The Hohokam"Collapse"

The concept of societal collapse looms large in an archaeological context and yet, a singular variable as a means of causation remains elusive. Numerous models have been developed and applied to collapse. However, they are devoid of a conclusive causation. Collapse is not a product of a singular action or condition, but must be attributed to multiple variables. When they are applied in conjunction create a situation ripe for social instability. Rebecca M. Dean goes beyond the traditional ecological models of Hohokam collapse and analysis the role of hunting intensification prior to abandonment in the region of Southern Arizona by the middle of the 15^th century. In her paper Hunting intensification and the Hohokam “collapse”, she attempts to demonstrate that population decline is a product of economic intensification and poorer nutrition brought about by a shrinking resource base.

There have been numerous explanations for the decline of the Hohokam population by A.D. 1450. However, they tend to be firmly and solely rooted in ecological explanations: “catastrophic climate deterioration, the failure of crops due to draught, flood, climate change or salinization of fields” (Dean 2007:110). Even warfare as a possible cause of decline has its basis on the competition for a limited resource base due to environmental constraints. Dean views the gradual population decline of the Hohokam people as a product of demographic stressors in conjunction with ecological stressors on settlements and the landscape, which is visible in the archaeological record. The resulting economic intensification and poorer nutrition due to a lack of sustainable resources led to a decrease in fertility and a rise mortality that would eventually bring about the demise of the Hohokam people.

In order to maintain population and cultural stability within a group context, resource sustainability must be maintained. When evidence of resource stress and hunting intensification becomes apparent in faunal assemblages, there is an apparent degradation in the resource base. Rebecca Dean uses this as the foundation for her analysis of how hunting intensification and an investment in to diverse hunting strategies is a key indicator of resource instability, which directly leads to the “collapse” of the Hohokam populations.

The author bases her assertions on a database of 85 faunal assemblages from the entire Hohokam cultural region, which span the Early Agricultural through the Classic periods. In order to provide an adequate sample size, assemblages were required to contain at least 100 identifiable species in a village context and at least 50 in a logistical camp or farmstead site. All samples were located below 800 m in elevations to limit a disproportionate number of particular game species. Even excluding higher elevation, the author contends that the sample retains adequate environmental diversity. The fauna database was also limited to specimens that could be collected through ¼ in. screen. Dean notes that fish and bird specimens may not be recovered from the standard ¼ in. screen. Dean attests that fish remains were not common at Hohokam sites and that species of raptors were used as ritual burials, which greatly inflate their presence in the archaeological record. Rodent species also tend to be problematic, therefore only the larger species were used in the analysis.

The intent in not to analyze the quantity of small or large game in the assemblages, but rather determine diversification in hunting strategies through time. The assumption is that the greater the observed diversity, the greater the populations need to implore additional resources to sustain the group. Dean attests that a society would not undertake an investment in diverse hunting strategies unless there was a specific need for the community. She then divides the Hohokam hunting strategies into five categories, not by faunal type but rather, the strategic methods for hunting them. Prey species are also then divided into five categories based on the strategic methods for hunting them. The distribution of faunal remains within these groups is subjected to a diversity index of evenness. The higher the index value the greater the shift in the traditional hunting strategy of hunting lagomorphs (rabbits).

Based on the resulting indices created from the 85 faunal assemblages a clear pattern of diversification emerges through time. Dean’s interpretation of the index analysis is that by the Classis period tradition hunting strategies were no longer providing adequate food and that diverse hunting strategies had to be implored to provide subsistence for the population. It is noted however, that by the Classic period the population “may have been sufficiently aggregated to allow an additional strategy of resource intensification: the allocation of specialized labor to long-distance artiodactyl hunting” (Dean 2007:124). Areas of highest population density also sought out higher degrees of diversity in hunting strategies. These diverse strategies included an increased willingness to hunt small game, birds, aquatic animals, and artiodactyls in conjunction with traditional diet staples. The underlying nature of hunting diversification demonstrates a society on the brink. When ecological or social factors such as warfare come into play, societal collapse is only hastened.

Rebecca Dean’s article makes significant forays into understanding the greater complexity of societal collapse. By acknowledging that collapse is the result of numerous factors intertwining to produce a singular effect over an extended temporal period rather than an overreaching variable during a single generation, she lays the foundation for a deeper understanding of “collapse”. Unfortunately, the model she developed may be to generalized to retain validity under securitization. Dean acknowledges the flaws in her analysis, but asserts that because it has fewer assumptions to violate and relies less heavily on specific data it is more applicable on a regional scale. This may be true, but the lack of specificity creates broad generalization that may not be implicit in all cases. Therefore, the analyses Dean provides retains important implications on understand resource stresses and the effect on population densities and eventually societal collapse. However, Dean should acknowledge that generalizations may not provide enough to substantiate an irrefutable analysis on the Hohokam “collapse”.

By: Lucas Hoedl

References Cited

Dean, Rebecca M.

2007. Hunting intensification and the Hohokam “collapse”. Journal of Anthropological

Archaeology 26: 109-132.

High-Altitude Biological Adaptation

In Lorna Grindlay Moore’s, and Judith G. Regensteiner’s paper entitled Adaptation to High Altitude, the authors write about the biological problems that humans face who live at high altitudes. They outline the challenges that hhumans living at high altitudes today experience largely due to the low levels of oxygen in the air. In fact, the oxygen supply is reduced by one-half at the highest altitudes at which human populations reside. This reduction in oxygen intake can cause serious and life-long health issues.

This paper points to a multitude of problems that are prevalent in populations from high altitudes, some that can even lead to death. These include reduced fecundity, problems during pregnancy, childhood growth retardation, high-altitude pulmonary edema, chronic mountain sickness and emphysema. With all these health risks, one would assume that high altitudes would not be popular places to live. However, today, at least 30 million people live and successfully reproduce at elevations over 7,500 feet and people have done so for thousands of years.

Hypoxia (a condition in which the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply) of high altitudes cannot be ameliorated by culture. This distinguishes hypoxia from other harsh environmental conditions like extreme cold or heat. In addition, it created an ideal environment for studying natural selection because all of the people in a population have access to the exact same amount of oxygen. Today, there are only four regions of the world in which groups of humans reside at elevations above 2500 meters: the Rocky Mountains in North America, the Andes of South America, the Ethiopian Highlands of Eastern Africa, and the Himalayas of South-Central Asia.

Scientists feel that natural selection has had enough time to increase the frequency of adaptive alleles in mountain populations who live in all four of these areas except the Rocky Mountains. Research has been done with populations that have inhabited the Andean and Tibetan Plateaus for millennia and scholars have identified distinctive morphological and physiological characteristics thought to offset the stress of high-altitude hypoxia. These adaptations include thin-walled pulmonary vasculature, relative hypoventilation of Andean high-altitude natives or the elevated exhaled nitric oxide of Tibetans.

Scientists now feel that there is enough evidence to show that people who have lived in these high altitudes for long periods of time have developed adaptations resulting from natural selection favoring more effective adaptive responses to hypoxia. Yes, there are those who can say that their ancestors have lived in a high-altitude environment for thousands of years, but not many. The implications for the health of many people who live in high altitudes are obvious. As stated by Moore and Regensteiner, many questions remain to be explored, especially those regarding prevention and treatment.


Moore, Lorna Grindlay and Regensteiner, Judith G.
1983 Adaptation to High Altitude. Annual Review of Anthropology 12:285-304.

Climate Change and the Colorado High Country

In this paper by James Benedict, one of the foremost experts in Rocky Mountain archaeology, the author explores how climate change influenced human population density near the Continental Divide over the last 3000 years. Benedict explains that the Continental Divide area is a good place study how climate change affected humans because it is considered a marginal environment. Thus, early human (and non-human) inhabitants of this area lived a kind of feast or famine existence and so were extremely vulnerable to even slight shifts in climate.

These early residents of the mountains exhibited a mobile lifestyle since the large animals they hunted were migratory (bison, elk, deer and sheep) and vegetation that they ate was scarce and only available at certain times of year. In addition, weather and landscape conditions at the higher altitudes were unforgiving and harsh and necessitated that winter base camps be located at lower elevations. During summer and early fall, people were highly mobile and travelled into high altitudes to hunt, forage, trade, etc.

Benedict analyzed carbon dates from numerous archaeological sites to determine that, during the last 3000 years, the number of sites found has increased dramatically. Although extreme taphonomic processes skew the record in the Rocky Mountain region, it is inferred from this data that population density rose significantly since 1000 B.C. This population increase was likely due to both growth within extant groups and migration of non-mountain peoples into the area.

Lichenometry, the study of lichen growth to determine the length of time period that rock has been exposed, was used to graph climatic shifts within the 3000-year time period. Lichen can only survive for a few years if covered by snow for too many weeks of the year. So, Benedict used this snow-kill information to discover when there was a period of time when snow melt was at a minimum. He then compared these trends to population density data.

The results show that during times when snow cover lasted the longest, the animals that were hunted by people did not visit their usual grazing grounds due to lack of exposed vegetation. Benedict hypothesizes that because the game animals were not in abundance during these time periods, human population density decreased because the people would have had far less successful hunting seasons. Since these human residents got most of their food in the form of big-game meat (80%-90%), there would have been no incentive for them to stay when these animals were not available. Thus, during times of increased snow cover, the area surrounding the Continental Divide of Colorado would not have been able to support a large population of humans, hence the large fluctuations in population density during the past 3000 years.

Benedict concludes by explaining that population density in marginal environments like the Rocky Mountains is valuable data for archaeology, ecology, climatology and general knowledge as a whole. He suggests that studies such as this one can be used to explain the fragility of regions like this even today. With climate changing at an exponential rate, it is vital that we understand how these shifts can dramatically influence our way of life.

Benedict, James B. 1999 Effects of Changing Climate on Game-Animal and Human Use of the Colorado High Country (U.S.A.) Since 1000 BC. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 1-15. INSTAAR, University of Colorado.

Digging Pixels 2: Modeling Rome’s Theatre of Pompey

In my first post I wrote about an archaeological study in Second Life, an online 3D virtual world. Archaeologists are interested in other aspects of 3D simulations, too. One way they use 3D models is to virtually reconstruct ancient sites or artifacts. Reconstructions can be fascinating to look at, for the public and professionals alike, but can also serve as research tools.

Such was the case when researchers at the University of Warwick, UK, embarked on creating a digital redo of Rome’s vast Theatre of Pompey, built in 55 B.C., “possibly the largest theatre ever built.” Although much of the original building remains, it was largely incorporated into the dense fabric of surrounding homes and shops during the Middle Ages. Parts can be glimpsed in basements and walls, but the way they link is not obvious. Because of its documentation in ancient texts, the theatre became the model for theatres throughout the Roman Empire, later in the Renaissance, and thus for Western theatres in general. Yet little is known about the original.

To address this lack, the researchers set out to assemble an ambitious electronic repository of information about the site, spanning its history and including 3D models, text references, records of every artifact associated with the site, and acoustical models. The digital reconstruction based on this resource was created with the highest possible accuracy from CAD drawings, and can be continually revised and updated with new information, since a virtual model allows ongoing adjustment and correction. A model of this kind has many advantages: it avoids invasive archaeological procedures; it can be easily publicized; and it can generate still images from any angle, interactive moving images, and even virtual environments for researchers and the public to experience.

But perhaps most important, the model is a tool for the ongoing investigation of the structure of the theatre the relationships between the parts. A full and detailed 3D model makes it easier to hypothesize about the areas of the theatre that can’t be seen, for instance by using virtual cutaway sections. The model can be zoomed into at any level of detail, rotated, modified, and shown in multiple versions to indicate different possible interpretations—crucial in not creating the impression of false certainty. The nature of the process, too, adds depth to the study, since it has required the collaboration of archaeologists with modelers, archivists, theatre and urban historians, and surveyors.

Coming full circle to the idea of virtual worlds, the researchers have proposed using the virtual reconstruction for virtual performances, bringing the ancient theatre to (virtually) full life and realizing its original purpose. It would not be the first of its kind; in Second Life there is a virtual Old Globe theatre that gives live Shakespearean performances by avatars, and a number of scholarly reconstructions of other historical theatres. This one, though, may be the most ambitious and thorough yet. Whether in Second Life or some other virtual realm, we may someday be able to sit in the 25,000-seat hall of Pompey’s theatre, the model for theatres over two millenia.

Reference
Beacham, R. and H. Denard
2003 The Pompey Project: Digital Research and Virtual Reconstruction of Rome's First Theatre. Computers and the Humanities 37(1): 129–139.

Digging Pixels 1: Virtual Archaeology (Come on, Literally?)

Archaeologists study the traces people leave behind, in order to learn about their lives. Until recently, those traces were generally on the ground or under it, where gravity inevitably takes the bits and pieces that we cast off or stop using. Twentieth-century technology has given us some ways of resisting this. Our radio and TV signals have escaped earth’s orbit, and so have spaceships and satellites, literally fighting gravity. The future Space Archaeologist will have to travel far to recover some of those ruins.

Some of our flights, though, have taken a more ephemeral route. The Internet has opened up new frontiers of cyberspace, which we have colonized rapidly. Blogs, social networks, and forums are where we scribble our graffiti. And while just a few years ago we were limited to cybertext and photos, we now have fully 3-dimensional places to explore since the development of virtual worlds such as Second Life, which has 50–70,000 users online at any given time. Social scientists of all kinds have followed this development with interest, including archaeologists. Second Life (SL) is a social space where people interact via their avatars, forming groups, communities, and cultures; but it is also a sensual universe of simulated ground, sea, sky, and space, where each user can build a personalized environment limited only by imagination.

Rodney Harrison, in “Excavating Second Life: Cyber-Archaeologies, Heritage and Virtual Communities” (Journal of Material Culture vol. 14, no. 1: 75–106), sees SL as a place where concepts of heritage are played out through these created environments. Heritage conservation in this context means that some virtual constructions are seen as worthy of preservation and special treatment, just as real-world historical and archaeological sites are selectively preserved according to cultural priorities. Harrison’s study reviews statements on blogs and web sites about SL heritage sites such as monuments, replicas of real-life heritage sites, and “conserved buildings,” and so it is largely a textual study rather than a study of the heritage sites themselves. He examines some of the modes in which people experience these sites, for instance whether they visit them alone or in groups, but this information is based on self-reporting rather than observation. He does gather some hard data: He examines the SL visitor statistics for some sites identified as having heritage characteristics, to discover their popularity relative to other SL sites. Harrison also investigates ways that virtual artifacts can be preserved for posterity.

The conclusions he draws are that virtual heritage sites are intended to create a sense of history and communal origins, and that they tend to celebrate elites and rulers rather than ordinary people. This is one of his chief concerns: that alternative viewpoints do not have a voice in these virtual worlds. His concern seems to be based on the fact that there are a few “official” sites in SL that are maintained by Linden Labs (the owning company) and that have some recognized cachet. His concern is puzzling, since any user of SL can build anything desired, and viewpoints are not restricted (apart from some rules about adult content in non-adult areas).

Harrison sometimes takes the idea of virtual archaeology too literally, such as looking for ways to determine the (relative) antiquity of virtual sites. Overall, this is more useful as a thought-provoking piece than as a research piece.

Bell Beaker Culture or Pottery as Social Identity?

Once again an archaeologist is looking into the phenomena known as Bell Beaker Pottery. The pottery’s spread and use is massive, very complex, and largely not well understood. The Bell Beaker pottery is thought to have originated somewhere out of the European southwest and spread into good portion of Europe all the way up into Ireland. Whether it is all just one culture that had massive migration or pottery vessels that spread through trade or the pottery became a copying phenomenon, is up for interpretation still. The Bell Beaker pottery is sometimes described as an entire culture phenomenon, but that is what the author of the paper “Danish Bell Beaker Potter and Flint Daggers-The Display of Social Identities?” Torben Sarauw, looks at most closely and possibly disagrees with.
Sarauw using recent studies and his own research into the area is tackling the issue of if the Bell Beaker pottery(BBP) in the Danish area is used differently than the other BBP regions. The BBP is used in ceremonial manners and prestigious grave sites throughout most of the participating European regions however the Danish use the pottery in a much more casual way. So the issue is what was the meaning of the BBP for the Danish Bell Beaker people? Sarauw also adds the production of flint daggers and their social meaning in to his thesis, since flint daggers were evident in the culture of the Danish Bell Beaker era and show material culture as social identity.
Social identity of the Danish Bell Beaker is the main issue in this article using the definition by social anthropologist Richard Jenkins as “…the way which people distinguish themselves and others through their social relations with others on the basis of similarity and difference.” (Sarauw 2008, 24) Sarauw uses the distribution of the pottery between several houses on the archaeological site of Bejsebakken to show how some households or community groups identified themselves with pottery in their everyday lives. These Bejsebakken households are of a common style in the Jutlandic and are radiocarbon dated to be in the correct time for the BBP in other areas of Northern Europe. The site also holds very large amounts of BBP and flint dagger remains of varying lengths and widths.
Sarauw’s article is divided into two parts for the main discussion the Pottery section and the Flint Section. In the Pottery section the discussion centers around the findings that the grave goods were either from an earlier interpretation of the Bell Beaker pottery or were only a shot term or “tested” cultural tradition for the Danish (Sarauw 2008, 26). This means that the Danish did not use their Bell Beaker pottery to show respect to the dead or to warrior men but used it instead to create an identity in their lives. This is shown by how the pottery distributed between the Bejsebakken houses. 16 houses were particularly studied because of their amount of pottery. There were several different types of pottery, some plain utility ware with no decoration, some coarse ware with horizontal grooves, and BBP were found around the houses (Sarauw 2008, figure 4). The particular oddity is that the three types of pottery surrounded only certain houses in chronological progression.
The flint daggers that were created and formed at the time are called “type I daggers” and they fall into varying standards. Sarauw refers to them as “ordinary” and “parallel-flaked” or “sub-type I C.”(Sarauw 2008, 32) The many daggers found were charted by length and width, which show where they fall in the two categories, although the “ordinary” daggers far outweigh the “sub-type I C.” It seems that the “sub-type I C” daggers appear most often in male graves, presumed to be warrior graves or graves that got warrior attention recognition. The other “ordinary” daggers are seen to be used as common things by all ages and sexes. The “sub-type I C” daggers when used in their ceremonial status are connected to only to warrior activities (Sarauw 2008, 36).
The social identities that are associated with this use of material culture from the Danish at Bejsebakken, and can possibly be expanded to all Danish is very interesting to the overall conclusions about the Bell Beaker Culture. Sarauw shows that the Danish at Bejsbakken do not use the BBP as a ceremonial pottery for the dead, but as a signifier of family. The pottery, plain, coarse ware and Bell Beaker pottery, that is found around these certain houses, are not exchanged between houses but are kept in the households continually. Sarauw interprets this as the pottery types create a social identity of lineage and family connection, not prestige or sex. However the difficult to make ‘sub-type I C” flint daggers from the area that was used at the same time as the pottery is created for warrior practices, and giving honor to warrior men at their graves. The flint daggers take the place of the pottery in the Danish Bell Beaker society. Sarauw comes to several conclusions about the overall Bell Beaker culture from this. A possible theory is due to sea voyages and trade the pottery is not a symbol for a migrating or dominant culture, but merely a trade picked up because it is attractive or in the case of the non-Bell Beaker areas not picked up because they find it unattractive (Sarauw 2008, 31). The final conclusion is that the Bell Beaker culture in the Danish society was not a culture at all, but merely a social identity marker, and that more research into the area is needed.

Work Cited

Jenkins, R
1996 Social Identity. London and New York, Routledge.

Sarauw, Torben
2008 Danish Bell Beaker Pottery and Flint Daggers - the Display of Social
Identities? In European Journal of Archaeology pp 23-47.

A New Methodology Towards the Bell Beaker Communities in Thy

A very large study on the Bell Beaker “Culture”, the strange phenomena of similar pottery wares spread across Europe, was done in Thy, northern Jutland, Denmark. This archeological project, the Thy Archaeological Project, covered a large amount of data that had recently been discovered in 1990. The Thy site was part of an expansion of the Bell Beaker phenomena, the site was previously unknown until some rescue excavations(Prieto-Prieto-MartIacutenez2008:116) The site is under the instruction of Kristian Kristiansen and this article “Bell Beaker Communities in Thy: The First Bronze Age Society in Denmark” is by M. Pilar Prieto-MartIacutenez. What is laid out by Prieto-MartIacutenez is an intricate look at the possible social contexts of the Bell Beaker Pottery in the Thy society and a possible new methodology for identifying pottery types. She also compares the Thy site findings to other areas in Germany, Poland and Holland and these site’s Bell Beaker pottery to see the similarities and differences.

What Prieto-MartIacutenez discusses are the 3361 sherds found on the site and the different housing sites themselves at the Jutland site (Prieto-Prieto-MartIacutenez2008:125.) Before discussing them in depth however she lays the foundation for her research by stating that there are three things that the archaeologists of Denmark Bell Beaker sites agree upon. One that Bell Beaker was passed from Germany’s coast to Denmark’s Jutland. Two Denmark only has about 400 years of Bell Beaker material culture spanning form 2350-1950 B.C. Three that the Bell Beaker “culture” and the Single Grave Culture(SGC), an earlier Danish Neolithic culture, must have coexisted or had some sort of contact. (Prieto-MartIacutenez 2008:117)

Prieto-MartIacutenez’s research question aims to explain possible parts of the culture of the Denmark Bell Beaker era through its pottery production. Showing that the production of pottery is an extension of the person who has made it, who is then in turn an extension of the culture they are from, so the pottery has the ability to accurately show what the culture is like.( Prieto-Prieto-MartIacutenez2008:121) She goes on to explain that this can also show the different social levels of society through the different changes in the pottery wear. Then she finalizes all of this by stating that “…the material culture from the Bell Beaker and particularly the Bell Beaker vessel itself, has a meaning that transcends any single community…”( Prieto-Prieto-MartIacutenez2009:122.)

This article is at its core about a methodology of defining and conceptualizing styles of pottery. Prieto-MartIacutenez uses the opportunity that the Thy Bell Beaker site presents to test her style methodology, creating sections underneath the overall “Style” to go in depth with what she calls “Category…a group of ceramics that share…formal attributes using the same technical solutions…”and even more detailed descriptions with Stylistic Tendencies “When small difference exist within a category…” (Prieto-Prieto-MartIacutenez2008:123) Through this methodology she theorizes the ability to determine connections between the pottery work, find cultural attributes and compare the findings to other Danish archaeological records.

Prieto-MartIacutenez finds a multitude of possible social and stylistic conclusions. Using the best site of the three studied for pottery analysis, Thy-2758 which reportedly had most of the 3361 pottery sherds found, Prieto-MartIacutenez mapped out the possible pottery connections. (Prieto-Prieto-MartIacutenez2008:125) From the analysis made Prieto-MartIacutenez finds that there is a connection between the SGC and the Bell Beaker pottery because of the similarities between some of the stylistic themes of the Bell Beaker pottery and the SGC pottery, called Corded-Ware Pottery. She also finds that there is a connection between the spatial analysis of the pottery and the social structure of the culture. Theorizing that House I with the most pottery and the most Bell Beaker pottery and the largest amount of Bell Beaker design pieces is the house with the most cultural standing. She furthers this claim with the comparison between House I and it’s variety of designed Bell Beaker pieces and House D from Myrhoj, a house with many prestige items and it’s large variety of designed Bell Beaker pieces(Prieto-Prieto-MartIacutenez2008:139, 141.) Her comparisons between the pottery sherds of Thy site and the rest of Denmark and Germany, Holland and Poland all have very strong evidence that the Bell Beaker pottery was treated as a prestige item fairly consistently across the area of its effect. (Prieto-Prieto-MartIacutenez2008:147)

This article lays out an easy to follow new methodology for comparing pottery that has special significance to different cultures. Prieto-MartIacutenez also is starting the job of integrating the pottery data from the Thy Archaeological Project (that was run in the 1990s) into what has been found so far from the Danish Bell Beaker material culture. There are a few things that Prieto-MartIacutenez does not completely go back to cover like some of her more theoretical premises such as how pottery can accurately show what a culture is like. Overall Prieto-MartIacutenez puts forth a great research base to start possible further research on the connections between the phenomena of the Bell Beaker pottery and its overall designs and prestige status especially in the area of Jutland.

Written By: Catherine Johns

Bibliography

Prieto-MartÍnez, M. Pilar.
2008 Bell Beaker Communities in Thy: The First Bronze Age Society in Denmark.
Norwegian Archaeological Review. 41(2):115-158.