Archeology Chapter 1-2

Abbreviations of Dating

- BP( before Christ) /BCE( Before the Common Era) - AD(Anno Domini) or CE (Common Era) - BP ( Before present, often used with radiocarbon dating)

Three Methods to link the fragmentary archaeological record with specific human behaviours

- Ethnoarchaeology - Experimental archaeology - Ethnographic Analogy

Archaeological site

- a place where evidence of past human activity is preserved

Horizontal excavation

- after vertical excavation - expose large areas of ground, usually one layer at a time - recorded and removed individually - intended to recover information

Difference between cultural and biological development

- changes in culture occur more rapidly than biological change - the past hundred thousand years of our presence are marked primarily by cultural changes rather than biological changes

Biological development

- dominated our first several million years of existance - by natural selection, adaptation, and etc

Factors that will affect the archaeological record

- not all behaviour will leave material traces - Due to intervening culture and natural processes, the archeological records are not usually a direct reflection of past behaviour - Archaeologist must avoid the Pompeii Premise

Vertical excavation

- takes form of test pits or trenches carefully placed across a site to expose the stratigraphy and artifact contents of a site - to identify stratified layers of soil sediments - by studying the vertical walls( the sections) of such pits or trenches, archaeologists can identify stratified layers of soil sediments - the stratigraphy reveals how the site was formed and how materials accumulated - the relationship between the deposites in the stratigraphical layers revels the timing arrangement of the layers - changes in activities over time - evaluation of stratigraphic sequence involves distinguishing between natural and human activities

How do artifacts enter the archaeological record ( further clarification)

-1) Acquisition : either direct or through trade 2) Manufacture: modification of raw materials 3) Use: leaves traces on artifact; can also be interpreted from where the artifact is found 4) Deposition: entry of the material into the archeological record

What should a field note for survey involving systematic field walking contain

1) location , site number, map number which field and position in the field 2) the archeological material found: types and number of artifacts, fire cracked stones, charcoal, and so on 3) Observations about the site, for example, discoloration in the soil that could indicate cultural layers or pits, the presence of mounds, stone foundations/walls, nearby streams or other source of water, and other pertinent environmental information

Five main classes of Archaeology data

1. Artifacts ● Any object made or modified by people ● Archaeologists specialise in particular types, especially stone tools, ceramics (pottery) ● Things that can be analyzed: ○ Form (size and shape) ○ Technology (how it was made) ○ Style (colour, texture, decoration) 2. Ecofacts ● Natural object used or affected by people ● Zooarchaeology (or Archaeozoology) ○ The study of animal remains in the archaeological record ○ Reveals domestication, hunting patterns, etc. ● Paleoethnobotany ○ The study of plant remains in the archaeological record ○ e.g. seeds, pollen, phytoliths (silicon dioxide nodules from plant cells) 3. Features ● Non-portable material remains ● Midden ○ A concentrated area of refuse ● Simple features ○ e.g. hearths, burials, storage pits, post holes ● Complex features ○ e.g. buildings such as houses, temples, granaries etc. 4. Sites ● A place where evidence of past human activity is preserved ● Spatial clusters of artifacts, features, and/or ecofacts ● Boundaries may be well or poorly defined ● Site may be complex (e.g. a city) or simple (e.g. a kill site) 5. Regions ● Largest and most flexible spatial cluster ● Can be defined as: ○ Geographically: e.g. river drainage, a valley, an island ○ Ecologically: e.g. boreal forest, arctic etc. ○ Culturally: e.g. area occupied by the Huron-Wendat ● Allow investigation of entire cultural systems ● Particularly important for subsistence, social organization

Feature

A feature is a collection of one or more contexts representing some human non-portable activity that generally has a vertical characteristic to it in relation to site stratigraphy. Examples of features are pits, walls, and ditches. - Features ● Non-portable material remains ● Midden ○ A concentrated area of refuse ● Simple features ○ e.g. hearths, burials, storage pits, post holes ● Complex features ○ e.g. buildings such as houses, temples, granaries etc

Dating Methods

Abbreviations ○ BC (Before Christ) or BCE (Before the Common Era) ○ AD (Anno Domini) or CE (Common Era) ○ BP (before present - often used with radiocarbon dating)

Absolute dating (general)

Absolute dating ● Dated to a specific year either Before Present or according to a calendrical system

● Direct dating:

Analysis of the object itself

anthropological archaeology (prehistory)

Archaeological investigation that seek to answer fundamental questions about humans and human behaviour - archaeology in combination with written record - borders on the field of history and usually refers specifically to the archaeology of civilizations of the Renaissance and Industrial area

Association

Association in archaeology is the close relationship between objects or contexts. - two or more items occurring together - usually in the same level, feature, etc eg: Artifacts associated with burial

Calendar dating (absolute dating)

Calendar dating ○ E.g. Dates on grave stones, monuments, written documents ○ Calendars ○ Greeks: from date of the first Olympics: 776 BCE ○ Muhammad's departure from Mecca: 622 CE ○ Egypt, China in terms of successive dynasties ○ Limitations ■ must be long with no gaps (e.g. Dynasties need to list all kings) ■ must be linked to a known date, or else it is relative

Carbon Dating

Carbon Dating ● Most common form of carbon is stable carbon 12 ● Cosmic radiation produces unstable carbon 14 ● Plants absorb C14 in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis; eaten by herbivores, eaten by carnivores ● C14 is continually replaced during life, until death ● C14 is unstable and decays gradually ○ As C14 decays (converting to N14), it releases radioactive beta particles ● A Geiger counter is used to measure beta emissions ○ Allows estimate of amount of C14 left in sample ○ Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) - improved Radiocarbon Dating ● Instead of requiring large amounts C14 to date ● AMS measures amount of C14 directly and only requires tiny samples ○ Artifacts themselves can be dated, without crushing them; only a small corner of an artifact is needed ○ Small or valuable objects can be dated ○ If organics are rare, single seeds, twigs, etc. can be dated Limitations of C14 dating ● Contamination before sampling ○ carbon in groundwater, modern plant roots, etc. ● Contamination during sampling ○ cardboard labels, glue, mound, etc. ● Sample is older than context ○ e.g. old wood used to build house ● Some materials contain ancient carbon ○ e.g. sea mammal bone ● Maximum date is about 50,000 years

Dendrochronology

Dendrochronology (tree ring dating) ● Temperate areas: trees dormant during winter and thus there are well-defined growth rings with vary by year in regular patterns ● Today: many sequences - oak trees from southern Germany are 11000 years old ● Sophisticated uses (e.g. Sequences of complex sites) ● Limitations ○ requires preservation ○ reuse of old wood e.g. as beams (date is of cutting, not of use) ○ need a regional chronology which is complex and time-consuming ○ useful only outside of tropics

Ethnoarchaeology

Ethnoarchaeology ● Archaeologists observing modern peoples, with archaeological questions in mind (e.g. "where do they put their garbage?" ● For example: Modern Alaskan Inuit: how are artifacts distributed around a hearth? ○ The "drop zone" - small bone chips; stone chips ○ The "toss zone" - larger objects thrown farther away ○ This allowed interpretation of stone tool waste at the French Upper Palaeolithic site of Pincevent

Screening

Form of excavation ● Critically important to recover full range of material ● Flotation: special type of screening: materials lighter than water are collected from the surface

Geochronology

Geochronology ○ Horizontal stratigraphy ○ In some areas, occupation moved horizontally in a predictable way ○ E.g. Series of beach ridges are formed as a waterbody recedes ○ E.g. Cape Krusenstern, Alaska ○ Limitations ■ beach ridges must be formed in a regular fashion ■ activity must be confined to waterfront beach ridge

Geochronology (relative dating)

Geochronology ○ Horizontal stratigraphy ○ In some areas, occupation moved horizontally in a predictable way ○ E.g. Series of beach ridges are formed as a waterbody recedes ○ E.g. Cape Krusenstern, Alaska ○ Limitations ■ beach ridges must be formed in a regular fashion ■ activity must be confined to waterfront beach ridge

Geomagnetism

Geomagnetism ● Looks at large-scale reversals of north-south polarity ● Used only occasionally, to confirm other dating methods

prehistory

In general, the human past; specifically the time before appearance of written records

Obsidian Hydration

Obsidian Hydration ○ Obsidian is volcanic glass - common stone tool material ○ When fractured, the edge begins to absorb water (thus hydration) ○ Hydration penetrates into the stone at a known rate and can be measured ○ Limitations ■ regionally specific (depends on temperature, moisture etc.) ■ each obsidian source is different

Potassium -Argon Dating

Potassium-Argon Dating (K40-Ar40) ● Another form of radiometric dating ● Used to date volcanic rock, not artifacts or human product ● Minimum age of 5000 years, no maximum age ● Half-life of 1,330,000,000 years ● Useful in regions with lots of volcanism ○ When rock is heated, it drives out all the Argon, and the potassium is left to decay to argon over time at a known rate

Radiocarbon Dating

Radiocarbon Dating Method ● Willard Libby, 1949 ● A radiometric dating method, based on radioactive decay or isotopes ○ Isotopes: different forms of an element with different atomic weights; i.e. different numbers of protons and neutrons in the nucleus ● Some isotopes are stable, others are unstable and gradually decay, changing into stable elements ● Can be used to date objects if the following is known: ○ Original amount of isotope ○ Amount remaining at present ○ Rate of radioactive decay (measured by a half-life, or the time it takes for half of the isotope to decay)

Stratigraphy (relative dating)

Stratigraphy ○ Based on the sequential laying down of strata ○ 17th century - Law of Superposition: "where one layer overlies another and lower layer was deposited first" ○ Strata are created both by humans and natural processes ○ Potential problem of disturbance: ■ garbage pits ■ burrowing animals (rodents, dogs) ■ floods washing layers away, redisposition

Survey

Survey ● the systematic search for the landscape for artifacts and sites on the ground through aerial photography, field walking, soil analysis and geophysical prospecting ○ Yields data on site size, distribution, number, form ○ Also yields data on local ecological zones and geographic features

Excavation

The exposure and recording of buried materials from the past (a type of fieldwork along with survey to discover artifacts and sites beneath the ground) ( contains vertical excavation and horizontal excavation)

total station

a computerized surveying and mapping instrument that uses a laser beam or radio waves to measure the distance and angle between the instrument and target and then calculates the exact position of the target

era

a major division of geological time, tens or hundreds of MYA, usually distinguished by significant changes in the plant and animal kingdoms - also used to denote later archaeological periods, ex: prehistoric era

shell midden

a mound of shells accumulated from human collection, consumption, and disposal - a dump of shells from oysters, clam and mussels or other species found along coasts and rivers, usually dating to the Holocene

bioturbation

activities of plants and animals in the earth, causing disturbance of archaeological records

ground penetrating radar (GPR or Georadar)

an instrument for remote sensing or prospecting for buried structures - a standard practice on many archeological excavations to look for features and structures before excavation

Primary context (in situ)

an object found where it was originally located in antiquity, not redeposited

Indirect dating

analysis of material associated with a given context

artifact

any object or item created or modified by human action

Historical archaeology

archaeology in combination with the written record-- borders on the field of history and usually refers specifically to the archaeology of civilizations on the Renaissance and Industrial era

cultural development

culture= a uniquely human means of non-biological adaptation; a repertoire of learned behaviours for coping with the physical and social environments - the adapattion is based on experience, learning, and the use of tool - within limits, culture allows us to modify and enhance our behaviour without a corresponding change in our genetic makeup

age of earth and age of universe

earth= 4.6 billion years old universe= 10 billion years of age

Secondary context

objects that haven moved from their original place of disposition

Test pits

preliminary examination of a site involves digging a series of one or more trenches or small, vertical test pits, about 1m times 1m, across the site

site

the accumulation of artifacts and/or ecofacts, representing a place where people lived or carried out certain activities

context

the association and relationships between archaeological objects (artifacts) that are in the same place - place including in the same pit, layer, or sediment - broader sense: context is the physical setting, location, and association of artifacts and features

archaeological record

the body of material and information that survives for archeologists to study

provenience

the place of origin for archeological materials, including location, association, and context

fieldwork

the search for archaeological sites in the landscape through surveys and excavations

archeology

the study of human past, combining the themes of time and change

Seriation (relatively new method) ( relative dating)

○ Typological sequences - systematic arrangement of material culture into types based on similarities of form, construction, style, content use, or a combination of such characteristics. ○ Artifact change over time ○ Technology and fashions change (e.g. Cars, clothes, music, etc.) ○ Some artifacts change more quickly and regularly than others ○ E.g. Pottery; arrowhead ○ Stylistic seriation ■ Most often pottery-types or styles ■ Presence/absence ○ Frequency seriation ■ More precise means of determining an ordered sequence ■ Based on the fact that any artifact type will be initially rare, then well accepted and then die out as it is replaced ■ Measuring changes in the proportional abundance (frequency) or artifacts ■ Limitations: the types must occur over a large region and must occur in significant features

Relative dating (general)

● Earlier or later than something else ● Ordering things in a sequence ● Not as precise