| experimental archaeology | Modern experiments to reproduce artifacts, architecture, and/or techniques from the past.
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| research design | The overall strategy of intended methods, research area, and planned analysis for answering a question or questions about the past.
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| ethnoarchaeology | Archaeological study of living societies for information to help better understand the past.
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| culture | A means of human adaptation based on intelligence, experience, learning, and the use of tools; the general set of behaviors and knowledge that humans use to survive and adapt.
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| archaeological culture | A group of related materials from a region that indicate a common or shared way of doing things.
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| demography | The study of human populations with a focus on size, age and sex distribution, birth and death rates, and migration. Prehistoric demography is also known as paleodemography.
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| environment | The natural and social milieu in which human societies operate.
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| technology | The material, equipment, techniques, and knowledge that allow humans to convert natural resources into tools, food, clothing, shelter, and other products they need or want.
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| economy | The means and methods that society uses to obtain food, water, and resources for maintenance and growth.
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| organization | Structure and interaction in human society, including relationships among individuals, groups, and other societies.
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| ideology | The explanation of human, natural, and supernatural relationships through belief, ritual, and ceremony.
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| population | (1) All of the people living at a place or in a region. An archaeological population generally refers to the people related through membership in the same group. (2) All of the items or units of interest in statistical sampling.
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| burial population | The set of human remains found interred in a site or cemetery.
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| population density | The number of people per unit of area, e.g., square kilometer.
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| home range | The geographic area an animal uses for feeding and other activities; in archaeology, the term generally refers to the area used by mobile hunter-gatherers.
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| territory | A recognized and defended area utilized by a group or society, often associated with agricultural societies.
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| country | A sovereign region, marked by boundaries and defended by military power, usually associated with state-level societies.
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| empire | Large sovereign space, expanded by military conquest and encompassing several countries and/or territories, associated with state-level societies.
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| shaduf | A manual water hoist used for irrigation in ancient Egypt.
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| saqia | An oxen-powered water wheel used for irrigation in ancient Egypt.
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| invention | The creation or development of new ideas or techniques for solving problems.
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| diffusion | The spread of new ideas or materials from one group to another.
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| migration | Movement of new people into an area.
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| subsistence | The activities and materials that people use to obtain food.
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| hunter-gatherers | People who obtain their food from wild plants and animals, not domesticated species.
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| foragers | Nonfarmers; groups who subsist by hunting, collecting, fishing, and the like without domesticated plants or animals.
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| exchange | Transfer of material or information among individuals or groups.
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| reciprocity | The exchange of items of roughly equal value.
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| redistribution | The movement of goods to a central place from which they are rationed or portioned out to members of society.
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| trade | Economic transactions between individuals or groups involving bartering, buying, or selling.
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| division of labor | Organization of tasks involving different groups doing different activities for the sake of efficiency.
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| cord-marking | A distinctive decoration on pottery produced by pressing a cord-wrapped stick into the soft clay of a pot before firing.
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| pithouse | A dwelling constructed over a hole in the ground, semisubterranean structure; a structure built on a semisubterranean foundation.
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| kinship | Relationships between individual members in society based on family ties.
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| lineages | Genealogies, lines of descent that are used to extend relationships and determine membership in a group; the relationship between individual members in society on the basis of their family ties.
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| moieties | Organizational division of some societies into two large, kin-related groups; moieties are composed of clans.
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| sodalities | Groups or clubs within society whose members come from different lineages and share common interests or goals.
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| rank | Inherited positions in societies based on birth order and ancestry.
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| class | Distinctions between groups of people that define levels, or strata, in society.
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| complexity | Organization of society involving more units in society and more integration between those units.
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| bands | Small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers where relationships are generally egalitarian and decision making is consensual.
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| tribes | Small-scale societies of farmers where relationships are generally egalitarian and decision making is consensual.
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| chiefdom | A large, kinship-based political unit of several communities where status is hereditary and assigned by birth order (rank).
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| state | A large-scale, autonomous, and territorial political unit and class society having a centralized government with the power to collect taxes, draft men for work or war, and decree and enforce laws.
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| shamans | Specialists in ritual and healing, seers of the future in hunter-gatherer and subsistence farming societies.
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| religion | Formalized ritual, a belief system that promotes cosmology, ideology, morals, and values in human society.
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| cosmology | Explanations of the origins of the universe, of life, and of society.
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| iconography | The pictorial representations of beliefs, ideas, symbols, and concepts.
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| symbol | Depiction or design which expresses larger concept, often ideological.
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| rituals | Symbolic, prescribed, and structured behaviors that are often repetitive in nature and related to belief systems.
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| Mesoamerica | Anthropological term for the area of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador where several early civilizations, including the Aztec and Maya, emerged.
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| ethnography | The detailed investigation of a group of people, traditionally non-Western, through participant observation and descriptions of practices, activities, behaviors, and beliefs.
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| ethnohistory | Branch of ethnography that combines sources from history, archaeology, and oral traditions in the search for answers about past peoples.
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| ethnographic analogy | Comparison between ethnography and archaeology to explain similar things.
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