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30 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is a temper?
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Material added to clay that keeps it from readily expanding or contracting.
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What is a shotgun house?
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A style of house made up of three to five rooms in a row. It was brought by the West Africans, along with the porch.
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What is creolization?
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A mixing of cultures.
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What is subsistence?
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The quest for food.
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What does our dietary patterns say about us?
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They demonstrate ethnic, cultural, religious, and political affiliation.
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Why is food better than clothing for determining immigrant status?
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Ethnic cooking often stays with a family while dress is assimilated.
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What is direct evidence for diet?
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Stomach contents and coprolites.
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What are coprolites?
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Preserved or fossilized feces.
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What does the direct evidence tell us: meal or diet?
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Only a meal.
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What is indirect evidence for diet?
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Historical accounts, depictions in art, and preserved food remains.
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What can isotopic analysis tell us about diet?
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Using human bones, we can tell whether a person was eating wild or domestic and terrestrial or marine plants (in the long term).
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What can we tell from macrobotanical remains?
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A subsample is first collected by floating and then analyzed against a modern sample.
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Why does floating separate plant remains?
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Carbon is light.
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What are the two things archaeologists look for in microbotanical remains?
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Pollen grains and phytoliths.
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What is palynology?
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The stud of pollen.
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What is pollen?
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The male germ cell of plants.
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What is a pollen profile?
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A key tool for reconstructing ancient environments - it describes what species were present through time.
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How is pollen identified?
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By shape, with a scanning electron microscope.
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What is the bias of pollen analysis?
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Pollen is highly mobile. Therefore, archaeologists may make false attributions.
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What are phytoliths?
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Silica bodies that form in the cells of some plants. They have distinct shapes.
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What can phytoliths tell us?
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They can reveal economic transitions and plant domestication in human societies.
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What is zooarchaeology or faunal analysis?
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The study of the relationship between humans and animals.
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What would a zooarcheologists try to determine from a set of animal bones?
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Whether they were deposited as a result of human behavior and what roles humans played.
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What is taphonomy?
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The study of how organisms become part of the fossil or archaeological record.
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What are the three steps of taphonomy?
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1. Identify remains to a specific taxon.
2. Quantify the remains. 3. Analyze the remains. |
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How do you quantify remains?
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NISP and MNI.
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What is NISP?
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Number of identified specimens: the bone specimens identified to a particular taxon.
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What is MNI?
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Minimum number of individuals: the minimum number to account for all skeletal elements.
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How do you determine MNI?
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Determine which sides of the body, species, fragments, and sizes are represented.
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What characteristics can you determine from animal bones?
How would you know when a site was occupied? |
Age and sex (which did hunters target?).
By the season the animals died. |
