Lecture 3 — Archaeological Fundamentals: Principles, Units of Analysis, Context

Big idea: Archaeologists translate material traces into claims about past life by combining (a) a shared analytic vocabulary, (b) careful attention to context, and (c) explicit research design.

Four underlying principles (analytic lenses)

Form: what something is like physically.
Function: what it was used for (or how it worked socially/technically).
Process: how it was made/used/deposited/altered through behavior and time.
Meaning: what it signified to people (symbolic, social, political).

Case study framework: Sake in Japanese American internment camps

Historical record exists (documents, photos, some oral histories), but archaeology asks:

What did daily life look like beyond official supplies?
How did people maintain relationships and cultural practices?
Were traditions suppressed, adapted, or enabled?

Using form/function/process/meaning helps infer:

access to goods and networks,
cultural persistence under constraint,
unofficial economies and social life.

Units of analysis (review)

Artifact (portable, human‑made/modified)
Ecofact (natural material meaningful by association)
Feature (non‑portable; destroyed by removal)
Site (cluster of materials/features)
Region (group of sites with shared cultural attributes)

Site formation processes and context

Behavioral processes: acquisition → manufacture → consumption/use → deposition/discard.
Transformational processes (taphonomy): natural + human (e.g., reuse, looting, construction).
Primary vs secondary context: whether provenience/associations remain intact.

Research design & sampling (field logic)

Because excavation is destructive:

Ask a research question.
Form hypotheses.
Select sampling + analytic methods (replicable).
Excavate/record/analyze.
Interpret and publish.

Sampling strategies

Judgmental, random, stratified—each produces different inferences; match strategy to the question.