Untangling Activity Areas in Open Spaces: Ethnography at Jandhala, North Gujarat, India (part II

Summary

Jandhala is a small village in the rural countryside of North Gujarat (India) where many of the activities related to food processing are still non-mechanized. One compound within the village has been investigated ethnographically to test a novel methodology to unravel activity areas. In this paper we present the results of investigations in the courtyard of the compound. Over 170 samples were collected, in a regular grid of 2x2 meters, and analyzed for multi-element geochemistry. We compare our results with the outcomes of previous analyses on the use of domestic space within the house. In addition, we analyze the effects of anisotropy (directionality of movement) and physical barriers (walls, fences and accumulations of different material) on chemical proxies. Our experiment is not intended to create direct parallelisms between present and past-times, but to test the reliability of our methodology against known activities. We conclude that the use of ethnography and geostatistical approaches can help in unlock the patters and identify activity areas in a controlled environment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Anthropic activity markers: archaeology and ethnoarchaeology

Keywords

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