Dr. Alaric Faulkner
Tel. 581-1900
E-mail: or Alaric Faulkner on FirstClass
Office hours: Monday 2:00-3:45
and by appointment in South Stevens 228a. You may also find me in the Historical Archaeology Laboratory, room 46, at the end of the hall.

Meeting

Tuesday afternoons, 2:10—4:55
Anthropology Teaching Laboratory, (second floor S. Stevens, Room 232a)

Required

     Deetz, James

1993 Flowerdew Hundred: the archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619-1864. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville

Description
     This is a seminar-lab, and will meet once a week to discuss various problems relevant to method and theory in Historical Archaeology. The course approaches these problems from two directions, both “top-down” and “bottom-up.” That is, we will view some current models and paradigms used in archaeological interpretation as well as the current tools used in the process of analysis: theory and method. Readings will be international in scope, and will include a variety of articles and monographs by some of the luminaries in the field.
     Each meeting will be divided into two segments, which will be of varying length as the topics demand. The first part will be dedicated to discussion of readings and traditional seminar presentations. The second will deal (at least in part) with the use of computers in approaching some of the problems discussed. In addition to a regimen of seminar readings, computer related “homework” assignments will be given to you on at least a biweekly basis. You should all have first class e-mail accounts by now so that you can retrieve assignments and submit your answers electronically.
     The “computer revolution” has had and is still having overwhelming effects in expanding the power of archaeologists to record manipulate, analyze, and present their data in ways which were just not practical a few years ago. In fact, few fields benefit in so many ways from computer applications as does historical archaeology. But like any tool the computer can be misused, or used blindly, and ineffectively. Virtually all of the current generation of archaeology students must participate in this revolution, and we will try to expand on this experience insofar as it is relevant to historical archaeology. We will consider data from various archaeological sources in Maine, and work through the various stages of recording, description, analysis and publication. Emphasis will be on using the computer applications, and tailoring them to suite the specific needs posed by different problems and different sites. While you will not be “programming” in the conventional sense, you will be “designing” flexible solutions to problems, and working through them yourselves.
     The experience will not be entirely hypothetical; this year we will work jointly on demonstration projects in class involving modifying a working databases, probably the Maine Historic Archaeological Sites Inventory or perhaps one of our site catalogues, depending on your backgrounds and needs. Our tasks will include publishing this information over the web. Other topics will include the use of GIS in Historical archaeology, as well as various tools for drafting, analyzing, presenting, and publishing the information you have all encountered in excavation.

Course Requirements
     There are four course obligations that must be met to complete this course successfully. First, and perhaps most important, is active, knowledgeable participation in seminar discussion, including class projects/demonstrations. This means you will have to complete the assigned general readings on time, and be prepared to evaluate them critically. Development of critical thinking is one of the key objectives of this and nearly any other seminar. This will count approximately 20% of your grade.
     Second you will be required to give a 30 to 40 minute oral presentation on some key figure in historical archaeology, focusing on a major contribution of that individual to the field. Alternatively, you can select a topic, and sketch the contributions of a few major contributors to it. This will be as much for the benefit of the entire class as for your own edification. Suggest a reading or two for us to use the week before. Teach us. Make your presentation in a form you would like to listen to and be able to benefit from. Keep it simple. Provide a brief bibliography with your presentation. This will count approximately 20% of your grade.
     Third, you will be expected to do at least two book reviews of professional quality. Follow the format of American Antiquity (essentially the same as Historical Archaeology). A copy of the American Antiquity style guide is on file in the classroom. One of the two may involve the research you finished for your oral presentation and will deal with a theoretical contribution; the other should present a new methodological approach, or a new technique recently applied to the field. These will count approximately 15% of your grade each. Keep a copy of your word processor file in case the report needs to be revised.
     Finally, the remaining 30% of your grade will be based on your computer homework. You may hand in your completed assignments to me each week via the ANT 573 conference on the First Class BBS. Make sure you identify your files with your initials in the file name somewhere. For example “EricJH1.2” for Eric Johnson, Homework #1 question 2. You will be using Macintosh software for which the University has multiple licenses and can work at any of the Macintosh clusters on campus. We can also accommodate IBM users, but you are responsible for working with that platform yourself, and performing any necessary conversions so that I can read the files. This has not been a problem in the past.

Report Figures & Topics
     There are many people who have made substantial (but not always theoretical) contributions to Historical Archaeology, but here are some ones you may wish to select from for the first presentations. Can you think of others?

Figures

Beadry, Mary—gender in the archaeological record; gender bias in Anthropology
Binford, Lewis—“Middle Range Theory”
Deetz, James—cognitive models
Glassie, Henry—structuralism; artifacts and folklore; the grammar of architecture.
Hall, Martin—South African Archaeology; symbolism and structuralism in Architecture; archaeology and art; Sausseurean structuralism.
Harris, Edward C.—Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy
Leone, Mark—structuralism, a Marxist approach
Lewis, Kenneth—frontier studies, and cultural expansion
Nieman, Fraser D.—“17th-Century Settlement—Theory” Clifts Plantation
Noel Hume, Ivor—various; presenting historical archaeology
Rathje—Le project du garbage
Schiffer, Michael—transformations
Ian Hodder—Modern Archaeological Theory
Leland Fergusan—“Colono-Indian ware”
South, Stanley—hypothetico-deductive method, pattern recognition (also Santa Elena)
Waselkov, Gregory, — Archaeology of Old Mobile

Topics

Zooarchaeology of Historical sites
     Reits, Elizabeth
     Bowen, Joanne
Integrating documents and archaeology
     Beaudry, Mary (ed.)—Documentary Archaeology in the New World
Leone, Mark P. ed.—The recovery of meaning (Smithsonian publication)
Earthfast Construction or “Impermanent Architecture”
     Morgan, Edmund
     Carson, Cary
     St. George, Robert
     Baker, Emerson and Robert L. Bradley (Maine)
     Kelso, William—Kingsmill plantation and Jamestown
Miller, George—ceramics studies and economic scaling
Archaeology and Colonial African America
     Ferguson, Leeland (Smithsonian publication)
     Otto, John—ethnicity/status models
     Emerson, Matthew—African influence on “Colono-Indian” products
Culture Contact
     Fitzhugh, William (Smithsonian publication)
     Rogers, J. Daniel on the Arikara (Smithsonian publication)
     Trigger, Bruce
     Grumet, Robert, Historic Contact
Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies
     Deagan, Kathleen (Smithsonian publication)
Early European settlement
     Noel Hume, Ivor —Virginia Adventure, Roanoke to Jamestown
     Kelso et al, —Jamestown Rediscovery
     Brain, Jeffrey— Archaeology of the Popham Colony (Maine), 1607

Class Projects/Demonstrations
     In conjunction with the class (and perhaps with individual reports), there will be demonstrations of applications of computer-based technologies immediately relevant to Historical Archaeology. You may have some choice in these, but I am prepared to talk about:

     Graphics
          Drawing plans and profiles
          Mapping
         Imaging
         3-D rendering and reconstruction of artifacts
          [3-D reconstruction of structures]
     Database management
          artifact data
          site data
          GISs (Geographic Information Systems)
          web publishing
     Publishing

Field Trip
     An all-day field trip to visit the 1607 Popham Colony excavations in Phippsburg, Maine as well as the 19th century Basin Lime Concern is scheduled for NEXT SATURDAY September 6. More information will be given to you in class. We leave by bus from the parking lot behind the Maine Center for the Arts at 8 AM sharp, and will get you back by about 5:30.
Dress warmly, bring a box lunch, and whatever non-alcoholic beverage you may want to drink.

First Assignment

1. Also read South, Stanley, Method and Theory in Historical Archaeology, Chapters 2 & 3 (photocopy copy available).
2. Test out your e-mail. Go to one of the clusters, if you are not already connected to the LAN. Log onto your first class account, and send me a message! Attach a dummy file of some kind, if you can! Drop the message and the attachment in the homework dropbox for ANT 573.
3. Prepare for the field trip on Saturday.