About this document
About this document A computerized simulation of an archaeological project from research design through regional survey, site selection, excavation, and data analysis. The simulation examines a hypothetical prehistoric culture with a seasonal settlement pattern.
Authors: T. Douglas Price and Anne Birgette Gebauer.
Publisher: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Audience: Primarily undergraduates and interested amateurs. However, with adequate guidance, it could be used as a group project in a secondary school.
Peer review, availability, permanence: Since Adventures In Fugawiland is commercially published, peer review is not mentioned but can be assumed. There is also a long list of acknowledgments in the preface, and the mere fact that the program has been around since 1988 and is in its second edition implies that it is acceptable to its intended audience.
Publication date: 1997.
Reviewer: Susan C. Jones, P.O. Box 449, Roosevelt, NJ, 08555. email: scjones@brynmawr.edu.
Review date: 15 May 1999.
Hardware Requirements:
PC: CPU 80286 or newer, 2MB RAM, VGA monitor with 256 colors, Windows 3.x or Windows 95, or
OS/2 Warp with win-OS/2 or WARP and Windows 3.x. I ran it on a 486 IBM Thinkpad; the following
description is based on the PC version.
Macintosh: All Macintosh machines with a hard drive (with 2.5 MB of available space) and at least 4 MB
RAM. Color monitor preferred. System 7.x.
I used the simulation as an exercise in an introductory archaeology/anthropology class at a large state college; the course itself was not a methods and theory class, but an overview of archaeology and early civilizations. The class consisted of 27 students, who ranged from first semester freshman to graduating seniors. There were no prerequisites for the class, so that although there were several anthropology majors scattered in among the class, the majority of the students were neophytes in anthropology and archaeological theory and practice. The class spent 6 weeks studying Robert J. Sharer and Wendy Ashmore, Archaeology, Discovering Our Past, 2nd ed. (Mayfield Publishing Co. 1993) before they began the Fugawiland project so that they had had a thorough exposure to the basics. I then gave them several weeks to complete the program as an independent exercise, in lieu of a standard research paper.
The simulation comes with a book and a single 3 1/2 inch floppy disk, in either MAC or PC format. The
program itself is relatively unsophisticated as can be assumed from the requirement of only a 80826 chip,
or a generic Macintosh. The book is divided into five parts:
- a brief introduction and installation instructions
- an overview of archaeological survey and excavation methods and terminology
- instructions on how to use the computer program
- a workbook to guide the user through the analysis of the data
- a section for "further study" that includes a bibliography, glossary, and index.
The overview of archaeology, "Doing Archaeology," is adequate if somewhat too simplified. The explanations of stratigraphy, for example, ignore potential disturbances (except for pits) and problems associated with secondary deposits. Similarly, the discussions of phosphate analysis and C-14 dating ignore contamination issues. The brief description of archaeological field methods for survey and excavation is somewhat out-of date; there is no discussion of the use of computers and digital data in the field or in analysis and interpretation. My final and most serious criticism is that there is no discussion of ethical issues involved with excavations of burials, even through most of the "sites" include one or more burials. Such issues, however, can be covered during classroom discussions, and the information given by the text is sufficient for the immediate tasks. It does provide the student with a quick reference as he or she "excavates" and analyzes the data presented by the program. In addition, if the student pays close attention to this section, there are numerous hints to guide his or her modeling of the culture. For example, the hypothetical seasonal subsistence pattern given on page 38 is exactly what will be revealed by a well- planned research design.
Similarly in the third part "Using the Computer Program," there are numerous hints to help the student interpret the data. There is no formal tutorial, but the instructions given are adequate for all but the true beginner or most computer-phobic student. The user navigates through the program using simple menus. Each menu and submenu is described in this section as well as in an on-line help menu that uses standard windowing protocols. A few minutes spent playing with the menus should be sufficient to familiarize most users with the software’s operation. (The manual warns, but does not emphasize, that each excavator is only allow to "excavate" ten sites. Any site that is excavated during this familiarization process must be included among those used in the regional analysis.)
I have the same basic criticism with the "Analysis of Data" section that I have with "Doing Archaeology." It is too simplified. Without classroom discussions about simple statistical concepts and the interpretation of graphical data, or even better, previous exposure to statistics, the text is insufficient to guide the students through the required analysis. Fugawiland provides discussion of all analytical tools provided within the program itself. The procedures made available by the software are (1) an ability to sort the data table by any variable -- site type, site elevation, site latitude/longitude, counts of artifacts and features, (2) simple X-Y plots of any two variables, (3) histograms by site, and (4) geographical plots of variables by site. I like the fact that the program merely presents the menu of analyses available and lets the student choose the appropriate ones to answer the basic questions.
The final section provides "bibliography and further reading;" texts cited are standard and up-to-date. Again I would like to see specific references to discussions of ethics, but several of the recommended texts have sections on archaeological ethics.
As for the simulation itself, it is presented in two parts: a pencil-and-paper section simulating the preliminary site analyses routinely performed to plan excavation strategies and the computerized "excavations" themselves. The preliminary pencil-and-paper exercises develop a chronology based on presented strata from test trenches and present the results of a surface survey of artifact densities and soil phosphate levels. Few of my students grasped the relationship between this pencil and paper exercise and the simulated excavations in the second part. Twenty-five potential excavation sites are displayed on a regional map that contains two river basins flowing from highlands into Lake Superior and two raw material sources, one chert and one copper outcropping (seen on p. 93 as well as on screen). Sites are spread among the lake shore, river valleys, raw material sources, and upland areas. When students initiate their "excavations," they are given ten multiple-choice questions to answer -- for example, "Projectile points were found where people were: hunting, fishing, hunting or fishing, at all sites." Using their specific set of questions as a guide, they must lay out a research design and choose ten sites to provide data to understand the culture. Site selection is not a foregone conclusion, and the students’ ability to understand the culture is hindered or helped by their selections. Once a site is selected, a list of artifacts, ecofacts, and features is provided along with a site plan showing findspots. The data is automatically recorded in a data table, and the user can recall the site plan and data list of any excavated site at any time.
The user chooses and excavates the sites sequentially so that poor initial research designs can be modified before further sites are excavated. Each student may excavate only a limited number of sites and can not change his or her mind once a site is chosen. Brief messages appear on screen to relate anecdotes and narrate the progress of the excavations. These messages include typical interruptions for crises in personal matters, excavation conditions, funding, etc. Students can perform and print out any of the available data analyses at any point, but the program is so structured that once they have answered and printed out the fundamental questions they may not change their answers, nor may they reenter the program. The workbook section provides specific exercises in data analysis, and then leaves room for the individual judgment for further analyses that might be required to answer the question set. As a final exercise the students write an essay presenting their own interpretations of the prehistory of Fugawiland.
I was somewhat surprised to find several students who appeared to be uncomfortable using the computer in general and the Fugawiland program in particular. This was exhibited by the fact that one asked serious questions about how to use the menu to generate the regional map and another ignored the scroll bars on the site display screens and therefore did not see the presentation of some vital data. Although I ran across a few random software error messages that required me to reboot the program, I encountered nothing that interfered with my completion of the program. About half a dozen students commented on the same random errors, but only two stated that software errors caused them to lose some data. I can not say if this was just an excuse for their tardiness in turning in the assignment or a genuine problem. (I also received the wonderful excuse from one student that her father had tried to help her resolve the software error, and he had subsequently caused the hard disk to crash, taking her data with it!)
Adventures in Fugawiland is a valuable tool to provide some sense of what goes into planning and executing actual archaeological projects. But as with many computer simulations, I have the feeling that some students could not relate "events" on the screen with the theoretical and methodological discussions in the classroom.