Review - Archaeology of Urban America-The Search for Pattern and Process by Roy Dickens

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Archaeology of Urban America: The Search for Pattern and Process by Roy S. Dickens

Review by: William Hampton AdamsAmerican Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 948-950Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/679596 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

ArcheologyArchaeology of Urban America: The Searchfor Pattern and Process. Roy S. Dickens, ed.Studies in Historical Archaeology. New York:Academic Press, 1982. xxii + 468 pp. $39.50(cloth).

William Hampton AdamsUniversity of FloridaThis book indicates that urban archeologyrecently has advanced in theory and methods,yet much remains to be accomplished. Severalauthors advocate the systems theory approachprovided by Cressey and Stephens, who examinethe material relationships among factorscreating Alexandria, Virginia. They view thecity as a single site, composed of many inter-related parts. We must develop citywide re-search designs (and regional ones) and we mustabandon the single house site approach if wehope to learn about any but the most trivialaspects of American life. This can only be done

through a multistage, long-term research pro-gram, using detailed archival sampling, plan-ning, preliminary testing, evaluation of contem-porary conditions, and, finally, selective excava-tion. Dickens and Crimmins also used a city-siteapproach in the MARTA Project in Atlanta;they relate the development of urban study andthe CRM movement, suggesting a multistageresearch design for urban research: precon-struction stage (working hypotheses, survey,testing), demolition and construction stage(monitoring, recording, salvage, controlled ex-cavation), and postconstruction stage (preserva-tion, final report).Several authors studied land modificationand construction practices affecting urban sites;they stress that even with extreme land modifi-cation, one cannot assume site destruction, butmay find preservation. Rothschild and Roth-man point out that even though documents in-dicated total disturbance of an area, the ar-cheology found much intact. Rubertone pre-sents a detailed methodology for the multistage

investigation of Providence, Rhode Island, in-cluding systematic and random sampling by useof truck-mounted auger, power-assisted excava-tion of trenches, comparison between trenchesthrough volumetrically derived samples, andproduction of SYMAP graphics. The secondRubertone chapter should be a starting pointfor developing an urban field research design.Her research focuses on how documented landuse changes were evidenced archeologically bypresenting area maps from archival sourcesshowing different types of usage (e.g., residen-tial, commercial); she then discusses differentclasses of artifacts and likely archeological con-texts. The many complex depositional activitiesand processes in urban sites is worthy of investi-gation. Marjorie Ingle examines the archeo-genesis or site building activities at the RogersLocomotive Works in Paterson, New Jersey,where site preparation with fill soil precededoriginal construction as well as later modifica-tions.Urban industrial sites are difficult to excavateand interpret, yet, as Gorman suggests, canyield important data on technological and eco-nomic history. He tests Bridenbaugh's hypoth-esis about 18th-century urban labor's effect onmanufacturing specialization by comparingglassworks from urban, suburban, and rurallocations, using cluster analysis on 39 archeo-logically sensitive but historically derivedvariables. The results indicate only partial con-firmation of the hypothesis. Faulkner reports hisinvestigations of the Weaver family pottery inKnoxville, Tennessee. The kilns and potters'shop lay beneath three later warehouses, yetconsiderable architectural and artifactual dataremained. Faulkner places this site within thelarger industrial setting and examines factorseventually closing the pottery in 1888, linkingthese to national consumer trends and toresource procurement and marketing problems.Cressey et al., working within Alexandria,Virginia, portray structural relationships be-tween two city areas and posit differences in set-

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ARCHEOLOGY 949tlement and artifact patterns based on dif-ferences in wealth and access to political power.Unfortunately, the data used are not sufficient,consisting of material from a single privy/well ineach area. A sample from one well can only be adiachronic sample of one household, no matterhow many artifacts it contains. The methodsused for comparison (vessel form, price, func-tion) have considerable merit.

Blakely and Beck studied unmarked graves ofpaupers and Blacks (1866-84) in OaklandCemetery, Atlanta. They describe the burialpit, coffin types, clothing, and burial layout,and, observing a high correlation between gravepit dimensions and the sex and age of its occu-pant, estimate the demographic distribution.Five authors examined various aspects ofmaterial culture and provide interestingperspectives. Baugher-Perlin presents threeaspects for analysis of glass bottles: technology,function, and trade networks. She provides agood general introduction to glass manufactur-ing, and then classifies bottles within ninegroupings of considerable range in importance,lumping all food and household products, yetseparating ink bottles. These arbitrary groupswere called "types." Baugher-Perlin begs thequestion of how one can determine the functionof bottles and presents trite, not empirically de-fined classes of bottles. For trade networks shecompares her work at the Prall Site withSchuyler's Sandy Ground nearby. With a smallsample size (n= 59), she explains differences asa result of village orientation to differentmarkets. Worthy presents a new classificationfor late-19th-century ceramic wares and decora-tive styles and discusses ceramic time lag. Shecompares the Edgewood site in Atlanta with theSilcott sites in Washington state and with mail-order catalog data for vessel form. This workshould be helpful to ceramic researchers for thisperiod.Dyson presents the ceramic data from sevensites in Middletown, Connecticut. The ceramicdata are tabulated by decoration and ware andthen discussed as these relate to the houses' oc-cupants. We are left with little understanding ofwhy any of these numbers are significant orwhat these really tell us of the social structure orchanging values of these people. Perhaps a bet-ter organization of these data and a summary offindings would have made this clearer. How-ever, the reader should be able to glean manyuseful bits of information for comparison.Davidson's chapter on foodways, as revealedfrom a dump investigation, is interesting, and

attempts to show that the dump resultedprimarily from winter activities, especially theholiday season, during 1910-11. She makesseveral good points regarding the distinct natureof zooarcheology of historical sites in whichthere was access to butcher shops. Unfortunate-ly, she does not also use meat weights to com-pare the importance of different species--thecomparisons are based simply on element fre-quency.Hill examined the factors (like manufac-turing, transportation, marketing, use, and re-use) affecting the life span of bottles within oursystem and quantified these by studying the dif-ferences between their mean manufacturingdates and the independently derived depositiondates. By addressing differential time lag, wecan better understand the behaviors and condi-tions affecting data and can interpret sites bet-ter. She biased this relationship, however, bytruncating dates that extended beyond theposited deposition date (p. 293), thus skewingthe derived information. Anyone using herfigures must be aware of several problems in ad-dition to this improper manipulation of statis-tics. Only median dates are presented, notmanufacturing ranges, so we cannot evaluatethe full significance of any median dates.Worse, she incorrectly abstracted the data fromthe published report on Silcott. With Hill'scategories and specimen assignments, the totalshould be as follows: Fresh Beverages, 98 (not46); Beer, 97 (not 32); Whiskey, 16 (not 9);Food, 56 (not 24); Medicine, 45 (not 36);Personal-Utilitarian, 24 (not 16). The actualtally is higher, for Hill did not include severalitems. Thus, her discussion of Silcott should beignored by the reader.Thompson and Rathje present a modern gar-bage project in Milwaukee. While this chapterwill have considerable value should we excavate1970s Milwaukee, its utility for the archeologistis limited to the usual constraints of analogy.Furthermore, because of the increased con-sumption and the perishable content of theirsample, I fail to see how a valid analogy can bemade between their data and earlier urbansites. This work reveals much about our presentconsumption and discard rate since the analysiswas conducted within socioeconomic categories.Their finding that low-income households pur-chase proportionately higher amounts of pre-pared foods and many small-size containers (in-stead of larger, more economical ones) has im-port for economists and for nutritionists.Dickens has assembled several informative



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950 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [85, 1983]and useful studies encompassing a variety ofsubjects which will assist historical archeologistsin urban and nonurban contexts. The bookshould be regarded as the first attempt atuniting a very broad and complex subject. Asusual, Academic Press has priced this book outof the student textbook market.

Village Ethnoarchaeology: Rural Iran in Ar-chaeological Perspective. Carol Kramer. NewYork: Academic Press, 1982. xx + 302 pp.$34.50 (cloth).Claudia ChangSweet Briar College

The task of conducting ethnoarcheologicalresearch on peasant communities is an oldresearch concern with a new name. Prehis-torians working in Europe and the Near Easthave been aware of the historical continuity be-tween the material culture of prehistoric farm-ing villages and the material culture of modernpeasant communities. What Carol Kramer intro-duces to the new discipline of ethnoarcheologyis the detailed and well-documented case studyof a Kurdish village in Iran and how materialcorrelates of the villagers' wealth and statuspositions may be discoverable in residential ar-chitecture, settlement plans, mortuary prac-tices, and subsistence practices. Kramer goesbeyond the archeological notion of ranking andstatus in farming villages to discuss populationsize and settlement pattern, land use and pro-ductive systems, and regional patterns of settle-ment and resource utilization. To date, this isthe most ambitious piece of ethnoarcheologicalreportage on contemporary peasant communi-ties.Kramer, not content with aspects of NearEastern archeology that may need explanatorymodels from contemporary communities, seeksto address a number of the most perplexing anddifficult assumptions that face any archeologistwho studies farming villages. For example, con-sider her premise that residential house plans,room function, and attributes are indicative ofwealth and status positions in Aliabad. To testsuch a hypothesis, Kramer presents a contem-porary estimation of each villager's wealththrough measures of livestock, landholdings,and other material goods. However, wealth andstatus positions in any peasant economy are sub-ject to the ebb and flow of resources among con-tracting or expanding households and domestic

cycles. As an astute ethnographer and archeol-ogist, Kramer illustrates how houses are re-modeled, renovated, and altered to comply withlife's chances and household composition. Un-fortunately, the author does not spend enoughdetail on just how difficult it is to adjust any setof material correlates with actual ethnographicfact. Instead, the reader is led to believe thatethnographic detail has a concrete meaning initself; it is reality and therefore archeologists re-main at the mercy of ethnoarcheological dis-coveries.

Chapters 2, 3, and 4 concentrate on villageorganization, variation in village households,spatial organization, and residential architec-ture. In my mind, the crux of this volume lies inthese three well-presented and carefully orga-nized chapters. For archeologists working onsites with residential architecture, these data farsurpass previous descriptions of architecture infarming villages. Many prehistorians will findthese chapters provide nice comparativematerial, excellent graphics, and good descrip-tions of rural architecture. Some may be a bitdisappointed that Kramer did not give exactmeasurements on important architecturaldetails such as wall thicknesses, wall abutments,and wall joinings. The ethnographic content ofthe section on household architecture (pp.91-116) provides a superb discussion of house-hold form, building materials for mud-brickhouses, construction sequences of a house andits compound, and structural and functional at-tributes of rooms. This section reintroduces thearcheologist to many unanswered questions con-cerning village architecture, such as (1) howare houses built, (2) where are buildingmaterials found, (3) what building phases arerepresented in the remodeling and renovationof a house, and (4) what spatial constraints andcognitive plans are used in determining spatiallayout of kitchens, store rooms, stables, court-yards, and sleeping areas. In many respects, theaverage reader may wish that Kramer had ex-panded this section of her monograph and hadabandoned the more theoretical and less satisfy-ing themes.To return to my own misgivings about the lesssatisfying themes of this monograph, the centralissue of determining wealth and status differen-tiation among villagers is an unfortunate preoc-cupation of this volume. Certainly all archeol-ogists who envision their discipline as possessinga cultural evolutionary framework dream of theperfect index fossil to measure wealth and statusamong prehistoric peoples. Status, prestige, and


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Review - Archaeology of Urban America-The Search for Pattern and Process by Roy Dickens