Digging into Archaeology A Brief OER Introduction to Archaeology with Activities Amanda Wolcott Paskey and AnnMarie Beasley Cisneros Supported by the Academic Senate for California Community College’s Open Educational Resources Initiative 2 |Digging into Archaeology © 2020 Amanda Wolcott Paskey and AnnMarie Beasley Cisneros, CC BY-NC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. More information on this copyright and approved uses of this text may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses. Wolcott Paskey & Beasley Cisneros 3 |Digging into Archaeology Table of Contents A Note from the Authors ..............................................................................................................7 For Instructors Using This Text ......................................................................................................8 1 Introduction to Anthropological Archaeology ........................................................................... 12 Activity 1.1 What Is an Archaeologist? ................................................................................................... 15 Activity 1.2 Scientific Method and Article Analysis ................................................................................. 16 Part 1. Identify the Scientific Method ................................................................................................. 16 Part 2. Annotated Bibliography........................................................................................................... 17 Part 3. The Literature Review ............................................................................................................. 18 2 History (up until the 1960s) ..................................................................................................... 19 Activity 2.1 Paradigm Shifts, Part 1 ......................................................................................................... 23 3 History (the 1960s and beyond) ............................................................................................... 25 Activity 3.1 Paradigm Shifts, Part 2 ......................................................................................................... 28 Activity 3.2 Get a Perspective ................................................................................................................. 30 Activity 3.3 Research of “Middle Range:” Additional Processual Approaches ....................................... 32 4 The Archaeological Record and Site Formation Processes ......................................................... 33 Activity 4.1 Artifacts: What Are They Good For? .................................................................................... 37 5 Artifact Preservation ............................................................................................................... 39 Activity 5.1 Formation Processes: What Survives? ................................................................................. 42 Part 1. Preservation by Matrix and Climate ........................................................................................ 42 Part 2. Card Activity ............................................................................................................................ 44 6 How to Find Archaeological Sites ............................................................................................. 47 Activity 6.1 Survey Techniques ............................................................................................................... 51 Part 1. Using a Compass ...................................................................................................................... 51 Part 2. Calculating Stride Length ......................................................................................................... 51 Part 3. Applying Compass Skills and Stride Length ............................................................................. 52 Activity 6.2 Campus Site Survey .............................................................................................................. 54 Part 1: General Site Survey ................................................................................................................. 54 Part 2. Surveying, Mapping, and Surface Collection ........................................................................... 56 Activity 6.3 Sampling the Past ................................................................................................................. 57 Simple Random Sample ...................................................................................................................... 58 Stratified Random Sample .................................................................................................................. 59 Wolcott Paskey & Beasley Cisneros 4 |Digging into Archaeology Systematic Sample .............................................................................................................................. 60 Stratified Unaligned Systematic Sample ............................................................................................. 60 Activity 6.4 Ground Coverage Survey ..................................................................................................... 67 Part 1. Map Reading ............................................................................................................................ 67 Part 2. Survey Planning ....................................................................................................................... 68 Part 3. Sampling .................................................................................................................................. 68 Part 4. Analysis .................................................................................................................................... 70 Activity 6.5 Garbology Survey ................................................................................................................. 73 7 Excavation .............................................................................................................................. 75 Activity 7.1 Excavating the Land of Candy: A Cultural Resource Management Exercise ........................ 80 Part 1: Recording Instructions............................................................................................................. 80 Part 2: Completion of the Resource Record Form .............................................................................. 81 8 Dating Methods – Relative and Absolute Dating ....................................................................... 82 Relative Dating ........................................................................................................................................ 82 Absolute Dating ....................................................................................................................................... 83 Activity 8.1 Stratigraphic Dating and the Harris Matrix .......................................................................... 90 Part 1. Stratigraphic Dating: A Café Scene .......................................................................................... 90 Part 2. The Harris Matrix ..................................................................................................................... 93 Part 3. Date Before Which and Date After Which .............................................................................. 95 Activity 8.2 Stylistic and Frequency Seriation ......................................................................................... 97 Part 1. Stylistic Seriation of Chevy Automobiles ................................................................................. 97 Part 2. Frequency Seriation of New England Headstone Designs .................................................... 101 Activity 8.3 Pottery Seriation ................................................................................................................ 105 Activity 8.4 Dating Conversions ............................................................................................................ 109 9 Artifact Analysis .................................................................................................................... 111 Activity 9.1 Artifact Classification ......................................................................................................... 115 Activity 9.2 Three Classifications .......................................................................................................... 118 10 Reconstructing Environments and Subsistence Patterns ....................................................... 123 Activity 10.1 Reconstructing Paleoenvironments ................................................................................. 128 Activity 10.2 Reconstructing Diet and Subsistence: Comparing Foraging and Farming ....................... 145 Activity 10.3 Subsistence Signatures .................................................................................................... 154 11 Social Archaeology .............................................................................................................. 160 Political Organization ............................................................................................................................ 160 Wolcott Paskey & Beasley