****REMEMBER****
GO TO SECTION THIS WEEK
IN 461 Social Sciences 1
This is essential to your continued
enrollment in Anthropology 3
Complete Probate Inventory Exercise
BEFORE coming to section.
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Unit 1 Quiz on WebCT
 Available from 3:00 pm today until midnight on
Friday.
 If you are enrolled in class you should be able to
access quiz using your UC Cruzmail log-in name
and password.
 If you enroll this week, you will need to register
for this class on WebCT to access quiz.
 Don’t panic. If you are having trouble, ask for
help.
 Try “Demonstration Quiz” before taking Unit 1
Quiz.
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Webcast Lectures and PPT
Notes now on Web Site
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~judith/anth3/
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Archaeologists study material remains
 physical traces of human action in the
world…
Artifacts: humanly-touched things
Features: human modifications in landscape
(houses, hearths, pits, fields, roads,etc.)
Ecofacts: objects of non-cultural origin
(seeds, pollen, bones, shell, etc.)
Is “Material Culture” Culture?
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Material remains meaningless outside of
temporal and spatial context…
 Sites: loci of past human activities; three dimensional
association of artifacts, features, and ecofacts.
 Cultural Landscapes: two dimensional association of sites
and features.
Vertical associations = relationships through time.
Horizontal associations = relationships across space.
Excavation and Survey: techniques for reconstructing vertical
and horizontal associations between artifacts, ecofacts,
features, and sites
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
The World as Seen by Archaeologists:
 Material remains are by-products of learned, shared,
cognitively structured behavior.
 Patterning in material record reflects cultural behavior
in a systematic way.
 Task of archaeology is to reconstruct these patterns
and explain their meaning--i.e. To tell stories about
the past.
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Unit 1, Lecture 2
The Enlightenment Roots of
Archaeology
Archaeology’s peculiar way of “seeing
and learning” about the past is recent
and unique to the West
By-product of radical
intellectual and cultural
developments in
Europe during the 16th
through 18th century-Renaissance and
Enlightenment.
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Radical Idea No. 1
 Humans are part of Nature and subject
to its Laws and Conditions.
 Laws and Conditions discovered
through Rational Inquiry--observation,
experiment, analogy.
 Human Society legitimate subject of
Rational Inquiry.
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Radical Idea No. 2
 Material conditions of Human existence
differ significantly across space and
have changed through time.
Interest in Classical Antiquity
Industrial Revolution--notion of Progress
European Colonial Encounters-- “primitive
others” “living fossils”
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Radical Idea No. 3
 Material remains or
“antiquities” could be used
to document material
conditions in the past.
 Recognition of Pre-Roman past
 Nationalist antiquarian societies
 Recognition of Stone Tools as
human artifacts
 Three Age System (C. Thomsen)
**Artifacts more than mere
curiosities; independent source
of information about the past**
Wm. Stuckley’s
Stonehenge
Recognition of Stone Tools as
Human Artifacts
By analogy with indigenous
Americans’ tools:
"I doubt not but you have
often seen of those Arrowheads they ascribe to elfs or
fairies, they are just the same
as the chip'd flints the natives
of New England head their
arrows with at this day: and
there are also several stone
hachets found in this
kingdom, not unlike those of
the Americans.” William Lhwyd,
Keeper of Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Stone tool found in France
Emergence of a Discipline
 Several conceptual and methodological
advancements in the 18-19th c. were
critical to development of Archaeology
as formal discipline.
 Made possible the systematic study of
material remains of past human
societies in their temporal and spatial
contexts.
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Advances in Geology
 18th century applied
geology (canals,
mines, etc.)
 Use of stratigraphy
 Layers in earth laid
down successively
in time
 Earth processes are
regular, predictable
William “Strata” Smith and “The
Map that Changed the World”
Advances in Paleontology
(17th-19th Centuries)
 Fossils seen as remains
of organisms
 Evidence for extinct
species accepted
 Specific fossils assoc. w/
specific strata-- gradual,
not catastrophic change
through time.
Realization of the Antiquity
of the Human Species
 Association of Stone Tools w/
Extinct Fauna
 Discovery of pre-modern
human fossils (Neanderthal,
Germany) Thomas Huxley-“The Missing Link”
Whole of Human history can not be
accounted for by Biblical time scale-The Idea of “Prehistory”.
Stratigraphic section from Abbeville, France
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Hoxne, Suffolk, England
Excavated by John Frere, 1790
"The situation in which these weapons were found may
tempt
us to refer them to a very remote period indeed; even
beyond
Judith
Habicht-Mauche,
2005, UCSC
that
of the Spring
present
world..."
Sommes Gravels, Near
Abbeville France
Excavated by
Jacques Boucher
des Perthes,
French Customs
Inspector
“antediluvian axes...”
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
A Test of Human Antiquity:
British Royal Society (1859)
Creates Commission of Experts*
Check B de P’s French evidence
Dig a site with undisturbed stratigraphy
*antiquarians & geologists, including Charles Lyell
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Test of Human Antiquity at Abbeville
1859
 Boucher des Perthes’ claims verified
stratigraphically by British Royal Society
knives hatchets of flint
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Brixham Cave, Windmill Hill, England
Brixham Cave
Chosen for excavation: stalagmite layer
sealed underlying archaeological deposits
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Brixham Cave Test: Relevant
Evidence & Their Meanings
 Stone artifacts = human handiwork
 Fossil bones = extinct Ice Age species =
Ice Age date
 Stratigraphic order = time sequence
 Association in 1 stratum = contemporary
 A long span of human “pre-history” widely
accepted by scholars
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Development of Systematic Techniques of
Excavation, Classification, and Dating in
Europe and N. America (1880-1920s)
 Less emphasis on spectacular
discoveries and treasures of antiquity
 Careful systematic recordings of finds
and their spatial relationships
 Used to determine temporal ordering
and interpretation of human behavior
through pattern and association.
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC
Development of Systematic
Techniques:
 General Augustus Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers-Cranborne Chase, England (1880-1890s)
 A.V. Kidder--Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico
(1915-1929)
**Archaeology is established as a unique way of
seeing and learning about the past
Judith Habicht-Mauche, Spring 2005, UCSC