FOUNDATIONS & DISCOVERY
These scientists focus on hominin skeletal fossils and genetic remains from the distant past to understand biological evolution.
Who are paleoanthropologists?
These are portable objects that humans make or manufacture, such as pottery, tools, and furniture.
What are artifacts?
This archaeological method involves physically examining a geographic region to identify promising locations where archaeological sites are most likely to be found.
What is an archaeological survey?
This dating method determines whether one object is older or younger than another without assigning an exact age in years.
What is relative dating?
What is the process of systematically uncovering archaeological remains by carefully removing the soil and other materials covering them?
What is excavation?
This term describes all material objects and structures created by humans and our hominin ancestors.
What is the archaeological record?
Unlike portable artifacts, these are non-portable material remains of human activity, such as house walls, ditches, altars, and niches.
What are features?
Identify the three survey methods discussed in the lecture: (1) archaeologists physically walk over an area, (2) photographs identify crop growth patterns or other signs of buried remains, and (3) technology detects buried remains without digging.
What are ground surveys, aerial photography, and remote sensing?
These are geological layers of rock and soil.
What are strata?
This term describes the precise three-dimensional position of an artifact within the material it was found in.
What is provenance?
This term describes a precise geographical location containing remains of past human activity that holds cultural heritage value or interest.
What is an archaeological site?
These are biological remains associated with food consumption or other human activities, such as plant seeds and animal bones.
What are ecofacts?
Archaeologists say this method tells us "a little about a lot of sites," whereas the other method tells us "a lot about a little of a site." Identify both methods and one reason the second is used less frequently.
What are survey and excavation? Excavation is expensive and destructive and can only be performed once in a given excavation area.
This dating principle assumes that older geological layers are generally deeper underground, while more recent layers are found above them.
What is stratigraphic superposition?
Archaeologists use this term to describe the place where an artifact is found and the other objects discovered nearby, helping them identify associations and relationships.
What is context?
Archaeologists can discover sites in four different ways. Identify all four methods of site discovery. (Give examples for bonus points.) (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
Already known sites, discoveries by chance, reviewing historical documents, and reconnaissance.
Identify the three archaeological terms: (1) the soil or material in which an object is found, (2) its precise three-dimensional position, and (3) the place where it is found and the other objects associated with it.
What is matrix, provenance, and context?
This method involves systematically uncovering archaeological remains through careful removal of soil and other deposits. Name three activities archaeologists perform to document the excavation. (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
What is archaeological excavation? Activities include taking photographs, writing descriptive field notes, and drawing profiles of stratigraphic layers.
A site contains evidence of two kinds of human activity: activities occurring horizontally in space during the same period and changes occurring vertically over time. What type of site is this, and what does each dimension reveal? (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
What is a multilayered site? Horizontal layers reveal contemporary activities in space, while vertical layers reveal changes in activities over time.
Archaeologists use this technology to detect buried remains by measuring laser light reflected from the ground, allowing them to identify ancient structures hidden beneath dense vegetation.
What is LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)?
Archaeologists study material evidence of human changes to the physical environment to accomplish three major goals. Identify them. (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
Reconstructing how humans lived in the past, identifying how cultures changed through time, and understanding what influenced those changes.
This field examines the processes that affect the formation and preservation of archaeological sites. Identify two natural factors, two cultural factors, and one climate condition that can affect preservation. (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
What is taphonomy? Natural factors include animal activity and natural catastrophes. Cultural factors include looting, construction, and agriculture. Very cold, very dry, or very wet climates can help preserve organic remains.
Archaeologists use laboratory techniques to establish the ages of archaeological remains. Identify three chronometric dating methods and explain what each can date. (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
Potassium-argon dating (useful around volcanic rock layers), radiocarbon dating (organic materials), and dendrochronology (wood using tree rings)?
One concept describes artifacts, features, and ecofacts from a particular time and place within an archaeological site. Another describes groups created by archaeologists when they identify similar collections of these materials across multiple sites. Identify both.
What are assemblages and archaeological cultures?
Archaeologists use this term to describe the place where an artifact is found and the other objects discovered nearby, helping them identify associations and relationships.
What is context?