Arch 210
Edward Tylor (1871)
Animism---Polytheism----monotheism
Ecological/Evolutionary approach
-Assumes that cultural and social change results from complex environmental factors. -This theory is widely used in to provide information on ancient lifestyles. -This theory focuses on interactions between ancient societies and their environment. -This focuses on communal responses to stress in the relationship to human societies and their environments.
The tourist, collector and archaeologist
- Many people believe that archaeologists live in mysterious parts of the world with "missing links" and and strange territories. -Many archaeological sites have been closed to the risk of damage by tourists -Removing an artifact from it's context robs us of any knowledge about that site. -Modern archaeology is about the preservation of humanities past through the material record
Troy and Mycenae
-A German businessman Heinrich Schliemann wanted to prove that Homer's The odyssey and The Iliad were true. -He discovered many cities superimposed on each other, and he also found 8,000 gold ornaments and artifacts. -He claimed to have found Homeric troy but a British consul Frank Calvert had discovered it before him. -At Mycenae he discovered fifteen graves with gold death masks, weapons, and jewelry which went back to 1190 b.c.
The Beginnings of Archaeology
-A Greek scholar Hesiod believed there had been five ages the first being the Gold age and the last age being the war age. (It went from easy to miserable). -The wealthy people during the Renaissance followed scholars and they collected artifacts from Classical lands. - King Charles III in 1798 had a Spanish engineer Joaquin de Alcubierre to excavate Herculaneum from underground using hundreds of men and prisoners. -Even the barrows of Stonehenge were taken over by the antiquarians for the buried artifacts. -Early archaeology was just a glorified treasure hunt and even a sport.
Why does archaeology matter?
-Archaeology does exercise a curious fascination about it. -Grotto de Chauvet was visited between 31,000 to 24,000 years ago. -Few archaeological discoveries generate excitement. -Many discoveries such as Otzi are very interesting.
Herbert Spencer
"Survival of the fittest"; Social Darwinism between societies and cultures
Edward Tylor's definition of culture
"that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other habits acquired by man as a member of society."
Archaeological theory today and tomorrow
- - -
Asia Scrolls and shoulder blades
-Aurel Stein was the first european to visit the cave of a thousand buddhas. -He smuggled out seven cases of scrolls on ponies for the British Museum. -Edward Morse excavated a shell mound in Tokyo, which had coral colored pottery. -In 1860 a french zoologist found Angkor Wat.
African Phoenicians?
-Charles Darwin stated that Africa was the cradle of human kind. -Traces of ancient life were found in cave paintings by nineteenth century explorers. -Karl Mauch claimed that the Great Zimbabwe was built by Phoenicians. -In 1929, Gertrude Thompson dated Chinese porcelain and determined it was the work of Africans
Discovery King Tut's Tomb
-Discovered in 1922 after six years of waiting by Lord George Carnarvon and Howard Carter -Contained inlaid wood chests, canopic jars, and chariots in the tomb -The king had golden beads, stools, and chairs that displayed his wealth -Twenty-four hour guard was installed to protect from thieves -Lord Carnarvon died after his visit causing the "pharaoh's curse" tale
Eruption at Akrotiri, Greece
-Discovered in 1967 when farmers couldn't plow their fields because of boulder piles. -The town was buried 3,500 years ago under a massive pile of volcanic ash and pumice. -Preserved detailed frescoes that have scenes of animals, landscapes, religion, military, and plants. -Many fled when the earthquakes in the region began.
Diffusionism: How did civilization spread
-Early archaeologists assumed that major human inventions originated one place -very complex culture changes made over long periods on led to belief in diffusionism -diffusion theories were popular in the twentieth century.
The Assyrians and Sumerians
-Ernest Sanzac found that the Assyrians were literate before the Egyptians. -Gertrude Bell founded the Iraq museum after World War 1. -While overseeing excavations Austen Layard acted like a tribal chieftain. -Layard discovered a royal library at Ninevah that was a foot deep in clay tablets.
Experimental Archaeology
-Experiments in prehistoric lifestyle have been very popular. -Archaeologists use innovative projects to understand past- such as sailing on rafts across the ocean. -Louis Leakey spent many years as a stone toolmaker. -Many recent experimenters have tried to replicate wear on ancient stone tools.
The Living past
-Few pre-industrial societies still enjoy their traditional lifestyles. -The Tasmanians disappeared within seventy years of white settlement. -Western exploration has led to the extinction of many traditional societies. -Indigenous societies of the Amazon are facing extinction from mining and deforestation.
The origins and spread of modern humans
-Fossil and genetic evidence suggests that humans evolved in eastern or southern Africa. -During the last millennia of the Ice Age humans crossed into the New World from the Old World. -The pacific islands were the last to be inhabited due to navigation and technology advances. -Humans are the only branch of the hominin family tree surviving today.
Obsidian Hydration
-Freshly exposed obsidian absorbs water which is invisible to the human eye -The hydration layer can be used to develop absolute and relative chronologies. -Nothing is known on temperature and chemical changes of soil on hydrations.
The origins of food production
-In 10,000 b.c. hunter gatherers started to cultivate wild cereal grasses and barley -cultivations of indigenous plants and cereals began in the Americas by 4000 b.c. -New economies sprang up in the Nile Valley, parts of Northern Europe. -Some independent centers such as India and Southeast Asia mave have domesticated animals.
Deciphering Hopewell
-It is named after a farm in Ohio and flourished from about 200 b.c. to 400 Ad. -Hopewell is known for it's flamboyant burial customs and complex trade networks over enormous areas. -The Hopewell people lived in small communities of one or two extended families. -Regions in the Illinois and Mississippi river valleys were major centers of development for the Hopewell people.
Electronic Spin Resonance
-It measures electrons that are trapped inside bone or shells -It is also very non destructive and works with tooth enamel -This is very similar to thermoluminescence dating -Esr has been used to date neanderthal teeth to 100,000 years ago
Maya Civilization
-John Stevens and Fred Catherwood had found 44 mayan sites on their expedition -At Palenque they looked for things parallel to Egyptians like human figures -They also discovered many famous sites including Chichen Itza and Uxmal. -Catherwood's archaeological illustrations were some of the finest documenting the Maya.
Who needs and owns the past?
-Many oral histories contain mixtures of facts and and parables to communicate political and moral views. -Most human societies transmitted history and knowledge orally. -Many societies do acknowledge the cultural change in the past. -In many societies the ancestors are the guardians of the land and past present and future of it.
Ancient Pacific Navigation
-Many scholars assumed that canoes accidentally blown offshore colonized the islands. -A small boat sailor David Lewis learned how to make passages with the aid of the sun, moon, and stars. -Replicas of canoes helped an experiment to sail back and forth to Tahiti and Hawaii. -The crews were made up of native islanders and a Hawaiian crew.
Historical Materialist Approaches
-Postprocessual archaeology that emphasized culture processes over people and individuals. -Culture change has been conditioned by materialism -Human existence is in constant negotiation with one another
Pueblo Culture
1st American corn growers. They lived in adobe houses (dried mud) and villages of cubicle shaped adobe houses, stacked one on top the other and often beneath cliffs. They also had elaborate irrigation systems to draw water away from the rivers to grow corn.
Maya Metates
-Present day Maya communities still use stone grinders and pounders. -Hayden worked with a fifty year old metate who demonstrated the entire process. -Stone tools took four to five and a half days to make. -Time studies showed that it took two and a half days to make a metate.
The Kung San
-San camps are developed their layouts through conscious acts such as building a shelter. -Most of the food preparation took place in family areas not communal spaces. -Most activities in the camps were related to individual families. -Some activity areas were located in convenient places such as under a tree.
Archaeology as a political tool
-The Sumerians used it in a epic which stated history began with them. -Archaeological evidence is used as both a scientific and literary enterprise. -Construction of real or fictional monuments has been used to sway public opinion. -The Nazis used archaeology to prove the superiority of the Aryan race in Europe during World War II
European Expansion
-The final chapter of human expansion that began outward from Europe in 1430. -The west has come into contact with all manners of human societies in the world. -The interconnected world is now referred to as a nascent system connecting us politically and economically.
The origin of states
-The first highly centralized societies were in Egypt and in Mesopotamia. -Many of them were bureaucracies and had a supreme ruler as the head. -They lived in very large communities with a social order where everyone conformed. -Early states were followed by the larger and more imperial civilizations.
The Lords of Sican Peru
-The lords were buried with lots of elaborate grave goods including gold and copper. -One tomb called the East Tomb took six months to excavate and 12.2 tons of grave goods. -One lord had fifteen bundles of unfinished bronze tools and 165 pounds of beads. -One man was mummified and dressed in regalia that included gold gloves and a golden mask.
The James town Settlement
-The settlement was abandoned when the capital moved to Williamsburg in 1699 -The excavation was a large puzzle of artifacts, structures and historical records -They also found settler burials and had an insight to a settler who died of a gunshot wound -As tobacco started growing in the interior Jamestown became less important
Cognitive processual archeology
-This covers all of the human past but it can be divided into two areas of concern. -This type of archaeology studies the ancient culture and the ancient mind. -This covers the whole spectrum of human behavior specifically religion and belief. -Experts who study this can give insights to what ancient people thought.
Middle Range Theory and the Archaeological record
-This theory comprises methods and theories and ideas that can be applied to anywhere in the world. -This theory provides conceptual tools for explaining artifact patternings and other phenomena. -This theory is used to understand behavior and material remains as well as patterning and structural properties of the archaeological record.
A.E. Douglass (1929)
-developed dendrochronology (tree-ring dating)
Genetics and DNA
-mtDNA changes faster than nuclear DNA. -Humans carry the history of their life in their genes. -Studies of human mtDNA has revealed that their is little variation across the globe. -DNA can be extracted from teeth, bone, and plant remains.
luminesence dating
-optical stimulated luminescence dating is used on sediments like sand. -thermo luminescence is used on baked clays or one heated and burnt stone. -it has been used in Israel to date neanderthal graves to more than 40,000 years ago.. -the dating methods are based on that every material on earth receives low levels of radiation.
Ethnographic Analogy
-refers to the logic of using customs from historical sources to inspire or justify a writer's reconstruction of a way of life -Hunter gathers such as the San, Aborigines or others could be argued as living representatives of stone-using hunter gathers -They use people who lived in earlier times to compare them with living relatives (i.e. 20,000 year old eskimo campsite vs. living relative)
The Ancient Egyptians
-the Romans and Greeks considered them as a fountain of wisdom and health knowledge. -Jean Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822 after Napoleon found the Rosetta Stone in 1798. -Egyptian antiques fueled a illegal black market trade which payed enormous prices for the exotic antiques. -A circus performer named Giovanni Belzoni found Seti I's tomb, he also dug out the entrance to Abu simal -John Wilkinson spent ten years recording hieroglyphs, and also wrote a account of daily lives of Ancient Egyptians.
Carbon 14 half life
5730 years
argon-argon dating
A high-precision method for estimating the relative quantities of argon-39 and argon-40 gas; used to date volcanic ashes that are between 500,000 and several million years old
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS)
A method of radiocarbon dating that counts the proportion of carbon isotopes directly (rather than using the indirect Geiger counter method), thereby dramatically reducing the quantity of datable material required. It counts carbon 14 and 12.
3-3.5 million years ago
Afarensis-Lucy (Hadar), Laetoli
Differential Preservation
Always dry and wet that are anaerobic are the best condition for things to be preserved in.
Gordon Willey (1953)
Anthropologist who did projects in the Viru valley of Peru. Studied the settlement patterns Viru valley.
Armchair Anthropology
Anthropology through the study of secondhand reports from people such as travelers and missionaries.
radiocarbon dating
Archaeologists use this test to determine the date/age of organic artifacts. The maximum it can date is 50,000 years.
Epistemology
BRANCH OF PHILOSOPHY THAT EXAMINES THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE
Ruth Tringham
Cal professor & Feminist, told Professor Lightfoot that past people are not just faceless blobs (Agency in Arch. / Emic) Feminist Approaches - 1) Bias correction - almost all arch. has been focused on men (the great hunters). 2) Discrimination - we need to recognize this within the field. 3) How to define sex and gender in past - What it is to be a social person extends to a variety of gender roles.
Uranium can date
Calcium carbonate build up
Alfred Wallace
Came up with the idea of natural selection to explain evolution, joint published with Darwin (1854)
1,000 years ago
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Medieval Europe
24,000-31,000 years ago
Chauvet Cave, France
Pecos Classification
Classification of Southwest populations based on developmental changes in architecture, pottery, and material culture.
Christian Thomsen (1816)
Divided history into Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages
Post-Processual Archaeology
Focuses on humanistic approaches and rejects scientific objectivity; concerned with interpreting the past, more than with testing hypotheses. Change arise largely from interactions between individuals operating within a symbolic and/or competitive system.
Mr. Conyers elephants
Found elephant remains in cave thought that belonged to Romans, after finding more things it was early humans in Britain (1690)
A.V. Kidder (1927)
Founder of Anthropological Archaeology. Established the Pecos Classification system.
Ecofacts
Natural remains affected by people
Basketmaker Culture
No pottery, only woven baskets Lived in caves and cliff recesses for natural protection
12,000 years ago
Paleoindians in North America-Lindenmier
potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating
Radiometric technique using the decay of 40K to 40Ar in potassium-bearing rocks; estimates the age of sediments in which fossils are found.
A.L. Kroeber (1916)
Seriation of Zuni ceramics
Father MacEnery
Stalagmite excavations in Devon, England (1824-29)
Processual Archaeology
Stresses dynamic relationship between social and economic aspects of culture, and the environment as the basis for understanding the processes of culture change. Archaeology becomes independent from anthropology -- explanation over description
Historical Particularism
The idea, attributed to Franz Boas, that cultures develop in specific ways because of their unique histories.
Dendrochronology
The process of counting tree rings to determine the age of a tree. U.S.A. trees 9,000 years, Europe trees 12,593 years
Ethnoarchaeology
The study of contemporary peoples to determine how human behavior is translated into the archaeological record.
Franz Boas
father of modern American anthropology; argued for cultural relativism and historical particularism
James Hutton
Theory of the Earth (1784)
Charles Lyell
Uniformitarianism- "The present is the key to the past" and Principles of geology (1830-33)
Features
a non-portable artifact that was made by people
fission track dating
a radiometric dating technique based on analyses of the damage trails, or tracks, left by fission fragments in certain uranium-bearing minerals and glasses.
Thorium and Protactinium are
insoluble in water
Lewis Binford
american archeologist known as the leader of the "new archeology" movement of being able to understand past cultures through their remains, through "how and why"
Archbishop James Ussher
calculated age of earth using Old Testament and genealogies
Willard Libby
developed radiocarbon dating in the late 1940's
Julian Steward (1955)
developed the concept and method of cultural ecology; cultures interact with each other and the environment
Carbon dating is used for
organic materials
Artifacts
portable objects that were phyiscally modified by people
Jens Worsaae (1855)
shell midden stratigraphy stone/pine ---> bronze/oak----> iron/beech
Louis Henry Morgan (1877)
social evolution: savagery (fire,pottery, bow) > barbarism (domesticated animals, agriculture, and metalworking)> civilization (alphabet, writing)
William "Strata" Smith
stratigraphy of marine fossils (Early 1800's)
Huikoehane
studying the remains of work
material culture
that sector of our physical environment that we modify through cultural determined behavior
Substinence
the action or fact of maintaining or supporting oneself at a minimum level
28,000 years ago
the end of Neanderthals/Archaic Homo Sapiens
Provenience
the identifying of material culture in a 3-D space
context
the place where an artifact is found
cultural relativism
the practice of judging a culture by its own standards
Experimental Archaeology
the study of past behavioral processes through experimental reconstruction under carefully controlled scientific conditions
Matrix
the surrounding material
Empiricism
the view that knowledge originates in experience and that science should, therefore, rely on observation and experimentation
cultural landscape
the world what they lived in and how they saw it
Meg Conkey
with Ruth Tringam, Post Processual Archaeologists Sex is where you have male or femal biologically defined. Gender is socially constructed - what it takes to be a social person, male or female. Gender is culturally constructed within different socieities and varies especially when going back in the back. Used how we construct gender to try and construct the past. A rigid binary division of labor - men (portrayed as hunters, eaters, drinkers) women (gatherers, cooks, caretaker). This definition is how the archaeological record was portrayed. (person) argued that this division of labor was problematic - archaeologists need to research this, we should not make an a priori assumption about what men and womens roles were. Nor should our traditional concept of families be used to define the families of the past.
