Ant 003: Intro to Archaeology UC Davis

archaeology

the scientific study of history or prehistory by analysis of a people's artifacts (or their material culture)

Nabonidus

the last kind of Babylon and earliest known archaeologist

Nationalist Archaeology

using the archaeological record to justify a historical, political, or geographical position

Direct Historical Approach

archaeological technique of working backward in time from sites of known age into earlier times (provides a chronological but assumes things are not much different in the past)

Artifact

anything owing any o fits attributes to human activity; usually a discreet object

Strata

units of roughly contemporaneous deposition occurring as relatively distinct layers of sediment, distinct from other such units

Principle of Superposition

if the strata are undisturbed, the last will be deposited at the top and the first deposited at the bottom

Principle of Strata Identified by Fossils

each stratum of a group of closely related strata contains its own characteristic set of fossils

Thomas Jefferson

use of stratigraphic excavation on Virginia mounds

Christian Thomsen

developed "Three-Age-System" for organizing museum collections

Principle of Association

things regularly found near each other spatially are inferred to have been used and deposited at roughly the same time

Portable artifact

any discreet object that does not lose its integrity when moved from its original position

Unmodified artifact

natural items not modified in shape or size, but were moved by humans

Subtractive

artifacts modified by the removal of pieces

Additive

several separate elements combined into a single object; created by putting pieces together

Altered

modified by chemical or molecular alteration of the raw material in order to construct the desired object

Feature

non-portable association of objects that must be studied in the field

Association

close spatial relationships of objects

Site

usually defined in terms of a density of cultural staff: a high spatial density of artifacts; this varies by how you define a dense cluster

Sampling

techniques for examining a part of a set of material in order to derive statements about the entire set of material; also refers to the act of drawing or selecting a subset.

Population

total set of units being studied

Sample

any subset of units from a population

Haphazard sampling

one accepts whatever cases/sites one happens to encounter with no consideration of how representative they may or may not be

Judgmental sampling

the archaeologist uses experience and expertise to choose where to sample

Probability sampling

samples are drawn to conform to statistical probability theory

Simple random sampling

all units in a population have an equal change of being drawn or selected

Precision

how close the sample values approximate population values

Reliability

the ability to resample and get the same answer

Validity

measuring what you are trying to measure

Sampling units

refers to the discrete parts into which a population has been divided for sampling purposes

Sampling element

those things that you are sampling to find

Cluster sampling

each sampling unit may have more than one element

sampling frame

a list of all sampling units making up a population

Stratified Random Sampling

dividing the population into subpopulations (or strata) and sampling randomly within each of these subpopulations

Homogeneous population

relatively the same; can use a smaller sample size or test a smaller percentage of the population

Heterogeneous population

variable; need to use a larger sample size

Systematic interval sampling

units are sampled at a fixed interval from on another

Culture History

involves tracing the history of past cultural units and placing them in their proper time/space position; what where and when; emphasized collecting representative samples

Culture area concept

stems form cultural anthropology and based on similarities in cultures in particular geographic areas and their subsistence

Culture Reconstruction

reconstruction of past life ways; trying to write ethnographies of the past; how; emphasized discovering function of artifcats

Artifact function studies

it would be more meaningful if artifacts were regarded as tools employed by humans in some pattern of behavior

Analogy

pointing out a series of similarities in tow or more phenomena and concluding from those observable similarities that the phenomena are similar in additional (usually unobservable) ways;

General analogy

broad generalizations and comparisons based on multiple cultural traditions

Specific analogy

comparisons based on a particular cultural tradition

Culture Process

test hypotheses to derive laws of cultural evolution and how culture works

Culture

shared ideas in a particularistic view

Hypothesis

a testable explanation for a set of phenomena; must have empirical content and be falsifiable. You cannot prove it to be true, only that it's the best explanation for now

Deductive-nomological approach

ability to predict how certain variables within a cultural system will respond to changes in other variables in that system; search for general laws of behavior

Statistical laws

the probability that A will be followed by B under certain conditions is some specific value P

Post-processual Archaeology

a post modern backlash to a scientific approach to archaeology; perceived to lack a humanistic view; based on critical theory

Ecological Archaeology

concerned with studying human adaptation in the past; use of ecological models like optimal foraging theory; outgrowth of cultural reconstruction

Evolutionary Archaeology

concerned with studying the evolution of human culture in the past; outgrowth of culture history

Behavioral Archaeology

concerned with studying human behavior in the past using analogues; outgrowth of cultural reconstruction

Portable artifact

any discreet object that does not lose its integrity when moved form its original position

archaeological site

any place where there is detectable evidence of past human activities

Archaeological surveying

looking for stuff

Sampling design

occurs when it is impossible to impractical to cover the total survey area

Provenience

the source, origin, or location, of an artifact or feature and the recording of the same

Cultural Deposits

have additional material in sediment, often darker in color, may contain charcoal or stone not usually geologically present

Subsurface testing

coring, auger testing, shovel testing, test excavation

Datum point

A point on a site from which all things are measured

Datum plane

an arbitrary horizontal plane across the surface of the site form which vertical distances can be measures (usually tied to sea level)

The Rice-Chex method

with this method you leave a balk between each unit; both horizontal and vertical views are discontinuous

balk

space on the grid between each unit