ANTH 51 Exam 1

How many federally recognized tribes are there in the US?

575 as of January 2026

What is archaeology?

Study of material traces left behind by past people to say something about human history

Nature/culture divide

Three examples of how figures of history view nature. John Muir believed in preservation, in that people should reduce/eliminate human impacts on nature. Gifford Pinchot believed in sustainable use of resources (conservation). Henry Ford believed in industrialization: technological process, manifest destiny, saying that nature is expendable for the sake of human culture.

Reflecting on these three views, archaeology finds that Fordian/technological fetishism is not the only way to understand the past. (Technological progress is not the only valuable invention that reflects human culture, it can be more oriented around nature)

Relationship between place and people

Place shapes how people think and act. Based on that, people can also affect the place that the grew up in and/or eventually other places surrounding them.

Uniformitarianism

The pace the world is changing at is how it has always been (rate of progress is continuous)

Catastrophism

Epistemology

theory of knowledge

how we know that the past has happened in a certain way

only became a consideration of archaeology by the 1960s

Archaeology’s relationship to science

Like other sciences: research design, data collection, test hypotheses, try to maintain objectivity

Unlike other sciences: close connection to subject matter (studying past humans), not usually repeatable

Artifacts and material culture

object used by a human being

Ecofacts

(human) waste, pollen, not direct effect by humans

Taphonomy

study of site formation processes

Artifact

“stuff” used by human being

Feature

immovable artifact that cannot be transposed/moved

Primary vs. secondary refuse

Primary (how people left it)

secondary (could have been moved)

In situ

Primary deposit (how the people exactly left it)

the grid

Pedestrian survey

Shovel test pits

Remote sensing

Visibility

Obtrusiveness

Provenience

exact 3D location and orientation of an object

Archaeology as “controlled destruction”

Ground penetrating radar (GPR)

Proton magnetometer

Trace element analysis

Neutron activation analysis

X-ray florescence

Experimental archaeology (with examples)

Ethnoarchaeology

Use wear

Zooarchaeology

archaeology of animals

Paleoethnobotany

archaeology of plants

Environmental reconstruction with C3/C4

Analysis of carbon isotopes in animal remains:

C3 (trees) don’t like C13

C4 (grass) does like C13

Pathways

Relative vs. absolute dating

Relative: no specific date established (4000 BCE or BC, aka 6000 years ago)

absolute: specific date established (4000 BC)

Stratigraphy

Law of Superposition

Radioactive decay dating (Radiometric)

C14 dating

Dendrochronology

Tree ring dating

Calibrating C14 dates

Obsidian hydration analysis

Paleomagnetism

Atlatl or spear thrower

Conflicts between North American archaeologists and Indigenous people

Antiquities Act of 1906

NMAIA

NAGPRA

Joe Watkins

Kennewick Example

Repatriation

Antiquarians

Moundbuilder myth (and archaeological responses)

Cyrus Thomas

Federal interventions (history of NA Archaeology)

Indigenous removal

Morrill Act

GI Bill or Servicemen’s Readjustment Act

New Deal Archaeology

Works Progress Administration

Harriet Smith

Society for American Archaeology

National Historic Preservation Act

The short chronology

Folsom point discovery

Cultural evolution

Boas and his critique of evolution

Culture history

Processual or New Archaeology

Lewis Binford

Postprocessual Archaeology

Ian Hodder

Wounded Knee (19th and 20th century events)

AIM

Archaeological theory (and why we need it)