ANTHRO 8 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Homo Erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis, Australopithecine
Document Summary
4 types of anthropology: cultural, linguistic, bio. Archaeology is the study of material culture (how people can be evaluated through stuff and use of space) as well as a way of finding out about long-term human development. Archaeology can be about the recent past as well as time periods millions of years ago. Not everything that is preserved gets found. Most things that are dead are supposed to decompose. Fossilization is an unusual event in the death of an organism. Takes special circumstances to fossilize and to be found. Fossilization: abnormal/unusual result; when we get one it is amazing. Physical, transformative process for a dead organism. Definition: under just the right conditions, dissolved minerals seeping in from the surrounding rock replace the whole bone, molecule for molecule, producing a mineralized specimen with surface detail preserved. Process through where decomposition is held off and there is instead a molecule for molecule organization/ implantation. Whole specimen preserved from molecule for molecule process.
