Archaeology exam 1

By the nineteenth century the geological sequence of the Earth had been divided into four great eras:

1. Primary 2. Secondary 3. Tertiary 4. Quaternary

Anna Roosevelt's rigorous standard

1. have suites of radiocarbon dates exhibiting low standard error 2. these suites run on single, clean, and taxonomically identified carbon samples 3. carbon samples were in undisputed primary association with diagnostic artifacts 4. the results must have been published in peer-reviewed publications

At least two parts to the initial migration proposed by Turner and others:

1. left the scattering of language isolates along the west coast 2. led to the most other North and South American peoples

two main kinds of uncertainty with the past and the future

1. past conditions were what they were but our ability to detect them is flawed and our reconstructions are therefore variable certainty 2. future conditions will be driven by forces too complex to allow us to predict them with certainty

The rise in sea level caused by glacial melting is referred to as ____________ rise.

"eustatic"

hypothesis

- a proposition inspired by some combination of evidence and theory that is potentially disprovable - one cannot prove a hypothesis, only disprove it - this leads to several observations that might be unsettling to the scientifically uninitiated - might be accepted for many years but then disproven by new evidence (new alternative hypothesis) - EVERY hypothesis should be regarded as a temporarily acceptable working hypothesis

theory definition

- a theory is a body of principles and not (strictly speaking) a set of indisputable facts - although some theories have been so thoroughly tested in so many ways that they are generally regarded as factual - ex. theories regarding planetary motion, electricity, and biological evolution

Bering land bridge

- a thousand-kilometer-wide isthmus connecting siberia and north america

Paleodindian adaptations

- adapted to the warmer and drier climatic conditions - explotation of large animals - they spread rapidly across North America - adaptation ended around 12,900 calendar years ago around the time of the Younger Dryas climatic reversal

Archaeologists tend to be skeptical of reports claiming:

- ages that exceed those generally accepted for any particular culture - tool complex - artifact type

Teosinte

- an undistinguished grass and a plant with great potential

Varves

- banded deposits in certain lakes that can record climatic records -can be used to calibrate inaccuracies in radiocarbon dating, the technique most commonly used by archaeologists and other scientists interested in climate change over recent millennia

mast forest archaic

- characterized by small stemmed projectile points, ground stone pestles, manos and metates, and a dependence upon mast forest resouces - examples of mast forest resources-- acorns, hickory nuts, deer, turkeys, pigeons

Squash (cucurbita pepo)

- comes from Phillips Spring site - comes from the bottle gourd (used as fishnet floats and containers) which was already domesticated in Asia more than 10,000 years ago and was brought to the Americas by early migrants

evidence for climate change

- comes from several complementary lines of research - involve such disparate techniques as ice coring, deep sea coring, lake sediment coring, and tree ring dating - fluctuations in weather are preserved in the cores and provides us with some measure of climatic conditions in the past

effects from the ice age?

- continental glaciers waxed and waned - rivers were rerouted - vast meltwater lakes formed along the margins of the glaciers then drained as the glacial landscapes continued to evolve

Carbon-14 Isotope in the atmosphere

- depressed slightly during times of increased solar radiation - record of these fluctuations is preserved in the rings of bristlecone pine trees that are thousands of years old

period 4: ipiutak culture

- derived from the arctic small tool tradition - carved bone and ivory is found more frequently in ipiutak sites - carved compound masks were included in burials

maritime archaic

- developed after 5000 BCE - created heavy ground stone working tools to create dugout canoes to hunt swordfish and sea mammals

Period 3: The Arctic Small Tool Tradition

- developed out of the paleo-arctic tradition and spread across the arctic in the roughly one- thousand year period - gets its name from very small burins, side blades, microblades, and microcores - paleo- inuit- had a mainly terrestrial adaptation, these people never strayed far from forested areas - later inuit were known for their clever gadgets - arctic climate became more difficult - pre-dorset-- relied heavily on hunting seals through their breathing holes in the arctic sea ice - independence 1- the some that made their way to greenland

Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon

- did a lot to develop the scientific method -

When did sea levels reach their modern levels?

- during the Middle Archaic times - coastal sites were better preserved

Bull Brook

- eastern Massachusetts - had over 40 temporary shelters

Blackwater Draw site

- eastern New Mexico

Fort Rock Cave

- eastern Oregon - had a pair of fiber sandals (oldest known Paleoindian footwear in North America)

Nenana Complex

- ery similar to the Clovis Complex except that the fluted projectile point is missing. Discovery of a fluted point at the Mesa site in the interior suggests that the innovative point type might have originated in that region as an addition to the Nenana complex, spreading southward across the rest of North America from there (Kunz and Reanier 1994, 1996)

Athabascan expansion

- expansion southeastward in canada's northwest territories began as early as 400 BCE - the movement was one of the dynamics of the fur trade

Standard Error in radiocarbon dating

- expressed as a plus or minus some number, often referred to as "one sigma" (one standard deviation form the mean)

Period 2: The Northern Archaic

- fall between 5000-2200 BCE - interior and coastal variants of this widespread development

Paleoindians in the Western Subarctic

- first people moving southwestward between retreating ice sheets in bands

Dorset demise

- forced southward to canada's east coast but they were overwhelmed by the even better adapted thule inuit culture by 1100 CE - individuals of the Dorset culture were either recruited to the Thule or slowly died off

what happened when connubia disappeared?

- generalized food sharing was no longer as adaptive as food storage - improved food production - sharing became more formal and more restricted - band ranges decreased and band sizes increased - mutually unintelligible languages accelerated

what was the climate of environments south of the glaciers (during the ice age)?

- generally cooler, more moist, and more unstable - human bands did not have the option of settling down and developing food

Woodland creatures

- had agriculture and pottery

Windover

- has provided science with a rare look at early archaic people - people were buried in a waterlogged deposit that preserved skeletons, brain tissue, wooden implements, textiles, atlatls, and other organic remains - these people were not consuming large numbers of marine and terrestrial plants

Anzick Site

- in Montana - it contains the earliest human burial in North America (a one year old boy)

Debert Site

- in Nova Scotia provides the oldest known evidence for human occupation - slightly elevated area

Key Traits of the languages found along the Pacific Rim

- include the "m" sound in second person pronouns, verb order, and the presence of numerical classifiers - Scattered Pacific coastal languages from New Guinea to Southern America (often not classifiable) include the "m" sound too

upper Paleolithic tool kid

- included specialized tools - stone tools such as bifaces were used as knives, scrapers or projectile points

A balanced diet of maize, beans and squash proved to be a winning diet and allowed for....

- increasingly dense populations and the rise of complex societies across Mesoamerica - all highland mexican domesticates can be planted and harvested using only a few simple hand toold

thule gadgetry

- inuit gadgetry reached an extraordinary level of development in thule times - dogsleds: built up frameworks that ran on iced runners of bone or ivory - closed kayak: boat of choice for marine sea fishers - open umiaks: facilitated the transportation of whole families and their belongings - soapstone lamps: used in place of cruder and more easily broken pottery, provided heat and light within igloos

Ogham writing

- involves sets of short parallel lines on the corner of an otherwise unmodified rock - ex. west wall of old main looks like ogham script but it is not and to the uninformed or unscrupulous observer they look close enough

whats the beauty of science

- its self correcting - the mistakes made by scientists are almost always found and corrected by other scientists - science if an extension of the unique human capacity to not just make mistakes but to learn from the mistake, correct it in future behavior, and pass that improved knowledge on to other human beings

What names are given to a diverse assortment of corner notched and basally notches points?

- kirk - palmer - bifurcate -- smaller points show the evolution from a heavier to a lighter spear

Shield Archaic

- known for three artifact classes: side-notched points, knives and scrapers - replaced by early eskimos

What did dorset people not have?

- lacked pottery, toggling harpoons, dogsleds

Social Organization

- late paleoindian bands remained linked together - individuals marries people from nearby bands - always trying to avoid incest

Great Basic Archaic

- lies between the rockies and the sierra nevada - it is a vast desert environment with no rivers - spotted with dry lake beds called playas

The Wilson-Leonard Site

- located in texas - has a Wilson culture stratum below its Late Paleoindian component - culture resembles an early archaic period but it is clearly older than the late paleoindian component

Meadowcroft rock shelter

- located in western PA - produced pre clovis remains from its lowest level (apparently) - James Adovasio (sites excavator)

Social Organization of the eastern subarctic Algonquians

- maintained connubia, which lead to all of the people speaking a single widespread Algonquian language ( it was so unique though that even neighbors only 1000 kilometers away couldn't understand it) --- this dialect form was called an "L-complex" and known as Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi - women were more mobile than men - great need for communication

American continents have:

- major mountain spines that generally run north-south - North American people channel north and south -- forced people, animals and crops to cross growing zones

Mitochondrial DNA can be used to define:

- matrilineal lineages - it mutates slowly and at a pretty well understood rate

dorset artifacts

- mens knives, women's knives (ulus), thrusting harpoons, oil lamps, stone cooking pots, bows and arrows, fish spears, kayaks, small sleds, ice creepers, snow goggles, and some copper tools - also had larger boats called umiaks to help w transportation

Paleoindian demography

- modern hutterites reproduce at the rate of 11 children on average - kung hunter gatherers women average 4.35 children

Shoop Site

- mountain top north of Harrisburg, PA

Younger Dryas (definition canvas notes)

- name given to a period at the end of the Pleistocene when cold conditions returned for about 14 centuries. The episode has been radiocarbon dated to 12,940 to 11,640 BP. Calibration has refined these dates to 13,000-11,570 (cal) years ago, or 11,050-9620 (cal) BCE. The Younger Dryas began and ended abruptly (Alley, et al. 2003)

Murray Springs

- near the Lehner site in Arizona - kill site with Clovis points and animal remains

Eskaleut languages of the Arctic north

- not demonstrably related to other North American Indian languages - resulted from a relatively recent migration of Eskimos and Aleuts from Siberia

cochise culture

- occurs in the desert potions of southern arizona and new mexico - been divided into three phases

period 4: Dorset, Choris, Norton and Ipiutak

- oil lamp technology - igloo provided winter shelter when other building materials were scarce - lasted from 1200BCE-600CE

glass buttes, oregon

- one important source on the northwest fringe on the great basin - found seven different obsidian flows - trace element analysis has helped archaeologists find quarry souces of tools

danger cave

- one of the key sites of the great basin - contains beach sand - dry conditions of the cave preserved certain items that would've been destroyed in wetter environments

Origins of the Thule Culture

- originated on the west coast of alaska - emerged 900-1000CE and replaced the dorset culture

technological divergence

- paleoinidans didn't begin as a monolithic clovis making culture - megafaunal extinctions forced a shift to alternative game - the Younger Dryas cold period probably led to more constricted band movements - widely-dispersed populations of small bands always diverge culturally due to random factors

The First Pottery

- people made containers in southern New england and the midatlantic areas - early vessels were made from steatite (soapstone)

biological refugia

- pockets of unglaciated landscape along the northwest coast - northern queen charlotte islands and prince of wales island were one such refugium - along the gulf of alaska portions were deglaciated and supplied w driftwood

Malaspina Glacier

- pressed all the way to the sea as recently as the late 1990s and would have presented a formidable 70 km-wide (40 mi) obstacle to human movement along the coast - led skeptics to wonder if it was ever possible for people to migrate southward along the coast. But the evidence from Daisy Cave in California (Rick, et al. 2001) suggests that early Paleoindians could have had seaworthy boats that were sufficient to allow them to get around such barriers

what was the archaeological evidence of the Archaic people's of the Eastern woodlands growing population?

- proliferation of projectile point styles

Christie Turner

- proposed the idea that ^ Native American populations arose as the result of three waves of migration (were not very different than one another and may have been very small) - her work was based on the analysis of discrete dental traits and this indicated that there were probably three founding populations

lake forest archaic

- recogonized by a series of diagnostic projectile points, thrower weights (bannerstones) and semilunar knives - used native copper to make these

variants of the late archaic cultures:

- shield archaic (southeastern canada) - lake forest archaic ( great lakes region) - mast forest archaic (southern part of the region) - Maritime archaic (along the coast)

How do band societies collapse

- size of the band - fertility of women within the band - natural disasters and catastophes - band extinction does not mean individual death bc some individuals will join other bands if their band is dying out

The Paleo-Arctic Tradition

- sometimes referred to as the Beringian tradition - often found in sites across Alaska - key artifacts include blades, microblades, cores and bifacial tools

Blood Haplogroups

- suggest that later Native Americans derived from three major migratory episodes - occurred more than 30,000 years ago

middens

- tend to be dominated by the remains of few foods that were abundant nearby during the periods in which they were occupied

Dorset housing

- tend to live near the shore in smaller circular pitthouses - built these houses of stone, driftwood, what bones, or sod blocks - short entrance tunnels often provided insulation

What does evidence from the rodgers site in missouri indicate?

- that the Dalton variant of Paleoindian culture dominated there around the transition - also Wilson culture people were living in texas and expanding stem projectile points and practicing rather different adaptation to a wide range of animal and plant foods

Four centers of domestication in the Americas:

- the Amazon lowlands - Andean highlands of South America - Mexican highlands - US Eastern Woodlands of North America

The Denali Complex

- the basis for the expanding Paleo-Arctic tradition - microblades: disappeared from the archaeological record of the region over time

examples of pseudoarchaeology

- the book How the Sungod Reached America - almost the entire Ancient Aliens television series - Ogham Inscriptions (authentic Ogham stone in Ireland with roman letters)

The Eastern Subarctic Algonquians

- the eastern subarctic lies almost entirely in canada (canadian shield due to its horsehoe shaped region of the northern forest that is wrapped around it) - the population of this region was often thin

Paleoindians in the Subarctic

- the eastern subarctic remained frozen under the laurentian ice sheet when paleoindians first roamed much of north america - by the time the region became habitable only the late Paleoindians, carriers of unfluted lanceolate points, were still around - this early culture turned into the Shiel Archaic

Western Subarctic Athabascan

- the interior portions of Alaska and northwestern Canada were occupied by bands of Athabascan-speaking Indians (sometimes referred to as Athapaskan) when Europeans first penetrated the region - athabascan languages are a part of the larger Nadene family

archaeology definition

- the scientific study of historic or prehistoric peoples through the analysis of their material remains - this course is a course of study of the history of the people who have lived in north america as evidenced by their physical remains - does NOT include the study of earlier prehistoric phenomena such as dinosaurs, which predate the evolution of humans

Thule Contact with Europeans

- the thule of the eastern arctic were contacted by the norse settlers who settled in greenland and newfoundland during the height of the medieval maximum

period 4: Norton Culture

- these people used both wood and oil for fuel - hunted small sea mammals - used kayaks to hunt but also created larger boats - hunted caribou - semi lunar knives for woman known as ulus were used - coarse and crude pottery

Archaic

- thought of as mainly as a stage of development that followed the paleoindian stage but preceded the woodland stage - some archaeologists prefer to use this term to describe particular adaptation rather than a stage of development or time period - when encountering this term we should always try to find out how it has been defined

thule adaptation

- thule hunters depended upon sea mammal hunting but also hunted caribou - created a broad range of gadgetry - key innovations: kayaks, soapstone lamps, dogsleds, and toggling harpoons

Joanna Nichols

- used linguistic evidence to argue early waves of migrants spread southward along the Pacific Coast - she has found languages scattered along the Pacific Rim that share fundamental traits - believes the migration process was very slow and early on

gravettian hunters

- used mammoths and mastodons - spread eastward into siberia - artists that produced many cave paintings that are well known in europe, they also made portable art like cool figurines

The Dyuktai Complex

- used microblades, wedge shaped microblade cores, burins, flake tools, and minory bifaces (their complexes) - Dyuktai complex expanded and replaced the ushki complex

Subsistence of the eastern subarctic Algonquians

- woodland caribou and fish were the primary game animals --- but moose, beaver, and waterfowl were also part of the diet - large forest fires forced the hunter-gatherers to relocate and adapt to ew conditions

connubium described on canvas

-Dispersed small bands of hunter-gatherers required close connections with related bands for critically important reasons - each band maintained relationships with a half dozen other bands - each band was a hub and the overall network was made up of a bunch of overlapping networks

four scientific goals of modern archaeology

1. recovery, preservation and description of remains 2. reconstruction of past lifeways 3. decipherment of culture history 4. reconstruction and study of cultural processes

Lesson 12 Main Points

1. Native plant species were increasingly cultivated. 2. The two centers of plant domestication in North America were in the central Eastern Woodlands and Highland Mexico. 3. The wet site at Windover, Florida, produced unparalleled detail about diet and the physical condition of ancient Americans. 4. The key American plant domesticates that fueled the rise of later dense complex societies were first cultivated in the Mexican highlands. 5. The lack of many candidate to become domesticated animals in ancient North America structured the character of foodways in important ways

The common usage terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) are equivalent to ________ and _______respectively.

BCE ; CE

Key artifacts and samples that typically come from dry sites in the great basin:

Bark or grass beds Basketry Fur cloth (woven strips of twisted rabbit hide) Fabric Tumplines Sandals (moccasins are rare) Spear throwers (atlatls) Pointed hardwood dart shafts Obsidian Manos and metates and smaller mullers Fire drills Digging sticks Wooden clubs Duck decoys Horn shaft wrenches Tubular smoking pipes Olivella and other shells Vegetable quids Coprolites (dried human feces)

Even today oone can see across the ________________ ____________ on a clear day

Bering Strait

Major geographic features of the Arctic?

Bering Strait, the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska peninsula, Kodiak Island, Point Barrow, Baffin Island, Hudson Bay, Greenland, and Newfoundland

There is little doubt that the first Americans reached the continent by way of ______________

Beringia

The oldest well-documented Paleoindian culture in North America, __________, was widespread by 11,000 BCE.

Clovis

______________ tools from North America look very similar to ____________ tools found in France and elsewhere in western Europe

Clovis, Solutrean - Solutrean origin for Clovis is very unlikely - Solutrean tools were made 20,000 years ago and Clovis did not originate until around 13,400 years ago (Stanford and Bradley 2002) - no one knows how to gap over eight millennia would have been spanned

large mammals that disappeared

Columbian mammoth Imperial mammoth Dwarf mammoth American mastodon Bison antiquus/occidentalus Dire wolf Giant ground sloth Horse Camel Tapir Peccary Four-horned antelope Mountain goat (extinct form) Giant beaver

Most recent evidence shows that....

Homo sapiens sapiens and Neanderthals mated more frequently and earlier that previously believed

What accounts for the presence of evidence for horses in North America very early on and again after 1492 CE but not in between?

Horses became extinct in North America and were reintroduced by Europeans.

During the Archaic period, many groups in North America passed the threshold population size of ______________, allowing them to be largely self-sufficient for insurance against hard times or for the acquisition of marriage mates.

500

________ is an important humany demography benchmark number, because it corresponds to the approximate number of people needed to mantain a viable human social system.

500

How many would have been in Eurasia?

544000

Generally speaking, cultures of the Early Archaic period began replacing Late Paleoindian ones by around _________________, earlier in some places. Over the next ________ years new cultural adaptations replaced older ones across eastern North America

9000 BCE, 1200

Which of the following events took place during the Pleistocene?

Anatomically modern human beings emerged in Africa.

The vast interior of North America between the Rockies and the Appalachians is drained southward mainly by the _____________________________ and its tributaries

Mississippi River

major mountain ranges in north america

appalachian chain (east), rocky mountains (west), sierra nevada cascade chain (between the rockies and the pacific ocean)

evolution

change in a reproducing population resulting from differential reproductive success

Environmental change over time is driven by ____________________

climatic change

Turner used a form of ___________ analysis that can sometimes yield spurious results

cluster

circumscription

constraints on population expansion imposed by surrounding features of geography or other human groups

Which of these was NOT a change in Archaic period adaptations caused by changes in North American environments?

construction of insulated living structures to cope with colder conditions

A __________________ did not open between the cordilleran and laurentian ice sheets until 15,000 years ago at the earliest and probably not until around 12,000 years ago

corridor

oral tradition

cultural traditions that are passed along from generation in spoken from rather than recorded in writing

moraine

deposits of ground up rock laid down along the sides and especially at the leading edges of glaciers

Small scattered populations of hunter-gatherer bands characterized by overlapping connubia tend to ______________ linguistically and culturally over time from random effects alone

diverge

coprolites

dried fossil feces

Nenana Complex

earliest complex known so far in Alaska (9000 BCE)

As empahasized in the required materials in week 1, two central themes that help archaeologists explain the past are ______________ and _______________.

ecology, evolution

Which of the following do archaeologists believe allowed the Dyuktai complex to expand rapidly?

emphasized small, temporary camps and highly mobile bands

The basic anthropological vocabulary used to classify polities includes the terms "band," "tribe," "chiefdom," "state," and _________________________.

empire

Late Paleoindian bands evolved by taking on new characteristics in response to changing _________________ circumstances

environmental - environments did not determine these choices but evolving environments did limit choices and people took the options that were most adaptable

diffuse adaptation

a human adaptation that is focused on a broad array of resources

focal adaptation

a human adaptation that is focused on a narrow range of resources

umiak

a large open skin boat used for transporting several people and their belongings

altithermal

a long series of high-temperature climatic episodes, 7000-3500 BCE

horticulture

a mode of subsistence that is dependent upon domesticated plant species

kame

a natural gravel mound left behind by melting glacial ice

knapper

a person who manufactures stone tools by means of flaking and chipping using percussion and pressure techniques

artifact

a portable object that has been used or intentionally modified by a human being

red orche

a red pigment typically derived from hematite

refugiem (refugia)

a region where plants and animals survived during periods when conditions elsewhere were too hostile for them

ulu

a semilunar knife often with a handle sometimes called a woman's knife

stochastic

a sequence of events due to random change

tradition

a series of two or more phases representing a developmental continuum over time

haplotype

a set of single nucleotide polymophisms that are statistically associated; in effect, a set of genes that occur together

projectile point

a sharp point, often made of stone, attached (halfed) to a projectile, such as a spear or arrow

wet site

a site situated in swampy ground, requiring special excavation techniques

microblade

a small silver with parallel sides struck from a prepared core

dart

a small spear, larger than an arrow, used with an atlatl

pithouse

a snug, semi-subterranean house entered through a smoke hole in the roof or by way of an entry tunnel

civilization

a social and political entity with a large population, institutionalized social inequality, formal legal apparatus, autocratic powers of repression, high degree of occupational specialization, permanent standing military or police force, and highly developed artistic and architectural styles or traditions

state

a society numbering over 10,000 people, having social ranking, permanent leadership, bureaucracy, and a standing army

chiefdom

a society of 1000-10000 people, characterized by social ranking and ascribed or inherited leadership

tribe

a society of two or more bands, having impermanent leadership and a population typically between 100-1,000

weir

a stake or stone fence constructed underwater to catch fish, usually in a river

oil lamp

a stone dish having a nipple to hold a wick above a small pool of oil fuel

clade

a taxonomic group of organisms consisting of an ancestor and all the descendants of that ancestor

hectare

a unit of area equal to a square 100 meters on a side or 2.471 acres

Connecting Siberia and Alaska, what best describes the "land bridge" that allowed the first people to enter North America?

a wide stretch of land now known as Beringia

cognate

a word in one language that is related to a word in another language by virtue of the two words having derived from a single ancestral word in their common protolanguage

Which of the following is NOT a situation that hinders archaeological research into the peopling of the Americas?

all of the earliest sites have already been found and there is nothing left for modern archaeologists to study

A connubium is best defined as _____________.

an abstract social unit consisting of a band and related surrounding bands

connubium

an abstract social unit consisting of a band and related surrounding bands

medieval maximum

an apisode of climatic warming that lasted approximately 950-1250 CE

phase

an archaeological culture, limited in space and time, and often one of a developmental series

site

an archaeological location containing a concentration of remains

protolanguage

an extinct language reconstructed on the basis of evidence found in living descendant languages

theory book definition

an internally consistent and well substantiated explanation of some aspect of the world that is capable of producing testable hypotheses

Dorset and other Arctic cultures were eventually replaced by Thule culture and migrants as they moved westward from Newfoundland and Greenland, into Alaska.

false

During the Archaic period, the general decrease in projectile point sizes was the result of a shift to hunting only smaller game animals like rabbits and deer, where larger points could not be used.

false

self aware groups

families, bands, tribes, cultures, communities, societies and so forth

As an essential tool, __________________________ helped Archaic peoples greatly alter the character of Holocene forest environments and reshape many parts of the North American landscape.

fire

The _______________________ of North America has long been the focus of archaeological interest. The widespread presence of Paleoindians (Clovis culture) in North America after 11,100 BCE has been established, but claims for earlier evidence remain very controversial {Meltzer, 1993;West, 1996}

first peopling

pieces esquillees

flaked stone artifacts manufactured by the bipolar percussion technique usually characterized by lenticular or wedge shaped cross sections

The __________ Clovis point is the hallmark of the Clovis culture

fluted

foraging

food collecting that involves residential relocation

ice creepers

footwear designed to facilitate walking on ice, like modern crampons

migration

for humans the permanent relocation of an individual or group

analog

forms that are similar but do not share a common origin

Human groups are _________________ complex than biological breeding populations

much more - Some groups may be nested within others. Some, like gender, may be strictly defined and virtually permanent while others, like hunting groups, may be quite temporary. Others, like family, clan, tribe, and so forth might consciously attempt to regulate breeding, thus producing an interaction between biological and cultural evolution.

The individual organism, whether plant or animal, is the locus of ___________________ _________________________. This is true even of social insects such as ants and honey bees, but the genetic mathematics are more complicated in those cases.

natural selection

What does the American Arctic include?

northern Canada, Alaska, and Greenland

If people had expanded westward on ice in the North Atlantic they would have needed:

oil lamps and techniques for hunting sea mammals - no evidence that the Paleoindians had these resources and did this

Radiocarbon age determinations are by definition generally less reliable the ________ they are

older

Three major ice caps of North America

one surviving in Greenland, the Cordilleran ice cap on the Rocky Mountain Chain, and the Great Laurentian Ice cap of Northeastern Canada

Was the dog domesticated twice, once in the Americas and once in Eurasia, or only once?

only once

Was the horse domesticated twice, once in the Americas and once in Eurasia, or only once?

only once

When did dorset emerge?

orset emerged around 500 BCE after a cold spell drastically shrank Pre-Dorset populations. Dorset people reoccupied areas across Canada and Greenland that had been abandoned in the face of colder climate. Their expansion coincided with a climatic improvement and their adaptation was more sea-oriented than the earlier Pre-Dorset one

new tools in the mesoamerica

oval metates, specialized grinding stones for processing maize and other seed plants, and prismatic obsidian blades, straight-edged and razor-sharp blades whose manufacture required great skill and which would remain in production until the Spanish conquest

Which of the following is NOT a topic of study included in archaeology?

paleontology

remains preserved in the shell middens show:

people were eating small mammals, birds, fish, and starchy seeds

semantic

pertaining to meaning in the language

Archaeological evidence of permanent habitation by Northern Arctic peoples during Period 3 is represented by _______________________, generally located near interior forests along migration routes of caribou.

pithouses

What accounts for the presence of dogs in archaeological sites and historically, but not in the earliest sites in North America?

poor preservation in the earliest sites

Although originally thought to be absent during Archaic period, it is now clear that _____________________________ appeared before the traditionally-defined end of the Archaic period.

pottery

Which of the following represents a technological innovation that is not known to be part of the Dorset Culture?

pottery

susquehanna tradition peoples

preferred tough rhyolite to chert and cremated their dead before interment

emergent

produced by the bottom up formation of large, complex patterns from simple fundamental rules

fluted points

projectile points bearing long concave scars left by one or more flakes detached from the side

we can never ____________ hypothesis only ____________ them

prove, disprove

discovery of ________________ a century ago led to dating techniques that make it certain now that there was more than enough time for evolution to produce all known species past and present

radioactivity

What were flute points made out of?

rare high quality cherts

complex

refers to just that groups tools

culture

refers to the complete cultural package carried by any human group

cultural evolutionary process

remember tree example w the branches - the process of cultural evolution does involve the inheritance of acquired characteristics

All of the following are features of Paleoindian culture EXCEPT:

residence in large permanent settlements

pictograph

rock art made by painting

petroglyph

rock art made by pecking or engraving

Archaic hunters wore _____________ more often than moccasins, at least in the warmer parts of the Eastern Woodlands

sandals

what is science

science is a set of principles and procedures for the systematic development of theory, which involves the recognition and formulation of problems, the systematic collection of data through observation and experience, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses

Clovis Complex

shaft wrenches, burnishers, large prismatic blades, blade cores, and scrapers. Side and end scrapers were sometimes equipped with graver spurs. This allowed the same tool to be used for scraping hide or wood, engraving, and perforating

The large shell middens of the American Southeast are archaeologically attractive because _______________.

shell neutralizes soil acidity and promotes good preservation of organic remains

The Tehuacan project of the early 1960s

showed that Maize probably originated in the highlands of Mexico

Recent research has shown that all Native Americans descending from the first wave of migrants to the New World descended from one or a few ______________________ ancestors living in the ____________________ region

siberian male, Lake Baikal

Wilson points are very _________________ to Kirk points found in the southeast region of the US

similar - the oldest kirk points are a thousand years younger than the youngest wilson points

homolog

similar forms that share a common origin and may have similar functions

r-selected species

smaller fast reproducing species

what caused the ice sheets to spread out from the centers more rapidly than they melted at the margins? (during the ice age)

snowfall and cool climatic conditions

calibration

specifically radiocarbon date calibration. the use of tree rings and other materials of precisely known age to calibrate radiocarbon ago determinations to the modern calendar

Denali Complex

spread through Beringia and was nearly everywhere in Alaska, featured microblade technology -- did not spread father east than the Yukon Territory and did not spread southward through the interior

Competition within larger local populations led to increased _____________ ____________________. This would eventually lead to the emergence of social ranking in some places

status differentiation

ushki complex (tools)

stemmed bifacial points, bifacial knives, stone and ivory beads

Which of the following was the most prominent technological feature of Arctic Stage 4, which occurred between 1200 (+/- 400) BCE - 600 (+/-500)CE?

stone lamps

In a hypothetical situation involving a mobile foraging group, the group decides that the resources that they need to survive are more abundant in a part of their annual territory that they had visited only ocassionally, for a short period of time. They decide to move to this area for an extended period of time, but eventually return to the original area of their territory after a few years. This pattern of movement can be described as _____________________________.

territorial mobility

Dental Evidence Indicated

that Native American populations arose as the result of three waves of migration (were not very different than one another and may have been very small)

Stage 1 development in the Arctic, which stretches from 15,000 - 5,000 BCE, can BEST be described as the stage _______________________.

that provides the earliest indisputable archaeological evidence for people in the Arctic

This course covers the ancient Native American cultures throughout:

the Americas from the Arctic to Mesoamerica

Fox and Caribou still cross on the ice via ________________________________________

the Diomedes Islands

Which of the following is NOT a standard of evidence needed to validate a claim that a site is "pre-Clovis"?

the analysis of the site was widely publicized only in newspapers, magazines, or online sites

Which of the following best describes the small number of skeletons that have been recovered from the Paleoindian period in North and South America?

their skeletal features and their DNA assays are consistent with Siberian origins.

Regarding the domestication of dogs, which of the following statements is NOT true?

they were intentionally domesticated by humans for the sole purpose of hunting

Bristlecone pine trees found in the southwestern North America can be _________________ of years olf

thousands

Which of the following plants is NOT a plant initially domesticated in North America or Mesoamerica?

tomato

Upper Paleolithic

tools made and used by homo sapiens sapiens

Radiocarbon years are often calibrated to true (calendar) years has the comparisons with dates from other methods, such as the dating of __________.

tree rings

Norse settlers in Greenland and Newfoundland were the first foreign people to make contact with the Inuits of the eastern Arctic.

true

Genetics use ________ kinds of DNA to trace ancestry

two - nuclear DNA (nucleus of every human cell) - mitochondrial DNA (inherited from our mothers only)

Large, crescent shaped knives used both historically and in ancient times by peoples of the Arctic are called ______________.

ullus

megafauna

very large animal species

obsidian

volcanic glass

Country by Country Breakdown of the total Square Miles in North America

look at google doc

Tracing descent through Y chromosomes tracks __________ lines of heritage

male

examples of game animals

mammoth, mastodon, bison, musk-ox, camel, horse, ground sloth, bear, pronghorn, mountain sheep, peccary, tapir, deer, rabbit, as well as various amphibians, reptiles, and birds

endogamy

marriage within the local group, contrasting with exogamy

how did these first Americans spread southward through the rest of the continent and beyond?

Fourteen thousand years ago the way was largely if not completely blocked by glacial ice and vast glacial lakes. One possibility is that they expanded southward along the West Coast, using boats where necessary to get around glaciers that reach all the way to the sea

K- selected species

large slow reproducing species

The rise of depressed landscapes after the removal of glacial weight is referred to as ____________ rebound

- "isostatic"

terminal archaic period

- 1700-700 BCE - replacement of maritime and related archaic adaptations by using the culture of the susquhanna tradition

The Pleistocene began to wane everywhere around ______________ years ago

- 21,000 -Ice sheets stagnated and melted back at their margins. Glaciated landscapes began to reemerge, often poorly drained but in some cases bearing soils that would eventually mature into rich farmland. The immense weight of glacial ice had depressed whole regions. Once relieved of that weight they rebounded, but in some cases not as fast as meltwater raised sea level. In those cases glacial lakes or ocean water temporarily inundated whole landscapes

what percentage of all Americans think that archaeology includes the study of dinosaurs?

- 93% - 80% of these people say they are only interested in archaeology because they think its the study of dinasaurs

Most advanced current technique for radiocarbon dating:

- Accelerator Madd Spectrometry (AMS) --this technique is expensive adn only a few labs can do it, one of them is at PSU University Park except it only allows for very small samples

Lehner site

- Arizona -kill site containing mammoth, tapir, bison, and horse remains

Thule Clever Gadgets

- Baleen-spring wolf killers: strips of baleen wound into tight springs and encased in frozen blubber, designed to spring open in the stomachs of wolves, killing them. - Gull hooks: hooks designed to catch greedy sea gulls. - Bird bolas: sets of strings with weights that could be thrown into flocks of birds, entangling them and bringing them down.

Dent Site

- Colorado - Clovis kill site

the Eastern Woodlands is one of the world's hearths of agriculture. Bruce Smith compiled a list of Eastern Woodlands Archaic domesticates (Smith 1989):

- Cucurbita texana (squash) - Cucurbita pepo (pumpkin/squash) - Iva annua (sumpweed/marshelder) - Helianthus annuus (sunflower) - Chenopodium barlandieri (goosefoot) - Polygonum erectum erect (knotweed) - Phalaris caroliniana (maygrass) - Hordeum pusillum (little barley)

Archaeologists tend to divide the Archaic into:

- Early - Middle - Late - Terminal Archaic period

What is known as the earliest stone burial mount in America?

- L'Anse Amour, Labrador North of Mexico -- face down burial of a twelve year old and an antler toggle head harpoon

Domebo site

- Oklahoma - mammoth kill site

The activities and behaviors that archaeologists have inferred from the evidence to reconstruct Desert Archaic culture include:

- Seasonal gathering Intense exploitation of small seeds - Special cooking techniques - Band organizations - Foraging widely when predictable resources were not available. - Collecting locally when predictable resources were available.

North American Physiography

- The land mass of North America is considerably less than that of Eurasia - their axes are north-south rather than east-west - their continent would harbor the animals, plants, and other resources needed for the evolution of complex societies

the extinctions around the end of the pleistocene were unprecedented in several ways:

- The numbers were large, out of proportion to the extinction rate over the previous 3 million years. - There was a differential loss of large animals over medium-sized and small ones. - The extinctions were nearly simultaneous and over a short time span. - Radical climate changes have occurred in the more distant past without leading to major extinctions.

ten key features of Paleoindian adaptation (by Brian Hayden)

1. Bands were characterized by high mobility and nonpermanent habitations. 2. Impermanent use of camps to which they did not often return led to little midden (trash) accumulation. 3. People traveled light and consequently maintained relatively simple technology. 4. Hunters tended to focus on a limited resource base of medium and large game (K-selected species), although not exclusively. 5. Paleoindians maintained a low population density with marginal habitats unpopulated. 6. They maintained egalitarian social organizations in which status differences were determined by age, sex, and personal characteristics alone. 7. There was widespread exchange of high-grade exotic lithic materials. 8. Paleoindians did little environmental modification. 9. Overlapping connubia covered relatively large band ranges. 10. There was little food storage.

Paleoindians had a standard set of adaptive characteristics:

1. High mobility and nonpermanent habitations. 2. Little midden accumulation. 3. Relatively simple technology. 4. Limited resource base of medium and large game. 5. Low population density with marginal habitats unpopulated. 6. Egalitarian social organizations. 7. Exchange of high-grade exotic lithic materials. 8. Little environmental modification. 9. Relatively large band ranges. 10. Little food storage.

Lesson 9 Main Points

1. Large mammals disappeared from North America at the end of the Pleistocene in an unusual mass extinction. 2. Species that survived tended to be smaller and faster reproducers. 3. Certain plants depended upon animal species for seed dispersal. 4. Many archaeologists believe that overkill by humans was responsible for the extinctions. 5. Some archaeologists argue forcefully against the overkill hypothesis. 6. Resolution of the overkill debate will depend upon both new empirical evidence and better computer modeling. 7. Assessing the impact of human hunters on animal populations depends upon a good understanding of their technological capabilities.

Lesson 8 Main Points

1. Late Paleoindian social organization remained that of simple band societies. 2. The skeletal remains of Paleoindians do not closely resemble modern American Indians. 3. Technologies diverged as Paleoindians began to adapt to regional specializations. 4. Most key Late Paleoindian sites have been found on or near the Great Plains 5. Population growth prompted expansion into marginal environments. 6. Small band societies are vulnerable to collapse and random survivorship. 7. Paleoindian bands could not form permanent larger societies because of their adaptations

Lesson 11 Main Points

1. Projectile point styles proliferated and average sizes generally decreased through the course of the Archaic periods. 2. Northeastern Archaic peoples adapted to interior forests and those living along the coast became productive marine hunters. 3. Large shell middens having exceptional preservation qualities accumulated at many Southeastern Archaic sites. 4. Archaic hunters may have worn fiber sandals more often than leather moccasins. 5. The first pottery was made in the Southeast by around 2500 BCE. 6. The first earthworks were built near the lower Mississippi River around 3400 BCE. 7. The Southwestern Archaic set the stage for later agricultural communities. 8. The Great Basin Archaic was a challenging adaptation that survived into the nineteenth century.

Characteristics that replaced the Paleoindian adaptive characteristics:

1. Seasonal sedentism and scheduling. 2. Midden accumulation due to specialization in resource-rich areas. 3. Relatively complex technology with ground-stone tools, fishing equipment, and food boiling. Tool specialization in some areas. 4. Resource diversification to more and smaller game. 5. Increased population density with expansion into marginal areas. 6. Competition and ranking in social organizations. 7. Use of local lithic materials. 8. Modification of environment through forest burning. 9. Reduced band ranges and loss of connubia. 10. Increased importance of food storage

Lesson 10 Main Points

1. The Archaic concept was created to describe adaptations to post-Pleistocene environments. 2. North American environments changed dramatically during the early Holocene. 3. Key features of emerging adaptation resulted from more stable environments and a basic human drive for more complexity.

Lesson 5 Main Points

1. The Upper Paleolithic cultures of Eurasia gave rise to the people who first spread into North America. 2. The Gravettian was an Upper Paleolithic culture that spread eastward into Siberia. 3. Siberian archaeological complexes spread into North America. 4. Dogs were domesticated in Siberia and accompanied the first Americans.

seven warning signs of bogus science

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. 2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. 3. The scientific effect involved is at the very limit of detection. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. 4. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. 5. The discoverer has worked in isolation. 6. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

Lesson 4 Main Points

1. The evolution of modern humans took place during the Pleistocene epoch. 2. Geological time sets the age of the earth at about 4.6 billion years and human history occupies only a tiny portion at its end. 3. Archaeological time is usually measured by radiocarbon dating and calendars. 4. Biologically modern humans evolved by 200,000 years ago in Africa and their descendants eventually migrated to North America. 5. The Pleistocene was characterized by widespread continental glaciation. 6. A temporary return to ice age conditions known as the Younger Dryas created major adaptational problems for early hunter-gatherers.

Lesson 3 Main points

1. The geographic scope of this course extends from the Arctic to Central America. 2. Canada is the largest modern country in North America. 3. Mesoamerica extends southward from Mexico to El Salvador in Central America. 4. Anthropologists define societies in terms of five types of increasing size and complexity. 5. Bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states, and empires all existed in North America in the millennia before Columbus.

three founding populations according to dental evidence

1. early one that was ancestral to most North and South American Indians (early migration from the Lena Valley around 15000 BP involved the ancestors of most later Native Americans) 2. a second one that was ancestral to historic Na-Dene-speaking Indians (ancestors of Athapaskans and speakers of other Na-Dene languages came from the Aldan River region around 6000 BP) 3. third Aleut-Eskimo one (Turner II 1989) (ancestors of Eskimos (Inuits) and Aleuts came from the Amur River Basin around 4000 BP)

key late paleoindian sites

1. folsom site in northeastern mexico, folsom point, kill site 2. plainview kill site in texas, unfluted plano points 3. Agate basin site in eastern wyoming, Agate basin and Hell gap points 4. Casper Site in central wyoming is a kill site, contains brison bones and hell gap points 5. olsen chubbuck site in southeastern colorado, kill site for bison

four principles of biological evolution

1. variability-- members of the same breeding population vary in outward appearance and genetically. Among animals identical twins are often regarded as exceptions, although even these may exhibit very minor variation. 2. heritability-- A large fraction of variability is inherited by any organism from its parents. Sexual reproduction leads to genetic recombinations that make even siblings somewhat different from each other. Modern genetics shows conclusively that offspring do not inherit characteristics that are not genetically coded from their parents. In other words, characteristics that are acquired during the parents lifetimes are not passed on. 3. evolutionary potential--All populations produce more offspring than necessary for simple population replacement. This was formerly true of even those populations (species) that dwindled to extinction because of changing circumstances in their environments. 4. differential survivorship-- Individuals that are less well adapted to the environments in which they live will reproduce less successfully than those that are better adapted.

The Pleistocene "ice age" began _______ million years ago

1.8

The return to cold Pleistocene conditions known as the Younger Dryas lasted _________________________ years ago

13,000-11,570 - this episode may have forced the ancestors of the Paleoindians southward along an interior route between ice sheets

How many meters/ ft is the British Columbia coast below current sea level today?

153 meters/ 500 ft - sea level rose very rapidly at the end of the Pleistocene, 5cm (2 in) per year - BUT even more rapid isostatic rebound of the earth's crust caused the shelf to first be elevated more above sea level then was submerged again as eustatic sea level rise caught up

How many would have been in South America?

178000

due to mutation rates, the small ancestral population probably lived about ________________ years ago

20,000 - although we should expect some substantial amount of time to have passed before the descendants of the ancestral males multiplies and drifted eastward

North America comprises over _____ million square kilometers of land, _______ of earth's surface

24, 16.3%

Assuming a very general worldwide density of hunter-gathers of only one person for every 100 square kilometers 9,000 years ago, about how many people were there in North America by that time? (Note: You will need this number to answer question 4, so be sure you are confident in your answer.)

243,000

As a branch of anthropology, archaeology covers humans throughout their history as a species. While humans and their hominin ancestors have been on the earth for millennia, this is only a fraction of the age of the earth, which is about __________ years old.

4.6 billion

In practical terms, how far back in time is radiocarbon dating useful?

40,000 years

Younger Dryas

A return to the Ice Age conditions that occurred 12,900-11,700

Fossil and genetic evidence both indicate that modern humans, Homo sapiens, evolved from earlier forms soon after 200,000 years ago in ________

Africa

Lower sea level exposed an isthmus as much as 1400 km (900 mi) wide 70,000-40,000 years ago and again 25,000-14,000 years ago. It was during the latter exposure that people probably first entered ____________________ (Hopkins 1982).

America

Based on genetic evidence from both Y-chromosome and mtDNA haplogroups, the most likely origin of North American Indian populations is ___________________.

Central and Northeast Asia

South American crops generally did not spread to North America until the coming of European explorers. Potatoes, tomatoes, manioc, guava, and papaya were all South American domesticates that never reached ______________________ until after 1492

North America - exception: tobacco bc it spread early to most regions

The Paucity of Evidence

Destructive natural processes guarantee that archaeological evidence will be lost over time, so older evidence will always be in shorter supply than more recent evidence. The first Americans were small in number and left only the faint traces of mobile hunter-gatherers. These circumstances make finding the evidence for the peopling of North America difficult at best

attractiveness of the overkill hypothesis

Explains nearly simultaneous extinctions from Alaska to Patagonia. Explains why there are no extinctions at the same time on islands or other continents (although earlier or later extinctions in other places occurred when humans first arrived there too). Explains why geographically widespread but environmentally unspecialized species went extinct. Explains why nearly all mammals of less than 10 kg (22 lbs) survived. Explains why virtually all plants survived. Explains why extinctions could have occurred while habitat was actually expanding rather than contracting. Explains why mass extinctions did not occur during previous deglaciation events. Explains why an extinction episode more severe than any other over the previous 65 million years could have occurred over such a short time

Animal Domestication in North America

In order for a mammal to be domesticated, a few key characteristics are necessary. These include mammals that: 1. weighed more than 45 kg (100 lbs), 2. had appropriate diets, 3. grew quickly to adulthood, 4. would breed in captivity, 5. had tractable dispositions, 6. were not subject to fits of panic, 7. were comfortable in herds

Memes

Innovations, ideas, and concepts are sometimes referred to as "memes." Thus memes are to cultural evolution what genes are to biological evolution. However, memes are much harder to define and describe, and the concept is useful mainly as a metaphor—but don't confuse this with the memes that you share via social media!

Now the hardest question. If the population of North America that you determined was the answer to Question 1 started with only 100 people, but doubled every generation of 20 years, how many years would it have taken to get to the Question 1 size?

Less than 250 years.

______________ is a site that has produced radiocarbon dates supporting an early peopling of the Americas by a maritime route southward along the Pacific Coast.

Monte Verde

The evidence from _________________________ which some archaeologists estimate is nearly 12, 500 years old, suggest the early maritime- adapted people might have spread quickly down the Ice Age Pacific Coast

Monte Verde, Chili -left no to little archaeological evidence

Many archaeologists now argue that migration along the __________________________ is a more likely scenario than expansion through an interior ice-free route (Ames and Maschner 1999:63). Much of the western coastline was deglaciated by 15-16,000 years ago (13-12,000 BC), and driftwood would have supplied fuel for heat

Pacific Coast

Modern humans are creatures of the ______________________ epoch, known popularly as the Ice Age. Along with the Holocene, or Recent, its three stages comprise the Quaternary period, which began 1.8 million years ago. The Quaternary in turn has been just the last in a long series of periods making up the third of three great eons of geological time since the origins of the earth 4.6 billion years ago.

Pleistocene

As discussed in your textbook and course lessons, which of the following is NOT one of the goals of modern archaeology?

Preservation of modern cultural identities

Researchers have discovered that plants have one or another of two different metabolic pathways and that the uptake of carbon isotopes is slightly different as a result.

Reported radiocarbon dates now adjust for this difference through standard calibration. Some animal specimens such as ivory, blubber, and shell have radiocarbon isotopic proportions that are different from standard wood or bone specimens. Reported radiocarbon dates on these materials are now also adjusted according.

Which of the following is NOT a line of widely-accepted evidence used to determine the origins of the original settlers of the Americas?

Similarities between Solutrean and Clovis tools.

Subarctic peoples lived primarily in:

Small, thinly scattered, linked bands

Where were the effects of general warming and drying strongly felt in?

The Desert West - vast lakes withered to cracked playas and species had to go to higher altitudes to survive

Which of the following is NOT a widely accepted explanation of the extinction of North American megafauna?

They were driven to extinction after an asteroid struck the earth approximately 13,000 years ago.

population decline of late paleoindian and rebound

To the extent that their populations grew Late Paleoindians probably expanded into environments that they had previously not exploited very much. Increasing familiarity with regional resources and stabilization of post-Pleistocene environments would also have facilitated such an expansion

Where have Albert Goodyear and colleagues been excavating for two decades?

Topper SC - near the town of Martin in Allendale County

The Algonquians of the Eastern Subarctic relied on _______________________ as the main sources of food resources.

caribou hunting and fishing

haplogroup

a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor with a single nucleotide polymorphism mutation

YA

Years Ago

The ________________ was characterized by 1200-year long return of cold conditions at the end of the Pleistocene.

Younger Dryas

The National Academy of Science defines scientific theory

a "well- substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses"

bruin

a chipped stone tool made from a blade and used to chisel bone, antler and ivory

kayak

a closed one person skin boat used by arctic sea hunters

culture

a coherent way of life shaped by members of a population that often speak the same languaged

tepee

a conical house covered by bark, matts, or hides

maunder minimum

a cool period that lasted approximately 1430- 1850 CE

BCE

a date before the common era

CE

a date in the common common era

labret

a decorative object designed to be won in or near a pierced lip

stratum (strata)

a depositional layer in an archaeological site, often one of several strata, the oldest at the bottom and the youngest at the top

complex

a distinctive set of cultural materials that typically occur together in excavated assemblages

biface

a flat chipped stone tool having two faces

chert

a glassy cryptocrystaline stone material that is well suited for making chipped stone tools

bannerstone

a ground stone artifact usually having a cylindrical hole for the insertion of a wood shaft that provides balance to a spear thrower

By _________________ the ancestors of Native American Indians had established permanent population in the northwestern most corner of North America, on the verge of expanding into the remainder of the continent.

aroung 12,000 BCE

niche

as used in ecology, the specific part of an environment to which an organism is adapted

pseudoscience

assertions made in the name of science that violate the scientific method -- often include deception, dishonesty or unfair practices and are advanced for nonscientific reasons that are not disclosed

early mesoamerican domesticates

avocados, chiles, squash, maize, lowland fruits (white sapote and black sapote), corn

bone tools

awls and needles (tailored hide clothing), bone fishhooks, projectile points, harpoon points, and many other tools for hunting

The first Americans were:

bands of people living in what is now Alaska

This course describes human societies in terms of five categories of increasing size and complexity

bands--> tribes--> chiefdoms--> states--> empires each of these is in order of increasing size

empirical

based on evidence adn observation

BP

before present

When was the Pacific Rim of North America open for migrants moving along the coast?

between 13,500 and 9500 years ago - this is not early enough to account for all current claims for Pre-Clovis sites in North and South America

The appearance and widespread use of __________________, allowed the Subarctic Algonquian peoples to move south, into the Eastern Woodlands.

bow and arrow

Paleoindians were big ____________ hunters

game -- also gathered plant food, fished, and took smaller game animals

nonscientific theory does not....

generate testable hypotheses

___________________________ indicates that descendants of the same individual also drifted westward, and that his ___________________ can be found as far west as modern England

genetic evidence, genetic traits

mitochondrial DNA

genetic material inherited by all animals from their mothers

semilunar

having the shape of a half moon

isostatic

having to do with the rise and fall of the landscape due to the presence or absence of heavy sheets of glacial ice

There are only a few Paleoindian sites that contain clear evidence that _____________________ successfully killed large Pleistocene mammals.

human hunters

All of the following are fundamental principles of biological evolution EXCEPT that ___________________.

information can be transmitted between non-biologically related individuals

biological evolution does not require or imply ___________________.

intent - ex. plant species have evolved unintentionally

However, human ______________________ and ________________________ often lead to rapid cultural adaptations that allow people to adjust to and even exploit changing circumstances that would doom a species that could adjust only through biological evolution alone.

intentionality, innovation ex. the native americans discovered the productivity of a certain plant by careful tending was most likely only for short term survival but this in turn led to the discovery of agriculture

hermatite

iron oxide, a bright red naturally occurring mineral

For our understanding of cultural evolution, the archaeology of Native North America is important because:

it reveals that civilization arose independently more than once.

What feature of Clovis archaeological material makes it easily distinguishable from most other Paleoindian material?

its highly distinctive fluted projectile points

In comparison to the the tools used by Neanderthals and other earlier hominins, the Homo sapiens Upper Paleolithic tool kit was different because ___________.

its tools required the use of both language and demonstration to learn to manufacture

lanceolate

lance shaped, usually applied to projectile points lacking notches or stems

what formed with the lowering of sea levels during the ice age?

land bridges

The half life for any radioactive isotope is :

the time it takes for any quantity of it it to decay by half

beringia

the broad Pleistocene isthmus joining Alaska and Siberia, today largely under water

ecological entrhopology

the combination fo biological evolution, cultural evolution and environment

anthropocene

the current epoch, which followed the holocene with the onset of climatic changes caused by human activity, especially the generation of the greenhouse gases

pseudoarchaeology

the description of the past that claims to be based on fact but is actually fictional or a deliberate distortion of observations for some nonscientific purpose

Which was domesticated first, the horse or the dog?

the dog

glottochronology

the estimation of the timing of the breakup of related languages by measurement of changes in core vocabulary

collecting

the gathering of edible species that involves no residential relocation

holocene

the geological epoch following the Pleistocene which began 11,700 years ago and continued until the onset of the Anthropocene

pleistocene

the geological epoch lasting from 1.8 million to 11,600 years ago, popularly known as the Ice Age

quarternary

the geological period containing the Pleistocene, Holocene, and Anthropocene epochs

cross dating

the inferential dating of a deposit at one site to the age of a similar deposit at another site by means of shared artifact types

territorial mobility

the long term shifting of a groups range due to the cumulative shifting of its constituent parts

cultivation

the protection of a plant species to ensure its reproduction, the species may be either wild or domesticated

residential mobility

the relocation of the local band within a known territory

archaeology

the scientific study of historic or prehistoric peoples by analysis of their material remains

band

the smallest human society, characterized by egalitarian relationships and typically composed of fewer than 100 peopl

demography

the study of the characteristics of a human population in terms of growth, decline, and structure

ecology

the study of the interrelationship of organisms and their enironmen t

epistemology

the study of the limitations of knowledge

logistical mobility

the temporary dispatch of task groups to specific field camps, usually for purposes of specialized hunting, fishing, or gathering activities

Which of the following is the best description of "debitage"?

waste flakes and chips from the manufacture of chert tools

debitage

waste flakes and chips from the manufacture of stone tools

But how do we know the age of the rocks that make up the Earth?

we can track the decay of particular types of radioactive isotopes. Key isotopes (radioactive variants) of certain elements decay through a few well-defined series until they produce stable elements

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of an animal that is desirable for a candidate for domestication?

weigh less than 35 kg (~77 pounds)