ANT304 Test #1 review

Archaeology is the science of_____________________

rubbish

middens

Things people have thrown away, broken pottery, fragments of animal bones, etc...

What is the more popular view of archaeologists today?

That they are digging up ancient tombs, pyramids, etc.... however, this is not the focus of most archaeological research.

What is the big question that we need to ask about middens?

the so what question- what was available to them, how were they preparing the things that were available to them?

What draws people toward archaelogical sites?

Movie producers' "fantasies"

What are many archaeological sites built around?

tourism and the "romance" of archaeology.

What is the curse of arcaheology?

people who covet the past/treasure hunters

Looting

Items that are taken from the grave without proper record of the item.

What is the problem with looting?

Taking the materials and not knowing where they came from.

Every item that is excavated is a product of__________________________

human behavior

*What is archaeology all about?

All about understanding past human behavior, these products are a result of that behavior.

*What do you have to know to understand everything else around the ground/site?

have to know where the items were constructed in *both space and time

context

The component of being able to understand where in space and time the object is from.

*Is there any going back after you remove an artificat from its context?

No, the knowledge of the artifact is lost.

Archaeology

The systematic study of humanity in the past. We use the remains of the past to try and understand humanity. This also applies to technological, religious, and economic aspects of human culture.

prehistory

Before written records.

classical archaeolgists

Archaeologists who study Greek and Roman exhibitions.

What did classical archaeologists focus on 40-50 years ago?

The classical statutory of buildings.

Historical archaeologists

Archaeolgists who study more recent activity and sites.

What are some examples of the kinds of sites that historical archaeologists would study?

Spanish missions and presidos in the Southwest, trading posts, fort sites, and colonial Williamsburg.

underwater archaeology

Deals with ships and occurs together with historical archaeology.

What two fields of archaeology hold their professional meetings together?

underwater and historical

prehistoric archaeologists

The period before written records are an enormous timescale. What we are calling prehistoric archelogists is 99 percent of human history.

What did many scientists use to believe about Earth?

That it was created in 7 days.

James Ussher

Archbishop who read through the scriptures and determined that the world was created in 4,000 BC

What does a historical archaeologist often have access to?

written records, documents, court orders, deeds, etc... to find things about that particular fort or village

Edward Tylor (1832-1917)

British anthroplogist who organized humanity into three stages of development.

What were Edward Tylor's three stages of development for humanity?

savagery, barbarism, and civilization.

Savagery

Modern groups that functioned as hunters and gatherers.

Barbarism

More advanced societies like farmers.

Civilization

Cities, more complex societies.

What are some of the significant questions about Edward Tylor's three stages of human development?

How did hunter and gatherers first become farmers and herders? Are their advantages to that? Did it really work? And if that's the case, why did people move to cities and form that kind of system?

When was it beleived that agriculture/horticulture began in the Middle East?

In the late 1800s and early 1900s.

How many major subfields does anthropology have?

3-4

Culture or social anthropology

anthropologists who study contemporary societies. These are anthropologists that help understand social and cultural issues, work with living people.

Physical or biological anthrolpologists (human biologists)

Trying to understand humans in a biological sense, from origins to genes what we can and cannot do.

Lingiusts

Study language and can understand when groups separate from their language or why people use certain terms to describe something.

Anthropological archaeologists

working with extinct cultures, people who aren't around anymore.

Adolf Bandleer

A self-made archaeologist, visiting Pueblo cultures on his mule seeing the different materials they left behind, working with Native American informants, and looking at Spanish archives and documents.

How did Adolf Bandleer work that changed archaeology forever?

From the known to the unknown.

Frank Cushing

Anthropologist who lived among the Zunni in the Southwest for 5-6 years: learned their language, dressed like them, admitted to certain secret societies.

How did Frank Cushing, as an anthropoligst view archaeology?

A way of doing cultural anthropology to the ancient past.

*True or false: archaeology is more than just digging up stuff from the ground. Archaeologists like anthropologists are looking at the human condition through time in all of its variety.

True

What are archaeologists mainly looking for in objects?

The human behavior behind them.

What are the three goals of archaeology?

1. The study of cultured history, 2. The reconstruction of ancient lifeways, 3. Look at the changes for human culture (the ways in which human culture changes over time and why it changes).

Cultured history is__________________________ at various sites and regions and then those places are then__________________________ to each other

restructured, compared

What is all part of culture history?

Seeing the foods that were made, trends etc

What was culture history's past definition/purpose?

Just describing the remains of the human past.

When did archaeologists stop using the old description for culture history?

1950

What made the archaeologists beleive that the pre 1950 description of culture history was now worthless?

They realized that classified materials wasn't enough- all those things, the broken stone tools, the types of pottery (wether it was a bowl, plate, etc..) all these things are highly influenced by the environment around them.

Gordon Willey

Developed the settlement patterns in archaeology while on research for the Smithsonian in Peru in the late 1940s-early 1950s.

What is an example of a settlement pattern?

Guys using either the first urinal in a bathroom or the last one if no one is in the restroom. Or if all but two urinals are taken up, you'd choose the one that is most comfortable for you.

What did the rise of new archaeologists who were skilled in computers in the 1960s lead to?

A major change in both methods and theoretical approaches in archaeology.

What did archaeologists used to say in the 1950s about learning more?

That they'd learn so much but there is a ceiling and they're limited to what they can learn in the past because of perishables.

What did the new, computer-skilled group of archaeologists say about the 1950s group of archaeologists who blame pershiables for not being able to learn as much about the past?

They said if your approach is scientifically rigorous enough you can find answers to all these questions and find out why societies change over time and why cultures adapt to certain things over time.

What could now be determined as a result of these archologists in the 1960s?

All aspects of human culture and society.

Who is the person credited with leading the charge to modernize archaeology in the 1960s?

Lewis Binford

What did the new group of archaeologists in the 1960s get carried away with?

The scientific approach and thought it would cause lots of problems.

How do archaeologists get the information they're looking for?

By surveying and digging/excavation

survey

looking for sites

*The data that comes from the_____________________ and_________________________ is what makes the archaelogical record

surveys and excavation

*What are archaeologists studying within the archaeological record?

sites and artifacts

True or false: all archaeological remains are modified by the passage of time.

True

*site formation processses

*The way the archaeological record is formed after the site is abandoned

What constitutes an archaeological site?

Any place where there are traces of human activity.

*How are sites usually classified?

According to the activities that took place to that location. For example, If you have domestic activities- cooking, living, etc... its called a habitation site.

kill site

If you have a site where mammoths or buffalos are killed

rock art site

If you have a site where there is a painted cave.

quarry site

Locations where people mined or quarried material (stone, obsidian, or clay etc...)

What helps archaeologists refer to what the site is?

The activity in the site.

artifact

Objects found at archaeological sites and exhibit features from human activity. If humans make or modify something its an artifact.

Is a rock from an archaelogical site an artificat?

No, it is not an artifact. For the rock to be an artifact, it depends if it has any human activity displayed on that particular item.

*Every event or object has a relationship to____________________________________

other events and objects.

What is an example of every event or object having a relationship to other events and objects?

all of these events- putting carpet on a floor, putting a table on the floor are all connected to each other. Can probably tell that the flooring was put on before the table, etc...

*Relative Chronology

go from oldest to last. We may not know the amount of time per episode or activity.

Where does the notion/idea of superposition come from?

geology

*Superposition

The oldest is at the bottom and the youngest is at the top.

Absolute or chronometric dating

Means that we're dating things in years, not just their position on the ground.

What is an example of Absolute or chronometric dating?

early calendars are great because they give you specific times and dates for certain activities.

tree ring dating (dendrochronology)

All of this is part of chronometric dating. The growth rings in the trees can be matched and extended back thousands of years, if one can match those rings they can trace back the site, etc...

What is one of the best examples of chronometric dating?

radiocarbon dating

What does an archaeologist need to do radiocarbon dating?

You need organic remains- hair, teeth, wood, etc... things that decay. Can't do radiocarbon dating on stuff that doesn't decay like pottery, stone, etc...

Space (ties into context)

How things are distributed across the landscape or a site, both horizontally and vertically.

Context in_________________ is critical to people's___________________

space, behavior.

What is an example of how context in space is critical to people's beavhior as well?

If you find a bunch of stone tools or fragments of shells, you might have a shell fragment area. Or if you find broken stone tools, maybe that is where they were making the tools.

Law of association

Artifacts found in the same layer as related to other artifacts, these items are contemporary. The items are contemporary with other objects found in that same archaeological horizon. These items become very important- may have a site with pottery and stone tools and a site with some less important tools. Now you're able to cross date objects from both sites, it helps to reconstruct past behavior.

*The concepts of culture and time and space are_____________________ in archaeology

inseparable

In archaeology, we can say that we have_____________________________ between the kinds of artifacts from sites, the dates of the artifacts, and where do they occur spacially (across an area or site)

studies of interrelationships

*What two concepts make up the archaeological context?

time and space