Measuring Time with Artifacts: A History of Methods in American ArchaeologyUniversity of Nebraska Press, 2006 - 346 páginas Combining historical research with a lucid explication of archaeological methodology and reasoning, Measuring Time with Artifacts examines the origins and changing use of fundamental chronometric techniques and procedures and analyzes the different ways American archaeologists have studied changes in artifacts, sites, and peoples over time.In highlighting the underpinning ontology and epistemology of artifact-based chronometers-cultural transmission and how to measure it archaeologically-it covers issues such as why archaeologists used the cultural evolutionism of L. H. Morgan, E. B. Tylor, L. A. White, and others instead of biological evolutionism; why artifact classification played a critical role in the adoption of stratigraphic excavation; how the direct historical approach accomplished three analytical tasks at once; why cultural traits were important analytical units; why paleontological and archaeological methods sometimes mirror one another; how artifact classification influences chronometric method; and how graphs illustrate change in artifacts over time.An understanding of the history of artifact-based chronometers enables us to understand how we know what we think we know about the past, ensures against modern misapplication of the methods, and sheds light on the reasoning behind archaeologists' actions during the first half of the twentieth century.R. Lee Lyman is a professor in and the chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Michael J. O'Brien is a professor of anthropology and an associate dean in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Lyman and O'Brien are the co-authors of Archaeology as a Process: Processualism and Its Progeny and Cladistics and Archaeology, among other books. |
Conteúdo
Ontology | 27 |
The Epistemology of Measurement Units | 71 |
Chronometers and Units in Early | 97 |
Direitos autorais | |
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A. L. Kroeber American Anthropologist American Antiquity American archaeology analytical units archaeological record artifact types artifact-based chronometers assemblages biological Biostratigraphy Boas ceramic Chapter chronological chronometers classification comprise concept cultural evolution cultural traits cultural transmission culture change culture history Darwinian diachronic diamond graph direct historical approach discussion Dunnell edited essentialist ethnographic Ethnology evolutionary Figure Ford Ford's fossils frequency distributions frequency seriation genetic graph heritable continuity historians ideational units index fossils Kidder Kroeber lineage Lyman and O'Brien marker types measure Midwestern Taxonomic Method Nelson noted notion O'Brien and Lyman ontology orthogenesis overlapping percentage stratigraphy percentage-stratigraphy data period phenomena phyletic seriation phylogenetic pottery types prehistoric principle relative frequencies result sequence sherds similar species specific historical analogy Spier Steward strata stratigraphic excavation stratigraphic revolution superposed superposition technique temporal term theory time-series analysis time's time's arrow Turnbaugh twentieth century underpinning unimodal unimodal frequency distributions variation vertical Willey Wissler