History 8 Archaeology Concepts

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Concepts

• What is and why is it important?

Geographic imagination is the way we view the rest of the world based on our culture, religion, and place of living. It is important because it helps us understand the views, beliefs, and cultures of different ares. [1]

Explain the four essential rules for an explanation to be considered scientific.

• Maximum Observations with Minimum Assumptions

• Compatible with Well-Established Body of Knowledge

• Tested

• Cannot explain all related observations

Read More: Criteria For Judging Interpretations

• Why can there be exceptions to the essential rules? Explain.
  • These are some of the reasons (but are not limited to) why the essential rules can have certain exceptions:
  • Observations can be changed by many other things, so the outcome could also change.
• An example of this would be:

While excavating a dinosaur, some archeologists take a break for a few minutes. During that time, a branch from a dead tree falls into the skeleton. when the archeologists get back and start examining the dinosaur, they notice that the spine is slightly altered. they think that the animal must have struggled when it was dying. In actuality, the dinosaur had not.

• • It is possible to make errors in measurement,human or mechanical, that can affect the outcome.
    • An example of this would be :

An archeologist is in a hurry to measure all of the artifacts that his team has found so he starts to round the answers, unfortunately he miscalculates one measurement and so that artifact is considered from another time period or completely disregarded

• • People may disagree about the outcome as well and their expectations and points of view can effect the outcome.
  • An example of this would be:

An old bone is found in an earthquake-prone area. The strata layers are also mixed. When one archeologist looks at the bone, he thinks that it is about 600,000 years old while when another archeologist looks at it, he thinks that the bone is 1,000,000 years old.

• Know the funnel of certainty and be able to explain it.

The Funnel of Certainty is a process used to rate explanations, reach probable theories, and finally, determine laws.

• Give and define the characteristics of a good theory

Good theories are simple, powerful, and predictable.

• Define catastrophism

• ID James Hutton

James Hutton (1726-1797) was a Scottish farmer who is known for his work on the theory of uniformitarianism.

• Charles Lyell Charles Lyell (1797-1875), also known as the father of modern geology, searched for principles that would help scientists unravel the geological history of the world. In the 1830s, Charles Lyell turned to the ideas of James Hutton, which stated that the Earth was not changed by unimaginable catastrophes, but by imperceptibly slow transformations, which we can see today. These ideas formulated the theory known as "uniformitarianism," named this because of Lyell's fierce insistence that the processes that alter the Earth are uniform through time. Using these ideas, he created and developed the "Law of Superposition," which says that, over time, new rock layers were deposited on top of older ones. Therefore, the deepest rock layer of the Earth's crust would be the oldest. The Law of Superposition and uniformitarianism also lead to the understanding of the "rock cycle" as we know it today. Charles Lyell was an influence on mathematicians and scientists alike, namely Charles Darwin. He influenced Darwin so deeply that Charles Darwin himself referred to his "Theory of Evolution," as a sort of biological uniformitarianism.

Sources: The Manual For Cultural Foundations of Ancient Civilizations (complied by Rosie Beniretto and Clay Elliot) & Uniformitarianism: Charles Lyell.

• Define, explain and give an example of each.
  • Uniformitariansim-

• • Superposition

The order of which layers of sediments are deposited above one another. The law of superposition is that the order of sediments is directly related to how old the sediment is. The bottom layer is the oldest, and the top layer would be the youngest. An example would be if you made a PB&J sandwich the slice of bread you placed on top would also be the most recent, therefore youngest, ingredient in the sandwich.

• • Three Age Theory

Developed in 1816 by Christian Thomsen, the Three Age Theory grouped artifacts of stone together, artifacts of bronze together, and artifacts of iron together.

• • Plutarch: Great Men and their Character

• • Toynbee: Challenge and Response

• • Malthus Theory of Population

• • Darwin: Survival of the Fittest

• • Marx: Material Dialectic

• • Turner: Geography and the Frontier

• *Radicals: History is the Story of Who Won

• • Boorstin: The Unexpected

• Cultural Relativism

• Why is history considered to be an interpretation of facts and events?