Why Study Archaeology?

• Curiosity and Adventure

• Exposes Historical Identity and an understanding human biological and cultural diversity

• Limited written records

• Study culture and culture change

TYLOR’S BOOK PRIMITIVE CULTURE

• First definition of Culture

– “Culture . . . taken in its wide ethnographic sense is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man (and woman) as a member of society.

• Key Word here is acquired or learned. Culture is learned rather than biologically inherited

• Culture is universal and yet varied

THE CULTURE LIST

• Culture in general sense is human universal

• Culture in specific sense is varied

• Culture is learned

• Culture is symbol-based

• Culture is adaptive

• Culture is shared

• Culture is pattern-ed & integrated

• Culture is Dynamic

CULTURE IS A PROCESS
IT IS DYNAMIC

• 4 Mechanisms of Culture Change

1. DIFFUSION-

• borrowing traits between cultures

• direct, indirect, and forced

• Spread of tobacco domesticated in North America

2. ACCULTURATION

• Acculturation-

– prolonged direct contact results

• Fusion-American melting pot ideology

• Extinction- Yanamamo dying at a rate of 10% a year due to mercury contamination of waters, massacres, malaria, tuberculosis

3. MIGRATION

• Population movement

• - example: Paleoindian

• Bering Land Bridge

4. INDEPENDENT INVENTION

• in situ evolution

• Invention of ceramics in Asia and Africa

ARCHAEOLOGY & CULTURE

• Archaeologists focus on the tangible products of culture

• Culture history-chronicle of the changes that occur within an archaeological culture over time

• Archaeological culture- widespread and regularly associated occurrences of archeological finds within a specific temporal and geographic region

t Horizon

Culture Area

Tradition

Period

Phase

FIELD METHODS

• Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists study the past and their clues to the past must be recovered from the ground

• Funding archaeological research

– Fulbright

– National Science Foundation

– Wenner Gren

• Writing a grant proposal that describes the topic and its importance, the location, and how it will be done.

PROBLEM ORIENTED RESEARCH

ARTIFACTS

• Object made, modified, or used by humans in the course of their activities

• Lithics- stone

• Ecofact/fossil-preserved remains, impressions or traces of living creatures (plants and animals) from past ages, not intentionally altered by humans

• Fauna- animal or animal remains

• Flora- plant or plant remains

FEATURE

• nonmovable artifacts such as ancient hearths, pits or walls. Something that can not be removed without destruction

SITE

• A remains of previous human activity. A spatial clustering of ecofacts, artifacts, and features

Other Important Terms

• Context- the framework (time, space, form, and culture) in which we find archaeological remains

• Assemblage-all the artifacts of one culture or time period found within an archaeological site

• Activity Area-a place within a site in which one or more specific activities occurred

• Attribute- a quality or feature of an artifact.

LOCATING SITES

• Informants

• Systematic Survey-to locate places of previous human activity.

EXCAVATION
Where is Everything?

• Grid- determine the exact horizontal and vertical location of an artifact usually 1x1 meter units

When do we stop?

• Arbitrary levels- depth of excavation determined by archaeologists usually 1-10 cm and consistent through excavation

• stratigraphic levels- excavation level dependent on the natural or cultural stratigraphy of a site.

• Excavation of a unit

Is complete when soil

is sterile, i.e. no cultural

remains

EXCAVATION

• Sieving/Screening- collection of ceramics, stone, human and animal bones through sieving/screening

• Floatation- technique of recovering artifacts by mixing the soil matrix with water.

• Items from each unit and

level are bagged separately

Charcoal collection

DATING METHODS

• Relative- assigning an event , object, or fossil as being older or younger than another- i.e., prehistoric verses historic

• Chronometric- assigning dates based on solar years, centuries or other units of time

– 300 BP (before present), 5th century

RELATIVE DATING

• Law of supraposition- in any succession of rock layers the lowest rocks have been there the longest and are probably the oldest- stratigraphic dating

• Faunal and Flora succession

• Seriation-using human made items such as pottery

CHRONOMETRIC DATING

• Radio-Carbon (charcoal from heaths,

burnt bone, wood etc)

– C14 in a living organism is the same as its environment

– Upon death the C intake stops and

C14 begins to decay

– The decay rate is constant half of C14

decays in 5730 years

– Generally used to date materials 100 to 40,000 years old.

CHRONOMETRIC DATING

• Potassium Argon

– Date volcanic ash and lava not the human materials that are found in the deposits

– Volcanic eruption argon is released leaving only potassium

– Rock cools the potassium begins to decay into argon

– Half life is 1.3 billion years

– Date effective 100,000 ya- 4.5 billion years

CHRONOMETRIC DATING

• Dendrochronology

– Growth in tree rings

– Each ring represents a year

– American Southwest sequence back 8000 years

AFRICAN CONTINENT

• 2cd largest continent in the world

• 5000 miles N-S

• 11.6 million square miles

POLITICAL MAP

• North, West, Central, Northeast/Horn, *East, and South

• Subsaharan Africa

• Equator

• Independent Nations

• OAU- Organization of African Unity-1963

CLIMATE

• ITCZ- inter-tropical convergence zone

• Bimodal and Trimodal rainfall

• Rainfall from < 4 inches to over 88 per year

CLIMATE REGIONS

• Desert

• Less than 4 inches

• Night and day extreme temp fluctuations

• Steppe

• Unreliable rainfall rarely 20 inches

• Tropical/Savanna

• Higher temp. range

• RF less with distinct dry seasons

• Monsoon

• Dry and wet season

• Rainforest

• RF >50 inches

• temp. >68

• Humid Subtropical

• Little contrast in seasons

• Warm 65-76, 2-5 inches rain

• Mediterranean

• 2-24 inches rain

• Cold winters 15, moderate summers 78

• Highland

VEGETATION

• Desert- xerophytic plants grass and date palm

• Dry savanna-acacia, baoba trees and grasslands

• Wet savanna-broadleaf-woodland with tall grasses

• Rainforest- three layers of vegetation ground cover, middle story, top canopy

• Mountain/Montane- acacias to juniper, oak, heath plants and sedges, grasses

• Mediterranean- junipers, pines, oak , cedar

MOUNTAINS & BASINS

• Mountains

– North Africa- Atlas, Ahaggar, Tibesti

– East- Ethiopian Massif and Mount Kilimanjaro

– South Africa- Drakensberg

• Basins

– Zaire- forested

– Kalahari- desert & steppe

– Sudan- sudd (marshland)

– Chad-swampy/ desert

– Djouf Basin- desert

DESERTS

• Sahara

• Horn Coastal region

• Coastal Namibia

RIVERS

• Nile (white & blue)

– 800 miles drops only 140 feet, cataracts

• Niger

• Benue

• Congo

• Zambezi

• Okavango

• Orange

RIFT VALLEY

• Ethiopia to South Africa 6000 miles

• Located along the margins of earth plates

• Lakes- L. Victoria (24,300 sq. miles)-Nyanza, L. Tanganyika, L. Nyasa

• Volcanoes-Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,340), Mt. Meru, Mt Kenya(17,040), Mt. Longonot

LINGUISTIC GROUPS

• Four Language Phyla of Africa

– Afro-Asiatic

– Nilo-Saharan

– Niger-Congo

– Khoisan

• Compare 100-200 core vocabulary terms from several languages to see how far they have diverged since the time when they were one

• Glottochronology- More differences between two languages the longer time they have been separate languages

• Origin (date and location) and some prehistory of the four Language Phyla follows:

AFROASIATIC

• Language Families-Egyptian, Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic, Chadic, Berber peoples

• Responsible for some of the most enduring state societies in prehistory

• Origin- Red Sea Hills- shared words for flour, grasses, grinding stones, donkey

• By 8000 BP share words for domesticates

• Intensive agriculture and pastoralist

NILOSAHARAN

• Language families- Songhay, Sahara, Maba, Fur, East Sudanic (Maasai, Dinka, Nuer), Central Sudanic, Berta Kunama, Koman, Gumuz, Kuliak

• 12,000 year old history

• Share terms cultivated field, to drive a herd, cow, cattle, goat, to milk

• Origin- eastern half of the southern Sahara

• Hunter-gatherers, hoe agriculturist/horticulturist, pastoralists

NIGER-CONGO

• Largest Language Phylum in the World (1436 languages)

• Language families: Bantu, Mande, Dogon, Atlantic, Kru, Benue, Congo, Adamawa-Ubangi

• 15,000 BP

• Origin from Sudan to Mali then south (5000 BP Bantu)

• Horticulturists, intensive agriculturist, hunter-gatherers

KHOISAN

• Language families: Ju, !ui-Taa, +Hoa, Khoe, Kwadi

• “Click languages”

• 200,000 speakers

• Smallest of Africa’s four Phyla

• 20,000 years ago

• Origins in eastern Africa

• Hunter-gatherers & pastoralists