Darwin’s work on evolution did not have a large or immediate impact on archaeologists.
The Rosetta Stone was discovered during Pitt-Rivers’s military expedition to India
(1798″1800).
Using differences in tree-rings to tie a wooden structure to a calendar date is an
example of a relative dating technique.
All known archaeological sites have been discovered by archaeologists during
archaeological excavation.
Although taking different amounts of time according to region, environmental
conditions, and technological innovations, all societies eventually progress from bands
to state societies.
“The Speculative Phase” is a term used to describe an archaeological school of thought
that sought to employ scientific methods to explain archaeological evidence.
The major drawback of the Giza Plateau Mapping Project is that none of the data
collected over the 15 years has been incorporated into GIS.
Many concepts that we consider to be inherent to our humanness, such as our system of
morals, our concept of gender, even how we respond to our senses, are not natural
“givens”.
Evidence of “deities” has been found at the sanctuary of Gbekli Tepe and thus it is
unlikely that the site was a shrine for ancestor veneration.
Google Earth was used to reveal 500 new caves in South Africa, including the one that
yielded the bones of Australopithecus sediba.
Lewis Binford is considered a processual archaeologist.
The main causes of archaeological site destruction have nothing to do with humans.
Protected from outside climatic effects, caves may act as natural “conservatories,”
creating local climates that can promote the preservation of organic remains.
The one thing that all synthetic materials have in common is that they have never been
exposed to heat.
There will always be more to learn in the field of archaeology.
Looters have destroyed a full 90% of sites from the Classic period of the Mimbres
culture in the American Southwest.
Pollens are best preserved in arid zones, particularly loess or sandy sedimentary
deposits.
Like anthropologist Julian Steward, British archaeologist Grahame Clark broke away
from the dependence on artifacts and argued for an ecological approach to how human
populations adapted to their environments.
The age an animal was at death is usually assessed through the study of its teeth.
Provenience is the exact position of a find within the matrix.
Archaeologists know for sure that stone was the most important material to people of
the Paleolithic; they never made wood or bone implements.
It was not until the 1990s that typology began to dominate archaeological thinking.
No domesticated plants were cultivated in North America until they were introduced
soon after the arrival of colonists from the Old World.
Hammurabi’s law code was written in the Akkadian language, in the script known as
cuneiform.
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.
Reflecting many other aspects of modern life in the 1960s, the New Archaeology was
more pessimistic than earlier, traditional approaches to archaeology.
Despite its name, evolutionary archaeology has very little to do with the ideas of
biological evolution.
While interaction, in the archaeological sense, does involve the exchange of goods, it
does not involve the exchange of information.
Archaeologists suspected that the Baghdad museum would be looted in 2003 and
warned US and UK officials, but they did not listen.
Dry environments prevent decay through the shortage of water, which allows
micro-organisms to survive and flourish, thus preserving organic remains.
The fundamental purpose of archaeology is to provide people with a better
understanding of the human past.
Because pottery is still widely made around the world, it is a particularly good focus
area for ethnoarchaeological research.
Even though figures in the terracotta army found near Xi”an, China have generic facial
features, their variable hairstyles, clothing, etc have provided much information about
how people looked.
Ground reconnaissance survey and aerial reconnaissance are two ways to discover and
record site locations.
Iron was not used in the New World before European contact.
After 14 years of work, this scholar was able to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822
a) Ephraim Squier
b) Gordon Childe
c) Jean-Franois Champollion
d) General Pitt-Rivers
e) C.J. Thomsen
Most human remains recovered by archaeologists are in the form of
a) mummies
b) bog bodies
c) skeletons or bones
d) impressions of decayed burials
e) hairs that have been preserved
Sending short pulses of electromagnetic waves into the ground and then receiving
reflections of these waves to detect underground changes in soil or archaeological
features is known as
a) standing wave technique
b) bosing
c) ground penetrating radar (GPR)
d) electrical resistivity
e) thermography
The main way that the Mimbres Foundation has sought to protect Mimbres sites from
looting is
a) by actually purchasing surviving Mimbres archaeological sites
b) to perform 100% excavation on every single Mimbres site that is known
c) by vigilantism: several people have been shot on sight
d) plant fake Mimbres artifacts for looters to find
e) all of the above
Broadly speaking, excavation techniques may be divided into those that emphasize the
vertical dimension, by cutting into deep deposits to reveal stratification, and those that
emphasize the __________ dimension
a) stratified
b) time-space
c) fourth
d) horizontal
e) perpendicular
The materials that most cultures consider to be valuable
a) are made out of gold
b) meet a basic human need like food or shelter
c) often have no use at all beyond display
d) are the ones that are most abundant in their territory
e) none of the above
An example of a symbol that is used to regulate and organize relations between human
beings is
a) mobiliary art
b) time measurement
c) money
d) a cognitive map
e) only answers a and d are correct
The purpose of the well-known cave paintings from such sites as Chauvet, Lascaux and
Altamira
a) was to serve in fertility rituals
b) was part of coming-of-age rites of passage
c) was purely artistic
d) was for education of children about animals
e) we do not know the purpose of these cave paintings
Wood that is said to be desiccated has been preserved due to
a) extreme wetness
b) artificial polymers
c) fire and charring
d) extreme cold or dryness
e) all of the above
Layers of sediments resulting from the melting of ice sheets and deposited in lakes on
an annual basis are known as
a) tree rings
b) pollen
c) ice cores
d) varves
e) contextual seriation
Once people began to cultivate cereals, they preferentially selected varieties that
a) retained their seeds until they could be harvested
b) lost their seeds easily in wind or rain
c) had small or tough seeds
d) were less nutritious than their wild ancestors
Humankind’s ability to use __________ is generally agreed to be what most clearly
distinguishes our species from other animals
a) currency
b) our thumbs
c) symbols
d) technology
e) none of the above
The controversial framework developed by Carl Hempel and adopted by some New
Archaeologists and heavily criticized by other New Archaeologists is based on the
development of universal statements and
a) cognitive maps
b) diffusion diagrams
c) religious interpretations
d) personal observations
e) natural laws
When antiquities are purchased or accepted by a museum there is a strong need for
careful investigation of where exactly the object came from. Such an investigation is
part of buyer
a) investigative reporting
b) characterization
c) context
d) importation
e) due diligence
Ian Hodder and his students were some of the first to advance influential arguments for
the school of archaeological thought called
a) the New Archaeology
b) ethnology
c) cultural ecology
d) postprocessual archaeology
e) processual archaeology
The study of ancient disease is called
a) paleopathology
b) osteopathology
c) dendropathology
d) historiopathology
______________ trained under Mortimer Wheeler, adopted his excavation method, and
is best known for excavations at Jericho and Jerusalem
a) Kathleen Kenyon
b) Gertrude Caton-Thompson
c) Anna O. Shepard
d) Mary Leakey
e) none of the above
England’s first inspector of Ancient Monuments, who was selected in 1882, was
a) Sir Mortimer Wheeler
b) Augustus Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers
c) Graham Hancock
d) Ignatius Donnelly
e) Kathleen Kenyon
Recent evidence has shown that our distant ancestors, such as the 1- to
2-million-year-old child’s skull found in Taung, South Africa, grew up
a) slower than we do now
b) in exactly the same way that we do now
c) with no parents present
d) faster than we do now
e) in stable farming communities
The two main agencies of archaeological destruction are construction and
a) natural disaster
b) rising sea levels
c) archaeological excavation
d) nationalism
e) intensification of agriculture
In ancient Greece, literacy
a) was restricted to a specialized scribe caste
b) was common among the highest classes but not available to the lower classes
c) was widespread among the population
d) was reserved for philosophers
e) did not make much of an impact on civilization
If a coin with a date on it is found in a sealed archaeological deposit, we know that the
deposit can be no older than the date on the coin. In that situation the date on the coin
represents
a) a terminus ante quem
b) an a maiore ad minus
c) an a minore ad maius
d) aterminum ad minore
e) a terminus post quem
Although the lower half of Lindow Man’s body was missing, his height was calculated
based on
a) the pair of trousers found with his body
b) his shoes
c) historical records of his life
d) his cranial circumference
e) the length of his upper arm bone
Systematic surface survey tends to be preferred to unsystematic for a number of
reasons, primarily because in unsystematic surveys there is a tendency for
a) survey walkers to concentrate mostly on areas where artifacts seem richer
b) survey walkers to get tired and hide under bushes
c) survey walkers to walk in circles
d) survey walkers to veer off the survey grid
By careful study of settlement patterns, archaeologists can answer this basic question.
a) Why people developed writing?
b) Where did religion originate?
c) Why did our hominin ancestors evolve into humans?
d) What is the scale of the society?
e) Should a radiocarbon date be calibrated?
Some archaeologists believe that an effective language was developed alongside the
first chopper tools around 2 million years ago by which human ancestor?
a) Homo erectus
b) Homo sapiens
c) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
d) Homo habilis
e) Australopithecus
Relying on a single dominant explanatory factor to account for a cultural change is
known as a(n)
a) idealist explanation
b) multivariate explanation
c) hypothetico-deductive explanation
d) monocausal explanation
e) postprocessual explanation
When a museum label fails to indicate where exactly an artifact on display came from,
that is a good sign that
a) the museum is protecting the site from looters by not letting the public have much
information
b) the museum is very disorganized
c) tests are being done on the object to determine its origin
d) the object came from a looted site through illicit or illegal channels
e) the museum is an older-style institution
The study of dental morphology, genetic anomalies of the teeth, can help archaeologists
determine if two individuals
a) were related
b) could have been cannibals
c) were married to each other
d) are part of the same culture
e) all of the above
Most archaeological survey and data recovery related to CRM work in the US is done
by
a) private archaeology firms
b) archaeologists who are federal employees
c) undergraduate students
d) university professors
e) members of the public with no archaeology training
Insect exoskeletons are resistant to decomposition and can be considered likely
indicators of past climactic conditions. The study of ancient insects is called
a) phytolythology
b) palonology
c) micromorphology
d) geomorphology
e) paleoentomology
In describing mechanisms of exchange, “direct access” is used to describe situations
where
a) the consumer is able to buy whatever they want
b) goods are bought from independent middlemen
c) trading is done through emissaries who represent a state
d) the user goes to the source material without the intervention of an exchange
mechanism
e) none of the above
Inclusions in the clay used to make pottery that act as a filler, creating strength and
counteracting cracking and shrinkage during firing, are known as
a) slag
b) temper
c) microliths
d) faience
e) debitage
The Classic Maya kings portrayed themselves as great guarantors of prosperity and
stability, but during the critical 8th and 9th centuries leading up to the Maya collapse
they were unable to deliver on these promises because of
a) the superior technology of the conquering Spanish
b) the degradation of an ecosystem already pushed beyond its limits by overpopulation
c) the superior technology of the conquering Aztec
d) the introduction of new diseases causing massive depopulation of the region
e) the arrival of Quetzalcoatl from central Mexico who brought a new religious cult to
the area