Intro to Archeology Unit 1

Sites

Spatial cluster of artifacts or features (short-term campsite, large city, rockshelter, etc.)

Features

NON-portable objects, deposits, constructions, made by humans (hearths, buildings, rock storage pits, etc.)

Ethnography

Structured scientific description of any aspects of a people or culture

Ethnohistory

WRITTEN accounts including observations of a people or culture by travelers, missionaries, soldiers, etc.

Ethnoarcheology

Documenting production, use, abandonment, or other aspects of sites, artifacts, or sites of living people

Archeology

The study of human history or prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artifacts and other physical remains

Analogy

The unknown function or identity of something that is inferred from a known case

Formal Analogy

An analogy based on the object’s form/shape (arrowhead, spear)

Direct-Historical Analogy

Interpreting the functions/uses of something using observation or known examples from the same region or descendant population; considered a weak line of evidence as correlation does NOT always equal causation

Context

What material remains, in what condition, and its associations?

Association

What is something found near? What stuff is near?

The Pompeii Premise

The assumption that the archaeological patterns you find are a perfect frozen-in-time record of the past (FALSE); in reality, most sites are altered through erosion, animals, fire, flood, human tampering, etc.

Site Formation Process/ Taphonomy

All the stuff that shapes archaeological artifacts, features, and sites during and after use can be cultural or natural (site erosion, weathering, movement)

Grids

The system of digging/excavating archeologists use to plot/map where artifacts are found; can be done manually or by using “totalisations” (stick with camera-mapping features)