ANT-309 Lecture Outline February 13, 2008

VII Classification

A  Artifacts

B Cultures  (Descriptive integration or the construction of Culture Histories)

1 Archaeological terms

a Component-- a culturally homogeneous unit within a single site. It refers to actual materials left behind by people at one particular site-- that is it is NOT an abstraction.

b Horizontal stratigraphy-- where components are separated horizontally.

c Phase: an archaeological unit possessing traits sufficiently characteristic to distinguish it from al other units similarly conceived. Phases are relatively discrete periods of time marked by a small number of distinct artifact types.

d Archaeological culture: “ an assemblage of artifacts that recur repeatedly associated together in dwellings of the same kind and with burials of the same rite. The arbitrary peculiarities of implements, weapons, ornaments, houses, burial rites, and ritual objects are assumed to be concrete expressions of the common social traditions that bind together a people.”  V. Gordon Childe  These are aggregates of closely related phases.

e Complex-- sometimes used instead of Culture-- when archaeologists feel that a pattern is less definitive and more tentative--  (also the term Pattern itself is sometimes used- David Fredrickson 1974)

f Tradition -- Phases that persisted for a long time. Defined by Willey and Phillips in the 1950s

g Horizon-- A style that persists only briefly over a wide area Defined by Willey and Phillips in the 1950s; Examples:

i Early or Chavin Horizon in Peru

ii Bead Horizons in Central California

VIII Interpreting Ecofacts: Reconstructing Subsistence and Past Environments

A Subsistence: the quest for food resources

1 Faunal Remains

a Vertebrates (Mammal, bird, reptile, fish)

b Invertebrates (Shellfish)

2 Floral Remains

a Charred seeds from features (Very important to determine the context of the remains, ie., natural or anthropogenic deposition)

b Coprolites

3 Important things foragers must know about each resource:

a Edibility and food (caloric) value or utility

b Proper tools needed to capture and process it

c Costs in time and energy to travel to, search for, collect, process, and consume it

d Distribution across landscapes

e Cyclical (often seasonal) variation in abundance

B Reconstructing past environments with non-archaeological data

1 Paleoclimate

a Physical evidence of climate change

i Sea and lake levels

ii Extent of glaciers and ice caps

b Biological evidence of climate change; for example, variation in:

i Fauna (fossil bone assemblages)

ii Vegetation

(a)  Pollen (palynology)

(b) Plant macro-fossils in peat,

(c)  Pack rat nests

c Chemistry of atmosphere and sea water

i Oxygen isotope analysis