No pre-Conquest civilization, including the Aztec, was able to politically or culturally
unify the whole of Mesoamerica.
In the absence of a male heir, political control of a Late Classic Maya city:
a) was automatically assigned to lord of a neighboring city
b) could fall to a female regent or queen
c) was vested in a ruling junta of priests
d) was often given to an outsider from Teotihuacn
e) fell to the winner of a special ballgame
Every aspect of the white marble figurines of the Cyclades remains enigmatic because:
a) most of them were removed from their original archaeological sites by looters and
sold on the black market
b) many of the figurines in museums and collections are fakes that were created in
modern times
c) they are made of perishable material which tend to fall apart when exposed to air
d) a and b only
e) b and c only
The __________ Dynasty has long been regarded as the earliest dynasty in China.
a) Ming
b) Xia
c) Shang
d) Zhou
e) Han
The main challenge faced in the study of ancient DNA is that:
a) so much ancient DNA is preserved that it is hard to tell what remains should be
sampled
b) only a few people know the proper techniques for studying ancient DNA
c) the human genome has not been completely mapped
d) archaeologists do not like the idea of incorporating science into their work
e) ancient DNA is preserved only in very rare cases
The so-called __________ was a calendar system employed by the lowland Maya that
starts on 11 August 3114 bc and assigns each day that passes and individual date much
like our modern calendar does.
a) Ritual Round
b) Gregorian Calendar
c) Long Count
d) Solar Calendar
e) Short Count
Linguistic evidence points to __________ as the ultimate homeland of the ancestors of
both the Austroasiatic and Austronesian language families.
a) Taiwan
b) the middle Yangzi Valley
c) the lower Mekong Delta
d) the Korean Peninsula
e) the Bangkok Plain
Current understanding is that Homo heidelbergensis
a) evolved directly from Homo erectus
b) is a subset of Homo habilis which is found only on a remote island
c) is the immediate descendant of Homo ergaster that expanded out of Africa and into
what is now Europe
d) is also known as “the hobbit” because it was very short
e) is the descendant of the Australopithecines that spread to East Asia, particularly
China
___________ are striations found on animal bones that indicate early hominins were
processing meat and marrow with tools.
a) Debitage
b) Cut marks
c) Bifaces
d) Isotopes
e) Carving glances
The Norse called the indigenous people they encountered in Greenland and the North
American mainland:
a) Chumash
b) potlatch
c) Newfoundlanders
d) parkas
e) skraelings
The term “aceramic” means:
a) without pottery
b) with pottery
c) without stone tools
d) with stone tools
e) without both pottery and stone tools
The Turkana Boy skeleton belongs to which species?
a) Homo sapiens
b) Homo neanderthalensis
c) Homo ergaster
d) Australopithecus boisei
e) Australopithecus afarensis
Why might agriculture be seen to have a down side?
a) because studies have shown the health of early farming populations was poorer than
that of their hunter-gatherer predecssors, at least in some cases
b) because the risk of an unbalanced diet or dietary deficiencies increased
c) because the impact of crop failures due to the weather became severe
d) because of the risk of infectious diseases transmitted from domesticated animals
e) all of the above
The idea that marine resources sustained population growth and that the infrastructure
of fishing on the Peruvian coast eventually inspired the adoption of agriculture is called:
a) the Single State Theory
b) the Sea Peoples expansion
c) the Maritime Hypothesis
d) the Monocausal Theory
e) agropastoralism
The people of the aceramic Neolithic period in Southwest Asia employed a combination
of various degrees of plant cultivation, animal herding, and utilization of wild resources
to meet their needs. These subsistence strategies are referred to as:
a) hunter-gatherer economies
b) mixed farming economies
c) peer-polity interactions
d) down-the-line economies
e) vertically integrated hierarchies
Archaeological evidence for taro farming at the Kuk site in Papua New Guinea is
significant because:
a) it indicates that most of New Guinea was conquered by Polynesians
b) it points to independent domestication and thus an independent development of
agriculture in the New Guinea highlands
c) it proves that the land bridges that connected New Guinea to the rest of Asia stayed
accessible longer than other land bridges, despite sea level changes
d) it proves that New Guinea had significant contact with Australia during the mid
Holocene
e) all of the above
By the 1st millennium ad, the __________ established an empire that stretched from
Central Asia to the Indian Ocean; they founded the city of Begram in Afghanistan and
spread their own version of Buddhism along the Silk Road.
a) Mauryans
b) Indo-Aryans
c) Sakas
d) Greeks
e) Kushans
The Oldowan industry was first defined by ________________ working at
_______________.
a) Donald Johanson and Yves Coppens; Hadar
b) Louis and Mary Leaky; Olduvai Gorge
c) Berhane Asfaw and Tim White; the Middle Awash
d) Donald Johanson and Mary Leaky; Aramis
e) Tim White and Donald Johanson; Laetoli
In postprocessual archaeology, multivocality can be defined as the idea that:
a) archaeological conclusions are the only interpretations of the past that are based on
fact
b) limiting the number of groups involved in the study of history reduces confusion
when arriving at the truth
c) there are many ways to interpret the past and that there should be no single “official”
version of the past
d) in the past multiple groups influenced each other through such processes as
emulation and migration
e) archaeologists should have no role in understanding the past
Two of the greatest and most important river basins in South Asia are:
a) the Yangzi and the Yellow River
b) the Nile and the Congo
c) the Ganges and the Indus
d) the Indus and the Yangzi
e) the Amazon and the Indus
Contact between cultures allows for the spread of technologies and innovations. This
process is known as:
a) innovation
b) cognition
c) affectation
d) diffusion
e) agency
The __________ culture was contemporary with the Shang Dynasty and was located to
the south in the Yangzi Valley region.
a) Longshan
b) Changjiang
c) Mongol
d) Ming
e) Hangul
The oldest intentionally prepared mummies in the world date to as far back as 5800 bc
and were made by the Chinchorro people who lived in what is now:
a) Mexico
b) Chile
c) Alaska
d) Egypt
e) California
The city of __________, located in the Basin of Mexico, was the largest city in the New
World: it covered up to 8 square miles and housed up to 80,000 people.
a) Teotihuacn
b) Chichn Itz
c) Tikal
d) Monte Albn
e) San Lorenzo
The Middle Paleolithic lithic industry associated with the Neanderthals is the
a) Gravettian
b) Clovis
c) Aurignacian
d) Mousterian
e) Oldowan