Archaeology Midterm

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Archaeologist use M******* R****** and P********* to explain the world

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Material Remains and Patterning

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Material remains are

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By products of cultural activities (ie learned, shared, cognitively structured behavior)

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Patterning

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In material remains, reflects the routine nature of cultural behaviors

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Task of Archaeology

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Identify patterns (and deviations)
Explain their significance

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Artifact

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portable human handiwork

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Ecofact

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natural resources used for subsistence, etc.

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Feautres

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non-portable human made structures

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Sites:

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loci of past human activities; 3D association of artifacts, features, and regions

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Law of Superposition

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➣ Nicolas Steno (1669), William Smith (1815).
➣ Sedimentary layers are deposited in a time
sequence, with the oldest on the bottom and
the youngest on the top = stratigraph

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Law of Uniformitarianism

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➣ Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (1830)
➣ deposits can be understood in terms of
processes observable today
➣ Earth was VERY old

Front 11

Archaeologist use M******* R****** and P********* to explain the world

Back 11

Material Remains and Patterning

Front 12

Material remains are

Back 12

Byproducts of cultural activities (ie learned, shared, cognitively structured behavior)

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Patterning

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In material remains, reflects the routine nature of cultural behaviors

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Task of Archaeology

Back 14

Identify patterns (and deviations)
Explain their significance

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Artifact

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portable human handiwork

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Ecofact

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natural resources used for subsistence, etc.

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Feautres

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non-portable human made structures

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Sites:

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loci of past human activities; 3D association of artifacts, features, and regions

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Law of Superposition

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➣ Nicolas Steno (1669), William Smith (1815).
➣ Sedimentary layers are deposited in a time
sequence, with the oldest on the bottom and
the youngest on the top = stratigraph

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Law of Uniformitarianism

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➣ Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (1830)
➣ deposits can be understood in terms of
processes observable today
➣ Earth was VERY old

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Gradualism

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➣ deposits built up over a long time by
processes observable today
(Uniformitarianism)
➣ species did not change (no concept of
evolution yet), only went extinct

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Catastrophism

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➣ Cuvier, French comparative anatomist
➣ global-scale disasters unknown today
wiped life out earlier “worlds” and lif

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What is the Three Age System?

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Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age

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Who invented the Three Age system?

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Christian Jurgensen Thomsen

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Why was Brixham cave in England important?

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Human artifacts found with Ice Age animal bones. Challenged view of Catastrophism.

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What is Antiquarianism?

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Study of antiquities, tour of Europe, done by rich white gentleman.

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Systematic Archaeology (1880s-1920s)

<3 Evolution to explain cultural differences

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- Less emphasis on treasures/spectacular finds
- Careful, systematic recordings of mundane finds and spatial locations
- comparison with past people to living assemblage

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Franz Boas

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➣ Cultural Relativism: No
universal standard by which to
judge human progress.
➣ Historical Particularism: Each
culture is the product of uni

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Culture History vs. Evolution
</3 evolution
(1920s- 1960)

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Culture changed through migration and diffusion

➤ For Archaeology, This Meant
Trait Lists and Culture Histories
➤ Assumptions:
➣ similar artifacts in different sites =
one culture
➤ Time / Space Systematics:
➣ Primary Goals: Space, Time, Form
➣ Organize cultural units within a
temporal and spatial framework
➣ Interpreted as migration of people
or diffusion of ideas.
➤ Methodology:
➣ Excavate units within sites
➣ Compare artifacts between sites
➤ Oscar Montelius (1843-1957

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Processual Archaeology
(1960-1980)

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Saw Cultural Archaeology as not enough about hard evidence and science


➤ Methodology:
➣ Broad sample of materials needed to
capture cultural processes
➣ Ethnoarchaeology - use the modern world to understand the past

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Post-Processual Archaeology

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Science is one truth, there are multiple truths.

A wide variety of theoretical
viewpoints have been embraced
➣ Material culture as symbolic
➣ Individuals and Agency
➣ Social categories embedded in
power relationships
 Gender, Ethnicity, Clas

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Primary goals of Archaeology

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- Time
- Space
- Form

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Secondary goals of Archaeology

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- Pattern
- Process
- Meaning

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NAGPRA

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Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

-- Passed in 1990, signed by George H.W. Bush
-- Requires that human remains, funerary objects,
sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony be
repatriated
-- Provides protection and ownership of items
unearthed on federal and tribal land
--First and foremost human rights legislation

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Time/Space Systematics = Chronology Building

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➣ Site Chronologies
➣ Regional Chronologies
➣ Cultural Chronologies – traditions & horizon

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Formation Processes

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Site Formation Processes: what patterns created a site? what events occurred that affect remains from last use to when they were found

Behavior Processes: what behavior does the data reflect

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Law of Association

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Materials in the same layer date to the same layer

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Index Fossil

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➣ concept taken from paleontology
➣ species typical of a span of time
➣ Presence in geological layers can
be used to date the laye

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Seriation

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- Placing artifacts in a series
- Artifacts that are closer to one another are more similar

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Terminus Post Queum

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the date AFTER which an artifact must have been deposited
ex. a coin dating to 1824

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Terminus Ante Quem

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the date BEFORE which a layer must have been deposited
ex. a french tobacco pipe bowl dating from 1865-1898

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Stanley South

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- archaeologist working on historic colonial sites in South Carolina
- Sought a method for dating site of the historic period using such evidence
- Using TPQ/TAQ reasoning, argued you could date a feature by the earliest date of the latest artifact (TAQ) and the latest date of the earliest artifact (TPQ)

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South's Mean Ceramic Dating

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Statistical methohd ofr dating ceramic

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Louis Binford

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- Mean date analysis of tobacco bowl pipe

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Dendrochronology

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- Developed by AE Douglass working in SW in 1920s
- Trees lay down annual growth rings
- Variable width related to rainfall/cimate
- patterns can be used to date sites and reconstruct environmental history

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Regional Survey

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Records distribution of artifacts and features across landscape

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Site Survey

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Suggests horizontal structure of individual sites

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Excavation

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Horizontal + vertical association of artifacts and features within a site

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Non-Site

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Extremely low density evidence (transient but important activities in landscape)

ie Lake Turkana footprints

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6 Factors of Regional Survey

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1. Research question
2. Kind of features you have
3. Formation processes
4. Environment
5. Local Politics
6. Funding/Time constraints

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2.

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How do you define regions?

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- Geography
- Artifact common traditions
- Materials: zone of exchange
- Historically documented interactions

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Magnetometry

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- uses small magnetic disturbances in Earth's magnetic field

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Soil Resistivity

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Electrical resistance in the soil varies, and is affected by the presence of features
- Electrical current passed through the ground at regular points on a grid.

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Ground Penetrating Radar

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- radar signal sent into the ground
- subsurface objects and stratigraphy will cause reflections that are picked up by a receiver

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Diachronic

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ideal for examining changes through time
(vertical test pits, flotation samples, component sites from different temporal periods)

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Synchronic

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snapshot of activities and associations at one point in time

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Low Level Theory

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emerges from hands-on archaeological fieldwork
- the basic data collected in archaeology

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Middle level theory

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links archaeological data to the behavioral or natural processes that produced them

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High level theory

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broader "how" and "why" questions of human history

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Experimental archaeology

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- controlled experiments with analagous materials, technology, methods, etc.

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Ethnographic & Ethnohistoric Analogy

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- Used as part of "direct historical approach"
- requires an uninterrupted historical and cultural link of present to earlier culture
- meaning from historic times assigned to archaeological objects and contexts

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Ethnoarchaeology

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- study living societies with some analogous aspects to archaeological cases