Final Exam Flashcards
Good grade on final
Paleoanthropology is an interdisciplinary effort, requiring expertise from various fields of earth science - sedimentology, paleontology, palynology, stratigraphy - to “paint the backdrop” for human evolution. Pick two of those fields and describe what they study and how they can assist in reconstructing the past environments in which hominids lived.
Sedimentology- Study of soil, can get a lot of info about past events. Paleontology- Study of fossil animals, make inference of environment, life, and change.
What are the three primary goals of archaeology? What are the three primary questions that archaeologists grapple with under the last of those objectives?
When and where, What and how (lifestyle), why domestication.
Why does archaeological information become just as important (or even moreimportant) than paleontological information when attempting to understand the evolution of hominids?
Change through culture
There are basically two kinds of sites. What are they? How are they different?
Primary- not touched intact
Secondary- out of context
The word taphonomy is Latin and basically means ______________. This subfield of paleontology focuses on what issues related to interpreting fossils and bones?
Tomb naming
What are the four main kinds of data that make up the archaeological database?
Artifacts, ecofacts, features, and sites
Although the archaeological record does not directly replicate the cultural setting that initially created it, the context of finds and their associations with each other can tell us a lot about the behaviors that created them. Generally, what are the three kinds of spatial relationships that archaeologists examine
Intrasite, Intersite, and regional
Absolute and relative dating. What is the difference between them? I.D. one method from each
Relative- Compartaive, sequence
Absolute- Years before present Method: carbon 14
Identify Uniformitarianism, Ethno-archaelogy, Law of superposition, and Experimental Archaeology
Uniformitarianism- Present is key to past
Ethno-archaelogy- Primate and human living studys (remains) (behavior)
Law of superposition- Oldest on bottom (geology)
Experimental Archaeology- Making bones youself (working backwards)
Taxonomists tend to be either “lumpers” or “splitters”. For instance, the array of human fossils from the Plio-Pleistocene can either be lumped into a few species or split into many. What factors are responsible for that taxonomic “lumping” or “splitting”? (ID two of three things.)
Sex, Age at death (age diffrence), Regional diffrences
The traditional view of the human species has always made the evolution of our large brains (encephalization) the hallmark of “Man”. What, do we know now, was the first derived feature to divide hominids from their ancestors? And what second anatomical change separated us from apes long before we started to exhibit any encephalization?
First, Bipedalism
Second , Changes in dental (Loss of canines, reduction of teeth size)
Third, encephalization (brain size)
Identify the four major grades or “super-lumps” of hominid types that evolved over the
Pliocene. Identify one “splitter” specimen for each.
Basel- Splitter- Ardipithecus Ramidus
Primitive-Splitter-Kenyanthropus Platyopes
Derived-Splitter-Australopthecus Robustus
Early Homo-Splitters-Homo Habilis
What are four main univariate models for the development of bipedality that “kicked off” or set into motion the muitivariate positive feedback loop process that, it has been argued in this class, started us off on the path to hominization (becoming fully human)?
Thermoregulation, Long distance EFFICENT walking, Visual surveilance, Free hands, Male provision, and to reach food
There are three kinds of primary sites that paleoanthropologists feel were left behind from the cultural activities of our ancestors in the Pliocene. What are they? What can be inferred from each?
Just bones (Killsite)
Just stones (Transport site)
Stones and variety of bones (Residental site)
The archaeologist Lewis Binford and the paleontologist Robert Brain reinterpreted Plio-Pleistocene sites and questioned many of the reconstructions of earlier researchers. What notions accompanied the Osteokeratadontic culture and “Home Base” reconstructions of Dart and Isaac? What methods were used by Binford and Brain to criticize their models?
Natural Death opposed to bury procces??
Ethnoarchaeology-Home for scavengers
