Ron-

Splitting hairs is what discussions of terminology are all about! 

That's interesting about "deflated" middens. I am assuming you mean
"blown out" rather than just thin. Is this one of those sites that's all
on the surface? That's analogous to having an entire site excavated at
close interval here back east where green stuff grows on top of our
sites. What I was saying is that we seldom have the opportunity to do
that much digging, especially during site reconnaissance.

At that level of testing, the overall sheet refuse on a site will
appear featureless, in much the same way your deflated site appears to
you at 6'1" . If you can see the big picture (dig more intensively, or
samle the artifacts at intervals), the sheet refuse will resolve into
features, for instance a series of identifiable thick midden features
trailing off to sheet scatter in all directions. Within the sheet
scatter between them would probably be areas (detectable by a
close-interval grid of excavations) that could be described as thin
midden features related to different functions or times of deposition.
Much of the sheet refuse area, however, would still be "noise," due to
the sparsity of artifacts. Of course, you would probably also be able to
see areas of absence that could be identified as traffic features:
doorways of structures, pathways between, etc.

With privies and wells: again I think it's a matter of content. Don't
most abandoned privies, if they contain actual privy deposits at all,
also contain midden deposits as in-fill? I think one problem is that we
tend to confuse the form of the deposit with the type of deposit. Just
because it's in a privy sump doesn't mean it's a privy deposit ("night
soil"). 

David-

That's very interesting. It must be a regional usage,  because at least
in the northeasten U.S., the term "midden"  is completely obsolete. A
"dustbin" is called a "trash can" or "garbage can" and there is no term
equivalent to your use of the word "midden," nor, as far as I am aware,
"close." To my mother a dustbin was an "ash can" because of the
prevalence of coal ash in household refuse in her generation. 

How do you define the term "midden" in your archaeological practice?
I'm guessing there will be regional differences there, too. 

I just looked around me and thought of a different type of midden: the
desktop midden. No dirt here... just coffee cups. Ron already mentioned
the "office floor midden."

Martin Pickands
New York State Museum

>>> [log in to unmask] 3/24/2007 3:12 AM >>>
 
In a message dated 3/23/2007 11:58:47 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

At  the
preliminary level of examination, as Ron pointed out, you may not  be
able to tell whether it is even a primary deposit. Thus the  many
mistaken "midden" I.D.s in CRM literature.



Perhaps we are just splitting hairs over (the term "midden") nothing
too  
important. Then again, I worry about people who dismiss something as
"surface  
scatter" or "sheet deposit" without understanding how it fits into the
larger  
feature of the site. Although I am about to embark on a learning
experience in 
a  prehistoric site (sorry, Anita, but it illustrates an important
point), I 
feel  the lesson directly applies to historic archaeology. From
1970-1979 
(usually one  or two weekends a month), I participated in surveys and
testing at 
China  Lake Naval Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert (California). We
found 
what  appeared (from my height of 6'1") to be meaningless light scatter
of  
artifacts, but the good scientist Emma Lou "Davy" Davis ordered us to 
dutifully 
map all the artifacts within 1,000 foot squares to test for features 
not 
visible to the naked eye. Davy then took the data home and ran
statistics to  test 
for feature clustering on the landform. She detected deflated tool 
reduction, 
sharpening, and breakage features spread over large areas that became 
more 
clear in the lab. Overlaying those features on the landform, she
predicted  the 
location of buried camel butchering sites and we returned to test one
in  1973 
(and found butchered large mammal bone and stone tools, flakes and
cores).  I 
experienced shock, as I realized my eyeballs at six feet were not
seeing the  
big picture. Several times in my career in historical archaeology, I
have  
conducted detailed mapping of historical artifacts (in what some would
call  
meaningless sheet scatter) and, lo and behold, found largely deflated
features  
that contained variance in personal, domestic, and workshop artifact  
assemblages. Not only did the technique make me a believer, it taught
me to be  very 
skeptical of the term sheet deposit or surface scatter. In reality, a 
thin 
deposit with only one dimension is easier to document and interpret.
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.



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