Glossary

Built environment A term used to refer to human-made

Environments, ranging from simple structures like huts to cities. functionalist archaeology This theoretical approach sought to examine how past cultures functioned as systemic entities.

Processualism The study of culture process through the

Analysis of archaeological materials. This school of thought seeks to examine cultural change as a series of evolving sociocultural processes.

Space syntax Formal spatial analysis approach that seeks to look at rules of spatial patterning and cognition as expressed in the built environment cross culturally.

The formal spatial analysis of archaeological remains at the levels of the household and site forms one of the key components of the archaeological endeavor. Spatial analysis on these scales can provide fundamental insights into past human behavior, as well as various other subjects, ranging from subsistence to ideology.

Spatial analyses of archaeological remains at the intra-site level are as old as the discipline itself, with the context and provenience of artifacts being recorded in excavations of archaeological sites since the beginnings of modern archaeology. The techniques employed in early excavations of archaeological sites were often crude by modern standards with regard to their recording of spatial data, and it was not until the late nineteenth century that methods of recording the provenience of artifacts were comparable to modern archaeological standards.

Despite these early spatial approaches, most scholars would concede that explicitly spatial approaches to archaeology developed in conjunction with the functionalist approach to archaeology. These analyses sought to explain the correlation between spatial patterning of artifacts and architecture in sites and the way that past societies functioned as systems. The importance of spatial analysis was underscored by Walter Taylor in his discussion conjunctive approach to archaeology, which emphasized the importance of all forms of material evidence from archaeological sites and the spatial relationships between these lines of evidence.

With the development of processualism, spatial analyses continued to be important as archaeologists sought to explain intercultural regularities through the analysis of the spatial patterning of architecture and artifacts. The work of Lewis Binford perhaps best exemplifies this approach, with his assertions that one of archaeology’s main goals should be to develop ‘laws of cultural dynamics’. This was applied to intra-site spatial analysis by comparing ethno-archaeological observations about the spatial patterning of artifacts with the archaeological past and attempting to discern regularities between past and present societies. In a related vein is the work of early ethnoarchaeologists who were working on similar problems regarding the spatial organization of present societies and their relevance to archaeological interpretation. Following the principles of processu-alism, these early ethnoarchaeologists sought to provide case studies of human spatial behavior to serve as aids to archaeological interpretation (see Ethnoarch-aeology; Processual Archaeology).

Kent Flannery and many of his students also employ overtly spatial approaches in their studies of Mesoamerican archaeology. This approach is perhaps best exemplified in The Early Mesoamerican Village, an edited volume that examines the study of early Mesoamerican villages from an explicitly spatial standpoint. Much of this volume is devoted to the analysis of community organization and the organization of households. The studies in this book employ a variety of statistical approaches to examine the patterning of artifacts and architecture, and draw social inferences based on these analyses. In effect, this book has become an archaeological ‘how-to’ manual about the spatial analysis of small-scale agrarian societies, complete with amusing anecdotes regarding the follies of pseudo-fictitious Mesoamerican archaeologists.

Formal household archaeology (see Household Archaeology) as a focus of research can be seen in many ways to have originated with the advent of processual archaeology, crossbred with the activity area studies of the functionalists. The work of Kent Flannery and his students truly revolutionized household archaeology, and developed it into a separate field of inquiry. Indeed, much of the early work in household archaeology was conducted in Mesoa-merica. Many of these early household studies were concerned with the formal spatial analysis of materials recovered in a household setting, and viewed the spatial relationships between artifacts, architecture, and features as being key to understanding social organization at the household level.

In Great Britain in the early 1970s a number of approaches to the spatial analysis of archaeological materials also developed, in many ways in a parallel fashion to developments in the Americas. Later in the 1970s an overtly ‘scientific’ approach to spatial analysis in archaeology was championed by David Clarke and his students. Clarke’s analyses hinged on complex studies of the interrelated nature of societies, and he sought to examine the spatial components of a society as part of a larger sociocultural system. Hodder and Orton, building on his approach, called for a more explicitly quantitative approach to the study of spatial patterning, and applied statistical methods to all levels of spatial analysis.

As this normative approach to spatial analysis became dominant in Anglo-American archaeology (as well as parts of Europe), some scholars began to question the relevance of such an approach. The late 1970s saw increasing interest in overtly social approaches to spatial questions in archaeology and the development of postprocessual archaeology (or archaeologies as many scholars have argued) resulted in a number of scholars questioning the normative assumptions made by the processualists, and beginning to examine aspects of human behavior in a less deterministic and rigid light. This new theoretical focus affected the ways in which archaeologists approached spatial analysis by focusing more on the social and cultural implications of spatial relations in past societies. This thread was present in both the functional and processual approaches to spatial archaeology, but postprocessual archaeology expanded on these earlier concepts (see Postprocessual Archaeology).

Some scholars, influenced by cultural geographers and anthropologists, sought to analyze the built environment constructed by past peoples. These scholars looked at the social, cultural, and ideological aspects of past buildings and cities. Some of the more recent work by Flannery has begun to address questions such as these, although many of his earlier ideas still remain in this more recent literature. An outgrowth of this is analyses of the spatial arrangements of the built environment, which have also been approached through space syntax analysis, developed by Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson. Space syntax analyzes the ways in which the built environment constructs and constrains space. It describes this organization using a standardized lexicon, and represents it through a series of standard visual conventions. Through these standardized forms of visual representation and description, it becomes possible to analyze the social relationships inherent in the spatial arrangement of the built environment. In archaeology, numerous scholars utilize space syntax analysis and represent the growing importance of this approach in the field.

An important aspect of the spatial analysis of households and archaeological sites is the study of urban landscapes, an area heavily influenced by human geography. Michael Smith, for example, notes the importance of urban landscapes in the constitution of society and discusses how power was idealized and realized in the urban landscapes of ancient Mesopotamian cities. He suggests that these power structures were inherently spatial, and that the active manipulation of urban space underscored the success of strategies of domination. The work of Ashmore also explored connections between urban built forms and social organization. Ashmore’s work suggests that urban landscapes in the Maya area reflect broader political affiliations, and that site plans among lower order centers often emulate the site plans of important cities. Timothy Pugh has approached similar topics from an explicitly quantitative standpoint by employing statistical approaches to examine the spatial organization of Mayapan, Mexico.

In recent years, household archaeology has also become increasingly influenced by studies conducted in archaeology’s sister disciplines of social anthropology and sociology. The relationship between spatial organization and domestic architecture is explored from an interdisciplinary perspective in a volume edited by Susan Kent that draws together work examining the spatial organization of residential architecture from a number of cultures. Similarly, Richard Blanton has examined the nature of domestic architecture, the spatial organization of activities and their influence on household organization in a number of contexts. In classical archaeology, recent scholarship has addressed similar questions regarding the relationship between domestic architecture, household units, and space. All of these studies employ varied approaches to the study of spatial analysis in domestic architecture, including statistical approaches, space syntax, and various approaches that seek to gain insight into cognitive concepts of space, but all of these scholars seek to gain insight about the household as a social unit through these analyses.

Spatial analysis at the levels of the household and site continue to form an important part of the archaeological endeavor. Indeed, it could be argued that the analysis of the spatial organization of archaeological sites and households forms one of the cornerstones of any archaeological project being conducted at these scales, because of the insights that this form of analysis gives into one of culture’s foundations, the spatial constitution of societies.

See also: Household Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Settlement Pattern Analysis.