Name: __________________________________________________________________ Mr. Shalaby
Date: ___________________________________________________________________ Collier High
Period: _________________________________________________________________ Anthropology
How We Discuss The Past
The Evidence of the Past
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Archeologists and Paleoanthropologists rely on four kinds of evidence to learn about the
past:
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Artifacts
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Ecofacts
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Fossils
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Features
Together they provide a ______________ story about human life long ago.
Artifacts
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Anything made or _____________ by humans is an artifact.
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Most of the artifacts that archeologists look for and examine to reconstruct what was
daily life like long ago are accumulated garbage of daily life – This is called
archaeological __________.
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The most common artifacts from the past are ________ tools, which archeologists call
____________.
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Humans first starting using stone tools more than 2.5 million years ago.
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Used for almost every ____________.
Another common artifact is ___________ (pots and other items of baked clay).
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Humans started making ceramics about 10,000 years ago.
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Because they are both __________ and relatively easy to make, ceramics
show up frequently in the __________ that makes up the archeological
record.
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Wood and bone artifacts are common as well.
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Used to make hide-working, cooking, _________ and even __________
tools.
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Unlike stone tools they tend not to ____________ well in the archeological
record.
Ecofacts
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Ecofacts are _____________ objects that have been used or affected by humans.
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For example: ___________ from animals that people have eaten.
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These bones are somewhat like artifacts, but they haven’t been made or
______________ by humans.
Fossils
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Rare but particularly ______________ about human biological evolution.
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A fossil may be an impression of an insect or _________ on a muddy surface that is now
a stone.
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Sometimes it is consist of the actual ___________ remains of an animal’s _____________
structure.
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When an animal dies, the ____________ matter that made up its body begins to
deteriorate.
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The ___________ and skeletal structure are composed largely of inorganic
mineral salts, and soon they are all that remains.
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We don’t have ____________ remains of everything that lived in the past, and sometimes
we only have ______________ from one or few individuals.
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Robert ____________ established that the earth has probably seen 6,000 _____________
species. Remains of only 3% of these species have been found.
Features
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Features are a kind of ___________, but archaeologist distinguished them from other
artifacts because they cannot be easily _____________ from an archaeological site.
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____________ are good example, when humans build a fire on bare
ground the soil becomes heated and is changes.
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When archaeologists finds a hearth, they find an area of hard, reddish soil
often surrounded by _____________ and ash.
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The most common features are called ___________.
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Pits are simply _________ dug by humans that are later filled with garbage or
eroded soil.
Living floors are another common type of features. These are the places where humans
__________ and _________________.
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A large or very deep area of such debris is called a ___________.
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Middens are often the remains of garbage dumps or areas repeatedly
used over long periods of time, such as _____________.
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_______________ are a common feature on archaeological sites.
Finding the Evidence
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Evidence of the past is all _____________ us, but finding them is not always easy.
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Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists usually restrict their search to what is called
sites.
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__________ are know or suspected locations of human activities in the past that
contain a record of that activity.
How Are Sites Created?
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_________ are created when the remnants of human activity are covered or ___________
by some natural process.
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The most dramatic one is ____________ activity.
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The records of human behavior or _____________ themselves can be totally
buried within _____________.
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The most impressive example of this must be __________ – an entire city that
was buried in the eruption of Mount ______________ in A.D. 79.
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Today archaeologists are digging out the city and finding the remains
of ancient life just as it was left in the ___________ before the eruption.
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Less dramatic means of burring the record of human ___________ are the natural
processes of dirt _______________ and _____________.
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Wind and water-borne soil and debris can cover a site either __________ (as in a
flood) or over a long period of time.
The processes through which soils are built up can also bury artifacts in a way that
allows archaeologists to _____________ them later.
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Since good locations to live and work in are often _____________ by humans, many sites
contain the remains of _______________ human occupations.
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_____________: each layer, or stratum, of human occupation is separated like a layer in a
cake.
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Not only do __________ sites allow the archaeologist or paleoanthropologists to
distinguish the sequence of site occupations, but the __________ themselves provide a
way to know the relative ages of the occupations – earlier occupations will always be
below later ones.
Taphonomy
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The very processes that create sites can often ____________ or destroy them.
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Wind and water for example.
Harold ___________ and his colleagues, for example, have argued that the
Lower Paleolithic site of Cagny-L’Epinette in France does not actually
contain locations where Lower Paleolithic people lived and worked. What
looks like locations of human activities were created by water running
across the site and accumulating artifacts in low-lying places.
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The study of the processes of site disturbance and destruction is called _______________.
How Are Sites Found?
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There is no single methods of finding sites, and indeed many sites are found by
___________________.
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Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists employ one of two basic methods:
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___________ Survey: Walking around and looking for sites.
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Remote ___________: Much more high-tech way of finding sites.
Pedestrian Survey
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A number of ____________ are used to enhance the effectiveness of pedestrian survey.
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Use of ______________ and systematic surveying methods to reduce the area to
be covered by foot.
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By focusing their search on places humans are likely to have _____________.
Remote Sensing
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Archaeologists find archaeological deposited by sensing their ____________ from a
remote location, usually the current _________ of the ground beneath which the
archaeological deposits are buried.
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Most ____________ sensing techniques are borrowed from exploration ______________,
and are the same ones geologists use to find mineral or oil deposit.