Archaeology Exam 1

To start with, regardless of their relative nearness to the occasions, the ancient people did not have the experimental and archaeological methods that enable present day researchers to touch base at much more exact conclusions. Secondly, and maybe more significantly, their advantage was less scholarly but rather more religious. Custom must be maintained no matter what, particularly even with dissident sectarians.

After reading Isser's explanation of how dates for events have changed over the long history of Judaism, such as the date for the Era of Creation, why are religious texts less equipped to explain the history of the earth than science is?

What can stratigraphy indicate about an artifact?

All of the artifacts in a given stratum will be of approximately the same age, while those in strata above or below will be younger or older respectively.

The physical and biological aspects of humans, such as bones, evolution of earlier humans, skin color.

Biological anthropology studies

-Academic -CRM -Government -Corporate (environmental, engineering, surveying)

Different types of archaeologists

Modern artifacts to determine historical ways of life.

Ethnoarchaeology studies

-Surface collection -Excavation -Probabilistic sampling -Stratified sampling -Subassemblage

Field methods

Undisturbed and preserved.

Given the likely hood that many lives were lost during these tragic shipwrecks, what is an appropriate way to display the cultural artifacts that are retrieved?

Ancient diet and nutrition must be studied together, for they are too distinct from subsistence, which is the actual process of obtaining food. Archaeologists study ancient diets by reconstructing the actual diet of ancient people.

How do archaeologists study ancient diets? What are the limitations of dietary research in archaeology?

Archaeologists study households by seeing how household members interact with other individuals in other households as well as how entire households interact with other households. From that information obtained you can obtain more information about human interaction, of trade, religion, and social ties, of differing adaptations to local environmental challenges.

How do archaeologists study households and what kinds of information can you obtain from such research?

Remote sensing contributes to archaeological surveys by allowing the archaeologists to find information and unique data that they wouldn't be able to obtain using the regular ground surveys and other methods.

How does remote sensing contribute to archaeological survey?

Flotation revolutionized our understanding of ancient foraging and farming by providing a much needed method to recover seeds and to separate the from the surrounding matrix and also other carbonized remains.

How has flotation revolutionized our understanding of ancient foraging and farming?

9,000 ya

How long ago did "Kennewick Man" live in Washington state?

A taphonomic approach to burial archaeology can address both sides of this problem.

How would you approach the excavation of a burial?

It can tell us about what people left behind. The techniques used in nautical archaeology can be applied to the study of submerged ports, lost cities, sacrificial wells, and other underwater sites.

If the purpose of archaeology, as a discipline, is to tell us about past human cultural behavior, what can nautical archaeology add to this purpose?

Planting Artifacts

In 2000, a Japanese archaeologist was accused of which type of fraud?

The remains of plants and their use by people.

Paleoethnobotany studies

Ancient writing.

Paleography studies

Eygpt

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in which country?

The ocean floor has dramatic physical features, including huge mountains, deep canyons, steep cliffs, and wide plains, it is pretty dark on the ocean floor, it is possible to sink into a hole or fall off a cliff. Also, volcanic eruptions, landslides, undersea slumps, or meteor impacts.

The article doesn't mention the danger involved in travelling to the ocean floor, but what danger do you foresee as possible with this type of activity?

Prehistory

The era that existed prior to written languages or written history is referred to as which of the following?

•Archaeology is a scientific pursuit, based on observable artifacts and features of the earth. -The Law of association -The Law of superposition -Site formation processes -Dendrochronology -Radiocarbon dating

The scientific method

How can the study of contemporary Native Americans help interpret prehistoric Indian culture?

The study of contemporary Native Americans can help interpret prehistoric Indian culture because the Native Americans culture has been passed down from generation to generation and continues to have and show the same patterns as their ancestors.

Vertical excavation is used to test stratigraphy, and to also make deep probes in the archaeological deposits. Horizontal excavation is used to uncover far wider areas and especially to excavate site layouts and buildings.

What are the best uses for vertical and horizontal excavation?

Constructing Culture History Reconstructing Ancient Lifeways Explaining Culture Changes Explaining Social Changes Preserving the Archaeological Record. Constructing Culture History and Reconstructing Ancient Lifeways ties together as in each of the goals are trying to find out more and learn more about the history and ancient lifeways. THis is were Explaining the Cultural and Social changes come into play. In order to know it you have to explain it and in order to explain it you have to know it. Basically just getting a better understanding of the way the people (neanderthals) evolved. That being said, the last goal is Preserving the Archaeological Records, this is also were practicing stewardship comes in handy. It is essential to preserve archaeological records because one the records and artifacts have been tampered with and ruined there's nothing much you can do to recover it. Tieing in with secondary context when primary context is disturbed by later human or natural activity.

What are the five major goals of archaeology, and how do they intersect?Five major goals of archaeology are:

One of the major problems of tourism is that mainly in the developing countries where there government of those countries tend to think that tourism is a fix to their economic problems. With that being said they develop tourism rapidly then enlarge the visiting population. While doing that they tend to stop worrying about the effect it has on the environment and as well as the cultural impacts. Sadly most local needs are often looked over. The way to prevent this and hinder it is the government needs to restrict the development of outside investments.

What are the problems facing archaeological tourism. Are there ways of solving them?

The goal of the archaeology of subsistence is to reconstruct the actual diet of ancient people.Archaeologists use zooarchaeology to identify different bones, which is directly carried out by a comparison of modern as well as ancient bones.

What are the uses and limitations of zooarchaeology for reconstructing ancient subsistence?

Landscapes are symbols of cultural stability that preserve enduring meanings over time. Landscapes are as much a cultural record as an individual site and a artifact. Settlement patterns are the layout and distribution of human settlements on the landscapes. Symbolic relationships to the environment and as well as ecology are very important roles.

What distinguishes a landscape from a settlement pattern and why?

In the United States, applied archaeology is often used as synonymous to contract archaeology, and essentially distinguishes (CRM) Cultural Resource Management from Academic Research. In a contemporary society for instance in the social construction of identities, in territorial claims and in research disputes form other understandings of applied archaeology of how knowledge of the past is used in contemporary society for different ends. The present is contingent with the past. Societies transform landscapes, they do not simply adapt to environments. Humans have have had an impact on practically all environments but different societies and land-use strategies impact different landscapes in dissimilar ways.

What distinguishes cultural resource management from academic archaeology? Give three reasons why it is important in contemporary society.

basically anything that can be used as a source. examples would be archaeological sites, artifacts such as portable material and objects, features such as homes and hearths and as well as ecofacts remains of plants and bones.

What do we mean by the archaeological record?

GIS contributes to the society of archaeology by allowing the information and data obtained from sites there features and location and all to be recorded and stored and analyzed.

What does GIS contribute to archaeology?

Think of specific examples. Allows us to interpret accurate portraits of some ancient lives, examples would be Amesbury archer (Early Bronze Age Man) and also Ötzi, the Ice Man ( a very well-preserved natural mummy of a man who lived around 3,300 BCE, more precisely between 3359 and 3105 BCE, with a 66% chance that he passed away between 3239 and 3105 BCE) -

What does biological anthropology contribute to your understanding of the human past?

Thomas Jefferson

What famous president was the first to use stratigraphy for archaeological dating?

to identify where a particular raw material resource occurs naturally. Regional exchange studies in archaeology describe the networks that people used to gain, barter for, purchase, or otherwise obtain raw material, goods, services and ideas from the producers or sources, and to move those goods across the landscape.

What information does sourcing give us about ancient trade and exchange?

To serve as the documentation required under 36 CFR 800.II allowing a determination of adverse effect to made. To serve as the summation of the archaeological research required by professional standards. Three phases that reflect increasing levels of archaeological fieldwork and research Phase 1: Identification and Preliminary Assessment—the preliminary identification and assessment of cultural resources Phase 2: Assessing Significance—determining the significance of the archaeological resources present and their potential for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Phase 3: Management Plans and Mitigation—spells out a management plan for cultural resources eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places •mitigation may include changing building designs, total excavation of a site, or partial excavation

What is the compliance process, and what does it require archaeologists to do?

Salvage excavation

What is the final phase in the recovery of data at an archaeological site?

Archaeology represents the first organized effort by a group of certain archaeologists to improve their research through a contemplation of gender and gender relations. The relationship between the genders can also give information on relationships between other social groups such as families, different classes, ages and religions.

What is the importance of engendered archaeology, and what can it tell us about human diversity?

Strata

What is the name for darkened, artifact-bearing soil?

Paleopathology

What is the study of ancient writing?

Anchors

What may indicate the age of ships that have been sunk at sea?

Wide margins of error

What weakness is inherent in absolute dating?

1992

What year did the Titanic sink?

1990

What year was the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act signed into federal law?

800 CE

When did the modern Julian calendar originate?

Historic archaeology

Which discipline within archaeology focuses on the recent past (more than fifty years ago, but after writing was invented?)

Wood

Which of the following could not be assigned an absolute date through radiocarbon dating?

Snorkeling

Which of the following is not given as a technique used in nautical archaeology?

Skull

Which part of "Kennewick Man's" skeleton indicates that he may have been of European, white ancestry?

Vasa

Which ship mentioned in the article was successfully raised by the Swedish government?

Astronomical events are more accurate than radiocarbon dating because modern science can pinpoint to exact calendar dates.

Why are known astronomical events more accurate than radiocarbon dating?

Low oxygen content of cold water.

Why do underwater artifacts deteriorate less quickly than they do on land?

Field methods have not advanced in archaeology as quickly as laboratory methods have because,archaeologists spend a lot more of their time in the laboratory analyzing artifacts and data more than they do in the field.

Why have field methods not advanced as quickly as laboratory methods have in archaeology?

It is what we have all learned from the artifacts that were found and have been documented. This covers the whole world; archaeology is the human story that belongs to everybody's past and represents and stands for everyone's heritage and culture.

Why is archaeological recording important?

It breaks down at a known rate

Why is carbon useful in absolute dating?

Nonintrusive archaeology is important because it can pick up things that the eye cannot see. The nonintrusive archaeology limitations is basically having accurate surveys of the earthworks and other features can easily enable them to be interpreted without the need for excavation.

Why is nonintrusive archaeology important, and what are its limitations?

Pottery is used the most often because of their virtual indestructibility and therefore useful as a scale for relative dating in archaeology, may be found in each stratum, and a relative sequence of pottery styles can be established.

Why is pottery often the most useful tool in relative dating?

Archaeologists try to bridge the gap between what actually happened in the past and the archaeological record of today. The human settlement pattern is complex and constantly changing networks of human interaction.

Why is settlement archaeology critical to our understanding of the past?

Stewardship is significant to archaeology because it is important that archaeologist obtain the responsibility to work hard for the long term process of conservation and protection of all of the archaeological records by practicing and as well as promoting stewardship of the archaeological records.

Why is stewardship so important in archaeology?.

Italy had expected that tourists would rush to see Ötzi, so Italy constructed a museum to display Otzi and expected to earn millions of dollars in museum entrance fees.

Why was Italy pleased to have the "Iceman's" body found in their territory?

Some of the archaeologists viewed the new law as antiscience and a threat to their access to the archaeological record.

Why were some archaeologists disappointed in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act passed in 1990?