Lecture 1 What Is Archaeology Flashcards
What happened during the Miocene period?
Early ancestors (25-5.5 m.y.a. -earliest ancestors)
What happened during the Pliocene
Led to hominins (apes and on two feet)
5.5-2m.y.a
What happened during the Pleistocene?
2 m.ya.-11.7 k.y.a.-modern humans (200-300kya)
What happened during the Holocene?
11.7 k.y.a-first cities, agriculture, ice age?
What happened during the Anthropocene?
Humans doing the most change
What are the four types of anthropology?
Archaeology- the study of human past
Cultural anthropology- the study of culture and how it is shaped by environments, ideas, and behaviors
Linguistics- the study of language
Biological anthropology- study of evolution
Archaeology Discovery define artifacts, eco facts, feature, site, survey, excavation
Artifacts- objects that humans made (pottery)
Ecofacts- natural material human made (animal skin to coat)
Feature- things that humans made but can’t be moved (pyramids)
Site- accumulation of artifacts
Survey- looking at the sites
Excavation-digging into the sites
Define primary context and secondary context
Primary- things were in their original place
In situ: things in their original place
Secondary context-site being disrupted
Who was the first archaeologist?
Nabonidus (died 538 BC)- excavated temple to build a new one
F. Petrarch (AD 1304-1374)-father of humanism his writing shaped modern Italian language
Study of human interactions
Circiaco de Puzzicolli-(AD1381-1453) “Restoring the dead to life” metaphorical stories
Who was Bishop Ussher?
(AD 1581-1656)
He wanted to find how old the earth was using biography and he came up with it being 4004BC Oct 23
What did James Hutton believe
(1726-1797)
No catastrophes happened
-Uniformitarianism: stead and equable
3 Processes
-Ocean deposition: transporting
-Metamorphism/ pressure
-Erosion
Charles Lyell
(1797-1875)
Also didn’t believe in catastrophes
His work: Principles of Geology
Based on uniformitarianism
The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863)
Was Thomas Jefferson an archaeologist?
Yes he excavated at Indian mounds
-mound at Monticello
Who was Christian Jurgensen Thomsen and what did he discover?
Danish National Museum 1836 Guidebook
Invented the Three Age System
-Stone
-Bronze
-Iron
Paleolithic vs Neolithic
(Old Stone Age and New Stone Age)
Alphabet soup
BC-Before Christ and BCE- before common era
AD-Anno Domini and CE-common era
BP- Before Present (1950)
Who was Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae?
-First professional archaeologist
-trained by CJ Thomsen
- Introduced inquiry
-Primeval Antiquities of Denmark(1843)
-Provenience-things in their original position
-Middens- rubbish dumps left by prehistoric people
Who was Lewis Henry Morgan
(1818-1881)
-Unilineal Evolution-one line of evolution
-Savagery
-H-G
-Projectiles
-Barbarism- breeding animals
-Pottery
-Domestication
-Metallurgy-metal tools
Mound builders
Prehistoric Indians who buried their dead in large mounds
1840s: Ephaim Squier & Edwin David
-European orgins
They both partnered in their research about American Indian mounds and published their findings Mississippi valley
Samuel Haven:
-Native Americans
-Asian Ancestry
Cahokia
(AD 600-1400) Mississippi American Indians culture rose to power after farming corn
Who was John Wesley Powell
(1834-1902)
-Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE)
-salvage Archaeology
1881: sent Cyrus Thomas to investigate mounds
-Definitely Native American
Who was Lt. General Augustus
He developed the idea of typology- classifying artifacts to show their development over time
What is bioturbation?
The disturbation of sedimentary deposits by living organisms
What does faunalturbation mean?
Soil bioturbation caused by animal burrowing
What’s Krotovina
a filled in animal burrow
What does cryoturbation mean?
Mixing of soil from freezing ice/ thawing
Ex: frost heaving, gelifuction, and ice wedging
What does argilliturbation mean?
When soil is wet it expands and when it is dry it shrinks which mixes the artifacts
What’s graviturbation?
The artifacts on hillsides slide down because of gravity and rain
Who was Alfred Vincent kidder?
(1885-1963)
Father of anthropological archaeology
He excavated pecos Pueblo: pottery and other artifacts and human remains
Who was Gertrude Canton Thompson
More interesting yet, Thompson’s expedition in Zimbabwe stoked racial tensions locally and across the British Empire, and her findings of the site challenged racist archaeological theories that had been used to defend and sustain Europe’s colonization of Africa. It was part of a wealthy African trading empire that controlled much of the East African coast from the 11th to the 15th centuries C.E.
Who was Vere Gordon Childe
Proposed the Neolithic age and his work called what happened in history
Who was Julian Steward
His work the theory of culture change where it was about cultural ecology
Who was the man that developed radio carbon dating
William Libby
Who was Lewis R. Binford and “New Archaeology”
New archaeology= Processualism
What is the that you may ask..
It is how ideas and theories mean nothing if you don’t have anything to prove (applied scientific method)
What’s postprocessual archaeology?
-commitment to social awareness (Neo- Marxist)
-Rejects systematic procedures of scientific method (post-positivist).
-Stresses personal experience (phenomenological)
-Stresses human “agency” and human actions (praxis)
in shaping social structure
~ Rejects generalization, emphasizes uniqueness of society and culture (hermeneutic or interpretive)
How do you convert 400BP to B.C.E or B.C. ?
Subtract 2023AD—400BP= 1623 B.C.E OR B.C
How do you convert 400 BCE or BC to Before present?
ADD 400 to 2023= 2423BEFORE PRESENT
