Monday, January 11, 2012

Lecture 2

Prof’s blurb:
Archaeology borrows approach and theories from many related disciplines:
Considered a cluster of methods, rather than a single method

ANTH360 Lecture 2
Archaeology
What is it?
A discipline?
A method?
An approach to understanding information about the past
A method to recover information about past

*Contributes to better understanding of the time
Archaeology as 4 fields
Biological/physical anthropology: study of human biological or physical characteristics and how they evolved
Cultural/social anthropology: analyzes human culture and society
Archaeology: “past tense of cultural anthropology”

Analyzes past human culture and societies through material remains (material culture)
*how to interpret something without any informants?
(Ethnoarchaeology: analyzes how past societies used material culture by studying how present cultures use similar objects)
Linguistics: study of languages, their acquisition, structure and meaning

Archaeology as history
99% of human existence happened before historical documentation
Prehistory: no written records of events
Protohistory: line between having some written records or visual information; civilization with a language, but cannot read it; history recorded through other civilization’s language or by other civilizations
History: events are already known, and asks more specific questions about the events
Study of specifics

Archaeology as science
Unlike texts, archaeological data must be interpreted
Scientific method
Collect evidence
Conduct experiments
Make hypothesis: a testable proposition to account for the data
Test hypo against data
Make model (a description) that best summarizes pattern observed in data

*Individual items cannot tell you much – need to know its context to infer its use or meaning
Study of the general

*in comparison to the historical approach
Hypothesis testing vs. Hermeneutical circle

*hermeneutical: constantly reforming questions referring to the data
Hypothesis testing is more common in processual arch
Hermeneutical is more common in post-processual
Interpretation: functionality
Context is crucial for interpretation of objects

• e.g. pictures of an Aztec ceremonial knife and a kitchen knife: both objects are knives
  when out of context, information is lost because where the knife was used is important to its function
  Different explanations come out of contexts
  Arch goals and Questions
  Reconstructions of past (traditional approach)
  Seek to reconstruct past but also to understand why change took place (processual approach (1950-60s))

• e.g. Why did some bands or tribes move? Why did they become sedentary?
  Seek to reconstruct symbolic and cognitive systems of past (post-processual or post-structural approach (1970-80s))

• questions about ideational aspects
  Possible to answer these questions in some situations, but not easy
  Ex) picture of ancient clay beds

*People needed to get the clay from somewhere; why choose this place? etc
Arch, anthropology and culture
Anthropology: study of humanity
Biological characteristics
Non-biological char: culture
Culture: knowledge beliefs art, morals, law, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by a member of society
Anthropologically, non-biological, unique aspect of a particular society
Archaeologically:
groups of artefact types at a particular moment in time = assemblages
Groups of assemblages = archaeological culture

Take groups of assemblages, and call it arch.al culture

Dates
Radiocarbon dates (C14)
Example: 895 +- 75years

*you get a range of dates, rather than a date; but you get a rough idea of how old the object is
useful for organic object, which contains carbon
useless for dating anything older than 30,000years
B.C/A.D.
Before Christ/anno domini
B.C.E/C.E.
Before common era/ Common era
B.P.
Before present
With the present officially starting at 1950

*Created to avoid complications associated with the dates above
Geography
(refer to powerpoint slides)
How china is usually studied:
Study china only, without context,
But China should be considered in terms of its surroundings
Many things considered traditionally Chinese come from regions outside of china, to form Chinese culture
Vast amount of mixing and exchanging through time
China-US area and latitudinal comparisons
Latitudes, breadth about the same
Without Alaska, China is larger
Climate
SE china: combination of no dry season and dry winter zones
SW china: highland zone – dry weather, warm daytime, cold nighttimes
NE side of china similar to Canadian weather
Mountains and deserts
Mts run east-west (in western region) and north-south (in eastern regions)
Natural barriers created by the mountain
Important to know in terms of migration
Mountains in the east are much lower
Rivers (4 major ones)
West (Hong Kong at the delta)
Yangtze (Shanghai at the delta)
Heilong Jiang
Yellow river
the “Sorrow of China”
Millions killed by the constant flooding
Dikes don’t hold up long
There are Chinese versions of Pompeii due to collapsed silt
farming in the mountains causes a lot of soil to go down the hill
Fast-flowing in middle parts of china, no way for silt to settle so the silt flows to the delta and pile up
Changes in channels over time
Highlighted zone: where all major rivers in Asia start
Indus
Mekong river
Potential damming of huge tributary to Mekong river
Issue because of water rights; the supply may be cut off
Salween
Elevation: highlands in west, low in east
Less rain in the mountains; more in lowlands
The rain is not frequent in NW, because land (mountains) blocks it
Less hospitable for agriculture, land not as fertile
Population
1.5 billion
Everyone clustered in the coast
80% of people in 1/3 of area of the country
Chinese archaeology focuses on this 1/3 of the area
People in less populated regions also contributed, but got little attention
Precipitation
West SW, drier NW: climate guides where people live
People in the past overcame aspect of their environment; lived in inhospitable conditions
Need particular and specific technological innovations to do so
There are, nevertheless, less people in these regions; people prefer to live comfortably, without the aid of techs
Seismicity of china 23000 BC to present
Subfield of archaeology: archaeology of earthquakes
Doesn’t happen everywhere, but concentrations in Taiwan
Green dot for Sichuan earthquake
Natural vegetation
Follows climate
Particular animals live according to the climate and vegetation
Some of these animals are domesticated, and/or are related to agriculture
Huge variety of landscape conditions
Fuels, power, minerals and metals
NW China rich in petroleum
NE China with coal
90% of rare minerals come from inner Mongolia
Oil fields
natural gas had been used for heating, but industrial use started in 1600s
People
Wide diversity of people in china
Chinese flag:
Big star for communists
Fours stars for major groups of ppl
Hans take up 90 or more % of the pop
There are 66 ethnicities recognized in China
in Chinese terminology, they are referred to as national minorities/ethnicities

ex) Turkic
From intermarriage between Persian and Chinese during Silk Road trading
Language
Sinotibetan
mandarin
Southern
Tibetan
Kam-tai
Miao Yao
Indo-European
Tajik (Persian)
Austro-Asiatic
Mon-Khimer
Altai
Turkic
Mongolian
Manchu-Tiungus
Korean

= … huge variety
HOW DO WE EXPECT A UNIFIED CULTURE IN A LAND OF SUCH VARIETY?
Diversity is in the present and in the past
They all contribute to now-called china
GDP
Richer states in the coast
NW rich thanks to oil, but wealth not evenly distributed
Easier to seize economic opportunities in the east
Communications and trade better developed
One of china’s economic aim in the next 10 years: narrow the gap between rich and poor
People in Beijing and Guangzhou (East coast): live 21C lives – not much different from Canadian
Have cell phones, cars, same standard of living
Amazing unbelievable rate of change in the last 30 years
The rest of the area, without as much economic prosperity; 19C lives
Huge contrast
China is trying to spread out the access to prosperity, and bring benefits to people’s lives
Territorial
Provinces
Autonomous regions
Mostly in Outer China
Places where large minority ethnicities are located
They want the government to reflect the views of the minority group
The political system is structured that an official of these regions always has a secretary
e.g.) there’s the governor, then provincial communist secretary; there’s a mayor of the city, then the secretary
Party secretaries are always han Chinese, and they always trump
Municipalities; cities – administrative district
Chongching – region broken off from Sichuan for autonomous decision-making
Hong kong – has its own citizenship, but part of china
Had been a British colony for 99 year
Has been returned on a condition that they retain some control for the next 50 years
Macau – also has its own citizenship, but part of china
Portuguese colony – 99 year lease

These municipalities have issues of citizenship, maternity tourism, power struggles against China over media, etc
Taiwan
Claimed by PRC, controlled by RC
Other boundaries not set in stone; debates everywhere
Economic development
Professor’s story: took one year to construct a railway across a tiny town by Chengdu – now the town is a huge city
Environmental macro-zones
N china plain – most fertile areas in china, ever
Most densely populated areas in china
Due to traditional land allotment (every son gets a bit of land), not enough land for everyone – great poverty
Cultural stereotypes exist between regions
Migrant workers in various areas in China
Heavy silt deposition around Yangtze and Yellow river
Loess – particular type of soil from glacial movement; particularly fertile
A lot of clay comes from loess, because loess stick together
For agriculture, need a lot of improvement to the land
First trace of agriculture here; perhaps due o the need of tools
Also deposition in areas next to Sichuan
Ringed with mountains; isolated
Sichuan had contact with the rest of the land, but degree of interaction was limited in comparison

= Correlation between loess deposition and early sites
Some oasis along the silk road
The desert has a descriptive name in Chinese – those who come in don’t come out
Zangarian (?) basin: grasslands – allowed for different lifestyle
Populated by nomads, with herds of sheep and horses
Along Yangtze: gorges – such geographical conditions affected communication and cultural interactions
At the mouth of the river, shanghai
NE china: fertile plain for agriculture (only withtin the last several hundred years)
Cold and dry climate
Lower NE china: bands of grasslands connect across the northern section of Eurasian continent
Horses
Mongols – conquered most of the known world thanks to the openness of the steppe lands
Himalayas
Highest mountains here
S china
Also mountains, restricted transportation
Changes in courses of the Yellow river

Prehistoric environment
Pleistocene period (1.8mya to 12kya)
Lower, middle, upper
Holocene period (from the end of last glacial cycle 12-1500BP)
The last geological era (modern)
At the mouths of Yangtze and yellow river: sediment is building more land
Changes in the coastline
The glacial period: glacier made of ice – dropped the sea levels
The area in green was land
Clear evidence of transmission between korea/taiwan and mainland
In the Neolithic period (8000-2000BCE)
In Shandong area, mountains – the only arch sites are at the base of the mountain, which is under the sea now
By 5000BC, all sites move towards mountains
River changed the coastline; no early sites in the fertile plains; covered by alluvium
Early landscapes in hills
Site locations show the environmental conditions
People start following the coast
Changing landscape
Alleviation started early