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arc 200 unit 1
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Anthropological Archaeology | Archaeological investigations that seek to answer fundamental questions about humans and human behavior through a cultures material remains, like garbage and burials. |
| Technology | The combination of knowledge and manufacturing techniques that enables people to convert raw materials into finished products. |
| Settlement archeology | How and why material culture is distributed across the landscape. |
| What question might archaeologists answer about "Technology?" | What did people make and use, how and why did it change over time? |
| Excavation | exposure and recording of buried materials from the past. |
| Archaeology | The study of the human past, combining themes of time and change. |
| Era | A major division of geological time (tens/hundreds of millions of years) usually distinguished by significant changes in the plant and animal kingdoms. Also used to denote later archaeological periods. Examples are the Cenozoic and Paleozoic eras. |
| Epoch | A subdivision of geologic time (millions of years) representing units of an era. Examples are the Pleistocene, Holocene and the debatable Anthropocene. |
| Culture | A uniquely humans means of nonbiological adaptation; a repertoire of learned behaviors for coping with the physical and social environments. |
| Evolution | The process of change over time resulting from shifting conditions of the physical and cultural environments, involving mechanisms of mutation and natural selection. |
| Biological anthropology | The study of the biological nature of our nearest relatives and ourselves in time and space. |
| Linguistic anthropology | The study of language, especially how language is structured, evolution of language, and the social and cultural contexts for language. |
| Cultural anthropology | The study of living people through their similarities and differences and the share aspects of the human experience |
| Applied anthropology | Application of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems. |
| Artifact | Any object or item created or modified by humans. |
| Site | The accumulation of artifacts and/or ecofacts, representing a place where people lived or carried out certain activities. |
| Survey | A systematic search of the landscape for artifacts and sites on the ground through aerial photography, field walking, soil analysis, and geophysical prospecting. |
| Ground-penetrating radar | An instrument for remote sensing or prospecting for buried structures using radar maps of subsoil features. |
| Archaeological record | The body of material and information that survives for archaeologists to study. |
| Goals of Excavation | 1) Understand how the site was formed 2) Uncover features 3) Recover artifacts/ecofacts |
| What questions might archaeologists answer about "Ideology?" | How do people think about the universe and their place in it, and how is this reflected in the archaeological record? |
| Context | The association and relationships between archaeological objects that are in the same place. |
| Primary context (in situ) | An object found where it was originally located in antiquity, not redeposited. |
| Provenience | The place of origin for archaeological materials, including location, association, and context. |
| What questions might archaeologists answer about "Organization?" | How did people organize themselves and relate to each other? How and why did those relationships change and become unequal? |
| Ecofact | Any of the remains of plants, animals, sediments, or other unmodified materials that result from human activity. |
| Feature | An immovable structure or layer, pit, or post in the ground having archaeological significance. |
| Ethnography | fieldwork in a particular cultural setting, provides an account of that community, society or culture. It also required participant observation |
| What question might archaeologists answer about "Economy?" | How did people meet their needs and exchange goods? |
| Assemblage | Collections of related material. |
| Cultural Resource Management (CRM) | The branch of applied archaeology that makes decisions about what needs saving, and preserve significant information about the past when sites cannot be saved |
| Cultural relativism | To know another culture requires full understanding of its members beliefs and motivations. |
| Ethnocentrism | The tendency to view one's culture as superior and to use one's own standards and values in judging others. |
| Bioturbation | Disturbance of soil stratigraphy on an archaeological site caused by natural processes, like rodent activity for example. |
| Primate | The order of animals that includes lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans. |
| Hominoid | A descriptive term for any human or ape, past or present, characterized by teeth shape, the absence of a tail, and swinging arms. |
| Hominin | A term that refers to the humans and our ancestors. |
| Sexual dimorphism | A difference in size between the male and female members of a species. |
| Relative dating | A technique used to estimate the antiquity of archaeological materials, generally based on association with materials of known age or simply to say that one item is younger or older than another. |
| Association | The relationship between items in an archaeological site. Items in association are found close together and/or in the same layer or deposit. |
| Absolute dating | A method of assigning archaeological dates in calendar years so that an age in actual number of years is known or can be estimated. |
| Isotope | One of the several atomic states of an element, such as radiocarbon. |
| Radiopotassium dating | An absolute dating technique based on the principle of decay of the radioactive isotope of potassium, 40K. Also called potassium-argon dating. |
| Half-life | A measure of the rate of decay in radioactive materials; half the radioactive material will disappear within the period of one half-life. |
| Oldowan | The name given to the assemblages of early pebble tools and flakes belonging to the Basal Paleolithic, derived from Olduvai. |
| Flake | A type of stone artifact produced by removing a piece from a core through chipping. |
| Core | The stone from which pieces or flakes are removed. |
| Hammerstone | A stone used to knock flakes from cores. |
| Flintknapping | The process of making chipped stone artifacts; the striking of stone with a hard or soft hammer. |
| Extrasomatic | Literally, "outside the body"; nonbiological, nongenetic. |
| Paleolithic | the first period of human prehistory, extending from the time of the first tools, more than 2.5 m.y.a., until the end of the Pleistocene, 10,000 years ago. |
| Neolithic | The period of time of early farmers with domesticated plants and animals, polished stone tools, permanent villages, and often pottery. |
| Achuelean | A major archaeological culture of the Lower Paleolithic, known for handaxes that served multiple puropes and were handheld, along with being portable. Associated with Homo erectus and archaic Homo sapiens. |
| Platform | Flat edge on core struck to form tool or remove pieces of stone. |
| Miocene | Epoch of 23-5 mya First probable hominin fossils |
| Pliocene | Epoch of 5-2 mya Mostly Australopithecines |
| Pleistocene | 2 mya-10,000 ya Epoch of major climatic fluctuations Genus Homo develops |
| Holocene | 10,000 ya-present Epoch of Modern humans |
| Sahelanthropus tchadensis | Early hominin or late Miocene and ancestor species found in Chad that exhibit habitual bipedalism and small canines. |
| Handaxe | A large, teardrop-shaped stone tool bifacially flaked to a point at one end and a broader base at the other. |
| Orrorin tugenensis | Found in Kenya dating to about 6 mya, early hominin that exhibits habitual bipedalism and thick tooth enamel. |
| Australopithecus afarensis | An early bipedal australopithecus with small brains, small canines, and large molars from Ethiopia and Tanzania 3.6-3 mya; "Lucy", "first family" and Laetoli footprints. |
| Ardipithecus ramidus | Found in Ethiopia in woodland environments, dating to 4.4 m.y.a., possible early hominin showing a transition to bipedalism, not much sexual dimorphism. |
| Homo habilis | First Homo species from East and South Africa, 2.4- 1.8 mya, shows increase in brain size, reduced postcanine tooth size, and use of early stone tools (Oldowan); "handy man" |
| Laetoli | Archaeological site in Tanzania where footprints of a bipedal hominin were found dating to about 3.6 mya. |
| Homo Erectus | 1.9 mya- 400kya, 6ft tall, has larger brain than prior fossils, first to leave Africa, Acheulean tools. |
| Dmanisi | Archaeological site in Georgia 1.8 mya with earliest known hominins outside of Africa, homo erectus. This site suggests rapid spread of the early hominins out of Africa into Eurasia around 1.7-1.77 mya. |
| Hadar | Archaeological site in Ethiopia where Australopithecine skeletons have been found; "Lucy" and the "first family" |
| Olduvai | Archaeological site in Tanzania where "pebble" chopper tools that were likely made by H. habilis were found. |
| Zhoukoudian | Archaeological site in China (700-200 kya) where Homo erectus remains show an increase in brain size, as well as evidence of use of stone tools and fire. |
| Gracile and Robust Australopithecines | Both date to 3-1 mya and probably descend from A. Afarensis Gracile: smaller and lighter (A. Africanus) Robust: larger teeth and jaws (Paranthropus) |
| Atapuerca | Archaeological site in Spain where at least 32 individuals were intentionally placed, approximately 500,000 years ago. |
| Schoningen | Archaeological site in Germany where 400,000-year-old wooden spears were discovered. |
| What types of raw materials are the best for making tools and why? | The best raw materials are those that break easily and in predictable ways, chert/flint are two examples of this |
| Blade | This is a specialized type of flake twice as long as it is wide. |
| what are some features that distinguish us from other primates? | bipedalism, teeth and diet, bigger brains, environmental adaptations, technology, communication, social relationships, mating and reproductive cycles and behaviors, life cycles (human life history), and culture. |
| Paleoanthropology | A subfield of physical/ biological anthropology, it aims to explain what key traits make us human, as well as physical evidence of early humans in the fossil record. |
| Kenyanthropus Platyops | May be an australopithecine, or its own species, found in Lomekwi, Kenya. It was dated to around 3.5 mya. |
| Homo Heidelbergensis | Between 850-200 kya, found in Africa and Europe, they were known for being very similar to us, they used the Levallois stone tool creation technique and even used wooden spears. |
| “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” is an example of: | An ethnographic description of a culture written from the perspective of an outsider |
| According to the article, Lucy's body size is indicative of sexual dimorphism in her species. How did scientists determine Lucy's stature? | They estimated it from the length of her femur (thigh bone) |
| Which traits of Lucy's anatomy place her within the genus Australopithecus? | receding chin, strongly prognathic face or snout, small brain size |
| Why would researchers examining the "First Family" specimens of A. afarensis at Afar Locality 333 (at the Hadar site) infer that the 17 individuals found there were all related? | They come from the same stratigraphic context, a single layer of rock |
| Fossil evidence from Hadar also includes cranial bones such as a ______ that provide evidence about early members genus Homo at the site. | palate and mandible |
| Since the 1960s, paleoanthropologists demonstrated repeatedly that | Multiple hominin species co-existed at the same time in much of the past |
| The anthropocene is best defined as: | A newly proposed geological epoch defined by human influences on the planet |
| ___________is a term that describes how culture provides adaptive advantages that go beyond the human body or are non-biological, such as the use of tools | Extrasomatic |
| The Potassium/Argon (K/Ar or radiopotassium) method is most often used | to date items more than 500,000 years old |
| Potassium argon dating uses the concept of ________ to calculate the age of a sample based on how much of the radioactive isotope Potassium 40 (K-40) is remaining. | Half-life |
| New discoveries at the _________ site provide evidence of basic stone tool-making 3.3 million years ago. | Lomekwi |
Created by:
c-sneller