Archaeology: A Brief Introduction

Archaeology, defined here as the scientific study of the human past through its material record, is introduced in fifteen chapters that run from the early history of the discipline to careers and responsibilities to the past. Case studies come from several continents, and two of them concern Cyprus: a study of households at Marki, and the use of the Uluburun shipwreck's copper cargo in a discussion of long-distance trade.

How it is organised

The early chapters take the emergence of archaeology as a science and introductory concepts, then explanation, space and time, research design, excavation and classification. Later chapters turn to the relationship between the present and the archaeological record, climate and environment, subsistence, settlement patterns, social life and the management of archaeological resources (pp. 5–367). End matter holds a list of sites and cultures mentioned in the text, a glossary of technical terms, references and an index.

The argument

Fagan and Durrani make archaeological context central to reading material remains. They separate primary from secondary contexts and present the archaeological record as the product of human activity and of later processes. Comparison with the present, ethnographic analogy, ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology can link material evidence to past behaviour, though each proposed link needs careful evaluation (pp. 219–237).

Explanations are presented as questions that different theoretical frameworks approach in their own ways: ecological and evolutionary, historical materialist, processual, postprocessual and cognitive. The discussion considers how archaeological evidence can support accounts of social and cultural change (pp. 77–99). Across the methods chapters the authors stress precise recording and the finite character of the archaeological record.

Cultural resource management is described as identifying and assessing sites, evaluating their significance, and planning management or mitigation. Legislation, site records, curation, publication, public archaeology, tourism and professional ethics are covered alongside it (pp. 337–356).

The evidence

The methods chapters describe relative, absolute and chronometric dating, including stratigraphic superposition, seriation, radiocarbon and tree-ring dating. Survey and site location draw on surface collection, remote sensing and geographic information systems, and excavation covers stratigraphic recording, sampling and the recovery of artefacts and environmental evidence (pp. 101–183).

Chapters on site formation and environment consider preservation, climatic change and environmental reconstruction, with evidence from pollen, tree rings, ice and deep-sea cores, and geoarchaeology; examples include Moche sites and the Ancestral Pueblo communities of the American Southwest. Subsistence is reconstructed from animal bone, plant remains and flotation, birds, fish, molluscs and rock art. Settlement plans, landscape distributions, human skeletal remains, stable-isotope analysis, artefact sourcing and evidence for trade and religious practice follow (pp. 219–336).

Marki

Marki is a Bronze Age settlement occupied for several centuries, which excavators divided into phases and in which they identified compounds interpreted as households. Fagan and Durrani use changes in courtyard enclosure and household organisation to discuss cooperation and the growth of more self-contained domestic units (pp. 287–289).

Uluburun

The Uluburun shipwreck shows how a wreck's cargo can be studied through excavation and sourcing. Fagan and Durrani place it in a discussion of long-distance trade and state that the copper ingots of the fourteenth-century B.C. wreck came from Cyprus (pp. 328–330).

Dating

The three-age system opens the treatment of chronology, followed by relative, absolute and chronometric dating, with stratigraphic superposition and seriation as ways of ordering evidence (pp. 108–125). Chronology is a method for establishing sequences and dates, and the case studies carry their own dates and labels: the case-study heading dates the Marki households c. 2200 B.C., while the text has the village occupied for 500 to 600 years after 2400 B.C.; the Uluburun wreck is dated to the fourteenth century B.C., and the Roman port at Kourion is discussed in connection with the earthquake of A.D. 365.