Midterm 2 Flashcards
What is the importance of the grid system in archaeology?
It serves as a way of mapping the entire site, by divvying up the larger site into smaller areas.
What are the differences between chronometric and relative dating methods?
Relative dating methods reveal the order of a sequence of found objects, materials, or events found within a site. Discovereing which is older/newer.
While Chronometric dates the actual age in the number of years of said items, materials, events, etc, found at the site.`
What evidence is used to determine if fossil species were bipedal?
If the fossils provide long bones
If it has a Foramen Magnum (Hole at bottom of skull, connecting spinal cord to brain)
The Pelivs/Hip Bone will be shorter but wider and a lot thicker
Finding a Femur is a good sign of Bipedalism, as the femur makes it effortless for us to stand up right.
Australopithecines Characteristics and Behaviour
Characteristics: Smaller Brain size, reduction in front teeth, sexually dimorphic.
Behaviour: Meat eating from scavengine, no evidence of hunting
Paranthropus Characteristics and Behaviour
Characteristics: MOre robustly built, Larger brain size, very large molars and premolars, large jaws fro chewing, presence of sagittal crest, pneumatized skull
Behaviour: Adapted to a diet made of coarse vegetation, strong sexual dimorphism, possible gorilla-like behaviour
The Habilines Characteristics and Behaviour
Characteristics: Larger Brains, Rounder Skull, Smaller Teeth, Less Facial prognathism, Postcranial like Australopithecines
The Australipithecus Garhi characteristics and behaviour
Oldest fossil that we know of that used stone tools
Behaviour: Tool use, butchery of meat
Characteristics and Behaviour of Homo Erectus
Characteristics: Larger body, larger brain, robust build, less sexual dimorphism, higher skull, less prognatic, smaller jaws and teeth, larger supraorbital torus, occipital torus
Behaviour: First to potentially migrate out of Africa, New Tools (Acheulean tools), Hunters or Scavengers, use of fire, made shelters
Homo Floresiensis Characteristics and Behaviour
Characteristics: 1m Tall, Small brain, Island Effect
Behaviour: Used fire, Stone tools
What is island effect?
Hominins who migrated onto islands evolved to be smaller
Archaics characteristics and behaviours?
Characteristics: Large brain size, modern human stature, more robust build, massive supraorbital torus, occipital torus
Behaviour: Hunted Large Game, Stone tools
Neanderthal characteristics and behaviour:
Characteristics: Very robust build, very large incisors, short limbs
Behaviour: Adapted to life in cold climates, buried their dead, evidence of portable art, evidence of care for the elderly
Homo Sapiens characteristics and behaviour
Characteristics: Roundest skull, small teeth, presence of a chin, slender build, oldest remains in Africa (?)
Behaviour: Contemporary with Neanderthals (coexisted), No evidence of cultural differences during that time
What is the Foramen Magnum?
Hold at bottom of skull where spinal chord is attached to brain
What and Who are the Protohominins?
Early Hominins
Sarchelanthropus Tchadensis
Orrorin Tugensis
Ardipithecus Ramidus
What are the general characteristics of Protohominins?
Small Brain, Mostly apelike characteristics, Possibly Bipedal, Lived in forested environments
What are flakes?
Sharp pieces of a stone used for cutting
Oldest Stone Tools
Dikika
Lomoekwi
Nyayanga
What are the theories on what happened to Neanderthals?
Out Of Africa Hypothesis
- Modern humans migrate out of Africa and replace all archaic hominids
Partial Replacement Model
- Modern humans interbreed with other archaic hominids, but some are replaced
Multi-Regional Hypothesis
-All archaic hominids evolve into modern humans through gene flow
Advantages of Domestication
Production of a Surplus
Reliable food supply
Become more sedentary
Supports larger populations
Allows more task specialization
Disadvantages of Domestication
More susceptible to famine (through natural disasters)
Spread of contagious diseases
Less varied diet (in the beginning)
Demand more work
Conflicts over land and crops
Beginning if social inequalities
Models for the origins of domestication
Population Growth Models
Climate change
Trading Networks
Increased knowledge of plants and animals
Expansion into new environments
Population growth models
As population grow, production of food becomes necessary
Climate Change effect on domestication
Climate change forces populations to look for new food sources and food production
Trading Networks effect on domestication
Some food items are cultivated for trade, but later become staple food sources
What is culture?
Culture is learned
Culture is symbolic
Culture is shared
Culture is always changing
Culture is adaptive
What is the Archeological Process
Purpose for Archaeological work -> Archival Research -> Survey -> Map -> Excavate -> Analyze -> Preserve
Types of Archeological Surveys
Aerial Photos
LiDAR
GPR
Fieldwalking
Test Pits
GIS
Excavating process
Dig
Screen for artifacts
Record statigraphy
Retrieve and document artifacts
Goals of Archaeology
Recover, describe and prserve sites or artifacts
Reconstruct Past Lifeways
Understand the processes of cultural evolution
Why things change overtime
What are Sites?
Tools/items
What are Localities
Remains
(Larger area containing multiple sites)
Explain Surface Survey (pedestrian survey) , it’s uses and limitations.
Def: Search surface for odd/anomolies to merit digging
(Pedestrian) form a line with people and walk and look slowly , and flag anything.
Limitations: Can’t cover very large areas
Explain Aerial photographs & satellite images
Can be used for mapping purposes or to photograph large areas with attributes that may suggest the presence of otherwise invisible sites. (such ass buried walls, crop marks, shallow soil)
What do Crop marks mean when surveying?
Shallow soil, Could mean something’s buried closer beneath the surface
Explain LiDAR
(Light detection and ranging)
- Helps see under the canape (Mass forestation)
- Sometimes can see whats hiding under the soil
Explain Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)
A Non-Intrusive method, it’s a radar that bounces waves back so that archaeologists can see whats hiding underground without digging
Explain Ethnohistorical data
Ancient maps, folklore, and documents looked at to find/pinpoint locations.
Explain natural erosion
Luck, that nature helps uncover fossils, tools, etc.
Via through the weather, natural disaster, etc
What is a datum point?
an arbitrarily established point on the site from which all. measurements are taken
What are artifacts
Objects that have been intentionally made with thought by humans or hominin ancestors
What are Features
Non-portable items created by humans, such as house walls or ditches
What are ecofacts
Biological remains that likely associated with food consumption or other human activities
Explain Provenance
When archaeologists study sites through survey or excavation, they carefully record the immediate matrix(e.g., soil, gravel, sand, or clay) in which an object is found and its provenance
Also record any items around it that could lead to identifying relationships and association between objects
Explain ethnoarchaeology
The study of the way present-day societies use artifacts and structures and how these objects become part of the archaeological record
What is Taphonomy?
The study of the various processes that may have affected the formation of a particular site
What are ways in which Human Activity can be particularly damaging on anthropological sites
Through Industrial Farming, Pillaging and Looting
Explain UAVs/Drones in Archaeology
Low cost option
Can penetrate dense forest cover to detect archaeological features and sites on the ground
Lasers are attached to low-flying planes and generally used in places covered by rain-forests (LiDAR)
Explain Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
GIS is a “computer-aided system for the collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, and presentation of spatial data of all kinds”
or
A database with map-based interference
What is Digital Heritage?
Digital information about the past available on the internet.
Macroevolution
Focus on long-term evolutionary changes
Microevolution
Focus on short-term evolutionary changes
Anagenesis
The slow, gradual transformation of a single species over time
Phyletic gradualism
A theory arguing that one species gradually transforms itself into a new species over time
Cladogenesis
The birth of a variety of descendant species from a single ancestral species
Punctuated equilibrium
A theory claiming that most of evolutionary history has been characterized by relatively stable species coexisting in an equilibrium that is occasionally punctuated by sudden bursts of speciation, when extinctions are widespread and many new species appear.
Bipedalism
Walking on two feet
Australopiths
An informal term to refer to al hominins that were the earliest bipedal hominins
Mosaic evolution
A process of change over time in which different phenotypic traits, responding to different selection pressures, may evolve at different rates
Cranial Capacity
The size of the braincase
Flakes
Chipped-off pieces of stone that may or may not have been used as small cutting tools
Oldowan Tradition
A stone-tool tradition named after the Olduvai Gorge (in Tanzania)
Taphonomy
The study of various processes that objects undergo in the course of becoming part of the fossil and archaeological records
Ancheulean traditions
A lower Paleolithich stone-tool tradition associated with Homo Erectus and characterized by stone bifaces, or “hand axes”
Early Stone Age (ESA)
The name given to the period of Oldowan and Acheulean stone-tool traditions in Africa
Assemblages
Artifacts and structures from a particular time and place in an archeological site
Culture Defined
Sets of learned behaviour and ideas that humans acquire as members of a society
What are the two terms that refer to the process of culturally and socially shaped learning?
Socialization and Enculturation
What is Socialization?
the process through which people develop culturally patterned understandings, behaviors, values, and emotional orientations.
What is Enculturation?
the process by which an individual learns the traditional content of a culture and assimilates its practices and values
Culture is ____ as well as ____
Shared , Learned
What is Habitus
Social/cultural norms learnt through absorption in the course of practical daily living. Such as Table Manners. Is a result of learning which is heavily influenced by out interactions with material culture
What evidence is there if any for hunting in Homo erectus?
Numerous animal bones occur also with the remains of H. erectus, and sometimes these bones seem to have been deliberately broken or charred.
How do archeologists explain the rise of State Organized societies?
Governments and states emerged as rulers gained control over larger areas and more resources, often using writing and religion to maintain social hierarchies and consolidate power over larger areas and populations.
How does the concept of human agency relate to the concept of nature?
Although nature may resist and complicate human actions, producing all sorts of unintended consequences, nature has neither the intentionality nor the choice that humans do. Nature may constitute a dynamic structure, but it is not an agent. Human beings alone are the motor of history.!
Domestication
Variety of ways that humans affected the reproduction of another species, with the result that specific plants and animals become more useful to and dependent on people.
Evolutionary Niche
Sum of all the natural selection pressures to which a population is exposed
Agriculture
The systematic modification of the encironments of plants and animals to increase their productivity and usefulness
Agroecology
The systematically modified environment (or constructed niche) that becomes the only environment within which domesticated plants can floursih
Sedentism
The process of increasingly permanent human habituation in one place
Why did animal domestication happen?
To provide food rather than to help get food.
Broad-Spectrum foraging
A subsistence strategy based on collecting a wide range of plants and animals by hunting, fishing, and gathering
Grave goods
objects buried with a corpse
Social stratification
A form of social organization in which people have unequal acess to wealth, power, and prestige
Chiefdom
A form of social organization in which a leader (the chief) and close relatives are set apart from the rest of society and allowed privileged access to wealth, power, and prestige.
Neolithic
The “New Stone Age” which began with the domestication of plants 10,300 years ago
Mesopotamia
The area made up of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, corresponding to modern-day Iraq, Kuwait, the northeastern section of Syria, and parts of Turkey and Iran. Often referred to as the “Cradle of Civilization” where early complex societies developed.
Egalitarian Social Relations
Social relations in which no great differences in wealth, power, or prestige divide members from one another
Surplus production
The production of amounts of food that exceed the basic subsitence needs of the population
Occupational specialization
Specialization in various occupations (e.g, weaving or pot making) or in new social roles (e.g., King or Priest) that is found in socially complex societies
Complex Societies
Societies with large populations, an extensive division of labour, and occupational specialization
Patterned
Related cultural beliefs and practices show up repeatedly in different areas of social life. Like Language
Example of Patterned cultural variation
Language in Canada is French and English, which this cultural pattern can be traced through time to the colonial era
How is Culture adaptive?
because cultural traditions can be reconstructed and enriched, generation after generation, primarily because human biological survival depends on culture.
What is a symbol in culture
something that stands for something else
Everything we do in society has a symbolic dimension, from how we conduct ourselves at the dinner table to how we bury the dead
What are Hominins?
All Bipedal Apes
Complex Symbolic representation
adapting key features of the environment to cultural symbols
Human Agency
Human beings’ ability to exercise at least some control over their lives
Holism
A perspective on the human condition that assumes that mind and body, individuals and society, and individuals and the environment interpenetrate and even define on another.
From a holistic perspective, human beings are complexe, dynamic living entities shaped by genes, culture, and experience into entities whose properties cannot be reduced to the materials out of which they were constructed.
Coevolution
The interconnected relationship between biological processes and symbolic cultural processes, in which each makes up an important part of the environment and to which the other must adapt.
Why Do Cultural Differences Matter?
The same objects, actions, or events frequently mean different things to people with different cultures.
Cultural Relativism
understanding another culture in its own terms sympatghetically enough that the culture appears to be coherent and meaningful design for living
Cultural Hybridity Example
Inuits have included christianity from missionaries into their culture. Using some aspects to create a hybrid of their culture.
Christians with Inuit traditions
A merger of cultures
Culture Imperialism
The idea that some cultures dominate others and that domination by one culture leads inevitably to the destruction of subordinated cultures and their replacement by the culture of those in power
