ANTH 12 - Key Sites

Tenochtitlan

There is evidence that they actually studied the material culture, used to solidify that lineage & power for this later Tenochtitlan; One of the tallest pyramids in the world, the Pyramids of the Sun—Teotihuacan, Pyramid of the Sun. Burned Systematically, largest known city known from then. 

Capital city of the Aztec Empire. Excavations have uncovered significant Aztec art and artifacts, including objects from the Aztecs' own collected items from other Mesoamerican civilizations, revealing aspects of their culture, religion, and artistry.

Gatecliff Shelther

Has been called the “deepest archaeological rock shelter in the Americas” with very well-preserved artifacts and undisturbed sediments which provide data and information. Most likely a short-term field camp. In the Great Basin (Navada Area) of the western United States that has remarkable stratigraphy.

Stonehenge

Prehistoric monument in England consisting of a circular arrangement of massive standing stones. Possibly a calendar measuring things like the Summer and Winter Solstice. Used survey techniques like Areial Survey, Magnetometry, Ground-Penetrating Radar, etc.

Antiquarian Perspective on Stonehenge: 

• Giants asked to build by Merlin

• Druids created & worshipped there

Carson Desert

The terminus of several large rivers that create a vast wetland and was used primarily between 5k-1.5k. Importance is in exploring the regional archaeological record, survey and sampling. Drawing on the same methods and theory of pollsters use to take the nation’s political pulse by interviewing only a few thousand people (each site has an equal chance of being included in the sample).

Santa Catalina de Guale

A subfield focusing on the physical remains of the historic Mission Santa Catalina de Guale, a Spanish colonial mission on St. Catherines Island, Georgia. Importance because of its Surface Survey, which basically means to walk in the straightest line possible, climbing over rocks and deadfalls, skirting along the sides of steep ridges—looking even when you don’t expect to find anything.

Folsom

Early Native American (immediately following Clovis) culture of North America; technology known for large, fluted, bifacial projectile points used as spear points for big game hunting.

Chaco Canyon

Once the center of a vast social and political network about one thousand years ago. Using things like ariel photographs (Survey Techniques) and Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanning helped find things like old prehistorical road networks and helped detect features such as buried road systems, even if they are invisible to an archaeologist standing on top of them. 

Nazca Lines

Series of large geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert of southern Peru. They cover a large area in straight lines, geometric shapes, and animal figures such as hummingbirds, monkeys, and spiders. Believed to have had religious and ceremonial significance. May have been used in rituals or as pathways for religious processions, connecting sacred sites or pointing to water sources. Important because of their use of several survey techniques like Ariel Survey. 

Piltdown

Piltdown Man, since the idea of an older world became widely accepted, people were racing to find the missing link. Charles Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward found “Piltdown Man”, but the problem of replicability, they only found one. Archeology is especially susceptible to “forging data” (due to being such a public facing science).

Cahokia

Wood Henge. An ancient settlement of southern Indians, located near present day St. Louis, it served as a trading center for 40,000 at its peak in A.D. 1200. Important in class because we used it to understand Analogies (the use of shared traits to aid interpretation; noting similarities between two things and then inferring that other attributes must also be shared; attributes of the better understood example with the lesser-known example, extrapolation) and Ethnoarchaeology (the use of living societies to see links between human behavior & material remains). Analogies can argue that the central pole in the central pole (by looking at neighboring native tribes) is worshipped and an important centerpiece.

Site of over 100-Earthen Mounds, larger than the contemporary people of London in 1200; Wood Hedge is likely also a calendar like Stonehenge.

Ozette

Prehistoric Northwest Coast whaling village, wet conditions at the site preserved objects of wood and fiber not usually well preserved. Helps us learn about how sites are preserved

Standard Preservation:

Oxygen, light & water are the enemies of keeping things preserved—break things down fast, yet in some cases if you take out one of these elements out but still have the other two, you tend to get pretty good preservation.

Hudson-Meng

an archaeological site in Nebraska preserving the remains of several hundred Bison antiques from approximately 10,000 years ago, discovered by ranchers in 1954 and later excavated to understand the Paleo-Indian bison kill. Helped to understand domestication and hunting on the environment. Taphonomy; using analogies, and the site itself always presented some troubling facts when comparing it with similar bison kill sites: no cut marks on bones, among others. The bone pile made a sediment trap. 

Laetoi

Location in Tanzania where tracks of australopithecine footprints were found showing that australopithecines walked upright. Superposition in action, Mary Leaky realized that footprints found with a human-like gait could test a major hypothesis of paleoanthropology; for decades, specialist in human evolution argued that bipedalism must have arisen in a response to tool use. But with her knowledge of geology, she guessed that the footprints were very old, implying that our human ancestors walked upright long before the appearance of the oldest stone tools in the area. So the hypothesis that tool use led to bipedalism must be wrong. 

Cagny-l’Epinette

An important Lower Paleolithic open-air archaeological site in the Somme Valley, France known for its well-preserved Acheulean stone tool assemblages and faunal remains from a period roughly 300,000 to 370,000 years ago. Important because it was studied with the idea of studying its “ancient living floor”, despite it not being the artifacts original site due to its river washing from other places, it is important because it contains a record of ancient humans did in France 200k years ago.

San Cristobal

A fertile volcanic island with the only permanent freshwater lake in the archipelago

Kerala

Reveals a deep prehistory, with Megalithic sites, Neolithic engravings at Edakkal Caves, and Iron Age burials featuring terracotta sarcophagi and unique laterite structures like capstones and umbrella stones

Mikea

A group of people living in the dry forests of southwestern Madagascar, challenge the popular image of them as a reclusive, ancient hunter-gatherer society. Plant Domestication

Poverty Point

A complex of monumental earthen mounds and ridges built by Native Americans between 1700 and 1100 BCE, during the Late Archaic period. Known for earthworks, I think.

Olduvai Gorge

A gorge in northeastern Tanzania where anthropologists have found some of the earliest human remains. Yielded the fossil remains of more than 60 hominins (members of the human lineage), providing the most continuous known record of human evolution during the past 2 million years, as well as the longest known archaeological record of the development of stone-tool industries. Has often been called the “Cradle of Mankind”

Meadowcroft Rockshelter

An archaeological site which is located near Jefferson, Pennsylvania. Contains evidence that the area may have been continually inhabited for at least 19k years ago. Importance because, if accurately dated, it would be one of the earliest known sites with evidence of a human presence and continuous human occupation in the New World. During the Ice Age before the Holocene, the glaciers would push up to right about there.