Brittany Smith

Reading Discussion Questions – Week 5, Day 1

Renfrew & Bahn, Ch. 5

1. Anthropologist Elman Service has developed a way to divide classified human societies

into four groups. The first group is known as the mobile hunter-gatherer group. This is a

small group of hunters and gatherers, known as bands, “who move seasonally to exploit

wild food resources.” (Renfrew & Bahn, 146) Since these bands are very mobile, sites

that have been found usually only contain briefly occupied camps. The second group is

known as the segmentary societies. These groups of people are usually larger than the

first group, however, its numbers are usually only in the thousands. “Segmentary

societies generally consist of many individual communities integrated into the larger

society through kinship ties.” (Renfrew & Bahn, 146) Their sites will usually consist of

agricultural homesteads or villages, where the villages are full of free-standing houses.

The third group is known as chiefdoms. A chiefdom is characterized by the differences in

social status between people. It usually has a center of power such as a temple where the

chief and his retainers live. They are very big on specializing in craft production. Lastly,

the final group is known as the early states. They are usually very similar to a chiefdom

however, the ruler “has explicit authority to establish laws and also to enforce them by

the use of a standing army.” (Renfrew & Bahn, 146) These societies show more of an

urban settlement pattern.

2. Sex and gender are often used interchangeably and very often complement each other.

However, they both refer to different features of what it means to be female or male. Sex

refers toward the biological differences between females and males where gender refers

toward the social concept. The sex of a human is very easily determined through DNA if
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possible and through different bone features if not possible. On the other hand, the gender

can help archaeologists study “our schemes of perception, sense of morals, ways of

moving our bodies around and communicating, and even the way we respond to our

senses.” (Renfrew & Bahn, 168) By using both aspects, archaeologists can not only find

if the remains are male or female, but how that body functioned.

Feder, Ch. 2

1. According to Feder, techniques that are used to retrieve “knowledge that is reliable,

truthful, and factual,” (Feder, 22) are known as science. He claims that science is unique

because chemistry, psychology, physics, and history are not able to give the absolute

truths about existence. Science is very commonly “used to maximize the probability that

what we think we know really reflects the way things are.” (Feder, 22) Feder not only

claims that science is the most useful, but he also claims that science is an art. Science is

not all problem solving and boring arithmetic, it requires creativity to see and solve many

unknown mysteries.

2. Feder states that “the study of the human past is a science.” (Feder 42) He says that this is

a science only because it relies on the same logical methods as all other sciences.

However, Feder believes that most of archaeology is not part of science. Over the years,

archaeology has become filled with false claims, guesses, and myths. Once these things

are present in a field of study, it can be hard to prove that all of the methods performed

are a part of science.

3. I believe that archaeology is a science when the archaeologists are actually studying

remains and conducting tests on the different materials found. With the use of many new

technologies, archaeology is becoming more of a reliable science whereas before the

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technology was invented, it was hard to produce exact times and dates. However, I still

have a hard time believing that the actual digging of the sites and finding remains is

considered a science. I believe in the study of those remains is considered a sciences, but

not the retrieval.