Archaeology Exam

Cultural and social changes over time

Concerned with socieites without the use of writing and textual evidence

Textual evidence available to complement material record (not always in agreement)

Multiple texts exist to document societies and events

Study of living cultures for archaeological reasons

Replication of tools, buildings, or activities to inform interpretations of material record

Material remains of human past and their physical contexts located in sites

All aspects of human adaptation and beliefs. Transmitted through learning.

Human evolution and culture are interwined. Human nature is dependent on culture.

• Ice Age
• 2.6 mya to 10,000 BP
• Continental plates: largely in place
• Repeated glacial cycles

• Old Stone Age
• 99% of human history
• Variety of tools- stone, bone, and wood
• Increading sophistication over time

• most are H. heidelbergensis
• Transition period into modern humans and Neanderthals

• Where: Zambia
• Period: Middle Pleistocene
• Found: Complete cranium, elements of several individuals with older (erectus) and modern traits

• Where: Ethopia
• Period: Middle Pleistocene
• Found: Nearly complete cranium, pattern of cut marks (defleshing by other hominins- reason unknown). Earliest case of bone processing of hominins by other hominins

• Where: Germany
• Period: Middle Pleistocene
• Found: craium with retention of certain H. erectus traits mixed with new traits (increased cranial capacity, reduced tooth size)

• Where: Spain
• Period: Middle Pleistocene
• Found: "Pit of bones"- 28 individuals + 4000 fossil fragments. Early Neandertal-like features

• Where: China
• Period: Middle Pleistocene
• Found: cranium displays with erectus and sapiens traits

a group of similar fossils whose range of morphological variation does not exceed the range of variation of a closely related living species

Usually associated with Neanderthals

interbreeding

• Where: Croatia
• Period: Middle Pleistocene
• Found: Neanderthal bones

between 1 and 4 percent

explained by admixture between early modern humans and Neanderthals

• Where: Altai Mountain- Siberia, Russia
• Period: Late Pleistocene
• Found: Denisovan bone fragments

• Disease-fighting genes
• ex. Human leukocyte antigens

Modern humans have ancestors in archaic human populations (like Neanderthals) from Africa, Europe, and Asia

All modern humans origingated from a small population in Africa

• Late Stone Age
• 40,000-10,000 BP
• More clothing, personal ornaments, specialized hunting
• Burials include ornaments, tools, red ocher

• Where: Russia
• Period: Upper Paleolithic
• Found: adults and adolescents with grave goods (beaded clothing, red ocher, ivory beads, long spears

• Big-game hunting
• Small pointed blades (stone)

Tool used in crafting and carving

Female figurines. Purpose unknown

• Where: Spain
• Period: Upper Paleolithic
• Found: Polychrome paintings, paleolithic artifacts on floor

• Where: France
• Period: Upper Paleolithic
• Found: 2000 figures (animals, human figures, abstract signs)

• Where: France
• Period: Upper Paleolithic
• Found: Hundreds of animal paintings, prey and predators

• Where: Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Period: Middle Paleolithic
• Found: Bone tools

• Where: South Africa
• Period: Middle Paleolithic
• Found: Bone tools, shell beads, engraved red ocher fragments

• Where: South Africa
• Period: Middle Paleolithic
• Found: Small bone points (transition from larger spear points to bow and arrow?)

Sunda and Sahul

Ecozone boundary between Sunda and Sahul (Asia and Australia)

possible routh of population for Asia/the Pacific

Lake Mungo

• Where: Flores, eastern Indonesia
• Period: Late Pleistocene (?)
• Found: remains of 9 very small individuals (Homo floresiensis?)

• Where: Easter Island
• When: Late Pleistocene (?)
• Found: moai (monumental statues)

• People entered by Bering Land Bridge (Beringia linked Siberia to Alaska)
• Yana RHS site, Siberia
• Clovis point used for Megafauna

• Monte Verde
• Meadowcroft Rockshelter
• Cactus Hill

• Marine adapted people from Europe canoed along the Atlantic ice-edge corridor
• Solutrean similarities to Colvis technology

Maritime adapted people canoed along the coast from Siberia to the Americas

Modern hunter-gatherers in Paraguay

Modern hunter-gatherer of Tanzania

Modern hunter-gatherers of northern Canada

• Americas: Paleo-Indian and Archaic
• Europe: Mesolithic
• W. Asia: Epipleolithic

Do it

Region along the nile rivier (Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt)

Characterized by decreased reliance on wild species and increased reliance on domesticates

utilizing resources across a more extensive piece of land (temporary homes)

localized investment. Sedentary.

clustering of people, animals, and plants near one water source. domestication occurs over time. hypothesis does not have archaeological support

Farming is a last resort. Started b/c of population needs

• Ritual Feasting
• Luxury items

• Between Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
• Center of domestication

Modification of environments in order to bring organisms under human control

• Levant area (NE Africa)
• Specialized hunter-gatherer settlements
• Semi-sedentary

• Where: Syria
• Group: Natufians
• Found: plant gathering, gazelle hunting, pit dwellings, domestic cattle, sheep, goat, and pigs

• Where: first city of central Turkey?
• Group: Natufians
• Found: Ritual and trade center (Obsidian volcanic glass trade) elaborate grave goods

Do it.

• 1. Highly populous
• 2. Politically centralized
• 3. Socially stratified/differentiated
• 4. Monumental architecture
• 5. Urbanism

• 11000 BP
• Roots of urbanism
• walls built

• Southern Iraq
• Sumerian civilization
• Considered to be the earilest true city

• Egyptian civilization
• Narmet Plette found- showed how power was consolidated

• Pakistan
• Indus Valley region
• Elaborate Middle Class society (no monuments)

• First documented state of China
• Captial- Anyang

• holy city
• center of Khmer culture
• Largest preindustrial city
• Stratified society

• Powerful, pre-colonial state
• Wealth from long-distance trade

• Old World
• Early Vietnamese capital?

Organized violence between politically autonomous groups or societies

• Where: Germany
• Found: Weapons, skeletal remains w/ skulls showing blunt force trauma