ANSC 301: Topic 3 (Archaeological Analysis)

Environmental determinism

The environment you live in shapes your culture

Food collection

Looking for food and getting it

Agriculture

growing your own food

Pastoralism

raising your own animals

Domestication

A state of interdependence between humans and a selected plant or animal species (takes a long time)

Paleobotany

The study of plant remains in the context of the site

Macrobotanicals

plant remains we can see with the naked eye

Mircobotanicals

plants we can see with the naked eye. They are microscopic.

Food collection

Basically looking for food and getting it. For example hunting, fishing, etc. Probably have to be mobile.

• less violence bc if you run out, you just move somewhere with more food.

Food production

• Growing your own food (agriculture)

• Pastoralism: raising your own animals.

• Domestication: takes a long time, but basically fostering a dependence between plants and animals on humans.

Diet

There’s a difference between what you are eating, growing, or producing so need to be really sure. We can do this by:

• Isotope analysis: can tell what we ate from out skeleton

• Coprolite analysis: from human feces and doesn’t preserve as well.

Environmental change

The climate has been changing over time so we need to know what the area looked like in the past.

Environmental change and it’s cultural impacts

Mohenjo Daro, Pakistan. The river jumped and moved half a mile away and because of that the city was abandoned.

The Beringia land bridge

The idea that people used it to come over to the Americas. This actually happened, but it was for later civilizations.

African Neolitic sites

Found evidence that they used to have catfish and hippopotami and that is now the Saharan Neolithic also the desert pushed people out and the moved into West Africa.