archaeology definitions
Terms
undefined, object
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- Mitochondrial DNA
- located outside of the cell nucleus, combines DNA from each parent
- Primary context
- acquisition, manufacturing, use & deposition occur in one location and is not disturbed
- Hominoids
- the biological family that includes humans, great apes, and gibbons
- Biological anthropology
- seeks to understand the physical human being through the study of human evolution and adaptability, population genetics, and primatology
- Lokalalei
- location in Kenya with stone tools dating back to 2.3 million years ago
- Site survey
- the attempt to systematically locate features of interest within a site
- Datum point
- serves as a reference for all depth measurements
- Soil micromorphology
- field that observes the attributes of the soil within various soil horizons and their arrangements
- Postdepositional-process analysis
- examines the natural and cultural processes that have affected the formation of archaeological sites
- Tai forest
- location where chimpanzees used stone hamers and anvils as tools to break open nuts
- Depositional unit
- material deposited at a particular point in time
- Paleolithic
- of, relating to, or denoting the Stone Age
- in situ
- describes material recovered in the place where it was originally deposited
- Paleolithic (Old Stone Age)
- the period during which humans lived with now-extinct animals
- Context
- the spatial and temporal relation of archaeological material
- Neolithic (New Stone Age)
- the period in which there are polished stone tools
- Luminescence dating methods
- measures the uptake of radioactive material
- Deduction
- works from general laws and models
- Radiation
- the biological term for a period when there is a rapid increase in the number of species in a single lineage
- Argo dating
- identifies the time of a volcanic eruption
- Purgatoris
- earliest-known primate, which lived between ninety and sixty-five million years ago
- New archaeology
- a concerted effort to develop archaeological theory firmly on the basis of scientific method
- Diachronic studies
- changes through long periods of time
- Palaeontology
- study of fossil animals
- Relative dating
- comparatively placing events on a timeline without specific dates
- Middle-range research
- looks at processes that can be observed in the present and that can serve as a point of reference to test hypotheses about the past
- Wet screening
- in which water is sprayed onto sediments as they pass through a screen—it is often used to recover very small artifacts and bones
- Excavation
- the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains
- Nuclear DNA
- located in the cell nucleus, combines DNA from each parent
- Ontogeny
- the growth and deelopment of an individual organism
- Region
- patterning of related archaeological sites across a landscape
- Features
- non-portable human made remains that cannot be removed from an archaeological site
- Synchronic studies
- within a single time period
- Publishing
- bringing the data obtained from excavations and analysis to the public
- Relative chronology
- laces assemblages in a temporal sequence not directly linked to calendar dates
- Seriation
- looking at styles of similar objects comparatively
- Species
- a group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring
- Radiocarbon dating
- measures the decay of carbon isotopes
- Laetoli
- site for the infamous discovery of australopithecine footprints
- Vertical excavation
- excavation to expose the record of a sequence of occupation
- Stratigraphy
- the analysis of order and position of layers of archaeological remains
- Feminist archaeology
- focuses on the way archaeologists study and represent gender, as well as bringing attention to gender inequities in the practice of archaeology
- Postprocessual archaeology
- branch that argues that archaeologists should emulate historians in interpreting the past
- Ardipithecus ramidus
- an early hominin dating back to approximately 4.5 million years ago
- Secondary context
- has been moved naturally
- Systems theory
- views society as an interconnected network of elements that together form a whole
- Hadar
- region of Ethiopia where the Gona site is located, with the oldest-known stone tools found dating back to 2.5 million years ago
- Typology
- a list of artifact types for a particular archaeological context
- Cosmology
- the science of the origin and development of the universe, and the religions that study it
- Horizontal excavation
- excavation of a broad area to expose the remains of a single point in time
- Hermeneutics
- concept which views our knowledge of the past as a continual process of interpretation
- Intrasite
- within a single archaeological site
- Homo erectus
- the first member of the hominin lineage to spread out of Africa
- Paranthropus
- species characterized by massive molars and muscles for chewing, dating from 2.5 to 1.4 million years ago
- Site
- location where archaeological materials (artifacts, ecofacts, fossils, features) exist in context
- Australopithecines
- species dating between 4 and 2.5 million years ago, providing the first evidence of being bipedal; famously named "Lucy"
- Analysis
- the act of gaining as much data as possible from an excavation and organizing it into a coherent body of information
- Agency theory
- theory which stresses the centrality of individuals living in society as the basic unit of archaeology
- Archaeology
- studies the contemporary distribution and form of artifacts, with the intent of understanding distribution and movement of ancient population, their social organization, and relationships among them.
- Flotation
- a method used to recover charred botanical material (wood and seeds) by mixing sediments with water and allowing the charred remains to float to the surface
- Sahelanthropus tchadensis
- one of te earliest-known members of the hominin lineage, dating to 7 million years ago
- Evolutionary archaeology
- involves a range of approaches that stress the importance of evolutionary theory as a unifying theory for archaeology
- East African Rift Valley
- geological feature stretching from East Africa to the Middle East and is the location of many important early hominin sites
- Homo habilis
- the earliest member of the genus Homo, found on sites dating between 2.5 and 1.6 million years ago
- Cultural anthropology
- the investigation of the culture and social organization of a particular people. (this is often comparitive)
- Law of superposition
- in an undisturbed depositional sequence, each layer is younger than the layer beneath it
- Bifaces
- the characteristic tools of the African Acheulian, invluding handaxes and cleavers
- Miocene era
- 23 to 5 million years ago, this period saw an explosion in the number of hominoid species
- Anthropogenic deposits
- deposits that are the result of human activity
- Intersite
- between two or more archaeological sites
- Archaeological theory
- consists of the ideas that archaeologists have developed about the past and about the ways we come to know the past
- Induction
- involves drawing inferences on the basis of available data
- Aeogyptopithecus
- one of the earliest hominoids, which lived between thirty-five million and twenty-three million years ago
- Phylogeny
- the evolutionary history of a species
- Three-age system
- divided prehistory into the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages
- Strata
- a discrete layer in a stratigraphic sequence
- Linguistic anthropology
- seeks to understand the processes of human communications, verbal and non-verbal, and the relationship between language and culture
- Artifacts
- an object made by a human being, typically of historical or cultural interest
- Molecular clock
- allows the timing of the split between lineages to be calculated on the basis of the degree of genetic similarity
- Paleomagnetism
- measures reversals in the earth's magnetic field
- Quantification
- used to represent the large quantities of material recovered in excavations and surveys
- Geographical Information System (GIS)
- software applications that allow spatial data to be brought together and consolidated
- Dating
- the act of identifying the age of sites/artifacts using various methods
- Taphonomy
- the study of the processes that affect organic remains after death
- Anthropology
- study of human beings
- Obsidian hydration
- measures the decay of the surface of obsidian artifacts
- Oldowan
- the earliest well characterized archaeological industry dating between 19 and 1.15 million years ago, its charcteristic tool being the chopper
- Harris matrix
- a tool used to depict the temporal succession of archaeological contexts and thus the sequence of deposition on a "dry-land" archaeological site
- Acheulian
- industry in Africa which dates between 1.7 million and approximately 200,000 years ago, characteristic tool being the biface
- Hominins
- the members of the human lineage after it split with the chimpanzee lineage
- Ecofacts
- non-artifact natural remains with cultural importance
- Lower Paleolithic
- the period when hominins began producing stone tools, roughly 2.5 million to 200 000 years ago
- Regional survey
- the attempt to systematically locate previously unknown sites in a region
- Thunderstones
- objects that were believed to be formed when lightning struck the earth
- Paleoanthropologists
- scientists who study the evolutionary history of the hominoids
- Absolute dating
- state the date absolutely in terms of today's date
- Dendrochronology
- the science or technique of dating events, environmental change, and archaeological artifacts by using the characteristic patterns of annual growth rings in timber and tree trunks
- Absolute chronology
- stated in terms of calendar years
- Kenyanthropus
- species dating back to 3.5 million years ago, discovered in northern Kenya
- Postdepositional processes
- the events which take place after a site has been occupied
- Olduvai Gorge
- location in Tanzania where many hominin fossils and archaeological sites have been discovered
- Attribute
- a particular characteristic of an artifact