Monday, October 2, 2017

Basic Archaeology. Complete notes suitable for university level part i

BASICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY


 Introduction
1.1  Definition
Etymologically, archaeology is originated from two Greek words; Archaeos which means “ancient” or “past” and Logos which means “study”

Functionally, archaeology is the systematic study of past human societies primarily through the recovering and analysis of material culture and environmental data which they have left behind, these includes artifacts, ecofacts and features.
Because archaeology employs a wide range of different procedures, it can be considered to be both science and humanity. In America archaeology is considered to be a branch of Anthropology while in Europe is taken as independent discipline.

Archaeology studies human history from the development of the first stone tools in eastern Africa around 2.5 million years ago up until recent decades. It is of most importance for learning about prehistoric societies, when there are no written records for historians to study. Archaeology is unique among sciences in its ability to study changes in human societies over long period of time. It provides a way of studying the collective heritage of humankind.

Artifacts
Artifacts are portable objects made or modified by humans. Examples of artifacts include stone tools, pottery, metal implements and bone points. Archaeologists therefore, study all these artifacts and come up with appropriate history of the early people. Artifacts like hammer-stone and pottery retain their form and appearance after the archaeologist takes them from the ground.

Ecofacts
Ecofacts are non-artifactual material remains that are not directly created or modified by humans but have cultural relevance. Examples of ecofacts include remnants of both wild and domesticated animals and plant species i.e. bones and seeds. Although they are neither directly created nor significantly modified by human activity, ecofacts provide appropriate information about past human activities. These and other ecofacts such as soils contribute to our understanding of the past because they reflect ancient environmental conditions, diet, and resource exploitation. Sometimes the line between ecofacts and artifacts is a bit ambiguous. For example, bones with cut marks from butchering might be considered artifact (reflecting human technology) as well as ecofacts (yielding clues to the ancient environment).

Features
Features are non-portable structures made or modified by humans. Examples include buildings, pits, post holes and burials. These features cannot be removed from their place of discovery without destroying their original form.

Goals of archaeology
Modern archaeology has five broad goals including conserving and managing archaeological sites; studying cultural history; reconstructing past life ways; explaining cultural processes and understanding the archaeological records. By no means would every archaeologist agree that all five of these objectives are equally valid or, indeed, that they should coexist. In practice, however, each objective usually complements the other, especially when archaeologists design their research to answer specific questions rather than merely dig as a precursor to describing rows of excavated objects.

Conserving and managing archaeological sites
Ø  Is the fundamental responsibility of all archaeologists to ensure the conservation and survival of the finite archaeological materials and sites. i.e. CHM.

Reconstruction of Culture History
Ø  This involves the description of human cultures extending thousands of years into the past. An archaeologist working on the culture history of an area describes the prehistoric cultures of that region. Culture history is normally derived from the study of sites and the artifacts and structures in a temporal and spatial context.
By investigating groups of prehistoric sites and the many artefacts in them, archaeologists can erect local and regional sequences of human cultures that extend over centuries even millennia. Most of the activity is descriptive, accumulating minute chronological and spatial frameworks of archaeological data as a basis for observing how particular cultures evolved and changed through prehistoric times. Culture history is an essential preliminary to any work on lifeways or cultural process.

Past Lifeways
Ø  The study of past lifeways – the ways in which people made their living in changing environments of the past – has developed into a major goal in recent years. This involves the reconstruction of how people lived in the past and how their societies were organized.
Studying past lifeways is a multidisciplinary enterprise, which enables the reconstruction of ancient subsistence patterns from animal bones, carbonized seeds, and other remains recovered through careful excavation. Archaeologists, pollen analysts, osteologists, and botanists cooperate in looking at archaeological sites in a much wider perspective. The aim is to look on changing patterns of human settlement, subsistence strategies, and ancient environments.

Culture Process
A third archaeological goal seeks to explain the processes of culture change in the past. The ultimate goal is to explain why human cultures in all parts of the world reached their various stages of cultural evolution. Human tools are seen as part of a system of related phenomena that include both culture and natural environment. Archaeologists design their research work within a framework of testable propositions that may be supported, modified or rejected when they review all of the excavated and analysed archaeological data.
This processual approach to archaeology is based on an assumption that the past is inherently knowable, provided that rigorous research methods and designs are used and that field methods are impeccable. It follows that archaeology is more than a descriptive science and that archaeologists can explain cultural change in the past.


Understanding the archaeological record
Ø  The archaeological record is made up of material things and arrangements of material objects in the soil. The only way we can understand this record is by knowing something about how the individual finds came into being. Binford relate archaeological data to a kind of untranslated language that has to be decoded if we are to make statements about human behaviour in the past. Therefore, the aim of archaeologists is to unlock people’s knowledge of the past people through the interpretation of material remins.

Scope of archaeology
Ø  Scope refers to time (temporal scope) and themes (thematic scope) within which archaeology as a discipline swings.
Ø  Temporal scope – from 2.5 million years ago (the beginning of human culture) to present.
Ø  Temporal scope can be divided into Prehistoric archaeology (2.5 mill. years ago to 3000 BC) and Historical archaeology (3000 BC to present).

Thematic scope / specialization refer to different themes in archaeology.
Example: 
ü  Historical archaeology
ü  Prehistoric archaeology
ü  Environmental archaeology
ü  Classical archaeology
ü  Industrial archaeology
ü  Underwater archaeology

  • Prehistoric archaeology studies prehistoric times from the time of the earliest human beings up to the frontiers of documentary history. That is to say 2.5 m.y.a to 3000 BC.
  • Historical archaeology refers to archaeological investigation carried out in conjunction with analyses of written records. It covers the period from 3000 BC up to present.
  • Underwater archaeology is the study of sites and ancient shipwrecks on the seafloor and lake bottoms. There is a tendency to think of underwater archaeology as something different, but in fact it is not. The objective of such archaeology remain the same: the reconstruction and interpretation of past cultures and the scientific study, through material remains of ancient human endeavour, in this case, seafaring.
  • Industrial archaeology is the study of buildings and other structures dating to the Industrial Revolution or later, such as Victorian railway stations, old cotton plantations, windmills, and even slum housing in England. Anyone entering the field needs at least some training as an architectural historian.
  • Classical archaeology is the study of the remains of the great classical civilizations of Greece and Rome.
  • Environmental archaeology is concerned with the reconstruction of the ancient environments (palaeoenvironment).

 Archaeology and related discipline
Archaeology and History
Archaeology is obviously related to the field of history in that both disciplines seek knowledge of the human past.
The major difference between the two disciplines is distinction in source of information which leads to differences in methodology, and the technique by which the past is studied.
Ø  History deals primarily with written accounts from the past while Archaeology deals with physical remains of the past.
These material remains are mute; their meaning and significance depend entirely on the inferences that trained archaeologists can make. In contrast, historical records contain messages that are direct and often deliberate communications from the past, although their meaning and significance are also subject to critical interpretation, to discover and get rid of exaggerations, lies, or other biases in written sources.
Ø  Another contrast between history and archaeology is that history focuses on literature and richest communities i.e. kings, queens and high priests. The prominence of these people could have influenced the storage of their records WHILE Archaeology is less partial to rich or learned folk; everyone eats, makes things, discard trash and dies. Therefore everyone contributes to the archaeological record.
Ø  Another contrast is found on the scope/coverage of the two disciplines. Archaeology covers the period from the beginning of human culture (2.5 m.y.a) up to present. For this case archaeology is our primary source of information for 99 percent of human history WHILE History covers the period from the beginning of written records (3000 BC) to present

Archaeology and Anthropology
Ø  Anthropology is a discipline which is concerned with the scientific study of humanity in its widest sense. Anthropologists study human beings as biological organism and as people with culture. They therefore carry out research on contemporary societies and on human developments from the very earliest times. Anthropology is therefore a very broad area of study and is sub-divided into a number of sub-disciplines
·         Physical Anthology involves the study of human biological evolution and the variations among different populations. Physical Anthology is also concerned with the study of the behavior of living non-human primates such as chimpanzee and the gorilla, in an attempt to understand and explain behavior among the earliest human beings. Physical anthropologist also use data obtained by primatologist who a concerned with the biological studies as well as the study of behavior of non-human primates.
·         Cultural or Social Anthropology is concerned with the study and analysis of human social life, both past and present. It is primarily concerned with the study of human culture and how culture adapts to the environment. There are a number of special areas of study namely;

ü  Ethnography; The study and description of the culture, technology and economy of living and extinct societies.

ü  Ethnology; is a comparatives study of societies with the objective of reconstructing general principles of human behavior.

  • Archaeology. Is a discipline which studies the material culture of ancient societies. The archeologists also want to know the meaning and significance of material remains of the past cultures and to explain how the cultures evolved and changed overtime.
ü  The sub-discipline of ethno-archaeology has therefore developed within archaeology where archaeologists like ethnographers live among contemporary communities for the purpose of understanding how much societies use material culture-how they make their tools and weapons, how they are used, the social organization of such communities etc.
ü  By a simple definition, ethno-archaeology is an attentive study of the contemporary societies as a means of understanding and interpreting the ancient societies. Take an example of the study of ancient hunting and gathering communities.
ü  Ethnoarchaeologist can best do this by studying the material remains of the present day hunting and gathering communities for example, as a means of understanding and interpreting the ancient hunting and gathering communities. This method of archaeology overlaps with those of Ethnography.
It is perhaps important to point that in Europe archaeology is not considered a sub-discipline of anthropology. 
  • Linguistic anthropology deals with the study of languages. Linguistic anthropologists are concerned with major problems as the origins of languages.
Archaeology and Sociology
Archaeology is part of anthropology which is concerned with past humans and their material remains they left behind. Sociology is very close related to cultural anthropology – it is actually concerned with living humans. Sociologist deals with migration, social injustice, demographics, crime, gender and so on.
Thus, both archaeology and sociology are concerned with societies and structures within those societies and also pattern in those societies.
Archaeology and Art
Art has been part of human life since time immemorial. What archaeologist does in the field is the manifestation of such art in the form of various technologies and designs.
Archaeology and Zoology
Zoology is the scientific study of both living and extinct animals. Zoology as far as is relevant in archaeology, mainly study the ancient animal bones collected from excavation sites.
The study of animal remains from archaeological sites is called Zooarchaeology. Zooarchaeology can be understood as a branch of archaeology where scientists are specifically interested in studying the interrelationship between humans, animals and environmental context. Archaeological sites produce many kinds of artifacts, which provide clues to aid archaeologists in understanding the past. Along with the more commonly recognized artifacts such as stone tools or fragments of pottery, animal (faunal) remains are also frequently found.

Faunal remains recovered from archaeological sites generally consist of the hard parts of animals such as bone, tooth and antler. Consequently, zooarchaeologists use these remains to learn about the interactions between animals and people in the past, and how these interactions affected people and their environment.

Archaeology and Geology
Geology is the scientific study of solid earth. As far as is relevant in archaeology, geology gives insights into the history of the earth as it provides the primary evidence for the evolutionary history of life and past climates. Archaeology especially prehistoric archaeology had always had strong ties with geology.

The formulation of the concept like stratigraphy in archaeology in the 19th century paved the way for the acceptance of the idea of human antiquity and provided the basis for interpreting the evolution of humanity and its cultures. So far, archaeologists viewed geology as a source of information on stratigraphy and reconstruction of palaeoenvironment.

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Expressing duration presposition of time since and for

expressing duration Presposition of time Since and For
We use since and for with the present perfect continuous tense.
i)                    FOR
Is the preposition which used to talk about the length of time (duration).
We use preposition present perfect tense with For + A period of time.
Thus
For + A period of time

Examples
For a week
For six months
For two hours
For a year
ii)                  SINCE
Is the presentation which is used to talk about the starting point of time.
We use present perfect continuous tense with Since + A period of time
Thus
Since + A period of time

Examples
Since this morning
Since last week
Since yesterday
Since I was twelve years old
More examples for since and for
1.      I have here for 20 minutes.
2.      I have been here since 9 O’clock.
3.      John has not called for six hours.
4.      John has not called since January.
EXERCISE
Fill the blanks by using since and for
1.      Mariam and Musa have not met their teacher ______ last week.
2.      They are on a trip since ______ December 28th last year.
3.      He has remained absent _____ many days.
4.      The manager has been waiting _____ two hours.
5.      My teacher was there _____ 1978.
EXERCISE:   USES OF SINCE AND FOR
Fill in the blanks by using the correct preposition from the brackets.
1.      I have been learning English _____ I was in class one. (for, since, at, by)
2.      He has been living Arusha _____ 1984 (since, for, at, by)
3.      Eliud and Mariam have been best friends _____ class four. (after, during, while, since)
4.      He has been sick _____ the day they arrived. (since, for, at, in, on)
5.      We have been waiting ____ over ten minutes. (since, for, at, in, on)
6.      He is lazy, he failed his exams ____ several times. (for, until, over)
Re-write using “since”
7.      I have been sick for two years.
I have been sick since last year.
8.      It started raining last night. It is still raining

It has been raining since last night.

The use of Tag Questions and example questions

Use of Tag questions.
A tag question is used to seek or ask for the confirmation of what we already known. It requires a person to confirm for the statement he/she has given. We form tag question by using some of the auxiliary verbs. Auxiliary verbs are helping verbs. A verb is a doing word. It explain what someone is doing.
These auxiliary verbs help the verb to tell what someone is doing. For the affirmative form we use tag questions. If the statement is not having a word “NOT” is called a POSITIVE STATEMENT.
Likewise if the statement is having a word “NOT” is called a NEGATIVE STATEMENT.
If the statement is negative the tag question should be positive and if the statement is positive tag question should be negative.
Examples of the Negative statement with the positive tag question
1.      You didn’t come to play, did you?
2.      I am not your friend, am I?
3.      A lion did’nt catch the zebra, did it?
4.      Audax will not come next week, will he?
5.      Mr. Kuhaba is not a Prime Minister, is he?
6.      They were not here, were they?
7.      You are not a teacher, are you?
EXERCISE
Write the correct tag question of the following statements.
1.      Anna is not our sister, ………….
2.      Abdallah is not coming today, ………
3.      She cannot cook properly, ………….
4.      He is not a good boy ,…………
5.      Our school is not dirty like yours,…………
6.      It will not rain today,…………
7.      Jumanne will not come to teach us,…………
Examples of the positive statements with the negative tag question
1.      We have a new house, haven’t we?
2.      Anna is coming to seat, isn’t she?
3.      Lowassa is our new president, isn’t he?
4.      Manase is our teacher, isn’t he?
5.      Mr. Mujuni is my brother, isn’t he?
6.      Manoti is driving well, isn’t he?
  You can form short by omitting other letters or words.
can not
can’t
will not
won’t
is not
isn’t
shall not
shan’t
do not
don’t
does not
doesn’t
have not
haven’t
has not
hasn’t

EXERCISE
Choose the correct answer and write in the box given.
1.      I am not escorting you to the wedding, ………….
A.    am I?
B.     I am?
C.     won’t I?
D.    isn’t it?
2.      Neema won’t go for the meeting, …………
A.    won’t she?
B.     will she?/
C.     isn’t it?
D.    can she?
3.      Emmanuel will teach us Geography, …………
A.    won’t he?
B.     will he?
C.     does he?
D.    doesn’t he?
4.      Lydia is our teacher, ………..
A.    is she?
B.     isn’t she?
C.     does she?
D.    doesn’t she?
5.      It won’t’ rain today, ………….
A.    won’t it?
B.     will it?
C.     won’t it?
D.    isn’t it?
6.      She doesn’t like the new teacher, …………..
A.    doesn’t she?
B.     does she?
C.     she does?
D.    does like?
7.      Anna is here, ……………….
A.    she is here?
B.     she haven’t?
C.     isn’t she?
D.    is he?
8.      Our English teacher can’t teach us today, …………….
A.    can he?
B.     can’t he?
C.     is he?
D.    isn’t he?
9.      Kakuru will come tomorrow to visit us, …………...
A.    won’t he?
B.     will he?
C.     can he?
D.    does he?
10.  We are not making noise, ……………
A.    we are?
B.     are we?
C.     isn’t we?

D.    won’t we?