Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T04:49:56.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Smudge Pits and Hide Smoking: The Use of Analogy in Archaeological Reasoning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Lewis R. Binford
Lewis R. Binford*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara, California
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is argued that as a scientist one does not justifiably employ analogies to ethnographic observations for the "interpretation" of archaeological data. Instead, analogies should be documented and used as the basis for offering a postulate as to the relationship between archaeological forms and their behavioral context in the past. Such a postulate should then serve as the foundation of a series of deductively drawn hypotheses which, on testing, can refute or tend to confirm the postulate offered. Analogy should serve to provoke new questions about order in the archaeological record and should serve to prompt more searching investigations rather than being viewed as a means for offering "interpretations" which then serve as the "data" for synthesis. This argument is made demonstratively through the presentation of formal data on a class of archaeological features, "smudge pits," and the documentation of their positive analogy with pits as facilities used in smoking hides.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , January 1967 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1967

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ascher, Robert 1961 Analogy in Archaeological Interpretation. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 17, pp. 317–25. Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Binford, Lewis R. 1964 The Sandy Tip Site; Carlyle Reservoir. Manuscript at University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Binford, Lewis R., Schoenwetter, James, and Fowler, M. L. 1964 Archaeological Investigations in the Carlyle Reservoir. Southern Illinois University Museum, Archaeological Salvage Report No. 17, pp. 1–117. Carbondale.Google Scholar
Bushnell, David I. Jr. 1909 The Choctaw of Bayou Lacomb, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 48. Washington.Google Scholar
Caldwell, Joseph R. 1955 Investigations at Rood's Landing, Stewart Co., Georgia. Early Georgia, vol. 2. No. 1, pp. 22–49. Calhoun.Google Scholar
Catlin, George 1880 North American Indians, Vol. 1, p. 52. Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London.Google Scholar
Cole, Fay-Cooper and Others 1951 Kincaid, A Prehistoric Illinois Metropolis. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Crane, H. R. and Griffin, J. B. 1963 University of Michigan Radiocarbon Dates VIII. Radiocarbon, Vol. 5, pp. 228–53. New Haven.Google Scholar
Cutler, Hugh C. 1963 Identification of Plant Remains. In Second Annual Report: American Bottoms Archaeology, edited by Melvin L. Fowler, pp. 16–18. Illinois Archaeological Survey, Urbana.Google Scholar
DeJarnette, David L. and Wimberly, Steve B. 1941 The Bessemer Site. Excavation of Three Mounds and Surrounding Village Areas near Bessemer, Alabama. Geological Survey of Alabama, Museum Paper 17. University of Alabama, University.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Alice C. and LaFlesche, Francis 1911 The Omaha Tribe. Twenty-seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 15–655. Washington.Google Scholar
Griffin, James B. and Yarnell, Richard A. 1963 A New Radiocarbon Date on Corn from the Davis Site, Cherokee County, Texas. American Antiquity, vol. 28. No. 3, pp. 396–7. Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Hall, Robert L. and Vogel, Joseph O. 1963 Illinois State Museum Projects. In Second Annual Report: American Bottoms Archaeology, edited by Melvin L. Fowler, pp. 24–31. Illinois Archaeological Survey, Urbana.Google Scholar
Hilger, Sister M. Inez 1951 Chippewa Child Life and its Cultural Background. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 146. Washington.Google Scholar
Hilger, Sister M. Inez 1952 Arapaho Child Life and Its Cultural Background. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 148. Washington.Google Scholar
Kelly, A. R. 1938 A Preliminary Report on Archaeological Explorations at Macon, Georgia. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 119, pp. 1–68. Washington.Google Scholar
Lewis, Thomas M. N. and Kneberg, Madeline 1946 Hiwassee Island, an Archaeological Account of Four Tennessee Indian Peoples. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.Google Scholar
Mason, Otis T. 1891 Aboriginal Skin Dressing; A Study Based on Material in the U.S. National Museum. Report of the National Museum, 1888–1889, pp. 553–89. Smithsonian Institution, Washington.Google Scholar
Morgan, Lewis H. 1901 League of the Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee or Iroquois, Vol. 2, p. 13. Dodd, Mead and Company, New York.Google Scholar
Morrell, L. Ross 1965 The Texas Site, Carlyle Reservoir. Southern Illinois University Museum, Archaeological Salvage Report No. 23. Carbondale.Google Scholar
Morse, Dan and Morse, Phyllis 1960 A Preliminary Report on 9-Go-507: The Williams Site, Gordon County, Georgia. The Florida Anthropologist, vol. 8. No. 4, pp. 81–91. Gainesville.Google Scholar
Myre, William Edward 1928 Two Prehistoric Villages in Middle Tennessee. Forty-first Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 485–626. Washington.Google Scholar
Neilson, W. A. (editor) 1956 Websters New International Dictionary of the English Language (Second Edition, Unabridged). G. C. Merriam Co., Springfield.Google Scholar
Newell, H. Perry and Krieger, Alex D. 1949 The George C. Davis Site, Cherokee County, Texas. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, No. 5. Menasha.Google Scholar
Quimby, George I. 1957 The Bayou Goula Site, Iberville Parish, Louisiana. Fieldiana: Anthropology, vol. 47. No. 2, pp. 91–170. Chicago Natural History Museum, Chicago.Google Scholar
Schoolcraft, H. R. 1856 Indian Tribes of the United States, Pt. IV, p. 61. J. B. Lippincott and Company, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Skinner, Alanson 1913 Notes on the Florida Seminole. American Anthropologist, n.s., Vol. 15, pp. 63–77. New York.Google Scholar
Skinner, Alanson 1921 Material Culture of the Menomini. Indian Notes and Monographs, Miscellaneous No. 20, edited by F. W. Hodge, p. 228. Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York.Google Scholar
Stebbing, L. Susan 1961 A Modern Introduction to Logic. Harper Torchbooks Edition, Harper and Brothers, New York.Google Scholar
Swanton, John R. 1911 Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 43. Washington.Google Scholar
Swanton, John R. 1946 The Indians of the Southeastern United States. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 137. Washington.Google Scholar
Thompson, Raymond H. 1956 The Subjective Element in Archaeological Inference. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 12. No. 3, pp. 327–32. Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Webb, William 1938 An Archaeological Survey of the Norris Basin in Eastern Tennessee. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 118. Washington.Google Scholar
Webb, William and DeJarnette, David 1942 An Archaeological Survey of Pickwick Basin in the Adjacent Portions of the States of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 129. Washington.Google Scholar
Wissler, Clark 1910 Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. V., Pt. 1. New York.Google Scholar
Yarnell, Richard Asa 1964 Aboriginal Relationships between Culture and Plant Life in the Upper Great Lakes Region. Anthropological Papers, Museum of Anthropology, No. 23. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar