ANT306H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Simple Features, Kennewick, Washington, Haida Gwaii
Document Summary
Must have unquestionable evidence of past human behaviour: artifacts (pottery, stone tools, features (mounds, pits, hearths, faunal remains, human remains. Artifacts portable objects and materials that people have made or used: e. g. stone tools, pottery, metal weapons, etc. Ecofacts non-artifactual organic and environmental remains: human skeletal remains, plant remains. Place on a landscape where you can find evidence of past human activity. Accumulations of artifacts, features, and ecofacts places where people lived or carried out certain activities in the past: e. g. village, campsite, middens. Sites are areas of denser deposits of cultural remains on a landscape that was to some extent continuously occupied or used. Archaeological sites are arbitrary units defined by archaeologists working with these data: they have some basis in reality as seen by archaeologists but are not inherently meaningful outside of the context of archaeological study. They are analytical units to understand the distribution of artifacts etc.
