Ch. 4 - Doing Fieldwork: Why Archaeologists Dig Square Holes Flashcards
Provenience
An artifact’s location relative to a system of spatial data collection.
Pleistocene
A geologic period from 2 million to 10,000 years ago, which was characterized by multiple periods of extensive glaciation.
In situ
From Latin, meaning “in position”; the place where an artifact, ecofact, or feature was found during excavation or survey.
Test excavation
A small initial excavation to determine a site’s potential for answering a research question.
Datum point
The zero point, a fixed reference used to keep control on a dig; usually controls both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of provenience.
Natural level
A vertical subdivision of an excavation square that is based on natural breaks in the sediments (in terms of color, grain size, texture, hardness, or other characteristics).
Arbitrary level
The basic vertical subdivision of an excavation square; only used when easily recognizable “natural” strata are lacking and when natural strata are more than 10 cm thick.
Strata (singular, stratum)
More or less homogenous or gradational material, visually separable from other levels by a discrete change in the character of the material – texture, compactness, color, rock, organic content – and/or by a sharp break in the nature of deposition.
Living floor
A distinct buried surface on which people lived.
Total station
A device that uses a beam of light bounces off a prism to determine an artifact’s provenience; it is accurate to +/- 3 mm
Water screening
A sieving process in which deposit is placed on a screen and the matrix washed away with hoses; essential where artifacts are expected to be small and/or difficult to find without washing.
Matrix sorting
The hand sorting of processed bulk soil samples for minute artifacts and ecofacts.
Flotation
The use of fluid suspension to recover tiny burned plant remains and bone fragments from archaeological sites.
Systemic context
The living behavioral system in which artifacts were originally manufactured, used, reused, and discarded.
Archaeological context
Once artifacts enter the ground, they become part of the archaeological context, where they can continue to be affected by human action but are also affected by natural processes.
Formation process
The ways in which human behaviors and natural actions operate to produce the archaeological record.
Cultural depositional processes
The ways in which artifacts enter the archaeological context though human action, primarily discard, loss, caching, and ritual interment.
Reclamation process
Human behaviors that result in artifacts’ moving from the archaeological context back to the systemic context – for example, scavenging beams from an abandoned structure to use in a new one.
Cultural disturbance process
Human behaviors that modify artifacts in their archaeological context – for instance, digging pits, hearths, canals, and houses.
Reuse processes
Human behaviors that recycle and reuse artifacts before the artifacts enter an archaeological context.
Floralturbation
A natural formation process in which trees and other plants affect the distribution of artifacts within an archaeological site.
Faunalturbation
A natural formation process in which animals, from large game to earthworms, affect the distribution of material within an archaeological site.
Krotovina
A filled-in animal burrow.
Cryoturbation
A natural formation process in which freeze/thaw activity in a soil selectively pushes larger artifacts to the surface of a site.
Argilliturbation
A natural formation process in which wet/dry cycles push artifacts upward as the sediment swells and then moves them down as cracks form during dry cycles.
Graviturbation
A natural formation process in which artifacts are moved downslope through gravity, sometimes assisted by precipitation runoff.
