ANT101H5 Lecture 7: LEC #7&8 (Archaeology)
Document Summary
Archaeology: the study of material remains in order to describe and explain human behaviour. Reconstruct human past across time and space. Interpretation of cognitive and symbolic behaviour of the past. New dating techniques: more accurate dating. Cultural resource management: protection of sites. You must recognize things as items used by humans; items that functioned within a cultural system. You must interpret how the items were used or how they functioned in a cultural system. You must integrate each symbol in its proper system and environment. Artifact: any object modified by human beings, express a facet of human culture, context is important. Typology: a categorization of artifacts to answer specific questions about a culture. Ecofact: items that become associated with a site through natural processes (give environmental information) Feature: things that cannot be taken back to a lab for analysis. Site: a spatially distinct place that exhibits evidence of human activity, characteristics: Fundamental unit of analysis for an archeologist.
