Handbook of Archaeological Sciences (eBook)

A. Mark Pollard, Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Ruth Ann Armitage, Department of Chemistry, Eastern Michigan University, United States. Cheryl A. Makarewicz, Institute for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology, University of Kiel, Germany.

Section 1. Dating
Overview
Quaternary geochronological frameworks
New developments in Radiocarbon dating
Dendrochronology and archaeology
Trapped charge dating and archaeology
U-series dating
Archaeomagnetic dating
Obsidian hydration dating with SIMS
Amino acid dating
An introduction to tephrochronology and the correlation of sedimentary sequences using volcanic ash layers

Section 2. Quaternary Palaeoenvironments
Overview
Modelling Quaternary Palaeoclimates
Ice core and marine sediment records of Quaternary environmental change
Insects as palaeoenvironmental and archaeological indicators
Non-marine molluscs as palaeoenvironmental indicators
Mammals as palaeoenvironmental indicators
Lake and peat records of climate change and archaeology
Archaeological soil micromorphology
Pollen and macroscopic plant remains as indicators of local and regional environments
Environmental controls on human dispersal and adaptation
Holocene climate changes and human consequences

Section 3. Human Bioarchaeology
Overview
Hominin evolution
Biological distance (normal variation/non-metrical and metrical analysis)
Palaeopathology
Integrating bioarchaeology and palaeodemography
Palaeodiet through stable isotope analysis
Palaeomobility through stable isotopes
Preserved human bodies
Cremated bone

Section 4. Biomolecular Archaeology
Overview
Zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS)
Archaeological proteomics
The use of immunological methods in archaeology
Lipids in archaeology
Archaeological microbiology
Dental calculus
The biomolecular archaeology of psychoactive substances

Section 5. Archaeogenetics
Overview
Sex and kinship typing of human archaeological remains
Human populations ? origins and movement
Palaeogenomics of extinct and archaic humans
Palaeogenetics and palaeogenomics to study the domestication of animals
Domestication of plants
Palaeomicrobiology of human infectious diseases

Section 6. Biological Resource Exploitation
Overview
Archaeobotany
Human impact on vegetation
Zooarchaeology
Coprolites/intestinal contents
Invertebrates
Secondary animal and plant products

Section 7. Inorganic Resource Exploitation
Overview
Lithic exploitation and usewear analysis
Ancient binders and pigments
Materials analysis of ceramics
The archaeometry of glass
Mining and resource procurement: methods and approaches to the appropriation of mineral raw materials in past societies
Making and using metals
Provenancing inorganic materials: biography and mutability

Section 8. Archaeological Prospection
Overview
Approaches to archaeological surface survey
Geophysical survey techniques
Remote sensing/LIDAR
Geochemical prospecting
Integrating survey data

Section 9. Burial, Decay and Archaeological Conservation
Overview
Defining the burial environment
Metallic corrosion processes and information from corrosion products
Post-depositional changes in archaeological ceramics and glass
Deterioration of organic materials
Diagenetic alterations to vertebrate mineralized tissues
Forensic taphonomy

Section 10. Statistical and Computational Methods
Overview
Spatial information in archaeology
Multivariate analysis in archaeology
The Bayesian inferential paradigm in archaeology
Quantification in zooarchaeology and palaeoethno(archaeo)botany
The use of kernel density estimates on chemical and isotopic data in archaeology
Modelling/Simulations in archaeology
Big data in archaeology