ANTHROP 3K03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Scientific Method, Statistical Hypothesis Testing, Ethnohistory
20 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Materials based work, looking at stuff from the past. Incorporation of other types of evidence such as linguistics, ethnohistory, ect. Filling in the blank spots in historic records, or representing things or people that are under documented/represented. Archaeology as a sub discipline of anthropology: cultural, archaeology, physical, linguistic. Different origins of questions lead to different perspectives. Types of archaeological questions can be categorized by era: Processualist- more anthropological type of questions up to 1940"s. Not just how things happen but why they happen. Thinking about how single events could hold multiple meanings for multiple people. Thinking about not only the past, but also how our interpretations impact present peoples. Looking for human universals, language, shelter, spiritual practice, ect. weakness- false comparisons, implicit racism. Hierarchy of comparison to the established standards of europeans. Boasian: strengths- documenting disappearing cultures in the americas. Gathering all the possible information that they could. Not engaging in comparing any of the cultures that they were studying.
