Exam 2 Flashcards
Descriptive approach
Basic data collection; description; typically during 18th-19th century
Culture history
Establish cultural chronology via stratigraphic excavation; serif at taxonomies; late 19th-early 20th century
Processual archaeology
“The new archaeology” positivistic: we can interpret the past; applying the scientific method to look at universal laws regarding human behavior. Late 20th century - reductionist
Post-processual
Embrace complexities of human behavior; agency oriented [nuanced approach] often pursues an explicit agenda
Processual plus
A healthy compromise between processual and post
Technomic
Technologies (processuals are good at this)
Sociotechnic
Social organization
Ideotechnic
Ideologies
Africanism
A custom in Africa that slaves brought over
Sub-floor pits - what do they look like to archaeologists now?
Dark stains on the ground
Are sub-floor pits an africanism?
No
Utopia III
Williamsburg; large old scallop shells and cow bones - religious cache
Utopia IV
Glass bottle inside metal tray with push pins in it; possibly some kind of religious shrine
Where are subfloor pits found?
Atlantic Chesapeake region
Spirit bundle
Annapolis; clay clump with bullets, nail, and prehistoric Native American axe; on street curb
Carrol house
Annapolis; cache with stone crystals, buttons, pins, animal bones
Experimental archaeology
Experimental approach to addressing specific archaeological questions
Replication
Painstaking effort to reproduce every concept of an activity
Major categories of experimental arch
Basic tech, architecture, watercraft, task-labor-energy issues
Taphonomy
How do sites get formed? Ie animal carcass testing
Flintknapping
Replicating stone tools via the process of making them
Debitage
Flakes
Percussion flaking
Hitting the rock with another thing
Hard v soft hammer
Pressure flaking
Applying pressure on one rock with another
Atlatl
Helps throw spears
Seriation chart
Material culture reaches peak then declines as something new comes around
During what era was the original gravestone project done? (Deetz and Dethlefson)
Processual
Lost colony
Roanoke - first english effort
First settlement of Roanoke
1585-1586
Walter Raleigh and captain Ralph lane
Left a few people, came back to find skeleton and some supplies but that’s it
Second settlement of Roanoke
1587-1590
Family groups
Raleigh and white went to re supply, then Spanish war so didn’t return for three years
Colony was empty, settlement showed no signs of struggle or forced evacuation
Croatan
Two theories on where lost colonists went
Chesapeake and croatan
Archaeology of fort Raleigh
Ground zero - not much there
Archaeology of hatteras
South
Finding things you would expect at Raleigh
Archaeology of albermarle sound
Northeast
Site X
Found a tricky map and other stuff
Portability problems
Easily portable items are easily displaced
Paradigms
Archaeological subcultures; theoretical world view
- Processual
- Post processual
- Processual plus
Positivism
Believin we can deduce the past from archaeology
Where is Stonehenge?
Salisbury plain, south England
How kin did it take to form Stonehenge
Neolithic to Bronze Age
How is Salisbury plain’s soil categorized?
Chalky
What was Stonehenge originally, before the stones?
Wood
Why was Stonehenge created?
to anticipate significant celestial events
What is needed for conventional aerial methods?
Airborne photography; optimal seasons and oblique lighting
Crop marks
Most notable when crops change; bad crops grow where there are anomalies - old stone homes, places where ditches were dug then refilled - nazca lines in chile, Bolivia, and Peru
UAV
Unmanned aerial vehicle; drone
Satellite imagery
Google earth basically; unfiltered full-spectrum imagery; multi spectral imaging shows healthy vegetation as red and unhealthy as yellow
Proton Magnetometer
Electrical current displaces protons; pulses
Fluxgate gradiometer
Continuously measures differences in magnetic alignment of electrical currents passing between two electromagnets
Why is magnetometery good?
Large anomalies, rapid collection
But it’s sensitive to interference!
GPR
Ground penetrating radar; measure length of time at which radio signals pass through a soil matrix; can show profile and 3D slicing, penetrates different surfaces
But it’s slow, the antenna must be in contact with the ground, lots of data processing
The cursus
Berm and ditch a mile long created before Stonehenge, two pits on either side after Stonehenge, oriented east/west
Durrington walls
Upright buried stones that no one knew about
LIDAR
Light distance and ranging; illuminates targets with laser generated light and measures the time the reflection takes to return; aerial and ground; three dimensions, intense data crunching, variety of surfaces
The testimony of the slade
Ground truthing still matters!
