Anthropology exam 2

Flora

Plants

cultivation

Preparing and using land for crops and farming.

Culture

Set of learned behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, values, and characteristics of a particular society or group

archaeology

The branch of anthropology that seeks to reconstruct the daily life and customs of peoples who lived in the past and to trace and explain cultural changes through material artifacts.

material culture

The physical evidence of a culture in artifacts and architecture they made and left behind.

Holocene

The present epoch, which is the second epoch in the Quaternary period and followed the Pleistocene.

rachis

The seed-baring part of a plant. Domesticated plants do not shatter easily.

Lewis Binford

Thought the incentive to domesticate plants and animals may have been a desire to reproduce what is most abundant in hunting and gathering areas, causing population growth and people to move to areas with fewer resources.

Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen

Thought there were 3 waves of migration into the New World and compared languages and grouped them into 3 language families

domestication

To tame an animal and keep it as a pet or for farm produce.

scientific method

a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge

autonomous

a country or region that has self-government

Maglemosian

a culture of early mesolithic period in North Europe. Used hunting a fishing tools and domesticated the dog. Most were nomadic. 9,000 BC-7,800 BC

band

a fairly small usually nomadic local group that is politcally autonomous

interglacial

a geological interval of warmer average global temps lasting several thousand years separating ice ages.

Olsen-Chubbuck site

a kill site excavated in Colorado shows the organization for hunting bison, dated to 6500 BC

nomadism

a member of a people or tribe that has no permanent abode but moves about from place to place, usually seasonally and often following a traditional route or circuit according to the state of the pasturage or food supply.

relative dating

a method of dating fools that determines the age of a specimen or deposit relative to a known specimen or deposit.

absolute dating

a method of dating fossils in which the actual age of a deposit or specimen is measured

geofacts

a natural stone formation that is difficult to distinguish from a man made artifact.

chiefdom

a political unit, with a chief at its head, integrating more than one community but not necessarily the whole society or language group.

ideology

a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic and political theory and policy.

token

a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality, ect.

Homo sapiens

all living people, which means all populations on earth can interbreed. emerged about 200,000 years ago.

Mesolithic

archaeological period in the Old World beginning about 12,000 BC. Humans were starting to settle into semipermanent camps and villages, depending less on big game, and relying on stationary food sources

hypothesis

predictions, which may be derived from theories, about how variables are related.

sedentariness

settled life

Monte Verde

site in Chile where stone tools, remains of hide covered huts, and a child's footprint next to a hearth were found, demonstrating that modern humans got to South America by at least 12,500 years ago.

Dolni Vestonice

site in Czech Republic dating about 26,000 BC where cave paintings, human burials, engravings, and carvings were found.

Border Cave

site in South Africa where Homo sapiens fossils that are about 100,000 years were found

Folsom

smaller than the clovis point; used to hunt straight horned bison after mammoths became extinct 10,000 years ago

egalitarian

societies in which all people of a given age-sex category have equal access to economic resources, power, and prestige.

rank

societies that do not have any unequal access to economic resources or power, but with social groups that have unequal access to status positions and prestige.

Pliocene

epoch 5.3 to 2.6 mya.

Chief

A person to exercises authority, usually on behalf of a multicommunity political unit. Generally found in rank societies and is usually permanent and hereditary.

headman

A person who holds a powerless but symbolically unifying position in a community within an egalitarian society; may exercise influence but has no power to impose sanctions.

Clan

A set of kin whose members believe themselves to be descended from a common ancestor but cannot specify the links back to that founder; often designated from a totem.

lineage

A set of kin whose members trace descent from a common ancestor through known links.

Karl Wittfogel

hydraulic hypothesis-he thought that the development of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and precolumbian societies had been blocked because of the need to irrigate vast surfaces for agriculture. Water control and distribution spawned authoritarian empires and bureaucracies, Western Europe was free from these limitations and could rise

broad spectrum revolution

hypothesis proposed by Kent Flannery in 1968, suggested that the emergence of the Neolithic in southwest Asia was prefaced by increases in dietary breadth among foraging societies

Amerind

indigenous people of north and south America

Clovis Points

large and leaf-shaped, flaked on both sides that was probably attached to a wooden spear.

Meadowcroft Rockshelter

located in western Pennsylvania, contains the most carefully reported pre-Clovis occupation in North America

Cordilleran and Larentide ice sheets

merged at the continental divide forming an area of ice that contained one and a half times as much water as the Antarctic ice sheet does today.

ethnographic analogy

method of comparative cultural study that extrapolates to the past from recent or current societies

Otzi

mummy found on the Austrian-Italian border preserved by ice who lived around 3,300 BC. Died from arrow wound in the shoulder.

Chris Stringer

paleoanthropologist who characterizes homo sapiens as having "a domed skull, a chin, small eyebrows, browridges, and a rather puny skeleton".

Mousterian

style of flint tools used by Neanderthals in the middle paleolithic

Marvin Harris

suggested that the first states with their coercive authority could emerge only in areas that supported intensive grain agriculture and the possibility of high food production and were surrounded by areas that could not support intensive grain agriculture. People will have poor quality of life if they moved away.

multiregional hypothesis

the human species first arose around two million years ago and subsequent human evolution has been within a single, continuous human species

Eve hypothesis

the hypothesis that modern humans have a common female ancestor who lived in Africa around 200,000 years ago.

Acheulian

A stone toolmaking tradition dating from 1.5 mil years ago. Assemblages have large tools created according to standardized designs or shapes. Most characteristic tool of this culture is the hand axe.

tribe

A territorial population in which there are kin or nonkin groups with representatives in a number of local groups.

Christy Turner

Anthropologist best known for his research on dental anthropology and his theories about the populating of the American continent in three migrating waves from Northeast Asia

Upper Paleolithic

the time period associated with the emergence of modern humans and their spread around the world.

Gobekli Tepe

Archaeological site in southeastern Turkey

Hilly Flanks

Area curving around the Tigris, Euphrates, and Jordan valleys and the location of one of the world's first civilizations (Mesopotamia) and the origin of irrigation

Oasis Theory

Argues that the reason people started living in settlements was because during a dry spell, the only livable place was near oases.

Upper Paleolithic cave art

Cave paintings in Asia and Europe, that date back to about 40,000 years ago. Animals, people, hands. Exact purpose is not know, located in areas that weren't inhabited or easily accessible.

Andrew M.T. Moore

Director of the Abu Hureyra site and president of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Theory

Explanation of associations or laws

Homo erectus

First hominin species to be widely distributed in the old world. Earliest 1.8 mil years ago. Brain is larger than Australopithecus or h halibis but smaller than modern human

Neanderthal

Group of robust hominins that are close relatives of modern humans

Robert Carneiro

His theory explains how the constraints of the environment interact with population pressures and warfare to form states

wear analysis

used to identify the functions of tools by closely examining their working surfaces and edges.

Cuneiform

wedge shaped writing developed by the sumerians around 3000 BC

Clovis culture

Named after stone tools found at sites near Clovis, New Mexico in the 1920's and 1930's. Paleo-Indian Culture that hunted large game (mammoths) around 11,200 to 10,900 years ago.

Na-Dene

Native American language family

Athapaskan

Nomadic hunters and fishermen in present-day Canada and Alaska

Uruk level IV

3300-3100 BC. Named after Sumerian city Uruk, emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia.

Pleistocene

A geological epoch that started 1.6 mil years ago and continues today according to some. Glaciers have often covered much of the earth's surface and humans are dominant life form.

stratified

An archaeological deposit that contains successive layers or strata

state

An autonomous political unit with centralized decision making over many communities with power to govern by force (collect taxes, draft people for work and war, enforce and make laws).

Abu Hureyra

Ancient settlement located in Syria. Inhabitants started as hunter-gatherers and moved to farming, making them the first farmers in the world.

Mureybet

Ancient settlement mount located on the west bank of the Euphrates in Syria. Occupied between 10,200 and 8,000 BC.

Fauna

Animals

V. Gordon Childe

Australian archaeologist. Named the Neolithic Revolution and theorized that a drastic change in climate caused domestication in the Near East.

Comparative Linguistics

Comparing languages to establish historical relatedness.

Robert Braidwood

Criticized Childe's theory and believed that climate change was not that drastic and there must be more to the explanation to produce food than changes in climate.

Natufian

Culture that existed from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the eastern Mediterranean. They were sedentary and before the introduction of agriculture.

mitochondrial DNA

DNA located in the mitochondria that cells use to make evergy.

Milfred Walpoff

Multiregional evolution and the punctuated equilibrium theory

Denise Schmandt-Besserot

Studied art, writing, and counting, and Mesopotamian script

Anthropology

Study of humans, focusing on cultural and biological similarities and differences in populations of humans.

pressure flaking

Technique for making tools by using a short pointed piece of bone or antler to pry away tiny flakes.

Karl Polanyi

Wrote The Great Transformation, about a cultural approach to economics which emphasized that economics are embedded in society and culture.

glume

bract at the base of grass

bulla (bullae)

clay envelopes