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
