ARch ch. 1-4
Terms
undefined, object
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- anthropology
- the study of humanity
- biological/physical anthropology
- the study of human biological or physical characteristics and thier evolution
- cultural/social anthropology
- the study of the nonbiological, behavioral aspects of a society
- ethnography
- the study of an individual contemporary cultures through firsthand observation
- ethnology
- the study of modern cultures with a view to deriving general principles about human society
- archaeology
- the study of the human past through its material remains
- Linguistics
- studying human language as a way of understanding a culture
- Material culture
- everything made and used in the daily life of a culture
- ethnoarchaeology
- the study of contemporary cultures with a view to understanding the behavioral relationships which underlie the production of material culture
- THree Age System
-
a classification system by C.J. Thomsen that establishes the idea of ordering things into sequences
1)Stone
2) Bronze
3) Iron - Typology
- arranging artifacts in chronological or developmental sequences
- Direct Historical Approach
- attempt to trace a modern phenomenon directly into the past
- Assemblage
- a collection of artifacts
- cultural ecology
- the relationship between human society and its environment, in which culture is viewed as the primary adaptive mechanism
- New Archaeology
- a new approach advocated in the 1960s which argued for an explicitly scientific framework of archaeological method and theory
- salvage archaeology
- the location and recording of archaeological sites in advance of highway construction, drainage projects, or urban development
- Postprocessual/interpretive archaeology
-
a new approach in which there is no single, correct way to interpret archaeological remains
-objectivity is impossible
- interest in cognition and religion - androcentrism
- a focus on men, often to neglect or exclude women
- artifact
- any portable object used, modified, or made by humans
- ecofact
- non-artificial, organic and environmental remains which have cultural relevance
- Feature
- a non-portable artifact
- site
- a distinct spatial clutering of artifacts, features, structures and environmental and organic remains which are the residue of human activity
- region
- sites grouped and studied together with their surrounding landscape
- matrix
- the physical material within which artifacts are embedded or supported
- provenience
- the exact horizontal and vertical position of an artifact in the matrix
- primary context
- area in which no one disturbed the item from the time it was used
- secondary context
- area where the item was placed by someone after being removed from primary context
- c-transform
-
(cultural transform)
deliberate or accidental activities of humans - N-transform
- natural processes that effect the record
- hoard
-
a deliberately-buried group of valuables or prized posessions
-often in times of conflict or war
-have not been reclaimed - peat bog
- important environment for wetland archaeology that is made up of decomposing vegetable matter , in northern latitude, that creates a sealed area
- research design
- systematic planning of archaeological research strategy to answer a certain question
- ground reconaissance
- a wide variety of methods for identifying individual archaeological sites, including consultation of documentary sources, place-name evidence, local folklore; but primarily actual fieldwork
- unsystematic survey
- walking and scanning the ground of a site and recording the location of artifacts and surface features
- systematic survey
- less subjective scan of a site involving a grid system and more accuracy
- aerial reconaissance
- site discovery from air or space
- earthworks
- things viewed in relief from aerial reconaissance
- soil marks
- changes in subsoil color that reveal the presence of buried things
- crop marks
- changes in areas of crop growth that show evidence for buried things
- oblique view
- shows sites in the context of landscape
- vertical view
- better for making maps and plans
- planimetric map
- shows the human remains of a site, and relates human-made features
- GIS
-
geographic information systems
map-based interface to a database designed for collection , storage, and retrieval, analysis, and display of spatial data - GPR
-
ground penetrating radar
measures the depth of changes in ground through pulses of sound - stratigraphy
- vertical layers of soil to see time ; used as relative dating
- Law of Superposition
- states that , where one layer overlies another, the lower was deposited first
- wheeler- kenyon method
- method of excavation in which squares are dug out, with baulks in between to see the vertical history
- open-area excavation
- the opening up of large horizontal areas for excavation; used where single period deposits lie close to the surface
- step-trenching
- excavation method used on very deep sites (tells) in which excavation proceeds downward in a series of gradually narrowing steps to see the remains of every time period
- in situ
- describes an artifact in the context of where it was found
- relative dating
- the idea that something is older or younger than something else; putting things into sequence
- absolute dating
- putting an exact date/year on an artifact
- BC/BCE
- before common era
- AD/CE
- common era
- BP
-
before present (present is 1950)
used in radio carbon dating - association
- co-occurence with something else in the archaeological remains
- seriation
-
chronological ordering of artifacts in which similar ones are adjacent to one another
-frequency seriation
-linguistic dating
-climatic chronology - pollen
- the grain flowering plants; used to date
- fauna
- bone
- stele
- an engraved stone that is standing with an absolute date
- terminus post quem
-
date after which
-no earlier, could be later - terminus ante quem
-
date before which
-no later, could be earlier - varve
-
a deposit of sediment that results from melting ice sheets every year
(only works in certain areas) - dendrochronology
- dating using tree rings
- radiocarbon dating
- nethod that measures the decay of radioactive isotope in carbon in organic material
- half-life
- how long it takes for one half of a sample to decay
- standard deviation
- a measure of the range of values in a set of numbers
- potassium-argon dating
- method used to date volcanic rocks up to 5mill. yrs old
- global events
- catastrophes that affect a large part of the globe
- Australopithecines
- earliest hominids, found in africa