C. Garth Sampson
Heroy Hall, Room 450
(214)768-3583
gsampson@smu.edu
Mixing and Matching the Sciences - Multidisciplinary Research in Archaeology
For forty years Garth Sampson has promoted and practiced the multidisciplinary
approach to archaeological research, in which scientists from many different fields are recruited
to focus their specialized skills on a particular problem in human prehistory.
Buried archaeological sites rich in organic remains are best suited
to this approach, but they are extremely rare. For this reason, Garth has searched far
and wide for ideal case studies, and has led large multidisciplinary teams to
investigate sites in northern California, southern England, and central South Africa.
The teams included specialists in chronology, sediments, skeletons of all sorts of
animals, fossil pollen grains, geology, geochemistry, and isotope chemistry.
Garth is currently working on an interactive CD in which graduate
students are asked to take charge of analyzing finds from a deep stratified shell mound
in Matagorda County, on the Texas coast. Having interpreted the radiocarbon dates,
geochemistry of the chert tools, the shellfish remains, fish bones, bird bones, mammal
bones, plant remains, sediments, soils and sea level changes, students will be
challenged to integrate all their findings into a unified explanation of what happened
at this place over the 3,000 year period that it was occupied.
On the South African project, there were no specialists who could
cope with the mass of tortoise and amphibian remains recovered, so Garth was obliged to
learn the skeletal anatomy of these little creatures in order to correctly identify
what he had excavated. It wasn’t long before colleagues at other sites were
asking to borrow such esoteric skills.
Although not tethered to any particular region (he has lately
joined a large project in N.E. Louisiana to help coordinate and publish their results),
Garth has a long standing commitment to archaeological mapping of the Seacow River
valley in the semi-desert Karoo region of central South Africa . Here, his team has
created the largest archaeological map in the world, having explored on foot an area of
some 5,000 sq. km - about the size of the state of Delaware . A special feature
of this valley is that the campsites of prehistoric Stone Age hunter-foragers are
never buried. All organic remains dissolve, leaving only the stone tools
lying on the surface. Every stone tool concentration ever made there is visible to
the naked eye, lying on a thin veneer of semi-desert sediment. The oldest are at least
a million years old. By mapping the camps of successive periods of the Stone Age
[recognizable by their distinctive technology, and designs] it has been possible to
reconstruct the changes taking place in human hunting strategies over the millennia.
Particular attention has been paid to the campsites of the last 2,000 years,
when pottery was first introduced to the valley, followed by livestock
[both sheep and cattle], and when rare rock shelters were occupied. This in turn
helped to preserve animal remains, which the occupants had eaten. A large
multidisciplinary study of the broken pottery sherds found on the sites was able to
delineate territorial boundaries between bands of prehistoric hunters. This study
also led to a search of archival records of how invading Dutch trekboers overwhemlemd
the Seacow River “Bushmen” between AD 1770-1830.
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