Archaeology Exam #2

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Agriculture

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The systematic modification of the environments of plants and animals to increase their productivity and usefulness

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Agroecology

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The systematically modified environment (or constructed niches) which becomes the only environment within which domesticated plants can flourish.

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Archaeology

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A cultural anthropology of the human past focusing on material evidence of human modification of the physical environment.

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Archaeological Record

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All material objects constructed by humans or near-humans revealed by archeology.

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Artifacts

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Objects that have been deliberately and intelligently shaped by human or near-human activity.

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Band

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The characteristic form of social organization found among foragers. Bands are small, usually no more than 50 people, and labor is divided ordinarily on the basis of age and sex. All adults in band societies have roughly equal access to whatever material or social valuables are locally available.

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Bloodwealth

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Material goods paid by perpetrators to compensate their victims for their loss.

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Broad Spectrum Foraging

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A subsistence strategy based on collecting a wide range of plants and animals by hunting, fishing, and gathering.

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Chiefdom

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A form of social organization in which a leader (the chief) and close relatives are set apart from the rest of the society and allowed privileged access to wealth, power, and prestige.

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Class

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A ranked group within a hierarchically stratified society whose membership is defined primarily in terms of wealth, occupation, or other economic criteria

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Coevolution

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The dialectical relationship between biological processes and symbolic cultural processes, in which each makes up an important part of the environmental to which the other must adapt.

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Concentrations of Particular Artifacts

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Set of artifacts indicating that particular social activities took place at a particular area in an archaeological site when that site was inhabited in the past.

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Complex Societies

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Societies with large populations, an extensive division of labor, and occupational specialization.

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Cosmopolitanism

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Being able to move with ease from one cultural setting to another.

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Cultural Relativism

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Understanding another culture in its own terms sympathetically enough so that the culture appears to be a coherent and meaningful design for living.

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Culture

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Sets of learned behaviors and ideas that human acquire as members of society. Humans use culture to adapt to and transform the world in which they live.

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Domestication

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Human interference with the reproduction of another species, with the result that specific plants and animals become more useful to people and dependent on them.

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Ecological Niche

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Any species' way of life; what it eats, and how it finds mated, raises its young, related to companions, and protects itself from predators.

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Egalitarian Social Relations

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Social relations in which no great differences in wealth, power, or prestige divide members from one another.

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Ethnoarchaeology

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The study of the way present-day societies use artifacts and structures and how these objects become part of the archeological record.

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Ethnocentrism

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The opinion that one's one way of life is natural or correct and, indeed, the only true way of being fully human.

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Evolutional Niche

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Sum of all the natural selection pressures to which a population is exposed.

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Excavation

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The systematic uncovering of archaeological remains through removal of the deposits of soil and other material covering them and accompanying them.

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Features

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Nonportable remnants from the past, such as house walls of ditches.

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Feminist Archaeology

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A research approach that explores why women's contributions have been systematically written out of the archaeological record and suggests new approaches to the human past that include such contributions

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Gender Archaeology

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Archaeological research that draws on insights from contemporary gender studies to investigate how people come to recognize themselves as different from others, how people represent these differences, and how others react to such claims.

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Historical Archaeology

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The study of archaeological sites associated with written records, frequently the study of Post-European contact sites in the world.

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Holism

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Perspective on the human condition that assumes that mind and body, individuals and society, and individuals and the environment interpenetrate and even define one another.

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Human Agency

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The exercise at least some control over their lives by human beings.

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Monumental Architecture

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Architectural constructions of a greater-than-human scale, such as pyramids, temples, and tombs.

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Neolithic

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The “New Stone Age,” which began with the domestication of plants 10,300 years ago.

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Niche Construction

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When an organism actively perturbs the environment or when it actively moves from a different environment, thereby modifying the selection pressures it is subject to.

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Occupational Specialization

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Specialization in various occupations (e.g. weaving or pot making) or in new social roles (e.g. king or priest) that is found in socially complex societies.

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Sedentism

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The process of increasingly permanent human habitation in one place.

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Shreds

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Pieces of broken pots.

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Site

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A precise geographical location of the remains of past human activity.

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Social Stratification

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A form of social organization in which people have unequal access to wealth, power, and prestige.

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Sodalities

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Special-purpose groupings that may be organized on the basis of age, sex, economic role, and personal interest.

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State

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A stratified society that possesses a territory that is defended from outside enemies with an army from internal disorder with police. A state, which has a separate set of governmental institutions designed to enforce laws and to collect taxes and tribute, is run by an elite that possesses a monopoly on the use of force.

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Status

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A particular social position in a group.

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Subsistence Strategy

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Different ways that people in different societies go about meeting their basic material survival needs.

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Surplus Production

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The production of amounts of food that exceed the basic subsistence needs of the population.

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Survey

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The physical examination of a geographical region in which promising sites are most likely to be found.

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Symbol

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Something that stands for something else.

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Tribe

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A society that is generally larger than a band, whose members usually farm of herd for a living. Social relations in a tribe are still relatively egalitarian, although there may be a chief who speaks for the group or organizes certain group activities.