Key Terms

Question 1

Attribute

Answer 1

The smallest logically irreducible component part of an artifact. Ex: color, length, decoration, thickness.

Question 2

Archaeological type

Answer 2

A class of artifacts that share a significant number of attributes.

Question 3

Functional type

Answer 3

An artifact class based and named on a hypothesized function. Function is most often assigned on ethnographic analogies.

Question 4

Descriptive type

Answer 4

An artifact class based on what the artifact looks like, not function.

Question 5

Phase

Answer 5

A temporal period during witch artifacts of the same type exhibit similar attributes, distinguishing their time period from others.

Question 6

Assemblage

Answer 6

All of the artifacts and features recovered from an archaeological site.

Question 7

Julian Steward

Answer 7

Developed the theory of cultural ecology which is widely employed by American archaeologists to explain cultural evolution. Cultures evolve as a result of an external environmental change that is adapted primarily by altering a cultures technology or economic system.

Question 8

Cultural Core

Answer 8

Those beliefs and behaviors operating within a culture that are essential for he survival of that culture. Also developed by Julian Steward.

Question 9

Lewis Binford

Answer 9

The father of “New Archaeology” and developed the methodology of utilizing predictive hypotheses in the study of long term cultural change.

Question 10

Technomic Artifacts

Answer 10

Artifacts that functioned in past cultures technological or economic activities.

Question 11

Sociotechnic Artifacts

Answer 11

Those artifacts that are thought to have functioned to aid in the organization of individuals within a past culture to accomplish technological and economic activities.

Question 12

Culture History

Answer 12

The goal of archaeology that seeks to define the sequence of change in the material remains found within a geographic area. Uses diffusion to explain change.

Question 13

New Archaeology

Answer 13

Emphasizes the use of the scientific method to interpret the past. Associated with binford and his students

Question 14

Culture Process

Answer 14

The goal of archaeology that attempts to explain episodes of change in past cultures. The first major goal of new archaeology it now seeks to provide laws of causality in the study of cultural evolution.

Question 15

Social Archaeology

Answer 15

Second goal of new archaeology and focuses on providing a description of a past culture at a specific point in time or era, could be a period of time of decades, centuries, or millennia.

Question 16

Walter W. Taylor

Answer 16

Developed an approach to archaeology that attempted to combine the determination of artifact function, features, and their function in order to produce a description of the lives of the people that produced the site. Qualify data rather than merely describe it.

Question 17

Relative Dating Technique

Answer 17

Dating methods that place artifacts, features, and or sites into a chronological sequence without a determination of actual age. Derivation and stratigraphy are two relative dating techniques commonly used.

Question 18

Absolute dating technique

Answer 18

Dating methods that provide an actual age range in years for archaeological artifacts, features, and sites. These techniques provide an actual year the artifact, feature, or site was made/occupied with a margin of error. Carbon 14, dendrochronology, and obsidian hydration are commonly used techniques.

Question 19

Contract archaeology

Answer 19

Archaeological investigations undertaken on a piece of publicly owned property as a result of federal, state, and or legislation mandating the preservation of historically significant sites.

Question 20

Direct historic approach

Answer 20

A form of ethnographic analogy that is drawn from the presumed modern descendants of the people who occupied the site and helped to create it.

Question 21

Archaeological context

Answer 21

The three dimensional relationship of artifacts within an archaeological site. Generally artifacts within close proximity of one another are conceived as being deposited together as a result of their being linked within the behavioral context of the past humans who produced the site.