ANTH 202 Study Guide for Exam 5

Does archaeology have practical value in the world today?

Although archaeology is conventionally perceived as a "pure" science, many archaeologists are finding ways to apply the techniques of archaeology to new problems, such as the analysis of contemporary garbage and landfills to help solve the nation's trash problem. Others are involved in forensic archaeology, working with law enforcement officials, providing training in the recovery and analysis of material remains, and generating firsthand evidence to be presented in courts of law; still others use archaeology to recover ancient technologies that benefit developing nations.

What is the strength of archaeology?

Although surrendering some of the detail available to ethnographers, archaeologists can focus on mega-patterns spanning vast reaches of space and time—across continents and millennia.

What federal policies help protect cultural resources, including archaeological sites?

Although the United States has been concerned with preserving its cultural heritage for a long time, protection of cultural resources did not become policy until the National Environmental Policy Act.

What is the difference between analogy and middle- level theory?

Analogy and middle-level theory both seek to make inferences about human behavior from archaeological remains. Analogy is one way to reconstruct the past but is limited to societies that have very close geographic and cultural counterparts (preferably ones with a historical connection) or to fairly low-level inferences. The greater the number of similarities, the greater the probability that the analogy is correct. Middle-level theory uses modern data from taphonomy, experimental archaeology, and ethnoarchaeology to explain why particular natural processes or human behaviors can be inferred from particular material remains. Middle-level theory relies on the principle of uniformitarianism.

What is an anthropological approach?

Anthropologists believe that a true understanding of humankind can arise only from a perspective that is comparative, global, and holistic. Anthropology includes four subfields: biological, cultural, and linguistic anthropology, and archaeology. The concept of culture unites these diverse fields. Culture is a learned, shared, and symbolically based system of knowledge that includes traditions, kinship, language, religion, customs, and beliefs.

How do archaeologists study ancient religion?

Archaeologists attempt to understand past religions—specific sets of beliefs based on people's ultimate relation to the supernatural. Such religious beliefs are manifested in everyday life through rituals—behaviors such as prayer, music, feasting, sacrifice, and taboos. As such, ritual is a material manifestation of the abstract idea of religion and archaeology's easiest portal to the study of ancient religions. Archaeologists also attempt to understand belief systems. This encompasses how past cultures explain their universe—how it originated and developed, how the various parts fit together, and what laws it obeys—and express their concern with what the future of the universe holds. Where archaeologists have available some ethnographic data that are closely related to the archaeological case, they may be able to extrapolate backward from the present to the past. Even these cases, however, harbor the chance that a symbol meant something different in the past than it does in the present.

What makes an archaeologist an archaeologist?

Archaeologists reconstruct and explain the past by "thinking from things," using their analyses of material remains as the basis for knowledge of the past.

What concepts help archaeologists reconstruct past social and political organizations?

Archaeologists think in terms of both residential and nonresidential groups. How these groups operate is a matter of gender (culturally based interpretations of biology), the division of labor, kinship, and status. Bioarchaeological analyses provide clues as to the di- vision of labor, but strong empirical generalizations or historically linked ethnographic analogies are of- ten needed. Kinship is the socially recognized network of relationships through which individuals are related to one another by ties of descent (real or imagined) and marriage. Status refers to the rights, duties, and privileges that define the nature of interpersonal relations. Ascribed status is parceled out at birth without regard to personal characteristics; achieved status comes from what one accomplishes in life. A society is egalitarian if achieved status is the means whereby an individual acquires a high position. In a ranked society, ascribed status places people into a ranked order of privilege; ranked societies exhibit a hierarchy, and its members have unequal access to basic resources.

What theories have been proposed to explain the origin of the archaic state?

Archaic states appear to be a response to (1) population growth and the resultant need to intensify agriculture, (2) the need for an overarching system of social integration, and (3) the potential to control productive resources. The specific character and history of an archaic state, however, depends on the particular environmental situation, the importance of warfare versus trade, and the kind of ideology that supports the elite rulers.

How can pollen help reconstruct past environments?

Because different plant species produce differently shaped pollens, we can identify ancient vegetation by identifying pollen in archaeological sites. Samples are prepared and the pollen counted under a microscope. The varying percentages of pollen in the samples roughly track the varying percentages of the different plant species that produced them. Pollen is good at reconstructing the regional environment; the palynologist must take measures to ensure that the results are not biased by a local environment's pollen. Other sources of information, such as wood rat nests, provide evidence of local vegetation.

How do bioarchaeologists contribute to a study of the past?

Bioarchaeology is the study of the human biological component evident in the archaeological record; it examines the health and workload of ancient populations. This specialty requires expertise in the method and theory of both biological anthropology and field archaeology.

What is the central challenge of "cognitive archaeology"?

Cognitive archaeology aims to study the perception, description, and classification of the universe; the nature of the supernatural; the principles, philosophies, and values by which human societies are governed; and the ways in which aspects of the world, the supernatural, or human values are conveyed in art. Studying these ancient modes of thought requires the interpretation of symbols, objects, or acts (verbal and nonverbal) that by cultural convention stand for something else with which they have no necessary connection. This means that, without some ethno- graphic context, there is no obvious way to connect a symbol to its meaning.

Why does context matter? How is it recorded?

Context matters because information comes from what artifacts are associated with each other, with features, and with particular strata. It's not enough to know that an artifact came from a particular site; we need to know how it relates to everything else found at the site. Context is recorded by recording the provenience of artifacts, features, and ecofacts. Provenience is recorded with a variety of technologies—total stations, photography, and so on.

What do archaeological dates date?

Dating techniques tell us nothing directly about cultural activities. Radiocarbon dating, for example, tells us when a plant or an animal died—it is up to archaeologists to relate the event being dated to a behavioral (cultural) event of interest.

What are the major dating techniques of historic sites?

Documentary evidence often provides dates for historical sites. When such evidence is not available, known ages of particular artifact types are generated to create age range or median ages for historical features or sites using TPQ and mean ceramic age dates.

What archaeological remains are important in reconstructing political organization, especially those involving inherited social inequities?

Egalitarian and ranked societies are often studied through patterning in mortuary remains, on the assumption that treatment in death reflects status in life, as well as through public and household architecture. Ranked societies are also indicated by the presence of "exotic" trade goods, traced to distant sources.

What is geoarchaeology?

Geoarchaeology applies the concepts and methods of the geosciences to archaeological research to assist in determining a site's age and its formation, including all the human and natural processes that work together to create an archaeological site.

What are the three major areas of historical archaeological research today?

Historical archaeology eschews the "oldest," "largest," and "most historically significant" sites, favoring instead the study of historically disenfranchised groups, including African Americans, Asian-American cultures, Native Americans during the historic period, and Hispanic Americans. Historical archaeology tackles questions about the recent past that history books answer unsatisfactorily. In this regard, some historical archaeologists are like crime scene detectives, collecting data to resolve disputes over the nature of key historical events. Many historical archaeologists research the nature of European colonialism (the developing capitalism of that time) and its effects on indigenous peoples.

How is historical archaeology more amenable to the postprocessual paradigm than prehistoric archaeology?

Historical archaeology has been fertile ground for postprocessual interests because texts can provide data with which to place archaeological remains in context. The study of the symbolic meaning of material remains proceeds more comfortably in historical archaeology, where documents can provide interpretations of material culture.

Who needs archaeology when we already have eyewitness accounts and historical records?

Historical archaeology looks at material remains from past societies that also left behind some form of written documentation ("history") about themselves. Historical sources can be significantly biased— sometimes intentionally, sometimes not; archaeologists look at archaeological and documentary records as equally valid yet independent lines of evidence.

Why does this difference matter?

In most sites, stratigraphy results from a complex interplay between natural and cultural processes. Archaeologists must understand the difference between an artifact's systemic and archaeological contexts to know how an artifact in the ground relates to the human behavior that is their ultimate interest

As archaeologists become increasingly involved with descendant and stakeholder communities, what associated ethical problems and positive potentials arise?

In the past 20 years, archaeologists have become increasingly concerned with incorporating multiple voices into their research and educational efforts. In some cases, this has created problems, as the various stakeholders in archaeology contest who "owns" the past; this issue is especially prominent for sites that some communities perceive as sacred. In a growing number of cases, archaeologists have created vibrant research and educational programs that create a better understanding of the past with the input of descendant communities' perspectives. In addition, such archaeological programs bring people of different backgrounds together and further break down social, ethnic, racial, and cultural walls that divide the world.

What does a zooarchaeological study involve?

It establishes that the bones are "cultural"—left behind by people (by looking for cut marks, impact fractures, and burning). It identifies the bones to element, taxon, sex, and age using a comparative collection. It counts the bones using NISP (number of identifiable specimens) and MNI (minimum number of individuals). NISP is simply a count of the number of bones of a particular taxon; MNI is the minimum number of animals required to account for those bones. The specific elements present and their breakage patterns suggest how the animals were hunted and butchered; this also suggests whether they were hunted close or far away, whether meat was stored or traded, or if people were pressed for food. The links between patterns in the faunal assemblage and interpretations depend on experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology.

What is "landscape archaeology"?

Landscape archaeology is similar to settlement pattern archaeology because of its interest in the regional record of human behavior, but it focuses on human modification and interpretation of the environment.

What three levels of theory does a scientific approach in archaeology entail? How do these relate to paradigms?

Low-level theory involves the observations that emerge from archaeological fieldwork; this is how archaeologists get their "data," their "facts." Middle-level theory links archaeological data with human behavior or natural processes; it is produced through experimental archaeology, taphonomy (the study of natural processes on archaeological sites), and ethnoarchaeology (the study of living peoples to see links between behavior and material remains). High-level theory provides answers to larger "why" questions. Paradigms are frameworks for thinking that relate concepts and provide research strategies. They apply to intellectual inquiry in general and are not specific to archaeology.

How are genetic data used to reconstruct population relationships and the ages of migrations?

Molecular archaeology uses data from living and ancient peoples to reconstruct population migrations. Especially useful is mitochondrial DNA. Although we still have much to learn about the rates at which DNA mutates, current studies show that DNA studies are important to reconstructing the past.

What is the difference between arbitrary and natural levels? Why do these matter?

Natural levels follow the site's geologic stratigraphy; arbitrary levels are normally 5 or 10 centimeters thick and are based on depth below the datum point. Arbitrary levels are normally used only in test pits when the natural stratigraphy is unknown or when natural layers are more than 10 centimeters thick. Arbitrary levels could mix artifacts from different natural levels, of different geologic or temporal contexts.

What is the attitude of archaeology toward public education?

One way or another, virtually all archaeological research depends on public support. Particularly within the last two decades, responsible archaeologists have recognized the importance of returning to the public some of the benefits. Consequently, many archaeologists are involved in public education, adding educational components to "pure" research projects.

How do bioarchaeologists use paleopathology and bone chemistry to reconstruct the lives of ancient peoples?

Paleopathology is the study of those ancient diseases that leave skeletal traces. Iron deficiency, for example, leaves a distinctive spongy appearance on the skull and the interior of the eye orbits. In addition, growth arrest features, such as Harris lines and enamel hypoplasias, indicate periods of severe disease or malnutrition in childhood. Bones respond to the routine mechanical stresses placed upon them; patterns of osteoarthritis and long bone cross sections can point to different patterns of workload between the sexes or to changes through time. Stature estimates can track changes in the quality of diet. Bioarchaeologists can also reconstruct diet: High frequency of dental caries indicates a diet high in simple carbohydrates and sugars. The ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone can recon- struct the dietary importance of wild plants, maize, and animals.

Why is the study of the past controversial?

People typically use their vision of the past to justify their actions in the present. The assumption that Great Zimbabwe was built by Europeans justified Europeans' taking southern Africa. Archaeologists can (and should) question any beliefs about the past. New World prehistory is largely studied by people of European descent, setting up inevitable and important disagreements about the past and its use in the present.

What determines preservation?

Preservation is enhanced in continuously dry, continuously wet, and/or very cold environments— anyplace where conditions subdue the microorganisms that promote decay. Diverse excavation strategies respond in part to different preservation conditions, constraints, and objectives in order to record provenience. From test pit to full-scale excavation, archaeologists maintain records of the three-dimensional provenience of the objects being recovered. Archaeologists record an excavation in such a way that another archaeologist can "see" what the original excavator saw.

What is the difference between relative and absolute dating?

Relative dating places sites, strata, features, and artifacts in relative order, without saying how much older or younger one site, stratum, feature, or artifact is than another. Absolute dating provides specific ages or specific age ranges. Absolute dating methods are absolute in the sense that they provide a particular age range at a known level of probability.

What is science, and how does it explain things?

Science is a search for answers through a process that is objective, systematic, logical, predictive, self-critical, and public. It works through a cyclical process that entails constructing hypotheses, determining their empirical implications, and testing those hypotheses with empirical data. For more than a century, archaeology has been firmly grounded in a scientific perspective, which provides an elegant and powerful way of allowing people to understand the workings of the visible world.

What role does typology play in archaeology's strength?

Seeking changes across space and time—so-called space-time systematics—archaeologists can find important patterns in the form of material culture. Because this cannot be done by focusing on artifacts individually, archaeologists address "types" of material culture—projectile points, pottery, architecture, and so on—across spans of space and time. By testing morphological types against solidly dated contexts, archaeologists define temporal types, the backbone for building cultural chronologies.

What archaeological remains help reconstruct social organization, especially kinship?

Social groupings are reflected "on the ground" in terms of house spacing and placement. Genetic distance studies of human skeletal remains provide clues to postmarital residence.

What are archaeological cultures, site components, and phases?

Spatial patterning in material culture defines archaeological cultures, but these are not the same as ethnographic cultures. By seeking out clusters of temporal types, we construct site components, which are culturally homogeneous units within a single site that can be synthesized into phases—archaeological units of cultural homogeneity that are limited in both time and space. Phases are the basic archaeological building blocks for regional synthesis, capturing temporal and spatial similarity in material culture.

What is the difference between sufficient and necessary conditions in an explanation?

Sufficient conditions are those that a theory pro- poses are the minimal ones needed for a change (such as the appearance of agriculture or archaic states) to occur; necessary conditions are those that must exist for a change to happen. Archaeology constructs specific historical sequences, then compares them and looks for patterns to deter- mine what conditions are necessary and sufficient to explain major cultural evolutionary transitions.

What limits surface survey? What are the basic remote sensing techniques and their benefits?

Survey can only find what lies on the ground; remote sensing helps us understand what lies below the ground. The proton magnetometer detects magnetic anomalies in the ground, such as pieces of metal and burned sediments (for example, hearths). Soil resistivity measures how readily an electric current passes through sediment, detecting areas of looser or more compact materials based on differences in water content. Ground-penetrating radar detects features, especially architecture, using radar waves. Lidar offers a new way to map terrain at scales fine enough to locate even subtle archaeological manifestations of past landscape modification. Remote sensing can help preserve sites by targeting excavations.

What do taphonomy, experimental archaeology, and ethnoarchaeology study?

Taphonomy studies the natural processes that help produce archaeological sites. Experimental archaeology re-creates behaviors that no longer exist today, such as stone tool manufacture, or replicates behaviors, events, or processes that need controlled observation. Ethnoarchaeology studies living peoples to see how human behavior is translated into material remains.

What is the principle of uniformitarianism?

The "facts" of archaeology are incapable of speak- ing for themselves; therefore, archaeology follows geology's principle of uniformitarianism, studying ongoing processes and their material consequences to develop ways of making inferences from archaeo- logical data. The principle of uniformitarianism does not assume that the past and the present are the same; it does assume that the processes of the past and the present are the same. This is why we can use modern observations, such as the material effect of sunlight on bone, or the relationship between house posts and house permanence, to help us interpret the archaeo- logical record.

What are the important elements of the 1906 Antiquities Act, the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, and the 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act?

The 1906 Antiquities Act required that individuals acquire a permit from the government before excavating archaeological sites, and gave the president the authority to create national monuments. The 1966 National Historic Preservation Act required that the government inventory cultural resources on its properties and ensure that develop- ment projects consider their effects on significant archaeological sites. The act established the National Register of Historic Places and State Historic Preservation Offices. The 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act provided further safeguards against the destruction of archaeological sites on federal and tribal land by increasing the penalties for excavating without a permit.

Why is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 important to archaeologists? How does it differ from other archaeological legislation?

The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, often seen as human rights rather than archaeological legislation, ensures that human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony are offered for repatriation to culturally affiliated tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. This process is still underway for most of the nation's museums and universities. This act differs from others in that it returns materials for reburial, rather than preserving them for the future.

How do animal bones and plants help establish a site's season of occupation?

The age of animals represented in a faunal assemblage coupled with assumptions of their season of birth help establish a site's "seasonality." Likewise, the modern fruiting schedules of plants represented in sites by their seeds or other edible components suggest when a site was occupied.

What trends have characterized archaeology over the last century?

The evolution from antiquarianism to professional archaeology has involved the movement from thinking about things to thinking from things. Archaeologists have always sought to build cultural chronologies, reconstruct ancient societies, and explain why cultures change over time. Today we can see they were initially successful with the first objective, then the second, and eventually the third. Along the way, archaeologists have increasingly borrowed information and techniques from many fields—geology, zoology, mathematical statistics, astronomy, climatology, and others—as they develop ways of making solid inferences from material remains using solid scientific methods. Archaeology today covers both prehistoric and historical eras and uses a wide diversity of approaches. Archaeology is concerned with bringing knowledge to a broader public, with making research relevant to contemporary society, and with understanding the opinions and needs of indigenous and descendant communities.

What is the law of superposition? How can it be violated?

The law of superposition holds that (all else being equal) older geological strata tend to be buried beneath younger strata. The law of superposition is only an organizing principle; in some instances, reverse stratigraphy can occur, as for example, when people excavate older deposits to create a mound.

What is the main principle of survey? Why does this matter?

The main principle of archaeological survey is to generate a representative sample of a landscape; sometimes a survey is randomized to ensure that every site has an equal chance of being included in the sample. This matters because if we only look in the "logical" places, we will almost certainly bias the sample and our reconstruction of the past.

What is unilineal evolution, and why did anthropology discard it?

The nineteenth-century idea of unilineal evolution claimed that the differences among modern peoples resulted from differential progress various peoples had made toward "modernity"—which was defined as an upper-class, western European lifestyle. Living "primitives" were seen as providing evidence of the stages of human cultural evolution; for some scholars, "primitive" peoples were still "back in the Stone Age." Social Darwinism suggested that human progress depends on competition; in the nineteenth century, this theory was used to justify global imperialism, racism, and the excesses of capitalism. American anthropology rejected unilineal cultural evolution, replacing it with historical particularism that sought to understand each culture within itself, not as a stage in human evolution.

What theories have been proposed to explain the origin of agriculture?

The origins of agriculture appear to have resulted from (1) climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene that were favorable for plant domestication, (2) population growth that caused foragers to take less efficient resources, including small seeds, and (3) the existence in some places of plants that responded to human foraging by becoming more productive.

How do plants help reconstruct ancient diets?

The sources include macrobotanical remains (for example, charred seeds recovered by flotation), phytoliths (silica nodules found in some plant stems), pollen, coprolites (preserved human feces), and lipids extracted from pottery. Each source has its strengths and weaknesses. Macrobotanical remains can be abundant, but it is not always clear if they represent food; coprolites clearly contain the remains of meals, but they are very short-term records. People's interaction with the environment has an economic basis, but culture may place layers of symbolic meaning on top of that interaction.

Can archaeologists learn anything from very ancient cases that have no close cultural descendants?

The study of ancient symbols runs the risk of becoming a free-for-all, with any interpretation being as valid as another. It is perhaps especially important, then, that the study of ancient art, writing systems, and other manifestations of a culture's cosmology and religion adhere to the canons of scientific analysis. In instances where ethnographic data are not available, archaeologists must be more restrained in their interpretations, not focusing on the specific meaning of particular symbols but looking to the more general character of thought itself.

What is the difference between systemic and archaeological contexts?

The systemic context refers to artifacts as they are being used or manipulated by people; the archaeological context refers to natural processes that act on artifacts and features once they are deposited in the ground. Artifacts leave the systemic context (and enter the archaeological context) through cultural depositional processes, including loss, discard, caching, and ritual interment. Once in the archaeological context, artifacts can continue to be moved and altered by a variety of natural site formation processes, including landslides, burrowing animals, earthworms, tree throw, and the actions of water and climate.

What two paradigms do anthropologists use to study culture, and how are these different ways of thinking reflected in archaeology?

These approaches are reflected in the two major paradigms of modern archaeology: processual and postprocessual archaeology. The former takes a scientific approach and focuses on the material factors of life; the latter takes a more historical approach, and emphasizes symbolic meanings, power relation- ships, individual actions, and gender.

What techniques help reconstruct ancient trade networks?

Trade networks reflect the geographic scale of non- residential groups, economic patterns, and political authority. Trade is established by determining whether artifacts were made or obtained locally and by determining the source of raw materials for artifact manufacture. Obsidian, clay, and temper sourcing studies demon- strate the geographic scale of an economic and/or political organization.

What are the major dating techniques, what materials do they date, and what is their time range?

Tree-ring dating (dendrochronology) dates wood of particular species; it is limited to relatively small regions and usually cannot date samples that are more than 2000 years old. Radiocarbon dating dates any organic material using the known rate of decay of 14C; it is useful for materials less than 45,000 years old. Trapped charge dating techniques—thermoluminescence (TL), optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), and electron spin resonance (ESR)—date ceramics or burned stone tools, eolian sediments, and tooth enamel, respectively. They date an object by calculating the amount of background radiation the object has been subjected to since the object's electron "clock" was last reset by heat (TL) or sunlight (OSL). These techniques can extend back several hundred thousand years. Argon-argon dates volcanic rock, especially ash. This technique can date volcanic layers that are millions of years old.

What are the principles of archaeological typology?

We create groups (based on one or more attributes of form) that minimize the differences within each group and maximize the differences between groups. We construct these groups through an objective, explicit, and replicable process. We recognize that there is no single "correct" typology. A typology's usefulness is judged relative to the question it is used to answer.

Why do archaeologists "survey"?

We do survey because no single site reveals everything about an ancient society.

How do bioarchaeologists determine age and sex for a skeleton?

We use characteristics of several bones, notably the pelvis and skull, to determine an individual's sex. An individual's age can be determined by tooth eruption; patterns of bone fusion, tooth wear, and bone wear are used to age individuals over the age of 25.

How do archaeologists recover the smallest artifacts and ecofacts?

We use screening, flotation, and bulk matrix processing to recover extremely small artifacts and ecofacts.

Is there an international black market in antiquities? If so, what can be done about it?

Yes, in fact this problem is on the same level as drug trafficking and illegal arms dealing. The United States and many nations around the world are work- ing to stop the flow of illegally acquired antiquities. Although many measures have been put into place, most countries still find it difficult to stop antiquities from entering a country where buyers are willing to pay high prices for them.