KEY:
Bold - Questions
( ) - Associated authors
SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS:
What is a dose response curve and how does it impact geochronology? I tried to go back over
his powerpoint but it doesn’t help much...
● This is when a substance is exposed to light. The reaction is measured and that light is
measured against known values. For example,
● OSL – Optically Stimulated Luminescence
● TL – Thermoluminescence
● Week 4 Readings by Rhodes and Jacobs & Roberts is on OSL
What can be a problem with ethnoarchaeology? What is Thulman looking for here?
● The living group may be using different methods or tools
● Processes occurring now are not necessarily an explanation for what happened in the
past)
● Portray different cultures to be static
Mutuality and materiality?
● Materiality is the relationship between people and their world (i.e. the artifact).
Specifically looking at the social aspect of the item
● Mutuality is the relationship between the people and how they interact with each other
(also called Social Theory)
Integrity and resolution (Binford). Explain.
● Integrity refers to the number of agents that have played a role in creating the patterning
observed in the archaeological record
● Resolution refers to the number and timing of events or actions of each agent involved in
the development of the archaeological record
How accurate is the paleo diet? And how would you know?
Why is calibration necessary for radiocarbon dating?
●
Pompeii Premise?
● Week 2 Binford Reading
What is a formal analogy and a suppressed analogy?
What is a relational analogy?
Stipulate casual or structural linkages between the phenomena specified.
Relational analogies are based on links between source or context and relevant criteria. They
are systematic.
Considered stronger than Formal Analogies.
What is the difference between C and N transforms? (Schiffer)
● Schiffer’s theory of site formation processes
● Cultural transformations (ex. Building a wall)
● Non-cultural/Natural transformations (ex. Stream running through the site)
What is a phytolith?
Culture History
● Defines people by material culture
● Relies on diffusionism for changes (diffusionism = find earliest example and everything
else derives from that source
● Cultural cores: geographical or ecological areas from which other stuff diffused
Vs. Cultural Ecology (Leslie White and Julian Stewart)
● Not diffusionism, cultures are functional systems designed to adapt to environmental
change
● Multi-linear
● Ex: irrigation/drought/ditches require systems
Processualism (Louis Binford)
● Interested in processes - how different processes function in society
● Not movement for change and development, instead looked at society’s relationship with
their environment and other processes at work to explain how a society was what it was
● Multi-variate explanations better than mono-causal (multiple explanations)
● General laws for cultural change when using processual theory:
○ Material is good evidence
○ Data objective
○ Diffusion not good explanation
○ Unity of humanity - “everyone can work it out, cultures are very complex”
● Explains similarities and differences between cultures in scientific way
● What are the functions of cultural components
Evolutionary Arch
● Centered on idea that processes responsible for biological evolution also drives cultural
change
Post-Processual
● Material culture has meaning to individuals
● Individuals make choices about their lives (agency)
● The history of a specific society is at least as important as the structure of that society
●
Data is not always objective, always making theoretical choices, which means
everything is biased
● Forced archaeologists to look at other groups of people (poor, women…)
● Material culture reflects how humans adapt to the environment
E. B. Tylor
● English anthropologist
● Liked LaMarck - thoughts of evolution directional
● Society goes through unilinear development
○ Savagery - Barbarism - Civilization
● “Everyone capable of moving up”
Louis Henry Morgan
● Befriended Iroquois, was inducted into tribe
● Band, tribes, chiefdoms, states
● Looked at interrelationships with people
Binford on Integrity and Resolution
● Integrity: inclusions within deposit derived from same dynamic conditions - one agent
doing all depositing
● Resolution: whether material can be referred to specific aka ambiguous events or
actions in the past
● Grain: how well components of sites can be differentiated
Optimal Foraging Theory
● Idea of why animals would eat one thing over another - maximize energy to obtain/return
and minimize energy released
● Ranking of different food choices
● Energy as currency (joules/calories)
● Predict human behaviour - food choice, social structure
● If resources are scarce and unpredictable, groups more mobile and territory undefended
● If resources are abundant and predictable, groups less mobile and defend territory
Broad Spectrum Revolution (Zeder)
● Flannery hypothesis: as population grew, more food needed, resource depression
induced dietary diversification