Archaeological Methods, Sociopolitical Organization, and Subsistence

Vocabulary practice cards covering archaeological survey methods, excavation techniques, analogical reasoning, absolute and relative dating, sociopolitical organizations, identity markers, and subsistence analysis.

Remote Sensing

The imaging of phenomena from a distance, conducted either from the air or from the surface of the ground.

Electrical Resistivity

A ground reconnaissance remote sensing method that passes non-destructive electric currents through the subsurface.

Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR)

An aerial reconnaissance technique used to see through vegetation and detect different levels of the ground.

Excavation

The systematic recovery of artifacts and remains discovered by digging, typically executed in $1 \times 1\text{ meter}$ square units with vertical increments and mapping throughout.

Curation

The post-excavation process where artifacts are cleaned, identified, and kept in condition to be studied and preserved.

Analogy

A similarity between like features of two things on which a comparison can be based, providing the basis of valid archaeological inferences from surviving material traces.

Ethnographic Analogy

The practice of using living cultural examples from the present to make inferences about past societies.

Ethnohistory

The study of ethnographic cultures through the examination of historical documents and records.

Experimental Archeology

The controlled replication and testing of recovered artifacts or known past activities.

Ethnoarcheology

Ethnographic research carried out with the analogical needs of the archaeologist in mind, often using descendant informants to study material practices such as metate production.

Awas

Maya cultural taboos associated with metate production and use that have corresponding consequences (such as Twilight Awas, Sunlight Awas, or Walking Over Metate Awas).

Relative Dating

Methods of establishing whether an object, stratum, or event is older or younger relative to something else without providing an exact calendar year.

Stratigraphy

A relative dating method that dates archaeological material relative to its position in underlying and overlying soil layers.

Typological Sequence

The relative ordering of artifacts, buildings, or objects based on observable shifts and changes in their style over time.

Seriation

A relative dating technique that measures changes in the popularity of certain styles or artifact types over time.

Deep-sea Cores

Sediment and foraminifera shell layers extracted from the ocean floor used to determine climatic changes based on variations in chemical structures.

Absolute Dating

Dating methods that determine the full or absolute calendar age of a specimen in years before present.

Dendrochronology

An absolute dating method where tree rings from an archaeological specimen are matched to a master ring plot to determine precise age.

Radiocarbon Dating

An absolute dating method measuring the decay of radiocarbon in organic materials (such as bone, charcoal, or leather), accurate from $300$ to $50000\text{ years ago}$.

Archaeomagnetism

A dating technique comparing magnetic pole alignments trapped in soils and materials heated to or above $700$ against historical shifts in Earth's magnetic field.

Potassium-Argon Dating

An absolute dating method that measures the ratio of $^{40}\text{K}$ and $^{40}\text{Ar}$ to date volcanic rocks and geological formations older than $80000\text{ years old}$.

Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL)

A dating method where minerals exposed to light have their accumulated radiation clock restarted, requiring background radiation measurement at the burial location.

Sociopolitical Organization

The regulation or management of relations and interactions among groups and their representatives.

Bands (Mobile Hunter-Gatherer Groups)

Small, kin-based, egalitarian foraging groups that live in temporary camps and shelters with minimal social differentiation.

Segmentary Societies (Tribes)

Societies based on non-invasive food production (horticulture and pastoralism) with permanent villages or pastoral herds and kin groups (clans/lineages) lacking formal government.

Chiefdoms

Kin-based societies characterized by permanent political structures, differential access to resources (wealth, prestige, and power), fortified or ritual centers, and large-scale monuments.

Early States

Societies featuring formal government, socioeconomic stratification, class hierarchies, urban settlements with infrastructure, palaces, temples, and specialized craft production.

Site Hierarchy

The classification of archaeological sites based on relative importance, typically determined by size and geographical location within regional settlement patterns.

Sex (in Archaeology)

The biological determination of an individual established archaeologically from physical skeletal remains.

Gender (in Archaeology)

A culturally constructed identity involving the specific sex-related social roles assigned to individuals within a society.

Burial Analysis

The archaeological examination of both human skeletons and accompanying grave furniture/artifacts to determine age, biological sex, social rank, and ceremonial practices.

Subsistence

The source, strategy, or means by which human groups obtain the necessities of life.

Foraging

An adaptive strategy relying on hunting, fishing, and gathering wild resources; the universal subsistence strategy of all humans until $10000\text{ B.P.}$

Horticulture

Non-intensive plant cultivation utilizing simple hand tools, slash-and-burn clearing, and shifting cultivation plots left fallow over time.

Agriculture

Continuous, intensive plant cultivation requiring significant labor, domesticated draft animals, irrigation, terracing, and manure fertilization.

Pastoralism

An adaptive strategy centered on a symbiotic relationship with domesticated animal herds used directly for food, milk, and hides.

Industrialism

An economic system where production separates workers from their products, with output sold for employer profit and reduced personal identification with the work.

Palynology

The microbotanical study of microscopic pollen grains preserved in acidic and poorly aerated soils.

Phytoliths

Minute particles of silica (plant opal) formed inside plant cells that persist in archaeological sediments after the plant decays.

Diatom Analysis

The identification of single-celled algae whose silica cell walls remain preserved in water-lain sediments after death.

Paleoethnobotany

The study of past human exploitation of plants through macrobotanical remains like seeds, fruits, wood, and vessel residues.

Coprological Analysis

The archaeological investigation of preserved prehistoric feces (paleofeces) to reconstruct ancient diet and health.

Faunal Analysis

The identification and interpretation of animal remains from archaeological sites, categorized into microfauna (small creatures) and macrofauna (large game).

Paleoentomology

The study of preserved prehistoric insect exoskeletons, which serve as sensitive indicators of past climatic and environmental conditions.

Isotopic Analysis

The study of chemical isotope ratios (such as carbon and strontium) extracted from archaeological teeth and bone collagen to determine prehistoric diet and geographic origin.