Module 1:
Lecture 1.1: Archaeology & Cultural Evolution:
- What is Archaeology?
- Is the study of past human societies through their material remains
- Artifacts
- Anything used, made, or modified by humans
- Includes stone tools, pottery, bone object, wood, plastic, and so on
- Archeologists study 4 types of artifacts
- Cultural items
- Features (fireplace, stonewall)
- Ecofacts
- Humans remain
- Archaeological site (not “sight)
- Behavioral definition:
- Site = “a place where human activity once took place”
- Archaeological definition:
- Site = “a cluster of artifacts”
- Archaeological interpretation moves from Artifacts to behavior
- Mayans never predicted the end of the world
- It was bogus that people came up with
- North America and South America were the last places to be invaded
- People of the earth: diverse environments
- High altitude, jungle, desert, forests
- The Urban revolution
- Small kin-based, illiterate agricultural villages transformed into large socially
complex, urban societies
- The Goals of Archaeology
- To discover evidence of the human past
- Fieldwork and lab work. Sites and artifacts
- Reconstruct cultural history around the world
- Who was where, when, and what did they do?
- Reconstruct past lives and societies
- How did people live? What was society like?
- “Lifestyles of the dead and buried”
- Explain changes in past societies
- Cultural evolution
- A broad trend that occurred in many parts of the world
- Archaeologists split this into 4 types
- Band
- Hunters and gatherers
- Less than 100
- Egalitarian
- Informal leadership
- Temporary camps
- Religion: shamans
- Tribe
- For small groups, most food from farming
- Up to few 1000 people
- Segmentary society, pan-tribal associations, raids by small groups
- Pastoralist herders
- Permanent villages
- Religious elders, calendrical rituals
- Chiefdom
- Tribes that have grown larger and more complication
- Leaders with real power are in charge
- 5000 - 20,000+ people
- Kinship-based ranking, high-ranking warriors
- Central accumulation and redistribution (craft specialization)
- Fortified centers, ritual centers
- Hereditary chief with religious duties
- State
- They have cities
- Political power is much greater
- Society is divided into social classes
- 20,000+ people
- Class-based hierarchy under king or emperor armies
- Centralized bureaucracy, tribute-based, taxation, laws
- Urban settlement: cities, towns, roads
- Presently class: RELIGION
- Pantheistic or monotheistic religion
- Old View (incorrect view): Cultural evolution was “progress”
- People improved the lives
- Society was better organized
- Life was easier
- Today we are at the peak of progress
- Why cultural evolution is NOT “progress”
- People had to work harder
- People lost their personal freedom
- People were less healthy
- There was more poverty, crime, and violence
Lecture 1.2: Finding & Excavating Archaeological Sites:
- Finding Archaeological sites begins with a goal
- Research Goal
- A scientist has basic research questions
- May also have specific hypotheses to test
- Conservation goals
- An area may be in danger from development or construction of some type
- Need to discover the sites so we can understand the potential damage to
this proposed work
- The first investigation of the Archaeological Record in a Region
- Reconnaissance
- Systematic attempt to identify archaeological sites
- Often the first step in a field project
- This is performed when you know virtually nothing about the region
- Rarely has a formal sampling design or statistical sampling system
- Survey
- Initial data gathering stage
- Typically does have a specific research question AND a statistical
sampling design
- These Two may be combined in one study
- How do we find sites?
- Proper sources
- Earlier studies
- Historical record
- Local people and interviews
- Most of the people farmer
- You gain trust with each other
- Construction activities and natural erosion
- Prediction from scientific principles such as geology
- Remote techniques - satellite photos and imagery plus ground penetrating
technologies
- Can help us predict where sites will be
- Allow us to look below the surface
- Pedestrian survey - walking on land
- How do we do the fieldwork?
- Always will vary on the specifics of the project and region
- But all projects face similar logistical demands
- How many people and of what skill sets?
- How to transport/
- How do provide food and clean water?
- How do we provide shelter?
- Let's take a look at some examples
- Conservation goals - example from Somalia
- Using survey and reconnaissance
- Problems with Surface data
- Buried remains may not be represented on the surface
- Surface remains are often severely biased by secondary disturbance
- It is very difficult to date surface remains because they are not sealed in a matrix
with an associated datable material
- 2 main goals of Excavation
- To reveal the three-dimensional patterning or physical structure in the deposition
of artifacts, ecofacts, and features = archaeological data or archaeological finds
- To assess the temporal and functional significance of this patterning
- What is a 3-D structure/ - vertical provenience
- Measured provenience
- Sometimes measured first with a local datum
- Then ultimately transformed to the true elevation
- Often referred to as “z”
- Another word for elevation
- Stratigraphic provenience
- What layer or stratum the data is in
- What is 3-D structure? - Horizontal Provenience
- Measure provenience
- Sometimes measure first with local grid (x and y)
- Then ultimately transformed into a more generally recognized grid
- UTM - 1m precision
- National Grid - centimetric precision
- Grid provenience
- “Feature” provenience
- Fireplace in the sand, stone tools in the fireplace
- Now you have x, y and z to get 3d measurements
- How do we record 3D structure?
- We can record it with some low-resolution bulk instrument
- Horizontal - within a “square”
- Vertical - within a “layer” or arbitrary “spit” (Arbitrary level)
- We can record it with some true direct measurement - point provenience or piece
plotting
- Use some method to measure its, x, y, and z
- Use Point Provenience
- Fires a laser and get a proper measurement
- Measurements are taken quickly
- Shows vertical and horizontal spreads
- You can also use a computer
- Stratigraphic (natural layer)
Lecture 1.3: Dating Methods:
- Archaeological Dating
- How Old is it?
- Which one came first?
- Important things to remember!
- We can date a great variety of things!
- We cannot use the same methods to date everything!
- We do not need to date every single thing we encounter
- Not all things can be dated using the same methods
- Organic
- Radiocarbon
- Inorganic
- Thermoluminescence
- Dating Methods
- Relative dating
- Ask questions like which things came first
- Geological
- Stratigraphy
- Archaeological
- Seriation
- Absolute Dating
- How old is this?
- Provide us with an actual age or range of ages in a calendar year
- Radiometric (organic material)
- Radiocarbon (14C)
- Dosimetric (inorganic material)
- Thermoluminescence
- Stratigraphy
- Sentiments on the bottom of a geological sequence are usually older than the
ones above it
- Isotopes
- Different forms of an element that have different atomic masses
- Protons and neutrons
- Cosmic rays from sun collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere producing energetic
neutrons → the energetic neutron collide with Nitrogen - 14 atoms to produce Carbon-14
atom and a proton → the Carbon-14 oxidizes to Carbon-14 dioxide and is transported to
the lower atmosphere → plants absorb Carbon dioxide during photosynthesis a take in
Carbon-14 in a ratio similar to that of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere→ Carbon-14 is taken
in by animals and human through the food chain
- 14C half-life = 5730 years
- Halflife: the amount of time it takes for 14C present in an organism to decay into
14N
- To calculate 14C dates
- Measure the remaining ratio in the archaeological sample
- Compare it to the ratio 14C/12C in a living organism
- Compare the difference to the half-life of the 14C isotope (i.e. 5,730 years)
- Measurement of remaining C14 is repeated several times
- The age calculated for a sample is the MEAN of all calculations + a
standard deviation
- 14C summary
- Can date ONLY organic things (things that were once alive)
- Can date ONLY things younger than about 50,000 years
- Thermoluminescence(TL)
- Used to date inorganic materials that contain minerals and had been fired at
some point
- It can date things up to 500,000 years old
- TL depends on how electrons behave in a crystal when exposed to radiation
- Is the process in which a mineral emits light when heated
- The light is proportional to the amount of radiation absorbed since
the last heating
- You cannot use TL on materials that have not been heated
- What you actually date is the last time something was heating (at or above 350
Degrees C)
Lecture 1.4: Explaining the Past (M. Smith)::
- The Goals of Archaeology
- To discover evidence of the human past
- Reconstruct cultural history around the world
- Reconstruct past lives and societies
- Explain changes in the past societies
- Diffusion and Independent invention
- Did pyramids come from Egyptians or did Mayans start it
- Did mummies come from diffusion?
- Analogy
- Modern case: known use
- Aztec artifacts: similar use?
- How does an explanation by analogy work?
- List the similarities
- State a hypothesis for the analogy
- Evaluate the hypothesis. The analogy is more likely to be correct if:
- There are numerous and detailed similarities
- The contexts of the objects are similar
- There is additional information supporting the analogy
- Ethnography
- Live in another culture and participate in that community to learn about that life
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Archaeologists doing ethnography (living with another culture), in order to learn
about their ARTIFACTS
- Experimental archaeology
- Archaeologists go out and get stones to see how to make stones themselves and
how things were created
- Archaeological is a historical science
- Archaeology is a comparative science
- We compare the past to eh present using analogy to understand the past
- We compare ancient sites and artifacts in different regions to explain what
happened in the past
- First example: agricultural terracing
- Q: what were these stone walls used for?
- Found out that the soil created a wall with the rocks
- Forming an analogy with modern terrace farming
- What do these terraces tell us about Aztec farmers?
- Peoples lives close to their fields
- They organized their own lives and farms
- They worked out a sustainable and productive form of agriculture
Video 1.1: Jemez Hands-on Archaeology
- Jemez Historical Site in New Mexico
- Public is participating
- People who want o participate have to be friends with the excavators
- Visitors can see what they found
Video 1.2: Cultural Heritage: A Basic Human Need
- Dr. Sada Mire
- She learned in a book called “Africa: a continent”
- One sentence that changed her life “in order to write African history we need to
do archaeological research”
- She enrolled in a course for archaeology
- She inherited an object
- The object protects the keeper from evil spirits (her mother told her)
- It was made from a sacred tree
- Wigger was its name
- Sites in Somalia for fertility
- A cultural crossroad
- There was trade coming in according to the archaeological artifacts
- Aw-barkhadle ‘sacred landscape’
- Before Islam, there were rituals taking place there
- People were able to look at the same document and tell her everything about that object
(they have knowledge of their history)
- People value knowledge of objects over the possession
-
- ‘Knowledge-Centered’ Approach
- A fruitful fusion
- The community was very happy about the sites within their culture and villages
- The internet was fast at the site in Somalia
- She started his because she wanted to know about African history and heritage
Module 1: Reading: Making it Work:
- The Daily Beast listed archaeology as one of the thirteen most useless undergraduate
degrees
- The Hopedale Archaeology Project
- Community archaeology program that hired and trained at-risk Inuit students from
Labrador, Canada
- Hopedale was the site of a prehistoric Inuit sod house settlement and a German
Moravian missionary
- HAP was broken down in 3 parts
- Excavation
- Lab work
- Outreach
- The Veterans Curation Program (VCP)
- For U.S. veterans to be placed in the archaeological program
- Designed to give veterans temporary employment
- In the Archaeological and archival curation lab
- Most archaeologists engage in a wide range of administrative and management skills to
conduct excavations as well as computer and digitization skills
- The VCP and HAP have similar goals
- To provide valuable work experience and help individuals to be more competitive
in the job market
- Kevin Bartoy: “teaching through archaeology”
- Cultural relativism: viewing cultures according to their own term and values
- Essential for interpreting the past
- 5 students were hired to excavate test units, screen for artifacts, take notes, and wash
artifacts
- Second phase included pedestrian survey on two islands
- The goal was to expose students to every part of an archaeological research project
while demonstrating that their work provides clues to understanding past Inuit human
behavior
- An important aspect was the peer-review system
- The island became a safe haven that temporarily removed the students from social
realities and pressures
- Goals of this project
- 1. The project aimed to provide employment and educational opportunities for
students outside of traditional arenas
- 2. Show the relevance of archaeology to the wider community, as not all
Hopedale residents were inuit
Module 1 Reading: Archaeological Ethics:
- Archaeological ethics is an important and viable subject in the archaeological literature
- What is Archaeology?
- The scientific or systematic study of people and lifeways in the past based on
material remains as evidence
- The goal is to reveal, interpret, and preserve the unwritten parts of the past
- Archaeologically ethics are not universally held
- National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA)
- National Environment Policy Act of 1969
- Archeological and Historic Preservation Act of 1974 (referred to as Moss-Bennet Act)
