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82 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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paleontology |
study of past animals and plants |
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archaeology |
study of past civilizations and peoples |
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Louis and Mary Leakey |
pioneered study of human evolution in Africa, discovered Australopithecus africanus and robustus |
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Gona stone tools |
2.4 MA Oldowan |
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Earliest instance of Acheulean tools is...? |
Turkana |
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oldest bone arrowhead |
circa 61ka Sibudu, SA |
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British occupation |
900ka Happisburgh, Norfolk, UK |
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Hesiod's speculative phase (5) |
golden age - humanity lived among gods silver age - lived 100 years under dominion of mothers bronze age - tools made of bronze, lots of war heroic age - Troy pirate raids iron age - misery and sorrow, then-present day |
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Nabonidus |
first archaeologist dug beneath temples to improve and learn about current/past culture |
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curiosity cabinets |
Renaissance-Victorian personal collections of ancient artifacts |
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William Stukeley |
demonstrated that great stone tombs in Northern Europe manmade before Romans |
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first excavations |
Pompeii & Herculaneum excellently preserved, 79 AD |
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Johann Winckelmann |
father of classical archaeology published Pompeii discoveries |
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Heinrich Schliemann |
excavations at Troy and Mycenae archaeological testing of Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid found the mask of Agamemnon or whatnot |
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processual archaeology |
archaeology should be explaining, not simply describing. conclusions must be tested and explanations must be based on explicit logical framework.
culture is system divided into subsystems |
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functional-processual |
first step of processual archaeology functional or ecological explanation |
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cognitive-processual |
second step of processual archaeology symbolic or cognitive aspects |
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differences between processual and traditional archaeology (7) |
1) explanatory vs descriptive 2) culture process vs culture history 3) deductive vs inductive reasoning 4) testing vs authority 5) project design vs data accumulation 6) quantitative vs qualitative 7) optimistic vs pessimistic scope |
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Timescale for Lomekwi, Gona, and Oldowan |
Lomekwi = 3.3ma Gona = 2.6ma Oldowan = 1.8ma |
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Aust. afarensis |
discovered by Donald Johansson 3.6-3ma Hadar, Ethiopia |
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Paranthropus |
robust clade dietary specialization 2.5-1.2ma |
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Early Homo
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2.4-1.8ma small bodies, big brains habilis or rudolfensis |
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Dmanisi |
homo erectus 1.8ma that old guy without the teeth and severe arthritis - showcases compassion and care within a group |
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findings at Lomekwi
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-cores often used for different things before flakes removed -1m thick bed, many of the artifacts found rather vertically on slope. isn't it near a lake bed? -Kenyanthropus found nearby - could it have made these tools? -very large stone tools, larger than any other, new category of stone tools |
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holotype
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single specimen on which whole species is named/branded
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paratype |
helps define what scientific name of taxon actually represents, but is not holotype |
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visibility threshold |
does the earliest record of stone tools symbolize the origin of culture? what about the pieces that have decayed? |
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timeline of tools & culture |
lomekwi - 3.3ma gona - 2.6ma oldowan - 1.8ma controlled use of fire - 780ka (GBY) hunting - 400ka (Schoeningen) |
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refitting sets |
oldowan technology - able to fit flakes into original core |
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cultural sequences (5) |
-stone, bronze, iron age -paleolithic and neolithic -lower middle upper vs early middle late -regional variation and function -time transgressive character |
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Naama Goren-Inbar |
lead researcher for GBY found wood, fruit seeds, pollen |
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Aurignacian |
38-29ka blade-based pressure flaking, higher skill hafting, spears greater cutting edge per weight of material ritual/aesthetic bone, ivory, antler, stone made by retouching blades, including scrapers and burins Chauvet cave - oldest cave art oldest portable art and musical instruments |
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Chatelperronian |
40-34ka mix of Mousterian and Aurignacian |
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Gravettian |
28-22ka Venus figurines clay lion heads backed bladelets spread of Venus figurines could be spreading of cult of fertility covered bodies with large bones - no predation |
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Solutrean |
22-19ka leaf points treated with heat drive hunting? horses found at bottom of cliff in heaps, perhaps. shoulder points, willow leaf points |
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Magdalenian |
17-11ka harpoons, bone points Lascaux cave jewelry, sculpture, very cool cave art beads, tubes, borers, beveled bases |
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Cro Magnon |
~30ka on in SW France modern specimens w/ robust features supraorbital notch and supracillary arch, glabellar swelling |
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Aurignacian context |
typically right on top of Mousterian/Neanderthal tools, no indication that they ever made contact |
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Chatelperronian questionability |
Is the Chatelperronian a jumble of evidence or bad excavation? |
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Last glacial maximum |
25-18ka settling of glacial and periglacial land |
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What do rings of large bones mean? |
foundation for houses in Upper Paleolithic imply sedentary lifestyle for at least part of year |
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UP & religion |
UP provides oldest evidence for religion and ideology - art and graves |
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Mesolithic |
12-8 kbp greater sedentism, larger populations, specialized technology |
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Starr Carr |
found bone pins, barbed harpoons, deer headdresses |
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bioarchaeology |
study of human remains in archaeology |
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individuation |
process of identifying an individual sex, age, height, physical attributes, relationships |
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cannibalism |
found in Gran Dolina, Atapuerca, Spain ambiguous & debated |
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paleopathologies |
can determine what people had based on skeletons left behind skeletal evidence of disease and trauma, DNA evidence from bacteria, parasites, and viruses, malnutrition and palaeodemographics from large sample sizes |
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migrationist/diffusionist |
geographic spread of ideas migration and diffusion are causes of change assumes that cultures represent ethnic units |
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Great Zimbabwe |
monument in southeastern Zimbabwe migrationists said it couldn't have been built by any African, must have been a Portuguese |
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Marxist archaeology |
focuses on clashing interests, struggles between classes, and poor exploitation by elite evolutionary, materialistic, holistic changes are result of contradictions and antagonisms within society |
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evolutionary archaeology |
human behavior consequence of evo
adaptive features of behaviors and practices in ecological way |
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optimal foraging theory |
intake the most energy while using the least |
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meme
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self-replicating cultural units |
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post-processual archaeology |
focus on individual, symbolic, and ideological aspects of past societies
material culture we study is product of individual's thoughts and actions |
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structuralist archaeology |
human activities guided by underlying architecture of our minds |
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artifacts
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portable objects made by humans |
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features |
non-portable artifacts |
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sites |
locations where artifacts and features are found |
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matrix |
archaeological layer |
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provenience |
location within context |
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association |
relationship with other artifacts |
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primary v secondary context |
primary = site has not been disturbed since original deposition secondary = opposite, duh |
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calendrical |
solar or lunar based |
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referential |
ex: Victorian era |
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seriation |
assemblages or artifacts from numerous sites are placed in chronological order |
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relative dating |
something is older or younger than something else |
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numerical (absolute) dating |
# years BP which something occurred |
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Nicholas Steno |
"father of stratigraphy" superposition, horizontality, lateral continuity |
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principle of superposition |
layers of rock arranged in time sequence, oldest on bottom and youngest on top |
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principle of original horizontality |
rock layers form in horizontal position, any deviation from this position are due to rocks being disturbed later |
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principle of lateral continuity |
rock layers deposited in laterally continuous fashion, within confines of basin. Subsequent erosion may disrupt continuity |
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principle of cross-cutting relationships |
truncations of rock layers must post-date layers that are cut
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William Smith |
Principle of faunal succession strata identified by fossils |
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BC & AD |
before Christ, anno domini |
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BCE/CE |
before common era & common era |
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BP |
before present = before 1950 |
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half-life of carbon-14 |
t=5760 years |
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calibration of radiocarbon dates |
radiocarbon info has to be translated into years because it's really hard to tell someone not in science what having 3/4 of the original sample means |
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tuff |
deposit of volcanic ash |
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half life of potassium-40 |
t=1.26x10^9 |
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geomagnetic polarity time scale |
measuring how old something is by how many times it's switched between poles |
