Archaeology ALIVE

METHODS AND TECHNIQUES

Written styles:
Page 3 of 3

Exercise: Distinguishing between different written styles

Below are three extracts taken from different published texts. Read through them and use the drop-down lists underneath to indicate the type of publication the text was taken from:

Tip: Some of the attributes you may use to arrive at your answers may include:

the vocabulary used (technical? everyday? sensational?)
the tone of the writing (clinical? familiar? informative?)
the structure of the writing (systematic? discursive? up-front?)

Extract 1:

'Scientists have reconstructed evidence of a murderous attack on a young adult male 36,000 years ago. The young man, who was a member of the vanished Neanderthal species, was clearly struck in the head by a bladed object such as a stone axe. His damaged skull and some of his other bones were unearthed from a collapsed rock shelter near the village of St Césaire, in the Charente Maritime in France. The discovery confirms something long suspected: that the Neanderthal people carried weapons and used them for hunting and for what the researchers call "interpersonal violence". '

Select the type of publication for extract 1:

Extract 2:

'The Dederiyeh cave is located 400 km north of Damascus and 60 km northwest of Aleppo. The cave is providing the best evidence yet of Neanderthal burial practices, as well as data on the morphology of Neanderthals and the chronological position of human types in Levantine Mousterian contexts. The infant was found in situ in the Mousterian deposit, lying on its back with arms extended, indicating an intentional burial...'

Select the type of publication for extract 2:

Extract 3:

'The great French physical anthropologist Marcellin Boule believed in the 1930s that the classic Neanderthals were clumsy, shambling people, so specialized that they became extinct while other populations provided the evolutionary basis for modern humans (Boule and Vallois 1957). Erik Trinkaus and William Howells (1979) reviewed Neanderthal populations from all over Europe and Southwest Asia and point out that their anatomical pattern took approximately 50 millennia to evolve ...'

Select the type of publication for extract 3: