Archaeology of Urban America: The Search for Pattern and Process by Roy S.

Dickens Review by: William Hampton Adams American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 948-950 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/679596 . Accessed: 19/07/2013 17:28
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BOOK REVIEWS

Archeology
Archaeology of Urban America: The Search
for Pattern and Process. Roy S. Dickens, ed. Studies in Historical Archaeology. New York: Academic Press, 1982. xxii + 468 pp. $39.50 (cloth). William Hampton Adams University of Florida This book indicates that urban archeology recently has advanced in theory and methods, yet much remains to be accomplished. Several authors advocate the systems theory approach provided by Cressey and Stephens, who examine the material relationships among factors creating Alexandria, Virginia. They view the city as a single site, composed of many interrelated parts. We must develop citywide research designs (and regional ones) and we must abandon the single house site approach if we hope to learn about any but the most trivial aspects of American life. This can only be done through a multistage, long-term research program, using detailed archival sampling, planning, preliminary testing, evaluation of contemporary conditions, and, finally, selective excavation. Dickens and Crimmins also used a city-site approach in the MARTA Project in Atlanta; they relate the development of urban study and the CRM movement, suggesting a multistage research design for urban research: preconstruction stage (working hypotheses, survey, testing), demolition and construction stage (monitoring, recording, salvage, controlled excavation), and postconstruction stage (preservation, final report). Several authors studied land modification and construction practices affecting urban sites; they stress that even with extreme land modification, one cannot assume site destruction, but may find preservation. Rothschild and Rothman point out that even though documents indicated total disturbance of an area, the archeology found much intact. Rubertone presents a detailed methodology for the multistage investigation of Providence, Rhode Island, including systematic and random sampling by use of truck-mounted auger, power-assisted excavation of trenches, comparison between trenches through volumetrically derived samples, and production of SYMAP graphics. The second Rubertone chapter should be a starting point for developing an urban field research design. Her research focuses on how documented land use changes were evidenced archeologically by presenting area maps from archival sources showing different types of usage (e.g., residential, commercial); she then discusses different classes of artifacts and likely archeological contexts. The many complex depositional activities and processes in urban sites is worthy of investigation. Marjorie Ingle examines the archeogenesis or site building activities at the Rogers Locomotive Works in Paterson, New Jersey, where site preparation with fill soil preceded original construction as well as later modifications. Urban industrial sites are difficult to excavate and interpret, yet, as Gorman suggests, can yield important data on technological and economic history. He tests Bridenbaugh's hypothesis about 18th-century urban labor's effect on manufacturing specialization by comparing glassworks from urban, suburban, and rural locations, using cluster analysis on 39 archeologically sensitive but historically derived variables. The results indicate only partial confirmation of the hypothesis. Faulkner reports his investigations of the Weaver family pottery in Knoxville, Tennessee. The kilns and potters' shop lay beneath three later warehouses, yet considerable architectural and artifactual data remained. Faulkner places this site within the larger industrial setting and examines factors eventually closing the pottery in 1888, linking these to national consumer trends and to resource procurement and marketing problems. Cressey et al., working within Alexandria, Virginia, portray structural relationships between two city areas and posit differences in set-

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ARCHEOLOGY
tlement and artifact patterns based on differences in wealth and access to political power. Unfortunately, the data used are not sufficient, consisting of material from a single privy/well in each area. A sample from one well can only be a diachronic sample of one household, no matter how many artifacts it contains. The methods used for comparison (vessel form, price, function) have considerable merit. Blakely and Beck studied unmarked graves of paupers and Blacks (1866-84) in Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta. They describe the burial pit, coffin types, clothing, and burial layout, and, observing a high correlation between grave pit dimensions and the sex and age of its occupant, estimate the demographic distribution. Five authors examined various aspects of and provide interesting material culture presents three perspectives. Baugher-Perlin aspects for analysis of glass bottles: technology, function, and trade networks. She provides a good general introduction to glass manufacturing, and then classifies bottles within nine groupings of considerable range in importance, lumping all food and household products, yet separating ink bottles. These arbitrary groups were called "types." Baugher-Perlin begs the question of how one can determine the function of bottles and presents trite, not empirically defined classes of bottles. For trade networks she compares her work at the Prall Site with Schuyler's Sandy Ground nearby. With a small sample size (n= 59), she explains differences as a result of village orientation to different markets. Worthy presents a new classification for late-19th-century ceramic wares and decorative styles and discusses ceramic time lag. She compares the Edgewood site in Atlanta with the Silcott sites in Washington state and with mailorder catalog data for vessel form. This work should be helpful to ceramic researchers for this period. Dyson presents the ceramic data from seven sites in Middletown, Connecticut. The ceramic data are tabulated by decoration and ware and then discussed as these relate to the houses' occupants. We are left with little understanding of why any of these numbers are significant or what these really tell us of the social structure or changing values of these people. Perhaps a better organization of these data and a summary of findings would have made this clearer. However, the reader should be able to glean many useful bits of information for comparison. Davidson's chapter on foodways, as revealed from a dump investigation, is interesting, and

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attempts to show that the dump resulted primarily from winter activities, especially the holiday season, during 1910-11. She makes several good points regarding the distinct nature of zooarcheology of historical sites in which there was access to butcher shops. Unfortunately, she does not also use meat weights to compare the importance of different species--the comparisons are based simply on element frethe factors (like manufacturing, transportation, marketing, use, and reuse) affecting the life span of bottles within our system and quantified these by studying the differences between their mean manufacturing dates and the independently derived deposition dates. By addressing differential time lag, we can better understand the behaviors and conditions affecting data and can interpret sites better. She biased this relationship, however, by truncating dates that extended beyond the posited deposition date (p. 293), thus skewing the derived information. Anyone using her figures must be aware of several problems in addition to this improper manipulation of statistics. Only median dates are presented, not manufacturing ranges, so we cannot evaluate the full significance of any median dates. Worse, she incorrectly abstracted the data from the published report on Silcott. With Hill's categories and specimen assignments, the total should be as follows: Fresh Beverages, 98 (not 46); Beer, 97 (not 32); Whiskey, 16 (not 9); Food, 56 (not 24); Medicine, 45 (not 36); Personal-Utilitarian, 24 (not 16). The actual tally is higher, for Hill did not include several items. Thus, her discussion of Silcott should be ignored by the reader. Thompson and Rathje present a modern garbage project in Milwaukee. While this chapter will have considerable value should we excavate 1970s Milwaukee, its utility for the archeologist is limited to the usual constraints of analogy. Furthermore, because of the increased consumption and the perishable content of their sample, I fail to see how a valid analogy can be made between their data and earlier urban sites. This work reveals much about our present consumption and discard rate since the analysis was conducted within socioeconomic categories. Their finding that low-income households purchase proportionately higher amounts of prepared foods and many small-size containers (instead of larger, more economical ones) has import for economists and for nutritionists. Dickens has assembled several informative quency. Hill examined

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950

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[85, 1983]

and useful studies encompassing a variety of subjects which will assist historical archeologists in urban and nonurban contexts. The book should be regarded as the first attempt at uniting a very broad and complex subject. As usual, Academic Press has priced this book out of the student textbook market.

Village Ethnoarchaeology: Rural Iran in Archaeological Perspective. Carol Kramer. New York: Academic Press, 1982. xx + 302 pp. $34.50 (cloth). Claudia Chang Sweet Briar College The task of conducting ethnoarcheological
research on peasant communities is an old research concern with a new name. Prehistorians working in Europe and the Near East have been aware of the historical continuity between the material culture of prehistoric farming villages and the material culture of modern peasant communities. What Carol Kramer introduces to the new discipline of ethnoarcheology is the detailed and well-documented case study of a Kurdish village in Iran and how material correlates of the villagers' wealth and status positions may be discoverable in residential architecture, settlement plans, mortuary practices, and subsistence practices. Kramer goes beyond the archeological notion of ranking and status in farming villages to discuss population size and settlement pattern, land use and productive systems, and regional patterns of settlement and resource utilization. To date, this is the most ambitious piece of ethnoarcheological reportage on contemporary peasant communities. Kramer, not content with aspects of Near Eastern archeology that may need explanatory models from contemporary communities, seeks to address a number of the most perplexing and difficult assumptions that face any archeologist who studies farming villages. For example, consider her premise that residential house plans, room function, and attributes are indicative of wealth and status positions in Aliabad. To test such a hypothesis, Kramer presents a contemporary estimation of each villager's wealth through measures of livestock, landholdings, and other material goods. However, wealth and status positions in any peasant economy are subject to the ebb and flow of resources among contracting or expanding households and domestic

cycles. As an astute ethnographer and archeologist, Kramer illustrates how houses are remodeled, renovated, and altered to comply with life's chances and household composition. Unfortunately, the author does not spend enough detail on just how difficult it is to adjust any set of material correlates with actual ethnographic fact. Instead, the reader is led to believe that ethnographic detail has a concrete meaning in itself; it is reality and therefore archeologists remain at the mercy of ethnoarcheological discoveries. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 concentrate on village organization, variation in village households, spatial organization, and residential architecture. In my mind, the crux of this volume lies in these three well-presented and carefully organized chapters. For archeologists working on sites with residential architecture, these data far surpass previous descriptions of architecture in farming villages. Many prehistorians will find these chapters provide nice comparative material, excellent graphics, and good descriptions of rural architecture. Some may be a bit disappointed that Kramer did not give exact measurements on important architectural details such as wall thicknesses, wall abutments, and wall joinings. The ethnographic content of the section on household architecture (pp. 91-116) provides a superb discussion of household form, building materials for mud-brick houses, construction sequences of a house and its compound, and structural and functional attributes of rooms. This section reintroduces the archeologist to many unanswered questions concerning village architecture, such as (1) how are houses built, (2) where are building materials found, (3) what building phases are represented in the remodeling and renovation of a house, and (4) what spatial constraints and cognitive plans are used in determining spatial layout of kitchens, store rooms, stables, courtyards, and sleeping areas. In many respects, the average reader may wish that Kramer had expanded this section of her monograph and had abandoned the more theoretical and less satisfying themes. To return to my own misgivings about the less satisfying themes of this monograph, the central issue of determining wealth and status differentiation among villagers is an unfortunate preoccupation of this volume. Certainly all archeologists who envision their discipline as possessing a cultural evolutionary framework dream of the perfect index fossil to measure wealth and status among prehistoric peoples. Status, prestige, and

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