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Definition
| Can help establish the season of the year when a site was occupied using animal birthing and tooth eruption schedules. |
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Definition
| The study of animal remains in archaeological sites. Can help provide direct evidence of which species were hunted (or collected) for food, how many animals were killed, how they were captured, and what butchering methods were employed. |
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Definition
| Powerful sources of data regarding ancient life. Flotation is the most commonly used method for recovering plant macrofosils from sites |
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Definition
| Study of pollen -- most useful in reconstructing past regional environments. Pollen diagrams enable us to document how local and regional vegetation has changed through time. |
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Definition
| Their Nests can preserve millenia-long records of local environmental change |
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Definition
| Intact Plant Parts. Important to paleoenvironmental reconstruction but are also direct evidence of which plant species were exploited, the season of site occupation, and plant processing technology. |
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Definition
| Small grans of silica that form inside plant stems, are less sensitive indicators of plants on a site, but can demonstrate which plant stems (as opposed to seeds) were present on a site |
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Definition
| Desiccated Feces. Provide evidence of what people ate. They are especially useful indicators of plants (some seeds pass through undigested) and small animals (bones, feathers, or fur may pass). Coprolites also tell us what people ate in a single day and hence can point to food storage practices. |
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| Analysis of Lipids, other New Methods |
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Definition
| prodive information on plant use and on the roles of meat and cooking techniques |
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Term
| Economy vs. Culture (people's interaction with the environment) |
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Definition
| People's interaction with the environment has an economic basis, but culture may frequently place layers of symbolic meaning on top of that inPeople's interaction with the environment has an economic basis, but culture may frequently place layers of symbolic meaning on top of that interaction. |
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Definition
| The study of the human biological component evident in the archaeological record; it examines the health and workload of ancient populations. This specialty requires expertise in the method and theory of both biological anthropology and field archaeology |
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Term
| How can we determine the sex of an individual? |
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Definition
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Term
| How can we determine an individual's age? |
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Definition
| tooth eruption; patterns of bone fusion, tooth wear, and bone wear are used to age individuals over the age of 25 |
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Definition
| The study of those ancient diseases that leave skeletal traces. Iron deficiency, for example, leaves a distinctive spongy appearance on the skull and the interior of the eye orbits. In addition, growth arrest features, such as Harris lines and enamel hypoplasias, indicate periods of severe disease or malnutrition in childhood |
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Definition
| Bones respond to the routine mechanical stresses placed upon them; patterns of osteoarthritis and long bone cross sections can point to different patterns of workload between the sexes or to changes through time |
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Definition
| Looks at patterns of death in a population, determining life expectancy, child mortality, and peaks in the age of death for men and women |
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Definition
| Stature estimates can track changes in the quality of diet |
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| Bioarchaeologists and Diet |
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Definition
| Bioarchaeologists can reconstruct diet: High frequency of dental caries indicates a diet high in simple carbs and sugars. The ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone can reconstruct the dietary importance of various kinds of plants and animals |
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Definition
| Uses data from living and ancient peopes to reconstruct population migrations. Especially useful is mtDNA and the genetic material in Y chromosomes. Although we still have much to learn about the rates at which DNA mutates, current studies show that DNA studies are important to reconstructing the past. |
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Term
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Definition
| The group is the basic social unit; how that group operates is a matter of gender, kinship, and status |
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Definition
| Sex is a matter of biology, Gender is culturally based interpretations of biology |
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Term
| Ethnography and Division of Labor |
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Definition
| Ethnographic research demonstrates that the sorts of patterns archaeologists are best at finding -- large temporal and spatial differences in material goods, especially technology -- can be related to different divisions of labor, which are a product of male and female decision making. Thus, knowing what men and women did is important to understanding larger social and economic patterns, but inferring what men and women actually did is difficult. |
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Term
| What can tell us about workload and diet? |
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Definition
| Bioarchaeological analyses provide some clues, but strong empirical generalizations or historically linked ethnographic analogies are often needed. |
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Definition
| Refers to the sociall recognized network of relationships through hwich individuals are related to one another by ties of descent (real or imagined) and marriage. Like gender, kinship to plays a role in understanding the choices that people made in the distant past. |
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Term
| How can we learn about social groupings? |
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Definition
| They are reflected "on the ground" in terms of house spacing and placement. Genetic distance studies of human skeletal remains provide clues to post-marital residence |
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Term
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Definition
| refers to the rights, duties, and privileges that define the nature of interpersonal relations. Social statuses are apportioned according to culturally determined criteria |
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Term
| Ascribed vs. Achieved status |
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Definition
| A key element in political organization is the difference between ascribed statuses, which are parceled out to the individuals at birth without regard to the characteristics of those receiving status, and achieved status, which comes from what one accomplishes in life. |
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| Egalitarian vs. Ranked society |
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Definition
| A society is Egalitarian if achieved status is the common (or only) means by which and individual acquires a high position, while in a ranked society, ascribed status places people at birth into a ranked order of privilege; ranked societies exhibit a hierarchy, and its members have unequal access to basic resources |
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Term
| How are mortuary remains used to study egalitarian and ranked societies? |
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Definition
| They are used on the assumption that treatment in death reflects status in life |
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Term
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Definition
| Trade networks reflect the geographic scale of non-residential groups, economic patterns, and political authority. Trade is established by determining whether artifacts were made or obtained locally and by determining the source of raw materials for artifact manufacture |
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Term
| Obsidian, clay, and temper sourcing studies |
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Definition
| Can demonstrate the geographic scale of an economic and/or political organization. |
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Term
| Processural archaeology and "archaeology of the mind" |
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Definition
| Though processual archaeology was initially optimistic that all aspects of the human conditions were available for archaeological investigation, the proponents of processual approaches during the 1970s and 80s were lukewarm, if not hostile, toward efforts to interpret symbols and construct an "archaeology of the mind" |
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Term
| Modern cognitive archaeology |
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Definition
| Aims to study the perception, description, and classification of the universe; the nature of the supernatural; the principles, philosophies, and values by which uman societies are governed; and the ways in which aspects of the world, the supernatural, or human values are conveyed in art. |
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Term
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Definition
| Studying ancient modes of thought requires the interpretation of symbols, objects, or acts (verbal and nonverbal) that by cultural convention stand for something else with which they have no necessary connection. This means that, without some ethnographic context, there is no obvious way to connect a symbol to its meaning. |
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Definition
| Archaeologists attempt to understand past religions -- the specific set of beliefs based on one's ultimate relation to the supernatural. Such religious beliefs are manifested in everyday life through rituals -- behaviors such as prayer, music, feasting, sacrifice, and taboos. As such, ritual is a material manifestation of the abstract idea of religion and archaeology's easiest portal to the study of ancient religions. |
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Term
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Definition
| This encompasses how past cultures explain their universe -- how it originated and developed, how the various parts fit together, and what laws it obeys -- and express their concern with what the future of the universe holds |
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| Ethnography and symbolism |
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Definition
| Where archaeologists have some ethnographic data available that are closely related to the archaeological case, they may be able to extrapolate backward from the present to the past. Even those cases, however, harbor the chance that a symbol meant something different in the past than it does in the present |
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Term
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Definition
| A cultures expression of abstract ideas in art and writing systems. It can also be used to reconstruct the religious and other ideas that stand behind the art. |
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Term
| Problems with studying ancient symbols |
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Definition
| Runs the risk of becoming a "free-for-all," with any interpretation being as valid as another. it is perhaps especially important, then, that the study of ancient iconography and other manifestations of a culture's cosmology and religion adhere to the canons of scientific analysis |
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Term
| What if there is no ethnographic data? |
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Definition
| Archaeologists must be more restrained in their interpretations, not focusing on the specific meaning of particular symbols but looking to the more general character of thought itself |
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Definition
| 19th century idea claiming that the differences among modern peoples resulted from differential progress various peoples had made toward "modernity" -- which was defined as and upper-class, western European lifestyle |
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Definition
| Living "primitives" were seen as providing evidence of the stages of human cultureal evolution; for some scholars, "primitive" peoples were still "back in the Stone Age" |
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Definition
| While Darwin did not actually use the term "evolution" in his "On the Origin of Species," he provided social Darwinists with a scientific explanation for why some peoples had not made progress, as well as the expectation that primitive peoples would all become extinct. Social Darwinism suggested that human progress depends on competition and, in the 19th century, this theory was used to justify global imperialism, racism, and the excesses of capitalism. |
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Term
| American anthropology's view of unilineal evolution |
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Definition
| American anthropology rejected unilineal cultural evolution, replacing it with historical particularism that sought to understand each culture within itself, not as a stage in human evolution |
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Term
| Is there any place for evolutionary processes in processual archaeology? |
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Definition
| Archaeology's processual agenda, with its emphasis on adaptive processes, brought back an interest in evolutionary processes by focusing on the degree of regularity in in human behavior. Archaeological research does show some patterns in human cultural evolution; in particular, increasing population density is associated with major changes in economy and social/political organization |
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Term
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Definition
| Resulted from (1) climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene that were favorable for plant domestication, (2) population growth that caused foragers to take less efficient resources, including small seeds, and (3) the existence in some places of plants that responded to human foraging by becoming more productive |
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Term
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Definition
| Archaic states appear to be a response to (1) population growth and the resultant need to intensify agriculture, (2)coordination of mechanisms of social integration such as trade and ideology, and (3)the potential to control productive resources. The specific character and history of an archaic state, however, depends on the particular environmental situation, the importance of warfare vs. trade, and the kind of ideology that supports the elite rulers. |
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Term
| How can archaeology determine what conditions are necessary and sufficient to explain major cultural evolutionary transition? |
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Definition
| Archaeology uses specific historical sequences, constructed through a more humanistic approach to prehistory, to determine what conditions are necessary and sufficient to explain ma |
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Term
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Definition
| looks at material remains from past societies that also left behind some form of written documentation ("history") about themselves. So defined, the first bona fide historical archaeology in American took place about 150 years ago. |
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Term
| Focus of Historical Archaeology in the 1st half of the 20th century |
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Definition
| during the first half of the 20th centuray, hist. archaeologists labored to supplement historical records, as a "handmaiden to history." This perspective is evident in public interpretive projects, such as Plimouth plantation, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Little Bighorn battlefield. Such projects tended to concentrated on a very few selected sites, particularly houses of the rich and famous, forts, and other military sites. |
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Term
| Focus of historical archaeology in the second half of the 20th century |
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Definition
| Things changed in the 1960s, when some processual archaeologists realized that they could refine their methods and theories by working in the contexts of verifiable historical controls. Mainstream historical archaeology distanced itself from an emphasis on the "most historically significant" sites -- looking instead at the larger social contexts |
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| Historical Archaeology and disenfranchised groups |
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Definition
| in the '60s, historical archaeology began to focus on historically disenfranchised groups in our own culture, seeking to uncover the history of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans during the historic period, and Hispanic-Americans. |
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| Historical Archaeology and postprocessual interests |
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Definition
| Historical archaeology has been fertile ground for postprocessual interests because texts can provide data with which to place archaeological remains in context. |
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Term
| Historical Archaeology and symbolism |
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Definition
| The study of the symbolic meaning of material remains also proceeds more comfortably in historical archaeology, where documents can provide interpretations of material culture |
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Term
| Historical Archaeology today |
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Definition
| one of the most rapidly expanding and exciting directions in Americanist archaeology; current trends -- challenges to existing histories and the recovery of the history of disenfranchised groups -- will generate debates and dialogue for years to come |
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Term
| The preservation of US Cultural Heritage and the Pell Act |
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Definition
| The United States has been concerned with preserving its cultural heritage for as long as it has existed as a country. Although individual sites were protected through specific pieces of legislation or by the actions of concerned citizens, the first legislation to protect all sites on public lands was the 1906 Pell Act. |
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| NHPA (National Historic Preservation Act) |
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Definition
| 1966, First truly systematic effort to preserve cultural resources. Required that the government inventory all cultural resources (historic structures and archaeological sites) on it properties and ensure that development projects consider their effects on significant archaeological sites. The act established the National Register of Historic Places and State Historic Preservation Offices. |
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Definition
| Involved in governmental decision making that requires evironmental and cultural variables to be considered side by side with technological and economic benefits when planning future construction. |
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Definition
| The most influential force in American archaeology today. The bulk of archaeological work being done has shifted from the academic side to the private and government sectors |
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Term
| 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act |
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Definition
| Provided further safeguards against the destruction of archaeological sites on federal and tribal land by increasing the penalties for excavating without a permit; but looting still continues to be the major threat to the nation's cultural resources |
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Term
| Illegally acquired antiquities |
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Definition
| The US and other nations are working to stop the flow of illegally acquired antiquities. Although many measures have been put into place, most countries still find it difficult to stop antiquities from entering a country were buyers are willing to pay high prices for them |
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Term
| 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act |
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Definition
| Often seen as human rights rather than archaeological legislation, it ensures that humanremains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony are offered for repatriation to culturally affiliated tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. This process is still underway for most of the nation's museums and universities. |
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