Topic 10: Reconstructing Culture Flashcards
(31 cards)
what are the 5 major types of society categories?
Bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states, empires
What evidence is used to distinguish between society categories?
In general: societies are based on economic, social and political systems!
- size of population
- size of settlement
- sedentariness/territoriality
- subsistence strategies
- monuments and architecture
- evidence of specialization
What are bands? How do we distinguish them?
- smaller groups
- do not have rigid territories, high mobility because they primarily hunted and gathered
- egalitarian, equal society
What are segmentary societies? How do we distinguish them?
- tribes and chiefdoms
- sedentary, small scale pastoralists and horticulturalists
- smaller groups integrated into a larger community
- living permanently or semi permanently in one area
- increase in population means an increased need for political organization, which leads to a rise in inequality
What are states? How do we distinguish them?
- bureaucracy, with a single ruler
- society based on socioeconomic wealth
- large scale permanent settling
- complex road system
- standardization of measures (lbs, currancy)
Why is type of society approach problematic?
- obscures variability
- fails to predict what we might expect archaeologically
- both neglects and reflects cultural institutions that perpetuates inequality
What is inequality? How do we determine if it is present in a society?
- differences in/of status and access to resources within a group
- we can determine it by looking at differences in burial practices, skeletal remains (for signs of malnutrition), houses and goods, distribution of goods
What are the three kinds of equality/inequality?
Egalitarian: everyone in group has roughly same status and access to resources
Ranked: everyone has a different status
Stratified: class system, differences between classes
What is exchange? What does it provide information about?
- exchange is the movement of material culture
- provides information about social organization, subsistence, politics and ideology
3 modes of exchange
- reciprocity (equal exchange, gift giving)
- redistribution (all goods collected and redistributed by a leader)
- market (bartering/trading for goods and services, capitalism)
What is Provenance?
The sources of an object, where the object was made AND/OR what the original sources of the raw materials was.
What is the study of distribution?
- the study of transport (by land, sea)
What are the mechanisms for trade?
- direct access (a person directly goes to the source to procure the item)
- down the line (trading between people for different items)
- freelance/middleman/trader (person who facilitates the exchange of objects)
What do archaeologies of gender focus on?
- how archaeologists study gender
- how archaeologists represent gender
- focuses on the cultural constriction of gender and sexuality
- focuses on challenging ideas that humans have always recognized heteronormativity
- focuses on gender inequalities in the practice of archaeology
How do we look for evidence of children in the archaeological record?
- evidence of play and learning
- representations of art, fingerprints
What is a symbol?
- an object that can be recognized as a depiction/representation of an object in the real world.
What are some of the uses of symbols?
- regulating and organizing relations between humans
- regulating and representing human relations with the supernatural or transcendental world
- as symbols of measurements (units of time, length, weight)
- recording and documenting
- establishment of place through delimitation of territory
- as a way to describe the world through depiction
What is style?
- traits associated with decoration
- culturally dependent and often difficult to analyze
What are materials of prestige value? Why are they important?
- “valuables” in a limited range of materials to which a society attributes a high value
- most have no use at all other than display!
- ex, feathers, shells, jade, gemstones, textiles
How do archaeologists reconstruct group and individual identity?
Major evidence archaeologists use to construct identity are:
- artifacts
- symbols
- nutrition/diet
- mortuary data
What is the archaeology of children and childhood?
- study of children and childhood in the past, as active participants in past cultures rather than regarding them mainly for their effect on adult life
- studies evidence of play, learning, artwork
What are some of the archaeological approaches to art?
- semiotic (meaning of symbols)
- formal (style to determine tradition)
- functionalist (purpose of art)
- processual (how art helps humans adapt to their environment)
- critical (how art reflects/legitimizes/criticizes power)
What is fall-off analysis?
Spatial analysis of artifact distribution, predicts that the greatest quantity should be found near the source for down-the-line exchange, and near central places for redistribution systems.
What are interaction systems?
- how trade can drive cultural change
- as trade networks develop there is an increased need for control of the system
- this can lead a down-the-line system to develop into a redistribution system
