Lecture 2: Archaeology & its Forbearers ● Four fields of anthropology ○ Cultural (or social) Anthropology ■ How do people live life? Why so much variability? ■ Centered around current populations ○ Biological Anthropology ■ Genetics of different demographics around the globe ■ From today’s molecular relations to primate behavior ○ Linguistic Anthropology ■ Study of language overtime and globally ■ One of the most important aspect of humanity ○ Archaeology ■ Study societies and artifacts of the past ■ Study is conducted through ruins and remnants ■ The remains and the relationships between them make up for the “archaeological record” ● The interests and questions of archaeology have changed with shifts out concepts of time and its depth ○ This had led to major shifts in how archaeology has been practiced over the past 300 years ● Napoleon Bonaparte and his campaign in Egypt (1798-1800) ○ Brought geographers and historians on him campaign and recorded ○ Rosetta Stone ■ Three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphic, Egyptian Demotic, Ancient Greek ● A new sense of time depth ○ The traditional view - it all started ~6000 years ago with creation ■ Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656) ● Dates creation through records of heritage ○ New developments over the next 2 centuries ■ Geology, evolutionary theory, archaeology ● BC / AD, "Before Christ" / Anno Domini (in the year of our Lord) ○ Denoting age from the birth of Christ ○ And you will always see the year before BC in text, and the year after AD in text ● BCE / CE, Before common era / Common era ○ The counting here is the same as in the BC / AD system, but BCE / CE is more commonly used today in academic and scientific work. That said, you will still see BC / AD commonly used in many publications. This system is also more neutral in terms of religion. ● BP, "Before Present" ○ "Present" being 1950. This was the year when we began using radiocarbon dating in archaeology and other physical sciences. This is also sometimes referred to as "Radiocarbon years before present". You will see this nomenclature used often in archaeological literature. ● Advancements in Geology & Archaeology (19th century) ○ James Hutton (1785) ■ Studied stratification in rocks ■ Principle of uniformitarianism ○ Charles Lyell (1830-33) ■ Same processes that occurred in the past still occur today ■ So, the past was much like the present ○ Boucher de Perthes (1836) ■ Discovers stone tools in association with extinct animals ● Advancement in Evolutionary Theory ○ Charles Darwin (1859) ■ “On the Origin of Species” ○ Alfred Russel Wallace (1859-60) ■ Evolution by Natural Selection “Survival of the fittest” ○ An explanation for change over time in plants and animals ● The 3 Age System (Thomsen and Worsaae) ○ Stone Age ○ Bronze Age ○ Iron Age ● Problem-orientated archeology ○ Rather than hunting for artifacts ○ Important of thinking “from” things instead of about thinking “about” things ○ Research became question oriented, the importance of context ■ What do we lose by looting? ● Gen. Augustus Pitt-Rivers (1827-1900) ○ 1st serious excavations recording all stratigraphy and the locations of all artifacts (systematic way of dealing with the past) ○ Produced the first real excavation report ● Sir William Flinders Petrie (1857-1942) ○ Importance of small finds as well as large ○ slow, methodical excavation Lectures 3 & 4: Archaeology and Advancements in Methods 19th century - Social Evolutionary Schemes ○ Lewis Henry Morgan and Sir Edward B. Tylor ■ “Ancient Society” ● Established their own 3 ages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization ○ With these labels there is an implication of a value-ladders that hints at continued advancements and also could rank other nations by these steps ■ This could give colonizers the idea that they are bringing civilization to the New World and that Europeans/Northerners are more developed people ○ Mid-20th Century ■ Neoevolutionism ■ Elman Service (1962) ● Bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states ■ Rejected by modern anthropologists because of a remain baggage that was thought up over colonialism ● How to think about “Culture” ○ Archaeology is about culture ○ “Culture … taken in its wide ethnographic sense is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law , custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” ■ - Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1871) ○ Adaptation of culture: tools and behaviors, environmental, the notion that culture is adaptive for societies ○ Ideas and Ideationsim: shared ideas/beliefs/understandings are the most clear lines of culture ● The Culture Historical Approach (early 20th century) ○ Interest in where cultures were and when? Where did they move? ○ How and why did cultures change? ■ External influences like diffusion, migration, etc. ● The Processual Approach (1960s - present) ○ Lew Binford had an interest in understanding the processes of cultural change ○ Revolution for North American and world archaeology ○ Archaeology as a science, it is objective and unbiased ■ Down-played history and the humanities behind archaeology ○ Adaptationist view of culture ○ People live within a cultural system - interacting realms of economy, technology, environment, etc. - change comes from the outside ■ This is attractive because it is material culture, it can be clearly seen and observed, counted, collected, easy to compare ■ Relatively little room for the actions of individuals in societies ○ Seeking to find the general laws of culture change processes - cultures as organic systems ○ A belief in “positivism” ■ The notion that in neo-archaeology that following the scientific process will reveal exactly what happened at a site/in the past ● An assumption that there is one history/one past ● The Post Processual Approach (mid 1970s - the present) ○ Ian Hodder ■ A reaction against extreme positivism, he does a full switch from Binford’s archaeology and focuses on culture/humanities ○ Only focusing on positivism, this excludes the views of non-science ■ Also the assumption that there is only one past ○ Can we know the one true past? ○ Archaeology is about people in the past - individuals ○ Also interested in change over time for cultures, but more interested more in internal changes inside a society: ■ individual/group agency; factionalism; social tension ■ Politics and the creation of ideology; dynamics of power ○ Archaeology is obviously political → 80% of funding comes from government Lecture 5 - Sites & Survey ● The Traditional Questions (historical and processual approaches): ○ Where did people live on the landscape? ○ When? ○ What was the environment like? Resources? ○ How did people make a living within the environment? What did people make and what did they consume? ○ How did they interact with others “near and far” ○ How do people act within their environment? ● Post Processual Questions: ○ What did people “think” in the past? ○ Religion, ideology, and politics? ○ Social organization ■ Social stratification? Inequality? Power? ■ Social production and reproduction ● How do young people in a society learn how to fit in? ○ Household archaeology -- as opposed to “tombs and temples” approach ○ Women and gender relations in the past ○ Children in the past -- previously underrepresented ○ The archaeology of groups with no written history. Giving a voice to traditionally neglected peoples ● How do we go about addressing these questions? ○ The archaeological process ■ Library Research: at least 30% of archaeology ■ Research design - digging with an explicit plan (as opposed to looting); multidisciplinary ■ Search for funding ■ Field research ● Site survey → pedestrian survey ● Remote sensing → (air and satellite images) ● Excavation → small scale to very large scale (careful and controlled) ■ Laboratory Analysis ■ Publication - dissemination of results - an ethical obligation to share and publish your findings ■ Curation - preservation of materials/public sharing ● Types of Archaeological Materials ○ Artifacts ■ Human made or modified objects that are moveable ● i.e. pottery remains, stone tools, etc. ○ Ecofacts ■ Natural objects in archaeological contexts ● i.e. food remains, bones, pollen, etc. ○ Features ■ Non-mobile human-made things ● i.e. hearths, storage pits, burial, floor, etc. ● Together, they all form the archaeological context -- the spatial association of it all ○ Archaeological record is both the artifacts and ecofacts that are found ● Archaeology as Scalar ○ Archaeological investigation takes place at different scales ■ The scale of investigation depends on the research questions being asked ■ Research questions: ● Where did people live and why? ○ Lead to looking at the landscape and map in sites ● How did people live? ○ Excavate villages and households - analysis of small remains of food and tools ● How were the tools made? ● Settlement patterns ○ Patterns of different kinds of sites on a landscape ● Settlement systems ○ Functional and ideational associations with various environmental zones and geographical features ● Data Collection Methods ○ How to collect the data ■ Pedestrian survey ● Quadrats ● Transects ● Set diameter circles ■ mapping/ recording sites ■ Surface collection Introduction to Zooarchaeology (guest lecture): ● What is zooarchaeology? ○ The study of animal remains from archaeological site ■ Micromammals, micromammals, etc. ○ Zooarchaeology is not just about reconstructing past diet: ■ Faunal remains can provide information on: ● When a site was occupied ● Past environments ● Site formation ● Disturbances at the site ● Ritual behavior ● Transitions of human diets ● Human population history ● Spatial and social organization ● Ritual behavior ● Once the bones are collected, how to identify: ○ Physical comparative collections ○ Digital comparative collections (2D/3D) ○ Identification guides ○ Biomolecular techniques (DNA/collagen fingerprinting) ● Data collection in the lab: ○ Species ○ Skeletal element ○ age/sex ● The importance of taphonomic research: ○ The science to help zoologists understand what happened between the death of an animal and our analysis of its remains in the lab ■ Data to determine this: ● presence/degree of burning ● Cut marks ● Percussion damage (break of a bone) ● Carnivore damage ● Rodent gnawing ● Weathering ● Use faunal remains to date sites: ○ Absolute dating: ■ Bones: Radiocarbon (C14) ■ Teeth: Electron Spin Resonance (ESR), Uranium-Series Dating (U-series) ■ Egg shell: Amino Acid Racemization (AAR) ● Using faunal data to reconstruct past environments ○ The more specific the habitat requirements/preferences, the more useful the taxon ○ Index species are particularly useful ○ Often times trouped by habitat type (i.e. grassland v. woodland) ● Importance of the study of microfauna ○ More sensitive to climate change/ have more specific habitat requirements than larger animals ○ Not generally introduced by human selection, so may provide a less biased picture of local conditions? ● Technology was essential for hominids to have the ability to hunt/process game ○ There is a relationship between the evolution of technology and meat-eating as a major component of the diet ■ Oldest evidence of human’s eating from ~3.4 million years ago ● How do we tell whether the assemblage (bits/evidence) was produced by humans or carnivores? ○ Cut marks/gnawing indications/stone points embedded/ etc. ■ Is there any association between the stone tools and the fauna, together could they make sense? ■ Utility of an animal → the amount of meat/marrow ● CARNIVORES CONSUMED CARCASSES IN A FAIRLY TYPICAL ORDER - high utility bones first, low utility bones later ○ If a group of early humans arrives late to a kill site, only the low utility elements could be left to scavenge for ■ Cut marks on the midshaft of limb bones indicates access by humans early/before carnivores ● Morphological changes → how an animal changes over time/domestication Definitions, short answers, 1 short essay (with 2-3 topics)