1 - Ethnoarchaeology: Some Assumptions and Practices

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of ethnoarcheology, which has also been referred to as archeological ethnography, archeoethnography, action archeology, and living archeology. Ethnoarcheology refers to problem-oriented ethnographic research, most often conducted by anthropologically trained archeologists. The chapter describes the scope of ethnoarcheological research, which investigates contemporary behavior and material culture from an archeological perspective, based on a study. It discusses empirical data from a contemporary socio-cultural system as they might be useful in interpreting some aspects of the archeological record. The chapter highlights selected features of spatial organization, material variability, and economic rank within one settlement from the perspective of an archeologist investigating a single site. Shifting the scale of observation and analysis from the local to the regional level, a study described in the chapter also reviews relationships between land use, settlement area, and population—variables that have entered into recent considerations of regional manifestations of organizational variation and change. Much of the material on which the study is based was collected in Iran; supplementary data are drawn from the published ethnographic record for Iran and other countries in Southwest Asia, one of the first world areas to experience the major demographic and organizational transformations that culminated in complex state societies.