ANTH 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Paleolithic, Mousterian, Clovis Point
Document Summary
Lecture 8 chapter 7: the dimensions of archaeology: time, space, and form. Archaeologists document patterns in how material culture changes through time (vertically) and across space (horizontally). Organizing data into meaningful patterns that are believed to reflect human behavior is vital to the field of archaeology. As a rule of thumb, for every week spent excavating, archaeologists spend 3 to 5 weeks or more cleaning, conserving, and cataloging the finds. Without the catalog, provenience is lost, and without provenience an artifact"s value to future researchers is greatly reduced. Archaeology"s basic unit of classification is termed a type. Types are abstractions imposed by the archaeologist on a variable batch of artifacts. We formulate a classification with a specific purpose in mind. A descriptive grouping of artifacts whose focus is on similarity rather than function or chronological significance (example: design similarities painted on archaeological bowl shapes.
