Archaeology

Test

Antiquarianism

The collection and study of ancient objects mainly because of their age, beauty, or curiosity, rather than using systematic archaeological methods to understand past societies.

Unilineal Evolutionism

An early theory that all human societies develop through the same fixed stages, usually from supposedly “simple” to “complex” societies. This idea is now considered overly simplistic and ethnocentric.

Three Age System

System that divides human prehistory into the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, based on the main materials used to make tools.

Type fossil approach

Using a distinctive artifact type as an indicator of a particular time period or archaeological culture. If that artifact is found at a site, archaeologists can use it to help identify when the site was occupied.

Archaeological Cultures

Groups defined by recurring patterns of material remains, such as similar pottery, tools, houses, or burial practices, found within a particular place and time. These patterns do not correspond perfectly to actual ethnic or social groups.

Cultural Ecology

The study of how human cultures interact with and adapt to their environments, including how resources, climate, and landscapes influence human behavior.

“New Archaeology,” aka processualism

An approach that became influential in the 1960s and sought to make archaeology more scientific and explanatory. Processual archaeologists emphasized testing hypotheses and explaining cultural change through processes such as environment, technology, economics, and social organization.

Behavioral archaeology

An approach that studies the relationships between human behavior and material objects, including how people make, use, reuse, discard, and alter things.

Post-processual archaeology

AN approach that developed partly as a criticism of processualism. It argues that archaeology cannot understand people through environmental and economic processes alone and emphasizes individual agency, symbolism, identity, ideology, power and different interpretations of the past.

Cultural resource management (CRM)

Professional archaeology focuesd on identifying, evaluating, and protecting archaeological and historic sites, particularly when construction or development could damage them.

Archaeological Record

All of the physical evidence of past human activity that survives and can be studied, including artifacts, features, structures, human remains, and environmental evidence.

Taphonomy

The study of the processes that affect materials after they are deposited, including decay, erosion, burial, animal activity, and human disturbance.

Cultural transformations (C-transforms):

changes to the archaeological record caused by human behavior, such as moving, reusing, breaking, looting, or discarding objects.

Natural Transformation (N-transforms)

changes to the archaeological record caused by natural processes, such as erosion, flooding, animal burrowing, plant roots, or sediment accumulation.

“Pompeii premise”

The mistaken assumption that an archaeological site represents a perfectly preserved snapshot of life at one moment, like Pompeii. Most sites accumulated and changed over long periods of time.

“middle range” research / “actualist” research

Research that connects things archaeologists observe in the present to patterns found in the archaeological record, helping them determine what past behaviors or processes could have produced particular evidence.

Ethnoarchaeology

Studying living or recently living communities to understand how their behaviors create material patterns that can help archaeologists interpret the past.

Experimental archaeology

Recreating ancient technologies or activities to see how they worked and what evidence they produced, such as making stone tools or constructing structures using ancient methods.

Artifact

An object made, modified, or used by humans, such as pottery, stone tools, coins, or weapons.

Ecofact

A natural remain associated with human activity that provides archaeological information, such as animal bones, seeds, pollen, or charcoal.

Feature

Evidence of human activity that cannot easily be removed from a site intact, such as a hearth, posthole, wall, pit, or ditch.

Survey

Systematically searching an area to locate, identify, and record archaeological sites or materials, often before excavation.

Excavation

The systematic removal and recording of soil, artifacts, features, and other archaeological materials to investigate a site.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

Computer systems used to store, map, analyze, and compare spatial information. Archaeologists use GIS to examine things like site locations, landscapes, elevation, resources, and settlement patterns

Artifact Screening

Passing excavated soil through a mesh screen to recover small artifacts and other remains that might otherwise be missed.

Provenience

The exact location where an archaeological object was found, usually recorded horizontally and vertically.

Context

An artifact’s relationship to its location, surrounding soil, features, and other objects. Context is essential because it gives an artifact archaeological meaning.

Primary Context

Material remains in approximately the location where people originally used, deposited, or abandoned them.

Secondary Context

Material that has been moved from its original location by humans or natural processes.

“In situ”

Latin for “in place.” An artifact found in situ remains in the position where it was originally deposited or placed.

Micromorphology

The microscopic study of undisturbed soil and sediment samples to understand how archaeological deposits formed and what activities occurred there.

Artifact Refitting

Physically or digitally matching broken pieces of artifacts back together. Refitting can help reconstruct objects and reveal how materials were made, used, broken, or moved.

Relative Dating

Determining whether something is older or younger than something else without determining its exact calendar age.

Absolute / chronometric dating

Methods that estimate an object's or event's age in calendar years or a numerical age range.

Stratigraphy

The study of the layers, or strata, of sediment and archaeological deposits at a site.

Principle of superposition

In an undisturbed sequence of layers, lower layers are generally older than the layers above them.

Bioturbation

The disturbance and movement of archaeological deposits by living organisms, such as worms, rodents, insects, or plant roots.

Seriation

A relative dating technique that places artifacts or assemblages into a chronological sequence based on changes in their styles or frequencies over time.

Battleship curves

Frequency patterns used in seriation. An artifact style often starts uncommon, becomes increasingly popular, reaches a peak, and then declines, creating a shape resembling a battleship when graphed.

Radiocarbon / Carbon-14 dating

A chronometric dating technique that measures the decay of radioactive carbon-14 in once-living material to estimate when the organism died. It is commonly used on materials such as charcoal, wood, seeds, and bone.

Radiocarbon dating plateaus

Portions of the radiocarbon calibration curve where changes in atmospheric carbon-14 make it difficult to convert a radiocarbon measurement into a narrow calendar-date range. One radiocarbon measurement may therefore correspond to a relatively broad range of possible calendar dates.

Radiocarbon calibration

The process of converting a radiocarbon age into a more accurate calendar-date range, usually by comparing it with independently dated records such as tree rings.

Notes

• Artifact = human-made/modified → pottery

• Ecofact = natural evidence → animal bone or seed

• Feature = nonportable evidence → hearth

• Provenience = exactly WHERE something was found

• Context = what it was found WITH and its archaeological relationship

• C-transform = humans changed the record

• N-transform = nature changed the record

• Relative dating = older vs. younger

• Chronometric dating = numerical age

• Ethnoarchaeology = observe people

• Experimental archaeology = recreate activities

• Processualism = science, systems, explanation

• Post-processualism = meaning, agency, identity, interpretation