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🚫 ANT100Y1: Introduction to Anthropology (Fall 2015) with S. Lehman & M. Friesen > arch. lecture 1 > Flashcards

arch. lecture 1 Flashcards

1
Q

Archaeology

A

the study of material remains (physical objects) and their spatial relationships to interpret past human behaviour.

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2
Q

Anthropology | Relationship with Other Disciplines

A

anthropology is the study of humankind.

  • a holistic discipline
  • archaeology adds a historical dimension, and comparative case studies
  • 4 subdisciplines:
    • Archaeology
    • Social-Cultural Anthropology
    • Linguistic Anthropology
    • Biological Anthropology
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3
Q

History | Relationship with Other Disciplines

A
  • Both study the past
  • History is based on written documents; archaeology on material culture
  • History is limited to at most 5,000 years; less than 100 in some regions
  • History - limited primarily to literate societies
  • Written records tend to focus on the rich and powerful
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4
Q

Historical Archaeology

A
  • archaeology with aid of historic records.
  • documents do not give the complete picture, and only archaeology can fill the gaps
  • e.g. how did “commoners” live?
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5
Q

Classical Archaeology

A
  • specialized subdiscipline
  • classical civilizations of Greece and Rome from about 700 BCE-500 CE.
  • allied with art history and history
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6
Q

Science | Relationship with Other Disciplines

A
  • Science is the systematic pursuit of knowledge about natural phenomena.
  • Archaeology interacts with many different sciences:
    • Geology – e.g., understanding what types of stone were selected for stone tools
    • Biology – e.g., identification of bones of extinct species
    • Physics and Chemistry – e.g., radiocarbon dating
    • Astronomy – e.g., was Stonehenge aligned with the summer solstice?
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7
Q

Archaeology is a Social Science

A
  • Since archaeology deals with human behaviour, it is often less predictable than the natural sciences
  • people are dynamic and complex, because of individual personality, culture, and motivations.
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8
Q

Artifact | Affecting the Archaeological Record

A

any object made or modified by people.

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9
Q

Ecofact | Affecting the Archaeological Record

A

natural object used or affected by people.

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10
Q

Feature | Affecting the Archaeological Record

A

non-portable material remains resulting from human activity (e.g. a house, a fireplace, a midden).

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11
Q

Site | Factors That Affect the Archaeological Record

A

a place where evidence of past human acitivty is preserved.

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12
Q

How Do Artifacts Enter the Archaeological Record?

A

four stages:

  1. acuisition: either direct or through trade.
  2. manufacture: modification of raw materials.
  3. use: leaves traces on artifact; can also be interpreted from where the artifact is found.
  4. deposition: entry of the material into the archaeological record.
  • artifacts can enter the archaeological record at any point in this process.
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13
Q

Natural Factors | Transforming the Archaeological Record

A
  • climate - temperature and humidity
  • extreme wet, dry, or cold preserves organics
  • biological factors - eg. decay, rodents, carnivores.
  • soil chemistry – can destroy (acid) or preserve (fossilize) - catastrophic events (volcanoes, earthquakes)
  • ​as a result of natural and cultural factors, the archaeological record is highly distorted.
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14
Q

Cultural Factors | Transforming the Archaeological Record

A
  • Large Scale Human Events (e.g., war)
  • Looting - encouraged by the antiquities market
  • Disturbance through industrial or agricultural development
  • as a result of natural and cultural factors, the archaeological record is highly distorted.
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15
Q

Context

A
  • provenience and associations of an artifact, feature, or archaeological find in space and time
  • Provenience = three-dimensional location of an artifact or feature
  • Association = two or more items occurring together usually in same level, feature, etc.
    • e.g. artifacts associated with burial
  • primary context: undisturbed since deposition of artifacts by people who made and used them.
    • ​e.g. burials, living floors, houses, middens
  • ​secondary context: location and association are altered, so less information is available to the archaeologist.
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16
Q

Survey

A
  • survey: the systematic search for archaeological sites
  • yields data on site size, distribution, number, form
  • also yields data on local ecological zones and geographic features
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17
Q

How Are Sites Found?

A
  • Chance or Accident
    • e.g. cave paintings in Lascaux (schoolboy’s dog), “Ice man” (found by hikers)
  • Use of documentary sources
    • e.g. L’Anse aux Meadows viking site in Newfoundland
  • Salvage archaeology
    • determined by industrial or urban development plans or site destruction
  • Archaeological survey
    • -Survey of regions. Allows reconstruction of settlement pattern = distribution of sites across the landscape
18
Q

Surface Surveying

A
  • most common – walking – looking for surface artifacts
  • aerial survey – airplanes, helicopters, drones
19
Q

Subsurface Surveying

A
  • used to identify buried remains
  • simplest, most common = test pitting – using shovel
  • Non-invasive methods for subsurface detection:
    • Soil Resistivity - resistance to electrical current
    • Ground Penetrating Radar - bounces electromagnetic waves off of subsurface features
20
Q

Site Evaluation | Excavation

A
  • once a site is found, you must determine size, type, layout
  • produce accurate maps
  • plot surface artifacts and ecofacts
  • subsurface testing

Excavation is necessary to acquire detailed information

  • often, buried deposits are better preserved and less disturbed than surface deposits
  • only buried deposits allow archaeologist to infer association
  • buried deposits provide the best evidence for change in activity over time
  • the key = retaining exact 3-dimensional record of context

note: archaeological excavation is destructive!

  • only dig what is necessary to answer current questions.
  • record, photograph, and draw everything.
21
Q

Vertical Excavation

A
  • stratigraphy, change through time
  • deep probes, generally used to construct chronologies
22
Q

Horizontal Excavation

A
  • spatial distributions at a specific time
  • single deposit or former living surface
  • looks at relationships between artifacts, ecofacts, features, etc.
23
Q

Screening (or Sifting) | Excavation

A
  • critically important to recover full range of material – pass soil through screen in order to find small artifacts and ecofacts
  • Flotation - special type of screening – materials lighter than water are collected from surface
24
Q

Direct Dating

A

analysis of the object itself.

25
Q

Indirect Dating

A

analysis of materials associated with a given object. depends on context.

26
Q

Relative Dating

A
  • earlier or later than something else.
  • ordering things in a sequence.
  • not as precise.
27
Q

Absolute Dating

A

dated to a specific year either Before Present or according to a calendrical system.

28
Q

Stratigraphy | Relative Dating

A
  • based on the sequential laying down of strata
  • 17th century - Law of Superposition: “where one layer overlies another, the lower layer was deposited first”
  • strata are created both by humans and natural processes
  • Potential Problem: Disturbance:
    • e.g. garbage pits
    • burrowing animals (rodents, dogs)
    • floods washing layers away, redeposition
29
Q

Seriation | Relative Dating

A
  • typological sequences, meaning artifacts change over time
  • Technology and fashions change (eg. cars, clothes, music, etc.)
  • some artifacts change more quickly and regularly than others
  • eg. pottery; arrowhead types
  • Stylistic Seriation
    • most often pottery - types or styles
    • presence / absence
30
Q

Frequency Seriation | Relative Dating

A
  • more precise means of determining an ordered sequence
  • based on the fact that any artifact type will be initially rare, then well-accepted, and then die out as it is replaced.
  • measuring changes in the proportional abundance (frequency) of artifacts
  • limitations: the artifact types must occur over a large region, and must occur in significant frequencies
31
Q

Geochronology | Relative Dating

A
  • Horizontal stratigraphy
    • in some areas, occupation moved horizontally in a predictable way.
    • e.g. series of beach ridges are formed as a waterbody recedes
    • e.g. Cape Krusenstern, Alaska
  • Limitations:
    • Beach ridges must be formed in a regular fashion
    • Activity must be confined to waterfront beach ridge
32
Q

Calendar Dating | Absolute Dating

A
  • e.g. dates on grave stones, monuments, written documents calendars
  • Greeks - from date of first Olympics - 776 BCE
  • Muhammad’s departure from Mecca = 622 CE
  • Egypt, China in terms of successive dynasties
  • Limitations:
    • must be long, with no gaps
      • e.g. dynasties need to list all kings
    • must be linked to a known date, or else it is relative
33
Q

Obsidian Hydration | Absolute Dating

A
  • Obsidian = volcanic glass - common stone tool material
  • When fractured - edge begins to absorb water (= “hydration”)
  • hydration penetrates into the stone at a known rate – can be measured

Limitations:

  • regionally specific - depends on temperature, moisture, etc.
  • each obsidian source is different
34
Q

Dendrochronology | Absolute Dating

A
  • temperate areas - trees dormant during winter - well-defined growth rings which vary by year in regular patterns
  • Today - many sequences - oak trees from southern Germany – 11,000 years
  • Sophisticated uses, e.g. sequences of construction and occupation of complex sites

Limitations:

  • requires preservation
  • reuse of old wood, e.g. as beams (date is of cutting, not use)
  • need a regional chronology - complex and time-consuming
  • useful only outside of tropics
35
Q

Geomagnetism | Absolute Dating

A
  • Looks at large-scale reversals of Earth’s north – south polarity.
  • used only occasionally, to confirm other dating methods
36
Q

Radiocarbon Dating | Absolute Dating

A
  • Willard Libby 1949
  • a radiometric dating method, based on radioactive decay of isotopes
  • (isotopes = different forms of an element with different “atomic weights”, ie., different numbers of protons and neutrons in the nucleus)
  • some isotopes are stable, others are unstable – unstable isotopes gradually decay, changing into stable elements
  • can be used to date objects, if you know:
    • original amount of isotope
    • amount remaining at present
    • rate of radioactive decay
  • rate of decay is measured by a half-life = the time it takes for half of the isotope to decay

​

  • Most common form of carbon = Carbon 12 (stable)
  • Cosmic radiation - produces unstable Carbon 14
  • plants absorb C14 in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis; eaten by herbivores, eaten by carnivores
  • continually replaced during life; until death
  • After death, since C14 is unstable, it decays gradually
  • half-life = 5730 years
  • as C14 decays (converting to N14), it releases radioactive beta particles
  • Geiger counter used to measure beta emissions
  • allows estimate of amount of C14 left in sample – this amount indicates the age of the sample
37
Q

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) | Absolute Dating

A
  • conventional dating - measure beta emissions - requires about 5 gm pure carbon = 10 gm charcoal, 200 gm bone.
  • AMS - measures the amount of C14 directly - requires only tiny samples:
  • artifacts themselves can be dated
  • small or valuable objects can be dated
  • if organics are rare, single seeds, twigs, etc. can be dated
38
Q

Limitations of C14 Dating | Absolute Dating

A
  • contamination before sampling: carbon in groundwater, modern plant roots, etc.
  • contamination during sampling: cardboard labels, glue, mould, etc.
  • sample is older than context (e.g., old wood used to build house)
  • some materials contain ancient carbon (eg. sea mammal bone)
  • maximum date about 50,000 years
39
Q

Potassium-Argon (K40-Ar40) Dating | Absolute Dating

A
  • another form of radiometric dating
  • used to date volcanic rock, not artifacts or other human products
  • minimum age 5,000 years, no maximum age (half life 1,330,000,000 years)
  • useful in regions with lots of volcanism - when rock is heated, drives out all Argon, and then potassium decays to argon over time at known rate.
40
Q

Dating

A
  • with all dating methods, demonstration of association is key.
  • generally, try to use at least two methods to confirm date.
    • e.g. stratigraphy + C14.
  • every dating method has its problems and limitations.
41
Q

The Archaeological Record

A
  • the archaeological record is the sum of all physical evidence about the past that survives to the present, i.e. objects plus their context.
  • but not all behaviour will leave material traces.
  • because of intervening cultural and natural processes, the archaeological record is not usually a direct reflection of past behaviour.
  • archaeologists must avoid the “Pompeii Premise”.

🚫 ANT100Y1: Introduction to Anthropology (Fall 2015) with S. Lehman & M. Friesen (12 decks)

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