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10 LOCAL LINKAGES AND GLOBAL EXTENSIONS "Linkage" is one of those vogue words that appears to be insinuating itself rapidly into anthropological vocabulary. Why this should be so is unclear. The Simpler and essentially synonymous "link" would seem to do the job as well. After all, we get by without speaking of "extensionages" (may this neologism never catch on!). Nonetheless, I will keep linkage, thinking of the word as "linkage " (much like the "line-age" of kinship studies), an archaeologically useful (if etymologically unfounded) parsing that Simultaneously directs our attention to synchronic connections and diachronic changes. The preceding chapters have developed an initial time-space framework for the Santiago-Cayapas region. The construction of such a framework is a necessary , but not ultimate, goal. In this concluding chapter, the implications that this framework carries for a more general understanding ofSantiago-Cayapas prehiStory are addressed. For this purpose, I find it useful to devise a series of indices that track various dimensions of the archaeolOgical record over time. In part, these indices are just convenient devices that condense an otherwise unwieldy set of data; in part, by recasting these data in new ways, they have the potential of moving beyond mere summary. We begin with unpleasant taphonomic considerations, move on to aspects of settlement pattern, and finally turn to properties of the artifacts themselves. Survivorship Index Although it may begin as a patterned precipitate of human activity, the archaeological record has a subsequent history involving a wide assortment of organismic and physical agents seemingly bent on shuffling, sorting, scattering, or otherwise transmogrifying the past (e.g., Schiffer 1987). I am reminded of the question most regularly asked when I was employed as a tour guide at Mesa Verde National Park: "Ranger, how many undiscovered ruins are there?" In the 1960s, I answered, "We don't know." In the 1970s, the response might have been more positive and referred to this or that sampling program. In the 1980s, various transforming taphonomic treacheries would have modified this estimate of the unknown. In the early 1990s, the retort "we don't know" resounds with a ring of honesty. The archaeological record, of course, consists of what is left. In the CayapasSantiago context, what is left includes a number of displaced sherd sediments deposited as point bars in esteros draining the interfluves. These transported 190 LOCAL LINKAGES AND GLOBAL EXTENSIONS sediments, as measures of the extent to which ancient landscapes have been subjected to erosion, can be used to construct a simple site sUrvivorship index: (total sites) - (sites in estero beds) (total sites) This is a percentage index that increases over time in the proposed chronology (table 10.1), an outcome that is reasonable and that merely suggests that the older the landscape, the more it has been altered. This result, however, should be treated with caution. If the Mafa settlement pattern was indeed geared toward the interfluves, then there have been more Mafa sites available for downslope and downstream erosion. Furthermore, Mafa sites situated along the simultaneously aggrading and bank-destroying mainstream would be underrepresented in a survey of contemporary surface remains. Although much has been written about "site formation processes," we know less about site destruction, unless it deals with the vacuum-cleaner capabilities of modern looting. In terms of theory, I know of only two attempts to model the effect that time-accumulated entropy may have on our ability to decode the messages vestigiously congealed in the archaeological record (Ascher 1968, Justeson 1973). These examples have remained unfollowed. Time, although considered to be a nonvariable by some, is nonetheless a one-way channel that transmits increasingly garbled and noisy messa~es. Aggregation Index It will take some cajoling to have the aggregation index received in the intended sense. The question concerns the distribution of population across settlements of varying sizes and the extent to which population is aggregated in large settlements or dispersed across small settlements. The following measure is proposed : total site area in ha number of sites This ratio, of course, is nothing other than mean site size, although it is not intended in that sense. Because most sites are small «0.03 ha) and only a few are large (>5 ha), this index, if taken as an average value, is misleading; however, it suffices as a simple measure of aggregation. As seen in table 10.1, this index increases from Mafa through Guadual and then subsequently declines, reaching its nadir among the Chachi. [18.191.216.163] Project MUSE...

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