INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

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Other important New World crops are beans, chili peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and peanuts, many crucial today to world economies and international cuisines. Don’t forget those non-food crops, tobacco, coca, and other drugs and industrial materials. What animals were domesticated in the New World? The dog came in early, probably with the first Paleolithic hunters. Others were South American camelids (llama, alpaca, vicuna) and guinea pigs, with occasional wild turkeys under human control. Why so few? Probably because there were few around to control. Horses and other large mammals became extinct at the end of the Ice Age, not to return until brought back by the Europeans. Was this the reason that there were no wheeled vehicles in North and South America—that there were no large animals to pull them? Probably not, since we do have prehistoric Mexican toys with wheels, and humans can pull carts too. What about the hogs that run around Florida and get shot during hog season? These are not native but are descendants of the pigs brought by the Spanish, which got loose and went feral in the forest! What will look different about archaeological sites after the beginning of food production? Besides evidence of genetically changed species, we will see larger settlements, more dense populations, more storage space, some evidences of social inequality, and more permanent structures, but not everywhere and not all at once. How does some of this evidence appear at the Ain Mallaha site in the Jordan valley of Israel? This very early village dates from 11,000 to 9000 B.C. Stone houses with querns, grinding stones, set into the floor indicate more permanent settlement. But there are wild grains and remains of gazelle and other wild animals. What does the evidence show of the development of domestication at Tell Abu Hureya in northern Syria? A tell is a mound of debris from successive habitation sites. Here we have uninterrupted occupation from 10,500 to 6000 B.C., with a record of the changes that happened during the transition from wild food collecting to farming and herding. Wild wheat, rye, lentil, and gazelle become replaced by cultivated cereals and domesticated sheep and goats over a time span of 2,500 years. Plastered mud brick houses were relatively permanent. How does the 10,000 years of occupation of the tell at Jericho tell us of culture change? A rich oasis in the Jordan Valley, it was a biblical city, but much earlier Neolithic levels were excavated by Dame Kathleen Kenyon (shown digging in a skirt, p. 215 and color picture in Fagan 1985). Similar grinding stones, permanent houses, traces of grain, and wild gazelle giving way to sheep and goats were found. But this article also emphasizes trade items from long distances, such as salt, tar, and sulphur from the Dead Sea and turquoise, shell, obsidian, and greenstone from elsewhere in the region. A Neolithic=period stone tower, wall, and ditch surrounded the site; this was a major group construction project requiring some direction and fancy planning. Was it all for defense, and if so, from whom? Later interpretations suggest that it was fortification against flooding and a tower for storage or community gatherings for social or ritual reasons. Jericho is also famous for early Neolithic human burials with plastered skulls remodeled to look like heads. What might this ritual treatment mean?
What fascinating evidence of Neolithic ideological systems is being recovered at Çatalhöyük? You are already familiar with this site and its recent excavations by Ian Hodder, who is reinterpreting the earlier reconstructions of Neolithic lifeways (Wolle and Tringham 2000) and trying to do postprocessual thinking along with the scientific discovery by publishing absolutely everything on the website, including field notes, lively goddess discussions, etc. Are the burials beneath the houses, female figurines, bull imagery, for special ritual purposes or part of the ideological system represented in every regular household? No status differences are yet seen in households, and both domesticated and wild wheat and other plants have been found. Were the cattle domesticated yet? Would they be important in ritual more so if they were wild or domesticated? What long-distance trade items contributed to the economic system here? The obsidian trade was important, and the source of this rock was 125 miles away. Where is Mehrgarh and what is its importance in for Neolithic archaeology? This site is in the Indus Valley in Pakistan. Earliest occupations had no pottery, but did have clay bricks for houses, a notable fact we will remember later. Early domesticated grains and dates were recovered, and the goats, sheep, and cattle remains become smaller over time but more abundant, suggesting the domestication process was making them more manageable. Many innovations in food production developed here, and the region was not just a recipient for domesticated species from elsewhere. What might be making it difficult to do archaeology in the Indus Valley today? Warfare and international conflict seriously interrupt or end archaeological research! What do Neolithic sites in the Far East look like? The two representatives in your book are Banpo-ts’un in northern China and Spirit Cave in Thailand. They also show control of indigenous plants and animals more than acceptance of domesticated species from elsewhere. Early Chinese farmers were also growing hemp and silkworms for cloth production, as well as millet, rice, and pigs. North American Prehistory Lesson Objectives: Compare models of the peopling of the Americas; understand the Archaic and early food production; late prehistoric societies. We will spend more time on North American prehistory since we live here and want to know about how the same land we live on now was used in the past. We will especially emphasize the southeastern U.S. and Florida. None of the color photos in your book document archaeology from this area, even though students in the eastern U.S. might be very likely to use this textbook!
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In Conjunction with the INTRODUCTIO
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USF's public archaeology program. T
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Same as Midterm, above, but coverin
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Students seem to like all the exerc
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Student Exercise 10: ETHNOGRAPHER A
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traditionally studying non-Western
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consideration landowners, descendan
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historic archaeology because we can
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11. It tries to see both synchronic
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INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

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