Archaeology and Material Culture
What this domain tests
Archaeology reconstructs past behavior from material remains. Items test survey and excavation methods, stratigraphy and context, artifact/feature/ecofact distinctions, formation processes, dating, and interpretation of subsistence, settlement, and exchange.
Core rules and concepts
- Context and provenience are everything: an object without recorded position loses much of its interpretive value.
- Stratigraphy: in undisturbed deposits, lower layers are older (law of superposition). Inverted strata signal disturbance.
- Formation processes: natural (erosion, rodent burrowing) and cultural (rebuilding, looting) transform assemblages; taphonomy studies these effects.
- Relative dating: stratigraphy, seriation, typology. Absolute dating: radiocarbon, potassium-argon, dendrochronology, OSL, thermoluminescence.
- Artifact = portable made object; feature = non-portable (hearth, wall, ditch); ecofact = biological or geological remain not made by humans.
- Middle-range research and experimental archaeology link observed patterns to past behavior.
Worked example
Charcoal from a hearth is radiocarbon-dated to 1200 ± 40 BP; potsherds of one style lie in the same sealed layer. Reasoning: the charcoal dates the burning of that wood, not necessarily the pots. If the wood was old when collected (the old wood problem), the hearth could postdate the dated wood. Because the layer is sealed and undisturbed, the association is strong, so the pottery is likely contemporaneous with the hearth - but the date is a terminus post quem for the layer, not a guarantee for every object.
Traps that cost marks
Treating association as proof of contemporaneity; saying radiocarbon dates pottery directly; ignoring disturbance and old-wood effects; using typology as an absolute date; confusing features with artifacts.