Archaeological Paradigms, Provincialism, and Semantics: A Reply to Beck\'s Comments

Journal of Archaeological Science (1996) 23, 455–458

Archaeological Paradigms, Provincialism, and Semantics: A Reply to Beck’s Comments Kenneth B. Tankersley Department of Anthropology, State University of New York, Brockport, NY 14420, U.S.A. (Received 7 March 1995, accepted 14 April 1995) Beck’s comments are semantic arguments based on a provincial view of material culture and a misunderstanding of archaeological paradigms. ? 1996 Academic Press Limited Keywords: MASTIC, AMBER, UPPER PALAEOLITHIC, CLOVIS, FOSSIL RESIN, TAR, PITCH, HAFTING, HOYT SITE.

has its own lexicon. The term mastic is used by anthropological archaeologists and Palaeoindian specialists as a synonym for glues and cements. As an example, Haynes (1982: 390) suggests that Clovis peoples may have used a mastic in conjunction with wrapping and sinew to complete the scarf joint of bevel-base cylindrical bone or ivory points. Such usage is sanctioned by the most reputable English dictionaries. For example, The Oxford English Dictionary states that mastic may be used to describe various pasty materials used as cement (Simpson & Weiner, 1989: 451). Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged also asserts that mastic is any of various pasty compounds used as cements (Grove, 1981: 1390). Therefore, Beck’s statement that the ‘‘practice is quite widespread among English speaking anthropologists’’ should not be surprising. Beck’s second allegation is based on the usage of the terms of amber, fossil, resin, and pitch. As previously stated (Tankersley, 1994: 118), I use the word amber in a broad meaning to refer to fossil resins. In this vein, I am using the word amber to refer to a relatively stable, water-insoluble tree resin that has lost certain volatile hydrocarbons and has been buried in the ground long enough to reach this state. This process may take a year, a thousand years, or more than a million years (Frondel, 1968: 371). Like other archaeologists, anthropologists, botanists, and geologists, I do not restrict the word amber to an individual species of plant, a particular geographic area, or a specific geological period of time. By fossil, I mean the remains or traces of prehistoric life preserved in the earth. Prehistoric means before recorded history; thus, it is a time-transgressive term. Beck’s presumption that fossil ‘‘implies an age of the order of a million years’’ is palaeontologically and archaeologically erroneous. As an analogue, to not

Introduction

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n the essay ‘‘Comments on a Supposed Clovis ‘‘Mastic’’ ’’ (earlier in this issue) C. W. Beck befuddles a suite of data, methods, and conclusions. His suppositions are provincially biased and based entirely on semantics. While Beck’s comments are understandable from the perspective of a chemist or engineer, they are unreasonable from an archaeological or anthropological point of view. The focus of his essay is paradigmatically misconstrued and illustrates a significant problem of carrying on a multidisciplinary analysis of material culture as opposed to conducting interdisciplinary archaeological research.

Semantics As Mark Twain once stated ‘‘get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please’’. Beck’s initial assertion is that the term mastic ‘‘should not be used as a general synonym of adhesive’’. In chemistry, mastic refers to a resin (or gum) that exudes from a specific group of trees such as Pistacia lentiscus, Bursera gummifera, Schinus molle, or Sideroxylon mastichodendron. It also pertains to a Mediterranean alcoholic liquor made from grain spirits or grape juice and mixed with an extract of gum mastic. In engineering, mastic is used to describe a cement used by builders to make joints and waterproofing. However, neither of these usages are inferred nor implied in the article ‘‘Clovis Mastic and its Hafting Implications’’ (Tankersley, 1994). Indeed, the article in question is neither a paper about chemistry nor engineering; rather, it is an archaeological essay. By archaeology, I mean the subdiscipline of anthropology currently taught and practiced at major universities and museums around the globe (Thomas, 1989). Anthropology, like other disciplines, 455 0305-4403/96/030455+04 $18.00/0

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consider the remains of a mammoth (Mammuthus sp.) from Upper Palaeolithic sites in Eurasia or Mastodont (Mammut sp.) bones from Clovis sites in North America fossils because they are not on ‘‘the order of a million years old’’ is preposterous. Beck is correct that the term pitch is restricted in its usage by chemists and material scientists to describe a substance obtained in the distillation of organic substances. In North America, however, archaeologists use the term as a synonym for any tree resin that can be used to produce an adhesive (e.g. Frison, 1991: 107). Such usage by Palaeoindian specialists is acceptable. For example, in Frison’s (1989) experimental use of Clovis weaponry and tools on African elephants, he bound a stone projectile point to the foreshaft ‘‘with sinew and pitch’’. Frison (1989: 770) further comments that ‘‘several species of trees produce pitch such as ponderosa and limber-pine’’.

Provincialism As Drummond Rennie noted ‘‘there seems to be . . . no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print’’ (after Thomas, 1989: 18). Beck’s comments on ‘‘material properties’’ are provincially circular and based on unsupportable assumptions. He correctly argues that optical microscopy is an insufficient test ‘‘to show that the material is a resin, a pitch, or amber’’. However, optical microscopy was not used to identify these materials on the haft element of a Clovis point from the Hoyt site; rather, it was used to describe the texture of the substance. The combination of ‘‘texture and location of the material on the biface suggest that it is a mastic’’ (i.e. an adhesive) (Tankersley, 1994: 117). Likewise, X-ray diffractometry was not used to identify the material as a resin, pitch, or amber. It was used ‘‘to test for the presence of inorganic crystalline compounds’’ (Tankersley, 1994: 117). The results demonstrated ‘‘that crystalline material is absent from the surface of the artefact’’. While X-ray diffraction has been used to detect crystalline components in Baltic amber (Frondel, 1968), that was neither my intent nor was it ever stated as such. Back-scatter scanning electron microscopy was used to examine microtopographic features of the artefactual compound. Electron micrographs of resinous material on the Clovis point from the Hoyt site are similar to heated amber (i.e. fossil resin) in the presence and size of micropores. Given that micropores of any kind are absent in heated bitumen (also known as natural asphalt, asphaltum, asphaltite, gilsonite, and grahamite), this material was eliminated as a possible match. In his discussion of solubility and reaction to heat, Beck implies that the physical data for amber pre-

sented in Tankersley (1994: 119) are inaccurate. Unfortunately, his statements are provincially dependent upon ‘‘Baltic amber’’ as a point of reference. For Beck, the Amber Research Laboratory, gem-dealers and jewellers (Rice, 1993: 277) true amber (i.e. Baltic amber) is a fossil resin that contains ‘‘a cross-linked polymer of communic acid and communol’’. However, amber is a more generic term used to refer to any fossil tree resin. Amber is not a single organic compound. More specifically, it is a complex mixture of several compounds in varying proportions, most significantly isoprene units linked together forming more complex terpenoid compounds (Rice, 1993: 142). Furthermore, some ambers may contain inorganic inclusions such as carbonates or sulphides. The exact chemical composition of amber varies from one plant species to another, from one geologic stratum to another, and even from one sample to the next. Amber is created by the loss of volatiles through time-related processes such as oxidation and polymerization (Frondel, 1968: 371). If the chemical composition of amber is variable, then it is logical to assume that its physical properties (e.g. reaction to heat and solubility) also vary. Nevertheless, it is illogical to assume that an 11,000 year old amber from one species of plant has the same chemical and physical properties as a 60,000 year old amber from another plant species. Furthermore, it is untenable that a c. 60,000 year old amber from the Baltic has the exact same chemical and physical properties as a c. 50,000,000 year old North American amber from Washington, a c. 125,000,000 year old amber from the Black Hills of South Dakota, or a c. 300,000,000 year old amber from Montana. Beck’s comments are based wholly on Baltic amber, ‘‘the only kind whose chemical composition is well established’’. Amber from the High Plains of North America becomes soft (i.e. it melts) at temperature less than 250)C (author’s experimental data). When slowly heated, it gives off a coniferous smell and has an epoxide-like consistency. If obsidian, chert, or chalcedony are slowly heated to a comparable temperature, hot fossil resin can be applied and will adhere to amorphous stone surfaces. An admixture of particulate carbon (i.e. wood charcoal) reduces crazing upon cooling. This phenomenon should not be surprising when we consider that many contemporary tree resins (e.g. spruce, pine, birch) can be heated and used as an adhesive in the hafting of flaked-stone tools. Essentially, amber is a tree resin that has lost some of its volatiles. With regard to the preservation of amber on archaeological sites in eastern North America, Beck is correct that it should be perfectly preserved in bogs. Wetlands are indeed one of the few environmental settings where plant remains are preserved. Otherwise, he is unconditionally wrong. There are only two other circumstances where the uncarbonized remains of plants are likely to be preserved in eastern North America, dry caves or rockshelters and in the presence

Abundance

Archaeological Paradigms, Provincialism and Semantics 457 4.00e+07 3.00e+07 2.00e+07 1.00e+07 0.00e+00 6

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Abundance

Figure 1. A gas chromatogram of amber.

2.80e+07 2.40e+07 2.00e+07 1.60e+07 1.20e+07 8.00e+06 4.00e+06 0.00e+00

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Figure 2. A gas chromatogram of heated amber.

of certain mineral salts (Watson, 1974; Tankersley et al., 1994). Both of these environmental settings are extremely rare in this region of the world. Beck concludes that ‘‘compositional analysis using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry’’ (GC/MS) has been used successfully in the recognition of organic residues. Indeed, GC/MC is ideally suited to identify fingerprints in the lower molecular weight organic composition of ancient plant resins such as amber. However, if we assume that the resin was heated to produce an adhesive, then many of these distinctive compounds may be lost. To illustrate this point, I used GC/MS to analyse a specimen of amber (i.e. fossil resin) from north–central Colorado. A 1 mg sample of amber was partially dissolved in approximately 20 ml of toluene. This solution (1 ml) was then injected into a 5890 Series GC connected to a 5970A (HP) Series MS with a 15 ml by 0·25 ìm J & W Scientific column. The temperature programme ran between 60)C and 375)C, heating the sample at a rate of 15)C min "1. The resulting gas chromatogram (Figure 1) illustrates a suite of complex lower molecular weight organic compounds including terpenes. For the sake of this discussion, the individual compounds represented in the gas chromatogram are irrelevant. Subsequently, a 10 mg sample of amber was placed in an open petri dish and carefully heated until the sample became ‘‘sticky’’, a consistency similar to recent coniferous tree resins. Upon cooling, the amber tightly adhered to the smooth glass surface. A stainless-steel dental pick was used to scrape away a 1 mg sample. This specimen was prepared and processed by the same procedure used to analyse the raw amber material. The resultant gas chromatogram is illustrated in Figure 2. Comparing Figures 1 and 2 it can be seen that unfortunately, characteristic lower

molecular weight hydrocarbons found in fossil resins may be lost when they are subjected to heat.

Archaeological Paradigms In the words of Henri Poincare, ‘‘Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science’’ (after Thomas, 1989: 537). The focus of Beck’s comments reflects a paradigmatic dichotomy between a multidisciplinary analysis of material culture and interdisciplinary archaeological research. Beck’s multidisciplinary approach to archaeological research has been to positively identify Baltic amber from archaeological contexts and unequivocally distinguish it from non-Baltic European resins (cf. Beck et al., 1971). This research is objectoriented and the underlying paradigm is from chemistry not archaeology. In interdisciplinary archaeology, our ultimate objective is the study, interpretation, and understanding of humankind. We accomplish this task through cross-cultural studies. Therefore, it is neither important nor germane whether or not fossil resin from the Lindenmeier site in Colorado or Upper Palaeolithic sites in the Ukraine meet a gem-dealer’s or jeweller’s definition of true amber. The archaeological significance is that amber (i.e. fossil resin) is a shared cultural trait between North American Palaeoindian and Old World, Upper Palaeolithic cultures. As an analogue, let us consider another shared trait between the Clovis culture and Upper Palaeolithic sites in eastern Siberia, central Asia, and eastern Europe (Haynes, 1987). Red ochre is an archaeological term that refers to a red iron-based pigment (Roper, 1991). Red ochre may be ferric oxide (Fe2O3) in the form of earthy hematite or it may be ground specular hematite.

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Red ochre also refers to heat altered goethite or limonite (iron hydroxide, HFeO2). The exact chemical composition or mineralogical origin of red ochre is an esoteric point in cross-cultural archaeological research. It is more important to investigations of raw materials available in particular regions of the world. Please note that I am not arguing that provenience studies are not important aspects of interdisciplinary archaeological research. Provenience is a crucial variable in palaeoeconomic studies of the processes of production, consumption, distribution, and exchange of goods that sustained or reproduced human livelihood (e.g. Tankersley & Isaac, 1990). However, ‘‘Clovis Mastic and its Hafting Implications’’ is not an essay on palaeoeconomics. Recently, Graves (1994) expressed concern that some archaeologists have retreated from archaeological theory and moved into the domain of technical expertise and instrumentation. An unfortunate outcome of this endeavour is a failure to understand each other (Graves, 1994: 6). Beck’s ‘‘Comments on a Supposed Clovis ‘Mastic’’’ clearly represent this point. Essentially, Beck’s view of archaeology is paradigmatically seen through amber-coloured glasses.

Acknowledgements This investigation was accomplished in the laboratories of the Departments of Anthropology and Chemistry, State University of New York at Brockport. Research was supported by a SUNY Scholarly Incentive Grant. The help and cooperation of Kendra Schlecht, Kenneth Schlecht, Jenny Tankersley, and William Todd is gratefully appreciated.

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