Archaeology

Changers• Giovanni Belzoni

- Famous Treasure Hunter 1778-1822. Employed by Henry Salt

• Thomas Jefferson

- Asked the who did it?

• A. V. Kidder

South America and S.W. U.S. looking for Patterns to come up with a cultural History

Anthropology(Study of Humans)

Subfields of anthropology

• Biological Anthropology

• Archaeology

• Cultural Anthropology

• Linguistic Anthropology

• Applied Anthropology

Applied Anthropology

• Solve Problems

• Advertising/ Marketing

Biological Anthropology

• Human Origins

• Examine Physical Remains at crime Scenes

• Diseases

Cultural Anthropology

• Document Diff. Living Cultures

• Languages

(comparative,

Evolution, and origins)

Linguistic Anthropology

Archaeology

• Reconstruct the Past using texts, objects, etc.

• Preservation

Scientific method

• Main Method• Six steps

– Define a relevant problem– Establish one or more hypothesis– Determine the empirical implications of the hypothesis– Collect appropriate data through observation and/or

experimentation– Test Hypothesis by comparing these data with the

expected implications– Reject, Revise, and/or retest hypotheses as

necessary.

Hypothesis

• A proposition proposed as an explanation of some phenomenon

Induction vs. deduction

• Inductive reasoning: Working from specific observations to more general hypotheses

• Deductive reasoning: Reasoning from theory to account for specific observational or experimental results.

The “Faces” project

• ??????????

Humanistic archaeology

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CultureMaterial culture

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Arch. Vocab

• Artifacts:Portable (made, Modified, or used by Humans)

• Features:• Non-portable thing constructed by

humans for some task or tasks• Ecofacts:• The unmodified remains of biological

materials used by people or related to the activities of people

• Geofacts:??????????

Pedra Furada

• ????????????

Midden

• Refuse deposit resulting from human activities, generally consisting of sediment; food remains such as charred seeds, animal bones, and shell; and discarded artifacts.

Debitage

• ???????

AREAS

• Site -Significance, human activity, types: terrestrial

and underwater…

• Region– A complex of sites, more broad scale notion of space

beyond the level of the site.

Archaeological culture

– not equal to ethnicity – used to describe shared traits

Pueblo Bonito

• Pg. 72

Chaco Canyon

• Pg. 72

Ancestral Pueblo

• ????????

Research design

• A plan that guides an archaeological investigation– It clarifies:

The questions being asked

The data needed to answer the questions

The methods used to recover the data

Primary depositSecondary deposit

• P: Material found at site of last use

• S: Material found where primary context has been disturbed

Archaeological survey

• Survey of an area to determine where there’s a site

Survey

• Remote sensing:

The Application of methods that employ some form of electromagnetic energy to detect and measure characteristics of an archaeology target.

• Aerial photography:

• Satellite imagery (TIMS)

Survey

• Magnetometer survey:

• Soil resistivity survey:A remote sensing. monitors the

electrical resistance of soils in a restricted volume near the surface of an archaeological site; buried walls or features can be detected by changes in the amount of resistance registered by resistivity meter.

• Ground penetrating radarRemote sensing. Radar

pulses directed into the ground reflect back onto the surface. Showing prescence and depth of possible buried features.

Sampling

• Judgmental sample

You Choose which sites to sample

• Statistical sample (Random Sampling):

Samples are picked randomly

• Judgmental vs. statistical sampling

Judgmental uses previously known knowledge/ info. Where as statistical gets rid of any bias and allows for generalizations.

Pg 53

• Settlement pattern

Goals of excavation

• Depends on the question

• To recover artifacts and ecofacts

• To locate features

• To recover relationships between artifacts, ecofacts, and features

Frequency Seriation

• Measures changes in frequency of an artifact style

• Battleship curves

Stylistic Seriation Seriation

• Artifacts are ordered based on stylistic similarity

• Measure changes in the frequency of an artifacts style

• Stratigraphy: A site’s physical structure produced by the deposition of geological and/or cultural sediments into layers, or strata

• Stratigraphic profile??????

• Datum:

The zero point, a fixed reference used to keep control on a dig; usually controls both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of province.

4 Principles of Stratigraphy

• Superposition

• Association

• Reversal

• Intrusion

Association

• -Artifacts found in the same stratum, or deposits are about the same age.

• -Curatorial effect and the rate of deposition can affect this assumption.

Reversal

• Digging through normal stratigraphy (with the oldest stratum at the bottom) can result in the depositing of older strata on top of more recent stratum.

Intrusion

• An intrusion into a pre-existing stratum must be more recent (or later) than the stratum itself.

• If the intrusion bisects a stratum, then it can be inferred that both sides of the layers belong to the same deposit.

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• Excavation tools

• Measurement tools

• Recording tools

Wet sites

• Accommodations for:

Excavation

Preservation: keep materials wet to avoid changing the

area

Caves and rockshelters

• Accommodations for:

Safety

Preservation

Mapping

Lighting

Air due to dust

Ozette

• Pg. 83-84 and 157

Hoko River site

• ?????

Hidden Cave

• ???????

Sutton Hoo

• ???????

Otzi the iceman

• 84-85

Posthole

• 65-66

Provenience

• 80-….

Total station

• 92-94

flotation

• 96,97, and 218-219

Site formation processes (natural and cultural)

• Pg. 224

Disturbances

• Cryoturbation:

• Faunalturbation:

• Floralturbation:

• Argilliturbation:

Water screening

• 228

“FUN” dating

• Measures fluorine, uranium, and nitrogen content in bones

• Site specific

• Limited by materials

Dendrochronology

• One tree’s rings are compared to others to generate tree ring sequences

• Present day to 10,000 yrs ago

Radiocarbon dating

• 1949: Willard Libby’s study of cosmic radiation and C14

• Half-life: 5,730 yrs.

• Sensitivity increased by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry

• 500- 45,000 yrs. Ago

Radiocarbon Dating Cont’d

• Materials: wood, Charcoal, bone, etc.

• Industry changes the amount of carbon in the atmosphere

• Atomic bomb changed it… making us adjust our

• Calibrations

• Protocol to avoid contamination

Thermoluminescence

Measures the amount of light emitted from the release of trapped Electrons

Dating limit: 300,000 yrs. Ago

Material: pottery, heated stones, etc

Argon-Argon dating

• Measures relative quantities of argon 39 and argon 40 in volcanic rock

• 200,000 Y.A. to several million Y.A.

• Materials: volcanic rock

Fission track dating

• Measures breakdown of a uranium isotopes 238 U

• Breakdown leaves tracks in material; density of tracks aids with dating site

• 100,000 – 200,000 yrs ago

Obsidian hydration

• Measures thickness of hydration layer in obsidian

• Site specific

Terminus post quem

• Last date after which

Mean ceramic date and Pipe dating

• 150-151

• 149

Laetoli footprints

• Pg. 103-106

Dating the Pyramids

• At first the pyramids were dated historically according to hieroglyphics on the pyramids.

• Due to speculation that the pyramids were actually thousands of years older Nakhla and Hawass decides to radiocarbon date the mortar that held the stones together since it contained pieces of charcoal.

• The Charcoal actually gave them a date a 100 or so years older because of the old wood problem…

• More info on page 146-147

Dating conventions

• BC, AD, BP, ya, BCE, CE, kya, mya, centuries, millennia