I am not sure how a universal functional categories would work, although
comparisons between collections would obviously facilitated if such a set
were developed and everyone agreed on them and everyone understood what each
category meant so that a random sample of archaeologists across North
America would all categorise an artefact in the same way. I imagine it would
be a sort of Munsell Book of Colour but with 5000 more pages.

But what happened when accepted break down - I have published an example of
a beer bottle that was recycled as a Jam Jar. Do you count 1 beer bottle or
1 jam jar and in any case the point of interest in the transition between
the two artefacts. I am sure there are numerous other examples.

There is a very interesting article of the role of artefact catalogues in
Australian historical archaeology by Crook, Lawrence and Gibbs (Australasian
Historical Archaeology 20:26-38, 2002) which indicates how this problem has
been approached (not solved) in Australia.

yours

Iain Stuart

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron May" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 1:11 AM
Subject: Re: Functional categories


> My experience of reading archaeology reports (at least 2,000 over
24-years)
> was that when people devised entirely "new" typological nomenclature for
> analyzing each artifact collection, they reduced the comparative value to
> meaningless gibberish. This held true for artifact identifications too
(which usually
> diminish to repetitive dissertations on bottle and ceramic manufacturing).
Then
> other archaeologists had to reexamine the older collections to come up
with
> meaningful comparisons. Collection discard policies rendered such
comparisons
> impossible, which drives the sacrifice of more archaeology sites
(mitigation by
> "data recovery"). What kind of data does our science benefit from if half
of
> it is discarded and the other half is identified and classified in an
entirely
> new scheme for each project?
>
> Of course we want to consider contexts each time we analyze a collection,
but
> real humans created each historic context in which those artifacts were
> deposited. Those real humans came from somewhere, were descended from
somewhere
> else, and brought with them habitual and favored behaviors that we as
> anthropologists should be interested in studying. It seems to me that
creation of
> completely new typologies each time an archaeologist approaches a site (or
feature
> within a site) risks making the data uncomparable or useless to other
> archaeologists. Why would we do that?
>
> I have had some offline discussions with critics of functional typology
and
> found we do not really disagree on most things. I am just afraid that
without
> testing some sort of typologies against ancestral ethnicity, gender,
ecomonic
> class, and labor within the greater historical movements identified by the
> National Park Service (et al) that we will not learn anything of interest
to
> anyone but ourselves. In a time when powerful federal U.S. Senators want
to
> terminate Section 106 archaeology studies on non-National Register sites,
we should
> be doing everything we can to make our collections useful to the rest of
the
> world.
>
>
> Ron May
> Legacy 106, Inc.