Archaeology
Archaeology tests how researchers reconstruct past behavior from material remains: survey, excavation, stratigraphy, dating, taphonomy, and interpretation. The exam emphasizes method and inference, especially what a find can and cannot prove.
Core concepts
- Context combines provenience, matrix, and association. An artifact without context loses much interpretive value because its date and associations are unknown.
- Formation processes are cultural (discard, reuse, looting, construction) and natural (erosion, rodent burrowing, root action). Taphonomy studies what happens to remains after deposition.
- Stratigraphy relies on superposition in undisturbed deposits: lower layers are generally older. Features such as pits, hearths, and walls can cut through layers and create intrusions.
- Relative dating includes superposition, seriation, and stylistic sequences. Absolute dating includes radiocarbon for organic remains (useful to roughly 50,000 years, with calibration), potassium-argon for volcanic rocks, tree rings, and optically stimulated luminescence.
- Survey uses sampling, pedestrian transects, and remote sensing. Excavation records a datum, grid, levels, plans, and sections; screening and flotation recover small remains.
- Ethnoarchaeology and analogy help interpret remains, but analogies must be justified, not assumed.
Worked example
A coin minted in 120 CE is found in a sealed floor deposit. It establishes a terminus post quem of 120 CE: the deposit formed no earlier than 120 CE. It does not date the floor to 120 CE, because the coin could circulate for decades before being lost. To narrow the date, combine the coin with radiocarbon dating of a short-lived organic sample, such as a seed, and with stratigraphic relations. Reasoning: the coin gives a minimum age for deposition, not an exact event date.
Traps that cost marks
- Assuming deeper always means older; this fails in disturbed or cut deposits.
- Confusing the date of the material with the date of the event being studied.
- Using radiocarbon on pottery, stone, or metal rather than organic material.
- Ignoring calibration and radiocarbon's upper limit.
- Treating absence of evidence as proof of absence.
- Inferring ethnic identity directly from artifact style without supporting evidence.