Events in the Archaeological Context and Archaeological Explanation [with Comments and Replies]

A Historical Sketch on the Concepts of Archaeological Association, Context, and Provenience

“…A similar concept is Binford's (1980) distinction of fine-grained and coarse-grained assemblages, with the former reflecting single behavioral events and the latter the result of multiple temporally distinct events. These notions of duration of assemblage formation, where an assemblage is a temporally associated set of artifacts, have a long history in archaeology the gist of which can be summarized by noting that every assemblage is to some greater or lesser degree a palimpsest (Bailey 2007;Brooks 1982). Whether the coarseness or palimpsest nature of an assemblage should be of concern depends on the temporal resolution implicated by the research question asked (e.g., Lyman 2003).…”

Time and Archaeological Event

“…It is actually difficult to find any detailed or sustained discussion on the nature of archaeological events in the literature, except in relation to another, more dominant concept (see Brooks 1982 for a rare exception; and most recently, Beck et al 2007). Try finding the word in the indices of archaeological theory books and one will be disappointed.…”

“…As such, the meaning of the word 'event' in much contemporary archaeology is unfortunate if not downright misleading. 'Event' is now frequently short-hand for small-scale structures as opposed to medium-and long-term structures; if against the concept of process, it was stripped of any explanatory power, against structure it becomes completely assimilated into the scalar model of time as a generalized concept and has lost almost all sense of particularity (see Brooks 1982 for a very explicit affirmation of this point).…”

Archaeology’s quest for a seat at the high table of anthropology

“…The need for historical context is especially acute in areas of the world with short written histories" (Gosden, 1999, p. 11). A realistic conception of the requisite time span for observing human behavior ethnographically or archaeologically depends on the question being asked (Brooks, 1982;Lyman, 2007). Gosden has hit upon one of two key points, but the one he has hit upon is the one others identiWed previously.…”