New Museum’s Definition and Strategies

Many archaeological sites are under cultivated or otherwise utilised land. Under the cultivated soil, archaeological features are gradually truncated and eroded. The negative features that remain are exposed or discovered using remote sensing or mechanical topsoil stripping. It is easy to forget how recent these developments are. In Norway, it was only in the early 1990’s, after the success of projects such as Forsandsmoen (Løken et al., 1996) and Åker (Pilø, 1992, 2002), that mechanical topsoil stripping became common in field archaeology. Now it is the standard method for excavation in cultivated areas. The consequence of this method is that soil is mechanically stripped until a strong contrast is seen, usually into the B horizon. Archaeological features are defined as contrasting sediments within the B horizon, preserved as negative features only. This is how archaeology becomes defined, and thus how it is expected to appear in cultivated areas. Expectation becomes reality.

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Typically, the negative features exposed or identified are ditches and postholes, with cooking pits also being common. Less frequently hearths and graves are discovered. Truncated postholes, pits and ditches often form the sole remnants of settlement and houses, and they commonly consist of secondary backfills. That is, the sediments within the cut are often a heterogeneous mix of locally derived material from the last phase of occupation disturbed by that feature, and earlier activities. The sediments do not directly represent a sole activity or a deliberate assemblage. They can also be formed after abandonment by sinkage and compression filling the top of the feature with chronologically later material, although such distinctions can be hard to make. These compare to primary contexts, whose composition represents a deliberate act, and the spatial distribution of enhancements in the sediment reflects the activity or process that purposively created them. For example, the detritus of micro-flakes produced around someone striking a flint core with a hammer stone could potentially be considered a primary context.

The definition and use of the terms primary and secondary originate in Martin Carver’s ‘Digging for Data’, who had his starting point in Behavioural Archaeology by Schiffer (1976). It is worth quoting the relevant passage in full:

‘Assuming the laws governing behaviours are acceptable, contexts can be designated “primary”

(produced directly by the occupants) or “secondary” (redeposited and to some extent distorted or contaminated).’ (Carver, 1995: 105)

Schiffer also included the term disturbed primary, but even so, there is clearly an obvious gap between the ideal of primary and secondary contexts and reality. Even within this definition, there are immediate problems governing the laws of behaviour, as they are left undefined for another theory to fill in. Another way of seeing the distinction between secondary and primary is by in situ formation versus transportation. Due to this research focus being upon soils and sediments, the analogy to soil and sediment formation feels appropriate. Whereas a soil is weathered in situ to form a body of mineral and organic constituents that differ from its parent materials (Birkeland, 1999: 2, after Joffe, 1949), a sediment is a mineral/organic material that has undergone weathering, transport and re-deposition by one or many geographic agencies (French, 2003). This, of course, means a sediment can become a soil and a soil can become a sediment, but it is not to suggest that primary contexts are soils and secondary contexts are sediments by the definitions given here. If humans are agents of transport, which surely they are, then the definitions of primary and secondary relate to in situ versus transport and re-deposition. However, just as a soil can become a sediment and vice versa, a primary context can become a secondary, and vice versa. As Harris (1989) notes, context formation can invert stratigraphy, and the resultant context can be a mingling of many combined primary and

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secondary contexts. New occupation phases utilise, expand and alter previous layers and contexts and definitions do not always clearly function in reality.

The definition used here is not too dissimilar to that of Andrén (1985), suggesting that there are both deliberate and unintentional acts of deposition, and that all can have meaning. Some are manifest, with intent to display, convey or accumulate, others are not. Those that are unintentional, he terms latent, and these include the slow but steady accumulation of material by occupation. Whilst a context can be both primary and secondary, and often is from a geochemical perspective, it is the preservation of spatial patterning from intentional and unintentional acts that defines whether they can be considered primary or not. By that, it is suggested that, if the context spatially (and thus chemically) resembles in situ actions from the activities we define and seek, then the label of primary can be used. These can be latent, or manifest in their original creation. It can seem as if we are in a linguistic hole, attempting a binary classification of irreversibly intertwined things, and therefore an example may serve to clarify.

If we return to postholes and ditches, which as previously stated are the main source of archaeological information in cultivated areas, then the deposits are frequently a mix of gradual infilling and deliberate acts of dumping. The act of dumping material may be primary, but the material deposited is usually a mix of occupational debris that no longer conveys any spatial patterning that can be related to the activities it represents. Only the act of rubbish disposal can be seen as deliberate. Andrén (1985: 10 and 248) rightly asserts that every act of deposition are sources of information to the archaeologist. Thus secondary deposits, whilst harder to decipher, have value and meaning that can be extracted.

3.7 Conclusions of chapter

This research will demonstrate that by integrating prospection and excavation approaches to archaeological geochemistry, and by developing a more intuitive sampling approach using coring and pXRF, a more complete and intricate interpretation of archaeological sites can be achieved with minimal intrusion. On the prospection side, this can then be used, for example, to design more realistic excavation strategies and costs, or to research delicate or protected sites. It can also capture details that excavation cannot reach due to limited time, resources or access. From the excavation perspective, the site can be seen for what it is; a complex, three dimensional mix of primary and secondary deposits that have spatial and temporal aspects. Working with and within excavation and prospection approaches, archaeological geochemistry using pXRF can potentially forward our understanding of the relationship between soils, human activities and

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what we can measure, by providing a quicker, cheaper, and more flexible strategy that can adapt to research questions and site conditions.

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4. Methods