Society for American Archaeology

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Kathleen Deagan Reviewed work(s): A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World by Charles E. Orser, Jr. Source: American Antiquity, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 163-164 Published by: Society for American Archaeology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/282400 Accessed: 14/01/2009 23:16
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It seems likely that the individualcompilers talked boundaries beforehand,because colonial El Paso and the Franciscanmissions at Hopi (among the provincias de la nueba Mexico) are missing from Levine'slist. But who shouldhave been responsiblefor includingthe preliminarywork by Beckett on El Paso's colonial Manso andTortugasPueblos?Withsuch rigid attentionto modem political boundaries,why is Gregory'swork at Los Adaes in Louisiana included with Texas (never mind thatthatmission and presidioonce served as the capital of SpanishTexas,as did El Paso for New Mexico)? To generalcriticisms-on the lack of theoreticalorientation behind much of the archaeologicalresearch, for andthe inaccessibilityof much of the grayliterature, example-I would add the following: the unfamiliarity of many "contractarchaeology" personnel(from which with basic historistems the bulk of the gray literature) cal source materials;their inability to read or evaluate the primary(Spanish language) documentarysources; and their lack of field personneltrainingin the identification of diagnosticmaterialculture. Overall, the absence of useful comparativestudies within the southwestern Spanishcolonial (andMexican) literature-or of comparative archaeological discussions across the colonial Borderlandsexperience (or between colonial entities, French and Spanish, for example), need to be seriouslyaddressed. No one working in the Hispanic Southwest can affordto be withoutthis guide; and it is anticipatedthat the growing body of materialstemmingfrom archaeologists and historiansin the North Mexican states might be compiled for a future guide, or at least, integrated issue. into an up-datedsouthwestern

A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. CHARLES E. ORSER, JR. Plenum Press, New York, 1996. xvi + 247 pp., 1 figure,workscited,index. $34.95 (cloth). Reviewedby KathleenDeagan, Universityof Florida. This is the first single-authoredvolume in nearly 20 years to address the nature, definition, goals, and achievementsof the burgeoningdiscipline of historical In it, CharlesOrser(drawingheavilyon the archaeology. work of James Deetz and Robert Schuyler) boldly claims a "researchprogram"for historical archeology thatdefines the field as "thestudyof the modem world" (p. 82), and situates its most appropriatetheoretical focus at a global scale. To operationalize tis programand to unify the endless ways in which the study of the modem worldmight be undertaken, Orserproposesa "mutualist perspective."

This is simply the widely accepted assertion of many andtheirsocial relationsocial sciences that"individuals ships are the basic stuff of human life"(p. 21) and that "peoplemust be connectedto one anotherto have some sense of the worldand find theirplace within it" (p. 30). Orser identifies this reasonableperspective as the root of the historicalarchaeologyhe envisions.The goal the relaof this historicalarchaeologyis to understand tionships connectingpeople to one another,since these can reveal the culturaland social life of any group of people under study (p. 21). He explicitly disassociates this undertakingfrom concepts of "cultures"or "societies," however, emphasizing instead the connections nets thatconnectpeople to thatforge the ever-expanding one anotherthroughtime and space. I interpretthis to mean the dynamic processes that create connections, that are operationalizedby interactionsamong people, and that are materiallymanifest in archaeologicalsites. In Orser'sview, the modem world is both defined and dominatedby four global processes of modernity, colonialism, eurocentrism,and capitalism. He defines the moder world as the time when these four forces converged(p. 86). These forces are referredto throughout the book as "haunts" because, in Orser'sview, they pervade and haunt every aspect of life in every part of the moder world. He asserts these as the overarching processes that conditionthe connectionsamongpeople, thus shaping and subsuming relations based on such social categoriesas gender,race, ethnicity,society, and class (p. 86). This perspectiveshould offer rich fodder for dialogue. Much discussion is devoted to explicating these enormouslycomplex processesas they pertainto historical archaeology, and,as Orseradmits,he cannotdo justice to them in the space of the book. Scholarswill find much to contest (as well as much to defend) here. The of colonialism,for example,is largelyrestricttreatment ed to the concept of acculturationand based on an extremely limited segment of the huge archaeological literature devotedto this subject.In his invocationof the model as the way historoutdated1951 Quimby-Spoehr ical archaeologistshave typically treatedacculturation, Orserignores most of the archaeologicalwork devoted to colonialismand acculturation publishedover the past threevoltwo decades (for example,the comprehensive umes of ColumbianConsequences,editedbetween 1989 and 1991 by D. Thomas and directly addressingthese issues, is not mentionedby Orser).Perhapsmore troubling, in a volume that calls for a global historical is the absenceof any referenceto the abunarchaeology, dant innovativework by non-Europeanor non-Angloandanthropologists Americanarchaeologists workingin those areasmost subjectedto colonialism and acculturationin the moder world(LatinAmerica,for example).

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Orser uses two very differentcommunities (seventeenth-centuryPalmares, Brazil, which was home to escapedAfricanslaves knownas Maroons,andthe nineteenth-century farming community of Gortoose, Ireland)to arguethat all sites are connectedto the larger world,that the four "haunts" of archaeologyoperate at all sites, and that his proposedresearchprogramcan even very disparatesites in time, space, and incorporate society. Unfortunately,neither of the sites has been excavated.This is regrettablein my view because the most important unresolved issue facing historical archaeology-and the only one that will make it relevant to intellectualconcernsthat transcenddisciplinary boundaries-is the identificationof those questionsand problems that only historical archaeologycan resolve. Although Orser's arguments based on historical and are clearlymade, it is difficult geographicalinformation to assess with confidencehow archaeologyat these sites will contributeuniquelyto an understanding of how the four processes operatedin the modem world. Toward the end of the book (chapter7), Orserintroduces the conceptof powerwith a thoughtfuldiscussion of how it shapes social relations. He argues that the natureof power relationsin modem times, conditioned has producedgrave inequalitiesin by the four "haunts," the availabilityof sources bearingon internalmeaning for elites and non-elites. The searchfor meaning at the level of the individual,while occasionally appropriate for power-holdingindividuals,is thus not productiveor perhapseven possible for non-elite people. This is certain to produce lively debate that may help define and resolve some of the disjunctionsof scale between questions and methods that still plague and limit historical archaeologytoday.Althoughthis book does not resolve this problemof scale (andin some ways suffersfrom it), it does offer an important opening for dialogue. What Orserproposes is an updatedand more tightly defined versionof a processualhistoricalarchaeologyat a global scale, informedby, but rejectingthe primacyof ethnographic,symbolic, or cognitive approachesto the past. The book may thus not be received warmly by those researcherscommitted to those directions. The pervasivenessof the four "haunts" may also be unconvincing for those historical archaeologistsworking in historic-periodAsia, India, and parts of Africa. Orser has, nevertheless, quite intrepidly offered a clear, if unproven, agendafor historicalarchaeologythatimbeds the discipline in the social sciences and providessome guidelines for doing so. The last books of this scope in historical archaeology (by Stanley South and James Deetz) provokeda long and largely unproductiveepidemic of excavationsdesigned to prove that "patterns" or "mind sets" existed in the ground. Let's hope that Orser'sbook spawnsongoing dialogueamong historical

archaeologistsabouthis propositions,ratherthan a rash of studies designed to "prove"that the four "haunts" were indeed presentin the many pasts we study.

The Middle Paleolithic Site of Combe-Capelle Bas (France).HAROLDDIBBLE and MICHELLENOIR, editors.UniversityMuseum Monograph91. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology,Philadelphia,1995. xxi + 363 pp., figures, tables, appendixes,referencescited. $40.00 (cloth). Reviewed by Anna Backer, Western State College of Colorado,Gunnison. This elegant monograph on recent excavations at Combe-CapelleBas (not to be confused with nearby Roc de Combe-Capelle, where Hauser discovered humanremains)is a useful contribution to the field of Paleolithic prehistory and sets high standards for archaeologists studying chipped-stone technology. As Frison states in the foreword,this book demonstrates how studies of site formationand stone tool organization have evolved in a multidisciplinary setting to sigof culnificantly enhance the quality of interpretations turalactivitiesin the Middle Paleolithic. The book is organizedinto five parts.PartI presents the history of researchin the Couze Valley (Lenoirand Dibble), outlines the research design (Dibble and Lenoir),and details the methodologyof excavationand analysisused at Combe-CapelleBas (Dibble,Holdaway, Lenoir, McPherron, Roth, and Sanders-Gray).The applicationby Dibble and his colleagues of excavation techniques involving meticulous automatedrecording of artifactshas gained a solid reputation among prehistoriansworkingin France. Part II presents the lithic assemblages and the archaeologicalsequence. Roth, Lenoir,and Dibble furnish an impressivearrayof data, with illustrationsand tables (some of which could have gone into an appendix), and Dibble and Lenoirprovidea typological summary of the archaeologicalsequence in the three excavated sectors. PartIII is groundbreaking in a numberof ways. The context of geological site formationand taphonomyis dealt with in depth.Ambiguities arising from differing of the degree to which geologic formainterpretations tion processesinterfered with the integrityof the artifact distributionsare addressed.Bertranand Texier'sanalysis of micromorphologyand sedimentologyimply that mass movement (in this case, debris flow and fluvial processes) alteredthe locationsof artifactssignificantly by redepositingassemblageson the slope. Otherstudies, notablythe electricalresistivityand magnetic suscepti-