The goal of middle level theory is to:
a. Determine whether modern cultures accurately reflect prehistoric cultures.
b. Identify gender through stone tool analysis.
c. Help build secure inferences from archaeological remains.
d. Identify the role of the individual in archaeological research.
Exploring the possible ways to make a projectile point is an example of _________,
while observing the way a living group of people make projectile points is an example
of _________.
a. Experimental archaeology/ethnoarchaeology.
b. Middle range research/general theory.
c. Ethnoarchaeology/experimental archaeology.
d. General theory/middle range research.
Physical features, both natural and artificial, associated with human activity, including
sites, structures, and objects possessing significance in history, architecture, or human
development are:
a. Historic landmarks.
b. Part of the National Register.
c. Natural resources.
d. Cultural resources.
The following is a false statement regarding paradigms in anthropology:
a. There are two basic paradigms in modern archaeology- the Processual and
Postprocessual paradigm.
b. Paradigms are a lot like culture- both are learned, shared and symbolic.
c. Archaeologists today fall neatly into one paradigm category and have very different
ways of thinking.
d. All archaeologists operate within a paradigm, whether they are aware of it or not.
According to Richard Burger, what best explains the widespread adoption of Chavn
religion as evidenced by the spread of Chavn iconography across the central Andes
between 500 and 250 BC?
a. Political expansion; local communities were subject to military occupation by Chavn
society, and local religions were prohibited and quickly replaced by Chavn religion.
b. The reliance of neighboring communities on Chavn agricultural crops; crops were
traded to local communities in exchange for political and religious allegiance to Chavn
society.
c. The extension of a powerful shared cosmology which resulted in the growth of
complex interregional exchange networks.
d. None of the above.
Which of the following is true of cognitive archaeology?
a. It is appealing to cultural materialists who are less concerned with interpreting
symbolic relationships than with reconstructing the material conditions of life.
b. It is the study of all those aspects of ancient culture that are a product of the human
mind.
c. It is based more in the processual than in the postprocessual paradigm.
d. Hypotheses generated within cognitive archaeology cannot be tested, and are
therefore unscientific.
The processual paradigm has several key characteristics which does not include;
a. Processual archeology emphasizes evolutionary generalization, not historical
specifics.
b. Processual archaeology does not downplay the importance of the individual.
c. Processual archaeology views culture from a systemic perspective.
d. Explanation in processual archaeology is explicitly scientific.
Unlike detectives, archaeologists
a. want to know what happened in the past.
b. make inferences about the past based on material remains.
c. work on sites that are quickly discovered and immediately protected.
d. commonly recover objects with unknown functions and meanings.
Brian Hatoff took the position when excavating Hidden Cave, outside Fallon, Nevada to
a. Do the work quietly in order not to involve spectators
b. Protect the site from looting by not publishing his results
c. Carry out a public education campaign to encourage community participation
d. Close the site permanently
According to the textbook the Garbage Project recovered
a. A plastic bag with a compacted cigarette buts
b. 40-year-old newspapers with hot dogs wrapped in them
c. 80-year-old construction debris
d. Evidence of Audubon Society bird counts
NAGPRA requires the repatriation not only of human skeletal remains, but also of:
a. Funerary objects, objects placed with a human body as part of a death rite or
ceremony or made to contain human remains at the time of burial.
b. Sacred objects, specific ceremonial objects necessary for current practice of
traditional Native American religions by present-day adherents.
c. Objects of cultural patrimony, objects that have ongoing historical, traditional, or
cultural importance central to a Native-American group or culture and that were
inalienable at the time they left the tribe’s possession.
d. All of the above.
A sipapu is:
a. A small pit in a kiva located along the wall opposite the ventilator shaft.
b. The place where the Hopis are said to have emerged into this world from the
underworld.
c. The place through which Hopi communication with the supernatural world takes
place.
d. All of the above.
Why has Peter Peregrine (Lawrence University) suggested that Chacoan pueblo society
practiced matrilocal residence?
a. The small size of Chacoan pueblos (<60 square meters) lies within the size limits of
ethnographically documented matrilocal residences.
b. The side-by-side spatial arrangement of pueblo rooms reflects social solidarity, which
ethnographic data suggest is characteristic of matrilocal residence.
c. Bioarchaeological analysis of Chacoan burial populations has shown that females are
more genetically similar to each other than are males; this means that females stayed in
their village of origin while males migrated from elsewhere.
d. All of the above.
Which of the following is likely to have played a part in the origins of agriculture?
a. Climatic change; foragers could not become agriculturalists until the environment
was capable of supporting agriculture.
b. Population pressure; people were required to expand their diets and rely more heavily
on plants.
c. Human intentionality; changes in wild cereals suggest that humans intended to
increase harvest productivity and efficiency.
d. All of the above.
Although we still have much to learn about the rates at which DNA mutates, current
studies show that
a. The ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone affect the DNA.
b. Stature affects the rate.
c. DNA studies are important in reconstructing the past.
d. DNA studies will soon be obsolete.
Radiocarbon dating was able to determine that the Shroud of Turin:
a. Was a modern forgery, created sometime in the 20th century.
b. Dates to the time of Christ.
c. Dates to medieval times, between AD 1260 and 1390.
d. Was created long before the time of Christ, although the exact date is uncertain
because it lies at the practical limit of radiocarbon dating.
Dendrochronology provides a(n) _________ measure of time, while the Law of
Superposition allows for a(n) ________ measure of time.
a. Relative/absolute.
b. Calibrated/corrected.
c. Long-term/exact.
d. Absolute/relative.
Why is the Chavn culture of the central Andes considered the first Andean civilization?
a. Because of its stratified social and political organization and its monumental
achievements in metallurgy, weaving, irrigation systems, and stone sculpture.
b. Because of its intensive agricultural subsistence strategy.
c. Because in spite of the fact that the Chavn people subsisted solely by hunting and
gathering, they were still able to develop a sophisticated iconography that reflected a
sophisticated cosmology.
d. Because unlike previous cultures in the region, archaeological evidence has shown
that the Chavn culture produced art and music.
In compliance with Section 106, if sites are located during survey, determined eligible
for the register, but cannot be avoided by the project, they might be
a. slated for preservation by local or state entities.
b. slated for “data recovery”, which means extensive excavations and associated
analyses of artifacts, ecofacts, and sediments.
c. slated for destruction without recovering data.
d. reason for hot debates among citizens, officials, and the project manager.
Archaeology contributes to our understanding of the human condition by
a. what it learns about the past
b. how it goes about learning about the past
c. assumptions that are proven to be correct
d. A & B
Rodent- and rabbit-size animals are classified in which one of five standard animal size
classes?
a. Class 1
b. Class 2
c. Class 3
d. Class 4
The earliest explorations in historical archaeology were conducted to:
a. Disprove the validity of documentary sources and show that archaeological
excavation was the only way to truly understand the past.
b. Understand how early European settlers interacted with existing Native American
populations.
c. Understand more about the investigators’ own pasts.
d. Justify colonial expansion and racist treatment of Native Americans.
The index fossil concept:
a. Allows widely separated strata to be correlated and assigned to the same time period
if they contain the same fossils.
b. Is the idea that strata containing similar fossil assemblages are of similar ages.
c. Enables archaeologists to characterize and date strata within sites using distinctive
artifact forms that research shows to be diagnostic of a particular period of time.
d. All of the above.
A proton precession magnetometer is useful for identifying subsurface magnetic
anomalies. Such magnetic anomalies can indicate all of the following except:
a. The presence of subsurface artifacts.
b. Archaeologically irrelevant magnetic “noise”.
c. Burned structures.
d. Ancient hunter seasonal rounds
Which of the following statements is true of the state of archaeology in the twenty-first
century?
a. The “New Archaeology” of the 1960s has for the most part been uncritically accepted
by nearly all archaeologists, and currently dominates archaeological thought.
b. Archaeology is today very diverse, representing many different theoretical
perspectives; there is no single, defining, dominating trend.
c. Whatever public interest and involvement that archaeology once experienced has
dramatically diminished; archaeology as a discipline is at the risk of extinction.
d. Archaeology today, as it was throughout the entire history of archaeology, is heavily
dominated by white males, with virtually no involvement by woman and other
minorities.
One effect of the 19th century comparative method was:
a. Indigenous peoples were viewed from their own historical perspective, rather than a
grand sequence of human evolution.
b. The domination of “primitive” peoples by Europeans was legitimized because it was
seen as the natural order of things.
c. Scientific proof that humanity was improving biologically, culturally, intellectually,
and spiritually.
d. All of the above.
Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector pointed out which of the following biases in
archaeology?
a. The fact that plant remains are rarely preserved at archaeological sites while animal
bones and stone tools are often abundant, leading archaeologists to overestimate the
importance of meat in prehistoric diets.
b. The fact that when archaeologists only study projectile points and ignore associated
debitage, or debris, from the manufacture of stone tools, they end up with a biased view
of prehistoric technological organization.
c. The fact that archaeologists tend to impose the current political organization of their
culture onto prehistoric political organizations without sufficient data to justify their
inferences.
d. The fact that archaeologists once viewed the world largely in terms of men’s
activities and perceptions, while the contributions of women were downplayed; this
view was projected into prehistory, resulting in a strong androcentric bias in
archaeology.
The “schlep effect” caused Perkins and Daly to explain that throwing away the bones
was why upper limb bones were not found at the Neolithic village, Suberde. R.E.
Chaplin interpreted the shortage of upper limb bones on a late-ninth century Saxon farm
as the result of butchering and dressing the carcasses for market. Upper limb bones
missing at American Plains Indian sites were argued by T. White to have been
pulverized and boiled to render the grease to make pemmican. These examples
exemplify the following:
a. The difficulty of archaeologists to agree on interpretations.
b. The lack of validity in archaeological interpretations made from animal bone.
c. Several competing hypotheses account for the same body of facts.
d. You cannot hypothesize from an absence of data.
Archaeologists employ systematic regional surveys mainly to:
a. Discover good places to excavate.
b. Arrive at accurate descriptions of the range of archaeological material across a
landscape.
c. Verify that extensive geographic regions were unoccupied prehistorically.
d. Maintain their funding from academic institutions.
Which of the following dates is the youngest?
a. AD 1066
b. 1066 BC
c. 1066 BCE
d. 1066 BP
An individual who has the power to contact the spirit world through trance, possession,
or visions, and who uses this power to influence the world of the living is:
a. A totem.
b. A shaman.
c. An oracle.
d. Any or all of the above.
The “density-equilibrium theory,” which explains the origins of agriculture as a product
of population growth that eventually causes the human population to exceed the hunting
and gathering carrying capacity of an environment, was proposed by:
a. Childe.
b. Binford.
c. Carneiro.
d. Braidwood.
Anthropologists refer to the rules and structures that govern relations within a group of
interacting people as:
a. Residence patterns.
b. Social organization.
c. Residence rules
d. Kinship systems.
The standard kinship system in North America as well as in many other industrialized
nationsis:
a. Patrilineal descent.
b. Matrilineal descent.
c. Bilateral descent.
d. Mostly patrilineal descent, with an almost equal amount of bilateral descent.
Which of the following is not a key characteristic of the process of science?
a. objective
b. systematic
c. logical
d. not predictive