ANTH 202 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Experimental Archaeology, Ethnoarchaeology, Taphonomy
Document Summary
Taphonomy studies the role that natural (non-cultural) processes play in creating the archaeological record. Experimental archaeology relies on controlled experiments to replicate the past under different conditions, looking for significant links between human behavior and its archaeological consequences. Ethnoarchaeology explores living societies to see how behavior is translated into the archaeological record. Middle-level research aims to provide archaeology with the crucial tools necessary for inferring behavior from the contemporary archaeological record. A geological fact is a contemporary observation made by a geologist on objects from the geological record. principle of uniformitarianism. The principle asserting that the processes now operating to modify the earth"s surface are the same processes that operated throughout geological time. all geological processes, past and present, are identical. Observing the contemporary world provides the information necessary to infer past human behavior and natural processes from observations on archaeological objects.
