Geophysical methods can be very effective for land-based site identification, but are
rarely effective in underwater reconnaissance.
Protected from outside climatic effects, caves may act as natural “conservatories,”
creating local climates that can promote the preservation of organic remains.
Iron is simply steel that contains between about 0.3 and 1.2 percent carbon.
The idea of Atlantis actually comes from a story narrated by the philosopher Plato.
Although an interesting idea, there is little support for the idea that Mesoamerican or
Andean civilizations oriented many of their major buildings in accordance with
astronomical alignments.
Despite advances in modern technology, it is impossible to extract any DNA evidence
from Neanderthal remains: they are simply too old.
Archaeologists rarely if ever focus on individual decision makers in the past.
Individuals simply cannot be seen as agents of change.
Nearly all early claims for cannibalism in the past have been shown to be true.
Despite it’s name, Marxist archaeology is not based on the writings of Karl Marx.
Museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have always lead the
charge against the looting of archaeological sites. They have never purchased illegal
antiquities and they denounce private collectors who do.
Over 50 years after it was drafted, the United States has still not ratified the Hague
Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
The limited range of exchange goods that a society considers very valuable or of high
status are known as prestige objects.
Phosphate analysis of soils can be used to identify where livestock were concentrated.
Deposition of artifacts with the dead always indicates a belief in the afterlife.
Ground reconnaissance survey and aerial reconnaissance are two ways to discover and
record site locations.
Natural formation processes include such activities as plowing, building structures, or
making tools.
Modern people do not overestimate the difficulties associated with building stone
monuments. For example the building of Stonehenge is still thought to be quite
mysterious: ancient people did not have the technology to construct that site.
“Heritage” is an easily defined term with a clear and accepted archaeological definition.
After the first leather shield from Bronze Age Ireland was discovered, an experiment
was conducted that involved researchers attacking each other with replicas of Bronze
age weapons. They found that leather shields were superior to bronze shields.
Whether or not an earlier hominins walked upright may be determined from a number
of fossilized skeletal remains, but paleoanthropologists require more than the skull.
Unlike societies today, ancient societies had little or no impact on their environment.
Because the Bamiyan Buddhas were a UNESCO World Heritage site, they were
protected from destruction: even though they were threatened they were not destroyed
in the end.
Lexicostatistics is the study of language change through analysis of vocabulary, and is
sometimes used as an absolute dating technique.
No domesticated plants were cultivated in North America until they were introduced
soon after the arrival of colonists from the Old World.
Discoveries made by the Leakeys indicate that our earliest ancestors lived only a few
thousand years earlier than recognized at the beginning of the 20th century.
When it comes down to it, “gender” and “sex” mean the same thing.
In most modern surveys, areas selected for survey typically utilize either a grid system
or a series of transects.
Ancient wood, when preserved, can be a useful indicator for understanding human use
of this material, but it must be burned (charcoal); desiccated or waterlogged wood is not
very useful.
The Classic Maya suffered a single, sudden, and total collapse around 900 AD.
Because we know that gold was valuable in ancient Bulgaria, it is very likely that
individuals who were buried with gold were of high status.
Surprisingly, the staple diet at Khok Phanom Di did not consist of rice and fish.
When one society comes to adopt the forms of customs, buildings, and artifacts of
neighboring societies, particularly among peer polities, this is known as emulation.
The function of perforated antler “batons” dating to the European Upper Paleolithic has
been debated for some time. The most widely accepted view, based on ethnographic
analogy, is that they were used as
a) handles for slings
b) tent pegs
c) harness pieces
d) arrow-shaft straighteners
e) tools for making the flutes on arrow heads
In 1841 Jacques Boucher de Perthes proposed the great antiquity of humankind, based
on his discovery of
a) ancient metal axes
b) human skeletal remains below those of the biblical flood layers
c) stone hand axes with the remains of extinct animals
d) metal axes with human remains
e) none of the above
It was through the writings of Ignatius Donnelly that the idea of ________ was
transformed into a simple and marvelous explanation of all ancient civilizations of the
world
a) Egypt
b) Ubar
c) Greece
d) Atlantis
e) the lost continent of Mu
Flannery and Marcus concluded that Guil Naquitz was
a) a small microband camp, of no more than four or five people
b) a specialized production site, probably for stone tool production
c) a small hunter-gatherer site, probably of no more than 20 to 30 people
d) a major Olmec center, home to a powerful ruling dynasty
e) a small hamlet, perhaps 4-12 households, of about 60 people
Sometimes it is possible to demonstrate the presence of boats even when no ship
remains have been found in the archaeological record. An example of this is
a) that Chinese artifacts are sometimes found along the coast of South America
b) that pyramids exist and both Egypt and Central America meaning that the two
regions were in contact
c) that traditional Italian food contains tomatoes, a plant that was domesticated in the
Americas only and thus had to be traded for
d) the fact that Australia was peopled after it was cut off from the mainland
e) that Neanderthals are found in both the Levant and in Europe
A basic technique used in the analysis of artifact composition, ________ allows for the
study of individual layers of an artifact (e.g. glaze, underglaze, and pot fabric)
individually
a) electron probe microanalysis
b) fall-off analysis
c) neutron scattering
d) seismic reflection profiling
e) non-probabilistic sampling
One of the first to argue that the “Moundbuilders” were in fact ancestral to the living
Native Americans was
a) Ephraim Squier
b) Caleb Atwater
c) Samuel Haven
d) Charles Darwin
e) C. J. Thomsen
The study of pollen grains, developed by Norwegian geologist Lennart von Post, is
commonly known as
a) geomorphology
b) palynology
c) archaeobotany
d) paleoethnobotany
e) microbotany
The best indicator of an individual’s age at death is based on study of the
a) clavicle
b) innominate bone
c) patella
d) teeth
e) radius
Proponents of the New Archaeology argued that archaeology should do which of the
following?
a) explain rather than describe
b) test hypotheses
c) be deductive rather than inductive
d) design research to answer specific questions
e) all of the above
The rise in professional archaeological fakes may be a result of the “mediatization” of
the field, meaning:
a) the inability to see archaeological excavation as being real life
b) the price that certified artifacts fetch on the open antiquities market
c) the need to generate publicity to further one’s career
d) the distortion caused by poor media reporting
e) all of the above
Satellite imagery from such resources as ________ are cheap or free and it has now
become standard archaeological practice to access such images and use them in
archaeological survey
a) the US Department of Defense
b) personal satellites purchased for the project
c) Google Earth
d) The CIA
e) satellite imagery is never cheap and thus is rarely used in archaeology
The most successful application of electron spin resonance so far has been for the
dating of
a) pollen
b) obsidian
c) tooth enamel
d) petrified wood
e) calcium carbonates
A leading thinker on Old World history and author of books such as Man Makes
Himself and Dawn of European Civilization, V. Gordon Childe moved beyond
classification, seeking to understand
a) the origins of civilization
b) the origins of the Neolithic Revolution
c) the origins of the Urban Revolution
d) all of the above
e) none of the above
At Khok Phanom Di, some shells were modified and apparently used as tools.
Experiments with similar shells indicated that marks were created by abrading them
with sandstone to create a sharp cutting edge. Further experimental work and
examination under a SEM indicated that the shells were probably used in
a) harvesting a grass such as rice
b) slicing and working skins and meats
c) incising designs on pottery
d) cutting bark cloths
e) fish processing
The “largest social unit” of a society that is a politically independent or autonomous
social unit is known as a
a) city
b) site
c) polity
d) cult
e) person
Many post-processual archaeologists like to use the analogy of the archaeological
record as ____________. This can be seen in the interpretive task of understanding the
murals at San Bartolo, Guatemala
a) an encyclopedia filled with hard facts
b) a play with a variety of actors
c) a text composed of meaningful signs
d) an oil spill that we are slowly cleaning up
e) a traffic jam that slows everyone down
In the early 1700s, Englishman William Stukeley made a systematic study of
__________ and demonstrated that they had not been made by giants or devils
a) North American mounds
b) European stone monuments
c) the Pueblo sites of the American southwest
d) the atalhyk ruins
e) the Egyptian pyramids
Extravagant and ill-found stories about the past which are made up and promoted
primarily for financial gain is called
a) fake archaeology
b) pseudoarchaeology
c) deceptarchaeology
d) archaeomarketing
e) antiarchaeology
In metalworking, the smelting process produces a residue known as
a) reaves
b) faience
c) coprolite
d) slag
e) debitage
The abstract notion of _______ , socially constituted structuring principles or the
dispositions operating within each individual, can be useful in the archaeology of
individual identity
a) agency
b) bands
c) habilis
d) habitus
e) androcentrism
Using relative bone weight of each species of animal present at a site is a way of
a) comparing species abundance
b) estimating the weight of meat represented by the bones in the sample
c) estimating age
d) comparing sex profiles
e) none of the above
An illegal antiquity can be defined as
a) an artifact made out of a controlled substance or from endangered species, such as
elephant tusk flutes or jaguar skin drums
b) an object that was excavated clandestinely and which has no published record
c) an artifact that carries considerable risk to people in the present, such as the remains
of a victim of the black plague
d) an artifact that was found by an archaeologist in a country that the archaeologist is
not a citizen of
e) all of the above are illegal antiquities
Artistic representations, often with an overt religious or ceremonial significance, are
known as
a) art history
b) semiotics
c) iconography
d) cognitive studies
e) cognitive maps
Although the creation of a typology may enable an archaeologist to understand gradual
changes in design or decoration, the rate of change must be deduced from
a) relative dating methods
b) absolute dating methods
c) parallels to other artifact typologies
d) stratigraphy
e) none of the above
Up until recently the past has generally been interpreted by
a) men
b) women
c) the government
d) archaeologists
e) actors and playwrights
A project led by Mike Parker Pearson that carried out 45 excavations in the Wessex area
determined that __________ was first constructed around 3000 BC as an enclosed
cemetery
a) The Great Wall of China
b) The Tower of Babylon
c) The Caves at Lascaux
d) Stonehenge
e) Great Zimbabwe
The waterlogged site of Ohalo II, along the Sea of Galilee in Israel, has yielded the
world’s oldest known ____________, dating to 19,000 years ago
a) domesticated animal bones
b) fish bones
c) wind instrument, made from an animal femur
d) cereal grains
e) dog burial
Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad used medieval Viking sagas to locate and excavate an
ancient Viking settlement in
a) Nantucket
b) Iceland
c) New Hebrides
d) Nova Scotia
e) Newfoundland
In the future it is to be expected that advances in ______________ will greatly
illuminati both the speculative and the tectonic phases of human evolution
a) stone tool analysis
b) neuroscience
c) linguistic decipherment
d) the analysis of symbols
e) GIS
In every known human society, gold, which is intrinsically valuable, has been
considered to be the most prestigious of materials.