographical units.

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 769

South Asia is an area of monsoonal climate which

originated due to the upthrust of the Himalayas and
Tibetan plateau, the final phase of which is dated to
about 14 Ma. Much of the peninsular block receives
its precipitation from the southwest monsoon. The
northern mountainous tract lies in the winter rainfall
belt of Northern Hemisphere; moisture comes in the
form of winter storms or snow melt. The extreme
southern part of the peninsula as well as Sri Lanka
benefit from the rainfall caused by the northeast
monsoon.
History of Research

Prehistoric research started in South Asia immediately after the epoch-making discoveries of stone stools
by Boucher de Perthes in the Somme river gravels of
northern France in the mid-nineteenth century. The
ratification of these findings by the Royal Society
in London in 1859 was a great source of inspiration
to Robert Bruce Foote who came to Madras (now
Chennai) in 1858 as a young officer to work in the
Geological Survey of India. Foote found a few bifacial
stone implements in a lateritic gravel pit near Madras
in May 1863. In the course of his three-decade-long
geological surveys in various parts of southern India
and Gujarat, he located a large number of prehistoric
sites which he classified under three periods
Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and Iron Age. His publication
entitled The Foote Collection of Indian Prehistoric
and Protohistoric Antiquities: Notes on Their Ages
and Distribution, published in 1916, is the first major
synthesis of South Asian prehistoric research and still
offers many useful insights into the environmental
settings and lifeways of prehistoric populations.
Foote is therefore rightly called the Father of Indian
Prehistory.
The next phase, spanning from the 1930s to the
1970s, witnessed the rise of what may be called
the stratigraphical-cum-cultural-cum-climatic sequence
paradigm. During this period efforts were made to
divide the Stone Age into various phases based on
stratigraphical evidence, as supplied by river sediments and other deposits. Based upon the character
of these deposits (gravels, silts, etc.), inferences were
also made about past climates consisting of a succession of wet and dry climatic episodes. Four major
studies were involved in the development of this
paradigm: (1) the work of L. A. Cammiade and
M. C. Burkitt on the southeast coast of India postulating the existence of four successive cultural
stages (series IIV); (2) joint investigations of the
Yale and Cambridge Universities in the Potwar
plateau and Kashmir Valley, and the formulation of
Soan culture-sequence with reference to alternation

of glacial and interglacial episodes; (3) the work of

F. E. Zeuner of the Institute of Archaeology, London,
in Gujarat and the Deccan seeking to identify the
stratigraphical contexts of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic assemblages with reference to alluvial and sand
dune deposits; and (4) H. D. Sankalias reconstruction of fourfold cultural sequence (series IIV) based
upon his study of cliff-sections of the river Pravara
at Nevasa in the Deccan. From the mid-1950s to
mid-1970s, this paradigm was extended to many
other parts of India. Simultaneously, some important Stone Age sites were reported from other parts of
South Asia, such as the Sanghao cave from Pakistan
and the Ratnapura industry from Sri Lanka. Indeed,
the emergence of Stone Age archaeology on the academic scene in South Asia was epitomized by the publication of the second edition of H. D. Sankalias book
Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan
in 1974.
The third phase, which was initiated in the late
1970s, reflected the advent of New Archaeology
into the region. It began to be realized that stone
artifacts recovered from secondary deposits such as
alluvial gravels and silts could not serve as secure data
for making behavioral interpretations. Also it was felt
that interpretations about past climate based on alluvial deposits were not sound. Against this background a fresh approach was initiated in the South
Asian Stone Age research. Its chief components were:
(1) region-based intensive field-surveys; (2) emphasis
on the identification of in situ sites and their careful
investigation, employing the perspective of formation processes; (3) use of both biological and Earth
sciences in palaeoenvironmental reconstructions; and
(4) use of experimental and ethnoarchaeological analogies. In an accompanying paradigm shift, culture
was redefined as a systemic whole and as a means
of human adaptation, rather than being treated as
a mere vehicle for arriving at classificatory and
descriptive definitions.
During the last quarter-century, several projects
employing some or all of these strategies were carried
out in the Siwalik hills of India and Pakistan, central
India covering the Belan, Narmada and Son Valleys,
arid tract of Rajasthan, Saurashtra, the Deccan
uplands, Chotanagpur plateau, and South India. In
more recent years, some important studies were undertaken in the Deccan, the Bhima and Kaladgi Basins
of north Karnataka, and the Kortallayar Basin of
south India. Sri Lanka and Nepal also yielded evidence of Stone Age occupation. Discovery of fossil
hominid remains at Hathnora in central India and
Odai in south India, and the use of various radiometric
methods for dating Stone Age sites are two other major
developments of this phase.

770 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

Some of these more recent projects benefited from

collaboration with research teams from Cambridge,
Oxford, Sheffield, and Sussex universities in England,
University of California and the Smithsonian Institution in the US, and Australian National University and
Marquarie University in Australia. Scientific institutions in India like the Physical Research Laboratory,
Ahmedabad, Central Arid Zone Research Institute,
Jodhpur, Geological Survey of India, and Anthropological Survey of India also participated actively in
some of the regional investigations. These joint studies were particularly helpful in attempting palaeogeographic and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions.
Palaeoenvironments

In the Pleistocene, which has a duration of 2.5 Myr,

South Asia was a part of the global climatic set-up.
Oxygen-isotope studies of ocean-bed sediment cores
established a repeated alternation of cold and warm
periods. During the last 1 Myr, 9 or 10 glacial/interglacial cycles occurred. During glacial periods in northern
latitudes, the monsoon was weak in South Asia and dry
climate prevailed. When the northern latitudes were
experiencing interglacial climate, the monsoon was
strong in South Asia resulting in a wet climatic episode
with a high level of precipitation. Although for want of
clear data it is not possible to correlate the Palaeolithic
cultural stages in South Asia with any specific climatic
episodes, sedimentary data from fluvial and other contexts in the Kashmir valley, western and central India,
and the Deccan region revealed a succession of wet and
dry or arid and humid phases. Some of these studies
deserve mention here.
Employing the technique of pollen analysis, D. P.
Agrawal and his team reconstructed a long and detailed palaeoclimatic sequence for the Kashmir
Valley. The area experienced a warm temperate climate up to 3.8 Myr. From 3.7 to 2.6 Myr the climate
changed from subtropical to cool temperate type.
Cool climate persisted in the area for 2 Myr. The last
200 kyr saw the building up of a thick deposit of loess
due to wind activity. Separating the periods of wind
activity were periods of climatic stability as revealed
by the formation of palaeosols. H. D. Sankalia found
a few stone artifacts in the alluvial conglomerate at
Pahlgam and dated them to the first interglacial period. Subsequent work in the area confirmed that at
least from the Late Pleistocene the area was occupied
by Stone Age groups in a regular way.
The prolonged research of the British Archaeological
Mission led by Robin Dennell from 1980 to 1990 in
the Potwar plateau of Pakistan resulted in a wholesale
re-evaluation of the Quaternary glacial/interglacial
terrace stratigraphy and Soan culture-sequence put

forward earlier by H. de Terra and T. T. Paterson. The

terraces proved to be only erosional features and nonglacigenic. Similarly, the Stone Age cultural material
was found on surface in secondary contexts and hence
it was found unsuitable for fixing culture sequences.
However, this recent work produced new discoveries
two Acheulian sites at Dina and Jalalpur dated between
700 and 400 kyr and a possible Lower Pleistocene
Early Man site at Riwat near Peshawar dated to
1.9 Myr by means of palaeomagnetism.
The western part of Rajasthan, now mostly occupied by the Thar Desert and its characteristic sand
dunes, provided sound evidence for reconstructing
palaeoenvironmental history and human adaptations. In the Pleistocence the area was a favorable
habitat for Stone Age communities. The work of
Bridget Allchin and others in the 1970s showed that
the area witnessed two major dry periods separated
by wet climatic episodes. Palaeolithic and Mesolithic
groups occupied sand dunes overlooking shallow
water pools and other favorable micro-niches. In the
1980s the team led by V. N. Misra carried out further
work in the area and identified three major Quaternary sedimentary units called the Jayal, Amarpura,
and Didwana formations. This multidisciplinary research involved excavations at Singi Talav and
Didwana (16 R locality) and made it possible to reconstruct a detailed history of climate and landscape
development. The 20 m deep trench at 16 R locality
exposed a series of five major paleosols, sixteen
calcrete bands, and well-dated cultural material
belonging to the Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, and Mesolithic stages (Figure 1). During the
Early Pleistocene the present-day waterless sandy
plains of the region supported large streams originating from the Himalayas, which laid down extensive
and thick gravel beds in Nagor and Jodhpur districts.
Man was absent. Subsequently, these beds were tectonically uplifted and new streams with wide flood
plains marked with pools and lakes were formed. The
Palaeolithic groups camped around these pools and
ponds and also on the exposed gravel beds. The climate during this period was basically semi-arid, but it
alternated several times between cool dry and warm
wet periods. Sand sheets and dunes were formed in
cool dry periods and their surfaces were stabilized
during the subsequent wet phases. Palaeolithic groups
occupied the stabilized sand surfaces.
In central India the middle stretch of the Narmada
preserved thick deposits of gravels, silts, and clays
broadly classified under a Lower Group and an
Upper Group. This sedimentary record, basically alluvial in nature, yielded rich evidence of mammalian
fauna and Stone Age cultural record. The recent hominid findings at Hathnora brought this area into focus

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 771

0
6,140 B.P. (T.L.)

Mesolithic

14,610 B.P. (T.L.)

1
16,190 B.P. (T.L.)

Brown (10 yr 4/4) loamy fine sand

weak pedogenesis

2
Unit I
Yellow brown (10 yr 6/4) fine sand
with soft carbonates

5
26,210 +2200B.P. (16c)
1700
6

Upper Palaeolithic

Unit II

Colluvial slate and schist

coarse sand
Calcrete I
Pale yellow brown (10 yr 5/4) loamy fine sand
Calcrete II
Pale yellow brown (10 yr 5/4) loamy fine sand
Calcrete III
Calcrete IV
Yellow brown (10 yr 6/4) fine sandy loam with
tubular carbonates moderate pedogenesis

7
Calcrete V
8

Yellow brown (10 yr 6/4) loany fine sand

Calcrete VI
Calcrete VII
Calcrete VIII
Reddish brown (5 yr 4/8) fine sandy loam
strong pedogenesis

10
Unit III
Brown (7.5 yr 4/6) fine sand

11

Middle Palaeolithic

163000 21000 B.P. (T.L.)

Calcrete IX
Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) loamy fine sand
strong pedobenesis

12
1,44,000 12,000 B.P. (U/Th)
13

Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) medium sand

Calcrete X
14
1,50,000 10,000 B.P. (U/Th)

Calcrete XI
Brown (7.5 yr 5/6 to 6/6) loamy fine sand

15

Calcrete XII
Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) loamy medium sand
16
Calcrete XIII
17

Lower Palaeolithic

Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) loamy medium sand

Calcrete XIV
Calcrete XV

18

Lower Palaeolithic
3,90,000 50,000 B.P. (U/Th)

Brown (7.5 yr 5/6) loamy medium sand

Calcrete XVI

19

Figure 1 16 R sand dune section at Didwana, Rajasthan, showing sedimentary stratigraphy and Stone Age culture sequence.
Courtesy: V. N. Misra, Stone Age India: an ecological perspective, Man and Environment, Vol. XIV, No. 1, 1989, Fig. 10.

772 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

once again. The University of Allahabad team, in

collaboration with the universities of California and
Melbourne, worked in the Belan and Son Valleys of
north central India and identified gravel and silt
deposits grouped under Baghor, Sihawal, Patpara,
and Khetauni formations. Various phases of the
Stone Age were correlated with these sedimentary
bodies.
In the Deccan region the basins of the rivers
Godavari and Krishna and their various tributaries
were the scene of Quaternary studies for the last half
a century. These preserved rich and continuous record
of Stone Age occupation including animal fossils. In
the northern Deccan geoarchaeological work during
the last two decades led to the recognition of four
major Quaternary formations Bori, Godavari,
Upper Bhima, and Chandanpuri formations containing valuable data for reconstructing Stone Age
culture sequence against the background of Quaternary climatic history. Following upon the pioneering
work of R. V. Joshi, important fresh field studies were
carried out in the Bhima and Kaladgi Basins of north
Karnataka and also in the Kortallayar Valley of Tamil
Nadu. These yielded important fresh data bearing
upon reconstruction of palaeogeography and settlement patterns of the Palaeolithic times.
Faunal collections obtained from different parts of
South Asia prove that the Quaternary landscape
supported rich animal world. The Karewa beds of
Kashmir and the Siwalik hills of the Punjab and
Himachal Pradesh produced Lower Pleistocene
fauna. Similarly, the sediments of the Godavari,
Narmada, Krishna, Belan, Son, and other Peninsular
Indian rivers yielded fossil fauna comprising various
species dated to the Middle and Late Pleistocene. The
Kurnool caves in the southern part of the country
and the Ratnapura beds of Sri Lanka also yielded rich
faunal assemblages. As regards the plant world, it is
inferred that as is the case today the South Asian landscape supported a cross-section of vegetation types
comprising the Alpine type geared to glacial landscape,
evergreen forest system, deciduous vegetation, savanna
grasslands, and scrub vegetation. From the wide spatial
distribution of Palaeolithic sites, it is clear that man
was adapting himself to various environmental settings
during the Pleistocene.

Archaeological Record
Nature of Palaeolithic Record

The South Asian Palaeolithic record is extremely rich

in terms of empirical contents. Its major components
are as follows:

1. The bulk of the record consists of lithic artifacts

fashioned out of a variety of basic rocks and siliceous materials.
2. Wood may have been used for artifact preparation
from the earliest stages, but unfortunately nothing
has survived the ravages of time.
3. Bone tools and objects are known from the Upper
Palaeolithic stage.
4. Remains of simple dwelling structures were exposed from Acheulian levels at Bhimbetka,
Hunsgi, and Paisra, and there is evidence of a
shrine-like feature from Baghor I in north central
India and a hearth from one of the caves in
Kurnool area.
5. Rock art may date to the terminal phase of the
Palaeolithic.
6. Hominid remains are known from Hathnora in
the Narmada Valley and Odai in Tamil Nadu.
7. Fossil fauna is reported from a number of places in
alluvial context and from a few sites in association
with in situ cultural record.
Chronology

In South Asia until the 1970s understanding of the

chronology of the Palaeolithic was entirely based on
criteria like the association of cultural record with
laterite and alluvial deposits, faunal succession,
stratigraphical record exposed in archaeological excavations, measurement of fluorine/phosphate ratios of
ancient animal bones, and weathering of rocks. Starting with the radiocarbon method, during the last
quarter-century South Asian Palaeolithic research
benefited from the application of several absolute
dating methods on various organic and inorganic
materials comprising animal bones, charcoal, freshwater shells, burnt soils, calcretes and travertines,
and, more recently, volcanic ash. These methods
include thermoluminesence (TL), uraniumthorium,
potassiumargon, argonargon, palaeomagnetism,
and electron-spin resonance.
East Africa is still regarded as the cradle of mankind. The earliest known stone tools, belonging to the
Oldowan or mode I assemblages and attributed to
the Australopithecines or Homo habilis, are dated
to 2.6 Myr. The Acheulian tradition appears around
1.6 Ma. Further east, the sites of Ubeidiya in Israel
and Dmanisi in Georgia are dated to 1.4 and 1.8 Myr,
respectively. In China, the Longguppo hominid and
associated stone artifacts have been dated to 1.9
1.7 Myr. In Indonesia there are claims that the Modjokerto fossil infant calvaria may date to 1.91.8 Myr.
Seen against the background of these early artifact
and hominid findings from West Asia and East Asia,

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 773

it is not surprising that stone artifacts dated between

1.2 and >2 Myr have been reported from certain
parts of South Asia Riwat (Pakistan), Uttarbaini
(India) and some other sites found in the upper
Siwalik formations of the Punjab, Himachal Pradesh
and Jammu. Unfortunately, the artifacts from all
these places are of a nondescript type and also doubts
have been expressed about their sedimentary contexts. Whatever be the uncertainty about the earliest
stage of hominid occupation, the absolute dating
methods have now placed at our disposal a good
number of dates for fixing the chronological limits
of the three regular phases within the South Asian
Palaeolithic (Table 1).
The Acheulian, representing the principal component of the Lower Palaeolithic, is dated to the Middle
Pleistocene. The available dates range from 670 kyr
to 190/66 kyr. At Bori in the Deccan, the lithic assemblage found in association with a tephra layer is dated

to 670 and 538 kyr. At Dina and Jalapur in the Jhelum

Basin of Pakistan, the gravels yielding stone artifacts
have been dated by palaeomagnetic stratigraphy between 600 and 400 kyr. Among the many thorium
uranium dates for sites in Rajasthan, Saurashtra, and
the Deccan, there are some which indicate an age of
>350 kyr for the Acheulian. More recently, Isampur
in north Karnataka has given a date of 1.2 myr, thereby stretching the antiquity of the Acheulian to the
Early Pleistocene.
The available radiocarbon, uraniumthorium, and
TL dates stretch the antiquity of the Middle Palaeolithic up to 40 kyr or the early part of last glacial stage.
The evidence from 16 R sand dune at Didwana in
Rajasthan suggests a still higher age. The cultural level
here has been dated to 125 kyr by means of thermoluminescence. The succeeding Upper Palaeolithic has
a larger number of radiocarbon dates which cluster
between 19 and 25 kyr. The dates from sites like

Table 1 Absolute dates for Palaeolithic sites in South Asia

Site

Material used

Method used

Possible early sites

Riwat, Pakistan
Uttarbaini, Siwalik hills, Jammu, India

Sediment stratigraphy
Volcanic ash

Palaeomagnetism
Fissiontrack

Sediment stratigraphy
Miliolite
Calcrete
Calcrete
Volcanic ash
Volcanic ash
Calcrete
Elephas molar
Bos molar
Elephas molar
Tooth-enamel, Bos sp.

Palaeomagnetism
Thoriumuranium
Thoriumuranium
Thoriumuranium
Potassiumargon
Argonargon
Thoriumuranium
Thoriumuranium
Thoriumuranium
Thoriumuranium
Electron-spin resonance

Important Acheulian sites

Dina and Jalapur, Pakistan
Umrethi, India
Didwana, India
Nevasa, India
Bori, India
Yedurwadi, India
Sadab, India
Teggihalli, India
Isampur, India
Important Middle Palaeolithic sites in India
Badalpur
Dhom dam
Mula dam
Nandipalle
Rati Karar
Didwana (16 R)
Important Upper Palaeolithic sites in India
Bhedaghat
Deoghat, Belan valley (3 dates)
Chandrasal (2 dates)
Inamgaon (3 dates)
Mehtakeri
Nagda
Patne
Dharangaon
Muchchatlachintamanugavi (Kurnool)
Dharmapuri

Age in years B.P.

>1.9 Myr
1.6 (revised to 2.8) Myr
400 to 600 kyr
190 kyr
>390 kyr
>350 kyr
537 kyr
670 kyr
>350 kyr
290 kyr
287 kyr
> 350 kyr
1.2 Myr

Calcrete

C-14
C-14
C-14
C-14
C-14
TL

24 kyr
37 kyr
31 kyr
23 kyr
32 kyr
125 kyr

Freshwater shells
Freshwater shells
Ostrich eggshell
Freshwater shells
Ostrich eggshell
Freshwater shells
Ostrich eggshell
Ostrich eggshell
Freshwater shells
Burnt clay
Freshwater shells

C-14
C-14
C-14
C-14
C-14
C-14
C-14
C-14
C-14
TL
C-14

25 kyr
18 to 25 kyr
36/39 kyr
12 to 21 kyr
>41 kyr
30 kyr
>31 kyr
25 kyr
25 kyr
16 kyr
29 kyr

Wood
Wood
Freshwater shells

774 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

Bhedaghat, Dharangaon, Mehtakheri, Nagda, and

Dharmapuri are in the range of 2540 kyr. The upper
limit for sites like Baghor I ranges from 8000 to
9000 BC. The Mesolithic representing the terminal
stage of the Stone Age has been dated to 1828 kyr at
the Batadomba-leva and Beli-leva caves in Sri Lanka.
The Mesolithic sites in India date to 800010 000
years ago.
Culture Sequence

While it is true that at no single site in South Asia one

could see the Palaeolithic as a single evolving cultural
entity, we have now several excavated primary sites
(caves/rock shelters and open air sites) showing evidence of all three stages within the Palaeolithic. These
include the Sanghao cave in Pakistan, the rock
shelters at Adamgarh and Bhimbetka in central
India, 16 R dune site at Didwana in Rajasthan, and
Patne in the Deccan.
Lower Palaeolithic The South Asian Lower Palaeolithic consists of two distinct tool traditions, viz. the
Soan or pebble-tool assemblages (treated as part of the
general Southeast Asian tradition) and the biface or
handax-cleaver tradition (Figure 2). The former tradition is best known from the Himalayan foothill zone. In
the 1930s de Terra and Paterson postulated the existence of a regular sequence within this tradition, made
up of pre-Soan, Early, Evolved, and Late Soan stages.
Later T. T. Paterson and H. J. H. Drummond treated
the lithic assemblages as the handiwork of a war-loving
people, as against the peaceful folk of the bifacial tradition. As mentioned earlier, the British Archaeological
Mission to Pakistan later raised serious doubts about
the sedimentary contexts of lithic assemblages collected by de Terra and Paterson and their evolutionary
sequence. On the Indian side of the border, pebbletool assemblages were found in the Sirsa Valley of
Haryana and the BeasBanganga Valleys of Himachal
Pradesh. On the basis of stratigraphic data and palaeomagnetic dates these sites were assigned an age of
300400 kyr. These studies on the Indian side of the
Siwalik frontal range also produced bifacial assemblages of Acheulian character from the Hoshiarpur
Chandigarh sector, thereby raising the possibility that
the two traditions coexisted in the area the Soan
confined to the dun valleys of the frontal range and
the biface tradition occupying the flat or plateau surfaces. Pebble-tool assemblages have occasionally also
been reported from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, lower
Deccan and Kerala, but their stratigraphical contexts
need to be placed on a stronger basis. The lithic assemblages from all these sites are characterized by the
use of stone hammer technique and the artifact types

comprise uni- and bifacially worked choppers with

thick butts and convex, straight or pointed edges,
cores, and flakes (Figure 3).
Rich clusters of sites belonging to the second and
more widely spread Acheulian tradition are known
from northern part of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, Orissa, Bihar, and Jharkhand, hilly tracts
of West Bengal, lower hilly tracts of Uttar Pradesh,
Madhya Pradesh, mainland Gujarat, Rajasthan, and
the Himalayan foothill area of Punjab. Some lithic
assemblages have also been reported from the
Saurasthra and Konkan coasts of western India.
Good Acheulian assemblages are also known from
Sind and the Jhelum Basin in Pakistan, and the dun
valleys of Dang-Deokhuri in Nepal.
Barring a few cave/rockshelter sites like Bhimbetka
and Adamgarh, all known Acheulian sites are of the
open air type and are mostly associated with alluvial
deposits. Quartzite was the most commonly used
rock for tool-making, but in areas lacking in it other
suitable and locally available rocks such as dolerite
and basalt, granite, schist, fossilwood and even
limestone were employed. In addition to stone hammer technique, soft hammer and prepared core techniques were also employed commonly.
In pursuance of the behavioral approach to the
Stone Age past that began to be adopted by the
workers since the 1970s, intensive surveys were
undertaken in some regions for identifying in situ
occurrences of lithic assemblages. Large site complexes
were found in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan, Gujarat, the Singhbhum area of Bihar,
the Belan and Son Valleys of north central India,
Orissa, the Hunsgi and Baichbal Valleys of the Bhima
Basin, the Kaladgi Basin, the Chittoor, Kurnool and
Cuddapah areas of the Eastern Ghats, and the Kortallayar Basin of Tamil Nadu. Further, excavations were
undertaken at some well-preserved (in situ) sites for
understanding the Acheulian occupation activities
and techno-typological aspects. These included Singi
Talav and 16 R dune site at Didwana in Rajasthan,
Bhimbetka, and Adamgarh caves and the open air site
of Durkadi in the Narmada Valley, Samadhiala in
Gujarat, Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh, Sihawal, Patpara,
and Nakhjar Khurd in the Son Valley, Paisra in Bihar,
Chirki-Nevasa and Bori in Maharashtra, and Hunsgi
and Yediyapur in Hunsgi and Baichbal Valleys.
More recently, excavations were done at Isampur
and Lakhmapur in north Karnataka, Morgaon in
Maharashtra, and Attirampakkam in the Kortallayar
Basin of Tamil Nadu.
At Chriki-Nevasa the Acheulian cultural material
was found in association with colluvial gravel of basalt rocks resting on a sloping rock platform exposed

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 775

64

72

80

88

96

36

36
2

1
3
4

500
km

AN

TI
RMA

ABA
R. S

29

B
AM

R.

CH

T
BE

N
16
N 20
O
LA
.S
BE
.
R
19
R
13
17
23
A
18
D
RMA
26
R. NA
24
27
28
I
25
P
R. M
TA
AHA
NAD
R.
I
31

R.
14 15

12

33
36

21
22

20

R. GODAV
ARI
32
34
R. KRISHNA
35
39
40

42
41
R. PENNERU

43
44
R.
KA
45
VE
RI

12

A
UTR
MAP
H
A
R
R. B

37

38

N
BHUTA

R.

30

AL

I
UN

28

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10

AN

11

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NE

R.

DU

N
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SH

28

BANGLADE

T
IS

K
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SRI LANKA
64

72

80

88

Figure 2 Important Lower Palaeolithic sites in South Asia: 1, Riwat; 2, Pahlgam; 3, Jalalpur; 4, Dina; 5, Beas-Banganga complex; 6,
Sirsa-Ghaggar complex;7, Dang-Deokhuri complex; 8, Didwana; 9, Jayal; 10, Jaisalmer-Pokaran Road; 11, Ziarat Pir Shaban; 12, Berach
complex; 13, Chambal complex; 14, Bhimbetka; 15, Raisen complex; 16, Lalitpur; 17, Damoh complex; 18, Son complex; 19, Sihawal; 20,
Belan complex; 21, Sisunia; 22, Singhbhum complex; 23, Paisra; 24, Brahmani complex; 25, Waingana complex; 26, Mahadeo Piparia;
27, Adamgarh; 28, Durkadi; 29, Samadhiala; 30, Umrethi; 31, Gangapur; 32, Chirki-Nevasa; 33, Bori; 34, Nalgonda complex; 35,
Hunsgi and Baichbal basins complex; 36, Mahad; 37, Anagwadi; 38, Malwan; 39, Lakhmapur; 40, Nittur; 41, Kurnool complex; 42
Nagarjunakonda complex; 43, Cuddapah complex; 44, Rallakalava complex; 45, Kortallayar complex.

on the right bank of the river Pravara. One of the

trenches (VII) exposed a cultural level spread over an
area of 74 m2 and rich in stone artifacts and fossilized
bones of Bos sp. The large stone blocks found in the

level may have formed part of the foundation of

a dwelling structure. Localities V and VI at Hunsgi
and Yediyapur VI locality also preserved 2035 cm
thick Acheulian levels under half-a-meter thick silt

776 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

5
1

cm

cm

10
(a)

cm

(c)

(d)

(b)

cm

Figure 3 Pebble tools from South Asian Lower Palaeolithic sites (a) Nittur, Karnataka; (b) Jaisalmer-Pokaran Road, Rajasthan;
(c) Sirsa valley, Haryana; (d) Mahadeo Piparia, Madhya Pradesh.

deposits. These levels yielded limestone cores, finished tools and debitage. All these spots were associated with rocky eminences/ridges standing 36 m
above the beds of local streams. The Acheulian
groups appear to have preferred small open spaces
enclosed by rock boulders which facilitated the erection of temporary shelters with leaves and branches.
Paisra in the Munger district of Bihar exposed Acheulian levels under 11.5 m thick colluvial gravel deposits in an inland valley enclosed by hills. These levels
also preserved evidence of dwelling structures in the
form of alignment of post-holes and circular arrangement of stone blocks. At Attirampakkam the Acheulian level was found in a thick deposit of laminated clay.
In III F-23 rockshelter at Bhimbetka, the Acheulian
deposit was 2.5 m thick and consisted of occupation

floors paved with stone slabs and pieces. A small area

of 16 m2 produced 4700 lithic artifacts.
Detailed geoarchaeological studies and excavations
conducted by K. Paddayya at Isampur in the Hunsgi
Valley exposed a quarry-cum-occupation spot covering an area of 0.75 ha. It is associated with a weathered
rock outcrop consisting of silicified limestone blocks
of suitable sizes and shapes. It preserved a 2030 cm
thick in situ Acheulian level below 50 cm thick brown
silt deposit. Trench 1 exposed seven chipping clusters
(each 68 m2 in extent) made up of cores, flake blanks,
finished tools, hammerstones, and debitage, all found
in mint-fresh condition (Figures 4 and 5). The total
assemblage from this trench comprised over 15 000
artifacts, illustrating the manufacturing trajectories
adopted by the hominids to produce various categories

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 777

Figure 4 (a) Acheulian level exposed at 50 cm depth below surface in trench 1 at Isampur, Karnataka; (b) close-up of a chipping
cluster.

of implements. Small amounts of fossilized dental

and bone remains of bovids and cervids, and turtleshell pieces were also found along with cultural material. Three electron-spin resonance dates obtained on
fossil tooth-enamel of animals belonging to Bos sp.
found in the excavation gave an average value of
1.2 Myr, thereby making Isampur the earliest known
well-documented Palaeolithic site in South Asia.
Despite its long duration and wide geographical
spread, the developmental history of the Acheulian
is still unclear because none of the sites has preserved
any clear stratigraphical record. At the moment it is
possible to recognize two broad stages, i.e., Lower
Acheulian and Upper Acheulian. The Lower Acheulian is characterized by crude workmanship. Consequent upon the use of stone hammer technique, the
artifacts (handaxes, cleavers, pebble tools, etc.)
are generally thick with irregular cross-sections; the
surfaces are uneven with large patches of cortex; and

the edges are sinuous. Among the hand axes pointed

forms (pear-shaped, lanceolate, pyriform, etc.) show
a majority. In some of the Lower Acheulian assemblages picks, knives and polyhedrons occur regularly.
As examples of this stage one may cite the assemblages from Ziarat Pir Shaban in Sind, Dina, and
Jalalpur in the Punjab (all in Pakistan), and assemblages from the excavated Indian sites of Singi Talav
in Rajasthan, Durkadi in Madhya Pradesh, Lalitpur
in Uttar Pradesh, Chirki-Nevasa and Bori in Maharashtra, Hunsgi, Yediyapur, Isampur, and Anagwadi
in Karnataka, Singhbhum complex and Paisra in
Bihar. The bottom 10 cm portion of the Acheulian
level exposed in trench 1 at Isampur yielded 13 043
artifacts. Among these 169 are shaped implements
comprising hand axes (48), cleavers (15), knives
(18), scrapers (45), chopping tools (14), discoids (3),
perforators (5), and an indeterminate example
(Figure 6).

AA

ISAMPUR EXCAVATION MARCH 2000

TRENCH - 1
ACHEULIAN LEVEL
50 cm. PLOTTED SURFACE
0

50 cm

L E G E N D
ARTEFACTS
CHERT NODULE
K

KANKAR NODULE

LF

LIMESTONE FLAKE

CF CHERT FLAKE

QF

QUARTZITE FLAKE

CHERT
CHS HAMMERSTONE
QUARTZITE
QHS HAMMERSTONE
BASALT
OHS
HAMMERSTONE
c

LIMESTONE CORE

CC

CHERT CORE

CT

CHOPPING TOOL

KN

KNIFE

DF

BIFACIAL TOOLS
(HANDAXE/CLEAVER)

LIMESTONE
(WEATHERED BEDROCK)

XXXXX CLUSTER
DENTAGE

Figure 5 Chipping clusters in the Acheulian level exposed at 50 cm depth in trench 1 at Isampur. Courtesy: K. Paddayya et al., Recent findings on the Acheulian of the Hunsgi and Baichbal
valleys, Karnataka, with special reference to the Isampur excavation and its dating, Current Science, Vol. 83, No. 5, 2002, Fig. 6.

778 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

10

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 779

2
0

3
cm

3
0

5 cm

4
9

0
cm

6
0

cm

cm

8
0 1 2 3 4 5
cms

5
cms

Figure 6 Acheulian artifacts from Isampur excavation: 1, core; 23, cleavers; 45, hand axes; 6, perforator; 7, knife; 8, hammerstone.

The Upper Acheulian assemblages show the employment of cylinder or soft hammer technique, as a
result of which the artifacts become thinner with
smooth surfaces; the edges run more or less in a
straight line. There is a general increase in the proportion of cleavers. Hand axes now include oval and
triangular forms. Flake tools become more common.
Bhimbetka, Raisen complex and Sihawal II in central
India, Gangapur in Maharashtra, Mudnur and Lakhmapur in Karnataka, and Rallakalava complex in

Andhra Pradesh are good examples of this stage.

Bhimbetka has the following types among finished
artifacts: hand axes (55), cleavers (150), side-scrapers
(368), end-scrapers (108), backed knives (163),
truncated flakes and blades (87), notches (111), and
denticulates (78) (Figure 7).
The Middle Palaeolithic H. D. Sankalias findings
in the 1950s at Nevasa in the Deccan led to formal
recognition of the existence of a distinct Middle

780 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

10
cm
15,7

cm
6,810

Figure 7 Acheulian artifacts from rock-shelter III F-23 at Bhimbetka, Madhya Pradesh: 14, hand axes; 5,7, cleavers; 6, convex
scraper; 8, notched tool; 9, denticulate; 10, end-scraper.

Palaeolithic tradition in South Asia. Since then

literally hundreds of sites were found in different
parts of the Indian subcontinent (Figure 8). In addition to the areas yielding Lower Palaeolithic sites,
lithic assemblages of Middle Palaeolithic affiliation
have been reported from hilly and forested tracts like
Tripura and Garo hills of northeast India and the
Karnataka sector of Western Ghats. The Ratnapura
chert assemblages from southern alluvial tracts of
Sri Lanka and the MainmatiLalmai group of assemblages on fossilwood from Bangladesh also belong
to this tradition. In addition to this tendency to
occupy even hilly, forested zones, there is a distinct increase in the number of sites and this suggests
a more intensified use of the landscape. Sojat in
Rajasthan, Choli Dongargaon in central India, and
Kovalli and Devapur in Karnataka are good examples of extensive workshops that came up on raw
material outcrops.
The Middle Palaeolithic tradition is marked by two
major changes. First, while quartizite and other rocks
continued to be used in some areas, there was now an
overall preference for cryptocrystalline silica forms
such as chert, chalcedony, jasper, and agate. The

nodules/cobbles of these materials were procured

from river-beds or hillsides lying several kilometers
away. The second important change concerns the
manufacture of shaped tools on flake blanks. These
blanks were obtained by means of the plain flaking
(soft/hard hammer), prepared core and discoidal core
techniques. Margin or edge-retouch was the most
common form of secondary working employed for
shaping the flakes into regular implements. The chief
tool-types are as follows: (1) side-scrapers of various
types (straight, concave, covex, transverse, and alround edges); (2) points (simple, tanged or shouldered
and bifacially worked); (3) borers; (4) combination
tools like scraper-cum-borers and borer-cum-points;
and (5) knives, denticulates, burins, and end-scrapers.
Hand axes, cleavers, and pebble tools also occur at
a limited number of sites.
Sanghao cave provided a five-period culture
sequence, of which period I belongs to the Middle
Palaeolithic. The lithic assemblage is based on the
working of quartz by means of plain flaking, discoidal,
tortoise core, and fluted core or blade techniques.
The major tool types include scrapers of varioustypes, points, discoids, and borers. The rock shelter at

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 781

80

72

64

88

96

36

36
1

500 km

N
4
6

TI

LU

21

R. S

ABA

RMA

R.

20

7 R.

CH

AM

L
BA
W

R.

T
BE

DA

RMA

R. NA

10

N
LA
BE
.
R

31

R.

22

15

R.

AP
AHM

12

13

20

R. MA

TA

UTR

R. B
11

SO

19

16

17
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18

14

BHUTAN

NI

SH

28

PAL

G
AN

R.

NE
G

U
ND

R.

I
AK

28

BANGLADE

A
ST

20

HANA

DI

R. GODAV

ARI

R. KRISHNA

23
24

25
R. PENNERU

26

27
R.

12

28
29

KA

12

VE

RI

SRI LANKA
30
64

72

80

88

Figure 8 Important Middle Palaeolithic sites in South Asia: 1, Sanghao; 2, Ror; 3, Mangalpura; 4, Didwana; 5, Dang-Deokhuri complex;
6, Luni complex; 7, Hokra; 8, Berach complex; 9, Sihora; 10, Belan complex; 11, Meghalaya complex; 12, Mainmati-Lalmai complex; 13,
Tripura complex; 14, Bhimbetka; 15, Patpara; 16, Samnapur; 17, Wainganga complex; 18, Patne; 19, Singhbhum complex; 20, Brahmani
complex; 21, Rojdi; 22, Nevasa; 23, Shorapur doab complex; 24, Kovalli; 25, Nagarjunakonda complex; 26, Sanganakallu; 27, Nandipalle;
28, Rallakalava complex; 29, Kortallayar complex; 30, Ratnapura complex.

Bhimbetka also preserved a rich Middle Palaeolithic

level yielding a variety of quartzite scrapers, Levallois
flakes, and blades. A number of scrapers are made on
thin slabs. The occurrence of cleavers and hand axes
indicates the transitional nature of this assemblage.

Samnapur on the Narmada, Patpara on the Son,

and Sanganakallu in South India are three excavated
sites of the open air type. At Samnapur the cultural
level was found in a semiprimary context in
association with a rubble deposit of colluvial origin,

782 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

forming part of a thick deposit of brown silt. The

total site measured 100  60 m. Over 3000 cherty
quartzite artifacts were excavated from an area of
44 m2 along with some fossil animal bones. This
was an occupation-cum-workshop site. The shaped
tools include side-scrapers, end-scrapers, denticulates, notches, points, borers, and knives. The assemblage is totally lacking in hand axes and cleavers. The
granite hill-top site of Sanganakallu produced an
assemblage of dolerite artifacts.
Without meaning any chronological implications,
two broad groups could be recognized among the
Middle Palaeolithic assemblages those still showing
some proportion of bifacial implements (e.g., Luni
Valley in Rajasthan, Bhimbetka in central India, and
Rallakalava complex) and the ones consisting of
flake-tools of various types (e.g., Samnapur in central
India and Shorapur Doab complex of sites in north
Karnataka) (Figures 9 and 10).
The Upper Palaeolithic M. L. K Murtys discovery
of blade-burin assemblages in the 1960s from half

a dozen workshops occurring on the surface of

Rallakalava gravel and silt deposits in the Chittoor
district of south India enabled the formal acceptance
of this phase in the South Asian Palaeolithic. In the
following quarter-century blade tool assemblages
were reported from a number of sites in Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh,
Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Gujarat
(Figure 11).
Quartzite and siliceous materials such as chert
and chalcedony continued to be the chief raw materials for tool making. A notable development concerns the use of animal bone at some sites like the
Kurnool caves in South India and of ostrich eggshell
in western and central India. The shaped tools were
now fashioned on long slender blanks called blades
struck from longish, well-prepared fluted cores. This
blade technique involved the use of a soft hammer
(wood or bone) and an intermediate punch or chisel.
The blades so detached were subjected to secondary working comprising edge-retouch/chipping and
blunting. The shaped tools include scrapers, points,

cm

10

11

12

15

13

14

Figure 9 Middle Palaeolithic artifacts from Rallakalava basin, Andhra Pradesh: 13, hand axes; 45, cleavers; 710, scrapers; 11,
tanged point; 1213, bifacial points; 1415, borers.

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 783

2
1

0 cms 5

6
7

10

Figure 10 Middle Palaeolithic artifacts from Samnapur, Madhya

Pradesh: 14, 10, scrapers; 5, core; 6, blade core; 7, round
scraper; 8, knife; 9, steep scraper. Courtesy: V. N. Misra et al.,
Geoarchaeology of the Palaeolithic site at Samnapur in the central
Narmada valley, Man and the Environment, Vol. XV, No. 1, 1990,
Fig. 8.

knives, borers, etc. In a few cases (e.g., the Rallakalava assemblages) various burin forms also occur
commonly. Toward the terminal part of this stage
microlithic forms appear, heralding the tradition of
composite tools which characterize the succeeding
Mesolithic stage.
The majority of Upper Palaeolithic sites belong to
the open air type and consist of extensive lithic scatters which developed on outcrops or veins of raw
material. Rallakalava assemblages from the Chittoor
area, Vodikalu in the Gunjana Valley of Cuddapah
region, Yadwad in the Kaladgi Basin, Maralbhavi in
the Bhima Basin, Bhokar in Maharashtra, and Baghor
on the Son are well-known examples.
The excavated sites include the caves of Bhimbetka
and Kurnool, and the open air sites of Patne and
Baghor I. In rock-shelter III F-23 at Bhimbetka the
Upper Palaeolithic level (layer 4) was found sandwiched between the Middle Palaeolithic and Mesolithic levels, and yielded blade artifacts of quartzite.
The Kurnool limestone caves were first investigated
by R. B. Foote in the nineteenth century. Foote

even claimed recovery of bone implements of the

Magdalenian type. Muchchtlachintamanugavi was
excavated in the 1970s and exposed 4085 cm thick
deposit made up of stone blocks and rubble as well as
cultural material and animal fossils. It yielded over
223 artifacts of shale and limestone, and 2003 bone
implements comprising scrapers, spatulae, and points.
The faunal material was typically Upper Pleistocene in
character comprising dental and osteological remains
of various animal species. A fireplace was also noticed
in the cultural level and a burnt clay sample from it has
a TL date of 17, 390 years B.P.
Patne is located in the Ajanta range of hills of the
Deccan, and preserved a three-tier (Middle and Upper
Palaeolithic, and Mesolithic) sequence in gravel and silt
deposits measuring 1020 m in thickness (Figure 12).
Levels 512 (from top) represented the Upper Palaeolithic. Among these layers 5 and 7 were especially rich
in stone artifacts and yielded 11 788 and 12 301 specimens, respectively. Five developmental phases (AE)
were recognized within the Upper Palaeolithic. Phases
A and B form an early variant with jasper as the main
raw material, while phases CE represent a late variant characterized by the use of chalcedony and
appearance of lunates, trapezes, and triangles. Phase
D has a C-14 date of 25 kyr. Patne also yielded many
ostrich eggshell pieces including a few incised specimens and beads. Excavations at Baghor I on the river
Son exposed a terminal Palaeolithic occupation floor
covering an area of 286 m2. It yielded a developed
lithic assemblage. An interesting feature exposed
at this site was the discovery of a rubble platform
which was interpreted as a shrine for mother goddess
worship.
Two broad variants could be recognized among
the lithic assemblages an incipient blade-tool tradition and a developed blade-tool tradition. In the
former the blades are rather thick and ill-formed.
Simple or retouched blades, flake scrapers, points
and borers, and sometimes even chopping tools
occur. Backed tools and burins are uncommon. Sites
in the Kurnool area, Shorapur Doab in the Bhima
Basin, Bhokar in Maharashtra, Bhimbetka in central
India, Singhbhum region in Bihar, Buddha Pushkar
in Rajasthan, and Visadi in Gujarat represent this
archaic stage (Figure 13). In the evolved tradition the
blade technique undergoes a large degree of refinement
so that the blade blanks are slender with perfect
parallel sides. Implements like scrapers, points, and
knives obtained by edge-blunting become more common. Vodikalu in Cuddapah area, Rallakalava assemblages from Chittoor, and Baghor I assemblage from
the Son Valley are some examples of this tradition
(Figure 14).

784 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

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72

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R. NA
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11
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TA
R.
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14
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18

TRA

R. B

APU
6

M
AH

R. M
AHA
NAD
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20

22
23
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25
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B
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DE
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Figure 11 Important Upper Palaeolithic sites in South Asia: 1, Sanghao; 2 Jenana; 3, Didwana; 4, Budha Pushkar; 5, Belan complex; 6,
Michimgiri; 7, Singhbhum complex; 8, Baghor I; 9, Bhimbetka; 10, Visadi; 11, Bhadne; 12, Patne; 13, Bhokar; 14, Papamiya Tekdi; 15,
Dhavalpuri; 16, Nevasa; 17, Inamgaon; 18, Asla; 19, Shorapur Doab complex; 20, Yadwad; 21, Kurnool complex: 22, Nagarjunakonda
complex; 23, Yerragondapalam; 24, Vodikalu; 25, Nandipalle; 26, Peddarajupalli; 27, Renigunta; 28, Vemula.

General Features

Settlement Patterns

Having reviewed the substantive and chronological

aspects of the South Asian Palaeolithic record, it now
remains to consider briefly some general features of
Stone Age adaptations.

Excluding some specific tracts such as the Indus and

Gangetic plains, central and northern parts of Sri
Lanka, and the deltaic region of Bangladesh, Palaeolithic sites occur practically all over the South Asian

IIIB

IIIA

Unconformity
3

8
4

Mesolithic

IIIC

Period III

Late
Mesolithic

10

Early
Mesolithic

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 785

7
5

Unconformity

IIC

9
10

IID

IIB

11

12

IIA

Upper Palaeolithic

Period II

Early Upper
Palaeolithic

Meters

Late Upper
Palaeolithic

IIE

1
13

Period I
advanced
Middle
Palaeolithic

Unconformity

Rock

Figure 12 Sedimentary stratigraphy and Stone Age culture

sequence at Patne, Maharashtra. Courtesy: S. A. Sali, The
Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Cultures of Maharashtra
(Pune, Deccan College), 1989, Fig. 11.

zone. The Stone Age groups occupied diverse geographical regions comprising high altitude and cold
tracts like the Kashmir Valley, the Potwar plateau
filled with thick sedimentary deposits, the dun valleys
of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Nepal, the
Aravalli hills stretching from Gujarat to Delhi, the
desert zone of Rajasthan, plateau tracts of central
and eastern India, the Deccan and south India, and
some coastal tracts. Geological basins of the Purana
age seem to have served as preferred habitats on
account of the valley-like topographic forms, availability of various rocks for flaking, and presence
of perennial water springs. Prehistorians in South
Asia are yet to fully explore the topic of hominid

adaptations in terms of sub-regional topographic

and ecological settings.
The intensive site surveys carried out in some
regions permit inferences about settlement patterns.
A large cluster of about 90 open air Acheulian sites is
known from the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh.
These are found in a valley enclosed by sandstone
hills and were occupied in winter. In the rainy season
Palaeolithic groups moved to the rock shelters of
the adjacent Bhimbetka hills. In the Kaladgi Basin,
covering the Malaprabha and Ghataprabha Valleys,
sites were mapped in relation to landform types. The
Stone Age groups generally avoided the forested and
high rainfall tracts close to the Western Ghats and
concentrated their occupation on river banks and in
foothill zone of the middle reaches of rivers. The more
recent work in the Malaprabha Basin, including a
small excavation at Lakhmapur, exposed Acheulian
occurrences on a lateritic surface and these were later
covered by sediments laid by low-energy processes.
Raw material from quartzite outcrops and water
sources in the form of springs and shallow streams
were exploited by the hominid groups.
The two-decade-long surveys and excavations in the
Hunsgi and Baichbal valleys of the neighbouring
Bhima Basin brought to light over 200 Acheulian
sites in an area of about 500 km2 (Figure 15). Four
major site categories emerged from this study: (1)
secondary fluvial sites; (2) secondary colluvial sites;
(3) secondary sites modified by surface runoff; and
(4) in situ or primary occurrences. Most of the sites
were found to belong to the last category, which
were again classified into manufacturing sites, occupation sites, food-processing sites yielding faunal material, single-event activity or off-sites, and stone tool
caches. Two major site concentrations (each made
up of 1520 occurrences and spread over a stretch of
1 or 2 km) were recognized in the area one near
Hunsgi in the Hunsgi Valley and the other near Yediyapur in the Baichbal Valley. The remaining sites were
found in a dispersed way all over the basin floors. In
East Africa a similar differential distribution of Palaeolithic sites was called scatter between the patches.
Considering this differential site distribution together
with seasonal availability of water sources and wild
plant and animal foods, as inferred from ethnographic
data, it was proposed that the Acheulian settlement
system of the Hunsgi and Baichbal Basins hinged
upon two main annual resource management strategies: (1) dry season aggregation of the Acheulian
groups near the perennial waterpools (fed by seepsprings) in the Hunsgi and Fathepur streams and concentration on large game hunting; and (2) wet season
random dispersal across the basin floors, resulting in

786 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

3
5
4

14

9
cm
12

10

13

11

15

20
21

16

17

18

19

22

23

Figure 13 Upper Palaeolithic artifacts from the Shorapur Doab, Karnataka: 13, retouched blades; 45, strangulated blades; 67,
backed blades; 8, nosed scraper; 9, end-scraper; 1015, burins; 1718 simple points; 1920, tanged points; 2122, borers; 2324, blade
cores.

the widely scattered small sites and nonsites, and

exploitation of a variety of season-specific plant foods,
small fauna and water pools of the basin floors. The
more recent work at Isampur revealed that this place
was a localized hub for manufacturing and occupation activities. Three or four additional hubs constituted
the Acheulian settlement system of the Hunsgi and
Baichbal Valleys.
Economic Organization

The South Asian Palaeolithic sites could be grouped

under the forager model, where the hunter-gatherer
groups map on to resources of a given region, as
according to their seasonal and spatial distribution.
The fossil fauna obtained from alluvial contexts at
a number of places definitely shows that in the Pleistocene various ecosystems were supporting rich
wildlife and vegetation. Direct evidence of faunal exploitation is however confined to open-air sites like

Isampur, Chirki-Nevasa, Samnapur, and the caves of

Bhimbetka and Kurnool. In recent years ethnoarchaeological research provided many analogies drawn from
the study of hunting-gathering communities like the
Chenchus, Boyas, Yerukalas, and Yanadis in South
India, and Pardhis and Van Vagris in central and
western India.
The faunal remains from excavated sites prove that
wild cattle, wild horse, wild elephant, and various
deer, and antlelope species were being exploited for
food purposes. Isampur excavation yielded shell
remains of land turtle, thereby indicating that small
fauna too was being exploited by the Palaeolithic
groups. From the ethnographic record one could
infer that this small fauna comprised the hare, birds,
reptiles, amphibians, rodents, insects, and fishes. It is
particularly abundant in wet season and its exploitation requires only collecting strategies. Muchchatlachintamanugavi exposed a fireplace consisting of
regular arrangement of limestone blocks. This is the

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 787

2
3

10

11

12
13

15

14

16

17

cm

19

20

21

18

Figure 14 Upper Palaeolithic artifacts from Rallakalava Basin, Andhra Pradesh: 12, blades; 3, backed knife; 412, backed blades
and bladelets; 13, borer; 14, tanged point; 15, blade core; 16, end-scraper; 1721, burins of various forms.

earliest known human use of fire in South Asia; it was

used for both cooking and heating of rocks required
for tool making.
Unfortunately, direct evidence of exploitation of
plant foods is lacking. But ethnobotanical studies
clearly show that the scrub jungle and deciduous
ecosystems which occupy much of the peninsular
Indian landmass offer a wide variety of wild plant
foods which are still being exploited by many tribal
groups like the Gonds, Boyas, Yerukalas, Yanadis,
and Chenchus, and also by the economically background classes of village communities. These foods
comprise a variety of tuber and root crops, leafy
vegetables, edible seeds, gums and mushrooms, and
many species of fruits, berries/pods. Honey is another
commonly used item. Like small fauna, many of these
plant foods are particularly abundant in the rainy
season. We may infer that the Palaeolithic groups of
South Asia exploited all these wild plant foods by
adopting simple collecting strategies. The recovery
of archaeobotanical remains of three wild edible
plant species, i.e., Artocarpus nobilis (wild bread
fruit), Canarium zeylanicum (a wild nut), and two

species of wild banana from the Mesolithic levels

(dated between 8000 and 10 000 years BP) in the
Batadomba-lena and Beli-lena caves of Sri Lanka is
a clear pointer in this regard.
Art, Ornamentation, and Religious Aspects

Certain strands of evidence inform us about the esthetic/artistic activities too. In some of the Acheulian
assemblages, hand axes, particularly the pointed,
ovate, and cordate forms, assume symmetric and esthetically pleasing shapes. So it is possible that these
specimens, in addition to serving utilitarian purposes,
were also treated as objects of art. Judging by the
criteria formulated by Jean Piagets genetic epistemology, these specimens also betray higher cognitive
abilities acquired by the Acheulian groups. Second,
several hundred painted rockshelters are known from
the Vindhyan and Kaimur hills of central India. The
earliest of these pictures depicting hunting, gathering,
fishing, and trapping activities may go back to the
terminal Palaeolithic. A third piece of art evidence
comes from one of the Upper Palaeolithic sites of

788 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

7630

7635

7640

1640

1640

7625

500

KEMBHAVI
FATEHPUR
PARASANAHALLI

JAINAPUR
TALHALLI
KARADAKAL

YEDIAPUR

MUDNOR

SHAKAPUR
TEGGIHALLI

1635

1635

PIRAPUR

Map showing the

distribution of
Acheulian sites in
the Hunsgi and
Baichbal Valleys

KUDALAGI

AGIRTH

MAVINAMATTI

AGN
500
KANAHALLI

SADAB

BAICHBAL

KARIBHAVI

BA

GUNDALAGER

ARIKERA

LAKKUNDI

YEDIHALLI

SALGONDI

ICH

BA

LS

TR

EA

ACHEULIAN

BONAL

NAVADG

KALADEVANAHALLI
EAM

HU
NS

TO TALIKOT

BANAHATTI

BANDAPPANHALLI

SALADGI

STR

GI

CHENNUR

KANKAR CONGLOMERATES
CONTOUR

BACHIMATTI
BENAKANAHALLI

HUNSGI

MALNUR

SPRING
500

HEBBAL B

DEVAPUR

500

3km

TOVADOR

KARIANIGUDDA
MARALBHAVI

HEBBAL K

WAJAL

MODERN VILLAGE
TRAVERTINE

1630

1630
ISAMPUR
KOLIHAL

*EXCAVATED LOCALITY

ACHEULIAN SECONDARY SITE

ACHEULIAN NON-SITE

KACHAKNUR

SIDDAPUR

GULBAL

1625

SRINIVASPUR

Tank
MANJALAPUR

1625

SHELLAGI

MANGALUR

INDIA

KUPI
Tank
KAMNATAGI

500

BALSHETTIHAL
KAKKERA

500

AREA OF
MAP

RAJANKOLLUR

TO NARAYANPUR

7625

7630

7635

7640

BSW

Figure 15 Distribution pattern of Acheulian sites in Hunsgi and Baichbal Basins, Karnataka. The clusters near Hunsgi and Yediyapur
are shown in dotted circles.

the Belan valley. It consists of a female figurine of

bone (8 cm high) with featureless face and pendant breasts. But some scholars have called it a mere
harpoon-head.
The Acheulian level at Hunsgi V yielded a few
pieces of red ocher, which were probably procured
by the site occupants from the neighborhood and
used for body decoration. Patne, Mehtakheri, Rajota,
and many other Upper Palaeolithic sites in western
and central India yielded ostrich eggshell pieces. At
Patne a few pieces were obtained from the preceding Middle Palaeolithic level. These pieces included a
few specimens showing criss-cross design engraved
between horizontal lines (Figure 16). Patne also
yielded three disk-beads of ostrich eggshell (Figure 17)
and a fourth specimen made of marine shell. These
specimens represent the earliest and undoubted evidence of ornamentation in South Asia.

Finally, some clues are available about the

religious beliefs of the South Asian Stone Age groups.
Baghor I exposed an extensive occupation floor yielding an advanced blade-tool assemblage dated to
80009000 BC. What is more interesting, a stone
rubble platform-like structural feature, circular in
shape and measuring 85 cm in diameter, was exposed
in the central part of this site (Figure 18). A triangularshaped block of sandstone (15 cm height, 6.5 cm broad
and 6.5 cm thick) bearing an eye-striking pattern of
concentric and bright-colored laminations (light yellowish red to dark reddish brown) was found amidst
the rubble of this platform (Figure 19). Using the practices still prevalent among communities like the Kol
and the Baiga living in the area as an analogy, the
rubble platform has been interpreted as a shrine
where the Late Palaeolithic inhabitants placed this
natural piece of stone with bright-colored laminations

ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures 789

Figure 16 Ostrich eggshell piece from Patne, Maharashtra, showing an engraved design. Courtesy: S. A. Sali, The Upper Palaeolithic
and Mesolithic Cultures of Maharashtra (Pune, Deccan College), 1989, Fig. XVIIa.

Figure 17 Disc beads of ostrich eggshell from Patne, Maharashtra. After Sali, 1989. Courtesy: S. A. Sali, The Upper Palaeolithic and
Mesolithic Cultures of Maharashtra (Pune, Deccan College), 1989, Fig. XVIIb.

and worshipped it as a manifestation of Mai or

mother goddess.
Hominid Remains and Origins

The issues of whens and hows of hominid colonization of South Asia are extremely difficult ones to

settle at the moment, partly because of the paucity

of hominid skeletal remains and partly due to the
uncertain sedimentary contexts and antiquity of cultural material. However, one or two brief comments
may be made to conclude this essay.
Up to the present time only two instances of the
occurrence of hominid fossils are known from South

790 ASIA, WEST/Paleolithic Cultures

Figure 18 Stone rubble platform exposed at Baghor I, Madhya Pradesh. Courtesy: J. M. Kenoyer et al., An Upper Palaeolithic shrine
in India? Antiquity, Vol. LVII, 1983, Plate X(a).

Figure 20 Fossil skull cap of archaic Homo sapiens from Hathnora on the Narmada, Madhya Pradesh. Courtesy: A. Sonakia,
Skull cap of early man from the Narmada valley (Pleistocene) of
central India, American Anthropologist, Vol. 87, 1985, Fig. 2.
Figure 19 Obverse and reverse positions of a triangular shaped
sandstone block (height: 15 cm) from Baghor I, Madhya Pradesh,
bearing colored laminations and probably worshipped as a manifestation of mother goddess. Courtesy: J. M. Kenoyer et al., An Upper
Palaeolithic shrine in India? Antiquity, Vol. LVII, 1983, Plate X(b).

Asia. At Hathnora on the river Narmada a fossil

hominid cranial vault (calvarium) was found in
1982 in 3 m thick gravel conglomerate dated to middle to upper Pleistocene (Figure 20). Hand axes and
mammalian fossils were found in association with
this hominid piece, which is treated as an archaic
form of Homo sapiens. Subsequently, a fossil hominid
clavicle was also reported from this site. In 2001 a
third hominid fossil specimen of archaic H. sapiens
was found at Odai on the Tamil Nadu coast. Here a

fossilized baby skull was found in 2 m-thick ferricrete

deposit dated to 166 kyr by TL method (see Luminescence Dating).
As to the problem of origins, the hominid fossil
and cultural findings of recent years from Georgia,
China, and Indonesia may imply that the Soan pebble-tool tradition was a part of the spread of Oldowan
tradition of East Africa across Asia by a northern route
somewhere between 1.8 and 2 Ma. It has been argued
further that the initial dispersal of the Acheulian into
West Asia took place already by 1.4 Myr and more
widespread dispersal covering even the South Asian
zone took place by 780 kyr along a southern route
cutting across the Arabian peninsula. Contrary to the

ASIA, WEST/Sri Lanka 791

opinions expressed by earlier scholars deriving the succeeding Middle and Upper Palaeolithic traditions from
West Asia or western Europe, the culture sequences
exposed in various caves/rockshelters and open-air
sites in India and Pakistan clearly imply that the Palaeolithic culture of South Asia evolved locally from the
Acheulian base and in this process developed tremendous intra-regional adaptational diversity.
See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Asia, South: India, Paleolithic Cultures of the
South; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples; Asia,
West: Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Hunter-Gatherers,
Ancient; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Ritual,
Religion, and Ideology.

Further Reading
Agrawal DP and Kharakwal JS (2002) South Asian Prehistory,
ch. 24. New Delhi: Aryan Books International.
Badam GL (1979) Pleistocene Fauna of India with Special Reference to the Siwaliks. Pune: Deccan College.
Chakrabarti DK (1999) Indian An Archaeological History:
Palaeolithic Beginnings to Early Historic Foundations, ch. 2
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Dennell RW (1995) The Early Stone Age of Pakistan: A methodological review Man and Environment 20(1): 2128.
Deraniyagala SU (1992) The Prehistory of Sri Lanka (2 pts).
Colombo: Department of Archaeological Survey.
Mishra S (1994) The South Asian Lower Palaeolithic. Man and
Environment 19(12): 5771.
Mishra S (1995) Chronology of the Indian Stone Age: The impact
of recent absolute and relative dating attempts. Man and Environment 20(2): 1116.
Misra VN (1989) Stone Age India: An ecological perspective. Man
and Environment 14(1): 1764.
Murty MLK (1979) Recent research on the Upper Palaeolithic
phase in India. Journal of Field Archaeology 6(3): 301320.
Paddayya K (1978) New research designs and field techniques in
the Palaeolithic archaeology of India. World Archaeology 10:
94110.
Paddayya K (1984) India: Stone Age. In: Mueller-Karpe (ed.) Neue
Forschungen zur Altsteinziet, pp. 345403. Munich: C.H. Beck
Verlag.
Paddayya K (2001) The Acheulian culture project of the Hunsgi
and Baichbal Valleys, peninsular India. In: Barham L and
Robson-Brown K (eds.) Human Roots: Africa and Asia in the
Middle Pleistocene, pp. 235258. Bristol: Western Academic
and Specialist Press.
Pappu RS (2001) Acheulian Culture in Peninsular India: An Ecological Perspective. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld.
Petraglia MD and Korisettar R (eds.) (1998) Early Human Behaviour in Global Context: The Rise and Diversity of the Lower
Palaeolithic Record. London and New York: Routledge.
Sankalia HD (1964) Middle Stone Age culture in India and
Pakistan. Science 146: 365376.
Settar S and Korisettar R (eds.) (2002) Prehistory: Archaeology of South Asia Indian Archaeology in Retrospect Vol. I.
New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research and
Manohar.

Sri Lanka
Robin Coningham and Keir Strickland, Durham
University, Durham, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Culavamsa The final Pali record of the Sri Lankan kings written
in Pali the little or lesser chronicle. It effectively follows on from
the Mahavamsa and covers the period from the fourth century
AD to the start of British rule in the nineteenth century.
Dipavamsa The oldest Early Historic record of Sri Lanka. Like
the Mahavamsa, it is believed to have been compiled by monks
around the fourth century AD. Its title translates as Island
Chronicle in Pali.
Early Historic Refers to the second emergence of urbanization
in South Asia, dating to the early part of the first millennium BC
through to the mid-first millennium AD. Its historic references
are derived from texts such as the Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa.
Mahavamsa The greatest of the islands Pali chronicles (literally,
its name translates as Great Chronicle), it covers the period from
the introduction of Buddhism to Sri Lanka with the coming of
Prince Vijaya from north India in the middle of the first
millennium BC to the reign of King Mahasena in the fourth
century AD.
stupa Solid-brick hemispherical mound constructed over
Buddhist relics.
vihara Pali term for Buddhist monastery.

Introduction
The island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon until 1973) lies 48 km
off the coast of southern India and is effectively an
extension of the Indian peninsula. However, while it
shares many environmental and social characteristics
with southern India the island is nevertheless both a
distinct regional unit within South Asian archaeology
and an independent nation state.
Despite its relatively small size, the island can be
divided into two distinct zones: a dry zone and a wet
zone. The wet zone encompasses the southwest of the
island and follows the lowland plains of the coast
lifting sharply into the upland, rising to over 2400 m
above sea level at Adams Peak near the center of
the island. The dry zone covers nearly two-thirds
of the island and is characterized by low level plains
that stretch from the far north of the island, down the
east coast and to the far south.
The environment of the dry zone plains is similar to
that of inland southern India, and dense human
inhabitation is only made possible through extensive
irrigation and water management, with artificial
reservoirs covering the landscape. Sadly this climatic
northsouth divide can now also be seen reflected
in the long running, bloody conflict between Tamil
separatists and the Sri Lanka government (Figure 1).

792 ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Sri Lanka

IT
TRA
KS
L
PA Kantarodai

Height above sea level

BAY OF
BENGAL

Jaffna

Mannar

2000 m
1500 m
1000 m
500 m
100 m
0m

Modern city
Archaeological site

Mantai

GULF OF
MANNAR
Trincomalee
Pomparipu
Anuradhapura

INDIAN
OCEAN
Polonnaruva
Ibbankatuva

Ballcaloe

Ampara

Kandy

Colombo

Badulla

Ratnapura

INDIAN
OCEAN
INDIAN
OCEAN

Galle

0
Map 2

100 km
1: 2 000 000

xxxxx xxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx

Figure 1 Map of Sri Lanka.

EarlyLater Prehistory
Sri Lankan prehistory is notable because, to date,
it lacks both a Palaeolithic and a Neolithic and the
earliest human activity can only be securely pushed
back to the first appearance of microlithic-using
hunter-gatherers.
Despite this relatively late start, it is no exaggeration to state that Sri Lanka has one of the largest
bodies of prehistoric archaeological research in
South Asia for its size. This body of work was pioneered by the Sarasin brothers in the first decade of

the twentieth century. In many respects they were

ahead of their time in their treatment of stratigraphic
sequences, artifact recording, faunal recording, site
sampling, and critically their usage of ethnographic
comparisons. By studying the extant Vadda huntergatherers, they were able to develop comparative
interpretations for the archaeological record. This
approach has continued to be used in recent years
with Kennedy suggesting a phenotypic link between
the so-called Balangoda Man (Homo sapiens balangodensis) and modern Vadda communities.

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Sri Lanka 793

The Sarasins work laid firm foundations, and over

the next decade a number of archaeologists, such as
Hartley (1911) and Wayland (1915 and 1919) studied
Sri Lankas later prehistory, creating a vibrant field. In
particular, since the 1930s, P. E. P. Deraniyagala, and
later his son S. U. Deraniyagala, have developed a
rigorous investigation of the islands prehistory
through the use of extensive surveys and excavations
in the Ratnapura region of southwest Sri Lanka, an
area with deep Pleistocene alluvial deposits and a
number of open air and cave sites with faunal remains,
human remains and lithic artifacts. The Ratnapura
and later geometric microlithic industry are characterized by the use of quartzite stone tools, and the latter
bear close comparison to the lithics of the Teri (sanddune) sites of littoral southern India. Microlithic-toolusing sites are found throughout Sri Lanka, ranging
from dunes to caves demonstrating the versatility and
mobility of the islands hunter-gatherers. Radiometric
dates from these sites demonstrate that microlithictool-using communities spread across the island
from 30 000 years BP onwards and in some places
demonstrate a continuity that lasts until the first
millennium BC.

ware ceramics and the use of iron, spread across the

island at the beginning of the first millennium BC.
Paralleling a similar technological and cultural development in peninsula India, the lack of a Neolithic or
Chalcolithic phase in Sri Lanka has tempted some to
suggest a demic diffusion from the south of India to
the island. However, to date there is no physical evidence of such a movement and it remains supposition.
The focus of Iron Age research has been primarily
on locating its cist burials and megalithic cemeteries,
which are found throughout the dry zone. Settlement
and subsistence data is limited to Coninghams
excavations at Anuradhapura, which show continuity from the beginning of the first millennium BC
(c. 840460 BC) through to the Medieval period.
Reflected in the substitution of small temporary
shelters by larger, more substantial, circular poststructures, the population of Anuradhapura increases
through the Iron Age as the settlement reaches a size of
28 ha and island-wide trade networks are augmented
by links across South Asia as a whole. Unfortunately,
few of the islands Iron Age cemeteries have been
published with only preliminary reports from Ibbankatuva and Pomparipu, restricting our knowledge of
social differentiation and ranking (Figure 2).

The Iron Age and Megalithic

Although we are unable to identify an overlap between these hunter-gatherers and the first iron-using
populations, a new cultural complex characterized
by the use of megalithic cist burials, black and red

Figure 2 Megalithic cist cemetery at Ibbankatuva.

The Early Historic and Anuradhapura

The Early Historic period begins in Sri Lanka around
450 BC and is distinct but still shows clear cultural
continuity with the preceding Iron Age. The Early

794 ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Sri Lanka

Historic is characterized by the emergence of urbanization, literacy, long-distance trade and the arrival of
Buddhism. Equally significant, its archaeological
record is augmented by the appearance of the islands
earliest historical records the Mahavamsa and
Dipavamsa. Recording accounts of the history of
Sri Lanka from its initial colonization by the north
Indian prince, Vijaya, and his companions in the
middle of the first millennium BC, these chronicles
were consolidated a thousand years later by Buddhist
monks and provide a valuable, if limited, context for
the interpretation of Early Historic archaeology.
Recorded in the Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa as one
of the first settlements to be established by Vijayas
followers, the city of Anuradhapura in the northern
central plains of Sri Lanka is undoubtedly at the center
of the Early Historic period in Sri Lanka. Its position is
reinforced by the fact that it has been both excavated
and published to a high standard, first by Deraniyagala,
and more recently by Coningham. Their fieldwork
suggests that Anuradhapura expanded dramatically
within a newly fortified circuit enclosing almost 70 ha
dwarfing other excavated Early Historic sites such as
the port site of Mantai on the northwest coast and
Kantarodai in the Jaffna Peninsula. Although Tissamaharama in the south of the island has long been identified as the capital of the sub-kingdom of Ruhuna and
contains a similar pattern of monasteries and reservoirs, its exact size is still unknown. Despite this focus
on larger settlements, the failure of recent surveys to

Figure 3 Jetavana stupa at Anuradhapura.

identify towns within Anuradhapuras hinterland has

led to the suggestion that monasteries may have performed many of the administrative tasks associated
with this category of settlement.
Capital from the fifth century BC until 1017 AD,
Anuradhapuras pre-eminence is reinforced by its
position as the birthplace of Buddhism in Sri Lanka,
as it was here that the missionary Mahinda, son of the
Mauryan emperor Asoka (see Asia, South: Buddhist
Archaeology), arrived in the middle of the third century BC. Converting king Devanampiya Tissa and his
court to Buddhism, the establishment of Anuradhapuras Mahavihara or great monastery was augmented by relics of the Buddha and a cutting from the
Bodhi tree at Bodhi Gaya and led to a growth in
pilgrimage from across the Buddhist world. The first
of the citys great brick stupas, the 106.5 m high
Ruyanvelisaya and 58.5 m high Mirisavati were
built on the orthodox Mahavihara in the second
century BC but they were challenged by the establishment of Abhayagiri in the first century BC and
Jetavanarama monastery in the third century AD,
the former centered on a stupa of 71.5 m and the
latter on one of 160 m (Figure 3).
Indicating the availability of surplus labor and
resources to the kings of Anuradhapura, their fortified capital was surrounded by 25 km2 of monastic
establishments with a recorded community of over
10 000 monks and nuns. Anuradhapuras survival
within the dry zone of the island is testimony to the

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Sri Lanka 795

Figure 4 Kalawewa reservoir.

creation of a vast hydraulic system. Begun with

the construction of simple gravity reservoirs, such as
the Basawak Kulam (91 ha) and Tissa Wewa (160 ha),
to store excess water from the wet season for use in
the dry season, the Malwattu Oya was unable to
satisfy the increasing demands of the city (Figure 4).
Although the construction of the Nuwara Wewa
(1288 ha) reservoir in the first century AD eased the
situation, water had to be diverted to Anuradhapura
from other river catchments through a system of feeder channels and vast storage reservoirs in the fifth
century AD. Guaranteeing two rice harvests a year,
Anuradhapuras surplus facilitated its participation in
Indian Ocean trade as evidenced by Roman glass,
intaglio, coins and metalwork, and early Islamic and
Chinese glazed vessels.
The dynastic capital for one and a half millennia,
the Culavamsa records that Anuradhapura was sacked
by military expeditions from south India in the eleventh century AD and, despite restoration attempts by
later kings, the collapse of its integrated system of
irrigation, agriculture and ritual eventually led to the
depopulation of the dry zone. Laying the foundations
for much of the islands urban, mercantile, economic,
religious and secular character, many Sri Lankans

still regard the islands Early Historic period, indelibly associated as it is with Anuradhapura, as a
halcyon age.
See also: Asia, South: Buddhist Archaeology; India,
Paleolithic Cultures of the South; Megaliths; Paleolithic
Cultures.

Further Reading
Bandaranyake SD (1974) Sinhalese Monastic Architecture: The
Viharas of Anuradhapura. Leiden: EJ Brill.
Brohier RL (1924) Ancient Irrigation Works in Ceylon. Colombo:
Ceylon Government Press.
Coningham RAE (1999) Anuradhapura (vol. 1). Oxford:
Archaeopress.
Coningham RAE (2006) Anuradhapura (vol. 2). Oxford:
Archaeopress.
Coningham RAE and Allchin FR (1995) The rise of cities in
Sri Lanka. In: Allchin FR (ed.) The Archaeology of Early Historic
South Asia, pp. 152183. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Cooray PG (1984) An Introduction to the Geology of Sri Lanka
(Ceylon). Colombo: National Museums of Sri Lanka.
Deraniyagala SU (1992) The Prehistory of Sri Lanka (2 vols.).
Colombo: Department of Archaeological Survey.
Geiger W (1934) The Mahavamsa. (translated). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

796 ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations

ASIA, SOUTHEAST
Contents
Early States and Civilizations
Pre-Agricultural Peoples

Early States and

Civilizations
Charles Higham, University of Otago, Dunedin, New
Zealand
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Angkor Site of a series of capital cities of the Khmer empire
for much of the period from the ninth century to the fifteenth
century CE.
Buddhism A non-theistic religion, a philosophy, and a system
of psychology pronounced by Buddha.
Cham civilization An ancient civilization of the Quang-nam
(where Dong-duong is located), Amaravati, Vijaya (the presentday Bihn-dinh), and Pandurang regions.
Dvaravati Kingdom of the Mon people that existed from the
sixth to the eleventh centuries. It was centered on the Chao
Phraya River valley in modern-day Thailand, with Nakhon
Pathom as the capital.
Hindu religion A diverse body of religion, philosophy, and
cultural practice native to and predominant in India.
inscriptions Words or letters written, engraved, painted, or
otherwise traced on a surface and can appear in contexts both
small and monumental (coin texts and monumental carvings on
buildings are both included by historians as types of
inscriptions).
Pyu (also written Pyuu, or Pyus) An ancient series of city-states
(and their languages) found in the central and northern regions of
what is now Myanmar (Burma), between the first century BC
and the ninth century AD, approximately 100 BC through
840 AD.
Sanskrit An ancient Indic language that is the language of
Hinduism and the Vedas and is the classical literary language
of India.

During the course of the second and first millennia

BC, communities living in much of lowland Southeast
Asia progressively became more socially complex.
Until recently, it was widely noted that the Bronze
Age, dating between about 1300 and 500 BC, failed
to reveal the rise of social elites. This is most unusual,
since the control and ownership of metal is commonly accompanied by such social change. However,
major excavations at the site of Ban Non Wat in
northeast Thailand have uncovered a small number

of exceptionally rich burials, in which the dead were

accompanied by bronze artifacts, up to 80 or 90
large pottery vessels and an astonishing amount of
exotic personal jewelry (Figures 1 and 2). Such social
divisions, between rich leaders and the majority of
the population, continued into the Iron Age. At
Shizhaishan in Yunnan Province of China, for example, there is a royal necropolis. One large grave actually contains a gold seal inscribed the seal of the
King of Dian, a seal probably given to the king by
the Han Emperor himself. Further south, burials
at the Iron Age site of Noen U-Loke near Ban Non
Wat were found with gold, silver, glass, agate, and
carnelian jewellery, set in clay-lined graves filled with
rice. Sites like Noen U-Loke were ringed by multiple
moats and banks that would have required a very
large and organized labor force.
Documentation of these prehistoric communities
and their cultural sophistication is an important
step in understanding the rise of civilizations. Concentration by generations of French scholars on the
physical remains of sacred historic sites and the associated inscriptions, largely written in the Sanskrit
language of India, led to the idea that civilizations
resulted from the process of Indianization. This
involved the adoption of Indian religions (Hinduism
and Buddhism), Indian architectural styles, and the
Sanskrit or Pali languages by the undeveloped local
peoples. We can now appreciate how complex Southeast Asian leaders might have selectively adopted
Indian ways to elevate their status and, in doing so,
founded their own states.
There is a sharp boundary between the situation in
Southeast Asia west of the Truong Son Cordillera and
south of the Red River Delta, and the regions to the
north (Figure 3). This reflects the imperialist policies
of the Qin Emperor and his Western Han successors.
They sent armies south, carved off new provinces
(known as commanderies), and extinguished the
power and status of local leaders. The rest of mainland Southeast Asia, beyond the reach of imperial
China, witnessed a series of distinct civilizations
each with their own language, traditions, religion,
and pattern of rise and decline. These were mainly
riverine. Rice was their economic prop, and all engaged

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations 797

Figure 1 This rich Bronze Age burial from the site of Ban Non Wat reveals the presence there of social elites, already, by about
1000 BC.

Figure 2 This row of very rich Bronze Age burials from Ban Non Wat in Northeast Thailand clearly illustrates the wealth of prehistoric
communities prior to the emergence of early states.

in widespread trade in goods and ideas. Warfare was

endemic. In the lower reaches of the Mekong River,
we encounter a succession of states often named as
Funan, Chenla, and Angkor (Figure 4). The state
of Dvaravati occupied the Chao Phraya River,
while the river valleys flowing east from the Truong
Son Range sustained the Chams. To the east, we
encounter the Pyu in Central Myanmar (Burma),
while a civilization developed on the Arakan coast.
These states should not be perceived as monolithic
civilizations. The reality was more subtle: authority

and power were probably flexible and dependent

on the charisma of individual leaders. Like a concertina, states could expand and contract rapidly.
Even during the life of the great civilization of
Angkor, establishing or maintaining control over peripheral princes was not easy, and was rarely, if ever,
achieved. Hence, when talking of Dvaravati, we are
probably in touch with a kaleidoscopic situation
of many rival rulers, and with Champa, each river
valley had its own polity with little evidence of central
hegemony.

798 ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations

22
Red River

20

18

Chams

Mekong
River
Pyu
Khorat Plateau

Truong Son
Cordillera

Hai Van Pass

Petchabun
Range
Chao Phraya R.

16

17
Chams 16
Amaravati

7
12

6 Dvaravati
9
8
10
11

19

14

18
Kulen
3

Vijaya

13 5
Great Lake

Chams
Chenla

Panduranga
14

GULF
OF
SIAM

15
12
Cape
Dinh

Cape Nay

10

4
108

Funan

110

Land above 500 m

98

102

104

106

200km
km

1. Ban Non Wat, 2. Noen U-Loke, 3. Angkor, 4. Oc Eo, 5. Ishanapura, 6. Ban Don Ta Phet, 7. Ban Tha Kae,
8. Pong Tuk, 9. U-Thong, 10. Nakhon Pathom, 11. Ku Bua, 12. Sambhupura (approximate location), 13. Wat En Khna,
14. Banteay Prei Nokor, 15. Po Nagar, 16. My Son, 17. Dong Duong, 18. Koh Ker, 19. Banteay Chmar
Figure 3 Southeast Asia showing the sites mentioned in the text, followed by the list of sites.

Funan
Funan was one of the earliest states in Southeast Asia.
Dating from about AD 100550, its centers were
located on the delta of the Mekong and Bassac rivers.
The name is shrouded in mystery, and might have a
Chinese rendition of the Khmer name phnom or hill.
The History of the Liang Dynasty records that two

Chinese emissaries of the Wu Emperor, known as

Kang Dai and Zhu Ying, visited Funan and encountered walled settlements and a king who lived in a
palace. A system of taxation involved dues on gold,
silver, perfumes, and pearls, and there was a form of
legal system that involved trial by ordeal. There were
specialists in engraving and metalworking, and the

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations 799

Lower
Mekong
1500
Angkor

Chao Phraya
Valley
Thai
expansion
south
Angkor
domination

1000

Myanmar
(Burma)

Burmese
expansion
south

Chenla
Dvaravati
civilization

500
Funan

500

Iron Age

Bronze Age

Neolithic,
first rice
farmers

Neolithic

Expansion
of Vietnamese
to the south
Later Cham
states

The Pyu
states of the
Early
dry zone
Cham states

Iron Age

Bronze Age

Coastal Vietnam

Iron Age

Iron Age
Sa Huynh
culture

Bronze Age

Bronze Age

1000

1500

Neolithic,
first rice
farmers

2000

Figure 4 The cultural sequence in Southeast Asia.

ordinary people, who were black, with curly hair and

tattooed bodies, lived in houses raised on piles against
the regular threat of flooding. They also recorded the
names of successive rulers and their predatory wars
against their neighbors. One early ruler named Hun
Panhuang conquered chiefs on the edge of his kingdom and installed his sons and grandsons to rule them
under his command. His son was called Pan Pan, and
he was followed by a ruler known as Fan Shiman,
who launched wars against his neighbors.
Air photographs taken during 1930s identified ancient canals crisscrossing the delta landscape, and the
outline of a large rectangular city now known as
Oc Eo. On the northern margins of the delta, another
walled city known as Angkor Borei lay at the northern terminus of one such canal. The Chinese visitors
noted that the capital of Funan had an inland location, and the size of Angkor Borei would qualify it, at
the very least, as a major center.
Subsequent archaeological research has confirmed
much of what Kang Dai and Zhu Ying described. Oc
Eo incorporated substantial brick temple foundations,

workshops for the production of jewelery, evidence

for casting metals, and the wooden piles that would
have supported houses. There are also seals bearing
brief texts in the Indian Brahmi script, and an abundance of evidence for trade involving Rome, India,
and China. A series of sites has also been uncovered
by Vietnamese scholars, again involving brick temples
as well as brick vaults containing cremated human
remains and rich artifacts. These include gold leaves
bearing inscriptions and images of women, gold discs,
gold rings, a gold flower, and jewelry fashioned from
precious stones and glass.
Few inscriptions survive, but their Sanskrit texts
provide important information. One refers to a ruler
named Jayavarman, who had been victorious in
the battle against a rival king. He founded many
sanctuaries dedicated to Vishnu, and placed his
son Gunavarman in charge of one. A second text
cites King Jayavarman and his son Rudravarman,
and describes how the former named the son of a
Brahman as his inspector of property. A third text
mentions this kings military victories. It also recorded
the foundation of a hermitage, reservoir, and a residence by his queen. Between AD 480 and 520, there
was conflict, the establishment of religious foundations in favor of exotic Indic gods, the presence of
educated officiants, and a royal succession from
father to son. There are two inscriptions from the
vicinity of Angkor Borei which imply that this was
the capital of Rudravarman, the last recorded king
in this region. That from Phnom Da mentions his
name on several occasions.
Funan prospered with the control of international
maritime trade, and the stranglehold it could place
over the flow of goods up and down the vital Mekong
Valley. It was, however, equally vulnerable to any
changes in the pattern of trade beyond its control.
During the sixth century AD, such a change occurred
when the Chinese increasingly bypassed the delta.
Funan then fell into a rapid decline and the political
center of gravity moved inland, to emerging agrarian
states known to us under the name of Chenla.

Chenla
Chenla enters history through Chinese records describing the receipt of an embassy in AD 616 or
617. Subsequent assessments of this polity, which
evidently flourished from about AD 550 to 800,
have been heavily influenced by the The History of
the Sui Dynasty, which noted that Chenla was originally a vassal of Funan, but under its ruler Citrasena,
conquered Funan and achieved independence. The impression that Chenla was a unified state under a king
has been largely set aside by more recent research.

800 ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations

Michael Vickery has stressed that the proper analysis of Chenla can only be undertaken on the basis of
the original inscriptions. Most of these texts, written
in Sanskrit often with a subsidiary text in old Khmer,
recorded the affairs of the temples that clearly
dominated the ancient landscape. Some surviving
inscriptions refer to kings, place names, the titles
and status of temple patrons, the extent of temple
property, and the names and duties of those assigned
to maintain the foundation. One of these from the
temple of Kdei Ang, dating to AD 667, names members of an elite family that straddled the transition
from Funan to Chenla. Other inscriptions describe a
dynasty of rulers with fine Sanskrit names. The first
ruler, Mahendravarman, claimed victories in the Mun
Valley to the north. A successor, Ishanavarman, was
widely recognized for his authority, and his capital
has been identified at the large site of Ishanapura. An
inscription from this site describes the valor and military prowess of Ishanavarman, a king who extended
the territory of his parents.
He was succeeded by his son Bhavavarman II,
about whom little is known, save that he continued
from the region of Ishanapura to maintain control
over most, if not all, his fathers fiefs. Jayavarman I
(about AD 635680) was the great grandson of
Ishanavarman. His inscriptions indicate the tightening of central power and control over a considerable
area, the creation of new titles and administrators,
and the availability of an army, the means of defense
and destruction. A text described how King Jayavarmans commands were obeyed by innumerable vassal kings. Jayavarman also strengthened the legal
code: those who levy an annual tax, those who seize
carts, boats, slaves, cattle, buffaloes, those who
contest the kings orders, will be punished. New titles
were accorded to highly ranked retainers who fulfilled
important posts in government. One lineage held the
priestly position of hotar. Another functionary was a
samantagajapadi, chief of the royal elephants, a military leader, while the dhanyakarapati would have
controlled the grain stores. The king also appointed
mratan and pon to a sabha, or council of state. Another inscription prescribes the quantities of salt to
be distributed by barge to various foundations, and
prohibits any tax on the vessels going up or down
river. Thus, Jayavarman I intensified royal control
over dependent fiefs begun by his great grandfather,
Ishanavarman. Thereafter, this dynasty loses visibility,
although the kings daughter Jayadevi ruled from a
center in the vicinity of Angkor.
There were, however, other dynasties of rulers in
their own, independent centers. A succession of three
queens ruled at Sambhupura, and controlled traffic
up and down the Mekong River, and there was a line

of kings with names ending in aditya, or rising sun,

who ruled during the eighth century. There was also a
local dynasty ruling the state of Canasapura in the
upper Mun Valley under a King Bhagadatta.
Archaeologically, the kingdoms that fall under
the umbrella of the Chinese term Chenla are recognized from their brick temples, encircling walls, and
associated reservoirs. Ishanapura is dominated by
three-walled precincts containing single-chambered
temples. The doorways incorporate sandstone lintels
and columns decorated with a range of motifs which
drew upon India for their inspiration. One lintel from
Wat En Khna shows a king in his throne chamber,
surrounded by members of his court. The facades of
the temples are also decorated in shaped bricks which
include representations of palaces. These reveal
aspects of richly ornamented wooden structures which
have not survived.
The Chenla states were essentially agrarian, and
their economy revolved round the temple. Temples
were more than centers for devotion and worship,
for they played a vital economic role in the management and deployment of agricultural surpluses. Most
inscriptions from this period are concerned with their
temples, and the provision of resources to maintain
the personnel. Men of high status with the title pon
are often mentioned for their role in temple management. Inscriptions indicate that they could donate
communal land to the temple and organize their kin
to produces surpluses. This system involved the accumulation of wealth in the form of rice, cloth, and
land. Donations to the temple, which housed ancestral spirits, resulted in the accumulation of the merit
necessary for a harmonious reincarnation.
Stored assets were also a form of tradable wealth.
Surviving texts suggest that rice, cloth, or ironware
could be traded, thus allowing pon to indulge in trade
not only for basic food and cloth, but also bankable
assets, such as gold and silver. Land could be mortgaged to a temple in return for silver or cloth, and the
product of the land was assigned as a form of interest
payment. A donor might gift products to the temple,
but receive other goods in return, or deposit goods
against which to make a later claim. The temple,
then, performed a key role in the appropriation
of a community asset into a medium for the creation
and exchange of wealth items among the elite. The
more successful could accumulate sufficient capital
in this way to buy further land, or they could combine assets through marriage alliances and gain sufficient wealth to increase their power and status to
such an extent as to control considerable areas. The
established kings, therefore, were concerned with
such wealth creation for it might encourage rivals,
and their permission was often described as being

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations 801

necessary in the amalgamation of temples, and the

rights to land ownership.
Many observers have cited Indianization as the key
to understanding the rise of Chenla states, wherein
the inspiration to increasing social hierarchies was
due to Indian visitors introducing new ideas. This
view has been criticized by underestimating the strong
and continuing contribution of indigenous Khmer
culture. Thus, Vickery has summarized the many
references in the inscriptions to local gods worshipped
in Chenla temples. The local matrilineal descent system continued, and the Khmer language took its
place alongside Sanskrit in the inscriptions. He prefers
the notion of an Indic veneer, wherein the elites in
society selectively adopted those Indian traits that
suited their objectives. These included the Sanskrit
language for personal and place names, the Indian
script, and architectural styles. They contributed to
the increasingly strong divisions in society which signal the formation of states, but the essential characteristics of the Chenla kingdoms were Khmer.
During the eighth century, the number of inscriptions fell markedly, and the historic record became
thin. This does not necessarily imply cultural decline.
On the contrary, it was during this period that
such large sites as Banteay Prei Nokor were occupied.
The latter was probably the base of a ruler known
as Jayavarman II, and it was he who founded the
kingdom of Angkor.

Angkor
Angkor, meaning holy city in Sanskrit, comprises a
complex of cities, temples, and reservoirs located
north of the Great Lake (Tonle Sap) in northwest
Cambodia. It was first encountered by Europeans
in the sixteenth century, when Portuguese missionaries visited and described an abandoned stone
city, encroached by the jungle. Their accounts were
recorded by Diogo da Couto and archived in Lisbon.
The Great Lake is one of the worlds most productive
sources of freshwater fish. During the wet season, the
Tonle Sap River, which connects the lake with the
Mekong River, reverses its flow and backs up to
expand greatly the lakes area. With the dry season,
the river drains the lake, and rice can be grown in the
wetlands left as the lake level falls. The lake margins
are a particularly favorable place for settlement by
rice farmers and fishers, and the region of Angkor is
further attractive because of the perennial rivers that
cross the flat floodplain from their source in the
Kulen uplands to the north.
There is a long history of settlement in this area,
which began at least as early as the Bronze Age, for
prehistoric occupation of this period has been found

in the Western Baray or reservoir. An Iron Age site has

also been found in the vicinity of the temple of Baksei
Chamkrong.
Hariharalaya, the earliest major complex, lies to
the southeast of Angkor. It comprises a series of
temples to the south of the Indratataka, a reservoir
of unprecedented size (3800  800 m2). Most of the
buildings were constructed during the reign of King
Indravarman (AD 877889). His capital incorporated two major temples, known as Preah Ko and
the Bakong. The water of the Roluos River was
diverted to fill the Indratataka, and was then reticulated to service the extensive moats which surrounded the temples as well as, presumably, the royal
palace. Preah Ko is surrounded by a 50-m-wide
moat west of the Srah Andaung Preng, a basin 100 m2.
The central area is dominated by six shrines dedicated to Indravarmans ancestors.
The adjacent Bakong stands out for the sheer scale
of the conception: the central pyramid rises in five
stages within a double-moated enclosure 800 m2.
Eight small sanctuaries were placed round the base
of the pyramid, probably acknowledging the male
and female ancestors of Indravarman. Still awesome,
it would have been a potent symbol of royal power
and sacred ancestry.
With the death of Indravarman in AD 889, his
son Yashovarman (protege of glory) completed the
northern dyke of the Indratataka and had the Lolei
temple constructed on an island in the middle of the
reservoir. However, he founded a new capital centered on a low sandstone hill known as the Bakheng.
This center, known as Yashodarapura, the city of
Yashovarman, lies at the heart of Angkor itself. Access to the summit temple is by steep stairs, but the
top of the hill has been partially leveled, so that
the six terraces of the sanctuary rise from the plateau
like a crown. There are numerous brick chapels at the
base of the pyramid and on the terraces. The topmost
tier incorporates five temples, the largest in the center
and the others at each corner.
Yashovarman was responsible for the creation of
the Eastern Baray, the dykes of which are 7.5  1.8 m2
in extent. Inscriptions erected at each corner record
the construction of this reservoir fed by the Siem Reap
River, which, when full, would have contained over
50 million m3 of water. He also had at least four
monasteries constructed south of his new reservoir,
and temples on hills surrounding the capital.
After a brief interlude, when King Jayavarman IV
established his capital at Koh Ker (Figure 5), to the
northeast of Angkor, his successor and older brother,
King Rajendravarman, returned to the old center and
had two major state temples constructed. One is now
known as Pre Rup, while the Eastern Mebon was

802 ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations

Figure 5 Jayavarman IV of Angkor (reigned AD 928942) moved his capital to Koh Ker, then known as Lingapura. This massive temple
mausoleum dominates the plain for miles in every direction.

built on an island in the center of the Yashodharatataka. The former honored the king and his ancestors
within the context of the god Shiva. Rajendravarman
was succeeded by his ten-year-old son Jayavarman V.
He continued to reign at Angkor, and his state temple,
then known as Hemasringagiri or the mountain with
the golden summits, was built to represent Mount
Meru, the home of the Hindu gods.
Jayavarman Vs reign was followed by a period of
civil war which left the state in serious disarray. The
victorious king, Suryavarman I, established his court
at Angkor, the focal point of his capital being the
temple known as the Phimeanakas. It comprises a
single shrine, surrounded by narrow roofed galleries
on top of three tiers of laterite each of descending size.
The royal palace would have been built of perishable
materials, and will only be traced through the excavation of its foundations. These buildings were located within a high laterite wall with five entrance
pavilions ascribed to this reign, enclosing a precinct
600  250 m2 in extent. Today, a great plaza lies to
the east of this walled precinct. On its eastern side lie
the southern and northern khleangs, long sandstone
buildings of unknown function. The former belong to
the reign of Suryavarman I.
Suryavarman also underlined his authority by beginning the construction of the West Baray, the largest
reservoir at Angkor, and one still retaining a considerable body of water. This reservoir was unusual, in
that the area within the dykes was excavated, whereas the customary method of construction entailed

simply the raising of earth dykes above the land

surface. The Western Mebon temple in the center of
the baray was built in the style of Suryavarmans
successor, Udayadityavarman.
It was under the succeeding dynasty of Mahidharapura, from about AD 1080, that central Angkor
reached the present form. Angkor Wat, the largest
religious monument known, was constructed by
Suryavarman II (AD 11131150). A devotee of Vishnu,
the temple still houses a large stone statue to this god,
which was probably originally housed in the central
lotus tower. Angkor Wat incorporates one of the
finest and longest bas-reliefs in the world, and the
scenes do much to illuminate the religious and
court life of Angkor during the twelfth century (see
Figures 6 and 7). One scene, for example, shows the
king in council, another reveals the Angkorian army
on the march, while a third shows graphic scenes of
heaven and hell. Very high status princesses are seen
being borne on palanquins (Figure 8). Within the
walls of reliefs, the temple rises to incorporate five
towers, representing the five peaks of Mount Meru,
home of the Hindu gods. Despite its size and fame,
Angkor Wat remains controversial. Sixteenth-century
Portuguese visitors described an inscription that may
well have been the temples founding document, but
this has not been seen or recorded since. We do not
know if the entire complex was sacred with restricted
access, or whether people resided within the area
demarcated by an outer wall and moat. The function
of the temple is not known with certainty, but George

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations 803

Figure 6 The five towers of Angkor Wat rise up above the jungle in this view from the Bakheng temple.

Figure 7 The central five towers of Angkor Wat represent the peaks of Mount Meru, home of the gods.

C
de`s has argued that it was a temple and a mausoleum for the king, whose ashes would have been
interred under the central shrine.
A second king of the Mahidharapura dynasty,
Jayavarman VII (AD 11811219), was responsible
for the construction of Angkor Thom, the rectangular
walled city which today dominates Angkor. This moated and walled city centers on the Bayon, an extraordinary edifice embellished with gigantic stone heads
thought to represent the king as Buddha. He also ordered the construction of the Northern Baray or reservoir
and the central island temple of Neak Pean, formerly

known as Rajasri. According to contemporary inscriptions, visitors to this temple would wash away their
sins in the water that gushed from four fountains in
the form of a human and animal heads. Foundation
inscriptions also describe how Jayavarman VII founded and endowed two vast temple complexes, Ta
Prohm to his mother and Preah Khan to his father.
Each temple also incorporated shrines dedicated to
ancestors of the aristocracy (Figure 9).
Following the death of Jayavarman VII, building
activity slowed. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Angkor state was under stress from the

804 ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations

Figure 8 An Angkorian princess, seen on a relief on the walls of Angkor Wat, is carried through a forest on a palanquin.

Figure 9 Banteay Chmar is a huge temple mausoleum, built by Jayavarman VII of Angkor (AD reigned 11811219). Located in a
remote part of northwest Cambodia, it was, until recently, virtually inaccessible and covered in jungle.

encroaching Thais, and was abandoned in the middle

years of the latter century. While much of the site was
then overgrown by the jungle, Angkor Wat was never
completely abandoned. It, and indeed all other temples, retain their sanctity to this day.
The physical remains of the civilization of Angkor,
and the corpus of inscriptions (Figure 10), make it
clear that there must have been many specialists
engaged in regular activities. The construction of a
temple even of relatively humble proportions would
have called on architects and a wide range of laborers,

from those who manufactured bricks, to those who

cut and shaped stone, as well as carpenters, plasterers
to create the frescoes, painters, and gilders. Surviving
bronzes, for example, palanquin fittings and statues,
indicate the presence of metal workshops, and the
ornate jewelry seen on the elite in the bas-reliefs
reflect not only lapidaries but workers of gold, silver,
and precious stones.
Recent archaeological research by Roland Fletcher
and Christophe Pottier has greatly expanded our conception of Angkor. They have identified numerous

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations 805

Figure 10 The temple of Banteay Chmar contains bas reliefs showing a naval battle between the Kingdom of Angkor and the Chams.

temple foundations and evidence for occupation beyond the ceremonial central temples and reservoirs,
suggesting that this was one of the largest preindustrial cities known. Moreover, they have traced
Angkorian canals that issued from the reservoirs,
providing firm evidence for intensive irrigation of
the rice fields between the city and the Great Lake
to the south. North of Angkor, it is clear that major
water control measures were put in place to divert
water via the newly created Siem Reap River, and
bring the precious water to the central city to feed
the reservoirs and canals. Precisely when this expansion and the provision of the irrigation canals took
place within the Angkorian period remains under
investigation, but the hydraulic expertise was clearly
of a very high order indeed.

The Cham Civilization

The Cham civilization occupied the coastal plains of
Vietnam from Saigon to the Hai Van Pass. Its people
spoke an Austronesian language most akin to the
languages of Borneo, and their ancestors probably
settled this coastal strip during the first millennium
BC. The territory of the Chams is divided into a series
of restricted coastal enclaves, backed to the west by
the Truong Son Cordillera. Cham centers are located
at the estuaries of the major rivers that cross these
coastal plains. The most southerly region of Champa
lies from the eastern margins of the Mekong Delta
to Cape Dinh, an inhospitable stretch of coastline
with thin, sandy soils. Between Cape Dinh and Cape

Nay, there are three well-watered valleys separated

by low passes, an area known to the Chams as
Panduranga. North of Cape Dinh, the coastal strip
broadens into a plain about 70  70 km2 in extent.
There are many sites here in a region known to the
Chams as Vijaya. The region of Amaravati lies between the Hai Van Pass and Quy Nhon, and was the
dominant area of Cham political centrality. It has
a reasonable area of land available for agriculture,
and several well-sheltered harbors. The last area lies
north of the Hai Van Pass, with most archaeological
sites being concentrated in the vicinity of Quang Tri.
The relative importance and political reach of these
polities named in the inscriptions almost certainly
changed markedly over time.
It is most unlikely that Champa was ever a unified
state. Early records provide the names of the component parts of this civilization. We find reference to
Amaravati and Vijaya. Kauthara was first mentioned in an inscription from Pa Nagar set up by King
Satyavarman in AD 784. A kingdom known as
Panduranga was recorded in an inscription from Po
Nagar, dated to 817 AD, which describes its ruler.
My Son was the great ceremonial center of Amaravati. It comprises a series of brick shrines set out in seven
walled groups with many outliers. It was founded at
least as early as the fifth century AD under a ruler
known as Bhadravarman. King Vikrantavarman initiated a major building program at My Son in the
seventh century AD. The temples were built of
brick, and the exterior surfaces bore strip pilasters,
false doors, and window niches. Further temples were

806 ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations

erected at least until the reign of Jaya Indravarman

toward the end of the eleventh century. Temple E1
is particularly notable for the presence of fine Cham
sculptures that belong to the early seventh century.
The inspiration of Indian art and religion is seen in
a carved sandstone pediment over 2 m wide, illustrating Vishnu recumbent on the ocean of eternity,
represented by a seven-headed serpent. A bearded
ascetic watches the god from his side, and two
figures grasp snakes in birds talons beyond his head
and feet. The temple within was dominated by a large
linga, a phallic symbol, representing Shiva, which
stood on a richly ornamented pedestal. Access to
the top of this platform, which represented Mount
Kailasa (the home of Shiva), was by three steps. The
outer walls of the pedestal incorporate a series of
carved reliefs. One of these is regarded by Guillon
as a masterpiece of Cham art, showing three dancers
wearing rich ornaments and holding scarves. Their
jewelry includes multiple necklaces, belts, armlets,
and heavy ear disks. Free-standing sculptures were
also recovered from My Son, the earliest coming
from temple E5, and dating to the late seventh century. It portrays Ganesha, the elephant god of wisdom. Again, Indian inspiration is apparent in this
fine statue, which stands almost a meter high. Ganesha
is portrayed with four arms, and he holds a rosary,
an axe, a bowl of sweets, and the root of a plant
which elephants are known to appreciate. He wears a

complex decorated belt and a tiger skin. A second

statue of Ganesha from temple B3 stresses again the
local attachment to this god. In this case, the elephant
is portrayed as seated.
Dong Duong is a second major center of Amaravati. It is a very large complex, measuring 1.5 km
from east to west, and was probably built by King
Bhadravarman in honor of his predecessor, King Jaya
Indravarman, in the late ninth century AD. The was a
temple designed for the worship of the Buddha. It
contains a huge statue of the seated Buddha, standing
over 1.5 m high, which was discovered in 1935 in the
hall of the Dong Duong monastery. Another large
statue depicts a monk holding a lotus in front of
him with both hands, and also came from the monastic hall. A third fine statue from this site shows a
guardian of the law. A dvarapala is a door guardian,
and there were eight of these at Dong Duong. They
are massive and forbidding, standing over 2 m in
height. Each one tramples on an animal or person,
and flourishes a sword.
Po Nagar is the major center of Kauthara, the most
southerly polity of the Cham civilization (Figure 11).
Six brick sanctuaries are built on an eminence that
commands a major estuary. There is a lengthy history
of construction, commencing at least in the seventh
century AD with a wooden temple that was destroyed
by fire in AD 774. The northwestern tower was built
in AD 813, and further sanctuaries were added until

Figure 11 The Cham temple of Po Nagar commands a strategic estuary on the coast of Southern Vietnam.

ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations 807

AD 1256. King Jaya Harivarmadeva set up an inscription in AD 1160, claiming victory over the
Khmer and Vietnamese, as well as the Cham kingdoms of Vijaya, Amaravati, and Panduranga. The site
is located so that it could control sea traffic from
China south to the states of mainland and island
Southeast Asia.
Chinese records contain many references to the
Chams, who appear as a constant irritant to the maintenance of peace on their southern frontier. However, it was the expulsion of the Chinese from the
Red River delta area by the Vietnamese that brought
doom to the Chams. Progressively, the Vietnamese
pushed south along the coastal corridor, destroying
the Cham civilization. Today, Cham speakers survive
in small communities within the state of Vietnam.

Dvaravati
The civilization of Dvaravati flourished in the valley
of the Chao Phraya River from about AD 400 to 900.
It then came increasingly under the influence, and at
times control, of the Kingdom of Angkor. The people
spoke the Mon language, which is closely related to
Khmer. There are many Iron Age settlements in this
area that reveal increasing cultural complexity between 400 BC and AD 300. These include Ban Don
Ta Phet, where rich burials contain a number of Indian imports. At Ban Tha Kae, the late prehistoric
phase incorporates ceramics, gold beads, querns,
and stamp seals similar to those from Oc Eo, the
Funan city on the Mekong Delta. There is a continuous record for the transition from prehistory to the
historic period of Dvaravati at the site of Chansen,
where the second period of occupation included a
notable ivory comb decorated with a goose, two
horses, and Buddhist symbols dating probably to
the first or second centuries AD (see Asia, South:
Buddhist Archaeology). Although the documentary
sources for Dvaravati are few, it is known that the
scribes employed Sanskrit in their inscriptions, and
that Buddhism was particularly favored but not to the
exclusion of major Hindu deities.
The archaeology of Dvaravati is dominated by a
series of large, moated cities of oval or subrectangular
outline. The favored location involved a stream that
fed the moats, just as in the later prehistoric Iron Age
of the region. Excavations have often revealed the
foundations of religious buildings in laterite and
brick. These were coated in decorated stucco with
Buddhist figures or symbols. The buildings were constructed to house relics or images of the Buddha.
There are three geographic groups of centers, known
as the Eastern, Central, and Western. It is not known

whether there was an overall integration into a single

kingdom, or a series of small, regional polities.
The major sites in the western group are strategically located on the flood plains of the Maeklong and
Chao Phraya rivers. At that juncture, the sea level
would have been slightly higher than at present, and
there would have been less sedimentation. Large centers would then have been closer to the shore and able
to participate in maritime trade. The principal sites in
this group are Pong Tuk, U-Thong, Nakhon Pathom,
and Ku Bua. The central region is dominated by the
site of Lopburi, Ban Khu Muang, and Sri Thep, while
the western group incorporates Muang Phra Rot,
Dong Si Mahosod, and Dong Lakhon.
The few inscriptions of the Dvaravati civilization
are important sources of information. Unlike the situation in Cambodia, where the actual names of the
Funan and Chenla kingdoms have not survived, we
know that the name of the Chao Phraya polity centered at Nakhon Pathom was Dvaravati, because two
coins inscribed with the Sanskrit text meritorious
deeds of the King of Dvaravati were found there.
Six surface finds of coins from Muang Dongkorn also
refer to the King of Dvaravati. Dvaravati means
which has gates, perhaps referring to the gates
giving access through the city walls. A mid-seventhcentury inscription from the site of U-Thong reads
Sri Harshavarman, grandson of Ishanavarman, having expanded his sphere of glory, obtained the lion
throne through regular succession. The king had
given meritorious gifts to a linga, and described his
exalted ancestry and military achievements. A further
text from Lopburi names Arshva, son of the King of
Sambuka. Finally, a seventh-century inscription from
Sri Thep records In the year . . . a king who is nephew
of the great King, who is the son of Pruthiveenadravarman, and who is as great as Bhavavarman, who
has renowned moral principles, who is powerful and
the terror of his enemies, erects this inscription on
ascending the throne.

The Pyu
The Pyu or Tircul people of Burma were first mentioned in a mid-fourth-century AD Chinese text in a
list of the tribes on the frontier of Southwestern
China. The author described them as the Piao.
Other early Chinese records that survived in later
editions describe the Piao as civilized, where prince
and minister, father and son, elder and younger, have
each their order of precedence. The Chinese called
them the Pyu, but the Mon people knew of them as
the Tircul. The Pyu civilization was developed in the
dry zone of central Burma between about 200 BC and

808 ASIA, SOUTHEAST/Early States and Civilizations

AD 900. It is best known on the basis of three large

walled cities, Beikthano, Sri Ksetra, and Halin. All
were located in tributary valleys of the Irrawaddy
River, where it was possible to harness the local rivers
or streams for irrigation purposes. There is compelling evidence at Beikthano for a pre-Buddhist mortuary tradition involving large brick and timber halls
containing the cremated remains of high-status individuals. By the fourth or fifth centuries AD, however,
Buddhism had taken root and many large public
buildings, including stupas and monasteries, were
constructed. Meanwhile, the cremated dead were
interred in large ceramic mortuary jars set in brick
structures outside the city walls. The Pyu spoke a
Sino-Tibetan language, and employed Indian scripts
in their inscriptions. They were proficient bronze casters, one set of figurines from Sri Ksetra showing
dancers and musicians richly appareled and ornamented. Skilled artisans also made silver Buddha images
of great beauty. They also took part in a widespread
trading network that incorporated India. The civilization was ultimately to be succeeded by the state of
Pagan. There is a major destruction layer at Halin.
However, many of the Pyu arts, crafts, and ideas were
incorporated into the Pagan civilization. It is recorded
that King Anawratha of Pagan removed votive tablets
and offerings from Sri Ksetra and placed them in his
Shwesandaw temple at Pagan.

The Arakan Coast

The Arakan coast of western Burma occupies a key
geographic position in the maritime exchange route
that developed during the early centuries AD. It faces
India across the Bay of Bengal, and was thus a natural
stepping stone when, for example, the Mauryan
Emperor Ashoka sent Buddhist missions to Southeast
Asia. Tradition has it that the Buddha manifested
himself in Arakan, when an image of him was cast.
This is known as the Mahamuni (great sage). Although the history of Arakan has hardly been tested
archaeologically, it is known that two major cities
span the fifth to the eighth centuries AD. The first,
Dhanyawadi, incorporated a walled royal precinct
and the hill on which the Mahamuni was housed
and revered until the early eighteenth century, when
it was removed to Mandalay. The second city of
Vesali, located like Dhanyawadi in a rich agricultural
valley suited to rice cultivation but with access to the
sea, was also ringed with a substantial brick wall and
moat. The Shit-thaung inscription text listed 22 kings
of the Ananda Dynasty who ruled this area. Buddhism was the dominant religion, but not to the exclusion of Hinduism. Coins were minted, and there is

evidence for extensive maritime trade and wealthy

urban communities.

Summary
The early civilizations of mainland Southeast Asia
dominated the major river valleys, and developed
from prehistoric societies in which there were strong
indigenous trends toward social complexity. Although
leavened by the adoption of Indian religions, languages, and architectural styles, the civilizations
of Southeast Asia followed their own course to statehood. Through Sanskrit or Pali inscriptions, associated
with texts in indigenous languages such as Khmer or
Mon, we can identify dynasties and the names of kings
who established themselves in palatial buildings associated with impressive stone temples. However, warfare was endemic both within and between the rival
polities. These states relied upon rice cultivation and
water control for their survival, and the production of
rice surpluses in villages little different from those in the
area today were deployed to maintain the elite.
In the case of Angkor, there was a strong thread of
continuity into modern Cambodia. The Mon state of
Dvaravati, however, was overtaken with the intrusion
of the Thais, while the Cham states succumbed to the
expansionary movement south of the Vietnamese.
Many early traditions survive, however, as seen in
court rituals of Thailand, and many place names of
Sanskrit origin.
See also: Asia, East: Chinese Civilization; Asia, South:

Buddhist Archaeology; Indus Civilization; Asia, Southeast: Pre-agricultural Peoples; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social
Inequality, Development of; State-Level Societies,
Collapse of.

Further Reading
Coe MD (2003) Angkor and the Khmer Civilization. London:
Thames and Hudson.
Guillon E (2001) Cham Art. London: Thames and Hudson.
Gutman P (2001) Burmas Lost Kingdoms: Splendours of Arakan.
Bangkok: Orchid Press.
Higham CFW (2001) The Civilization of Angkor. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Higham CFW (2002) Early Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia.
Bangkok: River Books.
Indrawooth P (1999) Dvaravati. A Critical Study Based on Archaeological Evidence. Bangkok: Aksornsmai.
Jacques C (1997) Angkor, Cities and Temples. Bangkok: River
Books.
Moore E and Siribhadra S (1992) Palaces of the Gods. Khmer Art
and Architecture in Thailand. Bangkok: River Books.
Vickery M (1998) Society, Economics and Politics in Pre-Angkor
Cambodia. Tokyo: The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies
for UNESCO.

ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples 809

Pre-Agricultural
Peoples
Sandra Bowdler, University of Western Australia,
Crawley, WA, Australia
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Hoabinhian First used by French archaeologists working in
northern Vietnam to describe late Pleistocene and Holocene
period archaeological assemblages excavated from rock shelters.
Sahul Shelf Part of the continental shelf of Sahul (the Australia
New Guinea continent) which lies off the north-western coast of
Australia.
sumatralith An oval- to rectangular-shaped stone artefact made
by unifacially flaking around the circumference of a cobble.
Sunda Shelf An extension of the continental shelf of Southeast
Asia, covered during interglacials by the South China Sea, which
isolates as islands Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and smaller islands.

Introduction
Southeast Asia is an arbitrary region whose definition is based on partly physical geographical factors,
partly on cultural similarities, and partly according to
politically defined areas. It comprises the modern
nation states of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Lao (Laos), Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma),
the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam
the ASEAN nations (Association of Southeast Asian
Nations), and East Timor (Figure 1). Some would include the island of Taiwan. Physically, Southeast Asia is
separated from India and much of China by high
mountains, but if we were to ignore political boundaries, southeast China, including Hong Kong, would
probably be seen as part as Southeast Asia. Another
conflict between physical and political parameters
arises in the case of eastern Indonesia. Much of Southeast Asia lies on the Sunda shelf which is separated
from the Sahul shelf by deep water barriers. The
Sahul shelf includes continental Australia and the surrounding islands of New Guinea and Tasmania. Irian
Jaya, the western half of the island of New Guinea, is
clearly part of Sahulland physically, but is part of Indonesia politically and is thus often included in Southeast
Asia, rather than within the Australasian grouping.
This article discusses the archaeological evidence
for the human occupation of Southeast Asia during the Pleistocene period, or Ice Age, which extended from c.2 million years ago to c. 10 000 years ago,
when it was succeeded by the Holocene, or Recent,
geological period. Since literacy did not reach
Southeast Asia until well after the end of the Pleistocene, we are reliant on archaeological evidence to tell

us the human history of that period. That evidence is

variable in its distribution and quality, partly due
to the fact that until the later twentieth century,
archaeological research was a colonial activity,
carried out in a somewhat disorganized fashion by
people who were often not trained archaeologists. In
the postcolonial era, research has increased in both
quantity and quality, and new discoveries are frequently made. Thus, many questions do not have
clear-cut or generally agreed answers but are subject
to ongoing discussion and debate.

Early Hominins
The first human-like inhabitants of Southeast Asia
were the early hominins members of the wider
human family known as Homo erectus. The first
fossil remains of this species were discovered in central
Java by Dutch Colonial medical officer Eugene Dubois
in 1890, who named it Pithecanthropus erectus, the
ape man who walks upright. Further remains of
H. erectus have since been found at several sites in
central Java. The dating of the fossils is problematic,
but recent evidence supports dates of at least 1 million
years ago, if not more. It is generally accepted that
these fossils represent one of the earliest forays of
hominins out of Africa, but whether they were the
direct ancestors of modern humans is more controversial. A continuing debate was initiated by DNA
research in the 1980s which suggested that modern
humans emerged from Africa at a much later date,
supplanting earlier hominins in places like Southeast
Asia. The older view, which seems to be losing ground,
was that H. erectus types migrated from Africa to
many parts of the world including the Middle East,
Europe, and China as well as Southeast Asia and there
evolved into subtypes of modern humans (see Modern
Humans, Emergence of).
One of the problems with the H. erectus fossils in
Java is their lack of clear association with any cultural
material. The earliest humans in Africa are defined as
human ancestors at least in part by their ability to make
and use patterned stone artifacts, objects which can be
considered cultural by virtue of their being passed on
within the social group by processes of learning. Stone
artifact assemblages made by H. erectus have been
claimed from various parts of Java, but none is unequivocal in terms of stratigraphic location, absolute
dating, and artifactual status. A badly defined industry
called the Pacitanian has been recognized from a series
of surface sites and attributed to H. erectus, but has not
been shown to be in association with any fossils, nor
has it been dated. Recent accounts suggest artifactual
evidence has been found in excavated stratified situations in central Java, but detailed reports are needed to

India

Bhutan

810 ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples

Nepal

China

Taiwan

Bangladesh
Hong Kong

Myanmar
Lao

Thailand
Vietnam
Cambodia

Philippines

Sri Lanka
Brunei
Malaysia
Malaysia
Singapore
Island of Borneo

Sulawesi

Sumatra

Indonesia

Iriyan Jaya
Papua New Guinea

New Guinea

Java
Flores
East Timor

Australia
Figure 1 Map of Southeast Asia, with places mentioned in text.

ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples 811

confirm this. The lack of universally accepted, clearly

associated artifactual evidence in Java might be taken
as suggesting that Javanese H. erectus was not a likely
ancestor for modern humans.
While the classic H. erectus remains from Java are
generally accepted as being at least 1 million to
750 000 years old, another group of remains, mainly
from Ngandong on the Solo River in central Java, are
considered to be more phylogenetically evolved and
therefore more recent. Again, their dating is problematic, with some claims that they might be as recent as
c. 30 000 years old, but a more generally accepted
dating would be of the order of 300 000 years. Like
the others however they are not, to the agreement of
all, associated with any cultural remains.
Research in Flores, one of the islands in the eastern
Indonesian archipelago, has revealed new evidence.
During the Pleistocene, there were periods of lowered
temperatures worldwide which froze up much of the
worlds water into glaciers and thus lowered sea
levels. Java, being part of the Sunda shelf, was connected to mainland Southeast Asia by a landbridge
during such periods. Flores lies in one of the deep
troughs between Sunda and Sahul and was thus only
ever accessible by water. While it is easy to imagine
H. erectus arriving dry-shod in Java, it seems less
likely that this early hominin would have crossed such
a barrier to Flores. Finds in the Soa Basin of central
Flores seem to suggest that this might have been the
case. While no actual hominin remains have been
found here, stone artifacts dated to c. 800 000 years
ago suggest that H. erectus was here at this time.
There is however continuing debate about the nature
of the artifacts and their stratigraphic associations. It
can be observed that in Java we have fossil hominins
with few if any indisputable cultural associations,
whereas in Flores we have putative hominin cultural
remains but no hominins. More recent and equally
challenging evidence from Flores has been recovered
recently, and will be discussed further below.
Evidence of H. erectus is lacking from the
Southeast Asian mainland, despite its presence in
southern China by at least 750 000 years ago and
possibly earlier. There is also no convincing cultural
evidence of an early occupation of the mainland.
Furthermore, there appears to be a wide chronological gap between these early residents of island
Southeast Asia and later hominin occupations in
the form of modern humans, H. sapiens sapiens.
Anatomically modern humans (AMHs) are now
generally accepted as having evolved in Africa some
time between 200 000 and 100 000 years ago, and to
have spread out to the rest of the world between
c. 100 000 and 40 000 years ago, or during the early
part of the Upper Pleistocene geological epoch.

AMH fossils are found in the Middle East dated to

c. 100 000 years ago, and in Europe by c. 40 000 years.
The oldest modern humans in China are dated no
older than 67 000 years ago (Liujiang). The Southeast
Asian evidence for modern humans conforms to this
pattern. Where it differs is in the nature of the associated cultural evidence, especially with respect to
stone artifact assemblages.

Eurocentric Models
Southeast Asian Pleistocene archaeology has been
plagued by the imposition of models based on the
archaeological sequences of Europe, and especially
Northwest Europe. The term Palaeolithic, meaning
literally Old Stone Age, was coined by English aristocrat John Lubbock in 1865, and subdivided by French
priest LAbbe Breuil in 1912 into Lower, Middle, and
Upper Palaeolithic. These subdivisions were, based
on types of stone artifacts on the one hand and hominin fossil types on the other, fitted into a uniform time
frame.
To summarize briefly, the Lower Palaeolithic represents the earliest Homo species including H. erectus
(now called H. ergaster in Africa and H. heidelbergensis, and other things, in Europe). The first human
ancestors (variously named, but including H. habilis)
were associated with stone artifacts considered to
be technically primitive, often made on pebbles (technically cobbles) and referred to as chopper and
chopping tools. The chronologically later and more
phylogenetically advanced H. erectus types were
associated with a particular stone artifact form, the
hand ax, a bifacial implement made on a large core,
which occurred in huge numbers at many sites across
Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India within the
vast time span of the Lower and Middle Pleistocene,
c. 1.5 million to 100 000 years ago. In Europe, the
succeeding Middle Palaeolithic phase, dated between
100 and 40 000 years, is the time of the Neanderthals
(H. sapiens neanderthalensis), whose evolutionary
status has long been problematic, but who is now
considered not to have been ancestral to modern humans. Their stone tools were flake tools rather than
core tools, and come in a range of recurring forms
generally referred to as points and scrapers. The
Upper Palaeolithic (c. 40 000c. 10 000 years) sees the
arrival of fully modern humans using a more refined
range of points and scrapers, often made on long
slender flakes called blades, and also featuring a range
of artifacts made of bone and antler. This is also the
period of the renowned naturalistic cave art of France
and Spain.
Many problems have arisen with the interpretation of the archaeological record outside Europe by

812 ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples

attempts to fit it into this LowerMiddleUpper

Palaeolithic model, and Southeast Asia is no exception. In 1948, American archaeologist Hallam
Movius Jr., who had worked on European Palaeolithic
sites, surveyed what was then known of the Asian
archaeological record, and concluded that there were
significant differences between Europe and the east.
His most celebrated observation was that there were
no hand axes in Asia, east of the Himalayas, and what
was found in the Far East was a more primitive stone
tool repertoire, consisting of choppers and chopping
tools, and that this continued for thousands of years.
The implication was that the latter was a hangover
from a more primitive past, which had somehow not
attained the advanced stage of manufacturing hand
axes, let alone the far more progressive level of the
Middle Palaeolithic. This was explicitly stated in his
observation that throughout the early portion of
the Old Stone Age the tools consist for the most part
of relatively monotonous and unimaginative assemblages of choppers, chopping tools and hand-adzes.....
the archaeological...material very definitely indicates
that as early as Lower Palaeolithic times Southern and
Eastern Asia as a whole was a region of cultural retardation (Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society 38 (1948): 329420). This is indeed a restatement of an earlier comment by the Jesuit priest
Teilhard de Chardin (Early Man in China (1941):
60): In contrast with the already steaming West,
Early Pleistocene Eastern Asia seems to have represented (on account of its marginal geographic position) a quiet and conservative corner amidst the fast
advancing human world.
The racist implications of these statements are obvious, and have been dealt with previously in many
places. It is however interesting that the overall concept of the Movius Line is perpetuated in textbooks
and syntheses with little modification from the 1940s,
if without the racist overtones. It is in general true
that bifacial hand ax forms do not occur in the east,
although there are some exceptions, such as the
Chinese site of Dingcun. It is not however the case that
what fills that void are primitive chopper-chopping
types. It needs to be observed that Movius (and
Teilhard) were working primarily with collections
of artifacts from undated surface collections, apart
from the excavated material from the celebrated
site of Zhoukoudian (Choukoutien) in China, home
of Peking Man (H. erectus). Even here however
the dominant artifacts are not chopper/chopping
tools; rather, the assemblage of artifacts which are
clearly associated with H. erectus is dominated by
small quartz flakes, many manufactured by the bipolar flaking technique. The hominin occupation at
Zhoukoudian is rather younger than most of the

Javanese fossils, ranging from about 400 000 to

perhaps 250 000 years ago.
There is however in Southeast Asia a range of tools
which can be characterized as chopper/chopping
tools, but they are not in fact the primitive artifacts
that Teilhard and Movius, and some more recent
scholars, have taken them to be.

Upper Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherers

After H. erectus, the oldest evidence for human occupation in Southeast Asia is restricted to the Upper
Pleistocene geological period, that is, within the last
100 000 years. In fact, firmly dated evidence is restricted to the last 40 000 or so years, with one
exception. Within that timeframe however there is
abundant archaeological evidence from all parts of
Southeast Asia, although research has been more intensive in some places than others. In general, again
with one exception, the cultural evidence is associated
with anatomically modern humans. The archaeological record itself however is rather confusing, at least
in the way it has been interpreted, particularly with
respect to the kinds of Eurocentric models imposed
on it, as discussed above. One of the enduring apparent mysteries of Southeast Asian research has been the
Hoabinhian.

The Hoabinhian
French archaeologist Madeleine Colani, who had
been resident in Vietnam since 1884, excavated
some 52 cave and rockshelter sites between 1924
and 1926 in Bac Son and Hoa Binh provinces in
northern Vietnam. While the fearsome speed of
these excavations must raise some doubts in modern
archaeological minds as to their refinement and
accuracy, it can hardly be denied that she had a substantial sample of material to deal with. In Hanoi
in 1932, she reported to the first Congress of prehistorians of the Far East the discovery of a new
Palaeolithic culture.
The Hoabinhian is a culture composed of implements
that are in general flaked with somewhat varied types of
primitive workmanship. It is characterized by tools often
worked only on one face, by hammerstones, by implements of subtriangular section, by discs, short axes, and
almond shaped artifacts, with an appreciable number of
bone tools (Praehistorica Asiae Orientalis, 1932).

It can be seen that Conlanis definition is somewhat

vague, and the Hoabinhian has bedeviled archaeologists ever since, with its status as culture or industry or indeed anything in particular under continual

ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples 813

attack. Colanis definition fails to include the salient

fact that the disks, short axes, and almonds she
mentions are unifacially flaked core tools made on
waterworn cobbles (generally called, less correctly,
pebbles). The disks are, as the name suggests, round
and flattish, the almond-shaped artifacts are often
flaked over one entire surface with the other side
consisting of waterworn cortex (these are also
known as sumatraliths, Figure 2), and the short
axes are basically the latter split or broken in half
(Figure 3). Other forms consist of a cobble broken
across a shorter access and similarly flaked; these
types are usually called choppers, although the term

Figure 2 Sumatralith.

Figure 3 Short ax.

Figure 4 Discoid.

is often applied to all these varieties (Figures 4 and 5).

What they all have in common is a worked/working
edge formed by the intersection of a flaked edge
with unworked cortex. One of the common and
continuing misapprehensions is that these objects
resemble, or are indeed the same as, the much less
patterned chopper/chopping tools of the African preAcheulian and European non-Acheulian sites of the
Lower Palaeolithic.
Sites containing artifacts effectively identical to these
pebble tools of the Hoabinhian have subsequently been
described from most parts of mainland Southeast Asia,
extending to Nepal and southeast China, but not, it

814 ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples

Figure 5 Chopper.

Figure 6 Biface.

has generally been believed, island Southeast Asia,

with the exception of northeast Sumatra (hence the
sumatralith). In peninsular Malaysia, sites containing
bifacially worked pebbles, which are quite different
from the original unifacial types, have been characterized as Hoabinhian (Figure 6).
As indicated, the status of the Hoabinhian has been
controversial. On the one hand, there has been a
reluctance to admit that the typical Hoabinhian artifacts are in any way distinctive, and it is often asserted
that they are only due to raw material availability: if
waterworn cobbles are available, pebble tools will
result. This overlooks the distinctive nature of these
types, which are not found in numbers in assemblages
anywhere else in the world except Southeast Australia
and in New Guinea. They do not resemble the earliest
artifacts from East Africa, nor the non-Acheulian
assemblages of Europe (such as the Clactonian, and
those from sites such as Vertesszollos). Occasionally
single unifacially flaked pebbles do occur in other
assemblages, but given the ultimate limitations of
stone artifact production, it is not surprising that
similar forms can occur in different places; they do

not however occur in consistent patterned numbers in

multiple assemblages outside Southeast Asia, New
Guinea, and Southeast Australia (Figure 7).
One of the continuing issues is whether there is a
Hoabinhian culture. Using the original definition (of
Childe and others) of culture as a recurring assemblage of types, it might be argued that there is such a
thing. On the other hand, the idea that this somehow
corresponds to some kind of shared ethnic identity is
hard to sustain in many archaeological cases,
but especially so with respect to the Hoabinhian.
American archaeologist Chet Gorman, who had
worked on Late Pleistocene sites in Thailand, notably
Spirit Cave, suggested that the Hoabinhian should
be described as a technocomplex: a group of cultures characterised by assemblages sharing a polythetic range but differing specific types of the same
general families of artefact-types, shared as a widely
diffused and interlinked response to common factors
in environment, economy and technology (term
coined by David Clarke in 1968). In other words,
Gorman was suggesting that there was a broad
range of variable characteristics characterizing the

ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples 815

Figure 7 Map of Hoabhinian distribution.

Hoabinhian, but none were essential as individual

elements to qualify for membership of it.
At the Hoabinhian 60 Years after Madeleine
Colani: Anniversary Conference in Hanoi in 1994,
it was agreed that the term Hoabinhian should be
retained, but that it should be referred to not as the
Hoabinhian culture, but rather as the Hoabinhian industry; the term technocomplex did not find favor.
The presence of sumatraliths was taken to be
an essential, perhaps defining, characteristic of the
Hoabinhian.
Another question is whether is there is a unique
dimension to the manifestation of the Hoabinhian in
Vietnam, or is it just the case that this is where it was
first described. As indicated, Colanis original definition was vague in the extreme. Apart from the unifacially flaked tools described above, there are other
shared characteristics of the sites within which they
occur, which extend beyond Vietnam. Hoabinhian
industries are generally found in occupation sites in
limestone rockshelters, or in open shell midden sites.
Usually the rockshelter sites contain deposits of shell
midden. Food remains, as well as mollusks, generally
include small mammals, and a range of plant foods

has been preserved in some sites. In some sites,

Hoabinhian artifacts have been found in association
with ground stone axes and/or grindstones. This
seems to be a chronological distinction, with such sites
being more recent than those without such objects.
The term Palaeolithic seems to have been used
by Colani to suggest that Hoabinhian sites were of
Pleistocene Age. Subsequent research suggested that
they were more recent than that, and should thus, in
European nomenclature, be considered Mesolithic,
the term applied to hunter-gatherer societies of the
Holocene in Western Europe. Colani however had in
fact described two cultures; as well as the Hoabinhian,
there was a later phenomenon, the Bacsonian. Many
of the tools of the Hoabinhian were also present in the
Bacsonian, but the latter contained tools more often
associated in Europe with the Neolithic, or early farmers: edge-ground axes and pottery. Bacsonian sites
included shell middens, located on the modern shore
line, and thus clearly of post-Pleistocene age.
A further complication arises with the concept
of a pre-Hoabinhian industry in Vietnam called
the Son Vian (after the site Son Vi) developed by
Vietnamese scholars. This is not clearly defined:

816 ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples

it contains what are obviously Hoabinhian type artifacts unifacially flaked cobbles of sumatralith and
short axe form but what actually distinguishes it
from its successor is not at all clear, certainly not in
the English-language literature.
In line with the conclusions of the Colani anniversary conference, it seems most useful to consider the
Hoabinhian as an industry, or industries, characterized by a particular range of unifacially worked
pebble/cobble tools. The limited, if odd, distribution
does suggest some form of cultural connection between the communities which utilized these objects,
but at this stage of our knowledge it cannot be precisely specified.
There has been sufficient archaeological research
carried out in Vietnam to suggest that it is found in
the north but not in the south. It is known from sites in
Cambodia but not Lao, but research in these countries
has not been carried out to the extent where we
can be sure what its distribution is in them.
A number of sites are known from Thailand, both
north and south. In Malaysia complications ensue,
because, as previously mentioned, sites in peninsular
Malaysia which contain bifacially flaked artifacts,
often not made on cobbles, are characterized as
Hoabinhian, which seems misleading. Examples are
known from Myanmar, but archaeological research
there has been as restricted as in Cambodia and Lao.
Very good examples are known from Nepal, mostly
from surface sites; this would seem to be the northwestern limit of Hoabinhian distribution. Hoabinhian
artifacts occur in sites in southeast China. It is not
clear whether they occur in Japan; single specimens
of artifacts resembling Hoabinhian types have been
reported, but it is not possible to be sure that they are
more than an incidentally produced form within the
context of quite different kinds of industries.
It has been a long-standing belief that Hoabinhian
type tools do not occur in island Southeast Asia, apart
from some well-documented, if not well-excavated
midden sites in northeast Sumatra. In fact, such artifacts have been found in some island sites; nothing
like as many, it is true, as in sites in Vietnam and
Thailand, but it is also the case that fewer sites have
been excavated in the islands. A careful inspection
of artifacts from the Niah Cave in Sarawak on
the island of Borneo shows that, in the lower levels,
tools of Hoabinhian type are present; they are almost
unrecognizable due to their having been reworked,
possibly after breakage. Specimens are also known
from sites on Morotai Island, northern Maluku.
They have been reported from northern Luzon in the
Philippines. As previously mentioned, Hoabinhian

tools are also known from sites in the interior highlands of Papua New Guinea, as well as Southeast
Australia.
The chronology of the Hoabinhian is, not surprisingly, now better understood than in Colanis time,
but there are still complications. In northern Vietnam,
tools of Hoabinhian type as here defined occur in sites
referred to the Sonvian and dating up to 33 000 years
ago. Some of these dates are however radiocarbon
assays based on freshwater shellfish, which are not
regarded as completely reliable. At the Mai Da Dieu
rockshelter, which was re-excavated in 1988, Hoabinhian tools appear bracketed between dates of
c. 24 000 and 20 500 years BP. At Mai Da Nguom
rockshelter, pebble tools attributed to Sonvian are
dated to c. 23 000 years. In Thailand, Hoabinhian
artifacts occur in sites dated to 28 00030 000 years
ago. In general however the dating of Hoabinhian
artifacts in archaeological sites shows a strong Late
to terminal Pleistocene to Early Holocene range, from
c. 16 000 to 7000 years BP. In Australia, Hoabinhian
artifacts are no older than 15 000 years, but continued
up to 200 years ago.
An exception is the site of Kota Tampan in Perak
in peninsular Malaysia. This site was originally
thought to be of Middle Pleistocene age, but modern
research has shown it to be Upper Pleistocene. It is an
open site which consists of a stone tool workshop
which was apparently sealed by volcanic ash from
an explosion of Mount Toba (Sumatra). Initially,
this was dated to c. 34 000 years ago, but more recent
work has revised that date to 74 000 BP. Artifacts of Hoabinhian type were definitely included in
the range of material underneath the ash layer. The
younger date fitted quite well with the evidence from
Thailand and Vietnam, but the new older date is quite
anomalous. Otherwise, the time range for Hoabinhian artifacts is reasonably well defined, from Late
Upper Pleistocene to Early Holocene. It is also clear
that it is an industry initially associated with huntergatherers, some of whom continued making these
artifacts after they had adopted agricultural practices,
or at least artifacts associated with such practices.

The Non-Hoabinhian
There are sites in Southeast Asia, both mainland and
island, and layers within sites, within the time range
of the Hoabinhian that do not include Hoabinhian
artifacts. It is necessary to consider this evidence, not
only in its own right, but to shed further light on the
Hoabinhian itself. If there was indeed a Hoabinhian

ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples 817

culture, does that mean that sites/layers which lack

Hoabinhian tools represent some other culture? This
evidence has generally been perceived as representing a mass of problematic data, nondescript at best,
incoherent and unclassifiable at worst, and completely unrelated to the Hoabinhian.
While it may be undistinguished compared with the
neat types of the European Palaeolithic, these stone
industries are not quite the morass of indistinguishable characteristics as has been represented. Not only
in island Southeast Asia, but also at some sites on the
mainland, there is a technological similarity among
Upper Pleistocene industries. At many sites, assemblages consist of small, apparently casual flakes, in a
range of lithologies, often including reef quartz and
fine-grained chert and silcrete types. Flakes tend towards the square rather than the elongated. While
simple percussion is the main flaking technique found,
the bipolar technique is often in evidence, and flakes
with secondary working are rare, but do occasionally
appear. These assemblages are similar to those found
in Chinese sites, some of which are up to 1 million
years old (such as sites in the Nihewan basin), and
include Zhoukoudian, and are thus associated with
H. erectus. They are also found at Chinese sites within the age range of H. sapiens.
This range of small-undistinguished artifacts appears
at first glance to be quite different from the Hoabinhian
industry. It is not however a completely different technology. The kind of percussion flaking which produces
a Hoabinhian core artifact also produces flakes which
share metrical and qualitative characteristics with the
other industry or industries. In Australia, within the
delimited space of Kangaroo Island, off the coast near
Adelaide, it has been shown that Hoabinhian artifacts
are in fact part of a wider industry including just
such small artifacts as described here, even though
the Hoabinhian types tend not to be found at the
same sites as the smaller artifacts. This also seems to
be the case in Southeast Asia, although there are some
sites in Thailand and Vietnam where the smaller artifacts are found with the Hoabinhian types; generally
the former have been overlooked and not remarked on
when the sites were described. Sites yielding only the
small amorphous assemblages are known from island Southeast Asia, for example Leang Burung 2 in
Sulawesi and Liang Lembudu in the Aru Islands,
dating to 31 000 and 27 000 years ago, respectively.
There are some sites which do not fit the pattern so
far described. Tingkayu, an open site, or rather series
of sites, in Sabah on the island of Borneo, has a range
of rather elegant bifacial lanceolates, which are
quite outside the range of most assemblages from

Late Pleistocene sites in Southeast Asia. The chronology of this site complex is far from secure however,
consisting as it does of open sites dated by geomorphological circumstances, and the age of these objects
must be considered unproven.
There have been attempts to demonstrate a sequence
of artifact change over the course of the Late Pleistocene. The site of Lang Rongrien in peninsular Thailand
has been recently excavated using modern techniques,
and has produced a noncontinuous sequence from
c. 37 000 years ago to Holocene agricultural times. It
has been interpreted as evidence of change from a
small nondescript industry dated to between c. 37 000
and 27 000 years ago to a Hoabinhian industry appearing in terminal Early Holocene times, dating to between c. 9500 and 7500 years ago. This is not a
classic Hoabinhian assemblage however, but consists
of the bifacially flaked types also characterized as Hoabinhian in peninsular Malaysia. In Malaysia, these
types are generally dated to a similar time range; types
with more typical unifacial Hoabinhian types are in
fact rather older in both Malaysia and Thailand.
It seems however that obvious cultural change,
consisting of new stone artifact types, did not occur
until the Holocene. A range of small tools including
backed blades and small projectile points are found in
sites dated to after 7000 years ago in island Southeast
Asia, notably Sulawesi and the Philippines. The
Toalian assemblages of asymmetric and geometric
microliths from southwestern Sulawesi have been
known since the early twentieth century, and their
appearance has been subsequently dated to about
6000 years ago. In the Philippines, serrated hollowbased points called Maros points have been within
the same time frame. It seems that in both cases, the
new tools were associated with hunter-gatherers who
kept on using them when they took up agriculture.

Human Remains
It would be expected that human remains of the Late
Upper Pleistocene in Southeast Asia would be of
modern humans, H. sapiens sapiens. Generally speaking, this is the case. The oldest such evidence is the
deep skull from the Niah Cave, Sarawak, usually
considered to be c. 40 000 years old, although there
is quite a lot of evidence of disturbance at that site,
including burials of more recent age which may
have cut into earlier layers. Recent research does
however appear to confirm the dating of the deep
skull as being somewhat older than 40 000 BP. Other
modern human remains have been found at late
Upper Pleistocene sites in Vietnam and Thailand,

818 ASIA, WEST/Pre-Agricultural Peoples

associated with Hoabinhian assemblages, and the

Philippines (Tabon Cave on Palawan).
The recent discovery of hominids of small stature
on the island of Flores is still subject to considerable
discussion. Found in a cave site called Liang Bua,
several individuals are associated with what seems
to be a typical small artifact assemblage as previously
described, with an Upper Pleistocene date range of
94 000 to 18 000 years. Such a recent date is associated everywhere else on the globe with modern humans, H. sapiens sapiens. The Flores remains however
have been assigned to a new species, H. floriensis,
and, according to the scholars who have examined
them, retain many characteristics of H. erectus. This
evidence prompts several questions: were there modern humans on Flores at this time, contemporary with
H. floriensis? If so, who produced the artifacts? Is it
feasible to suppose that H. erectus evolved into a
diminutive species on Flores only, particularly given
the gap between dates of 700 000 and 94 000 within
which no artifactual or fossil evidence falls? Only
further research on the available evidence, or more
evidence from Flores and elsewhere, can address
these issues.

foods, and many sites demonstrate a reliance on

freshwater and marine shellfish, together with small
to medium size mammals.
In the Early Holocene, indirect evidence for agricultural practices appears. Particularly in shell middens
on the coast of northern Vietnam and also northeast
Sumatra, Hoabinhian type tools are associated with
cord-marked pottery and small slate knives, believed
to be used for agricultural purposes. Pottery has a long
tradition in Japan where it was associated with the
Jomon hunter-gatherers of the terminal Pleistocene
and Early Holocene, but this is almost unique; elsewhere, it is generally believed that ceramic pots are
associated with the more settled lifestyle of agriculturalists. It is this late manifestation of the Hoabinhian
that was originally designated the Bacsonian. There is a
further question as to whether edge-ground stone axes
were associated only with the Bacsonian. This technology, which in Europe was considered to be associated
with farmers only and of Holocene age, has been found
in both Australia and Japan to be dated to over
30 000 years ago and attributed to hunter-gatherers.
There do not seem to be any well-dated examples of
this age in Southeast Asia.

Economy

See also: Asia, East: China, Paleolithic Cultures; Japanese

It is generally accepted that before 10 000 years ago,

all humans were hunter-gatherers, who did not domesticate plants or animals for food. There is no
evidence to suggest that Southeast Asia was any different, with evidence for agriculture appearing perhaps 7000 years ago. The people of Southeast Asia
during the Pleistocene seem to have subsisted on a
wide range of resources. Unlike their contemporaries
in Western Europe, they do not appear to have been
big game hunters, but then there were no populations
of large herd mammals to support such a regime.
Evidence from sites such as Spirit Cave in Thailand
shows the exploitation of a number of wild plant

Archipelago, Paleolithic Cultures; Hunter-Gatherers,

Ancient; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Oceania:
Australia.

Further Reading
Anderson DD (1990) Lang Rongrien Rockshelter: A Pleistocene
Early Holocene Site from Krabi, Southwestern Thailand.
Philadelphia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.
Bellwood P (1997) Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
OConnor S, Spriggs M and Veth P (eds.) (2005) The Archaeology
of the Aru Islands, Eastern Indonesia. Terra Australia 22.
Canberra: Pandanus Books.

ASIA, WEST/Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations 819

ASIA, WEST
Contents
Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations
Arabian Peninsula
Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant
Mesolithic Cultures
Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad
Palaeolithic Cultures
Phoenicia
Roman Eastern Colonies
Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization
Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures
Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures

Achaemenian, Parthian,
and Sasanian Persian
Civilizations
Edward J Keall, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto,
ON, Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Macedonia Ancient kingdom in southeast Europe: now a region
divided among Greece, the country of Macedonia, and Bulgaria.
Magi Members of a priestly caste of ancient Media and Persia.
Mesopotamia Ancient country in southwest Asia, between the
upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a part of modern Iraq.
Zoroastrianism The religion and philosophy based on the
teachings ascribed to the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra,
Zartosht). Zoroastrianism was once the dominant religion of
much of Greater Iran.

Persian Territory
This contribution covers roughly 12 centuries, from
around 550 BC to AD 640. During this time, three
Persian dynasties controlled vastly different extents of
territory the largest territory under the first dynasty
(Achaemenian), the smallest during the middle phase
(Parthian dynasty), and with subsequent sizeable
expansion under the Sasanians (though nowhere nearly as extensive as under the Achaemenians).
It is through Westerners eyes that we know the land
as Persia. Pars, an ancient province in todays southwestern Iran, was the homeland of the Achaemenians.
Today, through the alliteration of its pronunciation in
Arabic, the area is known as Fars province. In this

region of Iran lay Parsua, the first substantial Achaemenian settlement. In the fourth century BC, when the
Macedonian Greeks of Alexander the Great encountered the Achaemenians, they recognized them as
based in Pars, which they expressed as Persis. Hence,
the rulers in Persis were identified as Persians.
Through an extension of the term, the entire region
ruled by these Persians became known as Persian
Empire. The ancient name was Iran, a term closely
related to the concept of Aryan. Linguists define the
people as Indo-Iranians. They were connected with
the great migration into the area of Indo-European
language speakers that had occurred around the
middle of the second millennium BC. Those communities, with whom they could communicate,
because of the similarities of the spoken language,
were judged to be part of a great Iran. Those who
spoke completely different languages were considered
outsiders. Notwithstanding this simplistic definition
of Irans demographics, one should acknowledge that
there were definite exceptions to this rule. For there
were significant minorities present in the various
Iranian (Persian) states under scrutiny here, not least
the Semitic-language speaking groups of Mesopotamia
(particularly Aramaeans and Jews) who had been
residents since the first millennium BC, and Arabs
who increasingly migrated into the region in the early
centuries of the first millennium AD.
None of the three Iranian states described here
was confined to the Iranian plateau. For the Achaemenians, their purview at its height (besides Iran
proper, and Mesopotamia) included all of Anatolia
(modern Turkey), lower (northern) Egypt, northern
Arabia and Palestine, and the Punjab (modern
Pakistan). Admittedly, revolts toward the end of the
fifth century considerably reduced these territorial
holdings (especially in Egypt). Certainly, both the

820 ASIA, WEST/Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations

Parthians and the Sasanians in times of strength controlled territory far beyond todays northeastern border
of Iran, to include parts of modern Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. But official administration of Afghanistan was often ephemeral, and local
dynasties assumed virtual control. They rarely ever
held sway beyond the River Oxus (Amu Darya), and
never beyond the Jaxartes (Syr Darya). To the west,
the Parthians and Sasanians controlled large parts of
Mesopotamia, but only briefly did they control any part
of the Levant. The dynastic capital was invariably in the
area of todays modern Baghdad. For the Parthians and
Sasanians, the rough zone of confrontation with their
western enemies (first the pagan Romans, then the
Christian Byzantines) lay along the River Euphrates.
The archaeological record for all three Persian dynasties under scrutiny here is at best spotty. Certainly,
formal excavations have been conducted in the past
at various national capitals Achaemenian Pasargadae and Persepolis; Parthian Nisa, Hekatompylos,
and Seleucia-on-Tigris; and Sasanian Firuzabad and
Ctesiphon. But there has not been sufficient systematic
scrutiny of the entire area under consideration to allow
us to draw an effective picture of how each of the
regions operated over time period. It is evident
that when sites are excavated, the most prevalent
tangible item recovered broken utilitarian pottery
is characterized by a local production tradition. Excavators, for example, of the site of Tepe Agrab in
northwestern Iran, may muse about Achaemenianlooking shapes of the pottery, but without the certainty of attribution that is possible, by contrast, in
the discipline of Roman archaeology where thousands
of sites have been excavated and their pottery classified.
Standards are also difficult to assess. Artifact norms
prevalent in the Zagros reaches of western Iran may
not be directly applicable to the northeastern reaches
of Khorrasan. Sites singled out for mention here are
mostly based on the reality of excavation or site study,
and a published report. Historical phenomena are also
presented when documented by written texts, even
though they have not necessarily been excavated.

The First Iranian State

The first Iranians to have a definable entity through
tangible archaeological evidence (as opposed to legend) are peoples who moved into the valleys of the
Zagros Mountains of todays western Iran, by way of
the Caucasus, around 1300 BC. They are identifiable
through the archaeological record by their distinctive
gray-ware pottery. This is classified as Iron Age I.
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the
Iranian kingdom of the Medes was founded in the late
eighth century BC, with its capital at Ecbatana (modern

Hamadan). No formal excavations have been conducted in Hamadan, but innumerable high-quality
objects from Hamadan placed on the illegal antiquities
market attest to its significant status during this time
and later.
During the early seventh century, the Medes confronted the more famous and infamous Assyrians.
Mid-century invasions of the area by Scythians from
the Black Sea area caused considerable disruption. The
state was strengthened however through both diplomacy and strategic reorganization of the military into
separate fighting units of spearmen, bowmen, and
cavalry. In 609 BC, an alliance with the Babylonians
ended the previously formidable Assyrian power. Consequently, Media fell heir to the former Assyrian
holdings in Anatolia, bringing them into confrontation with the Lydians in western Anatolia. At this
time, the big power players in the Middle East were
the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Lydians, and the
Medes. An important aspect of Median identity is the
phenomenon of the Magi, priests of Aryan traditions.
Achaemenian Persians

Medias mid-seventh century problems permitted the

coalescence of an Iranian group tracing their ancestry
in southwest Iran to a legendary Achaemenes. The
nascent Achaemenian state is first to be discerned at
the site of Tepe Malyan in the Marvdasht plain,
where inscribed documents attest to its association
with the legendary Parsua. Around 550 BC, Persian
Cyrus II staged a successful revolt, having first married into the Median royal line. Cyrus the Great
established his dynastic seat at the site of Pasargadae,
north of the Marvdasht plain. The site comprises two
palaces, with an irrigated garden in between. A platform terrace was probably intended to be the location
of a third, private palace in the style of the later, more
grandiose Persepolis. Other features of the site include
an open-air sacred precinct with two altars, and a
tower building, likely an archive house. Cyrus tomb
employed a form and gabled roof derived from Lydian
traditions of tomb architecture.
Achaemenian holdings were considerably expanded when Cyrus captured the city of Babylon in
539 BC. He proceeded to attack Lydia, defeating
King Croesus in 546 BC, capturing also Greek cities
along the Aegean. But, turning to Irans eastern frontier, Cyrus lost his life in 529 BC fighting to control
reaches of the Oxus. The capital Pasargadae was never
finished as planned.
Cyrus successor, Cambyses II (529522 BC), continued the expansionist policies of his predecessor. In
525 BC, he entered Egypt after a surprise crossing of
the Sinai (normally considered formidable protection

ASIA, WEST/Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations 821

invasion), ending in capitulation of the city of Memphis. The Pharaoh was carried off into captivity to
Iran, and Cambyses was recognized as the founder of
the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty. Cambyses premature
death on the way home precipitated a widespread
national revolt. But Darius I (522486 BC) used suppression of the revolt to trumpet the new power of the
Achaemenian state.
The site of Bisitun, in western Iran, is enormously significant for the definition of Achaemenian
Empire. On a towering cliff-face above a prolific
spring, Darius depicts images of the vanquished in
very explicit terms they are shown with chains
around their necks. Their dress defines their ethnicity. Names inscribed above the figures determine
their identity. It was this trilingual inscription
in Babylonian, Elamite, and Old Persian that
formed the basis for Rawlinsons cracking of the
code of cuneiform in 1847. The site of Susa, in todays
southwestern Iran, but geographically a natural
part of Mesopotamia, functioned as an administrative centre in Achaemenian times. Few intact Achaemenian remains have been unearthed due to the
centuries of later site use. The stray find of a statue
of Darius is especially interesting because of its strong
Egyptianizing style.
Achaemenian Dominion

Following suppression of the famous revolt, Darius

moved to expand Iranian authority into India and
the Oxus reaches, which he did successfully between
522 and 486 BC. At the same time, he attacked the
Scythians in the area of the Black Sea, in the so-called
Hellespont, disrupting grain supplies to the Greek
city-states along the Aegean coast. His successes on
the world stage are well reflected in the creation of a
new capital in Pars province, at Persepolis. His palace
complexes were set upon an artificial terrace (called in
later folklore Takht-i-Jamshid, or throne of mythical
King Jamshid), accessed by a ceremonial staircase
rising from the Marvdasht plain. Here Darius built
his huge audience chamber (Apadana) palace, as
well as a smaller private palace. Walls were adorned
with scenes of grand accomplishments. There was
a treasury building as well. Flanking the staircase
of Darius audience palace were scenes of processions
of loyal subjects and the kings retainers (Medes
and Persians), reflecting the ceremonial activities envisaged for the building.
When King Xerxes (486465 BC) inherited the
throne after Darius death, a serious revolt broke
out in Egypt. Its harsh suppression signals the hard
line that Xerxes took in all his foreign policy. At
home, too, he was authoritarian. His so-called

Daeva edict, carved in stone in Old Persian, reflects

the close association between Persian state and Zoroastrianism. The edict outlawed what were considered
to be inappropriate acts of worship. Struggles with the
Magi priests of the Median tradition are not out of
the question. The royal tomb site of Naqsh-i-Rustam
along an escarpment in the vicinity of Persepolis also
attests to this. Here, the Zoroastrian god Ahura
Mazda is depicted above the figure of the king venerating a fire altar. Continuing the strong Egyptian connection in Achaemenian art, Ahura Mazda is shown
as a human carried as on the outstreched eagle wings
of the god Horus. Disillusioned at the failure of his
invasion of Greece in 480, Xerxes devoted his energies
to palace construction at Persepolis. He also built a
ceremonial gatehouse to the terrace that was flanked
by winged bulls as guardian spirits in the style of
Assyrian palace architecture.
Following the assassination of Xerxes, Iran was
ruled by a series of weak kings between 465 and
404 BC. Symptomatic of state weakness was another
revolt in Egypt, in 405 BC, resulting in the end of the
status of the Achaemenians as rulers of the TwentySeventh Dynasty. A notorious event in this period was
the attempted coup by Cyrus the Younger, to take the
Achaemenian throne, in 401 BC, employing the services of 10 000 Greek mercenaries. We owe it to the
Greek writer Xenophon for the account of Cyrus
demise. In spite of Cyrus battlefield defeat, the unchallenged retreat of the Greeks through hundreds of
miles of hostile terrain from Mesopotamia to the
shores of the Black Sea speaks loudly of the ineffectiveness of Achaemenian state authority at this time.
Macedonian Conquest

Other uprisings occurred in the Levant, though the

revolts were not successful. These events were largely
overshadowed by Macedons dramatic rise to power.
To their eventual disadvantage, the Achaemenians
declined to contribute aid to the Athenians in their
quest to restrict Philip IIs ambitious expansion of
Macedonian authority. At the battle of Chaeronea in
338 BC, Philip brought the entire Greek mainland
under his aegis. The stage was now set for the
campaigns of Alexander, Philips son, who would eventually topple the great empire of Iran. The first loss to
Alexander was in 334 BC at the river Granicus, not far
from Troy in northwestern Anatolia. Four years later,
the Macedonian wonder boy surmounted the steps as
a victor of the great palace terrace at Persepolis. The
palaces went up in flames. The worst damage was
in the palaces of Xerxes, causing archaeologists to
interpret the conflagration as an act of revenge. The
last Achaemenian king, Darius III, whose unfinished

822 ASIA, WEST/Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations

tomb at Persepolis bears testimony to the unexpected

speed of the Macedonian advance, fled the scene but
was murdered by his own men while trying to escape.
Seleucid Interlude

Returning from his extended march into Asia,

Alexander the Great took up residence in Babylon,
in southern Mesopotamia, expecting to operate very
much as the kind of eastern potentate he had just
defeated. Yet he died prematurely in 323 BC, leaving
no heir or designate. His generals fought for control
of the conquered lands, and Seleucus emerged as
victor of the eastern territories in 312 BC. He established a new capital just slightly upstream from
Babylon, at Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, close to todays
Baghdad. In spite of the fact that veterans of the
Macedonian campaign had been settled along the
way in newly created cities which meant that
Greek cultural attitudes and principles of science
and technology began to supplant the ancient traditions in these settlements it became difficult for the
Macedonian authorities to control the vast territory
they had conquered. Testimony to this is presented
when local figures issued coins in the own names, not
that of the Seleucid king.
An example of the precarious Seleucid position is
documented at Pasargadae. A military fort had been
built on Cyrus unfinished palace terrace, as part
of the post-Alexandrian occupation of the region.
A coin hoard recovered through excavation from
the destroyed, burnt layers of the Pasargadae fort
attests to a local uprising against the Macedonian
presence around 280 BC. Already by 300 BC either
provincial governors or native chiefs were claiming
degrees of independence from the Seleucid authorities. Eventually, as the eastern losses increased, the
Seleucids abandoned Mesopotamia and positioned
themselves on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, at Antioch. A few forays were made to recover
lost territory on the Iranian plateau, but the new
stakeholders the Parthians resisted these attempts.
We have here the beginnings of a new empire of Iran.

Persian Resurgence
The new Iran was far different from the old one. The
term Parthian is derived from Parthava the name of
an Achaemenian province situated just southeast of
the Caspian Sea. Its inhabitants were Iranians, by
virtue of the language they spoke. To the north, and
vaguely related as Indo-European speakers, were the
Dahae, one of many Scythian tribes. One of these tribal
figures, a certain Arsaces, immigrated into Parthava
and adopted the local Parthian culture and dialect.

He schemed successfully to become the local ruler.

The dynasty he founded is rightly called Arsacid
after his name. Western writers invariably call it Parthian. The first Arsacid (Parthian) kingdom emerged
around the middle of the third century BC.
For this early moment in the states life, we have
the archaeological record of Nisa, in todays Turkmenistan. Here we see the perpetuation of the now
long-established principle of the king residing in an
exclusive imperial city where entry by outsiders was
restricted. As such, the site of Old Nisa housed two
monumental halls, ceremonial shrines. A hoard of
ostraca written in Aramaic script but representing
the local dialect is the earliest testimony to the Parthian language. The hoard of 60 elaborately carved
rhytons, made of ivory tusks, is also vital evidence
of strong Hellenistic artistic trends prevalent in
Parthia at this time.
Some modest territorial gains were made initially
at the expense of neighboring states, but for threequarters of a century Parthia was largely confined to
the area south and east of the Caspian. Archaeologists
have identified the site of Shahr-i-Qumis in northeastern Iran as the location of the second Parthian capital,
Hekatompylos. This site features as one of the places
designated by the travel itinerary compiler Isidore of
Charax as one of the so-called Parthian Stations
along the great Asian highway. Isidores catalog is
an indication that transcontinental trade between
the Mediterranean and Indian and China was becoming increasingly important to the economies of the
states lying in between. Interestingly, archaeological investigations at another hypothetical Parthian
station Kangavar, in western Iran have proven
that the monumental remains actually date from
later Sasanian times.
The Parthian State

A most dramatic expansion of Parthian territory

occurred under King Mithridates I beginning after
170 BC. Land was seized right across the plateau of
Iran, including the westernmost highland province of
Media. The sudden increase in Parthian territory culminated in the 141 BC capture of the Seleucid capital
city of Seleucia-on-Tigris, in Mesopotamia. Extension of Parthian authority is well attested in Mithridates overstriking of the coin issues of the previously
independent state of Characene at the head of the
Persian Gulf. The city of Charax, founded like many
others in the fourth century in the aftermath of the
Macedonian conquest of Asia, served as an entrepot
for trade goods arriving from the east. From 73 AD,
termination of the independent coin issues of Characene reflects how the state was subsumed into the

ASIA, WEST/Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations 823

Parthian one. From excavations at Seleucia-on-Tigris,

in central Iraq, one can document the initial impact of
Macedonian conquest and promulgation of Greek
standards. Parthian coins were struck using the
Greek model of silver tetradrachm and drachm,
reflecting a deliberate government policy to accommodate Macedonian settlers in the new Persian state.
However, one can also document how Greek norms
gradually morphed into more local versions.
Nineteenth century scholarship was wont to call
this a debased, orientalizing trend. One should see
it rather as resurgence of native traits. In art, a persons
status, expressed in the clothes they wore, was more
important than a perfect body. At Seleucia, in house
construction, builders abandoned the Greek way of
constructing a post-and-beam roof, replacing it with
an arched vault a logical solution to the scarcity of
quality wooden beams. Vaulted halls became a cultural identity marker for centuries of subsequent architectural construction in this region. At the site of
Ashur, also in central Iraq, archaeologists have documented continuity of traditions going back to Assyrian times, albeit expressed in the medium of the now
current now Parthian architectural mode. In southern
Iraq, at the ancient site of Uruk, as well as at Nippur,
monumental structures were sometimes built complying with Greek standards, but increasingly reflecting
the vitality of indigenous traditions.
Seleucid rallies were made to regain lost territory, but mostly to no avail. Like his namesake,
Mithridates II continued to consolidate and expand
Parthian holdings after 123 BC. His claiming of
the honorific title king of kings suitably illustrates
Parthian aspirations at this time. However, westerly
expansion brought the Parthians inexorably into conflict with the Romans. The zone of confrontation lay
generally along the course of the Euphrates. The former Seleucid frontier city of Dura Europos fell into
Parthian hands around 113 BC, only to be taken in
turn by the Romans in AD 115. The overall basis
of the struggle stemmed from Romes perceived need
for defense of foreign interests by eliminating hostile
elements along her frontiers. This meant that a successful combat along a frontier inevitably implied
annexation of that territory and thereby the potential
for new confrontation further abroad. Gradually the
Romans were drawn further and further east through
Anatolia until they confronted Parthia.
In addition to expansion through frontier defense,
Roman confrontations with Parthia were also instigated through ambitious campaigns mounted by ex
officio government agents seeking personal fortunes.
The explosive potential of such a mission is well
illustrated by ex-consul Crassus Syrian campaign of
53 BC. It was an ill-advised attempt to corner the

market in luxury shipments from the East. Lightarmed Parthian cavalry easily outmaneuvered Roman
foot soldiers marching across the open Syrian plains.
Crassus ultimately lost his life. Parthian cavalry tactics
involved discharging the notorious Parthian shot.
Arrows were discharged at full gallop toward the
enemy. But before close contact was made, the rider
wheeled around and turned in the saddle to fire arrows
backward at the enemy line. Defeat, and the capture of
legionary standards, haunted the Romans for a generation until Emperor Augustus negotiated terms for their
return, in 20 BC.
Parthian Decline

Notwithstanding Parthian cavalry brilliance, the state

was poorly prepared to take advantage of military
success. Suren, commander of the forces that annihilated Crassus, was murdered out of perception that
he was a danger to the king. Other potential contenders were also eliminated. Parthias territorial gains
in Syria were gradually diminished through inept
government. The Parthians lacked the bureaucratic
machinery that ran the Achaemenian state. One may
suggest that this kind of imperial organization did
not appeal to the Parthians, and that a battle was to
be won for its spoils and the challenge of fighting,
nothing more.
More so than the Achaemenians, the Parthian
state was forced to confront tribal incursions on the
northeastern frontier. We may assume that the root
cause of the attempted incursions reflects the same
impetus that had caused Arsaces himself and his family to infiltrate into Iran two centuries earlier. Simply
said, a worsening ecological situation brought about
by population growth and environmental degradation may have prompted tribes to look for new
pastureland. In addition, the developed conditions
of the Iranian countryside, following centuries of
investment in infrastructure, may have presented an
enticing prospect for plunder.
As evidence of a lack of strong centralized state
bureaucracy, we have the archaeological record of
several sites. In tangible archaeological remains, we
can see that the Parthian state did not have a rigid
obsession with standardization. Rather, there are
strong regional characteristics. Exemplifying this
principle is the region of Elymais in southwestern
Iran. The area is known for its distinctive rock reliefs,
a coinage that speaks of autonomy within the Parthian
state. From our own perspective and attitudes toward
successful government, we may judge this as weakness. One may also judge it as a maturity whereby
Parthian governors were not obsessed with imposing
rigid rules on diverse peoples. Whatever the judgment,

824 ASIA, WEST/Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations

one has to acknowledge that the Parthian state did

survive for over 400 years, a not inconsiderable
achievement.
Independent States

Two sites exemplify lack of strong bureaucratic control

over the central reaches of traditional Iranian territory
at this time. The first is the independent Arab state
of Hatra in northern Mesopotamia, where its defensive walls resisted several attempts to breach them,
most notably by the Roman Emperor Trajan in AD
117. In the heart of the roughly circular city lay a
complex of shrines where some of the architectural
features are strictly Hellenistic in style, though the
predominant element in both structural form and
votive statuary is decidedly Parthian. Notwithstanding
its Arab society and independent status, Hatra is often
used extensively to define first century AD Parthian.
The archaeological site of Qaleh-i-Yazdigird also
epitomizes independence within the Parthian realm.
The site is a formidable fortress of the second century
AD overlooking the so-called Zagros Gates pass between the Iranian plateau and the Mesopotamian
plains. Containing a lavishly decorated palace, the
fortress is best explained as a warlords stronghold.
Wealth came from the extraction of tolls from caravan
traffic plying the great Asian highway (later dubbed
the Silk Road). Persian legends relating how the
Sasanian dynasty that replaced the Parthians faced a
major challenge in subduing this part of Iran attest
well to the idea of warlords like this in the Zagros.
We get some measure of the weaknesses and rivalries surrounding the Parthian throne from coins.
Around 78 AD, two kings (both claiming the title
king of kings) issued identically struck silver tetradrachms in the capital, but each with their own distinctive portrait and name on the coins. With no other
indications of expressed victory, rather than representing civil war, the arrangement seems to reflect a
degree of power sharing. Other issues of coins, such
as Pacorus victory tetradrachm of AD 82, definitively underlines contest for the throne of Parthian Iran.
The municipal bronze coins also provide priceless
insight into how the state was managed. Initially,
when the Parthian authorities began to take over
affairs of government from the Seleucids, cities were
awarded autonomy, largely due to the presence of
large numbers of Macedonian settlers. Toward the
end of the Parthian era, the municipal issues of coins
disappear, to be replaced by bronzes stamped with the
royal moniker.
In addition to insight that coins give us about
Parthian political structure, evidence of their circulation helps define both state organization and the

dynamics of trade. The tetradrachm circulated only

in Mesopotamia, whereas the drachm (smaller in size,
but higher in silver content) was the Iranian highlands currency. The phenomenon underlines again
lack of strong central authority. Although it lasted
almost 400 years, collapse of the Parthian state through
fragmentation was inevitable.

Persian Revival
The coup started in southwestern Iran, in the original
Achaemenian homeland, in the early third century
AD, under the banner of Ardashir. An ancestor of the
new regimes first king was a certain Sasan, hence the
identification of the dynasty as Sasanian. The region
of Firuzabad in Fars province witnessed the first of the
giant rock-cut propaganda tableaus that became a
trademark of the Sasanians. Here, Ardashir is depicted
defeating the last Parthian king, Artabanus, in AD
226. A palace with grand facade is an impressive
feature inside the circular city of Firuzabad itself.
The circular layout is matched by that of neighbouring Darabjird, as well as by Ctesiphon, the eventual
capital in Mesopotamia. The private palace of Qalehi-Dukhtar is perched on a mountain promontory
outside of Firuzabad.
The Sasanians ancestors were Zoroastrian priests,
helping explain how Zoroastrianism was promoted as
a state religion in the new Iran. Unlike their Parthian
predecessors, who seemingly tolerated most religious
expressions, the Sasanians declared what were judged
to be deviant beliefs were heretical, and persecutions
were imposed. In the third century, Manis ecumenical
teachings were outlawed. Zoroastrian orthodoxy outlawing Manichaeism is documented in High Priest
Kartirs palimpsest inscription on a triumphal rock
tableau of Shapur I at Naqsh-i-Rustam near Persepolis. Manichaeans fled to Central Asia where they
established monasteries that were as intimately linked
with spiritual pilgrimage as they were with trade
along the great Asian highway.
Sasanian Triumphs

After Ardashirs decisive victory over the last Parthian

king in AD 226, he campaigned to consolidate his
new realm. Seizing control of international trade
routes was a major part of his objective. From around
the mid-first century, immigrant Kushans had sponsored trade along the River Oxus, and through the
Hindu Kush and Indus valley. Kushan trade networks
circumvented Iran, meaning that the Parthians were
excluded from profits to be had from transshipping
oriental luxuries. Ardashirs campaigns were motivated by ambition to redress that imbalance. Initially,

ASIA, WEST/Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations 825

he and his immediate successors had notable successes against their neighbors in this regard. The
Arab stronghold of Hatra in northern Mesopotamia,
a previously impregnable stronghold, was besieged
and eliminated as an independent agent in the transcontinental trade in AD 238. Similarly, the new
Roman station of Dura Europos along the Euphrates
was seized through tunneling by Sasanian sappers
under the massive defensive walls. Like Hatra, Dura
no longer had a role to play in the expanded Sasanian
state, and it became a ghost city until early twentieth
century archaeologists documented its remains.
One must be cautious about awarding excessive
merit to the Sasanians for victories against the
Romans and their agents at this time. The truth is
that Rome was in a crisis during the third century, its
leadership manipulated to a large extent by soldiers.
Nevertheless, the armies were professional. As a
result, one should not downplay Shapurs decisive
victory over Philip the Arab in AD 244. Roughly a
decade later, 60 000 Roman prisoners were taken
at the battle of Antioch; and 70 000 were captured
4 years later at the battle of Edessa. Such victories
were the subject of propagandistic tableaus carved
on mountain faces near to the Sasanian ancestral
home of Persepolis. Yet, as with their Parthian predecessors, the Sasanians failed to establish lasting control over these northern Mesopotamian territories.
One should not discount the fact that the native languages of the area belonged to the Semitic family, and
communication may have been difficult. In that sense,
the territory would have been defined as non-Iran.
Nevertheless, the related dialect of Aramaic had been
a language of international commerce for considerable time, and language difficulties do not explain
why the Sasanians failed to establish hegemony in
the region. Similarly, it is wrong to imply that the
steppe landscape was foreign by Iranian standards.
The Sasanians successfully settled similar riverine
and desert-fringe terrain in the eastern part of their
empire, though this did not happen without a high
price being paid for defense of the region.
Roman Confrontation

A significant factor in the failure of the Sasanians to

maintain mastery over northern Mesopotamia in the
third century was the rising power of Palmyra (see
Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad). An
oasis in the Syrian Desert, halfway between the
Euphrates and the Mediterranean, Palmyra became a
proverbial caravan city, where Eastern goods were
transshipped to markets of the West. State support
for the trade, including the assignment of armed escorts for protection, allowed the Palmyrenes to keep

considerable amounts of international trade out of

Iranian hands. The accumulated wealth helped sponsor
a variety of lavish building programs in the city, as
well as earning it special status in the Roman Empire.
In the end, Palmyras flamboyance, especially the
aggressive behavior of its notorious Queen Zenobia,
aroused Roman resentment and the city was put under
direct Roman rule under the emperor Diocletian.
Rome had re-entered the Syrian scene just as the
Sasanian state was becoming enfeebled through feuding over the throne. In the face of Diocletians revitalized Roman administrative system in the late third
century, Sasanian weakness resulted in territory being
ceded to the west. A status quo of sorts did emerge in
the fourth century with the return of stability in Iran
and the 70-year-long reign of Shapur II (309379).
Although they battled extensively, neither side made
long-lasting gains. It has been argued that the long
drawn out wars, which drained the economies and
energies of both sides, partly account for the ease with
which Islam was eventually to conquer these regions
in the seventh century, due to the exhausted frame of
mind of the resident populations.
Through defeat of the Kushans and territorial
annexation, the Sasanians were brought into confrontation with the tribes across the River Oxus. Shapur
was obliged to spend considerable time and effort
defending the northeastern frontier of Iran against
the Chionite Huns (Chinese: Xiongnu). These efforts
had to be maintained under Shapurs successors, including by one of Sasanian Irans most charismatic of
kings, Bahram V (AD 420438). For his hunting
exploits, he earned the epithet of Gur, meaning
wild ass. His image was a favourite of Islamic times
to depict, along with his constant female companion
Azadeh. Less well known is the fact that he battled
in the northeast against a new wave of Hunnish invaders identified as the Hephthalites (White Huns). At
the site of Bandian near the Iranian border with
Turkmenistan, archaeologists unearthed a palace decorated with carved plaster scenes that likely depict a
victory against Huns around this time. The compositional arrangement is reminiscent of third century
Firuzabad, but the style reflects much more what
appears in the Soghdian art of sixth century Samarkand
(Uzbekistan). Carved plaster ornament was a universal
cliche of Sasanian palace decoration. The sites of Tepe
Hissar (northern Iran), Tepe Mill, and Chal TarkhanEshqabad (south of Tehran), and Ctesiphon have all
produced similar examples of geometric ornament,
stylized vegetation, heraldic devices, and figural art.
King Peroz (AD 457484) was obliged to continue
the attempt to halt the Hephthalites. Following a
defeat, the Sasanian king was obliged to give his
son Kavadh as hostage for the armistice. Ironically,

826 ASIA, WEST/Achaemenian, Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations

this was to serve Kavadh in good stead. When, after

his fathers death, challenges were made concerning
his coronation, he was installed with Hephthalite
help. Furthermore, when Kavadhs revolutionary
doctrine of egalitarian Mazdakism proved to be unpopular with the privileged aristocracy, Kavadh temporarily (AD 496498) found refuge with the Huns.
For the most part, however, he was a strong ruler and
confronted Byzantium (Romes Christian successor in
the east) effectively in northern Mesopotamia.
Sasanian Golden Age

A golden age for Iran set in with Khusrau Is accession

to the throne (Khusrau I, AD 531579). The era is
well reflected in scenes chosen to illustrate the sides of
a grotto (Taq-i-Bustan) in the northern Zagros. The
back wall shows an investiture scene and the solitary
figure of a heavy-armed cavalryman. The walls on the
sides depict a royal hunt. This is not an expedition.
Rather, the hunt takes place in an enclosed compound
where seemingly the king is guaranteed success.
Game is driven into the enclosure for easy target.
Musicians accompany the event. Everything is geared
to ensuring the kings prowess as a successful hunter.
As for Khusraus political successes, he resolved
the Mazdakite crisis through persecutions and executions, turning back to orthodox Zoroastrianism,
earning the title Anushirvan (the Just). The Mazdakite movement had caused serious disruption to
established legal and fiscal practices. However, recognizing Kavadhs concern over serious inadequacies in
property and product assessments, Khusrau initiated
fiscal reform. This included the concept of levying tax
on a crop on the basis of an average yield. It was a
much more effective way of assessing state income.
The measures stayed in place long after the Sasanian
regime disappeared.
Creation of a professional army, replacing the former drafting of recruits from private armies of nobles,
also had immediate success, both against Byzantines
and Huns. Khusraus most dramatic victory in northern Mesopotamia included the sack of Antioch in
AD 540, and the deployment of prisoners in construction projects in Iran, just as his predecessor Shapur
I had done. Equally significant for the adoption of
foreign ideas was the welcome afforded to academics
expelled from Byzantium when the Emperor Justinian
closed the prestigious academy of Athens in AD 529
on the grounds that the study of ancient Greek
philosophy was heretical. These scholars helped to
form the foundation of the famous medical school
of Jundishapur in southwestern Iran.
An undignified interregnum followed, with a successful military general challenging the heir apparent.

The legitimate crown prince was forced to seek Byzantine help in order to achieve his ascendancy to the
throne. Concessions were made as a result toward
Byzantine claims to territory in the Caucasus. So the
epithet Parvez (Victorious) hardly yet befits the individual (Khusrau II, AD 591628) who became the
new Sasanian monarch. However, Khusrau II went on
to mount the most impressive of all campaigns that the
Sasanians had waged since the third century. The city
of Edessa, in the lee of the Taurus Mountains and at
the head of northern Mesopotamia, had been an impregnable bastion for Byzantium for decades. When it
fell to Khusrau, the door to the rest of Syro-Palestine
was open. Antioch was sacked once again (in AD
611); Jerusalem fell in AD 614, with the Holy Cross
carried off as a spoil of war. Sasanian armies entered
Lower Egypt, capturing Alexandria in AD 619.
A Sasanian army even threatened Byzantium itself.
However the tables were turned through the brilliant tactics of Byzantine general-turned-emperor
Heraclius, who led his forces on a series of incisive
marches into the Iranian heartland between AD 622
and AD 628. In revenge for the sack of Jerusalem, the
campaign included sack of the great fire sanctuary of
Adhur Gushnasp, at the site of Takht-i Suleiman in the
northern Zagros. Khusraus successor, King Kavadh II,
negotiated for peace and conceded most of the recently
won territory. The Sasanians, however, now had to
face what turned out to be their ultimate demise.
Islamic Conquest

Shortly after Prophet Muhammads death in AD 632,

and apostasy rebellions, Khalid b. al-Walid marched
into the desert fringes of Mesopotamia to reimpose
acceptance of Islam on the apostates. This initial
entry of Muslim forces into Mesopotamia was only
directed toward dissident Arabs. No confrontation
was made with Sasanian authorities. Subsequent
raids into Mesopotamia, however, later culminated
in a severe Arab defeat at the hands of the Sasanian
army, in AD 634. The defeat convinced Caliph Umar
of the need to dispatch major forces to the area.
Unexpectedly, the Sasanians suffered a severe defeat
in the battle of al-Qadasiyya (AD 636, near al-Hira,
in southern Iraq). From there they fell back to a
position near the capital, Ctesiphon, but which the
Sasanians also failed to hold. The Arabs were awestruck by the opulence of the recently abandoned
palaces, performing their simple prayers in one of the
palaces. The Sasanians made another attempt to make
a stand at the Iranian plateaus edge (battle of Jalula),
but unsuccessfully. The final defeat of the Sasanian
king of kings occurred at the battle of Nehavand, in
AD 642, in the central lands of the plateau.

ASIA, WEST/Arabian Peninsula 827

See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The
Levant; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Phoenicia;
Roman Eastern Colonies; Civilization and Urbanism,
Rise of; Europe, South: Greece; Greek Colonies; Rome.

Further Reading
Allen L (2005) The Persian Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Culican W (1965) The Medes and Persians. London: Thames and
Hudson.
Curtis VS, Hillenbrand R, and Rogers JM (eds.) (1998) The Art and
Archaeology of Ancient Persia. New Light on the Parthian and
Sasanian Empires. London: Tauris.
Curtis VS and Stewart S (2006) The Idea of Iran, Vol. 2: The Age of
the Parthians. London: Tauris.
Daryaee T (in press) International Library of Iranian Studies, Vol. 8:
Sasanian Persia. The Rise and Fall of an Empire. London: Tauris.
Frye RN (1962) The Heritage of Persia. London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson.
Gershevitch I (ed.) (1985) Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 2: The
Median and Achaemenian Periods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harper PO (1978) The Royal Hunter. Art of the Sasanian Empire.
New York: Asia Society.
Herrmann G (1977) The Making of the Past: The Iranian Revival.
Oxford: Elsevier-Phaidon.
Yarshater E (ed.) (1983) Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3. The
Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, 2 parts. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Introduction
The Arabian Peninsula occupies an area of
c. 2 590 000 km2 and is bounded on the east by the
Persian Gulf; on the west by the Red Sea and the Gulf
of Aqaba; on the south by the western Indian Ocean
(Arabian Sea); and on the north by a desert-steppe
zone that blends seamlessly into the southern portions
of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Politically, it is comprised
of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain,
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Sultanate
of Oman, and Yemen. Most of Arabia enjoys a subtropical climate with low rainfall, but much of northeastern Arabia and parts of southeastern Arabia are
underlain by substantial reserves of artesian water.
The mountainous areas of Yemen, the Jabal Akhdar
in the interior of Oman, and inland Dhofar receive
higher rainfall capable of supporting more intensive
forms of irrigation agriculture (Yemen), horticulture (Oman), and arboriculture (Dhofar). Two major
deserts, the Nafud in the north and the Rub al-Khali in
the south, dominate the interior of the peninsula.
Microclimatic zones show considerable vegetational
diversity, as in the Asir region of southwestern Saudi
Arabia, and the relict mangrove forests around Kalba,
Ras al-Khaimah, and Umm al-Qaiwain in the UAE.
Studies have documented climatic variation in the past
and major sea-level changes in both the Red Sea and
Persian Gulf that affected settlement in these regions.

Pleistocene Remains

Arabian Peninsula
Daniel T Potts, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW,
Australia
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
anthropomorphism The attributing of human shape or
characteristics to a god, animal, or inanimate thing.
artesian aquifer A confined aquifer containing groundwater
that will flow upward out of a well without the need for
pumping.
blade A type of stone tool created by striking a long narrow flake
from a stone core.
ghee The liquid butter remaining when butter from milk is
melted, boiled, and strained.
microclimate The climate of a small, specific place within an
area as contrasted with the climate of the entire area.
subtropical climate Refers to zones in a range of latitudes
between 30/40 and 45 . The hot season duration is longer, while
the cold season is milder and rainy.
transhumance Seasonal and alternating movement of
livestock, together with the persons who tend the herds, between
two regions, as lowlands and highlands.

Whether via the Levantine corridor (from Africa to

Western Asia through Sinai), the Arabian corridor
(across the Bab al-Mandeb strait from the Horn of
Africa to Yemen), or both, stone tool-using hominins
reached the Arabian Peninsula, perhaps as early as
11.2 million years ago. The earliest dated remains at
Ubeidiya in Israel, just north of Arabia, have been
placed at around 1.41 million years ago. There,
Homo ergaster used stone tools of Acheulean type,
including large hand axes and large flakes. Comparable Acheulean (Lower Palaeolithic) material has been
found on open-air sites in northern Saudi Arabia and
in caves in Yemen. Potentially older pebble tools,
resembling Oldowan material in East Africa, have
been found on surface sites in the Wadi Shahar and
at Al-Guza cave (Yemen), but their attribution remains
unconfirmed.
Many more Middle Palaeolithic sites, showing
Levallois-style flaking technology and a Mousterian
industry, characterized by flakes and blades, are
known in both northwestern and southwestern
Arabia, although most of these are surface sites and
none has been excavated to date. Whether these sites

828 ASIA, WEST/Arabian Peninsula

were inhabited by Homo neanderthalensis can only

be determined when skeletal remains are excavated
at an Arabian site.
Upper Palaeolithic open-air sites with sidescrapers
and bifacial foliates have been documented throughout western Arabia and, more recently, south of Bir
Khasfa in the Wadi Arah of Oman. Typologically this
material shows clear links to East African, rather than
Zagros Mousterian industries.

Early Holocene
The terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene are
poorly documented in Arabia, and it is really not
until the mid-Holocene climatic optimum in the
seventh/sixth millennium BC (88507850 BP) that
the record of human settlement resumes. A variety
of data (sediments, isotopes, and pollen) from fossil
lake beds located in the southern Rub al-Khali (Saudi
Arabia and Yemen) and the UAE confirm that this
wet phase coincided with a temporary, northward
displacement of the summer monsoon. At the same
time, in the more northerly latitudes, the so-called
8.2 ka (ka thousand years ago) event, described
as the most abrupt and significant cold event to
occur in the past 10 000 years, caused a pronounced
aridification in Anatolia and the Levant, which disturbed the pattern of human settlement there, effectively ending the pre-pottery Neolithic phase. The
combination of aridification in the Levant and favorable climatic conditions further south in the Arabian
peninsula may explain the relatively sudden expansion of settlement throughout Arabia. The earliest
stone tool tradition in eastern Arabia during the
sixth millennium, a blade-arrowhead industry first
identified in Qatar, shows clear links to the late
PPNB Levantine lithic tradition, while the slightly
later sites of the Arabian Neolithic or Late Stone
Age in eastern Saudi Arabia and the UAE contain
faunal evidence of domesticated sheep and goat, both
of which must have been introduced. It can therefore
be suggested that the expansion of sites in eastern
Arabia at this time may have been due to migrating
groups from the southern Levant who, with their
flocks and distinctive lithic technology, sought to
leave behind a deteriorating environment, settling in
Arabia during a favorable period when monsoon activity was at its peak and both game and grazing were
plentiful (see Animal Domestication).
In northeastern Arabia, the bifacially retouched,
barbed and tanged arrowhead is the type fossil of this
phase, while in southeastern and southwestern Arabia,
apart from the so-called Fasad points, which are unifacial, foliates and tangless points are more common.

Most of the sites in the northeast and southeast are

surface scatters, although stratified sites with multiple
hearths, midden-like depositional accretion, burials,
and ceramics are known as well. Most of the ceramics
were of imported, black-on-greenish buff material of
Ubaid-type from Mesopotamia, although a coarse,
chaff-tempered redware found on sites like Abu Khamis
and Dosariyah in eastern Saudi Arabia may represent
local attempts at ceramic manufacture. The mechanisms whereby Mesopotamian pottery was distributed
from southern Iraq to sites in Kuwait, eastern Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE are unknown,
but scholars have speculated that Mesopotamian seamen may have ventured south in search of pearls and
other resources, for which they exchanged pottery
and perhaps other, perishable items.
As the excavated sites of this period in southeastern
Arabia always yield the remains of domesticated
sheep, goat, and cattle, it seems appropriate to class
the groups inhabiting them as herders who did some
hunting on the side, rather than hunters and gatherers
who kept livestock. In addition, as can be seen clearly
in the UAE, a seasonal pattern of transhumance was
practiced. This involved spending winters on the
coast, where fish, shellfish, and other marine fauna
provided ample protein; spring on the gravel plains of
the interior; and summers in the dry desert interior or
mountains.
Along with fish, shellfish, and domestic livestock,
wild animals like gazelle and oryx were hunted,
migratory birds including the Socotran cormorant (Phalacrocorax nigrogularis) were caught, and the date
palm was exploited, setting a pattern of use which is
a hallmark of Arabian horticulture to this day. It is
very likely that the animal domesticates were kept
primarily for their secondary products milk, fleece,
and hair while hunted animals (and marine resources)
provided the bulk of the protein needs of the population. Importantly, the domestic animals kept in eastern
Arabia were capable of turning brackish water, otherwise unfit for human consumption, into potable milk.
Given the impossibility of keeping milk very long in an
arid environment, it is clear that it was probably turned
into some form of cheese or ghee (clarified butter) that
could be consumed over a longer period of time.
Excavations at Ras al-Hamra (Oman) and Jabal
Buhais 18 (Sharjah, UAE) have revealed large cemeteries dating to this period. These are usually single
inhumations in shallow pit graves, although in several
cases more than one individual seems to have been
interred simultaneously, perhaps as the result of death
in a single event. The deceased were buried with a
variety of personal belongings including necklaces,
headbands, belts, bracelets, and anklets made out of
marine shells, coral, mother-of-pearl and stones such

ASIA, WEST/Arabian Peninsula 829

as agate, anhydrite, carnelian, chert, jet, limestone,

and serpentinite.
Few sites of this period have been excavated in the
interior of Arabia or in Yemen, but it is likely that
some of the many surface sites on which Arabian
bifacials and foliates have been found date to this
era. Many fossil lake beds in the southern interior of
Arabia, for example, are ringed by remains probably
left by hunting parties, though no sites as substantial
as those in eastern Arabia, with burials and stratified
deposits, have yet been identified.

Early Bronze Age

By the end of the fourth or the beginning of the
third millennium BC, the cultural manifestations
around the Arabian Peninsula begin to show more
and more divergence in all forms of material culture.
In southeastern Arabia, monumental tombs built of
unworked stone, of so-called Hafit type (after Jabal
Hafit), appear on ridge tops near oases such as Baat
and Buraimi. Although they contained few individuals, they were probably collective. Imported ceramics point to links with the Jamdat Nasr period
(c. 3000 BC) in southern Mesopotamia. Towards the
middle of the third millennium, the better-attested
Umm an-Nar culture, with its large circular fortifications (c. 1640 m in diameter, built of stone, mud
brick, or a combination of both) and far more numerous collective tombs, built of unworked stone faced
with finely masoned limestone ashlars, emerges. In
rare cases, the limestone ashlars of these tombs have
scenes in low relief, including humans and animals

Figure 1 Temple of cut limestone ashlars at Barbar, Bahrain.

(camel, oryx, donkey, bull). Mesopotamian and

Bahraini pottery, Iranian, black-on-gray ceramics and
carved softstone vessels, ivory combs from Bactria
and/or the Indus Valley, and Harappan weights and
etched carnelian beads, all reflect peak close ties with
a wide array of regions extending from the Indus
Valley in the east to Syria in the west. At RJ2 in
eastern Oman (Ras al-Jinz), a sprawling settlement
with third millennium occupation has revealed fragments of bitumen bearing cord and reed mat impressions that come from boats. Harappan material,
including ceramics and seals, found at the site suggests
that Ras al-Jinz, the nearest landfall to Pakistan and
India if one crosses the Arabian Sea by boat, was
probably an important stage in the maritime routes
linking the Indus Valley and the west. Importantly,
RJ2 has also yielded a rectangular, footed incense
burner with traces of aromatic resin still adhering to
its upper surface. This find suggests that the trade in
aromatics linking south Arabia, or the frankincense
and myrrh-producing regions of Dhofar (technically
in Oman, but culturally south Arabian), was already
underway in the Bronze Age, a probability made
highly plausible by references to a large variety of aromatics in Mesopotamian cuneiform sources of third
millennium date.
Late in the third millennium, several large settlements were founded on Bahrain (Qalat al-Bahrain and
Saar), while nearby temples (Barbar and Diraz) displayed the first public religious architecture known
in the region (Figure 1). In contrast to southeastern
Arabia where collective burial (sometimes involving
hundreds of individuals) was the norm, burial mounds

830 ASIA, WEST/Arabian Peninsula

on Bahrain, over 150 000 of which have been counted

on aerial photographs of the main island, were predominantly individual inhumations.
Cuneiform sources in Mesopotamia allow us to
identify southeastern Arabia with the region known
as Magan (Sumerian) or Makkan (Akkadian) at this
time. The mainland of eastern Saudi Arabia, with the
important island of Tarut, and Bahrain, on the other
hand, formed the land known as Dilmun (Sumerian)
or Tilmun (Akkadian). Settlements and tombs on the
mainland at Rufayah, Abqayq, and Dhahran, and on
Tarut, show evidence of strong connections with
southern Mesopotamia (ceramics) and southeastern
Iran (softstone vessels).
Elsewhere in the peninsula, however, third millennium occupation is more elusive. Recent C-14 dates
from the deepest levels at Tayma, in the Hejaz, suggest that Bronze Age occupation underlies the predominantly Iron Age strata at the site. In Yemen, the
Bronze Age was only discovered less than 25 years
ago when Italian archaeologists revealed stone structures near Sirwah at Khawlan at-Tiyal and Hada; in
the Wadi Hirab, north of the Jawf; and on the high
plateau near Sanaa around Hadur Hamdan and
Rayda. These seem to be small villages of agriculturalists who cultivated wheat, barley, sorghum, and
oats, and kept domesticated sheep, goat, and possibly
donkey. A limited range of brick-red, sand-tempered
ceramic forms, some of which are decorated with
burnishing and incision on the exterior, as well as
ground and flaked stone tools, copper tools (pins/
awls) and weaponry (short swords with raised midrib
and two rivets at the base for attachment to the hilt,
c. 1625 cm long, all from Bayt al-Mujali), and jewelry
made of shell and semiprecious stones, constitute the
bulk of the material found on these sites, with one
important exception. A small number of monolithic,
anthropomorphic statues, made of granite and varying between c. 17.5 and 33 cm in height, appears to
date to the third millennium (and possibly the second
as well). All have small, triangular, flattened heads
with eyes indicated by slight depressions and a clear
nose, atop broad, square shoulders. The upper arms
are held vertically against the body, and the forearms
are horizontal, a pose that is reminiscent of Mesopotamian statuary of the mid-third millennium in the
Diyala region (Early Dynastic II). Males are often
distinguished by a raised ridge running from the
shoulder downward, between the hands and around
the upper waist (a rope? braid? edge of a toga-like
garment that left the neck and one shoulder uncovered?); a belt closer to the hips; and a penis. In one
case, a female is identifiable by a large pubic triangle,
while in another small breasts and the labial area are

clearly delineated. The function of such statuary is

unknown. On analogy with contemporary Mesopotamia, these anthropomorphic images may represent
dead individuals who wished to be commemorated
by a statue in an attitude of perpetual prayer. If so,
then it is likely that they were originally displayed in a
temple or shrine of some sort.
The third millennium inhabitants of south Arabia
were buried in turret graves, collective inhumations
built of unworked stone whch often occur in clusters
or alignments. Most have been robbed, however, and
the paucity of archaeological finds contained in them
have made their dating problematic. Another tomb
type dating to the mid-third millennium, attested at
al-Qibali 9 in the Wadi Arf and at graves in the Wadi
al-Muhammadiyin, consists of a circle of vertical,
unworked boulders, some of which may have incised,
anthropomorphic forms on the outer face. These
resemble the freestanding granite statuary described
above, with the addition of a particular dagger type,
with crescentic pommel or handle (perhaps the handle
type that would have been riveted to the copper blades
found at Bayt al-Mujali). Close parallels for precisely
this type of weapon are known from the so-called
grave of Meskalamdug (PG 755) in the Royal Cemetery at Ur (c. 2500 BC) and later in a XIIth Dynasty
grave at Dahshur in Egypt (early second millennium
BC). Archaeological explorations at shell middens on
the Farasan islands in the lower Red Sea have been
directed at documenting links between southwestern
Arabia and pharaonic Egypt but to date there is
no compelling evidence of such ties before the Late
Bronze Age (see the relevant section below). As for the
Early Bronze Age of central and northern Arabia, as
well as most of the Red Sea littoral north of Yemen,
we have no information at the present time.
By the mid-third millennium, eastern Arabia began
to figure increasingly in Mesopotamian cuneiform
sources. Late Early Dynastic documents show us
Dilmun (Bahrain/eastern Saudi Arabia) as an exporter
of woods from foreign lands and copper to the southern Mesopotamian city of Lagash. By the twentyfourth century BC, Magan (UAE/Oman) had become
an object of aggression as at least two Old Akkadian
kings, Naram-Sin and Manishtushu, conducted campaigns there. Further aggression may have taken place
during the Ur III period, but the trade of Mesopotamian textiles and oil (sesame) for copper from Magan
(extracted from the copper-rich ophiolite formation
of the Hajar mountains in Oman) is also attested
(Figure 2). A decentralized political system is suggested by the size and nature of sites from this period
in the UAE and Oman, most which are dominated by
one or more fortified towers and were probably the

ASIA, WEST/Arabian Peninsula 831

Figure 2 The copper-rich Hajar mountains run from the northern UAE to the southeastern part of Oman.

Figure 3 Gold objects from the late 3rd millennium BC tomb at

Tell Abraq.

strongholds of local rulers, but there is at least one text

from Ur in Iraq which records the receipt of gold dust
from a king of Magan (Figure 3) (see Political Complexity, Rise of).

Middle Bronze Age

In the early second millennium, the major settlement
at Qalat al-Bahrain grew within the confines of an
enormous city wall, built at the very end of the third
millennium, encompassing some 15 ha. A large, palatial residence built of cut limestone ashlars, that
continued to be used right through the Iron Age, was
erected in this period. Cuneiform documents from
Ur confirm that an important trade in copper ingots
(originating in Oman) on their way to the cities of

southern Mesopotamia passed through the hands of

Dilmunite traders. A planned settlement at Saar, with
streets, a temple, and a consistent set of multiroomed
houses, was also inhabited. Furthermore, a colony of
Dilmunites was established on Failaka, an island in
the bay of Kuwait, at the head of the Gulf. Distinctive
stamp seals with iconography showing humans and
animals were used by Dilmunite traders, as a sealimpressed tablet recording trade in metals found at
Susa, in southwestern Iran, attests. Relations with
Oman, Dilmuns copper source, are reflected in the
presence of typical red-ridged, Dilmunite (so-called
Barbar) pottery, at sites like Tell Abraq and Kalba
in the UAE, the composition of some of which (from
Tell Abraq) shows that it originated at Saar.
In Oman and the UAE, a change in diet is suggested
by isotopic analyses of skeletal remains from collective tombs. Fewer terrestrial fauna (cattle, sheep,
goat) were being consumed, while marine resources
contributed a greater proportion of the protein intake
than previously. Whether environmental conditions
deterioriated at this time is unclear, though this has
been invoked as a possible cause of settlement regression. Whereas tombs are abundant enough in the first
700 years of the second millennium, settlements
became exceedingly scarce. A reversion to nomadism
is unlikely, particularly as there is no evidence of camel
domestication yet (see below). It is certain, however,
that socioeconomic change occurred, visible in changes
in ceramics, settlement pattern, and burial form.
Graves were now either long, single-chambered structures (both semi-subterranean and above ground);
ovoid, sometimes with an internal wall running the
length of the chamber; or multichambered aggregates

832 ASIA, WEST/Arabian Peninsula

of roughly circular or oval spaces (perhaps built successively to house members of an extended group?).
The evidence of contact with the outside world, so
abundant in the late third millennium, is considerably
less, though post-Harappan and Kaftari (Elamite) ceramics, at Tell Abraq and Shimal, as well as pottery and
seals of Dilmunite type, reflect ongoing contact with
foreign areas.
The Middle Bronze Age remains very poorly
attested outside of eastern Arabia, and it is not until
the Late Bronze Age that the archaeological sequences
in northwestern and southwestern Arabia offer us
much evidence.

Late Bronze Age

The late second millennium BC is now seen by many
as the formative period in both northwestern and
southern Arabia, leading directly to the emergence
of state-level societies in Yemen during the Iron Age
and major tribal confederations (e.g., the Midianites)
in the Hejaz that interacted on a variety of levels with
the peoples of Syro-Palestine and Egypt.
On the Tihama coast (Red Sea) and around the
southwestern tip of Arabia toward Abyan, to the
east of Aden, a unified, Late Bronze culture known
as the Sabr culture (after the type site of the same
name, c. 20 km north of Aden) shows clear links in
ceramic shapes and punctate or combed decoration
with African material, particularly at pre-Aksumite
sites in Ethiopia and Eritrea, from which the Yemeni
coast is separated only by the narrow Bab al-Mandab,
and on sites of the Pan Grave culture in Nubia.
Less oriented toward the highlands of Yemen than
toward the Red Sea, the Sabr culture represents an
important phase of development prior to the rise
of Saba in the early first millennium BC. The trajectory that led in the direction of the classical south
Arabian states (Awsan, Saba, Main, Qataban, and
Himyar) is, however, apparent in the highlands at
Yala and Hajar Bin Humeid, where calibrated C-14
dates push the beginnings of settlements utilizing irrigation agriculture and making ceramics which prefigure later south Arabian material, back to the
twelfth century BC. Some scholars have pointed to
early occuation at Raybun and Shabwa in the Wadi
Hadramawt which appears not merely pre-Sabaean
but noon-Sabaean, evincing links, to judge by the
ceramics, with the southern Levant. Such links are
long suspected by linguists who point to a probable common ancestry for the Phoenician and the
south Arabian alphabet and similarities between
alphabetic Ugaritic and the south Semitic alphabet
and letter order. These clues, along with ceramic parallels, have convinced researchers that an important

stimulus leading to the appearance of classical south

Arabian civilization derived from overland contacts
along what would become the western incense route
leading from Gaza in Palestine to Marib in Saba.
Certainly at the time proposed for such links,
northwestern Arabia was inhabited, but there has
been no excavation at key sites such as Qurayyah,
east of the Gulf of Aqaba in northwesternmost Saudi
Arabia, where the visible remains of fortifications,
a citadel, agricultural fields, ceramic production
area, and an associated settlement are known only
from brief surface investigations. Both Late Bronze
Age Aegean and Egyptian parallels, and with Midianite wares from the copper-smelting site of Timna
near Aqaba, suggest nevertheless that a date in the
thirteenthtwelfth centuries BC is highly probable.
Relations with Egypt and Israel, attested to in written
sources, will unfortunately remain invisible from
an archaeological perspective until excavations are
undertaken at Qurayyah and other sites in the region.
Turning to the east, by the Late Bronze Age,
Bahrain had come under the control of the Kassite
dynasty in southern Mesopotamia. Archaeologically,
this is manifested by a fundamental change in the
ceramic repertoire, as classic Kassite shapes replace
those of the BarbarDilmunite tradition. Several
dozen cuneiform texts found in the reused palatial
building on Qalat al-Bahrain, surely the seat of provincial administration at this time, attest to the use
of writing for local recording purposes by Kassite
officials, but, apart from this, writing seems not to
have become more widespread in the local community. Failaka, too, was well within the Kassite sphere
of influence, and the settlement there, consisting of
densely packed, multiroomed houses built of locally
available beach rock (Arabic farush), shows the same
predominance of Kassite ceramic forms as Bahrain.
Southeastern Arabia, on the other hand, remained
beyond Kassite control. At the end of the Late Bronze
Age, local ceramic forms and fabrics find few parallels outside the region and with the exception of a
small number of sherds resembling Elamite material
from southwestern Iran, as well as one manifestly
Elamite cylinder seal of faience from Tell Abraq,
evidence of ties to other regions is lacking.

Iron Age
During the early first millennium BC, several factors
combined to launch a number of regions in the
Arabian peninsula toward complex statehood. Agricultural intensification due to improved irrigation, the
production of surpluses under the control of local elites,
the domestication of the camel enabling long-distance
caravan trade in aromatics, and pressure from outside

ASIA, WEST/Arabian Peninsula 833

aggressors (principally Assyria) all contributed to state

formation processes in southwestern and northwestern
Arabia, while in the Persian Gulf and southeastern
Arabia, tributary relations with Assyria on the part of
local rulers were documented.
By far the best known of these states arose in south
Arabia where thousands of inscriptions, many of
them historical or annalistic, shed light on the intense
competition between rulers and regions that resulted
in the consolidation of successive Sabaean, Minaean,
Qatabanian, Hadramawt, and Himyarite states.
Although we know little of the earliest supraregional
state in the region, Awsan, there is an unbroken record
of state-level, highly organized, militaristic societies
with standing armies and important external trade
and diplomatic relations from the eighth century BC,
when two Sabaean kings are mentioned in Assyrian
royal inscriptions, to the coming of Islam in the seventh
century AD. Broadly speaking, this millennium can be
divided into four main periods: (1) the period of the
mukarribs (unifiers or federators) of Saba, eighth
to sixth century BC; (2) the period of the kings of
Saba, fifth to first century BC; (3) the period of the
kings of Saba and dhu-Raydan, first to third century
AD; and (4) the Himyarite period, fourth to sixth
century AD. South Arabian society was supported by
an intensive agricultural regime dependent on irrigation. Major dams, like the one at the Sabaean capital
Marib, stored water and enabled the production of
massive agricultural surpluses. Large, walled cities
(Marib, Sirwah, Baraqish, Shabwa, Najran, etc.) dot
the south Arabian landscape, along with smaller
towns, villages, and farmsteads in a complex hierarchy
of settlement. High standards of stone masonry and
an arid climate have resulted in an extraordinary level
of preservation at many sites. Monumental tombs,
replete with alabaster statuary, bronze weaponry, and
ceramics; silver and base metal coinage, inspired originally by Athenian coinage; a rich repertoire of iconographic elements in architectural decoration and
metalwork; and a passion for highly visible, elegantly
carved public inscriptions, characterize south Arabias
civilizations.
In northwestern Arabia, the site of Tayma grew
into a major urban center during the sixth century
BC when the neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus moved
his residence there from 553 to 543 BC. A large city
wall enclosing an important settlement with temples
and industrial areas makes this the largest archaeological site in the region. At about the same time, an
important settlement on the northeastern outskirts of
the al-Ula oasis, known as Khuraybah, began to
grow. The site, where Saudi excavations have recently
begun, is attested in the Bible as Dedan (e.g., Genesis
10.7, etc.) and was home to a trading emporium

founded by Minaean merchants from south Arabia

who thereby established an important commercial
center near the northern end of the incense route.
Other important Iron Age remains have been identified in the Jawf oasis of north-central Arabia,
ancient Adummatu of the Assyrian sources, but
these have not yet been investigated intensively.
Assyrian accounts of campaigns in the region make
it clear, however, that tribal confederations of camelbreeding nomads occupied much of the north
Arabian desert in the early and mid-first millennium
BC. The archaeology of this population is virtually
unknown, although some of the abundant rock art to
be seen in the region probably dates to this period.
Assyrian sources also record the receipt of tribute
from several kings of Dilmun but these predate the
occupational evidence from the major palatial building on Qalat al-Bahrain which was used during the
mid-first millennium. Ceramics and a rock crystal
stamp seal in Achaemenid court style suggest that a
provincial administrator in the service of the Achaemenid Persian Empire may have used the building.
Otherwise, there is little archaeological evidence of
Persian control at this time.
The Iron Age in the Oman peninsula witnessed an
explosion of settlement. Thanks to the introduction of
qanat or falaj irrigation technology, many new oasis
settlements were established, some of which were
walled. Date palm cultivation probably expanded at
this time and the use of the domesticated dromedary
camel is attested. Sites like Muweilah, Rumeilah,
al-Thuqaibah, and Hili 17 reflect the existence of
large communities living in multiroomed, mud brick
houses. Bronze weaponry has been recovered in large
quantities in cemeteries such as al-Qusais, on the outskirts of Dubai. Iron Age graves have been found all
over southeastern Arabia, and Izki, according to
Assyrian sources, was the base of a king named Pade
who sent tribute to the Assyrian ruler Assurbanipal in
the seventh century BC.

The Age of World Empires

Between Alexander the Greats conquest of the Achaemenid Empire in the late fourth century BC and
the coming of Islam, the different sub-areas of the
Arabian peninsula experienced highly variable interaction with the empires of later antiquity. In eastern
Arabia, there are visible signs of contact with the postAlexander Seleucid Empire, based in central Mesopotamia, and with the later Parthian and Sasanian
Empires that originated in Iran. A small Seleucid garrison that has yielded Greek inscriptions and coins,
imported Hellenistic pottery and figurines of Greek

834 ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant

deities, was established on Failaka island. Similar

sorts of finds are attested on Bahrain, particularly at
Qalat al-Bahrain and in hundreds of burial mounds,
while in the UAE and Oman the degree of Hellenistic
influence is considerably less, amounting to a small
quantity of imported pottery (e.g., the stamped handles from Rhodian wine amphorae) and a small number of coins. A local dynast named Abiel minted his
own coins at the site of Mleiha, in the interior of
Sharjah, where a sprawling settlement with private
houses and monumental, mud brick graves, generally
reminiscent of Palmyrene funerary towers in Syria,
has been excavated. Large quantities of imported
Parthian pottery, along with Characene coins from
southern Iraq, Namord ware from southeastern Iran,
Indian Red Polished Ware from the Indian subcontinent, and quantities of Roman glass, have been found
in excavations at the large (c. 4  1 km2) site of edDur, on the Persian Gulf coast north of Umm alQaiwain. Later occupational evidence in southeastern
Arabia is scarce. Although a large settlement mound
at Kush, in Ras al-Khaimah, has been excavated, as
well as numerous graves around Samad in Oman, the
last few centuries before the coming of Islam are poorly documented, perhaps because climatic conditions
deteriorated and population declined.
Given the distance from Yemen to the rest of the
Near East, south Arabia was rarely threatened by her
neighbors and its later history is marked more by
internal military strife than external threats. Although
diplomatic relations are attested in the Assyrian period,
and an alliance between the Hamdanid dynasty and
the Axumites in Ethiopia is attested in the second
century AD, the Roman expedition against Marib
of 26/5 BC was the first foreign incursion into south
Arabia. Increasingly, however, south Arabia was drawn
into a web of international political competition between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, in which
Christianity, Judaism, and international trade all
played a role. Archaeologically, the last few centuries
before Islam are poorly known. The major site of Zafar,
capital of Himyar, has never been excavated, and only
cursory investigations have been undertaken at Najran,
scene of an infamous massacre of Christians by Dhu
Nawas, a Jewish ruler in south Arabia who came to
power through a coup in 521522 AD. The conquest
of south Arabia by the Sasanians in 575 is archaeologically invisible.
The last great civilization in pre-Islamic northwestern Arabia was that of the Nabataeans. Although
normally associated with their capital Petra in southern Jordan, the Nabataeans exercised control much
further south. Madain Salih, in northwestern Saudi
Arabia, about 110 km southwest of Tayma, is a major
site with rock-cut tombs and a large settlement

mound. Smaller Nabataean sites are also known in

the region.
See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The
Levant; Mesolithic Cultures; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and
Akkad; Paleolithic Cultures; Africa, North: Egypt, PrePharaonic; Animal Domestication; Asia, South: Indus
Civilization; Political Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading
Edens C and Wilkinson TJ (1998) Southwest Arabia during the
Holocene: Recent archaeological developments. Journal of
World Prehistory 12: 55119.
Hoyland R (2001) Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to
the Coming of Islam. London: Taylor and Francis.
Potts DT (1990) The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, Vols. 12. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Simpson St J (ed.) (2002) Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient
Yemen. London: British Museum.

Archaeology of the Near

East: The Levant
Suzanne Richard, Gannon University, Erie, PA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
aniconic Traditional view that bans idols from the decorative
arts, for example, Jewish tradition disallows images in
accordance with Mosaic law.
Asherah The Canaanite mother goddess, term used to describe
Iron Age pillar figurines.
bit-hilani A Syrian-style palace/temple consisting of a portico
with columns, often with animals carved into the column bases.
hippodamian A town plan on a gridiron pattern, usually divided
into blocks according to various functions.
hypogeum An underground stone-built tomb.
Merneptah stele Victory stele of Pharaoh Merneptah (1207
BCE) mentioning numerous conquests, including, the people,
Israel.
miqvaot Pl. of miqveh, a Hebrew term for a ritual bath.
tetrapylon Architectural gate-like structure consisting of four
arches usually located at a major intersection in a Roman city.
Via Nova Trajiana The new road of Trajan, built after CE 135
from Petra to Bostra.

Introduction
Defining the Near Eastern Area: The Levant

The area encompasses the modern countries of Syria,

Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, as well as, Palestine and the

ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant 835

Sinai Peninsula (Egypt), although in antiquity, the regions borders often blurred with those of Anatolia
(Turkey) and Mesopotamia (Iraq). Often called Syria
Palestine or the Levant, the region divides naturally
along geopolitical borders today. Scholars specialize in either Syria/Lebanon (north) or Jordan/Israel
(south), the latter increasingly referred to as the
southern Levant. In the past, work in the south focused on illuminating the biblical text (biblical
archaeology); however, in the 1960s, the methods
and theory of the new archaeology revolutionized
work in the Levant. Today, those scholars undertaking the daunting task of relating biblical texts to
archaeological data often use the term, biblical
archaeology, specifically to refer to the Iron Age.
Physical Environment/Geopolitical Landscape

Western Syria/Lebanon and the southern Levant form a

geomorphologic unit. They share ca. a 400-mile Mediterranean coastline, and parallel mountain chains on
either side of the Rift Valley (Ghab, Orontes and
Bekaa valleys, southward to the Galilee Lake, Jordan
River, Dead Sea, and Araba to the Red Sea). Much of
the region is desert or semi-arid steppe: the Negev/
Sinai, the Saudi Arabian Desert in eastern Jordan,
and the Syrian Desert in southeastern Syria. Northeastern Syria (Jezirah) was part of North Mesopotamia,
while the Euphrates area, generally, was often part of
greater Mesopotamia. The Levantine corridor favored
northsouth trade routes: the Via Maris on the coast,
and the Kings Highway in Transjordan (ancient
Jordan), both stretching northward to Syrian hubs
from which trade routes radiated to the coast, to
Anatolia, and to Mesopotamia. As this broad survey
encompasses the prehistoric through classical periods,
the intent is to highlight the current scholarly assessment and/or compelling issue in each period, and to
illustrate it with select data sets. When cultural trajectories diverge, the north and south will be treated separately, in that order. Chronological ranges generally
encompass the two regions, but do not imply exactly
similar horizons. The start dates reflect the earliest
cultural occurrence; time lags will be noted.

Prehistory: Paleolithic Neolithic

Paleolithic (Old Stone Age): Hunter-Gatherers
to Foragers

Lower At Ubeidiya, near Lake Galilee, chopping

stones and micromammal remains, related to the
Oldowan Acheulean industry and dating to 1.4 million
years ago, now provide clear evidence for the early
movement out of Africa of Homo erectus. Although
fossil remains are few, and mostly in Late Acheulian

Israel (Ubeidiya, Gesher Benot Yaakov, and Zuttiyehs

Galilee Man), hand axes, wooden artifacts, and
plant remains at Gesher Benot Yaaqov, and the earliest
known piece of art a steatopygous female figurine
at Berekhat Ram in the Golan Heights, evidence a
developing hunter-gatherer society some 600 000 years
ago. Sites in the north (Yabrud, Adlun, Hummal,
el-Kowm) reflect regional variations near the end
(AcheuleanYabrudian), underscoring developing diversity in the Levant.
Middle New radiometric dating methods have
raised the start of this period considerably (250 000
45 000 year ago), resulting in a greater overlap with
the previous. An agreed demarcation, however, is the
absence of bifacial (handax) tools, while the Levallois
reduction technique (flake/blades) becomes characteristic. The best-known caves and rock shelters are
situated in the Mediterranean core area, for example,
Mount Carmel. The new dating has put those caves at
the center of controversy (human origins), since archaic (Amud, Kebara, and Tabun caves) and modern
humans (Qafzeh and Skhul caves) appear to be competitors using similar tools. Scholars remain divided
on whether the Mount Carmel remains indicate that
modern humans coexisted with or evolved from
archaic humans.
Upper Archaeologists exploring beyond the core
area have found open-air sites in semi-arid lands,
revealing that by 47 00018 000 BCE modern humans showed astonishing adaptation, for example,
Boker Tachtit (Negev), the Sinai, eastern Jordans
Azraq Basin, Ksar Akil 25 (Lebanon), and Palmyra,
and el-Koum (Syria). Accompanied with a toolkit of
blades, there is a concomitant trend toward more
mobile subsistence strategies and processing of plants,
that is, foraging, whose clearest data are seen in the
uppermost or Epipalaeolithic period.
Epipaleolithic: Foragers to Sedentists

One can best comprehend the Kebaran (c. 18 000

12 000 BCE) and Natufian (c. 12 0009500 BCE) as
evincing a broad spectrum revolution; that is, a
hunting strategy (foraging) that exploits a wide variety of game, cereals, and legumes in a localized area.
This strategy inevitably led to sedentism, namely, the
multiphased, round hut villages of Eynan (Galilee),
Mureybit and Abu Hureyra (Euphrates). Astonishingly, Abu Hureyra may have domesticated grain
(rye); Mureybit yielded over a 100 species of seeds
and plants. The archaeological correlates to grain
processing are: sickles with silica, mortars and pestles

836 ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant

(Hayonim Cave, Wadi Hammeh 27, Saaide II, and

desert sites in Jordan); to long-distance trade: obsidian,
Red Sea shells, and basalt; to symbolism: the sickle
hafts and figurines the first true art. More exciting
is the recent discovery of Natufian-like behavior in
the early Kebaran. The open-air sites of Neve David
(Mount Carmel) and Ohalo II (Galilee) already display the characteristics of sedentism, including
thousands of seeds at the latter site!
Neolithic: New Stone Age Farmers, Herders,
and Potters

Aceramic Neolithic
PPNA Coincidently or not, at the onset of the
Holocene era (c. 9600 BCE), the revolutionary first
unequivocal domestication of plants (einkorn wheat,
barley, and pulses) occurred (subsequent to sedentism, not the reverse). Concurrent with domestication,
the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) peoples crossed
the threshold to permanent village settlements:
Mureybit, Jerf el-Ahmar, Tell Aswad; in the south,
Netiv Hagdud, Iraq ed-Dubb, and Jericho, whose
stone wall and tower earned it the title, earliest
city in the world. Wall paintings (Mureybit), auroch
skulls on benches (Jerf al-Ahmar), along with decapitated burials and burning, suggest ritual communal
buildings. Though foraging still dominates, as the
first true arrowhead (notched el-Khiam point) indicates, developing social organization is implicit in
these experimental farming villages.
PPNB As researchers now know, it was somewhat
later (83006800 BCE) that plant domestication
became widespread, followed by the domestication of
goats and sheep. Surely implying population growth,
mega-sites (2535 acres), comprising large, multiroomed, rectangular houses (Ain Ghazal, Wadi
Shueib, Basta in Jordan, Abu Hureyra, and others
in the north) now appeared. Their most recognizable
attribute is the ever-present lime plaster, whether on
floors and walls, in white ware, or, more spectacularly, on plastered skulls and figurines, even unique
busts and statues, some almost 30 tall at Ain Ghazal
(Figure 1). The latter tradition, apparently an ancestor cult, is widespread (Bouqras, Tell Halula, Beisamoun, Wadi Shueib, Tell Sabi Abyard). Other
evidence of ritual includes: decapitated burials below
floors, and sanctuaries (Beidha Ain Ghazal, Tell Sabi
Abyad II, Halulu). It is possible that the remarkable
PPNB (Figure 2) period ended due to over-cultivation
and environmental degradation by the population.
Throughout the entire region, shifting settlement patterns, the abandonment of numerous sites, but occupational continuity at others, all suggest a dynamic

Figure 1 Female plaster statue and bust from the 1983 MPPNB
statuary cache at Ain Ghazal. Photo by Peter Dorrell and Stuart
Laidlaw. Permission of the Ain Ghazal Archaeological Project.

period of transition to the pottery cultures of the Pottery

Neolithic (PN).
PPNC This phase in the south equals the Final PPNB/
early PN in Syria. Discerned originally at Ain Ghazal
and now recognized at a handful of sites in the south,
the PPNC links the PPN to the PN period, thus closing
the hiatus palestinien proposed by Kathleen Kenyon
on the basis of an abandonment at Jericho. In lithics
(mostly flakes) and mortuary practices (skull intact),
but especially in architectural remains (small singleroom houses and corridor structures for storage) and
in faunal remains, a new mode of subsistence is perceptible: nomadic pastoralism. The seasonal herding of
sheep and goats as a subsistence strategy distinct from
sedentism may have arisen at this time due to the
ecoenvironmental conditions, as noted previously.
Ceramic/Pottery Neolithic (PN) The transition
(c. 6900 BCE in Syria) to widespread agricultural villages is cloudy, although continuity at a few sites (Abu
Hureyra, Bouqras, Tell Ramad, Tell Sabi Abyad)
alludes to a primarily indigenous process (also Ain
Ghazal in the south, earlymid sixth millennium). Typically, sites are small, dispersed, and short spanned,
often in new locations (Amuq, Hama; in the south
Munhatta, Shaar ha-Golan). It is thought that the

ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant 837

Figure 2 The PPNB Lower Temple, dated to 7016  132 cal BC. Photo by Bilal Deghedeh and Yousef Zubi. Permission of the
Ain Ghazal Archaeologicao Project.

new pattern reflects the adaptation and consolidation

of a mixed farming regime, with its offshoot, pastoralism. Notably, in the north, there are a few larger
regional sites; in the south, Shaar ha-Golan has public
buildings and a vast collection of female figurines.
Pottery making, a correlative process to PPNB
lime-plaster technology, appeared c. 6900 BCE at Tell
Damishlyiia and Tell Sabi Abyad, in the Jezirah (protoHassuna ware), and in the Amuq (dark-faced burnished ware), and later at Ain Ghazal, in the south
(Yarmoukian). Around 6000, exquisite red-painted
Halaf ware appeared in the Jezireh, then spread to the
coast along with an assemblage of tholoi, red-painted
figurines, stamp seals, and clay sealings. Implying
large-scale pottery production, specialized craftsmanship, and trade (seals), this growing complexity (in the
north) accelerated in the following period.

Chalcolithic (Copper-Stone) Age: Cultural

Complexity and Cities
North

Syria experienced two cultural waves from southern

Mesopotamia, where complex irrigation agricultural
societies developed: Ubaid, in the late sixth and fifth
milleniums, and Uruk (first city/first writing) in the
mid-fourth millennium. The issue is to isolate diffusion
from local processes in the rise of cities. The pervasive
Ubaid cultures mass-produced pottery coincided with
a noticeable developing complexity at sites, suggesting
diffusion. Some sites, Tell Hamam et Turkman, Tell
Brak, Tell Zyadeh in the Jezireh and Tell Kurdu, Ras

Shamra, and Afis in the west have 1014 Ubaid levels,

including granaries (grill buildings).
By 3600 BCE, diffusion from Sumer (the Uruk Expansion/World System) was unequivocal. Habuba
Kabira is the quintessential Mesopotamian urban
colony: fortifications, tripartite-niched cultic buildings, cone mosaics, beveled-rim bowls, and clay
tablets of pre-pictographic style. Other colonies on
the Euphrates include Jebel Aruda, Hadidi, Sheik
Hasan, Tell el-Haj, Habuba Kabira; in the Syrian
Desert, el-Koum. On the other hand, a mixed local
and Uruk assemblage characterizes the established
sites like Hama, the Amuq, and Tell Brak (the Eye
Temple). The most significant new development is
the view that Tell Brak (a 240-acre site with monumental buildings and a hierarchy of hinterland sites)
and, possibly, Tell Hamoukar were urban sites before
the Uruk expansion. What this signifies is that a local
urban trajectory in the dry-farming north (Jezireh)
may have paralleled that of the irrigation societies of
the south (Sumer). The period ended with the Uruk
Collapse c. 3100.
Southern Levant

A different picture emerged locally (c. 4500), as probable chiefdoms arose in several of numerous regions,
the northern Negev (Shiqmim, Gilat), and the Jordan
Valley (Teleilat el-Ghassul). The evidence for developing hierarchies consists of a two-tier settlement
pattern, expansive settlements, public sanctuaries,
and elaborate ritual; formal cemeteries, trade networks, and craft specialization (ivory, basalt stone

838 ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant

carving, metals, pottery) centering on religious iconography (Figures 3 and 4). The rich corpus of prestige
items must indicate a ruling elite. The spectacular Cave
of the Treasure (Nahal Mishmar) hoard contained
429 mostly ritualistic copper items (crowns, scepters,
maces), generally considered the temple equipment
from nearby Ein Gedi, a sacred precinct overlooking
the Dead Sea. The Teleilat el-Ghassul temples displayed
extraordinary frescoes illustrating mythical figures and
an apparent ceremony; at Gilat, a wealth of cultic
paraphernalia was recovered in the temple. Nahal
Qanas eight gold ring ingots affirm trade in prestige
items with Egypt. As scholars consider the interplay of
prestige items, the cult, and metallurgy, they must

factor in the recent stunning discovery of the largest

copper mine in the Near East (Wadi Feinan in southern
Jordan). Still enigmatic are the reasons for this preurban societys total collapse, c. 3500 BCE, although
a destruction layer with Egyptian mace heads (Gilat) is
instructive.

Early Bronze Age (EBA): Widespread

Urbanism and the Rise of the State
North

The rise of state institutions, temple economies, historical writing, in short, civilization, is a hallmark

Figure 3 Overview of excavations in the Shiqmim Chalcolithic village, Northern Negev desert, Israel. Photo: T. E. Levy, UCSD
Levantine Archaeology Laboratory.

Figure 4 Cache of Chalcolithic ceramic vessels found in a ritual deposit, Shiqmim village, northern Negev desert, Israel. Photo: T. E.
Levy, UCSD Levantine Archaeology Laboratory.

ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant 839

Figure 5 Umm el-Marra, Syria. General view of Early Bronze Age Tomb 1, an elite tomb with multiple burials. Pictured here are two men
buried in the middle layer. Courtesy Glenn M. Schwartz.

of Sumer and Egypt, c. 3000 BCE. Lately, scholars

seeking the mechanisms for secondary state formation have focused on local trajectories distinct from
the Mesopotamian model, a case in point being the
dry-farming region of the Jezireh. Following the
Uruk Collapse, an apparent indigenous development (the pivotal Ninevite V period) climaxed in
widespread urbanism (by 2600 BCE), for example,
the 216-acre city-state of Tell Leilan. Elsewhere
urbanism emerged in the west at Byblos, Ras Shamra,
Hama. Even rural sites (Figure 8) show surprising
complexity, for example, monumental architecture
(Kashkashu III, Halawa, Raqai), hydraulic systems
(Umbashi, like nearby Jawa in Jordan).
Ebla Several phenomenal expressions of late third
millennium urban city-states (Ebla, Mari, Urkesh)
enlighten us on Syria and its ethnic composition.
The revolutionary discoveries at Ebla (Tell Mardikh)
unveiled a hitherto unknown palatial state equal to
Sumer, and an unknown Semitic language, called
Eblaite, found on cuneiform tablets in the Palace G
archive. Both the workshops, filled with quantities
of tin, obsidian, lapis lazuli, etc., and the texts document Eblas control of major trade routes. Related
Semitic language and texts at Mari elaborate the
rivals control of the middle Euphrates and contiguous steppe. There, Mesopotamian culture is more
pervasive than at Ebla, where native traditions in art
and in religion are apparent. At Urkesh (Tell Mozan),
the Hurrian capital, stunning monumental remains,
including a vast monumental temple plaza and terrace are coming to light.

Figure 6 Umm el-Marra, Syria. Lapis Lazuli wild goat ornament

found with female skeletons in upper layer of Early Bronze Age
Tomb 1. Courtesy Glenn M. Schwartz.

Stone-built tombs at Mishrife (Qatna), and Umm

el-Marra (Figures 57) the corbelled Hypogeum
at Tell Ahmar (Til Barsip), and the unique white
mountain tomb at Banat underscore the wealth
and prestige of urban elites. The caliciform culture,
mass-produced corrugated cups and bowls, links sites
across the region, including the southern Levant
(EB IV). Destruction, abandonment, and decentralization marked the end of the third millennium.
Southern Levant

On the periphery of the Uruk World System but

probably feeling ripples from Syria, a local type of
urbanism developed, its rise and collapse being a
major issue of research. By EB II (3100 BCE), a fairly

840 ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant

uniform pattern of fortified sites of a size ranging

from 10 to 60 acres was typical (Megiddo, Ai,
Jericho, Tell el-Farah N.). A wealth of new data
suggests that Egypt quickened or stimulated urbanization. Egyptians involved in royal trade resided in EB
I/II southern coastal sites (Ein Besor, Erani, Taur
Ikhbeineh), as adduced by Egyptian material culture,
but especially royal serekhs of Narmer (Dynasty 0).
Levantine jars (the Abydos jug) in Egyptian tombs
verify an interregional trade, which also included copper from a complex network involving Arad, Feinan,
and Negev/Sinai sites.
EB III
Between 2750 and 2300 BCE, urbanism
peaked in mega, highly fortified sites (Yarmuths
40 m wide defenses (Figure 9): Jerichos underwent 16
rebuilds in EB IIIII), following the collapse of Negev
sites and concurrent Egyptian territorial expansion.
Although some question EBA urbanism, in relation to
Syrian models, the 216-acre site of Yarmuth appears
to be a city-state with palace economy and complex
organizational hierarchies (1.5-acre palace, temple,
and storage facilities). Such complexity is glimpsed
elsewhere: the public granary at Beth Yerah, cultic precincts at Ai, Megiddo, Khirbet Zeraqoun, Arad, and
palaces at Megiddo and Arad. Wealth differential is,

Figure 7 Umm el-Marra, Syria. Gold filigreed pendant found

with female skeletons in upper layer of Early Bronze Age
Tomb 1. Courtesy Glenn M. Schwartz.

132

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56

TELL AL - RAQA'I

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54

Level 3

63

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57

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58

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52

0
66

64

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29

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36

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76
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48

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46
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54

Figure 8 Raqai. Level 3, Syria. View of a small Early Bronze Age settlement showing domestic and industrial areas and rounded
(silo) building. Courtesy Glenn M. Schwartz.

ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant 841

Figure 9 EB III walled palatial complex (B1) looking NE: main courtyard in foreground, smaller courtyard in the NW, Tell Yarmuth,
Israel. Tell Yarmuth Expedition, courtesy P. Miroschedji.

however, not observed in burials, usually multiple interments of extended families in caves or, uniquely, in
charnel houses (Bab edh-Dhra).
Urban collapse 2300 BCE Once explained by invasion, the collapse and subsequent EB IV is now generally considered a local episode of urban/rural
oscillation. The EB IV, something of a dark age
until recently, is now known to include agricultural
settlements, as well as pastoral sites. Although the
urban sector is missing, there is a level of rural complexity, evidenced by multiphase sites, even regional
centers (especially in Transjordan), displaying remnant EB III urban traditions, for example, Khirbet
Iskander has reused fortifications, a bench-lined gateway, and public storeroom (Figure 10). Bab edh-Dhra,
Aroer, Abu-en-Niaj, Iktanu, Shaar ha Golan, Nahal
Rephaim complement this picture. A large corpus of
metals, and ingots connecting Negev/Sinai sites with
Feinan (Khirbet Hamra Ifdan), also points to trade
(Egypt), as does caliciform pottery (Syria). The period
ended c. 2000 BCE.

Middle Bronze Age (MBA): Regional

Kingdoms and Common Culture
Scholars have the task of explaining a transition from
collapse to a revitalized urbanism, an urbanism

reflecting a similar cultural complex spanning the

region (and even into the Egyptian Delta). By the
end of MB I, the reoccupied tells uniformly reflected
the power and institutional control of elites, and texts
verify the new regional kingdoms or territorial states
of Mari, Yamkhad, Qatna, Hazor (and Tell el-Daba
in Egypt). The highly integrated nature of the culture
has much to do with interregional exchange, but also
ethnic ties. Texts indicate that new peoples across the
Levant were in power positions, particularly Amorites
and Hurrians, and Asiatics in Egypt (the Hyksos). The
urban transformation in the south is difficult to explain without positing new peoples and urban stimuli
from Syria.
Metals, Pottery, Defenses

Various attributes demonstrably support a highly

integrated Levantine culture. Now that bronze superseded copper, distinctive forms like the notched
chisel, the duckbill axe, and socketed spearheads
appeared. Metallurgical advances promoted a mastery of firing and kilns, resulting in a ceramic assemblage of well-fired, carinated, metal-like vessels with
delicate ring bases, highly slipped and burnished
and made on a fast wheel. Massive fortifications
(Figure 11) of multiple walls, triple-entryway gates,
moats, glacis, and enclosures, from Leilan to Mari

842 ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant

Figure 10 Khirbet Iskander, Jordan, EB IV gate and plan, to the N. Pemission of the Khirbet Iskander Expedition, courtesy S. Richard.

to Ebla (440 thick ramparts) and Qatna to Hazor to

el-Daba are characteristic. Unique to the region are
Tell Dans mudbrick arched gate, and the temple at
Leilan (Shamsi Adads capital) with swirling designs
on engaged columns.

miniature calf shrine at Ashkelon; and child burials in

foundation deposit jars. The wealth of elites illustrates a
growing internationalism, notable in tombs and hoards,
like the heavily Egyptian-influenced Montet Jar metal
hoard, from Byblos.

Wealth and Elites

Mari

Ebla offers perhaps the prototypical bit-hilani exemplar in Temple D, a fortified (migdol) tripartite temple.
Royal hypogeum tombs, found filled with exquisite
artifacts and sculptures beneath the palace, foreshadow
the LBA tradition at Ugarit. In the south, Syrian style
courtyard palaces are known (Kabri, Megiddo,
Aphek, Tell Sera), although on a different scale than
the monumental palace complexes in the north (Ebla,
Mari, Alalakh). Widespread contacts may explain the
variety of cult structures and ritual practices, for example, the Byblos Obelisk Temple (Egyptian influence);
Gezer High Place, Nahariya outdoor sanctuary; even a

The splendid 300-room palace of Zimri-Lim at Mari

renowned in its time symbolizes the burgeoning
power of kings. A gold mine of information, its
20 000 tablets mention trading partners (e.g., Dan
and Hazor in the south), political alliances, warfare,
religion, and, of special import, relations with the pastoral nomadic tribes who throughout history played
a critical role in the region. Most notable among
Maris countless treasures are the Mari Standard, the
goddess with the flowing vase, and the Investiture
fresco, whose Minoan like style has also been noted in
frescoes at Tell Kabri, Alalakh, and Tell el-Daba.

ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant 843

known, scholars investigating socioeconomic factors

cite evidences of great wealth differential (elite residences, tombs, luxury items, personal seals), as a potential harbinger of societal breakdown and general
urban collapse, a view supported by texts documenting
a growing society of disaffected peoples (the Habiru).
The sociopolitical and economic impact of empire on
vassal states should likewise not be underestimated.
Suzerains and Vassals

Conquest, tribute, trade, control of resources, and

ultimately political and territorial hegemony drove
the constant warfare of competing empires: Mitanni,
Egypt, Hatti (the Hittites). Prospering urban centers
on the Euphrates, such as Munbaqa, Tell Brak, and
Emar, were in the heartland of Mitanni, while Hittites
and Egyptians battled over western Syria. In the
south, Egyptian garrison cities (Tell es-Saidiyeh,
Tell Beth Shean, Gaza), Egyptian style temples (Beth
Shean, Lachish), anthropoid coffins (Beth Shean, Deir
el-Balah), and the Amarna texts all converged to substantiate a vassalsuzerain relationship.
Cosmopolitanism

Figure 11 Overview of the Middle Bronze Age southern gate

complex at Tell Gezer, c. 17001500 BC. Credit: Hebrew Union
College Gezer Excavations Phase II. Courtesy Joe D. Seger.

Writings

In the south, for the first time, there was documented

literacy (Akkadian cuneiform tablets). But, it was the
MB/LB invention of the (pictographic) alphabet, ancestor to the Phoenician linear alphabet, that was truly
revolutionary: inscriptions of this were found at
Megiddo and carved on stelae by Canaanites working
in Sinai at Serabit el-Khadem. Destruction and upheaval ended the period (c. 1550/1500); Hittites campaigned in the north and Egyptians expelled the hated
Hyksos. Both, in the process, carved out LBA empires.

Late Bronze Age (LBA): Internationalism,

Empires, and Vassal States
Despite constant warfare, there was remarkable
cultural continuity with the MBA, although there was a
generalized aura of decline across the region, if fewer
sites, a dearth of new fortifications, and degenerate
(MBA) ceramics are any indication. Incongruently,
this was a time of great wealth and cosmopolitanism.
Although the Sea Peoples invasion c. 1200 BCE is well

The late fourteenth c. Uluburun and Cape Gelodoniya shipwrecks off the coast of Turkey epitomize the
internationalism of the period: 350 Cypriot copper
ingots, Egyptian ebony, Aegean and Levantine pottery,
gold, wine amphora, etc. In microcosm, the picture is
the same from a family tomb at Gezer (Cave I.10A),
among whose contents were an Egyptian glass vase,
a Syrian jug, Mycenaean and Cypriot vessels, and a
Minoan-style larnax (clay sarcophagus). Imported
pottery from Cyprus and Mycenae floods the market.
Extravagant palaces (Megiddo, Alalakh, Ras ibn
Hani), sacred precincts (Hazor, Ugarit), monumental
sculptures (Megiddo, Hazor, Ugarit), patrician residences (Tell Batash, Megiddo, Ras ibn Hani), bronze
Astarte and Baal statues (Hazor, Ugarit), the Megiddo
ivories (a 300-piece hoard), lavish underground
stone built (corbelled) graves (Tell el-Ajjul, Dan,
and Megiddo, Ugarit) all attest to glaring wealth
differential in the Levant.
Ugarit

Also glaring are palatial economies, for which Ugarits

(Ras Shamra) fabled palace of 100 rooms is a prime
example. This port city is a virtual treasure trove of
gold (elite art) and other precious items and sculpture
(Baal stela), but, as at Ebla, its enduring legacy was a
new language, Ugaritic (Canaanite), the first fullfledged alphabetic (cuneiform) script, and close relative of Hebrew. Textual study has revealed common

844 ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant

religious and social traditions with the later Israelites.

Upheaval, destruction, the end of empires, and general
collapse swept the Mediterranean at the end of the
LBA. The culprits? Probably the Sea Peoples, their
battles with Ramses III immortalized on his mortuary
temple at Medinet Habu.

Iron Age: New Peoples, Nation-States,

and World Empires 1200333 BCE
Once the dust settled, it was evident that a new
sociopolitical order existed: into the political vacuum
had come new peoples (Neo-Hittites, Phoenicians,
Arameans, Israelites, Philistines Moabites, Ammonites,
Edomites). New nation kingdoms were shortly to arise
in this new age of Iron, only to succumb to a sequence
of world empires: Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian,
Persian, and, ultimately, Alexander the Great. The
LBA/IA transition remains enigmatic, as does the
reconstitution of new political entities by numerous
ethnic groups. What was the cultural and political
impact of empire on Levantine peoples?
North (Iron I)

Three regional nation-states are recognizable: NeoHittites (north), Phoenicians (coast), and Arameans
(previous nomads of the steppe), who controlled most
of Syria, even south to Lake Galilee. Affirmed by
continuity at numerous sites (Tell Afis, Carchemish,
Hama), these LBA descendants reconfigured into a
number of competing polities (1200900 BCE).
Archaeologically, it is hard to sort out the multiethnic cities described in the texts, since the sometimesoverlapping Aramaean and Neo-Hittite kingdoms
embrace similar elite markers. Good examples are
the Aramean sites of Ain Dara, whose Syrian bithilani temple is adorned with Neo-Hittite carved
reliefs of mythological creatures and sculpted sphinxes and lions; and Tell Halaf whose colossal caryatid
statues are extraordinary. A new city plan, smaller,
oval, double-walled, with citadel (Tayinat, Zincirli) is
a hallmark of the period (also found at Megiddo in
the south).
Phoenicians (Canaanites) These colonizers (Carthage)
and traders who opened the Levant to western (Greek)
culture were extremely important quantities of
Greek pottery in coastal sites like Tell Sukkas, Al
Mina, Tabbat al-Hammam may equate with colonies.
Their major ports are mostly modern cities today:
Byblos, Sidon, Tyre, Beirut, and Arwad (Akko in the
south), which limits excavation, although there are
sarcophagi (Ahiram), Sidons temple to Eshmun, 200
inscribed funerary stelae outside Tyre, numerous

inscriptions, and important pre-eighth century materials

from Sarepta. They were renowned for crafts (purple
cloth, masonry, glass), but especially ivories, which
adorned Samaria (castigated by the prophets) and comprised the famous Nimrud (Assyria) Ivories, thought
to be tribute or booty. Undoubtedly, their most
lasting contribution was the linear alphabet, ancestor
to the Hebrew and Greek alphabets.
Empires (Iron II)

Just before 900, the already entrenched Assyrians

campaigned from the Jezireh to the coast, absorbing
their enemy, the Aramaeans, in the process and their
alphabetic language, Aramaic (the new lingua franca).
Evidence of imperial domination is clearest in the
Jezireh. There, besides palace ware, provincial centers with Assyrian wall paintings were found.
Dur-Katlimmu, a huge (288 acre) walled site included
a garden mural, while a famous mural of a king
hunting adorned the walls at Til Barsip, a site with
citadel and vast bit-hilani palace. Colonies were
also established as supply centers and/or settlements
for deportees (well-known Assyrian policy). The
subsequent Neo-Babylonian Empire, following the
destruction of Nineveh in 609, left few imperial
markers, except for their reuse of the provincial site of
DurKatlimmu, where tablets recovered from the
impressive Red House, date to Nebuchadnezzar. The
Persian Empire (539332) left few remains inland a
rectangular fort has been found at Ebla. The coast,
however, thrived, since the Persians required fleets to
transport their armies. There the site of Amrit a
stunning colonnaded open-air water temple exhibits
a blend of both Persian and Greek influences.
Southern Levant (Iron I)

With the first mention of a people, Israel (Merneptah

Stele 1207), the archaeology of the area relates to the
Bible, and questions of settlement and ethnicity
arise. There is no incontrovertible evidence for an
invasion (e.g., Jericho). Conversely, continuity of
LBA Canaanite tradition in hundreds of newly
founded rural villages (Shiloh, Ay, Raddana, Giloh)
is evident in pottery, cult (Bull Site), language
(Raddana, el Khadr, Izbet Sartah), along with an
emergent Iron Age repertoire of four-room pillar
buildings and collar-rim jars. The data suggest that
in the wake of widespread LBA upheaval, probably
multiethnic peoples, for example, Habiru, Shashu
(Amarna), Israel (Merneptah Stele), Hittites, Amorites,
etc. (Bible), settled in the highlands, eventually coalescing to form a national kingdom (Israel). A similar
development is posited (LBA/IA site of Umayri with its

ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant 845

Figure 12 The Four-room Iron Age I House at Tall al-Umayri, JordanArtists rendition by Rhonda Root. By Permission of Rhonda
Root and the Madaba Plains ProjectUmayri.

four-room house (Figure 12) and collar rim jars) for the
national kingdoms of Ammon, Moab, Edom. Not in
question is the ethnicity of settlers on the coast: they
were the Philistines, part of the Sea Peoples whose
highly urbanized cities, Aegean-derived material culture, and iron technology, have been brilliantly brought
to light (Ekron, Gath, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Qasile).
The United Monarchy, Tenth Century (Iron IIA)

The issue of secondary state formation (David and

Solomon) is in flux, as one school reassigns wellknown strata to the ninth century. Some scholars
suggest that state-level societies arose only in the
eighth century. Briefly, the questionable materials
include: (1) four-entryway gates (Hazor, Gezer,
Megiddo), (2) palaces 6000 and 7320 at Megiddo,
(3) royal planned forts in the Negev (Arad,
Beersheba), and (4) Jerusalem Temple parallels (Ain
Dara). While tenth century strata are becoming better
known (Tell Rehov, Tel Zayit abecedary), Jerusalems
occupation remains controversial. There are, however, extra-biblical tenth century correlations, such
as Ahirams sarcophagus and Pharaoh Shishaks
raid. The picture is clearer from the beginning of the
ninth century with the Divided Kingdom.
The Northern Kingdom (Iron IIB)

The well-fortified ninth and eighth century cities of

Israel suggest a powerful, but embattled nation state.

Stelae record victories of Aramaeans (Dan Stele,

which also mentions the house of David), Moabites
(Mesha Stele), and Assyrians (Black Obelisk showing
King Jehu bowing and giving tribute). Tell Dans
exceptional cultic precinct confirms the breakaway
kingdom of Jeroboam in the Bible. Royal building
activities depict a powerful state, for example, Ahabs
monumental pillared buildings (chariot cities) or
storerooms (Hazor, Beersheva), water systems (Hazor,
Gezer, Megiddo), but especially the lavish Phoenician
style palace at Samaria. Destruction of the latter by
the Assyrians in 722/721 brought the northern kingdom to an end, its people deported.
The Transjordanian kingdoms, more cordial client
states, survived the depredations of the Assyrians.
Iron II sites are well-fortified (Tell es-Saidiyeh, Tell
Deir Alla, Tell Mazar, Dibon, Lehun, Mudayna,
Umayri, Jalul, Tawila, Buseirah, Umm el-Biyara,
Tell el-Kheleifeh), but the term tribal kingdoms is
increasingly used to describe these polities. A fascinating local tradition is seen in a group of statues
of Ammonite kings.
The Southern Kingdom (Iron IIC)

In the ninth to eighth centuries, nation-states in

both north and south are demonstrable by a four-tier
hierarchical settlement: royal capitals (Jerusalem,
Samaria), administrative centers (Lachish), smaller
centers (Beersheba), and provincial towns (Tell Beit

846 ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant

Figure 13 Tel Miqne, Israel, reconstruction of an olive oil manufacturing facility, seventh c. BCE. Tell Miqne-Ekron Excavation Project,
courtesy S. Gitin; drawing: E. Cohen.

Mirsim). Jerusalems expansion and strengthening

(Hezekiahs broad wall and tunnel) is confirmed.
The remains of the 701 Assyrian siege of Lachish,
including the siege ramp, is a stark reminder of life
under empire, and is commemorated in Sennacheribs
relief at Nineveh. Elsewhere, the Philistine site of
Ekron (Tell Miqne) functioned as an Assyrian supply
center and became the largest olive oil production
center in the Near East (Figure 13). A major area of
current Iron II research centers on popular religion.
A vast corpus of cult sites (Arad, Tell el-Farah (N),
Taanach, Kuntillet Ajrud, the Edomite sites Hurvat
Qitmit and Hurvat Uza), and female figurines
(Asherah), provide tantalizing clues about the range
of Israelite practices, set in a context of the wider
world of Near Eastern religion. The Neo-Babylonian
destruction (587/6 BCE) of Jerusalem has vividly come
to light (Ahilus house). Ultimately (539 BCE), Cyrus
the Great of Persia allowed the deported Jews in
Babylon to return home.
Persian Period (Iron III)

New research demonstrates site continuity, despite

devastation and exile. The archaeology of Jerusalem
confirms a much-reduced city, as exiles returned from
Babylon and rebuilt, and minted coins refer to the
province as Yehud. Provincial garrison towns at
Hesi, Jemmeh, Khirbet Abu Tuwein, Tell es-Saidiyeh,
and material culture, affirm imperial control. The
interior of the country, generally, contrasts with the
Phoenician coast, where sites (Dor, Akko, Ashdod,
Askhelon) thrived due to Persian trade. Luxury

items and Attic ware underscore prosperity under

empire and intensifying Greek cultural influence.

Greco-Roman Period: The Westernization

of the Levant
In terms of intercivilizational impact, there is no match
to the hellenization of the Levant. With Alexander the
Greats conquest in 332 BCE, dominant elite Greek
(and later Roman) western civilization transformed
what would become the Province of Syria-Palaestina.
Past encounters of local peoples with empires had not
led to acculturation, although recent research suggests
that the process was underway before Alexander. Are
local traditions still discernible? Is there noticeable
variability in cultural adaptation? The following select
archaeological materials highlight these issues and
western acculturation.
Hellenistic Period

Phoenician/Hellenistic continuities in coastal cities

(Tyre/Dor) document a Greek acculuturation underway before Alexander. Just as clear is the gradual superseding of oriental by Greek coins, architecture,
hippodamian plan, figurines, and cult (Tel Dor). In
Syria, the colonizing Macedonians (Hippodamian
plan in Damascus and Dura Europas in the desert)
and strong Seleucid influence hastened the acculturation process. In the south, near the coast, Mareshas
tombs displayed Greek art (the Panathenaic of Athens),
and, gradually, even the inward looking religious communities in the central hills (Samaria /Jerusalem)
showed imported Aegean wares and wine amphoras

ASIA, WEST/Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant 847

in the local assemblages. The Decapolis cities in Transjordan were founded. Variability in cultural adaptation
is manifest in a comparison of the Hellenized Jewish
Hasmoneans (Jericho palace; Iraq el-Amir estate) and
the Jewish Community of Qumran, which exhibits no
evidence for acculturation. A recent study of the site
and cave pottery gives credence to the correlation between the site of Qumran and the cave scrolls (Dead
Sea Scrolls) and, probably, the Essenes. Recently released to the public domain, the scrolls remain essential
for both Judaism and Christianity.
Roman Period

The cultural impact accelerated from 63 BCE CE 332

as Rome tied the Levant to the rest of the Empire,
politically, economically, and militarily, effecting a
further transformation (Romanization). In CE 135,
with subjugation (first and second Jewish Revolts)
and annexation (Nabataea) accomplished, the Romans
constructed the Via Nova Trajiana between Aqaba
and Bostra (with links to Palmyra and Dura Europas).
This secured the Arabian spice trade and brought
great prosperity to the Decapolis cities. The Via Maris
linked Alexandria to Antioch. Roman milestones are
visible reminders of imperial might aimed at controlling
trade and facilitating troop movement. Military might
is confirmed by excavation of sites like Aila, Udruh,
Lejun, Umm el-Jimal, Bostra, Palmyra, Dura Europas,
which guarded the frontier (the Limes Arabicus).
Military camps and siege ramp at Masada (destroyed
in CE 73) are a somber witness to the consequences of
revolt under empire.
Urbanization Cities, built to the specification of
classical convention, vividly epitomized Romanization. An early square military plan of intersecting
cardo and decumanus (Beirut, Jerusalem-Aelia
Capitolina, Baalbek, Bostra) evolved into an elaborate plan of colonnaded streets, triumphal arches, and
central tetrapylon (Palmyra, Jerash, Petra, Apamaea,
Beth-Shan Scythopolis, etc). It began early with King
Herods (4346 BCE) construction of a harbor city
(Caesarea) and lavish building activity (Herodium,
Masada, Machareus, Jericho, Jerusalem).
Local Traditions
Within Greco-Roman style, an
oriental (Syrian/Parthian) tradition is perceptible in
Palmyras architecture (Temple of Bel), sculpture
(frontal), and inscriptions (Aramaic, not Greek).
A Nabataean style (e.g., distinctive capitals, eggshell
thin pottery in floral designs) is discernible as early as
25 BCE. New excavations in the Civic Center at Petra
have now uncovered elephant capitals in the Great
Temple and a contiguous pool and garden, indicative

of a sophisticated hydraulic system. Exceptional

isolated sanctuaries at Seela (Syria) and Tannur (the
Hauran), but few evidences of residences are a
continuing enigma. A Jewish aniconic tradition is
likewise distinctive, evident in the CE 70 destruction
of Jerusalem, where villas of Hellenized Jews were
lavish, but included no idols in mosaics and frescoes.
There also were numerous miqvaot for ritual purity.
Byzantine Period

Another cultural wave (Christianization) washed

over the Levant with the Byzantine Period (elsewhere
Late Roman or Late Antiquity), c. 324638. Some
500 churches attest to the dramatic religious transformation of the region evident from Sinai (St. Catherines)
to Jerusalem (Church of the Holy Sepulchre) to
northwest Syria (Qalat Simon) to the Euphrates
(Dura Europas). Of particular note, a cache of
Greek papyri was recently recovered in the Petra
Church, and possibly the earliest church (fourth century) was found at Aila.
An excellent example of the intercivilizational
dynamic at work is visible in the adaptability of
Hellenized Jews to allow figural art in synagogues,
such as the zodiac with the god Helios (Beth-Alpha),
frescoes of biblical figures (Dura Europas) and pagan
elements in funerary sculpture (Beth-Shearim). Such
decorative arts, permissible at the time due to a liberal
interpretation of the second commandment against
idols, represent an accommodation to Hellenism. An
early example (third century) from the Jewish, but
very Hellenized city of Sepphoris may be seen in the
Dionysus Villa, named for its frescoes and figural
mosaics.
In 638 the era of Muslim dominance began yet a
further new chapter in the Levant that would once
again utterly transform the region.
See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pharaonic; Animal
Domestication; Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and
Akkad; Phoenicia; Roman Eastern Colonies; Southern
Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization;
Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures; Biblical Archaeology; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Europe, South:
Greece; Greek Colonies; Plant Domestication; Political
Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading
Akkerman SR, Peter MMG, and Schwartz GM (2003) The Archaeology of Syria: From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban
Societies. (c. 16,000300 BC) Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Chancey M and Porter A (2001) The archaeology of Roman
Palestine. Near Eastern Archaeology 64(4): 164203.

848 ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures

microburin The residual product of the creation of a microlith
during flint tool manufacture in many different cultures, for
instance, the European Mesolithic.
wadi A valley, ravine, or watercourse that is often dry except
during the rainy season.
microlith A small stone tool, typically knapped of flint or chert,
usually about 3 cm long or less.
vegetation zone An extensive, even transcontinental, band of
physiognomically similar vegetation on the earths surface. Plant
communities assembled into regional patterns by the areas
physiography, geological parent material, and history.

Dever WG (2003) Who were the Eearly Israelites and Where Did
They Come From? Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing
Company.
Finkelstein I (1996) The archaeology of the United Monarchy:
An alternative view. Levant 28: 177187.
Levy TE (ed.) (1995) The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land.
Facts on File: An Infobase Holdings Company.
Levy TE, Adams RB, Hauptmann A, Prange M, Schmitt-Strecker S,
and Nahar M (2002) Early Bronze Age metallurgy: A newly
discovered copper manufactory in southern Jordan. Antiquity
76: 425437.
MacDonald B, Adams R, and Bienkowski P (eds.) (2001) The
Archaeology of Jordan. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Richard S (ed.) (2003) Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader.
Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

West Asia during the Late Pleistocene witnessed a

wealth of hunter-gatherer adaptations immediately
prior to agriculture. This geographic area Turkey,
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, the Egyptian Sinai, Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, and western Iran contains an environmentally
diverse landscape (Figure 1). Mountainous regions
include the Zagros, Taurus, and Lebanon ranges,
while the Mediterranean Sea provides coastal niches,
and inland areas are steppe or desert.
Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers lived between
c. 22 600 and 10 100 uncal BP (Table 1). Significant
environmental oscillations were the Last Glacial
Maximum (LGM), c. 18 00017 000 uncal BP, when
worldwide conditions were considerably cooler and
drier, and the subsequent climatic amelioration, when
conditions favored expansion of vegetation zones
such as the Mediterranean forest and its many plant
food resources.

Mesolithic Cultures
Deborah I Olszewski, University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,
Philadelphia, PA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
hunter-gatherer society A society whose primary subsistence
method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and
animals from the wild, using foraging and hunting, without
significant recource to the domestication of either.

Black Sea
0

Georgia

400
km
Turkey
Taurus
Taurus Mount

ins
Mounta

ains

Caspian Sea

M'lefaat
Cyprus
Mediterranean Sea
Ohalo ll

Lebanon
Mountains

Za

gr

os

Palegawra

'Ain Mallaha

Iran
nt

ai

ns

Ein Gev lll

Tig

Wadi Hammeh 27

hrat

Sinai
Re
dS
ea

Arabian Peninsula

es R
iver

Eup

e
Riv
ris

Wadi Jilat 6
Tor Sageer

Egypt

ou

Warwasi

Persian
Gulf

Figure 1 Map showing West Asian region and selected sites. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures 849

Table 1 Chronology of the Epipalaeolithic in West Asia
Period

Levantine Complex a

Uncalibrated BP

Calibrated BP

Zagros Complex b

Early Epipalaeolithic
Middle Epipalaeolithic
Late Epipalaeolithic

Kebaran
Geometric Kebaran
Natufian

22 60015 000
15 00012 500
12 80010 100

24 000c18 000
18 00014 600
14 60011 700

Early Zarzian
Late Zarzian
3000 year gap followed by Mlefaatian

Data from Byrd (2005: 238); Olszewski (2003: 232).

Few dates are available for the Zagros Complexes; temporal placement of these are estimations.
c
The uncalibrated date of 22 600 BP lies outside the range of dates that can be calibrated. Based on uncalibrated dates that are slightly
younger, the beginning of the Early Epipalaeolithic may be about 24 000 cal BP.
b

Table 2 Major wild food resources during the Epipalaeolithic

Common name

Latin name

Acorn (oak)
Aurochs
Barley
Boar
Chickpea
Einkorn wheat
Emmer wheat
European half-ass
Gazelle
Goat
Hawthorn fruit
Lentil
Onager
Pea
Persian fallow deer
Pistachio
Red deer
Roe deer
Sheep

Quercus sp.
Bos primigenius
Hordeum spontaneum
Sus scrofa
Cicer arietinum
Triticum boeoticum
Triticum dicoccoides
Equus hydruntinus
Gazella subgutturosa, G. gazella
Capra aegagrus
Crataegus sp.
Lens sp.
Equus hemionus
Pisum sp.
Dama mesopotamica
Pistachia atlantica
Cervus elaphus
Capreolus capreolus
Ovis orientalis

For most of the Epipalaeolithic, hunter-gatherers

were mobile, frequently moving their campsites to
take advantage of seasonal resources or to hunt
game animals. These resources included acorns, wild
cereals such as einkorn and emmer wheat and barley,
pistachios, hawthorn fruits, pulses such as peas and
lentils, gazelle, onager, European wild ass, aurochs,
wild sheep and goat, and, more rarely, wild boar and
various deer (Table 2). A short interlude during the
Late Epipalaeolithic saw the establishment of small
villages in some areas. A hallmark feature of most
Epipalaeolithic groups was the use of microliths
small backed stone tools as arrow components or
as sickle elements.

The Levantine Epipalaeolithic

The Levant comprises the western portion of West
Asia and intensive archaeological research here for
more than 70 years has resulted in a detailed understanding of the Epipalaeolithic period. Three major
complexes are the Kebaran, Geometric Kebaran, and

Figure 2 Kebaran Complex. Top: microburins; Bottom: nongeometric microliths. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

Natufian. These are often identified by their chipped

stone (lithic) assemblages, and, for the most part, are
temporally sequential.
Kebaran Complex

Lithic industries of the Kebaran Complex first

appear about 22 600 years ago (see Table 1). They
are characterized by narrow nongeometric microliths (Figure 2). One important distinction between
Kebaran Complex industries west and east of the
Jordan Rift Valley is the presence of microburin technique (a specialized way to snap bladelets so that the
resulting segments can be abruptly retouched into
backed microliths) in the interior Levant east of the
Jordan Rift Valley.

850 ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures

Kebaran Complex sites are small, suggesting

highly mobile adaptations, perhaps influenced by the
onset and height of the LGM when living conditions
were more harsh. In some cases, however, these hunter-gatherers repeatedly returned to the same locales,
such as Ohalo II along the Sea of Galilee where they
built brush structures, or to favored rockshelters such

as Tor Sageer in the Wadi al-Hasa (Figure 3). Evidence

for the use of wild plant foods is amply demonstrated
at Ohalo II (charred wild barley, hawthorn stones, and
pistachio nutshell fragments, among other edible plant
foods). People hunted land tortoise, gazelle, deer, onager, and birds. More rarely, they exploited fish (see
Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient).
Geometric Kebaran Complex

About 15 000 years ago, lithic industries featuring

backed geometric microliths (triangles and trapezes)
appear and microburin technique becomes typical in
both the western and eastern Levant. The groups that
made these tools lived during the early part of the
climatic amelioration following the LGM. Like their
predecessors, people of the Geometric Kebaran Complex were highly mobile and exploited the same range
of wild plant and animal food resources.
Sites are found in both the Mediterranean forest and
steppic areas. Some, such as Ein Gev III, contain evidence for somewhat substantial hut structures, while
others, such as Wadi Jilat 6 (Phase A) (Figure 4), may
represent aggregation sites or places where people
repeatedly returned. Most sites, however, are small,
temporary occupations.
Natufian Complex

Figure 3 View of the Kebaran Complex rockshelter at Tor

Sageer, Jordan. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

The advent of the Natufian Complex, typified by

lunate (half-moon) geometric microliths (Figure 5),
some 12 800 years ago, signals a radical departure

Figure 4 Overview of the Geometric Kebaran Complex site of Wadi Jilat 6, Jordan. Note that the site forms a small mound due to
repeated reoccupations over time. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures 851

Figure 5 Natufian Complex. Three geometric lunate microliths on left; two microburins on right. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

Figure 6 Late Natufian Complex small structures at the Black Desert site of Huwaynit, Jordan. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

from earlier hunter-gatherer adaptations. Natufian

Complex groups, particularly in the favorable Mediterranean forest zone from about 12 800 to 11 000
uncal BP, yield the first evidence of small village communities, such as Ain Mallaha, and investment in
human burials within settlements. This early Natufian also contains art carved figurines of animals
and more rarely humans, as well as carvings on bone
tools. Numerous ground stone tools, such as mortars
and pestles, at sites like Wadi Hammeh 27 suggest a
reliance on stone-ground plant foods (acorns and
wild cereals). A focus on gazelle hunting is also typical. Not surprisingly, many archaeologists interpret

these features as part of the behavioral groundwork

leading to the development of agriculture societies a
few milleniums later.
Curiously, in the period from 11 000 to
10 000 uncal BP, later Natufian Complex groups
became highly mobile, even within the Mediterranean
forest. Small villages all but disappear, as does art. This
restructuring of adaptations may be a response to a
global cooling event known as the Younger Dryas,
which resulted in shrinkage of favorable vegetation
zones like the Mediterranean forest, which affected
the abundance of plant foods available both to humans
and the animals they hunted (Figure 6).

852 ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures

The Zagros Epipalaeolithic

Although archaeological research here also began
more than 70 years ago, the Epipalaeolithic in eastern
West Asia is poorly known due to historical events
that have precluded extended periods of research.
The main archaeological culture is the Zarzian,
while the Mlefaatian is likely proto-Neolithic or
Early Neolithic.
Zarzian Complex

Hunter-gatherer groups manufacturing backed microliths in the Zagros region are classified as Zarzian
(Figure 7). As in the Levant, the Zarzian Complex has
a temporal trend from nongeometric to geometric
microliths (mainly scalene triangles). It also parallels
the western Levant in that microburin technique
appears when geometric microliths are manufactured.
Due to the paucity of radiocarbon dates (see Carbon-14
Dating), currently it is not possible to delineate precisely
when this change occured (see Table 1).
Most test excavated sites are rockshelters or
caves in the mountainous foothills (Figure 8), such as
Warwasi Rockshelter. All appear to represent highly
mobile groups of hunter-gatherers pursing game animals such as onager, goat, red deer, aurochs, gazelle,
and wild boar. Aside from repeated visits to these
sites, there is no evidence for hut structures, burials,
or investment in plant-processing tools such as ground
stone. The duration of the Zarzian Complex is

Figure 7 Zarzian Complex. Top: lunate and small scalene triangles; bottom: elongated scalene triangles on left and microburin
on right. Courtesy of Deborah I. Olszewski.

thought to be from the onset of the LGM through

the early part of the subsequent climatic amelioration.
An end date of about 12 000 uncal BP is suggested by
radiocarbon dates from Palegawra.
Mlefaatian Complex

The Mlefaatian Complex may derive from the Zarzian, and several researchers classify the Mlefaatian
as proto-Neolithic or Early Neolithic rather than Epipalaeolithic. Hindering understanding is a 3000 year
gap between the end of the Zarzian and the beginning
of the Mlefaatian, during which there is little archaeological evidence. The Mlefaatian lithic industry contains nongeometric microliths and a well-developed
technology that results in relatively standardized
bladelet cores. Compared to the Zarzian Complex,
Mlefaatian sites tend to be open-air contexts, such as
Mlefaat, rather than caves and rockshelters.
Reliance on wild food resources was the norm, with
hunting of cattle, sheep, gazelle, wild boar, birds, and
the collection of freshwater clams, freshwater crabs,
land snails, and fish. It is assumed that wild cereals
formed part of the diet.

Summary
The Levant and the Zagros respectively represent the
western and eastern Fertile Crescent, and yield evidence for several Epipalaeolithic complexes. Areas to
the north, such as Turkey, and to the south, in the
Arabian Peninsula, are not yet well known. For historical reasons, the most complete information is
from the Levant, and thus the following discussion
is based on this region.
For c. 20 000 years, hunter-gatherers of the Epipalaeolithic exploited a wide array of wild plant and
animal foods. Their subsistence economies entailed
frequent movement of campsites and their archaeological signature therefore is somewhat ephemeral.
Especially favorable locales, however, often yield evidence of the construction of more substantial hut
structures, isolated human burials, or longer periods
of residence. It is this background of Epipalaeolithic
behaviors set within the context of global climate
changes associated with the LGM and later climatic
amelioration that underlie the establishment of foodproducing (agricultural) economies in the subsequent
Neolithic.
Why this transition from hunting and gathering to
food production occurred remains a major research
question in archaeology. Many scholars have pointed
to the sociocultural complexity that may be evident
in the early part of the Natufian Complex, such as

ASIA, WEST/Mesolithic Cultures 853

Figure 8 Overview of the Zarzian Complex site of Baba Yawan Rockshelter, Iran. Courtesy of Fereidoun Biglari.

investment in art and personal ornamentation (shell

beads and bone pendants). Some hunter-gatherers of
this period lived in small, semipermanent villages
where interactions with ones neighbors may have
required increased levels of cooperation. A stronger
sense of territoriality also may have developed, resulting in numerous human burials within the small villages. It is probable that the Early Natufian Complex
adaptations focused heavily on plant foods such as
wild cereals and acorns. Strategies for collecting these
may have led to the development of behaviors conducive to long-term investments in plant foods, especially the cereals. Although this adaptation appears to
have vanished during the Late Natufian Complex with
the onset of cooler and drier conditions, these behavioral signatures are once again seen in subsequent
Early Neolithic societies.
See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant; Paleolithic Cultures;
Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Carbon-14 Dating; Europe, Northern and Western: Mesolithic Cultures;
Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Bar-Yosef O (1998) The Natufian culture in the Levant: Threshold
to the origins of agriculture. Evolutionary Anthropology 6(5):
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854 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

Mesopotamia, Sumer,
and Akkad
Augusta McMahon, University of Cambridge,
Cambridge, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
cuneiform Cuneiform is the distinctive script style developed in
Mesopotamia, comprising groups of wedge-shaped signs
impressed with a feed stylus upon clay tablets.
empire A political unit having an extensive territory or
comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a
single supreme authority.
pottery Ceramic ware made from clay and baked in a kiln.
social complexity Social complexity is an approach to social
phenomena which acknowledges heterarchy or difference,
as well as hierarchical conditions of inequality.
state The group of people comprising the government of a
sovereign state.
urbanism The culture or way of life of city dwellers.

Research Contexts and Questions

The acquisition of collections of monumental art for
museums in Europe and the US was the dominant
impetus behind the earliest archaeological work in
Mesopotamia from the 1860s through the early
1900s (collections in the British Museum, Louvre,
and Metropolitan Museum of Art are testament to
this approach). From c. 1920, archaeological work in
the region shifted in focus, and the goal became a
complete chronological categorization and material
culture sequencing; pottery and architectural stratigraphy joined art as worthy of attention. In many ways,
this goal persists in the present, but in the 1960s, wider
questions of structure and process began to drive research. Archaeologists working in the prehistory of
Mesopotamia are often at the forefront of theoretical
debates (i.e., origins of agriculture, origins of states,
and nature of chiefdoms). However, within Mesopotamian historical archaeology, our reconstruction of
human actions and society is still compressed into
and constrained by chronological phases, and the abundant textual material means that history often dictates
to archaeology. Event-driven political narratives and
institution-based explanations dominate archaeological approaches, and urban centers have most often
been the focus of research programs. However, in survey and settlement archaeology, scholars working in
Mesopotamia have been among the first to utilize satellite imagery and intensive survey approaches incorporating landscape and off-site features. Mesopotamia is

fertile ground for exploration of ideas of empire,

mechanisms of craft production, and urbanrural
interaction.

Environment and Resources

Mesopotamia is defined by its two rivers, the Tigris
on the east/northeast and Euphrates on the west/
southwest. Within these boundaries is a wide range
of terrain, resources, and environmental conditions.
The most important factor affecting human occupation
is rainfall. In northern Mesopotamia (SE Turkey, NE
Syria, N Iraq), rainfall is generally above 250 mmyr 1
and rainfall agriculture is possible. However, yearly
fluctuations mean that reliance on rainfall alone is
risky, especially at the southern edge of this zone,
and irrigation projects were developed there, particularly in association with artificially large cities of
the NeoAssyrian Period. Irrigation is vital for agriculture in the central and southern portions of the
region (central and south Iraq), and it is likely that
sophisticated canal systems were in place from at
least 6000 BC. Topographically, subregional divisions
follow the rainfall variation. Northern Mesopotamia
has foothills, rolling plains, river tributaries, and occasional rock outcrops, while southern Mesopotamia
is relentlessly flat and without natural features other
than the rivers.
Archaeological maps of Mesopotamia often show
the land between the rivers as entirely devoid of
resources, with metals, stones, and timber located in
the arc of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains and
foothills beyond Mesopotamias northern and eastern
borders. However, in northern Iraq, stone and metals
are available, and from the earliest permanent settlements there existed sophisticated commerce connections across the region and beyond that meant the
river plains were never without any of these materials. Empty resource maps also ignore the many materials Mesopotamia does offer. Clay is an overlooked
but extraordinarily important resource, utilized for
bricks, plaster, pottery, figurines, and tablets. The
Mesopotamian writing system is arguably the worlds
earliest, and its particular form and trajectory was
both enabled and directed by the ubiquitous medium
of clay. The alluvial soil is capable of generating
substantial agricultural surpluses. Fish abound in rivers
and canals, and dates were and remain an important
element of the diet and are easily exportable. Bitumen,
used for waterproofing anything from baskets through
boats to buildings, is found in only a few specific
locations in the Middle East, including the midEuphrates. Textiles, generated by the agro-pastoralist
systems large carrying capacity for herds of sheep and

ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad 855

goats, were produced on an industrialized scale in

Mesopotamia and exported, even to other textile-producing areas. Finally, the southern marshes are an often
overlooked but vitally important element in the resource base. Reed mats, containers, and furniture were
produced there by an otherwise hunterfishergatherer
population and sold to urban dwellers. Most of these
materials are not archaeologically visible and thus are
not viewed as traditional resources yet they were
vital to the survival and strength of the Mesopotamian
economic and political system.

Materials and Landscape

The most important tool for Mesopotamian archaeologists is pottery. The density of pottery per cubic meter
of archaeological soil here is probably the highest of
any region. The basic sequence of diagnostic pottery
forms and decoration is well established, and this is
instrumental in the identification and characterization
of chronological phases (see Pottery Analysis: Stylistic).
Regrettably, this does mean that Mesopotamian ceramic studies tend to foreground morphology, decoration,
and seriation, while study of assemblages and their
meanings often comes second. We are also limited by
the preponderance of urban excavations, which affects
reconstruction not only of pottery assemblages but
also of all other aspects of material culture (see Urban
Archaeology).
Mounded tell sites are typical of the region and are
the clearest signs of past occupation in the generally
flat landscapes. Clustering of resources, the need to
avoid good agricultural land, and the attachment to
place mean that once sites were chosen for settlement they tended to remain occupied, or at least to be
frequently reoccupied, for centuries or millennia. The
buildup of occupational debris and the rebuilding of
mud brick houses on previous foundations result in
the distinctive shape of these sites and their relatively
rapid vertical growth. But low single-period sites,
multiple-mounded sites, off-site sherd scatters and
ancient roads also make up important foci of archaeological research in Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamia can be characterized as a landscape
of destruction in archaeological terms. Alluvial accumulation and dune abrasion in the south and wind
and water erosion in the north have covered or removed
parts of large sites and entire small sites. Millennia of
intensive agriculture and modern industrialized cash
crop farming have taken a heavy toll on both sites
and landscape features. Looting and illegal excavation has increased astronomically in the last two
decades. Mesopotamias archaeological record is
perennially under threat (see Illicit Antiquities).

Chronological and Archaeological

Overview
Late Prehistoric City-States

Mesopotamia has long been recognized as one of

the primary complex societies, developing a state
structure without external influence. The Uruk period
(c. 40003000 BC) sees social complexity: urbanism,
elaborate temple complexes, mass production, the
earliest writing, and the earliest representations
although standardized and anonymous of kings
(Table 1). The site of Uruk with its 320  150 m
temple complex and separate temple tower provides
the most emphatic evidence for public institutions in
this period. Temples are identifiable by their tripartite plan, a large central space flanked by rows of
smaller rooms, and an external facade decorated with
narrow niches and buttresses. The Uruk temple complex sits near the center of a city that had reached
250 ha by c. 3200 BC. This rapid urban growth was
matched by depopulation of the immediate countryside, but settlement patterns around other contemporary sites (i.e., Nippur) indicate that the normal
arrangement was a scatter of linked towns and
villages surrounding each city.
The Uruk Period ceramic assemblage is extraordinarily standardized, almost entirely undecorated (in
contrast to the preceding Ubaid Period) and mass
produced. The mud bricks from which both temples
and houses were constructed are similarly standardized in shape and size. It was in the Uruk Period that
one of the most distinctive objects of Mesopotamia,
the cylinder seal, first appeared. These objects acted
much like a signature, expressing authority and ownership when rolled across a clay tablet or door sealing. Usually made of imported stone, seals were
intended to be worn and seen, as badges of office or
of wealth and as good luck amulets. Scenes on Uruk
Period seals include representations of kings involved
in religious or (more rarely) military events, as well as
animal combats or more prosaic rows of human figures weaving or manufacturing pottery. The glyptic
scenes of kings in front of temples or feeding temple
flocks are supplemented by votive statuary and reliefs
showing the king as a solitary pious figure or involved
in symbolic lion combat. He is instantly recognizable,
no matter which context, by his distinctive skirt and
hat, plus the fact that he is the center of attention or
focus of each scene. These characteristics of royal art
will have a long tradition, lasting through the first
millennium BC.
Writing is invented to serve the economy, particularly temple-centered economic administration. The
earliest texts are overwhelmingly simple receipts and

Southern Mesopotamia
60004000
40003000
Ubaid
Uruk

30002334
Early
Dynastic

Northern Mesopotamia
Northern
Northern Ninevite 5
Ubaid
Uruk
(Early Jezirah I-IIIa)
5000
4000
31002550
4000
3000

23342154
Akkadian

Late ED (Early
Jezirah IIIb)
25502300

21542004
Ur III

Northern
Akkadian
(EJ IV)
23002200

20171763
Isin-Larsa

17631595
Old
Babylonian

Post-Akkadian
(EJ IVb-V)
22002000

15701157
Kassite

? Old Ass Kingdom

yrian
of upper
Mesop.
1920 18131728
1740

1157905
Isin II,
Sealand II,
Bazi, Elam
? Mitanni

1500
1340

1157625
Post-Kassite/
NeoAssyrian
Middle Assyr.

13651031

625539
Neo-Babylonian

539330
Persian

? NeoNeoPersian
Assyrian
Bab.
934612

612
539

539
330

856 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

Table 1 Mesopotamian Chronological Periods (all dates uncalib. BC)

ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad 857

inventories, supplemented by long strange vocabulary lists, ultimately quite revealing of the classes
into which the Mesopotamian mind categorized
the natural and human world. The script is initially
pictographic but rapidly becomes syllabic as the
signs develop from inscribed drawings to impressed
cuneiform.
Trade colonies and pervasive southern Uruk cultural
material in northern Syria, southeast Turkey, and
western Iran provide further evidence for the economic power of urban institutions. Much of the archaeological debate about the Uruk Period in the last
two decades has focused on the southern expansion
into northern and northwestern areas and on the
particular relationship between local and southern
populations. The consensus is that the southern influence was just that, strong cultural influence backed
up by genuine presence of southerners at some sites.
But there was in fact substantial social and economic
complexity in the north prior to the southern influence, and there was no attempt by the south to impose
either economic or political control.

Uruk Period developments of urbanism, economic

complexity, and king-led, staple resource-based
wealth with strong religious flavor matured and were
formalized. The city-states were potentially selfsufficient, yet they share a material culture assemblage
(pottery, domestic and religious architectural styles,
ways of burial, etc.), and have a common religious
system and literary tradition. Each city-state had a
patron deity as well as hereditary kings, and complementary institutions in the temple and the palace.
This cultural network covers all of the southern alluvial plains and even incorporates Mari, on the Syrian
Euphrates (see map, Figure 1). The city-states are perhaps best typified by Lagash, an urban center with a
network of linked towns and villages and associated
agricultural land and irrigation canals. Lagash was
just one of approximately 15 major contemporary
independent city-states, in a delicate balance which
involved complementary economic behavior and
occasional armed conflict. We know the list of some of
Lagashs kings and have their images on stone reliefs,
variously at war with neighbors such as Umma, building temples and presenting offerings to the gods.
Kish has the best-preserved palace (Palace A), with
formal and symmetrical public and private wings,
surrounded by thick, buttressed walls (see Figure 2).
Unfortunately, palaces tended to be kept clean during use and to be emptied at the end of their lives,

Third Millennium BC City-States to Nation-States

The Early Dynastic (ED) Period (c. 30002334 BC)

follows the Uruk in southern Mesopotamia and can
be summarized as an era of city-states (Table 1). The

TELL MOZAN
TELL LEILAN
ALALAKH

KHORSABAD
NINEVEH

TELL BRAK
NIMRUD
abu

EBLA

Kh

NUZI
ASHUR

Tig
ris

MARI
Eu

ph

ra

tes

TELL ASMAR

DAMASCUS

KHAFAJAH
AQAR QUF

BABYLON

BAGHDAD

KISH
NIPPUR

SUSA
UMMA
GIRSU

URUK

LAGASH

N
100 200 KM

Figure 1 Map of Mesopotamia with sites mentioned in the text.

UR

858 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

20 M
Figure 2 Early Dynastic Palace A at Kish. After Moorey (1978).

20 M
Figure 3 Late Early Dynastic Temple at Khafajah, Level X. After
Delougaz and Lloyd (1942).

leaving only an architectural plan and an impression

of sterile, impersonal power. The religious institutions of the ED are most clearly illustrated at several
sites along the Diyala River, northeast of modern
Baghdad. Tell Asmar and Khafajah present us with a
range of small to medium-sized shrines and temples
(see Figure 3), while the Temple Oval at Khafajah
offers a vision of how large and impressive these institutions could be. In each temple, the central shrine
room is easily identified by a combination of plan
(right-angled access), features (built-in altars), and
contents (stone votive statues of men and women
with hands clasped, elaborate bronze or ceramic offering stands). The Mesopotamian pantheon mirrors

human relations; gods have families, and family

members are frequently worshipped in the same temple in lesser shrine rooms. The temples also have large
courtyards and storage spaces, for outdoor rituals
and economic activities. Archives of texts, such as
that from the Bau temple at Girsu, reveal that temples were major landowners and employers as well
as houses of the gods.
The Ur Cemetery, established in the Late ED period,
is justifiably famous for its rich assemblage of exquisitely worked vessels, seals, jewelry, weapons, and
musical instruments, the raw materials for which
were imported from as far away as the Indus Valley
(carnelian), Afghanistan (lapis lazuli), Iran (chlorite),
Anatolia (silver), and Egypt (gold). The cemetery is
unfortunately also famous for a brief and limited
episode of human sacrifices (e.g., Royal Tomb 1237,
with its 74 skeletons), an unusual aspect of burial
unique to a few years at the city of Ur and not at all
representative of Mesopotamian burial practices. But
the human sacrifices can be seen as an extreme version of a commonplace feature of Mesopotamian
burial, grave goods. There was a clear societal image
of the afterlife, and the necessity of taking food,
drink, and ornaments to wear, or with which to
bribe underworld deities, was strong at all levels of
society. Besides cemetery burial, a popular option was
interment below house floors, which appears from
the ED through the first millennium BC. Placement
below house floors retained the deceased as a member
of the family, while cemetery burial may have been
more common for those whose identity reached
beyond the household and lineage, such as priests,
kings, and officials.
Pottery continues to be mass produced and standardized, with some variation and decoration among
jars but very little among bowls. The large numbers of
plain-rimmed single-serving bowls at all sites may
reveal Mesopotamian dining habits as individualcentered, but more work remains to be done on this
issue. Cylinder seals diverge from the scenes of the
Uruk Period and have patterns of animals and humans
in hand-to-hand combat, with smaller numbers of
scenes showing symbolic banquets or geometric
designs.
Contemporary with the southern ED, Ninevite 5 is
the chronological label for Northern Mesopotamia.
Contemporary textual documentation and modern
archaeological excavation in the north have both
lagged behind that of the south, with the result that
the north is seen as something of a backwater, but
recent and ongoing excavations in Syria are filling the
gaps and revealing a densely occupied world of great
economic variety. Ninevite 5 pottery includes both
painted and incised wares, which it is tempting to

ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad 859

view as implying a less-institutionalized economy and

society. The settlement pattern is less hierarchical
than in the south, and although cities and religious
institutions exist, the north may be characterized by
mature chiefdoms rather than city-states.
It was during the Akkadian Period (c. 23342154 BC)
that the regions first nation-state was created in
southern Mesopotamia (Table 1). It was headed by
a dynasty of charismatic kings, some of the earliest
visible agents responsible for political change and
linked cultural changes. The first step was military
conquest, followed by social, economic, and administrative transformations designed to create a nation
out of a disparate group of city-states. These included
the replacement of Sumerian by Akkadian as the
official written language, establishment of a new
capital city, imposition of regional governors loyal
to the king, placement of royal images in key locations and a new system of weights, measures, and
legal oaths. The Akkadian kings and the ideal of
unity they represented had great resonance through
the rest of Mesopotamian history: copies of Akkadian
royal inscriptions and the myth of the birth and rise to
power of the dynastys first king, Sargon, appear long
after the nation had vanished.
Archaeologically, we are obstructed by the problem
that the capital city, Agade, has never been discovered,
although it is known to lie in the northern alluvial
plains, near Babylon, Kish, and modern Baghdad.
However, many major artworks of this period survived and reveal a new freedom of movement and
delicacy of detail, while maintaining many of the
ED/Sumerian traditions of royal representation. The
Akkadian stele of Naram-Sin can be contrasted to
the ED stele of Vultures; both represent a king leading
his army in battle. The Vulture stele shows Eannatum
of Lagash ahead of a blocky cluster of his army in
strict horizontal registers with no representation of
background setting; the Naram-Sin stele shows a
backdrop of mountains and trees, and the horizontal
registers have been replaced by undulating sloped
ground-lines with individual figures. Akkadian Period cylinder seals retain the animalhuman combat as
an important motif, refining the crowded ED patterns
into elegant heraldic pairs. The combat motif is supplemented by that of introduction, a procession of
deities leading the human seal-owner towards a
seated deity. Where domestic occupational material
of the Akkadian Period has been uncovered (Nippur,
Uruk), the ED cultural traditions of architecture and
format of burial persist. Ceramic types change, but
gradually.
The great debate about this period is whether the
Akkadian system was a state, nation, or empire.
The wider question of archaeologically visible

determinatives of nations and empires is also part of

this discussion. In some ways, the system is best represented by evidence from its edge in northeast Syria: the
armory/arsenal (Naram-Sins palace) and massive administrative complexes at Tell Brak or the Akkadian
buildings at Tell Leilan. These Akkadian structures
intrude into a world characterized by city-states and
small kingdoms ruled by local Hurrian kings. The
northern pottery style and assemblage contrasts
strongly with that of the south, but the official southern Akkadian seal style is widespread. Artworks of
the Akkadian kings glorify their military conquests
rather than showing religious building projects. The
most striking of these is again the stele of Naram-Sin,
grandson of the dynasty founder. Naram-Sin is,
unusually, depicted with the pair of bulls horns that
identify a deity. All these aspects look imperial. Yet
the empire was patchy and acted more like a commercial enterprise aimed at access to raw materials
rather than accumulation of land and subjects.
Discussion of Sumer and Akkad would be incomplete without reference to the ethnic distinctions
implied. Sumerian and Akkadian languages are distinct,
Sumerian being an ergative isolate while Akkadian is
the oldest known Semitic language. But identification
of Sumerian versus Akkadian peoples, sites, or material culture is virtually impossible. By the time we can
identify two potential populations from their written
languages, in the later third millennium BC, centuries
of contact have created an ethnically entangled
bilingual population. Geographically, Sumer is traditionally located in the southern half of Babylonia,
from Nippur to the Arabian Gulf, while Akkad is
northern Babylonia. An alternative view holds that
Sumer is the region dependent on the Euphrates and
Akkad the world of the Tigris. But neither of these
two mental divisions map onto distinct cultural
regions. In fact, Sumer and Akkad are customarily
used together in royal inscriptions from the Ur III
Period onward; rarely do inscriptions speak of just
Sumer or just Akkad. During most of the Akkadian
Period, the kings simply refer to themselves as kings
of Agade or king of the four quarters.
The ED situation of interlinked but self-sufficient
city-states is the default state for southern Mesopotamia. The Akkadian Period then presents the
often reached-for ideal of a unified nation (to recur
in Ur III, Old Babylonian, etc.), but this nation
just as frequently collapses. The Akkadian nation
broke down rapidly and ignominiously, according to
textual records. The later kings lost power and land;
the capital Agade dwindled to a village. However,
excavations in late Akkadian levels at Nippur, Uruk,
and other sites indicate continuity of settlement
and material culture despite Agades problems. By

860 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

contrast, the end of the Akkadian adventure in northern Mesopotamia was marked by withdrawal of personnel and the ritual in-filling of public buildings (i.e.,
Area SS at Tell Brak). There is an ongoing debate over
the post-Akkadian Period in northern Mesopotamia
and the reason for the retraction of the Akkadian
presence, plus the nature of the reaction of the indigenous population. A climatic downturn, aridity, agricultural collapse, and the emigration of large parts of
the northern population have been suggested; but
while some sites are abandoned, others show
continued occupation. We are hampered in reconstructing this period by few relevant excavations
and an imprecise characterization of the ceramic
assemblage.
The Ur III dynasty (21122004 BC) attempted to
recreate the nation of the Akkadian kings, but by
literally inverting it: Sumerian returned as the official
written language, monumental art returned to the
archaic forms of the ED, and the nation was ruled from
the far south of the alluvial plain, from Ur, rather than
the north. These are substantial differences from the
Akkadian situation, yet the concept of the southern
plains as a unified whole with the surrounding areas
tied to it to varying degrees is a replica of the Akkadian
ideal. Economic documents proliferate; it appears
that few transactions were too trivial to record, and
unprecedented numbers of people were employed at
least part time by the palace, necessitating documentation of rations and movement of raw materials and
worked goods. In northern Mesopotamia, the Tell
Brak arsenal was rebuilt, but other sites (for instance
Tell Mozan) remained independent.
The greatest archaeological contribution of the
Ur III kings was the elaboration of the existing
temple platform into the stepped ziggurat, possibly
the most enduring symbol of Mesopotamian-ness (see
Figure 4). Like megalithic structures in Neolithic
Europe, ziggurats, with their strongly unnatural
shape, massive size and weight, would have been
striking markers of human impact on the landscape.

Figure 4 Ur III Ziggurat at Ur (reconstruction). After Woolley

(1939).

Particularly in the flat unbroken southern Mesopotamian plain, these structures are visible from substantial distances and would have emerged as peaks above
a mass of urban buildings. They are icons simultaneously of the kings who commissioned them and the
gods to whom they were dedicated; they express the
glory of the city and that of the larger city-state to
which they belonged. They are also monuments to
collective labor of the city-states citizens, but unfortunately access seems to have been restricted, once
completed, to religious functionaries and perhaps
political elites.
Ur III monumental artworks emphasize the religious side of being a king, rather than the military
aspects, and reliefs such as the Ur-Nammu stele are a
throw-back to the ED style of presenting images serially, in horizontal registers. Overall, Ur III art is far
more conventional than that of the Akkadian Period.
In cylinder seals, the elegant animal combats vanish
and introduction scenes are reduced in complexity
and detail. Indeed, many introduction seals are so
similar as to be indistinguishable except through
their inscriptions. But one original element in this
period is the return of baked clay figurines. These
had been a regular feature of prehistory but essentially vanish with the advent of the state in the Uruk
Period. This disappearance may have been due to a
shift in access to means of production, particularly if
ceramic and figurine production were closely linked
and ceramic production became increasingly industrialized. These figurines now return in force, overwhelmingly female and naked; they are handmade
with applied details and a schematic, yet attractive,
form. Incantation texts indicate that their probable
function was love or fertility charms.
Second Millennium BC Collapse, Expansion
and Collapse

An episode of political collapse (20041763 BC) followed the decline of the Ur III state and the capture of
its last king by an Elamite army. These centuries are
known in southern Mesopotamia as the IsinLarsa
Period because the leaders of the two city-states of
Isin and Larsa were the primary actors in a political
struggle for control of the southern plains. Additional
minor actors were the kings of Uruk, Marad, and
Babylon, most of Amorite descent. These Amorites
are the earliest of a series of foreign nomadic groups
who filtered into and assimilated with local Mesopotamian peoples and society. Their ease at cultural
assimilation has traditionally been ascribed to their
lack of written language and artistic expression.
However, the strength of Mesopotamian culture and
its surprisingly comprehensive and embracing nature

ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad 861

were also certainly factors. The political success of

the Amorites is less easily explained and is genuinely
revolutionary.
Archaeologically, the IsinLarsa Period is difficult
to distinguish from the preceding Ur III and subsequent Old Babylonian. Some specific ceramic markers
of these centuries exist (white-inlaid gray ware), but
the overall assemblages vary very little; cylinder seals
continue the introduction theme. Perhaps the downscaling from nations to city-states did reduce the
number of monumental artworks, for we have no
representations of kings from this period. But it does
provide the best image of Mesopotamian urban
domestic architecture in two neighborhoods at Ur.
There the ideal of a courtyard surrounded by rooms
including bathroom and kitchen has been organically
adapted to match available space, with irregular
houses, shops, and shrines reached via winding
streets. Texts allow the unfolding of the biography
of some houses as they passed between owners and
were internally modified.
Ultimately, neither Isin nor Larsa but Babylon was
victorious in the regional power struggle. The subsequent political situation in the Old Babylonian Period (17631595 BC) mirrors the Akkadian and Ur III
states, re-focused at the northern end of the alluvial
plains (Table 1). This earliest Babylonian dynasty is
best known for king Hammurapi, whose Law Code
offers a vision of Mesopotamian society with strictly
divided classes: slave, poor, free, or female. The top of
the basalt stele on which the law code is inscribed
presents the enduring and iconic image of the king
receiving the rod and ring (two enigmatic and muchdiscussed symbols) from the sun god, who also
oversees justice. At the other end of the artistic spectrum, mass production subsumes the naked female
figurines, which are now formed in molds in large
numbers. These are supplemented by baked clay
plaques with images of deities and scenes of family
life or myth.
As already mentioned, the transition from the third
to early second millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia remains one of the largest holes in our
archaeological reconstruction. During the first quarter of the second millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia, the city of Ashur was engaged in lucrative
long-distance trade in textiles and metals with Kanesh
and other cities in Anatolia (central Turkey). This
trade is unfortunately mostly documented in texts
from Kanesh; relevant levels at Ashur are covered
by later occupation and the way stations on the
route across the Khabur basin (NE Syria) are largely
unexcavated or unidentified. We are only on firmer
ground with the establishment of the Kingdom of
Upper Mesopotamia in what would become Assyria,

northern Iraq, and northeast Syria (18131741 BC).

This was created by a Sargon-like figure, ShamshiAdad, and reached from Ashur and Ekallate on the
Tigris across to Tell Leilan in the northeast Khabur
basin and southwest to Mari on the Euphrates. This
was the first unified regional state in the north. Much
of the political situation is reconstructed from the
massive text archive preserved in the palace at Mari,
at the juncture of northern and southern Mesopotamia and the Levant. This building is one of the most
impressive structures in Mesopotamia, a vast sprawl
of over 250 rooms, organized into clusters by function and surrounding two large courtyards partly
decorated with wall paintings depicting royal investiture and symbolic scenes. A distinctive ceramic assemblage, Khabur Ware (often decorated with red or
black horizontal stripes), traditionally has been associated with the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia. But
excavations at Tell Leilan, Tell Brak, and elsewhere
indicate that this pottery continues to be manufactured, unsurprisingly, after this dynasty and into the
subsequent period of political devolution into citystates and small kingdoms.
The Old Babylonian dynasty suffered the same fate
as the Akkadian and Ur III dynasties gradual loss of
territory and power and sudden military defeat, this
time by an Anatolian army. However, the backdrop
to the territory loss and the military defeat was ultimately environmental catastrophe. Water flow in
the eastern course of the Euphrates appears to have
diminished, with consequences for the survival of key
urban systems and the agricultural surplus on which
the region relied. What follows is a dark age with
few texts and unclear archaeological remains. Once
the situation is clear again, the later second and all of
the first millennium BC is the time of empires. From
15951200 BC, the Kassites controlled southern
Mesopotamia, Mitanni and then Assyrian leaders
ruled northern Mesopotamia, the Elamites expanded
on the Iranian plateau, the Hittites created a nation
in Anatolia, and New Kingdom rulers changed the
atmosphere in Egypt. The kings in all these regions
were involved in luxury goods exchange and diplomatic correspondence with each other, exemplified
by the Amarna Letters from Egypt. Gold flowed
from Egypt and lapis lazuli from the east by way of
Babylonia, iron was the gift of the Hittites and horses
that of the Mitanni. At the crux of these Great
Powers lay the Late Bronze Age city-states of northwest Syria: Ugarit, Qatna, Alalakh, and others.
Rather than being crushed by the surrounding landhungry regimes, these land-poor city-states wielded
enormous economic power because of their contacts
and near monopoly on Mediterranean maritime
trade.

862 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

Both the Kassites in the south and Mitanni in the

north are known to have been foreign to Mesopotamia from texts, yet the search for markers of nationality or ethnicity in the archaeological record has
proved fruitless. The earliest kings of the Kassites
are textually and archaeologically obscure, but by
c. 1400 BC they had established a new capital, Aqar
Quf, near modern Baghdad. This new foundation
would have offered the potential for a new style and
structure to reflect their origins, yet the palace and
ziggurat are indistinguishable from Mesopotamian
prototypes. In northern Mesopotamia, the extent of
the Mitanni empire is matched by the spread of a
distinctive painted pottery style (Nuzi Ware), yet this
spread and its limits have more to do with economic
connections than with ethnic identification. This pottery offers an example of an important aspect of the
later second millennium across the region, the
increased internationalization and hybridization of
artistic production. The western examples of this
pottery (from Alalakh, for example) show floral motifs
that owe inspiration to the Mediterranean and Egypt,
while western examples more often bear geometric
designs. Faience and glass were also now produced,
for the moment restricted to decorative luxury items.
From c. 1200 BC, the entire region, from Anatolia to
Iran, suffered a second political collapse, with settlement pattern disruptions, urban destructions, environmental stress, and the disappearance of texts. This
is matched by political collapses and archaeologically
visible destructions across the Mediterranean, sometimes unfairly blamed on the Sea Peoples.
First Millennium BC Empires

The Neo-Assyrian kings were relatively successful at

weathering the regional Dark Age at the end of the
second millennium BC and are the first to re-emerge
as a territorial power. Babylonia devolved once again
into rivalry among city-states and was first dominated
by Assyria and eventually incorporated into its empire. The Neo-Assyrian is the best-known period of
Mesopotamian history but perhaps the most misjudged. Traditionally, Assyria has been viewed as a
cruel, military-obsessed regime, but this is belied by
minor arts such as ivories, foundation deposits, and
the stunning gold work of the royal tombs of Nimrud.
Ashurbanipal commissioned a library as well as the
destruction of the Elamites. Kings appear in symbolic
or religious contexts as often as in military action in
palace reliefs.
Neo-Assyrian political ideology was firmly focused
on the concept and image of the king, and part of the
expression of this ideology was the construction of
palaces or entire new cities to house the king, his

family, and the imperial administration. Ashur,

Nimrud, Khorsabad, and Nineveh mirror the increasing size and complexity of the empire. Each has a
citadel densely covered with palaces, temples and
administrative structures, and each citadel has been
incorporated into an artificially large, regular, and
mostly empty city with a vast ring of high walls.
The palaces are famous for the miles of stone reliefs
that decorated the public rooms. These develop longstanding themes of Mesopotamian art: ritual banquets, religious ceremonies, and military battles (all
known from the ED) and lion and bull hunts (from
the Uruk Period). The idea of stone reliefs lining the
walls may have been appropriated from the Hittites,
but the style is distinctively Assyrian, muscular, symmetrical, teeming with elaborate yet formalized
detail. The scale is also unprecedented, with figures
reaching over 4 m high at Khorsabad. The king is
central and vital to most scenes, immediately recognizable by distinctive dress and hat, slightly larger
scale, and as the focus of attention in any scene. The
reliefs tend to overwhelm the other art produced
under the Neo-Assyrians, but this is no less spectacular. Ivory and gold objects and inlay show strikingly
beautiful fusions of Assyrian, Syrian, and Egyptian
Phoenician styles. Cylinder seals, already finely detailed under Middle Assyrian rule in the later second
millennium BC, developed further. Many of the later
Middle Assyrian scenes had echoed the heraldic
groups of the Akkadian period but show new exotic
animals, such as ostriches or winged horses. In the
Neo-Assyrian Period, seals still show combats and
introductions to deities, but the attention to detail
begun in the Middle Assyrian period reaches a peak,
with individual feathers of winged figures and garment textures clearly articulated. Yet despite military
might and impressive art, this Assyrian empire also
crumbled, destroyed by a Mede and Babylonian
coalition after 2 years of siege and battles.
The Neo Babylonian Period saw the final, again
short-lived, Mesopotamian empire. The expansion
of the city of Babylon mirrored that of Nineveh,
with the enlargement of the core mounded area plus
the incorporation of a large and mostly empty area
around it. Temples were rebuilt, while the palace was
restructured and elaborated to an extreme and functionally useless extent. The blue-glazed brick Ishtar
gate, a well-known and often-reproduced icon of this
age, was one of several ceremonial access points into
the city. Its animal/deity symbolism (Ishtars lion,
Adads bull, Marduks dragon) echoes the winged
bull gatekeepers of Neo-Assyrian palaces but is
uniquely Babylonian in format and sensibility. This
was the last independent episode for Mesopotamia,
which became part of the Persian empire in 539 BC.

ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad 863

Key Themes

The Built Environment

Archaeology and Texts

Besides cities and ziggurats, the other human impact

on the landscape, particularly in southern Mesopotamia, would have been irrigation canals. As irrigation
was essential to agricultural life, canals would have
had great resonance and meaning for fertility and continuity. Larger canals were vital transport and communication routes from cities to supporting towns
and villages, as well as between cities. With fish and
reed-beds they present an exploitable ecosystem distinct from adjacent agricultural lands. From the third
millennium BC, kings claimed credit for construction
and extension of canals, as well as construction of city
walls or temples; control of water conveys extraordinary power and became a cornerstone of political
ideology.
Ziggurats and canals offer an opposing pair of
images: mountain-like peaks and extended semisubterranean linear devices. Human building activity
has impacted both the sky and the earth. It is therefore
somewhat surprising that Mesopotamians considered
cities and canals to be gifts from the gods.

The archaeology of Mesopotamia is inseparable from

its contemporary texts, comprising economic, administrative, legal, historical, and literary documents.
This rich textual corpus adds nuance and detail to
archaeological materials; while the archaeological
record offers a valuable check to the often institutionally biased or selective texts. The political histories
are strictly narrative, describing events and royal
actions, which may or may not have affected peoples
daily lives. But economic and administrative texts,
although restricted to transactions and situations
deemed worthy of recording for the future, are more
relevant for them. Literature and myth offer insights
into the reasons behind modes of burial, for instance,
while instruction texts illuminate both agricultural
techniques and religious ritual. Even vocabulary lists
open a window into the Mesopotamian mind, indicating important categories and value assignments;
even the absence of some terms (notably including
artist) is revealing.
The texts themselves, clay tablets, are archaeological objects, and information on their associations
and context are as vital for their full comprehension
as this information is for an understanding of art or
ceramic assemblages. Both palaces and temples held
libraries including both current and ancient texts.
Although the majority of the population would have
been technically illiterate, oral traditions were strong,
and knowledge of past history and cultural traditions
was part of being Mesopotamian.
Early Complexities and Urbanism

Mesopotamia presents the worlds first state and empire. It was also essentially an urbanized society. Excavations in northern Mesopotamia (Syria) are pushing
back the earliest known urban settlements into the
fifth millennium BC, earlier than those currently
known for southern Mesopotamia. For example,
monumental architecture, industrial pottery production, and organized obsidian import were present at
Tell Brak in the fifth millennium BC. But the absence
of recent excavations in southern Mesopotamia may
introduce a bias. The date and location of the earliest
city may eventually be as debated as are the date and
location of the earliest domesticated grain.
But there is a more serious issue awaiting resolution, whether these cities were primarily economic,
religious, or political in origin. Urbanization also
means ruralization. The urbanrural dynamic demands
further exploration if it is not to be viewed as a onesided exploitation of hinterland by urban center.

Archaeology of Religion

Temples physically dominated many cities and crowd

the excavated archaeological record in Mesopotamia.
The model of a temple-state, a world owned by temples and controlled by priests, was cast off long ago,
but temples were undeniably material in the success
of Mesopotamian urban life. Yet visits to neighborhood shrines and performance of small-scale rituals
probably constituted the primary religious experience
for many. The line between religion and magic was
blurred, with incantation figurines and foundation
deposits occupying the frontier.
Mesopotamian religious belief invoked a pantheon
of deities, primarily agricultural, astral, or pastoral
and also, unusually, linked with man-made objects or
concepts such as tools, irrigation, or the weaving
loom. Deities were conceived of as anthropomorphic and were often portrayed in thirdearly second
millennia artworks in human form, marked as divine
only by horned crowns. Later, deities were reduced
to symbols as the relationships among gods, kings,
and the rest of the population developed.
Power hierarchies among the gods mirror political
hierarchies among humans. Mesopotamian religion
changed over time, some deities rising in power while
others faded. Political power was usually implicated:
Marduk, an obscure agricultural deity, replaced Enlil
of Nippur in the Creation Epic and in the highest
position of authority as his city, Babylon, rose to
prominence in southern Mesopotamia in the later
second millennium BC.

864 ASIA, WEST/Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad

Mass Production and Trade

Some early cylinder seals (Late Uruk) show schematic

scenes of lines of women involved in weaving. This is
supplemented by texts from temple and palace contexts across the millennia that refer to weaving institutions and the trade of large volumes of graded and
specified textiles. The extreme standardization of
shape and volume of many ceramic vessels across
the late prehistoric and historic periods along with
the absence of kilns in domestic contexts points to
mass production of pottery. But the question of
whether mass production meant attached or independent specialists has not yet been satisfactorily answered. The same question arises with regard to
other modes of craft production, such as metallurgy.
With mass production comes trade, and Mesopotamian trade involved both locally produced basic
necessities (bricks, pottery, textiles, agricultural products) and imported luxuries. Urban institutions undeniably played a large role in the exchange of both
types of goods and were the major siphons for and
consumers of the latter. Sargon of Agade boasts of
ships from Magan and Meluhha (probably Oman and
the Indus Valley) coming to his capital, and urban
public buildings are the main contexts in which exotic
materials and objects are found. But the extent of
private trade and barter is surely under-represented.
The AshurAnatolia trade documentation presents an
image of sophisticated profit-driven and speculative
economic behavior entirely run on a private basis,
and it is unlikely that this was an isolated episode.
Shifts in popularity of imported raw materials can
be difficult to explain. Carnelian all but disappears
after the Akkadian Period, but the reason may lie
with events in the Indus Valley, in Mesopotamia or
the Gulf. The royal and religious monumental artworks of the Old Babylonian Period are overwhelmingly of dark stones, black limestone, or steatite, a
contrast to the more variable and frequently lightcolored stones of the third millennium. This shift
may have been intended to give a somber serious
impression, but it may suggest closure of access routes
for white limestone.
Pastoralism and Urbanism

Pastoral groups appear in textual material, particularly in the late third and early second millennia BC,
but remain archaeologically invisible in the continuously recycled Mesopotamian landscape. Texts reveal
that urban dwellers sometimes viewed their pastoralist neighbors as barbarians who lacked knowledge of
cooking or burial. But they were conversely happy
to welcome them as members of the army or even
as political leaders. Amorites, Kassites, Chaldaeans,

and Aramaeans all with substantial mobile components serially infiltrated southern Mesopotamia and
ended up in political control. Mobile tribes in northern
Mesopotamia seem to have been more fragmented and
did not usually end up in power, yet the Mari texts
indicate their importance to the economy in the second
millennium, and Aramaeans eventually appeared in
key official positions within the Neo-Assyrian imperial
administration.
The economic complementarity between agriculture and herding is better known from ethnographic
examples; in the modern Middle East herds graze on
harvested fields and contribute fertilizer in return.
Temples in the past owned both farms and flocks,
and reconstruction of a comparable seasonal movement is plausible.
Continuity and Change

A graph of Mesopotamian political history would

describe a ragged and broken line. States shifted and
collapsed; empires tended to be hard-won and surprisingly rapidly broken. The capital cities of nations
or empires leapt across the landscape, and the focus
of these political units shifted with them. These
changes would have affected government officials
and political elites, yet the archaeological record indicates that often these major political developments
had minimal impact on private citizens. Settlement
patterns remained the same; architecture and intrasite spatial use was stable; pottery style persisted.
Art had a mixed reaction to political change. Official styles can be identified with specific political
regimes. Given the illiteracy of the majority of the
Mesopotamian population, imagery was the most
effective way to impart political ideology. But sometimes the most eloquent statements were made not by
introducing new motifs or styles but by returning to
previous ones. An image of king carrying a hod of
bricks or mud plaster for construction of a temple
appears in the ED and Ur III Periods in reliefs and
foundation deposits; this easily read icon reappeared
in the Neo-Assyrian Period with Ashurbanipal presented as the rebuilder of Babylon. Similarly, the
figure of a defeated enemy prostrate below the feet
of the victorious army persists as a piece of visual
vocabulary from the mid-third through the late first
millennium.
Continuities of style and function also appear in
private portable art. Old Babylonian figurines of
naked women are virtually indistinguishable from
those of the Neo-Babylonian Period despite a millennium of separation. Their function (love or fertility
charms) also remained unchanged over this time, testament to the immutability of less-formal systems of

ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures 865

belief. There are also continuities in literary traditions; the Epic of Gilgamesh, a musing on the pleasures of friendship and inevitability of death, had a
life of at least 1000 years.

Palaeolithic Cultures
Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mesopotamia in the Early Twenty-First

Century AD
The momentum of archaeological research in Iraq
slowed dramatically in 1990 and has effectively
ceased since 2003, while work in Syria and Turkey
has intensified during these years. The Iraq Museum,
repository of an irreplaceable collection of Mesopotamian artifacts, was partially looted in April 2003,
and sites across the country have been comprehensively pillaged since that time, in one of the largest
cultural resource disasters of recent years. Satellite
images have, however, become more widely available
during this period, as aerial coverage of the region has
intensified; for the foreseeable future, remote sensing
techniques will be the only ones available to anyone
who wishes to work in Iraq and they have become
increasingly relied upon by those working in Syria.
Themes and theory are supplementing chronological
reconstruction and culture historical approaches.
See also: Asia, West: Achaemenian, Parthian, and

Sasanian Persian Civilizations; Archaeology of the Near

East: The Levant; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life;
Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Craft Specialization; Political Complexity, Rise of; Writing Systems.

Glossary
Acheulian A cultural complex identified in Africa and Eurasia
by the production of handaxes bifacially flaked tools, as well as
cleavers, bifacially U-shaped handaxes on a nodule or a large
flake. It lasted from 1.7 to c. 0.1 million years.
alluvial fan A fan shaped distribution of sediments carried by
rivers or wadis where the water flow decreases and stops, and the
deposits carried by spread side-ways.
Epi-Paleolithic A term that designates the period that marks the
latest part of the Palaeolithic period. It is mainly used by
archaeologists in North Africa and the Levant. This period lasted
from c. 20 000 to 11 500 cal BP in the Levant, when the Neolithic
period began.
geomorphology The study of landforms, including their origin
and evolution, and the processes that shape them.
hunter-gatherer society A society whose primary subsistence
method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and
animals from the wild, using foraging and hunting, without
significant recourse to the domestication of either.
The Levant Geographic term that refers to the area from the
foothills of the Taurus mountains to the tip of the Sinai peninsula
in the Eastern Mediteranean. Its eastern border are the Balick
river valley in northern Mesopotamia, and the Syro-Arabian
desert from the Euphrates River Valley, southward through the
Black Desert, El-Jaffer basin and the plateau along the eastern
shoreline of the Gulf of Aqaba.
wadi A valley, ravine, or watercourse that is dry except during
the rainy season.

Further Reading
Akkermans P and Schwartz G (2003) The Archaeology of Syria,
From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies
(c. 16 000300 BC). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crawford H (2004) Sumer and the Sumerians, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moorey PRS (1978) Kish Excavations 19231933. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Matthews R (2003) The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, Theories
and Approaches. London: Routledge.
Delougaz P and Lloyd S (1942) Pre-Sargonid Temples in the Diyala
Region. Chicago: Oriental Institute Publication 58.
Oates J (1986) [2003]. Babylon. London: Thames & Hudson.
Oates J and Oates D (2001) Nimrud, An Assyrian Imperial City
Revealed. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq.
Postgate JN (1994) Early Mesopotamia, Society and Economy at
the Dawn of History. London: Routledge.
Schuster A and Polk M (eds.) (2005) The Looting of the Iraq
Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia.
Harry Abrams: New York.
Van de Mieroop M (2004) A History of the Ancient Near East,
c. 3000323 BC. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Wilkinson TJ (2003) Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Woolley L (1939) Ur Excavations V: The Ziggurat and Its
Surroundings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Introduction
The dominant geographical features of Western Asia
consist of a topographic combination of mountains
(mostly of the Alpine uplift), plateaus, alluvial plains,
and desert landscapes including oases. The coastal
plains are often very narrow in comparison to those
of other continents. The Anatolian plateau is bounded by the Pontain mountains on the north and the
Taurus mountains on the south, each range about
1500 km long. Both join the northwestern end of
the 1800 km long Zagros chain, which, together with
the Caucasus Mountains, create a deeply dissected
land mass. The Iranian plateau is bounded by the
Zagros Mountains in the west and south, the Elburz
and Kopet Dagh Mountains in the north, and the
Khurasan and Baluchistan mountains in the east.
The Mesopotamia plain stretches and descends from
the foothills of the Zagros and Taurus into the Persian
Gulf. The Syro-Arabian desert that stretches bound
it on the west into the Arabian Peninsula. The
Mediterranean Levant is a special zone within Western

866 ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures

Asia and covers an area about 1100 km long and 250

350 km wide. Topographically, it includes the coastal
mountain range (overall lower than the Taurus), the
Dead Sea system or the rift of the Orontes-Jordan
Valleys, inland mountain ranges, and the eastward
sloping plateau, which is dissected by many wadis
flowing eastward into the Syro-Arabian desert.
Today the climate of Western Asia is dominated by
two seasons: cool, rainy winters and hot, dry summers.
Winter temperatures are milder in the coastal ranges
and more severe inland or at higher elevations. Precipitation is affected by distance from the sea and by
altitude, with the central Anatolian and Iranian plateaus, the Syro-Arabian desert, and Mesopotamia
being the driest zones. In the Mediterranean Levant,
rainfall decreases in a northsouth direction from the
Taurus Mountains to the Sinai Peninsula. That zone is
characterized by Eu-Mediterranean vegetation consisting of woodlands or open parklands on and along the
coastal ranges. In contrast, western Anatolia is covered
with broad-leafed and needle-leafed trees and shrubs
resistant to cold, while cold-adapted deciduous broadleafed woodland characterizes the eastern mountains
and large areas of the Zagros. Dwarf shrubland and
steppic vegetation (Irano-Turanian) dominate the eastern Anatolian plateau and form a wide arching belt
south of the northern Levantine, Taurus, and northern
Zagros hilly ranges. Farther south, open xenomorphic dwarf shrubland and desert plant associations
(Saharo-Arabian) cover areas with an annual precipitation of less than 300 400 mm.
The current complex climatic system of Western
Asia makes it difficult to reconstruct the patterns
of the past. Presently, large annual fluctuations in
rainfall characterize the precipitation of the region
with storm tracks following various paths. Those that
carry humidity along the Mediterranean Sea move in
a more arid, southerly direction. The second series of
cyclones descends through Europe and, in turning east,
leaves most of the southern Levant dry. Isotope studies
of speleothems in Israel, as well as chemical analyses
and dating of the palaeolake Lisan in the Jordan
Valley, have demonstrated that Upper Pleistocene
rainfall distributions were similar to those of today,
although at certain times higher than the known
averages. Rather than temperature changes, decadal and centennial fluctuations in the amount of
precipitation were responsible for the expansion and
contraction of vegetation belts recorded in the palynological sequences and lake levels.
While the climate of Western Asia today is characterized by cold and rainy winters and hot and dry
summers, the exceptions are the margins of the Arabian
Peninsula that are affected by the Indian monsoon.
The interplay between the western winds that bring

the moisture from the Atlantic or Northern Europe

and the Asia barometric high in wintertime as well as
the monsoon system, is the reason why it was difficult
for many years to decipher the meaning of the climatic changes in the Levant. Knowledge was improved as
the number of marine cores from the Arabian Sea
became available in recent years with the increase of
similar cores from the eastern Mediterranean. However, detailed correlations between climatic changes
and cultural expressions are still tenuous in most cases.
The Mediterranean coastal areas are more humid,
whereas the inland plateaus are drier and colder in
wintertime. In Anatolia and Iran, it snows. At the
higher altitudes in the Taurus, Zagros, Caucasus,
and other mountain chains, it snows in the winter
and the summers are cool and often dry. The topographic alignments and the effects of the storm tracks
that arrive in the Near East from the west created a
phytogeographic pattern in which the vegetation belts
are also arranged in a parallel northsouth direction.
They are known as the Mediterranean woodland and
parkland, the steppic Irano-Turanian, and the desertic Saharo-Arabian. The latter characterize the areas
where annual precipitation is often less than 250 mm
a year. In Iran, they stretch along the Zagros and
in Anatolia in part parallel to the Taurus. The climate
of the Caucasus area is temperate in the west and
becomes dried semi-arid in the east toward the
Caspian.
Pleistocene and Holocene climates were somewhat different than todays climate and rain patterns
were not necessarily the same. The study of past
palaeoclimatic conditions demonstrates the shifts
in plant and faunal associations, accompanied by
geomorphic landscape modifications. The emerging
images of Pleistocene environmental conditions are
still fragmentary when the Lower Pleistocene is
considered. Diastrophic movements along with climatic changes cause both geomorphologic alterations
such as major erosion due to lowering base level,
deposition in closed basins, coverage by lava flows,
and the appearance and disappearance of lakes in the
rift valley and the semi-arid belt. The main elements in
Western Asian fauna were always Eurasiatic and the
earlier MiocenePliocene stamp of an African component steadily decreased through the Pleistocene.
Plant associations were also affected by the climatic
fluctuations. Under conditions of increasing winter
precipitation, the woodland belt expanded eastward
and even southward. Steppic plants covered large
portions of the previously arid zone, and the SaharoArabian vegetation retreated to certain enclaves.
Ponds and small lakes emerged in lowlands and
enclosed basins in the semi-arid areas of the SyroArabian desert. Improved environmental conditions

ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures 867

enabled hunter-gatherers to expand their territories and increase their populations. The conditions
changed when precipitation decreased and worsened
when accompanied by a drop in the annual average of
temperatures. Foragers living between the Mediterranean shoreline and the deserts or on the inland
plateau such as Anatolia and central Iran, or in high
altitudes, had to accommodate their mobility patterns, exploitation strategies, and population size in
order to survive under the new climatic regime.
Knowledge of Western Asia prehistory is pertinent
for understanding the global evolutionary cultural
processes due to its crucial geographic location at
the crossroads between Africa and the rest of Asia.
It is the Levantine corridor within this vast region that
produced a wealth of archaeological records for
several migrations out of Africa of Homo ergaster/
erectus as well as the archaic types of modern
humans. The Levant and adjacent areas have also
seen the first sedentary hamlets of complex huntergatherers among whom were the founders of the
agricultural or Neolithic revolution.

History of Research
Investigations of the prehistory of Western Asia
began during the late nineteenth century in two subregions: the Caucasus by Germans and Russians, and
the Holy Land and adjacent countries by a wave of
scholars and educated travelers who searched for its
antiquities and who noticed the presence of prehistoric stone tools. This was already at the time when
the antiquity of humankind had become an accepted
notion in Europe. Hence, the first excavations were
carried out at the turn of the century, in Lebanon, by
Abbe P. G. Zumoffen. But it was not until the excavations in 1925 in Wadi Amud caves by F. TurvillePetre, who discovered a fragmentary skull at Zuttiyeh
cave, that the search gained momentum. Other
scholars who followed and published a considerable
amount of new data were D. Garrod, R. Neuville,
M. Stekelis, Father J. F. Ewing, and A. Rust. Thus the
period between the two World Wars became a Golden
Age for prehistoric research that expanded to western
Iran, and research by others in the Caucasus Mountains. Among the most notable discoveries were the
human relics uncovered in the caves of Mount Carmel
(el-Wad, Skhul, and Tabun caves), Qafzeh Cave, and
Ksar Akil. These continue to attract scholars from
different countries to Western Asia. Further discoveries
of human remains were made in the Iraqi cave site of
Shanidar, and the investigations of the cultural expressions of the Palaeolithic period were, and are, being
published in local languages as well as English,
French, German, and Russian. Even today, this is the

only region in the entire world that is being searched

by archaeologists from numerous different schools
and countries, from Japan in the east through the
USA in the west.
In addition to systematic excavations, often carried
out by variable digging methods and degrees of precision, numerous survey projects have facilitated the
recognition of the prehistory of this region. Due to
an ease of conducting archaeological research, most of
the surveys addressing the distribution of Palaeolithic
sites were done in the Levantine countries and include
the various vegetation belts from the Mediterranean
forests through the arid zone. Hence, our knowledge
of past geomorphologic changes and the possible
impact on human societies of hunter-gatherers is reasonably fair. In spite of the paucity of lakes in this area,
pollen cores that reflect environmental fluctuations
provide some information mainly in relation to the
Upper Pleistocene although hints concerning the past
1.8 million years are also available.

Lower Palaeolithic
The geographic position of the Levant at the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia made it a natural
path for the dispersal of H. ergaster or erectus. The
earliest site is Dmanisi in Georgia. The site was originally located at the shores of a small lake. Accumulations of bones and artifacts were the results of
redeposition from the occupation levels in a series of
pipes. The most striking discoveries are five skulls
and a suite of postcranial bones. The stratified assemblages overlie a lava flow dated to 1.8 million years
and the rapid rate of deposition indicates a terminal
age for the site c. 1.7 million years. The lithic industry
primarily consists of core-choppers, and numerous
flakes, several of which are retouched. Based on African terminology, it was suggested to call the industry
pre-Oldowan. However, this term only indicates that
the main artifacts are cores and flakes and other Asian
sites, mostly those beyond the so-called Movius line,
exhibit similar composition. Pollen from coprolites
indicates that the area was forested with tree species
such as Abies, Pinus, Fagus, Alnus, Castanea, Tilia,
Betula, Carpinus, and rare Ulmus and Salix, and
bushes such as rhododendron, corylus, and myrtle,
as well as herbaceous vegetation dominated by Cyperaceae, Graminae, and Polygonaceae. This association
reflects an environment of high mountains with wellwatered woodland of an inland basin. The fauna included essentially palaeoarctic species such as Struthio
dmanisensis, Ursus etruscus, Canis etruscus, Pachycrocuta sp., Homotherium sp., Megantereon cf. megantereon, Archidiscodon meridionalis, Equus cf. stenonis,
Equus cf. altidens, Dicerorhinus etruscus, Sus sp.,

868 ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures

Dama cf. nestii, Cervus sp., Dmanisibos georgicus,

Caprini gen., Ovis sp., Leporinae gen., Cricetulus sp.,
and Marmota sp. Most of the fauna accumulated at the
edge of a shallow lake but some bones demonstrate
human involvement whether related to scavenging
and/or hunting.
Second in antiquity is Ubeidiya that lies 3 km south
of the Sea of Galilee on the flanks of the western
escarpment of the Jordan Rift. With the aid of heavy
machinery, several geological trenches (numberedIV, K, and Ka) were excavated to a total length of
about 1100 m. The geological structure, as observed
in these artificial exposures, is an anticline with several undulations accompanied by several faults. The
numerous layers in the trenches were numbered from
the observed earliest to the latest over a total thickness of about 154 m. The observed sequence was
subdivided into four cycles, two limnic (Li and Lu)
and two terrestrial (Fi and Fu), as follows:
1. The Li cycle, characterized by clays, silts, and limestone, terminates with laminated silts, rich with
freshwater mollusks and fish remains. One layer
(III-12) contained mammalian bones and some artifacts, and provided the only pollen spectrum indicating the forest cover of the flanks of the Jordan
Valley.
2. The Fi cycle is built of clays and conglomerates,
mainly beach deposits. Most of the archaeological
finds and faunal remains were obtained from this
member beginning with layer II-21 through III-64.
3. The Lu cycle is the upper limnic member, and
consists of two parts: the lower part is essentially
clays and chalks, while the upper part is a whitishgrayish-yellow silty series. Only a few artifacts
were encountered in this unit.
4. The Fu cycle consists mainly of conglomerates,
some of which are large basalt boulders. No artifacts or mollusks were found in this member.
Presumably, it represents the regression or even
total disappearance of Lake Ubeidiya due to the
onset of a tectonic movement. This member is
overlain by a Pliocene overthrusted block within
which the basaltic flow was K/Ar-dated to 3.6
million years.
The palaeoenvironments of Ubeidiya were reconstructed on the basis of the different nature of the
layers while taking into account the malacological
and faunal assemblages. The results indicate that the
site was located within a sequence of complex alluvial
and deltaic situations in which lakeshores fluctuated
constantly. The major lake expansions are recorded in
the Li and Lu members while the retreat is reflected
in the Fi member. It is at that time that hominins

camped on the lakeshores, at the edges of the alluvial

fan, and on the mud flats or temporarily dried
marshes. From the hilly area, several lithic assemblages were washed and redeposited within the gravels that filled a wadi channel (layers K-29, K-30, and
III-34, 35). The lake transgressed again (Lu), and then
regressed (Fu), this time probably as a result of the
beginning of the tectonic movement that caused
the folding of the formation and the slumping of the
Pliocene block on top of its younger member.
The archaeological excavations at Ubeidiya uncovered many layers with numerous artifacts. Field
observations indicate that the same layers can be
traced on both sides of the main anticline. However,
in order to avoid unfounded correlations, layers were
numbered separately in relation to each geological
trench. Of the 65 artifact-bearing layers, 15 can be
considered as the major archaeological horizons and
most were excavated on sufficiently large exposures
to provide a fairly large sample of artifacts and animal bones. The depositional environment indicates
on what kind of natural environment hominins preferred to stay. These types of localities are on top of a
drying marshy layer, on the gravelly lake beaches, and
somewhere upslope, perhaps on the plateau above the
Jordan Valley. The latter contexts were washed into
the lake and accumulated within a fluvial conglomerate. It should be noted that occasional isolated artifacts were encountered in different geological layers
reminiscent of spare finds in East African Lower
Palaeolithic sites.
The raw materials used for making artifacts were
lava (basalt), flint, and limestone. The basalt occurs
as pebbles, cobbles, boulders, and scree components;
the limestone as cobbles within the beach and wadi
deposits; and the flint in the same environments as
small pebbles and cobbles. The shapes of the stone
objects modified by hominins include the corechoppers and the detached pieces such as flakes
mostly made of flint, limestone spheroids, hand
axes, trihedrals, and picks made mainly of basalt,
with a few of flint and limestone. There is a direct
correlation between the size of the object category
and the type of common raw material.
The dating of Ubeidiya is based on faunal correlations with Dmanisi and European sites and is thus
suggested as 1.41.5 million years, and current electron spin resonance (ESR) dates suggest 1.2 million
years. Among the faunal assemblages that include
more than 100 species of mammals, birds, and reptiles, the following species are chronologically
noteworthy: Lagurodon arankae, Mammuthus meridionalis cf. Tamanensis, Praemegaceros verticornis,
Canis arnensis, Pelorovis oldowayensis, Apodemus

ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures 869

(Sylvaticus) sylvaticus, Apodemus flavicollis, Dicerorhinus etruscus, Panthera gombaszoegensis, Kolpochoerus

oldowayensis, Hippopotamus gorgops, Hippopotamus behemoth, Hypolagus brachygmathus, Allocricetus bursae, Cricetus cricetus, Gazellospira torticornis,
Sus strozzii, Ursus etruscus, Pannonictis ardea, Megantereon cultridens, Crocuta crocuta, Herpestes sp. In
sum, the Ubeidiya faunal is essentially Late Villafranchian with a few Galerian elements, and is mostly
Euroasiatic with rare African elements. Faunal connections with Africa were cut off during the Late
Pliocene and the early part of the Lower Pleistocene.
Most of the fauna accumulated on the lakeshores and
in the deltaic deposits. Only a small portion indicates
the involvement of humans, probably due to hunting
although scavenging as meat-obtaining strategy was
not excluded.
Dmanisi and Ubeidiya mark stations in human dispersals from Africa into Eurasia through the Levantine
corridor. The existence of the Saharan desertic belt
since the end of the Miocene excludes the interior of
the Arabian Peninsula from the Levantine corridor
except for the coast of the Red Sea. Under interglacial
conditions, the northern penetration of the monsoonal
system drastically changed the potential for increasing
amounts of resources in eastern Sahara and could have
enabled an alternative route for H. erectus or archaic
H. sapiens groups. The Lower Palaeolithic assemblages
at el-Abassieh in Cairo may indicate that the Nile
Valley should not be excluded as a potential migration
route.
The Acheulian sequence is generally divided into
three major categories: Lower, Middle, and Upper
Acheulian. Assemblages are incorporated in each phase
based on the morphological and metrical attributes of
the bifaces. In general, the bifaces demonstrate additional refinement in their shapes and the degree of
symmetry, when compared to the most simple forms
at Ubeidiya, that represent the Lower Acheulian.
Over 200 Acheulian occurrences were recorded
in the Levant, eastern Turkey, and Iran. However,
the number of excavated sites is small and includes
Evron-Quarry, Gesher Benot Yaaqov, Holon, Revadim, Tabun cave, and Umm Qatafa in Israel, Latamne
and Gharmachi in Syria, Ain Soda and Lions Spring
in the Azraq Basin in Jordan, and Sehrmuz and
Kaltepe in Turkey.
The site of Gesher Benot Yaaqov, where most of
the industry was manufactured from basalt with
fewer artifacts made of flint and limestone, stands
out with the amount of available information concerning faunal, plant remains, palaeoecological
observations, and detailed lithic studies. The dominance of cleavers made of basalt flakes, provides an

African aspect to this industry and is seen as cultural

evidence for another movement of hominids from
Africa into the Levant. Several layers of the depositional sequence of the site, which amounts to over 30 m
thick and is tilted westward, were recently extensively
excavated. The Bruhnes/Matuyama palaeomagnetic
chronological borderline (0.78 million years ago) was
found within the sites sequence characterized by the
accumulation of fluvial, lacustrine, overbank sediments at the shoreline of an old Hula lake. Among
the most important discoveries was the residue for the
use of fire by the sites occupants. Many thousands
of small flakes that bear potlid fractures, which
mark the effects of fire, were identified in particular
concentrations.
Among the faunal remains the species identified
were Stegodon mediterraneus, Mamuthus (Elephas)
trogontherii, Dicerorhinus merckii, Hippopotamus
amphibius, Dama mesopotamica, Bison cf. priscus;
Capra sp., Gazella gazella. This assemblage falls
within the general definition of the Galerian fauna
that replaced the Late Villafranchian association
around 0.90.7 million years ago.
Most of the sites from this period demonstrate
the involvement of humans in the formation of the
accumulations. Hunting and opportunistic scavenging were the main procurement strategies. The site of
Gesher Benot Yaaqov produced also a wealth of
plant remains, some of which were collected as food
items by the camping foragers.
One should mention the Middle Acheulian that in
the past seemed to be a recognized phase within the
Acheulian of the Near East. It was best known from
the systematically collected samples in river gravels
along the Nahr el Kebir and Orontes Rivers in Syria.
Rare finds were retrieved in the Euphrates Valley,
and some in the Beqaa Valley. Chronologically, they
were assigned to the Late Lower and Early Middle
Pleistocene. In the southern Levant, the definition of
Middle Acheulian was rarely used. Assemblages that
seem to fall within this category, on the basis of the
dominant biface forms, can be also attributed by to
the Upper Acheulian. Such, for example, are the
assemblages from the excavations at Holon and
Umm Qatafa cave layer E. The bifaces are generally
elongated, pointed, and roughly made when compared
to the fully symmetrical Upper Acheulian types.
However, the dates for the Holon site (c. 300220
thousand years ago), and the Acheulian contexts from
Revadim Quarry, are within the range of dates for the
Acheulo-Yabrudian entity that stretches from north
of the Yakon River, though Mount Carmel into northern Syria. The two Upper Acheulian sites, and many
more surface assemblages collected in the Negev

870 ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures

desert, are distributed south of the presumed cultural

boundary between the Acheulo-Yabrudian and the
Upper Acheulian, which cuts across the Levantine
ecologies from west to east.
The Upper or Late Acheulian demonstrates a technological tendency to have more use of soft hammer
percussion, high degree of artifact symmetry, and the
presumed appearance of the Levallois technique.
However, the products of this knapping technique are
only available in a few assemblages and their frequencies are generally very low. Typologically, the disappearance of core-choppers is noticeable. Bifaces of
cordiform and amygdaloid shapes often outnumber
the ovates. It seems that in part the variability in
metrical attributes between sites reflects differences
in the size of raw material that is available in the
vicinity of these localities.
The Acheulian sequence in the northern province
ends with an entity that is known as either the
Acheulo-Yabrudian or the Mugharan Tradition. Three
facies or combinations of different frequencies of
the same tool types are included in this entity:
one is dominated by small bifaces (Acheulian); the
second contains numerous side scrapers, canted, and
transverse scrapers often shaped on thick flakes
(Yabrudian); and the last has backed blades as well
as rare bifaces (Amudian). Stratigraphically, this
entity precedes the Mousterian industries in the central and northern Levant. Its age is derived from thermoluminescence dating (TL) and ESR readings of
c. 400/380250/230 thousand years available for
the Acheulo-Yabrudian layers at Tabun cave and
the Amudian industry in Qesem cave. Recent work
in the Taurus Mountains suggests that this entity
originated in the north and spread southward.
Unfortunately, hominid remains from this long
period are very rare and include one tooth from
Ubeidiya, a skull fragment that was found in
Acheulian context in Nadaouiyeh in the el-Kowm
Basin, and two femurs from Gesher Benot Yaaqov
collected from deposits removed when the Jordan
Valley channel was deepened. The best preserved is
the fragmentary skull from Zuttiyeh Cave, in Wadi
Amud in an Acheulo-Yabrudian context, which is
considered as either late H. erectus, or a generalized
human type that is known from a larger area within
the Old World.

Middle Palaeolithic
The study of the Levantine Mousterian benefited
from the long stratigraphy of Tabun cave and from
a host of other excavated sites. The Middle Palaeolithic in the TaurusZagros ranges differs in part from

that of the Levant, but resembles the industries

from the Caucasus region. The basis for the general
subdivision of the Levantine industries is the sequence
of Tabun Cave. The increase in the number of
well-published lithic assemblages including the data
pertaining to the variability within each of the
Mousterian industries was the result of the advent
of technological studies centered on recognizing the
reduction strategies, expressed in both, the basic
modes within the Levallois concept, as well as other
lithic production concepts. Although the morphological variability of the lithic artifacts from various
sites is not fully portrayed through the simplified
model based on the Tabun Cave sequence, it seems
that the overall chronological trend is clear, and that
the general entities are valid archaeological cultures
in time and space, as follows:
1. Tabun D type assemblages are stratigraphically
located at the base of the Mousterian sequence in
multilayered sites such as Tabun Cave, unit IX,
Yabrud I Rockshelter, Hayonim Cave layers
F and lower E, and in Douara Cave layer IV, Abu
Sif, and the open-air site of Rosh Ein Mor in the
Negev highlands.
This entity is characterized by the production of
elongated blanks sometimes defined as blades,
pointed, and when retouched are known as Abu
Sif points. The blanks were removed from cores
with basal preparation and correction of the core
convexity conveys the impression that the reduction
had been bidirectional. In Hayonim Cave and Rosh
Ein Mor, both the laminar and Levallois methods
core reduction strategies were practiced. Other tool
types are the burins that occur in this industry.
Most Early Mousterian assemblages in the southern Levant were produced by this particular Levallois method and could be called Abu Sifian. In the
northern Levant, the Early Mousterian Hummalian
industry from sites in the el-Kowm Basin (northeast
Syria) is essentially a bladey industry, mostly nonLevallois. Further north, in the Caucasus Mountains, a similar bladey Mousterian is known from
Djrujula Cave, and a few other sites such as
Koudaro Cave, and is sometimes named Djrujulan.
Currently, the dating for all these industries ranges
from about 250 000 to c. 150 000 years, and are
therefore of similar ages to the Tabun D type.
2. The Tabun C-type assemblages are found in
multilayered sites above the Tabun D-type ones
(Tabun I 18-26 or layer C in Garrods excavations), Hayonim Cave upper layer E, and below
the Tabun B type in Tabun Cave. Most of the
assemblages are characterized by the dominance
of ovalrectangular blanks, best described from

ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures 871

Qafzeh cave. The common products of this method

are suboval and subquadrangular flakes, sometimes
of large dimensions, struck from Levallois cores
through centripetal and/or bidirectional exploitation. Triangular points appear in small numbers in
definite horizons, such as layer XV in Qafzeh.
Other generally similar assemblages were reported
from Skhul layer B, Naame, Ras el Kelb, Ksar Akil
XXVI, and Quneitra where the lithic assemblage is
also considered as having particular traits.
3. Tabun B type comprises assemblages dominated
by the production of mainly flakes and triangular
Levallois points, frequently with a broad-base the
typical chapeau de gendarme striking platform.
They are removed from unidirectional convergent
Levallois cores. There is a striking similarity between Kebara units IX and X, Tabun layer B both
in Mount Carmel and Tor Faraj in southern Jordan.
In Amud and Tor Sabiha Caves, unidirectional convergent cores yielded narrower and more elongated
triangular flakes, sometimes called leaf-shaped
flakes. It is worth noting that blades do occur in all
of these assemblages sometimes comprising up to
25% of the blanks such as in Kebara units XI and
XII, and Amud B1. Similar Tabun B-type assemblages occur in Bezez Cave layer B, Ksar Akil layer
XXVIII (Lebanon), Dederiyeh (northern Syria), and
Um el Tlel in el-Kowm Basin.
For historical reasons, it should be noted that the
production of long and narrow flakes by unidirectional convergent mode of flaking, and the variable
frequencies of blades in Tabun B-type assemblages,
were interpreted as suggesting that this industry could
have been the technological progenitor of the bladey
Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP). While this suggestion
means that the technical change, or the first step
of the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution, took place in the
Levant, it also has biological implications. For scholars
who classify the human fossils associated with the
Tabun B-type industries (Kebara, the woman from
Tabun, Amud, Dederiyeh) as Western Asian Neanderthals, it means that the descendants of this population were those who initiated the new technological
revolution of the Upper Palaeolithic. This stands in
contradiction to the genetic evidence that finds correlation between modern humans and Upper Palaeolithic
industries. Hence, the emergence of the new lithic reduction sequences and tool types should be sought in a
different region such as the Nile Valley or East Africa.
The Middle Palaeolithic assemblages uncovered in
the caves of the Zagros and Taurus resemble those
of the southern Caucasus. The common knapping
methods are discoiadal and Levallois and the frequencies of retouched pieces are very high. The dates from

Karain Cave (Turkey), Shanidar (Iraq), and Ortvale

Klde (Georgia) indicate that these assemblages,
rich in well-retouched and resharpened points and
sidescrapers, characterize mostly the Last Glacial
Mousterian. Surface collections in Anatolia, north
of the Taurus ranges, demonstrate the presence of
Levallois-dominated industries.
One of the cultural characteristics of the Middle
Palaeolithic of the region are the burials. The best
known are from Skhul and Qafzeh cave, embedded
in Tabun C-type assemblages, and considered as
archaic modern humans, possibly related to the
finds in Omo-Kibish and Herto in Ethiopia. Late burials are those of the Neanderthals in Kebara, Tabun,
Amud, Dederiyeh, and Shanidar caves (see Burials:
Excavation and Recording Techniques).
Faunal analysis indicated that humans hunt what
was available in the vicinity of their seasonal camps.
In the Levant, the main game animals were the gazelle
and the fallow deer, while in the Lebanese mountains the fallow deer and the wild goat were very
common. In Shanidar the wild goat was the common
hunt and in the Caucasus the thur (Capra Caucasica).
Both the identified hunting seasons and differences
in the number of retouched pieces versus cores and
debitage products indicate that Middle Palaeolithic
humans were mobile, employing various habitats,
either along altitudinal transects (Zagros and Caucasus) or more along topographic lows (the Levantine
landscapes). Meager evidence concerning the vegetal diet was provided by carbonized plants from
Kebara Cave. In spite of the poor preservation, it
seems that in all the Mediterranean areas plants
were more important as a stable source of food than
animal tissues.

Upper Palaeolithic
The cultural transition from the Middle to the Upper
Palaeolithic, also referred to as the Upper Palaeolithic
revolution, is demonstrated first by the technotypological shift of manufacturing stone tools and a little
later by the appearance of marine shells as body
decorations. The technical and typological transition
is best documented in Boker Tachtit in the Negev and
Ksar Akil in the Lebanese mountains. Level 1 at
Boker Tachtit contains an assemblage that demonstrates mixed characteristics with dominance of tool
types such as end scrapers, burins, and new point
types. On the one hand, core reduction is dominated
by blade production, and on the other hand some of
the products bear the forms of Levallois points. These
differ from the typical Mousterian Levallois points as
they are shaped by bidirectional removals and not by
convergent removals like the earlier forms. Similar

872 ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures

observations concerning the transitional nature of the

core reduction technique were made at Ksar Akil.
There is little doubt that the earliest layers should be
dated to around 47/45 00043 000 radiocarbon years
ago. The particular industries from this phase were
grouped under the term transitional industries or
Emiran, although the preferred term today is Initial
Upper Palaeolithic (IUP).
Among the retouched pieces, the Emireh point,
known for its basal bifacial shaping, is common
only in the central and southern Levant. From the
central and northern Levant, blades and flakes with
transverse removal at the tip, known as chamfered
pieces or chanfriens in French, occur in Ksar Akil,
Abri Antelias, Abu Halka, and Ucagizli Caves. In all
cases, they mark the IUP that is also recorded in the
el-Kowm Basin (northeast Syria).
The next cultural phase in the Levant is characterized by the blade-dominated assemblages of the Early
Ahmarian industry that dates from 43/42 00034/
30 000 years BP. In the early assemblages, the striking
platforms of the blades bear the same facets similar to
Late Mousterian core preparation, while the lipped
and punctiform platforms became dominant later.
End scrapers and burins are among the common
tool types. Numerous open-air sites in the semi-arid
areas of Sinai, the Negev, and southern Jordan were
excavated and radiocarbon-dated. It seems that from
c. 38 000 to 24 000 years BP the steppic zone received
a higher amount of annual precipitation than it does
today, and became the homeland of many groups of
Ahmarian foragers. Most sites were located next to
water sources. The people gathered seeds, leaves, and
fruits, and hunted ibex, gazelle, and aurochs as shown
by the uncovered bones.
The Early Ahmarian is poorly known from the
northern and central parts of the Levant due to insufficient research and the mobility pattern of those foragers, which did not always incorporate cave-sites
or rockshelters. The most impressive archaeological
sequence was uncovered in Ksar Akil rockshelter.
The stratified assemblages and faunal collections
make this site unique. It could have served as a location for meetings during many generations. From this
site and a few others, we know that the Upper Palaeolithic people hunted the available game in their respective areas: ibex, fallow deer, and roe deer in the
Lebanese mountains; gazelle and fallow deer in
Mount Carmel; and gazelle, ibex, and aurochs in the
Jordan valley. Small game included hare, and trapping
for birds is evidenced.
The Upper Palaeolithic sequence in these parts
of the Levant was interrupted by the appearance of
the Aurignacian that was originally labeled as Levantine Aurignacian although the published assemblages

are very similar to the European ones. One of the tool

types, an essential Aurignacian component in every
assemblage, is the el-Wad point that clearly resembles
the Krems point of Central Europe and the Font Yves
point in France. Other striking similarities between
the European Aurignacian and the Levantine contexts
include the body decorations such as beads from deer
teeth, as well as the proliferation of bone and antler
tools, among which there are samples of split base
points. These cultural elements support the identification of the Levantine assemblages with the Aurignacian cultural complex. A limestone slab with an
incised horse from Hayonim cave adds to the artistic
aspects of this culture.
The Levantine Aurignacian, dated to c. 34 000
29 000 years BP, is geographically limited to the
coastal and inland ranges of the central and northern
Levant and was not found in the arid zone (although
certain assemblages were previously misidentified as
Aurignacian). Further dating may reduce this time
range. Similar assemblages were reported from the
Zagros Mountains but not further east or north
(such as in the Caucasus). The Aurignacian penetration probably originated in the Balkans and reached
selected parts of the Near East through Anatolia.
The Late Ahmarian (from 30 000 to 20 000 years
ago), and the ensuing Epipalaeolithic industries, are
characterized by the production of blades and numerous bladelets. The emergence of microlithic forms or
small and narrow bladelets precedes what is often
called the Epipalaeolithic period in the Levant.
One of the best examples for a camp of huntergatherers was exposed in Ohalo I, a waterlogged site
discovered when Lake Kinneret regressed. Excavations uncovered a series of brush huts, a wealth of
carbonized plant remains including cereals, a large
slab stone, on the surface of which starches were
found, evidence for grinding seeds. Among the huts,
a burial was discovered. The tool assemblage includes
microliths, bone and wooden tools, fishing weights,
and a wealth of debitage products. Animal bones testify to hunting and ephemeral fishing. The vegetal
diet, as suspected for earlier periods, provided most
of the calories of those bands of foragers (see Asia,
West: Paleolithic Cultures).

Epipalaeolithic
The Epipalaeolithic period in the Levant, dated to
c.20/19 000 through 11 500 cal year BP, is characterized by the increasing complexity of settlement
systems, technology, subsistence proclivities, social
organization, and artistic representations. The latter
part of this period witness the emergence of settled
life by sedentary foragers, known as the Natufian

ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures 873

culture, who were the forerunners of the agricultural

communities.
The palaeoclimate of this period is generally better
documented due to availability of sources such as
pollen cores, deep-sea cores, and speleothems. The
milleniums of the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM)
caused the expansion of the arid belt and therefore the more limited spatial distribution of Kebaran
foragers. The climatic amelioration of the Terminal
Pleistocene improved the local environmental conditions, but ended with the Younger Dryas, which was a
globally cold and dry period. During the time from
c. 18 000 through 13 000 cal year BP, numerous lakes
and ponds were established in the formerly desertic
and steppic areas; woodlands and parklands expanded
permitting foragers to relax their population control
and to allow for the acquisition of reliable, accessible,
and predictable food resources in the same zone where
subsistence was earlier a matter of hazard.
The Levantine core area demonstrates both continuity and shifts in lithic industries from the previous
Upper Palaeolithic entities. The European terminology placed these milleniums within the Upper Palaeolithic, but the research in the Near East since the
1960s demonstrated that the cultural trajectory was
different. The European term of Mesolithic designated the appearance of microlithic assemblages
produced by hunter-gatherers who lived during the
postglacial times, that is, the Early Holocene. Hence
the attribution of Levantine microlithic industries to
the Mesolithic, as proposed by the pioneering prehistorians, seemed inadequate. The term Epipalaeolithic
was adopted from the prehistory of North Africa,
where researchers faced similar terminological ambiguities (see Asia, West: Mesolithic Cultures).
The variability displayed in Epipalaeolithic lithic
industries with the constantly accumulating radiocarbon dates is interpreted as reflecting the existence of
various contemporaneous cultures. This situation led
to the introduction of various new names with definitions based on differences among tool morphologies.
Often the core reduction techniques are the same
through most of the region and through milleniums,
but the shaped microliths differ considerably both in
form and type of retouch.
The Natufian culture, the latest in the sequence,
demonstrates differences in core reduction methods
from their previous cultures, and a few new ways for
secondary shaping of the blanks into tool types.
A good example is the process for snapping bladelets
on an anvil, known as the microburin technique,
practiced more often then by others before. Helwan
retouch is a bifacial shaping used for forming lunates,
some retouched bladelets, and sickle blades that were
inserted in wooden hafts.

In the core area of the Levant, several Epipalaeolithic

entities were the Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran
complexes. Their geographic distribution covers most
of the Levant. In the Negev, Sinai, and eastern and
southern Jordan, the typological variability seems to
have been larger. The names of industries such as
Nebekian, Nizzanan, Qalkhan, Hamran, etc., are
sometimes grouped under the general terms of complexes. The presence of numerous cultural entities
may indicate population growth on a regional scale
due to the expansion of foragers from the Mediterranean core area into the previously arid zone, as well as
migration into the region by foragers from Northeast
Africa. The enhanced occupation of the steppic zone
was encouraged by the climatic improvement that
ended around 13 000 years ago although it did not
eliminate human presence in the deserts that lasted
into the Holocene.
The early complex of the Epipalaeolithic period
(from the last milleniums of the LGM) is the Kebaran
which includes some local varieties (like the Nebekian) and is still in great need for many additional
radiocarbon dates. The most typical stone tools
were the backed and finely retouched bladelets. End
scrapers are common and so are the burins. Bone
and horn-core tools are rare. The ground stone tools
include mortars, pestles, and hand-stones that were
employed in food processing, and crashing ochre
for making colors. The bearers of these microlithic
industries inhabited the areas that continued to have
sufficient winter precipitation and within the Mediterranean woodland belt, especially during the LGM.
Other groups occupied several desertic oases (known
from Jordan and Syria). Lake Lisan, a large salty lake,
continued to cover most of the Jordan Valley from
todays Sea of Galilee to 30 km south of the Dead Sea.
It began shrinking around 15 000 years ago and had
its final drying stages during the Younger Dryas.
The makers of the Geometric Kebaran complex
expanded their territories into the desertic areas at
the time of the climatic amelioration. Hence we find
the sites located in southern Sinai and the el-Kowm
basin in the north. In Sinai and the Negev, the Early
Mushabian and later the Late Mushabian (also known
as Ramonian) possibly reflect expansion of Northeast
African forages into the Levant. In southern Jordan,
the Qalkhan and the Hamran are of the same time.
Remains of several entities were recognized in the
oasis of the Azraq Basin and its surroundings, and the
radiocarbon dates indicate that this increase in
human presence and lithic variability occurred from
15 500 through 13 500 cal year BP.
The Natufian culture emerged around 14 500 cal
BP following a short cold and dry spell. The conditions of the BollingAllerd in this region, with

874 ASIA, WEST/Palaeolithic Cultures

increased amounts of rain, facilitated this semisedentary hunter-gatherers culture to establish itself.
Several clustered pit houses formed hamlets, where
the Natufians also buried their dead, thus symbolically stating their ownership of the land. The Natufian
lithic industry contained not only a specific secondary
shaping technique, known as the Helwan retouch,
but had hafted blades that bear the luster caused by
harvesting cereals or cereals straw. Numerous mortars and pestles, some brought from distances of up to
100 km, were found in the base camps along with
large quantities of marine shells often retrieved
along the Mediterranean shores. A smaller amount
of shells were obtained through exchange from the
Red Sea and the Nile Valley, and a few obsidian pieces
from Anatolia were found in a Late Natufian occupation at Eynan (Mallaha). Natufian art objects are
of different types, many represent incised decorations
of bone tools, and others are small figurines, mostly of
animals and rarely of humans. Incised slabs are known
from most sites. In the Negev, ostrich eggshells were
employed for such decorative expressions.
The meaty diet of the Natufian groups is reflected in
the bone assemblages including many gazelles. Deer is
more prevalent in the forested or parkland areas,
where hunting and gathering hare, tortoise, and birds
reflect the depletion of the local environments.
During the Younger Dryas, Late Natufian groups
adapted to the new conditions. Some became mobile,
others more sedentary within the parkland areas. Annual partial mobility continued to be the rule. In the
Negev and northern Sinai, the Harifian culture represent an adaptation to worsening conditions through
seasonal movements across the land. Winters were
spent in the lowlands of the coastal plain including
northern Sinai, and summers in the highlands of the
Negev. However, at the onset of the Holocene climatic
conditions, the Harifian groups disappeared, possibly
by joining the newly established cultivating communities known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A.
The Epipalaeolithic sequence in other parts of
Western Asia is much less known than in the Levant.
In the TaurusZagros area, a few sites were excavated. This paucity is partly due to widely scattered
field research, high rate of alluviation in the valleys,
which caused the burial of many pre-Neolithic sites,
and geopolitical restrictions. The excavated caves
such as Okuzini (Turkey), Palegawra, Shanidar,
Zarzi (Iraq), and Gar-i-Khar (Iran) caves, as well as
open-air sites such as Hallan C
emi (Turkey), Zawi
Chemi Shanidar (Iraq), and Asiab (Iran) indicate
that between 13 000 and 11 500 cal year BP a shift
from mobile hunting and gathering to sedentary or
semi-sedentary communities took place in the eastern
Taurus and the northern Zagros foothills. In village

sites such as Hallan Cemi, rounded dwellings resemble

those of the Natufian, although mud was employed
more extensively as a building material. The lithic
assemblages are dominated by the production of microliths. High frequencies of triangles in Hallan C
emi
seem to indicate connections with the southern Caucasus region. The archaeological records of foragers
occupations in Okuzini Cave are demonstrated an
overall similarity with other backed bladelet industries
both in the Levant and in the Balkans. Lithic production reflects continuity from the Upper Palaeolithic
traditions. For example, in the case of the Zarzian, it
is the high frequency of microliths and the important
geometric component that connects it to other caves in
the Zagros. In addition, there is a definite increase in
the use of pounding stone tools such as mortars, bowls,
and cup-holes, and pestles, common food-processing
objects that employed by hunter-gatherers in this region. The shift in settlement pattern seems to have
happened slightly later in the southern Zagros, Khuzistan, and the western Taurus than it did in neighboring
areas. The faunal remains indicate the hunting of goat,
sheep, gazelle, red deer, cattle, boar, and a wide range of
other forms with the emphasis being different depending upon site location.
See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The
Levant; Mesolithic Cultures; Southern Levant, Bronze Age
Metal Production and Utilization; Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Lithics:
Analysis, Use Wear; Modern Humans, Emergence of.

Further Reading
Akazawa T, Aoki K, and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) (1998) Neandertals and
Modern Humans in Western Asia. New York: Plenum.
Bar-Oz G (2004) Epipaleolithic Subsistence Strategies in the
Levant: A Zooarchaeological Perspective. Boston: Brill Academic
Publishers.
Bar-Yosef O (2002) Natufian: A complex society of foragers. In:
Fitzhugh B and Habu J (eds.) Beyond Foraging and Collecting:
Evolutionary Change in Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems,
pp. 91149. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Bar-Yosef O and Pilbeam D (eds.) (2000) The Geography of
Neandertals and Modern Humans in Europe and the Greater
Mediterranean. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, Harvard
University Press.
Bar-Yosef O and Valla FR (eds.) (1991) International Monographs
in Prehistory: The Natufian Culture in the Levant, pp. 110.
Ann Arbor, MI: Oxbow Books.
Bergman CA (1987) BAR International Series 329: Ksar Akil,
Lebanon: A Technological and Typological Analysis of the
Later Palaeolithic Levels of Ksar Akil. Oxford: BAR.
Catto N (ed.) (2005) Quaternary of the Mediterranean Basin and
Western Asia: Marine and Terrestrial Processes and Palaeoenvironments. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Dibble H and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) (1995) The Definition and Interpretation of Levallois Technology. Madison: Prehistory Press.

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 875

Firouz E (2005) The Complete Fauna of Iran. London, New York:
IB Tauris.
Garrod DAE and Bate DM (1937) The Stone Age of Mount
Carmel. Oxford: Clarendon.
Goren-Inbar N (1990) Quneitra: A Mousterian Site on the Golan
Heights. Jerusalem: Hebrew University.
Goren-Inbar N, Sharon G, Melamed Y, and Kislev M (2002) Nuts,
nut cracking, and pitted stones at Gesher Benot Yaaqov, Israel.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
99(4): 24552460.
Goring-Morris AN (1987) BAR International Series 361: At the
Edge: Terminal Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherers in the Negev and
Sinai. Oxford: BAR.
Goring-Morris AN and Belfer-Cohen A (eds.) (2003) More than
Meets the Eye: Studies on Upper Palaeolithic Diversity in the
Near East. Oxford: Oxbow.
Harrison DL and Bates PJJ (1991) The Mammals of Arabia.
Sevenoaks: Harrison Zoological Museum.
Henry DO (1989) From Foraging to Agriculture: The Levant at the
End of the Ice Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Henry DO (ed.) (1995) Prehistoric Cultural Ecology and Evolution: Insights from Southern Jordan, pp. 4984. New York:
Plenum Press.
Henry DO (ed.) (1998) BAR S705: The Prehistoric Archaeology of
Jordan. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Hole F and Flannery K (1967) The prehistory of southwestern Iran:
A preliminary report. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 33:
151206.
Kuhn SL (2002) Paleolithic archeology in Turkey. Evolutionary
Anthropology 11: 198210.
Marks AE (ed.) (1983) The Avdat/Aqev Area (Part 3): Prehistory
and Paleoenvironments in the Central Negev, Israel. Dallas:
Southern Methodist University.
Medelssohn H and Yom-Tov Y (1999) Mammalia of Israel.
Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Olszewski DI and Dibble HL (eds.) (1993) The Paleolithic Prehistory of the Zagros-Taurus. Philadelphia: The University
Museum, University of Pennsylvania.
Ohnuma K (1988) BAR International Series 426: Ksar Akil, Lebanon: A Technological Study of the Earlier Upper Palaeolithic
Levels at Ksar Akil: Vol. III: Levels XXVXIV. Oxford: British
Archaeological Reports.
Shea JJ (1998) Neandertal and early modern human behavioral
variability: A regional-scale approach to lithic evidence for hunting in the Levantine Mousterian. Current Anthropology 39(supplement, Jun. 1998): S45S78.
Smith PEL (1988) Palaeolithic Archaeology in Iran. Philadelphia:
The American Institute of Iranian Studies, The University
Museum, University of Pennsylvania.
Stiner MC (2005) The Faunas of Hayonim Cave, Israel: A 200 000
Year Record of Paleolithic Diet, Demography and Society,
pp. 3958. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology
and Ethnology, Harvard University.
Tchernov E (1986) Les Mammife`res du Pleistocene Inferieur de la
Vallee du Jordain a Oubeidiyeh. Paris: Association Paleorient.
Tchernov E (1992) EurasianAfrican biotic exchanges through the
Levantine corridor during the Neogene and Quaternary. In: von
Koenigswald W and Werdelin L (eds.) Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg 153: Mammalian Migration and Dispersal
Events in the European Quaternary, pp. 103125. Frankfurt:
Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg.
Tchernov E (1998) The faunal sequences of the Southwest
Asian Middle Paleolithic in relation to hominid dispersal events.
In: Akazawa T, Aoki T, and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) Neandertals and
Modern Humans in Western Asia, pp. 7790. New York: Plenum.

Yacinkaya I, Otte M, Kozlowski J, and Bar-Yosef O (eds.) (2002)

ERAUL: La Grotte dokuzini : Evolution du Paleolithique finale
du Sud-Oust de lAnatolie. Lie`ge: Universite de Lie`ge.
Zohary M (1973) Geobotanical Foundations of the Middle East.
Stuttgart: Springer Verlag.

Phoenicia
Glenn Markoe, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati,
OH, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
acropolis Upper fortified part of an ancient city.
amphora Large earthenware vessel with a narrow cylindrical
neck and tapering bottom used for storing wine, oil, or grain.
ashlar Hewn or squared stone used in wall construction.
cremation Burial process of incineration for a corpse.
emporion Important trade center or marketplace.
faience Glazed composition consisting of a sand quartz core
with a glassy surface glaze.
kothon Artificially constructed dry dock used for the building
or repairing of ships.
mole Artificial causeway built of earth and stone rubble.
murex shell Marine gastropod of the genus Murex; one species,
Murex trunculus, was the source of the Phoenician purple dye.
necropolis Cemetery of an ancient city.
nuraghic Prehistoric civilization of Sardinia that flourished in
the second millennium BC and was distinguished by the use of
bronze metallurgy and the construction of large stone structures
(called nuraghe) in the shape of truncated cone towers.
orientalizing Native artistic design or motif that imitates or is
influenced by Near Eastern pictorial models.
pier-and-rubble construction Technique of Phoenician wall
construction employing upright ashlar piers in alternation with
zones of fieldstone rubble infill.
pithos Large earthenware storage jar with a wide, round mouth.
repousse Technique of hammering a relief design up from the
back of a piece of sheet metal.
stele Freestanding upright stone slab used as a votive dedication
or a gravestone.
tophet Precinct of Punic ritual child sacrifice involving the
cremation and subsequent offering of the victims charred
remains in terracotta urns deposited in the ground; the term
derives from a reference in the Hebrew Bible to a roasting area in
the Valley of Ben-Hinnom where Israelite children were
sacrificed by fire.

Introduction
Geographically, the Phoenicians present a challenge
to define. According to the ancient classical authors,
they occupied the entire Levantine coast between the
Suez and the Gulf of Alexandretta. In actuality, however, their heartland was considerably smaller, consisting of a narrow coastal strip between the Lebanon

876 ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia

mountains and the Mediterranean sea stretching from

northern Palestine to southern Syria a slightly extended version of modern-day Lebanon. This dichotomy suggests that the term Phoenician in antiquity
was broadly applied to any Semitic sea trader, regardless of origins. Such ambiguity may indeed reflect
historical reality. Unlike their Syrian, Palestinian, or
Mesopotamian neighbors, the Phoenicians were a
confederation of traders rather than a country defined
by territorial boundaries. Their empire was less a
stretch of land than a patchwork of widely scattered
merchant communities. Maritime trade, not territory,
defined their sphere.
Indisputably, Phoenician maritime commerce was
driven by the pursuit of a single category of natural
resource raw metals (gold, silver, tin, copper, iron,
and lead). In such trade, the entrepreneurial Phoenicians skillfully positioned themselves as middlemen,
procuring and conveying metals in ingot form; as
importantly, they transformed them into exquisitely
wrought, finished goods of bronze, iron, silver, and
gold. The Phoenicians search for precious metals was
nothing new. As archaeological research has shown,
many of their trade routes had already been established by their Mycenaean and Cypriot forebears.
The Phoenician contribution lay in expanding the
scale and geographic scope of such exploitation,
which took them not only throughout the Mediterranean, but beyond, past the Strait of Gibraltar into the
coastal Atlantic regions of Europe and West Africa.
It is this expansive Phoenician commercial empire
that serves as the focus of this survey article.

Geographic Survey
Phoenician Homeland

The following is a summary of the major Phoenician

coastal ports (see Figure 1).
Tyre The peninsular setting of modern Tyre (Pun. Sor
(rock)) today differs greatly from that of the ancient
city. The headland upon which it stands is the result
of successive sediments deposited on a mole built in
332 BC by Alexander the Great. In antiquity, Tyre was
an island emporion, situated originally on two adjacent
offshore reefs. Traces of bedrock on Tyres western edge
and in the adjacent sea bed reveal that the principal
island upon which Tyre was founded was a long narrow
reef some 500 m in extent.
Owing to the dense overlay of later construction, excavations in the heart of Tyre have not been
possible. Stratigraphic information to date has been

ascertained only by a deep sounding undertaken

in 1974, which revealed that Tyre was originally
occupied in the Early Bronze Age, corroborating an
ancient Tyrian tradition, reported by the Greek historian Herodotus, that the city was founded 2300 years
before his day (around 2750 BC: Hdt. 2.44). Following a long hiatus in occupation encompassing the
Middle Bronze Age, the city was resettled at the
start of the Late Bronze Age. Judging from the archaeological record, permanent habitation on the island
does not seem to have taken root until the late
fifteenth century BC, with comprehensive urban development following in the mid-fourteenth century.
The archaeological and written record are in unanimity about the urban character of Iron Age Tyre: the
city was densely populated, perhaps far more so than
any of its Phoenician mainland counterparts with the
possible exception of Arwad. The 1974 sounding, in
fact, yielded nine distinct Iron Age building levels that
bear witness to continuous efforts at remodeling and
terracing. From this time forward, the pier-and-rubble
technique, a Phoenician trademark, was widely utilized; large-scale buildings were marked by handsomely dressed walls of marginally drafted ashlar
masonry (see Table 1 for the definitions of time phases
referred to in this article).
Tyres two harbors, situated to the north and south
of the emporion, were noted by a variety of classical
authors, including Pliny (N.H. 5.76), who observes
that they were connected by a canal which traversed
the city. Its northern port (known in antiquity as the
Sidonian) was a natural bay, sheltered from prevailing winds by the island itself and by a strip of offshore
reefs that protected its entrance; it functioned as a
closed harbor situated within the city walls. Tyres
southern port, the Egyptian, was a built harbor
protected by two great offshore breakwaters.
Excavations undertaken at Tyre from 1997 to 1999
have uncovered a small portion of the citys main
adult cemetery, a cremation necropolis at Al-Bass on
the opposing mainland. Consisting of burials in urns
set within shallow, excavated pit graves along a sandy
shoreline, the cemeterys vast extent (estimated at
40 000 m2) and its prolonged use (spanning some
400 years, from c. 1000 to 600 BC) underscore the
spread and longevity of the cremation practice within
the funerary life of the city.
Sarepta The coastal town of ancient Sarepta (modern
Sarafand) occupies a low mound situated on the
promontory of Ras el-Qantara, overlooking a broad
bay with sheltered anchorage. Explored by the University of Pennsylvania from 1969 to 1974, Sarepta
represents the first in-depth excavation of an Iron Age

Massalia

Emporion

Elba

CORSICA

D
Iberian Peninsula

BALEARIC

Tharros

ISLANDS

Adriatic Sea
Pyrgi/Caere
Rome
CAMPANIA
Cumae
Pithekoussai
Tarentum
SARDINIA
Tyrrhenian Sea

Adalusian
Coast

Tipasa
Gunugu

Nora
Ibiza
Hippo Acra (Bizerte)
(Algiers)
Hippo Regius
Icosium
Chullu
R.
da
lgilgili Medje
lol
Carthage

Gadir (Cadiz)
Pillars of
Tingis (Tangiers)
Herakles
Oran
Les Andalouses
(Strait of
Lixus
Gibraltar)
Rachgoun
Rusaddir
Sala
A

Strymon R.

Alalia

Sulcis

Alcacer
do Sol

Black Sea

ETRURIA
Populonia
Vetulonia

Hadrumetum
Achotla

Utica
Cape Bon

Euboea

Kythera

Ionian Sea

MALTA

Cape Gelidonya

Mediterranean Sea

Ugarit

Ulu Burun
Rhodes

Knossos
Kommos

Gabes

Sardis
Sarnos
Miletus

Paros

Leptis Magna
Sabratha
Oea
TRIPOLITANIA
Mogador

CYCLADES

Syracuse

Pantelleria
Gozzo
Kerkouane

Daskyleion
Lemnos
LYDIA

Athens

Corinth

SICILY

Thapsos

Aegean Sea

Croton Greater
Syrtis

Lipari
Morya Panormus

Pangaeum
Samothrace

Thasos

Amathus

Kition
CYPRUS

Arwad

Byblos
Sidon
Tyre

Cyrene
Greater Syrtis

CYRENAICA
Memphis
LIBYA

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 877

Figure 1 Map of Mediterranean with Phoenician sites. Based on Markoe G (2002) Peoples of the Past. Phoenicians. London: British Museum Press.

878 ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia

Table 1 Chronological chart
Chalcolithic 4500(?)3100 BC
Early Bronze Age 31002000 BC
Middle Bronze Age 20001550 BC
Late Bronze Age I 15501400 BC
Late Bronze Age II 14001200/1150 BC
Iron Age I 1200/11501000 BC
Iron Age II 1000586 BC
Iron Age III (Neo-Babylonian) 586538 BC
Persian period 538332 BC
Hellenistic period 33264/63 BC

mainland Phoenician settlement. Soundings made in

two areas on the tell (X and Y) have revealed a
continuous sequence of habitation extending from
the beginning of the Late Bronze Age the date of
the citys foundation through the Hellenistic period.
Sounding Y, made on the highest part of the mound,
yielded an uninterrupted sequence of 11 occupation
strata marked by complexes of courtyard houses
equipped with potters kilns and bread ovens. Sounding X revealed an extensive industrial quarter located
near the harbor at the northern periphery of the
settlement. Much of this district was devoted to
pottery production; findings included the remains of
22 stone-built firing kilns in addition to slip basins
and tanks for washing and storing clay. This sounding
also produced an eighth century stone ashlar shrine to
the goddess Tanit-Ashtarte equipped with benches,
an offering table, and a central cultic pillar.
The ancient settlement was flanked to the north
and south by two small harbors; excavation of the
southwestern port at Ras esh-Shiq uncovered a stonebuilt quay erected in the first century AD. No evidence has yet been found for the usage of either
harbor facility prior to the Roman period.
Sidon The port city of Sidon (Pun. Sdn) is situated
on a rocky promontory bordered by a line of coastal
reefs. The settlement, marked by an oval mound of
roughly 145 ac, lies adjacent to two natural harbors:
a southern circular cove and an enclosed northern
port. As at Tyre, the density of modern settlement
at Sidon has inhibited archaeological exploration.
Concerted excavations, however, have been undertaken in recent years by the British Museum under the
auspices of the Lebanese Department of Antiquities.
Centered in the area immediately north and east of
the medieval St. Louis Castle, this work, begun in
1998, has succeeded in documenting a continuous
stratigraphic sequence extending from the beginning
of the Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age.
To the south of the city acropolis, along the shore
of the southern circular cove, stands a 40-m-high

accumulation of discarded murex shells marking the

ancient emplacement of a large purple dye installation. As Poidebards early investigations have shown,
Sidons chief port facility was situated immediately
north of the city. This natural harbor, which was
sheltered from the prevailing winds by a rocky offshore island and a northeasterly chain of reefs, constituted the citys closed port first mentioned by
Pseudo-Skylax in the mid-fourth century BC.
Archaeological research over the last century has
provided substantial data on the distribution of Sidons
suburban cemeteries. Special attention may be drawn
to the necropolis of Dakerman, a vast coastal cemetery
located immediately south of the city. Excavations
undertaken there by the Lebanese Department of Antiquities have yielded several hundred tombs of various
types ranging from the fourteenth century BC through
the early Roman period. Sidons royal necropolises of
the Persian and Hellenistic periods (Mogheret Ablun
and Aya) have been located along a line of hills
extending east and southeast of the city.
The most important of Sidons suburban sanctuaries
was the precinct of Eshmun, located to the north of the
city on the southern slopes of the Nahr el-Awali valley.
Erected over a series of split-level terraces, this temple
complex, founded in the sixth century BC, was the
focus of excavations undertaken by the French from
1963 to 1978.
Beirut The ancient port of Beirut (Pun. Brt) is
situated on a rocky promontory with a sheltered harbor. Known previously from scattered textual references, the ancient city has now been revealed, thanks
to archaeological research undertaken in connection
with the redevelopment of war-devastated downtown
Beirut. Such excavations, begun in 1993 under the
auspices of the Lebanese Department of Antiquities,
have unearthed numerous sectors of the pre-Roman
city, including Beiruts settlement mound and an adjacent residential precinct dating to the Persian period.
The original settlement occupied an elliptical tell,
situated on a small limestone-eroded outcrop, roughly
5 ac in extent. Its core, site of the ancient acropolis,
was completely demolished during construction of the
medieval Crusader castle, whose foundations reached
bedrock. Recent excavations around the Crusader
structure have uncovered evidence for an occupational sequence dating back beyond the Middle Bronze
Age, when the site was first fortified and equipped
with a monumental gate. The mound itself underwent
six defensive phases lasting until the Persian period,
when settlement spread well beyond the confines of
the tell. To the west, in the area of the modern souk, or
market place, excavations have uncovered the remains
of a residential district with well-preserved dwellings

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 879

of pier-and-rubble construction laid out in an orthogonal plan. In the area immediately adjacent to the
northwest, a large quantity of murex shells and a
basin complex were uncovered, attesting to local purple dye production. As excavations have revealed,
Beirut underwent extensive urban development beginning in the Hellenistic period, when the ancient city
achieved its historic form.
Byblos The seaport of Byblos (Pun. Gbl) is situated
on a promontory with two small adjacent harbors, its
principal settlement situated on an elevated, circular
tract of land approximately 7 ac in size. A planned city
with a massive stone rampart and two gates, the Early
Bronze Age city was an important coastal emporion.
As recent studies have shown, its urban development
was centered on a rock-cut well or spring situated in a
central depression on the promontory. Beginning in
the third millennium BC, the northern sector of the
mound was converted into a sacred precinct by the
erection of two monumental sanctuaries: a temple
to Baalat Gubal (Lady of Byblos) and an L-shaped
temple dedicated to an unidentified male deity. The
latter structure was subsequently dismantled and its
foundations re-employed in the construction of a
sanctuary (known as the Obelisk Temple) dedicated
to the god Reseph. The Baalat Gubal and Obelisk
sanctuaries were maintained with modifications
down through the Hellenistic period. Earlier excavations undertaken by the French in the southern sector
of the promontory have uncovered the remains of a
residential district dating to the Middle Bronze Age.
Composed of roughly 100 two- to four-room house
units densely arranged in four blocks, this area may
have housed personnel attached to the sanctuary.
The urban extent of Iron Age Byblos remains a
complete unknown, although scattered clues point
to the citys development in the plains east of the
acropolis. Building activity probably reached a peak
in the Persian period, when the city prospered economically as a regional administrative and defensive
center under the Achaemenids. It was at this time that
a monumental platform and stone-pillared building
(marking a Persian governors reception hall) was
erected in the northeast sector of the city walls.
As for the citys harbor facilities, the twin bays
located north of the acropolis are both extremely
small and thus unsuitable for large ships. As has
been recently proposed, the citys primary needs
may have been served by the larger bay and riverine
estuary that stood south of the acropolis. If this reconstruction is correct, Byblos topography would
conform with that of a typical Phoenician port,
situated on a headland flanked to the north and
south by separate harbors.

Arwad Ancient Arwad (Pun. rwd (refuge)) occupies a roughly oval-shaped island of approximately
100 ac situated roughly 2.5 km off the Syrian coast
opposite mainland Antaradus (modern Tortose). The
urban history of this Phoenician island emporion,
which remains completely unexcavated, is virtually
unknown. Although Arwad was occupied continuously from at least the third millennium BC, its earliest
surviving architectural vestiges (i.e., the monumental
city ramparts) date only from the Roman period. Ideally situated for trade, Arwad possessed a twin harbor
facing east toward the mainland; its northern and
southern bays were separated by a natural jetty some
60 m in length, which was augmented in antiquity by
ashlar stone construction. As its massive Roman fortifications suggest, the Phoenician Iron Age city must
have been protected by a fortified defensive wall that
ringed the island. As the classical sources reveal,
Arwad was densely populated; its city center, like
that of Tyre, marked by multistoried houses (Strabo
XVI.2.13). The high ground presently occupied by
the medieval fortifications undoubtedly marks the
ancient citys acropolis and the site of its main sanctuaries. As at Tyre, the citys main necropolises were
probably located on the mainland opposite in the
region of Tortose, in whose vicinity a Persian-period
cemetery of royal character has recently been discovered. As chance finds from the modern city suggest, a
small cremation cemetery may also have been located in
the islands southern periphery. Like Tyre, Arwad was
heavily dependent upon the mainland for its raw materials and agricultural staples. In addition to Tortose,
Arwads mainland dependencies included coastal
Marathus (Amrit), Arwads chief continental port.

Phoenician Commercial Expansion

Abroad
Egypt

As the textual and archaeological record affirms,

Egypts longstanding commercial relationship with
Phoenicia was motivated by one dominant factor:
the desire for Levantine timber. As history records,
one of her primary targets was the forest reserves
located behind Byblos in the valley of the Nahr Ibrahim
and the adjacent slopes of Mount Lebanon. Extensive
tracts of cedar, fir, pine, oak, and juniper were, in
fact, broadly available along the entire length of the
Lebanon range from Sidon north to Tripoli and,
beyond, along the slopes of the Jebel Ansariye. Of
the various Lebanese hardwoods harvested in antiquity, cedar was the most highly sought after for its
girth, durability, and fragrance. Financial gain for the
Phoenicians lay not only in the marketing of the wood

880 ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia

itself but in the varied employment it provided

Phoenician artisans, traders, and seamen.
Tyrian commercial activity in the Nile delta is well
attested, historically. As the southernmost of mainland Phoenician ports, Tyre enjoyed a close commercial and political relationship with Egypt, beginning
in the Late Bronze Age, as the Amarna Egyptian royal
correspondence with the Phoenician city-states
reveals. Such commercial orientation is further evidenced by the citys construction of a southern, artificial harbor, entitled the Egyptian, in the ninth century
BC. Phoenician commercial presence in Egypt is later
attested, in the period of the Achaemenid dynasty
(538332 BC), by the presence of a Tyrian commercial establishment, known as the Camp of the Tyrians
[Hdt 2.112], at the Egyptian capital Memphis.
Cyprus

As discoveries of Phoenician pottery along the islands

southern and western coasts clearly reveal, from the
eleventh century onward Cyprus served a strategic role
as an entrepot for Phoenician westward trade within
the Mediterranean. The archaeological and epigraphical record from Kition confirms a date around the midninth century BC for the earliest Phoenician settlement
on the island. Evidence so far produced for earlier Iron
Age occupation remains inconclusive.
As the historical record confirms, Kition (Pun.
Kt(y)) formed the urban nucleus and epicenter for
Phoenician settlement on Cyprus, which was confined elsewhere to small commercial communities or
trading posts within existing towns. A Tyrian foundation, Kition ultimately became a self-governing entity,
perhaps as early as the late eighth century BC. The
citys early coinage bears witness to the existence of
an independent Phoenician city dynastic line by the
early fifth century BC.
An important Cypriot settlement in the Late Bronze
Age, Kition (situated at present-day Larnaka) was
occupied by the Phoenicians (after a period of abandonment lasting some 150 years) in the ninth century.
The ancient Phoenician walled city remains largely
unexcavated, with the exception of the Kathari sanctuary complex situated in its northern periphery;
the latter was erected upon an earlier, Late Bronze
Age temenos precinct. Recent excavations on the
Bamboula hill, Kitions southerly harbor district,
have yielded remains of the citys port facilities built
during the classical period.
One of the largest and most active of Phoenician
communities on Cyprus outside of Kition was situated
at the southerly coastal port of Amathus, a native
Cypriot foundation. Phoenician commercial presence
there is evident from the quantity of early imported

Phoenician ware found in the citys numerous chamber tombs. The recent discovery of what appears to be
a local Phoenician cremation cemetery along the citys
southern shore reveals that a substantial and prosperous resident community of Phoenician traders was
established there by the sixth and fifth centuries BC.
The growing number of Phoenician inscriptions
found throughout Cyprus affords an accurate indication of the extent of Phoenician settlement on the
island, much of it tied directly to transit trade
(Amathus, Paphos, Lapithos) and the copper industry. Phoenician involvement in the copper trade is
affirmed by the number of Phoenician-influenced
sites (Tamassos, Golgoi, Idalion, Meniko, Alassa) located inland on the spurs of the copper-rich Troodos
range. As the archaeological evidence suggests, the
Phoenicians at Kition were involved in their own
commercial initiatives, particularly in the Tyrrhenian
basin (Sardinia, Etruria), where Cyprus had traded
earlier in the Late Bronze Age.
Rhodes

Like Cyprus, Rhodes strategic position along the

coasting route from the Levant to the Aegean rendered
it an ideal transit station and secondary point of departure for Phoenician commerce. Finds of Phoenician luxury items (ivories, Tridacna shells, gold and
silver jewelry) dating to the late eighth and seventh
centuries attest to such trade. Besides its role as a
transit station, Rhodes apparently served as a regional
production center for Phoenician goods, among them
trinkets and luxury items in faience (including scarabs, incised vessels with low-relief decoration, and
anthropomorphic unguent vases). Beginning in the
late eighth century BC, Rhodian Phoenician factories
also exported ceramic unguent flasks in a local fabric
imitating Cypriot and mainland pottery types.
Material evidence for Phoenician settlement on the
island prior to the Hellenistic period remains ephemeral. The presence of infant burials in amphorai at the
archaic necropolises of Kameiros and Ialysos points
to the existence of resident Phoenician communities
in these localities.
Crete

Phoenician presence on Crete was first intimated by the

discovery, in 1884, of a cache of Orientalizing bronzes
in the Zeus Cave on Mt. Ida. Subsequent finds have
corroborated this fact. The discovery of a Phoenician
inscribed bronze bowl at Teke near Knossos, datable
on archaeological grounds to c. 900 BC, provides
the earliest and most dramatic evidence thus far.
Recent excavations at Eleutherna and in the region
of Knossos have yielded luxury goods of Oriental and

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 881

Orientalizing workmanship equal in quality to the

Idaean finds.
Phoenician presence along Cretes southern coast
has been documented by recent excavations at
Kommos, which have uncovered a Phoenician-style
three-pillared shrine as well as quantities of imported
Phoenician pottery. Such evidence underscores the
primacy of Crete as a transit point for Phoenician
maritime trade. Metal prospecting served as a catalyst
for Phoenician involvement on Crete. The island is
rich in phosphorous-bearing iron ore, deposits of
which were undoubtedly worked in antiquity; recent
excavations at Kommos have revealed the presence of
one such iron-working center.
As the literary and archaeological record reveals,
the island of Crete stood on a southern Aegean
Phoenician commercial route (skirting the Greek
mainland) that was aimed at the central and western
Mediterranean. Focal to such transit trade was
Phalasarna, Cretes westernmost harbor, the direct
departure point for ships traveling north to the island
of Kythera and the southeastern Peloponessus. Recent
excavations have shown that the Cretan port facility
contained a rock-cut holding basin, or kothon, of
Phoenician variety. Kythera itself was associated
in antiquity with the Phoenicians; according to
Herodotus (1.105), the islands chief sanctuary of
Aphrodite Ourania was founded by them.
The Aegean

As on Cyprus and Crete, Phoenician trade with the

northern Aegean was propelled largely by mining
interests and the metals trade. Herodotus (6.47)
informs us that the Phoenicians had settled on the
island of Thasos with this objective; the Greek historian claims to have seen their extensive mining operations along the southeastern side of the island, the site
of a Phoenician temple to Herakles; excavations conducted by the French have exposed the location of
these mines. From Thasos, the Phoenicians, in all
likelihood, prospected on the opposing Thracian
mainland, in the area of Mount Pangaeum and the
Strymon River, where rich gold and silver deposits
were later tapped by the Thasians themselves and by
foreign Greek entrepeneurs. Judging from ancient
classical sources, the Phoenicians enjoyed commercial
relations with the neighboring north Aegean islands
of Samothrace and Lemnos; according to Homer, the
latter received the gift of a decorated Sidonian silver
krater (Il. 23.74145).
The distribution of various ceramic, stone, and
faience imports from the eastern Mediterranean
(Rhodes, Cyprus, and the Syro-Phoenician mainland) allows us to trace the existence of a Phoenician

commercial channel to the Greek mainland through the

central Aegean. As the archaeological evidence reveals,
this route passed in a northwesterly trajectory from
Rhodes via Kos and the central Cyclades (Naxos,
Delos, Syros) to the island of Aegina in the Saronic
Gulf. Delos centrality to such trade is evident not
only from the quantity of its early Oriental imports,
but also from the islands later commercial importance
to the Phoenicians in the Hellenistic period. Aeginas
role as an entrepot for eastern trade should come as
no surprise. Its central location in the Saronic Gulf,
with direct access to both Attica and the northeastern
Peloponnesus, rendered it an ideal depot for Oriental
goods entering Greece. As imported finds indicate,
Greek coastal centers such as Corinth, Eleusis, and
Argos formed major recipients of such Aegean trade
in the late eighth and seventh centuries, either directly
or through the intermediary of an island center such as
Aegina. Another, more northerly, terminus for Oriental trade was the island of Euboea off the central
Greek mainland, as recent excavations have shown.
Sicily

As for early Phoenician contact with Sicily, Thucydides

(6.2.6) provides a brief but informative account: in
his words, the Phoenicians had originally established
themselves all around the island on promontories
and offshore islets, which were used as posts for
trade with the native Sicels. With the arrival of
Greek colonists, the Phoenicians abandoned most of
these settlements, focusing their attentions on Motya,
Solunto, and Panormus in the northwest. The historical veracity of Thucydides account has been confirmed by excavations at Motya, which have
revealed early evidence of Phoenician occupation
around 720 BC, shortly after the foundation of the
earliest Greek colonies of Naxos (734 BC) and Syracuse (733 BC). As Thucydides implies, the Phoenician
withdrawal to the northwestern corner of Sicily was a
calculated move, aimed at consolidating control of its
most strategic commercial interests on the island; the
region was the closest access point to Carthage and the
North African mainland. Northwestern Sicily also
represented the closest point of departure for mineral-rich, southern Sardinia and for trade north with
Campania and Etruria, offering an alternative to passage through the Greek-controlled Straits of Messana.
The archaeological remains at Motya afford a
unique opportunity to trace the urban evolution of a
Phoenician city from its beginnings as an early,
unwalled settlement to its commercial height in the
fifth century. Excavations by the Italian authorities
have targeted specific areas of the island settlement,
including portions of its harbor and commercial and

882 ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia

residential quarters. Material evidence for Phoenician

colonial presence in Sicily outside of Motya remains
scant. Unfortunately, little is known archaeologically of the Phoenicians main settlement at Palermo
(Grk. Panormos), a fair-weather harbor situated
alongside a natural inlet within a large bay (known
today as the Conca dOro). The ancient walled city,
which now lies buried beneath Palermos historic
inner district, stood on a small hill (Paleapoli) originally flanked by two small waterways: the Kemonia
and Papireto. Its western portion was marked by
an acropolis (now occupied by the Palace of the
Normans), beyond which stood an extensive extramural cemetery in use from the late seventh through
the third centuries BC.
Sardinia

Owing to its mineral wealth (in copper, iron, and silverbearing lead ores), Sardinia served early on as a magnet
for Levantine trade. The early appearance of iron technology suggests that the exploitation of this metal may
have served as a catalyst (along with copper) for early
Phoenician contact, leading to close interaction with the
native nuraghic population, whose active cast bronze
industry and emergent urban character may be tied to
Oriental presence on the island.
The earliest direct archaeological evidence for
Phoenician colonization of Sardinia is furnished by a
monumental inscribed stele from the southern coastal
site of Nora, dated epigraphically to the end of the
ninth or early eighth century BC. The steles discovery
at Nora is not fortuitous; the sites peninsular location
along the western shore of the Bay of Cagliari rendered it both an ideal landing stage for Phoenician
trade and a convenient coastal access point to the
neighboring Iglesiente plateau with its abundant
deposits of iron and silver-bearing ores. Phoenician
commercial activity within the Gulf of Cagliari appears
to have been well established by the seventh century
BC. Focal to control of the region was the port of
Cagliari (Pun. Krly) on the Tuvixeddu promontory.
The Phoenician establishment of Cuccureddus near
Cape Carbonara at the gulfs eastern extremity may
have played a similar role as a regional trade center.
As archaeology has revealed, by the seventh century
BC, the entire southwestern coast of Sardinia (from the
Bay of Cagliari west to the Gulf of Oristano) was
literally dotted with Phoenician emporiums, largely
founded on abandoned early nuraghic settlements.
Aside from Nora, the earliest traces of Phoenician
occupation, dating back to the mid-eighth century,
may be found at modern-day Sulcis (Pun. Slky) on the
islet of SantAntioco in the Gulf of Palmas, which

served as the primary loading port for the mineral

wealth of the Iglesiente region. Connected to the mainland by a partially man-made isthmus (attributable
to Phoenician engineering), Sulcis early commercial
growth is attested by the eighth century date of its
tophet precinct and by the recent discovery of an early
Phoenician necropolis in the region of Portoscuso on
the adjacent mainland.
Another early major Phoenician coastal foundation
was the port of Tharros on the isthmus of Cape San
Marco in the Gulf of Oristano. Situated, like Nora,
on a narrow promontory with multiple harbors, the
city controlled access, through the Campidano plain
and Tirso river valley, to an agriculturally rich hinterland. As archaeology has revealed, the city functioned
not only as an international port, but as a regional
distribution center for a variety of products, including
stone funerary sculpture, terracottas, and metal and
faience jewelry.
The seventh and succeeding sixth centuries marked
a period of territorial consolidation within Phoenician Sardinia, as existing settlements developed and
new foundations were established at river arteries on
the coast (Bithya, Bosa, Villaputzu) as well as inland
(Othoca, Pani Loriga, Monte Sirai) for defensive and
commercial purposes. Of the strategic defensive centers, archaeology has fully exposed the site of Monte
Sirai, a fortified hilltop settlement established by
Sulcis to control and monitor access to the Iglesiente
region and Campidano plain.
Central Italy

Like Sardinia, Phoenician interest in central Italy was

motivated primarily by the metals trade; the wealth of
the Etruscan cities also rendered them profitable commercial markets for Phoenician goods. The earliest
and clearest evidence of Phoenician presence in Italy
may be found on the island of Pithekoussai (modern
Ischia) off the coast of southern Campania. An early
Euboean foundation, the island housed an active
community of Phoenician traders by the late eighth
century BC, as finds of Phoenician pottery (some with
graffiti) attest. In all likelihood, the islet, situated
strategically en route to coastal Etruria, served as a
free port at which native Greeks and Near Easterners
mingled freely.
The primary objective of Phoenician trade in Italy
was, however, the northern Etrurian heartland with
its ore-rich deposits of copper, lead, iron, and silver.
Geological surveys have, in fact, shown that the present-day region of northwestern Tuscany, comprising the island of Elba and the opposing mainland
between the Ombrone and Cecina Rivers, was extremely rich in silver-bearing ores. From an early date,

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 883

this mountainous district, the Colline Metallifere,

attracted Phoenician prospectors, commerciants, and
artisans, who left in their wake a variety of luxury
goods, including ornate vessels in repousse silver,
produced locally by resident Phoenician craftsmen.
Imported pottery finds suggest that the flourishing
northern Etruscan coastal cities of Populonia and
Vetulonia may have formed primary bases of operation
for the Phoenicians, whose knowledge of Etrurias
mineral resources may have been gained from earlier
Cypriot entrepreneurs.
Malta

In contrast to Sicily and Sardinia, the Maltese archipelago, consisting of the principal islands of Malta
(Pun. nn) and Gozo (Pun. Gwl), occupied a very
different functional niche for the Phoenicians. Unlike
its larger neighbors to the north, Malta possessed little
in the way of natural resources. Agricultural potential,
confined to two small alluvial plains in the north and
south, was extremely limited, while mineral wealth was
lacking. Maltas attraction for the Phoenicians lay in its
geographic situation midway between two primary
Phoenician commercial routes to the north, along
the southern coast of Sicily, and to the south, along the
North African littoral; from an early date, the island
probably served as a refueling point and servicing station for Phoenician merchant ships sailing west through
the Mediterranean.
As burial finds and inscriptions have documented,
Phoenician presence on the Maltese archipelago was
fairly widespread by the late eighth century BC. While
Phoenician necropolises have been found throughout
both of the main islands, modern construction has
severely limited archaeological exploration of habitation levels. As in Gozo, with its interior highland
settlement (at Victoria) and southern coastal port
(in the bay of Mgarr), Phoenician occupation on the
main island of Malta was centered in two zones to
the north, on a central highland plateau, and in the
southeast, around the large bay of Marsaxlokk and its
neighboring inlets. From the size and extent of its
surrounding necropolises, the northern hill town located inland at Rabat-Mdina apparently formed the
main urban nucleus. With its natural harbors, the
region around Marsaxlokk functioned as the center
of commercial trade, a fact evident both from the
density of surrounding indigenous settlements and
from the presence of two major Phoenician sanctuaries to Melqart and Astarte. The latter temple,
implanted on the site of an earlier Chalcolithic complex at Tas Silg, has yielded a wealth of evidence for
Phoenician cult, including several hundred ceramic
plates bearing dedications to Tanit and Astarte.

North Africa

The story of the Phoenicians in North Africa, or ancient

Libya, is clearly centered on the northern Tunisian
headland around the Bay of Tunis and its environs.
It is here, at the southern apex of the Tyrrhenian
triangle, that the two earliest and most important
Phoenician cities, Carthage and Utica, were founded
along a temperate and protected coastal stretch of
North Africa, situated on the transit route to the central Mediterranean and the far west. According to
ancient historical accounts, Utica, located at the
mouth of the fertile Bagradas (Medjerdeh) river valley,
was founded first some 287 years before Carthage.
The classical sources are in agreement about the citys
early foundation, which followed shortly after the
establishment of Cadiz in 1104/3 BC, a date assigned
to a period 80 years after the Trojan War (Velleius
Paterculus, Hist. Rom. 1:2, 1-3). Skepticism, however,
has persisted over the validity of such an early date for
Phoenician presence in North Africa, which is yet to
be substantiated by the archaeological record. At
Utica itself, no trace of the Phoenician settlement has
yet been found, while the city necropolis has yielded
tombs datable no earlier than the seventh century BC.
Modern topographical analysis has, in fact, revealed
that the city, today located some 12 km inland, was
originally situated on a coastal promontory with an
adjoining islet.
By contrast, ongoing archaeological research conducted over the past half decade has yielded much
new information about Carthage (Pun. Qarthadasht,
new city) and its urban, industrial, and defensive
character. In fact, recent excavations carried out
on the Byrsa, the city acropolis, have yielded architectural vestiges dating back to the mid-eighth century
slightly more than 50 years shy of the citys
traditional foundation date (813 BC). Based upon the
results of stratigraphic soundings within Carthages
settlement area and the topographical evidence of
its surrounding extramural burials, an accurate sense
of the physical extent of the city and its environs
can now be had, revealing an occupied settlement of
more than 24 ha (60 ac).
As for Phoenician commercial presence further east
along the North African coast, the archaeological record is scant. Practical navigational considerations may
have figured largely into the equation. The strong
westeast current that runs along the North African
littoral from the Strait of Gibraltar to Port Said made
a westerly coastal advance toward Carthage from
Egypt extremely problematic. So, too, did the buffeting
winds, hazardous shoals, and poor visibility encountered along the barren 300 mi coastal stretch of central

884 ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia

Libya known as the Syrtis. In the face of such difficulties, Phoenician sailors from the eastern mainland
heading for Carthage and points beyond may have
opted for a more direct westerly route via the open seas.
Such circumstances help to explain why, despite
ancient historical claims, the eastern Tunisian and
Libyan coasts have yielded little archaeological evidence for Phoenician occupation. Indeed, with the
exception of Hadrumetum and Leptis Magna, both
reputed Phoenician foundations, the great cities of the
Sahelian littoral, the Gulf of Gabes, and Tripolitania
are marked by later settlement strata originating in
the Punic period. Leptis Magna (Pun. Lpqy) alone has
yielded evidence of permanent construction associated with its seventh century origins. Yet, even
here, doubt persists as to the nature of the incipient
settlement; according to a recent interpretation, the
early stone construction found on virgin soil near
Cape Hermaion served as a warehouse for a seasonal
entrepot; permanent settlement did not begin until
the late sixth century under Carthaginian initiative.
The record of early Phoenician settlement west of
the Tunisian headland is equally scant. In fact, the
entire coast of western Tunisia and eastern Algeria
(from Bizerte (Cap Blanc) to Oran) has produced little
evidence for occupation prior to the fifth century BC.
Culturally and chronologically, the many emporiums
dotting the Algerian coastline from Hippo Regius
(Annaba) westward to Gunugu (Gouraya) reflect the
growing regional influence of Carthage. The sites
themselves and their Punic toponyms, which are
often prefixed by y (Pun. for island) or Rus (meaning cape), underscore their functional significance as
emporiums for Punic coastal trade. It is only in the
extreme west of Algeria, along the Oranian coast,
that material evidence of earlier (seventh to sixth
centuries) Phoenician occupation may be found at
Les Andalouses, west of Oran, and at Rachgoun, a
coastal islet situated near the mouth of the Siga
(Tafna) River, where an inland necropolis and coastal
settlement have yielded evidence for Phoenician
occupation extending back to the seventh century BC.
Ibiza

Situated off the eastern coast of Spain, the island of

Ibiza (Pun. ybsm, isle of the balsam tree) in the
Balearic archipelago formed a natural port-of-call
for Phoenician craft plying the Mediterranean to
and from the Strait of Gibraltar. Excavation in recent
years has confirmed that the island was settled
by Phoenician colonists from the Atlantic straits.
By the mid-seventh century, an early foothold was
established on the peninsula of Sa Caleta along Ibizas

southwestern coast for trade with Sardinia and the

Iberian coast. In addition to shipping, mining interests
(silver and iron) appear to have promoted the settlement, a modest entrepot of limestone-and-mudbrick
residences and warehouses. After a brief occupation
of some 50 years, the settlement of Sa Caleta was
abandoned, its population transferred to the hill of
Puig de Vila overlooking the larger bay of Ibiza a
short distance to the east, with its ancient port facility,
the emplacement of which is marked by abundant
finds of late seventh century Phoenician pottery. Salvage excavations undertaken in the early 1980s on
the lower slopes of the adjacent hill of Puig des Molins
(later site of Ibizas vast Punic necropolis) have uncovered the remains of the settlements archaic cemetery,
marked by several dozen cremation pithoi burials.
Ibizas strategic placement for early Phoenician
trade has been elucidated by scattered finds of Phoenician pottery along the northeastern coast of Spain
in Alicante province (Pena Negra de Crevillente, Los
Saladares) and Castellon (Vinarragell) and, further
north, in the delta of the Ebro River in southern Catalonia. Such finds, dating from the later seventh and
early sixth century BC, suggest that Ibiza had served
as a conduit for western Phoenician trade with the
northern Spanish interior and with southern France,
valued outlets for tin arriving overland from the north
Atlantic regions of Cornwall and Brittany.
Spain

Archaeological investigation in recent decades has

revealed a great deal about Phoenician settlement in
the Iberian peninsula, the westernmost stage of Phoenician Mediterranean expansion. Memory of early
Phoenician involvement in southern Spain has been
preserved in the accounts of classical authors, whose
writings clearly reveal that Phoenician colonial activity in the region was driven by one overriding motive
the acquisition of ores and precious metals. The
Spanish peninsula, in fact, forms one of the richest
sources of raw minerals (gold, silver, copper, iron, and
tin) in the entire Mediterranean. The Tyrian settlement of Cadiz in close proximity to the mineral-rich
Huelva district and Guadalquivir valley underscores
the Phoenicians abiding interest in gaining access to
such resources.
Ancient Cadiz (from Pun. Gdr, wall or fortified
citadel) was founded on a series of offshore islands
in the sheltered Bay of Cadiz beyond the Strait of
Gibraltar. As recent geologic and archaeological investigation has shown, the early Phoenician settlement
was centered on the small northern islet of Erytheia,
the present heart of nineteenth century Cadiz. In

ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia 885

antiquity, this islet was separated from the larger,

southern island of Kotinoussa by a deep, narrow channel, the Bahia-Caleta, which served as Cadiz original
harbor. Like its mother city Tyre, the early Phoenician
settlement at Cadiz, which lies unexcavated, appears
to have been an extremely compact one, covering
no more than 25 ac, encompassing the citys three
primary sanctuaries to Astarte, Baal Hammon, and
Melqart. The latter, renowned in antiquity for its oracle, may be localized on the present-day islet of Sancti
Petri, where a group of ancient bronze statuettes
depicting male deities was discovered in 1984. The
city necropolis of Cadiz was situated apart from the
settlement on the opposite bank of the Bahia-Caleta
channel in the area of Puertas de Tierra, where
numerous burials, the earliest dating to the fifth century BC, have been uncovered.
Tyrian involvement in the Tartessian silver trade
has been elucidated in recent years by archaeological
research. As demonstrated, Phoenician activity focused in two regions: the western area of the province
of Seville and the mountainous region of Huelva
beyond. In the former, the trade in metals followed a
route ending directly at Cadiz via the mouth of the
Guadalquivir. Early on, Cadiz established an enclave
on the northern shore of the Guadalete estuary at the
indigenous Tartessian settlement of Castillo de Dona
Blanca, which served as the island citys continental
port and transit station for mainland trade; excavations conducted there over the past two decades have
revealed extensive traces of Phoenician presence.
As archaeological research has demonstrated, silverbearing lead ores (perhaps from the silver mines at
Aznalcollar in the Sierra Moreno) were processed and
subsequently smelted at the native Tartessian sites
of Tejada la Vieja and San Bartolome de Almonte,
respectively. Phoenician activity at Tejada is evinced
by the urban character of the native walled settlement, which housed stone-built warehouses and facilities for the grinding and washing of the ores.
The richest deposits of gold- and silver-bearing
pyrite ores were, however, to be found in the mountains of Huelva, in the inland region of Rio Tinto, the
site of the most extensive mining operations in antiquity. Modern survey of the surviving traces of silver
slag, estimated at roughly 6 000 000 tons, reveals
the monumental scale of mining activity conducted
in the Iron Age. The presence of two indigenous
neighboring hill settlements (Quebranthuesos and
Cerro Salomon) confirms that the process of mining
and extraction fell in native hands. Phoenician
involvement in such mining operations is now well
documented by excavations at Cerro Salomon, where
a small settlement, marked by imported Phoenician

pottery, revealed obvious traces of metalworking.

Transported in ingot form down the Rio Tinto, the
silver was processed at the native coastal port of
Huelva, where excavations have revealed the emplacement of actual smelting furnaces dating to the eighth
to seventh centuries BC.
It is along the Andalusian coast east of Gibraltar,
however, that the Phoenicians appear to have concentrated their settlement efforts, beginning in the
eighth century BC. Archaeological investigation over
the past three decades has, in fact, documented the
existence of a series of compact, closely spaced settlements with adjacent necropolises along the coasts
of Granada, Malaga, and Almeria, all strategically
situated on low coastal headlands within sheltered
bays or inlets. Their positions on riverine estuaries
such as the Guadalhorce, Guadalmedina, Velez, and
Algarrobo ensured access to the surrounding agriculturally rich interior, which represents some of the
most fertile farmland in all of the Iberian peninsula.
It was with an eye toward local exploitation of such
natural resources (including timber) that the majority
of such settlements, including Cerro del Villar, Toscanos, Moro de Mezquitilla, and Chorerras, were
founded on a coast that was largely undeveloped
and sparsely inhabited at the time of the Phoenicians
arrival. Unlike their Levantine mainland equivalents,
the Phoenician settlements of the eastern Andalusian
coastal plain appear small and unpretentious, totalling
only a few acres (23 ha) with correspondingly small
populations: what the archaeological record reveals, in
fact, is a series of centrally administered commercial
enclaves rather than full-fledged towns. With its threeaisled warehouse facility, Toscanos, the best documented of such archaeological sites, well illustrates this
point. In addition to farming and cattle breeding,
Toscanos economic activities consisted of purple-dye
manufacture and metallurgy (both copper and iron).
As for Phoenician settlement west along the Strait
of Gibraltar, attention may be drawn to Gorhams
Cave, a grotto extending some 30 m into the Gibraltar Rock along its southeast side. As recent excavation of its upper stratum reveals, the cave apparently
served as a Phoenician shrine. Over the years, ongoing archaeological research has yielded a large quantity of Phoenician and Punic finds deposited between
the eighth and third centuries BC, including copious
faience amulets and scarabs of Egyptian and Egyptianizing variety, glass core-formed vessels, and Phoenician red slip pottery. The importance of the Gorhams
Cave grotto may also be explained by the natural
defensive position provided by the Gibraltar Rock
and by the safe anchorage it afforded in the Bay of
Algeciras on its western side.

886 ASIA, WEST/Phoenicia

Phoenician Atlantic Trade

The North Atlantic

With their foundation of Cadiz, the Phoenicians established a trade foothold in Atlantic coastal Spain. North
of Huelva, however, archaeological substantiation of
Phoenician occupation has proved elusive. Recent
excavations, nevertheless, have revealed evidence of a
substantial Phoenician settlement of seventh century
date at Alcacer do Sal near the mouth of the Sado
River. The presence of this site, located some 400 km
north of the Guadalquivir basin, lends credence to the
supposition that the Phoenicians had established a series of coastal emporia up to and beyond the Algarve
coast of Portugal.
While the Portuguese Algarve coast presently
represents the northernmost limit archaeologically of
Phoenician Atlantic commerce, ancient textual evidence suggests a far broader scope to Phoenician
North Atlantic trade. According to the Ora Maritima
of Avienus, written in the fourth century AD, the
Carthaginian navigator Himilco, in the late fifth century BC, undertook a four-month expedition in pursuit
of tin that brought him to the coast of northern Britanny and perhaps beyond across the Channel to
southern Britain and coastal Cornwall. As modern
investigation has revealed, the latter region served in
antiquity as a primary mining source of tin oxide ore,
present in a number of alluvial gravel deposits. As
excavation has shown, such stream tin had been recovered and smelted locally as early as the Bronze Age.
The scope of Himilcos North Atlantic expedition,
in fact, hinges on the identification of the notorious
Cassiterides (tin islands), mentioned by a number of
Greek and Roman authors, including Herodotus,
Strabo, and Diodorus. There has been much debate
on their exact location, a subject about which the
ancient authors remain vague. Strabo (III.5.11) is the
most explicit in situating them in the open seas beyond
ancient Artabria, that is, the northwest region of the
Spanish peninsula. Although the Cassiterides have
long been associated with the Scilly Islands off the
southwestern tip of England, they are more plausibly
identified with European mainland locations closer to
home, including the islets of the Bay of Corcubion
beneath Cape Finisterra in Galicia and the islands
along the southern coast of Brittany (ancient Armorica) between the estuary of the Loire and the town of
Quiberon. Both regions housed rich deposits of alluvial tin ore that were accessible in antiquity.
Atlantic Africa: Morocco

As history records, the city of Lixus (Pun. Lks) was

central to early Phoenician trade in Atlantic Morocco.

The classical literary tradition underscores the importance of this key emporion, whose foundation (in
1180 BC) was believed to antedate that of Cadiz
(Pliny, N.H., 19.63). Lixus location 4 km inland
on the north bank of the Loukkos River has been
known since the early nineteenth century. Yet excavations on the upper plateau of the Tchemmich hill,
the presumed site of the early city, have failed to
produce architectural evidence of early Phoenician
occupation. In all likelihood, the port and its harbor
were originally situated below, on the hills sheltered
eastern foot; the date of this settlement may be surmised from scattered finds of Phoenician red slip ware
of late seventh century date found on the plateau
above. Like Cadiz, Lixus monitored riverine access
into a mineral-rich hinterland; along the spurs of the
Atlas mountains lay rich deposits of gold, copper, iron,
and lead.
Beyond Lixus, along a coast largely devoid of
natural harbors, archaeological traces of Phoenician
coastal trade are sparse. The first clear evidence of
occupation may be found at Sala, an emporion
situated inland from the Bou Regreg estuary near
the heart of modern Rabat. Here, excavations have
uncovered the remains of a large ashlar stone building
associated with Phoenician red slip pottery datable to
the seventh to sixth centuries BC.
More than 400 km beyond Sala lies the southernmost of Phoenician Moroccan coastal establishments
(on the island of Mogador in the bay of Essauoira),
where excavations have uncovered a seasonal coastal
encampment, roughly 50 m in diameter, marked by
hearths and small huts. Mogadors commercial nature
is apparent from its ceramic finds, which include a large
quantity of red slip ware sherds (around 20 bearing
Phoenician inscriptions). A settlement in operation
from at least 650500 BC, Mogador, like Sala to the
north, functioned as a secondary center for trade
with the indigenous peoples of the Moroccan interior.
As its pottery types suggest, the settlement may have
been founded by colonists from Cadiz; the ceramic
repertoire from Mogador is particularly close to that
found in Phoenician settlements from Andalusia.
How much further along the western coast of
Africa beyond Mogador the Phoenicians explored
remains an open question. While clearly exaggerated,
Strabos claim (17.3.3) that the Tyrians founded 300
colonies along the West African coast may contain a
reminiscence of such exploration, which set the stage
for the later expedition of the Carthaginian navigator
Hanno in the latter half of the fifth century BC.
Debate has raged over the identification of ancient
place names mentioned in this remarkable account,
which, according to its text, was originally set up in
the temple of Saturn (Baal Hammon) at Carthage.

ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies 887

The more adventurous would take Hanno as far as

Sierra Leone or even the Cameroons or Gabon in the
Gulf of Guinea; according to a more conservative
view, the explorer terminated his voyage at Cape
Juby along Moroccos southern boundary.
See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The
Levant; Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production
and Utilization; Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures;
Europe, South: Greece; Greek Colonies; Medieval and
Post-Medieval; Rome; Exchange Systems; Metals:
Chemical Analysis; Primary Production Studies of;
Ships and Seafaring.

Further Reading
Aubet ME (2001) The Phoenicians and the West. Politics, Colonies
and Trade, 3rd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Briquel-Chatonnet F and Gubel E (1998) Les Pheniciens aux
origines du Liban. Paris: Gallimard.
Harden DB (1971) The Phoenicians. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Krings V (ed.) (1995) La civilisation phenicienne et punique.
Manuel de recherche. Leiden: Brill.
Lipinski E (ed.) (1992) Dictionnaire de la civilisation phenicienne
et punique. Brussels: Brepols.
Markoe G (2002) Peoples of the Past. Phoenicians. London: British
Museum Press.
Markoe G (2005) The Phoenicians. London: The Folio Society.
Moscati S (ed.) (1988) The Phoenicians. New York: Abbeville Press.
Pritchard J (1978) Recovering Sarepta, A Phoenician City.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Roman Eastern
Colonies
Rebecca Sweetman, University of St Andrews,
St. Andrews, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
colony colonia Status given to a city in the Empire which had
especially high privileges.
client kingdoms States who had yielded to, or allied themselves
with, Rome and were under her control mainly through military
presence but retain the local political and administrative
establishment.
duoviri Roman officials appointed to act as magistrates in a
judicial role in Rome and in the cities of the provinces.
globalization A social process in which the constraints of
geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in
which people become increasingly aware that they are receding
as stated by Waters 1995, 3.
province The name given to the largest unit of a an area of
foreign land under Roman possession.

Introduction
Roman imperial expansion in the eastern Mediterranean was a consequence of the inheritance of land,
the subduing of enemies and the quest for economic
resources leading to a significant growth of the Empire
from the late third century BCE. The Macedonian
Wars (215148 BCE), followed by the Mithridatic
Wars (8863 BCE) in addition to the series of Roman
Civil wars (8830 BCE) meant that by the death of
Pompey in 48 BCE areas such as Epirus, Macedonia,
Achaea, and Asia (see Figure 1) were officially under
Roman control. Pompey had secured many of the
Eastern provinces and subsequently, Caesar and
Augustus were responsible for much of the organization and consolidation of the Eastern Empire. The
institution of Roman rule in the provinces was manifested diversely; the joining of provinces, the consolidation of the geographical mass, inclusion of client
kingdoms and the installation of armies, and comprehensive new administration. Provinces were established as administrative and political units and were
controlled by governors, who were formally either
Propraetors or Proconsuls and appointed by the Senate
or the Emperor, thus creating senatorial and imperial class provinces. Imperial provinces were officially
governed by the Emperor with a legate as his representative, were often established in areas of instability,
buffer zones, or potential flashpoints and thus had a
high military presence (hosting one or more legions),
for example, Moesia. Although Egypt had a legion
posted there, it was an Imperial province of a special
kind with an Equestrian governor, as was Judea
(at times). Once a province was firmly established
with a governor appointed from Rome, unless there
were mitigating circumstances or particularly vehement opposition to Roman rule, the local population (more often its elite elements) was commonly
incorporated into regional government positions. The
Letters of the Younger Pliny are especially enlightening
for an understanding of the relationship between a
Roman governor, his entourage, and the local population in the Eastern provinces. The roles of the governors were varied and they were expected to oversee
administration, to ensure peace (at a range of levels), to
warrant maintenance of the communication routes
and upkeep of the cities, preservation of religious and
entertainment facilities, and essentially, to guarantee
the collection of taxes for Rome.
The geographical boundaries of provinces were not
static. Although the limes identified in the physical
remains of the frontier forts and watchtowers, indicate the boundaries of the Empire at different times, it
is arguable that they were as much about monitoring
the unconquered tribes as defining the extent of the

888 ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies

Figure 1 The Provinces (Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no FrontCover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License).

Empire (e.g., as fieldwork undertaken on the Limes

Arabicus is showing). An awareness of the traditional
political borders between provinces was maintained
and while broad generalizations regarding the cultures of the Eastern Roman Empire are futile, the
Roman army functioned directly and indirectly as a
unifying element. Their tours of the Empire further
stimulated communication between provinces, particularly through provision of food supplies and created an element of commonality through their
presence and their maintenace of the built landscape.
Just as the Emperor had to be constantly on guard
against potential uprisings in Rome, the provinces,
particularly those with a significant military presence,
could be a breeding ground for future challenges
to the Emperor. As such, the size and nature of a
province could change to combat growing power
bases, for example, Moesia was subdivided and by
211 CE Syria had been divided into three provinces.
Provinces could also be merged and in some cases the
reasoning behind this is not always clear, for example
Crete and Cyrene were joined together to become a
single administrative unit. Pisidia was originally given
to Cappadocia in the second century BCE to govern,
but when this failed it was joined with Galatia in the

late first century BCE. Lycaonia was divided between

Galatia, Cappadocia, and Cicilia and following a
series of border changes she finally became a separate
province in CE 371.
A historical framework for the foundation and
organization of the Eastern provinces is achievable
through a collation of sources such as Dio, Livy,
Pliny, Suetonius, and Tacitus. The density of written
culture in the East allows a view of the significant
events and key characters of the provinces is viable.
Archaeological material such as pottery and other
small finds, epigraphic and numismatic evidence,
mortuary evidence, and architecture provide a much
more coherent picture of the broader aspects of society and culture of the Eastern Roman provinces. In
the past, much of the archaeological work has been
focused in urban centers, although with the rise and
refinement of archaeological survey methods, increasing attention is paid to the consideration of the rural
landscape in the Roman period (e.g., work such as the
Libyan Valleys project and the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project in the Peloponnese).
Scholars have explained the development and
outcome of expansion and cultural change within
the provinces through the application of processes

ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies 889

such as Romanization, creolization, and globalization. A brief synopsis of these processes will allow
for a more comprehensive understanding. Detailed
discussion is available in the further reading section.
Suffice is to say here that the nature of Roman provinces can be best understood through an examination of the archaeology in combination with the
historical data to allow consideration of the perspective of the local population in addition to that of
the Roman. As such this approach allows for a
more inclusive understanding of the cultural change
in the eastern Mediterranean with the growth of the
Roman Empire.
The initial establishment of the provinces in the East
was quite a different process from that of the West. In
many respects urbanization was fundamental to the
success of Roman occupation and the presence of the
long established cities of the East meant that it was
relatively straightforward for Roman administration to
fit in. The populations of the East were already habituated to centralized administration. In addition, they
had advanced technologies and stunning architecture.
There were well-developed trade and communication
networks and there was intense exploitation of agricultural and natural resources. In addition to the manifestations of conspicuous consumption, the populations
of the East had a keen awareness of hierarchy and the
machinations of politics. Rome had respect for the
territories of the East and her policy seems to have
been to undertake as little interference as possible, as
long as peace was maintained to facilitate crucial tax
collection.
Just as there are differences between the provinces
and cities of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire,
the archaeology of the East reveals that the provinces
are as culturally diverse as they are geographically.
There are few model Roman cities; provinces become part of the Empire at different periods and for
varied reasons. Their subsequent development as part
of the Empire follow a multitude of progressions
dependent on location, nature of the local population, economy, investment, etc. and a single scenario
for provincial development is not appropriate.
The provinces were subsumed and cities were given
different status at different times for numerous
motives. There was no concurrent rate at which they
grew and transformations within the cities, if any took
place, occurred for a staggering multiplicity of reasons. The different levels of support for Rome were
sometimes, although not always logically reflected
in the level of privileges or punishment conferred.
For example, Aphrodisias wholeheartedly supported
Rome and experienced the economic benefits, in contrast Corinth was sacked. Some cities retained certain
autonomous rights, such as Palmyra and Damascus,

largely because of the benefits they provided for the

Roman economy. These rights however were only
valid as long as the cities behaved well. The foundation and subsequent growth of the Roman provinces
was in some cases a planned strategic process, but
more often there is little evidence throughout for a
clearly defined unified policy. A study of the archaeology of the Eastern Roman Empire allows a broad
range of perspectives and for such diversities to become apparent.

Brief History and Topography

As noted in the introduction, much of the expansion
and provincial organization in the East was carried
out under Pompey, Caesar, and Augustus. A brief
presentation of the chronology will allow further insight in the nature of the foundation of the different
provinces and cities within. The widely accepted
chronologies are followed here; however, it is important to note that current work is beginning to challenge the more traditionally accepted chronologies
for province-creation.
Following on from his success in the Mithridatic
wars (after the Third Mithridatic war Bithynia ceded
to Rome and Pompey was victorious over King
Mithridates of Pontus in CE 65B), Pompey set about
solidifying some of this control with the organization of some of the provinces, such as Cicilia (conquered in 102 BCE and reorganized 66 BCE). Pompey
annexed Syria in 64 BCE and in this way she functioned as a peace monitor, having to ensure that
the Cilician tribes behaved. In the same region,
Pompey also organized for Judea to become a client
kingdom under local monarchs. Octavian Augustus
consolidated this arrangement and Judea came under
the authority of the governor of Syria (as Cilica
already was). The provinces were somewhat pillaged
by both Pompey and Caesar to support their bids for
control of Rome and the instability the civil wars gave
Mithridates VI the opportunity to reclaim some of
the lost land in the East in the middle of the first
century BCE.
Following his victories over Pompey and his success in Egypt, Caesar began a process of ensuring the
loyalty of the elite, secured and founded client kingdoms in the East and also finally put an end to the
Pontus uprisings in 47 BCE, thereby obtaining the
province. The work of Pompey and Caesar gave
Augustus a good foundation for the expansion and
consolidation of the Empire. At this point, various
provinces had been inherited (e.g., Cyprus), victories
in Egypt had provided a good economic base and
obstreperous regions such as Judea and Pontus were

890 ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies

annexed along with Moesia (44 BCE). These actions

of strengthening borders and policing uncontrolled
regions served to unify the Eastern Empire geographically. After Augustus, the Julio-Claudians
continued on a small scale to expand the Eastern
Empire with the inclusion of Cappadocia (CE 17),
Lycia (CE 43), and Thrace (CE 46). The next concentrated expansion did not occur until Trajan.
Trajan extended the holdings with the inclusion of
new provinces and previous client kingdoms such as
Arabia Petraea (CE 105) and Armenia (CE 114). At
this point, the Empire was expanded to include
Dacia (CE 106) which functioned as a buffer zone
to the unconquered peoples of the East. Hadrians
view of the Empire was quite different from that of
his predecessor Trajan. Much against the views of
factions within the Senatorial elite, Hadrian envisioned that a smaller Empire would be both more
manageable and more profitable and thus he began a
process of contracting the borders. Although Severus
motivated further consolidation and re-organization
of the Empire with the inclusion of Osroene and
the expansion into northern Mesopotamia, by the
third century the nature of the Roman Empire
had changed. At this point a clear eastern koine
was identifiable throughout the Eastern provinces
but at the same time the external threats of the
Goths and Vandals created a need for defense rather
than expansion.

The Nature of the Provinces

The diversity within and between Roman provinces is
understandable when full consideration is given to
the following: (see Table 1):
. How and why provinces were acquired (force or
inheritance; strategic or economic)?
. The intended or consequential role within the
Empire (frontier zones or Roman colonies).
. How the nature of pre-conquest societies created
such diversity in the Early Empire through the
extent of:
. multiculturalism
. pre-conquest peace within the province
. pre-conquest Roman involvement.
. Existing economy.
. Existing religions.
. Location (Mediterranean or continental; remote or
accessible).
. Natural resources.
. Topography.
Different reasons for foundation (see Table 1):

. Inherited: for example, Asia, Cyrene.

. Development from client kingdoms to provinces
(e.g., Judea).
. Conquered because of economic potential (e.g.,
Egypt).
. Conquered because of strategic location for trade
(e.g., Crete).
. Taken to shore up gaps in the area of the Empire
(e.g., Cappodacia).
. Taken to act as buffer zones against threatening
tribes (e.g., Dacia).
. Taken to maintain peace (e.g., Cilicia & Judea).
. Conquered as a result of attempts to rebel against
Roman rule (Pontus, Achaea).
. Conquered as part of strategic expansion of Empire
(e.g., Armenia & Mesopotamia taken in Trajanic
expansion).
As noted in the introduction, a range of different
types of provincial establishments were founded in
the East (see Table 1):
. Senatorial Province (former consuls): Asia.
. Senatorial Province (former praetors): Macedonia,
Crete & Cyrene, Achaea, Cyprus, Pontus &
Bithynia, Lycia & Pamphylia.
. Imperial Provinces (former consuls): Moesia, Syria,
Cappadocia.
. Imperial Provinces (former praetors): Galatia,
Cilicia, Arabia.
. Imperial Procurators: Thracia, Epirus.
. Prefect: Egypt and Mesopotamia by early third
century.
. Some were provinces but behaved more like client
kingdoms (e.g., Syria).
Within these different provincial establishments there
was a range of cities with different status and functions:
. Colonies (Butrint (Illyrium), Savaria (Pannonia),
Corinth (Achaea), Knossos (Crete and Cyrene),
Nicomedia (one of the last at 284305), Beirut,
Edessa, Antioch).
. Military presence (Palestine & Syria and along the
Danube).
. Provincial principal city (Ephesus, Gortyna,
Alexandria).
. Economic foundations (Damascus, Palmyra).
. Creations to balance internal power (Patras).
. Cultural centers (Sparta).

Archaeology of the Eastern Provinces

With these variations and diversities in mind a model
province is not a viable means of understanding
either Roman cities or the provinces themselves in

Table 1 The Eastern Roman provinces

Province

Type of
admin (by
CE 211)

Date a

Some key cities (incl b

capitals and colonies)

Reason for inclusion and economic resources

Macedonia

Senatorial
former
praetor

168 BCE/ 146 BCE

Dion, Pella,
Thessaloniki
(capital)
Phillippi, Cassandra

Rebelled against Romans. Early Empire used as a

launch for several conquests into east and north.

Epirus

Imperial
procurator

167 BCE

Nicopolis (capital)
Butrint

Lycia

Senatorial
former
praetor

Letoum, Xanthus,
Patara (capital),
Phaselis

Lycaonia

Imperial

Achaea

Senatorial
former
praetor

167 BCE independent

state. Joint province
with Pamphylia in
CE 43
16064 BCE divided
between Galatia,
Cappadocia, Cilicia.
146 BCE and then
formally in 22 BCE

Asia

Senatorial
former
consul

133 BCE (inherited).

129 BCE became a
province

Crete and
Cyrene

Senatorial
former
praetor

69 BCE

Ephesus (capital),
Aphrodisias (free
city), Miletus (free
city)
Gortyna (capital),
Cyrene
Knossos

Bithynia &
Pontus

Imperial
former
praetor

64 BCE

10

Cicilia

Imperial
former
praetor

784 BCE, 67 BCE,

5159 BCE (Vatia,
Pompey, Cicero)

Iconium

Athens (capital)
Sparta (free city)
Corinth Patras

Nicomedia (capital)
Nicea (capital)
Byzantium, Prusa
Apamea
Olba, Seleucia-adCalyca, Dnum
Tarsus (capital)

64 BCE Roman reorganization. Administration and

borders often changing. Passed to Eumenes II of
Pergamon then divided after Mithraditic wars.
146 BC attached to Rome after defeat in fourth
Macedonian war. Corinth and later Athens sacked.
Achaea subdued and peaceful. Trade, marble,
cultural credibility
Inherited from kingdom of Pergamum. first BCE
mutinies, sacking of Ephesus and finally from
Augustus onwards, strong economy and trade
centers.
Crete has initial resistance. Likely to have been taken
with view of strategic stopover point for trade. Piracy
is used in the sources as excuse. Timber exported
from Crete. Siphnum (?) from Cyrene.
Bithynia ceded to Rome in 75 BCE but joint province
with Pontus after victories over Mithridates in 64 BCE

Issues with pirates and uncivilized populations.

A potential threat to the peace and stability of Empire.
Various stages of subduing the province. Octavian
finally succeeded in formalizing control.

Wealthy and prosperous

Mixture of cultures, Lycaonian

and Greek

Cyrene was inherited by the Romans

in 96 BCE. Originally a province on
its own in 74 BCE then joined with
Crete in 69 BCE.

As appendix to Syria, Syria was

meant to deal with minor
uprisings, etc.

Continued

ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies 891

Economy: overland trade (via Egnatia constructed).

Agricultural land, gold, iron, and timber exports
Sided with Macedonia. Defeated by Romans in third
Macedonia war (Aemilius Paullus). Central areas still
had tribes. Coastal regions did well.
Declared independent after Rhodes had attempted
colonization. Annexed by Claudius formally.

Other

Province

Type of
admin (by
CE 211)

Date a

11

Syria

64 BCE

12

Cyprus

Imperial
former
consul
Senatorial
former
praetor

13

Moesia

Imperial
former
consul

14

Aegyptus

Equestrian

30 BCE

15

Galatia

25 BCE

16

Pisidia

Imperial
former
praetor
Imperial

17

Cappadocia

Imperial
former
consul

58 BCE 22 BCE
became senatorial
province under
Augustan
consolidation of East.
44 BCE split into two
by Domitian

102 original Roman

interest. 25 BCE

CE 17

Some key cities (incl b

capitals and colonies)

Reason for inclusion and economic resources

Palmyra, Damascus,
Beirut
Antioch (capital)
Paphos (capital),
Salamis, Soli. No
colonies
established

Annexed by Pompey

Tomis. Nicopolis ad
Istrum. Naissus
(capital) Odessus,
Viminacium Oescus
Alexandria (capital),
Cairo, Thebes,
Memphis
Ancyra (capital)
Germa

Natural resources (gold, minerals and farmland).

Military importance. Defence of Thrace. Danube:
communication hub. Was important for shoring up the
frontiers of the Empire.

Sagalassos, Selge,
Antiocheia (and
also capital),
Olbasa, Cremna
Caesarea (capital),
Comana, Tyana

Annexed by Rome while taking advantage of the

ambiguous nature of the inheritance of Egypt. Piracy
provided another excuse.

Other

Certain cities (eg., Palmyra) given

autonomous rights (economic
benefits to the Romans).
For a time it was part of the province
of Cilicia.

Less noticeable change in population

with inclusion in Empire. Problems
with Scythians and Sarmartins

Annexed by Augustus

Augustus formalized Roman control. Originally given to

Cappodacia to govern but this failed. Pisidia was then
joined with Cilicia. Very slow to adopt Eastern Roman
koine.
Annexed by Tiberius. Changeable relationship with
Rome. With Anticochus but against Philip V and
Mithradiates. Managed to support the winning sides
after this, Pompey, Caesar, Augustus.

Quite but steady and economically

secure.

892 ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies

Table 1 Continued

18

Thrace

Imperial
former
praetor

c. CE 46

19

Pamphylia

Joint province with

Lycia in CE 43

20

Commagene

Senatorial
former
praetor
Imperial

21

Judea

Equestrian

22

Arabia
Petraea

Imperial
former
praetor

23

Dacia

Imperial
former
consul

c. CE 106

24

Armenia
Inferior

Imperial

66 BCE initial Roman

control. CE 114

Trapezus

Part of the Trajanic expansion to shore up gaps in

the provinces.

25

Osroene

Imperial

CE 114 and CE 195

Edessa

26

Assyria

Imperial

CE 230

Nisbis

Originally part of the Trajanic expansion, became

semi-autonomus and then annexed formally by
Severus.
Briefly controlled by Rome in 161 and CE 194. Difficult
area due to heavy Parthian involvement.

CE 72
c. CE 100 finally
brought fully under
Roman control having
been a client kingdom
CE 105. Annexed by
Trajan

Plovdiv (capital),
Sardica,
Philippopolis,
Deultum.
Adrianople
Aspendus (neocorus),
Perge (capital),
Antalya, Side
Samosata (capital)
Jerusalem, Caesarea
(capital), Sebaste

Petra (capital),
Jerash,
Philadelphia
Philippopolis
Bosra (capital)
Sarmizegetusa
(capital), Napoca,
Apulum, Drobeta

Agriculture. Gold. Many areas functioned using Latin

rather than Greek. Difficult provinces as always
suffered from invasions and as battle ground.

Supported Pompey and then became client state under

Augustus. Annexed by Vespasian.
Originally annexed by Augustus in CE 6. Significant
problem for the Romans. Originally under the
governorship of Syria, several Jewish revolts.

Last independent kingdom in

Asia Minor

Annexed from Kingdom of Nabetae.

Buffer zone, Danube, agriculture. Submitted to Trajan

and then Hadrian divided the province.

Significant change with inclusion in

Empire. Mixed population. Used
Latin. Both free and occupied
territories
Always a difficult area due to
incursions by neighboring tribes
such as the Parthians (firstthird
CE)

ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies 893

a
The dates given are those which are commonly accepted for the creation of the Roman province. There are variations on the dates and work is underway to produce a coherent reassessment
of the foundation dates.
b
Seat of the Roman Governor.

894 ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies

the East. Notwithstanding, there are many shared

common elements. In addition to the local existing
architecture many provinces benefited from investment in new buildings, such as basilicas, amphitheaters, and heated baths. A range of housing from the
urban domus, such as those multistoried buildings at
Ephesus, to the rural villa, such as Herodes Atticus
Villa at Loukou in the Peloponnese, to farmsteads,
such as those identified in the Megalopolis survey was
found throughout the Eastern Empire. Many of these
buildings became showcases for the latest trends in
art such as mosaics, wall painting, and sculpture. The
somewhat laissez-faire attitude to religious expression in the provinces meant that in addition to the
family and personal shrines a myriad of temples to
different gods are found. In addition to temples
to local gods (from Apollo to Baal) the temples of
Imperial cult and the Capitoline triad were founded
and, with the increased security of communication
routes, came the spread of popular Egyptian religions
such as Isis, Serapis, and other mystery cults such as
Mithras. Although some cities continued to mint their
own coins, provinces more often produced series of
provincial coinage with the symbols and images of the
ever-present Imperial ruler. Epigraphic evidence in the
East provides insights into the nature of administration and economy (such as the tax code of Palmyra)
and relations between Roman and local populations.
It is clear that with a few exceptions and unlike the
Western provinces, after an initial attempt to run
the provinces using Latin as the official language,
by the end of the first century CE, Greek had become
the predominant language again, as seen in Corinth.
A number of ceramic studies show similar patterns in
densities of ceramic imports. As sites on Crete have
shown, Italian forms were prevalent in the first half
of the century but this gave way to a clear preference
for Eastern Sigilliata B by the end of the century.
Local wares and imitations remained a constant.
A mixture of grave types is found depending on topography and population; lavish sarcophagi, rock cut
tombs, and tile graves are just a few of the variety of
types of mortuary evidence. New roads and aqueducts were constructed to facilitate communications
and provide utilities. Current ceramic studies of the
eastern Mediterranean (particularly in Corinth) are
re-dating and presenting more refined chronologies.
Additionally, more nuanced application of the ceramic
evidence is leading to new theories concerning trade
and economic, skills and technology in the East.
To provide more detail about the archaeology of
provinces, this section will examine four areas of the
Eastern provinces in detail which will allow scope
for a broad understanding. In presenting a brief
survey of the Eastern Empire, allowance for the

nature of archaeological research should be factored

in. The comparative dearth of rural evidence is slowly
being addressed (as explained in the introduction).
In the urban landscape, many of the Roman cities
continued in use and are present-day occupied cities
and thus much of their excavation has necessarily
been patchy. In the following account, a range of
areas has been chosen to reflect not only the different Roman establishments but also the diversity in
archaeological material available for interpretation.
Thus the areas are:
. Corinth. Considered a new Roman foundation in a
Senatorial province.
. Knossos. A Roman colony created from a strongly
anti-Rome city.
. Palmyra. A key economic foundation in Syria, an
Imperial province.
. Paphlagonia and Achaea. The Rural Roman East.

Corinth in Achaea

With a few notable exceptions such as Sparta, the

Achaean league was strongly opposed to Roman
interference in the Peloponnese. Following powerful
resistance Mummius sacked Corinth in 146 BCE during the Achaean war. Although the extent of depopulation of the city is likely to have been inflated
somewhat in the sources, even so, the Roman investors had a reasonably clean slate from which to start
in terms of constructing the new Roman city.
Walbank notes clear evidence for the distribution
of land, and settlers from Rome is evident with the
establishment of the colony, Colonia Laus Julia Corinthiensis by Caesar in 44 BCE. Moreover, there was
immediate investment in civic and domestic parts of
the city. The forum with its stoas and shops, the Julian
Basilica, Roman Temples C, D, E, F, G, and the
Odeion were all established by the early first century
CE. New houses, villas and baths were constructed
and a fine collection of mosaics survives from the city.
The success and wealth of the city is visible in the
manifestation of conspicuous consumption seem in
lavish buildings such as the Pierene fountain and the
continuous investment in the Forum area. As a result
of her position on the Isthmus and with some initial
investment, during the Roman period, Corinth once
again became a strong economic and strategic city.
Her growing strength and position may have played a
part in the reasoning behind Octavians foundation of
the Colonia Aroe Augusta Patrensis at Patras on the
western end of the Gulf of Corinth, intended to temper the potential power of Corinth.
Extensive excavations have been undertaken at
Corinth and contemporary urban development has

ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies 895

been limited, allowing for detailed research. The archaeology of Corinth in the Early Empire clearly
points to close ties with Rome and the West. Until
the time of Hadrian, Latin was the language of choice,
outnumbering Greek inscriptions by 101 to 3. As
Alcock has discussed the ceramic assemblages and
the overtly Roman coins which were minted in Corinth suggest clear westernized traits. The situation of
the Roman temples with their frontal emphasis along
the east side of the forum, one of which is likely to
be the Capitolium and the epigraphic details for the
Imperial cult support this connection with Rome.
Simultaneously however, the Greek temple of Apollo
continues in use. As the epigraphic evidence supports,
with the initial foundation of the colony a clearly
westernized city is constructed, however as with
other cities in Greece, by the second century CE the
original Greek roots appear to be the stronger force in
the cultural koine of the city.
Knossos in Crete and Cyrene

Under the veil of cleansing the Mediterranean of

pirates, Crete became a focus of Roman attention.
With the exception of cities such as Gortyn, the island
was strongly opposed to Roman rule and during
the early part of the first century BCE there were
valiant attempts to dispel the Romans from the island.
Cretes resistance finally collapsed and the island was
taken by Metellus. In 69 BCE Crete and Cyrene
become joint province with the provincial capital
at Gortyn. By 25 BCE Knossos had become the praetorian provinces only colony, Colonia Julia Nobilis
Cnossus and while there is limited evidence to suggest
a significant westernization of the city, she certainly
appears to have flourished.
Knossos has not been affected by contemporary
urban growth, but the bias of archaeological investigation has clearly been on Minoan material. Even
with detailed archaeological survey, research into
the Roman remains has often been curtailed by the
desires to focus on the Bronze Age material. Coupled
with this is a dearth of historical sources for the
province of Crete and Cyrene. In recent years, the
increasing academic attention that is being paid to
Roman Knossos with more research (rather than rescue) excavation and synthetic studies of the material
culture, a more in-depth understanding of the nature
of change from Greek city to Roman colony is viable.
There is limited evidence for Roman occupation of
the city in the first century BCE/CE, however it is
clear that by the late first century CE Knossos has
developed into a prosperous peaceful city with evidence for many of the architectural manifestations of
an Eastern Roman city.

In the first half of the first century BCE, the epigraphic and numismatic data from Knossos clearly
points to early attempts to run colony on formal lines:
for example, with coins, Italian duoviri, and official
administration documents in Latin. In the ceramic
assemblage there is an initial favoring of Italian
wares which by the mid first century CE are replaced
by the Asia Minor-originating Eastern Sigallata B but
all the time, domestic production continues. In contrast to the Latin public and official inscriptions in the
first century BCE, all evidence thus far suggests that
private inscriptions continued in Greek. Greek burial
customs (such as rock-cut tombs and tile graves) persisted with no significant evidence for Roman burial
customs. By the late first century CE a perceptible
change in the material culture with the construction
of the so-called Civil Basilica and the theater is visible.
This is enhanced with evidence from a range of buildings representing a good cross section of society such as
the Villa Dionysos and the small bathhouse close by
and the town house complex at the Unexplored mansion with its associated industrial area. In terms of the
sacred landscape, material culture is limited, but excavations at the Demeter Sanctuary have shown it to
continue in use until the Late Antique period. The
inclusion of Roman buildings, particularly administrative buildings in the late first century CE suggests a
change in the Knossian landscape. It seems that finally,
a century after the foundation of the colony, the city
began to fit into the developing koine of the Eastern
Empire, but this was taken on, a process decided on by
both the local and Roman population, rather than
forced.
Palmyra in Syria

Syria played a number of roles in the Eastern Empire.

She was a significant economic resource for Rome, at
times she acted as a buffer zone to the more problematic tribes to the East and for certain periods she
played the role of policing her more obstreperous
neighbors such as Judea. In spite of her wealth and
in many respects compliance to Rome, Syria is often
perceived to be a province on-edge and this is partly
due to the fear of attack from the unconquered tribes
that edged in across her borders (Persian incursions
were always problematic). This was the case throughout Roman rule. When the first Roman incursions
occurred and Pompey began to annex the province,
the Arab Nabateans begin to move in from the south
and they were even able to hold Damascus for a
period (around 85 BCE). Due to the constant threats
three legions were originally posted in Syria (they
were later moved to Judea (during the second half of
the first century CE)).

896 ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies

Given the potential wealth of Syria, some cities

were given the right to retain a certain degree of
autonomy (as long as they behaved) and Damascus
and Palmyra are two examples. This arrangement
was largely because of the benefits they provided for
the Roman economy (trade in the case of Palmyra and
production of luxury items in the case of Damascus).
Hadrian granted free status to Palmyra. It was
probably because of its unusual status that Palmyra
did not become a colony until CE 217. The archaeology reveals a stunning diversity of culture and a
flourishing city. Located in the Syrian Desert, in an
oasis 150 km from the Orontes River and 200 km
from the Euphrates, the full extent of her isolation
was perceived as an advantage to the Romans. There
is remarkable preservation of the Roman town and
many of the surviving buildings are a result of a
renewed investment in the town after Hadrians status change for the city.
Like most cities of the Eastern provinces, Palmyra
had a multitude of buildings; the forum represented
the heart of the city with its lavish architectural colonnades. Rich residential houses have been excavated
in addition to the theater, banqueting hall, baths,
market place and temples. The range of temples at
Palmyra, from the temple of Baal-Shamin to the temple of Bel, to the temple of Lat reflects the myriad
of gods, local and foreign that were freely worshipped
in the city.
The tax code of Palmyra provides a wealth of evidence about local trade and the cost of living. From
this inscription it is also clear what kind of material
was being traded in and out of the city; basic items
such as purple-dyed wool, scented oil in alabaster jars,
and salt to more luxurious material such as spices,
perfume, ivory, and silk from the East in addition to
glass and other fine objects from Phoenicia. The tax
code highlights the nature of primarily local trade. In
addition to the tax code, a range of inscriptions from
across the Empire reveal the extent to which Roman
governors could extract tax; from property tax to
income tax to inheritance tax to export and import
tax. Provinces were taxed directly from Empire, controlled by the local governors. It was organized on the
basis of a census and the increase in tax revenue was
normally routed into the maintenance of the provinces. This worked as an incentive and ultimately
economy growth in the Empire.
During the third century Palmyras power increased
while Romes stability waned. Palmyra grabbed the
opportunity and she began to seek independence
from both Rome and Persia. These attempts culminated in Queen Zenobia attempting to defy the
Romans which resulted in the sacking of the city
in CE 273. The city never recovered and became a

simple frontier stronghold. In all, the archaeology of

Palmyra allows a good insight into daily life of a
Roman provincial trade center; from public display
to private life.
The Rural Landscape

There are a number of issues concerning an understanding of the rural landscape in the Roman provincial East. The bias in the historical sources is firmly
on the urban setting and when reference to the rural
landscape is made more often as an aside. Survey
evidence has saved the rural landscape from disappearing from the academic radar, however significant
problems still remain. Not all areas of the Eastern
Empire have been surveyed, so the full extent of regional variation and topographic diversity is not fully
understood, often leading to unsupported assumptions. Not all field surveys have the opportunity to
test their results with stratigraphic excavation. As
such, pottery sequences and identification of context
might not be completely accurate, so there is a reliance
on potentially misleading data. Geophyiscal data, for
example, evidence which has been brought to light in
the Dichin field surveys in Moesia, undertaken by
Poulter and Boyd, has the potential to provide vast
quantities of evidence on the architecture of the rural
landscape. Moreover, unless excavation is undertaken
on the identified sites, gaps in the chronology and
function will be rife.
Survey data from some regions have allowed
some generalizations to become popular assumptions
which are recently being challenged. For example, as
Alcock has shown, survey data suggests that there was
a decrease in rural activity after the initial conquest of
Achaea which has been interpreted as increased urbanization. An increase in the occupation and exploitation of the countryside was visible in the third
century and there was a perceived increase in construction of villas, farmsteads, and rural villages.
This pattern is often taken as being common to
many, if not all of the Eastern provinces. Given the
diversity as discussed above, and given the acceptance
that towns and provinces could be vastly different,
there is no reason to assume a coherent pattern in the
rural landscape. The variety of topography, natural
resources, fertility, and trade and communication potential leads to vastly different inhabitation and exploitation of the rural setting. In the Eastern provinces
few generalizations can be made, but what is clear is
that agriculture was exploited, routes were carved
through the landscape and industries were founded
where ores and minerals provided incentive. In addition, occupation ranged from simple one-room dwellings to farmsteads including home industries such as

ASIA, WEST/Roman Eastern Colonies 897

olive production to farmstead/industry/villa combinations to luxury villas. Although many towns such as
Palmyra or Corinth gained their wealth through trade,
the local population was still dependent on agricultural productions to sustain them.

Processes of Inclusion: Globalization

Current research is expanding the application of
globalization theories to the understanding of the
development of the Roman Empire. In light of postprocessual, and particularly cognitive approaches to
archaeology, globalization is an attractive concept
and one which ultimately might solve many of the
problems of terminology (with terms such as Romanization now recognized as being problematic)
and further understanding of the development of the
East under Roman control. For Roman studies, such
an approach allows further exploration of issues of
cognitive elements (particularly aspects of intentional
and non-intentional processes in addition to allowing
an explanation of a progressive change in material
culture (as seen in most of the East) rather than a swift
cultural impact.
The subject of globalization as a modern concept is
not without its controversies and these debates largely
center on different applications of globalization.
A basic and commonly accepted definition could be
read as:
A social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and
in which people become increasingly aware that they
are receding as stated by Waters.
Waters definition does not rely on economic processes (notwithstanding they are a factor) nor does it
preclude the concept of culturally independent states
within a globalized world. Instead it allows social
practices, unpredictable by geographical location
and concerns, the development of a region relative
to the globalizing power (rather than simply becoming a version of that state). In this way localization
can prosper in parallel. Importantly for the Roman
period, the latter element permits a situation where
relative positive and negative preferences can be
expressed for the potential of the globalizing power.
To put it in terms of the Roman Empire, albeit simplified, Rome gradually became a superpower in the
Mediterranean, provinces were bequeathed, submitted and lost to her and eventually all displayed
Roman cultural elements to varying intensities and
as a consequence of different processes on the part of
the Romans and on the part of the indigenous population. In this sense, this is one of the most attractive
elements of explanations of globalization of the

Roman Empire, that it allows for the intentional

and nonintentional influence and adoption of cultural
elements for both sides.

Conclusion and Outlook

As theoretical approaches are developed, so too are the
practical aspects; ceramic studies encourage more
refined chronologies, underwater archaeology is providing new evidence in areas such as the Black Sea and
landscape surveys are correcting the urban-focus bias.
For many years the foundation of colonies in the
East has been viewed through a lens of the Romans
imposing their designs for model establishments on
local provinces. A comprehensive examination of the
colonies of the eastern Mediterranean together highlights the range of diversity within the provinces. Not
only is an imposed model of Roman-ness no longer
sustainable but future studies which approach the
material from the viewpoint of the Romans and of
the individual cities will continue to reveal the multiplicity of societies that existed in the eastern Mediterranean for the first two centuries of Roman Imperial
expansion.
See also: Europe, South: Rome.

Further Reading
Alcock S (1997) The Early Roman Empire in the East. Oxford:
Oxbow Monographs No. 95.
Alcock S (1993) Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece.
Cambridge: CUP.
Bowersock GW (1998) Roman Arabia. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Bowman AK (1986) Egypt After the Pharaohs. London: British
Museum Press.
Bowman AK and Rathbone D (1992) Cities and administration in
Roman Egypt. The Journal of Roman Studies 82: 107127.
Butcher K (2003) Roman Syria and the Near East. London: British
Museum Press.
Christie N (ed.) Landscapes of Change. Rural Evolutions in Late
Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2004. ISBN 1-84014-617-6.
Hingley R (2005) Globalizing Roman Culture. Unity, Diversity and
Empire. London: Routledge.
Millar F (1993) The Roman Near East, 31BCAD 337. Harvard:
Harvard University Press.
Raddice B (1963) The Letters of the Younger Pliny. Penguin
Classics.
Walbank MEH (1997) The foundation and planning of Roman
Corinth. Journal of Roman Archaeology 10: 95130.
Waters M (1995) Globalization. London: Routledge.
Wells C (1984) The Roman Empire. London: Fontana.
Whittaker C. R (1994) Frontiers of the Roman Empire. Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wiseman J (1979) Corinth and Rome 1: 228 B.C. A.D. 267.
Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt II.7: 438538.

898 ASIA, WEST/Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization

Southern Levant,
Bronze Age Metal
Production
and Utilization

The first known use of metals in the Southern Levant

is during the Chalcolithic period (end of fifth to most
of the fourth millennium BC). Dating from that time
more than 500 metal objects have been found mainly
in hoards, burials, and habitation remains, most of
the metals come from sites in the southern part of
Israel and Jordan and very rarely from beyond the
center of Israel and north of Nahal Qanah. Most of
the metals belong to two major categories and there is
also a third, minor category:

Currently, no production remains or production sites of

these prestige/cult objects have been found.
2. Unalloyed copper tools comprising mainly of
relatively thick and short bladed objects (axes, adzes,
and chisels) and points (awls and/or drills) made from
a smelted copper ore cast into an open mold and then
hammered and annealed into their final shape and
their blades or points hardness properties. The copper
tools were produced in the Chalcolithic villages on the
banks of the Beer-Sheva valley where slag fragments,
clay crucibles, some possible furnace lining pieces,
copper prills and amorphous lumps were found beside
high-grade carbonated copper ore (cuprit). The ore
was collected and selected in the area of Feinan in
Trans-Jordan and transported to the Northern Negev
villages some 150 km to the north to be smelted there
for the local production of these copper objects.
3. A group of eight gold (Au) and electrum (Au up
to 30% Ag) solid rings was found in Nahal Qanah
cave. This unique find, with no dated parallels, is
attributed by the excavators to the Chalcolithic period
based upon local stratigraphic and geological reasons
and 14C dating of ground samples from the vicinity of
the find in the cave. Surface analyses of these objects
revealed a surface gold enrichment caused by the depletion of silver and the copper traces. This effect could be
caused naturally by deposition, but could as well result
artificially at the time of production in order to achieve
a yellow color for the electrum rings rich in silver.
During the Chalcolithic (copper stone) era at least
two, if not three different metal industries of different
metals beside copper were operating and left their products in the Southern Levant.

1. Prestige/cult elaborated and complex-shaped

objects made of copper (Cu) alloyed (either by a
deliberate choice of complex minerals or by adding
several minerals together) with distinct amount of
antimony (Sb) or nickel(Ni) and arsenic(As). They
were cast in a lost wax technique into single closed
clay molds and then polished into their final shining
gray or gold like colors depending on the amount of
antimony or nickel and arsenic in the copper. The
biggest hoard (416 metal objects) comprising mainly
of these highly artistically complex-shaped objects
was found hidden in a remote cave (the cave of the
treasure) in Nahal Mishmar, Judean desert, Israel,
wrapped in a straw mat. The origin of the complex
source material for the production of these objects is
currently unknown. The nearest suitable ore is in Trans
Caucasus and Azerbaijan more then 1500 km from
the finding sites of the objects. Several clay and stone
cores and clay molds remains were petrographically
analyzed and the results point to a possible local production within the metals distribution zone in Israel.

During the next thousand years of the Early Bronze

(end of fourth to end of third millennium BC), the
same unalloyed copper production of the Chalcolith
(1) continued to produce short blades and points as
before. The same metal technique was now used for
the novel production of long-blade weapons (riveted
daggers and knives, heavy tanged swords, and epsilonshaped axes). The same copper production technique
of casting into an open mold and then hammering
and annealing was now used to produce all other
metals as well, including jewelry of thin plates, sometimes decorated, and elongated thin wires (mainly for
rings and bracelets) made of unalloyed copper as well
as from silver (first appearance) and gold. Archaeological remains of Early Bronze copper mining and
copper smelting in the vicinity of the mines have been
found in Trans-Jordan (Feinan), the Arava valley
(Timnah), and Southern Sinai. The only remains of
metal production are those of copper and include
copper slag, prills, and amorphous copper lumps as
well as small shallow ball-shaped clay crucibles with

Sariel Shalev, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Chalcolithic (Copper Age period) A phase in the
development of human culture in which the use of early metal
tools appeared alongside the use of stone tools.
Levant A geographical term that refers to a large area in
Southwest Asia, south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the
Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Arabian Desert in the south,
and Mesopotamia to the east.
Tel Dan Also known as Tel el-Qadi , an archaeological site in
Israel in the Upper Galilee next to the Golan Heights.

ASIA, WEST/Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization 899

a socket for inserting wooden handle. In the Early

Bronze I site of the Ashkelon Marina in the southern
part of the Israeli coast, small shallow open pits,
probably for the melting of copper in a crucible,
were found beside copper industrial remains. Most
of the metal products are found in burials mainly
from the Early Bronze I. The same types of metals
continue to be found in sites and tombs throughout
the whole Early Bronze and all over the local distribution map of Early Bronze sites. A single hoard of copper
objects probably from the Early Bronze I was found
with no related archaeological context in the fields of
Kfar Monash. During the Early Bronze period the
Southern Levant metal industry became more industrialized and homogenous in its production modes and
the products typology. For the first time in the South
Levantine metal history, significant typological and
technological affiliations to the growing metal industries in the two major imperial centers (Egypt and
Mesopotamia) on both sides of the Fertile Crescent
are visible. During the whole Early Bronze age there is
no archaeometallurgical evidence for bronze production and no bronze objects were used during this period
in the Southern Levant (see Asia, West: Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures).
More than 500 metal objects have been found that
date to the Middle Bronze age (end of third to middle
of second millennium BC). The development of more
complex weapons (longer daggers, swords, complex
battle axes, etc.) was possible by alloying the copper
with arsenic at the beginning and tin (Sn) later to
produce arsenical copper and tin bronze. These
changes in the metal properties of weapons are
reflected in a kind of a mirror image in the composition of small objects like toggle pins that were probably made mainly from scrap re-melting. Lead (Pb) is
starting to play a greater role as a major alloy for
thick and relatively big casts of copper-based objects,
mainly of battle axes at this period.
During the Late Bronze age (second half of second
millennium BC) more than 400 metal artifacts were
found (c. 200 blade weapons, 140 metal vessels, some
working tools and small arrow heads and decorative objects). All the blades analyzed were found to
be made of tinbronze and most of all other copperbase objects are either tinbronze alloy or have tin in
their metal as impurity. At this stage in history, large
quantities of copper and tin ingots are found all over
the coasts of the Mediterranean and in several shipwrecks under the sea, mainly in the southern coast
of Turkey.
Copper and copper-base metals continued to be the
major metal in use during the first part of the Iron age
(end of second to beginning of first millennium BC).

Bronze scrap re-melting remains (mainly v-shaped

clay crucibles, slags, clay tuyers) and structures of
open camp fires full of metal production remains
were found in several sites in Israel associated mainly
with the Philistines and the Sea People settlements on
the coast (i.e., Tel Qasile, Tel Gerisa, Tel Dor) and Tel
Dan in the north of Israel. Only later in the Iron Age
metallic did iron start to play a major role as a base
metal for tools and weapons.
See also: Asia, West: Southern Levant, Chalcolithic

Cultures.

Further Reading
Budd P, Pollard AM, Scaife B, and Thomas RG (1995) Oxide
ingots, recycling and the Mediterranean metal trade. Journal of
Mediterranean Archaeology 8(1): 13.
Gershuny L (1985) Bronze Vessels from Israel and Jordan. Prahistorische Bronzefunde II, 6 (Munchen).
Hauptmann A (2000) Zur fruhen metallurgie des kupfers in Fenan/
Jordanien. Der Anschnitt Beiheft 11: 1236.
Levy TE and Shalev S (1989) Prehistoric metalworking in the
Southern Levant: Archaeometallurgical and social perspectives.
World Archaeology 20(3): 352372.
Miron E (1992) Axes and Adzes from Canaan. PBF IX, 19.
Philip G (1989) Metal Weapons of the Early and Middle Bronze
Age in SyriaPalestine. BAR Int. Series 526.
Philip G (1991) Tin, arsenic, lead: Alloying practices in SyriaPalestine around 2000 BC. Levant XXIII: 93104.
Shalev S (1988) Redating the Philistine Sword at the British Museum: A case study in typology and technology. Oxford Journal
of Archaeology 7(3): 303311.
Shalev S (1993) Metal production and society at Tel Dan, In:
Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990, Proceedings of the Second
International Congress on Biblical Archaeology. pp. 5765.
Shalev S (1994) The change in metal production from the Chalcolithic period to the Early Bronze age in Israel and Jordan. Antiquity 68: 630637.
Shalev S (1996) Archaeometallurgy in Israel: The impact of the
material on the choice of shape, size and colour of ancient
products. In: Archaeometry 94, The Proceedings of the Twentyninth International Symposium on Archaeometry, pp. 1115.
Ankara: Tubitak.
Shalev S (2002) Metal Artifacts. In: Kempinski A. Tel Kabri The
19861993 Excavation Seasons. pp. 307318. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv
University, Institute of Archaeology, Monograph Series 20.
Shalev S (2003) Early Bronze Age I copper production on the coast
of Israel: Archaeometallurgical analysis of finds from AshkelonAfridar. In: Potts T, Roaf M, and Stein D (eds.) Culture through
Objects: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of P.R.S.
Moorey, pp. 313324. Oxford: Griffith Institute.
Shalev S (2004) Swords and Daggers in Late Bronze Age Canaan.
PBF IV, 13).
Shalev S and Northover JP (1993) The metallurgy of the Nahal
Mishmar Hoard reconsidered. Archaeometry 35(1): 3547.
Tadmor M, Kedem D, Begemann F, Hauptmann A, Pernicka E, and
Schmitt-Strecker S (1995) The Nahal Mishmar Hoard from the
Judean Desert: Technology, composition, and provenance.
Atiqot XXVII: 95148.

900 ASIA, WEST/Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures

Southern Levant,
Chalcolithic Cultures

of all the cave sites is Nahal Mishmar, also known as

the Cave of the Treasure because of the hoard of over
400 metal artifacts discovered there.

Jonathan M Golden, Drew University, Madison,

NJ, USA

Diagnostic Features

2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Chalcolithic Culture-historical-chronological period, literally,
CopperStone Age, denoting a period of incipient metal use,
while stone remained a primary technological medium.
ossuary Also known as bone box, or charnel house, a
receptacle made of ceramic or stone used to hold secondary
human remains (e.g., long bones). Ossuaries are often rectilinear
in form with a string cut lid, and are often decorated with
painted and applied designs (e.g., human faces).

Overview
The Chalcolithic (c. 47003500 BC) was a period of
major change throughout societies of the southern
Levant. Basic food production systems of the Neolithic gave way to new subsistence strategies and
technologies, and broad changes in overall economic
organization (e.g., the rise of craft specialization) are
evident. Changes in social organization as well have
been observed with early signs of social inequality
and the emergence of elite groups.
Key Sites/Settlement Patterns

The Chalcolithic culture spread across most of the

southern Levant, from the south, near Eilat, up to the
Golan in the north, and from the Mediterranean coast
east past the Rift Valley (Figure 1). One of the most
important settlement sites, Teleilat Ghassul (Jordan),
has been treated as a type site, though it may have
been abandoned before the end of the period. The Beer
Sheva sites of the northern Negev (e.g., Abu Matar and
Bir es-Safadi) have also been treated as type sites,
though they were not occupied during the earliest
part of the Chalcolithic. Other key sites include
the cluster of settlements that comprise the Golan
subregional culture and Grar, Gilat, and Shiqmim,
in the northern Negev. There was a sizeable mobile
(e.g., pastoral-nomadic) population in the region as
well in addition to the settled peoples. Shiqmim has
the only extramural cemetery that is directly related to
a Chalcolithic settlement, though in recent years a
number of very important cave tomb sites have been
discovered. These tombs include Peqiin, Nahal
Qanah, and Givat Ha-oranim. The most spectacular

Chalcolithic material culture is usually easily distinguished from that of other periods, though internal
subchronologies are still lacking. Key diagnostic
features include ceramic forms such as V-shape
bowls, churns, and hole-mouth jars with lug handles;
red painted bands are a common form of decoration.
Several distinct classes of sculpted figurines have been
observed, including the schematic violin-shape figurines (Figure 2), the more naturalistic ivory figurines,
pillar figurines, especially in the Golan, and human
heads made of basalt. Basalt was also used to make a
range of vessels, most notably bowls and fenestrated
stands. The lithic assemblage is noted for axes and
awls, along with a variety of blade tools, including
microblades made from a fine flint, and fan-shape
scrapers made from the so-called tabular flint.
A novel material at the time was metal, mainly copper
and copper with arsenic and antimony, along with one
rare instance of gold and gold alloys.

Economic Organization
Subsistence

Subsistence strategies of the Chalcolithic relied on a

combination of farming and herding/animal husbandry. Two-rowed barley was the most common
crop followed by wheat and lentil. Based on studies
of archaeobotanical remains, specifically, phytoliths,
it appears that simple irrigation techniques were used
to assist in the cultivation of wheat and barley. Another breakthrough in farming technology was the
use of cattle for traction in plowing, a development
reflected in the faunal assemblage.
Of course, animals also served as a primary source of
food, with sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs being consumed at most sites (see Animal Domestication),
though the latter are rare at sites where there is less
rainfall. There was also a growing dependence on products such as wool and dairy, known as the secondary
products revolution, evidenced by the presence of
churns and an older population of female animals in
the faunal assemblage. The low frequency of pulses at
some sites (e.g., Shiqmim) suggests that the people were
raising crops for fodder (see Plant Domestication).
Craft Specialization

The success of these subsistence strategies no

doubt freed up some time for dabbling in specialized

ASIA, WEST/Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures 901

Peqi'in
Kabri
N

Sea of
Galilee

Akko
Haifa

Rasm Harbush

G O L A N

Yiftahel

Ya

Megadim
'Afula

Tell eshShuna (N)

Irbid

Megiddo
Neve Ur
Mediterranean

Beth Shean

Sea

Meser

Pella

Tel Tsaf
Abu Habil

Farah(N)
Nahal
Qanah

Tel Aviv

Nablus

Wadi Rabah

Amman

Azor

Palmahim

Jericho

Gezer

Ben Shemen
Yehud
Shoham(N)

Abu Hamid

Jordan
R

Bene Berak
Giv'atayim

Adeimah

Jerusalem

T. Batashi

Tuleilat
Ghassul

W. Zeita
Dead
Tel 'Erani

Gaza

En Gedi
Grar
Gilat

Kissufim

N. Mishmar

Tel
Halif

Tel Arad

Beersheva

Kilometers

Arad

Sea

40
NEGEV

Kerak

asa

an

id

.F

Modern City/ Town

W.H

Archaeological Site

W. Mujib

Bab edh-Dhra

Bir es-Safadi
Horvat Beter
Abu Matar
A R
A V
A

Shiqmim

rmuk R .

MAKTESH
RAMON

Figure 1 Map of Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in the southern Levant (courtesy of Y. Rowan).

production activities, and, in time, several craft industries, including ceramic production, textiles, basalt
and ivory carving, and metallurgy, would emerge.
Chalcolithic ceramic production reached a new level
with a wide variety of forms and technological innovations such as the earliest use of the slow wheel. Basalt
bowls and the elegant fenestrated and high-footed
incense stands reflect a high level of craftsmanship in
the area of groundstone production. Though little is
known about their manufacture, the quality of finished
ivory goods, including human figurines and perforated

tusks, also attests to the work of highly skilled craftspeople. Evidence for textile production comes in the
form of loom weights and spindle whorls, floral
remains such as preserved linseed (flax), tabular scrapers used as sheers, and cloth impressions preserved on
the bases of ceramic vessels; in rare cases such as the
Cave of the Treasure (Nahal Mishmar) and the Cave of
the Warrior, the textiles have been preserved.
The most outstanding technological development of the Chalcolithic was the local inception of
copper. Though the initial technology may have been

902 ASIA, WEST/Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures

Figure 2 Chalcolithic figurines: (a) ivory female from Bir es-Safadi (by J. Golden, adapted from Perrot 1968: Pl. 5); (b) male ivory from
Bir es-Safadi (by J. Golden, adapted from Perrot 1959: Pl.II); (c) stone violin-shaped figurine from Gilat (by J. Golden, adapted from Alon
and Levy 1989); (d) bone anthropomorphic figurine with violin shaped elements (by J. Golden, adapted from Levy and Golden 1996) (not
drawn to scale).

introduced from elsewhere, by midway through the

period, local smiths were producing metal at an
advanced level. Two distinct industries have been identified: one based on the open-casting and hammering of
relatively pure copper to manufacture tool-shaped
goods; and another involving the casting (lost-wax) of
complex metals (i.e., copper with arsenic and antimony) to manufacture a range of goods, some quite elaborate in design (see Figure 3). Evidence for the pure
copper industry is known from village workshops
such as that of Abu Matar and Shiqmim, while evidence for the complex metals industry is extremely
rare. There are now, however, some indications that
the two industries may have overlapped more than
previously thought, and new clues pointing to the
local production of complex metals have begun to
surface (see Metals: Primary Production Studies of).
A staple surplus would have been required to support the activities of craft specialists that were engaged
in nonfood production, and evidence for communal
storage facilities has been found at large central
sites such as Gilat and Ghassul, suggesting a surplus
of agricultural products, probably wheat or barley.
The people of the Chalcolithic also engaged in longdistance trade, as material used to manufacture
many of the fancy metal goods probably came from
distant sources. Obsidian found at Gilat can be traced
to sources in Turkey, and it is possible that some
goods, such as ivory or the gold from Nahal Qanah,
came from Egypt.

Social and Political Organization

Inferences concerning social organization can be
made based on the discovery of status symbols and

Figure 3 Cast metal objects: (a) Ibex Standard from Nahal

Mishmar; (b) vessel from Nahal Mishmar hoard (a and b by
J. Golden adapted from Bar-Adon 1980: 44, No. 17; and 107,
No. 158); (c) standard from Givat Ha-Oranim (by J. Golden,
adapted from Namdar et al. 2004: 5.2:1).

luxury goods, and the hoard and burial contexts in

which they are usually found. The complex metals
serve as a good example, where great effort and
expenditure went into the production of goods,
which in the end, were buried, either in small caches
or deep in some burial cave. The cave tombs themselves seem to reflect some form of social hierarchy
(see Social Inequality, Development of); a tomb built
of mud bricks was recently discovered at the site of
Kissufim Road. The wealthier burials often contained
a burial kit consisting of fancy items made of basalt,
ivory, and metal, along with fine ceramics (e.g.,
Cream Ware) and ceramic ossuaries, or bone boxes
that are usually decorated (see Figure 4). Nahal

ASIA, WEST/Southern Levant, Chalcolithic Cultures 903

Figure 4 Ceramic ossuary from the Chalcolithic cave tomb at

Peqiin (drawing by J. Golden, after Gal et al. 1999).

Qanah contains the earliest gold in the region along

with several copper and copper alloy goods, and
objects. In most cases, the tombs contained the
remains of multiple individuals, suggesting that they
were not dedicated to any one individual, but perhaps
to certain lineages. Peqiin, which had at least 250
ceramic ossuaries, and the remains of at least 450
individuals, was probably used over the course of
several generations. While the rare exotic goods and
rich tombs indicate that not all people had equal
access to wealth and status, differences in house size
have not been observed at the settlement sites, which
might be expected were there marked variation in
social status (see Settlement System Analysis; Household Archaeology; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites).
It is difficult to say much about political organization in Chalcolithic societies. There has been considerable debate regarding this, with some scholars
arguing that there was little evidence for sociopolitical complexity, while others disagree. It is possible
that the aforementioned cave tombs contained the
burials of political leaders, but it is difficult to distinguish archaeologically between evidence for wealth
and power. Nahal Mishmar, where there was a concentration of over 200 metal maceheads, may provide
evidence for organized conflict.

Ritual and Religious Practice

There is a wealth of material representing ritual and
religious practice during the Chalcolithic, though
much of it remains enigmatic (see Ritual, Religion,
and Ideology). The well-known ceramic statues from
Gilat (Gilat Lady and Ram with Cornets) likely
represent ritual icons or paraphernalia. There are
also smaller figurines that may have been used in

ritual practice. Violin-shape figurines have been

found at sites such as Peqiin, Ghassul, and Gilat
where there are over 50 examples made from a variety of materials, many directly associated with the
sanctuary. The ivory figurines appear mainly in the
Beer Sheva area, and a unique bone figurine blending
elements of the two traditions has been found at
Shiqmim. Other evidence for cultic practice includes
massebot, or standing stones found at a number of
sites, and fenestrated incense burners, named as such
because traces of charring as well as their form suggest they were used for the burning of organic material. Sites with cultic architecture include Ein Gedi,
Gilat, and Teleilat Ghassul, where archaeologists
have excavated clusters of building and open courts
identified as temple complexes. At Ghassul, portions
of murals depicting what appear to be mythical figures have been preserved.
See also: Animal Domestication; Asia, West: Archaeol-

ogy of the Near East: The Levant; Household Archaeology; Metals: Primary Production Studies of; Plant
Domestication; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Settlement System Analysis; Social Inequality, Development of; Spatial Analysis Within Households and
Sites.

Further Reading
Bar Adon P (1980) The Cave of the Treasure. Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Journal.
Epstein C (1998) The Chalcolithic Culture of the Golan. (with a
contribution by Tamar Noy). Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities
Authority.
Gilead I (1988) The Chalcolithic period in the Levant. Journal of
World Prehistory 2: 397443.
Golden J (1998) Dawn of the Metal Age: The Origins of
Social Complexity in the Southern Levant. London: Equinox
Publishing.
Gopher A and Tsuk T (1996) Monograph Series of the Institute of
Archaeology: The Nahal Qanah Cave: Earliest Gold in the
Southern Levant. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University.
Levy TE (1986) The Chalcolithic period. Biblical Archaeologist 49:
83106.
Levy TE (ed.) (2006) Anthropology, Archaeology and Cult The
Chalcolithic Sanctuary at Gilat, Negev Desert, Israel. London:
Equinox Publishing.
Lovell JL (2001) BAR International Series 974: The Late Neolithic
and Chalcolithic Periods in the Southern Levant: New Data
from Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Perrot J (1993) Beersheba: The Chalcolithic settlements. In: AviYonah M and Stern E (eds.) NEAEHL, vol. 1, p. 161163.
Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Carta.
Scheftelowitz B and Oren E (1997) Givat haoranim (Nahal
Barequet). New Antiquities: Recent Discoveries from Archaeological Excavations in Israel, p. 20. Jerusalem: The Israel
Museum.
Rowan Y and Golden J (in prep.) The Chalcolithic of the southern
Levant. Journal of World Prehistory.

904 ASIA, WEST/Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures

Turkey, Paleolithic
Cultures
Marcel Otte, Universite de Lie`ge, Lie`ge, Belgium
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Acheulean An archaeological industry of stone tool
manufacture associated with prehistoric hominins during
the Lower Palaeolithic era across Africa and much of Asia
and Europe.
Middle Palaeolithic Second subdivision of the Paleolithic or
Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Upper Palaeolithic Third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic
or Old Stone Age.

The modern territory of Turkey extends in latitude

more than 2000 km. In the east, it penetrates the
Asian continent to the Iranian border. Its western
extremity belongs to Balkan Europe, beyond the
Marmara Sea. Geographically, politically, and archaeologically, this immense country thus establishes
the link between the three continents of the Old
World, Africa included. In effect, the varied relief

of the western plateaus were characterized to the

east by the extension of the Rift delineating the
Levantine coast. Further still, southeast Anatolia
belongs primarily to Mesopotamia, opening toward
Iraq and Iran. The north, bordered by the Black
Sea and the Caucasus, seems to have limited cultural currents. In contrast, the southern coast on the
Mediterranean favored different forms of exchange
from the Levant to Europe (see Europe: Paleolithic
Raw Material Provenance Studies). Despite its size
and important geographic position, Palaeolithic
Turkey has been the subject of only a few foreign
research projects. However, different Turkish institutions have undertaken numerous surveys, evidencing
the potential abundance of sites to be excavated.
Having participated in several field campaigns with
our Turkish friends and various foreign colleagues,
we present here a summary of essential knowledge
(Figure 1).
The earliest traces of human occupations were
apparently discovered at Dursunlu, in central Anatolia at the bottom of a brown coal quarry. A small
series of artifacts were found in association with
Lower Pleistocene faunal remains, dated to around a
million years ago. Artifacts include irregular flakes
on rough rocks and small worked cobbles. The

400 km

Yarimburgaz
rm

ak

lI

zi
Ki

Sakarya

ANKARA
te

ra

ph

Eu

Kalatepe

S,ehremuz

Dursunlu

Karain
Okuzini

T A U

Beldibi
Belbasi

Figure 1 Localization of the main sites mentioned in the text.

Uag
%izli

ASIA, WEST/Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures 905

Lower Palaeolithic layer, dated to around 400 000

years ago, seems to be attached to the same tradition:
unprepared flakes, worked cobbles. This extends the
European traditions present in Bulgaria to the edge of
the Marmara Sea (Figure 2).
The situation is completely different in eastern
Anatolia: the high basins of the Euphrates and its
tributaries are encased in deep limestone deposits
with abundant flint sources. This vast geographic area

technology has no relationship to the Acheulean, already present in Israel and Iran. This part of Anatolia
seems to belong to Eurasian traditions of this period,
such as have been found at Dmanisi in Georgia,
Korolevo in the Ukraine, and Riwat in Pakistan.
In European Turkey, the cave of Yarmburgaz was
excavated by a team from the University of Istanbul
and the University of California at Berkeley. In addition to interesting Neolithic phases represented, a

12

11

10
5

0
cm

15

14

13
16
Figure 2 Yarmburgaz, Lower Palaeolithic. Retouched flake tools. After Kuhn SL, Arsebuk G, and Clark Howell F (1996) The Middle
Pleistocene lithic assemblage from Yarmburgaz cave, Turkey. Paleorient 22(1): 3149.

906 ASIA, WEST/Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures

contains, for the most part, Acheulean traditions of

African origin, as in the southern Levant and the
northern Caucasus. However, the lack of precise
stratigraphic context (apart from the depth of the
geological stage) prevents dating of the sequence,
apparently of long duration, if one uses the technotypology of bifaces. A single site, Sehremuz, has yielded
a well-preserved industry which has been subjected to
functional analysis.
In central Anatolia, at Kalatepe, the excavation of
a Neolithic tell also yielded a perfectly preserved
Acheulean industry on obsidian. Still being studied,
it appears to correspond to the workshops present in
this region where obsidian is abundant. Acheulean
diffusion continues in this way toward the western
part of the Anatolian plateau, but apparently becomes
more limited as bifaces become rarer.
After pioneering research by Professor I. Kokten from
Ankara, followed by the excavations by I. Yalcinkaya
and H. J. Muller-Beck, we have continued the study of a

long stratigraphic sequence in the Karain caves near

Antalya. Chamber E has yielded the longest sequence,
some 10 m thick and still being excavated. Available
dates show that the middle assemblages are situated
around 300 000400 000 years ago, but the base
remains undated. Briefly, we can state that the base
has assemblages containing rough, unprepared,
flakes, similar to those found at Dursunlu. The middle
phase corresponds to the European Charentian, with
irregular debitage, massive platforms, thick bulbs, and
tools with scalar retouch. The upper part of the sequence, representing the last 100 000 years, contains
increasingly elaborate Levallois industries. A few
isolated Neanderthal teeth were found associated
with the Upper Mousterian. The sequence ends with
dispersed Epipalaeolithic traces (Figure 3).
A dichotomy is observed regarding lithic raw
material use: the Charentian is made of green or
red radiolarite of local origin while Levallois methods
were applied to flint of homogeneous texture. Thus,

1 2

3 cm

Karain E, arch. entity I

Karain E, arch. entity C

Figure 3 Karain E, Middle Palaeolithic. Artifacts from the Charentian (lower) and the Levallois (upper) industries. After Otte et al.
(1996) Paleolithique ancien de Karan (Turquie). Anthropologie et Prehistoire 107: 149156.

ASIA, WEST/Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures 907

near natural outcrops (e.g., in a radius of 100 km

around Karain), numerous workshops evidencing
Levallois reduction are present, from which certain
elements were transported over long distances, where
they appear at sites as intrusive. As during the Acheulean, the basins of the eastern rivers were also
abundantly used as Middle Palaeolithic quarries.
Surface survey has shown the presence of numerous
workshops characterized by utilization of methods
similar to those of the Levant. The Anatolian Middle
Palaeolithic thus ends with a dichotomy, perhaps partially linked to accessibility of lithic raw materials. In
the mountainous arc joining the Taurus and the
Zagros, the Charentian industries, typically involving radiolarite, also contain numerous heavily
retouched tools. In the central basins, assemblages
of Levallois character, made on flint, evoke the
Levant all the more as they sometimes include bifacial
pieces, calling to mind the Yabrudian.
At the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, all of
these assemblages apparently disappeared (as well as
the populations making them?), being replaced by
two entirely different traditions. At the site of Karain
B, the Charentian is replaced by the abrupt appearance of a classic Aurignacian, with carinated tools
and finely retouched Dufour bladelets. If not for the
absence of a bone industry, this Aurignacian would be
identical to that found in Georgia and Iran. It could
thus correspond to a movement coming out of
Central Asia, related to modern humans (see Modern
Humans, Emergence of) (Figure 4).
By contrast, in the Hatay region, in the Turkish
Levant, the cave of Ucagizli, formerly excavated by
Kokten, and subsequently by S. Kuhn and a Turkish
team, has yielded a completely different industry.
This industry is attributed to the Early Upper
Palaeolithic, dated to 32 000 BP, and contains long,
regular blades, sometimes retouched into curved
backed points. Technological and typological criteria
clearly associated these assemblages to the Ahmarian
of the Near East, for which it would represent a
recent phase and the northernmost expansion from
its origin in the Negev, defined recently by A. E.
Marks. The assemblages themselves seem to follow
Nilotic traditions. At the Turkish site, pendants have
also been discovered, which are the earliest examples, clearly original to the Anatolian Palaeolithic
(Figure 5).
A new hiatus apparently seems to have taken
place following the Early Upper Palaeolithic. To our
knowledge, the late Aurignacian is not present in
Turkey and the Ahmarian disappears.
The sequence resumes around 18 000 BP, present
in the upper part of Karain B, more particularly at

2 3 cm

Figure 4 Karain B, Early Upper Palaeolithic. Artifacts from the

Aurignacian industry. After Yalcinkaya I and Otte M (2000) Debut
du Paleolithique superieur a` Karain (Turquie). LAnthropologie
104: 5162.

4
0

2 3 cm

6
5
Figure 5 Ucagizli, Early Upper Palaeolithic. Artifacts from the
Ahmarian industry. After Kuhn SL, Stiner MC, and Gulec E (1999)
Initial Upper Palaeolithic in south-central Turkey and its regional
context: A preliminary report. Antiquity 73: 505517.

okuzini, and finally at some plateau sites, at Tel Ilipinar or Pinarbasi. Traces of a Late Mesolithic were
discovered at Beldibi and Belbasi, near Antalya.
kuzini are
The two sequences of Karain B and O
complementary and additionally geographically close

908 ASIA, WEST/Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures

Neolithic (Gobekli Tepe, Nevali Cori). Through such

evidence, one thus recognizes the extreme cultural
diversity represented by Anatolia, to which the prehistory of the Near East is indebted.
See also: Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures; Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies; Europe, Eastern,
Peopling of; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Modern Humans, Emergence of.
0

3 cm

3
2

kuzini Late Upper Palaeolithic. Artifacts from the

Figure 6 O
three lithic phases. After Otte M, Yalcinkaya I, Leotard J-M, et al.
kuzini cave (SW Anatolia) and its
(1995) The Epi-Palaeolithic of O
mobiliary art. Antiquity 69: 931944.

(only a few kilometers between the two sites). From

18 000 to 16 000 BP, the assemblages contain short,
retouched blades with curved back, producing points
similar to Azilian or Kebaran points. The toolkits
increasingly tend toward bladelets segmented to make
microlithic armatures, with a true developmental
break in technology (Figure 6).
Evidence of sedentism appear (gathering of terrestrial mollusks, grinding), although the economy
remains hunting-based (wild sheep and goats) until
the Holocene. If one takes into account other evidence
of Holocene hunters, located in coastal regions, it is
possible to imagine that the hunter-gatherer way of
life persisted in these areas while the Neolithic became
well established on the central plateaus (e.g., at Catal
Huyuk). If, moreover, we consider the eastern part
of this vast country (Urfa, Diabakyr), we note the
presence of a very early and prestigious pre-pottery

Further Reading
Bar-Yosef O (1994) The Lower Palaeolithic in the Levant. Journal
of World Prehistory 8(3): 211265.
Celiberti V, Barsky D, Cauche D, et al. (2004) Les industries lithiques archaques du site de Dmanisi, Georgie. In: BAR
International Series 1272 : Section 4 : Human origins and the
Lower Palaeolithic. General sessions and posters. Proceedings of
the XIVth international Congress of the UISPP, 28 September
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B
BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Michael B Schiffer, University of Arizona, Tucson,
AZ, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
behavioral archaeology A theoretical program for studying
the interactions of people and artifacts in all times and all
places, formulated by J. Jefferson Reid, Michael B. Schiffer,
and William Rathje at the University of Arizona during the
early 1970s.
processual archaeology A program for an explicitly scientific
archaeology dedicated to studying culture process that arose
during the early 1960s at the University of Chicago under the
leadership of Lewis R. Binford.
Pueblos Apartment-like dwellings of modern Puebloan people
of the northern American Southwest and their ancestors, usually
built of stone, occasionally of adobe.

Historical Foundations
An outgrowth of the new archaeology or processualism, behavioral archaeology emerged at the University of Arizona in the early 1970s (see Processual
Archaeology). During these years, processual archaeology was approaching its peak popularity, practiced
by a coterie of recruits exposed to its tenets in graduate school. However, seeking to carve out niches in the
discipline, many young processualists eschewed establishment of a theoretical orthodoxy and went their
separate ways. Some employed anthropological theories; others introduced theories from systems engineering, economics, and ecology; and a few drew
inspiration from the philosophy of science. As a consequence, various schools of processualism arose and
began to feud with each other, initiating a period of
great intellectual ferment.
The prospect of an archaeology riven by factions
stimulated one of behavioral archaeologys first contributions. While still a graduate student at Arizona,
J. Jefferson Reid delineated a common ground on
which all archaeologists could stand. His proposal
consisted of several fundamental tenets. First, archaeology was defined as the discipline that studies relationships between human behavior and material

culture in all times and all places. Second, depending

on their training and interests, archaeologists could
ask historical (particular, idiographic) or scientific
(general, nomothetic) research questions. Thus, archaeology has both historical and scientific components, and the flow of questions and findings among
them contributes to the disciplines integration. Third,
four strategies of a behavioral archaeology can be
delineated on the basis of the kind of questions being
asked (historical or scientific) and the temporal referents of the behavior and material culture being studied
(past or present). These four strategies encompassed
archaeologies of every variety, new and old, and also
hinted at future developments.
In collaboration with Michael B. Schiffer, a fellow
graduate student, and William L. Rathje, a young
faculty member at Arizona, J. Jefferson Reid fleshed
out these ideas and developed their implications for
archaeological practice.
The Four Strategies

Strategy 1 is the study of past material culture in order

to answer historical questions descriptive and explanatory about past human behavior and societies,
and encompasses most of prehistoric, historical, classical, and industrial archaeologies. This strategy was
expected to remain the core of archaeology, and it has.
In strategy 2, which includes experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology (see Experimental Archaeology), one asks scientific questions of present-day
material culture in order to craft principles useful for
studying past behavior. Since the disciplines inception,
archaeologists have conducted experiments and made
observations in living societies, but these activities
were sporadic, unsystematic, and did not lead to the
cumulative growth of principles. Behavioralists anticipated that as the need for principles became more
widely appreciated, strategy 2 would undergo a dramatic expansion. These forecasts have been realized,
for archaeologists now perform experiments on a
bewildering array of subjects and carry out ethnoarchaeological research in both traditional and industrial
societies. As predicted, both experimental archaeology
and ethnoarchaeology, now often undertaken with

910 BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY

rigorous research designs that build on previous studies, have generated numerous principles; these mounting scientific products have profoundly affected the
understanding of past lifeways, especially those of
hunter-gatherer and mid-level societies.
Strategy 3 embodies the long-standing belief that
archaeology alone has access to records of long-term
behavioral change. Thus, argued processualists such
as Fred Plog, the study of past material culture
could enable archaeologists to formulate principles
for explaining change in past (and present) human
behavior and societies. Although Reid and his collaborators expected that strategy 3 would expand rapidly,
this has not happened. For the most part, archaeologists continue to borrow artifact-free theory (now
called social theory) from other disciplines rather
than create explanatory principles more suitable for
engaging the material record of the past.
Finally, the advent of William L. Rathjes Le Projet
du Garbage led to the designation of a fourth strategy: the study of modern material culture to address
historical questions about modern behavior, especially in industrial societies. Arguing that archaeology
uniquely possessed the conceptual tools for handling
the artifacts of ongoing societies, behavioralists
believed that this strategy would enjoy a rapid florescence. Such research continues to increase and diversify, but slowly. Ironically, several archaeologists
who immediately appreciated the possibilities of
strategy 4, including Richard Wilk and Daniel Miller,
became cultural anthropologists. Rathjes garbage
project remains the paradigmatic example of strategy
4 research.
When published in 1975, the four strategies served
a useful purpose, calling attention to decades-long
trends in the disciplines development, discerning
emerging research frontiers, and giving impetus to
the expansion of experimental and ethnoarchaeological research. However, the scheme was far less
successful in achieving its aim of reintegrating the
discipline. Indeed, beginning in the mid-1980s, under
the impacts of postprocessualism and evolutionism,
the discipline continued to fission into warring camps.
Archaeological Inference

Prior to the publication of the four strategies, behavioralists had taken issue with the epistemological
foundations of processualism, that is, its fundamental
assumptions about how archaeologists fashion inferences about past human behavior. Processualists
expounded a model of inference that went approximately as follows. Because human behavior is
patterned, the archaeological record (a product of
human behavior) also must be patterned. Therefore,

by applying pattern-discovery statistics to archaeological materials, one can extract statistical patterns
that directly reflect past behavioral patterns. The
principles enabling processual inference were called
correlates, which codified patterns of human behavior in relation to material culture. Thus, in his classic
inference of marital residence patterns at Broken
K Pueblo, in east-central Arizona, James N. Hill
employed a correlate linking matrilocal residence to
the spatial distribution of female-associated stylistic
attributes of pottery.
Schiffer and Reid argued that the processual model
of inference, though appealing in its simplicity, nonetheless failed to account for processes that intervened
between past behaviors of interest and present-day
properties of the archaeological record, the latter
manifest as formal, quantitative, spatial, and relational (associational) variability. These intervening
processes were termed formation processes of the
archaeological record, and encompass cultural phenomena such as trash disposal, burial of the dead, and
the loss and abandonment of artifacts, as well as
environmental phenomena including animal disturbances, chemical weathering, and fluvial deposition
and erosion. Principles of cultural formation processes are called c-transforms, those of environmental
processes n-transforms. Formation processes themselves were said to be highly patterned, in causes
and in consequences, and so could create or modify
archaeological patterns. Clearly, argued Schiffer and
Reid, an appreciation for the operation and effects of
formation processes demonstrated that the syllogism
supporting the processual model of inference was
defective: archaeological patterns do not directly mirror past behavioral patterns. (Early applications of
the formation-process perspective to prehistory can
be found in special issues of The Kiva in 1974 on
Grasshopper Ruin (J. Jefferson Reid, editor), and in
1975 on Antelope House (J. T. Rock and D. P. Morris,
editors) and in Schiffers 1975 consideration of
Dalton settlement patterns in Plains Anthropologist.)
To address the inadequacies of the processual
model of inference, behavioralists crafted their own
models. A foundation was laid in Schiffers 1972
American Antiquity paper, Archaeological context
and systemic context, which stressed the importance
of keeping conceptually and analytically distinct the
systemic and archaeological contexts of artifacts. In
systemic context, an artifact or place is participating in a behavioral system; in archaeological context, the artifact or place is no longer taking part
in a behavioral system, having been output to the
archaeological record. Conflating these two contexts, as did the processual model, precluded rigorous

BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY 911

inferences. This paper emphasized that artifacts have

life histories, which can be coarsely modeled as a
series of processes, including procurement, manufacture, maintenance, use, and discard. Three types
of refuse were also defined: primary refuse, discarded
in its location of use; secondary refuse, discarded
in nonuse locations; and de facto refuse, artifacts
not discarded, per se, but abandoned along with an
activity area.
Upon a life-history foundation, Schiffer presented
in Behavioral Archeology (1976) the synthetic model
of archaeological inference. The core idea is that of a
symmetry between inference and explanation: an inference is a statement about past behavior whose
justification also explains particular properties of
the archaeological record. In justifying an inference,
then, one constructs an argument employing correlates, c-transforms, n-transforms, and stipulations
(relevant assumptions) that accounts for the successive transformations that took place during the life
histories of the artifacts (and places and ecofacts)
serving as evidence. For making fine-grained behavioral inferences, Schiffer also presented a detailed lifehistory model, the behavioral chain, which focuses
on specific activities instead of general processes.
In 1978 Alan Porter Sullivan III published in
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory a
model of inference that divided life histories into
trace-production contexts, those intervals during
which traces of particular processes and activities are
mapped onto artifacts and surfaces. Inferences are
constructed by partitioning traces into their respective
trace-production contexts. Thus, in inferring the use of
a chipped-stone tool on the basis of microflakes, one
has to partition out microflakes created by nonuse
processes such as abrasion during manufacture, trampling, soil movement, shovel or bag wear, and museumdrawer retouch. The result of this partitioning process
is isolation of the set of microflakes that can serve as
strong evidence for inferring tool use. The partitioning
process of Sullivans model is enabled by the synthetic
models correlates, c-transforms, and n-transforms.
Together, the synthetic model and the traceproduction model established the gold standard of
archaeological inference. One could no longer ignore
formation processes when constructing inferences
and accounting for properties of the archaeological
record. To assist the building of well-justified inferences, Schiffer published, in 1987, Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record, a compendium
of c-transforms and n-transforms that drew on recent
findings in experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and geoarchaeology. This book also presented
detailed case studies of Hohokam chronology and

Broken K ceramics, showing precisely the importance

of taking into account formation processes, whether one
is dealing with the social inferences of processualists or
the chronological inferences of culture-historians.
Behavioral archaeologys contributions to archaeological inference and to the understanding of
formation processes have been widely appreciated.
Indeed, many archaeologists working in strategy 1
operating with behavioral models of inference,
incorporating findings from strategy 2, and controlling for formation processes have greatly
expanded our knowledge of past human behavior
throughout the world. These innumerable achievements cannot be cataloged in this brief article; rather,
the focus is on more recent developments of behavioral method and theory.

Behavioral Archaeology Today

Surprisingly, one unanticipated effect of the programs success has been the overshadowing of other
behavioral research agendas. Perhaps many archaeologists believe, erroneously, that the practice of
behavioral archaeology is confined to conducting
experiments, doing ethnoarchaeology, and studying
formation processes. From the very beginnings of the
behavioral program in the 1970s, however, practitioners began to refine, and develop further implications of Reids new definition of the discipline and to
extend the applicability of the life-history framework
to topics beyond inference and formation processes.
Moreover, behavioralists delineated new research
areas in the course of responding to the advent,
in the 1980s, of evolutionary and postprocessual
archaeologies. These latter programs called attention
to a host of research questions that processualists had
underemphasized, including social power and inequality, ideology, religion and ritual, meaning and
symbols, and evolution defined as the differential
persistence of discrete variants. Beginning in the
1980s a new behavioral archaeology arose, also
among students and faculty at the University of
Arizona, which sought to show that the program
could address contemporary issues including those
prioritized by postprocessualists and evolutionists.
Back to Basics

Before engaging these issues, behavioralists had to

revisit some fundamentals. The first move was to
modify slightly the behavioral definition of archaeology. William H. Walker and others pointed out, in the
introduction to Expanding Archaeology, that early
behavioral formulations had included the commonsense idea that behavior is an organisms muscular

912 BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY

movements. Thus, defining archaeology as the study

of relationships between human behavior and material culture placed artifacts outside human behavior,
as mere constituents of the environment beyond the
body. The revised definition rests on the tenet that
behavior, as activities, involves both people and
artifacts interacting; artifacts and behavior are inseparable. Moreover, artifacts consequentially take
part in every activity, such as harvesting grain, a
Passover seder, and playing poker. Archaeology is
redefined as the study of peopleartifact interactions
in all times and places. As Rathje and Schiffer pointed
out in Archaeology (1982), specific interactions can
be aggregated into ever-larger units of analysis, ranging from the nearly instantaneous act of striking
a flake from a chert core to the centuries-long life
history of a complex society.
Interactions and Performance Characteristics

In The Material Life of Human Beings (1999),

Schiffer and Miller specified varieties of interactions.
The principal interaction modes are mechanical,
chemical, thermal, electrical, and electromagnetic.
One can also define interactions in relation to human
senses. For example, olfactory interactions are essentially chemical, whereas taste involves both chemical
and mechanical interactions. Similarly, tactile and
acoustic interactions are mechanical, and visual ones
are electromagnetic. Even the simplest activity can
involve interactions in many modes. Thus, writing a
letter with a pen and paper includes mechanical interactions between person and pen, between pen and
paper, between paper and a support such as a table;
and visual interactions between person and paper. Similarly, a soldier saluting an officer involves, minimally,
the mechanical interactions between an officer and his
or her uniform, and the mutual visual interactions
between soldier and officer.
In order for an interaction to take place, thereby
enabling an activity to proceed, each participating
interactor whether person, artifact, or extern (any
phenomenon of the noncultural environment) must
carry out one or more performances. Each interactors performance is made possible by a performance
characteristic, which is the capability, competence,
or skill that comes into play during a specific interaction. In the letter-writing example, a pen is capable of
delivering ink when pressed against the paper; the
paper is able to receive and absorb the ink; the ink
dries quickly and remains visible; the papers support
is firm; and the writer possesses the competence to
compose text in a particular language and the ability
to manipulate a pen. In saluting an officer, the soldier
is able to recognize an officers uniform and can raise
his or her arm appropriately. Human behavior at all

scales consists of aggregates of specific interactions

enabled by relevant performance characteristics.
Artifact functions The concepts of performance
characteristic and interaction mode help one to place
traditional discussions of artifact function the role(s)
an artifact plays in an activity on a firm behavioral
foundation. Drawing inspiration from an earlier
effort by Lewis R. Binford, Rathje and Schiffer, in
Archaeology, designated three basic functions: technofunction, socio-function, and ideo-function. A
techno-function is a utilitarian function, which
can involve the transport, storage, or alteration of
materials. Most activities involve artifacts that perform techno-functions: ceramic crucibles for pouring
molten steel, chairs to support people while taking
notes, and a cabinet to hold sacred scrolls. Artifacts
performing socio-functions communicate information about social phenomena among an activitys
participants and/or between that social unit and
others. Artifacts with socio-functions, silently communicating social facts, are ubiquitous and affect
interpersonal interaction in many activities. Ideofunctions are served by artifacts that encode or symbolize ideas, values, knowledge, and information.
Clearly, artifacts can perform more than one kind of
function, even in the same activity. Thus, in cruising
around town, a Hummer 2 automobile moves people
and cargo from place to place (techno-function),
denotes membership in the group of wealthy drivers
favoring a military-derived vehicle (socio-function),
and (in the view of some observers) proclaims contempt for environmental values (ideo-function).
All functions reduce to one or more specific interactions, each enabled by particular performance characteristics. Thus, in pounding a nail into a piece
of wood (techno-function), a hammer is capable of
interacting appropriately with the person wielding it
and with the nail. In order for a doctors uniform to
properly affect social interaction in a hospital (sociofunction), it has to perform in a visually distinctive
manner relative to the uniforms of people playing
other social roles. Similarly, a bumper sticker promoting peace (ideo-function) performs visually, either
through words or a peace symbol. Although technofunctions tend to involve mechanical, chemical, and
thermal interactions, and thus depend on corresponding performance characteristics, and socio- and ideofunctions require visual and acoustic interactions,
these correspondences are far from perfect. Thus, partitions that delineate cubicles in an office complex
affect social interaction by separating individual spaces
both mechanically and visually. That functions can be
defined with reference to specific interactions sharpens
discussions of the roles that artifacts play in activities.

BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY 913

Properties, performance characteristics, and technical

choices It is useful to distinguish between an interactors properties and performance characteristics.
A property, such as the tensile strength of a steel
alloy or a persons height, is defined in terms of the
interactor itself with reference to a measuring instrument and standard scale in a laboratory-type setting.
In contrast, performance characteristics are defined
relationally, for they refer to the capabilities of one
interactor in its engagement with another in a specific
real-world, not laboratory, interaction. Properties
of course affect performance characteristics. Thus,
whether a cloth object can perform visually as, for
example, a US flag at a football game, depends upon
its size, shape, and color patterns. However, lighting
conditions and the sensory performance characteristics
of observers also affect this visual performance. Similarly, the heating effectiveness of a low-fired ceramic
cooking pot a performance characteristic is dependent upon properties such as thermal conductivity and
the permeabilities of the interior and exterior surfaces.
Yet, heating effectiveness is also influenced by (1) the
heat source, (2) the pots contents, (3) the placement of
the pot in relation to the heat source, and (4) the
temperature of the ambient environment. Thus, properties can strongly affect, but do not uniquely determine, performance characteristics.
Insofar as artifacts are concerned, their properties
result from the technical choices made by artisans,
instantiated as specific interactions during procurement and manufacturing activities. For example, the
interior permeability of a low-fired ceramic cooking
pot is affected by technical choices such as smudging,
polishing, and organic coatings.
Schiffer and James M. Skibo in several papers explored the reticulate relationships between technical
choices and performance characteristics. They argued
that a technical choice can affect many properties
and more than one performance characteristic. Thus,
the addition of copious quantities of sand temper
raises a pots resistance to thermal shock and improves
heating effectiveness while simultaneously lowering
resistance to impacts. By the same token, a given performance characteristic can be influenced by more
than one technical choice. A pots thermal shock resistance is affected, for example, by firing temperature,
kinds and quantities of temper, as well as vessel shape,
size, and wall thickness (in addition to the performance of the heat source). An appreciation for these
sorts of relationships, acquired in the process of conducting a long-term program of ceramic experiments,
enabled Schiffer and Skibo to construct a behavioral
theory of artifact design. A reader-friendly version of
the design theory appeared in Anthropological Perspectives on Technology (2001).

Studying Technological Change

Given that the archaeological record is, above all, a

record of changing artifact designs, behavioralists are
interested in understanding processes of technological change. Artifacts are, of course, a technologys
hard parts, distinguishable from the interacting
people and their performance characteristics (based
on knowledge, skill, values, etc.), which are also
essential components of a technology. Regrettably, in
culture-historical and processual studies of technological change, diverse processes were conflated. Thus,
diffusionists traced inventions from place to place
with little regard to the processes affecting a new
technologys adoption and nonadoption; likewise, processualists assumed that external stresses on a cultural
system, such as population growth or environmental
deterioration, stimulated effective problem-solving
inventions, which were adopted with zeal.
Behavioralists break down technological change into
major life-history processes, such as invention, design,
replication (or commercialization), and adoption (also
known as acquisition or consumption), each of which
can in turn be subdivided. In the behavioral framework, there can be no single theory of technological
change because of the potentially diverse people and
social groups (e.g., inventors, manufacturers, consumers) whose decisions create a technologys life history.
Thus, one segments a technologys life history, and
builds process- and variety-specific laws, theories, and
models to explain the decisions that create specific
behavioral patterns. The behavioral approach to studying technological change is illustrated by the following
examples of invention and adoption.
Invention Invention can be defined as the creative
act of envisioning a new technology, that is, forming a
vision or idea of an artifact or technological system
having certain performance characteristics that sets it
apart from other technologies. Obviously, only ideas
recorded in texts or materialized in prototypes come
within the purview of archaeologists. There are many
kinds of invention processes, but all have one material
consequence of interest to archaeologists: they lead to
new variants, which sometimes occur in clusters or
invention spurts. Inventions that cluster in time and/
or in space should be especially amenable to archaeological study.
The model of stimulated invention, presented
by Schiffer in American Antiquity in 1996, helps to
account for some invention spurts and, in addition,
contributes to reconciling evolutionary and processual
views on invention. Evolutionists insist that invention,
like genetic mutation, is a random process, whereas
processualists regard invention as a problem-solving

914 BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY

activity that sets the stage for new adaptations. The

process of stimulated invention acknowledges that
inventors usually work without knowledge of which
experimental paths will lead to technically successful
inventions (i.e., those achieving desired performance
characteristics), nor can inventors foresee whether a
technically successful invention will be replicated and
adopted. Nonetheless, the activities of inventors are
often responses to perceived performance shortcomings of extant technologies. When performance shortcomings are widely appreciated, they can stimulate a
spurt of inventive activities that results in many new
variants, some of which may achieve technical success.
These variants, in turn, undergo selection during
subsequent processes, and some may be replicated
and adopted.
Because variants selected against may have but
limited archaeological visibility and because of the
time-telescoping effects of most chronologies, the
processual tendency to view invention as an efficient
mechanical response to adaptive needs is understandable, that is, it appears as though people were able to
quickly foresee, and implement, an acceptable solution to the problem. In fact, however, many variants
may have been tried out and found wanting before any
was adopted; and sometimes none is adopted, leaving
the performance problem to be solved in another way.
That stimulated variation may or may not lead to a
technology that reaches consumers is in accord
with the evolutionary tenet that researchers must distinguish rigorously between, and model separately,
variety-generation and variety-selection processes.
The cascade model of invention, published by
Schiffer in American Antiquity (2005), is closely
related to the stimulated-variation model, but applies
only to the development of a complex technological
system (CTS). The latter is defined as any technology
that consists of a set of interacting artifacts; interactions among these artifacts (and people and externs)
enable that system to function. Examples include irrigation systems as well as particular hunting and
cooking technologies. Because the cascade model is
flexibly defined, examples of CTSs abound, even in
small-scale societies.
The cascade model posits that, during a CTSs development, emergent performance problems recognized by people as shortcomings in that technologys
constituent interactions stimulate sequential spurts
of invention. As adopted inventions solve one performance problem, people encounter new and often unanticipated problems, which stimulate more inventive
spurts, and so on. The result is a series of invention
cascades. A distinctive feature of the model, which
promotes its generality, is the premise that processes
in a CTSs life history are the immediate contexts in

which performance problems emerge and stimulate

invention cascades. Thus, life-history processes are
suitable analytical units for investigating invention
processes in CTSs. The minimal set of processes is:
fashioning a prototype, replication (or commercialization), use, and maintenance.
In an analysis of invention cascades that occurred
during the development of the nineteenth-century
electromagnetic telegraph, it was necessary to elaborate the basic processes. The latter came to include
creating the prototype, technological display, demonstrating practicality, replication, marketing and
sales, installation, use/operation, maintenance, and
functional differentiation. Performance problems encountered during each of these processes generated
many invention cascades, such as insulators, receiverprinters, and submarine cables.
Other behavioral models of invention include, for
example, Brian Haydens aggrandizer model in Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (1998),
and Schiffers cultural imperative model in Technology and Culture (1993).
Adoption Evolutionists have taught archaeologists
to regard many instances of technological change as
competitions between variants during the adoption
process. Thus, a new technology that becomes available to consumers often must compete with an established technology. For example, in its first decades as
a commercial product, the automobile competed with
other forms of transportation, including bicycles,
horse-drawn wagons and carriages, and trains and
trolleys. Also, alternate variants of a new technology,
such as gasoline- and electric-powered automobiles,
can compete with each other.
As members of a consumerist society, we are aware
that many new technologies are adopted in limited
numbers or not at all. So it was in the past. Prehistoric
societies in southern California and the Great Basin
were familiar with pottery making, for their neighbors
practiced it; yet, this technology was adopted by only
some groups. This suggests that consumer behavior,
whether at the scale of the individual, household, corporate group, or even community, can be regarded as a
process of differential adoption. The explanatory
task is to account for the decisions of both adopters
and nonadopters. To facilitate this task, one can employ both a life-history framework and the heuristic
tool known as the performance matrix.
It is assumed that adoption decisions are based on
peoples comparisons of two or more technologies
anticipated performance characteristics in relation
to relevant activities. After identifying the information about performance characteristics that likely was
available to past decision makers, the archaeologist

BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY 915

juxtaposes the competing technologies in a table

known as a performance matrix. Major and minor
patterns in the matrix indicate which performance
characteristics were apparently weighted in adoption
decisions.
Performance matrices can be structured in several
ways. For example, in Schiffers study of the competition between American gasoline and electric automobiles in the early twentieth century both technologies
were new at the time performance characteristics
were organized by male- and female-associated activities. The resultant patterns were quite clear: gasoline
automobiles excelled in the touring activities favored
by men, whereas electrics were superior performers in
the urban activities associated with women. Americas
elite tended to adopt both gasoline and electric cars,
embodying a certain gender equality, whereas middleclass families almost exclusively purchased gasoline
cars, thereby privileging mens activities. Factors of
wealth and the patriarchal structure of American
families at that time were invoked to explain this
pattern of differential adoption.
Performance characteristics can also be aggregated
on the basis of several life-history activities, as in the
competition between electric and oil illuminants for
lighthouses in the nineteenth century. (Schiffer published this study in Technology and Culture, 2005).
Decisions about lighthouse illuminants were made in
each maritime nation by lighthouse boards, which
were governmental or quasi-governmental organizations. Because these decisions affected a great many

activities, it was necessary to include performance

characteristics of lighthouse illuminants pertaining
to acquisition and installation, utilitarian and symbolic functions during use, and regular operation
and maintenance. The performance matrix (Table 1)
employs plus and minus signs to indicate which
technology does () or does not () perform at a
minimally adequate level.
The entries in Table 1 suggest that performance
characteristics run the gamut of behavioral capabilities, including those for mechanical, chemical, and
electrical interactions as well as costs (as enablers) for
acquiring, using, and maintaining a technology.
Moreover, the incorporation of sensory performance
characteristics accommodates esthetic and symbolic
capabilities, such as conveying a general or specific
meaning. This expansive conception of performance
characteristics allows one to build into an analysis
seemingly incommensurable factors, qualitative and
quantitative, from labor costs to political meanings.
Thus, the researcher can explicitly deal with the
multiple contextual factors that affect adoption
decisions.
The performance matrix itself is a causally neutral
tool involving no a priori assumptions about weightings, so long as the investigator includes all potentially relevant performance characteristics. On the basis
of any major and minor patterns, one can identify
which performance characteristics were weighted by
past people and postulate which contextual factors
(e.g., political, religious, economic, social) might have

Table 1 A performance matrix for lighthouse illumination, c. 186099

Acquisition of the components, and installation of the system
Ability to acquire system components commercially
System can be installed in lighthouses in any location
System can be easily installed in existing lighthouse structures
Affordability of a systems first costs
Existing expertise adequate for designing and installing the system

Electric

Oil

Functions during use

Yields the whitest, brightest, most penetrating light
Can produce sufficiently steady light
Long outages are avoidable
Does not cast confusing shadows
Can avoid blinding mariners
Ability to symbolize special concern for the safety of ships and sailors
Can symbolize a nations wealth and political power
Can symbolize modernity
Able to symbolize scientific/technological prowess

Electric

Oil

Operation, regular maintenance, and repairs

Operable with traditional staff of keepers
Operable without complete backup systems
Ease of repairing breakdowns
Affordability of operating expenses
Ease of administration

Electric

Oil

916 BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY

affected their decisions. In the lighthouse case, the

performance matrix disclosed a major pattern: the
electric light competed poorly in acquisition, installation, operation, and maintenance activities. However,
a minor pattern indicates that the electric light was an
adequate illuminant, especially in haze and light fog,
and excelled in symbolic capabilities during use.
On the basis of these patterns one can explain why
the vast majority of maritime nations decided against
adopting electric lights: they apparently assigned
heavy weight to maintenance and financial factors
(of acquisition and use). But a few nations, England
and France, together acquired around 20 electric
lights, and several others, including the United States,
installed just one or two. These adoptions are explicable in terms of the minor pattern. Thus, France and
England, long-time rivals and empire builders, were
competing to have the most up-to-date illuminating
technology that could advertise their political power,
technological expertise, and concern for mariners of
all nations. In other cases of adoption, the electric
lights ability to symbolize modernity, indicating
that a nation was on the cutting edge of electrical
technology, was highly valued and outweighed the
technologys performance deficiencies in the increasingly competitive international arena of the late
nineteenth century.
The performance matrix reveals which performance characteristics were weighted, thereby implicating potentially relevant contextual factors. By
drawing upon contextual information such as family
structure or international competitions in high technology, the investigator can explain why some people
or social units adopted a given technology while
others did not.
Communication

In the latter decades of the twentieth century, the study

of material culture was incorporated into the margins
of many social and behavioral sciences. The usual
move was to transform the materiality of artifacts
into the immateriality of ideas, norms, rules, values,
and similar constructs so that they could be accommodated by conventional social theories. This move,
however, embodies a biased view of human life that
decisively privileges the mental over the material. As
one of many steps needed for remedying this pervasive problem, behavioralists crafted an artifact-based
theory of human communication that assigns causal
efficacy to both material and cognitive phenomena.
In conventional communication theories, researchers accommodate artifacts by relegating them to a
nonverbal mode or to technologies of information transfer such as clay tablets, newspapers, and

telephones. Safely marginalized in this manner, artifacts merely modify and convey verbal information.
On the other hand, the behavioral theory (presented
in The Material Life of Human Beings) asserts that
artifacts play consequential roles in every communication mode. Three major sets of artifacts are recognized: personal artifacts, those compounded with a
person such as tattoos, clothing, and ornaments; situational artifacts, which turn up at a place for the
conduct of an activity; and platial artifacts, those
residing in a place, including portable items and architectural features. Activity artifacts, those taking part
in a specific activity, are drawn from person, situational, and platial artifacts.
Communication modes are defined with reference
to human sensory modes: visual, acoustic, tactile, and
chemical. Taking persons as an example, artifacts
perform consequentially in every mode. Thus, clothing and makeup affect visual performance; tooth
modification, foods being chewed, and musical instruments influence acoustic performance; clothing
and scarification affect tactile performance; and perfume and soaps influence chemical performances.
The behavioral theory requires that the investigator privilege the vantage point of the receiver,
the person who, in the course of an activity-situated
communication process, obtains information from
the performances of other interactors and responds.
The response depends also on the receivers inferences, which are formed on the basis of correlons,
relational knowledge acquired mainly through experience. Correlons operate not only on the performances of people, but also on those of artifacts.
Indeed, the performances of activity and platial artifacts, which define the context of a communication
process, key in the receivers activity- and interactionspecific correlons, which contribute to producing the
response.
To appreciate the importance of artifacts in communication, one must abandon the two-body
model that is, two people conversing as the paradigm of communication. The behavioral model posits
instead three interactor roles: sender, emitter, and
receiver. Emitters are the interactors whose performances furnish the receiver with the information
needed to construct the inferences that contribute to
a response. The sender is the interactor that the receiver infers affected the performance of the most
salient emitter. Thus, in observing a woman who
had just exited a hair salon, her husband playing
the receiver role might infer from her coiffures
visual performance (the salient emitter) that the
sender was a skilled stylist. The response might be a
compliment.

BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY 917

Applying this communication theory to prehistory

is obviously challenging, but it does provide a framework for asking questions. For illustrative purposes,
let us place the cave paintings of the upper Palaeolithic into a communication framework. The first task
is to designate the various receiver(s); in this case, the
people who viewed the paintings in each activity
of the paintings life histories. Next, we may assume
that the paintings, performing visually, were platial
artifacts that helped define the context of each activity. We can ask, for example, What were those
activities? Did situational artifacts participate in
them? If so, what were these artifacts? Were the
paintings or other interactors the salient emitters in
particular activities? What were the activity-specific
social and demographic characteristics of the receivers? What inferences did receivers in specific activities make about the source and meanings of the
paintings? What were the likely receiver responses?
Can we model the correlons that contributed to specific responses?
Postprocessual archaeologists advocated the study
of meaning and symbols, but supplied scant guidance
on doing this in the absence of historical or ethnographic evidence. On the other hand, the behavioral
model of communication furnishes a framework for
asking questions that can foster well-founded inferences about meaningful phenomena.
Ritual and Religion

Few archaeologists today would subscribe to the venerable view that it is far more difficult to construct
inferences about ritual and religion than about technology or economic activities. Indeed, behavioralists
have assembled the rudiments of an approach for
studying ritual and religion. A major premise is that
religious rituals, like the performance of all other activities, require artifacts both highly symbolic sacra
as well as those having mainly utilitarian functions.
William Walker, in Anthropological Perspectives
on Technology, has suggested that, in many religious
rituals, people employ artifacts as technologies for
manipulating supernatural forces and entities.
Another important premise is that artifacts
employed in religious rituals tend to be disposed of
differently than artifacts taking part in more secular
activities. In a paper in Expanding Archaeology (1995)
Walker labeled such artifacts ceremonial trash.
Although mortuary rituals give rise to the most conspicuous kind of ceremonial trash grave goods such
activities sometimes generate other, less obvious deposits of ceremonial trash. For example, beginning in
the mid-1980s, archaeologists working in the American
Southwest began to re-evaluate the contents of

structure floors. Detailed analyses of the artifact inventories furnished strong evidence that domestic structures, particularly pit-houses, had been ceremonially
abandoned. One recurrent pattern was the deposition
on floors of relatively large numbers of pots and other
artifacts, followed by burning of the structure. In a
study of pit-houses at Snaketown, a large pre-Classic
Hohokam site in southern Arizona, Deni J. Seymour
inferred that structures abandoned in this manner had
taken part in a mortuary ritual, during which the
belongings of the deceased were deposited and the
house was destroyed. These findings accorded with
the mortuary practices of ethnographic pit-housedwellers in the American Southwest. As Vincent
M. LaMotta has argued, no longer can archaeologists assume that a structures floor-associated artifacts merely represent de facto refuse; sometimes the
floor assemblage even the structure itself was also
ceremonial trash.
Sometimes an entire village was abandoned in a
ritual flourish. In studies of Chodistaas, a thirteenthcentury pueblo of 18 rooms in east-central Arizona,
Barbara Montgomery faced a challenging puzzle.
According to J. Jefferson Reids measure of relative
room abandonment, based on a generalized lifehistory of pueblo rooms, early-abandoned rooms
should contain few floor artifacts as de facto refuse,
whereas their fills might be dense with secondary
refuse. For late-abandoned rooms, the expectations
are reversed: much de facto refuse on floors, little
secondary refuse in fills. Surprisingly, Montgomery
found that Chodistaas departed from this pattern, as
most rooms had an abundance of restorable pots on
floors presumably de facto refuse closely approximating systemic ceramic inventories and a high
density of secondary refuse in fills; also, the rooms
had burned. These facts suggested that the site had
been abandoned in haste, perhaps in response to
warfare or a forest fire. But these hypotheses left
unexplained the anomalous secondary refuse.
Detailed analyses of the fill materials enabled
Montgomery to discount these hypotheses as well as
various post-occupational scenarios, such as fluvial
deposition. In the end, she furnished strong evidence
for a sequence of behaviors that implicated a ritual
abandonment. After vacating vessel-rich rooms, the
inhabitants set the pueblo on fire. On the pueblos
smoldering ruins they deposited tons of refuse, including more than 100 000 sherds scavenged from
extramural deposits. Apparently, prior to joining
other immigrants at nearby Grasshopper Pueblo, the
inhabitants of Chodistaas performed a ritual cremation and burial of the pueblo in acknowledgment
of its death. By closely attending to the formation

918 BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY

processes of Chodistaas deposits, Montgomery was

able to infer a ritual abandonment and rule out other,
seemingly more plausible, causes.
One of the most contentious debates in the prehistory of the Southwest surrounds the explanation of
maltreated human remains. In case after case, archaeologists have found bodies bearing traces of violent
acts leading to death as well as post-mortem dismemberment and sometimes even dispersal of the bones.
Warfare is the obvious explanation for finds of
burned and mutilated bodies, especially those left
uninterred in structures. The warfare hypothesis has
lately been augmented by claims of cannibalism, supported by taphonomic and other specialized analyses.
Apparently, the Puebloan Southwest was not the
Apollonian paradise that Ruth Benedict made famous
in Patterns of Culture.
In considering alternatives to the warfare and cannibalism hypotheses, William Walker asked a deceptively simple question: Where are the witches of
prehistory? The ethnographic and historic records
from around the world make clear that witchcraft
accusations, often followed by the killing of the
witch and harsh treatment of its remains, are rather
common. If so, why do archaeologists rarely invoke
witchcraft beliefs and the highly ritualized punishment of witches to explain maltreated human
remains? Walker argued that some instances of purported warfare and cannibalism make more sense if
viewed as the outcome of witchcraft beliefs that led
to activities of identifying and punishing witches. No
doubt warfare and consumption of human flesh occurred in the prehistoric Southwest, but so too did the
killing of witches. Using behavioral methods for analyzing the deposits in the structures that yielded
human remains, Walker showed that sometimes one
can distinguish among the competing hypotheses.
In the final analysis, inferences about ritual and
religion are no more or less difficult to construct
than inferences about any human activity. In all
cases, one first infers the formation processes of the
deposited materials. Once these are identified, the
archaeologist can construct inferences about ritual
activities as well as offer hypotheses in the form
of correlons about religious beliefs. Applications
of behavioral method and theory to the study of ritual and religion demonstrate that Binfords early
optimism about the vast inferential potential of the
archaeological record was not unfounded.
Landscapes and Territories

Behavioral approaches to landscapes and territories draw upon empirical research and principles
from diverse theoretical programs. To these eclectic

formulations, M. Nieves Zedeno and Stephanie

M. Whittlesey have added important frameworks
and other constructs.
From an archaeological vantage point, one can
study humanenvironment interactions over many
spatial and temporal scales as well as frames of reference. Thus, one can focus on a given piece of land or
terrain (or even a resource) and inquire about its
history of use by different societies; one can also
investigate how a given societys activities over time
created territories and a changing landscape. What
is essential, Whittlesey emphasizes, is that archaeologists appreciate that the relationships between
societies and environments are interactive and dynamic. People conduct activities and thereby modify
their environment, and in turn the environment
modified and unmodified influences subsequent
human activities.
In landscape and territory studies, one inevitably
confronts the problem of defining units. Zedeno suggests, for example, that many kinds of behaviorally
significant spatial units behavioral spaces can be
constructed in relation to a given societys activities.
These include habitation space (the spatial extent of
dwellings and supporting activities), food production space (fields, pastures, water- and soil-control
features), resource procurement space (quarries,
hunting and gathering locales, water sources), and
ritual space (shrines, ceremonial buildings, sacred
mountains). To this list Whittlesey adds communication space, which includes trails, roads, and other
features that link activities. Needless to say, such
behavioral spaces are not isomorphic and can vary
independently over time.
Zedeno has provided a life-history model for studying territories as the changing aggregate of a societys
behavioral spaces and associated landmarks that
is, artifacts and features. A territorys life history is
divided into three major stages, each consisting of
several processes: establishment (exploration, colonization, and settlement), maintenance (expansion,
consolidation, and fission), and transformation (use
change and abandonment, which leave behind persistent places, and reclamation). For each process,
she has enumerated associated activities and their
material correlates and likely landmarks. For example, exploration activities such as reconnaissance,
temporary uses, and limited resource exploitation can
generate ephemeral shelters, caches, and markings/
cairns. Employing the case of the Hopi in northeastern
Arizona, Zedeno has shown the usefulness of her
model for organizing the study of territories.
As Whittlesey emphasizes, landscapes and territories also have cognitive dimensions. On the basis

BEHAVIORAL ARCHAEOLOGY 919

of the landmarks representing political, religious,

subsistence, and other activities, the archaeologist
can proffer inferences about corresponding cognitive structures. For example, analysis of a societys
shrines locations, orientations, features, and associated ceremonial trash can implicate cosmological
correlons.
The rapidly growing behavioral literature on territories and landscapes, which dovetails with postprocessual concerns, is furnishing constructs and heuristic
tools useful for studying humanenvironment interactions over space and time. For example, Michael
Heilen has recently distinguished between systemic
and archaeological landscapes and developed the
implications of this distinction for empirical projects.

posed by other theoretical programs, using principles and heuristics acquired during more than three
decades of theory building, experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and investigations in diverse
societies ranging from foragers to industrial nationstates. In his contribution to Expanding Archaeology,
J. Jefferson Reid elegantly emphasized the programs
continuing vitality as a coherent framework for
thinking about and doing archaeological research,
and remarked, moreover, that it has withstood rigorous testing, substantial battering, even ridicule, but
has not been proved to possess fatal flaws. Although
behavioral archaeology is a mature and highly productive program, its practitioners appreciate that not
all research questions can yet be answered rigorously
and that much hard work lies ahead.

Conclusion
Among the present-day programs competing for attention, behavioral archaeology offers a coherent
framework of models, principles, and heuristics
founded upon an unapologetic appreciation for the
materiality of human life. Because artifacts participate in all human activities, behavioralists insist on
grounding research questions in peopleartifact interactions at every temporal and spatial scale of activity.
This requires researchers to acknowledge that artifacts and technologies are both causes and effects of
behavioral change. Yet, while placing stress on the
materiality of human life, behavioralists also seek to
model cognitive phenomena for example, correlons,
which contribute to the activity-situated responses of
human participants.
Unlike many theoretical programs, behavioralists
do not insist that only one kind of cause or prime
mover (e.g., environmental change, altered beliefs,
conflict among social classes and polities, or new technologies) is responsible for every behavioral change.
Rather, behavioralists maintain a stance of causal
agnosticism, recognizing that innumerable factors, acting singly and in varying combinations, can promote
change in human behavior. Thus, a major function
of the growing repertoire of behavioral formulations
is to help researchers tease out the causal factors in
specific cases.
In the mid-1970s Reid and colleagues asserted that
archaeologists could ask historical and scientific
questions of any human society, past or present, by
privileging the study of artifacts in human behavior.
More than youthful exuberance, this claim expressed
something quite fundamental about archaeologys
unique potential to fashion new understandings of
the human condition. Indeed, behavioralists now
address many significant questions, including those

See also: Evolutionary Archaeology; Experimental

Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading
LaMotta VM and Schiffer MB (2001) Behavioral archaeology:
Towards a new synthesis. In: Hodder I (ed.) Archaeological
Theory Today, pp. 1464. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Montgomery BK (1993) Ceramic analysis as a tool for discovering
processes of Pueblo abandonment. In: Cameron CM and Tomka
SA (eds.) Abandonment of Settlements and Regions: Ethnoarchaeological and Archaeological Approaches, pp. 157164.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Reid JJ (1995) Four strategies after twenty years: A return to basics.
In: Skibo JM, Walker WH, and Nielsen A (eds.) Expanding
Archaeology, pp. 1521. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah
Press.
Reid JJ, Schiffer MB, and Rathje WL (1975) Behavioral archaeology: Four strategies. American Anthropologist 77: 864869.
Schiffer MB (1995) Behavioral Archaeology: First Principles. Salt
Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
Schiffer MB (ed.) (2001) Anthropological Perspectives on Technology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Seymour DJ and Schiffer MB (1987) A preliminary analysis of
pithouse assemblages from Snaketown, Arizona. In: Kent S
(ed.) Method and Theory for Activity Area Research: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach, pp. 549603. New York: Columbia University Press.
Skibo JM, Walker WH, and Nielsen A (eds.) (1995) Expanding
Archaeology. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
Walker WH (1998) Where are the witches of prehistory? Journal of
Archaeological Method and Theory 5: 245308.
Whittlesey SM (1998) Archaeological landscapes: A methodological and theoretical discussion. In: Whittlesey SM, CiolekTorrello R, and Altschul JH (eds.) Vanishing River: Landscapes
and Lives of the Lower Verde Valley, pp. 1728. Tucson, AZ:
SRI Press.
Zedeno MN (1997) Landscapes, land use, and the history of territory formation. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
4: 67103.

920 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Ilan Sharon, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem,
Israel
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Definition and Introduction

The term biblical archaeology is used in at least four
different though intersecting meanings. From widest to narrowest, these are: (1) the archaeology of the
entire fertile crescent from the Neolithic through
late antiquity (this definition encompasses the archaeological setting of the biblical literature and related
genres in its widest possible extent); (2) the archaeology of the Levant (or only its southern part) from the
(Middle) Bronze Age to the early Roman period (this
is the setting to the biblical narrative sensu stricto);
(3) as above, restricted to the Bronze and Iron Ages
(this definition confines the field to the background of
the Old Testament); and (4) a particular intellectual
current within Near Eastern archaeology.
This article will mainly deal with biblical archaeology as a school of thought (definition 4) using
definition 3 as background as the wider definitions
largely overlap with Near Eastern archaeology as a
whole (see Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East:
The Levant) and/or intersect with the purview of
classical archaeology (see Classical Archaeology).
Whether it is explicitly called biblical or by any
other name (see below), the archaeology of the Levant
in the periods relevant to the Bible finds itself for
better and worse in the shadow of the founding text
of the Judeo/Christian/Moslem civilizations. This is
manifested in the intense interest scholarly and lay
in discoveries pertaining to the Bible. Considering its
tiny area, Israel may well be the most excavated
territory in the world, and the Biblical Archaeology
Review has claimed to be the most widely read of all
archaeological journals. It also means that the field
is rife with alternate or pseudo archaeologists
earnestly searching for Noahs ark, the ark of the
covenant, the ashes of the red heifer, or the holy
grail as well as simple con men. Thousands waited
patiently in line to peek at the brother of Jesus
ossuary at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto or
the . . . house of YHWH inscription at the Israel
museum in Jerusalem both of which are probably
fakes. Serious scholars whether believers or agnostics
can ill afford to ignore their own prejudices, much
less those of their audience, when dealing with artifacts possibly pertaining to the roots of monotheism

and western civilization in an emotionally pregnant

and politically volatile part of the world.

Nineteenth Century The Birth of the

Discipline
The earliest archaeological investigations in the Levant were conducted by European travelers in the
second half of the nineteenth century. Learned societies dedicated to the investigation of the Holy Land
were founded in short order in most Western powers.
These included the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF)
in Great Britain (1865), the Deutschen PalastinaVereins (DPV) in Germany (1878), the Ecole Biblique
et Archeologique Francaise (1890), and the American
Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) in 1900. The
motives for this interest were sundry. Scientific curiosity was primary, but it was mixed with religious
conceptions, romantic allure, and sometimes pure
mysticism. Political and military interests of the big
powers were very much in the background. Most of
the early explorers were either missionaries or army
officers.
Breakthroughs of the late nineteenth century were
the accurate mapping of the region culminating in
the Survey of Western Palestine conducted by the
PEF in 187178, the first stratigraphic excavation of
a Near Eastern tell by W. M. F. Petrie at Tell el-Hesi
in 1890, and the invention of typological seriation by
the same.
Outside the Levant itself, the decipherment of
cuneiform and hieroglyphic scripts enabled for the
first time to evaluate biblical literature in its original
milieu. This, plus the general move toward secularization of knowledge, had led to the deconstruction
or decanonization of the Bible. The documentary
hypothesis of Graf and Wellhausen posits that the
Hebrew Bible is not a single composition, but a patchwork of several different sources far removed from
each other in time, place of composition, theology,
and moral outlook cut and restitched in a pseudochronological order by (late) redactors.

The First Half of the Twentieth Century

The next revolution in archaeological fieldwork in
the Levant was the introduction of the ReisnerFisher
locus to stratum excavation method just before
World War I. Finds were labeled by their locus (as
defined by this system the space circumscribed by a
single set of walls) and loci were grouped into buildings and strata on architectural grounds. Despite its

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 921

limitations, this system was a great improvement over

Petries arbitrary horizontal slices, and still fit the
logistical structure of most expeditions at the time
a horde of native workmen directed by a minimal
crew whose main expertise was in linguistics, theology, or art. With the resumption of fieldwork after
the halt imposed by World War I and the establishment of British mandate over Palestine (and French
over Syria), most of the large-scale excavation projects switched over to the locus to stratum method.
For all their crudeness, these projects often involving clearance of large tracts by hundreds of workers exposed city plans and large assemblages of
artifacts, which served as the basis for working out
detailed artifact typologies and relative chronological
sequences. By 1922, the directors of the foreign
schools in Jerusalem accepted the chronological framework and terminology proposed by W. F. Albright
(director of the American School), which serves as the
basis of nomenclature in Levantine archaeology to
this day. While the terminology they chose followed
the technological scheme, the criteria for defining
the periods were strictly historical. For example, the
Early Iron Age I was defined as being between the
entry of Israelites to Canaan and the division of
the kingdom after Solomons death. This reflects the
confidence of Albright and his contemporaries not
only that such events indeed happened but that
they can be unequivocally read in the archaeological
record.
The figure of Albright dominates this period. A
multifaceted genius linguist, Bible scholar, archaeologist, theologian he was one of the leaders of
intellectual fundamentalism within American evangelical protestantism. This movement was a reaction
to continental pietism, which stressed the human,
devotional aspect of religion and was skeptical about
miracles and divine revelation. Fundamentalists
advocated the unity, inerrancy, and literality of the
Bible; predicating their religious belief on the literal
historicity of the covenants between God and mankind. Academically, Albright waged a lifelong battle
against German Old Testament source criticism.
Archaeology became the linchpin of his campaign to
disprove the deconstruction of the Old Testament to
an anthology of competing theologies. The very name
of his principle synthesis, From Stone Age to Christianity Monotheism and the Historical Process,
defines the scope of the biblical archaeology he envisaged maximalistic in temporal and geographic
extent, if somewhat myopic in thematic scope.
It should be stressed that Albright was not a bigot
he proposed a straightforward positivistic research
program into the historical reality behind the
biblical narrative. Nor was he a narrow-minded

creationist or geocentrist insisting that the word of

God supersedes any evidence to the contrary. However, the rules of engagement of his biblical archaeology were such that one may not discount the prima
facie historicity of a written source unless it has
irreparable inner contradictions or irremediably contradicts the facts in the ground. It was also prone to
reflexive confirmation assuming the reliability of a
historical text as above, that text is utilized as a guide
to the interpretation of the archaeological record
and the (thus constructed) convergence is then used
as archaeological corroboration of the historicity of
the text. Albright maintained, as some of his students
students still do, that an unbiased examination confirms the unity, antiquity, uniqueness, and almost
metahistorical nature of the evolution of monotheism. Thus was created the popular image of the
archaeologist holding the shovel in one hand and
the Bible in the other.
Curiously enough, this Albrightian program was
embraced not only by religious Protestants, but also
by secular Jewish (and to a lesser extent Arab) nationalists (both orthodox Judaism and Islam remained
deeply suspicious of archaeology in any guise). The
argument about roots was central to the legitimacy
debate between Jewish and Arab inhabitants of Palestine and though the claims being made were opposing, the terms of discourse were those of biblical
archaeology. A Jewish Palestine Exploration Society (now called the Israel Exploration Society) was
founded as early as 1914, and fielded its first dig in
1924. The first department of archaeology in a local
academic institution was founded in the Hebrew
University in 1934.

The Second Half of the Twentieth Century

The next methodological breakthrough in field work
started after the ten-year hiatus in archaeological
activity imposed by World War II and the ensuing
ArabIsraeli wars. In her excavations in Jericho
(195258) and Jerusalem (196167), Kathleen Kenyon
implemented what came to be called the Wheeler
Kenyon or balk and debris layer method of excavation. Kenyons work on pottery especially the
seriation of tomb deposits from her own excavation
at Jericho and those of the Chicago excavation
at Megiddo is also exemplary. However, her conception of historical process, as seen from the textbooks
she wrote, is narrow diffusionism. She equated the
succession of archaeological cultures she defined
with successive waves of migration and conquest by
wild tribes from the sea, the desert, or the steppes
Amorites, Hyksos, Israelites, and Philistines being cases
in point.

922 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Albrights American students began a project in

Shechem (Tell Balata) in 1952, and the Israelis,
under Yadin, the last of the digging soldiers, began
excavating in Hazor in 1958. These projects were
hugely influential in as much as almost all the next
generation of field archaeologists were trained in
them and the techniques used in them became
known as the American versus Israeli excavation
schools. Both were attempts at compromise between
the horizontally oriented locus to stratum method
and the vertically oriented balk and debris layer.
The Israelis inclined toward larger exposures and
faster excavation and tended to keep and publish
mainly primary assemblages and complete forms,
while the Americans stressed meticulously separating and recording all types of deposits and assemblages which made for smaller exposures and
slower excavation. Interpretation-wise, however, both
schools correctly saw themselves as faithful followers of Albright. Indeed, G. E. Wright director
of the Shechem excavations and a leader in the neoorthodox movement in biblical theology was arguably even more extreme than Albright in his notion
of God who acts in history.
Even though biblical archaeologys rules of engagement of biblical text and archaeological record
seemed to be accepted at least initially by everyone,
a series of debates through the latter half of the twentieth century progressively eroded the Albrightian
paradigm.
Within biblical studies, Albright and his students
did not stem the tide of deconstruction, and his
intellectual fundamentalism remained a minority position. Indeed, by the 1970s and 1980s, extreme doubt
in the historicity of the entire Deuteronomistic narrative (the books of Deuteronomy through Kings
thought to represent a single source), gave rise to the
so-called minimalist or nihilist school, which essentially replaced the concept of (late) redaction of the
texts with (even later) invention, that is, the biblical
stories are seen by proponents of this school as pious
fraud of postexilic Jews. While this other extreme
also remains a minority position in biblical studies,
it cannot be ignored by archaeologists in as much as it
argues that any attempt to draw on some biblical
reality to aid the location of sites and interpretation
of the archaeological record is tantamount to mounting an expedition to excavate Treasure Island.
Attempts by Albright and others to situate the
patriarchal narratives in the reality of the Middle
Bronze Age or portray Joseph as a Hyksos prince
lost favor as early as the 1950s, as most biblical
scholars and archaeologists came to deny any but
the haziest recollection of the Bronze Age in the
stories of Genesis.

The failure to find any wandering Israelites in the

Late Bronze Age foiled attempts to trace the route of
the Exodus especially as Sinai, the Negev, and the
trans-Jordanian deserts became well explored in the
1970s and 1980s and thousands of nomadic sites of
other periods, from Palaeolithic to modern Bedouin,
were located.
One of the most notable defections from Albrights
camp was when Y. Aharoni, Yadins principal aidede-camp, accepted a source critique by A. Alt, who
claimed that the books of Joshua and Judges represent
rival traditions of how the Israelites came to occupy
the Land of Israel, rather than a single narrative sequence of conquest and then settlement. Aharoni
claimed that the archaeological record favored if
not conclusively proved the peaceful penetration
tradition over conquest. The rift between Yadin and
Aharoni caused the latter to leave the institute in
Jerusalem and establish a department in the new Tel
Aviv University, which would become increasingly
critical of the Albrightian paradigm.
By the 1980s, following the work of several of
Aharonis students in Tel Aviv (most notably
I. Finkelstein) and several younger generation
Americans (e.g., D. Esse and A. Joffe), the appearance
of Israelite highland villages at the beginning of the
Iron Age came to be seen by most archaeologists as
some combination of sedentization of locally mobile
agropastoralists and ruralization of indigenous urban
populations following the collapse of the Bronze
Age world system. Migration and conquest had
all but disappeared from the lexicon. In biblical archaeology terminology, these views would fall somewhere between Alts peaceful penetration model and
Mendenhalls peasant revolution but they really
have more to do with the impact of processual archaeology than any particular interpretation of the
biblical stories of the origins of Israel (see Processual
Archaeology).
Another one of the debates in the 1980s raged over
the very name of the discipline. W. Dever, one of
the ablest spokesmen for the profession, argued that
a community no longer made up of linguists, missionaries, kibbutzniks, or spies, and a discipline no longer
focused on the Bible, should not be named after a text.
The name he proposed, however Syro-Palestinian
Archaeology was rejected by some Americans for
religious reasons and by some Israelis for political
ones. The alternative Archaeology of the Land of
Israel was unacceptable to Arabs. (So as to stay on
the straight and narrow politically correct path, this
author hereby declares that this article uses the terms
Palestine, Israel, and Southern Levant interchangeably; that the term Israel except when utilized in a modern political context is used in the

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 923

biblical sense; and that the use of Palestine and

Israel in no way implies a judgment about the rights
of any modern political entity to any territory and/or
the borders of any such entity past, present, or
future.) The only result of this unresolved argument
was the changing of the name of the semipopular
ASOR journal from Biblical Archaeologist to Near
Eastern Archaeology which promptly caused a drop
in circulation.
The last decade of the twentieth century brought
another argument to the fore. Finkelsteins low Iron
Age chronology dating the Iron Age I to c. 1125
925 BCE instead of c. 12001000 as traditionally
maintained is not a large correction in absolute
terms. However, it divorces the appearance of decorated Philistine pottery in the lowlands and of the
Israelitesettlements in the highlands from the Egyptian
references to i
s
r/l
r/l and p
r/l
s
t at the time of
Marneptah and Ramesses III. Moreover, it supports
the minimalist claim that the United Kingdom of
David and Solomon is more a golden period fantasy
than historical reality in as much as it claims that
state formation in the highlands postdates the reigns
allotted to Saul, David, and Solomon in the biblical
king lists.
From the fundamentalists point of view, the critical fracture between religion and archaeology had
already been passed. Once the covenants of Abraham
and Moses come in archaeologists eyes to be
classified as legend or allegory, it is of little import
whether or not the biblical king lists are historiographic. From the point of view of archaeological
method, however, it may well be that the chronological debates mark the final demise of the Albrightian
paradigm. Proponents of both sides have now shifted
the criteria for the absolute dating of archaeological
horizons from historical/textual conjunctions to
chronometric dating (mainly radiocarbon). Albrights
basic stance of guarded credulity had irrevocably
changed to qualified skepticism: no biblical mention
can be relied on unless corroborated by independent
evidence.
Three developments in the way archaeology is
practiced in the Near East led to the increasing
estrangement between Bible and archaeology after
World War II. These are (in more or less chronological
order) the increasing involvement of locals in the local
archaeology, the rise of professionalism within archaeology, and the rise of environmental conservationism.
The founding of independent states in place of Western
mandates or protectorates in the Near East was followed in short order by the establishment of antiquities
services manned by locals, who increasingly are graduates of indigenous departments of archaeology. The
placement of Near Eastern archaeologists in general

institutes of archaeology has also served to make

them more responsive to trends in archaeological theory and practice and less attuned to the biblical studies
community. This has arguably been less the case in the
North American and German systems, where Near
Eastern archaeologists often operate from departments
of Near Eastern studies or religion. Finally, the motivation of the bulk of archaeological fieldwork nowadays
is salvage operations and resource management.
As such, practitioners see themselves as operating within an environmental paradigm, and often have little
background or interest in humanities or the Bible.

Biblical Archaeology in the Third

Millenium?
Is biblical archaeology dead in the water? Not by a
long shot.
First, while the Albrightian paradigm has been somewhat marginalized, there certainly are enough who still
proudly profess it. This includes practicing American
archaeologists like R. Younkers and R. Tappey, and
Israelis like Eilat Mazar, as well as several universally
acclaimed older scholars like F. M. Cross and
K. Kitchen. With the bulk of lay support squarely
behind it and the re-emergence of intellectual conservatism in academia, it is certainly too early to pronounce its demise.
Second, whereas archaeology has by and large
divorced itself from biblical studies, it is questionable whether the opposite is warranted, or indeed
possible. For scholars whose field of interest is the
emergence of monotheism, the archaeology of the
Levant offers the only possibility of testing hypotheses
against empirical evidence. The very supposition that
the biblical text is complexly constructed and multifocal means that to get to its historical kernel (and
nearly all biblical scholars believe that there is some
historicity behind some of the texts) one need constantly re-examine the facts (or factoids as some
postprocessualists would have it) provided by archaeology in light of competing textually based hypotheses. Needless to say, such endeavor would not be
possible if the veracity of the text is the departure
point for the building of the archaeological scenario.
Third, while there is no doubt that biblical (and
classical) archaeology have not fared well in the era
of processualism, they have every chance of flourishing in a postprocessual climate (see Postprocessual
Archaeology). If the purpose of archaeology is defined as searching for some universal laws of human
behavior, and the preferred method of doing so is
reading the archaeological record with the aid of
some simple transforms or middle range theory

924 BIOARCHAEOLOGY

which would make redundant the engagement with

actual texts, then the archaeology of the Levant in the
Bronze and Iron Ages becomes one test case among
many in the anthropologists cache, and a pretty
problematic one at that. If, however, one defines archaeology as the engagement between text and context, or the study of how people construct their past,
then the intensive study of a tiny patch of ground
from which different and competing ideologies hail
becomes a fascinating theme. For this, we need to
stop looking at the Bible as a collection of historical
benchmarks and to consider it as an expression of
ideology to be compared with material expressions
that we find in the ground. Both types of artifacts
should then be regarded as gaming pieces which we
the players continually rearrange in order to construct our own differing views of how the world of
the present came to be. This is exactly what some
younger scholars, for example, S. Bunimovitz,
A. Faust, or B. Routledge, are doing.

Big Game Extinctions

See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The

Levant; Classical Archaeology; Middle Range Approaches; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual
Archaeology.

Further Reading
Davis TW (2004) Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical
Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Drinkard JF, Mattingly GL, and Miller JM (eds.) (1988) Benchmarks in Time and Culture. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
King PJ (1983) American Archaeology in the Near East: A History
of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Philadelphia: The
American Schools of Oriental Research.
Millard AR and Hoffmeier JT (eds.) (2004) The Future of Biblical
Archaeology; Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions: The
Proceedings of a Symposium, August 1214 2001 at Trinity
International University. Grand Rapids: Eardmans.

See: Extinctions of Big Game.

BIOARCHAEOLOGY
John Krigbaum, University of Florida, Gainesville,
FL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
bioarchaeology Recovery and scientific analysis of human
remains from archaeological context.
palaeopathology In bioarchaeology, the study of health and
disease in human remains for both the individual and population
being studied.

Bioarchaeology (osteoarchaeology) is the study of

human remains in archaeological context. It may
also be used in a general sense as the study of any
biological remains (fauna and flora) recovered from
an archaeology site. Increasingly, however, the term is
used with regard to the identification and recovery of
human skeletal remains in the field to analysis in the
lab (osteoarchaeology). The aim of bioarchaeology is
to contribute to archaeological interpretation and

offer fresh perspectives about cultural pattern and process in the past. Skeletal biology, its cornerstone discipline in physical (biological) anthropology, provides
the basic groundwork for studying recovered human
remains. However, first and foremost, bioarchaeology
is an archaeology discipline. It requires a firm understanding of the contextual aspects of site formation
from individual burial features or commingled ossuaries to mortuary analysis of burial patterning across
time and space. Bioarchaeology should be a holistic
process, whereby interdisciplinary efforts inform and
improve upon the findings in the archaeological record.
In practice, coordination of disparate data sets has
been the exception rather than the rule in the analysis of human remains from archaeological sites (see
Osteological Methods).

Historical Background
In the early stages of the twentieth century, bioarchaeology was an as yet undefined field of study

BIOARCHAEOLOGY 925

focusing on descriptive aspects of skeletal analysis.

Copious data were collected from skeletal remains,
particularly skulls, and included as appendices to
reports. Physical anthropologists involved in this research rarely contributed substantively to problemoriented archaeological research and were enlisted as
specialists post-excavation to analyze the skeletons
recovered. Typological approaches to racial classification were the topic of the day, and most efforts
were made to establish and document patterns of
human variation. Most noted for these efforts was
Ales Hrdlicka who, in the early twentieth century,
founded the Division of Physical Anthropology at the
Smithsonian Institution (National Museum of Natural
History).
In contrast, Ernst Hooton of Harvard Universitys
Peabody Museum had the goal of integrating data
from human remains with archaeological findings
and to collectively look at remains and the patterns
of pathologies, etc. Although still ensconced in the
racial anthropology of his day, his work at Pecos
Pueblo, NM (in conjunction with Alfred Kidder),
was noteworthy in providing a population-based
approach to the interpretation of the human remains.
This hallmark effort, however, did not change how
physical anthropologists approached archaeological
skeletal collections. By the mid-twentieth century,
human remains continued to be analyzed and data
collected and appended to archaeological monographs and reports. Greater care and detail was
placed in describing/diagnosing pathological lesions
but more as curiosities rather than to establish overall
patterns.
Bioarchaeology changed in the 1960s and 1970s,
with the advent of the new archaeology and ecological anthropology. Research programs at the
Smithsonian Institution with J. Lawrence Angel, at
University of Massachusetts with George Armelagos,
and at Northwestern University with Jane Buikstra
truly began to clarify the role skeletal data should
serve in archaeological research. Interdisciplinary
efforts were made to guide problem-oriented research
in what was just getting referred to as bioarchaeology. At a conference organized by the late Robert
Blakely in 1977, Buikstra clarified what bioarchaeology was and should be in American archaeology, in
contrast to its more generalized use as a term in
European archaeology meaning analysis of all
biological materials from a site (e.g., seeds, charcoal,
and faunal remains).
Bioarchaeology in the 1980s and 1990s made substantial inroads in critical analysis and interpretation
of skeletal material. Lab-based advances, in particular, are noteworthy such as the application of bone

chemistry methods to infer past diet (palaeodiet),

place of origin, and biological relatedness.

Methodological Approaches
Reconstruction of an individuals life history, where
possible, offers information about an individuals
ancestry, demographics, well-being, and habit. This
requires good preservation of the skeleton. Commingled and fragmentary remains prove to be more
complex, from establishing minimum number of individuals (MNI) to identifying markers and/or diagnosing pathological lesions. All remains, no matter how
fragmentary, have a story to tell and can contribute to
understanding biological and cultural processes in
past populations. All human remains must be treated
with respect, particularly when remains are subject
to scientific analysis which may require destructive
sampling of bone and tooth tissues. Methodological
advances have minimized the impact such approaches
have on human remains and this is particularly true
with molecular advances in ancient DNA (aDNA)
and stable isotopes and trace element studies (see
Stable Isotope Analysis; DNA: Ancient).
Palaeodemography

Apart from associated grave markers with name and

date of birth/death, estimation of age-at-death and
sex is established through observation of osteological
markers on the skeleton. Subadult individuals are easier to age due to developmental patterns of growth in
their skeleton and teeth. The presence/fusion of long
bone epiphyses and eruption sequence in the deciduous
and permanent dentition provide age estimates with
excellent precision. Although there is greater error in
correctly aging adult skeletons, age-related changes
to the skull and postcranial skeleton, particularly the
pelvis, have good precision. With respect to sex,
the subadult skeleton typically lacks diagnostic traits
prior to puberty, while adult males tend to be more
robust and lack modifications of the pelvis as a function of childbirth. Much research has been dedicated to establishing and verifying methods to age and
sex the skeleton, particularly with respect to forensic
applications.
A conceptual advance in bioarchaeology was made
in 1992 with the publication of Wood and colleagues
Osteological paradox in Current Anthropology.
Although the bias inherent in skeletal samples and
their interpretation is clear enough (that a mortuary
space or cemetery represents a collective body that
may not reflect the population as a whole), the implications and significance of palaeopathological studies
changed in a constructive fashion. The importance of

926 BIOARCHAEOLOGY

frailty and relative health and well-being are certainly

vital concerns that can contribute to biocultural understanding of past populations.
Palaeopathology

Perhaps the greatest advances over the past several

decades have been in palaeopathological diagnosis
and interpretation critical review of skeletal remains
and differential diagnosis to ascertain the best explanation for the lesions observed. The osteological paradox
also has heightened the efforts to consider implications
of health, frailty, and concomitant morbidity and mortality as inferred from prehistoric populations.
Growth disruption studies have been the most significant insult that may be present in the subadult
(or adult) skeleton. Subadults may show evidence of
delayed appearance/fusion of ephiphyses, and in deciduous and permanent dentition, lines of arrested
enamel development are often interpreted as signs of
nonspecific stress. Other nonspecific stress indicators
include signs of nutritional deficiency such as cribra
orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis. Additional nonspecific pathologies include Harris Lines, which
seem to reflect signs of growth commencement in
long bone shafts.
Specific pathologies play an important albeit
complex role and are critically evaluated in studies
of human remains. The role of infectious disease, in
particular, has helped to transform bioarchaeology
from a descriptive discipline in to a holistic one.
Changes toward sedentism and agriculture are thought
to correspond to improved lives. However, findings in
the late 1960s and 1970s by Armelagos and colleagues,
and by Buikstra, Clark Spencer Larsen and others
showed that this was clearly not the case. Increased
evidence of nonspecific pathologies was present that
indicated poor dietary quality in staple foods, notably
maize. Most importantly, these studies underscore
the fact that different populations experiencing similar
biocultural stressors respond in similar fashion.
As part of the new bioarchaeology, increased emphasis has been placed on examining aspects of the
skeleton that may not be pathological but rather express use for the individual/population under study.
Significant observations and analyses are made on
patterns of osteoarthritis have been observed and
biomechanical aspects of bone formation assessed to
infer past use and accommodation of the skeleton to
forcing stressors and loads.
Palaeodiet

Two important analytical techniques in bone chemistry include trace element analysis and stable isotope ratio analysis (see Trace Element Analysis;
Stable Isotope Analysis). Advances have proved to be

exceptionally useful in contextualizing human remains

and reconstructing past human subsistence. Coupled
with other archaeological data, stable isotopes provide an independent measure of individual diet. Such
data can distinguish between numerous dietary regimes and thereby provide important distinctions of
diet that may relate to status, gender, and place.
Ancestry

Analysis of biological distance (biodistance) has advanced significantly since the early descriptive stages
of skeletal biology. Metric and nonmetric data continue to be collected on teeth, skulls and postcranial
remains and new methods of analysis and more powerful computer programs, statistical software, and
data acquisition tools (e.g., microscribes and CT
scans) make these data relevant and complementary
in both local and regional context. New advances in
bone chemistry, particularly with heavy stable isotopes of strontium and lead, also provide novel
approaches to assessing place of origin. Simply put,
individuals tissues reflect the terra firma of their
childhood. Other approaches to determining ancestry
are more direct, perhaps best reflected by advances in
ancient DNA studies using well-preserved bone. Coupled with genetic surveys of living populations and
with studies of historical linguistics, aDNA data provide a powerful means to assess past relationships of
the individual and/or population in question.

Ethics
One important change in bioarchaeology in North
America has been the adoption of legislation affecting
the status of excavation and curation of human
remains. The Native American Grave Protection and
Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), signed as law in 1990,
forced bioarchaeologists from field schools to museums
to reassess their actions in the field and in their
analysis of archived collections. Importantly, bioarchaeologists were made to justify the use of such
collections in present and future research. Active research programs across the North American continent
have improved efforts to integrate biological data
with the archaeological record. Further, NAGPRA provides a means for bioarchaeologists to connect with
Native American/First Nation groups and find common ground or compromise. Further benefits from
NAGPRA were to make the public and anthropologists aware of other disenfranchised groups and
to reconsider issues of cultural property and ownership or stewards of the past. These repatriation concerns have been addressed outside of North America
with mixed results and often for political rather
than ideological purpose. No matter, that lines of

BLOOD RESIDUE ANALYSIS 927

communication have been open and public awareness

and debate is ongoing is healthy for the future of
constructive bioarchaeology in the future to assist in
promoting a better understanding of the past.
There is huge potential for bioarchaeology to provide and promote a biocultural framework with
which students of prehistory and the public can benefit. From individual life history to population-based
studies, bioarchaeology has made significant contributions to archaeology. Bioarchaeology is a field
that has matured considerably over the past century.
Early classificatory stages focused on typological
and descriptive reviews whereas at present, increased
focus draws upon multiple lines of evidence to assess
past human experience and condition. Increased specialization has led to numerous points of reference
in the natural and physical sciences which help to
expand the scope of bioarchaeology and underscore
its relevance in any archaeological pursuit associated
with human remains.
See also: Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Excavation

and Recording Techniques; DNA: Ancient; Forensic

Archaeology; Health, Healing, and Disease; Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act;
Osteological Methods; Paleodemography; Paleopathology; Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element
Analysis.

Further Reading
Armelagos GJ (2003) Bioarchaeology as anthropology. In Gillespie
SD and Nichols DL (eds.) Archaeology Is Anthropology, Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association
No. 13. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, pp. 2740.
Blakey ML (2001) Bioarchaeology of the African diaspora in the
Americas. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 387422.
Buikstra JE and Ubelaker DH (eds.) (1994) Standards for Data
Collection from Human Skeletal Remains. Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Series, No. 44. Fayetteville, AK: Arkansas
Archeological Survey.
Buikstra JE and Beck LA (eds.) (2006) Bioarchaeology: The
Contextual Analysis of Human Remains. San Diego: Elsevier.
Cohen MN and Crane-Kramer GMM (eds.) (in press).
Ancient Health: Skeletal Indicators of Agricultural and
Economic Intensification. Gainesville, FL: University Press of
Florida.
Katzenberg MA and Saunders SR (eds.) (2000) Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton. New York: Wiley-Liss.
Larsen CS (1997) Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the
Human Skeleton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Parker Pearson M (2001) The Archaeology of Death and Burial.
College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.
Steckel RH and Rose JC (eds.) (2002) The Backbone of History:
Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Ubelaker D (1999) Human Skeletal Remains: Excavation, Analysis,
Interpretation. Washington, DC: Taraxacum.

BLOOD RESIDUE ANALYSIS

Judith Field and Karen Privat, The University of
Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
blood residue One or a number of blood components (e.g., red
blood cells, hemoglobin, heme, plasma proteins, etc.) present on
some surface.
Bugas-Holding A late Prehistoric Shoshone occupation of the
Sunlight Basin in the Absaroka Mountains of northwest
Wyoming.
Cuddie Springs A notable archaeological and paleontological
site in the semi-arid zone of central northern New South Wales,
Australia. Cuddie Springs is an open site, with the fossil deposits
preserved in a claypan on the floor of an ancient ephemeral lake.
Monte Verde An archaeological site in south-central Chile,
which is suspected to date 12,500 years before present, making it
one of the earliest inhabited sites in the Americas. Monte Verde
pre-dates the earliest known Clovis culture site of Clovis, New
Mexico by 1000 years.

Introduction
Stone tools used in the butchering of animals or the
processing of animal meat, skin, or bone may accumulate blood and other associated residues on their
surface. Blood is most likely to derive from prey
species, though it is possible for human blood to be
deposited on a tool accidentally during the knapping
process. When an animal is being butchered, blood
may also build up in associated sediments or on other
nearby materials such as hearthstones. The recovery
and species-level identification of blood residues has
the potential to contribute important and detailed
information about the hunting practices, dietary
habits, and economies of ancient peoples.
Sustained interest in the analysis of archaeological
blood residues was initiated by Tom Loys 1983 report of the species-level identification of haemoglobin
recovered from 16-kyr-old stone artifacts. Since
then, there has been a concerted effort to identify

928 BLOOD RESIDUE ANALYSIS

apparent blood residues to genus/species using a variety of techniques borrowed from the clinical sciences.

Blood as Residue
Mammalian blood is primarily composed of plasma
and red blood cells (
55% and
45% in humans,
respectively). The remaining minor constituents of
blood (<1%) include white blood cells, platelets, and
proteins. Blood residue may indicate one or a number
of blood components present on a tool surface that
are visually or biochemically detectable. In addition
to red blood cells, reported residues derived from
blood include hemoglobin, Heme, and plasma proteins. Red blood cells are comprised of 90% hemoglobin, a metalloprotein responsible for oxygen transport
throughout the body. Heme is a main constituent of
hemoglobin, and consists of a porphyrin ring surrounding an atom of iron. Immunoglobulins are globular
proteins that function as antibodies, which are present
in plasma as well as other body fluids.
During butchering, the surface of the tool(s) used
may accumulate blood as well as other tissues such
as collagen, hair, and muscle tissue. The archaeological manifestation of these residues may only be a
fraction of the original accumulation, as residues
are lost through taphonomic processes such as abrasion, microbial degradation, or dissolution. The key
questions at the core of blood residue research are
(1) whether the molecular components of blood persist
in detectable form on the surface of stone tools in the
burial environment, and (2) whether these components survive over archaeological timescales.

Survival in the Fossil Record

Opinion is divided over the likelihood of blood to
survive for any period on the surface of stone or
other artifactual material in a physically or biochemically identifiable way. Although the apparent presence of blood residues has been demonstrated in a
limited range of modern experimental and archaeological contexts, the preservation of any detectable
residue must be considered an exception rather than
the rule. In the case of residues on tool surfaces, it is
possible that the close association with mineral (i.e.,
stone or associated clay matrix) in the burial environment may have a stabilizing effect on organic material
such as blood proteins, and may also protect organics
from microbial attack.
Experimental studies to determine the factors
controlling the survival of blood residues have been
largely inconclusive, possibly due to the wide range of
sediments and environments represented in the fossil
record that require consideration. In order to better

understand the conditions that promote the survival

of blood on stone, sites from which blood residues
have been successfully recovered must be thoroughly
documented. Of particular interest are the sedimentary context, the environmental setting at the time of
artifact deposition, the post-depositional history, and
the techniques of artifact recovery.
The survival of blood residues on stone tools dated
to >30 ka has been reported at the Pleistocene
archaeological site of Cuddie Springs in southeastern
Australia. The artifacts were deposited on the bed of
an ephemeral lake (cf. waterhole), and the sediments
from which the artifacts were recovered are primarily
silts and clays, anaerobic, alkaline, and constantly
damp. There has been little movement within the
sediment since deposition and the sediments have
been protected from disturbance by the formation of
an old land surface capping the deposits of interest.
While now in the semi-arid zone, Cuddie Springs was
located within the arid zone during the period of
artifact deposition. Residue survival seems optimized
in the sediments formed during extended dry lake
conditions when it is likely that blood would have
dried relatively quickly before burial. Rapid burial
post-discard may have reduced the exposure to damaging UV radiation. The residues on the Cuddie
Springs artifacts were generally identified in or near
unconformities such as step fractures on the stone
surface, where they would have accumulated from
cutting or scraping and would have been less susceptible to subsequent removal (Figure 1c). Such blood
and tissue accumulation has been observed in modern
experimental studies, indicating that higher residue
concentration and long-term survival is more likely at
disconformities such as microcracks and step fractures than on smooth areas on the tool surface.

Methodology
No single analytical protocol has yet been agreed upon
as consistently effective in detecting and identifying
blood residues. Researchers therefore employ various
techniques during excavation, post-excavation, screening, and biochemical analysis of artifacts, according to
personal preference and experience. Some investigations of potential blood residues omit certain elements
of the investigation process, such as special handling of
artifacts with potential blood residues during and after
excavation, or the documentation of visible residues
prior to extraction.
Examination and Documentation

The first step in residue analysis should involve the

examination of the artifact under low-power magnification to locate any possible blood residues. If any

BLOOD RESIDUE ANALYSIS 929

Figure 1 (a), Blood residue on a silcrete stone artifact used to butcher kangaroo (M. fuliginosus, scale bar 100 mm). (b) Extraction
from the same tool in A, visualized in a scanning electron microscope showing individual red blood cells (scale bar 10 mm). (c) Putative
blood residue (dark films) associated with step fractures adjacent to the used edge of a flaked stone artifact from Cuddie Springs, in
sediments dated to 30 ka. (d) High-power view of residues on flaked stone artifact shown in (c) (scale bar 100 mm). (e) Surface of
experimental tool with blood residue from butchering kangaroo prior to extraction using water as a solvent (scale bar 1 mm). (f) Surface
of same experimental tool shown in (e), showing the incomplete removal of residues (scale bar 1 mm). The surface of the tool was lightly
scraped with a nylon disposable pipette tip before the solvent plus sample was withdrawn.

residues are detected, they should be described and

photographed. Blood has often been reported as having
a distinctive morphology. Dried blood accumulated
on experimental tools used to butcher animals produces distinctive residues, straw yellow to dark red
in color, exhibiting extensive hexagonal cracking in
places (Figure 1a). Scanning electron microscopy of
these residues shows intact red blood cells within the
yellowred matrix (Figure 1b).
Red blood cells, if preserved intact, are large enough
to be visually identified by light microscopy on lithic
tool surfaces. Because the anucleate, concave shape of
mammalian red blood cells differs from those of other
vertebrates, some researchers have postulated that
broad taxonomic distinctions may be made from the
observed three-dimensional form of preserved residues.
The diameter of red blood cells also varies between
species, providing another, more precise prospective

diagnostic tool. However, changes in red blood cell

size and morphology have been observed during drying
of experimental residues, calling into question the potential efficacy of these taxonomic indicators.
Prior to extraction, the artifact may be further tested
for the possible presence of blood using a clinical
haemoglobin detector, such as Ames Hemastix. Such
tests cannot unequivocally identify haemoglobin on
artifacts since they have been found to cross-react
with non-blood-derived fluids and to produce falsepositive results when exposed to certain elements commonly present in sediment. Blocking cross-reactions
may be attempted (e.g., treatment with 0.5 M EDTA
to prevent manganese cross-reaction), but cannot be
guaranteed. Nevertheless, they can be included as
one useful step in the screening process for blood
residues, with a positive result indicating that further
investigation is necessary.

930 BLOOD RESIDUE ANALYSIS

Extraction and Analysis

Protocols for the recovery of residues from an artifact

surface involve either the targeted isolation of visually
identified residues (Figure 1e, f) or bulk, whole-tool
extractions. There is great variability in extraction
methods for putative blood residues and the solvent
used is critical to success. The use of 4 M guanidine
hydrochloride and 4% ammonium hydroxide rather
than water or buffer solutions has been reported to
greatly improve recovery and detection rates.
Once extracted from the artifact surface, the residue
may be subjected to one or a number of immunological,
electrophoretic, and microscopic analyses to determine
the presence of blood-derived compounds. Immunological assays, including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Western blot techniques, seek
to detect and identify particular proteins derived from
blood. In theory, immunological methods can identify
specific proteins derived from a particular species,
allowing for species-specific identification of blood
residues. However, cross-reactivity between species
still occurs in practice, reducing the reliable application
of immunological techniques to the general detection of
(mammalian) blood.
Blood proteins can also be isolated and identified
using gel electrophoresis, which uses an electric current to separate molecules by their size. Isoelectric
focusing (IEF) involves the separation of the individual proteins in a residue into discrete components
by their ionic charge through a pH gradient. Blood
residue studies have also attempted to use simple
protein assays such as dot-blot and bicinchoninic
acid assays.
Often a laboratory will preferentially use one extraction and analysis protocol while another will routinely employ a different method. Differing protocols
between laboratories may account for the greatly
varying reports for the survival and recovery of
blood from stone artifacts and for divergent perspectives on blood survival and/or the form in which
blood may be detected. Laboratories do not typically
engage in inter-laboratory comparison of results or
consultation regarding the relative effectiveness of
analytical strategies. Blind tests of the recovery and
identification of blood residues that have been undertaken between laboratories have generally produced
equivocal results.

Archaeological Applications
Cross-over electrophoresis is an immunological
method, principally used by Margaret Newman, University of Calgary, to identify blood proteins in residues on stone tools. Orin Shanks and colleagues
applied this method to the analysis of artifacts from
the Late Holocene Bugas-Holding (open) site in

Wyoming, USA. The large area excavation of the

site investigated site-patterning of specific domestic
activities. Site-specific information was pooled to
provide an interpretative framework for the study of
possible protein residues and included site formation
processes, palaeoenvironmental data, and excavation
strategies involved in the recovery of artifacts. Furthermore, considerable testing of reagents, experimental controls, and systematic re-testing of samples
were undertaken to reduce the probability of falsepositive results. The results confirmed the processing
of faunal species (bovine and sheep) that had been
identified in the faunal assemblages. Interestingly,
the analyses raised further questions about animal
exploitation, with bear proteins also found on three
of the seven artifacts returning positive reactions.
Bear was represented at the site by only a single
skeletal element. Furthermore, the nature of the subsistence tasks identified by the integrated functional
approach has provided insights into tool use and
re-use. Importantly for blood residue studies, these
results support a relatively long-term survival of
blood residues on stone artifacts and the potential
of identifying species-specific proteins by methods
other than DNA analyses, while reinforcing the
need for a systematic and rigorous approach to the
analysis of purported blood residues in archaeological contexts.
Noreen Tuross and Tom Dillehay undertook an
analysis of residues from the site of Monte Verde in
Southern Chile. Monte Verde is an open site, with
occupation traces contained within a wetland environment on the margin of an ancient tributary of the
Maullin River. Two cultural layers were identified at
the site: the youngest dated to 13.212.5 kyr BP and a
second less well-defined unit located some distance
from the other site and dated to c. 33 kyr BP. The investigations included a combination of immunological
and geochemical approaches to the identification of
residues on flaked stone artifacts recovered from
both horizons. Consideration of the archaeological
and stratigraphic contexts as well as the geochemical
characterization of the sedimentary matrix was an
essential part of the investigative approach to this
study. An analysis of the sediments and site formation
processes indicated that the younger cultural layer
represented a single occupation event, following
which material was rapidly buried and maintained
in a consistently anoxic, reducing environment, promoting organic preservation. The geochemical analyses demonstrated the absence of organic matter and
the presence of desiccant silica gel in the deposits
immediately below the younger occupational layer,
and identified a lack of humic acids in the overlying
strata suggestive of low microbial activity. Further
macroscopic, microscopic, and molecular evidence

BONE TOOL ANALYSIS 931

of the high degree of preservation of organic remains

within the cultural strata, in addition to the consistently low temperature of the sediments, indicated
that the burial conditions were likely to promote
long-term preservation of molecular residues.
Seven artifacts from the two horizons were tested
for the presence of residues: three from the 13.2
12.5-kyr-BP habitation level and four from the older
(possible) cultural layer. The authors noted that no
correlation existed between observed stains on the
surface of the artifacts and the results of immunological
tests for blood residue. One artifact (from the
c. 33 0-kyr-BP layer) yielded positive results for the
presence of blood protein. For the immunological
assay experimental controls, including soil samples
and blanks were included. These controls enabled a
greater degree of confidence in the interpretation of
the results from testing the extracted residues. The
ELISA method was used to detect the presence of
haemoglobin. A Western blot assay was subsequently
used to determine the preservation and source (i.e.,
species) of the purported haemoglobin-containing
residue. The results of this study suggest that it is
possible for degraded but detectable components of
blood to survive over archaeological timescales, and
in sufficient quantities and preservation to be detected using existing biochemical techniques.
The case studies presented above demonstrate how
important a rigorous, multidisciplinary approach is
for investigating questions of artifact function and
use. Not every analysis will necessarily require taxonomic identification. The detection of blood proteins
alone may be a useful result, depending on the research question at hand. When approaching the
biochemical testing stage, a hierarchical approach

should be observed, with the assessment of the nature

of the residues as the first step. Identification of residues to species level remains contentious and problematic, and may not be possible. The most fruitful
studies will include a survey of all tool-use indicators,
including usewear and technological studies, and will
incorporate the expertise of both archaeological and
biochemical researchers to ensure the effective execution of the analyses and the interpretation of the
experimental results.

Further Reading
Cattaneo C, Gelsthorpe K, Phillips P, and Sokol RJ (1993) Blood
residues on stone tools: Indoor and outdoor experiments. World
Archaeology 25: 2943.
Craig OE and Collins MJ (2002) The removal of protein from
mineral surfaces: Implications for residue analysis of archaeological materials. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 10771082.
Fullagar R, Furby J, and Hardy B (1996) Residues on stone artefacts: State of a scientific art. Antiquity 70: 740745.
Loy TH (1983) Prehistoric blood residues: Detection on tool surfaces and identification of species of origin. Science 220: 1269
1271.
Loy TH (1993) The artefact as site: An example of the biomolecular analysis of organic residues on prehistoric tools. World
Archaeology 25: 4463.
Odell GH (2001) Stone tool research at the end of the millennium.
Journal of Archaeological Research 9: 45100.
Shanks OC, Kornfeld M, and Ream W (2004) DNA and protein
recovery from washed experimental stone tools. Archaeometry
46: 663672.
Tuross N and Dillehay T (1995) The mechanism of organic preservation at Monte Verde, Chile, and one use of biomolecules in
archaeological investigation. Journal of Field Archaeology
22: 97110.
Yohe RM, II, Newman ME, and Schneider JS (1991)
Immunological identification of small-mammal proteins on
Aboriginal milling equipment. American Antiquity 45: 659666.

BONE TOOL ANALYSIS

Ryan J Rabett, University of Cambridge,
Cambridge, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

osseous materials Bone, antler, ivory teeth, and horn.

secondary manufacture Production investment following the
initial creation of a tool blank.

Glossary

Introduction

anthropic The intentional or unintentional result of human

action.
curated tools Implements of variable investment with a use life
usually beyond a single episode; repair is likely.
expedient tools Low-investment implements, employed chiefly
because of the utility of an existing feature (e.g., sharp edge)
and the convenience of the moment. They are generally not
retained or repaired.

This article examines the osseous technologies that

can be created from animal skeletons. Tool status is
accorded to a skeletal element or fragment that has
been modified subsequent to its isolation from the
carcass. Such anthropic adaptation may be deliberate
(e.g., through manufacture) and/or appear as a result
of utilization, and is granted in instances where these

932 BONE TOOL ANALYSIS

details cannot otherwise be ascribed to alternative

nonanthropic causes. Implements can display a combination of traces from both human and natural
sources and as such the study of them involves
both zooarchaeological (i.e., via animal ecology,
hunting, and butchery) and technological analysis
(see Archaeozoology). As an exemplar of this, the
following discussion will present some of the similarities and differences that exist between osseous and
lithic raw materials and tool-blank production, and
will situate both in an operational sequence of animal
procurement and processing. It will then give an account of principal manufacturing techniques, methods
for establishing tool function, and the phenomenon of
pseudo tools.

Raw Materials and Tool-Blank Production

Close similarities exist between certain aspects of
acquisition and processing osseous and lithic raw
materials. Both may be collected in an opportunistic
manner during the course of other activities such as
foraging, hunting, or herding, and cached ahead of
actual use. This kind of scheduling has been inferred
from the concentrations of red deer antler found at the
Early Mesolithic site of Star Carr in northern England.
Preproduction exposure to fire can affect the
mechanical character of stone and help with its working into a tool. Incidental heat treatment of bone as
part of the cooking process also alters its responsive
qualities through the loss of moisture and organic
(collagen) constituents. The extent to which these
changes influence the selection of skeletal fragments
for tool manufacture is an area that requires further
research; however, preproduction work, including the
soaking of antler to make it more plastic and workable for tool making, is well known from ethnographic sources and experimentation.
As with lithics, acquiring a tool blank is often
an extractive process. Osseous implements may begin
life as fortuitously fractured pieces of bone broken
during processing of the carcass before or through
consumption, for example, as a consequence of marrow extraction. Alternatively, this initial stage may be
more targeted and deliberate: from the quarrying of
simple cortical flakes from the dense sections of cortical bone in a manner reminiscent to flake removals for
stone tool production, to more elaborate preparatory
steps. One of the most well known of these involves
using a special lithic tool (a burin) to remove long
parallel sections of cortical bone or more commonly
antler or ivory, such as is seen at the Upper Paleolithic
sites in Europe and the Central Russian Plain, through
what is called the groove and splinter technique.

A second method, used chiefly on bone or antler,

involves cutting around the circumference of the element. This usually takes place close to one or both
ends of the element so that the diaphysis can be used
as a source of material or as a tool in itself. While it is
possible to cut cleanly through a piece using this
method, frequently just enough is done simply to
control fracturing and the bone or antler is broken
by force. As a result, this is called the groove and
snap technique.
There are, however, divergent as well as convergent
characteristics between lithic and osseous technologies. Whereas access to usable or favored resources
may be affected by variables such as distance, transportation, and even weather conditions in both
instances, stone is by and large a stationary resource;
osseous raw materials by contrast will, in all cases
where living animals are the starting point, have their
own patterns of mobility. The behavior of groups
(e.g., migration) and individual animals introduces
an element of unpredictability and reliance on the
skills of the hunter to successfully locate, stalk or
trap, and ultimately kill the animal. Whereas the
procurement of lithics (be it opportunistic or targeted) must be incorporated into other daily activities, the reward for meeting this unpredictability is
that potential raw materials are guaranteed at the end
of every successful hunt. Allowing for interspecies
differences, osseous raw materials will also always
occur in identically shaped packages. Where predictability is lost in the initial phase of acquisition, it is
gained through redundancy in the form of what is
acquired. However, skeletal elements are functional
parts of a body structure that facilitate locomotion,
provide protection to internal soft tissues or form part
of a feeding apparatus. This places certain limits on
how osseous materials can be worked and on what
can be made from them; restrictions that are less
pronounced in lithic raw materials.
Bone is also a much more dynamic material than
stone. It is being constantly reformed and replaced
during the life of the animal and is subject to the effects
of habitual action, trauma, and disease. Age affects an
elements size, but also its inherent strength bones
from aged animals are more highly mineralized than
those of younger animals or those in their prime.
Changes in composition continue postmortem: the
organic collagen decomposes (the rate of this process
will be moderated by the environmental conditions of
deposition and, as mentioned, may be accelerated
by cooking), bone becomes still more mineralized,
structurally weakened and prone to the effects of
weathering.
Finally, animals may also be treated in different
ways according to variability in the way people view

BONE TOOL ANALYSIS 933

them. Ethnographic studies show how some animals

may be perceived as being an integral part of a groups
community while others may be treated as hostile
outsiders; the act of hunting carries overtones of
social interaction as much as it is the necessary pursuit of sustenance. There is considerable challenge in
retrieving these subtle, often habitual, relationships
archaeologically, though it is not impossible for us to
draw inferences about them in our interpretations of
animal procurement and reduction sequences, including where this leads to the production, maintenance,
and discard of osseous technology (Figure 1).

Curated, Expedient, and Pseudo Tools

Turning a blank into a tool may require a multistage
or an abbreviated sequence of additional work. Various secondary manufacturing techniques may be
employed in the creation of more complex curated
tools, including cutting, perforating, or incising the
blank. A process like hafting will bring together a
range of different materials to bed, bind, and mount

the working point or edge of a tool into a handle or

shaft.
In order to exploit the mechanical strength of most
animal bones, the long axis of the tool must be aligned
with that of the element. As the archaeological record
attests, the resilient nature of the material means that it
is well suited to the production of projectile points
(Figure 2) and it is here that many experimental studies
have concentrated.
Perhaps the most widely applied techniques involve
the scraping and paring or the grinding of a tool
blank, either to augment its existing form or to turn it
into a prescribed shape. Scraping creates bands of thin
striations of varying widths (Figure 3) reminiscent of
a bar code that are caused by minute irregularities in
the working edge of the stone or metal being used.
Scraping leaves two other characteristic (though not
ubiquitous) traces. The first of these are called chatter marks: short, closely associated, parallel signals
that appear during the course of the stroke and lie at
right angles to the main striations (Figure 3). The
second trace is characterized by an abrupt line also

Available
prey

Prey
selection
Perceived
social
relations
between
hunter and
hunted

Primary butchery

Practical
dictates of
animal
physiology

Removal of blank
from bone
Manufacturing
process
Discard bone
debitage

Cooking
Mechanical
properties of bone

Choice of skeletal
element
Available lithic or
other implements

Hunting
technology

Cultural/
traditional
observances
of
production

Learned
skills

Intention to make
bone artefact
Choice of
technique
Actual use and
maintenance of
bone artefact
Discard bone
artefact

Figure 1 Schematic diagram of interrelated factors in the sequence of bone tool production, use, and discard. Striped arrows indicate
the entry and exit points to other adjoining systems.

934 BONE TOOL ANALYSIS

Figure 2 Experimental projectile points and hafting mechanism. Scale in 5 mm increments. Photographs: Ryan Rabett.

at right angles to the direction of the striations. This

marks the point at which the edge of the fabricating
tool first cuts into the bone at the beginning of a
stroke the inception point (Figure 3) and is an
indication of the direction in which the bone was
worked. Paring essentially involves a more invasive
form of the same process, where shavings are actually
carved out of the bone surface.
Working osseous materials with an abrasive agent
such as sand produces a different form of striation
exhibiting a spindle or comet-like appearance
(Figure 4). This distinct profile develops as a result
of changes in applied pressure along the abrading
path that individual grains take across the surface.
In some cases, the shape of a blank and that of the
tool itself may spring directly from the natural form or
affordances of the original element. Archaeological
examples fitting this description include antler and
bone pieces used as soft hammers or punches in lithic
reduction (or alternatively, where elements are used as
hide processing or fabrication tools). For example, in
the Third Millennium Neolithic site of Chalain 4 in
the Jura region of France, wild boar tusks and beaver

incisors provided preformed cutting edges that were

well suited to tasks such as working the wooden parts
of composite tools like arrows or bow staves.
There are certain occasions when the only anthropic
modification to an osseous blank comes from a brief
period of utilization, for example, using fragments of
an animals own carcass as improvised tools to assist
in its butchery. Such pieces are often characterized as
expedient and are generally discarded at the end of a
single period of activity. The lack of investment and
abbreviated use life means that it is often only by
identifying highly localized damage, such as microflake scars, or rounding of a fracture edge, that such
tools can be singled out from other nonanthropically
modified fragments in a faunal assemblage.
The ability to distinguish between surface traces
left by human action and those caused by other agencies (such as trampling, which can cause traces that
are superficially similar to cut-marks), either before
or during burial, is a major concern in the study of
animal butchery, but also has significance in the study
of osseous technology. This is particularly the case
when archaeologists find potential implements that

BONE TOOL ANALYSIS 935

are made on antlers, horns, and teeth. As part of the

external anatomy of an animal, there is a greater
chance that these parts will have been subject to
surface damage and wear during its life in ways that
the internal bones will not have been. Work on deer

Figure 3 Striations, chatter marks, and inception lines on

scraped bone (20 magnification: upper image; 30 magnification: lower image) from Niah Cave, Borneo. Photographs: Ryan
Rabett. Reproduced courtesy of the Sarawak Museum, Malaysia.

antler from nonarchaeological contexts by Sandra

Olsen, for example, has shown that rounding, polish,
fracturing, and fine abrasion may all occur at the
points of antler tines, and are caused when the deer
rubs its antlers against the ground or against trees.
This may proceed even to the extent of producing
a discrete wear facet to the tip. These pseudo tools
are completely natural features, but can sometimes
be mistaken for use wear and hence for genuine
archaeological tools. Familiarization not only with
the context of an archaeological assemblage but also
with the ecology and behavior of species represented
is an important guard against making this mistake.
Tool function is normally deduced through two complementary avenues of investigation. The first of these
employs comparable lines of evidence through ethnographic or experimental analogues as a reference or to
replicate the conditions and consequences of usage.
Alternatively, archaeological tools may be examined
at a microscale for use wear traces attributable to particular activities (see Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear). Analysis at high magnification, such as that possible
through a scanning electron microscope (SEM), can
reveal the finest intricacies of detail, isolating minute
blood or vegetal residues, or can provide highly resolved images of different kinds of surface polish. Although care must be taken to isolate contaminants that
could have become lodged in the microstructure of the
surface during recovery or subsequent conservation,
this approach can help establish the kinds of materials
a tool came into contact with during the period of its
use (see Organic Residue Analysis).

Figure 4 The form of ground striations (20 magnification) left on the surface of a bone tool from Niah Cave, Borneo. Scale in 5 mm
increments. Photographs: Ryan Rabett. Reproduced from Asian Perspectives.

936 BONE TOOL ANALYSIS

Figure 5 Use-wear striations (accumulated after 300 strokes) along the leading edge of an experimental unhafted tool used to scrape
tubers (sweet potatoes); 20 magnification. Photograph: Ryan Rabett.

Lower magnification (usually light-microscope

work) is more coarse-grained and has limited facility
to characterize residue traces, but where portability
or a comparatively large sample size (or cost) are
controlling factors, this method is still able to examine
details of gross surface change, for example, fractures,
manufacturing, and use striations (Figure 5), and give
the global character of use polishes: how and where
they are distributed across a tool. For example, hafting
may preserve a clear wear differential between exposed and bound sections of the tool, while movement
in the haft during use can cause discrete patches of
polishing and may result in the creation of fine striations from particulate abrasion. This kind of analysis
is, therefore, suited for establishing patterns in the
context of use how implements were being utilized.

Conclusion
Ethnographic studies and archaeological sites with
outstanding organic preservation reveal the wide
range of applications to which organic technologies
have been used. In most cases, few of these items
survive to be recovered by excavation. Of these technologies, osseous tools are among the most enduring
and provide valuable insights into the procurement
and processing strategies of early peoples. While
many of the processes of stone tool utilization may
have been transferable to osseous materials, recourse
to these alternate raw materials was probably not
always or perhaps even usually as a direct replacement for stone. There is growing appreciation that
osseous materials were often chosen with quite deliberate intent and a view to the affordances that their
form or mechanical properties gave to successfully
negotiating a particular task. As such, they also

offer a rare glimpse of the interface between human

technical adaptation, tradition, and ingenuity, and
the living resources upon which we relied.
See also: Archaeozoology; Cognitive Archaeology;

Ethnoarchaeology; Experimental Archaeology;

Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Organic Residue Analysis;
Taphonomy; Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading
Clark JGD (1954) Excavations at Star Carr: An Early Mesolithic
Site at Seamer near Scarborough, Yorkshire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DErrico F, Giacobini G, and Puech P-F (1984) Varnish replicas:
A new method for the study of worked bone surfaces. OSSA
911: 2951.
Dobres M-A and Hoffman CR (1999) The Social Dynamics of
Technology: Practice, Politics and Worldviews. Washington:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
Johnson E (1985) Current developments in bone technology.
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 8: 157235.
Knecht H (ed.) (1997) Projectile Technology. New York: Plenum
Press.
Luik H, Choyke AM, Batey CE, and Lougas L (eds.) (2005) From
hooves to horns, from mollusc to mammoth: Manufacture and
use of bone artefacts from prehistoric times to the present.
Muinasaja teadus 15: Proceedings of the 4th Meeting of the
ICAZ Worked Bone Research Group at Tallinn, 26th31st of
August, 2003. Tallinn: Tartu University.
Olsen S (1989) On distinguishing natural from cultural damage on
archaeological antler. Journal of Archaeological Science 16:
125135.
Scheinsohn V and Ferretti JL (1995) The mechanical properties of
bone materials in relation to the design and function of prehistoric tools from Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina. Journal of Archaeological Science 22: 711717.
Semenov SA (1957) Prehistoric Technology: An Experimental
Study of the Oldest Tools and Artefacts from Traces of
Manufacturing and Wear. Thompson MW (trans., 1964).
London: Cory, Adams & Mackay Ltd.

BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods 937

BURIALS
Contents
Dietary Sampling Methods
Excavation and Recording Techniques

Dietary Sampling
Methods
Karl J Reinhard and Vaughn M Bryant, Jr.,
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA
Published by Elsevier Inc.

Glossary
control sample A sample collected from an area that is not
likely to be influenced by the phenomenon under study which is
used to compare analytical results with those from areas that are
likely to have been impacted by the phenomenon under study.
dental calculus Hardened plaque on the teeth which is formed
by saliva, food debris, and minerals.
dental plaque An adherent substance made of mucus, food
particles, and bacteria.
edaphic Resulting from, or influenced by, the soil.
pelvic girdle The bony ring supporting the lower limbs in
humans composed of the two hip bones laterally and in front,
and the sacrum and coccyx behind.
pollen aggregates Clumps of pollen composed of many grains
of the same type. These signal economic use of buds, flowers,
anthers, or sometimes seeds or fruits.
pollen concentration A method for calculating the number of
pollen grains present per milliliter or gram of sediment based on
adding known numbers of exotic pollen grains or spores to a
sediment sample.
sacrum A triangular bone made up of five fused vertebrae and
forming the posterior section of the pelvic girdle.
stratigraphic column In burial analysis, a stratigraphic
column refers to the layers within the pelvic girdle that range
from burial fill to intestinal remains. As a corpse decomposes,
sediment from the burial fill enters the pelvic girdle from above
and compresses the intestinal contents to the lowest part of the
pelvic girdle, the sacrum. The uppermost sample from the highest
part of the pelvic girdle is composed of burial fill. The middle of
the pelvic girdle might contain some food remains. The lowest
level is very likely to contain dietary residue from food.

Burials and Preservation

Microenvironments
A burial contains numerous, individual microenvironments, each of which has a different preservation
potential, which in turn can provide evidence of
human diets. Animal and plant food residues can be
recovered from the lower intestinal tract, oral cavity,
associated vessels, other forms of burial offerings,

and fragments or whole plants or animals deposited

in the burial. Individual microenvironments at a burial site result from many aspects including, but
not limited to: (1) preparation of the burial feature,
(2) addition of burial offerings, (3) depth and orientation of the corpse, (4) edaphic conditions such as
moisture and pH, (5) microbial activity, and (6) exposure of the burial when it is excavated.
When burials are discovered at sites, the subsequent excavation and removal process should be
done with caution and should take into consideration the subsequent types of laboratory analyses (see
Burials: Excavation and Recording Techniques). Failures during the recovery phase, or the use of improper
sampling strategies, will compromise the ability to
provide valid interpretations. In addition, burial sampling must include control samples from the burial fill
and surrounding contexts.
When found, a skeleton or mummified burial normally has two areas where dietary residues can be
easily recovered. In life, dietary residues (i.e., pollen grains, phytoliths, starch granules, plant fibers,
animal hairs, etc.) are produced or released during
mastication and some of these can become trapped
in dental plaque (see Pollen Analysis). If not removed,
within a few days, plaque is mineralized and adheres
to the teeth in the form of dental calculus. Large deposits of calculus are often found on teeth (Figure 1).
Dietary microfossils and residues that were trapped in
the calculus are easily recovered during laboratory
analysis (Figure 2). Sometimes artifacts or vegetal
materials are placed in the mouth of the deceased,
especially in the Andean region of South America.
Such types of vegetal materials can often be recovered
and identified as microfossils or macrofossils present
in the area of the oral cavity of a burial.
The second burial area of dietary interest is the
abdominal area, specifically the sacrum and the soil
inside the pelvic girdle. In some well-preserved burials,
distinct fecal pellets (coprolites) can be found in the
abdominal area because the colon is located in that
area. However, for most burials, distinct coprolites
are not visible, but controlled sampling of sediments
in the pelvic girdle area may reveal seeds, starch
grains, phytoliths, pollen, and other types of residues
of dietary and medicinal importance.

938 BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods

Figure 1 Photograph of dental calculus. Microfossils from

dental calculus reflect diet for a few days prior to death.

sterile containers that are then sealed, and then sent

to a laboratory where the contents can be removed in
a controlled environment. A control sample of burial
sediment around the exterior of each vessel should be
collected, examined, and then used as a basis for
comparison with the contents recovered inside the
vessel. In burials where recovered ceramic vessels
are cracked, it is often appropriate to remove the
sediments in the vessel in the field. In cases where
burial vessels are fragmented, analysis of the shard
will sometimes provide useful palaeoethnobotanical
data.
The importance of collecting control samples of the
burial fill and from areas above and below the burial
cannot be overemphasized. Any interpretations of
paleoethnobotanical data recovered from burials
(i.e., mummy or skeleton, vessels, artifacts, burial
floor surface) are dependent upon comparisons to
data recovered from site and burial control samples.
Extensive analysis of the contents of control samples
will allow analysts to distinguish which items are
probable evidence of diet or medicinal use and
which items might instead reflect site contaminants.

Pollen Studies and Burial Sediments

Figure 2 Microfossils, for example the starch grains illustrated

here, are quite common in dental calculus.

In some types of burials, a variety of grave offerings

are included with the body. If present, each bowl or
other type of vessel in a burial becomes its own microenvironment, which can offer evidence of its original
contents (i.e., pollen, starch, phytoliths, and macrofossils). Some types of grave offerings present better
microenvironments of preservation. For example,
basketry vessels are less durable than ceramic vessels,
and therefore have less preservation potential. Objects
made of copper or copper alloy promote preservation
because the copper oxide produced by the object is toxic
to most types of microbial decomposer organisms.
When containers are found in burials, there are
various techniques that should be used to sample for
dietary residues. For ceramic vessels, a rinsing of the
inside, bottom portion is appropriate. Ideally, burial
artifacts should be collected in the field, placed in

As a general rule, the wind-pollinated plants produce

and disperse millions of pollen grains in the hope that
a few of them will be carried to their intended destination by the winds. As a result, in any given location
there may be thousands or even millions of pollen
grains falling to the earths surface in what is called
a regions pollen rain. This is why the most frequent
pollen types recovered in sediment and soil samples
are from wind-dispersed plants. The insect-pollinated
plants, which are sometimes pollinated by bats, humming birds, small mammals, or a host of insect species, usually produce flowers containing nectar and
relatively few pollen grains. Normally, these plants
need to produce only a few hundred or a few thousand pollen grains per flower because of the highly
efficient method of direct pollination achieved by
the various pollen carriers that visit the flowers. The
pollen grain surface of most insect-pollinated types is
usually covered with lipids so they will stick easily
to insects that visit the flowers. In addition, these
insect-pollinated plants usually produce highly ornamented pollen grains with thick, sturdy pollen walls
designed to protect the pollens cytoplasm from the
often bumpy ride provided by the pollinators. In
general, insect-pollinated pollen types are also heavy
and overall are not designed aerodynamically for
travel on wind currents. For all of these reasons, few
of these types become part of the normal pollen rain
of a region. One exception would be instances where

BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods 939

flowers still containing a few pollen grains might fall

to the surface underneath the parent plant, thus
allowing the pollen to become released as the flowers
decay. Another exception would be situations where
insect-pollinated flowers are carried to a specific location by some animal or human.
Using several lines of logic and planned sampling
strategies, pollen in burial soils that results from
cultural activities, called economic pollen, can be
separated successfully from pollen that may have
come from the normal pollen rain, referred to as
background pollen. First, if one of the pollen types
in the soils of a burial matches an ethnographic
or archaeological food plant species endemic to the
region, or comes from a plant that may have been
obtained in trade, then that pollen should be considered as potentially reflecting the use of that plant as a
food source. However, roots, tubers, corms, and other
underground plant organs will not carry attached
pollen with them from the source plant, so there is
reduced potential for the pollen from these types to be
represented in the site. Seeds and fruits from some
plant species that are brought to a site often do carry
pollen on their outer surfaces and thus such pollen
types can reflect plant usage. Nevertheless, even with
such types of potential pollen sources, one must be
careful to distinguish pollen evidence suggesting actual plant usage and pollen that may be from background sources. For example, a number of types of
economic chenopods, including Chenopodium quinoa, and amaranths (Amaranthus) produce pollen
that is nearly identical to the pollen of many noneconomic genera and species in these same plant groups.
Trying to distinguish which pollen types are from
economic plants rather than from noneconomic background types is often nearly impossible to determine
without extensive studies using the resolution capability of a scanning electron microscope.
Pollen concentration values add another dimension to pollen data from burials and coprolites. For
example, 10 maize pollen grains out of each 100

pollen grains recovered from a soil sample would be

recorded as a 10% average. Similarly, 10 000 maize
pollen grains out of 100 000 would also be recorded
as a 10% average. However, there is a significant
difference in terms of the potential importance and
source of maize pollen in each of those two samples.
That difference can only be realized by conducting
pollen concentration values of both samples.
Low concentrations of some pollen taxa in coprolites or soil deposits may result from sources of ambient
pollen in the normal pollen rain (pollen distribution
in a region). However, high concentration values of
the same pollen taxa would suggest some type of
disturbance or cultural activity rather than resulting
solely from normal pollen rain distributions. Knowing the types of percentages of pollen found in burial
sediments and coprolites in burials is important because the relative pollen percentages may be roughly
the same in both types of samples; however, there may
be dramatically differences in the pollen concentration values. This is illustrated in the Mimbres burial
(Table 1) examined by Shafer et al. For example,
maize pollen percentages are not statistically different
between the control sample and samples from the
sacral coprolites. However, the maize pollen concentration values reveal an average concentration of only
266 pollen grains per gram for the control sample but
59 280 pollen grains per gram for the sacral coprolite
sample.
The above discussion briefly describes some of the
factors that should be considered during the analysis
and interpretation of pollen materials collected from
burials at archaeological sites. In addition to these,
there are other, even more important considerations
that must be applied to pollen studies of burial deposits. These include (1) the assurance that the person
conducting the pollen analysis has not accidentally
contaminated the field samples with other pollen
types in the laboratory that come from the use of
unclean laboratory equipment or facilities; (2) the
knowledge that the researcher has not accidentally

Table 1 Pollen concentration values of selected pollen types from Burial 109, NAN Ranch, New Mexico
Taxon

Mustard
Squash
Cheno-am
Willow
Maize
Cattail
Grass

Sacrum

Grave fill

Above pelvis

Below pelvis

Conc.

Conc.

Conc.

Conc.

303 240
6840
43 320
149 340
59 280
7410
3420

53
1
7.5
26
10
1
<1

0
0
2087
15
266
0
326

0
0
67
1
9
0
11

0
0
1083
0
418
0
342

0
0
54
0
21
0
17

0
0
645
0
194
0
133

0
0
59
0
18
0
12

940 BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods

lost or destroyed potential pollen in a sample by using

incorrect or harsh extraction procedures; (3) that the
person has a working knowledge of the pollen flora of
the region where he or she is conducting the analysis;
and (4) that all identifications of pollen types are
accurate and are based on comparisons with modern
reference materials of known pollen taxa.

Case Studies Dietary Residues

from Burials
As noted above, Shafer et al. presented the first modern paleoethnobotanical analysis of fecal residues
(coprolites) discovered within a burial. Shafer et al.
presented multidisciplinary methods for the recovery
of microscopic and macroscopic remains that related

to diet and medicine. Control sediment samples

were taken above the pelvic girdle, grave floor, and
from the burial fill. Macroscopic evidence of finely
ground maize cupules was found in the coprolites.
The coprolites contained high concentrations of
maize pollen. Pollen from a medicinal plant, willow,
was also found in high concentrations in the coprolites (Table 1 and Figure 3). Pollen concentration adds
another dimension to pollen data. In addition to
knowing the types of percentages of pollen in sediments, pollen concentration provides an estimate of
the number of pollen grains present per gram or milliliter of sediment. This is illustrated by the fact that maize
percentages are not statistically different between the
samples from the Mimbres burial. However, the pollen
concentration shows that compared to the average

Sacrum sample

Control sample from

above pelvic girdle

3420
7410
59 280

342

149 340

303 240

43 320

Mustard
Squash
Cheno-am
Willow
Corn
Cattail
Grass

6840
44

1 083

418

326

133

266
15
194

645

2087
Control sample from grave fill
Figure 3 The pollen spectra from a coprolite and control samples from a Mimbres burial.

Control sample from grave floor

BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods 941

concentration of 292 pollen grains per gram for the

control samples, the sacral coprolites contained
59 280 grains per gram.
Later, Reinhard et al. presented field and laboratory methods for recovering dietary residues from
pelvic girdle sediments from a single burial. They

Figure 4 The pelvic girdle sampling strategy proposed by

Reinhard et al. in their analysis of an ancestral Anasazi burial.
Samples 1 and 2 are control samples taken from a stratigraphic
column within the pelvic girdle. Sample 3 is a sediment sample that
should be collected from the anterior surface of the sacrum, where
dietary remains from the large intestine are trapped during decomposition.

recommended paleoethnobotanical study of burials

as a nondestructive method to identify diet and season of death. In this case study, they emphasized the
need to analyze multiple control samples to identify
contamination. In this case, multiple samples were
taken from a stratigraphic column within the pelvic
girdle (Figure 4). The burial was excavated into a
prehistoric house floor and there were a variety of
contexts to sample for comparative evaluation.
These included the burial fill, the house floor, a
storage pit, the area of the lower legs, and the area
of the skull. Seeds were found only in the sacrum
(Figure 5) and 345 seeds were found in 4.3 g of sediment from the sacrum. No seeds were recovered in
the 50-g control samples. Pollen aggregates (clumps
of pollen of the same type) were found only in the
sacrum. The seeds and pollen aggregates indicated
that pigweed seeds, goosefoot seeds, sunflower seeds
of two species, panic grass, and two other species
were eaten. Pollen aggregates of grass, pigweed and/
or goosefoot type, sunflower type, and ragweed type
were found. Therefore, the pollen and seed evidence
show that the deceased ate a variety of wild plants
before he died. The pollen spectra comparison
shows an elevated percentage of grass pollen in the
sacrum compared to the other samples (Table 2 and
Figure 6).

Figure 5 Seeds from the ancestral Anasazi burial. The upper left shows goosefoot and pigweed seeds. The upper right shows wild
sunflower seeds. The lower images are of unknown seeds. This shows that well-preserved plant foods can be recovered from burial
sediments.

942 BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods

Table 2 Macrobotanical data from selected Arizona burials (Berg 2002)
Taxon

Burial A

Maize fragments
Agave fragments
Cactus seed
Cotton seed
Plant epidermis

Burial B

Burial C

Control

Sacral

Control

Sacral

Control

Sacral

30
5
0
2
0

254
424
0
0
0

11
17
1
8
13

189
491
75
302
264

13
3
0
0
6

0
35
0
105
0

Sacrum

Pithouse floor
7

2.5

17

4
1.5
18.5
26

42.5
Pine
Juniper
15.5
6.5

Grave floor

33

Wild grass
Sunflower type
Ragweed type
Sage brush

2 0.5

4.5

Cheno-am

10.5

Bee plant

1 3

Storage pit

10.5

Bean family
Globemallow

17
4.5
47.5
5.5
10
3
0.5

4.5

13.5

36.5
7

Figure 6 The pollen spectra from sacrum sediments and control samples from the ancestral Anasazi burial.

Berg expanded these methods to cemeteries in Arizona (Table 3) and Denmark and successfully demonstrated that the multidisciplinary approach presented
in the first three case studies is extremely powerful

when applied to detecting patterns of medicine and

diet in groups of interments. He also formalized a
consistent sampling strategy that can be applied to
most burial excavations (Figures 7 and 8).

BURIALS/Dietary Sampling Methods 943

Table 3 Pollen data from the burial analyzed by Reinhard et al.
(1992)

Figure 7 Berg (2001) formalized a sampling strategy for macroscopic flotation and pollen sampling for burials. He proposed that
macrofossil sampling be focused on flotation samples from the
pelvic area and from the grave fill near the head (red areas). He
recommended that pollen control samples be recovered from long
bone areas and a single control sample in the pelvic girdle. The
dietary pollen sample should be recovered from the anterior surface of the sacrum (blue areas).

Taxon

Sacrum

Burial
floor

Pithouse
floor

Storage
pit

Pine
Juniper
Wild grass
Sunflower type
Ragweed type
Sage brush
Cheno-am
Rocky Mountain
bee plant
Squash
Mormon tea
Euphorbia type
Bean family
Globemallow
Prickly pear
Gilia
Oak
Willow
Greasewood
Solanaceae
Maize
Spruce

4
2
42.5
6.5
15.5

10.5
17
10
3
4.5
0.5
47.5
2

3
8
4
1.5
33
4.5
26
17

10.5
8
4.5
5.5
13.5
7
36.5
3

1
0.5
0.5

0.5
2.5

18.5

7
2.5

1
3
0.5

1
0.5
0.5
0.5

0.5

1.5

0.5
1
1

500

400

Parts per liter

Taxon
Maize fragments
Agave fragments

300

Cactus seed
Cotton seed
Plant epidermis

200

100

0
Control

Sacral

Burial A

Control

Sacral

Burial B

Control

Sacral

Burial C

Figure 8 Macroscopic remains from Bergs analysis of three Arizona burials. Burial A shows an elevated frequency of maize and agave
fragments in the sacrum sample compared with the control sample. In burial B, increased numbers of maize, agave, cactus, cotton, and
plant epidermis macrofossils were found in the sacral sample relative to the control sample. Agave and cotton seed were evident in the
burial C sacral sample.

944 BURIALS/Excavation and Recording Techniques

Conclusion
The analysis of burials for botanical and zoological
remains evidence of diet is a proven method of
nondestructive analysis in the mortuary setting (see
Archaeozoology; Pollen Analysis). The value of such
analyses is directly dependent on sampling strategies
that must include a number of control samples.
See also: Archaeozoology; Burials: Excavation and
Recording Techniques; Pollen Analysis.

Further Reading
Bayman J, Hevly RH, and Reinhard KJ (1996) Analytical perspectives on a protohistoric cache of ceramic jars from the Lower
Colorado Desert. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 18: 131154.
Berg GE (2002) Last meals: Recovering abdominal contents from
skeletonized remains. Journal of Archaeological Science 29:
13491365.
Bohrer VL and Adams KR (1977) New Mexico Contributions in
Anthropology Vol. 8, no. 1: Ethnobotanical Techniques and
Approaches at Salmon Ruin. Portales: Eastern New Mexico
University.
Bryant VM, Jr. and Morris DP (1986) Uses of ceramic vessels and
grinding implements: The pollen evidence. In: Morris DP (ed.)
National Park Service Publications in Archaeology, No. 19:
Archeological Investigations at Antelope House, pp. 489500.
Washington, DC: National Printing Office.
Reinhard KJ and Bryant VM, Jr. (2006) Reinterpreting the pollen
pata from Dos Cabezas. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (in press).
Reinhard KJ, Geib PR, Callahan MM, and Hevly RH (1992)
Discovery of colon contents in a skeletonized burial: Soil sampling for dietary remains. Journal of Archaeological Science 19:
697705.
Reinhard KJ, Souza SMF, Rodrigues CD, Kimmerle E, and
Dorsey-Vinton S (2001) Microfossils in dental calculus: A new
perspective on diet and dental disease. In: Williams E (ed.)
Human Remains: Conservation, Retrieval, and Analysis,
pp. 113118. London: British Archaeology Research Council.
Shafer HJ, Marek M, and Reinhard KJ (1989) Mimbres burial with
associated colon remains from the NAN Ranch Ruin, New
Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology 16: 1730.

Excavation and
Recording Techniques
Tracy L Prowse, Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
axial skeleton The central portion of the skeleton made up of
the cranium, vertebral column, ribs, and sternum.
consolidant A chemical substance that is applied to the surface
of an object and acts to stabilize fragile material.

datum A predetermined, fixed reference point against which all

vertical and horizontal measurements are made on a site. It is
usually a permanent feature on the site.
flotation An archaeological technique used to recover trace
remnants of materials like plants, shells, and charcoal by adding
water to soil samples and allowing the lighter materials to float
to the surface for collection.
geomagnetometry A geophysical method that detects
distortions in the Earths magnetic field caused by subsurface
features like pits, ditches, hearths, and other structures.
ground penetrating radar (GPR) A geophysical method of
subsurface detection that sends electromagnetic pulses through
the soil that reflect back any significant changes in soil caused by
the presence of pits or structures, etc.
ossuary A container or large structure (e.g., a vault) used to
house human skeletal remains.
resistivity survey A geophysical method that measures the
degree of resistance in the soil to the passage of an electric current
between two electrodes. Features that retain more moisture, such
as pits, will have lower resistivity than more permanent features
such as walls or roads.
total station A mapping instrument that electronically records
data collected in the field (distance, elevation, and angle), which
can then be downloaded directly to a computer.
transit An instrument used to plot the location of trenches or
mapping features in an excavation. It records the horizontal
distance and vertical angle between a predetermined reference
point and the feature being mapped.

Introduction
Concern for the dead is a pervasive characteristic of
all human societies and burials provide a wealth of
information about past human societies. We can infer
mortuary ritual, social status, as well as attitudes
toward the dead (and the living) from burials and
their material contents. In addition, the human skeletal remains recovered from these burials can provide
invaluable information on palaeodemography, diet,
health, and disease in past populations. However,
archaeologists must also be aware of the legal and
ethical considerations when excavating human
remains. The ways that human societies bury their
dead vary dramatically over space and time, so there
is no universally applicable method for excavating a
burial. Excavation methods need to be adaptable to
different types of burials encountered.

Locating Burials/Cemeteries
Systematic surface survey can be used to look for
evidence of burials, such as surface scatters of bones
or artifacts associated with burials, but this applies
only if the burials have been disturbed. In many archaeological contexts, there is no longer any evidence
of a burial visible above the soil, so various geophysical methods can be employed to detect the
presence of burials. Noninvasive technologies like

Excavation and Recording Techniques 945

ground-penetrating radar (GPR), geomagnetometry,

and resistivity surveys can be used to detect features
under the soil, although the success of each method
depends on a number of variables, including soil conditions and the characteristics of the burials (e.g.,
simple pits vs. chamber tombs).

Burial Types
There are a number of terms used to describe the general categories of burials encountered in an archaeological context. In a primary burial, all the bones
are in their normal anatomical position, indicating
that the individual has not been disturbed since the
original interment. A secondary burial refers to a
collection of bones that were buried or had decomposed in one location, and then were disinterred/
collected for reburial in another location. This type
of burial can usually be distinguished from a primary
burial, because the bones are typically disarticulated
and some elements may be missing. A multiple burial consists of two or more individuals in the same
grave. These individuals may have been buried at the
same time (e.g., a mass grave), or there may have been
a series of depositions over time (e.g., an ossuary). An
inhumation refers to the intentional placement of an
individual in the ground. A cremation is a burial that
shows evidence of burning; this may have occurred
prior to burial or an individual may have been cremated in situ. A cremation can be distinguished by
signs of burning in the burial, as well as the fragmentary and discolored appearance of the bones, depending on the intensity and duration of the fire (Figure 1).

Burial Excavation
Proper excavation of a burial requires time; it must be
done carefully and methodically. The objective is to
completely expose the skeleton and all associated

artifacts, while minimizing damage to the skeleton

by extended exposure to the elements. It is essential
to have an osteologist as a member of a burial excavation project from the early planning stages, particularly when dealing with complex multiple burials
or infant and subadult skeletons. At the very least,
excavators should have thorough osteological training
so they can quickly and accurately identify bones as
they are being uncovered. Whether excavating a single
burial or multiple burials in a cemetery, the main
priority is to maximize the amount of information
obtained, because once the burial is excavated its original context is lost. Proper recording of all stages of
excavation is crucial for accurate interpretation of the
results. The entire site should initially be surveyed
using a total station or transit, which maps the
location of the site and each individual feature on
the site in relation to a chosen reference point, or
datum.
When excavating a single burial, the first step is to
determine the limits of the burial. Clearing soil from
above the burial can be done with picks and shovels.
Heavy machinery can be used under certain conditions, particularly when excavating cemeteries that
require large surface areas to be exposed. Excavation
using heavy machinery must proceed slowly in order
to watch for the first traces of burials in the ground.
Opening up a relatively large area in a cemetery excavation may help to delineate spatial relationships
between the burials (Figure 2). There may be an obvious burial structure to expose, but if there is none then
the archaeologist should look for evidence of a burial
outline through localized changes in soil color or
consistency. All aspects of the burial should be
recorded before the skeleton is exposed, including
dimensions, orientation, depth from surface, and distance from the datum (measured at both ends of the
burial). The burial should be mapped on a scale
drawing and photographed using both digital and

Figure 1 Cremation burial showing evidence of burning (black) and cremated bone.

946 Excavation and Recording Techniques

Figure 2 Cemetery excavation with all of the burials exposed in a trench, so that the orientation of the burials and their spatial
relationships can be documented.

SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras (see Burials: Dietary

Sampling Methods; Osteological Methods).
If excavating a cemetery, the number of burials
opened up at any given time should be determined
by the number of excavators available. Partially or
fully excavated skeletons should not be left exposed
for extended periods of time, so each burial should be
fully excavated and removed by one team before
another burial is started. Exposure of the skeleton
should proceed by carefully removing soil in horizontal layers across the entire surface of the burial. As the
bones are encountered, they should not be completely
exposed until the location of all the bones has been
determined, so that the excavator has an idea of the
orientation and position of the skeleton. The characteristics of the soil inside the burial should be
recorded and any material found in the burial fill
should be recorded separately from material found
outside the burial. Excavation tools should include
smaller tools such as trowels, brushes of various
sizes, bamboo skewers, wood sculpting tools, small
spoons, and dental picks. Dental picks are useful tools
because they are strong and can be used for fine work,
but they can easily damage the skeleton so it is best
to use less destructive tools like wood carving tools,
skewers, and brushes when clearing soil adhering to
the bones. If the skeleton is going to be sampled for
biochemical or ancient DNA analysis, the bones
should be handled as little as possible and ideally
surgical gloves should be worn when touching the
bones.
It is best to work from the center of the skeleton
outward, so that exposed bones are not covered with
dirt from the middle of the burial. Hands and feet
should be excavated last, because they are easily

disturbed once exposed. All the soil inside the burial

should be screened for small artifacts, teeth, and other
small finds. The entire skeleton and any associated
grave goods should be exposed, so that the position
of the artifacts in relation to the skeleton can be
recorded. As excavation proceeds, the skeleton
should be protected as much as possible from extended exposure to the elements, as this can damage the
bones. All of the dirt around the bones should be
cleared, so that the bones are clearly visible for photography and drawing. Soil samples should also be
taken from inside any vessels for flotation analysis.
Once the skeleton and associated artifacts are
completely exposed, they should be drawn and
photographed in situ. All photographs should include
a label, a scale, and a North arrow in the image
(Figure 3). The area surrounding the skeleton should
be cleared of any tools, equipment, and loose soil
before the photograph is taken. A series of photographs from a variety of angles and distances should
be taken; never rely on only one photograph. Detailed
information about the position and orientation of the
skeleton should be recorded. Standard terms used to
describe the position of the skeletal elements include:
extended, indicating that the legs are at 180 in
relation to the axial skeleton; semi-flexed, indicating that the angle of the legs is between 90 and 180
to the axial skeleton; and flexed, indicating an angle
of less than 90 . In addition, the position of the arms
should also be recorded (e.g., at the sides, crossed at
the chest or pelvis, etc.). The position of the skeleton
(on its back, front, or laying to one side), the orientation of the main axis, maximum length and width, as
well as depth from surface (at the cranium and feet)
should also be recorded (Figure 4). Dimensions of the

Excavation and Recording Techniques 947

Figure 3 Primary burial.

Figure 4 Measuring the location of skeletal elements in a burial using a plumb bob and measuring tape. Note the use of an umbrella to
protect the burial from the sun.

excavated burial pit and distance from the datum

should be measured. The exact position of each object
in the relation to the skeleton should be described,
measured, photographed, and recorded. Standard
forms can be used to collectively record all of this
information, but written observations should still be
recorded.
Once the burial has been extensively recorded,
removal of the skeleton and associated artifacts
can take place. If the bones are extremely fragile, it
may be necessary to consolidate the bones in situ
before attempting removal. Any type of consolidant
used should be soluble, so it can be removed at a
later date if required. Further soil may have to be
excavated from underneath the bones in order to
remove them; they should never be forcibly extracted
from the ground. Label each bone as it is removed

(e.g., right femur, left femur), and keep paired bones

in separate containers. Right and left sides of the ribs,
hands, and feet should be stored separately. The soil
in the pelvic region should be carefully examined and
screened for the presence of fetal skeletal remains,
kidney stones, or possible traces of intestinal parasites.
The cranium should be removed with care and the
surrounding soil should be examined for loose teeth
or other small bones, like the bones of the inner
ear. Once all material has been removed, screen the
remaining soil in the burial to recover any small bones
or bone fragments.
There are a variety of materials recommended to
transport and store skeletal material, including aluminum foil, acid-free paper, and paper, cloth, or plastic bags. Regardless of the material used to transport
the material back to the field house or laboratory,

948 BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES

label each bone or bone assemblage with the site

name, burial number, skeletal element(s) and date.
All the bones should be laid out in a protected, shaded
area for cleaning and should be allowed to dry
completely. Long-term storage of skeletal material
and artifacts should be in labeled containers that
are suitable for fragile material and that will not
deteriorate over time. Proper excavation, documentation, and conservation of burials and their contents will ensure that we obtain the most evidence
from these invaluable sources of information about
our past.
See also: Burials: Dietary Sampling Methods; Osteological Methods; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial;
Remote Sensing Approaches: Geophysical.

Burials/Interpretation

Further Reading
Brothwell D (1981) Digging Up Bones. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Buikstra JE and Ubelaker DH (1994) Standards for Data Collection
from Human Skeletal Remains. Fayetteville, AR: Arkansas
Archaeological Survey.
Dupras TL, Schultz JJ, Wheeler SM, and Williams LJ (2006)
Forensic Recovery of Human Remains: Archaeological
Approaches. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Mays S (1999) The Archaeology of Human Bones. New York:
Routledge.
Pearson MP (1999) The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Texas:
Texas A&M University Press.
Roberts CA, Lee F, and Bintliff J (1989) Burial Archaeology:
Current Research, Methods and Developments. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Ubelaker DH (1989) Human Skeletal Remains: Excavation,
Analysis, Interpretation. Washington, DC: Taraxcum Press.

See: Engendered Archaeology; Social Inequality, Development of.

BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES

Manuel Domnguez-Rodrigo, Complutense
University, Madrid, Spain
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Butchery
Butchery is one of the oldest human activities that
can be archaeologically traced. Traditionally, butchery
was inferred from the spatial association of stone
tools and bones in archaeological sites. However,
Binford questioned this assumption, and the recent
application of modern taphonomic techniques to the
early East African Olduvai Bed I sites has proved
that the assumption is unwarranted. Experiments
and ethnographic observation show that butchery
leaves physical traces on bones in the form of cut
marks and percussion marks. Cut marks show a
diversity of forms: filleting marks created through
defleshing and eviscerating, scraping marks generated when removing tissues (meat scraps, periostium) strongly adhered to the bone, and chopping
marks produced when disarticulating long limb
bones or cutting through tendons and ligaments.
Location of cut marks on bones is informative of
each of these butchering activities. Evisceration of

carcasses produces cut marks on the ventral side of

ribs and vertebral bodies. Tongue removal leaves cut
marks on the lower end of the lingual mandibular
ramus. Defleshing of the axial skeleton produces cut
marks on ribs and vertebral arcs, bodies, and apophyses. Removal of flesh from pelvises leaves abundant marks on the ischium and ilium. Removal of
flesh from scapulae produces long cut marks on the
scapular blade parallel to the axis of the bone. Dismembering of the scapula from the humerus produces
cut marks on the neck of this element. Marks on
epiphyses from long limb bones and on carpal and
tarsal bones are the result of disarticulation. Marks
on the near-epiphyseal sections of long limb bones
can be produced both during defleshing and dismembering. Only the exact location of marks on these
sections (craniocaudal and lateralmesial) can provide more information to reconstruct which behavior
was responsible for their occurrence. Filleting of large
muscle packages produces cut marks on the shafts
(namely, mid-shafts) of long limb bones.
Frequencies of cut marks, as well as their anatomical
location (element and section), are also crucial to reconstruct strategies of carcass acquisition. Experiments
reproducing early access to fully fleshed carcasses and
late access to abandoned felid kills, reproducing hominid hunting and passive scavenging behaviors, have

BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES 949

shown a very distinctive pattern of cut mark frequency

and anatomical location in both scenarios. Scavenging
is reflected in most cut marks occurring in higher frequencies in distal limb bones and on long bone ends as a
result of removing the marginal scraps of flesh that
survived carnivore initial consumption of carcasses.
Carnivores pull flesh off from carcasses leaving most
mid-shafts scrap-free, which explains why the surviving scraps are found on the ends (epiphyses and nearepiphyses), reflected in the location of cut marks. In this
situation, humeri and femora rarely bear cut marks,
and never bear them on their mid-shafts.
Having access to fully fleshed carcasses, in contrast,
is reflected by humeri and femora showing the highest
frequency of cut marks, very closely followed by tibiae
and radii. In this case, mid-shaft fragments are the
most cut-marked bone sections, as a result of cutting
through the meat that overlies them. This is a clear
reflection of hominid butchering behavior, not just
random scarring of bones with stone tools. The number of cut marks on the bones does not necessarily
reflect the number of strokes made by the butcher;
rather, cut marks occur most frequently on specific
bone sections because these sections are the most exposed to the stone tool or because the flesh on these
sections is more difficult to remove. Cut marks appear
more frequently on certain loci of bones because flesh
is more strongly attached to their surfaces (e.g., linea
aspera of femora). This shows that cut mark occurrence on bones is the combined result of three elements: the butchers skill, bone surface exposure to
the stone tool during butchery, and distribution of
flesh on bone. These three characteristics, especially
the last two, are substantially different in scenarios
of butchery of fleshed carcasses (obtained through
primary access) and defleshed carcasses (obtained
through passive scavenging from felid kills in Africa).
Therefore, the contrasting results in cut mark distributions in each scenario should come as no surprise.
Bone breakage for marrow extraction is one of the
final butchery processes. It leaves traces in the form of
percussion marks, very wide percussion notches, and
oblique breakage planes with acute angles. Assuming
an assemblage in which humans broke open all bones,
percussion marks will be found on between 10% and
30% of all long limb bone fragments, and there will
be one notch every 67 specimens. Notches created
by humans are varied. Complete notches are the most
abundant. Double overlapping and double opposing
notches are represented in much lower frequencies
than in carnivore-broken assemblages. Any assemblage created as a result of hominid butchery should
exhibit a combination of the above physical attributes
resulting from the modification of bones during the
butchery process.

Modern Butchery Sites

Ethnographic observations of large animal kill sites of
modern Hadza hunter-gatherers in Africa have shown
that such sites can sometimes extend to distances of
some hundred square meters, with dense concentrations of bone refuse near water sources. For carcasses
smaller than 400 kg, bones selected for transport to
home bases and those discarded at kill sites vary
according to the number of carriers, distance to
home base, time of day, and other variables. In animals larger than 400 kg, carcasses are defleshed and
marrow is consumed at the site, whereas flesh is
transported to home bases without the extra weight
of bones. These kill sites thus preserve most of the
animal skeletal parts. About 8090% of all skeletal
elements are left at the kill. Axial and cranial remains
from these animals remain clustered together, whereas long limb bones may be scattered over a broader
area. In contrast, animals smaller than 400 kg undergo a more variable scattering process. No more than
30% of bones from animals between 50 and 400 kg
are abandoned at kills. Transport decisions are not
related to prey body size but are cultural decisions.
Animals of the same size may be transported differently. For instance, when an eland is hunted, Hadza
abandon limb bones preferentially over axial bones.
When Hadza obtain buffalo, limb bones are transported while axial bones are discarded at the kill site.
Given the set of physical and cultural variables conditioning carcass part transport and discard, skeletal
part profiles are of limited application to distinguish
transported (home base) versus discarded (kill site)
carcasses of this size range.
Taphonomic indicators of a butchering site can also
be documented in modern forager kill sites. Given
that carcass remains are not widely shared in these
loci, bones from the same individual tend to form a
spatially discrete cluster. When several individuals are
obtained simultaneously or at different intervals,
bone clusters from different animals are independent
or minimally overlapping. Importantly, anatomical
sections frequently are abandoned articulated. Bones
discarded at home bases rarely appear articulated,
whereas they are common in kill sites.

Archaeological Butchery and Kill Sites

The evidence of carcass butchery by humans is old.
Cut-marked bones found both in Gona and in Middle
Awash (Ethiopia) show that systematic butchery
might have begun around 2.5 million years ago. The
small sample of cut-marked bone does not allow
complete interpretation of the butchery practices of
hominids at that time, but it clearly shows that they
were defleshing (abundant number of cut marks on

950 BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES

mid-shafts of upper and intermediate limb bones),

dismembering, removing tongue, and even (at least,
occasionally) eviscerating (Figure 1). Archaeologists
still do not know if the sites where these cut-marked
bones were found are kill-butchering sites or other
type of sites where the remains were transported from
the loci of carcass obtainment.
By 1.8 million years ago, a few sites in Kenya and
Tanzania have evidence that hominids were processing carcasses in different types of sites. Sites where
animals were initially obtained and butchered are not
documented as well as those where those animals
were repeatedly transported from loci of obtainment.
The whole range of butchering practices is documented: defleshing, dismembering, eviscerating, tongue
removal, and marrow processing.
Traditionally, assemblages consisting of stone tools
and bones from a single animal or several animals of
the same species have been interpreted as butchering
sites. The oldest butchering sites thus documented
were FLK North 6 at Olduvai (Tanzania) and FxJj3
(HAS) in Koobi Fora (Kenya), about 1.71.8 million
years ago, where the remains of an elephant and hippopotamus, respectively, appeared spatially associated
with stone tools. Butchering sites are abundant during
the Early and Middle Pleistocene (Table 1). Associations of stone tools and megafaunal remains have been
widely documented in Olorgesailie and Koobi Fora
(Kenya), Fejej, Gadeb and Middle Awash (Ethiopia),
and Dandero (Eritrea). However, natural processes
may also account for the spatial associations of lithic
and bone remains. Most of these sites appear in alluvial
contexts where natural clusters of bones from hippo
and elephant carcasses are frequent, given the preferential use of these habitats by those animals. The
taphonomic analyses of archaeological butchering
sites from this time period have revealed remains

Figure 1 Electronic microscope (SEM) photo of several cut

marks found in a 2.5-million-year-old bone from Gona (Ethiopia).

from different taxa found together in a single site (see

Taphonomy). In addition, in most of these sites, not a
single bone showed any modification created by
human butchering activities. In several sites, such as
FLK North 6, Mwanganda, or Karonga, it has been
observed that artifacts underlie the elephant bones.
This suggests a deposition of artifacts previous to
(and independent of) the deposition of the elephants.
A recent revision of FLK North 6 has shown that the
lithics and bones in the assemblage are not functionally
related and the spatial association is inadvertent. The
author has also revised the Gadeb butchering sites and
the depositional histories of bones and stone tools are
different and independent. From a taphonomic point of
view, none of these assemblages can be interpreted as
solid evidence of butchering sites.
The only sustainable claims of butchering sites in
Africa from this time period are from the elephant site
at Olorgesailie (Kenya) (an exclusive accumulation of
an elephant and lithic artifacts whose functional link
is pending taphonomic confirmation) and Peninj
(Tanzania). This is also evidenced later in the Herto
sites (end of Middle Pleistocene) in Ethiopia, where
hippo remains associated with stone tools bear cut
marks. However, this reductionist view, focused on
cut marks alone, prevents us from considering some
archaeological sites where butchery of large fauna
might have occurred. Modern observations of elephant and hippo carcass butchery show that a complete carcass may be butchered without leaving a
single trace. The problem that archaeologists face is:
how to differentiate these sites from others where the
spatial association of lithic and bones is accidental?
No answer to this question can be currently provided.
This problem is exacerbated, for example, in European Middle Pleistocene open-air sites, where elephant
remains are frequently mixed with bones from other
animals. In most of these sites, the elephant bones
have been interpreted as naturally deposited, given
their fragmentary state. Following this assumption,
the fact that large fauna remains may naturally
appear within bone assemblages of other animals
reinforces the idea that this could also be the case in
sites where only megafaunal remains and artifacts
exist. Both megafauna and hominids were very active
in the same alluvial environments and spatial associations of lithic and bones may be completely accidental, as several sites have shown. In this case, the only
evidence of butchery that is scientifically reliable is
the presence of cut and percussion marks, and any
physical signatures of hammerstone bone breakage,
meaning that several potential butchering sites are
likely archaeologically invisible.
Peninj preserves some 1.3-million-year-old butchering sites. One of them (ST4) is characterized by the

BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES 951

Table 1 Some of the most important butchering sites documented from Early Pleistocene to Holocene
Site

Animal

Age

Taphonomic
evidence

FLK North 6 (Olduvai, Tanzania)

Deinotherium site (Olduvai, Tanzania)
Fejej Fj1 (Ethiopia)
Buia (Eritrea)
Dandero (Eritrea)
Barogali (Djibouti)
FxJj3 (HAS)
Gadeb (Ethiopia)
ST4 (Peninj, Tanzania)
Mwanganda (Malawi)
Olorgesailie (N15)
Olorgesailie (Hippo Banda site)
Olorgesailie (DE/89)
Middle Awash (Herto)
Gesher Benot Ya aqov (II-6) (Israel)
Clacton-on-Sea (England)
La Cotte de Saint Brelade (Jersey)
Karlich Seefer
Boxgrove (Horse site)
Boxgrove (Rhino site)

Elephas recki
Elephas recki
Elephas recki
Elephas recki
Elephas recki
Elephas recki
Hexaprotodon karumensis
Hexaprotodon karumensis
Giraffa sp.
Elephas recki
Elephas recki
Hippopotamus gorgops
Theropitecus oswaldi
Hexaprotodon
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Mammuthus primigenius
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Equus ferus
Stephanorhinus
hundsheimensis
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Equus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Palaeoxodon antiquus
Mammuthus primigenius
Mammuthus primigenius
Mammuthus primigenius
Mammuthus primigenius
Mammuthus americanum
Mammuthus columbi
Gomphothere
Mammut americanum
Mammut americanum
Mammut americanum
Mammut americanum
Mammut americanum
Mammut americanum
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison
Bison bison

Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Early Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene

Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Confirmed
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Confirmed
Absent
Confirmed
Confirmed

Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Middle Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Upper Pleistocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene
Holocene

Confirmed
Absent
Confirmed
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Confirmed
Confirmed
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Absent
Confirmed
Confirmed
Confirmed
Confirmed
Confirmed
Confirmed
Confirmed
Confirmed
Absent
Confirmed

Bilzingsleben (Germany)
Lehringen (Germany)
Schoningen (Germany)
Venosa Notarchirico (B) (Italy)
La Polledrara di Cecanibbio (Italy)
Isernia la Pineta (Italy)
Casel di Guido (Italy)
Torralba (Spain)
Ambrona (Spain)
Arriaga II (Spain)
Aridos (Spain)
Tomsk (Russia)
Krakow-Nowa Huta (Poland)
Skarati (Poland)
Saskaton (Canada)
Grundel (USA)
Cooperton (USA)
Taima taima (Venezuela)
Kimmswick (Missouri)
Russell Farm (USA)
New Hudson (USA)
Van sicke (USA)
Heisler (USA)
Cole (USA)
Garnsey (USA)
Horner (USA)
Casper (USA)
Agate Basin (USA)
Hudson-Meng (USA)
Jones-Miller (USA)
Olsen-Chubuck (USA)
Folsom (USA)
Vore (USA)
Powder River site (USA)
Hawken (USA)
Kobold (USA)
Glenrock Buffalo Jump (USA)
Ruby (USA)

Confirmed taphonomic evidence refers to presence of cut or percussion marks.

Absent
Confirmed
Confirmed
Confirmed

952 BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES

partial semi-articulated distribution of different anatomical units of an extinct giraffe, with spatially differentiated distribution of taxa, which resembles the
distribution of bones in Hadza kill sites and might be
indicative of the place having acted as a butchering spot
(Figure 2). The spatial association of bones and stone
tools would support this (given the presence of cut
marks and percussion marks), as well as the low density
of artifacts and the presence of clusters of articulated
bones. Elements in the home bases of modern foragers
tend to be more widely mixed and dispersed. Pseudoarticulation of elements in home bases is also marginal
or nonexistent. Several anatomical units of at least
three different animals have been accumulated and
manipulated by hominids in a spatially restricted area
of the base of the ST4 site. The evidence from the
ST4 site supports that Lower Pleistocene hominids
were processing carcasses and not just dismembering
bones.
The virtual lack of any physical evidence of butchery of megafauna during the early Pleistocene contrasts
with the presence of cut-marked bone at European
Middle Pleistocene butchery sites. In Table 1, more
than one out of every three sites from this period is
assumed to represent megafaunal butchery episodes,
have butchery traces in the form of cut marks. This
supports the presence of butchering sites during this
time, although none of them could be called kill
sites, since the only documented hominid activity is
butchery (in some cases, marginal butchery). The scarcity of artifacts at some of these sites, such as Torralba

and Ambrona, is more suggestive of marginal butchery than complete butchery of elephant skeletons.
The abundant presence of artifacts at other localities, such as the Boxgrove sites, is suggestive of more
intensive butchery of large fauna (rhinoceros) and
smaller animals (horse). Either way, access to these
animals through scavenging cannot be differentiated
from hunting. Therefore, the term kill site applied
to megafauna is only appropriate for Holocene sites,
especially those occurring in historical times, where we
have a more accurate record of how these animals were
obtained.
The Torralba and Ambrona sites, formerly interpreted as mass kills of proboscideans, have been reanalyzed from a taphonomic point of view. Most of
the elephant bone breakage is diagenetic; when there
was green breakage, it was caused by carnivores. Very
few remains bear traces of hominid butchery, and
weathering stages of bones together with detailed
microstratigraphic analysis of both sites show that
carcass accumulation was due to long processes
involving the deposition of single carcasses during
long time intervals. Hominids seem to have played a
very marginal role in the accumulations of bones at
both sites, which are due to natural causes.
The only Middle Pleistocene site that could represent a mass kill site is La Cotte de Saint Brelade, in the
island of Jersey close to Normandy, where a pile of
bones of woolly mammoth and rhino, some of them
bearing cut marks, were located at the bottom of a
cliff. It has been interpreted as the result of Middle

40759000
N

40758000

40757000

40756000

Anvil

Freshly broken bones

40755000
19732000

19733000

19734000

19735000

19736000

19737000

19738000

Figure 2 Portion of the excavation of the ST4 butchery site at Peninj (Tanzania). Most bones belong to a pigmy giraffe that was
butchered by hominids. Bones appeared on a dry river bed. Most freshly broken bones occurred around a lava boulder that seems to have
acted as the anvil where those bones were broken. The giraffe bones bear cut marks and percussion marks as a result of butchery
(redrawn from Dominguez-Rodrigo et al., 2007).

BUTCHERY AND KILL SITES 953

Pleistocene hominids having driven herds of these animals to the cliff from which they fell and died. Two
distinctive bone piles found in layers 3 and 6 (isotopic
stage 6) of 20 mammoths and 5 rhinos comprise virtually all the fauna of these levels. A smaller frequency of
stone tools than the other levels where such bone piles
do not exist suggests more episodic or brief occupation
as expected at butchery sites. The rhino sample is
mostly composed of infantile and juvenile individuals.
Mammoths are represented by all age groups. Some
of the mammoths show partial skeletons. Cut marks
have been found on several bones of these animals.
Cut marks have been observed on proximal ends of
tusks (removal), on scapulas, and long bone shafts
(defleshing). Given the presence of this mass of animals
inside the ravine at the foot of a 70 m cliff, the previous
characteristics support a mass death event (or more
than one) better than isolated death events for each
individual. Animals grazing upland plateau would
have been driven along a headland to the edge of the
cliff where they would have fallen. Something similar
has been suggested for Le Solutre (France) toward the
end of the Upper Pleistocene, where a bone pile of
horses was excavated.
Bone piles containing individuals of the same species have also been documented in prehistoric North
America (Table 1). Holocene kill sites in this geographic region are very abundant. Most of them are
mass buffalo kill sites. In this case, carcasses of dozens
of buffaloes have been unearthed at a single spot.
Archaeologists working on these sites have differentiated between a kill site and a butchering site.
Kill sites are identified in proximity of a natural or
contrived trap; the bone bed consists of bones from a
single species, showing a high degree of articulated
bones, with a corresponding proportion of butchering tools; and bones accumulated are frequently
unbroken. Butchering sites are spots with smaller
density of remains, absence of those elements usually
discarded at kill sites (e.g., skulls), a lower frequency
of articulated elements, and lack of complete skeletons. However, some of these assertions are ambiguous, since they also occur in natural palaeontological
associations. These mass kill sites have been interpreted as the result of humans driving herds of bison
to natural traps where they are collectively hunted.
Corral structures have been discovered at some of
these sites (e.g., Ruby). Most frequently, these sites
occur in natural traps like streams or arroyos (e.g.,
Hawken), narrow valleys or sand dunes (e.g., Casper),
bottom of cliffs (e.g., Glenrock Buffalo Jump), karsts
(e.g., Vore), etc. Some sites, like the latter, show a
thick bone level representing a single season kill of
hundreds of animals.

The most widespread type of zooarchaeological

analysis at these sites is skeletal part representation. Other data such as cut mark frequency and distribution, bone breakage, and intervention of other
nonhuman agents in bone modification are only marginally considered. By taking anatomical data into
consideration, it can be observed that there is a large
variation in element representation. This suggests that
either the functionality of these sites was different
among one another, taphonomic processes affecting
site formation were also diverse, or that hunting techniques were more varied than historically documented.
Butchering sites of larger animals, such as mammoth, have also been documented in North America
during the end of the Pleistocene (see Table 1). In
most cases, remains belong to single individuals,
which suggest that hunting techniques for mammoths
and bison were different.
In general, compared to other types of sites (workshops, central places), butchering sites are not abundant in the archaeological record. Table 1 summed up
the most representative kill or butchering sites for
2.5 million years of archaeological record. It can be
argued that butchering sites during the Middle
Pleistocene can be taphonomically confirmed. In contrast, very few sites of this type can be documented
for earlier periods. During the Upper Pleistocene and
Holocene, butchering and kill sites are more abundant and can be more easily confirmed from a taphonomic point of view.
See also: Extinctions of Big Game; Taphonomy;

Vertebrate Analysis.

Further Reading
Binford L (1981) Bones: Ancient Men, Modern Myths. New York:
Academic Press.
Callow P and Cornford JM (1986) La Cotte de St Brelade.
Norwich: Geo Books.
Dominguez-Rodrigo M (2002) Hunting and scavenging by early
humans: The state of the debate. Journal of World Prehistory 16:
154.
Dominguez-Rodrigo M, Alcala L, and Luque L (eds) (2007) Peninj:
A Research Project on the Archaeology of Human Origins
(19952005). Massachussetts: Brill.
Nitecki MH and Nitecki DV (1987) The Evolution of Human
Hunting. New York: Plenum.
Pickering TR and Egeland CP (2006) Experimental pattern of
hammerstone percussion damage on bones: Implications for
inferences of carcass processing by humans. Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 459469.
Pitts M and Roberts M (1998) Fairweather Eden. London: Arrow
Books.
Speth JD (1983) Bison Kills and Bone Counts. Decision Making by
Ancient Hunters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

C
CARBON-14 DATING
Tom Higham, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Radiocarbon dating (14C dating or carbon dating) is

the method of choice for the reliable chronometric
analysis of archaeological material spanning 55 000
years to the modern era. The technique was developed
in the late 1940s by Willard F. Libby and two graduate
students (Arnold and Anderson), at the University
of Chicago. There are three principal isotopes of
carbon (the others being the stable isotopes 13C and
12
C constituting 1.11% and 98.89% of global carbon,
respectively). The radioactive isotope of carbon (14C) is
formed in the upper atmosphere (c. 10 km alt.) through
the secondary effects of cosmic ray bombardment upon
the isotope 14N. The replacement of a proton with a
neutron in the nucleus of 14N results in an atom of 14C.
Following production, 14C is rapidly oxidized and
enters the biosphere principally through plant photosynthesis as 14C-labeled 14CO2 and thence to animal
lifeways and all living organisms. The 14C content of
living organisms was assumed from the beginning
of the development of the technique to be in equilibrium with the level of atmospheric 14C, although it
became apparent later that this was not quite true (see
below). As the level of 14C in living organisms decays,
so it is replenished through the uptake of food and
nutrients. When death of an organism occurs, however,
no further replenishment of 14C takes place and only
decay continues.
Radiocarbon dating is based initially on the measurement of residual radiocarbon content. This task is
often challenging because the proportion of radiocarbon compared 13C and 12C is very low indeed
(14C is 1012 to 1015 of the level of 12C). A conventional radiocarbon age is calculated on the basis
of the Libby half-life of 5568  30 years, expressed
in years BP (before present, with 0 BP equivalent to
1950 AD). Dates are expressed as an age and a standard deviation (or  value), which represents plus or
minus one standard deviation (68% probability) from

the mean. Radiocarbon dates are measured with reference to modern reference standards, usually the oxalic
acid II standard, the ratio of whose 14C activity is tied
to the primary radiocarbon standard which is 1890
wood. In the 1970s the actual half-life was shown to
be closer to 5730  40 years, but for reasons of historical continuity the Libby half-life was retained: to
change it would have made comparisons with previous
dates problematic. The calibration of radiocarbon
dates makes this issue redundant, since the tree rings
that make up the calibration curve and the radiocarbon
dates on unknown materials are both calculated using
Libbys half-life.
Three methods of measuring radiocarbon are currently used. Intercomparison exercises undertaken
by the international radiocarbon community show
no demonstrable differences between any of the
three methods when dating test samples. Two of
the methods are classical or conventional methods,
which measure the decay of 14C via the emission
of beta particles (electrons). This is mostly by liquid
scintillation counting (LSC), using benzene, or
gas proportional counting (GPC), using purified
CO2 gas, both produced from the radiocarbon
sample. The third is a direct ion counting technique,
which uses the kind of particle accelerator originally used in nuclear physics research. This method,
accelerator mass spectrometry (or AMS), has revolutionized this field of dating since the first measurements were achieved in 1977 (Figure 1). Because
AMS enables the direct measurement of individual
14
C atoms, the weight of material required is substantially reduced. In addition, the measurement time
is much less. AMS can routinely date samples of
1mg carbon and, in some circumstances, down to
100200 mg of carbon. For archaeology, this has
meant that sample types previously undateable, such
as single hairs from mummies or individual grains
of domesticated wheat or barley, can now be dated.
Typical starting weights required for AMS are
1020 mgs of seed/charcoal/wood, 500 mgs of bone,
and 1020 mgs of shell carbonate. These weights are

956 CARBON-14 DATING

Detector
CO2 ion source

Graphite
ion source

High voltage
accelerator

Figure 1 The accelerator mass spectrometer at the University of Oxford.

Radiocarbon determination (BP)

5700

5600

5500
OxA-15943
(544537 BP)

5400

5300

4600

4500

4400

4300

4200

4100

4000

Calibrated date (cal BC)

Figure 2 Section of the INTCAL04 calibration curve showing
fluctuations in the levels of radiocarbon. The calibration of a typical
radiocarbon date is shown. The calibration of a typical radiocarbon
date is shown. In this instance the wiggle in the curve yields a
biomodal calibrated distribution of 43424317 BC (28% probability)
and 42984262 BC (40% probability).

c. 1000 times less than the weights required by conventional counting systems.
The requirement for calibration of the radiocarbon
timescale was evident by the 1960s when variations
in the 14C content of the atmosphere were demonstrated in tree rings of known age (Figure 2). These
variations cause the level of 14C to differ from the
calendrical timescale and are due to the long-term
influences of geomagnetic variation in the Earths

dipole and the short-term influences of the geomagnetic intensity of the Sun, which ameliorates the
amount of cosmic radiation reaching Earth. Conversion of radiocarbon into calendar years is therefore
required, and may be achieved using a calibration
curve. A calibration curve is a plot of the atmospheric 14C content as a function of calendar time, with the
calendar time known precisely and usually derived from
a single-year proxy such as dendrochronologically
dated tree rings or uraniumthorium dated pristine
corals. The latest internationally agreed calibration
curve (INTCAL04) spans 026 000 cal BP (Figure 2).
The 012.4 cal BP part of the calibration curve comes
principally from the US bristlecone pine, the German
pine/oak, and the Irish oak dendrochronological
sequences. Between 12 400 and 26 000 years ago BP,
marine corals and foraminifera are used. Beyond this,
a series of marine and terrestrial records show some
significant variation between them, which means that
there is currently no internationally agreed curve that
can be used for calibration beyond this time. It is
anticipated that within 5 years it may be possible to
calibrate over the entire 55 000 years of the radiocarbon timescale.
A wide range of material from archaeological contexts is dateable, since carbon is so common in the
Earths biosphere and readily forms compounds with
many other elements. While some dating methods
utilize single materials or two types of material at
best, radiocarbon is applicable to a vast array of
different, commonly found archaeological materials.
In recent years this range has been extended by developments enabling the reliable dating of cremated

CARBON-14 DATING 957

bone, pollen, carbon in iron artifacts, and insect chitin. Routinely dated samples include bone, wood and
wood charcoal, marine and freshwater shell, sediment carbon, textiles, tissues, resins, hair, and soil
carbon.
Reservoir effects are increasingly important in understanding the potential variation in radiocarbon
ages from archaeological sites. A so-called apparent
age is obtained when a radiocarbon sample obtains
carbon from a different source (or reservoir) than
atmospheric carbon. A shellfish alive today in a lake
within a limestone catchment, for instance, will yield
a radiocarbon date that may be excessively old. The
reason for this anomaly is that the limestone, which is
weathered and dissolved into bicarbonate, has no
radioactive carbon in it, so it acts to dilute the
14
C activity of the lake in comparison with the level
of 14C activity elsewhere. The most common reservoir effect is the marine effect. The apparent age of
oceanic water is caused both by the delay in exchange
rates between atmospheric CO2 and ocean bicarbonate, and the dilution effect caused by the mixing of
surface waters with upwelled deep waters which are
very old. A reservoir correction must therefore be
made to radiocarbon dates of shell of fish to account
for this difference. These corrections are based on
marine organisms of known age that are radiocarbon
dated and then the results compared with their
expected age. Human bone may sometimes be a problematic medium for dating in some instances due to
the human consumption of fish, the 14C content of
which will reflect the ocean reservoir and render the
human dates too old.
Accurate radiocarbon dating begins with the archaeological investigation and the identification of the relationship between sample and event. Taphonomy (the
science of embedding of materials in archaeological
sites) becomes critically important. Essentially every
archaeological object must be assumed to be residual

unless clearly shown otherwise (e.g., by being articulated

bone). Sample selection is fundamentally important.
With the exception of what are termed single entities
(samples which can be tied to a subannual period of
growth, such as seeds and grains), all charcoal samples
will naturally be influenced to varying degrees by nonsystematic offsets from their true age. Where possible,
single entities alone ought to be selected for dating.
Using AMS this is now routinely achievable.
Radiocarbon has given us a more integrated view
of world archaeology, by allowing the uniform application of scientifically derived chronologies. In addition, it has ushered in the beginnings of the scientific
archaeology we know today. The method is underpinned by over 50 years of scientific investigation
into its application but new research into aspects of
its use are ongoing, particularly in the race to complete the calibration of the complete 55 000-year
timescale, the development of new means of chemically precleaning samples before dating and improved
instrumentation (mainly in the field of small accelerator systems).
See also: Dating Methods, Overview; Dendrochronology;
Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Obsidian Hydration
Dating; Taphonomy.

Further Reading
Aitken MJ (1990) Science-Based Dating in Archaeology. London:
Longman.
Bowman SGE (1990) Radiocarbon Dating. Interpreting the Past.
London: British Museum Publications.
Taylor RE (1987) Radiocarbon Dating. An Archaeological Perspective. Orlando, USA: Academic Press.
Taylor RE (1997) Radiocarbon dating. In: Taylor RE and Aitken
MJ (eds.) Chronometric Dating in Archaeology, pp. 6596. New
York: Plenum Press.
Tuniz C, Bird JR, Fink D, and Herzog GF (1998) Accelerator Mass
Spectrometry Ultrasensitive Analysis for Global Science. CRC
Press.

958 CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY
John Collis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
culture resource management The theory and practice of
managing, preserving, and interpreting cultural resources within
a social and legal context.
hunter-gatherer society A society whose primary subsistence
method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and
animals from the wild, using foraging and hunting, without
significant recourse to the domestication of either.

For a relatively small profession, the range of jobs

archaeologists carry out is very large and so the skills
one archaeologist may need to acquire are very different from those of another. It also means that people
enter the profession by many routes, but there is also
flexibility for students to change direction while still
studying, or for professionals to change direction as
their careers progress. In addition to the obvious
academic careers within universities, or full-time posts
carrying out excavations and surveys, there is a plethora of jobs providing specialist back-up in the laboratory, for instance dealing with human and animal
remains, ceramics, soils and plant remains; there are
archaeologists in local and national/federal government overseeing the preservation and development of
our heritage, what is generally referred to as cultural
resource management (see Cultural Resource Management). Archaeology also needs to be presented to a
wider public, not only through museums, but also
through specialist books, magazines, and television
programs (see Popular Culture and Archaeology). It
is a subject with a worldwide appeal, with relevance
wherever humans have set foot, from the great civilizations of the past in, say, Egypt or Central America,
to the ephemeral remains of the first hunter-gatherers
who colonized much of the planet. Thus, even before
training starts, you need to have some sort of idea
about what sort of archaeologist you would like to
become.

Pre-University Experience
Some students arrive at university with a fair amount
of knowledge both practical and academic. My own
career in archaeology started with an article in a local
newspaper appealing for volunteers to help on an
excavation. I was soon not only helping to dig, but
also assisting the museum with the washing and

marking of finds, and from the contacts I made in

this voluntary work I was able to work on a number
of major excavations in southern England and even
Germany before my formal training at university
started. Nowadays, because of more stringent rules
with insurance and professionalization, such a route
may be impossible, but there are many community
projects in which schoolchildren can participate;
large rescue projects may have open days for schools,
and some, like Mont Beuvray in France, run summer
schools especially for schoolchildren. Few schools
teach archaeology formally; in Britain there is an
A-level course (examinations taken at 18) in archaeology which is taught in some schools (in 2005, there
were 1868 students completing the course), but this is
due usually to the motivation of a particular teacher
and is, therefore, not available to the vast majority.
Some archaeology may be taught within history or,
for the origins of humanity, within biology, and some
schools may even have archaeology clubs (I have
encountered these in Britain and Poland), but most
students will have to rely on their own initiative and
enthusiasm.
The most obvious sources of information are television, and increasingly, the Internet (see Internet,
Archaeology on), but the quality of archaeology presented can vary considerably, with a tendency towards
the spectacular or the bizarre, and some programs
purporting to be scientific are simply nonsense. But
others, such as Time Team or Meet the Ancestors in
Britain, give a good idea of scientific approaches such
as geophysics or isotope analysis while demonstrating
the limitations of archaeological inference as interpretations change from day to day if not hour by
hour. However, they fail to show the painstaking,
methodical, often boring, work which takes up the
majority of an archaeologists time, in digging and
recording, in processing and analyzing the finds, and
in publication.
There are also both local and national societies
which cater for young people; in Britain the Council
for British Archaeology runs a Young Archaeologists
Club, with many local groups linked to it (65 at the
time of writing), and these may arrange visits, lectures, and where possible, field experience. But for
many young people there will be no local organization, so traditional approaches like reading books are
the only route. Where entry into university includes
an interview at your chosen university, you may well
be asked which books you have been reading, and
here too the Council for British Archaeology provides

CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY 959

useful reading lists. But in Britain, students enter

university with a great variety of scholastic backgrounds from the sciences and the humanities, and
there is no single recommended route, though this
is not true in all countries where, for instance, a
background in history or the classics may be required.

Undergraduate Training
Increasingly a university degree is essential for an
archaeological career; in Britain 95% of professionals
have some form of degree (and this rises to 98%
for those in their 20s). But there are exceptions; in
Germany and the Netherlands, excavation is usually
carried out by technicians who will have had a technical rather than an academic training in skills such as
cartography, photography, and draftsmanship, while
the actual digging is often done by unskilled workmen, mainly people registered as unemployed. In
developing countries the organization of excavations
tends to be more hierarchical, with a clear distinction
between academics who run the project and the
workmen who do the digging, usually with no specific training in archaeology, but supervised by a foreman who will have picked up archaeological skills in
the field.
In developed Western countries, there are also
differences in the importance assigned to the degree.
In Britain, the traditional entry point for professional
careers has been the Bachelors degree, completed
after three years of study at university, whereas in
the USA and Australia it is an Honors degree which
takes four years, though entry tends to be at the
Masters level. In countries where until recently the
Humboldt system dominated (especially in central
and northern Europe), students would study for a
minimum of seven years or more before emerging
with a Masters degree. In some of the Lander in
Germany the doctorate is still a formal requirement
to direct an archaeological excavation, in others it
may be a Masters (in Germany, to excavate a formal
permit is required by law), so archaeologists with
degrees at Bachelors and Masters level may hit a
ceiling in their careers, as in Germany these are considered as technical qualifications. We still do not
know how the new group of students graduating
with only a Bachelors will be considered, but in
Germany at present the reaction of employers generally is very negative, so German archaeology students
have set up a national committee to make sure their
voice is heard. Other countries such as Italy also treat
academic qualifications in a formal legalistic way,
and similar rules regulate, for instance, excavation
on Federal lands in the USA which are under the

control of the Secretary of Interiors. Many countries

have signed up to the Valetta Treaty which states that
only properly qualified people should be allowed to
undertake archaeological excavation, but there are
still variations about quite what qualified means.
At the time of writing, the structure of university
training in Europe is undergoing fundamental change
which will eventually have an impact worldwide. In an
attempt to equate university qualifications throughout
the European Union, and so allow a greater movement
of people across national boundaries, an agreement
was signed in Bologna in 1999 under which all university courses will share a common structure by 2010,
outlined as follows:
1. A system of easily readable and comparable degrees
shall be introduced, supported by the implementation of the Diploma Supplement.
2. Higher education course systems shall be based on
two consecutive cycles: the undergraduate cycle,
lasting three years, shall qualify students for employment, whereas the graduate cycle shall lead to
a Masters and/or Doctorate degree.
3. In order to ensure student mobility through the
transferability of their achievements, a credit system similar to ECTS shall be launched; credits
shall also be obtainable in non-HE contexts such
as lifelong learning.
4. Student mobility and free movement shall be
promoted.
5. European cooperation in quality assurance shall
be established.
6. The European dimension shall be promoted in
higher education through curricula, interinstitutional cooperation, and mobility schemes for
both students and teachers/researchers.
In some countries this is translated into: three years
for the Bachelors, two years for the Masters, and
three years for the Doctorate, but in other countries
the emphasis may be placed on outcomes, whereby
what one knows is measured by the credits in
ones particular discipline as the Bologna Agreement
demands. The Agreement has been interpreted differently from one country to another, and even from one
part of a country or one university to another. So, in
the Walloon area of Belgium, the universities have
followed the French system with a first degree in
history or art history with some specialist courses
in archaeology followed by a two-year Masters in
archaeology, whereas the Flemish-speaking area has
followed the Dutch system with a three-year Bachelors in archaeology, followed by a one-year Masters
in archaeology which qualifies one to work as an
archaeologist; in the Netherlands, for those wishing

960 CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

to follow an academic course leading on to the

Doctorate, there is a two-year Masters course, but
one-year Masters courses exist to provide specialist
training. The situation is thus highly confusing, so
one can only recommend students check carefully
what can be done with a degree, especially if planning
to change countries (e.g., will a particular European
university accept a one-year Masters degree from an
English university when registering for a Doctorate?).
Several countries (Norway, Germany, the Netherlands,
and the Czech Republic) have already made the change
to the Bologna structure, others are in the process of
changing (France, Sweden, Croatia, and Ukraine),
some still have no clear program for conforming
(Spain and Britain), and universities in other countries
such as Australia are adapting their courses to the
European structure. The British system already largely
conforms except that Masters degrees, tend to be oneyear degrees, and this raises problems about whether
British qualifications will be accepted everywhere
in Europe.
This outward appearance of uniformity, however,
masks a great variety, especially for a subject such as
archaeology. In some countries, notably Britain and
Germany, it is accepted as a discipline in its own right,
and from the start of a course students take specialist
courses (if not entirely concentrating on archaeology)
and graduate with a Bachelors in archaeology; this
can be either a science or an arts/humanities degree
(BSc or BA). Often there may be a subsidiary subject,
the Nebenfach in Germany, while under the modular
systems found in many British and American universities one can take modules in another subject, or even
do a joint degree with, say, history, classics, or geography. In the USA, though one may major in archaeology, it is part of a wider degree in anthropology, so
the courses are likely to include some physical anthropology and linguistics as well as social anthropology.
In some Mediterranean countries (France, Spain), it is
generally not possible to do a first degree in archaeology, but only a few subsidiary courses, as archaeology
is considered a specialist subject only studied at the
Masters level; so, in Spain, an archaeology Bachelors
degree does not qualify one to practice in archaeology
because it does not exist, whereas a history degree does!
The usual entry is thus through a degree in history, art
history, or, if one is studying the Paleolithic in France,
through geology.
This betrays fundamentally different cultural attitudes towards archaeology. Traditionally, it was seen
as an adjunct to classics, to history (the handmaid
of History), or to art history (mainly dealing with
architecture and sculpture), and so simply providing physical remains to illustrate what we already
know from written sources, or just filling in the

gaps. However, I would argue that now the reverse is

true as archaeology deals with the whole of the history
of the human species in all parts of the world, whereas
history is largely biased towards parts of Asia, Europe,
and North Africa and is limited in time, while dealing
with only a limited range of material culture, that is,
written documents. The theoretical and methodological basis of archaeology is therefore fundamentally
different from history and art history, though it can
encompass these subjects as well. A better case can
be made in arguing that it represents the historical
dimension of anthropology.
This difference of attitude, especially of the sorts
of questions we ask of the past, leads in turn to
different ways of studying the past, and therefore of
the methodologies the reconstruction of ancient
environments, of production of artifacts, of trade,
discussed elsewhere in this volume, and also of scientific approaches such as the analysis of the physical or
chemical characteristics of pottery, of ancient pollen,
or animal bones. Here, then, we meet the fundamental divide in the way in which archaeology is taught,
for instance, in the more arts-based approach found
in southern Europe, the environmental and scientific
approaches of northwestern Europe, and the anthropology-based approach of North America. There is
also a fundamental divide among archaeologists about
who should be undertaking the specialist scientific
work: people from other disciplines who have had a
specialist training but who are perhaps not familiar
with archaeological methodologies and theory; or by
archaeologists themselves who must therefore acquire
the specialist skills. In the last 50 years this split has
become most marked between Britain, which has embraced the wider role of archaeologists and so of the
training they need, on the one side, and Germany on
the other, where most archaeologists have a narrower
training in areas such as the identification and dating of
artifacts, and where specialists from other disciplines
do much of the laboratory work.
These differences are also reflected in the sort of
facilities that universities offer students and also what
sort of funding is available to universities to develop
those facilities. In a highly commercialized system
such as that in the USA, competition between departments can push up the quality of what is on offer, but
commercial pressures can equally lead to degrees
being offered on the cheap without high quality staff
and facilities, and may depend on what income the
department can generate from fees and sponsorship.
In contrast, countries where there is substantial
government funding, either in terms of paying student
fees or funding buildings and other developments,
ultimate control may be in the hands of state or university bureaucrats who may have an old-fashioned

CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY 961

view of what should constitute an archaeology

degree. In a mixed system, such as Britain, where
there is still substantial state funding, but where the
universities are, nominally at least, autonomous organizations, the level of funding for a particular department will be decided locally, and this will be heavily
influenced by four main factors: the ability of archaeological staff to convince their universities to
invest, the amount of independent funding which
can be attracted through research grants and commercial activities, the number of students who register with the department, and the level of fees
university students pay. The University Funding
Councils for Wales and England (the Governmentsupported organizations that distribute public funding to the universities) give a larger level of funding
for each archaeology student than, say, history or
English as the subject is considered part science
like geography or earth sciences; in Scotland, however, archaeology is classed an arts subject, and so
does not attract the extra funding, and this is true of
many other countries; in the USA, anthropology is
usually taught within a College of Arts and Sciences.
The other major difference is in the size of departments. Again, Germany and Britain provide one of
the greatest contrasts; in Germany there are rarely
more than two or three academic staff per department, whereas in Britain between 10 and 20 is quite
normal, with University College London having
over 60. There are also 40 departments in Britain
which offer undergraduate archaeology degrees and
another 10 which offer them at Masters level, and
many others which have some archaeology modules
available for students of other subjects such as history,
or specialist Masters courses. Most other advanced
countries, like Japan, Spain, or the Scandinavian countries, are somewhere in between. Each system has its
advantages. Small and highly specialized departments
such as those in Germany offer a close relationship
between student and staff, and students were, under
the Humboldt system, able to move away from their
home university for a period of time to gain experience
in other universities. This is less easy at the undergraduate level within the Bologna system due to the
shortness of courses and their more-defined curriculum
(though movement is easier at the Masters level); a
recent trend is for German universities to link together
to share the teaching of degrees. In contrast, the large
departments can usually offer a much greater range
of teaching, and better facilities and equipment. However, where there may be a hundred or more students
registered for a particular module, library facilities may
be strained, though electronic resources are developing
rapidly to supplement the traditional book, though
perhaps not to replace it.

The size of department is closely linked with political and cultural perceptions of university training. In
countries where the degree is seen primarily as a
qualification for entry into an academic and professional elite, the percentage of the population attending university will remain relatively small 1520%.
In Spain the recent conservative government actually
planned to reduce the numbers entering university
and also the range of degree subjects available; in
contrast, in Britain all governments since the 1950s
have aimed at increasing numbers, and the present
Labour government has a target of 50% (at present it
is just over 40%, but the target has already been
reached in Scotland). In countries with this higher
participation rate, the undergraduate degree in archaeology is seen more as a general training in life
skills which may or may not, lead the student into
the specialist training needed to practice as a professional. So in Britain and the USA a degree in archaeology is seen in more general terms, as one which
provides transferable skills, for example, an ability
to read and write critically, to understand scientific and
theoretical debate, the possession of practical skills
working in the field or the laboratory, or as a member
of a team or research group. So a lot, if not the vast
majority, of archaeology graduates will end up as
teachers or administrators rather than as archaeologists, though this has become more difficult of late in
Britain with the narrowing of the national curriculum
for History in schools. In the USA, the majority
of those who go on to take a higher degree in archaeology end up in the private and government sectors,
though there is still a dynamic university sector.
In countries where there has been a massive
increase in student numbers, there has inevitably
been a major strain on public finances, and increasingly the trend has been to shift the burden on to the
student. When I went to university in Britain in the
1960s not only were all fees paid, but all students
were eligible for a living allowance, the level of
which depended on ones parents income (who
were expected to contribute). Now in most of Britain
(though not Scotland) all British and EU students
except those from deprived backgrounds have to
pay up to 3000 top-up fees and there is certainly
no money for living expenses, but repayment does not
start until after graduation and until the graduates
salary is over 15 000 a year, and so quite a high
percentage qualifies for some sort of rebate on their
fees. There are pressures to follow the American system whereby the top universities (the Ivy League in
the USA, Oxbridge and the Russell Group in Britain)
will be able to charge higher fees, and so compete at
an international level with the top universities across
the world in the quality of teaching and facilities.

962 CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

In other countries such as France and Germany where

tuition is still free, the situation is likely to change
radically in the next few years with the introduction
of the Bologna system; in Germany it is predicted that
undergraduate courses may remain free, but fees
may be charged for postgraduate courses, and this is
already happening in some of the Lander. However,
in the USA and Britain, universities make grants
available to try to attract the best students; in the
USA there is also a well-developed system for students
to obtain assistantships in their departments, fee
waivers, money for work study, and scholarships.
The increasing financial pressure on students may
also affect student practices. In France, where the
entry into university is a right for all those with the
necessary qualifications, students tend to stay at
home and go to the nearest university for their first
degree, thereby cutting living costs. In Britain and the
USA, where entry is competitive, students have traditionally moved away from home, and compete for
places in the universities which offer the best courses
in the subject that interests them, but increasingly
they are looking for situations where part-time or
vacation work may be available. But worldwide, students still tend to very reliant on parental or family
support.
Thus, with the university world in such a state of
flux, and especially in a subject such as archaeology
where there is a vast variation in the types of department and the courses on offer, the only advice one can
give to prospective students is to think carefully about
what sort of archaeological career they want; to investigate fully on the web what a particular department may offer, the likely costs in fees and living
expenses; and wherever possible, to visit the universities beforehand to see if the reality lives up to the
prospectus, for instance, a large list of teachers does
not necessarily tell you how many of them are actually there full-time. Many universities and departments
have open days when students can visit for tours;
feedback from existing students on campus can be
really useful, as can advice from archaeologists about
how departments are rated. The market is becoming
increasingly international, and more and more students are moving to other countries to get some of
their professional training.

Postgraduate Training
What I have written about Bachelors degrees is even
more true about Masters degrees. Until the 1980s the
Masters degree was relatively unimportant in Britain.
It usually consisted of a dissertation, either for
students who wanted to do a research project but

without committing themselves to several years of

research (though nominally three years, the Doctorate
often took six to seven years to complete), or for
students who were changing direction in their studies.
These options are still available, but nowadays, even
though the dissertation is still an important part of the
degree, up to two-thirds of the degree will consist of
taught courses similar to, but more advanced than,
those offered at an undergraduate level, and a higher
degree of knowledge is expected. A Taught Masters
can perform a number of roles: as a simple continuation and intensification of what is done at the Bachelors level; as an entry point for those who have a first
degree in another subject (especially in countries such
as Spain and France where there has been no Bachelors level, but conversion courses are also important
in countries like Britain where students commonly
change the direction of their studies after completing
the first degree); as a shift to a more specialized area
within archaeology (e.g., geophysics, heritage / cultural resource management; environmental or forensic
archaeology, etc.); as a route towards the Doctorate,
with an emphasis on acquiring research skills; or as a
highly specialized degree as part of ones professional
development (e.g., in deciphering inscriptions in an
ancient language). In contrast, most Masters degrees
in the States are more generalized, but with a thesis in
the area of specialization.
We can expect the provision of Masters courses to
develop rapidly over the next decade. In the countries
which are changing from the Humboldt structure,
the Masters course is generally seen as a simple
continuation from the Bachelors, leading directly on
to the Doctorate, and so it is not a specialist degree.
At the time of writing the first cohorts of students in
some of these countries are reaching the Masters
level. In some countries, notably Scotland, students
will study for four years, and graduate with a Masters
degree rather than a Bachelors, and in Oxford
and Cambridge, students are offered an automatic
Masters degree two years after graduating (which is
how I acquired my Masters!). In countries where the
Masters has been long established, there may be a
great variety of courses on offer; in the 2006 listing
of postgraduate courses in Britain, no fewer than 170
different Masters courses are listed under archaeology, taught at 30 different institutions, and even this
is not complete as courses with a strong archaeological component may be listed under other headings
such as Celtic Studies. Also, it is quite common for
students who plan an archaeological career to deliberately take a Masters in a different subject, such as in
natural sciences, to gain expertise in the area in which
they plan to specialize.

CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY 963

In countries where a degree qualification is a legal

requirement to practice, taking the Masters (and perhaps the Doctorate) is a necessity for entering the
profession, and there is less flexibility in the sort of
Masters course one takes. In Germany, failing to
complete the sequence of degrees in the subject in
which one originally started is considered tantamount
to failure; in the British and American system, changes
of direction are encouraged. In countries where the
Bachelors has traditionally been the point of entry in
ones career, many students have not considered it
worthwhile to continue with further levels of qualification. But we are now in an increasingly competitive
world, and the range of skills we require to carry out
our jobs has expanded vastly as well (acquisition of
IT skills is one of the most obvious developments of
the last 20 years), and this has led the bar for entry to
be raised. In the 1960s I was told that, with a Bachelors
degree, I was over-qualified for a post as City Archaeologist, and when I obtained my first permanent university lecturing post, I had still not completed my
Doctorate. Nowadays a City Archaeologist would be
expected to have a minimum of a Bachelors level
archaeology degree backed with many years of experience, and new lecturers usually have a Doctorate, and
several published papers, if not a book, behind them.
Thus, in the 1980s and 1990s there was a huge
expansion in the provision of Taught Masters courses
in Britain and in the USA, driven by three factors: first
the need for more specialist expertise as the archaeology profession expanded and diversified; second,
student demand, as students felt they had a better
possibility of a post with a Masters rather than just
a Bachelors degree; and third, competition between
universities, as in Britain the level of funding from the
Government depends on the rating of the department
in the Research Assessment Exercise, and one of the
factors taken into account is the number of postgraduate students in the department. In the past it
was normal for students in Britain to move straight
from the Bachelors to work on the Doctorate, but
nowadays the Masters is seen as an almost essential
step in research training for the Doctorate, and this
will become more true as the Bologna system is
adopted. However, with only limited funding and
scholarships available, the student is faced with the
difficult task of deciding what sort of Masters course
to take and when to take it, and whether it is worth
the financial outlay (fees and living expenses for one
or two more years). Many students register immediately on completion of the Bachelors, but others take
a year or two off to gain field and work experience,
something which I would recommend, as one will get
a much greater feel for what openings there are and

what expertise is needed (no point in taking a Masters

in a field which is already over-supplied): it may
also give the opportunity to pay off debts and save
money for further qualifications. In the States, however, one needs a Masters degree to work on sites on
the National Register of Historic Places.
Whether to go for the Doctorate represents another
dilemma, as in most countries this is largely, if not
purely, a research degree, and so can lead one into
over-specialized areas of expertise. This is less true in
the USA where the doctorate contains a major taught
component, indeed many students enter the commercial world ABD (all but dissertation), that is, they
have completed the taught element of the degree, but
plan to submit the final part, the dissertation, later in
their career. In countries such as Germany where the
Doctorate is essential, students will have little choice
but to continue to the higher level of qualification,
and elsewhere it is essential for students who wish to
pursue an academic career, for example, as a university teacher or in a research institute. In most of
the former communist countries there are archaeological institutes which carry out major research, and,
increasingly, rescue projects. These are based on the
French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS), and in France, entry into this elite group of
researchers is highly competitive, and considered of
higher status than a university post, though the situation is becoming blurred as members of the CNRS
and their research groups often have close links with
universities and provide some of the teaching. In some
countries such as France and Germany those pursuing
a university career may also have to complete a higher
level of doctorate, the Habilitation, usually prepared
while the researcher holds a junior temporary post in
the university.

Entering the Profession

The old adage it is not what you know but who you
know still has some weight in a relatively small profession such as archaeology, though it is only in a
few developing countries that appointments may be
decided more on family or political connections than
expertise or qualifications. Until recently, even in an
advanced system such as Germany, graduates were
highly dependent on their professors to provide them
with the contacts with which to get on the first rung
of the professional ladder, and in Spain, despite
efforts by the Government to make appointments
more on merit, it is claimed that some posts are still
sorted out quietly behind closed doors by professors
eager to place their proteges. Despite Britain being a
highly competitive and open system, the references,

964 CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

written or verbal, from ones teachers and previous

employers still have considerable weight. It is good
to spread yourself around when acquiring work
experience, by not only working on projects run by
staff from your university, but also on those run
by other sorts of organizations, and making personal
connections (and so be in the right place at the right
time) as well as extending your expertise and experience. Also, attending conferences, especially those
that attract professional archaeologists, giving a
paper as soon as there is something new to be said,
will be useful in the long run.
Personal connections are especially important at
the beginning of your career if you are working in a
commercial environment contracts tend to be shortterm and at this level opportunities on new projects
may not be advertised as information is spread more
easily by word of mouth. You should also write to
major employers to get on their mailing lists. Longerterm or permanent posts will generally be advertised
in some way, and information will commonly be sent
to major university departments and employers, so
keep an eye on notice boards. In Britain, by law,
senior posts may have to be publicly advertised, especially in the major national broadsheet newspapers,
usually on a specific day of the week, but increasingly
archaeological organizations are providing specialist
services for job-seekers, like those of the Institute of
Field Archaeologists in Britain. There are special problems faced by those seeking jobs in fieldwork where
contracts may be of short duration and may not be
advertised until just before the work starts; however,
there is now an independent publication for British
workers, BAJR (pronounced badger) which is the
main source of information about posts in the field.
In the USA the Society for American Archaeology
provides a similar sort of service, and its annual conference is used by many organizations to interview
and hire new staff, and the same is true for the Society
for Historical Archaeology and the American Anthropological Association.

Career Development
Be aware that there may be a huge gap between your
university training and what you are expected to do in
your job; it is a continuous complaint of employers
that new university graduates are inadequately trained
and prepared for the world of work. Good employers
are aware of this and will organize training for new
recruits, some of which may be legally required, such
as in health and safety. In Britain we are in the early
stages of developing graduate apprenticeships to
provide specialist training for new entrants, including

a range of work experience, not only fieldwork but

also the administrative organization of archaeology;
at the time of writing (2006) the first pilot schemes
are underway.
Major institutions such as universities, national and
local government, museums or state field units like
Institut national de recherches archeologiques preventives (INRAP) in France will have clearly defined
career structures, but this is less true for commercial
organizations. Field archaeologists typically tend to
be poorly paid (though there are exceptions, such as
Australia), due in part to the oversupply of people
looking for jobs, but also because digging has in the
past been considered unskilled work which can be
carried out by laborers or volunteers. In fact I would
argue that digging requires considerable skill, to make
academic judgments about what is or is not important,
and how to retrieve the maximum amount of information. But there are similar problems further up the
hierarchy where more generic skills like IT expertise,
personnel management, project budgeting and project
organization are increasingly important. In an attempt
to overcome problems of career development and the
perceived low status of archaeologists in Britain, the
Archaeology Training Forum (ATF) has been formed,
a committee which consists of representatives of the
major organizations involved in national and local
government, commercial employers, professional bodies like the IFA, training providers such as universities,
trades unions, etc., and from this a number of initiatives have emerged that will develop ideas which can
be applied worldwide.
One of ATFs earliest projects, recently repeated,
was to find out how many archaeologists there are in
Britain, who they are, what they do, and what they are
paid. This has helped identify areas where there are
shortages in expertise; ATF has also sponsored an
attempt to define what skills are needed for a large
range of archaeological roles. The next stage, at
present underway in 2006, is to link National Occupational Standards (NOS) with the jobs that archaeologists actually do within their organization, and
also to link training, especially university degrees,
with these skills. We can thus start to define what skills
are not at present being provided for both those entering the profession, and also for people moving up the
career ladder, and ways in which this training can be
provided and funded. A similar survey of archaeologists is taking place in other European countries
(Finding the Archaeologists of Europe) as well.
In the USA the Society for American Archaeology
Curriculum Committee has taken on a similar role,
defining the skills needed by archaeologists.
At the same time individuals need to be empowered to make the most of these opportunities to

CAREERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY 965

enhance their own skills and career prospects. In the

universities this takes the form of student centered
learning, but this continues into the profession as
lifelong learning via continuing professional development (CPD). This requires each individual to make
informed decisions about what both their short-term
and long-term aims are and how these can be achieved,
though it needs continual revision, preferably every
year; NOS are important in helping to define the
long-term aims. Out of this process, there has emerged
a number of documents which are of use to both the
individual and the employer:
1. The curriculum vitae (CV) lists personal details,
formal qualifications, positions of responsibility,
publications, grants received, lectures given, etc.
2. The personal development plan (PDP) in which
you decide over the short term (usually twelve
months) what skills and training you need to
acquire and how to acquire them (from formal
courses, reading, attending conferences, and especially the more informal expertise we pick up from
colleagues in the workplace).
3. A skills log: this lists the skills and knowledge that
you have already acquired with an honest estimate
of your level of expertise, from beginner to world
expert!
4. A portfolio: examples of your work, which may
include essays, reports, publications, drawings, etc.
to show potential employers what you can do
(for senior academic posts in Scandinavia you are
expected to produce a complete set of your publications for an external adjudicator to peruse).
Good employers will help you in the preparation of
the documents and provide opportunities for training
and career development, though remember that these
are your personal documents, and the PDP may include plans to get a better job with another employer!
In some countries the provision of training for staff is
a legal requirement with several days put aside each
year, but bad employers cut their costs by cutting
training (and usually employees salaries too!).
In some countries, in an attempt to improve standards, archaeologists have formed professional institutes, though archaeology is a long way behind
professions such as law, medicine, engineering, architecture, etc. In Europe the most developed is the
Institute of Field Archaeologists (IFA) whose members are mainly, though not exclusively, based in
Britain, and similar organizations have recently been
founded in Ireland and the Netherlands; in the USA
the Register of Professional Archaeologists (ROPA)
provides some of the functions of a professional institute. Membership is becoming increasingly important
in Britain for many archaeological posts, though it is

not legally enforceable, and students and young professionals are encouraged to join at an early stage of their
careers. Professional institutes are not to be confused
with trade unions; the institutes are mainly concerned
with professional standards and so providing guarantees to organizations that employ archaeologists of
standards of both individuals and organizations, and
some sort of redress if those standards are not met.
Trade unions, in contrast, are mainly concerned with
protecting the individual, from exploitation or wrongful dismissal, while negotiating general terms and conditions of employment; as in the rest of the workforce,
British archaeologists tend to be more unionized than
in many other countries (though still a minority),
from university staff to the lowest-paid diggers. However, the most successful strikes by archaeologists
have been in France, once over the reorganization
of rescue archaeology and the establishment of
INRAP (generally the archaeologists were in favor
of a centralized state organization as opposed to a
commercialization of archaeology such as has occurred in Britain and the USA), and a second time
against the open flouting of the planning laws by
politicians involving the destruction of part of the
Roman and medieval defenses of the city of Rodez
(the archaeologists won!).

The Future
Clearly the teaching of archaeology and the profession is in a great state of flux, and this is not likely to
settle down in the near future. To keep up to date the
prospective archaeologist should keep an eye on the
websites of national and international organizations
such as the Society for American Archaeology, the
European Association of Archaeologists, the Institute
of Field Archaeologists, the Council for British
Archaeology, etc. Be aware of what you are doing;
for example, under the Bologna agreement you may
find that qualifications you obtain in one country
may not be valid in another (e.g., will the rest of
Europe accept British one-year Masters qualifications?). I have not dealt much with developing
countries; university structures are often modeled on
those of the more developed countries (especially
USA, Britain, and Germany), and students are still
highly reliant on obtaining higher degrees in developed countries, though this is likely to change rapidly
in the next decade or two. Further reading on matters
of education and training can be found in The (Field)
Archaeologist (published by the IFA), in an online
journal just about to be launched by the Higher Education Academy in Britain, and in the following
books and articles:

966 CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS

See also: Cultural Resource Management; Internet,
Archaeology on; Popular Culture and Archaeology.

Further Reading
Aitchison K (1999) Profiling the Profession: A Survey of Archaeological Jobs and Jobs Profiles in the UK. London: Institute of
Field Archaeologists/Council for British Archaeology/English
Heritage.
Aitchison, K (2000) A Survey of Archaeological Specialists. Institute of Field Archaeologists/Museum of London Specialist Services/English Heritage.
Aitchison K and Edwards R (2003) Archaeology Labour Market
Intelligence: Profiling the Profession 2002/03. Reading/Bradford: Institute of Field Archaeologists and Cultural Heritage
National Training Organisation.
Bender SJ and Smith GS (eds.) (2000) Teaching Archaeology in
the Twenty-First Century. Washington: Society for American
Archaeology.
Carter S and Robertson A (2002) Project to Define Professional
Functions and Standards in Archaeology. Reading: Institute of

Cave Art

Field Archaeologists and Cultural Heritage National Training

Organisation.
Chitty G (2000) A Rapid Survey of Training Needs. London:
Archaeological Training Forum/Institute of Field Archaeologists/Council for British Archaeology/English Heritage.
Colley S, Ulm S, and Pate DF (eds.) (2005) Teaching, Learning and
Australian Archaeology. Australian Archaeology (61). (December
2005). Canberra: Australian Archaeological Association Inc.
Collis JR (2000) Towards a national training scheme. Antiquity 74:
208214.
Fagan B (2006) So you want to be an archaeologist? It may not be
as glamorous as you think. Archaeology, May/June 2006: 5964.
QAA (2000) Benchmarking Archaeology. Gloucester, Quality
Assurance Agency.
Rainbird P and Hamilakis Y (eds.) (2001) BAR International Series
948: Interrogating Pedagogies: Archaeology in Higher Education. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Shepherd N (2005) Who is doing courses in South African universities? And what are they studying? South African Archaeology
Bulletin 60(182): 121123.
Zeder MA (ed.) (1997) The American Archaeologist: A Profile.
Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press in co-operation with
the Society for American Archaeology.

See: Rock Art.

CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS

Paul Goldberg, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
Rolfe D Mandel, University of Kansas, Lawrence,
KS, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
flowstone Flowstones are composed of sheetlike deposits of
calcite carbonate formed where water flows along the walls or
floors of a cave.
karst An area of limestone in which the bedrock has produced
fissures, sinkholes, underground streams, and caverns.
rockshelter An overhanging projection of rock that could
provide shelter from the elements; often a rich source of
archaeological evidence, because they were occupied by different
cultures over many centuries.

Introduction
Caves and rockshelters have long been the focus of
prehistoric and archaeological research, and many
of the most archaeologically significant finds have

been uncovered from them. Finds encompass remains

of fossil hominins, which span a major part of the
human record, including Australopithecus in South
African cave sites (e.g., Swartkrans), various species
of Homo and Neandertals from both Europe (e.g.,
Atapuerca, Spain; Tautavel, France; Neanderthal
Cave, Germany) as well as the Middle East (Shanidar,
Kurdistan; Qafzeh and Kebara, Israel). Furthermore,
many cave and rockshelter sites contain abundant
lithic, faunal, and floral remains within thick accumulations of deposits that permit archaeologists to
detect long-term changes in technology, plant and
animal exploitation, and site use through time. Striking examples of all of the above are Tabun Cave,
Israel, with over 18 m of deposits that contain Lower
and Middle Palaeolithic remains spanning over
200 000300 000 years of human history (Figure 1).
At Danger Cave in the Great Basin of North America,
there is an extraordinary stack of well-preserved primarily culturally derived sediments spanning more
than 10 000 years. Also, extensive and intensive occupation lasting from Late Palaeo-Indian through Late

CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS 967

Figure 1 Tabun Cave, Israel showing a thick sequence of sandy,

silty, and anthropogenic deposits; Lower Palaeolithic deposits
occur at the base and Middle Palaeolithic deposits are seen
above the third step. The vertical nature of the deposits in the
lower left is associated with subsidence of the deposits into a
subterranean depression or swallow hole during the Lower
Palaeolithic.

Archaic times is illustrated at Dust Cave, Alabama

(Figure 2).
The deep interiors of caves are in total darkness
and isolated from the outside environment. In contrast, cave mouths and areas under projecting rock
ledges (rockshelters) have broad connections with the
outside environment and are illuminated to some
extent by sunlight. The degree of protection from
the outside climate or weather depends on the size,
configuration, and orientation of the rockshelter or
cave mouth. For example, the deep, massive rockshelters at Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado
provide considerable protection from the external
environment (Figure 3). In contrast, the small Movie
Draw Rockshelter in the Black Hills of South Dakota
affords little protection (Figure 4).
At high altitudes in the Peruvian Andes, nearly
all of the recorded archaeological sites are in caves
because they offered shelter from the rain, wind, and
cold nights. Pachamachay Cave at 4300 m (nearly
14 000 ft) above sea level has 33 superimposed layers
of cultural deposits dating between 12 000 and
8000 years BP. Guitarrero, another high-altitude cave
in Peru, contains evidence of human occupation
between 10 500 and 2000 years ago, and a possible
occupation layer was dated to c. 13 000 14C years BP.
Caves and rockshelters have been the focus of
archaeological research concerned with the peopling of
the New World, especially South America. Cave sites in
the Peruvian Andes including Telarmachay, Uchumachay, Lauricocha, Huargo, Guitarrero, Pachamachay,
Pikimachay, and Panaulauca have yielded finds
suggesting, but not proving, that people were in the

Figure 2 Dust Cave, Alabama. Dust Cave presents a striking example of anthropogenic ashes and charcoal, interfingered with detrital
clays, which have been remarkably well preserved because of the dry conditions.

968 CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS

Figure 3 Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde, Colorado. This 200-room Anasazi cliff dwelling is in a large rockshelter formed along a
shalesandstone contact.

Figure 4 Movie Draw Rockshelter, Custer State Park, Black Hills of South Dakota. This small rockshelter formed in sandstone has
yielded a rich cultural record dating from c. 2000 to 700 BP.

region as early as 20 00015 000 BP. In eastern Brazil,

the rockshelter at Pedra Furada has produced disputed
evidence for human occupation over 30 000 years ago.
Although pre-12 000 BP archaeological findings at
many of the cave and rockshelter sites mentioned
here are problematic, they have yielded unequivocal

evidence for people in South America between

c. 12 000 and 10 000 BP (see Americas, South: Early
Cultures of the Central Andes).
Unlike most open-air sites, caves and rockshelters
constitute distinctive archaeological environments
in that they tend to be essentially closed systems.

CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS 969

Materials that are brought into the enclosed space

tend to stay there, and thus they present detailed
records of geological and human activities, although
they can be subject to physical and chemical modifications. They provide a contrast to the situation of openair sites, which are more prone to erosion or burial by
processes associated with gravity, wind, or water.
The cultural deposits of dry cave and rockshelter
sites generally yield well-preserved floral and faunal
remains. For example, the earliest solid evidence for
domesticated maize comes from the dry rockshelter
site of Guila Naquitz in Oaxaca, Mexico, where two
maize cobs produced AMS radiocarbon dates of
c. 6300 BP. The dry San Marcos and Coxcatlan
rockshelter sites in the Tehuacan Valley of Puebla,
Mexico, have yielded well-preserved maize that is
nearly as old as the maize from Guila Naquitz. In
southern Peru, the dry rockshelter site of Asana has
well-preserved faunal remains (mostly deer, camelids,
and small mammals) dating back to c. 11 500 BP, plus
a variety of floral materials, including tubers, mesquite pods, cactus fruits, and chenopod grains.
The recovery of well-preserved floral and faunal
remains is not limited to dry caves and rockshelters
in Mexico and South America. The earliest farmers in
the mid-south of North America lived seasonally in
rockshelters and also used them for dry storage of
cultivated plants. Evidence for early (Late Archaic),
domesticated, small-seeded plants has come from the
Cold Oak, Cloudsplitter, and Newt Kash rockshelters
in eastern Kentucky and the Marble Bluff rockshelter
in northwestern Arkansas. At Salts and Mammoth
caves in Kentucky, Early Woodland people unknowingly left a detailed record of their diet in the dry cave
passages. Thousands of human coprolites are well
preserved throughout the nearly 35 km of cave passages explored and mined for minerals (mostly gypsum and medicinal sulfates) between c. 2800 and
2300 BP. The coprolites, plus stratified archaeobotanical remains from the mouth of Salt Cave, provide
the most detailed record of an ancient agricultural
complex known anywhere in the Americas.
The aridity of rockshelters also has resulted in
remarkable preservation of perishable organic materials at sites in the Great Basin of North America.
For example, several dozen sandals made from sagebrush bark fiber were found in Fort Rock Cave in
southern Oregon. A fragment from one of the sandals
yielded a radiocarbon age of c. 9000 BP. Two other
Great Basin rockshelters, Lovelock and Humboldt in
west-central Nevada, contained well-preserved nets,
mats, cordage, twined and coiled baskets, cloth, and
hides, with some of the materials dating as far back as
4500 BP. At Hogup Cave on the western edge of the
Great Salt Desert of Nevada, cultural deposits dating

to the Early Holocene and later times included the

seeds of pickleweed, a plant native to the salt flats,
and fragile remains of waterfowl and shore birds
hunted at nearby salt marshes and small lakes.
Although cave and rockshelter sites are less numerous than open-air sites, they have played a very
significant role in furnishing data on prehistoric
human palaeoecology and evolution. They also have
shed light on the timing of human arrival in the
New World. Hence, cave and rockshelter sites merit
attention from the archaeological community. It is
important to understand how these geologic features
form in the landscape and receive sediment from
internal and external sediment sources. It is also important to recognize postdepositional processes that
may affect the archaeological record at cave and
rockshelter sites. Despite being relatively protected,
caves, and especially rockshelters, are not always
isolated from geomorphic and biologic processes
that may reshape cultural deposits in these settings.

Formation of Caves and Rockshelters

Caves and rockshelters form by a variety of means.
Caves cavities that commonly extend well into the
bedrock are normally associated with karstic processes and linked to dissolution of limestone. Caves in
sandstone, however, are well known in Australia, and
from Middle and Late Stone Age sites in South Africa.
Rockshelters, in contrast, tend to be more wide than
deep. Whereas they can also result from karstic processes, differential weathering of less resistant layers in
the bedrock is a common mechanism in their formation. Rockshelters also form by fluvial undercutting of
bedrock valley walls. For example, Bonfire Shelter in
southwest Texas is a product of fluvial undercutting of
a cliff face in Mile Canyon when the elevation of the
canyon floor was 18 m higher than today.
In the Great Basin of North America and elsewhere, rockshelters were formed and/or enlarged
by wave action along ancient shorelines of pluvial
lakes. For example, the Bonneville Estates Rockshelter
in Nevada is one of many rockshelters in the
region with prominent wave-cut features that correlate with Lake Bonnevilles various Late Pleistocene
shorelines.

Depositional and Postdepositional

Processes in Caves and Rockshelters
Caves and rockshelters are subject to a number
of depositional and postdepositional processes that
not only preserve the archaeological record, but can
also significantly modify it and how we interpret it.

970 CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS

Depositional processes involve the accumulation of

coarse deposits (pebble-size and larger) and finegrained materials (sand, silt, and clay) from both
within and outside the cave or rockshelter. Coarse
material (eboulis, in French) is normally a product of
roof fall or wall collapse, and results from the dissolution of the bedrock along joints, the breakdown of the
bedrock by freezethaw processes, or tectonic activity.
The eboulis can vary from centimeter-sized clasts to
blocks over a meter in diameter.
The finer fraction in cave and rockshelter deposits
can come from a variety of sources. These include the
following:
1. Infiltration of reworked soil material through
joints or solution cavities in the bedrock. This material accumulates along the walls and on the floor of
the cave or rockshelter as small mounds, which can be
re-mobilized by flowing water or human activity,
such as trampling.
2. Fluvial deposition is also one of the ways in
which caves and rockshelters in stream valleys may
receive alluvium. When streams are adjacent to or
very near valley walls, coarse-grained sediment,
including sand and gravel, may be delivered to rockshelters and cave mouths through lateral accretion of
point bars. In contrast, fine-grained alluvium (mostly
silt and clay) held in suspension may be deposited
during floods, a process known as vertical accretion.
Rodgers Shelter in the western Ozark Highland of
Missouri is a good example of a rockshelter containing a sequence of lateral and vertical-accretion deposits. This archaeologically rich shelter remained at or
only a few meters above the elevation of the floodplain of the Pomme de Terre River throughout the
Holocene.
Alluvium also occurs in karstic caves. For example,
at Sheriden Cave, a Clovis habitation site in Ohio, finegrained sediments display evidence of alluvial transport. In general, coarser sediments, including sand and
fine gravel, were deposited near the cave entrance, and
silt and clay were deposited in laminar layers in the
lowest passages. This depositional sequence is similar
to the one described for Ohio Caverns.
3. Eolian accumulation, which takes the form of
sand deposition associated with coastal dunes and
eolianites (fossil dunes) is another way. Many important caves and rockshelters have eolian sand accumulations that are tied to worldwide fluctuations in sea
level (e.g., Tabun Cave, Israel; Gorhams and Vanguard Caves, Gibraltar; Blombos and Die Kelders
Caves, South Africa; Akrotiri Aetokremnos Rockshelter, Cyprus). Build-up of finer, silt-sized material
in caves and rockshelters is volumetrically less important but is clearly visible; it is generally linked to

eolian dust deposition or reworking of eolian silts

(e.g., Dust Cave, Alabama).
4. In addition to coastal eolian deposits, finegrained marine littoral deposits occur as sandy beach
sediments in caves and rockshelters (e.g., Yarimburgaz
Cave, Turkey). Coarse boulders representing former
high-energy shorelines also occur (e.g., Southeast
Alaska sea caves).
5. Slope deposits are another source. There are
two general types of slope deposits: colluvium and
slope wash. Colluvium is poorly sorted deposits of
sediment transported chiefly by gravity. Slope wash is
laminated, well-sorted deposits of soil and sediment
that has been moved down a slope predominantly by
the action of gravity assisted by water in the form of
sheet flow or concentrated flow in rills. Slope deposits
may form a berm or talus cone in front of a rockshelter or cave entrance. From there, they can be
washed back into the shelter or cave by runoff or
high-density mudflows (Figure 5).
6. Attrition is also one of the sources. Solution
weathering, including hydration and carbonation,
often causes grain-by-grain disintegration of sandstone and bioclastic limestone, which produces a
steady rain of sediment to the floor of a cave or
rockshelter. This process is a major source of sediment in several important rockshelters, including
Akrotiri Aetokremnos in Cyprus and Meadowcroft
in Pennsylvania.
7. A major aspect of the sediments, and one that
has received surprisingly little attention, is their anthropogenic nature. These human-derived materials
are obvious and widespread in Holocene sites around
the Mediterranean. However, significant human inputs
are also noteworthy from Palaeolithic and Middle
Stone Age (MSA) sites in the Old World and Africa
(Figures 5 and 6a). Most typical are midden-like accumulations of bone and lithic debris, but remains of
combustion features both in situ and reworked (e.g.,
hearth rake-out and dumping of ashes and charcoal)
are increasingly being recognized and understood.
In certain instances, such as Kebara and Hayonim
Caves, anthropogenic accumulations constitute the
majority of the depositional fill and substantially
exceed geogenic contributions.
8. Finally, biogenic additions are also very common
and subtle. Bat and bird guano are common in caves
and rockshelters today, but in Pleistocene deposits it is
difficult to detect them directly in the field. However,
guano can be documented by microscopic and other
analytical evidence (e.g., X-ray diffraction (XRD),
Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FTIR)), in
the form of phosphate or other minerals which generally are a product of a series of mineralogical transformations induced by the original guano.

CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS 971

Figure 5 Kebara Cave looking toward the southeast corner. Note the exposed south wall on the right, in which the mostly Upper
Palaeolithic deposits are dipping from the entrance of the cave (right) to the back (left). This bedded silt- and sand-sized material is in large
part composed of Middle Palaeolithic combustion features that have been reworked by sheetwash from the entrance and transported
toward the back. This dip initially resulted from a large-scale subsidence event into a subsurface swallow hole that took place near the rear
of the cave during late Middle Palaeolithic times.

Figure 6 (a) A sequence of combustion features and anthropogenic deposits from the Middle Palaeolithic layers at Kebara Cave,
Israel. The whitish zones were originally calcareous ash accumulations, which have been subsequently altered by diagenesis to apatite
(calcium phosphate) or other phosphate minerals. At the right, the stepped-like and offset nature of the ashes is a product of subsidence
of the underlying deposits into subsurface depressions. The ruler is 50 cm long. (b) Macrophotograph of sequence of thin combustion
zones from the Middle Palaeolithic layers of Kebara Cave (cf. part (a)). Note the sequence of a dark charcoal-rich layer overlaid by lighter
ashes. Scale: length of photograph is 75 mm.

972 CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS

Postdepositional processes can affect the archaeological record in caves and rockshelters in a number
of ways, and generally fall under the term, diagenesis. Physical modifications include displacements of
bones, lithics, and anthropogenic debris by many of
the depositional processes cited above (e.g., mudflow,
sheetwash) (Figure 5). Erosion by wind (deflation)
and water (e.g., streams, storm-generated waves along
coasts) can totally remove previous accumulations.
Similarly, colluviation can transport deposits near
the site entrance to further back in the cave or
rockshelter, removing both artifacts/ecofacts, and
dismantling previously formed features. In addition,
reorganization of cave deposits through subsurface
slumping is a typical process in karstic settings, and
can take place even when the surface deposits are dry
and somewhat consolidated.
The effects of chemical modifications can be more
subtle but no less important. The most striking and
visible is the precipitation of calcium carbonate
that takes the form of crusts and layers (flowstone,
travertine) (Figure 7), stalagmites, and cemented
detritus colloquially known as breccia. Flowstones
and travertines, when pure, are very valuable for
two reasons. Firstly, they can be dated by uraniumseries dating techniques, thus enabling the construction of temporal frameworks up to 350 000 years,

well beyond the limits of radiocarbon. Secondly,

they furnish detailed climatic records as expressed
by oxygen isotope contents of individual calcite
layers.
On the other hand, the presence of guano, organic
acids, and acidic dripping waters can result in the
partial or even total dissolution of carbonate and
the formation of other minerals, such as gypsum. In
some instances, a marked reduction of volume of the
original deposits can occur (up to 50%), such as Die
Kelders Cave (South Africa) Furthermore, in cases
of extreme diagenesis, major mineralogical transformations can take place involving the formation of
various phosphate minerals (Figure 6a), the breakdown of clays, and the precipitation (neoformation)
of silica. The ramifications of such transformations
involve the complete destruction of bone from all or
parts of the cave or rockshelter, as well as the close
monitoring of dosimetry measurements since radioactive isotopes can be concentrated during diagenesis.
These hot spots must be taken into account when
dating techniques such as thermoluminescence (TL),
electron spin resonance (ESR), or optically stimulated
luminescence (OSL) are used. Awareness of such
diagenetic changes, therefore, allows for more accurate dating of deposits, and also controls on the spatial distribution of bone across a site, which may not

Figure 7 Secondary calcium carbonate draping over wall and MSA deposits at Cave 13b from Pinnacle Point, South Africa. The 20 cm
ruler rests upon a thin whitish crust (flowstone), which overlies sandy deposits that were blown into the cave. In turn, these sands cap a
series of darker sediments containing combustion features that are rich in burned shellfish. These deposits are currently being studied,
and uranium-series dating of the flowstone combined with OSL dating of the underlying sand should provide independent dating checks
and tight chronometric control of the infilling of the cave and associated occupations.

CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS 973

relate solely to human activities but postdepositional,

bio-geo-chemical ones.
Sedimentological studies of cave and rockshelter
deposits have advanced markedly in recent years.
Up to the end of the 1970s, researchers tended to
use a somewhat standardized set of analytical techniques. These consisted of grain-size analysis, morphology of clasts and grains, analysis of heavy
minerals (those with high specific gravities), and
other mineralogical analysis using X-ray diffraction.
A number of chemical analyses were also employed,
measuring amounts of organic matter, calcium carbonate, and phosphate. These analyses were carried out on
bulk samples collected from main stratigraphic units.
More recent research has made use of soil micromorphology, the study of intact blocks of sediments
under the petrographic microscope. With this technique, undisturbed material (Figure 8) is embedded in
polyester or epoxy resin, sliced and mounted on a glass
slide, and finally ground to a thickness of 30 mm
(Figure 6b). The use of these thin sections enables the
researcher to observe mineralogical composition,
size and shape of the particles, and the finer matrix.
More importantly, because the original geometry
of the components is preserved, it is possible to isolate depositional effects from postdepositional ones.
Thus, original calcite from limestone eboulis can be
distinguished from secondarily precipitated carbonate. Micromorphology has been effectively applied to
many cave and rockshelter sediments that focus on
important archaeological issues. These topics range
from site formation processes in Palaeo-Indian sites
and the early appearance of humans in the New
World, to the use of fire in Zhoukoudian, China and
in the Middle Palaeolithic.
Optical microscopy has its limits, however, and
more sophisticated analytical techniques are now
more commonly employed, particularly in the study
of diagenesis. FTIR and electron microprobe analysis
have been invaluable tools to evaluate the type and
extent of diagenesis. Such studies have raised our
awareness of these processes, which are crucial to a
proper understanding of the archaeological record
and how it has changed through time.

Figure 8 Middle Palaeolithic cave site of Pech de lAze IV,

Dordogne, France. Shown here is an in tact block of sediment
being removed for micromorphological analysis from organic-rich
sands with remains of combustion features shown by the dark
bands. Length of column is c. 30 cm.

and postdepositional processes, coupled with more

sophisticated analytical techniques than existed
even a decade or so ago, provide clearer windows
into the activities, subsistence strategies, and behaviors of former inhabitants of cave and rockshelter
sites.
See also: Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating; Rock Art; Seasonality of Site Occupation; Soils and Archaeology.

Conclusion

Further Reading

Caves and rockshelters constitute one of the richest

venues for attracting past human inhabitants and
preserving their remains. Because they provide shelter
and protection, they tend to preserve although
sometimes in an altered state aspects of the
archaeological record that are often missing in
open-air sites. Current awareness of depositional

Ahler SA (1976) Sedimentary processes at Rodgers Shelter. In:

Wood WR and McMillan RB (eds.) Prehistoric Man and
His Environments: A Case Study in the Ozark Highland,
pp. 123139. Academic Press: New York.
Aldenderfer MS (2002) Late Andean hunting-collecting. In:
Peregrine PN and Ember M (eds.) Encyclopedia of Prehistory,
Vol. 7: South America, pp. 200216. New York: Kluwer
Academic/Plenum.

974 CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS

Ayalon A, Bar-Matthews M, and Kaufman A (2002) Climatic conditions during marine oxygen isotope stage in the eastern
Mediterranean region from the isotopic composition of speleothems of Soreq Cave, Israel. Geology 30: 303306.
Browman DL, Fritz GJ, and Watson PJ (2005) Origins of foodproducing economies in the Americas. In: Scarre C (ed.) The
Human Past: World Prehistory & the Development of Human
Societies, pp. 306349. London: Thames & Hudson.
Courty MA, Goldberg P, and Macphail RI (1989) Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Crothers G, Faulkner C, Simek J, Watson PJ, and Willey P (2002)
Woodland cave archaeology in eastern North America. In:
Anderson D and Mainfort R (eds.) The Woodland Southeast,
pp. 502524. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Dibble DS and Lorrain D (1968) Miscellaneous Paper No. 1:
Bonfire Shelter: A Stratified Bison Kill Site, Val Verde County,
Texas. Austin: Texas Memorial Museum, University of Texas.
Dillehay TD (2000) The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. New York: Basic Books.
Donahue J and Adovasio JM (1990) Evolution of sandstone
rockshelters in eastern North America: A geoarchaeological perspective. In: Laska NP and Donahue J (eds.) Centennial Special
Vol. 4: Archaeological Geology of North America, pp. 231251.
Boulder, CO: The Geological Society of America.
Farrand WR (2001) Archaeological sediments in rockshelters and
caves. In: Stein JK and Farrand WR (eds.) Sediments in Archaeological Context, pp. 2966. Salt Lake City: The University
of Utah Press.
Fritz GJ (1990) Multiple pathways to farming in precontact eastern
North America. Journal of World Prehistory 4: 387435.
Goldberg P (2000) Micromorphology and site formation at Die
Kelders Cave 1, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 38:
4390.
Goldberg P and Arpin T (2000) Micromorphological analysis of
sediments from Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania: Implications for radiocarbon dating. Journal of Field Archaeology 26:
325342.
Goldberg P and Bar-Yosef O (1998) Site formation processes in
Kebara and Hayonim Caves and their significance in Levantine
prehistoric caves. In: Akazawa T, Aoki K, and Bar-Yosef O (eds.)
Neandertals and Modern Humans in Western Asia, pp. 107
125. New York: Plenum.
Goldberg P, Weiner S, Bar-Yosef O, Xu Q, and Liu J (2001) Site
formation processes at Zhoukoudian, China. Journal of Human
Evolution 41: 483530.
Gremillion KJ (2002) The development and dispersal of agricultural systems in the Woodland Period southeast. In: Anderson D
and Mainfort R (eds.) The Woodland Southeast, pp. 483501.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Hoy RG, Harbor JM, and Carlson EH (1995) The origin of finegrained sediment in the Ohio caverns. Northeastern Geology
and Environmental Sciences 17: 8388.
Jennings JD (1957) University of Utah Anthropological Papers 98:
Danger Cave. Salt Lake City: University of Utah.

Ceramic Analysis

Karkanas P, Bar-Yosef O, Goldberg P, and Weiner S (2000) Diagenesis in prehistoric caves: The use of minerals that form in situ
to assess the completeness of the archaeological record. Journal
of Archaeological Science 27: 915929.
Laville H, Rigaud J-P, and Sackett J (1980) Rock Shelters of the
Perigord. New York: Academic Press.
Long A, Benz BF, Donahue DJ, Jull AJT, and Toolin LJ (1989) First
direct AMS dates on early maize from Tehuacan, Mexico.
Radiocarbon 31: 10351040.
Lynch TF (1980) Guitarrero Cave: Early Man in the Andes. New
York: Academic Press.
Mandel RD and Simmons AH (1997) Geoarchaeology of the Akrotiri Aetokremnos Rockshelter, southern Cyprus. Geoarchaeology: An International Journal 12: 567605.
Marean CW, Goldberg P, Avery G, Grine FE, and Klein RG (2000)
Middle Stone Age stratigraphy and excavations at Die Kelders
Cave 1 (Western Cape Province, South Africa): the 1992, 1993,
and 1995 field seasons. Journal of Human Evolution 38: 742.
Marean CW, Nillsen PJ, Brown K, Jerardino A, and Stynder D
(2004) Paleoanthropological investigations of Middle Stone
Age sites at Pinnacle Point, Mossel Bay (South Africa): Archaeology and hominid remains from the 2000 field season. PaleoAnthropology 2004.05.02: 1483.
Meignen L, Bar-Yosef O, Goldberg P, and Weiner S (2001) Le feu
au Paleolithique moyen: Recherches sur les structures de combustion et le statut des foyers Lexemple du Proche-Orient.
Paleorient 26: 922.
Piperno DR and Flannery KV (2001) The earliest archaeological
maize from highland Mexico: New accelerator mass spectrometry
dates and their implications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98: 21012103.
Rhode D, Goebel T, Graf KE, et al. (2005) Latest Pleistocene
Early Holocene human occupation and palaeoenvironmental
change in the Bonneville Basin, UtahNevada. In: Pederson J and
Dehler CM (eds.) Interior Western United States, pp. 211230.
Geological Society of America Field Guide 6. Boulder, CO: The
Geological Society of America.
Rick JW (1980) Prehistoric Hunters of the High Andes. New York:
Academic Press.
Rink WJ (2001) Beyond 14C dating. In: Goldberg P, Holliday VT,
and Ferring CR (eds.) Earth Sciences and Archaeology,
pp. 385417. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Sherwood SC, Driskell BN, Randall AR, and Meeks SC (2004)
Chronology and stratigraphy at Dust Cave, Alabama. American
Antiquity 69: 533554.
Tankersley KB (1997) Sheriden: A Clovis cave site in eastern
North America. Geoarchaeology: An International Journal 12:
713724.
Weiner S, Goldberg P, and Bar-Yosef O (2002) Three-dimensional
distribution of minerals in the sediments of Hayonim Cave,
Israel: Diagenetic processes and archaeological implications.
Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 12891308.
Woodward JC and Goldberg P (2001) The sedimentary records in
Mediterranean rockshelters and caves: Archives of environmental change. Geoarchaeology 16: 327354.

See: Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Stylistic.

CERAMICS AND POTTERY 975

CERAMICS AND POTTERY

Barbara J Mills, University of Arizona, Tucson,
AZ, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
claywater system Varying ratios of clay to water to produce a
mixture with properties from leather-hard to plastic to slurry.
ethnoarchaeology Study of contemporary peoples to answer
questions of archaeological relevance.
paste or fabric The mixture of clay and aplastics that produces
distinctive wares.
potsherd A broken portion of a pottery vessel.
provenance The location where an object was made.
residue analysis Analysis of organic substances on the surface
of the vessel or absorbed into the paste.
slip A liquid coating containing clay and/or pigments added to
the surface of a vessel.
style Choices that are made in the production of an object,
including but not limited to decoration.
temper Aplastic materials added to the clay to improve its
workability and the performance of the vessel during firing and
use.
use life The longevity of a vessel in its context of use.
use-wear Surface alteration resulting from the ways in which a
pottery vessel was used.
ware A distinctive paste and/or surface treatment.

Introduction
Ceramic artifacts are ubiquitous at many archaeological sites, especially those of the last few millennia.
They preserve well and in some cases were used and
discarded in such large quantities that archaeologists
are often faced with the issue of sampling ceramics
to be analyzed. Ceramic artifacts occur in a wide
range of forms, including those used as containers.
Thus, although ceramics as a term is often used
interchangeably with pottery, the former is more
encompassing and includes fired clay figurines, tiles,
spindle whorls, pipes, sickle blades, and many other
artifact types that were used around the world.
Ceramics can be used to address many different
archaeological questions. Their primary use has been
for dating associated archaeological deposits. As early
as the late nineteenth century, archaeologists observed
that the kinds and distributions of ceramics could help
date archaeological deposits. In fact, the first question
that a ceramic analyst usually is asked to address is
the relative age of different ceramic-bearing deposits.
Despite its widespread use in dating, ceramics are
also important for addressing many other problem
domains. These include interpretations about subsistence, identity, migration, economic organization,

status, gender, and ritual and ideology. There are

few research topics that cannot be addressed with
ceramics, but some have been used more than others.

Ceramic Technology and Terminology

Ceramics are produced by firing objects made out of
clay. Because clays are ubiquitous in the earths crust,
ceramics are found in many areas of the world. The
only areas of the world where clays are absent or
inaccessible is on newly formed islands (especially,
coral and recent volcanic islands) and in areas where
they are buried under ice and snow such as the Arctic.
Clays are defined by their distinct chemical, mineralogical, and particle-size attributes. Clays are the
product of weathering and are hydrous alumina silicates with the basic chemical formula of AlSiO2. There
are several different kinds of clay minerals, which are
defined by their crystalline structures, including kaolinite (the clay mineral used for porcelain), illite, and
montmorillonite (also called smectite). Particles of clay
are platy in form and are defined by particle sizes
smaller than silt, or less than 0.00005 mm. Clays can
also be defined by their refractory properties, or how
well they withstand high temperatures without fusing.
Kaolinitic clays have the highest refractory properties
of the commonly occurring clay minerals.
When water is mixed with clay, the platy structure
of the particles allows them to slide against each other
producing a plastic substance that can be manipulated by hand. The right mix of water and clay within
what has been termed the claywater system produces substances with different workability. Too little
water will produce a mixture that is sticky and cannot
be manipulated. Too much water will produce a liquid slurry or slip that is useful as a coating, but is
not able to be formed by hand. Each clay type has
a different absorption rate and therefore will require
different ratios of water to solids. Kaolinites, because
of their two-layer crystalline structure, absorb less
water than do montmorillonites, which have a threelayer structure. Kaolinites are therefore less susceptible
to shrinkage as the water evaporates and do not crack
as easily during drying and firing.
Clays can be prepared in a number of different
ways prior to the forming of the vessel. Depending
on their origin, they may need to be cleaned, winnowed, or levigated to remove impurities and nonclay
particles. Levigation basins allow larger particles to
settle and have been archaeologically documented in
many areas of the world. Sedimentary clays, often
found interbedded with sandstones, may need to be

976 CERAMICS AND POTTERY

ground up to disaggregate the clay minerals and allow

even mixing with water. This was accomplished by
grinding the clay on ground stone slabs.
Potters around the world discovered that adding
some material to the clay after it has been mixed with
water enhances the performance characteristics of the
object. These materials can be other clays, but more
often they are aplastic materials whose properties do
not change with the addition of water. Aplastics added
to clays are referred to as temper by archaeologists.
Temper and clay together form the paste or fabric of
ceramic objects. Tempering materials used around
the world include sand, and crushed rock, shell, or
potsherds. The latter are pieces of broken pottery,
also referred to as sherds or shards (the latter is the
British term). Organic tempers were also used in many
areas of the world and include materials such as grasses,
dung, fur, and rice chaff. Organic tempers largely burn
out during the firing of the object and are identified
by the shape of their distinctive voids in the paste.
Specific performance characteristics that are enhanced through the addition of tempering materials
include increased workability during the forming
process, reduced shrinkage during drying, increased
strength through the chemical or mechanical bonding
of temper and clay particles, and increased toughness
by reducing crack propagation. Different clays may
require the use of a range of temper types. Even
within the same assemblage, there may be differences
in the tempers because of differences in the intended
use of vessels. These different paste combinations are
often the basis for distinguishing what are called
wares in archaeological assemblages.
Ceramics may be formed in a number of different
ways and archaeologists may use forming methods as
an indicator of the intensity of production practiced
by a particular potter or potting group. For example,
the use of a potters wheel is often seen as an indicator
of higher production output. The simplest way to
form an object out of clay is by forming a ball and
then pinching the clay out with the thumb and forefinger. Pinch pots may be made in this way, or they
can be the bases of vessels, which are then added on
to other building methods. The walls of a vessel may
be built up successively with coils or slabs of clay.
These building methods are especially common for
hand-building without a wheel, but may be used with
a turning plate or slow wheel. Wheel-made ceramics
rely on centrifugal force and may begin with a large
lump or cylinder of clay that is then shaped during the
turning process. Smoothing or finishing of the walls
of vessels after coiling is often accomplished with
scrapers, hence the term coiled-and-scraped. In
other cases the walls may be thinned and smoothed

using a paddle on the exterior surface and a hard

object called an anvil held against the interior surface.
Another technique found in some archaeological
assemblages is the use of a two-piece mold. Slabs of
clay are pressed into the two sides of the mold,
removed from the mold, and then pieced together
before the sides have completely dried.
Many of the above building methods may be combined on a single vessel, creating objects with complex
building methods. The different techniques sometimes
can be distinguished based on surface characteristics,
such as scrape marks from making coiled-and-scraped
vessels, the dimpling that results from the use of
paddle-and-anvil construction, or the concentric rings
evident on wheel-made pottery. However, in cases
where multiple building techniques were used and/or
when the surfaces have been smoothed, slipped, and
painted over, the methods used to form pottery vessels
may only be determined through techniques such as
X-radiography. Nonetheless, these different techniques are important to reconstruct because they can
provide information on the intensity of production
practiced by potters as well as on modes of transmission in learning styles that can be associated with
different potting groups in the past.
After the vessel has been formed, the exterior can
be altered using a variety of tools and materials. Some
of these change the color of the surface and/or enhance the ability of a vessel to retain liquids or conduct heat. After the vessel has been formed, but still
plastic, the surface may be decorated by tools used for
texturing, including incising and stamping. It may be
covered with a clay slurry or slip, an organic coating
such as pitch, and/or polished. Depending on the
firing temperature and the contents of the slip, some
slips may turn vitreous and produce a glaze. Glazes
were more commonly found in the Near East and Asia,
as well as in historical period assemblages. All-over
glazes, covering the exterior of the vessel, are absent
from archaeological assemblages in the Americas until
Spanish explorers brought the tin-glaze technique
widely known as majolica.
Painted decoration may involve a variety of materials, but are generally divided into organic (usually
plant) and mineral categories. In practice, many pigments used in preindustrial contexts were mixtures of
organic and mineral materials because organic materials help to bind mineral particles together and minerals
within an organic matrix add depth and density to the
color. Commonly used mineral paints include hematite
and manganese. Glaze paints are made by adding
a flux to a paint mixture that also includes silica.
Common fluxes are lead, copper, and tin. The fluxes
lower the melting point of silica allowing the paint to

CERAMICS AND POTTERY 977

vitrify at temperatures closer to what was possible

using traditional firing techniques.
Firing of clay objects chemically and physically
transforms the clay minerals to produce a hard object
from what was plastic material. Up until the object was
fired, objects made from clay will rehydrate when
subjected to moisture and lose their form. Some
low-fired objects, or what has been referred to as
soft ware, may be highly susceptible to weathering
and therefore not well preserved in the archaeological record. Earthenwares were fired at between 600
and 1000  C. Some low refractory clays cannot be
fired at higher temperatures than this. Open firing
was used throughout the world and can be highly
efficient forfiring ceramics in this range. Formal kilns
became prominent parts of ceramic technology in
many parts of the world. Kilns are necessary for
high-fired ceramics, such as porcelains, which were
made from kaolinitic clays fired at temperatures of
between 1200 and 1400  C.

The Earliest Ceramics and Pottery

The discovery that clay will fire into a hard material
was independently invented many times and in many
areas of the world. It is clear that the knowledge that
clay can be transformed through fire into hard, durable objects preceded the manufacture of pottery vessels. Figurines are the earliest form of ceramics in
many areas, sometimes preceding the production of
pottery by thousands of years. At the site of Doln
Vestonice in Czechoslovakia, figurines of fired clay
have been recovered that date to the Upper Palaeolithic, or about 30 000 years ago. Figurines are also
among the earliest ceramic forms in many parts of the
Americas, such as Formative Period Mesoamerica
and the American Southwest.
As these early figurines show, although many people equate agriculture with pottery, the earliest ceramics predate agriculture. Around the world, there are
many examples of huntergatherers who made ceramics, including pottery vessels, demonstrating that
ceramics are not necessarily or exclusively a technology of sedentary people or agriculturalists. Some of
the earliest pottery in the Old World comes from
Jomon period sites in Japan, where potters made
some ceramic vessels dated to c. 13 000 BP. These
were probably used by complex foragers who prepared shellfish and other collected foods. Radiocarbon dating of associated materials and fiber temper
suggests that early pottery was made in two other
areas about the same time or perhaps even earlier,
in southern China (such as the Nanling area) and
eastern Russia (including the Amur River basin).

These are associated with the Palaeolithic to Neolithic

transition, including a broader spectrum of resource
extraction. In the New World, the earliest ceramics
are found in lowland South America, such as Brazil,
where they are dated to c. 8000 BP. Societies in several
other areas of the New World independently invented
and/or adopted pottery technology over the next several thousand years, responding to changing environmental conditions and a broadening of the subsistence
base to include more seed crops.
There are several reasons why pottery containers
became part of the technological repertoire of past
societies throughout the world. Worldwide, archaeologists have noticed that besides their occurrence as
figurines, many of the earliest ceramics were made by
hunter-gatherers in resource-abundant areas of the
world. Some archaeologists have suggested that these
ceramics are closely associated with prestige building
events, such as ritual feasts. These theories complement
the idea that ceramics were invented because they
provide more efficient containers for serving, storage,
and cooking.
The ability of ceramics to withstand repeated temperature cycling, or thermal shock resistance, may
have been a major reason for the change from baskets
to ceramic containers for food preparation. Similarly,
changes in the shape of pottery vessels, such as from
flat-bottomed to round-bottomed forms, may be
related to the prolonged use of vessels for transforming seed-based foods into palatable and more nutritious meals. This is one of the major reasons why
agriculturalists relied heavily on ceramic containers.
But, not all ceramics were used for cooking in early
agricultural societies. Storage of seeds was another
important use of ceramics as was the use of ceramics
in serving, including serving in communal consumption events or feasts.

Ceramics and Chronology Building

One of the most important uses of ceramics for archaeological analysis is in establishing archaeological
chronologies. The sequence of occupation at a ceramicbearing site can be determined through a number
of complementary methods including ceramic seriation, stratigraphic association, direct dating of vessel contents and absorbed or surface residues, and
dating of associated materials.
Ceramic seriation is based on the principle that
styles defined as choices made about technology,
decoration, form, etc. go in and out of favor. Consider,
for example, the hula hoop, bell bottoms, and car
tail lights. When viewed through time, the frequency
of styles starts out small, increases dramatically, and

978 CERAMICS AND POTTERY

then drops out of favor. Occurrence seriation is based

on the presence/absence of a particular ceramic style.
This method of chronological ordering was first applied by Sir Flinders Petrie in the late nineteenth century
to the contents of predynastic cemeteries in Egypt.
Frequency seriation is based on counts or frequencies,
which are then converted to percentages of stylistic
categories or types. Frequency seriation was developed
by James Ford in the 1930s to arrange ceramic assemblages from the Southeastern US. His method of
hand-sorting strips of paper to produce the expected
popularity of curves of different types in an assemblage
can now be replicated using computer programs.
In addition, there are multivariate quantitative
methods that produce other ways of arranging ceramic
assemblages. These usually start with a matrix or
spread sheet with types as columns and proveniences
or find contexts as rows (such as strata, house floor, or
burial assemblages). Correspondence analysis has been
the most successful of these quantitative techniques.
Direct dating of archaeological ceramics can be
accomplished through a number of methods. Radiocarbon or AMS dating of organic temper, vessel
contents, and residues is becoming more widespread.
Fiber tempers provide one possible source of dating,
but is dependent on low-firing conditions in which
the temper is not wholly burned out of the paste. If
during excavation the vessel is found to have its contents still preserved, such as stored seeds, direct dating
may be a highly accurate indicator of the time that the
pot was filled and deposited. Residues on the exterior
of the vessel are highly subject to post-depositional
processes, such as water-borne carbon. In addition,
the carbon may be from firewood that is much older
than the use of the pot itself. Absorbed residues,
including lipids, can also be directly dated. Nonetheless, dating of residues is still in its infancy because of
potential contamination by other materials and the
porous nature of ceramic pastes that allows later
material to be absorbed.
A second method of directly dating ceramics is
luminescence dating. Luminesence dating is based
on the principle that the crystalline structures in ceramics emit light in a measurable way as a result of the
absorption of light during the firing event. Luminescence dating has been applied to ceramics from
around the world and found to closely track other
independent dating methods. The major impediment
to more widespread use is the cost. In addition, treering and AMS dating of materials associated with
ceramics still provide more precise estimates of the
age of pottery. Nonetheless, when ceramics are made
over long time spans and other methods are not available, luminescence dating may be a good solution.

Ceramics may be indirectly dated through other

independent techniques, such as radiocarbon dating
and dendrochronology. Tree-ring dating of architectural wood has been a mainstay of chronometric control
in areas such as the American Southwest, where there
are now hundreds of thousands of pieces of dated
wood. Although the dated events may be different
the date that the tree was felled in the case of the wood,
and the date that the pottery was discarded in the case
of the ceramics dendrochronology still offers a level
of precision not found with most other techniques.
Even AMS dating, however, can be useful for establishing absolute dates for ceramic style changes that are
otherwise in a floating series or sequence. Ultimately,
the best way to use ceramics for chronology building
is to combine a multitude of techniques, including
direct and indirect dating and stylistic seriation.

Ceramic Function
Differences in theories about the origins of ceramics
along with archaeologists interest in reconstructing the
ways in which ceramics were used in social life have led
to a vast literature on ceramic function. Archaeologists
who study vessel function rely on pottery form (shape
and size), use alteration, composition, archaeological
context, and observations of ceramics used in contemporary societies. The latter includes the field of ceramic
ethnoarchaeology, where archaeological questions
(like vessel use) are addressed by observing how
vessels are made, used, and discarded in ethnographic
contexts.
Most ceramics recovered archaeologically were used
as containers. These containers can be viewed as tools
that even out spatial and temporal heterogeneity. They
are used to transport contents, including water. They
store materials for use at a later time, including seeds
for planting or consumption. They also help to process
foods to make them more palatable or more nutritious,
such as the cooking of dried seeds. These container uses
are supplemented by their social uses, such as expressions of social identity including gender, social group
affiliation, and status. When archaeologists refer to
vessel function, they are primarily referring to their
use as containers, but pottery also had important
social and ideological components in many societies.
Variation in ceramic shape can be an important
predictor of how vessels were used in the past. Vessels
used to store liquids will generally have small apertures to promote containment security. Vessels used
to transport goods often have appendages that make
them more portable and, especially if carrying liquids,
will have small necks. Serving vessels are usually
wider than they are tall, with large apertures, which

CERAMICS AND POTTERY 979

make them more accessible. It has been noted that

extended cooking favors a rounded bottom over one
that is flat. In addition, cooking of stews and gruels
often requires an opening that is large enough to
stir and serve from, but closed enough to keep the
contents in. Despite these generalities, cooking vessels
show tremendous intra- and intergroup variation
making shape only one way to determine vessel function. In addition, some vessels were multifunctional
and their shapes reflect compromises among a number of considerations of use.
Besides shape, archaeologists use size as a way of
getting at differences in vessel form and use. Measurements of different parts of the vessel, such as the rim
diameter, aperture (if different from the rim), maximum diameter, and height provide quantitative data
for comparing vessel sizes. The use of ratios of these
size measurements, such as maximum diameter to
height, is a quantitative way of distinguishing different shapes present in a vessel assemblage. Volume is
the best overall measure of vessel size but it is difficult
to estimate on broken vessels.
When analyzing broken vessels, rim diameter is used
more exclusively. The curvature fitting method is still
the most widely applied and can also provide a means
of estimating the percentage of the vessel represented.
Nonetheless, rim diameter and volume may not be
strongly correlated. Ceramic analysts frequently work
back and forth between whole vessels and sherds to
come up with both shape and size classes that can be
broadly applied in a particular archaeological area.
Many archaeologists have pointed out that form
focuses on the intended use of a vessel. In order to
look at the actual use, archaeologists instead have
focused on use alteration, including both residue analysis and use-wear. Absorbed residue analyses have
become increasingly important in recent years. The
remains of foods cooked, served, or stored in a vessel
become trapped in the pores of the vessel and are
extracted in the laboratory. This is usually accomplished through GC-MS, a technique that uses gas
chromatography to extract residues such as lipids and
proteins, combined with mass spectrometry to identify
their specific chemical signatures. GC-MS has been
used to identify cacao in storage vessels from the
Maya area, milk in vessels from Europe and Eurasia,
beer and wine vessels in the Mediterranean, and
changes in diet in a number of other areas of the world.
Another type of use alteration is use-wear. In this
case, archaeologists study the abrasion, scratching,
spalling, and pitting of the surface of sherds to understand differences in vessel use. Pitting has been used to
suggest fermentation vessels especially when absorbed
residue analyses have not yet been applied. In other

cases, use-wear has demonstrated that vessels found in

one context, such as burials, were used in other contexts
before their placement with the deceased.
The composition and surface treatment of ceramics
is also a clue to the ways in which different vessels were
used. Cooking vessels are rarely decorated and usually
have a coarse temper, which helps to counteract the
thermal shock of heating and cooking. Ceramics used
for serving are usually made of finer pastes and are
more often decorated. Again, these generalizations
may vary from society to society and through time,
but variation in the ways in which vessels were tempered may be important clues to the function of vessels
in a particular archaeological assemblage as well as to
changes in the way that vessels were used. For example,
the shift from sand- to shell-tempered pottery in the
Southeastern US has been found to be correlated with
changes in diet and longer-duration boiling.
Differences in vessel use are important for what is
called accumulations research and are based on the
concept of ceramic use life. Use life is the life span of
a ceramic vessel and can be affected by a number of
factors, but most importantly on frequency of use.
The shorter the use life, the more often a vessel class
breaks and is discarded. The accumulation of different vessel classes can be helpful for reconstructing the
duration of settlement occupation.

Pottery Economics
Ceramics are widely used by archaeologists to look at
the economic organization of past societies. Domains
of the economy can be divided into production, distribution, and consumption. In terms of ceramics, production addresses who produced the ceramics, how
much they produced, where they made them, in what
groups, and for whom. Distribution addresses how
ceramic objects moved from producers to consumers,
including the structure of their social interactions, the
distances moved, and the intensity or amount of goods
that were moved. Consumption looks at how ceramics
were used and in what social contexts, including
ways in which consumer choices or demand influenced
what ceramics were being made and distributed. Each
of these domains includes the analysis of slightly different questions and different methods of analysis.
Nonetheless, it is recognized that all three need to be
integrated to understand pottery economics.
Ceramic Production and Specialization

Ceramic production is closely tied to the concept of

specialization. Specialization is defined on a continuum of producers to consumers in which the fewer the

980 CERAMICS AND POTTERY

number of producers that is present, the more

specialized is the production. In the past, archaeologists generalized about specialization and dichotomized it as full versus part-time. Based on multiple
ethnographic, archaeological, and ethnoarchaeological studies, we now know that ceramic production
can be organized in multiple ways and that specialization should be viewed as a continuum that can be
measured using multiple dimensions.
Another historical misconception in the way that
archaeologists approached specialization in production was the association of high degrees of specialization with complex societies and especially with states.
Although it is true that many complexly organized
societies, including states, had a high degree of
craft specialization, not all crafts and especially not
all ceramics were made by specialists. Conversely,
many nonstate societies may have had some ceramic
forms that were made within a highly specialized organization of production. Finally, it is clear that every
society had multiple degrees of specialization in the
crafting of ceramics, which may have been dependent
on their uses. Archaeologists now look at different
ceramic vessel classes to determine how production
was organized. Following a division proposed by
Cathy Costin, they also divide production into a number of variables including (1) the location and spatial
concentration of production, (2) the social scale of
production, (3) the extent to which production is controlled by elites, and (4) the intensity of production.
Location of ceramic production One of the first
steps in determining how production was organized
is to determine where the ceramics were made or
their provenance. The provenance of pottery can be
assessed through a number of methods and contributes
to understanding how concentrated production was on
the landscape; that is, whether production was limited
to a number of sites within a region or to a specific area
of an individual site. If production of pottery was concentrated in a few locations, then specialization was
more likely to have taken place.
Direct means of identifying pottery production
locations include the excavation of kilns, mixing or
levigation basins, piles of wasters (vessels broken and/
or misfired during firing), prepared clays, and tools
specifically used for pottery production. The latter
may include scrapers, anvils, and polishing stones.
One of the difficulties with these kinds of direct
means of determining pottery production locations
is that only some of them clearly differentiate the
exact wares and vessel types that were made at a
particular site. Wasters are the best example of the
specific vessels that were made, as is illustrated

by fused vessels from a firing area at Tell Leilan,

Syria. Other evidence may indicate that production
occurred at a particular location, but not which ceramics were actually produced.
Provenance analysis of ceramics now largely focuses
on ways of assessing their composition. Compositional
analyses include mineralogical and chemical identifications of pastes, tempers, slips, and paints. Mineralogical analyses can be conducted using a binocular
microscope to identify different kinds of temper
particles. This technique is usually supplemented by
the analysis of 30 mm thin-sections that are analyzed
with a petrographic microscope (see Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis;
Stylistic).
The petrographic microscope allows identification
of specific minerals based on their crystalline structures as well as a means of counting the number of
fragments in the paste when used with a point-counting
stage. Recent improvements in digital image-analysis
software now provide ways of capturing images with
camera mounts on the microscope and conducting
more detailed analyses. Petrographic analysis also
allows textural analyses to be conducted, including the
size, shape, and density of different particles. Several
archaeologists have adopted the Gazi point-counting
technique, which plots clay, silt, and sand on a ternary
graph.
Chemical compositional analyses are diverse, but
may be divided into point and bulk techniques. Point
techniques focus on a small area of the paste, temper,
slip, or paint, while bulk analyses generally involve
grinding of a sample. For the analysis of ceramic
pastes, bulk techniques can homogenize clay and
temper signatures, obscuring the actual signature of
each. Nonetheless, bulk chemical analyses have been
used widely in archaeological analyses.
The two most commonly used bulk techniques
used on ceramics are Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA or sometimes just NAA) and
Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry
(ICP-MS). The latter includes new laser instrumentation that allows surface analysis and is also being used
on slips and paints (LA-ICPMS). INAA is considered
to have the highest accuracy, precision, and sensitivity
of all the other chemical-characterization techniques
and can measure the presence of major, minor, and
trace elements. Another bulk technique is X-ray
Fluoresence (XRF), which is faster than the other
two techniques but only measures major elements.
A more point-based technique includes electron
probe microanalysis (EPMA). INAA is now being
replaced by ICP-MS in the analysis of archaeological
ceramics because many of the nuclear reactors used

CERAMICS AND POTTERY 981

for research are going off-line and will not be

replaced. Thus, although ICP-MS measures fewer elements than INAA, it is becoming more popular.
In addition to measuring the elemental content of
paste, temper, slip, or paint recipes, some of this
instrumentation can assess the geological age of the
material. This is done through the characterization of
specific isotopes of different elements, especially lead.
When lead is used in paints, as it was in glazes in the
Southwestern US, the age of the source material can
be identified. Because different geological sources
were formed at different times, isotopes help to identify the location of the procurement of raw materials,
if not the production location itself.
Despite the use of scientific instrumentation, a
successful application of compositional analysis to
ceramics requires geological heterogeneity in the distribution of raw materials and within-source homogeneity of the raw material. This is known as the
provenience postulate (perhaps better called the
provenance postulate). Some clay sources occur over
too large an area to accurately locate the location of
production. In addition, some clays are highly heterogeneous within sources, further complicating analyses. In order to compare the results of one analysis
to the results derived from another analysis using a
different instrument or between different runs on the
same instrument it is also necessary to calibrate
the instrument to a known standard.
All of the above techniques, whether chemical or
mineralogical, do not necessarily tie ceramics to exact
locations, but rather to zones. Only in limited cases
do they pinpoint exact locations of production.
Nonetheless, they can help to determine the number
of potential settlements where ceramics were made.
In addition, they can be applied to geological samples
of clays and tempers to further narrow-down potential production areas.
The social scale of ceramic production In addition
to the spatial location of ceramic production, a major
part of the organization of ceramic production is determining who made ceramics. Although many ceramics worldwide are made by individuals within a
household, other well-documented examples include
production by multiple members of the household as
well as supra-household production in workshops.
It is difficult for archaeologists to firmly attribute
the production to an individual within the household.
Nonetheless, based on cross-cultural analyses women
tend to make ceramics used in non-market economies. This inference can be corroborated by looking
at the distribution of the tools of production in burials, such as polishing stones and scrapers. When

multiple members of the household are involved in

production there may be permanent facilities associated with the production of pottery, such as the
presence of large mixing basins or firing areas. Similarly, if these facilities are in facilities separate from
domestic rooms, then workshops may be present.
As the intensity of production increases (see below),
it is more likely that production has moved beyond an
individual and is being made by multiple hands within
the household or even in a workshop. Recent archaeological research has found that ceramic workshops are
rarer in prehistoric situations than originally thought.
Particularly in the Americas, it is clear that ceramics
were more often made within the household even
though production output was high. These studies
demonstrate the flexibility of the household to increase
production as needed, but still at the same social scale.
The control of production by elites The degree to
which elite members of a society were involved in
ceramic production is another dimension of the organization of production. When elites control production it
is sometimes referred to as attached specialization as
opposed to the more independent specialization of
non-elites. Although elite control over production
has been hypothesized for many crafts, there are
fewer examples of their control over ceramic production. This is largely because most ceramics are not
high-status items.
Nonetheless, there were situations in which elite
households themselves were involved in the production and specialization of special forms of vessels.
Maya cylinder jars are again an example because the
knowledge of how to make them, or at least
the knowledge of how to decorate them, was limited
to those who knew how to write. This has been
termed embedded production the production of
items within elite households that promotes the status
of that household.
In other situations there may not be a clear stratification of society into elite and non-elites, or there may
be many categories of social status. Ceramic production may still benefit or promote the status of individual
families in these latter cases. For example, archaeologists working in the US Southwest have suggested that
production of feasting vessels promoted the status of
particular individuals and/or their households.
Intensity of ceramic production Another dimension
of variation in ceramic production is how much pottery was made, or the intensity of production. Although this has been interpreted by some as how
often production is scheduled, the most archaeologically salient attribute is how much is produced by

982 CERAMICS AND POTTERY

potters. Production in excess of household needs

affects the way that pottery is distributed (see below).
Measuring intensity of ceramic production can be
done by looking at the amount of production debris.
Often this has to be scaled to another variable, such as
the total number of sherds in the discard assemblage.
Done in this way, differences among households can
be measured, demonstrating the uneven production
by some households over others at an intra- or intersite basis.
Ceramic Distribution

Like production, ceramic distribution is dependent on

a number of different variables. One of the most
important things that must be established is where
the ceramics were produced, or their provenance. The
other most frequently used variable is the intensity of
production. Using these variables, the distances and
quantities of ceramics that were distributed can be
mapped.
Although it is assumed that most ceramics are
distributed from their locations of production through
trade and exchange, in many societies, people also
move with their pots. Migration from one area to
another will result in similar patterns of ceramic distribution, with an important exception. Migrants cannot
carry a large number of ceramic vessels and when they
move they often replicate what they made in their
former homes in the new area. If the ceramic raw
materials are heterogeneously distributed, this migration may be discerned by looking at the transfer of the
practices of making ceramics using locally available
materials.
Other than through migration, ceramics may be
distributed by a number of interactions that fall into
the categories of small-scale exchange, larger-scale redistribution, and even markets. Small-scale exchanges
of ceramics were common in many societies, from
the simplest to the most complex, as part of gifting.
These are often described as reciprocal exchanges
because a similar gift is expected, if not given.
Redistribution of ceramics in which the products
are pooled and then given out is a more intensive
means of distribution and is called redistribution.
The distinction between reciprocity and redistribution is less applicable to ceramics than it is for other
items, such as subsistence goods. Few archaeologists
have identified the pooling of ceramic goods and their
redistribution, although there are examples in statesupported production and distribution such as
among the Inca.
There have been many more examples of the distribution of ceramics through intensive interactions that
took place in situations of barter or the exchange of

goods for other goods. When production is at a level

of intensity that cannot be accommodated through
gifting, barter of ceramics is often present. In ceramic
marketplaces documented ethnoarchaeologically, ceramic vessels often are exchanged for a set amount
of a subsistence good that might be measured by the
contents of the vessel itself such as how much rice it
might hold.
Although barter is a kind of market economy, it
need not have an established marketplace. Nonetheless, there needs to be some place where people
congregate to exchange goods. In the southern US
Southwest, it has been suggested that ballcourt communities were where barter exchanges took place. Preclassic Period Hohokam communities specialized in
the production of different vessel forms and wares
and then were distributed throughout the entire region. The intensity and concentration of production
in these communities was so high that their distribution could not have been through gift exchanges. The
absence of centralized redistribution of these vessels
leaves barter as the logical means of distribution.
Ceramic Consumption

Archaeologists have spent more time looking at models and methods for investigating ceramic production
and distribution than they have in looking at ceramic
consumption. Yet, how ceramics were used or consumed is important for understanding the complete
economic system. Consumption refers to the social
contexts in which ceramics were used, including who
used them and for what purposes.
As befits the topic of consumption, much of the
recent research on ceramics focuses on their use as
vessels for the preparation, storage, and serving of
food. Functional analyses are handmaidens to these
analyses, which tend to distinguish between diet and
cuisine. Diet refers to the items that are cooked, but
cuisine is more encompassing and refers to the practices that surround food preparation, serving, and
consumption.
A recent topic of ceramics and cuisines is the use of
pottery in feasts. Feasting vessels include serving vessels for food and drink and have been suggested to date
to the earliest periods of ceramic production. Beer
fermentation and drinking vessels have been identified
in many contexts and include some of the earliest use
of ceramics in many areas, such as Western Europe.
Consumption also covers the ways in which ceramics were deposited. Some ceramics were clearly
deposited outside the usual discard pathways of domestic refuse. For example, vessels placed in caves
containing cotton, painted and carved wood, and
other objects are found in many areas of the US

CERAMICS AND POTTERY 983

Southwest. Ceramics are also found in caves in

Mesoamerica. Finally and perhaps more ubiquitously, ceramics were deposited with the deceased. Each
of these archaeological contexts is an important
way of looking at ceramics and their different values
within each society.
Modeling Change in Production, Distribution,
and Consumption

There are three basic models for explaining organizational change in the production, distribution, and
consumption of ceramics: (1) economic imperative,
(2) political economy, and (3) ideological motives.
Although these often are presented as mutually exclusive, there are situations in which multiple models
may apply in the same archaeological situation and
these different models may overlap.
The economic imperative model is more often applied to utilitarian goods and one hypothesis is that it
is tied to the need for extra income. Those who cannot grow enough food, for example, turn to ceramic
manufacture to make up for shortfalls. This may be
because they are disenfranchised from agricultural
land also called the disenfranchised peasant model
or because of personal situations such as loss of the
major agricultural producers in the family. This hypothesis has been difficult to test archaeologically and
where it has, no clear relationship between agriculturally marginal lands and specialization has been
demonstrated. Another variant of the economic imperative model is that excess production was a means
of buffering risk. Those people living in more marginal areas produced more ceramics for exchange and
that provided them with the networks to call on when
they experienced shortfalls. A final variant of the
economically-based approach is that with increasing
population sizes, it is more efficient to have fewer
producers.
The second major model for considering how pottery economics change is based on the political economy, or the ways in which power is enhanced through
the production, distribution, and consumption of certain goods. In the case of ceramics, production of
certain kinds of pottery may be seen as a way of building prestige. This may only apply to a limited number
and types of ceramics, such as the Maya cylinder jars.
In many cases, ceramics are not prestige items. A more
widespread way in which ceramics may be used in the
political economic is through the monopolization of
production and/or distribution of pottery as a means
of creating debt dependency.
The third major model is based on ideological
motives. According to this model, ceramics used in
ritual or with ideological meaning may enhance the

prestige of the producer and/or the consumer. Examples include bowls that held special offerings, vessels
used to serve food and drink at feasts, and/or other
vessels with depictions of supernatural beings. These
ideological motives may be strongly tied to social
identities as they reinforce participation in certain
groups. These need not be items used exclusively by
elite members of the society, but could have been used
by all members, or at least by many members.
As the above models indicate, there are many ways
in which archaeologists now approach the production, distribution, and consumption of ceramics. New
work on ceramics parallels other work on the circulation of goods that emphasizes their multiscalar and
multicentric properties. Different materials, including
different forms of vessels, may have highly variable
production and circulation patterns even within the
same society.

Social Interpretations of Ceramics

Archaeological ceramics are multifaceted objects that
can be used in a number of ways. Chronology, function, and the economic organization of past societies
have been the major ways of interpreting these artifacts in the past. In addition to these topics, there
has been a resurgence of interest in other questions
such as identity and migration, and ideology. These
topics have been touched upon above, but because of
their increased attention in recent years they require
elaboration.
Identity and Migration

An oft-cited phrase is that pottery equals people.

Archaeological cultures in many areas of the world
were defined on the basis of differences in ceramics.
This equivalence has been strongly questioned in recent
years because differences in identity are not always
expressed through ceramics. Moreover, it is now recognized that identity is multidimensional and expressed
in many ways including gender, household affiliation,
language group, village, and suprahousehold group
membership not just social group identity or ethnicity.
Previous interpretations of identity from ceramics
largely have focused on the active uses of style, especially decorative styles. Today, technological styles, or
the many ways of making a pot, are used instead.
These include attributes such as the way that vessels
are built, the finishing or angle of the rim, and paint
recipes. Some of these technological styles are the result of unconscious choices that potters make while
they are engaged in the production process. Others
are intentional choices, but it has been argued that
unconscious choices may be a better way at getting

984 CERAMICS AND POTTERY

at learning traditions or what has been called communities of practice.

The significance of these studies of technological
styles for identity research is that they are not dependent
upon the analysis of painted decoration. Even more
importantly, these provide ways of linking people
across the landscape and in addressing migration
through ceramics. Migration has received a resurgence
of interest and ceramics are a key way of interpreting
the movement of people across the landscape.
Ritual and Ideology

Ceramic artifacts were used in ritual contexts and to

convey aspects of ideology. A distinction between the
two emphasizes how ceramic objects were used in
ceremonial practices versus what they meant to those
who used and viewed them. Ceramics were used in
a variety of ritual contexts including containers to
serve special food and drink, vessels to hold offerings,
pipes for ceremonial smoking, censers for burning fragrances, and figurines as representations of the human
body during curing and other ritual practices.
Form and context are two of the most important
criteria for determining the ritual use of ceramics,
especially when these can be combined. Another
way in which ritual and ideology can be interpreted
is through iconography. For example, many pots were
decorated with images that show ceremonial scenes,
represent supernatural beings, and/or depict animals,
birds, and humans from oral histories. In many areas
of the world ceramics were an important medium for
expressing ideology, including such well-known producing areas as the Mimbres of the Southwest and
the Moche in Andean South America.
See also: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview; Artifacts,
Overview; Carbon-14 Dating; Chemical Analysis

Techniques; Classification and Typology; Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Craft Specialization; Culture, Concept and Definitions; Dating
Methods, Overview; Economic Archaeology; Ethnicity; Ethnoarchaeology; Exchange Systems; Experimental Archaeology; Food and Feasting, Social and
Political Aspects; Geoarchaeology; Household Archaeology; Identity and Power; Image and Symbol; Individual, Archaeology of in Prehistory; Interdisciplinary
Research; Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Luminescence Dating; Neutron Activation Analysis; Pottery
Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis;
Stylistic; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Seriation; Vitreous Materials Analysis.

Further Reading
Barnett WK and Hoopes JW (eds.) (1995) The Emergence of
Pottery. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Costin C (1991) Craft specialization: Issues in defining, documenting, and explaining the organization of production. In: Schiffer
MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory,
vol. 3, pp. 156. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
David N and Kramer C (2001) Ethnoarchaeology in Action.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Orton C, Tyers P, and Vince A (1993) Pottery in Archaeology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rice PM (1987) Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rice PM (1999) On the origins of pottery. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 6(1): 154.
Rye OS (1981) Pottery Technology: Principles and Reconstruction.
Washington, DC: Taraxacum.
Shepard AO (1957) Ceramics for the Archaeologist. Publication
609, Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Sinopoli CM (1991) Approaches to Archaeological Ceramics. New
York: Plenum Press.
Skibo JM (1992) Pottery Function: A Use-Alteration Perspective.
New York: Plenum Press.
Skibo JM and Feinman GM (eds.) (1999) Pottery and People:
A Dynamic Interaction. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES 985

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

Julian Henderson, University of Nottingham,
Nottingham, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) A method used for
determining the elemental composition of materials, based on the
X-rays emitted by different elements.
mass spectrometry An analytical technique used to measure
the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. It is most generally used to find
the composition of a physical sample by generating a mass
spectrum representing the masses of sample components.
neutron activation analysis A nuclear testing method that
determines elemental content regardless of oxidation state,
chemical composition, or physical location.
particle accelerator A device that uses electric fields to propel
electrically charged particles to high speeds and to contain them.
scanning electron microscopy A method for high-resolution
imaging of surfaces.
synchrotron-induced radiation A form of very high radiation
produced using an accelerator. High intensity is accompanied by
fine beam dimensions and this allows it to be used for a range of
applications using a range of analytical techniques.

Introduction
The investigation of archaeological materials using
scientific techniques has a long history, dating back
as far as Renaissance Italy. Following on from George
IIIs assay master, Mr. Alchorn, who analyzed Irish
Bronze Age swords, in 1798 Klaproth published the
analytical results of Roman glass and bronze mirrors.
Later, the eminent scientists Michael Faraday (1791
1867) and Humphrey Davy (17781829) analyzed
archaeological materials, Davy analyzing Egyptian
blue and a material labeled red enamel. These early
investigations were enquiries into the technological
capabilities of the ancients.
Since then, the analysis of archaeological materials
and the interpretation of the results obtained have
developed in various ways. The application of a range
of scientific techniques for the first time and the initial
assemblage of data showing chronological contrasts
in the developments of technologies occurred. This
continued in the 1960s and by this time scientific
techniques were being used to investigate provenance
in order to contribute to models of production
and exchange. The chemical analysis of obsidian in
particular produced results that were especially useful for provenance. At this time it was therefore
demonstrated that scientific analysis could contribute in important ways to mainstream archaeology.

It represented an important step change in archaeological science. Confidence had developed in the accuracy
and precision of specific applications of the techniques used. Given the possible range of organic and
inorganic materials used and made in past societies,
there has always been a degree of unpredictability
about the results obtained, which created an added
incentive for those involved. Whereas the analyst
and the archaeologist have tended to collaborate as
independent specialists, and they still do, the two
aspects are increasingly understood and the results
combined by the same person. Since the 1970s,
research using scientific analysis has continued to
contribute to mainstream archaeology in a range of
important ways and has started to show how it can
shed light on the study of embedded technologies,
thereby contributing to social, economic, and ritual
aspects of materials in society.
Scientific analysis can be destructive, microdestructive, or nondestructive. The use of a particular technique will be determined by the research questions
to be answered, the availability of techniques, the
expertise of those involved, the availability of funding, and the extent to which one or more artifacts can
be sampled or surfaces prepared for analysis (see
Artifacts, Overview). The scientific investigation of
weathering clearly has a role to play in archaeological
and museum environments. Scientific analysis can
contribute to an understanding of what is depleted,
what has replaced it, the rate at which weathering has
occurred, and under what conditions it occurred.
Microdestructive techniques have become increasingly more acceptable. Although there may be a question over how much sample is representative of the
whole artifact, microsampling of a homogeneous
(single phase) material such as glass or obsidian is
often adequate (see Sampling Methods, Theory and
Praxis). Moreover, by analyzing a sufficient number
of artifacts of a specific type and date, it can provide
evidence of the raw materials used, their compositional variations (including impurities), workshop
compositions, regional compositions, the decorative
techniques employed provenance and trade. If microsamples are unweathered, it is possible to produce
quantitative results that are directly comparable with
other unweathered samples. Standard materials of
known chemical composition, which have been subject to scrupulous scientific analysis using a range of
analytical techniques, are used to highlight instrumental errors, as a means of calibrating analytical systems
and for monitoring any analytical drift. Repeated

986 CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

analysis of the same standard material produces

results for accuracy. The use of standard materials is
equally applicable to the use of destructive techniques,
where all of the samples are dissolved in a solution.
Microdestructive techniques may also involve the
solution of the (small) sample, but moreover the samples may be mounted for analysis and stored so that
they can be reanalyzed using the same or a different
technique.

Destructive Techniques
Arc emission spectrometry (AES), introduced in the
1920s, involved the removal and dissolution of a
powdered sample and was a time-consuming technique. A graphite electrode was positioned so that
an arc occurred between electrode and sample causing the sample to be volatilized and light to be emitted. Each element emitted a specific wavelength that
was recorded on a photographic plate. The relative
intensities of each line were measured and converted
into relative concentrations in the sample. This was
semi-quantitative and it was used for early work on
obsidian sourcing. Around 1970, a more accurate and
less destructive wet chemical technique started to
replace AES: atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS).
It involves similar principles to those involved in
AES although analysis involves the use of a flame
to atomize the sample at temperatures c. 2000  C.
A sample of c. 10 g is dissolved and injected into
flames; the kind of gas being burnt depends on the
element being analyzed. When a particular chemical
element is vaporized in the flame, specific wavelengths of light characteristic of the element are
absorbed, and others emitted. These absorptions of
light are measured. As with AES, AAS records the
elements present, each with its own characteristic
wavelength, usually one at a time. AAS is a quantitative technique. When a sample with an unknown
level of that element is analyzed, its concentration
can be plotted on a calibration curve. Detection levels
are between 1 and 100 ppm, though this depends
on the element sought, the element absorption line
concerned, and the conditions of analysis.
With the introduction of the graphite furnace, the
flame no longer plays a part in AAS, with the sample
solution being injected into a chamber that is heated
in a controlled way. Computer automation of this
process has provided a much faster analysis time.
Interference between two or more elements can occur
in the sample. In this case, solutions are made up in
order to assess the extent to which the quantitative
results are affected. The technique has been one of
the principal techniques used for the bulk analysis

of ancient inorganic materials, especially pottery and

metal, and has contributed in a significant way.
Inductively coupled plasma emission spectroscopy
(ICPS) is also destructive. It was introduced later than
AAS and involves the dissolution of the sample. The
sample is dispersed at temperatures above 8000  C in
a plasma torch in which argon is combusted. The
sample is injected into the flame and breaks up into
its constituent parts. Since the temperatures involved
are much higher than those used in AAS, theoretically
this should make the technique more sensitive and
reduce the amount of interference between elements.
It is also much faster. After calibrating the system, the
technique allows the operator to analyze 20 elements
simultaneously. Inductively coupled plasma mass
spectrometry (ICP-MS) can provide both chemical
and isotopic analysis (for laser ablation ICP (LA-ICP),
see microdestructive analysis).
Thin-section petrology is used to analyze pottery,
crucibles, bricks, stone (e.g., stone axes and flint),
slags, and minerals (see Pottery Analysis: Petrology
and Thin-Section Analysis). Thin sections of pot of
c. 30 mm in thickness are prepared, examined with a
petrographic microscope, and polarized light interacts
with minerals in the pottery producing characteristic
colors characteristic of the minerals and their orientations. The light patterns produced, often of different
colors, are called interference figures. The use of
polarized light allows the analyst to identify the anisotropic minerals present. These minerals have physical
properties which vary in different directions, as opposed to isotropic minerals which have the same optical properties in all directions. The colors observed
for mineral crystals are basically due to the differences
between the largest and the smallest refractive indexes.
It is one of the cheaper techniques, but to be successful it needs experience. There are many examples
of very successful studies of archaeological ceramics
using thin-section petrology. By combining thinsection petrology and X-ray diffraction spectrometry
(XRD; see below), it is possible to identify crystals
and measure the distribution of each crystal leading
to quantitative or semi-quantitative results. When the
materials being examined do not contain diagnostic
minerals, it may be possible to characterize the
ceramic by counting the relative size and occurrence
of grains.
Neutron Activation Analysis

When samples are powdered, this technique is destructive with sample sizes of between 50 and 200 mg.
However small artifacts, such as beads, can be analyzed, although their geometry may make it difficult
to produce quantitative results. It is a sensitive

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES 987

technique (see Neutron Activation Analysis), but

others such as LA-ICP do not require access to an
atomic pile or create radioactive materials so they
are starting to take the place of neutron activation
analysis (NAA). The samples are irradiated in an atomic pile for a defined period of time. The radioactive
samples then decay according to the half-lives of each
element in the sample, those with shortest half-lives
decaying fastest. The number of counts detected is
directly relatable to the concentration of the element
in the material being analyzed. The gamma radiation
produced is directly relatable to the activity of the
atomic flux at the time of the radiation. The inclusion
of standard materials is vital so that a measure of the
reaction of standard and sample to the flux can be
made. Normally, the standard will be made of a similar
material to that being analyzed. The peak wavelengths
are characteristic of the elements present; it may be
necessary to strip out interference peaks.
NAA can be a sensitive technique with potential
detection limits down to parts per million for 3035
elements simultaneously, though it is relatively insensitive for the detection of major components. The
technique has been used especially for the analysis of
ceramics for a full range of trace elements, the structure of the data being further analyzed using multivariate statistics. Much of the pottery work has been
focused on the relationships between chemical characterization, distribution patterns, the clays used,
other raw materials used, and the location of kiln sites.
Mass Spectrometry

The technique is becoming increasingly important in

the study of ancient materials. In the investigation of
organic materials, it can be used as a means of reconstructing ancient diets and charting the movements
of populations through the analysis of bones and
teeth. Alternatively, it can be used to investigate the
provenance of inorganic materials such as pottery,
metals, and glasses.
The main technique that has sufficient accuracy in
the determination of isotopes in ancient materials has
been thermal ion mass spectrometry (TIMS) incorporating spectrometers of the magnetic sector type. A
variety of isotopes can be analyzed in this way, including lead, strontium, rubidium, neodymium, oxygen,
samarium, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. More recently, multiple collector plasma mass spectrometry
(MC-ICPMS) systems have also been used to produce data of acceptable levels of accuracy. Quadrupole
mass spectrometers can scan the mass spectrum
very rapidly, though a sacrifice may be the mass
resolution.

Mass spectrometry relies on the principle that it is

possible to separate electrically charged atoms of an
element according to their atomic masses (e.g., 87Sr
and 86Sr). This separation is achieved by using magnetic or electrical fields. Simple mass spectrometers
have magnetic or electrostatic deflector systems.
Since the determination of lead isotopes has one of
the longest histories in archaeological research, it is
worth describing what factors may (or may not) lead
to its successful application. Lead is a mixture of
primordial lead and radiogenic lead. Radiogenic lead
was produced as a result of the radioactive decay
of uranium and thorium. Primordial lead consists of
four isotopes (labeled according to their different
atomic masses): lead-204, lead-206, lead-207, and
lead-208 with abundances of 1.3%, 26.3%, 20.8%,
and 51.5%, respectively. Lead-204 is the only type
which has not been formed as a result of radioactive
decay, so there is a constant amount in the earths crust.
Lead isotopes are continuously accumulating by the
radioactive decay of uranium-238, uranium-235, and
thorium-232. To characterize lead-containing deposits, a comparison of the relative amounts of stable and
radiogenic isotopes is made. Thus, clearly the lead
ores themselves need to be characterized sufficiently
and the degree of mixing that may have occurred
needs to be established. Lead can occur as part of
an ore body such as galena or in association with
other minerals. An important assumption involved
in lead isotope analysis is that, even if the lead is
present at varying concentrations in an ore body, as
long as it has been formed under the same conditions
and that it has undergone the same geological processes, the ratios between the lead isotopes present
will be the same. Another important characteristic of
lead is that the isotopes do not fractionate (i.e., a
systematic change in the abundance ratios of two
isotopes). A result is that if an ore contains both lead
and copper, the lead isotope ratios in one metal will
be the same in the other. However, remobilization of a
lead-containing ore as a result of a postdepositional
geochemical process can produce heterogeneity leading to a large range of lead isotope ratios, even within
a single mineral type. This would therefore generate a
severe problem in attempting to characterize the ore
and the metal objects made from the ore in provenance studies. Another possible complicating factor is
that different lead ores with correspondingly different
formation times (and therefore isotopic ratios) can be
laid down very close together. If used as a source of
metal in the same production center, objects having
the same or similar chemical compositions may have
very different isotopic compositions. Moreover, some
ore bodies, such as copper-bearing ones, can contain

988 CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

low lead concentrations with a spread of lead isotope

compositions due to the uranium present continuing
to decay after the copper ore has been formed.
A detailed understanding of the geological history of
lead ore deposits is therefore essential. With these
considerations in mind, it is generally agreed that
20 samples of ore from a deposit should be sufficient
to characterize it. The fractionation of lead isotope
ratios occurs during smelting and corrosion, but there
is a general consensus that this is not a problem.
Mixing of metals produced using materials containing lead with different lead isotope signatures can
pose a problem when it comes to characterization
and provenance. However, even here if the end members can be defined, the mixing lines can be used
advantageously. This assessment of mixing can also
be applied to glasses and ceramics. The use of mass
spectrometry to determine the age and type of raw
materials used to make glasses is a relatively recent
development. Here, strontium isotope ratios are
chemically linked to the source calcium and neodymium to the source of silica. Lime can be introduced in
the plant ash or in the seashell fragments in sand used
to make glass. Calcium carbonate often occurs in
pottery. With glass and ceramics, as with other provenance studies using mass spectrometry, it is important to define the variations of these isotopes in
potential raw material sources across the landscape
and then to compare such variations with both material from primary production sites and with other
artifacts. Clearly, as for the application of mass spectrometry to the determination of lead isotopes, the
technique depends on there being sufficient geological contrast in the source of the raw materials used
to be successful. The same principles apply to the
use mass spectrometry to the study of population
movements.
Carbon-13 and nitrogen-15 are stable isotopes
which are absorbed into the human body as a result
of being metabolised. Their presence is a reflection of
ancient diets. During the process of photosynthesis,
plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The uptake of carbon in this process makes it possible
to distinguish between two different plant types
which are important in human diets: C3 and C4.
These plant types have distinct ranges of carbon-13
values depending on whether C3 or C4 plants have
been consumed. C3 plants such as rye, oats, wheat, and
barley typically grow in temperate climates, whereas
C4 plants such as maize, sorghum, tropical grasses,
millet, and sugar grow in dryer, warmer climates.
A relative enrichment of carbon-13 can also be a
mean of distinguishing between the intake of different
sources of dietary protein. Bicarbonates in seawater

is the principle source of carbon dioxide for marine

plants. In the seawater, it is enriched in 13C by 7%
relative to the atmospheric carbon dioxide that is
photosynthesized by land plants. Marine plant (and
protein) resources are therefore enriched in this
way compared to terrestrial sources and are comparable to C4 plants. In the assumed absence of subtropical plants the determination of 13C in human
bone collagen can be used to estimate the relative
proportions of terrestrial and marine foods in human
diets. d15N values of marine plants are enriched by 4%
relative to terrestrial plants and this can be seen not
only in the difference between maritime and terrestrial
food chains but also in the particular trophic level
considered. A gaseous sample is used for the determination of these stable isotopes for mass spectrometry.
Standards are used as an essential comparison.
When mass spectrometry is used to analyze organic
materials, complex mixtures of biochemical components are identified. These may be overcooked food
residues, organic binders, and the organic fractions of
pigments. Hydrolysis, oxidation, and polymerization
can further degrade organic materials such as oils and
fats. Mass spectrometry can provide detailed information about the structures and compound distributions of complex mixtures. The reason that it can be
used in such a way is that chromatographic techniques such as gas chromatography (GC) and highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC) can be
coupled to mass spectrometers, leading to the separation of individual molecular species and the quantification of trace levels. The kinds of materials that can
be investigated using these techniques are leaf waxes,
beeswax, fats, oils, resins, tar, human remains, and
plant remains.

Microdestructive Techniques
Nondestructive and (Other) Microdestructive
Techniques

The principles of X-ray fluorescence spectrometry

(XRF) form the basis for microanalysis in the context
of electron probe microanalysis and spectrometers
attached to scanning electron microscopes. The principles of XRF therefore will described first.
XRF analysis can be a totally nondestructive technique. It is a surface technique of spectroscopic analysis which relies on the interaction of primary X-rays
with the sample generating, among other particles,
a range of secondary X-rays which have energies
characteristic of each of the elements in the sample.
It produces a spectrum of energies in the same way that
AES does. The primary energy source can either be a

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES 989

radioactive material which will generate g-rays; when

fired at the sample in a solid geometry, the interaction
of the g-rays with the sample will generate secondary
X-rays. A much more common source of X-rays
is an X-ray tube which, when configured within a
commercially produced system, will be located in a
stable position, allowing the same analytical geometry to be repeated each time (the same analytical
geometry is important if quantitative analysis is
attempted).
The primary X-rays interact with each of the elements in the sample surface. During this process,
secondary X-rays are emitted at the takeoff angle,
escaping from the sample at the same angle at which
the primary X-rays were fired at the sample. A variety
of energy transitions occur between inner atomic
electron shells in each atom, and these lead to the
generation of the secondary X-rays. The secondary
X-rays hit a detector (typically silicon drifted with
lithium) with an analog-to-digital converter attached
to it. Conversion of discrete pulses of secondary
X-ray energies into electrical pulses occurs depending
on the atomic weight of the element concerned. The
electron pulses are then fed into a multi-channel analyzer which displays the maxima in the spectrum of
X-ray energies as a series of peaks above the background (see Figure 1 for an X-ray spectrum). The
peaks are a Gaussian shape because the process by
which the peaks are formed is one dependent on
counting probability, whereby the maximum number
of events which fall at the exact center of the peak

produce the maximum peak height. The tails of the

peak are due to a smaller number of events at energies
above and below the peak centroid.
The depth to which the primary X-rays penetrate
the sample is mainly dependent on the energy of the
primary X-rays, the angle at which the X-rays are
fired at the sample, and the matrix composition of
the sample. With a material which contains a relatively
high proportion of a heavy element, like lead, with
an atomic number of 82, secondary X-rays for a
relatively light element, like potassium, also in the
material, will be derived from a shallower maximum
depth than a material which on average has a lighter
matrix. The greatest depth from which elemental
X-rays are derived is therefore an important consideration because it partly determines the sensitivity of
each element to X-rays and therefore the number
of X-ray photons that are detected per unit time. If
the count rate is low, the length of the count time
in order to produce acceptable statistics needs to
be increased.
There are two principal types of XRF: energydispersive and wavelength-dispersive spectrometry.
Energy-dispersive spectrometry operates by collecting
data from the detector, distinguishing it according
to its energy and displaying it in spectral form.
Wavelength-dispersive spectrometry, on the other
hand, relies on a different means of operation. In
this case, the spectrometer relies on the presence of
crystals causing the secondary X-rays to be diffracted
at a particular angle, according to its atomic number.

Figure 1 An X-ray spectrum of an opaque yellow lead-silica glass which is opacified with lead-tin oxide. The X-axis displays the relative
number of counts for each element detected above the background. The Y-axis displays the X-ray emission energies for each of the
elements. Note that some elements are more sensitive to X-rays than others so the relative peak heights are not a reflection of the relative
quantities of each. Tin (Sn) and iron (Fe) have a number of X-ray peaks. These result from the interaction of electrons (in this case) with
different orbitals in the atoms. (Source: author.)

990 CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

The secondary X-rays are detected electronically. The

dispersion of the secondary X-ray is greater than with
energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry which makes
it possible to separate the X-rays peaks more completely and, in general, also makes it possible to
detect elements at lower levels. Wavelength-dispersive spectrometry is normally slower simply because
the spectrometer angle needs to be changed, and from
time to time also the crystals in the spectrometer,
depending on what elements are sought.
Typically wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectrometry is used to analyze material that has been powdered and made into a silicon borate glass bead. The
bead is cast so that it lower surface is flat and of the
appropriate diameter for the beam of primary X-rays
used for its analysis. Energy-dispersive spectrometry,
on the other hand, can more readily be used as a
totally nondestructive technique and is therefore
more appropriate to a museum environment. However, if the sample has an irregular surface and/or is
weathered/or depleted in any way, it is difficult to
produce a quantitative result. The obvious use for
energy dispersive (ED) analysis in a museum is to
provide an initial identification of a material, though
it must never be forgotten that the technique only
provides an analysis of the surface. The depth to
which the exciting energy (X-ray or g-ray) penetrates
the sample is dependent on, in the case of an X-ray
tube, the voltage used and also the matrix composition of the material: for a light matrix the depth
from which the heaviest secondary X-ray may escape
to be detected is c. 40 mm, whereas for the analysis of
materials with heavy matrices the maximum depth
is more typically 15 mm.
The successful quantification of the results from
XRF depends on a number of factors. An ideal sample
is one which is polished flat and compositionally
homogeneous. The factors which affect the analysis
include X-ray tube voltage, the composition of the
anode which is used in the X-ray tube, the geometry
of the analytical system, the use of a collimator, the
roughness of the sample surface, the extent of interference between elements in the X-ray spectrum,
whether the X-ray emission peaks are successfully
deconvoluted, and the composition of the sample
being analyzed (a greater absorption of light elements, such as sodium or magnesium occurs in a
matrix which consists of a heavier average Z (atomic
number). In addition, the use of a reliable set of
standards of known composition is absolutely essential, as it is for almost any analytical technique.
Obtaining a reliable set of standards can be difficult
and is one way of checking the quality of the analyses.
Finally, the kind of quantification program employed

can affect the results. In the case of XRF, the use of

fundamental parameters or the influence coefficients
can be used.
Electron Probe Microanalysis

A microdestructive technique which produces highquality results is electron microprobe analysis. This
followed on from the milliprobe and its early use in
analysis, becoming commonly used, especially for
research in mineral sciences, in the 1970s. As the
technique suggests, microsamples as small as 0.5 mm
can be mounted and analyzed. The technique involves
the use of a microbeam of electrons which are focused
on the sample surface using a series of magnetic lenses.
The electrons themselves are generated using an electron gun (in Figure 2). The interaction of the electrons
with the sample generates secondary X-rays which are
characteristic to the chemical elements in the material.

Figure 2 A Jeol JSM 8200 electron microprobe in the Department of Archaeology, University of Nottingham. An energydispersive spectrometer is located on the left-hand side of the
machine, the electron gun in the center (mounted vertically) and
one of four wavelength-dispersive spectrometers is on the righthand side of the machine with a cathodoluminescence facility
mounted behind it. In this case the samples can be imaged in
both secondary- and backscattered electron modes. The screen
shows a secondary-electron image. Samples are located beneath
the electron gun. (Source: courtesy of Edward Faber.)

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES 991

London raw
London others

Amsterdam raw
Amsterdam others

Venice cristallo
Venice vitrum blancum

12.00

Weight % potassim oxide (K2O)

This technique provides an analysis of a shallower

layer of material than with XRF (35 mm compared
to c. 3050 mm), and by sampling and preparing
the sample carefully the quality of the results when
compared to open geometry ED X-ray analysis is far
higher. The samples are normally embedded in epoxy
resin and polished flat so that the geometry of the
analysis is repeated exactly each time. In the process
of doing this, any weathered material can be removed.
The electron beam can be focused or defocused
depending on the intended area of analysis; it may
also be essential to defocus the beam in order to minimize or eradicate the possibility of volatalizing the sample surface, causing elements like sodium to be boiled
off. In practice, the minimum diameter of a focused
electron beam during the analysis of a metal or even
a ceramic is 1 mm on the sample surface, which spreads
out in the metal itself to c. 2 mm; for glass, the beam
needs to be deliberately defocused to c. 5080 mm.
The electron probe was introduced in c. 1975 primarily as a tool used by geologists. As a result, some
of the early models used were ideal for the analysis of
silicates, part of which to analyze chemically individual crystals in ceramic materials. Apart from being
microdestructive, one of the other advantages of the
technique is that it is possible to locate the electron
beam precisely on the area of the sample to be analyzed with the use of a microscope attached to the
system; if compositional heterogeneity is suspected,
an energy-dispersive detector attached to the system
can be used to carry out qualitative point analyses before the quantitative analyses are performed.
A scanner attached to the machine can also provide
an image of the sample. It would be possible to quantify the ED results from the system but the levels of
precision and detection achieved with the wavelength
dispersive probe are of a far higher quality. This same
comparison is also true when the results from an ED
spectrometer attached to a scanning electron microscope and those from a wavelength-dispersive system
in an electron microprobe are compared.
The technique is a quantitative one, and given the
small beam size it is normal to analyze three to five
spots of a homogeneous material like glass, and average the results. The system must be calibrated before
chemical analysis is attempted with the use of standards, preferably of the material being analyzed for the
major elements, so as to reproduce the matrix conditions of differential absorption of secondary X-rays.
Geological standards may be used for pure elements
occurring at minor or trace levels in the unknown. As
with any analytical technique, the cross-analysis of a
multielement standard not used in calibrating the
system and of proven reliability at the start and end

10.00

8.00

6.00

4.00

2.00

0.00
6.00

8.00

10.00 12.00 14.00 16.00 18.00 20.00

Weight % soda (Na2O)

Figure 3 The relative levels of sodium and potassium oxides in

late sixteenth and seventeenth century raw and vessel glasses
from factory and other sites in London, Amsterdam and Venice
showing distinctions in the chemical compositions of glasses from
each zone. Note that three samples of raw glass from Amsterdam
fit with the compositions of vitrum blancum glass from Venice and
were therefore imported from Venice.

of the analysis will provide two things: the determination of relative analytical accuracy and a means of
monitoring any drift in the system. EPMA can be used
to distinguish between different production zones
(see Figure 3).
Scanning Electron Microscopy

As mentioned above, scanning electron microscopy

(SEM) can be used for microanalysis, and it is possible to attach both energy-dispersive and wavelengthdispersive spectrometers to the instrument, but the
quality of the analyses will not be as high as for a
dedicated electron microprobe because in the context
of an SEM it is not possible to reproduce the same
analytical geometry as for a microprobe. Indeed, the
systems should not be confused they are different
and should be referred to as an electron microprobe
and an analytical SEM, respectively.
The SEM is primarily used for imaging structurally
or compositionally heterogeneous organic and inorganic materials. The systems are often fitted with an
energy-dispersive spectrometer, a secondary electron
detector, and a backscattered electron detector
(see Figure 4). The secondary electron detector provides images of the surface texture of materials,
whereas the use if a back-scattered detector mainly
provides images of variations in composition. Such
detectors can also be attached to the EPMA.

992 CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

Acc.V Spot Magn

20.0 kV 4.3 551x

Det WD
BSE 10.0 sample 29

100 m

Figure 4 A backscattered electron micrograph of a thick section of Ottoman ceramics. The image is formed from contrasting grey levels
which are dependant on the variations of average Z (atomic number) in each component. The grey angular grains are silica, the white
material in the middle is calcium phosphate (bone ash) and the pale grey matrix materials that surrounds many of the silica crystals is a
soda-rich glass. (Source: courtesy of Martin Roe.)

The source of energy for an SEM is an electron gun.

Instead of the electrons being focused as a point as in
the electron microprobe they are focused in a particular plane, but also scanned across the material
using scanning coils so as to build up an image of
their interaction with the material. Because backscattered electrons travel in almost straight lines and the
detector is located to one side of a specimen, a shadowing effect is produced. A secondary-electron
image is dependent on the angle between the beam
and the specimen surface (see Figure 1). Differences in
gray level are, as a result, a reflection of the angle of
the surface to the detector: the roughness of the surface and the shape of the sample can be seen clearly in
this image of the surface of glass, including characteristic conchoidal fractures. Backscattered electron
images, on the other hand, provide pictures of compositional heterogeneity by recording the number of
backscattered electrons from the sample, a measure
of the relative average atomic number in the area
being analyzed. The secondary electron images therefore provide highly magnified images of the surface
textures of materials, whereas backscattered electron
images are built up from variations in composition.
The two techniques can of course be also used in
conjunction with each other: if a small area of decoration has been applied to a metal surface which is of
a different composition from the body of the artefact,
the SEM may provide evidence for both the way in
which the decoration has been attached and also how
the materials used are different.

Whereas with an electron microprobe an initial

examination of a thin section of a pottery sample
can provide an unambiguous identification of the
crystal, which can then be pinpointed and analyzed
chemically by using a photograph, the SEM can provide clear images of how a particular compositional
family of crystals (e.g., alkaline feldspars) might vary
in composition and texture within the same sample or
between samples from different sources. In addition,
of course, the SEM can be used to show great compositional contrasts between crystals and the matrix
material they are sitting in, between layered materials
and between depleted/ corroded surfaces and the parent material. By examining cross-sections through
materials, it is possible to relate structural corrosion
to changes in chemical composition which can, in
turn, be recorded photographically.
For successful imaging using a backscattered detector, it is appropriate to use a sample that has been
mounted and polished flat in the same way as the
sample was prepared using the electron microprobe.
This procedure is of course inappropriate if the sample is being examined for its surface texture, in which
case it should be carefully attached to a stub within
the SEM and can be rotated to examine different
areas of interest.
In order to examine materials like metals which
conduct electrons, the sample can be attached to the
stub within the system. If the material is glass, glaze,
or obsidian, for example, and does not conduct electrons, then it needs to be coated so as to prevent

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES 993

distortion and deflection of the electron beam; this is

also true for electron microprobe analysis. The sample size that can be examined under the SEM is determined by the size of the sample chamber. Since
samples are examined under vacuum, open geometry
is not possible, as it can be with XRF spectrometry.
A range of SEM systems are manufactured and relatively large objects can be accommodated, of up to
c. 5 cm  3 cm in dimensions.
Particle-Induced X-Ray Emission

The feature that characterizes particle-induced X-ray

emission (PIXE) is the cost and size of the instrument! The analytical technique requires a tandem
van der Graaf accelerator in order to generate particles which are accelerated at high speeds toward the
sample where they collide and penetrate the sample
at great speeds. A particle accelerator can cost up to
500 000. The same size of sample prepared in the
same way as for the SEM and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) can be used and is presented to the
beam in a fixed geometry. The system can be operated
in both an open geometry and in a sample chamber, so
the sample size can, theoretically, be infinite. With an
open geometry system, it is also possible to analyze
materials containing light elements by bathing the
sample in helium so as to prevent the light secondary
X-rays produced from being absorbed in the air
before being detected.
Analytically, the most significant difference from
EPMA is that the backgrounds produced by PIXE
are a factor of 10 lower (see Figure 5). The reason
for this is that the particles bombarding the sample
enter the sample at such a great speed that less scattering of the particles occurs than when electrons or
X-rays are used as the primary exciting energy. The

net result is that the background of the X-ray spectrum is significantly lower, allowing far lower concentration of components to be detected. Some PIXE
systems are fitted with scanning coils so that the
distribution of elements through the surface of the
material can be mapped, including at very low concentrations. The same detector system and multichannel analyzer is often used as for EPMA and SEM
systems, a lithium-drifted silicon detector.
The depth of analysis for PIXE is in the same magnitude of order as for stand-alone ED-XRF analysis,
but also, as with XRF, is dependent on the voltage
that the system is operated at, which in the case of
PIXE is typically 1.5 or 2 MeV. The depth of penetration by the analyzing beam can be up to 50 mm in
a material with a light matrix and only c. 15 mm in a
heavy matrix. If the substance being analyzed contains crystals which are 10 mm below the surface there
is no way, at present, of separating the contribution
made by the crystal to the analysis from that made by
the matrix of the material. SEM and EPMA systems
are more appropriate analytical techniques in the
analysis of crystalline materials.
In addition to being able to detect elements at very
low concentrations, by using PIXE it is also possible
to map elemental distributions through the thickness
of a sample by analyzing its surface This technique is
known as Rutherford backscattering and relies on
backscattering of the protons from crystallites or
other particles within the sample being analyzed.
X-ray Diffraction Spectrometry

This technique can be used to identify unambiguously

the type of crystals present in minerals, stone, metals,
pottery, opaque glasses, opaque enamels, and opaque
glazes, or it can be used to assess the degree of

Field of view: 78 78 m2

Li isotopes (3)

Na (284)

K (250)

Fe/CaO (40)

Mg (26)

Al (126)

Sb isotopes (?) Pb isotopes (167)

Si (77)

PbSbO2 (77)

Figure 5 A series of compositional maps produced from time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry. Each image is for different
ions in the same sample of opaque turquoise glass. This is similar to those produced using a scanning-electron microscope. However the
levels of detection can be an order to 1001000 lower. The opacity is due to the presence of calcium antimonate crystals. By using this
technique, however, it can be seen that iron and lithium impurities are co-located in the crystals. No other technique has such a shallow
depth of penetration combined with great analytical sensitivity (especially for light elements) combined with high special resolution.

994 CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

crystalinity in a material. It is destructive in that an

object must be sampled, but the sample can be small
and it is not destroyed in the same way that it is with
truly destructive techniques. The technique involves
firing radiation of a particular wavelength (monochromatic) at the crystalline material which is mounted
at a specific angle to the incoming energy. The interaction of the radiation with the crystal(s) produces
an X-ray pattern which is characteristic of the structure of the crystal. Crystals are composed of lattices
built up in a regular pattern; their size and spacing is
characteristic of the crystal species. The technique produces spectra which sometimes include several peaks
for a single crystal providing the crystal identity. Thus,
while it is possible to determine the chemical composition of calcium antimonate, for example, it is only
with XRD that it is possible to distinguish between
Ca2Sb2O7 and Ca2Sb2O6. In some cases, different species of crystals are formed at different temperatures, so
XRD can help to determine what temperature regimes
were involved in the production process. For example,
a-quartz is the normal form of silica which occurs in
nature. When it is heated to 573  5  C it is converted
to b-quartz. At 867  C, b-quartz is converted into
another form of silica, tridymite; at 1250  C, cristobalite is formed. These reactions can be slow, a feature
which may be of interest to the archaeological scientist,
because it shows that the material was held at the
temperature before the transformations occurred. In
any case, since all three crystal types have the same
chemical composition (silica), only by using XRD is it
possible to identify the species involved.
The original XRD camera was used to take photographs of patterns produced by d-spacings in one or
more crystal samples in the material analysed. More
recent developments incorporating fully automated
equipment has involved a thin slurry of the material deposited on a slide. The resulting radiation is
measured and the spectra fed electronically into a
computer which has a library of d-spacings making
it possible to match the unknown pattern to those
stored in the computer. Quantitative assessments of
the relative proportions of different crystal species
in the sample are possible by examining the relative
intensities of the peak heights. This needs to be carried out on several subsamples of the material
being analyzed to produce a representative picture.
Thin-section petrology is a more effective means of
carrying out such quantitative work.

Other Techniques
A number of techniques which are used less commonly or have only recently been used to investigate archaeological materials need to be discussed. These

include synchrotron-induced (SR) radiation, X-ray

photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), auger-electron
spectroscopy (AES), particle-induced gamma emission (PIGE), time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and transmission electron
microscopy (TEM).
Synchrotron radiation is produced by an instrument known as a synchrotron. The system consists
of an accelerator, which produces high energy electrons, a booster accelerator and a storage ring. The
technique produces intense radiation of all frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The high intensity is accompanied by fine beam dimensions and this
allows it to be used for a range of applications using
a range of analytical techniques. For example SR
can be used for SR-induced X-ray micro-diffraction,
SR-induced X-ray fluorescence and SR-induced neutron diffraction. SR has been used to chemically characterize a range of materials including pigments,
glass, luster glazes, the crystals in bones, ink, iron
and phase transformations in pottery. Most recently
a synchrotron source at Cornell has been used in
conjunction with confocal X-ray fluorescence to analyze non-invasively separate layers of pigments in
pictures. It has been possible to create a detailed
depth profile through the layers of pigments. Studies
have also been carried out using SR in order to investigate deterioration and in conservation science of
both inorganic and organic materials. With the
achievement of a one micron beam diameter at the
new Diamond facility at Didcot in the UK, the time is
ripe for a wide range of archaeological and conservation science applications using SR.
X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and auger
electron spectroscopy (AES) both have roles to play in
the investigation of archaeological materials. XPS
essentially provides information about the chemical
environment of the elemental species induced by a
suitable radiation such as Al Ka or a monochromatized synchotron radiation (see above). The resulting
information is useful because it can detect the presence of different bonding states for the same element.
Photoelectrons have low kinetic energies and are
absorbed if they are produced below a depth of
2050 A, so the technique provides information
about surfaces. An X-ray photoelectron spectrum is
a plot of binding energies versus the number of electrons detected. The different binding energies correspond to peaks in the spectrum. The technique has
been used to investigate glass, pottery, stone, metals,
dyes, pigments, paintings, paper, ink and stone. The
degradation of materials can obviously benefit from
being investigated by using XPS. Auger electrons are
a kind of particle that is produced when a material is
bombarded with electrons (such as from an electron

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES 995

gun). They also have very low kinetic energies and

derive from the surface two or three atomic layers.
Like XPS, Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) can be
used for examining the chemical state of the atom
from which they derive. The reason why this is possible is because Auger electrons are emitted from the
outer orbitals of atoms. The outer orbitals are often
involved in chemical bonding so the Auger electrons
characterize the state of the atom.
With particle-induced gamma ray emission (PIGE)
instead of the more commonly measured X-rays emissions being measured, gamma rays are measured
instead. Typically this type of analysis is carried out
at the same time at PIXE (see above) by bombarding
the sample with protons. Although not commonly
used (partly because accelerators are expensive) the
technique, which is especially sensitive to the detection of light elements such as lithium and fluorine,
can be used quantitatively.
Time-of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry
(ToF-SIMS) is a technique which has only very recently been used to examine archaeological materials.
SIMS involves sputtering a material with a beam of
positively charged ions in an ultra high vacuum chamber. The fragments of the surface that are ejected
(sputtered) range from atomic species to large ensembles of atoms (clusters). These secondary ions are
extracted into a mass spectrometer for mass analysis.
In the case of ToF-SIMS a short pulse (about 1 ns) of
primary ions hits the surface and the resulting secondary ions are accelerated to a constant energy before
entering a field-free drift tube. Ions of different mass
must have different velocities so they are separated by
flight-time in the drift tube (heavy ions travel more
slowly). Their arrival time at a detector is registered
and this produces an intensity versus time spectrum.
The spectrum is built up from the addition of many
such pulses. Both positively and negatively charged
fragments are sputtered yielding both positive and
negative ion mass spectra. The sputtered fragments,
typically, can only escape from a shallow depth
(about 95% of the signal comes from the top two
monolayers of atoms). The technique is especially
useful for detecting light elements such as boron
and lithium and in principle it can be used in a
quantitative mode. It is the only technique which

Chiefdoms, Rise of

can be used for both mapping crystallites and analyzing their impurities, down to ppb. Isotopic information is also produced. So far it has apparently only
been used for the analysis of ancient opaque glass.
Another sensitive technique which is used infrequently for examining archaeological materials is transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In this case a thin
section of the sample is prepared and the electrons
travel through the sample. It is especially useful for
the detection of small crystallites in archaeological
materials, identifying pigments and for the investigation of bone and tooth diagenesis.
See also: Archaeometry; Artifacts, Overview; Neutron
Activation Analysis; Pottery Analysis: Chemical; Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis; Sampling Methods,
Theory and Praxis; Stable Isotope Analysis; Vitreous
Materials Analysis.

Further Reading
Blackman MJ and Bishop RL (2007) The SmithsonianNIST partnership: the application of instrumental neutron activation analysis to archaeology. Archaeometry 49: 321341.
Ciliberto E and Spoto G (eds.) (2000) Modern Analytical Methods
in Art and Archaeology. New York: Wiley.
Hatcher H, Tite MS, and Walsh JN (1995) A comparison of
inductively-coupled plasma emission spectrometry and atomic
absorption spectrometry analysis on standard reference silicate
materials and ceramics. Archaeometry 37: 8394.
Henderson J (2000) The Science and Archaeology of Materials: an
Investigation of Inorganic Materials. London and New York:
Routeledge.
Li B-P, Zhao J-X, Greig A, Collerson KD, Feng Y-X, Sun X-M, Guo
M-S, and Zhuo Z-X (2006) Characterisation of Chinese Tang
Sancai from Gongxian and Yaozhou kilns using ICP-MS trace
element and TIMS Sr-Nd isotope analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 33: 5662.
Pollard AM and Heron C (1996) Archaeological Chemistry.
Cambridge: The Royal Society of Chemistry.
Pollard AM, Batt C, Stern B, and Young S (2007) Analytical Chemistry in Archaeology. Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rutten FJM, Roe MJ, Henderson J, and Briggs D (2006) Surface
analysis of ancient glass artefacts with ToF-SIMS: A novel tool
for provenancing. Applied Surface Science 252: 71247127.
Whitbread IK (1995) Greek Transport Amphorae A Petrological
and Archaeological Study. Fitch Laboratory Occasional Paper 4.
Athens: The British School at Athens.

See: Political Complexity, Rise of.

996 CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE

CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE

Charles Gates, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
atrium In a Roman house, an unroofed room with a basin below.
ostrakon A fragment of pottery or stone on which something
has been written or drawn.
peristyle court In Greek and Roman architecture, a courtyard
surrounded by a colonnaded portico.
stele (pl. stelai, stelae) A stone slab, usually thin in section,
placed vertically; often decorated with inscriptions, relief
sculptures, and/or paintings.
tell An artificial mound consisting of the remains of settlements,
especially the air-dried mud brick favored as a building material.
Arabic tell Persian tepe, Turkish hoyuk.

Ancient Cities Defined

Cities arose fairly recently in the long history of
humankind. Changes in climate c. 12 000 years ago
led to the end of the Ice Ages, to a warmer, moister
climate that in certain parts of the world favored the
development of controlled agriculture and animal
husbandry. No longer were people dependent on the
collecting or hunting of wild food sources. Thanks
to agriculture, in particular, permanent, year-round
settlements developed. As farmers settled together in
small villages, as food surpluses were registered, certain
people were freed for other tasks crafts, religious
activities, etc. Increase in population eventually
resulted in cities, with such features as monumental
public architecture, figural art, writing, and social
stratification.
These changes, and the rise of cities, occurred at
different times in different parts of the world, with
many regions never having cities at all. The earliest
cities appeared in the Near East. Here, the changes
described above began to take place in the eleventh to
tenth millennia BC. By the fourth millennium BC,
developed cities had appeared. This article focuses on
cities in this region the Near East, Egypt, and the
Mediterranean basin with a concluding section on
Teotihuacan (Mexico), as a New World comparison.

Daily Life Defined

Daily life in ancient cities comprises many elements.
The polarity between private and public is one basic
way to structure any study. Private life centers on the
house. The architecture and objects (furniture, decorations, utensils, and tools) suggest family relationships

and activities happening in the house. Gender and age

relationships are important: male and female, and
children, mature adults, and the elderly. The life cycle
with its rites of passage can serve as a focus: birth,
marriage, old age, death. Household functions include
food preparation and eating (or dining), hygiene,
sleeping, socializing, etc.
The public arena centers on social relationships,
political organization, and the maintenance of order,
economic matters (making a living, commerce and
trade), and religion. Within a social hierarchy, different ranks in society, from rulers to slaves, have their
various occupations. Other functions of city life were
also public: religious practices, for one, and certain
entertainments, such as the Roman bath. But like
private life, public life takes place in a physical
setting: buildings, monuments, streets, open spaces,
perhaps in connection with certain natural features
(rivers, hills, mountains, the sea, harbors). What these
elements look like, individually and in relation with
others, is an essential part of recreating daily life in
ancient cities.

The Archaeology of Daily Life in Cities

Archaeology as a Source of Information

The possibility of stepping into vanished worlds has a

great appeal. Archaeology, by exposing ruined cities,
their buildings and their artifacts, is an important
vehicle for making this possible. For many, a visit to
an archaeological site is more exciting if one gets the
sense of what living there in a past time period was
like. But for historic periods, ancient texts have also
been a prime source of information about ancient life.
The Hebrew Bible and Greek and Latin literature contain infinite details, combined with the names of people
and places. Ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, and
Mayan texts, now readable thanks to decipherments
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, also offer
much. For some, the written word is supreme; the
reality of place and object, the discipline of archaeology, are supplementary to the texts. These preferences
can be reflected in the structures of academic study in
universities, museums, and research centers.
We who wish to enter ancient worlds should not
feel forced to choose, for each source of information
makes a valuable contribution. We might well ask,
though, what do archaeological excavations contribute that literary sources cannot? Archaeology, the
study of material culture, makes clear the visual and
the tactile. Ancient sounds (music), ancient smells

CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE 997

(perfumes, cooked foods, fuels), ancient tastes (foods,

wines, other drinks) are lost to us. Actions of all sorts
and communications between people are recorded in
texts, and we can perhaps visualize them taking place.
But archaeology gives us the physical environment in
which we can place the people and events we read
about: the natural setting, the built environment (the
city, its plan, its architecture), and the objects that
ancient peoples created.
The Preservations of Material Remains

The material remains from ancient times are never

preserved in their entirety. Climatic, geological, and
cultural conditions all play a part in preserving and
destroying. A dry climate, such as that of Egypt, preserves organic materials well. In contrast, in a wet,
damp climate, the human body and products from
animals bodies (leather, hair), wood and other plant
products, and even metal objects rot, rust, corrode,
disintegrate. The state of preservation affects our
understanding of particular cultures. Textiles, for
example, were an important product of daily life
and commercial exchange, but they never survive
with the completeness of a stone sculpture.
Geological factors also have impact. Earthquakes,
fires, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, erosion, and the
repeated flooding of silt-bearing rivers (such as the Nile)
all have the potential to change the urban landscape.
Human agency also has contributed to the alterations in
the material record. In cities occupied for centuries, the
building materials of structures collapsed or destroyed
might be recycled into new constructions.
At the very least, foundations of buildings typically
remain. Another standard remnant of ancient city life
is broken pottery, for ceramics, products of a technology first developed in the mid-Neolithic period
(eighth millennium BC), do not disintegrate. Other
cultural habits that have preserved artifacts include
the placing of objects in tombs and the depositing of
offerings in religious centers.
Variations of Research Design: Effects
on Understanding Ancient Daily Life

The questions that archaeologists seek to answer are

hugely varied. They can be shaped by the state of
research in a particular region or time period, its pasttraditions and current problems, and by the academic
training of the individual researcher. In the Mediterranean, Egypt, and the Near East, approaches have included antiquarianism, the historical-descriptive, and
the anthropological. These should not be seen as mutually exclusive, but overlap and complement each
other, depending on the interests of the particular
researcher.

Antiquarianism refers to an interest in an object

by itself, a thing of beauty or curiosity. Compiling
collections was often its goal. Today this term is
negative, for it suggests that the interest in the object
is shallow, divorced from any scientific study of the
objects value in understanding the past.
A historical-descriptive approach has dominated
the archaeology of our region in the past two centuries. Archaeologists seek to understand the material
record by creating a framework for its study: by
describing buildings and artifacts carefully, then by
arranging them in chronological (or historical) order,
and by seeing developments through time (diachronical): what, when, where. With such classifications
in hand, scholars can then compare and contrast developments between sites, between regions, between time
periods. In our region, such comparisons are generally
made within a particular civilization (Egyptian, Greek,
Roman). For the study of the material evidence of daily
life, this approach has been essential.
Anthropological approaches, applied especially to
prehistoric cities, seek to understand the material
record as a reflection of human behavior. While
historical-descriptive analyses are not ignored but
valued as helpful tools, the archaeologist focuses on
larger questions, such as how and why. In addition,
the anthropologist is interested in comparing situations between different civilizations, to extract larger
lessons about the nature of human societies.

Case Studies
In order to explore further the issues raised above, let
us examine five archaeological sites that are particularly well known for evidence concerning daily life,
both from the Old World and the New. With our Old
World examples, we shall proceed in reverse chronological order, from later to earlier.
Pompeii

Pompeii, near Naples (Italy), is justly famous for its

rich evidence for daily life. This provincial Roman city,
founded in the late sixth century BC, was destroyed in
AD 79 by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius, buried
under volcanic pumice and ash (see Volcanism and
Archaeology). Despite some salvage, looting, and sporadic occupation, the city was never dug out and reinhabited. Thanks to the building materials of stone,
brick, and concrete, the architectural fabric of the
city did not disintegrate, but remained remarkably
well preserved, offering us an unparalleled glimpse
into Roman city life in the late Republic and early
Empire. Excavations began here in 1748, among the
earliest of organized archaeological expeditions anywhere, and have continued to the present.

998 CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE

The walled city housed a population of c. 10 000

20 000. For the most part, the city was laid out on a
grid plan, with the earliest sector, the forum (city
center) in the southwest. The forum and its environs
contained the most important public buildings of the
city. A long, narrow rectangular space, the open-air
forum was lined by colonnaded porticoes. At the
north, short end, stood the Temple of Jupiter, the
major shrine of the city. Behind the porticoes lay
civic, commercial, and additional religious buildings.
Civic buildings at the south end of the forum offered
meeting space for the town council, chief magistrates,
and the police. Commercial buildings, on the east,
included a guild hall for wool processors (Eumachias
building) and a meat and fish market. Religious buildings consisted of a Temple to Apollo and a shrine to
the deified emperor Vespasian. Emperors were routinely worshipped as divinities; the cult of the deified
emperor served to link towns throughout the vast
empire.
Archaeology at Greek and Roman sites has often
concentrated on grand public buildings, so the view
of ordinary street life that Pompeii gives is exceptional. Streets here had sidewalks and large stepping
stones at intersections so one could step over any
mud or sewage. Shops were frequent. They included
a mill and a bakery, with stone mills for grinding flour
and an oven for baking bread, and wine shops or
snack bars with huge clay jars embedded in the counters for easy serving of beverages. Street walls were
covered with advertisements and graffiti on all sorts
of topics, such as politics, sex, and love, with many
people named.
Pompeii had its own theaters, like all Roman cities.
Types included a large, open-air half circle, a design
taken from Greek tradition; the odeum, a smaller
covered theater; and the amphitheater (lit. double
theater), here a large oval, used for the gladiatorial
combats, the violent spectacles enjoyed by the Romans.
A barracks for gladiators was identified in a portico
behind the large theater, thanks to finds of helmets,
armor, weapons, and graffiti referring to teams of
gladiators. Nearby, skeletons of at least 52 people,
including children, were found, together with much
jewelry; they were gathered here intending to escape
through the nearby city gate to the harbor, but never
made it.
The private houses, numerous and well preserved,
range in size and decoration from large and rich
to modest. They typically have a lararium, a shrine
to the lares, the deities who protected house and
family. Traditional Italic houses feature the atrium,
a room with a square or rectangular opening in
the ceiling, letting in light, air, and rain. The rain
would fall into a basin below, then into a connected

underground water tank. Arranged around the atrium were smaller rooms. Since furniture was portable,
the functions of these rooms could easily vary. In
winter, they could be closed off, heated with portable
braziers. At the rear, the important rooms were located, the main reception room (tablinum), where the
owner of the house and his family formally greeted
guests, and the dining room (triclinium). Houses of the
wealthy might also have a peristyle court, an open
space surrounded by a colonnaded portico. A feature
borrowed from Greek architecture, the peristyle in
Roman Pompeii typically enclosed a garden. Explorations of the cavities left by plant roots, by pouring
plaster down them to recover their shapes, have
allowed researchers to reconstruct the kinds of plants
cultivated, and to replant some gardens in the ancient
manner.
House decorations typically included walls plastered
and painted with a variety of images in a realistic style,
and floor mosaics. A spectacular example of the latter
is the Alexander Mosaic, a large (5.1
2.7 m2) scene
of Alexander the Great confronting the Persian king
Darius III at the Battle of Issos.
The Athenian Agora

Our second example is the agora, or city center, of

Athens (Greek agora Latin forum). Unlike Pompeii,
Athens has been continuously inhabited since antiquity a situation that presents numerous practical
problems to the archaeologist. The agora, located on
low ground to the northwest of the acropolis, or high
city, was covered with modern houses when excavations began in 1931. Over the years to the present, land
has been bought, houses demolished, inhabitants and
businesses relocated in order that this important sector
of the ancient city be brought to light. Although the
excavations have revealed remains from hundreds of
years, from the Bronze Age well into the Middle Ages,
the Athenian agora is distinctive for the quantity of
written records that have helped in understanding the
findings. Frequent mentions in ancient literary texts,
notably a detailed description by Pausanias, a second
century AD traveller, have been complemented by over
7500 inscriptions, on stone and on potsherds, discovered here. Ruins and texts together give a detailed view
of the public life of ancient Athens.
What did this city center look like and what went
on here? Let us concentrate on the fifth century BC,
the golden age of ancient Athens. The Persians had
sacked the city in 480 BC. Rebuilding soon began in
the agora. Boundary stones marked the entrances; two
found in situ were inscribed, I am the boundary of the
Agora. In mid century, a Temple to Hephaistos was
built on the western hill that overlooks the Agora.
Along the base of this hill, major civic buildings were

CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE 999

erected: two bouleuterions, old and new, for meetings

of the 500-member city council; a tholos, or round
building, for the monthly delegation of 50 council
members that ran the daily affairs of the city; and
stoas, or free-standing porticoes, offering shelter
from sun and rain for a variety of commercial and
legal activities. The south side of the agora was
framed by an additional stoa, an enclosure for law
courts, a fountain house (where the public could
obtain fresh water), and a mint (coinage, invented in
Lydia, in western Asia Minor, in the late seventh
century BC, had quickly become a standard feature
in Greek cities). The north side was marked by a
stream, and, in the northwest, by the painted stoa, in
which panel paintings (now lost) depicted the Greek
victory over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon.
Private houses and shops, randomly placed, formed
the east side. Cutting diagonally across the central
space was the Panathenaic Way, the processional
route to the Acropolis used during the annual festival
for Athena, the patron goddess of the city. To the
southwest of the agora lay a prison, houses, and workshops representing a wide range of industries: pottery,
terracotta figurines, metalworking, sculpture and
marble-working, shoemaking, and wine shops.
Of the many objects found in the Agora, those
dealing with voting are particularly striking. They
include ostraka, potsherds inscribed with the names
of men whom people felt should be voted into exile
because they were suspected of plotting to seize the
government. This practice of ostracism was used from
c. 487 to 415 BC, in Athens. Another fascinating item
is a fragment of an allotment machine used for the
selection of jurors and magistrates, a stone slab containing rows of slots for the tags of potential jury
members. A crank system released a ball from a tube
full of black and white marble balls. If white, the first
row of jurors would serve that day. If black, that row
would not serve. And on it went, ball after ball, until
the required number of jurors had been filled.
Amarna: An Egyptian City

Amarna (ancient Akhetaten) offers an unusually full

view of an ancient Egyptian city. Planned as the new
capital by the pharaoh Akhenaten (ruled c. 1353
1337 BC), the city, rapidly built on previously undeveloped land, was inhabited for a short time only. Not
long after Akhenatens death, the city was abandoned
in favor of Thebes and Memphis, the previously
established royal centers of New Kingdom Egypt.
Two factors have helped preserve this site. First,
much of the city lies just inland from the flood zone
of the Nile, and thus was neither covered with silt nor
destroyed by farmers ploughs. Second, the site was
never rebuilt. For its short life and good preservation,

Amarna is unusual among ancient Egyptian cities.

Air-dried mud brick, with stone or wood for columns
and certain details, was the standard building material. Walls have melted or eroded away, with much cut
building stone carried off even in New Kingdom
times, but nonetheless many ground plans have been
recovered. Excavations conducted from the late nineteenth century until 1936, and again since 1977, have
revealed much about this city, especially about its
overall layout, its city center with palaces and temples, and its suburban houses. Additional evidence for
the appearance of the city comes from pictures that
decorated tombs.
The city proper lay on the east bank of the Nile, its
various sectors linked by a northsouth road (the Royal
Road) c. 8 km long. The territory of the city was much
larger, however (an area measuring 16
13 km2,
marked by 14 inscribed boundary stelai), that extended across the river to the western desert and included farmlands and small villages. The city was not
walled. Desert cliffs to the east were used for rock-cut
tombs, including, in a remote valley, that of Akhenaten
himself. The population of Akhetaten has been estimated at 20 00050 000.
The architecture documents social distinctions.
First, the great social difference between ruler and
ruled is clearly expressed in the contrast between the
grandiose royal palaces and the houses used by everyone else. The king resided in a fortified palace in the
extreme north end of the city, but the city center
contained two additional palaces. The first, the
Great Palace, is a huge complex used for receptions
and ceremonies. Its plan consists of flat-roofed buildings, courts notably a large court lined with colossal
statues of Akhenaten and gardens, and larger columned reception halls. Decorations included wall
paintings with images of the royal family. A covered
bridge across the Royal Road connected the Great
Palace with the Kings House, a smaller palace in
which the king met with officials and dealt with
day-to-day affairs. This building contained the Window of Appearances, from which the king, accompanied by his family, could address the people.
Near the palace was the Great Temple, for worship
of Akhenatens preferred deity, the Aten (life force depicted as a sun disk). Much of this large (730
229 m2)
compound was open to the sun a contrast with the
usual temple residence of Egyptian gods, a small,
dark room. The open area contained several hundred
offering tables. A butchers yard and a large bakery
complex located nearby contributed to the supply of
offerings.
The city center also contained, in fairly symmetrical arrangement, storehouses, police barracks, and
administrative buildings, including the Records

1000 CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE

Office in which the important Amarna Letters were

found, clay tablets recording correspondence with
foreign states in western Asia.
In outlying districts to the north and south of the
city center, excavations of private houses have given a
good idea of the lives of Amarnans of all social levels.
Here overall planning was much looser than in the
city center; Kemp has compared these districts to
collections of villages or neighborhoods, with walled
house compounds randomly arranged, interspersed
with streets and garbage dumps. Houses of both rich
and poor resembled each other in design, differing
mainly in size. The typical house was built on a low
platform inside its walled compound. The focus of the
ground plan was a main hall with an adjacent twostory loggia, both with a higher roofline, held up by
columns, with windows. The main room might contain a low brick platform where the owner and his
wife would sit, a plastered stone washing place for
water jars, and a shrine. Off this main room lay
smaller rooms, bedrooms, toilets and bathrooms
(from which liquid wastes drained into the ground
outside), storage rooms, and stairs up to the flat roof.
Outside the house, the compound would contain a
garden, a well for water, servants quarters, kitchens
(with circular clay ovens for baking bread, open fires
for the rest), storage areas, a shelter for animals, and a
shrine to the Aten. These compounds served as economic centers, collecting food products from lands
leased or owned, either near (in Amarna) or further
away in the owners home region, and for crafts or
manufacturing. An example of this last is the house of
the sculptor Thutmose; in his workshop was found
the well-known painted bust of Queen Nefertiti.
Although Egyptian cities are otherwise poorly
preserved, because of the silt covering brought by
the Nile flood or subsequent rebuilding, our knowledge of the daily life of the ancient Egyptians is highly
detailed. This we owe to Egyptian burial practices
in which tomb decorations and grave offerings reproduce the elements of the deceased persons material
world as faithfully as possible and to the preserving
qualities of the dry climate (and burials were placed in
the desert areas, beyond the fertile farm lands nourished by the annual rising of the Nile). In addition, the
long life of this civilization ensured that these burial
concepts continued to be practiced for over 3000
years, leaving us a wealth of examples to study.
Ur: A Sumerian City

Ur, in southern Iraq, is the best known of the Sumerian

cities, thanks especially to the well published excavations of Leonard Woolley (19221934). Ur is a tell, an
artificial mound consisting of the accumulated remains

of habitation. In the case of Ur, habitation here lasted

c. 4000 years, from the fifth to the mid-first millennium
BC. Since mud brick was the main building material,
the mound rose higher when brick buildings went out
of use and new buildings were erected on top.
The city of Ur was thus constantly renewed over a
long period of time. It was large, too, occupying an
area of c. 60 ha. How, then, does an archaeologist
investigate a city with such a long history?
Even in the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries,
when excavating was faster than it is now, the archaeologist could still only sample such a site. Removing
each habitation layer from such a vast area would
be impossible, even if the layers were neatly deposited
which in reality they never are. One can only excavate
where convenient, such as along the sides, or in
selected areas from the top, to descend and find representative sections of the city at different periods in
its long history. Thus Ur is quite different from Amarna
(a single-period site), Pompeii, and the Athenian agora
(where stone and baked bricks could be reused, and
thus a high mound was not formed), but very typical
of the ancient cities of the Near East.
The buildings excavated at Near Eastern tell sites
do not survive well. If exposed to rain, the mud brick
dissolves; a modern roofed structure is needed for
protection, rarely provided because of high costs
and practical problems. Further, the need to remove
higher levels of habitation in order to sample earlier
periods necessitates destruction of architecture. As a
result, the modern tourist cannot expect to visit the
site and step into an environment that might evoke
the ancient reality a striking contrast with, say,
Pompeii. The ancient Near Eastern city typically
lives on after excavation not in its built environment,
which has quickly disintegrated, but in books, articles, photographs, plans, and any objects that might
have been recovered (clay tablets, seals, pottery, figurines, metal objects, etc.).
Woolleys excavations yielded much information
about Ur, especially about its city walls, religious
center, tombs, and houses. Ur was located on a promontory between an arm of the Euphrates River and a
navigable canal. Although approachable by land only
from the south, the city was encircled by a mud brick
wall, 27 m thick. These walls were built late in Urs
history, in neo-Babylonian times (sixth century BC),
but surely followed the placement and appearance of
earlier walls.
The religious center was dominated by a ziggurat,
built by king Ur-Nammu during the prosperous Ur III
period, c. 21002000 BC. A distinctively Mesopotamian construction, a ziggurat is a stepped pyramid
made of mud brick, a series of platforms one on top
of the other, each smaller than the one below, with a

CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE 1001

temple on top. In the flat landscape of southern

Mesopotamia, it resembled a mountain, and allowed
people to reach up to the gods. Unlike Egyptian pyramids, ziggurats were never tomb buildings.
Residential districts consisted of narrow, winding
streets, the sign of a city developing organically over a
long period of time, not planned at a single moment
(see Settlement Pattern Analysis; Spatial Analysis
Within Households and Sites). Houses were plain
from the outside. Inside, there was a central court,
with rooms around it. Woolley believed they had two
stories, but this has been doubted. Most rooms
opened onto the courtyard. The function of rooms is
rarely certain. As at Pompeii, portable furniture must
have meant that functions were constantly changing.
Burials were made below the floors of the houses, in
tombs of various types, with grave goods.
The most famous tombs are the 16 Royal Tombs
of the Early Dynastic period, c. 26002350 BC, part
of a large cemetery containing some 2000 graves. These
graves consisted of built chambers of brick and/or
stone used for multiple burials. In these tombs found
intact, the deceased were accompanied by wonderful
objects. Striking here was the discovery, on the ramp
leading down to the chamber, of draft animals, the
wheeled vehicles they pulled, and skeletons of soldiers
and female attendants. The greatest number of bodies
was 74. It is assumed these people were killed at the
time of the burial. This practice is unique to Ur in this
period, and not explained in any texts.
Teotihuacan: A Mesoamerican City

Do cities from a completely different tradition differ

radically from the above? The aims of archaeologists
in illuminating ancient daily life in the New World are
certainly the same as in the Old World, and varying
natures of sites and conditions of preservation mean
that certain features are clearer than others.
Mesoamerica differs from the Old World presented
above in that sixteenth century Spaniards were able to
step into a truly different world, into the equivalent
of complex societies of the ancient Mediterranean
and Near East. The huge significance of this was
not immediately apparent. Some descriptions were
written Bernal Dazs eyewitness account of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, is classic but few felt
the need to record in any systematic way the built
environment and behavior throughout the region.
Certain ancient Mesoamerican peoples did have
writing. Recent advances in understanding Mayan
texts (by far the most copious) have revealed much
about local dynastic histories, but other aspects of
commoner Maya daily life that we might wish to
learn about were not recorded. Archaeology, then,
remains our best source of information about

Mesoamerican daily life (see Americas, Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya; Postclassic
Cultures of Mesoamerica).
Cities appeared in the mid-first millennium BC, in
the highland areas of the valleys of Mexico and
Oaxaca. But like the long development of southwest
Asian settlements during the Neolithic period, Mesoamerican cities emerged from earlier traditions, from
villages, ceremonial centers, and towns found in many
regions. In the Maya lowlands, urbanism began
slightly later, in the late first millennium BC.
As an illustration of an ancient Mesoamerican city,
let us examine Teotihuacan, in the Valley of Mexico.
Teotihuacan flourished especially c. AD 150600,
thanks to its religious importance, its commercial
exploitation of obsidian, its favorable position on
trade routes, and agricultural prosperity in the region
it dominated. The city displays a grand public built
environment. It was laid out on a vast scale, as the
intensive Teotihuacan Mapping Project has shown.
Interestingly, the city was not walled; it is thought
that its huge population and lack of nearby rivals
assured its security. Two long avenues, crossing at
right angles in the center, divide the city into four
quadrants a basic planning frame, off which other
structures were placed in a loose grid system. The
major northsouth avenue, the Avenue of the Dead,
is 5 km long; the major eastwest street measures
2 km to the west of the crossing point, 6 km to the
east. Considering that wheeled vehicles and pack animals were not used in ancient Mesoamerica, these are
considerable distances to cover on foot. The citys
area has been measured as 20 km2, its population at
its height (by AD 600) estimated at over 100 000.
With only one exception, it was by far the largest of
all pre-Columbian New World cities; only Aztec
Tenochtitlan would be more populous.
The Avenue of the Dead served as a sacred way,
with three large structures on it. The Moon Pyramid
marks the north end. The large Ciudadela (citadel),
perhaps the administrative center of the city, with,
inside it, a Temple of Quetzalcoatl in stepped pyramid
form, is located at the crossing of the two major
avenues; across the street to the west lies the Great
Compound, possibly the central market area. The
immense Sun Pyramid stands halfway between these
two. Echoes of the natural world show how the inhabitants connected their built environment with
natural forms. The Moon Pyramid reflects the mountain behind it. The Sun Pyramid shelters in its depths
a cave (caves, like mountains, had symbolic importance in ancient Mesoamerica), used as a shrine. The
pyramid temple of Quetzalcoatl is decorated with
sculpted feathered serpent heads and goggled heads
(fire serpents?), accompanied by sea shells, perhaps

1002 CITIES, ANCIENT, AND DAILY LIFE

images of the first creation, when serpents battled

in the great ocean. Below this pyramid, remains of
more than 200 individuals have been found, men and
women, carefully positioned sacrificial offerings
unique in Mesoamerica. These features of city plan,
architecture, decoration, and sacrifice indicate the
cosmological importance of this city for ancient
Mesoamericans a significance that would continue
to be honored into Aztec times, long after the citys
collapse. Connections between the built environment
and the cosmos are seen in the Old World, too the
Sumerian ziggurat, the Egyptian pyramid but rarely
with such coordinated grandeur.
The Teotihuacan Mapping Project has discovered
that the city was filled with over 2000 walled residential compounds. These housing units illuminate several
aspects of social life in this city. The compounds varied
in size, but an average example might be 3500 m2,
housing 60100 people, living in apartments grouped
around courtyards furnished with shrines. Access into
the compound was controlled, thanks to a small number of entrances. Residents of a compound must have
had some connection with each other either family,
or the same occupation (obsidian working was much
practiced), or even, in this cosmopolitan city, place of
origin (a compound for Oaxacans has been identified
in the west part of the city, another for Gulf coast/
Maya lowlanders in the east). Typically, each compound had one or two rich burials in it, under the
floor, with grave offerings that might include pottery,
obsidian objects, and textiles.
The compounds show social differences. The larger, richer compounds centrally located close to the
Avenue of the Dead may have housed the ruling
class. Elsewhere, ordinary people lived in compounds
of similar ground plan, but made of cheaper materials, and without decoration (such as wall paintings).
Writing was little used here a surprise, since contacts between Teotihuacan and cities that routinely
used writing (such as Monte Alban and Tikal) are
clear (see Writing Systems). Because of the scarcity
of writing, we might hope that pictorial art might give
some clues about the society, about daily life. Wall
paintings, a frequent decoration in the compounds,
show supernatural beings, especially the goggled
storm god and a goddess. Images stress harmony
and agricultural plenty. Humans, when they occur,

are anonymous, shown in profile, in procession.

Rulers are never shown, neither in the murals nor in
other arts. This absence of ruler portraits and images
of power contrasts with art in Mayan cities, in which
rulers are presented on carved stelai, or at Monte
Alban, with its Danzantes (Dancers) reliefs, images
not of dancers but of enemy dead. In sum, pictorial
art does give information about ideologies in favor at
Teotihuacan, but presents nothing that chronicles
specific people and their accomplishments.
Teotihuacan is not typical of Mesoamerican cities,
but then neither is Monte Alban or Tikal. In any case,
the same themes of daily life that we list for Old
World cities can be applied to the New World as
well with, as always, each site providing certain
types of information, but not others.
See also: Americas, Central: Classic Period of Meso-

america, the Maya; Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica;

Anthropological Archaeology; Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise
of; Europe, South: Greece; Historic Roots of Archaeology; Household Archaeology; Settlement Pattern
Analysis; Spatial Analysis Within Households and
Sites; Urban Archaeology; Volcanism and Archaeology;
Writing Systems.

Further Reading
Camp JM (1986) The Athenian Agora. Excavations in the Heart of
Classical Athens. London and New York: Thames & Hudson.
Camp JM (2001) The Archaeology of Athens. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Gates C (2003) Ancient Cities. London: Routledge.
Grant M (1971) Cities of Vesuvius: Pompeii and Herculaneum.
New York: Macmillan.
Kemp BJ (1989) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization,
pp. 261317. New York: Routledge.
Marcus J (1983) On the nature of the Mesoamerican city. In: Vogt
EZ and Leventhal RM (eds.) Prehistoric Settlement Patterns.
Essays in Honor of Gordon R. Willey, pp. 195242. Albuquerque, NM, and Cambridge, MA: University of New Mexico Press
and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard
University.
Sabloff JA (1989) The Cities of Ancient Mexico. Reconstructing a
Lost World. New York: Thames & Hudson.
Woolley CL (1982) Ur of the Chaldees, revised by Moorey PRS.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Zanker P (1998) Pompeii. Public and Private Life, Schneider DL
(trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1003

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF

Deborah L Nichols, Dartmouth College, Hanover,
NH, USA
R Alan Covey, Southern Methodist University, Dallas,
TX, USA
Kamyar Abdi, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
urbanism The study of cities their economic, political, social
and cultural environment, and the imprint of all these forces on
the built environment.
city A center of population, commerce, and culture; a town of
significant size and importance.
state A regional polity characterized by social stratification and
centralized and specialized administration.

When the archaeologist V. Gordon Childe coined the

term urban revolution, he posed a central question for
archaeology: what is the relationship between
the development of the earliest cities and states? The
emergence of the first cities entailed an historical
and evolutionary transformation in human social relations and the landscapes where these developments
first took place: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley,
China, Mesoamerica, and South America (Figure 1).
The first cities did not necessarily develop gradually; some early centers grew explosively as regional
populations relocated to them. Most early cities
formed in a network of interacting peer polities and

Figure 1 Schematic world map showing regions with early cities.

nowhere was this transformation entirely peaceful

(or entirely coercive). Differences in the size, form,
and organization of early urban centers have
prompted discussion regarding whether there were
early civilizations without cities or whether cities
developed in the absence of states, what the appropriate definition of a city is, and why some early
civilizations were more urban than others. There is a
developmental trajectory in ancient urbanism, with
some state institutions evolving over time that were
not present in the first cities.
Archaeologists have moved away from definitions
based strictly on absolute size and density criteria to
typological approaches that relate variations in form
to the development of social institutions and/or functional approaches that emphasize the role of cities
relative to their hinterlands. It has not proved to be
especially useful to focus on notions of cities as sharply demarcated, autonomous, corporate communities.
Cities were embedded in larger societies and cannot
be understood apart from that wider frame. People in
early civilizations did not always draw as sharp a
distinction between city and countryside often the
important social entity was the political territory controlled by a ruler.
Early cities were centers of population and contrasted with less densely occupied hinterlands. Elites
concentrated in early cities that were centers for the
production and distribution of wealth and political
and ritual activities. All early states had such centers

1004 CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF

where the social transformations of state formation

innovations in forms of governance, social institutions, and ideological programs were materialized.
The form of early cities ranged from the dispersed
centers of the Classic Maya to the compact, walled
cities of Mesopotamia. Early cities of the Old
World usually were walled, a characteristic often
attributed to military tactics, although land values
might have been an influencing factor.
Some archaeologists feel that distinguishing between networks of small states, each comprised of a
capital town/city and hinterland, and large regional/
territorial states explains much variation in early
cities and urbanism. Generally, territorial states
were less urbanized than city-state systems, although
not all small polities were very urbanized. Large
states did not always have very urbanized capitals.
Many archaeologists emphasize economic factors
and the role of markets and merchants in the
growth of large cities and urbanism. Contrary to
early views of preindustrial cities, certain early cities
exhibited considerable economic differentiation and
commercial development. Other researchers focus
on the role of technology, especially transportation
technology, and ecology in accounting for urban size
differences.
Politics and ruralurban relations also shaped the
form and size of early cities. Rulers of large territorial
states frequently moved between multiple capitals
and sometimes shifted locations of capitals. Their
capitals were often dispersed, which archaeologist
Bruce Trigger attributes to the absence of threats of
external attack. The cities of Classic Lowland Maya
kingdoms, however, were dispersed also, despite regular conflicts between them. The absence of a single
urban nucleus might reflect weak central political
authority or multiple hierarchies.
Rulers of large states had to delegate authority to
people outside the capital, thus creating a hierarchy
of administrative centers; in the case of imperial
colonies, urbanism sometimes was imposed. Colonial
centers were not always well integrated with the
countryside and their persistence or collapse was
closely linked with the fortunes of the imperial state.
Some city-states and their urban centers also expanded through conquest to form empires or hegemonic
states, although they often were short-lived.
As political capitals, the earliest cities often symbolized the state or kingdom and stood at its cosmological center. Monumental architecture was a prominent
feature of most early cities because conspicuous consumption was an important strategy of early rulers and
elites. Palaces served as both residences and administrative headquarters. Temples and shrines to deities
and the cosmic forces of the universe towered over the

urban landscape. Where cults of kings developed,

funerary monuments were built in cities to honor
ancestral rulers. Where states emphasized corporate
strategies, depictions of rulers were rare.
Because of the presence of impressive monumental
architecture, often sites of state religious rituals, the
symbolic dimension of early cities has long attracted
attention. Although the notion that the earliest cities
were primarily religious centers is mistaken, how
ideology was incorporated into the urban landscape
as a built environment remains a current topic. Were
cities by-products of technological and sociopolitical
changes or were they created? Rather than viewing
cities as a passive backdrop for expressions of power,
some scholars advocate the view that cities were built
and maintained to legitimize and constitute authority.
In some world regions, cities or sacred precincts in
them were deliberately designed to represent aspects
of cosmology.
Another recent research direction examines the social composition of cities and household and neighborhood organization. Many early city dwellers were
commoners, and in certain regions, such as Mesoamerica, substantial numbers of farmers lived in the
earliest cities for political and defensive reasons.
People of the highest status tended to live in the
central part of cities; however, neighborhoods often
included a mix of high- and low-status households.
Such residential divisions, the physical separation of
administrative, religious, and market centers, and
dispersion of manufacturing areas, seen especially in
city-state centers, reflect the internal divisions of early
states.
A regional perspective directs attention to hinterlands and urbanrural relations. In addition to
supplying food, raw materials, and goods, cities
depended on rural villages for labor and immigrants.
Immigration fueled the rapid growth of the earliest
cities and helped sustain them thereafter. The possibility that crowding, poor sanitation, and inadequate
diets caused mortality rates to exceed fertility rates
has been raised by a few studies but this important
issue warrants more systematic study.
The archaeology of the earliest cities faces particular challenges because later settlement often overlies
the early ruins or they have been destroyed by human
activities or environmental changes. As described
below, there is considerable diversity in the earliest
urban forms that reflects diversity in the organization
of the earliest states themselves.

Sumer
The land of Sumer southern Mesopotamia from
south of Baghdad to the marshlands at the head of

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1005

Figure 2 The southern tip of the Mesopotamian plains with the approximate shore of the Persian Gulf and the location of important sites
mentioned in the text. After Susan Pollock, 1999. Ancient Mesopotamia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, figure 2.1, with some
modifications.

the Persian Gulf has been called the heartland of

cities (Figure 2). Here we find ample evidence for
two major developments in human history: the beginnings of urban life and the formation of the first states.
Many theories on these landmark developments rely
on archaeological data from this region. Although
these theories may debate the causes, mechanisms,
and relationships between urbanism and state formation, they agree that cities and states developed in
the context of a rich agricultural regime dependent
on the fertile alluvial plains created by the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers.
The earliest phases of settled life in Mesopotamia
began farther north and it was not until the early sixth
millennium BC, with the emergence of the Ubaid
culture, that villages and small towns appeared in
Sumer. Archaeological evidence from Ubaid settlements suggests a gradual change toward increasing
socioeconomic complexity. However, as town dwelling in Sumer was undergoing its organic development,

some evidence suggests that the shift to urbanism

involved the introduction of a new form of settlement,
the city-state, that came to characterize Sumer later
in the Early Dynastic period (c. 29002334 BC). Each
city-state consisted of an urban center exercising
control over a hinterland of a 1520 km radius, dotted
with smaller settlements engaged in the production
and collection of foodstuffs. An underlying feature of
each urban center was the Sumerian concept that
each was the dwelling of a particular god or goddess,
the patron deity of the city (and the state) whose
temple formed the citys focal point. Cities and states
emerged from these temple-based settlements, the first
example of which can perhaps be witnessed at Eridu.
Eridu

According to Sumerian literature, Eridu was the first

city to receive kingship from the gods in antediluvial
times. Eridu was the site of e-bazu, the temple of
Enki, the supreme deity of the Sumerian pantheon

1006 CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF

and god of subterranean freshwater. Construction of

a modest mudbrick building at Eridu at the southernmost edge of the alluvial plain during the early Ubaid
period marks an important landmark in human history. This building interpreted as a shrine is superimposed by foundations of 15 increasingly larger
structures, and finally by a ziggurat for Enki built by
kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur some 3500 years
later. The superimposition of the buildings, from the
modest examples of earlier levels to the elaborate
examples of upper levels to the Ziggurat of Enki,
stressed the sanctity of this location.
Little is known about the settlement surrounding
these early shrines, but the largest recorded Ubaid
cemetery was discovered here, with an estimated 8001000 graves showing evidence for social
differentiation.
Uruk

The pattern observed at Eridu may have been repeated at other sites. For example, the city of Uruk was
also founded during the Ubaid period. Beneath the
temple precinct of the goddess Inanna (called Eanna,
house of heaven), deep soundings have reached
buildings that may have been cultic structures similar
to those at Eridu.
At this time, the head of the Persian Gulf was about
80 km northwest of its present location with the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers each forming its own
delta. This turned the area around Uruk into a wellwatered, alluvial, and marshy land that allowed a rich
agricultural regime to flourish.
By the end of the Ubaid period, Uruk was a town
of modest size, but it grew gradually throughout the
following Uruk period (traditionally associated by
archaeologists with state formation), experiencing a
surge from the Middle Uruk to Jemdet Nasr periods
(36002900 BC), and reaching 400 ha by the Early
Dynastic II period (c. 2700 BC). Surveys of the Uruk
countryside suggest that there was a continuous
migration of people into the city, leading to the
abandonment of many smaller settlements. Middle
Uruk period settlement patterns indicate a four-level
administrative hierarchy for the region, interpreted
by archaeologists as a marker of a state system.
Excavated evidence from the city also suggests
state institutions. In the Eanna precinct, a series of
monumental buildings were discovered, but most
date to later phases of the Uruk period. The so-called
Limestone Temple, Stone Building, and Stone Cone
Temple, all with foundations made from limestone
slabs quarried from the Arabian Shelf some 80 km
east of the city, date to the Uruk V period (c. 3600
BC) when, presumably, a state was already in place.

In the next phase (Uruk IV), several other monumental buildings were constructed around the Great
Court, including Buildings AE, Hall of Pillars, Hall
of Round Pillars, and the Subterranean Building
made from riemchen (a kind of small brick with a
square cross section). In the Uruk IV period, the
appearance of the earliest protocuneiform numerical
tablets, apparently used to record economic transactions, is also observed.
In the Late Uruk period, a mudbrick wall was constructed around the city that was rebuilt on a larger
scale in the Early Dynastic I period (c. 2900 BC).
Sumerian texts attribute this undertaking to Gilgamesh, the semi-mythical ruler of Uruk. To archaeologists, the construction of a wall signals the rise of
other competing polities.
By the Early Dynastic II period (c. 27502600 BC),
the land of Sumer was divided among as many as 35
city-states. Some, including Lagash, Umma, Ur, Isin,
Shuruppak, and Adab, played a more important
political or military role. Two lines of evidence indicate the consolidation of states in this time: royal
titles indicating established kingship, and buildings
interpreted as palaces. The most solid evidence
for both comes from the quintessential Sumerian
city, Kish.
Kish

The city of Kish in the northernmost part of Sumer

was also founded during the Ubaid period. Kish
expanded and attained prominence in the Early
Dynastic period, when it was considered to be
where the kingship descended from heaven after the
Great Flood. The prestigious title King of Kish
signified, at least nominally, political hegemony over
the land of Sumer. The authority of the king of Kish
derived from military might as well as a coalition
among several city-states, evidence for which comes
from seal impressions from Ur and Jemdet Nasr.
Excavations at Kish are more limited than at Eridu
or Uruk, but the first example of a Mesopotamian
palace was discovered here in Area A. To the northwest of this palace (in Area P), a large building with
extensive storage facilities and thick buttressed walls
may have been another palace or a heavily fortified
administrative building. Also in the Early Dynastic
period, at least two structures were built at Kish
that have been interpreted as ziggurats, perhaps dedicated to Zababa, the important god of Kish.
With the rise of Sargon of Agade, Sumerian citystates lost their autonomy and were absorbed into the
Akkadian Empire. Some attempts were later made to
revive the city-state form of government, for example,
during the IsinLarsa period (20171763 BC), but the

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1007

nature of Mesopotamian government had already

shifted from city-states to polities oriented toward
inter-regional hegemony.

Egypt

Buto

Merimda

Egypt has been called the civilization without cities.

While the lack of evidence for major urban centers
with domestic residential quarters dating to the earlier part of Egyptian history may partially be due to
heavy sedimentation or later human activities, one
should not ignore the fact that large cities would
hardly have had enough room to flourish in the tight
Nile Valley (Figure 3).
From the beginning of sedentism in the Nile Valley
up to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and the
foundation of the Egyptian state (c. 45003100 BC),
one can distinguish three broad patterns of settlement
development:
Phase 1 TasianBadarian period (c. 45003900
BC). Small, more or less self-sufficient farming
communities were located on the margins of the
floodplain, levees, and the low desert to avoid
annual flooding, but to have easy access to rich
alluvium left behind by the Nile.
Phase 2 Amratian or Naqada I period (c. 3900
3500 BC). Small towns, perhaps centers for craft
activities, involved in regional exchange, were
located along the edge of the floodplain and on the
levees. These towns were usually associated with
cemeteries that began to exhibit signs of social
differentiation.
Phase 3 Gerzean or Nagada II period (c. 3500
3200 BC). Small cities that housed protokingdoms
exercised control over a stretch of the floodplain
and towns and villages within it. The Egyptian
state seems to have emerged in Naqada III or protodynastic period (c. 32003000 BC) within the
context of competition and coalition among three
major protokingdoms in the Upper Egypt: This,
Naqada, and Hierakonpolis.
This

This or Thinis (ancient Abedjo) is actually famous

for its funerary satellite site Abydos. Abydos may
have started out as a burial ground on the outskirts
of the city of This, but a large number of protodynastic burials, not to mention the main burial ground
for the kings of the first and second dynasty, turned
Abydos into the most prominent necropolis in Egypt,
already signifying its later importance as the main
cult center of the god Osiris, the primary god of the
land of the dead.

Memphis
Fayum

Protokingdom of
Upper Egypt

Maadi/
Helwan

THIS
Abydos
NAGADA

HIERAKONPOLIS
Stage 1
Elephantine

Stage 2
Stage 3

Nubia
Qustul
Figure 3 The protokingdoms of Upper Egypt in protodynastic
period, with the location of sites mentioned in the text. After Barry
J. Kemp (1989). Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. London:
Routledge, figure 13.

Naqada

In the protodynastic period, the South Town at

Naqada (ancient Nubt) housed a large mudbrick enclosure, perhaps a royal compound, some 50 m long
and 34 m wide with walls 2 m thick. At the Naqada
cemetery, one can also see increasing evidence for
social differentiation in larger, better constructed,
and more lavishly furnished tombs. One particular
example is Tomb T5, where an individual was found
accompanied with remains of human sacrifice.
Hierakonpolis

The city of Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen), perhaps

the most important protodynastic center in Upper

1008 CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF

Egypt, consists of two zones: the low mound located

in the floodplain where the remains of the town and
the Temple Mound are found, and a group of interrelated sites stretching westward for 2 km into the
Western Desert. Excavations at the Temple Mound
have exposed traces of an early shrine perhaps
dedicated to Horus, the god of Hierakonpolis in
which the famous Main Deposit was discovered,
including some of the most important artifacts
pertaining to the era of state formation, such as the
King Scorpion macehead and the Narmer Palette. To
the north of the Temple Mound, remains of a monumental building have been excavated, featuring a
20 m wide gate built with mudbrick in the distinct
niche-and-buttress style reminiscent of Uruk period
Mesopotamian masonry.
Excavations at the Hierakonpolis cemetery indicate an accelerated process of social differentiation from late predynastic to protodynastic period,
as one can see a marked difference in the size and
contents of the burials. One remarkable burial is
Tomb 100, where the walls are decorated with colorful painting combining Egyptian and Near Eastern
motifs.
As urbanism and political developments were underway in Upper Egypt, a number of cities flourished
in Lower Egypt, most importantly Buto.
Buto

Founded in the mid-fourth millennium BC on a sand

dune about 30 km south of the Mediterranean coast
in marshlands of northwestern delta, Buto soon
became an important town engaged in exchange networks of the eastern Mediterranean, evident in pottery finds from the Levant and Syria and the so-called
clay-cones reminiscent of Uruk Mesopotamia.
By the Naqada II period, people from Upper Egypt
began expanding northward into Lower Egypt. While
this movement may have initially been a peaceful
process to allow people of Upper Egypt more direct
access to the eastern Mediterranean and its resources,
archaeological and iconographic evidence suggests
that the political unification of Upper and Lower
Egypt was achieved through military campaigns
waged by several generations of Upper Egyptian rulers
culminating in a Thinite ruler called Narmer.
According to Manetho, the third century BC high
priest at Heliopolis who composed a history of Egypt,
the legendary first pharaoh of Egypt, Menes (who
may or may not be the same person as Narmer),
founded a city at the juncture of Upper and Lower
Egypt to serve as the capital of the unified kingdom.
This city came to be called inbu-hedj (white walls) in
Egyptian and Memphis in Greek.

Memphis

The ruins of Memphis, about 20 km south of

Cairo, occupy an area of c. 4 km from north to
south and 1.5 km from east to west. Despite sustained
archaeological fieldwork since the nineteenth century,
no settlement remains earlier than the First Intermediate period have been discovered, mostly due to heavy
overburden of later periods. The city of Memphis is
important for a number of monuments, including
the Temple of Ptah that may have begun in Early
Dynastic period, although nothing earlier than Nineteenth Dynasty has been discovered so far. The area
around Memphis is, however, dotted with remains of
Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom times: to the south
is Saqqara where mastabas of the Early Dynastic
officials and the Step Pyramid of Djoser are located,
and to the north Giza where the pyramid complexes of
the Fourth Dynasty pharaohs Khufu, Khafra, and
Menkaura are to be found.
As the capital of Egypt during Early Dynastic and
Old Kingdom times (c. 30002165 BC), Memphis was
the most important political and cultural center in the
land. The temple of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis to
the northeast of Memphis was an important religious
center with strong influence on Old Kingdom royal
ideology, gradually replacing Horus with Ra as the
primary deity associated with the pharaoh. Memphis
also produced one of the more important Egyptian
myths of creation revolving around Ptah. Ateliers
working out of Memphis under the patronage of the
royal court were responsible for creating splendid
works of art and architecture that characterize the
distinct Old Kingdom style, highly regarded and
emulated in later phases of Egyptian history. However,
despite its political and cultural importance, Memphis
was basically a royal city where the court and high
officials resided, while the population continued to live
in small towns and villages along the Nile.
With the decline of the Old Kingdom and disintegration of the central government, Memphis ceased
to be the capital and two other cities laid claim to
power: Herakleopolis in Middle Egypt where the
Ninth and Tenth Dynasties ruled and Thebes in
Upper Egypt where Eleventh and subsequently
Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs embarked on another
series of campaigns to reunify Egypt and establish
the Middle Kingdom.

Indus
The early Indus civilization covered a vast area of
500 000 km2 and extended well beyond the Indus
River basin to parts of Afghanistan in the north and
to Gujarat in the south to the Indo-Gangetic divide in

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1009

Figure 4 Schematic map showing locations of early cities in the Indus Valley and China.

the east and the Makran coast in the west (Figure 4).
The early cities of the Harappan phase of the Indus
Valley Tradition of Pakistan and western India developed by 2600 BC and lasted as late as 1300 BC in
some areas. The region was not politically unified
and the degree of integration of Harappan centers is
debated. At least five centers were large enough to be
considered cities: Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira, Ganweriwala, and Rakhigarhi, each with a hinterland of 100 000150 000 km2. All Indus cities
shared some common features: walled settlements,
urban planning of streets and buildings, sophisticated
drainage systems, a common writing system and system of weights, and similar styles of pottery and other
goods (see Asia, South: Indus Civilization).
The nature of urbanrural integration is not well
understood. Some archaeologists have even questioned
whether early Indus polities were states because of
an absence of monumental religious architecture,
palaces, and depictions of rulers and limited evidence
of warfare. The Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro indicates that ritual bathing has a long religious tradition in the region. The lack of glorification of rulers
is not unique among early civilizations and suggests
a corporate form of rulership. The absence of recognized archaeological evidence of warfare does not

necessarily indicate an absence of warfare, as the

history of research on Classic Maya civilization
demonstrates. The size, complexity, and urban planning of Indus cities are consistent with the state form
of organization.
The Indus script is yet to be deciphered. Recent
archaeological investigations, however, have provided new details of Indus cities and also corrected
misconceptions from their initial discovery in the
1920s.
Harappa

The city of Harappa was first settled around 3300 BC

and expanded to cover at least 150 ha. The urban
population ranged from 40 000 to 80 000 persons,
depending on the time of year. Four mounded areas
were clustered around a central depression that might
have held water. The mounded areas were walled, as
was the entire city, and entered by gateways. Because
of poor preservation, it is difficult to determine the
layout of houses and the function of buildings. Workshops occur along with residences in each of the
mounded areas. Various functions for the walls have
been suggested: defense, flood control, and the
demarcation of sociopolitical boundaries. Workshops

1010 CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF

and multistory residences built of kiln-fired bricks

occur in all the mounded areas, suggesting that the
walls may represent political and/or social divisions,
along with defensive aspects. The city was laid out to
separate public and private areas.
Indus cities had sophisticated water- and wastemanagement systems. Wells for drinking water occurred in and around Harappa. Houses had bathing
areas, latrines, and sewers that connected to larger
drains that emptied beyond the city walls. The fertile
waste water was deposited on agricultural fields
surrounding the city.
Mohenjo-daro

Mohenjo-daro, located on the lower Indus, is the

best-preserved Indus city. It covers 200 ha. The walled
citadel mound includes several large buildings that
might include elite residences, along with the famous
Great Bath. A lower town covering 8 ha is divided by
four major eastwest and northsouth streets that
divide into blocks that are further subdivided by
smaller streets and alleyways. Houses are grouped
around courtyards and included bathrooms and elaborate drainage systems. Workshops where various
types of commodities were produced are distributed
throughout the city.
Dholavira

Dholavira is the most recently discovered Harappan

city. It is located on Kadir Island in the Gulf of Kutch
and was founded as an outpost or colony. The mix
of artifact styles suggests that along with the local
population, Indus Valley elites and artisans lived in
the city. Dholavira had a very different layout than
the better-known cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. The outer city wall enclosed a series of walled
rectangular and square compounds. Residential and
craft areas occurred in the lower or outer town that is
divided by streets running in cardinal directions.
Large structures were present on the acropolis.
Little excavation has been undertaken at either
Rakhigarhi or Ganweriwala, two cities identified
through survey. Much work remains to be done to
understand early Indus cities more thoroughly. The
cities were connected through trade networks. They
imported raw materials and finished goods form
Central Asia and Afghanistan, and carnelian beads
and shell bangles made in Indus cities have been
found in Mesopotamia and Central Asia.
Around 1900 BC, the cities began to lose population, and other defining characteristics of early Indus
civilization such as its system of weights were no
longer practiced. Foreign invasions, natural disasters,

and disruption of trade networks with southwest Asia

used to be the conventional explanations, but archaeologists now favor an interaction of factors that
might have disrupted trade networks and undermined
the power of elites, but the details remain unclear.

China
Chinese urbanism developed out of Neolithic and
Chalcolithic patterns of site layout (Figure 4). Over
several millennia, village sites began to exhibit
specialized architecture, distinguishable residential
clusters, and the construction of defensive ditches.
By Longshan times (c. 26002000 BC), square or
rectangular precincts with nucleated populations
were enclosed by walls of rammed earth (hangtu),
which are thought to have housed and protected an
emerging elite. Walled sites from the Longshan period include Wangchenggang, Dantu, Bianxianwang,
Pingliangtai, Shijiahe-Tucheng, and Laohushan. The
walls of these sites enclose a modest area (generally
less than 10 ha), and although residential areas are
known outside of the walls, it is probably inaccurate
to consider such sites to be the urban capitals of early
states. (In comparison, the average city size for Eastern
Zhou capitals (770221 BC) has been estimated to be
about 16 km2.) Recent archaeological surveys indicate
the establishment of multitier settlement hierarchies
during Longshan times, with some very large sites
developing. Despite large settlement sizes, clear archaeological indications of centralized states do not
appear to be present during the third millennium BC.
Longshan period developments culminated in the
emergence of a suite of new artifactual and architectural forms known as the Erlitou culture (that many
researchers using texts link to the Xia Dynasty).
Erlitou is a sizeable settlement that has foundations
of what is interpreted as a palace, as well as several
craft workshops. Although no wall has been found at
this site, rammed-earth foundations have been identified, the largest of which were surrounded by an
enclosure wall and held large halls in which rituals
were conducted. In its later phases, the Erlitou site is
thought to have developed into the urban capital of a
centralized state.
Zhengzhou

Clear archaeological and textual evidence for urban

settlements with populations numbering at least in
the thousands is more readily available from the midsecond millennium BC. Shang period sites of the
Central Plain (Zhongyuan region) in North China.
The Middle Shang (c. 1600 BC) city of Zhengzhou
consists of a walled area surrounded by areas of craft

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1011

production, and is thought to have been the capital of a

Shang state. The walled sector of the city enclosed an
area of nearly 3 km2, within which are a number of
rammed-earth platforms that may have held elite residences. While the walled part of the city is considered
to have housed an elite population, craft production
areas have been identified outside the walls, including
bronze smelting, bone ornament and tool production,
and pottery production. Cemeteries are also found
outside the walled city.
A number of smaller cities appear to have developed around the same time as Zhengzhou, including
Panlongcheng and Shixianggou. The latter site has
a walled precinct laid out with wide avenues and
has a large palace enclosure that occupies about 4 ha.
Anyang

The later Shang capitals at Anyang and Shangqiu are

better known archaeologically. Anyang is thought to
have been the sixth and final capital of the Shang
dynasty. By around 1200 BC, the city comprised a
metropolitan area of some 15 km2, consisting of multiple occupation clusters spread along a 6 km stretch
of the Yellow River. Anyang was not merely a conglomeration of villages large-scale residential foundations thought to be palaces have been found at
Xiaotun, and tombs of a scale indicative of royal
burial are present at Xibeigang, where a large number of inscribed oracle bones attest to a qualitative
change in social organization. Three clusters of
hangtu foundations have been identified at Xiaotun,
a total of 53 individual foundations of which the
largest is 2800 m2. Storage pits containing the remains
of grain, bronze weapons, oracle bones, and fine
pottery have been identified around the palatial foundations. Craft workshops and commoner residences
are also present, indicating that bronze casting and
jade, shell, bone, and stone working were conducted
in the area around the palaces. The Xiaotun sector
is thought to be the administrative-ceremonial core
of Anyang, administering a web of surrounding
settlement clusters.
One of the outlying sites that constitute the Anyang
urban web is Xibeigang, where 13 monumental
tombs have been excavated. All of these consist of a
primary pit accessed by ramps that share the same
orientation and have evidence of extensive sacrificial
burials (including humans, dogs, horses, and other
animals) associated with the burials of prominent individuals. Although these have been extensively looted,
the Fu Hao tomb excavated at Xiaotun offers us a sense
of the wealth of grave goods placed with prominent
individuals. This tomb belonged to a wife of the ruler
Wu Ting and contained 16 human sacrificial victims,

six dogs, 7000 cowrie shells, and more than 1600 other
items (bronzes, jades, oracle bones, stone objects, ivory
carvings, pottery, and shell objects).
More research is needed to clarify patterns of
urban development in China, but it is clear that cities
with populations exceeding 100 000 had developed
by Eastern Zhou times (771221 BC), when urban
settlements exhibit a more nucleated character and
a more consistent layout. By this time, the urban
form included a walled inner city (wangcheng) that
contained a palace, an outer city (guo), and a surrounding hinterland of suburbs (jiao) and farming
hamlets (yie). Zhou cities were commercial centers
with thriving craft industries and well-developed
administrative hierarchies.
It is undeniable that these cities developed out of
millennia-long traditions of settlement organization.
Longshan social development saw the appearance of
walled compounds of a few hectares, possibly areas
of elite residence and craft production that were surrounded by commoner settlement. By the mid-second
millennium BC, Chinas largest sites covered several
square kilometers and had sizeable precincts (sometimes walled) in which monumental architecture,
palatial residences, ritual spaces, and storage facilities
were located. Craft production appears to have become more specialized and was carried out on a larger
scale in workshops outside of the inner city. Farmers
lived in rural communities outside of the cities. It
appears that the inner parts of these early cities were
planned to a degree not seen at the urban periphery,
which grew more organically in a number of linked
settlement clusters.

Mesoamerica
By the early sixteenth century, when the Aztec capital of
Tenochtitlan was among the largest cities in the world,
Mesoamericas urban tradition was over 2000 years old
(Figure 5). Prehispanic cities took different forms and
varied significantly in size. Most archaeologists place
the beginnings of urban life and development of state
organization during the Late or Terminal Formative/
Preclassic with the formation of civilizations in both
the highlands and lowlands.
Teotihuacan

By the end of the Late Formative at 300 BC or slightly

thereafter during the Early Terminal Formative
(300100 BC), two urban regional centers dominated
the Basin of Mexico in the central highlands
Cuicuilco in the southwest and Teotihuacan in the
northeast each head of a state system. About 100
BC, Teotihuacan grew explosively as most of the

1012 CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF

Figure 5 Schematic map of Mesoamerica showing locations of

early cities.

basins population relocated to the city. Volcanic eruptions destroyed Cuicuilco and its immediate hinterlands leaving Teotihuacan as the sole power in the
basin until CE 650/750. It became the most influential
city in Classic period Mesoamerica.
The city expanded to 100 000125 000 people and
covered 20 km2 by CE 300. In prehispanic Mesoamerica, only Tenochtitlan in the early fifteenth century was larger. Following the aggregation of the
basins population at Teotihuacan, its rulers undertook a massive reorganization of the city structured
around a cruciform plan. Monumental buildings
were constructed along a main northsouth artery
(Figure 6). A one-story apartment compound became
the standard residential unit that housed related
families, each with their own apartment.
Although many farmers lived at Teotihuacan, craft
specialization expanded as the city became a major
commercial center. Teotihuacan was a primate city
whose size, military, politicoeconomic, and ideological importance inhibited the development of rival
centers. By the mid-500s, however, the city had
increasing economic and political difficulties in its
hinterlands, and around CE 650 or 750 major temples and other public buildings at Teotihuacan
were burned and figures smashed. The collapse of
Teotihuacan marked the start of the Postclassic citystate systems, and, although greatly reduced in size
and influence, Teotihuacan became an Epiclassic (CE
650950) city-state center.
Monte Alban

In the Valley of Oaxaca in the southern highlands of

Mexico, the city of Monte Alban became the political
and cultural center of the early Zapotec state. Toward

Figure 6 Teotihuacan looking down the Street of the Dead.

the end of the Middle Formative (about 500 BC),

Monte Alban was founded for defensive and ideological reasons atop a cluster of hills in the center of the
valley. To some archaeologists, the establishment of
Monte Alban signals the political unification of the
valley and beginnings of state organization. An alternative interpretation posits that a chief from the
northwest Etla branch of the valley moved his capital
to Monte Alban and subsequently unified the valley
in the Terminal Formative (200 BCCE 300).
Located on the main plaza are the famous Danzantes that date to 350200 BC. This gallery of 300
life-size carved stone monuments depicts slain individuals, probably war captives attesting to the importance of warfare in regional politics and in the
founding and growth of the city. At the end of the
Late Formative or during the Terminal Formative, a
2 km long defensive wall was built on the northern
and western slopes of the city as Monte Alban forcibly extended its control into surrounding regions.
Monte Alban reached its maximum size of 17 000
30 000 people during the Classic period (CE 200700).
Monumental temples and a palace were added to the
main plaza, along with stelae depicting Monte Albans
rulers. In contrast to the broad main avenue of Teotihuacan, the main plaza at Monte Alban was designed
to restrict access.
As the urban population grew, people created terraces on the hillslopes where they built their houses.
Many commoners who lived at Monte Alban were
farmers who traveled down the hill to farm their
fields. Some craft specialists might have resided together in barrios.
Most construction in the main plaza stopped by
c. CE 700, and the citys population shrank. With
Monte Albans decline as a regional political capital, other centers expanded. Small kingdoms, citystates, or cacicazgos, each with a central town or

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1013

city, became the dominant political form in the Postclassic (see Americas, Central: Postclassic Cultures of
Mesoamerica).
Lowland Maya

Rainforests provided the setting for the development

of Maya civilization in southern Mexico, Guatemala,
Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador. During the
Middle Preclassic (900300 BC), large chiefdom centers developed in parts of both the Maya lowlands
and highlands. The Late Preclassic saw the emergence
of the earliest cities in the central lowlands at El
Mirador, Nakbe, Cerros, and Tikal, and the establishment of the essential elements of Maya kingship and
Great Tradition. El Mirador is the largest-known
early city in the lowlands, with two acropoli of temples, palaces, and plazas connected by a causeway
and hundreds of residential platforms scattered
over 16 km2. Toward the end of the Late Preclassic
(300 BCCE 250), El Mirador, Nakbe, and Cerros
were mostly or completely abandoned, perhaps due
to local overpopulation, conflict, and/or eruption of
the Ilopango volcano c. CE 250.
Lowland Maya civilization of the Classic period
(CE 250800) consisted of a network of kingdoms
cross-cut by a broadly shared elite culture. Some
kingdoms grew larger than others through alliances
and conquests but none formed a stable regional/
territorial state.
Maya centers varied from a few thousand to populations in the tens of thousands, reaching c. 60 000
people at Tikal. Maya cities were ritual-regal or courtly centers of royalty and elites. Masonry temples,
palaces, ball courts, and the funerary monuments of
ancestral rulers were arranged around large open plazas (Figure 7). Stone stelae with depictions of rulers,
hieroglyphic writing, and dates proclaimed important
events in the lives of divine kings. Major plaza groups
were separated from each other within a city and
connected by causeways. Cities grew by accretion
with little indication of overall planning.
Scattered between the plaza complexes were household groups of farmers and craft specialists and lesser
nobles. Maya cities were not tightly bounded. Settlement became increasingly dispersed away from the
urban core with gardens and fields between house
clusters.
Beginning in the ninth century, major cities in the
southern lowlands were abandoned, their hinterlands
experienced marked population reductions, and kingship collapsed. Cities in the northern lowlands, however, experienced their apogee during the Terminal
Classic (CE 8001000). One view sees the ninthcentury abandonment as a pan-lowland collapse.

Figure 7 Tikal Temple 1.

Others disagree and point to some centers whose

occupation continued into the Postclassic. Agricultural degradation from over-intensification, intensified
warfare, and elite competition, and a rejection of the
institution and ideology of Maya kingship contributed to the collapse of most southern cities.

Andes
The capitals of late prehispanic Andean empires were
sizeable cities, with populations in the tens of
thousands (Figure 8). Researchers have not reached
a consensus regarding the antiquity of the first
Andean cities and the development of the first centralized state governments. Despite ongoing debate, the
Mochica, Wari, and Tiwanaku can be considered to
have been early states in their respective regions and
provide case studies for exploring urbanism and the
rise of civilization. The capitals of these polities bear
witness to the transformations concomitant with the
establishment of centralized state governments.
Huacas of Moche

The capital of the Mochica state was located at the

mouth of the Moche Valley, at a site comprising the
Huaca del Sol, Huaca de la Luna, and the intervening
valley bottom. This site, which spanned more than

1014 CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF

Figure 9 Urban compounds at Huacas of Moche site.

Figure 8 Schematic map of the Andes showing locations of

early cities.

72 ha and had a population estimated in the thousands,

is known today as Huacas of Moche. The principal
monuments were laid out so as to capitalize on
natural topography while also bounding the area of
urban residential population. A major avenue sets
the Huaca de la Luna and adjoining elite residences
apart from the urban residential area (Figure 9). The
two huacas appear to have been used by elites as
part of the religious and political activities of the
state other ceremonial activities are known to
have been conducted in nearby elite households.
Recent excavations have revealed that the area between the major civic-ceremonial complexes was
densely occupied in the Moche IV period (CE 400
700). Researchers have identified multiple domestic
compounds that are thought to have been the residences of extended family units. Compounds were
enclosed groups of rectangular structures of varying
size and construction quality, which contained
modest open spaces and storage facilities. These
units were separated from each other by narrow
streets (generally less than 2 m wide). Excavations
have revealed that the occupants of these compounds
were generally not a farming population, but were
mostly craft specialists evidence of weaving, ceramic production, shell working, smelting, and the working of lapidary ornaments has been identified, while
farming and fishing tools are virtually absent.
The rise of Mochica civilization included the extension of administrative control or hegemony over a

number of coastal valleys to the north and south of

the Moche Valley. In some areas, local settlement
patterns were disrupted as secondary administrative
sites were established and irrigation systems were
extended. The Mochica capital itself seems to have
grown and been laid out to meet the new needs of
state administration. Monumental building projects
increased dramatically at the capital, with elites
directing the construction of not only the major huacas, but also palatial residences and elaborate tombs.
Specialized craft production also increased at this
time, and major agricultural intensification projects
were completed as well.
Wari and Tiwanaku

The Wari and Tiwanaku polities were the first states

to develop in the central Andean highlands and the
Titicaca Basin, respectively. Both polities are known
to have had urban capitals that developed around the
time of the first territorial expansion outside of their
core regions. Wari and Tiwanaku secondary centers
and provincial outposts were constructed with certain
aspects of an urban template in mind, but the populations of secondary sites appear to have been too
modest to consider them as cities.
Tiwanaku At its maximal extent, Tiwanaku was a
city of 6 km2, with a population estimated in the tens
of thousands. At the center of the city lay a ceremonial precinct that was surrounded by a large artificial
moat. Certain of the citys most important monuments are located within the enclosed area (viz., the
Kalasasaya and Sunken Temple), as are residential
compounds identified as elite and royal palaces. The
inner city at Tiwanaku was renovated after CE 800,
replacing previous residential areas with a smaller
number of compounds occupied by elites with close
ties to state ceremonial activity.

CIVILIZATION AND URBANISM, RISE OF 1015

Outside of the urban core, archaeologists have

excavated domestic compounds interpreted as the
residences of minor state officials. These exhibit a
degree of central planning and take the form of
walled compounds that contained the residences of
extended families. Streets and drains separate these
compounds and provide access through the site. Some
workshops have been identified in the outer part of
the city, but the residences of craft specialists have
been difficult to identify unambiguously. Agricultural
laborers lived mainly in the citys hinterland, near to
the system of raised fields that provided sustenance
for the population of the Tiwanaku heartland.
Huari The Wari state developed in the Ayacucho
region of highland Peru. Its capital (Huari) was established on the site of several previously autonomous
settlements, growing from c. CE 400900 and exhibiting the characteristics of an urban center by the
seventh century. The urban core of Huari was 4 km2
at its maximum extent and contained several monumental religious complexes, areas for public feasts,
storage facilities, and residential compounds. Walled
temple compounds such as the Semisubterranean
Temple and the Vegachayoq Moqo complex were
laid out and separated by narrow streets, and domestic architecture in later phases takes the form of
walled compounds as well. As domestic residential
blocks filled in the open areas between religious complexes, the city grew more crowded, and second-story
architecture was built. Residential compounds were
laid out as walled enclosures in which a series of halls
and smaller rectangular structures were built around
a central patio area. The excavated assemblage in
these compounds has been interpreted as belonging
to mid-level state officials.
The first cities in the Andes grew rapidly, outpacingsimilar growth processes at secondary centers
(e.g., Lukurmata, Conchopata). As capitals of early
states, these cities grew around precincts of monumental religious architecture in which elite residences
have been identified. Open spaces for large-scale
gatherings and feasts were built as part of the major
religious complexes, and more modest plazas are
often found in elite residences. The occupants of
these early cities included the ruling elite, minor state

officials, and artisans whose workshops tended to be

located outside the main religious-administrative areas.
Housing tends to take the form of walled compounds in
which extended family groups resided. Residential
blocks were separated by streets that appear to have
been narrow and opportunistically built, although
there is evidence that the state did lay out major avenues and invested in programs of urban renovation
resulting in better access and urban infrastructure.
See also: Africa, North: Egypt, Pre-Pharaonic; Americas,
Central: Classic Period of Mesoamerica, the Maya;
Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica; Americas, South:
Inca Archaeology; Asia, East: Chinese Civilization; Asia,
South: Indus Civilization; Asia, West: Achaemenian,
Parthian, and Sasanian Persian Civilizations; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Cities, Ancient, and Daily Life;
Classification and Typology.

Further Reading
Cowgill GL (2004) Origins and development of urbanism: Archaeological perspectives. Annual Review of Anthropology 33:
525549.
Feinman G and Marcus J (eds.) (1998) Archaic States. Santa Fe,
New Mexico: SAR Press.
Hansen MH (ed.) (2000) A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State
Cultures. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and
Letters.
Hansen MH (ed.) (2002) A Comparative Study of Six City-State
Cultures. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and
Letters.
Kenoyer JM (1989) Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nichols DL and Charlton TH (eds.) (1997) The Archaeology of
City-States: Cross-Cultural Approaches. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
Sanders WT, Mastache AG, and Cobean RH (2003) El urbanismo
en Mesoamerica. Urbanism in Mesoamerica. Mexico City:
Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia and University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University.
Smith ML (2003) The Social Construction of Ancient Cities.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Storey G (ed.) (2006) Population and Preindustrial Cities. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Trigger B (2003) Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative
Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yoffee N (2005) Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the
Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

1016 CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Linda Ellis, San Francisco State University, San
Francisco, CA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
classical archaeology A field specializing in the study of
Greek and Roman civilizations, their prehistoric antecedents,
and areas of influence.
Mediterranean region The region around and surrounded
by the Mediterranean Sea.
Roman Empire An empire established by Augustus in 27 BC
and divided in AD 395 into the western Roman Empire and the
eastern or Byzantine Empire; at its peak, lands in Europe and
Africa and Asia were ruled by ancient Rome.

Introduction
Classical archaeology encompasses the study of ancient societies of the circum-Mediterranean together
with areas (e.g., Europe, Middle East, North Africa)
colonized by the Roman Empire and the regions
earlier thalassocracies (e.g., Etruscans, Phoenicians,
Greeks). The time span covered by classical archaeology has been predominantly the classical Greek and
Roman civilizations (approximately eighth century
BC to the fifth century AD). However, during the
twentieth century, research has extended both to
the prehistoric periods, especially the Bronze Age
(c. second millennium BC), and to the late/postRoman period of Late Antiquity (c. fourth to seventh
centuries AD).
The density, diversity, and quantity of material
remains of ancient Mediterranean societies are such
that a number of specialized fields emerged early in
the history of the discipline: art historical analysis of
Greek and Roman art and architecture, philological
and epigraphic analysis of Greek and Latin inscriptions, numismatics and the broader study of the imperial economic system, military history and the process
of colonization, underwater archaeology of Bronze
Age and classical period shipwrecks, and applications
of archaeometry for physicochemical analyses of materials (e.g., coins, amphorae, and marble).
The 125 years of archaeological research at the
Roman memorial monument and ancient city of Tropaeum Traiani in SE Romania (see Figure 1) is an
excellent example of the evolution of, and changes
within, the profession of classical archaeology and
illustrates the multidisciplinary nature of the field.
Uncovered in the nineteenth century, and with no

ancient records, the first task was to excavate and identify the disheveled construction and collect the dispersed inscriptions and associated artworks. Through
epigraphic research on inscriptions, the location was
identified as a major battlefield of Emperor Trajans
first war with the local Dacians (1012 AD) and was
associated with the nearby fortified city settled by
Roman veterans. Once 49 of the original 54 metopes
(rectangular sculptural scenes) had been recovered, art
historians debated for a century the order of the
metopes, their enigmatic significance, and the identity
of the sculptor(s). Meanwhile, military historians not
only had a location for a major battle identified, but also
corroborating illustrative data on Roman armor and
weapons. Simultaneously, archaeologists, architects,
and engineers labored to reconstruct the monument,
which was rebuilt in the 1970s, over the Roman
concrete core. For most of the twentieth century,
meticulous excavations have revealed the complicated
500-year architectural history of the city (second to
sixth centuries AD). Since 2002, a regional surveying
and hydroarchaeology program was undertaken to
identify rural satellite settlements and the extensive
aqueduct system needed to support the city.

History of Classical Archaeology

Cyriac of Ancona (13911452) was an Italian merchant who travelled on business throughout the eastern
Mediterranean and, justifiably, he may be considered the first archaeologist. Over the course of
25 years, he meticulously documented and published
Greco-Roman inscriptions, monuments, artwork, and
coins. However, the Renaissance passion of antiquarianism the undisciplined collecting of Greco-Roman
art and antiquities began a plague that persists today.
Beginning in the fifteenth century and continuing for
400 years, Greco-Roman sites and monuments were
seriously plundered: Most architectural and sculptural
remains were found at ground surface and therefore
became easy provender for avaricious popes and
secular elites alike, as well as the ever-growing trade
in antiquities. Many large private collections eventually made their way to museums worldwide. Problems with legal ownership of classical antiquities
and repatriation issues regarding objects collected
during this era still persevere the Parthenon Marbles
in the British Museum (originally detached by Lord
Elgin when Greece was under Ottoman control) is a
cause cele`bre.

CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 1017

Figure 1 Tropaeum Traiani (Trajans Trophy), c. AD 109, near Adamclisi, SE Romania. Photograph: Gil Zilberstein.

It was not until the eighteenth century that more

systematic study of classical antiquity began with the
work of two pioneering German scholars. Johann
Winckelmann (171768) established art history as a
distinct subdiscipline of classical archaeology. In
1764, Winckelmanns History of Ancient Art included the first chronology of Greek and Roman sculpture, a discussion of aesthetics and technique, and the
social background of artistic production. In the nineteenth century, Eduard Gerhard developed the rules
for classical archaeology and systematized its practices as a foundation for a profession, severing it from
the tradition of antiquarianism. In 1850, he published
Archaeological Theses, which provided rules for
archaeological description, tools, and techniques.
Gerhard also first established archaeological pedagogy in higher education at the University of Berlin.
The study of material remains in classical archaeology has also required knowledge of classical literature, especially since archaeologists have at their
disposal one of the most extensive written records
from ancient Greek and Roman authors against
which to test hypotheses or verify identification of
locations, events, and finds. A classical example is
Heinrich Schliemanns (182290) obsession with
Homers Iliad and his excavations of Troy at

Hissarlik in NW Turkey. However, framing archaeological practice within an ancient literary tradition
has limited classical archaeology to mostly placeand event-oriented and descriptive research, rather
than providing explanation for sociocultural processes. Furthermore, the written record is notoriously
exclusionary produced by and for elites and thus
serves as one research tool among many (and not as a
foundation) for archaeological research.
The mid- and late nineteenth century witnessed a
surge of great excavations of ancient cities and religious sites, with classical archaeologists adopting
more professional and systematic approaches to
excavation, documentation, and publication. In
1837, the Greek Archaeological Society was founded,
followed by the establishment (in Athens) of the
French, German, American, and British schools and
institutes for archaeological research in Greece. From
the 1870s to the 1970s, 18 countries established similar national institutes in Rome to coordinate foreign
archaeological research throughout Italy. However,
in the post-World War II (WWII) era, government
and university funding for large-scale excavations at
Greco-Roman sites has become increasingly difficult to obtain, and beginning in the 1960s multidisciplinary regional surveys (e.g., University of Minnesota

1018 CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Expedition in Messenia, Greece) became both economical and productive for settlement system, land
use, and environmental studies.
During the twentieth century, the Bronze Age of the
Aegean region (e.g., Knossos on Crete, Akrotiri on
Thera) attracted significant archaeological research
interest. Island archaeology in general has flourished
throughout the Mediterranean region with major
excavation and surveying programs on Sardinia,
Cyprus, Malta, and others. The boundaries of classical archaeology have been pushed even further
with technological developments that allowed underwater surveying and excavation of shipwrecks and
submerged ancient harbors.
With the development of radiocarbon dating, classical archaeology could establish an absolute chronology and allow accurate dating of any site without
reliance on ancient king-lists, texts, inscriptions, or
coinage. Since the 1960s, the applications of analytical methods from the fields of materials science,
physics, chemistry, biology, and geology to the understanding of cultural, biological, and geological
remains (i.e., archaeometry and archaeological science) have contributed to studies of mining and
manufacturing operations, local and transcontinental
trade and commerce, cultural adaptation to and alteration of the environment, and human health and
pathology, as well as to the determination of authenticity and provenance of museum collections.
In 1993, the first in a series of conferences on the
applications of archaeological and social science theory to classical archaeology was published. In 1- to
3-year intervals ever since, the Theoretical Roman
Archaeology Conference (TRAC) has been held in
the United Kingdom and has brought together a new
generation of scholars working in all geographical
areas of the Roman Empire. While a coherent body
of theory in classical archaeology is yet to be clearly
expressed, these multifarious collections of studies on
the Roman period represent the beginning of a new
direction for the profession.
Of major concern to classical archaeologists today
is the continuing spoliation of Greco-Roman and
prehistoric sites (e.g., the robbery of Etruscan tombs
in rural northern Italy). Salvage archaeology has
increased since 1990s, as a result of modern urbanization and major construction projects like the
Athens subway system, all of which continue to put
archaeological resources at serious risk.

Conclusion
Unfortunately, the profession of classical archaeology
has a reputation for intellectual ossification, due in
part to the architectural focus of many excavations,
reliance on ancient literary texts, and event-oriented
research agendas. Classical archaeology never experienced the revolution (cf. new archaeology) and
reevaluation (cf. postprocessual archaeology) that
the rest of the archaeological profession underwent
over the past 40 years (see Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology). However, this situation
should be seen not as a hindrance, but rather an
opportunity. The application of cultural theory and
the social sciences to the understanding of classical antiquity is wide open for a new generation of
archaeologists to exploit! The Mediterranean region
from 500 BC to 500 AD witnessed one of the most
profound cultural, political, economic, military, and
urban explosions and subsequent implosion
humankind has ever experienced. This phenomenon
still has not been adequately analyzed from a culturaltheoretical point of view and thus provides an
enormous database for future anthropological and
archaeological research. Furthermore, and perhaps
more importantly, does this world of classical antiquity not only mirror but also forecast the outcome
of our own military-industrial complex?
See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The
Levant; Roman Eastern Colonies; Phoenicia; Europe,
South: Greece; Greek Colonies; Rome.

Further Reading
Bruhn J, Croxford B, and Grigoropoulos D (eds.) (2005) TRAC
2004: Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Theoretical Roman
Archaeology Conference. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Dyson SL (1998) Ancient Marbles to American Shores: Classical
Archaeology in the United States. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Medwid LM (2000) The Makers of Classical Archaeology:
A Reference Work. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.
Rapp G and Gifford JA (eds.) (1982) Troy, The Archaeological
Geology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press and the
University of Cincinnati.
Shanks M (1996) Classical Archaeology of Greece: Experiences of
the Discipline. London: Routledge.
Weiss R (1969) The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY 1019

CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY

William Y Adams, University of Kentucky, Lexington,
KY, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
artifact Any object made or modified by a human culture and
often later recovered by some archaeological endeavor.
classification Grouping of ideas and objects into categories
with specific purpose.
periodization Attempt to categorize or divide time into discrete
named blocks.
systematics Science of systematic classification of objects and
the evolutionary relationships among them.
seriation A method in relative dating in which artifacts of
numerous sites, in the same culture, are placed in chronological
order.
typology Classification of things according to their
characteristics.

Introduction
Classification is the most fundamental of interpretive
activities in all the natural sciences, including archaeology. The sheer accumulation of data in time
requires its subdivision into groups, before any other
analytical or interpretive procedures can be undertaken. In archaeology, this has been true in the case
of both artifacts and cultures. As a result, archaeological classification has a long history; in the broadest sense it probably dates back to the beginnings of
archaeology itself.
In the archaeological literature, the terms classification and typology are often used interchangeably.
Properly speaking, however, a typology is just one
particular kind of classification: an ordering of physical or tangible entities into discrete and mutually
exclusive groups. The entities most commonly included in a typology are artifacts above all pottery
and lithic remains but there are also typologies of
houses, graves, and other cultural manifestations.
Classification is a more inclusive term that includes
typologies, but also includes the chronological or
spatial ordering of cultural data: the recognition and
naming of different culture complexes in different
area, and also the division of culture sequences into
successive phases. The article deals separately with
the issues of cultural classification and of artifact
typology, for they have had quite different histories
and involve different methodologies.

Historical Beginnings
The archaeology of today is an outgrowth of what
was earlier called antiquarianism. It is usually said to
have had its beginnings in the Renaissance, when
royal and noble patrons paid for field excavations in
Italy and Greece which they hoped would yield objets
dart for their private collections (see Europe, South:
Greece; Rome).
Every collector developed his or her own system for
displaying the collected antiquities, and most of these
probably involved some kind of primitive, ad hoc
classification, perhaps according to the materials
employed, or artistic similarities, or based on places
of finding.
While the Renaissance was pre-eminently an era
of discovery and collecting, the Enlightenment that
followed was above all an era of systematization.
The dominant concern was to bring order and system
to the mass of materials and facts that had been collected, not only in the natural world but in the social and
political spheres as well. There was a proliferation of
botanical, zoological, and geological classifications,
best exemplified by the famous System of Nature of
Linnaeus. At the same time the moral philosophers,
especially in France and in Scotland, developed logically coherent social and political schemata, including
what came to be known as the three-stage schema of
prehistory involving successive hunting-gathering, pastoral, and agricultural stages in human development.
In the broadest sense, the classificatory methods of
Linnaeus and other naturalists provided a methodological foundation for the later development of artifact classifications, while the three-stage schema of
the moral philosophers was equally basic, at least
conceptually, to the subsequent development of culture classifications. However, the real development of
classification as an essential rather than merely an
incidental feature of archaeology had to wait upon
the beginnings of scientific archaeology, in the middle
of the nineteenth century.

The Beginnings of Culture Classification

European scientific archaeology, including classification, had its beginnings in Scandinavia, a region that
had lain outside the realm both of classical antiquity
and of the prehistoric megalith-builders. Scandinavians
at the outset of the nineteenth century were gripped by

1020 CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY

the same spirit of nationalism that affected nearly all

European peoples, and like many others they had
begun to regard prehistory as an essential part of
their national heritage. Without major architectural
monuments or conspicuous objets dart, however,
they had a much more difficult job to recover that
heritage than had their neighbors in more southerly countries. It was in that context that scientific
archaeology had its beginnings.
As far back as 1776, Scandinavian scholars had
recognized that in their countries there were some
archaeological sites which yielded only stone cutting
tools, others having both stone and copper, and still
others with stone, copper, and iron. In the early nineteenth century, Vedel Simonsen wrote specifically of a
Stone Age, a Copper Age, and an Iron Age as stages in
the prehistory of Scandinavia. It was however Christian Thomsen who first gave wide publicity to what
has come to be called the three-age system, when in
1819 he arranged all of the prehistoric collections
in the newly opened Danish National Museum into
separate Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age assemblages. The three-age system was from the beginning
both a culture classification and a kind of artifact
classification.
By the 1850s, discoveries in England, Ireland, and
Switzerland had convinced at least some scholars that
the scheme had continent-wide validity (see Historic
Roots of Archaeology). A little later it was found to
accord perfectly with the worldwide schemata of cultural evolution proposed by Herbert Spencer, John
Lubbock, Lewis Henry Morgan, and other pioneer
evolutionists, and its acceptance became universal.
Indeed, it remains at the foundation of nearly all
cultural classification systems in Europe and the
Near East, down to the present day.
French prehistorians, working in the middle of the
nineteenth century, made an important addition to
the three-age system when they recognized the existence of two stone ages: an earlier period characterized by the exclusive use of chipped stone tools, and a
later period having also ground and polished tools. In
his Pre-Historic Times, first published in 1865, the
English prehistorian John Lubbock gave to these
phases the formal names by which they are still
known: the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age and the
Neolithic or New Stone Age.
It was also the French prehistorians of the later
nineteenth century who first revealed the great variety
of stone age cultures, and the very long time span that
they had occupied.
The de Mortillet system, originally proposed in
1869, recognized four stages Mousterian, Solutrean,
Aurignacian, and Magdalenian each named after a

type-site in central France where the remains had

first been identified. The de Mortillet scheme underwent continual modification, as new cultural assemblages were identified, and a few old ones dropped.
Nevertheless, the system became an accepted canon
of prehistory for decades, and in many respects it
remains so today.
Part of its appeal lay in the fact that the entire
system was strictly chronological and unilineal, each
stage succeeding the preceding, with no allowance for
concurrent, spatial variation in culture in different
parts of Europe. As such, it was wholly consistent
with the unilinear theories of social evolution that
gained general acceptance in the latter part of the
nineteenth century. In the broadest sense it may be
said that evolutionism, biological and social, provided
the ideological framework within which archaeological classification developed for more than half a
century.
It was recognized from the beginning that the
European Neolithic had been a stage of far shorter
duration than the Palaeolithic, enduring perhaps not
more than a few thousand years. Yet European scholars at the end of the nineteenth century were so
wedded to a unilinear vision of cultural evolution
that they at first tried to fit all of the known varieties
of Neolithic culture into a single developmental
succession, as they had done in the case of the Palaeolithic. However, the Neolithic archaeological record
was far richer and more diverse one than was that
of the Palaeolithic, encompassing not only tool types
but also pottery, houses, and burials. As the full
diversity of these remains came to be recognized,
the effort to fit them all into a strictly evolutionary
and unilinear sequence became insupportable. As
a result, the classification of Neolithic cultures in Europe and the Near East came to be based as much on
the recognition of spatial as on temporal differences.
The great systematizer for the European Neolithic,
as well as for the Bronze and Iron Ages, was yet
another Scandinavian, Oscar Montelius. Through
the detailed study of artifact collections from all
over Europe he worked out a series of regional chronologies, and then went on to suggest an overall
periodization into which they could all be fitted. It
encompassed four stages, designated as IIV, for the
Neolithic, and five stages (IV) for the Bronze Age.
Other scholars, working at about the same time, subdivided the prehistoric Iron Age into two phases. The
new schemes substituted diagnostic assemblages for
individual diagnostic tool types as the basis for definition of cultures and culture periods. This approach
to culture classification was called by Montelius the
typological method.

CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY 1021

The Montelius chronology of roman-numbered

Neolithic and Bronze Age stages is still occasionally
employed by European prehistorians, insofar as it
provides a handy set of typologicalchronological
pigeonholes into which particular cultures can be
placed. However, modified versions of the scheme
have a much more basic role in the classification of
Aegean and Near East cultures, where scholars still
routinely assign sites and cultures to the Early,
Middle, or Late Bronze Age, and to numbered
subdivisions thereof.
A new and highly formal methodology for the
development of culture classifications was proposed
in 1968 by David Clarke. In the broadest sense it
represented a refinement of the typological method,
in which artifacts were to be clustered into types,
types into assemblages, and assemblages into cultures,
using highly rigorous criteria of inclusion at each
level. However, this discussion was purely programmatic; the author did not go on to propose an actual
classification based on his system, nor did the Soviet
prehistorians who discussed and debated the methods
of culture classification in rather similar terms during
the same period. The time/space grid of European
prehistory that remains in actual, everyday use
among prehistorians is still very largely an extension
of the ones created initially by Thomsen, de Mortillet,
and Montelius, and is based on their typological
methodology.

Culture Classification in the New World

While the classification of prehistoric cultures in
Europe and the Near East was always overshadowed
by a concern for chronology and a belief in evolutionary progress, these factors were almost wholly
lacking in early North American archaeology. There
was for a long time a general belief that the native
inhabitants had arrived in the Western Hemisphere
only within the last two or three millennia, and that
their cultures had undergone little or no significant
advance during the subsequent interval. At the same
time, however, ethnographers could recognize the
enormous diversity of culture exhibited by presentday Indians in different parts of the hemisphere, and
it was expected, correctly, that the same diversity
would be encountered in the archaeological record.
As a result, culture classifications in the Americas
from the beginning came to emphasize geographical
rather than chronological variation.
If the informing framework for Old World cultural
classification was the theory of social evolution, the
informing framework for New World classification
was the culture-area concept. In simplest terms, this

involves the recognition that cultures in different

regions show a high degree of similarity to one another, but differ from those in neighboring regions, as a
result partly of historical diffusion but mostly of
adaptation to differing environmental resources.
Culture-area theory, unlike early evolutionary theory,
places a heavy emphasis on specialized adaptation. It
is an approach developed initially not from archaeology but from the ethnographic study of living
Indian peoples.
Archaeologists, assuming that the remains they dug
were immediately ancestral to living Indian cultures,
tended for a time to take culture-area theory as a
given. Moreover, their excavations for a long time
failed to uncover any conspicuously stratified sites
or any evidence of genuinely primitive, Palaeolithictype cultures, thus seemingly confirming the general
belief in a recent migration of the Indians from the
Old World. As investigations progressed, however,
two things became apparent: first, that there was
considerable diversity among the prehistoric cultures
even within certain culture areas, and second that
there had indeed been substantial developmental
change in many of the prehistoric cultures. This led,
in the 1920s, to a widespread recognition of the
need for a classification of the prehistoric American
cultures that should be independent of existing
ethnographic classifications.
The first Pecos Conference, held in New Mexico in
1927, marks the beginning of formal classification
in American prehistory. The conferees agreed to divide the prehistoric Pueblo culture (nowadays called
Anasazi) into seven developmental stages, each
marked by distinctive pottery types, house types, and
settlement patterns, as well as certain other cultural
criteria. While this was, strictly speaking, a periodization rather than a classification, it set a pattern of
systematization which was soon widely copied in
other parts of North America. Within a very few
years, several other cultures had been defined and
periodized not only in the Southwest but also in the
Midwest, Northeast, and other areas.
The proliferation of named cultures led, at least in
some quarters, to a perceived need for more formal
systematics. In 1934, Winifred and Harold Gladwin
published a short monograph entitled A Method for
the Designation of Cultures and Their Variation.
Their approach was strictly chronological and culture-historical, and was based on an analogy with
biological classification. The metaphor they used,
however, was that of describing a tree. In the beginning, according to the Gladwin scheme, there were a
few widespread and generalized regional roots. These
in the course of time had given rise to stems, stems

1022 CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY

had subdivided into branches, and branches into

phases.
At nearly the same time, archaeologists in the Middle West were developing a fundamentally different
classificatory system that ignored history altogether,
and was based purely on typological resemblances
between artifacts and artifact groups. Formally designated as the Midwestern taxonomic method, it came
to be known popularly as the McKern system because
it was first described in print by W.C. McKern in
1939, although it had actually been formulated at
a series of archaeological conferences several years
before.
While the Gladwins system was essentially a
splitting system, the Midwestern system was conceived by its authors as a lumping system. It began
at the lowest level by recognizing foci, which were
made up of groups of sites in a localized area, sharing
a very large number of traits in common. Foci were
grouped into aspects, which shared some but not as
many traits in common; aspects were in turn lumped
into phases, and finally phases were grouped into
patterns, representing the highest and most generalized level in the system. The original scheme comprehended only two patterns for the whole eastern
United States: the Woodland and the Mississippian.
The Midwestern system was devised to a considerable
extent for the study and classification of museum and
private collections, most of which were poorly dated,
and for that reason it did not have a specifically
chronological dimension. Phases, aspects, and foci
might be either temporal or geographical variants of
the parent pattern.
The McKern system has been widely, though not
very systematically, employed in many parts of
North America besides the Midwest; however, it has
never been accepted as providing a fully satisfactory overall schema for the classification of North
American prehistory. Like nearly all classificatory
devices, it has been found to work better in some
places and at some periods than at others.
Meanwhile, the discovery of so-called Early Man
(now usually called Palaeo-Indian) remains in the
1930s added a new and unexpected chronological
dimension to American prehistory. Palaeolithic-type
remains were found which must date back at least
several thousand years, and which could not be definitely related to the later Indian cultures. In classifying these early remains, American prehistorians
followed much more closely the model of de Mortillet, rather than the methodology they employed in
dealing with the later cultures. That is, the various
Palaeo-Indian cultures, like Clovis and Folsom,
were treated strictly as chronological subdivisions in

a single linear progression. This approach seems to be

supported both by distributional evidence and by
subsequent radiocarbon dating, but it probably
owes something to the influence of the Old World
Palaeolithic canon as well.
In 1958, G.R. Willey and Philip Phillips proposed
a comprehensive chronological schema for all of the
native cultures of the New World. The prehistoric
cultures were assigned to five developmental stages:
lithic, archaic, formative, classic, and postclassic.
This involved no formal systematics; it was a simple
evolutionary chronology somewhat akin to the European three-age system, though with more attention
to ecological factors. It has proved to be useful for
the evolutionary pigeonholing of specific prehistoric
cultures, but it makes no effort to express historical
relationships among them, as the Gladwin and
McKern systems were intended to do.
The Gladwin and McKern systems remain almost
the only efforts to introduce anything like formal or
rigorous systematics into the classification of New
World cultures, and neither has come into general
use. Insofar as formal methods have been employed,
they have been devoted much more to the differentiation of sequential phases within the same culture
(e.g., Pueblo IIIIIIIVV) than to the differentiation
of spatially distinct cultures. Overall, archaeological
culture classification in the Americas remains mostly
an ad hoc process, guided by no rigorous rules, as it
does also in Europe and Africa.

The Development of Artifact

Classification
Scientific artifact classification developed initially as
an adjunct to culture classification. The early prehistorians, like Thomsen and de Mortillet, were not
really interested in tools and pots as evidence of
activities or of technologies or of thought-patterns,
but only as identifiers of chronological horizons. The
objective in artifact classification was to identify
those types that could be associated specifically with
the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age, and
could help in the allocation of sites to one or another
of those periods. Individual types were of course defined on the basis of formal characteristics, but they
were then grouped together on the basis of chronological contexts rather than on the internal evidence
of form or function.
So long as they were undertaken for purposes
of culture definition and of site attribution, artifact
classifications were dominated by the concept of the
index fossil. That is, primary attention was given to
those artifact types that were found to be diagnostic

CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY 1023

of specific periods. On the other hand, artifact types

that were considered non-diagnostic were often ignored. Thus, for example, Mediterranean archaeologists gave names and definition to a few pottery types,
like Minyan ware, that had a high degree of historical
significance, while a great many other and more ubiquitous pottery wares went unnamed. In the same
way, North American prehistorians developed comprehensive and highly detailed classifications of projectile points, while nothing comparable was done
for more generalized stone tools like scrapers and
choppers.
A long step forward was taken when Montelius
introduced the typological method, in which cultures and chronological horizons were defined on
the basis of total assemblages rather than of a few
diagnostic types. As a result, artifact classifications
became more comprehensive. There was not, however, any attempt to introduce formal systematics in
the classifications.
However, not all nineteenth-century artifact classifications were instrumentalist. A great many museum
collections had been donated by amateurs, with little
or no accompanying provenience information. As a
result, museums often developed purely formalistic
artifact classifications, based on criteria of size,
shape, and color alone. Under this procedure, groups
of similar-appearing artifacts were displayed together,
without any consideration for their times or places
of origin. This tradition persisted in the display of
many kinds of museum materials until well into the
twentieth century.
General A.H. Pitt Rivers, often regarded as the
father of scientific archaeology in Britain, went beyond other museum curators in combining classificatory formalism with evolutionism. So committed was
he to a unilinear evolutionary perspective that he
arranged all of the objects in his vast collection
both ethnographic and archaeological into what
he believed to be developmental sequences, without
any reference to their place of origin. Pitt Rivers
may thus have been the first prehistorian to employ
purely logical seriation, though the technique had
certainly been used earlier by art historians. Combined
with more formal typology, it would later be used by
scholars such as Petrie and Kroeber to develop culture
sequences in areas where direct chronological evidence
was lacking. That is, types were initially defined on
formal grounds, and then were arranged into what
appeared logically to be developmental sequences.
The single most important revolution in artifact
classification came about as a result of the introduction of frequency seriation, in the early decades of
the twentieth century. This procedure grew out of a

recognition that cultures generally change gradually

rather than cladistically. At any given time, some
types of artifacts are always coming into use while
others are going out. After the passage of a generation
or two, all of the same artifact types may still be in use
as at the beginning, but some will have increased
in frequency while others will have decreased. Accordingly, cultures and their various developmental
phases need not always be recognized by diagnostic
artifact types or assemblages; they can also be recognized by diagnostic frequencies of artifacts, even
when there are no individually diagnostic types.
Frequency seriation introduced for the first time
the procedure of quantification in artifact classification, and this involved two important methodological
correlates. First of all, if types were to be treated
quantitatively, classifications had to be fully comprehensive; there had to be a type category for every
sherd or point. Moreover, the categories had to be
mutually exclusive. In other words, the classification
had to be a true typology. Second, the frequency
seriation approach had the effect of partially decoupling artifact classification from culture classification.
That is, types might not necessarily be diagnostic of
any one period or even of any one culture, yet their
relative frequency could help in the definition of
periods and cultures.
The frequency seriation method was originally
developed in the study of pottery distributions, and
it is still much more often applied to pottery than to
other materials. In the 1940s and 1950s, however,
Francois Bordes introduced a similar approach in
the study of lithic materials from French Palaeolithic
sites. The method requires a far more precise and
comprehensive typology of stone tool types than
had previously been attempted. The Bordes method
has proved to be generally effective on its home
ground, and attempts have been made to employ it
also in many other parts of Europe, the Near East,
and Africa. Field workers tried originally to employ
the same actual tool types that had been designated
by Bordes in France, assuming them to be universal in
distribution, but this has not proved to be successful.
The general conclusion now is that the frequency
seriation method itself works well with Palaeolithic
stone tools, but the actual types must be separately
classified for each area.
The partial decoupling of artifact classification
from culture classification had a kind of liberating
effect on the study of artifacts. No longer treated
simply as culture-markers, they could be studied
more nearly as autonomous data, giving evidence of
technologies, of activity patterns, and even of thought
patterns that were not necessarily culture-specific.

1024 CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY

Moreover, many North American prehistorians by

1940 had come to feel that the older, instrumental
artifact classifications had now done their job, insofar
as a series of cultures and culture sequences had now
been devised for nearly the whole continent. It was
time therefore to develop new classifications for new
purposes. The result was a series of self-proclaimed
revolutions in American archaeology, each of which
had an impact, at least theoretically, on the processes
of artifact classification.
Beginning around 1940, it was argued that archaeologists had been splitting hairs over minute differences of pottery temper or of lengthwidth ratio in
arrowheads, because these differences proved to be
useful for the chronological ordering of sites, when
they might have been accidental or meaningless to the
actual makers of the artifacts. There was, as a result, a
certain turning away from the strict formalism that
had characterized the previous generation of classifiers. The basic idea now was that artifact types
should be essentialist rather than instrumentalist;
they should represent mental templates in the minds
of the makers, and should ignore variations and
variables that seemed to be unintentional. However,
there was never complete agreement as to how this
was to be determined. One school, championed by
Alex Krieger and Irving Rouse, argued that the most
sharply demarcated types could be safely assumed to
represent the intent of the makers. Another school,
best represented by Walter Taylor, apparently believed
that prehistoric peoples thought more in functional
than in formal terms, and therefore recommended an
approach to classification based more on the function
than on the form of objects.
The supposed functionalist revolution had not proceeded very far when it was overtaken, in the 1960s,
by the self-proclaimed scientific revolution ushered
in by new archaeology. The new archaeologists
shared with their predecessors the belief that artifact
types should in some sense be real, rather than mere
heuristic constructs of the archaeologist, and there was,
at least for a time, a continued assumption that reality
must reflect the intent of the makers. However,
reality was now to be determined by strictly scientific
and empirical procedures, without recourse to interpretation or context. The touchstone of reality was
replicability. Any type proposed by one archaeologist
should be capable of confirmation by others, using
properly scientific measures. Types, like other scientific
propositions, should be regarded as propositions to be
tested. As a result, there was, necessarily, a renewed
emphasis on formal systematics, exemplified especially
in the work of David Clarke, Robert Dunnell (1971),
and Dwight Read.

The renewed emphasis on formality and rigor led

to an important methodological innovation: the use
of statistics, and the definition of types by attribute
clustering rather than by object clustering. The
archaeologists traditional procedure of partitioning
a body of collected material into types through visual
inspection and the observation of similarities was
now thought to be too intuitive. Instead, a list was
to be made of all the attributes of size, shape, color,
and so on that were exhibited by all the objects in a
collection individually. Types were then to be defined
by clusters of attributes that occurred together with a
frequency greater than chance, as revealed through
the use of accepted statistical measures.
In the beginning, the major difficulty in statistically
based classification lay in the enormous number of
separate calculations that had to be made in order to
determine the randomness or non-randomness of a
nearly infinite number of attribute combinations.
That difficulty was overcome in the 1970s, however,
with the introduction of computers. There followed
a decade of experimentation with computerized systems of classification, which, it was hoped, would
finally achieve the elusive goal of automatic classification. The search for automatic and absolutely
natural classification before long became an end in
itself, rather than a means to an end, and as such it
considerably outlived the new archaeology paradigm
that had given it birth.
It was eventually realized, however, that the goal of
automatic classification was not practically attainable. The coding of more and more variables simply
resulted in the generation of more and more types, far
more than were useful for any practical purpose.
Indeed, the ultimate logical outcome of computerized
classification was a series of classifications in which
every object constituted a separate type. In the end
there was a general, though not universal, acknowledgement that types that were not produced for any
specific purpose were also not useful for any specific
purpose.
The successive changes of direction and of interest
that have taken place since 1940 have given rise far
more to theoretical and programmatic literature than
to actual, in-use classifications. The concern of most
authors has been to propose new methods of classification, rather than to develop actual classifications
based on those methods. Insofar as the new methods
have been put to practical use, it has been almost
entirely at the level of individual assemblages.
There has been, as a result, a proliferation of ad hoc
classifications, each archaeologist developing his or
her own system as a way of dealing with, and publishing, his or her own finds. For the most part, these

CLASSIFICATION AND TYPOLOGY 1025

have not proved to be capable of generative use, and

have not passed into what might be called the public
domain. The archaeological type concepts and typological systems that remain in general, region-wide
use are still very largely those that were developed,
chiefly for the instrumentalist purpose of culture
classification, more than half a century ago.

Other Archaeological Classifications

Although the vast majority of archaeological classifications are concerned either with cultures or with
artifacts, there are classifications also of house and
building types, of burial types, of petroglyph and
pictograph types, and of artistic styles. Some of
these, like some of the artifact classifications, predate the beginnings of scientific archaeology. As far
back as the 1750s, William Stukeley devised a classification of British earth mounds and megalithic
monuments. A generation later, Colt and Cunnington
proposed a fivefold classification of English barrow
types. In North America, Caleb Atwater in 1820 and
Squier and Davis in 1848 proposed classifications of
earth mound types.
The classification of houses and of burials has
always gone hand-in-hand with culture classification,
much as did the classification of artifacts before the
1930s. Indeed the various monument types designated by Stukeley, by Colt and Cunnington, and by
Atwater were initially regarded as the primary diagnostics for the recognition of different cultural periods. Later, house types took their place along with
pottery and projectile points as defining characteristics of the various Neolithic cultures of the Old
World, as well as of prehistoric American cultures.
Burial types on the other hand have played an especially important role in defining the early cultures of
the Nile Valley, where evidence of housing is generally
lacking. In Nubia, at the beginning of the twentieth
century, George A. Reisner recognized and differentiated a whole succession of previously unfamiliar
ancient cultures on the basis of burial types alone.

Theory versus Practice: The Typological

Debate
So long as the basic aim in artifact classification was
to define cultures and sequences, the actual procedures involved in classification were generally
regarded as non-problematical. Artifact types were
accepted or rejected on the grounds of their recognizability and their utility or non-utility for the reconstruction of culture history, and the question of their

objective reality or meaningfulness to their makers did

not arise. Debate often raged over the legitimacy
or the utility of individual types, but it did not
touch upon the general methods or the purposes of
classification itself.
However, the major shifts of interest that occurred
after 1940 gave rise not only to new approaches to
classification, but also to an extensive and often heated dialogue about the nature and the meaning of
classification itself. In one form or another, this discussion persists down to the present day, particularly
in North America, where it has been termed collectively the typological debate. The accumulated body
of theoretical and programmatic literature is enormous, yet it bears surprisingly little relationship to
what goes on in the practical domain, where typologies developed more than half a century ago remain
in general use.
The most fundamental issue that has been debated
concerns the naturalness or artificiality of types.
There is general agreement that artificial (i.e., instrumentalist) types can be created which are useful
for some archaeological purposes; the question is
whether or not there can also be natural (i.e., essentialist) types that have objective existence independent of any purpose of the typologist. The question
in simplest terms is: can types be said to exist independently of purposes?
Both the erstwhile functionalists of the mid-century
era and the new archaeologists of the next generation
attempted to answer this question in the affirmative.
It is evident, however, that the conception of what
constitutes naturalness was quite different for the
two groups. There were, moreover, critics of both
approaches, who continued to insist that types cannot
be wholly separated from the archaeologists cognition, which in turn is shaped by his or her purposes.
It remains true in any case that nearly all of the
artifact types that are in general use today were
developed for avowed culture-historical purposes.
The typological debate, so designated, has been
conducted mainly among North American prehistorians, particularly as regards the use of computers in classification. Since the 1960s there has
also been a somewhat different typological debate
among European prehistorians, emphasizing methods rather than objectives. In the Old World, the
influence of de Mortillet and Montelius remains
strong, and it is still generally taken for granted that
the proper purpose of artifact classifications is to
aid in the development of culture classifications, and
particularly chronologies. Debate therefore has
been largely concerned with the best way of achieving
that purpose.

1026 COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY

Adams and Adams (1991: 278304) have undertaken a review and critique of the typological debate.
They argue that much of it has been misplaced, partly
because it has ignored the question of purpose and
partly because it has failed to grasp the full complexity of type concepts. Types necessarily have material, cognitive, and representational dimensions: the
actual objects, the archaeologists mental perception
of the objects, and the words and pictures that are
used to convey those understandings. The three
dimensions are not wholly interdependent, in that
any one of them can be changed without necessarily
affecting the other two.
The two authors have gone on to assert that just
about everything that has been written about archaeological types is partly true and partly not true, because the types that are actually in regular use are
partly natural and partly artificial, partly essentialist
and partly instrumentalist, partly formal and partly
functional. An infinity of types may be actually present in the material, but the archaeologist inevitably
selects from among them those that are useful for
some purpose, by choosing to emphasize some attributes and ignore others. The authors conclude that the
two ultimate touchstones of artifact types are that
they must be consistently recognizable, and they
must be demonstrably useful for some purpose.

See also: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview; Culture,

Concept and Definitions; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic.

Further Reading
Adams WY and Adams EW (1991) Archaeological Typology
and Practical Reality: A Dialectical Approach to Artifact
Classification and Sorting. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bordes F (1961) Typologie du Paleolithique Ancien et Moyen.
Bordeaux: Imprimeries Delmas.
Dunnell R (1971) Systematics in Prehistory. New York: Free Press.
Klejn LS (1982) Archaeological Typology. BAR International
Series, vol. 152. Oxford: BAR.
Lubbock J (1865) Pre-Historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient
Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages.
London: Williams and Norgate.
Montelius O (1903) Die Typologische Methode: Die alterend
Kulturperioden im Orient und in Europa. Stockholm:
Slebstverlag.
Pitt Rivers AHLF (1874) On the principles of classification
adopted in the arrangement of his anthropological collection,
now exhibited in the Bethnal Green Museum. Journal of
the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 6:
293308.
Rouse ID (1960) The classification of artifacts in archaeology.
American Antiquity 25(3): 313323.
Whallon R and Brown JA (eds.) (1982) Essays on Archaeological
Typology. Evanston: Center for American Archaeology Press.

COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY
Colin Renfrew, McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research, Cambridge, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

speciation The evolutionary formation of new biological

species, usually by the division of a single species into two or
more genetically.
symbol A representational token for a concept or quantity
(artifacts that are allegorical to (but do not directly codify) a
symbolic meaning).

Glossary
brain That part of the central nervous system that is located
within the cranium (skull).
cognition The mental process of knowing, including aspects
such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.
iconography The art of representing or illustrating by means of
pictures, images, or figures.
interpretation A stage in archaeological research design at
which the results of analyses are synthesized and attempts
made to explain their meaning, allowing a reconstruction of
the past.
neuroscience The scientific disciplines concerned with the
development, structure, function, chemistry, pharmacology,
clinical assessments and pathology of the nervous system.
religion A framework of beliefs relating to supernatural or
superhuman beings or forces that transcend the everyday
material world.

Introduction
Cognitive archaeology the study of past ways of
thought as inferred from the material remains has
only recently been investigated in a sustained and
systematic way. Until the explicit investigation of the
basis for knowledge in archaeology the epistemology
associated with the new or processual archaeology
of the 1960s and its aftermath, there were opposing
views. Some archaeologists working upon literate
culture with a rich iconography often regarded the
approach to interpretation as relatively unproblematic
(see Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Image and
Symbol). On the other hand, prehistorians lacking

COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY 1027

any rich graphic imagery often regarded the task as

prohibitively difficult: in the words of Professor
Christopher Hawkes To infer to the religious institutions and spiritual life . . . is the hardest inference
of all.
The theoretical outlook of processual archaeology
brought with it a new optimism (see Processual
Archaeology). In 1968, Lewis Binford quoted with
approval the words of W. H. Sears:
With the proper approach it should be possible to
discover and document a great deal about social
systems and the political and religious organizations for most prehistoric cultures. There must be
limits, kinds of information we cannot reconstruct,
but until we have tried we shall not know what
these limits are.
But in practice during the first two decades of processual archaeology, it was the ecological and the social
factors which were emphasized. There were few
investigations into early symbolism, iconography or
religion. Such initiatives were sometimes dismissed,
for instance, by Binford, as mere palaeopsychology.
This was an era when processual archaeology was
still rather functionalist in nature. It was rather the
interests of the postprocessual or interpretive
archaeologists which emphasized the symbolic, as in
Ian Hodders Symbols in Action, published in 1982.
Others, working in the processual tradition, were
already considering the cognitive dimension: Kent
Flannery and Joyce Marcus, in their work on the
evolution of urban society in early Oaxaca, Mexico,
have consistently argued for what they term a holistic approach, where functional and symbolic aspects
are integrated.
The aspirations of the interpretive archaeologists
sometimes exceeded the outcome, however. The criticism that some of their approaches lacked any coherent method was not definitively answered. Indeed
the argument of some early postprocessual archaeologists that general criteria could not be applied,
and that one persons view was as good as anothers,
led to charges of relativism (see Postprocessual
Archaeology). The allegation was made that in the
interpretationist (or hermeneutic) mode of reasoning anything goes.
In recent years the two approaches have converged
somewhat, with attempts to develop a more systematic
and explicit methodology toward the thought processes underlying human actions. Cognitive-processual
archaeologists working in the tradition of processual archaeology have learnt from the explorations
of interpretive archaeologists in such fields as gender
archaeology, the archaeology of identity, and the use

of symbols. New developments in landscape archaeology, laying emphasis upon how the landscape is perceived and understood, have also favored convergent
approaches.

The Speciation Phase

Most archaeologists now agree that the species, Homo
sapiens sapiens, emerged some 200 000 years ago from
earlier hominid ancestors, almost certainly in Africa.
The date of the out-of-Africa dispersal of the species is
set around 60 000 years ago. These dates establish an
inevitable division in the field of cognitive archaeology.
After the dispersal phase, about 60 000 years ago, we
speak about a human animal very much like ourselves.
The genetic differences are quite small, so that a baby
born then would be very like a baby born today. We
talk about very comparable innate abilities and capacities. But before this time we consider the very emergence of humankind as a species, from the earlier apes.
It is clear that there must have been very significant
cognitive developments over the preceding millions of
years following the appearance in Africa of the more
remote ancestor Australopithecus.
There are many intriguing questions in the cognitive archaeology of the speciation phase, that is to say
of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, associated with
Neanderthal humans, with Homo erectus and with
their predecessors. One of the most interesting and
most hotly debated is the question of the emergence
of language. When did complex language, implying
the ability to distinguish between past, present,
and future, with reasonably sophisticated syntax, in
fact emerge? Some earlier scholars sought to associate
this with tool use, and emphasized the elegant symmetry in some of the flint implements termed handaxes. It was suggested that the use of language would
be helpful in the transmission of the relevant skills
between generations. But others, such as Merlin
Donald, stressed the importance in these earlier hominids of mimesis, of skilled imitation, which would not
necessarily be dependent upon linguistic capacity.
Some archaeologists have sought to associate the
emergence of new tool kits at the outset of the Upper
Palaeolithic of Western Europe with the appearance
there of Homo sapiens. Bone as well as stone tools are
widely found from this time, and human burial, rarely
seen earlier, is more common. Some scientists have
spoken of a creative explosion at this time, seeking
to equate the new behaviors with the emergence of
complex language, of self-consciousness, and indeed
with the appearance of cave art. New research into
the later Stone Age of Africa, at sites such as the
Blombos Cave, has however shown that new behaviors, such as the production of beads and adornments

1028 COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY

and the incision of pattern upon lumps or red ochre,

were developing there as early as 70 000 years ago.
Context is clearly crucial for the cognitive archaeology of the speciation phase of human development.
So the detailed study of living floors has been productive in the beginning of the study of social life, often
around the hearth. The sequence in the production,
the chane operatoire, of stone tools has also been
profitably studied. So we too have questions of procurement: the distance over which humans were willing and able to travel to collect the necessary raw
materials. Some of these, such as obsidian or shell,
were carried over considerable distances. Gradually
such questions as these are being subjected to much
more systematic study, and the cognitive archaeology
of the palaeolithic period is now being constructed
upon sound foundations.

After the Dispersal

Trajectories of development, following the outof-Africa dispersal, are different in different parts
of the world. Speciation is complete: this is now a
tectonic phase, where communities construct the
social worlds in which they live. In many areas the
establishment of settled life marks a turning point,
with the development of many new forms of symbolic
behavior which are represented in the archaeological
record. Symbolic behavior, like the use of language
itself, is essentially a social activity, and the field of
cognitive archaeology can sometimes be seen as the
study of symbolic interactions. Man, or humankind,
was defined by Leslie White as a symboling animal.
It is possible to think here in terms of a series of
categories of symbolic human behavior. Symbols are
used to cope with several aspects of existence, all of
them finding a place in the archaeological record:
1. design, in the sense of coherently structured, purposive, behavior;
2. planning, involving time scheduling and sometimes the production of a schema prior to carrying
out the planned work;
3. measurement, involving devices for measuring,
and units of measure;
4. social relations, with the use of symbols to structure and regulate inter-personal behavior;
5. the supernatural, with the use of symbols to communicate with the other world, and to mediate
between the human and the world beyond; and
6. representation, with the production and use of
depiction or other iconic embodiments of reality.
Each of these represents a different subfield of cognitive archaeology. Of these, the archaeology of religion has been the most intensively studied. Yet for

periods and places with a restricted iconography, the

task can prove to be a difficult one.

Broadening the Mind

Recently, however, archaeologists have become critical of the very notion of symbol, frequently conceived along the lines of the usual definition, where
X (the signifier) represents Y (the thing signified), in
context C. For, while that is a perfectly reasonable
definition of symbol in some ways, it can promote
the old mindbody dualism associated with Cartesian
thinking, with the material symbol seen as the materialization of an abstract, mental concept. But the
notion of the mind as something apart, enclosed within the human brain, is now being called into question.
As Lambros Malafouris has emphasized, following
philosophers such as Andy Clark, the mind is embodied: it cannot work without the body. Indeed, many
skills are exercised through the fingers as much as
among the brain cells. Moreover, mind is in large
measure a social phenomenon. Knowledge is shared
between individuals, and it makes sense to speak here
of the extended mind or even the dispersed mind.
We are now beginning to understand some of the
relevant questions. Developments in neuroscience,
including studies of the brain in action through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), hint that
there is so much yet to learn. The vast differences in
human culture that have emerged along the different
trajectories of development over the past 60 000
years, all predicated upon much the same infant
brain, show that the study of material engagement
between humans and their world is only just beginning. That engagement is a knowledgeable one in
that sense it is cognitive. But it is also material: it
leaves traces in the archaeological record. That is why
cognitive archaeology has a great future.
See also: Engendered Archaeology; Identity and Power;
Image and Symbol; Interpretive Art and Archaeology;
Interpretive Models, Development of; Landscape Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual
Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology.

Further Reading
Clark A (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World
Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DeMarrais E, Gosden C, and Renfrew C (eds.) (2004) Rethinking
Materiality the Engagement of Mind with the Material World.
Cambridge: McDonald Institute.
Donald M (1991) Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the
Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

COLONIAL PRAXIS 1029

Hodder I (1982) Symbols in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malafouris L (2004) The cognitive basis of material engagement:
where brain, body and culture conflate. In: DeMarrais E,
Gosden C, and Renfrew C (eds.) Rethinking Materiality:
The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, pp. 5362.
Cambridge: McDonald Institute.
Marcus J and Flannery KV (1996) Zapotec Civilisation: How
Urban Society Evolved in Mexicos Oaxaca Valley. London:
Thames and Hudson.
Mithen S (1996) The Prehistory of the Mind. London: Thames and
Hudson.
Renfrew C (1994) Towards a cognitive archaeology. In: Renfrew C
and Zubro EBW (eds.) The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive
Archaeology, pp. 312. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Renfrew C (2001) Symbol before concept. In: Hodder I (ed.) Archaeological Theory Today, pp. 122140. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Renfrew C and Scarre C (eds.) (1998) Cognition and Material
Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage. Cambridge:
McDonald Institute.
Renfrew C and Zubrow EBW (eds.) (1994) The Ancient Mind:
Elements of Cognitive Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Renfrew C (2006) Becoming human: the archaeological challenge.
Proceedings of the British Academy 139: 217238.
Searle JR (1995) The Construction of Social Reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin Press.
Thomas J (1996) Time, Culture and Landscape. London: Routledge.
Tilley C (1994) A Phenomenology of Landscape. Oxford: Berg.

COLONIAL PRAXIS
Ross Jamieson, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby,
BC, Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
colonialism The extension of a nations sovereignty over
territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler
colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous
populations are directly ruled or displaced.
gender archaeology A method of studying ancient societies by
closely examining the roles played by men and women in the past
as exhibited through the archaeological record.
material culture The psychological role that all physical
objects in the environment have to people in a particular culture
and the range of manufactured objects (technocomplex) that are
typical within a socioculture and form an essential part of
cultural identity.
patriarchy The cultural expectation that fathers have primary
responsibility for the welfare of families (in ancient cultures, this
included management of household slaves).

regain the purity of the time before colonization. It

has been the goal of much anthropological and
archaeological rumination over the last 40 years to
disentangle us from this trap. Rather than seeking
purity and essentialism in the study of culture(s),
there has been a realization that our fear of the hybrid
is founded more on the colonial origins of our disciplines than on any valid concept of unchanging
cultural entities.
What happens to people during a period of colonial
rule? What happens to their cultures? One way of
exploring this is through the actions of people
involved in the colonial enterprise, whether as colonizer, as colonized, or somewhere in between. A key
concept in this anthropological analysis is that in
colonial situations, practices can be taken from the
homeland or from local cultures, and from these
collisions a uniquely colonial praxis develops.

Praxis: The History of a Concept

Introduction
The forging of anthropology and archaeology in the
colonial crucible has left these disciplines with a certain stain. Anthropologists and archaeologists can be
accused of being trapped in a dichotomy in looking at
colonized peoples. In the first instance these peoples
are seen to represent the tattered remnants of an
idyllic precolonial time, when cultures and ethnicities
were pure and unsullied by colonizing powers. There
is then a corollary that once colonizing powers have
released their hold, newly formed independent
peoples remain in a form of postcolonial loss, rejecting the culture of the colonizers, yet never able to

Praxis (from Greek noun: action) as an analytical

category has very deep roots in western philosophy.
Aristotle saw three basic forms of human activity:
theoria (the act of seeking to understand), poiesis
(action to produce things), and praxis (action with an
end in itself, e.g., politics or ethics). These distinctions
were important to Georg Hegels early nineteenthcentury formulations of dialectical reasoning, and
from there became a key influence on Karl Marx.
Marx rejected Hegels effort to unify practical and
theoretical knowledge. Instead, Marx emphasized
the transformative nature of action, and the privileging of action over theory. The Marxist definition

1030 COLONIAL PRAXIS

of praxis emphasizes the creative actions of human

beings, once they are freed from the everyday labor
needed for survival, and became a key concept for
twentieth-century Marxist theoreticians such as
Antonio Gramsci. The commitment of mid-twentiethcentury Marxist scholars to viewing praxis as a key
element of revolutionary action is very different, however, from the average late twentieth-century anthropologists view of praxis as a term for something
as politically neutral as social action (see Marxist
Archaeology).
It was in the early 1980s that such concerns entered
anthropological discourse. Anthropologists began to
turn away from the dominant schools of cultural
ecology, structural Marxism, and symbolic anthropology. Instead, and perhaps in tandem with the postcolonial movement in literary fields, anthropologists
began to question many of their own analytical
assumptions. This has led to strong interest in ideas
of how individuals in a society use strategy to
manipulate, and live within social boundaries. These
types of concerns can variously be seen as related to
practice and agency, areas where the work of sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens, as
well as the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, have
provided very useful models. Practice theorists envision human actors, as individuals, playing a significant role in their own lives. This is not to deny the role
of social systems, which affect, and even oppress
individual actions. Practice theorists are interested in
this interplay between systems and individuals. There
is an assumption on the part of such theorists that
people neither blindly follow rules and norms, nor do
they have complete freedom to choose their actions.
Instead, rules and norms are created and reinforced
through peoples actions in an endless re-evaluation.
This always involves power relations between different groups in society.

Colonialism
Colonialism, broadly defined, is the presence of foreigners in a region at some distance from their place
of origin, involved in asymmetrical relationships of
domination and exploitation of local populations. In
any situation where one society conquers another,
there is a comprehensive change in relations between
peoples. The conquerors impose a set of norms that
impact almost all areas of the conquered societys
culture, whether it is in economic relations, religion,
gender roles, administration, or class relations. Yet
this imposition is never complete. Attempts to stamp
out precolonial practices and replace them with foreign ideas have a strong tendency to engender new,
and often unintended practices. Individuals in the

system are a key component in creating what can be

termed a colonial praxis.

Pierre Bourdieu
One of the founding theorists of the practice movement had his ideas formed in an anticolonial struggle.
Pierre Bourdieu was the son of a rural French postmaster. Bourdieus academic ability allowed him to
enter the elite Ecole Normal Superior in Paris in the
1950s, where he was a fellow student of Jacques
Derrida and Michel Foucault. He eventually became
Chair of Sociology at the Colle`ge de France, one of
the most prestigious academic appointments in a
country fascinated by intellectuals.
Bourdieus early discomfort with the scholasticism of his intellectual equals in Paris led him to a
form of personal rebellion. Bourdieu avoided doing
his army service as part of the officer corps, as befit
his education, and instead enlisted in the regular
army. He was assigned to clerical work with the
French Army in Algiers at a time when the independence movement in Algeria was a growing force. His
experiences in Algeria led him toward ethnology. He
was passionate about Algeria, a feeling mixed with
guilt about the suffering of its people under French
colonial rule. When he finished his military service he
took up an academic post at the University of Algiers.
From that point forward he began ethnographic
fieldwork with the Kabyle, Berber peoples of coastal
Algeria. The initial years of his Kabyle fieldwork
took place in the midst of the guerilla war between
the French army and the independence forces of the
ALN (National Liberation Army). Many Kabyle were
in French relocation camps at the time that Bourdieu
studied them. His contradictory writings on the
Kabyle reflected their colonial displacement from
their villages, which revealed to Bourdieu the fundamental structures of Kabyle society. His ethnography
was, thus, a direct product of colonialism, and at
times emphasized an idealized and traditional Kabyle
culture, while at other times foregrounding the role of
French colonial rule in their lives.
He returned to academic life in France, and settled
on the role of rural sociologist as giving him the
greatest comfort. Intellectual life in postwar Paris
was dominated by Jean-Paul Sartres existentialist
philosophy. Prominent intellectuals like Sartre and
Frantz Fanon were fascinated by The Algerian Question, and particularly by the role of rural peasants
as a revolutionary vanguard in independence movements. Bourdieu, who had spent considerable time in
Algeria, was hurt by this discussion. Far from seeing
the Kabyle as a revolutionary vanguard, he emphasized the destruction of their way of life by the

COLONIAL PRAXIS 1031

military situation. For Bourdieu human beings were

indeed constrained by a social order, and could not
simply choose the form of their own existence as the
existentialists claimed.
In Paris in the early 1960s Claude Levi-Strauss had
brought anthropology great prestige in intellectual circles. Bourdieu took up structuralism, but his sociological training led him toward looking at the historical
context of the ethnographic present, and at issues of
inequality. He was a lifelong colleague, and admirer,
of Levi-Strauss, but Bourdieu felt that Levi-Strauss
had removed the subject, or the agent, from anthropological enquiry. For Bourdieu the structuralists
overemphasized rules and social stasis, ignoring strategic practices by individuals and groups, which he
saw as the key to understanding social life. As a result
he rejected both structuralisms emphasis on formal
patterns, and existentialisms emphasis on autonomous action. Instead he used his concept of habitus
to describe both the old Kabyle system, based on
honor, kinship, and community solidarity, and the
new colonial system of individualism, markets, and
profit. For Bourdieu, French colonialism had created
a set of destabilizing, jumbled expectations for the
Kabyle, which allowed colonial rule to flourish.
Bourdieu used the term doxa to refer to the unquestioned reality that is perceived by an individual. It is
the way things are. The social scientist understands
that doxa is socially constituted, and not a representation of objective reality, but for social actors doxa
remains as the unquestioned background to their
actions. He coined the term habitus to refer to the
habitual dispositions of people. These give shape to
social conventions. The habitus is built over a lifetime
of experiences, learned unconsciously from the outcome of an individuals previous actions in a particular field. It does not preclude, but in fact enables,
improvization based on past experience. Peoples
daily routines encourage complicity with current social norms, while at the same time new identities can
be built through changes to daily practices. For the
ethnographer, it is important to recognize that conscious answers to questions, and communication with
informants, tends to emphasize explicit cognitive rules
that informants can vocalize. The practical activities
of informants are another field entirely, often outside
the realm of explicit rules, but holding important
information on the habitus of an individual, and on
the implicit doxa of a society.
Bourdieu then turns toward daily practice, and sees
it as strategic. People are able to improvise, and
change their practices, and in doing so they reproduce
society. Radical social and economic change tends
to expose the arbitrariness of a societys doxa, allowing active resistance to what had, previously, been

unquestioned reality. Colonial situations, such as

that of the Kabyle, produce particular challenges. In
situations of colonization, it is very common that
people become aware of challenges to their doxa, an
awareness which destroys the idea of an unquestioned reality, and imposes new forms of reality.
A lifetime of habitus is destroyed when people lose
their way of life, and habitus is changed forever
through colonial practices.
Archaeologists in the English-speaking world who
have taken up Bourdieus ideas have generally done so
through reading his Outline of a Theory of Practice
(1977), which leans toward the more idealized, or
essentialist, side of his ethnography. Many of the
works in which Bourdieu more directly addressed
the history of French colonial interaction with Kabyle
society have not been translated into English, and
have had little exposure in archaeological circles.

The Archaeology of Colonialism

In the Americas the purview of historical archaeology
is the material record dating after the AD 1492 beginnings of the colonial period, and continuing to the
present, through the period of independence of the
New World colonies. From its beginnings in the first
half of the twentieth-century historical archaeologists
in North America have made frequent claims that
they speak for the wretched of the earth; the colonized rather than the colonizers. These claims are
easily justified. Whether they claim explicitly Marxist
theoretical ties or not, historical archaeologists can
often agree that their study of material culture gives
voice to a silent majority of people who are not wellrepresented in the written historical record, and who
can be understood through the material remains they
have left us in the ground (see Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline).
This led historical archaeologists into the anthropological literature on ethnicity and acculturation,
and more recently into more explicitly Marxist ideas
such as James Scotts work on subtle forms of resistance. The issue of individual agency has come to the
forefront in such discussions.
The foregrounding of the concept of human agency
in archaeology in the last 10 years is partly a reaction
to the New Archaeology of the 1960s, and its
emphasis on systems. Archaeologists working from
an agency approach have now taken this in the opposite direction, emphasizing the role of individual choice
in the archaeological record. Several archaeological
examples can be used to illustrate recent attempts to
explore the relationship of people as agents to wider
social structures through the daily activities of people
in colonial situations.

1032 COLONIAL PRAXIS

Roman Sardinia
Rome seized the Mediterranean Island of Sardinia
from the Carthaginians in 238 BC, 3 years after the
end of the First Punic War. It took 11 years for
the Roman garrisons to gain formal control over the
main parts of the island, and uprisings of local people in the interior mountains continued for another
250 years. Most famously, wealthy landowners from
the island sided with Carthage during the Second
Punic War in 215 BC. Roman historians emphasized
the strategic role of Sardinia as a naval base and
supplier of grain, but the local population is never
really addressed in historic sources.
Peter Van Dommelens archaeological work on
the west central part of the island has revealed interesting archaeological evidence of the daily practices
of the Sardinians during the Roman period. It has
long been noted by archaeologists that there are
many Carthaginian, or Punic, elements to the material remains of the early Roman period on the island.
This has been variously framed as the survival of
a debased Punic culture, or evidence of a failed
Romanization of the local culture. Van Dommelen,
however, demonstrates the relevance of an approach
to colonial practice in an archaeological survey of
rural farmsteads. The vast majority of these farms
used ceramics produced locally, in shapes that
reflected the Punic heritage of the inhabitants. Some
also demonstrate neo-Punic forms that show ongoing
contact with the Carthaginians of the North African
coast. One exception is a larger farm, where local
ceramics are mixed with Roman imported wares. In
local burial patterns Punic grave styles and grave
goods continue until 100 BC, when a shift occurs
to Roman-style graves and imported Roman grave
goods. This coincides with a shift in rural utilitarian
ceramics toward more Roman styles.
Van Dommelen is convincing in his belief that this
is not merely the persistence of pre-Roman Punic
cultural practices. The Romans demanded taxes and
rents, but cultural assimilation does not seem to have
been a priority. It would seem, rather, that the landowners of the region remained in contact with the
Carthaginians, and demonstrated through their daily
practices their ongoing sense of being Punic, despite
being part of the Roman system. This was a conservative strategy of maintaining the old ways, and yet
at the same time contributed to a silent resistance to
Roman rule through daily activities on these farms.

Aztec Women
We understand much about Aztec history and life
in the Valley of Mexico from the surviving native

histories, largely oral narratives written down in the

Spanish colonial period, but also illustrated annals
and cartographic histories with considerable native
input. These written sources, however, are exclusively
male in authorship, and usually focus on the Aztec
capital of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). Archaeological
excavations in Mexico City have also revealed the
remains of the Aztec Great Temple, with many sculptural representations of gendered gods. Elizabeth
Brumfiel has studied the Aztec interpretation of gender roles, but instead of through such documents
and core architecture, Brumfiel has studied rural
households in the colonized hinterland, through
archaeological excavation.
Throughout Central Mexico prior to Spanish contact weaving, spinning, and textile production were
seen as gendered female tasks. This was reinforced
through girls being given spindles by the age of four to
begin learning to spin. Cloth was used throughout
Central Mexico for basic protection against the elements, and as an indicator of status, gender, class, and
ethnicity. Within the Aztec imperial system, cloth was
demanded as tribute by administrators of subordinate
groups. Brumfiel has examined the presence of small
spindle whorls, used to spin cotton, in rural households, as an indicator of female production of cotton
cloth. She demonstrates that in areas near the major
cities the production of cotton cloth did not increase
under Aztec control, presumably because food production for sale in urban markets allowed households
to acquire the cloth they needed to give in tribute. In
more peripheral areas, however, spindle whorls do
increase in number in the archaeological record,
demonstrating the increase in cotton tribute cloth by
women in these households. The spindle whorls,
however, are less decorated than they were in previous eras, perhaps thus showing us a decreasing pride,
or identification, of women with the activity of
spinning. This is combined with a related change in
household ceramics. Households near urban areas
began to rely more heavily on griddles to make dry,
portable foods, probably to till distant fields and
participate in urban markets. In more peripheral
areas, however, an emphasis on jars to produce stews
remained constant, even after Aztec conquest, suggesting a continuing reliance on eating meals at home.
The changes that Brumfiel notes in households
colonized by the Aztec can be placed in the terms of
Bourdieus practice theory. The doxa of gender roles
in the region remained unquestioned, in assigning the
task of spinning to women. Yet Aztec colonization
did appear to change the habitus of these women,
with tribute production of cloth somehow devaluing
the previous focus on production for local consumption, and thus perhaps the daily practice of rural

COLONIAL PRAXIS 1033

non-elite women, whose former pride in household

cloth production was compromised by the demands
of a state eager to extract tribute from this preexisting domestic labor arrangement.

Dutch Cape Gable Houses

In the eighteenth century Dutch colonists in the Cape
of Good Hope built houses with a particular style of
gabled architecture, known as Cape Gable. Martin
Hall has shown that these were associated with
wealthy landowners, who focused on large wine and
wheat-growing operations using the labor of enslaved
Africans. Smaller landowners, and those who did not
own slaves, did not build houses with ornate gables.
The documented owners of these gabled houses
were predominantly male, but the Roman Dutch legal
system of partible inheritance meant that females
inherited equal portions of these agricultural properties. Marriage between cousins, transfer of title from
father to son-in-law, and other methods were used to
keep the estates within a set of elite families concerned
about maintaining economic and racial boundaries.
His research showed that although a wide number of
sales of these houses took place throughout the
eighteenth century, they were in fact held by seven
or eight leading family networks. The networks were
often tied to female inheritance patterns, and descent
through female lines. Hall theorizes that the gable
architecture, with its outmoded baroque decoration
of riotous growth and foliage, symbolized female
fertility, the female role in the domestic space, and
their role in maintaining family lines.
Hall has looked toward Pierre Bourdieus formulation of symbolic capital to characterize the use of
Cape Gable architecture by this elite. Although the
inheritance patterns and social systems of this group
were never overtly stated, the houses were a euphemism for a set of class and gender relations which
formed a habitus shared by all elite slave-owning
families. This is important in underscoring that
those on every rung of the social and economic ladder
in a colonial situation build new identities through
the process of daily practices in the colony, including
their definitions of appropriate domestic architecture.

Native Alaskans at Fort Ross

When Tsarist Russia launched the Second Kamchatka
Expedition in 1741, the result was an increased understanding of the maritime geography of Siberia
and Alaska, and an understanding of the wealth of
sea otter and fur seal pelts that could be available
for exploitation in the North Pacific. The resulting
fur boom led, in 1799, to the creation of the

Russian-American Company, a mercantile corporation which controlled this trade until the purchase
of Alaska by the United States in 1867.
Sea otter pelts were sold to the Chinese, in exchange for a wide variety of goods, and the great
wealth to be made led to over-exploitation of the
resource, and the need to reach further and further
south along the Pacific Coast of North America. In
1812 the Company established Fort Ross in what is
now Northern California, and maintained it as a fur
trade post until it was sold to an Anglo-Californian
in 1841. Kent Lightfoot has undertaken long-term
research at this location, focusing on the Native
laborers who lived and worked at the fort.
Fort Ross was a complex mix of cultural influences.
Those in charge of the operation, and those representing the Russian Orthodox Church, came from Russia.
The expert sea mammal hunters were largely Alutiiq
men, brought by the Company from Kodiak Island
in Alaska. Many of the laborers, particularly in providing food to the population, were local Native
Californians, including Kashaya Pomo, Coast Miwok,
and Southern Pomo. These, along with a variety of
creole, or mixed race people, interacted on a daily
basis in the operation of the enterprise, but lived in
spatially segregated areas around the facility.
Lightfoot became fascinated by the Native Alaskan
Neighborhood, where census data show that Alutiiq
Alaskan men were living with Kashaya Pomo women.
This combination of a gendered and ethnic dichotomy provides an interesting case study. A number of
the houses were semi-subterranean, a form familiar
to both Alutiiq and Kashaya. The Alutiiq, however,
disposed of trash in the bottom of the central room of
their houses, covering the floor with grass, and slowly
accumulating trash under their feet. The Kashaya,
on the other hand, carefully swept clean all interior
space, and cleaned exteriors around their houses,
disposing of trash in middens well away from the
houses. This is the pattern found in the Neighborhood,
with clean floors indicating that Kashaya women
maintained Kashaya ideals of cleanliness and order.
In their cooking practices the foods were baked in
tiers of rocks from a hot fire, in underground ovens, a
method typical of the Kashaya and unknown to the
Alutiiq. The foods included many of the terrestrial
animals commonly eaten by the Kashaya, as well as
the sea mammals, sea urchins, and sea birds common
in the Alutiiq diet, including seal flippers, an Alutiiq
delicacy. Added to this was beef and mutton introduced by the Russians. The artifact assemblage shows
no indication of Alutiiq domestic objects, but heavy
representation of debris from Alutiiq bone sea mammal hunting tools, and repair of birdskin parkas and
skin boats that were Alutiiq technology. Chipped and

1034 COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING

groundstone lithics were all from local sources,

reflecting traditional Kashaya lithic use. Fragments
of European ceramic and glass tablewares appear to
have been scavenged from broken vessels, in order to
reuse them as bead blanks and chipped-glass tools.
The spatial arrangement of the houses, in a long
line overlooking the bay, is typically Alutiiq, yet its
location on a terrace near the fort, and not directly on
the waterfront, probably reflects overall control by
the Russian administration of the spatial layout of the
settlement. Lightfoots overall impression of the village is one in which the Kashaya women and Alutiiq
men have accommodated to each others needs in
various ways, with little change toward European
ways of life. The Kashaya women depended heavily
on their kinship ties to inland Kashaya villages,
whereas the Russian colonists provided little to
these families. The Native Alaskan Village at Fort
Ross is thus an excellent example of how colonial
situations bring together unique, and varying, cultural interactions, and how daily practices can create
entirely new identities.

Conclusions
Colonial praxis can be summarized as a concept
which straddles structural considerations of societies,
and the ability of individuals and groups to formulate
and carry out new strategies within the existing structure. This is in some sense a concept with a Marxist
pedigree, and yet it has been adopted much more
broadly by archaeologists, whether they are explicitly
Marxist in their research orientation or not. It is
important to emphasize that although historical
archaeologists have strongly emphasized the aspect
of resistance by colonized peoples, a focus on colonial
praxis tends instead to emphasize the inextricably
intertwined nature of colonizers and colonized, and
the unique historical trajectory that each person, and

each group, contributes in a colonial situation. Pierre

Bourdieus research career, in studying the Algerian
colonial system through ethnography of the Kabyle,
and through the academic lens of his personal relationships to both Claude Levi-Strauss and Jean-Paul
Sartre, can be seen as a key moment in the development of the concept.
See also: Agency; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline;
Marxist Archaeology; Philosophy of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology.

Further Reading
Blackburn S (1994) The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Brumfiel EM (2000) Asking about Aztec Gender: The historical
and archaeological evidence. In: Klein CF (ed.) Gender in
Pre-Hispanic America, pp. 5785. Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks.
Bourdieu P (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu P (2004) Esquisse pour une auto-analyse. Paris: Raisons
dagir.
Gosden C (2004) Archaeology and Colonialism: Cultural Contact
from 5000 BC to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hall M (1995) The architecture of patriarchy: Houses, women and
slaves in the eighteenth-century South African countryside.
Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 79: 6173.
Lightfoot KG, Martinez A, and Schiff AM (1998) Daily practice
and material culture in pluralistic social settings: An archaeological study of culture change and persistence from Fort Ross,
California. American Antiquity 63: 199222.
Lobkowicz N (1967) Theory and Practice: History of a Concept
from Aristotle to Marx. Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press.
Silliman SW (2001) Agency, practical politics and the archaeology
of culture contact. Journal of Social Archaeology 1: 184204.
Van Dommelen P (1998) Punic persistence: Colonialism and cultural
identities in Roman Sardinia. In: Laurence R and Berry J (eds.)
Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire, pp. 2548. London:
Routledge.

COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING

Mark Lake, University College London, London, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
algorithmic model A model specified as a sequence of
procedures that follow one another, where the exact sequence
depends on the outcome of each procedure. Algorithmic models

are often described using flowcharts or language constructs such

as if X then do Y else do Z, where X is some condition and
Y and Z are procedures.
agent-based model A computer simulation model which
implements a set of autonomous agents situated in an artificial
environment. Each agent pursues its own goal(s), typically
adjusting its behavior according to its current state and the
environment in which it finds itself. In archaeological
applications agents usually represent individuals or
households, but they can theoretically represent any

COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING 1035

relevant unit ranging from individual atoms or molecules to
entire nation states.
artificial intelligence (AI) The field concerned with the
construction of machines (i.e., artificial devices) that can reason
and solve problems. Proponents of strong AI seek to reproduce
human intelligence, while those operating under the banner of
weak AI do not believe that this is possible and/or are content to
focus on more narrowly defined problem domains.
artificial life (AL) The field that studies the systems responsible
for the maintenance and evolution of life by attempting to replicate
them, usually, but not exclusively, in a computer simulation.
Proponents of strong AL hold that life is substrate neutral, from
which it follows that the life in an AL simulation could potentially
be as real as biological life, while proponents of the weak position
hold that true life is confined to wet chemistry.
cellular automata In practice, a computer simulation which
iteratively (and synchronously) updates the state of each of a set
of identical cells arranged on a regular grid. Each cell may be in
one of a finite number of states and has an update-rule which
specifies how it should change its state depending on the states of
other cells in its neighborhood.
cognitive architecture In the context of agent-based
modeling, a formal representation of the process by which
an agent reasons. In practice this often amounts to a
representation of how the agent decides what to do in
order to achieve its goal(s). The best-known example is based on
Michael Bratmans beliefdesireintention theory of human
practical reasoning.
dynamical systems model A model specified in terms of one
or more mathematical equations which deterministically predict
how one or more quantities (state variables) change through
time, given their initial values. Many such models are capable of
producing very different behaviors, ranging from monotonic
progression to an equilibrium value (e.g., smooth growth to a
stable population size) to chaotic oscillations (e.g., a population
size that undergoes a never exactly repeated sequence of growth
and decline).
expert system A reasoning system in which a computer
program (the inference engine) attempts to solve a problem by
applying rules stored in a domain specific knowledge base to data
also stored in that knowledge base.
object-oriented programming language A computer
programming language, such as C or Java, that allows data
and operations to be kept together in objects. This approach
has many advantages from a software engineering
perspective, but the principal interest here is that objectoriented programming lends itself particularly well to the
implementation of agent-based models, since agents are readily
created as objects.
sensitivity analysis The process of re-running a computer
simulation model with many different combinations of
parameter values in order to investigate: (1) the range of results
that are possible and (2) which parameters have a significant
effect on the results.
stochastic A stochastic model incorporates one or more
random processes. A stochastic computer simulation model
should be run many times, each with a different seed for the
random number generator, in order to determine the extent to
which the results vary by chance alone. This procedure should be
followed for each combination of parameter values studied.
toolkit A collection of computer program codes, typically
organized as libraries, that provides much of the functionality
required to implement a particular type of computer program.
For example, the Repast simulation toolkit provides most of the
generic features necessary for an agent-based model, thus

allowing the programmer to concentrate on implementing

features specific to the problem at hand.
validation The process of ensuring that a computer simulation
model reflects the salient aspects of the real-world phenomenon
that is being studied. Ideally this is achieved by demonstrating
that the model can reproduce observed outcomes from known
initial conditions, but this is often difficult or impossible in
archaeological applications of simulation. Consequently,
archaeological models are often validated using sensitivity
analysis to demonstrate that model outcomes are theoretically
reasonable for a wide range of parameter values. It is vital that
any archaeological data that one wishes to explain using the
model is not also used for validation.
verification The process of ensuring that the computer
simulation model correctly implements the conceptual
model, in other words, that there are no errors in the
program code.

Introduction
Computer simulation involves the use of a computer to
study the behavior of a model over time. Models are
used to link theoretical ideas with observations, usually
by invoking the operation of one or more processes. For
example, archaeologists recently built a spatially explicit agent-based model to study a quantitative model
of the relationship between annual climatic conditions,
maize yield, and population growth among the Puebloans of Long House Valley, Arizona. Comparison of the
simulated population growth with the estimated actual
population growth revealed interesting deficiencies in
the first version of the model; a revised version
mimics the estimated population growth very well
(Figures 1 and 2).

Purpose
Computer simulation has been used in three main ways:
tactically, for hypothesis building, and heuristically.
Tactical models

Tactical uses of simulation are intended to develop

archaeological method and are not normally simulations of any specific past process. A recent example
used simulation to examine the efficacy of cladistic
(tree-building) methods for discriminating between
reticulated and nonreticulated patterns of evolution.
The researchers simulated the spread of cultural
traits through populations of individuals engaged in
different types of cultural transmission in order to
create test data sets for the cladistic methods they
were examining.
Hypothesis testing models

Simulation has been used to test hypotheses about

what actually happened in the past. This often

1036 COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING

Long House Valley

Unfarmable

Settlements of 5 or fewer households

High water table

Settlements of 620 households

Low water table

Settlements of 21 or more households

Land under cultivation in simulation

AD 1170
Real

Simulated

AD 1270

Figure 1 Comparison of real and simulated settlement distribution from an agent-based computer simulation of Puebloan settlement in
Long House Valley, Arizona. Adapted from Kohler TA, Gummerman GJ, and Reynolds RG (2005) Simulating ancient societies. Scientific
American 293: 79.

proceeds by comparing output from the model with

observed patterns in the archaeological evidence. An
example from the late 1980s simulated the creation
of faunal assemblages by artificial hunter-gatherers
given specific hunting strategies grounded in optimal
foraging theory. By comparing the simulated assemblages with real archaeological assemblages it was
possible to draw some conclusions about variability

in Mesolithic hunter-gatherer strategies in different

areas of northern Europe.
Heuristic models

Heuristic uses of simulation are intended to study the

operation of some process, usually for the purpose of
theory-building. Typically the purpose is not to test

COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING 1037

Diversification of Purpose (Mid- to Late 1970s)

Number of households

240
Real
Simulated
160

80

0
800

900

1000

1100

1200

1300

Year [AD]
Figure 2 Comparison of real and simulated population sizes
from an agent-based computer simulation of Puebloan settlement in Long House Valley, Arizona. Adapted from Kohler TA,
Gummerman GJ, and Reynolds RG (2005) Simulating ancient
societies. Scientific American 293: 79.

what actually did happen in the past, but rather to

establish plausibility what could (or could not)
have happened. For example, a simulation model linking the demand and production of prestige goods has
been built to examine the proposition that elites in
European Bronze Age society could control the value
of goods by removing excess items from circulation
(see Social Inequality, Development of). The simulation demonstrated that nonlinearities resulting from
the time lag between production and consumption
would have made it very difficult, if not impossible,
for elites to maintain the proposed level of control
(Figure 3).

History and Types of Model

The history of computer simulation in archaeology
can be divided into four main periods, in which different types of model have been constructed, sometimes
for different purposes.
The Pioneer Phase (Late 1960s to Early 1970s)

Early simulation models more or less explicitly treated

culture as an adaptive system and their subject matter
ranged from Palaeolithic social systems through huntergatherer subsistence strategies to the colonization of
Polynesia. These models combined the increasing availability of general-purpose computer programming languages with the systemic perspective favored by the
New Archaeology to construct algorithmic or mathematical models of processes involving the flow of
information, energy, or materials (e.g., subsistence
items) through whole societies, possibly in response
to environmental change and often incorporating simple feedback representing, for example, the effect of
population growth (see Processual Archaeology).

During this period, most North American studies

continued to take a systems approach to social organization and culture change, usually in the context of
settlement pattern. Like the pioneer simulations,
these were conducted with the aim of theory-building
or testing specific hypotheses. Elsewhere notably in
Britain archaeologists deployed more narrowly
focused simulation models for tactical purposes, for
example, to assess the reliability of inferring trade
mechanisms from patterns of artifact dispersal.
Pessimism and Inactivity (1980s)

This period of relative inactivity had at least two

causes. One was continuing concern about a lack of
input data, which undermined confidence, particularly
in the use of simulation for hypothesis testing. The
other cause was a growing theoretical dislike of systemic approaches to cultural change, which effectively
rendered simulation (as it was then practiced) less useful for theory-building. Ironically, tactical simulations
that demonstrated the very real problem of equifinality
in attempting to identify quantitative signatures of
past behavior themselves contributed to the change in
theoretical direction the postprocessual interest in the
role of individuals and the meanings of things that
appeared to curtail the utility of simulation.
Renewed Optimism (Late 1980s to Present Day)

In the very late 1980s the use of simulation in archeology entered its current period of renewed optimism.
This can be attributed to two main factors. The most
important is the availability of both conceptual and
methodological tools from the new science of complexity, which has, to some extent, permitted a realignment of quantitative methods with the changing
theoretical climate in archeology. In particular, the
development of the agent perspective in artificial
intelligence and especially artificial life has lead to
the development of a series of agent-based models in
which population-level phenomena (things which
might be observable archaeologically, such as settlement patterns or artifact distributions) arise from
the interaction and/or decision-making of individual
actors. In similar vein, cellular automata provide the
ideal tool for exploring how adherence to simple local
rules can produce often quite complex larger-scale
spatial phenomena. On a slightly different tack, the
mathematics of dynamical systems has lead to the
development of a new generation of systemic models
which, despite being deterministic, can produce unexpected results and even structural changes in long-term
behavior depending on initial conditions and parameter values (Figures 4 and 5). The second most important

1038 COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING

1 Access

2 Accumulation

1
2

3.02
9.98

1
2

2.96
9.38

1
2

2.90
8.78

1
2

2.84
8.18

1
2

2.78
7.58 0.0

2
2
1

2
1

12

1
1
2
2

1
1

7.50

(a)

15.00
Time

22.50

30.0

Accumulation vs Access
9.98

Accumulation

9.38

8.78

8.18

7.58
2.78

2.84

(b)

2.90

2.96

3.02

Access

Figure 3 Output from a dynamical systems model of Bronze Age exchange, showing complex periodicities in the relationship between
the accumulated and circulating wealth. Reproduced from Fig. 12.12 in McGlade J (1997) The limits of social control: coherence and
chaos in a prestige-goods economy. In: van der Leeuw SE & McGlade J (eds.) Time, Process and Structured Transformation in
Archaeology, pp. 298330. London: Routledge.

reason for the renewed optimism about the utility of

simulation is probably the increasing availability of
high-resolution input data, particularly that relating
to past climate change.

Procedure and Implementation

Simulation typically involves eight steps, which operate in feedback as shown in Figure 6:
1. It begins with a set of real-world observations
(e.g., a settlement distribution) and a body of theory.
2. A specific problem is defined (e.g., to what extent was the mode of tenure a principal determinant
of that pattern?).
3. The next step is the construction of a conceptual
model of the process thought to have been at work.
Almost all archaeological interpretation proceeds
through the construction of conceptual models, but
very often they are not explicitly stated. If simulation
is envisaged the conceptual model must be made

explicit. It might initially be specified in natural

language or possibly using flowcharts or other graphical means of depiction, but ultimately, in order to
study a model with a computer, it must be expressed
mathematically, logically, or algorithmically. It may
be that future developments in artificial intelligence
will permit specification in natural language, but that
is not yet possible.
4. The conceptual model must be implemented as
a computer model. It may be possible to implement a
relatively simple model in a spreadsheet. More complex models expressed as systems of equations can be
implemented within general-purpose mathematical
modeling applications, such as MATLAB or Mathematica, or alternatively using a specialist mathematical simulation application such as STELLA. Cellular
automata can also be implemented in MATLAB and
Mathematica, but they are just as likely to be implemented as new applications written using an appropriate computer programming language. Agent-based
models are almost always implemented as new

COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING 1039

Figure 4 The trail of an individual forager in an agent-based simulation designed to explore the effect of increased memory on foraging
strategies. Bar height indicates magnitude of resource extraction; darker colors indicate more recent extraction events. Reproduced from
Costopoulos A (2001) Evaluating the impact of increasing memory on agent behaviour: Adaptive patterns in an agent-based simulation of
subsistence. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 4(4)7<http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/4/4/7.html>.

Figure 5 Output from a cellular automaton showing the effect of a local majority rule in which cells adopt the same strategy as the
majority of their neighbors.

applications written in an object-oriented programming language. Exactly how much new program
code is required will depend on the complexity of
the model and, in particular, whether the entire
model is written from scratch or alternatively builds
on simulation modeling toolkits such as those
provided by SWARM, Repast, or NetLogo. Either
way, few archaeologists have the requisite programming skills and most will need expert assistance.
5. The process of verification ensures that the
computer model is a faithful implementation of the
conceptual model, that is, that there are no programming errors.
6. The next step is to establish the validity of the
conceptual model. The validity of most simulation

models will be judged on whether the modeled process is realistic, not on the realism of the output alone,
since several models might produce output matching
the archaeological evidence. Consequently, validation of archaeological simulations can be difficult;
one option is to perform a sensitivity analysis to
investigate whether the model produces theoretically
reasonable output for a wide range of input values
(e.g., very low to very high rainfall).
7. The final, but by no means least important, step
is to run a series of experiments with the simulation
model in order to learn more about the problem at
hand. The exact experimental strategy will depend
on the purpose of the simulation. Hypothesis-testing
may require that either the input or the process is

1040 COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING

Real world

Theory and
observations

Independent
theory/data

Problem definition

Conceptual model

Computer model

Verification

Validation

Experimentation

decreasing price of computing power (see Paleoanthropology, Computer-Assisted). Recent moves to couple
spatially explicit agent-based models and cellular automata with geographical information systems look
especially promising for archaeological purposes and
are generating considerable excitement. In addition, it
is only a matter of time before archaeological agentbased models incorporate explicit cognitive architectures such as those implemented in recently developed
toolkits like Jason and JessAgent. Given the range of
technologies now available (from simple spreadsheets
through to geographically situated agents who reason
using an expert system) it is likely that simulation will
continue to be used tactically, for hypothesis building
and heuristically. It is equally likely that there will
continue to be healthy debate about the relative merits
of simplification versus realism in archaeological
simulation.
See also: Paleoanthropology, Computer-Assisted;
Processual Archaeology; Social Inequality, Development of.

Output
Figure 6 The process of computer simulation.

varied until the output matches an observed state.

Heuristic use for theory-building is generally less
concerned with obtaining a match with an observed
state and more with understanding the variability in
the model output. Either way, it is important to make
multiple runs of a simulation that includes stochastic
elements in order to explore the variability produced
by chance events.

Outlook
The archaeological application of computer simulation is undoubtedly undergoing something of a reconnaissance, fueled in large part by the development of
new technologies which facilitate the use of simulation to address current theoretical concerns, but also
by the increasing use of simulation in related disciplines such as sociology and, of course, the ever

Further Reading
Costopoulos A (2001) Evaluating the impact of increasing memory
on agent behaviour: Adaptive patterns in an agent-based simulation of subsistence. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social
Simulation, 4: 4.
Gilbert N and Troitzsch KG (1999) Simulation for the Social
Scientist. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Gimblett HR (ed.) (2002) Integrating Geographic Information
Systems and Agent-Based Modeling Techniques for Simulating
Social and Ecological Processes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kohler TA and Gumerman GJ (eds.) (2000) Dynamics in Human
and Primate Societies: Agent Based Modeling of Social and
Spatial Processes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kohler TA, Gummerman GJ, and Reynolds RG (2005) Simulating
ancient societies. Scientific American 293: 7684.
Lake MW (2001) Numerical modelling in archaeology. In:
Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences, pp. 723732. Chichester: John Wiley.
Mithen S and Reed M (2002) Stepping out: A computer simulation
of hominid dispersal from Africa. Journal of Human Evolution
43: 433462.
van der Leeuw SE and McGlade J (eds.) (1997) Time, Process and
Structured Transformation in Archaeology. London: Routledge.

CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS 1041

CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF

MATERIALS
Nancy Odegaard, University of Arizona, Tucson,
AZ, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
acid-free paper Paper-based products that have been made
neutral or basic pH (7 or greater) during production that are used
in archival and museum settings to protect cultural property that
is otherwise sensitive to acids.
accretion An unintended deposit or mass on an object surface
that has accumulated during burial from sources such as
insoluble salts, corrosion products, or decomposition build-up.
agents of deterioration The environmentally related causes of
damage to cultural property including light, temperature,
relative humidity, pollutants, and pests.
block lift An excavation technique by which fragile or unstable
archaeological finds are removed within their soil matrix in order
to provide greater structural support and surface protection.
conservation The careful preservation and protection of
cultural property through research and education while retaining
its integrity including historical significance, context, and
esthetic or visual aspects.
consolidant A low concentration of adhesive polymer in liquid
that is sometimes applied to materials that have lost their own
cohesive qualities.
inert packaging materials Supportive supplies that are lacking
in active properties that would contribute to the deterioration of
cultural property during storage, display, and transport.
silica gel Amorphous silica, resembling coarse white sand,
which is used as a desiccant to dry and dehumidify storage
environments for finds. It can be reactivated by heat.

Just as archaeology is much more than the study of

objects dug up from the ground, conservation is much
more than the cleaning and mending of objects. Archaeological interest in conservation has been longstanding, yet the role conservation plays to help
archaeologists unearth new clues about artifacts is
relatively new. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the processes of conservation
within the various stages of archaeology. The processes of conservation include: examination and analysis,
stabilization design and proposal, treatment application and interpretation, and data and documentation.

Pre-excavation
Prior to excavation it is important to consider the
conservation needs of a particular site and ensure
that adequate funds, facilities, and expertise are available. Planning for conservation in the field involves
asking about:

1. the kinds of material finds that are anticipated;

2. the types of stabilization or treatment methods
that may be needed;
3. the types of supplies, tools, equipment, storage/
packaging materials required to prepare and transport finds from the excavation to the lab; and
4. the storage conditions that will facilitate the longterm preservation of the collections.
Without careful thought to these considerations, disasters may occur when excavators are faced with
unpredictable conditions and materials. The preservation of delicate finds, particularly metals and
organics, is dependent on their physical environment
during burial. The type of soil, the drainage of water,
and the climatic conditions at the excavation site will
strongly influence the structural integrity and surface
appearance of archaeological materials. Understanding the soil also allows for some prediction of the type
of cleaning that would be necessary and will facilitate
further studies.
Favorable preservation environments for organic
materials include the dry conditions of arid deserts
where alkaline soils (pH above 7.0) are more common,
the oxygen-free conditions of waterlogged sites, the
refrigerated and frozen conditions of arctic landscapes,
and situations where generally exclusive and abundant
amounts of salt or metallic minerals surround the artifacts. Under these otherwise hostile conditions, organic
objects or details from them are often preserved.
Poorer preservation environments include saline
soils where seawater is present or in dry environments
where flooding or irrigation has been a common occurrence. Acidic soils (with a pH below 7.0) that are
associated with areas of high rainfall and the incomplete breakdown of organic matter also contribute to
the deterioration of many types of materials (Table 1).

On-site
Conservation refers to the careful preservation and
protection of something. For a conservator that something is cultural heritage, for a conservationist it is
a natural resource. Archaeological excavations are
destructive. As finds are permanently removed from
their context, they are subjected to violent changes
from various agents of deterioration. It is the sudden
exposure to light, the rapid adjustment to a new
temperature and humidity, the loss of support from
soil encapsulation, the introduction of vibration from
a trowel, brush, or pick, the action of poor human

1042 CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS

Table 1 Artifact materials and preservation in various soil conditions
Artifact materials and preservation in various soil conditions
Materials

Acidic

Alkaline

Desert

Waterlogged

Saline

Artic

Gold, silver
Copper, lead, tin, zinc
Iron
Ceramics
Glass
Shell
Bone
Leather, wool
Wood, basketry














Table key: , preservation is likely;
, preservation is unlikely; , preservation may or may not be likely (depending on specific nature of
materials).

handling, and inadequate packing that are the most

destructive aspects of archaeology. Many artifact
materials will shrink as they dry out, crumble as soil
is brushed away, or fade with exposure to light.
On-site, conservation methods can be used to stabilize the soil around a fragile object, maintain artifact dampness, or provide artifact support during the
excavation process. The expertise of an archaeological conservator is particularly useful when cultural
objects are undergoing the transformations or reactions which occur during an excavation. The use of a
block lift may be necessary for materials that are
decomposing or disintegrating due to processes such
as corrosion, soluble salt efflorescence, desiccation,
or erosion.
The most straightforward technique of lifting
involves using a rigid support inserted underneath
the artifact. A thin metal sheet, board, or dustpan
may be used as the support. Objects such as whole
ceramics may be bandaged as they are excavated
though care must be taken to prevent imprinting by
the bands. In the case of vessels, it is important not to
remove soil from the interior.
Another technique involves the use of a rigid framework that is built around a block of soil containing
the fragile artifact. After the object is isolated on a
pedestal, a framework of wood or cardboard is constructed to create a collar that can contain a fill
material such as dirt, polyurethane foam, or plaster.
After the fill material has set or been secured, it forms
a supportive material so that the block may be undercut and lifted.
Sometimes it is necessary to consolidate the surrounding soil that is protecting and supporting a
delicate object. Synthetic consolidants can be used
to create an outer crust on the block and facilitate
lifting. Selection of an appropriate consolidant during
excavation is important because the use of an

inappropriate consolidant may cause the surface of

an object to change or for soils to become fixed to it.
The direct application of consolidants to in situ
objects is rarely necessary. Selection of a suitable
consolidant is based on the artifact material, its condition, the ambient environment, and when further
conservation treatment will occur. Consolidants that
fail to penetrate sufficiently may result in object collapse. Consolidants such as cyclododecane (a waxlike volatile cyclic alkane) that provide temporary
stability for insecure surfaces, but may be easily reversed, offer a better option for certain finds.
Specialized packaging techniques are employed to
minimize the deleterious effects caused by the agents
of deterioration, which include, but are not limited
to, water, temperature, humidity, sunlight, and wind.
In underwater archaeology, mesh baskets are used in
ways that prevent collapse of delicate items during
movement from sea bed to lab. The choice of packaging materials at terrestrial excavations is dependent
on what purpose is intended. Wrapping, padding,
sealing, supporting, and transporting finds may necessitate the use of many types of supplies required by
the artifact material, its condition, the ambient environment, and when further conservation treatment
must also be considered. Conservators prefer the use
of inert packaging materials, such as polyethylene
foam, sheet, or bags, so that contamination is avoided.
Materials such as newspaper may transfer staining
ink residue and organic acids over time, colored
papers may bleed dyes and cause discolorations, and
recycled food containers may encourage biological
deterioration.
Some archaeological conservators are also well
suited to assist with the preservation and management of exposed structures after an excavation.
Their understanding of environmental interactions
with natural materials combined with knowledge of

CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS 1043

the properties of many synthetic preservatives can

provide clarification or guidance. Issues of material
strength, porosity, durability, and expansion coefficient should be researched and studied thoroughly
prior to actual application.

Laboratory Conservation
From the archaeological processing laboratory where
sorting, labeling, classifying, and ordering is performed,
some artifacts may be identified for further study by
specialists. As unstable finds are identified, many may
be sent to the conservation laboratory for conservation
treatment. Conservation is a highly technical and
time-consuming process that includes examination
and analysis; treatment design and proposal; application and interpretation; data and documentation.
In the conservation laboratory, conservators may
continue to excavate a block lift or they may perform
analyses that will identify materials of construction,
techniques of manufacture, and products of deterioration (Figure 1). At other times the recovered finds
are so fragmentary or exotic that classification is only
possible after the conservator has read or deciphered
it. Like a detective, the conservator prepares the fragmentary clues from an excavation so that the attributes or identifiable features of an artifact can be
interpreted by other specialists (such as numismatists,
archaeo-botanists, faunal experts or specialists in ceramic, textile, metal or lithic technologies) depending
on the nature of the site (habitation, quarry, religious,
art, etc.). Sometimes the process of conservation can
help discover more about intangible aspects of human
behavior and the relationships between activities and
objects from a particular time and place.
Informed examination of cultural objects forms
the basis for all future conservation action. Commonly referred to as a condition assessment, this process
may involve procedures that have a small physical
effect on the object such as solvent or pH testing
of surfaces or the removal of small samples for
microscopic inspection, microchemical testing, or
instrumental analysis. In addition to a description of

Pedestal for object

Figure 1 Block lift.

Barrier layer around object

all procedures used, a justification should be made

and permission attained for sampling, destructive
testing, or otherwise unusual procedures. All documentation generated from these efforts should become part of the written record.
For the conservator, the treatment design is a
flexible plan that may be modified as the process
continues. Only treatments that are judged to be suitable to the preservation of the esthetic, conceptual,
and physical characteristics of the cultural property
should be recommended and approved. Understanding what constitutes a responsible treatment comes
after thoughtful and informed judgment of how the
materials of construction, the techniques of manufacture, and the products of deterioration have presented
the current condition. A treatment proposal is developed after thoroughly considering the physical characteristics, condition, and specific needs of the
cultural property within the context of its discovery,
interpretation, and intended use. The proposal also
takes into account the physical environment where
the finds will be located and the likelihood of
continuing care, the potential risks of treatment to
the objects, the available resources of equipment and
supplies, the limits of personal competence, and the
safety of the treatment for personnel, the environment, and the public. A treatment proposal or plan
should be approved in writing by the responsible
custodian of the cultural property.
The choice of materials and methods for a treatment application should not be formulaic. The potential to cause further deterioration or contamination of
analytical testing must be contemplated. Current ideas
about conservation treatment stress maintenance of
the natural unaltered state of excavated finds. This
attitude is replacing an older assumption that excavated finds merely illustrate typological-centered research which justifies esthetic restoration. Therefore,
while use of and access to collections is encouraged,
it is important that treatment for one purpose does
not preclude research for other purposes.
Cleaning is one of the most common invasive applications of treatment at an archaeological excavation.

Supportive frame
or consolidation layer with infill
(dirt, foam, plaster)

Rigid platform and cover

1044 CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS

Cleaning involves freeing dirt and impurities from

something. The goals for cleaning should relate to the
techniques even if it is only a step in the conservation
process. In the decision to clean or not to clean, there is
always a balance that must be identified and evaluated.
How much cleaning is acceptable and how much loss
or change is acceptable? Has cleaning been undertaken
as part of preparations for accessioning, or as a step in a
series involving preservation, study, or analysis? The
use of cleaning treatments should be a conscious, conscientious, and well thought-out process and should
always be documented with information on any materials and techniques used.
Mechanical cleaning involves the use of an implement or tool. The degree of vibration from the implement that the artifact is subjected to is relative to
the amount of control one has over what is being
removed and the degree of structural damage that
may be incurred. Any of the techniques listed below
have the potential to damage, scratch, or alter the
overall physical integrity of the materials to be cleaned.
Any scratches or additional distortions that are left
behind may be misinterpreted in future studies. Proceed
with caution and be observant, remembering that
less is more in the case of mechanical cleaning.
Mechanical cleaning tools (presented from least
potential for damage):

unwanted particles from surfaces. These techniques tend to redistribute dust and soil rather than
remove it.
. Electric drills, Foredom flex shafts, Dremel rotary tools, and vibro-tools are often mentioned
for use in the removal of excess rock around fossil
samples and are sometimes mentioned for use in
soil removal on specimens. The use of these tools
requires extreme ability and patience in order to
avoid damage. Due to their aggressive nature, they
can cause microfractures and pull away surfaces
adjacent to the soil.
. Air abrasive tools (miniature sand blasters) abrade
and clean using a high velocity air stream and
abrasive particles. These tools can easily remove
artifact surface and introduce abrasive particles
that lodge into porous materials.
. Ultrasonic cleaners and scalers use sound waves
(typically at frequencies between 20 and 50 kHZ)
to dislodge unwanted soil and residue particles
from surfaces. Ultrasonic baths often use heat and
are known to generate stress fractures in softer
materials such as bone and ivory. Ultrasonic scalers
are mentioned in the cleaning of fossils and sturdy
archaeological objects. They channel the vibratory
nature of the cleaning to a blade and without
immersion in liquid.

. Fine artist brushes can gently dislodge dirt

particles.
. Bamboo skewers are thin rods, are pointed at the
end, that offer finer and more rigid mechanical
ability for cleaning in small areas.
. Utility brushes, including toothbrushes, kitchen
brushes, and small whiskbrooms, can scratch surfaces, dislodge soils with parts of object surfaces
attached, and push dirt and dust into porous surfaces. The type, length, and pattern of bristle layout
can affect softer surfaces. Also, when soils or accretions are harder than the artifact on which they are
deposited, the brush may actually cause damage.
. Metal probes, dental picks, needles, and pins are
commonly used in archaeology to delicately work
through soils next to artifacts. For most archaeological finds, especially examples that are degraded,
the use of metal tools requires extreme caution.
. Specialized vacuum cleaners have been used to gently clean delicate surfaces. Removal of molds and
dust is most often best accomplished by brushing
toward the opening of a small vacuum attachment
(the opening must be much smaller than the object
being cleaned). However, vacuum cleaning is nondiscriminating in what it picks up.
. Bulb syringes, canned air dusters, and air-brushes,
all use compressed air as a force to dislodge

Washing with water removes dirt because it is an

excellent solvent. However, when porous, degraded,
and weakened structures are cleaned, other reactions
may also take place. Water affects porous materials in
the burial environment through an exchange of
minerals and salts from the adjacent soil. If these
excavated materials are then subjected to water cleaning (rinsing, washing, or soaking), it is common to
activate the soluble salts which often collect just
below the surface. As the artifact dries, these salts
tend to crystallize and expand, causing pressures
that are enough to pop the surface, effloresce, or
powder. The rate of the reaction and type of damage
will depend on the porosity and surface condition of
the artifact material.
Water is rarely pure. Waters that contain significant
proportions of calcium and magnesium are difficult
to wash with and are considered hard. They may
actually add dissolved minerals to porous materials. Softened waters and commercial-scale remover
additives alter the mineral content by adding acids
and sequestering agents. Washing with additives adds
new material to the artifact. Reversed osmosis, distilled, and de-ionized water are often mentioned with
artifact cleaning because they influence the cleaning
process. Careful consideration is always required for
any aqueous cleaning, but, if used, it is critical that

CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS 1045

artifacts and fragments be supported completely

throughout the process.
An alternative to immersion or soaking an object in
a bath is spot cleaning. Spot cleaning may involve
application of water or solvent to a small area using
a fine watercolor brush or swab. In the treatment
documentation, a sketch or marked digital image of
the spot should be included so the cleaned or affected
area is identifiable in the future.
Chemical solvents are used for cleaning because
they can remove contaminants. When deciding which
solvent might be best to remove a particular contaminant, it is necessary to consider factors such as
chemical type, evaporation rate, solubility parameter,
toxicity, and flammability. Because most chemical
solvents contain more than one component, purity
is also a concern. Solvents used on objects should
not include colored or nonvolatile impurities. Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) should be checked
for solvent composition information and storage
recommendations.
Chemists usually classify solvents by the most reactive portion of their molecule. From an application
standpoint, solvents that are miscible with water are
considered polar, while those that are not, are nonpolar. Water or HOH is reactive at the OH bond.
Water generally dissolves soils effectively, while
greases and oils are better dissolved by less polar
solvents such as the hydrocarbons.
When using soaps, detergents, bleaches, or chemical
reagents, it is important to prepare for adequate rinsing
or flushing. These additives are not meant to stay in
materials to be cleaned and even careful flushing after
the application of a detergent, for instance, does not
guarantee that all of it has been removed. The remaining contaminates could affect obtaining a date, DNA
analyses, or a promise to descendants. Though their use
is found in the literature, bleaches are truly problematic
as they are very difficult to flush and continue to have
on-going effects long after application, including possible recrystallization problems. Likewise, acid treatments once commonly used in archaeological field
schools to remove unwanted carbonate-based accretions are now discouraged because they are difficult
to control and they continue to cause degradation
years after application.
Coatings, consolidants, and adhesives have a long
history of use in the conservation of excavated finds.
The use of film-forming polymers enables the same
product to serve as a coating, consolidant, or adhesive
depending on how it is mixed with a liquid and how it
is applied. Polymers are large molecules that are
made from the chain-like formation of smaller identical
molecules involving a chemical reaction. Both natural
and synthetic film-forming polymers have been used to

impart structural stability to fragile materials. Synthetic polymers are generally considered more versatile to
use and do not deteriorate as quickly. Making recommendations in favor of particular film-forming polymers is difficult without the consideration of many
factors. Typically, there are multiple grades for a product; manufacturers often change the composition, and
some have synonymous names that are used in different
markets. Consideration of a polymers working properties and its effects on later analysis is critical before it is
used on cultural property. Guidelines for the selection
of accepted materials used in conservation treatments
include chemical and physical compatibility with the
cultural property; ability to distinguish the treatment
from the composition materials of the cultural property; chemical and physical stability; and removable with
the least amount of damage to the cultural property,
should it become necessary.
Coatings have been recommended in the past as a
covering for objects. Coatings may enhance an objects appearance by unifying the surface with gloss
and texture. While a coating does provide some measure of mechanical protection for a delicate surface, it
will decay. Many coating films become yellow, lose
transparency, or become brittle with age. Others may
become sticky and attract dust, and some may enhance the destruction of soluble salts that can build
up and break apart the structure below the intact film
layer. Protective coatings are not recommended and
should never be standard practice.
Consolidants are low concentrations of adhesive
polymer in liquid form which are sometimes applied
to materials that are unstable and have lost their
own cohesive qualities. The low concentration ideally allows for deep and thorough penetration. The
use of consolidants in the field has been mentioned,
but in that context, it is usually best to use them to
consolidate a soil collar for the object rather than
the object itself. While a consolidation treatment
applied directly to inherently fragile material may be
the only way to stabilize the structural form or surface quality, it is a decision that cannot be taken
lightly because it comes with potentially permanent
repercussions.
Adhesives are substances that are used to hold two
surfaces together by means of a join. The adhesives
used for conservation are generally applied as a liquid,
but they may also be activated by heat or pressure.
Making recommendations in favor of particular
adhesive products is difficult because there are many
factors to consider. Manufacturers of adhesive products often change the composition of their products;
there may be multiple grades for a product, and some
have synonymous names that are used for them in
different markets.

1046 CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS

Synthetic polymer products have been used to adhere, consolidate, and stabilize archaeological finds.
They are generally grouped based on their chemical
structure. There have been numerous studies devoted
to the advantages and disadvantages of particular
adhesives, so an informed choice based on suitable
chemical properties is possible. A basic list of synthetic polymers that have been used on archaeological
finds includes the following.
. Acrylic polymers: acrylic or methacrylate polymers; acrylic monomers including cyanoacrylates;
acrylic emulsions and dispersions.
. Cellulosic polymers: ethers; esters including cellulose acetate and cellulose nitrate.
. Cross-linking polymers: silcone rubber; polyester;
polyurethanes; epoxy resin; formaldehyde resins.
. Hydrocarbons: polyethylene/vinyl acetate; paraffin
wax; synthetic rubber.
. Synthetic thermoplastics: poly(vinyl chloride); poly
(vinylidene chloride); polystyrene; poly(ethylene
glycol); soluble nylon.
. Vinyl acetate derived polymers: poly(vinyl acetate)
emulsions; poly(vinyl acetal); poly(vinyl butryal).
After an adhesive is selected, re-assembly of fragmentary finds may begin. This process is sometimes
referred to as reconstruction (to construct again),
restoration (to bring back to original condition),
mending (to make repairs), or bonding (to fasten
together). In contrast, the word conservation may
include a range of activities that prevent damage,
engage a technical study of materials or the study of
deterioration processes, treat damaged items by stabilizing them with minimal intervention, or restore
damaged items through the addition of new materials
the compensate for the losses due to damage. Reassembly is generally considered a part of the conservation treatment process that joins together multiple
parts that have become separated through breakage.
The best results for accurate reassembly involve
the use of trained skill, a sand-box, sand-bags, clothes
pins, and padded clamps together with gravity-based
positioning. When fragmentary objects such as vessels are built up sherd by sherd, there is better keying
or alignment. By placing the join line of two pieces in
a horizontal position within the sandbox, gravity and
balance will indicate the correct alignment (hand
holding or tapes can be avoided). After a join is set,
the pieces may be repositioned so that the next join is
horizontal. Unsatisfactory reassemblies usually occur
if groups of pieces are first joined together into groups
and then as a few large pieces because the alignment
between the larger pieces is poor.
The issue of whether the join itself will be reversible
and stable cannot be overlooked. While it may be

possible to re-dissolve a spot of set adhesive with

solvents, it is rarely possible to do this when the
adhesive has entered porous structures or has fixed
the keys of a break that make up a join. This penetration is often impossible to remove even with
aggressive treatments. In addition, all film-forming
polymers are sticky when liquid and take up space
when dry. The alignment of an adhesive join should
be considered the result of a permanent subjective
process. Thus, alternatives to a reassembly should always be considered before any adhesives are selected
and used.
Restorative methods of stabilization often include
the compensation of losses; however, it is important
that any compensation technique should be reversible
and should not modify, remove, or obscure original
artifact material. Restorations are useful when the
goal is to help scholars and the public to more readily
understand an otherwise fragmentary object or structure. The use of plasters, waxes, and synthetic fillers,
as well as armatures and hardware attachments, is
common. The techniques used to restore artifacts
to esthetic wholeness, the types of materials, their
techniques of application, and their stability over
time are well known, but they can be problematic.
Materials used may penetrate porous objects and become functionally permanent, they may initiate additional chemical reactions causing degradation, and
can contaminate or inhibit future analyses. A restoration that includes loss compensation will also conceal
the information provided by broken edges.
The following points should be considered prior to
any treatment involving adhesives, consolidants,
coatings, or restorative fills be undertaken:
. Has information for planned sampling for analysis
been identified and considered?
. Is the individual doing the proposed restoration
able to properly key the fragments together accurately in their original positions?
. Has there been warping or natural expansion during or since the breakage?
. Will the adhesive be used in the joins measurably
add to the overall dimensions of the whole?
. Is the adhesive re-soluble in an appropriate solvent?
. Although the join may be reversible, will removal
of adhesive residues affect the texture, appearance,
and inhibit further analysis?
Methods of treatment become recognized as acceptable after appropriate testing and publication in
peer-reviewed literature. Appropriate methods are
selected based on the competence of the conservator
after experimental evaluation using mockups or
samples. Documentation enables an understanding
of what was removed, and perhaps more importantly,

CONSERVATION AND STABILIZATION OF MATERIALS 1047

what may have been added. While modern conservation presumes to include documentation for all treatments, this has not always been common practice
with archaeological processing. Items found with undocumented repairs or preservatives are common in
collections. They are inadvertently compromised for
further scientific analysis and typically require further
conservation treatments to be suitable for display
or illustration.
Treatment documentation should include reference
to the object treated, the date of treatment completion, any deviations from the proposal, and a description of any material removed, obscured, or added
(cleaning agents, solvents, bleaching agents, chemical
reagents, surfactants, and consolidants). The sources
of added materials including manufacturer, proprietary name, and chemical composition should also
be included where known. All documentation generated during the execution of a treatment or stabilization effort should become part of the written record.
Graphic documentation (drawings or photographs)
should be labeled before treatment, during treatment,
and after treatment. Alternatives to invasive treatments are commonly referred to under the term,
preventive conservation.

Long-term Preservation
Because it is not possible to completely adapt archaeological materials, which have undergone some
level of decay, to postexcavation environments, the
conservation of archaeological finds continues past
treatment. Preventive conservation is the mitigation
of deterioration and damage to cultural property
through the formulation and implementation of
policies and procedures that insure ongoing care and
maintenance.
Long-term preservation guidelines for the continuing use and care of archaeological finds involve

RH indicator card

RH

collaborations with curation and collections management professionals. Various guidelines recommend
environmental conditions during storage, transport
and exhibition, the selection of appropriate materials
for storage, packing, display and transport, and encourage proper procedures for handling during processing and use. For example, details for the design
and construction of a support or housing of a fragile
artifact and the suggested environmental levels for
temperature, humidity, and air filtration that will
inhibit material deterioration are part of the conservation for an archaeological object. Cultural property
that will be stored in an archaeological repository
should be prepared in a manner that is consistent
with the conservation standards of that facility.
Good storage for archaeological finds eliminates
excess movement between fragmentary pieces, minimizes handling during searches for particular items,
and may preserve a reassembled order, or dry-fit for
the next analyst. Suggested principles for packaging
and storage include the following (Figure 2):
1. Recommended environments for archaeological
finds suggest desiccating conditions for metals,
temperate conditions for dry organic materials
such as basketry and textile, and cool conditions
for damp or wet objects such as leather or bone.
Sealable containers can be kept damp with pads
made from wet foam with a biocide or they can be
desiccated with silica gel.
2. Zip-locking polyethylene bags may be used for
small finds that have stable structures and surfaces.
3. Plastic boxes (including polycarbonate, polystyrene, polyethylene, or polypropylene) or acid-free
trays and tissue padding may be used to hold more
fragile artifacts and fragments. Materials of different types should be placed in separate containers.
4. Acid-free paper, washed cotton muslin, and acidfree boxes may be used if non-synthetic packaging
is required.

SILICA
GEL

Silica gel dessicant bags

Sealed plastic bin

Bubble wrap
Perforated zip locking bag

Polyethylene foam padding

Figure 2 Storage box.

1048

CONSERVATION, ARCHAEOLOGICAL

Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Sonya Issaeva for assistance in rendering the illustrations.
See also: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview; Conservation, Archaeological; Preservation, Modes of; Sites:
Conservation and Stabilization.

Further Reading

Horie CV (1990) Materials for Conservation: Organic Consolidants, Adhesives and Coatings. London: Butterworths.
Odegaard N and Cassman V (2006) Treatment and invasive
actions. In: Cassman V, Odegaard N, and Powell J (eds.)
Human Remains: Guide for Museums and Academic Institutions, pp. 7795. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press.
Pye E (2001) Caring for the Past: Issues in Conservation for
Archaeology and Museums. London: James and James.
Sease C (1994) A Conservation Manual for the Field Archaeologist,
Archaeological Research Tools, Vol. 4, 2nd edn. Los Angeles:
UCLA Institute of Archaeology.
Stanley Price NP (1995) Conservation on Archeological Excavations. Rome: ICCROM.

American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works

(2006) Core documents. Electronic format, http://aic.stanford.
edu/about/coredocs/index.html.
Cronyn JM (1990) The Elements of Archaeological Conservation.
London: Routledge.

CONSERVATION, ARCHAEOLOGICAL
Elizabeth Barham, Museum of London Archaeology
Service, London, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
mineralized organic Partial or full replacement or coating of
organic materials with inorganic minerals from the burial
environment or artifact.
residue Trace remains adhering to the fabric of an object.
treatment Physical or chemical intervention to slow down
deterioration.
waterlogged Archaeological state in which the structure of an
artifact is immersed in and supported by water.
X-radiography The application of X-rays to generate an image
through which the structure and condition of an object may be
examined non-destructively.

Introduction
The aim of archaeological conservation is a greater
understanding of the past through scientific investigation of excavated artifacts and by preventing them
from further deterioration. Conservation is a fully
integrated part of the archaeological process, but
requires specialist knowledge of how materials decay
so that important features are recognized, despite the
physical and chemical changes that objects or structures may have undergone while buried.
Conservators are trained to know what analytical
techniques might be used to interpret the evidence
inherent in archaeological finds. They also understand which options to choose among the potential

treatments and environmental conditions that could

be applied to an artifact after excavation to prevent it
from deteriorating further. Therefore, they work as
part of a project team with archaeologists, curators
and finds specialists at all stages of the archaeological
process from excavation through to archiving, publication of finds and display. Conservation is often
considered to be a means to an end within archaeological projects but conservation science is also a
branch of research in its own right, examining decay
processes, treatment effects, and preventive care of
artifacts.

Practical Conservation Work

Archaeological conservators can work commercially
or in the public sector for museums, universities, archaeological units, or conservation companies. Many
are trained in the conservation of a wide variety of
archaeological materials and support excavations by
lifting the most vulnerable finds and giving advice on
short-term care of freshly excavated material.
Conservators examine the constituent materials
and structure of artifacts and assess their condition
through X-radiography, instrumental or chemical
analysis, and investigative cleaning under the microscope, to help archaeologists and finds specialists
answer research questions about a site. They may
also reconstruct selected finds to assist with interpretation and enable objects to be displayed or illustrated. They use chemical treatments to slow down
deterioration of artifacts post excavation. They keep

CONSERVATION, ARCHAEOLOGICAL 1049

a record of any treatments and analyses carried out

and refer to past records if retreating objects.
Archaeological conservators are also responsible
for ensuring that finds are stable prior to long-term
storage or when arranging a loan to external institutions and for advising on protective conditions during
transport, if handled or while on display. These may
include care of the environmental material from a
site, such as bone and seed samples and, given the
importance of the site archive as a whole, the preventive care of the digital or paper records. They monitor
and assess environmental factors in deterioration such
as temperature, relative humidity, light, pests, dirt, pollution, packaging, case materials, and handling regimes.
In some cases this may include advice on preservation of
artifacts in situ on an archaeological site.
Many are involved in outreach activities, explaining and demonstrating conservation and collections
care to archaeological professionals, volunteers, and
the public.

A Brief History
Records suggest that artifacts have been investigated
and prepared systematically by institutions for public
display for several hundred years, for example, from
the mid-nineteenth century it is known that specialist
restorers were employed by the Trustees of the
British Museum. However, these would have been
museum technicians or archaeologists without formal
training in what is now termed conservation work.
Much of the earliest work was done without a thorough knowledge of the nature of historic materials or
archaeological decay. A more limited range of chemicals
and adhesives were available for use as treatments than
today and little was known about the long-term effects
of particular chemical treatments on an objects condition. Non-interventive investigative techniques were
basic. Individual scientists began to research the cause
and effects of deterioration though lacking the advantages in technology now available to analyze objects on
a microscale. The fact that archaeological practices
were not always well defined or standardized, also
sometimes led to poor recording practices during the
conservation process.
As a result, evidence associated with a surviving
artifact, such as food residues from pots or mineralized organic remains on ironwork, will have inevitably been lost through cleaning or not recognized
during investigation of finds assemblages. Insufficient
recording made it hard to identify the original features of the artifact as excavated and to distinguish
and reverse poor or aging restoration work without
further damage.

In the 1920s and 1930s, museums began to actively

support scientific investigation into causes of deterioration and remedies, to assist archaeological expeditions of the time. International cooperation in the
conservation of artifacts and monuments developed
in earnest, and the first specialized journals began
publication, notably Technical Studies in the Field of
Fine Arts, published by Harvard University. Effort
was made to understand and define the field of conservation, and a conference held in Rome in 1930 was
an important early step in this process.
In the 1950s and 1960s conventions developed on
professional conservation practice, the International
Institute for the Conservation of Artistic and Historic
Works (IIC) began its work and specialist training
courses were introduced, such as the Diploma in
Conservation at the Institute of Archaeology, London.
The UKs Museums Association agreed that those
qualifying in this diploma could become accredited
members, improving the status of conservators within
museums and archaeology.
National conservation institutes representing conservators in individual countries followed, setting up
standards of practice and codes of ethics. These bodies
also help to support the sharing of knowledge and
experience and communication of the benefits of
good conservation practice. In recent decades graduate
and postgraduate training has become the standard
entry requirement for archaeological conservation and
schemes have been established for the professional
certification or accreditation of conservators.

Conservation Ethics
Alongside the development of professional technical
standards, observation and recognition of the risks
and changes artifacts can undergo during conservation treatment has also led to the development of
ethics that conservators of all specialisms, including
archaeological remains, are encouraged to follow by
their professional institutes.
Some of the most fundamental of these principles
include:
. minimum intervention during examination or
treatment;
. reversibility of treatment, to prevent damage
should retreatment become necessary;
. recording of every step of treatment and investigative results to inform future conservators or
analysts;
. respect for inherent evidence to avoid removing
residues or features that form part of an objects
historical context during treatment;

1050

CONSERVATION, ARCHAEOLOGICAL

. respect for wishes of stakeholders in artifacts

such as those who legitimately claim ownership,
or an ethnic link with the makers or users of the
artifact; and
. favoring conservation of original material over
esthetic restoration considerations, for example,
ensuring that the treatment makes clear any parts
that have been added during conservation, and not
adding new details that were not known to be
present in the original.

Conservation Research
Many conservation challenges have been addressed
over the last century by investigating burial conditions, their interaction with artifacts in the ground,
and the mechanisms and products of corrosion and
decay. The aging and capabilities of conservation
materials have also been studied in depth.
Some of the greatest breakthroughs have been
in the conservation of archaeological iron and of
waterlogged archaeological organic artifacts. These
materials can weaken dramatically while in the
ground and on excavation are particularly liable to
deterioration without rapid appropriate attention.
Preservation of archaeological remains in situ,
or their reburial, has become an increasingly important area of research as this approach is now frequently advocated for large archaeological finds
such as timbers and structural remains, to reduce
costs. Research examining preventive conservation
measures has also increased, recognizing a need to
refine our understanding of appropriate environmental conditions for artifacts.

Changing Approaches to Conservation

Work
Many noninterventive investigative methods are now
possible as new materials and analytical techniques, such as digital imaging, lasers, and advanced
radiographic equipment have become more commonplace and accessible to archaeological projects and
museums. This has made it easier to follow the ethical
principles aspired to by the conservation profession as
these methods can enable conservators to be more
selective with treatments.

Consulting Archaeology

The requirements of improved health and safety

practice have also restricted use of some chemicals
in conservation. Tighter funding has brought a need
for holistic approaches, prioritizing good conservation practice for finds assemblages as a whole, to gain
the greatest benefit from available resources.
In some institutions these factors have led to a shift
of emphasis toward preventive conservation of finds
wherever possible over treatment. As with other
archaeological roles within a project, conservation
input must usually be defined and justified according
to the stated research requirements of an excavation
and its publication, the archive requirements of a
receiving museum or the interpretation requirements
for a forthcoming exhibition.
See also: Archaeology Today; Artifacts, Overview;
Conservation and Stabilization of Materials; Sites:
Conservation and Stabilization.

Further Reading
Cronyn JM (1999) The Elements of Archaeological Conservation,
5th edn. London and New York: Routledge.
Evans J (1987) The Institute of Archaeology: The first fifty years
and after. In: Black J (ed.) Recent Advances in the Conservation
and Analysis of Artifacts, pp. 1015. London: University of
London Institute of Archaeology Summer Schools Press.
Gedye I (1987) Forty years of conservation at the institute. In:
Black J (ed.) Recent Advances in the Conservation and Analysis
of Artifacts, pp. 1619. London: Summer Schools Press.
Hoffmann P, Straetvern K, and Spriggs JA (eds.) (2004) Proceedings
of the ICOM Group of Wet Organic Archaeological Materials.
Bremerhaven: ICOM Committee for Conservation Working
Group on Wet Organic Archaeological Materials.
Scott D, Saunders D, and de la Rie R (eds.) (2006) Studies in
Conservation. London: International Institute for Conservation
of Historic and Artistic Works.
Watkinson DE and Neal V (1998) First Aid for Finds, 3rd edn.
London: RESCUE and Archaeology Section of the United Kingdom Institute for Conservation with the Museum of London.

Relevant Websites
www.aic.stanford.edu The American Institute for Conservation
of Historic and Artistic Works.
www.icon.org.uk ICON, The Institute of Conservation.
www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk The British Museum.

See: Cultural Resource Management.

COPROLITE ANALYSIS 1051

COPROLITE ANALYSIS
Timothy G Holden, Headland Archaeology Ltd.,
Edinburgh, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
coprolite Fossilized or desiccated human or animal faeces.
desiccation State of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme
drying.
faeces Waste product from an animals digestive system tract
expelled through the anus during defecation.
rehydration Treatment of desiccated samples with an aqueous
solution of tri-sodium phosphate to restore the original texture
and pliability to both animal and vegetable tissues.

Introduction
Direct evidence for what people ate in the past is extremely rare but under certain circumstances human
fecal material survives in archaeological contexts and
can be analyzed. Within the broad definition of fecal
remains, three distinct classes can be recognized. Sewage (often referred to as cess) is recovered from cesspits,
latrines, sewers, and drains, and provides large, mixed
assemblages of human feces together with waste from
the kitchen and elsewhere. Where preservation is good,
particularly under waterlogged conditions, microscopic analysis of such assemblages has provided valuable
information on diet and living conditions. The mixed
nature of the samples makes it difficult to comment on
individual meals, but the inclusion of other household
waste products and evidence for sanitary practices in
many ways compensates for this.
By contrast, coprolites (preserved human stools) or
the contents of the intestines of well-preserved
humans are of more value for a study of individual
people and the meals that they ate. They are essentially uncontaminated and each sample potentially provides information on not more than one or two meals.
Coprolites are occasionally preserved by charring
or mineralization but most commonly survive as
desiccated samples in caves or extremely arid areas.
In some instances, specified latrine areas are set aside
by a settlement and large numbers of broadly contemporary samples can be recovered. Each sample provides evidence for foods eaten by an individual but, as
a group, such assemblages also enable the identification of patterns of consumption within populations.
The aridity required for the preservation of desiccated samples often means that human encampments
within these areas are transient and seasonal. The
evidence from coprolites is therefore important for

deducing not only the resources exploited but also

the season of occupation. There are numerous published analyses of coprolites from the deserts of
Southwestern North America, Mexico, Peru, and
Chile, or dry cave environments in more humid zones.
When preservation permits, and where no elaborate mummification procedures have been performed, in situ food residues can survive in the
intestinal tracts of human cadavers. In areas such as
Egypt and the Pacific coast of South America or in dry
cave environments, preservation of whole humans
by desiccation can occur (see Osteological Methods).
Less frequently, bodies are preserved by freezing or
freeze-drying, most notably the Greenland mummies
or the Tyrolean iceman, or by waterlogging as in
the case of European bog bodies. Because these finds
are so rare they cannot be considered as being typical
of the population at large and are often of limited
value when discussing wider dietary issues. However,
the presence of the associated corpse and the information that this provides enables a different level of
discussion. The person may have died naturally or
been killed by force or accident. Fecal analyses
can therefore provide information regarding such
things as the nature of their last meals, whether
they had been involved in predeath rituals or subjected to treatments for illness. They may have been
given food that was only fit for the poor or prisoners. In the absence of written accounts this type of
information is very difficult to unearth by any other
means.
As archaeological assemblages, coprolites and gut
contents contain a very diverse range of biological
and mineral components. This makes it difficult for
any one specialist to undertake all elements of analysis. Desiccated samples usually require rehydration
using an aqueous solution of tri-sodium phosphate.
This solution restores much of the original texture
and pliability to both animal and vegetable tissues,
enables samples to be teased apart and individual
items extracted for identification. Much of the initial
work requires detailed light and electron microscope
analysis to identify the more obvious components but
chemical analyses of the finer residues may, in the
future, offer the potential for the identification of
part digested foods or their waste products. Other
more specialized techniques such as electron spin resonance can be used to determine how particular food
items have been cooked.
The most productive area for research is in the
analysis of food elements that are totally or partially
resistant to digestion or have escaped digestion by

1052 COPROLITE ANALYSIS

identified. Muscle fibers have been recovered on occasion, but traces of commonly eaten foods such as
milk or blood products, eggs or softer body parts do
not survive in a readily identifiable form (Figure 1).
The remains of foods are often accompanied by
evidence for pathological conditions such as intestinal
parasites or their eggs, and other inadvertent inclusions can add significantly to our understanding of
how people lived. Insects or other invertebrates such
as mites can inform us about storage conditions, and
the pollen breathed in or ingested with food and drink
can provide evidence for the season in which the food
was consumed. Traces of grit and the fragmentation
of remains can throw light onto the grinding/pounding implements used to process food and the presence
of burnt food and charcoal about cooking techniques.
The foods and the preparation techniques used can
also say a lot about the wealth or status of an individual and the nature of trade. In some instances they
enable a discussion of such things as ritual meals or
famine foods.
See also: Archaeoparasitology; Archaeozoology; Frozen Sites and Bodies; Paleoethnobotany; Seasonality
of Site Occupation.

Further Reading
Figure 1 Light micrographs. a, Cells from the seed coat of a
legume species from a mummy from Azapa, North Chile. Magnification  290. b, Seed coat of an Opuntia cactus seed from a
coprolite from Tulan, N. Chile. Magnification  45. c, The bran of
rye (Secale cereale) from the gut of the Huldremose bog body,
Denmark. Magnification  290. d, Meat fibers taken from a coprolite from Tulan, N Chile. Magnification  290.

being protected from the digestive enzymes in some

way. Fibrous or resistant parts of plants such as cereal
bran, epidermal fragments, and certain seeds are
commonplace and with the correct reference material
to hand can be identified (Figure 1). Even starch
grains can survive and be identified under certain
circumstances. Traces of animal foods are also
restricted to the more robust body parts, so hair,
bone, insect, and crustacean parts are commonly

Bryant VM (1974) Diet in Southwest Texas: The coprolite

evidence. American Antiquity 39: 407420.
Bryant VM and Williams-Dean G (1975) Thecoprolites of man.
Scientific American 232(1): 100109.
Callen EO (1963) Diet as revealed by coprolites. In: Brothwell DR
and Higgs E (eds.) Science in Archaeology pp. 186194. London:
Thames and Hudson.
Fry GF (1985) Analysis of faecal material. In: Gilbert I and Mielke
JI (eds.) The Analysis of Prehistoric Diets pp. 127154. New
York: Academic Press.
Greig J (1984) Garderobes, sewers, cesspits and latrines. Current
Archaeology 85: 4952.
Greig J (1981) The investigation of a Medieval barrel-latrine from
Worcester. Journal of Archaeological Science 8: 265282.
Holden TG (2001) Dietary evidence from the coprolites and the
intestinal contents of ancient humans. In: Brothwell DR and
Pollard AM (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences
pp. 403413. New York: Wiley.
Stead IM, Bourke JB, and Brothwell D (1986) Lindow Man: The
Body in the Bog. London: British Museum Publications.

CRAFT SPECIALIZATION 1053

CRAFT SPECIALIZATION
Julia A Hendon, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg,
PA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Chavin An early civilization that existed in present-day Peru.
Chiefdom Any community led by an individual known as
a chief.
craft production Set of processes involved in making specific
kinds of objects, processes that often require training and the
development of skills in the manipulation of specific kinds of
materials.
craft specialization Production for exchange beyond the
household, that is to say beyond ones co-resident domestic
group.
Vijayanagara empire Dominated south India during the
fourteenth to seventeenth centuries AD.

Craft specialization is one of the central issues in

archaeological research because its study provides
insight into economic organization, social relations,
and political power. Explanations of social change,
especially those that focus on how societies become
more complex (see Social Theory), have argued that
the rise and expansion of craft specialization contributed to these developments although the role of
specialized economic production has been subject to
debate. The main difference characterizing these
explanations centers on whether craft specialization
was a causal factor that helped make increasing social
differentiation, political centralization, and economic
interdependence possible or whether it was a consequence of these changes. The processes, technologies,
and relationships that make up craft specialization
have been studied by archaeologists working in all
parts of the world and in many different time periods
of human history and prehistory. It has been an especial focus of interest among those archaeologists
working on questions of the origin of the state, the
development of chiefdoms, or the rise of cities in such
areas as Mesoamerica, Andean South America,
Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, South and East
Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
While archaeologists recognize craft production as
universal among human societies across time and
space, and that craft production frequently leads to
specialization of some sort, they no longer assume
that a single developmental sequence applies to all
civilizations. The pattern of technological change identified in Europe, for example, in which cutting tools

were first made of stone, then of bronze, then of iron,

is now understood as the result of the convergence of
specific environmental, social, economic, and political factors in which the availability of raw materials,
the effects of interaction among multiple societies,
and cultural beliefs favored the application of
human knowledge and energy to the manipulation
of certain kinds of materials and the production of
certain kinds of objects.
Study of metalworking in South America prior to
European contact, especially among the Inca, Chavin,
Moche, and related civilizations of Andean and
coastal Peru as well in contemporaneous societies in
Colombia and Ecuador, has demonstrated that these
groups had a highly sophisticated understanding of
the properties of the main metals worked that allowed
them to create alloys of gold, silver, and copper such as
bronze or tumbaga. These alloys were processed using
techniques including smelting and casting to produce
objects of sophisticated design and workmanship
that primarily served social or religious purposes
(see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). Items of personal
use or for personal adornment enhanced the prestige
and reflected the status of certain people in society.
Objects made of metal were imbued with religious
meaning, serving as offerings. Metals were also
incorporated into the decoration of religious buildings. Very little effort was expended on the development or manufacture of practical or utilitarian metal
items, such as agricultural implements or weapons,
which were made from stone, wood, and fibers. This
makes the history of metalworking and the application
of metallurgical knowledge in pre-Columbian South
America very different from that of Europe or Mesopotamia but in no way inferior or aberrant.
V. Gordon Childe (18921957) may be credited
with one of the earliest attempts to integrate the
phenomenon of specialized production into an explanation for the development of early cities and states as
part of his urban revolution (see Civilization and
Urbanism, Rise of). For Childe, specialized production was a consequence of a convergence of factors
resulting ultimately from the development of agriculture. Farming allowed groups to build up food surpluses and to congregate in larger and more
permanent settlements, leading to the development
of new economic and social relations, or modes of
production. Childe considered cities and centralized
institutions of government as necessary conditions
for the development of full-time occupational specialization, a process that produced increasing degrees

1054 CRAFT SPECIALIZATION

of interdependence within society even as it led to

greater differentiation among members of that society. Childes particular scenario of causes and
consequences was influential but has not held up in
light of more recent archaeological research both in
Mesopotamia and other geographic, historical, and
cultural contexts. Nevertheless, his realization, inspired
in part by the writings of Karl Marx, that economic
processes are integral to social relations, political
systems, and patterns of social change (see Marxist
Archaeology), continues to be fundamental to how
archaeologists think about craft specialization and
why they believe it is an important research topic.

Defining Craft Specialization

Studies of craft specialization must first come to grips
with what it is. The archaeological literature abounds
with references to craft production and craft specialization. These terms are often used interchangeably and in fact they refer to a large degree to the
same phenomenon or closely related ones. The term
craft production sums up a set of processes involved
in making specific kinds of objects, processes that
often require training and the development of skills
in the manipulation of specific kinds of materials.
Ethnographic and archaeological investigations have
demonstrated that even the smallest-scale and least
socially differentiated of societies engage in craft
production of some sort. Nor is it limited to societies
that depend on agriculture or which have become
sedentary, let alone living in cities.
Its presence may be traced back to the earliest
moments of human (and perhaps even prehuman)
history, thus calling into question assumptions common to many models that posit the existence of some
primary or original state of self-sufficiency among
individuals or households in early foraging or farming
societies in which every household produces what it
needs and nothing more. Whether such a degree of
economic isolation was ever possible must remain an
open question since the majority of archaeological
evidence, the preponderance of comparative material
from more fully documented historical or contemporary societies, and even to a certain extent the behavioral information gathered from nonhuman primates
strongly suggest that the fundamental sociality of our
species led us from the beginnings of our development
to find ways to foster connections with those near and
far. Thus, the existence of craft production coincides
with an interest in exchange, or the movement of
goods between groups, often over long distances.
Although such goods or materials may be rare or

difficult to obtain, they are equally likely to be items

that could be produced locally or acquired through
ones own efforts. What the close connection between
craft production and exchange demonstrates is the
social benefits of being able to enter into peaceful
and ongoing relations with neighbors and those further away (even when what one exchanges is pretty
much the same as what other people produce).
Recognizing that craft production is present in forager and farming societies and in more and less egalitarian ones has made it harder to differentiate it from
specialization. Craft specialization has been defined
as production for exchange beyond the household,
that is to say beyond ones co-resident domestic
group. This definition, however, runs into problems
given the widespread human emphasis on production
and exchange just mentioned, that mitigates against
the idea of some self-sufficient group at the core of
human society. An alternative approach has been to
argue that production is specialized when the producers are limited in number and regularly produce
more goods than they need, allowing them to acquire
the goods and services necessary for their own support, in part or completely. Specialists thus rely on
their crafting abilities for all or some of their maintenance in ways that create greater degrees of interdependency within and between societies.

Kinds of Specialization
Specialization and the increased interdependence it
helps create may come in several varieties. In other
words, the occupational specialization characteristic
of modern postindustrial capitalism is not found in all
cases as not all societies developed the same sorts of
economic institutions or relations. To help systematize the variation, archaeologists have recognized
different types of craft specialization. While the
terminology and precise definitions vary, the following features emerge as useful in distinguishing among
kinds of production: intensity, scale, location (also
sometimes referred to as context), and social relations
between producer and consumer.
Intensity and Scale

Intensity is often summarized as full- or part-time

specialization. Does a person spend all or most of
his or her productive energy and time on a particular
craft, such as potting, weaving, or blacksmithing? Are
they dependent on their labor in this kind of work for
the acquisition of all or most of the things needed to
sustain life and to fulfill their responsibilities as members of society? If yes, then we can characterize this

CRAFT SPECIALIZATION 1055

person as a full-time craft specialist. Part-time specialization would thus be when people engage in
productive activities, producing more than they need
and satisfying their personal, familial, and larger
social obligations in part through the fruits of their
labor, but who also regularly apply their labor to
other forms of production. Most typically, such
would be the case when an individual or a household
continues to engage in farming, herding, or foraging
to some degree rather than relying entirely on their
craft to support themselves. Closely tied to intensity is
the concept of scale, of how much is produced and
how often. The scale of production relates directly to
the socially defined needs that create a demand for
certain objects over others. While it is certainly the
case the full-time specialization is likely to be capable
of a greater scale of production, it is also the case that
continual growth in production capacity or in the
amount produced is not characteristic of all economies,
even those at the state level. Limits on production may
serve political ends.
The difference between full-time and part-time specialization is obviously one of degree. It is also somewhat misleading to talk about the craft specialist as
the sole producer of some item for exchange and thus
provider for his or her family who have no connection
to the process. In fact, family or household members
are frequently integral to the success of both full- and
part-time specialization. This is the case in the sense
that the domestic group may take care of other sorts
of activities necessary to daily life. But this sort of
division of labor between the occupational specialist
and the rest of the domestic group, which is usually
uncompensated for its efforts, is by no means the
norm in nonindustrial or precapitalist economies.
Relatives and co-residents often provide crucial assistance in the production process in ways that are
patterned and integral to the passing on of the knowledge and abilities central to the productive process.
Ethnographic studies of South Asian potters, for
example, demonstrate that the male head of household, who is the one identified as the craft specialist,
routinely relies on his wife, children, and other people
living with him to take care of certain aspects of the
process of turning clay into finished pots for sale.
A similar interdependency emerges from sixteenth
century Spanish descriptions of Aztec feather workers
in what is now Mexico. Before the Spanish conquest,
they lived in Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztec
empire, and made the elaborate capes and other apparel worn by the nobility, priests, and warriors.
Although Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, in his work
known as the Florentine Codex, emphasizes the

efforts of men in the creation of this high-prestige

clothing, identifying them as the feather workers,
his discussion allows us to grasp the important and
regular involvement of women in the process. These
women, members of the same kin group as the men,
were responsible for dyeing the feathers, choosing
colors, and manipulating the dyes to produce the
appropriate designs.
Location or Context

Also considered to be important is the location of

production. Location is often summed up as either
household or workshop, that is to say as being the
same as where people live and engage in the activities
of daily life or in some separate place. These spatial
locations imply a number of things about the organization and relations of production. They also connect
to the issue of how much time is devoted to the craft.
A household-based production system is often also a
part-time one and, even if full time, may more easily
involve other members of the household, as in the
case of the South Asian potter or the Aztec feather
worker. The establishment of workshops may indicate a greater intensity of production and the interaction of people not necessarily closely related or bound
by the same social ties as those that characterize
households or families. Distinct spatial locations
may also indicate differences in the scale of production, in terms of the amount produced or the number
of people involved. Unlike Aztec weavers who mostly
worked at home on a part-time basis, Mesopotamian
city-states during the Ur III period established weaving workshops staffed by female slaves or semi-free
women who were closely supervised by agents appointed by the government. These women received little
compensation for their efforts beyond subsistence and
had lost most or all ability to control their labor or its
products. The relationships outlined here are by no
means invariant but thinking about where production
takes place has proved to be fruitful in attempting to
understand how the production of the same sort of final
product may be organized in quite different ways.
Social Relations between Producer and Consumer

Another way that archaeologists have approached the

question of specialization is by considering the nature
of the social relations between producer and consumer and between who makes and who controls the
objects produced. Two types have been defined: attached and independent specialists. These categories
have proved useful in considering how craft production contributes to social change and the accumulation or reinforcement of political power. Attached

1056 CRAFT SPECIALIZATION

specialists work for a patron, usually an individual or

social group of high social status and sufficient wealth
to provide the support. In many cases, the patron is
the governing authority itself. The patron in effect
exercises some degree of monopoly over the labor of
the specialists and assumes control over the disposition of what the specialists produce. In return, the
patron provides the support, which may include
the raw materials or even the tools as well as food,
housing, or other benefits, allowing the specialists to
devote themselves to their productive activity. Independent specialists operate on their own account, as it
were, relying on other mechanisms of exchange such
as markets to trade what they have produced for
other goods and services. Archaeologists working in
the Late Intermediate period city of Chan Chan in
Peru, seat of the Chavin Empire, have argued for the
presence of both kinds of specialists, identifiable in
part through differences in spatial location as well as
kinds of materials being produced. Attached specialists lived and worked next to large elite residential
compounds, whereas independent ones carried out
their production in work areas integrated into their
houses which were located in parts of the city away
from elite compounds.

Methods for Identifying Specialized

Production
Ways of identifying the occurrence and scale of
specialized production in past societies fall into four
main categories: archaeological context, object studies, observation or experimentation, and the use of
documents or art.
Archaeological Context

This refers to the examination of those areas of an

archaeological site where production took place. Determining the location of production is complicated
by differential preservation, especially of organic
materials, and is directly affected by the methods
chosen to excavate the site, but when successful, this
approach is one of the most productive. The association of tools, production facilities such as kilns, raw
materials, waste from the manufacturing processes,
and objects in the process of being manufactured are
some of the things that the excavator looks for and
are among the best kinds of evidence with which to
address issues of intensity, scale, and location. The
example of Chan Chan discussed above provides an
excellent illustration of the value of excavation strategies designed to recover information from multiple
locations within a site. Excavation of both the large
elite compounds and the smaller household areas

made it possible to identify the occurrence of two

different contexts of production.
Studying Objects

Studying the objects themselves is probably the most

widely employed approach because it may be applied
to items in museum collections or otherwise not
excavated by the analyst directly. Studies of objects
may consider their formal or decorative properties,
such as design elements or their execution, to try to
identify stylistic clusters that may indicate production
by the same group of producers. Such inferences must
be confirmed by archaeological data from sites in the
proposed region, however, since alternative explanations are possible. Techniques of manufacture, such
as the use of molds, are also of interest for the light
they shed on the technological aspects of production
and the organization of production.
Object studies may also employ scientific techniques such as petrography, neutron activation analysis,
or X-ray fluorescence to determine the chemical composition of raw materials. Analysis of the trace elements present in clay or obsidian, for example, allows
the archaeologist to group together objects on the
basis of shared features of their raw materials
(see Chemical Analysis Techniques). Although these
techniques do not by themselves tell one where the
sources are located, they may show that certain styles
or types of pottery were made from the same or
different kinds of clay. This in turn has been used to
make inferences about where objects were produced.
Such information may be combined with other kinds
of evidence to develop models of the scale or organization of production. Research on metalworking traditions has discerned the composition of different
alloys and the kinds of manufacturing techniques
employed.
Observation and Experimentation

Observation or experimentation provide a different

means to consider the issue. Archaeologists have observed contemporary specialists or engaged in experiments to replicate ancient technologies. These
studies have been extremely productive in working
out both the technological and social aspects of craft
specialization because of the information they generate regarding how much time is required, how many
people needed, what kinds of skills are involved, and
how new craft specialists are trained. Thus a great
deal of social information may be acquired that
would not otherwise be recoverable from the object
itself. When taking an experimental approach, it is
crucial to recreate the conditions of production, including the kinds of tools and facilities used, the

CRAFT SPECIALIZATION 1057

raw materials and how they are processed, and the

end product as closely as possible based on evidence
from archaeological contexts or other sources of information. Observation of craft production or experimental reconstruction under controlled conditions
often yield unexpected insight into the complexity
of preindustrial or nonmechanized technologies as
well as the degree to which craft specialists understand the properties of the materials with which they
worked.
Written and Visual Sources of Information

Finally, when available, written documents or art

may provide information about craft specialization
in a specific historical and cultural context. These
kinds of sources have been particularly helpful in
overcoming the limitations of the archaeological record in many parts of the world. Specialized production is not limited to such durable materials as clay,
stone, or metal but manufacture of those materials is
often what leaves the most extensive traces. Visual
representations of society and written texts expand
the range of kinds of crafts practiced while providing
information about the social relations of production
and the cultural beliefs that develop around the
productive process.

Research Questions
Research on craft specialization has shifted from
trying to determine if it is present or absent in a
particular society at some point in its history to understanding its nature and role in a given context. The
two research areas that have received the most attention are political economy and social identity.
Political Economy

Archaeologists interested in the study of political

economy are trying to understand how economic
processes, including those of production and exchange,
provide support for the differential distribution of
power and authority that characterize chiefdoms or
middle-range societies and states. Given their focus on
prehistoric societies and early civilization, archaeologists interested in these issues are often working within
the context of preindustrial or noncapitalist social
formations. This requires them to develop models
that do not assume the same sorts of economic relations, systems of value, or modes of production as
found in the modern world. The preindustrial, noncapitalist state societies that developed in both the Old and
New Worlds often continued to rely on modes of production that did not develop into the sort of full-time

paid occupational specialization envisioned by Childe.

In particular, production in the spatial location and
social context of the household remains a primary
way of organizing production. Even many attached
craft specialists continue to structure the creation of
goods and the training of new producers through a
familial or household context even when supported
by the state or elite patrons.
Much of the terminology discussed earlier was
developed by archaeologists interested in questions
of political economy. Emerging complex societies
benefited from already existing systems of craft
production and specialization which helped underwrite the changes they experienced. Attached and independent specialists, when they coexist in society, are
devoted to the production of different kinds of objects
or materials. Attached specialists are assumed to be
responsible for prestige goods that are restricted in
their distribution to members of the elite and function
as symbolic markers of status and political power.
Independent specialists, in contrast, produce more everyday sorts of items needed by people at all levels of
society. This difference requires more than one way of
exchanging goods and services. Prestige goods are controlled by social and political elites who use them to
create alliances, bind subordinates to them, and to
make visible their claims to distinction and status.
They are not available to just anyone and their use is
restricted by social and possibly legal sanctions.
The existence of attached specialization is seen as
crucial although there is less interest in the specialists
themselves and more in how their patrons deploy the
prestige goods produced. The relationship between
specialist and patron provides the patrons with material goods that serve as economic and symbolic capital in the ongoing negotiation of social position and
political control with other members of the elite. The
ability to control such goods has in fact been seen as
one explanation for the emergence of social hierarchy
and complexity. Thus, Childes original idea that specialization develops after the establishment of cities
and state-level government has been reversed. Craft
specialization becomes a cause, not a consequence.
Goods produced by independent producers, defined
as utilitarian, are distributed through less restrictive
systems of exchange such as marketplaces. Anyone
may obtain such items if they have the necessary
means. The association between independent producers and utilitarian goods has emerged as less satisfactory than the equation of attached specialists and
prestige goods (see Economic Archaeology). This is
because material goods of all sorts may be used as
markers of social difference, identity, and affiliation,
even ones that seem to be merely tools or utensils for

1058 CRAFT SPECIALIZATION

daily life. Nonelite households at the small third millennium BC site of Kurban Hoyuk (Turkey) acquired
large flint blades and wheel-made pottery from specialists while continuing to produce other kinds of
stone tools and make some pottery vessels by hand.
The types of goods produced by specialists that were
found in Kurban domestic contexts suggest that people living in this small town were not only part of a
diversified regional economy but also used these
goods as items of social display. Wheel-made ceramics were used for serving food which would increase
their social visibility and thus their use as conveyers
of social and symbolic information. The ability to
manipulate such social symbols was as important
to the nonelite households operating at the small scale
of the domestic setting as it was to the elite.
Social Identity

Although research on political economy has dominated discussions of craft specialization, another
focus is the study of social identity. This research is
more concerned with the specialists themselves, not
as the means by which others become prominent and
important but as people with social positions and
roles. It seeks to determine how being involved in
some sort of specialized craft production becomes
one source of individual or group identity. Since not
all people will produce the same things, one avenue to
explore is how productive activities are allocated and
how new craftspeople are recruited, trained, and supported. Certain forms of knowledge and productive
activities may be widespread, other kinds of production
may be the province of adult men or women, particular
ethnic groups or social classes, guilds, slaves, or other
subgroups within society. The consequences of being
part of an system of independent or attached production for the producers themselves have also been
studied. Producers of similar items may have quite
different social status depending on the particular
circumstances. In contrast to the Ur III example,
weavers in the Vijayanagara empire (that dominated
south India during the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries AD) experienced an increase in status over
time. Weavers were independent specialists organized
by households or communities, not slaves or semi-free
individuals as in the case of Mesopotamia.
The assumption that producers are inherently of
lower social status or belong to a lower social class
than the patrons to whom they are attached and
would thus be excluded from use of the very things
they make has been challenged by consideration of
social identity. Even when independent specialists are
believed to exist, they are generally taken to be different from those who rule or make up the social elite.
Some archaeologists have demonstrated that in fact

members of the elite or the ruling class may indeed

also be craft producers. Although their support may
not derive primarily from their productive activities,
they are generally producing more than they need for
their own purposes. This makes it possible to think of
them as a kind of craft specialist whose social position
becomes part of how their work is valued by society.
Their existence has been demonstrated among the
pre-Columbian Maya of Mesoamerica and the Native
American groups of the northwest coast of the United
States, including Alaska, and Canada. Research on
craft production in other Native American societies
demonstrates that often the producer and user of
symbolically significant objects are the same person.
Ritual specialists make their own paraphernalia as
part of their religious role in society, a role that
onfers social status on those who fill it. These investigations indicate that the production of material symbols of prestige may take different forms. Acquiring
control over the labor of others and over what they
produce is one form but by no means the only one.
Social identity shifts the focus from attached or
independent specialists as hard and fast categories to
demonstrate how the same producers may fill multiple roles. Ironworkers in the Toro kingdom of
Uganda might be both part-time independent producers in the context of their village and also specialists
supported by the Toro ruler at the royal court,
moving between these roles and locations as needed.
By directing attention to questions of identity, archaeologists do not limit themselves to the study of a select
few in society. They are able to bring in issues of
gender and ethnicity as well as taking a more inclusive
approach to the study of social status or class. In the
process, the interconnections between cultural values
and economic relations have come into sharper focus.
At the same time, the complexity of these interconnections in any given social context become easier to
see as well as how those connections changed over
time. The topic of identity has also proved useful in
studying specialization in less stratified or centralized
societies but has also augmented political economic
studies of chiefdoms and states.

Summation
Craft specialization intersects with a range of crucial
questions in the quest to understand what past societies were like and to explain social change. Although
ostensibly economic, it pertains to a number of social
domains, including those involving the construction
of social difference, the maintenance of social hierarchy, and the consolidation of political power in the
hands of the few. At the same time, it provides a way
to consider issues of identity and role across society.

CULTURAL ECOLOGY 1059

Archaeologists have expended much thought and

debate on the best ways to study craft specialization.
Intensity, scale, location, and social relations have been
recognized as important aspects of the process. Like all
analytical concepts, full- and part-time specialization,
household versus workshop production locations, or
attached versus independent specialists are useful heuristics that allow archaeologists to construct explanatory models. As heuristics, they are subject to ongoing
refinement and questioning as a result of both new
evidence and new thinking about the underlying
framework of the models to which they contribute.
See also: Chemical Analysis Techniques; Civilization
and Urbanism, Rise of; Economic Archaeology;
Exchange Systems; Experimental Archaeology; Identity and Power; Marxist Archaeology; Political Complexity, Rise of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social
Inequality, Development of; Social Theory; Spatial
Analysis Within Households and Sites; Textiles.

Further Reading
Brumfiel EM and Earle TK (eds.) (1987) Specialization, Exchange,
and Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Childe VG (1951) Man Makes Himself. New York: The New

American Library.
Clark JE (1995) Craft specialization as an archaeological category.
Research in Economic Anthropology 16: 267294.
Costin CL (2001) Craft production systems. In: Feinman GF and
Price TD (eds.) Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook,
pp. 273327. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Costin CL and Wright RP (eds.) (1998) Craft and Social Identity.
Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association.
Cross JR (1993) Craft specialization and cultural complexity.
Research in Economic Anthropology 14: 6184.
Graham-Campbell J (ed.) (1991) Craft production and specialization World Archaeology 23(1): 1130.
Lechtman H (1993) Technologies of power: The Andean case. In:
Henderson JS and Netherly P (eds.) Configurations of Power:
Holistic Anthropology in Theory and Practice, pp. 244280.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Patterson TC (2005) Craft specialization, the reorganization of
production relations and state formation. Journal of Social
Archaeology 5: 307337.
Schortman EM and Urban PA (2004) Modeling the roles of craft
production in ancient political economies. Journal of Archaeological Research 12: 185226.
Stein GJ and Blackman MJ (1993) The organizational context
of specialized craft production in early Mesopotamian states.
Research in Economic Anthropology 14: 2959.
Wailes B (ed.) (1996) Craft Specialization and Social Evolution: In
Memory of V. Gordon Childe. Philadelphia: The University
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of
Pennsylvania.

CULTURAL ECOLOGY
Marion Blute, University of Toronto at Mississauga,
Mississauga, ON, Canada
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
archaeobotany The study of plant remains from archaeological
sites.
cultural ecology The study of the interaction between cultures
and their environments.
ecology The study of the interaction between organisms and
their environments.
environmental and ecological archaeology The study of
the relationship between past human populations and their
environments.
geoarchaeology The study of the geology of archaeological
settlements and sites.
horticulture A mode of subsistence in which people farm using
hand tools.
hunting and gathering A mode of subsistence in which people
gather wild plants and hunt wild animals.
intensive agriculture A mode of subsistence in which people
farm more intensively than do horticulturalists employing draft
animals for labor.

pastoralism A mode of subsistence in which people live

primarily off herds of mammalian herbivores which they
herd or follow.
zooarchaeology The study of animal remains from
archaeological sites.

The material remains that archaeologists normally

study (the remnants of artifacts such as the tools,
pottery, buildings, and settlements of past human
societies) is logically part of culture more broadly.
First, culture also includes languages as well as socially learned customs, beliefs, and values; these merged
into social roles, statuses, or identities and these
aggregated in turn into organizations and institutions. Hence, material culture needs to be placed in
the context of culture more generally. Second, since
human (including cultural) ecology is logically part
of ecology more broadly, it needs to be placed in that
context. Although the actual historical story of the
evolution of these fields of study is considerably more
complex than these simple logical distinctions, they
are used here as organizing principles and hence the

1060 CULTURAL ECOLOGY

discussion will proceed from ecology to human (specifically cultural) ecology, and thence to environmental and ecological archaeology including a discussion
of the impact of people on their environments. Finally,
we will turn to some general theoretical issues
which cut across these related fields of study and
some conclusions.

Ecology
The term ecology was coined by the biologist Ernest
Haeckel in 1869. It has come to mean the study of
all aspects of the interaction between organisms and
their environments. The latter include the physical
(abiotic) environment and other species (the biotic
environment). In the broadest sense, ecology includes
interactions with the environment involving all
biological processes, including physiology, development, demography, social interaction, and evolution.
It includes these at all levels, including individuals,
populations of a single species, pairs of interacting
species, and communities/ecosystems of multiple species. Historically, the most emphasis was placed on
ecology as a pure science, on the effect of the ecological environment on organisms rather than vice versa,
and on particular processes at particular levels. These
latter included demographic processes (births, deaths,
dispersal, and population growth rates and sizes)
both at the level of single populations and pairs of
populations interacting competitively (

), mutualistically ( ), or antagonistically (
), as well as the flow
of energy and materials through, and the degree of
species richness in ecosystems. In recent decades these
have been supplemented with more emphasis on applied
problems of environmental management, on the effects
of organisms on the ecological environment (niche construction), and on other processes such as the physiology
of individuals (physiological ecology) and the evolution
of populations (evolutionary ecology).
Because people are animals too, the relationship
with their ecological environment can and has been
studied from a biological perspective, much like that
of any other species. On the other hand, people are
not just another kind of animal. Admittedly, this
human exceptionalism we now know is quantitative
rather than qualitative. The members of many species
of birds and mammals particularly are known to
communicate, fashion and use simple tools, learn
socially by observation from each other, and more
rarely to be capable of communicating employing
simple rules in short, to have culture. The extensiveness of social learning, of the use of language to instruct
and be instructed, particularly in their application to
technology is so great, however, in the human species,
that the quantitative has become qualitative. Any

human ecology which did not take significantly into

account, not simply our great flexibility in learning
individually by trial and error for example, but the
extensiveness of our second (cultural) inheritance and
evolutionary system which has transformed the face of
the planet would be seriously deficient.

Cultural Ecology
The phrase cultural ecology was first used by the
anthropologists Julian Steward and Leslie White in
the 1950s. It was defined by Steward as the adaptive
processes by which the nature of society and an unpredictable number of features of culture are affected
by the basic adjustment through which man utilizes a
given environment. It has come to mean the study of
all aspects of the interaction between human cultures
and their ecological environments. Like other sciences,
much of cultural ecology is classificatory and descriptive. In particular, cultural ecologists commonly distinguish among societies with different subsistence patterns
(ways of making a living from nature), distinguishing in
particular among hunting and gathering, horticultural,
pastoral, and intensive agricultural societies.
Hunting and Gathering

In hunting and gathering societies, people eat wild

food (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient). They do little
to actively control the reproduction of exploited species. They do utilize a great array of plant and animal
species of which they possess detailed knowledge, but
commonly concentrate on the tubers, seeds, nuts, and
fruits of plants as well as small animals and birds.
A few have specialized in hunting large animals.
Hunter-gatherers may be sedentary if a rich store of
resources is available locally as was the case with
salmon for the Nuu-chah-nulth of the British Columbia coast and with sea mammals for the Chumash of
the California coast. In such cases, population sizes
can become large and social organization complex.
In most cases, however, hunter-gatherers live in small
bands of an average of 25 or so and rarely more than
40 people. They are mobile in some or all of three
ways. First, they may travel frequently, foraging
through a familiar landscape on a route timed to
when resources are expected to become available.
Second, they may instead, or in addition, make
trips, often in smaller groups, out from a short or
longer-term home base, collecting resources which
are brought back to the home base. Finally, they
may migrate into a wholly new area.
The social organization of hunter-gatherers tends
to be fairly simple, with a low level of division of
labor based on age and gender. Birth rates are lower

CULTURAL ECOLOGY 1061

than in horticultural societies with the spacing of

children achieved in part by lengthy nursing. Women
tend to specialize in gathering plant material, men in
hunting animals. The more mobile they are, the fewer
are their material possessions. Social inequality is low.
Animal food, particularly large animals, is shared
among families, a practice which works like insurance. It reduces the risk for all concerned when the
results of hunts are variable and surpluses cannot be
stored. Membership in bands tends to be fluid with
families and individuals sometimes moving between
bands, such shifts having the effect of equalizing band
sizes more and permitting new family formations.
Once all humans were hunter-gatherers and it was
by means of this mode of subsistence that they spread
out to populate the Earth. As all parts of the world
became inhabited, however, and some groups turned
to agriculture to make a living, hunter-gatherers came
to be limited to more marginal habitats. Relationships between hunter-gatherers and farmers tend to
be uneasy for obvious reasons, but in some cases,
mutualistic relationships have been established with
trade between them, based on an exchange of wild
for cultivated foods. Despite the limitations that
most people having turned to agriculture has placed
on hunter-gathers, many anthropological studies
have shown that this way of life remains successful
for some even providing greater leisure, for example, than other modes of subsistence. Some huntergatherers that have been studied by anthropologists
are Australian Aborigines, the Inuit of the Canadian
arctic, the San of the Kalahari desert in southern
Africa and the Batak of the Philippines.

within societies. Small intensively cultivated gardens,

sometimes terraced, may be maintained near home,
while plots for different species which are less intensively cultivated are located further afield. The degree
of control over the reproduction of domesticated
species can also vary from simply controlling what
species grows where to practicing some selective
breeding, choosing the best individuals in a domesticated species for material to plant and breed.
Horticulturalists are sedentary. Their population
sizes, birth rates, and density (numbers per unit land
area) are typically larger and social organization
more complex than that of hunter-gatherers. Horticulturalists live in families which may or may not be
extended, with family households commonly grouped
in villages. Groups which are actually or mythically
related by common descent (lineages, clans) are commonly recognized, with the whole constituting a tribe
or ethnic group which shares a common culture, language, and way of life. Disputes within and between
lineages/clans tend to be settled by informal discussion
among the senior males of the groups involved
although some develop chiefdoms (see below). The
less intensive the cultivation, the more likely it is that
rights to cultivate plots can be redistributed among
families by clan elders as family sizes wax and wane
but the more intensive the cultivation, the more these
rights come to approach being treated as family property. Some examples of horticultural societies which
have been studied by anthropologists are the Dani of
highland New Guinea, the Nuer and Dinka of East
Africa, the Kofyar of the Jos Plateau of Northern
Nigeria, and the Yanomamo of northwestern Brazil.

Horticulture

Pastoralism

Horticultural societies practice small-scale agriculture with human labor using hand tools and without
draft animals, although they may keep small domesticated animals such as chickens and pigs. The extent
to which horticulturalists alter the landscape and
control the reproduction of domesticated species in
order to make a living from nature can vary greatly.
Slash and burn or shifting cultivation is sometimes
practiced in tropical forests where fields are cleared,
planted, and abandoned after a few years when the
soil becomes exhausted. Swidden agriculture is a
more sustainable system in which fields are reused
regularly after a fallow period. Because the diversity
of biological species increases towards the equator
and decreases towards the poles, tropical horticulture
can be a very complex phenomenon with many different species whose requirements complement each
other interplanted, which mature at different times,
and are used for different purposes. Elsewhere, the
intensity of cultivation can vary greatly between and

Pastoralists derive all or the majority of their food

and other resources from domesticated animals
which they herd goats, sheep, llamas, camels, cattle
etc., or less commonly simply follow, for example,
reindeer. Pastoralism is really a form of gathering
except that instead of gathering directly, pastoralists
herd herbivores that gather, that is, which graze on
grasses or browse on bushes that humans cannot
digest, and then the people live on the animals on
their milk, blood, meat, wool, hides, dung (useful for
fuel), etc. The animals may provide transportation as
well. Like hunter-gatherers, all pastoralists are mobile
to varying degrees. They may be almost continuously
nomadic, herding their animals on a route timed
to when resources are expected to be available, for
example, among waterholes, between lowland and
upland pastures, etc. Alternatively, or in addition,
they may make trips (often in smaller groups, usually
composed of younger males, but which can extend
to all males) out from, and back to, a shorter or a

1062 CULTURAL ECOLOGY

longer-term home base. The most common intentional landscape alteration they engage in is burning to
control the ratio of grass to brush but they often
practice quite sophisticated selective breeding of their
animals. Pastoralists live at higher population densities
than hunter-gatherers but lower than horticulturists.
Because they often have animals available for transporting goods, they usually have more material possessions
than hunter-gatherers.
Social organization among pastoralists can vary
from small band-like groups of families all the way
through tribes and in some cases chiefdoms (see
below). More commonly however, like horticulturalists, pastoral societies are segmentary with a number
of lineages to varying degrees of depth recognized.
At the most inclusive level, a group of clans constitute
the tribe. Some examples of pastoral societies which
have been studied by anthropologists are the Saami
of northern Scandinavia, the Nuer and Maasai of east
Africa, and the Najavo of the American southwest.
Intensive Agriculture

Intensive agriculturalists farm with energy from animals yoked to plows. They alter the landscape much
more than do horticulturalists, plowing larger fields
and employing a great variety of methods of intensification (acquiring more resources per unit land area)
by irrigating (controlling floods, diverting streams,
building dams and canals, digging wells, and terracing) as well as by fertilizing, rotating crops, and selectively breeding crops and livestock. Agricultural
production typically is concentrated on a single root
or grain crop. Their population sizes, birth rates, and
population densities are all higher than those of horticultural societies. Intensive agriculturalists are sedentary. Their farming yields a surplus beyond that
needed to feed those who actually do the work of
farming and caring for animals. This permits at least
some craft specialization and, in the case of the most
productive, a whole strata or series of strata of craft
specialists and religious, political, military, and
bureaucratic leaders in archaic states. Despite its
productivity, the narrowing of diet which tends to
occur under intensive agriculture and the social
inequality which increases may result in deficiency
diseases and poorer health, at least for some. Those
who do the actual agricultural work may live, or live
part of the time, near their fields. However, intensive
agricultural societies all include villages or towns
with ceremonial centers, and in the case of states,
a series of such, which form satellites around an
even larger urban center.
Social organization under intensive agriculture
is based on chiefdoms or states. Chiefdoms can arise
by coercion, but are commonly believed to arise most

often in horticultural and pastoral societies beginning

with big men. These are senior clan males whose
personal qualities spiritual power, deep ecological
knowledge, wisdom in settling disputes, oratorical
or fighting ability, and so on set them apart as
charismatic and they acquire power and prestige. As
mentioned previously, they may become responsible
for settling disputes and redistributing land and other
resources among families within clans as family sizes
wax and wane. The same thing can occur on a higher
level as one clan, having acquired a reputation for
producing such men, is elevated and serves the same
functions among clans.
Chiefdoms have emerged when these chiefly statuses
on one or more levels become hereditary. Chiefdoms
tend to be politically unstable for three sociological
reasons. One is greed. Their material demands (gifts,
tribute, etc.) originally seen as just compensation for
the time and effort put into managing the communitys
affairs, may become excessive. Religious manipulation
and coercion may come to replace service more and
more, and as a consequence, they may be overthrown
by revolt from below. The second is the succession
problem. Sons may not possess the abilities of their
fathers, or there may be conflict among them over
succession. The third is that the ecological conditions
supporting more intensive agriculture and pastoralism
and which, by their surplus production, lead to the
nucleation of chiefdoms, can lead to similar nucleation in adjacent territories. This can lead to disputes
and wars over territory and subjects, particularly if
resources become scarce for ecological reasons. Some
examples of intensive agriculturalists that have been
studied by anthropologists are the Tamang of Nepal,
the Mexican village of Cacurpe, and the Kofyar of
central Nigeria.
Ecological factors (other than access to plentiful
water for productive agriculture) such as locations
that are a crossroad for trade, play a role in the rise
of states. With state level social organization (sometimes called ancient or archaic civilizations), kinship
as the basis of large-scale social organization is broken down and replaced by endogamous strata. The
bond of kinship that binds leaders to followers, even
in chiefdoms, is broken. Instead, a state religion typically holds that kings of states have a different, supernatural origin from commoners, giving them a divine
right to rule. Strata replace kinship as the most important organizing principle in society. One is born
into a distinct strata of which at least two, commoner
and nobility, are present. The leaders of states have
more power than do those of chiefdoms, with a greater capacity to raise taxes, make laws, regulate and
engage in long distance trade, draft soldiers, and allocate land and labor. The largest settlement is a city

CULTURAL ECOLOGY 1063

and large architectural projects like palaces, tombs,

and ceremonial centers are undertaken. States have
larger and more different kinds of nonagricultural
specialists including a variety of full-time craft specialists as well as full-time priests, administrators,
soldiers, architects, and builders of public buildings,
and not uncommonly artists, scientists, and historians. The latter primarily record dynastic history.
All human groups are known to have mechanisms to
control and reduce aggression and violence within the
group and to engage in it between groups, whether
these be bands of hunter-gatherers, the tribes of horticulturalists and pastoralists, or the chiefdoms and
states of intensive agriculturalists. Obviously, however, the consequences of group aggression and violence (war) are greater the larger the units involved.
For obvious reasons states have primarily been studied by archaeologists and they include states that
emerged independently on all continents except for
Antarctica and Oceania, for example in the Nile
Valley, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Northern
China, Mesoamerica, and in the Andean region of
South America.

Environmental and Ecological

Archaeology
Environmental and ecological archaeology is the study
of the relationship between past human populations
and their environments. Rather than study human
artifacts themselves, the tools, pottery, buildings etc.
that other archaeologists concern themselves with,
environmental and ecological archaeologists study
the geological and biotic environment and components
of archaeological settlements and sites. There are three
main subfields geoarchaeology, archaeobotany
(sometimes called paleobotany or even paleoethnobotany), and zooarchaeology (sometimes called archaezoology). Geoarchaeology is the study of the geology of
archaeological settlements and sites. Archaeobotany is
the study of plant remains and zooarchaeology of animal remains from archaeological sites.
Geoarchaeology

The geoarchaeology of a settlement or site includes

the nature of the underlying bedrock; drift deposits
from ice sheets, rivers, and ancient lakes; and landforms of sediments shaped by subsequent deposition
or erosion. (The term geomorphology, literally the
shape of the landscape, is sometimes used to apply to
all three and, sometimes, only to the latter.) Geology
in general, and landforms in particular, are important
because they affect things such as water supplies,
potential communication routes, defensibility, and

agricultural potential. They are particularly important in the study of paleolithic sites because landforms
may well have been changed by natural processes
since they were inhabited, affecting interpretations
of other data. In addition, human activity itself, particularly intensive agriculture, alters the landscape.
Hence, understanding landscapes and the changes
they have undergone through time are critically important in understanding archaeological sites. Mapping,
including remote sensing techniques, are important in
geoarchaeology. The study of sediments and surface
soils is also as important. Many physical and chemical
properties of sediments and soils have been studied,
normally away from the field in laboratories, or in
experiments replicating ancient conditions and practices, both of which have resulted in significant information about the origin, preservation, and destruction
of archaeological sites.
Archaeobotany and Zooarchaeology

Plant and animal remains from archaeological sites

and settlements are particularly informative. They
can be used to distinguish the type of biome present
tropical forest, temperate deciduous forest, temperate
coniferous forest, grasslands, desert, tundra, and
mountains some of which may have changed over
the time of human occupation. Plant remains including nut shells, fruit stones, grains, and seeds can be
informative about mode of subsistence, land use, diet,
and changes in these. Particularly well developed is
the study of pollen and spores. These are often well
preserved because they were naturally selected to
disperse and be resistant to various kinds of stress.
They are usually separated from soil samples by flotation and studied under microscopes and even their
DNA is sometimes analyzed. This permits identification down to the species level and, in some cases, can
show changes in species through time, reflecting climate change or selective breeding. Similarly, animal
remains can be informative about the biome as well as
about fishing and the hunting and domestication of
animals. Again, certain parts are more likely than
others to be preserved, for instance, shells, insect
exoskeletons, and the bones of fish and small and
large mammals.
One micro example of the success of environmental and ecological archaeology involves a farm
mound on Papa Westray, an island in the Orkney
archipelago off the northern tip of Scotland. The
mound, once thought to result from either a dung
heap or a decayed and replaced turf building, was
shown by a combination of geoarchaeological, archaeobotanical, and zooarchaeological methods to be the
remains of a twelfth-century fish-processing site.
One macro example is the light they have shed on

1064 CULTURAL ECOLOGY

the mass extinctions of mega-fauna (large animals)

around the world which followed shortly after the
arrival of prehistoric humans (see discussion below).
Impact on the Environment

Both cultural anthropologists and archaeologists have

normally described the relationship of cultures and
past human populations with the environment as an
interactive one. Practically, however, historically
both tended to place more emphasis on the effects of
the environment on people rather than the effects
of people on the environment. In recent years, though,
that has changed. Archaeological research has made
it clear that there never was an Eden in which people
lived in a stable, harmonious balance with their environment. It is also the case that as the scale of human
societies increased, as both population sizes and the
amount of resources acquired from nature per capita
increased from hunting and gathering through horticulture and pastoralism through intensive agriculture, the footprint left on the Earth has increased.
This has, of course, reached its apogee in industrial
societies in which human and animal labor has largely been replaced by machines using fossil fuels, the
type of society not commonly studied by archaeologists. Resource depletion and environmental degradation have been ubiquitous, but generally increasing in
human history.
Archaeological evidence for the impact of humans
on the environment comes from a great many parts of
the world, time periods, modes of subsistence, and
social organization. They include the massive extinction of birds by Polynesian colonizers; deforestation
of the Maya lowlands; the salinization of lands in
southern Mesopotamia; social erosion in ancient
Greece; the deforestation and elimination of virtually
all bird fauna on Easter Island; and the extinction of
mega-fauna at the end of the last ice age after upper
Paleolithic hunters of Siberia crossed the Bering
Straits to the Americas. In the latter case, climate
change may have played a role, but so did humans
in the extinction of mammoths, mastodons, ground
sloths, horses, and camels. There are now available archaeological landscape histories of all of the
major civilizations, including Egypt, Mesopotamia,
the Indus valley, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andean
region of South America. Most reveal resource depletion and environmental degradation resulting from
interactions between climate change and landscape
changes resulting from human activities, particularly
deforestation, overgrazing, and salinity from irrigation. In more recent history, the devastation has
spread from terrestrial to freshwater and marine
ecosystems.

Some Theoretical Issues

Discrete or Continuous?

We described different modes of subsistence and

associated forms of social organization almost as if
wholly discrete. While they do not form a smooth
continuum, the distinctions are more like multimodel
clusters than discrete kinds. For example, some primarily hunter-gatherers may cultivate a small patch of a
basic food plant in a cleared patch, abandoning it to
look after itself until they harvest it on their next return.
All pastoralists utilize some plant foods which they
may acquire by trade or cultivating small gardens.
Members of horticultural, intensive agricultural, and
even industrial societies eat some wild foods, and the
latter may keep small gardens around their homes. This
variability is also true of social organization. While no
hunting and gathering society has been organized as a
state and no state has subsisted exclusively on wild
food, in between there is a fair amount of overlap.
For example, horticultural and pastoral societies can
be socially organized along kin-based tribal lines or as
chiefdoms, and intensive agricultural societies can be
socially organized based on chiefdoms or states.
Evolution

In the social as in the life sciences, ecological and

evolutionary theories are closely linked. It is often
forgotten, for example, that Julian Steward first discussed cultural ecology in a book titled Theory of
Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear
Evolution. Some degree of variability within a particular mode of subsistence and social organization as
described above is inevitable, given that the different
modes are related by common cultural descent from
hunting and gathering which was the primordial
mode of human subsistence. However, biologically,
just as prokaryotic cells evolved from eukaryotic ones
does not mean that prokaryotic cells did not persist,
and that multicellular organisms evolved from unicellular ones does not mean that unicellular organisms
did not persist; culturally, the fact that horticulture
evolved (branched from) hunting and gathering, and
that pastoralism evolved (branched from) horticulture, as they are believed to have done, does not
mean that hunting and gathering and horticulture
did not persist. Culture, like life itself, evolves by
descent with modification in a multilineal fashion,
like a branching tree, rather than developing like a
single organism does in a linear sequence of stages.
The Role of Ecology and History

Although there are others like drift (sampling error)

and the laws of physics and chemistry, biological

CULTURAL ECOLOGY 1065

evolutionists emphasize that two forces largely explain the existing array of organisms the forces of
selection and the weight of history. Darwin called
these the conditions of existence and the unity of
type. While the different modes of subsistence described are historically related, that is so only in a very
general sense. In other words, culturally different
modes of subsistence and forms of social organization
are more like biological guilds (organisms which
occupy a similar niche and follow a similar way of
life) than they are like biological clades (all the
descendants of a common ancestor). For example,
we know with confidence that agriculture evolved
independently in a number of different places in the
world. Only archaeological research can reveal actual
historical affinities.
What is the Mechanism of Cultural Adaptation?

The concept of adaptation is ubiquitous in cultural

ecology and ecological and environmental archaeology. Different modes of subsistence are different modes
of adaptation to the ecological environment. In biology, there is a mechanism explaining adaptation.
At its most basic, the mechanism is Darwins natural
selection, natural selection acting among alternative
alleles or versions of a gene. But what is the mechanism of cultural adaptation? Many theorists across a
wide variety of social sciences today think that cultural evolution is an analogous process (or an instance of
the same general class of selection processes). The
basic elements of an evolutionary process transmission, variation, and selection are the same except
that cultural evolution is based on social learning or
meme-based transmission rather than the gene-based.
This theoretical perspective is very well-developed in
archaeology where methods of classification originating in biology are increasingly used to understand the
historical relationships among artifacts, for example.
Of course, there remain a variety of other theoretical perspectives. For example, just as developmental
biologists prefer to begin the story of life with individual organisms growing and developing rather than
with members of populations of adults differentially
reproducing, many social scientists prefer to begin the
story of culture with individuals learning and/or
making rational choices, rather than with members
of cultural populations being differentially transmitted by social learning. Similarly, just as some biologists prefer to emphasize the way that organisms
construct their environments (niche construction)
rather than how populations of them are structured
by it, some social scientists prefer to emphasize how
culture constructs nature rather than how it is
structured by it. While these development versus

evolution and construction versus structure chicken-and-egg problems have not been entirely resolved
in either realm, it is likely that the alternative perspectives in either case will eventually be understood as
being compatible. That, at least, is the assumption
generally made by biologists.
Still other theorists are impressed with the overwhelming importance of rituals in human society.
The ecologically oriented, however, have shown that
even some very exotic rituals can be shown to be
ecologically adaptive and some ritual-like behavior
is known to occur among animals. There it generally
serves the same kind of function as it does in humans,
either inducing an emotional state which promotes
conformity or testing the propensity of individuals
to conform, prior to some group activity important
for ecological reasons. More to the point here than
these various theoretical debates, the evolutionary
ecological perspective implies that many principles of
evolutionary ecology that are biological in origin can
be applied to cultural ecology.
The Evolutionary Ecology of Culture

It is a general principle of foraging that low densities

relative to resources favor eating (acquiring more
resources), while high densities favor digesting (deriving more breakdown products from each such resource unit acquired). Cultures behave similarly.
Even hunter-gatherers process food in various ways
use tools to cut off the most tender cuts of meat; chop,
pound, and winnow plant foods; and cook many
different kinds of foods. These are all methods of
pre-digestion, suggesting that even hunter-gatherers
experience resource pressures. Indeed, all techniques
of cultivation used in horticulture and intensive agriculture, techniques such as irrigating and fertilizing,
are methods of intensification, of deriving more
resources from each land unit. On a larger scale,
low densities favor growth while high densities
favor motility in a colonizable environment, maintenance in a renewable one, and mutability (innovation) in one with environmental carrying capacity
unutilized for historical reasons. While all cultures
use all of these strategies to some degree, huntergatherers tend to emphasize motility, moving on
when resources become depleted. Agricultural societies tend to emphasize maintenance, methods of storing and preserving food until at least the next harvest.
Industrial societies tend to be very technologically
innovative. Density dependence is only one kind of
example; there are other evolutionaryecological
principles of potential relevance to cultural ecology
and archaeology, principles such as scale, frequency,
and heterogeneity-dependent selection.

1066 CULTURAL ECOLOGY

Co-evolution

If culture and not genes only evolve in the human

species, then the relationship between them is a coevolutinary one according to many theorists, that is,
our genes and culture evolve in interaction with each
other. Surprisingly, whether adaptation in any particular case is achieved genetically or culturally may not
have made much difference for most of the history of
our species because as long as transmission is from
parents to offspring or at least among closely related
kin, the results of the two are generally predicted to
be similar. It is only with the coming of non-kin based
social organization and ultimately dense populations,
cities, schools, mass communications, etc. that genetic and cultural transmission and hence adaptation
begin to diverge (think of modern difficulties in
achieving life-work balance). More to the point
here, however, it is believed that the relationship
between human culture and the biology of other
species has been a co-evolutionary one.
There are three basic modes of co-evolution
competition (

), cooperation or mutualism ( ),
and antagonism (
). The relationship between
domesticated species and the cultural practices of
domestication are generally thought to be mutualistic, that is, a relationship from which both parties
benefit. There are characteristic changes which tend
to take place in species under domestication. These
include more docile personalities, a reduction in the
size of weapons like horns, and a general loss or at
least a reduction in the ability to defend themselves
from predators and parasites, functions which we
tend to assume. Once some of these have been
achieved, sizes tend to increase again. While our relationship with domesticated species may largely be
mutualistic, there is no doubt that our relationship
with most species has been antagonistic, in particular
one in which we benefit and they lose. The evidence is
strong that we are in a period of mass extinction of
species rivaled only by the half dozen or so mass
extinctions of planetary history, but this time brought
about by us, largely through habitat destruction. To
be fair, we also remain the victims of a number of
viral, bacterial, and protozoan parasites.

Conclusion
The story that cultural ecology and environmental
and ecological archaeology have to tell about our
history is, at one and the same time, inspiring and discouraging. On the one hand, the story is one of human
ingenuity, of anatomically modern humans ability to
persist and even thrive for roughly 100 000 years, facing
the challenges of every climactic zone and ecological

environment on the face of the Earth a story of success

matched by no other single species. At the same time, it
is also the story of how we have achieved this at the
expense of the physical environment including its
climate, as well as at the expense of a myriad of
other species in all ecosystems terrestrial, freshwater, and marine to the extent that we ourselves
may now be threatened. So what of the future?
Jared Diamond, in his comparative study of the
successes and failures of past societies, concluded
that there are five contributing factors to societal
success and failure. Environmental damage, climate
change, hostile neighbors, and friendly trading partners may be significant in any particular case, but a
societys response to its problems, particularly to environmental ones, is always significant. He concluded
that some societies have proved sustainable over
much longer periods of time than others and that
archaeological knowledge, in particular, can allow
us to learn from others mistakes. It is also possible,
however, that the science fiction writer Douglas
Adams and the physicist Stephen Hawking are also
right. It may be in the very nature of life itself to grow
and reproduce beyond the carrying capacity of its
environment. Our species may be only unusual in
the ecological dominance we have achieved. If so,
then while Diamond may be right in the short and
intermediate run, the only answer in the very long run
may be, as Adams and Hawking have suggested, to
eventually continue our long history of expansion,
but next off this planet.
See also: Agriculture: Biological Impact on Populations;
Social Consequences; Animal Domestication; Archaeozoology; Geoarchaeology; HumanLandscape Interactions; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Paleoethnobotany;
Plant Domestication; Political Complexity, Rise of.

Further Reading
Bates DG (2005) Human Adaptive Strategies: Ecology, Culture and
Politics, 3rd edn. Boston: Pearson Education.
Begon M, Townsend CR, and Harper JL (2005) Ecology: From
Individuals to Ecosystems, 4th edn. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing.
Branch N, Canti M, Clark P, and Turney C (2005) Environmental
Archaeology: Theoretical and Practical Approaches. London:
Hodder Education.
Diamond J (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or
Succeed. London: Viking Penguin.
Moran EF (2006) People and Nature: An Introduction to Human
Ecological Relations. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Netting RM (1986) Cultural Ecology, 2nd edn. Prospect Heights:
Waveland Press, Inc.
OConnor T and Evans JG (2005) Environmental Archaeology:
Principles and Methods, 2nd edn. Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton
Publishing Limited.

CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 1067

Odling-Smee FJ, Laland KN, and Feldman MW (2003) Niche
Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton
and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Redman CL (1999) Human Impact on Ancient Environments.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Sutton MQ and Anderson EN (2004) Introduction to Cultural Ecology. Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman and Littlefield
Publishers, Inc.

Cultural Heritage Legislation and Antiquities

Legislation.

Cultural Heritage Sites

See: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage

See: World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Donald L Hardesty, University of Nevada, Reno,
NV, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
ARPA (The Archaeological Resources Protection Act 1979) An
act to regulate finds on federal and Indian lands and to prevent
looting and destruction of archaeological resources.
cultural resources A broad category that describes a wide
variety of resources including archaeological sites, isolated
artifacts, features, records, manuscripts, historical sites,
traditional cultural properties, historical resources, and historic
properties, regardless of significance.
excavation The principal method of data acquisition in
archaeology, involving the systematic uncovering of
archaeological remains through the removal of the deposits of
soil and the other material covering them and accompanying
them.
salvage archaeology A term applied to the emergency salvage
of sites in immediate danger of destruction by major land
modification projects such as reservoir construction.
historic preservation A movement to protect buildings with
historic value from destruction or extensive renovation.

Introduction
Cultural resource management (CRM) is the theory
and practice of managing, preserving, and interpreting cultural resources within a social and legal context. Cultural resources refers to a wide variety of
material and nonmaterial expressions of human social groups and cultures in the environment. The
category includes archaeological remains, buildings
and structures, landscapes and places, towns and
neighborhoods, objects, historical documents, folk
traditions, and other things associated with and valued by people. Compliance or rescue archaeology is

the most common practice of CRM but it also

includes architectural and engineering documentation, public history, and landscape history.

History of CRM
The history of CRM has roots in ancient civilizations.
Han dynasty emperors in China collected ancient
artifacts, for example, and the Roman Emperor
Hadrian preserved some ancient monuments. In the
modern world, Renaissance Rome established a program to document and preserve ancient houses and
monuments in the Vatican as early as 1462, following a decree by Pope Pius II. In 1666, Sweden passed
the first law in Europe prohibiting the destruction
of antiquities and applied the law to all of its citizens
except the aristocracy. The English state showed a
concern for civic monuments as early as the reign
of Henry VIII and protected old royal strongholds
and religious buildings. England passed antiquities
legislation prohibiting the destruction of prehistoric
remains in 1882. The Ancient Monuments Act,
amended several times over the following decades,
allowed the state to purchase and maintain guardianship over ancient monuments (see Antiquities and
Cultural Heritage Legislation).
In the United States, the city of Philadelphia purchased and preserved Independence Hall (the Old
State House) in 1816 to prevent its demolition for a
subdivision. Congress mandated the Smithsonian Institution to explore the archaeological remains of the
mound builders as early as the 1840s. The Mount
Vernon Ladies Association of the Union, founded
in 1853, appears to be the first civic preservation
organization in the United States and raised money to
purchase and preserve President George Washingtons

1068 CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

estate. Congress established Yellowstone National

Park in 1872 and purchased Civil War battlefield
sites for preservation over the next few years. In
1889, federal legislation was passed to designate the
prehistoric Pueblo site of Casa Grande in Arizona
as the nations first national monument and to fund
its preservation. Court decisions prevented the
construction of a railroad through the Gettysburg
Battlefield in 1896.
Not until the Antiquities Act of 1906, however,
which prohibited the excavation of antiquities on
public land without a federal permit and authorized
the President to designate national monuments, did
federal legislation establish a general foundation for
CRM in the United States. Congress subsequently
created the National Park Service in 1916 as the
first governmental manager of natural and cultural
resources and gave it authority in 1935 under the
Historic Sites Act to document, acquire, and protect nationally important historical sites, objects,
and buildings. The act also created the National
Historic Landmarks program. Early CRM programs
emerged during the Great Depression in the 1930s
and 1940s in the context of federal relief programs
such as the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Tennessee Valley
Authority.

The Legal Framework of CRM

Most CRM laws and policies, however, emerged after
World War II and established the foundation for current compliance or rescue archaeology and other
CRM practices (see Historic Preservation Laws). Legislation and funding for these practices vary widely
throughout the world. Thus, Germany instituted a
variety of laws between 1953 and 1993 that both
required the state to fund CRM projects and required
developers proposing projects with impacts on cultural resources to pay according to the polluter pays
principle. In England, several modifications to the
Ancient Monuments Act culminated in the Ancient
Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act of 1979,
followed by the creation of English Heritage in 1983
as an institution to fund CRM projects. The establishment of the polluter pays principle in 1990 shifted the
primary mission of English Heritage away from funding to serving as an advisor on CRM projects. At the
same time, competitive tendering, which involves bidding by several competing archaeological contractors
for each project, emerged as the principal management system for the current practice of CRM.
In the United States, the Federal-Aid Highway Act
of 1956 and the Reservoir Salvage Act of 1960

authorized salvage archaeology of antiquities

threatened by the construction of highways, dams,
and reservoirs. The passage of National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966 (and later amendments), however, established the foundation for the
modern practice of CRM. The act mandated that all
federal agencies take into account the impact of their
activities upon significant historical properties and
established the existing regulatory framework and
institutions for the management of cultural resources
in the United States. NHPA created the National
Register of Historic Places, the Advisory Council for
Historic Preservation, and a system of state officers
(now known as State Historic Preservation Officers
or SHPOs) to administer federal historic preservation
grants to the states. Later amendments to NHPA
further stipulated that federal agencies must inventory and evaluate for national register eligibility
all cultural resources under their jurisdiction, allow
the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to review and comment upon the potential impacts of
proposed agency projects upon cultural resources,
and mitigate any adverse impacts to significant
cultural resources.
In 1969, Congress passed the National Environmental Protection Act of 1969 (NEPA). NEPA established a
national policy for preserving the environment and
mandated that the impact of federally funded projects
upon both natural and cultural resources be evaluated
through the preparation of environmental assessments
and environmental impact statements, a process that
involves the public. Executive Order 11593, issued by
President Richard Nixon in 1973, ordered federal
agencies to treat cultural resources potentially eligible
for the national register as if they were listed. The
Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act of 1974
(the MossBennett Bill) amended the 1960 Reservoir
Salvage Act and provided funding for federally mandated CRM projects. Congress passed the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (ARPA), which
required federal agencies to issue uniform procedures
(e.g., permits, ownership, penalties) for the treatment
of archaeological resources on federal and Indian
lands. In 1990, Congress passed the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA);
NAGPRA requires federal agencies or repositories that
receive federal funds to repatriate human remains and
cultural objects to Indian tribes who can show historical or cultural connections. Compliance with NEPA
and Section 106 of NHPA is the cornerstone of the
practice of CRM in the United States but also includes
practices associated with NAGPRA, ARPA, historic
buildings and structures, landscapes and places, and
other cultural resources.

CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 1069

CRM Practice
The practice of CRM takes place within the legal
framework discussed above. In the United States, for
example, the practice of CRM is focused on compliance with Section 106 of NHPA, which requires that
federal agencies consider the impact of their actions
upon significant historic properties and that the
ACHP be given an opportunity to comment on their
actions. Compliance with Section 106 is a process
with several steps. Before initiating the compliance
process, the proposed action must have federal involvement (an undertaking) and must have the potential to have an impact upon cultural resources. If
so, a review is required. The next step is consultation
among concerned parties or stakeholders, which may
include the SHPO (or Tribal Historic Preservation
Officer (THPO) in the case of Indian tribes), Indian
tribes, local governments, applicants for federal funds
or permits, and the public. Identifying historic properties then takes place (sometimes called phase I) and
involves defining the area of potential effects of the
proposed action and reviewing existing information
from documents (e.g., site records), oral histories, consultations, reconnaissance surveys, ground-surface examination, shovel testing, and limited test excavations.
The next step is evaluation (or phase II) to determine whether or not the identified properties are
eligible for listing on the national register. Phase II
gathers more detailed data about the property from
intensive pedestrian surveys, remote sensing, controlled surface collection, and patterned test excavations. The evaluation process involves the application
of the national register criteria of historical significance, assessment of whether the historic property
retains enough integrity to convey its significance,
and determination of whether or not the property
should be exempted if it is in a category excluded
from listing on the national register (e.g., cemeteries).
Determining whether or not the proposed action will
have adverse effects upon historic properties found
to be eligible for the national register is the next step
in the evaluation process and often involves the preparation of a memorandum of agreement between the
federal agency and an SHPO/THPO. Phase III or mitigation of adverse effects is the next step. Mitigation
may involve architectural documentation of buildings
and structures, archaeological data recovery such as

large-scale excavation, the preparation of oral histories, public outreach or educational activities such
as museum displays or brochures, or moving the
proposed project to another location to avoid
adverse effects.
The organizational structure of CRM practice also
varies. In some countries, CRM mostly takes place
within a centralized organization (e.g., the Archaeological Survey of India or Mexicos INAH). Other
countries have a much more decentralized system in
which the practice of CRM takes place at the level of
states (e.g., the independent states in the erstwhile
Federal Republic of Germany), regions, or localities.
The private sector practices most CRM in some
countries, for example, the United Kingdom and the
United States, but not in others (e.g., Sweden, where
most CRM is done by the National Heritage Board or
county museums). CRM practice also varies widely as a
function of whether cultural resource laws apply to
private (e.g., Sweden, Argentina) or to public property
(e.g., the United States).
See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation;
Careers in Archaeology; Environmental Impact Assessment and the Law; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Historic Preservation Laws; Who Owns the
Past?; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.

Further Reading
Cleere H (ed.) (1996) Archaeological Heritage Management in the
Modern World. London: Routledge.
Cleere H (2003) Preserving archaeological sites and monuments.
In: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS): Archaeology
(Ed. Donald L. Hardesty). Developed under auspices of the
UNESCO. Oxford: Eolss Publishers. http://www.eolss.net.
Green W and Doershuk JF (1998) Cultural resource management
and American archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research
6(2): 121167.
King T (2004) Cultural Resources Laws and Practice: An Introductory Guide, 2nd edn. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Johannson N and Johannson LG (2003) Rescue archaeology. In:
Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS): Archaeology,
Developed under auspices of the UNESCO. Oxford: Eolss Publishers. http://www.eolss.net.
McManamon FP and Hatton A (eds.) (2000) Cultural Resource
Management in Contemporary Society. London: Routledge.
Neumann TW and Sanford RM (2001) Cultural Resources Archaeology. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.

1070 CULTURE, CONCEPT AND DEFINITIONS

CULTURE, CONCEPT AND DEFINITIONS

R Lee Lyman, University of Missouri Columbia,
Columbia, MO, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
transmogrify

Transform in kind, essence, or nature.

The concept of culture has evolved over the past

130 years, and continues to transmogrify as the
needs and interests of anthropologists develop. Culture is an analytical concept that is defined and operationalized in manners that facilitate analytical work
and broaden and deepen our understanding of human
behavior the subject in which anthropologists and
archaeologists are interested. Archaeologists study
what is sometimes referred to as material culture.
This term implies that culture is a material manifestation, though this is disputed in the anthropological
literature. In the following, the history of the culture
concept within anthropology is summarized first.
Then, the manners in which culture has been conceived and perceived by archaeologists in the Old
World and in the New World are described.

Anthropological Perspectives
Edward Burnett Tylor published his seminal definition in 1881: Culture, or Civilization, taken in its
wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole
which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. Culture was
the central focus of inquiry within the discipline
Franz Boas nurtured, though he himself did not formally define culture until his career was nearly over.
Tylor considered culture to be a thing and used the
term in the singular form culture in the wholistic
sense. Boas highlighted the fact that there were many
different cultures, each comprising its own more or
less unique, historically contingent set of cultural
traits culture in the partitive sense.
In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn
compiled more than 160 definitions of culture from
the literature, and sorted them into seven categories
(descriptive, historical, normative, psychological, structural, genetic, incomplete). Kroeber and Kluckhohn
defined culture as a set of attributes and products
of human societies, and therewith of mankind, which
are extrasomatic and transmissible by mechanisms

other than biological heredity. This definition has

analytical utility, because it comprises a theory of culture in the sense that it explains how individuals in a
group acquire their behavioral repertory they learn
those behaviors rather than inherit them genetically.
What individuals learn concerns not only acceptable
behaviors but values, beliefs, attitudes, and otherwise
arbitrary meanings of phenomena, such as the fact
that holy water is more than merely wet. Leslie White
argued throughout his career that man alone had the
ability to assign symbolic meaning to otherwise natural phenomena and to anthropogenic phenomena.
Conceptions of culture as ideological and transmitted
nonbiologically served the historical ethnology or
historical particularism school of thought. This
school was interested in writing the history of cultural
phenomena. Cultural transmission was accomplished
by enculturation and socialization between members
of a group, and diffusion between groups comprising
different cultures.
Culture has also been conceived of as an adaptive
system. Perhaps the most famous, or at least well
known among archaeologists, definition of culture
as an adaptive system was provided by Leslie White
in 1959: Culture [is] an extrasomatic mechanism
employed by [humans] in order to make [their] life
secure and continuous. The notion that culture is
adaptive was reinforced by Julian Stewards cultural
ecology. In Stewards view, different technologies
mediate the influence of different environments on
culture. In Whites view, a culture is a system. It comprises various elements that are functionally (one might
say mechanically) interrelated with other elements, all
in a particular organizational configuration. White
identified three basic subsystems of a culture: technology, social structure or relations, and ideology.
Whites characterization of a culture as a system of
elements in a particular structuralfunctional arrangement paralleled Bronislaw Malinowskis conception
of a culture.
If culture is ideological, it can develop or evolve
and accumulate over time; what my grandparents
learned is transmitted to my parents, who learn
more; all of that accumulated knowledge is transmitted to me, and I can learn more and teach everything
to my offspring. Cultural evolution occurs in part as a
result of imperfect fidelity of transmission (e.g.,
learning error), and in part as a result of (necessary)
adaptive change. Some argue that the cumulative
property of culture allows it to be much more (adaptively) plastic than a biological gene pool, and that

CULTURE, CONCEPT AND DEFINITIONS 1071

it also distinguishes human culture from what

otherwise seems to be cultural behavior in nonhuman
animals.
Culture in the wholistic sense can be conceived
as accumulated, transmitted, and shared ideas, as an
adaptive system, and as only ideological or ideological plus the empirical results of an ideology manifest
in behaviors and by-products of behaviors (artifacts).
A culture, in the partitive sense, comprises the particular set of ideas (and behaviors and behavioral
byproducts) held more or less in common by a group
of individuals that tend to also have a common language, occupy the same general area, and experience
some degree of face-to-face contact.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the culture concept was
criticized, it was said to be no longer central to
anthropology, and it was argued to be an ideological
position rather than a scientific concept. This assault
continues today, prompting many anthropologists to
retool what they take to be the fundamental concept
of their discipline. Some still find definitions like
Kroeber and Kluckhohns useful; others disagree.
Nevertheless, the concept is useful when it is defined
with an analytical purpose in mind. Part of the present difficulty is that until recently, individual cultures
were conceived as units that were more or less bounded and autonomous. But cultures often are not
bounded or autonomous. Social groups fission and
fuse to varying degrees. The permeability of cultural
boundaries, the discreteness of cultures, is historically
unique and contingent, and may comprise the research
question. The reification of discrete, ethnographically
documented cultures influenced archaeology (see
Anthropological Archaeology).

Archaeological Perspectives
Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe adopted
German archaeologist Gustaf Kossinas definition of
an archaeological culture, but not its racist connotations. In 1929, Childe stated that a culture was manifest archaeologically as a set of artifacts that occurred
more or less completely at multiple sites. According
to Childe, archaeologists assume that a complex of
regularly associated artifact types is the material
expression of a people. Discipline-wide use of this
definition of an archaeological culture is sometimes
said to mark the birth of cultural archaeology the
study of prehistoric cultures and a shift from an
antiquarian or natural historian kind of archaeology
focusing on artifacts merely as curious anthropogenic
phenomena. Childes definition was, however, not
unique; a similar one existed in North America. In
the Old World, archaeologists were studying the (pre)
history of their genetic ancestors, whereas in the New

World archaeologists were studying the (pre)history

of a group with which they shared neither history nor
genes. These differences resulted in slightly different bases from which the notion of a prehistoric
culture grew.
Old World Archaeological Cultures

In Childes view, language facilitated a cultures transmission and accumulation. Childe believed that
humans cling to old traditions and display intense
reluctance to modify customary modes of behavior;
innovators and nonconformists have found this out
time and again through history. In Childes view, an
anthropologist conceives of a culture as a pattern of
behavior common to a group of persons or to all
members of a society. The uniformity of types of
artifacts in an archaeological culture reflects this conception and discloses the uniformity and rigidity of
the traditions of the artifact makers. Peculiarities of
the component types of an archaeological culture are
determined by convention or tradition rather than
function; thus an archaeological culture corresponds
to a social group that carries a particular social tradition. Childe thought it would be rash to try to define
precisely what sort of social group corresponds to an
archaeological culture, though he believed that different sets of artifact types represented different social
traditions or cultures. Further, social traditions were
created by societies or groups of people and transmitted, but they were not fixed or immutable. Culture
changed constantly as a society dealt with new circumstances. Finally, Childe held that a culture was an
organic whole and the elements of a culture would
more or less influence each other a conception of a
culture as a system.
Grahame Clark thought that the definitive criteria
of prehistoric cultures would vary from case to case,
but the most reliable criteria would be those capable
of expressing human choice or style, rather than those
controlled by ecological or economic factors. He also
believed that the more numerous the definitive
elements or traits, the more valid the cultural entity
defined. When he said the definitive criteria vary from
case to case, he meant that sometimes pottery might
be sufficient, other times chipped stone or perhaps
floor plans of houses. All of these might, or might
not, vary stylistically. Although the term had been
used without formal definition since the beginning of
the twentieth century, by the middle of that century
the term style had come to denote a kind or category
that corresponded to a particular geographic locality,
a particular time period, or both, and mostly the last.
From an archaeological perspective, in both the Old
and the New Worlds, styles were transmitted culturally, more or less free of functional constraints or limits,

1072 CULTURE, CONCEPT AND DEFINITIONS

and so could be used to map in time and space the

distribution of prehistoric cultures.
In 1968, British archaeologist David Clarke
remarked that culture consists of learned modes of
behavior and its material manifestations, socially
transmitted from one generation to the next and
from one society or individual to another. Contrary
to many anthropologists of the first half of the twentieth century, Clarke argued that there was no difference between the material manifestation of concepts
of form and function preserved in artifacts and the
social manifestations of similar concepts manifest as
social activities and behaviors. Agreeing with many of
those same anthropologists, Clarke thought that culture comprises a communication system of acquired
beliefs that increasingly supplements the genetic aspects
of humans. Culture is adaptive, is transmitted extrasomatically, and is cumulative. A culture is a system, an
integrated, intercommunicating network of entities
that form a complex whole. Subsystems include material culture, economic structure, religous dogma, and
social organization. In Clarkes view, the environment
in which a culture exists is part of the cultural system.
The belief that archaeological cultures might not be
equivalent to an ethnographers cultural units gained
strength in the 1970s. Several individuals observed
that different kinds of material culture did not all
display identical or even similar geographic distributions. Groups of artifact types were, according to
Childe and Clark, supposed to be distinctive of social
groups comprising cultures. Yet they and Clarke
recognized that groups of types were often polythetic;
sometimes no amount of analysis could discern geographic clusters of particular groups of types. Childe,
Clark, and Clarke suggested that the adaptive nature
of culture was influencing the combinations of types
rather than culture itself, implying that culture was
ideational and though adaptive, culture was more
stylistic choice than functional necessity.
British archaeologist Ian Hodder did ethnoarchaeological research to test the notion that the shared
ideas comprising a culture were reflected by artifacts.
He found that the symbolic meaning of an artifact
was contingent on variables such as the social context, economic context, functional context, and
purpose of the symbol. Artifacts as cultural symbols
were, in Hodders view, always in action, being
renegotiated and re-evaluated, rather than passive,
rigid, or immutable reflections of culture. In Hodders
view, archaeologists must realize that each artifact is
produced in relation to a set of symbolic schemes, and
in relation to general principles of symbolic meaning
that are built up into particular arrangements as part
of particular social strategies. This means that efforts
to identify archaeological cultures equivalent to an

ethnographers cultures are misguided. There is no

simple relationship between the flow of cultural information and material culture patterning. An archaeologist cannot predict the past based on general
propositions about how cultures work; rather, an
archaeologist must interpret the past by using contemporary knowledge of symbolism and ideologies.
The historical context in which the artifacts (and the
portion of the archaeological record) under study
were created is, in Hodders view, critically important
to learning about past cultures. This conception of
culture as dynamic and under constant formation
based on human actions and the contexts of those
actions had a great deal of influence on subsequent
archaeological research.
New World Archaeological Cultures

North American archaeology is and has historically

been one of the four parts of anthropology (sociocultural, linguistic, biological, archaeological) that all
focus around the culture concept. Therefore, by and
large, as anthropology goes, so goes archaeology.
Most anthropologists and archaeologists writing
prior to 1950 used the term material culture, without definition, as a synonym for artifact a material
item owing one or more of its attributes to human
activity, usually a tool. Whether or not an artifact
actually was culture was debated, many saying that
artifacts were but empirical, long-lasting manifestations of cultural (extrasomatically learned) behaviors
but were not culture themselves.
During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, an archaeological culture in North
America was conceived of as a particular set of cultural traits, where a cultural trait could vary tremendously in inclusiveness and was both an emic-like and
an etic-like unit. Cultural traits were units of cultural
transmission whatever the mode or pathway of transmission (diffusion, enculturation, etc.). They were
useful for rapidly recording vanishing indigenous lifeways, and for tracking the movements of cultures or
parts thereof over geographic space. Cultural traits
were the operational units of the direct historical
approach. Perceptions of distinct culture areas
manifest as trait clusters reinforced the notion that
cultures were discrete units. Archaeologists used artifact types as if they were equivalent to cultural traits;
an archaeological culture comprised a particular set
of artifact types; thus an archaeological culture was a
more or less distinct set of cultural traits, just like
an ethnographers cultural units were more or less
distinct sets of cultural traits. Also just like with
ethnography, the greater the number of artifact
types shared between two archaeological assemblages
of artifacts, the greater their cultural affinities.

CULTURE, CONCEPT AND DEFINITIONS 1073

The gist of the preceding paragraph was implicit in

the literature, so in the 1940s Walter Taylor constructed an explicit discussion of the culture concept.
Taylors advisor was Clyde Kluckhohn, who himself
had strong opinions about anthropological epistemology and the culture concept. Taylor made several
points. First, culture is the product of human activity;
there are no nonhuman cultures. Second, culture can be
considered wholistically (all human groups have it) or
partitively (each human group has a more or less
unique culture). Third, culture is mental or conceptual;
Taylor found the concept of material culture to be
fallacious. That culture comprises ideas (attitudes,
beliefs, meanings, sentiments, values, interests, knowledge, etc.) means that it can be transmitted and cumulative. A culture is a set of ideas shared by a group of
people; the behaviors of those people are objectifications of the shared ideas; an artifact is a possible result
of the behavior and so is also an objectification of
culture but is not culture itself. Finally, for Taylor (following Kluckhohn), a cultural trait is an inferred
mental construct. For an anthropologist (who observes
behavior) or for an archaeologist (who observes artifacts), culture is, in Taylors view, completely inferential because culture itself is solely mental.
Thus, arguing from slightly different bases, both
Old World and New World archaeologists developed
a definition of an archaeological culture as a distinctive aggregate of artifacts that (may) recur in multiple
sites or strata. What, then, is an artifact aggregate and
how does an archaeologist know when one has been
found? Several kinds of artifact aggregates are recognized. In the Old World, an industry may be defined
as an assemblage of artifacts all made of the same
material, such as stone, or bone; or, industry may be
used as a synonym for assemblage. In both the Old
and New Worlds, an assemblage comprises all artifacts within a stratigraphically bounded unit. In the
New World, a component is an archaeological manifestation of a culture; it may consist of one or more
assemblages. A component usually is a stratigraphically bounded set of artifacts (it may include one or
more strata); components that share a majority of artifact types are thought to represent the same or closely
related social groups such as one or more particular
bands of an ethnic group. A component is sometimes
thought to be more or less equivalent to a community,
or a group of persons who normally reside together in
face-to-face association. An archaeological phase is
often thought to be more or less equivalent to a society,
which in turn comprised multiple communities, each of
which was manifest archaeologically as a component.
Until the 1960s, archaeologists plotted the spatiotemporal distributions of artifact types. They had
commonsensical notions of how cultures worked

and how culture traits moved through time and

space, thanks to their ethnologist teachers. But they
had little in the way of theory to guide their explanations of the distributions of traits (artifact types),
and they were concerned with making time visible.
The form of artifacts was directly visible, as was
the geographic distribution of each type of artifact;
what could only be made visible analytically was the
age of an artifact type. The primary goal of culture
historians was, then, to determine the spatiotemporal distribution of artifact types, distinctive sets of
which were referred to as cultures. Once prehistoric
cultures were mapped in time and space, archaeologists
intended to explain those distributions in cultural
terms, particularly in terms of processes of cultural
transmission such as diffusion, enculturation, migration, and the like. Culture was conceived as ideational,
with material manifestations in the form of artifacts.
The conception of culture as ideological is sometimes referred to as normative theory; this conception was, in some ways, typical of archaeologists who
wrote culture history. In 1962, the normative definition was discarded by Lewis Binford who noted that
while the generic process of diffusion had come to
be the explanation of choice, it actually explained
nothing because why diffusion had occurred (whether
the transmission of ideas, the movement of people, or
any other mode) was not addressed. Binford advocated Leslie Whites definition of culture as humankinds extrasomatic means of adaptation. Binford
echoed White again when he (Binford) explicitly characterized a culture as a system of articulated variables
that covaried. The processual change of a culture
involved not a change in cultural norms but rather
change in one cultural variable that relates, in
Binfords and Whites view, in a predictable and quantifiable way to changes in other variables, the latter
changing in turn relative to change in the structure of
the cultural system as a whole. The key variable was
change in adaptation culture changed because it
was an adaptational system. The analytical challenge
was to identify the catalyst for any particular adaptive
change. Toward that end, Binford postulated that
artifacts could be categorized as belonging to one of
three basic groups (technomic, sociotechnic, and ideotechnic) that would reflect Whites three cultural subsystems (technology, social structure, and ideology,
respectively). This line of reasoning was not, however,
pursued by practitioners of the processual archaeology that Binford spawned; instead, they adopted the
narrow definition of culture as an adaptive system
and, in a sense, focused on the technomic category.
Binfords alteration of the concept of culture
with no attendant change in the conception of how
a culture is manifest archaeologically prompted

1074 CULTURE, CONCEPT AND DEFINITIONS

Discussion

much innovative research. Some focused on how

change in one social variable resulted in change in
other social variables (as manifest in design elements
on ceramics); to do this, analysts adopted the normative definition of culture. Other researchers focused
on a culture as an adaptive system. The latter became
the approach preferred by processual archaeologists
of the 1970s and 1980s, though adaptation became
something of a universal explanation much like diffusion had earlier been. These archaeologists adopted
the White/Binford definition of culture as an adaptive
system. Seldom in the literature of the 1960s through
the 1980s were the two conceptions used by the same
researcher.
Some American archaeologists did not adopt Binfords definition, but instead focused on culture as
ideational. An early member of this group was
James Deetz, who did not offer a definition of culture
but who advocated a more sophisticated version of
normative theory. Deetz explicitly stated that adopting the view that an artifact was a concrete expression
of a mental template held in the mind of the artisan
would allow archaeologists to reconstruct the culture
of the makers of the object in question. The implication that culture is ideological a mental template
was equivalent to a conceptual norm was reinforced
when Deetz noted that the attributes displayed by
artifacts were equivalent to a linguists allophones,
and that the combination of these attributes into
culturally meaningful units manifest as artifacts was
very similar to the isolation of morphemes and their
constituent allomorphs. While not adopting Deetzs
linguist metaphor, other American archaeologists
tended to agree that culture was mental but nevertheless could be accessed through the archaeological
record. This sort of thinking eventually developed
into postprocessual archaeology (see Postprocessual
Archaeology; Processual Archaeology).

In simplistic terms, three basic anthropological conceptions of culture can be identified. Culture is ideational
(normative theory); culture is an adaptive system; and
culture is historically contingent and relative. Perusal of
the glossaries in 15 introductory archaeology textbooks published over the past 30 years (all most recent
editions, no repetition of authors) reveals the following. Six books give a normative definition of culture;
four books give a culture is an adaptation definition;
only one gives forms of both the normative and the
adaptation definitions and underscores that the two are
not necessarily mutually exclusive. The remaining four
books define culture as something uniquely human.
Only six of the 15 books mention material culture,
and they simply define the term as artifacts.
Early editions of introductory archaeology textbooks tend to state that archaeology is prehistoric
ethnography or the study of prehistoric cultures.
More recent, advanced discussions of archaeological
method and theory tend to refer to social theory
rather than culture theory. This change in terminology reflects a concern for a humanistic archaeology
rather than the (allegedly) dehumanizing scientific
archaeology of the 1960s through 1980s. The change
is more than simplistic, however. It involves many
changes in cultural theory that can perhaps be reduced
to one general kind of change. Previously, culture was
something that was learned and passively participated
in by humans. Now, humans are conceived of as the
active creators of culture, and culture is created and
recreated in different social settings in slightly different
forms. Thus, social theory is today seen by some as in
many ways a much more appropriate term for explanatory models and concepts used by both anthropologists and archaeologists than is culture theory.

Summary

Conclusion

In Europe, archaeology concerns history projected

back into the past. Ethnic variants correspond with
linguistic, social, cultural, and biological variants.
A culture is an integrated, cohesive whole; cultural
change (temporal variation) is therefore abrupt or
saltational. In (North) America, archaeology is a
part of anthropology. Cultures are continuous
geographically until there is major environmental
change. A culture lacks cohesion (except geographically) and comprises a hodgepodge of cultural traits.
Culture is independent of ethnicity, language, society,
and biology. Cultures blend temporally, so change
can be autochthonous (internal) and gradual or, if
immigration occurs, saltational. How to distinguish
the two archaeologically is an analytical challenge.

Over the years, numerous ethnologists and archaeologists pondered the likelihood that an archaeological
culture as defined by Childe was equivalent to a social
unit that an anthropologist would categorize as a
culture. Most archaeologists agree that an archaeological culture manifest as a set of artifacts represents
a social group; it is the nature of that group and its
relationship to an ethnologists culture that is the
point of contention. In practice, most archaeologists
still speak of this or that archaeological culture and
use (typically implicitly) Childes definition. This is
likely because Childes is a pragmatic definition that
has analytical value. What archaeology consistently
needs more of are explicit theories that describe the
myriad relations between artifacts and culture.

CULTURE, CONCEPT AND DEFINITIONS 1075

Theories are the tinted glass through which we

view, interpret, explain, and come to understand
how the world works. An ethnographers cultures
are not bounded, autonomous entities, to various
degrees and at various rates they exchange traits,
information, members, materials, and so on not
only across geographic space but through time.
Yet even recognizing this, archaeologists still make
reference to standard archaeological cultures such as
Woodland, Chumash, Mousterian, and the like. The
key to avoiding the reification of individual cultures
is to keep in mind that a culture is an analytical unit
and to realize that cultural units are differentially
discrete, bounded, autonomous. For some analytical
purposes, they might be treated as perfectly discrete;
for others, the frequency or magnitude of intercultural
contact or interaction may be a central consideration.
Units of culture (partitive) can be explained with the
assistance of a relevant definition of culture (wholistic), where relevance derives from an analytical problem, hypothesis, or theory. The culture concept will
continue to be discussed, dismantled, debated, and
resurrected in new forms by anthropologists. Archaeologists will continue to borrow those resurrections
and to discuss prehistoric cultures manifest as distinctive sets of artifacts. Whatever conception culture
takes, it should facilitate analytical work.

See also: Anthropological Archaeology; Historic Roots

of Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Social Theory.

Further Reading
Binford LR (1962) Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28: 217225.
Childe VG (1929) The Danube in Prehistory. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Clark G (1957) Archaeology and Society, 3rd edn. London:
Methuen.
Clarke DL (1968) Analytical Archaeology. London: Methuen.
Deetz J (1968) Cultural patterning of behavior as reflected by
archaeological materials. In: Chang KC (ed.) Settlement Archaeology, pp. 3142. Palo Alto, CA: National Press.
Hodder I (1982) Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of
Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kroeber AL and Kluckhohn C (1952) Culture: A critical review of
concepts and definitions. Papers of the Peabody Museum of
American Archaeology and Ethnology 47: 1223.
Lyman RL and OBrien MJ (2004) A history of normative theory in
Americanist archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Method and
Theory 11: 369396.
Steward JH (1955) Theory of Culture Change. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press.
Taylor WW (1948) A study of archaeology. American Anthropological Association Memoir 69: 1263.
Tylor EB (1881) Primitive Culture. London: John Murray.
White LA (1959) The Evolution of Culture. New York: McGrawHill.

D
Data Management

See: Archaeology Laboratory, Overview.

DATING METHODS, OVERVIEW

James Truncer, Stanford University, Stanford,
CA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
absolute dating A form of archaeological dating that provides
interval or ratio scale measurements, with the latter capable of
being linked to a calendrical system.
accuracy The degree of closeness of the sample measurement to
the actual phenomenon of interest, an event in archaeological
dating.
measurement error The error formed by limitations in sample
size, instrument precision, and calculation parsimony.
precision The magnitude of measurement error.
relative dating A form of archaeological dating that provides
ordinal scale measurements, supplying older than/younger than
age assessments.
sample event The event for which a date has been obtained.
stratigraphic superposition A geological law of sedimentary
deposition stating that older layers are formed below younger
layers.
stratigraphy The documentation of a sequence of depositional
layers, sometimes used as a shorthand term for stratigraphic
superposition.
systematic error An error that forms a bias of constant
magnitude and direction in a particular methodology or research
design.
target event The event of archaeological interest for which an
age is sought.

Determining when events of archaeological interest

occurred remains a central and fundamental task for
archaeologists around the world. Using dating methods to assess the age and duration of historically
unique events is crucial in archaeology, as it is in
other history-dependent sciences (e.g., geology),
since chronology is essential for description, comparison, and analysis. Frequently, the larger goal in archaeology is to develop chronological sequences,
where investigators aim to establish the temporal

order of events to document (and through the use of

theory, ultimately explain) change in the archaeological record. Thus, many archaeologists are continuously engaged in developing and applying new dating
methods, as well as refining existing ones, as part of
an ongoing effort to produce improved chronologies.
Establishing chronology in archaeology, however,
is not as straightforward as it might first appear. First,
what is actually dated is not an artifact, site, or culture
per se, but an event of potential archaeological interest. It is important to distinguish between the sample
event (the event actually dated) and the target event
(the event of interest for which an age is being
sought). Unfortunately, sample events are only rarely
synonymous with archaeological target events because
most dating methods employed by archaeologists have
been developed outside the discipline in pursuit of other
objectives. Some dating methods are able to produce
age estimates for events that largely coincide with, or
are identical to archaeological interests, such as establishing the time of last exposure to fire, the time of
manufacture, or the time of artifact deposition. More
often, however, bridging arguments are required to link
the sample event to the archaeological target event.
Such bridging arguments are often missing or not well
developed in archaeology, negatively affecting the precision and accuracy of archaeological chronologies.
Second, all dates inherently contain some error, and
these errors vary by kind, magnitude, and probability
across the range of archaeological dating methods
available. Some kinds of error, such as measurement
error, result from the limitations of sample size, the
complexity of calculations, and the precision of the
instruments used to estimate a date. Other kinds of
error, such as systematic error, constitute an inherent bias of constant magnitude and direction in a
particular dating methodology or research design,
consistently overestimating or underestimating the
age of an archaeological event.

1078 DATING METHODS, OVERVIEW

Lastly, the various dating methods used in archaeology have different methodological strengths and
weaknesses; some methods offer high precision
(small instrument or measurement error) while other
methods confer a high degree of accuracy (the degree closeness of a measured date to the actual age).
Although a few dating methods, such as radiocarbon
dating, now possess both high intrinsic accuracy and
precision methodologically, these advantages do not
necessarily confer accurate and precise archaeological
chronologies because the event dated is often not
closely linked to the archaeological event of interest.
For instance, the age of a manufactured wooden
house beam and its use in construction may be of
archaeological interest, but a radiocarbon date obtained from analyzing a sample of the beam may not
necessarily record the time of these events. The radiocarbon method dates the time living entities stopped
exchanging carbon with the biosphere (death). Except
for the trees outermost ring which contained living
cells just before death, all radiocarbon samples of the
beam will record an age older than the death of the tree
(systematic error) because the cells of the inner rings
ceased exchanging carbon up to hundreds of years
before. The use of old wood in construction and artifact
manufacture complicates matters even further it cannot simply be assumed that the time of the trees death
corresponds to the events of archaeological interest.
It is important to consider the factors discussed
above in evaluating the application of various dating
methods to archaeological problems and contexts.
A brief review of the history of archaeological dating
is followed by a discussion of the various dating
techniques used in archaeology.

Development of Archaeological Dating

Establishing chronology was not always an overriding concern among archaeologists. In North America
at the turn of the twentieth century, for example,
resolution of the moundbuilder and American Paleolithic controversies actually dampened interest in
chronological issues because it appeared that human
occupation in the New World was relatively shallow,
perhaps representing only a few thousand years.
Throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, establishing age tended to be a coarsegrained affair, and usually involved identifying a particularly well-known historical period (e.g., Roman)
or documenting the presence or absence of materials
such as ceramics or iron which were thought to be
generally indicative of time (e.g., the stonebronze
iron age distinctions of Christian Thomsen and Jens
Worsaae). Material types became chronological indicators if the materials consistently produced a generalized pattern stratigraphically (e.g., bronze artifacts

in deeper layers were presumed to be older than

iron artifacts in more shallow layers if the strata
were undisturbed) (see Artifacts, Overview; Fiber
Artifacts). Although detailed stratigraphic studies
were making vast improvements to geological chronology at this time, comparable advances in archaeology
were slow to be realized. Another early and unsophisticated archaeological technique involved estimating the
minimal age of earthen mounds in the American Midwest by assessing the age of trees growing on them,
although it was impossible to know just how much
older the mounds might actually be. The slow development of archaeological chronology began to change in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when
it was realized that measuring change in the frequency
of artifact types from different contexts and/or different depths could produce a temporal sequence.
In the late nineteenth century, Sir Matthew Flinders
Petrie, working with predynastic Egyptian ceramics
from grave contexts, appears to have been the first
to realize that the various combinations of artifact
types found in different contexts could be ordered in
a way so that all the artifact-type distributions formed
overlapping monotonic curves, with some forms
gradually replacing others through time. Petrie appreciated that this arrangement represented chronological order and was able to deduce the relative age of
the graves, although identifying which end of the
order was younger still needed independent evidence
such as stratigraphic superposition. Petries innovation came to be known as seriation, a method independently elaborated upon in the 1910s by American
scholars such as Alfred L. Kroeber, Nels C. Nelson,
Leslie Spier, and Alfred V. Kidder working in the
Southwest. The development of the seriation method
in archaeology had an enormous impact on the discipline. One of the chief advantages of the seriation method is that initial chronological frameworks are able to
be tested empirically against other artifact assemblages
and can be subsequently refined, giving the method a
science-like quality that was recognized early on, even
by those outside the discipline. Seriation was soon applied to archaeological assemblages throughout the
world, and constructing chronological frameworks
became the primary interest of most archaeologists
working from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Another archaeological dating method, dendrochronology, was also being developed in the American Southwest around the same time that the
seriation method was being refined. Unlike simply
counting annular tree rings, dendrochronology uses
the unique patterns of varying ring widths in some
tree species that are sensitive to climate and precipitation fluctuation. By linking multiple tree samples of
different ages, master sequences of this patterning
have been built that extend back thousands of years.

DATING METHODS, OVERVIEW 1079

Samples of unknown age can then be fitted against

this master sequence to derive an age estimate. One of
the principal advantages of dendrochronology is its
high precision, with the potential to identify the exact
year in which an event took place. The development
of seriation and dendrochronology were remarkable
achievements that occurred well before the advent of
radiometric dating techniques such as radiocarbon
dating, and both methods continue to be used today.
More recently, a veritable explosion of radiometric and chemical archaeological dating methods has
occurred in the last few decades, concordant with
advances in the ability to detect and measure various
physical and chemical changes in materials. Many
of these methods are referred to as absolute dating
methods, in which measurements are made at an
interval or ratio scale that includes the possibility of
connecting the age of an event to a calendrical system.
By comparison, seriation is a form of relative dating
in which measurements are made at an ordinal level
based on order, and when tied to outside information
such as stratigraphic superposition, yield older than/
younger than distinctions in age. While there are
many advantages to absolute-dating methods, all
were developed outside the discipline of archaeology
and thus require rigorous bridging arguments that
link the dated event obtained to the archaeological
event of interest. Furthermore, the technical sophistication of many absolute-dating methods is costly in
terms of specialized expertise and equipment. Even
so, these methods offer archaeologists the possibility
to assess the age of archaeological events with greater
precision and accuracy than ever before.

Kinds of Archaeological Dating Methods

Within the class of absolute-dating methods, there are
five major kinds: (1) counting methods, (2) radioactive isotope decay methods, (3) radioactivity dosimetry methods, (4) magnetic methods, and (5) chemical
methods. Not all absolute-dating methods entail the
use of high-technology techniques, as evidenced by
the development of dendrochronology in the 1910s
and 1920s, as discussed above. The extensive use of
dendrochronology is limited, however, to contexts in
which tree remains are well preserved over appreciable periods of time. These contexts include architectural structures that have sheltered wood elements
from decomposition, extremely dry desert or arid
environments, or oxygen-deprived wet environments
such as swamps or bogs. A similar counting method
that makes use of historically unique climate patterns
is varve analysis a method devised in the late nineteenth century that measures seasonal variation in
sedimentation rates in lakes that receive glacial runoff. These sedimentation rates can vary substantially

from year to year based on the duration of the

season (higher rates of sedimentation occur during
summer months) and temperature. An obvious
drawback to this method is the limited number of
environmental settings in which it can be applied.
Perhaps the best-known absolute dating method is
radiocarbon dating or 14C, a method that relies on
measuring the degree of 14C decay in a sample and
comparing this to the known decay rate of the isotope. The 14C isotope is unstable and eventually
decays to 14N, and the decay rate is measured using
a convention known as the half-life (the amount of
time a sample loses one half of its radioactivity). The
half-life of 14C is relatively short at 5730 years.
Through feeding and photosynthesis, a living organism constantly exchanges 14C with the atmosphere,
but this process ceases upon death. The amount of
14
C remaining in an organic sample, then, is dependent on the time of death of the organisms cells and
constitutes the event that is dated.
There are several ways to measure the amount of
14
C in a sample. The most common technique is to
measure the emission of beta-rays when the 14C
isotope decays into 14N. However, since the decay
transition is a rare occurrence during the actual analysis of the sample, relatively large samples are needed
to obtain sufficient counting statistics, and limits analysis to samples less than 30 000 years old. Another
technique uses atomic mass spectrometry (AMS) to
separate out 14C atoms by weight and counts their
occurrence. This more recent technique has reduced
the sample size of charcoal to 5 mg, and extended the
age limit of radiocarbon dating back to about 55 000
years. A major refinement in the precision of radiocarbon dating has been the development of calibration
curves that take into account the fact that production
of radiocarbon in the atmosphere has not been constant over time. For the last several thousand years,
calibration curves are obtained by 14C dating samples
from the annular rings of trees, the true age of which
is known through dendrochronology. The radiocarbon age estimates in different years are then calibrated to fit the dendrochronological age, and the
resulting calibration curves can then be used to improve the precision of radiocarbon age estimates for
samples of unknown age. Beyond the limits of dendrochronology, radiocarbon calibration curves have
been produced through U/Th and TL dating.
Another frequently used decay method is known as
potassiumargon or K/Ar dating, and is similar to
radiocarbon dating in that it dates the separation of
the sample pool of the unstable 40K isotope from the
atmospheric reservoir. Since 40K decays into 40Ar at a
known rate (half-life of 1.28  109 years), the deficiency of 40K and the buildup of the decay product (40Ar)
in the sample can be used to estimate the age of the

1080 DATING METHODS, OVERVIEW

separation event. Since the half-life of 40K is significantly longer than 14C, and has undergone much less
change over the last few tens of thousands of years, its
detection limits are especially well suited to estimating
ages beyond where detection of 14C begins to be problematic, at around 50 000 years ago. Uranium series,
most commonly U/Th dating, provides another
decay method based on the differential solubility of
uranium and thorium compounds. The most common
technique measures the deficiency of 230Th compared
to 234U, but other uranium decay products, as well as
the parent isotopes of 238U, 235U, and 232Th, can also
be measured to obtain chronological information.
Dosemetric methods analyze materials that contain information on the amount of radiation to which
they have been exposed. The total amount of radiation received by a sample can be used to estimate its
age if the sensitivity of the sample to radiation is
understood and is combined with an estimate of the
annual dose rate. Thermoluminescence dating (TL),
optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), infrared
stimulated luminescence (IRSL), and electron spin
resonance (ESR) are all examples of dosimetric, or
trapped charge dating methods. All electrons in a
mineral are in a ground state when it is originally
formed or reset due to subsequent light or heat energy.
In dosimetrically sensitive minerals (e.g., feldspars,
quartz, and calcite), exposure to naturally occurring
radiation will reposition some electrons away from
atoms in the ground state to a higher energy state
known as a conduction band. Over time, most electrons will return to their ground states, but some will
become trapped at defect sites in the lattice structures
of the mineral. Electrons have the potential to accumulate in these lattice defects with the passage of time
until all defects are filled and saturation is reached.
In the laboratory, energy in the form of light (OSL,
IRSL) or heat (TL) can be imparted on the sample to
activate the trapped electrons, which then either
return to the ground state or recombine with luminescence centers and emit light or luminescence. Luminescence is then measured fairly precisely using a
photomultiplier resulting in accurate estimates of
total dose. ESR measures the number of trapped electrons differently by bombarding the sample with
microwaves in a magnetic field. An ESR spectrometer
then records the amount of microwave absorption
which is proportional to the number of trapped electrons and holes, which in turn produces the age estimate. The precision of ESR is far less than luminescence
methods, but an advantage lies in its nondestructive
measurement process that allows multiple measurements to be taken on the same sample.
Estimating the annual dose in using luminescence
methods is complex and can be prone to substantial
error factors. Annual dose is received both from

concentrations of radioactive elements in the sample

itself, as well as external environmental sources. Only
the ionizing effects of gamma and cosmic rays need to
be considered in calculating the external dose rate
since short range beta and alpha ray contributions
can be eliminated with the removal of the outer
2 mm of the sample. Internal dose rate, however, is
primarily due to alpha and beta rays emitted from
radioactive elements in the sample and need to be
measured. Dose rate is dependent on radioactivity
originating from the U, Th, and 40K decay chains
with minor sediment contributions from 87Rb. One
factor that can negatively affect the precision of
trapped charge dating is disequilibrium in the U-series
decay chains, which complicates dose rate calculations and may increase the uncertainty of age estimates. Other attenuating factors on radiation such
as moisture content and latitude also need to be
accounted for. The overall precision of trapped charge
dating methods, however, can be as low as 67%, a
rate that compares favorably with other radiometric
dating methods.
A central advantage of trapped charge dating methods is one of accuracy. The events dated are the
growth of a crystalline structure such as bone or
tooth enamel (ESR), exposure to temperatures in excess of 500  C during manufacture or subsequent
firing events, typically ceramics or heated lithics
(TL), or the last exposure of archaeologically relevant
sediments to sunlight (OSL, IRSL). These events are
often of direct interest to archaeologists, and thus
trapped charge dating methods possess the potential
to yield archaeological chronologies of overall higher
precision than other dating methods with intrinsically
high methodological precision such as radiocarbon
dating. This advantage has gone largely unappreciated
by North American archaeologists, although trapped
charge dating is used extensively in Europe and other
regions to supplement other dating methods. Regardless, the use of trapped charge dating methods will
continue to play an increasing role in the development
of archaeological chronologies, and OSL dating in
particular is poised to make major breakthroughs in
constructing reliable archaeological chronologies.
Fission-track dating is a dosimetric method that
works differently than trapped charge dating methods. Fission tracks are created in crystalline minerals
when atoms of 238U fission and break apart. Since
238
U fissions at a known rate, the number of fission
tracks across a quantified crystalline area in a material
in which the concentration of uranium is known can be
used to estimate age. Fission-track dating is limited,
however, in its application to archaeological contexts
older than 100 000 because the low frequency at which
238
U fissions creates substantial error terms that makes
its applicability to younger samples impractical.

DATING METHODS, OVERVIEW 1081

Archaeomagnetism, or archaeomagnetic dating,

is a method that pursues correlating an event of
archaeological interest with the position of Earths
magnetic north (which is continually changing).
These magnetic positions can provide absolute dates
during the time interval of the last few thousand years
once they are correlated with dates derived from
other methods, such as radiocarbon. Magnetic materials such as iron will tend to align themselves according to the direction of the Earths magnetic field
at any particular time and place. If these magnetic
materials are in fired contexts, such as in archaeological hearth or kiln features, the direction of magnetic north can be preserved to a degree that dating
the firing event is possible. Like dendrochronology,
archaeomagnetic dating requires constructing reference curves, or a master sequence of direction change
in magnetic north, using the orientation of samples of
known age based on historical records or, more commonly, radiocarbon dating. These master sequences
need to be constructed for each region of study because secular variation in magnetic north is regionally
specific. Archaeomagnetic dating is often used in concert with other available dating methods, although it
is extensively used in some areas, such as the American Southwest. Another form of magnetic dating
documents reversal events of the Earths north and
south magnetic poles by analyzing the magnetic properties of minerals in preserved sediments. Documenting reversed polarity events has proved to be a
robust relative-dating method, but can only provide
general age estimates and is restricted to relatively old
archaeological contexts. For example, the most recent reversal, the Blake subchron, has been dated to
104 000117 000 BP.
A final set of absolute-dating methods can be referred to as chemical dating methods that rely on
isolating and documenting the temporal dimension
of a reaction or set of reactions. Amino acid racemization, obsidian hydration, fluorine dating, and
in situ cosmogenic isotope dating fall into this category. Chemical dating methods are complicated by the
fact that reaction rates are not just product of time,
but are influenced by a number of other environmental variables as well (e.g., moisture content, temperature, pressure, etc.). Due to the relatively large
number of variables that need to be independently
measured, serious problems with amino acid racemization remain to be resolved and applications of cosmogenic isotope dating in archaeology are in an early
state of development. Indeed, all three methods are
more powerful when used to assess the relative age of
archaeological events rather than absolute age.
Amino acid racemization relies on the rate of
decomposition of protein in bone and shell in order
to assess age. A major drawback to the method is

that temperature, and thus the rate of protein decomposition, or racemization, must be assumed to have
remained constant over time. These assumptions then
allow age to be assessed using linear projections, but
both assumptions are highly problematic for time
periods that clearly demonstrate significant climatic
change. Some attempts have been made to control for
this shortcoming by creating calibration curves using
radiocarbon dating, producing racemization rates to
estimate ages beyond the limits of radiocarbon range.
However, this calibration still carries the assumption
that variation in temperature during earlier periods
was similar to that of the later radiocarbon calibrated
time span. A more robust application of amino acid
racemization is known as aminostratigraphy, a relative-dating method that differentiates stratigraphic
units based on protein ratios, and has led to the
construction of broad regional chronologies.
The parameters of obsidian hydration are better
known; however, a number of attributes need to be
documented for its successful application. Obsidian
hydration measures the hydration layer of an exposed
surface of glass or silica-enriched rock such as obsidian. Hydration of a new surface begins the moment
it is exposed, so the event dated using this method
is one consistent with archaeological interests (e.g.,
the manufacture or recycling of obsidian artifacts).
The thickness of the hydration layer is dependent
on the hydration rate, which if known, can yield an
age of exposure of the surface. Calculating the hydration rate can be difficult, however, since the rate is
dependent on composition, moisture, temperature,
and pressure. Even so, obtaining sufficient estimates
for these attributes is far from impossible, and many
successful applications of obsidian hydration have
been made. In a relative-dating role, obsidian hydration offers the possibility of identifying and ordering
assemblages of mixed age. In addition, because the
chemical composition of obsidian differs significantly
from outcrop to outcrop, provenance studies have
been very successful in accurately characterizing different sources and allocating artifacts to them. Such
provenance information, when combined with the
chronological information of obsidian hydration,
provides a powerful set of tools to document change
in the archaeological record.
Fluorine, or fluorineuraniumnitrogen dating of
bone can be achieved by measuring the amount of
fluorine in the sample through an irreversible reaction
that results in fluoroapatite replacing hydroxyapatite.
Because the amount of fluorine in the environment and
the reaction rate is extremely variable, fluorine dating
is best suited to a relative-dating role. Fluorine dating was used to uncover the Piltdown hoax, in which
a skull was fabricated from bones of different species
and age and purported to represent a human ancestor.

1082 DATING METHODS, OVERVIEW

In situ cosmogenic isotope dating is a relatively

new radiometric method that, like obsidian hydration,
measures how long a surface has been exposed to the
atmosphere. Rather than using hydration rates, cosmogenic isotope dating measures the abundance of
in situ cosmogenic isotopes in surface or near-surface
materials that have been exposed to the bombardment of high-energy neutrons contained in cosmic
rays. In situ cosmogenic isotopes are created when
these high-energy neutrons interact with atoms in
minerals located in the topmost 1 m or so of deposits.
Below 1.5 m, cosmogenic isotope production completely ceases, representing a serious application
limit for many archaeological deposits. Partial burial
or intermittent burial of artifacts and structures can
slow the isotope clock significantly, requiring an accurate understanding of depositional history. Conversely, an artifact or structure buried within the top
1.5 m can accumulate a significant amount of inherited cosmogenic isotopes before surface exposure.
In addition, the low production rates of commonly
measured cosmogenic isotopes result in timescales
that are often more compatible with geological
investigations than archaeological ones. However,
continuing improvements in the technical ability to
measure ever smaller atomic quantities has led to
some optimism that common archaeological timescales will soon be encompassed.
Cosmogenic isotope dating primarily makes use of
six isotopes, two of which are stable (3He and 21Ne)
and four of which are radioactive (10Be, 14C, 26Al,
36
Cl). The relatively short timescales of archaeology
restrict exposure dating studies to isotopes that accumulate relatively quickly in minerals, namely 3He,
14
C, and 36Cl. Cosmogenic isotope production is
dependent on elevation (higher rates at higher elevations), magnetic field strength (higher rates with distance from the equatorial magnetic field), and solar
activity (high solar activity decreases cosmic ray flux).
At present, all of these factors will require additional
future research to better assess in situ cosmogenic
isotope production rates. Best case scenarios for nearterm future archaeological applications of cosmogenic
isotope dating will probably include stone structures,
monuments, or petroglyphs whose surfaces have been
continually exposed to cosmic rays and have experienced minimal erosion.
Two relative-dating methods that have been briefly
mentioned, seriation and stratigraphic superposition,
deserve further comment because they still constitute
the most common forms of dating used in archaeology today. The principle of stratigraphic superposition
was developed in early geological inquiries of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The central
proposition is that older deposits lie below younger

ones. It is important to stress that the geological law

of superposition refers to the age of the deposition
event, not necessarily the age of the artifacts within
the deposit. However, barring the subsequent disturbance or reworking of the deposits (e.g., reversed
stratigraphy), the age of artifact manufacture frequently does roughly coincide with the age of the
deposition event, making superposition useful to
archaeologists in building chronology.
Unlike other dating methods, seriation was developed by archaeologists. Consequently, the dated attributes are archaeological and in accord with
archaeological target events. Seriation uses a distinctive patterning in the distribution of historical classes
(often classes of pottery style) through time to generate the chronological order of archaeological events.
The distinctive pattern is one of a continuous, nonrepetitive distribution if one documents the presence
or absence of attributes (occurrence seriation), or
monotonic (unimodal) if the frequencies of historical
classes are recorded (frequency seriation). Stratigraphic superposition initially supplied information
on which end of the order was oldest (and which was
youngest), but it was soon realized that even undated
surface assemblages, if described as stylistic classes,
could be ordered chronologically if they were arranged
in such a way that all classes exhibited unimodal frequencies. Only recently has it come to be understood
why stylistic classes behave in this manner.
Seriation is successful because it provides the ability to empirically assess initial chronological constructs against outside data. Initial chronologies and
historical class descriptions could be revised or discarded. For almost 70 years, archaeologists knew
seriation worked, but were unable to explain why,
merely stating that styles wax and wane in popularity.
This response did not address why styles act this
way. We now know that stylistic traits are akin to
neutral traits in biology which also display unimodal
distributions due to the lack of selection pressure.
This theoretical realization has led to new research
on the underlying principles of seriation, and has generated new interest in documenting and explaining
temporal and spatial variation in the archaeological
record.

Concluding Remarks
While archaeologists now have at their disposal a
greater range of dating methods than ever before,
the strengths and limitations of these methods
for developing archaeological chronologies often go
unrecognized. This situation appears to be slowly
changing, but will only improve markedly with
the recognition that creating robust archaeological

DENDROCHRONOLOGY 1083

chronologies requires robust archaeological theory.

Refinements in archaeological chronology are dependent not only on technical improvements in the methods themselves, but also on a developed theoretical
framework that determines which archaeological
events are relevant to a chronological inquiry, and
how these events need to be dated and analyzed. Secure
chronological information continues to be a key requirement for studies that undertake the widely held
goal of explaining change in the archaeological record.
See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Artifacts,

Overview; Carbon-14 Dating; Dendrochronology;

Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Fiber Artifacts;
Luminescence Dating; Obsidian Hydration Dating;
Seriation; Stratigraphic Analysis; Time and History,
Divisions.

Further Reading
Aitken MJ (1990) Science-Based Dating in Archaeology. London:
Longman.

Deep Ocean Archaeology

Baillie MGL (1995) A Slice through Time: Dendrochronology and

Precision Dating. London: Batsford Press.
Dean JS (1978) Independent dating in archaeological analysis. In:
Schiffer MB (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and
Theory, vol. 1, p. 223255. New York: Academic Press.
Dunnell RC (2000) Dating, method, and theory. In: Ellis L (ed.)
Archaeological Method and Theory: An Encyclopedia,
pp. 143150. New York: Garland.
Feathers JK (1997) The application of luminescence dating in
American archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Method and
Theory 4: 166.
Nash SE (ed.) (2000) Its About Time: A History of Archaeological
Dating in North America. Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press.
Stuart FM (2001) In situ cosmogenic isotopes: Principles and potential for archaeology. In: Brothwell DR and Pollard AM (eds.)
Handbook of Archaeological Sciences pp. 93100. New York:
Wiley.
Taylor RE (2001) Radiocarbon dating. In: Brothwell DR and
Pollard AM (eds.) Handbook of Archaeological Sciences
pp. 2334. New York: Wiley.
Taylor RE and Aitken MJ (eds.) (1997) Chronometric Dating in
Archaeology. New York: Plenum Press.
Truncer J (ed.) (2003) Picking the Lock of Time: Developing
Chronology in American Archaeology. Gainesville: University
Press of Florida.

See: Robotic Archaeology on the Deep Ocean Floor.

DENDROCHRONOLOGY
Stephen E Nash, Denver Museum of Nature and
Science, Denver, CO, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
climate signal Patterning evident in tree-ring growth sequences
that is due to the influence of (preferably) one environmental
parameter that limits tree growth in a given locality. At lower
elevations in the arid American Southwest, the climate signal
recorded in tree-rings is a reflection of variability in precipitation
levels from year to year.
crossdating The procedure of matching patterned ring-width
variation between trees of the same species growing in close
proximity, or between an archaeological sample and a master
chronology, such that one may identify all growth anomalies and
determine the exact year on the common era calendar in which
each ring was grown.
cutting date The term for a common-era calendar date assigned
to the last growth ring on a specimen when there is definitive
empirical evidence that it was the last ring grown before tree
death.

double ring The term used to describe a situation in which tree

growth began in one year, stopped because of some
environmental or other stress, and then began again during the
same growing season. If not properly identified through
crossdating, double rings, which are also termed false rings, can
cause the dendrochronologist to apply calendar dates that are too
young to the outer rings on a tree-ring specimen.
locally absent rings Similar to missing rings, locally absent
rings are caused when environmental conditions are stressful
enough that, although tree growth may occur in a given year, a
complete growth ring is not formed along the entire stem of the
tree. A tree-ring core taken along a radius in which growth has
not occurred (see Figure 2) will yield a locally absent ring, even
though the ring for that year is not truly missing.
missing ring The term used to describe a situation in which tree
growth never occurred during a particular year because of
environmentally stressful conditions. If not properly identified
through crossdating, missing rings can cause the
dendrochronologist to apply calendar dates that are too young to
the outer rings on a tree-ring specimen (see also locally absent
rings).
non-cutting date The term for a common-era calendar date
assigned to the last growth ring on a specimen when there is no
empirical evidence that it was the last ring grown before tree death.

1084 DENDROCHRONOLOGY
skeleton plot An analog method for recording variability in
tree-ring sequences. Comparatively narrow rings are recorded
with long lines on a piece of graph paper; comparatively wider
rings are recorded with shorter lines.

Dendochronology
Dendrochronology, the study of tree time, is a multidisciplinary science that provides chronometric, environmental, and behavioral data to archaeologists and
other scientists. The fundamental principle of dendrochronology is crossdating. Crossdating is the procedure of matching patterned ring-width variations
between trees of the same species growing in close
proximity, such that one may ultimately determine
the exact year in which each ring was formed. The
process of crossdating begins with the analysis of
cores or cross sections from living and recently living
trees for which the calendar-year date for the outside
growth ring is known and for which calendar-year
dates for interior rings may be inferred. Crossdating
ends with the construction of a tree-ring chronology
in which all anomalous rings are identified and
accounted for and common-era calendar dates have
been applied to all rings in the tree-ring sequence. In
order to be useful for archaeological dating, properly
crossdated tree-ring chronologies must be built back
through time, from living-tree specimens through the
analysis of successively older and older wood or
charcoal specimens (Figure 1).

Prerequisites for Successful

Tree-Ring Dating
Four conditions must be fulfilled before dendrochronology may be developed and applied in archaeological research. The first condition is that the tree

species under analysis produce only one growth ring

per calendar year. Unfortunately, nature is not always
so neat. During particularly stressful years, trees that
usually produce one growth ring per year may actually fail to produce a growth ring, in which case dendrochronologists will note a missing ring (or locally
absent ring) in its tree-ring sequence (Figure 2). Some
species, such as pinyon (Pinus edulis), may present
many missing rings in any given sequence and therefore must be crossdated with extreme care. If missing
rings are not properly identified through crossdating,
the dendrochronologist may assign a tree-ring date to
the last growth ring on the specimen that is too old
on the common-era calendar.
Under other stressful conditions, trees that typically produce one growth ring per year may in fact produce two or more rings in a given year (Figure 3).
Double rings are created when climatic conditions
(e.g., drought or cold snap) prompt a tree to stop
growing prematurely, then to resume growth when
favorable conditions return later that growing season.
If not properly identified and crossdated, double rings
will cause the dendrochronologist to assign a commonera calendar date that is too young.
The potential for missing, locally absent, and double rings varies by tree species and location, and are
the reasons that the basic principle of dendrochronology, crossdating, requires so much more than simple
ring counting. It is essential to all archaeological treering dating that the dendrochronologists use crossdating to identify all problem rings before assigning
dates to a tree-ring chronology. Once a sound treering chronology has been properly crossdated, the
act of deriving a tree-ring date for an archaeological
wood or charcoal specimen requires controlled comparison of the ring sequence for that specimen against
the master chronology derived for that region.

Figure 1 Crossdating, the procedure of matching patterns in annual variations in ring width (or other ring parameters, including density)
from specimen to specimen, working back through time. Note that crossdating is not ring counting. (Figure courtesy of the Laboratory of
Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson).

DENDROCHRONOLOGY 1085

Figure 3 Double rings are caused by some environmental

stress, like a cold or dry period, which causes a tree to prematurely begin growth cessation and the creation of darker latewood
cells. With the return of normal growing conditions, growth, and
the production of earlywood resumes, until the end of the growing
season and the creation of a normal ring boundary (Figure courtesy of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of
Arizona, Tucson).

Figure 2 Missing (or locally absent) rings. If a tree-ring core

were taken at the radius marked by line a, the growth ring for
AD 1447 would not be present on that core, and would be identified through crossdating with other specimens in which the growth
ring for that year is present. In the strictest terms, the growth ring
for AD 1447 is locally absent, as it is present on certain portions of
the tree stem. (Figure courtesy of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring
Research, The University of Arizona, Tucson).

The second prerequisite condition for successful

crossdating is that growth of the tree species under
consideration be limited primarily by one environmental factor. In the American Southwest and at
lower elevation tree lines, that environmental factor
is usually precipitation. In Europe, at upper tree lines,
and in high latitudes, that environmental factor is
usually temperature. Research (and common sense)
has of course demonstrated that many parameters,
including environmental, genetic, and idiosyncratic
variables, affect individual tree growth. For tree ring
dating to work, however, a climatic variable must be
most responsible for tree-growth variation in the species being examined in any given area. If this is the
case, it can be stated that the trees in that area are
responding to the same climate signal.
The third prerequisite condition for successful
crossdating requires that the growth-limiting factor
(be it temperature or precipitation) be characterized
by extreme annual variability and that the variability

is then recorded in growth rings of trees in the area.

That is, the trees must be sensitive to the local climate signal. To belabor the point: Because crossdating requires ring-width pattern matching, there has to
be environmentally produced and variable ring-width
patterns available to crossdate! Trees that are not
stressed and indeed enjoy growing conditions favorable to growth (look at cross sections in your local
lumber yard) produce annual rings that are comparatively uniform in width and therefore have a uniform
pattern. Such ring series are termed complacent and
are not ideal for dendrochronological analysis.
The fourth prerequisite condition for successful
crossdating requires that the variability in the climatic parameter to which the trees are responding
be geographically extensive and influential enough
that trees across a large region respond to that variability in similar fashion. On the Colorado Plateau, in
the Four Corners region of the American Southwest,
for instance, coniferous tree species generally respond
to a plateau-wide climate (e.g., precipitation) signal
even though much more localized variability is also
recorded by the trees.
For archaeological dating to be possible at all, two
additional conditions must be met. The first is a function of prehistoric wood use behavior. Though it may
seem obvious, it is worth stating: If prehistoric populations did not make use of crossdatable tree species

1086 DENDROCHRONOLOGY

for firewood, as construction timbers, or as raw material for artifacts, then it will be impossible to treering date their sites, features, and objects because the
wood and charcoal recovered by archaeologists is
not, by definition, datable. For example, cottonwood
and ironwood are two tree species available to prehistoric inhabitants of the American Southwest but
for which tree growth violates one or more of the
aforementioned prerequisite conditions. Cottonwood
and ironwood simply do not produce annualized rings
that are sensitive to individual climate signals. If the
prehistoric inhabitants of the American Southwest
built their houses with cottonwood logs and cooked
their food over ironwood campfires, dendrochronologists would simply not be able to date prehistoric
sites using tree-ring analysis. Fortunately for archaeologists, the prehistoric inhabitants of the Four Corners region made extensive use of crossdatable species
like ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, pinyon, and juniper.
A second additional condition, corollary to the
first, is that, even if prehistoric populations made
use of crossdatable tree species, tree-ring dating is
possible only if samples remain preserved in the archaeological record, in the form of wood or charcoal,
and are recovered, saved, and submitted for analysis
by archaeologists. Thirteenth-century cliff dwellings
in the American Southwest, such as those at Mesa
Verde, are well-dated dendrochronologically because
wood beams have been preserved in the dry rockshelter
environments and remain to be sampled by archaeologists today. On the other hand, tenth-century openair sites and pit structures in the Southwest are not
well-dated because wood samples decay in open-air
environments, though charcoal can remain in good
condition for comparatively long periods of time in
such environments.
The principle of crossdating and the prerequisite
conditions for archaeological tree-ring dating are

invariable. Accurately crossdated tree-ring chronologies cannot be developed if any of the first four above
conditions are not met, and archaeological artifacts,
features, and sites cannot be tree-ring dated if appropriate tree species were not used prehistorically and
are not preserved for recovery today.

Archaeological Tree-Ring Date

Interpretation
To derive a tree-ring date from an archeological wood
or charcoal specimen, an analog representation of its
tree-ring sequence is recorded on a skeleton plot
(Figure 4). The width of the growth rings on a given
tree-ring specimen are plotted in inverse narrow
growth rings are indicated on the skeleton plot by
very tall lines; comparatively wider growth rings are
indicated by relatively shorter lines, and wide growth
rings indicated by no line at all. Once a skeleton plot
has been created for an individual specimen, it can
then be compared against those of other specimens to
create a master chronology or it is compared against
that regions existing, precisely dated master chronology until the ring-width patterns match up, all
missing and double rings have been identified and
accounted for, and calendar dates can be identified for
each ring on the specimen. Today, sophisticated computerized quantitative techniques can be used to crossdate specimens, build tree-ring chronologies, and date
archaeological specimens, but the classic skeleton
plot technique is still in use. Even when quantitatively
crossdated, good dendrochronologists always go back
to the wood to confirm the dating suggested by the
computer.
Once calendar dates have been identified for all
rings on a specimen, the dendrochronologist examines physical characteristics on the outside end of
a tree-ring specimen to determine whether the date

Figure 4 The skeleton plot. A schematic summary of growth rings on a tree-ring specimen. Narrow rings are indicated by tall lines,
relative wide rings are indicated by short lines or are not noted at all. (Figure courtesy of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The
University of Arizona, Tucson).

DENDROCHRONOLOGY 1087

assigned to the outermost ring is a cutting or a

noncutting date. A cutting date is assigned when
the specimen provides some evidence, in the form of
bark, beetle galleries, or other conditions, that the
outermost ring on that specimen was the last one
grown by the tree before it died. A noncutting date
is assigned when there is no evidence that the outermost ring present on the specimen was the last one
grown before the tree died.
For reasons having mostly to do with preservation
issues, noncutting dates are, unfortunately, far more
common in archaeological tree-ring dating, even
though cutting dates are of much greater analytic
utility to the archaeologist. Cutting dates may not
necessarily indicate the year of a sites construction,
the year in which a campfire was burned, or the year
that an artifact was made, but they do indicate the
year in which the tree was harvested or otherwise
died, and are therefore much closer approximations
of the dates and behaviors of interest to the archaeologist. Noncutting dates are further removed, often by
an indeterminate number of years, from the behavior
of interest.
Because noncutting dates are so common in archaeological analysis, and prove to be so problematic
to archaeological interpretation, archaeologists often
rely on date clustering to guide their analyses. If a
number of noncutting dates from any given feature or
site tend to cluster in 1, 2, or 3 years, the archaeologists can infer that tree-ring analysis has identified a
prehistoric event, simply because there is little a priori
reason to expect noncutting dates to cluster.

Applications of Tree-Ring Dating

in Archaeology
The chronometric, or time measurement, application
of dendrochronology has the longest history and is the
most commonly known to nonspecialists. Tree-ring
dating is routinely used to date artifacts, features,
sites, and, by extension, abstract archaeological entities including periods, stages, phases, and styles.
Tree-ring dates have also been used to confirm and
provide absolute dates for chronological sequences
provided by relative dating techniques including seriation and stratigraphic analysis. Tree rings are used
to calibrate radiocarbon dates and to confirm the
veracity of dates provided by other chronometric
techniques, including archaeomagnetic, obsidian hydration, luminescence, and historic dates (see Electron Spin Resonance Dating; Obsidian Hydration
Dating). As but one example of many, when treering dates were first used to calibrate the radiocarbon
curve in Europe in the 1960s, archaeologists understanding of European prehistory was turned on its

head. Although megalithic sites in western Europe

were once assumed to postdate the pyramids of classical Egypt, and monumental architecture was assumed
to have diffused from Egypt to the West, tree-ring
calibration of the radiocarbon date curve demonstrated that western European megaliths actually predated the pyramids, and the supposed diffusion of
technology could not possibly have happened.
The environmental application of modern dendrochronology enjoys the most worldwide application, as
tree-ring chronologies can be used to mathematically
reconstruct many environmental variables, including
precipitation, temperature, stream flow, drought severity, fire frequency and intensity, insect infestation,
atmospheric circulation patterns, and other parameters. These kinds of analyses have proved useful
for archaeologists when compared to excavation data
to determine potential cause-and-effect relationships
between paleoenvironmental conditions and the
human occupation of a given area.
The behavioral application of dendrochronology
has a shorter and more restricted pedigree, but the
analysis of tree-ring dates within their archaeological
contexts allows archaeologists to make inferences
regarding wood-use practices, trade, and other economic variables and relationships. As but one example, dendrochronological study of wood use at Walpi
Pueblo, on the Hopi Mesas in Arizona, yields precise
chronometric data on three different wood-use regimes at the site: (1) prehistoric use of stone axes by
Native Americans to cut down living trees; (2) early
historic use of metal axes by Hispanic populations
to cut down and use both living and dead trees; and
(3) the use of milled lumber by Anglos and others
with the arrival of the railroad in the 1880s.

Conclusion
Dendrochronology provides the most accurate, precise,
and reliable chronometric information available to
archaeologists. In areas like the American Southwest
and western Europe, where tree-ring dating has
enjoyed widespread archaeological application for
nearly eight decades, archaeologists are blessed with
the availability of astonishingly precise temporal, environmental, and behavioral data spanning the last 2000
years, and in some cases for longer. Though some success has been achieved in tree-ring dating archaeological sites and structures in Alaska, the American
Midwest, and the Mediterranean and Middle East,
the stringent prerequisite conditions for crossdating
and archaeological application of tree-ring dating practically guarantee that its application will not expand
much beyond the times and places to which it is
currently restricted. Nevertheless, in situations where

1088 DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY

tree-ring dates can be obtained, archaeologists can derive interpretations about the prehistoric past that are
resolved to the year.
See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Carbon-14
Dating; Dating Methods, Overview; Electron Spin
Resonance Dating; Luminescence Dating; Obsidian
Hydration Dating; Time and History, Divisions.

Further Reading
Baillie MGL (1982) Tree-Ring Dating and Archaeology. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Baillie MGL (1995) A Slice through Time: Dendrochronology and
Precision Dating. London: BT Batsford Ltd. London.
Dean JS (1978) Tree-Ring Dating in Archaeology. University of
Utah Miscellaneous Anthropological Papers 24. Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press.

Dean JS (1997) Dendrochronology. In: Taylor RE and Aitken MJ

(eds.) Chronometric Dating in Archaeology: Advances in Archaeological and Museum Science, vol. 2, pp. 3164. New
York: Plenum.
Dean JS, Meko DM and Swetnam TW (eds.)(1996) Tree-Rings,
Environment, and Humanity: Proceedings of the International
Conference, Tucson, 1994. Tucson: Radiocarbon.
Hillam J (1998) Dendrochronology: Guidelines on Producing and
Interpreting Dendrochronological Dates. London: Ancient
Monuments Laboratory.
Nash SE (1999) Time, Trees, and Prehistory: Tree-Ring Dating and
the Development of North American Archaeology 19141950.
Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Nash SE (2000) Seven decades of archaeological tree-ring dating.
In: Nash SE (ed.) Its About Time: A History of Archaeological
Dating in North America, pp. 6082. Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press.
Nash SE (2002) Archaeological tree-ring dating at the millennium.
Journal of Archaeological Research 10: 243272.
Stokes MA and Smiley TL (1968) An Introduction to Tree-Ring
Dating. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY

O Hugo Benavides, Fordham University, Bronx, NY,
USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Pompeii A ruined Roman city near modern Naples in the Italian
region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. It
was destroyed, and completely buried, during a catastrophic
eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius on 24 August 79 AD.
Stonehenge A Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monument
located near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire,
about 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury.
World Archaeological Congress A nongovernmental,
not-for-profit organization, it is the only archaeological
organization with elected global representation.

Archaeology has been an essential part of the development discourse since its very inception at the end
of World War II. However, even before this official
launching of a Western development project archaeology had been implicated in the production of identity,
territorial rights, and national legitimization. Because
of its very aura of historical objectivity and scientific
rigor, archaeology has traditionally commanded an
enormous amount of power in terms of defining the
nature and ownership over cultural property and territorial rights. In this manner, archaeology has also been
able to muster an enormous amount of influence on
allocating and producing complex forms of identity
and social alliances with the recent and ancient past.

It is this particular disciplinary heritage that made

archaeology an implicit ally in the Wests drive for a
global development project that looked to eradicate
the most pernicious forms of poverty and illness
around the world. In its most implicit forms archaeology consistently provided the historical legitimization
for differing groups, including powerful nation-states
to rally around the idea of ancestral claims to land
and resources that had been bitterly disputed in
the region. As Foster has argued, in many ways archaeologists provided for national communities
what poppy seed growers have for heroin addicts.
This metaphor captures to some degree the volatile
nature of archaeological heritage and the complex
place that it holds in the national configurations of
identity and resources since the end of the twentieth
century. The development project makes use of this
archaeology in slightly similar ways, enabling many
national groups, including states and oppressed
minorities, to use the past to claim access to resources
that either had been traditionally denied or monopolized by contesting groups. To this degree the development project exacerbated an already hierarchical
difference between first and third world nations (or
preferably, global north and south) under the auspices
of a paternal (and patronizing) desire to remedy some
of capitalisms most pernicious global impacts.
As a result of this development enterprise, the central role of historical identity in the production of
political rights became a viable social enterprise. It
is in this fashion that many ancestral Indian (or so

DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY 1089

called native) communities throughout the Americas,

Africa, and Asia began to not only fight for their
access to resources but also to reorganize their own
political claims and identities in accordance with the
new global demands of the nation-state. Archaeology
has played an essential role in supporting this new
wave of Indigenous/Native human rights agendas,
which awakened by the development discourse, present new postmodern forms of identification throughout the world. In this new age of post-industrial
capitalism the native is no longer a mere sign of Western oppression but one of cosmopolitan identification.
This complicity between development and archaeology has also found fertile ground in the resurgence
of transnational NGOs, progressive social movements, and new forms of eco-tourism that more
than ever look to provide a more dynamic understanding of a democratic present (and past). The
complex manner of these political reconfigurations
both in the global north and south is highlighted
below in the following three cases of different regions
of the world.

World Archaeological Inter-Congresses:

the Political Reconfiguration of Native
Identities
He kainga no te ururoa, te moana (The ocean is the
home of the shark, and) He Kainga no te kereru, te
ngahere (the forest is the home of the wood pigeon).
This Maori proverb has many meanings one of which
is that respect should be accorded to those whose domain you enter. (World Archaeology Congress website)

Since its original inception in 1986, the World

Archaeology Congress (WAC) has held several different inter-congresses in between their larger global
meetings held every four years. Two of these intercongresses have taken place in New Zealand, in 2001
and 2005, both dealing with issues of indigenous rights
and archaeology. To an enormous degree the foundation of WAC itself, and these recent inter-congresses,
express the central role of native identity and indigenous rights in the modern-day configuration of
archaeological research. As such, Indian/native identities throughout the globe are central political elements
in the development enterprises carried out in the far
reaching corners of the world. As more development
projects are carried out in remote places and ancestral
homelands, many of these same impoverished communities find themselves empowered and re-vitalized to
re-define their historical identities in new modern
ways.
To this degree the WACs two inter-congresses express the intersection of development, archaeology,
native rights, and re-territorialization. It is this new

revitalization of native rights and ancestral claims to

land and government bodies that may be seen as one
of the most politically progressive contributions of
the development enterprise. Even though one could
argue that this cultural revalidation was not the initial
motivation of the development paradigm, more and
more projects of sustainable development, cultural
heritage and minority valorization are central parts
of the new development agenda of the twenty-first
century. At the same time, not surprisingly, archaeology has been called into this enterprise by encouraging both bureaucrats and native populations who see
ancient history, particularly when written records are
not available, as essential in their claims of national
identity and political representation.
A critical element in this new reconstitution of the
native within the global landscape is the important
place of cultural diversity within the political and
economic narrative of the West, including in transnational institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the meetings of the
Super 7. It is no longer acceptable to simply ostracize
minority and native populations but rather one of the
very signatures of the new enlightened modernity of
the West is to attempt to support, democratically
integrate, and respect traditional ways.
This has meant the powerful reworking of a native
discourse that has logically enough both shaken and
legitimized contemporary nation-states. Natives have
expressed themselves in terms of authentic cultural
traditions and through the reigning developmental
discourse successfully obtained international assistance, aid, and political validation. In a sense they
have had no choice but to express themselves in culturally authentic terms, and yet in another sense they
have been empowered to become natives by a developmental paradigm that necessarily needs natives to
develop, and a nation-state that also needs them to
secure international funds. In this postcolonial framework homogenous nation-states are out of the picture,
not primarily because they have never existed, but
more specifically because this reality would translate
into an economic debacle and their political demise.
However, to mistake native movements as representative of some pristine cultural authenticity, as the
movement espouses for obvious reasons of economic
and cultural survival, is to disregard the dangerous
underpinnings of capitalist transformations. In this
sense, natives do not represent a greater form of
cultural authenticity than other contesting groups
including those representing the state project, but a
hybridity of previous social symbols and meaning
in modern terms. This mixing process is strongly indebted to Western values, which provide the symbols
and meaning that give the movement its reason of

1090 DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY

being, both historically and politically. This transformation occurs even in the light that the different
native movement, as the state itself, must adamantly
express itself as representing an authentic (i.e., natural and pristine) independent of historical struggle
and free of polluting modern characteristics, bringing in dangerous genocidal shadows.
History enables natives to use an ethnic identity
that was the cause of their historic domination.
Therefore, Indians/natives are able to use their ethnic
oppression as cultural capital to obtain funds, political recognition, and other resources from first world
nations many of which were once (and still are) at the
head of their own cultural destruction. Because of
this, far from being a simple tale of utopic liberation;
native struggles, development schemes, and democratization plans are re-transformations of old, uneven
political alliances between first and third world
forces. Only in this transnational reconfiguration of
the market have natives been able to articulate their
historical agency. The resistance and contestation
against the West by native communities is not new,
only the fact that they are being heard and celebrated
by the Wests most powerful representatives.
It is at this juncture that archaeology enters into
the reclaiming of land and identities of ancestral and
native communities around the world. As Gero (N.d.
in WAC website) states in the introductory remarks of
WACs website, In fact this is the archaeology of the
future. The discipline of archaeology is no longer the
exclusive province of white European upper-class
men, and there is no going back to a pre-WAC era
of exclusionary, hierarchical and scientized knowledge that marginalizes the multivocal archaeology
from the peripheries. The question of who controls
the past? is no longer a conundrum because it must
be generally conceded that there are many pasts and
they will be known differently from many views?
As a result of this complex relationship between
development and archaeology there is now a reinvestment of centuries-old struggles for economic,
political, and cultural resources all over the world.
From the most powerful Indian movement in the Americas, to the resurgence of Maori culture and life-ways in
New Zealand, to the complex foundation of national
parks in a post-apartheid South Africa, these groups are
consistently vying to reinsert their contemporary lives
and culture in a much more humane and democratic
apparatus that has been the case until now.

Cochasqu: an Idealized Development

Failure
The monumental site of Cochasqu (AD 5001500)
in the north Andean Ecuadorian highlands illustrates

the manner in which development archaeological

projects are productive in a myriad of ways. Far from
achieving the initial success that the development agenda proposes, most projects achieve mixed results that
tend to be most productive in ways that differ, even
contradictorily so, to the aims initially expounded.
In this manner, Cochasqu was far from able to successfully maintain its initial ideal of sustainable development yet has become one of the most visited
archaeological sites in the country, and ultimately
serves to sustain the historical ideal of the Ecuadorian
nation-state far beyond its mere two centuries of
existence.
The site is located 56 km north of Quito, Ecuadors
capital, only an hour-and-a-halfs drive north of the
city. Since its initial opening to tourists in the late
1970s, under the auspices of the Programa Cochasqu,
the site averages around 20 000 visitors a year both
nationals and foreigners. The Programa Cochasqu
was initially defined as an organic structure that is
concerned with scientific research; the conservation,
restoration, the economic development of the region;
the diffusion, promotion and carrying out of different
agendas, scientific and ecological tourism; with the
perspective of defining, motivating and defending our
national identity.
Since 1986, the program has been officially an
administrative unit of the Consejo Provincial, but
until then the program had been an independent
department of this state entity. The programs funding
is automatically included in the annual Consejo
Provincials budget, although extra funds for special
events are presented separately to the Consejo and
directly approved by the Prefecto Provincial. The
Cochasqu Program staff is typically composed of 15
members: a director, five tour guides (two of them from
the local population), a site resident, an archaeologist,
a sociologist, a secretary, two drivers, four local workers, and three local guards. By 1981 the 83.9 ha that
currently make up the site had been completely expropriated from their last private owner, the Hacienda
Pirela, and the site of Cochasqu opened its door to
the public.
The programs initial plan put forward four main
objectives for the maintenance of the archaeological site of Cochasqu: (1) historical/anthropological;
(2) conservation-restoration; (3) socioeconomic (community development); and (4) public awareness. These
four initial objectives have been maintained during
the programs existence. The most interesting objective of the program in its central concern for the
historical reconstruction of the site has been its interest in including the comuna (local community) in the
sites preservation. From the outset it proposed a
dynamic concept of culture as the essential element

DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY 1091

for any possible model of autonomous development

of the region.
The initial structure of the program was of an
interdisciplinary nature because it looked to the
development of Cochasqu not only as an archaeological site but also as an autochthonous community
with many other needs, such as agricultural, socioeconomic, and medical. It also proposed a future
structure wherein the local communities (comuna)
would become responsible and capable of managing
the archaeological site directly. This initial cultural
objective was still prevalent among the tour guides
at the site in the late 1990s.
In the programs restructuring in the early 1990s,
there was an explicit understanding of three major
moments of activity at the site: the first was the initial
period of cleaning and preparing the site for public
display; the second was marked by the presence of
foreign and national experts who served as consultants to the program and carried out studies of different aspects at the site; and the third was the programs
recognition of the difficulty in implementing many of
the initial objectives, mainly due to the instability of
the programs personnel.
As a result of this, the program personnel has been
completely overhauled many times over the last two
decades, with only the local staff, the archaeologist
and site resident remaining from the previous administrations. This instability of the staffs personnel was
signaled by Salcedo in his ethnography about cultural
identity at Cochasqu as a central characteristic of
the program. For him, the labor instability is provoked
by a whole array of different reasons and situations:
The instability of the staff, who are constantly removed;
the confusion of personal conflicts with the general and
transpersonal objectives of the Program; the problems
of communication between different social and cultural
backgrounds; the intangible phenomena resulting from
power conflicts; the labor tensions from the working
conditions of the Provincial Council and of the Program
itself; the different ideological tendencies of its members; and the different degrees of interest in the Program
itself has made it a heterogeneous composition of varied interests and personal motivations, which is why
a uniform collective action can not be implemented
(Salcedo 1985: 103).

More importantly, this instability is a response to

actual structural constraints defined by the countrys
different ideological currents. The programs position
within the Consejo Provincial, a state institution,
makes it prey to economic hardships reflected in low
wages, contract problems, transportation deficiency
(cars always breaking down), and social instability as
a result of the constant powerplay of consejeros and
electoral politics.

In this manner, Cochasqu has failed at almost all of

its development aims (not surprising to any degree for
the multiple development projects around the world)
but has been successful in other equally powerful
enterprises. Perhaps its biggest succes is to have been
able to muster an enormous sense of national pride
and historical legitimization for the troubled Ecuadorian nation-state. Suffering from a profound loss of
territory to its neighbors, particularly Peru, Ecuador
has traditionally suffered from an identity void in
terms of historical validation. The productive identification of these thousandyear-old monumental
pyramids within the recent Ecuadorian nation-state
has provided a sense of pride in an Indian past that
had never coalesced in such successful fashion. It is
not unrelated to this enterprise that the contemporary Indian communities in Ecuador (i.e, CONAIEConfederation of Indian Nationalities of Ecuador)
have been able to mobilize with unprecedented power
in the last two decades. Although they yet have to
make direct claims to archaeological remains and artifacts, there is no doubt that the global conditions of
transnational ecological movements and local forms
of claims to an ancestral past have powerfully served
to revitalize an ancestral Indian identity in Ecuador.

Pompeii: the Historical Limitations

of the Global North
One of the most pervasive (and perhaps pernicious)
implications of the development agenda is that somehow it implicates in a much more powerful fashion
the third world than it does the first. This assumption
in itself is an inherent result of the hierarchical manner in which the development enterprise situates itself
in the global order. By over-emphasizing the changes
occurring in the third world, among ancestral communities and re-formulated minority and native identities, the actual shifts and changes occurring in the
first world actually get erased or covered up. This
particular form of discursive denial is essential for
several reasons that are inherent to the development
paradigm.
Prime among these reasons is the belief that somehow the third world is at the receiving end of the
resource exchange, eliding the manner in which
those same native communities have been decimated
by centuries of capitalist exploitation that have
secured the uneven access and exchange of development resources today. Another crucial element in the
development enterprise is that of racial identification.
In the sense, that the development scheme once again
retells a global narrative of compassionate white
stakeholders helping out black and brown skinned
others to achieve a higher level of development outside

1092 DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY

of their own internal grasp. Of course, this denies

the fact that a significant number of development
workers (even from first world countries) are not
white, that the overall state of poverty is more widespread in the world today (even after five decades of
development work), and the ethnocentric base of evolutionary schemes of development, civilization, and
modernity.
Based on the above, archaeological sites in the first
world present interesting analytical cases in which
to assess the uneven exchange of cultural resource
contained within the development enterprise, and
also the manner in which cultural identification itself
gets reproduced in highly uneven fashion. In this manner, the site of Pompeii, in southern Italy, (perhaps
along with Stonehenge) allows for an initial understanding of the complex ways in which first world
archaeological enterprises also get marked and redefined within the new transnational order of things.
It is perhaps equally telling how the site of Stonehenge
is completely off-limits to all but a few archaeologists,
precisely because the state has become rapidly aware of
the volatile nature of the sites historical identification
possibilities.
The Roman site of Pompeii presents itself as an
interesting site of multiple and ambivalent identification. Above all, the splendor, mystery, and sheer monumentality of the site puts it on a scale of its own
within the European landscape. As a result of having
worked there on several different projects, the author
was immediately struck by the tens of thousands of
Italians and foreigners who flock to visit and walk its
streets each summer, visiting a city that was almost
instantly stopped in its track by the Vesuvius explosion two thousand years ago. As a result of that natural
accident, the site would seem to present a window into
a similar, yet different, way of life that took place
in todays modern Mediterranean landscape. Not surprisingly, it is the awesome historical seduction of the
site that justifies the thousands of euros that visitors
pay to visit Pompeii and that support the rest of Italys
archaeological sites and enterprises.
However, one of the most profoundly explicit elements at Pompeii is how much the site, and visiting it,
is not about the past but rather about the present. In a
way the site proudly expounds a moment in time
when the Roman (i.e., Italian) empire was at its global height, not only in terms of monumental achievement but more importantly of territorial and global
domination. This particular manner of understanding
Pompeii, and the Roman past, is essentially related to
the rather secondary place that Italy now plays within
the new European Union, and the almost third world
identification it has inherited since World War II to
the present day. In this fashion, Pompeii serves to

ambivalently state, to Italians and foreigners alike, a

narrative about national superiority that is impregnated with imperialist nostalgia about the past and
burgeoning feelings about a misplaced fascist history
of the present.
At the same time, the site elaborates a more global
narrative of archaeological grandeur in a manner not
unrelated to its European geography. In this way
Pompeii is also ambivalently situated within an
emerging postnational identification of a modern
Europe at the same time that it presents an empirical
backdrop from the imagined past that modern history
came from which and has evolved. This particular ambiguous identification is an essential marker of a development scheme that is pervasively present throughout
the world in its modern reconfiguration. On the one
hand, Europe (and the United States) must maintain a
superior distinctiveness that both expresses and reflects
their greater resource possibilities, while on the other
hand they must also express an element of democratic
identification that makes development not the uneven
exchange that it always has been, but rather a more
humanitarian enterprise of democratic self-fulfillment.
In such a complicated landscape of discursive possibilities, archaeology and centrally produced sites
such as Pompeii play an essential role in both justifying and enabling such narratives of unequal cultural
exchange. That is why it is so easy for visitors at
Pompeii to be awed by the grandeur of the site which
tells of a luxurious past in tune with a prosperous
territorial present. Yet this present historical narrative
is not completely true, and that particular reality is
made more visible in the landscape of Pompeii, where
the northern sensibilities of the continent are far from
being espoused, and are often openly ridiculed. It is
also in this manner that the archaeological landscape
of Pompeii opens a series of questions about what is
the nature of the sites archaeological representation,
and ultimately what does this representation actually
accomplish.
In such a fashion, first world archaeological sites
and not only third world ones are imbued with significant discourses about national and global identification. In this sense, Pompeii, as with Cochasqu and
other third world archaeological projects, is burdened
with a historical narrative that not only transcends its
borders but that perhaps even more importantly did
not even begin within them. To this degree the development enterprise is so pervasive in its restructuring
of the current global order of nations that archaeological sites carry this historical object of validation
within the very possibilities of their discursive explanations. In this manner the story told by guides and
imagined by visitors at Pompeii is as much about the
site as it is about a troubled first world incapable of

DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY 1093

transcending its own historical limitations, an Italy

traversed by unequal identification between its northern and southern regions, and about an ancient Roman
empire that is as alive today in peoples imagination as
we want it to be.

Archaeology and Development:

a Relationship of Affinity
As the above discussions show, both development
and archaeology are invested in providing support,
empowering and enabling forgotten communities,
either within the current political structure or in the
historical record. In this manner, the intersection of
both disciplinary interests belies a much broader
structural apparatus that secures the reproduction of
old neocolonial interests but in slightly different
ways. It is, of course, contained within these slightly
differing manner of political identification and distribution of resources that hope for a more democratic
future is embedded, one in which all native communities, not only oppressed ones will be more able
to espouse and live their cultural values without
genocidal fears and exclusion.
In this same way, the three discussions above
exemplify the different manner in which the developmentarchaeology interaction has varied effects on
populations throughout the world. Even though most
look to exclusively highlight the progressive empowerment of native communities, this process is far from
simple or politically neutral. At the same time, most
development projects intertwined with archaeology
fail miserably, albeit productively. As the Cochasqu
case exemplifies, these projects end up having other
powerful results that are equally complex, ethically
and politically speaking. Finally, although unequal emphasis has also been placed upon the shifts impacting
in the archaeological realms of the third world, the first

Diet Study of

See also: Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance

Studies; Identity and Power; Native Peoples and
Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?.

Further Reading
Appiah AK (2006) Cosmopolitanism. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Bender B (1998) Stonehenge: Making Space. New York: Berg.
Escobar A (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and
Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Ferguson J (1997) The Anti-Politics Machine: Development,
Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Foster R (1990) Making cultures in the global ecumene. Annual
Review of Anthropology 20: 235260.
Garca-Canclini N (1992) Cultural reconversion. In: Yudice G,
Flores J, and Franco J (eds.) On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Latin American Culture. Minneaopolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Malkki L (1995) Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National
Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Programa Cochasqu (1991) Replanteamiento programatico,
Quito: H. Consejo Provincial de Pichincha. 1981 Program
Cochasqu, Consejo Provincial de Pichinicha, Quito.
Salcedo, Jose (1985) Al rescate de la identidad cultural en Cochasqu,
Ms., Programa Cochasqu, Cochasqu, Ecuador.

Relevant Website
www.worldarchaeologycongress.org WAC website.

See: Stable Isotope Analysis; Trace Element Analysis.

Direct Historical Approach

Disease

world is equally affected and perhaps more so in a

nuanced and silent fashion which needs to be made
explicit before it further serves to reinsert the uneven
exchange of ideas and resources prevalent in the world
today. Because as the Maori might say (paraphrasing
the proverb quoted above), the world is the home of all
(and not only some) humans.

See: Anthropological Archaeology.

See: Health, Healing, and Disease.

1094 DNA/Ancient

DNA
Contents
Ancient
Modern, and Archaeology

Ancient
Mim A Bower and Martin K Jones, University of
Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
allele One member of a pair or series of genes that occupy a
specific position on a specific chromosome.
autosomal DNA The non-sex chromosomes. Humans have 23
pairs of chromosomes, the first 22 pairs are the autosomal DNA
chromosomes and the 23rd pair is the sex chromosomes, known
as the female X-chromosome (or mtDNA chromosome) and the
male Y-chromosome.
biogeography A synthetic discipline that describes the
distributions of living and fossil species of plants and animals
across the Earths surface as consequences of ecological and
evolutionary processes.
chloroplast A plastid containing chlorophyll, developed only in
cells exposed to the light and almost entirely limited to plant
cells. Chloroplasts are minute flattened granules, usually
occurring in great numbers in the cytoplasm near the cell wall.
genetic markers Alleles of genes, or DNA polymorphisms,
used as experimental probes to identify an individual or group of
individuals. These can be a single altered nucleotide (SNiP), or
sequence motif (microsatellite), pattern of altered nucleotides or
DNA fingerprint.
genome The entire complement of genetic material in a
chromosome set. The complete set of genetic information of an
organism including DNA and RNA.
genotype The genetic makeup, as distinguished from the
physical appearance, of an organism or a group of organisms.
The combination of alleles located on homologous chromosomes
that determines a specific characteristic or trait.
haplotype A set of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNiPs)
that are statistically associated. Haplotype and genotype are
sometimes used interchangeably to mean genetic type, though
their strict biological definitions are different.
isozyme Variants of the same enzyme.
metagenomics The study of genomes recovered from
environmental samples. The technique is to clone DNA in large
fragments directly from the microorganisms environment (such
as soil) into a culturable host and conduct a sequence-based
analysis on it. The hope of this new strategy is to isolate new
chemical signals, new secondary metabolites, and the
reconstruction of an entire genome of an uncultured organism.
mitochondria A mitochondrion is an organelle or specialized
part of a cell found in the cells of most eukaryotes. Mitochondria
are sometimes described as cellular power plants because their
primary purpose is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate
(ATP), which is used as a source of energy. The number of

mitochondria found in different types of cells varies widely. At

one end of the spectrum, the trypanosome protozoan has one
large mitochondrion; by contrast, human liver cells normally
have between 1000 and 2000 each.
molecular clock A theoretical clock based on the assumption
that the rate at which nucleotide substitutions become fixed in
evolutionary lineages is approximately constant for a given DNA
sequence and reflects the time since the data diverged.
nucleotide The building blocks of nucleic acids, that is, DNA
and RNA. Nucleotides are composed of phosphate groups, a
five-sided sugar molecule, and nitrogen-containing bases. These
fall into two classes, pyrimidines and purines, and are usually
denoted as a four-letter code G, guanine; A, adenine;
T, thymine; and C, cytosine.
PCR Polymerase Chain Reaction. A molecular biological
method for amplifying (creating multiple copies of) DNA
without using a living organism, such as Escherichia coli or
yeast. PCR is commonly used in medical and biological
research labs for a variety of tasks, such as the detection of
hereditary diseases, the identification of genetic fingerprints,
the diagnosis of infectious diseases, the cloning of genes, and
paternity testing.
phenotype The physical appearance and constitution of an
individual, or a specific manifestation of a trait, such as size or
eye color, that varies between individuals. Phenotype is
determined to some extent by genotype, or by the identity of the
alleles that an individual carries at one or more positions on the
chromosomes. Many phenotypes are determined by multiple
genes and influenced by environmental factors.
phylogenetics The determination of the rates and patterns of
change occurring in DNA in order to reconstruct the
evolutionary history of genes and organisms. The aim is to infer
process from pattern: the processes of organismal evolution
deduced from patterns of DNA variation and processes of
molecular evolution inferred from the patterns of variations in
the DNA itself.
population A group of individuals of the same species living in
the same area at the same time; a stable group of randomly
interbreeding individuals.
Y chromosome A chromosome is a large macromolecule into
which DNA is normally packaged in a cell. It is a very long,
continuous piece of DNA (a single DNA molecule), which
contains many genes, regulatory elements, and other
intervening nucleotide sequences. The Y chromosome is one of
the two sex-determining chromosomes in humans and most
other mammals (the other is the X chromosome) and determines
maleness.

Introduction
The term ancient DNA (aDNA) refers to DNA that is
no longer in a living organism (e.g., plant, animal,
human), is no longer being continually repaired by

DNA/Ancient 1095

the cell, and therefore is exposed to a range of decay

mechanisms. aDNA is usually preserved within some
form of matrix (e.g., bone, charred seed, mummified
skin) and can survive in analyzable amounts for
remarkably long periods of time. For example, it has
been shown repeatedly that organisms in cold situations (e.g., permafrost animals or the Ice Man) have
better-preserved DNA than those in temperate areas,
and that organisms found below a certain latitude
tend not to have amplifiable DNA.

past relationships based on such data. This framework of living populations can then be explored for
time depth using aDNA to see if the patterns observed
are identifiable in the past. aDNA data are then
returned to inform the theoretical models of the molecular clock and therefore improve the quality of the
data and patterns we can get from modern data. The
most recent aDNA studies have shown that the genetic present may not match so straightforwardly onto
the genetic past as we might previously have hoped.

aDNA and Archaeogenetics

A Brief History of aDNA

Initially, the analysis of aDNA was a curio, used to

analyze unusual specimens of limited relevance to the
general archaeologist (e.g., Egyptian mummies).
However, since the mid- to late 1990s, it has become
a fully fledged part of a larger discipline called archaeogenetics which tackles central questions in archaeology, such as the origin of modern humans and the
domestication and spread of plants and animals.
Archaeogenetics is the application of population
genetics to the study of the past. It includes:

In the 1960s, preliminary explorations of ancient

biomolecules were made. For example, using simple
protein comparisons, isozyme variations Teosinte was
shown to be the progenitor of domesticated maize.
In the 1970s, DNA sequencing was developed. This
allowed accurate phylogenetic comparisons, although
from limited sequence information only, for example,
the comparison of chloroplast DNA from wild and
cultivated barley. However, the field progressed slowly
because of methodological difficulties presented by
aDNA. The methodological revolution, provided by
the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR),
through which we can amplify tiny amounts of DNA,
allowed aDNA research to blossom.
Early efforts (1980s) concentrated on samples that
appeared to have excellent morphological preservation, for example, mummies and frozen specimens
and museum skins including the quagga and marsupial wolf. However, this methodological revolution
and the indiscriminate use of the technology also led
to problems. There was a rush to get the oldest and
most unusual sample; it seemed like anything was
possible, so there were many studies on what later
became called antediluvian DNA from dinosaurs,
insects encased in amber, and fossil plant remains, the
findings of which were subsequently called into question. However, these high-profile results and the
resulting controversy allowed significant advances in
our understanding of how aDNA can be used to the
greatest effect, including the way we now use a series
of lines of evidence to advance the argument for the
authenticity of the aDNA from the samples we study
(see the section entitled How can we argue for the
authenticity of our aDNA).
Since the 1990s, enormous advances have been
made. We can now analyze aDNA from a wide range
of preserved materials (e.g., mummified skin and
other body parts, bone, feces, charred seeds, teeth,
wood, hair). Furthermore, the survival of aDNA in
specimens up to several thousand years old is now
well established and even retrieval of DNA from

. the analysis of DNA from living populations (including humans and domestic plant and animal species)
in order to study the human past and the genetic
legacy of human interaction with the biosphere;
. the application of statistical methods (see Statistics in Archaeology) developed by evolutionary
geneticists to genetic, archaeological, or linguistic
data, including sophisticated computer modeling
of population dynamics (see Paleoanthropology,
Computer-Assisted);
. the analysis of DNA recovered from archaeological
remains, that is, aDNA.
Although much archaeogenetics research draws on
data from living populations alone, the roles of living
population genetics and aDNA are inextricably intertwined. Living population genetics can rapidly analyze
many genetic markers in the large numbers of samples
from global populations required to make statistically
robust biogeographical patterns. aDNA cannot do this,
for two reasons, partly due to the time and expense
needed to produce and validate aDNA research (which
means that only small numbers of samples can be analyzed at a given time). But, more importantly, except in
the most unusual cases, it is not possible to analyze a
real ancient population as defined in biological terms.
The most effective use of aDNA is based within a
thorough examination of genetic features of living
plants and animals from living populations. From
this, we construct a biogeographic framework of
relatedness between living populations, and model

1096 DNA/Ancient

remains of the Late Quaternary (up to 100 000 years

ago) is possible. These scrupulous studies have provided the basis for regained confidence in the field of
archaeogenetics.

Cracking the Jargon

Cells contain many organelles including the nucleus
and mitochondria (Figure 1(a)). The nucleus contains
the genome an entire set of genes in chromosomes,
with linking sections of intergenic DNA. In addition
to a single nucleus, there are many mitochondria.
They are the energy-generating organelle of the cell
and have a circular molecule of DNA.
mtDNA is well suited for aDNA studies because it
is characterized in many organisms, available in high
copy number (meaning that it is more likely to have
sufficient copies, well enough preserved for PCR),
and has highly polymorphic regions which allow for
between-species comparisons (e.g., cytochrome b), and
for within-species comparisons (e.g., hypervariable
region of the D-loop). Additionally, it is maternally
inherited, and therefore of interest in lineage studies.
DNA is made up of nucleotide bases adenine (A),
thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C) (Figure 1(b)).
Every A and T pairs together while every G and
C pairs together, to make two complementary strands.
The DNA molecule is shaped like a twisted ladder.
DNA is packaged in a chromosome, which is a long
continuous strand of DNA. Structural proteins, for
example, histones, provide a scaffold on which DNA
is wrapped and may be instrumental in the preservation of ancient DNA.

Post-mortem Breakdown of DNA

The DNA molecule is relatively unstable compared
with other cellular components and will degrade
with time if not repaired. As soon as an organism
dies, its cells rupture releasing enzymes which rapidly
digest strands of DNA; nutrient-rich fluids, which
encourage the growth of environmental microorganisms, contribute to further degradation. However,
under certain conditions, such as rapid desiccation or
burial in anaerobic conditions, freezing, low soil pH,
or high salt concentrations, decay enzymes and microorganisms are inactivated before DNA is completely
disassembled. In these cases, DNA can remain preserved in short fragments of 100500 base pairs for
remarkably long periods.
These short fragments of DNA are also subject to
chemical damage by radiation, oxidation, condensation, and hydrolysis (Figure 2). Hydrolysis breaks the
backbone of DNA strands while oxidation blocks polymerase action, and condensation cross-links proteins
and DNA. These forms of damage can stall or confuse
the enzymes used in PCR to give erroneous results;
for example, the most common form of damage (the
deamination of cytosine residues) causes a characteristic
nucleotide change during sequencing (a C-to-Tor G-to-A
change).
The upshot of these processes is that aDNA specimens frequently contain very little of original DNA,
which is why most aDNA studies focus on mitochondrial rather than nuclear DNA: there are simply more
copies of mitochondria, so the chances of getting an
aDNA sequence are that much higher.

(a)
C

(b)
Figure 1 Cracking the jargon. (a) A cell has one nucleus and many mitochondria. (b) DNA is made up of four bases: adenine, thymine,
guanine and cytosine which bind together to make a double stranded helix.

DNA/Ancient 1097

Depurination
Double-strand
break
Depyrimidination
Pyrimidine
dimer
Base alteration
Single-strand
break

DNA protein
crosslink

Figure 2 The postmortem breakdown of DNA.

aDNA Methods
There are a great number of methods for the analysis
of aDNA, and new methods are being developed continuously. Therefore, this is a snapshot of commonly
used methods available at the time of publication.
In the Extraction Lab:
Clean samples. Using bleach, buffered solutions,
and UV light, particulate matter (e.g., soil) and extraneous DNA from living organisms are removed.
Mobilize DNA. DNA is brought into solution to be
separated from other components of the cell and
organism. It usually involves grinding the sample
into a fine powder, which is mixed for several hours
in an extraction buffer, containing a digestive enzyme
(Figure 3(a)).
Purify DNA. This removes all but the DNA from
the buffer including the remaining particles of the
sample (e.g., bone powder, crushed seed, etc.) and
any other remaining proteins, sugars, soil particles,
etc. that have also come into solution with the DNA.
There are many available methods for this step.
Precipitate/concentrate DNA. This ensures that
you have a high enough concentration of DNA to be
able to make the amplification step work. Sometimes,
other steps may be added to enhance results; for
example, the use of DNA repair enzymes or glycosyl
bond-cleaving agents.
In the PCR set-up room (where even the air
is filtered and UV irradiated):
Prepare for DNA amplification. A mixture of template aDNA, a buffer, magnesium salt, and a pair of

primers designed to target a specific section of DNA is

made up. This is then taken to the postextraction lab
where PCR and downstream processing is carried out.
In the PostExtraction Lab:
PCR
PCR works like a photocopier and makes multiple
copies of the DNA you ask it to target. PCR can be
difficult from ancient material for a number of reasons
(inhibition by co-extracted compounds, very low copy
number of DNA, DNA swamped by contaminants,
DNA too badly fragmented or damaged), but there
are a number of methods to help improve success rates.
Visualize amplified DNA. Different lengths of
DNA are separated out on an electrophoresis gel.
DNA is stained with ethidium bromide and fluoresces
under UV light and can easily be scanned by eye for a
DNA fragment of the expected size (Figure 3(b)).
Read DNA sequence. DNA can now be sent for
sequencing (Figure 3(c)). This direct sequence is a
consensus of the pool of amplified DNA, which may
include errors from damaged DNA and possibly even
contaminant sequences. However, to understand how
damaged and mixed your sample is you must use
bacterial cloning.
Bacterial cloning. A single fragment of DNA resulting from PCR (i.e., a single photocopy) is inserted in a
bacterial host, which then copies it many thousands
of times. Then the DNA from multiple bacterial colonies are sequenced separately and the sequences are
compared to look for error and contamination. Finally,
a consensus sequence is constructed from these multiple sequences and checked for statistical robustness.

How Can Archaeological Inference

be Made from DNA Sequence Data
The same section of DNA sequence is collected from
many living individuals. These are compared to each
other, and their relatedness is scored using various
statistical analysis methods. These methods search
for sequence similarities that allow organisms to be
grouped together into subsets of the data. These patterns are usually explored using phylogenetic trees or
median joining networks but the basis of the analysis
is the same sequence data. Trees and networks are
methods for the visual representation of the mathematically determined pattern of relatedness within the
data set (Figure 4). These methods are based on theoretical models of evolution and they differ in the complexity of the models they express. The basis of all of
them is that relatedness can be measured by the accumulation of mutations in sequence data. Mutations
are changes in genetic information. They can accumulate in nonessential regions of DNA and are thought to
record an overall history of the evolutionary life of a

1098 DNA/Ancient

(a)

(b)

(c)
Figure 3 How to get ancient DNA: (a) bones and teeth are sub-sampled and ground to a fine powder in liquid nitrogen; (b) as agarose
gel showing faint bands of aDNA from the above sample; (c) a chromatogram of the aDNA sequence obtained from the sample.

genome. We believe that they occur at a predictable

speed (though this is recently being challenged) and
accumulate unidirectionally over time (in mtDNA at
least). Different parts of the genome mutate at different speeds; this is why some parts of the genome are
better for studying the evolution of species and others
the evolution of populations.
Approximate ages for the patterns of relatedness
can be estimated based on models of the molecular
clock. The molecular clock is an estimation of the rate
that spontaneous errors in DNA replication (mutations) occur over time. Initially it was thought that
this was constant across species and genetic loci;
however, molecular clock users now are developing
statistical approaches including maximum likelihood
techniques and Bayesian modeling to formulate a

relaxed molecular clock which is proving to be

more accurate. The same section of DNA from ancient individuals is then added to the analysis and this
gives patterns in the living data real-time depth as
these can give a terminus post quem to the groupings
within which they fall.
The dating of divergence events based on the
molecular clock and more importantly ancient DNA
allow the molecular data to be compared with
archaeological data (patterns in material culture,
settlement and migration, the occurrence of archaeobotanical remains of cereals during the spread of
agriculture into Europe from the Fertile Crescent,
etc.) and other data (e.g., palaeoenvironmental data)
that can then begin to build up a picture which can be
used to construct an archaeological narrative.

DNA/Ancient 1099
Descendant 3

Descendant 2 Descendant 1

Common ancestor

Resulting tree

GAACCTTGTCCG
GAACCTTATCCG
GAAG-TTATCCG
GAAC-TTATCCG

plant architecture, storage protein synthesis, and starch

production) were analyzed. aDNA showed the selection of traits during early domestication, and allowed
estimation of when these desirable traits appeared
(see Plant Domestication). Analysis suggested that
the alleles typical of contemporary maize were already
present in Mexican maize 4400 years ago, just a few
thousand years after initial domestication from the
wild grass teosinte.

Mutation in descendant 3

Lost Genotypes

Insertion in descendant 2

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been analyzed

from Late Pleistocene remains of brown bears and
bison preserved in permafrost. Today, these species
are found in distinct geographical regions, but aDNA
showed them to have coexisted in a large diverse
population throughout Beringia over 30 000 years
ago, when the populations genetic diversity began
to decline. The implication for living population genetics is that much of the current distribution of mtDNA
types might be due to relatively recent phenomena,
such as the random loss of mtDNA lineages in small
populations during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Mutation in descendant 1
Common ancestor

Aligned sequences

GAACCTTGTCCG

GAACCTTATCCG

Descendant 3

Descendant 2

GAAGTTATCCG
Descendant 1

GAACTTATCCG

Common ancestor

Figure 4 Phylogenetic trees are a visual representation of the

relatedness of individuals through time.

Applications
Origins and Spread of Domesticated Animals
and Plants

aDNA can uncover biogeography that has become

blurred in modern genetics by subsequent events
(e.g., specialist breeding, population movements).
The available modern genetic and archaeological
evidence for the domestication of cattle has pointed
to at least two major sites of domestication in India
and in the Near East (see Animal Domestication).
Under this hypothesis, all present-day European breeds
would be descendants of cattle domesticated in the
Near East; however, aDNA from Italian aurochsen
dated between 7000 and 17 000 years BP suggest
that there might have been local domestication events
in Europe with introgression from European aurochs
species.
A maize cob from the Ocampo Caves in Mexico
dated to 3890 years BP was the first study of aDNA
that looked at phenotype. Three genes (which control

Evolution

aDNA has shown that evolution is more complex and

dynamic than originally thought. aDNA allows direct
estimation of the rate of nucleotide evolution of a
population (mutation rate), by comparing individuals
from different times. Lambert and co-workers measured the rate of mtDNA evolution by analyzing a
large number of Adelie penguins from Antarctica.
The data they produced allowed estimation of the
molecular clock, which they found to be significantly
faster than that previously used in theoretical models.
Ancient Communities

Cemetery studies have focused on genetic continuity

between past and present human populations. mtDNA
was analyzed from individuals from rural communities
in Paucarcancha, Patallacta, and Huata near the famed
site of Machu Picchu. The haplotype frequency data
showed clear similarity to those of modern Quechua
and Aymara people in the Peruvian and Bolivian highlands, and unlike those of pre-Hispanic individuals of
the north coast of Peru, suggesting a strong genetic
affinity between sampled late pre-Hispanic individuals
and modern Andean highlanders.
Nuclear DNA sequences (autosomal and Y-chromosome short tandem repeats) have also been obtained
in cemetery studies. For example, DNA from a
2300-year-old Xiongnu population near Lake Baikal
in northern Mongolia was compared with data from

1100 DNA/Ancient

two contemporary Mongolian populations. Genetic

similarities between the ancient and modern populations suggested that the succession of different Turkic
and Mongolian tribes in what is now Mongolia was
based on cultural rather than genetic exchanges.
Ancient Ecosystems

aDNA has been analyzed from Siberian permafrost

sediments and from the soil of temperate caves in New
Zealand, ranging in age from 10 000 to 400 000 years.
Fragments of different plant taxa could be identified
from chloroplast DNA (angiosperms, gymnosperms,
and mosses) and various animals including mammoth,
bison and horse. Dramatic changes in the diversity
and composition of Beringian vegetation during the
Quaternary were apparent from the Siberian data.
The temperate cave sediments from New Zealand
also gave sequences of extinct species, including two
species of ratite moa and 29 plant taxa characteristic
of the prehuman environment.
Extinct Species

Perhaps the best known example is the woolly mammoth, which was the first Pleistocene animal to be
sequenced. This is particularly notable because,
recently, three independent groups have used cutting-edge technology to sequence the entire mitochondrial genome: one group sequenced 28 million
base pairs of DNA in a metagenomics approach.
However, around 50 extinct animal species have
been analyzed in order to relate them to living animals
via molecular phylogenies, for example, Australian
marsupial wolves, New Zealand moas, American
ground sloths, and Hawaiian geese. The Australian
marsupial wolf has been shown to be related to other
Australian marsupials rather than to carnivorous
marsupials in South America, suggesting that morphological features shared by marsupial wolves and
South American marsupial carnivores may have
evolved independently. Much of this has been based
on mtDNA; however, nuclear DNA sequences have
been determined from several Pleistocene animals and
from plants preserved in dry environments. Recently,
sex determination of moa samples using nuclear DNA
sequences has revealed that several moa forms previously regarded as different species based on their
morphology were, in fact, male and female birds of
the same species.

Human aDNA Sequences Still a

Controversy
The study of human DNA from archaeological
material is still fraught with difficulties. Humans

constantly shed DNA, so it is hardly surprising that

aDNA researchers have shown repeatedly that human
DNA is ubiquitous in all environments where humans
exist. This unfortunately includes labs and even aDNA
labs where the greatest care is taken to eliminate modern DNA. For example, it has repeatedly been shown
that human DNA can be amplified from excavated
animal bones of all different species. This means that
where a DNA sequence is similar or identical to
modern humans there will always be a measure of
doubt as to its authenticity even if all authentication
criteria are followed rigorously, especially in cases
where, for example, European aDNA researchers
work on ancient European material (see next section).
Unfortunately, as our methods become more sensitive the greater this problem will be, as even the tiniest
amount of modern human DNA could mask the
authentic ancient DNA in a human bone. Therefore,
the challenge of the coming years is to develop an
approach that will allow us to separate authentic
DNA from contaminant DNA and identify which
one is the DNA of the individual we are studying.

How Can We Argue for the Authenticity

of Our aDNA?
It is almost impossible, especially where human
aDNA is concerned, to be 100% sure that your aDNA
is authentic; however, we can build an argument for
authenticity by following these criteria:
. Multiple extraction and PCR controls. Each set
of extractions should include at least three extraction
controls that contain no sample material but are otherwise treated identically. For each set of PCRs, multiple negative PCR controls should be added to
identify and source contamination that may occur
during the extraction or preparation of the PCR.
. Repeated amplifications from the same or several extracts. This allows detection of sporadic contaminants and consistent sequence changes due to
damage or PCR error.
. Inverse correlation between amplification efficiency and length of amplification product. aDNA is
fragmented, therefore the longer the fragment of
aDNA you are trying to amplify, the more difficult it
is to achieve amplification. Most aDNA sequences are
between 100 and 500 nucleotides long unless preservation is unusually good.
. Bacterial cloning of PCR products and sequencing of multiple clones. This allows quantification of
sequence mixture in the amplification products. Sequence mixture results from damage, PCR error, or
contamination with living DNA.

DNA/Modern, and Archaeology 1101

. Quantitation of the number of amplifiable DNA

molecules. This shows how many template molecules
any given PCR begins from and gives a probability
of whether consistent base changes are likely to occur
or not.
. Biochemical assays of macromolecular preservation. Good biochemical preservation can support the
authenticity of an ancient DNA sequence. Poor biochemical preservation indicates that a sample is unlikely to contain DNA.
. Reproduction of results by an independent laboratory. This can detect if there is contamination of
chemicals or samples during handling in the laboratory. However, contaminants that are already on a
sample before it arrives in the laboratory will be
faithfully reproduced in a second laboratory.

Conclusions and Outlook

The future of aDNA promises to be exciting. DNA
analytical technology is rapidly advancing; we are
able to analyze more parts of the genome from more
difficult material and more unusual samples. We are
beginning to understand more about the links
between genotype and phenotype, that is, what the
DNA says and what an organism looks like, for
example, wooliness in sheep or brittle rachis in
wheat. This will open the way for many questions of
key importance in archaeology, such as the deliberate
selection of particular qualitative traits in plants and
animals in the past, that is, the development of
breeds and varieties. In addition, aDNA is set to
become significant to plant and animal breeding and
ecological conservation because of its ability to track
the loss of genetic types through time.
Ancient DNA, within the discipline of archaeogenetics, is a powerful tool. When used in a collaborative multidisciplinary framework it can contribute
significantly to central questions in archaeology in a
way that was not possible before.
See also: Animal Domestication; DNA: Modern, and
Archaeology; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Paleoanthropology, Computer-Assisted; Plant Domestication; Statistics in Archaeology.

Further Reading
Jones M (2002) The Molecule Hunt. London: Penguin Books.
Paabo S, Poinar H, Serre D, et al. (2004) Genetic analyses from
ancient DNA. Annual Review of Genetics 38: 645697.
Zeder MA, Emshwiller E, Smith BD, and Bradley DG (2006)
Documenting domestication: The intersection of genetics and
archaeology. Trends in Genetics 22: 139155.

Modern, and
Archaeology
Keri Brown, University of Manchester,
Manchester, UK
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
bottleneck A temporary, dramatic reduction in population size
that results in reduced genetic diversity.
coalescence/divergence The separation of DNA sequences
that share a common ancestor by the accumulation of nucleotide
(base) substitutions. The time of divergence of DNA sequences or
the time when sequences coalesce to a common ancestor can be
estimated when the rate of nucleotide substitution is known.
effective population size The actual number of individuals in
a population that are reproducing.
genetic diversity A measure of the genetic variability in a
population.
haplotype An individual mtDNA sequence.
haplogroup A major class of mtDNA sequences in the human
population.
molecular clock The concept that mutations accumulate at an
approximately constant rate in a given DNA sequence and in all
its descendants so that times of divergence can be estimated from
the ancestral form.
population No definitive definition for humans. Usually taken
to mean a group of individuals that share certain characteristics
such as language, geography, ethnicity, phenotype either one of
these or all of them.
phylogenetic tree A representation of the evolutionary history
of a group of taxa, genes or other inherited markers.

The fact that ancient deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)

extracted from archaeological material can give information about past peoples, animals, and plants has
been readily grasped by archaeologists. What seems
to be more difficult to accept is that DNA sampled
from present-day populations can also give information about that populations history. DNA is inherited
from our parents, and in turn they inherited their
DNA from their parents, and so forth back into
time. But with each generation the DNA packaged
into the chromosomes gets shuffled this is known
as recombination. We do not as yet have the mathematical and computing tools to unravel the shuffling, so geneticists who are interested in population
history and human evolution tend to concentrate on
those areas of DNA that do not undergo recombination. Two particular regions of DNA are particularly
suitable, firstly mitochondrial DNA and secondly the
nonrecombining region of the Y chromosome.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is found in the
mitochondria, which are small organelles located in
the cytoplasm of cells. Each cell may have thousands of

1102 DNA/Modern, and Archaeology

mitochondria. These are thought to have originated as

independent organisms that entered into a symbiotic
relationship with more complex cells 1.5 billion years
ago. They have lost most of their genes to the nuclear
DNA, but the 37 genes left are involved in the production of energy. MtDNA is inherited maternally it
is not transmitted by males to the next generation
(although there have been some controversial papers
published about the possible paternal transmission of
mtDNA if it happens, it must be an extremely rare
occurrence and has little or no impact on population
studies). MtDNA does not undergo recombination,
so any mutations acquired in the past in its DNA
sequence are maintained. Two noncoding (i.e., they
do not contain genes) regions of mtDNA are studied
which seem to accumulate single base mutations at a
high rate hypervariable regions I and II (HVR I and
HVR II). These mutations are inherited together and
form a set of DNA markers that have been classified
into haplotypes by comparison to a reference mtDNA
sequence (the Cambridge Reference Sequence). A number of similar haplotypes forms a haplogroup. By
assuming that mutations are acquired at a regular
rate, the concept of a molecular clock can be applied
and the date of the appearance of new mtDNA haplogroups can be estimated (also known as divergence or
coalescence times) albeit with wide confidence limits.
mtDNA from human, animal, and plant populations
around the globe has been classified in this way. The
relationships between the different haplogroups have
been studied by means of phylogenetic analysis, most
notably by network analysis. MtDNA has been used
to study the evolution of modern humans in Africa,
and the movements of these people into the Old
World (Out of Africa). mtDNA has also been used
to re-examine the Wave of Advance hypothesis developed to explain the spread of agriculture from its
origins in the Near East into Europe. In both research
questions there were opposing hypotheses that predicted differing genetic outcomes for human populations. In both research areas, there was controversy
between the accepted archaeological interpretation
and the genetically based interpretation. In this article, the nature of the controversies will be explored
and the importance of the genetic contribution to the
debate will be stressed. In both cases, the contribution
of genetics has led to a better understanding of the
complex issues involved in these two most important
events of human prehistory. Our knowledge of these
events would be the poorer without mtDNA analysis
(see DNA: Ancient).
The nonrecombining region of the Y chromosome
is also making its contribution to our understanding
of human population history. Only mammalian males
possess the Y chromosome (at least, the vast majority

do there are always rare exceptions to every rule in

biology) and it is inherited paternally. The nonrecombining region of the Y chromosome contains the SRY
gene which determines maleness, but it also contains
a number of DNA markers which can be inherited as
a block, that is, a haplotype. Analysis and classification of Y chromosome haplogroups started somewhat later than the mtDNA work. The nature of the
Y DNA markers is more complex than the single base
mutations found in mtDNA, so the phylogenetic
analysis is also more complicated and the molecular
clock concept more difficult to apply. However, the
male side of human population history tells a broadly
similar story for Out of Africa, although the story is
not so clear-cut for the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition
in Europe; hence, the details of this research will not be
dealt with in this article.

Multiregionalism versus Out of Africa

The origin of modern humans is a research topic that
has long fascinated scientists and the public alike. The
finding of new hominid fossils is treated as a major
event by the media, but in the last two decades a new
form of evidence has come into play genetics. Based
purely on the fossil evidence, two opposing theories
had been put forward to explain the evolution of
modern humans (Homo sapiens). These were Out of
Africa and Multiregionalism (Figure 1).
The first theory proposed (by Chris Stringer) that
H. sapiens evolved in Africa, and then migrated to
colonize the Old World, replacing the Homo erectus
populations (including Neanderthals) that were found
in Europe and Asia, as well as Africa itself.
Multiregionalism as a theory has undergone a certain amount of evolution itself, but in its original
formulation by Milford Wolpoff it proposed that the
regional populations of H. erectus in Africa, Asia, and
Europe all evolved into modern humans, with extensive gene flow between the different populations. Out
of Africa implies a recent common ancestor for modern humans, at about 200 000 years ago; multiregionalism implies a more ancient one, going back to the
first migrations out of Africa by H. erectus, maybe
more than 1.8 million years ago. It also implies that
the various physical differences between human
populations, such as skin color, eye and nose shapes,
etc., which are environmental adaptations, also have
an ancient origin. These are obviously over-simplified
statements of a complex situation in human prehistory. But they make predictions about modern
human populations that can be tested empirically
with genetic evidence. Indeed, archaeologists have
criticized geneticists for adopting such simplistic explanations of the past, especially with regard to the

DNA/Modern, and Archaeology 1103

The Out of Africa hypothesis

Multiregional evolution

Homo erectus

Homo erectus

Africa

Africa
1 MYr

1 MYr
Europe

Africa

Asia

Homo
sapiens

Europe

Africa

Asia

Homo
sapiens

Homo
sapiens

Homo
sapiens

0.1 MYr
(a)

Modern humans

(b)

Modern humans

Figure 1 The two opposing hypotheses on the origins and spread of Homo sapiens. (a) Out of Africa proposes that the evolution of
H. sapiens took place in Africa, which then migrated and replaced H. erectus-derived populations in Africa, Asia and Europe. (b) Multiregionalism proposes that H. erectus-derived populations evolved into H. sapiens, with extensive gene flow between these populations.

Mesolithic/Neolithic transition and the introduction

of agriculture into Europe (see below). Yet this is to
misunderstand how science works.
The more precise the hypothesis, the more specific the
prediction it makes, and hence the more powerful the
test we can perform simply because it is then harder for
empirical results to appear to confirm the prediction if
the hypothesis is not in fact true. (Dunbar, 1995, 102).

Scientists are well aware of the fact that their initial

theories may be simplistic and sweeping, even inaccurate, but the data have to confirm this so that they can
go on to refine their theories or make new ones!

Genetic Outcomes of the Two Theories

of Human Evolution
What sort of genetic outcome would be seen for each
of the two theories when mtDNA is analyzed in present-day human populations? For multiregionalism,
we would expect to see a very ancient origin or coalescence date for all extant mtDNA haplogroups,
correlating more or less with the first migration
from Africa by H. erectus. We would also expect to
see deep-rooted genetic differences between populations which would reflect their antiquity and evolution from African, Asian, and European H. erectus
populations.
With the Out of Africa or replacement model, the
coalescence of mtDNA haplotypes would be much
more recent, corresponding to the more recent origin
of H. sapiens. We would expect to see less genetic
diversity between populations of modern humans.
We would also expect that the population which has
the most intra-population genetic diversity would be
the oldest, and hence the original population from
which modern humans originated and migrated into

the rest of the Old World. These two sets of predictions are eminently testable with genetic data.
mtDNA Evidence Supports Recent Evolution
of H. sapiens

The first study to use mtDNA to investigate human

evolution was published in 1987 by Rebecca Cann,
Mark Stoneking, and the late Allan Wilson. They analyzed mtDNA from 147 individuals from a number of
populations and constructed a phylogenetic tree. The
root of the tree was placed in Africa in other words,
the ancestral mtDNA to all others was located in
Africa, and by applying the molecular clock concept
the ancestral mtDNA was dated to c. 200 000 ya (within confidence limits of 140 000290 000 ya). This ancestral mtDNA was dubbed Mitochondrial Eve by the
media and some misunderstood this to mean that just
one woman lived in Africa. This is certainly not the
case it means that other ancestral mtDNAs of other
women did not leave female descendants to contribute
their mtDNA to present-day humans. This initial study
was criticized on a number of grounds the phylogenetic methods used to analyze the data (several different trees could be constructed from the same data,
with the root not always in Africa), the origin of the
African mtDNA samples (many of these actually were
obtained from Afro-Americans, so may not have been
truly representative of African mtDNA haplotypes),
and even the choice of mtDNA as the genetic locus of
investigation.
Since this ground-breaking publication, many
more genetic studies on human evolution have been
carried out, using mtDNA, Y chromosome DNA and
a wide variety of nuclear genes. Many of these studies
show that the highest intrapopulation genetic diversity is found in Africa. High genetic diversity is found
in both older populations (the older the population,

1104 DNA/Modern, and Archaeology

the more DNA mutations become fixed) and expanding populations (the larger the population, the more
DNA mutations become fixed). Some knowledge of
Late Pleistocene human populations in the Old World
is necessary in order to determine the correct interpretation. Estimates have been made of the size of
populations required for each of the two theories. For
example, using numbers based on hunter-gatherer
groups, it has been estimated that the world population at around 150 000 ya was between 125 000 and
1 000 000. However, the effective population size
consists of the actual number of individuals in a population that are reproducing, and is usually estimated to
be one-third of the census population, that is, 42 000
333 000 individuals throughout the Old World. The
question is whether this would have been enough for
the sort of gene flow between populations in Africa,
Asia, and Europe envisaged by multiregionalists. If we
consider the Out of Africa scenario, this would entail a
smaller number of individuals drawn from a larger
population, forming what is called a bottleneck (or
founder event). Analysis of the overall low genetic
diversity of modern humans has enabled an estimate
to be made of the effective population size in this
bottleneck just 10 000. This is almost a mystical
number in human evolutionary genetics it crops up
time and again with different statistical analyses of
genetic data and it means that H. sapiens lived on a
knife-edge of extinction for much of its early existence
in Africa. Therefore, we can say that the high genetic
diversity seen within African populations points to
Africa as the place where modern humans evolved,
and indicates the age, not the size, of the population.
Other Genetic Studies Support the
Out of Africa Hypothesis

Whole mitochondrial DNA sequences have been analyzed (not just HVRI and HVRII) from 53 humans
with mtDNA from another primate species, chimpanzee, as an outgroup. This analysis showed important features which corresponded well with other
studies on mtDNA and nuclear genes. The most recent common ancestor for human mtDNA was dated
to 172 000  50 000 ya. There was separation between African and non-African mtDNA lineages and
the most recent common ancestor for the non-African
lineages was dated to c. 80 000 ya. The latter relatively
recent date for the origin of non-African mtDNA
lineages shows that H. sapiens migrated from Africa
as much as 100 000 years after evolving there. Recently discovered hominid fossil evidence from Herto,
Middle Awash, Ethiopia, has been interpreted as the
immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans
and a new species name, H. sapiens idaltu, has been
given to these fossils. H. sapiens idaltu has been dated

to 160 000154 000 ya and thus the gap between the

genetic dating and the fossil evidence is being filled in.
With the combination of the genetic and the new fossil
evidence, there can be little doubt that modern
humans evolved in Africa and multiregionalism is
seen by many as a discredited hypothesis. The debate
has moved on to other interesting questions concerning the direction and timing of the Out of Africa
migration. Although the archaeological evidence for
human migration is patchy or nonexistent in many
regions of the Old World, the DNA evidence from
present-day populations is again producing new
insights into past events. All mtDNA haplogroups
found in present-day populations are shown in a network analysis in Figure 2, with the geographical origin
of each haplogroup shown in color. The Neanderthal
mtDNA sequence is also included to show its relationship to modern human mtDNA, and the position of
Mitochondrial Eve is also shown as belonging with
the African mtDNA haplogroups. The L3* haplogroup can be seen as giving rise to all non-African
haplogroups (see below).
Which Way and When?

Extensive mtDNA research has been carried out in

populations around the world to trace the route
taken by H. sapiens out of Africa into the Old World
(and indeed into colonization events in the New World
and Oceania). Archaeological evidence has shown
that modern humans were present in the Levant at
c. 10090 000 ya at the cave sites of Qafzeh and
Skhul, but these are now seen as either an extension
of African populations or a failed migration event. This
northern route into Europe and Asia was not the one
used by modern humans, and modern humans do not
seem to have colonized Europe until much later,
c. 45 000 ya. In fact, Australia seems to have been
colonized before Europe (OSL and TL dates of
50 00060 000 ya have been obtained)!
All non-African mtDNA haplogroups coalesce
to c. 80 000 ya another way of saying this is that
all non-African mtDNA haplogroups (those found
in Asia, Europe, and Australia) are descended from
an African ancestral mtDNA haplogroup. All African
mtDNA haplotypes fall into three haplogroups. Using
the mtDNA nomenclature, these are L1, L2, and L3,
and these are further subdivided (e.g., L1a, L1b, etc).
All non-African mtDNA haplogroups are derived
from L3 the origin of L3 itself is dated to 84 000 ya.
Haplotypes derived from L3 in Asia are not found
in the African L3 haplotypes (Figures 2 and 3). L3
in turn gave rise to two haplogroups called M and N
approximately identical in age at c. 63 000 ya: each of
these haplogroups is further subdivided into branches.
The branches derived from M are called C, D, E, and

DNA/Modern, and Archaeology 1105

Neanderthal

L0k

L0f

L0d
L0a
C1
L1b

D1
D2

L1c

Mitochondrial
Eve M7b M7c D5

C*
Z

D4*
G

M7a

L5

L4a

L4g
CZ*

L2a

E
M7*

M31

D
M8a

M9*

L2b

M10

M32

L4*

M8*

Q
L2c

M6

M42
L6

L2d

M27

L3b

L3i

M3

M1
L3* M11 M21 M22

L3e

L3d

M4

M28
L3f

L3h

X2a

Key

A4*

M2
l

N5

N21

V
N1a

A*

L3w

X2*
X1

H1b

Africa

N*

N9a
N9*

R7

R*

B*

R11

R2

U1

U2

HV*

R31

B4*

B2

HV1

R30

R5

B5

Western Eurasia

R8

R6

Eastern Eurasia

A2

M5

M*

H*

R21

South Asia

U8a

U*

R1

P
F4

America

K
U4

H1

F*

U5

R9b
U6

F3

U3

Australasia

U7

U9

F2
F1

Figure 2 The complete human mtDNA haplogroup network, showing geographical regions in which each haplogroup is most frequent.

L3

N
R

L1 L2 L3*+ C D M* E G

A I W X N* B F H V R* T J U K

mtDNA haplogroup
Figure 3 Simplified mtDNA phylogenetic tree. Shaded areas
represent non-African (i.e., European and Asian) haplogroups
descended from African L3. Most African mtDNA haplogroups
belong to L1, L2, and L3.

G, and these are found mainly in South and East

Asia and America. The branches from N are A, B, F,
H, I, J, K, R, T, U, and V and these haplogroups are
found mainly in European and West Asian populations

(although A and B are also found in America, for

example). Haplogroup R seems to have emerged rapidly within N at c. 60 000 ya. Eastern Africa has now
been identified as the source population for the initial
migration out of Africa, as Ethiopian populations have
a high frequency of M haplotypes (variants of the
M haplogroup) not found in sub-Saharan African
populations. The genetic evidence also supports the
theory of a single dispersal event out of Africa, rather
than multiple ones.
How did humans manage to get to Australia before
Europe? There is now archaeological evidence to
support the mtDNA evidence that indicates a southern, beachcombing route around the coast of Asia
(Figure 4). The earliest evidence for the use of marine
resources dates to 125 000 ya and is found at Abdur
on the Eritrean coast of the Red Sea, so early modern
humans were already able to exploit this subsistence
strategy. In fact, a rough estimate has been made of
the dispersal rate of humans using the southern route
of 0.74 km yr1, so that the time taken to reach
SE Asia and Australia could have been quite rapid
after the initial departure, perhaps only a couple of
thousand years in all. Even the number of women

1106 DNA/Modern, and Archaeology

Figure 4 Map showing the southern beachcombing route Out of Africa, following the coastline to Australia (solid line), and the much
later migration into Western Asia, Europe, and North Africa (dotted line).

involved in the initial migration out of Africa has

been estimated as about 600, but perhaps as low as
500 and as high as 2000. Although the true number
may eventually be found to be higher or lower, this
estimate gives us a feel for the size of the modern
human population involved in this critical event in
human prehistory. Various coastal populations considered by anthropologists to be relicts of the Out of
Africa migration have been sampled for mtDNA
analysis, such as the Andaman Islanders, the Orang
Asli, the Semang, the Senoi and Aboriginal Malays
(all from Malaysia), the Papuans and Aboriginal
Australians. If these populations are indeed descended from the initial Out of Africa dispersal that
followed a coastal southern route, then their mtDNA
haplogroups should coalesce to the same founder
mtDNAs at 60 000 ya or earlier. If a northern route
through the Levant was taken, then the coalescence
time for their mtDNA haplogroups should be much
more recent at 45 00040 000 ya. The relict populations should also contain mtDNA haplotypes that are
geographically distinct due to their isolation from
later population movements.
Although a small sample number was used in this
study, the results show that the Orang Asli and the
Andamanese populations both contained M mtDNA
haplotypes that branched off c. 60 000 ya, soon after
the M haplogroup itself appeared in human populations. The Orang Asli also contained a number of
M haplotypes that are virtually restricted to this
population. Along with the analysis of the complete mtDNA genome from Papuans and Aboriginal

Australians, we now have strong genetic evidence for

an early southern route of dispersal from Africa into
the Old World. One genetic estimate for the time of
arrival in Australia is 70 000 ya. Again it is a case
where the archaeological evidence needs to catch up
with the genetics. A recent review by Mellars sets out
the archaeological evidence known so far and suggests that this also supports the case for the southern
route and a single dispersal event. The detailed archaeology of the coastal southern route and the
identification of the earliest sites in Australia await
discovery, although changes in sea level may mean
that many sites may lie below the sea.
Into Europe Eventually

The presence of modern humans in the Levant

at 90 000100 000 ya has been interpreted by
palaeoanthropologists as either a failed attempt to
colonize this region or as merely an extension of the
African population. The earliest archaeological
evidence for modern humans in Europe dates to
c. 45 000 ya. The archaeology includes evidence of
cognitive behavior that is associated with being modern, that is, the use of symbols, personal ornaments,
art, formal burial and so forth. It has been claimed
that the European evidence is the first to show a
change in human behavior sometimes dubbed the
human revolution. However, why should a species
that had been around for perhaps 140 000 years wait
until it had got to a very small continental cul de sac
(for such is Europe) to suddenly show its modernity?

DNA/Modern, and Archaeology 1107

Archaeological evidence from Africa shows that certain behaviors (personal ornaments and symbolism)
were already existing at least 100 00080 000 ya (the
former date for perforated shells found at Skhul),
while formal burial and cave paintings are attested
in Australia 60 00032 000 ya. The major constraint
on European colonization by modern humans was
climate, not cognitive abilities.
As seen above, European mtDNA haplogroups
are derived from the N haplogroup, which gave rise
rapidly to the R haplogroup. Both of these haplogroups emerged soon after the Out of Africa dispersal, probably in South Asia, 6360 000 ya. But all
European mtDNA haplogroups are descended from
N and R. These haplogroups are dated to c. 50 000 ya.
From R the haplogroups B, F, H, V, T, J, U, and K are
derived: haplogroups A, I, W, and X originate from
N. Some of these haplogroups are not found in European populations and so can be omitted from this
account (A, B, F, and R itself). All of the remaining
haplogroups can be found in the Near East, with
coalescence dates that are much earlier than for the
same haplogroups in Europe. This shows that the
sources for European colonization by modern humans
were to be found in Western Asia (Figure 4), and
ultimately these in turn derived from haplogroups
that originate in South Asia. Some of the haplogroups
in the Near East, such as J, T, U5, and I, date to
50 00045 000 ya. Colonists from the Near East
entered Europe, bringing what were to become European haplogroups with them. The earliest seems to be
haplogroup U5, dating to c. 50 000 ya according to
the molecular clock. Other haplogroups arrived in
Europe much later, as much as 15 000 years afterwards. The Upper Palaeolithic colonization of Europe
by modern humans (also known as Cro-Magnons,
after the French site where skeletal remains were
first identified) has been linked by some geneticists
with the appearance of the Aurignacian stone tool
industry, and also a second, later wave of migration
has been suggested as responsible for the introduction
of the Gravettian stone tool industry. The link between stone tool industries and colonizations was
first made in a study of Y chromosome haplogroups,
which are difficult to date compared with mtDNA
haplogroups, and must therefore be viewed with caution. However, mtDNA data would seem to support
the Y chromosome evidence, as the next mtDNA
haplogroup to enter Europe, haplogroup HV, gives a
coalescence date of c. 33 000 ya, which coincides with
the earliest appearance of the Gravettian in north
east Europe. Although archaeologists are understandably wary of equating material culture with specific
human groupings, either by population or ethnicity,
in this case we have to consider the possibility that

new stone tool industries and associated new cultural

activities were indeed introduced by new peoples into
Europe.

Genetics and the MesolithicNeolithic

Transition in Europe
The question of whether changes in material culture
seen in the archaeological record were the result
of internal development by indigenous communities
or the introduction of new practices by incoming
people is one that lies at the heart of the debate over
the spread of agriculture in Europe from its origins in
the Near East. Again archaeological opinion was polarized into two opposing schools of thought, which
could be formulated into two opposing, and testable
hypotheses.
The Neolithic period in Europe is identified with
the adoption of agriculture as the major subsistence
base. There is no dispute that the domesticated plants
and animals that form the foundation of farming
originated in the Near East. But how did these domesticates reach Europe? Traditional explanations for
the introduction of agriculture involved the concept
of diffusionism whereby the spread of the new subsistence was facilitated by an accompanying spread
of populations from the Near East. The incomers
replaced the indigenous Mesolithic populations of
Europe and radiocarbon dates for early farming sites
seemed to confirm a gradual spread across Europe
from the Near East. Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza
calculated that the spread of agriculture occurred at
a uniform rate of 1 km per year (or 25 km per generation time of 25 years) and represented the colonization of Europe by demic diffusion from the Near East.
This uniform rate of spread was called the wave of
advance hypothesis.
Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforzas wave of advance
model for the spread of the Neolithic was first put
forward in the 1970s. It was not until 1994 that
Cavalli-Sforza et al. published gene frequency distribution maps that seemed to confirm the wave of
advance hypothesis. The genetic data used were
obtained from the examination of 95 protein and
DNA polymorphisms in populations across Europe.
This massive amount of data was summarized in the
now famous Principal Components (PC) maps, the
most important of which (in a statistical sense) showed
a genetic gradient (or cline) from southeast to northwest Europe which was dated to the Mesolithic
Neolithic transition even though there is actually no
method of assigning dates to the genetic distribution
patterns revealed by PC Analysis. This first PC map
(Figure 5) accounted for 27% of the variation in the
genetic data; the second Principal Components map

1108 DNA/Modern, and Archaeology

Figure 5 The first PC map showing a genetic gradient from the SE to the NW (darker shading to lighter) across Europe, interpreted
as the spread of the Neolithic and agriculture by Cavalli-Sforza et al.

accounted for 22% of the data and showed a genetic

gradient from southwest to northeast for which there
was no obvious archaeological explanation. The third
PC map accounted for 11% of the data and was interpreted as resulting from the invasion of Bronze Age
Kurgans, the fourth map was supposed to show
Greek colonization in the Mediterranean. Each PC
map was thought to represent a separate migration/
colonization event, and the larger the amount of data
in each map, the older the event.
By the 1990s, diffusionism and population replacement had been rejected as the mechanisms for the
spread of agriculture into Europe instead the adoption of agriculture was seen as a result of gradual
acculturation by the indigenous Mesolithic populations of Europe, hence known as indigenism. Although the domesticated plants were imported from
the Near East, some suggested that animals such as
cattle, pigs, and sheep were domesticated in Europe.
The pause in the spread of agriculture across
Europe seen on the Carpathian plain and the late
adoption of agriculture by Mesolithic populations
in Scandinavia and Britain was interpreted by Ian
Hodder as due to the reluctance of these groups
to change to this new subsistence base until they
had themselves become domesticated the adoption
of agriculture entailed different modes of thought

about plants, animals, settlement, and landscape use.

The social context for the adoption of agriculture
was seen as having to change first. The genetics directly challenged the orthodox interpretation derived
from archaeological research and the new theoretical
stances used to reach these interpretations. The
work of Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues was heavily
criticized by archaeologists who felt that this account
of the introduction of agriculture into Europe was not
corroborated by the archaeological evidence even
that it harked back to the old-fashioned explanations
of culture change being due to ex orientae lux.
In 1996 Martin Richards and colleagues published
an analysis of mtDNA haplogroups in European populations, which showed that the majority of mtDNA
lineages were present in Europe from the end of the
last Ice Age, and some even prior to that in the Upper
Palaeolithic period (Figure 6). However 2025% of
present-day European mtDNA lineages originate in
the Near East, such as haplogroups J and T1, so some
demic diffusion must have occurred in the past, but
how much could not be quantified. The mtDNA evidence was severely criticized by Cavalli-Sforza and
colleagues on several grounds, for example sample
size, and the fact the mtDNA is in effect a single genetic
locus and thus cannot be as informative as the analysis
of 95 loci. However, the overall difference between the

DNA/Modern, and Archaeology 1109

Origin of agriculture
U (5.7%)
HV (5.4%)
I (1.7%)
U4 (3.0%)
H (37.7%)
H-16304 (3.9%)
T (2.2%)
K (4.6%)
T2 (2.9%)
J (6.1%)
T1 (2.2%)
0

10 000

20 000

30 000

40 000

50 000

Years before present time

Figure 6 The 11 major European mtDNA haplogroups and their estimated time of origin. Only haplogroups J and T1 are associated
with the Neolithic.

two studies is not irreconcilable the first PC map has

been re-analyzed and now represents 23% of the data,
while the Near Eastern mtDNA lineages in modern
Europeans is about 10% of the total. So the female
Neolithic contribution to modern Europeans ranges
from 10% to 23%; as already seen above, most
mtDNA haplogroups entered Europe in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods.
Several archaeologists have grappled with the
challenge presented by the new genetic evidence, for
example, Renfrew, Zvelebil, and Pluciennik. The result of the genetics challenge to the orthodoxy of the
Neolithization of Europe is that we have a much more
nuanced understanding of the different processes that
went on in different parts of Europe. Colonization is
now seen as having played a part in some areas, such
as Greece, the Balkans, and Iberia, and possibly
Southeast Italy is another candidate. Robert Foleys
group have suggested that empty spaces, that is,
regions with little or no Mesolithic occupancy may
have been preferred by early farmers. So some population incursions may indeed account for the spread
of agriculture in some regions.
In other regions more complex interactions between indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and incoming farmers can be recognized Marek Zvelebil
has written about the various types of interactions
that can occur. In a detailed case study on the social
context of agricultural adoption by gatherer-hunters,
he suggested that hypergyny, the movement of
women from one social group to another would be
likely to take place from gatherer-hunter groups to
farming groups. Recent strontium isotope studies by
Alex Bentley on human remains from LBK settlements have shown that this was in fact happening.
This is a good example of an archaeological hypothesis being supported by scientific data. The movement
of women from gatherer-hunter groups into farming

groups might help to partly explain the dominance of

Palaeolithic and Mesolithic mtDNA haplogroups
seen in European populations today, but the numbers
of incoming Neolithic colonizers was probably not
very high to begin with. In the long run their genetic
contribution to the population of Europe may not
have been as important as the technological and
social changes they brought about.

Conclusions
mtDNA analysis has made extremely important contributions to our understanding of human evolution
and the subsequent colonization of the Old and New
Worlds by our species. This is because the hypotheses
were framed as leading to certain genetic outcomes
that could be seen in present-day populations, so that
DNA sampling of populations would then provide
the evidence that would support or refute each hypothesis. The situation with the MesolithicNeolithic
transition in Europe was more complex, since the
hypotheses were not sufficiently distinct in their genetic outcomes. In addition, the genes sampled and
the statistical methods of analysis of the genetic data
were so different, so like was not being compared
with like. In effect the overall picture for the introduction of agriculture seems not to fit into any
overarching explanation such as diffusionism or indigenism, but instead is the result of a complex series of
events that varied in different regions. However the
formulation of opposing, testable hypotheses have
proved to be of value, and it is often the case that
archaeological interpretations can progress when hypothesis testing can be carried out. New techniques
in archaeological science, like those of biomolecular
archaeology, mean that old questions can be reexamined, and new ones formulated that perhaps
were not possible 20 years ago.

1110 DNA/Modern, and Archaeology

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dr. Martin Richards for permission to reproduce the complete mtDNA network in Figure 2 and
thanks to Garland Science for permission to reproduce
Figures 1, 3, 5, and 6. Figure 4 was drawn by Terry
Brown.
See also: Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures; DNA: Ancient;

Modern Humans, Emergence of; Oceania: Australia;

Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Brown KA and Pluciennik M (2001) Archaeology and human
genetics: Lessons for both. Antiquity 75: 101106.
Cavalli-Sforza L, Menozzi P, and Piazza A (1994) The History and
Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Dunbar R (1996) The Trouble with Science. London: Faber and
Faber.

Domestication of Animals

Domestication of Plants

Ingman M, Kaessman H, Paabo S, and Gyllensten U (2000) Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern humans.
Nature 408: 708713.
Jobling MA, Hurles ME, and Tyler-Smith C (2004) Human Evolutionary Genetics. New York and Oxford: Garland Science;
Taylor and Francis Group.
Macaulay V, Hill C, Achilli A, et al. (2005) Single, rapid coastal
settlement of Asia revealed by analysis of complete mitochondrial genomes. Science 308: 10341036.
Mellars P (2006) Going east: New genetic and archaeological perspectives on the modern human colonization of Eurasia. Science
313: 796800.
Oppenheimer S (2003) Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World.
London: Constable.
Richards M, Macaulay V, Hickey E, et al. (2000) Tracing European
founder lineages in the Near Eastern mtDNA pool. American
Journal of Human Genetics 67: 12511276.
Richards M, et al. (2003) The neolithic invasion of Europe. Annual
Review of Anthropology 32: 135162.
Zvelebil M (2000) The social context of the agricultural transition
in Europe. In: Renfrew C and Boyle K (eds.) Archaeogenetics:
DNA and the Population Prehistory of Europe. Cambridge, UK:
McDonald Institute.

See: Animal Domestication.

See: Plant Domestication.

E
ECOFACTS, OVERVIEW
Kitty F Emery, University of Florida, Gainesville,
FL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
ecofacts Archaeological finds that are of cultural significance,
but were not manufactured by humans.
environmental archaeology Study of the long-term
relationship between humans and their environments.
geoarchaeology Archaeological research using the methods
and concepts of the earth sciences.
landscape archaeology A body of method and theory for the
study of the material traces of past peoples within the context of
their interactions in the wider social and natural environment
they inhabited.

bioarchaeology, and is dependent on the methods of

human osteology analysis (see Osteological Methods).
Today, neither environmental archaeology nor the
study of any ecofact is a simple investigation of what
was there or what was used. Among other questions,
researchers studying ecofacts use both modern comparative and archaeological collections to reconstruct:
(1) the environment associated with archaeological
sites; (2) the use of plants, animals, and landscapes
by past inhabitants of these sites; (3) the impact
people had on the world around them; and (4) the
way ancient peoples perceived and were affected by
their surroundings and the plants and animals on
which they relied.

Categories of Ecofacts
Introduction
Ecofacts are traditionally defined as the nonartifactual organic and environmental remains found
on archaeological sites, including remains produced
as a result of human activity, affected by human activity, or that reveal aspects of human activity. However,
while some ecofactual remains, such as agricultural
soils, are clearly not artifacts in the traditional sense,
they are definitely affected and changed by human
activity. Other ecofacts, such as bone tools, provide
important environmental information regardless of
the extent of their modification into artifacts. Some
archaeologists therefore include all environmental
remains under the general heading of ecofacts, or do
not distinguish between ecofacts and artifacts.
The study of ecofacts or environmental remains is
most often included within the science of environmental archaeology. Environmental archaeology is
the interdisciplinary study of past human interactions
with the natural world and combines three fields:
zooarchaeology (the study of archaeological nonhuman animal remains), archaeobotany (the study of
archaeological plant remains), and geoarchaeology
(the study of the archaeological abiotic landscape).
Human remains are sometimes also included under
the heading of ecofacts, but their study is more
typically within the field of physical anthropology or

Ecofacts are commonly divided into plant remains

(archaeobotanical remains), nonhuman animal
remains (zooarchaeological or faunal remains), and
landscape remains (geoarchaeological remains). Archaeological plant remains include microbotanical
remains (small plant parts such as pollen and spores
which are the regenerative cells of the plants, phytoliths and cell fragments including the cells themselves
and the silica deposits that fill and take the shape
of plant cells, and several types of small plants including algae, molds, etc.), and macrobotanical remains
(whole plants or plant parts such as wood, seeds,
nuts, fruit pits, etc.). The most commonly recognized
zooarchaeological remains are the hard parts of both
vertebrates and invertebrates, including bone, teeth,
antler/horn, and shell. Zooarchaeologists also study
less-recognized remains including eggshell, insect and
crustacean exoskeletons, and microscopic remains including those of ostracods (microscopic calcareousshelled crustaceans), foraminifera (marine protist
tests), and parasites (eggs and cysts found in feces).
Geoarchaeology is defined as archaeological research
using the methods and concepts of the earth sciences.
Geoarchaeological ecofacts are therefore the most
diverse and include those abiotic elements that
can be used to identify the environmental context
of a site (global conditions including climate and

1112 ECOFACTS, OVERVIEW

tectonics, landforms including hydrology and topography, and lithology including mineral, rocks, and
other resources), and its matrix (sediments and soils
and their processes of formation, transformation, and
transportation). A final category of ecofactual data
overlaps all three of these main data sets and includes
residues, biomolecules, and chemical signatures found
in any of the plant, animal, or geologic material studied as ecofacts.

Methods in Ecofact Analysis

Although it is beyond the scope of this short definition
to discuss the specific analytical methods for these
diverse ecofacts, some methodological considerations
affect all ecofact studies regardless of the particular
material type. These include appropriate methods of
material recovery and analysis, a detailed understanding of potential bias caused by differential deposition
and preservation, and careful attention to identification and to interpretation through quantification.
1. Recovery and sampling. Ecofactual remains are an
intrinsic part of any archaeological site (and of
intersite spaces). While these remains are often
found dispersed through archaeological deposits,
they are sometimes found as dense accumulations
(such as shell middens) that hold a wealth of combined palaeoenvironmental and cultural information. Appropriate recovery methods and sampling
are essential regardless of the distribution of ecofactual remains in the archaeological context. Appropriate methods determine not only whether
remains are found at all, but also whether those
remains accurately represent the full range of
materials originally deposited. In the science of
zooarchaeology, for example, the question of appropriate recovery techniques is vital. The smaller
the remains, the more fine-grained the technique
of recovery that must be used. Consider, for example, a zooarchaeological study of subsistence that
relies on excavation by eye (with no screening of
the archaeological matrix) compared to one that
relies on fine-gauge screening (the most common
gauges are 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 inch) or even microscopic matrix analysis. While the first sample may
well provide information on the use of large mammals and birds, the second will provide a more
robust sample of all animal remains including
fish, small amphibians, and birds, and the smallest
of body parts, and the third could provide additional insect casings, parasite ova, and other
microzoological remains. However, finer-grained
recovery techniques are more labor intensive and

costly, so careful consideration must be given to

the questions being asked, the likelihood of recovery of some materials, and the type of sampling
strategy that would best balance accurate recovery
with cost and time effectiveness.
2. Deposition, preservation, and transportation.
Ecofactual materials, often organic, are highly susceptible to degradation under poor preservational
conditions and the rate at which they are preserved
is variable. Plant remains, for example, are our
most fragile ecofacts and the least likely to preserve. However, some plant remains preserve
better than others (hard shells, burnt wood, and,
one of the most durable organic materials, pollen
(see Pollen Analysis), one of the most durable
organic materials), and certain conditions are
more conducive to the preservation of certain
plant remain types (carbonization preserves many
macroremains while destroying pollen). Similarly,
because ecofactual materials can be deposited
naturally or as a result of human subsistence, construction, ritual, and so on, they are differentially
deposited into the archaeological record and transported within it. An animal killed or scavenged in
the forest, for example, may well have its parts
deposited at the kill site, at the butchering site,
where the meal is eaten, where the garbage is
tossed, or even (as parasitic inclusions) where the
animal originally defecated. An understanding of
all these variables is essential before an analyst can
ensure the distribution of ecofacts reveals clues
about ancient environments or behavior, or whether
it is simply a result of differential sizes, material
types, or preservational conditions.
3. Identification. Most ecofacts are identified through
a process of comparison with known modern counterparts, or comparative collections. Accurate
identification depends on the skill of the analyst,
good knowledge of the factors controlling variability (genetics, age, moisture regimes, etc.), and
the availability of comparative specimens of all
known possible species or groups in all possible
preservational conditions (consider how different a kernel of corn looks from one that has
popped, and the need for different specimens
preserved under different conditions is clear).
Here the specialist is necessary. A geoarchaeologist with a speciality in archaeopedology, for
example, is trained to recognize the microparticulate variations within soil structure, the morphology and relationship between soil particles,
and the chemical signatures that would indicate
various land-use practices, and to tie those together to present a clear picture of the life history
of the soil sample itself.

ECOFACTS, OVERVIEW 1113

Ecofact-Based Research Questions

The questions that archaeologists have asked using
ecofactual or environmental remains are as diverse as
the materials themselves. These questions may seem
to have changed over time as more knowledge has
been gathered and methods for analysis have been
refined and diversified. However, the reality is that
the basic questions have remained the same, while the
perspectives used to approach them have changed.
Our questions include (1) methods in the study of
ecofacts, (2) environmental reconstruction, (3) ecofact use, and (4) environmental impact.
1. Methods. Archaeologists studying either artifacts
or ecofacts have always been interested in devising
ways to improve our methods of sampling, analyzing, and interpreting our data. As the above
discussion of methods has highlighted, some questions of methodology in environmental archaeology are particularly important and therefore remain
paramount. However, fascinating new methods in
microdata analysis (biomolecules, chemicals, etc.),
computer modeling, and other intriguing techniques have encouraged a growing emphasis on
interdisciplinary research and the increasing use
of methods from multiple science fields, often in
simultaneous combination.
2. Environmental reconstruction. For as long as
archaeologists have studied the ancient past, they
have also asked questions about the environmental
conditions surrounding the peoples and cultures
they have studied. Environmental reconstruction,
or defining the changing ancient environments
inhabited by ancient peoples (reconstructing climate, landscapes, and resources), is still one of
our most valuable research directions. However,
these questions are now reformulated to reconstruct more than simply what was there? and
how did it change?. We are now able to ask questions about human perception and explore how
landscapes, climates, or resources were perceived
by archaeological peoples, and how this perception
affected the way people used their resources. How
people react to their environs is based as much on
what is there as what they expect to be there, what
history has told them was there previously, or what
parts of their surroundings they consider valuable
or useless. So, human landscapes are defined
not just by environmental inventories, but also by
an understanding of how those environs have
changed over time and how rapidly or periodically
those changes have taken place. In addition, a
landscape is defined by the value of its elements
a value that is specified by the culture itself, not the
intrinsic value of any one environmental resource.

So, in a flat terrain, a hill is the center of attention,

and in a dry land any source of water is noted.
3. Ecofact use. Over the years of research on ecofacts,
our questions about their ancient use have shifted
from simple inventories of what was used and how
to broader questions of why certain environmental
elements were used or modified or otherwise
incorporated into the culture. This group of
questions includes the most common investigations
of economics, subsistence (including domestication
of plants and animals), and land use. However,
other directions taken also include questions about
resource management that ask how environments
and resources were managed both to ameliorate risk
and to correlate with changing cultural structures
(including population sizes, increasing hierarchies,
etc.). Here all aspects of ancient culture can be
explored through the window of environments
and landscapes because most ecofacts (as with
most artifacts) are incorporated into the cultural
milieu as symbolic elements to be described through
cultural mores and norms, religion or politics.
4. Environmental impact. Questions about environmental impact have a surprisingly long history.
Long before politicians began to stand on green
platforms, archaeologists studying ecofacts were
well aware of the impact that people have had on
their environments through overhunting, deforestation, and so on. This continues to be one of the most
important ecofactually based questions, but it is now
often reinterpreted in terms of the synergy and dynamics of the interrelated environment/human relationship. How did people and their activities change
and create new environmental conditions and
how did they then respond to those changes? This
research is often incorporated into conservation
initiatives that are built on the archaeological data
describing original plant and animal communities.

Summary
Ecofacts, generally defined as unmodified or nonartifactual components of archaeological sites, in
fact are the most diverse and comprehensive archaeological remains. Ecofacts are both environmental and
cultural indicators, sometimes unmodified, but often
intentionally or unintentionally modified by human
activities. These remains include both organic (plant
and animal) and inorganic (geological) materials and
their study requires both specific technical training
and interdisciplinary approaches to methods and theory. Ecofacts provide the most important clues to
ancient peoples and their relationships with the environments in which they lived, and their study is the
science of environmental archaeology.

1114 ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY

See also: Archaeozoology; Geoarchaeology; Human

Landscape Interactions; Organic Residue Analysis;

Osteological Methods; Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods; Paleoethnobotany; Preservation,
Modes of.

Further Reading
Albarella U (ed.) (2001) Environmental Archaeology: Meaning and
Purpose. Boston: Kluwer.
Dincauze D (2000) Environmental Archaeology: Principles and
Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ecological Archaeology

English Heritage (2002) Environmental Archaeology: Center for

Archaeology Guidelines. London: English Heritage.
Evans JG (2003) Environmental Archaeology and the Social Order.
London: Routledge.
Evans JG and OConnor TP (1999) Environmental Archaeology:
Principles and Methods. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing.
Pearsall DM (2000) Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures, 2nd edn. New York: Academic Press.
Rapp G, Jr. and Hill CL (1998) Geoarchaeology. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Reitz EJ and Wing ES (1999) Zooarchaeology. Cambridge
Manuals in Archaeology. New York: Cambridge University.
Wilkinson K and Stevens C (2003) Environmental Archaeology:
Approaches, Techniques, and Application. Gloucestershire: Tempus.

See: Cultural Ecology; Geoarchaeology.

ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY
Gary M Feinman, The Field Musuem, Chicago,
IL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
accelerator mass spectrometric techniques Mass
spectrometry techniques in which ions are accelerated to
extraordinarily high kinetic energies before mass analysis.
domestication Changes in the physical properties of plant and
animal populations through human selection.
economic archaeology Study of the relationships between
past populations and their natural and cultural resources,
encompassing production, distribution, consumption, and
stratification.
flotation Processing soil or feature fill using water to recover
tiny artifacts, including plant remains and fish bones.
obsidian Translucent, gray to black or green hard volcanic
glass that produces extremely sharp edges when fractured.
reciprocity Exchange of goods between known participants
by means of barter and face-to-face exchanges.
settlement pattern studies Archaeological studies involving
examination of regions rather than individual sites.
socioeconomic stratification Form of organization in which
social groups vary markedly in terms of access to wealth and
resources.
Star Carr One of the best known early mesolithic archaeological
sites in England.
subsistence The means of making a living, particularly the
procurement of food.

Introduction
Defined largely by its material record, archaeology
has had broad-brush economic concerns since its
infancy. As early as the nineteenth century, ancient
artifacts recovered through field studies served as an
empirical basis from which the Danish scholars
J. C. Thomsen and J. J. A. Worsaae described and
generalized long-term changes in human tool technologies (such as the shift from stone to bronze to iron)
over time. Archaeologically recovered tools also
provided researchers with a basis to reconstruct certain aspects of past subsistence practices including
hunting and the grinding of grains. For the most
part, these early interpretations described basic production practices, including subsistence pursuits, for
specific peoples at particular times in the past, yielding basic knowledge on how food procurement shifted
over long reaches of time in many global regions. Such
empirically based observations laid a foundation for
the definition of terms like the Paleolithic (Old Stone
Age) and the Neolithic (New Stone Age) that are still
widely employed in the discipline of archaeology.
Nevertheless, it was not until the last half century
that an economic archaeology truly emerged with
important conceptual and methodological breakthroughs. Broadly defined, economic archaeology

ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY 1115

is the study of the relationships between ancient

populations and their natural and cultural resources,
thereby encompassing production, distribution,
consumption, and stratification. The mid-twentiethcentury writings of neo-evolutionary anthropologists
such as Leslie A. White, Julian H. Steward, and
Marvin Harris spurred a much greater concern
with questions concerning the nature and relative
importance of the economic underpinnings of societal
variation. Issues such as was band organization a
necessary correlate of a hunting and gathering economy? and was redistribution a hallmark of chiefdoms? led to a renewed focus on past systems
of exchange and production. At the same time,
prompted by the works of V. Gordon Childe, archaeologists endeavored to understand the causes, consequences, and shared/distinct characteristics in
different global regions of the agricultural and
urban revolutions, fostering a growing interest in
the diachronic relationships between human populations and their available resources, changing farming
strategies (including the scale and management of
irrigation systems), and the kinds and degrees of control that political institutions had over the economies
in different regions.
By mid-century, the forging of a cross-cultural,
comparative approach to neo-evolutionary questions
in archaeology, such as the factors underpinning the
origins of farming and sedentary life and the rise
of the first states, generated new research and
major advances in the economic realm of production
(especially in subsistence). It was only more recently
that comparable attention was focused on the economys other principal facets, including distribution/
exchange, consumption and access, as well as different
modes of socioeconomic inequality or stratification.
The remainder of this essay is organized in sections
that highlight key research topics, approaches, findings, and advances in each of these realms that compose
the major facets of economic life. Since the economy
encompasses the behaviors associated with production,
distribution, consumption, and stratification, and each
of these activities is intricately intertwined, the specific organization and flow of this discussion is, of
course, somewhat arbitrary.

Production
The initial developments in economic archaeology
focused on food procurement/production (subsistence activities), although the theoretical frames
for these early studies (and so the questions being
asked) tended to be more ecological than explicitly
economic.

Subsistence

During the mid-twentieth century, increasing attention was given to the collection of faunal and floral
evidence relevant to the reconstruction of past diets
and how people utilized available resources. In the
excavations at Star Carr, the 900010 000-yearold Mesolithic site in northeastern Great Britain,
Grahame Clark incorporated scientists from a number of disciplines into his research team. Some of
these specialists analyzed pollen and faunal remains
to document how the settlement served as a camp site
at the margins of a lake where the occupants largely
hunted red deer and gathered a range of plant foods in
a shifting landscape following the end of the Pleistocene. The Star Carr studies illustrated how much
could be learned by supplementing traditional artifact
analysis with other classes of archaeological data.
By the 1960s and 1970s, it became standard practice for archaeologists to recover macrobotanical
remains from their excavations through dry-screening
(or sieving) and flotation (the sorting and recovery of
light plant remains from heavier sediment matrices
through the use of fluid suspension). The collection of
plant materials (and more recently the direct radiocarbon dating of these remains using accelerator mass
spectrometric techniques) has laid the empirical foundation for the great progress that has been made in
the study of plant domestication over the past four to
five decades. For example, early multi-disciplinary
projects led by Robert Braidwood in the Near East
and Richard MacNeish and Kent Flannery in highland Mexico were able to distinguish precisely
when phenotypically wild grains were supplemented
(and ultimately largely replaced) by domesticated
varieties. These breakthroughs (and others that
have followed from these pioneering efforts) have
documented that different suites of plant foods
were domesticated in Southwest Asia, eastern Asia,
Europe, the Pacific, Africa, and South, Middle, and
North America. At the same time, they have shown
that the nature of the relationships and timing
between plant agriculture and sedentary village life,
animal domestication, and major technological innovations, such as the production of ceramic vessels,
were far from uniform from one global region to
another (see Agriculture: Social Consequences). Economically, these findings are significant since they not
only document that the material underpinnings of
each global region were in certain key respects different, but they have helped rule out the long-held rather
romantic notion that the literal and figurative seeds
of civilization diffused out in some simple, beaconlike manner from a small number of central locations
or hearths. Instead, scholars have learned that local

1116 ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY

factors and indigenous resources played key roles in

each region.
Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, systematic
archaeological settlement pattern studies in several
regions of the world also were adding a new largerscale perspective to the investigation of subsistence as
well as the relationship between populations and
available food resources through catchment analyses.
These studies examined the distribution of communities on landscapes in relation to the surrounding
plant and animal resources or agrarian potentials
(based on crops, soils, and water). Such survey research has made it more feasible for archaeologists
to evaluate and assess theoretical claims that serious
stress on local subsistence resources prompted other
key cultural transitions (including the beginnings of
farming and the rise of state governments). Such
assessments were really not possible before we had
empirically derived regional distributions of past settlements for specific areas over time. Careful comparisons of settlement and resources at the regional
scale allowed archaeologists the opportunity to disentangle the phenomenon of population growth (based
on the size and number of settlements) from population
pressure on potential food supplies (how population
indicators and estimations compared to potentially
available resources). Although no consensus has been
reached and the causal links likely were not uniform in
diverse times and places, neither starvation nor resource stress have stood up convincingly as prime motivating forces for either the advent of farming or the
emergence of new political institutions.
In recent years, the examination of subsistence
production has been enhanced by biophysical studies
of human bone and teeth, which have provided more
direct insights into what actually was consumed. The
chemical analysis of human bone has proved to
be valuable both to quantify relative meat intake
within and between populations as well as to determine the comparative significance of local plants versus imported domesticates in the diets of specific past
peoples. For example, the latter studies have been
fruitful in documenting the consumption of exotic
maize (from Mesoamerica) as a staple in eastern
North America and when maize beer became a key
component of Andean diet during the late prehispanic
era. On a theoretical level, archaeologists have not
only elaborated their investigatory repertoire for deciphering what foods people collected, produced, and
consumed, but the new data generated by these numerous methodological innovations have enabled
them to probe and answer questions about variation
and change in subsistence production that largely
were not even contemplated five to six decades ago.
Current investigations are able to evaluate how food

procurement strategies compare at particular points

in time to the estimated availabilities of different
resources (allowing for the quantitative assessment of
optimization models), while other multi-disciplinary
researches, involving foot surveys with botanical
studies and other techniques, have shown how with
major labor inputs some past agrarian landscapes
(such as in parts of the Amazon and the lowland
Maya Peten of Guatemala) were able to yield greater
food bounties in the past than often are produced in
these same areas today.
Nonagricultural Production

The systematic investigation of nonagricultural production did not receive serious archaeological attention until the 1970s. The first studies began with
efforts to identify locations where pottery and chipped
stone tool manufacture occurred in the past. Sets
of archaeological correlates were devised from ethnographic and other sources to recognize these economic/craft activities at excavated sites (and with
less confidence at a regional scale using surface findings). These correlates generally have been shown to
have high degrees of cross-cultural utility and validity.
Importantly, these archaeological signatures rely not
only on specific classes of artifacts (such as ceramic
wasters or defects to identify pottery production) but
also on relational data or the spatial coincidence of
several kinds of evidence including the wasters, the
remnants of ceramic firing features, the implements of
manufacture, and high densities of pottery.
Of late, archaeologists also have developed similar
expectations and indicators to document empirically
(with excavated data) the production of a range of
other, less prevalent craft (and other manufactured)
goods including bone tools, shell ornaments, metal
objects, ground-stone implements, fiber/cloth, and
alcohol (see Craft Specialization). The formulation
of broadly accepted criteria for the recognition of
craft manufacturing contexts has generated an empirical record from which archaeologists are able to examine long-held, but little tested, notions regarding how
the nature and degree of suprahousehold labor specialization shifted as human polities became larger and
more hierarchically organized.
Although it is not surprising that labor divisions by
age and sex have been found in most human societies,
it perhaps has been less expected to find that household or domestic group self-sufficiency is not as common among hunting/gathering and village farming
peoples as may have once been believed. Domestic
craft manufacture, likely often on a part-time basis,
appears to have been a common occurrence even in
relatively small-scale societies. Also unexpected has

ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY 1117

been the frequent finding that craft production was

generally situated in domestic contexts even in large
complex societies. This pattern is particularly evident
in the prehispanic Americas where nondomestic
workshops or factory-scale manufacture appears to
have been relatively rare. Larger-scale nondomestic
production contexts have been found with greater
frequency in Eurasia, where the land-transport technologies (wheeled vehicles and a greater array of
beasts of burden) were more efficient, but the preconceived notion that nonresidential workshops generally supplanted domestic craft manufacture in all or
even most archaic states needs to be reconsidered.
As has long been proposed, the nature and degrees
of specialized labor do seem to increase with political
complexity, but the increments are not necessarily
stepwise or uniform.

Exchange and Distribution

Reciprocal
exchange

Food

Shell
ornaments

od
Fo

Be

od

Figure 1 Modes of exchange.

th

Reciprocal
exchange

Redistribution

Clo

Redistribution

Fo

ad

In archaeology, systematic and concerted efforts to

theorize and reconstruct past patterns of exchange
and distribution began during the second half of the
twentieth century. Research on this central aspect of
past and present economies was prompted by the
seminal writings of Karl Polanyi and Marshall
Sahlins, who described basic modes of circulation
(reciprocity, redistribution, and marketing), which
then were closely linked to different organizational
formations by Service, Fried, and others (Figure 1).
At the same time, concern with defining the principal

factors that prompted key societal evolutionary transitions led archaeologists to pose research questions
that endeavored to assess the relative importance of
local versus long-distance exchange (as well as other
postulated prime movers such as warfare, demographic growth/pressure, and irrigation) in specific
historical contexts. With the advent of these theoretical queries, archaeologists no longer found it sufficient
or even adequate merely to categorize the external
contacts between social groupings as either migration
or diffusion, thereby focusing greater attention on
the broad range of behaviors, many with economic
implications, that could transmit various goods and
information across space and between societies.
In his highly influential works that structured decades of later conceptualization and research in archaeology, Polanyi outlined an association between
the economic predominance of reciprocal exchanges
(face-to-face transactions between known or symmetrically situated individuals) with small, egalitarian
sociopolitical formations. At the same time, redistribution, a circulatory mode in which goods flowed
into a central settlement or nodal power broker and
then back out, was seen as almost a definitional aspect of chiefdoms and their economic underpinnings.
Market exchange was thought to be important only
in a select subset of later states and largely was associated with capitalism.
Although these early views still have some validity
and support, past modes of circulation and economic interaction have been shown by decades of

Market

1118 ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY

archaeological investigation and analysis to be far

more complex and variable than Polanyis scheme
envisioned. In particular, the importance and broad
relevance of redistribution has been called into question in many global contexts, and, generally, archaeologists have found far less evidence of direct political
controls over production and exchange than may
have been thought 25 years ago. To begin with, if
much craft production was situated in houses, such
manufacture would be difficult for political authorities
to monitor or control directly. Nevertheless, there are
other ways for governing officials to tap the sources
of production through mechanisms like tribute.
More specifically, archaeological research has
shown that bulk commodities, like grain, often are
moved through different networks and mechanisms
than were employed for rare, highly valued goods,
such as metals, jade and gemstones, and marine shell.
In certain regions of the world, a third class of items
of intermediate worth has been defined, including
obsidian (volcanic glass) and woven cloth. Items in
this class exchanged through channels that neither
conform to the prestige good exchanges of high
valuables nor to the paths traveled by basic staples.
These complexities now make it difficult to characterize the breadth of ancient economies into a small
number of discrete modes or to distinguish them from
modern economic systems in some kind of categorical
or rigid manner. For example, market exchange has
been shown to have had a greater role in the circulation of goods in precapitalist contexts (including
Mesoamerica, China, Greece, and Rome) than would
have been supposed in Polanyis era.
Archaeologists have devised and adopted a series
of analytical means to assess the movement of goods,
and hence the channels and mechanisms through which
exchange took place in specific settings. Traditionally,
the form and stylistic aspects of specific artifacts
have been used as visual clues to trace patterns of
interaction. Yet artifact forms can be copied, or even
appear similar by chance. So it is not always safe to use
resemblance alone to distinguish an imported piece in a
given archaeological context from something locally
made. Much more secure inferences regarding exchange can be drawn if it can be demonstrated that an
artifact was made in a locale other than where it was
found. Characterization refers to a bevy of techniques
of examination by which key properties of the constituent materials are identified, thereby allowing the
source of that material to be determined.
If characterization is to be effective, there must be
certain attributes that distinguish the products of one
source of certain materials from others. Generally,
this cannot be achieved by visual means alone, and
it is necessary to employ chemical, petrological, or

physical means to distinguish the materials from different sources. Some of the first characterization research was carried out with obsidian, which was
valued in many past societies, since it can be knapped
to create sharp chipped stone cutting edges. The main
elements (including silica, oxygen, and calcium)
of which obsidian is composed are largely the same
the world over, but the rare additional elements
are markedly different from one source to another.
Since distinct obsidian quarries can be distinguished
by the specific composition or signature of these
rare trace elements, a number of different chemical
techniques (including neutron activation and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) have been
employed over the years to identify the sources of this
material. Given the widespread use of obsidian, such
characterization studies have yielded important findings on exchange patterns for the Mediterranean, the
Pacific, and across much of the Western Hemisphere.
Since the possible sources of clay and most kinds of
stone other than obsidian are numerous and diverse,
there is much less chance that similar chemical analyses (reliant on a small number of distinct elemental
signatures) can be employed to source them with a
degree of resolution comparable to that reached for
obsidian. Alternatively, petrological methods that examine stone or ceramic materials by taking a thin
section of the target material and placing it under a
light microscope can yield information on the rock
and mineral structure of such materials. For certain
stone materials (particularly building stone), such
findings have successfully matched artifacts to their
quarry or source. Ceramic artifacts, which frequently
are composed of clay and mineral, sand, or rock
inclusions, also have been profitably studied through
these petrological methods. Yet because the fabric or
composition of ceramics often is made from materials
derived from more than one source (the clay mine
and the sand or mineral source), the challenge of
characterization is generally greater than it is for
stone. Nevertheless, petrological techniques (especially when employed quantitatively) can provide a
mineral signature for sets of pottery objects made
with a specific recipe, and therefore such procedures
help define the paths by which these vessels were
moved. If the petrological characterization of the
mineral composition is supplemented by chemical
analyses of the clays, then often even greater resolution can be gained. Physical techniques, such as X-ray
diffraction, that define the crystalline structure of minerals based on the angle at which X-rays are deflected
also have been employed for the characterization of
pottery as well as certain stone materials.
Characterization studies (and other means of documenting the movement of goods from their source)

ECONOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY 1119

permit archaeologists to define distributional patterns and hence some of the ways that communities
and valuables circulated. When regional and even
larger-scale perspectives on the archaeological record
are available, quantitative spatial techniques have
been employed to define these distributional patterns.
One of the key questions that still needs to be adequately tackled by archaeologists concerns the scale
of many past economies and economic relations and
how these interactions shifted over time. Prior to the
advent of systematic settlement pattern studies in
many regions of the world, archaeologists tended to
focus on small physiographic regions when examining exchange and economic interactions, presuming
that important relations were almost entirely local in
character perhaps due to the limits on transportation
technologies. Yet in parts of the ancient world, high
volumes of certain commodities and precious goods
were indeed transferred over long distances in significant enough quantities to have clear systemically important economic effects on the polities involved.

Consumption, Access, and Systems

of Stratification
Consumption is the third segment of an economic
network that begins with production and is mediated
by distribution or circulation. In general, consumption practices have been less intensively investigated than the other aspects of economic behavior. To
evaluate consumption, archaeologists require some
sampling of houses or other kinds of comparable
and meaningful archaeological units. More than 25
years ago, scholars such as Paul S. Martin in the
American Southwest and Kent V. Flannery in Oaxaca,
Mexico, conducted excavations of large numbers of
contemporaneous houses in single regions. Yet such
sets of data ideal for the examination of consumption remain relatively rare in the discipline today. In
addition, like many aspects of economic archaeology,
the study of consumption practices depends on and
requires an examination of relational patterns in the
archaeological record, or how certain kinds of artifacts were distributed across specific features. Again,
such a relational approach to the record is only beginning to become normal science, a conceptual transition that became possible, thanks to the rapidly
expanding capabilities of computerized recording,
data storage, and analysis over recent decades.
Consumption practices are valuable for economically oriented archaeologists to examine and
understand, as they provide a window into access
patterns, or which items (within the range of goods
available) do specific peoples or groups have the ability to procure and in what quantities. The outcome

of such relational patterns for certain goods provides

a key underpinning for the determination of socioeconomic stratification in the archaeological record
(and so in the past). In other words, if a series of
household units at a particular site are compared, it
is important to assess whether all households had
access to the same goods or whether select domestic
units had more exclusive abilities to procure certain
items, in particular those of high value, but also staple
goods may be at the heart of basic subsistence.
Marked disparities in access to portable wealth
(usually objects that are highly crafted, exotic, or
rare) as well as other goods provide an indicator for
assessing the degree of socioeconomic stratification
or inequality at a particular site or across a specific
social grouping. Such empirical assessments are significant, as it is clear that stratification systems are
highly variable over space and time. Recognized variation in the manner of socioeconomic stratification
also has been found not simply to be a simple consequence of (although related to) the level of sociopolitical complexity. In some societal settings, where
people lived (the elaboration of their residences) and
how they were buried at death served as the main
means by which some people or groups distinguished
themselves from others, while in other places relative
access to certain movable goods was a prime manifestation of socioeconomic stratification. The nature
and degree of coincidence between these aspects of
stratification also vary to different degrees from one
time and place to others.

Looking Forward
Economic relations are one fundamental key for understanding the workings and transitions of past
societies and for grappling with how and why those
societies varied. Although archaeology has many
goals, addressing such big complicated issues about
long-term societal variation and change is certainly
at the forefront of much archaeological thought, and
the broad range of field and analytic research that
is synthesized here under the rubric of economic
archaeology is essential for moving forward on these
issues. Over the last 50 years or so, buoyed by a new
corpus of techniques and ways to conceptualize the
archaeological record, scholars have forged a more
dynamic economic archaeology that has endeavored
to determine not only what people ate and how they
financed their central institutions but also how and
why shifts in these basic relations affected the course
of local and regional histories.
Through the comparative examination of production, distribution, consumption, and stratification in
different global regions, the discipline has made great

1120 ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING

progress in defining the many diverse ways that past

societies worked and also sometimes why they did
not. Such data are important for enlightening aspects
of the past that rarely find their ways into written
histories. They also enable us to understand the histories and consequences of past economic strategies
that have been employed, and in what ways do contemporary economic relations truly vary from the
practices employed at different points in the human
past. This is not trivial, as it is now allowing us to
correct and modify the notions and theories of economists and social theorists about premodern economics that often were born in the context of little or
inadequate empirical information.
Despite the advances that have been made, economic archaeology remains at a young stage. The menu of
questions waiting to be tackled remains robust and
multi-disciplinary in implication and approaches. Yet
in many, if not most, regions of the world, we still lack
the systematic regional (and even macroregional) settlement surveys, the intensive site-based studies with
rigorous collection strategies, and the domestic excavation results that provide the starting point for many
kinds of economic investigation. At the same time,
many faunal and floral as well as compositional analyses remain at a largely descriptive level, estranged
from the economic archaeological questions that they
are so necessary to elucidate. Conceptually, we need to
find broadly acceptable means to define marketing
behavior and better ways to capture labor relations
in the past. Finally, we must find a way to work
systematically on the different scales of economic behavior from the macro- or world scale down to the

transactions that took place between the co-residents

of a house. As our archaeological efforts are practiced
at these multiple scales, archaeologys chances to develop consensus answers to the big comparative issues
regarding societal diversity, how it came to be, and
how it changes over historical time will increase.
See also: Agriculture: Social Consequences; Chemical
Analysis Techniques; Craft Specialization; Exchange
Systems; Social Inequality, Development of.

Further Reading
Blanton RE, Feinman GM, Kowalewski SA, and Peregrine PN
(1996) A dual-processual theory for the evolution of Mesoamerican civilization. Current Anthropology 37: 114.
Childe VG (1950) The urban revolution. Town Planning Review
21: 317.
Feinman GM and Nicholas LM (eds.) (2004) Archaeological Perspectives on Political Economies. Salt Lake City: University of
Utah Press.
Polanyi K, Arensberg CM, and Pearson HW (eds.) (1957) Trade
and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and
Theory. Glencoe: Free Press and Falcons Wing Press.
Renfrew C and Cherry J (eds.) (1986) Peer Polity Interaction and
Socio-Political Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Sabloff JA and Lamberg-Karlovsky CC (eds.) (1975) Ancient Civilization and Trade. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press.
Sahlins M (1972) Stone Age Economics. New York: Aldine.
Smith BD (1998) The Emergence of Agriculture. New York: Scientific American Library.
Smith ME (2004) The archaeology of ancient state economies.
Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 73102.
Worsaae JJA (1849) The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark. (trans.
by WJ Thoms). London: Parker.

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING

Rainer Grun, The Australian National University,
Canberra, ACT, Australia
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
alpha efficiency Alpha rays are significantly less effective in
producing ESR intensity than beta or gamma rays. The alpha
efficiency is the ratio of ESR intensities generated by a given
alpha dose over an equivalent beta or gamma dose.
cosmic rays Ionizing radiation received from space (mainly
originating from the sun).
disequilibrium The activity ratio of two isotopes is different
from unity.
dose Amount of radiation received.

dose response curve Plot of ESR intensity versus

laboratory dose.
dosimeter An instrument or substance for measuring the dose
generated by ionizing radiation (e.g., X-, alpha, beta, gamma
and cosmic rays).
electron spin resonance dating A dating method based on
the time dependent, radiation induced accumulation of electrons
and holes in the crystal lattice of certain minerals. The age
estimate usually refers to the formation of the minerals (e.g.,
tooth enamel, shells, corals, etc.). The trapped electrons and
holes are measured with an electron spin resonance spectrometer.
speleothems Carbonate precipitations in caves, consisting of
stalactites (growing from the cave ceiling), stalagmites
(from the cave floor), and flowstones (sheets).
thermoluminescence dating A dating method based on the
time dependent, radiation induced accumulation of electrons in
the crystal lattice of certain minerals. The age estimate usually

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 1121

Conduction band

Ea

Trap

g
b,
a,
n
io
at
di
ra

refers to resetting by light (quartz grains) or heating (pottery,

flint). The trapped electrons are measured with a
thermoluminescence reader.
travertines Carbonate deposits around springs.
U-decay chains There are two naturally occurring U-decay
chains. 238U decays via eight alpha emissions to the stable
end product 206Pb and 235U via seven alpha emissions to 207Pb.
In nature, the atomic 238U/235U ratio is about 138/1.
U-series dating Dating methods based on the time dependent
change of the 230Th/234U and 231Pa/235U ratios. When minerals
are precipitated from aqueous solutions, they are free of
water-insoluble isotopes such as 230Th and 231Pa. With time,
230
Th and 231Pa are produced through the radioactive decay of
234
U and 235U, respectively. At the time of mineral formation, the
230
Th/234U and 231Pa/235U activity ratios are zero, after about
500 000 and 150 000 years, respectively, they approximate
equilibrium (i.e., 230Th/234U 1; 231Pa/235U 1). This presents
the upper dating limits of the methods. 231Pa/235U is only rarely
applied because of the shorter dating range and difficulties of
precisely measuring 231Pa.

Electron spin resonance (ESR) dating is based on the

time-dependent accumulation of electrons and holes
in the crystal lattice of certain minerals. The process is
the result of the exposure of the mineral to radiation,
which is emitted from radioactive isotopes in the
sample and its surroundings. In such a way, the
mineral acts as a natural dosimeter. A numerical age
can be derived from the estimation of the dose a
sample has received in the past and the dose rate
generated by the already-mentioned radioactive elements. Analysis of tooth enamel is the most common
ESR dating application in archaeology. In ideal
circumstances, dating of tooth enamel to about one
million years seems possible.

Basic Principles
The energy levels of insulating minerals, such as
quartz, apatite, calcite, etc., can be schematically
shown in an energy band model (Figure 1). Insulators
have two energy levels, at which electrons may occur:
the ground state (valence band) and a higher energy
state (conduction band). The two energy bands
are separated by a so-called forbidden energy zone.
Naturally occurring radioactive isotopes emit a variety of rays, which ionize atoms. Negatively charged
electrons are knocked off atoms in the valence band
and transferred to the conduction band, positively
charged holes remain near the valence band. After a
short time of diffusion, most electrons recombine
with holes, returning the mineral back to its original,
electrically neutral state. However, all natural minerals contain defect sites (e.g., lattice defects and interstitial atoms), at which electrons and holes can be
trapped. The trapped electrons and holes form socalled paramagnetic centers, which can be detected

Valence band
Figure 1 Trapping of electrons and holes: the basis for ESR
dating. An insulating mineral has two energy levels, at which
electrons may occur. The lower energy level (valence band) is
separated from the higher energy level (conduction band) by a
so-called forbidden zone. When a mineral is formed or reset, all
electrons are in the ground state. Ionizing radiation emitted from
radioactive elements (U, Th, and K) knocks off negatively charged
electrons from atoms. The electrons are transferred to the conduction band and positively charged holes are left behind near the
valence band. After a short time of diffusion most of the electrons
recombine with the holes. Some electrons can be trapped by
impurities (electron traps) in the crystal lattice. These electrons
can be directly measured by electron spin resonance spectroscopy. Ea activation energy or trap depth.

with an ESR spectrometer, giving rise to a characteristic ESR signal (Figure 2).
When a sample is formed, it contains no trapped
electrons; consequently, the ESR signal intensity is
zero. After its formation, the mineral is exposed to
natural radiation leading to the trapping of electrons
and holes. This process will continue until the sample
is measured in the laboratory. The measured ESR
signal is called natural intensity and is dependent on
the number of
traps, the strength of the radioactivity
.
(dose rate, D), and the radiation time, T ( age of
the sample). The product of dose rate and time is the
dose, DE, that the sample was exposed to in the past.
An age is derived from the simple relationship:
DE
T :
D
The determination of the DE value is the actual ESR
part of the dating procedure. The dose rate is calculated from the analysis of the radioactive elements
(mainly Th, U, and K) in the sample and its surroundings. The concentrations of the radioactive elements

1122 ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING

400
Natural
radiation

Signal intensity (a.u.)

350

Laboratory irradiation

300
250
200
150

Additive dose
response curve

100

DE

50
0
100

50

Natural intensity
0

50

100

150

200

250

300

Irradiation dose (Gy)

Figure 2 Dose (DE) determination using the additive dose method: after measurement of the natural intensity, the sample is irradiated in
the laboratory. This leads to the production of more trapped electrons and holes (Figure 1). Consequently, the signal intensity increases.
The plot of ESR intensity vs. laboratory dose is called the dose response curve. The DE value results from fitting the data points of the
dose response with an exponential function and extrapolation to zero ESR intensity.

Table 1 Dose rates for the U and Th decay chains and

K (ppm part per million)
.
.
.
Da
Db
Dg
1 ppm 238U 235U
1 ppm 232Th
1% K

2780
732
782

146
27
243

113 mGy y
1

48 mGy y
1
mGy y
1

are converted into dose rates by published tables

(Table 1). The determination of the natural radiation
field that the sample is exposed to is complex and has
to be carefully evaluated (Figure 4).

For the measurement of the DE value, the sample is

irradiated in the laboratory with increasing dose steps
from a calibrated gamma source (these are, e.g., used
in hospitals where they are used for cancer treatment
or sterilization). The irradiation process generates
more trapped electrons; consequently, the measured
ESR signals increase. A dose response curve can be
established by plotting the signal intensity against the
applied dose (Figure 3). This data set allows extrapolation to zero ESR intensity and the DE value results
from the intersection of the best fit of the data with
the dose axis. The dose response curve of tooth enamel
is not linear, but is most often described by a single
saturating function.

Measurement of the Dose Value

DE stands for equivalent dose and stems from the
fact that the laboratory procedures utilize gamma
sources, whereas the dose the sample has received in
the past is the sum of multi-energetic alpha, beta,
gamma, and cosmic rays (see below). Thus, the
experimentally determined dose value is the gamma
equivalent of the naturally received dose, which is
frequently called paleodose, P. The SI unit for
absorbed dose is Gray (Gy).
The measured ESR signal must have the following
properties to provide reliable results:
. The signal intensity grows in proportion to the dose
received.
. The signals have a stability, which is at least one order
of magnitude higher than the age of the sample.
. The number of traps is constant or changes in a
predictable manner, provided recrystallization, crystal growth, or phase transitions have not occurred.
. The signals should not show anomalous fading.
. The signal is not influenced by sample preparation
(grinding, exposure to laboratory light, etc.).

ESR Measurement
ESR intensities are measured with off-the-shelf ESR
spectrometers (manufactured, e.g., by Bruker and
JEOL). Note that the ESR measurements for dating
do not require the determination of the absolute number of trapped electrons; only relative concentrations
( ESR signal intensities) are required to establish the
dose response curve. Most modern ESR spectrometers
are stable enough so that internal or external standards are not required.
.

Determination of the Dose Rate, D

The dose rate is calculated from the concentrations
of radioactive elements in the sample and its surroundings (only the U and Th decay chains and the
40
K-decay are of relevance; a minor contribution
comes from 87Rb in the sediment) plus a component
of cosmic rays. There are three different ionizing rays,
which are emitted from radioactive elements (Figure 4):

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 1123

ESR intensity (a.u.)

150

M1

Natural
Irradiated

100
50
0
50
100
3360

3380

(a)

3400

Magnetic field

(104

3420

3440

T)

400
1126C
ESR intensity (a.u.)

300

200
+

100
0

*
#

100
200
3280
(b)

3300

3320

3340

3360

3380

Magnetic field (104 T)

Figure 3 ESR spectra of tooth enamel. The spectrum is dominated by a CO

2 radical (a). Some spectra show interferences by methyl
(* in b), SO2 (), and a rotating CO

2 (#).

. gamma rays (photons) have a range of about

30 cm;
. beta rays (electrons) have a range of about 2 mm; and
. alpha rays (helium nuclei) have only a very short
range of about 2040 mm because of the large size
of the particles.
Alpha particles are less efficient in producing
ESR intensity than beta and gamma rays. Therefore,
an alpha efficiency, which is usually in the range of
0.13  0.02, has to be determined.
The concentrations of radioactive elements within
a sample are usually very different from their surroundings. Thus, internal dose rates and external
dose rates have to be assessed independently.
Furthermore, it is necessary to estimate the cosmic
dose rate, which is about 300 mGy yr
1 at sea level
and decreases with depth below ground, and is also
dependent on altitude as well as on geographic
latitude. The conversion of the elemental analysis
into dose rates is shown in Table 1. Dose rate calculations become more complicated when disequilibrium
in the U-decay chains or attenuation factors has to be
considered.

External Dose Rate

The calculation of the external dose rate is dependent
on the size of the samples (Figure 4). The removal of
the outer 50 mm of the sample eliminates all the externally alpha irradiated volume. If the outer 2 mm
can be removed, the external beta dose is eliminated.
In this case the external dose rate consists of gamma
and cosmic rays only. If the samples are smaller, it
receives external beta radiation, which decreases with
depth; therefore, attenuation factors have to be considered. The external beta dose rate has to be calculated separately from the external gamma dose rate
because the beta dose rate is generated from the sediment immediately attached to the sample, whereas
the gamma dose rate originates from all sediment
within a radius of about 30 cm around the sample
(see Figure 4). The external sediment beta dose rate
is derived from the chemical analysis of U, Th, and K.
The gamma dose rate cannot normally be deduced
from laboratory analyses but has to be measured
in situ with a portable, calibrated gamma spectrometer or thermoluminescence dosimeters. In situ
measurements have the advantage of including the

1124 ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING

Cosmic rays

g
g

1m

g
g

Qz

400 mm

4 cm

a
a

a
Fsp
a

Qz

a
a

Figure 4 Schematic representation of the different components of natural radiation relevant for dose rate calculations (based on
S. Stokes as shown in Aitken MJ (1998) Optical Dating. Oxford: Oxford University Press: Fig. 2.2.). Cosmic rays are high-energy particles
and are attenuated once they penetrate the sedimentary layers. For practical purposes, the cosmic dose rate becomes negligible at a
depth of about 20 m. Gamma rays have an average range of 30 cm. Thus, in homogeneous sediments, the gamma dose rate can be
calculated from the chemical analysis of the bulk sediment. However, if the sediment contains boulders or intercalation of layers with
different radioactivity, the gamma dose rate should be measured in situ. Beta rays have average ranges of a few mm. In smaller samples,
such as teeth or shells, the volume that has received external beta dosage cannot be removed. For dose rate calculations, the sediment in
the immediate surroundings of the sample is analyzed for radioactive elements. Alpha rays have average ranges of a few tens of
micrometers. Sediment grains used, for example, in luminescence dating receive a substantial external alpha dose. This volume is usually
removed by etching, except when fine grains (411 mm) are being measured, usually in luminescence dating studies.

present-day water contents. Water absorbs some beta

and gamma rays; therefore, its presence in the surrounding sediment has to be considered in the calculation of the beta and gamma dose rates.

Internal Dose Rate

This parameter is mainly generated by alpha and beta
rays emitted from elements within the sample. In

enamel and dentine of teeth, the U-decay chains are

in disequilibrium. This affects the average dose rates
and has to be taken into account mathematically.
The alpha efficiency of tooth enamel is difficult
to determine because of size requirements for ESR
measurements. The best value is about 0.13  0.02.
The dose rate calculations in tooth enamel are further complicated by the fact that bones and teeth tend
to accumulate uranium over time. Modern bones are

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 1125

virtually uranium free (with concentrations around

110 parts per billion, ppb), whereas archaeological
samples may contain many orders of magnitude
higher concentrations (up to several hundreds ppm).
The explicit history of the uranium uptake may have
significant implications for the calculation of the average dose rate. Conventionally, two uranium uptake
models have been calculated: early U-uptake (EU)
and linear U-uptake (LU). For the EU model it is
assumed that all the uranium that is measured today
was accumulated by the teeth within a short time
after its burial, whereas the LU model predicts that
the uranium has been accumulated continuously over
time in a linear fashion. The differences in EU and LU
age calculations are small as long as the U-concentrations in the teeth are moderate (less than about 2 ppm
in dentine). However, with increasing U-concentrations in the teeth, the EU/LU age difference increases
until the LU age is about twice the EU age. In the
interpretation of the ESR dating results, it is generally
assumed that the correct age of the sample lies
somewhere between the bracketing EU and LU age
calculations. It has been recognized, however, that
teeth from a considerable number of sampling sites
(perhaps 1020%) may have U-uptake histories that
lie outside the age range defined by the EU and LU
models. This may be due to U-leaching or strongly
delayed U-uptake. The reason may lie in changes
in the hydrological environment of the samples.
If ESR is used as an independent dating technique
and unless U-series analyses are carried out on the
teeth (see below), there is no first-principles argument that could be used to prefer one model over
another.
To overcome the problem of the unknown U-uptake
history in teeth, Grun et al. suggested analyzing the
enamel and dentine samples for U-series isotopes.
Uranium series dating results on bones and teeth are
similarly influenced by U-uptake, but to a different
extent than ESR (the LU U-series age is always nearly
twice the EU age). Combining ESR and U-series
allows the establishment of an equation system that
can be solved for a one-parameter diffusion equation
and age.

Measurement of Radioactive Elements

and Isotopes
A plethora of analytical techniques can be used for
the analysis of radioactive elements. In the field, the
external gamma dose rate can be measured with thermoluminescence dosimeters or a gamma spectrometer. Elemental concentrations can be measured with
X-ray fluorescence, induced coupled plasma mass
spectrometry (ICP-MS), neutron activation analysis,

etc. In teeth, uranium and thorium concentrations, as

well as U-series isotopes can be measured in situ by
laser ablation ICP-MS.

Errors
Although error calculation should be straightforward, and has been outlined in detail by Aitken,
most publications mix the random and systematic
errors and treat them equally. Note that nearly all
ESR age estimations are given with 1-s errors.
The error in the DE estimation is usually within
15%. Depending on the number of dose rate parameters and the intrinsic errors of the analytical
techniques involved in the dose rate determination,
the typical precision of dose rate assessments is in the
range of 57%. Some systematic errors are introduced by assumptions. These occur because not all
parameters are measured or can be measured. For
example, the water contents of the sediments might
have changed over time, some sediments might have
had some radioactive disequilibrium in the U-decay
chain, the alpha efficiency in ESR is difficult to measure and is based on the analysis of a few samples,
radioactive disequilibrium within the samples and
surrounding sediments are rarely measured, etc.
Many archaeological and palaeoanthropological
sites have been completely excavated in the past and
it is not possible to measure any external dose rates.
In some cases, it has been attempted to reconstruct
the external gamma dose rate from museum sediment
samples. This process is usually associated with very
large errors (>20%) because (1) the samples show a
large spread in the concentrations of the radioactive
isotopes and (2) any effects of a lumpy environment
are neglected (i.e., the original sediments might have
contained larger boulders and pebbles, etc., which, of
course, were not collected). If teeth contain significant amounts of uranium, the errors introduced
by the unknown U-uptake history may be as high
as 50%, if the assumption is made that the EU and
LU models bracket the true ages of the samples.
If all dose rate parameters are measured, including
U-series isotopes, the 1-s error (precision) of an ESR
analysis is in the range of 7%. Because it is very
difficult to analyze teeth of precisely known age, the
evaluation of the systematic errors (accuracy) in ESR
dating is open to conjecture.

Application of ESR Dating

Dating of teeth is the main application of ESR in
palaeoanthropological studies. There have been
some other applications in archaeological/palaeoanthropological contexts: for example, ESR dating of

1126 ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING

0

50

100

1 BS

ESR

645a
645b

250

200

14

530a
530b
530c
17304

EU-age (ka)

LR1

33 1 ka

up

39 3 ka

36 1 ka

up

41 2 ka

LRC

48 1 ka

Early LSA

531a
531b
531c
644a
644b
646a
646b

150

1 WA

2 BS
(

41 ka

529a
529b
541a
541b
19011+

MSA 3

540a
540b
17302+
532a
532b
532c
533a
533b
537a
537b
537c
17505+

63 2 ka

2 WA

60 ka

535A
535B
535C
535D
3 BS

607A
607B
536A
536B
536C
609A
609B
609C
BC5

BC5: 74 5 ka

58 2 ka

66 3 ka

74 4 ka

3 WA

66 2 ka

601A
601B
601C

1 RGBS

76 4 ka

534a
534b
647A
647B
538a
538b
538c

4 BS

Howieson's Poort

608A
608B
608C

79 ka

602a
602b
602c
4 WA

604A
604B
604C
605a
605b
605c

118 4 ka

116 5 ka

174 5 ka

166 6 ka

147 6 ka

174 9 ka

227 11 ka

250

EU-age (ka)

MSA 1

603A
603B
603C

82 2 ka

5 BS

539a
539b
539c
754a
754b
754c

5 WA

753
0

50

100

150

200

Figure 5 The age of BC5 in context with the ESR and 14C chronology for Border Cave. Lowercase letters following the sample number
denote sub-samples of a single tooth, capital letters separate enamel fragments. The two bracketed results were not used for the
calculation of the average ages of the units. Grun R, Beaumont P, Tobias PV, and Eggins S (2003) On the age of Border Cave 5 human
mandible. Journal of Human Evolution 45: 155167; Bird MI, Fifield LK, Santos GM, et al. (2003) Radiocarbon dating from 4060 ka BP at
Border Cave, South Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 943947.

ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE DATING 1127

speleothems, which has created some confusion with

respect to the age of the Petralona hominid (Greece);
ESR dating of mollusk shells (e.g., from Batadomba
Cave, Sri Lanka); of spring deposited travertine (e.g.,
Weimar Ehringsdorf and Bilzingsleben, Germany),
and of burnt flint (e.g., Kebara, Israel). These applications have recently been summarized by Grun and
Rink. Perhaps, apart from ESR dating of mollusk
shells, other dating techniques are significantly better
suited to provide precise age information on these
materials, for example, U-series dating on speleothems and travertines or thermoluminescence on
burnt flint. ESR dating of tooth enamel is applicable
between a few thousand years and, in exceptional
circumstances, up to a few million years.
Although it would be highly desirable to be able to
date bones with ESR, any attempt to obtain independent ESR age estimates has so far been unsuccessful.
This is due to the following observations: (1) bones
usually absorb more uranium than teeth and (2) the
mineral phase (hydroxyapatite) in bones is only somewhere in the region of 4060% (enamel: about 96%).
During fossilization the mineralogical compounds of
the bones change, leading to the formation of new
minerals, disintegration of some mineral phase, conversion of an amorphous phase into hydroxyapatite,
as well as growth of the crystal size. Formation of the
new mineral phase (with new defects traps) with
time will generally lead to an age underestimation
regardless of the U-uptake model applied.
ESR dating of tooth enamel has been applied to a
variety of archaeological and palaeoanthropological
sites. ESR dating has been used for the dating of the
early modern human sites of Border Cave, and Klasies
River Mouth Cave in southern Africa, as well as
Qafzeh and Skhul in the Levant. The ESR dating
results demonstrated the occurrence of anatomically
modern humans at around 100 000 years ago. ESR
was also used for the dating of Neanderthal sites
including Tabun, Kebara, Amud, Krapina, Le Moustier,
and La-Chapelle-aux-Saints.
The particular strength of ESR dating lies in the
direct analysis of tooth enamel fragments from
human fossils. The archaeological and palaeoanthropological site of Border Cave contains one of the most
detailed ESR dating sequences (Figure 5). The dating
results in the younger layers agree well with radiocarbon results on charcoal collected from the same
layers. Of particular interest is the age of Border
Cave 5, one of the few early anatomically modern
hominid fossils that were found in situ at the site.
A study based on the analysis of nitrogen contents
and infrared splitting factors indicated that BC5 may
be as young as Iron Age, that is, about 1000 years old.

ESR analysis of a tooth fragment and determination

of its uranium concentration with laser ablation ICPMS demonstrated that BC5 agrees with the age of
the other samples that were found in the surrounding sediments (Figure 5). The best age estimate of
74 000  5000 years shows that fully modern humans
lived in southern Africa significantly earlier than in
Europe.

Summary
The advantages of ESR dating of tooth enamel,
particularly when applied to human fossils, lie in
providing valuable information to our understanding
of modern human evolution. The dating range of ESR
goes well beyond the radiocarbon barrier and covers
about the last 500 000 years. The inability to accurately date tooth enamel by other means is also a
downfall of ESR dating, because it is difficult to assess
the reliability of the age estimations. The precision of
ESR dating is significantly less than that of isotopic
methods. Results of museum specimens are often
associated with large errors, because ESR dating is
crucially dependent on the reconstruction of the
external dose rate environments.
See also: Amino Acid Racemization Dating; Carbon-14
Dating; Dating Methods, Overview; Dendrochronology; Luminescence Dating; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Obsidian Hydration Dating.

Further Reading
Aitken MJ (1985) Thermoluminescence Dating. New York:
Academic Press.
Aitken MJ (1998) Optical Dating. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Bird MI, Fifield LK, Santos GM, et al. (2003) Radiocarbon dating
from 4060 ka BP at Border Cave, South Africa. Quaternary
Science Reviews 22: 943947.
Eggins S, Grun R, Pike A, Shelley A, and Taylor L (2003) 238U,
232
Th profiling and U-series isotope analysis of fossil teeth
by laser ablation-ICPMS. Quaternary Science Reviews 22:
13731382.
Eggins SM, Grun R, McCulloch M, Pike A, Chappell J, Kinsley L,
Shelley M, Murray-Wallace C, Spotl C, and Taylor L (2005)
In Situ U-series dating by laser-ablation multi-collector ICPMS:
new prospects for Quaternary geochronology. Quaternary
Science Reviews 24: 25232538.
Grun R (1989) Electron spin resonance (ESR) dating. Quaternary
International 1: 65109.
Grun R (2000) Electron spin resonance dating. In: Ciliberto E
and Spoto G (eds.) Modern Analytical Methods in Art and
Archaeology Chemical Analyses Series, vol. 155, p. 641679.
New York: Wiley.
Grun R (2006) Direct dating of human remains. Yearbook of
Physical Anthropology 49: 248.

1128 ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY

Grun R, Beaumont P, Tobias PV, and Eggins S (2003) On the age of
Border Cave 5 human mandible. Journal of Human Evolution
45: 155167.
Grun R and Stringer CB (1991) ESR dating and the evolution of
modern humans. Archaeometry 33: 153199.
Prescott JR and Hutton JT (1988) Cosmic ray and gamma ray
dosimetry for TL and ESR. Nuclear Tracks and Radiation Measurement 14: 223227.

Elites

Rink WJ (1997) Electron spin resonance (ESR) dating and ESR

applications in quaternary science and archaeometry. Radiation
Measurements 27: 9751025.
Sillen A and Morris AG (1996) Diagenesis of bone from Border
Cave: Implications for the age of the Border Cave hominids.
Journal of Human Evolution 31: 499506.

See: Social Inequality, Development of.

Empires

See: Political Complexity, Rise of.

ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY
Rosemary A Joyce, University of California,
Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
androcentrism An unreflective assumption of a unified male
perspective that does not allow for differences in perspectives of
women and men.
dichotomy Division into two parts, groups, or classes, especially
when these are sharply distinguished or opposed.
division of labor The anthropological concept that in every
society there is a normal distribution of tasks among people of
different age, sex, or other identity statuses.
ethnographic analogy The procedure of using observations of
living societies made by anthropologists as a basis for
interpretation of archaeological patterning, based either on
specific historical continuities or on similar characteristics that
allow one case to be generalized and identified with another.
feminist archaeology An explicitly political approach to
archaeology that critically examines androcentrism and gender
inequity in the present practice of archaeology, encourages
analyses of inequality in past societies, especially inequalities on
lines of sex, and advocates awareness of the implications of
models of past gender relations for contemporary society.
gender Often used to distinguish the cultural interpretation of
sex differences, including the assignment of different roles on the
basis of biological sex, and understood as a culturally created
and therefore historically changing aspect of human identity.
processual archaeology The idea that archaeology should
identify the processes through which past societies developed in
their historical forms, with an emphasis on the generalizable
aspects of what happened in the past.

sex/gender system The concept that sex and gender are not
separable as given biology (sex) and cultural interpretation
(gender) but instead are inseparable parts of cultural orders
through which biological variation is naturalized as the basis for
cultural differences.

Introduction
One of the most active areas of archaeological innovation in the last half of the twentieth century was the
exploration of gender. Never a single, unified project,
this topical area of attention was able to bring together
archaeologists representing every theoretical perspective from culture historical through processual,
postprocessual, and even evolutionary archaeology
(see Processual Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Evolutionary Archaeology). After more than
20 years of development of this topic, most contributions still take the form of individual papers, usually
included in edited volumes. This is one indication of
the breadth of participation by a very large number of
people in developing archaeologies of gender. Early
in the history of the development of archaeologies
of gender, Cheryl Claassen, who did much to sustain
this level of energy by organizing the three conferences
on gender in archaeology starting in 1991, noted another important characteristic of participation in this
emerging topical area: many, perhaps most, of the
participants were graduate students or recent recipients of doctorates.

ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY 1129

The lack of theoretical unity among the many people contributing to archaeologies of gender has at
times been seen as a weakness, particularly from the
point of view of explicitly feminist scholars. Their
most urgent concern was with the possibility that
archaeologists pursuing questions of gender would
simply create an appearance of long-term stability
for present-day gender relations, naturalizing present inequalities. Remarkably, other archaeologists
saw quite the opposite danger: that use of explicitly
feminist theoretical perspectives would impede the
progress of objective research on gender in the
past, or that such research would be marginalized
because mainstream archaeologists would find it
unacceptably political.
Despite the large numbers of contributors to the
development of archaeologies of gender over the past
20 years, and the very visible venues where work of
this kind has appeared, it is probably true that today,
some archaeologists view this as a specialty with
which they do not need to engage. This is unfortunate, because while archaeologists of gender have not
developed special methods to see men and women in
the past, they have developed sophisticated perspectives on the social implications of material remains
whose potentials go far beyond such simple goals.
Archaeologies of gender fundamentally transform
understandings of classic archaeological questions
such as the development of agriculture, the emergence
of institutionalized social distinctions in early sedentary societies, and the ways that wealth and power
could be increasingly concentrated in the hands of a
few people in the most stratified states. In this article,
some of the big moments in the history of archaeologies of gender are briefly reviewed first, and then
some of the key interpretive and methodological
approaches taken by archaeologists working around
the world on questions of gender are outlined. Finally,
future directions for this line of archaeological inquiry
are suggested. It is clear that there is no reversing the
impact of the extraordinary florescence of archaeological
research on gender of the past decades.

Genealogies of Research on Gender

in Archaeology
Constructing histories while events continue to unfold
is a perilous task, one that also has highly political
dimensions. This article does not claim to be a complete
history of archaeologies of gender. Instead, it identifies
a series of key conferences and publications that pushed
the field of gender archaeology forward in the 1980s
and 1990s. The outline of events mainly concerns the
English-language literature, above all, the literature
from North America and Great Britain. Within the

English-language literature, important contributions

were also made by archaeologists in Australia. In
parallel, archaeologies of gender were developed by
Scandinavian archaeologists, such as Erika Engelstadt
and Mary Louise Stig S
rensen, often publishing in
English as well as Scandinavian languages. In Germany,
Femarc, the Womens Network in Archaeology, began
in 1991 and continues to operate a website to this
day, again in both English and German. Archaeologies
of gender are less developed in other regional traditions in archaeology, but the international extension
of interest in related questions that developed over the
same period of time is still noteworthy.
Many histories of archaeology of gender credit an
article by Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector in
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory,
published in 1984, as a particularly influential starting point. In this article, Conkey and Spector outlined
a task-differentiation approach to identifying women
in archaeological sites, using ethnographic analogies
to establish the tasks that would have occupied men
and women in different societies. Concern has been
expressed about singling out this article as a kind of
origin point for archaeology of gender, based on the
indisputable fact that there were preexisting works by
archaeologists concerned with understanding gender
relations using archaeological data. For example, at
least as early as 1960, Tatiana Proskouriakoff published a pathbreaking study of women in Classic
Maya art. This beginning was followed up in 1976
by Joyce Marcus consideration of evidence for
womens roles in Classic Maya politics. In 1982,
archaeologist Mary Pohl published a pathbreaking
study of the roles of Classic Maya women in relation
to the raising of animals. About the same time,
archaeologists working on the ancient societies of
Egypt, Mesopotamia, and neighboring regions were
actively developing accounts of the roles of women in
these ancient societies, in books like the 1983 Images
of Women in Antiquity.
It is thus worth asking why the 1984 paper by
Conkey and Spector has been cited by many people
as a turning point in their ability to write about
gender as a legitimate topic. Two things stand out:
first, the article is methodological; it proposed a
framework for identifying evidence of gender. Second, the method is rooted in the concept of gendered
divisions of labor, an anthropological base that
many archaeologists found helpful in initially making
a transition to gender analysis. These perspectives
also underwrote the Wedge Conference, organized
by Conkey and Joan Gero, which brought together
archaeologists working on a variety of technologies
to follow through on analysis of gender in 1988.
The published volume from this conference, 1991s

1130 ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY

Engendering Archaeology, is perhaps the secondmost

widely cited point of reference for archaeologists
of gender, and was a landmark that, among other
things, launched the newly coined term engendered
archaeology.
It might be fair to say that archaeologies of gender
have been struggling with the legacy of this initial
orientation ever since. By linking gender to production, archaeologists opened the door to examining
gender in what processual archaeologists saw as the
most determinative aspect of social life, subsistence,
and the economy. Contributions to Engendering
Archaeology argued for the significance of factoring
in differences in the economic roles of men and
women in models of past societies, and demonstrated
an ability to address these questions with materials
of many different kinds. The method advocated in
the original article, however, was inherently dependent on cross-cultural analogies subject to critical
re-examination. Since these analogies were derived
from ethnography conducted in the contemporary
world, in societies that already had experienced colonial engagements of unknown transformative effect,
they ran the risk of incorporating presentist perspectives and validating modern gender arrangements as
universal. Moreover, most authors took for granted
an equation of dichotomous biological sex with a
primary division of all human populations into a relatively homogeneous group of males, and an equally
homogeneous group of females. Later researchers in
archaeology have worked hard to develop alternative
approaches that do not assume a dichotomy of genders
grounded in the two-sex model. But they contended
with their own histories of advances based on making
precisely this assumption.
The philosopher Alison Wylie, writing an introductory paper in Engendering Archaeology, called attention to the trajectory for future research that could be
predicted given the beginning of archaeology of gender as a search for women in the past. Comparing
archaeology to other disciplines, such as history, she
predicted that archaeologists would find it necessary
eventually to question the very concepts of analysis
with which they were working. While most subsequent authors cited Wylie, we nonetheless took
the short cut provided by associating gender with two
preexisting sexes, between whom there was assumed
to be a separation of tasks, something we could potentially see archaeologically in dichotomous distributions of features, artifacts, and floral and faunal
remains.
The Wedge Conference was influential precisely
because of its shared programmatic direction.
A second conference, held at almost the same time,

is equally important in the history of development

of archaeologies of gender even though participants
shared no common project or assumptions. This was
the 1989 Chacmool conference on gender in archaeology. Organized by students of archaeology at
Calgary University, this open-attendance conference
provided a forum for an international group of
archaeologists who proposed an astonishing array of
approaches to understanding gender in the past.
Many of the international participants already had
taken part in conferences or publication projects in
which gender was one dimension of human variation
being considered, some of which were grounded in a
more openly feminist critique of archaeology than
generally characterized North American gender studies of the time. The sheer diversity of the papers
included in the Chacmool conference volume is testimony to the already existing activity of archaeologists
who had arrived, more or less simultaneously, at the
conclusion that it was time to talk about men and
women in archaeological analyses. Notable contributions to this conference went further, and began to
trouble simple assumptions of a male/female dichotomy. Many of the papers argued that the projection of
genders in representational media, such as figurines
or stone sculpture, was a source of understanding
gender ideologies, something that had been a secondary theme of many participants at the Wedge Conference as well. Several papers at the Chacmool
conference attempted to explicitly theorize how genders might have been formed in the past through
peoples use of materials that would leave archaeological traces, taking gender formation, not the work
and lives of women and men, as their explicit focus.
Even more notable, at a time when most work on
gender conflated gender with women, some of the
participants at the Chacmool conference were concerned with identifying masculine images, roles, and
ideologies.
Cheryl Claassen, a participant in the Wedge Conference, organized a third pathbreaking conference in
1991 that nurtured archaeologies of gender in North
America. Claassen was inspired to promote wider engagement in discussions of archaeology of gender,
bringing together individuals who she knew had
presented papers on related themes at national and
regional meetings. The three conferences that Claassen
organized served as incubators for cross-regional connections that sustained a large number of researchers
interested in pursuing questions that were not central in
their individual regions. Notably, the first conference
included discussion of teaching courses on gender, or
with content about gender. Roundtable discussions
explored the question of how archaeologists were

ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY 1131

actually operationalizing their terms, defining gender

and using it. After its first few iterations, successor
conferences moved to different regions of the US,
providing a unique context for archaeologists, including large numbers of students, to meet with others of
like mind and develop their analyses in collaborative
settings. These conferences promoted a form of feminist practice through which new generations of scholars were able to gain a foothold, exploring every
possible material and all the ways that they could
imagine accessing gender in the past. Subsequent regional conferences dealing with the US Southwest, the
pre-Columbian Americas, and archaeology worldwide
included many scholars who first tried out their ideas
about gender in the context of one of the gender in
archaeology conferences.
The importance of such conferences as settings that
allowed practitioners to gain support for their ideas
was not limited to North America. In 1991, the first
of a series of Australian conferences on Women in
Archaeology was held. In addition to papers on
aspects of the place of women in past societies, this
conference included discussions of equity in careers of
women in archaeology. The Australian conferences
appear also to have had a more explicit commitment
to feminist analysis than was typical of the open
North American conferences. Several participants
in the Wedge Conference participated in the first
Australian conference. In Great Britain, questions of
gender were incorporated in a number of conferences
around the same time, although typically in Britain,
these conferences were not limited to discussions of
gender. An exception was the 1994 Gender and
Material Culture Conference at the University of
Exeter, which explicitly brought to the foreground
methodological concerns, asking how archaeologists
could use the material record to talk about gender
in the past. Like the other conferences taking place in
the early and mid-1990s, some of the participants in
the Exeter conference, which resulted in three edited
volumes, had previously participated in other conferences dedicated to exploring gender in archaeology.
It is arguable that without the extremely lively
conference scene of the time, gender would never
have taken off as a strong topic of research in archaeology, since at the same time as these conferences,
considerable resistance to work in this area was
expressed by mainstream archaeologists. Some archaeologists were concerned that the diversity of participation would lead to an incoherent field of study. In a
1997 review article in Annual Reviews in Archaeology, Margaret Conkey and Joan Gero expressed concerns about what they characterized as a cottage
industry of gender archaeology. For archaeologists

like this, the price of the openness of participation in

gender conferences was bracketing the fundamental
definitional questions Claassen raised at the first
conference she organized. The gain was a vast number of studies that proposed ways to assess the roles of
women, and less often men, in past societies around
the world, often relying on distributions of specific
artifacts used as signatures of men and women. Critical participants in archaeologies of gender worried
that premature attempts to create simple methods to
see men and women would reinforce modern ideas
of clearly divided separate spheres that actually are
products of relatively recent histories in the industrial
world. Some archaeologists, drawing on theoretical
work in contemporary gender studies, were concerned that archaeologists too quickly adopted definitions of sex (as precultural, biological given) and
gender (as the cultural interpretation of sex) that were
already critiqued by scholars in other fields. A very few
archaeologists of gender, informed by these external
theoretical sources, were trying to grapple with how
one would recognize a sex/gender system in which
biology was conceived as something other than a simple
dichotomy. Other participants in the early development
of archaeologies of gender noted that treating sex/gender systems as separable from other aspects of identity,
such as age, class, ethnicity, or race, was artificial, and
that it was especially problematic to assume that gender
was the most fundamental division in all societies.
These concerns still exist, and not all work on
archaeology of gender meets contemporary standards
of analysis in feminist and gender scholarship more
widely. Nonetheless, the advances fostered by the wide
participation in archaeologies of gender are clear. It
has now become common to find sessions dedicated
to gender at annual meetings of archaeological professional societies, and to find papers on gender
included in sessions on other topics. Archaeologies
of gender have made important contributions to
how archaeologists think about the past and to what
we think we know about it.

What We Know Today as a Result

of Archaeologies of Gender
Because archaeologies of gender began with the question where are the women? much of the literature
in this topical area has consisted of empirical contributions to knowledge of particular times and places.
Thus there are edited books and special issues of
journals on gender in Africa, Asia, and various regions
of the US, among others. Such edited volumes usually
adopt culture-historical or culture-evolutionary models, but explicitly include consideration of womens

1132 ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY

contributions in the past, often highlighting those

instances in which women were active agents
of change. Culture-evolutionary or culture-historical
approaches are also common in the still-rare monographs in the field. For example, in their 1999 study of
women in the ancient Americas, Karen Olson Bruhns
and Karen Stothert provided a culture-evolutionary
overview of womens place in economy and society in
the ancient Americas, as evident in the numerous case
studies they reviewed and synthesized. Sarah Nelsons
influential 1997 book Gender in Archaeology: Analyzing Power and Prestige, while organized around
a critique of androcentrism in archaeology itself,
demonstrates the proposed alternative approach
through a global cultural evolutionary narrative that
asks what womens contributions were at various
points in human history around the world. Studies
such as these draw needed attention to the absence
or assumed passivity of women as social actors in
other archaeological accounts of cultural evolution.
Other works take the study of gender as a means
to propose new methodological perspectives. One
long-term debate, both within and outside archaeologies of gender, was whether there should be methods
specific to the study of gender, and if so, what these
methods were. Reduced to its basic, this is the
question of how archaeologists can see women (and
by implication, men) in the past. Archaeologists of
gender in fact have exploited the entire existing
archaeological toolkit in pursuit of evidence of differential treatment of people in the past along lines of
sex, and of differences in the experiences and activities
of people of different socially recognized genders. The
entire suite of distributional analyses used in household archaeology, for example, has been marshaled to
support identification of gendered spaces and divisions
of labor along the lines of gender in places as widely
separated as Europe and Mesoamerica.
Studies of gender have not been limited to the smallscale settings where normative models of gender relations derived from late twentieth-century ideologies
associating women with a private, domestic sphere
lead archaeologists to expect to see women. Significant studies of political economy of states and of prestate societies asked the question, what were the
political and economic roles of women in these societies? The answers proposed showed that women were
significant political actors even in complex societies
where official political roles were reserved for men,
particularly when womens roles in production for
the state are included. In Elizabeth Brumfiels articles
on Aztec society, she demonstrates that household
labor was reorganized with the development of the
state in ways that relate to intensification of demand
for cloth produced by women in domestic contexts.

As she and others have noted, the importance of cloth

in the Aztec economy created opportunities for
women to assert special status in both the household
and state. Brumfiels writing has been extremely
influential, making her 1992 article in American
Anthropologist the secondmost cited journal article
on gender in archaeology, after the 1984 paper by
Conkey and Spector.
Archaeologists have amply demonstrated that a
public/domestic dichotomy cannot be projected into
the past without losing much of the picture of ancient
political economy. As Julia Hendon argued in a 1996
article in Annual Reviews in Anthropology, which is
among the top ten cited articles on gender and archaeology, political and economic action begins in the
household. Archaeologists of the more recent past
have posed direct challenges to the assumption of
a timeless feminine domestic sphere by tracing how
ideologies of female domesticity were built up over
the course of the nineteenth century. This cult of
domesticity was promulgated through the use of
material culture recovered in archaeological research
such as serving wares and decorative objects. Historical archaeologists have documented the continued
engagements of women as laborers outside this emerging domestic sphere in a wide range of historic settings,
from plantations where enslaved African women
reproduced social and cultural relations even under
the most oppressive conditions, to the brothels of
urban centers where sex trade was practiced, and
the prisons, mining settlements, and camps of striking
laborers typical of modern industrial societies.
Two analytical approaches come closest to being
core methods of gender archaeology, mortuary analysis and analysis of art. Burials have repeatedly
figured as possible sites were the relations between
biological sex and cultural statuses could potentially
be clarified. Mortuary and bioarchaeological studies
of human remains have documented telling distinctions in treatment of the dead along lines of sex or
inferred social gender identities, including differences
in nutrition, in burial orientation, and in materials
buried with the dead (see Bioarchaeology; Individual,
Archaeology of in Prehistory). Drawing on ethnographic documentation, Sandra Hollimon has pursued a particularly careful set of explorations of the
possibility to identify third genders in Chumash cemeteries, given the known presence and frequency of
such statuses in historic Chumash communities. Drawing on sophisticated biocultural understandings of
sex itself as encompassing variations beyond normative male and female, Rebecca Storey has proposed
that an individual burial at Classic Maya Copan
may have been intersexed, and recognized socially as
a different gender.

ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY 1133

Scholars have examined how men, women, and

additional genders were represented in ancient societies using approaches common to study of symbolism
and ideology in visual media (see Interpretive Art and
Archaeology). Some of the most abundant, and earliest, work of this kind was accomplished in Classical,
Egyptian, and Mesopotamian archaeology by art historians. Typically, studies began by identifying signifiers of male and female genders, sometimes explicitly
considering the possible existence of alternative genders. Bodily features, such as breasts, genitalia, facial
hair, waist-to-hip ratios, and musculature are often
used to identify males and females. Depictions of
anthropomorphic forms in rock art, in areas as distant as Norway and South Africa, have been the focus
of such studies, identifying different forms of bodily
masculinity as well as differences between males and
females (see Rock Art). Ann Cyphers proposed that
figurines from Chalcatzingo, Mexico, recorded different stages in the female life course, including specific developments related to stages of pregnancy,
providing a parallel expansion of feminities. Costume
and modifications of the body, including sex-specific
hair treatments and body ornaments, are common
secondary attributes identified in such studies of gender in visual imagery. In some studies, the distributions in burials of ornaments of the kinds depicted in
sex-specific imagery are considered as a second line of
evidence to assess the inferred gender differences.
Among the most explicitly theoretical discussions
of gendered visual representations are the many contributions to debates concerning the meanings of
Paleolithic and Neolithic figurines of Europe and
the Near East (see Asia, West: Archaeology of the
Near East: The Levant; Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures; Europe: Neolithic).
Exaggerated physical features on some of these figurines have been identified as evidence of fertility cults
in which womens bodies were valued as symbols of
broader fecundity, as sexualized toys intended for
men, as self-portraiture of pregnant women, and as
ambiguous images that sometimes clearly conflate
suggestions of male genitalia with apparent female
bodies. A broadly debated question in figurine studies
worldwide is whether the apparent predominance
of female representations indicates that the makers
of these small-scale human images were normally
women. Joyce Marcus has developed a particularly
strong argument in which she links the dominance of
female images in early figurines in Oaxaca, and their
distribution in household contexts, to female veneration of female ancestors.
None of these innovative studies employed methods uniquely developed for finding gender in the past.
Together, they demonstrate that no method available

to archaeologists cannot be pressed into service in an

archaeology of gender. As with other archaeological
topics, a common strategy is to draw on multiple lines
of evidence to strengthen arguments.
The fact that gender archaeology has no specific
unique methods does not imply that archaeologies of
gender have not been sources of archaeological innovation. The archaeology of gender has involved critical
reassessment of a core archaeological methodology,
ethnographic analogy. As the social anthropologist
Henrietta Moore has noted, most of the studies produced by early ethnographers assumed a correspondence between sex and gender, a universal dominance
of males in the public, political sphere, and a more
limited and passive position of women. Reliance on
informants who were usually male means that most
ethnographies do not represent any contestation of
gender ideologies. Specialists in gender have addressed
this weakness in the main source of interpretive models
for all archaeology, including conducting new ethnographic research attentive to the complexity of gender
among hunter-gatherers and small-scale societies
where economic, political, and social relations could
be reexamined with gender and archaeology in mind.
Archaeological reevaluations of ethnographic sources
have resulted in analyses of the exercise of authority
and control by women obscured by androcentric analyses of state-level societies, like those of the Classic
Maya or Aztecs. Ethnographically informed studies of
native North American hunter-gatherers, like those
of Hetty Brumbach and Robert Jarvenpa, show how
parties that ranged out from home bases to pursue,
process, and bring back game were constituted of
men and women recruited along lines of age rather
than by parties segregated by sex. Margaret Conkey,
writing about the hunter-gatherers of the European
Paleolithic, suggested that when separate bands came
together at seasonal gathering places, multiple dimensions of identity including but not limited to sex
would have been brought to the foreground as band
members navigated complex social relationships.
These studies suggest strongly that other dimensions
of difference within society, such as age or skill, may
often have been more significant bases for distinctions
within society than sex/gender. These studies have
shifted focus from gender identity (assumed to be congruent with sexual identity) to sex/gender difference,
which can be much more fluid and multidimensional.
Archaeologists working on questions of gender
have also developed broader critiques of androcentric
assumptions taken for granted by archaeologists. The
fact that archaeologies of gender assumed prominence at a time when women were moving into the
field in unprecedented numbers is undoubtedly significant. Androcentrism may have been more obvious

1134 ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY

to women archaeologists because it did not ring

true with their own experiences. For example, male
viewing perspective and modern sexual orientations
projected into the past led generations of archaeologists
to interpret female figures as sexual imagery. Women,
also among those who viewed and possibly used such
objects in the past, would not necessarily have shared
the same sexualization of the female body. Arguments
like those of Ann Cyphers that figurines showing
women in different stages of pregnancy were made
and used in rites of passage during a female life course
are based on a notably different experiential perspective from the one that saw these same objects as
intended for male viewing.
A second example of the critical interrogation of
androcentric assumptions are innovative discussions
of the possible roles of women in early plant cultivation and pottery production. Both arguments propose
that women would have been agents of change due
to their detailed and intimate knowledge of the materials being manipulated, as the assumed principal
participants in food preparation. In both cases,
archaeologists propose that human beings in general,
and women in particular, may have been more active
in fostering change than in traditional models. This
shift to a more active view of human intervention,
based on critically examining the assumed passivity
of women that was an accepted part of earlier archaeological models, has broader significance.
The methodological innovations of archaeologies
of gender are not limited to critiques of previous
approaches. While there is no specific method for
detecting women (or men) in the past, participants
in archaeology of gender have pursued the core question of when and how one can talk about gender
difference in sophisticated ways. An increasing number of archaeologists have asked specifically how we
might study gender in the past if we did not begin by
projecting a modern two-sex/two-gender model that
encourages the interpretation of dichotomous distributions as evidence of gender segregation. Bioarchaeologists have been particularly important participants in
this process. Early on, archaeologies of gender often
began with sexed burials to try to arrive at diagnostic
patterns associated with male or female identity.
The assumed simple correspondence model, though,
ignores both the actual continuity of distribution of
biological characteristics such as body size, and the
presence in biological populations, even if at a low
frequency, of persons whose chromosomal sexual
identity is neither normative male nor normative
female. Bioarchaeologists, with their greater understanding of both the procedures of sex assignment in
analysis and of real biological variation, have been

open to identifying possible intersexed individuals.

Working with ethnographic models, bioarchaeologists have been the first to ask how people whose
gender identity was neither normative male nor normative female, so-called third or fourth genders,
would appear in mortuary populations where they
were known to have existed, such as in native North
American societies.
Other archaeologists inspired by contemporary
studies of gender as a product of specific social practices have turned to the archaeological record to examine how different societies in the past went about
producing the experiences of embodied personhood
that are gender. If gender is not simply a cultural
recognition of innate dichotomous sexual differences,
then sex/gender systems were outcomes of experiences
beginning in childhood and continuing throughout
life, reinforced by everyday habits of work, by rituals
of the life cycle, and by the representation of normative sex/gender in discourses, some of them recorded
in permanent visual and textual forms. These analyses have led far beyond questions of sex/gender
alone, to explicit consideration of sexuality and the
nature of personal experience of embodiment in
the past. These archaeological discussions lead far
from the initial roots of archaeologies of gender in a
quest to find the women missing from most accounts
of the past.

Future Directions
Archaeology is immeasurably enriched by work that
replaces unexamined generalized people with populations of diverse, changing persons. It is thus important that research on gender does not become a form
of separate analysis that is seen as easy to ignore
because it is assumed to have no consequences for
broader analyses. The solution does not lie in banishing explicit critical theoretical perspectives from
archaeology of gender. Gender needs to be mainstream, but not at the cost of abandoning critical
lessons that archaeologies of gender have shown
about archaeological navete about models that
presume all people are interchangeable, or that genetically female persons in the past naturally did housework and were tethered to homesites by childbirth and
childrearing.
We need to follow the examples of pioneers who
use their analyses of gender to critique commonly
accepted models. For example, Elizabeth Brumfiel
insists on the consequences of taking gender into
account for the study of the Aztec state. The consequences are not solely the recognition of political
status of some women, the identification of the

ENGENDERED ARCHAEOLOGY 1135

exceptional queens of antiquity, now amply documented for a wide range of societies. They go to the
heart of the way domestic economies and political
economies are interconnected. They should transform our notions of what counts as socially significant craftwork. The broader scope of sex/gender
positions archaeologists of gender have examined,
including celibate men and women, third sexes, hypermasculine men and their less aggressive counterparts,
and males and females pursuing same-sex desire must
become part of mainstream models of ancient societies
or we risk perpetuating unreal, unidimensional views
of other times and places.
Archaeologists studying gender also need to bring
their work to the attention of specialists in other
fields, historians, ethnographers, and researchers on
cultural studies, who still rarely use the more sophisticated work of contemporary archaeologists in their
studies, referring instead to the speculative history of
an earlier generation. The human past is a source of
far more varied examples of ways people lived their
lives as differently sexed persons than any society
recorded in ethnography or documentary history.
Some of the past human experiences did not survive
into the historical period, notably the ways of life of
hunter-gatherers of the deep past. Other human
experiences may be more evident in the material
traces of everyday life than in the selective record of
politically motivated textual records. For all periods,
even the well-documented recent past of the capitalist
world, archaeology provides alternative lines of evidence that often demonstrate practices at odds with
ideologies, whether those of populations underrepresented in texts or those of people whose actions
departed from the expressed norms. It is incumbent
on archaeologists to make our understandings of the
complex ways that spatial features and portable
objects helped shape human sex/gender systems
more accessible to other scholars, and to the wider
public.
To accomplish all of these goals, archaeologists
interested in gender can no longer assume a simple
dichotomous model of sex, nor a correspondence of
sex with gender. In each individual social setting, we
need to consider how physical variability, including
sex, was subject to shaping, evaluation, and representation. We need to consider the political dimensions
of differential experiences of people in the past
grounded in sex and simultaneously in other aspects
of personhood. We need to take seriously the idea that
sexual being was always related to experiences of
desire and pleasure that were not inconsequential
parts of human experience. At the same time, we

need to treat the multiple actors in our past settings

as agents of economic and social action that might
have shaped the understandings of sex and gender as
much as they were shaped by them. We need to do
all this in the clear realization that archaeologies of
personhood are always politically charged in the present, in the expectation of conservative backlash and
resistance, and with the clear understanding that
what we say will matter in the lives of people in the
present, if only because the past is so often used to
justify contemporary social relations. This may seem
daunting, but it should seem exciting: asking questions that matter with data that no other field can
provide is what will continue to infuse archaeologies
of gender with energy.
See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The
Levant; Bioarchaeology; Craft Specialization; Enslavement, Archaeology of; Ethnicity; Europe: Neolithic;
Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures;
Evolutionary Archaeology; Food and Feasting, Social
and Political Aspects; Household Archaeology; Identity and Power; Individual, Archaeology of in Prehistory;
Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Philosophy of
Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Politics
of Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Rock Art.

Further Reading
Balme J and Beck W (eds.) (1995) Research Papers in Archaeology
and Natural History, No. 26: Gendered Archaeology: The Second Australian Women in Archaeology Conference. Canberra:
ANH Publications.
Claassen C (ed.) (1992) Monographs in World Archaeology,
No. 11: Exploring Gender through Archaeology: Selected
Papers from the 1991 Boone Conference. Madison, WI: Prehistory Press.
Conkey MW and Gero J (eds.) (1991) Engendering Archaeology:
Women and Prehistory. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
Donald M and Hurcombe L (eds.) (2000) Gender and Material
Culture in Archaeological Perspective. New York: St. Martins
Press.
Gilchrist R (1994) Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology
of Religious Women. London: Routledge.
Nelson S (1997) Gender in Archaeology: Analyzing Power and
Prestige. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
Nelson S (ed.) (2006) Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Lanham,
MD: AltaMira.
Pyburn KA (ed.) (2004) Ungendering Civilization. New York:
Routledge.
Schmidt RA and Barbara LV (2000) Archaeologies of Sexuality.
New York: Routledge.
Walde D and Willows ND (1991) The Archaeology of Gender:
Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Conference of
the Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary.
Calgary: University of Calgary Archaeological Association.

1136 ENSLAVEMENT, ARCHAEOLOGY OF

ENSLAVEMENT, ARCHAEOLOGY OF
Kofi Agorsah, Portland State University, Portland,
OR, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
African Diaspora African people and culture away from the
continent of Africa, for example, African Diaspora in the
Caribbean.
Kormantse The name of a fishing village on the coast of Ghana
from which the first consignment of slaves was shipped by the
British; a term for describing slaves imported from the Gold
Coast (Ghana) who either passed through that port or from the
West African region, usually identifying Akan (Asante) cultural
practices.
Maroons The enslaved, who escaped from bondage, freed
themselves and founded their own communities in inaccessible
parts of their respective territories; runaway slaves.
Maroon society Group(s) of runaway communities that grew
out of runaways in colonial times.
marronage The act of running away and harassment of the
plantation.
plantocracy Plantation class or proprietors.

In many parts of Africa, use of the terms slave,

slavery, slave trade, and enslavement could lead
to complete distortion of history, culture, and varied
perceptions unless the specific term is qualified and
explained in relation to the specific circumstance,
time, and place. While in the African sense, being a
slave merely connotes a person of low social status
among communalistic and even feudalistic systems
with tendencies toward patronage and a source of
prestige, sexual gratification, and rewarded domestic
labor, the western paradigm has been purely capitalistic, depicting downright human degradation and racism with financial gain as the main objective. This
non-African connotation is crystallized in what could
be described as powerless animal-status unpaid jobbing gang and facilitated by the trans-Atlantic slave
trade. Fuller discussions of the differences in these
terms and the conditions in Africa by many writers
reveal their implications for our approaches in archaeological interpretations of the evidence of the cultural
formation and transformations created by the encounter of African and other cultures in the Americas.
Edward Long, an eighteenth-century planter and
lawyer, clearly described enslaved Africans as commodity. . .Negroes . . . fit objects of purchase and sale,
transferable like any other goods or chattels. The
temple and domestic serfs of Ancient Egypt and
the ancient world, including the Near East, Asia
Minor, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, particularly

during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom until about

500 BC were considered the semifree labor forces, suggesting the African concept of slavery system, of
course, with certain minor differences. In those areas,
as in Africa, the enslaved were not stripped of their
social identity, nor denied opportunity to forge new
bonds of kinship through marriage and alliance, or
considered as mere property.
Understanding of the role and place of the slavery
system depended on the cultural attitude toward it
and each attitude impacts approaches used in explaining cultural values in history. However, the historical
interpretation and cultural attitude of the transAtlantic slave trade that led to the creation of the
concept of the African Diaspora appears to have overwhelmed consideration of slavery systems in times,
places, and periods preceding it. In fact, the earliest
formation of the African Diaspora could date back
to the first time when our human ancestors left Africa
about a million years ago although one cannot make
any connection with the Atlantic slavery system. This
adds a major challenge to archaeological reconstruction and interpretation of the history of enslavement
as it relates to Africa and African culture abroad.
Much of the lack of consensus and diversity of
approaches in archaeological analysis and interpretations that crystallized in the 1970s in the Americas can
also be identified in uncertainties and Eurocentrism
in archaeological inquiry and interpretations of the
African past. Additionally, longstanding issues regarding chronology, methodology, African identity, and
cultural continuities remain unresolved. These problems are duplicated in the African continent itself,
where archaeological research has failed to address
the ancient and traditional slavery system on which
the Atlantic slave trade capitalized. Directed mainly
toward reconstructing the lifestyles of the plantocracy, archaeology of slavery has often been limited to
identification of architectural and plantation layout,
associated export/import items such as arms and
ammunition, pharmaceutical, and other cash commodities, seriously ignoring the lifestyle and conditions of
enslaved groups. In 1985, Theresa Singleton of Syracuse University, writing on Archaeology of the African
Diaspora, made a statement which confirms that
archaeological endeavors were biased toward the
interpretation of planter lifestyles. Evidence is geographically, thematically, and unevenly distributed,
leaving gaps, lacking objectivity in interpretation, and
seriously plagued by loose patterns in the use of cryptic,
vague, or unclear archaeological jargon.

ENSLAVEMENT, ARCHAEOLOGY OF 1137

Toward the end of the last century, many archaeological endeavors directed toward life of the enslaved
in Jamaica began to change the situation. The
Maroon site of Nanny Town and Port Royal referred
to as the wickedest colonial city in the Caribbean
and many more sites in Antigua, Barbados, Curacao,
Montserrat, Guadeloupe, and the Bahamas were
explored. Bio-anthropological analysis of skeletal
remains of enslaved African in colonial Suriname
by a Mohammed Khudabux broke new grounds in
the study of colonial slavery systems. The Suriname
data addresses, ethnic identity, patterns of physical
changes, diet, health, and other conditions of forced
slave adaptation on plantations. The African Burial
Ground project of New York directed by Michael
Blakey, a bio-anthropologist of College of William
and Mary, though more recent, continues to be a
major impact on the archaeology of slavery in the
Americas. In a comprehensive review, William Keegan
of University of Florida clearly and rightly confirmed
that archaeology of the African Diaspora, including
archeology of slavery, was riding the wave of exponential curve; this was illustrated by a two-volume
Bibliography of Caribbean Archaeology he and
others edited and also demonstrated by the Society
for Historical Archaeology in one of its Columbian
Quincentenary series edited by Theresa Singleton and
Mark Bograd. However, research efforts concerning
slavery in the African Diaspora continued to be restricted to plantation studies and dealing with the
planter class activities referring only generally to
the enslaved. Many more scholars, including archaeologists and historians were increasingly engaged
with issues of material culture of the enslaved, building upon and correcting, where necessary, biased
studies and interpretations.
The establishment of a teaching and research archaeology program at the University of the West Indies in
Jamaica in 1987 increased hope and enthusiasm for
joint collaborative field schools, which generated greater awareness. For the first time, a major archaeological
project on the heritage of Maroon societies was
initiated. The resulting discoveries of Amerindian
figurines (Figure 1) and Spanish coins (Figure 2) at the
site of Nanny Town in Jamaica, for example, suggested
that the natives, who ran away into the hills of Jamaica,
may have been the first Maroons to be later followed by
the African runaways. The evidence further suggests
early coexistence of both groups and formation of
defense alliances against the colonial power. These
early finds overturned the claim by many historians
that the natives on the island had all been exterminated
prior to the arrival of the English. Developments
of the last decade may be attributed to the cultural
awareness that followed far-reaching constitutional

Figure 1 Terracotta figurines, Nanny Town, Jamaica.

Figure 2 Spanish coin (pieces-of-eight), Nanny Town, Jamaica.

1138 ENSLAVEMENT, ARCHAEOLOGY OF

Govinden, and Chowdhury began to receive much

attention, following the pattern developed in the
Caribbean and South America. Merrick Posnansky,
professor emeritus, University of California, Los
Angeles, provides summary discussions of the implications of these endeavors in both Africa and the
African Diaspora, emphasizing the need for more
attention to the multidisciplinary approaches and
closer examination of transformations created by the
encounter of cultures in the African Diaspora. But
the question remains about how much more we now
know than before, how much more we need to know
about the African experience in the Diaspora, and
which direction should archaeology go in the coming
millennium?

and educational changes, emergence and successes of

resistance movements, and transformations of the previous decades, compounded by associated nationalistic
activities and the achievement of independence by
many nations in Africa and the African Diaspora. Archaeology of resistance culture became recognized as a
central factor in understanding slavery in the New
World. The awareness propelled many countries in
the Caribbean and the Americas into accepting the
historical links more seriously than before. However,
lack of qualified archaeologists, restrictive funding
sources, and the dearth of Africanist and local scholars
with archaeological interest posed serious challenges
(see Africa, Historical Archaeology).
In Africa itself, the main archaeological studies
linking the African Diaspora related to the colonial
trade forts and castles built along the West and
East African coasts and the wealthy coastal gold-rich
kingdoms such as Efutu in the Gold Coast (Ghana).
Archaeological research spread into the general West
African region, including the colonial Senegambian
area, the Bassar area of Togo and the coastal Benin,
Cameroon and adjoining areas, the East African
coast, including what has been referred to as the
Swahili coast, and the Indian Ocean and Polynesian
region. Studies of Maroons and resistance culture in
Mauritius and South Africa by Peerthum, Carter,

Slavery Factor in Africa

West and Central Africa contributed large numbers
of enslaved Africans to the trans-Atlantic trade. Even
before Columbus visit to the New World and European
migrations that followed in search of greener pastures,
African slaves had been taken to Spain and Portugal
from northern Africa, consequently becoming a major
factor in the trade that drove Europe and the Americas
to prosperity. The development of plantations in the
mid-fifteenth century on the West African coast was

AKANNY States (or ethnic groups) known to Dutch

GHANA

Forts
Lodges

IVORY
COAST

A
AK

Y
NN

AQ
QUIFORO

R P
re

M
O

N
l
Ax
i

Figure 3 Location of Kormantse, Ghana.

tri

BC

NA

GR

RA

UIE OE
OQ ONN BY
B ATE
L

T ACCRA
EA
O
Ac su
cra

UA

AG

TU
MANY
M
C
O
Mo orm
r
an
Elm Cab i
tin
ina o C
ors
Sh
am
a
C

D
A

E
Ju
m
or
ee

BI

Adapted from Agorsah 1994,184

Bu

YN

JA

TA

BU

NT

SA
FE

(AH)AN

SONQ
FA

Dye

UAY

ABR

ATY

U
AMB

RUYCHAVER

MB
UA

E
BO

Location of Kormantse in the 1650s

ENSLAVEMENT, ARCHAEOLOGY OF 1139

eventually switched to the Caribbean and the Americas

in a confusing trade that makes tracing of the origin
of the enslaved Africans increasingly difficult and
elusive. Identifying cultural transfers, the nature of the
pre-existing cultural traits among groups that served as
the carriers of the original substantive aspects of the
cultures, and the reconstruction of their formation and
transformation processes became more difficult. Meanwhile, the early approaches designed to recover artifacts
and architectural data only for the interpretation of
planter lifestyles had also become obsolete. For example, the uncritical use of such terms as Kormantse, also
written in various forms (Cormantyne, Kramanti, etc.)
to describe groups of enslaved people passing through
the then Gold Coast port of that name in West Africa
(Figure 3) continued to plague the archeological literature and discourse. But other gains have been made.
Explaining burial and mortuary practices among
different African societies as a means of deriving
models that would help reconstruct life experiences
of the enslaved in the African Diaspora was beginning
to be appreciated. The bio-anthropology laboratory
at Howard University embarked on an ambitious
examination of skeletal remains of the African Burial
Ground in Manhattan, New York bringing hope of
reconstruction of the identities and past experiences
of the enslaved. Similarly, studies relating to settlements of Maroons and free slaves, houses, yards or
compounds, diet, diseases, physical effects of slave
labor in Jamaica, Bahamas, and other Caribbean
areas as targets of archaeological research which
followed the 1990s, continued to yield lots of good
results. Regardless of all these developments and
advances in approaches toward explaining slavery in
Africa and its relations to the Atlantic slave trade, much
remains to be done. Kwaku Senah, an African historian in Trinidad and Tobago, who has researched
Slavery from the African perspective, in a 2005 article
notes that the main problem might be that the term
slavery has acquired an expanded meaning to serve a
vast number of purposes and blames it partly on
the languages in which the term is discussed. Or is it
to be concluded that slavery cannot be identified
through archaeological efforts alone?

See also: Africa, Historical Archaeology; Africa, West:

Villages, Cities, and States; Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in Mexico; Americas, North: Historical
Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South:
Historical Archaeology.

Further Reading
Agorsah EK (1994) Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe
Press.
Agorsah EK and Child GT (2005) Africa and the African Diaspora:
Cultural Adaptation and Resistance. New York: Authorhouse.
Armstrong DG (1990) The Old Village and the Great House: An
Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation. St. Anns Bay Jamaica, Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Blakey ML (1989) American nationality and ethnicity in the depicted
politics of the Past. In: Gathercole P and Lowenthal D (eds.) One
World Archaeology, 12, pp. 4650. London: Routledge.
Farnsworth P and Wilkie L (1996) The influence of trade on
Bahamian slave culture. Historical Archaeology 30(4): 123.
Goucher CL (1993) African metallurgy the Atlantic world. African
Archaeology Review 11: 197215.
Higman BW (1988) The archaeology of slavery. Slavery and abolition. Journal of Comparative Studies 9(1): 8592.
Horton J and Horton EL (2005) Slavery and the Making of America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Keegan WF (1994) West Indian archaeology. 1. Overview and
foragers. Journal of Archaeological Research 2(3): 255284.
Keegan W, Stokes AV, and Newson LA (1990) Bibliography of
Caribbean Archaeology, 2 Vols. Bullen Research Library.
Gainesville: University of Florida.
Long E (1772) Candid Reflections upon the Judgment lately
Awarded by the Court of the Kings Bench in Westminster-Hall
on What is Commonly Called The Negroe-Cause . . . By a Planter.
London: T. Lowndes.
Mintz S (1974) Caribbean Transformations. Chicago: Aldine
Publications.
Patterson HO (1969) The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the
Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave in Jamaica.
New Jersey, Rutherford: Africa World Press.
Posnansky M (1982) African archaeology comes of age. World
Archaeology 13: 345358.
Posnansky M (1984) Towards an archaeology of Black Diaspora.
Journal Black Studies 15(2): 195205.
Senah EK (2005) Explicating the primary nexus: Slavery in Africa
and the African Diaspora. In: Agorsah EK and Childs T (eds.)
Africa and the African Diaspora, pp. 204222. New York:
Authorhouse.
Singleton T (1985) The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation.
Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

1140 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT

AND THE LAW
Thomas F King, SWCA Environmental Consultants
Silver Spring, MD, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
agency A unit of government, whether local, provincial/state/
regional, national, or international for example, the Agency for
International Development; the Environmental Protection
Agency. Synonyms include bureau, ministry, department,
division, office.
data recovery Archaeological excavations or other research
performed to recover or rescue information from destruction.
Often performed as a form of impact mitigation.
environment Variously defined, but generally refers to
everything around us, notably the natural environment (trees,
rocks, streams, animals, plants, mountains, landscapes) and the
built environment (houses, cities, neighborhoods, villages,
parks), including the social, cultural, and esthetic values attached
to them by human society. Also include less tangible
surroundings such as social institutions, beliefs, and expressive
arts, at least to the extent these are somehow related to the
tangible environment.
environmental impact analysis Study of a projects or
programs potential impacts on the environment.
mitigation Eliminating, reducing, ameliorating, or
compensating for damage to or destruction of something for
example, redesigning a project to avoid destroying an
archaeological site, or to destroy less of it than might otherwise
be the case; excavating a site in advance of its destruction;
funding the preservation of one site to mitigate the effect of
destroying another.
program (programme) A complex of activities and/or planned
actions designed to accomplish some purpose for example,
a citys housing program, or a regional irrigation program.
Sometimes referred to as a scheme.
project A specific action someone proposes to
undertake for example, a motorway, a reservoir, a military
exercise, an agricultural scheme, a housing development, a
sewerage system.

What is Environmental Impact

Assessment and What Does It
Have to Do with Archaeology?
Most archaeological research in the early twenty-first
century is not done in the interests of learning about
the past for its own sake. Nor is it done in order to
obtain information and materials for public interpretation in museums, parks, and educational institutions. Most archaeological research today is done,
and most archaeologists are employed, in connection
with some kind of environmental impact assessment.
As the words suggest, environmental impact assessment (EIA) is done to assess what impacts some

action, activity, or program will have on the environment. It is done as a result of laws enacted in the
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s by virtually all developed
nations and many developing ones, and because of
policies adopted by international funding bodies like
the World Bank and the US Agency for International
Development (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage
Legislation). The basic idea behind EIA is look before you leap determine what damage a project or
program will do to the environment before deciding
whether and how to carry it forward. National EIA
laws and international instruments cause studies to be
done of a proposed projects environmental impacts,
so that these impacts can be weighed and balanced
together with the projects perceived benefits in reaching a decision about funding or permitting it.
Words like environment and impact can have
different meanings for different people, and the ways
such terms are expressed and understood can vary
between cultures. Generally, however, the environment is understood by EIA practitioners to include
both the natural world and the built environment of
cities and towns. Sometimes the word is used rather
exclusively to embrace only the tangible aspects of the
environment plants, animals, soil, water, buildings,
sites. In other cases things that are not so tangible are
also recognized as parts of the environment such as
the social and cultural institutions involved in human
use of plants, animals, or water, and the feelings that
people have for places of awe, of reverence, of revulsion, and so on. Impacts, in most EIA systems, include both direct and indirect impacts: impacts that
result immediately from an action at or near the place
the action happens, and impacts that occur at a distance in space or time. Archaeological sites are usually
understood to be parts of the environment, and their
disturbance is taken to be an environmental impact.
It should be noted that environmental engineers that
is, engineers who work on control and correction of
environmental pollution tend to think of the environment as limited that which can be polluted basically
air, water, and soil, and regard impacts as primarily
involving the pollution of such media.
A well-done EIA examines all aspects of the environment that may be altered by a project, be it a
highway, a railroad or pipeline, a dam and reservoir,
a new urban development, an agricultural scheme, or
a port facility. The analysis is performed by an interdisciplinary team of scientists, social scientists, and
other specialists, often organized by a consulting

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW 1141

firm engaged either by a project proponent or by a

government agency or ministry responsible for funding, permitting, or overseeing the proposed project.
Among the aspects of the environment that are often
examined are the affected areas archaeological sites,
along with its historic buildings, cultural landscapes
and urban areas, the traditional lifeways of its people,
and other cultural characteristics.
In the United States, where the practice of EIA is
well developed although not always very well done,
it has been reliably estimated by a major US
firm, SWCA Environmental Consultants, that about
US$300400 million is spent every year on EIA-based
archaeology. This is an enormous amount of money
relative to what comes from traditional research
funding sources like foundations and academic institutions. A similar level of EIA-based archaeology is
carried on in the European Union, Japan, and other
nations, although in some countries most of the work
is conducted by cultural ministries and other governmental organizations rather than by the private consulting firms that dominate the field in the US. Most
archaeologists completing graduate degrees today
can expect to spend at least part of their careers in
EIA-related work. The industry has also generated
many jobs for people without advanced degrees.
Many archaeologists support themselves in graduate
school in such jobs, and some make their careers in
EIA-related work without having to complete a graduate education.

In many countries, and in the implementation of

some international standards and agreements, EIA
archaeology is regarded as part of an interdisciplinary
professional practice called cultural heritage, heritage resource management, historic preservation,
or cultural resource management (Figure 1; see
Goals of Archaeology, Overview). This field of practice brings together specialists in such fields as archaeology, cultural and social anthropology, history, and
architectural history to work toward ensuring the
preservation and wise use of the cultural environment, as variously defined. Precisely which aspects
of that environment are emphasized varies from
nation to nation; some national traditions give priority to protection of the built environment of architecture and landscape architecture; others give more
stress to traditional ways of life, uses of the natural
environment, or intellectual property. Archaeology
plays a large role in some such interdisciplinary management programs, a minor role in others, but to
the extent a cultural heritage program emphasizes
EIA work, archaeologists are deeply involved in the
assessment process.

Conducting EIA Archaeology

Ideally, EIA is initiated very early in the process of
planning a project, when it is possible to explore
multiple alternative ways of fulfilling a given need
(e.g., the need for safe transportation between city A

Figure 1 EIA archaeology assesses and deals with the impacts of modern developments like railroads, highways, reservoirs and
housing on archaeological sites. Photo by the author.

1142 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW

and city B, or the need for irrigation water in Agricultural Zone X). Unfortunately, EIA is sometimes
delayed until later in planning sometimes so late
that it becomes effectively meaningless, because key
decisions have been made and alternatives have been
foreclosed. When the system is working properly,
however, the EIA begins when the project and its
alternatives have been only roughly sketched out. At
this early stage, the government agencies or other
parties responsible for the EIA undertake scoping to
determine what types of analysis to perform. Scoping
involves establishing the geographic areas within
which studies of the environment will be undertaken
the lands through which a highway or railroad is
planned, for example, or the valley that may be
flooded by a reservoir or turned over by mining. It
also includes doing background research to determine
what is already known about such areas and about
the impacts of the kind of project under study, and
consultation with government agencies, experts, and
stakeholders. The result is a plan and schedule for
the EIA research, and the selection of study team
members.
Often scoping reveals that archaeological sites
may be affected by the proposed action perhaps
flooded, bulldozed, blown up, or more subtly damaged through changes in land use, increased public
access to sensitive areas, and similar factors. Sometimes background research indicates that important
archaeological sites are known or suspected in the

area; in other cases there may be no data on archaeology at all, or such data as do exist may be unreliable, making further study necessary. There may also
be the potential for impacts on places and other
resources that are not strictly archaeological but are
culturally or historically important perhaps living
communities, important subsistence resources, or
areas regarded by local people as having spiritual
significance. Determining how these places may be
affected often requires research by historians, architects, landscape specialists, or anthropologists, as
well as careful discussions with local people. Other
research commonly done as part of EIA includes
studies of the areas geography, ecology, water and
air quality, water resources, sociology, and economy.
Where the possibility exists that archaeological
resources will be damaged or destroyed, archaeological surveys are typically conducted in coordination
with the other environmental studies, although the
coordination, unfortunately, is not always perfect.
Such a survey is similar to what an archaeologist
might do for pure research purposes (Figure 2), but
its location is dictated by where project effects may
occur, and the archaeologist in charge of the work is
not free to focus only on the kinds of sites and data in
which he or she is interested. Instead, an effort must
be made to understand the full nature of the archaeological record that may be destroyed or altered by the
project. This requirement to address areas and sites
that archaeologists might not choose to examine if

Figure 2 EIA archaeology involves a great deal of field survey and documentation Photo by the author.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW 1143

left to their own devices has resulted in some interesting expansions of archaeologys scope. We have found
ourselves examining the archaeological leavings of
World War II, for example, the fields and farmsteads
of the early twentieth century, and many a nineteenthor early twentieth-century urban neighborhood. We
have also paid more attention to small, relatively
unimpressive sites than we might have otherwise,
since they may be all we find and they are subject to
destruction (Figure 3).
Survey is typically supervised by professional archaeologists, but may be carried out by students, local
people, or itinerant archaeological survey specialists.
It usually includes further background research, consultation with local residents, and controlled fieldwork walking, driving, or otherwise going over the
land surface looking at it carefully, and sometimes conducting test excavations. It may also require aerial or
satellite imaging, underwater remote sensing using
side-scan sonar and other exploratory techniques, and
studies of the areas geomorphology how the landscape has developed and been transformed through
time. In urban areas it may require deep excavations
in and around standing or recently demolished buildings. The fieldwork is followed by analysis of results,
leading to the preparation of descriptive and analytical reports (Figure 4).
The archaeological reports are summarized as part
of the EIAs overall description of the potentially
affected environment, along with information on
the areas biology, hydrology, air quality, wetlands,
floodplains, sociopolitical systems, and economic

structure. The analysts conducting the EIA sometimes archaeologists, sometimes other specialists,
most often groups representing multiple disciplines
then examine how the proposed project is likely to
affect whatever has been found. Depending on the
requirements of the laws under which the assessment
is done, they may examine multiple options for
achieving the projects purposes, seeking an alternative that will achieve those purposes with minimum
damage to the environment. They may consult with
local residents, specialists, and government bodies
that have special expertise or legal jurisdiction, such
as cultural ministries or historic preservation agencies. They may commission additional studies to fill
gaps in the assessment, or to address topics that come
up as the analysis goes forward. Special attention
often is given to impacts on the environments of
indigenous groups, and of low-income and minority
populations.
In most cases the money to support EIA work
comes from the project proponent, based on the
premise that he who wants to build something, and
who presumably will benefit from it, should be
responsible for assessing and revealing its impacts.
EIA-related work is typically done by nonprofit- or
profit-making corporations sometimes corporations
that specialize in the study of particular resources
such as archaeological sites, sometimes corporations
that conduct a range of planning, environmental
study, and even architectural and engineering work.
In some countries EIA studies, or their archaeological
elements, are carried out by academic institutions or

Figure 3 Nineteenth-century copper processing site in New Mexico, USA. Photo by the author.

1144 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW

Figure 4 EIA archaeologists must also consider buildings and structures associated with relatively recent history, such as this World
War II Japanese building, blasted by American bombs and strafing, on Jaluit Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Photo by the
author and The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.

government agencies, such as cultural ministries in

the case of archaeology. Sometimes such agencies
are expected to conduct their EIA work using their
own budgets, rather than deriving support from project proponents. This arguably increases the independence of their judgments, reducing the influence of
the project proponent on the study results, but it can
also cause stress on an agencys budget, and distort
its priorities.

the projected level of impacts on archaeological sites

alone to convince decision makers to abandon a project, but sometimes such impacts in combination with
others for instance, impacts on threatened and endangered animal and plant species, on water quality,
on health and safety, on human communities or on
places of contemporary religious or cultural importance result in a decision that a project cannot go
forward.

The Results of Environmental

Impact Assessment

Archaeology as Impact Mitigation

Generally, the EIA results in a document or documents that accompany the project plans through
whatever review and approval process is required by
the responsible government or funding body. The
people and groups responsible for deciding whether
and how to proceed with the project consider its
projected environmental impacts along with its costs,
its benefits, and its technical and economic specifications. They eventually make a decision as to whether
the project or some alternative to the project will be
implemented, and if so, under what conditions.
If the EIA reveals that the project will cause disastrous effects on the environment, the project may be
abandoned, but this is rare. In most cases the result of
EIA is some modification in the project design to
control impacts on the environment. It is rare for

In most cases, the decision is to go ahead with the

project in some form. Typically, then, measures are
adopted to mitigate (i.e., reduce or compensate for)
the projects environmental impacts, including its
impacts on archaeological sites. Sometimes archaeological sites can be buried and left for future study, or
incorporated into planned parks or other kinds of
open space. However, excavations or other studies to
rescue archaeological data that would otherwise be
lost are commonly included among impact mitigation
measures. Sometimes these studies are hurried affairs
that produce rather marginal data, but in countries
with strong EIA systems that create orderly planning
processes, there is usually enough time and money
to conduct good archaeological research, carried
through to include analysis and publication of results
and the permanent care of recovered materials. As in

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW 1145

the case of the studies done during EIA preparation,

the funding for mitigation usually comes from the
project proponent or the projects financial backers,
based on the principle that those who benefit from a
project should pay to mitigate its impacts. In some
countries, however, cultural ministries and other archaeological bodies are themselves expected to fund
the work, which can create serious disconnects between the magnitude of a projects impacts and the
level of effort devoted to their mitigation.
Excavations conducted to recover archaeological
data as impact mitigation are similar to excavations
done for research purposes, with some important
exceptions. In most cases the sites one is excavating
will be destroyed when one is finished with them (or
sometimes earlier), so there is pressure to be as complete as possible in the recovery of important information. Information may not be the only important
thing to recover; it may be, for instance, that the site
contains graves, and it is important to recover and
relocate the bodies regardless of their archaeological
research significance. Time may be of the essence, so
expedited means of excavation may be employed
very large excavation teams, bulldozers and backhoes, other heavy equipment. Sometimes, though it
is not desirable, archaeologists find themselves literally working around the construction equipment as a
site is destroyed.
Although archaeologists usually formulate research designs to guide their data recovery excavations, the fact that the sites are going to be destroyed
creates an obligation to be attentive to other research
interests as well. The archaeologist in charge may be
especially interested in, say, the archaeology of the
period 30002000 BCE, but if the site to be destroyed
contains deposits from 1000 to 0 BCE, these deposits
cannot be ignored; they must be responsibly investigated. This argues for a team approach in which
different specialists focus on different areas of interest, and some data recovery projects are organized in
this manner. In other cases, the archaeologist in
charge must try to do justice to whatever research
interests are relevant to a site.
Sometimes excavations must be carried out under
hazardous circumstances that a wise archaeologist
would otherwise avoid in areas polluted by toxic
wastes, amid unexploded ordnance, even in the path
of lava flows from an erupting volcano. On the other
hand, excavations are often carried out in very public
settings at construction sites in the middle of a city, or
along a busy highway, so archaeologists have to learn
to relate positively to the public. Many archaeological
data recovery projects include public involvement elements, featuring site tours, publication of nontechnical
reports of results, and programs for volunteers.

How EIA Archaeology Differs from Other

Kinds of Archaeology
In some countries the archaeological aspects of EIA
are performed by governmental cultural ministries or
by nongovernmental cultural heritage organizations.
In others they are conducted by the same academic
institutions and museums that may carry out other
kinds of archaeological research. Very often, however,
archaeologists are employed by private companies or
governmental bodies that specialize in environmental
impact work, either for profit or on a nonprofit basis.
Archaeologists working in such an organization do
little or no teaching or pure research, and they must
learn to do things that they would not always need to
do if employed in academia or a research institution.
They must learn to work in teams with other scientists, and often must take on nonarchaeological
responsibilities themselves. It is not uncommon for
archaeologists to be involved in assessing not only
impacts on archaeological sites, but also impacts on
historic buildings, culturally valued landscapes, and
places of traditional cultural importance to living
indigenous and other communities. They may find
themselves conducting ethnographic studies and consulting with such communities to learn their concerns
about the project and to explore ways of addressing
them. They may have to become expert in doing
historical research, examinations of historic architecture, or studies of traditional ways of life. EIA archaeologists also need to become at least somewhat
familiar with the laws, regulations, and government
policies under which their work is funded and conducted, and to understand something of the political,
economic, and business realities surrounding the projects whose impacts they study (Figure 5). They need
to learn enough about relevant aspects of engineering
and planning to be able to communicate with those
designing the project and get their help in finding
alternatives that lessen impacts. As an archaeologist
assumes higher and higher levels of responsibility in
an EIA organization, he or she needs to learn about
how to prepare and manage budgets and payrolls,
how to hire, dismiss, and supervise staff, how to
write and review planning documents, and sometimes
how to oversee quite large, diverse groups of people
using expensive and sometimes dangerous equipment. Some archaeologists have come to specialize
in work dealing with hazardous environments, wearing protective clothing and working with experts to
minimize exposure to toxic wastes or injury from
unexploded ordnance.
Archaeologists doing EIA work must also learn to
refrain from electing to excavate sites when there are
viable and perhaps less costly alternative ways to

1146 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW

Figure 5 EIA archaeologists must be sensitive to the cultural importance of natural places. Rivers like this one (the Klamath in Northern
California, USA) are significant to indigenous groups not only because of the role their fish play in the economy, but because of their
centrality in traditional culture. Photo by the author and Klamath River Intertribal Fish and Water Commission.

manage them for example, through redesign of a

project to protect a site in place, sometimes burying it
so deeply that it is unlikely to be seen again for
thousands of years. They need to learn to deal with
real-world conflicts between archaeological and other
interests not only the interests of project proponents
and governments, but such interests as those of
local people in their own cultural heritage.

Problems in EIA Archaeology

Of course, EIA work is not always as orderly and
positive as described above. One common problem is
insufficient money to do the job right. Sometimes fieldwork is rushed, or analysis and reporting are delayed or
not carried out at all. In the context of surveys and
other assessment studies, this can lead to faulty data
upon which to make decisions about the significance of
impacts or the appropriateness of mitigation measures.
In the context of mitigation, it can defeat the whole
purpose of archaeological data recovery, since the data
are not made available for future research.
Another common problem is that some project
proponents, government agencies, and whole governments treat the EIA process as merely an administrative
hurdle that must be surmounted on the way to getting a
project funded, approved, or constructed. They may
schedule the work too late to really influence decisionmaking about whether and how to proceed with a
project; they may shortchange the research, and they

may ignore the results. Their minds may be made up

before the analysis even begins.
Some regulatory agencies, EIA companies, and
even archaeologists themselves apply arbitrary and
inflexible standards to EIA work rigidly prescribing
how surveys are to be done, for example, and how
things are to be recorded. This can lead to significant
inefficiencies, and to rote, pointless studies that
merely masquerade as scholarly research.
The ways in which EIA regulations interface with
national and other archaeological and historic landmarks laws can also present problems. In some
countries, heritage laws protect only sites or buildings that have been recorded on some kind of schedule or register which means, of course, that they
have to have been found and studied to some extent
before they are considered in planning. When a project is planned in an area that has never been fully
surveyed for archaeological sites or even one that
has been surveyed, but where new discoveries are
likely there may be no sites that have been scheduled
or registered, but sites may actually be there, and
they may be very important. The logic of EIA
demands that such sites be identified and considered,
but the countrys heritage laws do not provide for it.
The people organizing a piece of EIA research may
know no better than to identify only those places
already on the schedule. The result, of course, is
that very significant sites can be destroyed without
consideration for preservation or data recovery.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW 1147

Sometimes people working on an EIA are treated as

nuisances by project planners and construction workers, finding themselves ignored, expelled from project
sites, and castigated as obstructionists. This can be
traumatic for the individuals involved, but more importantly it can impede their work and result in a
failure to consider and address significant archaeological sites and other aspects of the environment.
Regarding EIA as a mere nuisance is one reason
assessments are sometimes done too late to have any
influence on planning.
Perhaps worst of all, some private companies
and government ministries that do or contract for
EIA work encourage those working for them to ignore or play down a projects adverse effects, including effects on archaeological sites, even threatening
noncompliant employees with loss of their jobs. It
may be made very clear that if one wants to keep
ones position, or be part of the next contract, one
had better not regard that newly discovered site as
significant, request that obviously necessary bit of
laboratory analysis, or pay attention to that group
of descendants who want to save their ancestors
bones. If one bends to these pressures, one not only
damages ones own reputation, but can be a party to
unnecessary archaeological destruction and other
environmental impacts.
Archaeologists and others working on EIA also
often find themselves caught between project proponents and opponents, each intent on having its way
at the expense of the other and demanding that the
EIA analysts take sides. This can bring about high
levels of frustration, depression, and burnout. Working in EIA can also be depressing because one is
constantly confronted with the destruction of archaeological sites, traditional communities, beautiful
buildings, and pristine natural landscapes. However
much one is able to arrange for these impacts to be
mitigated, the experience of loss can take a toll on
ones mental health.
Some academic and research archaeologists look
down on EIA archaeology as intellectually undemanding second-class research. This, too, can be unpleasant for archaeologists specializing in EIA, but
most take it philosophically, holding that their critics
have little knowledge of the matter and are merely
expressing elitist bias. In fact, there is EIA-related
archaeology that is excellent and EIA-related archaeology that is very badly done, but the same can be said
for any other kind of archaeological research. Most
experienced EIA archaeologists also find that archaeological research is overrated as an end in itself. In
EIA practice an archaeologist can contribute to
making the world a better place, to preservation of
the planets natural and cultural heritage, and to

the continued existence of indigenous and other

cultures. One of the best parts of working in EIA
is that an archaeologist can become more than just
an archaeologist.

The Advantages of Being an

EIA Archaeologist
It is that sense of contribution that makes EIA work
peculiarly worthwhile, whether one comes into the
field as an archaeologist, a biologist, a sociologist, or
a soil scientist. Ones research connects with the real
world, with real people, and real needs. The EIA
specialist is involved in solving practical problems,
and engaging with communities in identifying and
protecting the places they hold dear. Many archaeologists find this the most rewarding part of their
work that it involves them with communities trying
to save things that they care about.
EIA work also is or should be highly interdisciplinary, so an EIA archaeologist has the opportunity
to enjoy the intellectual stimulation that comes from
being part of a team with members of other disciplines. Unfortunately, much EIA work tends to be
multidisciplinary rather than interdisciplinary each
discipline working by itself, with the results pulled
together into an overall report by an editor. But when
the work truly is an interdisciplinary team effort, it
can be particularly rewarding.
EIA work takes archaeologists to interesting places
where they might not otherwise travel. Because
human development takes place all over the world,
there is a need for EIA work almost everywhere. EIA
archaeology is done in great cities and remote deserts
and jungles, even on the bottom of the sea. Parts of
the world that had seen little or no archaeological
research in the past have become part of the archaeological universe because scholars have gone there to
prepare EIAs. There is even talk of the need for EIA
archaeology on the moon.

The Future of EIA Archaeology

One of the greatest dangers that EIA archaeology, and
EIA in general, face is that they will become so
standardized, so routine, that they neither attract
talented people to their practice nor accomplish very
much for the environment. This tendency is apparent
in the United States, where EIA archaeologists in
particular seem to be falling into rote ways of finding and describing sites, of describing and analyzing
impacts, of reporting results, and even of conducting
data recovery excavations. Standardization can be
useful, but it can also stultify creativity. It also creates
a process of impact analysis that is opaque to the

1148 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND THE LAW

Figure 6 Even animals can be important cultural heritage resources, requiring careful attention by EIA archaeologists. The Okinawa
dugong is important in the traditional culture of Japan, and has been the subject of recent litigation over the effects proposed U.S.
Department of Defense projects may have on it. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, permission given.

public, laden with jargon and unexamined assumptions. We do things in particular ways because it is the
way we always do them, and we describe what we do
in terms that can be understood only by others who
do the same things. This is not only a formula for bad
research and useless results, for lost and destroyed
archaeological sites; it is also something that will
in the end erode public support for the whole EIA
enterprise.
To conclude on a personal note, the authors belief
is that in order to survive and thrive, EIA archaeology
must become truly more than archaeology; archaeologists must not only work with members of other
disciplines in an interdisciplinary manner, we must
become interdisciplinary ourselves. We need to go
beyond archaeology to address the impacts of change
and development on the whole cultural environment
the ways people relate to natural resources, their
belief systems, the spiritual values they attach to
places, plants, animals, vistas (Figure 6). We need
to relate in a positive, open, consultative manner to
the public in all its multifaceted richness, bringing
people into our analyses and making sure that our
results make sense to them. The reason for doing EIA
is to maintain the viability of the environment while
getting on with needed change. This should be, and
can be, a creative, challenging enterprise in which
archaeologists can play important roles.
Many archaeologists now make their careers doing
or supervising EIA work for private companies and
governmental bodies, and most twenty-first century
archaeologists will take part in EIA for at least portions
of their working lives. Some research archaeologists

think of this as being like a jail sentence, and for

some it doubtless is. For others, however, it is an
opportunity to do some of the most exciting, rewarding, and socially significant work to which an
archaeologists talents can be bent.
See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation;
Careers in Archaeology; Cultural Resource Management; Goals of Archaeology, Overview.

Further Reading
ArchDev (1999) Archaeologists and development: environmental campaigners guide to archaeology. http://www.geocities.
com/rainforest/canopy/2065/encamp.html, accessed 23 August
2006.
British Archaeological Job Resource (2004) Short guide to
archaeology and the planning process. http://www.bajr.org/
Documents/Guide for Archaeology in Planning.pdf#search%
22%22EIA%22%20%22Archaeology%22%22, accessed 23
August 2006.
Canadian International Development Agency (2001) Environmental impact assessment: preliminary index of useful internet web
sites. http://www.iaia.org/eialist.html CIDA, Hull, Quebec.
Canter L (1995) Environmental Impact Assessment. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Council for British, Archaeology (2003) Planning for archaeology
and the historic environment: having your say. On-line factsheet
series at http://www.britarch.ac.uk/conserve/planning/, accessed
23 August 2006.
King TF (2004) Cultural Resource Laws and Practice: An Introductory Guide. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
King TF (2005) Doing Archaeology: A Cultural Resource Management Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Lawrence DP (2003) Environmental Impact Assessment: Practical
Solutions to Recurrent Problems. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley
Interscience.

ETHICAL ISSUES AND RESPONSIBILITIES 1149

ETHICAL ISSUES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Thomas F King, SWCA Environmental Consultants,
Silver Spring, MD, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
descendant A person or group of people defined by their
established or assumed genetic or cultural relationship to an
ancestor or group of ancestors.
ethics Moral principles and values that guide the behavior of a
group of people, in this case archaeologists.
ethics, code of A formal articulation of ethical standards
adopted by an organization for example, the code of ethics of
the Association for Interplanetary Archaeology.
indigenous Native to an area for example, aboriginal
Australians are indigenous to Australia.
looting Strictly speaking, taking something of value by force or
violence. As used broadly by archaeologists, digging up
archaeological sites or otherwise taking things from them for
personal interest or gain, or for wanton pleasure, or even out of
ignorance, and defacing or destroying archaeological sites
without good reason, even if no taking of loot is involved.
trafficking Buying, selling, or assisting in the buying and selling
of things in commerce; used by archaeologists with specific
reference to artifacts and other archaeological material.

Introduction
Working as we do with finite and fragile resources,
which often are of interest and value to both the general
public and specific, sometimes competing, groups of
people, archaeologists often wrestle with ethical questions. These questions are seldom simple or unambiguous however much we might like them to be, or in
some cases think that they are. The purpose of this
article is to summarize major ethical issues that archaeologists confront, outline some of the ways archaeologists deal with them, and discuss some positive,
negative, and ambiguous aspects of the answers given
to ethical questions. Elsewhere in this encyclopedia,
Don D. Fowler outlines the history of institutional
approaches to archaeological ethics, including some
of the laws, international agreements, and organizational codes developed to canonize ethical precepts.

The Core Ethic: Protecting, Obtaining,

and Using Data
A basic assumption underlying archaeological practice is that it is a good thing to do, that it is right and
proper to perform archaeological research. But for
what purpose? If pressed, most, if not all, archaeologists would say that we work to preserve information

about the human past that would otherwise be lost,

that we seek to bring that information back into
the intellectual mainstream from which time has
displaced it that is, to interpret the past accurately
and that we try to use the information we recover,
and our interpretation of it, to address questions and
issues that are important to humankind. If this is our
tripartite purpose, then our central ethical obligation
must be to pursue it well, to achieve it to the best of
our abilities.
This core ethic which in fact we are rarely called
upon to articulate, but which remains an assumption
underlying all our work is the justification for doing
archaeology and for the support it receives from
the public and governments worldwide. One way or
another, it informs and influences how we attend to
all other ethical responsibilities.
Some of our commonly recognized ethical prescriptions follow directly from the core principle. For
instance, forging artifacts and assisting in the perpetuation of hoaxes are taken by archaeologists to be
unethical. Why? Because such activities mislead, and
can cause the past to be misinterpreted, violating our
ethical responsibility to interpret the past accurately.
For a similar reason because our core ethics require
that we make what we recover available for use in
accurately understanding the past the failure to
write up and publish the results of a field project is
almost universally regarded by archaeologists as an
ethical failure. To a somewhat lesser degree it is
regarded as at least questionable for an archaeologist
not to share data with another researcher, particularly
if one has delayed publication of ones results for a
long time. Similarly, it is regarded as ethically reprehensible not to see to it, to the extent one can, that the
materials one takes out of the ground, and the documentary records that one creates in the process, are
cared for properly, theoretically in perpetuity, usually
by an appropriate museum or other curatorial facility.
Of course, it is regarded as highly unethical to excavate an archaeological site without fully recording
what one does, what one finds, and the spatial relationships among things found and observed.
However, it is generally understood that an archaeologist may not be able to follow all these prescriptions in every case to the extent that all archaeologists
might wish. No one faults an archaeologist who
suffers a debilitating illness and cannot finish writing
up an excavation. Nor is one faulted if one turns
over artifacts and records to a curatorial facility
that is subsequently bombed or looted, that burns

1150 ETHICAL ISSUES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

down, or whose new management decides to throw

out its archaeological collections to make room
for Edwardian furniture or post-Impressionist art
though in the latter case, if the archaeologist is aware
of the institutional change, there is some ethical responsibility to try to get the archaeological collections
moved to another facility. Finally, how much one can
record during an excavation depends on whether
one has plenty of time or is being rushed by forces
of destruction; it also depends on what the forces of
destruction are, the character of the site, the local sociopolitical situation, and so on. Although giving up
ones life to protect a site from vandals with AK-47s
may be regarded as admirable, it is not generally held
to be an ethical requirement.

The Ethics of Destroying

Archaeological Sites
It follows from the core principle that we favor
the preservation of archaeological sites, and hence
deplore their destruction. However, in point of fact
we destroy sites ourselves, by excavating them, and
heres the quandary: we cannot adhere to our core
ethic of retrieving and making good use of data without destroying them. This might not be the problem it
is, if we could document everything we uncover in an
excavation, but complete documentation is impossible. We cannot record every particle of soil and its
relationships with every other particle, its chemical
composition, and its physical structure. Every year, it
seems, new analytic techniques are developed or new
research questions posed that make us wish we had
recorded something that went unrecorded in last
years excavations. So most archaeologists acknowledge that the very conduct of archaeological research
destroys sites and the data they contain.
To contend with this uncomfortable truth, many of
us try to conduct our research only in sites that are
likely to be destroyed by other forces anyway sites
in the path of development, for example, or that are
being eroded off sea cliffs. We sometimes are critical
of colleagues who conduct excavations in sites that
can be preserved, or who excavate in unnecessarily
destructive ways. If an archaeologist strips away a
2000-year-old cultural stratum to get at one that is
4000 years old, and fails to make a reasonable effort
to record the more recent stratum and its contents, his
or her ethics are likely to be questioned.
The vehemence with which we criticize such practices, however particularly the practice of excavating sites that can be preserved, such as those in
protected areas like parks waxes and wanes through
time. Back in 1974, William Lipe called eloquently on

archaeologists in the United States to adopt a conservation model and emphasize site preservation. For
a time many perhaps most American archaeologists followed Lipes advice; we tried to focus our
attention only on threatened sites, and criticized
those who dug sites that could be preserved. In recent
years this ethic has eroded, in part because it can be
hard to uphold the core ethic of learning and transmitting information about the past without excavating protected sites. Another reason the conservation
ethic has eroded is disillusionment with our ability
truly to protect any site over the long run. This decades open space all too readily becomes the next
decades parking lot or housing tract. Illicit excavators can gain access to even the most remote sites, in
the most protected locations. Earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions, tsunamis, and the massive erosion resulting from rising sea levels are mostly beyond human
control, and warfare seems to be as well; the
organized military forces of most countries theoretically adhere to the 1954 UNESCO Convention for
the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of
Armed Conflict, but compliance with the letter of this
convention is sporadic at best, and compliance with
its spirit is even less systematic. All these characteristics of the real world can wreak massive destruction,
and do not respect the integrity of ostensibly protected archaeological sites. In the face of these complexities, few archaeological eyebrows are currently
raised over the excavation of a site that theoretically
can be protected, provided the excavation is well and
carefully done. However, the pendulum may swing
back at any time toward something like Lipes conservation model. Ethics are not immutable.

The Ethics of Treating with Looters

and Traffickers
Archaeologists use the term looter rather loosely, to
mean not only people who dig into archaeological
sites to acquire loot with which to enrich themselves,
but also people who collect artifacts for their own
enjoyment, people who wantonly vandalize archaeological sites, and people who pick or dig something
up out of simple curiosity. Some archaeologists recognize that looters of such varied character have many
reasons for digging, some of them not too different
from those that motivate archaeologists themselves.
Others, however, would condemn to purgatory or
worse all nonprofessional excavators, and sometimes
even collectors of artifacts from the ground surface.
Archaeologists are similarly critical of people who sell
or assist in the sale of artifacts who are seldom
referred to simply as buyers, sellers, or dealers

ETHICAL ISSUES AND RESPONSIBILITIES 1151

but by the pejorative term traffickers. The reason for

such visceral reactions on the part of archaeologists is
that looting is understood to be destructive of archaeological data present in sites, in artifacts, and
particularly in the relationships among artifacts,
sites, and site features like architecture and soil strata.
A pot ripped out of its archaeological context may be
beautiful on the shelf, but it has lost much of its ability
to inform us about the past. Trafficking makes looting attractive to some people by creating a private
market for excavated antiquities.
An archaeologist who assists or otherwise deals
positively with looters and traffickers, is regarded
by most of his or her colleagues as unethical. Degrees
of ethical violation are generally recognized. If an
archaeologist helps an artifact dealer establish that a
looted pot is genuine, in most archaeological communities that is regarded as bad, but not as bad as
helping the dealer establish a monetary price for the
pot, which in turn is not as bad as buying the pot
from the dealer, which is less bad than selling the
pot to the dealer. Worst of all is digging the pot up
and selling it to the dealer.
But if the pot or its contents are very, very important in terms of the information they represent, the
core principle of recovering and using information
may take precedence. If the pot contains papyri bearing some previously unknown ancient text, many
archaeologists on balance will swallow hard and
buy it. Selling it, however, is another matter unless
the buyer is a research or curatorial institution, in
which case it may be acceptable for the archaeologist
to recoup whatever he or she paid for the pot and its
contents. There are, in other words, extenuating circumstances, but the extenuation extends to different
lengths depending on the action taken.
Some looters and traffickers are economically
distressed residents of areas rich in ancient sites,
driven by their poverty to dig up and sell artifacts.
Some have the additional justification of viewing the
artifacts as having been left to them by their ancestors. Although most archaeologists regard what such
people do as reprehensible, most also have to acknowledge that the situation is a difficult one, in which ethical
codes by themselves provide little guidance. Should we
try to stop such looting? If so, are we not obligated to
look for alternative ways for the erstwhile diggers to
earn a living? Is this not at least a practical necessity, if
we expect people to stop digging for profit? Is purchasing something from an impoverished community
whose members dig up things left by their ancestors
somehow less bad than buying something from a different kind of looter? What about trying to teach
people to loot using archaeological methods? Where
and how does one draw ethical lines?

There are others classified by many archaeologists

as looters and traffickers who seek archaeological
cooperation for example, people who seek treasure
buried or lost on land and under the sea. If a treasure
hunter offers to fund an excavation, done using all
relevant controls to assure the recovery and documentation of important data, in return for the right
to keep or sell what is found, is it ethical for an
archaeologist to accept the offer? Mainstream archaeological organizations, and most archaeologists,
answer with a resounding No. When pressed for
a rationale (something that is seldom done in polite
archaeological company), many fall back on a simple
statement of morality excavating things for sale is
simply wrong. If asked for a rationale less redolent
with religiosity, the answer may be that in the final
analysis no treasure hunter ever has, ever will, ever
can excavate according to archaeological principles;
in the end the fever to loot will win out. Or that even
if an excavation is done properly, if the artifacts are
dispersed through sale, they become unavailable for
future study. Some treasure-seeking interests counter
with proposals to turn over everything found to a
museum, or even to create museums for everything
found, except for items like coins and gold bars,
which arguably have little research significance.
While this sort of proposal softens the logical ground
under archaeological opposition to cooperative endeavors, the hardcore moralism tends to remain. The
codes of ethics of most archaeological organizations
flatly forbid cooperation with those who would excavate archaeological material for sale.
Finally, there are many people, nonarchaeologists
in terms of professional training and academic
degrees, who collect artifacts for reasons that they
say are essentially the same as those that motivate
archaeologists. We are fascinated by the past, they
say; we want to learn about the past, and we do not
want to see archaeological sites destroyed by development or agriculture or erosion, so we want to
excavate them. The only difference between what
we do and what you do, they go on, is that we keep
what we find, or occasionally sell or exchange it
rather than putting it in a museum where we all know
it has a good chance of being lost or tossed out in
some change of institutional policy. Some say they
would be happy to work to archaeological standards,
if archaeologists would only help them and not insist
that they give up their collections.
There are some archaeologists (this author among
them) who wonder if it is possible to achieve cooperation between archaeologists and at least some classes
of looter and trafficker creating a relationship
under which sites are excavated using archaeological
methods, but selected recovered objects can remain in

1152 ETHICAL ISSUES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

private hands or enter the stream of commerce rather

than going to museums and research institutions. On
the whole, such an idea is regarded as anathema by
the mainstream of archaeology. There are certainly
programs in which archaeologists work with people
who collect artifacts, but almost invariably an agreement not to traffick is a precondition to participation
in such a program. Often a participant is required to
give up his or her private collection or at least refrain
from digging to expand it. Very few archaeologists
have gone to work for or with treasure recovery
organizations, based on agreements under which
the treasure seekers record and properly conserve
archaeological data while recovering coins or bullion
for sale. These archaeologists, however, are widely
regarded by the mainstream as having sold their
souls. It is not apparent that they, or a responsible
private collector, actually violate archaeologys core
principle of protecting, recovering, and using data,
but many archaeologists and archaeological organizations shun and discriminate against them. This is an
unresolved issue that will probably gain more exposure as time goes by, particularly as treasure recovery
companies gain expanded access to the deep oceans
and other extreme environments using expensive high
technology unavailable to ordinary archaeological
researchers.

The Ethics of Relations with Indigenous,

Descendant, and Protective Communities
If I decide that I want to excavate your late grandmother to study her grave offerings, you will probably want to have something to say about it. If it
is your great-great-great-great grandmothers body
I want to exhume, you may be less concerned, but
this is not certain; you may feel just as strongly about
your distant ancestors as you do about your proximate ones. Descendant communities typically want
to exercise a considerable amount of control over
their ancestors bones, artifacts, and places of residence, worship, and burial, and their interests may
differ considerably from the information-driven interests of archaeologists.
Descendant communities are not the only ones who
may wish to protect the bones and relics of past
societies from the attentions of archaeologists. Some
communities are strongly protective of the dead on
religious or other spiritual grounds, regardless of the
putative ancestral relationships between the dead
and any person living today. Such groups simply
hold that the dead should not be disturbed, and to
varying extents this belief may extend to the artifacts
produced and used by the dead as well. Such protective interests may be just as deeply felt as those of

people who trace their own lines of descent back to

the people in the ground.
There was a time when archaeologists could largely
ignore the concerns of such communities at least
they could as long as those communities were indigenous groups, people of color, and other relatively
powerless parties. Ignoring such concerns did not seem
unethical because the core ethic of archaeology
obtaining data to satisfy human curiosity and bring
the past back to life was taken to be unequivocally
good. Most archaeologists still feel that our motives in
conducting research are essentially pure; we are hurt
when descendant and protective communities call us
ghouls and grave robbers, but that is what we are to
them, and explaining the importance of our research
has little impact on their perceptions.
As colonial power structures have given way to
postcolonial ones, hitherto powerless communities
both those who have actually been colonies and those
who simply feel colonized by virtue of being parts
of a social and economic underclass have become
increasingly critical of archaeology and archaeologists. Since such communities often arguably occupy
the moral high ground, and because their causes can
generate strong public and political support, archaeologists have had to find ways to accommodate and
respect their interests.
Some archaeologists and archaeological organizations try to distinguish between real descendants
that is, people who can demonstrate descent using
sciences like genetics and anthropology and people
who merely think themselves descended from longago cultures, or feel that they are responsible for
the well-being of the dead. The former, it is argued,
are entitled to respect; the latter are not. This sort of
science-based distinction is embedded in some legislation, like the Native American Graves Protection
and Repatriation Act in the United States, which
mandates the repatriation of bones and artifacts to
descendants or otherwise affiliated groups, but only
upon a showing of ethnic or cultural affiliation. This
sort of distinction infuriates communities that regard
science itself as a colonialist, imperialist activity; once
again the dominant society is imposing its values on
them. From the perspective of many indigenous communities, a distinction based on affiliation also misses
the point. Many such groups feel strong responsibility for the dead, regardless of their relationships to
anyone living today. It is, they feel, their responsibility
to the dead themselves, or to spiritual powers, to
ensure that the dead can continue their journey to
the afterlife. Demanding that affiliation be demonstrated is doubly offensive to such groups. Not only
does it impose the dominant societys scientism on a
community whose beliefs lie elsewhere, it also implies

ETHICAL ISSUES AND RESPONSIBILITIES 1153

that one human being can own another a notion

that carries widely troubling connotations.
Archaeologists particularly those trained in
anthropology can empathize with such perceptions,
but often have trouble embracing ethical codes based
on such empathy. The core ethic of a descendant or
spiritually protective community is usually entirely
different from that of archaeology; the past is something to be protected, to be left alone, to be respected,
not to be exhumed, scrutinized, and studied. Returning ancestral remains and artifacts to a nonscientific
group usually makes them unavailable for research,
and may even result in their destruction (from the
archaeologists perspective). Collaborating with such
a community when excavating an ancestral site usually places restrictions on what can be excavated, or
on the kinds of analysis that can be performed.
Nevertheless, whether out of empathetic desire or
political and legal necessity, archaeologists the world
over have developed ethical codes supporting collaboration with, and often acceding to the wishes of,
descendant and protective communities particularly
those indigenous to the area where an archaeologist
works, such as American-Indians and AboriginalAustralians, and those with access to local, national,
or international political power. Many of us square
these new ethics with our central research ethic by
believing (rightly, I think) that we gain more in terms
of understanding and preservation of the past
through partnerships with such communities than
we would from running roughshod over their interests even if doing the latter were still legally and
politically possible.

The Ethics of the Workplace and Society

In recent years, whether out of choice or necessity,
archaeologists have paid increasing attention to
certain ethics that they share with other professionals
scientists, engineers, teachers, cooks and with
society as a whole. It is unethical to plagiarize, of
course, or to steal a colleagues or students work. We
have ethical responsibilities toward those who work
with and for us. We should not exploit or abuse them;
we should provide a living wage, decent living conditions, and reasonably safe workplaces. Less obviously,
most of us recognize an obligation to help those we
supervise learn from what they do, regardless of
whether they are formally regarded as students. Particularly, those who work without or with little pay
generally do so because they are interested in archaeology, and we are obligated to help them satisfy that
interest.
We have ethical duties to those who pay the bills, be
they institutional employers, sponsor foundations or

individuals, government agencies, or contractual clients. At the very least, we owe our employers and
sponsors an honest days work and a product as close
as possible to whatever it is they expect us to deliver.
Beyond this, most of us recognize an obligation to be
sensitive to the interests that have brought them to
finance our work for example, the interest of a
property developer required to fund an archaeological
study before his or her development destroys a site,
whose great desire is probably that we complete our
work promptly and get out of the way.
We have ethical responsibilities toward the world
around us, and to its nonarchaeological resources.
Those of us who work in environmental assessment
and similar fields often find ourselves assigned responsibility for describing and evaluating aspects of the
environment that are not archaeological historic
buildings, cultural landscapes, the traditional lifeways
of local people. We have a duty to recognize that these
places and things have value even though they may not
be of archaeological interest. If we cannot ourselves
represent that value adequately, we have a duty to
make sure it is addressed by people better qualified
to do so than we. All of us are responsible for taking
care of the natural and human environments within
which we work for not polluting a stream with dirt
from our excavations, not digging up the habitat of an
endangered species, and not undermining the historic
building that stands on our excavation site.
Among these external ethical precepts, one of the
most interesting and problematical is the notion of
responsibility to those who pay the bills. Recognizing
and carrying out this responsibility is seldom a problem when the one doing the paying is ones own
museum or university, or a foundation that supplies
research grants. We may be late with a report; we may
not find what we and our supporters had hoped we
would find, we may misspend our grant and flee the
country, but these tend to be either minor problems
or such obvious ethical failures that they raise few
problems of interpretation. The ethic of responsibility to financial supporters becomes complicated when
the financial supporters only interest is in getting the
archaeology out of the way so he can proceed with his
housing project or highway.
Archaeologists today are routinely employed as
members of teams doing environmental impact
assessments in advance of construction and land use
projects. In this context ones financial support often
comes from the party whose potential environmental
impacts one is assessing. What are ones responsibilities toward the financial supporter the client in
such a case?
It is easy to say that our responsibility is simply
to do proper, honest archaeology to ascertain what

1154 ETHICAL ISSUES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

impacts the proposed project will have on archaeological sites and seek ways to preserve them. But
the matter is not that simple. For one thing, there
are many different ways to consider impacts. Will
we seek only those sites that will be bulldozed to
oblivion if the project is built, or will we also look
for those that may be indirectly affected, by future
erosion downstream, through looting by residents
of the new housing project, through secondary development induced by the presence of the new motorway? When we find a site, we can evaluate its
significance in a variety of different ways some
narrow and more or less dismissive, others much
broader and more inclusive. Which sort of evaluation
scheme should we employ? As individuals and teams
we may or may not individually be particularly well
qualified to find or evaluate particular kinds of sites,
in particular areas, but obtaining specialist advice
may be costly to our client. Then there are the nonarchaeological interests the descendant community
that thinks a place is terribly important even though
we, as archaeologists, find nothing interesting about
it; the religious group that ascribes spiritual significance to a place, the architectural historians who
want to save old buildings and the community members who want to save their town. Doing proper
archaeology may technically not include paying any
attention whatever to such interests, and whether we
do pay attention or not can have financial implications for our employer. It is safe to assume in most
cases that the client would like us to do as little and
find as little as possible to look only at areas where
direct destructive project impacts will occur, to evaluate sites as narrowly as possible, and to assign value
solely on the basis of archaeological criteria, let other
interests fend for themselves. Is it our ethical obligation to do our work in accordance with our clients
program and preference, or is this directly contrary to
our other ethical responsibilities? Here again it is easy
to say we should be broad, inclusive, and thorough in
our study of a projects impacts, and provide the
client with objective, unbiased information whether
he wants it or not. But just how broad an area or
range of impacts should we consider? What range of
interests should we include in our consideration?
What is our definition of thorough in the case at
hand or for that matter, our definition of objective
and unbiased? And what do we do when our team
leader says, or implies, that we are being unreasonable, costing the client unnecessary money, not giving
him the results he wants, and that we may lose our
jobs or our next contract as a result? On the other
hand, at what point does the thoroughness of
our research become exploitative of our client?
These can be difficult questions, and archaeologists

increasingly must grapple with them as we play our

roles in the activities of government agencies, land
developers, project proponents, and public-interest
groups.

Conclusion
One sees much articulation of ethical standards in
the archaeological literature but little serious debate
about such standards and their implications. It is
generally accepted that such things as destroying
archaeological sites and cooperating with looters
and traffickers are wrong, and one must not do
them even when doing so appears to be justified
by archaeologys core principle of preserving,
recovering, and using information. We insist that we
simultaneously give clients good value for the money
they spend on our impact assessment work, and give
maximum protection to both archaeological sites and
other aspects of the human environment, but we seldom debate the complications that such balanced
service creates. Ethical discussions both in print and
at such events as the ethics bowl held annually by
the Society for American Archaeology tend to assume
the correctness of the standards promulgated by the
various archaeological and cultural organizations,
focusing on their application in particular situations.
We tend to believe quite strongly that some things are
ethical and that others are not, often without deeply
exploring the logical underpinnings or practical
results of our beliefs.
While logic and practicality do underlie most of
archaeologys ethical positions, it is doubtful whether
rigid and unquestioning adherence to them is always
wise. For a discipline regarded by many of its practitioners as a science, however, archaeology can be
remarkably unwilling to explore the theory upon
which its canonical principles are based. It can be
quite unforgiving of those who deviate from those
principles, expunging them from membership in
professional organizations, refusing to allow them
to present or publish the results of their work, threatening their employment. Anyone contemplating such
a deviation, even with what may seem to be a pure
heart and excellent justification, needs to tread with
extreme caution, at risk of being branded ethically
deficient.
See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation;
Environmental Impact Assessment and the Law;
Historic Preservation Laws; Illicit Antiquities; Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act;
Native Peoples and Archaeology; Philosophy of
Archaeology; Who Owns the Past?; World Heritage
Sites, Types and Laws.

ETHNICITY 1155

Further Reading
Green EL (ed.) (1984) Ethics and Values in Archaeology. New
York: Free Press.
King TF. A 1937 winged liberty head dime from Silver Spring,
Maryland. In: Thinking about Cultural Resource Management:
Eessays from the Edge, pp. 164169. Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira Press.
Layton R (ed.) (1994) Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions. London: Routledge.
Lipe WD (1974) A conservation model for American archaeology.
The Kiva 39(12): 213243.
Lowenthal D (2005) Why sanctions seldom work: Reflections on
cultural property internationalism. International Journal of Cultural Property 12(3): 393424.

Lynott M and Wylie A (eds.) (1995) Ethics in American Archaeology: Challenges for the 1990s. Washington DC: Society for
American Archaeology.
Scarre C and Scarre G (eds.) (2006) The Ethics of Archaeology:
Philosophical Perspectives on Archaeological Practice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Shanks H (1999) How to stop looting: a modest proposal. Archaeological Odyssey. 2:04, September/October 1999. Washington
DC: Biblical Archaeology Society.
Vitelli KD (ed.) (1996) Archaeological Ethics. Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira.

ETHNICITY
Bonnie J Clark, University of Denver, Denver,
CO, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
culture history A history of the cultures that inhabited a
particular location or region.
descent Hereditary derivation or lineage.
ethnicity A form of communal identity that emphasizes
common ancestry and an association with a territory.
hybridity A description of the inevitably mixed, interpenetrated
condition of cultures, languages, etc.
material culture Human modifications to natural resources
and the environment.
race A population distinguished as different from others based
primarily on physiology. Genetic studies suggest there are no
legitimate ways to divide the human population based on such
characteristics, rather the existence of races is a social rather than
a true physical phenomenon.

Ethnicity, as a topic of concern for archaeologists, has

its roots deep within the history of thought about
human difference. Although the term itself is relatively new (arriving in English language dictionaries in the
1950s), the idea is old, derived as it is from the ancient
Greek term ethnos, which roughly meant various
different groups of peoples. The journal Ethnos,
which began publication in 1936, is a testament to
the anthropologys long engagement with such difference. As it is currently theorized, ethnicity is a form of
group identity separable from other communal identities, such as class or religion, by emphasis on common ancestry and an association with a territory, both
of which may be based in some deep, perhaps mythic
past. Other characteristics that ethnic groups often

exhibit are a collective name, a shared history, elements of common culture, and a sense of communal
solidarity. The concept overlaps a great deal with
ideas of race based as it is on at least supposed shared
ancestry. Nineteenth-century discussions of differences based on ethnicity as defined above, often used
the terminology of race, something currently associated primarily with physiological differences. Thus,
archaeological investigations of race and racism share a
great deal with those primarily focused on ethnicity.
A general consensus exists among anthropologists
that, for ethnic identity to have salience, group members must have an awareness of peoples outside of the
group. Some anthropologists suggest that ethnicity is
a relatively modern social construction, one that exists
only in relation to state-level societies. Others claim
that, because cultures have always been in contact
with other groups through relations such as trade or
marriage, the conditions which foster ethnic identity
are essentially universal.
Every archaeologist who has studied ethnicity has
relied on the existence of a significant relationship
between material culture and ethnicity. As so deftly
laid out by Sian Jones in The Archaeology of Ethnicity, how archaeologists have conceptualized that relationship has a great deal to do with their ideas about
culture. When they believe that cultures are bounded,
homogeneous entities, archaeologists easily equate
different suites of material culture with different
groups in the past. The building of culture histories
around the world relied upon this unproblematized
relationship, one expressed in many terms we still
use for prehistoric peoples, such as the Basketmakers
of the Southwestern United States, or the Beaker
people of Europe. However, other archaeologists

1156 ETHNICITY

conceptualize cultures as having porous boundaries,

comprised of multifaceted individuals with potentially conflicting goals. Increasingly those who study
ethnicity conceptualize it as intimately tied to age,
gender, status, and other elements of identity. Such
researchers expect that people with different social
positions within an ethnic group may engage with
material culture in very different ways. This view of
culture leads archaeologists to pay attention to a
range of material culture that those with a normative
view might dismiss as random variation.
Early approaches to past peoples relied on what
has been termed primordialism, or a belief that
similarities in the cultural expressions of members of
various ethnic groups lie in the sameness of shared
experience. In the wake of various ethnic political
movements that often relied on the mobilization of
cultural symbols, came Ethnic Groups and Boundaries in 1969. The editor of the book, Fredrik Barth,
posited that ethnic identities are tools created during
crisis and often mobilized to political or economic
ends. This position, which has since been coined
instrumentalist, suggests that ethnicity is a form of
invented tradition rather than an expression of shared
practices of significant time depth. The decades that
followed the publication saw anthropologists of all
stripes expending a good deal of energy investigating
these two models of ethnicity. Historical archaeologists often embraced the study of ethnicity, especially those who were in the position to research the
material remains of documented locales such as plantations, where identity was forged from the crucibles
of cultural struggle. Ethnoarchaeological research
investigated how much variation in the style of
artifacts could be accounted for by different social
groupings. Various investigations suggested that
some artifacts reflect passive style or cultural norms
of the proper way to produce an item, an idea that
fits with primordialism. Other items, however, have
active style intended specifically to mark social differences, something expected by an instrumentalist
view of ethnicity. It is clear, however, that there is
no absolute boundary between passive and active
style, as an artifact that in one generation is shaped
by taken-for-granted norms can become actively
manipulated in the next. A middle-ground position,
that ethnicity has both primordial and instrumental
characteristics, is held by many twenty-first-century
practitioners.
How researchers operationalize the concept of
ethnicity highlights some of the critical themes in a
twenty-first-century archaeology of ethnicity. Given
that the term ethnos derives originally from ancient
Greek, it seems appropriate to turn to research on
the poleis (city-states) of ancient Greece and their

colonies. Many ancient Greek poleis were comprised

of a number of cultural groups. Texts of Greek origin
myths help to establish that these collective identities
were in fact ethnic, and were mobilized in continuing
proclamations of group distinctiveness. As investigated by Jonathan Hall, a number of groups coupled
these discursive strategies of ethnic identification
with material ones. Both Greeks in Cyprus and the
Akhaians of southern Italy expressed their identity
materially, particularly through distinctive architecture. Other groups used the built environment to
reinforce their link to mythic ancestors and the territories with which they were associated. For example, the Dryopes legitimized their claim to Asine by
participating in the cult of Hera, the earlier, Bronze
Age goddess of the Argive plain in which Asine was
located. They also reused local Bronze Age tombs for
their own inhumations. These are acts Hall classifies
as ancestralizing, strategies he suggests to be common among ethnic groups, because descent is often a
critical element of this form of collective identity.
It is illustrative to couple these studies of identity
within the Greek poleis with those conducted in
far-flung colonies. For example, in Berezan, a Greek
colony in the northern Black Sea, the earliest traders
lived in housing very similar to that of the majority
Scythian population. Interestingly, the distinguishing
architectural elements of the colonists houses were
interior heating systems, something that reflects their
struggles to adjust to a colder climate. This is an embodied element of their ethnic identity linked to the
environmental differences between their homeland
and their new territory and very unlikely to be an
instrumental expression of personhood. These early
traders were later joined by a wave of Greek immigrants, who as documentary and ceramic evidence suggests were largely Ionian. They lived in above-ground
houses that reference a pan-Hellenic rather than Ionian
form. One imagines that in Berezan, the most pertinent
axis of ethnic identification was Greek/Scythian; thus,
colonists did not mobilize around their internal Greek
identity as Ionians. This case study highlights a critical
element in the archaeology of ethnicity, namely that
ethnic identity is both contingent and fluid, and thus
our investigations must pay careful attention to the
context in which material remains were a part.
Like many archaeological investigations of identity,
both of these are examples where researchers have
access to some form of written documentation. However, aided by technological breakthroughs such as the
sourcing of materials and DNA analysis, researchers
are interpreting ethnicity among prehistoric populations with growing confidence. For example, the
traditional culture areas of the prehistoric southwestern United States have recently come under scrutiny,

ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY 1157

revealing numerous examples of migration, intermarriage, and ethnogenesis. These studies indicate that the
region has long been host to various forms of ethnic
hybridity, a condition which post-Colonial theorists
suggest is the norm for humanity.
See also: Engendered Archaeology; Identity and Power.

Further Reading
Barth F (ed.) (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little
Brown.
Conkey M (1990) Experimenting with Style in Archaeology: Some
historical and theoretical issues. In: Conkey M and Hastorf C
(eds.) The Uses of Style in Archaeology, pp. 517. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Duff AI (2002) Western Pueblo Identities: Regional Interaction,

Migration, and Transformation. Tucson: The University of
Arizona Press.
Hall JM (1997) Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Jones S (1997) The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present. London: Routledge.
Lucy S (2005) Ethnic and Cultural Identities. In: Daz-Andreu M,
Lucy S, Babic SA, and Edwards DN (eds.) The Archaeology of
Identity, pp. 86109. London: Routledge.
Orser CE, Jr. (ed.) (2001) Race and the Archaeology of Identity.
Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Romanucci-Ross L and DeVos G (eds.) (1995) Ethnic Identity:
Creation, Conflict, and Accommodation. Walnut Creek, CA:
Alta Mira.
Solovyov SL (1999) Ancient Berezan: The Architecture, History
and Culture of the First Greek Colony in the Northern Black
Sea. Leiden: Brill.
Stark MT (ed.) (1998) The Archaeology of Social Boundaries.
Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY
Margaret E Beck, University of Iowa, Iowa City,
IA, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
ethnoarchaeology The study of cultural material (such as pots,
weapons, and tools), the understanding of how and why these
materials were used, and interpretations of what they were
used for.
ethnography The branch of anthropology that deals with the
scientific description of specific human cultures.
material culture The counterpart of verbal culture and learned
behavior that refers to physical objects from the past together
they constitute human activity.
middle-range research Study of how people use objects and
structures and the human behaviors associated with this use.
uniformitarianism The theory that all geologic phenomena
may be explained as the result of existing forces having operated
uniformly from the origin of the earth to the present time.

Ethnoarchaeology is ethnographic field work designed

to contribute to archaeological interpretation. It has
also been called action archaeology, living archaeology,
or archaeological ethnography. Archaeologists study
the material traces of past human behavior; ethnoarchaeologists study the material traces of ongoing
human behavior, so that archaeologists can better
infer past human behavior from material patterns.
Ethnoarchaeological studies may address questions

at one or more levels, including the artifact (e.g., manufacture and use), the site (e.g., spatial distribution
of features), and the process (e.g., exchange, seasonal
mobility). Direct behavioral observations, informant
accounts and explanations, previous anthropological
or sociological studies, and historical documents may
all be available to the ethnoarchaeologist, allowing a
more detailed and nuanced look at the relationships
between human activities and artifacts.
Archaeologists often use data collected from living
people to formulate hypotheses and interpret archaeological patterns. Ethnographic accounts and
ethnographic museum collections are often incorporated
into archaeological studies, but relevant information
may come from many fields, including sociocultural
anthropology, history, linguistics, sociology, geography, and economics. This other work used by archaeologists is distinguished from ethnoarchaeology by
its research design. Data originally collected for nonarchaeological applications is usually too vague about
the material culture or spatial distribution of activities. For example, ethnographers may provide some
information on diet and food preparation but fail to
describe the vessels and utensils used and the resulting
material evidence of food preparation, such as wear
on tools and the refuse produced. Archaeologists are
then forced to guess what the material patterns should
be from these activities. The term ethnoarchaeology is
restricted here to fieldwork conducted explicitly for

1158 ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY

archaeologists, because only then will archaeological

issues be adequately addressed and data collected in a
way that relates to archaeological data.
Ethnoarchaeology is one of several areas of study
that improve archaeological inference, grouped by
Lewis Binford into middle-range research. Middlerange research is essentially the study of cause and
effect; archaeologists observe end products, such as
artifacts, features, and spatial patterns, and infer the
events or behaviors that created them. Links or
correlates (as defined by Michael Schiffer) between
dynamic events and activities and their static material
traces can be formulated either by observing the
ongoing behavior of others, as in ethnoarchaeology,
or by mimicking the behavior in experiments under
controlled conditions, as in experimental archaeology.
Using these correlates requires the uniformitarian
assumption that our observations can apply to other
time periods because the processes we see in the
present operated in a similar way in the past. The
notion of uniformitarianism became widely accepted
in geology in the first half of the nineteenth century
and is now common in archaeology, although, the
extent to which human behavior is consistent across
time and space is still hotly debated.
To complicate matters, the end product or archaeological record is created by multiple processes,
and archaeologists often find remains that only indirectly reflect the particular human behavior they have
chosen to study. Middle-range research, therefore,
also includes the study of formation processes of
the archaeological record, perhaps best known from
the work of Michael Schiffer. Formation processes
include both cultural processes, such as those studied
by ethnoarchaeologists, and natural processes, such
as sediment deposition and erosion. These processes
can alter and rearrange material remains at any point
during archaeological site formation. Some ethnoarchaeologists focus on particular behaviors of interest,
such as house construction, stone tool manufacture,
or food sharing, that occur early in the site formation process. Other ethnoarchaeologists address how
materials enter the archaeological record through activities such as discard and house abandonment and
how they are transformed by cultural processes such
as trampling and construction, later in the site formation process. Research on formation processes is
similar in some ways to taphonomy, the subdiscipline of palaeontology that addresses how organisms
become part of the fossil record.

Development and Research Themes

Jesse Walter Fewkes first used the term ethnoarchaeologist in 1900, referring to an archaeologist

who applies his knowledge of a groups current or

recent culture to the study of its prehistory. This is
similar to the direct-historical approach formally
defined by Waldo Wedel in 1938 and depends on
cultural continuity over time. This approach was
used by a number of archaeologists in the United
States during the late nineteenth century and early
twentieth century, including Arthur Parker in the
Northeast, Wedel and William Duncan Strong in
the Great Plains, Julian Steward in the Great Basin,
and Fewkes and Frank Hamilton Cushing in the
Southwest, and it still plays an important role in
archaeological interpretation. It is not considered to
be ethnoarchaeology by current scholars, who argue
that ethnoarchaeology concerns more general links
between human behavior and material patterning
that are not dependent upon cultural continuity.
The summary of ethnoarchaeologys history largely
follows that of Nicholas David and Carol Kramer,
who in their 2001 book Ethnoarchaeology in Action
divide the history of ethnoarchaeology into three
periods: Initial, New Ethnoarchaeology, and Recent.
They date the beginning of modern ethnoarchaeology
to a 1956 paper by Maxine Kleindienst and Patty
Jo Watson, titled Action archaeology: the archaeological inventory of a living community. Kleindienst
and Watson argued that the archaeologist, with his
own theoretical orientation, needed to conduct fieldwork to collect appropriate data for archaeological
applications.
The Initial period of ethnoarchaeology is mostly
exploratory, descriptive, and focused on particular
material culture classes. Modern Yucatecan Maya
Pottery Making by Raymond Thompson, published
in 1958, is a landmark study in this period because
Thompson addresses how his descriptive work may be
used by archaeologists. George Fosters 1960 article
Life expectancy of utilitarian pottery in Tzintzuntzan,
Michoacan, Mexico is an early attempt in ethnoarchaeology to consider how artifacts are actually
discarded and enter the archaeological record.
The New Ethnoarchaeology developed from the
New Archaeology or processual archaeology, an
important theoretical shift in American archaeology
following Lewis Binfords article Archaeology as anthropology in 1962. The New Archaeology regarded
culture as the external, nonbiological means of human
adaptation to the environment. It also advocated an
explicitly scientific approach to archaeological inquiry. This theoretical shift directed ethnoarchaeology
toward studies of landscape and resource use, particularly by foragers, and toward work that considered
how cultural remains entered the archaeological record. Important studies of hunting and gathering
groups include work with the Ngatatjara Aborigines

ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY 1159

in Australia (Richard Gould), the !Kung San in southern

Africa (John Yellen and others), the Nunamiut
in Alaska (Lewis Binford), the Alyawara of central
Australia (James OConnell), and the Hadza in
Tanzania (James OConnell, Kristen Hawkes, and
others). Studies of agricultural villagers include
research by Patty Jo Watson and Carol Kramer in
Iran and William Longacre in the Philippines. Publications appeared on the use of space, both within
individual settlements and broader landscapes, and
on-site formation processes.
The Recent period is characterized by the growing
influence of postprocessualism within archaeology
and ethnoarchaeology. This perspective downplays
function and adaptation and emphasizes the role of
human choice and agency in culture. David and
Kramer start this period in 1982 with the publication
of Ian Hodders book Symbols in Action, which uses
ethnoarchaeology to present a different view of material culture. Material patterns and objects are not just
the end result of human behavior, Hodder argued;
they also influence and shape that behavior. Artifacts
are not passive evidence of culture but symbols in
action. Hodder was inspired by scholars, such as the
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, whose practice theory has
become increasingly important in archaeology. Postprocessualism does not replace processualism and
related theoretical perspectives, however; this period
also displays continuity in theory and in actual projects from the New Ethnoarchaeology period. Frenchspeaking ethnoarchaeologists such as Valentine Roux
also continued to work in the positivist tradition,
adopting a theoretical position known as logicism
that is based on archaeological writings by JeanClaude Gardin and outlined by Alain Gallay.
The fruits of long-term efforts in ethnoarchaeology
became apparent in this period, through comparison
and synthesis and the publication of findings from several large multiyear projects. Edited volumes such as
Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology and From Bones to Behavior bring together studies from multiple authors and
regions and evaluate the overall contributions of ethnoarchaeology to behavioral inferences from a particular artifact class. The Coxoh Ethnoarchaeology Project,
led by Brian Hayden, conducted fieldwork in three
communities in the Maya highlands between 1977
and 1979 and led to important publications on the
production and use of flaked stone, ground stone, and
ceramic artifacts as well as refuse disposal. The Mandara Archaeological Project directed by Nicholas David
and Judy Sterner began in 1984, conducting research
in Cameroon and Nigeria on ceramic manufacture,
metallurgy, household compounds, and other topics.
Longacres Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project has
continued over 30 years and is discussed further below.

To date, ethnoarchaeological projects have been

conducted all over the world, in settings ranging
from huntinggathering camps to state-level societies.
Topics include a wide variety of material remains and
artifact classes, such as architecture, faunal bone,
botanical remains, basketry, flaked stone, ceramics,
glass, and metals. Activities and cultural processes
have also been studied, such as the use of space within
buildings, sites and settlements, and broader landscapes, site abandonment, and the development and
transition of decoration and style. All of these studies
are too varied and numerous to adequately summarize
here. For more information, readers are referred to
the Further reading section, especially the excellent
overview by David and Kramer.

Applying Ethnoarchaeology
As archaeology has evolved, so have ideas about the
nature of archaeological inference and the appropriate use of ethnoarchaeology. Ethnoarchaeological
data may be used as analogy, in which the archaeologist concludes that one thing (the prehistoric culture)
is like another thing (the recent or modern culture)
based on some observed similarities in material culture. The archaeologist may then associate the material culture with less tangible aspects of culture in the
recent or modern group, and project those aspects
onto the prehistoric group. In ethnoarchaeology as
first defined by Fewkes and in the direct-historical
approach, ethnographic analogies were often used
uncritically; because of presumed cultural continuity,
analogies between ancestral and descendent cultures
were assumed to be valid without testing. Robert
Ascher expanded use of these analogies in 1961 by
arguing that analogies can be drawn between cultures
that adapted to similar environments in similar ways.
The New Archaeology emphasized testing hypotheses with archaeological data, and uncritical analogies
were subsequently challenged. Ethnoarchaeology was
often used instead as a source of testable hypotheses,
as advocated by Patty Jo Watson. Robert Kellys
The Foraging Spectrum illustrates this perspective.
It combines ethnoarchaeological research with other
huntergatherer studies and may not be ethnoarchaeology itself, but it was written primarily for archaeologists who need relevant anthropological theory to
create testable archaeological models. (Kellys recent
work studying mobility and site layout among the
Mikea of Madagascar is more clearly ethnoarchaeology as it is defined here.) Hypotheses should not
be generated solely from data from living people,
however, as pointed out by ethnoarchaeologists such
as Martin Wobst and Michael Stanislawski. The universe of possible explanations should not be restricted

1160 ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY

to what has been observed in recent human behavior;

if it is, we will never see how the past may differ from
the present.
Ethnoarchaeology has also served to point out
problems in interpretation, either with overlooked
variables or unexplored alternatives. John Yellen has
called this the spoiler approach and notes that
although it emphasizes what archaeologists get wrong,
it is an important part of developing and improving
middle-range theory.
Both Binford and Schiffer emphasize that in order
to make inferences from the archaeological record,
archaeologists need scientific law-like generalizations
about the relationships between human behavior and
material culture. Ethnoarchaeology is one major
arena in which these generalizations or correlates
are developed. Richard Gould and John Yellen have
used contrastive ethnoarchaeology in this way, comparing household spacing between huntinggathering
groups in similar desert environments. In this case,
the differences proved to be more informative than
the similarities, and they concluded that the closer
spacing in the Kalahari Desert was related to danger
from large carnivores, which are absent in Australias
Western Desert. Comparative studies also use data
from multiple groups to find broader patterns, as in
Dean Arnolds Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process,
Kellys The Foraging Spectrum, and Richard Blantons
Houses and Households: A Comparative Study.
Binford argues strongly for the use of cross-cultural
comparisons as a uniformitarian strategy for learning
in anthropology throughout his career and in his
2001 book Constructing Frames of Reference, written to address productively using ethnographic data
in the service of archaeological goals.
French-speaking archaeologists and ethnoarchaeologists in the logicist tradition agree that ethnoarchaeologists look for generalizations about behavior
and material culture, although, as Alain Gallay points
out, these are not useful if they become overly broad
platitudes on human behavior or overly narrow
local cultural particularisms. Gallay also argues
that they cannot be applied appropriately if the
mechanisms behind them are not understood. The
scientific approach taken by the logicists includes
use of evidence from other scientific fields, including
some less often considered by North American ethnoarchaeologists such as experimental psychology.
Valentine Roux and Danie`la Corbettas research on
craft specialization near New Delhi, India is one
example of a logicist ethnoarchaeological study. Roux
and Corbetta relate changes in ceramic shape to
increasing productive specialization, explaining the
relationship through the development of motor skills
by potters as well as attributes of the raw materials.

Not all archaeologists believe such generalizations

have been or can be developed through ethnoarchaeology, or that they can be applied broadly enough
to be meaningful or useful. Archaeologists such as
Michelle Hegmon and Donald Grayson, referring to
ceramic and faunal studies respectively, have suggested that cautionary tales or the spoiler approach
dominate the field. Postprocessualists might deny that
patterns of any real significance or interest could
apply across cultures. Even committed ethnoarchaeologists find difficulties, often practical if not theoretical. For example, David and Kramer note that
Roux and Corbettas results have not been applied
to the interpretation of archaeological material, in
part because Rouxs system for classifying vessels
by level of specialization is very complex and can
only be used for complete or reconstructible vessels.
Other archaeologists and anthropologists argue
that direct applications to archaeology are not the
only useful contributions of ethnoarchaeology, if
ethnoarchaeology is defined more broadly as ethnographic study with an archaeologists attention to
material culture. Daniel Miller conducted ceramic
ethnoarchaeology in India early in his career, and
has since made enormous contributions to the field
of modern material culture studies. He is a founding
editor of the Journal of Material Culture, and his
books include A Theory of Shopping and the edited
four-volume set Consumption: Critical Concepts.
Jeanne Arnold and Anthony Graesch are two of the
archaeologists working with data from modern middle-class households in Los Angeles, collected at the
UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF),
a Sloan Center on Working Families supported by
the Alfred P. Sloan Foundations Program on DualCareer Working Middle Class Families. They focus
on domestic material culture, including architecture,
home furnishings, and family possessions, and document the use of objects and space through systematic timed observations, photographs, and interviews.
Currently, Arnold is investigating activity scheduling, object management, and identity formation,
and Graeschs focus is on how the constructed domestic environment reflects and relates to household
activities.
In spite of debates about its utility and appropriate
role, ethnoarchaeology has had a significant impact
on archaeological research, affecting the way questions are formulated, hypotheses are evaluated, and
material patterns and interpretations are placed in a
broader cultural context. The most visible impact
may be on hunter-gatherer archaeology. James Skibo,
in his review of American Antiquity articles from
19752004, found that ethnoarchaeological studies
were cited 19 times per year on average and that most

ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY 1161

of these citations were for work with hunter-gatherers.

Indeed, hunter-gatherer ethnoarchaeology has been frequently used to interpret archaeological data sets, such
as regional survey data from the United States Great
Lakes area in a 2005 issue of American Antiquity.
Ethnoarchaeology often contributes to archaeology in the same way that other anthropological and
social studies do, by enriching our understanding
of culture and adaptation and human variation.
Archaeologists who undertake ethnoarchaeology witness connections between artifacts and people and a
whole lot more, and often return with a fundamentally different perspective on the study of human
behavior, through archaeology or otherwise. These
contributions are hard to quantify. There are other
more tangible, if more prosaic, applications of ethnoarchaeological data. One area of influence is artifact
analysis and interpretation. As pointed out by Donald
Grayson and Laurence Bartram, Binfords analysis of
ethnoarchaeological fauna influenced many analyses
of archaeological faunal collections.
In spite of the apparent dominance of huntergatherer archaeology, ceramic ethnoarchaeology has
also affected archaeological ceramic research. For
example, the ethnoarchaeologist Dean Arnold once
collaborated with two leading researchers in the
chemical characterization of artifacts, Hector Neff
and Ronald Bishop, to examine what ceramic sourcing really means in a social and behavioral context.
Mark Varien and Barbara Mills used cross-cultural
ethnoarchaeological data on ceramic use life to
evaluate archaeological ceramic discard rates at one
site in the United States Southwest. Miram Stark,
who received her PhD from the University of Arizona,
influenced many of her archaeological colleagues
with her depiction of village-level ceramic specialization from the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project
(which is one reason why Kalinga and other ethnoarchaeological data are frequently considered in
the reconstruction of ceramic exchange networks
in central and southern Arizona).
Spatial patterning has also received a lot of attention. Papers in the edited volume The Interpretation
of Archaeological Spatial Patterning include both
ethnoarchaeological studies and applications of ethnoarchaeological findings to particular archaeological sites. Susan Kents Analyzing Activity Areas
is an important work that illustrates the utility of
moving back and forth between ethnoarchaeological
and archaeological perspectives. Kent planned to
directly apply her ethnoarchaeological research presented in the first half to archaeological sites in the
second half, but this application proved difficult
given differences in the types of data collected. The
attempt nonetheless generated many useful insights,

including a ground-breaking discussion of crosscultural differences in the use of space. Her later
article The archaeological visibility of storage: delineating storage from trash areas is a strong application of her ethnoarchaeological work in Botswana to
archaeological sites in the United States Southwest.

Ethnoarchaeological Collections
So far there has been a discussion on the collection
and use of data rather than objects. The physical
objects, as examples of the material culture, are
another important line of evidence. Ethnographic
collections have been used by archaeologists to better
understand nonindustrial material culture, and some
have been directly compared to archaeological collections or analyzed using similar methods. Despite their
utility, these are not the collections the archaeologists
themselves would have made given the opportunity.
This is, at least in part, because museums and wealthy
individuals do not choose items that represent the
bulk of the archaeological record. For example,
collectors and the viewing public generally prefer
painted vessels in good condition. Plain cooking vessels are underrepresented and heavily used vessels are
rarely included, although fragments of such vessels
dominate many archaeological collections.
Ethnoarchaeologists may collect objects as well as
data with the needs of archaeologists in mind. Such
collections may allow for more detailed artifact
analysis similar to that undertaken for archaeological
objects, and permit reanalysis and use as training
material by other researchers who could not visit
the field site. Collections both enhance the original
study and help other archaeologists to learn and
benefit from ethnoarchaeological work. For example,
Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project researchers
collected both painted water jars and plain cooking
vessels, now curated at the Arizona State Museum.
These collections were an integral part of research by
Skibo and Kobayashi on cooking vessel use. During
his Nunamiut research, Binford collected faunal bone
from both recently butchered animals and older
Nunamiut sites. These materials are stored at the
Museum of New Mexico and also at the University
of Arizona, where Mary Stiner is directing additional
analyses.

Example: The Kalinga

Ethnoarchaeological Project
Some of the issues raised above are revisited through
one example from the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological
Project (KEP). This project is directed by William
Longacre at the University of Arizona, who began

1162 ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY

studying contemporary potters in 1973. His choice of

potters in Kalinga Province, the Philippines, was
influenced heavily by a colleague, Edward Dozier,
whose ethnographic fieldwork in the region indicated
that ceramic vessels were still made and used within
Kalinga households. Over the past 30 years, Longacres initial research focus on pottery decoration has
expanded into broader investigations of household
ceramic manufacture, use, and exchange. Longacre
continued to collect data himself for decades and
directed one large field season during the 198788
academic year. Many of his former students, including Michael Graves, James Skibo, and Miriam Stark,
have also published their work with this project.
The KEP is based in the Pasil Municipality
along the Pasil River Valley in northern Luzon, the
Philippines. The study area has two things in common
with many other ethnoarchaeological field locations.
First, most people in Pasil are farmers who grow
almost all of their food and have limited access to
cash. Second, the area is relatively inaccessible due
to the local topography. The Pasil villages are located
on mountain slopes (Figure 1), and unpaved roads
reach some but not all of them. Electricity is only

available from gasoline-powered generators; it is

used primarily for powering lights at night, and even
then not consistently. Fewer commercial goods reach
these communities because they are difficult to transport and also difficult to afford. Ceramic cooking
vessels stay in use longer in these settings, perhaps in
part because they are locally available and cheaper
than the metal vessels that have replaced them in most
of the world (Figure 2).
The example used here is drawn from the 2001
field season in Dalupa (Figure 3), a community of
380 people in 71 households. As a prehistoric ceramic
analyst, the author was especially interested in ceramics from middens, or trash dumps, because archaeologists recover large samples of ceramics from these
contexts. Many more vessels are broken and discarded into middens than are left in other contexts,
such as within houses during abandonment. During
our fieldwork, we tracked the movement of discarded
vessels into middens to link refuse deposits with
their source areas, such as households or groups of
households, and to see how well midden assemblages
represented what was thrown away.
Households are the focus of much anthropological
and archaeological inquiry. Relying on observed ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological patterns, archaeologists have tried to associate attributes of household
ceramic assemblages or social groups with household size and composition, wealth or status, social
obligations, and diet, cuisine, and food preparation
techniques. To draw these connections, however, they
need to isolate the ceramics from different households
or groups of households. Our goal was to see whether,
using the right approaches, they could include midden
ceramics in such studies.
Methods

Figure 1 View from Dalupa across the Pasil River Valley

towards two nearby communities.

The choice of methods is crucial in an ethnoarchaeological study, particularly if the authors claim to
find a broader pattern that applies to other situations.
Archaeologists need to have confidence in the results
before using them in archaeological interpretation,
and should ask some pointed questions. How exactly
did the ethnoarchaeologists document their patterns?
How much variation might be expected from these
patterns? Could any of the data sources be biased,
and how and why? The best way to show the crosscultural applicability of a pattern is often to look at
as many cases as possible, but authors can at least
increase confidence in their particular case through
careful data collection. David and Kramer provide
an excellent overview of fieldwork methods and
concerns unique to ethnoarchaeology. KEP fieldwork here is offered as one concrete example of
ethnoarchaeological methods.

ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY 1163

Figure 2 Local potters in Dalupa apply resin to ceramic pots after firing to waterproof them.

Figure 3 View down the central thoroughfare (cement sidewalk) of Dalupa. Because of Dalupas location on the side of a mountain,
houses sit on residential terraces with stone walls like the one visible in the foreground.

Matthew Hill and Margaret E. Beck spent five

months living in Dalupa and conducting fieldwork.
They relied partially on interviews with Dalupa residents and partially on their independent observations
of behavior and physical deposits, collecting data from
household ceramic inventories, weekly questionnaires,
and physical investigations of middens and artifacts.
The interviews were conducted in English with
the help of four local assistants, who translated as
necessary. While use of English is widespread in the
region, the dominant language is Kalinga. Interviews
are a relatively quick way to get information on a
variety of topics, and may be the only way to get
some kinds of data. Some responses may be inaccurate or misleading, however, as informants may not

remember events in sufficient detail or may adjust

answers in attempts to please interviewers or avoid
embarrassment. We attempted to reduce informant
error by interviewing households once a week and
collecting data over the entire field season, asking
informants only to remember very recent events. We
also reviewed questionnaire data for internal consistency and field-checked data whenever possible. Rosemary
Firth describes and illustrates well the value of crosschecking interview data in Housekeeping Among
Malay Peasants.
We visited each house at the beginning of fieldwork
to record all of the ceramic vessels owned by each
family. Toward the end of the field season, we visited
everyone again and re-inventoried their ceramic

1164 ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY

vessels. We compared the totals and then asked the

family about any discrepancies, including vessels they
may have broken or discarded.
One of our local assistants visited every family once
a week to ask about cooking vessel use, general
household discard, and ceramic breakage and discard. First, people were asked what their family had
cooked the previous day and which pots they used to
cook in. They were also asked what they threw away
the previous day, and where they put it. Finally, they
were asked if they had broken or otherwise damaged
any ceramic vessels during the week, and what they
did with the vessels afterward. Their reports of damage from weekly interviews should have been consistent with the final ceramic inventories, and families
were asked about any discrepancies during the final
vessel inventories.
We mapped the entire village, including any visible
accumulations of trash. Each accumulation got an
arbitrary number. Every week we reviewed the
questionnaire data and matched the reported discard
locations to our mapped trash piles, checking for new
trash piles as needed. In this way we estimated how
many households, and which households, threw trash
into a particular midden.
Once the middens were defined, we documented
them in more detail. We mapped them in plan view
(Figure 4), cored them along a center line to determine depth, and recorded the items present on the
surface in sample units. We also excavated test units
in two active middens. We collected 3001 midden
sherds, including surface sherds from 17 active middens
and excavated sherds from two middens.

Results: Trash and Trash Accumulation

Most trash within the Dalupa residential area is

produced by household activities. Household trash
generally consists of household items and waste
from routine activities, such as meal preparation and
personal hygiene. It is usually temporarily collected in
a container within the house, such as a large metal
can, that is periodically carried outside and emptied.
Ceramic vessels are thrown away close to where
they were broken, in most (79%) cases within 10 m.
Ceramic vessels broken within houses were treated
like other household trash, although as relatively large
objects, they might be thrown away immediately rather
than placed in the trash can.
One major difference in household trash between
Dalupa and communities in the United States is that
leftover food is almost never thrown away. It is instead shared with other people or given to domestic
animals, and does not find its way into middens.
Some inedible (to humans) by-products of food
processing, such as pea pods, are thrown away.
Discarded items do not accumulate randomly all
over the village. The piles of trash often smell, attract
insects and scavenging animals, and occupy space
that could be used for other activities. Residents
therefore come to some informal agreement about
where trash may accumulate, and it becomes concentrated in certain locations as middens, known as
aggil in the Kalinga language. In Dalupa and in other
ethnoarchaeological settings, middens tend to appear
in or along streams or washes, around the edges of
house lots, and off the sides of hills or terraces.

Figure 4 This midden below a terrace wall was photographed just before mapping. (The line through the midden center is a measuring
tape.) Note the spectators along the wall. Especially in the beginning of the field season, most of our activities gathered a crowd.

ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY 1165

There were 32 active middens in Dalupa during

our fieldwork, covering about 10% of the residential
area. Dalupa households use between one and three
middens for disposal of their daily household waste,
although they tend to concentrate their refuse in one
midden closest to their house.
Some middens are used by a particular house and
others are shared by multiple households. We grouped
middens into three categories based on household contributions: household (used by only one household),
local (used by two to five households), and communal
(used by six or more households). Household and
local midden users transported their refuse relatively
short distances, averaging 6 and 11 m, respectively,
because these middens were either within or adjacent
to their house lots. The communal middens shared
by many more families tended to be farther away
from their houses, and communal midden users transported their trash nearly 35 m from their households
on average.
People apparently prefer to put a household midden close by, within their own house lot, when they
have the space to do so. Household middens are
found among the Maya households in the Coxoh
Project area and in Philip Arnolds sample of Mexican
households in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz. The
average house lot size in the Veracruz sample is
282 m2. In Dalupa, where house lots average only
156 m2, residents are often forced to share middens
with their neighbors.
Middens in Dalupa are constantly disturbed even
while they are forming. Younger children have not
yet been fully socialized to avoid the trash, and often
play in middens and collect materials from them.

Figure 5 Animals rummage through a Dalupa midden for food.

Domestic animals such as pigs, dogs, and chickens

scavenge for food and also enter the middens to consume rice chaff, banana peels, and other discarded
organic materials (Figure 5). Because middens are
often very close to living and working areas, they
received significant foot traffic in some areas and
might be shifted or disturbed by outside cleaning
activities. For example, neighbors occasionally moved
small middens away from their house if the smell or
waste bothered them; larger middens near public
spaces, such as the basketball court or elementary
school, were pushed back or burned, or both, to clean
up the area before intra- or intercommunity events
(Figure 6). The movement, cleaning, and trampling of
middens reduces many items to plastic, metal, glass,
fabric, and ceramic scraps. Faunal bone fragments only
appear occasionally; in Dalupa as elsewhere, dogs
destroy most of the bone produced by butchery and
meat consumption.
We argue that the basic rules of trash disposal and
midden placement might apply in other settings,
allowing archaeologists to link middens to the living
and working areas where trash was produced. It
would be easier to connect household and local
middens with their sources, because they receive trash
from fewer households. Those households are immediately adjacent to the midden and can be identified.
Household and local middens are visibly different
from communal middens, at least in Dalupa, in their
smaller size and placement around or between houses
rather than around public activity areas. To apply our
patterns, archaeologists would need to determine
which structures in their site are habitation structures
and which structures are contemporaneous.

1166 ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY

Figure 6 The midden adjacent to the elementary school (the building to the right) is burned before the start of fall classes.

We also conclude that middens are good contexts

for sampling household ceramic assemblages. Most
(73%) discarded vessels went to middens, according
to the weekly interviews, although some vessels were
left outside the residential area or as isolated artifacts
within the village. Both the weekly interviews and
analysis of the midden ceramics suggest that the distribution of vessel types in middens is similar to the
overall distribution of discarded vessel types.
Discussion In the absence of ethnoarchaeology,
data on this topic may never have been collected.
Other anthropologists do not seem to want such detailed information about trash and trash dumps, and
the limited comparative data available were collected
by other ethnoarchaeologists. We also reaped the
benefits of a long-term ethnoarchaeological project,
as our work was greatly improved by the availability
of previous KEP vessel collections and data. For example, we were able to compare the frequency of
vessel breakage and rates of ceramic use between the
198788 and the 2001 field seasons. Unfortunately,
from the perspective of ceramic ethnoarchaeology, we
found that ceramic use and ownership significantly
declined over this 13-year period.
Ethnoarchaeological fieldwork is similar to other
ethnographic research in some ways, but methods
reflect (or should reflect) the emphasis on material
culture and the need for data comparable to archaeological data. Even so, there are often fundamental
differences in the units of observation between ethnoarchaeology and archaeology, as noted by researchers who have worked in both settings, such as James
Skibo and Philip Arnold. Moving back and forth
between ethnoarchaeological and archaeological

perspectives should enhance both kinds of research.

We attempted to collect data as comparable to archaeological data as possible, having previously worked as
archaeologists and attempted to apply ethnoarchaeological findings to our archaeological data. Only our
archaeological audience can judge whether we were
successful in our own data collection strategies.
Our goal was to generalize about waste disposal in
a village setting, and we suggest the observed patterns
should apply in other villages (prehistoric or otherwise)
similar to our ethnoarchaeological case. If they do, then
midden deposits can be used to compare the material
culture between households or groups of households.
Archaeologists interested in household archaeology
currently rely on material from house floors, which
produce much smaller samples. We believe, as do other
archaeologists influenced by the New Archaeology, that
our generalizations would be refined and strengthened
by additional cross-cultural comparisons.

Conclusion
Archaeologists often want data from living groups
that they can apply, more or less directly, toward their
interpretations of the archaeological record. These
are not easy to come by for several reasons. First, everyone really wants ethnoarchaeological data collected
by archaeologists with similar theoretical perspectives and research interests to his or her own. This is
obviously impossible; despite a considerable increase
in ethnoarchaeological studies, they still make up a
small portion of archaeological research, and opportunities to study nonindustrial technologies and lifeways
are rapidly vanishing. Although ethnoarchaeologists
attempt to serve the needs of archaeology, diversity

ETHNOHISTORY 1167

within the discipline ensures that not all archaeologists

will get what they want.
Second, as noted earlier, both cultural and natural
formation processes affect material patterning, and
not all of these are documented in ethnoarchaeological studies. Archaeological inference depends upon
numerous correlates or principles from multiple avenues of research, and ethnoarchaeology alone is unlikely to provide a scene that one could also observe
in the archaeological record. As John Yellen observed,
ethnoarchaeologists often describe the results of single events but archaeological assemblages result from
multiple events. The archaeologists hoping for, in
James Skibos words, some tidy, tight, little correlate
that can be applied to their massive pile of sherds
now spilling onto the lab floor will be disappointed
by ethnoarchaeology, because ethnoarchaeological
findings must first be put into models that then can
be applied to the archaeological record.
See also: Behavioral Archaeology; Experimental Ar-

chaeology; Interpretive Models, Development of;

Ethnographic Analogy

Middle Range Approaches; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Sites: Formation

Processes.

Further Reading
Beck ME (2006) Midden ceramic assemblage formation: An
ethnoarchaeological case study from Kalinga, the Philippines.
American Antiquity 71: 2751.
Binford LR (1978) Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology. New York:
Academic Press.
David N and Kramer C (2001) Ethnoarchaeology in Action.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hayden B and Cannon A (1984) The Structure of Material Systems:
Ethnoarchaeology in the Maya Highlands. SAA Papers 3.
Washington, DC: Society for American Archaeology.
Kramer C (1979) Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnography
for Archaeology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Longacre WA (ed.) (1991) Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press.
Longacre WA and Skibo JM (eds.) (1994) Kalinga Ethnoarchaeology: Expanding Archaeological Method and Theory.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Yellen JE (1977) Archaeological Approaches to the Present: Models
for Reconstructing the Past. New York: Academic Press.

See: Middle Range Approaches.

ETHNOHISTORY
Joel W Palka, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
analogy This concept relates to the inferences archaeologists
make regarding the reconstruction of past behavior based on
information from ethnography, ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology,
or comparative studies.
annales An influential movement in historical research that
seeks to reconstruct the complete history of a wide range of
human activities and social life that vary over short to long
periods through a multivariate data set, such as documents, oral
history, material culture, geographical information, economics,
archaeology, and social theory.
archive Collection of documents in government offices,
churches, libraries, museums, town halls, and private holdings
studied by ethnohistorians.

contact studies This specialty involves historical and

archaeological research on the interaction between colonial
peoples and indigenous societies, and examines how culture
contact resulted in transformations in native cultures.
direct historical approach Relies on ethnographic and
historical evidence to correlate archaeological sites and artifacts
with known cultures and combines the data to reconstruct past
societies and specific human behavior.
emic A term that describes a view from within a society or an
insiders perspective on a culture that is obtained through native
voice, symbolism, material creations, or actions.
ethnography The description of contemporary human societies
and culture that combine social analysis, comparative theory,
and occasionally historical and archaeological contexts (also
cultural and social anthropology or ethnology).
ethnohistory This field of inquiry, methodology, or discipline
examines past human behavior and elements of a society, such as
demography, social change, and material culture, and how they
were maintained or transformed through time by using written
records and oral accounts.

1168 ETHNOHISTORY
longue duree This term refers to periods of little or slow change
in a society, or predictable cycles or repetitions of cultural
elements over an extended period, that are integrated with
large-scale environmental or material factors. In archaeology
circles, this concept often signifies the long duration of cultural
continuities.
middle-range theory This concept covers the different
methods and ways that archaeologists reconstruct past human
behavior from interpretations of material remains in the
archaeological record.
upstreaming Refers to the use of ethnographic or ethnohistoric
data from modern cultures to critique reconstructions of or
directly interpret past behaviors and cultures in the
archaeological and/or historical records (the reverse is referred to
as downstreaming).

This article covers the usage and importance of ethnohistory in archaeology. Ethnohistory is a multidisciplinary field of study. The discipline typically
focuses on past indigenous societies and how they
changed following contact with expanding Western
states in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods (usually around 15001900). Ethnohistory frequently
involves the study of documents and/or oral histories
related to indigenous lifeways, language, religious
beliefs, economic organization, material culture, and
how they were transformed following encounters
with Europeans. Ethnohistory has been described in
the past as the study of identities, locations, contacts,
movements, numbers, and cultural activities of indigenous peoples from written records. Essentially, this
field can be portrayed as the ethnography of past
cultures through historic sources, either written by
colonists (usually European) or indigenous peoples
following colonization, and it involves the interpretation of social behaviors and cultural transformations.
Many archaeologists do ethnohistorical research,
yet in most cases they rely on published information
on primary sources or studies carried out on them by
ethnohistorians or historians. In turn, ethnohistorians
undertake or participate in archaeological projects as
archival researchers and usually not as excavators.
However, that is changing today since some archaeologists also retrieve data from archives, explorers
accounts, and oral histories, and ethnohistorians are
more interested in first-hand archaeological findings.
While archaeology and history can be used separately
for studies of the past or culture change, this essay
concentrates on the use of ethnohistory and archaeology together in research projects to learn more about
ancient societies. Therefore, as it can be imagined, the
direct utilization of both fields of inquiry and data
sets is a worthwhile but difficult task. It is easy for an
anthropologist to incorporate historical information
in a discussion of culture change, yet it requires more

effort to gather original archaeological and historical

data as well.
Although ethnohistory was influential with historians and social anthropologists during its genesis,
the relationship between and interconnectedness of
ethnohistory and archaeology continues to expand.
This relationship fits well within the Annales school
of historical scholarship, for instance, where different but interrelated data sets and perspectives help
achieve a more complete analysis of the past. The
Annales approach is also concerned with the differing
pace of historical events over the short and long
terms. In other words, specific political events can
occur in short periods in a society whereas ethnic
interaction and change can take place over centuries.
Interestingly, the importance of ethnohistory in archaeology is not usually explained in archaeology
textbooks, yet many archaeologists incorporate ethnohistoric research findings or original historic data in
their studies. However, textbook authors who work
in Middle America usually discuss the utility of ethnohistory and this is perhaps due to the extensive archives
and historical research in this culture area.
Ethnoarchaeology and historical archaeology,
which are related disciplines, generally receive more
treatises than ethnohistory in textbooks and discussions of archaeological inquiry. They differ from
ethnohistory, however, in that ethnoarchaeology is
concerned with ethnographic studies of human societies and their material culture and how they help
archaeologists create behavioral analogies with the
past. Sometimes there is an ethnohistorical component in ethnoarchaeology, but it mainly deals with
the ethnographic present. At the same time historical
archaeology is traditionally viewed as the study of
Europeans and their settlements and society from
the Colonial Period to the twentieth century with a
particular emphasis on the nineteenth century (as
seen in the article content in the flagship journals in
this discipline; besides the serial Ethnohistory, the
Annual Review of Anthropology , American Antiquity, and the Journal of Field Archaeology are good
places to begin researching case studies and theoretical approaches to ethnohistory in archaeology).
However, there is actually much overlap between
historical archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and ethnohistory, and their uses in archaeology with regard to
methodologies, aims and goals, creation of analogies,
contributions, and their connections to history.

Ethnohistory
This type of research is typically conducted by historians, ethnologists, linguists, and archaeologists.

ETHNOHISTORY 1169

Ethnohistory can be claimed as a subdiscipline or

methodology in either anthropology or history, and
the debate continues regarding which field it should
be placed in. Despite the fact that it is a common
scholarly pursuit and has its own widely-read journal,
very rarely does ethnohistory have its own academic
department or program within a university. Additionally, ethnohistorians can be found in different university departments, such as anthropology, linguistics,
and history, or organizations (libraries, museums,
cultural centers, etc.).
Ethnohistory as a research tool and subdiscipline
largely grew out of studies of colonialism and culture
contact which focused on indigenous culture change
starting around the mid-twentieth century. With this
in mind, the discipline has its roots and subsequent
developments in research in the New World: the clash
of cultures and the generation of archives in North,
Central, and South America from the Colonial Period
onward provided the impetus for the creation of ethnohistory as a discipline or research methodology.
One area of usefulness of ethnohistory in archaeology is its ability to help bridge time gaps. It is
advantageous for substantiating evidence from the
ethnographic present, which archaeologists rely upon
for their analogies and interpretations of past human
behaviors, in order to reconstruct the archaeological
past. In fact, there is actually an inherent danger in
applying analogies from the ethnographic present to
reconstruct human lifeways in the deep past due
to considerable culture change over time. However,
if the behaviors are represented in the historic record
which is closer to archaeological periods, then errors
relating to the misapplication of ethnographic data to
ancient times are minimalized.
For our purposes here, the positive uses (and not
abuses in the field, such as taking all documents at
face value for truthful past cultural reconstructions)
of ethnohistory in archaeology are stressed. Much of
the discussion and bibliographic sources here revolve
around New World archaeology, especially Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, where the author has
research expertise and where impressive amounts of
ethnohistory in archaeology have taken place. Certainly, ethnohistory is used in archaeology in other
parts of the world where European or indigenous
documents and oral histories are available, such as
Africa, China, and the Pacific, but this combination is
popular in the Americas because of the abundance of
historic sources and investigators. In Africa and the
Pacific, for example, Portuguese and English writings
along with native oral histories are accessed by archaeologists. Indigenous histories are important for
excavators in China and India on the other hand.

In the archaeology of Europe, pre-colonial (Rome

and Norway, for instance) and colonial-era (United
Kingdom and Spain) sources are utilized in archaeology. In true ethnohistorical form, I will devote space
here for an extensive list of sources that can be easily
accessed by the reader to peruse ethnohistorical and
archaeological research.
In these cultural and geographical regions, ethnohistorical information is often used to singularly help
archaeologists reconstruct specific aspects of the past
societies that they are interested in. On the other hand,
some ethnohistory is more comprehensive in nature or
is focused on many social and historic issues regarding
a past society. Political structure and ethnic borders in
an ancient civilization, such as Maya and Aztec, for
instance, are examined in light of what Europeans
described for similar social conditions in these societies during the contact period or time of colonization.
Stone tool manufacture and how lithics were used in
the distant past are also similarly reconstructed with
ethnohistoric accounts of a particular culture, including the historic Maya, Aztecs, and Inuit.
Importantly, archaeology fills in gaps in the historical record (see Time and History, Divisions). At times
we know of certain behaviors and material possessions present in a past society through ethnohistory,
but we may lack a more complete understanding of
the native culture and social change. For example,
through ethnohistory the settlement patterns of a
certain ethnic group may be clearly described. But
we may not have historic records of their subsistence
practices and how they were transformed after interaction with foreigners. For example, we may comprehend nineteenth-century Yucatec Maya subsistence
from accounts of explorers, but more information
from archaeology may be desired regarding their
burial practices and household economies if they are
not historically evident.
Conversely, only through ethnohistorical data and
analysis are archaeologists able to examine research
topics such as ethnogenesis, native resistance to colonial rule, social organization, religion, cultural survivals, and late pre-contact societies. Ethnohistory also
lends significant insights on issues that currently are,
and will continue to be, scrutinized, including human
agency, gender, ritual, microeconomics, and cultural
diversity. It also provides the time depth that is the
backbone in archaeological research so that we may
witness culture change or continuity and how and
why they occurred over a long period. The documentary record varies depending on the region, authorship, preservation, period in which they were created,
and intended audience. Some documents cover population figures, household sizes and compositions, and

1170 ETHNOHISTORY

tribute or tax lists. Other archival sources contain

long discussions of native religion, social organization, and intellectual life. Additional written sources
contribute maps, descriptions or drawings of material
culture, and native language dictionaries, to name a
few types of ethnohistorical information.
It is easy to see why ethnohistory is of great interest
to archaeologists. Written records provide information
on human behavior, culture change and continuity, and
material culture that can be examined in the archaeological record. Often the time depth of the documents is
helpful for viewing diachronic culture change which is
a hallmark advantage of archaeological research.

Ethnohistory and Archaeology

Among the earliest mentioning of ethnohistory is
in the archaeology literature at the beginning of the
twentieth century. Here the term refers to a method to
reconstruct past cultures by extracting information
from historical documents. Surely many archaeologists in different settings did, and still do, consult
historical sources to better interpret archaeological
data and generate more convincing analyses of archaeological cultures. It is important to note here
that studies of Colonial Period sources and the histories of indigenous people were an integral part
of the development of archaeology in many Latin
American countries, such as Mexico where research
on the Pre-Columbian past was bolstered by written
descriptions of the Aztecs and Maya. In Mexico and
Guatemala, for instance, ethnohistory, archaeology,
and ethnography come together for the study of
national history, heritage, and contemporary society.
While it may be tempting to suggest that the origins
of ethnohistory as a field of study was within archaeology in the Americas, it in fact was pursued simultaneously by historians, archaeologists, linguists, and
anthropologists, who put their research into further
historic light. A perusal of the journal Ethnohistory
demonstrates the multidisciplinary origins of this
field. The volumes from the first few years of this
journal contained articles by historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists who covered their field of
study and its importance for ethnohistory, and vice
versa. Toward the end of the twentieth century, however, more historians and fewer anthropologists and
archaeologists wrote for the journal. Comparatively
little archaeology is found there today and when
archaeologists publish in the journal they treat the
historic record and its implications for archaeology,
but they often do not include archaeological data.
The plural disciplinary nature of ethnohistoric research continues to the present, although some researchers point out that many ethnographies would

benefit from ethnohistory. Similar suggestions or criticisms have not been leveled at archaeologists as a
whole, except for colleagues who are seen as ahistorical or who lack historical analogies or comparative
data in their work. Their research is often shallow in
time depth and frequently needs historical information
for stronger behavioral reconstructions. These archaeologists have also ignored historic processes of culture
change since they concentrate on single periods and
advocate for cross-cultural behavioral laws. Or they
have merely not included an ethnohistoric component
to their research even if written sources are available.
From the origins of archaeology to recent intellectual shifts in archaeological thought, ethnohistory has
played a key role in the reconstruction of past societies. Although the genesis and growth of ethnohistory itself are rooted in culture contact and culture
change studies in American archaeology, history
is also strongly wedded to classical archaeology in
Europe, as with the study of Greece and Rome, and
European and US historical archaeology, such as
excavations at Monticello in the eastern US and in
nineteenth century Irish farmsteads.
It was also instrumental in the development of the
global cultural-historical approach in archaeology during the first half of the twentieth century. Historical
knowledge was central to culture-historical archaeology at this time since the study of material culture,
ethnicity, and their historical connections to particular
societies were the main goals of archaeological research. Thus, archaeologists sought to identify the
archaeological remains of known societies, like the
Hopi and Navajo people of the Southwest US. Nationalism and progress in expanding nation states around
the world were also frequent topics touched upon in the
culturalhistorical approach, as in Nazi Germany and
Soviet Russia, and the study of documents was necessary to learn more about past ethnic groups and their
archaeological sites within the boundaries of these
states. Hence, the understanding of the political extension of and material culture of the Aztecs of Mexico
depended on the joint employment of ethnohistory and
archaeology (see Political Complexity, Rise of).
Ethnohistory was not viewed as a vital enterprise
within the Processual approach or the New Archaeology which was generally concerned with comparative cross-cultural studies in understanding the
past. Although culture change over time and ethnographic analogies are part of the processual archaeology (see Processual Archaeology), the use of history
was minimized, however, since it was seen as culturespecific, non-recurring, and noncomparative in nature.
Ethnohistory nonetheless is deemed useful in postprocessual or contextual archaeology (see Postprocessual Archaeology). In this archaeological paradigm it is

ETHNOHISTORY 1171

recognized that long-term cultural continuities may

exist and can be manifested in archaeological, historical, and ethnographic contexts. It is also recognized
here that meanings and functions of ancient material
culture can be discerned by analyzing the historic past
through documents of different periods. Furthermore,
human actions and agency are often the focus of historical research and this perspective can help explain
archaeological patterns and the artifactual evidence.
For instance, the complex symbolism and womens
labor in ancient Maya civilization can be viewed
in historical accounts of Maya textile weaving. This
information has been applied to the interpretation
of classic Maya elites and textile production as seen
on stone monuments and archaeological ceramics.
Historic meanings and cultural transformations are
targeted for understanding individual symbolic systems
and art, particular social groups or economic classes,
and specific human behavior and beliefs in postprocessual research.
Again, what is termed historical archaeology traditionally is thought of as the archaeology of
Europeans during the Colonial and post-Independence
Periods. Yet the concentration of ethnohistoric research, or the investigation of indigenous societies
and culture change following colonization, can be
placed within the rubric of historical archaeology.
This is due to the fact that there are many documents
related to indigenous cultures and not just Europeans
or Africans. Conversely, ethnohistorians do cover Old
World peoples in their research and not just indigenous cultures. Moreover, ethnohistory and historical
archaeology both use documents and material culture
for the examination of past cultures and lifeways.
Thus, historical archaeology encompasses the historical and material analysis of the modern world,
whether it is European or not. The subdiscipline of
historical archaeology (see Historical Archaeology:
As a Discipline) is also attracting attention around
the world and its practitioners incorporate historical
information directly in their research more so than
other archaeologists.
Ethnohistory is gaining greater importance in
archaeology at the present as a research tool or
guide for conducting research on the ancient past.
Archaeologists are continuously relying on ethnohistory to create analogies for reconstructing past behaviors from the material record (namely, using the
so-called see middle-range theory), especially if there
is a historical connection between the archaeological
and documented cultures or if there are no ethnographic societies from which to draw analogies. In
many academic departments or research programs
around the world, especially in Europe, archaeology
is closely aligned with history and researchers are

using both to investigate specific cultures or local

ethnic groups and how they changed or remained the
same over time. Even ethnohistorians are now
employing archaeological studies and data in their
research and publications. Ethnohistory is a uniting
force in the study of culture: it brings prehistory, history, and ethnography together in complex and necessary ways. As one scholar put it: the wall between
history and archaeology and its practitioners is tumbling down.

The Direct Ethnohistorical Approach

The anthropologist Julian Steward coined the concept
of the direct historical approach and called for its
practice to unite archaeology and anthropology over
50 years ago (although some researchers in North
America, Mexico, and Europe were linking past
societies with present ones much earlier). Basically,
this approach implies that the reconstruction of past
societies represented in the archaeological record can
be facilitated through ethnographically observed behavior in modern cultures. The scholar must work
from the known to the unknown, taking cultural
elements back in time to their archaeological beginnings to examine prehistoric human behavior. This is
done preferably with identifiable peoples and cultures
in the past to make these links with their historic
and ethnographic descendants. The approach of
upstreaming, or starting with the ethnographic and
reaching to ancient times is more common than the
opposing downstreaming, but the latter is appearing
more and more in the literature.
Importantly, in this view, more secure connections
are made between a historical-ethnographic group and
its archaeological antecedents for convincing reconstructions of the past. Importantly, solid chronologies
and identifications of past and present cultures are
necessary for the direct historical approach to work.
A historical connection has to be demonstrated for
the application of present conditions to the past to be
believable. This connection is frequently impossible to
make, however. Subsequently, simple or only a few
analogies can be attempted between cultures that
occupied the same geographic, had a similar economy,
or were organized under like political structures. The
continuity of behaviors between the past and present
also has to be assumed, or, better yet, demonstrated. In
the end, archaeologists are just creating analogies and
comparisons from the present to the past, and some
are more convincing than others with regard to the
quality of the data and interpretations.
The majority of archaeological research that utilizes ethnohistory involves such a direct historical
approach between related past and present people:

1172 ETHNOHISTORY

cultural information, reconstructions of past behaviors, and interpretations of historic societies taken
from the written record are applied to their archaeological counterparts. The importance of ethnohistory in creating analogies or directly reconstructing
archaeological cultures is obvious in Mesoamerica
(see Americas, Central: Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica). In this region, archaeologists have access to a
vast number of colonizer accounts, documents written
by indigenous people, church and government records,
early ethnographies, and oral histories to inform them
about archaeological cultures. For instance, ancient
Aztec settlement patterns can be studied in conjunction
with conquistador descriptions. Aztec religious rituals
and material culture are better understood through
priests records. Their past economic life, such as craft
production and trade, can be illuminated by Aztec or
Spanish tribute lists.
Some major historical sources of Mesoamerica,
extensively mined by a large number of archaeologists for their rich indigenous cultural information,
include the Florentine Codex, an extensive treatise of
MexicanAztec culture of central Mexico compiled
by the Friar Bernadino de Sahagun with the aid of
indigenous informants, the Relation of the Things of
Yucatan, a description of Yucatec Maya culture and
history mostly attributed to Friar Diego de Landa
and his informants, and the Relation of Michoacan,
which is a detailed recounting of the rise and fall of
Purepecha or Tarascan society in west Mexico as told
by natives.
Aztec ritual artifact deposits in central Mexico have
been correlated with historically described New Fire
ceremonies in Sahaguns manuscript, Classic Maya
hieroglyphs and calendar chronologies from stone
monuments are now well comprehended through
Landas writings, and Tarascan burial practices and
beliefs have been reconstructed by using the Relation
of Michoacan. Texts created by the Maya themselves
include the Popol Vuh, the Annals of the Cachiquels,
and the Chilam Balam manuscripts.

Ethnohistorical Archaeology
In most instances, archaeologists turn to the historical
record to apply cultural data to prehistoric conditions
as described above generally after the excavations
and lab work have begun. Nonetheless, some archaeological research has been driven by initial or coeval
groundwork in ethnohistory, and this approach is
becoming more common. Either archaeologists conduct preliminary searches in archives related to the
problems and geographical area at hand, or he/she
carries out archaeological research on historic indigenous cultures that supplements what is known from

the written record. This type of interdisciplinary ethnohistorical archaeology is valuable since the written
and material records complement one another aptly.
Furthermore, the archaeological evidence provides
additional windows or unique views regarding past
cultures that are not available from written texts.
In this category of investigations, archaeological
research focusing on the historic period, or to the time
of European colonizers across the globe, is dominant.
Furthermore, investigators study both indigenous and
Old World societies and how they interacted in the
contact period. The information and interpretations
from the documentary sources and archaeology are
interwoven into a seamless whole since the two data
sets provide information that one or the other disciplines may not have alone. Also, there are often fewer
temporal and cultural gaps between the historical and
archaeological peoples and periods (vs ethnographic
and ancient cultures), and one body of data directly
informs the other.
For instance, studies of early Colonial Period Taino
settlements, demography, and political organization
in the Caribbean are balanced with Spanish descriptions of native villages, populations, and sociopolitical structure on the one hand and archaeological data
on settlement patterns, numbers and sizes of houses,
and distribution of status goods within Taino sites
on the other. Likewise, the functions of Taino
architecture and artifacts have been inferred from
information in historic descriptions.
To summarize, the combination of ethnohistory
and archaeology in academic research generally
follows a few main goals, although they can be combined into a larger one as well: (1) the two subdisciplines and associated data sets are utilized to acquire
additional insights on a past society during a specific
period, (2) ethnohistory is used in conjunction with
archaeology to reconstruct past societies over a long
period of time stretching from recent times to the
distant past or vice versa, or (3) the historical and
archaeological data are combined to provide insights
and reconstructions of past societies that normally
would not be possible with one of the disciplines
alone.
This approach allows archaeologists to work with
diachronic culture change over an extensive period in
a geographical or culture area and allows for a focus
on particular social issues; these ends are normally
not possible with archaeological or historical data by
itself. For example, at the turn of the twentieth century, Jesse Walter Fewkes obtained archaeological, historical, and ethnographic data to reconstruct Taino
society, the function of indigenous material culture,
and outline social changes from precontact to modern
times in the Caribbean. He was able to reconstruct

ETHNOHISTORY 1173

the functions of artifacts, such as stone implements and

pottery, and discuss them with regard to Taino religion
and economics with the diverse data set. Additionally,
researchers in Amazonia and Mesoamerica have explored culture continuities and change over thousands
of years with ethnohistory and archaeology. In these
cases involving the longue duree, topics such as symbolism in art, specific subsistence strategies, human
agency, and reasons for particular transformations in
social organization are only visible through a compound historical and archaeological lens.
A useful outgrowth of ethnohistorical archaeology
is material culture studies in the contact era. Scholars
simultaneously conduct archaeological and ethnohistorical research to catalog, interpret functions of,
scrutinize changes in, and dissect the social relevance
of artifacts for past peoples and cultures. Popular
avenues of research in this vein include the production and distribution of stone tools and ceramics,
which were widely used by indigenous groups from
the Colonial Period up to the present, because of their
cultural importance, availability, and durability.
These two classes of artifacts are also resilient in
the ground and are studied by most archaeologists.
Publications of Colonial Period and post-Colonial
artifacts and their importance for examining time
frames, ethnicity, economic interaction, religious symbolism, social relations, and identity are clear products of the archaeologyethnohistory interface. In
this manner, the production and consumption of
stone tools and their relationship to social rank
in post-contact Hawaii, California missions, and
Australia are well known.

Ethnohistory in Archaeology at Present

This final discussion visits recent uses and considerations of ethnohistory in archaeology. The general
trends in ethnohistory and archaeology over the last
few decades will be outlined along with some predictions for the future based on current thoughts and
practices in the field. At the present we are witnessing
a surge in the number of research projects and publications in archaeology that have a substantial ethnohistorical component. Archaeologists continue to
turn to ethnohistory for direct historical analogies
to reconstruct past cultures. To give one example,
the religious symbolism and supernatural worlds of
Native Americans in the midwest and southeast
regions of the US have been resurrected by comparisons of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic
information from these culture areas. This Archaeology of the Soul by Robert Hall is achieved through
the interpretations of the historic, material, and ethnographic data sets from the select cultures.

Additionally, more archaeologists are utilizing ethnohistory and ethnographic information in their study
areas to do historical anthropology. With these developments we now have diachronic perspectives on
specific anthropological issues such as agrarian reform, ethnogenesis, long-term adaptations to colonialism, symbolism and religion, material culture
and identity, and the role of trade in culture change.
The results of these studies create a wide, long-term
perspective with links between history, ethnography,
and archaeology; no longer are historical, cultural, or
archaeological treatments given at the beginning or
the end of a book, for instance, they appear handin-hand throughout the narrative. In recreating the
lives of farmers and communities during the nineteenth-century Caste War of Yucatan, for example,
the complexities of the political and economic causes
and effects of the conflict and what they mean for
todays inhabitants have come to light.
Importantly, scholars are increasingly becoming
more sophisticated in the practice of ethnohistory.
For one, they are more critical of the historic sources
since other documents and archaeology often provide missing or conflicting information. Oftentimes
documents provide a narrow window on past indigenous societies, especially if they were produced by
European elites in their lifetimes. Investigators then
have persisted in seeking additional historical information to confirm their analyses and cultural
reconstructions. Conversely, they do not take the
historical information at face value and continue to
seek additional corroborating documentary or archaeological information. For example, Spanish reconstructions of Mesoamerican religious practices,
especially bloodletting and human sacrifice, can
be ambiguous or exaggerated depending on the
authors. Therefore, a careful checking and comparison with other historical and material evidence
is warranted for a more accurate view of past
behaviors.
When available, ethnohistorians today have more
frequently turned to native writings or documents
directly concerning indigenous people, such as wills
and court proceedings, to widen their perspectives
and obtain an emic or native view of past societies.
This approach is difficult since both native languages
and Colonial Period writing have to be mastered. With
these sources new data on specific topics in native
records and lifeways including marriage practices,
language, land tenure, community identity, and ritual
become available. Research on indigenous Yucatec
Mayan language testaments in Colonial Yucatan, for
instance, revolutionized Maya ethnohistory and provided additional analogies for ancient Maya culture
for archaeologists.

1174 ETHNOHISTORY

Moreover, the growing number of indigenous

scholars in ethnohistory, archaeology, and anthropology is producing fresh ideas and new perspectives
on the past through ethnohistory and archaeology. An
indigenous renaissance with regard to native views
on history and nuanced interpretations of archaeological data is producing an emic view of culture and
how it changes or remains the same over time. It can
be argued that a closer, insider/emic view of native
archaeological culture can be realized in general with
information from historic accounts interpreted by their
descendants. This insiders view will be obscured if
documentary evidence is lacking or if no indigenous
people study available sources.
Scholarly attention to oral history also continues to
grow. Spoken and remembered information about the
past is more commonly accepted alongside written
and archaeological data at the present. The combination of the historical data sets and archaeology has led
to the construction of alternate histories which follow indigenous perspectives for indigenous ends. In
this case, insights from native informants and local
colleagues help generate new models on the social
and political structures of past societies and how
they should be presented to readers, for example.
The study of new ethnicities following culture contact
between Europeans, Africans, and indigenous peoples
in Latin American history and archaeology and
the use of the past to counter colonialist political
positions are just two examples of this non-Western
perspective.
Finally, as indigenous people around the world
continue to organize politically, they have stressed
their desire to obtain a more complete picture of
their past and of the social and economic conditions
of their ancestors. This movement will cause a growth
in historical anthropology where ethnography, cultural studies, archaeology, and history meet. Through
the urging of native or first peoples, a new awakening
of hybrid research in ethnohistory, archaeology, and
ethnography carried out by people of different backgrounds and disciplines is upon us. This approach
counters many studies in anthropology and archaeology today that are overly synchronic, ahistorical, and
colonial. Thus, ethnohistory in archaeology and ethnography is here to stay because of its utility in

providing useful information and analogies with

regards to the past and since it is important to indigenous societies who are preserving their culture and
identity for the future.
See also: Americas, Central: Postclassic Cultures of
Mesoamerica; Ethnoarchaeology; Historical Archaeology: As a Discipline; Political Complexity, Rise of; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology.

Further Reading
Alexander RT (2004) Yaxcaba and the Caste War of Yucatan: An
Archaeological Perspective. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press.
Baerreis DA (1961) The ethnohistorical approach and archaeology.
Ethnohistory 8(1): 4977.
Bauer BS (2004) Ancient Cuzco: Heartland of the Inca. Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press.
Deagan KA and Jose Mara C (2002) Columbuss Outpost among
the Tainos: Spain and America at La Isabella, pp. 14931498.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Galloway PK (2006) Practicing Ethnohistory: Mining Archives,
Hearing Testimony, Constructing Narrative. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press.
Gasco J, Smith GC, and Garca PF (eds.) (1997) Approaches to the
Historical Archaeology of Mexico, Central and South America.
Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at University of
California, Los Angeles.
Heckenberger M (2005) The Ecology of Power: Culture, Place,
and Personhood in the Southern Amazon, A.D. 10002000.
New York: Routledge Press.
Kepecs S and Rani TA (eds.) (2005) Postclassic to Spanish-Era
Transition in Mesoamerica: Archaeological Perspectives.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Knapp BA (1992) Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory.
Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
Lightfoot KG (2005) Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants:
The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Moreland J (2006) Archaeology and texts: Subservience or enlightenment. Annual Review of Anthropology 35(1): 135151.
Rogers JD and Samuel MW (eds.) (1993) Ethnohistory and Archaeology: Approaches to Postcontact Change in the Americas. New
York: Plenum Press.
Siegel PE (ed.) (2005) Ancient Borinquen: Archaeology and
Ethnohistory of Native Puerto Rico. Tuscaloosa, AL: University
of Alabama Press.
Smith ME (1996) The Aztecs. Oxford: Blackwell.
Spores R (1984) The Mixtecs in Ancient and Colonial Times.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

EUROPE/Neolithic 1175

EUROPE
Contents
Neolithic
Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

Neolithic
Peter Bogucki, Princeton University, Princeton,
NJ, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
animal traction The use of animals for pulling vehicles such as
wagons.
beaker A decorated, handleless drinking vessel, characteristic of
the Late Neolithic in northern, central, and western Europe.
causewayed camp A Neolithic enclosure in northern or
western Europe with one or more circuits of ditch interrupted
by unexcavated zones that enable level passage across the
ditch.
cenotaph A monument or empty tomb honoring a dead person
whose body is elsewhere.
Copper Age/Eneolithic A term used to refer to the societies of
southeastern and central Europe who had adopted copper
metallurgy but which were otherwise Neolithic in character.
Synonymous with Chalcolithic as used in the Near East.
loess Fine-grained wind-deposited soil sought by early farmers
due to its high fertility.
long barrow An elongated mound of earth covering one of more
burials; the term is specifically applied to non-megalithic long
mounds built during the late fifth and early fourth milleniums BC
in northern and western Europe.
longhouse An elongated wooden post structure with a
primarily residential function.
magoula (pl. magoules) A Greek name for an artificial mound
formed by successive layers of settlement debris.
rondel A symmetrical round ditched enclosure in central Europe
with one of more circuits of ditch and palisade.
settlement cell A regional cluster of settlements separated by
some distance from similar clusters; derived from the German
term Siedlungskammer used to characterize the regional
distribution of Neolithic settlements in central Europe.
smelting The separation of metal from its ore by heating in a
hearth or furnace.
wristguard A rectangular plaque of stone with several small
holes at either end for tying to the wrist as a protection from the
snap of the bowstring, often found in graves associated with Bell
Beakers.

Archaeologists refer to the final part of the Stone Age

in Europe and many parts of Asia and Africa as the
Neolithic period. The basic defining attributes of
the Neolithic period in Europe are the emergence of
sedentary farmsteads or villages whose inhabitants

cultivated crops, kept livestock, and made pottery

(Figure 1). It began with the initial appearance of farming communities in Greece around 7500 BC, spread
across Europe to reach Scandinavia and the British Isles
just after 4000 BC, and ended with the development
of bronze metallurgy just before 2000 BC. Neolithic
societies exhibit considerable variation across Europe
and over time.

The Concept of the Neolithic

The notion that there was a period of antiquity that
predated the use of metals, a Stone Age, was formally
articulated by Christian Thomsen when he organized
the exhibits of the Danish National Museum in the
early nineteenth century. By the time Sir John Lubbock
(18341913) published Prehistoric Times in 1865, the
Stone Age in Europe was considered to have two
phases: periode de la pierre taillee (the period of
chipped stone tools) and periode de la pierre polie
(the period of polished stone tools). Lubbock termed
the former Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age, and the
latter Neolithic, or New Stone Age, from the Greek
words for new and stone. Subsequently, archaeologists realized that the definition of this period based on
a single artifact type was spurious, since Neolithic
peoples also continued to use chipped stone tools even
as polished stone axes were introduced. A broader view
emerged that saw the Neolithic as characterized by
pottery manufacture, agriculture, livestock, and settled
villages, but still without the use of metals. In this
conception, the Neolithic formed the final Stone Age
precursor to the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in the
classic northern European prehistoric sequence, which
was soon adopted throughout most of Eurasia.
Over time, the association between the Neolithic
period and the establishment of agricultural communities became its most salient characteristic. During the
first half of the twentieth century, the eminent archaeologist V. Gordon Childe (18921957) characterized
the Neolithic Revolution as a major transformation of
human society on the pathway to civilization. In
Childes view, this change was very rapid and unavoidable, the most important human event between the
discovery of fire and the building of cities. Such an

1176 EUROPE/Neolithic
Skara Brae
Balbridie,
Crathes
Claish Farm

Sarup

Magheraboy

Grdbygrd,
Limensgrd

Ceide Fields
Schipluiden,
Hardinxveld,
Hazendonk

Ascott-underWychwood
Hambledon Hill

Goseck

Sweet Track

Henauhof NW

Balloy

Hornstaad Hornle

Egolzwil

Otzis findspot

Arene Candide

Varna

Leucate Correge
Rudna Glava

Aibunar

Caldeirao Cave
Franchthi Cave

Passo di Corvo

Figure 1 Principal sites mentioned in text.

emphasis established the study of the Neolithic period

and the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture as a major research focus in archaeology during
the second half of the twentieth century.
We now know that Childes characterization of
the Neolithic transition to agriculture as revolutionary might be somewhat misleading. It was certainly an important change but one that had its
roots thousands of years earlier in changes in human
diet and social organization at the end of the Ice Age.
The eventual adoption of domesticated plants and
animals required a long-term process of change and
did not take place overnight.
Archaeologists today use the word Neolithic to
designate a period characterized by agricultural societies using cultivated plants and domesticated animals, yet still relying on stone tools. It is not a
sharply demarcated span of time or a set of cultural
features. At the beginning, it is blurred due to many
instances of local continuity with foraging societies
whose economy was transformed by the addition of domesticated plants and animals. At its end,
the Neolithic merges relatively seamlessly into the
Bronze Age, as the copper that came into use late in
the Neolithic was alloyed with tin to make a much
harder metal suitable for tools and weapons. When
accompanied by the use of livestock for products

other than meat, the demand for bronze permitted

the accumulation of status, power, and wealth that
characterizes the last two milleniums BC in Europe.
Thus, the word Neolithic provides a convenient
shorthand for archaeologists to refer to this complex
set of developments that was initiated by the transition from foraging to farming and subsequently saw
the emergence of a mature agricultural economy.
Concurrently there was an elaboration of mortuary
ritual, exchange, conflict, and social differentiation
that provided the foundation for later European prehistory and indeed many of the specific characteristics
of European society that survive into modern times.

Founder Crops and Animals

The crops and livestock that fed the Neolithic communities of Europe (see Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures) originated in the Near
East. Recent research points towards a region known
as the Levantine Corridor, an inland zone about
40 km long between the Damascus Basin and the
lower Jordan Valley, as potentially the location of
the earliest cultivation in the Near East. Einkorn
wheat, emmer wheat, and barley are the three principal founder crops of Near Eastern agriculture. They
differ from their wild counterparts primarily by the

EUROPE/Neolithic 1177

nature of the rachis, the stem which holds the grain to

the ear. Wild wheats and barley have a brittle rachis,
which shatters at ripening to disperse the grain and
thus propagate the plant. In domestic forms, the rachis is tougher and thicker, which permits the harvesting of the whole ear by cutting with sickles. Such a
method would have selected for plants with tougher
rachises which were dependent on humans for their
propagation. At sites like Netiv Hagdud in the lower
Jordan valley, early farmers lived in circular and oval
structures built of mud bricks upon stone foundations
and stored grain in underground storage pits.
Just as wheat and barley were the founder crops
of Near Eastern agriculture, sheep and goat can be
considered the founder animals of ungulate domestication, around 10 000 years ago. Goats appear to
have been domesticated first in the Zagros Mountains, while sheep in the upper Tigris and Euphrates
valleys underwent domestication a few centuries
later. Cattle and pigs appear to have been domesticated in Anatolia around 9000 years ago. Recent
DNA analyses show that the domestic cattle used in
Neolithic Europe originated from this Anatolian
source, with minimal ingression of native wild cattle
genetic material. The earliest domestic pig in Europe
also originated in Anatolia.
The major elements of the suite of Near Eastern
domestic plants and animals spread from the core area
of early agriculture in the Levant to Europe. Their
dispersal to Europe is particularly interesting because
plants and animals which had originated in semi-arid
regions quickly adapted to temperate conditions. The
mechanisms of this dispersal varied. In some areas,
agricultural peoples themselves dispersed, bringing a
sedentary lifestyle, crops, and livestock. Elsewhere,
indigenous populations which had previously lived
by foraging gradually adopted agriculture. The spread
of farming in prehistoric Europe between 7000 and
3000 BC is a classic example of the interplay between
these two processes.

Arrival and Dispersals

The first farming settlements in Europe were established in Greece around 7000 BC. Although the earliest farming settlements of western Turkey are not
yet well known, it is clear that the domesticated plants
and animals, and possibly the farmers themselves,
came from Anatolia. Rather than taking a short
jump across the Bosphorus, it appears that the earliest
farmers came to Greece by hopping along the islands
of the Aegean Sea. Although there is still little evidence for settlement on the Aegean islands during the
Mesolithic, the inhabitants of mainland sites like

Franchthi Cave could certainly catch deepwater fish,

implying the possession of watercraft suitable for
open-water travel.
Once domestic plants and animals reached the
Anatolian coast, knowledge of them probably traveled
quickly throughout the Aegean basin. Farming appears
to have arrived more or less simultaneously on Crete,
the Argolid Peninsula, and Thessaly, suggesting two
main routes, via Rhodes and Karpathos to Crete and
through the Cyclades to the Greek mainland. By about
6800 BC, farming was certainly present in Europe,
probably even a century or two earlier. At Franchthi
Cave in the Argolid, the subsistence pattern changed
dramatically. Although the domesticated emmer wheat,
barley, lentils, sheep, and goats must have arrived from
Anatolia, the Franchthi finds indicate continuity from
the local foragers.
The floodplains of Thessaly are crossed by many
abandoned watercourses and a few active meandering streams. These abandoned watercourses with their
silted-up channels and adjacent levees made ideal
locations for early farming settlements. They are
dotted by hundreds of mounds, known locally as
magoules, that were the locations of Neolithic settlements. About a hundred of them in the Larisa basin
date to the period between c. 6800 and 6000 BC. The
water-retentive properties of the light silty soils,
the flooding of streams, and the seasonal pooling ofwater in basins provided a favorable environment for
cultivation. Livestock could be grazed in the areas
with heavier soils.
The Early Neolithic magoules contain layers of
small settlements composed of clustered rectangular
houses that were built using either mud bricks without wooden reinforcement or with a frame of upright
posts with the spaces between them filled with wattle
and daub. The floors are made from packed clay and
were frequently recovered with a fresh layer. The
construction techniques, especially the use of mud
bricks, reflect strong Near Eastern connections. The
Early Neolithic sites of Greece had a predominantly
agricultural economy, with few wild plants and animals found. Emmer wheat, six-row barley, lentils,
peas, and vetch are the most common crops, while
sheep and goat are the most common livestock. Cattle
and pig are scarcer.
Along the Mediterranean coast, domestic plants and
animals spread outward from Greece quickly after
about 6500 BC. Watercraft enabled long-distance interaction among foraging communities of the coasts
of Italy and southern France as well as with the large
Mediterranean islands. Domestic plants and animals
were transported from one hunter-gatherer community to another, and a distinctive form of pottery

1178 EUROPE/Neolithic

impressed with small seashells known as Cardium

was widely adopted. Many early Neolithic settlement sites are found in rockshelters such as Arene
Candide in Liguria. Open air settlements with
Cardium-impressed pottery are also known, including the walled settlement at Passo di Corvo in Italy
and Leucate-Corre`ge in southern France.
By 5500 BC, farming had reached the Atlantic
along the coasts of Spain and Portugal, as demonstrated by finds of domestic sheep from the cave site
of Caldeirao. In contrast to the situation along the
central Mediterranean where hunter-gatherers appear
to have adopted agriculture, the Portuguese archaeologist Joao Zilhao has argued that colonizing farmers
settled fertile areas in Spain and Portugal, forming
enclaves of agricultural settlement throughout the
Iberian Peninsula.
First Farmers of Central Europe

V. Gordon Childe (18921957) recognized the significance of the Danube valley as a corridor for the
movement of people and ideas from southeastern
Europe into the heartland of the continent during
the Neolithic. Proceeding up the Danube from southeastern Europe, the early farmers entered the lowlands of Hungary, an area that includes sand dunes,

low levees, oxbow lakes, and flat plains. West of the

Danube bend, the river is fed by tributaries like the
Nitra, the Vah, and the Morava that drain south
from the Carpathians and east from the Alps. Further
northwest, fairly narrow divides separate the Danube
and its tributaries from other major river systems of
central Europe (see Europe, Central and Eastern),
including the Oder, Elbe, and Rhine. From these,
early farmers could reach rivers such as the Vistula,
the Meuse, and the Aisne. All these river systems
drain basins formed within the hills and mountains
of central Europe.
Beginning on the Hungarian Plain and spreading
through Slovakia, the Czech lands, Austria, Germany,
and Poland into the Low Countries and eastern
France, farming communities became established in
the river valleys of central Europe between 5500 and
5000 BC. Named for the distinctive incised lines
on their ceramic vessels, the earliest farmers of central Europe are known as the Linear Pottery Culture
(Figures 2 and 3). The rapid dispersal of Linear Pottery settlements throughout this area, over a period of
only a few centuries, accompanied by the extreme
uniformity in artifacts and architecture over this vast
area, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in
prehistoric Europe. Its large settlements have traces of

er

Fun
ne
lB
Cul ea
tur k
e

Linear Pottery C
ult
ur

Thessaly
Figure 2 Principal archaeological cultures mentioned in text.

EUROPE/Neolithic 1179

Figure 3 Linear pottery vessel with cattle motif from Hienheim,

southern Germany, ca. 5300 BC. (after Modderman PJR (1977)
Die neolithische Besiedlung bei Hienheim, Ldkr. Kelheim I. Die
Ausgrabungen am Weinberg 19651970. Leiden: Institute of
Prehistory.)

the largest buildings in the world at this time, timber

longhouses up to 45 m long.
Linear Pottery settlements are concentrated in what
archaeologists would call settlement cells, loose
clusters of settlements along streams among the hills.
These islands of early farming settlement are found
from Slovakia to eastern France and are associated
with patches of a fertile wind-blown soil called
loess. Loess was deposited by winds during the Ice
Age that picked up loose soil and blew it forward
until it settled as a thick blanket. In the loess patches,
small brooks cut shallow valleys as they merged into
larger streams, which flowed into smaller rivers
which in turn drained into the major rivers. Such
valleys of smaller streams were especially preferred
by the Linear Pottery settlers.
The Linear Pottery Culture takes its name from the
incised lines on its ceramic vessels, but pottery is not
the only defining characteristic of these early farming
societies. Flint tools include blades that are markedly
different from the tiny microliths that characterize
Late Mesolithic finds. Triangular flint arrowheads
are occasionally found in some areas, interpreted variously as signs of increased hunting, conflict, or influence by indigenous hunter-gatherers. Toolmakers
sometimes traveled great distances to get high-quality
flint. Coarser stones like amphibolite were shaped
through hammering and pecking, then grinding, into
axes. A special form of Linear Pottery ground stone
axe is the so-called shoe-last celt, which is relatively
narrow with a square cross section resembling a
cobblers tool.
Hundreds of Neolithic settlements with longhouses
are now known across central Europe. Linear Pottery
longhouses were rectangular multipurpose structures,
ranging between 7 and 45 m in length and generally
57 m wide. The posts occur in five rows, two forming the exterior walls and three providing the interior

support for the roof. In the exterior walls, the spaces

between the posts were filled with wattle and daub.
The longhouses provided shelter for humans and livestock as well as storage and working space. Longhouse settlements occur primarily in the valleys of
the smaller rivers, in small clusters of sites at which
several houses were standing at any one moment,
usually at the point where the floodplain begins to
slope up towards the adjacent hills. Sometimes they
are located on the terraces of the major rivers like the
Danube and Vistula. These localities were occupied
for up to several centuries, with longhouses being
rebuilt on the same locations many times.
The rapid spread of farming across central Europe
came to a sudden halt after a few centuries, resulting
in a major Neolithic farming frontier that encircled
the area of Linear Pottery settlement. Most Linear
Pottery settlements did not generally extend beyond
the loess, and the isolated pockets along the lower
Vistula and Oder and in the Paris Basin remained the
farthest extent of agricultural settlement for several
centuries. The Central European Farming Frontier
was not a simple boundary line that could be drawn
on a map. On its northern edge, it lay between 52
and 54 north latitude, the southern part of the
North European Plain where there were the pockets
of settlement by the Linear Pottery culture and its
descendants. On the west, it lay on a belt around
the Paris Basin and down to the Yonne valley, while
in the south it was marked by the foothills of the Alps.
Life on this frontier must have been complicated.
The indigenous hunter-gatherers of the North European Plain, the Alpine lake basins, and the Atlantic
coastal areas were not very far away. We can only
imagine the sorts of interactions that occurred. It is
clear is that the foragers did not immediately see any
benefit in adopting the full agricultural system of the
Linear Pottery farmers. Nonetheless, the frontier was
porous. In addition to a trade in stone axes, it must
have been a struggle for Linear Pottery farmers to
account for each of their cattle and sheep. Cattle in
particular, when grazing in forests, have a penchant
for wandering off. Feral domestic livestock must have
found their way beyond the farming frontier and
would have found congenial habitats in the clearings
and meadows created by tree falls, beavers, and the
foragers themselves.
After about 5000 BC the Linear Pottery culture
fragmented into a variety of local groups that flourished during the fifth millennium BC. Prominent
among these are the Brzesc Kujawski Group of northcentral Poland, and Rossen Culture of central and
western Germany, and the Villeneuve-St. Germain
(VSG) Group of northern France. These groups clearly

1180 EUROPE/Neolithic

Figure 4 Neolithic longhouses at Miechowice, central Poland, ca. 4500 BC (from Grygiel R (2004) The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age
in the Brzesc Kujawski and Osonki Region. odz: Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, used with permission).

follow in the Linear Pottery tradition. The most visible

evidence for continuity comes in the form of longhouses, although the later houses have a trapezoidal,
rather than rectangular, shape to their groundplans
(Figure 4).
The subsistence economy of these groups also
followed generally in the Linear Pottery tradition, although in many areas domestic pigs assumed greater
importance. This development moved the economy
closer to the pattern of mixed farming that was widespread throughout later European prehistory and
persists into the present day. Changes also appear in
burial rites in some areas. For example, Linear
Pottery communities buried most of their dead in
cemeteries set apart from the settlements, while the
graves of the Brzesc Kujawski Group are found just
outside their longhouses, often in small clusters that
suggest family groups.
Long Barrow Cemeteries

One of the most striking developments of the late fifth

and early fourth millennia BC is the development of
large mortuary sites characterized by the construction
of long earthen mounds, called long barrows. They
are found on the periphery of the world inhabited by
the Linear Pottery culture and its successors, most
prominently in Poland, Germany, and Denmark, and
in France along the Yonne, Seine, and Marne. These
would have been areas of cultural contacts between
the early farmers of central Europe and the foragers
of northern and western Europe, and the construction

of long barrows presages the mortuary ceremonialism of the later Neolithic period that will be discussed
further below.
The long barrows were built from timber and earth,
sometimes reaching lengths of well over 100 m, although rarely more than 10 m wide. In northern
Poland they are outlined with large boulders, while
similar structures outlined with a wooden palisade
have recently come to light in southern Poland. In
France, they are delineated by ditches. Beneath the
mound are one or more burial chambers aligned on
the main axis of the barrow.
Long barrows often have a trapezoidal plan, reminiscent of the Brsesc Kujawski, Rossen, and VSG
longhouses, and at Balloy at the junction of the
Seine and Yonne rivers, they were built upon the site
of an abandoned VSG settlement. They often occur in
groups of a dozen or more. Archaeologists beginning
with V. Gordon Childe have noted the similarity
between the long barrows and the earlier longhouses,
and Magdalena Midgley has recently proposed that
the traces of abandoned longhouse settlements would
have provided powerful images of ancestral places
that were transferred by subsequent generations to
the mortuary monuments.
Foragers Meet Farmers: the RhineMaas Delta
and Alpine Lake Basins

On the periphery of the Linear Pottery area, two

other regions provide additional evidence for an

EUROPE/Neolithic 1181

indigenous response to the proximity of farmers. The

lake basins of the Alpine Foreland in southern
Germany, Switzerland, and eastern France supported
populations of Mesolithic foragers, while in the
combined delta of the Rhine and Maas (Meuse) rivers
in the Netherlands, hunter-gathers gradually became
aware of the farming populations to their south.
In both areas, domesticated plants and animals
worked their way into the forager diet during the
centuries just before 4000 BC (see Europe, Northern
and Western: Mesolithic Cultures).
The excellent preservation conditions in the Rhine
Maas delta have provided a remarkable record of the
reaction of hunter-gatherers to the proximity of farmers, in this case the Linear Pottery and Rossen communities about 100150 km to the south, during the
fifth and fourth milleniums BC. At Hardinxveld near
Rotterdam, several dunes were the sites of winter
base camps of hunter-gatherers between 5500 and
4450 BC. In the upper levels, dating after 4700 BC,
bones of domestic animals were found, although
cereals were absent. After about 4300 BC, there is
clearer evidence for contact between foragers and
farmers, for pottery found at sites like Hazendonk has
stylistic affinities to late Rossen wares. Bones of domestic animals and charred chaff and grains of domestic
cereals reflect what Leendert P. Louwe Kooijmans has
called a semi-agrarian economy, which combined
the use of domestic plants and animals with a broad
exploitation of wild species. This type of subsistence
pattern appears to have lasted for several centuries.
The missing link between the semi-agrarian economy of the late hunter-gatherers and the full farming
economy of the later part of the Neolithic has been
provided by the site of Schipluiden, excavated in
2003. Located on coastal dunes, Schipluiden provides
traces of an economy with a continued mix of wild
and domesticated species but with a greater role
played by domesticated plants and animals. The
settlement remains are more substantial than at
Hazendonk and contain locally made pottery, dense
concentrations of posts, a fence around the settlement,
long-term use of discard areas, and both summer and
winter birds, suggesting year-round occupation by
about four or five households during some time
between 3700 and 3400 BC. Contracted burials suggest adoption of the burial rite used by Neolithic
communities to the south.
The Alpine Foreland of southern Germany and
northern and western Switzerland saw a similar confrontation between foraging and farming. The lake
basins of this area were populated by communities of
hunter-gatherers, as reflected by the site of HenauhofNord on the Federsee in southern Germany, during

the second half of the sixth millennium BC. During

the succeeding millennium, lakeside farming communities using domestic plants and animals but also
continuing to hunt and gather were established
along the lakeshores. One such settlement is found
at Egolzwil, one of the classic sites of the so-called
Swiss Lake Dwellings, which contrary to popular
reconstructions of houses built on piles over the
water were really post structures built on the muddy
lake shores. By 3900 BC, settlements like Hornstaad
Hornle on Lake Constance provide evidence of a full
agricultural economy based on sustained cultivation
of wheat and barley.
The Great Transformation around 4000 BC
in Northern and Western Europe

Just after 4000 BC, the indigenous foraging peoples of

northern and western Europe adopted agriculture.
The relative contemporaneity of this transformation
from southern Scandinavia to the British Isles is remarkable, leading some to suggest that a climate
change was involved. Although this is far from clear,
most of the radiocarbon dates for the earliest agriculture from Sweden to Ireland all seem to fall at the
beginning of the fourth millennium BC, between
about 4000 and 3700 BC.
Around 4100 BC, agricultural communities were
established in Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany
after a marked increase in contact between the indigenous foragers of the southern Baltic basin and the
farmers to the south that began several centuries earlier. Around the southern Baltic in Denmark, southern Sweden, and northern Germany and Poland, the
foragers of the Erteblle culture lived in relatively
sedentary year-round settlements, such as the one at
Smakkerup Huse on the Danish island of Zealand.
These final hunters of northern continental Europe
and southern Scandinavia became the first farmers in
this region, beginning around 3900 BC.
Once adopted by the foragers, agriculture spread
rapidly up to the Dala River north of Stockholm,
which formed the northern limit of Neolithic cultivation. The Erteblle culture developed into the Funnel
Beaker culture, the first Neolithic society of northern Europe, named for the flaring upper edges of
its ceramic vessels. Funnel Beaker settlements
increased in size during the fourth millennium BC.
On the island of Bornholm, long rectangular houses
have been found at the sites of Limensgard and
Grdbygard. During Funnel Beaker times, we see
the first use of wetlands for rituals being used for
ritual deposits, often of pots containing food offerings, and occasionally animals and even people who
were sacrificed.

1182 EUROPE/Neolithic

The British Isles have yielded surprisingly little evidence of their earliest farming settlement, leading to
the popularity of the hypothesis that agriculture was
introduced very gradually over the 2000-year span
of the Neolithic. Peter Rowley-Conwy has argued
against this idea, pointing out that the adoption of
agriculture has a dramatic transformative effect on
society and that the transformation must have been
rapid. Indeed, evidence is accumulating of Neolithic
cultivation and animal use during the fourth millennium BC. Occupation and rubbish deposits under a
long barrow at Ascott-under-Wychwood provide evidence for Neolithic timber structures and the use of
domestic animals just after 4000 BC. In eastern
Scotland, remarkable timber post structures have
been found at Balbridie, Claish Farm, and Crathes.
In and around these structures, samples of carbonized
grain have been radiocarbon-dated to the period between 39003500 BC.
Ireland presents a very interesting case of how archaeology can change rapidly. Until very recently,
virtually nothing was known about the earliest farming settlements except for some scattered traces of
houses. In the last decade, there has been a remarkable boom in the discovery of Neolithic houses
throughout Ireland, due largely to road construction
and other development connected with the Irish
Economic Miracle. Most of these new houses, which
are small rectangular structures with posts set in
a bedding trench that runs around its outer wall,
date between 3800 and 3600 BC. Even earlier is a

palisaded Neolithic enclosure at Magheraboy in

County Sligo that dates to 40003900 BC.
The extent and organization of early agriculture
in Ireland can be seen at the preserved Neolithic
landscape found at the Ceide Fields in northern
County Mayo. Early farmers removed the forest
cover during the centuries after 4000 BC and cleared
the stones from their fields to make house foundations and walled compounds in which animals were
kept. The removal of the forests by early farmers
caused soil nutrients to be washed away, making the
soils more acidic, which in turn inhibited the decomposition of dead vegetation, which formed peat
beginning around 3500 BC. Layer upon layer of
peat accumulated over the next several milleniums,
burying the entire landscape including the stone
walls and house foundations, with blanket bog.
Archaeologists can now trace the outlines of the
walls and houses to discover how the early farmers
organized their landscape.
By 3000 BC agriculture was established throughout
most of Europe, from Skara Brae in the Orkney
Islands (Figure 5) to the southern tips of Italy and
Spain, and from the Atlantic to the Urals. In archaeological time, the dispersal of farming and the transformation of society that accompanied it occurred
remarkably quickly. While it may not have been the
revolution that V. Gordon Childe thought it was, it
was certainly a process that once begun was not
possible to stop once a community made a commitment to the use of domesticated plants and animals.

Figure 5 Plan of the Neolithic settlement at Skara Brae, Orkney Islands, ca. 3100 BC (after Childe VG (1931) Skara Brae, a Pictish
Village in Orkney. London: Kegen Paul, Trench, Trubner).

EUROPE/Neolithic 1183

Consolidation: The Late Neolithic

and Copper Age
Following the successful establishment of agriculture
throughout Europe, farming communities from the
Balkans to Ireland and from Sweden to Spain developed into mature and stable societies. They had accumulated a store of knowledge about cultivation and
livestock that enabled them to handle the risk and
uncertainty inherent in an agricultural economy.
Herds ceased to be simply a source of meat and hide
and became living resources for milk, wool, and animal power. Metals, particularly copper, came to
be used in many areas, first for ornaments and then
for tools. Mortuary ceremonialism became more
elaborate and widespread.
Archaeologists refer to the final millennia of
the Neolithic with a variety of terms. Late Neolithic
is the most common label, while in southeastern
Europe the use of copper has led many scholars to
refer to this time as the Copper Age. Older publications
use the term Eneolithic, although this label is rarely
applied today. Chronologically, the Late Neolithic can
be said to be framed roughly by the span of time between 5000 and 2800 BC in southern and southeastern
Europe, 40002200 BC in central and eastern Europe,
and 35002000 BC in northern and western Europe.
Copper Metallurgy

The use of copper to make ornaments and tools

appeared first in the Balkans just before 5000 BC,
when the ability of potters to achieve high temperatures for the firing of pottery also enabled them to
smelt copper from its ores. During the millennium
that followed, the knowledge and skill of the early
metalworkers developed further, and copper use expanded throughout southern Europe and into central
Europe. The earliest copper artifacts were beads,
pendants, and bracelets, although subsequently, it
became possible to make complex forms like axes
and chisels using molds.
Copper was smelted from ores such as malachite
and azurite which are found in mountainous areas.
Many Late Neolithic copper mines have been found
in central and southeastern Europe, including Rudna
Glava in Serbia and Aibunar in Bulgaria. The presence of copper slag at settlement sites suggests that
metalworking was a part of routine life for Late
Neolithic peoples in southeastern Europe. Copper
artifacts are found in both mortuary and domestic
tzi the Iceman was carrying a copper ax
contexts. O
when he died around 3300 BC.
Artifacts made from copper, particularly daggers,
are especially prominent features of the Late Neolithic
societies of northern and western Europe. In these

areas, copper artifacts clearly are prestige items,

found almost exclusively in burials, presaging the
role of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, in the
years after 2000 BC.
The Late Neolithic Built Environment

Settlements, burials, and ceremonial sites became visible and permanent features of the landscape and
were invested with attachment and with meaning. In
different parts of Europe, these locations took various
forms: nucleated settlements; groups of dispersed
farmsteads, compact, densely settled mounds; strongholds with earthworks; cemeteries of all sorts; tombs:
megaliths, long barrows; rondels and causewayed
camps, even bogs and ponds as locations for rituals.
The significance of these locations lasted on a time
scale ranging from decades to centuries. The locations
of habitation, burial, and ritual were the spatial anchors of Late Neolithic society to a far greater degree
than had been seen previously. Moreover, these sites
were connected by well-worn communication routes:
paths, tracks, rivers, passes, and portages. They were
destinations as well as starting points. This inter-site
tzi the
movement is dramatized by the find of the O
Iceman, about whom more will be said below, who
died while negotiating a high Alpine pass around
3300 BC.
Circular ditched enclosures known as rondels are
found in upland loess zones south of the Carpathians
in Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Austria, and eastern
Germany. Unexcavated gaps in the ditch at four opposing points on the perimeter provide a way across.
Usually, there are few traces of settlement, so these
appear to have served some form of nonhabitation purpose, presumably ceremonial. At Goseck in
eastern Germany, a series of four concentric ditches
and two palisades about 75 m at their maximum
diameter have been recently discovered. The palisades had three gates facing southeast, southwest,
and north. The excavators have suggested an astronomical purpose for the site, while alternatively the
gates in the palisades controlled access to the central
ceremonial space.
Similar to the rondels of central Europe are the socalled causewayed camps of the British Isles that
date between 3700 and 3000 BC. About 40 such
enclosures are known, largely on the chalk downs
and river terraces of southern England. Often, they
are associated with earthen long barrows, about
which more will be said below. These sites have one
or more concentric ditches, roughly circular in plan,
interrupted at several points by unexcavated portions, which form causeways into the interior. The
existence of the causeways and the locations of the

1184 EUROPE/Neolithic

sites suggest that the earthworks did not fulfill a

defensive function. Instead, they are most commonly
interpreted as ceremonial or ritual sites. At a number
of them, such as Hambledon Hill in Dorset, human
remains have been found in the ditches and interiors.
At Hambledon Hill, these remains had been exposed
to the elements and largely defleshed prior to their
deposition in the ditch.
Another such important place was Sarup in
Denmark. Between 3400 and 3200 BC, an enclosure
with several causeways was built to enclose an area of
about 8.5 ha on a sandy promontory. The enclosure
was not a complete encirclement of the site, since it
was bounded on two sides by water. Instead, it closed
off the landward side of the promontory from the
surrounding terrain. The Sarup enclosure grew from
a simple palisade to a complex system of parallel
ditches and palisades, placed conspicuously in a landscape that contained dozens of megalithic tombs. It
appears that the Sarup enclosure was also a place of
ritual, for a number of the pits and ditches contained
burnt human bones.
In northern and western Europe, Neolithic people
and their livestock often needed to cross wetlands.
They began to lay down wooden trackways made
from stakes and logs across the wet areas. One of
the best known is Sweet Track in Somerset, England,
where the earliest trackway has been dated by treerings to the winter or early spring of 3807 or 3806 BC.
Later, wider roads made from logs were laid down,
many of which were often rebuilt and used for
centuries.
Neolithic roads may also have existed on dry terrain. These are very difficult to document, but some
have proposed that the arrangement of burial monuments across the landscape reflects ancient road systems. It seems logical that Neolithic tracks and even
roads would have run through mountain passes and
converged on major stream crossings. The widespread distribution of raw materials and finished
artifacts clearly reflects a population on the move.
Intimacy with the Dead

One of the defining characteristics of the Late

Neolithic and Copper Age is what could be called
mortuary ceremonialism. Such ceremonialism takes
a variety of forms, from the megalithic tombs of the
Atlantic fringe to the elaborate cemeteries of southeastern Europe. A distinctive feature of these societies was a particular intimacy with the dead, who
were a persistent presence in society and continued
to be encountered on a regular basis in excarnation
places, collective tombs, settlement burials, and family
plots and cenotaphs in cemeteries. These encounters

occurred in a context of ceremonial veneration for

ancestors and a sense of continuity of place and
affiliation. It legitimized the existence and perpetuation of the household or hamlet to whom the dead
belonged.
A cemetery at Varna, in northeastern Bulgaria,
provides the richest collection of Late Neolithic/
Copper Age burials in eastern Europe. Although its
dating is inexact, correlation with dates finds from
other sites suggests that the Varna cemetery was in use
between 4900 and 4400 BC. The nearly 300 graves
contain gold, copper, and other luxury items, although 20% were symbolic graves or cenotaphs
without actual human remains. Gold artifacts, the
most distinctive aspect of the Varna cemetery, occur
in 61 graves, including most of the cenotaphs. Curiously, most of the gold is found in the cenotaphs,
while only a few of the graves with skeletons were
similarly furnished. Three cenotaphs contained goldornamented clay masks with male features. The richest burial at Varna contained the skeleton of a man
about 4050 years old and about 1.75 m tall. Accompanying the skeleton were nearly a thousand gold
objects along with other items made of copper,
stone, clay, and Spondylus shell. One of the gold
objects is termed a scepter, in which a wooden handle had been sheathed with gold and topped with a
stone macehead.
tzi the Iceman
O

Not all Late Neolithic human remains are found in

graves. In 1991, two hikers in the Alps came across
the frozen corpse of a man who subsequent investigation showed to have died about 3300 BC. Nicknamed
tzi and the Iceman by the press, this find produced
O
one of the most remarkable glimpses of the life of a
Late Neolithic inhabitant of central Europe. He was
in his middle- to late-40s, rather old for his time, and
had lived a hard life.
tzi was carrying a lot of equipment, including
O
a bow and a quiver of arrows, bone points, a needle,
a copper axe in a handle, several flint tools, a marble
pendant, and several pieces of fungus believed to have
medicinal properties. He was wearing a bearskin hat,
shoes with bearskin soles and deerskin uppers, goatskin leggings and loincloth, a calfskin pouch and belt,
and a cape of woven grass. His stomach contents
indicated that he had recently consumed venison
and cereals before his death in late spring or early
summer, as indicated by tree pollen.
tzis death remain a matter
The circumstances of O
of controversy. A CT scan has revealed an arrowhead
embedded in his shoulder, and wounds have been
found on his hand and wrist. Was he fleeing from

EUROPE/Neolithic 1185

attackers with whom he had previously fought, or

was he an individual who had lived a physically
taxing and sometimes violent life who had the
misfortune to be caught in a late-spring blizzard as
sometimes occurs high in the Alps? The answer is
tzis corpse and the
simply not yet known. Today, O
associated finds can be seen at the Archaeological
Museum in Bolzano, Italy.
The Secondary Products Revolution

In a 1981 essay, Andrew Sherratt (19462006) coined

the term Secondary Products Revolution to describe
a major shift in the use of domestic animals from
providers of meat and hides, which required the
death of the animal to Secondary products, renewable resources taken from living animals such as milk,
wool, and animal power, or traction. During the
fourth millennium BC, Neolithic farmers in eastcentral Europe began to make much greater use of
these secondary products. A variety of social changes
are reflected this change in animal management. Although some activities, such as dairying, began in
earlier prehistoric periods, approaches to animal use
became progressively more complex during the Late
Neolithic. The key data for the Secondary Products
Revolution include ceramic sieves and vessels probably used in milk handling; animal figurines; remains
of wagons, wagon parts, and plows in burials and
waterlogged deposits; wagon models and representations on pottery; rock-carvings of wagons; ritual burials of cattle and other livestock; and plow-marks on
fossil soils under barrows.
Two of the principal secondary products, milk and
wool, may have been in use much earlier, but after
4000 BC their use was especially widespread. Dairy
production would have enabled Neolithic farmers to
collect milk from their animals and to convert it into
storable food such as cheese and yogurt. The availability of such storable animal products would have
enabled Neolithic households to maintain a steady
food supply during the growing season and to obtain
dietary protein and fat during the summer before the
crops were harvested. Wool from sheep would have
provided warm clothing that permitted more winter
activities as well as blankets and wall hangings that
would have kept Neolithic houses warm and reduced
the amount of wood burned for fuel.
Animal power was perhaps the most significant
aspect of the Secondary Products Revolution. Traction from oxen would have been useful for two major
Late Neolithic innovations, plowing and cartage.
It also would have had significant implications for
the household labor supply and the ability of individual households to manage their resources by

multiplying their productive capacity well beyond

that which its own human labor force can provide.
Two of the most labor-intensive activities of a Neolithic household would have been the preparation of
fields for cultivation and the transport of bulk materials from remote locations to the settlement. Households using animal-pulled plows are able to cultivate
an area significantly greater than that of households
not using animal traction, especially for crops grown
on heavier clay-based soils.
Oxen pulling wagons would also reduce household
labor costs substantially by hauling harvested crops
and especially wood for construction and firewood.
The transformation of livestock, particularly cattle,
from a walking pantry to productive assets provided
an opportunity for individual households to accumulate wealth. The household that owns draft animals can manage its labor much more flexibly than
one without such assets, and it also enables lessproductive members of the household, such as children and the elderly, to contribute to the household
labor pool. When durable and valuable goods such as
copper tools and ornaments are added to the equation, we see that this combination provided the conditions for households to accumulate wealth and to
transfer it from one generation to the next. Mechanisms probably developed for the loaning and borrowing of draft animals between households, as exist in
many agrarian societies today. Yet livestock can become sick, die, or be stolen, so draft animals were not
money in the bank but investments that carried a
risk of failure.
As households became differentiated by wealth, the
potential also existed for differentiation by status,
which begins to appear in variation in grave goods
found in Late Neolithic burials. At this point, however, there does not appear to have been any formal
structure in public life that suggests political power
beyond the level of the household. Formally instituted
social and political hierarchies, such as are seen in the
Bronze Age chiefdoms after about 2000 BC, may be a
logical consequence of differentiation by wealth and
status, but it is not possible to recognize them yet
during the Late Neolithic over most of Europe.

Corded Ware and Bell Beakers

The third millennium BC saw the emergence of two
large-scale cultural developments that are marked by
distinctive artifact styles distributed over vast areas.
One is the widespread use of cord-marked pottery
associated with single burials under low mounds,
while the other involves the appearance of a very
specific type of handleless thin-walled drinking vessel

1186 EUROPE/Neolithic

known as a beaker that is consistently found in male

burials with other distinctive artifacts Archaeologists
have puzzled over the meaning of these phenomena,
known as Corded Ware and Bell Beakers, for over a
century, and yet their significance remains elusive.
Corded Ware is distributed through eastern, central,
and northern Europe as far west as the Netherlands,
whereas Bell Beakers are found from Spain to Denmark and throughout the British Isles.
The earliest dates for Corded Ware come from
central and southern Poland around 2800 BC, and
it spread outwards from this core area. It generally
disappeared from most regions between 2300 and
2100 BC. A number of variants of Corded Ware are
known. It is found in Alpine pile dwellings and along
the Baltic coast. In Sweden and southern Norway,
Corded Ware communities made axes with upturned
edges that resemble the prow and stern of a boat,
hence the name Boat-Axe Culture. One of the latest
Corded Ware groups is the Fatianovo Culture along
the upper Volga in Russia, which persisted until
around 2000 BC.
Corded Ware communities continued the Neolithic
pattern of mixed farming, with cattle, sheep, and goat
playing a prominent role. With the exception of
the communities along the southern Baltic coast,
known as the Rzuczewo Culture, and the Alpine lake
dwellings, Corded Ware settlements are rare. This has
given rise to the hypothesis that the makers of Corded
Ware were mobile pastoralists, although it is just as
likely that they were sedentary peoples who simply
built their houses in a way that did not leave substantial subsurface traces.
The practice of burying individuals under single
small mounds which characterized the Corded Ware
world was a break with the earlier practice of collective burial found over much of this area during the
previous millennium. It appears from the burials that
a key societal role was assigned to a group of men
whose status is reflected in their possession of flint
knives, battle-axes, bows and arrows, and drinking
vessels. Such emergence of individual identity and
status is an important development that continues
into the Bronze Age.
Bell Beakers are even more enigmatic than Corded
Ware. First recognized at the end of the nineteenth
century, they were first presumed to be the characteristic artifacts of a single mobile people who spread
rapidly across western and central Europe. Archaeologists spoke of a Beaker Folk and ascribed various
attributes to them, such as being warriors, traders,
and metalsmiths. Throughout the twentieth century,
various theories were proposed for the origins of Bell
Beakers under the assumption that they represented

a people whose identity was reflected in the use of a

very specific vessel form.
The vessel that gives Bell Beakers its name is a
finely made thin-walled cup usually deep orange in
color. It is tall and narrow, without handles. Its incised
decoration occurs in horizontal bands, or zones,
separated by smooth bands without ornament. The
decoration is usually in the form of chevrons or
hatching. A number of types of beaker decoration
have been identified that appear to have regional or
chronological significance. The late Andrew Sherratt
suggested that the beakers were used to consume
alcoholic beverages during feasting and conviviality.
Alongside the beakers archaeologists often find a
distinctive set of artifacts. Many of these are associated with archery, including flint arrowheads, slate
wristguards that protected the archers hand from
the bowstring, and shaft straighteners which were
pairs of grooved stones to polish arrow shafts. Copper
daggers were the principal metal artifact associated
with Bell Beakers in central and western Europe, while
in northern Europe, flint copies of metal daggers
were made. Finally, a characteristic Bell Beaker artifact is the V-perforated button in which two holes
were drilled into a piece of material to converge in
its interior. Bone, antler, jet (a semiprecious black
stone), and amber were the most common materials used. The V-perforated buttons were used as
ornaments.
The significance of Bell Beakers has been debated
heatedly by archaeologists. No longer do they speak
of a Beaker Folk, since the geographical distribution
and chronology of Bell Beakers makes it clear that
there was no obvious origin or dispersal, but rather of
the widespread Beaker Phenomenon in which a set of
artifacts connected with drinking, war, and hunting
appears in male burials in which the body was placed
in a contracted position. The Bell Beaker set of artifacts may have been the status symbols of an
emerging elite that came into sharper focus during
the subsequent Bronze Age.

Conclusion: the Roots of Europe

During the Neolithic period, the prehistoric societies
of Europe start to appear familiar to the modern
observer. People ceased to be hunters and gatherers
pursuing a way of life completely alien to us. While
the earliest European farmers lived under what we
would consider primitive conditions, nonetheless
their settled existence is more like ours than their
precursors. It is indeed possible to trace the roots of
European society known from recent milleniums
back to the Neolithic in several key aspects:

EUROPE/Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

1. A mixed farming economy based on wheat, barley,

pulses, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs formed the
subsistence base for European communities until
the introduction of American plants like the
potato about 500 years ago;
2. The basic technology and infrastructure of European rural life, including metallurgy, timber
architecture, weaving and ceramics, salt and food
preservation, roads, and watercraft, either made
their initial appearance during the Neolithic or
developed into tools of everyday life;
3. The ritual use of important landscape features,
such as mountains, springs, and bogs, and the
maintenance of ritual structures on the landscape
carried through into later prehistoric and historic
times; and
4. Patterns of social and economic asymmetry and
the acceptance and formalization of these social
conditions that were elaborated in the Bronze Age
and afterward can be seen to have their roots in the
Late Neolithic.
It has now been only four millennia since the end
of the Neolithic, not a very long time at all in archaeological terms. Four millennia earlier, most inhabitants of Europe were still hunters and gatherers in
a relatively unmodified landscape. Placing the Neolithic period in this perspective dramatically illustrates
the extent of the transformation in human society
and also in the natural environment that occurred
during this time and the need to understand how it
happened.

See also: Animal Domestication; DNA: Ancient; Modern,

and Archaeology; Europe, Central and Eastern; Europe, Northern and Western: Bronze Age; Early Neolithic Cultures; Mesolithic Cultures; Plant Domestication.

Further Reading
Bogucki PI (1988) Forest Farmers and Stockherders: Early Agriculture and Its Consequences in North-Central Europe. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bogucki PI (1999) The Origins of Human Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Bogucki PI and Crabtree PJ (eds.) (2004) Ancient Europe 8000
BCAD 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World. New
York: Charles Scribners Sons.
Childe VG (1925) The Dawn of European Civilization. New York:
A. A. Knopf.
Childe VG (1931) Skara Brae, a Pictish Village in Orkney. London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
Cunliffe BW (ed.) (1994) The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of
Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1187

Fowler B (2000) Iceman: Uncovering the Life and Times of a

Prehistoric Man Found in an Alpine Glacier. New York:
Random House.
Grygiel R (2004) The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in the Brzesc
Kujawski and Osonki Region. odz: Museum of Archaeology
and Ethnography.
Hodder I (1990) The Domestication of Europe: Structure and Contingency in Neolithic Societies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Midgley M (2005) The Monumental Cemeteries of Prehistoric
Europe. Stroud: Tempus.
Milisauskas S (ed.) (2002) European Prehistory: a Survey. New
York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Modderman PJR (1977) Die neolithische Besiedlung bei Hienheim,
Ldkr. Kelheim. I. Die Ausgrabungen am Weinberg 19651970.
Leiden: Institute of Prehistory.
Price TD (ed.) (2000) Europes First Farmers. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Thorpe IJ (1996) The Origins of Agriculture in Europe. London:
Routlege.
Whittle AWR (1996) Europe in the Neolithic: the Creation of New
Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Whittle AWR (2003) The Archaeology of People: Dimensions of
Neolithic Life. London: Routledge.

Paleolithic Raw
Material Provenance
Studies
Jehanne Feblot-Augustins, CNRS, Nanterre,
France
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
biface Refers to a tool shaped by the removal of flakes from two
surfaces of a piece of raw material (a cobble or a large flake). The
characteristic retouch flakes generally cover most of the two
opposing surfaces.
blade Refers to an elongated flake, with a length equal to at least
twice its width, and more or less parallel edges. A bladelet is a
small blade. Tools made from blades or bladelets are termed
blade or bladelet tools.
blank Refers to products (e.g., flakes, blades or bladelets) or
pieces of raw material (e.g., cobble) that can potentially be
transformed by retouch into a formal tool, hence the terms flake
blank, blade blank, bladelet blank.
chane operatoire Refers to the successive stages involved in
the production of lithic artifacts, beginning with the procurement
of the block of raw material and ending with the discard of the
used artifacts. A concept somewhat broader than that of
reduction sequence (see lithic reduction), with which it is often
equated.
core Any piece of raw material from which flakes, blades, or
bladelets have been detached, in order to produce blanks for
tools, hence the terms flake core, blade core, and bladelet core.
down-the-line trade Refers to a process in which goods (here
lithic items) move through reciprocal exchange from group to

1188 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

group, thus involving a series of successive exchanges of material
from a point source.
flake Refers to any fragment of stone that is removed from either
a core or a tool during manufacture. No particular size or shape
is implied by this term. A tool made from a flake blank is termed
a flake tool.
Levallois Refers to an elaborate Middle Palaeolithic core
preparation and reduction process, by which are predetermined
the shape and character of the products (also termed Levallois)
sought by the knapper. Sometimes, the aim is to manufacture a
single large flake rather than a series of smaller flakes: in that
case, the product is called a Levallois preferential flake. The
flakes detached in order to prepare the core for production are
also quite specific and are called Levallois preparation flakes.
lithic reduction Refers to the subtractive process by which a
block of raw material is transformed, through successive stages,
into a tool. This involves the detachment of flakes, blades, or
bladelets using a hard (stone) or soft (wood, antler) hammer. The
block or nodule may have to be rid of its outer part (roughing-out
stage), before being prepared in order to give it an adequate
shape for the subsequent operations. Once prepared, the block
has become a preformed core, from which the desired products
(flakes, blades, or bladelets) are obtained according to a variety
of methods and techniques. These products can subsequently be
transformed into tools.
Middle Palaeolithic (Europe) Refers to the time period
beginning about 250 000 years ago and ending about
40 00035 000 years ago, during which a particular culture
developed, the Mousterian, characterized by the use of flake
tools. This culture is associated with Neandertal man. Five stable
types of Mousterian industries have been recognized. Among
these, the Quina Mousterian is characterized by high amounts of
large, thick side-scrapers, the Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition
by high amounts of bifaces.
retouch Refers to removals carried out for the purpose of
obtaining a tool.
technology Refers to the methods and techniques implemented
by prehistoric stone-knappers to produce artifacts corresponding
to varied mental templates. The technological analysis of a lithic
assemblage aims to reconstruct the ordered series of sequences
that have to be carried out to obtain from a block of raw material
the particular types of products sought by the knapper. These
desired products are called end products, and can be either
blanks or tools.
tool As opposed to blanks, refers to retouched products, that is,
products that are modified by the removal of flakes (termed
retouch flakes) along one, both, or part of their edges. Many
formal tool types have been recognized for the Middle and Upper
Palaeolithic, for example, scrapers, limaces, burins, bifaces.
When the edges of the tools have become blunt through use, they
are renovated by means of resharpening flakes.
Upper Palaeolithic (Europe) Refers to the time period
beginning about 40 00035 000 years ago and ending about
10 000 years ago, during which successive cultures rose and
developed: the major ones are the Aurignacian, the Gravettian,
the Solutrean, the Magdalenian. Among other traits, these
cultures are characterized by industries based on the systematic
production of blade and bladelet tools in addition to flake tools.
The associated human remains belong to anatomically modern
humans (Homo sapiens sapiens). The transition with Middle
Palaeolithic industries is represented in eastern central Europe by
the Szeletian. Because no human remains were recovered, it is
still unclear whether Szeletian industries were made by
Neandertals or by modern humans.

Introduction
Provenance studies are based on the identification of
spatial relationships between stone archaeological
artifacts and geographical locations, the raw material
sources. Prerequisites are the characterization of the
archaeological samples by a variety of methods and
techniques the most common being petrographic
techniques and chemical analyses and the existence
of comparative regional geological databases, generally resulting from systematic geological sampling on
a regional basis.
In the context of prehistoric mobile hunter-gatherer
societies, stone raw material provenance studies prove
useful for investigating the way man interacts on a
macroregional scale with his environment and other
human communities. Tracking the human transport
of raw materials and stone tools across the landscape
can give us insights into both individual and group
mobility, and interaction networks. This is because
stone raw materials are, with shells, among the rare
documents that can be traced to a geographical origin. Ceramics (when present) or other objects made of
clay, such as figurines, can also be sourced.

Historical Developments
Provenance studies have been the object of a longstanding interest in western and central Europe,
where the potential of such studies was recognized
as early as the 1960s70s. Research on raw material
procurement was not initially developed along the
same lines everywhere. In France, Belgium, and
Germany, for instance, attention focused primarily on
the site and the raw materials introduced into it. As a
result, long-distance transfers were rarely recognized
because geological surveys were conducted within the
confines of a region, generally construed as the catchment area of a major watercourse or as a major sedimentary basin. More recently, a greater awareness of
the need to exchange information and flint samples has
led to closer interaction between researchers working
in different areas, and consequently to the acknowledgment of transfers exceeding the confines of a region.
On the other hand, in Poland, Hungary, and former
Czechoslovakia, attention centered during the earlier
phases on the deposits themselves and on the distribution from the sources of distinctive types of raw
materials, resulting in an initial emphasis on longdistance and medium-distance movements of raw
materials. Since the 1980s, when systematic regional
geological surveys were undertaken, more prominence has been given to the characterization and

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

identification to source of raw materials recovered

at individual archaeological sites.

An Integrated Approach
Distances traveled, usually measured as the crow
flies, and the plotting on maps of raw material transfers are by themselves highly informative elements,
notably in terms of the varying magnitude of these
transfers through time. They also help to appreciate the geographic limits of exploited or known territories, and reveal the recurrent character of certain
transfers, indicative therefore of favored itineraries. These aspects can be directly appreciated from
maps and the frequency distributions of transfers in
relation to distances. However, behavioral perspectives cannot meaningfully be developed without
reference to technology (see Lithics: Manufacture),
an approach closely linked since the 1980s to lithic
provenance studies. Based on the notion of chane
operatoire (reduction sequence), the technological
analysis of a lithic assemblage, broken down into different categories of raw material, enables one to recognize the stage of manufacture in which each sourced
and quantified raw material is introduced onto a site
(nodules or roughed-out blocks, preformed cores,
blanks or tools). Thus, raw materials can be characterized not only by distances and quantities, but also by
technological stages of introduction. The relation between these three parameters distance, quantity, and
character of transported technology defines a technoeconomic transport pattern characteristic of a period
and/or of a region.
Because raw material procurement should be considered as an integral part of a large set of subsistence
strategies, aimed at meeting both economic and social
requirements, distributions in combination with
transport patterns need to be interpreted in terms of
prehistoric mobility (i.e., land-use) and in terms
of long-distance social interaction.

Interpretive Framework
Group Mobility versus Interaction Networks

In Middle and Upper Palaeolithic contexts, analyzing

the causes underlying raw material distributions is a
major difficulty. Do observed distances correspond
to the customary movements of groups across the
landscape, or to displacements of items exceeding
the range of such movements? A related matter is the
distinction between direct acquisition and indirect
acquisition through trade and exchange of raw materials, the two major types of mechanisms responsible

1189

for the presence of intrusive items in archaeological

assemblages.
When distributions are interpreted in terms of group
mobility, the underlying assumption is that of a procurement embedded in other subsistence-activities,
and distances traveled are construed as a measure of
the size of the area exploited for subsistence-related
purposes. In particular, the maximum transport distance (MTD) recorded for individual lithic assemblages is used as a proxy for the maximum size of
territories. Economic necessities arguably give rise to
specific mobility strategies, which may vary through
time and/or space, and translate into different scales
and rates of movement.
When distributions are interpreted in terms of intergroup relationships, thereby implying exchange, MTDs
are seen as the material correlates of the maximum
extent of interaction networks expected as part of the
survival and social process. Distances involved can be
very great insofar as items can travel a long way through
successive transfers. The existence of alliance networks
is rarely contemplated for the Middle Palaeolithic. They
are supposed to have developed only in the Upper
Palaeolithic, along with the essential social structures
making interaction possible.
Criteria for Exchange

Establishing the magnitude of Palaeolithic group mobility from the extent of interaction networks is
fraught with difficulties, since direct and indirect procurement may produce similar patterns. However, in
some cases, the possibility of a down-the-line mode
of distribution resulting from successive reciprocal
exchanges can be considered in view of the results of
a cross-cultural comparison of ethnographic records
of exchange. These show that highly valued items are
conveyed over extreme distances (6003000 km) by
such a mode. Archaeologically, the prerequisites for
an interpretation in terms of down-the-line trade are
(1) the presence of at least one site where the item
may have been passed on, located between the source
and the furthest known occurrence of that item and
(2) the presence in the relay site of another item
made from the same raw material or from a raw
material of close geographical provenance (see
Exchange Systems).
The Cultural Ecological Paradigm

Whether plotted transfers are interpreted as correlates

of group mobility or as proxies for the extent of interaction networks, the issues are generally addressed
in relation to the cultural ecological paradigm

1190 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

(see Cultural Ecology). Behavioral models devised to

assess the size of exploited territories and the extent of
spatial networks of connection among groups are
mostly based on ethnographic accounts of present
day hunter-gatherers and rely heavily on ecological
approaches (Figure 1). Hunter-gatherer subsistence
strategies are supposed to be directly influenced by
the nature, abundance, and accessibility of resources.
In turn, these strategies may result in different patterns,
rates, and scales of movement across a landscape, as
well as in variably dense and extensive interaction
networks. In particular, the scale of group mobility
appears indicative of adaptation to different environmental contexts, moves being longer or more frequently recorded over long distances in the most
exacting environments, Similarly, risk-minimizing
strategies in high-risk environments, where resources
are liable to important fluctuations, promote the
creation of wide-ranging social networks through
which information about vital resources is dispensed, the exchange of goods forming an integral
part of these strategies. When interpreting distributions of transfers, it is suggested that in both cases
the frequency with which particular distances are
covered is possibly more significant than the magnitude of transfers (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient).

which past hunter-gatherers dealings with space were

environmentally constrained. Drawing on bibliographical information about stone raw material transfers in
500 lithic assemblages, evidence for change and variability is presented below, and particular points are illustrated and discussed in relation to these major issues.
The methodologies used to characterize and identify sources of the lithic materials discussed in this
article have changed over the years. Earlier attempts
(in the 1980s) were mainly based on the sole macroscopic characterization of rocks by color, texture, and
visible inclusions. This method nevertheless allows
materials to be sourced with a measure of reliability
when it is grounded in a thorough knowledge of the
range of regionally available raw materials. In later
publications (from the early 1990s to the present), the
most widely used approach involves a combination
of macroscopic observations and petrographic microfacies analyses, complemented by micropalaeontological analyses of thin sections. On the whole, chemical
methods, more complex, costly, and time-consuming,
have been less used, and either on specific materials
such as obsidian and radiolarite, or to narrow the
range of potential sources when other approaches
were powerless to do so (see Chemical Analysis
Techniques).

A Palaeolithic Perspective: Diachronic

Change and Macro-Regional Variability

Diachronic Change: Scale of Transfers

Provenance studies have since the 1980s been conducted in a techno-economic perspective, and a large
documentation is available on lithic transfers for the
entire Palaeolithic of western Europe (WE), western central Europe (WCE), and eastern central Europe (ECE).
Monitoring change versus continuity and macroregional variability for the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic allows major issues to be addressed, namely the
question of behavioral/cognitive differences across the
Middle/Upper Palaeolithic divide, and the degree to

Middle Palaeolithic transfers In the European Middle Palaeolithic, MTDs greater than 100 km (65 miles)
are recorded for only 11 sites (8%), all late Middle
Palaeolithic, out of 145 (Figure 2), with a maximum of
300 km in three instances. On the assumption that
Middle Palaeolithic transfers are correlates of group
mobility, and MTDs are proxies for the maximum
size of territories, the very high proportion of MTDs
smaller than 100 km (n 134, 92%) suggests that in
most cases subsistence requirements were met within
those bounds.

Patterns, rates and

scales of movement

Scale and density

Resources

Group mobiity

Nature
Abundance
Accessibility

Continentality
latitude

Interaction networks

Hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies

Environment

Figure 1 The role of ecological conditions in the development of long-term adaptive strategies.

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

1191

60
MP (n = 145)
Frequency (%) of MTDs

50

UP (n = 355)

40
30
20
10
0
[050]

]50100]

]100150]

]150200]

]200250]

]250300]

>300

Distances (km)
Figure 2 Frequency distributions of MTDs recorded for European Middle Palaeolithic (MP) and Upper Palaeolithic (UP) lithic assemblages, respectively. There is a single MTD per assemblage. Data for the so-called transitional industries such as the Chatelperronian, the
Bohunician, and the Szeletian, are included in the Upper Palaeolithic distribution. Data come from France and Belgium for WE, from
Germany and Switzerland for WCE, from Poland, Hungary, eastern Austria, the Czeck, and Slovak Republics for ECE.

Upper Palaeolithic transfers A dramatic increase

(n 173, 49%) in the number of sites with MTDs
greater than 100 km is observed for the European
Upper Palaeolithic (Figure 2). The absolute threshold
of the (Late) Middle Palaeolithic (300 km) is overshot, since transfers (n 27 occurrences) between
300 and 450 km (200300 miles) are recorded.
There are also two exceptional instances of 600 and
700 km long transfers. As a result, the proportion of
sites with MTDs smaller than 100 km has fallen to
51%. The increase in the magnitude of transfers suggests differences of a socioeconomic nature. These
can refer to the inner organization of groups and the
patterning of their mobility, when for instance anticipated long-distance seasonal moves are considered.
They can also refer to complex processes involving
long-distance social interaction, the latter in particular, but not exclusively, for transfers >300 km.
Diachronic Change: Techno-economic Transport
Patterns

Normative Middle Palaeolithic patterns For the entire Middle Palaeolithic of western and central
Europe, in areas where there is little correspondence
in lithic resource availability, terrain, and topography, transport patterns show strikingly similar characteristics. As a rule, quantities decrease in relation
to distance from source, and lithics are introduced
onto the sites in a more and more elaborate form.
In particular, transfers exceeding 20 km are tied to
small quantities of end products (blanks, tools) sometimes complemented by a few reduced cores, interpreted as portable personal gear intended for use as
people go along. Interestingly, exceptions where
larger quantities are brought onto sites as preformed

cores from further than 20 km relate to areas yielding

only poor to medium quality stone, thus arguing for
the existence of a selective attitude toward raw materials in the Middle Palaeolithic. However, even in
such cases, the quantities involved are smaller than
in the Upper Palaeolithic and the distances much
shorter: recently documented examples range from
14% to 20% transported over 3040 km. Consequently, these exceptions should not be overrated in
terms of anticipated needs in large quantities of
higher-grade raw materials.
Variable Upper Palaeolithic patterns Throughout
western and central Europe, Upper Palaeolithic
techno-economic patterns are characterized by their
extreme variability, as opposed to the Middle Palaeolithic norm. Alongside the former Middle Palaeolithic
pattern, which occurs unsurprisingly where high-grade
local raw material is available, another pattern is
observed, consisting in the transport over long distances (140160 km to 300 km) of substantial quantities (>50% in the Gravettian) of unworked nodules
or preformed cores (with or without a complement of
blanks or tools). This new pattern points explicitly to
the building up of supplies, and can be identified in
most cases where the poor to medium quality local raw
material is not suitable for Upper Palaeolithic blade
production, although admittedly the selective attitude
toward raw materials fluctuates through time and
seems dependant among other factors on the particular demands of a given cultures lithic technology.
Macro-regional Variability

While techno-economic patterns of transport do

not vary macro-regionally and exhibit similar

1192 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

other data, a different patterning of group mobility

has been suggested for ECE, functioning on a seasonal
basis and involving medium (100 km) to long-distance
(230300 km) moves following natural transit routes.
Interestingly, the rare west European long-distance
transfers, also following natural transit routes, occur
in a region of France, the Auvergne, where environmental conditions were probably as exacting as in
more continental (ECE) zones.

characteristics in the whole of Europe for the Middle

and Upper Palaeolithic, respectively, MTD distributions for the Middle Palaeolithic and the Upper
Palaeolithic suggest an enduring clinal relationship
between greater frequency of long-distance transfers
and increasing continentality across the Middle/
Upper Palaeolithic divide, in keeping with the cultural
ecological paradigm.
Evidence for the Middle Palaeolithic Compared with
west European MTDs, those for WCE and ECE show
a forward shift of frequencies toward greater distances, in particular for the first three distance classes
(Figure 3). In addition, transfers greater than 200 km
are better represented in ECE. Building on this and

Evidence for the Upper Palaeolithic While in the

Upper Palaeolithic MTDs exceeding 300 km are
recorded for WE and WCE, they are exceptionally
rare (n 2, n 1) in comparison with ECE (n 24)
(Figure 4). Their range is also smaller since they do

60
MP (n = 145)
Frequency (%) of MTDs

50

UP (n = 355)

40
30
20
10
0
[050]

]50100]

]100150]

]150200]

]200250]

]250300]

>300

Distances (km)
Figure 3 Frequency distributions of Middle Palaeolithic MTDs for WE, WCE, and ECE. There is a single MTD per lithic assemblage.

50

Frequency (%) of MTDs

WE (n = 177)
WCE (n = 47)

40

ECE (n = 131)

30

20

10

0
[050]

]50100]

]100150]

]150200]

]200250]

]250300]

>300

Distances (km)
Figure 4 Frequency distributions of Upper Palaeolithic MTDs for WE, WCE, and ECE, respectively. There is a single MTD per lithic
assemblage. Data for the so-called transitional industries such as the Chatelperronian, the Bohunician, and the Szeletian, are included in
this distribution. Note that the WE distribution is biased in favor of the ]200250] and ]250300] distance classes by the weight of the
Auvergne transfers (see Figure 5).

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

not exceed 380 km in WE and 400 km in WCE,

whereas in ECE distances well over 400 km are
recorded (four occurrences at 420450 km, one at
600 km, and one at 700 km). The overall magnitude
of lithic transfers is therefore greater in the latter
macro-region. More interestingly, MTDs shorter than
100 km are by far the most frequent in WE, suggesting that in most cases either territories or networks
were smaller than in ECE. By contrast, the ECE distribution is quite balanced, and displays relatively important percentages associated with distances greater than
100 km. The frequency distribution of MTDs for WCE
is partly consistent with a location halfway along a
continentality gradient, insofar as percentages for the
]100150 km] and ]150200 km] distance classes are
highest, implying that most territories/networks fall
within this range. This suggests that although magnitudes could be similar, longer transfers were more frequent in WCE than in WE, arguably as a result of
greater continentality. WE percentages for the ]200
250 km] and ]250300 km] distance classes seem to
contradict this assumption. It should however be
noted that they are mainly due to transfers in the
environmentally exacting Auvergne region, which
account for 58% of the occurrences (17 out of 29)
for these classes. They also account for 18% of the
]150200 km] distance class. When the Auvergne transfers are disregarded (Figure 5), the ]200250 km] distance class percentages for WE and WCE are inverted
(5.9% and 6.4%, respectively); they are, in addition,
both lower than the percentages for ECE (17.6%).
This, as well as the very low percentages associated
with the longest distances (>300 km), draws WCE
closer to WE rather than to ECE.

1193

Case-Studies
Seasonal Mobility in the Auvergne

The magnitude of raw material transfers between the

Auvergne sites and sources 250300 km further north
illustrates a case of continuity in mobility patterns
across the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic divide, which
is consistent with the cultural ecological paradigm.
Considered in a techno-economic perspective, these
transfers also reinforce previously stated diachronic
differences.
A hilly relief and a globally rough climate characterize the Auvergne, in the central part of France. During
colder periods, local glaciers covered the higher altitude zones that border the Loire and Allier valleys,
along which there are clusters of sites, both Middle
Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic (Gravettian, Protomagdalenian, mostly Badegoulian and Magdalenian).
All of the Upper and some of the Middle Palaeolithic
sites contain northern flint from the Touraine and the
Paris Basin, the former sites in large quantities. In this
respect, it is significant that flint is scarce and generally
of poor quality in the Auvergne.
The Auvergne is considered to have been a region
of severe seasonal contrasts throughout the Upper
Palaeolithic, particularly inhospitable during the winter months. The absence of any winter hunting in the
sites further suggests that human occupation was
seasonal in the area. Working on this assumption, it
is contemplated that in the Upper Palaeolithic the
procurement of higher-quality northern flint was
embedded in subsistence strategies and occurred in
the context of planned seasonal moves. These followed natural routes connecting flint yielding regions

50
WE (n = 158)
Frequency (%) of MTDs

WCE (n = 47)
40

ECE (n = 131)

30

20

10

0
[050]

]50100]

]100150]

]150200]

]200250]

]250300]

>300

Distances (km)
Figure 5 Frequency distributions of Upper Palaeolithic MTDs minus the Auvergne transfers for WE. Compared with Figure 4, MTDs for
WE, WCE, and ECE are more consistent with an overall distribution along a continentality gradient when the Auvergne transfers are
disregarded.

1194 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

and others known to be lacking suitable raw materials

(Figure 6). Long-distance seasonal mobility (ranging
between 160 and at least 250 km in the Upper Palaeolithic) is a pattern argued to obtain in ECE. Explaining
the Auvergne long-distance seasonal moves in terms
of adaptive responses to environmental constraints is
supported by the enduring northern origin of raw
materials across the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic divide.
However, the quantities recorded for the Middle
Palaeolithic are very small. A similar case of continuity in transport and mobility strategies is documented only in ECE, in Moravia, where northern
trans-Carpathian flint systematically occurs in Middle
and Upper Palaeolithic sites, conveyed along natural routes (the Moravian Gate). As in the Auvergne
only poor quality flint is available in Moravia, and
it is also only during the Upper Palaeolithic that
trans-Carpathian transfers are associated with large
quantities of raw materials, rather than with a few
end-products.

Indirect Procurement

Drawing on ethnographic parallels concerning the exchange of highly valued items by down-the-line trade
over extreme distances, special attention has been paid
to the longest transfers (>300 km) acknowledged in
WE, WCE, and ECE. These always involve very small
quantities (generally a single item) of end-products,
often in remarkable materials, such as obsidian or
white-spotted Swieciechow flint in ECE, which
account for half these transfers and may have been
invested with more than utilitarian properties.
Eastern Central Europe In ECE, such very long
transfers are recorded throughout the Upper Palaeolithic, beginning with the Szeletian and the Aurignacian, which partly overlap in time. It is argued that
three of the four >300 km Szeletian transfers
may result from a down-the-line mode of exchange
(Figure 7). Items made of eastern materials from the

PARIS BASIN

LOIRE

ALLIE

TOURAINE

AUVERGNE

High-quality flint area

Middle Paleolithic sites
0

50 100

200

km

Upper Paleolithic sites

300

Figure 6 Northward long-distance winter moves from the Auvergne (France), following natural routes leading to areas yielding highquality flints. Both Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites contain Touraine and Paris Basin flints, but the procurement of large quantities of
such flints is only documented for the Upper Palaeolithic. Figure composed by G. Monthel (UMR 7055 du CNRS).

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

1195

Chocolate flint

Holy Cross Mts

Sweciechw flint
Krakw Jurassic flint
Radiolarite

la

tu
Vis

MORAVIA

Obsidian
Felsitic quartz porphyry

Urcice-Goltyn
Mikovice
Nov Dedina I

Neslovice

Szeletian sites
Aurignacian sites

Va

TOKAY

Danube

BKK

50

100

200

300

Other transfers, possible

combination of direct and
indirect procurement
Szeletian
Aurignacian

km

Indirect procurement
(down-the-line)
Szeletian
Aurignacian

Figure 7 Indirect procurement by down-the-line trade through social exchange in the Szeletian and the Aurignacian of ECE (Poland,
Hungary, the Czech Republic). Figure composed by G. Monthel (UMR 7055 du CNRS).

Tokay and Bukk regions (obsidian and felsitic quartz

porphyry, 360 and 340 km) are recorded west in Moravia, at Neslovice. Obsidian and felsitic quartz porphyry are abundant in all the Bukk area sites. Felsitic
quartz porphyry is also documented at a halfway point
in some Vah valley sites, construed as relay sites. In
addition, the presence of the characteristic raw material of this valley, radiolarite, is recorded in both eastern
(Bukk) and western (Moravia) sites. In a similar way,
the Swieciechow flint item from northeastern Poland
found in Moravia, at Miskovice (360 km), alongside
with Krakow Jurassic flint, is argued to have been
conveyed through the Krakow region sites, where
Swieciechow flint items are recorded, as well as items
in chocolate flint, of similar northern origin. In the
Aurignacian, indirect procurement can be contemplated for two of the four >300 km transfers. One is
associated with the presence of Swieciechow flint in
Moravia, at Urcice-Golstyn (380 km), where Krakow
Jurassic flint is also recorded. There again, the Krakow
sites, which yield some Swieciechow flint (three items
at Krakow-Sowiniec), can be interpreted as relay
sites. Another transfer is associated with the presence

of 10 obsidian items at Nova Ddina I in Moravia

(320 km), alongside with radiolarite, and these were
possibly conveyed through the Vah valley sites.
Western Central Europe In WCE, only one >300 km
transfer is recorded, in connection with HohlensteinStadel, an Aurignacian site of the Swabian Jura. It is
associated with a few end products in Baltic flint from
northern Rhineland (400 km). While in the Swabian
Jura, all other long-distance transfers are throughout
the Upper Palaeolithic oriented eastwards (240 km)
and westwards (220 km) along the Danube River,
suggesting direct procurement of materials during
(seasonal?) group movement, this transfer is oriented
north-south. Small quantities of Baltic flint have been
found at the Aurignacian site of Wildscheuer in the
Rhineland, some 140 km distant from the closest
source, and the assumption is that down-the-line
trade to southwestern Germany conveyed the items
recovered at Hohlenstein-Stadel.
Western Europe In WE, basically as a reflection of
the state of current research, >300 km transfers are

1196 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

so far only acknowledged for the French Aurignacian

(n 2 occurrences). These transfers relate to one item
each of grain de mil flint conveyed from western
Charente to the Arie`ge (at Tuto de Camalhot) and
the Herault (Regismont-le-Haut) (Figure 8). Grain de
mil flint also occurs at several of the Veze`re valley
sites in the Perigord, and two types of northern
Aquitaine flints (Bergeracois and Fumel) have been
identified at the Tuto de Camalhot and Regismontle-Haut. Indirect procurement by down-the-line trade
via Perigord relay sites is therefore suggested for
the >300 km grain de mil transfers. In this respect,
it is of additional interest that shells of Atlantic coastal species occur both at Perigord sites and at the
Tuto de Camalhot.
It does not necessarily ensue from the above
examples that direct procurement is the only underlying mechanism for transfers <300 km, and possible
successive transfers each involving relatively short
distances (c. 100 km) can be reconstructed in both
WE and ECE, arguing for exchange also on a smaller scale, overlapping that of group mobility. In all
likelihood, the observed increase in Upper Palaeolithic magnitudes of transfers can be accounted for
by a combination of socio-economic factors more
systematic long-distance moves, exchange within interaction networks whose respective importance is
difficult to assess.

The Nature of Personal Gear

It is acknowledged that the items transported as part

of hunter-gatherers personal gear are more diversified than previously thought. Parallels drawn between examples from the French Middle and Upper
Palaeolithic have implications in terms of Middle
Palaeolithic peoples conceptual capacities (Figure 9).
Personal gear in the Upper Palaeolithic Upper
Palaeolithic transfers <300 km can be associated
with high or low quantities of materials. Low quantities (<1%) relate to either end-products alone (mainly
retouched blade tools) or end-products (blade blanks
exceeding tools) complemented by small bladelet cores
in the same raw materials. These can be very reduced
plain prismatic cores. They can also be made from
various types of products, such as flakes, or formal
tools that have been identified as potential cores, for
example, carinated scrapers in the Aurignacian and
thick Raysse burins in the Gravettian. While indirect
procurement cannot be ruled out, it is generally assumed that these various items correspond to the
portable personal gear of mobile hunter-gatherers. In
particular for the Aurignacian, the main arguments put
forth pertain to the similar way that local/regional and
more distant raw materials are managed. In both
cases, the anticipated manufacture of blade blanks

CHARENTE
Atlantic
Ocean

Vzre valley sites

Ga

PRIGORD

ro

Grain de mil flint

nn

Northern Aquitaine flints

Atlantic coastal shells
Aurignacian sites
HRAULT
Shell transfers
Tuto de Camalhot
ARIGE
50

100

200

km

Rgismontle-Haut
Mediterranean
Sea

Lithics, indirect procurement

(down-the-line)
Lithics, possible combination
of direct and indirect
procurement

Figure 8 Indirect procurement by down-the-line trade through social exchange in the Aurignacian of WE (southern France). Figure
composed by G. Monthel (UMR 7055 du CNRS).

Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

Upper Palaeolithic

Middle Palaeolithic

Blade blanks
Used as such or retouched

Levallois flakes
Used as such or retouched

Reduced prismatic bladelet cores

Supply of raw material

Various reduced cores

Supply of raw material

Formal tools
Carinated scrapers
Raysse burins

Tool

Supply of
raw material

Formal tools
Quina side-scrapers
Limaces

Tool

Flakes
Future tool

1197

Supply of
raw material
Flakes

Supply of
raw material

Future tool

Supply of
raw material

Figure 9 The nature of hunter-gatherers transported personal gear. Middle and Upper Palaeolithic analogies.

for delayed use coexists with the on-site ad hoc production of bladelets made from prismatic or carinated
cores, introduced in more or less advanced stages of
processing as a function of the distance from raw
material sources.
Personal gear in the Middle Palaeolithic Recent
studies on Middle Palaeolithic transfers highlight
the potentially flexible nature and long life span of
some of the items conveyed over distances >20 km.
For example, in the Quina Mousterian, large sidescrapers and limaces are shown to be both tools and
potential supplies of raw material in the form of
long thin retouch or resharpening flakes, which can
in turn be retouched into tools, sometimes testifying
to several cycles of exploitation. The same seems to
hold for bifaces in the Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition (MTA). In addition, it is demonstrated that in
some assemblages cores were frequently worked from
flakes. This suggests that large flake blanks were
transported both as potential tools (to be retouched)
and as raw material supplies (to produce flakes).
Considering that predetermined products such as
Levallois preferential and preparation flakes and reduced cores are also part of the mobile tool-kit, the
overall technological pattern of transport is somewhat analogous to the one associated with low quantities in the Upper Palaeolithic (Figure 9), and points
to a higher degree of technological planning than
previously thought. Interestingly, in some sites, this
pattern is documented for both exotic and local raw
materials, giving new insights into site function and
duration of occupations.

Conclusions
Environmental Constraints

Some of the points developed above raise the question

of the relevance of the cultural ecological paradigm
for addressing land-use and interaction related issues.
Admittedly, in WE, evidence from the Auvergne
region underscores the role of ecological conditions
in the development of long-term adaptive strategies
across the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic divide. However, the Auvergne transfers account for only 58%
of the occurrences recorded for the ]200300 km]
distance class. The other occurrences are not associated with particularly exacting environmental contexts. Moreover, these source-site connections do not
follow natural routes, but are mostly perpendicular to
the valleys and entail crossing the hydrographical
network. Whatever their interpretation, in terms of
group mobility or interaction networks, the existence
of these long-distance transfers, as well as the transfers >300 km arguably ascribed to a down-the-line
mode of exchange, considerably weakens the supposed relationship between increasing continentality
and greater magnitude of transfers. Clearly, huntergatherer subsistence strategies are more independent
of environmental constraints than the cultural ecological interpretive framework suggests. But they are
not wholly independent either, in particular when
the frequencies with which certain distances are covered are considered rather than the magnitude of
transfers. For instance, when the Auvergne transfers
are omitted (Figure 5), the three series of MTDs are
more consistent with an overall distribution across a

1198 Paleolithic Raw Material Provenance Studies

continentality gradient. In addition, when distances

of 300 km and beyond are considered, both frequency
and magnitude of transfers set apart ECE from both
WE and WCE. Interpreted as proxies for the maximum extent of interaction networks, these transfers
are far more frequent in ECE, and their range is also
greater.

induced higher constraints on the quality of raw materials, therefore justifying the higher cost of transport
in the absence of suitable locally available resources.
This could be seen as reflecting quantitative rather
than qualitative differences across the Middle/Upper
Palaeolithic divide.

Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Behavioral/

Cognitive Capacities

See also: Chemical Analysis Techniques; Cultural

Other points address the question of whether observed differences between the Middle and Upper
Palaeolithic should be considered as the expression
of fundamentally different behavioral/cognitive capacities (see Modern Humans, Emergence of). Possible
arguments in favor of such an assumption are the
overall dramatic increase in magnitude of Upper
Palaeolithic transfers and the decrease in frequencies
of <100 km MTDs (51% against 92%). These point
to the development of interaction networks and to a
different patterning of group mobility, involving
anticipated long-distance seasonal moves. However,
planned seasonal mobility has also been suggested for
the Middle Palaeolithic, albeit as an adaptive response
to environmental constraints (ECE and Auvergne).
In the Upper Palaeolithic, such mobility strategies
cannot therefore be considered novel. Rather, they
appear only as more systematic, possibly because
they were less situationally driven. Another major
difference between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic
pertains to the anticipated building up of supplies for a
use that was much deferred, considering the distances
over which large quantities of raw materials were
transported to areas lacking suitable stone. The pattern is observed for the Upper Palaeolithic even when
continuity in mobility patterns across the Middle/
Upper Palaeolithic divide can be argued for the same
region (Auvergne, Moravia). Even though the acquisition cost need not have been higher if embedded
procurement is considered, the cost of transport undoubtedly was. However, this is not necessarily indicative of cognitive differences between Middle and
Upper Palaeolithic groups, particularly in view of
the analogies between Middle and Upper Palaeolithic
technological patterns of transport associated to small
quantities. The possibility should be considered that
the demands of Upper Palaeolithic lithic technology

Ecology; Exchange Systems; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Lithics: Manufacture; Modern Humans, Emergence of; Neutron Activation Analysis.

Further Reading
Blades BS (1999) Aurignacian lithic economy and early modern
mobility: New perspectives from classic sites in the Veze`re valley
of France. Journal of Human Evolution 37: 91120.
Bordes J-G, Bon F, and Le Brun-Ricalens F (2005) Le transport des
matie`res premie`res lithiques a` l0 Aurignacien entre le nord et le
sud de lAquitaine: faits attendus, faits nouveaux. In: Jaubert J
and Barbaza M (eds.) Territoires, deplacements, mobilite,
echanges. Actes du 126e Congre`s CTHS, Toulouse, 2001. Paris:
CTHS. pp. 185198.
Bourguignon L, Delagnes A, and Meignen L (2006) Syste`mes
de production lithique, gestion des outillages et territoires au
Paleolithique moyen: ou` se trouve la complexite? In: Astruc L,
et al. (eds.) Normes techniques et pratiques sociales: de la simplicite des outillages pre- et protohistoriques. Actes des XXVIe
rencontres internationales darcheologie et dhistoire dAntibes.
pp. 7586. Antibes: APDCA.
Feblot-Augustins J (1993) Mobility strategies in the Late Middle
Palaeolithic of central Europe and western Europe: Elements of
stability and variability. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
12: 211265.
Feblot-Augustins J (1997) La circulation des matie`res premie`res au
Paleolithique (2 vols.). Lie`ge: ERAUL.
Feblot-Augustins J and Perle`s C (1992) Perspectives ethnoarcheologiques sur les echanges a` longue distance. In: Ethnoarcheologie.
Justification, proble`mes, limites. Actes des XIIe rencontres internationales darcheologie et dhistoire dAntibes, pp. 195209.
Juan-les-Pins: APDCA.
Fontana L (2005) Territoires, mobilite et echanges au Magdalenien
dans lAude et le Massif Central (France): approche comparative,
modelisation et perspectives. In: Jaubert J and Barbaza M (eds.)
Territoires, deplacements, mobilite, echanges. Actes du 126e Congre`s CTHS, Toulouse, 2001. Paris: CTHS. pp. 355370.
Jaubert J and Barbaza M (eds.) (2005) Territoires, deplacements,
mobilite, echanges. Actes du 126e Congre`s CTHS, Toulouse,
2001. Paris: CTHS.
Keeley LH (1988) Hunter-gatherer economic complexity and
population pressure: A cross-cultural analysis. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 7: 373411.

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1199

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

Arkadiusz Marciniak, University of Poznan, Poznan,
Poland
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
amber A yellowish translucent or opaque fossilized resin from an
extinct variety of pine tree found in alluvial soils or on the
seashore. It has been a highly valued material since the Neolithic
and has been traded throughout Europe ever since.
bronze An alloy of copper and tin in various proportions. It is
harder than copper, more readily melted, and easier to cast.
It was first made before 3000 BC but it was only in the 2nd
millennium BC that it became widely used. Introduction of
bronze turned out to have a far reaching consequence for the
European communities.
chiefdom A form of sociopolitical organization with a chief
having the central authority over a social ranking or hierarchy.
Status of individuals is inherited and determined by closeness of
relationship to the chief. A chiefdom is resposible for emergence
of large monuments, usually of ceremonial character, and is
characterized by well organized distribution of goods and
services and specialization in crafts.
copper A ductile and malleable metal. Smelting ore that
produced pure copper was discovered in Anatolia after 6000 BC.
Knowledge of the use of copper was then wider spread than the
metal itself. Copper metallurgy was dominated by casting tools
and weapons and triggered development in many domains of the
European communities.
Homo erectus A species of early human that appeared around
1.8 million years ago. It was upright man efficient in walking on
two legs. The average brain size was c. 800 cubic cm.
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis A species of the Homo
genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from
c. 130 000 to 25 000 years ago. It was robust and muscular and
the average brain size was similar to that of anatomically modern
humans.
Homo sapiens sapiens A species characterized by the lighter
posture compared to earlier humans. A high vaulted cranium
with a flat and vertical forehead houses the brain of average size
of c. 1300 cubic cm.
iron A silvery, lustrous and malleable metal occurring abundantly
in combined forms such as hematite, limonite, magnetite, and
taconite. The beginning of its use varied geographically and it
became the major metal exploited by the European groups in the
1st millennium BC. The large-scale production of iron
implements, in particular tools and weapons, facilitated a
dynamic economic development and large-scale movements.
kurgan The Russian word for tumulus. It is a kind of earthen
burial mound or barrow constructed over a burial chamber, often
of wood.
limes A protection system marking the boundaries of the Roman
Empire. It was usually fortified with forts and watchtowers. The
continuous system of fortifications and barriers was constructed
along the Rhine and the Danube rivers. Hadrians Wall was
also one of its significant elements.
nomadism A way of life of a community that has no permanent
settlement and moves cyclically or periodically within a defined
territory. It usually depends on domestic livestock and migrates
to find pasture for their animals.

oppidum A large Celtic settlement of significant administrative

function. It is the first town-like structure north of the
Mediterranean, often surrounded by earthworks. After the
Roman conquest, oppida were set to administer the Empire
provinces and some of them became later genuine Roman towns.

The Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic

The Palaeolithic Age of central and eastern Europe is
marked by a cycle of glacial and interglacial periods
continuing until the beginning of the Holocene period
around 10 000 BC. Cyclical changes in ice sheets
defined living conditions of local hunter-gatherers
and forced subsequent depopulation and recolonization of vast territories (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient). The Lower and the Middle Palaeolithic are
marked by the scarcity of evidence.
The Lower Palaeolithic from central and eastern
Europe begins with the first appearance of hominids
belonging to the group Homo erectus marking their
first shift out of Africa. The date of the earliest colonization is a matter of debate. The earliest fossil
hominids in the region comprise a H. erectus mandible from Mauer, Germany, c. 500 000 years ago. The
other fossils come from Vertesszollos, Hungary, Bilzingsleben and Steinheim in Germany, and are dated
between 400 000 and 200 000 years ago (see Figure 1).
These fossils show a mixture of features, including
archaic Homo sapiens, and hence their attribution to
H. erectus is now questionable.
The early hominids of the Lower Palaeolithic possessed skills to manufacture hand axes and simple
flake-based stone tools. The hand axes were manufactured in the so-called Acheulean tradition, named after
the site of Saint-Acheul in France. They were accompanied by a range of flake tools from the inconspicuous flakes to chopping tools, found, for example, at
the sites of Isernia, Taubach, and Bilzingsleben (eastern
Germany), Prezletice and Stranska skala (Czech
Republic), and Vertesszollos (Hungary) (Figure 1).
These groups also possessed the ability to light a fire.
All these developments provided protection against
predators, means of preparing and cooking meat, and
keeping warm in cold climate. The early hominid
groups lived in caves and tent-like structures in the
open areas and consumed both plants and animals.
They hunted large animals such as rhinoceros, cervids,
bovids, equids, elephants, and bears. One of the bestknown sites from the period is Bilzingsleben in eastern
Germany. It is an open-air site with tremendous abundance of archaeological and palaeontological finds. It
comprised oval dwelling structures, each c. 3  4 m,

1200 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

Volga
North Sea
Baltic
Sea

Dnieper

Elb

e
Biskupin

Teutenburg
Forest

in
Rh

Neandertal

Leki Male
Krzemionki
Opatowskie

Bilzingsleben
Leubingen

Ehingsdorf

Mezhirich

Stradonice

Hochdorf

Dn

est

Mauer
Steinheim

Heuneburg

be

u
Dan

Manching
Forschner

Dolni
Vstonice
Willendorf

Pavlov
Nitransky Hrdok

Bheimkirchen

Hatvan
Vrtesszlls

La Tne

Aquileia

Stic^na

Sarmizegethusa

Rho

ne

Po

Krapina

Vac^e

TiszapolgrBasatanya
Otomani

Danube

Hallstatt

Singindunum
Rudna Glava

Ad

ria

250 km

Spisky tvrtok

tic

Lepenski Vir

Danube
Varna

Aibunar

Se

Karanovo

Figure 1 Major prehistoric sites of central and eastern Europe.

hearths, workshops, and several activity zones for the

working of stone, bone, and wood as well as a paved
area of small pebbles and bone debris measuring 9 m in
diameter.
The period that followed is known as the Middle
Palaeolithic and occurred about 130 000 years ago.
Homo erectus was replaced by Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. They were the first hominids who buried their dead deliberately and furnished the burials
with grave goods. This indicates some sort of belief
system that included notions of an afterlife. The
earliest remains of H. sapiens neanderthalensis in
central and eastern Europe come from Ehingsdorf
near Weimar in eastern Germany. Remains of these
hominids have also been found in other sites such as
Neandertal, Wildscheuer, Salzgitter-Lebenstet, and
Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany as well as in Krapina

and Vindija (Croatia), Sipka and Ochoz (Moravia),

Subalyuk (Hungary), and Kiik-Koba (Ukraine)
(Figure 1).
These hominid groups also produced a range of
stone industries from which the Mousterian tradition,
named after the site of Le Moustier in southern
France, remains the most important. During this
period, hand axes disappeared and were replaced
by the use of prepared cores for the production of
finely made flake tools featuring well-designed scrapers and projectile points. Further technological
advances in the Middle Palaeolithic were manifested
in the emergence of a developed flake stone tools
production in the Levallois technique. It reflects apparent mental abilities such as discursive anticipation
and planning as the technique required deliberate
and specific sequences of actions aimed to produce

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1201

distinctively shaped tools such as side scrapers or

notches. The Neanderthals hunted, gathered, and
scavenged similar species as their predecessors.
The Middle Palaeolithic ended when H. sapiens
neanderthalensis was rapidly replaced by Homo sapiens sapiens, the first modern humans. Their rise
marks the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic. They
emerged in Europe around 40 000 years ago and
soon spread throughout the continent. This process
occurred in conditions of the last cold period of the
Quaternary known as the Wurm glaciation, itself
characterized by climatic oscillations. The northern
part of central and eastern Europe was under a gigantic ice cap. The environmental zones south of its line
were spread longitudinally with a humid tundra in
the west of Europe and a cold steppe in the east.
The grassy steppes of central and eastern Europe
(especially Ukraine) with an abundance of wild animals facilitated dynamic developments of human
groups, while steady disappearance of the ice sheet
resulted in a move of the local communities into
previously uninhabited areas such as the Northern
European Plain.
The Upper Palaeolithic communities made considerable advances in a stone blade technology enabling
manufacture of highly developed tools such as end
scrapes, projectile points, borers, gravers, and spearthrowers. Most of them were hafted. They also made
composite tools by putting wooden or bone shafts
together. They used spears and, later, bows and
arrows as well. Distinct flint assemblages provided
criteria for distinguishing separate archaeological
cultures such as leaf-shaped point cultures, Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian, and
groups with shouldered points, which appeared in
subsequent periods of the Upper Palaeolithic in various regions in central and eastern Europe as well as in
the western part of the continent. It is believed that
these groups represent distinct societies of huntergatherers. The Upper Palaeolithic H. sapiens sapiens
also manufactured bone tools such as weapon tips,
harpoons, and needles.
These improvements of hunting techniques and
materials facilitated specialized hunting on animal
species that were particularly numerous and highyielding such as mammoths and woolly rhinoceros.
For the first time, they could be killed from a distance
by specialized hunting groups. Mammoths were
hunted on a wide scale. It is speculated that this was
accompanied by considerable social changes where a
part of the community remained in base camps while
the other was responsible for supplying raw material
and game (see Europe: Paleolithic Raw Material
Provenance Studies). A number of large sites of
these hunters were discovered, for example, in Pavlov

and Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic), Kostienki,

Mezhirich, and Pushkari (Ukraine), or KrakowSpadzista (Poland) (Figure 1). The elaborate dwellings were often made of mammoth bones. One of the
largest complexes was discovered in Kostienki in
the Don River basin, which comprised a complex of
25 surface and stratified open sites. The largest were
composed of substantive mammoth-bone dwellings,
resulting probably from multiple occupations, as well
as small sunken-floored huts, believed to be evidence
of single occupations. Mammoth long bones were
used to stabilize the bases of dwellings in contact
with the earth, while tusks were used in the construction of roofs. More than 50 000 mammoth bones have
been discovered at this site. Like their predecessors,
Upper Palaeolithic communities also lived in caves.
Homo sapiens sapiens were the first groups to
create representational and abstract art produced in
astonishing quantity and impressive quality. They
comprised both mobiliary and rock art. The former
involved works of art made of stone, antler, bone,
ivory, and teeth as well as decorated tools and weapons. The latter marks the development of artistic
activity in the form of cave paintings. The center of
Upper Palaeolithic art lay in western Europe. However, numerous sites in central and eastern Europe
contained exemplary pieces of mobiliary art. These
include especially elaborate carved female figurines,
the so-called Venus, which are depicted with exaggerated breasts, stomachs, buttocks, and thighs, as represented by well-known objects from Willendorf and
Kostienki. The first representations of the human figure appeared in the Gravettian assemblages of France
and related eastern variants of that technocomplex,
especially the Pavlovian in the Czech Republic and
the Kostenkian in Ukraine (31 00025 000 BC). These
female images were most often small-scale statuettes,
carved in stone, bone, ivory, and fired loess. They were
sometimes discovered along with animal figurines
depicting rhinoceros, mammoth, and feline creatures.
The melting of the ice sheet at the end of the Upper
Palaeolithic, which marked the beginning of the
Holocene period, resulted in a warmer climate, the
spread of forest cover, and the disappearance of
steppe regions. This transformed immensely the geography of Europe and forced local hunter-gatherers to
change their mode of life. This new period known as
the Mesolithic is set to designate a phase of human
history following the last glaciation and prior to the
emergence of predominantly farming-based subsistence (see Europe, Northern and Western: Mesolithic
Cultures). It is marked by an ability to adapt to and
exploit diverse environmental zones. Its chronology
varies according to region, but it dates from about
10 000 to 5000 BC. It is the last time central and

1202 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

eastern Europe was inhabited exclusively by huntergatherers.

As the ice sheet disappeared, hunter-gatherers in
central and eastern Europe began to inhabit mostly
forest areas. They lived in smaller social groups in sites
that became more widely spread. They buried their
dead in individual burials with funerary items such
as pendants, bone and stone tools, and often dusted
with red ochre. Available resources (hunting, fishing,
gathering) were more diverse than previously. The
rapid warming also stimulated great changes in flora
and fauna. Mammoths became extinct, and reindeer
moved north and were replaced by forest-dwelling
mammals such as red deer, roe deer, and wild boar.
Profound technological innovations in this period
involved the marked reduction in the range of stone
tools and the transition from blade technology to
manufacture of microliths. They were produced in a
variety of forms and have been interpreted as projectile points and were also used as blanks. Organic
materials such as wood, antler, and bone were used
on a large scale for production of harpoons and
arrows. This new hunting weaponry based upon
bow and arrow proved to be more efficient in the
newly established forest environment than previously
used spears.
In a few special regions, a complex settlement and
economic pattern emerged which involved a base
camp associated with a number of small, specialized
activity camps. In some cases, as in ErteblleEllerbeck in northern Germany and Scandinavia,
coastal resources were exploited, which resulted in
the accumulation of massive shell middens. Large
groups at the Iron Gate on the banks of the Danube
Gorge abundant in aquatic and terrestrial resources,
as known from Lepenski Vir, were clearly sedentary
living in trapezoidal houses with stone foundations
and hearths. They manufactured rounded stone
sculptures with engraved facial features accompanied
by geometric motifs (Figure 2). In some areas, such as
in the eastern part of the Baltic Sea and the forest zone
of Russia, a hunting and gathering economy continued long after farming was introduced in other
parts of central and eastern Europe.

The Neolithic and the Copper Age

The Neolithic is commonly identified by the appearance of farming, initiating a shift from an almost total
dependence on wild resources to a diet based primarily
on cereals and domesticated animals. It was accompanied by a sedentary mode of life in complex settlements,
the erection of elaborate monuments, and the use of
pottery and polished stone tools. Farming and sedentism revolutionized ways of life of the local communities

Figure 2 Lepenski Vir, Serbia. The anthropomorphic statue.

and their view of the world. They also had demographic consequences manifested in the population increase.
Society became more complex and stratified.
The mechanism of neolithization of Europe is one
of the most fiercely debated issues in archaeology (see
Europe: Neolithic). This new mode of life emerged
probably both as a result of immigration of farmers
from the south and its adoption by local indigenous
foragers. This process was supposedly highly idiosyncratic. Impact of these components onto the overall
cultural transformation varied across time and space
and the complete Neolithic package did not appear
fully fledged from the beginning.
Early Neolithic communities came to Europe from
the Near East and Anatolia around 7000 BC, and first
settled in the southeastern part of the continent in
Greece and the Balkans. The early farmers in this
region subsisted on barley, wheat, lentils, legumes,
sheep, and goats. Farmers inhabited open settlements
and lived in free-standing, rectangular houses. As in
Anatolia, some large settlements were inhabited for
long periods and the continuous construction of
buildings at the same place led to the emergence of
large settlement mounds (tells). The most densely
occupied areas were Thessaly as represented by the
settlements of Achilleion, Argissa, Otzaki, or Sesklo,
and the Maritsa valley in central-southern Bulgaria
with the large tell of Karanovo (Figure 1).

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1203

Further north, farmers settled in all central and

large parts of lower Danubian region. This stage
comprised Starcevo-Cris culture dated to seventh millenium BC. The economic basis of these communities
did not differ considerably from their predecessors.
People also came to occupy regions little or less
settled in the Early Neolithic in this part of Europe
such as northern Greece, the lower Danube valley,
Bosnia, the Hungarian plain, and the forest-steppe
zone of western Ukraine. By about 6000 BC, Neolithic
communities moved to the southern part of the
Hungarian plain and the east part of the Carpathians.
This northward spread of the Balkan style of the
Neolithic resulted in the emergence of the Koros
culture in Hungary. Farming groups then spread rapidly from the central Danube region, north along the
Elbe, Oder, and Vistula until the southern part of the
North European Plain. In this temperate zone, they
underwent considerable transformations. This route
of colonization was associated with Linear Pottery
groups. They occupied mostly river valleys and lived
in massive timber longhouses (see Europe, Northern
and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures). The move of
farmers to this ecological zone was accompanied by
the increased significance of cattle, which was probably primarily associated with rituals. They manufactured incised decorated pottery and shoe-last adzes
for clearing forests. By 5300 BC, the neolithization of
central Europe was complete, albeit the bulk of the
landscape remained unoccupied.
A homogenous period of Early Neolithic was followed by more regionalized developments in various
ecological zones resulting from disintegration of the
Linear Pottery groups and incorporation of elements
of local foragers. This process dates back to around
4500 BC. These local phenomena are identified by
distinctive pottery styles including the Michelsberg
culture between the Rhine delta and the Alps, and
the Funnel Beaker Culture in northern and eastern
Europe. In this period, people lived in small dwellings
that were less substantial than those of the Early
Neolithic. They also built circular ditched enclosures
with causeways on the perimeter (especially in eastern
Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, and Austria),
along with earth and stone mortuary structures. During
this time, important economic changes such as the
introduction of the wheel and plow, wool production,
and an increased use of animals for specialized tasks
emerged. New economic strategies also manifested in
the extensive exploitation of flint mines and the production of large flint tools exported over vast distances
as, for example, in Krzemionki Opatowskie (Figure 1).
During the fifth millennium BC, copper metallurgy,
specifically smelting of copper from ores, developed
independently at several places in southeastern

Europe, especially in the Balkans and the Carpathian

Basin. It soon became widely used in human ornamentation and in mortuary items. This period, which
in this region lasted between 4500 and 2500 BC, is
known as the Copper Age. Copper mines in Rudna
Glava in Serbia or in Aibunar in Thrace (Figure 1),
along with many others in the region, were discovered
and exploited. The demand for copper existed at a
considerable distance from its sources, probably
reaching c. 1000 km.
The fifth and fourth millenniums BC were marked
by the development of cemeteries rather than erection
of domestic structures. They comprised a range of
different forms, from the earthen barrows and megalithic tombs in northern part of the region to the elaborated cemeteries in its southern part. The appearance of
large burial grounds such as Tiszapolgar-Basatanya in
Hungary (Figure 1) succeeded burials grouped within
the occupation mound and were accompanied by disperse settlement patterns. A spectacular example in
which individual graves featured sophisticated gold
and copper work was found in Varna on the Black
Sea coast of Bulgaria (Figure 1). Cemeteries were a
means of establishing group identity and instilling a
sense of belonging as well as providing a social arena
in which these communities could display their wealth
and prestige.
Megalithic tombs are known only from the northern part of central Europe and comprised the very
eastern margin of this phenomenon associated with
the Atlantic coast that stretched from Portugal in the
south through the Orkney Isles and Scandinavia in
the north and Poland in the east. They consisted of
tombs that ranged from simple stone burial chambers
beneath small mounds to complex passages and
chambers that run beneath large mounds. The earliest
of these megaliths date to the early part of the fourth
millennium BC. Their meaning is debatable, but it is
likely that they functioned as social markers and/or as
a resting place for ancestors.
On the Pontic steppes, indigenous hunting and
fishing groups started to acquire pottery and domestic
cattle from their Neolithic neighbors in the sixth
millenium BC. A large Cucuteni-Tripolye complex
emerged in the Bug and Dnieper regions in the beginning of the fifth millenium BC. The size of the settlements in the developed phase increased up to 100 ha
and the houses up to 200 m2. The platform dwellings
(the so-called ploscadki) were very elaborate and had
a regular plan. The Cucuteni-Tripolye groups acquired and used copper extensively. Further developments in eastern part of the region involved the
taming and domestication of horses. This process is
under the scrutiny of many archaeologists and a number of issues remain unanswered. The site of Dereivka

1204 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

is at the center of this debate as it contained a large

number of horse bone remains. Other innovations,
such as the use of paired draught technology for
wheeled vehicles and light plows along with new
breeds of sheep, probably of Caucasian or Near Eastern origin, had a considerable effect on these dry
areas north of the Black Sea. Horses and ox-drawn
wagons permitted mobility over vast distances. They
facilitated the development of pastoralism and the
emergence of a large complex known as the Pit
Grave culture. It was characterized by chambered
burials covered with wooden beams under round
barrows or kurgan. Some of these monuments
found from the Urals to the lower Danube were
topped by a stone anthropomorphic stela and occasionally contained wooden wheels or whole wagons.
Groups of these people penetrated the Danube region
of northern Bulgaria and eastern Hungary.
By 3000 BC, previously dominant and omnipresent
ritual structures and monuments such megaliths and
ceremonial centers lost their value. The wealth
became portable, which marked a rapid change
across the region. The focus shifted from places to
people and from collective to personal possessions.
A manifestation of this change is the Corded Ware
culture, with distinctive pottery decorated with
impressed cords, that dominated central and eastern
Europe. This pottery appeared first on the Pontic
steppes and in the eastern part of the North European
Plain. These new communities buried their dead
in singular, rather than collective graves, which is
seen as a sign of differentiation or individualization
within a stratified society. Mostly male graves were
accompanied by decorated drinking vessels known as
beakers and stone axes with a shaft hole and a single,
drooping blade, called a battle-axe. These graves
were placed in the center of a circular mound.
Central Europe also formed the eastern fringe of the
Bell Beakers phenomenon in the late third millennium
BC, known from vast areas of Europe. It is named after
decorated drinking cups without handles. Graves were
also individual round mounds and contained beakers,
daggers, and archery equipment such as triangular
barbed-flint arrowheads and wrist-guards of fine
stone. The early daggers were made of flint, the later
ones of copper, and eventually bronze. The vast distribution of the Bell Beakers across temperate Europe
as well as the Mediterranean region was a sign of an
increasingly mobile way of life and signaled disintegration of traditional social structures.

The Bronze Age

In central and eastern Europe, copper came to be
alloyed with tin to make bronze in the end of the

third millennium BC. From a small-scale production

at the early stage, bronze metallurgy developed enormously throughout this period producing high quantities of metal in a high variety of forms from tools
and weapons to sophisticated ornaments. Copper and
tin typically do not occur together and must have been
transported from their sources in a sustained and directional manner to the rising centers of metalwork (see
Metals: Primary Production Studies of). Functioning of
these centers depended on regular supplies of both
ores, which in turn triggered communication and
interaction over much of Europe. In the early phase,
bronze became the universal medium of prestige. It
further became popular in the manufacture of weapons, ornaments, and tools.
The Bronze Age brought about not only an advent
of bronze but first and foremost considerable social
and economic changes (see Europe, Northern and
Western: Bronze Age). Many archaeologists believe
that the Bronze Age marked emergence of some form
of institutionalized and probably hereditary differentiation, characterized by social ranking or hierarchy
and often defined as chiefdom. Craft specialization
associated with bronze manufacture is thought to
have played a significant role in emergence of social
complexity.
The Early Bronze Age is marked by differentiated
developments of particular regions of central and
eastern Europe. A zone north of the Carpathians
was occupied by the Unetice culture. Pit graves were
commonly found in flat cemeteries and were furnished quite simply. However, clusters of richer elite
barrows also occurred in eastern Germany (Helmsdorf, Leubingen) and Poland (eki Mae) furnished
with multiple bronze and gold objects (Figure 1). In
eki Mae, the skeletons were laid in wooden-roofed
burial chambers within a cairn of boulders. Here, the
dagger remained the chief weapon, while flat axes
and shaft-hole axes were used as prestige tools and
weapons. Metal ornaments, particularly rings, were
also deposited. Characteristic metal objects included
ingot torcs.
The lakeside dwellings in southern Germany and
Switzerland flourished, continuing a tradition dated
back to the Neolithic. The sites of Forschner or
Wasserburg Buchau consisted of numerous post structures, single- and multiroomed buildings, assorted
outbuildings and palisades (Figure 1). This tradition
continued well into the Late Bronze Age in sites like
Greifensee-Boschen.
The communities in the Carpathian Basin created
the most advanced culture of this time north of the
Alps, probably due to the control of major trade
routes. In the east-central part of the region, these
elite lived in large fortified settlements such as

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1205

Nitriansky Hradok and Spissky Stvrtok in Slovakia or

Boheimkirchen in Austria (Figure 1), all situated
along rivers and crucial trade routes. In other parts
of central Europe, people continued to live in dispersed small settlements. Further south was an area
of fortified settlements and flat-grave cemeteries with
a large number of graves. Large settlements on
mounds with box ramparts with numerous superimposed houses in wattle-and-daub or plank-built walls
were found in Otomani in Romania or Fuzesabony and
Hatvan in Hungary (Figure 1). In these zones, but
especially in the Carpathian Basin, magnificent and
numerous gold and bronze objects were deposited not
only in burial mounds but also in the form of hoards of
metal objects. Bronze was accumulated in masses and
then removed from circulation, often left as votive
offerings.
The metallurgical community in the whole region
grew substantially. The proximity of urban cultures
in the eastern Mediterranean inspired this dynamic
development by providing alternative centers of trade
and exposure to novel eating and drinking habits,
clothing, furniture, means of transport, prestige
ornaments, and weaponry.
The neighboring steppe populations demanded a
large supply of bronze and trade and communication
networks were established for the first time across the
steppes and into the area north of the Caspian Sea.
The steppe communities flourished. They settled in
large villages and exhibited new grave architecture
that included timber-built underground chambers
from which the name to Timber Grave culture was
derived. Eastward, as far as the Altai mountains, the
closely related Andronovo culture brought Bronze
Age innovations to the borders of Mongolia, where
there were rich deposits of copper and tin. The new
metallurgical centers in the Carpathian Basin and the
Caucasus maintained their connections across the
steppes. Throughout the steppe zone, horses and a
newly invented horse-driven chariot complete with a
bridle-bit with spiked cheek pieces made of antler
facilitated mobility.
The subsequent Middle Bronze Age in central
Europe brought about emergence of a large number
of burials under barrows, which is associated with
broadening of the local elite. This phenomenon is
called the Tumulus period. Elaborated burials were
furnished with newly invented bronze swords while
settlements remained small and simple. During this
period, trade contacts with the southeast remained
intact and were probably expanded.
When the developed civilizations of the eastern
Mediterranean collapsed after 1300 BC, dramatic
changes affected Europe. This began the period
known as the Late Bronze Age, characterized by

hill-forts, field systems, flat cemeteries, scrap hoards,

and votive finds from rivers. In central Europe, the
most striking sign of the changes was the almost universal shift from inhumation to cremation and the
placing of human ashes in pits in the ground or in
funerary urns. It implies profound changes in religious
beliefs.
The new period, which lasted until 600 BC, brought
about a unification of large areas of Europe and
was named the Urnfield period. It formed a fairly
coherent cultural complex with rapid exchange of
ideas over large distances, characterized by a high
degree of economic, social, and ritual correspondence. This regional system spread from the Atlantic
to the Carpathians and from the Mediterranean to
Scandinavia. It was marked by profound changes in
many spheres of life, population expansion, technological innovation, and economic diversification.
Extensive networks keeping the system in operation
were formed through wealth consumption and elite
exchange. The abundance of swords, daggers, spearheads, arrowheads, and armor found indicate the importance of warfare and the extensive offensive and
defensive weapons available to the local warriors.
Graves and large numbers of metal artifacts with
no archaeological context make up much of the
material culture. Remains from settlements of this time
are sparse. They contained numerous post-hole houses
of different sizes, mostly rectangular in plan. Hilltop
forts and fortified settlements on lower ground
became popular after 1100 BC. At Biskupin in central
Poland (Figure 1), a fortified settlement was constructed according to a plan of 13 parallel rows
of houses with a regular network of timber roads in
between and an arterial road leading around its circumference (Figure 3). The entire complex was encircled by a rampart of timber compartments filled
with earth and stones and defended by timber breakwaters. The layout of this remarkable settlement
demonstrates communal order and, although no
signs of social stratification were found, indicates
the presence of a strong coercive power.
In the steppe region of eastern Europe, nomadic
pastoralism emerged at the beginning of the first
millennium BC. The inhabitants of the Pontic steppe
are identified with the Cimmerians. From ninth
century BC, elements of a nomadic style of life,
in the form of new types of horse-gear and wagons
as well as iron technology, were introduced in the
eastern Urnfield region.
Throughout the Late Bronze Age, well-established
exchange networks allowed goods to travel over
vast distances. Baltic amber as well as swords, spearheads, armor, safety pins, and certain ornaments from
central and northern Europe first appeared in the

1206 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

Figure 3 Biskupin, Poland. Modern reconstruction of a fortified settlement. Photo by W. Raczkowski.

(

Mediterranean, marking intensive contacts between

central Europe and these developed civilizations. For
the first time, salt from the Austrian Alps and other
places was mined and emerged as a valuable trade
commodity and Hallstatt became a major salt-mining
center around 800 BC (Figure 1). Iron also emerged as
a new commodity in this period. It became rapidly
popular, especially in eastern and southern part of
Europe. Iron sources were more numerous and more
evenly distributed across Europe than those of copper
and gold. Communities, which until this point had no
indigenous supply of metals, suddenly found themselves with easy access to large-scale sources of this
newly discovered metal. However, the process of transition to a full iron-using technology was a gradual one,
and it was introduced at a different pace in particular
regions.

The Iron Age

In the seventh century BC, iron became the standard
material for tools and weapons, which marked the
beginning of the Iron Age (see Europe, Northern and
Western: Iron Age). Bronze remained the metal of
choice for high-quality decoration products. In this
period, Europe became divided into the civilized or
classical south and barbaric north. Central and eastern Europe became a core of the latter region. The
explosion of trading ports of urban societies around

the Mediterranean, Aegean, Adriatic, and the Black

Sea provided a strong incentive for the development
of this part of Europe. The exotic prestige goods from
the south were acquired by the wealthy and then used
as proof of their status. Inspired by these luxury
wares, craftsmen began to make copies of imported
items and people started to adopt alien behavior and
practices. It is not clear what local products were
exchanged, but salt, gold, furs, foodstuffs, and slaves
were likely. Dynamic development of these newly
emerged centers was further stimulated by an internal
network for the commercial exchange of material and
products in temperate Europe. Wheel-thrown pottery
and the rotary querns comprised major technological
achievements of the Iron Age society.
The valleys of the Rhone and Saone provided
easy access to the region stretching from Burgundy
to southern Germany. The elite from this region
controlled the flow of goods from the south and
distributed them further in temperate Europe. This
led to the formation of the west Hallstatt zone that
spanned the upper courses of the Seine, Saone, Rhine,
and Danube rivers and facilitated direct access to
much of the continent north of the Alps. The local
elite displayed their wealth by building hilltop residences and burying their dead with exotic goods including costly sets of wine-drinking equipment. The
practice of building hill-forts peaked in the sixth and
early fifth centuries BC. These structures were usually

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1207

Figure 4 Hochdorf, Germany. The chief burial. Photo by O. Braasch.

between 1 and 6 ha in extent and required organized

communal effort to erect. A unique and particularly
elaborate fortified settlement of this kind is known
from Hueneburg in southwestern Germany (Figure 1)
a major center of production, exchange, and trade.
Its walls were built of sun-dried mud bricks on a stone
foundation in a technique completely alien and unsuitable for wet climate of temperate Europe but
widespread in the Mediterranean.
The wealth and status of local chieftains was also
reflected in spectacular burials as, for example, in
grave of the famous chief of Hochdorf (Figure 1).
He was buried in a sophisticated burial chamber
under a mound 6 m high and 60 m in diameter and
accompanied by a lavish set of gold, bronze, and
iron objects symbols of his exalted status. A fourwheeled wagon with harnesses for two horses accompanied the grave (Figure 4).
The significance of iron and salt in this period
triggered dynamic development of some regions.
The east Alpine zone, known as east Hallstatt zone,
flourished because of extraction and processing of
these commodities. Salt continued to be exploited
in the Hallstatt region in the Austrian Alps while
Sticna in Slovenia (Figure 1) emerged as a large
center based on the smelting and forging of iron.
The large fortified settlements in this region, such as
Magdalenska Gora and Vace, which were accompanied by large cemeteries, indicated its stability from
the eighth to the fifth centuries BC (Figure 1). This

dynamic development was additionally facilitated

by the key positioning of Slovenia between the
Adriatic and the mountain ranges of the Balkans
that served as a significant point of connection of the
Mediterranean world with temperate Europe. It seems
likely that amber from the Baltic coasts was traded
here as well. These local commodities were traded
for luxury goods from Italy. The extreme wealth
evident in the west was not found here, but some
presumably aristocratic graves were furnished with
exotic objects.
In other parts of central Europe, beyond the hillfort zone to the north, stretching from the mouth of
the Rhine to the Vistula across the North European
Plain, life continued in a largely unchanged manner
similar to the preceding period. Local groups inhabited
small villages and the area remained largely untouched
by the technological innovations of the age or the trade
routes. The arrival of the Romans and their trading
networks in the first and second centuries AD changed
this situation.
Horse-riding nomadic pastoralists continued their
uninterrupted development in the Pontic steppes.
They formed a coherent society with social ranks
known as the Scythians. Their everyday life remains
largely unknown in contrast to their burial customs
with lavish gold burial goods. They erected elaborate
burial mounds up to 20 m high under deep centrally
placed shaft. The impressive Scythian goldwork was
often decorated with representations of wild animals

1208 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

and, to a less extent, humans. Despite a dominant

nomadic way of life, the Scythians erected large settlements such as Elizavetovka or Kamenskoe, the
scale and elaboration of which was reminiscent of
the oppida. The ScythianGreek relationships were
intense after establishment of trading colonies such as
Chersonesos on the Crimea or Panticapaion at the
Sea of Azov. As their western counterparts, the local
elite used prestigious goods from the Greek world to
mark their wealth and social position.
The rise of a new warrior elite in the early fifth
century destabilized the west Hallstatt system and
by the middle of the fifth century caused its demise.
This marked the emergence of the La Te`ne period
that comprises the second phase of the Iron Age (450
50 BC) in western and central Europe. It is named
after the lake site on the edge of Lake Neuchatel,
Switzerland (Figure 1). It comprised a range of artifact
types, especially weapons and ornaments, a distinctive
art style characterized by abstract geometric designs
and stylized bird and animal forms, as well as warrior
burials. The La Te`ne culture and its style is often identified with Celtic. Tracing its spread is difficult, as it is
hard to differentiate between culture that was spread
by migrating populations and that which evolved
through acculturation. Additionally, the art style and
artifacts were, in many instances, absorbed and imitated by local craftsmen. Items of La Te`ne metalwork
spread northward across the North European Plain,
but the true northern limit of La Te`ne culture lay
roughly on a line from the mouth of the Rhine, across
southern Germany to the Carpathians.
The Celts were the major groups of the age and they
settled in large regions of Europe. The first reference to
these people comes from the Greek authors in the fifth
century BC. This term probably referred more to their
northern and western neighbors rather than to any
kind of coherent ethnic or cultural entity. They arose
from and relied on native craftsmen to produce luxury
goods. This culture passed through several phases and
regional variations during the next four centuries as
the Celts expanded through most of northern and
southern Europe and the British Isles. It came to an
end in the middle of the first century BC, when most
of the Celts lost their independence to Rome. The
organization of Celtic society is well known. It was
divided into various segments such as nobles, Druids
(the religious elite), and commoners. The elite warriors were buried with swords, spears, shields, helmets, and sometimes even two-wheeled chariots.
The Celts also reached some regions of central and
eastern Europe. This process can be traced through
the distribution of objects belonging to the La Te`ne
culture. In the late fifth and early fourth century BC,

they reached the Great Hungarian Plain and then

settled in Transylvania. After being pushed out of
Macedonia, a substantial part of the population
moved north to the Danube, causing the Celtic population that was already there to swell. This mixed
Celtic population became known as the Scordisci,
and had their major oppidum at Singindunum
(Belgrade, Figure 1). In the third century, the Celts
pushed into southern Thrace and Greece and established the kingdom of Tylis. In the northeast, Celtic
groups crossed the Prut and Dnestr, exploiting the
vacuum left by the decline of Scythian power. When
faced with probable overthrow by the Celts, Thracians seem to have buried as many of their valuables
as they could. Hoards of decorated fourth century
BC silver have been found throughout northwest
and northcentral Bulgaria. Remnants of Celtic tribes
defeated by the Romans in the fourth century set off
to the north, eventually settling in Bohemia.
In the second and first century BC a new settlement
system appeared in central Europe characterized by
large defended settlements known as oppida. They
were located in Bavaria (e.g., Manching, Kelheim)
and Bohemia (e.g., Stradonice, Zavist) (Figure 1).
They were large residential, commercial, industrial,
and administrative centers and thus varied considerably from earlier princely residences such as Heuneburg. Interestingly, there is no clear evidence of public
or elite architecture there. They were massive and
being typically over 30 ha in area, some of them reaching more than 100 ha. The walls of the Manching
oppidum enclosed 380 ha. The interior was densely
built up with regularly laid out timber buildings
aligned along straight, ordered streets. A wide range
of craft skills were practiced and commodities such as
wheel-turned pottery, glass beads, bracelets, and ironwork of every kind was done on an industrial scale.
Oppida were also centers where coins were minted.
The size and production levels of oppida makes them
the first urban centers of barbarian Europe.

The Roman Times

By the formation of the Roman Empire in 27 BC,
the Romans had already conquered large areas of
Europe, including that of its central part. Macedonia
became part of their state in the second century BC.
Thrace, which had long been a dependent kingdom,
was annexed to Rome in 46 BC. In early first century
AD, new provinces of Raetia, Noircum, Pannonia,
Moesia, and Dalmatia in southern part of Central
Europe and in the Balkans were added to a rapidly
growing empire. The Danube frontier was formalized
during the reign of Augustus.

EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN 1209

Along the Danube limes, the biggest threat to the

Romans came from the Dacians, who formed a state
in second century BC out of a broad confederacy of
people occupying the uplands of Transylvania. In
about 6050 BC, King Burebista unified the kingdom
and defeated the Transylvanian Celts, the Boii, and
Helvetii forcing them westward. The Dacians had a
state religion, monumental architecture, central storage facilities, currency, and control of a vast and
diverse territory. The society was divided into aristocrats and commoners. Its major settlement at Sarmizegethusa (Figure 1) was a large complex containing
various types of dwellings and surrounded by a series
of stone-built fortresses. They buried their warriors
with rich grave goods; however, these graves were
rare. Barrel-shaped pits known as ustrina and interpreted often as cremation places were also found in
these settlements. Such evidence may mark the start
of a new religious ritual. Dacia was conquered
and became Romes first and only trans-Danubian
province in early second century AD.
Large areas of Central Europe in the first century
AD were inhabited by Germanic tribes. A rich source
of information about them comes from Germania
written by Tacitus in AD 98. The major Germanic
tribes at that time comprised the Chatti from the
territory of todays Hesse; the Frisii living on the
coast between the Rhine and the Ems; the Suebi inhabiting Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony, and
Thuringia; the Hermunduri in the territory stretching
from Franconia to Thuringia; the Marcomanni, previously living in the Main valley and then migrated
during the last decade BC to Bohemia; the Bastarnae
from the lower Danube; and the Goths, Gepidae, and
Vandals inhabiting the southern Baltic coast. According to Tacitus, these groups had neither mediatory
nor central authority. Status could, however, be
acquired by acts of bravery and leadership in raids.
Power lay with the elite, who had a right to form the
tribal council. However, only in times of exceptional
warfare would members of the aristocracy be elected
to lead the confederate army.
By the end of the third century AD important
changes took place, as three great tribal confederacies
were formed along the limes. The lower Rhine
was inhabited by the Franks, the Main valley by
the Burgundians, and the Black Forest region by the
Alemanni. Their respective social and political system
also changed. Arable land was distributed according
to social status and leadership. Councils of the elite
were held regularly as were general assemblies of
warriors who met to debate current issues.
The Germans, who had no central locus, were more
challenging opponents than Celtic tribes living in

oppida. Their first great clash with Romans came at

the end of the second century BC, when the Cimbri
and Teutoni of Jutland and the North Sea coast
moved south. They first moved through Moravia
and Hungary to the middle Danube where they
attacked the Celtic Scordisci and pushed them south
into Macedonia and west along the Sava. They further attacked Noricum and invaded Gaul and northern Italy and were finally beaten by Gaius Marius.
Long-lasting military conflicts between the Roman
Empire and the German tribes at the turn of the first
century BC culminated in a battle at Teutenburg Forest where the German people headed by Arminius
forced the Romans back westward, resulting in the
establishment of the Roman frontier on the Rhine
River. The Roman limes was then systematically protected by a system of defenses and guarded by Roman
soldiers based in military bases (see Figure 5).
The Roman Empire needed a continuous supply of
raw materials and manpower. Many commodities
such as amber and furs were available only in barbarian lands and could only be acquired through trade.
Romes greatest dependence on the barbarian periphery derived from its need for slaves to provide the
labor force required to keep the Roman system working. The scale of the slave trade was enormous.
A wide range of Roman commodities, such as glass

Figure 5 Vechten, The Netherlands. Modern reconstruction of

a Roman watchtower limes.

1210 EUROPE, CENTRAL AND EASTERN

and metal vessels, red tableware, coins, weapons,

brooches, statuettes, and ornaments of various kinds,
was used to trade with the Germans. A number of rich
burial sites that contain sets of luxury goods have
been found in this zone. Equally strong trade relations
were established with Pannonia and Noricum through
the principal route leading from Aquileia on the
northeastern coast of the Adriatic (Figure 1). They
acted as a catalyst for local dynamic development
of these areas. The merchants introduced not only
various products that brought the native owners
much prestige but also Roman manners and customs
that were imitated by local aristocracy.
To the northeast of this elite burial zone, stretching
from northern Poland to the Gulf of Finland, a different type of social system emerged. In Poland it
consisted of two groups: the Oksywie culture of the
lower Vistula region and the Bay of Danzig, and the
Przeworsk culture of the VistulaOder region. These
groups were identified largely through their warriortype burials. Most men were buried with swords,
shields, and spurs, and a few, of higher status, were
accompanied by silver or gold fibulas.
On the steppe, the Scythians were replaced as
the dominant elite by the Sarmatians by 200 BC, to
whom they were closely related. Like their predecessors, they were accomplished horsemen and highly
developed in warfare. They were pastoral nomads
who also practiced hunting. Sarmatian metalwork
continued Scythians tradition and featured gold jewelry and cups along with bronze bracelets, spears,
swords, and knives. Jewelry such as diadems, bracelets, rings, or brooches was a major craft. The art was
dominated by geometric and floral motives. Intense
transregional exchange networks, far more intense
than in the preceding period, existed between farming
societies of temperate Europe and these horse-riding
pastoralists of the Pontic steppes. It had a commercial
character characterized by a flow of raw materials
and manufactured goods over long distances.
The Sarmatians posed a threat to the Roman provinces in the Balkans. They attacked Lower Moesia
in first century AD. Forming an alliance with the
Germanic people soon after, they became a major
challenge to the Romans in this part of its empire.
They later invaded Dacia and the lower Danube
region and were only defeated by the Goths during

the third century AD. The Sarmatian dominance was

destroyed by the Huns who migrated into the Pontic
steppe region after AD 370.
The system of socioeconomic zones outlined above
remained in force throughout the first and until the
middle of the second century AD. It began to disintegrate in the second half of the second century as folk
movements in Germany began to build up. They
pressurized the tribes of the frontier region who, in
turn, threatened the Empire. The first recorded indications of the growing problem came in AD 162
when a frontier tribe, the Chatti, attempted to migrate south into Roman territory. A few years later,
the Longobardi and Marcomanni crossed the Danube
into trans-Danubian Hungary. In AD 167, the massive
movement of Marcomanni, Quadi, and Iazyges
reached the head of the Adriatic and besieged Aquileia.
This marked the beginning of a wave of migrations
across Europe. Military and economic turbulence of
the Roman empire in third century AD allowed the
Germanic tribes to cross the limes along the Rhine
and Danube and raid Roman territory. After a short
period of regaining of the Roman rule, barbarian
raids intensified from the end of the fourth century
AD and continued through the next century. The
Empire was eventually destroyed.
See also: Europe: Neolithic; Paleolithic Raw Material

Provenance Studies; Europe, Northern and Western:

Bronze Age; Early Neolithic Cultures; Iron Age;
Mesolithic Cultures; Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient; Metals: Primary Production Studies of; Modern Humans,
Emergence of.

Further Reading
Bogucki P (1999) The Origins of Human Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Cunliffe B (ed.) (2001) The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gamble C (1999) The Paleolithic Societies of Europe. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Harding A (2000) European Societies in the Bronze Age.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Henke W and Rothe H (1994) Palaoanthropologie. Berlin: Springer.
Kristiansen K (1998) Europe before History. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Whittle A (1996) Europe in the Neolithic. The Creation of New
Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF 1211

EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF

Janusz K Kozlowski, Jagiellonian University,
Krakow, Poland
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The recent discovery of remains of Homo ergaster/

erectus and pebble industries at Dmanisi (Georgia),
dated between 1.6 and 1.8 Ma, encouraged suggestions that the first peopling of eastern Europe took
place from trans-Caucasian regions, either via the
Caucasus and southern Russia or via Anatolia and
the Balkans. In eastern Europe so far no sites have
been dated to as early as in southwestern Europe, that
is, between 1.2 and 0.9 MA. There is no evidence to
confirm eastern routes of the first peopling of Europe,
directly from western Asia. In the present state of
investigations it seems more likely that the first
migrations to Europe took place directly from Africa,
via Gibraltar to southwest Europe (Figure 1).
It is only from southwestern Europe that the higher
geographical latitudes of central and east-central Europe were settled. Sites with pebble industries dated to
about 0.80.6 MA are recorded in Germany (Karlich
in the Rhein basin), in the Czech Republic (Prezletice
near Prague dated to 0.890.59 MA, Stranska skala I

near Brno dated to 0.76 MA), and in the territory

of trans-Carpathian Ukraina (Korolevo layer VIII
about 0.85 MA).
The first populations that settled central-eastern
Europe have not been identified in terms of biological
taxonomy, but they could represent the species
known form southwestern Europe as H. antecessor
and H. cepranensis.
These populations built a base for subsequent cultural evolution namely: microflake industries that
made their first appearance in southern Europe in
the Apennines (Isernia in Italy), possibly also in the
Balkans (Kozarnika Cave in Bulgaria, layer 11b)
beginning about 0.75 MA.
In central-eastern Europe (see Europe, Central and
Eastern) microflake industries (Figure 2) that made
their appearance in the Lower Palaeolithic, that is,
between 0.6 and 0.3 MA, were produced by H. heidelbergensis, which is confirmed by the direct association
of a human mandible with microflake artifacts at
Mauer (Germany). Among the most important sites
in central-eastern Europe from this period belong to
Bilzingleben in Thuringen (Germany) 350300 kyr
BP, Schoningen (Germany) 400 kyr BP, Trzebnica 2g,
Rusko 33, and 42 in Silesia (Poland) 400350 kyr BP,

>1.200.74 MA
Krlich
Brno

Korolevo

Atapuerca TD-6

Vallonet

Monte
Poggiolo

andalja l

Dmanisi
Ceprano
Orce
Ain Haneh

Ubeidiya
Pebble industries
1.6 1.2
>1.2 MA

0.90.74 MA

1.20.9 MA

0.90.74 MA

1.20.9 MA

Human bones

Figure 1 Map of the oldest settlements in Europe and >1.0.74 MA.

500

1000 km

1212 EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF

Figure 2 Microlake industries fom the period 0.60.3 MA in Central Eastern Europe: side-scrapers, points and denticulated tools
(15 Trzebnica, Site 2, Lower Silesia, Poland; 610 Rusko, site 42, Lower Silesia, Poland; 11, 12 Dubossary, Republic of Moldova,
13 Pogrebi, Republic of Moldova).

Vertesszollos (Hungary) 550350 kyr BP, Dubossary

I and Pogrebi I (Republic of Moldova) 300 kyr BP, and
Mikhaylovskoye in the Lower Don Basin (southern
Russia) about 300 kyr BP. Moreover, the oldest industries in the northern Caucasus, for example, from
layers 5a7 of the Treugolnaya Cave (Russia) also
show microflake character.
Microflake industries did not appear as one cultural tradition, but are the effect of adaptation of the
oldest European groups producing pebble industries

to climatic conditions of the first interglacials (isotope

stages 1511), notably to the Mediterranean and
Boreal environments. For this we have the evidence
of the wide use of organic materials, most importantly wood, which was used to make projectiles (at
Schoningen spears of more than 2 m long were discovered) and hafts for small flake tools (known from
Schoningen and Bilzingsleben). The manufacture of
microflake tools (average length from 17 to 35 mm)
could be explained by the more difficult access to

EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF 1213

lithic raw materials at the time when the forest

cover was thick.
The sites with microflake industries often occur
within travertines, sedimented in the vicinity of thermal springs. Among faunal remains, bones of forest
elephant (Bilzingsleben) and horse (Equus mosbachensis Vertesszollos I, Schoningen) dominate. Although there were suggestions that faunal remains
come from scavenging, there is evidence to show
that they come from hunting. For example, at Schoningen wooden spears occurred and bones of young,
selectively hunted, horses dominated.
It should be emphasized that the Acheulian does
not occur in central and eastern Europe. On the one
hand, this culture is known in western and southwestern Europe (beginning from 600 to 500 kyr BP)
and on the other, on the southern slopes of the
Caucasus (probably not earlier than 350 kyr BP) east
of the line of the Rhine and the Alps, and north of the
main ridge of the Caucasus; therefore, the Acheulian
did not occur (Figure 3). Hand ax cultures could have
appeared as the effect of the second Out-of Africa
migration that took place along two routes: via the
Near East and via Gibraltar.
The Middle Palaeolithic of central eastern Europe
(beginning from about 300 kyr BP) saw the continuation of microflake adaptations and the emergence
of two new cultural traditions: the Micoquian and the
Mousterian. These cultures were created by the preNeanderthals, and later by the classical Neanderthals.

At that time Europe was isolated from outside

migrations, forming a kind of cul-de-sac. At the
same time the expansion of the Neanderthals from
Europe to Western Asia, during the isotope stages 6
and 4, took place via the Balkans and Anatolia. This
expansion was brought about by deteriorating climatic conditions during the ice-sheet transgressions in
isotope stages 6 and 4. At that time the routes joining
Europe with Western Asia north of the Caucasus were
blocked by the Caspian Sea transgressions and by
the Manych Inlet that joined the Lower Don with the
range of the Caspian transgressions.
Middle Palaeolithic central eastern Europe was
divided into two culturally distinctive zones: the southern zone, where from about 250 to 200 kyr BP the
Mousterian with characteristic Levallois technology
and tools on flakes developed, and the northern
zone with the dominance of the Micoquian with the
manufacture of bifacial tools, notably asymmetrical
Keilmesser and bifaces. The two cultural units overlap
in the Carpathian Basin and in the Crimea (Figure 4).
The peopling of central and eastern Europe by
anatomically modern humans (AMHs) took place
as late as between 45 and 35 kyr BP, parallel with
the gradual vanishing of the Neanderthals who
nonetheless survived until about 28 kyr BP. The
first AMH expansion to Europe is generally believed
to be related to the first diffusion of the Aurignacian
into Europe, corresponding to the AMH migration
from the Near East into Europe via Anatolia, the

Before zone 6

1
2
3
4
5

Figure 3 Eastern Europe before Oxigen Isotope Stage 6 (>186 kyr BP): Early Middle Palaeolithic: 1 Acheulian, 2 Bilzingsleben
microflake group, 3 Clactonian-Tayacian, 4 Levalloisian, 5 Levalloisian with leaf points.

1214 EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF

1
2
3
4
5
6
0

1000 km

Figure 4 Mousterian (16 points) and Micoquian (710 side-scraper-knives Keilmesser) implements from the Late Middle
Palaeolithic of Crimea: 16 Kabazi II, 7,8 Ak-kaya, 9,10 Kiik Koba upper level.

Balkans, and the middle Danube Basin. Although it is

still thought that AMHs were makers of the Aurignacian (despite the fact that some human remains
ascribed to the Aurignacian proved to be younger,
e.g., at Cro-Magnon and Vogelherd), it is highly likely
that prior to the emergence of the Aurignacian, earlier
AMH migrations had brought some Early Upper
Palaeolithic cultural elements from the Near East.
These earlier migrations brought to Europe blade
technologies deriving from Levallois technological
tradition (e.g., assemblages from the Temnata Cave,
Bulgaria, the Bohunician in the Carpathian Basin),
and could form the base for the origin of the Aurignacian, not necessarily in only one center (Figure 5).
The Middle/Upper Palaeolithic transition appears
to be an increasingly complex process. Besides the
Aurignacian, functioning between 37 and 28 kyr BP,
more local units emerged between 45 and 30 kyr BP
assigned to transitional units. Their distinctive feature
was the production of leaf points (the Szeletian in the
Carpathian Basin, the Streletskian in the Don Basin,

and the Crimea, the Jerzmanowician (-RanisianLincombian) in the border zone between the uplands
and the Great European Plain) or the manufacture of
backed points (the Uluzzian which occurs not only in
Italy but also in southeast Europe Klisoura Cave I in
the Argolid, Greece). The anthropological type of
makers of transitional cultures is still unknown,
but these cultures played a vital role in the formation
of culture units of the middle phase of the Upper
Palaeolithic (3020 kyr BP) in Europe (e.g., the
Pavlovian in the middle Danube Basin; the Sungirian
in the Russian Lowland). Populations of the middle
phase of the Upper Palaeolithic belonged, undoubtedly, to AMH, but preserved a gene pool inherited from
the Neanderthals (i.e., one of the individuals from the
grave in Sungir near Vladimir in Central Russian
Plain) and some cultural traits inherited from the
transitional cultures (Figure 5).
The first pan-European culture horizon which corresponds to cultural and probably ethnical uniformity,
was the Gravettian spreading from the Atlantic to the

EUROPE, EASTERN, PEOPLING OF 1215

Figure 5 Early Upper Palaeolithic of Central Eastern Europe (Oxigen Isotope Stage 3 5030 kyr BP): 1 Levallois-derived Initial
Upper Palaeolithic (probably first anatomically modern humans); transitional leaf point industries, 2 Szeletian (Neanderthals), 3
Jerzmanowician (Neanderthals or AMH), 4 Streletskian/Sungirian (Neanderthals/AMH), 5 Bryndzenian; transitional industries with
backed blades, 6 Uluzzian (Nenaderthals and/or AMH), 7 Aurignacian (AMH).

Don, during the period between 30 and 20 kyr BP.

The maximum of the last great ice-sheet transgression
(2018 kyr BP) caused the disintegration of this cultural uniformity when the northern part of central Europe
became depopulated and different cultural units
emerged in the Western (the Solutrean and the Magdalenian) and Eastern (the Epigravettian) Europe.
See also: Asia, West: Paleolithic Cultures; Turkey, Paleolithic Cultures; Europe, Central and Eastern; Modern
Humans, Emergence of.

Further Reading
Bar-Yosef O and Philbeam D (eds.) (2000) The geography of
Neandertals and modern humans in Europe and the Greater
Mediterranean. Peabody Museum Bulletin 8.

Burdukiewicz JM (2003) Technokompleks mikrolityczny w paleolicie dolnym Srodkowej Europy. Wroclaw: Uniwersytet
Wroclawski.
Burdukiewicz JM and Ronen A (eds.) (2003) Lower Palaeolithic
Small Tools in Europe and the Levant. BAR International Series.
Oxford: BAR.
Gamble C (1999) Palaeolithic Societies of Europe. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Gladilin VN and Sitlivy VI (1999) Achel Tsentralnoy Evropy. Kiev:
Naukova Dumka.
Lordkipanidze D, Bar-Yosef O, and Otte M (eds.) (2000)
ERAUL: Early Humans at the Gate of Europe. Vol. 92. Liege:
ERAUL.
Mellars P (ed.) (1990) The emergence of Modern Humans.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Petraglia MD and Korisettar R (eds.) (1998) Early Human Behaviour in Global Context: Rise and Diversity of the Lower
Palaeolithic Record. London: Routledge.
Roebroeks W and van Kolfschcoten T (eds.) (1995) The Earliest
Occupation of Europe. Leiden: Leiden University.

1216 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age

EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN

Contents
Bronze Age
Early Neolithic Cultures
Iron Age
Medieval
Mesolithic Cultures

Bronze Age
Peter Bogucki, Princeton University, Princeton,
NJ, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
alloy A mixture of two or more elemental metals to form a new
metal with specific qualities.
barrow A burial mound that covers a grave, usually of earth in
contrast to a cairn; also known as a tumulus or kurgan.
cairn A mound of stones, either over a burial chamber or grave
or from the clearance of fields.
chiefdom A form of social organization characterized by
differences in access to status, power, and wealth that are passed
down from one generation to the next.
heterarchy A structure of social organization in which the
ability to make decisions is not concentrated at the top but rather
spread among many cooperating individuals.
hillfort A fortified hilltop, usually by means of ramparts, ditches,
and embankments.
hoard A buried deposit of artifacts, usually ones of fine quality
or value, not associated with a settlement or burial.
longhouse An elongated wooden post structure, primarily for
dwelling but often including stables and workspaces.
lur (pl. lurer) A Bronze Age bronze horn from southern
Scandinavia consisting of a long curving tube cast in sections and
ending in a circular plate.
palisade A fence or stockade constructed of closely set wooden
posts, set either in individual postholes or in a continuous trench.
palstave A Bronze Axe tupe in which the blade is divided from
the heel by a ridge, with flanges on the heel forming grooves to
enable connection to a handle.
sarsen A type of sandstone from the Marlborough Downs in
southern England that was used in a number of prehistoric
monuments including Avebury and Stonehenge.
wattle and daub A method of wall construction in which mud
is plastered over a lattice of sticks and branches.

Between about 2500 and 800 BC, the prehistoric

societies of northern and western Europe were characterized by increasing technological sophistication
and the emergence of social and economic systems
that were more complex than those of the Neolithic
period. Archaeologists refer to this period in Europe

as the Bronze Age, a term which has been in use for

nearly two centuries and is based on the widespread
use of bronze for weapons and ornaments. In fact, the
concept of an intervening period between the preceding milleniums when people used only stone and the
subsequent appearance of iron metallurgy has its
roots in northern and western Europe, although it is
now common to speak of a Bronze Age in many other
parts of the Old World as well.

Concept of a Bronze Age

Credit for the introduction of a systematic division of
antiquities into stone, bronze, and iron is generally
given to Christian Thomsen (17881865), who was
the curator of the Danish National Museum of Antiquities in the early nineteenth century. Thomsen
recognized that there were certain collections that
contained no metals, others that had only bronze,
and others that included iron. His successor, J. A. A.
Worsaae (182185), transformed this system of organizing collections into an archaeological tool by
demonstrating that the collections with just stone
artifacts were earlier than those that included bronze,
and that these in turn were earlier than those that
included iron. Thus, the three-age system of Stone,
Bronze, and Iron Ages was established and was eventually adopted throughout Europe.
Although modern archaeologists realize that this
tripartite division of prehistoric society is far too
simple to reflect the complexity of change and continuity, terms like Bronze Age are still used as a very
general way of focusing attention on particular times
and places and thus facilitating archaeological discussion. In the case of the Bronze Age of northern and
western Europe, the topic of discussion is the second
millennium BC, plus several centuries beforehand and
afterward. Neolithic society did not turn into the
Bronze Age overnight, nor did Bronze Age society
suddenly decide that it was time for the Iron Age to
begin. As with many archaeological categories, the
Bronze Age is not only a time but also a set of

EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age 1217

technological, social, and economic practices that

had earlier roots and later consequences.

Bronze: New Technology

Late Neolithic peoples in central and southern Europe
had used copper smelted from ores such as malachite
and azurite since the fifth millennium BC. The Iceman
who died in the Alps around 3300 BC had a solid
copper axehead among his possessions. Pure copper
is very soft and difficult to cast, so the only objects
that could be made from it were ornaments and
simple tools.
Around 2500 BC, prehistoric metallurgists discovered that the addition of a small amount of tin, about
10%, to copper made it much stronger and easier to
cast. Copper alloyed with tin (sometimes also arsenic
or lead) is known as bronze. This discovery was one
of the earliest examples of materials science, in
which a new metal with a distinctive chemical composition that does not exist in nature was created by
experimentation and observation of the results.
The advantage of alloying copper with tin is that
the resulting bronze can be made more or less hard
depending on the application. A very hard bronze
with 10% tin would be used for weapons, while a
milder 6% bronze could be used to make sheets that
could be shaped into body armor. The range of products that could be made from metal multiplied
exponentially, as did the variety of forms, decoration,
and sizes of different artifact types.
Different regions were able to make their own distinctive forms of weapons and ornaments, and these
changed gradually over time in response to stylistic
and technological advances. As these artifacts accumulated across Europe during the nineteenth century, the
Swedish archaeologist Oscar Montelius (18431921)
was able to work out a detailed mapping in time and
space of the bronze forms of northern Europe. His
relative chronology of the Bronze Age, although superseded by other dating forms such as radiocarbon, is
still useful as a general reference framework to modern
archaeologists.
Although copper deposits are widespread in Europe,
the amount of copper ore that is visible on the surface
is limited. Copper mining was practiced from Late
Neolithic times onward, but during the Bronze Age,
mining had to take place on an industrial scale to
meet the demand. A number of Bronze Age copper
mines have been discovered and the mining techniques studied. One of the largest Bronze Age copper
mines is at Great Orme in northern Wales, where
shafts and galleries were dug deep into the orebearing rocks. Fires were lit at the mining face, and
then cold water was dashed on the hot rock to cause it

to crack. The cracked rock was then pried loose with

levers or smashed with stone hammers and brought to
the surface. Other important Bronze Age copper
mines are found in the Austrian Alps and in southwestern Ireland (Figure 1).
The problem is that tin does not usually occur in
the same general locality as the copper, and in fact is
usually found some distance away. During the Bronze
Age, tin deposits were located in Cornwall, Brittany,
Spain, and Anatolia, but these are very localized.
Prospecting missions must have been undertaken by
Bronze Age metallurgists to find tin sources, and once
these were located, trade connections must have been
established to bring the copper and tin together
to smiths in other parts of Europe. In the Carpathian
Basin, there are abundant copper deposits in the
surrounding mountains, but no tin, yet a tremendous
number of bronze artifacts are found there. Even
more remarkable is the fact that Denmark lacks
local deposits of both copper and tin, but there
are robably more Bronze Age metal finds per unit
of area in Denmark than in any other European
country.
Along with the development of metallurgy came
advances in metal working, particularly in the development of moulds. The earliest moulds were carved
into soft stones, but these quickly advanced to twopiece moulds made from stone or clay that permitted
the manufacture of three-dimensional objects. Channels in the moulds provided inlets to pour in the
molten bronze and vents for some of it to escape,
thus preventing the occurrence of air bubbles in the
finished product. The excess was melted down and
reused. Clay and wax cores enabled the casting of
hollow or socketed objects. Stone moulds could be
reused many times to produce dozens of identical
artifacts, thus permitting the mass production of standardized objects, while multiple clay moulds could be
formed around a prototype object to make identical
copies.
Weapons were a high priority for Bronze Age
metalsmiths. These include daggers, swords, spearpoints, and a wide variety of axeheads. Bronze axe
forms underwent a considerable development over
time. The earliest were flat forms that continued the
copper shapes used during the Late Neolithic. These
progressed to a form known as a palstave, in which a
ridge in the center of the axe halfway between the
butt and the blade improved the attachment of
the axehead to the haft, or the handle. The palstave,
in turn, was superseded by socketed axes in which
the haft fits into a socket moulded into the base
of the axehead. Alongside these forms, another common bronze weapon was the halberd, a pointed
weapon like a dagger attached perpendicular to a

1218 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age

Borum Eshj
Egtved
Hjgard
Holme-next-the-Sea (Seahenge)
North Ferriby

Egenhj
Tanum

Flag Fen
Runnymede
Avebury

Ekornavallen

Great Orme

Uggarde rojr

Clonfinlough

Kivik
Trundholm
Elp
Windy Dido
Telgte
Itford

Stonehenge, Amesbury,
Bush Barrow
Gwithian
Shaugh Moor/Grimspound
Fort Harrouard
Marmesse
Auvernier
Monte Bego

Lugnaro

Leubingen
Dover
Black Patch
Haguenau Forest
Zurich-Mozartstrasse
Mauritius Spring
Val Camonica

Figure 1 Location of principal sites mentioned in the text.

shaft. Utilitarian objects like sickles and razors were

also made by bronze metalsmiths.
Ornaments and other decorative and ritual objects
were also made from bronze. Bronze bracelets, neckrings, and decorative pins were popular forms. Some
of the most unusual Bronze Age artifacts are the pairs
of wind instruments, known as lurer in Denmark but
also found in Ireland, in which long bronze tubes
consisting of several moulded pieces fitted together
which produce a low sound when blown from one
end. Another remarkable object is the so-called sun
chariot from Trundholm in Denmark, in which a
moulded bronze horse on a platform with six wheels
is pulling a large bronze disk that had been plated
with gold leaf. The lurer and the sun chariot are on
display at the National Museum of Denmark in
Copenhagen.
Although many of these bronze objects have been
found in graves, and some in settlements, a large number are known from deposits called hoards in which
collections of bronze objects were deliberately buried,
for reasons that are difficult to fathom. Earlier generations of archaeologists thought that hoards were the
caches of itinerant metalsmiths, who buried their

wares either for safekeeping or to avoid having to

carry them over long distances, and then never
returned to dig them up. This seems very improbable,
and it seems more likely that hoards were the result of
some ritual activity, perhaps votive offerings to deities.
Bronze was not the only desirable metal in use during the Bronze Age. Gold was also greatly in demand,
and in some parts of Europe such as the British Isles,
Bronze Age goldwork is stunningly beautiful. Gold
was probably acquired by picking it out from placer
deposits in streams. Once accumulated, it was
hammered and shaped cold rather than cast. Beaten
gold sheets were formed into crescent-shaped necklaces called lunulae, bracelets, and cups like the one
found at Rillaton in England, now on display in the
British Museum. Later, massive neckrings with elaborate twists and clasps, some weighing over 2 kg, were
manufactured, especially in Ireland where they can be
seen in the National Museum in Dublin.

Continuity from Late Neolithic

Despite the changes caused by new metal technology,
the everyday life of most people in northern and

EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age 1219

western Europe during the Bronze Age was very similar to that of Late Neolithic times (see Europe: Neolithic). Small-scale societies flourished in every
location that had fertile soil and ample pastures. The
principal difference was the increased interconnectedness among these societies due to trade, watercraft,
and vehicles.
Architecture, Settlement, Economy

The mature agropastoral economy that emerged during the Late Neolithic throughout Europe continued
into the Bronze Age. Rural farmsteads dotted the
landscape. In some areas, they were clustered into
villages, but for the most part they were dispersed.
The pristine forested landscape encountered by the
Neolithic farmers had long been transformed into
fields and pastures, although woodlands still remained
in abundance (see Europe: Neolithic).
Evidence from some areas indicates the large-scale
organization of the landscape with field boundaries.
Across Dartmoor in southwestern England, low walls
of stone enclosed large rectangular fields over many
square kilometers. The basis for such partitioning of
the landscape is unclear, but for some reason it ceased
abruptly around 1200 BC. Bronze Age landscape organization is also known from other parts of the British
Isles. At Windy Dido near Quarley in Hampshire,
fields were organized into blocks that shared long
parallel boundaries, ditches dug into the Wessex chalklands that ran for several kilometers in some cases.
Bronze Age houses and settlements in northern and
western Europe take a variety of forms, although the
main settlement type is a small farmstead with one
or more houses, presumably the residence of one or
several families. The farmsteads were dispersed
across the landscape, separated by fields, pastures,
and woodland. Larger agglomerations of population
are relatively rare, generally associated with particularly favorable habitats like the lakes of the Alpine
Foreland or craft production centers.
Some of the best-studied Bronze Age houses in
northern Europe are in Denmark. Early Bronze Age
settlements saw a continuation of the use of longhouses with a single row of interior posts, known as
two-aisled longhouses. At Egehj in Jutland, three
houses were excavated. Each was 6 m wide and between 18 and 21 m long. The walls were built from
posts between which the spaces were filled with a
mixture of twigs and mud plaster known as wattle
and daub, while four large posts ran down the center
of each house to support the roof. Later in the Bronze
Age, the width of the houses was expanded to three
aisles through the addition of a second row of interior
posts. At Hjgard, three-aisled houses were 89 m

wide and 2022 m long, dimensions that are generally

consistent with other such Late Bronze Age houses
from northern Europe. There is some evidence for a
part of the interior space of these houses being
divided into stalls for livestock.
In the Netherlands, three-aisled longhouses were
also built, often over 20 m long and clearly divided
into stables for livestock and living and working
space for people. At Elp, there is evidence that the
same farmstead site was used again and again over
a period of several hundred years, sometimes after
having been abandoned for decades. All this rebuilding occurred within a very small area, adjacent to a
burial mound, suggesting that people returned repeatedly to a location inhabited by their ancestors.
In Switzerland and eastern France, the pattern of
lakeside settlement in the Alpine foothills that began
in the Neolithic continued into the Bronze Age, and in
fact flourished during the second millennium BC.
Houses were built either using a log-cabin method, as
exemplified by those found at Zurich-Mozartstrasse,
or with wattle and daub between posts, as at Auvernier
on Lake Neuchatel. Many of the Alpine lakeside
Bronze Age settlements were abandoned just before
1000 BC.
In Britain and Ireland, round houses were the
norm, grouped together into small farmsteads of
between two and ten buildings. Each house had
approximately 100 m2 of floorspace. At Gwithian in
Cornwall, the house walls were built from a double
circle of stakes with two large posts defining the
entrance. Around 17001600 BC, the farmstead at
Shaugh Moor in Dartmoor was enclosed by a stone
wall, within which several round stone structures
were situated around its interior edge. High phosphate levels in one of the structures suggest that animals were kept in it, whereas the largest building was
probably the house. Nearby, the Grimspound settlement also has round stone houses surrounded by a
stone enclosure. Two well-studied settlements that
date to the end of the second millennium BC are
Blackpatch and Itford Hill in Sussex. At these sites,
small clusters of round huts built from stakes were
enclosed by fences to form household compounds.
At Clonfinlough, in County Offaly in Ireland, an
oval palisade with ash posts enclosed an area about
50 by 40 m in a raised bog. Within this enclosure,
four wooden platforms built of oak planks, ash posts,
brush, sand, and gravel and connected with wooden
trackways provided dry living surfaces above the wet
bog. Several of the platforms supported round houses
built with posts and wattle and with internal hearths.
The platforms ranged from 4 to almost 10 m in diameter. Tree ring dating of timbers ranged between
917 and 886 BC. Interesting finds at Clonfinlough

1220 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age

include two amber beads, possibly originating in the

Baltic area, and two wooden paddles. The nearby
river Shannon was a major communication route
between the interior of Ireland and the west coast.
The agricultural economy of Bronze Age northern
and western Europe saw a continuation of the mixed
farming economy with field crops and livestock that
emerged during the Neolithic period. Various types of
wheat and barley were the most commonly cultivated
plants, but millet and rye became economically important for the first time. The grains were made into
bread, porridge, beer, and probably other fermented
beverages. Legumes such as broad (also known as
Celtic) beans were an important complement to
grains, and they also fix nitrogen in the soil, thus
enabling crops to be rotated for sustained yields. Oil
plants such as flax and poppyseed were widely used.
Cattle, pigs, sheep, and goat were kept in proportions that varied from region to region. Not only were
livestock kept for meat and hides, but in the case of
sheep, goat, and cattle for their valuable secondary
products that could be provided by living animals
such as milk and wool. Cattle also provided yet another important resource: traction, or pulling power.
They could thus draw plows or wagons, both of
which had crucial importance for the economy.
Plows permitted the cultivation of more land and
also of poorer soils, thus expanding the potential
areas of settlement. Wagons enabled farmers to
move large objects such as animal carcasses, timber,
firewood, harvested crops, metals, and other bulky
objects back to the farmstead and between settlements. Cattle, sheep, and goat thus became capital
investments by a farming household and could be
exchanged for other commodities like metals or
loaned, thus generating wealth.
Eventually, horses entered the Bronze Age economy, facilitating long-distance travel over land.
A network of roads emerged, along with wooden
trackways made from logs across marshy areas in
northern Europe. Horse-drawn wheeled vehicles,
such as chariots and wagons, appeared in some
areas of northern and western Europe. Wheels were
made from planks joined together with cleats or dowels, although spoked wheels are found on Late Bronze
Age wagon models and depicted in rock art.
Bronze Age Watercraft and Trade

The capacity for maritime mobility that emerged during the Mesolithic and Neolithic of northern and
western Europe developed further during the Bronze
Age. Transport of people and goods across straits and
protected seas such as the English Channel, Baltic Sea,

and the Irish Sea became routine. Indeed, such transportation was necessary to link the copper and tin
sources and to distribute the finished bronze products.
The inhabitants of the British Isles and Scandinavia
were closely linked to the Bronze Age societies of
continental Europe.
The maritime boatbuilding abilities of Bronze Age
peoples are reflected in several watercraft that have
been found preserved in waterlogged coastal deposits.
A boat discovered in 1992 near Dover was probably
about 15 m long (9.5 m was recovered) and 2.4 m
wide. It was made from six large oak timbers joined
by strips of yew, with all the joints caulked with moss
and covered by oak strips, clearly the work of sophisticated shipwrights. It is estimated that the Dover
boat was propelled by at least 18 paddlers to ferry
people, livestock, and goods across the English Channel. In 1974, just off Dover in Langdon Bay, a large
number of bronze axes made in France were found,
apparently the load of another cargo boat that sank
just off the English coast. Other Bronze Age boats
have been found at North Ferriby in Yorkshire, although not as well preserved as the one at Dover.
Meanwhile, a timber structure at Runnymede Bridge
on the Thames river in England has been interpreted
as a Late Bronze Age wharf, indicating that river
commerce led to the construction of facilities for
loading and unloading boats.
The extent of Bronze Age trade is most clearly
reflected in the distribution of metal finds in northern
and western Europe. Nowhere is this more vivid than
in Denmark. An extraordinary number of Bronze Age
metal artifacts have been found in Denmark, yet the
Danish peninsula and islands lack any natural sources
of copper or tin. Some of the finds reached Denmark
as finished products, whereas evidence for local
metalworking suggests that copper and tin ingots
also were transported there. What was provided in
exchange for these items? Agricultural products,
wool, hides, dried fish, and amber were the likely
commodities, although slaves cannot be excluded
from the range of possibilities.
Long-distance trade and the local economy converged at some of the large fortified sites that emerged
late in the Bronze Age. One such site is FortHarrouard in France just west of Paris. An area of
about 7 ha on a plateau overlooking the Eure river
was surrounded by earthen ramparts and a ditch.
Inside the ramparts were houses arranged around an
open space. Fort-Harrouard was a regional center for
weapon manufacture. Excavations yielded about a
hundred moulds, primarily for weapons like spears,
swords, arrowheads, and daggers. Hill forts were also
constructed throughout the British Isles during the Late

EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age 1221

Bronze Age. The Breiddin hillfort in Wales was fortified

with a rampart reinforced with timber boxes, and evidence for bronzeworking was also found at this site.

Death and Burial

Death was an important part of life in the Bronze Age
of northern and western Europe. Two of the most
notable burial rites were the practice of burying individuals under mounds in the early Bronze Age and the
widespread change to cremation during the Late
Bronze Age. Grave goods were often lavish, and
archaeologists debate whether these reflect directly
the deceased individuals status in life or were symbolic and ritual displays by the survivors. The removal of expensive bronze and other exotic materials
from the world of the living is a powerful statement
of the importance attached to mortuary ritual, as is
the investment of time and effort in the construction
of tombs and the arrangement of the body and its
associated objects (see Burials: Excavation and
Recording Techniques).
The tradition of burial of single individuals under
small mounds (also known as barrows or tumuli) that
began during the Late Neolithic continued into the
Bronze Age in northern and western Europe. The deceased individual was usually buried in a small central
pit along with grave offerings. Often, a circular trench
would be dug around the pit to define the burial site,
and then a low barrow built over the grave and its
surroundings. As time went on, whole mortuary landscapes of barrows accumulated, sometimes dozens or
even hundreds, as are found in the Haguenau Forest in
eastern France. In Ireland, the tradition of megalithic
burial continued for a while with the construction of

Figure 2 Wedge tombs, like this one at Srahwee in County

Mayo, continued the tradition of building megalithic burial monuments into the Early Bronze Age (photo 2004 by Peter Bogucki).

the small wedge tombs (Figure 2). The descendants

living among these tombs were continually reminded
of their membership in a genealogical lineage and the
degree of status and power that this accorded them.
In 2002, about 3 miles from Stonehenge at Amesbury, rich burial was found that dated to the very
beginning of the Bronze Age in southern England,
around 2300 BC. The Amesbury Archer was between 35 and 45 years old. He was buried on his
side in a flexed position in a large rectangular pit,
possibly lined with wood. On his forearm was a slate
wristguard that protected the arm from the string of
the bow. The grave contained several pottery vessels,
flint tools, two copper knives, and two gold earrings.
The most interesting aspect of the Amesbury Archer
was that chemical analysis of his teeth and bones
showed that he originally came from central Europe
in the region of the Alps.
Some of the most remarkable burials from the early
part of the Bronze Age are those of the Wessex culture
in southern England, which contain many finely crafted artifacts made from gold and imported materials
that reflect long-standing and sustained connections
to continental Europe. The Bush Barrow, situated
about a kilometer from Stonehenge and excavated in
the nineteenth century, contained the body of a tall
male lying on his back. On his chest was a gold plate,
and his right hand held a small bronze dagger. Two
larger daggers lay parallel to his right arm, along with
an enigmatic gold plate with a hook, while a bronze
axe lay by his shoulder. The gold artifacts bear similarities to those found in France, particularly in Brittany.
The nature of the probable relationship between
this individual and the activities that took place at
Stonehenge is unclear.
The Wessex burials of southern England reflect
a society that had long-distance connections and
whose elite members were part of an international
community made possible by the trading connections
mentioned earlier. Similar elite burials are found in
continental Europe from this period. At Leubingen
in central Germany, a timber mortuary structure was
covered by a mound about 34 m in diameter. Within
the structure was the body of an old man and a
younger individual, accompanied by bronze weapons
and gold ornaments.
Timber was employed somewhat differently in a
number of Bronze Age mound burials in Denmark.
Huge oak trunks were hollowed out into massive
coffins whose lids formed an airtight seal. A thin
iron pan that formed around the cores of the mounds
also contributed to extraordinary preservation of
cloth, leather, and hair. At Borum Eshj near Aarhus
in Jutland, a mound 38 m across and 9 m high

1222 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age

contained three oak coffins. The first contained a

woman in her fifties who wore a woolen tunic and
long skirt, along with bronze ornaments and a dagger.
She was covered with a heavy wool rug and a cowhide. The second coffin held a man in his fifties or
sixties on top of a cowhide. He wore a woolen hat,
kilt, and cape. The third coffin had been placed into
the mound after the first two and contained a younger
man. At Egtved in southern Jutland, an oak coffin
lined with cowhide contained a young woman about
1820 years old, wearing a short-sleeved woolen
tunic and a short skirt made from cords rather than
cloth. A bronze belt disk, decorated with spirals and a
raised spike at its center, lay on her abdomen. The
blossom of a yarrow flower, found between the hide
and the blanket covering the body, indicated that
the burial had taken place during the summer, while
a birch-bark container held the residue of a fermented
beverage made from honey, fruit, and wheat.
Bronze Age barrows in southern Scandinavia were
meant to be seen from a distance and are usually
at high points in the landscape. In Sweden, their
presence was also emphasized by covering them
with cairns of stones gathered from the surrounding
countryside. A typical Bronze Age cairn is found at
Ekornavallen in central Sweden, about 20 m in diameter and 2 m high. It is at the highest point on a ridge
sloping toward a nearby river in an area dotted with
prehistoric graves built over a period of several
millennia. In southeastern Sweden, the Kivik cairn
was larger, about 75 m across. Although robbed in
1748 and used as a quarry, it contained two stone
cists and several carved slabs that have images that
are similar to those on rock carvings and which may
depict the funeral ceremony. The largest of the 400
Bronze Age cairns on the island of Gotland in the
Baltic Sea is Uggarde rojr (note lowercase r), where
a central cairn 45 m in diameter and 8 m high was
surrounded by a number of smaller cairns.
Later in the Bronze Age, around 1700 BC in the
British Isles and by 1300 BC in continental Europe
and Scandinavia, the principal burial rite shifted dramatically from the burial of whole bodies to the
reduction of the body to ashes through cremation.
Across much of continental western Europe, the
ashes were placed in urns and buried in cemeteries
known as urnfields, which contain dozens or even
hundreds of burials. Grave goods were also modest
and consisted largely of the bronze ornaments that
might have been on the corpse when it was burned,
such as pins and earrings, rather than weapons.
At Telgte, in northwestern Germany, urn burials
were found throughout a 2 ha area, although this
was probably only part of the whole cemetery. In
many of the graves, the pit containing the urn was

surrounded by a small ditched enclosure. Some of

these were circular, others elongated, and still others
had a keyhole plan in which the round end encircled
the burial pit but the enclosure was extended into a
rectangular form on one end. Some of the keyhole
graves had traces of mortuary houses constructed
from wooden posts over the burial. Many of the
elongated enclosures have a common orientation,
roughly NWSE.
In Scandinavia, the Late Bronze Age cremation
burials were sometimes placed within settings of
stone that suggest the outline of a ship. At Lugnaro
in western Sweden, a mound covered a stone ship that
was about 8 m long. The cremated remains of four
individuals were found in the mound. In one instance,
the urn contained burnt human and sheep bones, a
piece of wool cloth that survived the funeral pyre, and
three bronze objects: a dagger, tweezers, and an awl.
The tradition of arranging stones in the form of a ship
around a grave continued for many centuries after the
end of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia.
The variation in the quantity and quality of grave
goods and mortuary architecture has led most archaeologists to conclude that the Bronze Age was characterized by increasing differences in the access by
individuals to status, power, and wealth. The amount
of physical labor and ceremonial effort that went into
some Bronze Age burials and the high value ascribed to
the goods buried with the bodies and thus taken out
of use by the living is consistent with their expectations for such a stratified society. Thus the evidence
from burials reflects a society differentiated into elites
and commoners, which is not especially apparent from
the small and unassuming settlements.

Rock Art
The Bronze Age saw the flourishing of a rich tradition
of rock art in which exposed surfaces of rock were
engraved with depictions of objects, people, and symbols (see Rock Art). The two major provinces of
Bronze Age rock art in western and northern Europe
are found in Scandinavia and in the southern Alps.
Each has its own characteristic repertoire of motifs.
There is hardly a rock outcrop with a smooth face
in Sweden that escaped being used as the canvas for
rock carvings. Most are concentrated along the west
coast facing the North Sea, a region called Bohuslan,
but they are also found in southern and central
Sweden and adjacent parts of Norway and Denmark.
The Tanum area in Bohuslan is the capital of Bronze
Age rock carvings in Sweden. Several hundred separate carved outcrops are known in Tanum, and many
more are known from adjacent districts. Hundreds
more await discovery. When they were carved, the

EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age 1223

Bohuslan engravings were along the shoreline, whereas today they are 2530 m above sea level due to the
postglacial rebound of the Swedish peninsula, which
continues to rise even today.
The most common engraving is a very simple hemispherical pit 510 cm in diameter and a few centimeters deep, known as a cup mark. Cup marks are
ubiquitous on Scandinavian rock outcrops. The
significance of cup marks is completely unknown,
for they do not represent any recognizable object,
but the fact that so many of them were made means
that they surely held some sort of symbolic meaning.
More interesting to archaeologists are the rock
carvings that depict objects, animals, and humans,
because they are trying to tell us something about
the social and spiritual lives of Bronze Age people.
Ships are by far the most abundant image, and
thousands of carved watercraft with raised prows
and sterns and often carrying people have been
recorded (Figure 3). Sleighs, trees, and weapons are
also common motifs. When people are shown, they
are often brandishing spears and swords, playing
bronze trumpets, pushing plows, or riding chariots
drawn by oxen. Many of the human images are unequivocally male. Animals include deer, bear, fish,
birds, and whale. Abstract images are often of suns
and spirals. Sometimes the artists traced their feet and
hands.
Some of the Swedish carvings give the impression
of planned compositions, while others seem more
haphazard. Scenes of rituals, processions, plowing,
and hunting depict at one level familiar elements of
Bronze Age life, but we do not know the extent to
which these carvings themselves were locations or
backdrops for social activity or whether the capturing

of these images had a deeper significance for the

relationship between the world of the living and
the world of myths and deities.
The other major province of Bronze Age rock art is
found in the southwestern Alps of northern Italy and
southeastern France. It is exemplified by two classic
sites, Val Camonica in Lombardy, Italy, and Mount
Bego in the French Alps-Maritimes. At both these
sites, the tradition of carving on rock faces began
during the Neolithic and continued into the Iron
Age, but the Bronze Age carvings are classics of
their genre.
At Mount Bego, some 100 000 individual images
were carved into the schist and sandstone outcrops
by hammering with a pointed metal or stone tool.
The most common images are a schematic depiction
of horned oxen, sometimes in pairs or fours pulling
a plough. Bronze weapons and tools account for
about 15% of the images. Matching them to dated
finds of actual tools and weapons from archaeological deposits has proven to be a reliable way of
dating the Mount Bego carvings. Enigmatic geometrical figures may be depictions of animal pens and
fields. Human figures are rare, but they are often
complex. One famous example has a circular head
and zigzag arms, while others seem to be dancing or
praying. The human figures also seem to be placed at
special locations such as where travelers would have
to pass.
Val Camonica has yielded over 200 000 carvings,
and neighboring valleys contain still more. Traces of
color suggest that many of the engravings were once
highlighted with color. Some of the carvings appear to
depict houses and workshops with pitched roofs,
while others may be pictorial maps of fields and
dwellings. People are engaged in activities like hunting, weaving, plowing, and metalworking. Weapons
and tools are common motifs at Val Camonica as at
Mount Bego, clearly reflecting the functional and
symbolic importance of these objects for Bronze Age
society.

Monuments

Figure 3 Rock carvings, like this one from Scania in southern

Sweden, cover boulders throughout Scandinavia and depict
important aspects of Bronze Age life in northern Europe, such as
seafaring using long boats with multiple rowers. Note the cup
marks directly below the ship (photo 2000 by Peter Bogucki).

In addition to their mortuary monuments, the Bronze

Age inhabitants of western Europe continued the
tradition of marking the landscape with settings of
upright stones. As with the burial chambers constructed during the Neolithic, these monuments are
part of the megalithic tradition of using large stones
as architectural elements. Yet they also continue an
earlier tradition of building similar monuments in
timber. Collectively, these round monuments are
known as henges, the most celebrated of which is
Stonehenge.

1224 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age

Stonehenge

It is impossible to describe the Bronze Age without

mentioning Stonehenge, although the monument that
is visible today was the product of many centuries of
construction and renovation and is only an elaborate
example of the circular stone monuments found
throughout the British Isles. Stonehenge is located in
southern England not far from Salisbury in Wiltshire.
After its relatively simple Late Neolithic origins
around 2700 BC, Stonehenge developed into a complex arrangement of concentric circles and semicircles
of enormous upright stones by the beginning of the
Bronze Age around 2000 BC. It continued to be in use
for several centuries after that and remained visible
on the landscape in the form we see it today, known
as phase 3. Although some have hypothesized that it
served as an astronomical observatory, a more likely
explanation is that Stonehenge was the regional focal
point for the rituals and ceremonies that were integral
parts of Bronze Age life.
An intriguing aspect of Stonehenge is the source of
the stones used for its construction. The distinctive
trilithons, the immense upright stones with equally
immense lintels placed across them, are blocks of
sarsen stone, a very hard sandstone found near
Avebury, about 30 km to the north. Sarsen stone was
also used for the surrounding circle of upright stones
with lintels that give Stonehenge its circular form.
Even transporting these blocks 30 km was a tremendous engineering feat, for they weigh up to 60 tons,
but it pales in comparison with the effort needed to
move the smaller bluestones that also form a horseshoe setting within the sarsen circle. These volcanic
rocks, each weighing several tons, were brought from
the Preseli Mountains of Wales, about 200 km away.
Archaeologists have estimated that the final building
phase of Stonehenge required nearly 2 million hours
of labor, the equivalent of a thousand people working
for a year.
Most people do not realize that Stonehenge lies
amid an immense Late Neolithic and Bronze Age
ceremonial landscape with hundreds of prehistoric
sites from the third and second milleniums BC.
Most of these are barrows, while others were smaller
ritual features that mimic or presage Stonehenge, only
built from wood long since decayed. Many of the
barrows are sited along ridges to the north, south,
and east of Stonehenge. Stonehenge itself is approached by an avenue formed by two parallel ditches
cut into the chalk and banks about 12 m apart that
stretch in a curve down to the River Avon. During
earlier phases of Stonehenge construction, other
ditched features, known as the Cursus and Lesser
Cursus were situated north of the site. Whatever its

Figure 4 Stonehenge, in southern England, is perhaps the most

famous Bronze Age ceremonial monument that has survived to
the present. The sarsen trilithons with their upright orthostats and
horizontal lintels can be seen in this picture (photo 1984 by
Peter Bogucki).

function, Stonehenge did not exist in isolation but

rather was one prominent element in a landscape
devoted to ceremony and burial (Figure 4).
Seahenge

At Holme-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, England, an oval

arrangement of 55 oak posts found in the intertidal
zone in 1998 appears to have been an early Bronze Age
ritual structure, popularly named Seahenge soon after
its discovery. The arrangement of posts was 6.8 m
across at its maximum diameter. In the center of the
ring was an upturned stump of a large oak tree. All of
the timber posts were shown by tree ring dating to
have been cut in a single year, 2049 BC in fact, during
the spring or early summer while the central inverted
stump was cut or died the previous year. Comparison
of the marks left by bronze axes showed that between
50 and 60 different tools were used.
As is the case with Stonehenge, the function of
Seahenge is shrouded in mystery. The many different
toolmarks suggest that it was a community project.
The location at the edge of the sea is probably significant, and the inversion of the stump clearly held a
complex symbolic meaning, but we can only speculate on what it might be.
Flag Fen

Much later than Seahenge, toward the end of

the Bronze Age around 1350 BC, an immense
timber barrier and platform was built at Flag Fen
near Peterborough, England. Immense numbers of
trees were felled and brought to the site. Many, perhaps up to 80 000, were used to build a long wooden
alignment of pilings through the swamp, extending
over a kilometer, by driving them into the bottom

EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Bronze Age 1225

mud. Closer to the shore, timbers were laid horizontally on the wet ground to make a trackway. The
structure was maintained for several centuries, until
about 950 BC.
At the deepest part of the swamp, an immense
platform about a hectare in area was built with
more piles across which timbers were placed. There
is no evidence that it was used for dwelling, for it was
probably simply too wet a spot. From the platform,
wooden, ceramic, and metal objects were cast into the
swamp as offerings, many after having been deliberately broken. Human and animal bones were also
found. In 1994, the earliest prehistoric wheel known
in England, made from three alder planks, was found
at Flag Fen.
Flag Fen is a conspicuous example of the role of
bodies of water in prehistoric rituals in northern and
western Europe that began during the Neolithic and
reached its zenith during the Iron Age in the first
millennium BC. Springs, ponds, and bogs all seem to
have held some sacred significance, judging from the
quantities of bronze, wooden, and ceramic objects
that were cast into them. At the Mauritius Spring at
St. Moritz, Switzerland, renovations in 1907 led to
the discovery of two complete bronze swords and a
part of a third, a broken dagger, and a fibula that dated
to the period between 1400 and 1250 BC. The swords
are types that are found primarily in southern Germany
and Bohemia, indicating that they were brought some
distance to the site. These artifacts lay at the bottom
of a wooden well chamber that had been determined
by tree ring dating to have been built in 1466 BC to
capture the effervescent water of the spring.

Bronze Age Society

Society did not undergo a radical transformation at
the onset of the Bronze Age. Many of the social,
economic, and symbolic developments that mark
this period have their roots in the Late Neolithic.
Similarly, many of the characteristics of the Bronze
Age persist far longer than its arbitrary end in the first
millennium BC with the development of ironworking. The Bronze Age in Europe is of tremendous
importance, however, as a period of important
changes that continued to shape the European past
into the recognizable precursor of the societies that
we eventually meet in historical records. Stuart Piggott (191096), in his 1965 book Ancient Europe,
called it a phase full of interest in which the Neolithic curious amalgam of traditions and techniques
was transformed into the world we encounter at the
dawn of European history.
If we accept the view that the Bronze Age mortuary
and ceremonial sites of northern and western Europe

reflect societies whose members differed in their access to status, power, and wealth, the question then
becomes what form these differentiated societies
took. Some archaeologists have hypothesized that
they were organized into chiefdoms, a form of social
organization known from many prehistoric societies
around the world. In chiefdoms, positions of status
and leadership are passed from one generation to the
next rather than earned by accomplishment. This elite
population depends on the control of the production
of farmers, herders, and craft specialists, whose products they accumulate, display, and distribute to
maintain their social pre-eminence. As an alternative
to such a straightforward hierarchical social structure, other archaeologists have advanced the notion
that Bronze Age society had more complicated and
fluid patterns of differences in authority and status,
depending on the situation and the relationships
among individuals and groups, a condition known
as heterarchy. Whatever position one accepts, it
is clear that the Bronze Age social organization
became progressively more complex between 2500
and 800 BC.
Along with the evidence for social differentiation
comes increased evidence for warfare. Defended
sites such as hill forts, skeletons with traces of violent injuries, and especially the innumerable finds of
weapons reflect societies in which conflict was endemic. The ongoing race to improve the effectiveness of weapons, culminating in well-crafted swords
(many of which are found with damaged edges,
showing that they were used and not just for display), shows that Bronze Age armorers were always
thinking of better ways to injure people. Helmets
and shields afforded some protection, but body
armor made from thin bronze sheet, such as the
Marmesse cuirass from France, would have been
ineffective against weapons and was probably worn
as a symbol of status. Boats probably provided
transport for raiding parties, as well as for goods
and travelers.
The paradox of the Bronze Age of northern and
western Europe is that the social differentiation seen
in graves is not reflected in the farmsteads and
small hamlets in which people lived. Aside from
hill forts, which appear to have been defended refugia rather than locations of working settlements,
there is little evidence for sites in northern and western Europe having served as the seats of chiefs.
Unlike the Mycenaean palaces of the Aegean or the
elaborate stone-walled citadels of southern Spain
and Portugal, the dispersed and relatively uniform
Bronze Age settlements of northern and western
Europe do not match the variation or richness seen
in the burials.

1226 EUROPE, NORTHERN AND WESTERN/Early Neolithic Cultures

Life in northern and western Europe was very different at the beginning of the first millennium BC
from how it was at the end of the Neolithic. While
the Bronze Age in this area did not see the emergence
of urban states as it did in the Aegean and in the Near
East, the changes in society were nonetheless significant and long-lasting. During the Bronze Age, local
chiefs came to control trade networks for the acquisition of resources and to oversee their conversion into
symbols of power and wealth. The status of these
chiefs was embedded in hereditary claims to authority
and in alliances with their peers. Although there is
virtually no evidence that any one of these polities
was yet able to dominate others or to control territory
beyond its local sphere, herein lie the foundations of
the European societies that we know from later prehistory and early historical accounts.
See also: Asia, West: Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal
Production and Utilization; Burials: Excavation and
Recording Techniques; Europe: Neolithic; Europe,
Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures; Iron
Age; Rock Art; Ships and Seafaring; Weapons and
Warfare.

Further Reading
Bogucki PI and Crabtree PJ (eds.) (2004) Ancient Europe 8000
B.C.A.D. 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World.
New York: Charles Scribners Sons.
Childe VG (1930) The Bronze Age. New York: The Macmillan
Company.
Clarke DV, Cowie TG, Foxon A, Barrett JC and National Museum
of Antiquities of Scotland (1985) Symbols of Power at the Time
of Stonehenge. Edinburgh: National Museum of Antiquities of
Scotland.
Cunliffe BW (ed.) (1994) The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of
Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kristiansen K (1998) Europe before History. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Kristiansen K and Larsson TB (2006) The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Milisauskas S (ed.) (2002) European Prehistory: A Survey.
New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Mohen J-P and Eluere C (2000) The Bronze Age in Europe.
New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Osgood R, Monks S, and Toms J (2000) Bronze Age Warfare.
Stroud: Sutton.
Parker Pearson M (1993) The English Heritage Book of Bronze
Age Britain. London: B.T. Batsford.
Piggott S (1965) Ancient Europe; from the Beginnings of Agriculture to Classical Antiquity: A Survey. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Pitts MW (2000) Hengeworld. London: Century.
Renfrew C (1973) Before Civilization; the Radiocarbon Revolution
and Prehistoric Europe. London: Cape.
Waddell J (1998) The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland. Galway:
Galway University Press.

Early Neolithic Cultures

Michael Ilett, Universite Paris 1/CNRS, Nanterre,
France
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
adze A tool with a polished stone blade used for cutting and
shaping wood, similar to an axe. The wooden haft is not
preserved in most archaeological contexts. Unlike an axe, the
cutting edge of an adze blade is at right angles to the haft.
caprine Sheep and/or goat. As the skeletons are very similar, it is
often impossible to distinguish between sheep and goat bones
from archaeological sites.
comb decoration Impressed decoration made by pressing a
tool with a short, serrated edge into the soft clay surface.
daub A building material for walls made by mixing soil, water,
and chopped straw or other plant fibers. Daub is plastered onto a
wooden framework and survives in archaeological contexts
when it has been hardened by fire.
dendrochronology A dating technique based on the
comparison of annual growth rings from trees. A complete
dendrochronological calendar has been established for oak in
Europe, including the whole Neolithic period. Oak from
archaeological contexts with a sufficient quantity of growth rings
preserved can thus be dated very precisely.
fine-ware pottery Thin-walled vessels, often in the smaller size
range, with well-finished surfaces.
flexed burial The body is placed in the grave on its side, with the
legs slightly bent at the hips and knees.
impressed techniques Decoration of pottery before firing by
pressing a fingertip, natural objects such as shells, or specially
made tools in wood or bone, into the soft clay surface, leaving a
negative.
incised decoration Decoration of pottery before firing by
drawing a sharp instrument across the soft clay surface to create
shallow lines.

The Early Neolithic is defined here as the initial period

of the spread of farming into western Europe between
6000 and 5000 cal BC. Archaeological data currently
available from most regions suggest that this process
involved the westward migration of farming communities, rather than the adoption of agriculture by indigenous hunter-gatherers. Steady demographic growth
was the most likely cause of population movement.
Originating from southeast Europe, farmers moved
west along two principal routes, the Mediterranean
coast and the Danube valley, each producing characteristic archaeological remains and cultural sequences.
Thus a distinction can be drawn between the Mediterranean Early Neolithic of Italy, southern France and
Spain, and the Early Neolithic of western Germany,
Benelux, and northern France, closely linked to central
Europe. Contrasts in the scale of fieldwork should also
be underlined. In many Mediterranean regions, excavation has often been limited to caves rather than

Early Neolithic Cultures 1227

open-air sites, whereas the more northerly regions

have a much longer history of large-scale settlement
excavation.

Italy, Southern France, and Spain

The Neolithic sequence in the central and west Mediterranean begins with the Impressed Ware culture,
which appears in southeastern Italy shortly after
6000 cal BC and remains largely confined to this
region, although there are a few outliers in northwest
Italy and southern France. Pottery is characteristically
decorated with a variety of impressed techniques,
and some red-painted motifs occur in the later stages
(see Pottery Analysis: Stylistic). As throughout the
Early Neolithic sequence, lithic industries include
flint blades, polished stone axes, and grinding equipment in abrasive rock. Flint was mined through
long galleries dug into the hillside at Defensola, on
the Adriatic coast. Obsidian from the island of Lipari
was an additional raw material for blade production.
Bone tools are also present. Italian Impressed Ware
settlement sites range up to 3 ha in size, but none
have been extensively excavated. Post-holes, foundation trenches, and daub fragments provide evidence
for houses, although there are few distinct ground
plans. Other features are pits containing burnt stones,
and occasional burials. Some sites are enclosed by
ditches. The faunal remains are almost entirely of
domestic animals, with a majority of caprines. Analyses of charred plant remains show that both emmer
and einkorn wheat were grown, as well as naked
wheat and barley. Lentil and pea were also cultivated.
The period 56005000 cal BC sees major expansion
of farming communities in the west Mediterranean,
with a new series of cultures emerging from Late
Impressed Ware. These include Stentinello in southwest
Italy, Catignano in east-central Italy, and the Cardial
complex which extends from west-central Italy
through southern France to the Iberian Peninsula.
Stentinello pottery has a combination of impressed
and incised decoration arranged in broad horizontal
and vertical bands. Survey in the Calabria region has
documented a dense pattern of settlement with an
average distance of 1 km between sites. The Catignano
culture is characterized by its fine-ware pottery with
red-painted motifs on both external and internal vessel
surfaces. Excavation of the type-site has provided
good evidence for settlement organization. The area
investigated, under 10% of the 3 ha site, contains the
ground plans of five buildings with deep foundation
trenches and post-holes. All are orientated north
south. The plans are either rectangular or trapezoidal,
with slightly rounded north ends (Figure 1). Length

ranges from 12 to 16 m and width from 7 to 9 m. Close

by lies a cluster of deep, irregularly shaped pits with
refuse layers producing large quantities of finds. There
are also smaller cylindrical pits and shallow rectangular features filled with burnt stones.
The widespread Cardial culture, with its distinctive
shell-impressed pottery decoration (Figure 2), can be
broken down into a number of chronological and

Figure 1 House plans and associated features from the Neolithic settlement of Catignano, Italy. Adapted with permission from
Tozzi C and Zamagni B (eds.) (2003) Gli scavi nel villaggio neolitico
di Catignano (19711980). Florence: Instituto Italiano di Preistoria e
Protohistoria.

Figure 2 Pottery decorated with shell impressions, Cardial

culture, Courthezon, southern France. Photo: M. Olive/MCC.

1228 Early Neolithic Cultures

regional groups. From an early stage, the islands of

Sardinia and Corsica were settled, and by 5000 cal
BC farming communities had spread along the coastlines as far west as southern Portugal. Expansion also
took place inland, notably following the Rhone and
Ebro valleys. There are both open settlements and
cave sites, the latter being used mainly for caprine
herding or as hunting camps, according to data from
southern France. On current evidence, the settlements
are relatively small, covering at the most 1ha. In the
Rhone valley, sites like Courthezon and Lamottedu-Rhone contain shallow features filled with burnt
stones, as well as post-hole alignments and deeper
pits. Of particular interest is the quite recent discovery of two lakeside settlements, La Marmotta in westcentral Italy and La Draga in northeastern Spain. On
both sites, waterlogged conditions have preserved
large quantities of upright wooden posts from buildings, as well as other organic remains. A complete
11m dugout canoe was found on the Italian site. At
La Draga, dendrochronological analysis of oak posts
indicates the presence of rectangular houses. The
small areas excavated here have produced the highest
numbers of cereal remains and animal bones in the
west Mediterranean Early Neolithic. The most comon
cereal is free-threshing wheat, followed by hulled and
naked barley. Faba bean and pea are present in much
smaller quantities. Over 90% of bones are from
domestic animals, with caprines slightly outnumbering cattle and pig.

Figure 3 Pottery decorated with comb impressions, Late LBK

culture, Maizy-sur-Aisne, northern France. Photo: UMR 7041,
CNRS.

Western Germany, Benelux, and

Northern France
The first farming populations here belong to the central
European Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture, dating to
55005000 cal BC. Due to large-scale excavations of
settlements and cemeteries, data are abundant. LBK
chronology is based on changes in pottery decoration
techniques. Typical motifs are incised curvilinear
bands. The earliest LBK sites are only found in regions
of Germany east of the Rhine. The next stage takes the
LBK across the Rhine and further west into parts of
Benelux and northeastern France. The valleys of the
Seine basin, which form the last western frontier of
LBK expansion, were mostly settled in the latest
stage, when comb-impressed decoration had become
common (Figure 3).
Lithic industries include tools made from flint
blades, as well as polished stone adzes and abrasive
grinding equipment. Both flint and stone raw materials circulated over considerable distances, as finished
or semi-finished products. Sea-shell ornaments provide further evidence for exchange networks. There is
also a range of bone artifacts.

Figure 4 House plans and associated features from the Neolithic (LBK) settlement of Langweiler 8, Germany. Adapted with
permission from Boelicke U, von Brandt D, Luning J, Stehli P, and
Zimmermann A (1988) Der bandkeramische Siedlungsplatz
Langweiler 8. Bonn: Habelt.

Settlement patterns are well documented and thus

offer possibilities for reconstructing land use and
population density. In most regions, LBK sites are
located on fertile loess soils in the major river basins
and at a more local scale form clusters consisting of up
to 12 sites. The largest, longest-lived sites can cover
up to 10 ha and are sometimes associated with ditched
enclosures. Characteristic features are post-holes and
foundation trenches of rectangular buildings 57 m
wide and 1045 m long (Figures 4 and 5). Oriented

Early Neolithic Cultures 1229

Figure 5 LBK house under excavation at Cuiry-le`s-Chaudardes, northern France. Photo: UMR 7041, CNRS.

Figure 6 LBK burial, Berry-au-Bac, northern France. Grave goods include pottery and stone bracelets. Photo: UMR 7041, CNRS.

northwest/southeast, houses are flanked on either side

by long pits. Originally dug to provide material for
daub, these pits were ultimately used for discarding
refuse. Extensive rescue excavations in advance of
open-cast mining near Cologne in Germany have
shown that large sites such as Langweiler 8 can contain up to 100 ground plans. Detailed phasing of this
long-lived site shows that the actual size of the settlement fluctuated between 3 and 17 houses. A similar
site at Kuckhoven, in the same region, has produced a
15-m-deep well, with an elaborately constructed oak
plank lining and other organic finds preserved below
the water table.
Cemeteries occur a short distance from the settlements (Figure 6). One of the largest excavated so far

is Aiterhofen, in southern Germany, containing over

200 inhumation and cremation burials. The former
are single flexed burials in shallow pits. Men are often
buried with flint arrowheads and stone adzes.
LBK settlement excavations in western Germany
and Benelux have provided abundant charred plant
remains, although animal bones are often poorly preserved in loess soils. The most recent studies indicate
that five species of plant were cultivated: emmer and
especially einkorn wheat, as well as pea, lentil, and
flax. Associated weed species are an additional source
of information on agricultural practices. The most
complete data on animal bones come from the late
LBK settlement of Cuiry-le`s-Chaudardes in northern
France. Here domestic species make up 80% of the

1230 Iron Age

remains, with cattle clearly outnumbering caprines

and pig, as is generally the case in other LBK regions.
The highest frequencies of wild animal bones are
associated with the smallest houses on this site.
On the shifting western frontier of LBK expansion,
shared flint arrowhead types are possible signs of
interaction between farmers and hunter-gatherer
groups. It has been suggested too that the exotic La
Hoguette and Limburg pottery styles mainly found
on LBK sites in these frontier regions were made
by hunter-gatherers, but there are very few data to
support this idea.
In short, the Early Neolithic cultures of western
Europe reflect the gradual migration of small farming
communities into new areas over a period of several
centuries. Knowledge of the LBK is particulary detailed and offers the clearest picture of settlement
growth and territorial expansion. Movement into
northern Europe was probably hindered by environmental conditions that were less favorable for LBK
agriculture. It should also be stressed that there is
still no firm evidence in western Europe for huntergatherer populations actually adopting agriculture
at this time. Nor is there evidence for the widespread diffusion of pottery making among these
populations, in contrast to the situation on the northeastern margins of Europe at an equivalent period.
Nevertheless, the degree of contact and admixture
between Early Neolithic farmers and indigenous
hunter-gatherers inwestern Europe still remains a
subject of considerable debate. Progress on this question will depend largely on more intensive fieldwork
in regions where hunter-gatherer sites occur close to
Neolithic farming settlements. New insights can also
be expected the further development of biomolecular
archaeology, especially the analysis of ancient DNA
from burials.
See also: Animal Domestication; DNA: Ancient; Europe:

Neolithic; Europe, Central and Eastern; Plant Domestication; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic.

Further Reading
Ammerman AJ and Biagi P (eds.) (2003) The Widening Harvest:
The Neolithic Transition in Europe. Boston: Archaeological
Institute of America.
Arias P (1999) The origins of the Neolithic along the Atlantic
coast of continental Europe: A survey. Journal of World Prehistory 13: 403464.
Binder D and Senepart I (2004) Derniers chasseurs et premiers
paysans de Vaucluse. In: Buisson-Catil J, Guilcher A, Hussy C,
Olive M, and Pagni M (eds) Vaucluse Prehistorique, pp. 131
162. Le Pontet: Barthelemy.
Boelicke U, Von Brandt D, Luning J, Stehli P, and Zimmermann A
(1988) Der bandkeramische Siedlungsplatz Langweiler 8. Bonn:
Habelt.

Bogaard A (2004) Neolithic Farming in Central Europe. London:

Routledge.
Bosch A, Chinchilla J, and Tarrus J (eds.) (2000) El poblat lacustre
neolitic de La Draga: Excavacions de 1990 a 1998. Girona:
Museu dArqueologia de Catalunya.
Guilaine J and Cremonesi G (eds.) (2003) Torre Sabea: Un etablissement du neolithique ancien en Salento. Rome: Ecole francaise
de Rome.
Luning J (1988) Fruhe Bauern in Mitteleuropa im 6. und 5. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Jahrbuch des Romisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 35: 2793.
Price TD (ed.) (2000) Europes First Farmers. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Tozzi C and Zamagni B (eds.) (2003) Gli scavi nel villaggio neolitico di Catignano (19711980). Florence: Instituto Italiano di
Preistoria e Protohistoria.
Vaquer J (ed.) (1999) Le neolithique du nord-Ouest Mediterraneen.
Paris: Societe Prehistorique Francaise.

Iron Age
Peter S Wells, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
MN, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Celtic art Celtic art is art associated with various peoples known
as Celts speaking the Celtic languages in Europe from prehistory
through to the medieval period and beyond, as well as art of
ancient peoples whose language is unknown, but where cultural
and stylistic similarities lead to believe they are related to Celts.
La Te`ne culture The part of the Iron Age in central and
northwestern Europe, from c. 450 BC to c. 58 BC. This period of
culture received its name of La Te`ne from an archaeological site
in Switzerland, where an amazing discovery was made of iron
weapons, implements, and jewelry, most of them decorated with
a particular style of artwork.
oppidum Latin name used by Julius Caesar to designate the
Late Iron Age centers he encoutered in Gaul during his military
campaigns (5851 BC), and now used by European
archaeologists to designate all of the large walled settlements
dating to the final two centuries BC in temperate Europe.
bog bodies Bog bodies, also known as bog people, are preserved
human bodies found in sphagnum bogs in Northern Europe.
Unlike most ancient human remains, bog bodies have retained
skin and internal organs due to the unusual conditions of
preservation.

Introduction: The Concept and

General Patterns
The Iron Age Concept and Chronology

Iron Age is a modern concept that archaeologists

created in the nineteenth century as a means for
organizing their study of prehistoric materials. They

Iron Age 1231

define the Iron Age in Europe as the period between

the time that communities first began to adopt iron as
their principal material for making tools and the
Roman conquests of the last century BC and the first
century AD. Peoples in different regions adopted iron
metallurgy at different times. In central parts of the
continent, such as eastern France, southern Germany,
and the Czech Republic, a generally accepted date
for the beginning of the Iron Age is 800 BC. In Britain
and Scandinavia, it is around 600 BC. In common
practice, the Roman Period begins (and the Iron Age
ends) in France and neighboring countries west of the
Rhine in the 50s BC, when Julius Caesar led his
Roman legions in the conquest of Gaul. In Germany
south of the Danube, the Roman conquest happened
in 15 BC. The conquest of Britain took place in the
years following the invasion in AD 43. For regions
east and north of the Roman frontiers on the Rhine
and Danube, investigators use Roman Iron Age to
designate the period until about AD 400 (see Figure 1
for key sites).
Everyday Life: Subsistence, Settlement,
and Provisioning

By the start of the Iron Age, virtually all peoples of

northern and western Europe belonged to communities that practiced agriculture and animal husbandry. Only in some regions of northern Scandinavia
and northern Britain did hunting and gathering still
play a major role in the diet. Wheat and barley were
the staple cereals in most regions, with rye and oats
important in some places. Lentils, peas, and beans were
significant garden crops. Cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs
were the main domestic animals, with great variation
regionally in which animals were most important.
Excavation results show that many agricultural communities supplemented their diets with local wild
resources, such as fish, deer, and boar, and a wide
variety of fruits, berries, and nuts.
Throughout the Iron Age, the great majority of
people lived in small communities, with fewer than
100 inhabitants. In most regions, houses were built of
timber, usually with posts sunk into the ground along
the perimeter and wattle-and-daub walls constructed
between them. Only in some regions did larger communities develop, with populations in the hundreds.
In the final two centuries BC, town-like settlements
emerged in central regions of the continent and in
southeastern Britain. During this time the development of new implements made food production
more efficient. These include iron plowshares and
coulters for preparing fields for planting, scythes for
harvesting hay to feed livestock during the winter,
and rotary querns for grinding grain.

Communities manufactured a variety of goods that

they needed or desired. Pottery was made of local
clays and served a range of domestic purposes. Iron
was smelted from surface ores, which were abundant
in many regions, and it was used to make a variety of
tools, weapons, and ornaments. Bronze remained
the principal material for jewelry, such as bracelets,
necklaces, and clothing pins (see Metals: Primary
Production Studies of). Wood, bone, antler, textiles,
stone, leather, and other materials were also processed into needed objects.
Most communities were in more or less regular
contact with other communities, both regionally and
inter-regionally. The clearest evidence for interaction
is in traded objects. Most communities had regular
access to bronze for making ornaments, yet neither
copper nor tin (of which bronze is an alloy) occur in
most parts of northern and western Europe. Every
bronze object is the product of a complex process of
mining, smelting, transporting, alloying, and crafting.
Other materials that were regularly traded between
communities include amber, fine ceramics, glass
(beads and bracelets), and grindstones.
Major Changes During the Iron Age

Several major interrelated changes took place during

the Iron Age in much of northern and western Europe.
These happened at different times and in different ways
in the various regions. Population increased. In most
regions more settlements and cemeteries are known
than from earlier periods, and their sizes suggest larger
communities. In some areas, centers of population
and more complex economic and political functions
developed during the Iron Age. Interactions between
communities intensified, and they included significant
links over great distances, such as across the Alps to
the Mediterranean world. Manufacturing increased in
scale, especially during the final two centuries BC.
Marked differentiation in burials points to the emergence of more powerful individuals and groups in
some regions who gained control over the political
and economic systems. Warfare is a major theme of
Iron Age Europe. Weapons are common in burials in
some times and places, and hilltop settlements defended
by major banks and ditches are prominent features
of many landscapes (see Social Inequality, Development of; Weapons and Warfare). In ritual activity, we
can observe a shift from practice on the scale of individual households and small communities, to much
larger intercommunity behavior, including the construction of large sites in the landscape at which substantial quantities of valuable objects were deposited
in the course of rituals. Significant changes in world
view, including ideas about identity on individual,

1232 Iron Age

21.
26.
19.

53.
30.

43.

47.

7.

52.

BALTIC SEA

NORTH SEA
37.

28.

38.

39.

15.

49.

24.
13.

El

55.

36.

2.
10.

e
Wes

25.

8.

ine
Rh

22.

Oder

48.
56.

40.

be

45.

9.

34.

12.

5.

58.

20.
44.

46.

51.
32.

16.
17.

23.

Seine

50.
3.
29.
57.

54.
4.

1.

18.

31.
14.

41.

27.
6.

35.
Dan
ube

11.

Rho
ne

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

42.

33.

Figure 1 Map showing key sites. 1. Alesia; 2. Aylesford; 3. Berching-Pollanten; 4. Bibracte; 5. Biskupin; 6. Bragny-sur-Saone; 7. Bra;
8. Colchester; 9. Danebury; 10. Deal; 11. Dottenbichl; 12. Empel; 13. Feddersen Wierde; 14. Fellbach-Schmiden; 15. Flogeln; 16. Glauberg;
17. Gournay-sur-Aronde; 18. Grafenbuhl; 19. Grauballe; 20. Grossromstedt; 21. Gundestrup; 22. Gussage All Saints; 23. Hannogne;
24. Harsefeld; 25. Hayling Island; 26. Hedegard; 27. Heuneburg; 28. Hjortspring; 29. Hochdorf; 30. Hodde; 31. Hohenasperg; 32. Iwanowice;
33. Jakuszowice; 34. Kalkriese; 35. Kelheim; 36. Kessel; 37. Knockaulin; 38. Lindow; 39. Llyn Cerrig Bach; 40. Maiden Castle; 41.
Manching; 42. Mont Lassois; 43. Navan Fort; 44. Neuwied; 45. Putensen; 46. Ribemont; 47. Roekillorna; 48. St. Albans; 49. Snettisham;
50. Stare Hradisko; 51. Stradonice; 52. Tara; 53. Tolland; 54. Vix; 55. Welwyn Garden City; 56. Winchester; 57. Zarten; 58. Zavist.

community, and larger social group levels, are apparent in the development and spread of new styles and
techniques of representation.

Themes In Iron Age Research

Centers: Emergence of Larger and Specialized
Communities

The most apparent difference between the Iron Age

and earlier periods of European prehistory is the emergence of centers in some regions. During the sixth
century BC, settlements were established on hilltops
in the upland regions of western and central Europe,
and outfitted with substantial bank-and-ditch defense
systems. Many of these hilltop settlements developed

into substantial centers of population and of manufacturing and trade activity. The most fully investigated of these is the Heuneburg on the upper Danube
River in southwest Germany. Other sites that show
similar patterns include Mont Lassois and Bragnysur-Saone in eastern France, the Hohenasperg in
southwest Germany, and Zavist in Bohemia.
At the Heuneburg, building foundations reveal a
much denser settlement structure than on typical
farming settlements, with rectangular timber-framed
buildings constructed close together within the fortress. Recent research has revealed extensive suburbs
on the lower ground surrounding the fortified center,
with clear differentiation between people who lived
in the hilltop fortress and the larger population that
lived below. The Heuneburg and the other centers

Iron Age 1233

were parts of complex structured cultural landscapes

that included cemeteries of burial mounds. Within the
cemeteries around the Heuneburg are 11 monumental mounds that contained exceptionally rich graves
as well as more modestly outfitted burials.
Workshop debris shows that manufacturing at the
centers included iron production, bronze working,
pottery making, bone and antler carving, and the
processing of a variety of luxury materials, such as
amber, coral, gold, jet, and lignite, for the crafting of
personal ornaments. The centers produced goods that
were exchanged with smaller communities in the
countryside.
Especially striking at the centers is abundant evidence for interactions with peoples of the Mediterranean basin. Numerous vessels of Attic painted pottery
have been recovered at the Heuneburg, showing that
this fine ware produced at Athens (1600 km away)
was imported to the Heuneburg and used, and
broken, there. The types of vessels, including cups
(kylikes) and mixing vessels (kratere), were part of
the Greek wine-drinking ritual. Fragments of Greek
transport amphorae indicate how wine was brought
from Mediterranean lands, most likely up the Rhone
River valley, then overland to the Danube valley and
to the Heuneburg. Coral, another import from the
Mediterranean, was brought north for carving into
ornaments for inlay on metal jewelry. While these
imports may have arrived through indirect trade, an
important piece of evidence at the Heuneburg demonstrates interaction on a personal basis. In one of the
phases of construction of the defensive system around
the fortress, the wall was built of clay bricks, a technique foreign to temperate Europe but common in
the Mediterranean world. The shape and size of the
bricks match those at Greek fortifications on the
Mediterranean coasts. An architect from the Greek
world must have been brought to design the wall,
or a native of west-central Europe learned the technique during a sojourn on the shores of the Mediterranean, and upon returning directed the building of
the wall.
A center that differed in significant ways from those
of west-central Europe was excavated at Biskupin in
west-central Poland. Archaeologists uncovered a settlement of 120 timber-build houses, densely arranged
within a walled enclosure, preserved in the wet environment. Tree-ring dates show that the timbers for
the first phase of construction were felled near the end
of the eighth century BC. If all of the houses were inhabited at the same time by families, some 5001000
people may have lived at Biskupin. A variety of craft
activities are evident, and amber, bronze, and glass
beads are among the imports. Biskupin and other
settlements in this part of Europe do not show the

intense connections to the Mediterranean world

apparent at the Heuneburg and other sites in westcentral Europe.
The centers of west-central Europe flourished between the mid-sixth and early fifth century BC, then
declined, for reasons that are not well understood. In
Britain at this time, many fortified hilltop settlements
were thriving. The community at Danebury played
many of the same roles in its landscape that the
Heuneburg did in its, and Danebury remained a center of regional importance for several centuries. Excavations revealed intensive habitation, subsistence,
and economic activity on the settlement. The investigators recognized that many of the grain-storage pits
on the site were subsequently used for depositing
materials, including humans and animals, in the
course of ritual practice.
In most of temperate Europe, during the fourth and
third centuries BC, centers were less common than
before, though in Britain Danebury and other sites
remained active into the final century BC. The cultural landscape in most regions shows a more dispersed,
non-centralized pattern of settlement. Cemeteries of
often well-outfitted inhumation burials are the most
abundant source of information about this period.
Womens graves often contain sets of personal
ornaments, including bronze neckrings, bracelets,
fibulae, and link belts, as well as glass beads and
bracelets. Some mens graves contain sets of weapons,
including iron swords, spears, and shields.
In the second century BC, a new series of centers
emerged, known as oppida, after Julius Caesars use
of that term in reference to the tribal capitals of Gaul
against which he fought in his campaigns of 5851 BC.
The word oppidum at that time meant town, indicating that in Caesars view, the Gallic centers were of
urban character. In his commentary, Caesar described
a number of the oppida in Gaul, and archaeological
evidence shows that similar urban centers developed
east of the Rhine in southern Germany, Austria,
the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. About
150 such sites have been identified, though they differ
greatly in area and in the density of occupation
remains.
All oppida were enclosed by massive walls of earth,
timber, and stone. Most are on hilltops, but others
are situated in other naturally defensible locations.
Oppida were considerably larger than the earlier
centers, with many including hundreds of acres of
land. Many that have been excavated reveal dense
occupation remains, with evidence of highly active
industries in iron, bronze, ceramics, and other materials, as well as intensive trade relations with other
parts of Europe, including the Mediterranean world.
At the time that the oppida were thriving, great

1234 Iron Age

quantities of iron implements were being manufactured, many of high-quality steel, and a three-metal
coinage system in bronze, silver, and gold had developed. The major oppida at which dense occupation
and manufacturing remains have been recovered,
such as Bibracte in France, Manching in Germany,
Stradonice in Bohemia, and Stare Hradisko in
Moravia, probably had populations between 5000
and 10 000. Some oppida, such as Zarten in southern
Germany, have yielded little evidence of habitation
and are believed to have served as places of refuge
only in times of danger.
The oppida occur in the hilly upland regions of
temperate Europe and not on the North European
Plain. There communities remained much smaller. In
southern Scandinavia, a few larger farming villages
developed, such as Hodde in Denmark, with 27
households joined together within a fenced settlement
enclosure. One complex of house and barn at Hodde
was set off from the rest by a substantial fence, it was
built more sturdily than others, and its occupants
used finer pottery, suggesting social differentiation
within this settlement.
In Britain, new, larger communities were forming,
as they were in the upland regions on the continent,
but their settlements differed from the fortified oppida.
Large hillforts such as Maiden Castle, with its massive defensive works, had relatively small populations
and do not display the highly centralized economic
functions of the continental oppida. Major tribal centers of southeast Britain, such as those at St Albans
and Colchester, often include significant earthworks
and widespread settlement remains. But they seem to
have more the character of several small settlements
agglomerated into one area than of large fortified
central places.
Interaction: Regional and Inter-Regional

Interaction between communities is more apparent

during the Iron Age than earlier. It is evidenced in
the archaeological material both through imports
objects made of materials that do not occur locally or
displaying techniques and styles of manufacture that
indicate foreign origins and through the adopting of
practices and techniques that point to distant sources.
Foreign materials that commonly indicate interaction
over distances include amber, bronze, coral, glass,
and gold. Finished objects that often point to nonlocal origins include items of personal ornamentation,
such as fibulae and belthooks, fine pottery, bronze
vessels, and weapons. A variety of different mechanisms of interaction is likely to have been involved
in the transmission of such goods from one place
to another, including trade, migration, raiding, pilgrimage, and interfamily visits. Such interactions are

especially evident at the centers, but they are apparent

throughout the Iron Age landscape, as new discoveries
are making increasingly clear.
Especially for more densely inhabited regions, such
as continental Europe, southern Britain, and southern
parts of Scandinavia, a useful way of thinking about
inter-community interactions is in terms of networks.
Throughout the Iron Age, most communities belonged
to complex networks through which goods and information flowed. Changes in one part of the network,
such as the sudden availability of new desired
products such as glass beads, spread throughout the
network, such that the new goods became available
to all communities that were part of it.
At the Early Iron Age centers, interaction is particularly visible in the presence of quantities of Mediterranean luxury imports. Yet recent discoveries are
changing our understanding of the systems of interaction by showing that Mediterranean imports were
much more widely distributed in the cultural landscape. Fine painted pottery from Athens, bronze vessels and figurines from Etruscan Italy and eastern
Mediterranean lands, and ornate objects made of
glass, are among the foreign objects recently reported
at many sites in Iron Age Europe. But the centers are
still distinguished by the density of high-value
Mediterranean imports larger quantities of fine
Greek pottery, and unusually large and complex
objects such as the Hochdorf cauldron and the Vix
krater (see below). Objects crafted from silk and
ivory in some of the rich burials attest to very long
distance circulation of exotic luxury goods.
The Greek and Etruscan imports recovered at the
Early Iron Age centers are associated with evidence
suggesting that elements of feasting rituals practiced
in Mediterranean societies were adopted by elites at
the centers north of the Alps. The Greek pottery consists of vessels used in wine-drinking rituals, and the
sets of ceramic and bronze vessels arranged in the rich
burials at Grafenbuhl, Hochdorf, and Vix attest to
practices that probably played important social and
political roles among the elites.
The mechanisms of transmission of the unusual and
costly Mediterranean imports, such as the Grafenbuhl
tripod and furniture, the Hochdorf cauldron, and the
Vix krater and gold neckring, have been much discussed. When systematic study of such imports began,
most researchers viewed the interactions in economic
terms and understood them as trade goods. More
recently, investigators have focused on social roles
that such imports are likely to have played, including
ways that the elites manipulated them at politically
significant feasts and funerary rituals.
Mercenary service by young men in armies in the
Mediterranean region probably played a much larger

Iron Age 1235

role in cultural change than we understand at present.

Greek textual sources mention Celtic mercenaries in
different parts of the Mediterranean basin during the
fourth and third centuries BC. The earliest local coinage in temperate Europe, dating to the third century
BC, is modeled on Greek gold coins, the prototypes of
which were probably brought into temperate Europe
by such soldiers returning home. They surely brought
with them information about their experiences in the
Mediterranean world, and this knowledge is likely to
have played a significant part in the changes that
occurred during the final centuries of the Iron Age.
The oppida of the last two centuries BC were
major centers of interaction, demonstrated by large
quantities of foreign materials recovered on these
settlements. Imports from the Mediterranean world
include fine pottery, ceramic wine amphorae, bronze
vessels, medical instruments, mirrors, personal ornaments, writing equipment, and coins. Other goods at
the oppida indicate interactions with other regions,
such as with communities on the North European
Plain. Objects from Italy and from the central regions
of the continent become increasingly common in
Scandinavia, especially Denmark and Sweden, during
the final century BC, attesting to intensification of
long-distance interactions across Europe. The island
of Gotland off the coast of central Sweden played a
special role in interactions in the north of Europe.
Exceptional quantities of goods, especially metalwork,
from regions to the south have been recovered there.
In Britain too, ever larger quantities of materials
from the continent are evident in the final century BC.
Coins from across the English Channel were imported, and new coinages developed in southern
Britain. Metalwork, including fibulae, from the continent is also well represented on British sites, and
stylistic development of local metalwork indicates
familiarity with fashions on the continent. Roman
amphorae were arriving at ports such as Hengistbury
Head on the south coast. Other Roman imports
include fibulae, glass ornaments, and garum, the
popular fish sauce. Interactions between British
communities and groups on the continent led to the
widespread adoption of wheelmade pottery and
wine-drinking paraphernalia among elite groups of
the southeast, evident in well-outfitted burials such
as those at Aylesford and Welwyn Garden City.
Manufacturing: Production of Needed
and Desired Goods

Most Iron Age communities produced their own

basic ceramics for food preparation and storage, textiles for clothing, and everyday implements of wood,
bone, and antler. Many smelted local ore to make
iron. In some regions where high-quality ore was

abundant, larger-scale, specialized production developed early, as in parts of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany.
Since the constituents of bronze, copper and tin,
are available in only very limited locations, for
communities to have access to bronze to make
personal ornaments, the metal had to be brought in
from outside. Bronze objects are abundant in graves
throughout the continent, showing that most communities had means for acquiring the metal, through the
network of connected settlements. Molds for casting
ornaments are relatively common on settlement sites,
and their presence indicates that in many communities, someone knew the techniques of casting the
metal. The molds were most often made of sandstone,
and they may have been crafted by specialists and
acquired by many communities for their own use.
The scale of iron production grew substantially
during the Iron Age. By around 500 or 400 BC (it
varied by region), iron had replaced bronze for
tools, and by the time of the oppida in the final two
centuries BC, very large quantities were being produced. Sizable numbers of iron implements are found
at sites such as Manching and Stradonice, and extensive slag heaps attest to major production at many
sites, including Kelheim on the Danube River in
Bavaria. Metallographic analyses show that from
the beginning of the Iron Age, some blacksmiths had
learned how to make steel blades by alloying carbon
with iron. By the final two centuries BC, a large
proportion of the cutting tools were being produced
of high-quality steel.
Until the time of the oppida, almost all pottery in
western and northern Europe was handmade. Limited use of the wheel is evident at some Early Iron Age
centers, but the technology was not further developed
at that time. Only during the last two centuries BC do
we find substantial proportions of pottery made on
the fast-turning wheel, both on the continent and in
southern Britain. This change indicates that pottery
production shifted from a domestic craft to a highly
specialized one, probably practiced by full-time potters. The fine, wheel-turned ceramics supplied not
only the inhabitants of the centers, but also people
in the smaller settlements in the countryside.
Recent excavations at many small settlements have
produced important evidence that economic processes that had been believed to be largely restricted to the
oppida, such as making pottery on the wheel and
minting coins, were in fact carried out by numerous
small communities. At Berching-Pollanten in southern
Bavaria, a village community produced wheel-made
pottery, fibulae, coins, and substantial quantities of
iron, rather than depending for those goods upon
the industries at the nearby oppida of Manching or

1236 Iron Age

Kelheim. In southern England, residents of a small

farming community at Gussage All Saints cast ornate
bronze ornaments for chariots and horse harness
fittings. Such discoveries necessitate fundamental
rethinking of ideas about how the Late Iron Age
economy operated.
Elites: Expressions of Status through
Funerary Practice

Richly outfitted burials are more common and more

lavishly equipped than those of earlier periods. The
richest of these graves attracted attention early in the
development of the field of European archaeology,
and they remain the most familiar aspect of the period, abundantly represented in books and magazine
articles about Celts. They are important in any discussion of social and political organization in Iron
Age Europe, as well as of ritual and identity.
The most striking of the burials are those of the
period 550480 BC in west-central Europe, associated with the Early Iron Age centers such as the
Heuneburg, the Hohenasperg, and Mont Lassois.
These graves were situated inside elaborate chambers
of hewn timbers and covered with substantial mounds
of earth. Typical grave goods include gold neckrings,
gold bracelets, other gold jewelry, four-wheeled
wagons, sets of drinking vessels, many of them
imported from the Mediterranean world, and, in the
mens graves, ornate daggers. While no two graves are
identical, the similarity of the goods in rich graves
from central France in the west to Bohemia in the east
indicates a common set of rules and practices regarding the signs and symbols of elite status that were used
in funerary ritual. The graves at Hochdorf in southwest Germany, dated about 540 BC, and Vix in eastern France, about 480 BC, are of special significance.
Unlike the majority of rich graves in the region, the
Hochdorf tomb was undisturbed, and the excavations in 1979 were of unusually high quality. In the
grave were the remains of a man about 30 years of age
adorned with a gold neckring, gold bracelet, two gold
fibulae (pins that worked like modern safety-pins), a
gold belt plate, a dagger with sheath and hilt covered
with gold, and gold ornaments on his shoes. He was
arranged on a couch made of sheet bronze. At his feet
was a bronze cauldron made in a Greek workshop,
containing residue of a beverage that was probably
mead, with a gold bowl for a ladle. Other objects in
the grave included a wagon and, hanging on the north
wall of the chamber, nine drinking horns, one large
horn of iron with gold bands ornamenting it and eight
smaller ones crafted from bulls horns.
The Vix burial contained the remains of a woman
approximately 30 years old. She also wore a gold

neckring and a variety of other jewelry, and she was

buried with a wagon and with vessels. This grave
contained a much richer assemblage of vessels made
in the Mediterranean world. They included two fine
ceramic drinking cups from Athens, a bronze jug and
two bronze basins from central Italy, and an enormous bronze krater, 1.64 m high and weighing 208 kg,
made in a Greek workshop, a unique object believed to
have been a diplomatic gift of some kind from the
Greek world to this potentate in eastern France.
Much discussion has revolved around the nature of
the social and political system of which these burials
were part. Some scholars interpret the graves in terms
of a feudal model derived from medieval Europe,
whereby the buried individuals are understood as
princes and princesses ruling regional cultural landscapes from their fortified hilltop settlements. Others
adopt a model from comparative anthropology, viewing the buried individuals as chiefs. The former
interpretation leads toward ideas about significant
political power, the latter to discussion about redistributive economies. Debate also circulates about why the
practice of outfitting these rich burials (of which about
50 are known) began around the middle of the sixth
century BC, then ceased by the middle of the fifth century BC. A central issue in this debate has been the
role of the southern imports the Greek and Etruscan luxury objects in the rich burials and on the
settlements associated with them that distinguish
these from the majority of sites. Did the elites rise to
power by exploiting interactions with southern societies to enhance their prestige and increase their wealth?
Or did the elites emerge through processes operating
within their societies, and are the imported luxury
goods expressions of the wealth they consumed and
displayed?
Beginning around the middle of the fifth century BC,
another series of richly outfitted burials appeared to the
north, again extending across the central regions of
temperate Europe from eastern France to the Czech
Republic. The individuals buried in these graves were
also marked by gold ring jewelry, wheeled vehicles, and
southern imports, but their ornaments were decorated
in a new style called La Te`ne, also known as Early
Celtic art. In these burials, dating between about 450
and 400 BC, the imported vessels are mostly Etruscan
bronze jugs, and only a few Greek ceramic vessels are
represented. The same questions apply about the nature of the society to which these individuals belonged,
and the reasons behind their apparent rise to power and
wealth. From the fourth century BC on, richly outfitted
burials in chambers under mounds are much less frequent. Characteristic instead are large cemeteries of flat
graves, with many mens graves containing weapons
(swords, spears, shields) and womens graves including

Iron Age 1237

personal ornaments, especially bronze fibulae, bracelets, and chain-link belts. Gold is unusual in burials
after 400 BC, as are vessels imported from the Mediterranean world. Only in the final century BC, when interactions between the oppida and the Roman world
were intensifying, do we find substantial numbers of
unusually richly outfitted burials again.
In Britain, where the burial evidence from the Iron
Age is considerably less abundant than on the continent, a series of cemeteries in east Yorkshire known
as the Arras Culture includes graves characterized by
two-wheeled chariots, bronze ornaments, ditched
enclosures, and covering mounds, all of which indicate
some special distinction for the individuals so buried.
In the final centuries of the Iron Age on the Continent and in Britain, graves that contain the remains
of men with weapons and often other special items
such as bronze vessels have been interpreted in terms
of the emergence of a warrior aristocracy. The phenomenon has been understood in terms of interregionally linked groups of men whose identity was
closely tied to their roles as warriors in their communities. Such graves have been documented at Deal
in Kent in Britain, Hannogne in eastern France,
Neuwied in the Rhineland, and Harsefeld on the
North European Plain.
Much recent discussion has revolved around the
question, what do the rich burials actually represent?
Are they indicative of the rise of elites with new
power and wealth, or are they instead indications of
periods of unusual instability and competition for
power? One school of thought argues that all periods
in which unusually rich graves occur were times of
unusual stress and political disorder, and that lavish
funerary rituals served in competitive displays during
such tumultuous periods. According to this perspective, times and places that were not distinguished by
rich burials did not necessarily have more egalitarian
social and political structures, only greater stability.
Ritual: Deposition of Objects and Construction
of Enclosures

Many traditional ritual practices, such as depositing

objects in bodies of water or burying them in pits in
the ground, continued into the Iron Age from earlier
times. But during the course of the Iron Age, the scale
of deposition increased, and more effort was devoted
to constructing special places for the performance of
rituals (see Ritual, Religion, and Ideology).
Recent excavations at a spring at Roekillorna in
southern Sweden show that the site was used as a
place of ritual deposition over long periods, including
the Iron Age. In a pond at Hjortspring in Denmark,
about 350 BC people deposited a boat capable of

carrying 20 warriors, together with weapons to outfit

a force of 80 fighters, including swords, shields,
spears, and chain mail. Several large and ornate
metal cauldrons have been recovered from wet sites
elsewhere in Denmark. Most are bronze, such as the
enormous vessel found at Bra. But the Gundestrup
cauldron is made of silver, and it is decorated with
unique scenes of ritual, warfare, and deities interacting with humans. This extraordinary object was
deposited in a bog near the northern tip of Jutland,
apparently as an offering. In northwest Wales at Llyn
Cerrig Bach was found a deposit of about 150 objects
that included iron weapons, bronze vessels, and metal
ornaments from a wheeled vehicle and from horse
harness equipment. Much elaborate bronze metalwork
was deposited in rivers in Britain during the Iron Age.
Ornate shields, helmets, and swords have been recovered from the River Thames at London, for example,
along with large numbers of human skulls. Similar
deposits of metal objects and human skulls have been
found in the River Meuse at Kessel in the Netherlands.
The bog bodies of northern Europe constitute a
special set of ritual sites, though there continues debate about the nature of the rituals that resulted in the
many hundreds of human beings deposited in watery
places. Bog bodies date from different periods, but a
clear concentration is apparent during the prehistoric
Iron Age and early Roman Iron Age. In contrast to
typical burials, in which only skeletal remains survive
under favorable conditions, the bodies found in bogs
are often extraordinarily well preserved by the anaerobic and acidic conditions, with skin and internal
organs intact. Among the best known and most thoroughly studied of the bog bodies are those from
Grauballe and Tollund in Denmark and Lindow
Moss in Britain. Scholarly opinion generally agrees
that they were deposited in the course of ritual sacrifice. Both men and women are represented among the
bodies, and all age groups from adolescence to old
age. Some bog bodies have articles of clothing, others
do not. Few objects have been recovered with the
bodies. Many of the individuals were killed through
some method that involved the neck strangling,
cutting the throat, or breaking the neck.
In Britain, recent research has shown that throughout most of the Iron Age, settlements were the settings
for ritual activities such as feasting and the making of
special deposits. Favored locations for such deposits
were pits within the settlements or boundary ditches
surrounding them. On the continent, enclosures defined by banks and ditches were constructed as places
for ritual activity. Sometimes they were circular, but
more often rectangular. At Gournay-sur-Aronde in
northern France, from about 300 BC, remains of
thousands of animals were placed into pits, and

1238 Iron Age

thousands of weapons, including swords, spears, and

shields, were deposited in the enclosing ditches. At the
nearby site of Ribemont, quantities of human bones
indicate sacrifice of large numbers of persons, or ritual
manipulation of skeletal remains in connection with
funerary practices. Many hundreds of rectangular
ditched enclosures known as Viereckschanzen have
been identified throughout the central regions of
temperate Europe, and many include special deposits
of iron weapons and tools in the ditches. At the
bottom of a deep shaft at the Viereckschanze at
Fellbach-Schmiden in southwest Germany, large
wooden sculptures of stags and goats were recovered,
with indications of an anthropomorphic deity linked
to the animals.
Iron tools buried in pits have been interpreted as
offerings in rituals dedicated to deities connected with
fertility and with the harvest, while deposits of coins,
most often gold but sometimes silver, are thought to
represent offerings of wealth. At Snettisham in eastern England, 11 pits have been found that contained
jewelry, coins, and scrap metal of gold, silver, and
bronze, all apparently buried for ritual purposes.
Two sets of gold jewelry, including neckrings, bracelets, and fibulae, have been found recently on a hilltop
near Winchester in southern Britain, apparently part
of a ritual deposit made around the middle of the final
century BC. On the continent deposits of gold coins,
sometimes together with gold rings, indicate similar
practices. Funerary rituals changed throughout much
of Europe during the second century BC. While
hundreds of inhumation cemeteries are known from
the fourth and third centuries BC, for most parts of
temperate Europe, cemeteries are rare from the second and first centuries BC, and it is not clear how
communities disposed of bodies. At some settlements,
quantities of human bone recovered in pits have been
interpreted in terms of practices involving exhumation and ritual manipulation of human bone, perhaps
in place of the earlier practice of inhumation. Among
the best-studied assemblages is that from the oppidum at Manching, where at least 420 individuals are
represented by skeletal remains on the settlement.
Many places that were sites of ritual activity during
the Iron Age continued to play special roles during the
Roman Period. Such sites provide critical evidence for
understanding continuities and changes in religious
practice from the prehistoric Iron Age into Roman
times. The ritual complex at Ribemont in northern
France became an important temple center after the
Roman conquest, and a large stone and cement structure was erected on top of the Iron Age site. At
Empel in the Netherlands, a ritual site at which ornaments and coins were deposited during the Late Iron
Age became in the Roman Period the site of a

stone-built temple dedicated to the god HerculesMagusanas a deity with characteristically both an
indigenous and a Roman name. In southern England,
Hayling Island was the site of an enclosure at which
quantities of metalwork, including weapons, jewelry,
and coins, were deposited during the prehistoric Iron
Age. During Roman times, a stone temple was constructed directly on top of the earlier structure.
In Ireland, a number of large hilltops were sites of
communal ritual activity from the third century BC
onward. Excavated complexes at Knockaulin in the
south and Navan Fort in the north yield remains
of enormous timber circles that were apparently
constructed for ritual performance. Around both
sites are outer banks and inner ditches, a combination
commonly associated with ritual rather than defensive purposes. Both sites show complex phases of
building, using often very large timbers, with burning, and rebuilding, suggesting complex series of
rituals practiced on these hilltops. Many of the visible
structures at the great ritual complex of Tara near
Dublin are believed to be of Iron Age date.
Identity: Textual Sources and Uses of Style

In earlier traditions of research, the peoples of western and central Europe were considered Celts, those
of northern and northeastern Europe, Germans.
Now much research in both archaeology and history
has challenged that model. The idea that Iron Age
Europeans were Celts comes from sixth and fifth
century BC Greek texts, which indicate that people
called Keltoi inhabited lands in western Europe. Texts
from later centuries refer to Keltoi migrating across
the Alps into Italy and serving as mercenaries in
armies in the eastern Mediterranean region. Roman
writers used the term Galli (Gauls) to refer to peoples
north of the Alps, and several writers tell us that the
peoples whom the Greeks called Keltoi and those
the Roman called Galli were the same. The name
Germani (Germans) appears later; the earliest description of people called Germans that survives is that
of Julius Caesar in his commentaries on his campaigns
in Gaul.
The main problem with these names Celts and
Germans is that they come to us through the writings
of other people (Greek and Roman authors) we
have no record of what the native Iron Age peoples
called themselves. To judge by the regional variation
in style of material culture, it is highly unlikely that all
of the peoples whom the Greeks considered Keltoi
would have thought of themselves as members of a
group. The same applies to Germans, as described by
Caesar and by later writers such as Tacitus.
The new style of ornament known as La Te`ne,
characterized by stylized floral patterns and human

Iron Age 1239

and animal heads, first appeared in the middle

Rhineland region early in the fifth century BC. It
contrasted markedly with the geometric patterns of
squares, rectangules, circles, and triangles of the
Early Iron Age. The first examples of this style are
on objects in rich burials, such as gold neckrings,
bracelets, and pendants, and on bronze fibulae, vessels, and scabbards. The appearance of this new style
at about the same time that Greek writers mention
Celts in western Europe led archaeologists to associate the style with the Celts, and it is often called Early
Celtic art. Many investigators have linked the spread
of the style, from the start of the fourth century BC
on, with migrations of Celts southward into Italy,
southeastward into Greece and Turkey, northeastward to Poland, and westward into Iberia. But as
the archaeological database has increased in size,
and as archaeologists have begun much more critical
appraisals of traditional models of migration, new
understandings of these processes are emerging.
Ideas for the new style came ultimately from the
Mediterranean world, but its expression north of the
Alps does not represent any attempt to copy Greek
and Etruscan patterns. Rather, it was a transformation of themes from Mediterranean objects into new
decorative media in temperate Europe. The reasons
behind the creation of this style are related to identity,
but not the simple Celtic identity of traditional interpretations. The earliest examples on the metalwork
in the rich burials can be understood as signs created
for newly emerged elites to distinguish themselves
from the elites at the Early Iron Age centers to the
south (see above). After a couple of generations, the
new style was adopted by peoples in other parts of
Europe, as, for example, represented in the cemetery
at Iwanowice in Poland, but there is no need to connect this adoption with large-scale migration. The
application of the La Te`ne style shows marked regional variations, not adherence to a common pattern
that might indicate migration of a population. Nor
is there archaeological evidence for substantial movements of populations, either out of some areas or into
new ones. The spread of the La Te`ne style is best
interpreted as the adoption of a fashion, taken up by
peoples throughout much of Europe as an attractive
novelty associated with special status. Initially in
every region, the new style appeared on objects possessed by elites fine jewelry, ornate weapons, and
luxury vessels of bronze. It served as an identifying
mark of elite status and thus was so eagerly adopted,
first by groups competing for that status, later by
others seeking to emulate them.
The ancient writers never mentioned Celts in connection with Britain or Ireland. But the La Te`ne style
appeared in Britain around the middle of the fifth

century BC, and a distinctive insular La Te`ne style

continued to develop throughout the rest of the Iron
Age. La Te`ne ornament is first recognizable in Ireland
on metal objects dating to the third century BC, many
of which display a flamboyant local version of the style.
Relations with Rome: Intensification of Interactions

From around the middle of the second century BC,

and especially during the final century BC, numerous
indications show that connections with the Roman
world intensified. Ceramic amphoras attest to an
expanding wine trade over much of the continent and
in southern Britain. Roman bronze vessels associated
with the consumption of wine appear in many graves,
including ones at Welwyn Garden City in Britain,
Hannogne in France, and Kelheim in Germany. Following Caesars conquest of Gaul in 51 BC, Roman
bronzes, pottery, weapons, and other objects became
ever more abundant in graves east of the Rhine, especially in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Poland.
A new series of mens graves containing weapons indicates a new value placed on military activity, as in
cemeteries at Grossromstedt in Thuringia, Putensen
in Lower Saxony, and Hedegard in Denmark.
Also east of the Rhine, new settlements were established around the middle of the final century BC, as at
Feddersen Wierde and Flogeln in Lower Saxony,
which became intensively involved in production of
goods for trade to Roman military bases along the
Rhine frontier. At Jakuszowice in southern Poland,
substantial quantities of Roman coins, ornaments,
and pottery reflect long-distance connections, perhaps based on trade in iron, between Late Iron Age
communities and the Roman provinces.
Recent excavations at battle sites from the time of
the Roman conquests are producing new information
about those confrontations between the Roman
legions and the indigenous forces. At Alesia in France,
excavation results are changing understanding of that
critical battle in Caesars victory over the peoples
of Gaul. Excavations at Dottenbichl in southern
Germany have revealed the first identified battle site
associated with the conquest of southern Bavaria in
15 BC. At Kalkriese in northern Germany, the site of
the defeat of three Roman legions under the leadership of the general Varus is yielding important evidence about a Roman catastrophe that played a
major role in disuading Roman leaders from attempting further conquests eastward.
Current Trends in Research

Past research tended to focus on imposing and highly

visible sites, such as major hillforts in Britain, oppida
on the continent, and large burial mounds all over

1240 Medieval

Europe. Recently, research has taken new directions.

Surface survey and excavation are examining typical
Iron Age settlements, not just the major centers. As a
result, we are coming to understand much more
about how economic and social systems operated in
the landscape and to situate the hillforts and the rich
graves into broader contexts of social and political
development. Studies of landscapes rather than individual sites are showing that a wider view is needed
to understand the specific archaeological deposits.
At Vix, for example, new investigations uncovered
a rectangular enclosure 200 m from the rich grave
that apparently served as a place for part of the funerary ritual associated with the burial. At the Glauberg
near Frankfurt in Germany, aerial reconnaissance and
excavation in the landscape around a mound revealed
a complex series of landscape alterations associated
with the burial, including a long processional way
and four life-size statues set up near the tumulus.
New studies of DNA extracted from bones in
Iron Age graves are contributing to understanding
of family relationships among individuals buried in
cemeteries. The results are likely to greatly enhance
our ability to reconstruct social systems in this period. As this research progresses, we may be able to
develop much better understanding both of community
compositions and of patterns of migration in Iron Age
Europe.
See also: Europe: Neolithic; Europe, Northern and
Western: Bronze Age; Medieval; Mesolithic Cultures;
Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in Britain; Historical Archaeology in Ireland; Exchange Systems; Household Archaeology; Metals: Primary Production Studies
of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Inequality,
Development of; Spatial Analysis Within Households
and Sites; Weapons and Warfare.

Further Reading
Bogucki PI and Crabtree PJ (eds.) (2004) Ancient Europe 8000
BCAD 1000: Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World 2 vols.
New York: Thompson/Gale.
Green MJ (ed.) (1995) The Celtic World. London: Routledge.
Hill JD (1995) The Iron Age in Britain and Ireland (c. 800 BCAD
100). Journal of World Prehistory 9: 4798.
Jrgensen L, Storgaard B, and Thomsen LG (eds.) (2003) The
Spoils of Victory: The North in the Shadow of the Roman
Empire. Copenhagen: National Museum.
Megaw R and Megaw V (1989) Celtic Art. London: Thames and
Hudson.
Moscati S, Frey O-H, Kruta V, et al. (eds.) (1991) The Celts.
New York: Rizzoli.
Todd M (1992) The Early Germans. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wells PS (1999) The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples
Shaped Roman Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wells PS (2001) Beyond Celts, Germans, and Scythians: Archaeology and Identity in Iron Age Europe. London: Duckworth.

Medieval
Tadhg OKeeffe, UCD Dublin, Dublin, Republic
of Ireland
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
assarting Reclaiming; taking into cultivation land that was
previously unavailable.
bastides Regularly planned fortified towns, such as the late
thirteenth-century English towns in Gascony, southwest France.
Gothic Style of architecture in Europe between c.AD 1150 and
1500; it is characterized by the pointed arch.
grubenhauser Small, semi-subterranean, usually single-roomed
huts, typical of Germanic culture in the fifth and sixth centuries.
manors Large agricultural estates with various ranks of tenant,
all under the control of a local lord.
motte-and-bailey The mound (motte) and enclosure (bailey)
components of a castle which formerly had timber buildings.
Romanesque Style of architecture in Europe between
c. AD 1050 and 1150; it is characterized by the Roman-style
round arch.
wics Early medieval coastal trade depots, often with some
manufacturing; they date between the late seventh and ninth
centuries.

Introduction
Europe is generally regarded as having five welldefined major historic regions: the north, the west,
the east, the south (the Mediterranean), and the
center or middle. Northern Europe is comprised of
the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, Finland, the
Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), and
Scandinavia. It is, in a sense, the northern equivalent
of the Mediterranean, in that these lands encircle
the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Even though the
region was never a single political entity, the histories of these lands, individually and collectively,
revolve around that very large and continuous body
of water. Western Europe is comprised mainly of
Iberia, France, and the major off-shore islands of
Britain and Ireland. Here too a sea in this case the
Atlantic Ocean provided a natural geographic unity.
Like northern Europe, this region was never politically
unified either; on the contrary, its medieval and early
modern history is marked by regional conflicts in
which England usually stood alone. Where Europes
northern seas imparted some degree of cultural unity
to their adjoining landmasses, there has been much less
cultural unity along the Atlantic seaboard.
In this overview we will look at two general issues
chronology and historiography/methodology before
recounting the development of medieval northern
and western Europe as revealed by archaeological
evidence.

Medieval 1241
Chronology

The phrases medieval and middle ages are relatively

modern inventions. A middle age was first identified
by the Italian scholar Flavio Biondo in the early fifteenth century, and was used with reference to the
period of European history that had ended just before the Italian Renaissance. The associated adjective
medieval is of more recent vintage, having been
coined in the eighteenth century.
When did the medieval period begin and end?
More precisely, given that the terminology is a post
facto invention, what are the dates that historians and
archaeologists regard as marking the start and end
of the period? The answer varies from one part of
Europe to another, as each European country has its
own historical trajectory, but there is general consensus that the period lasted for about 1000 years across
most of the continent and was framed by the early
fifth century AD at one end and by the early sixteenth
century AD at the other.
The Birth of the Middle Ages

Most scholars maintain that the collapse of the western Roman empire at the start of the fifth century was
the event that began the period; a cross-disciplinary
European Science Foundation project in the 1990s
entitled The Transformation of the Roman World
and the Emergence of Early Medieval Europe reflected this view. That collapse was a complex process that began in the third century, but its most
dramatic moments came in the early 400s as Germanic
peoples barbarians, as the Romans described them
unflatteringly spilled over the empires boundaries,
sometimes taking land by force. As recently as 30 years
ago it was fashionable in academic circles to describe
that immediate post-Roman period in the western
half of Europe as the Dark Age(s). This terminology
reflected the view that the Germanic peoples, who
were non-Christian and illiterate, extinguished the
bright light of the empire, casting Europe into darkness. Today, of course, the cultural sophistication of
the Germanic populations is universally appreciated
on its own terms, and they are celebrated as medieval
Europes founding population. The abandonment of
the term Dark Age reflects our understanding of their
critical role in the shaping of Europe over the following millennium (see Europe, Northern and Western:
Iron Age; Europe, South: Rome).
It should be noted that the fifth century is less
appropriate as the starting date for the medieval period in those areas around the edges of northwestern
Europe that had not been under Roman control.
Scandinavia, for example, was prehistoric in the
fifth century. Indeed, judging by an authoritative

encyclopedia of Scandinavias medieval history and

archaeology, scholars in Norway, Denmark, and
Sweden regard the medieval period as beginning in,
respectively, the late 800s, the late 900s, and the
mid-1000s. Judging by this authority, Scandinavian
scholars do not describe the period in which the
regions Viking inhabitants expanded overseas the
late eighth and ninth centuries as part of the middle
ages, even though the Viking raids and settlements
overseas are described as part of medieval history
elsewhere.
The End of the Middle Ages

Turning to the other end of the chronological scale,

the period between 1500 and 1550 is favored by
historians as the end phase of the middle ages in
both the northern and western regions of Europe.
This chronology is also generally accepted by archaeologists, even though many medieval cultural practices
are known to have continued on. There are, briefly,
four reasons why the early sixteenth century has such
significance: Italian Renaissance thinking spread
northwards and westwards (a phenomenon of particular interest in France), Protestantism gripped Northern
Europe, the New World was discovered, and finally,
feudalism, which was the dominant mode of social
organization in the middle ages, gave way to capitalism. Although each of these is, strictly speaking, an
historical phenomenon, each impacted on the material
conditions of life and so each is manifest in the archaeological record.

Historiography and Methodology

As a period for which there is a good documentary
record, most of our knowledge of the European middle ages comes from the discipline of history. Both
the idea of history (historia) and the privileging of the
discipline of history within the western intellectual
tradition are reflected in the fact that we speak of
the ancient past as pre-history. It is hardly surprising,
then, that the discipline of medieval archaeology
the specifically archaeological study of the historical period of the middle ages was, with historical
archaeology, among the last major branches of archaeology to develop in Europe. Yes, archaeologists
had been studying medieval, especially earlier medieval, remains since at least the early 1900s, but the
work was sporadic and was conducted with little
sense of the intrinsic or self-referential value of archaeological investigation. It was the foundation of
the London-based Society for Medieval Archaeology
in 1957, and the launch of its journal, Medieval
Archaeology, that really marked the beginning of
the disciplines maturation. That journal remains the

1242 Medieval

best-known and most widely read international journal in the field; although British-based, it has always
accepted papers from other parts of Europe, reflecting the importance of pan-European thinking in the
understanding of the medieval archaeological record.
Other periodicals dealing with the same post-Roman,
pre-Reformation period, such as Archeologie Medievale from France (first issued in 1970), Archeologia
Medievale from Italy (first issued in 1974), and Boletn de Arqueologa Medieval from Spain (first issued
in 1987), have significantly smaller circulations, in
part for reasons of language, and are generally less
influential as a result.
For much of its short history, the discipline of medieval archaeology has been strongly empiricist in
approach. Although practitioners do not slavishly
follow the interpretations suggested to them by historical sources, there has long been a tendency among
them to present normative explanations of the material as historical narratives, thereby reinforcing
the argument that the purpose of medieval archaeological research is to buttress our historical knowledge of the middle ages. Indeed, the reviews
presented ahead of the archaeologies of the earlier
and later medieval periods follow this pattern. It must
be said that a measure of archaeologys success in
making the material evidence talk has been the increasing tendency among medieval historians to make
use of archaeological findings in their own work.
Medieval archaeology was very much in its infancy
when new archaeology emerged in the late 1960s.
Its response to that theoreticalmethodological shift
was implicitly positive, though not immediately so.
However uncomfortable medieval archaeologists
were with new archaeologys concern with anthropological thinking, its qualitative and model-building
aspects had a clear use and were embraced accordingly, albeit with one eye still trained on the historical
record. The more recent theoretically informed interests and approaches in archaeology often described
under the umbrella term of postprocessualism since the
mid-1980s have been accepted less enthusiastically.
In 1994, a decade after postprocessualism first emerged in prehistoric archaeology, an exciting agenda for
a postprocessual medieval archaeology was set out
by David Austin, but its success has been somewhat
limited. In Britain, where archaeological theory is
especially popular, many new studies adopt explicitly
theoretical perspectives, but it is noteworthy that
most of the published papers in the journal Medieval
Archaeology testify to the continued strength of
empiricism.
No general medieval archaeological survey of
Europe, or indeed of any large-scale region of Europe,
has ever been published: studies of the medieval

archaeology of many of the constituent countries (as

defined in modern rather than medieval times) are
available, but no inter-regional or international synthesis has ever been fashioned from them. The one
book that does attempt a survey of all of medieval
Europe The Encyclopedia of Medieval Archaeology
(Crabtree (ed.) 2001) certainly succeeds in giving a
snapshot of the medieval continent, and indeed the
regions of interest to us here feature very prominently,
but it is in a format that, almost by its nature, fails to
communicate the dynamics or outcomes of crosscontinental connections and so is of relatively limited
synthetic value.
The problems of producing a synthesis are great.
A number stand out. There is differential knowledge
of different places and regions, as well as differential
access to whatever data is available. For example,
the significantly heavier concentration on England
over other countries (notably Spain, with its medieval Islamic culture) in the Encyclopedia of Medieval
Archaeology reflects the extent to which medieval England is better understood archaeologically
than almost anywhere else of comparable scale in
Europe; it also reflects the accessibility, thanks to
language, of scholarly research material from there.
The danger, of course, is that a pan-European synthesis
will be skewed toward places like England, and that
the complexity of cultural dynamics in medieval
Europe as manifest in the archaeological record will
be misrepresented as a result.
There is also differential development of both
interpretative strategy and interpretation. Again,
thinking of England (and of Britain more widely),
normative explanations that were acceptable a generation ago have come under increased scrutiny, thanks
to the theoretical turn. For example, English scholars
once had no difficulty believing that the AngloSaxons did indeed migrate to England in huge
numbers at the dawn of the middle ages, causing an
almost immediate cultural transformation, but alternative mechanisms of change involving much smaller
numbers of migrants are now being explored. Comparable mechanisms are not being explored in every
other part of Europe to explain comparable, migration-related, changes at the dawn of the middle ages,
even though there may be scope for them. Inevitably,
then, there is a lack of synchronicity in this case
between interpretations of the same phenomenon in
different parts of Europe. This illuminates the difficulty of creating a balanced pan-European overview.
Finally, there are problems of terminology, both of
the middle ages and of modern scholarship. Medieval terms had different meanings at different periods,
and different terms were used to describe the same
basic phenomena in different places: this point is

Medieval 1243

wonderfully illustrated by a trilingual document from

twelfth-century Zealand in which the concept of castle is conveyed by the term motte in French, munitio
in Latin, and werf in the local or vernacular language.
Also, modern terms coined in one part of Europe
might not have clear equivalents in other parts, thereby making cross-cultural connections a little more
difficult to establish: for example, the letter-system
used by British scholars to describe the ceramics
imported in post-Roman times from the Mediterranean and Gaul (B-ware, E-ware) is not used
in the lands in which those ceramics were actually
produced.

The Earlier Medieval Period: AD 5001000

The medieval period is generally divided into three
phases Early, Central, or High, and Late but there
is little consensus on their date ranges. For the purpose of this review of northern and western Europe,
we will simply divide the period into two: an earlier
phase to AD 1000 and a later phase to AD 1500.
The Age of Migrations

The archaeology of that earlier period can really only

be understood by reference to the Roman period that
preceded it. The fifth century was unquestionably
a century of rupture, of broken continuity. The archaeological evidence for this is plentiful and diverse:
excavations in old Roman towns, for example, often
reveal actual gaps in occupation around the fifth
century, while gold coinage, previously the staple of
the empire, was no longer produced or circulated in
the fifth century (and when it was minted again in
the sixth century, it owed more stylistically to contemporary Byzantine coinage than to older Roman
coinage, thereby underscoring the discontinuity).
But there was also considerable continuity. Continuity is entirely to be expected given that many
Germanic people lived with the imperial boundaries
prior to AD 400, while Romanized populations
continued to live within those former boundaries
after the collapse. The archaeological evidence for
continuity is, again, very diverse and plentiful. At a
local level, for example, Roman-type wheel-turned
pottery continued to be made in the RhineMeuse
valley, even though this was under the control of
Germanic people whose pottery vessels were handmade. Continuities are also manifest at a more international level. Although it has often been assumed
that one consequence of the collapse of the empire
was the loss to northern and western Europeans of the
far-flung trade partners they had acquired in Roman
times, archaeologists have been able to show how
Roman-origin long-distance trade routes remained

open and in operation. We know, for example, that

raw glass from the former Roman provinces of Egypt
and Palestine was still being exported to the western
Mediterranean and northwestern Europe during the
post-Roman (i.e., early medieval) period, and that it
was not until the late eighth century that western
Europeans used glass that was manufactured in
western Europe.
One hugely important commodity that was moved
along these long-distance routes is known historically
but is almost invisible in the archaeological: the slave.
It is reasonable to imagine that the vessels that carried
wine, fur, olives, hides, and other commodities along
the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and North Sea shipping
lanes were also transporting slaves.
The shift from Roman rule to Germanic rule in the
fifth century had social and economic implications
everywhere, not least in northern and western
Europe. In terms of archaeology, towns and villas
had been central to territorial organization and to
patterns of production and consumption under the
Romans. Under Germanic rulers, by contrast, unenclosed, irregular, agglomerations of houses seem to
have been the dominant settlements, and in many
areas they were associated with a greater amount of
pastoral farming than had been the case under the
Romans. These agglomerations, generally comprised
of timber-built houses and sunken-floor buildings
(grubenhauser), had neither the spatial regularity
nor the permanency of towns or villages. Indeed,
most of them were abandoned within a few centuries
of their creation, to be replaced toward the end of the
millennium by the towns and villages that are still
occupied in the landscapes of modern northwestern
Europe. These early settlements do testify, however,
to societies that were well above subsistence level, if
also perhaps below the average comfort levels of their
Roman predecessors.
Wics and Christianity

Archaeological evidence of a rebound towards full

productive exploitation of economic resources on a
par with that of the Romans is available from the
later seventh century.
The archaeological evidence from the newly established wics (specialized coastal settlements for trade
and even some manufacturing, the largest examples
of which were Ipswich, Southampton, London,
Quentovic, Dorstad, and Birka) testifies to intense,
localized, economic and commercial activity in seventh- and eighth-century northwestern Europe; indeed, when the Vikings took to the regions seas a
little later (in the late 700s and early 800s), they
would have been very familiar with the traffic in

1244 Medieval

valuable goods over the previous century and a half,

and probably also with its destinations.
The trade activity around the wics was not only
local, however: Michael McCormick, in a groundbreaking study that combines history and archaeology, has demonstrated how, contra earlier views,
northern and western Europe also continued to be
linked to the Mediterranean through the relic-trade,
and the movements of both coinage and slaves. To
illustrate the importance of the wics in the international network of relations, one need only scrutinize
the contents of the grave at Sutton Hoo of the East
Anglian king Raedwald (died 6245): the assorted
overseas material testifies to contacts between eastern
England and the Celtic West, Francia, Scandinavia,
and the east Mediterranean, and the nearby wic of
Ipswich was probably the point of entry.
The wics are also important because they were to
some degree planned settlements; in other words,
they did not evolve but were brand new settlements
laid out according to some predetermined spatial
plan, complete with boundary markers and designated use-zones. We must imagine that people hitherto living in the countryside relocated by choice, or
more likely were relocated with no choice, to these
new settlements, under the watchful eyes of local
kings. Given that the wics were places of specialized,
nonagricultural activity, we must imagine also that
the same local kings ensured that contemporary rural
farmland kept them supplied with food. It is significant in this context that there is increasing archaeological evidence from different parts of northwestern
Europe, particularly England, for nucleated rural
settlements of the seventh century being laid out
anew with some degree of spatial regularity. The
archaeological evidence suggests, then, a controlled
reorganization of the landscape with a view to
increased productivity.
The seventh century was also a period of sustained
conversion (or, more accurately, reconversion) of
the northern half of Europe to Christianity. The
Germanic migrants of the fifth century had been
pagan. Under their polity Christianity disappears
from our record across much of northern and western
Europe, only to reappear two centuries later as the
dominant religion once again. The most famous exception to the fifth-century shift from Christian to
pagan is Ireland, where the shift was the other way
around.
The hitherto pagan Irish were first subjected to
Christian missionary activity in the fifth century;
ironically, that activity came mainly from Christian
Roman Britain, just as the Romans were ceding control to the new pagan Anglo-Saxon immigrants. An
extraordinarily rich insular Christian tradition of art,

literature, and learning developed in Ireland thereafter, sustained by the patronage of local kings and by
the wealth generated by its proto-urban monasteries.
Although their influence has probably been exaggerated, Irish missionaries played an important role in
the reintroduction of Christianity to parts of Europe
in the late sixth and seventh centuries.
An enduring paradox of early medieval Christianity in Ireland is that its great works of art
free-standing, sculpture-covered, monumental stone
crosses (High Crosses), illuminated gospel books
(such as the Book of Kells), and rich altar plate (such
as the Ardagh Chalice) were produced to serve a
Church which invested very little in built fabric:
contemporary Irish churches were small, ill-lit buildings, capable at best of holding no more than several
dozen people at a time. Viking raids in the late eighth
and early ninth centuries certainly disrupted the pattern of production at church sites in Ireland, but their
impact was not fatal. In fact, the Viking contribution
to medieval Irish civilization was ultimately very positive: communities of Vikings settled permanently in
coastal Ireland in the early tenth century, establishing
new towns (such as Dublin), and later converting to
Christianity and assimilating thoroughly with the
native population.
Carolingian and Later Europe

The first sustained period of economic prosperity in

post-Roman northwestern continental Europe came
a little later in the 800s, when much of the region
was under the rule of Charlemagne and his successor
Carolingian emperors. Although he was a Frank, and
therefore a descendent of one of the fifth-century
Germanic migrant groups, Charlemagne fashioned
himself as a Roman emperor and had himself crowned
as one on Christmas Day AD 800. Thus, the connection with the Roman world was still alive four
centuries after the fall of Rome itself.
Although the Carolingians only held power over
part of the larger geographical area of northwestern
Europe, in many respects they represent the continents principal bridge between antiquity and the
peak centuries of the middle ages. Their landlords,
farmers, industrialists, and builders shaped the future. On their great agricultural estates or manors,
for example, they used heavy plows, crop rotation,
and watermill-aided grain processing, thus setting in
train the system of farming that would later feed
the continent when population figures soared in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They replaced gold
with silver as the material for coinage, and silver
remained the currency standard until the twelfth century (when its debasement by copper provoked
a return to gold). Carolingian builders also took

Medieval 1245

the old Roman basilical form of church and remodeled it in a way that formed the basis of later, post1000 AD Romanesque architecture, as we will see
below.
By the close of the first millennium AD, and thanks
in no small measure to the innovations of the Carolingian era, the form of sociopolitical organization
that we describe as feudalism had developed. Feudalism has long been a very contentious concept among
historians of medieval Europe, with some arguing
that it is a misleading concept and others defending
its general value but arguing that its nature differed
from one part of Europe to another. In its most basic
form a feudal society is hierarchical, obligationbased, and militarized, with different grades of peasants obliged to provide labor services to those above
them on the social pyramid, and the lords obliged to
provide land and military protection to those below
them in status.
Among archaeologists, medieval feudalism is generally regarded as represented by private castles on
the one hand and large agricultural estates with communal farming and planned market villages on the
other. Castle building by local lords had certainly
begun by the tenth century, especially in the former
Carolingian territories in France: at Doue-la-Fontaine
in Anjou, for example, a castle-hall dating from the
tenth century was discovered in excavation beneath
an eleventh-century castle mound. The first fully
planned villages are more difficult to date, and it is
difficult to generalize from one part of northwestern
Europe to another, but there is firm evidence now that
the process began in the ninth and tenth centuries, if
not as far back as the seventh (as we noted above).
The role of the Church in village formation from the
tenth century is certainly critical, since churchyard
burial became the norm for local communities in the
north and west in that very century.

The Later Medieval Period: AD 10001500

The millennium year AD 1000 was a significant
one in European cultural history. There was a real
fear in many circles that the anniversary of Christs
death would be marked by the fulfillment of the
prophecies in the Book of Revelations. The year
passed without incident, and medieval churchmen
across Europe marked the deliverance of the world
from apocalyptic destruction by building churches
at an astonishing rate. The great church building,
Romanesque and Gothic, represents only one highprofile element in the archaeological canvas of later
medieval Europe, as we will see, but its prominence in
our thinking about the period a period for which
George Duby coined the phrase The Age of the

Cathedrals (1981) reflects the penetration by

Christianity of all aspects of later medieval life in
northern and western Europe. Having said that,
there is a need, as yet generally unfulfilled at the
level of synthesis, to factor into the medieval archaeology of Europe the impact of Islam: a kiln of
Islamic tradition among the thirteenth-century workshops of Sainte-Barbe in Marseille, for example, is
but one indicator among many of the movements of
craftsmen and craft-knowledge from the Arab world
to the Christian, while Kufic inscriptions on the
walls of twelfth-century southern French churches,
such as the cathedral in Le Puy, suggest more subtle
interactions.
Farm, Industry, Market

In many cultural pursuits the patterns established

before AD 1000 simply continued thereafter. But
steady population increase prior to the fourteenth
century had a growing impact on all of them. That
impact is perhaps most evident archaeologically in
the landscapes of rural farming communities on the
one hand, and of urban mercantile communities on
the other.
The output requirements of rural communal agriculture in this period of enlarging population led to a
massive intensification of arable farming in environments suited to cereal growing. Technology made
that intensification possible within the manorial
economy. The heavy plow, mounted on wheels and
pulled by a team of (usually eight) draft animals,
either horses or oxen, had been known in Roman
and earlier medieval times, and was universal by the
thirteenth century. The large rural workforce had a
sufficient supply of iron-made tools (plows, harrows,
and so on) to open up to cultivation land that had
hitherto been under forest. The taking in of new land
assarting in English is most dramatically represented by the forest villages of Germany with their
long, sinuous, fields snaking across land that had
been newly cleared.
Turning to urbanism, the later medieval physical
expansion of old towns of Roman origin was exceeded by the foundation of brand new towns, complete with planned marketplaces, regularly arranged
streets with properties of equal width along them,
and town walls. New town foundation was an economic necessity everywhere in Europe, and was made
possible by the agricultural endeavors in the countryside. As defensible places, new towns had roles in
regional defense, as, for example, the bastides established by the English in southwestern France in the
thirteenth century. Finally, new town foundation was
also an agent of colonization in the late twelfth and
thirteenth centuries: because town occupancy was

1246 Medieval

attractive to medieval rural dwellers, the English

founded new towns in Ireland in order to entice settlers to their new colony there, and the Germans did
exactly the same in the Slavic lands on the other side
of Europe.
One definition of town is that it is a place where
the majority of inhabitants are not engaged primarily
in agricultural production but are involved in the
so-called secondary and tertiary industries of manufacturing, commerce, and so on. Many medieval
industries, both before and after AD 1000, were
rural rather than urban, however. Availability of
raw material was one factor in their location. Extractive industries were rural by their nature. Unless raw
material, once obtained, could be easily transported
to urban places, manufacturing industries tended to
stay in the countryside, often with settlements of
specialized workers developing around them, as in
the pottery-producing Saintonge area of western
France, for example. In any case, most industries
required copious amounts of firewood, and industrial
operations intended to serve regional markets required it in vast amounts. Not only was the wood
scarce in already built-up areas, but kilns and furnaces were fire hazards.
The availability of water for power and transport
was also influential in determining industry location.
Urban places generally had water, but industry often
polluted it, so it is no coincidence that we find certain
urban (or, more correctly sub-urban) industries like
tanning at places where water flows away from
settlements.
Pottery Of all the medieval industries, the ceramic
industry is probably the best known. It is certainly the
industry that leaves the strongest imprint in the archaeological record. Northern and western Europe
were pottery-making and pottery-using right through
the middle ages (although there were aceramic pockets, such as early medieval Ireland), and each region
had its own pottery-making traditions that evolved
through time. Some sites or places of production had
histories of activity over a millennium: Mayen in the
German Eifel, for example, was one of many places
where there was continuous pottery production from
Roman to later medieval times. Because pottery has
almost no recycling value, broken sherds enter the
archaeological record as unmodified cultural indicators. By-sight analysis often allows identifications of
places of origin: for example, thirteenth-century pots
from Saintonge, mentioned above, can be easily identified in archaeological levels in Britain and Ireland
by their distinctive shapes and by their white or
buff color (the result of being made with the local,

low-iron, fine clay). Scientific analysis of ceramic

material particularly Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis, or INAA allows actual production
places to be identified.
Most medieval pottery is simple earthenware: it is
clay pottery, made by hand or wheel. Wheel-turned
earthenware was present in the Roman world but its
manufacture and use was discontinuous in large parts
of Europe. By the start of the later medieval period (as
defined here) it was common again, and from the
twelfth century it was everywhere. The clay for earthenware was literally dug out of the ground, made
pliable, had materials (temper) added to it for stabilization in the kiln, and was then fired slowly. The heat
of the firing determined hardness and imperviousness. Although generalization is dangerous given the
sheer quantity and diversity of ceramic material
found in northwestern Europe, later medieval ceramics were invariably glazed. Glaze is a lead-based
transparent vitreous film on the surface of pottery,
and its purpose is both decorative and functional: the
colors are attractive and it largely prevents porosity.
Glaze was applied in different ways before firing:
sometimes vessels were completely immersed in it,
and at other times it was applied by brush or was
dripped over the inverted vessels as they were stacked
in readiness for firing. Just as the color of the ceramic
was determined by the type of clay used, the color of
the glaze was determined by added oxides: iron oxides made them yellow or red, copper made them
green, cobalt blue, and antimony yellow.
Prestige vessels tableware were glazed externally, but cooking wares were sometimes only glazed on
the inside to increase their imperviousness. On the
whole, the use of ceramic cooking vessels actually
declined around the fourteenth century as more efficient and larger capacity metal vessels (such as cauldrons) came into use. By contrast, the range of serving/
consuming vessels increased, so that by the end of the
middle ages, there were many ceramic factories producing high-quality plates and dishes. It was only after
the end of the middle ages the late sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries that slipware and porcelain
(or china) was made in northwestern Europe.
The Hanseatic League The archaeology and socioeconomic history of late medieval northern Europe is
dominated by the Hanseatic League, a group of towns
around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea which formed
a regional commercial and manufacturing cooperative
from the middle of the thirteenth century to the end
of the fifteenth. Hanse means fellowship, and it was
applied in this context to allude to mercantile guilds.
The League towns were distributed between the

Medieval 1247

Netherlands in the west and Estonia in the northeast,

and were mainly port towns, even if their access to
the sea was by navigable river. There were also communities of Hansa merchants in port cities outside
this area (such as London). The development of the
League and its control over regional commerce was
greatly aided by the development of a new type of
large capacity seafaring vessel, the cog.
Lubeck was the main Hansa town. A new town
founded in 1158, it achieved regional prominence in
the 1220s and 1230s when its laws its town constitution, in other words were adopted by other towns
within the region, notably Hamburg. The center of
Lubeck quickly became a mercantile enclave, with
a market area, specialized shops and craft areas,
a town hall, merchant houses, warehouses, and a
Kaufmannskirche or merchants church, designed as
much for mercantile business as for worship. In its
layout and architecture, Lubeck can be regarded as a
typical Hansa town.
No artifact is more associated with the Hansa confederation than the stoneware vessel. Stoneware is
earthenware that is fired at such great heat (1200
C
and upward) that it is impervious to water. Not all
clays lend themselves to this: the most suitable clays
were in Saxony and the Rhineland, which is where the
type originated. Stoneware was distributed widely
across Europe, even to the Mediterranean, thanks to
the influence of the Hanseatic League. Glaze, usually
made of salt, was applied towards the end of the firing
process so that the ceramic body and the glaze fused as
one. Stoneware is the Hansa ceramic par excellence.
Castles

Castle-building began before AD 1000, as we have

noted, but survivals of that period are quite rare.
The great phase of castle-construction begins in the
second half of the eleventh century and it continues
uninterrupted to at least the end of the middle ages.
Indeed, newly built high-status private buildings were
still being described as castles in the 1700s across
much of northern Europe.
The history of the castle as a monument-type has
long been discussed in terms of a tension between
defensibility and domesticity. Castles are traditionally
understood by scholars to have been primarily military structures, but they are also understood to have
been residences, equipped for comfortable living by
lords and their inner households. Castle-scholars
castellologists across both northern and western
Europe have generally argued that prior to the fourteenth century or thereabouts, castles were more military than domestic, reflecting the fact that power was
maintained within feudal society by military force or

persuasion. They have also argued that, notwithstanding the widespread use of gunpowder, changes
in the social and political environments in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shifted the emphasis
in castle design toward greater domestic comfort and
a higher level of status display. In this way of thinking, the late thirteenth century is identified as the
period when castle building was at its peak. Thus,
the castles of Edward I in north Wales Caernarvon,
Harlech, Conway, and the unfinished Beaumaris
are regarded in many circles as the greatest of all
European medieval castles because they offered high
levels of comfort (for their royal patron and his court)
within near-impregnable architectural designs.
Recent years have seen shifts in this thinking
among some archaeologists. The overtly military interpretation of pre-1300 and later castles has been
questioned, and other aspects their symbolism, the
rituals of domestic life within them have come into
focus instead. Much of the groundbreaking work in
this regard has come from Britain, where, for example, archaeologists now regard the watery landscapes
that surround castles not as defensive barriers but
as early attempts at aesthetic landscape planning of
a type that is more frequently associated with the
Renaissance.
Archaeological studies of stone castles have concentrated on fabric; excavation can yield lost walls
but the upstanding walls tell us the most. The one
type of medieval castle for which excavation is singularly well suited is the timber-and-earth castle, a type
that is pan-European in distribution and usually dates
from the eleventh or twelfth century.
There are different types of timber-and-earth castles,
or timber castle as some describe it. The best-known
type is the motte or motte-castle; the motte-and-bailey
castle is a subcategory of this. The motte-castles main
feature is a tall earthen mound, steep-sided and flattopped in profile. The timber building or buildings
stood on this mound, but needless to say these do not
survive and their plans are retrievable only by excavation. The word motte itself, sometimes rendered as
mota or motta, originally signified a small block of
land, as in the ninth century in north Italy, but by the
middle of the twelfth century it was mainly being used
to describe the mounded component of a castle,
whether that mound was a natural feature or was
manmade. The term bailey, which refers to the courtyard area beside a motte or outside a central citadel
within a castle complex, is regarded as the modern
recension of ballium in Latin, and baile in the English
language of the Norman period.
The consistency with which mottes were built
by medieval societies of the eleventh and twelfth

1248 Medieval

centuries from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean,

and from west of the Shannon in Ireland to east of the
Elbe in central Europe is quite extraordinary. The
motte is almost as ubiquitous as Romanesque architecture in the Europe of the later 1000s and 1100s.
The tried-and-trusted practical value of the castle
mound as a high and well-drained vantage point
may have been behind its great popularity, and it
might also have acquired some sort of iconic status as
part of the visual apparatus of feudal lordship. Moreover, the act of building a motte of stripping land,
moving soil, imitating a natural hill may have
been imbued with as much symbolic significance as
the finished product, since it was the actual practical
demonstration of a lords control over natural and
human resources.
Motte origins across this great geographic sweep
are frustratingly fugitive. The documentary record is
not explicit enough to help us discover when, where,
or why the motte first appeared, and too few sites
have been excavated. It has been argued that mottes
first appeared in the tenth century but we only really
know them from the eleventh. It is possible that the
motte was the end result of a process of morphological development from a simpler form of timber-andearth monument, driven perhaps by a need for greater
defense in increasingly restless times. To support this
we could cite the evidence from the German site known
as Der Husterknupp where there was a gradual heightening of an earthwork between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries until it eventually looked like a motte.
On the other hand, it could be equally argued that the
motte had actually been invented as a fully-fledged
type by at least the start of the eleventh century.
Monasteries and Cathedrals

Among the many achievements of the late eighth- and

ninth-century Carolingians, the one which stands out
most boldly in the archaeological record may be the
architectural. The first great architectural style of the
later medieval period, the Romanesque (c.10501150),
developed in part out of Carolingian architecture;
at very least, the Carolingians showed how ancient
Roman architectural forms could be reshaped, and in
doing so they provided a blueprint for post-AD 1000
builders.
The place of origin of the round-arched style that
we know as Romanesque is disputed, as indeed is the
very idea that Romanesque is a single style to begin
with. What is clear, though, is that by AD 1100
hundreds of new ecclesiastical buildings had been
erected in Spain, northern Italy, France, Germany,
and England, all of them revealing an obvious ancestral debt to Roman buildings of eight centuries earlier.

Included in these were cathedrals, parish churches

and, especially, monasteries.
The greatest of all monasteries of the period was
Cluny in Burgundy. This was founded in 910 as a
Benedictine monastery. During the tenth century its
brethren adapted their Benedictine regulations to
their own needs and the monastery suddenly became
the center of a new monastic movement: the Cluniac.
Their monastery was simply vast. Twice they had to
replace their church with a bigger structure, and eventually (in 1130) they ended up with the largest church
ever built in northwestern Europe. French revolutionaries demolished almost all of the church and monastery between 1800 and 1810, but the American
scholar Kenneth Conant excavated large parts of the
site in the mid-twentieth century and revealed its
history. Conants work at Romanesque Cluny is
among the most famous excavations of a medieval
European site.
Each of the countries of medieval northern and
western Europe had its own particular national tradition of Romanesque architecture, and there were also
regional traditions within those countries. The funding for this explosion of new architecture came from
different sources. Local royal patronage and international pilgrim traffic account for some of it. These
building projects would not have been possible if
contemporary economies had not also been operating
so successfully.
In the second quarter of the twelfth century, church
builders in the region around Paris developed a new
architecture: the pointed-arch style known as Gothic.
St Denis, the royal abbey church of France, was the
first building in which it was used. Over the course of
the following century the Paris Basin, with Chartres,
Notre-Dame-de-Paris, Bourges, Beauvais, and others,
became a great canvas for the display of Gothic architecture. That this same region was exceptionally
rich agriculturally is no coincidence.
Gothic spread outwards from northeastern France
and by the mid-thirteenth century it was the established style almost everywhere for new ecclesiastical
buildings. As with Romanesque before it, there were
national regional traditions of Gothic. In fact, ethnic
and political identities English, French, German
were articulated more clearly through Gothic architecture in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than
had been the case with Romanesque.
Gothics debt to the Roman past was much less
obvious than Romanesques. It was a new creation
of the middle ages. Were one looking for a symbol of
the end of the middle ages around the start of the
sixteenth century, one could choose the replacement
of Gothic, the quintessential medieval style, with the
neo-Classical style of the Renaissance.

Mesolithic Cultures 1249

See also: Europe, Northern and Western: Iron Age;
Europe, South: Medieval and Post-Medieval; Europe,
South: Rome; Europe, West: Historical Archaeology in
Britain; Historical Archaeology in Ireland; Exchange
Systems.

Further Reading
Austin D (1990) The proper study of medieval archaeology. In:
Austin D and Alcock L (eds.) From the Baltic to the Black
Sea: Studies in Medieval Archaeology, pp. 942. New York:
Routledge.
Crabtree P (ed.) (2001) Medieval Archaeology: An Encyclopedia.
New York: Garland.
Duby G (1981) The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society 980
1420. London: Croom Helm.
Fehring GP (1991) The Archaeology of Medieval Germany. An
Introduction. New York: Routledge.
Gaimster D (2005) A parallel history: The archaeology of Hanseatic urban culture in the Baltic c.12001600. World Archaeology
37: 408423.
Gerrard C (2004) Medieval Archaeology: Understanding Traditions and Contemporary Approaches. London: Routledge.
Higham R and Barker P (1992) Timber Castles. London: Batsford.
McCormick M (2001) Origins of the European Economy.
Communications and Commerce AD300900. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Pulsiano P (ed.) (1993) Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia.
New York: Garland.

Mesolithic maritime cultures, such as the Erteblle culture of

southern Scandinavia.
composite tool A tool formed by the incorporation of disparate
elements, such as microliths set into a bone or antler shaft to
form a projectile point or knife.
forager A subsistence strategy based on the daily gathering of
wild food resources (hunting, gathering, fishing) by small
subsistence groups; foragers are highly mobile and move
seasonally to take advantage of natural resources.
microliths Small stone tools made on small blades or bladelets,
often geometric in shape; they were set into grooved shafts of
bone, antler, or wood to form a projectile point or knife and often
served as the barbs or tips of an arrow.
midden An accumulation of poorly stratified refuse (ash,
charcoal, food debris, broken tools, and pottery) associated with
human occupation.
resource intensification The increased production and
productivity of natural resources, involving the manipulation
and regulation of wild plant and animal species and improved
methods for harvesting or capturing them.
seasonal round An annual pattern followed by hunter-gatherers,
with regular seasonal stops at specific locations for the
procurement and/or production of plant or animal foods.
tranchet A lithic tool with a chisel-like edge produced by
removing a single large flake perpendicular to the axis of the tool;
the technique was used to manufacture axes and adzes in the
Mesolithic.
transverse point A trapezoidal lithic projectile point that lacks
an acutely pointed tip; instead, a sharp, unretouched straight
edge cut a wide wound channel in the prey, facilitating blood
loss.

Introduction

Mesolithic Cultures
Gail Larsen Peterkin, Houston, TX, USA
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
adze A flat, heavy lithic artifact similar to an ax, but with the blade
perpendicular to the haft and an asymmetrical cross-section; it was
used to fell trees, trim boards, and hollow out dugout canoes.
ax A flat, heavy lithic artifact with a working edge parallel to the
haft; axes were used for woodworking and, later in prehistory,
for warfare.
blade A long, parallel-sided lithic flake, at least twice as long as
it is wide, removed from a specially prepared blade core.
bladelet Small blade; blades are at least twice as long as they are
wide, but blade/bladelet metric dimensions vary culturally.
collector A subsistence strategy based on the logistical
collection of wild food resources in an area with seasonal and
environmental variability; collectors send out specialized
subgroups to procure natural resources for a larger sedentary
group, often producing a surplus and encouraging storage.
complex hunter-gatherer Sedentary hunter-gatherers (or
logistical collectors) with intensive economies and an internal
differentiation of labor, characterized by storage, trade, and
ceremonial elaboration. The Native Americans of the Northwest
Coast are a classic example of complex hunter-gatherers,
although the term has also been used for sedentary Late

The term Mesolithic (Greek mesos middle lithos

stone) was first used in the late nineteenth century to
fill the gap between Lubbocks Palaeolithic (Old
Stone Age) and Neolithic (New Stone Age) stages,
although it was only in the early twentieth century
that it began to acquire a consistent meaning. As a
European concept, the Mesolithic has been most relevant for the prehistory of Europe, especially northern
and western Europe.
The Mesolithic is a transitional chronological stage
interposed between the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers
of the Pleistocene glacial epoch and the development
of agricultural economies in the Neolithic. The
Mesolithic begins with the end of the Pleistocene at
11 550 years ago (9600 BC) and represents the continuation of a foraging way of life into the postglacial
Holocene geological epoch. This period was characterized by the retreat of glacial ice from northern
Europe, an accompanying rise in sea level, the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna, a more stable and
temperate climate, the growth of forested ecosystems,
and the redistribution of plant and animals species.
The cultures of the Mesolithic were thus able to expand into new frontiers, including the deglaciated
regions of northern and western Europe.

1250 EUROPE, SOUTH/Mesolithic Cultures

The Mesolithic ends with the local adoption of agriculture, so the terminal date for the Mesolithic varies
regionally. In northern and western Europe, agricultural economies were adopted several millennia after the
beginnings of food production in southwest Asia.
Hence, the Mesolithic is best known from northern
and western Europe, where there was a considerable
length of time for its development between the end of
the Pleistocene and the adoption of agriculture.

Characteristics of the Mesolithic

Because of its geographical breadth and chronological depth, the Mesolithic is noted for cultural diversity and the emergence of regional territories (Table 1).
Nevertheless, the Mesolithic cultures of northern and
western Europe shared a number of basic cultural
attributes.
Subsistence

The new and rapidly changing environments of postglacial Europe required an adaptive shift to take
advantage of the expanding resource base. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers exploited a wide range of
medium-sized ungulate species that flourished in the
forests, including red deer, roe deer, elk, aurochs,
boar, sheep, goat, and ibex. Small animals provided
food and fur; birds, fish, shellfish, and marine mammals were heavily utilized at some sites. Coastal sites
were often accompanied by large shell middens. For
the first time, plant resources became an important
part of the diet, including species such as hazelnuts,
acorns, European water chestnuts, and nettles.
Mesolithic hunter-gatherers managed the landscape. Chipped and ground stone axes were used to

cut down trees, and the controlled burning of swamps

and wetlands provided open land where animals
could congregate for easier hunting. In northern and
western Europe, the dog was domesticated during the
Mesolithic, perhaps to assist with hunting by tracking
wounded prey or flushing birds and small game
(see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient).
By the Late Mesolithic, a well-developed collector
economy based on resource intensification was in
place throughout northern and western Europe. Plant
and animal resources were extensively exploited based
on their reliable and recurrent seasonal availability,
producing a surplus that could be stored for later use.
For this reason, several anthropologists and archaeologists have argued that some Late Mesolithic foragers
should be considered complex hunter-gatherers.
Technology

Mesolithic stone-tool technology was based on

microliths small stone tools, usually geometric in
shape, that were manufactured on small blades or
bladelets. They were set into special slots in bone or
antler shafts, forming a composite tool (Figure 1).
Composite tools were used both for hunting and
procuring and processing plant materials. Organic
tools were manufactured of bone, antler, or wood,
and included a variety of harpoons, bird points, and
fishing equipment such as fish hooks and leisters
(Figure 2). Nets and seines were used to ensnare
large numbers of smaller fish.
Axes of chipped and ground stone were also used
for woodworking (Figure 3). Wood was an important

Table 1 Well-known Mesolithic cultures of northern and western

Europe (in italics), along with the Mesolithic sites mentioned in the
article
Region

Early
Mesolithic

Middle
Mesolithic

Late
Mesolithic

British Isles
France

Star Carr
Azilian

Sauveterrian

Iberia

Azilian

Tardenoisian,
Campignian
Asturian,
Mirian

Low
Countries
Germany
Scandinavia

Pesse
Ofnet
Kongemose

Ellerbeck
Erteblle
Bjrnsholm
Ringkloster
Skateholm
Smakkerup
Huse
Strby Egede

Beuronian
Maglemose

2 cm
(a)

(b)

Figure 1 (a) Reconstructed Mesolithic composite point with

microlithic inserts; some composite points had as many as 11
microliths inserted into a prepared groove, (b) a triangular geometric microlith or triangle.

EUROPE, SOUTH/Mesolithic Cultures 1251

(a)
2 cm

2 cm

Figure 4 Mesolithic transverse arrow point.

(b)

(c)

Figure 2 Mesolithic organic tools: (a) bone fish hook, (b) Azilian
antler harpoon, and (c) Mesolithic barbed antler point.

points were added to the tool kit later in the Mesolithic; they relied on a straight cutting edge to produce
a wide wound channel (Figure 4). The discovery of a
number of Mesolithic composite and transverse
points lodged in the bones of game animals confirms
their effectiveness as hunting weapons.
Pottery and ground stone tools, considered hallmarks of the succeeding Neolithic stage, made their
first appearance in the Late Mesolithic. Ground stone
was used to make axes and adzes, as well as beads and
figurines. Although never abundant, pottery was
present in several Late Mesolithic cultures, including
the Campignian of northern France and the Erteblle
of southern Scandinavia. Mesolithic pottery was utilitarian and was used for cooking and food storage.
Erteblle vessels had thick walls and little or no
decoration, and the most common form had a pointed base. Small oval ceramic bowls may have been
used as lamps.
Settlement

2 cm
Figure 3 Mesolithic flaked stone ax.

resource in the Mesolithic, and it was used to construct dwellings and to manufacture boats, canoes,
and paddles. The earliest evidence of substantial carpentry dates from the Early Mesolithic of Star Carr,
where a wooden platform or track was constructed
over the boggy terrain between the site and the nearby
lake; the earliest known dugout canoe comes from
Pesse in the Netherlands.
The first definitive evidence of the bow and arrow
in Europe dates from the Mesolithic, and wood was
used for Mesolithic self bows and arrow shafts. The
bow and arrow was an important advancement in
hunting technology. It was useful in a wide range of
environmental settings, including postglacial forests,
and it allowed hunters to kill from a greater distance
and with more accurate targeting. Transverse arrow

The Mesolithic pattern of resource diversification

and resource intensification encouraged population
mobility, and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers moved regularly in an annual cycle called a seasonal round,
taking advantage of plants and animals during their
peak abundance. For this reason, it is necessary to
examine regional settlement systems rather than individual sites. In southern Scandinavia, for example,
large sites, such as Bjrnsholm and Smakkerup Huse,
were located along the coast, with smaller satellite
settlements, such as Ringkloster, located further inland
for specialized activities such as hunting, trapping, or
freshwater fishing.
Larger coastal sites often had a longer duration of
habitation. Many of these larger settlements were
semisedentary or sedentary, and some, such as
Erteblle and other Scandinavian sites, were probably
occupied year round. Domestic structures were variable in form: round, semicircular, oval, or rectangular.
Houses had sunken floors, wooden post construction,
and a single central hearth, suggesting that they were
occupied by a single family or small group.

1252 EUROPE, SOUTH/Mesolithic Cultures

2 cm

that the health status of Mesolithic populations was

good, with little evidence for disease or malnutrition.
Numerous traumatic injuries, however, indicate that
violence was a common cause of death, and mass
graves, like the one at Strby Egede in Denmark,
suggest intergroup conflict.

Figure 5 A typical Azilian painted pebble.

Mesolithic to Neolithic Transition

Figure 6 Artists rendering of the red deer antler headdress

from Star Carr.

Art and Ritual

The Mesolithic was characterized by a decrease in

artistic quality and quantity, especially in comparison
to the preceding Upper Palaeolithic. Largely schematic
rather than naturalistic, Mesolithic art was produced
in a restricted range of colors the reddish hues of
ochre, complemented by black and white. Enigmatic
objects such as Azilian painted pebbles may have been
a form of artistic expression, although they could have
been lunar notations or even game markers (Figure 5).
Jewelry and items of personal adornment were present
in the Mesolithic, including ground stone beads,
pierced shells and teeth, and amber, and the presence
of exotic items indicated regional exchange and interaction. At Star Carr, 21 red deer antler headdresses
were probably worn for ceremonial rituals or used as
hunting disguises (Figure 6).
The existence of numerous Mesolithic cemeteries
confirms the existence of burial rituals. Although
most Mesolithic cemeteries were small, they provide
a great deal of information about the culture and
biology of Mesolithic populations. Burial techniques
were not yet standardized. At the large cemeteries of
Skateholm I and II in Sweden, both inhumation and
cremation were practiced, and the unusual skull
nests of Ofnet, Bavaria, suggest either ritual veneration or large-scale violence. Many graves, including
those of children, were colored with ochre and accompanied by grave goods, including tools, jewelry, shells,
and animal and human figures, suggesting the emergence of a social status based on age and gender
differences. Physical anthropologists have determined

The Neolithic arrived relatively late in northern

and western Europe, beginning around 4000 BC.
Neolithization, the processes that culminated in the
customary production of food from domesticated
sources, began prior to the actual arrival of Neolithic
cultures, as Late Mesolithic foragers accommodated
to the presence of neighboring agriculturalists along
an expanding Neolithic frontier. During the transition, lithic artifacts such as axes, adzes, picks, and
tranchets increased in number, and pottery came into
wider use. The bones of domesticated animals and
cereal pollen began to appear sporadically within
Late Mesolithic sites. Neolithic attributes, including
polished axes, domesticated animals, beaker ceramics, and burial mounds and barrows, appeared gradually over a period of several hundred years.
See also: Asia, West: Mesolithic Cultures; Europe:

Neolithic.

Further Reading
Bonsall C (ed.) (1989) The Mesolithic in Europe: Papers Presented
at the Third International Symposium, Edinburgh, 1985. Edinburgh: John Donald.
Larsson L, Kindgren H, Knutsson K, et al. (eds.) (2003) Mesolithic
on the Move: Papers Presented at the Sixth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, Stockholm, 2000. Oxford:
Oxbow Books.
Mellars PA and Dark P (eds.) (1998) Star Carr in Context. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Milner N and Woodman P (eds.) (2005) Mesolithic Studies at the
Beginning of the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Mithen SJ (1990) Thoughtful Foragers: A Study of Prehistoric
Decision Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peterkin GL, Bricker HM, and Mellars P (eds.) (1993) Hunting and
Animal Exploitation in the Later Palaeolithic and Mesolithic of
Eurasia. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological
Association 4. Washington, DC: American Anthropological
Association.
Price TD and Gebauer AB (eds.) (2005) Smakkerup Huse: A Late
Mesolithic Coastal Site in Northwest Zealand, Denmark. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Rowley-Conwy P, Zvelebil M, and Blankholm HP (eds.) (1987)
Mesolithic Northwest Europe: Recent Trends. Sheffield: Department of Archaeology and Prehistory, University of Sheffield.
Vermeersch P and VanPeer P (eds.) (1990) Contributions to the
Mesolithic in Europe: Papers Presented at the Fourth International Symposium on the Mesolithic in Europe, Leuven, 1990.
Leuven: Leuven University Press.

EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece 1253

EUROPE, SOUTH
Contents
Greece
Greek Colonies
Medieval and Post-Medieval
Rome

Greece
Airton Pollini and Sophie Montel, University of
Paris 10 Nanterre, Nanterre, France
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
abaton In Greek, portico for incubation. In this kind of
dormitory, the sick waited for the god to appear in their sleep and
to give them the way of recovery.
agora In Greek, public place. They were multifunctional.
andron (pl. andrones) In Greek, reception room for men.
archaeometry Combining of scientific techniques and
traditional methods of history and archaeology.
bouleuterion Greek term to design the Council Chamber.
cella Latin term for the main room of the Greek temple, the
naos. It is generally preceded by the pronaos.
Doric and Ionic order In classical architecture, a column
(without base in Doric order, with a base in Ionic order) with
shaft, capital, and entablature. The number of flutes, the form
of the capital, and the decoration of the entablature vary between
the two orders. The Doric order has been employed mainly in
central Greece, south Italy, and Sicily, while the Ionic order
originated in Asia Minor.
dynast Sovereign, ruler of a little country or ruling under the
protection of a great power.
heroon Funerary enclosure or monumental tomb of various
forms, designed for a hero and, by extension, for a prominent
figure.
hestiatoreion In Greek, public room for banqueting.
hysplex Greek term for the system of departure of the race in
the stadium.
kouros (pl. kouroi) Greek term for the young male. It designs
the male statue of Archaic Period. The female statue is the kore
(pl. korai).
naiskos (pl. naiskoi) In Greek, diminutive of naos. The term
refers to a kind of little chapel with pillars or columns in front
and a pediment. Naiskoi were used as funerary monuments,
expanded grave reliefs, especially in Athens Kerameikos
cemetery in the fourth century BCE.
palaestra Place of training for the athletes.
Pausanias Greek author and traveler of the second century CE.
He wrote a Periegesis, a travel around Greece in ten books, very
useful for archaeologists.
peribolos tomb Tomb with a wall of enclosure. This kind of
monumental tomb was developed in Attica in the fourth century.
peribolos wall Wall of enclosure of a sanctuary.
peristyle A range of columns surrounding a building or an open
court.

philology Study of written documents.

Pliny the Elder Latin author of the first century CE. He
wrote the Historia Naturalis, encyclopedia in 37 books. In books
XXXIIIXXXVII (ores, metals, stones), he deals with history of art.
Plutarch Greek author of the first and second century CE.
pronaos In Greek, before the temple (naos). The pronaos is
the first room when entering the temple.
stele Rectangular and vertical stone used as a surface of
engraving and/or painting and sculpture. In funerary context, it
designs the relief monument above the tomb.
stoa (pl. stoas) Portico in Greek.
tholos Round building. The term is also used to design the
Mycenaean chamber tombs.
Vitruvius Latin author and architect of the first century
BCE. He wrote De Architectura, a treatise of architecture in
ten books.

When it comes to Greek archaeology, one must have in

mind that the very word archaeology comes from
ancient Greek and meant at that time a history or a
legend of the past (as put by Plato: They are very
fond of hearing about the genealogies of heroes and
men, Socrates, and the foundations of cities in ancient
times and, in short, about antiquity [archaeologia] in
general., Hippias Major, 285d), or in the terms of
Thucydides, to talk about ancient things (VII, 69, 2).
Archaeology in present-day Greece is a well-known
discipline and its origins should be found first in the
Renaissance and most precisely in the philological
tradition. Nevertheless, some knowledge of ancient
texts has always been transmitted over generations,
including during the Middle Ages, when manuscripts
were kept and recopied within monasteries and
libraries. The Renaissance marked an important
moment for this transmission, either by descriptions
of the antiquities seen by travelers, such as Cyriacus
of Ancona (13911455), or by an increasing interest
in, and an intellectual reappraisal of, the ancient literature. The editing of ancient texts by intellectuals all
over Europe resulted in another discipline, philology, a
word that appeared only in the eighteenth century. The
discovery of archaeological remains in Herculaneum
and then in Pompeii started a stronger regain of interest in antiquity: noble and wealthy families became
interested in acquiring and collecting works of art

1254 EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece

coming from ancient sites. In the second half of the

eighteenth century, intellectuals, artists, and cultivated
people also started traveling to those ancient remains,
especially in Italy and Sicily, the so-called Grand Tour.
Even though we have the testimony of various
Western travelers from previous periods, visits to
Greece were eased only after its independence in
1831, after 10 years of war against Ottoman rule. At
the beginning of the nineteenth century, when nationstates were being established in Europe, Greek
and Roman cultures were perceived as the cradle of
Western civilization and started to be studied as such
(see Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of). The example
of Lord Byron, who went to Greece to fight for its
independence, is symptomatic of the intellectual link
between Western European countries and their claim
for a common culture with ancient Greece. For a long
period, Greek archaeology was actually the simple
collection of works of art, what we can call antiquarianism, and almost no attention was given to the contexts of discovery. Archaeology was not yet a
discipline, but only a private activity sponsored by
the nobility.
A turning point was represented by the establishment of the international schools in Athens, the first
of which was the Ecole Francaise in 1846 (Figure 1)
(followed by the British, German, American, and

Italian, among others), responsible for the study of

the antiques and not only their collection by private
nobles. It coincides with the development of archaeology as a discipline and with the beginning of the great
excavations in Greek ancient sites, in particular some
of the most important sanctuaries of the Greek world
(Olympia, Delphi and Delos). Another important
achievement of the incipient discipline of Greek archaeology was the discovery and excavation of the site of
Troy, by H. Schliemann and W. Dorpfeld in 1871.
Greek archaeology has some problems of definition, geographical and chronological. The ancient
Greek world does not coincide with present-day
Greece, which somehow is an insolvable problem.
Most of the ancient Greek cities established in the
Anatolian coast (actual Turkey) are included in
what is called Greek archaeology, but ancient Greek
colonies on the Black Sea and in Italy, Sicily, France,
and Spain are most commonly treated separately
(see Europe, South: Greek Colonies).
The other definition problem is chronological. In a
broad sense, Greek archaeology would comprehend
prehistoric and historical periods together, going
through several centuries, from the Minoan civilization (second millennium BCE) until at least the
Roman conquest in the second century BCE. On the
other hand, due to the increasing specialization of
the discipline, Minoan and Mycenaean periods, that
is, the period before the advent of Greek city-states
at the beginning of the first millennium BCE, are usually considered as independent branches of Greek
archaeology.

Minoans and Mycenaeans

Figure 1 Athens, French School of Archaeology (EFA): main

building, library (nineteenth century).

Succinctly, linguistic studies of the Mycenaean language, the Linear B decrypted in 1952 by M. Ventris,
proved it to be a sort of ancient Greek dialect, written
by ideograms and syllabic symbols. It was the proof
of a certain continuity between these civilizations and
classical Greece, already suggested by the memory of
a thalassocracy (Minoans) in the writings by Herodotus and Thucydides, as well as implied by the descriptions of the Iliad, by Homer (Mycenaeans) (see
Classical Archaeology).
The chronology of Minoan civilization, whose
name is obviously inspired by the legend of the Cretan
king Minos and the Minotaurus, is comprised between 2100 and 1450 BCE and several archaeological
remains can be found especially in Crete, since the
discovery of Knossos by Sir A. Evans at the beginning
of twentieth century. Some important palaces in the
best-known cities such as Knossos, Phaistos, Malia,
and Zakros characterized this civilization, whose
language, the Linear A, is still to be deciphered.

EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece 1255

Archaeological research has interpreted these buildings, constructed in the form of a courtyard with
several rooms around it, as a palace having various
functions such as habitation, administration and official ceremonies, and also religious functions. Some
cases include stocking facilities, which indicate a
commercial function as well (Figure 2). All these elements, together with the analysis of the evolution of
architectural remains, allow the statement of a civilization with a growing degree of centralization, attaining an impressive measure in the apogee of Minoan
times between 1700 and 1450 BCE. During this time,
we can hardly distinguish the main palace and the
urban quarters, becoming a large and intricate net of
constructions. Recent research has indicated important commercial routes in the basis of ceramic material found in surveys and excavations, with a growing
precision of its typology, chronology, and origin of
production.
Mycenaean civilization developed from 1700 and,
during the period from 1450 to 1300 BCE, archaeological research has discovered remains of a series of
important damages suffered by the great Minoan
palace at Knossos. Recent developments have supported the hypothesis of linking the development of
Mycenaeans (with an increasing number of remains
found in Crete, as well as a large quantity of ceramic

and the presence of written tablets in Linear B), and

the series of destructions suffered by Knossos.
Mycenaean is the name given by H. Schliemann to
those he thought to be the people described by Homer
in the Iliad. At the edge between antiquarianism
and scientific archaeological research, the discovery
of the so-called Agamemnon mask, a golden mask
H. Schliemann attributed to the Mycenaean king
and chief of the Greek expedition to Troy, was used
as the proof of the existence of that civilization. If
there is still much discussion about the association of
the literary tradition in the Homeric epic poems and
the Mycenaean culture, ulterior research has proved
at least the existence of a kind of common culture, in
the forms of funerary rituals and the geographical
spread of ceramics. The other great discovery by
H. Schliemann was the location of the city of Troy
(Figure 3), which has been excavated by a join
AmericanGerman team (since 1988) and became a
Turkish national historical park in 1996. The geographical spread of this civilization was impressive,
reaching most of mainland Greece, several islands of
the Cyclades, Crete, and Asia Minor, which can be
verified by the similarities of funerary customs as well
as by the spread of a common type of ceramics.
Despite this large territory, we only know four
palaces of that period: Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, and
Thebes. Most of what we know of Mycenaean civilization comes either from archaeological research in
these palaces, which seem to concentrate all the administration of the city, or, on the other hand, by the
interpretation of epigraphic evidence, mostly in the
form of clay tablets in Linear B.
Several elements described in Homers epics, notably in the Iliad, found a correspondent in some
archaeological findings (like a cup similar to the
Nestors cup, weapons whose techniques of production coincide with the descriptions by Homer, etc.),
posing a problem of chronology. Recent research has
proved that Homers descriptions are not perfectly
Mycenaean, but a mixture of elements of a long past
memory and his contemporary society, of the eighth
century BCE: one example is that weapons in the Iliad
are described as iron ones although those of the Mycenaeans were in bronze.

Dark Ages

Figure 2 Knossos, Crete: the warehouse with pithoi on the

ground (Minoan period).

This chronological problem takes us to the discussion

of what is called the Dark Ages: the period between
the thirteenth and the eighth centuries BCE. All Mycenaean remains show that an important destruction
occurred in the thirteenth century, for which there are
few plausible explanations: the traditional view of a
series of invasions of other people, based upon some

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Figure 3 Troy (Troia/Wilusa), Turkey: fortification wall of Troia II (c. 25502250 BCE), with the paved ramp leading to the
southwest gate.

literary evidence, was questioned by later archaeological discoveries that, instead of showing a sudden
change in practices and material culture, are more
likely to present a picture of continuity between Mycenaean and later periods. Even the designation of the
Dark Ages is now put into question, as archaeologists
are finding more and more evidence of intense activities during this period, but still not enough to give us a
broader picture of the society of those times.
Zagora of Andros

One of the best-known examples of archaeological

remains of the period called the Dark Ages is Zagora
of Andros (Cyclades): due to their importance, recent
excavations advocate a different appellation for this
period. Zagora is one of the first organized settlements dating in the Proto-Geometric Period (the
dark transitory period) to be discovered. Greek
excavators (in the second half of the twentieth century) brought to light schist wall houses covered by mud
or flat stones which remind us that localized and
perishable building materials are of common use for
the construction of houses in the whole Mediterranean area, from prehistory up to the present (the
schist is the local stone of Andros and is used in all
settlements of the island). This settlement was protected on the one side by a strong wall, and by the cliff
on the other; the houses are dated to the tenth and
eighth century, whereas the sanctuary continued to be
in activity until the classical period. The usual composition of the houses was of an oblong room with a
central fireplace, a separate storage area, and a stable
with a courtyard. The advantage of the orthogonal
plan that was used in later settlements is illustrated by
this example of the Geometric Period.

City-state
The eighth century represents a great rupture of
Greek history in the development of the city-state, a
rupture that was sometimes called the Greek renaissance. It is the system created in and for the city-state
that characterizes the so-called classical Greece, a
social system that lasted until at least the adventure
of Macedonian conquest and the formation of the
Hellenistic kingdoms, at the end of fourth century.
These four centuries of Greek culture could be better
described by means of themes instead of a simple
chronological method. We discuss then the major
elements of this culture we try to depict: the political
sphere (with its civic buildings), the habitat, the
economic organization, the religion and Greek main
sanctuaries, the funerary customs, and the artistic
achievements.
The traditional definition of city, as developed by
M. Weber, E. Durkheim, and G. Childe, is: a concentration of population in a particular place, with a
specialization of working activities, a public and
monumental architecture, a complex social stratification, the use of writing, and the development of internal and external commerce. Most of Greek history
and culture were organized in the context of the citystate, that is, independent states composed of an
urban center and territory of variable size, which
gave the most distinguished elements of what is
Greek. The first characteristic that should be clarified
is the Greek culture: even though we can recognize
some elements to be distinguished as Greek, with the
literary evidence to support this statement, a Greek
culture is an intellectually created affirmation, probably resulting from the wars several allied cities
made against the common enemy, Persia. Even the

EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece 1257

dichotomy between Greek and barbarians only made

real sense after those wars, at the beginning of fifth
century BCE. Actually, Greece was composed of several independent cities, with different social and political
systems of organization, and constantly at war against
each other. All these traits continued to be true even
after the Median Wars and the Peloponnesian War
(opposing Athens to Sparta and their allies); the latter
war is the clearest proof of very different organizations
of those cities. Nevertheless, before enumerating the
different characteristics, one could follow Herodotus
classical description of what makes Greeks different
from the others and similar among themselves: the
kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the
shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life (Histories, 8,
144, 2). These are exactly the themes we follow to
describe the common Greek society.
The Political Sphere

The urban center of a Greek city was composed basically of three parts: the public area of political and
economic exchanges, the sacred space, and the residences. The area reserved for the public life was called
agora in Greek and it used to house several buildings
with specific purposes. One of the best known examples is the agora of Athens (Figure 4), which is also
taken as a model by modern archaeologists trying
to describe other cities monuments. However, recent
research has made it clear that Athens is only a
well-known example among various possibilities of
organizing the public area of a Greek city.
The American School of Classical Studies has excavated the agora of Athens since 1931, after some

preliminary, nonsystematic excavations. As most of

the Greek literature preserved comes from Athens,
the work in its agora can benefit from the combination of those two types of data (literary and
archaeological); no other city in Greece has as much
information and the same quality of data as Athens.
For political purposes, the most important building
is the bouleuterion, where the council of the elected
representatives would gather to vote the decisions of
the city. Several other examples of this civic building
can be found in Greece or Asia Minor (Aphrodisias,
Assos, Herakleia at Latmos, Iasos, Miletos, Nyssa,
Priene): they show a variety of size and form but
most of those buildings found in mainland Greece
are in a bad state of preservation (Argos, Athens,
Corinth, Dodona, Megalopolis, and Olympia).
One of the most characteristic buildings of an agora
is the portico (stoa in Greek): some agoras seem not to
have a bouleuterion, but a portico is present in practically every Greek city. The stoai were places for public
gatherings and walking (Figure 5): they offered shelter on rainy or too sunny days; they could also provide
shelter for public, religious, commercial, or political
activities; they constituted multipurpose buildings.
The typical architecture of these buildings is of a
long covered space, recognizable mainly by the presence of colonnades, forming a protected place. In the
case of Athens, several porticoes were identified, on
all four sides of the agora; they are not contemporaneous but they progressively framed the public space.
Some of them may also have had some administrative
functions, as well as a propitious place to house
Solons laws (Royal Portico, in the west), where the
tribunal could give some of the citys judgments, such
as the famous one against the philosopher Socrates

Figure 4 Athens, agora: the public place (circular tholos in the foreground) and temple of Hephaistos on the left.

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Figure 5 Assos, Troad, Turkey, agora: north stoa; on the back wall, we can see the holes for the wooden beams for an upper story (late
Hellenistic age).

in 399 BCE. Public display in the form of inscriptions

on steles could also provide information on laws
or on next events. When talking about the stoai of
Athens, one of the most impressive is the Stoa of
Attalos, constructed by Attalos II of Pergamon in
the middle of the second century BCE, and rebuilt
by the American school to lodge the Museum of
the Agora in 195356. At the rear of this building,
a row of shops links the building with the commercial
function of the agora.
Other agorai have been excavated in Greek cities.
All of them assume the role of the economic center of
the city, with permanent (stoai, shops often with a
room for the sales and another room, at the back, for
the stock or the workshops) and not permanent structures (such as stalls): on the Competaliasts agora in
Delos, holes in the pavement made of granite plates
were brought to light and interpreted as holes for
stalls and tents installed on the market day.
Other common types of building present in an agora
are the sacred ones (temples or altars), as well as places
for social gatherings, such as theaters. In some smaller
cities, the same building could perform the functions
of theater and bouleuterion, depending on the circumstance. That was not the case in Athens, where one can
find, besides the bouleuterion, an odeon (small covered
theater) in the middle of the agora, constructed under
Roman rule in the first century BCE.
Habitat

Greek habitat may be perceived by various means and

should take account of the structural differences
between, on the one hand, cities of spontaneous
growth, such as Athens and Delos (Figure 6), and
planned ones, such as Piraeus, Olynthos, Miletos,

or Priene. On the other hand, the habitat comprises

either the urban center of a city (called asty in Greek),
or residences, farms, and small villages spread in the
countryside. Most of our knowledge of Greek habitat
comes from the study of urban centers, and good examples are Delos and Olynthos, or the colonial cities in
the west (Megara Hyblaea, Selinunte, Poseidonia,
Metapontos) and in the east (Chersonesos, Istria, etc.).
Olynthos Olynthos (Chalcidic peninsula) is a famous
example of a Greek urban habitat: D. M. Robinson
(Johns Hopkins University) excavated it between
1928 and 1939, and J. Vokotoulou is undertaking
recent excavations and restorations. The city occupies
two flat-topped hills rising to about 3040 m (the north
and south hills) and a section in the plain, east of the
hills; founded in the fifth century and unoccupied since
its destruction by Philippe II in 348 BCE, Olynthos is of
great interest for archaeologists. The ruins preserved
the state of the houses where ancient Greeks lived in the
fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The main feature of
Olynthos is the regular orthogonal plan of the city
and the organization of the habitat in blocks: for example, on the north hill, houses were mostly grouped in
blocks of ten, comprised of two rows of five houses
separated by a narrow alley. Like most Greek houses,
they are organized around a central courtyard, often
paved, and a portico on one side (generally north).
Within this regular plan, however, there is considerable
variation, and the uniformity of the house plans is only
on the surface. Some houses devote much space to
andrones (richly decorated with floor mosaic), kitchens, and other specialized rooms, whereas others have
more general-purpose spaces or many shops. The study
of the artifacts found in the houses allows working

EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece 1259

Figure 6 Delos, theater area: example of spontaneous habitat (Hellenistic and Roman in date).

hypothesis on the purpose of the rooms and the gender

distribution inside the house: this new approach has
renewed our knowledge and interpretations of the
organization of Greek household.
Other sites inform us on the daily Greek lifestyle:
Abdera (Thrace), Kassope (Epirus), and Priene (Asia
Minor) are examples of modular Hellenistic houses like
the ones in Olynthos. The joint Greek and Swiss excavation of Eretria (Euboia) has revealed oval-shaped
houses or houses of apsidal plan, dating to the Geometric Period, as well as houses decorated with mosaic
dating to Hellenistic and Roman periods. The mosaic
floors also concern the rich Hellenistic houses of Pella
(Macedonia), second capital of the Macedonian kingdom, where the archaeologists have discovered a palace. Two other palaces were discovered, completing
our knowledge on this kind of residence: the palace of
the first capital of the Macedonian kingdom, VerginaAigai, dated to the second half of the fourth century
BCE, and another in Demetrias-Volos (Thessaly).
These impressive (Pella: 60 000 m2) but badly preserved sites comprise complexes which surrounded,
like the Greek houses, large, open, peristyle and central
courtyards. The apartments, the reception rooms, and
the functional ones were distributed round these central courtyards.
Territory

One of the major developments of Greek archaeology

in the last two decades is the introduction of a different method of research, the survey. This technique
consists of the collection of data on the surface and
of the identification of constructed structures, covering a large area and broad chronological periods.
One of the main intentions of these researches is

the identification of settlements spread in the countryside (chora in Greek). The study of the territory of
a Greek city is a relatively recent subject for archaeologists and it allows a new approach on ancient
Greek lifestyle.
A great part of the society was organized on an
agricultural basis, from the calendar (e.g., for festivals
and wars) to the economic, political, and social life,
since only citizens could own the land and cultivate it.
Recent discoveries all over Greece permitted the drawing of a better picture on several aspects, but especially
on the organization of the habitat in the form of farms
or small villages, as well as new hypothesis of demography estimations, of the economic production of the
land, etc. Another evolution is the cooperation of several scientists in the archaeological research: geographers, botanists, zooarchaeologists, among others, are
integrated in the archaeological team and search for a
broader knowledge of ancient lifestyle.
The first and the best-known example of survey in
Greece is the Boiotian Project, started in 1979 and
intended to draw a complete picture on this regions
occupation. Since then, several other projects have
been proposed almost everywhere in Greece and
they have given a much better idea of the ancient
rural life. One of the reasons surveys are so wellvalued is that their results are held in the form of
quantifiable data, allowing the development of models for the interpretation of the territorys occupation
and the comparison between several regions. Our
knowledge of the organization of Greek countryside
has improved considerably thanks to this new
method; nevertheless, much has been said to reinforce
the limits of surveys and the importance of completing them with traditional stratigraphic excavations.

1260 EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece

Economic Organization

Religion and Main Sanctuaries

As in every society, ancient Greece had a specific form

of organization of economic life; however, compared
with other themes, which are the subject of a clear
conceptualization by ancient authors, the economic
life was not an aspect of major interest. The word
economics (oikonomikos) comes from Greek, but it
held a very different sense at that time it was related
to the management of the household (oikos in Greek).
The treatises by Xenophon and Aristotle, both named
Oikonomikos, were entirely devoted to the administration of the household, in its broad sense, which
also included how to deal with the citizens family and
slaves. Nothing was ever written on how to administer the economy at the city level, or how economic
exchanges were organized. Our knowledge has to
draw either on the archaeological remains alone or
on some short texts (mainly inscriptions) dealing with
very specific subjects.
The rarity and the variety of sources (inscriptions,
numismatics, and several types of material culture)
result in several different interpretations for the
economic history of ancient Greece. The reference
book by M. I. Finley (The Ancient Economy, 1973)
stressed the importance of agriculture as the main
source of richness; more recently, the study of some
aspects of the long-distance commerce, especially
the study of amphorae, has drawn attention to the
possibilities of the high economic income merchants
could have.
There are basically two issues that favor this reappraisal of the importance of commerce: on the one
hand, the developments on the typology of ceramics
(whose locality and date of production can be identified much more precisely), and on the other hand,
submarine archaeology and the discovery of important shipwrecks with their load (the best-known
examples are those of Marseille and Alexandria).
These improvements lead to a much broader view
of economic exchanges and contribute to their reevaluation. The first and most important conclusion is that,
despite some texts (mainly the works of philosophers as
Platos Laws, The Republic, and Aristotles Politics)
advocating for an entirely autonomous city as the perfect model, all and every Greek city counted on external
commerce.
On the local scale, after a long tradition in Greek
archaeology of being interested only in the most
impressive monuments (temples, civic buildings,
etc.), some aspects of ancient common life have recently attracted attention. In this sense, excavations
of workshops and farms as well as surveys made in
the countryside contributed to reinforce and improve
our knowledge of the economic production.

Our knowledge of Greek religious practices has

continued to increase since the end of the nineteenth
century and the first large excavations conducted by
the French School of Archaeology (Delphi, Delos), by
the German school (which excavated mainly in Olympia, Samos, and in Turkish sites like Miletos and
Didyma), by the Austrian (Ephesos), by the American
school (Isthmia, Nemea), and by the Greek Archaeological Service (the Acropolis of Athens, Dodona, Eleusis, Epidauros). Those sites are very important for us to
approach the Greek way of honoring the gods.
One possible approach to the study of Greek sanctuaries and religion is by the festivals organized in
those places. We can start with the Olympic games, as
this field shows a recent improvement, due mostly to
the Olympic games of Athens in 2004.
Olympia The Germans have excavated the place
that gave its name to the Olympic games since the
end of the nineteenth century. Whereas a Mycenaean
cult center is attested, Olympia (NW Peloponnesus)
became important only in the Geometric and Archaic
Periods (776 BCE is the date traditionally given for
the beginning of the games). The buildings belong to
two main categories: worship (temples of Hera, altar
and temple of Zeus with the chryselephantine statue
made of gold and ivory by Phidias), and places
linked to the activities of the Olympics (stadium,
palaestra, gymnasium, and accommodation). More
specific and problematic is the so-called Phidias
workshop, a place where the technician certainly
sculpted the statue.
Olympic games were organized in four different
places, during what is called an olympiad: they started
in Olympia, continued in Isthmia and Nemea, then in
Delphi, and finished in Isthmia and in Nemea again.
Nemea In Nemea, S. G. Miller (University of
Berkeley, California) reconstructed the system of departure of the stadium (in Greek hysplex, which guaranteed a simultaneous start) and allowed a better
comprehension of the athletics. The excavations (of
the locker room, the passageway to the stadium, the
drinking fountains, and the platform for the judges)
and the restoration of Nemea, as well as the restoration in Isthmia (University of Chicago), complete our
knowledge of the buildings used for Olympic Games.
The following examples complete the panorama of
Greek places of worship.
Athens The sanctuary of Athena Polias on the
Acropolis of Athens is one of the most famous and
well-known religious places of classical antiquity

EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece 1261

Figure 7 Athens, Acropolis: the sacred rock from Philopappos Hill.

(Figure 7). Ancient sources are prolific (Pausanias,

Plutarch), several researchers studied this place, and
a large academic production is available. The excavations were first conducted in the nineteenth century
under the authority of the archaeological society
(P. Cavvadias) with German contribution (186295
mainly); in 1975 began a great campaign of restoration work that is still in progress. The Propylaea, the
Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and the temple of Athena
Nike are the major buildings of the sacred rock, but
our knowledge of this place also concerns the inscriptions (IG I3) and the offerings: statues, specially the
archaic maiden of the Perserschutt (the word, owed to
German archaeologist W. Dorpfeld, refers to all the
fragments resulted from the Persian vandalization of
the Acropolis in 480479 BCE), bronze statuettes,
vases, weapons, little objects.
Eleusis Eleusis, where the Greek Archaeological
Society has been working since 1882, is another place
of interest in Attica (22 km west of Athens). It was a
sanctuary of Demeter, where mysteries were celebrated. Eleusis became a pan-Hellenic sanctuary in the
Archaic period under Solon. The main architectural
features and the specific archaeological remains of
this sanctuary are the sacred well (Kallichoron), the
Cave of Pluto, and the Telesterion of Demeter where
the secret initiation rites were accomplished. The telesterion is a square building with banks of seats on its
four sides; here, initiated people watched the mysteries. This kind of building is very specific and
belongs to the category of meeting places. Other
examples have been excavated: for religious purposes
in Samothrace (Sanctuary of the Great Gods), Thebes
(Cabirion), and for civic purposes, in several agorai.

Some of the main Greek sanctuaries house oracles:

Delphi, Delos, Dodona, Didyma, Epidauros. In Delphi
(Phocidia), Apollo spoke to the believer through the
Pythia, a priestess; in Delos, in Didyma, and in other
places in Asia Minor (i.e., Claros), Apollo also gave
oracles. In Dodona (Epirus), it was Zeus oracle that
spoke by the rustle of the wind in the sacred tree (oak).
Asklepios, whose main sanctuary is in Epidauros (but
also Kos and Pergamon in Hellenistic and Roman
periods), cured the ill, sending them visions. All these
practices, documented by ancient texts and archaeological remains, have revealed specific installations,
which give us a better idea of the way Greeks consulted
the oracles.
Delphi Delphi is a sanctuary of Apollo located in
Central Greece, north of the Corinthian Golf, in
Phocidia. It was founded probably in the geometric
period, c. 800 BCE (but there are some traces of
Mycenaean occupation in the surrounding area).
The excavations conducted by the French school
since the end of the nineteenth century have revealed
numerous phases for the altar and temple of Apollo,
and several remains of offerings made to the divinity
(Figure 8). It is important to notice that, before
exploring the sanctuary, the French school and the
French government had to move the modern village
of Kastro (which developed since the Middle Ages in
the location of the ancient ruins). This operation
permitted the preservation of one of the most significant religious place of the ancient world. In other
places, like Olympia or Delos, which were not occupied since late antiquity, archaeologists did not encounter such problems. Our knowledge of Delphis
topography owes much to the testimony of the Greek

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Figure 8 Delphi, sanctuary of Apollon: theater (classical and Hellenistic periods), Apollo temple (fourth century) under it, and the
treasury of the Athenians at the bottom.

author Pausanias (Description of Greece, Book X)

who described the sanctuary in the second century
BCE. Historians and archaeologists compared the
remains excavated and the text; it results in a possible
recreation of the numerous architectural buildings
(temples, porticoes, about 30 treasuries) and sculptural offerings along the sacred way (the statue bases
are preserved and we can analyze the evolution of the
settings of such offerings). The archaeological finds
and the ancient sources combined allow us to understand Delphi as a real showcase for the cities which
represented at the sanctuary either major events
(victories on the barbarians, Persians, or Gauls) or
personal acts and commemorations. Delphi was, in
the symbolic spirit of Greek mythology, the navel of
the world. Neither archaeological nor geophysical
studies brought to light explanations about the functioning of the oracle (neither hole in the ground nor
divine spirit), famous in antiquity and used by Greeks
before every important enterprise (i.e., colonization).
Moreover, on the other side of the valley, the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia completes the panorama of this
important religious place (temple, treasuries, and a
tholos, built in the beginning of the fourth century
BCE, the function of which remains hypothetical).
Delos The sanctuary of Apollo in Delos (Cyclades)
is one of the main interests of this island deserted at
the end of antiquity. The French School of Archaeology started working there in 1873 and the activities
(excavations, studies, restorations) still carry on. The
oracle of Apollo was the second one after Delphi,

and, here again, Delian Festival and games were

held every four years.
Didyma The sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma (Asia
Minor, 10 km south of the city of Miletos) was a
famous cult place with a sacred spring and a grove
before the arrival of the Greeks. The Germans all
through the twentieth century up to the present have
conducted the excavations. Here, the study of the
Hellenistic period of the temple gives some information on the oracle: the temple was unroofed; a naiskos
in the middle of the court contains the statue of
Apollo, whereas an unusual room between the pronaos and the cella may have served as the Chresmographeion (office of the oracle). A sacred way linked
the Didyma sanctuary to the city of Miletos (also
excavated by a German team), and much has been
learnt on the procession held between these two
points from inscriptions and archaeological finds.
Dodona This sanctuary of Epirus (north of central
Greece, 20 km south of Ioannina) was famous for the
oracle of Zeus, traditionally the earliest oracle in
Greece. The earliest archaeological evidence for cult
activity dates to the eighth century BCE. Greek excavations (from 1873 up to the present) brought to light
the temple of Zeus and a peribolos wall that surrounded the sacred oak (early fourth century), three
other temples (Aphrodite, Dione, Themis), and a bouleuterion. Dodona developed a more monumental
character with the rule of King Pyrrhos (297272
BCE). A theater, a temple of Herakles, stoai, and

EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece 1263

finally a stadium were added. The theater and the

stadium belong to the festival buildings used in
Dodona for the Naia Festival (athletic and drama
contests) held every four years in honor of Zeus.
Epidauros In Epidauros (on the east coast of the
Argolid, Peloponnesus), the sanctuary honored first
Apollo (sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas) and then
Asklepios, God of Medicine. The excavations began
in 1881 (Greek Archaeological Society) and continued in the twentieth century, while the restoration
works are still in progress (Committee for the Preservation of the Epidaurus Monuments). In the fourth
and third centuries BCE, an ambitious building program resulted in the construction of monumental
buildings for the worship (the temple and the altar
of Asklepios, the tholos, the abaton, etc.), and later, of
convenient buildings (the theater, the hestiatoreion,
the baths, the palaestra, gymnasium, stadium, etc.).
The theater, the tholos, and the abaton (portico where
the sick waited for the god to appear in their sleep) are
the most specific buildings of this sanctuary. Porticoes
for incubation (abaton) are known in other sanctuaries of Asklepios (Athens, on the south side of the
Acropolis, Corinth) or Amphiaraos, hero healer
(Oropos, Attica). Like other religious festivals, the
Asklepieia (pan-Hellenic athletic and dramatic festival) were held every four years.
Samos, Ephesos Two other sanctuaries give some
precious data on the religious practices. The Heraion
of Samos (excavated mainly by the Germans between
1910 and 1914, 1925 and 1939, and since 1952) and
the Artemision of Ephesos (excavated by the Austrians since 1896) show us examples of an Archaic
Ionic temple. In these two places, we can follow the
development of the sanctuary from the Geometric
Period to Roman time. Ionic order began there, on
the west coast of Asia Minor: the archaic temple of
Artemis in Ephesos was the largest building in the
Archaic Greek world and the first large structure to
be built entirely in marble. The temple, reconstructed
after a fire in 356 BCE, was considered as one of the
Seven Wonders of the World. The special features of
the soil in the Heraion of Samos ensured the preservation of ivory and wood artifacts, which is very rare;
in the Ephesos so-called Artemision, many little
offerings were discovered and inform us on the cults
celebrated there in the Geometric Period, before the
construction of the archaic temple (so-called Cresus
temple).
Necropolis Mausoleum: Funerary Customs

The archaeology of death is one of the most productive fields of our discipline. The funerary custom is

an important element in the definition of a society:

its regularity and diffusion in space may shed light
on the extent of a given community. The type of
tombs (sarcophagus, funeral urn, tumulus, for an
individual or for a family, etc.), the funerary ritual,
the treatment of the corpse (incineration or inhumation), and the artifacts buried together with the
deceased inform us of the physical characteristics
and the social status of the deceased, as well as the
religious beliefs of the community.
We choose to comment on four sites, ranging from
the Proto-Geometric to the fourth century BCE, that
illustrate archaeological concerns of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries: the heroon of Lefkandi
(Euboia), the cemetery of the Kerameikos in Athens,
the mausoleum of Halikarnassos (Asia Minor), and
the royal necropolis of Vergina (Macedonia).
The British School of Archaeology in Athens excavated the heroon of Lefkandi during the 1980s. The
excavation of the Toumba cemetery has brought to
light a long and narrow, apsidal building dated to the
first half of the tenth century BCE. It measures c. 50 
13.5 m2, and a row of holes for wooden posts surrounds the building. Other holes, in the center of the
building, are the remains of the inner colonnade: the
heroon, like the first Archaic temple in stone, had an
axial colonnade. Two burial shafts were uncovered
inside, one containing the skeletons of four horses,
the other both the inhumation of a woman and the
cremation of a warrior. They were rich in offerings,
some of which were imported, and show the
exchanges between Greece and Near East at that
time. The structure has been interpreted as a local
rulers house, which, after his death, was covered
with a mound and converted to a heroon.
The cemetery of the Kerameikos in Athens was
explored first by the Greek Archaeological Society
(18631913) and since 1913 by the German Archaeological Institute. These excavations allow us to understand on a wide scale the funerary practices of the
rich Athenians from the sub-Mycenaean and ProtoGeometric periods to the late imperial Roman time.
This cemetery includes private graves, tumuli with
several burials, public burial monument (the demosion sema), and peribolos tomb. All these funerary
structures have revealed rich material that gives an
idea of the citizens buried there. The monuments
discovered over the tomb, statues (kouroi and
korai), steles, or naiskoi, give several examples for
the history of art of both Archaic and classical times
(Figure 9).
Among the important discoveries of the nineteenth
century, we have to consider the mausoleum of Halikarnassos. This is an eponymous monument: we name
this kind of funerary structure after the Mausolos

1264 EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece

Figure 9 Athens, Kerameikos cemetery: the Street of the Tombs, with classical funerary monuments (mostly fourth century BCE).

dynasty of Karia who died in 353352 BCE. Charles

Newton, who removed many of the sculptures to the
British Museum, excavated the site in 1857. Excavations resumed under Danish direction in 1966. It is a
huge construction (total height of monument c. 57.6 m)
made up of a tall podium (with two or three steps), a
cella surrounded by a peristyle, and a pyramidal roof
crowned by a sculpture. The mausoleum associates
Greek features and local, indigenous ones. Greek
sculptors came to Halikarnassos (following ancient
authors Pliny and Vitruvius) we can see it in the
relief friezes which decorate the monument but the
entire structure owes much to local traditions, for
example, the Lycian pillar tombs and the Nereid
Monument of Xanthos. Nowadays, researchers place
emphasis on all these influences and on the relations
between the funerary structures of Greek cemeteries
(like the Kerameikos) and those ones.
In 1977, Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos
discovered the royal necropolis of Vergina (Macedonia). Vergina-Aigai was the first capital of Macedonia:
archaeologists brought to light the palace and a
large number of tombs (from the tenth to the second
century BCE). A huge tumulus, 110 m in diameter
containing three vaulted tomb chambers and one
cist grave, lies on the western edge of the necropolis.
These royal burials of the last third of the fourth
century, with their well-preserved painted decoration
and rich contents (gold and ivory artifacts, weapons,
crimson-purple fabrics, ruins of funerary furniture)
are among the most spectacular recent discoveries of
Greek archaeology. Tomb II, with a royal hunt painting on the front, has been identified as the tomb
of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. Vergina
and other Macedonian tombs (Lefkadia, Aghios

Athanasios) are now being published by their Greek

finders or curators.
Artistic Achievements

Ancient painting When we talk about ancient painting, we have only a few works of art to look at:
Minoan and Mycenaean wall paintings are often
fragmentary; almost nothing is preserved from the
Classical period. The Greek author Pausanias gives
some rich descriptions of mural paintings in Delphis
Cnidian Lesche (by Polygnotos), of the panels in the
Stoa Poikile (painted stoa) of the Athenian agora (by
famous Athenian artists), or in the left room of the
Acropolis Propylaea, but nothing has survived. The
only possible example of a classical Greek painting is
to be found in the colonial context of the Tomb of the
Diver in Paestum (Figure 10). The tomb formed by
four slabs and one lid, all of them painted, was dated
to 480 BCE. The very characteristic of painting the
inside of a tomb and certain aspects of the iconography put some doubts on the identification of the tomb
as Greek. On the other hand, the tomb belongs to a
Greek city, and the style of the paintings is comparable to the contemporaneous Greek ceramics. For the
Archaic and classical periods, in terms of Greek
painting, the black or red painted vases (produced in
Greece mainly between c. seventh and third century
BCE) remain the most reliable source.
However, recent archaeological discoveries in the
north of Greece (Macedonia; see also the discussion on cemeteries) invite us to a new approach to
the ancient authors whose writings on painting and
color have been feeding the collective imagination
of artists, philosophers and historians since the

EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece 1265

Figure 10 Paestum National Museum, south Italy: Tomb of the Diver, detail of the lid with the diving scene (c. 480 BCE).

Renaissance. Recent books bring a new way of looking at the links between Roman and Greek paintings:
the first are sometimes inspired by the second, when
they are not copies of Greek famous creations, as the
Roman author Pliny the Elder, for example, reported
(Natural History, XXXV). Archaeometry and new
techniques of photographic analysis (infrared, ultraviolet, etc.) complete iconographic and stylistic studies: analyses and characterization of the pigments
and the painting techniques used on Macedonian,
Thracian, or Alexandrian monumental tombs, on the
Hellenistic paintings collection of Louvre Museum in
Paris, on the funerary stele of Demetrias-Volos,
revealed the characteristics of this kind of painting
(monumental and funerary) and allow some more
precise considerations.
On the other hand, the discipline has seen a renewal of the studies on the Roman wall painting (like for
the Greeks, Roman portable panels disappeared) of
the Pompeii, Herculaneum (Campania), or Farnesina
(Rome) villae. Current research starts from the four
styles defined by A. Mau in 1899 (Style I, incrustations simulating marble of various colors and types
on painted plaster; Style II, architectonic or architectural, artists imitated architectural forms by pictorial
means; Style III, ornamental, under Augustus reign;
Style IV, heterogeneous) to define and specify features
that depend on the geographical, historical, political,
sociological, and of course architectural contexts.
Our knowledge of ancient painting has recently
improved not only with these late classical and Hellenistic discoveries, but also with the renewal of the
study on protohistoric painting.
Cycladic wall paintings were brought to light in the
south Aegean islands of Santorini (frescoes of the
ancient habitations in Akrotiri-Thera, excavated by
S. Marinatos, then by Ch. Doumas (Archaeological
Society at Athens, since 1967), Melos (Phylakopi),
and Keos (Ayia Irini, University of Cincinnati since

1960); Minoan paintings were discovered in Crete

(palace of Knossos, Ayia Triada, villae of Amnisos
and Tylissos in the surroundings). All the figurative
paintings are neopalatial in date (17001450 BCE).
The frescoes of Akrotiri-Thera are now exhibited in
the Museum of Prehistoric Thera and in the National
Museum in Athens, while restoration works are now
being conducted on the site. The frescoes of Knossos,
discovered by Sir Arthur Evans, are exhibited in the
Herakleion Archaeological Museum; copies are on
display for tourist purposes on the site.
The Minoan frescoes have different sizes: some of
them covered the wall in its whole height (e.g., the
saffron gatherer), others were under life size (taureador fresco) or miniature (in this case, the paintings
emphasized architectural parts like the doors or
windows). Distinction can also be made between the
subjects: among the frescoes with human and animal
representations, we find bull-leaping and bullcatching compositions, boxing and wrestling scenes,
processional scenes; there are also formal patterns or
heraldic animals on a large scale (frieze of figureof-eight shields or griffins flanking throne) and,
finally, decorated floors (the dolphin fresco, restored
by Evans like a mural, probably collapsed from the
second story).
Mycenaean paintings were discovered in the palaces
of Mycenae (H. Schliemann, Greek and English excavators), Tiryns (H. Schliemann and W. Dorpfeld), and
Pylos (palace of Nestor, paintings first published by
M. Lang, 1969), and also in Orchomenos and Thebes;
some of the Knossos murals are Mycenaean because
they were painted when the Mycenaeans came to Crete
c. 1450 BCE.
Mycenae and Tiryns are well known by archaeologists and historians. In Pylos, where the frescoes that
stood on the walls at the time of their destruction
have survived in great number, the present purpose
is to restore the paintings trying to reconstruct the

1266 EUROPE, SOUTH/Greece

decorative program from the huge quantities of fragments. The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project
(multi-disciplinary, diachronic archaeological expedition formally organized in 1990 to investigate the
history of prehistoric and historic settlement and land
use in western Messenia in Greece, in an area centered on the Bronze Age administrative center known
as the Palace of Nestor, University of Cincinnati and
other contributions) is one of the programs which
illustrates the association of researchers in order to
improve our knowledge on a place or an area. In this
context, chemists, physicists, archaeologists, and art
historians work together and produce new results
that give another idea of the ancient artifacts, way
of life, etc. Ancient recreations of the Mycenaeans
paintings of Pylos have been checked, completed, or
changed, while new ones have been suggested; some
fragments have revealed clearly traces of painting or
patterns.
Sculpture In this article, we cannot take into consideration all the recent discoveries and improvements in
the study of ancient pieces of art. We can only mention the direction taken by art historians who are
dealing with Greek sculpture. Marble originals, rare
bronze originals (often discovered under the sea), or
Romans copies of both continue to impress visitors of
antique museums. The reception, the visual perception, and the setting of the statues are nowadays
subjects of study, as well as the use of color or gilding
on marble sculpture. It is neither the career of one
sculptor, nor the stylistic or iconographic studies,
which mainly interests the art historians and archaeologists of the twenty-first century: they want to understand Greek sculpture from the quarrying of the block

in the quarry to the workshop of the sculptor, and from

there to the place of exhibition (Figure 11).
Ceramics The same shift of interest has also happened in the study of Greek ceramics. In the beginning,
archaeologists cared only for the beautiful pieces of
art of painted vases; more recently, scholars are more
preoccupied in defining typologies and in making
them more accurate. In a broader sense, the modern
approach aims at constituting precise corpora either
of forms with accurate dating or in a reappraisal of
those painted vases, trying to show evolutions of style
and of subjects represented. The study of everyday
vases, and particularly amphorae, permitted assessment of some aspects of the organization of ancient
daily life. Analyzing the paintings, researchers are
trying to account for the messages those images
could convey, contributing thus to a better comprehension of the values of those societies and their
symbolic meanings.
A new approach that sees material culture as an
indication of the peoples identities (mainly grouped
under the term ethnicity) is perceptible in the study of
Greek ceramics, either in the constitution of typologies or in the analysis of representations and symbolic
meanings of images.
Recent improvements in Greek archaeology are
now allowing the reduction of the differences of approach between a more traditional one, based essentially on classics, and a more conceptual one,
influenced by an anthropological method developed
initially for prehistoric archaeology. Those two
approaches have much to gain from each other and
Greek archaeology is the perfect field for that encounter, as it is a privileged area, containing extensive

Figure 11 Samos, Greece: the cast of the sculptural group offered by Geneleos (beginning of the sixth century) is set up on the site,
while the original pieces are in Samos and Berlin museums.

EUROPE, SOUTH/Greek Colonies 1267

written documents as well as very broad material

culture that can touch all aspects of past life, from
poor peoples daily life to high-level artistic and economic achievements of the elite.
See also: Asia, West: Roman Eastern Colonies; Ceramics
and Pottery; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Classical Archaeology; Ethnicity; Europe, South: Greek
Colonies; Rome; Historical Archaeology: Methods; Landscape Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology.

Further Reading
de Carbonnie`res P (1995) Olympie: La victoire pour les dieux.
Paris: CNRS.
Empereur J-Y and Garlan Y (eds.) (1986) Recherches sur les
amphores grecques. Athens: Ecole Francaise dAthe`nes; Paris:
De Boccard.
Etienne R, Muller Ch, and Prost Fr (2000) Archeologie historique
de la Gre`ce antique. Paris: Ellipses.
Holtzmann B (2003) LAcropole dAthe`nes: Monuments. Cultes et
histoire du sanctuaire dAthe`na Polias. Paris: Picard.
Immerwahr S (1990) Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age. University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Knigge U (1991) The Athenian Kerameikos. History Monuments
Excavations. Athens: The German Archaeological Institute in
Athens (Krene Editions).
Miller SG (2004) Ancient Greek Athletics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Morris I (1992) Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical
Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rouveret A (2004) Peintures grecques antiques La collection
hellenistique du musee du Louvre. Paris: Fayard-Musee du
Louvre.
Whitley J (2001) The Archaeology of Ancient Greece. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Greek Colonies
Gocha R Tsetskhladze, University of Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Archaic period Traditionally dated c. 700479 BC. Some
scholars prefer different dates: starting from c. 800 BC with
the appearance of the Greek alphabet; or from c. 750 BC, to
coincide with the onset of the Greek renaissance; or identify
c. 700600 BC as the Orientalizing period, when many ideas and
features came from the Near East. 479 BC marks the end of the
Persian Wars, a significant turning-point in Greek history.
A period of significant Greek achievement in pottery, sculpture,
architecture, lyric poetry, philosophy, and new forms of political
organization (from tyranny to democracy).

Classical period c. 479323 BC. From the end of the

Graeco-Persian Wars to the conquest of the Near East by
Alexander the Great and his death. The fifth century marks the
development by Athens of her empire, the conflict between
Athens and Sparta, resulting in the Second Peloponnesian War
(431404 BC), the defeat of Athens and the loss of its empire;
culturally a golden age thanks to Pericles; further refinement of
democratic government. The fourth century is marked by the
fight for dominance between Sparta, Athens, and Thebes. Athens
remained the dominant intellectual center (Plato, Aristotle,
philosophy, rhetoric, etc.).
colonization A form of migration, deliberate in intent. For the
Archaic period of ancient Greek history, it dates from c. 750
down to c. 490 BC and describes Greek expansion throughout
the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, which took place for
a variety of reasons. Colonization continued in the Classical,
Hellenistic, and Roman periods. Ancient colonization was
different from its modern counterpart.
Hellenistic period 32331 BC from Alexanders conquest of
the Persian empire to the defeat of Cleopatra VII of Egypt by
Rome (and her suicide in 30 BC). Under Alexanders successors,
numbers of small kingdoms emerged throughout the Near East
from the defeated Achaemenid empire. Greek culture spread
beyond the Mediterranean, resulting in the Hellenization of local
cultures and the absorption of features of local cultures by the
Greeks; Alexandria became the true center of Greek culture.
From the late third century BC, Rome gradually conquered the
whole Mediterranean world; from c. 200 BC it began to develop
a culture of its own, heavily influenced by Greek models.
migration Movement of a group of people as a body, usually in
large numbers and over large distances. Migrations happen in
every period of human history, for many and various reasons, for
example, displacement by war, collapse of empires, natural
disaster, shortage of food or raw materials, etc.
post-and-pise construction Vertical wooden framework
with rammed earth/clay infilling to make walls.

Major Greek expansion around the Mediterranean and

the Black Sea, called in academic literature Greek
colonization, dates from the Archaic period (eighth
century BC to beginning of the fifth century BC).
Migration and colonization feature in every period of
Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern history, but Archaic
Greek colonization is distinguished from most others
by its scale and extent (the only comparisons to be
made are with Alexander the Greats campaign in
the Near East and the Hellenistic period, but the nature
and character of these are different).
Greece itself had witnessed migration even before
the Archaic period: the Ionians migrated from mainland Greece (followed by Dorians and Aeolians) in
the late eleventh to tenth century BC and settled
the islands of the Aegean and on the west coast of
Asia Minor, founding 12 cities; earlier still, the Mycenaeans had established their settlements around the
Mediterranean.
The reasons why Archaic Greek colonization was
such an important phenomenon are simple and
straightforward. Greeks set up colonies in new environments, establishing themselves in the lands

1268 Greek Colonies

stretching from the Iberian Peninsula in the West to

North Africa in the South and the Black Sea in the
North East (Figure 1). In this colonial world, Greek
and local cultures met, influenced, and enriched each
other, and together with the spread of the Roman
empire and Christianity formed the foundations of
modern European culture.

Introduction: General Observations

Although the study of Greek colonization, colonies,
and overseas settlements has a long history, there are
some methodological issues to be addressed, not least
the term colonization. There has been some discussion of the appropriateness of the term to the Ancient
Greek context. Was what happened really colonization
or just a form of migration? Nowadays, colonization is generally recognized as a modern Anglophone
concept, based on imperial activity in the recent past,
transported back and forced onto Ancient Greece; the
usefulness of applying such terminology to the ancient
world is debatable. In reality we are talking about
words, and since colonization has been in common

currency, it is hard to abandon its use. The fact is

that there were Greek settlements outside the Greek
mainland.
We have few, if any, ancient written sources contemporary with Greek colonization. Our information
comes from a whole range of Greek and Latin authors.
Herodotus (c. 485425 BC), Thucydides (c. 460/455
395 BC), Strabo (c. 64/3 BCAD 23), Pseudo-Scymnus
(c. 13874 BC), and Eusebius (c. AD 260339) are our
main sources on the establishment and description
of colonies. Although in the Odyssey Homer provides
us not just with information on geography, trade,
and life in the Greek city but with an account of an
ideal colonial site, we do not know when Homer lived
(the latest suggestion is the mid-seventh century BC).
Ancient authors give foundation dates for colonies,
for instance Thucydides those for Sicily. But how
accurate are these dates when he was writing a few
centuries later? The dates given in ancient written
sources need to be compared with those obtained
from archaeological evidence, especially the earliest
Greek pottery found in colonial sites (see Table 1).
Even this approach has drawbacks: how extensively

Olbia
Panticapaeum
Tyras
Theodosia
Chersonesus

Histria

ET

RU

Gades
Maenaca

Mesembria
Apollonia
Rome

Heraclea
Chalcedon

Byzantium

Epidamnus

Kyme
Pithekoussai

Metapontion
Cyzicus

Chalcis
Eretriaj

Corinth

Phycaea
LYDIA
Miletus

ACHAEA

NI

Megara

lO

Corcyra
Himera Naxos
Utica I Selinous
L
Katane
Akragas
T
Carthage
Syracuse
Gela
Kamarina
E
Hadrumetum
D

Amisus

Trapezus

PHRYGIA

Aspendus CIA
LI
CI

PAM
PHY
LIA

Al Mina

Rhodes

CYPRUS
CRETE
N

Tyre

PHO

R
A

Phasis

SEA
Sinope

IA

Tartessus
Hemeroscopium

AN
S

Alalia

RIC IS
.
LEA
BA

BLACK

ENIC

Massalia
Emporium

SC

Barca Cyrene
L IBYA

Naucratis
Memphis
EGYPT

Figure 1 Major Greek colonies in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Source of illustration: Tsetskhladze GR and De Angelis F (eds.)
(1994) The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, endpapers.

Greek Colonies 1269

Table 1 Main Greek colonies and settlements in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (all dates are BC)
Settlement

Mother-city/cities

Literary dates for foundation

Earliest archaeological
material

Earlier local
population

Abdera

1. Clazomenae
2. Teos
Miletus
Andros
Syracuse
Gela
Aegina
Aeolia

1. 654 (Eusebius)
2. c. 545
c. 680652 (Strabo)
655 (Eusebius)
663 (Thucydides)
580
late 6th c. (Strabo)
second half of 7th c.first half of 6th c.
(Herodotus, Ephorus, Ps.-Scymnus,
Strabo)
shortly after 600
c. 545
before 561 (Ephorus, Strabo)
c. 655625
late 7th c.

second half of 7th c.

No

c. 600575

?Yes

c. 655625
c. 600

c. 625600
c. 600

Yes

c. 600

Yes
Yes

Abydus
Acanthus
Acrae
Acragas
Adria
Aenus

Agathe
Alalia
Alopeconnesus
Ambracia
Amisus
Anactorium
Apollonia in
Illyria
Apollonia in
Libya
Apollonia
Pontica
Argilus
Assera
Assus
Astacus
Barca
Berezan
Bisanthe
Black Corcyra
Byzantium
Callatis
Camarina
Cardia
Casmenae
Catane
Caulonia
Celenderis
Cepoi
Cerasus
Chalcedon
Chersonesus
Taurica
Chersonesus
(Thracian)
Cius
Cleonae
Colonae
Corcyra

Phocaea
Phocaea/Massalia
Aeolians
Corinth
Miletus and ?
Phocaea
Corinth and Corcyra
Corinth and Corcyra
Thera

?6th c.
second quarter of 7th c.
c. 600575
c. 525500

Yes
Yes

third quarter of 7th c.

c. 575550
Yes

Miletus

c. 610 (Ps.-Scymnus)

late 7th c.

Andros
Chalcis
Methymna
Megara and Athens
Cyrene
Miletus
Samos
Cnidus
Megara
Heraclea Pontica
Syracuse

?655 (Eusebius)

mid-7th c.

?7th c.
?711 (Eusebius)
c. 560550
647

6th c.

c. 630

Yes

6th c.
659 (Eusebius) or 668
late 6th c.
601 (Eusebius); shortly before c. 597
(Thucydides)
late 7th c.

600575
650625
4th c.
late 7th c.

No

shortly before c. 642 (Thucydides)

737/6 (Eusebius); c. 728 (Thucydides)

c. 600
second half of 8th c.
c. 700

Yes
No

mid-6th c.

580560

?Yes
Yes

685 and 679 (Eusebius)

421

525500

Yes

1. Plutarch
2. 707/6 (Eusebius);
same as Syracuse (Strabo)

second half of 8th c.

Yes

7th c.
some pre-750 in pre-Hellenic
context; first colonial pottery
after 725

Miletus and
Clazomenae
Syracuse
Chalcis
Croton
Samos
Miletus
Sinope
Megara
Heraclea Pontica
Athens

561556

Miletus
Chalcis
Miletus
1. Eretria
2. Corinth

627

Cotyora
Croton
Cumae (Italy)

Sinope
Achaea
Chalcis and Eretria

709 (Eusebius)
1050 (Eusebius)

Cydonia

Samos (then Aegina)

c. 520 (Herodotus)

Yes
No
Yes

Continued

1270 Greek Colonies

Table 1 Continued
Settlement

Mother-city/cities

Literary dates for foundation

Earliest archaeological
material

Earlier local
population

Cyrene

Thera

late 7th c.

Yes

Cyzicus

Miletus

Dicaearchia
Dioscourias

Samos
Miletus

1. 762/1
2. 632/1 (Eusebius)
1. 756/5
2. 676/5 (Eusebius)
531 (Eusebius)
c. 550

Yes

Elea
Emporion
Epidamnus
Euhesperides
Gale
Galepsus
Gela

Phocaea
Massalia/Phocaea
Corcyra
Cyrene
Chalcis
Thasos
Rhodes and Crete

early/first third of 6th c.

(local inland settlement)
first half of 6th c.
c. 600575

Gryneion
Helorus
Heraclea
Minoa
Heraclea
Pontica
Hermonassa
Himera

Aeolia
Syracuse
Selinus

Hipponium
Histria
Hyria
Lampsacus
Laus
Leontini
Leros
Leucas
Limnae
Lipara
Locri
Epizephyrii
Madytus
Maronea
Massalia
Mecyberna
Medma
Megara
Hyblaea
Mende
Mesembria
Metapontum
Metaurus
Methone
Miletopolis
Mylae
Myrmecium
Nagidus
Naucratis
Naxus (Sicily)
Neapolis
(Kavalla)
Nymphaeum
Oasis Polis

Megara and
Boeotians
Miletus and Mytilene
Zancle/Mylae
Locri Epizephyrii
Miletus
Crete
Miletus
Sybaris
Chalcis
Miletus
Corinth
Miletus
Cnidus
Locris
Lesbos
Chios
Phocaea
Chalcis
Locri Epizephyrii
Megara
Eretria
Megara, Byzantium,
Chalcedon
Achaea
1. Zancle
2. Locri Epizephyrii
Eretria
Miletus
Zancle
Miletus or
Panticapaeum
Samos
Several Ionian cities
Chalcis

c. 540
c. 600
627 (Eusebius)
before c. 515

692/1 (Eusebius); shortly before 688

(Thucydides)

before 510

657 (Eusebius)
?7th c.
654 (Eusebius)
shortly before 728 (Thucydides)

c. 625
c. 700

Yes

by 500
c. 700
mid-6th c.

No
Yes

575550
c. 625
c. 620
630
6th c.

750725
7th c.

?Yes

Yes

Yes

mid-7th c.
630 (Eusebius)
679 (Eusebius); temp Messenian war
(Aristotle)
before c. 650
598 (Eusebius)

728 (Thucydides); before Syracuse

(Ephorus)
493
775/4 (Eusebius)

575550
c. 700

Yes

c. 600
c. 600
third quarter of 8th c.

No

?11th c.
c. 500
last quarter of 8th c.
1. 700650 2. c. 550

Yes

716 (Eusebius)

last quarter of 8th c.

575550

No

c. 655 (Strabo)
737 (Eusebius); shortly before 733
(Thucydides)

last quarter of 7th c.

third quarter of 8th c.

Yes
Yes

c. 733 or c. 706

c. 650625

Thasos
Miletus
Samos

610575

554 (Ps.-Scymnus) (Strabo)

650/49 (Eusebius); 648 (Ptolemy,

Diodorus)

Yes

580570
before c. 525

Yes

Greek Colonies 1271

Table 1 Continued
Settlement

Mother-city/cities

Literary dates for foundation

Earliest archaeological
material

Earlier local
population

Odessus
Oesyme
Olbia
Paesus
Pandosia
Panticapaeum
Parium

585539

c. 560
650625
575550

Yes

c. 725700
590570

Yes

Parthenope
Patraeus
Perinthus
Phanagoria
Phaselis
Phasis
Pilorus
Pithecusa
Posidonia
Potidaea
Priapus
Proconnesus
Prusias
Pyxus
Rhegium
Rhode
Samothrace
Sane
Sarte
Scepsis
Scione
Selinus

Miletus
Thasos
Miletus
Miletus
Achaeans/Elis
Miletus
Paros, Miletus,
Erythrae
Cumae/Rhodes
Miletus
Samos
Teos
Rhodes
Miletus
Chalcis
Chalcis and Eretria
Sybaris
Corinth
Miletus
Miletus
?Miletus
Sybaris
Chalcis (and Zancle)
Rhodes
Samos
Andros
Chalcis
Miletus
Achaea
Megara Hyblaea

675650
mid 6th c.

?Yes

c. 540

?Yes

c. 550530

Yes

c. 750725
c. 600
c. 600

Up to a point
No

Selymbria
Sermyle
Sestus
Side
Sigeum
Singus
Sinope

Megara
Chalcis
Lesbos
Cyme
Athens
Chalcis
Miletus

Siris
Spina
Stagirus
Stryme
Sybaris
Syracuse
Tanais
Taras
Tauchira
Temesa
Terina
Thasos

Colophon
Chalcidians
Thasos
Achaea
Corinth
?Miletus
Sparta
Cyrene
?Croton
Croton
Paros

Theodosia
Tieum
Tomis
Torone
Trapezus
Tyras
Tyritace
Zancle

Miletus
Miletus
Miletus
Chalcis
Sinope
Miletus
Miletus
Cumae/Chalcis

647
775/4 (Eusebius)
709
12th c. (Strabo)
550500
602 (Eusebius)
c. 545
?688

625585
before c. 690
627 (Eusebius)
8th c.
9th-8th cc.
600500
655

720s
late 7th c.
c. 700

Yes

651 (Diodorus Siculus); 650 (Eusebius);

628 (Thucydides)
before Byzantium

mid-7th c.

Nearby

7th-6th cc.
620610
1. pre-757 (Scymnus)
2. 631/0 (Eusebius)
c. 680652
656 (Eusebius)
c. 650
720s (Ps.-Scymnus); 710/9 (Eusebius)
735
706 (Eusebius)

1425 (Eusebius); mid-17th c.

(Archilocus)
550500

before c. 650
757/6 (Eusebius)
mid-6th c.
8th c.

last third of 7th c.

c. 700

720s
c. 750725
c. 625600
c. 700
c. 630
c. 500
c. 500
c. 650

No
Yes

580570

Yes

early 6th c.
late 12th c.
second half of 6th c.
575550
third quarter of 8th c.

Yes

Yes

Yes
Yes
?Yes
?Yes
No

Adapted from Graham (1982), 160162, Osborne (1996) 121125, with additions from Tsetskhladze and De Angelis (1994) passim, and
Hansen and Nielson (2004) passim.

1272 Greek Colonies

date and describes a city-state enjoying independent

political and social institutions (not least its own
constitution), and furnished with an agricultural territory (chora). The term apoikia is generally used
for colonies; its literal translation is a settlement far
from home, a colony. Although the term carries no
particular political or social meaning, it can include
a proto-polis with independent political and social
arrangements and a chora. To distinguish another
kind of colonial settlement, emporion is used. It is a
kind of trading-post or settlement, lacking a chora
or any independent social and political structure,
established in a foreign land, either as a self-contained
site or as part of an existing native urban settlement,
sometimes with the permission of local rulers and
under their control. The first use of the term emporion was by Herodotus in the fifth century to describe
Ionian Naucratis in Egypt (see below). But this term
too is artificial: a polis was also a trading center,
sometimes with a designated area called, in ancient
writings, an emporion. Excavation of so-called
emporia demonstrates that these were not just trading
stations but also centers of manufacture. In recent
times the formulation port-of-trade (introduced for
the first time for the ancient world by K. Polanyi
in the 1950s60s) has gained increased favor with

has the site been studied and have the earliest habitation levels been reached? In several cases we know
the name of a colony from written sources but have
been unable to locate it archaeologically, or unable to
investigate it since it lies under a modern city. The
first Greek colonies and overseas settlements were
small, situated mainly on peninsulas for easier
defence. Since the Archaic period the landscape has
changed sea levels have risen, peninsulas have become islands, suffered erosion, been submerged, etc.
(Figures 2 and 3).
We face pitfalls with the terminology used by ancient authors to describe Greek cities and colonies. It
all comes from (and applies to) the Classical period
and later. Its application by many modern scholars to
the Archaic period complicates more than it clarifies.
According to the ideal Classical concept of a polis
(city-state), each city should have a grid-plan, fortification walls, a designated area for temples and cult
activity (temenos), market-place (agora), gymnasium,
theater, etc. Indeed, we can identify these features
more or less easily when excavating Classical and
Hellenistic sites, but they were not the norm in earlier
periods. Even to use the term polis for the Archaic
period, either in mainland Greece or in the colonial
world, causes problems: the concept belongs to a later

City wall

about 600 B.C.

about 560 B.C.
about 500 B.C.
Supposed coastline
in 6th century B.C.
Main streets
Marshes
Craftsmen's district
City gate

Carmes
Major

Pistoles

Moulins
Bourse
Agora
?

Saintlaurent

R
OU
RB
A
H

NE
ZO

Old Harbor

Figure 2 Plan of Archaic Massalia (now Marseilles, southern France). Initially, colonies were small, as the city walls of about 600 BC
clearly demonstrate in this case; with the increase of population, a greater area was enclosed. The coastline has changed since ancient
times: the ancient harbor is now dry land. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and
Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 363, fig. 3.

Greek Colonies 1273

Figure 3 Topography of Emporion (Spain). The initial settlement was established on a small off-shore island called Palaiapolis (right of
plan; now linked to the mainland). Later, the colony was moved to the mainland, called Neapolis (left of plan). Source: Tsetskhladze GR
(ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 475, fig. 26.

historians of the ancient economy; for example, Archaic Naucratis is so labeled, although it was more
than a trading place it manufactured pottery and
scarabs. Thus, once again, modern conceptions are
applied to ancient reality.
The reasons for colonization are the most difficult
to identify and disentangle. There were particular
reasons for the establishment of each colony and it
is practically impossible to make watertight generalizations. Many writers adopt a perspective influenced by modern experiences: overpopulation, food
shortages, the hunt for raw materials, etc. Ancient
written sources seldom mention reasons; where they
do, the emphasis is always on forced emigration. The
eighth century BC is not the seventeenth to eighteenth
centuries AD. In the Archaic period there was little
knowledge of distant lands; no trade routes plied
regularly by shipping. According to one modern
scholar, it was murder to establish a colony. The
people had no idea where they were going, how
many of them would get there, and what they would
find when they did. Another practice known from
ancient times is of tyrants disposing of (to them)
undesirable people by forcing them to migrate. The
population of the earliest colonies was small; we have
few definite figures, one is of 1000 people at Leucas,
200 at Apollonia in Illyria and the same number at
Cyrene. The most obvious of example of forced
migration in response to a clear set of circumstances
is Ionia in East Greece, a very wealthy region in
modern-day western Turkey with Miletus as its
main city. From the second half of the seventh century, neighboring Lydia began to expand, gradually
absorbing Ionian territory; this was the time that
Ionia sent out its first colonies. Greater misfortune

befell it from the middle of the sixth century when

the Achaemenid empire began to conquer Ionian territory and then, in the wake of the Ionian revolt in
499494 BC, laid it to waste. Ancient written sources
indicate directly that the Ionian population fled from
the Persians their choice was flight or to remain and
be enslaved or killed. Thus, they established between
75 and 90 colonies around the Black Sea and several
in the western Mediterranean. Of course, there was
a shortage of land and a shortage of food, but this
was not from overpopulation, it arose from loss of
resources to a conquering foe; and external difficulties provoked internal tension between different political groups, especially in Miletus. One Ionian city,
Teos, after sending out colonies to Abdera in Aegean
Thrace and Phanagoria in the Black Sea, became so
depopulated that Abdera was asked to send people
back to refound the mother-city.
We have a few inscriptions, such as foundation
decrees of the Late Archaic period, which describe
the process and formalities of founding a colony; the
vast majority of the information comes, however,
from Classical and later authors. Some colonies
were established by a mother-city (metropolis) as an
act of state, others as a private venture organized by
an individual or group, in each case choosing an
oikistes (leader/founder of the colony), from no particular group or class but in many cases a nobleman.
The oikistes then consulted the Delphic Oracle in
order to obtain the approval of the gods for his venture: the colony would be a new home for the Greek
gods as well as for the settlers. The colonists and those
who stayed behind bound themselves by a solemn
oath not to harm each other (initially, colonies reproduced the same cults, calendars, dialects, scripts, state

1274 Greek Colonies

offices, and social and political divisions as in their

mother-cities). The oikistes was a very important
man. According to sources of the Classical period, it
was he who named the new city, as well as selecting
its precise site when the party arrived at its destination; he supervised the building of the city walls,
dwellings and temples, and the division of land. The
death of the oikistes may be seen as the end of
the foundation process: he became a hero and his
tomb was worshipped with rituals and offerings.
It was a widely held opinion, based mainly on the
information of Classical authors, that only males set
off to colonize; and that Greek men took local
women. Of course, intermarriage was practiced and
many ventures may have been entirely male, but we
know that women (priestesses) accompanied men in
the foundation of Thasos and Massalia. It is also
possible that women followed their men to a colony
once it had been established. In any case, we have no
evidence from the Archaic sources to be certain one
way or another.
The relationship between the colonists and the native inhabitants was very important. Again, there is
no single model. Unfortunately, in modern scholarship, political correctness has cast a shadow. The
word barbarian has fallen from favor because of its
modern connotations; we forget how the Archaic
Greeks used it onomatopeically for the sound of
local languages to their ears. Thus, barbarian had
no cultural connotations; it meant simply someone
who did not speak Greek. Modern academics have
even set up an artificial dichotomy of Greeks and
Others. Scholars are increasingly applying modern
definitions and standards of ethnicity and race to the
Archaic colonial world (even the concept of Greekness itself belongs to the Classical period, not earlier). Step by step the attitude is fading (and rightly so)
that Greeks civilized the local peoples with whom
they came into contact. All relationships are a twoway process: so, just as locals were influenced by
Greeks, Greek colonies adopted and adapted local
practices. Now we know that native people played
an important role in the foundation and laying out of
Megara Hyblaea. In Metapontum some of the first
colonists used the simple construction methods of the
local population dwelling-houses were dug partly
into the ground; while in the building of the temple in
the chora of Sybaris, posts and pise were used, a
technique alien to mainland Greece. These are just a
few of many examples. In many cases, Greeks and
locals lived alongside each other in a Greek settlement, whether in the western Mediterranean or the
eastern Black Sea. Nowadays, there is increased
archaeological evidence of Greeks living alongside

locals in native settlements far inland: one case in

the Scythian lands some 300 miles/500 km from the
shore, but also in the deep hinterland of Massalia in
the south of France.
Many colonies were established in territory either
occupied by a local population or close by (see
Table 1). Frequently, land for settlement by colonists
was given by local rulers. The relationship between
the newcomers and the locals was often pacific, to
their mutual benefit. Greek craftsmen were employed
by local rulers; for example, in the Iberian Peninsula
and the Black Sea to produce prestige objects, and
even, as is the case in Etruria, to paint tombs, or build
fortifications, as in Gaul, or public buildings, as in
Iberia (near the colony of Emporion). This was characteristic mainly of Ionian colonization. Elsewhere,
things could be less peaceful. In Syracuse, for
instance, the local Cyllyrii were serfs, and at Heraclea
Pontica on the southern Black Sea, half the local
Maryandini were killed and the rest enslaved. This
was typical of Dorian colonization. Recent scholarship has started to re-examine the nature and
mechanisms of trade relations between locals and
colonists less a matter of commerce, as we understand it now, more of formalized gift-giving and exchange. What we know about the locals and their
culture is mainly the way of life of their elites; and
the tastes and behavior of nobles were practically the
same in every area, whether of the Mediterranean or
the Black Sea (see Europe, South: Greece; Asia, West:
Archaeology of the Near East: The Levant).

Greek Colonies and Settlements

in the Mediterranean and Black Sea
Greek colonization, which started in c. 750 BC, produced about 230 colonies and settlements. Several
were the result of secondary colonization colonies
established by other colonies; fewer than half have
been studied archaeologically. The main colonizers in
the Archaic period were Chalcis, Corinth, Eretria,
Megara, Miletus, and Phocaea. In one short survey,
it is impossible to paint a comprehensive picture. This
article concentrates on major areas of activity and
their principal colonies (for more information see
Table 1).
A frequently asked question is who were the first
colonizers the Greeks or the Phoenicians? It is very
difficult to answer with any certainty. The Phoenicians were forced to flee their homeland in the Levant
by the expansion of the Assyrian empire. But it seems
that the main aim of Phoenician migration was commercial. In the eighth century BC Greeks were
moving into the relatively close territories of central

Greek Colonies 1275

and southern Italy, while the Phoenicians established

small settlements in Sardinia and further to the west
and south. The Greek settlements were designed
for permanence; those of the Phoenicians disappeared over time, probably absorbed by the locals.
Currently, we are re-evaluating our knowledge of the
Phoenicians and their expansion on account of a new
absolute chronology for the Mediterranean Iron Age
based on radiocarbon and other scientific dating. It
seems that Phoenician expansion started nearly a
hundred years earlier than had been thought.
Down to the fifth century BC, Greek culture was
heavily influenced by ideas from the Near East. There
are Near Eastern objects in Greece; we also know of
migrant (especially Syrian) craftsmen settling in
mainland Greece. Lefkandi in Euboea received a
large quantity of Eastern and Egyptian objects. This
is of particular significance the earliest colonizers
were Euboean, and it is unsurprising that they should
look to the Near East as their first destination. Which
brings us to Al Mina, in northern Syria at the mouth
of the Orontes River, the Greeks gateway to the
Near East.
The site was excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley
before World War II, since when its interpretation
has provoked heated debate which still continues.
The architectural remains, where they exist, are poorly
preserved construction was of mud-brick but the
sites importance lies in the large quantity of Greek
pottery it has yielded: from first occupation down to
about 700 BC the vast majority of it Euboean, some
probably from Samos, very little Corinthian, and
some made by Greeks in Cyprus or Syria. From
about 700 BC onward, the remains of Greek pottery
and non-Greek local wares (Syrian and Cypriotshape) are roughly equal. It is very difficult, based
on pottery alone, to say whether the settlement was
the first Greek emporion/port-of-trade, a distribution
center for Greek pottery to the Near East, or a
Euboean quarter within a local settlement, and who
was transporting these pots. But since the Euboeans
and the Levantines already knew each other, it is most
probable that some Euboeans were living in a local
settlement controlled by a local ruler. Euboean
pottery has been found at various Near Eastern
sites. It surely came via Al Mina. We know of
Greek mercenary sites at Mezaz Hashavyahu and
Tell Kabri.
The Euboeans were also pioneers in the western
Mediterranean where, in the mid-eighth century BC,
they established the emporion Pithecusa on an island
in the Bay of Naples (modern Ischia). Excavation has
produced abundant evidence of early metallurgical
production. A Levantine (Syrian) presence is also

recorded, as is that of mainly Euboean but some

Corinthian potters. The site is famous for the discovery of a North Ionian cup with an inscription of
the Nestor poem (Figure 4). Pithecusa declined in
importance from the end of the eighth century following the foundation of Euboean Cumae on the
nearby Campanian mainland.
South Italy and Sicily were well-stocked with colonies. In the former, Sybaris was established by
Achaeans in c. 720 BC. It had good farmland for producing grain and wine. Another Achaean foundation
was Croton (in about 710 BC), also with good farmland; the temple of Hera Lacinia stands in the Archaic
city. Metapontum, also Achaean, had an excellent
harbor and agricultural territory (the pattern of land
division has survived very well); there were many temples in the city, including one to Apollo. Poseidonia
(Paestrum), again Achaean, has yielded fortification
walls, temples dedicated to Hera, Ceres, and Athena,
and had close links with the Etruscans (Figure 5).
Tarentum, Siris, and Locri were Spartan foundations.
The colonies soon became large and wealthy, and then
began to establish their own colonies: Locri, for example, founded Medma, Hipponium, and Metaurus.
In Sicily, Syracuse, established by the Corinthians in
734 BC, was the richest Greek colony. It possessed a
fine harbor and temples to Athena, Zeus, and Apollo;
one Ionic temple was unfinished. Naxus, a Chalcidian
foundation of 734 BC, was built on a local settlement
from which the native inhabitants had been displaced. Leontini (established 728 BC), also Chalcidian, was also established on a local site from which
the native Sicels were expelled; it had fortification
walls. Soon afterwards, the Chalcidians founded Catane. Rhegium was a joint foundation of Chalcidians
from Zancle and Messenians from the Peloponnese,
while Zancle itself (later Messina) had been founded
soon after Naxus by Cumae in southern Italy. Megara
Hyblaea was a Megarian colony; it exhibits regular
planning, excavation has unearthed the earliest
houses, temples, the agora, etc. Gela, a Dorian foundation of 688 BC in which Rhodians and Cretans
participated, displaced a local settlement; we know of
temples to Athena and Demeter. In the seventh century
BC these colonies expanded by establishing their own:
Syracuse founded Helorus, Acrae, Casmenae and
Camarina; Megara Hyblaea, Selinus; Zancle, Himera;
and Gela, Acragas.
Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily soon outgrew
their mother-cities in wealth and display. For this
reason Sicily became known as Magna Graecia. Syracuse by repute was the largest and most beautiful of
all Greek cities. In the fifth century, Acragas had
a population of 80 000; Sybaris between 100 000

1276 Greek Colonies

Figure 4 Nestors Cup, Pithecusa. Late eighth century BC. One of the earliest examples of Greek writing. This cup is inscribed with lines
known from Homer. The inscription translates as: Nestor had a most drink-worthy cup, but whoever drinks of mine will straight away be
smitten with desire of fair-crowned Aphrodite. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies
and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 228, fig. 13.

A
PAESTUM
PIANTA GENERALE

Porta NORD
cd. "AUREA"

Ex S

50 0 N 100 m

8
S. 1
Museo

Santuarlo
dl ATHENA

Area
sacra

FORD

B
Porta EST
cd. "della SIRENA"

Porta OVEST
cd. "MARINA"

Santuarlo
dl HERA

C
Porta SUD
cd. "della GIUSTIZIA"

Figure 5 Plan of Poseidonia (Paestrum) (Italy). Step by step, Greek colonies developed regular planning, a designated area for trade
(agora), a sacred place where the main temples were erected (temenos), etc. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation.
An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 186, fig. 7.

Greek Colonies 1277

and 300 000, and filled a circuit of about 10 km

(6 miles); the area of Tarentum exceeded 7000 km2
(2750 square miles). Even the earliest inscription in
the Greek alphabet, scratched on a local vase, was
discovered in Italy (near Gabii); it dates to c. 770 BC.
In North Africa the fertile land of the Cyrenaican
seaboard and plateau was probably what attracted the
Greeks. In c. 632 BC Dorian colonists from the island
of Thera established Cyrene. Initially, they settled on

5 cm

50 cm

Figure 6 Architectural ornaments from temple, Emporion

(Spain). Left: antefixes (carved ornaments hiding joints between
tiles in roof eaves); right: acroterion (pinnacle). Both made of
terracotta (baked clay). Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006)
Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other
Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 478, fig. 27.

the small offshore island of Platea. After a few years, the

native Libyans persuaded them to move to a better site,
Cyrene. The colonists took local wives. Cyrene prospered and in the sixth century invited new settlers from
the Peloponnese and the Dorian islands; as a result, the
new colony of Barca was established. This expansion
alarmed the natives who, in 570 BC, sought Egyptian
help against the Greeks. From c. 515 BC Cyrene formed
part of the Persian empire, but it continued to prosper.
The city had grand public buildings, temples to Apollo,
Zeus, and Demeter. There were other Greek cities in
Libya Apollonia (established by Thera), and Euhesperides and Tauchira (both colonies of Cyrene itself).
In Egypt the pharaohs employed Ionians and
Carians as mercenaries from the early seventh century
BC. In c. 650 BC Chios, Teos, Phocaea, Clazomenae,
Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, Phaselis, Mytilene,
Aegina, Samos, and Miletus established an emporion
Naucratis on the Nile Delta. The settlement was
under strict Egyptian control which forbade intermarriage between Greeks and locals. Many of the states
established a joint sanctuary (Hellenion), with separate temples for Aegina, Samos, and Miletus. This
was not just a trading station but a production center
for pottery, votives, and faience scarab seals.
Greek colonists opened up the Adriatic coast, the
lands of local Illyrians, in the last quarter of the eighth
century BC. The chief attraction of the area was
probably its silver mines. Corcyra (Corfu), settled
first by Eretrians and then, in 733 BC, by Corinthians,
had two temples of Artemis and one of Dionysus.
Relations between the colony and its mother-city of
Corinth were tense and in the seventh century there
was a battle between them. In about 627 BC, Corcyra
and Corinth established Epidamnus, of which little is
known archaeologically; shortly afterwards Corinth
founded Apollonia, a wealthy colony.

Figure 7 Reconstruction of local Iberian funerary sculpture (Spain). Greek influence becomes increasingly visible in the material culture
of the local population. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements
Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 460, fig. 18.

1278 Greek Colonies

50 cm

Figure 8 Iberian sculptures (Spain), early fifth century BC. Some Greek features appeared in local sculpture. Source: Tsetskhladze GR
(ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 461, fig. 19.

1
0

2
5m

Figure 9 Archaic subterranean dwellings from Olbia (Black Sea). Plans and reconstructions. The earliest colonists lived in simple
dwellings. Source: Tsetskhladze GR (2003) Greeks beyond the Bosporus. In: Karageorghis V (ed.) The Greeks beyond the Aegean: From
Marseilles to Bactria. New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA), 138, fig. 3.

For the colonies of the northern shore of the

Aegean, the main sources are literary; there is little
archaeological evidence, especially for the Archaic
period. The chief colonizers were the Chalcidians,
whose main colony here was Torone, and the
Eretrians, who founded Mende, Scione, and Methone. Corinth founded Potidaea in c. 600 BC. The
Parians, who occupied the island of Thasos in the
680s, established several cities on the mainland opposite, including Neapolis (Kavalla) and Oesyme in

Thracian lands whose foundation occasioned conflict

with the native Thracians. The Chians established
Maronea and the Aeolians Aenus. Abdera, a wealthy
colony situated in Aegean Thrace, was founded twice:
the first time by Clazomenians in the second half of
the seventh century BC; the second time by Teans in
c. 545. Both were Ionian.
Another Ionian colony, Massalia in the south of
France, was established by Phocaea in c. 600 BC
(Figure 2). Ancient tradition, not contemporary with

Greek Colonies 1279

the event, speaks of the welcome the colonists

received from the native ruler and their commitment
to intermarry with native women. The earliest dwellings were one-room constructions of mud-brick on
stone foundations. For a long time Massalia lacked a
chora, thanks to the proximity of local settlements to
the city walls and the unsuitability of the local terrain
for grain cultivation. Thus, for economic survival,
Massalia needed to establish very close links with
the Gauls and other local peoples as it did with the
Etruscans. Gradually, it established subcolonies or
settlements in the near hinterland. Another Phocaean
foundation, established at the same time as Massalia,
was Emporion in Spain, home to a local Tartessian
kingdom and several Phoenician settlements. Initially,
it was a small settlement on an island; in c. 575 BC it
moved to the adjacent mainland, an area populated
by locals who came to form part of the Greek city
(Figures 3 and 6). Because of the marshy surroundings, Emporion had very little chora, at least until
the fifth to fourth centuries. Thus, like Massalia, it
developed close relations with local peoples (Iberians)
from the outset in order to ensure its prosperity
(Figures 7 and 8). We know nothing archaeologically
about Rhode, the other Greek colony in Spain.
Ionian colonies in Italy were few. In Etruria Ionians
established their quarter in Gravisca (the harbour of
Tarquinia) in about 600 BC. This was not just a center
for trade between Greeks and Etruscans; it was a production center as well, including a gem workshop
established in the late sixth century. Elea was entirely
Greek and we have no evidence to suggest that locals
formed any part of it. Initially, it enjoyed friendly relations with local chiefs; however, in about 520 BC it had
to erect fortification walls. Alalia, established by Phocaea in about 565 BC, was surrounded by local people
too, but we know little about relations with them.
The main area of Ionian colonization was the Black
Sea, known to Greeks initially as inhospitable. The
Hellespont and Propontis, where such colonies as
Thracian Chersonesus (by Athens in 561556 BC),
Cyzicus (by Miletus in 756 and then again in 676
BC), Perinthus (by Samos in 602 BC), Chalcedon (by
Megara in 685 or 679 BC), and Byzantium (in 668 or
659 BC) were established, provided the gateway to
the Black Sea. Miletus was the principal colonizer
of the Black Sea, founding its first colonies here
in the last third/end of the seventh century Histria,
the settlement on Berezan (ancient Borysthenites),
Sinope, Apollonia Pontica, and Amisus. The sixth
century BC saw a major wave of colonization. Several
dozen cities and settlements were established Panticapaeum, Olbia (Figures 9 and 10), Cepoi, Patraeus,
Odessus, Phanagoria, Gorgippia, Phasis, Gyenos,
Dioscurias, and many others. Heraclea Pontica was

25

50 m
3

Figure 10 Olbia (Black Sea). Plan and reconstruction of the

agora and temenos. The physical appearance of colonies
changed gradually, especially from the Classical period
(cf. Figure 9). Source: Tsetskhladze GR (2003) Greeks beyond
the Bosporus. In: Karageorghis V (ed.) The Greeks beyond the
Aegean: From Marseilles to Bactria. New York: Alexander S.
Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA), 143, fig. 7.

founded in 554 BC by Megarians and Boeotians;

Hermonassa was a joint colony of Miletus and Mytilene. The Black Sea littoral was heavily populated
by locals, chief among them the Thracians, Getae,
Scythians, Colchians, Mariandynoi, Chalybes, and
Macrones. Several of these were hostile to the Greeks
from the outset: for example, in the large area between Heraclea Pontica and Byzantium, there were
no Greek colonies or settlements despite the fertile
land and excellent harbors, apparently ideal for the
establishment of colonies, because, as ancient Greek
written sources tell us, this was a region inhabited by
hostile locals.

1280 Medieval and Post-Medieval

Conclusion
The establishment of Greek colonies around the
Mediterranean and Black Seas in the Archaic period
took place at a time and in a context of exploration,
the acquisition of new geographical and technical
knowledge, and the mutual entriching of each others
cultures (Figures 7 and 8). It was not just expansion
and colonization as we understand it from a modern
point of view. It was dictated by internal and external
considerations. Thanks to colonization boundaries,
both physical and intellectual were pushed, so that,
as Plato remarked, the world extended from the Pillars
of Hercules to the River Phasis (modern-day Rioni in
Georgia), that is from the western tip of the Mediterranean to the eastern edge of the Black Sea. Thus, even
at a cursory glance, it can be seen that Greek colonization owned no single reason, followed no particular
model and responded in a variety of ways to the varied
local circumstances it confronted.
See also: Asia, West: Archaeology of the Near East: The
Levant; Classical Archaeology; Europe, South: Greece.

Further Reading
Boardman J (1999) The Greeks Overseas. Their Early Colonies and
Trade, 4th edn. London: Thames and Hudson.
Descoeudres J-P (ed.) (1990) Greek Colonies and Native Populations Proceedings of the First Australian Congress of Classical
Archaeology, Held In Honour of Emeritus Professor A. D.
Trendall, Sydney 914 July 1985. Canberra and Oxford:
Humanities Research Centre and Clarendon Press.
Graham AJ (1982) The colonial expansion of Greece. In:
Boardman J and Hammond NGL (eds.) The Cambridge Ancient
History, vol. III, pt 3, 2nd edn., pp. 83162. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Graham AJ (1983) Colony and Mother City in Ancient Greece,
2nd edn. Chicago: Ares.
Hansen MH and Nielsen TH (eds.) (2004) An Inventory of Archaic
and Classical Poleis. An Investigation Conducted by The Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Malkin I (1987) Religion and Colonisation in Ancient Greece.
Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Malkin I (ed.) (2001) Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Osborne R (1996) Greece in the Making, 1200479 BC. London:
Routledge.
Tsetskhladze GR (2003) Greeks beyond the Bosporus. In:
Karageorghis V (ed.) The Greeks beyond the Aegean: From
Marseilles to Bactria. New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public
Benefit Foundation (USA).
Tsetskhladze GR (ed.) (2006) Greek Colonisation. An Account of
Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 1. Leiden:
Brill.
Tsetskhladze GR and De Angelis F (eds.) (1994) The Archaeology
of Greek Colonisation. Oxford: Oxford University School
of Archaeology.

Medieval and
Post-Medieval
John Bintliff, Leiden University, Leiden,
The Netherlands
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
Al-Andalus From the eighth to tenth centuries AD, almost all of
Spain and Portugal fell to Islamic armies and became known as
Al-Andalus. The origin of this term is disputed but could be a
corruption of the Gothic term for division of conquered land into
allotments. Today the modern province of Andalucia covers only
the southernmost part of Spain, but includes the last kingdom to fall
to the Christian armies in the 15th century AD, that of Granada.
Byzantine Roman is a cultural and chronological term which is
used for the Roman Republic and later Empire up till the fourth
century AD, when Rome is replaced by Constantinople as
imperial capital. The subsequent period is often called Late
Roman in the East (fifth to seventh centuries AD) after which
Byzantine civilization begins in full. Confusingly, some scholars
term these Late Roman centuries Early Byzantine. Byzantine
civilization lasts till the fall of Constantiople in 1453 AD.
ByzantiumConstantinopleIstanbul A Greek colony,
Byzantium, was renamed after the Emperor Constantine the
Great, when he relocated the capital of the Roman Empire Rome
to this city in AD 330. After the Ottoman conquest of the city in
1453, it was again renamed, to Istanbul (a corruption of the
Greek expression to the City).
capitalism Developing in late medieval Italy, this new form of
financial and commercial activity concentrates on monitoring
and manipulating capital, including credit notes, to create new
forms of economic stimulus and wealth creation. Global spread
of this form of economics has been one of the key historical
processes between the fourteenth and twenty-first century AD.
feudal Technically, in the medieval period in Western Europe, a
lesser and major elite of warriors was maintained by being
granted rights over the products of peasant villages and lands, on
the basis that they would fight for their superior lords (the
highest in the feudal pyramid being kings, dukes, and the Pope).
In the Byzantine and also Early Ottoman Empires a similar
system of support operated, and a strictly feudal system was
spread through Greece and the Crusader states of the Near East
through Crusader colonies in the eleventh to fifteenth
centuries AD.
incastellamento A term employed in Italian medieval
archaeology to describe the fortification of villages, with or
without an elite fortress or tower associated, from the Dark Ages
into the early high medieval era (c. AD 6001000). Both
protection from marauding barbarians and also control by the
lord of the village can be the reason for this widespread
phenomenon in the countryside.
Little Ice Age Between the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries
AD, there is scientific and archive evidence to suggest a global
climatic cooling phase, which in Europe may have been
associated with unstable, wet weather and crop failures.
maiolica When this kind of glazed ware was imported from
Islamic and Christian Spain into Italy and Islamic North Africa,
one route took it through the Balearic Islands such as Majorca
and Menorca, hence the name. The key feature is the coating of
the clay of the pot with an opaque tin glaze, which creates a

1298 EUROPE, WEST/Rome

Guichard P (2000) De la Conquete Arabe a la Reconquete: Grandeur et Fragilite Dal-Andalus. Granada: Fundacion El Legado
Andalusi Granada.
Jardine L (1996) Worldly Goods. A New History of the Renaissance. London: Macmillan.
Papanikola-Bakirtizi D (ed.) (2002) Everyday Life in Byzantium.
Athens: Ministry of Culture.
Pollak MD (1991) Turin 15641680. Urban Design, Military Culture, and the Creation of the Absolutist Capital. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sabelberg E (1983) The persistence of palazzi and intra-urban
structures in Tuscany and Sicily. Journal of Historical Geography 9: 247264.
Sigalos E (2004) Housing in Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece.
Oxford: Tempus Reparatum.

plebeians were Roman citizens who were not patricians: rich and
poor, progressively organized as a political force seeking to
obtain almost the same rights as the patricians.
pom(o)erium Area defining the spatial, religious, and legal
limits of the city, inside the pomerial line, drawn by a founding
furrow. Tombs and army were normally not accepted in it.
templum Inaugurated space, usually squared, from where each
public decision must be taken. The temple building was a
templum consecrated to a god: it was normally divided into a
cella (where the cult statue was stored), a vestibule and a
colonnade, above a high podium with stairs; the sacrifices were
fulfilled on an altar in front of the temple.

Introduction: A Question of Urban

Archaeology
Some Specificities of Rome

Rome
Emmanuelle Rosso, Colle`ge de France, Paris,
France
Stephanie Wyler, Ecole francaise de Rome,
Rome, Italy
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Glossary
apotheosis Divinization of a Roman emperor.
auspicium (look at the birds) Religious procedure
consisting in examining the signs given by birds, in order to
question the divine agreement before each public decision. First
step of the augural science, which approves the inauguration of
a templum.
euocatio Religious procedure consisting of an invitation to the
main god of the enemy to join the Roman side before a decisive
battle; in return for the victory, a temple to the new Roman
divinity is vowed (e.g., Consus from Tarent on the Aventine (272),
Vertumnus from Volsinii (264), Minerva from Falerii (241), etc).
evergetism Social practice consisting, for a rich private citizen,
in paying, theoretically voluntarily, for the development, the
maintenance and the improvement of his city. In return for his
expenses, he received honor, public gratitude, and the popularity
necessary for being elected to the highest public offices.
forum Central place for public and private business. Originally
a market place (moved to the forum boarium, holitorium, and
piscarium, for the trade of livestock, vegetable and fish), the
forum Romanum was the first forum of Rome, symbol of the
Republic, but in use throughout the history of Rome. The five
imperial forums were new places built directly to the north of the
forum Romanum for propaganda of the Emperors (Cesar,
Augustus, Vespasian, Nerva, Trajan).
horreum Monumental and usually multistoried structure
designed for the storage of goods (especially grain). The port
on the Tiber River in Rome comprised huge horrea like the
horrea Galbana.
imperial ustrina On the Campus Martius, the place where the
funerary pyres of Roman emperors were erected.
patricians/plebeians The patricians were hereditary
aristocrats coming from the first consuls of the Republic, holding
the exclusive power until the middle of the fifth century BC. The

The archaeology of Rome is a paradigm for urban

archaeology, with all the specificities that this peculiar
situation involves. As a matter of fact, the city has
continuously been settled from the proto-historic
period and cyclically prominent on the Italian and
Mediterranean scales. The evolution of the urbs, the
City, as the ancient Romans used to call themselves,
has been complicated by its status of capital of the
Empire, to which Rome has given its own name, and
by its history: the knowledge of ancient Rome has
become a major issue at stake in the legitimacy of
power, enhanced by the rule of the Christian Church
and by the final choice to turn the city into the capital
of united Italy at the end of the nineteenth century.
Thus, ancient Rome has constantly been considered as
a pattern for other periods, should it be the Renaissance or Mussolinis time, highlighting in turn the
glorious remains of the lost power or, on the contrary,
re-using the antique wealth, in order to compete with it.
As a matter of fact, the surface intra muros (century
40 000 m2.) and the population of Rome at the first
century BC (c. 1 million inhabitants) have never been
reached again before the twentieth century.
Each and every period would deserve to be taken
into consideration. Further, study of any one of them
(e.g., Rome throughout pagan Antiquity the subject
of the present article), necessarily needs an intellectual reconstruction: the remaining untouched evidences
are intricately linked to their reused corollaries, on
occasion re-employed or functionalized for other purposes (e.g., a pagan temple turned into a Christian
church, a sarcophagus into a fountain etc) (Figure 1).
Besides, the increase of the citys level, of c. 20 m at
the most from the sixth century BC to nowadays,
gives an idea of the stratigraphic complexity in the
different areas: some of the hugest public buildings
have been used as foundations for medieval and
Renaissance constructions, and partly remain in the

EUROPE, WEST/Rome 1299

Figure 1 An example of reuse: the mausoleum of Hadrian turned into the fortified Castel SantAngelo.

cellars of houses (such as the theatre of Pompey or of

the stadium of Domitian, under the Piazza Navona).
Moreover, the different areas of the city have not
evolved the same way, some monuments having been
completely destroyed, others reused, removed, preserved, or even rebuilt for practical as much as ideological reasons.
Rome throughout History

Urban archaeology applied to the case of Rome raises

different methodological issues: besides the scattering
of material evidences, for the above-mentioned urban
purposes, but also with the growing taste for collections of antiquities as early as the Renaissance, it is
often tricky to categorize most of the monuments,
considering their use even during Antiquity. As a
matter of fact, ancient Romans themselves liked to
gather works of art in public or private collections,
and, on occasion of restorations due to obsolescence
or fire, to transform, adapt, modernize, or personalize all kinds of monument, always used as ideological
symbols in a culture in which the limits between
public and private spheres were definitely different
from ours. In that context, one specific monument
should be studied in consideration of its foundation,
but also its different phases of monumentalization,
throughout Antiquity and beyond.
It ensues from this that a chronological overview is
as problematic as a topographical one. Here we have
been chosen to organize the presentation of the main
archaeological remains of Rome, unlike most of the archaeological guides, in four chronological phases: the
time of the foundation, the Republic, the Augustan
period, and the Empire, subdivided into thematic
focuses. This intends to underline the specificity for

each period of a long history, from the eighth-century

BC to the fourth-century AD, and to emphasize the
situation of archaeology in the historical research.
Multidisciplinary Evidences: Imaging the City

It implies that each chronological panorama is an

intellectual reconstruction, based not only on the
archaeological remains ideally replaced in their contexts of uses, but also, on a variety of literary, epigraphic and iconographic evidences. This feature is another
specificity of Rome: on the one hand, there is a rather
important number of preserved monuments, and on
the other hand, we know through written documents
the name, the function, the history, and the approximate localization of most of the ancient buildings so
that the research field is immense, and the temptation
to associate the one to the other great. This is also
methodologically dangerous, when the coincidence
cannot be rigorously demonstrated. Most of the time,
archaeological reality is much more normal than the
textual one, which is inclined to highlight the exceptions, for artistic, ideological, or sociologic reasons.
Consequently, present scholars intend to connect
the lacunary elements in time and space, thanks to a
multidiciplinary approach in order to base building
identifications upon more precise archaeological information. Systems of computer modeling and virtual
reconstructions have recently permitted to provide
impressive three-dimensional graphical, digital, and
interactive restitutions of the buildings. In the end,
ongoing studies tend to focus on private constructions,
while a new field of research looks at non-noble or
non-elite constructions like suburban habitations,
shops, or basic infrastructures of the city, such as
water supply, which clearly demonstrate that Ancient

1300 EUROPE, WEST/Rome

Rome was not exclusively a city of temples and

squares, emperors, horses and houses.
Main Steps of Roman excavations

The heterogeneity of evidences to be connected to

archaeological findings is one part of the puzzle of
Rome; another concerns the modern attitude toward
the antique remains. As a matter of fact, for the
reasons mentioned above, a search for the past has
always existed unlike most of ancient cities, such as
Athens: the quest whether it should be linked to
the cult of the first Christian saints and the trade of
martyrs relics, or to the fascination for the politic and
artistic antiquity at the Renaissance, has destroyed
and isolated from their context a number of monuments. Paradoxically, the most important damages
have been done when the interest for antiquity was
at the highest point: in the sixteenth century, the area
of the forum and the Palatine Hill, rather well preserved because of its abandonment into pasture and
aristocratic gardens, was systematically excavated
and properly looted from the sculptures and precious
materials, essentially marbles, that were found; this
can be partially reconstructed, thanks to drawings of
contemporaneous artists and architects, such as Pirro
Ligorio, but no scientific documentation was carried
out at the time. The same process of discovering (led
by philological interests above all), imitation and, in
the end, spoilation, can be observed at the Neronian
domus aurea, at the origin of the taste for the
grotesques, and the villa Hadriana at Tivoli, in the
Roman suburb.
The destruction of archaeological levels and the
removal of antiquities was stemmed when archaeology was to become a scientific discipline, thanks to
Winckelmanns conceptions on Art History, in the
nineteenth century at the same time, archaeological
remains became the stake of a competition between
the Vatican, the aristocratic Roman families, the foreign states (particularly Germany and France) and the
new Italian state. After 1870, most of the archaeological areas, defined as such, were bought by the state,
scientifically excavated by archaeologists such as
Ranucio Lanciani or Giacomo Boni, highlighted and
exhibited to the public. But this does not imply that
they were absolutely preserved, faced with the big
works of the new capital, or, in the 1930s, of the
Mussolinian State, whose leaders intended to inscribe
themselves in the continuation of their famous predecessors, with the construction of the monument to
Vittorio Emmanuele II between the Capitol and the
forum, or the via dei fori imperiali (street of the
imperial forums), leading across the different forums
and destroying part of them.

From the revival of the excavations after World

War II up to nowadays, with the digging of the third
line of the metropolitan underground line, started in
2006, the scientific scopes of archaeology are better
defined, controlled, and distributed by the Soprintendenza to the different partners Italian and foreign,
public and academic. But this still implies necessary
choices, depending on the patrimonial strategies, in
excavating, preserving, presenting, and emphasizing
the archaeological findings. Since excavations are a
destructive method, to reach one peculiar historical
level means to destroy the levels above, even if they
are more impressive. Even if modern methods intend
to document them with the best accuracy, objectivity,
and exhaustiveness, the ongoing attitude tends to
preserve most of the construction, and to work on
very limited surveys, or to benefit from public works
that drill the underground of Rome. So that we know
definitely better the archaeology of the latest antique
periods than the earliest; but the quest for the entire
Roman past is still in constant progress, thanks to the
evolution of modern archaeology.

The Beginnings of Rome: The Formation

of the City
The Question of the Origins

The question of the origins of Rome is a methodological textbook case of the status still nowadays
conferred to archaeology in the historical research.
As a matter of fact, the ideological background at
stake is a major issue. Roughly, the question is to
understand how Rome became the ruler of its huge
Empire, including Greece: was its destiny written as
soon as it was founded? Why Rome, and not another
Latial or Etruscan city? This question has been asked
by the ancient historians themselves, including the
Greek Polybius (e.g., 1.1.5) in the mid-second century
BC and the Roman Livy, who wrote, at the time of
Augustan restoration, a year-by-year history of
Rome ab urbe condita, since the foundation of the
city. This ideological justification of the power of the
city has been regularly updated, from the pontifical
states, at the head of the Kingdom of Rome up to the
fascist state, which pretended to restore the ancient
Empire.
This weighty historiography is even complicated
by the relative scarcity, and above all the disparity,
of the evidence concerning the beginnings of Rome.
In that matter, archaeology is, with epigraphy, the
only primary discipline, whereas the others ancient
literature, historical annals, myths, and religious
practices offer a very rich tradition, much more
emphasized than any other foundation story of the

EUROPE, WEST/Rome 1301

Mediterranean area: one of the most relevant features

is that the birth of Rome has not been attributed to
a divine, but to a human willingness, and then immediately conceived as a politic phenomenon, confusing ancient history and earthly mythology. Yet, do
the archaeological discoveries confirm or infirm the
literary tradition, mostly conveyed by authors writing
at the end of the first century BC (mainly the antiquarian Varro, the historian Livy, and the politician
Cicero)? As such, the question seems easy to answer; in
fact, the debate between hypercriticism the quasicomplete rejection of the traditional sources, considering them as late reconstructions which cannot afford a
piece of evidence and fideism which sees every new
discovery as a proof of the reliability of ancient tradition is far from being closed, even with the most
recent and spectacular excavations of the slopes of
the Palatine Hill.
Tradition Confronted to Archaeology

According to the literary tradition, Rome was founded

by Romulus in 754/3 BC. He and his twin-brother
Remus had been rescued and fed by a she-wolf, and
then by a shepherd, who found them on the river
Tibers bank, on the future site of Rome. Once
grown up, Romulus founded the Roma quadrata,
the squared Rome on the Palatine Hill, surrounded
by a wall, correlated with the first pomerium, the
ritual boundary of the city; he was proclaimed king
after having killed Remus, who pretended to share the
power. It was the beginning of the royal period, which
lasted through the reigns of (mythically) seven kings,
up to 509: the last three of them, the Etruscans
Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius
Superbus, testimonies of the Etruscan rule of Rome
from the end of the seventh century, are to be
connected with a phase of (re)organization of the
people and of the city. Disgusted by the excess of
the monarchy, Romans were induced to revolt against
the last Tarquinius and set up the Republic.
Archaeologically, the settlement of Rome is known
as early as the beginning of the ninth century, thanks
to the discovery of a habitat on the Palatine hill
(mainly huts), and of tombs (inhumation and cremation) on the future forum, on the Capitol and the
Esquiline, indicating the development of communities
from small villages to larger nucleated settlements.
Yet, the Italian excavations, led by A. Carandini since
the 1980s on the northern lower slope of the Palatine,
have brought to light a monumental wall dating from
the middle of the eighth century: the coincidence with
the Romulean tradition is definitely proved for the one,
whereas for the others, the political definition of
Rome as a city-state cannot be demonstrated by this

discovery, even less included in the evolution of a protourban structure than in a revolution of the political and
urban organization; however, this process appears
to have been completed at the latest at the end of the
seventh century.
The royal Etruscan period (end of the seventh to
sixth century) indeed coincides with the material
tracks of a proper systematization of the city (which
does not imply that it did not exist before), with
a clear delimitation of the different spaces (public
religious/private habitat, civic/military, living/dead),
and a specific orientation of the urban axes, determined by the augural science; this feature clearly
differentiates Rome from the Greek cities of Italy
founded at the same time.
Among the most important archaeological remains
of this period, best known thanks to the comprehensive work of F. Coarelli, belongs a coherent urban
system, at the term of which the pomerium was
extended in order to include the septimontium (the
enclosed seven hills), when Servius Tullius traditionally reorganized the people in 30 tribes and the
city in four parts; it was marked by a new wall, still
in use up to the first century AD (the remaining wall
in cappellaccio-tuff dates back to the fourth century.
BC, but coincides with the archaic track of the wall).
The most important discoveries, from the excavations of G. Boni at the very beginning of the twentieth
century up to those of the Palatine and the Capitoline
Hills, one century later, concern the complex formed
by the forum, the Arx (the citadel upon the north of
the forum, where the auspicia were taken), and the
Capitolium (Figure 2). The marshy site of the forum
was paved after important drainage works, and particularly the construction of the cloaca maxima (the
main sewer), one end of which is still visible on the
Tibers bank. On the forum, the first public place,
were built the comitium, the political space where
the people used to assemble, tabernae (shops), settling
the commercial activities, and religious shrines, such
as the Volcanal, a sanctuary consecrated to Vulcan
(also known as the lapis niger, named after the first
century BC pavement of black stone that covered it),
in which was buried an altar and a sacred law mentioning a king (rex) so far the oldest public inscription
of Rome.
On the western part of the forum (Figure 3) was
maintained, throughout the Republic, the Regia, the
royal palace of the last kings of Rome (traditionally
the house of Numa), linked to the house of Vestal
Virgins and the temple of Vesta, in which they kept
the public household fire. In the Regia were found
bucchero (Etruscan pottery) with the name rex
inscribed, and decorative terracotta probably alluding to the foundation of Athens (with a representation

1302 EUROPE, WEST/Rome

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Forum

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Oppius

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500 m

Figure 2 Topographical map of Rome.

of the Minotaur), which informs on the level of familiarity towards Greek culture as early as this period.
The forum was crossed by the via sacra (the sacred
way), whose orientation, even if its the original
layout is still debated, follows a religious axis linking
the arx to the Latin shrine of Jupiter Latiaris in the
Alban Hills, at the south of Rome. But the bestpreserved religious archaic structure is the sanctuary
of Mater Matuta and Fortuna, under the church of
SantOmobono, between the Capitol and the forum
Boarium: with the temple of the Capitol triad dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, achieved at
the very end of the sixth century and become the
symbol of the city (the foundation and part of the
podium are exhibited in a new part of the Capitols
museum (Figure 4)), they throw some light on the
development of religious architecture of the time,
known as Tuscan (Etruscan) order: as for the public
development of the forum, the new grandeur of the
religious building informs on the inner and foreign
expansion of the city.
Remains of the royal period, from the eighth to
the end of the sixth century, inducing a re-reading of
the tradition, enlighten, in addition to the proper
foundation of Rome, the process of elaboration of a

city-state whose final state is rather well known at the

sixth century. However, the archaeology of archaic
Rome is still increasing, thanks to permanent excavations and a superior knowledge of the surrounding
archaic cities of Latium and Etruria (for which we
have far fewer texts and almost no tradition), that
should allow to define more and more precisely the
very specificity of the city, and an always more subtle
chronology of its beginnings.

Republican Rome
Literary tradition has it that the Romans expelled the
last Etruscan king, Tarquinius the Proud, and established the Republic in 509 BC. If the temple of the
Capitol triad seems to have been inaugurated at that
period indeed, and the first lists of consuls appear
contemporaneously, the archaeological remains suggest that a much more violent crisis happened in the
middle of the fifth century, with important fire tracks
on several public buildings, such as the Regia
and the comitium, followed by the reconstruction of
a part of the forum. Once again, more than a
proper revolution, it seems that the political organization of the city has progressively changed all

EUROPE, WEST/Rome 1303

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Forum of Caesar
(forum Iulium)

Scalae
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(jail)
Basilica
Porcia

Curia
Hostilia

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lia

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Comitium

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Alt

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Columna
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50 m

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Graecostasis

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Temple
of Vesta

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Sanctuary of
Venus Cloacina

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House of the King

Atrium Vestae
Lacus Iuturnae

VIA NOV

Figure 3 Map of the western forum in the Republican time.

through the first half of the fifth century, which might

reflect the different steps of the conflict between
patricians and plebeians, and the fear of the return
of kings in Rome, probably more and more stigmatized throughout ages.
The forum Romanum

From that time dates back a reorganization of the city,

and above all of the forum, that was used as the politic,
economic, and symbolic center of Rome (Figure 3).
Initially (probably as soon as the late sixth century),

the area of the forum was roughly divided into two

parts, distinguishing a northern zone around the comitium for public activities, and the forum as such,
the market place in the southern part. Progressively,
the part devoted to politics, in a broad sense, tended to
monopolize the entire area: besides the political spaces
as such, this normally included the religious sphere,
which was absolutely inseparable from the civic activities. As for the economic activities, most of the cumbersome markets were moved to the Tibers bank,
on the forum boarium, holitorium, and piscarium,

1304 EUROPE, WEST/Rome

Figure 4 Archaic podium of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

respectively, for the trade of livestock, vegetables, and

fish, whereas prestigious business (banking, jewellery,
perfume) were maintained around the macellum,
divided into shops (tabernae), from the balconies of
which people could look at the gladiators fights, still
taking place on the forum place up to the end of the
Republic, and sponsored by the politics.
As a matter of fact, one relevant feature of the
Republican time was the competition between the
members of the new aristocracy (the nobilitas, composed of both patricians and plebeians), physically
expressed by the construction of different monuments
glorifying the rulers and their families, as they paid,
with the profits of looting, to build, restore, extend,
and embellish the public buildings. This implies
that most of those buildings were called after a leader
except the temples named after the divinity to which
they were devoted and that the forum was subjected
to an increasing competition of that sort of evergetism,
up to an actual saturation. At the end of the Republic,
the only way to carry on this escalation was to extend
the forum, which meant building new ones: the first
initiative in that sense was used by Cesar, imitated on a
larger scale by Augustus, Vespasian, and Trajan. The
original Republican forum went on to be called the
Roman forum, whereas the new ones got the name
of each Emperor, known at once as the imperial
forums (Figure 5).
Archaeologically, the forum Romanum is better
known from the fourth century (as Rome was restored
after the Gallic siege of 390), and mainly from the
second century BC: after the victory over Carthage,
the rule of Rome on the Mediterranean led to a rapid
accumulation of wealth, and an important embellishment of the city starting with the forum, as the most

obvious politic symbol of the power of Rome.

Combined with the competition between the rulers,
Republican Rome displayed above all the image of its
triumph on the Greek and barbarian worlds, in terms
of military victories (triumphal arches, euocatio of the
enemies main divinities) and looting (mainly sculptures and paintings), whereas the influence of Greek
art and technology was to change definitely the shape
of the city. However, throughout the Republic, the
overall organization of the forum did not fundamentally change: the key buildings remained roughly the
same, so as to be reproduced in other cities under
Roman power, specifically most of the colonies (see
Asia, West: Roman Eastern Colonies; Europe, South:
Greece).
The comitium area Among these buildings should
be first counted the complex of the comitium, made
up of the comitium itself, the curia, the Rostra
platform, and the Graecostasis (platform for the
Greeks). The whole represents the architectural
image of the working Republic, politically and judiciary: the people used to assemble on the place at the
center of the comitium, the Senate usually in the
curia, and the magistrates to speak from the Rostra
(whereas the foreign representatives could contribute
to the Senate meetings from the Graecostasis).
The comitium existed since the royal period, but
its Republican shape was adopted either at the end of
the fourth or in the middle of the third century BC:
probably under the influence of the Greek public
ekklesiasteria, it was designed as a circle inscribed
inside a square, with internal terraces, while, as an
inaugurated templum, it was oriented following
the cardinal points. As a matter of fact, the first

EUROPE, WEST/Rome 1305

Roman colonies designed in the first third century

Alba Fucens (301), Cosa and Paestum (273)
adopted such a circular structure as the center of
their own political lives.
South of the Roman comitium had been set up, at
the very beginning of the Republic, the raised platform for the orators, magistrates, and lawyers, named
Rostra (ship-rams driven into a column on the platform) after the naval victory of Rome over the Latin
people, off Antium, in 338. Cesar moved it westwards when he extended the forum, purely and simply destroyed the Graecostasis and turned the curia
Hostilia into a temple to Felicitas, as he was to build a
new curia named after his family, the curia Iulia
(Figure 3): a high rectangular building (corresponding
to the proportions prescribed by the Caesarean
architect Vitruvius) subdivided inside into three longitudinal sectors to welcome the senators. These
modifications, directly linked to the topographical
move of the center, were obviously highly symbolic:
notably, that was the way to turn the Rostra from the
curia to the forum, that is to say the magistrates, from
the Senate to the people, in accordance with Cesars
popular politics.
Shaping the forum The last generic building of the
Roman forum was the basilica (royal building,
named after the Hellenistic kingdoms architecture
adopted in Rome at the end of the third century
BC). It was a large covered space designed as a substitute for the open space of the forum when the weather
did not allow its normal activities economic, politic,
and judiciary. The structure of the basilica, usually
subdivided into three parallel aisles by two central
colonnades, has been adopted by Christian architecture when building churches which maintained the
terminology.
During the Roman Republic, texts mention at least
four basilicas: Porcia, Aemilia, Sempronia, Opimia,
before the edification of the Caesarean basilica Iulia.
The latter is an extension of the basilica Sempronia,
south of the comitium area and the forum place, and
appears much richer than the Republican ones in terms
of architecture and decoration, even just the podium
remains nowadays: 101  49 m (including the previous basilica and the adjacent old shops), five aisles
bordered by porticos on two levels of arches, and
internal temporary subdivisions that allowed judgement in several trials contemporaneously.
One of the urban functions of those large and
regular buildings was to unify and close the forum,
that is to say to create a coherent complex where the
gradual set-up of the place tended to appear anarchic.
It is no accident that Cesar proceeded to the restoration of the basilica Aemilia, north of the forum,

contemporaneously with the construction of the basilica Iulia, and of its own forum, with all the modifications in the comitium area above mentioned.
When he finally opened the northwestern corner of
the forum Romanum in 46 to set up the forum Iulium,
he bordered it directly with a portico on three sides,
and at the center of it a temple to his patron Venus
Genitrix, and a bronze equestrian statue of himself
(Figure 5).
The Republican place had already been closed west,
against the Capitol, with the monumental Tabularium
(where were kept the State archives, the tabulae), by
Quintus Lutatius Catulus in 78: a long gallery on three
levels, inspired by the architectural development of
Latial sanctuaries which would become a model for
other Roman buildings (such as the theater of Pompey,
the Coliseum, or the Trajans markets), served to link
the aerarium (bronze treasure) and the temple of
Saturn to the coins workshop, close to the temple
of Juno Moneta on the Capitoline Hill.
The Republican shape of the forum Romanum was,
lastly, definitely determined by a number of temples
and shrines, and of honorific monuments to the glory
of the rulers. Once again, each and every aspect was
symbolically inextricable: a temple dedicated to a
divinity who helped the Romans to win a victory
(often a deified human quality) celebrated at the
same time the god, the power of Rome and the action
of the general and his family. Little remains of the
numerous Republican sanctuaries of the forum which
were so many testimonies to Roman history, as they
have been continuously restored and reused during
the Empire. Among them might notably be named, in
addition to the royal shrines still in use throughout
the Republic (sanctuary of Venus Cloacina, altar of
Saturn, temple of Vesta, mundus the navel of the
City), the temples of Saturn and of the Dioscuri
Castor and Pollux (early fifth century BC, restored
both several times), the temple of the Concord (fourth
or third century). But the Republican temples are best
known, thanks to the temples on the forum boarium
(to Portunus and Hercules Victor) and on the area
sacra of the Campus Martius.
The Campus Martius (Field of Mars)

Topographically, the campus Martius is the plain included between the Capitol, the Tiber, the Quirinal,
and the Pincio, but the name usually refers to
the western part of it, delimited by the via Flaminia
(Figure 2): outside the pomerium, it is a public area
(since, according to the tradition, it was the property
of Tarquinius before being seized by the Republican
State), devoted to military exercises, sportive games
(such as horses races), and some political assemblies
(notably the elections of magistrates in the saepta, the

1306 EUROPE, WEST/Rome

vote enclosure), that is to say to activities that required a large space in which to gather the Roman
people, armed and voting (theoretically synonymous
at that time).
Unlike the center of the city, the campus Martius
was for a long time an open space rather free of constructions: this explains that, from the second century
BC, it became a proper laboratory of urbanism
(P. Gros), progressively extended northwards. Roughly,
four archaeological phases are well identified: the
sanctuaries of the mid-Republic (fourth to third century BC), the Hellenistic constructions in the area of
the circus Flaminius (second to first century BC), the
Augustan extension northwards, and the Imperial
modifications (essentially during Domitian, Hadrian,
and the Antonin Emperors reigns, from the end of the
first century to the end of the second century AD).
The area sacra of the Largo Argentina The four
temples of the sacred area, emphasized, thanks to the
preserved zone in the middle of the Largo Argentina
(Figure 6), give the best idea of the evolution of
Republican religious architecture (even if all of them
have been several times restored, particularly after the
fire of AD 80). Built between early third century and
late second century BC, it had not been monumentalized as a coherent complex before the mid-second
century, unified by a paving between the temples.
Now the architecture and decoration of their first
phases (sometimes found reused in the Late Republican or Early Imperial restorations) progressively go
from Latial traditions (shared with south Etruria) to
Hellenistic ones, typically with the circular neoclassic
temple B (Figure 7).
At the same time, this religious area reveals itself to
be very coherent with the entire zone: the involved
divinities (convincingly identified by F. Coarelli as
Feronia, Juturna, the Lares Permarini, and Fortuna
Huiusce Diei, the Fortune of today) were linked to
the provision of supplies, thanks to marine and fluvial
transport, related to the plebeian connotation of this
part of the Campus Martius, particularly since the
construction of the circus Flaminius in 221, competing with the traditional circus Maximus.
Yet, from the second century BC, the Field of Mars
was to become, even more than the forum, the scene
of intense rivalry between the leading families who
found enough room, and fewer restrictions than inside the pomerium, to conceive huge constructions,
such as porticos and theaters. The most relevant
example is the complex of Pompey, directly west of
the area sacra, dedicated after his triumph of 61: at
the top of the theater stood the temple of his patron
Venus Victrix (the terraces of the first serving as
a scale for the second, allowing to get round the
interdiction to construct a permanent show building),

whereas a squared portico, adjacent to the theater,

adorned by a rich collection of artworks and finally
devoted to Pompey, was closed by a new curia (in
which Cesar was murdered 10 years later). Despite
the scarcity of material evidence (the shape of the theater is readable in the layout of modern streets), this
complex is a proper summary of the changing conception of the state, physically and symbolically reflected
in the city, to the glory of a man. Cesar was to magnify
the same movement when he prematurely died: August
pursued his projects and extended them to definitively
change the face of Rome.

Augustan Rome
Roman studies for over a century had explored
numerous aspects of the Augustan revolution: society, institutions of the new regime, religion and religious architecture, topography of Rome, Augustan
portraiture, the widespread dissemination of the
urban model in the colonies of the Empire; but a
very specific issue of recent studies since the mid1980s focuses on ideology and its visual expressions
after the pioneer study by P. Zanker entitled The
Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, and especially his study on the symbols involved in numismatics, sculpture, painting and also ceramics, etc.
Moreover, new attention was given to a global approach to the Augustan building policy and city
planning as paradigm for reading urban creations of
autocratic rulers. Finally, the perception of Rome
by Ancient viewers became a new important theme.
Although the documentation from the Augustan Age
is more abundant and our knowledge much more precise than for any other period of the Empire, many
monuments are known through no direct testimonies,
but only through numismatic or written sources,
for example, the extraordinarily rich collections of
artworks displayed in major ensembles that have
completely disappeared.
Augustus transformed the aspect of the city more
durably, more deeply, and more radically than any
other Roman statesman before and after him. The
concentration of all the power in the hands of a single
man permitted for the first time the development of a
coherent, uniform, and global urbanistic program
which could be conceived as an ideal reflect of the
political achievements of the Emperor.
The anarchical expansion of not only the Urbs during the Late Republic but also the transformations and
destructions due to the civil wars of the first century
BC necessitated an important enterprise of restoration and reconstruction and a more accurate control
of the urban space: for that reason the huge urbanistic
program of Augustus is based upon an important
administrative reform. The ancient division of the

EUROPE, WEST/Rome 1307

Figure 5 Map of the imperial Forums including recent discoveries.

Figure 6 Temple C to Fortuna Huiusce Diei (end of the second century BC), on the area sacra of the Largo Argentina.

urban space into four districts inherited from the fourth

century BC system was transformed by Augustus who
created 14 new circumscriptions, the regiones; moreover, each of the 265 urban vici or quarters received
a magister in charge of the cult of the Lares and of
the genius Augusti: the numerous crossroads marmorean altars preserved in the Roman collections reflect
the new imperial ideology and bear a rich iconography derived from the official monuments such as the
Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace); they symbolize the strict

correlation between administrative, urbanistic, religious, and political reforms of the Augustan era.
The principal aim of the Augustan program was the
reconstruction of Rome and the restoration of its
traditional cults neglected during civil wars. The
archaeological evidence is fortunately completed by
a major source of the period, the Res Gestae divi
Augusti (History of the Divine Augustus), political
testament of the princeps which gives a list of the
monuments dedicated or restored by the Emperor:

1308 EUROPE, WEST/Rome

Saepta
Iulia
Iseum

Marsh of
the Goat

Altar of Mars

Hecatostylum
Diribitorium

ptu

Theater and
portico of Balbus

nu

us
dic
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Be

llo

Me

tor

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Circus Flaminius

pit

Ju
no
Re
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Sta

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Theater of Pompey

B
C
Vetus
D
Area sacra

ollo

Pompey

Ap

Portico of

Villa Publica

Porticus
Minucia

TIBER

Forum
Holitorium

300 m

Figure 7 Map of the southern Campus Martius in the Republican time.

he said to have 82 temples restored during the year of

his sixth consulship in 28 BC! In fact, there are three
main categories of temples concerned by Augustan
restoration of the pax deorum (peace of the gods):
first of all, cults linked to the origins of Rome or
traditional Republican cults like those of Quirinus,
Iuno Regina, Jupiter Feretrius, Vesta, Jupiter Capitolinus; then temples of personal divinities protecting
the emperor and his family (Apollo, Diana, Mars,
Neptune or divus Iulius, deified Cesar); finally,
temples or altars dedicated to personified abstractions such as Pax, Concordia or Fortuna.
As major symbol of the old Republic that Augustus
pretended to restore, the aspect of the forum Romanum
could not be transformed as radically as other areas
of the Urbs. Moreover, religious restrictions did not
allow to modify the location of the traditional temples.
So the strategy of the princeps (first citizen, prince)
consisted of a planned process of annexation of preexistent buildings and of addition of basic symbols of

the new imperial order, mainly linked to the victory of

Actium (over his rival Marcus Antonius in 31 BC) and
the arrival of the Golden Age. Instead of erecting new
monuments, Augustus consequently chose to mark the
main circuits with symbolic elements like statues,
arches, and honorary columns decorated with the
spoils of the main battles: for instance, a Hellenistic
statue of Victory was placed in the curia Iulia. By this
way he could change the signification of this area and
transform it into a space dedicated to the selfpromotion of the Gens Iulia; in fact, the only new
foundation is that of the Temple of Caesar soon surrounded by two Augustan triumphal arches, the first
one commemorating Actium, the second one the diplomatic victory over the Parthians with the recuperation of Roman standards in 19 BC. This triple-bay
arch was articulated with the portico of Caius and
Lucius Caesar (the adoptive sons of the princeps)
which formed a monumental facade for the basilica
Aemilia (Figure 7).

EUROPE, WEST/Rome 1309

The new foundations were fewer but of a high

significance: Augustus created a third forum of monumental proportions significantly located between
the forum Iulium and the forum Romanum; it was
dominated by a huge temple of Mars Ultor (the
Advenger) and flanked by a double absidated portico
decorated with the portrait statues of the summi uiri
(the Great) and triumphators of Rome from Aeneas
to Caesar (Figure 8). Recent excavations brought new
elements about a sumptuously decorated aula (aristocratic courtyard) adjacent to the portico, whose
exact destination remains uncertain but that was
probably dedicated to the Imperial Cult.
As founder of a new Rome, Augustus gave new
importance to the Palatine, the hill of Romulus; this
sector was fully reorganized under his reign and
became another strategic place for the expression of
the new imperial ideology: as early as 40 BC Octavian
had begun to transform it into his principal residence
and in 28 BC he dedicated there a temple to the
cardinal divinity of the new Golden Age, Apollo
Actius after an omen that this place had to become a
sanctuary; so Apollo became the new custodian of the
Sibylline Books. Augustus also declared public a part
of the residence and built two libraries as well as
a monumental portico whose decoration figured
Apollinian myths: a complete sculptural evocation
of the Danaids myth was displayed in the forecourt of
the temple. Excavations began as soon as the eighteenth century on the site at that time occupied by the
Farnese gardens and residences; the rich collection of

marble sculptures, terracotta, and various artifacts

from the Imperial Palace are nowadays dispersed in
various private palaces, in Roman Museums but also
in the Archaeological Museum of Naples; recent research focuses on the residence of the first emperor
and its paintings. Moreover, the Palatine Hill, which
preserved a continuous stratigraphy from the archaic
period until late-antique times, is concentrating most
intensive archaeological activity; in addition to important researches on archaic walls and habitations
which recently provided much-discussed results (see
supra), archaeologists and researchers are at present
collaborating to a large-scale international research
project studying the successive phases of the Imperial
Palace and including three-dimensional modeling of
each phase. Moreover, excavations in the northeast
part of the Hill by French archaeologists on the area
of Vigna Barberini, the ancient site of a monumental
terrace of the imperial residence, brought new evidence about the Domitianic and Severan phases of
the Palace as well as new data concerning archaeology
of landscape and gardens, a field that has recently
acquired new importance.
On the Campus Martius, Augustus realized a largescale building program including his most innovative
architectural projects: he gave to Rome and dedicated
to Marcellus in 13 BC one of its first stone theaters;
moreover, Augustus dedicated a monumental complex comprising a huge dynastic Mausoleum inspired
by archaic royal tombs (tumuli), the marble Ara Pacis
commemorating the victorious return of the princeps

Figure 8 Reconstruction of the Colosseum, the Palatine hill and the imperial forums.

1310 EUROPE, WEST/Rome

after campaigns in Gaul and Spain in 13 BC and a

monumental sundial engraved in bronze letters on a
large square dominated by an Egyptian obelisk whose
shadow indicated the direction of the Ara Pacis at
Augustus birthday. Remains of the sundial were
found under Piazza Montecitorio and the obelisk is
to be seen there. But the most spectacular reorganization of the area was due to Agrippa who commissioned a series of new prestigious buildings: he built
the Pantheon, one of the best-preserved temples of
Rome, a monumental thermal ensemble that became
the prototype of the series of all imperial baths up to
Caracalla, a campus, gardens including an artificial
lake (stagnum), a sanctuary to Neptune and the
Porticus Vipsania, where a monumental map of the
world was exhibited; he also rebuilt the Villa Publica
and the Saepta Iulia, both of which were designed at
the same time for political activities, spectacles, and
agreement of the Roman people.
Although the originality of Augustus building
program is undeniable, it is important to underscore
that the architectural choices of the princeps were
highly traditional and often conservative; typologically, they almost all used a Republican visual language,
which formed the formal counterpart of the restoration by Augustus of the traditional piety and politics.
Stylistically, the evolution of Augustan buildings
enlightens the elaboration of specific visual semantics that formed the Roman Corinthian order, which
became a major symbol of the new imperial order. So
had Augustus profoundly modified the Roman cityscape without introducing any spectacular novelty in
urban components? Augustan Rome was a new Rome
due to a change of scale and to the unifying aspect of
the project.

Rome of the Emperors

Flavian Rome (AD 6996)

The original and very ambitious building program

of the Flavian emperors in Rome has only recently
received the attention that it merits, although we
know very well-preserved monuments from this
period, notably the Colosseum or the arch of Titus
on the forum. First of all, numerous reconstructions
were imposed by the great fires of AD 69, which
heavily damaged the Capitol and the forum Romanum, and of AD 80, destroying much of the central
Campus Martius; both of them authorized the second
dynasty to reconstruct in a strong programmatic way
the Augustan Urbs. The new Rome of the Flavians,
including very innovative constructions, concerned all
parts of the Urbs and all types of monuments. Another
destruction was of benefit to the Flavian urban reshaping: the full reorganization of the huge area once covered by the domus Aurea, the sumptuous private palace
of the emperor Nero, which was almost completely
destroyed: the entire space was restored to public use
(and thus to the Roman People) and included the completion of the unfinished temple of divus Claudius
(Figure 9), a gigantic stone amphitheater known as
the Colosseum, part of Vespasians forum (see below),
a monumental thermal complex built under Titus, a
ludus for gladiators, a new version of the Meta Sudans
(a monumental circular fountain) and finally, important Domitianic extensions of the Palatine imperial
residence recently excavated; among these discoveries,
there is to mention a monumental terrace-garden built
on huge substructions on the northeast side of the hill
including an absidated portico, and a new access ramp
with an entrance arch to the Palace.

Figure 9 A temple for the imperial cult: the temple of Divus Claudius on the Forma Urbis.

EUROPE, WEST/Rome 1311

In the traditional political center of the city the

Flavian emperors, like Augustus before them, realized
minor transformations; there is to mention a systematic scansion of the Via Sacra from the Field of
Mars to the Capitol, with arches or commemorative
monuments evoking the Flavian victory and the Jewish triumph of AD 70: for instance the arch of Titus in
the Circus Maximus, known essentially from epigraphic evidence, and that of the Velia, fully preserved today.
The Flavian dynasty built or rebuilt no fewer than
50 major public monuments in Rome representing a
complete monumental panoply and including two
new dynastic temples (see below), a mausoleum temple, two new imperial forums, a stone amphitheatre,
and many sanctuaries and honorific monuments.
Moreover, recent research has revealed that important
cutting and leveling works had already begun under
Domitian on the site of the future Trajans Forum,
which suggests that Domitian had planned the construction of a second imperial complex. The scale of
the works begun under Domitian as well as the stylistic characteristics of Domitianic architectural decoration clearly demonstrated for the first time a centralized
organization of the urban building industry and of
the ateliers at an unprecedented level.
The Imperial Forums

The area of the imperial forums is the one that has

recently offered most innovative historical perspectives due to the extensive excavations in the city centre
realized on occasion of the Roman Jubilee (2000)
(Figure 10): the traditional image of these forums
formed in the early nineteenth century has been for
the first time modified in a radical way, in particular
concerning the planimetry of Trajans and Augustus
forums; recent research has also brought new evidence
about the successive phases of these monumental
programs (some of them only projectual) and about
the early mediaeval occupation of the area of forum
Transitorium (Figure 11) and Temple of Peace, which
results are at present exhibited with axonometric
reconstructions in the recent Crypta Balbi Museum.
Moreover, a large-scale research project is aiming at
studying all the architectural fragments from the
forums and the provenience of their material while a
new Museum specifically dedicated to the history of
the forums is to be opened in Trajans markets.
The most important recent findings concern
Augustus Forum, which included a third semicircular
exedra on its south part, Trajans Forum, where no
monumental temple to divus Traianus has been
found, and the central area of the Templum Pacis.
The three first ensembles are those of dynasty
founders, Caesar, Augustus and Vespasian; the

multifunctional forum Iulium dedicated to Venus

Genetrix, divine ancestor of Gens Iulia, associating
an axial temple consecrated to a dynastic divinity, a
closed colo