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Analysis of the Artifacts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2018
Extract
In the two preceding sections, a structural framework for the site has been given which will enable the reader to visualize the manner in which artifacts were correlated with the growth of the mound.
With this in mind, it should be clear in the discussion below what I mean by experimentation in establishing valid types. That is to say, it was necessary to create trial “types” first, plot them against the physical strata of the site, first in one way, then in others. It was not until a picture of consistency developed, first within the site, and second in related sites, that I began to feel that the typology was on firm ground. After that it was necessary to re-group and re-plot the specimens against the strata, and finally to re-total the findings in terms of the “phases.” The cultural stratigraphy, then, is the result of a very long-drawn process of typological experimenting and plotting in a number of different ways, the final purpose of which was to find combinations consistently falling together and contrasting with other combinations.
- Type
- Part II. Analysis and Interpretation
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1949
References
1 Krieger, 1944; and an article published in Proceedings of the Fifth Plains Archaeological Conference, held in Lincoln, Nebraska, November, 1947.
2 Haury and Sayles, 1947, pp. 49-51. The terms “Alma Plain, Forestdale variety” and “Alma Plain, Bluff variety” are used to designate the locally specialized forms of a more general type.
3 This procedure was followed in the organization of material across the northern half of Texas (Krieger, 1946). Formal names were used for some pottery and projectile point styles which had borne up under various distributional tests, but only roughly descriptive terms were given to the remaining archaeological materials.
4 Thus, such terms as “stem type,” “rim type,” “type of incising,” “type of design,” and the like are not used. In all such cases, it is just as easy to use “this kind of stem,” “stem of this shape,” “this method of decoration,” and so on, avoiding the use of “type” whenever any other word will do.
5 This is in addition to the year spent by Perry Newell in evolving 17 trial types from a detailed study of 6,000 rim sherds. Observations were recorded on large sheets for each of these sherds. The 17 trial types were then plotted, but only as to the number found in the village (field) and primary and secondary mounds.
6 Type descriptions were originally written after the accepted form of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference by Perry Newell for the 17 types he recognized. Later these were condensed to 12 types and the descriptions revised, and still later revised again. They are on file at the University of Texas. It would be most desirable all around, I believe, for a handbook of Eastern pottery types to be prepared alter it lias been possible to viork tViem OVCT vn conferences to establish their ranges in detail.
7 Krieger (1946, pp. 1.85-91), referring to pottery from the Sanders site near the south side of Red River in Lamar County, Texas. This is the type site for the Sanders Focus, related in some ways to the Alto Focus, for which Davis is the type site. I know of no other reports employing this method for the total ceramic remains, although large groups of sherds from the same vessels are often noted.
8 Ford and Quimby, 1945, Tables I-VIII. Note the great strength of Tchefuncte and Mandeville Plain in their bar chart (Fig. 22) when compared to any single decorated type or even all decorated types put together.
9 Ford and Willey, 1940, Fig. 42.
10 Haury and Sayles, 1947. pp. 58-9.
11 The approved descriptive form of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference is somewhat awkward in this respect, for one has to discuss the technique and distribution of decoration first, then the vessel form in terms of rim, lip, and body separately.