Prehistoric Archaeology Quiz 1

Historical Particularism

A culture must be understood within its own time period, and contemporary cultures are culminations of those that came before.

Cultural Relativism

Judging cultures on their own standards rather than through comparison to other (often Western) cultures

Franz Boas (1858-1942)

Championed Cultural Relativism and Historical Particularism to combat unilateral theories of cultural development

Gertrude Bell (1868-1926)

Focused on earliest Iraqi farmers, founded Natl. Museum of Iraq, British Intelligence spy

Amelia Edwards (1831-1892)

Founded the Egyptian Exploration Society to raise awareness of the destruction of archaeological sites in Egypt, wrote A Thousand Miles Up the Nile

Augustus Pitt-Rivers (1827-1900)

Ex-military, rigorous standards of excavation and record-keeping, understood that excavation is destructive. Created detailed maps and architectural models of sites, categorized artifacts by material, not culture

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890)

Rich German who destroyed Troy, not understanding stratigraphy and conflating artifacts from 9 different times and sites as all contemporaneous. The treasure was bought in Berlin, lost in WWII, and rediscovered in the 90s

Giovanni Belzoni (1778-1823)

Italian circus performer who becomes a looter-for-hire by blowing up sites with TNT, hired for “mummy unwrapping parties”. Later hired by Henry Salt to acquire artifacts for the British Museum

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

“Father of US Archaeology”, first to argue the ancestors of Native Americans built the ruins, created maps, made notes, and tested hypotheses in problem-oriented archaeology, used stratigraphy, asked indigenous peoples and observed cultural continuity

Antiquarianism

Collecting for the sake of collecting, starts with the 1594 discovery and looting of Pompeii

Avoidance

An act of reverence in some indigenous cultures

16th century

Colonialism, the assumption that native peoples are savages and thus that great ruins were built by others

Renaissance

Humanism and trying to understand the natural world

Nabonidus (555 BC)

Last of the Babylonian kings, calls for then 2,500 y/o Ur to be excavated and makes a museum

Settler Colonialism

The replacement of one set of peoples w/another

Shift narrative from abandonment to…

persistence

Induction

Specifics to generalities, uses circumstantial evidence to make statements about processes that can’t be directly observed

Deduction

Generalities to specifics

Diachronic Analysis

Change over long periods w/less depth

Synchronic Analysis

Snapshot in time, witnessing and participating in behavior

3 Goals of Archaeology

1. Construct Cultural Chronology

2. Reconstruct Past Ways of Life

3. Define Culture Process and Change

Anthropology

The study of humans and culture

Archaeology

The study of human artifacts

Occam’s Razor

The hypothesis with the least amount of assumptions is the best

Uniformitarianism

The present is the key to the past

4 Basic Scientific Principles

1. Real and Knowable Universe

2. Operates based on understandable laws

3. Laws are immutable

4. Laws can be discerned through research

Epistemology

The study of knowledge

Faustian Bargain

Sacrificing integrity for personal gain. In Nazi Germany this resulted in the unethical treatment of research and its use for propaganda in exchange for support, power

3 kinds of German archaeologists during the Nazi regime

1. True believers (there from day 1)

2. March violets (conformed as Hitler became dictator)

3. Dissenters (used hidden disobedience, weapons of the weak)

The 1950s

• Settlement Pattern Studies = Regions rather than single sites, all sized sites are valued

• Environmental Determinism = The environment determines everything about how people lived

• Multi-disciplinary research teams

• New dating techniques, like radiocarbon and dendrochronology

1960s and 1970s

• Self-reflection, there is a need to show the relevance of archaeology to everyday life problems

• Emphasis on being scientific

• Beyond just being descriptive, archaeology should explain cultural processes

Culture Process/Processual School (1960s and 1970s)

Understanding individual behaviors within the context of larger systems to explain how components work together and how cultures change over time

3 tenants of Culture Process/Processual School

1. Archaeology is Anthropology

2. Culture is a system made of inter-related subsystems

3. Archaeology is a science and should use deductive approaches w/hypotheses

Post-Processual School (1980s-today)

Practitioners, publishers, and benefactors have biases in their interpretations of the past which reflect political agendas

2 types of dating methods

1. Relative - compares within a data set

2. Absolute/Chronometric - is exact

6 types of Relative dating methods

1. Stratigraphy = uses law of superposition and law of association (contemporaneous within a layer)

2. Geologic Dating = relates to documented geologic/climate events

3. Stylistic Seriation = works directly w/cultural materials, expert looks to gradual changes in style of a single artifact type

4. Cross Dating = uses an index fossil or artifact, something with a distinct appearance and short timespan

5. Terminus Post Quem = date after which the layer was deposited

6. Terminus Ante Quem = date before which the underlying layer was deposited

4 questions for any Absolute/Chronometric dating methods

1. What material is the method testing?

2. What event is really being dated?

3. What time range does the method work for?

4. What are potential problems with the method?

6 Absolute/Chronometric dating methods

1. Dendrochronology = tree rings, core samples from trees. Limitations: Regional, “Old Wood Problem” reuse of materials, what is actually being dated?

2. Standard Radiocarbon/C-14 = C-14 is unstable w/a half-life of 5,730 yrs and, upon death, decays to N-14, while C-12 levels stay constant. Limitations: difficult knowing what is being dated, destructive method requiring large samples, subject to contamination by differently-aged C-14, 50,000 yr limit for age of artifact

3. Accelerator Mass Spectrometric Radiocarbon dating = counts C-14 atoms in sample, less destructive w/smaller samples, up to 75,000 yr limit. Limitation: very expensive

4. Potassium-Argon Dating (K-Ar) = measures amount of argon gas in rocks surrounding an artifact to identify the last time volcanic rocks were molten, K-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion yrs and decays to Ar gas at a constant rate, up to 4.5 billion yrs old. Limitations: Samples often contaminated w/older crystals, not useful w/samples younger than 100,000 yrs old

5. Obsidian Hydration = absorbs moisture at a constant rate, creating a measurable hydration layer that determines the manufacture date of an artifact up to 100,000 y/a. Limitations: Regional, re-fracturing starts the hydration layer at 0

6. Archaeomagnetic Dating = Magnetic materials in clay and certain stones record the orientation of the surrounding magnetic field when last heated up to 10,000 y/a. Limitations: Only useful for stationary features, loses magnetism upon being moved, dates the last time the object was heated, so can be influenced by forest fires