Diatoms are useful for identifying whether ancient bodies of water were fresh, brackish
or salt, but not for finer-grained analytical questions, such as the level of water salinity
or nutrient status.
It is not easy to identify the intentions of the people in the past that left behind hoards,
which are usually characterized by a substantial assemblage of goods found in an
archaeological deposit.
Survival of organic materials is typically limited to cases of extreme moisture, such as
very arid or waterlogged conditions.
Once a piece of wood is burnt and becomes charcoal it is impossible for archaeologists
to even guess what type of tree it came from.
Most scholars believe that the Maya collapse was monocausal.
Clear ethnic groups do not always stand out clearly in archaeological remains.
Many aspects of archaeology at the start of the new millennium emphasize the
importance of the past for the contemporary world.
Such metals as gold, silver, and lead corrode and do not survive well in the
archaeological record.
The manufacture of stone heads at Easter Island is less mysterious than most people
think: several statues there have even been found unfinished and in quarries.
Most counties ensure at least some degree of protection for their major archaeological
sites.
Fluctuations in ancient fauna can have other causes than the influence of either climate
or people.
Chavn de Huantar, which flourished in the years 850 to 200 BC, is located in Peru.
In most segmentary societies, craft production is organized at the household level. In
chiefdoms and states, craft production is often organized at a higher, more centralized
level.
Geophysical methods can be very effective for land-based site identification, but are
rarely effective in underwater reconnaissance.
Public museums, as bastions of culture and guardians of the past, have never tolerated
archaeological destruction or the looting of archaeological sites.
Marxist archaeology seeks to understand processes of change in human history through
the study of contradictions between the forces of production and social organization.
Archaeologists are rarely interested in ancient wind because it has had very little impact
on human activity.
Paleolithic cave art is made in a variety of ways, including simple finger tracings, hand
stencils and painting in several colors.
Scientists have come to recognize that fluctuations in climate during the Ice Age were
far less complex than originally thought; indeed, the Ice Age was just one long
unbroken spell of cold with little temperature fluctuation.
The sheer number of man hours required to build Stonehenge (estimated at 30,000,000
hours of work) indicated that at that time the Wessex area of Britain
a) was in contact with ancient Egypt
b) was centrally organized
c) was populated by bands of hunter-gatherers
d) was overpopulated
e) all of the above
The use of a star symbol that was once the emblem of Alexander the Great led to
conflict between which two countries?
a) Turkey and Greece
b) Greece and Macedonia
c) Macedonia and Serbia
d) Serbia and Greece
e) Macedonia and Turkey
The study of artifacts and other material indicators of patterned actions that reflect
religious beliefs is known as
a) the archaeology of cult
b) geoarchaeology
c) the archaeology of the mind
d) spiritual archaeology
e) none of the above
Early archaeologists in the United States were taught to think more deeply about how
ethnography might aid archaeological interpretation by the presence of
a) tree-ring dates
b) Thomas Jefferson
c) modern Native American societies
d) Irish immigrants
e) a break-away group of British scholars
One of the major drawbacks of tree-ring dating is that the date recorded corresponds to
the felling of the tree, thus
a) tree-rings cannot be used to calibrate carbon dates
b) it cannot be considered an independent method of absolute dating
c) it is hard to conduct tree-ring dating outside of the tropics where there are a lot of
trees
d) timbers may be older or younger than the structures that they were used to build
e) all of the above
The American Antiquities Act was signed into law in 1906 by
a) Theodore Roosevelt
b) Abraham Lincoln
c) Franklin Roosevelt
d) Herbert Hoover
e) The Antiquities Act was never passed
Although the American Southwest did not produce true humanly created mummies as
in Egypt, its arid environment nonetheless promoted exceptional preservation when the
pueblo dwellers buried their dead
a) in deep pits
b) in special kivas
c) in dry caves
d) under the floors
Formation processes affect the way in which finds came to be buried and what
happened to them after their burial. A good example of a natural formation process
would be
a) gradual burial of a feature by wind-borne soil
b) the sudden fall of ash over Pompeii
c) slow accumulation of river sediment over a feature
d) gradual burial of an artifact by sand
e) all of the above
Small fragments of bone may be examined for bone microstructure. With increasing
age, circular structures called _________ become more frequent
a) otoliths
b) osteons
c) osteoliths
d) fairy rings
e) ephiphyses
Although peat bogs and wetlands are best known for preserving human remains,
preserved _____________ have also been recovered from the wetlands
a) wooden trackways
b) boats
c) fishing nets
d) wooden carts
e) all of the above
When compared to the facial reconstruction of her skull, the artist who crafted Seianti
Hanunia Tlesnasa’s sarcophagus chose to portray her as
a) younger than she was at death
b) with a more girlish mouth than she actually had
c) without fewer chins than she had when she died
d) with a prettier nose than she actually had
e) all of the above
Some scholars prefer the term BCE to the term BC when talking about calendar dates
because BC, which means Before Christ, is not necessarily meaningful in areas with
other calendars or religions. What does BCE stand for?
a) Before Columbus’s Exploration
b) Before the Common Era
c) By Convention Exactly
d) Before Calendar Evidence
e) By Common Evidence
Diseases that affect bone do so through
a) erosion
b) growths
c) altered structure
d) all of the above
Most stone tools are made by removing _________ from a __________
a) cores from a flake
b) megaliths from a quarry
c) flakes from a core
d) hand-axes from a chopper
e) choppers from a hand-axe
What is androcentrism?
a) male bias
b) the study of females
c) the study of males
d) female bias
e) none of the above
The name of this country comes from the name of an archaeological site
a) Greece
b) Iran
c) Zimbabwe
d) Morocco
e) Vietnam
Stone monuments, often collective tombs, from Europe’s Neolithic period are often
referred to as
a) megalithic
b) chalcolithic
c) megahenges
d) stone-tied
e) paleolithic
Excavations at the Boarding School site in northern Montana, carried out with help
from the local Blackfoot tribe, found evidence of a typical hunting practice used for
thousands of years in North America, with three layers of bones, each representing one
episode. This site was a
a) bison drive site
b) moose corral
c) antelope kill site
d) jackrabbit snare
e) quail snare
Change in the archaeological record is sometimes attributed to struggles between social
classes, a result of contradictions that arise between the forces of production and the
relations of production (mainly the social organization). Such an approach to
understanding the past would be considered
a) Critical theory
b) culture-historical archaeology
c) postprocessual archaeology
d) Marxist archaeology
e) processual archaeology
The international body behind the World Heritage List and the principal international
convention against the illicit trafficking of antiquities is
a) ICOMOS
b) ICROM
c) UNESCO
d) CRM
e) GIS
On numerous occasions the Greek Government has formally requested that this
museum return the Parthenon Marbles to Athens
a) The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
b) The Pergamon Museum in Berlin
c) The British Museum in London
d) The Skopje Museum in Macedonia
e) The National Museum of Turkey in Ankara
While New Archaeology was fast to investigate social structures it was slow to explore
a) how science could be used in archaeology
b) the symbolic aspects of culture
c) the impact of the environment on people in the past
d) the origins of agriculture
e) all of the above
If it can be demonstrated that gold was highly valued by a society, archaeologists could
conclude that individuals from that society that were buried with gold
a) were artisans that worked in gold
b) had a lower social status
c) had a higher social status
d) came from somewhere else
e) all of the above
An example of how the world can be measured, the major axis of Stonehenge is
oriented toward
a) the midsummer sunrise
b) the movement of Venus
c) the hands on a standard clock
d) the grid system that the entirety of Wessex follows
e) the only source of fresh water in the area
Objects used, modified or made by people are known as
a) artifacts
b) geofacts
c) ecofacts
d) typologies
e) sites
The “Ice Maiden,” the frozen mummy of a young girl found on the Ampato Volcano in
Peru, as well as the preserved bodies found on the peak of Llullaillaco, probably were
ceremonial offerings made by which culture?
a) the Mongols
b) the Aztecs
c) the Tyrolians
d) the Incas
e) we do not know what culture the mummies came from
____________ photographs taken from the air provide better perspective and are easier
to view and understand than vertical photographs, which are better for making maps
and plans
a) Oblique
b) X-Ray
c) GIS
d) Horizontal
e) all of the above
Symbolizing faculties that were present in early human include all of the following
except
a) the deliberate burial of human remains
b) conscious design in tool manufacture
c) the development of language
d) creation of representational art
e) all of these faculties existed in early humans
____________ has replaced traditional farming methods in many parts of the world,
leading to the destruction of deeply buried archaeological sites and remains
a) The digging stick
b) Mechanized agriculture
c) The shallow plow
d) Organic farming
e) Small-scale hand farming
Sites can be detected by remote sensing methods through features such as
a) crop circles
b) mounds
c) walls
d) holes cut into the ground
e) b through d
Which of the following has been put forth as a monocausal explanation for the origins
of a state
a) the hydraulic hypothesis
b) population growth
c) warfare
d) all of the above
e) none of the above
When the goal of an artist is representation of objects in the real world, the resulting
work is known as a
a) cognitive map
b) depiction
c) portrait
d) illustration
e) demonstration
Tenochtitln is located beneath modern
a) Beijing, China
b) Tokyo, Japan
c) Mexico City, Mexico
d) Lima, Peru
e) Cairo, Egypt
An example of an artifact made of inorganic materials is
a) a plant fiber basket
b) a stone tool
c) an animal bone comb
d) a wood flute
e) none of the above