Quiz 1 Flashcards
What is archaeology?
The study of human lifeways, culture, and materials
How is archaeology classified?
As a science and a type of anthropology
What is the difference between an archaeologist and a collector?
A collector gathers artifacts to sell or for personal gain but archaeologists collect artifacts for the sake of knowledge
Why is archaeology a science?
The scientific method is used
What is the scientific method?
- Indentification of research problems
- Theoretical basis for research
- Hypotheses
- Test implications
- Confirmation
- Testability
- Explanation
What are the goals of archaeology?
- Studying culture history
- Reconstructing past lifeways
- Explaining culture change
- Making archaeology relevant to the present
What is the prehistoric subfield?
Before written records
What is the historic subfield?
In addition to texts
What is the classical archaeology?
Using written sources, architecture, and art
What is the underwater archaeology?
Waterlogged sites or artifacts with special techniques
What do ceramic analysts look at?
Ceramics and pottery
What do lithic analysts look at?
Stone tools
What do metallurgists look at?
Metal production
What do architecture analysts look at?
Landscape and buildings
What do bioarchaeologists look at?
Human remains, adaptations, and growth
What do paleoethnobotanists look at?
Plant remains, plants that were traded, and impacted economic species
What do zooarchaeologists look at?
Animal bones and human interactions
What do geoarchaeologists look at?
Human environments
What do geographic information systems do?
Spatial distribution and artifacts
What does epigraphy do?
Ancient writing systems
What do ethnoarchaeologists look at?
Interacting with living culture
How do you find a site?
- Luck
- Pedestrian survey
- Local knowledge
- Historical documents
- Aerial photography
What brings artifacts to the surface?
- Plowing farmed areas
- Animal burrows
- Tree falls
What is context?
It is the use and information behind the artifact being collected
What is remote sensing?
A method of collecting artifacts without changing the context
What are the common remote sensing methods?
- Aerial photography
- Ground penetrating radar
- Magnetometry
- Light Detection and Ranging
What is excavation?
Precisely recorded and controlled areas with coordinates that preserve the context
What is stratigraphy?
A method of analyzing the layers where the upper layers are new and the bottom layers are old
What is the difference between artifacts and ecofacts?
Artifacts are man made but ecofacts are natural
What is relative dating?
The date of an artifact with reference to something else
What is absolute dating?
When you provide an artifact with a specific calendar date
What does stratigraphy tell us?
As the Law of Superposition states the older layers are on the bottom while the newer layers are on top
What does seriation tell us?
Organizes relative dates based on morphological order and by categorizing it and then organizing it by time
What do written records and coins tell us?
Tells us the history and the coins can tell us the leader and time frame
What does dendrochronology tell us?
Using the tree rings as a form of measurement where each ring is 1 year, the thinner ring represents a dry year, and the thicker rings represent a rainy year
What does radiocarbon dating tell us?
Using the half life of carbon 14 of 5,730 years to determine the time frame
What are the assumptions for seriation?
The distribution of a historical type through time is continuous
What do you need for dendrochronology to occur?
- Outermost ring
- Established a relationship between the dated and target events
Where did the earliest point of farming begin?
Southwest Asia
What are the advantages of food production?
- Steady
- Select desirable foods
- Pleantiful
- Increases sedentism
- Geographic expansion
What are the disadvantages of food production?
- Workload
- Creating an attractive resource for your enemies
- Danger to small lands of food sources
What was the architecture in the Catalhoyuk society?
To walk on roofs
What is the fertile crescent?
The crescent near the middle east where the environment is wet and enables growth
