Archaeological Dating Methods, Societies, Diet, and Bioarchaeology

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering relative and absolute dating methods, botanical and faunal analysis, bioarchaeology, hominin evolution, and archaeological ethics based on Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 8 lecture notes.

Relative Dating

A process used to understand the chronology of events and how old something is relative to something else, without assigning a specific calendar date.

Absolute Dating

Methods used to determine the actual calendar age of fossils and artifacts rather than simply whether they are older or younger compared to something else.

Stratigraphy (Stratigraphic Dating)

Using layers of rock and sediment to relatively date fossils, rocks, or artifacts compared to one another.

Typological Sequence

The classification and arrangement of objects, structures, and specimens into an ordered series based on shared physical, functional, or other traits.

Seriation

Arranging objects, artifacts, or events into a logical, orderly sequence based on a characteristic or dimension such as weight or style.

Environmental Sequences

DNA or RNA extracted from soil, water, air, or sediment without first culturing the organisms in a lab.

Deep-Sea Cores

Sediment cylinders drilled from the ocean floor containing layers of microfossils and chemical signatures (like oxygen isotopes) that record long-term climate cycles used for dating and contextualizing human migration and evolution.

Ice Cores

Cylinders of glacial ice that have trapped air bubbles, dust, and chemical isotopes that preserve proof of various climates and can be used for dating and inferring human activity in relation to climate.

Pollen Data

The counting of pollen grains in sediment to reconstruct past vegetation and climate around archaeological sites and to infer environmental change and plant use.

Dendrochronology

A dating method that uses tree rings to infer the exact calendar year they formed.

AE Douglass

An American astronomer and archaeologist who correlated sun spot cycles and tree ring development, ultimately leading to dendrochronology being used as a dating practice.

Radioactive Clocks / Radiometric Dating

Natural atomic timekeepers used by archaeologists and geologists to determine the age of artifacts, remains, and rock layers.

Radiocarbon Dating

A method founded by Willard Libby that determines the age of organic materials—such as wood, charcoal, bones, seeds, or cloth—by measuring the radioactive amount of carbon-14 ($^{14}\text{C}$).

Potassium-Argon Dating

An absolute radiometric dating method used to determine the age of volcanic rock layers surrounding ancient human/hominin remains.

Uranium Series Dating

An absolute dating method that measures the decay of uranium isotopes into thorium in calcium carbonate and mineral deposits; helps date hominin fossil sites, cloth, seeds, bones, and thin calcium carbonate layers on or under Paleolithic cave art.

Fission Track Dating

A dating method that uses microscopic damage trails (fission tracks) left behind when uranium-238 atoms split and decay; used on pottery, ceramic, obsidian, and volcanic ash layers.

Thermoluminescence Dating

Dating the amount of time a crystalline object (pottery, terracotta, bricks, burnt flint) was strongly heated or fired (above $400^\circ$).

Optical Dating

Measures the length of time minerals (quartz or feldspar) have been buried or hidden from daylight; used for understanding climate shifts by analyzing dust or sand or the timing of ancient floods and glacial formation.

Electron Spin Resonance Dating

Trapped charge dating used to date radiation damage in crystalline materials over time, applied to enamel, quartz, stalagmites, and other cave deposits.

Archaeomagnetic Dating

Dates fired clay by matching ancient magnetic orientation to historical shifts in Earth's magnetic fields; used on ancient kilns and baked clay floors to pinpoint when they were last used.

Australopithecines

Extinct, bipedal primates with smaller brains and larger jaws, combining human and ape-like traits.

H. erectus

Hominid known for walking on two legs, existing $2\text{ million} - 110{,}000\text{ years ago}$, with longer legs and shorter arms; the first human to migrate out of Africa towards Eastern, Southern, Western Asia, and parts of Europe.

H. sapiens

Current form of humans.

Holocene

The current geological epoch beginning $11{,}700\text{ years ago}$ after the end of the Last Glacial Period.

Microbotanical Remains

Plant traces too small to see without a microscope (pollen, phytoliths, diatoms, starch grains) that survive where whole plants decay and are recovered from soils, sediments, tools, and teeth.

Pollen Analysis (Palynology)

Counting and identifying preserved pollen grains with tough outer walls from lake, bog, and waterlogged sediments to show how vegetation, climate, and human land use changed over time.

Phytoliths

Microscopic silica bodies formed inside plant cells that persist after the plant rots; identifiable to plant type (grasses, maize, rice, palms) to help track crops and local vegetation.

Diatoms

Single-celled algae with silica shells whose species-specific preferences for salinity, depth, and temperature reveal past water conditions, sea-level change, and wetland or lake environments.

Macrobotanical Remains

Plant parts visible to the naked eye (seeds, charcoal, wood, nutshell, chaff, roots), usually preserved by charring, waterlogging, or desiccation, used to identify foods, fuel, building materials, and crops.

Flotation

A recovery technique where soil is poured into water (often agitated); lighter charred seeds and charcoal float and are collected in fine mesh, while heavier material sinks.

Paleoethnobotany

The study of how past people used plants for food, medicine, fuel, construction, and ritual, combining macro- and microbotanical evidence.

Zooarchaeology

The analysis of animal bones, shells, and other remains to learn about hunting, herding, butchering, diet, domestication, and the surrounding environment.

Seasonality

Establishing what time of year a site was occupied or a resource exploited, using clues like migratory species, fish or tooth growth increments, antler shedding, juvenile animal ages, and seasonal plants.

Diet

The long-term pattern of food intake that people actually consume across seasons and years.

Subsistence

The larger system of getting food, including strategies (foraging, farming, herding), technology, labor, and storage.

Bioarchaeology

The study of human skeletal remains from archaeological sites to learn about health, diet, activity, and social life.

Sexual Dimorphism

Physical differences between males and females of a species; observed in human skeletons mainly in pelvis shape, skull shape, and overall size.

Epiphyses

Bone ends that fuse to the shaft at predictable ages; their fusion stage helps estimate age in juveniles and young adults.

Cranial Sutures

Joints between skull bones that gradually close with age, used as a rough age-at-death indicator in adults.

Mitochondrial DNA

DNA passed down the maternal line; it is abundant in cells, survives better than nuclear DNA, and traces maternal ancestry.

Ancient DNA

Genetic material recovered from old remains that reveals ancestry, kinship, sex, disease, and population movements.

Harris Lines

Lines on long bones visible via X-ray that mark pauses in growth caused by childhood stress such as illness or malnutrition.

Stable Isotope Analysis

Measuring isotope ratios (such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium) in bone and teeth to learn about past diet and place of origin or migration.

NAGPRA

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act ($1990$), which requires federal agencies and museums to return human remains, funerary objects, and sacred items to descendant communities and consult with tribes.

Repatriation

The process of returning human remains and cultural items to their descendants or communities of origin.

Kennewick Man / The Ancient One

An approximately $9{,}000\text{-year-old}$ skeleton found in Washington State ($1996$) that underwent a long legal dispute between scientists and tribes, ending with DNA evidence linking him to Native Americans and subsequent reburial in $2017$.

Coprolites

Preserved fecal remains that can contain human proteins or dietary evidence, used to investigate past human consumption patterns and debate prehistoric cannibalism.

What was the key discovery at the Wilamaya Patjxa site in the Peruvian Andes?

A young adult female (17–19 year old female dated to about 9,000 years ago) buried with a big-game hunting toolkit

(Haas et al. 2020) How was the individual's sex determined?

Skeletal morphology and amelogenin peptide analysis of tooth enamel

What did the authors' broader analysis of Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene American burials suggest about female participation in big-game hunting?

Roughly 30–50% of big-game hunters may have been female

Which long-standing idea does Haas et al. 2020 paper most directly challenge?

The 'Man the Hunter' assumption of a strict sexual division of labor

What did the Holens and colleagues claim about the Cerutti Mastodon site in their 2017 Nature paper?

Humans were in California about 130,000 years ago

What evidence did the authors cite to argue that humans, not natural forces, broke the bones?

Spirally fractured fresh bone, impact notches, and large cobbles that resembled hammerstones and anvils

The Holens' dating of the site was not the main target of criticism. Why?

The uranium-series dates were considered high quality; the problem was how far outside the accepted range they were

What was Todd Braje's main objection to the Cerutti claim?

Natural processes can mimic human-made percussion damage, and the evidence is too thin to overturn genetic, linguistic, and archaeological evidence

How was Kennewick Man discovered, and how old did radiocarbon dating show he was?

Found by two college students in 1996 on the Columbia River bank; about 9,000 years old

Under which law did Native American tribes seek custody of the remains, and what was the key difficulty in their claim?

NAGPRA; proving a cultural affiliation with the tribes extending back about 9,000 years

What did James Chatters and Joseph Powell each conclude about Kennewick Man's ancestry from skeletal analysis?

Chatters saw 'Caucasoid' traits; Powell linked him to Polynesians or the Ainu of northern Japan. Powell instead found a closer match to Polynesians or the Ainu. The episode notes 'Caucasoid' is an anthropological skeletal term, not a reference to skin color.

What did the 2013/2015 DNA study led by the University of Copenhagen find?

His closest living relatives were Native Americans from the Colville tribe, so he was not European, Polynesian, or Ainu

What did the skeleton reveal about Kennewick Man's life, including his diet?

Right-handed, likely spearing fish or seals, with injuries including a spearpoint lodged in his hip; diet almost exclusively marine mammals

Who is credited with the insight that led to radiocarbon dating, and what was it?

Willard Libby, whose 1946 letter noted that dead organisms should have less radioactive carbon than living ones

Where does carbon-14 come from, and why does it let us date dead organisms?

Cosmic rays turn atmospheric nitrogen into 14C, which enters the food chain; after death, no new 14C is absorbed and the existing 14C decays

What is the half-life of carbon-14, and what does it mean?

5,730 years; after two half-lives, a quarter remains

Why do modern shellfish from coastal Peru produce a radiocarbon date of about 400 years old?

14C is not evenly distributed; their seawater carries carbon that was last at the ocean surface about 400 years earlier

Which human activities have disturbed atmospheric 14C and help explain why radiocarbon dating is not used on objects younger than about 300 years?

Burning fossil fuels and above-ground nuclear bomb tests

How did Nash convert his sandal's raw radiocarbon date into calendar years, and what range resulted?

Tree rings from bristlecone pines and European oaks; the sandal calibrated to about 40 B.C.–A.D. 120