Thin Archaeology

Saw a great talk yesterday. Ken Ames repeated his NWAC keynote address for a PSU audience. The talk was worth it both times, although he did have more of a rush going for the first one, which is hard to recreate.

The thing that struck me was the idea of a “thin” understanding of the past. That is, our knowledge is often dependent on a few sites or a small amount of data. It appears robust and detailed, but one new discovery can change everything.



It reminded me of something I had read years ago. It was a multi-site testing project on the Plateau. Overall it was pretty well done; it was only testing after all. The work is widely cited and used to discuss foragers and collectors. But, what is interesting was that when I poured though all the data, catalogs, tables, and appendices, I realized that the biggest difference discriminating between the earlier foragers and later collector systems were three inferred storage features.

It’s not that the work is bad at all; the point here is not to criticize the work. Rather, sometimes we just don’t realize how little data is driving our understanding until we actually dive in and study it. It’s actually pretty scary.

But it’s also pretty cool. It means there is still lots to learn, support, test, etc.