"We can look to the past to see the future. The hallmark focus of this generation is a redefining of archaeology from a rather abstract pursuit to one that has direct impact on day-to-day concerns" (Chuck Redman, Arizona State University.) Archaeology is more than just an indulgence of a rich society. We really do have something to say to future generations" (Don Rice, Southern Illinois University.) "We should not repeat the mistakes they made. Grazing and overcutting have made the Middle East bleak and unproductive while Europe, profoundly altered by human activity, is not longer in a natural state" (Jeff Dean, University of Arizona.) There is an up side to the story archaeologists tell however. Many societies have a record of success for hundreds, even thousands of years. People such as the Lacandon Maya or the Hopi leave us lessons that we need to learn because they are marked by success rather than failure. Ask yourself "what does history repeat itself?" as you learn about what archaeology is and what archaeologists have learned.
Space-Context
Space in Archaeology is not the limitless frontiers of the heavens, but a precisely defined location for every find made during an archaeological survey or excavation. Archaeological objects of any type have an exact find spot, a context in the three ordinary dimensions of space to produce the latitude, longitude, and depth measurements that define a point uniquely. This spatial component of context is just as important as the precise date of an artifact.
Space is important to archaeologists because it enables them to determine the distances between different objects or features, or between entire settlements, or settlements and key vegetational zones and landmarks. Important distances can be a few inches of level ground between a dagger and the skeleton of its dead owner, or a mile separating two seasonal camps, or a complicated series of interrelated distance measurements separating dozens of villages that are part of an elaborate trading system carrying luxury goods like sea shells through several geographic regions hundreds of miles apart.
Space studies in archaeology depend on another fundamental law: The Law of Association. Simply stated is Association in archaeology is the horizontal relationship between artifacts and other archaeological finds or results of human activity. Finds are said to be associated with one another, or with occupation layers in a site when they are deemed to be contemporary with one another. This is directly tied to the concept of Context. It is through the recording of association that archaeologists place things in context so that one can infer behavioral references. Think of an artifact that is found all by itself without anything around it. How much could be inferred about its context to any behavior. Context in space is closely tied to cultural behavior, and is best illustrated by the grave setting in the Introduction to Archaeology computer module.
A hierarchy of Archaeological Entities
Space and Time; two critical elements in studying the human past, are the foundation of a whole hierarchy of important archaeological entities-units and concepts used by archaeologists to subdivide, classify, and interpret the past.
By the phrase "Hierarchy of Archaeological Entities" we mean: A hierarchy of theoretical terms devised by archaeologists that enable them to classify the archaeological record into ordered levels. These levels start at the lowest level with individual artifact attributes, and at their highest subsume the human world system.
In other words, the Hierarchy is a set of entirely arbitrary labels used by archaeologists to classify and manipulate their data in the field and laboratory. When studying the Hierarchy, an understanding of which is essential for a journey through human prehistory, you should always remember that terms like "attribute," "artifact," and so on are theoretical constructs designed to assist research. They do not necessarily coincide with the original peoples' view of their own artifacts, houses, and so on.
World Prehistory and World Systems
World Prehistory, the subject matter of much of this course, is the study of human prehistory from a global perspective. It behooves us, therefore, to approach the subject from a global perspective. The way we do this is through the notion of a World System.
The highest level in our hierarchy of archaeological entities is that of the World System, which is a reflection of the perspective of human prehistory that emerges from this course. We must now look at this idea more closely, and define what we mean, in general terms, by "World system."
Since World War II, archaeology has become increasingly specialized and more and more hi-tech, to the point that relatively few archaeologists know much about the prehistory of any area other than their local region and research locale. This means that general theories of prehistory are few and far between. In this course, we take you on a journey through human prehistory on a global basis, and do so within a broad, overall theoretical framework that applies as much to the earliest humans as it does to the very twilight of prehistory in recent centuries. This framework is based on a general notion of a "World System."
Today, we live in a world of numerous nations and cultures that are linked together by global ties at every level and of every type imaginable. Some ties are economic-trade in gold, grain, and other commodities, to say nothing of automobiles and luxury goods. Others are spiritual-the philosophical ties of Christianity, Islam, and other world religions. Many are political, links forged by common allegiances to political canons, or by formal treaty. All these networks encompass vast distances and hundreds of diverse societies, even before we contemplate the subtle and not-too-subtle environmental links that join all of humankind with imperishable and fragile chains.
Anthropologist Eric Wolf has argued persuasively that all human societies have been linked together in many subtle ways ever since Europeans embarked on their voyages of discovery to Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific in the fifteenth century AD. These societies have influenced each other in all manner of obvious and not-so-obvious ways-to make the notion of "pristine" societies, uninfluenced by others, an untenable one.
Wolf is at least partially, if not wholly, right in his assumption-as far as the past five or six centuries of prehistory are concerned. The Mediterranean civilizations-Rome, Greece, Alexander the Great, the Persians, the Assyrians and Babylonians, to say nothing of the Chinese, created widespread "world systems" that impacted many other societies, but not, of course, on the scale of recent centuries. But what about earlier prehistory?
It is our belief that human societies have formed part of a world system since the earliest times-but the character of this world system has changed radically through the millennia. We live today in a world system generated, nurtured, and constantly changed by human actors. Our remote predecessors lived in a world system shaped not by humanity but by global forces of climatic and environmental change-by the constant climatic changes of the Ice Age, which began over 2.5 million years ago.
We can divide our notion of a world system into four stages, themselves grouped into humanly-created and natural systems:
Humanly-Created Systems
1. Modern World System (AD 1400 to modern times). This system, created by the European Age of Discovery and its consequences, spans the last five centuries of prehistory.
2. Nascent World System (c.1500 BC to AD 1400). Far-flung, but still regional, systems created by early imperial civilizations, and their successors-Medieval France, the Italian nation-states, and so on.
Natural Systems
3. Holocene World System (c. 12,000 BC to modern times). Post Glacial, or Holocene, times saw the retreat of Ice Age glaciers from northern latitudes, world sea levels rise from about 300 feet below modern levels, and major, and constantly fluctuating climate change on a local and global scale. These changes saw a rapid warming-up after the end of the Ice Age, with the warmest temperatures in about 4,000 BC.
The Holocene saw major changes in human society, the emergence of food production and village life, also the development of the first state-organized societies. Note that this System continues right into modern times, for humanly-created world systems only begin to assume dominance in human affairs after about AD 1400.
4. Ice Age (Pleistocene) World System (2.5 million years to 12,000 BC). The Pleistocene, the so-called Great Ice Age, is the last geological epoch. It began about 2.5 million years ago and ended with the retreat of northern ice sheets after 12,000 BC. In fact, we are in the midst of a warm cycle of the Ice Age today, but geologists and archaeologists separate the Holocene from the Pleistocene for convenience.
The ever-changing cycles of Ice Age climate were the backdrop, the global ecological system that affected the early evolution and spread of humankind. Conceptually, we study world prehistory against this changing backdrop, for global environmental fluctuations affected all of humankind, even groups separated by thousands of miles and living in quite different environments.
As we shall see, local changes were as important as global ones in triggering developments in human biological and cultural evolution that had ultimately momentous effects on the future course of human prehistory.
From the very earliest times, humans have been an integral part not only of their own local ecosystems, but of the global ecosystem as well. This was, and still is, the world system that governs, and still governs, the biological, and increasingly the cultural, evolution of humankind. World prehistory, the subject matter of the last seven assignments of this course, is the study of the relationship between evolving and spreading humanity and this ever-changing world system. It is also the study of the diverse ways in which humans have achieved increasing control over the global ecosystem, creating the artificial world system along the way.