race: a subgroup of human population that shares a greater number of physical traits with one another than they do with those of other subgroups.

radioactive decay: the regular process by which radioactive isotopes break down into their decay products with a half-life which is specific to the isotope in question (see also radiocarbon dating).

radiocarbon dating: an absolute dating method based on the radioactive decay of Carbon-14 contained in organic materials.

radioimmunoassay: a method of protein analysis whereby it is possible to identify protein molecules surviving in fossils which are thousands and even millions of years old.

radiometric dating: a type of chronometric dating that involves methods based upon the decay of radioactive materials; examples are radiocarbon and potassium-argon dating.

raised beaches: these are remnants of former coastlines, usually the result of processes such as isostatic uplift or tectonic movements.

random sample: a sample in which each individual in a population has the same chance of being selected as any other.

range: see home range.

ranked societies: societies in which there is unequal access to prestige and status e.g. chiefdoms and states.

rational economic decisions: the weighing of available alternatives and calculation of which will provide the most benefit at the least cost.

reaves: Bronze Age stone boundary walls, for instance on Dartmoor, England, which may designate the territorial extent of individual communities.

rebellion: an attempt within a society to disrupt the status quo and redistribute the power and resources.

recessive: a genetically determined characteristic that is expressed only in the homozygous recessive condition.

reciprocity: a mode of exchange in which transactions take place between individuals who are symmetrically placed, i.e. they are exchanging as equals, neither being in a dominant position.

recombinant DNA: a technique for transferring genetic material from one organism to another.

recombination: a mechanism of meiosis responsible for each gamete's uniqueness. As the chromosomes line up in metaphase, they can combine into several configurations.

reconnaissance survey: a broad range of techniques involved in the location of archaeological sites, e.g. the recording of surface artifacts and features, and the sampling of natural and mineral resources.

red blood cell: see erythrocyte.

redistribution: a mode of exchange which implies the operation of some central organizing authority. Goods are received or appropriated by the central authority, and subsequently some of them are sent by that authority to other locations.

refitting: sometimes referred to as conjoining, this entails attempting to put stone tools and flakes back together again, and provides important information on the processes involved in the knapper's craft.

refutationist view: approach which holds that science consists of theories about the empirical world, that its goal is to develop better theories, which is achieved by finding mistakes in existing theories, so that it is crucial that theories be falsifiable (vulnerable to error and open to testing). The approach, developed by Karl Popper, emphasizes the important of testability as a component of scientific theories.

regional continuity model: a hypothesis which states that modem H. sapiens had multiple origins from existing local populations. Each local population of archaic humans gave rise to a population of modem H. sapiens.

regulation of access to resources: control over the use of land, water, and raw materials.

regulatory gene: a segment of DNA that functions to initiate or block the function of another gene.

relative dating: the determination of chronological sequence without recourse to a fixed time scale; e.g. the arrangement of artifacts in a typological sequence, or seriation (cf. absolute dating).

relative fitness (RF): the fitness of a genotype compared with the fitness of another genotype in the same gene system. Relative fitness is measured on a scale of O to 1.

relativism: the concept that a cultural system can be viewed only in terms of the principles, background, frame of reference, and history that characterize it.

religion: a framework of beliefs relating to supernatural or superhuman beings or forces that transcend the everyday material world.

remote sensing: general term for reconnaissance and surface survey techniques that leave subsurface archaeological deposits undisturbed.

rent fund: the portion of the peasant budget allocated to payment for the use of land and equipment.

replacement fund: the portion of the peasant budget allocated to the repair or replacement of materials depleted by normal wear and tear.

replacement model: a hypothesis which states that modern H. sapiens evolved in Africa or Asia and radiated out of one of these areas replacing archaic hominid populations.

replication: the experimental reproduction or duplication of prehistoric artifacts in an attempt to better understand how they were made and used in the past.

repressor protein: the product of a regulatory gene that blocks the function of another gene.

reproductive isolating mechanism: a mechanism that prevents reproduction from occurring between two populations.

reproductive population: a group of organisms capable of successful reproduction.

reproductive risk: a measure expressed in terms of the number of zygotes needed from a mating pair to produce two offspring that will in turn reproduce.

rescue archaeology: see salvage archaeology.

research design: systematic planning of research, usually including (1) the formulation of a strategy to resolve a particular question; (2) the collection and recording of the evidence; (3) the processing and analysis of these data and their interpretation; and (4) the publication of results.

resharpening flakes: usually small flakes removed from the edges of chipped-stone cutting or scraping tools to rejuvenate the effectiveness of the edge.

residual volume: the amount of air still remaining in the lungs after the most forceful expiration.

resilience: the ability of an ecosystem to undergo change while still maintaining its basic elements or relationships.

resistivity meter: see soil resistivity. Natural accretions of manganese and iron oxides, together with clay minerals and organic matter, which can provide valuable environmental evidence. Their study, when combined with radiocarbon methods, can provide a minimum age for some landforms, and even some types of stone tool which also accumulate varnish.

resistivity: a means of detecting buried features and areas of disturbance by measuring the resistance of an electrical current passed through the ground.

restriction enzyme: an enzyme used to "cut" the DNA molecule at specific sites; used in recombinant DNA technology.

retina: the layer of cells in the back of the eye that contains two types of cells, rods and cones, that are sensitive to light.

retinoblastoma: a cancer of the retina of the eye in children, inherited as a dominant.

retouch: the removal of small secondary flakes along the edge of a lithic artifact to improve or alter the cutting properties of that edge. Retouch flaking may be bifacial or unifacial.

retouched flake: a stone flake which has had one or more edges modified by the deliberate removal of secondary chips.

revitalization movements: conscious efforts to build an ideology that will be relevant to changing cultural needs.

revolution: an attempt to overthrow the existing form of political organization, the principles of economic production and distribution, and the allocation of social status.

Rh blood-type system: a blood-type system consisting of two major alleles. A mating between an Rh - mother and Rh + father may produce in the infant the hemolytic disease erythroblastosis fetalis.

rhinarium: the moist naked area surrounding the nostrils in most mammals; absent in most primates.

rhyolite: a fine-grained light colored volcanic rock, chemically identical to obsidian. color may range from white, through gray, and yellow to reddish-pink. Sometimes used as a raw material for lithic tools.

ribonucleic acid A type of nucleic acid based upon the sugar ribose; exists in cells as messenger RNA and transfer RNA.

ribose: a five-carbon sugar found in RNA.

ribosome: a small, spherical body within the cytoplasm of the cell in which protein synthesis takes place.

rimsherd: a fragment of the rim, or top edge, of a ceramic vessel. important archaeologically since rims-herds frequently show the greatest degree of stylistic variability.

rite of solidarity: any ceremony performed for the sake of enhancing the level of social integration among a group of people.

rites of intensification: rituals intended either to bolster a natural process necessary to survival or to reaffirm the society's commitment to a particular set of values and beliefs.

rites of passage: rituals that mark a person's transition from one set of socially identified circumstances to another.

ritual: behavior that has become highly formalized and stereotyped.

rock alignment: any artificial arrangement of rocks or boulders into rows or other patterns.

rock-art: an inclusive term for petroglyphs and pictographs.

rock-shelter: a shallow cave or rock overhang large enough to have allowed human occupancy at some time.

rods: cells of the retina of the eye that are sensitive to the presence or absence of light; function in black-and-white vision. ~

role: a set of behavioral expectations appropriate to an individual's social position.

sacred: the sphere of extraordinary phenomena associated with awesome supernatural forces.

sagittal crest: a ridge of bone along the midline of the top of the skull that serves for the attachment of the temporalis muscle.

sagittal keel: a bony ridge formed by a thickening of bone along the top of the skull; characteristic of H. erectus.

salvage archaeology (also "rescue archaeology", or "crisis archaeology"): archaeological research carried out to preserve or rescue sites, materials and data from areas threatened by man-made or natural disturbance. The most common type of archaeological fieldwork conducted in North America at the present time.

sampling bias: the tendency of a sample to exclude some members of the sampling universe and overrepresent others.

sampling error: in population genetics, the transmission of a nonrepresentative sample of the gene pool over space or time due to chance. See also founder principle and genetic drift.

sampling unit: the sub-element of the total population selected for sampling.

sampling universe: the largest entity to be described, of which the sample is a part.

sampling: the probabilistic, systematic, or judgmental selection of a sub-element from a larger population, with the aim of approximating a representative picture of the whole.

sanction: any means used to enforce compliance with the rules and norms of a society.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the notion that a person's language shapes her or his perception and view of the world.

scarce resources: a central concept of Western economics which assumes that people have more wants than they have resources to satisfy them.

scarp: an escarpment, cliff or other steep slope, such as the slope between fluvial terraces.

scent marking: marking territory by urinating or defecating or by rubbing scent glands against trees or other objects.

science: a method of reaming about the world by applying the principles of the scientific method, which includes making empirical observations, proposing hypotheses to explain those observations, and testing those hypotheses in valid and reliable ways; also refers to the organized body of knowledge that results from scientific study.

scientific theory: a statement that postulates ordered relationships among natural phenomena.

scientism: the belief that there is one and only one method of science and that it alone confers legitimacy upon the conduct of research.

scraper: a tool presumably used in scraping, scouring, or planing functions. Most frequently refers to flaked stone artifacts with one or more steep unifacially retouched edge(s).

seasonal isolation: a form of reproductive isolation in which the breeding seasons of two closely related populations do not exactly correspond.

secondary burial: a human interment which was moved and re-buried aboriginally.

secondary center of ossification: an area of ossification, usually near the end of a long bone.

secondary datum: a local base measuring point at a known distance from the main horizontal or vertical datum points.

secondary deposit: a body of natural or cultural sediments which have been disturbed and re-transported since their original deposition.

secondary retouch: finishing or resharpening flaking done after the basic shape of a lithic tool has been completed.

secondary sexual characteristics: physical features other than the genitalia that distinguish males from females after puberty.

section: (1) a vertical cut (or exposure) through a body of sediments or a feature. (2) a one-square mile unit in the legal subdivision system.

sectorial premolar: a unicuspid first lower premolar with a shearing edge.

secular trend: the tendency over the last hundred or so years for each succeeding generation to mature earlier and become, on the average, larger.

sedentary pastoralism: animal husbandry that does not involve mobility.

sedentism: the practice of establishing a permanent, year-round settlement.

sediment: material that was suspended in water and that settles at the bottom of a body of water.

sedimentary beds: beds, or layers, of sediments; also called strata.

sedimentation: the accumulation of geological or organic material deposited by air, water, or ice.

sedimentology: a subset of geomorphology concerned with the investigation of the structure and texture of sediments i.e. the global term for material deposited on the earth's surface.

segmentary lineage: a descent group in which minimal lineages are encompassed as segments of minor lineages, minor lineages as segments of major lineages, and so on.

segmentary societies: relatively small and autonomous groups, usually of agriculturalists. who regulate their own affairs; in some cases, they may join together with other comparable segmentary societies to form a larger ethnic unit.

segregation: in the formation of sex cells, the process in which paired hereditary factors separate, forming sex cells that contain either one or the other factor.

seismic reflection profiler: an acoustic underwater survey device that uses the principle of echo-sounding to locate submerged landforms; in water depths of 100 m, this method can achieve penetration of more than 10 m into the sea-floor.

selective agent: any factor that brings about differences in fertility and mortality.

selective attention: unconscious focusing on and response to stimuli that are perceived to be important, to the exclusion of other stimuli.

selective coefficient: a numerical expression of the strength of a selective force operating on a specific genotype.

selective pressure: pressure placed by a selective agent upon certain individuals within the population that results in the change of allele frequencies in the next generation.

self-organization: the product of a theory derived from thermodynamics which demonstrates that order can arise spontaneously when systems are pushed far from an equilibrium state. The emergence of new structure arises at bifurcation points, or thresholds of instability (cf. catastrophe theory).

self-reducing tacheometer: a major surveying instrument (transit or alidade) which allows the direct read-out of true vertical and horizontal distances within the eye-piece without the use of trigonometric formulae or tables.

semantic domains: groups of related categories of meaning in a language.

semantics: the study of the larger system of meaning created by words.

senescence: old age.

serial monogamy: an exclusive union followed by divorce and remarriage, perhaps many times.

seriation: a relative dating technique based on the chronological ordering of a group of artifacts or assemblages, where the most similar are placed adjacent to each other in the series. Two types of seriation can be recognized, frequency seriation and contextual seriation.

serrated: notched or toothed. may refer to the edge of a tool.

serum: plasma after the clotting material has settled out.

settlement pattern: the spatial distribution of cultural activities across a landscape at a given moment in time.

sex chromosomes: the X and Y chromosomes. Normal males have one X and one Y; normal females have two X's.

sex-controlled trait: a trait that is expressed differently in males and females.

sex-limited trait: a trait that is expressed in only one of the sexes.

sexual dimorphism: the condition in which differences in structure exist between males and females of the same species.

sexual division of labor: the situation in which males and females in a society perform different tasks. In hunting-gathering societies males usually hunt while females usually gather wild vegetable food.

sexual isolation: a form of reproductive isolation in which one or both sexes of a species initiate mating behavior that does not act as a stimulus to the opposite sex of a closely related species.

sexual skin: skin in the anal region that turns bright pink or red and may swell when the animal is in estrus; found in the female of some primate species.

sexual stratification: the ranking of people in a society according to sex.

shaman: a medium of the supernatural who acts as a person in possession of unique curing, divining, or witchcraft capabilities.

shamanistic cult: that form of religion in which part-time religious specialists called shamans intervene with the deities on behalf of their clients.

sharecropping: working land owned by others for a share of the yield.

shared ancestral feature: compared with a shared derived feature, a homology that did not appear as recently and is therefore shared by a larger group of species.

shared derived feature: a recently appearing homology that is shared by a relatively small group of closely related taxa.

sharing clusters: among chimpanzees, temporary groups that form after hunting to eat the meat.

shell midden: a site formed of mainly concentrated shellfish remains.

shifting cultivation: (swidden, slash and burn) a form of plant cultivation in which seeds are planted in the fertile soil prepared by cutting and burning the natural growth; relatively short periods of cultivation on the land are followed by longer periods of fallow.

shovel-screening: a rapid excavation procedure in which the site matrix is shoveled directly through a screen (usually 1/4" mesh).

shovel-shaped incisors: incisors that have a scooped out shape on the tongue side of the tooth.

sickle-cell anemia: a disorder in individuals homozygous for hemoglobin S in which red blood cells will develop into a sickle shape that, in turn, will clog capillaries, resulting in anemia, heart failure, etc.

sickle-cell trait: the condition of being heterozygous for hemoglobin A and S. yet the individual usually shows no abnormal symptoms.

side-blade: a flaked stone, bone, shell, or metal artifact inserted in the side of a shaft or projectile point to provide an extended cutting edge.

sidescan sonar: a survey method used in underwater archaeology which provides the broadest view of the sea-floor. An acoustic emitter is towed behind a vessel and sends out sound waves in a fan-shaped beam. These pulses of sonic energy are reflected back to a transducer-- return time depending on distance traveled--and recorded on a rotating drum.

silent areas: sections of the cerebral cortex, which include parts of the frontal, occipital, and temporal lobes, in which electrical stimulation produces little or no emotional or motor response.

simian shelf: a bony buttress on the inner surface of the foremost part of the ape mandible, functioning to reinforce the mandible.

simple random sampling: a type of probabilistic sampling where the areas to be sampled are chosen using a table of random numbers. Drawbacks include (1) defining the site's boundaries beforehand; (2) the nature of random number tables results in some areas being allotted clusters of sample squares, while others remain untouched.

simulation: the formulation and computer implementation of dynamic models i.e. models concerned with change through time. Simulation is a useful heuristic device, and can be of considerable help in the development of explanation.

site catchment analysis (SCA): a type of off-site analysis which concentrates on the total area from which a site's contents have been derived; at its simplest, a site's catchment can be thought of as a full inventory of artifactual and non-artifactual remains and their sources.

site exploitation territory (SET): often confused with site catchment analysis, this is a method of achieving a fairly standardized assessment of the area habitually used by a site's occupants.

site survey: the process of searching for and describing archaeological sites in a given area.

site: a distinct spatial clustering of artifacts, features, structures, and organic and environmental remains. as the residue of human activity.

skull deformation: the artificial distortion of cranial bones during growth practiced by some aboriginal cultures.

slag: the material residue of smelting processes from metalworking. Analysis is often necessary to distinguish slags derived from copper smelting from those produced in iron production. Crucible slags (from the casting process) may be distinguished from smelting slags by their high concentration of copper.

SLAR (sideways-looking airborne radar): a remote sensing technique that involves the recording in radar images of the return of pulses of electromagnetic radiation sent out from aircraft (cf. thermography).

slash and burn agriculture: a method of farming, also called swidden agriculture, by which fields are cleared, trees and brush are burned, and the soil, fertilized by the ash, is then planted.

slavery: a practice that permits some people within a society to own other persons and to claim the right to their labor.

slope distance: in mapping the inclined distance (as opposed to true horizontal or vertical distance) between 2 points.

social anthropology: see cultural anthropology. <> social category: a category composed of all people who share certain culturally identified characteristics.

social class: a category of people who have generally similar educational histories, job opportunities, and social standing and who are conscious of their membership in a social group that is ranked in relation to others and is replicated over generations.

social control: a framework of rewards and sanctions that channel behavior.

social division of labor: the process by which a society is formed by the integration of its smaller groups or subsets.

social intelligence: the knowledge and images that originate in an individual's brain and that are transferred by speech land in the last 5,000 years, by writing to the brains of others.

social mobility: the ability of people to change their social position within the society.

social norm: an expected form of behavior.

social pressure: a means of social control in which people who venture over the boundaries of society's rules are brought back into line.

social stratification: the ranking of subgroups in a society according to wealth, power, and prestige..

socialization: the process by which a person acquires the technical skills of his or her society, the knowledge of the kinds of behavior that are understood and acceptable in that society, and the attitudes and values that make conformity with social rules personally meaningful, even gratifying; also termed enculturation.

society: a group of interacting people who share a geographical region, a sense of common identity, and a common culture.

sociobiology: the study of the biological control of social behavior.

sociocultural anthropology: a branch of anthropology that deals with variations in patterns of social interaction and differences in cultural behavior.

sociolinguistics: a branch of anthropological linguistics that studies how language and culture are related and how language is used in different social contexts.

soil resistivity: a method of subsurface detection which measures changes in conductivity by passing electrical current through ground soils. This is generally a consequence of moisture content, and in this way, buried features can be detected by differential retention of groundwater.

soil texture: the relative proportion of clay, silt and sand sized particles in a soil.

soil-sample: a quantity of soil, site matrix, or sediments collected for physical, or chemical analysis.

soil-sieves: small, precision metal screens, used for determining the proportions of different sized particles in a soil sediment sample.

soil-sounding radar: a method of subsurface detection in which short radio pulses are sent through the soil, such that the echoes reflect back significant changes in soil conditions.

solifluction: the slow downslope movement of surface sediments in a saturated condition. Prevalent in permafrost areas due to the seasonal thawing of the surface of the permafrost zone. Can cause complete mixture of site stratigraphy and archaeological components.

somatic: a term that refers to the body.

sorcery: the performance of certain magical rites for the purpose of harming other people.

sororate: a social custom under which a widower has the right to marry one of his deceased wife's sisters, and her kin are obliged to provide him with a new wife.

specialization: the limited range of activities in which a single individual is likely to be engaged.

specialized pastoralism: the adaptive strategy of exclusive reliance on animal husbandry.

specialized species: a species closely fit to a specific environment and able to tolerate little change in that environment.

specialized trait: a structure used basically for one function.

speciation: the evolutionary process that is said to occur when two previous subspecies (of the same species) are no longer capable of successful interbreeding; they are then two different species.

species: the largest natural population whose members are able to reproduce successfully among

speech community: a socially distinct group that develops a dialect; a variety of language that diverges from the national language in vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar.

sperm: a male gamete.

spermatogenesis: sperm production.

spheres of exchange: the modes of exchange-- reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange-- that apply to particular goods or in particular situations.

spindle: a structure consisting of fibers radiating out from the centriole that functions in cell division.

spirit possession: the supposed control of a person's behavior by a supernatural spirit that has entered the body.

spokeshave: an artifact with a notch or concave edge, presumed to have been used in shaping wooden or bone shafts.

spontaneous generation: an old and incorrect idea that complex life forms could be spontaneously created from nonliving material.

stability: the ability of an ecosystem to return to equilibrium after disturbances.

stadia rod (also "surveyor's staff'): a long brightly painted rod, accurately calibrated in metric units (or feet and inches), used for obtaining elevations and stadia measurements of distance in mapping with a major surveying instrument.

standard deviation: a statistical measurement of the amount of variation in a series of determinations; the probability of the real number's falling within plus or minus one standard deviation is 67 percent.

standing wave technique: an acoustic method, similar to bosing, used in subsurface detection.

state: a term used to describe a social formation defined by distinct territorial boundedness, and characterized by strong central government in which the operation of political power is sanctioned by legitimate force. In cultural evolutionist models, it ranks second only to the empire as the most complex societal development stage.

statistical analysis: the application of probability theory to quantified descriptive data.

status: a position in a pattern of reciprocal behavior.

steatite: soapstone or talc; a soft gray to green stone used as a carving medium.

stela (pl. stelae): a free-standing carved stone monument.

step-trenching: an excavation method employed on very deep sites, such as Near Eastern tell sites, in which the excavation proceeds downwards in a series of gradually narrowing steps.

stereoscope: a simple optical device to allow the perception of a stereoscopic (or 3-dimensional) image from pairs of aerial photographs.

stereoscopic vision: visual perception of depth due to overlapping visual fields and various neurological features.

storage-pit (also called cache-pits): circular excavations usually less than 3 m in diameter assumed to have aboriginally functioned as storage "cellars".

strata: (1) depositional units or layers of sediment distinguished by composition or appearance. (singular: "stratum"), (2) individually sampled subareas in a "stratified-random" probabilistic sampling scheme.

stratification: the division of a society into groups that have varying degrees of access to resources and power.

stratification: the laying down or depositing of strata or layers (also called deposits) one above the other. A succession of layers should provide a relative chronological sequence, with the earliest at the bottom and the latest at the top.

stratified random sampling: a form of probabilistic sampling in which the region or site is divided into natural zones or strata such as cultivated land and forest; units ate then chosen by a random number procedure so as to give each zone a number of squares proportional to its area, thus overcoming the inherent bias in simple random sampling.

stratified sample: a sample obtained by the process of dividing a population into categories representing distinctive characteristics and then selecting a random sample from each category.

stratified society: a society in which extensive subpopulations are accorded differential treatment.

stratified systematic sampling: a form of probabilistic sampling which combines elements of (1) simple random sampling, (2) stratified random sampling, and (3) systematic sampling, in an effort to reduce sampling bias.

stratigraphy: the study and validation of stratification; the analysis in the vertical, time dimension, of a series of layers in the horizontal, space dimension. It is often used as a relative dating technique to assess the temporal sequence of artifact deposition.

stratosphere: the part of the atmosphere 20 to 50 kilometers (12 to 31 miles) above the earth's surface; the area where ozone forms.

structural functionalism: the theory that the central function of the various aspects of a society is to maintain the social structure--the society's pattern of social relations and institutions.

structural gene: a segment of DNA that codes for a polypeptide other than a regulator.

structuralist approaches: interpretations which stress that human actions ate guided by beliefs and symbolic concepts, and that underlying these ate structures of thought which find expression in various forms. The proper object of study is therefore to uncover the structures of thought and to study their influence in shaping the ideas in the minds of the human actors who created the archaeological record.

structured interview: an ethnographic data-gathering technique in which large numbers of respondents are asked a set of specific questions.

style: according to the art historian, Ernst Gombrich, style is "any distinctive and therefore recognizable way in which an act is performed and made." Archaeologists and anthropologists have defined "stylistic areas" as areal units representing shared ways of producing and decorating artifacts.

sub-bottom profiler: see underwater reconnaissance.

subcutaneous fat: the fat deposited under the skin.

subera: a division of an era. The Cenozoic is divided into two suberas, the Tertiary and Quatemary.

submetacentric chromosome: a chromosome in which the centromere lies to one side of the center, producing arms of unequal length.

subsistence pattern: the basic means by which a human group extracted and utilized energy from its environment.

subspecies: interfertile groups within a species that display significant differentiation among themselves.

substantivism: a school of economic anthropology that seeks to understand economic processes as the maintenance of an entire cultural order.

subsurface detection: a collective name lot a variety of remote sensing techniques operating at ground level, and including hosing (or bowsing), augering, magnetometer, and radar techniques.

supernatural beliefs: a set of beliefs found in all societies that transcend the natural, observable world.

superposition: the principle that under stable conditions strata on the bottom of a deposit were laid down first and hence are older than layers on top.

surface collection: archaeological materials obtained from the ground surface.

surface finish: in the study of ceramic artifacts, the mainly decorative outer elements of a vessel.

surface scatter: archaeological materials found distributed over the ground surface.

surface structure: the particular arrangement of words that we hear or read.

surface survey: two basic kinds can be identified: (1) unsystematic and (2) systematic. The former involves field-walking, i.e. scanning the ground along one's path and recording the location of artifacts and surface features. Systematic survey by comparison is less subjective and involves a grid system, such that the survey area is divided into sectors and these are walked systematically, thus making the recording of finds mote accurate.

survey area: the region within which archaeological sites are to be located.

surveying: (1) in archaeology, the process of locating archaeological sites. (2) more generally, the process of mapping and measuring points on the ground surface (e.g. "legal" or topographic surveying").

suspensory behavior: a form of locomotion and posture whereby animals suspend themselves underneath a branch.

sweating: the production of a fluid, sweat, by the sweat glands of the skin. The evaporation of the sweat from the skin leads to a cooling of the body.

symbol: something that can represent something distant from it in time and space.

symmetry analysis: a mathematical approach to the analysis of decorative style which claims that patterns can he divided into two distinct groups or symmetry classes: 17 classes for those patterns that repeat motifs horizontally, and 46 classes for those that repeat them horizontally and vertically. Such studies have suggested that the choice of motif arrangement within a particular culture is far from random.

sympatric species: different species that live in the same area but are prevented from successfully re-producing by a reproductive isolating mechanism.

symphyseal face: the surface of the pubis where one pubis joins the other at the pubic symphysis.

symplesiomorphic feature: see shared ancestral feature.

synapomorphic feature: see shared derived feature.

synapsids: the reptilian group from which the mammals ultimately emerged.

synchronic studies: rely on research that does not make use of or control for the effects of the passage of time.

synchronic: referring to phenomena considered at a single point in time; i.e. an approach which is not primarily concerned with change (cf. diachronic).

syndrome: a complex of symptoms related to a single cause.

synostosis: the joining of separate pieces of bone in human skeletons; the precise timing of such processes is an important indicator of age.

syntax: the arrangement of words into meaningful utterances.

synthetic theory of evolution: the theory of evolution that fuses Darwin's concept of natural selection with information from the fields of genetics, mathematics, embryology, paleontology, animal behavior, and other disciplines.

system: a series of interrelated parts wherein a change in one part brings about changes in all parts.

systematic sampling: a form of probabilistic sampling employing a grid of equally spaced locations; e.g. selecting every other square. This method of regular spacing runs the risk of missing (or hitting) every single example if the distribution itself is regularly spaced.

systematic survey: see surface survey.

systems thinking: a method of formal analysis in which the object of study is viewed as comprising distinct analytical sub-units. Thus in archaeology, it comprises a form of explanation in which a society or culture is seen through the interaction and interdependence of its component parts; these are referred to as system parameters, and may include such things as population size, settlement pattern, crop production, technology etc.