The Basics
Any movable object that has been used, modified or manufactured by humans.
What is an artifact?
My name is Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae.
Who is the first professional archaeologist?
I am the "angry young man" and proposed that "artifacts be examined in their cultural contexts" and that the scientific method is required.
Who is Lewis R. Binford?
Reasoning from theory to predict specific observational or experimental results.
WHAT IS DEDUCTIVE REASONING?
Hunter-gathers' pattern of movement between different places on the landscape, timed to the seasonal availability of food and other resources.
What is seasonal round?
I am an archaeologist and a site has been dated to 100 BP and I have forgotten what BP stands for.
What is "before present?"
Refuse deposit resulting from human activities, generally consisting of sediment; food remains such as charred seeds, animal bone, and shell; and discarded artifacts.
What is a midden?
Biological, cultural, linguistic and archaeology.
What is anthropology?
Working from specific observations to more general hypotheses.
What is inductive reasoning?
The distribution of archaeological sites across a region.
What is a settlement pattern?
I found ancient axe heads and extinct mammal bones in the gravel along the Somme River.
Who is Jacques Boucher de Crevecoeur de Perthes?
I created the first framework of Southwestern prehistory and described an archaeologist a "mouldier variety of anthroplolgist."
Who is Alfred Vincent Kidder?
An integrated system of beliefs, traditions, and customs that govern or influence a person's behavior. Culture is learned, shared by members of a group, and based on the ability to think in terms of symbols.
What is culture?
The observations and interpretations that emerge from hands-on archaeological field and lab work.
What is low-level theory?
The movements and activities reconstructed from a settlement pattern.
What is a settlement system?
The branch of archaeology that studies the "classical" civilizations of the Mediterranean such as Greece and Rome, and the Near East.
What is classical archaeology?
I proved the buildings of Great Zimbabwe were build by Africans.
Who was Gertrude Caton-Thompson?
A research perspective that focuses on ideas, symbols, and mental structures as driving forces in shaping human behavior.
What is the ideational perspective?
Hypothesis that kinks archaeological observations with the human behvior or natural processes that produced them.
What is middle-level theory?
A set of strategies for arriving at accurate descriptions of the range of archaeological material across a landscape.
What is systematic regional survey?
Originally, someone who studied antiquities largely for the sake of the objects themselves, not to understand the people or culture that produced them.
What is an antiquarian?
I loved paleoindian archaeology, was the only second woman admitted to Harvard and once had to sit in the hall because I was prohibited from entering the lecture hall.
Who is H. Marie Wormington?
A research perspective that emphasizes technology, ecology, demography, and economics as the key factors in defining human behavior.
What is adaptive perspective?
Theory that seeks to answer large "why" questions.
What is high-level theory?
The region that contains the statistical population and that will be sampled. Its size and shape are determined by the research question and practical considerations.
What is the sample universe?