Methods in Physical Anthropology and Archaeology

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Methods in Physical Anthropology and Archaeology

• Part 2

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How do we reconstruct the past?

• Questions
• For paleoanthropologists When did these animals
  become people?
• For archaeologists How did these people live?
• Settlement patterns
• Relationship to the environment
• Social and political organization
• Food
• When and why did cultural change happen?
• Who were these people and were they related to
  the people who live in this region now?

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Analysing artifacts

• What kinds of artifacts can you name?
• Typology and formal analysis
• Measurement, drawing and photography
• Function
• Technology and social organization

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Example of post-excavation artifact analysis

• To left Drawings and photographs of Late Jomon
  Period Kasori B pottery.
• Middle Jomon Pottery Chronology for Kanto region

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What can we learn from old bones?

• Osteology
• Human or non-human?
• Ageinfant, child, adolescent or adult?
• Dental, skull, bone structureSee Figure 3-2 in
  text
• Sexmale or female based on sexual dimorphism
• Skull and PelvisSee Figure 3-4 in text

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What can we learn from old bones?

• Paleopathology
• Disease origins
• Disease prevalence within and between
  populationsindividuals, subgroups and groups
• Disease spread over time and over space

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What can we learn from old bones

• Biocultural study
• Infectious disease, nutritional status, accidents
  and homicide
• Selective mortality How can we tell how many
  people actually became ill when we only see the
  people who died of the disease?

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What did people eat?

• Zooarchaeology Animals and people
• What might have been available in the Antigonish
  area 1000 years ago? (see next slide)
• Mammals?
• Fish and shellfish?
• Birds?

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What did people eat?

• Hunting and collecting What bones are found on
  sites?
• What artifacts might indicate animals use?
• What features might indicate animals use?
• Domestication of animalswhat, when and why?
• Experimental archaeology and analogy

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What did people eat?

• Paleoethnobotany Past people and plants
• Pollenwhat was the environment like and what
  might people have used
• Seeds in middens, pits, pottery, the soil,
  hearths
• Intensive tending of plants and domestication
• Coprolitesancient feces can tell us a lot about
  what people ate
• Chemical analysis of stable isotopes and trace
  elements in skeletal remains

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How did people use the land?

• Paleoecology
• Physical evidence of land forms, water levels,
  plants and animals
• What was the non-human environment like and how
  did people adapt to it or change it?
• Settlement patterns
• Where are the sites on the landscape and what
  kinds of sites are they?
• What are the structures within a specific site or
  community?

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What can settlement patterns tell us?

• Settlement patterns
• Junko Habus examination of settlement patterns
  in Jomon Period Japanese sites
• Habus publication Link
• Reconstructing social systems
• In what kinds of structures did people live?
• How are people buried at Sannai Maruyama?
• Egalitarian social organization or social
  stratification?
• Trading networks?

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How do cultures change?

• Discovery and invention
• Deliberate attempts to solve a problemHow can we
  shelter ourselves better? How can we produce
  more food?
• Unplanned actions which result in cultural
  changedomestication of dogs and cats

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How do cultures change?

• Diffusion
• Direct contactthe spread of paper from China to
  other parts of the world
• Intermediate contactmissionaries and Western
  clothing throughout the world
• Stimulus diffusionHeian Period Japanese womens
  creation of hiragana from Chinese Kanji

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How do cultures change?

• Acculturationresults in cultural change when one
  society is more powerful than the other
• English language use in Nova Scotia by people of
  Acadian, Mikmaq and Scots or Irish Gaelic
  language descent

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Words to remember

• Typology
• Osteology
• Sexual dimorphism
• Paleopathology
• Zooarchaeology
• Paleoethnobotany
• Coprolites
• Paleoecology
• Settlement Patterns
• Egalitarian social organization versus social
  stratification
• Invention, diffusion, acculturation

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Readings

• Ember et al. Chapter 3