Archaeological Survey

290 Pages·2002·4.39 MB·English

by  E. B. Banning (auth.)

Archaeological Survey
MANUALS IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL METHOD, THEORY, AND TECHNIQUE
Series Editors:
Charles E. Orser, Jr., Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois
Michael B. Schiffer, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY
E. B. Banning
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Archaeological Survey
E. B. Banning
University oj Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC
ISBN 978-0-306-47348-7 ISBN 978-1-4615-0769-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-0769-7
©2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Kluwer Academic /Plenum Publishers, New York in 2002
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1s t edition 2002
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Preface
One of the questions that non-archaeologists often ask us is how we find archaeo
logical sites. Today we often provide a pat answer about random or systematic sam
pling, or perhaps about fieldwalking. This does not do justice to what archaeologists
actually do, or to the body of theory and methods we have built up.
After decades of carrying out surveys with intuitive designs, in the 1960s some
archaeologists began to deal more explicitly with the design of archaeological surveys.
Some seminal articles on aspects of archaeological survey design followed over the
next two decades but, unlike excavation methods, archaeological survey has received
no comprehensive treatment that could serve as a guide to survey practitioners. The
main purpose of this book is to fill this gap.
In addition, most archaeologists have been reluctant to discuss aspects of survey
other than sampling and a few of the factors that influence detection probability. They
have also almost completely ignored the large body of literature on search theory that
cognate fields have generated. In an attempt to put archaeological survey on a consistent
theoretical "and methodological basis, I have drawn on research in archaeology, math
ematical earth sciences, and operations research. This will result, I think, in some sur
prises for archaeologists, who have sometimes struggled to identify and understand sur
vey problems that other fields had already studied intensively.
My own interest in archaeological survey began more than 20 years ago, when an
invitation to join the staff of a survey in southern Jordan quite quickly threw me into the
midst of debates over sampling, discovery probabilities, site significance, site defini
tion, and other issues. A few years later, I also had a hand in designing a survey in the
eastern Nile delta of Egypt. I thank Burton MacDonald and Carol Redmount for provid
ing those opportunities. These, and my own survey project, which I started in northern
Jordan about that time, exposed me to survey in stony deserts, dune areas, plowed fields,
and even dense oak scrub and forest (yes, there actually are forests in the Middle East).
In addition, these seasons of fieldwork forced me to learn from my mistakes. It quickly
became obvious that cookbook solutions that were popular at the time were quite inef
fective for achieving my objectives. No longer would I design a survey the way I did in
the early 1980s.
From 1985 to 1987, I divided a post-doctoral fellowship between the University of
Virginia and the University of Arizona, where I was able to focus on some of the prob
lems I had been encountering with survey design and evaluation, and benefited from
discussions with Steve Plog and Mike Schiffer. I thank them and a number of archaeolo-
v
vi Archaeological Survey
gists who responded to a questionnaire I circulated at that time, for helping me formu
late my trial solutions to some of these problems, and the Social Sciences and Humani
ties Research Council of Canada for supporting my post-doctoral project.
I also thank Ron Farquhar for introducing me to the geophysical perspective on
survey and remote sensing at the University of Toronto. My interactions with him while
I served as teaching assistant in a course on archaeometry led me to try to find a unified
theory for archaeological survey, as applicable to fieldwalking for lithic scatters as to
magnetometry. Eventually, this experience, and a discussion with Dave Lasby, led to
my discovery that such theories had long been available in the search literature of math
ematical geology and operations research.
I would like to thank Tony Wilkinson and Michael Mathers for their helpful com
ments on content; Margaret Bateman and Jennifer Sharman for help with the bibliogra
phy, index, and proofing; and Mike Schiffer and Charles Orser for inviting me to con
tribute this book.
Knowing that part of my audience would be CRM surveyors, and that my own
experience was focussed on the Middle East, I also sometimes relied on discussions
with Steve Monckton, Ron Williamson, Paul Racher, Chris Watt, Dana Campbell, and
Jeff Bursey for their impressions of the problems of CRM survey in the Great Lakes
region of North America. Over the years, I have also benefitted from discussions about
survey with Cesare d' Annibale, Max Friesen, Peter Dawson, Lou Levine, Bill Cavanagh,
Sally Stewart, Alicia Hawkins, and Dave Lasby. I would also like to thank Mark Pearce
at University of Nottingham for introducing me to W. G. Clarke's 1922 guide to
fieldwalking.
The organization of this book reflects my belief that good archaeological survey
design must both anticipate the factors that affect the detectability of archaeological
materials and facilitate the surveys' objectives. Consequently, the main chapters follow
ing the introduction focus on influences on detectability and on three classes of survey
that, I think, reflect the main goals that surveyors attempt to achieve. These are
prospection, estimation, and the detection of spatial pattern. Certainly other classifica
tions are possible, but I have found this a useful way to conceive of the differences
between survey strategies and to resolve conflicts between site and "non-site," and sam
pling and "total" survey. Other chapters deal with practical matters that are common to
all types of surveyor (Chapter 8) to CRM surveys in particular.
The book is aimed at professional archaeologists and archaeological students who
already have some familiarity with archaeological theory and methods. Some chapters
explore mathematical aspects of survey design, but I would urge readers who find the
mathematics tedious simply to focus instead on the substantive implications ofthe equa
tions. Among these implications I would include:
1. It is indeed possible to find near-optimal geometries and distribution of effort for
many kinds of survey.
2. Increases in survey effort often have diminishing returns.
3. Quantitative evaluation of a survey design and its results allows us to make
realistic assessments about the proportion of targets the survey detected, about the
extent of bias in their detection or in estimates of their parameters, and about the
Preface vii
places where targets probably will and will not occur in as yet unsurveyed regions.
I have also provided some simple examples to illustrate how some of the more im
portant equations work in practical situations.
Students with less background in archaeology might want to focus on the more
general Chapters I and 2, and on the more practical issues in Chapter 9, and to read the
survey sections of general introductions to archaeological fieldwork, such as Brian
Fagan's Archaeology: A Brief Introduction (1988), Jane McIntosh's The Practical Ar
chaeologist (1986), or Robert Sharer and Wendy Ashmore's Discovering Our Past
(1996).
Some of the approaches I advocate in this book, I am sure, will seem to some readers
too theoretical, too counter-intuitive, or too much of a departure from years of practical
experience. Yet part of my argument below is that the knowledge and intuition of expe
rienced practitioners should be integral to the survey design process. In addition, I hope
I can convince you that we should not satisfy ourselves with boilerplate surveys and
cookie-cutter shovel-test intervals, just because they are easy for bureaucrats or devel
opers to understand or because they provide a level playing field.
Modem development is rapidly altering forever the shape of the archaeological land
scapes we hold dear. Let us find ways to explore those landscapes thoroughly, yet prac
tically, while we still can.
Ted Banning
Toronto, Ontario
Contents
LIST OF FIGURES ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• xix
LIST OF T ABLES ........................................................................................................... xxi
I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1
1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEy ............................................... 2
1.1 Early Archaeological Reconnaissance ......................................................... 2
1.2 Fieldwalking in Britain ................................................................................ 3
1.3 Early Air Reconnaissance ............................................................................ 4
1.4 Surveys in Northwest Europe ...................................................................... 4
1.5 The Viril Valley Survey ............................................................................... 4
1.6 Diyala and Uruk Surveys, Iraq .................................................................... 5
1. 7 The Basin of Mexico Project .................................................................... '" 6
1.8 Site Survey in the American Southwest ...................................................... 6
1.9 Survey in North American Forests .............................................................. 7
1.l0 "Non-site Survey," and "Landscape Archaeology" .................................... 7
1.11 Intertidal and Shallow-lake Survey ............................................................ 8
2. SURVEY'S UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION TO ARCHAEOLOGy ...................................... 10
3. SURFACE DISTRIBUTIONS AND BURIED LANDSCAPES ........................................... 11
3.1 Models of Cultural Distributions....................... ......... .... ........ ................... 12
3.1.1 The Monument Model.... .......... ......... ............................. ...... ............. 13
3.1.2 The Earthwork Model ....................................................................... 13
3.1.3 The Uniform Distribution .................................................................. 14
3.1.4 The Modal, "Bulls-eye," or "Fried-egg" Model .............................. 15
3.1.4.1 Mathematical Models for Clusters of Artifacts........ ........ ... .... 16
3.1.4.2 Contagious Distributions ......................................................... 17
3.1.5 The Palimpsest Model ....................................................................... 18
3.1.6 The "Off-site" or "Intersite" Model .................................................. 19
3.1.7 The Distributional or "Non-site" Model ........................................... 20
3.1.8 The Place Model ................................................................................ 20
3.1.9 The Paleolandscape Model ................................................................ 22
4. RESEARCH DESIGN IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEy ............................................ 22
IX
x Archaeological Survey
II. THE GoALS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEy .............................................................. 27
1. TYPES OF GoALS ............................................................................................. 27
1.1 Prospection ................................................................................................ 28
1.2 Statistical Survey ........................................................................................ 30
1.2.1 Populations, Parameters and Estimation ........................................... 30
1.2.2 Estimating Densities of Sites ............................................................. 30
1.2.3 Estimating Densities of Artifacts on the Landscape .......................... 31
1.204 Estimating Proportions of Site Types ................................................ 31
1.2.5 Estimating Human Population Size or Growth Rate ......................... 32
1.2.6 Estimating Proportions of Sites by Ecological or Land-use Zone .... 32
1.2.7 Estimating Parameters of Artifact Attributes .................................... 32
1.2.8 Estimating the Range or Diversity of Archaeological Materials ....... 33
1.2.9 The Relevance of Prospecting Tools ................................................. 33
1.3 Surveying for Spatial Structure ................................................................. 34
1.3.1 Detecting Settlement Lattices, Landscape Systems, and Communica-
tion Routes ............................................................................................ 34
1.3.2 Mapping "Continuous" Distributions ................................................ 34
104 Surveys with Multiple Goals ..................................................................... 35
1.5 The Issue of Methodological Consistency ................................................ 36
1.6 Summary ................................................................................................... 38
III. THE DISCOVERY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL MATERIALS BY SURVEy .............................. 39
1. FACTORS AFFECTING ARCHAEOLOGICAL DETECTION ........................................ 39
1.1 Method of Inspection ................................................................................. 40
1.1.1 Visual Inspection in Surface Survey ................................................. 40
1.1.2 Visual Inspection of Aerial Photographs with Groundchecks ........... 41
1.1.3 Survey by Test Pits, Divoting, Coring, or Augering (SST) ............... 42
1.104 Geophysical Survey ........................................................................... 44
1.104.1 Resistivity Survey .................................................................... 44
1.104.2 Magnetometer Survey .............................................................. 44
1.104.3 Electromagnetic (EM) Survey .................................................. 44
1.10404 Seismic Survey ......................................................................... 45
1.1.4.5 Sonar or Acoustic Survey ......................................................... 45
1.1.4.6 Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) ............................................ 45
1.104.7 Chemical Survey ...................................................................... 45
1.104.8 Thermal Survey ........................................................................ 45
1.1.5 Underwater Survey ............................................................................ 45
1.2 Visibility .................................................................................................... 46
1.3 Obtrusiveness ............................................................................................ 48
1.3.1 The Constituents of Archaeological Distributions ............................ 49
1.3.2 Obtrusiveness of Artifact Scatters ..................................................... 49
Contents XI
1.3.3 Constituent Removal by Chemical or Mechanical Destruction ........ 54
1.3.4 Obtrusiveness in Aerial Reconnaissance ........................................... 54
1.3.5 Obtrusiveness in Geophysical Survey ............................................... 55
1.3.6 Obtrusiveness in Chemical Survey ................................................... 55
1.4 Distance from Target to Sensor ................................................................. 56
1.4.1 The Law of Clean Sweep or Definite Detection ............................... 57
1.4.2 Inverse-cube Law .............................................................................. 58
1.5 Geometry of Sites or Artifact Clusters ...................................................... 59
1.6 Intensity or Density of Effort .................................................................... 60
1.7 Resolution .................................................................................................. 62
1.8 Coverage .................................................................................................... 63
1.9 Accessibility .............................................................................................. 63
l.l 0 Crew Training, Experience, and Motivation ............................................ 65
1.10.1 Training and Briefing Team Members .............................................. 66
1.10.2 Team Composition ............................................................................ 66
1.10.3 Team Motivation ............................................................................... 66
1.10.4 Accounting for Variability ................................................................. 67
1.11 Data Units ................................................................................................ 67
1.12 False Targets ............................................................................................ 67
2. ESTIMATING DISCOVERY PROBABILITIES .......................................................... 68
3. POST-DEPOSITIONAL FACTORS THAT AFFECT SPATIAL PATTERN ........................ 72
3.1 Artifact Displacement or Sorting by Erosion ............................................ 73
3.2 Artifact Removal by Erosion ..................................................................... 73
3.3 Artifact Displacement or Removal by Bioturbation .................................. 73
3.4 Artifact Removal by Chemical or Mechanical Destruction ...................... 73
3.5 Artifact Displacement by Plowing ............................................................ 73
4. SUMMARY ........................................................................................................ 74
IV. UNITS, SAMPLING FRAMES, AND EDGE EFFECTS IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEy ••••••• 75
1. THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF MATERIAL CULTURE ........................................ 75
2. BOUNDARIES OF THE SURVEY AREA .................................................................. 76
2.1 Physical-Geographical Boundaries ........................................................... 77
2.2 Historical-Political Boundaries ................................................................. 78
2.3 Estimated Political-Economic Boundaries ................................................ 78
2.4 Catchment Boundaries .............................................................................. 78
2.5 Oversize Boundaries and Group Territories .............................................. 79
2.6 Edge Effects ............................................................................................... 80
2.6.1 Edge Effects in Nearest Neighbor Analysis ...................................... 80
2.6.2 Edge Effects on Rank-Size Analysis ................................................. 80
3. TYPES, SHAPES, AND ORIENTATION OF UNITS ................................................... 81
3.1 Sites ........................................................................................................... 81