Measuring time with artifacts : a history of methods in American archaeology
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-this volume 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
History
1 online resource (1 volume)
9780803256316, 9781280466373, 9780803229662, 9780803280526, 9786610466375, 0803256310, 1280466375, 0803229666, 0803280521, 6610466378
65517821
Ontology
The concept of evolution in early twentieth-century American archaeology
The epistemology of measurement units
Cultural traits as units of analysis in early twentieth-century anthropology
Chronometers and units in early archaeology and paleontology
A.L. Kroeber and the measurement of time's arrow and time's cycle
Time, space, and marker types in James Ford's 1936 chronology for the lower Mississippi Valley
The epistemology of chronometers
The direct historical approach
American stratigraphic excavation
Graphic depictions of culture change
Artifact classification and artifact-based chronometry
English