Lab Flashcards
What are faunal remains and some examples?
This refers to what remains of animals, including skins, bones, teeth, feathers, baleen, and soft tissue when preservation is good.
What does element refer to?
It refers to the anatomical part of the body (ex: femur, cranium)
Femur: the bone of the thigh
Cranium: skull
What does taxon mean?
Categorizing faunal remains. It is important to try and identify the most specific taxonomic category you can indentify. (It would be the species level)
What does genus mean?
It is a taxonomic category in the biological classification, composed of species that have been classified together based on common features such as characteristics.
Broadest to narrowest
Family, genus, species
What are the 7 key things to recover a significant data about past human- animal interactions and ecological conditions
1) season of occupation,
2) ecological conditions and/or change,
3) Food choices or taboos,
4) if domestication of animals occurred,
5) hunting organization and practices,
6) whether the animals were hunted or scavenged,
7) if people or animals suffered dietary stress,
8) if animals were used for trade or exchange.
What is the definition of lithics analysis?
Study of stone tools referred to as lithics
What is chert or flint
Fine grained materials that can be formed into objects with durable sharp edges so they are good for weapons (ex: projectile points, spear points), cutting objects (ex knives) or for tools used in animal processing (ex: scrapers)
Slate
Better for things like making axes, gouges, or other woodworking tools.
What is steatite?
(Also commonly referred to as soapstone)
Best used for vessels to be used for cooking or as lamps.
Geological source location
Archaeologists can use those source locations to understand how people interacted with their environment, assess how they might have been moving around a landscape, and examine how territorial cultures may have been.
What is core?
Large chunk of rock
What is reduction technology?
Production of lithic objects
What does perform mean?
Chiseling down or flaking a core
What is type?
Further grinding into its finished form.
What is flintknapping?
For finer-grained materials like chert
What is debitage?
When they are the wast products of lithic production
What is pressure flaking
Is the controlled removal of smaller flakes by using applied pressure on the edge of lithic objects to push off flakes usually with tapered antler tine or some relatively softer material.
What is bioarchaeology?
Bioarchaeology is the study of the human biological component of the archaeological record. In other words, what human biology can tell us about past cultures. This includes studying the bones themselves using osteology to molecular archaeology where archaeologist use ancient
DNA (aDNA) to understand many aspects about past peoples.
Pelvic architecture
on average females have a wider sub pubic angle than males
Sciatic notch
Women have wider sciatic notch than males. These, and a more rounded pelvic girdle among women are all a consequence of the evolution of our bipedal structure and our large brains, increasing the need to have different pelvic architecture to help with the process of childbirth.
Cranial structure (skull)
Female crania are more gracile and rounded while males are more robust and squared off. Males also have more supraorbital ridges than females (eyebrow ridges) males also have slightly more square-shaped eye orbits than females. Male mandibles (jaw/chin) are also more square
How can we detect the age?
Babes have different bones that are all separated by the cartilage with the biggest gap being the fontanelle (soft spot) where the temporal bones articulate with the parietal bones at the crown of our heads
Bone fusion
Another way to assess age. When u are young, there is a separation between a small bone at their ends (epiphysis) and the main shaft (diaphysis) of bone (Figure 5). Over our lives these ossify and become a singular bone.
Teeth
Also known as deciduous teeth
The use wear on teeth can also be related to how old an individual was with the assumption that the older person used their teeth more.
Hypoplasia: is the underdevelopment or incomplete development of a physical trait. Archaeologist is can detect illnesses and malnourishment.
What are strontium isotopes
Reflect the rations of different types of that element in ground water and here people spent their youth when their bones were first developing.
Other isotopes such as nitrogen and carbon…
Can be used to assess different types of food that people consumed. If they ate more plant materials then the N values are related to terrestrial-based resources while higher ones are associated with marine resources.
