Fagan Ancient Lives - Ch 7 Terms

Front 1

descriptive (inductive) research methods

Back 1

the development of generalizations about a research problem based on numerous specific observations on artifacts and other finds

Front 2

normative view of culture

Back 2

a view of human culture arguing that one can identify the abstract rules regulating a particular culture; a commonly used basis for studying archaeological cultures through time

Front 3

inevitable variation

Back 3

cumulative culture change due to minor differences in learned behavior over time

Front 4

cultural selection

Back 4

process that leads to the acceptance of some culture traits and innovations that make a culture more adaptive to its environment; somewhat akin to natural selection in biological evolution

Front 5

invention

Back 5

new ideas that originate in a human culture by accident or design

Front 6

diffusion

Back 6

the spread of ideas over short or long distances

Front 7

components

Back 7

all the artifacts from one occupation level at a site

Front 8

phases

Back 8

archaeological units defined by characteristic groupings of cultural traits that can be identified precisely in time and space, lasting for a relatively short time and found at one or more sites in a locality or region, with cultural traits that are clear enough to distinguish one phase from other phases

Front 9

regions

Back 9

areas defined by natural geographic boundaries that display some cultural homogeneity

Front 10

culture areas

Back 10

arbitrary geographic or research areas in which general cultural homogeneity is found

Front 11

horizons

Back 11

widely distributed sets of cultural traits and artifact assemblages whose distribution and chronology allow researchers to assume that they spread rapidly; often formed of artifacts that were associated w/ widespread, distinctive religious beliefs

Front 12

traditions

Back 12

persistent technological or cultural patterns identified by characteristic artifact forms that outlast a single phase and occur over a wide area

Front 13

migration

Back 13

the deliberate movement of people from one area to another

Front 14

analogy

Back 14

a process of reasoning whereby two entities that share some similarities are assumed to share many others

Front 15

stelae

Back 15

commemorative columns or uprights

Front 16

functionalism

Back 16

the notion that a social institution w/in a society has a function in fulfilling all the needs of a social organism

Front 17

ethnographic analogy

Back 17

analysis of living societies to aid in understanding and interpreting the arch. record

Front 18

ethnoarchaeology

Back 18

the study of living societies to aid in the interpretation of ancient ones

Front 19

experimental archaeology

Back 19

conducting controlled experiments with ancient technologies and other methods to provide a basis for interpreting ancient human behavior

Front 20

scientific method

Back 20

method of inquiry based on the formal testing of hypotheses, cumulative research, and replicable experiments

Front 21

inductive reasoning

Back 21

using specific observations to form general conclusions

Front 22

deductive reasoning

Back 22

forming specific implications from a generalized hypothesis

Front 23

processual archaeology

Back 23

studying the process of culture change using a systems or environmental approach

Front 24

general systems theory

Back 24

the notion that any organism or organization can be studied as a system broken down into many interacting subsystems or parts; sometimes called cybernetics

Front 25

pollen analysis (palynology)

Back 25

the study of ancient vegetation by using minute pollens preserved in organic deposits

Front 26

cultural ecology

Back 26

the study of the ways in which human societies adapt to and transform their environments

Front 27

multilinear cultural evolution

Back 27

cultural evolution along many diverse tracks

Front 28

post-processual archaeology

Back 28

approaching the past by examining ideology, motives, and nonenvironmental aspects of culture change

Front 29

cognitive archaeology

Back 29

the "archaeology of mind" using arch. methods to study human motives, ideologies, and intangibles.

Front 30

cognitive-processual archaeology

Back 30

an approach to arch. that combines the methods of processual and postprocessual researchers