2/3 - how do we find sites? Flashcards
Feature
Nonportable archaeological evidence such as fire hearths, architectural elements, artifact clusters, garbage pits, and soil stains.
Midden
Refuse deposit resulting from human activities, generally consisting of sediments; food remains such as charred seeds, animal bone, and shell; and discarded artifacts.
Fifty-year rule
In the US, something is considered archaeological after 50 years.
Cache
A collection of things stored for later.
Ritual Deposit
things left behind for a specific purpose
Dwelling
place where people lived, many makes a city
Settlement patterns
The distribution of archaeological sites across a region.
Settlement systems
The movements and activities reconstructed from a settlement pattern.
Pedestrian Survey
walk in straight lines and record what you see - good for places with ground visibility and little buried deposits. great for plowed places.
Ground Penetrating Radar
A remote sensing technique in which radar pulses directed into the ground reflect back to the surface when they strike features or interfaces within the ground, showing the presence and depth of possible buried features.
Magnetometry
Similar to GPR but for magnets.
Shovel Testing
A sample survey methods used in regions where rapid soil buildup obscures buried archaeological remains; it entails digging shallow, systematic pits across the survey unit.
LiDAR
A technique that uses satellite or airplane based laser scanning to map ground surface at very fine resolution. It can penetrate tree canopy, and create topographic maps providing 5-10 centimeter accuracy.
Augering
Coring subsurface deposits at even intervals. time consuming, small diameter, 12+ feet deep.
Coring
technique to extract cylindrical samples of soil or sediment from the ground.
