revealing archaeology - provisioning society (midterm 2)

What is how people get their groceries and prepare their food for consumption?

subsistence

Although there is evidence that early humans ate some what? plant foods dominated their diet.

meat

What is one of the things archaeologists do well?

Subsistence analysis

Until about when were most people foragers who hunted and gathered wild foods?

10,000 years ago

Over time, most societies have become more (what) and have come to rely on domesticated plants and animals as their primary subsistence means?

sedentary

Archaeologists continue to develop hypotheses explaining subsistence (what?)

change

Many foods are (what) before they are eaten?

processed

It is (what) to see the evidence for early plant use?

difficult

People have been using animal resources for food and for materials for (blank)

a very long time

What is an advantage of wild food as a primary subsistence resource?

variety

What is a disadvantage of wild food as a primary subsistence resource?

differential availability

(What) developed across the globe in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons?

domestication

We can learn a lot about how people managed their use of subsistence resources by studying (what?)

seasonality indicators

Seasonality reconstructs the (what?) that people were using different subsistence resources?

time of year

Cooking, drying, and storage are some of the ways people prepare food for consumption and make food more reliably available throughout the seasons and across years of (what?)

natural scarcity

(What) is the study of past people using plant remains?

Archaeobotany; paleoethnobotany

Specialized techniques are used to recover (what) and (what) remains from sediments?

macrobotanical; microbotanical

Macrobotanical remains, such as flowers, seeds, and roots are usually (what?)

carbonized

(What) remains, such as pollen, phytoliths, cuticles, and diatoms, are studied microscopically in reconstructing environment and subsistence

Microbotanical

(What) is the study of pollen?

Palynology

(What) are used when identifying archaeological plant remains?

Comparative collections

(What) is the study of how people obtain and use animal resources?

Zooarchaeology

What kinds of animal tissues are often preserved in the archaeological record?

hard tissues

What do hunters do to process game before bringing it home?

cut it up

(What) are samples of the animal resources people used?

archaeofaunas

Archaeologists study (what?) by recording and analyzing data, in association with experimentation and ethnoarchaeological data analysis

faunal assemblages

Faunal analysts analysts count bones, do experiments, and observe (what?) getting and using animal foods to address questions about how past people got their food and organized its consumption and distribution

contemporary people

Fossilized human feces (what?) offer evidence about diet, storage, and health

coprolites

Human bones are studied with various (what?) techniques to find out more about what people ate

chemical; isotopic

Use-wear and residues left on stone tools and (what?) are analyzed in reconstructing human diet

pottery vessels