Class notes
Intro to Archaeology
- Course
- ANTH232 (ANTH232)
- Institution
- University Of Nebraska - Lincoln
Intro to Archaeology notes August to October
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Intro to Archaeology❖ Archaeology is 1 of the 4 subdisciplines of anthropology
➢ Physical anthropologists look at the skeletal remains
➢ Puebloan structure ~ 1240AD
❖ Atlantis: A Lost City Beneath the Sea
29 August 2024
Archaeology: First Thoughts
❖ Diachronic: concerned with the way something has evolved through time
❖ What is arhcaeology?
➢ Nothing to do with dinosaurs (paleontology duh)
➢ No treasure (looting)
➢ No booby traps (hollywood)
➢ No ancient aliens (pseudoarchaeology)
❖ What really is archaeology
➢ The scientific study of human society through material remains
➢ Science means obtaining and presenting evidence that supports a claim or
interpretation
➢ Science is about collecting evidence in standardized and replicable ways
that others can understand and duplicate
➢ Science is about making evidence public so others can reach independent
conclusions
➢ Material remains are physical manifestations of human cultural activities
❖ Material Remains
➢ Artifacts (artificial/manmade)
➢ Ecofacts (put there by nature)
➢ Features
❖ Archeological artifacts
➢ Something made by humans
➢ Preservation problem in archaeology
■ If youre in certain kinds of environments you have the preservation
of organic materials
➢ Carved ivory handle, Egyptian knife (3500-3200BC)
❖ Archaeological Ecofacts (biofacts)
➢ Shells
➢ Datura seeds
➢ Hudson-Meng Bison Bonebed
❖ Archaeological features
➢ Walls and floors
➢ Pictographs
, ➢ Irrigation canals
➢ Roman Aqueduct of Segovia in modern Spain ~100AD
■ Dry laid, without concrete
➢ Temple of the Jaguar in Tikal, Guatemala 732AD
■ Created for a ruler, burial tomb
➢ 5000-year-old Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England
■ Analyze the geo-chemistry to the rocks to know where they’re
coming from
➢ Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico 750-1150AD
➢ Barrier canyon style rock art in Utah ~7000-200BC
➢ Serpent mound in Ohio 400-300BC
➢ Mesa Verde style Puebloan Kiva
❖ Archeological Sites
➢ Cached black-on-white jar
➢ Material remains have spatial and temporal distributions
■ Space and time: key dimensions for material remains
● Spatial location and associations can be recorded
● Temporal placement and associations must be determined
by various dating techniques
◆ Relative dating techniques place finds in relative
order of older than and younger than
◆ Absolute dating techniques assign an age estimate to
find
➢ Temporally diagnostic artifacts
■ An artifact of distinctive form, style, or manufacture with a known
and limited time period of production
■ Radiocarbon definition: Radiocarbon dating is a method for
determining the age of an object containing organic material by
using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
● 25+ radiocarbon dates on open-twined sandals place them
between 8300 and 6800 radiocarbon years ago
➢ A common misconception
■ It isn’t about the artifacts… IT’S ABOUT THE CONTEXT
● Not only an artifact’s physical location in space, but its
relationship to other material remains: other artifacts,
ecofacts, and features.
❖ Archaeologists use material remains to answer questions
➢ Who were these past people
➢ Where did they come from?
➢ What was their relationship to those that came before and after
➢ What was their environment like
, ➢ How did they interact with their neighbors
➢ How did they survive
➢ How did their lifeway change
➢ Why did their lifeway change
❖ Materialized history
➢ From recovered material remains archaeologists infer past human
behaviors and history
■ From the fate of the uniquely preserved individuals such as Otzi,
the ice-man from the Austrian-Italian border
■ The fate of various sized social groups, from family units to states
■ From local, short-term histories to regional and global long term
histories
❖ 4 goals of archaeology
➢ Devolop chronology - who and when
➢ Reconstruct past lifeways - what and how
➢ Examine culture process and change - why
➢ Derive meaning - understanding beliefs
❖ “Thinking through things”
➢ Archaeology has well established methods to recover, preserve, document,
and analyze material remains
➢ All in attempt to understand people and cultures from the materials they
left behind
➢ Past people and cultures principally, but also those documented
historically
❖ Detective Analogy
➢ Otzi died 5300 years ago and was discovered in 1991
■ Found with a copper axe
➢ Proplems with evidence
■ Much of material culture is organic
■ Most recent remains are usually more visible than older remains
■ Material remains of some people are diffuse and scattered
(foragers), thus hard to study
■ The material evidence of some people is so extensive that it is
difficult to study
❖ Archaeology is also about preservation
➢ Archaeology is the scientific study and preservation of material
remains of past societies and their environment
➢ Preservation is a key oart of archaeology these days
■ Many archaeology jobs are in the preservation sector:
● Cultural resource management
❖ PAST OR PRESENT
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