Real ANTHRO 280 Midterm

Adena Mortuary Tradition

Adena Mortuary Tradition

-800BCE-1000AD
-Tradition=several groups that share ways of doing things
-Mounds were accretional so they were built bit by bit and used for burials
-Buried 1 important person at a time
-Adena tablets found with people proved buried people were important
-Secondary burials occurred

Archaic people of the great basin

8.500 BC- First few centuries AD
-Hunter gatherer groups
-Not much hierarchy
-Practiced verticality
-Rock Art (Cooperation b/w groups)
-Hot Rocks w/ tight baskets
-Processed acorns
-Long hunting lanes built

Arctic small tools tradition

Refers to the first group to colonize the Arctic Ocean coast of the High Arctic, known particularly for their small, finely made composite tool blades, and small arrowheads. 

Benton Tradition

Hypertrophic blades and bannerstones along with larger and flatter tips with no end notches

Cahokia

Largest and most important mound-builder settlement from this period; located near today's East St. Louis, Illinois; it appears that the people who built Cahokia were Mississippians who had moved there from somewhere east of it; had a social hierarchy from its inception

-Formed 1000 AD w/ big bang happening 1050 AD declined 1350
-Located in the American Bottom
-Swells to 15k people
-Corn allowed people to come together

Clovis

-Group of people that came through ice free corridor 13k years ago
-Used biface double sided with fluted clovis tip

Dalton Tradition

Tradition which appeared after Clovis, spreading across eastern North America, though with lots of regional variation.  These groups often focused on riverine ecosystems, and also frequently hunted whitetail deer.  Their stone tools include adzes which were likely used to hollow out wooden canoes. 

Dorset

This later sub-group from the Paleoeskimo line relied heavily on seal hunting.  They seem to have abandoned the use of bow and arrow.  Their elaborate carvings of polar bears, masks of human faces, and carved, fanged "shaman's teeth" all hint at their shamanistic practices.

Effigy Mound Culture

These mounds were built in the shapes of animals, such as bears, birds, bison, and turtles. This mound type was common in the upper Mississippi river area and east to lake Michigan, during the Late Woodland period

Folsom Tradition

Traveled a lot to follow and hunt bison herds and would chase bison off cliffs

Groswater complex

Late Paleo-Eskimo period, which occurred between approximately 800 BCE and 1,000 CE. constructed semi-subterranean houses hunted marine mammals, including seals and walrus

Hopewell, and Hopewell Interaction Complex

100 BCE to 500 CE where people do things differently but still stay in contact started in Ohio built mounds associated with celestial bodies and had people travel hundreds of miles to bring material

Maritime Archaic

These people were the first to live in what is now the eastern Canada.  There were of Amerindian descent, moving up from the south.  They were the builders of the burial mound at L'Anse Amour, the oldest known mound in North America.  In some of their later settlements, they build longhouses up to 50 meters long, and segmented for different families.   Differences in grave goods and longhouse divisions suggest some level of social difference.   They hunted primarily using spears and toggling harpoons.

Mill Branch

This culture emphasized deer hunting, and material culture associated with men, such as knives and bannerstones.   Descended from Paris Island. 

Mississippian Period

1000 CE to 1600

Morrow Mountain

This tool tradition is often found at the base of archaic shell mound sites.  Later examples are common across the southeast, often associated with small, ephemeral sites.  Points made in this style are often knapped from white quartz, and tend to have a relatively simple shape, with minimal notching.

Norton

Paleoeskimo

Eastern Canada from the northwest.   They brought new technologies, such as the bow and arrow.   They tended to be more mobile than Amerindian groups to the south, and relied on a broader, more flexible range of resources. 

Paris Island

Plano Tradition

This culture, which followed Folsom, practiced intensive, large-scale bison hunting on the Great Plains, sometimes even driving whole herds over a cliff.  They began to scale back bison hunting as rainfall decreased and herds became smaller in size and number.

Stallings

This culture was among the first to make use of pottery in North America.   However, they did not use their pottery to cook over fires, but rather continued the hot rock cooking methods, and sometimes sought out soapstone slabs for this purpose.  Centered along the Savannah River.

Thule Eskimo

The Thule culture is generally associated with the Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) and is dated to approximately 1000 CE to 1600 CE.

Woodland Period

500 B.C.- 800 A.D.
still hunted/ gathered some food
more settled down
more crop planting
increased religious ceremonies

Cerutti Mastodon Site

Claim they found bone quarry where mastodon bones were smashed dating back to 130,00 years ago

Etowah Indian Mounds

Located in Georgia known for copper plates and bird-man theme and found recoverable cloth due to it being next to copper

Folsom site

Site discovered by the cowboy George McJunkin, and later excavated by Jesse Figgins.   Extinct bison antiquus bones were found in association with Folsom projectile points, proving humans had reached the Americas at least 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Green River Shell Mound Sites

Burial sites where dogs were treated like humans, tucked into round graves in a flexed burial position.

Hiwassee Island

Mound site which was excavated by a 1930s WPA project, before being partially submerged by the building of a dam. Known for its unusual "dual pyramid" central mound.

Kincaid Site

Mound site located in Illinois, where mounds were built in alignment both to lunar movements and to the nearby bayou. Widespread owl imagery at the site likely marks a distinct local identity.

L’anse Amour

Oldest burial mound in North America dated to 8,000 years ago where a single child was buried with various objects

Monte Verde

SIte found in 1970s which clearly had pre clovis artifacts has preserved tent stakes due to site being waterlogged

Mound 72

This ridge-top mound from Cahokia was built over the site of an earlier wood henge. It contained hundreds of burials, including an adult male and female who may have been founders of "new" Cahokia, or otherwise involved in the city's restructuring around 1050. The adult male was buried with a cloak made from 10,000+ shell beads and several caches of finely crafted projectile points. Included among the other burials are a group of 53 young women who had been sacrificed.

Moundville

Mound site in Alabama, known for wide use of "horned serpent" and "winged serpent" iconography.

Port au Choix

117 burials were documented here

The Indigenous peoples of Port au Choix were known for their maritime adaptation, relying on the sea for sustenance. This included fishing, hunting marine mammals, and using marine resources for tools and other purposes.

Poverty Point

This series of mounds included several central mounds standing in front of a series of ridged rings. People lived here for centuries during the Archaic period, even though they were still hunter-gatherers

Powell Mound

(Mound 86) This ridge-top mound was the second largest at Cahokia, but was mostly destroyed in the 1930s. Archaeologists present when the mound was destroyed noted burials, shell beads, and ceramics in the mound.

Serpent Mound

This mound was built by late Adena or early Hopewell people. It is built in the shape of a snake, with the curves of the snake's body aligning to sunrise and sunset on the solstices.

Sloan Site

This funerary site in Arkansas may have been a meeting place for people from across the region.  The oversize stone tools found here appear to have been made specifically for the burials, showing no evidence of use.  This site is associated with the Dalton tradition.

Topper Site

Pre-clovis site in South Carolina.  Lower strata at this site have been dated to 50,000 years BP, but these dates remain controversial, as they are at upper limits of what carbon dating can reliably cover. 

White Sands

• Oldest secure date that is Pre-Clovis

• Site where numerous footprints have been found, some of which have been dated to 20,000 years BP, based on carbon dated grass seed which was embedded in the footprints.  Many of the prints were left by children and teenagers.

Windover Site

This funerary site is unique due to its waterlogged conditions, which preserved organic remains including human remains, wooden posts, bottle gourds, woven fabric, and atlatls

Adze

a tool similar to an ax with an arched blade at right angles to the handle, used for cutting or shaping large pieces of wood.into boats

Accretional

• Growing a little bit at a time

• Adena conical burial mounds is an example

• Mounds grew in size as additional earth heart was deposited

Adena tablets

Intricate tablets buried with important people of adena mounds

Archaic corrals and drive lanes

Used to corral herds to kill a lot of bison in one space

Atlatl

Notched throwing stick used by hunters to propel spears farther and faster.

Bannerstones

These flat, "winged" stone objects typically had a hole drilled through the center.  They may have been used as atlatl weights or bow-drill weights.  Some unusually large ones were used as valuable trade items, and appear most often at the borders between different cultures in the Eastern archaic. 

Bedrock Mortars

non portable mortars- embedded into rock. used as grinding tool in late archaic period

Bioarchaeology

the study of human remains in an archaeological context

Kennocwihck man and the muscles to tell which arm was used, Dna to tell where he was found, what his diet was and more,

• teeth and the rings to show the malnutritions

Bow and arrow

The use of the bow and arrow is associated with the Archaic period in North America,

Cache

Used by those in the great basin so they did not have to carry heavy stone mortars and pessels

Carbon dating

a scientific method used to determine the age of an organic artifact

Ceramics analysis

The Stallings and how the started that act of pottery but them quickly abandoned it, and how other cultures were influenced by it

Chunkey

Anlyzing ceramics can tell us the handidness of the poter and what was in the pot

Clovis First Model

The Clovis culture, dated to 13,500 to 12,500 years ago, is the first human occupation in the Americas came through Ice free corridor

Coastal Migration Hypothesis

If the first occupants of the New World were adapted to coastal environments, they might have moved relatively rapidly down the coasts of North and South America

Complicated stamping

Used in woodland culture of the east Woodland Complicated Stamping is notable for its distinctive surface decoration, which consists of intricate stamped or incised designs.

Conical mounds

First built as part of the Adena Mortuary complex, these mounds were used for burials. They continued to be built throughout the woodland and Mississippian periods.

Cord-marking (and cord-marking paddles)

wrapping cord around paddles and imprinting it on clay so designs come out on pottery.

Dorset carved figurines

Intricate figurines of animals such as polar bears which showed the artistic nature of the Dorset

Dorset longhouse

Houses used by those in the Arctic where everyone lived in one big house where everyone had the same amount of room

Eastern Agricultural Complex

describes the agricultural practices of the pre-historic Eastern Woodland Native Americans in the eastern United States and Canada. Native Americans domesticated and cultivated many indigenous crops as far west as the Great Plains such as tobacco and corn

Effigy mounds

These mounds were built in the shapes of animals, such as bears, birds, bison, and turtles. This mound type was common in the upper Mississippi river area and east to lake Michigan, during the Late Woodland period.

Eskimo vs. Amerindian

The term "Eskimo" has been used in the past to describe Indigenous groups inhabiting the Arctic "Amerindian" is another outdated term used to describe the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Eva of Naharon

The skeleton of a 20- to 25-year-old human female found in the Naharon section of an underwater cave in Mexico. Eva is the oldest known human remains found in the Americas to date.

Fiber temper ceramics

When different clay are mixed and grass is added to the clay to add moisture so that it would not crack and break during the heating process. Soapstone was the preferred clay used to make the ceramics. From this, you could learn if a person was right or left-handed due to the pressure applied while dragging

Geophysical methods

Any methods that measures a characteristic of the ground without penetrating/digging. Might pick it instead of digging because it is non destructive, a lot faster than digging, and would leave the area non-disturbed. Ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry, soil resistivity used to locate anomalies below ground

Hopewell incised stone spheres

Used for sealing water basins

Horticulture

Cultivation of crops carried out with simple hand tools such as digging sticks or hoes not very intensive

Hot rock cooking

Cooking by heating rocks on a fire and putting them in a watertight basket. First used by Archaic big basin

Hypertrophic

This term literally means "overfed," and refers to objects made in unusually large, even impractical sizes, typically for ceremonial or symbolic use, rather than utilitarian purposes.  Blades and points of this type were often found in Benton caches. 

Inhumation

burial; act of depositing in the ground

Kelp Highway

another theory regarding how first people came to Americas, lots of kelp along coast, boats followed the land along west coast - oldest artifacts found there

Kennewick Man / The Ancient One

Early Archaic skeleton found along the Columbia River that led to a long and involved series of lawsuits clarifying NAGPRA. After much argumentation, human remains belong to their descendants, but when in doubt, some studying may be allowed to determine who the descendants are.

Lithics analysis

in archaeology and anthropology, is the systematic study and examination of stone tools and artifacts, known as lithics, to gain insights into prehistoric human behavior, technology, and culture.

Longhouse

Houses used by those in the Arctic where everyone lived in one big house where everyone had the same amount of room

Maritime archaic longhouse

Houses used by those in the Arctic where everyone lived in one big house where everyone had the same amount of room

Matrilocal

Describes a residence pattern where married couples reside near the bride's family.  In these societies, the women of a community are most closely related.   Stallings culture is thought to hae practiced this residence pattern.

Medieval Warm Period

a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region, lasting from about AD 800-1300. Warmer conditions and longer growing seasons likely had a positive impact on agriculture in some areas, allowing for the cultivation of crops that might not have thrived during cooler periods.

Mica

flaky, shiny mineral found in the southern Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina

Mississippian bundles

Wrapped groupings of sacred and ceremonial objects, which were used for ceremonies and oracles, and treated as individuals rather than objects.

Newark Shaman Figurine

A Hopewell figurine showing a human wearing a bear skin, and carrying a human head in one hand. When rotated, the figurine appears to show the human changing into a bear.

Optically stimulated luminescence

A trapped charge dating technique used to date sediments; the age is the time elapsed between the last time a few moments' exposure to sunlight reset the clock to zero and the present.

Overkill Hypothesis

argues that humans were responsible for the Late Pleistocene extinction of megafauna in northern Eurasia and North and South America

Paired post architecture

type of architectural structure or design in which two vertical posts or columns are used together in a paired arrangement, found in adena culture mounds where they were similarly used to build houses.

Paleopathology

study of disease and injury in skeletons from archaeological sites

Patrilocal

Describes a residence pattern where married couples reside near the groom's family.  In these societies, the men of a community are most closely related.  Mill Branch may have practiced this residence pattern.

Pinyon Pine

Main food source for groups in the Archaic Great Basin

Pit houses

a house in the Arctic region dug into the ground and covered with wood and skins

Ramah Chert

This type of stone was particularly prized by people of the Maritime Archaic, and traded throughout their territory, and as far south as Maine.

Ramey Incised Pottery

distinctive incised or engraved designs associated with the Ramey phase, an archaeological cultural tradition in the southeastern United States

Reduction vs oxidation

Reduction loses oxygen while oxidation gains oxygen reduction helps preserve artifacts while oxidation does not

Ridgetop mounds

positioned along the uppermost parts of ridges and hillcrests used for ceremonies or burials

Ring mounds

typically circular or elliptical in shape They have been associated with a range of activities, such as burial sites, ceremonial or ritual enclosures, defensive structures, agricultural enclosures, or simply demarcations of land ownership.

Rock art:

1. Petroglyph vs. pictograph

2. Abstract vs. representational

1. Petroglyph is engraved or carved while pictographs are painted or drawn rock art

2. Abstract does not depict real world events while representational does

Secondary burial

ome time after the initial burial the bones are removed and reburied.

Shamanism

The practice of identifying special individuals (shamans) who will interact with spirits for the benefit of the community.

“Shaman teeth”

Used primarily by Dorset shamans where they would wear wooden teeth to try to become more like an animal

Shell temper ceramics

Started in cahokia where shell was mixed with clay to prevent it from cracking

Short Chronology