ANTH 140 Test 2
Camp Followers
??? (says a term used to identify civilians and their children who follow armies on wiki) ???
Snaketown
A Hohokam city close to Phoenix that might have been inhabited 300 BCE-1,200 CE. It had intricate canal systems.
Coxcatlan Cave
A Mesoamerican archaeological site in the Tehuacán Valley of Puebla, Mexico. It was the initial appearance of three domesticated plants (THE THREE SISTERS FIRST APPERENCE IE. SQUACH/MAIZE/BEANS) in the Tehuacan Valley (Puebla, Mexico) and allowed an evaluation to be done again of the overall temporal context of the plant domestication in Mexico. These people produced domesticated plants in components dated between 5,000 and 3,400 BC, or better known as the Coxcatlan Phase. The Coxcatlan Phase was a phase were the people and animals living in Tehuacan Valley divided their time between small hunting encampments and large temporary villages.
Jericho
A city still occupied today above the Dead Sea that originated from Natufian Hunter-Gatherers around 10,000 B.C.E.
Loess
A clastic, predominantly silt-sized sediment, which is formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. Rich dusty soil that is not stratified.
Natufian
A culture that existed from 13,000 to 11,000 B.C. in the Levant. The Tell Abu Hureyra site, the site for earliest evidence of agriculture in the world was of this culture.
Lake Mungo
A dry lake region where the Mungo Man was found, the oldest know Homo sapiens in Australia believed to have lived between 40,000 and 68,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch. Also the oldest know cremation took place with these finds.
Playa Lake
A dry lake, the bottom creates a salt flat
Pueblo Grande
A large prehistoric Hohokam Indian village site that was continuously occupied between 100 and 1450 A.D. Heavily influenced by contacts with Mexico, the Hohokam built a Central American style ball court and a large masonry platform mound surrounded by caliche-brick dwellings between 1150 and 1450 A.D. In Pheonix south of Snaketown.
Lintel
A load-bearing building component, a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented structural item. It is often found over portals, doors, windows, and fireplaces. A major architectural development that helped make more square buildings.
Mississippian culture
A mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 to 1600 CE The construction of large, truncated earthwork pyramid mounds, or platform mounds. Such mounds were usually square, rectangular, or occasionally circular. Structures (domestic houses, temples, burial buildings, or other) were usually constructed atop such mounds. Maize-based agriculture. In most places, the development of Mississippian culture coincided with adoption of comparatively large-scale, intensive maize agriculture, which supported larger populations and craft specialization. The adoption and use of riverine (or more rarely marine) shells as tempering agents in their shell tempered pottery. Widespread trade networks extending as far west as the Rockies, north to the Great Lakes, south to the Gulf of Mexico, and east to the Atlantic Ocean. The development of the chiefdom or complex chiefdom level of social complexity. The development of institutionalized social inequality. A centralization of control of combined political and religious power in the hands of few or one. The beginnings of a settlement hierarchy, in which one major center (with mounds) has clear influence or control over a number of lesser communities, which may or may not possess a smaller number of mounds. The adoption of the paraphernalia of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC), also called the Southern Cult. This is the belief system of the Mississippians as we know it. SECC items are found in Mississippian-culture sites from Wisconsin (see Aztalan State Park) to the Gulf Coast, and from Florida to Arkansas and Oklahoma. The SECC was frequently tied in to ritual game-playing, as with chunkey.
Clovis Culture
A prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture, named after distinct stone tools found at sites near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1920s and 1930s. The Clovis culture appears around 11,500-11,000 BCE, at the end of the last glacial period. Many archeologists believed these were the first settlers of the Americas and in many places they were, but there are remains of many different peoples coming before Clovis' mass colonization. The Clovis points standardization is a remarkable feat for these presumed megafauna hunters.
Koster
A prehistoric archaeological site located south of Eldred, Illinois. The site includes eleven settlements dating from 5100 B.C. to 1000 A.D. Nine of the settlements were occupied during the Archaic period, while the other two were inhabited during the Woodland period. The site includes one of the oldest known cemetery sites in eastern North America. The cemetery site has provided researchers with evidence that Early Archaic civilizations had specific burial practices and buried their dead in cemeteries. Other significant discoveries made at the site include early evidence of North Americans using stones to grind food and keeping domesticated dogs. The discovery of permanent residences and items which could not be easily transported at the site suggests that it was a large permanent village; at the time of its discovery. Excavations at the site have also yielded a variety of stone tools, which were used for various purposes and also indicate long-term habitation of the site.
Monte Verde
A site in Chile dated to 14,800 years. The first humans in America, this site went against the Clovis-first theory very strongly, and supports the coastal colonization theory (the artifacts also point to the fact these people were fishermen and gatherers).
Gault site
A site in Texas known for it's extensive amount of recovered artifacts particularly Clovis points.
Trilithon
A structure consisting of two large vertical stones (posts) supporting a third stone set horizontally across the top (think stone henge)
Sedentism
A term applied to the transition from nomadic lifestyle to a society that remains in one place permanently. Essentially, sedentism means living in groups permanently in one place.
Stonehenge
A trilithon structure made 3,000-2,000 B.C. that incorporated knowledge of the solstices and equinox's
Tell
A type of archaeological mound created by human occupation and abandonment of a geographical site over many centuries.
Lindenmeier Site
A typical Folsom site with many bison bones from around 10,600 to 10,720 B.C.E. outside Fort Collins
Çatalhöyük (IS A TELL)
A very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC, and flourished around 7000BC. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date. A channel of the Çarşamba river once flowed between the two mounds, and the settlement was built on alluvial clay which may have been favourable for early agriculture. Plaster interiors, this was what that movie was on. Buried their dead, paintings on walls, two kins on either side of river, venus figurines found in cereal containers, traded for obsidian.
Otzi
A very well preserved ice man from 3,300 BCE found in the Alps between Switzerland and Italy. The most well preserved ancient human, much testing has been done on his remains.
Swidden Agriculture
An agricultural technique that involves the cutting and burning of plants in forests or woodlands to create fields
Chaco Canyon
An ancient gathering site by the Hohokam people including many buildings such as Pueblo Bonito, Pueblo Alto, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo del Arroyo, etx. These people built all the buildings to align with each other during solstices, and during the 18 year lunar cycle. They had far advanced knowledge of the night/day sky with sun daggers positioned with rocks to mark all significant events in the astrological calendar. These buildings were not for permanent residence as they were all abandoned, and have little wear and tear during their 300 year use from ~800 AD - 1200 AD droughts.
Bat Cave
An archaeological site in New Mexico, in the American southwest. The name actually refers to a complex of rockshelters, occupied from about 10,000 years ago up to the present, with evidence for early maize agriculture. While radiocarbon dates have placed the corn kernels recovered from Bat Cave to 3500-3000 years ago (the corn was originally dated much earlier), THIS CAVE STILL HAS THE EARLIEST CORN DOMESTICATION IN THE AREA (American Southwest). Excavated by Herbert Dick in the late 1940s, the corn was examined by Paul Manglesdorf and Mary Eubanks.
Abu Hureya (IT WAS A TELL)
An archaeological site located in the Euphrates valley in modern Syria. This clan is the first known Homo sapiens to transform into an agricultural town from hunter-gatherers. It was occupied between 13,000 and 9,500 years ago.
Where it was first domesticated: Quinoa
Around Bolivia/Peru/Chile in 1,000-2,000 B.C.E.
C3/C4 Carbon isotopes and documenting adoption of agriculture
C3 plants convert carbon dioxide to a three carbon molecule. Rice, wheat, and soybeans are some of the most recognizable C3 plants. C4 plants convert carbon dioxide to a four carbon molecule. Grasses from the subtropics, which grow at high temperatures and in sunny conditions, are the primarily constituent of this class. Sugarcane and corn are among the most recognizable C4 plants. The more C3 or C4 food matter in teeth and such, the more domesticated food the people were eating with numbers that are higher than the lower terrestrial numbers that come from hunting and gathering.
Poverty point
Close to the Mississippi in Louisiana, this site comprises several earthworks and mounds built between 1650 and 700 BCE, during the Archaic period in the Americas by a group of Native Americans of the Poverty Point culture. The culture of hunter-gatherers extended 100 miles (160 km) across the Mississippi Delta.
Enviornmental changes between the Pleistocene and Holocene
Dates: ~13,000-10,000 B.C.E. The "Ice Ages" ended along with the Bering strait's land bridge. This made travel to the Americas almost impossible, and made domestication and agriculture around the world more accessible to higher and lower latitudes.
Sarsen Stone
Druid Stone (what stonehenge is made of), a silicon petrified sand stone.
Cattle Shrines
Entire buildings in Çatalhöyük that praised to cattle for transportation, meat, milk, etx. with heads and paintings put up in the buildings.
Ways Of Telling Transition From Wild To Domesticated Animal Forms
Flexible diet - Creatures that are willing to consume a wide variety of food sources and can live off less cumulative food from the food pyramid (such as corn or wheat), particularly food that is not utilized by humans (such as grass and forage) are less expensive to keep in captivity. Carnivores by definition feed primarily or only on flesh, which requires the expenditure of many animals, though they may exploit sources of meat not utilized by humans, such as scraps and vermin. Reasonably fast growth rate - Fast maturity rate compared to the human life span allows breeding intervention and makes the animal useful within an acceptable duration of caretaking. Some large animals require many years before they reach a useful size. Ability to be bred in captivity - Creatures that are reluctant to breed when kept in captivity do not produce useful offspring, and instead are limited to capture in their wild state. Creatures such as the panda, antelope and giant forest hog are territorial when breeding and cannot be maintained in crowded enclosures in captivity. Pleasant disposition - Large creatures that are aggressive toward humans are dangerous to keep in captivity. The African buffalo has an unpredictable nature and is highly dangerous to humans; similarly, although the American bison is raised in enclosed ranges in the Western United States, it is much too dangerous to be regarded as truly domesticated. Although similar to the domesticated pig in many ways, Africa's warthog and bushpig are also dangerous in captivity. Temperament which makes it unlikely to panic - A creature with a nervous disposition is difficult to keep in captivity as it may attempt to flee whenever startled. The gazelle is very flighty and it has a powerful leap that allows it to escape an enclosed pen. Some animals, such as the domestic sheep, still have a strong tendency to panic when their flight zone is encroached upon. However, most sheep also show a flocking instinct, whereby they stay close together when pressed. Livestock with such an instinct may be herded by people and dogs. Modifiable social hierarchy - Social creatures whose herds occupy overlapping ranges and recognize a hierarchy of dominance can be raised to recognize a human as the pack leader:
Folsom Culture
Folsom is the name given to early Paleoindian hunter-gatherers of the North American continent, ca. 9,000-10,500 years ago. Although still not precisely dated, Folsom is considered slightly later than Clovis, the original big game hunters of North America. The Folsom type site is a bison kill site, in Wild Horse Arroyo near the town of the Folsom, New Mexico. It was famously discovered in 1908 by the African-American cowboy George McJunkins, although stories vary. Folsom was excavated in the 1920s by Jesse Figgins and reinvestigated in the 1990s by Southern Methodist University, led by David Meltzer. The site has evidence that 32 bison were trapped and killed at Folsom; radiocarbon dates on the bones indicated an average of 10,500. IMPORTANT: Big game hunters after Clovis with Clovis like finer projectile points to hunt from distance.
Complexity
Going from Band to Tribe to Chiefdom to State. The development of social structure of a people.
Flores Island "Hobbit"
Homo floresiensis, a different species of Homo's that is located solely on Flores island in Indonesia. This was the longest surviving non human hominoid till around 10,000 B.C.E. A pigmy small statue, this species was wiped out by a volcanic eruption and bigger megafauna. Some debate they were just a Homo erectus culture long surviving their peers that were subjected to insular dwarfism.
Pueblos
Hopi/Pueblo/Anatazi people of Southwest America. Built everything from Snaketown to Chaco Canyon in the 4 corners area.
Laurentide
Ice sheet from Edmonton to the Hudson Bay opposite of the Cordilleran Ice sheets that the First Americans could of passed through. The pass was closed 38,000-34,000 yrs ago and 22,000-15,000 yrs ago.
Cordilleran
Ice sheet stretching on the Pacific from Seattle to Anchorage, opposite side was the Laurentide.
Where it was first domesticated: Rice
In south China (Pearl river Valley) around 10,000-8,000 B.C.E.
Where it was first domesticated: Barley
In the Fertile Cresent in 8,500 B.C.E.
Where it was first domesticated: Wheat
In the Levant (fertile cresent) around 9,600 B.C.E.
Where it was first domesticated: Cotton
Indus Valley in around 5,000 B.C.E.
Where it was first domesticated: Maize
It was as domesticated in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico around 10,000 years ago, but did not spread through the Americas as a viable resource until ~2,500 B.C.E.
Mesa Verde
Largest American archeological presereve in southwest Colorado. These cliff dwellings were settled in 400, and later by 1100 were inhabited by the Puebloans.
Three Sisters
Maize/Corn, squash, beans in Central America's. They fit together very well growing and nutrition wise.
Mesoamerica
Modern day Mexico
Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloans)
Name given by the Navajo tothe people who built the ancient cliff dwellings and freestanding pueblos found in the American Four Corners region. The builders were not Navajo, and the term means "ancient enemies" in the Navajo language. The builders were the ancestors of the modern Hopi, some prefer the term Ancestral Puebloan.
Mogollon
One of the four major archaeological Prehistoric Southwestern Cultural Divisions of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. The American Indian culture known as the Mogollon lived in the southwest from approximately AD 300 until sometime around AD 1300.
Sahul
Plate/Glacier covering Australian, New Zealand, and New Guinea
Sunda
Plate/Shelf of land including South-East Asia, Northern Indonesia, and Southern most points of China.
Mano and Metate
Primitive mortar=(Mano) and pestle(Metate)
Fluting
Putting a notch and a hole on two things that connect.
Pastoralism
Raising livestock, a form of agriculture.
Cereal Grains
Rice, Corn, Wheat, Barley, Sorghum, Millet, Oats, Rye, Quinoa. Plants, especially grasses, that produce starchy grains. Cereal plants were among the first domesticated foods produced during the Neolithic.
Phytolith
Rigid, microscopic structures made of silica, found in some plant tissues and persisting after the decay of the plant. These plants take up silica from the soil, whereupon it is deposited within different intracellular and extracellular structures of the plant. Archaeobotanists working in the Americas first consider and analyze phytolith assemblages in order to track prehistoric plant use and domestication. Also for the first time, phytolith data from pottery are used to track history of clay procurement and pottery manufacture.
Major differences in the types of animals domesticated in old world vs the new world
SIZE
Hohokam Irrigation
See Snaketown, these people made irrigation for agriculture with the structures of power closer to the original river, away from the secondary and tertiary streams.
Wallace Line
Separating Sahul and Sunda plates, it is right around Borneo to the Philippines
Intensification
Ss characterized by a low fallow ratio and higher use of inputs such as capital and labour per unit land area. This is in contrast to traditional agriculture in which the inputs per unit land are lower. IE. trying to get the most agricultural output out of the limited land one has.
Carnac
The Carnac stones are an exceptionally dense collection of megalithic sites around the French village of Carnac, in Brittany, consisting of alignments, dolmens (clusters), trillithons and single menhirs (single stones). More than 3,000 prehistoric standing stones were hewn from local rock and erected by the pre/proto-Celtic people of Brittany, and are the largest such collection in the world.[1] Most of the stones are within the Breton village of Carnac, but some to the east are within La Trinité-sur-Mer. The stones were erected at some stage during the Neolithic period, probably around 3300 BC, but some may date to as old as 4500 BC.
Dyukatai Cave
The Dyuktai Cave site contains evidence of Pleistocene occupation between about 16,000 - 12,000 years BP. The three Pleistocene levels contained 316 implements and fragments of various blade cores, burins, and projectile points. A bone awl-like tool and a hammer made of reindeer antler were also recovered. Faunal remains included mammoth, reindeer, wolf, and other small animals, but evidence of human activity seems to be restricted to the mammoth remains that were found. IMPORTANT: With humans here in Siberia we can strongly theorize that they must be connected with the first Americans traveling through Beringia.
Holocene
The Epoch when humans first started agriculture dating to around ~11,000/10,000 B.C.E to now
Ice Free Corridor
The area between the Laurentide and Cordilleran Ice sheets that the First Americans could of passed through. Closed 38,000-34,000 yrs ago and 22,000-15,000 yrs ago.
Fertile Crescent
The area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present day Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Rachis
The beginning of something, the stem. I.e. the solid point of a feather where all the other parts come off of.
Pueblo Bonito
The biggest 4 story structure in Chaco Canyon. Aligned with many celestial events.
Horticulture
The branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and non-food crops such as grass and ornamental trees and plants. The cultivation of taro and yam in Papua New Guinea dates back to at least 6950-6440 cal BP.[5] The origins of horticulture lie in the transition of human communities from nomadic hunter-gatherers to sedentary or semi-sedentary horticultural communities, cultivating a variety of crops on a small scale around their dwellings or in specialized plots visited occasionally during migrations from one area to the next (such as the "milpa" or maize field of Mesoamerican cultures).[6] In the Pre-Columbian Amazon Rainforest, natives are believed to have used biochar to enhance soil productivity by smoldering plant waste.[7] European settlers called it Terra Preta de Indio.[8] In forest areas such horticulture is often carried out in swiddens ("slash and burn" areas).[9] A characteristic of horticultural communities is that useful trees are often to be found planted around communities or specially retained from the natural ecosystem
Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions
The combination of hunting and disease from humans with the end of the Ice Ages made Megafauna (almost exclusively in the Americas at this point) made almost all of the large animals die off.
Domestication
The cultivating or taming of a population of organisms in order to accentuate traits that are desirable to the cultivator or tamer. The desired traits may include a particular physical appearance, behavioral characteristic, individual size, litter size, hair/fur quality or color, growth rate, fecundity, lifespan, ability to use marginal grazing resources, production of certain by-products, and many others.
Solstice
The day when the sun reaches its lowest or highest point depending on the surrounding area.
Where it was first domesticated: Sorghum
The domestication of sorghum has its origins in Ethiopia and surrounding countries, commencing around 4000-3000 BC.
Carrying Capacity
The environment's maximal load, how many of a species can live in a certain area given the resources.
Levant
The fertile region between Anatolia and Egypt. Includes modern day Israel, and parts of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.
Beringia
The land around the Bering Strait where humans crossed over to settle the Americas.
Cahokia
The mounded city near St. Louis, biggest city/temple north of Mexico, part of Mississippian culture, abandoned around the 1,200.
Neolithic
The new stone age, ranged from 10,000-(4,000/2,000) was the time of people all over the world (at different times) starting to use agriculture and domesticate plants/animals.
Paleoindian
The people of the Americas from first colonization to the first begining of cultures 18,000-8,000 BCE Paleoindian Clovis Folsom
Archaic
The period is the name given to generalized hunter-gatherer societies in the American continents from approximately 8,000 to 2000 years BC. (Human colonization in the Americas to the Common Era)
Teosinte
The tall wild grass maize/corn evolved from
Göbekli Tepe (IS A TELL)
The tell includes two phases of ritual use dating back to the 10th-8th millennium BCE. During the first phase (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected. More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and a weight of up to 20 tons. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock.[5] In the second phase (Pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB)), the erected pillars are smaller and stood in rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime. Topographic scans have revealed that other structures next to the hill, awaiting excavation, probably date to 14-15 thousand years ago, the dates of which potentially extend backwards in time to the concluding millennia of the Pleistocene.[6] The site was abandoned after the PPNB-period. Younger structures date to classical times. The function of the structures is not yet clear. Excavator Klaus Schmidt believed that they are early neolithic sanctuaries. IMPORTANT: Göbekli Tepe is a stone-age mountain sanctuary
Mesolithic
The time between the Paleolithic and Neolithic (middle stone age) ~10,000-5,000 B.C.E.
Egalitarian
The type of social structure where all people are equal and treated as such.
Placental
The types of animals that give birth with a placenta (ie. all mammals exept marsupials and echidna's)
Chaco Road
These very straight lined roads led out of Chaco Canyon into areas where the people actually resided, and down to trade with other peoples all the way down to Mezo-American cultures such as the Aztecs and Maya. These roads were also important to build Chaco Canyon's buildings as most of the materials/food were foreign to the region.
Mammoth hunting
To hunt mammoths, humans usually would get the stragglers, injured, or young and separate them from the pack walking them into exhaustion. Folsom like projectile spears were important because humans did not want to get to close to large beasts.
Fajada Butte
Top peak of Chaco Canyon, where the sun dagger pertaining to all the celestial knowledge of these people was found.
Marsupials
Type of animal native to Australia that carries their young in a pouch.
Tehuacan Valley
Valley around Mexico city
Equinox
When the day and nigh are equal length, midpoint between solstices.
Agriculture
the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinals and other products used to sustain and enhance human life.