Chapter 5
MCQ's
Weblinks
This chapter provides an introduction to the ideas underpinning the way archaeologists interpret their finds.
5.0 Transformation processes
- A case study is outlined and illustrated at:
- http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Research/rob/Afon Ystwyth.html
5.1 Taphonomy
Taphonomy is sometimes referred to solely in relation to bones and sometimes used to describe the study of what happens to things once they are buried.
- Explanations are at:
- http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/shdbone/taphonomy.htm
- http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Taph/
- Examples of taphonomic experiments using lithics are at:
- http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/rogerg/research/EXPARCH/pages/EA1.html
5.2 Making sense of the data
Most site-based websites will include some discussion of how data has been interpreted. In most cases analogies or analogs will have been used. The sources for these can include historical or ethnographic sources as well as experimental archaeology.
- Butser Experimental Ancient Farm is at:
- http://www.butser.org.uk/w
- Castel Henllys http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/arch/castellhenllys/web/
- Sometimes analogs are drawn from studies of animals, particularly primates. A fascinating example from zoological research (armadillos) is at:
- http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/origins/armadillo.html
- US national Parks Service training for archaeological interpreters
- http://www.nps.gov/archeology/AforI/index.htm
5.3 Ethnographic accounts
Ethnographic analogies are drawn from the records of social anthropologists (or ethnographers) who have studied people in the last 100 years or so. Sometimes these analogies provide a set of general models (and categories) which are used by archaeologists to discuss the past and against which their findings are tested. A good example of the former is the way terms like band, chief and tribe have been used by archaeologists.
- An interesting place to start is the Pitt Rivers Museum
- http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/
- !Kung documentary
- http://www.der.org/films/hunters.html
- Man the Hunter- book
- https://books.google.ca/books
5.4 Experimental archaeology
- An excellent site on lithics and experimentation is at:
- http://www.hf.uio.no/iakh/forskning/sarc/english/study/experimental_archaeology
- University of Reading- examples of experimental projects
- http://www.reading.ac.uk/archaeology/research/Projects/arch-RH-experimental.aspx#projects
- Butser Ancient Farm
- http://www.butser.org.uk/
- A blog about experimental and reconstructed structures
- http://structuralarchaeology.blogspot.co.uk/
- Experiments at Butser Ancient Farm
- Building an iron age round house
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXcHbJ4IMIc
- ard (plough) with dexers
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xup3jPgW6L0
- living in the past 1970s
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRs-zRoBIc4
- Peter Reynolds on Experiments
- http://www.butser.org.uk/iafexp_hcc.html
5.5 Historical sources
Historical analogies are drawn either from the work of historians who have researched the documentary evidence from past societies or from accounts by people in the past describing aspects of their world. An example of this is where Roman accounts have been used to try to understand Iron Age Britain or travelogues from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been used in North America.
5.6 Ethnoarchaeology
- Ethnoarchaeology involves the study of remains left by people today. Its value is that the people can be either be observed or interviewed to explain what they were doing and why they did it.
- http://home1.gte.net/ericjw1/ethnoarchaeology.html
- A branch of ethnoarchaeology is the study of waste produced by modern societies. This is termed garbology. A start point for academic research is:
- http://www.anthrosource.net/
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