ANP 203 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Paleoclimatology, Determinism, Temperate Deciduous Forest
Document Summary
Chapter 9 vocab (book: environmental determinism: the now discredited view that the degree of challenge presented by a particular environment determines the level of technological complexity achieved by the people living there. The cultural ecological approach views culture as an adaptive system. Paleoenvironmental: relating to the ancient environment of an area. Archaeologists seek to understand the nature of the paleoenvironment to which a human group adapted. They become expert in recovering pollen and identifying the species of plants that produced it. Palynologists can reconstruct ancient plant communities and, by inference, ancient climates by comparing the pollen profiles derived from ancient pollen assemblages to the pollen rain falling in modern locations with their known climates. Pollen profile: the percentages, usually depicted in a graph, of the pollen of each of the species of plants contributed to an overall pollen assemblage at a given place and at a given time period compared over time.
