7/27/2019 Arch Doc
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Tasked with explaining the formation of this archaeological
site, we begin as follows:
following the law of superposition, it makes sense to assume
that since the first stratum
that between the green and brown linescontains only D artifacts,
D is the oldest culture
of the four. That this could not be otherwise will become more
convincing as this analysisproceeds. It seems that as time passed
and as D no longer inhabited this space, the ground
was raised to the green line; owing to the arbitrary and rugged
contour of this line, itappears likely that this elevation took
place naturally.It seems, then, that C came to inhabit this space
after the rise in elevation but, wanting to
build the temple, decided to flatten the land by filling it in;
this created the stratum
between the red and green lines. Artifacts from both C and D
appear in this stratum, andso it seems likely that C turned to the
surrounding land for fill and, in the process,
artifacts from D, while still remaining in their archaeological
context, came to be used as
part of the fill. The seemingly unintentional incorporation of
artifacts from D into both
the fill and the construction of the temple certainly
constitutes cultural disturbance. To besure, since artifacts from
both C and D appear in the ground fill, as well as in
theconstruction of the temple, it seems to be the case that
since D certainly came before
C, it is C that was responsible for both the ground elevation
and the construction of thetemple. Because no artifacts from B
appear in the ground fill or in the construction of the
temple, it seems reasonable to assume that B could not have been
responsible for either.
That B was a more recent culture than C will become more
certain.
While it is difficult to say whether C and B were
cotemporaneous, it seemsunproblematic to assume that B not only
inhabited the same space, but that it also made
use of the same living floor; this is because there is an
artifact from B that is resting on
the red line. Moreover, it seems as if B, although a different
culture than C, made use ofthe temple; it seems as if B and C each
created a burial site underneath the floor of the
temple (this is an example of cultural deposition). Also, the
fact that there are only
artifacts from B inside the room of the temple, coupled with the
observation that Cs
burial site is located deeper in the floor of the temple than
that of Bs, further contributesto our understanding that B was the
more recent culture.
It then seems as if the area, once again, came to have no
inhabitants and overtime came to
be covered by natural processes, with the ground elevated to the
pink line. By noting thatmidden #2 only contains artifacts from A
and that its top is flush with the pink line, we
can reasonably conclude that this pink line seems to have served
as the living floor for A.
It follows, then, that since the houses base rests on this
floor, it was A that built thehouse. Furthermore, it seems as if A,
through a process of reuse, used as the floor of the
house the top of the temple built by C; of course, the idea of
reuse only holds if we come
to conclude that the top of the temple was exposed when A came
across it. In addition,
the deep and narrow isolated stratum, the one in the west that
stretches from thepink line down to the green one, seems to have
been dug by A; this is because it seems to
have been dug from As living floor and, invoking the idea of
reverse stratigraphy, an
artifact from A is found at the same vertical depth as the
living floor of B and C.
Furthermore, there is a burial site underneath the house that
contains one artifact from Aand one from C; coupled with what has
been said so far, this supports the idea that it was
A that built the house. Lastly, if we look at the stratum
between blue and pink, which we
could call, if you will, As living space, we see artifacts from
all four cultures; it seems asif A reclaimed these artifactsthat
is, brought them out of their archaeological context
