Suchergebnisse

Detailed analyses of ancient stone tools, or lithic analyses, were performed by archaeologists as early as the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe, the Near East, and North America. However, it was not until the past thirty years that lithic analysis became a standard part of prehistoric research in Mesoamerica. The reasons for this belated beginning involve the dominant humanities-art history orientation toward much of Mesoamerican archaeology prior to the 1960s; the extraordinary richness, complexity, and accessibility of other cultural components (particularly architecture, hieroglyphics, ceramics, and sculpture); and the lack of quantitative dating techniques. The paucity of reliable dating techniques until quite recently led archaeologists into elaborate attempts to date the past by using a variety of subjective ordering techniques. It is therefore not surprising that, prior to the last ten years, most Mesoamerican lithic analyses had as their major objective the isolation of chronologically significant classes. These were discovered and defined at both the typological and the attribute (or modal) level of classification.

Volcanic Activity and Human Ecology deals with dating, chronology, stratigraphy, volcanic activity, and with the impacts of volcanism on animals, plants, human populations, and the environment. Some of the chapters explain how such findings must be weighed against other causes that influence human behavior and survival, such as factors of social customs, climatic change, shifting biogeographic patterns, disease, and the ability to adapt. Each of the chapters that assess the possible human response to volcanism does so by searching for multiple explanations of the archaeological record, avoidi