ANTH 205 Lecture Four: Middle Range-theory, Experimental, and Ethnoarchaeology

systemic context

- a living behavioral system in which artifacts are part of an ongoing system of manufacture, use, reuse, and discard - cultural deposition - reclaimation - cultural disturbance - reuse

Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site

- a site in northwestern nebraska that featured a pit with a lot of bison bones and spear heads - inferences of human activity, food storage, hunting, and large group sizes - didn't take into account taphomonic processes - natural processes altered the way the remains came out - bison actually not killed by humans; trapped in forest fire and died from asphyxiation; humans came after they died

archaelogical context

- additional cultural formation - disturbance by plants, animals, freezing, wet-dry cycles, errosion

formal analogies

- analogies justified by similarities in formal attributes of archaeological and ethnographic objects and features - similarities in form

relational analogies

- analogies justified on the basis of close cultural continuity between the archaeological and ethnographic cases or similarity in general cultural form - related by history, culture, or similar social features

formation processes

- behavior archaeology; Michael Schiffer - part of processual archaeology; 70s/80s - an effort to be more systematic in reconstruction of archaeological records - reaction to oversimplified theories of 'entropy' and assumptions that archaeological finds were directly related to past human behaviors - there is no simple correspondence between the distribution of artifacts at a site and human behavior - depostis aren't just a record of human behavior, but also alterations to that record by both cultural and natural forces

middle range theory

- hypothesis that links archaeological observations with the human behavior or natural processes that produced them - creates bridging arguments that link material remains to human behavior or natural processes - uses the structure of analogy in addition to principles of uniformitarianism (essential)

taphonomy

- the study of how natural processes contribute to the formation of archaeological sites - this is crucial because understanding how a site formed helps us understand human behavior and environmental context of that behavior - developing bridging arguments by by observing natural processes in action and their material results - By trying to explain why those natural processes produce the particular material results that they do, you move from simple analogies into middle-range theory

taphonomic processes

- the study of the processes that affect organic remains after death - extends to all archaeological remains including artifacts and features

ethnoarchaeology

- the study of the way present-day societies use artifacts and structures and how these objects become part of the archaeological record

experimental archaeology

Research that attempts to replicate ancient technologies and construction procedures to test hypotheses about past activities.

principles of uniformitarianism

processes in the past are identical to those in the present; the present is the key to the past - used as a tool; can use observations on current geologic changes to reconstruct past ones - creating if/then statements: become bridging arguments, translate hypothesis into specific expectations that can be tested using archaeological evidence