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ANT100: Lecture_22

Apr 28, 2021, 7 min read

Archaeological methods and Humanity’s African Origins

March 11

Archaeological Methods

  • The methods we use influence the kinds of data that we can collect; methods shaped by research question
  • How methods influence interpretation
    • Ex: The Boardwalk site: using screens found evidence of fish bones at a coastal site, which was previously believed to not have fish bones when excavated without screens
  • Interpretation - how we interpret the past determined by evidence, but also our theoretical perspective; our idea, and research questions

Archeological Evidence

  • Artifacts; sites; features; ecofacts (plant remains/animal remains); stratigraphy(地层学); dates; matrix (the sediment making up the site); chemical Signature (example of residue of plant remains)

  • Archaeological Site - the accumulation of artifacts or ecofacts representing a place where people carried out certain activities with features (which can be traced)

    • Can be thought of as a concentration of human activity;

  • Fieldwork - the act of finding archaeological sites

    • Survey: the search for archaeological sites (Aerial/ground);
    • Testing and excavation of known or suspected archaeological sites
    • Fieldwork is undertaken: because of development; rescue excavation; cultural resource management (CRM); as a part of a research project

  • Archaeological Survey - a systematic investigation of a specified area for archaeological remains; start with background research; historical documents; pre-existing archaeological sites; maps and aerial photographs; histories: Oral and Written; folklore, talking with locals

    Ex of Oral Histories:

    Erebus and Terror: Franklin’s Ships; 1845 search for the Northwest Passage; Inuit oral histories of ships trapped in ice, starvation, and locations of graves

Mapping

  • For example, settlements may be found near bodies of water such as lakes/rivers

Aerial Photography(航空摄影)

  • Taking of photographs of the ground from an elevated/birds eye position
  • Record crop marks, observe that crops grow differently above soils with cultural features than those without cultural feature. Buried stone features lead to poorer crop growth directly above the stone
Ex1: Roman Harbour town of Altinum

View full extent of or see how features are related; wider view of landscape; historical aerial photographs let you see landscape prior to recent development (example: 1930s photo of Poverty Point, Louisiana; 3600 – 3200 years old)

EX2: Amazon

Recent research triggered by aerial photography (and deforestation); shows densely populated settlements, earthworks, and terraforming (about 1000 years old); evidence for farming & orchards

LIDAR: Light Detection and Ranging

  • Great in heavily forested environments, plane flies over area, sends laser signals, which then bounce back to the plane if they hit something, and then recorded

  • Records everything from top of the trees to the forest floor, remove forest signals to get map of ground level

    Ex: Caracol (Mayan city-state) (quite remote site, discovered by a logger seeking mahogany); AD 550 to 900; over 4 billion measurements in 4 days; showed full extent of city and city viewed in 3D

Satellite Images

  • Satellite images pick up on distinctive soil signatures

  • Formed as people walked from settlements to fields/pastures over centuries

    Ex. “hollow ways” or trackways in Syria (over 14000 settlements discovered using this method)

Ground Reconnaissance(侦查)

  • “Ground truthing”; pedestrian survey; field walking; isolated artifacts on the ground surface; changes in soil/vegetation

    Ex. Prince Rupert Harbour in B.C., with lack of trees implying an ancient village); tree throws; exposed erosional face

Geophysics(地质物理学) in Archaeology

  • The science of the physical properties of the Earth and its surroundings. Helps identify subsurface features prior to excavation; radar waves sent into ground and bounce back off of buried objects

    Ex: Ground Penetrating Radar (Prof. Patton’s example of searching for old graveyard of escaped US slaves in southwestern Ontario)

    Ex: Ness of Brodgar: first identified using Ground Penetrating Radar; predates Stonehenge (on the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland)

  • Excavation:

    • Vertical: test pits or trenches that reveal stratification (or stratigraphy)
    • Horizontal: area excavations. Good for seeing arrangement of features

Site Grid

  • Facilitates documentation of provenience and mapping; breaks site up into small units (1x1m, 2x2m, etc.); site datum
  • Provenience: place of origin; location, association, and context; X, Y, Z coordinates; stratigraphic deposit; found in association with what other objects?
  • Context: without attention to context, archaeology is antiquarianism; how different is this from looting?
  • Artifacts: objects created or modified by human action; technology, economy, exchange, ideology
  • Ecofacts: plant remains: micro and macro; seeds, charcoal, starch grains; paleoethnobotanical analysis; animal bones; shells; faunal analysis or zooarchaeological analysis; questions pertaining to: economy, trade, domestication, social relations, ideology
  • Features: an immovable structure or layer, pit, or post in the ground having archaeological significance; can be traces
  • Stratigraphy: the layers of natural and human-generated deposits that reveal how sites formed and how materials accumulated; essential for understanding change through time; stratigraphic sequence shows chronological arrangement of deposits; a relative chronology
  • Relative Dating: a technique used to estimate the age of archaeological materials, based on the association with materials of a known age or simply in relation to other materials; something is older or younger
  • Absolute Dating: a method of assigning archaeological dates in calendar years; often still an estimate; most rely on radioactive decay in certain elements; radiocarbon dating (C14); radiopotassium (or potassium-argon) dating; dendrochronology
  • Radiocarbon Dating: good for wood, shell, animal bones, antler; C14 unstable carbon isotope; half-life of 5730 years; plants absorb CO2; animals eat plants; when plants or animals die, intake of carbon stops; C14 begins to decay;
    • Calibration: C14 dates must be calibrated to account for changes in the amount of C14 in atmosphere through time;
      • Calibrated dates: C14 dates that have been “corrected” to calendar years
  • Radiopotassium Dating: also called potassium-argon; measures ratio of radioactive potassium-40 to argon-40 in rocks and minerals (both radioactive)
  • The context of strata, artifacts, features, etc. is critical to understanding the past

Time in Long History (Prehistory):

  • [Miocene (23.0 – 5.3 MYA)](##Miocene-(23.0-–-5.3 MYA)) - existence of earliest bipedal ancestors;
  • [Pliocene (5.3-2.6 MYA)](##Pliocene-(5.3-–-1.8 MYA)); Laetoli footprints; first stone tools; start of the Paleolithic (old stone age); Pleistocene (2.6 MYA – 11.7 KYA); ice age; hominin ancestors first leave Africa

Homun Recent Time

  • Earliest controlled use of fire 1 MYA; Wonderwork Cave, South Africa
  • Flaked Stone Fundamentals: Flaked Stone - also called “lithics” (stone)
    • The material culture of the Paleolithic (Pliocene – Pleistocene)
  • Flintknapping: the process of making chipped stone artifacts using a hard (hammerstone) or soft hammer (antler billet); percussion flaking; pressure flaking
  • Retouch; the shaping or sharpening of stone artifacts through percussion or pressure flaking
  • Flintknapping Produces: cores and flakes: attributes to know: flake: Platform, bulb of percussion; core: flake scar; debitage (the stuff that doesn’t get used)

==Oldowan==: (Lower Paleolithic)

  • First identified and named for Olduvai Gorge; associated with [H. habilis](###Homo Habilis-[Tanzania,-Kenya,-and-Ethiopia-(2.3-1.6-MYA)])
  • Start to find them in contexts dated 2.6 MYA
  • Earliest stone tools; direct percussion method; flakes (cutting); cores, called chopper (marrow extraction, woodworking)
  • Remarkably uniform across space and time (mostly found in East Africa)
  • Probably used for hunting and scavenging; long-term use of specific tools
Understanding purpose of stone tools:
  • Context: found in association with animal bones with cut marks (butchery); other marks could signal hunting over scavenging; microscopic wear; experimental archaeology
  • What earliest tools reveal about older hominins:
    • Problem solving; manual dexterity(灵巧), Created a technology that becomes critical for adaptation; abstract idea of tool, knowledge of steps to make it; learning (social behaviours and communication); social engagement of multiple individuals

Acheulean:

  • Lithic industry associated with [H. erectus](###Homo Erectus-[Asia-and-Southeast-Asia-1.8 MYA-–-27-KYA])
  • Handaxe; symmetrical and bifacially worked; 1.8 MYA – 200 KYA
  • Multi-purpose tool; cutting, sawing, digging, bashing, boring; St. Acheul gravel pits, France; 1859 (tools at St. Acheul dated 500 – 300 KYA)
  • Zhoukoudian: Davidson Black, 1927; Sinanthropus pekinensis; further excavations revealed remains of multiple individuals dating 700 – 200 KYA; no handaxes
  • Boxgrove: in the UK; attributed to H. heidelbergensis; believed to be first hominin in Europe; over 250 handaxes found; some appear to not have been used at all

Hunting. 400KYA, 500KYA

  • Cooperation is a huge element of human evolution; may have been needles that serve as evidence of tailoring, for hominins living in colder climates

    Schöningen, Germany -> 400 KYA; Boxgrove, England -> 500 KYA; serves as a reminder that

Fire: Wonderwork Cave, 1 MYA

  • Used to scares away animals; extends the socializing and working hours; it cooks food; key to life in cooler climates
  • For [Gosden](##Chris Gosden‘s-Prehistory:-A-Very-Short-Introduction), big changes occur ca. 800 KYA

Graph View

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