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A cultural anthropology of the human past focusing on material evidence of human modification of the physical environment.

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archaeology

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All material objects constructed by humans or near- humans revealed by archaeology.

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archaeological record

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A precise geographical location of the remains of past human activity.

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site

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Objects that have been deliberately and intelligently shaped by human or near-human activity.

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artifacts

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Nonportable remnants from the past, such as house walls or ditches.

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features

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The study of the way present-day societies use artifacts and structures and how these objects become part of the archaeological record.

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ethnoarchaeology

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The physical examination of a geographical region in which promising sites are most likely to be found.

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survey

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The systematic uncovering of archaeological remains through removal of the deposits of soil and other material covering them and accompanying them.

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excavation

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Digital ________ is the digital information about the past available on the Internet. It can include a range of materials from digitized documents and photographs to images of artifacts to video and sound recordings.

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heritage

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Different ways that people in different societies go about meeting their basic material survival needs.

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subsistence strategy

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The characteristic form of social organization found among foragers. ____ are small, usually no more than 50 people, and labor is divided ordinarily on the basis of age and sex. All adults in _____societies have roughly equal access to whatever material or social valuables are locally available.

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band

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A society that is generally larger than a band, whose members usually farm or herd for a living. Social relations in a _____ are still relatively egalitarian, although there may be a chief who speaks for the group or organizes certain group activities.

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tribe

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Special-purpose groupings that may be organized on the basis of age, sex, economic role, and personal interest.

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sodalities

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A form of social organization in which a leader (the ____) and close relatives are set apart from the rest of the society and allowed privileged access to wealth, power, and prestige.

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chiefdom

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A particular social position in a group.

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status

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A stratified society that possesses a territory that is defended from outside enemies with an army and from internal disorder with police. A ____, which has a separate set of governmental institutions designed to enforce laws and to collect taxes and tribute, is run by an elite that possesses a monopoly on the use of force.

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state

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A research approach that explores why women's contributions have been systematically written out of the archaeological record and suggests new approaches to the human past that include such contributions.

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feminist archaeology

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Archaeological research that draws on insights from contemporary ____ studies to investigate how people come to recognize themselves as different from others, how people represent these differences, and how others react to such claims.

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gender archaeology

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The study of archaeological sites associated with written records, frequently the study of post-European contact sites in the world.

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historical archaeology

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Being able to move with ease from one cultural setting to another.

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cosmopolitanism

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bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states, and empires

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Formal Categories Used by Anthropologists to Classify the Forms of Human Society

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Sometimes called a rank society.

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tribe

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Forms when one state conquers another.

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Empire

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A variety of natural and human forces may have interfered with remains once they are left behind at a site. Being able to tell when processes like this have or have not affected the formation of a particular site is the focus of ____.

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taphonomy

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____ from bones can be used to identify species to which ancient bones belonged, and the ratio between stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in bone ____ can indicate the amount of meat in the human diet.

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Collagen protein

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Ancient ____ can also be recovered from ceramic fragments or other materials and can be analyzed as biomarkers of leaf wax, muscle, or milk residues, again providing insights about past diets.

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fat molecules

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Occasionally, archaeological sites are well preserved as a result of ___, such as volcanic eruptions.

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natural disasters

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Similarly, mudslides may cover sites and protect their contents from erosion, whereas waterlogged sites free of _____ can preserve a range of organic materials that would otherwise decay.

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oxygen

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____ are exemplary airless, waterlogged sites that have yielded many plant and animal remains, including artifacts made of wood, leather, and basketry as well as the occasional human body.

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Peat bogs

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Lob pilings recovered from Swiss lakes have been useful both for reconstructing ancient sunken dwellings and for establishing tree-ring sequences in European ____.

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dendrochronology

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The earliest classification of ancient human cultural traditions in Europe was based on stone, bronze, and iron ____, all of which can survive for long periods.

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tools

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____ also renders plant seeds virtually indestructible, allowing important dietary clues to survive.

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fire

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This is well illustrated by the spectacular 1991 discovery of the so-called ____, who had frozen to death in an Alpine glacier 5,300- 5,200 years ago.

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Ice Man

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Much of the final analysis of the remains is carried out in laboratories, but some archaeologists promote the integration of discovery and analysis by bringing theorists to excavations in progress to engage in "____."

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interpretation at the trowel's edge

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____ are done when archaeologists want to know a lot about a little of a site.

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Excavations

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Artifacts and structures from a particular time and place in a site are grouped together in assemblages; similar assemblages from many sites are grouped together in archaeological _____.

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cultures

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Archaeologically reconstructed societies are classified using a ____ of forms of human society that was developed in conjunction with cultural anthropologists in the middle of the twentieth century. Its major categories are bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.

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taxonomy

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____ forms of archaeological research have increasingly involved cooperation between scientists and members of groups with past or current connections to the sites under investigation.

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collaborative

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Many archaeologists have concluded that it is vital to develop a ____ understanding of the claims of varied stakeholders and to promote conversations among them, even if achieving consensus may not be possible.

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cosmopolitan

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Four Kinds Of Objectives Have Guided Archaeology At Different Times Over Its History: (1) reconstructing material remains, (2) reconstructing lifeways, (3) processual archaeology, (4) _________ or interpretive archaeology

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post-processual

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Later came the goal of reconstructing the _______ — the culture — of the people who left those material remains.

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lifeways

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___________archaeologists "sought to make archaeology an objective, empirical science in which hypotheses about all forms of cultural variation could be tested"

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processual

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As a general rule, ______ archaeologists downplayed explanations in which people play an active role as agents who are conscious to a greater or lesser degree of what is happening around them and whose activities contribute to cultural maintenance or change.

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processual

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Interest in human adaptations to various environments in the course of cultural evolution led to an interest in the field of ____, in which cultural processes must be understood in the context of climate change, the variability of economic productivity in different environments, demographic factors, and technological change.

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cultural ecology

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Relating to human agency and the power of ideas and values in the construction of ancient cultures. A variety of new approaches, which are sometimes called ________________ or interpretive archaeology, stress the symbolic and cognitive aspects of social structures and social relations.

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post-processual

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Some postprocessual archaeologists focus on ____ in their explanations of certain aspects of the archaeological record; they draw attention to the ways that archaeological evidence may reflect individual human agency and internal contradictions within a society.

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power and domination

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Other post-processual archaeologists point out that similar-looking features can mean different things to different people at different sites, which is why it can be seriously misleading to assume that all cultural variation can be explained in terms of _______ like population growth or ecological adaptation.

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universal processes

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The presence of other remains, such as plant residues or animal bones connected with food provisioning, which are not themselves artifacts but appear to be the byproducts of human activity.

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ecofacts

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When archaeologists study sites through survey or excavation, they carefully record the immediate _____ (e.g., gravel, sand, or clay) in which the object is found and its provenance (sometimes spelled provenience), which is the precise three dimensional position of the find within the _____.

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matrix

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When archaeologists study sites through survey or excavation, they carefully record the immediate matrix (e.g., gravel, sand, or clay) in which the object is found and its _____, which is the precise three dimensional position of the find within the matrix.

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provenance

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radioactive carbon, half-life is ____ yo

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6000

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Dendrochronology (tree rings) can tell how much moisture a tree receives in the ring, a particular pattern in a particular region, reconstruct a tree ring sequence; compare with other tree rings, line up like bar codes. American southwest has old trees going back ____ years.

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10,000

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____: radiocarbon and dendrochronology

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Absolute dating methods

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____: Stratigraphy and Artifact seriation

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Relative dating methods

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In the United States, Cultural Resources Management (CRM) archaeology plays an important role in carrying out research on archaeological sites threatened by road building or other infrastructure projects. In Europe, these issues are the focus of a field originally called "rescue archaeology" after World War II, but which has been called "____ archaeology" since 1979.

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preventive

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For partisans of private, commercial archaeology, developers are clients, for whom they need to be as efficient as possible. This is why ____archaeology is often referred to as developer-led archaeology or developer-funded archaeology, as if it were the developer who decided on the excavation.

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preventive

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