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anthropology midterm
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| micropmorphology | taking small soil samples, hardening them with resin + cutting the slides, and then studying them under microscopes for remains or plants, coal, and animal bones |
| superposition | the dating principle that undisturbed older layers deeper into the ground signify happenings from a long time ago, while layers closer to the surface are younger and signify more recent happenings |
| bioturbation | burrowing animals moving objects up and/or down in a site, making them seem younger or older than they are |
| cryoturbation | the freezing and thawing of soils can break apart or move sediment layers |
| traits that indicate complex hunter-gatherers | large populations, high population densities, sedentary, accumulation of property/material wealth |
| how is complexity recognized in the archaeological record | accumulation of shell middens, large structures in settlement areas, territorial behavior |
| complex HGs | HGs whose cultures and societies have cultural, social, and economic traits that scholars assumed required agriculture for them to develop - they were not mobile, but rather sustained themsleves while remaining sedentary |
| epistomology | the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion using techniques to confirm or deny |
| radiocarbon dating/carbon-14 dating | determines the age of organic materials up to 60,000 years old by measuring the decay of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 - it decays at a constant rate when living organisms die |
| ethnographic analogy | to understand the way HGs lived in the past, archaeologists look at how these people in current times live - ethnographic research is conducted → typically by living with or around these groups of people |
| analogy | involves the comparison of different things, settings, or practices that share certain properties - two objects or things share some properties, so they might be expected to share other things in common as well |
| source and subject | refers to a modern source for comparison, and what they are comparing the modern source to (typically an older group of HGs archaeologists are seeking to learn more about) - simple tying claims do not suffice when trying to create epistemological facts |
| foragers | have a home residential base that is tethered to key resources (such as water) |
| collectors | they move their residential bases less often, utilizing “logistically organized food-procurement parties.” - they tend to store food, more so than foragers |
| wiessner critique of binford's view | the environment does not dictate an “optimal solution” for how to live - need to take into account the social relations of production of a society to understand the archaeological record |
| the affluent society | material requirements from their natural environments - they culturally construct their needs as the want of a share |
| HGs (defined as an economic system) | an economic system based on obtaining food through hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants rather than agriculture or domestication |
| material culture | belief that the material, physical world should be given more attention than the ideal mental world |
| the archaeological record | this refers to the body of physical evidence left behind by past human activity (artifacts, ecofacts, features, etc) |
| middle-range theory | a set of interpretive tools that bridge the gap between static, present-day archaeological remains and dynamic past human behaviors |
| direct historical approach | investigating the past by working backward in time from the known ethnographic present to the unknown pre-colonial past - the assumption of continuity |
| "tyranny of the ethnographic record" | fails to the possibility or consider that there could be other forms of living that may have existed that don’t have current modern analogues // representations of it |
| excavation | the systematic process of digging of uncover buried material remains (can often be destructive) |
| survey | the non-destructive initial phase of field research is used to locate archaeological sites and artifacts across a landscape |
| non-invasive detection | using advanced technology to map underground sites without disturbing or physically altering the landscape |
| taphonomy | the study of how organic and inorganic remains transition from the biosphere to the lithosphere - the process of things moving down from the earth |
| total station | a tool that measures and records the exact location of artifacts and features in three dimensions |
| culture historical approach | focused on describing and classifying cultures based on material remains and explaining change through diffusion and migration |
| processualism (the "New Archaeology") | viewed as a science and seeks to explain cultural change through different processes - seeked to explain the “how” and “why” of cultural change |
| post-processualism | an approach that emphasizes human agency, symbolism, ideology, and multiple interpretations, arguing that archaeology is influenced by social and political context - emphasized subjectivity |
| materialist conception of society | material conditions, such as economic production + access to resources, form the foundation of social organization, beliefs, and institutions (defined by how material needs are met) |
| economics determine society? | a debate on whether or not economic systems primarily shape political, social, and cultural life (vice versa) |
| hunter gatherers as people "frozen in time" | an outdated view that treats hunter-gatherer societies as unchanged and primitive → ignores adaptability and assumes continuity |
| travelers strategy vs. processors strategy | travelers move more frequently to aquire their resources processors invest more time extracting and processing resources in one place |
| optimal foraging theory | a model that suggests that foragers make decisions that maximize benefits while minimizing costs (their costs being time, energy, and risk) |
| cost/benefit analysis | the evaluation of whether or not the energy gained from something is worth the effort put into obtaining it benefits: calories, nutrients, security risks: hunting, foraging, moving from home base |
| immediate return societies | consumes food right after or shortly after acquiring it, rather than storing |
| delayed return societies | societies that invest labor in infrastructure, food storage, and the processing of it as well (with returns on their efforts, such as larger and more sedentary populations) |
| the "man the hunter" conference, 1966 | one in a series of meetings in which archaeology and hunter-gatherers were discussed - provided lasting impacts on our information regarding hunter-gatherer societies |
| dunbars number | a suggested cognitive limit of approximately 150 people with whom an individual can maintain stable, meaningful social relationships |
| poverty point site | we don’t exactly know what the mounds at poverty point are for, though it marks the larger question of them having lives (both socially, architecturally, etc.) bigger than just what we think of them |
| democracy | again → pointing to the idea of complexity, and what it means to be a complex human being - our perceptions of human behavior now are different than what they were before, though some alignments can specify things |
| historical ecology | interested in the interaction of humans and the environment - they influence each other (humans adapt to the animal/environment/climate and vice versa |
| cognitive archaeology | primates live in a complex social world that is computationally more demanding than anything from other animals - the brain includes all cognitive processes (both conscious and unconscious) |
| wynn's template (inferring cognition) | the mental processes and reasonings that go behind making inferences about how or why these HG’s did certain things ex. why did they create spears, or why did they create designs on specific things, why did they create certain art, etc. |
| enhanced working memory | symbols that represent abstract or autonoetic concepts demonstrate this |
| conceptual blending | a theory in cognitive science and linguistics that explains how humans combine different ideas or mental spaces to create new meaning |
| Chaîne Opératoire | a series of actions that transform a raw material from its natural state to a manufactured state |
| Neandertals (symbolic abilities) | a topic that is widely contested, problems in dating and such - we are unable to know for sure if they were capable of showing off symbolic abilities |
| stone tools | lomekwian, oldowan, acheulean, mousterian, chatelperronian, aurignacian, solutrean, |
| why are stone tools important | they are typically the artifacts that are left behind + they provide a lot of information (such as what they were capable of making, etc.) |
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n8qio