Lecture 7: theoritical approaches in urban archeology (part 3)

what are the main functions of writing in cities? (3)

• economic administration

• accountability (who did what)

• ritual activities: myths, legends

why did we start to study cities in a faster pace than before? (2)

• multidisciplinary approach: we are more aware of the changes in social sciences and we work with other domains

• advances in methods: softwares

true or false: knowing the size of a city is importantly to all archeologists

false

why is it difficult to get a population estimate? (5)

• lost remains, we don’t have all the information of the city

• destroyed sites

• size of habitatation ≠ number of people living in it

• richer people lived in larger houses and left more remains

• overburden: building on top of remains

what was the population threshold between equalitarian and a hierarchical social structure?

• egalitarian: less than 2500

• hierarchical: more than 2500

±500, between 2000-3000 we aren’t entirely sure

explain the absolute population estimate to estimate the population

residential density ratio: size of site x residential density ratio = population

what’s the problem with the absolute population estimate?

it doesn’t consider environmental, ecological and ethnographic factors

explain the relative population estimates method to estimate the population

amount of archeological evidence reflects the amount of people living there: more artefact = more people living there

absolute population estimate or relative population estimate: which doesn’t produce a clear number

relative population estimate: it’s a comparative tool

true or false: according to the relative population estimate, if you find 7 pots in site A and 4 in site B, then you can affirm that site A had 2 times more people than site B

false: it’s a comparative tool but maths eh

explain how radio carbon dating works

• through the life of living organism, it will absorb carbon 14

• when the organism dies, it will release C14

  • 5730 years later: 50% of C14 lost

  • 11 460 years later: 25% of C14 lost (half of half)

  • 17 190 years later: 12,5% of C14 lost (half of half of half)

• the limit if 40 000 years later which isn’t too bad

what’s a problem with radiocarbon dating?

• the decay of C14 is steady, but not to absorption, so we don’t know how much C14 they had before dying

• the amount of C14 also depends on the environment

explain how dendrochronology works

• we date using tree rings

• the ring changes depending on the season (pale for spring, dark for summer) and the growth (large and dark for a lot, small and pale for a little)

• the same species of tree in that region should have the same growth pattern

• we sample some wood used on construction and compare them on tree patterns

explain the bayesian radiocarbon dating

just like radiocarbon dating, but we use a software and it tells us how probable an object is to be from a certain era

explain how the GINI index works (global dynamics of inequality project)

• index that varies between 0 and 1 (but you can never achieve 0 or 1)

  • 0 = perfect equality, everyone owns the same thing

  • 1 = pure inequality, one person owns everything

• it looks at the variation of house size and capacity

what did GINI help us understand?

it helps us understand social organization and how inequalities were negotiated

for what domain GINI was initially invented for and how can it still continue to improve today?

• for economics

• it can improve by adding some data about early cities

what’s the difference between macroscopic and microscopic levels?

• macro: visible with the naked eye

• micro: need tools to see and study

explain how phytoliths analysis works

• water goes through the roots to the plant to nourish it

• minerals also get absorbed and enter the plant

• the plant has ways to “kick out” water, but not minerals

• minerals create a cast around the cells of the plants

• even when all the organic material is gone (eaten, burnt), the microfossils can tell us what type of plant it was

true or false: the way starch grains were cooked can tell us about the plant and how it was transformed

true

what contained phosphate that we could use to identify human activity? (4)

• human waste

• cemetery (with decomposed bodies)

• animals

• fertilizers

what could we identify with C13 (2) and N15 (1) contained in animal and human remains during isotopic analyses?

they both tell us about diets

• C13: marine or terrestrial food, type of plants

• N15: where you are in the foodchain (the more N15, the higher)

what were the chemical substances used to identify migration patterns? (2)

O18 and Sr87/86

explain how we used tooth enamel and bone tissues to identify migration patterns

• tooth enamel is created during childhood only

  • it determines where you were as a child, what was the water source

• bone tissue continues to develop as you grow

  • it tells you where you were when you died

why can’t we identify migration patterns with animals?

because they don’t live long enough

what can be cause us problems when we try to rebuild DNA? (3)

• bacteria or fungus that break DNA

• if the body was buried close to the surface, a lot of the DNA was destroyed

• if the person wasn’t buried quickly after their death, their DNA sequence might be damaged

why don’t we use aDNA often? (2)

costly and a lot of contamination risks

true or false: aDNA can be used for migration patterns

true