BiblioVault - Books about Analysis

Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology

Edited by William A. Longacre

University of Arizona Press, 1991

Ethnoarchaeology, the study of material culture in a living society by archaeologists, facilitates the extraction of information from prehistoric materials as well. Studies of contemporary pottery-making were initiated in the southwestern United States toward the end of the nineteenth century, then abandoned as a result of changes in archaeological theory. Now a resurgence in ethnoarchaeology over the past twenty-five years offers a new set of directions for the discipline. This volume presents the results of such work with pottery, a class of materials that occurs abundantly in many archaeological sites.

Drawing on projects undertaken around the world, in the Phillipines, East Africa, Mesoamerica, India, in both traditional and complex societies, the contributors focus on identifying social and behavioral sources of ceramic variation to show how analogical reasoning is fundamental to archaeological interpretation. As the number of pottery-making societies declines, opportunities for such research must be seized. By bringing together a variety of ceramic ethnoarchaeological analyses, this volume offers the profession a much-needed touchstone on method and theory for the study of pottery-making among living peoples.

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Ceramic Petrography and Hopewell Interaction

James B. Stoltman

University of Alabama Press, 2015

A highly innovative study in which James B. Stoltman uses petrography to reveal previously undetectable evidence of cultural interaction among Hopewell societies of the Ohio Valley region and the contemporary peoples of the Southeast

Petrography is the microscopic examination of thin sections of pottery to determine their precise mineralogical composition. In this groundbreaking work, James B. Stoltman applies quantitative as well as qualitative methods to the petrography of Native American ceramics. As explained in Ceramic Petrography and Hopewell Interaction, by adapting refinements to the technique of petrography, Stoltman offers a powerful new set of tools that enables fact-based and rigorous identification of the composition and sources of pottery.

Stoltman’s subject is the cultural interaction among the Hopewell Interaction Sphere societies of the Ohio Valley region and contemporary peoples of the Southeast. Inferring social and commercial relationships between disparate communities by determining whether objects found in one settlement originated there or elsewhere is a foundational technique of archaeology. The technique, however, rests on the informed but necessarily imperfect visual inspection of objects by archaeologists. Petrography greatly amplifies archaeologists’ ability to determine objects’ provenance with greater precision and less guesswork.

Using petrography to study a vast quantity of pottery samples sourced from Hopewell communities, Stoltman is able for the first time to establish which items are local, which are local but atypical, and which originated elsewhere. Another exciting possibility with petrography is to further determine the home source of objects that came from afar. Thus, combining traditional qualitative techniques with a wealth of new quantitative data, Ceramic Petrography and Hopewell Interaction offers a map of social and trade relationships among communities within and beyond the Hopewell Interaction Sphere with much greater precision and confidence than in the past.

Ceramic Petrography and Hopewell Interaction provides a clear and concise explanation of petrographic methods, Stoltman’s findings about Hopewell and southeastern ceramics in various sites, and the fascinating discovery that visits to Hopewell centers by southeastern Native Americans were not only for trade purposes but more for such purposes as pilgrimages, vision- and power-questing, healing, and the acquisition of knowledge.

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Ceramic Production in the American Southwest

Edited by Barbara J. Mills and Patricia L. Crown

University of Arizona Press, 1995

Southwestern ceramics have always been admired for their variety and aesthetic beauty. Although ceramics are most often used for placing the peoples who produced them in time, they can also provide important clues to past economic organization. This volume covers nearly 1000 years of southwestern prehistory and history, focusing on ceramic production in a number of environmental and economic contexts. It brings together the best of current research to illustrate the variation in the organization of production evident in this single geographic area. The contributors use diverse research methods in their studies of vessel form and decoration. All support the conclusion that the specialized production of ceramics for exchange beyond the household was widespread. The first seven chapters focus on ceramic production in specific regions, followed by three essays that re-examine basic concepts and offer new perspectives. Because previous studies of southwestern ceramics have focused more on distribution than production, Ceramic Production in the American Southwest fills a long-felt need for scholars in that region and offers a broad-based perspective unique in the literature. The Southwest lacked high levels of sociopolitical complexity and economic differentiation, making this volume of special interest to scholars working in similar contexts and to those interested in craft production.

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Chipped Stone Technological Organization

Central Place Foraging and Exchange on the Northern Great Plains

Craig M. Johnson

University of Utah Press, 2019

Over a 40-year period, Craig Johnson collected data on chipped stone tools from nearly 200 occupations along the Missouri River in the Dakotas. This book integrates those data with central place foraging theory and exchange models to arrive at broad conclusions supporting archaeological theory. The emphasis is on the last 1,000 years, when the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara farmer-hunters dominated the area, but also looks back some 10,000 years to more nomadic peoples. The long timespan and large number of villages and campsites help define changes through time and over large distances of local and nonlocal tool stone and its manufacture into arrow points, knives, and other tools.

Central place foraging theory, through the field processing model, posits that the farther a source material is from the central living area, the more it will be processed before it is transported back, to avoid hauling heavy, nonusable parts on long trips. Johnson’s data support this theory and demonstrate that this model applies not only to nomadic hunter-gatherers but also to semisedentary farmer-hunters. His results also indicate that toolstone usage creates distinctive spatial patterns along the Missouri River, largely related to village distance from the sources. This is best illustrated with Knife River flint, which gradually declines in popularity downriver from its source in west-central North Dakota but increases in central South Dakota because of exchange.

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Clovis Blade Technology

A Comparative Study of the Keven Davis Cache, Texas

By Michael B. Collins

University of Texas Press, 1999

Around 11,000 years ago, a Paleoindian culture known to us as "Clovis" occupied much of North America. Considered to be among the continent's earliest human inhabitants, the Clovis peoples were probably nomadic hunters and gatherers whose remaining traces include camp sites and caches of goods stored for utilitarian or ritual purposes.

This book offers the first comprehensive study of a little-known aspect of Clovis culture—stone blade technology. Michael Collins introduces the topic with a close look at the nature of blades and the techniques of their manufacture, followed by a discussion of the full spectrum of Clovis lithic technology and how blade production relates to the production of other stone tools. He then provides a full report of the discovery and examination of fourteen blades found in 1988 in the Keven Davis Cache in Navarro County, Texas.

Collins also presents a comparative study of known and presumed Clovis blades from many sites, discusses the Clovis peoples' caching practices, and considers what lithic technology and caching behavior can add to our knowledge of Clovis lifeways. These findings will be important reading for both specialists and amateurs who are piecing together the puzzle of the peopling of the Americas, since the manufacture of blades is a trait that Clovis peoples shared with the Upper Paleolithic peoples in Europe and northern Asia.

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Clyfford Still

The Artist’s Materials

Susan F. Lake

J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2022

This groundbreaking book provides the first detailed account of the materials and techniques of perhaps the most radical—and until now, least studied—major American Abstract Expressionist.

Among the most radical of the great American Abstract Expressionist painters, Clyfford Still has also long been among the least studied. Still severed ties with the commercial art world in the early 1950s, and his estate at the time of his death in 1980 comprised some 3,125 artworks—including more than 800 paintings—that were all but unknown to the art world. Susan F. Lake and Barbara A. Ramsay were granted access to this collection by the estate and by the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, which houses this immense corpus today.

This volume, based on the authors’ materials research and enriched by their unprecedented access to Still’s artworks, paints, correspondence, studio records, and personal library, provides the first detailed account of his materials, working methods, and techniques. Initial chapters provide an engaging and erudite overview of the artist's life. Subsequent chapters trace the development of his visionary style, offer in-depth materials analysis of selected works from each decade of his career, and suggest new approaches to the care and conservation of his paintings. There is also a series of technical appendices as well as a full bibliography.

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Communist China, 1955–1959

Policy Documents with Analysis

Robert R. Bowie and John King Fairbank

Harvard University Press

The years 1955–1959 in Communist China included striking fluctuations and successes for Mao Tse-tung’s Party, and the working out of the first Five-Year Plan for economic and agricultural development. Here analysis of domestic developments is supported by 48 documents—directives, speeches, and articles. The major Party pronouncements are given in full. The significance of each is clarified by prefatory comments indicating additional readings, and by the 41-page introductory essay. This newly integrated picture of five crucial years pioneers the use of documentation (as in Soviet studies) for dealing with Communist China.

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Contemporary Lithic Analysis in the Southeast

Problems, Solutions, and Interpretations

Philip J. Carr

University of Alabama Press, 2012

Representing work by a mixture of veterans and a new generation of lithic analysts, Contemporary Lithic Analysis in the Southeast explores fresh ideas while reworking and pushing the limits of traditional methods and hypotheses.

The variability in the southeastern lithic landscape over space and through time makes it a dynamic and challenging region for archaeologists. Demonstrating a holistic approach and using a variety of methods, this volume aims to derive information regarding prehistoric lifeways from lithic assemblages.

The contributors use data from a wide temporal span and a variety of sites across the Southeast, ranging from Texas to South Carolina and from Florida to Kentucky. Not merely cautionary tales, these case studies demonstrate the necessity of looking beyond the bag of lithic material sitting in the laboratory to address the key questions in the organization of prehistoric lithic technologies. How do field-collection strategies bias our interpretations? What is therelationship between technological strategies and tool design? How can inferences regarding social and economic strategies be made from lithic assemblages?

Contributors
William Andrefsky Jr. / Andrew P. Bradbury / Philip J. Carr / CarolynConklin /

D. Randall Cooper / Jason L.Edmonds / Jay D. Franklin / Albert C.Goodyear III /

Joel Hardison / Lucinda M. Langston / D. Shane Miller / George H.Odell /

Charlotte D. Pevny / Tara L. Potts /Sarah E. Price / Douglas Sain / Sarah C.Sherwood /

Ashley M. Smallwood /Paul Thacker

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Cooperation with Evil

Thomistic Tools of Analysis

Kevin L. Flannery, SJ

Catholic University of America Press, 2019

Contemporary society very often asks of individuals and/or corporate entities that they perform actions connected in some way with the immoral actions of other individuals or entities. Typically, in the attempt to determine what would be unacceptable cooperation with such immoral actions, Christian scholars and authorities refer to the distinction, which appears in the writings of Alphonsus Liguori, between material and formal cooperation, the latter being connected in some way with the cooperator's intention in so acting. While expressing agreement with most of Alphonsus's determinations in these regards, Cooperation with Evil also argues that the philosophical background to these determinations often lacks coherence, especially when compared to related passages in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Having compared the philosophical approaches of these two great moralists, Cooperation with Evil then describes a number of ideas in Thomas's writings that might serve as more effective tools for the analysis of cases of possible immoral cooperation. The book also includes, as appendixes, translations of relevant passages in both Alphonsus and Thomas.

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