Concepts
The ‘Residue’ remaining following various cultural and non-cultural (natural) processes. Evidence studied by archaeologists often includes artifacts (belongings) used, modified, or created by people.
The understanding that (at least in North America) modern societies can be used to understand the past.
What is Ethnography?
Using overlays and layers to better compile data to understand how it all works together, this technology can be used at different scales - from landscape to the features, to the artifacts found within the archaeological site.
What is GIS (Geographic Information Systems?)
Assemblages of objects arranged in order to create a chronology.
What is Seriation?
Remains large enough to be visible without a microscope, this can include leaf remains, needles, cones, stems, and even seeds. It tells us about which plants grew in an area, and help to reconstruct the terrestrial environment.
What are Macrofossils?
Portable objects used, modified or made by humans (for example stone tools, clothing, etc.)
What is an Artifact?
Beginning in the 1980's this framework includes the re-examination of gender bias and androcentrism or male bias in archaeology.
What is Feminist archaeology?
These methods measure physical properties, such as magnetism and gravity, and does not need to produce its own energy to measure a response. Unlike active methods which produce an energy source to measure the response and “read” what lies below the soil.
What is a Passive technology (Non-Invasive Remote Sensing)?
Developed by Charles Lyell, the concept that the same processes acting in the past are the ones acting in the present, connected to the Law of Superposition.
What is Uniformitarianism?
Single-celled algae (microscopic), their cell walls are composed of silica, so they preserve. They are found in all aquatic environments as well as soils around the world. These small algae produce 20-50% of the oxygen we breathe.
What are Diatoms?
A group of artifacts found in the same place (association or context).
What is an Assemblage?
What is Processual or 'New Archaeology'?
Magnetic anomalies that appear as both light and dark spots in a magnetometry survey that are caused by iron or metal buried within an archaeological site.
What are Dipoles?
Examination on the use of volcanic ash that may be incorporated into archaeological sites and can be used for relative dating based on spatial association.
What is Tephrochronology?
These silica bodies are formed during the lifetime of a plant. They persist even after the plant decays and survive even if burnt.
What are Phytoliths?
Material surrounding the artifact/feature (for example sand, gravel, etc.).
What is the Matrix?
Using personal and humanistic insights recognizing the varied perspectives of different social groups to examine experiences of the past, including examining gender bias, power dynamics, and ethnicity as an interpretive framework in archaeology.
What is Post-Processual Archaeology?
This technology is helpful in locating hearths, kilns and other heated features, as well as for locating iron objects (metals). This is done by measuring slight distortions to the Earth’s magnetic field based on the presence of iron in the soil.
What is Magnetometry using a Fluxgate Magnetometer?
Rivers that are highly sinuous, with a low sediment load. Sediment is deposited on inner channels, and cut-off channels produce oxbow lakes, with large flood plains.
What are Meandering Rivers?
The study of plant grains called pollen. Pollen in bogs and lakes can allow us to reconstruct detailed past vegetation and climate.
What is Palynology?
Vertical and horizontal position of an artifact within the matrix (when found in situ).
What is the Provenience?
Having ancestral descendants talk about and study their own pasts and histories. Examining and critiquing the colonized history of archaeology.
What is Indigenous or Post-Colonial Archaeology?
Using radiowave pulses sent into the ground, this emitter sends short pulses through the soil, and the echoes reflect back changes in the soil and sediment conditions, and the depth that these occur at based on the travel time of the pulses.
What is GPR or Ground Penetrating/Probing Radar
Areas dominated by windblown sediments, such as sand and silt, including some deserts and polar climates. Can produce windblown ventifacts.
What are Aeolian Environments?
Single-celled organisms with shells, they are found in all aquatic environments. They are usually found on seafloor sediment, and have been used to study the layers to provide a record of the earth’s sea level temperature changes. Can be used in archaeology to provenience stone tools from limestone.
What are Foraminifera?