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Defining and Measuring Midden Catchment Author(s): James L. Boone, III Reviewed work(s): Source: American Antiquity, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Apr., 1987), pp. 336-345 Published by: Society for American Archaeology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/281785 . Accessed: 24/01/2012 12:29
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Minnis, Paul, and Steven LeBlanc 1976 An Efficient, Inexpensive Arid Lands Flotation System. American Antiquity 41:491-493. Schock, Jack M. 1971 Indoor Water Flotation: A Technique for the Recovery of Archaeological Materials. Plains Anthropologist 16:228-231. Struever, Stuart 1968 Flotation Techniques for the Recovery of Small-scale Archaeological Remains. American Antiquity 33:353-362. Wagner, Gail E. 1982 Testing Flotation Recovery Rates. American Antiquity 47:127-132. Watson, Patty Jo 1976 In Pursuit of Prehistoric Subsistence: A Comparative Account of Some Contemporary Flotation Techniques. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 1:77-100.

DEFINING AND MEASURING MIDDEN CATCHMENT

James L. Boone, III

to activitiesthat contribute a single midden The settlementarea that encompassesall the refuse-generating Two relatedissues are exploredwith respectto the problemof to may be referred as a midden's "catchment." measuringmidden catchment:1) the relation betweensettlementdensity, midden size, and distribution,and of and 2) the relationbetweenthe heterogeneity a midden'scontentsand its catchment. middencatchment; The settlement area that encompasses all the refuse-generating activities that contribute to a single midden may be referred to as a midden's "catchment." Because middens typically accumulate material from a large surrounding area, analysis of excavated middens can allow the archaeologist to make inferences about activities that occurred in unexcavated areas. Thus the ability to determine size and extent of midden catchments could be very useful for studying settlement organization when only a sample of a site can be excavated. I explore here two related issues with respect to the problem of measuring midden catchment. The first is the relation between settlement density, midden size and distribution, and midden catchment. The second concerns the relation between the heterogeneity of a midden's contents and the relative extent of its catchment area. In the following discussion, I emphasize midden accumulation in village and urban archeological contexts, with examples based on the result of recent excavations at Qsar es-Seghir, a medieval walled town in northern Morocco. EXCAVATIONS AT QSAR ES-SEGHIR Qsar es-Seghir is a fortified port settlement located halfway between Ceuta and Tangier on the Moroccan coast of the Strait of Gibraltar. Originally founded as an Islamic port to Andalusia in the twelfth century, it was occupied by the Portuguese in 1458 during the first stages of the Iberian expansionism. The site was almost entirely rebuilt to Portuguese specifications by 1500, but soon after began to decline as royal interests turned to India and China. In 1550, the settlement was completely abandoned, partially razed, and never again reoccupied. The occupational phase under study here spans approximately the period 1500-1550. Excavations at Qsar es-Seghir were carried out between 1974 and 1980 (cf. Boone 1980; Redman ResearchLaboratory,The University Texas at Austin,Balcones of James L. Boone, III, TexasArcheological ResearchCenter,10,100 BurnetRd., Austin, TX 78758 AmericanAntiquity,52(2), 1987, pp. 336-345. Copyright? 1987 by the Society for AmericanArchaeology

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1986; Redman and Anzalone 1980). To date, over 18% of the 2.83 ha area within the walls of the settlement has been excavated in the late Portuguese levels using both probability and judgment sampling strategies. The excavations have revealed a densely occupied settlement organized around a main plaza, with two churches, an assembly hall, and numerous residences and light industrial structures. MIDDEN SIZE AND DISTRIBUTION Two proximate factors determine the size-considered as the total quantity of artifacts-of a midden. The first is the number of people contributing to the midden, which affects the rate of artifact accumulation. The settlement space that these contributors take up in refuse-producing activities constitutes what has been defined above as midden catchment. Given the spatial analytical focus of this discussion, I will be concerned primarily with accumulation rate as a function of activity space, rather than numbers of contributors per se. The second factor affecting midden size is the length of time the midden has taken to accumulate. For the moment, let us consider only the first factor and assume that accumulation time is constant. I return to the problem of variable accumulation time below. In densely occupied urban and village contexts, dumping generally occurs in abandoned rooms or other confined spaces not currently in use. The denser the occupation, the fewer abandoned spaces are available for refuse disposal. As occupational density increases and dumping areas become more restricted, it can be hypothesized that the area of refuse-producing activity contributing to any single midden, i.e., midden catchment, will tend to increase, as will the average size of individual middens in the settlement (Schiffer 1976:14-15). If midden accumulation was synchronous over an entire settlement, if occupation density and refuse-producing activities were uniform over the settlement, and if people adhered to the least effort principle with regard to disposal of their refuse, we could expect a pattern of middens of equal size dispersed evenly throughout the settlement. Each midden would have a catchment of equal size, and midden size and dispersion would be entirely a function of activity density. Few settlements are likely to conform to such ideal criteria. However, it is worthwhile to keep in mind the conditions that would create this ideal pattern in order to lay the groundwork for the systematic interpretation of expectable deviations from it. For example, spatial variation in occupational density within a settlement would be one obvious reason for nonuniform size and distribution of middens in a settlement, as the following example will illustrate. Figure 1 shows a map of the excavations of the late Portuguese occupation of Qsar es-Seghir, showing the size, location, and relative density of middens in relation to occupied space. The settlement was encircled and constrained by high walls and a moat, and had only three relatively restricted entrances. All the space within the walls was taken up with architecture. The larger excavated areas of the site were subdivided into areas corresponding to "blocks" on the basis of street patterns (see Figure 2). Within these areas, the small black squares denote the location of dumps containing between 600 and 1,500 pottery sherds, the smaller triangles 1,500 to 3,600 sherds, and the larger triangles, between 6,000 and 10,000 sherds (there were no middens in the 3,600 to 6,000 sherd range). The figures beside each area indicate the ratio of rooms or other walled spaces abandoned to dumping to the number of rooms still in use at site abandonment within in the excavation area. The isopleth divides the site into areas of more and less than the average ratio (.23) of dumps to usable rooms. Areas of highest dumping density cluster around the periphery of the site, away from the entrances to the walled town, and in an area near the center of town. Figure 2 shows the two long main streets that connect the main plaza with the two land entrances. A third entrance through the town walls was located just southeast of the citadel. The greatest competition for space occurred along these streets and around the main plaza. These high settlement density areas correspond to areas of least dumping density. The shading in Figure 1 indicates the area of greatest residential density (as opposed to the religious and administrative buildings around the main plaza in the northwest center of the town and the

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patterns.Shadedareais zoneof densesthabitation. Figure1. Plan of excavatedareasof site showingdumping roomsor buildings)containing6,000-10,000 ceramicand Largetrianglesindicatedumps(locatedin abandoned glass sherds;small triangles, 1,500-3,600 sherds;squares,600-1,500 sherds. Figures indicate ratio of rooms to abandoned dumpingto numberof roomsstill in use withinan excavatedarea. Isoplethdividessettlementarea into areas of more and less than the averageratio (.23) of dumpsto usable rooms. Asterisk indicatesthat all availablespaces with the excavationunit were given overto dumping.

less densely packed settlement area around the periphery of the site and away from the main streets). This area was delineated by an independent analysis of architectural space use (cf. Redman and Anzalone 1980:287). This residential sector can be assumed to be the greatest refuse-producing area as well. Significantly, the four largest dumps excavated, which averaged twice as large as the next smallest size category of dumps, lie right at the edge of this dense habitation zone. Dumping sites were clearly limited within the zone, but the inhabitants wasted little effort in taking their refuse to the nearest available abandoned space in the less densely packed areas around it. This pattern supports the prediction made previously that midden size increases with settlement density, as well as the assumption concerning least effort. There is also a great deal of variation in dump size, indicating either that there is variability in accumulation time, that not all areas of the site are producing refuse at the same rate, or that some dumps have larger catchment areas than others. Clearly, the large central dumps, being surrounded by an extensive, densely settled, high traffic area, probably have a much larger than average catchment. Generally, however, it is at this point impossible to distinguish whether midden size in any particular case is due to accumulation from a small catchment over a long time or a large catchment over a short time. In order to accomplish this distinction, we turn now to a consideration of midden heterogeneity as an auxiliary means of estimating midden catchment.

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MEASURING MIDDEN HETEROGENEITY To the extent that variability exists in the spatial distribution of refuse-producing activities in a site, the contents of any particular midden will vary according to which activities are taking place within its catchment. We might conceptualize all the artifact deposition that takes place within the confines of a settlement during a given time period as a single global "dump" whose catchment includes the entire area of the site. The overall relative frequency of artifacts in this site would reflect the site-wide mix of activities particular to that settlement (that is, as a function of the varying amounts of refuse each activity might produce; this, of course, is not the same as the relative frequency of the activities themselves). Individual middens on the site would be attracting material from some smaller proportion of the settlement activity space, and hence, a smaller portion of the activities. How closely the mix of activities in the catchment of a particular midden approximates the mix of activities on the entire site, then, could constitute a useful measure of midden catchment. The following measure of midden heterogeneity was developed as a potential means of measuring midden catchment. Heterogeneity (also referred to as "evenness," Pielou 1977: 14) is a measure of diversity that takes

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into account not only the number of different classes of entities in a population, but their proportional representation as well. Perfect heterogeneity is reached when all defined categories of entities in a population are present in equal quantities. Perfect homogeneity exists when the population consists almost entirely of only one category. In analyzing a series of refuse deposits excavated from Qsar es-Seghir, a measure of heterogeneity was constructed in which the site-wide artifact mix, that is, the relative proportions of artifacts over the whole site, is considered "perfectly heterogeneous" in that it reflects the relative proportion of refuse-producing activities over the whole settlement (at least in terms of the amounts of artifacts they produced). This expression of site-wide activity mix was used as a baseline from which to measure local differences in activity structure. Because various artifacts in a site have very different overall deposition rates, a weighting system was employed that equalized overall variation in artifact deposition rate and isolated the effects of local variations due to localized differences in the activity mix. The result is that site-wide relative frequencies, when subjected to the weighting procedure, appear as an array of equal values reflecting the "perfect heterogeneity" of the site-wide activity mix. Observed relative artifact frequencies for individual midden deposits within the site will deviate from this expected array of equal values to varying degrees. The heterogeneity measure is calculated for each individual midden and constitutes the sum of the squared deviations of the observed relative frequencies from the expected site-wide array. A small value for a particular midden would indicate less deviation from the site-wide activity mix (in other words, greater heterogeneity) and a greater evenness of activities. Larger values of the measure reflect greater deviation from the site-wide activity mix, and hence, that a more homogeneous mix of activities had occurred within the catchment of that particular midden. The computational details of this measure are as follows: 1) The raw data consist of frequency counts (denoted yij) of an array of artifact classes (i) from a set of discrete midden deposits (i). Site-wide totals of each artifact class are denoted Yj. 2) An expression of site-wide relative frequencies is obtained by computing the ratio of one class total to each remaining class total. In this case, the class that was generally the most frequent in where Wj = Ypi,n/ any deposit, plainware, was chosen. This ratio becomes the weighting factor (JWj), Yj.The weighting factor is an expression of the estimated site-wide deposition rate of a given artifact class relative to the deposition rate of plainware. 3) The observed frequencies yij in each deposit are multiplied by their respective weighting factors Wj, producing weighted counts (Wjyij). Weighted counts are the counts that would obtain if each artifact class under consideration had the same site-wide deposition rate. 4) Weighted percentages are obtained by taking the row percentages of each observation, in which the raw counts have been converted to weighted counts:
wjyij

5) An array of site-wide expected values (Pj) is produced by taking the weighted percentages of the site-wide class totals:
p Wj Yj

This, of course, results in a closed array of identical values. For example, if there are 10 artifact classes included in the analysis, Pj for each class would be . 10. These identical values reflect perfect heterogeneity. That is, any deposit producing the expected array of values of pj will contain exactly the same artifact mix as the site as a whole. The observed values of pij, then, constitute a measure of deviation from the expected Pjs. 6) Finally, an expression of heterogeneity of a particular deposit would be the sum of the squared deviations from the expected array: Hi, = p -Pj) where smaller values indicate greater heterogeneity, or evenness. It should be emphasized that "heterogeneity" here is measured in relation to the site-wide artifact mix. The site-wide artifact mix

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in Figure3. Graphshowingpredictedcurvesproducedby plottingdumpsize and heterogeneity three hypoand c) sectored spatial distributionof thetical settlement situations with a) fine-grained,b) coarse-grained, activities. The dotted Line C denotes that little or no correlationbetween deposit size and heterogeneityis middenswouldbe scatteredin the upperhalf of the graph. expected,and that points representing

is "perfectly heterogeneous" because it encompasses the widest possible range of artifact-producing activities. In the sense intended here, a particular deposit would be "perfectly heterogeneous" if it accumulated each artifact class at the same relative rate as the entire site. ACTIVITY STRUCTURE AND MIDDEN HETEROGENEITY If the activity structure of the site in question was such that the larger the catchment of a dump, the more different kinds of activities (and therefore kinds of artifacts) would be encompassed by it, then midden heterogeneity could be expected to increase (values of Hi become smaller) in direct proportion with midden size, and the regression line of a plot of the two variables would be a straight line. Of course, in an actual site it would be more likely that midden catchment would increase up to a point where evenness of activities is approximated before it actually encompassed the entire settlement space. In this case, heterogeneity would tend to increase at a slower and slower rate with midden size, producing a curve at the end of the regression line. At the same time, at the other end of the regression, where deposits are very small and homogeneous due largely to the stochastic nature of the accumulation process, values of the sum-squared deviations would start out very high, slowly flatten out to values representative of the homogeneous nature of localized activities, and then gradually approach perfect heterogeneity. Thus, the regression line describing the relation between dump size and heterogeneity would more likely approximate a curve such as pictured in Figure 3. In any case, the overall activity structure of the site in question will have a predictable effect on the shape of this curve. For example, consider a site where artifact deposition reflects a set of activities evenly interspersed over the whole settlement (example: a village of households all engaged in similar subsistence activities or occupations). In such a case, the catchment area of a midden would not have to extend out very far before it encompassed all the activities that would take place

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Figure 4. Schematic plan of the spatial distribution of activities in three idealized settlements with finegrained, coarse-grained, and sectored activity structures. Letters indicate location of hypothetical activities A, B, C, D, and E, each of which produces distinct artifact types.

on the site and the artifact mix of the midden would rapidly approximate that of the whole site. This "fine-grained" activity structure (refer to Figure 4) would produce a line approximating Line A in Figure 3, where sum squared deviations start out high due to stochastic variability, but reach maximum heterogeneity very quickly. Consider, though, another settlement situation where discrete activity areas are segregated into rather larger activity clumps (example: a village with differentiated craft or subsistence production associated with various households). In this case, the midden's catchment would have to expand to encompass at least one of each activity clump before it would approximate perfect heterogeneity. Thus in a "course-grained" situation, the fall-off of the curve would be considerably slower (as in Line B). A third contrasting situation would be where refuse-producing activities are segregated into large, discrete activity sectors (example: a settlement where various production activities and residential quarters are spatially segregated). In the sectored model, the catchment area of any given dump would have to encompass practically the entire site before it began to accumulate various activityrelated artifacts at the same relative frequency as the site-wide mix. In the sectored model, then, the overall correlation between dump size and heterogeneity should be very low: points representing the various dumps would be scattered in a cloud in the upper regions of the graph (symbolized by Line C). To summarize, in a fine-grained activity pattern, we would expect to see points distributed in a relatively thin, parabolic band along the x and y axes, with a high correlation between deposit size and heterogeneity (Line A, Figure 4). In a coarse-grained activity situation, the plotted points would lie in a wider band along Line B in Figure 4, with a correspondingly lower correlation between the two variables. Finally, with the sectored activity pattern (Line C), points would be scattered over the upper regions of the graph, and we would expect to see little correlation between midden size and heterogeneity. These three activity structure models are of course highly idealized: no actual settlement situation will conform perfectly to one type or another. But it can be worthwhile to plot refuse deposits in this manner to gain an overall idea of how a series of deposit accumulations are "behaving" with

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Figure 5. Scatterplotof values of Hi against deposit size (low deviationvalues approach"perfectheterogeneity" in relation to site-wide artifact mix, as explained in text). Dotted line isolates two extreme outliers describedin text. respect to the adjacent activities they reflect. Figure 5 shows a plot of dump size and heterogeneity at Qsar es-Seghir, based on the relative frequencies of nine pottery ware types. I have included all room deposits on the site with over 50 sherds. Thus, primary and de facto refuse accumulations are probably included. These would produce high sum-squared deviation values because they reflect very localized activities. The curve represented by this plot appears to conform to the "fine-grained" model. This conclusion is corroborated by analysis of architectural features on the site. The town was principally a garrison containing the residences of soldiers, tradesmen, and merchants with their families. Low-level settlement maintenance/production activities were interspersed throughout the residential areas (see Figure 2), which took up most of the site. The only perceptible differentiation in the town (other than the public versus residential sector, which was distinguished architecturally, as discussed above) is a tendency for high-status residences to occur near the main plaza and along the two streets connecting the plaza with the two gates. These were detectable through differential deposition of imported display wares (Boone 1980; Redman and Anzalone 1980). Another interesting aspect of this plot is that the point where deposits begin to approximate perfect heterogeneity coincides with a rapid fall-off in the overall number of deposits (at around 600 artifacts), indicating that the depositional behavior that resulted in their formation was distinct from that of most smaller deposits. In fact, the heterogeneity measure is a good general technique for distinguishing quantitatively between primary/de facto and secondary refuse deposits. Two extreme outliers in the scatter plot (outlined by dashed lines) provide an illustration of this point. These two provenience units are actually the result of one depositional episode, and were excavated a year apart in adjacent squares on the main plaza of the site. They are apparently the result of more than a dozen large globular flasks being dropped in transport and later smashed into about 3,800 small pieces by carts and other traffic. Thus, they are the result of a very localized activity uncharacteristic of the site-wide activity mix. Earlier in this discussion, I pointed out that a major problem with predicting refuse catchment

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from midden size is that it is impossible to tell from size alone whether a midden is the result of a small catchment accumulating material over a long time or a large catchment accumulating material over a short time. Plotting heterogeneity and dump size presents a potential solution to this problem. Individual deposits that fall far above the regression line represent deposits that are much less heterogeneous than would be predicted by size. Following the logic of the heterogeneity measure presented here, these deposits should represent accumulations of comparatively small catchments over a long time. By the same token, points falling below the line represent middens that are more heterogeneous than predicted and should indicate middens that have just begun to accumulate material from a comparatively large area of the settlement. Of course, the reliability of this distinction depends initially upon how well heterogeneity is predicted by size in general (estimated by the value of r), and hence, on the general predictability of the overall activity structure of the site. In a sectored settlement, a large dump exhibiting a high deviation from the site-wide mix might just be accumulating material from a large catchment encompassing a small range of activities within one sector. In order to determine how much midden heterogeneity is predicted by deposit size in this test case, I linearized the regression model by plotting the relation between the logarithms of the two variables. The resulting plot is presented in Figure 6. An r value was calculated at - .63, indicating that about 40% of the variation in heterogeneity is predicted by deposit size alone. (as r2-) DISCUSSION I present here a way of thinking about artifact accumulation in middens within the context of artifact deposition over the entire site. A measure of deposit heterogeneity was developed that was derived directly from the logic of the deposit accumulation process. The heterogeneity measure fails to measure midden catchment in an absolute sense, but does prove to be a useful way of characterizing individual accumulations in relation to the site-wide activity/artifact mix. By plotting a number of such accumulations by size and heterogeneity, it is possible to make useful statements about the

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activity structure of a site. Clearly, this method is most useful in excavation situations that produce a large number of separate provenience units. A few remarks regarding sample size effects are appropriate here. Kintigh (1984) has discussed the effects of sample size on measures of diversity. His concern was with diversity considered as the number of different classes of artifacts in a sample. In the present study, I am concerned with evenness expressed in terms of relative proportions of selected classes. In employing the measure of heterogeneity, I attempted to strike a balance between including as many ceramic classes as possible while at the same time not including classes that were rare over the whole site. Increasing the number of classes decreases the relative effect of zero frequencies on the rest of the values of pij, while selecting relatively abundant classes will decrease the likelihood that zero frequencies will occur by chance alone, except among the smallest midden accumulations. As previously discussed, low sample sizes will produce high values of Hi among the smallest accumulations, but as midden size increases, settlement activity structure will be the predominant factor in shaping the curve produced by plotting Hi against midden size. This analysis was designed specifically for within site investigation of village or urban contexts. However, the general approach could easily be extended to apply to other kinds of problems. For example, artifact accumulations within individual settlements could be investigated in relation to accumulation over an entire settlement system. Data on site specific deviations from the settlement wide mix could be used to measure the degree of functional differentiation within the system. Acknowledgments. I thank Albert Ammerman, George Cowgill, Keith Kintigh, Emlen Myers, CharlesL. Redman,the reviewers,and the Editorfor their helpfulcomments in the preparation this report.Partof the of researchfor this study was funded by National ScienceFoundationResearchGrantBNS-80-02289.

REFERENCES

CITED

Boone, J. L. 1980 Artifact Deposition and Demographic Change: An Archeological Case Study of Medieval Colonialism in the Age of Expansion. Ph.D. dissertation, SUNY-Binghamton. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kintigh, Keith W. 1984 Measuring Archaeological Diversity by Comparison with Simulated Assemblages. American Antiquity 49:44-54. Pielou, E. C. 1977 Ecological Diversity. John Wiley and Sons, New York. Redman, C. L. 1986 Qsar es-Seghir: An Archeological View of Medieval Life. Academic Press, New York. Redman, C. L., and R. A. Anzalone 1980 Discovering Architectural Patterning in a Complex Site. American Antiquity 45:284-290. Schiffer, M. B. 1976 Behavioral Archeology. Academic Press, New York.