ANTHRO 2C: Introduction to Archaeology Final Review
Tribes
A group of bands/clans occupying a specific region, which speak a common language, share a common culture and are integrated by some unifying factor; resulting in a single village; leadership consists of a council of elders representative of each lineage.
Horizon calendar
A horizon calendar is when time/seasons are tracked by looking at the placement of the sun on the horizon at sun rise and sun set each day.
Syncretism
A process by which two or more deities were fused into the object of a single cult, which was a fundamental aspect of the development of Egyptian religion.
Chiefdoms
A ranked, multi-community society in which every member has a position in the hierarchy; an individual's status is determined by membership in a descent group; they are typically redistributive systems with a prominent "Big Man" of the prominent lineage responsible for redistribution.
Bands
A small group of related people (patrilineage) occupying a single region (ca. 30 people; casual "leadership" by an influential male member known as a Headman; 99.9% of human occupation on earth.)
Sympathetic magic
All sympathetic magic is based upon two principles: first, "like produce like," or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things having been in contact with each other continue to react upon one and another at a distance even after they have been severed or disconnected. The former principle is called the Law of Similarity, while the latter is the Law of Contagion or Contact.
Population Packing
An increase in density of population.
Symbols / signs
An object or act (verbal or nonverbal) that, by cultural convention, stands for something else with which it has no necessary connection.
Elman Service
Anthropologist who defined "Bands, Tribes, Chiefdoms and States"
Christy Turner
Archaeologist at the Department of Anthropology at Arizona State University, did research on the Cannibalism at Chaco Canyon.
William Longacre
Archaeologist who helped found the New Archaeology in the 1960s, interested in Ethnoarchaeology, Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project
Lewis R. Binford / Intensification
Binford's global analysis of hunter-gatherer societies found residential mobility to be the mechanism that assured access to crucial resource clusters. Based on ethnographically known hunter-gatherers, "packing" of the landscape begins at about 1 person/24m2 and reaches a "packing threshold" at 1 person/10.9 m2 When this threshold is reached (carrying capacity), mobility is severely constrained and groups are forced to broaden their dietary niche through new subsistence strategies. Common response strategies for increasing niche breadth are intensification of aquatic resource use and horticulture. As population "packing" occurs (finite territories), population continues to grow hence diminishing returns of hunting and gathering, plant domestication would replace hunting simultaneously with the assertion of exclusive rights to the area being farmed.
Catchment-Retail Gravitation
Catchment -- the amount of territory necessary to support a family in one day (radius around a central location). Retail Gravitation -- As collection distance increases productivity decreases.
Walter Christaller and Losch
Central Place Theory -- Hexagonal Distribution
E. Boserup / "prehistoric food crisis"
E. Boserup first suggested that population growth could be an independent variable responsible for economic changes e.g. grow food to feed mouths. Mark Cohen presented "Prehistoric Food Crisis" -- argued that it wasn't population density per se, but the saturation of local environments, so that emigration (moving) was no longer a viable solution.
Mary Douglas-food taboos
Edible animals were supposed to be those that have cloven hooves and that chew the cud—such as cattle, sheep, and goats. Pigs have cloven hooves, but they do not chew the cud. Consequently, they are unclean because they are an anomaly in the "natural" order of animals. Avoiding certain animals, then, had little to do with food, but with a continual af rmation of what constitutes God's order in the world.
Floral and Faunal Analysis
Floral Analysis -- The study of plant remains from an archaeological site, including identification, association with artifacts and food processing, etc. Faunal Analysis -- The study of animal remains in an archaeological site, as by identifying bones or shells, examining butcher marks, and so on. The analysis is used to determine past hunting and dietary practices.
Formal / Informal Religion
Formal (modern) Religions -- Monumental architecture; Priesthood; hierarchy; Scripture; Communal ritual; Calendar of ritual events; Indirect Contact w/ spirit world; Monotheistic deification Informal (early) Religions -- Shaman; Direct Contact w/ spirit world
Central Place Theory
Given a "homogeneous resource plain," populations will seek rational use of space (equidistance).
Optimal geometric spatial arrangement
Hexagonal distribution
Robert Hall (Mississippian peace pipes)
I see the Hopewell platform pipe as the archaeologically visible part of a transformed ritual atlatl, a symbolic weapon which in Middle Woodland times probably had some of the same functions as the calumet of historic times, itself a ritual arrow.
NISP
In faunal analysis, the number of identified specimens in a collection: a gross counting technique used in the quantification of animal bones.
Lewis-Williams (cave paintings, meaning)
In sum, Lewis-Williams argues that Upper Paleolithic art is not art for art's sake, nor is it fertility or hunting magic. Instead, he argues that the art reflects humanity's effort to come to grips with the perception that their quotidian existence was not all that there was, to answer the question "What is the meaning of life?"
Sympathetic / Contagious magic
Law of Similarity—conducting of imitative rituals, "acting out" hopeful events with "homeopathic" ideas: Paleolithic cave art, amulets, avocados, rain-making Law of Contagion—the notion that things which have once been conjoined they will remain connected thereafter... a material item of some sort which unites distant objects, sharing meaning and feeling with one another: "Magic" socks worn by an athlete repeatedly, reminiscent of a winning day.
Teosinte
Mexican tall annual grass grown as fodder, considered ancestral to domesticated maize.
NRE
Non Repeating Elements—for asymmetry—unilateral.
Parietal / mobiliary art
Parietal art -- Literally, art on walls" a term used to designate art on the walls of caves and shelters extended to cover art on any non-movable surface (large rocks blocks ceilings floors)." Mobiliary art -- A general term used to describe the small and portable objects produced by artists during the Upper Palaeolithic period.
States
Political power is centralized in a government, consisting of multiple cities which has the power to use force (standing professional armies) to regulate the affairs of its citizens, and its relations with other states.
James Frazer
Published The Golden Bough in 1922. Sympathetic Magic.
Richard Stockton MacNeish
Responsible for having discovered one of the earliest locations of the domestication of corn.
Ritual and religion, Iconography / epigraphy
Ritual and region -- One's concept of the supernatural and techniques to manipulate it (may overlap with Cosmology and Iconography below) Iconography / epigraphy -- Art, decoration, sculpture, ideational symbols, parietal and mobility art; Iconography—pictographs / petroglyphs, amulets, fetishes, talisman ; Epigraphy—writing and mathematics (may overlap with Ritual Magic above)
Winter / summer solstice / Vernal-autumnal Equinox Ceremonies
Ritual events that take place during these specific dates of the year.
Phytoliths
Silica (opal) deposits that form mostly in the stems of arid-adapted grassy plants
Julian Steward
Talked to people about what hunting and gathering was like, came up with carrying capacity. 1:20m2 to feed one person Owens Valley 1:100m2 central Great Basin 1:1m2 in native Newport Beach
Taxa, element
Taxa -- In faunal analysis, the classification of a skeletal element to a taxonomic category—species, genus, family, or order. Element -- In faunal analysis, a specific skeletal part of the body—for example, humerus or sternum.
Considerate burial
The intentional, neat and peaceful means of a honorable human burial.
Pollen
The male gametes of flowering plants
Carrying capacity
The minimal amount of territory necessary to support a family.
MNI
The minimum number of individuals represented in a given faunal or human bone collection; determined from the number in the largest category of skeletal elements recovered.
Shanidar Cave, Iraq
The place where the earliest human burial was found.
Lascaux Cave
The setting of a complex of caves near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne in southwestern France. Over 600 parietal wall paintings decorate the interior walls and ceilings of the cave. The paintings are primarily of large animals, typical local and contemporary fauna that correspond with the fossil record of the Upper Paleolithic time.
Cognitive Archaeology
The study of all those aspects of ancient culture that are the product of the human mind: the perception, description, and classification of the universe; the nature of the supernatural; the principles, philosophies, ethics, and values by which human societies are governed; and the ways in which aspects of the world, the supernatural, or human values are conveyed in art.
Zoo-archaeology
The study of animal remains, especially bones, from archaeological contexts, including the identification and analysis of faunal species as an aid to reconstructing human diets, determining the impact of animals on past economies, and in understanding the environment at the time of deposition.
Taphonomy
The study of the transformation of organic remains after death to form fossil and archaeological remains.
Optimal foraging
The theory that an animal's efficient foraging behavior should maximize an animal's net rate of food intake. (Minimize catchment)
Cosmology
The understanding of the cosmos or universe; the origin and evolution of things; some include witchcraft or ability of individuals in cause and effect; seen in calendrics, solstices, astronomy, architecture.
Micro-floral
Those plant remains from archaeological sites that are visible only with the aid of magnification, primarily pollen and phytoliths. The term is also applied to any small or strictly localized flora, as of a microenvironment.
Macro-floral
Those plant remains from archaeological sites that are visible to the naked eye, primarily seeds and charcoal.
Postmortem
after death
Perimortem
at death
Antimortem
before death
