ANTH 140 Exam 1

H. floresiensis

"The Hobbit" - from Indonesia - island dwarfing meant natural selection for smaller bodies and is basically a mini H. Erectus

Homo naledi

(~250,000 years ago). South Africa. Has traits of both Homo and Australopithecus. Had tools and buried dead

Anzick, Montana

- 1 year old infant burial - a dedicatory cache - buried with 115 ochre-covered tools - shows SNA lineage which disproves Solutrean hypothesis

Upper Paleolithic Period

- 10,000 - 40,000 BP - humans maintained a broader diet which gave them an advantage over neaderthals - higher population size allowed them to grow even more - modern human DNA essentially takes over - mostly a European phenomenon - subdivided into several smaller cultural periods based on tool types, artwork, and residential patterns

Homo sapiens neanderthalensis

- 300 t0 400 kya - not an African manifestation - physiology adapted to fluctuating cool and wet climates - short, stocky build - cranial capacity is equal or slightly larger than modern humans - different brain, less in temporal lobe and more in rear - broad spectrum diets and hard life

Megafauna overkill hypothesis

- 35 genera of megafauna go extinct during Clovis period probably due to a mix of human hunting and environmental factors

Laetoli Footprints

- 70 prints in a trail pattern that is very human like - heel strike and toe-off walking - around 3.6 mya and multiple "people" present

Blade technology

- Blade-making is the hallmark of the upper Paleolithic period - blade is a ribbon-like flake that is twice as long as it is wide - required great skill and high-quality materials

Dent Site, Colorado

- Dent Railroad Depot finds mammoth remains (1932) - three 'Folsom-oid' projectile points found with remains of 13 mammoths - first 'Clovis' projectile points ever found and not yet recognized as different from Folsom

Neander Valley

- Neanderthal remains accidentally uncovered from cave blasting in Germany - Herman Schaffhausen confirms the skull is different from modern humans in 1856

Charles Lyell

- Post Enlightenment and showed how Principles of Geology can age the Earth and not the Bible - helped develop uniformatarianism - long-term gradual changes to the earth

Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi)

- about 4.4 to 5.7 mya - has divergent toe - suggests full bipedalism but not exclusively grassland environments (still using the toe) - pelvis becomes shorter and wider

Unilineal thinking

- all animals will get bigger, stronger, faster - all societies move through the same stages of development - developed by Lewis Henry Morgan and C.J Thomsen

Artifact

- any object made or modified by human hands - includes items produced by earlier ancestors of modern homo sapiens Ex) metal, coins, bones tools, ceramics, glass

Homo habilis

- associated with Oldowan technology (2.6 mya) - "handy man" that emerges around 2.8 mya - bigger brain case, possible speech, apelike features Oldowan tech - core tools like choppers and scrapers - mostly hard-hammer techniques - used sharp flakes as tools too - most likely used to scavenge meat and not hunt

Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR)

- beams of near-infrared light are shot towards the ground from an aircraft or terrestrial system - can penetrate forest canopies and shows depth

What is needed to understand context?

- characteristics of sediment matrix - provenance (exact spatial location) - association with other materials nearby

Marcellin Boule

- characterized Neanderthals as dumb, brutish, and clumsy and stated that the physical attributes were more prevalent than the hominins being smart at all - where we get cave man idea

Achuelan stone tools

- characterized by well-made handaxes and large bifacial tools - symmetrical outline (mathematical thinking prevalent) - made to last ( can be fixed and reused) - made for butchering large animals

Four field approach

- cultural anthropology - biological anthropology - linguistics - archaeology

Dolni Vestonice

- dates back to 30 - 22 kya BP - composite architecture with mammoth bone structure - ceramic kiln for making figurines - elaborate burials found - evidence of textiles

Fossil Creek Site

- discovered in 2010 in Fort Collins dating to the early ceramic era - Native American occupation - first did surface survey where they found many chipped stone tools, pottery, and ground stone - second did shovel testing where they found buried hearths and tons of ceramic vessel sherds and finger nail impressions - third did electrical sensitivity where that helped them determine where exactly things were - fourth they did block excavation where they targeted the anomalies from the electrical sensitivity and wanted to expose "activity areas" and found hearths

Raw Material Caches

- dozens of caches found in western and southern USA - contain raw material blanks for making stone tools - raw materials often very distant from source

Black Water Draw, New Mexico

- excavated in 1932 - Clovis remains found with mammoth/camel/sabre tooth cats - Folsom artifacts found with bison remains ABOVE the clovis layer (stratigraphically separated) - established Clovis-Folsom temporal separation

Bronze Age

- farming and pastoral societies - consolidation of stone villages - early urbanization circa 5000 BP

Franz Boas

- father of American school of anthropology - helped establish four field approach

Clovis First Model

- first model of human colonization in the americas - clovis era people first colonized the lands of America when the ice gap opened up (ice-free corridor fully open by 13.8 kya) - debunked today

Stone Age

- first step in cultural evolution - most simplistic technological achievement - attributed to most hunter-gatherers 2.5 mya - 5kya

Folsom Site, New Mexico

- found by George McJunkin - former slave that discovered bison antiquus remains eroding from a recent flood - archaeologists found spear points in direct association with the bison remains - changed archaeology forever

Kennewick Man

- found in Washington and known as the ancient one - complete skeleton found with projectiles lodged in the bones - Army blocked access for study and reburial - proved direct ancestry to Native Americans so they got the rights to rebury the remains in 2017

High Rise Village, Wyoming

- found more than 60 lodge pads at 11,500 feet elevation - dated 2500 to 400 BP with long period reuse - focused on white bark pine nut processing and perhaps medium sized game

Monte Verde, Chile

- fully debunked the 'Clovis First' model because it showed an intact house structure that predated clovis

Levallois technique

- highly efficient core reduction technique where they made triangular-shaped flakes - greater range of mobility and lasted longer than Acheulan tools

Mutilineal thinking

- immense variation exists - successful organisms adapt to the environment making them different around the globe - better explains cultural and technological differences seen over deep time

Dmansi Site

- in the Republic of Georgia - dated to 1.77 mya - relatively small crania compared to larger H. erectus - toolkit similar to earlier homo habilis

Australopithecus afarensis

- initially around 3.7 mya - the famous Lucy fossils from 3.18 mya - numerous "very" complete skeletons of single individuals - fully upright creatures (bipedal) with small cranial capacity

Iron Age

- iron weapons and tools replace bronze - abundant glass and ceramic wares circa 3000 BP

Beringia

- landmass connecting upper paleolithic siberia with North Amercian continent - closed off around 13-12 kya due to seawater - important because archaeology in that region is not well understood

Schoningen site

- located in Germany and dates back to 337 - 300 kya - oldest complete wooden tools in the world - large spears most likely for hunting

Shanidar Cave site

- located in Iraq and showed examples of taking care of the elderly until they die and laying their dead respectfully - Also respectful burying of dead in La Ferrassie, France

Lascaux Cave site

- located in Lascaux, France - found 300 paintings plus 1500 engravings - would have required some sort of scaffold to paint the cave ceilings - 17,000 BP - several galleries of varying animals and figures

Lake Mungo

- located in New South Wales, Australia - mungo man is oldest human found in Australia - mungo woman is first ritually cremated human remains - rich with life between 120,000 and 50,000 years ago

Blombos cave site

- located in South Africa and shows some of the earliest modern human artwork - decorated ochre, shell, and stone

Site

- locus of human activity - combination of artifacts, ecofacts, and features - range in size and complexity

Brain growth

- majority of growth happens after birth - quadruples over lifetime

Catastrophic kill events

- minimum number of individuals of hunted bison increases ten fold from early paleo - greater evidence for all age cohorts being killed, whole herds wiped out - emphasis on late spring/early summer hunting based on the presence of sub-adult bison - Jones-Miller Bison Kill, CO

Lindenmeier Site, CO

- most significant site found for Folsom just 25 miles north of Fort Collins - largest Folsom site known - deeply buried stratigraphy and occupation surface visible over 1 km - found more than 600 folsom points and domestic tools and decorative tools -east side of site suggest bison kill area

Australian coast vs. Inland site distributions

- oldest sites in Australia mostly found along coastline - very few inland sites date to the initial colonization period because maybe it was difficult to live in?

Earliest fire

- possible use at Swartkrans and Wonderwerk , South Africa (1 mya) - earliest prediction at 1.7 - 2 mya - guaranteed at 400,000 years ago

Charles Darwin

- proved framework for multilinear evolution - evolutionary success is probabilistic - plants/animals/human culture have evolved over time

Paisley Caves, OR

- rock shelter found off of river in southern Oregon - intact shelter with tools and human fecal matter - tools are nothing clovis and predate clovis

Homo erectus

- significantly more human-like than homo habilis - increased cranial capacity - oldest and most complete specimens come from various places in Africa - story begins around 1.8-2 mya -expand to two other continents (Asia and Europe) - Peking man (China) and java man (first fossil found in Indonesia)

Feature

- something man-made that is immovable - important helping determine site function

Ground survey

- survey teams walk across the landscape in search of materials - transect walking where everyone is equally spaced out

Uniformitarianism

- the present is the key to the past - processes of change which occur today also happened in the past - process is slow, overall

Mousterian Technology

- tools become highly specialized towards the end of middle paleolithic - individual tools shaped for specific tasks - sawing, slicing, scraping, pounding, piercing - earliest modern humans used these at first

Accidental vs. Intentional colonization

Accidental- possible seafaring accidents drifted people away from homeland and they reached new land; most likely not the case because day-to-day seafaring boats were small which suggests interbreeding would have to occur and the boats had limiting voyaging capabilities Intentional - outfitted ships with people, food, pets, plants and young adults with a balanced sex ration and limited genetic overlap

Paleoindian vs. Archaic lifeways

Archaic lifestyle required less bison in their diet and incorporated lower ranked resources which created new, specialized and regionalized tools for processing lower ranked resources

Three-Age System

Christian J. Thomsen created the three age system of Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. - problem is that it does not apply everywhere in the world because people are in different ages and took different paths

Clovis vs. Folsom Technology

Clovis - 13.5 to 12.7 kya - projectile point with a flute about 1/3 to 1/2 the length - made with overshot flaking -flute facilitated hafting Folsom - 12.8 to 12.2 kya - new fluted point type that runs the full length of the point - maximizes penetration depth and that can be reused like an X-Acto knife - slide-up haft design

Clovis vs. Folsom areas

Clovis is found all over the USA and Folsom is exclusively found in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains

C-Transform

Cultural Transform - the act of modifying a site, feature, or artifact by human hands

Encounter vs. Intercept hunting

Encounter - effective for one or two hunters - focused on low numbers of animals - opportunistic encounters - high energy events Intercept - low energy events - capture many animals at once - involves constructing and designing traps - potential to feed more people

Classifying artifacts

Functional - describing and naming based on the presumed function of the artifact (milk jar, hunting knife) Stylistic - naming artifacts based on a presumed cultural trait and period (Venus figurine) Morphological - describing artifacts based on the method of production (chipped stone biface)

Early artwork examples Neanderthals

Krapina. Croatia and the Red Linear Motifs in Iberia, Spain

Major Ice sheets

Laurentide - the big one (eastern one over canada and northern US) Cordilleran - the small one over alaskan peninsula

Housing in Middle Paleolithic vs. Upper Paleolithic

Middle - small sites on average - little evidence of long-term residence Upper - more sites with dense accumulation of debris - tools, and architecture suggest "downtime" in camp - seasonal aggregations of people coming together to exchange information

N-transform

Natural Transformation - modifications to cultural artifacts or ecofacts by natural agents - weathering processes, geological, chemical

Earliest Sahul

New Guinea Sites - most sites found on coastal margins - nut processing - making stone tools - possibly controlling forest growth Australia Sites - earliest documented plant processing with ground stone artifacts - large stone biface hatchets

Parietal vs Mobiliary Artwork

Parietal - painted or etched into rock walls of caves or shelters Mobiliary - portable pieces of art that can be taken with you

Context within Sites

Primary Context - artifacts and ecofacts discovered in the position that they were commonly used Secondary Context - objects moved to another location De facto refuse - objects left in place at the time of abandonment

Sahul and Sundaland

Sahul - name given to the connected islands of Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea more than 50,000 years ago Sundaland - southeast asia being connected into one big land mass sahul and sundaland were NOT CONNECTED, separated by Wallace trench

Ethnoarchaeology

The study of contemporary peoples to determine how human behavior is translated into the archaeological record Lewis Binford is leading figure of ethnoarch

Basic Rock Art Terms

Zoomorph - an artistic figure representing an animal, directly or indirectly Anthropomorph - a figure representing a human, bodies, or pieces of a body Enigmatic - neither human nor animal, but a figure nonetheless Attribute - personal adornments, isolated symbols

Activity Area Concept (it is flawed)

a collection of artifacts, features, and ecofacts in a primary context with a distinct function examples - cooking area, tool production localities

Assemblage

a group of artifacts and organized based on location or time

Shovel Testing

a survey method used to examine shallowly buried deposits when ground visibility is low

Kelp Highway Model

also known as the Pacific Coast model and suggests arrival via coastline migrations by 20 kya with short interval maritime highways - most accepted model today

Ochre

an earthy pigment containing ferric oxide, typically with clay, varying from light yellow to brown or red

Feature examples

bison bone beds hearths fortified ditches

Younger Dryas

cold snap at the end of Clovis that returned land to glacial conditions across North America - bison population booms - forests replaced by tundra vegetation

Remote Sensing

digital methods of acquiring data

Olduvai Gorge

found in Rift Valley in eastern Africa and was groundbreaking in determining human evolution

Kill Camp Model

highly mobile specialized bison hunters move from kill to kill

Ground stone technology

included a hand stone (mano) and a milling stone (metate) - used to process inedible and toxic parts of a plant to something you could eat - The idea was to grind down a lot of grains and concentrate them for an 'energy bar' approach - high transport costs

Atlatl dart/spear technology

made from bone and was used to throw spears to hunt

Magnetometry

measure the magnetic field of the ground subsurface

Radiocarbon dating

measures residual radioactivity of Carbon 14

Electrical Resistivity

measures the ability of the ground subsurface to resist an electrical current that is passed through

Vertical Excavation

narrow excavation blocks excavated deeply into the ground - useful for determining the total extent of time represented

Ecofact

naturally occurring, biological materials that are deposited as a result of human presence (domesticated animal bones)

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)

sends out high-frequency radar waves to map out the subsurface of sites - higher frequency waves are precise but dont travel as far

Relative dating

soil stratigraphy, artifact types and when they were from

stratigraphy

strata representing different geological levels, consisting of sediment and minerals Law of Superposition - lowest stratum is always older than one above

Paleoanthropology

study of earliest human relatives and our emergence across deep time

Solutrean Hypothesis

suggests an earlier Atlantic crossing to reach North America predating the Pacific crossing over the Bering Land Bridge - racist model

Lomekwian stone tools

suggests that tools were being used as early as 3.3 million years ago and predates the emergence of "homo" by about 500 thousand years - found in Kenya - afarensis using tools?

Flintknapping

the process of making stone tools Core - piece of stone that is flaked Hard hammer percussion - using large rock as a hammer stone Soft hammer percussion - using softer material for a precisely controlled flaking technique Debitage - any waste byproduct from the flintknapping process Flake - intended waste byproduct when flintknapping Tool - anything produced in flintknapping that is used to complete a task

Dendrochronology

tree ring analysis for wooden artifacts that are highly intact

Horizontal Excavation

widely spaced excavation blocks with units that are connected -useful for understanding functions of sites - usually used for one time period