ANTHRO C125A: Midterm 1

with no written documents

with written documents

with a small amount of early written documents.

study of human culture based on the analysis of human remains

a non-portable object
e.g. a hut.

Archaeology deals with both prehistoric and historic period (no written records and with written records).

China: Shang Period (ca. 1500 BC)
Korea: Unified Shilla (AD 7th c.)
Japan: Nara (AD 8th c.)

Neolithic is the same as Jomon period (14,000-400 BC).

domesticated animals, stayed in one place.

Complex interactions between the 3 countries because there were no countries such as china, korea, and japan during the prehistoric period.

1) Archaeology as history: study of different people. Study of the ancestors.
2) Emphasis on data accumulation: East has more available data (ex. Japan). Less emphasis on analyzing that data.
3) Unique theoretical traditions: less influence on Western archaeological ideas until later.
4) Interest among the general public: the people want to know about their ancestors' life. The government puts in more money into the projects.
5) Development of administrative organization for cultural resource management (CRM): they need to excavate the site before constructing anything on it because archaeology is a destructive science. CRM archaeologists are hired to excavate as much as possible, as per direction of the government.
6) Development of natural scientific techniques:

1) Past is important.
2) The past is politically charged, ideologically powerful, and significant.
3) The past is subject to destruction because it is closely related to economic and social issues.

Archaeological studies have often been closely tied to the study of national and/ore ethnic identities.

As such, archaeology has been used to support specific political agenda (e.g. birth place of homo erectus and thus all human beings).

-No Archaeologists is free from social, political, and economic contexts of archaeology.
-The nature of archaeological interpretation is full of biases because human beings, who are influenced by means of society, are the ones doing the interpretations.

-Archaeologists' nature (human influenced by social, political, and economic issues).
-Insufficient or inadequate data due to possibly no funding
-Depends on the way people are trained.
-Ethnicity: whether the archaeologists are connected to the group being studied.

-Roots: comes from post modern thoughts and the growth of social movements from the 1980s.
-Definition: allowing multiple interpretations of the archaeological past from different perspectives. Facilitate diff. perspectives from different parts of the world.

-study on bronze and stone inscriptions: Song