Archeology MidTerm

What is superposition? What is the significants?

• Older artifacts are found in lower layers of soil, and younger artefacts are found in higher layers

• Significants: Used to date artifacts and understanding the chronological sequence of events

What is the Chaîne Opératoire? What is the signifiants?

• Raw material (distribution of culture) → technology ( technological traditions) → use (activities) → discard

• Significants: provides a “biography” of an objects and its history; offers new interpretations

What are the 6 “Ages”?

• Palaeolithic (“Stone Age”) → 3 ma - 2000 BCE

• Mesolithic (“Stone Age”

• Neolithic (“Stone Age”) → 7000 BCE

• Copper Age (“Eneolithic/chaloclithic) → 3000 - 2000 BCE

• Bronze Age → 2000 - 1000 BCE

• Iron Age → 1200 - 600 BCE

What are Megaliths? What are examples of Megalith? Significants?

• Very large block of stone

• Examples:

  • Roman stole from Egypt (1400 BCE) Karnak brought to Rome in 4th century

  • Incan Megalithic Architecture

    • Stones come from many different cities, used ropes and leather strapping

    • Thousands of people to move from quarry

    • Ritualistic sites, plaza etc

• Significants: Offers insight into ancient cultures and beliefs along with their technology

What is Opus quadraum? What is the significants?

• Preserved walls → skilled masonry before mortar and max production complex

• Ex. Wall from the late 3rd century BCE; can see hatch marks on stone

• Large, uniformly cut stones to create smooth surfaces

• Significants: Signals a significant shift in advancements on building techniques due to its stability (early Roman Architecture)

What is Knapping? How do Archeologist know? What is the Significants?

• Striking and pressure to break/carve rocks

  • Flint or obsidian (Ryan Gills)

• Taking stone → knowing the structure of the stone along fractures/cleavage

• Archelogists: Archilogist experiments (do snapping themselves) ; talking to experts (Noel Grayson)

• Significants: Represents earliest form of human technology; crucial step for survival and evolution

What are Lithic Types? Significants?

• Typological indicators that allows to date types of Clovis points - mammoth killing sites (11,400 - 10,800 BCE)

• Folsom points (10 900 BCE) → site that have material from Bison kill sites

• Significants: Gives a sense of contact (human contact)

How does Lithic Making work?

• Use wear analysis:

  • See how objects are worn down experimental archaeology

  • Try carving animal flesh/scraps, nones, what traces of wear?

• Use observation of what wear to determine how that object was used/how often/who used

• Microscopic imaging

What is Alloying? What is the significants?

• Bringing together two different types of metals

  • Alloys: Copper + tint = Bronze

• Iron is much more available then copper (also cheaper)

• Significants: Strong, durable, resistant to corrosion; represents another advancements in technological making

What is Anneling? Significants?

• Heating up metal and then hammering the metal out

• Significants: Increases ability to wield heat and allows for new material (Moh’s scale)

In the context of class, what is Forming and Firing technique? What is the significants of studying?

• Core building

  • Materials and objects that are different; molds, prestigious

• Mosaic Glass

  • Canned glass; Popular in Roman Bowels and window glass

  • Expensive

• Glass Blowing

  • Create specific forms and sizes

  • Known models; standardizations

  • Blowing into mold

• Etching can create geometric shapes

• Significants: Important to date chronological types and are lined to a date of manufacture/date

In the context of ceramics, what was pottery like?

• Raw materials = clay sediments, sometime addition minerals/organic (inclusion = temper)

What are some forming methods in pottery?

• Paddle and Anvil

  • Padding the day into a standardized shape

  • Community in making pottery

• Could Building

  • Using coil in order to create the shape of a vase

  • Centripetal force of the wheel allows for symmetry

• Significants: observing the lack of symmetry in the vessels and using that to then hypotheses that they are hand build…

What is Terra Sigillata?

• name of type of Roman red potter ( 1st -2nd century BCE)

• Slip → clay on the surface

• Sigilitattap → a stamp of a makers mark

• Add water to dilute the clay soluition, creates a consistent red shiny surface

• Red → iron rich clay fired in an oxygen rich environment

• Ancient mass Production

What is Morphology and why is It significant in archeology research?

• Forms:

  • Open form = diameter of the rim is wider than the body (bowel)

  • Closed form = diameter of the rim is narrower than the body/belly (storage)

• Significants: Material consideration. What is it made of that gives clues? What kind of minerals (temper → clay matrix)

• Composition: Consider durability

• Composition: Thermal conductivity

What is Ceramic Petrography? Significance?

• Thin sections where they slice samples of clay

• Use magnified and cooled light shown minerals that allow for the identification of minerals

• They can tell geologically were the minerals come from

• Significance: allows for evidence of he movements of ceramics through trade and exchange, distribution

What is ceramic temper?

• Look under a microscope

• Too much temper → two many pores → poor conditions of heat for cooking food

• Slip → red paint

• Grog → ground down another piece of pot to add

Explain Use Wear Analysis and its significants

• Traces of wear on the object by human

• Abrasion

  • Chemical process of liquid (observe the acidity)

  • Wear on opposite side of pot

• Discolouration from fire/other

  • relationship between fuel and source

  • Accretion of sot

• Significance: Allows for the identification of the use of the tool/understand how it was used in the Ancient world

In the context of textiles, what would allow for the preservation of archeological organic/soft matter?

• Waterlogged conditions = aerobic conditions

• Very dry conditions

  • no water = slow decomposition of soft matter

• Rare mineralized context

  • Textiles forms into rocks (become minerals)

  • Limited and dependent

What is the Turfan man, and why is it significant?

• 1200 BCE

• Man found wearing pants/belt with a wool ban on his head

• Theorized to have been a horseman

• Pants: Are entry point in silk trade that transformed the world

In the context of wood, what are the preservation conditions needed?

• Carbonized context = burnt stuff

• Preservation of organic material (botanical material) (ie. shells around seeds)

• Significances: Helps learn of the consumption of wood

  • Different woods have different structures to identity what kind of wood the people in the Ancient world used

What is Anthropology?

Study of ancient charcoal

What was the Vindolanda Roman Fort and what was the significance?

• Northern England just south of Hadrian wall (85 CE - late 2nd century CE)

• Local geology with waterlogged condition

• Over 2000 shoes, 7000 leather object

• Significance: Looking at the demography of the fort (who lived there, understand the leather industry)

  • Sexual dimorphism = what we look at the different sizes between men and women

In the context of trade and contact, what was theorized to have been the first human contact of North America?

• Bergen Strait = 15, 000 - 20, 000 years ago was how people travelled to North America, land mass between Alaska and Russia

What was the new discovery of humans living in North American?

• Evidence of older cloves (12 000 BCE)

• Radioactive dating, evidence that humans lived in NA 100 000 years ago

What was found in White Sands New Mexico?

• Foot print founds in mud (multiple layers of mud with organic material in between)

• 20 000 years ago

What is the Ulubrum wreck and what does it tell about the ancient past?

• 13 00 BCE

• SHip bring copper and tin

• On bored was ivories from hippos, elephants, metals, igots from all over the world

• Signficances: Demonstrates trade and contact along with transport