Anthropology 2 – Spring 2011
Review Sheet #2 Archaeological Terms
archaeological site is a place at which traces of human activity are found, these types of sites include:
- living or habitation sites
- kill sites
- ceremonial sites
- burial sites
- quarry sites
- art sites
archaeological cultures are consistent patterning of assemblages, the archaeological equivalents of human societies.
Archaeological cultures consist of the material remains of human culture preserved at a specific space and time
archaeological data are the material remains of human activities; these include
- artifacts - portable objects made or modified by human activities
- features - non-portable artifacts and associated material
- e.g., post-holes, hearths, or burials
- ecofacts - the nonartifactual remains found in archaeological sites
- e.g., animal bones, plant remains, and pollen
- structures buildings that can be identified from features in the ground
assemblage all of the artifacts found at a site, including the sum of all subassemblages at the site
context is the position of an archaeological find in time and space, established by measuring and assessing its associations,
matrix, and provenience
- the assessment includes study of what has happened to the find since it was buried in the ground
culture is a dynamic, complex, structured organization
- culture has three components:
1) individual behavior
2) the traits that are shared by members of a culture
3) the system of behavior in which everyone participates
- culture is seen as a system, made up of numerous subsystems that are linked together in complex ways
culture areas are large geographic areas in which artifacts characteristic of an archaeological culture exist in a precise
context of time and space
law (i.e., scientific laws) - is a generalize theory that explains a phenomena
- in archaeology they are usually associated w/ human behavior
- a scientific law must be universal in nature, i.e., they must provide statements about relations between variables
that are assumed to hold true regardless of the temporal period, region of the world, or specific cultures that are
being studied
- these generalizes vary in scale from major assumptions about historical processes to regularities dealing with
relatively trivial aspects of human behavior
normative approach
- the normative approach, which was derived from the perspective that dominated American cultural
anthropology for most of this century
- it emphasized shared ideas and that all human behaviors are patterned
- the form of these patterns are determined by culture
- all members of a culture shared an ideal mental template that they were taught as children
- these shared ideas were expressed in cultural traits
- e.g., how pottery was made and designed or projectile pt types, or house types, etc.
- anthropologists characterized cultures by long lists of these traits
- changes in the form or pattern of these traits were assumed to reflect cultural change
- to develop these trait lists archaeologists were concerned with description and classification of artifacts,
architecture, sites, and cultures
- function, i.e., what is it
- where, i.e., spatial location
- when, i.e., temporal or chronological concurs
- e.g., - when was a pot manufactured or projectile pt produced
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- what is the relative temporal relationship between one archaeological culture,
assemblage, or sub-assemblage, and another
problems with normative approach:
1) major problem w/ normativism is that it ignores all the variability between cultures
2) with normativism’s stress on ideas and mental templates it was difficult for archaeologist to
employ to their data, i.e., it is difficult to identify ideas in the archaeological record
processual archaeology
- processual archaeology is an approach to archaeology that focuses on the analysis of the causes of cultural
change, in particular the transition to cultural complexity
- processual archaeology is still concerned w/ traditional normative issues, however, the primary interest is with
the why and how of prehistoric cultural change, i.e., the factors responsible for cultural change
Lewis Binford and the New Archaeology
- movement began in early 1960’s; although lip-service had been paid to a “need for change in archaeological
research” since the end of the 1930’s and 1940’s
- he argued that archaeology, like cultural anthropology, should adopt the goal of explaining cultural change over
long periods of time, i.e., elucidate universal laws that govern cultural change
- modern archaeologists became more interested in the growth of cultural complexity, this lead to much greater
interest in the environment
- the older possibilism perspective had held the environment more or less constant in archaeological thinking,
the environment was seen as background or the setting for cultural development
- this view was replaced w/ a modified determinism approach that recognized the environment as a factor in
cultural change
New Archaeology an approach to archaeological research that emphasizing the importance of understanding underlying
cultural processes in order the elucidate cultural change
- this approach is commonly associated with Lewis R. Binford
- the New Archaeology stressed three things:
1) cultural ecology
- per Julian Steward environment
- the study of interrelationships between human societies and their environment
- how humans adapt to their environment
- reemergence of cultural evolutionary theory
2) systems approach
- this approach views culture as a system with a number of subsystems having changing adaptive roles
through time - e.g., technological subsystem = workers, tools, materials, and techniques linked
with exploitation of the environment
- while economic and political subsystems operated to facilitate subsistence activities
- New Archaeologists stressed that cultural remains had to correlated w/ the different subsystems in
order to determine the links between them
- different from normativism where culture was viewed as being share, this approach saw people
participating in culture, and participating in different ways
3) scientific approach
- as previously discussed
- in the past archaeology had lacked rigorous methodologies in both the field and laboratory
- this new approach emphasized standard excavation techniques, sampling methods, analyses procedures
(e.g., C14 and other dating techniques)
middle range research
- by the 1970’s Binford, Michael Schiffer, and others began to question how the extant archaeological record and
be correlated with past human behavior
- this approach attempts to link the static data from the archaeological record with the dynamic processes that `
formed it
- two primary issues are involved
1) how is the archaeological record form originally and how is it transformed over time
- the archaeological record is not a direct reflection of past human activities
- numerous different forces act upon the material remains after its original deposition
- two categories of processes affect the archaeological record
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a) natural processes, e.g., decay, weathering, animal activity, soil pressure (i.e., weight), water
transportation, etc.
b) cultural processes, e.g., reuse, trampling, construction
- thus archaeologists must understand what and how transformational processes can affect the
archaeological record
2) how to link the present record w/ past behaviors in as unambiguous a fashion as possible
- archaeologists nolonger make simple inferences
- complex analogy is used in an attempt to elucidate the archaeological record, this is a means of
reasoning based on the assumption that if two things are similar in some respects, then they must be
similar in other respects
ethnoarchaeology is the study of contemporary peoples to determine processual relationships that will aid in
unraveling the archaeological record, i.e., archaeologists carry out ethnographic studies to document the
relationships between human behavior and the patterns of artifacts and food remains
- e.g., Binford’s Nunamuit Eskimos (site formation processes in camp sites and
butchering sites) or study of shellfish gathering by Australian aborigines
experimental archaeology studies are designed to aid archaeological interpretation by attempting to duplicate aspects of
behavioral processes experimentally under carefully controlled conditions
- e.g., replication studies of stone tool technology or reproduction of pottery manufacture
primary context refers to a find which has remained undisturbed from the time it was originally deposited until
archaeological recovery
secondary context refers to finds which have been disturbed (e.g., by water transport or by subsequent human
activities) since they were originally deposited
provenience archaeological materials occur within a matrix (i.e., surrounding material)
- their position within this matrix is their provenience
- is the horizontal and vertical position of an archaeological object in relation to the established coordinate system
- i.e., recorded three-dimensionally within an archaeological unit and/or site
- provenience is determined by the law of association and the law of superposition
law of association the principle that objects found in physical association were probably in use together at the same time
subassemblage an association of artifacts denoting a particular form of prehistoric activity practiced by a group of people
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