Midterm Flashcards
Three dimensions of archaeological variability.
Time, Space, Form
Culture History
Major goal of archaeology until about 50 years ago. Involves tracing history of past cultural units and placing them in their proper time/space position. Then determine how units are related. Usually pottery was 1st classified as its decoration changed over time.
Archaeology
the study of the human past from material remains; often considered as a subfield within the discipline of anthropology
Nabonidus
1st recorded archaeologist
Last king of Babylon (556-539 B.C.)
He excavated old temples to find out what appropriate gods to worship. His method included excavation, recording information, cataloging and displaying artifacts. Restored old temples
Direct historical approach
Working backward in time from the present into the past. Using a Chronological anchor (the present) artifacts are assumed to not be that different from modern stuff.
nationalist archaeology
Using the archaeological record to justify a historical, political, or geographic position.
Principle of Superposition
states that if a sequence of sediments is unmixed and undisturbed, the oldest layers will be at the bottom;
(Nicolaus Steno)
Principle of Strata Identified by Fossils
horizontal strata containing the same fossils were deposited around the same time.
(George Cuvier/William “strata” Smith)
Thomas Jefferson
mound excavation
Mounds and moundbuilders
inhabitants of North America who, during a 5,000-year period, constructed various styles of earthen mounds for religious and ceremonial, burial, and elite residential purposes.
Three-Age System
stone–copper/bronze–iron (Christian Thomsen)
Principle of Association (J. J. A. Worsaae)
objects found in the same archaeological layer under conditions where its is clear that they were deposited at the same time, must all date from the same time – be of similar age
Jacques Boucher de Perthes—
site of Menchecourt in Somme Valley; extinct fauna with artifacts
Geological Society of London (Charles Lyell)
site of Brixham Cave, extinct fauna with artifacts
Stratigraphic excavation
Began around 1914, previously uncommon because of “Flat Past”, where no change over time was perceived.
Why do archaeology:
1) furnish museum items,
2) Art and Archaeology,
3) Culture History,
4) Culture Reconstruction,
5) Culture Process
diffusion
Movement of single traits or artifact types; not people.
migration
Movement of a group of people, where whole assemblage of artifacts move.
trade
Whole items are exchanged but not assemblages
independent invention
Two almost identical inventions/artifacts develop with no contact
Age-Area Concept
Developed by Wissler
1. Culture traits disperse equally in all directions from the point of origin.
2. The area over which a trait is found gives an indication of age; older traits have greater distribution.
3. All traits disperse at same speed/rate
Culture Area and Age Area concepts go hand in hand
Horizontal = Time
Problems
-traits don’t move at same speed
-there isn’t even distribution bc of Geographic, Demographic, and Cultural Obstacles
Natural Stratigraphy
collecting all artifacts within a natural or cultural level. It does not matter the thickness.
Culture Reconstruction
reconstruction of prehistoric lifeways, use of analogy
Function of artifacts/causally related attributes
What the artifact was used for.
representative samples
samples of areas that give a true representation of the full area
(Walter W. Taylor, Julian Steward)
Analogy
Pointing out a series of similarities in two or more phenomena, and concluding from those observable similarities that the phenomena at
general and specific analogy
General- Broad generalizations and comparisons based on multiple cultural traditions
ex. Comparing pygmy elephant hunting to mammoth hunting on the steppe tundra in the Pleistocene
Specific- Comparisons based on a particular cultural tradition.
- cultural continuity
- comparability in environment
- similarity in cultural form
ex. Whalen in the arctic, prehistoric whaling can be informed by historical whale hunting in the arctic.
Sources of analogy
Common Sense (not reliable)
Ethnographic record
Ethnoarchaeolgy
Experimental Archaeology
Positive and negative effects of cultural reconstruction
Positives-
emphasized collecting representative samples
emphasized discovering function of artifacts
Negative-
Might be true, but not necessarily, NOT SCIENTIFICALLY TESTABLE
Culture Process
Test hypotheses of culture process to derive laws of cultural evolution and how culture works to explicate and explain cultures in all places and all times
Lewis Binford
1962- Archaeology is Anthropology Goals are to explicate and explain the total range of cultural similarities, and differences characteristics of the entire spatial and temporal span of human existence. Derive laws( atemporal and aspatial )
Definitions of culture: holistic (humans as culture bearing organisms) vs. partitive (culture as shared ideas by members of a society)
Holistic- humans as culture bearing organisms
Partitive- culture as shared ideas by members of society.
Normative theory
What culture is
Extrasomatic views
Culture adapts faster than genetics,
Study of culture process as the study of cause and effect relationship operating among socio-cultural systems.
Traditional data gathering – inductivist approach (know steps; negative and positive aspects)
Assumption- archaeology should proceed until enough data are gathered, until answers become evident.
Deductive reasoning and data gathering (know steps; negative and positive aspects)
Method
-Explicitly state a specific problem
-derive multiple working hypotheses
-deduce test implications
-go to field and collect relevant data
-compare data with hypothesis, choose one as best solution, FOR NOW
Pros
-the problems specified and possible solutions define the required data
-the problem is limited to data by hypothetical explanations
Con
-requires inductive work first.
Hypothesis
a testable proposition which is a proposed explanation for a set of phenomena.
must have
-empirical content for test implications that are archaeologically visible
-should be capable of being falsifiable.
Deductive-Nomological, laws
Binford’s meaning behind explicate and explain
Explain= the ability to predict how certain variables within a culture system will respond to changes in other variables in that system.
Cultural operates according to universal laws, and archaeology’s goal should be finding those laws. general to particular.
probabilistic laws
Comes with an emphasis on statistics Brought a rigor to the collection of data and we tried to look and behave like scientists. Screening Probabilistic Sampling Delving into methods from other fields
Post-Processual critique
~1980’s
Science is not objective and inappropriate for archaeology.
Critical Theory- every interpretation of the past is equally valid, archaeology views past through western eyes.
Concerns with Dehumanization of the testing to indigenous people.
Archaeology splintered
Current schools of thought in archaeology
Culture Historians
Processual Archaeologists
Post- Processual Archaeologists
Artifact, feature, association
Artifact- Anything made, modified, or moved by people
Feature- non-portable association of objects which must be studies in the field
Association- close spatial relationships of objects.
Portable artifact (unmodified; modified—subtractive, additive, altered)
Unmodified- natural objects not modified in shape or size
Modified-
Subtractive- artifacts modifies by the removal of pieces
Additive- several objects combined into a single object
Altered- Chemical or Molecular alteration of a single object.
Site
A location where past people preformed an activity
Judgemental sampling
Using expertise to choose sites to sample, causes large bias. Used by Culture Historians, most common method today.
haphazard/grab sampling
Just surveying area, and recording what you find, and excepting what is found as a representative sample. Ultimate in inductive method.
Problems- sampling is generally done in less remote areas, could find nothing,
simple random
Sample sites are chosen randomly through entire area, does insure non bias, but can often lead to under coverage or clustering of site spots.
systematic interval
Eliminates the potential for uneven coverage, 1st sample is chosen at random then other units are chosen at a set interval from initially chosen unit.
K=N/n where K is sampling interval, and N is pop, and n is sample size.
Pros- Easily implemented
Cons- Cyclical data, can cause over or under representation of sites.
stratified random
Stratify a population into Stratum, then take proportional samples of each strata.
Pro- ensure coverage, good for heterogeneous areas
Con- introduces bias with stratum choices.
Precision, reliability, validity
Precision- How close sample values = population value
Reliability- If we do it again, same results?
Validity- Are we measuring that we a trying to measure?
Surface reconnaissance
Traditional Method
Look for artifacts or features on the ground
coring
Used to search for deeply buried cultural deposits
shovel testing
Round Nose Shovel
Dig Holes 30-40cm in diameter, by 40-50cm deep
sift dirt
test pits
Test excavation-
Dig a 50x50cm or 1mx1m hole
Not time efficient
auguring
done to look for deeper below the surface deposits
chemical testing
Using the presence of Phosphorus or Human DNA to help identify cultural sites.
Discovery probability (site survey):
Each site has a unique chance or disc. prob. that we will find it.
abundance
Frequency of a site type in an area
clustering
degree to which sites are aggregated
obtrusiveness (detectability)
Using a particular discovery technique, how detectable will a site be.
visibility
Variation in visual detection site size artifact density artifact size exposure size* exposure frequency*
*can somewhat be controlled
Smithsonian site naming system
A system of site naming which takes into account the State, County, and Site Number.
Exceptions CA and Alaska.
Remote sensing
aerial photos, magnetometer; metal detector; ground-penetrating radar
Provenience using datum point
horizontal grid system; moveable chains;
radial offset
datum point= point of origin
Horizontal grid system, is a coordinate mapping
Moveable chains only uses a Y axis, and then how far from that y axis
Radial offset, distance and degree from datum.
Surface Collection
Artifacts found on surface, which are subject to have moved from original deposit.
Troweling;
Usually a mason trowel, used in a scraping fashion with sharpened edges to slowly uncover artifacts.
Hand-picking;
Using hands to go through soil and find artifacts
Screening -screening (dry vs. wet)
Dry- Dry dirt goes into a screen and gravity and shaking helps to sift dirt and keep artifacts.
Wet- uses water to help facilitate screening. cleans off artifacts and bone, used when dry screening is impractical ( Clay/ hard soil), can be environmentally damaging.
screen-mesh size
1/4’’ for fast and quick sifting, 1/8’’ for smaller and more precise sifting, downside more time and money to use.
flotation
Method to remove small light and heavy materials
Good for recovering plant remains
