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Archaeology Midterm Exam Flashcards

1
Q

What is Archaeology

A

Archaeology is the study of the ancient and recent human past through material remains

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2
Q

How did Archaeology start?

A

It grew out of a curiosity about the past and a desire to collect and study ancient artifacts.

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3
Q

How does Archaeology work?

A

By discovering and excavating artifacts and ecofacts of old sites

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4
Q

What is the famous example of the excavation site in Illinois

A

The Cahokia Mounds

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5
Q

What is a site?

A

A site is a place where human activity occurred and materials remain where deposited

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6
Q

How do sites form?

A

Sites are formed from where past human activity was. Usually it was where humans used to live and build shelters

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7
Q

What are preserves

A

Preservations are any forms of artifacts and ecofacts left at the sites

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8
Q

What are Artifacts?

A

Any man-made objects like ceramic or tools

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9
Q

What are Ecofacts?

A

Any plant objects left by the preservations like roots or other plants

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10
Q

What is a topography map?

A

detailed record of a land area, giving geographic positions and elevations for both natural and man-made features

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11
Q

Define survey?

A

Survey is an archaeological method, or set of methods, used to locate sites

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12
Q

What is site formation?

A

Some sites are obvious on the landscape, but some are hidden on aerial photos. So we need a way to find them.

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13
Q

What is an isolated find?

A

When one random artifact is found in the middle of nowhere

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14
Q

What is a topographic map?

A

a two-dimensional representation of a land area’s three-dimensional terrain

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15
Q

What is GIS stand for

A

Geographic, Information, systems

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16
Q

What is SHPO

A

State Historic Preservation Offices

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17
Q

What is Visual Survey?

A

a method of data collection that primarily uses visual cues like photographs, images, or videos to gather information

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18
Q

What is a controlled Surface survey

A

a method of recording and collecting artifacts from the ground surface

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19
Q

What is a transect

A

a transect is a straight line used to systematically survey an area, almost like a graphing module

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20
Q

What is remote sensing

A

Taking a picture of the sight and using data to detect structures in the ground

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21
Q

what is magnetometry

A

Magnetometry is a scientific technique that measures the Earth’s magnetic field and magnetic properties

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22
Q

what is Electrical resistivity

A

Electrical resistivity is a measure of a material’s property to oppose the flow of electric current

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23
Q

What is excavation

A

The process of taking out and examining artifacts and ecofacts after digging up a site

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24
Q

What is trenching it?

A

In archaeology, trenches are long, narrow excavations used to uncover buried layers of history and culture. Trenches are often dug in a grid pattern

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25
What is controlled unit
Finding exact points on a gird base
26
What is datum?
The process of making a grid on the site and moving North to South
27
what is horizontal excavation?
Usually used when recovering villages, the focus is on precise areas of interest and not units or squares of excavatoin
28
What is vertical excavation?
Commonly used while trenching, they build minecarts to help move the dirt out
29
Open area excavation?
This is where the site is uncovered layer by layer and not a lot of strata is uncovered.
30
What is Natural Levels?
In archaeology, natural levels are layers of soil that have not been impacted by humans
31
What is Arbitrary level
an archaeological technique that involves dividing excavation sites into standardized units, regardless of the site's natural stratigraphy
32
What is box grid excavation
Segmenting the site into a grid and every type is within its own graph
33
What is Strata
THe layering of rocks and dirt within the earth
34
What is Seriation?
you put things in order according to changes in style. You understand that a button up dress of lace is probably older than Jnco Jeans
35
What is Paleoethnobotany
Paleoethnobotany is the study of how humans in the past interacted with plants
36
How do you do flotation in archaeology?
Archaeologists fill a site up with water and any run off just flows out of the site
37
What is Dry Brush?
"dry brushing" refers to the technique of gently cleaning dirt off an artifact using a completely dry brush
38
What is catalog
Filing the artifacts found within a site
39
what is material culture
In archaeology, material culture is the physical objects created by a society, such as tools, buildings, and other artifacts
40
What is relative dating
Is the determinant based of finding the range of age of finding an artifacts
41
What is Diagnostic Artifacts
an item that is indicative of a particular time or culture group that tells us what time period we’re working with.
42
What is absolute dating
finding the exact date to which an object was made
43
What is stratigraphy
a branch of Geology and the Earth Sciences that deals with the arrangement and succession of strata, or layers
44
what is materiality
the study of physical objects (artifacts) and how they relate to the social practices, beliefs, and experiences of past people
45
What is an Index Fossil
a fossil that is useful for dating and correlating the strata in which it is found.
46
what is diagnostic type?
refers to an artifact or object that can be confidently dated to a specific time period or cultural group
47
what is a Harris matrix
Units of Stratification. Is a method charting that helps keep track of the different dating of layers.
48
What is stratigraphic laws
a set of principles that describe how rock layers are deposited and relate to one another
49
What are the Deetz Gravestones?
James Deetz studied the "Evolution" of the designs of gravestones to see how they are altered throughout time
50
What is Chronometric Data?
it is the function of dating something by measuring the physical and chemical changes throughout time
51
What is Dendrochronology?
Tree ring dates trees. Must be at least 20 rings and must have outer rings
52
What is Radiometric
depend on radioactivity. Use principles of beta decay to calculate age before the present. Works for radioactive isotopes.
53
What is Calendrical dating?
- cultural calendar systems: Linear time-
54
What is Linear time
The flow of time... is normal
55
What was the Mayan calendar
a complex system of cycles and counts used by the ancient Mayan civilization. made up of 3 interlocking cycles
56
What is Radiocarbon dating?
Earths atmosphere is bombarded with cosmic radiation, atmospheric nitrogen is broken down into an unstable isotope of carbon. By measuring the amount of radioactive carbon in a decaying body we can understand how old they were.
57
Who founded Radiocarbon dating
Willard E Libby
58
what does AMS stand for?
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry
59
What does AMS do?
a technique used in archaeology to date organic materials by counting carbon-14 atoms
60
What was prescientific archaeology like?
Antiquarianism: Focus on personal interests, Associated with an interest in the classic world, later the orient, that began in the Renaissance period
61
What were some flaws with Antiquarianism
Stayed with personal interests, ignored Native American landmarks, focused on collecting antiquities
62
What was the first archaeology site in North America
Thomas Jeffersons place in Monticello
63
What is Geology Uniformitarianism
Charles Lyell: Studied how old the earth was by being able to measure dates by testing erosion and found out and found out how much older the world actually was
64
What is Uniformitarianism?
the assumption that the same natural laws–the theory that changes in the earth's crust during geological history have resulted from the action of continuous and uniform processes.
65
Why do old theories about archaeology matter?
they represent the historical development of the discipline, influence current approaches to interpreting data,

Archaeology (1 decks)

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