ANTH 1010H Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Relative Dating, Dendrochronology, Fjord
3 Sep 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Four goals of archaeology: to generate information about the past. Through discovery, description, and classification of sites and artifacts: to synthesize (put together) information. To reconstruct culture histories and cultural chronologies: to develop explanations for what was observed, to develop an understanding of human behaviour. To understand both diversity and the common human experience. Similar to what cultural anthropologists are interested in: social, political, and economic organization. But we are limited to material remains. Material remains of past human activities and behaviours. Artifacts, ecofacts, features, architecture: physical remains of people and their tools, houses, foods, any material lost, discarded, abandoned, and stashed by people. Sites: the geographic locations where these materials are found. Archaeologists can only study what is found and what is preserved. Not every site ever formed will be discovered and studied. Not every artifact deposited will preserve to be discovered. Because of this, our view of the past is inherently biased.
