Introduction to Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology:

 

Humanity's Journeys

 

Dr. Kathryn Denning

 

Anth 2140, Sept 2005 - Apr 2006

 

  

 

 

10 Jan 2006... Welcome back!

 

 

 

Plan for the day

 

1   Course business/ announcements...

2   Lecture: Archaeological methods and interpretation

 

Reading and Assignments

Full syllabus for Term 2 is coming next week.

The Museum Assignment will be handed out in class on January 31st. It is due March 1st. N.B. February 7 and 8 there will be no lecture or tutorial, to help free up some time for you to go to the museum. You also have Reading Week off, of course (Feb 13-17). Start planning now to ensure you can go to the museum for several hours during the month of February. You are responsible for getting to the museum yourself.

 

Schedule

For today: Fagan Chapters 5,6,7.

For next week, Jan 17: Bioarchaeology. Course Kit: review Atlas of Primate Skeletal Anatomy, and read Sexing and Aging the Skeleton, Whispers from the Ice, Kwaday dan Tsinchi. 

Also quickly review Fagan 243-256.

For Jan 24, Fagan Ch 10, 257-283. The Great Diaspora, and Fagan Ch 11, 283-314. The Earliest Farmers

FOR TUTORIAL TOMORROW... come prepared to discuss: What can we really know about past people's lives? What can't we know?

 

 

 

 

 

 

First - Why learn about Archaeological Methods?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 5: Individuals and Interactions

 

 

 

The example from Moundville, Alabama:

http://www.ua.edu/academic/museums/moundville/home.html

 

 

c. AD 1200 ... one of the largest settlements in North America. (1000 + 10 000)

 

 

 

 

"Chief's Mound", Moundville

 

 

 

The diagram on p 129 shows the relationship of grave goods to position at the burial site, and thus gives us some indication of status - social stratification.

Taken together, the information shows the importance of positioning, and the importance of some materials and objects.

 

 

Also in that chapter....

 

-close analysis at Abu Hureyra, revealing gender differences in labour

- ideologies of domination, used by elites to exercise power.... e.g. Maya cosmology

- resistance among enslaved people, visible through the artifacts they made and used, even while trapped within a dominating culture

- the truth of oral history among the Cheyenne, versus standard American history

- war casualties at Thebes, Egypt, and knowledge of the way they fought and died

 

- types of exchange and trade (gift exchanges, reciprocity, redistribution, markets) - i.e., there are lots of ways of moving goods around!

- sourcing of goods - finding out where they came from tells us how far they travelled -- e.g. obsidian sourcing

- Uluburun shipwreck, a wrecked trading vessel from 1316 BC, telling us about trade in the Mediterranean -- raw materials and manufactured goods from all around the region

 

  

 

 

Chapter 6, Studying the Intangible

 

- the challenge of reconstructing the intangible beliefs, ideologies, and social relationships of the past

- human cosmology  [Greek for "study of the universe", meaning an understanding of the order and nature of the universe]

 

In early civilizations' cosmologies:

a) it appears that several elements were generally shared: a multilayered cosmos with realms of the underworld and sky, primordial waters, an axis mundi [axis of the world] with a central sacred place -- e.g. pyramid (Egypt, Aztec, Maya), cave, or mountain (Hindu Mount Meru, Greek Mount Olympus, Lakota Black Hills)

b) sacred places/mythic landscapes were "instruments of orthogenetic [developing in a straight line] transformation" (Eliade cited in Fagan 2004:146), i.e. they kept traditions intact

c) material and spiritual worlds were not separate - ancestors were often intermediaries between living and supernatural

d) shamans, mediums, visionaries, or other people "of power" could link directly to the supernatural world, were healers, and could influence the natural world

e) the cycles of the seasons governed human life - fertility, procreation, life,death

 

 

How do we know all this? Much investigation, archaeological and anthropological, and also through history of religion (texts)

 

How can we interpret specific examples of religious/cosmological belief in the archaeological record?

 

Very carefully... with attention to all potential evidence, and using all methods of analysis possible.

 

 

e.g. Oracle Bones, from Shang era China - divination rituals 4500 years ago

 

 

(Scapulimancy/scapulamancy still used today in a few cultures, including North American Native, Innu... presumably a quite old practice!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

e.g. Rock Art in Africa -- San people whose ancestors made the art are still able to interpret it for anthropologists -- they still know the ceremonies being depicted

 

 

San eland painting being examined by Lewis-Williams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0102/feature7/index.html, http://www.museums.org.za/sam/resource/arch/rockart.htm

 

 

Rock art from Ice Age Europe and other locations isn't the same as African rock art, but comparisons can be fruitful.

 

 

Archaeology of Death e.g. Sutton Hoo, burial of an Anglo-Saxon king, Raedwald, 625 AD Example of an elaborate funeral rite: the symbolism of the ship burial

Site image: www.suttonhoo.org . British Museum info  (n.b. no body - decayed - though chemical traces found)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

e.g. Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, 2550 B.C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

borrowed from http://maceachern.carleton.ca/Conferences/MWSCAS_2003_Cairo/image010.htm

 

 

 

Artifacts: The Importance of Context

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Portrait skulls from Jericho, Jordan Valley, circa 6500 BC - excavated from a pit below a house floor. Each face an individual portrait -- plaster, with shell eyes. The context is all-important to understanding their significance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another example of context being crucial to understanding artifacts:

 

 

Shrine at Phylakopi, island of Melos, Greece

 

 

 

"Lady of Phylakopi"

 

 

- very careful excavation was required to see the layout of the building, to verify that it was indeed a shrine - altars with statues, trumpets, lyres

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artifacts and Art Styles

 

- very difficult to decode highly stylized art -- to understand the ideology  behind it, but sometimes it can be done with a lot of careful work and some luck

- e.g. Moche (Peru) sacrifice ceremony seen in art.... and then in reality

- e.g. decoding Maya glyphs and understanding the cosmology

 

 

Sacred Places

 

- understanding the symbolism of the material site, the fusion of sacred and secular

e.g. Chartres cathedral, the Rose windows

e.g. Maya cities of Copan, Tikal, replicas of the spiritual world

e.g. Angkor Wat in Cambodia - towers explicitly depict Mount Meru, home of Hindu gods/centre of universe

 

 

 

e.g.  Cahokia (Illinois, AD 1150) layout - quadripartite pattern known from surviving Southeastern spiritual traditions.  Note also Woodhenge.

 

 

 

 

Astroarchaeology and Stonehenge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sun lines up with several key points at the solstice.

 

 

 

Stonehenge aerial view: Burials around the site indicate that it was not merely a secular time-piece -- this is a sacred landscape.

 

 

 

 

Other examples of prehistoric astronomy encoded in archaeological sites: Regions like Chaco Canyon. Below: Pueblo Bonito, in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico -apparently the centre of a massive cultural/sacred landscape. Modern Pueblo peoples have helped archaeologists understand these ancient Ancestral Pueblo sites.