Intro to Archaeology Exam 2

Behavioral archaeology

The study of the interaction between people and things in all times and places

Ethnoarchaeology

a subdiscipline of archaeology that studies contemporary cultures to understand how past human behaviors, social structures, and cultural practices created the archaeological record we see today

What is the Kalinga Project?

William Longacre went to Kalinga in the 1970s in the northern Philippines to study people using artifacts in ongoing matrilineal tribal scale society

Michael Schiffer is credited with what?

He wrote the major theoretical pieces defining what behavioral archaeology is

What are the four ways life histories can be measured?

Formal: physical measurement, color, weight, length

Frequential: number of objects

Spatial: Location in 3D space

Relational: associations with other objects

Archaeological context

find and measure patterns to make inferences about systemic context

What is systemic context?

materials, manufacture, use, reuse, disposal

Synthetic model of inference

Behaviors defined as human interactions with objects, including over humans

What are the cultural processes that affect artifacts in systemic and archaeological contexts?

Primary refuse, secondary refuse, De facto refuse

Primary refuse

Artifacts are no longer usable and have been abandoned in their place of use, not common except in temporary camps

Secondary refuse

no longer usable artifacts abandoned in someplace other than where they are used, most common

De facto refuse

still usable artifacts abandoned at their place of use, very rare, except in cases of catastrophe

What are the natural processes that affect artifacts in systemic and archaeological contexts?

bioturbation, cryoturbation, erosion

Debitage

Flakes and angular shatters, the waste material produced in the production of stone tools

What are features of a typical flake?

point of impact, striking platform, bulb of percussion, ripple marks

Striking platform

the surface area on objective piece receiving the force to detach a piece of material

Bulb of percussion

the bulbar location on the ventral surface of a flake that was formed as a result of the Hertzian cone turning toward the outside of the objective piece

What did Boule say about neanderthals?

They were culturally primitive and barbaric with no language

What did new research show about neanderthals?

They have large cranial capacity

What are classic Neanderthal traits?

• Large brow ridge

• large nasal aperature

• mid-face prognathism

• large frontal dentition

• retreating chin

Shanidar cave

• excavated in the 1950s to 1960s

• Northern Iraq

• Multiple Neanderthal burials

• Individuals with healed bones and healed injuries

• Shows care from community

How long ago did the first humans appear?

200,000 ya

Where is the earliest homo sapiens sapiens site?

Herto, Ethiopia

How does technology differ between Neanderthals and humans?

Both had bead an lithic technology, both employed the same technology

Hunter gatherers

People who collect food from naturally occurring resources such as wild plants, animals, and fish. Lots of mobility

Organization of hunter gatherers

• groups were 25-150 people

• families and extended families

• members changed groups frequently

• group sizes fluctuate

What was the Mousterian Debate

a debate between Francois Bordes and Lewis Binford that centered on explaining the variations in Middle Paleolithic stone tools

What did Francois Bordes argue?

that the five toolkit variations indicted different Neanderthal groups

What did Lewis Binford argue?

suggested they reflected assemblages for different tasks (the function of sites)

Foragers vs collectors

Collectors are logistically organized with task groups, and they bring resources back to common camp. They have base camps, temporary camps, and caches. They often show delayed use to resources, which is important to extreme environments like Inuit in the Arctic.

People in uniform environments tend to be

foragers

People in patchy environments tend to be

collectors (Inuit)

Patchy environments

Arctic

Uniform environments

Equator

What is Clovis culture

13,250-12,800 ya

Large came hunters, highly mobile

Large territories and low populations

What were Clovis points?

“Fluted”

High-quality material

Set into shafts, “hafted”

What did Paul S Martin suggest about the Clovis culture?

They entered via land bridge and hunted large game. They had rapid expansion and hunted to extinction, causing their downfall

What did the sites at Mount Verde Chile show?

14,500 yra. Found by Tom Dillehay. Site was residential, not big game hunters. Challenged Clovis culture and supports the idea of a pacific migration route

Bioarchaeology

the study of human biological components evident in the archaeological record

What can we learn from human remains

1. demography

2. sex and age

3. social status

4. health

Kennewick man

Skeleton found on Columbia river. Showed to be 9400 years old. Became embroiled in debate regarding cultural patrimony and was one of the first big tests of NAGPRA legislation. Five different tribes claimed the bones.

NAGRPA Act of 1990

Addresses the rights of lineal descendants of Native Americans. It requires federal agencies and museums to provide information about Native American cultural items to parties with standing and ensure the items undergo disposition or repatriation

Why did people start farming?

climate change

Palynology

the study of pollen

Post Pleistocene Adaptiation trends

• decreasing mobility

  • more local resources, plants, and coastal resources

• intensive and efficient exploitation of resources

• population growth

  • broader diet

Robert Braidwood’s model for the origin of agriculture

Natural habitat hypothesis

• food production started in sub tropical zones, where wild wheat and barley would be abundant

Mark Cohen’s model for the origin of agriculture

Population pressure

• growing populations needed more food

V. Gordon Childe’s model for the origin of agriculture

• from crowding around waterholes during long drought

Barbara Bender and Brian Hayden’s model for the origin of agriculture

• certain individuals promoted agriculture to gain prestige

Natufian

12,500-10,00 BP

Late Pleistocene hunter gatherers in the near east who developed farming

social organization

rules and structures that govern relationships between individuals within a group and between groups

Political organization

formal and informal institutions that regulate a society’s collective acts (levels of integration = clans, community, chiefdom, state)

What did Elman service do?

Explained the difference between bands, tribed, chiefdoms, and states

Bands

groups of families, elders are leaders

• 25-150 people

• close social ties

• dominant social organization until agriculture

Tribes

clusters of bands linked by clans

• large groups, 100s-1000s

• leaders called chiefs

• more permanent settlements

Chiefdoms

polities with centralized authority

• 1000s-10,000s

• heredity and ranking

• agriculture and specialization

What is a state?

an internally specialized and hierarchically organized political formation that administers large and complex polities

population is socially and economically stratified

Other characteristics of states

• social classes

• long distance trade

• division of labor

• record keeping, writing

• science and math

Origins of state theories (6 of them)

• The Urban Revolution- V. Gordon Childe

• The Fertile Crescent Theory- Boserup

• Hydraulic (irrigation) Theory- Wittfogel

• Technology and Trade- Renfrew

• Coercive (Circumscribed) Theory- Carneiro

• Social Approaches- Yoffee

What are the two Indus Valley urban centers

Mohenjo daro and Harappa

Indus Sociopolitical organization

1. uniformity

2. enormous trade network

3. no obvious elite residences

4. all burials have similar grave goods

5. no hordes of prestige goods

What are the three things that make an environment

Biological

• air, water, minerals, organisms, etc

Cultural

• social, economic, political forces

Cultural ecology

• complex nature of relationships among human beings, their cultures, and the environments in which they live

Processual archaeology

archaeology as science, universal laws of cultural change

objectice

environmental determinism

science

broad systems

Post-processual

subjective, culturally specific experiences in the past, individuals and social dynamics

What did Charles Redman write about?

Changing practices in surface collection, sampling and research deisgn

What did Stephen Hall write about?

Neanderthals

What did Binford write about?

Inuit hunter and gathers, he is a father of processual archaeology

What did Hodder write about?

Gender roles in Catalhoyuk, he was the father of post processual archaeology

What did Jonathan Mark Kenoyer write about?

Indus people and what happened to them

What did Leblanc write about?

Warfare in prehistory

Terry L Hunt and Carl P Lipo

Easter Island

Varien

Mesa Verde

Stone

Angkor

Fagan

future of archaeology