Final ANTH Exam!!!

idk how comprehensive this is, I tried my best lol

Altamira

Cave in Spain containing Paleolithic art in the form of painted bulls. It was an elaborate scene, painted in a cave using natural bumps of the wall. However, this wasn’t a living space, instead a place where other social events took place.

Cahokia

A very large urban center in the Mississippian. It likely held 10,000 people and contained infrastructure, defensive structures, and evidence of human sacrifice. People may have traveled here to participate in funerary matters. It has iconic mounds like mound 51 and 72

Catal Hoyuk

Site important for the understanding of neolithic, Turkey, Oberved Tells, there are lots of mounds and some are very large. The site controlled the trade of obsidian, rectangular houses, and some evidence of headless people, death, and religious activity.

Durrington Walls

The largest known neolithic henge in the UK, a seasonal settlement near Stonehenge

Folsom Site

A kill site in New Mexico, they found extinct bison remains, and projectile points, pushed back human presence in the Americas by 6-7 thousand ya

Gobekli Tepe

Rise of social complexity, a mound resulting from one large sacred complex, likely the oldest known temple, no found evidence for settlement

Saqqara Pyramid

First pyramid occurred during Old Egypt and belonged to Djoser, “step pyramid”

Meidum Pyramid

Sneferu’s pyramid, has step structure but there were issues with design/building and it partially collapsed, he built more pyramids

Bent Pyramid

Sneferu’s pyramid, it has asymmetrical sides, a step towards the stereotypical idea of a pyramid

Giza Pyramid

Built for Khufu, part of the “great” pyramids, built during Old Kingdom

Stonehenge

a famous megalith, very complex, has sarsen (blue) stones, Trilithon, may have started as cemetery, had 3 phases that went ditch, blue/wood, all stones. could attract seasonally moving people

Craft Specialization (Prime Mover)

V. Gordon Chile. Neolithic revolution, then urban (farming then metallurgy).

Irrigation (Prime Mover)

he who has the water controls everything, created by K. Wittfogel

Warfare (prime mover)

R. Carneiro, competition fuels growth, people compete for the good land and then winners oppress everyone else

Trade (prime mover)

W. Rathje, mesoamerica, small villages give up independence for resources from central power, but not needed in all areas.

Multiprocesses

R. McCormick Adams, satisfactory explanation, put a bunch of stuff together to make it more universal. differential wealth, the rich get richer and form the elite, creat structures and establish power.

bluestones

a part of stonehenge, stones that were brought in during the second phase of building

Trilithon

the thre stones making a pi symbol, put together with lego rock nipple things, there were 5 in a horseshoe shape

Broad-spectrum revolution

following the ice age, hunter-gatherers made a switch to a much larger selection of plants and animals for food with some domestication/manipulation. this led to the neolithic revolution

cities/urbanization, full-time labor specialists, surplus, class structure, state organization, trade, public works, records

Characteristics of State societies

Clovis

prehistoric Paleoamerican archaeological culture, north america’s first culture with distinct arrowhead points

Domestication

the process of changing plants or animals to make them more useful to humans

Sedentism

when people began living permanently in one place instead of moving around to find food

Edge hypothesis

Created by Lewis Binford, People only do stuff when they have to, unfavorable conditions in outlying areas forced agriculture

Effects of the Adoption of Agriculture

creation of surplus which allowed for more complex societies, population growth, technological development, storage such as pottery and silos, sedentism

Egalitarian society

a group based on the sharing of resources to ensure success with a relative absence of hierarchy and violences

stratified society

People grouped according to economic or social class; characterized by the unequal distribution of wealth, power, and prestige.

Halaf period

6000-5400 BCE, mesopotamia, north, circular buildings and painted pottery with female figurines, people occupy a previously sparse area, dryland wheat, barley, sheep, goat, cattle

Ubaid period

5300 - 3600 BCE, mesopotamia, Irrigation agriculture means you can live in dry plains, main site was Eridu, they had Enki the water god, spread influence through pottery styles, centralized, photo-writing system

Uruk period

mesopotamia period, warka temples were big, ziggurat, large jump in population size for a urban settlement (10k people), white temple → anu, temples were more than for religion.

Kennewick

Columbia river remains, bones 10 kya, they were repatriated with no chance to study them caused court case, and scientists won

Cuneiform writing

The earliest writing in Mesopotamia, a picture writing invented by the Sumerians who wrote on clay tablets using long reeds.

Hieroglyph writing

Used by ancient Egyptians, were pictures representing things

Martin’s Overkill/Blitzkrieg Hypothesis

Hypothesis for the extinction of megafauna, humans travelled south through the Americas killing whatever they came upon (they did not)

Mastaba

Arabic, "bench." An ancient Egyptian rectangular brick or stone structure with sloping sides

Megaliths

Big rocks, usually associated with rituals and burial practices

Menhirs

Megalith, giant standing stones

Henges

Megaliths, patterned ritualistic complexes

Dolmens

Megaliths, tombs

Mesopotamia

A region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that developed the first urban societies. In the Bronze Age this area included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires, In the Iron Age, it was ruled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires.

They could have came by boat, hopped along West Coast, came through the ice gap, travelled north from South America

Migration routes into the Americas

Mississippian

First society in North America, was a Chalcolithic (copper age) mound-building Native American culture that flourished in the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 to 1500 A.D., varying regionally.

Oasis Theory

V. Gordon Childe', domestication occurred where the environment was right for it

Natural habitat hypothesis

Robert Braidwood, Jarmo excavation in Iraq found signs of agriculture → Fertile Crescent. domesticates occur where their wild ancestors lived

Coevolution hypothesis

David Rindos. The proximity of humans and plants modifies the environments of proto-domesticates which causes change, humans pick the plants they like

Scheduling model

Kent Flannery, modeled on edge hypothesis, hunter-gatherers move upland seasonally, they transplanted plants to new environment cause population pressure

Social Hypothesis

Barbara Benders, pressure for food production came from social stratification, individuals want to get surplus to get an advantage over their neighbors.

Monte Verde

A site in Chile where evidence of human occupation 15,000 years ago supports the argument that Clovis culture does not represent the first occupation of the Americas.

NAGPRA

Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act; Native American have rights to the remains of ancestors and sacred objects.

Narmer Palette

Ancient Egypt, shows Narmer was the one who united Ancient Egypt and that it was Chaos before he did so, he was seen wearing evidence of both north and south Egypt

Nome-nomarch

regions in pre-dynastic Egypt ___ were ruled by ___

Pastoralism

A type of agricultural activity based on nomadic animal husbandry or the raising of livestock to provide food, clothing, and shelter.

They were built to house the tomb of the pharaoh, as monuments, and to define their authority

Roles of the Pyramids

Shamanism

The practice of identifying special individuals who will interact with spirits for the benefit of the community, sometimes through animals, theory of paleolithic art

Sumeria

One of the first inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the name of the first culture in the world to develop cities.

Tells

Mounds where many levels of artifacts are found

Teosinte

The wild ancestor of maize

The Fertile Crescent

an area of rich farmland in Southwest Asia where the first civilizations began, Mesopotamia

Homo floresiensis

Nicknamed “Hobbit”, A distinct species closely related to Homo erectus and only found on the Indonesian island of Flores. They are tiny, with cranial capacities of about 380cc.

E. Piette

believed paleolithic art was created for the heck of it and because it fills free time created by hunting

Hunting magic

People have an image of an animal or plant with symbolism and then they create that animal, ritual killings of animals

lower/upper Egypt

The Nile Delta is called ___. The land upstream, to the south, is called ___. United by Narmer

Zigguraut Temple

massive pyramidal stepped tower made of mudbricks. It is associated with religious complexes in ancient Mesopotamian cities, but its function is unknown.

David Lewis-Williams

South African archaeologist. He is best known for his research on southern African San rock art, shaman trance hypothesis

Djoser

had the very first (step) pyramid built at his tomb in Saqqara

Imhotep

Architect who designed the very first (step) pyramid for Djoser

King Scorpion

There’s a highly decorated mace head showing a ruler with a crown, his enemies are shown defeated below him, he seems cool

Lewis Binford

Creator of the edge hypothesis, “new age” archaeologist

Maria Sanz de Sautuol

an eight-year-old Spanish girl who discovered the first known prehistoric cave paintings in 1879 while working with her father in Altamira Cave

Narmer

The uniter of lower and upper Egypt, wears both crowns

Robert Braidwood

“Hilly flanks” hypotesis, excavation at Jarmo, agriculture began in hilly flanks of Taurus and Zagros mountains, significant for evidence of early agriculture

Sneferu

Egyptian king who built the first true pyramid, one collapsed and one was bent though. red pyramid?

Vere Gordon Childe

Creator of the Oasis Theory