THE SPATIAL DYNAMICS OF ACTIVITY AT ANANGULA, ALEUTIANS
Date of Completion
January 1982
Keywords
Anthropology, Archaeology
Degree
Ph.D.
Abstract
Archaeologists are faced with the problem of comprehending the archaeological distributions they analyze within a behavioral context. Archaeological sites are no fossilized villages but are, instead, discrete, static phenomena. These phenomena are, of course, the accumulated results of human activity and one of the goals of archaeology is to relate the static archaeological record to the dynamic behaviors which produced it. Thus we are faced, at any individual site, with a deposit of material accumulated over the duration of occupation of the site. To reconstruct the activities which resulted in the recovered deposit we must assess the possible ways in which material objects utilized in specific behaviors could have been incorporated into the archaeological record.^ The ninth millenium B.P. village of Anangula in the Aleutian Islands provides an excellent opportunity to approach this problem of reconstruction. The large set of provenienced data from this well published site is the focus of this work.^ In an attempt to explicate the behaviors associated with stone tool manufacture and utilization at the site, the Multiple Pathway Model is introduced. Here, various strategies of tool manufacture and use are discussed, including their predicted material/spatial consequences. Each of these possibilities represents a pathway by which items could have been translated from their cultural contexts into their archaeological contexts. Each pathway reflects different possible practices and strategies of tool manufacture and use including social and functional parameters of these behaviors. The expected archaeological result for each of the behavioral pathways is presented, and the statistical/spatial concomitants in the form of probable factor analytic results are provided. Factor analysis of the spatial distribution of tool categories at Anangula is performed and these results are compared with the predicted results of the multiple possible pathways. The behavioral scenario of the pathway whose predicted factor analytic result conforms best to the actual factor analysis of the Anangula data, first for tool manufacture and then for tool use, is selected as the most likely description of the actual behavior which resulted in the archaeological record at Anangula. ^
Recommended Citation
FEDER, KENNETH L, "THE SPATIAL DYNAMICS OF ACTIVITY AT ANANGULA, ALEUTIANS" (1982). Doctoral Dissertations. AAI8216406.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/dissertations/AAI8216406