Chapter 6 Flashcards
Why is the Anthropology Archaeologist?
Helps human modification of the physical environment
What is archaeological record?
Interpret cultural variation and cultural changes deep into the past
How has Archaeologist changed over time?
- Focusing on reconstructing material remains of the past
- Strives to reconstruct the life-ways, or cultures of past people
- Explain the cultural processes that created a culture and known as processual archaeology
- Interpretive archaeology or postprocessual archaeology
Who are processual archaeologists?
- Objective (empirical science)
- Use mathematics to examine distribution of material remains over space and time
- Emphasize human adaptation to different environments (functional approach)
Who are postprocessual archaeologists?
- Human agency and the power of ideas and values when studying past cultures
- Stress symbolic and cognitive aspects of societies
- Examine power, domination, and internal contradictions within a society from the archaeological recod
What are the three parts of the Archaeological Records?
- Artifacts (the portable objects made, used, or modified by hominins)
- Eco-facts (plant or animal remains that are byproducts of hominin activities)
- Features (non-portable remnants or hominin activities, such as walls, ditches, or mounds)
What is a site?
Represent a geographic location with the remains of past activities
How do you examine the the four types archaeological record?
- Matrix (physical medium that surrounds, holds, and supports archaeological remains)
- Association (two or more objects found in the same matrix)
- Provenance (three-dimensional location of an object within the matrix)
- Context (evaluation of what happened to an object after it entered the archaeological record)
Why do we interview?
Farmers or other who have accidentally encountered sites
Why do archaeologists survey?
Geographical region to find unknown sites
What is GIS (geographic information systems)
Used to organize site information
What are the three types of surveying?
- Pedestrian (involves walking systematically across the ground and looking for surface remains)
- Aerial (use planes to identify crop growth patterns or other signs indicating surface of buried remains)
- Geophysical (uses sophisticated technology to “see” buried cultural remains)
Why do archaeologist excavate?
Site consists of the systematic uncovering of archaeological remains through careful removal of the matrix
Why are archaeologists moving away from excavation?
Always destructive
What is documentation?
Must be careful and thorough
How do archaeologist record sites?
- Three-dimensional grid system
- Strati-graphic excavation (digging in layers)
What is cataloging?
Involves classifying an object’s shape, material, and function
What is an Assemblage?
Group of artifacts and features from a particular time and place in a site
Why are Archaeological cultures important?
Constructed by grouping similar assemblages from many sites
- Map similarities and differences across space
- Maybe mistaking assumed to represent a real social group
What is subsistence strategies?
Represent the different ways that varying societies meet basic survival needs
How did archaeologists divide societies?
- Foragers (food collectors who gather, fish, or hunt)
- Food producers (depends on domesticated plants or animals or both)
What are the two types of food producers?
- Pastoralists (herd animals)
- Farmers (practice intensive or extensive agriculture)
What are societies?
Categorized into bands, tribes, chiefdom, and states that represent points on a continuum
What are Band Societies?
- Common social organization among foragers
- NO more than 50 people
- Provide roughly equal access to material or social valuables
- Divide labor is based in age and sex
What are Tribal societies?
- Composed of farmer or herders
- More people than band societies
- Provide roughly equal access to material of social valuables
- Divide labor basis of sodalities that group people based on age, sex, economic role, or personal interest
- Can have a leader with greater prestige but not usually greater power or wealth
What are Chiefdom Societies
- More people than seen in tribal
- Provide roughly unequal access to material or social valuables
- Have a leader have privileged access to power, wealth, and prestige
- Greater degree of craft production
- May develop into states
What are States?
- Consist of a stratified society with unequal access to material or social valuables
- Defined territory and a centralized government
- Led by an elite with the power to tax and a monopoly on using force
- May develop into empires by conquering other states
Whose past is it?
- Past can have meaning to people living today
- Descendant communities help deepen an understanding of the past
What is the NAGPRA?
- Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
- Protect Native American graves on federal or tribal land starting in 1990
- Must inventory Native American human remains and cultural objects collected in past years
- Items can be “repatriated” or returned to Native American groups
How does Land development destroy sites?
- Construction
- Mechanized Agriculture
What id Gender Archaeology?
Recognizes that traditional archaeologists have often ignored the presence of women in the past
What is Collaborative Archaeology?
Projects seek to study the past by working with descendant communities
What is Archaeology as a tool of civic engagement?
An approach that seeks to use an understanding of the past to address modern social justice issues
