Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
R. Lee Lyman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Temporal Frequency ◽  
Line Graphs ◽  
Visual Thinking ◽  
Frequency Distributions ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Analytical Tools

Graphs of quantitative data are analytical tools that facilitate visual thinking. In many disciplines, the use of graphs was preceded by tables summarizing quantitative data. Graphs known by North American archaeologists as “battleship curves” are temporal frequency distributions of relative abundances of specimens in each of several artifact types. They are unimodal frequency distributions known as spindle graphs. In the early 1950s, it was suggested that the idea of spindle graphs was borrowed by archaeologists from paleontology. Archaeologists occasionally used bar graphs and line graphs to diagram change in artifact inventories in the early twentieth century. The questions addressed in this volume are: (i) did North American archaeologists borrow the idea of spindle graphs from paleontology, and (ii) what was the frequency of use by North American archaeologists of each of the various graph types to diagram culture change during the early and middle twentieth century?

Early History of Archaeology Graphs

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-101
Author(s):  
R. Lee Lyman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Line Graphs ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Historian

The earliest archaeological spindle graph was published in 1883 by natural historian and avocational archaeologist Charles C. Abbott. Evidence that he obtained the idea from paleontology, which first published spindle graphs in the 1830s and 1840s, is circumstantial at best, and differences in graph styles weigh against such borrowing. Several spindle graphs published in the 1890s and early 1900s by archaeologist William Henry Holmes either depict his views on inevitable progressive evolution—a theory rapidly falling from anthropological favor—or were so speculative as to likely have had little influence on the discipline. During the first couple decades of the twentieth century, physicist/geographer/anthropologist Franz Boas (often referred to as the father of anthropology) published numerous line graphs of quantitative data. He influenced archaeologists Leslie Spier and Manual Gamio who used line graphs to display temporally varying frequencies of artifacts. About the same time, the wife and husband team of Madeleine Kidder and Alfred V. Kidder published several line graphs of relative frequencies of pottery types against stratigraphic provenience, seemingly largely as a result of Madeleine’s influence because Alfred never again published such a graph and instead favored phyletic seriation graphs of a type reminiscent of Sir William Flinders Petrie’s sequence dating graphs from the turn of the century.

Materials and Methods

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
R. Lee Lyman
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Line Graph ◽  
Graph Grammar ◽  
Time Range ◽  
American Archaeology ◽  
North American Archaeology ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Spatio Temporal

To determine the origin of archaeological spindle graphs, and to track the frequency of use of each of several types of graph used to diagram culture change, a sample of North American archaeological literature was examined. Numerous series of monographs and volumes of journals in both the archaeological and the paleontological literature were inspected. If a graph of biological (paleontological) or cultural (archaeological) change was included in a publication, that piece of literature was recorded along with the type of graph included. To record such data, a classification of graph types was developed based on categories of statistical graphs (e.g., bar graph, line graph, pie graph, time range, spatio-temporal rectangle). More than 900 pieces of literature on North American archaeology published between ~1880 and ~1960 were inspected, and more than 450 pieces of literature on paleontology were inspected. Because different graph types are constructed under different guidelines, they require an understanding of graph grammar—the rules for constructing, deciphering, and interpreting graphs.

scholarly journals Spatiotemporal distribution of Holocene populations in North America

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (39) ◽  
pp. 12127-12132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle A. Chaput ◽  
Björn Kriesche ◽  
Matthew Betts ◽  
Andrew Martindale ◽  
Rafal Kulik ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
Kernel Method ◽  
Temporal Frequency ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
Frequency Distributions ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
The North

As the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets retreated, North America was colonized by human populations; however, the spatial patterns of subsequent population growth are unclear. Temporal frequency distributions of aggregated radiocarbon (14C) dates are used as a proxy of population size and can be used to track this expansion. The Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database contains more than 35,000 14C dates and is used in this study to map the spatiotemporal demographic changes of Holocene populations in North America at a continental scale for the past 13,000 y. We use the kernel method, which converts the spatial distribution of 14C dates into estimates of population density at 500-y intervals. The resulting maps reveal temporally distinct, dynamic patterns associated with paleodemographic trends that correspond well to genetic, archaeological, and ethnohistoric evidence of human occupation. These results have implications for hypothesizing and testing migration routes into and across North America as well as the relative influence of North American populations on the evolution of the North American ecosystem.

An Evaluative Framework

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
R. Lee Lyman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Theory Of Change ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
Measure Change ◽  
Theories Of Change ◽  
Variational Evolution

North American anthropologists and archaeologists have long confused the Midas-touch-like transformational evolution of Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward B. Tylor, and Herbert Spencer with the variational evolution of Charles Darwin. Following Franz Boas, evolution as a theory of change was allegedly discarded by North American anthropologists and archaeologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, they used the term “development” instead of “evolution” and spoke of culture change in evolutionary terms, often mixing elements of the theories and ontologies of transformational and variational evolution. Documenting culture change under variational evolution demands the materialist paradox be circumvented. This paradox highlights the question: How do we measure change in continuously variable phenomena? Paleontologists adopted the approach that each population of organisms is polymorphic; individuals are members of the same species but formally variable. Paleontologists compare central tendencies of temporally sequent populations, or chronospecies. Archaeologists who undertook frequency seriations adopted an approach that focuses on morphospecies, forms or types that occur in two or more temporally sequent populations. The occurrence of multiple types per temporal period highlights the variation upon which a sorting mechanism such as selection works, and the occurrence of one or more types in each of two or more temporally sequent assemblages provides evidence of connection between them required of studies of change. Recognizing that graph types, how phenomena are parsed into types, and theories of change are mutually influential allows evaluation of archaeological graphs of change in terms of their implied theories and ontologies.

Archaeology Spindle Graphs in the 1930s

2021 ◽  
pp. 128-147
Author(s):  
R. Lee Lyman
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Temporal Frequency ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Statistical Reasoning ◽  
Graph Models ◽  
Frequency Distributions ◽  
Ultimate Source ◽  
Rough Form ◽  
Variational Evolution

During the 1930s, archaeological spindle graphs in the form of seriograms (straight-sided spindle graphs) were published. Three of these represent the investigator’s suspicions about culture change rather than being strictly empirical. Stylistically, seriograms were seldom subsequently published, suggesting these graphs minimally influenced later researchers. By the 1920s, based on the basically unimodal frequency distributions observed in frequencies of specimens of various pottery types in the American Southwest, anthropologists had begun to suspect there were so-called stylistic pulses reflecting the vogue or popularity of particular kinds of artifacts. Explanations fell back on probability theory, likely as a result of the influence of Franz Boas’s statistical reasoning; kinds of phenomena simply should display unimodal temporal frequency distributions given probability theory. Although conceptually unsophisticated, graphic models of these stylistic pulses published by anthropologists in the 1920s took the rough form of spindle graphs and represent a then unrecognized nod to the theory of variational evolution. These spindle graph models may be the ultimate source of archaeological spindle graphs, but these models were a bit difficult to decipher. Many graphs of culture change appearing in the 1920s and 1930s imply variational evolution.

Tito Caula’s photographic imaginary and mid-century Caraqueño modernity

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-79
Author(s):  
Russell White
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Urban Forms ◽  
Economic Boom ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Physical Changes

The photography of the Argentinian photographer Francisco ‘Tito’ Caula tracked some of the key social and physical changes that Caracas underwent during the middle decades of the twentieth century. This period saw the country transition from dictatorship to democracy. Caula’s advertising photographs together with his images of spectacular spaces and buildings such as the Sabana Grande and the Centro Simón Bolívar presented Caracas as a mecca of mid-century ‘petro-modernity’ (LeMenager 2014). In contrast to late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century modernity, which was predominantly European in influence, Caraqueño modernity at mid-century was more cosmopolitan, taking particular inspiration from the United States. Caula’s photographs speak to the process of Americanization, defined as the adoption of North American cultural products, urban forms and patterns of living that Venezuela underwent during the years Caula spent in the country. Venezuela witnessed an economic boom in the 1960s and 70s, which was fuelled by the US acquisition of Venezuelan oil. In Venezuela, the boom facilitated the growth of a consumer society as well as the development of such quintessentially North American urban forms as freeways, shopping malls, drive-in movie theatres, suburbs and skyscrapers. It was also accompanied by the adoption of violent security tactics by the state’s security apparatus and the political marginalization of the radical left. Given that Caula held left-wing views, it is perhaps surprising that his photographs (at least those that have been published) do not explore the tensions at the heart of the Pacto de Punto Fijo, instituted to ensure that the transition from dictatorship to democracy would hold following elections in 1958. The celebration of North American influence within Caula’s photographs puts them in dialogue with critical perspectives that have seen US cultural influence rather more negatively. Moreover, their celebration of prosperity and their presentation of Caracas as an exciting city means that, for some, they have taken on a nostalgic hue.

The Cult of Beauty

2018 ◽  
pp. 192-224
Author(s):  
Robert Holland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
British Culture

This chapter details British engagement with the Mediterranean from 1890 to 1918. It has been argued that cultural despair was the distinguishing mark of modernism in the British compared to their European and North American counterparts, where a generally upbeat tone was more evident. Since the age of the Grand Tour, a pathology deeply marked by Mediterranean influences had characterized British culture. Thus, it was only logical that this remained true entering the twentieth century, and that despair and a sense of national fragility remained part of the mix. That hallmark characteristic had various roots, but critical to it was a continuing apprehension that the British remained unique as a leading European power in lacking an authentic, mature civilization of their own.

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