Archeology - Midterm

Stratigraphic Excavations

Directed to undertake stratigraphic excavations in 1800s (Denmark) to test the validity of the three-age system using the principle of superposition

Principle of Superposition (Nicolaus Steno)

The oldest layers are at the bottom and the youngest are at the top (1600s)

Strata/Stratum

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

• Strata = plural

• Stratum = singular

Charles Lyell (Geological Society of London)

• Brixham Cave

• Found stone tools near extinct fauna (mammoth)

• “Father” of Geology

• Humans are older than believed

Jacques Boucher de Perthes

• Site Menchecourt in Somme Valley

• Found stone tools near extinct fauna (mammoths)

• Discredited because he was a weirdo by Charles Darwin

What is an Artifact?

Anything created or touched/moved by humans

• Attributes: Form and Location

Three-Age System (Christian Thomsen)

• Stone —> Copper/Bronze —> Iron

• The realization that changes in artifact material could be used to trace time

Mounds and Moundbuilders

• Mounds: Man-made piles of dirt/soil

• Europeans believed that Indigenous peoples were too primitive to build mounds

• Ceremonial burials

Direct Historical Approach

• Using the present as a chronological anchor to work backwards in time

• Compare artifacts used by the ppl at the time to further prove historical events

Nabonidus

• Last Babylon king and first known archeologist

• Did it to further legitimize his position as king

• Conducted excavations in temples

• 556 - 539 B.C.

What is archeology?

Scientific study of human history written or unwritten through the analysis of human material culture

Bishop James Ussher

• Creation October 4004 B.C.

• Used biblical genealogies to calculate when the earth was created

Thomas Jefferson

• Mound Excavations

  • To prove that Indigenous ppls were in the Americas for a long time to counter. the prevailing notion that they were recent arrivals

Principle of Strata Identified by Fossils (George Cuvier)

• 1800s

• Allows for correlation of strata across broad geographic areas because each strata contains its own unique strta

• Allows correlation of animals to time and location

• Allows archeologists to examine when animals went extinct

Principles of Association (J.J.A. Worsaee)

• Items are associated in both time and space

• Artifacts found around the same location are inferred to be deposited around the same time

• Burials

B3

• Time

• Space

• Form

Nationalist Archeology

Using the archeological record to justify historical, political, or geographic position