Archaeology: Methods, Social Theory, and Urbanism at Teotihuacan

Vocabulary flashcards covering archaeological field methods, formation processes, theories of urbanism and social evolution (Childe, Marx, Durkheim, Wheatley), and case studies from Teotihuacan.

Archaeological Record

The configuration and accumulation of physical remains from past human activity and environmental post-depositional processes, which provides an incomplete material record of the past.

Artifact

A portable object made or modified by human beings.

Feature

A non-portable piece of material evidence of past human activity, such as a hearth, pit, floor, posthole, or wall.

Ecofact

Natural, organic, or environmental remains recovered from an archaeological context that possess cultural relevance or reflect past human behavior.

Archaeological Context

The location of materials and their physical association with one another, composed of immediate matrix, provenience, and association.

Matrix

The physical material or sediment immediately surrounding an archaeological object.

Provenience

The precise three-dimensional location of an archaeological object, recorded via horizontal and vertical coordinates.

Association

The spatial and contextual relationship between an archaeological object and other artifacts, ecofacts, or architectural features.

Systemic Context

The condition of an object while it is actively participating in an ongoing, functioning human behavioral and social system.

Primary Context

An archaeological context or condition in which a deposit has remained largely undisturbed since its original deposition.

Secondary Context

A depositional setting where the provenience, matrix, and association of archaeological objects have been altered by post-depositional transformational processes.

C-Transforms (Cultural Transformations)

Post-depositional processes caused by human activity that alter, reshape, or rebuild the archaeological record.

N-Transforms (Natural Transformations)

Environmental or natural post-depositional processes, such as flooding, erosion, or volcanic activity, that alter the archaeological record.

Primary Refuse

Waste or discarded material left behind at the exact location where the activity or consumption took place.

Secondary Refuse

Discarded materials that have been removed from their original place of use or manufacture and deposited elsewhere, such as in a trash heap or midden.

Reconnaissance

A preliminary, relatively unsystematic exploration of an area to obtain an initial impression of visible archaeological remains across a landscape.

Systematic Archaeological Survey

A controlled pedestrian survey aimed at collecting systematic information about the location, distribution, and organization of past human activity from surface remains.

Survey Traverse

An individual path walked across a landscape by a surveyor with a recorded direction and length.

Random Sampling

A sampling strategy where survey or excavation units are selected entirely by chance to eliminate conscious selection bias.

Systematic Sampling

A sampling strategy where survey units are selected according to a regular, predetermined spatial interval or grid pattern.

Stratified Sampling

A sampling method in which a landscape is first divided into meaningful environmental or cultural zones (strata) before sampling within those categories.

Crop Marks

Aerial survey clues visible as differential plant growth and crop color, caused by buried archaeological structures altering moisture retention.

Soil Marks

Aerial survey patterns resulting from visible differences in subsoil color or texture exposed on the surface by buried archaeological features.

Shadow Marks

Subtle surface earthworks made visible from the air when low-angle sunlight casts prominent shadows across slight topographical variations.

Geographic Information System (GIS)

A digital tool used to assemble, store, manipulate, and analyze multiple overlapping layers of spatial and environmental data.

Electrical Resistivity

A geophysical remote sensing technique measuring how strongly underground deposits resist electric currents, detecting buried walls or ditches through moisture differences.

Magnetometry

A subsurface remote sensing method that detects localized variations in the ground's magnetic properties, highly sensitive to burned features such as hearths and kilns.

Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR)

A remote sensing technique that sends radar energy into the ground and measures subsurface reflections, providing precise depth and anomaly data.

Vertical Excavation

Deep, narrow stratigraphic excavation designed to establish occupational sequences, site chronology, and change over time.

Horizontal Excavation

Broad-area excavation designed to expose a single occupational level to reconstruct spatial organization, activities, and community layout.

Sterile Soil

Geological sediment or strata that contains no artifacts, ecofacts, or evidence of past human occupation.

Unilinear Social Evolution

Lewis Henry Morgan's framework proposing that all human societies progress along a single, universal evolutionary ladder through Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization.

Multilinear Evolution

The neo-evolutionary perspective formulated by Sahlins and Service proposing that societies can develop along diverse evolutionary trajectories rather than one universal path.

Historical Materialism

Karl Marx's theoretical perspective stating that societal structure and historical transformation are driven fundamentally by material and economic organization.

Means of Production

The physical technology, land, raw materials, tools, and labor capacities used to produce goods in a society.

Relations of Production

The social relationships surrounding production that dictate who works, who owns and controls resources, and who appropriates the surplus.

Mode of Production

The overall economic organization of a society, comprising the material base (means and relations of production) and its associated ideological superstructure.

Social Surplus

Food or goods produced by agriculturalists beyond the immediate subsistence requirements of their own households, making specialization possible.

Neolithic Revolution

V. Gordon Childe's term for the transition from hunting and gathering to food production and agriculture, substantially increasing carrying capacity and population.

Urban Revolution

V. Gordon Childe's term for the major systemic transformation from small agricultural villages into large, socially stratified, specialized urban civilizations.

Mechanical Solidarity

Émile Durkheim's concept of social cohesion in simple societies where unity is maintained because individuals perform broadly similar tasks and share identical beliefs.

Organic Solidarity

Émile Durkheim's concept of social cohesion in complex societies where unity is produced through the functional interdependence of specialized, differentiated roles.

Ideology (Marx)

Beliefs, conceptions, and social ideas whose function is to legitimize and conceal class inequalities, presenting unequal relations as natural and proper.

Pristine States

The earliest early civilizations that developed centralized state institutions independently and free from the influence of pre-existing states.

Exemplary Centre

Paul Wheatley's concept of a ceremonial city designed as a symbolic replication and built microcosm of cosmic and natural order.

Cosmogram

A built model, map, or architectural schematic that physically depicts a society's understanding of the cosmic, moral, and supernatural order.

Axis Mundi

A sacred cosmic pillar, central mountain, temple, or vertical axis that connects and mediates communication between the earthly, celestial, and underworld planes.

Urbanism

The institutions and social patterns associated with the transition from relatively egalitarian, kin-based groups toward socially stratified, territorially organized societies.

Urbanization

The demographic ratio or proportion of a total regional population residing within urban centers.

Primate City

An urban center that disproportionately dominates its regional settlement system in terms of population size, political authority, and economic concentration.

Carrot and Stick Model (Cowgill)

George Cowgill's dual framework explaining urban migration through both attractive benefits (economic, religious opportunities) and coercive forces (political pressure, violence).

Apartment Compound

A large, walled residential complex characteristic of Classic Teotihuacan, housing multiple domestic units and containing living areas, courtyards, workshops, and shrines.

Corporate Group

A social unit formed through shared residence within an apartment compound, organized by cooperative activities, kinship ties, craft specialization, and collective ritual.

Oztoyahualco (15B:N6W3)

An excavated apartment compound at Teotihuacan studied by Linda Manzanilla, demonstrating household specialization in stucco plastering and differentiated ceramic access.

Coyotlatelco

The post-collapse ceramic and cultural tradition associated with the limited reoccupation of Teotihuacan following its destruction and burning around 600–650 CE.

Reconnaissance

A preliminary, relatively unsystematic field exploration of a landscape aimed at gaining initial impressions of visible archaeological remains.

Systematic Pedestrian Survey

A controlled ground survey method in which investigators walk across a landscape along defined paths to identify, record, and map surface cultural materials.

Survey Traverse

A predetermined, recorded walking line of specific direction and distance followed by a field surveyor during systematic landscape prospection.

Random Sampling

A probabilistic sampling strategy where survey or excavation units are selected entirely by chance to eliminate conscious investigator bias.

Systematic Sampling

A sampling strategy where investigation units are chosen according to a predetermined, regular mathematical interval or grid spacing.

Stratified Sampling

A sampling approach where a landscape or site is partitioned into distinct environmental or cultural zones before choosing sample units within each zone.

Systematic Surface Collection

A controlled technique of gathering surface artifacts within gridded spatial units to generate quantitative density maps and infer buried activity areas.

Crop Marks

Aerial survey anomalies visible through differential vegetation growth and coloration, caused by buried archaeological walls or ditches affecting soil moisture retention.

Soil Marks

Aerial survey indicators formed by visible variations in the color or texture of surface subsoil disturbed and exposed by buried archaeological features.

Shadow Marks

Surface earthwork patterns revealed from the air under low-angle sunlight, which casts distinct shadows across subtle topographic variations.

Geographic Information System (GIS)

A computational tool for capturing, storing, analyzing, and layering multiple overlapping georeferenced spatial and environmental datasets.

Global Positioning System (GPS)

A satellite-based navigation system used by field archaeologists to record accurate geographic coordinates and spatial locations of sites and features.

Electrical Resistivity

A geophysical subsurface prospection method measuring ground resistance to electrical current, distinguishing features like stone walls or wet ditches through moisture contrasts.

Magnetometry

A non-invasive remote sensing technique measuring subsurface magnetic field variations, exceptionally sensitive to thermoremanent features like kilns and hearths.

Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR)

An active geophysical technique that transmits radar pulses into the ground and measures subsurface reflections, providing precise anomaly depth profiles.

Test Pitting

The controlled excavation of small, exploratory vertical units to evaluate the presence, depth, and character of subsurface cultural deposits before broad excavation.

Vertical Excavation

Deep, narrow stratigraphic excavation designed to reveal occupational succession, establish chronological sequences, and trace cultural change over time.

Horizontal Excavation

Broad-area areal excavation designed to expose a single occupational horizon to reconstruct spatial organization, domestic activities, and community layout.

Floor Chemistry Analysis

The geochemical analysis of microscopic residues, phosphates, and minerals embedded in ancient living surfaces to identify unpreserved domestic activity zones.

Lewis Henry Morgan

19th-century anthropologist who formulated the framework of unilinear social evolution, proposing that all societies develop sequentially through Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization.

V. Gordon Childe

Archaeologist who combined Marxist economic theory with archaeological material to conceptualize the Neolithic and Urban Revolutions and define ten diagnostic traits of cities.

Karl Marx

Philosopher and political economist whose historical materialist theory posits that the material and economic mode of production drives social organization and historical change.

Émile Durkheim

Sociologist who theorized that societies maintain social cohesion through either mechanical solidarity based on likeness or organic solidarity based on functional interdependence.

Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service

Anthropologists who formulated multilinear neo-evolutionary theory, organizing societal development along non-linear evolutionary trajectories across band, tribe, chiefdom, and state.

Paul Wheatley

Cultural geographer who challenged econometric models of urban genesis, arguing that early traditional cities originated as ceremonial exemplary centres and cosmograms.

Clifford Geertz

Anthropologist associated with the tenet that power served pomp, proposing that ritual spectacle, theater, and public ceremonies constitute political power rather than merely masking it.

George Cowgill

Archaeologist who formulated the carrot and stick framework to explain regional population aggregation and urban growth at Teotihuacan through both incentives and coercion.

Manuel Gamio

Pioneering Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist who led major early stratigraphic excavations and monument restoration at Teotihuacan between 1918 and 1920.

Sanders, Parsons, and Santley

Archaeological research team that conducted extensive, regional-scale pedestrian settlement surveys across the Basin of Mexico to reconstruct long-term demographic trajectories.

René Millon

Archaeological director of the Teotihuacan Mapping Project, which generated an exhaustive, gridded photogrammetric and surface survey map of the entire ancient city.

Linda Manzanilla

Archaeologist who excavated the Oztoyahualco compound at Teotihuacan, analyzing domestic corporate groups, localized rituals, and household craft specialization in plastering.

Saburo Sugiyama and Nawa Sugiyama

Archaeologists who investigated the monumental cityscape of Teotihuacan, analyzing dedicatory sacrificial burials and state rituals within the Moon and Feathered Serpent Pyramids.

Wendy Ashmore and Robert Sharer

Archaeologists whose theoretical writings emphasize the distinction between systemic and archaeological contexts, formation processes, and context preservation in research design.

Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn

Archaeologists whose methodological writings emphasize spatial prospection, sampling methods, remote sensing technologies, stratigraphic excavation, and recording standards.

Unilinear Social Evolution

A 19th-century evolutionary paradigm proposing that all human societies progress through a single, fixed universal sequence of stages from Savagery to Barbarism to Civilization.

Multilinear Evolution

A neo-evolutionary framework proposing that cultures can follow diverse, multiple evolutionary pathways shaped by ecological and structural conditions rather than one shared trajectory.

Historical Materialism

The philosophical approach holding that the material economic organization of production serves as the foundational driver of human history and cultural superstructures.

Base and Superstructure

The Marxist socio-economic model where the economic foundation of production shapes the ideological, legal, religious, and political institutions of society.

Neolithic Revolution

V. Gordon Childe's economic concept describing the transformative transition from hunting and foraging to food production, drastically increasing carrying capacity.

Urban Revolution

V. Gordon Childe's systemic theory describing the societal transition from egalitarian farming villages into dense, class-stratified, specialized urban state societies.

Ten Diagnostic Traits of Urbanism

V. Gordon Childe's set of material symptoms marking cities: dense population, full-time specialization, surplus taxation, monumental buildings, social classes, writing, exact sciences, art, long-distance trade, and state institutions.

Mechanical Solidarity

A social cohesion model described by Émile Durkheim where societal integration is maintained because individuals perform largely homogeneous roles and share uniform beliefs.

Organic Solidarity

A social cohesion model described by Émile Durkheim where complex societies are integrated through the mutual functional interdependence of specialized labor roles.

Marxist Ideology

A conceptual framework of ideas and beliefs that functions to legitimize structural social hierarchies, presenting exploitative class relations as natural, inevitable, and proper.

Exemplary Centre Theory

Paul Wheatley's sacred urbanism model proposing that traditional cities were constructed primarily as ceremonial replicas of cosmic and supernatural order.