3 Site Definition: Surface Distribution of Cultural Items

Extract

The initial problem in approaching an archaeological site as a structural entity is to define the boundaries of the sampling universe within which the investigator must work. In the case of Hatchery West, it was hoped that by following the procedures mentioned earlier (having the fields especially plowed, waiting until there had been sufficient rain to settle the newly plowed earth, laying out a grid over the entire plowed area, and collecting all items exposed on the surface and bagging them by grid square) the analysis of the resulting data would permit definition of the boundaries, as well as something of the internal structure of the site. Aside from the obvious advantages of defining the universe in which we would work, we hoped to investigate the nature of the relationship between the structure of the site as defined by the surface distribution of cultural items and the structure of the site as defined by the spatial configuration of sub-surface cultural features. This kind of investigation was prompted by an awareness that certain general principles of site selection as well as guide lines to selecting the locations on a site for excavation have been traditionally employed for many years. It seems fair to say that archaeologists have tended to select for excavation sites with ihe greatest yield of cultural items from surface collections and have tended to excavate areas on such sites selected in terms of two general criteria: 1) where there are above ground indications of cultural features, e.g., such things as mounds, house depressions, walls, etc.; and 2) where there is the greatest density of cultural items observed in the surface reconnaissance. I have previously addressed myself to the problem of obtaining an adequate and representative sample of both cultural items and cultural features (Binford 1964). The work reported here is an attempt to evaluate objectively the assertion that traditional methods of selecting locations for excavation could lead to inadequate and misrepresentative data about the site being investigated.