ANTH 9 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Processual Archaeology, Archaeological Theory, Cultural Learning
3 Sep 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Historical overview of archaeological theories: antiquarianism (pre-1900)-largely non-theoretical, culture historical approach, modern theoretical archaeology. Select a location and find the artifacts that are most varied in attributes that are potentially time sensitive such as pottery decorations: develop a preliminary chronological scheme that states how the attributes change over time. Tradition, and the spatial distribution of these attributes is called a horizon: the artifacts themselves are called horizon markers. Processual archaeology is focused on how and why events took place: why did cities form, why did we change from hunting and gathering to agriculture, this is referred to as culture process. From the model we develop hypotheses to test. Hypothesis 1: collapse occurred from soil nutrient exhaustion: data expectation: nutrients in gardens will be at levels insufficient to raise a crop to maturity-low phosphorus. Hypothesis 2: collapse occurred because of drought: data expectation: pollen records will show that dry-adapted plant species appear around ad 1650.
