Archaeology of Early Cities ANTH 210 mcgill

CRM

Cultural Resource Management. "Contract Archaeology", most common form of archaeological research in north America today

Monumental Architecture

temples, places, etc. They tend to be better preserved because they are built of more durable material and fairly visible

Garbage

extensive scatter over the urban landscapes, ceramic shards, stone tools, bone implements

Site Abandonment

abandoned and not reoccupied, made from wood, adobes, etc

Accretional Process

gradual building up of the landscape---Creates a Tel

Archaeological Field Survey

a method used to collect information about the location, distribution and organization of past human activities through the distribution of material remains over a large area.

Research Design

made up of a context, research questions answered, information on the finds, definitions of the data to be collected

Implementation

Fund-raising, permission to access land, getting equipment and a workforce

Data Acquisition

When field research takes place and can be a survey or excavation

Processing and Analysis

Detailed artifact classification and study

Interpretation

To answer research questions posed originally

Publication

Little money for it though it is crucial

Middens

Shell heaps in parts of California

Element sampling

One selects arbitrary grid samples randomly over a large area

Cluster sampling

Governs a survey made up of arbitrary survey units defined by an area

Remote Sensing

non-destructive methods; aerial photography, magnetic prospecting methods and side scan radar

Milpa System

Slashing and burning forests, using it for 3-4 years before moving on to virgin plots
Mesoamerican strategy

Sideways Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR)

senses terrain on either side of an aircraft's path

Geographic Information System (GIS)

system for collection, storage, retrieval, analysis and presentation of spatial data of all kinds

Transects

survey lines

Debitage

small, discarded fragments of chipped stones

Geoglyph

Large ground drawing

Settlement Pattern

Refers to the "Distribution of Archaeological sites over the landscape", first developed by Harvard archaeologist Gordon Willey in the 1950's in the Viru Valley on the North Coast of Peru

What do Settlement Patterns tell us?

Economic strategies (trade?), defense concerns (presence of forts), religious significance, demography and population, political organization

Tools of Archaeologists

picks, masonry trawls, dental tools (rarely), varying sized brushes

Civilization

The stage of human social development and organization that is considered more advance- most archaeologists reject this bias notion (urban literate societies)

Short hand for "pre-industrial civilizations)

Sir Edward Taylor

Three stages of human development

1.) Simple hunting (savagery)

2.) Simple Farming (barbarism)

3.)Civilization

Lewis Henry Morgan (American)

Believed in seven distinct periods of human progress

City

Large, dense settlement with at least 2000-3000 people to one million (Rome or Changon), characterized by specialization and interdependence between urban and rural and craftsmen and other groups, has centralized institutions to regulate internal affairs and ensure security

Primary Characteristics of Early Civilization

cities, states, specialization of labor, concentration of surplus, and a class structured society

Secondary Characteristics of Early Civilization

monumental public works, long distance trade, standardized monumental artworks, writing and the sciences ( arithmetic, geometry and astronomy). Early cities do have similarities but cannot be considered similar

Botta and Layard

dug into Nineveh (See Religion)

Ernest de Sarzec

Excavated Telloh mounds in 1877- found Sumerian civilization

Leonard Wooley (British)

dug at Or, 1926 unearthed huge cemetery with sixteen "royal" burials and thousands of commoner's graves

Heinrich Schliemann

German millionaire who, along with British Frank Calvert, discovered Homeric Troy, found seven superimposed cities

Sir Arthur Evans

Dug at Knossos on the island of Crete and named the civilization Minoan after King Minos

Minoans

developed a new script known as Linear A, also yielding more tablets in Linear B

John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood

Made two expeditions and drew the ruins of Copan, Palenque, Chichen Itza and Uxmal

Max Uhle

Revealed the time depth of South American civilization when he excavated Pachacomac

Hiram Bingham

Found the ruins of Manchu Pichu after only five days

jhumming

Shifting cultivation after an area becomes overused

Ten Things Separate Earliest Cities from Old Villages (1-5)

1. Cities were more extensive and densely populated

2. Supported full time craftsmen and specialists

3.Citizens paid taxes or tithes

4.Monumental public building

5.There was a ruling class (religious or political)

Ten Things Separate Earliest Cities from Old Villages (6-10)

6.Invented systems of recording and exact, but useful sciences

7.The invention of scripts

8.Artistic endeavors and artists

9.Regular "foreign" trade

10. Where a craftsmen belongs economically and politically

Hernan Cortes

saw the Aztec Tenochtitlan while it was still in its prime

Aztecs

Taught that conformity was expected, strict social classes, they were on Earth to serve the state and the gods

Myopic

Lacking imagination or intellectual insight

Multi-linear Evolution

We started in basic societies before branching out

Pre-state societies

Societies on a small scale, based on the community, band or village

Bands

Autonomous and self-sufficient groups consisting of a few families

Tribes

Egalitarian like societies but with greater levels of social and cultural complexity; kin based, public opinion matters in decision making

Chiefdoms

Societies headed by an individual and similar to tribes; high population densities, first signs of social rankings

State organized societies (civilizations)

Operate on a large scale, centralized organization

Soil

Looking for changes in color (Munsell Color Chart), texture and consistency, hardness, sound, ratios of clay, sand and silt

Recording

Bulk of the time, photograph and draw a great deal of the time, drawing to scale on graph paper

Stratigraphic Profiles

Locate different changes (layers)

Soil Samples

ten liters go through floatation, separates objects by weight, then unimportant material is skimmed off

Paleoethnobotany

study of plant materials and remains

Artifact Processing and Analysis

Must be washed, labeled, catalogued and washed on site! You cannot take it back to your home country.

Zooarchaeology

Study of animal remains

Ceramic Analysis

Analyzing ceramics, important for chronology

Bioarchaeology/Physical Anthropology

Studying skeletal and sometimes DNA remains, looking at their health, injuries, nutrition and any stress marks

Cranial Deformation

Fronto-Occipital, Unmodified, Annular

V. Gordon Childe (1892-1957)

Concept of "Urban Revolution", presented in 1936 book "Man Makes Himself", refined ideas in 1950 article "The Urban Revolution, influenced by Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim (Father of French Sociology)

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

"Historical Materialism" "Men make History" "History is a patterned sequence of modes of production". He was looking at the material conditions of life, its economics and the quality of life that result from that "men in the flesh"

Mode of Production=

Base + Superstructure

Society is...

a system whole of interdependent parts; change in one social domain systematically effects all others

The Base

Things and the relationships between people

Means of Production

tools, natural resources, machinery, technology

Relations of Production

between people and classes of people, the haves and the have nots

Pre-industrial Civilizations

Urbanized societies, economies based on the centralized accumulation of capital and social status through tribute and taxation, advances towards record keeping, science mathematics and some form of written script, public buildings, some form of all embracing state religion

Childe and the Urban Revolution

Neolithic Revolution was followed by an Urban Revolution

Irrigation

Gave the land exceptional fertility that allowed for food surpluses, which allowed higher population densities

Technology and Trade

Metallurgy, trade has two components, goods and commodities being exchanged and people doing the exchanging

Warfare

Key role in state formation

Coercive

Hostile external coercion, oppressive internal coercion, self-preservation in the context of a military threat

Buffer Zones

a standoff between neighbors that allows them to coexist

Ten Qualities of Chiefs who Created 1st Civilizations (1-5)

1.Were members of the elite

2.Had outstanding military abilities

3.Usurped the position of chief

4.Conquered immediate neighbors

5.Sought competitive advantage with distant neighbors

Ten Qualities of Chiefs who Created 1st Civilizations (6-10)

6.Expanded to more distant lands

7.Used forced labor to intensify agricultural production

8.Acquired additional resources through raiding

9.Soldified their position of power

10. ?

Dynamic Model

An initial unitary state endures about two hundred centuries before breaking down into city states which go into further cycles of expansion, unification and fragmentation

bajos

raised fields set in marshy depressions that allows for year round food production

Jericho

Claims to be oldest town on Earth, a walled community, plastered human skulls

Abu Hureyra

hunter/gatherer village, human skulls, along the Euphrates

Catalhoyuk

large village or town in southern turkey

Ideology

Any set of beliefs, ideas, conceptions, and attitudes whose main function is to conceal class distinctions and make them seem natural

Troy (Hisarlik, Turkey)

Excavated by Heinrich Schleimann in 1870's

Tell El Amarna

(Egypt 1891) by W.M. Flinders Petrie

Marxism Key Concepts

History is a sequence of modes of production

Mode of production=base + superstructure

Concept of Revolution

Childe's Three Modes of Production

1.)Savagery

2.)Barbarism

3.)Civilizations

Savagery

Hunting and fishing societies (Paleolithic and Pleistocene)

Barbarism

Early agriculturists and "Neolithic Revolution"

Civilizations

Urban societies supported by irrigation agriculture as a new mode of production

Four Case Studies of Childe's UR

Harrapa

Uruk

Giza

Chichen Itza

Childe's Points 1-5

1.)Large, densely populated settlement

2.)The class lines are more defined

3.)Payments made to a deity or a divine king

4.)Surpluses used to build monumental public works

5.)Exempt from physical labor---labors were given protection, relieved of intellectual duties,

Childe's Points 6-10

6.)Innovation to transmit ideologies

7.)Management of economy

8.)More realistic and improvement of art

9.)Trade with the food surpluses you can pay for high value goods

10.)State is the power (have almost entire control of life)

Emile Durkheim

(1858-1917) Resolution of Social Conflict (instead of Social Revolution, Division of Labor in Society (1893), nature of society, changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution and the new, modern work force

Organic Metaphor

Society is a system of interconnected parts

Solidarity

integration, moral phenomenon, opposite of anomie

Collective consciousness

Defined as "the totality of beliefs or sentiments common to the average member of a society", values, mores, attitudes, beliefs shared by members of a society, NOT! the same as Marx's concept of "false consciousness" about concealing class relations or inequalities

Mechanical Society

"Positive" because it is based on similarities between member; homogeneity, associated with less complex, low population densities based on resemblances and similarities within limited groups, redundancy of roles, emphasis on group

Organic Solidarity

"Negative" because it is based on differentiation and heterogeneity, associated with population increase; stronger form of social organization more vulnerable to enemies, often the stronger societies