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Current and Not-So-Current Events: Excavation, Moving, and Other Early Summer Odds and Ends

5/27/2016

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PictureMy new home.
It's been two weeks since my last blog post.

I've spent much of that two weeks away from my computer, which has been a nice change. Since the semester ended, I've been working in the field, doing stuff around the house and with my family, and prepping my office for a move. Today I'm relocating from the main SCIAA building to a larger, nicer office suite right in the heart of campus. I'll have plenty of room to ramp up my research, process and analyze artifacts, store collections I'm working on, and (hopefully) start getting some student work going. It's really an amazing thing to have the space -- it's larger and nicer than many fully functional archaeology labs where I've worked in the past.

A 6000-Year-Old Moment Frozen in Time?

Archaeological sites are places that contain material traces of human behavior.  While the human behaviors that create archaeological sites are ultimately those of individuals, we usually can't resolve what we're looking at to that level.  Traces of individual behaviors overprint one another and blend into a collective pattern. The granularity of individual behavior is usually lost.

Usually, but not always.

I spent portions of the last couple of works doing some preliminary excavation work at a site I first wrote about last October. Skipping over the details for now, documentation of an exposed profile measuring about 2.2 meters deep and 10 meters long showed the presence of cultural materials and intact features at several different depths.  The portion of the deposits I am most interested in is what appears to be a buried zone of dark sediment, fire-cracked rock, and quartz knapping debris about 1.9 meters below the present ground surface. Based on the general pattern here in the Carolina Piedmont and a couple of projectile points recovered from the slump at the base of the profile, I'm guessing that buried cultural zone dates to the Middle Archaic period (i.e., about 8000-5000 years ago).​
PictureA buried assemblage of quartz chipping debris, probably created by a single individual during a single knapping episode.
I did quite a bit of thinking to come up with my plan to both stabilize/preserve the exposed profile and learn something about the deposits. After I cleaned and documented the machine-cut profile as it existed, I established a coordinate system and began systematically excavating a pair of 1x1 m units that cut into the sloping face of the profile above the deposit of knapping debris visible in the wall. Excavating those partial units allowed me to simultaneously plumb the wall and expose the deposit of knapping debris in plan view. While there is no way to know for sure yet, I think I exposed most of the deposit, which seemed to be a scatter of debris with a concentration of large fragments in a space less than 60 cm across (an unknown amount of the deposit was removed during the original machine excavation, and I recovered numerous pieces of quartz debris from the slump beneath the deposit).  My best guess is that pile of debris probably marks where a single individual sat for a few minutes and worked on creating tools from several locally-available lumps of quartz.  I piece-plotted hundreds of artifacts as I excavated the deposit, so I'll be able to understand more about how it was created when I piece everything back together. 

PictureI did what I came to do.
The site I've been working on would be a great one for a field school. It is close to Columbia and has all kinds of interesting archaeology -- great potential for both research and teaching. This May I was out there by myself. It took just about every move of fieldwork jiu jitsu I know (and several that I had to invent on the spot) to do what I did to stabilize the site and get it prepped for a more concerted effort, but I think it's in good shape now. Once I get moved into my new lab space I'll be able to start processing the artifacts and doing a preliminary analysis. I'll keep you posted.​

The Anthropology of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers in the Eastern Woodlands?

Earlier in the month, I had the privilege of visiting the archaeological field schools being conducted at Topper. I wrote a little bit about the claim for a very early human presence at Topper here. The excavations associated with that claim aren't currently active. Field schools focused on Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene (Mississippi State University and the University of West Georgia) and Woodland/Mississippian (University of Tennessee) components at Topper and nearby sites have been running since early May. Seeing three concurrent field schools being run with the cooperation of personnel from four universities (and many volunteers) is remarkable.
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On the day of my visit, I gave a talk titled "The Anthropology of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers in the Eastern Woodlands?" I argued that not only is it possible to do the anthropology of prehistoric peoples, but it should be a fundamental goal. Skipping over the details for now, I argued (as I have elsewhere) that complex systems science provides a set of tools for systematically trying to understand how history, process, and environment combine to produce the long-term, large-scale trajectories of prehistoric change that we can observe and analyze using archaeological data. I talked about each of the components of my three-headed monster research agenda.  And I got to eat various venison products prepared under the direction of my SCIAA colleague Al Goodyear. And I got to see alligators swimming in the Savannah River.  As a native Midwesterner . . . I anticipate that working near alligators will remain outside my comfort zone for some time to come.

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The Savannah River: there are alligators in there.
When Did Humans First Move Out of Africa?

Archaeologists love finding the earliest of anything and people love reading about it. While we often want to know how/when new things appear, identifying the "earliest of X" often gets play in the popular press that is disproportionate to its relevance to a substantive archaeological/anthropological question. And you can never really be sure, of course, that you've nailed down the earliest of anything: someone else could always find something earlier, falsifying whatever model was constructed to account for the existing information and moving the goal posts.

Exactly a year ago, I wrote about the reported discovery of 3.3 million-year-old stone tools from a site in Kenya. Those tools are significantly earlier than the previous "earliest" Oldowan tools.  I think they're really interesting but not particularly surprising:  several other lines of evidence (cut marks on bone, tool-use among chimpanzees, and hominin hand anatomy) already suggested that our ancestors were using tools well before the earliest Oldowan technologies appeared.

I anticipate that we still haven't seen the "earliest" stone tool use. 

A recent report from India argues that our ideas about the "earliest" humans outside of Africa also miss the mark. (Note: when I say "human" I'm referring not to "modern human" but to a member of the genus Homo.) This story from March discusses a report of stone tools and cutmarked bone from India purportedly dating to 2.6 million-years-ago (MYA), blowing away the current earliest accepted evidence of humans outside of Africa (Dmanisi at 1.8 MYA) by about 800,000 years. With an increasing number of Oldowan assemblages dating to about 1.8-1.6 MYA are being reported outside of Africa (e.g., in China and Pakistan), would it be that surprising to find evidence a migration pre-dating 1.8 MYA?  Probably not.  Do the finds reported from India cement the case for human populations in South Asia at 2.6 MYA?  Not yet: the fossils and tools reported from India so far (as far as I know anyway) don't have a context that allows them to be convincingly dated.
My Conversation with Scott Wolter
PictureForbidden Archaeology (ANTH 291-002): It's going to worthwhile.
I had a pleasant conversation with Scott Wolter yesterday. I emailed him to touch base about his participation in my class in the fall, and we ended up talking for about 45 minutes. It was the first time we've spoken and we had more to talk about than we had time to talk. We talked about the Wolter-Pulitzer partnership, of course, but I'm not going ​to go into the details of our discussion (I just invite you to read for yourself Pulitzer's bizarre word salad blog post from Wednesday containing his reference to me as "some back woods rural South Carolina Pseudo-Archaeologist who never worked in the field, but only learned from books").  My sense is that Wolter is someone with whom I can have a frank and vigorous discussion about the merits and interpretation of archaeological evidence and how it is used to evaluate ideas about the past. I'm looking forward to his participation in my class. My plan is to start a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money to fly him down here so he can interact with the students on a face-to-face basis.  

And now the movers are coming for my filing cabinets.  And now my chair is gone.  And now you are up-to-date.
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Who Built the Megalithic Monuments of Nartiang?

4/26/2015

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My interest in the megalithic traditions of south and east Asia began in reaction to the ridiculous claim/belief that it was impossible for normal-sized people without advanced technology to have moved the large stones associated with prehistoric megalithic traditions (hence they must have been built by giants, aliens, advanced civilizations, etc.).  The "living" megalithic traditions of Indonesia (Sumba, Nias, Toraja) and India (Angami Naga) are great because they clearly show not only that large numbers of people armed only with ropes and wood can move some pretty big stones.  They also give us insight into the contexts and motivations that make moving those stones possible. There is both early 20th century ethnographic information and, in some cases, videos available on YouTube showing stones being moved. If you're interested in this sort of thing, check out my previous posts: the photographs and the videos are pretty sweet.

My interest in the Asian megalithic traditions has started to move beyond simply using them to demonstrate that normal-sized people can move big rocks.  As I've learned a little bit more about the archaeology/ethnography of this part of the world, I've started to see the potential for building a really interesting case that might form a useful comparison/contrast to the prehistoric megalithic cultures of Europe and the Mediterranean and the earthen structures of eastern North America. So . . . perhaps I'm off on another large database project.  Who knows.  For now I just wanted write a note about the megalithic monuments of Nartiang,India.

My knowledge of the geography of south/east Asia is not great, and I'm guessing that's true for many of the readers of this blog, also.  So I made a map showing the locations of the megalithic traditions I've written about so far:
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The site of Nartiang is in the Jaintia Hills region of eastern India, in the state of Meghalaya. It is just one of many sites in the region with megalithic monuments. I do not yet fully understand what is known about the living/prehistoric megalithic traditions of this area, but I was struck by the explanations for the monuments at Nartiang (the following passage is from this paper by Vinay Kumar):

"The megalithic monuments of Nartiang in Meghalaya are significant because of larger dimension. Some of the monuments are very big even 9m high. Nartiang used to be the summer capital of the Jaintia Kings of the Sutnga State. The megaliths here are huge granite slabs probably hewn out by the fire setting method. The huge monolith, is said to be erected by Mar Phalyngki, a Goliath of yore. The Nartiang menhir  measures 27 feet 6 inches in thickness."
Here is a photo of Nartiang (source):
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Many of the monuments at Nartiang are composed of a combination of a standing stone (menhir) and horizontal slab balanced on supports (dolmen).  In other areas (and apparently this one as well), the vertical and horizontal stones symbolize male and female, respectively. 
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Based on a quick perusal of online descriptions, it appears as if the prevailing belief is that the Nartiang monuments were erected during the reign of the Jaintia kings in the 16th-19th centuries (source for the photo to the left). An individual named Mar Phalyngki or Marphalangki is variously credited with building all of the monuments or the biggest monument, and is sometimes described as a "giant."

As I said above, I don't have enough knowledge of the ethnohistory or archaeology of this region to evaluate the claim that the monuments were built by the Jaintia kings. I will just point out that the clustered arrangement, the repeated male/female motif, and the variety of stone sizes all seem to me to be consistent with the "living" megalithic traditions that are related to prestige-building and funerary rituals (i.e., celebrating/commemorating particular individuals or households by harnessing human capital to move and erect large stone monuments).  I'm hoping there's a lot more information available on the megalithic cultures of this region.

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Video of Naga Stone-Pulling Ceremonies

3/7/2015

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Yesterday I wrote a short post about stone-pulling among the Naga, an agricultural people of northeastern India.  Early 20th century ethnography documented the Angami Naga moving multi-ton stones as part of prestige-building ceremonies.  Stones were quarried, moved long distances, and erected by large groups of people in a ritual under-written by a feast.

I assumed that the stone-pulling ceremonies of the Naga were a thing of the past: I was wrong!   There are several short, recent (2009-2014) videos on YouTube that show stones being pulled by the Naga:

  • Viswema, Nagaland (3:34)
  • Maram Naga, part 1 (0:52)
  • Maram Naga, part 2 (0:49)
  • Maram Naga - pulling a stone uphill (0:41)
  • Kigwema Village (1:50)

The videos from Viswema and Kigwema show large groups of people (at least several hundred) in ceremonial dress pulling large stones on a paved road.  The Kigwema video is nice because of the angle - from above you can get a good sense of the size of the stone.

The Maram videos show smaller stones on wooden sleds being pulled on unpaved woodland trails.  It is more difficult to get a sense of how many people are pulling.  The video of the stone getting pulled up the hillside is pretty impressive. 

While the social and economic contexts of the stone-pulling ceremonies have certainly changed over time, seeing how groups of people move really big rocks is pretty neat. 
I'm hoping there is some detailed quantitative information out there on these ceremonies: number of people involved, distances the stones were moved, and the sizes of the stones.  I also know that there are other ethnographic cases that can provide some context for evaluating ideas about prehistoric megalithic construction.
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Screen capture of video of stone-pulling ceremony in Kigwema Village (link to left).
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Screen capture from part 1 of Maram Naga video (link to left).
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Screen capture of video of Maram Naga pulling a stone up an earthen hillside (link to left).
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Normal-Sized People Can Move Big Rocks: The Example of the Angami Naga

3/5/2015

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A common component of the claim that giant humans once inhabited the planet is that normal-sized humans could not have moved the big stones used to build various megalithic structures around the world (a similar logic is often used to argue for the necessity of ancient aliens).  I’ll spare you a litany of references for now, but I can assure you that the notion is out there: giantologists say the use of big rocks in construction signals the presence of big people in prehistory.  To them, the simplest explanation for megalithic monuments is not that normal-sized people had the capabilities and motivations to move big rocks, but that there must have been a supernatural race of giants (for which all direct evidence has somehow been suppressed by the Smithsonian) that was really interested, for some reason, in sticking stones in the ground.

That's baloney.  We have ethnographic examples of normal-sized people moving big rocks with minimal technology.  It happened in the ethnographic present, and it almost certainly happened in the prehistoric past.

While I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I had the opportunity to take classes from a lot of really smart people.  I find myself drawing on that experience all the time.  As I was thinking about giants the other day, I remembered a moment in a seminar taught by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus where they were talking about a ritual that involved the movement of some pretty big stones.  I couldn’t remember the ethnographic reference, but after an email I learned that they discuss the case in their (2012) book The Creation of Inequality.

The Angami Naga are/were an agricultural society in northeastern India, organized into autonomous villages whose residents were divided into clans.  Flannery and Marcus (2012:107-109) describe a ritual of the Naga that involved moving multi-ton stones.  A stone was moved from a distant quarry into the village as a way for the man who sponsored the “stone pulling” to build prestige:

“For this spectacle the host turned to all the young men of his clan, all the alumni of his men’s house, and perhaps even his entire village.  It was not unusual for 50 clansmen to turn out for this task, and when an entire village was involved, the crew could grow to several hundred men. . . . 
    To be of value the monument had to come from a distant quarry. The Lhota Naga placed the stone on a heavy litter of wooden poles that could be carried by six rows of men, 12 per row.  The Angami, who hauled even larger stones, levered the monument onto a sledge of heavy logs.  Wooden rollers were placed in the path of the sledge and hundreds of men, using strong ropes made of tropical vines, pulled it along jungle trails for hours while singing along.  All knew that at the end of their journey they would be welcomed with gallons of rice beer.”


As anyone who has moved knows, the promise of beer at the end of a sweaty adventure is one of the best ways to recruit labor (even Pabst works -- it isn't really about quality).
Picture
Photograph of some of the stones moved by the Angami Naga (from Hutton 1921:112).
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Photograph of a large stone moved to the village of Maram (Hutton 1911:135).
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Photograph of stone moved by the Angami Naga (Hutton 1921:232).
The original ethnographic account of the stone pulling (The Angami Nagas) was by John H. Hutton, published in 1921.  I have reproduced two of the photos from that report here and one from a 1911 report (The Naga Tribes of Manipur) by T. C. Hodson (the same stone shown by Flannery and Marcus 2012:108).  I don't yet have any specific data on the size of the stones or estimates of their weight, but it's obvious from the photos that they're quite large.  The Wikipedia entry for the Maram Naga shows an assemblage of menhirs, presumably erected in stone-pulling rituals.

As Flannery and Marcus (2012:109) point out, the stone-pulling rituals of the Naga were performed in the context of societies where “leadership was based solely on achievement.”  In other words, not only were these people moving some big rocks, but they were doing it without any centralized, hierarchical organizational structure.  It should go without saying (but it probably doesn’t, so I’ll say it), but Hutton did not report that any of the Naga people were giants or in possession of alien technology.  Of course, these stones are smaller than many used in megalithic construction.  But they compare well in size to some moved by much more "complex" societies, such as the Olmec and the Maya (Flannery and Marcus 2012:109).  And they were moved by normal-sized people armed only with ropes and wooden rollers and motivated by community, tradition, and the promise of beer.  I think a lot of us can probably relate to that. 

The giantologists should keep the Angami Naga in mind when they marvel at megaliths.  It is probably unwise to assume that a bunch of enthusiastic humans can't figure out how to get a big rock from Point A to Point B.


Update (3/7/2105):  Post on videos of Naga stone-pulling ceremonies.
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