Peter Bleed
Biographic Data
| ID | 3581080 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Bleed |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Bleed |
| SIGNATURE | BLEED P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nebraska–Lincoln |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 573 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 32 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Virtual Reconstruction as Archaeological Observation
Virtual Reconstruction is a powerful tool broadly suited to a diverse array of archaeological heritage applications. In practice, however, reconstruction has largely focused on grand and monumental sites. Here we present two case studies–one from southern Oklahoma, the other from western Nebraska–to explore the use of this technology for more common heritage applications. The goal of this article is to advertise the dilemma we faced with communic…
Photogrammetrical Assessment of Procedural Patterns and Sequential Structure in “Handaxe” Manufacture
When initially discovered in 2014, 21 Early Stone Age (ESA) pointed stone bifaces from the Uitspankraal 1 (UPK1) in western South Africa were left in the field but recorded for photogrammetry analysis. Digital models developed with these data made it possible to recognize that UPK1 handaxes were routinely produced with a process that emphasized outline rather than volumetric adjustment and usually involved only a single flip. The procedural unifo…
Scale armor on the North American frontier
In 1870, as he was starting his career as a frontier army officer and anthropologist, John Bourke collected a gorget composed of iron scales and the story that it was a relic of early Spanish exploration of the Plains. This paper describes the Bourke armor and assesses its manufacture, history, and cultural context. The origins of the armor remain uncertain, but it seems unlikely that it arrived during initial Spanish explorations of the Plains. …
Contexts for Conflict
There has been a long history of interest in the material remains of conflict, but in the last two and a half decades archaeologists have made strides in the study of war and warfare. Techniques have been developed, refined, and borrowed to expose the material record of combat. Sites associated with other military undertakings have been discovered and the material culture of conflict has been documented. This growth has expanded an understanding …
Why Didn’t Agriculture Develop in Japan? A Consideration of Jomon Ecological Style, Niche Construction, and the Origins of Domestication
Burning Issues
To develop general characteristics of burned structures, charred features in an excavated Nebraska phase earthlodge are discussed in light of observations made during the intentional burning of a reconstructed earthlodge. These comparisons show that earthlodge burning was not a simple or uniform process. Posts and soil overburden collapse separately. Charred posts reflect incomplete combustion of posts likely to have been smothered by slumped soi…
[Foragers and Farmers in the Japanese Islands] a Nice Place to Live and Work
Skill Matters
Do Regions Make Theory? Comments on Mitchell's Discussion of the Legacy of the Missouri Basin Project
Mark Mitchell’s (Mitchell 2006) assessment of the theoretical legacy of the Smithsonian Institution’s Missouri Basin Project does not show that research in the Great Plains has made a particularly small contribution to archeological theory. The sparse population, dispersed professional community, and paucity of graduate archeology programs in the region contribute to its archeological research patterns
Living in the human niche
Japan
Obviously sequential, but continuous or staged? Refits and cognition in three late paleolithic assemblages from Japan
Cheap, Regular, and Reliable
Systematically produced microblades are a hallmark of terminal Pleistocene occupation of the Japanese archipelago. Regional differences in microblade production have been interpreted as “cultural.” Building on detailed technological analyses by Japanese scholars, this chapter uses event tree analysis of assemblages from Araya, Kakuniyama, and Fukui Cave to suggest that major differences in microblade production were designed to fit with hunting s…
Trees or Chains, Links or Branches
Purveying the Past
The business of selling antiques is a popular arena in which modern Americans curate much of the country’s cultural patrimony, define what is important and valuable about the national past, and decide the condition of the things that will survive into the future. A study of the antiques market in Lincoln, Nebraska reveals how the trade in antiques organizes and presents widely dispersed goods with a . marketing channel composed of four steps that…
Each According to Need and Fashion
An Inscribed Native American Battle Image From The Little Bighorn Battlefield
A brass artifact found in the Hunkpapa campsite that was attacked by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on June 25, 1876 is engraved with images of soldiers and American Indians. The battle image was scratch engraved on this unique medium in a pre-Reservation Biographic style reminiscent of rock art and robe art of the same era. It may depict a scene from the Battle of the Little Bighorn or the Rosebud Battle of June 17, 1876. In any case, the arti…
Content as Variability, Result as Selection
Technology has long been of interest to anthropologists but anthropological study of the topic has lagged behind consideration of other human institutions. In part this is because technology has remained poorly understood and incompletely defined and because technology's material and non‐material components have been either confused or treated in isolation. To clarify the relationship between its material and non‐material aspects, this paper defi…
Technology, Flaked Stone Technology, and Risk
Recent theoretical studies of flaked stone technology have identified many factors that affect the ways in which human beings make and use tools. However, these studies lack a unified body of theory that might help to integrate their diverse perspectives. This paper expands recent anthropological discussions of risk as the basis for such a theory. We begin by defining risk, emphasizing two distinct components of this concept-the probability that …
Jomon of Japan
Subsistence and Stone Tool Technology
Risk and Cost in Japanese Microcore Technology
To study production risks In a prehistoric technology, this paper presents an event tree analysis (ETA) of microblade technology at Paleolithic sites from north central Honshu, Japan. ETA reconstructs the sequence of steps involved in making micro-cores and determines the points and rates at which cores failed. The analysis identifies production characteristics of the two assemblages and shows that, although production risks were present, they ad…
Why do artifacts look the way they do
Cotterell, Brian and Johan Kamminga. Mechanics of Pre‐Industrial Technology: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Ancient and Traditional Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. xv + 325 pp. including appendices, references, and index. $49.50 cloth. Basalla, George. The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. viii + 248 pp. including references and index. $11.95 paper. Norman, Donald A. The Desi…
Operations Research and Archaeology
Operations research is the systematic study of resource utilization through the manipulation of conceptual models. Used most often by engineers and managers, these models also have potential application in archaeology. Event tree analysis, which models multipart systems with a number of potential consequences resulting from a series of events, makes it possible to analyze artifact-production processes or the operation of complex economic activiti…
Objectivity, Reflection And Single Case Studies
The Optimal Design of Hunting Weapons
Design engineers share archaeologists' interest in material culture, but unlike archaeologists, engineers have developed concepts for determining the suitability of technical systems to perform specific tasks. Given the difficulty archaeologists face in developing theories of material culture, I suggest that guiding principles of engineering design offer potentially useful insights.In this article I discuss two design alternatives for optimizing …
Technology, Flaked Stone Technology, and Risk
Recent theoretical studies of flaked stone technology have identified many factors that affect the ways in which human beings make and use tools. However, these studies lack a unified body of theory that might help to integrate their diverse perspectives. This paper expands recent anthropological discussions of risk as the basis for such a theory. We begin by defining risk, emphasizing two distinct components of this concept-the probability that …
Trees or Chains, Links or Branches
Skill Matters
Cheap, Regular, and Reliable
Systematically produced microblades are a hallmark of terminal Pleistocene occupation of the Japanese archipelago. Regional differences in microblade production have been interpreted as “cultural.” Building on detailed technological analyses by Japanese scholars, this chapter uses event tree analysis of assemblages from Araya, Kakuniyama, and Fukui Cave to suggest that major differences in microblade production were designed to fit with hunting s…
An Objective Test of the Effects of Heat Treatment of Flakeable Stone
Widely held notions about the effects of heat treatment of flakeable stone were tested by agitating matching sets of regularly shaped pieces of heated and raw chert. The tests indicate that heat treatment changes some of the variables that control flake formation although not necessarily in ways that make flintworking 'easier.' It appears that in order to realize an advantage to the practice, the flintknapper must call on individual skill to make…
Why Didn’t Agriculture Develop in Japan? A Consideration of Jomon Ecological Style, Niche Construction, and the Origins of Domestication
Energetic efficiency and hand tool design
Content as Variability, Result as Selection
Technology has long been of interest to anthropologists but anthropological study of the topic has lagged behind consideration of other human institutions. In part this is because technology has remained poorly understood and incompletely defined and because technology's material and non‐material components have been either confused or treated in isolation. To clarify the relationship between its material and non‐material aspects, this paper defi…
Risk and Cost in Japanese Microcore Technology
To study production risks In a prehistoric technology, this paper presents an event tree analysis (ETA) of microblade technology at Paleolithic sites from north central Honshu, Japan. ETA reconstructs the sequence of steps involved in making micro-cores and determines the points and rates at which cores failed. The analysis identifies production characteristics of the two assemblages and shows that, although production risks were present, they ad…
Photogrammetrical Assessment of Procedural Patterns and Sequential Structure in “Handaxe” Manufacture
When initially discovered in 2014, 21 Early Stone Age (ESA) pointed stone bifaces from the Uitspankraal 1 (UPK1) in western South Africa were left in the field but recorded for photogrammetry analysis. Digital models developed with these data made it possible to recognize that UPK1 handaxes were routinely produced with a process that emphasized outline rather than volumetric adjustment and usually involved only a single flip. The procedural unifo…
Contexts for Conflict
There has been a long history of interest in the material remains of conflict, but in the last two and a half decades archaeologists have made strides in the study of war and warfare. Techniques have been developed, refined, and borrowed to expose the material record of combat. Sites associated with other military undertakings have been discovered and the material culture of conflict has been documented. This growth has expanded an understanding …
Operations Research and Archaeology
Operations research is the systematic study of resource utilization through the manipulation of conceptual models. Used most often by engineers and managers, these models also have potential application in archaeology. Event tree analysis, which models multipart systems with a number of potential consequences resulting from a series of events, makes it possible to analyze artifact-production processes or the operation of complex economic activiti…
Virtual Reconstruction as Archaeological Observation
Virtual Reconstruction is a powerful tool broadly suited to a diverse array of archaeological heritage applications. In practice, however, reconstruction has largely focused on grand and monumental sites. Here we present two case studies–one from southern Oklahoma, the other from western Nebraska–to explore the use of this technology for more common heritage applications. The goal of this article is to advertise the dilemma we faced with communic…
Continuity and Local Evolution in the Neolithic of South China
The Neolithic of South China (and of the Far East generally) has traditionally been reconstructed on nuclear-diffusionist models; chronologies and local culture sequences in South China have been related to the rise of agriculture and Neolithic technology in North China, and their subsequent spread into the South, often seen to have resulted from a movement of peoples out of the "nuclear area." Recent data now suggest a generally contemporaneous …
Do Regions Make Theory? Comments on Mitchell's Discussion of the Legacy of the Missouri Basin Project
Mark Mitchell’s (Mitchell 2006) assessment of the theoretical legacy of the Smithsonian Institution’s Missouri Basin Project does not show that research in the Great Plains has made a particularly small contribution to archeological theory. The sparse population, dispersed professional community, and paucity of graduate archeology programs in the region contribute to its archeological research patterns
Burning Issues
To develop general characteristics of burned structures, charred features in an excavated Nebraska phase earthlodge are discussed in light of observations made during the intentional burning of a reconstructed earthlodge. These comparisons show that earthlodge burning was not a simple or uniform process. Posts and soil overburden collapse separately. Charred posts reflect incomplete combustion of posts likely to have been smothered by slumped soi…
Purveying the Past
The business of selling antiques is a popular arena in which modern Americans curate much of the country’s cultural patrimony, define what is important and valuable about the national past, and decide the condition of the things that will survive into the future. A study of the antiques market in Lincoln, Nebraska reveals how the trade in antiques organizes and presents widely dispersed goods with a . marketing channel composed of four steps that…
An Inscribed Native American Battle Image From The Little Bighorn Battlefield
A brass artifact found in the Hunkpapa campsite that was attacked by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on June 25, 1876 is engraved with images of soldiers and American Indians. The battle image was scratch engraved on this unique medium in a pre-Reservation Biographic style reminiscent of rock art and robe art of the same era. It may depict a scene from the Battle of the Little Bighorn or the Rosebud Battle of June 17, 1876. In any case, the arti…
Continuity and Local Evolution in the Neolithic of South China
The Neolithic of South China (and of the Far East generally) has traditionally been reconstructed on nuclear-diffusionist models; chronologies and local culture sequences in South China have been related to the rise of agriculture and Neolithic technology in North China, and their subsequent spread into the South, often seen to have resulted from a movement of peoples out of the "nuclear area." Recent data now suggest a generally contemporaneous …
An Objective Test of the Effects of Heat Treatment of Flakeable Stone
Widely held notions about the effects of heat treatment of flakeable stone were tested by agitating matching sets of regularly shaped pieces of heated and raw chert. The tests indicate that heat treatment changes some of the variables that control flake formation although not necessarily in ways that make flintworking 'easier.' It appears that in order to realize an advantage to the practice, the flintknapper must call on individual skill to make…
News and Short Contributions
Prehistory of Japan
Plains Conference
The Optimal Design of Hunting Weapons
Design engineers share archaeologists' interest in material culture, but unlike archaeologists, engineers have developed concepts for determining the suitability of technical systems to perform specific tasks. Given the difficulty archaeologists face in developing theories of material culture, I suggest that guiding principles of engineering design offer potentially useful insights.In this article I discuss two design alternatives for optimizing …
Energetic efficiency and hand tool design
Objectivity, Reflection And Single Case Studies
Operations Research and Archaeology
Operations research is the systematic study of resource utilization through the manipulation of conceptual models. Used most often by engineers and managers, these models also have potential application in archaeology. Event tree analysis, which models multipart systems with a number of potential consequences resulting from a series of events, makes it possible to analyze artifact-production processes or the operation of complex economic activiti…
Why do artifacts look the way they do
Cotterell, Brian and Johan Kamminga. Mechanics of Pre‐Industrial Technology: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Ancient and Traditional Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. xv + 325 pp. including appendices, references, and index. $49.50 cloth. Basalla, George. The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. viii + 248 pp. including references and index. $11.95 paper. Norman, Donald A. The Desi…
Jomon of Japan
Subsistence and Stone Tool Technology
Risk and Cost in Japanese Microcore Technology
To study production risks In a prehistoric technology, this paper presents an event tree analysis (ETA) of microblade technology at Paleolithic sites from north central Honshu, Japan. ETA reconstructs the sequence of steps involved in making micro-cores and determines the points and rates at which cores failed. The analysis identifies production characteristics of the two assemblages and shows that, although production risks were present, they ad…
Each According to Need and Fashion
An Inscribed Native American Battle Image From The Little Bighorn Battlefield
A brass artifact found in the Hunkpapa campsite that was attacked by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on June 25, 1876 is engraved with images of soldiers and American Indians. The battle image was scratch engraved on this unique medium in a pre-Reservation Biographic style reminiscent of rock art and robe art of the same era. It may depict a scene from the Battle of the Little Bighorn or the Rosebud Battle of June 17, 1876. In any case, the arti…
Content as Variability, Result as Selection
Technology has long been of interest to anthropologists but anthropological study of the topic has lagged behind consideration of other human institutions. In part this is because technology has remained poorly understood and incompletely defined and because technology's material and non‐material components have been either confused or treated in isolation. To clarify the relationship between its material and non‐material aspects, this paper defi…
Technology, Flaked Stone Technology, and Risk
Recent theoretical studies of flaked stone technology have identified many factors that affect the ways in which human beings make and use tools. However, these studies lack a unified body of theory that might help to integrate their diverse perspectives. This paper expands recent anthropological discussions of risk as the basis for such a theory. We begin by defining risk, emphasizing two distinct components of this concept-the probability that …
Purveying the Past
The business of selling antiques is a popular arena in which modern Americans curate much of the country’s cultural patrimony, define what is important and valuable about the national past, and decide the condition of the things that will survive into the future. A study of the antiques market in Lincoln, Nebraska reveals how the trade in antiques organizes and presents widely dispersed goods with a . marketing channel composed of four steps that…
Trees or Chains, Links or Branches
Obviously sequential, but continuous or staged? Refits and cognition in three late paleolithic assemblages from Japan
Cheap, Regular, and Reliable
Systematically produced microblades are a hallmark of terminal Pleistocene occupation of the Japanese archipelago. Regional differences in microblade production have been interpreted as “cultural.” Building on detailed technological analyses by Japanese scholars, this chapter uses event tree analysis of assemblages from Araya, Kakuniyama, and Fukui Cave to suggest that major differences in microblade production were designed to fit with hunting s…
Japan
Living in the human niche
Do Regions Make Theory? Comments on Mitchell's Discussion of the Legacy of the Missouri Basin Project
Mark Mitchell’s (Mitchell 2006) assessment of the theoretical legacy of the Smithsonian Institution’s Missouri Basin Project does not show that research in the Great Plains has made a particularly small contribution to archeological theory. The sparse population, dispersed professional community, and paucity of graduate archeology programs in the region contribute to its archeological research patterns
[Foragers and Farmers in the Japanese Islands] a Nice Place to Live and Work
Archaeology (23 works) · History (23 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (19 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Geography (16 works) · History (12 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (12 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Engineering (6 works) · Geology (6 works)