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Middle-range Theory (archaeology)
In archaeology, middle-range theory refers to theories linking human behaviour and natural processes to physical remains in the archaeological record. It allows archaeologists to make inferences in the other direction: from archaeological finds in the present to behaviours in the past. Middle range theories are derived from ethnoarchaeology and experimental research in combination with the study of taphonomic processes. Background and application The term was adapted by Lewis Binford. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork amongst modern hunter-gatherer peoples such as the Nunamiut Eskimo, the Navajo, and Aboriginal Australians in order to understand the pattern of waste their activities generated. He then used this data to infer the behaviour of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers from the waste they left in the archaeological record. Binford and many of his contemporaries viewed the construction of middle-range theories as a fundamental first step in understanding how people in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bedouins - Tunisia - 1899
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Arabian Desert but spread across the rest of the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa after the spread of Islam. The English word ''bedouin'' comes from the Arabic ''badawī'', which means "desert dweller", and is traditionally contrasted with ''ḥāḍir'', the term for sedentary people. Bedouin territory stretches from the vast deserts of North Africa to the rocky sands of the Middle East. They are traditionally divided into tribes, or clans (known in Arabic as ''ʿašāʾir''; or ''qabāʾil'' ), and historically share a common culture of herding camels and goats. The vast majority of Bedouins adhere to Islam, although there are some fewer numbers of Christian Bedouins present in the Fertile Crescent. Bedouins have been referred t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Navajo People
The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United States; additionally, the Navajo Nation has the largest reservation in the country. The reservation straddles the Four Corners region and covers more than 27,325 square miles (70,000 square km) of land in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. The Navajo Reservation is slightly larger than the state of West Virginia. The Navajo language is spoken throughout the region, and most Navajos also speak English. The states with the largest Navajo populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (108,306). More than three-fourths of the enrolled Navajo population resides in these two states. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical research, empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the Theory, theoretical understanding of social processes and phenomenology (sociology), phenomenological method. Subject matter can range from Microsociology, micro-level analyses of society (i.e. of individual interaction and agency (sociology), agency) to Macrosociology, macro-level analyses (i.e. of social systems and social structure). Traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, sociology of religion, religion, secularization, S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Archaeology
Processual archaeology (formerly, the New Archaeology) is a form of archaeological theory that had its beginnings in 1958 with the work of Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips, ''Method and Theory in American Archaeology,'' in which the pair stated that "American archaeology is anthropology, or it is nothing" (Willey and Phillips, 1958:2), a rephrasing of Frederic William Maitland's comment: "My own belief is that by and by, anthropology will have the choice between being history, and being nothing." The idea implied that the goals of archaeology were, in fact, the goals of anthropology, which were to answer questions about humans and human culture. That was a critique of the former period in archaeology, the cultural-history phase in which archaeologists thought that any information that artifacts contained about past people and past ways of life would be lost once the items became included in the archaeological record. All they felt could be done was to catalogue, describe, and cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tautology (logic)
In mathematical logic, a tautology (from el, ταυτολογία) is a formula or assertion that is true in every possible interpretation. An example is "x=y or x≠y". Similarly, "either the ball is green, or the ball is not green" is always true, regardless of the colour of the ball. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein first applied the term to redundancies of propositional logic in 1921, borrowing from rhetoric, where a tautology is a repetitive statement. In logic, a formula is satisfiable if it is true under at least one interpretation, and thus a tautology is a formula whose negation is unsatisfiable. In other words, it cannot be false. It cannot be untrue. Unsatisfiable statements, both through negation and affirmation, are known formally as contradictions. A formula that is neither a tautology nor a contradiction is said to be Contingency (philosophy), logically contingent. Such a formula can be made either true or false based on the values assigned to its propositi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Falsifiability
Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses that was introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). He proposed it as the cornerstone of a solution to both the problem of induction and the problem of demarcation. A theory or hypothesis is falsifiable (or refutable) if it can be ''logically'' contradicted by an empirical test that can potentially be executed with existing technologies. Popper insisted that, as a logical criterion, it is distinct from the related concept "capacity to be proven wrong" discussed in Lakatos' falsificationism. Even being a logical criterion, its purpose is to make the theory predictive and testable, thus useful in practice. Popper opposed falsifiability to the intuitively similar concept of verifiability. Verifying the claim "All swans are white" would theoretically require observing all swans, which in actuality, is not possible. In contrast, obs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Processual Archaeology
Processual archaeology (formerly, the New Archaeology) is a form of archaeological theory that had its beginnings in 1958 with the work of Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips, ''Method and Theory in American Archaeology,'' in which the pair stated that "American archaeology is anthropology, or it is nothing" (Willey and Phillips, 1958:2), a rephrasing of Frederic William Maitland's comment: "My own belief is that by and by, anthropology will have the choice between being history, and being nothing." The idea implied that the goals of archaeology were, in fact, the goals of anthropology, which were to answer questions about humans and human culture. That was a critique of the former period in archaeology, the cultural-history phase in which archaeologists thought that any information that artifacts contained about past people and past ways of life would be lost once the items became included in the archaeological record. All they felt could be done was to catalogue, describe, and cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palaeolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene, 11,650 cal BP. The Paleolithic Age in Europe preceded the Mesolithic Age, although the date of the transition varies geographically by several thousand years. During the Paleolithic Age, hominins grouped together in small societies such as bands and subsisted by gathering plants, fishing, and hunting or scavenging wild animals. The Paleolithic Age is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aboriginal Australians
Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands. The term Indigenous Australians refers to Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders collectively. It is generally used when both groups are included in the topic being addressed. Torres Strait Islanders are ethnically and culturally distinct, despite extensive cultural exchange with some of the Aboriginal groups. The Torres Strait Islands are mostly part of Queensland but have a separate governmental status. Aboriginal Australians comprise many distinct peoples who have developed across Australia for over 50,000 years. These peoples have a broadly shared, though complex, genetic history, but only in the last 200 years have they been defined and started to self-identify as a single group. Australian Aboriginal identity has cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nunamiut
The Nunamiut or Nunatamiut ( ik, Nunataaġmiut, , "People of the Land") are semi-nomadic inland Iñupiat located in the northern and northwestern Alaskan interior, mostly around Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska. History Early Nunamiut lived by hunting caribou instead of the marine mammals and fish hunted by coastal Iñupiat. After 1850 the interior became depopulated because of diseases, the decline of the caribou and the migration to the coast (including the Mackenzie Delta area in Canada, where they are called Uummarmiut) where whaling and fox trapping provided a temporarily promising alternative. Historically, the Nunamiut hunted caribou. When caribou numbers dwindled in the 19th century, some Nunamiut migrated towards the Mackenzie River delta. Around 1910, with caribou continuing to be insufficient to sustain the native hunting, Nunatamiut migrated further into the Siglit area. They were spurred by increased demand for furs by the Hudson's Bay Company and the possibility of jobs within ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline, but may also be classified as part of anthropology (in North America – the four-field approach), history or geography. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, which is the study of fossil remains. Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for which, by definition, there are no written records. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the adven ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, honey, or anything safe to eat, and/or by hunting game (pursuing and/or trapping and killing wild animals, including catching fish), roughly as most animal omnivores do. Hunter-gatherer societies stand in contrast to the more sedentary agricultural societies, which rely mainly on cultivating crops and raising domesticated animals for food production, although the boundaries between the two ways of living are not completely distinct. Hunting and gathering was humanity's original and most enduring successful competitive adaptation in the natural world, occupying at least 90 percent of human history. Following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers who did not change were displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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