Confronting Scale in Archaeology: Issues of Theory and Practice / Edition 1

by Gary Lock, Brian Molyneaux

Overview

Without realizing, most archaeologists shift within a scale of interpretation of material culture. Material data is interpreted from the scale of an individual in a specific place and time, then shifted to the complex dynamics of cultural groups spread over time and place. This book discusses the cultural, social and spatial aspects of scale and its impact on archaeology, and shows how an improved awareness of scale offers new and exciting interpretations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780387757018
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	11/15/2007
Edition description:	2006
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: Confronting Scale.- Introduction: Confronting Scale.- Introducing Scale: Space, Time and Size in The Past and the Present.- On Being the Right Size: Affordances and the Meaning of Scale.- Timescales.- Scale as Artifact: GIS, Ecological Fallacy, and Archaeological Analysis.- Artifacts as Social Interference: The Politics of Spatial Scale.- Constructing Scale: Identifying Problems.- Topographical Scale as Ideological and Practical Affordance: The Case of Devils Tower.- Perspective Matters: Traversing Scale through Archaeological Practice.- Artifacts as Landscapes: A Use-Wear Case Study of Upper Paleolithic Assemblages at the Solutré Kill Site, France.- Scale and Archaeological Evaluations: What are We Looking For?.- Scale, Model Complexity, and Understanding: Simulation of Settlement Processes in the Glenwood Locality of Southwestern Iowa, 1976 and 2000.- Scale and Its Effects on Understanding Regional Behavioural Systems: An Australian Case Study.- Custer’s Last Battle: Struggling with Scale.- Interpreting Scale: Towards New Methodologies and Understandings.- Temporal Scales and Archaeological Landscapes from the Eastern Desert of Australia and Intermontane North America.- Large Scale, Long Duration and Broad Perceptions: Scale Issues in Historic Landscape Characterisation.- Multiscalar Approaches to Settlement Pattern Analysis.- Grain, Extent, and Intensity: The Components of Scale in Archaeological Survey.- Persons and Landscapes: Shifting Scales of Landscape Archaeology.

Editorial Reviews

"Archaeologists from North America, Europe, and Australia grapple with the concept of scale and its intentional and unintentioanl influence in their practice. The fundamental problem is that archaeologists, being human, have trouble imagining things very much larger or very much smaller than humans, and things very much longer or very much shorter than a human lifetime. The contributions look at space, time, and size in the past and the present; problems of scale and their identification; and new methodologies and understandings for interpreting scale." (Reference and Research Book News, November 2006)

From the Publisher