Anth 103: Introduction to Archaeology Mid-term Study Guide

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts, theoretical movements, key intellectual figures, and dating and field methods from Anth 103 Introduction to Archaeology.

Archaeology

The study of the past through the systematic recovery and analysis of material remains.

Anthropology

The study of humankind; archaeology is one of its subdisciplines focused specifically on past humankind.

Holistic

Treating, dealing with, or considering a whole system, structure, or person rather than focusing exclusively on isolated parts. In archaeology, it is an inclusive, interdisciplinary approach that reconstructs past human behavior by examining all aspects of a society—including its ecology, economy, social organization, politics, art, and ideology.

Comparative

An anthropological approach that compares different cultures and societies to achieve a better understanding of the past rather than viewing circumstances in isolation.

Biological Anthropology

A subdiscipline of anthropology (also known as physical anthropology) that views humans as biological organisms, studying human evolution, physical variation, and the biological bases of human behavior.

Cultural Anthropology

A subdiscipline of anthropology that emphasizes nonbiological aspects: the learned social, linguistic, technological, and familial behaviors of humans.

Linguistic Anthropology

A subdiscipline of anthropology that focuses on human language, diversity in grammar, syntax, and lexicon, historical language development, and its relation to a culture's perception of the world.

Catastrophism

The scientific and historical concept that Earth's geological and biological features were shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events rather than slow, gradual processes.

Fixity of Species

An outdated scientific and philosophical belief that all living organisms were created in their current, unchanging forms and cannot evolve or transform into new species over time.

Giovanni Battista Belzoni

An Italian figure recognized as one of the earliest antiquarians.

Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae

The first professional archaeologist, who excavated specifically to answer questions instead of merely finding things.

Alfred Vincent Kidder

The founder of Anthropological Archaeology.

H. Marie Wormington

A female pioneer in American archaeology.

Thomas Jefferson

Conducted the first systematic excavation during the mound builder debate, defining soil layers and recording artifact positions.

Index Fossil Concept

A concept introduced in 1815 by geologist William Smith showing that identical geological layers are exposed over large areas and that each distinct layer contains characteristic fossils used to identify it.

Three-Age System

A technological classification system devised by C.J. Thomsen in 1836 that organizes prehistory into Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages, establishing the recognition of archaeological time depth.

Uniformitarianism

A geological principle outlined in Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1833) stating that the Earth's surface is the product of natural processes that can be observed operating in the present.

Gradualism

The concept that geological changes have occurred slowly and incrementally over centuries.

Natural Selection

Charles Darwin's evolutionary mechanism outlined in Origin of Species (1859), based on common ancestry, adaptation, and survival of the fittest, establishing that species were not created separately.

Sam Haven

The Father of Northern American Archaeology (1865), who concluded that Native American ancestors came from Asia and that prehistoric mounds were built by Native Americans.

Cyrus Thomas

An archaeologist hired by the Bureau of American Ethnology in the 1880s who substantiated Sam Haven's conclusions regarding the mounds after 11 years of research.

Gertrude Caton Thompson

An archaeologist who in 1929 advocated excavating settlements rather than solely tombs, and confirmed that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans.

V. Gordon Childe

An archaeologist in the 1950s who compared different geographical areas and argued that cultural changes in Europe were introduced via diffusion from the Near East.

Diffusion

The spread of cultural ideas, knowledge, or practices between societies through trade or migration.

New Archaeology (Processual Archaeology)

An approach emerging in the 1960s led by Lewis Binford that embraced the scientific method and broke cultural data into integrated subsystems such as technology, subsistence, and social structure.

Post-Processual Archaeology

A theoretical movement emerging in the late 1970s and 1980s as a reaction against processual archaeology's strict objectivity and environmental determinism, asserting that complete neutrality is impossible and interpretations reflect personal, cultural, and political biases.

Culture History

An archaeological approach practiced mainly in the early-to-mid 20th century that explains differences or changes in artifact frequencies through the diffusion of ideas or migration of peoples with different mental templates.

Site

A spatially isolated locus of past human activity, ranging in scale from a flaked stone scatter to an ancient city.

Artifact

Any movable object that has been used, modified, or manufactured by humans, such as stone, bone, or metal tools, pottery, ornaments, or sacred items.

Feature

Nonportable, immovable evidence of human activity at a site, such as architecture, fire hearths, artifact clusters, garbage pits, or soil stains.

Assemblage

A collection of artifacts of one or several classes of materials derived from a defined archaeological context, such as a site, feature, or stratum.

Attribute

An individual characteristic that distinguishes one artifact from another based on size, surface texture, form, raw material, method of manufacture, or design pattern.

Type

A defined class of archaeological artifacts characterized by a consistent clustering of attributes.

Typology

The systematic arrangement of material culture into defined types.

Structural-Functionalist Theoretical Approach

A framework that views society as an interconnected system in which material culture fulfills specific functions to maintain social order, stability, and institutional equilibrium.

Egalitarian Society

A small-scale society (bands or tribes of $50$ to $500$ individuals) characterized by simple foraging or farming, household self-sufficiency, kinship-based membership, situational leadership, and an absence of wealth accumulation.

Ranked Society (Chiefdom)

A society with a population of $500$ to $10{,}000$, characterized by simple or flood/irrigation farming, limited economic specialization, kin-based status, few permanent leaders, and limited wealth accumulation.

State Society

A large-scale society supported by intensive agriculture and food surpluses, stratified into distinct classes (elites, commoners, slaves), with formal leadership and institutionalized state religion and coercive forces (police and military).

Cultural Evolution

The selection and modification of learned human behaviors and social institutions over time, occurring rapidly in response to environmental stress or opportunity.

Biological Evolution

The natural selection of genetic material producing physical and biological changes in human populations over time, characterized by little anatomical change over the past $110{,}000\text{ years}$.

Context

The relationship of archaeological items to other items within the material record.

Behavioral Context

The living, spatial association between items used contemporaneously, documenting what objects functioned together in spatial proximity.

Chronological Context

The temporal sequence of items, features, and deposits in time, establishing what came before or after in relative or absolute calendar years.

Plan View

A to-scale, top-down bird's-eye drawing or map documenting the horizontal distribution of features, structures, and artifacts across an excavation unit or surface, capturing behavioral context.

Profile

An exposed vertical cross-section or wall of an excavation unit or trench displaying the sequence of cultural and natural sedimentary layers, documenting chronological context.

C-Transforms

Cultural transformations; human-driven behaviors and activities that create, shape, or alter an archaeological site before, during, and after occupation.

N-Transforms

Natural transformations; non-cultural environmental and geological processes that alter, bury, or destroy an archaeological site during or after occupation.

Provenience

An artifact's exact physical location relative to a standardized spatial grid or system of data collection.

Archaeological Survey

The initial, non-intrusive phase of research aimed at discovering, locating, and mapping archaeological remains and evaluating regional settlement patterns.

Settlement Pattern

The regional distribution and spatial patterning of archaeological sites across a landscape.

Lidar

An optical remote sensing technology combining light and radar pulses to map landscapes and detect hidden archaeological features obscured beneath dense vegetation.

Smithsonian Site Number

A standardized trinomial system used to record archaeological sites in the United States, consisting of a state code, a two-letter county abbreviation, and a unique sequential number (e.g., 45PI438).

Excavation Unit

A standardized, controlled grid square excavated systematically in horizontal and vertical levels to maintain spatial control and record context.

Relative Dating

Methods that order objects, strata, or events chronologically relative to one another (as earlier, later, or contemporary) without determining an exact calendar year.

Absolute Dating

Dating methods that establish ages expressed in specific, measurable scientific units (such as calendar years, centuries, or millennia) to pinpoint a discrete interval in time.

Law of Superposition

Steno's geological principle stating that in an undisturbed pile of sedimentary layers, each bed is older than the layer above it and younger than the layer below it.

Dendrochronology

An absolute dating method that assigns exact calendar years to ancient wood specimens by measuring and matching patterns of annual growth rings.

Drift-Wood Effect

A dating error where a society utilizes old or scavenged driftwood, causing radiocarbon dates to appear substantially older than the actual human occupation or construction event.

Radiocarbon Dating ($^{14}\text{C}$ Dating)

An absolute radiometric dating technique measuring the radioactive decay of carbon-14 in organic materials up to $50{,}000\text{ years}$ old, based on a half-life of $5{,}730\text{ years}$.

Half-Life

The predictable time period required for half of the unstable radioactive atoms in an isotope to decay.

Potassium-Argon Dating

An absolute radiometric dating technique measuring the ratio of radioactive potassium-40 to stable argon-40 gas to determine the age of volcanic rocks and minerals.

Middle Range Theory

A conceptual framework that links static archaeological observations in the present to dynamic human behaviors of the past by operationalizing material correlates.

Ethnoarchaeology

The ethnographic study of living peoples to observe how human behaviors and material culture enter and become transformed in the archaeological record.

Formal Analogy

An archaeological analogy based on shared general characteristics or environmental conditions between an archaeological case and an unrelated contemporary society.

Direct Historical Approach

A relational analogy method that interprets archaeological remains by studying contemporary or historical groups that are direct cultural descendants of the prehistoric population.

Binford's Collector Model

A 1980 theoretical framework modeling how hunter-gatherer groups organize mobility and subsistence, contrasting foraging strategies with collecting strategies.