Uneven Ground synthesizes archaeological field survey, historical map analysis, ceramic analysis, and geospatial modeling to investigate a region of northern Zanzibar, Tanzania across multiple environmental zones and time periods. Results address fundamental anthropological questions related to landscapes of settlement, historical ecology, and social change. I reconstruct settlement systems in the inland areas of the island, across four transformative historical periods: 1) the initial recolonization of the island by early Swahili people in the late first millennium, 2) social stratification and precolonial urbanism in the early second millennium, 3) Portuguese and Omani rule in the early colonial period (1500-1830 CE), and 4) during the development of the plantation system starting around 1830, and the formation of the Omani (1749-1856) and Zanzibari (1856-1963) states.Results show that inland villages of the early second millennium (1000-1400 CE) and plantation estates of the late colonial period (1830-1963 CE) developed across similar contexts in the central and western regions of north Zanzibar, where environmental conditions favored intensive agricultural production. These areas supported large settlement systems, but sociopolitical changes disrupted occupation in this region across multiple periods. In contrast, the agriculturally marginal and rocky eastern regions supported enduring small-scale occupations from the earliest period to the present. Landscapes of the east have the longest and most consistent history of settlement and land use in the survey region. This was made possible by specific techniques of agricultural landscape modification and proximity to near-shore reefs. Parts of the eastern region may have served as a refuge during politically turbulent periods. I also demonstrate that starting around 1830, the development of the plantation system transformed settlements across rural inland areas in north Zanzibar. Archaeological and geospatial analyses show the effects of this episode on rural communities. Settlement systems clustered spatially and became more politically integrated for the first time. Imported ceramics increased in count and variability, and local ceramics became more standardized in temper, fabric color, clay color, and form. Settlement and ceramic trends reflected the impacts of the mass importation of enslaved East Africans into rural areas on the island, the entrainment of Zanzibar’s agricultural landscapes within global commodity flows, and the contours of state formation and political integration across the island. Spatial analyses show that while 19th-century elites in the urban center of Stone Town were able to extract wealth from the rural areas, they did not successfully integrate heterarchical elements within their state. This pattern shaped anti-colonial resistance and revolution at the end of the late colonial period.

Late Bronze Age (LBA) Cyprus is well known in archaeologies of the eastern Mediterranean. Long associated with the ancient place name of Alashiya, Cyprus is believed to have been the primary source of the bulk copper that was at the heart of the trade networks of the period. In addition to providing copper, Cyprus was involved extensively in other trade, including possibly a controlling role in the trade of tin. Archaeological evidence indicates that LBA Cyprus also was producing pottery, textiles, and agricultural goods at supra-household if not industrial levels. Cyprus, an economically powerful state, developed a settlement pattern that reflected its political economy. Ports ringed the coast and were linked back to the interior of the island where mining and initial refinement of copper ores took place in specialized settlements, both supported by other sites focused on agricultural production. Scholars disagree on the political organization of LBA Cyprus. Options include a centralized state, a series of independent polities, and some hybrid. Always somewhat distinctive from its mainland contemporaries, Cyprus in the LBA demonstrates both deep local traditions and a dynamism that resulted from growing off-island connections.

At the close of the LBA (~1200 BCE and the surrounding decades), there is overwhelming evidence for structurally significant changes on the island. Sites are abandoned or suffer destruction, sometimes repeatedly, and the LBA settlement pattern is almost completely erased. The disruption within Cyprus is echoed in the broader eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus’ close partner, the trading hub of Ugarit, was destroyed at roughly the same time, dealing what must have been a decisive blow to eastern Mediterranean trade. Destructions range up and down the Levantine coast and extend inland as well, including to the Hittite capital of Hattusha, which was destroyed shortly after 1200 BCE.

Scholarly opinion has converged on the belief that the changes at the end of the LBA had multiple causes. Collapse is seen not as an event, but instead as a process of resilience and adaptation; such a process has aspects both of continuity and discontinuity. For Cyprus, this takes the form of continued occupation at two major sites – Kition and Palaipaphos – as well as new foundations, such as at Salamis. Broadly, for example in ceramic traditions and mortuary practices, there are additional signs of continuity. Eventually however, by the close of the EIA (~900 BCE), Cypriot society, its economy and material forms, is much diminished.

Scholars of the Cypriot EIA debate the relative degree of continuity and discontinuity. This thesis explores these themes, using the concept-metaphor of complex adaptive systems (CAS). CAS theory views society as a web of relationships. These relationships have varying temporal and spatial extents, and connect humans, singularly and collectively, to each other and as well to non- humans. At any point in time, the sum of the relationships is constitutive of the society. Enduring relationships can be viewed as an expression of continuity. At the same time, other relationships change in response to stressors, both internal and external. These changes are a form of adaptation; making such changes is a form of resilience. Adaptations, when minor, are adjustments and do not express as discontinuity. Larger adaptations are modifications and can be expressed as discontinuity.

This thesis explores LBA and EIA Cyprus using this CAS approach. It concludes that major modifications in economic and political power were likely underway in the later part of the LBA, that adjustments were made in attempts to deal with stressors at the close of the period, and finally, when the stressors were simply too significant, major modifications are again made in the EIA. The thesis also concludes that the scholarly debate between continuity and discontinuity is a false either/or, driven by other motivations, and able to persist due to evidentiary gaps. The thesis thus also offers a revised field survey methodology, and suggests it be used to generate better evidence for the Cypriot EIA.

This project applies microscale geoarchaeological analysis to four sites from late 1800s and early 1900s in Fort Davis, Texas in order to reconstruct life histories, past taskscapes, and show the potential of geoarchaeological analysis in a historic archaeology context. The military post at Fort Davis was established in 1854 along the San Antonio-El Paso road through the high Chihuahua Desert in Far West Texas. The civilian town of Fort Davis quickly formed near the post. After withdrawing during the Civil War, the army reoccupied the Fort in 1867 and over the next twenty years it was periodically home to every company of African-American “Buffalo Soldiers” in the United States army. In 1961 the Fort became a National Historic Site under the National Parks Service. The four sites investigated in this dissertation include two residences on Fort property which date to the 1800s: the Laundresses’ Quarters and the Enlisted Married Men’s Quarters. Two additional sites are from civilian areas of town: the Smith-Carlton Casa Vieja (the oldest standing, continuously occupied adobe structure in town), and a midden and nearby foundations on the Francell-Byerley Property which date to the 1920s and 1930s. Analysis at each site focused on a combination of fundamental soil chemical analyses (soil pH and soil organic matter) and microstratigraphic methods (particle size analysis and soil micromorphology). These approaches, combined with historical data, are used to develop life histories for each of the four sites. Additionally, taskscapes associated with residence and discard activities (the tasks most commonly represented in the four sites) are discussed. These analyses show how microscale archaeology, rarely incorporated into historical archaeology projects, can provide a significant line of evidence when combined with archaeological and historical sources.

This dissertation pairs paleoenvironmental analyses with persistent place theory to better understand human-environment relationships at a large Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherer site in eastern Jordan, Kharaneh IV. I use fecal stanol molecules, gazelle tooth enamel stable isotope values, loss-on-ignition, micro- and macrofossils, geoarchaeological excavation and survey, and sedimentological characterization to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental history of the Kharaneh wetland and understand the qualities of the local environment that contributed to the formation of Kharaneh IV as a persistent place on the Epipaleolithic landscape. Although fecal stanols at the site do not appear to reflect ancient conditions, the analysis identified two major limitations of the method in archaeological studies: 1) stanol molecules appear to be mobile through permeable cultural deposits, suggesting that the method is not viable in dryland sites, and 2) non-human producers of fecal stanols may complicate the interpretations of a site’s history, as herd animals that pass over the site are a likely source of fecal stanol contamination.Gazelle tooth enamel isotope values show little variation between the site’s older Area B and younger Area A occupations, indicating relatively stable conditions over the course of the site’s thousand-year history and supporting notions of Kharaneh IV as a persistent place. However, a -2% excursion in δ18O values suggests a temporary period of enhanced precipitation during the site’s Middle Epipaleolithic occupation. Geoarchaeological excavation and survey identified a permeability gradient between wadi gravels and shallow limestone bedrock surrounding Kharaneh IV that allowed for wetland formation from shallow groundwater flow during the Pleistocene. Loss-on-ignition, micro- and macrofossils, geoarchaeological excavation and survey, and sedimentological characterization data indicate that the wetland fluctuated significantly before and after the site’s occupation, but provided a reliable source of water for Epipaleolithic groups, plants, and prey that in turn encouraged place-making activities to occur and develop Kharaneh IV into a persistent place.

Learning is a fundamental aspect of the human condition. It allows us to interact within a world of socially constructed meanings and to create individual and group identities (Jarvis 2012; Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998). My research investigates knowledge transmission during the Epipalaeolithic Period at the hunter-gatherer site of Kharaneh IV (≈20,000 BP) (Maher and MacDonald 2013) and argues that stone tool production (flintknapping) can be viewed as a practice that reflects normative rules guiding the interactions of flintknapping communities in the ancient past. Evidence of the practice can shed light on an ancient habitus related to learning and participating within a community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991; Cole 1996; Weisner 2002; Rogoff 2003; Maynard and Greenfield 2006; Joyce 2008; Wallaert 2012; Takakura 2013). The study of education in archaeology primarily focuses on ceramics as it is an additive process where each step is identifiable through microscopic analyses. While these studies have proven useful for understanding how novices learned practices in the past, in most regions ceramics only extend back to about 8,000 years BP and studies on apprenticeship and learning rarely extend past the Bronze Age (Hasaki 2012). To examine a reductive technology like flintknapping one must take a different approach than previously established ceramics studies on apprenticeship (Gosselain 2000; Wallart 2012; Hasaki 2012). The waste products, debitage, are the basis for analysis rather than the final tool form as each removal of flint during the production process preserves prior removal scars and indicates how an individual piece was removed. The knowledge of where to find raw materials, how to ‘correctly’ reduce a blade core, and what constitutes a tool is circumscribed by the community (Ortner 2001; Joyce 2008; Pea and Cole 2019). Therefore, lithic artifacts may represent normative practices of flintknapping during the Epipalaeolithic. New materials or techniques can reflect changing dynamics within a community as the establishment and continuity of traditions are reliant upon ongoing apprentice/master relationships (Lancy 1980; Lave and Wenger 1991; Wallaert-Pêtre 2001; Greenfield et al. 2003; Milne 2012; Takakura 2013). By studying how unskilled flintknapping events are spatially related to skilled flintknapping events we can begin to reveal the habitus of a community of practice. Applying Lave and Wenger’s (1991) legitimate peripheral participation to lithic artifacts and flintknapping education during the Epipalaeolithic, I pose a fundamental question: Can learning and evidence of a sociotechnological practice be used to understand the habitus constructed around flintknapping at the Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherer site of Kharaneh IV?