UCR Anth005 Midterm 2

Small Scale

artifact, ecofact, feature, structure (Ex: Tokens in Syria used them as stamps, the stamps had symbols that indicate a writing system. Indus Valley Civilization: stamp seals, cubical weights in graduated sizes)

Middle Scale

a group of structures, a site (Ex: some sites are walled, built walls to get water during the dry season, no evidence of warfare)

Large Scale

a region (Ex: the Silk Road 202 BC- 202 AD Han Dynasty)

Finding Sites

-Surface Survey: detect and record archaeological evidence present on the ground by direct inspection

-Historic Texts: Troy

-Environment : Sites are often located in a particular environment

-Local Informants

-Aerial Remote Sensing: aerial photography and survey

Aerial photography

started after WW1 aerial photos were used to survey enemy positions. Photos represent different features during different hours, days, seasons, years.

1. Oblique angle: used to find sites

2. Vertical angle: used to make plans on it (vertical is better)

Crop marks

Satellite Imagery

LANDSAT (infrared vs. thermal)

1. Infrared: infrared wavelengths, e.g. health or vegetation

2. Thermal: how heat flows through a material

Aerial survey and photography

UVA(unmanned aerial vehicle) Balloons, Drones, Planes, Helicopters

Google Earth

Georeferenced Data

LiDAR

Light Detection and Ranging, an airborne remote sensing technique that can "see through" even dense vegetation to reveal architecture and other modification to the landscape.

-Light Detection and Ranging, Laser-based aerial mapping, Measure return signals of laser (point cloud), Accurate Digital Elevation Model (DEM), Forest canopy.

-Problems with LiDAR: different types of vegetation, no single visualization method, ground verification

Digital Elevation Model (DEM)

red= highest area, blue= lowest area (Ex: El Palmar, jungle, clearing costs a lot) visibility analysis, different layers

Subsurface Probe

a. Core and auger surveys

b. Shovel test surveys

Subsurface Remote Sensing

1. Active: uses energy and measures a response

2. Passive: measures physical characteristics w/o the use of energy (ex: magnetism)

Earth Conductivity Survey

1. Electromagnetic (EM) Survey

2. Active: Electrical current

3. Measure: Conductivity of the current

4. Two stationary probes

5. Soil contrasts and no depth

Resistivity Survey

1. Active: electromagnetic energy

2. Measure: Resistance of the matrix

Ground penetrating Radar (GPR)

1. Active: Radio pulses into the ground

2. Echo

3. Two dimensional vertical or horizontal time slices

Magnetic susceptibility

Passive: provides a measure of the ability of a material to be magnetized when a magnetic field is applied

Magnetometer survey

1. Measure: Magnetic intensity of the field

2. Features exposed to heat 700 ॰C or higher such as hearths, pits, and ditches, or iron objects.

3. Distortion in the magnetic field.

Mapping

-Topographic vs Plan View

-Pace and compass

-Tape and compass

-Transit and level

-Total station

-Gps

-Remote sensing data

-Reasons to use different techniques surface collection

Types of Excavations

Each site has different context.

-Coring and augering

-Test pit

-Trench

-Horizontal stripping (clearing excavations)

-Stratigraphic excavations

Documentation

-Grids and provenience

-Wheeler box grid (balks)

-Horizontal control

-Provenience: three dimensional location of archaeological data (levels:grid and datum: measuring pole)

-Vertical control

Stratigraphy: profile or cross section

Matrix

the material that surrounds and supports archaeological data.

Association

two or more artifacts that occur in the same matrix, Wari, Peru

Context

the final evaluation of the significance of the provenience, association and matrix of archaeological data.

-Importance of good documentation

-Problem of unprovenienced artifacts

Primary Context

Naturally and culturally are relatively undisturbed deposits Ex: Pompeii

Secondary Context

The provenience, association, and/ or the matrix are disturbed.

-Use-related secondary context related to human actions Ex: burial in secondary context

-Natural secondary context related to cultural processes.

Collecting Artifacts

-Dry-Screening

-Wet Screening

-Floatation: Light fraction, Heavy fraction, looking for Microartifacts

-Documentation: tags, bags, excavation forms, and field notes

Hunting and Overkill, Climate Change

Why did Ice-Age (Peistocene) Megafauna become extinct?

Megafauna

ex: Mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, savel tiger, reindeer

Popular images of the stone-age

-Caveman

-Savages

-Natural being

-Hairy images

-Hide, axes, etc.

1. How is !Kung's lifeway?

-Arranged marriages,young marriages rituals (trance), traveling around, hunting and gathering so many things, they moved and left sickness behind.

-N!ai, !Kung: "we gathered so much things." "Nobody told us what to do." "When we moved, we left sickness behind."

2. What kind of physical characteristic (ie. A large brain and tools vs. bipedalism) is critical for hunting large mammals?

Lean, tall, bipidal locomotion (habitually walking on two feet), hunting by tracking

3. What is !Kung's principal diet?

Insects, sweet berries, boba fruit, cucumbers, water, a deep root, any meat they can find (giraffe).

Earliest evidence of Bipedalism

Australopithecus afarensis footprints at Laetoli in tanzania 3.6 mya

Physical appearance (Modern vs. Ancient)

Past:

-upper paleolithic "Venus" figurines

-Elaborate hairdos or hair nets

-Textiles, baskets, ropes

Our notions of the body:

-Our fascination with the body

-Attracting mates, identities, self-image

-Notion of being civilized

-Upper paleolithic

Portable art

symbolic expressions beyond function

Varve Analysis

Places: cores (sea, lake, and ice), varve forms levels of sediments every year, up to about 53,000 B.P.

Limitations: requires a specific environment condition (ex: smooth ocean or lake, surrounded by mountains, deep water depth, ect.)

Phytolith analysis

microscopic silica bodies that form in living plants and provide a durable floral ecofact that allows the identification of plant remains in archaeological deposits.

Australia

-45,000 B.P.

-Navigation

-Australian data (peopling=45 kya)

-Extinction of megafauna (51.2 to 39.8 kya)

-Good correlation or earlier extinction of some species?

Ex: giant kangaroos and diprotodon

Europe

Extinction 40,000 years ago Wolly rhinoceros

Pacific islands

Extinction Moa: New Zealand

Stratigraphy

the study and interpretation of the sequentially layered deposits of a site

-helps create a chronology, a history of the site

-helps understand formation processes

Stratification

the observed layering of matrices and features.

Law of superposition

the sequence of strata from bottom to top reflects the order of deposition from earliest to latest. Older layers lie beneath younger layers.

Soil changes

1. Color (Munsell Chart)

2. Texture (clay, silt, sand)

3. Composition: organic and inorganic materials

4. Inclusions (natural and cultural)

Harris Matrix

visualizes the logical analysis and interpretation of sequentially, layered deposits in archaeological sites.

Stratigraphic correlation

cross-dating five stratigraphic columns

Site Transformation Processes

N-Transformation

C-Transformation

N=natural, C=Cultural

Natural transformation processes

-Erosion, deposition and deposition

-Flooding

-Bioturbation: when animals or tree roots disrupt the statigraphy gophers

Cultural transformation Processes

-Importation

-Mining

-Repurposing Abandoned and Collapsed Architecture

-Natural and Cultural formation processes

Typology

-Variation in Time: Chronology (ex: evolution of cars)

-Variation in Space: contemporary ceramic styles, late classic maya

-Form vs. Function

Style-Use and Replication of Style

Ancient roman columns and us capitol building

Artifact Biographies

changes in their use over time

-Acquisition

-Production

-use/reuse

-Discard

Assemblage

a gross grouping of all sub assemblages assumed to represent the sum of human activities carried out within an ancient community.

Attributes

the minimal characteristic used as a criterion for grouping artifacts into classes; includes stylistic, form and technological attributes.

Lithics

lithic comes from the greek term lithos =stones, chipped stones and ground stone, reduction technology

Two broad categories of stone tools

1. Tools produced by chipping= chipped stone tools

-Raw materials before removing flakes is called nodule (nodule, flake, core)

-Preferred materials below:

- chert (or flint), obsidian

Ground stone

tools produced by pecking and grinding (more recent technology)

ex: Mano (pestle) and Metate (mortar arquarn)

Ceramics

modeled or molded artifacts from clay, made durable by firing (Ex: figurine, pottery, music instruments)

-Slip: surface coating

-Paste: the mix when wet

-Fabric: the mix when hard

-Temper: mixed with the clay

-Vitrification: To make the fabric

Petrography: slip, temper, paste

Firing

open firing, kiln firing

Metallurgy

the group of industries involved in extracting metals from ore and using them to make artifacts; includes the copper, bronze, and iron industries.

Principal techniques (Metallurgy)

-Hammering

-Annealing

-Alloying:

-Smelting

-Casting

-Forging

Native Copper

-hopewell cold-hammered copper (220 B.C. - A.D. 500), hammering alone causes the metal to become brittle

-7000 BC in the Old World

-3000 BC in the New World

-Cold hammered, cut, polished, etc.

-Annealing

Ex: the great lakes area

Melting Points of Metals

-Copper 1083 ℃

-Gold 1063 ℃

-Silver 960 ℃

-Bronze 950-1000 ℃

-Iron 1540 ℃

Copper Smelting

Earliest often in crucibles (ceramic technology)

-Depiction of cu smelting from saqqara egypt ca. 2600 B.C.

-Early crucible from Tal-i-lbis, Iran. ca 5008 B.C.

No much metal

Further processing

-Break up the slag (silica rich junk mineral glass)

-Pick out the small bits of melted copper

-Remelt the copper to form a more pure and usable amount of metal

Alloying

Copper+Tin=Bronze

Advantage:

-workability (ex: more fasible than copper) from 1083 ॰C to 950 ॰C.

-Harder and less brittle than copper

-Enable to cast

Bronze Age (3500-1200 BC)

• Bronze age trade: long distance

• Uluburun shipwreck Casting

-Dated to approximately 1305 BC

-Sunk off of SW coast of Anatolia

-Sailing from palestine? To Aegean?

Casting

a liquid material is poured into a mold of a desired shape, lost-wax technique=one-off method (fine clay, wax model, foot bellows)

Iron Age (1200-1000 BC)

-Hilti Te in anatolia (turkey)

-Later in central and northern europe

-Not used in the new world and australia

-Melting point 1500॰C

-Charcoal fire= carburized iron or steel

Forge

the shaping of metal using localized compressive forces

Implication of iron

1. Full time specialists

2. No longer elite items

3. Bust cast iron (except china) and intentionally alloyed steel (Fe+C) were not common