arch. lecture 1

Question 1

Archaeology

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Anthropology | Relationship with Other Disciplines

Answer 2

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

Question 3

History | Relationship with Other Disciplines

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

Historical Archaeology

Answer 4

• 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?

Question 5

Classical Archaeology

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Science | Relationship with Other Disciplines

Answer 6

• 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?

Question 7

Archaeology is a Social Science

Answer 7

• 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.

Question 8

Artifact | Affecting the Archaeological Record

Answer 8

any object made or modified by people.

Question 9

Ecofact | Affecting the Archaeological Record

Answer 9

natural object used or affected by people.

Question 10

Feature | Affecting the Archaeological Record

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Site | Factors That Affect the Archaeological Record

Answer 11

a place where evidence of past human acitivty is preserved.

Question 12

How Do Artifacts Enter the Archaeological Record?

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

Natural Factors | Transforming the Archaeological Record

Answer 13

• 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.

Question 14

Cultural Factors | Transforming the Archaeological Record

Answer 14

• 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.

Question 15

Context

Answer 15

• 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.

Question 16

Survey

Answer 16

• 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

Question 17

How Are Sites Found?

Answer 17

• 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

Question 18

Surface Surveying

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Subsurface Surveying

Answer 19

• 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

Question 20

Site Evaluation | Excavation

Answer 20

• 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.

Question 21

Vertical Excavation

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Horizontal Excavation

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Screening (or Sifting) | Excavation

Answer 23

• 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

Question 24

Direct Dating

Answer 24

analysis of the object itself.

Question 25

Indirect Dating

Answer 25

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

Question 26

Relative Dating

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Absolute Dating

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Stratigraphy | Relative Dating

Answer 28

• 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

Question 29

Seriation | Relative Dating

Answer 29

• 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

Question 30

Frequency Seriation | Relative Dating

Answer 30

• 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

Question 31

Geochronology | Relative Dating

Answer 31

• 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

Question 32

Calendar Dating | Absolute Dating

Answer 32

• 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

Question 33

Obsidian Hydration | Absolute Dating

Answer 33

• 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

Question 34

Dendrochronology | Absolute Dating

Answer 34

• 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

Question 35

Geomagnetism | Absolute Dating

Answer 35

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

Question 36

Radiocarbon Dating | Absolute Dating

Answer 36

• 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

Question 37

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) | Absolute Dating

Answer 37

• 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

Question 38

Limitations of C14 Dating | Absolute Dating

Answer 38

• 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

Question 39

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

Answer 39

• 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.

Question 40

Dating

Answer 40

• 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.

Question 41

The Archaeological Record

Answer 41

• 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”.