The Archaeological Record

Question 1

What is the archaeological record?

Answer 1

no concrete/agreed upon definition. very broad and subjective. consists of all remains left behind by humans. sites; artifacts; features; ecofact; cultural landscape. also includes field notes, reports, photos, etc.

Question 2

What is an archaeological site?

Answer 2

can be a habitation site, human remains, rock art, or petroforms. pretty much a place with physical evidence of past human activity.

Question 3

What is a habitation site (list)?

Answer 3

camp site, village, city, tell, midden.

Question 4

What is a campsite?

Answer 4

a small and temporary site. ex. tent rings on the coast of Nunatsiavut, which looks like rocks laid out in circles.

Question 5

What is a village?

Answer 5

semi-sedentary pattern of residency. ie there for a few mths-yr. might come back to them.

Question 6

What is a city?

Answer 6

permanent residency - rlly settling in there. at least 5000 ppl living there. ex. Teotihuacan. not much of a reason to move around as much. intro of agriculture.

Question 7

What is a tell?

Answer 7

term to describe mounds that have been created by successive settlements in western asia and africa. ex. Tell Barri, NE Syria. ppl settled on a piece of land, and then left, later another group came and settled. so adding onto what was there already. (thats why its raised).

Question 8

What is a midden?

Answer 8

garbage/refuse pile. ex. shell middens. can show signs of a habitation area of a city.

Question 9

What is earthenwork?

Answer 9

changes in the land lvl by sculpting rocks and soil. created for defence, burial, spiritual, or habitation. smaller mounds.

Question 10

What are human remains?

Answer 10

isolated human remains or burial. ex. cemetery. could be multiple or singular burial.

Question 11

What are Petroglyphs?

Answer 11

etching into stone. a form of rock art. still considered an arch site.

Question 12

What are pictographs?

Answer 12

painting onto rock. a form of rock art. also considered an arch site.

Question 13

What is a petroform?

Answer 13

alignment of stones in a purposeful manner. exs. stone fences, hunting blinds, fishing weirs. bannock point petroform in whiteshell provincial park. can be big or small.

Question 14

What is a megalith?

Answer 14

alignment of very large stones. petroforms. ex. stonehenge.

Question 15

What are fishing weirs?

Answer 15

any obstruction placed in water that creates some kind of barrier to trap fish in at the coast or river bank.

Question 16

What are the implications of designating places arch sites?

Answer 16

it can be good bc it protects the area. it can be have neg implications for descendant and local communities - might affect ancestral processes of site is now off-limits.

Question 17

What is an artifact?

Answer 17

any object that shows evidence of having been manufactured, modified, of used by ppl. has to be portable. subjective - usu based on arch and their research whats considered an artifact or not, ie for some glass shards, broken nails, etc might be considered an artifact and to others its not.

Question 18

What is a feature?

Answer 18

an object that shows evidence of having been made, used, or modified by ppl. NOT portable so meant to stay in place. includes small objects arranged in a significant way. exs; building; hearths; burial; lithic scatter; patterning of natural sediment.

Question 19

What is an ecofact?

Answer 19

any natural object found at an arch site that provides cultural info (was not modified). includes faunal remains, botanical remains, sediments. provides evidence about past enviros. diet, subsistence strats, settlement patterns, social inequalities. ie hides, animal bones, etc.

Question 20

What is a cultural landscape?

Answer 20

looking at an area and trying to understand why it was used. move away from focus on sites and artifacts. conceptualizing areas how they would have been seen in the past. ex. Chilkoot trail - coast of alaska –> yukon, an nb trading route for indig pops. visualize the whole trail as how it was being used. ie grouping together the diff arch sites along the trail.

Question 21

What are the takeaway points about the archaeological record?

Answer 21

no concrete def of what makes up the arch record. - consists of everything left behind by humans - our documentation of the stuff left behind. our def and designation of an arch site, artifacts, etc. can impact living people.

Question 22

How are sites created?

Answer 22

two things to consider about the creation of arch sites: 1. circumstances that material remains initially enter the arch record (so what happened for material remains to be left behind and become apart of the arch record) why were the sites left behind? purposeful, accidental. 2. the diff ways remains become buried. so how do things get covered up/buried.

Question 23

How are sites initially created?

Answer 23

the process that leads to the creation of arch sites is site formation process. most archs use the term refuse to refer to collectively discarded items. involves primary and secondary refuse.

Question 24

What is primary refuse?

Answer 24

left where it was used. ie making a campfire and leaving it there. in situ= in place.

Question 25

How are sites initially formed (list)?

Answer 25

intention burial, lost and forgotten, abandonment.

Question 26

What is secondary refuse?

Answer 26

deliberately moved from one place to another. ie moving garbage in kitchen to garbage can outside. out of situ.

Question 27

What is an intention burial?

Answer 27

intentional bc of the act of burying. human or animal burials. objects assoc with a burial ie grave goods. caches - storage pits underground.

Question 28

What are lost and forgotten sites?

Answer 28

left accidentally. cargo lost during a shipwreck. dropping smthn that falls under floorboards. isolated finds like arrowheads lost after missing a target.

Question 29

What is abandonment sites?

Answer 29

most of human history, ppl moved around a lot. usu seasonally. sites also abandoned for enviro, social, economic reasons. purposefully abandoned sites have less artifacts - bc you takes as much stuff with you as you can. if theres some kind of catastrophe, ie non-purposeful, a lot of stuff is gonna be left behind.

Question 30

How do natural sediments get to arch sites?

Answer 30

many diff processes bring sediments into a site: natural decay of organic matter; rivers, tides, rising lake and sea lvls bringing in new sand, shells, etc.; wind blowing sand or dirt over a site; mass mvmts like landslides, volcanic eruptions, avalanches.

Question 31

What is the example of Pompeii and sediments?

Answer 31

roman city estimated pop of 20000. quickly covered in 9ft of ash from eruption of mt. vesuvius in CE 79. very good preservation. uncovered markets, villas, amphitheaters, shops, and restaurants. bodies encased in layers of hardened pumice and ash. casts have been made from this ie created molds or casts from bodies encased to protect it.

Question 32

What is the material bias of preservation for inorganic material?

Answer 32

common types of inorganic materials are objects made of stone, clay, and metal. inorganic materials preserve better than organic materials. hard stones like obsidian preserve better than sift stone. fired clay is hard but can still be easily crushed and broken. iron and tin rust and corrode quickly, gold, silver, bronze, and copper preserve well. so some materials preserve better than others.

Question 33

What is the material bias of preservation for organic material?

Answer 33

bones, teeth (highly mineralized/inorganic), and antler have the best preservation - bc of inorganic compo. bones of larger animals preserve better than those of smaller animals. mammal bones preserve better than fish an bird. wood, pollen, and seeds preserve best among plant remains.

Question 34

What is environmental bias of preservation?

Answer 34

many enviro conditions affect preservation of organic remains. such as; rate of burial, microbial activity, burning, extreme enviros, and chemistry of the matrix (soil composition).

Question 35

How does the rate of burial affect preservation?

Answer 35

rapid burial preserves better; removes scavengers from equation, limits exposure to air (the driving force of decay) and chemicals, creates an anaerobic enviro (very little to no O2). the faster smthn is buried, the less chance there is for animals to scavenge it (rodents knaw at bones for the salt).

Question 36

How does burning affect preservation?

Answer 36

removes nutrients. some preservation but ultimate makes it more brittle. the longer exposed to heat, the more inorganic materials are leached out.

Question 37

How do extreme enviros affect preservation?

Answer 37

cold enviros inhibit organisms that eat organic materials. Otzi was discovered in melted glacier ETD= 5500 yrs ago. thought died in alps and thin layer of snow covered body. combo of dry enviro and extreme cold made it preserve very well. dry enviros contribute to natural mummification. waterlogged materials tend to be well preserved, espec soft tissue. bog men in euro; bodies found in stagnant water. preserved very well bc bogs have colder temps and water helps preserve soft tissue. (espec helps bc water is stagnant).

Question 38

How does the matrix chemistry affect preservation?

Answer 38

bone preserves best in alkaline soils (pH above 7). acidic soil will break down inorganic component of bone. some botanical remains preserve better in acidic soil. differential preservation of remains cna happen bc some parts of the soild are alkaline and some acidic.

Question 39

How do site disturbances affect preservation?

Answer 39

there are many factors that can alter the og patterning of material culture left by a sites occupants. ie natural disturbances and cultural disturbances.

Question 40

What are natural disturbances?

Answer 40

has to do with the nat enviro around it. also referred to as non-cultural disturbances or N-Transforms. includes wide range of activities that alter pattern of material record. ie bioturbation, cryoturbation, aeroturbation.

Question 41

What is bioturbation?

Answer 41

a natural disturbance. disturbances by plants ansdanimals. floralturbation and faunalturbation.

Question 42

What is floralturbation?

Answer 42

a type of bioturbation. disturbance from plant roots growing. tree-throw (tree falling over), increase o2, water, and chemicals into the ground during photosynth. increases physical and chemical weathering (breaking away if parts of sites, features, etc.)

Question 43

What is faunalturbation?

Answer 43

digging and scavenging by small animals. earthworms - study showed that earthworms could bury lithic and ceramic fragments by 45 cms in 5 yrs, also alter chem of soil (either more basic or acidic). rodents can bring new materials like shell and bone into a site, and remove others. animals may also mark or break bones which could be mistaken for human activity. ie teeth marks mistaken for cuts.

Question 44

What is cryoturbation?

Answer 44

a type of nat disturbance. impact of cold enviros. frost activity can move objects a substantial distance.

Question 45

What is aeroturbation?

Answer 45

a type of nat disturbance. items displaced by wind.

Question 46

What are other examples of natural disturbances?

Answer 46

water (tides, streams, groundwater); hills (artifacts rolling down); weathering; erosion; climate change - coastal erosion (sites now being at the edge of land), melting of permafrost (impacts preservation, can heave site), flooding.

Question 47

What are cultural disturbances?

Answer 47

aka behavioural disturbance processes or C-transforms. ie. reuse; recycling; human trampling' industries; looting; warfare.

Question 48

What is reuse?

Answer 48

type of cultural disturbance. reusing the site after the initial abandonment. ex. tells.

Question 49

What is recycling?

Answer 49

type of cultural disturbance. ppl in the past would search sites for materials to reuse. so taking materials from sites and making it into smthn else.

Question 50

What is human trampling?

Answer 50

a type of cultural disturbance. humans walking or driving over sites can break artifacts and ecofacts.

Question 51

What are industries?

Answer 51

a type of cultural disturbance. logging and mining. disrupts arch sites.

Question 52

What is looting?

Answer 52

a type of cultural disturbance. disturbs site context and removes artifacts. hobby collecting; collecting arrowheads, using metal detectors to find coins, etc.. participating in trade in illicit antiquities. ethical and moral considerations. if find looted material, dont know where it was og from.

Question 53

What is warfare?

Answer 53

a type of cultural disturbance. bombing. difficult to prevent looting in war. disturbances due to military base activities. digging tranches, military vehicles.

Question 54

Is archaeology a cultural disturbance?

Answer 54

yes. digging process is disturbing the site. modifying for restoration is still changing the site.