Classical Studies 2500A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Social Stratification, Radiocarbon Dating, Historical Archaeology

• School: Western University
• Department: Classical Studies
• Course: Classical Studies 2500A/B
• Professor: Beth Greene

Document Summary

The layers built up on a tell site when the same site is reused by successive human groups. Walls, pits, floors, and debris all remain in their stratigraphic sequence for archaeologists to find. Natural process of soil moving around, and burying archeological sites, have to work way down: (cid:862)profile drawi(cid:374)g(cid:863) of site. Human action is the most common on sites of continued human use. Groups in succession bury, knock down, renovate, and reuse their own past structures and settlement systems. Archaeologists excavate stratigraphically (layer by layer) and record each layer they uncover by surveying in features and locations of artefacts found. The layers are dated by the form and decoration of artefacts and pottery and by scientific processes such as carbon-14 dating and dendrochronology. Relative dates are determined by ordering artefacts: What comes before and after: typology: ordering types of artefacts by form and style.