Sir Grahame Clark, a passionate connoisseur of flints : (an internalist study of Clark's early publications)
| dc.contributor.author | Smith, Pamela Jane | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-08-15T18:24:27Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-08-15T18:24:27Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 1993 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 1993 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Anthropology | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Arts M.A. | en |
| dc.description.abstract | An internalist approach to Clark's early publications from 1927 to 1939 is used to examine his goals, methods, assumptions, definitions of archaeology, immediate academic influences, and intellectual change. Clark (1933h:232) defined archaeology as "the study of past distribution of culture-traits in time and space, and of the factors governing their distribution" and was especially astute when fulfilling the first part of this definition. His greatest early strength was his methodological exactness in creating typologies and chronologies based on the assumption that lithic and pottery forms evolved and can be arranged in chronological order by studying morphological changes. During his early career, Clark's primary goals were the establishment of relative dates for British assemblages and the definition of the Mesolithic as a unique period. He exhibited occasional difficulties when considering the factors which governed the distribution of cultures, and did not discuss diffusion in depth or detail. Clark used the term Mesolithic to indicate both a time period and a group of cultures. Clark was a founding member of the interdisciplinary Fenland Research Committee, publishing with the Committee throughout the 1930s. During this association, his goals, typological methods, and definition of archaeology did not change. However, his methods broadened when he stressed the importance of excavating and promoted the study of wetland sites. His demonstration of the relevance to British archaeology of natural scientific techniques, such as pollen and faunal analysis, was a major contribution. Clark's greatest strength was his ability to synthesize several independent lines of evidence forcefully and to demonstrate how information from varied sources converged to support a conclusion. When classifying an artifact, he studied morphology, function, type of material, patination, techniques of manufacture, and associated finds. When excavating, he correlated archaeological, botanical, geological, and faunal evidence to strengthen his argument. He strongly influenced the establishment of the Prehistoric Society in 1935 and as Honorary Editor of its Proceedings until 1970 facilitated the publication of innovative research. In The Mesolithic Settlement of Northern Europe, he introduced the reconstruction of prehistoric subsistence patterns and social factors into the study of past cultural distributions and seemed to assume that economic activities were more basic to the survival of a society than social, ideological, or artistic endeavours. The weaknesses of his approach became evident when he used environmental determinism to explain assemblage change. During the late 1930s, Clark was influenced by D.F. Thomson's seasonality study, A.M. Tallgren's re-evaluation of prehistoric archaeology's methods, and by German and Scandinavian settlement excavations. In Archaeology and Society, Clark redefined archaeology as the study of how humans lived in the past, theorized many different aspects of society were interrelated but continued to argue that typological analysis must precede interpretation. Throughout Clark's early career, he was concerned with how to apply innovative methods to enhance classifications, excavations, and economic and social reconstructions of prehistoric life. The history of Clark's earlier research allows us to understand more clearly his later choice of sites, technique of excavation, and interpretation of Star Carr as an early Maglemose seasonal habitation. | en |
| dc.format.extent | 160 pages | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/19742 | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | en_US |
| dc.subject | UN SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities | en |
| dc.title | Sir Grahame Clark, a passionate connoisseur of flints : (an internalist study of Clark's early publications) | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
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