Final Exam Arch - Anthropology 101 with Dunham at Michigan State University

Rachel G.

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Bio Archaeology

The study of human biological component evidence in the archaeology record.

Bio Archaeology

Examines the health and workload of ancient populations.

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Determining Sex

Pelvis and the scull

Scaiatic notch

narrow notch (Men) wide notch (women) on rear side of the pelvis

first bone to decay

Cribera Orbitalia

A symptom of iron deficiency anemia in which the bone of the upper eye sockets take on a spongey apperance

Determining Sex

tend to be more robust then female skulls.
have heavier brow ridges over the eye
have more rugged muscle attachments
squarer chins and eye orbits
Narrower notches then females

Archaeologist can usually tell just by the feel

Best methods for determining age of a juvenile

Tooth crown eruption
bone fusion

Determining age of an adult

Bone wear (after age 30 bones begin to wear down)
Degree of tooth wear and loss. (caution is required because the rate of the tooth wear is strong related to diet)

Pubic Symphysis

Where two halves of the pelvis meet in the groin area.

determine age

Epiphyses

The end bones that fuse together to the main shaft or portion of bone at various ages. Most bones are fused by age 25; this fact can be used to age skeletons of younger individuals.

Paleopathology

•the study of ancient disease, disorders, and trauma

(Stillwater people)

Paleopathology at Stillwater

Looked for non specific indicators of stress, particularly those caused by nutrition defects and/or nonspecific infectious diseases

Porotic Hyperostosis

A symptom of iron deficiency anemia in which the scull takes on a porous appearance

Harris Line

Thin line of bone (X-ray)

horizontal lines near near the ends of long bones indicating episodes of physological stress

Growth Arrest Features

•These features will note whengrowth stopped during an individuals life, often due to malnutrition or disease

•Harris lines

•Enamel hypoplasias

Enamel hypoplasis

horizontal linear defects in tooth enamel indicating episodes of physiological stress

more permanent then harris lines

Focused on these for the Stillwater Case

Conclusions for Stillwater

•Larson found signs of irondeficiency anemia among the skeletal remains from Stillwater Marsh.

•Two-thirds of the individualsexperienced hypoplasias that occurred between the ages of3 and 4.

Conclusion from disease and trauma at Stillwater

Children of Stillwater Marsh had seen some hard times, but conditions were by no means as bad as they might have been.

Fluctuations in the food supply from the marsh - subject to the local climate - most likely caused periods of malnutrition for young children

Workload at Stillwater

Every single adult skeleton in theStillwater

collection had osteoarthritis in at least one joint.

–Differencein osteoarthritis locations between men and women

The femur cross sections andpatterns in osteoarthritis indicated that the people living at Stillwater Marshwalked a great deal to make a successful living.

Osteoarthritis

Disorder in which the cartilagebetween joints wears away, often because of overuse of the joint, resulting inosteophytes and eburnation

Signs of Osteoarthritis

•Osteophytes, bones develop a distinct “lipping”of bone at the point of articulation. Appears as bony growth

•Eburnation, epiphyses of long bones are wornsmooth, causing them to take on a varnish-like appearance

Roles of men and women

Because of the osteoarthritis it was evident that men did more walking. Women most likely had it in their back because of two factors: child rearing and food processing.

Paleodemography

The study of ancient demographic patterns and trends

Paleodemography reconstructs

parameters such aslife expectancy at birth, the age profile of a population, and patterns in theages of death.

Mortality Profile

Charts that depict the various ages at death of a burial population

The Stillwater Mortality Profile

Mortality of newborns and toddlers is very high among hunting andgathering populations
The female morality profile shows an increase in deaths in the earlychild-bearing years; common for foraging populations
Few individuals are assigned to the 46-50 and 50+ age category.

Reconstructing Diet from Human Bone

•Cavities indicate a starchy diet (Becausetheir diet was low in simple carbohydrates, only 3 percent of Stillwaterskeletons had cavities)

•Ancient diets can also bereconstructed by analyzing the carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes preserved inhuman bone.

Stable Isotopes

•Human bones reflect the isotopicratios of plants ingested during life.

•We reconstruct the dietaryimportance of plants by measuring the ratio of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bonecollagen.

Molecular Archaeology

the use of genetic information (DNA) in ancient human remains to reconstruct the past

Stillwater Hunter-Gatherer’s,How did they live?

•Stillwater people lived relativelyhealthy lives, free of serious disease and trauma

•Extreme hard work and lots ofwalking with periods of malnutrition

mtDNA or Mitochondondrial DNA

DNA found in the mitochondria of cells; it is inherited only from the mother and appears to mutate at a rate of 2-4 percent per 1 million years

Conclusion from mtDNA

•Explains why Native Americans inCanada and southern South America are genetically similar.

•Differences in Asian and NativeAmerican populations must generally postdate the time when they separated atthe Bering Strait.

•It is possible that all NativeAmericans came from a small number of Asian founding families.

molecular clock

•calculates the time sincedivergence of two related populations using the presumed rate of mutation in mtDNA and the genetic differences between thetwo populations.

What could a bioarchaeologist look at to determine the age at death of a mature human skeleton (>30 years old)

patterns of wear on the pubic symphysis

The best bone for determining stature from human skeletal material is

the femur

The ratios of _____ and _____ in bone can indicate the dietary importance of various kinds of plants and animals

carbon; nitrogen isotopes

social organization

rules and structures that govern relations within a group of interacting peopl

Political Organization

A society's formal and informal institutions that regulate a populations collective acts

If you live in a society in which two or more local groups are organized under a single highly ranked individual, you live in a...

chiefdom

Material culture reflects

symbolic meaning as well as functional behaviors

means that archaeological patterning can be extremely difficult to find

Sex

referes to inherited, biological differences between males and females

(male or female)

Gender

refers to culturally constructed ideas about sex diffrences

(Can be more then two genders)

ex) men who choose to live like women

Gender Roles

the culturally prescribed behavior associated with men and women; roles can vary from society to society

Gender ideology

the culturally prescribed values assigned to the task and status of men and women; values can vary from culture to culture

(example of atlatls, or spear throwers)

Problem with Webb's argument

grounded in assumption & by no means logical.

Webb could not imagine women as hunter, he searched for another explanation for the inclusions of atlatls in women's graves.

Because archaeologist lack an established method for objectively deriving this sort of information from material remains

most investigators are focused to rely on ethnographic analogy or historical documents, with all their limitations

Can archaeologist reconstruct the activities conducted by males and females in the past?

Modern archaeologist find it difficult to say much about gender roles in the past, let alone move beyond such relatively mundane activites to an understanding of gender ideology. Doing so may be limited to those instances in which a close, historically linked analogy is available.

Kinship

The socially recognized network of relationships through which individuals are related to one another by ties of descent (real or imagined) and marriage

social groupings

are reflected "on the ground" in terms of house space and placement

Clan

A set of lineages that claims to share a distant, often-mythical ancestor

Status

The rights, duties, privileges, powers, liabilities, and immunities that accrue to a recognized and named social position

Ascribed Status

Rights, duties and obligations that accrue to a person by virtue of his or her parentage; inherited.

Achieved Status

Right, duties and obligations that accrue to a person by virtue of what he or she has accomplished in life

egalitarian society

is a society in which people generally have equal access to critical, life-sustaining resources.

contains roughly as many valued positions as there are persons capable of filling them.

recognizes status on the basis of gender and age.

ranked society

A social system in which positions of status are limited, and thus where not everyone of talent may achieve high status or prestige

The fact that material culture reflects symbolic meanings as well as functional behaviors means

it can be difficult to interpret archaeological patterning and to infer social and political organization from artifacts.

Death and Social Status

ethnographic data shows that societies that have important social distinctions among living individuals also have material distinctions among death

Ne-con-ne-pe-wah-se site

Typical family

-mother & father, their children & grandparents

possibly the father’s unmarried adultsiblings

· social and economic roles were assignedaccording to gender and age.

Egalitarian Society

down-the-line trade

an exchange system in which goods are traded outward from a source area from group to group, resulting in a steady decline in the item's abundance in archaeological sites farther from the source

energy dispersive X-ray

An analytical technique that uses obsidian's trace elements to "fingerprint" an artifact and trace it to its geological source.

direct acquisition

a form of trade where a person or group goes to the source area of an item to produce the raw material directly or to trade it for it's finished product

Hopewell individuals might have acquired obsidian through down the line trade, it's shiny black surface serving to remind people of

the important social ties some individuals had to high-ranking persons in other Hopewell communities

cognitive archaeology

the study of all those aspects of ancient culture that are a product of the human mind

Archaeology of the mind

more postprocessual because such an approach will necessarily be concerned with recovering meaning

Symbol

an object or act (verbal or nonverbal) that, by cultural convention, stands for something else with which it has no necessary connection.

Symbols have no

no necessary connection to their culturally assigned meaning, they can be used in different ways

Religion

a specific set of beliefs about one's relation to the supernatural

a society's mechanism for relating supernatural phenomena to the every day world

Ritual

a secession of discrete behaviors that must be performed in a particular order under practical circumstances.

Rituals are...

behavioral acts that often entail material cultures and therefor can be represented in the archaeological record

Peace Pipe Conclusions

the peace pipe rituals served to mediate interctions over a vast area of eastern North America. By promoting a common set of symbols - perhaps linked to some common religious ideas.

-reduced regional differences

-promoted contact and communication between groups

The difference between a symbol and a sign

a sign has a connection to what it signifies, while a symbol does not

Finely carved Hopewell effigy pipes have been interpreted as ritual artifacts. Robert L. Hall argued from ethnographic analogy in the late 1970s that these pipes

resented ritual weapons (atlatls).

functioned as peace pipes functioned historically.

helped maintain relationships between communities, reducing regional differences and promoting contact and communication.

The occurrence of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe is marked by the appearance of

complex technology of stone, bone, and antler as well as art.

Chavin

Upland people using symbols from lowland areas

Ethnographic link

Low lands

Sacred knowledge

Medicinal plants

Power of the forest

(cosmology)

Cosmology

the study of the orgin, large scale structure

Oracle

A shrine in which a deity reveals hidden knowledge or purpose

(Chavin Cosmology)

iconography

art forms or writing systems that symbolically represent ideas about religion or cosmology

art-for-art's-sake interpretation

stressed what humans could accomplish in the leisure time that technology could bring.

-the animals had no particular meaning; they were just artistic expressions of the things people saw around them

problem with art-for-art's-skae

fails to explain why the artist chose the remote location

Sympathetic magic

rituals in which doing something to an image of an object produces the same desired effect on the real object

- like controls like

Problems with sympathetic magic

if the art represents sympathetic hunting magic then it was not very successful

interpretations assumes that the animals are literal and they they have no symbolic meaning

structuralism

The paradigm that holds that human culture is the expression of unconscious modes of thought and reasoning, notably binary opposition

jump to symbol to meaning

Problems with structuralism (oppositions)

circular reasoning
not held up as more caves were discovered
drew upon his own culture rather from the ancient people's culture
one thing did not stand for "male" or "female"

Totems

a natural object, often an animal ,from which a lineage or clan believed itself to be descended and/or with which lineage or clan members have a special relations

(cannot access if this idea was right for the upper Paleolithic people)

Shamans and the upper paleolithic

firmly grounded in middle level theory
is evidence of shamanic traces
elements of uniformitarianism

Shaman

one who has the power to contact the spirit world through trance, possession, or visions.

On the basis of this ability, the shaman invokes, manipulates, or coerces the power of the spirits for socially recognized end - both good or ill

According to the Shaman theory the wall art is a result of

what they saw in their visions

The Cave of Lascaux

located in Europe
discovered by schoolboys in 1940
farther you go into the cave the more abstract the images get

Lewis-Williams argues that

the art reflects humanity's effort to come to grips with the perception that their quotidian life was not all that made up their existence

what is the meaning of life

historical archaeology

the study of human behavior through material remains whose interpretations is in some way affected by written history

Why do historical archaeology

Documentary sources can be selective and biased toward the interests of particular cultural, political, or ethnic groups

In early days of historical archaeology

excavations in historical periods sites merely supplemented the "known" documentary view of the past

modern historical archaeology often has a

postprocessual slant to it

historical archaeologist commonly have access to texts, ethnohistoric data, and oral traditions

Three themes in historical archaeology

hidden history
Correcting inaccuracies
reexamining history

Hidden History

seeks to rectify an injustice by documenting the experience of minority of subjugated populations whose lack of access to literacy often left their voice out of traditional historical texts

Correcting inaccuracies

seeks to set historical records of events straight in cases where records may be biased

Reexamine history

seeks to determine whether our explanations of the past, or whether national "stories" of how a nation came to be, are accurate or whether the story masks the processes that led to and propagate inequalities

How does modern historical Americanist archaeology differ from its prehistoric counterpart

Historical archaeologists tend not to study large-scale processes; the high degree of temporal resolution in historic sites often leads investigators to focus on specific events or individuals.

Because historical archaeology deals with the relatively recent past, and all the cultural, political, and ethical challenges therein, it is often emotionally charged.

Bioarchaeological analysis of the burials from the African Burial Ground site in New York City showed that

half of the population died before reaching the age of 12, with another peak in mortality between the ages of 15 and 20

most early plantation archaeologists

was aimed at archaeological reconstruction, and prior to the 1980s, few restored plantations addressed the issue of slavery explicitly

today the field of african american archaeology...

is a growing industry, helping undercover information about aspect of life on which the documentary sources are often silent.

in the 1960's, historical archaeology began to focus on

historically disenfranchised groups in our own culture, seeking to uncover the history of african americans, asian americans, native americans during the historic period and hispanic americans

historical archaeology has been grounds for

postprocessual interests, because texts can provide data with which to place archaeological remains in context

What was archaeological investigation of the battlefield at Little Bighorn able to conclude about the nature of the battle?

Virtually no evidence of formal tactics such as skirmish lines, supporting Indian accounts of chaos and hand-to-hand fighting.

Archaeologist believe that Custard...

was caught off gaurd

A major goal of critical theory

social change

Blakey’s analysis of some 400 individuals from the burial ground concluded

The remains showed signs of human brutality.

Analysis of the remains showed mortality occurred between the ages of 15-20, and half of the population died before they reached the age of 12.

Enlarged muscle attachments on both men and women demonstrated continual demands on their physical labor.

How does Leone explain the appearance and popularity of formal Georgian gardens in wealthy Annapolis homes during the mid 18^th century?

he gardens expressed the Enlightenment idea of the power of reason over nature, and that nature controlled by culture was more desirable and attractive than nature alone.

According to Leone, which of the following aspects of Annapolis reflect an upper-class Anglo-American show of power

The layout of the city itself
The formal gardens of wealthy households.
Use of optical illusions in landscape architecture to manipulate view and control perspective.

Changes in material culture between medieval mindset and those with a Georgian worldview

the changes made in material culture signal a shift to a culture that focused on the individual rather then the group, and on the control of nature

culture was to nature as order was to chaos.

Clovis and the First Americans?

People came to the Americas via a land bridge in Asia

Clovis points – time marker, approx. 14,000 years ago
Clovis people were through to be the first and only migration

Two major problemswith the interpretation that the Clovis people were the first Americans:

Some archaeological sites may predate Clovis(ex. Monte Verde)

Earliest human skeletons in the new world aredifferent from later native Americans

Egalitarian groupgraves

sex and age of the individual

Ranked group graves

status, rank, occupation, etc

The garbage project

Tuscon, AZ an urban community whose population was slightlyover 360,000, Archaeology was used to explore 9 landfills across the US

started by William Rathje

paper takes up 40-50% of volume in landfills

people drank more beer then they admitted to drinking

cultural resource management (CRM)

A professional field that conducts activities; including archeology, related to compliances with legislation aimed at conserving cultural resources

Forensic archaeology

the application of archaeological and bioarchaeological

-teaching police force how to do basic archaeology in order to find a criminal

Antiquities Act 1906

requires federal permits before excavating or collecting artifacts on federal land
establishes a permitting process
gave the president the authority to create national monuments

Cultural Resources

physical features both natural and artificial, associated with human activity, including sites, structures, and objects possessing significance in history, architecture, or human development.

-unique and nonrenewable

National historic preservation act (NHPA) 1966

the national register of historic places
the advisory council on historic preservation
state historic preservation office
a process to mitigate the impact of development

Archaeological resource prevention act (ARPA) 1979

prohibits the excavation or removal of artifacts from federal property without a permit
prohibits sale, exchange, or transport of artifacts acquired illegally
increased penalties for violations of the act over those of the antiquities act

1990 Native American grave protection and repatriation act

mandated inventory of institutions' human skeletal remains
required that institutions consult with tribes
gave native americans a large role in dispassion of artifacts and skeletal remains

cultural affiliation

in NAGPRA, a relationship of shared group identify which can be reasonably traced historically or prehistorically between present day Indian tribes

Nazi archaeology

Idea of who controls the past & who gets to decide? =absolute power = bad

Words From Our Students

Words From Our Students

Words From Our Students

Words From Our Students