At 03:20 AM 6/16/98 -0400, Dan Mouer wrote:>
>Hiya, Ed!
>
>The only facts I was possessed of were those Linda wrote in her post. And
my reply said, or should have been read to say: If you said "If one can
find no stratigraphy in a site one has no business digging. " To which I
said "wrong," but whether flat-out wrong or dead wrong I don't remember.
>
>As Marley knows, and I think you do, I am a Harris-Matrix-digging kind of
guy. But I have also had to struggle with dead- (or flat-) uniform
sandy-loam deposits containing a rough sequence of 8000-10000 yea rs of
stuff in a space of 3-4 feet, with no stratigraphic distinctions available.
If I feel that the deposits were likely to have been laid down over time
then I will dig them in arbitrary levels. It ain't perfect, but it's all we
got.
>
>Dan
>
>-- Dan Mouer "Pioneer" http://saturn.vcu.edu/~dmouer/homepage.htm
>
Hi Dan,
        The matrix of many, perhaps most, of the prehistoric archaeological sites
in the SE U.S. are unstratified like those you describe.  I have dug many
such sites, and wish there had been discernible strata to permit digging by
stratigraphic units.  But you have to play the hand you are dealt.  If such
sites are all you have to work with, you should learn as much as you can
from them in spite of their shortcomings.
        The only recourse in such cases is to collect artifacts from arbitrary
excavation units--vertical and horizontal--and to look for distinctive
patterns in the distributions of artifact classes and types.  And, of
course, sometimes there are cultural features that provide association
contexts.  But I have found repeatedly that older types of artifacts (dated
from contexts elsewhere) tend to occur deeper in such homogeneous deposits
than later types.  This can only be demonstrated statistically by seriation
graphs and the like, as the absence of strata precludes the possibility of
stratigraphic separation of types.
        I have never been able to determine to my satisfaction whether the deeper
occurrence (statistically) of older types is owing to their being deposited
at a site while soil aggradation was going on, or whether they were
transported downward mechanically from a stable surface by bioturbation,
vertisol fracturing, etc., the older materials ending up deeper simply
because they were subject to the transportational mechanisms longer than
more recent materials.  Perhaps both processes were going on at most sites.
 But whatever produced them, statistical differences in the vertical
distribution of types covering a respectable span of time in such sites can
usually be recognized by plotting distributional data from arbitrary
excavation units.
        Also, when a site was utilized by different groups of people over a span
of several millennia, there often are demonstrable differences in the
horizontal distribution of different artifact types and classes, reflecting
different spatial utilization of the site by the respective groups.
        So, if there is good reason to dig an unstratified site--because, for
example, there are no known stratified sites containing similar cultural
remains in the region--the only reasonable approach is to dig it by
arbitrary vertical and horizontal units.  And the literature is fraught
with reports showing that such sites can produce significant interpretive
results.
 
        Ed Jelks