Chapter 2 Edited

Question 1

How are Sites Formed

Answer 1

come into existence through a series of site formation processes, tools discarded or lost food remains thrown in trash pit or pile dead bodies abandoned or intentionally ceremonially buried valuable objects cached

Question 2

Taphonomy

Answer 2

how materials become part of the paleontological or archaeological record.

Question 3

Artifact

Answer 3

any object manufactured by a human being or human ancestor. Usually defined further as a portable object like a stone spearpoint or clay pot to distinguish it from larger more complex archaeological features.

Question 4

Ecofact

Answer 4

element found in archaeological contexts that exhibits human activity, but was not made by people and so is not, strictly speaking, an artifact.

Question 5

Site

Answer 5

a place where people lived and/or worked and where the physical evidence of their existence in the form of artifacts, ecofacts, and features can be or have been recovered.

Question 6

Primary Refuse

Answer 6

archaeological artifacts and ecofacts left at the place they were used or produced.

Question 7

Feature

Answer 7

a combination of artifacts and/or ecofacts at a site, reflecting a location where some human activity took place.

Question 8

Secondary Refuse

Answer 8

archaeological artifacts and ecofacts that were removed by the people who made used, or produced them from the place where they were made, used, or produced, to a designated refuse area or areas

Question 9

How Sites are Found

Answer 9

some natural processes expose them, rivers cutting into banks wind blowing sand waves eroding beach

Question 10

Pedestrian Survey

Answer 10

a systematic walkover of an area in the search for archaeological remains.

Question 11

Lidar

Answer 11

Lidar: an imaging method that uses pulses of laser light- light detection and ranging- to produce 3-D images. Lidar is able to penetrate the leaf canopy of trees and is useful, therefore, even in heavily forested regions. Lidar is very useful in the search for aboveground archaeological remains and in mapping sites with aboveground remains.

Question 12

Cache

Answer 12

a stash of stuff placed away for safekeeping
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Question 13

X Ray Flourescence

Answer 13

a technique for identifying the chemical makeup of a raw material

Question 14

Coprolites

Answer 14

fossilized feces, useful in the reconstruction of an ancient diet

Question 15

Pollen

Answer 15

pollen grains are the male gametes in plant sexual reproduction

Question 16

Phytoliths

Answer 16

microscopic, inorganic particles produced by plants

Question 17

How to determine sex of a skeleton

Answer 17

Human and ape males have skeletons that are often readily distinguishable from those of females of the same species

Males tend to be larger, with heavier, denser, and tougher bones than females

Larger, heavier skulls, with larger and rougher areas for muscle attachment

In some ape species - males have a bony crest on top of skulls, and females lack this feature

Males have a large ridge of bone above eye orbits,

females either lack this feature or have a smaller ridge

Among humans, all the various angles of the pelvis that control the overall size of the birth canal are, of necessity, larger in the vast majority of females than in males

Modern forensic scientists as well as paleoanthropologists can correctly distinguish males and females more than 85% of the time

Male skulls are more likely to feature prominent brow bones and jaws that are strong and square; also larger are the occipital crest, where muscles attach in the back of the head, and the mastoid process, the bony bump behind your ear. Female features are smaller, or “gracile.”

Question 18

How to determine age (at death) of individual from the skeleton

Answer 18

The bones of human children go through a series of developmental changes through the course of their lives

Tooth eruption and replacement provides developmental time-posts in human maturation

Deciduous dentition - the baby teeth - erupt above the gum line in a regular and fairly well-established time and order

The permanent teeth replace the baby teeth in a regular pattern and at well-fixed ages until the wisdom teeth come in

Long bones - various bones of arms, legs, hands, feet

At birth, each long bone is in three sections, a shaft (diaphysis) and two endcaps (epiphyses)

During epiphyseal fusion the shafts and endcaps fuse to one another during growth at more or less set times during teen years -reflects maturity and full growth

Question 19

deciduous dentition

Answer 19

baby teeth. The teeth that are shed like the leaves of deciduous trees

Question 20

Diaphysis

Answer 20

the shaft of a long bone. On either end of the diaphysis, there is an epiphysis

Question 21

Epiphysis

Answer 21

the endcaps of the long bones. The epiphyses join at the ends of the diaphysis of each long bone

Question 22

Dating Techniques Based on Radioactive Decay

Answer 22

Among the best-known techniques are radiocarbon dating, potassium–argon dating and uranium–lead dating.

Question 23

absolute dating vs. relative dating

Answer 23

Absolute date: any date where a year or range of years can be applied to a site or artifact
Relative date: a date that places a fossil or archaeological site or artifact in a sequence with other specimens

Question 24

K/Ar dating

Answer 24

potassium/argon dating

Question 25

Half-life

Answer 25

measurement of the amount of time it takes for half of the radioactive isotope in a given sample to decay into a stable form

Question 26

C-14 dating/radiocarbon

Answer 26

Radiocarbon dating: radiometric dating technique based on the decay of a radioactive isotope of carbon 14C or radiocarbon
Carbon dating: radiometric dating technique based in the decay of a radioactive isotope of carbon: 14C or radiocarbon

Question 27

accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS)

Answer 27

a variety of radiocarbon dating. In AMS dating, the amount of carbon-14 left in a sample is measured directly by an actual count of atoms

Question 28

Dendrochronology

Answer 28

tree-ring dating

Question 29

Stratigraphy

Answer 29

Stratigraphic (stratigraphy): related to the geological or cultural layer in which something has been found
seriation

Question 30

obsidian hydration

Answer 30

is a geochemical method of determining age in either absolute or relative terms of an artifact made of obsidian.

Question 31

potassium argon dating argon/argon dating

Answer 31

absolute dating method based on the decay of radioactive potassium to stable argon gas. Because of the long half-life of radioactive potassium, there is no upper chronological limit to the application of the technique

Question 32

NAGPRA

Answer 32

NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) modern native Americans are the legal stewards of burials that can be shown to contain the remains of their ancestors

Question 33

Trace Element Analysis

Answer 33

determining the geographic source of the materials used by an ancient people through the analysis of small or “trace” concentrations of elements or chemicals in those raw materials.

Question 34

Palynology

Answer 34

Palynology Palynology: the identification of plants through the remains of the pollen grains

Question 35

faunal assemblage

Answer 35

Faunal assemblage: the animal bones found at a site and the species represented by those bones