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The Notion Site

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Space, Time, and Archaeological Landscapes

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology ((IDCA))

Abstract

In spite of critiques that date to the early 1970s (Dancey 1971; Thomas 1975) the notion site is as ubiquitous as any archaeological concept in the current literature. Archaeologists look for, and find sites (e. g., site surveys); they record sites (e. g., state surveys, the National Register of Historic Places); they collect and/or excavate sites, they interpret sites; and incredibly, they even date sites. Site usually provides the framework for recording artifact provenience; it usually serves as a sampling frame at some level in most fieldwork (e. g., Binford 1964; McManomon 1981; Redman 1973); and, largely by default, it, or some partitioning of it (e. g., Dewar 1986), serves as the unit of artifact association. Site is, as usually depicted in introductory texts, a basic, if not the basic, unit of archaeology.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, DH-05, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98195, USA

    Robert C. Dunnell

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  1. Robert C. Dunnell
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  1. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

    Jacqueline Rossignol

  2. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

    LuAnn Wandsnider

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Dunnell, R.C. (1992). The Notion Site. In: Rossignol, J., Wandsnider, L. (eds) Space, Time, and Archaeological Landscapes. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2450-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2450-6_2

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