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ANTH 2201 Introduction to Archaeology Workbook Assignment #3 Ceramics, Seriation, Site Formation & Household Archaeology at Broken K Pueblo These exercises are intended to introduce you to a number of closely-related concepts through a replication of the archaeological analysis of the site of Broken K Pueblo. Broken K is a real site on the Colorado Plateau in the drainage of the Upper Little Colorado River (Arizona). As a pueblo, the site conforms to a common plan of multiple, conjoined room blocks with several central underground chambers called “kivas,” distinguished by a sipapu , or floor hole of ritual significance. Because Pueblo peoples today, like the Hopi and the Zuni, occupy similar adobe (mud brick) villages in New Mexico, we use the term Ancient Pueblo (or also Anasazi) to refer to the peoples past who left behind similar ruins and probably practiced similar lifestyles. On the Colorado Plateau, the Ancient Pueblo people experienced climate and population stress in the 13 th C (AD) and “disappeared,” (probably declining in population and moving to the areas occupied today by modern Pueblo peoples). Broken K Pueblo was excavated by James Hill in the 1960s. This was an exciting decade in archaeology, and the excavations and reports on Broken K Pueblo and nearby Carter Ranch broke new ground conceptually and methodologically. The Southwest region had long been a target of American archaeologists. Alfred Kidder at Pecos Pueblo had worked out a detailed stratigraphic seriation of ceramic types, recognizing the gradual phasing out of popular styles and the phasing in of others throughout the site’s deep occupation. (See the Gatecliff Rockshelter projectile point diagram on your lithics quiz as an example of frequency seriation ). This culture history based on ceramic types was one of the best known contributions to American archaeology to date, and it meant that many sites could be dated based on the ceramics one found. But in the 1960s, young archaeologists called for radical change in the approaches. No longer content to catalogue and document successive culture types of the past, they called for a “ New Archaeology ” based on the premise that scientific methods could reveal universal laws of human behavior . They further argued that the purpose of archaeology was to discover past lifeways —to reconstruct human behaviors rather than culture history. “Archaeology is Anthropology, or it is nothing,” insisted Gordon Willey and Phillip Phillips. The excavators at Broken K Pueblo applied many of the methods in vogue at the time. Computer analysis was new, and the cluster, or factor, analysis used to identify co-variance in ceramic types is a statistical predecessor of correspondence analysis widely used in multivariate analysis of variance today. Along with new technologies, archaeologists were applying new rules, or “theoretical considerations” as Hill (p. 15) put it. These included: a) Patterned behaviors leave patterned debris. In subtle deference to statistical (i.e., scientific) principles, new archaeologists declared an interest in normative behavior, that is, the most common behaviors rather than rare, outlier actions. In this sense, “human behavior is patterned, or structured.” Excavators at Broken K argued that, “people do things in certain places within their communities, and they leave behind them artifacts and other evidence of these activities” (Hill 1970: 15). b) Ethnographic analogy links materials to behaviors. By examining how people in modern societies use (behave with) material culture, archaeologists can develop models of how similar-looking material culture was used in the past. (Remember W.J. Sollas, Lewis Binford, and Jean-Marie Rigaud studying Inuit behavior in cold climates for clues to the behaviors of Paleolithic peoples?). This branch of archaeology is ethnoarchaeology . In the Southwest USA where

modern Pueblo people are descendants of Ancient Pueblo groups, some of the best ethnoarchaeological models come from the behaviors and material culture of modern Pueblo Indians. For example, modern Pueblo potters are always women, and they practice matrilocality (living with the wife’s family after marriage). c) Multiple lines of evidence can be used to generate and test hypotheses. In analysis, archaeologists use observational science to discover patterns in material culture. Once one recognizes a pattern and proposes a tentative explanation, or hypothesis, to test that pattern, one can employ alternate types of evidence to make the test. For example, at Broken K Pueblo, archaeologists used frequency seriation of ceramics (drawing upon Kidders’ and others’ work in the broader Southwest USA) to date several phases of occupation. Fourteen ceramic types from Broken K were associated elsewhere with absolute dates (generated by counting tree rings). The excavators used the frequencies of these types to estimate whether Broken K fell early or late in the time frame in which these ceramics were used. Then excavators obtained an absolute date from a single uncharred portion of a roof-beam (counting annual growth rings of the tree). This date (1260 AD) fell within the range of 1150-1280 AD hypothesized from the ceramic frequencies. Archaeologists used multiple lines of evidence—ceramics, bones and other artifacts, architectural details, and the presence of pollen—to assign room functions, relative room use dates, and study the activities and lifeways of people living at Broken K. d) Sampling can be used to understand the whole. Not only would it have been too time- consuming to excavate the entire Broken K site, but excavation is destructive. Good practice leaves part of the site for future study. But what should archaeologists sample to get representative picture of material culture? At Broken K, archaeologists used pre-existing units— ancient rooms—as the basis for stratified, random sampling. The structure of the site guided choices to sample rooms from each room block (all sides of the site) and several kivas, as well as trenching outside rooms. e) Middens=trash. People in permanent settlements dump trash away from the spaces in which they are living. Who wants to wade ankle-deep through smelly old bones, cracked pottery, and chipped stone? When these things accumulate where they were used (usually at temporary campsites from which people move) they are called primary context . When people dump them into trash areas, or middens, they are in secondary context . Most of the room fill (and possibly all of it) at Broken K Pueblo was in secondary context, meaning that these rooms had been abandoned. Rooms with the most midden had probably been abandoned longest. f) Clusters of attributes co-vary, making these clusters the target of artifact analysis. Once one understands patterning in ceramic forms, designs, and fabric, these patterns provide the basis for hypothesis generation or hypothesis testing. Clusters of attributes can have meaning that is chronological, functional, or social. For example, a pattern of early bowls with late jars might provide the basis for assigning rooms containing these to different periods (chronological). Or the pattern might suggest that rooms containing bowls were eating rooms and rooms containing jars were storage rooms (functional). Or the shift in time might suggest that people de-emphasized presentation of food to guests (in bowls) and increased their hoarding of food in jars (social).

1. The following table is a frequency seriation of pottery types adapted from the real ceramic assemblages recovered from kivas at Broken K Pueblo (Hill 1970: 35). Each row represents 100% of the ceramics collected from a particular kiva. The oldest kiva is the bottom row and the youngest is the top . (The totals of columns are irrelevant since each cell represents the percentage of a particular ceramic type in the assemblage from that kiva). HINT: you might want to refer to the Gatecliff Rockshelter projectile point frequency seriation diagram on your lithics quiz for help in reading this table. Kiva Snowflake Black & White (Snowflake variety) St. Johns Brown on Red Brown Plain Corrugated Patterned Corrugated Pinto Polychrome Snowflake Black & White (Tularosa variety) St. Johns Polychrome Brown Plain Corrugated smudged interior McDonald Plain Corrugated Plaza 3 0 2 7 28 23 17 12 8 Room 29 0 0 25 50 25 0 0 0 0 Room 6 0 35 65 0 0 0 0 0 0 41 15 80 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 PROBLEM: You are conducting survey at 5 very small pueblos neighboring Broken K. Surface collections yielded only a few ceramic types, suggesting in each case that the entire site was short-lived. You have permission to excavate a narrow test pit in a kiva at each of the five sites to generate a ceramic assemblage comparable to the ritual kiva assemblages at Broken K. Your results appear in the following table: Survey Site Number Snowflake Black & White (Snowflake variety) St. Johns Brown on Red Brown Plain Corrugated Patterned Corrugated Pinto Polychrome Snowflake Black & White (Tularosa variety) St. Johns Polychrome Brown Plain Corrugated smudged interior McDonald Plain Corrugated Site 1 5 60 35 0 0 0 0 0 0 Site 2 42 38 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 Site 3 0 0 0 3 2 7 15 38 35 Site 4 0 0 25 50 25 0 0 0 0 Site 5 0 22 46 22 10 0 0 0 0 a) Using the Broken K Pueblo assemblages, generate a relative chronology of your sites (earliest to latest). , , , , .

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