Nicholas David

Integrating ethnoarchaeology: A subtle realist perspective

Abstract Ethnoarchaeology is characterized by a diversity of products that often seem to have little in common but which can for the most part be assigned to one or the other of two contrasting, although not incompatible, schools: the scientist and the hermeneutic. A subtle realist philosophical perspective and Goodenoughs concepts of phenomenal and ideational orders are employed to situate ethnoarchaeological researches in the context of culture as a whole. It becomes apparent that the diversity of studies reflects the expanse of this domain, in the analysis of parts of which it is appropriate to employ a variety of methods and analytical styles. Selected ethnoarchaeological studies are reviewed in demonstration of the thesis that the relative simplicity or complexity and openness or restriction of the systems under investigation are the main factors influencing choices of methods and styles. Ethnoarchaeological and archaeological interpretation should indeed partake both of scientist explanation and hermeneutics. Last, it is noted that, while ethnoarchaeology remains closely linked to archaeology, its scope is widening to include a broader range of anthropological concerns that can be accessed through material culture studies.

Excavations in the Southern Sudan, 1979

This is an account of the archaeological aspect of the second of the four BIEA expeditions to the Southern Sudan. It is mainly the work of Dr David, the leader of the expedition, and now Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Calgary.

The Ethnoarchaeology and Field Archaeology of Grinding at Sukur, Adamawa State, Nigeria

A typology of artificial rock hollows and tentative identification of their functions is founded upon study of recent practices at Sukur. Five stages of development of equipment for grinding grain are identified and shown, using field archaeological evidence, to constitute a sequence of historical phases that extends from the Neolithic or early Iron Age to the present. The development of other types of hollows is related to this sequence. Ethnographic data are employed to estimate the use lives of grain grinding hollows, which are interpreted in terms of woman-centered familial grain-grinding units. The evidence suggests that prior to ca. AD 1600 the population density averaged two orders of magnitude less than in recent times—with important implications for regional culture history. This exploratory study demonstrates the potential of artificial hollows as evidence for the study of prehistory, culture and demographic history, and the history of landscape in Africa and beyond.

ACTION ON MATTER: THE HISTORY OF THE UNIQUELY AFRICAN TAMPER AND CONCAVE ANVIL POT-FORMING TECHNIQUE

The publication, largely by ethnoarchaeologists, of new data on the tamper and concave anvil technique of pot-forming (TCA) permits a reassessment of this uniquely African technique, its toolkit, and its culture history. A survey, inspired by the technologie culturelle school, of its varied expressions in the southern Saharan, Sahelian and northern Sudan zones from Mali to Sudan and extending north into Egypt emphasises the potential of the technique for the efficient production of spherical water jars of high volume to weight ratio, much appreciated in arid environments. The technique is demanding and therefore practised for the most part by specialists. The origins and diffusion of the technique are assessed in the light of the ethnological, archaeological, linguistic, and historical evidence, and a four stage historical development is sketched.

Tazunu: Megalithic Monuments of Central Africa

Summary This article describes the excavation of two tumuli incorporating megalithic structures of a type found in the western Central African Republic and part of eastern highland Cameroon. The author examines the question of their construction and offers an interpretation of their cultural and historical significance. Dr. David is an Associate Professor of Archaeology in the University of Calgary. Excavations at two major megalithic monuments in the Central African Republic allow reconstruction of their plans and the sequence of construction. In one case the sources of the raw materials are restricted and comparative evidence suggests that this, and by extension all other tazunu, could have been built by a village of Later Stone Age food producers in a single season. The few small finds found within the monuments are indicative of a Neolithic technological level and the sites are radiocarbon dated to the first millennium BC The stratigraphy and dating of tazunu previously excavated in the Bouar locality...

Monumental architecture in mountain landscapes: the diy-geδ-bay sites of northern Cameroon

The DGB sites are complexes of dry-stone terraces and platforms in the Mandara Mountains of northern Cameroon. They constitute the earliest well-established evidence for human occupation of this region and raise important questions about the nature of monumentality, relationships with social complexity and areal culture history. The present state of knowledge of the DGB sites and questions arising are summarised and reviewed. While it appears that the sites represent indigenous responses to major areal droughts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this is neither a complete explanation nor does it address the relationship between the montagnards and the state societies at that time developing in the surrounding plains. Deeper understanding of the DGB sites requires research into their variation and their roles within inhabited landscapes, as well as a reformulation of largely implicit models of historical process and agency corresponding to a topographical dichotomisation of mountain and plains.

Perigordian and Noaillian in the Greater Périgord

During the past two decades, there has been intensive research on the systematics of the earlier Upper Paleolithic cultures of the Perigord region of southwestern France and to an increasing extent the traditional typological aspects of such research have been supplemented by information about environment and chronology provided by the natural sciences (e.g., Delpech 1983; Laville 1975; Paquereau 1978). An important part of this work has concerned the so-called “Perigordian” tool-making tradition, which although named and defined in the 1930s by Denis Peyrony (1933, 1936), has received significant redefinition in recent decades (e.g., Bordes 1968b; Delporte 1976; de Sonneville-Bordes 1960). One modern view of Perigordian systematics was presented by Henri Laville, Jean-Phillippe Rigaud, and James Sackett (1980) in their general monograph on the archaeology and geochronology of Paleolithic rock-shelter sites in the Perigord. Another, rather different view of the same subject has been developed by several scholars who have worked during the past two decades with many of the same materials but who have taken as their point of departure a series of assemblages from the site of Abri Pataud (Les Eyzies, Dordogne), excavated in the 1950s and 1960s under the general direction of Hallam L. Movius, Jr. (1974, 1975, 1977). Until recently, the Pataud data concerning the Perigordian and the Noaillian were known only from several preliminary papers (Bricker 1976, 1978; Clay 1976; David 1973; Movius and David 1970) but by now two monographs relevant to our topic have been published (Bricker and David 1984; David 1985), and a well-illustrated, one-volume, descriptive summary of all the Pataud assemblages is in preparation. With much of the documentation on both sides of the issue now or soon to be available, it is a convenient moment for us to present a brief statement of our view of the Perigordian and the Noaillian in the Perigord.

Ethnoarchaeology: its nature, origins, and history

The problem for archaeologists, it appears, is that they are always too late … ( Tim Ingold 1999: ix ) Clearly a bout with ethnography is neither possible nor necessary for everyone. ( Susan Kus 1997: 209, after research among the Merina of Madagascar ) We begin by explaining why and how ethnoarchaeology came to be, and give an example from Peru as an illustration of what it is. Then, after explaining the plan of this book, we define the subject and offer a periodized history, concluding the chapter with a glimpse of what it is to be an ethnoarchaeologist. Why ethnoarchaeology? Archaeological interpretation is founded and ultimately depends upon analogy – a form of inference that holds that if something is like something else in some respects it is likely to be similar in others. We use it to recognize a flint flake as an artifact or, built into a long chain of reasoning, to impute a tributary mode of production to early civilizations (Trigger 1993: 45–6). Archaeologists draw upon their lives and upon everything they have read, heard about or seen in the search for possible analogies to the fragmentary remains they seek to interpret. By the mid-1950s attention was turning to a new range of questions about the past, to approaches to understanding the patterning in artifact assemblages that would lead beyond cultural chronologies and time-space systematics, the organization of cultural variety into convenient temporally and spatially limited packages such as phases and cultures (Willey and Phillips 1958).

Theorizing ethnoarchaeology and analogy

It is particularly because human beings delegate to artifacts, to exchange and to technical acts a large part of the construction and the conservation of their social ties that human societies constitute stable frameworks, in contradistinction to the societies of other primates that – transient because they lack things – require to be continuously (re)constructed by direct contacts (touches, looks, sounds, smells), and by the physical closeness and continuous active involvement of the participants. ( Anick Coudart 1992a: 262, our translation ). What recourse is there for the imaginatively challenged? ( Bruce Trigger 1998: 30 ) The vast majority of publications on ethnoarchaeology take no explicit theoretical position – which does not mean that they are atheoretical. In this chapter we offer the reader a basic toolkit with which to examine the theory, implicit or explicit, expressed in the ethnoarchaeological literature that we will be considering in the course of this book. For two reasons the toolkit we offer at this stage is a minimal one. First, most of us prefer to deal with theoretical complexities as they arise and in a factual context. Second, this is not the place to attempt to survey the wide web of theoretical positions taken by archaeologists (and to a lesser extent ethnoarchaeologists) following an influx of theory reaching anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s from a variety of sources including the philosophy of science, literary theory, and sociology.