It’s all about scale—thoughts on Paul Goldberg’s contributions to geoarchaeology

Summary

Geoarchaeologists, like their colleagues in the geosciences and archaeology, are required to understand the archaeological record at a variety of scales: from the sub-microscopic to the continental. We track human behavioral change across millions of years and geographic expansions across continents. Yet, our data come from archaeological sites, individual layers, and single artifacts. As archaeologists who investigate past human interactions with various geosystems, we are required not only to think at different scales, but we are also required to conceptually link observations made at a variety of scales. These observations form the basis for interpretations about landscape change, site formation, and human behavior. For the past 40 years, Paul Goldberg’s research has challenged us to understand the significance of scale in geoarchaeological work. His work on almost every continent, and from almost every time period, has shown that even the smallest microscopic observation can be significant for understanding the human past.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology in Context: The Influence of the Geoarchaeological Career of Paul Goldberg   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

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