Formation Processes Flashcards
Typology-
A means of constructing a relative chronology
- Arranges objects into sequences from simple > complex - allows them to be placed in a chronological order
Oscar Montelius - typology of 19th century railway carriages exhibited gradual evolution
Seriation- Invented by Flinders Petrie
- puts assemblages of objects into sequence based on the relative frequency of artefact types
- ‘Battleship curve’
Stratigraphic dating. Deposits on archaeological sites may be arranged in a sequence (with the earliest at the bottom)
- Stratigraphical sequences may be dated with the help of the artefacts they contain
- Pitt Rivers and a new approach to recording in the late 19th century
Spatial relationships between features. - Features that cut each other can be placed in chronological sequence. E.g Stuckley dating barrows due to Roman Roads cutting through them.
Harris matrices -way of graphically representing the stratigraphical relationship between different archaeological contexts - invented by Edward Harris in Winchester in 1974
John Torrington, Petty Officer, Franklin expedition to Greenland, 1845. Preserved due to very cold conditions.
Sutton Hoo. Saxon ship burial preserved due to chemical changes in the soil. Found in East Anglia, two 6th- and early 7th-century cemeteries. Included helmets, whetstones, gold objects. Now in the British Museum.
Pompeii. Preserved via volcanic ash and negative impressions. Eruption of Mount Vesuviusin 79 AD. The objects that lay beneath the city have been preserved for centuries because of the lack of air and moisture. These artifacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city. During the excavation, plaster was used to fill in the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies. This allowed one to see the exact position the person was in when he or she died.
Ötzi the Iceman, c.3200 BC Male, aged 40-50 years old. Found on the Austrian-italian border and was the subject of a territory dispute. Organs in good condition except lungs. Tattoos and osteoarthritis, last meal of goat meat, killed via an arrow in the back. Had a grass cape, birch containers with maple leaves, knife, bow and arrow, medicinal plants, Copper axe, flint objects in a pouch. Bear and calfskin clothes. Backpack structure found - only one of it’s kind.
Aboriginal Dreamtime Art, worshiping mythical ancestor figures or gods.
Danish antiquarian Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. Developed The Three-Age system - Age of Stone, Age of Bronze, Age of Iron - Originally primarily a method of classifying the collections in the Danish National Museum
Jens Worsaae - considered associations between artefacts - ‘Worsaae’s law’: objects found together were used together
Oscar Montelius - Scandinavian Bronze Age divided into 6 periods and typology
Mortimer Wheeler’s Grid Square Method of Excavation. Wheeler argued that excavation and the recording ofstratigraphic context required an increasingly scientific and methodical approach, developing the “Wheeler Method”. 1920s-60s.
N-transforms (natual factors that affect the archaeological record) - e.g. erosion, animal burrowing, etc. Objects deposited outside a rabbit burrow. Michael Brian Schiffer is one of the founders and pre-eminent exponents of behavioral archaeology.
C-transforms (cultural factors that affect the archaeological record) - e.g. refuse disposal, ploughing. Developed by Schiffer.
Grooved ware is the name given to a pottery style of the British Neolithic. Its manufacturers are sometimes known as the Grooved ware people, 3rd millenium BC. Some of the vessels were used to hold a poison and a powerful hallucinogen. Emerged in Orkney, found at Stonehenge and Durrington Walls.
