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- General
- From Thomas, "Archaeology" and F. Whittaker's lectures
- Artifact
- Anything that owes any aspect of its form or position to human activity; portable
- Feature
- Non-portable artifact, studied in place
- Provenience
- Location; in a site, horizontal and vertical position of an object in established coordinate system
- Site
- Spatial cluster of artifacts &/or features
- Nabonidus
- 538 BC - Early antiquarian
- Petrarch
- 1304-1374 First humanist, encouraged archy to search past for morals
- Ciriaco
- 1391 - ca. 1449 Helped establish modern discipline of archaeology
- Jacques Boucher de Perthes
- Found axeheads w/ extinct mammal bones; 1st to excavate at an open site
- Thomas Jefferson
- First scientific excavation
- C.B. Moore
- (1852-1936) First to do detailed and documented excavations
- Nels Nelson
- (1875-1964) Advanced stratographic techniques; first working archaeologist
- A. V. Kidder
- (1886-1963) Founder of anthropological archaeology; organized Pecos Conference
- Pecos Conference
- (1927) to determine a uniform cultural chronology and a relatively consistent terminology
- James A. Ford
- (1911-1968) Reconstructionist; advanced seriation based on pottery, artifact classification
- Steno
- (1669) Discovered law of superposition
- Christion Thomsen
- (18th C) Established Stone Bronze Iron ages
- George Cuvier
- (1808) Fossil sucession as relative dating\
- W. W. Taylor
- (1913-) Attacked lack of cultural study in archy; advocated conjunctive approach
- Conjunctive Approach
- Connecting artifacts within their cultural context
- Lewis R. Binford
- (1930-) Father of New Archy; pushed for broader range of study, reconstruction, research
- Cultural Evolution
- Study systematic change of cultural systems over time
- Cultural ecology
- Study relationships between human populations, other organisms, and their environments
- Social Organizations
- Structural make-up of society; divided into groups, has statuses and roles for groups
- Technomic artifacts
- Tools used primarily to cope with environment; variability is explained largely in ecological terms
- Sociotechnic Artifacts
- Used in social subsystem
- Ideotechnic
- Distinctive properties of artifact reflect mental, cognitive component of culture
- Anthropometry
- Measuring human morphology
- Emic
- Anthropological concepts & distinctions that are meaningful to participants in culture
- Etic
- Concepts and distinctions that are meaningful to scientific observers
- Ideational research strategy
- ideas, symbols, & mental structures are driving forces shaping behavior
- Adaptive research strategy
- Technology, ecology, demography and economy are driving forces shaping behavior
- Adaptive
- Cultures in dynamic equilibrium within their ecosystem, primarily economy
- Marvin Harris
- Cultural materialism
- Cultural materialism
- modes of production and reproduction lie at causal heart of every sociocultural system
- infrastructure
- elements which satisfy basic human needs
- Structure
- Domestic and political system
- Superstructure
- values, aesthetics, rules, beliefs, religions and symbols
- Infrastructural Determinism
- Society optimizes cost/benefits of primary needs; determine changes in rest of system
- Critical Theory
- Attempt to adapt Marx's ideas to an understanding of events and circumstances
- Claude Levi-Strauss
- Father of structural anthropology
- Structural Anthropology
- Culture is shared symbolic structures that are cumulative creations of the mind
- Symbolic Anthropology
- Culture is a code for communication
- Acculturation
- Adoption of a trait or traits by one culture from another; the influence of one culture on another
- Cultural Chronologies
- Ordering of past material culture into meaningful temporal segments
- Cultural Processes
- the "why" of culture; cause and effect cultural relationships
- Culture (Binford's)
- An extrasomaic means of adaptation
- Index Fossil Concept
- Strata containing similar fossil assembleges will tend to be similar age
- William Smith
- 1790s - 1st to recognize fossils can relate strata
- G. Buffon
- 1770s - Epochs of the Earth - 1st to split human and earth history
- J. Worsaae
- 1840's - Used superposition to verify 3 age system
- Brixham Cave
- 1858 - Paleontological site; mapped location of every bone; stone tools w/ excinct animals
- paleoethnology
- Behavior of the past, past lifeways, kinship (culture reconstruction)
- Midwestern Taxonomic Method
- McKern Classification - form trait list, divide into foci -> aspects -> phases -> base
- William Rathje
- Director of the Garbage project
- John Yellen
- Ethnoarcheologist - Worked with the !Kung
- Ethnoarcheology
- Study contemporary peoples to determine processual relationships that will help solve archy record
- Profile
- Section or exposure showing primary depositional or developmental strata
- Cryoturbation
- The Freeze/thaw cycle
- Karl Butzer
- First Geoarchaeologist: establishes three components of a site
- Physiogenic compontent of a site
- Changes due to natural earth forces
- Biogenic component of a site
- Changes due to animals and plants
- Anthropogenic component of a site
- Changes due to people
- Components of a site (3) (From Karl Butzer
- Physiogenic, Biogenic, Anthropogenic
- Two concerns of Geoarchaeology
- Site formation, Post-depositional processes
- Post-depositional processes (4)
- Faunal turbation, floral turbation, cryoturbation, argilliturbation
- Argilliturbation
- Clay expansion/contraction due to water content
- Krotovina
- Animal burrow
- Three ways to shape a stone
- 1) Chipping, flaking, knapping 2) Pecking 3) Grinding
- Montmorilonite
- Type of clay - expands and shrinks with humidity; difficult to use in pottery
- Kaolinite
- Type of clay - pure and clean, stable - excellent for pottery
- Radiation Offset
- Use surveyor's instrument to measure every single point
- Classification
- Creation of units of meaning by stipulating redundancy
- Spaulding
- C.R. - used statistical method for type definition - attribute cluster analysis
- Attribute cluster analysis
- any occurance of attributes significantly above expected constitutes a type
- Seriation
- Ordering of assemblages chronologically on the basis of frequency or occurrence of temporal types
- Fordian Bar Graph
- By James Ford: graph % frequency of temporal types
- Assumptions of Seriation - All assemblages being seriated must:
- be of comparable duration; belong to same cultural tradition; be drawn from same geographical area
- Occurance seriation
- Based on presence or absence of historical types
- Occurance Law
- the distribution of historical types through time is continuous
- Radiocarbon dating - what is it?
- Counts beta particle emissions as carbon-14 decays
- Radiocarbon - 1/2 life
- 5730
- Radiocarbon - range
- to 40,000 BP
- Radiocarbon - event dated
- Death of organism (removal from crabon exchange)
- Accelerated Mass Spectrometry
- Radiocarbon dating - counts atoms of carbon-14 directly
- Accelerated Mass Spectrometry - range
- to 75,000 - 100,000 BP
- Dendrochronology - what is it?
- Counts annual growth rings in trees sensitive to climatic variations
- Dendrochronology - range
- to 8000 BP
- Obsidian Hydration
- Measures the absorption of water into obsidian
- Obsidian Hydration - event dated
- Breakage of obsidian exposing a fresh surface
- Obsidian hydration - range
- to 800,000 BP
- Thermoluminescence - what is it?
- Measures trapped light energy in rocks
- Thermoluminescence - range
- to 1,000,000 BP
- Thermoluminescence - what and event dated?
- ceramics, glass - last time material heated above critical termperature at which light is emitted
- Potassium-Argon dating - what is it?
- Measures argon gas trapped in rock
- Potassium-Argon - 1/2 life
- 1.3 billion years
- Potassium-Argon - range
- 30,000 to 2 billion years
- Potassium-Argon - event dated
- Formation of the rock
- Archaeomagnetism
- Compares magnetic orientation of material to changes in earth's magnetic pole
- Archaeomagnetism - range
- to 2,000 BP
- Archaeomagnetism - material dated
- Fixed (have not moved) fired clay features such as hearths
- W. F. Libby
- Founder of radiocarbon dating
- Zooarchaeology
- study of animal remains from archy context
- Taphonomy
- Study of processes that affect bone after death of animal
- Slip
- Watery clay mixture applied to the surface of a pot before fireing to change the color or texture
- Temper
- non-plastic material added to clay to control shrinkage and prevent cracking in drying and firing
- Erraillure
- Small flake sometimes removed from area of the bulb of percussion
- Arris
- Ridge created by intersecting flake scars
- Dorsal face
- Back, away from the core
- Ventral face
- Inner face, against the core
- Distal end
- End away from striking platform
- Proximal end
- End with the striking platform
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