4.2: How The Archaeological Record Forms


In the above sections, it is shown that there is an archaeological record, that this may consist of built structures or their traces, discarded garbage and abandoned artefacts, stratification, layers and features created by man or naturally on the site, traces of human impact on the environment, plant and animal remains, mortuary practices, and many other features relating to human use of a site. Archaeology is the attempt to understand the patterning of these archaeological contexts making up that record and to use them as a basis for inference aiming to reconstruct past human behaviour. However, before archaeologists can reach meaningful conclusions about human behaviour from the archaeological context, they must know how it was created (Waters, 1992, 11). The identification of site formation processes must precede behavioural inference based on observation of the results of their effects

There are very few sites where the remains found are in the positions where they were placed or left in the past (Pompeii, tombs, some shipwrecks, an abandoned fighting position on a WW1 battlefield). After a site goes out of use and either ceases to have human activity present, or that activity changes, it becomes subject to various processes that determine the potential survival of the evidence present. The abandonment of activities on a site will leave behind some material evidence of what happened there, some of which will disappear relatively quickly, other traces are more persistent. The site and the record of those activities will be affected by later human activity, the processes of weathering, and the interaction of plants and animals. The evidence may remain on or close to the surface, or the site may become buried as the result of soil processes. Once a site has attained some form of stability, it may yet be modified by later changes in land use (ploughing) or environment (dessication of waterlogged sites).

The record that we encounter today is therefore the result of a whole range of dynamic processes that have acted on the remains left on a site by human activity (Schiffer, 1987, 7). Understanding these processes is vital to the interpretation of these deposits and patterns in terms of the processes - cultural and natural - that formed them. The theory of the transformations that archaeological deposits undergo underwent rapid development from the 1960s to 1980s, especially due to the influential work of Michael B. Schiffer on formation processes (Schiffer 1972, 1987). Schiffer identified two groups of processes that form the archaeological record and archaeological sites (quoted here after Raven Todd DaSilva).
'Cultural Transformation Processes (C-Transforms): which involve all human activity, intentional or otherwise. Examples would include farming, tool making, building, etc. Human interaction follows the cycle of acquisition, manufacturing, use, and disposal. An object can enter the archaeological record at any point during this cycle, providing even more information to modern researchers. Burial, both of our dead, and of material goods count towards a C-Transform.
Natural Transformation Processes (N-Transforms): natural events ranging from accumulation of sand and soil, land movement by rain and water, plant and animal interference [...] Unlike C-Transforms, N-Transforms are continuously ongoing, and depend heavily on climate and location. This also plays a role in regards to what is preserved in the archaeological record. Inorganic materials have a better chance of surviving regardless of what transformation process occurs, whereas organic substances degrade much faster and are more sensitive to N-Transforms'.
These N-transforms affecting the culturally-determined traces left by past human activity on the site therefore include both natural and anthropogenic forces operating in different depositional environments, Together they contribute to postdepositional changes in (disturbances of) the patterning of archaeological evidence left on a site. Such site formation processes therefore affect the spatial integrity of both artefact assemblages and contexts.

It is therefore clear that to be able to observe and understand the results of these changes to interpret the archaeological record in any field project requires a rather large prior knowledge deriving from study of these processes. The archaeologist needs to have the knowledge and experience to cope with the correct interpretation of the effects of a large number of processes and the nearly infinite combination of them that may have contributed to the formation processes of specific deposits of interest.


Archaeological Site Formation – "When turf rooves collapse.....Colleen Morgan
Much of what we know of the formation processes (cultural and natural) of archaeological sites comes from observation ('watching buildings fall down') and experimental archaeology (building things and watching how they fall apart), and related fields ethnoarchaeology, geoarchaeology, and vertebrate taphonomy. As a result, many advances have been made in understanding the environmental formation processes (N-transforms). We now know enough about the formation processes involved to allow responsible archaeological research into the meaning of spatial and stratigraphic patterns at any given site. Recent developments are discussed by Shahack-Gross (2017).

References:
Hirst, K. Kris  'Site Formation Processes- How Did That Archaeological Site Get There? – Why is an Archaeological Site Like a Palimpsest?' Thought.co

Nash, D.T and Petraglia, M.D (eds.). 1987 Natural Formation Processes and the Archaeological Record, British Archaeological Reports, International Series 352: Oxford.

Schiffer, M.B. 1972, 'Archaeological context and systemic context'. American Antiquity 37(2): 156-165

Schiffer, M.B. 1983, 'Toward the Identification of Formation Processes', American Antiquity, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Oct., 1983), pp. 675-706

Schiffer, M.B. 1996, 'Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record', University of Utah Press: Salt Lake City

Waters, M. R., 1992. Principles of Geoarchaeology: A North American Perspective. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Shahack-Gross, R. 2017, 'Archaeological formation theory and geoarchaeology: State-of-the-art in 2016',  Journal of Archaeological Science 79:36-43


Tamara Kroftova comments:
"Anybody who sets out to retrieve archaeological material from the archaeological record and do it responsibly has to interpret that record. Obviously a key step in that must be to have first of all as wide a knowledge as possible of the mechanisms by which it is formed and altered, and secondly a grasp of the methods and theory of the interpretation of the effects of those changes". 



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