What are site formation processes?

They are the cultural and natural processes by which materials are deposited, buried, disturbed, and preserved, shaping what archaeologists ultimately find in the ground.

Taphonomy is the study of what happens to organic remains, especially bones, from death through burial and decay, which helps archaeologists understand biases in surviving assemblages.

Site Formation Processes and Taphonomy

Site formation processes and taphonomy explain how the archaeological record was created and altered, distinguishing the traces of past human behavior from the effects of natural and post-depositional change.

Definition

The study of how archaeological materials enter the ground and are subsequently modified, encompassing both cultural and natural formation processes and the taphonomic history of biological remains.

Scope

This topic covers the cultural and natural processes that produce, bury, disturb, and preserve archaeological deposits and assemblages. It addresses Schiffer's distinction between behavioral and transformational processes, the taphonomy of bones and other remains, differential preservation, and the inferential reasoning needed to reconstruct past activity from what survives.

Core questions

How do cultural and natural processes create the archaeological record?
How are deposits and assemblages disturbed after burial?
How does differential preservation bias what survives?
How can past behavior be inferred despite formation and taphonomic effects?

Key theories

Cultural and natural formation processes: Schiffer's framework separating the behavioral processes that deposit materials from the cultural and natural transformations that subsequently rearrange and alter them.
Taphonomy of assemblages: The study, especially of faunal remains, of how organisms die, decay, are dispersed, and are preserved, so that biases in surviving assemblages can be recognized and corrected.

History

Attention to formation processes grew in the 1970s and 1980s, when Michael Schiffer argued that the archaeological record is not a direct fossil of past behavior but the product of intervening processes. Taphonomy, borrowed from palaeontology, was developed for archaeology through actualistic studies of bone modification by figures such as Lewis Binford and R. Lee Lyman.

Debates

Behavioral reconstruction versus the 'Pompeii premise': Schiffer's critique of the assumption that sites preserve a frozen snapshot of past life provoked debate over how directly assemblages reflect behavior and how much they are shaped by formation processes.

Key figures

Michael B. Schiffer
R. Lee Lyman
Lewis Binford

Seminal works

schiffer1987
lymanvert1994

Frequently asked questions

What are site formation processes?: They are the cultural and natural processes by which materials are deposited, buried, disturbed, and preserved, shaping what archaeologists ultimately find in the ground.
What is taphonomy?: Taphonomy is the study of what happens to organic remains, especially bones, from death through burial and decay, which helps archaeologists understand biases in surviving assemblages.