Definitions
Geographical Informational Systems
What is GIS?
An estimate of age in calendar years.
What is absolute dating?
Transported by running water.
What is alluvial?
Randomly searching for artifacts on foot.
What is Unsystematic Survey?
Detection through indirect or non-contact means.
What is Remote Sensing?
The study of a series of horizonal layers in time and space.
What is stratigraphy?
A timescale developed to tell time in the distant pasta in coordination with radiocarbon dating.
What is BP?
Transported by gravity.
What is colluvial?
Natural, cultural, and arbitrary.
What are types of excavation layers.
A way of mapping underground using radio pulses.
What is ground penetrating radar?
The study of the origin and evolution of landforms, and the processes that shape them.
What is geomorphology?
A type of absolute dating that uses tree ring patterns.
What is dendrochronology?
Transported by wind.
What is Eolian?
Recording of artifacts using a grid system.
What is systematic survey?
A laser-scanning technique that can accurately map whole landscapes which uses the same principle as radar.
What is LIDAR or Light Detection and Ranging?
The principal method of data acquisition in archaeology.
Excavation
Dating materials are volcanic rocks or minerals.
What is Potassium Argon Dating?
The study of anthropogenic sediments under a microscope.
What is micromorphology?
When only a representative part of an area is actually searched.
What is a sampling strategy?
Measuring the strength of magnetism between the earth's core and a sensor held by an operator.
What is magnetometry?
Assemblages of objects that can be arranged in serial order to create a relative chronology.
What is seriation?
When materials are heated, the iron particles they contain align with the magnetic poles.
What is Archaeomagnetic Dating?
A chart used to identify soil type and color.
What is a Munsell Chart?
The study of the distribution of surviving features of a site.
What is site surface survey?
Monitors electrical resistance of surveys.