Study Guide MT2 Flashcards
PLACES:
Cahokia
- Largest and best known Mississippian center
- Illinois, opposite from St. Louis
- 1000-1350 AD
- Numerous outlying settlements
- Population peak between 10,000 and 30,000
PLACES:
Moundville
- Second largest site in Mississippian valley (behind Cahokia)
- Located in Alabama
PLACES:
Etowah
- Moundbuilder settlement in Georgia
- It is the most intact Mississippian culture site in the Southeastern United States.
PLACES:
Spiro Mound
- Moundbuilder settlement in Oklahoma
- Spiro was a major western outpost of Mississippian culture, which dominated the Mississippi Valley and its tributaries for centuries.
- Treasure hunters during the great depression exposed a hollow burial chamber inside the mound, a unique feature containing some of the most extraordinary pre-Columbian artifacts ever found in the United States
PLACES:
The Old Stone Tower, Newport, Rhode
Island
- Proposed to be viking by Carl Christian Rafn in 1837 in his book Antiquitates Americanae
- Philip Ainsworth Means supported this theory citing architectural features obsolete by 17th century
PLACES:
L’Anse aux Meadows
- Viking site in Newfoundland, discovered by Helge and Anne Ingstad
- Found Bog Iron and spindle whorl. Clear evidence of contact and diffusion
PLACES:
Vinland
- First? Viking land discovery in North America in modern day Newfoundland
- Discovered by Lief Erikson
PLACES:
Natchez
- One of few chiefdoms to make it in to contact period (1500)
- First contact between Native Americans and Europeans, in the form of materials traded inland
- Exposed to Disease, smallpox and measles. warfare, missionization, colonization
PLACES:
Gault Site
- Buttermilk Creek Complex, Texas
- bears evidence of almost continuous human occupation, starting at least 16,000 years ago—making it one of the few archaeological sites in the Americas at which compelling evidence has been found for human occupation dating to before the appearance of the Clovis culture.
PLACES:
Monte Verde
Wiki: “Monte Verde is an archaeological site in southern Chile, located near Puerto Montt, Southern Chile, which has been dated to as early as 18,500 cal BP (16,500 BC).[1] Previously, the widely accepted date for early occupation at Monte Verde was ~14,500 years cal BP.[2] This dating added to the evidence showing that the human settlement of the Americas pre-dates the Clovis culture by roughly 1000 years.”
One area of site dates to 13,000 BP
Preserved by development of peat-bog
Houses
Wood, bone, skin, meat, botanicals
Ambiguous lower level of three possible cultural
features and some stone tool fragments dated to
33,000 BP
Affiliation unclear, but more recent research
suggests early dates compelling
PLACES:
Knossos
Capital city of the Minoans
PLACES:
Thera
Eruption of Santorini (Thera)
Volcanic eruption in second millennium B.C
(Map with probable ash fall from eruption in slides)
Ancient Thera (Greek: Αρχαία Θήρα) is an antique city on a ridge of the steep, 360 m high Messavouno mountain on the Greek island of Santorini
PLACES:
Mu
- Envisioned as a “Mother Culture” by James Churchward
- Alphabet similar to Mayan and Egyptian
- Continent in middle of Pacific
- Envisioned to be similar to visions of Atlantis
INDIVIDUALS:
Plato
Greek Philosopher 4th century BC
Wrote of Atlantis in his dialogue: Timaeus and Critias
The Atlantis described in Plato is an evil imperial
power bent on the destruction of a hypothetically perfect society, played by ancient Athens.
INDIVIDUALS:
Ignatius Donnelly
- Author of Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
- Atlantis located in middle of the Atlantic Ocean
He is known primarily now for his fringe theories concerning Atlantis, Catastrophism (especially the idea of an ancient impact event affecting ancient civilizations), and Shakespearean authorship, which many modern historians consider to be pseudoscience and pseudohistory
INDIVIDUALS:
Col. James Churchward
The Lost Continent of Mu - Col. James Churchward
Churchward is most notable for proposing the existence of a lost continent, called Mu, in the Pacific Ocean
INDIVIDUALS:
Helge and Anne Ingstad
- Viking site in Newfoundland, discovered by Helge and Anne Ingstad
- L’Anse aux Meadows
- Found Bog Iron and spindle whorl. Clear evidence of contact and diffusion
INDIVIDUALS:
Erik the Red
- Settled Greenland and sent his son Lief to explore America
- 982 arrived in Iceland, expelled from Norway
- Exiled from Iceland after 3 years, explored westward and found Greenland
INDIVIDUALS:
Lief Erikson
- Son of Erik the Red
- 997-1003, explored Westward discovering Vinland (Modern Newfoundland)
INDIVIDUALS:
Olaf Ohman
Discovered the Kensington stone in 1898 on a small knoll near his farm in Minnesota
INDIVIDUALS:
Zheng He
Zheng He (1371–1433 or 1435) was a Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat, fleet admiral, and court eunuch during China’s early Ming dynasty.
He was originally born as Ma He in a Muslim family, later adopted the conferred surname Zheng from Emperor Yongle.
Zheng commanded expeditionary treasure voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, Western Asia, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433
INDIVIDUALS:
Ephrain Squier and Edwin Davis
-Began large scale and semi-systematic survey/exploration of the mounds
- Wrote “ANCIENT MONUMENTS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY” (long argument about the differences
between Moundbuilders and First Nations) - Thought Aztecs to be related to Moundbuilders
INDIVIDUALS:
Cyrus Thomas
Cyrus Thomas (1825-1910), archaeologist for
the Smithsonian Institution, suggested
that the source of the Davenport writing was
Webster’s dictionary of 1871, which presented a
sample of characters from ancient alphabets.
TERMS:
Minoans
Early Aegean state 1900-1200 BCE
- Island of Crete, centered at Knossos
- Not as urbanized as other Mesopotamian states
- Written language (Linear A)
- Benefited from geographic location along major sea trade routes (wine and olive production)
- Massive volcanic eruptions (Santorini) may have contributed to decline after 1450 BCE
TERMS:
Mycenaeans
- Early Greek civ - gained control of Aegean region after decline of Minoans
- Endemic warfare (Bronze weaponry, iconography, citadels)
- Numerous associated villages around elite citadels with elaborate road networks
- Written records (Linear B)
- Elaborate elite burial culture (Shaft graves, later monumental tombs of stone)
- Decline for unknown reasons (maybe expansion of pre-classical greek states a factor)
TERMS:
Caldera
A caldera is a volcanic feature formed by the collapse of a volcano into itself, making it a large, special form of volcanic crater. A caldera collapse is usually triggered by the emptying of the magma chamber beneath the volcano, as the result of a large volcanic eruption.
TERMS:
Kennsington Stone
- Runically inscribed stone found in American middle west
- Real runes, wrong language (19th century swedish)
- Fake, why is it in interior U.S. without other artifacts or sites?
TERMS:
Mississippian
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American civilization archeologists date from about 800 CE to 1600 CE, varying regionally.
TERMS:
Clovis period
13,000BC, Theory that the Clovis people were the first inhabitants of the Americas
Clovis People with their fluted projectile points rapidly
spread out across America following game.
The “fluted” projectile points of the Clovis and
Folsom varieties represent elements of the
stone tool kits of not the first, but the first
widespread cultures in the New World.
■ Small populations
■ Probably very mobile
■ Hunters and gatherers
– Very characteristic fluted points, often associated with hunting megafauna
– Frequently hunted medium and small mammals, birds and fish
– Highly dependent on gathering locally available plants
■ Elaborate caching practices
TERMS:
Pre-Clovis period
Tons of sites found
Paleocoastal tools 12,000-11,000 BP (PRE-CLOVIS)
Buttermilk Creek Complex, Texas 16,000 BP (PRE-CLOVIS)
Arlington Springs Woman, Santa Rosa
Island, California (PRE-CLOVIS)
Monte Verde, Chile (PRE-CLOVIS)
North American Sites (PRE-CLOVIS)
Alaskan sites (PRE-CLOVIS)
Beringian Sites (PRE CLOVIS, BEFORE 13,000 BP)
TERMS:
Solutrean Culture
20,000 to 15,000 BP
The Solutrean hypothesis on the peopling of the Americas claims that the earliest human migration to the Americas took place from Europe, during the Last Glacial Maximum. This hypothesis contrasts with the mainstream view that the North American continent was first reached after the Last Glacial Maximum, by people from North Asia, either by the Bering land bridge (i.e. Beringia), or by maritime travel along the Pacific coast, or by both.
Western Europe (France and Spain)
Very cold throughout northern hemisphere in late Solutrean times
Heat-treated flint to make sophisticated
stone tools
Fine pressure flaking
Finely made, bifacially flaked, symmetrical,
leafs-shaped projectile points
Bas-Relief Art
TERMS:
Paleoindian period
Paleoindian Period: 12,000-10,000 BC
The Paleoindian Period refers to a time approximately 12,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age when humans first appeared in the archeological record in North America.
TERMS:
Vinland map
The Vinland map is claimed to be a 15th-century mappa mundi with unique information about Norse exploration of North America
chemical analyses have identified one of the major ink ingredients as a 20th-century artificial pigment
FAKE
TERMS:
Viking Sagas
The Vikings explored to the West and had established colonies beyond Greenland
TERMS:
Alphabetic
- Alphabetic: 1 symbol = 1 phoneme
- Alphabetic usually have <40 characters
TERMS:
Logographic
- Logographic: 1 symbol = 1 word (mandarin)
- Logophonetic/logographic have upwards of 5000
TERMS:
Logosyllabic
- Syllabic: 1 symbol = 1 syllable (Japanese Hiragana)
- Syllabic: typically 40-100 characters
- Logosyllabic:
TERMS:
Quipu
Quipu (or khipu) was a method used by the Incas and other ancient Andean cultures to keep records and communicate information
Using a wide variety of colours, strings, and sometimes several hundred knots all tied in various ways at various heights, quipu could record dates, statistics, accounts, and even represent, in abstract form, key episodes from traditional folk stories and poetry.
SAMPLE QUESTIONS:
Describe all of the evidence that links Thera to the myth of Atlantis?
FILL ME IN
…a volcano exploded?
Santorini destroyed at the same time as the disappearing of Atlantis
SAMPLE QUESTIONS:
The Chinese fleet made several voyages under Admiral Zheng He. What do the historical documents of these voyages reveal about the nature and extent of the Chinese fleet?
Where did they go and why?
What archaeological evidence corroborates the historical texts?
Everywhere but Europe
Antartica, Arctic, North/South America, Pacific, Australia
Lots of places tended to have Chinese artefacts remaining. Emperor’s coin in Africa etc.
The historical nature of the documents revealed that China had a massive fleet of boats that were well beyond its age. It gave China one of the largest fleets in the world at the time.
SAMPLE QUESTIONS:
Cahokia was the largest Mississippian city built.
Describe why this city became so important.
Where was it located?
What was its economy?
What was it architectural and urban layout?
When did it fall?
Where was it located?
Illinois, opposite from St. Louis
What was its economy?
Not in the slides????????
What was it architectural and urban layout?
When did it fall?
1350
SAMPLE QUESTIONS:
What were the five basic arguments presented by Feder that the ancestors of the indigenous peoples of the Americas could not have been the Moundbuilders?
- Indian Culture was too primitive
- Mound culture was older than Indian culture
- There were alphabetically inscribed tables in the mounds
- Indians were never witnessed building mounds and had no knowledge of who had built them.
- Metal objects found in the mounds were beyond the metallurgical skills of the Indians
SAMPLE QUESTIONS:
What were three characteristics of Atlantis, according to Plato’s accounts?
To make his point, Plato makes Atlantis sound like a nearly insurmountable adversary. Plato’s detailed description of Atlantis was intended to impress the reader with its material wealth, technological sophistication, and military power.
That the smaller, materially poorer, technologically less
well endowed, and militarily weaker Athenians could defeat the Atlanteans imparts the fundamental message of Critias: It is not just wealth or power
that is important in history; even more important is the way a people govern themselves.
For Plato, the intellectual achievement of a perfect government and society is far more important—and triumphs over—material wealth or power.
SAMPLE QUESTIONS:
Name two conditions required in order to translate (decipher) and undeciphered text.
- Scholars should have a good idea of the type of
script they are dealing with, - The corpus or database of texts should be large
enough to allow effective comparisons, - The language should be known,
- There should be a bilingual inscription or other
clues to word meaning, - The cultural context of the script should be
known, including names, places, historical
details, etc
