Ch 7

Ch 7

1. Method

   • Cultural Theory
     • There is emphasis on primacy of data, facts and classifaication
       • Like putting things in order
         • Problem: Can not account for either stability or change in ancdient culture in waays other than what we observe in the modern world
           • ANTHROPOLOGICAL
             • This ddeals with issues of adaptation and change in such systems by identifying three realms of behavior: Environment, social and ideological
               • focus is an explaining how adaptations and carioation occuer, why cultures do not change
                 • Culture should be viewed as a system with its technological, economic, social, political and ideological aspeects all closely interwined.
                   • The importance of cultureal ecology and the necessity to view the interaction of the environemnt and cultural sustematically.
                     • should study the envolution of these cultural sustem though time.
                       • Postmodern
                         • Interpretive arachelogy
                           • Highlights the limits of archaeology as a science, this shows the limits od what we know about the past and highlights how multiple interpretations are possibl from the same objects depending on the viewpoint od the observer
                             • Chaine Oprtsyoire: operational chain
                               • Attempt to reconstruct the way artifacts were manifacured and used. In adition, to understand the place technical activities played in older human societies
                                 • Technology is a social activity, and thus arachaeology must consider the social and cultural roots and the entire web of actions that generated artifacts
                                   • Miachel Schiffer
                                   • Studies dont limit to ancient societies but is interested in how objects transform over time from the point of discard to the present
                                     • Garbage
                                       • Cognitive archaeolgy
                                         • interffering the way people thought in earlier times by studying material culture that survives
                                         • The way humans use symbols and in the social relations that are needed for them to use symbols and communcate with one another

2. Characterisits

   • Archaeology is the scientific study of historic and prehistoric peoples and their cultures bu analyis od their artifacts, inscriptions, monuments and other remains
     • There is no way of directly corraborating guesses as to the meaning of objects to the culture they were found in
       • Cultureal historical, anthropalpgical, postmodern approaches
         • objects do not exist in a void
           • Arcaeology is best understood by analyzing each object in the context of other objects found with it in a careful excavation
             • Arhaeologist lean about human societies of the past bu studying debris. However, these material remains have not come down to us unchanged.
               • Artifacts have been modified