Anthropology Exam 1

Any date where a year or range of years can be applied to a site or artifact

A date that places site or artifact in a chronological order with other specimens

Radio carbon dating of a smaller sample so that a huge sample won't be destroyed

• Magnetic orientation can become "fossilized" in cultural features. 
• Find magnetic north= find date

Radiometric dating technique based on the decay of a radioactive isotope of carbon

Very large herbivores of the Pleistocene world (woolly mammoth)

Element found at a site that exhibits human activity (butchered animal bone)

Object manufactured by a human being/ancestor (stone pot)

proposed explanation for some phenomenon, can be derived from observation of a phenomenon

Artifacts or ecofacts left at the place that they were used/produced

Artifacts/ecofacts removed by people and taken to a designated refuse (trash pit)

Systematic walkover of an area in search of unnatural inclusions/shapes/shiny objects

Stash of stuff placed away for safe keeping by ancient people (time capsule)

Noninvasive technique involving a cart that is pulled that sends electromagnetic pulses through the soil

Magnetometer measures the strength of the earth's magnetic field from the surface and detects anomalies (buried walls)

Determining the geographic source of the materials used by and ancient people through the analysis of small concentrations in the material

Precise and unique chemical makeup of raw material sources are found analyzing by analyzing trace elements and comparing

Each chemical element in a raw material is read and determined through x-rays resulting in the exact elemental composition of the material

Analysis of the shape and form of skeletons and artifacts

Animal bones found at a site and the species represented by those bones

Photosynthetic process employed by trees

Photosynthetic process employed by grasses

How much less of Carbon 14 is measured and the amount of decay in the material can give a time frame based on the time it takes Carbon 14 to reach its half-life

Variety of an elements atomic form

Measurement of the amount of time it takes for half of the radioactive isotope to decay into a stable form

Differences in the form and size of the two sexes (men larger)

Relatively dating things based on their layer in the earth

Radiometric dating technique based on the decay of a radioactive isotope of carbon (C14)

Energy produced from natural radiation in soil becomes trapped in nearby objects that can be measured

Tree ring dating

Any dating technique based on the measurement of radioactive decay

Mode or strategy for survival including a characteristic that will help an organism survive in a changing environment

Place where people lived and where the material objects they used are recovered and analyzed

Study of humanity through the analysis of the things that people made and used in the past

Cultures change in response to their physical and cultural environments

Cultural anthropologist who lives among a group of people/cultural group

Defines ownership and the return of sites and bones that culturally belong to the modern Native Americans

Systematic change through time of biological organisms or human cultural systems

• Defines Archaeology
• Look at everything as a whole and see how everything fits

Many pathways of change a culture may take over the time span of its existence

Individuals of a species that possess advantageous characteristics are more likely to survive and pass on their genes

Chronological breakdown of the history of human culture into a stone, bronze and iron age

Appearance of earth resulted from the slow action of known processes over a very long period of time

No longer accepted view that all cultures change along the same pathway of increasing complexity

• Cave Paintings
• Found in 1940
• 15,000-9,000 BC

Designs carved/etched into rock faces

Painting on a rocks surface

Portable art including the venus figurine

Used to produce paint

Stone tool-making tradition of the European Upper Paleolithic (symmetrical, leaf shaped projectile point)

Art on the wall of a cave

Cultural materials placed into a grave, sometimes in a conscious attempt to provide the deceased with items needed in the afterlife

Toolmaking tradition of the Upper Paleolithic. Small blades and denticulate knives

Lithic tool technology associated with anatomically modern human beings. Long, narrow blade tools

Fluctuations in Arctic result in the breaking off of icebergs that contain sediments and rock mass

• Romania
• In a flooded cave that can only be reached through diving
• 6 drawings of animals

• Later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic 
• Europe
• Characterized by composite or specialized tools, tailored clothing
• First to use a spear thrower (reindeer bone)
• Bone was used extensively

• Ethics
• Awareness that we all have privilege to learn but ancestors we want to study have modern day ancestors

• Old: Savagery-barbarism-complex society
• New: Cultures evolve and devolve, are constantly changing.

• Treasure Hunters
• People were looking for treasures & places that are easy to find/popular

• Focus more on average person than elite
• Education= more people can access not just rich
• Technology allows for more discoveries

• 40,000-10,000 years ago
• Rapidly changing technology

Compare carbon dates with each other to get a more specific date

• Movement is a common theme
• 20,000 years ago

• Turks occupied Greece
• Took stuff from the Parthenon/Greece and brought it back to the British Museum

• First to lead an expedition of Creet
• First female leader

• Anthroplogy Influence
• Evidence of human evolution provides a basis for Archaeologist studying cultural evolution

• Used stratigraphy and uniformitaranism
• Slow agency of existing causes
• Timescale for dating

Natural evolutions/ operations are equable and steady

• Used C 14 Dating on Bison/charcoal
• WWII- studying nuclear weaponry and invented radiocarbon dating

• Systematic excavation
• Square pits- how we record things so that if destruction, we can reconstruct it in the best way possible

• Cave art interpreter
• Chauvet Cave