ANTA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Relative Dating, Oligocene, Ethnoarchaeology
Document Summary
Features: products of human activity that cannot be removed from the archaeological record as a single discrete entity. Artifacts: objects or materials made or modified by hominins. Ecofacts: natural materials that give environmental information about sites. Context: the spatial and temporal associations of artifacts and features in an archeological site. Information that osteologists can get from a skeleton: Traces or remnants of organisms found in geologi(cid:272)al (cid:271)eds on the earth"s surfa(cid:272)e. Replacement of organic materials with inorganic (stone-like) mineral matrix. Site survey: process of looking for archaeological sites. Finding sites is as informative as not finding sites. Goal is to maintain as much information about the context as possible. Need to preserve information on its location in both vertical and horizontal dimensions. Also need to preserve the geology of the site before excavating. Screening for materials: lets you recover smaller materials. Organising materials: sort cultural material from natural material, species, raw material, etc.
