Archaeology

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Archaeology

• 4th Edition

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Chapter 1

• Meet Some Real Archaeologists

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Outline

• Introduction
• The Western World Discovers Its Past
• Founders of Americanist Archaeology
• Revolution in Archaeology An Advancing Science
• Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century
• Conclusion Archaeology's Future

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First Archaeologist

• Most historians list Nabonidus, the last king of
  the neo-Babylonian Empire as the first
  archaeologist.
• Nabonidus rebuilt temples of ancient Babylon and
  searched the foundations for inscriptions of
  earlier kings.
• He looked for answers to questions about the past
  in physical residues of antiquity.

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The Western World Discovers Its Past

• Fifteenth-century Italian scholar Ciriaco de
  Pizzicolli established the modern discipline of
  archaeology.
• He translated the Latin inscription on the
  triumphal arch of Trajan in Ancona, Italy.
• He devoted his life to studying ancient
  monuments, copying inscriptions, and promoting
  the study of the past.

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Archaeologys Alphabet Soup

• BC - before Christ
• Example 3200 BC letters follow the date.
• AD - anno Domini, in the year of the Lord
• A year after the birth of Christ. Letters are
  before the date - AD 1066.
• The earliest AD date is AD 1. There is no AD 0
  (use 0 BC to denote that date), double numbering
  is not allowed.

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Archaeologys Alphabet Soup

• BP - before present
• Many archaeologists are more comfortable using
  this age estimate with AD 1950 selected as the
  zero point.
• A date in lower case, such as 3200 b.c. ,
  denotes a date derived by radiocarbon methods and
  reflects radiocarbon years rather than calendar
  years.

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Boucher de Perthes

• In 1836, Perthes found ancient tools and bones of
  extinct mammals in the gravels of the Somme
  River.
• He believed these proved the existence of ancient
  man.
• Current religious thought was that human beings
  had only been on earth for 6000 years, so many
  didnt believe him.
• Some suggested the tools were produced by
  lightning, elves, or fairies.

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More Discoveries

• More finds were made in the gravel pits at St.
  Acheul and in southern England.
• Respected British paleontologist Hugh Falconer
  and other scholars declared their support for
  Perthes findings in 1859.
• This began the recognition that life was more
  ancient than Biblical scholars argued and human
  culture had evolved over time.

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British Archaeology

• These discoveries led to two divergent courses
  for British archaeology
• The problems of remote geological time and the
  demonstration of long-term human evolution.
• The archaeology of ancient Greece and Rome, a
  field now known as classical archaeology.

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Archaeology and Native Americans

• American scholars saw living Native Americans as
  relevant to interpretation of archaeological
  remains.
• Many Europeans saw Native Americans as living
  fossils, relics of times long past.
• New World archaeology became connected to the
  study of living Native American people.

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Elements Peculiar to New World Archaeology

• Racist, antiAmerican Indian theories that
  dominated early 19th century American scholars.
• The form of antiquity legislation in North
  America.
• The fact that many Native Americans still do not
  trust conventional Western scholarship to
  interpret their past.

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Branches of Archaeology

• Classical archaeology - Studies civilizations of
  the Mediterranean, such as Greece and Rome, and
  the Near East.
• Ethnology - Deals with the comparative study of
  cultures.
• Americanist archaeology - Evolved in association
  with anthropology in the Americas it is
  practiced throughout the world.

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C. B.Moore Genteel Antiquarian

• At age 40, Moore was introduced to American
  archaeology and transformed himself from
  gentleman socialite to gentleman archaeologist.
• Moore was an antiquarian, more interested in
  objects of the past than in reconstructing the
  lives of the people who produced them or in
  explaining the past.

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Artifact

• Any movable object that has been used, modified,
  or manufactured by humans.
• Artifacts include stone, bone, and metal tools
  beads and other ornaments pottery artwork
  religious and sacred items.

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Midden

• Refuse deposit resulting from human activities,
  generally consisting of sediment.
• Food remains such as charred seeds, animal bone,
  and shell and discarded artifacts.

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Nels Nelson Americas First Working
Archaeologist

• Nelson learned largely by experience.
• His first responsibility was to record what he
  saw, then to conduct a preliminary excavation
  where warranted, and finally to offer tentative
  inferences to be tested by subsequent
  investigators.
• Nelson typified the early 20th century
  archaeologists, who strongly believed that
  archaeology should be brought to the public.

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A. V. Ted Kidder Founderof Anthropological
Archaeology

• Helped shift Americanist archaeology toward more
  anthropological purposes.
• Maintained archaeology should be viewed as that
  branch of anthropology which deals with
  prehistoric peoples, a doctrine that has become
  firmly embedded and expanded in todays
  Americanist archaeology.

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James A. Ford A Master of Time

• Refined techniques to place the stages of pottery
  development in sequential order, a process known
  as seriation.
• By assuming that cultural styles change
  gradually, archaeologists can chart a style
  through time and across space.
• Fords seriation technique established the
  baseline prehistoric chronology still used in the
  American Southeast.

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Walter W. Taylor Moses in the Wilderness

• Combined lines of evidence to create a picture of
  what the past was like and to discuss the
  functions of artifacts, features, and sites.
• Urged archaeologists to forsake temples for
  garbage dumps.
• Proposed that archaeologists quantify their data
  and test hypotheses that would refine their
  impressions.

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Culture History

• The kind of archaeology practiced in the early to
  mid-twentieth century.
• It explains differences or changes over time in
  artifact frequencies by positing the diffusion of
  ideas between neighboring cultures or the
  migration of a people who had different mental
  templates for artifact styles.

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Trait List

• A simple listing of a cultures material and
  behavioral characteristics, for example, house
  and pottery styles, foods, degree of nomadism,
  particular rituals, or ornaments.
• Trait lists were used primarily to trace the
  movement of cultures across a landscape and
  through time.

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Conjunctive Approach

• As defined by Walter W. Taylor, using functional
  interpretations of artifacts and their contexts
  to reconstruct daily life of the past.

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Lewis R. BinfordVisionary with a Message

• Binford argued that archaeologists should acquire
  data that make samples more representative of the
  populations from which they were drawn.
• He urged archaeologists to look beyond the
  individual site to the region so entire cultural
  systems could be reconstructed.

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New Archaeology

• An approach to archaeology that arose in the
  1960s emphasizing the understanding of underlying
  cultural processes and the use of the scientific
  method.
• Todays version of the new archaeology is
  sometimes called processual archaeology.

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Kathleen A. DeaganArchaeology Comes of Age

• A curator at the Florida Museum of Natural
  History, she specializes in Spanish colonial
  studies.
• She is concerned with the people and culture
  behind the artifact and with explaining the
  social and cultural behaviors that she
  reconstructs from archaeology.

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History of Archaeology A Summary

• In North America, archaeology began as the
  pastime of the curious and the wealthy, who
  lacked formal training.
• Archaeology as a formal discipline dates to the
  mid nineteenth century and was characterized by a
  scientific approach and rigorous methods of
  excavation and data collection.

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History of Archaeology A Summary

• By the 1950s, archaeology began to move beyond
  description and chronology to focus on the
  reconstruction of past lifeways.
• This continued in the 1960s, with the addition of
  efforts to employ a scientific approach aimed at
  discovering universal laws and to develop
  theories to explain the human history uncovered
  by archaeology.

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Archaeology Today

• Today, archaeology covers both prehistoric and
  historic archaeology.
• The number of archaeologists has grown
  dramatically since the 1960s.
• The field represents many different theoretical
  perspectives and acknowledges the need to
  communicate results to the public.

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Quick Quiz
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• 1. Fifteenth-century Italian scholar Ciriaco de
  Pizzicolli is considered the first
  archaeologist.
• True
• False

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Answer B. False

• Most historians list Nabonidus, the last king of
  the neo-Babylonian Empire as the first
  archaeologist.

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• 2. The earliest AD date is AD 0.
• True
• False

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Answer B. False

• The earliest AD date is AD 1. Use 0 BC to denote
  AD 0.

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• 3. Which of the following is an example of an
  artifact
• Metal tools
• Beads and other ornaments
• Pottery
• Religious and sacred items
• All of the above

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Answer E

• Metal tools, beads and other ornaments, pottery
  and religious and sacred items are examples of
  artifacts.