Anthropology exam 2
Flora
Plants
cultivation
Preparing and using land for crops and farming.
Culture
Set of learned behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, values, and characteristics of a particular society or group
archaeology
The branch of anthropology that seeks to reconstruct the daily life and customs of peoples who lived in the past and to trace and explain cultural changes through material artifacts.
material culture
The physical evidence of a culture in artifacts and architecture they made and left behind.
Holocene
The present epoch, which is the second epoch in the Quaternary period and followed the Pleistocene.
rachis
The seed-baring part of a plant. Domesticated plants do not shatter easily.
Lewis Binford
Thought the incentive to domesticate plants and animals may have been a desire to reproduce what is most abundant in hunting and gathering areas, causing population growth and people to move to areas with fewer resources.
Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen
Thought there were 3 waves of migration into the New World and compared languages and grouped them into 3 language families
domestication
To tame an animal and keep it as a pet or for farm produce.
scientific method
a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge
autonomous
a country or region that has self-government
Maglemosian
a culture of early mesolithic period in North Europe. Used hunting a fishing tools and domesticated the dog. Most were nomadic. 9,000 BC-7,800 BC
band
a fairly small usually nomadic local group that is politcally autonomous
interglacial
a geological interval of warmer average global temps lasting several thousand years separating ice ages.
Olsen-Chubbuck site
a kill site excavated in Colorado shows the organization for hunting bison, dated to 6500 BC
nomadism
a member of a people or tribe that has no permanent abode but moves about from place to place, usually seasonally and often following a traditional route or circuit according to the state of the pasturage or food supply.
relative dating
a method of dating fools that determines the age of a specimen or deposit relative to a known specimen or deposit.
absolute dating
a method of dating fossils in which the actual age of a deposit or specimen is measured
geofacts
a natural stone formation that is difficult to distinguish from a man made artifact.
chiefdom
a political unit, with a chief at its head, integrating more than one community but not necessarily the whole society or language group.
ideology
a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic and political theory and policy.
token
a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality, ect.
Homo sapiens
all living people, which means all populations on earth can interbreed. emerged about 200,000 years ago.
Mesolithic
archaeological period in the Old World beginning about 12,000 BC. Humans were starting to settle into semipermanent camps and villages, depending less on big game, and relying on stationary food sources
hypothesis
predictions, which may be derived from theories, about how variables are related.
sedentariness
settled life
Monte Verde
site in Chile where stone tools, remains of hide covered huts, and a child's footprint next to a hearth were found, demonstrating that modern humans got to South America by at least 12,500 years ago.
Dolni Vestonice
site in Czech Republic dating about 26,000 BC where cave paintings, human burials, engravings, and carvings were found.
Border Cave
site in South Africa where Homo sapiens fossils that are about 100,000 years were found
Folsom
smaller than the clovis point; used to hunt straight horned bison after mammoths became extinct 10,000 years ago
egalitarian
societies in which all people of a given age-sex category have equal access to economic resources, power, and prestige.
rank
societies that do not have any unequal access to economic resources or power, but with social groups that have unequal access to status positions and prestige.
Pliocene
epoch 5.3 to 2.6 mya.
Chief
A person to exercises authority, usually on behalf of a multicommunity political unit. Generally found in rank societies and is usually permanent and hereditary.
headman
A person who holds a powerless but symbolically unifying position in a community within an egalitarian society; may exercise influence but has no power to impose sanctions.
Clan
A set of kin whose members believe themselves to be descended from a common ancestor but cannot specify the links back to that founder; often designated from a totem.
lineage
A set of kin whose members trace descent from a common ancestor through known links.
Karl Wittfogel
hydraulic hypothesis-he thought that the development of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and precolumbian societies had been blocked because of the need to irrigate vast surfaces for agriculture. Water control and distribution spawned authoritarian empires and bureaucracies, Western Europe was free from these limitations and could rise
broad spectrum revolution
hypothesis proposed by Kent Flannery in 1968, suggested that the emergence of the Neolithic in southwest Asia was prefaced by increases in dietary breadth among foraging societies
Amerind
indigenous people of north and south America
Clovis Points
large and leaf-shaped, flaked on both sides that was probably attached to a wooden spear.
Meadowcroft Rockshelter
located in western Pennsylvania, contains the most carefully reported pre-Clovis occupation in North America
Cordilleran and Larentide ice sheets
merged at the continental divide forming an area of ice that contained one and a half times as much water as the Antarctic ice sheet does today.
ethnographic analogy
method of comparative cultural study that extrapolates to the past from recent or current societies
Otzi
mummy found on the Austrian-Italian border preserved by ice who lived around 3,300 BC. Died from arrow wound in the shoulder.
Chris Stringer
paleoanthropologist who characterizes homo sapiens as having "a domed skull, a chin, small eyebrows, browridges, and a rather puny skeleton".
Mousterian
style of flint tools used by Neanderthals in the middle paleolithic
Marvin Harris
suggested that the first states with their coercive authority could emerge only in areas that supported intensive grain agriculture and the possibility of high food production and were surrounded by areas that could not support intensive grain agriculture. People will have poor quality of life if they moved away.
multiregional hypothesis
the human species first arose around two million years ago and subsequent human evolution has been within a single, continuous human species
Eve hypothesis
the hypothesis that modern humans have a common female ancestor who lived in Africa around 200,000 years ago.
Acheulian
A stone toolmaking tradition dating from 1.5 mil years ago. Assemblages have large tools created according to standardized designs or shapes. Most characteristic tool of this culture is the hand axe.
tribe
A territorial population in which there are kin or nonkin groups with representatives in a number of local groups.
Christy Turner
Anthropologist best known for his research on dental anthropology and his theories about the populating of the American continent in three migrating waves from Northeast Asia
Upper Paleolithic
the time period associated with the emergence of modern humans and their spread around the world.
Gobekli Tepe
Archaeological site in southeastern Turkey
Hilly Flanks
Area curving around the Tigris, Euphrates, and Jordan valleys and the location of one of the world's first civilizations (Mesopotamia) and the origin of irrigation
Oasis Theory
Argues that the reason people started living in settlements was because during a dry spell, the only livable place was near oases.
Upper Paleolithic cave art
Cave paintings in Asia and Europe, that date back to about 40,000 years ago. Animals, people, hands. Exact purpose is not know, located in areas that weren't inhabited or easily accessible.
Andrew M.T. Moore
Director of the Abu Hureyra site and president of the Archaeological Institute of America.
Theory
Explanation of associations or laws
Homo erectus
First hominin species to be widely distributed in the old world. Earliest 1.8 mil years ago. Brain is larger than Australopithecus or h halibis but smaller than modern human
Neanderthal
Group of robust hominins that are close relatives of modern humans
Robert Carneiro
His theory explains how the constraints of the environment interact with population pressures and warfare to form states
wear analysis
used to identify the functions of tools by closely examining their working surfaces and edges.
Cuneiform
wedge shaped writing developed by the sumerians around 3000 BC
Clovis culture
Named after stone tools found at sites near Clovis, New Mexico in the 1920's and 1930's. Paleo-Indian Culture that hunted large game (mammoths) around 11,200 to 10,900 years ago.
Na-Dene
Native American language family
Athapaskan
Nomadic hunters and fishermen in present-day Canada and Alaska
Uruk level IV
3300-3100 BC. Named after Sumerian city Uruk, emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia.
Pleistocene
A geological epoch that started 1.6 mil years ago and continues today according to some. Glaciers have often covered much of the earth's surface and humans are dominant life form.
stratified
An archaeological deposit that contains successive layers or strata
state
An autonomous political unit with centralized decision making over many communities with power to govern by force (collect taxes, draft people for work and war, enforce and make laws).
Abu Hureyra
Ancient settlement located in Syria. Inhabitants started as hunter-gatherers and moved to farming, making them the first farmers in the world.
Mureybet
Ancient settlement mount located on the west bank of the Euphrates in Syria. Occupied between 10,200 and 8,000 BC.
Fauna
Animals
V. Gordon Childe
Australian archaeologist. Named the Neolithic Revolution and theorized that a drastic change in climate caused domestication in the Near East.
Comparative Linguistics
Comparing languages to establish historical relatedness.
Robert Braidwood
Criticized Childe's theory and believed that climate change was not that drastic and there must be more to the explanation to produce food than changes in climate.
Natufian
Culture that existed from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the eastern Mediterranean. They were sedentary and before the introduction of agriculture.
mitochondrial DNA
DNA located in the mitochondria that cells use to make evergy.
Milfred Walpoff
Multiregional evolution and the punctuated equilibrium theory
Denise Schmandt-Besserot
Studied art, writing, and counting, and Mesopotamian script
Anthropology
Study of humans, focusing on cultural and biological similarities and differences in populations of humans.
pressure flaking
Technique for making tools by using a short pointed piece of bone or antler to pry away tiny flakes.
Karl Polanyi
Wrote The Great Transformation, about a cultural approach to economics which emphasized that economics are embedded in society and culture.
glume
bract at the base of grass
bulla (bullae)
clay envelopes