Summary
Contents
Subject index
Via 100 entries or "mini-chapters," 21st Century Anthropology: A Reference Handbook highlights the most important topics, issues, questions, and debates any student obtaining a degree in the field of anthropology ought to have mastered for effectiveness in the 21st century. This two-volume set provides undergraduate majors with an authoritative reference source that serves their research needs with more detailed information than encyclopedia entries but in a clear, accessible style, devoid of jargon, unnecessary detail or density.Key Features- Emphasizes key curricular topics, making it useful for students researching for term papers, preparing for GREs, or considering topics for a senior thesis, graduate degree, or career.- Comprehensive, providing full coverage of key subthemes and subfields within the discipline, such as applied anthropology, archaeology and paleontology, sociocultural anthropology, evolution, linguistics, physical and biological anthropology, primate studies, and more.- Offers uniform chapter structure so students can easily locate key information, within these sections: Introduction, Theory, Methods, Applications, Comparison, Future Directions, Summary, Bibliography & Suggestions for Further Reading, and Cross References.- Available in print or electronically at SAGE Reference Online, providing students with convenient, easy access to its contents.
Dating Techniques
Dating Techniques
Situating things in time and space is critical for archaeology and paleoanthropology. Knowing when something happened helps us to understand how humans and cultures evolved. From John Lightfoot and Bishop James Ussher, who calculated the age of the earth using genealogies in the Bible, to Willard Libby, who developed radiocarbon dating and beyond, researchers have been working to establish a chronology of the past.
Absolute, or chronometric, dating techniques provide us with measurable dates-day, year, millennia, for example. Relative techniques provide a basic order to material recovered from a site; they give us an idea of its age-how old something is in comparison to something else. This chapter will cover a few of the techniques from each category. It is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of all dating techniques nor provide an in-depth discussion of the techniques. It is meant to be an introduction to some of the dating techniques available to archaeologists and paleoanthropologists.
Relative Dating Techniques
Relative dating techniques provide the researcher with an order of occurrence but not an absolute date-it is an age in relation to something else. Even though it does not provide a calendar date, it does not mean that the techniques are not important or useful. For sites where it is impossible to recover the appropriate material for absolute dating techniques, relative dating is critical. It can also be used to make connections between sites and artifacts across time and space, as well as to examine site formation processes. Stratigraphy and the index fossil concept are the cornerstones of relative dating, providing a foundation for subsequently developed relative methods.
Stratigraphy
In geology, stratigraphy deals with the classification and mapping of observable units that form the earth's crust, using rock description, classification, and interpretation. Archaeologists use stratigraphy to establish relationships in time between artifacts and features. As such, stratigraphy is the cornerstone of archaeology.
Stratigraphy, or stratigraphic dating, is based on the assumption of the law of superposition. First noted by Nicolas Steno (1638–1686), the law of superposition states that geologic strata are progressively older the deeper one goes. Steno observed a layer of shell beneath ancient Rome and posited that it must be older then the ancient city since it was beneath the city. He reasoned that particles in a fluid would be laid down in distinct horizontal layers (strata), an effect he called the principle of original horizontality. For example, let us say that a layer of sediment, or strata, heavy in clay content is laid down (Strata 1). Perhaps through a flood, a layer of organically rich sediment with pebbles is laid down on top of it (Strata 2), and then perhaps another layer of sediment (Strata 3) is laid down, and so on. In this example, Strata 1 is the oldest, Strata 2 is younger than Strata 1 but older then Strata 3, and so on. This may seem common sense to us today; however, it was a new idea in the 1600s.
The principles of stratigraphy established by Steno provided the first relative dating technique. Using the earth's own strata, it became possible to place things in the order they were deposited. Early attempts at establishing stratigraphic chronologies centered on stratigraphic observation-the noting of artifacts in relation to strata. John Frere (1740–1807) used the method to order stone tools found with extinct animal fossils, and Christian Thomsen (1788–1865) developed the three age system for Stone Age Europe. Boucher de Perthe (1788–1868) was the first archaeologist to employ stratigraphic observation in conjunction with archaeological excavations, ensuring stratigraphy's vital role in archaeology.
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