Physical, face to face associations of people are referred to by archeologists as
a. Non-residential groups
b. Residential groups
c. Residences
d. Non-residences
How has Lewis-Williams explained the cave paintings at Lascaux?
a. The paintings represented totems, from which lineages or clans believed themselves
to be descended.
b. The paintings were left by hunters seeking to mark the territory as their own, and
provided a sign to other hunters that they were not welcome.
c. The paintings had no real symbolic meaning, and were essentially “art-for-art’s sake”,
appreciated for its aesthetic value but containing little cultural meaning.
d. The paintings are related to altered states of consciousness, and ultimately represent
Upper Paleolithic people pondering the meaning of life.
The novice’s first job in the lab of an archaeological investigation is almost often
a. piecing together ceramics.
b. writing down minute number on artifacts or labels and entering the information into a
database.
c. analyzing pollen or residues of blood, plants, or other materials.
d. reconstruction of skeletal remains.
The difference between a natural level and an arbitrary level is
a. natural level is a vertical subdivision and an arbitrary level is a horizontal
subdivision.
b. natural level is a horizontal subdivision and an arbitrary level is a vertical
subdivision.
c. natural level is a vertical subdivision based on natural breaks in sediments and
arbitrary level is a vertical subdivision used only when natural strata are lacking or
more than 10 cm. deep.
d. irrelevant. Natural levels are no longer used in archeology, only arbitrary levels are
used.
The result of only looking in “logical” places in a survey is that
a. We will not bias the sample.
b. We will not bias the reconstruction of the past.
c. We will bias the sample.
d. We will not be conducting archaeology.
We know much about what Maya hieroglyphs mean because
a. Maya left written explanations.
b. Maya epigraphers can read the hieroglyphs.
c. Maya hieroglyphs are exactly the same as Egyptian hieroglyphs.
d. We do not confuse hieroglyphs with art.
What did Thomas and Kelly learn from the Carson-Stillwater survey?
a. The hypothesis that wetlands had been the focus of a sedentary settlement system
could not be rejected.
b. The hypothesis that the wetland was only one stop on a seasonal round that included
the pinon forests could not be rejected.
c. Neither hypothesis was able to provide an adequate reconstruction of prehistoric
Carson Desert and Stillwater Mountain settlement systems; both were therefore
rejected.
d. Neither hypothesis could be rejected, thus showing that their sampling design was
inherently flawed.
William Webb (1882-1964) excavated hundreds of burials at the Indian Knoll site in
western Kentucky. How did Webb explain the presence of hunting weapons in the
graves of women and children at the site?
a. Women and children hunted in life; they were therefore interred with the objects they
would need in the afterlife.
b. Burial ritual; the artifacts were symbols of grief rather than objects that the interred
used during life because women and children would not have hunted.
c. Misinterpretation of the archaeological evidence; the “hunting weapons” were not
hunting weapons at all, but rather tools used to process plants.
d. All of the above; his interpretations of the site changed through time.
If a person goes to the natural source area of a raw material and either extracts the
material him- or herself or trades for it or for finished products, he or she is engaging
in:
a. Direct acquisition.
b. Down-the-line trade.
c. Raw material sourcing.
d. The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.
At Agate Basin, the NISP count suggests that ____________were more important than
____________.
a. elk, rabbit
b. Dog, skunk
c. Bison, pronghorn
d. Camel, dog
If sites are located during a survey and are determined eligible for the National Register
they might be slated for “data recovery”, which means
a. excavations and associated analyses of the artifacts, ecofacts, and sediments.
b. excavations sufficient to ensure that information is not lost.
c. securing the site and making it off limits to the general public.
d. proposing a well-reasoned research question to combat threat to the site from looting
or construction activities.
Richard Burger suggests that power in Chavin culture came from the
a. Early rulers
b. Original agriculturalists
c. Original priests
d. Women
A tree ring sequence is only useful in the region in which it was developed because:
a. Trees respond to climate and climate is regionally variable.
b. Researchers tend not to share their data with one another, and thus each area needs its
own specialist.
c. Tree rings are partially conditioned by soil chemistry which can be highly variable
over small distances.
d. In order to be useful, tree rings must be calibrated using radiocarbon dating, and
calibration curves are regionally specific.
The primary distinction between humanistic and scientific approaches within
archaeology revolves around the issue of:
a. Absolute truth.
b. Ethical concerns.
c. Objectivity.
d. The definition of culture.
The primary strategy of cultural anthropology in which data are gathered by
questioning and observing people while the observer lives in their society is called
a. first person observation
b. engaged listening
c. active participation
d. participant observation
Culture history is:
a. The kind of archaeology practiced during Renaissance times, primarily focused on
the reconstruction of classical civilizations.
b. A breakthrough in archaeological thought that rejected simple descriptions of cultural
development through time for more comprehensive interpretations of past lifeways.
c. The kind of archaeology practiced during the early to mid-20th century, in which
changes in artifact frequencies through time were explained by diffusion of ideas or
migration of people.
d. The kind of archaeology most frequently practiced today by Americanist
archaeologists.
Archaeologists who analyze faunal assemblages are commonly known as:
a. Palynologists.
b. Zooarchaeologists.
c. Paleoecologists.
d. Paleoethnobotanists.
Non-site archaeology is:
a. Analysis of archaeological patterns on a regional scale, rather than of patterns within
a single site
b. Analysis of small-scale patterns of artifact distribution, such as those from a single
site.
c. The most common type of archaeology practiced today; archaeologists have largely
abandoned the concept of a “site”.
d. Useful when dealing with fairly small areas, but becomes impractical on the scale of
kilometers.
In Gatecliff’s master stratigraphy there are 16 living surfaces resulting from
a. human activities.
b. natural flood deposition.
c. geological origin.
d. alluvial sediments.
In anthropological terms, a civilization refers to:
a. A complex urban society with a high level of cultural achievement in the art and
sciences, craft specialization, a surplus of food and/or labor, and a hierarchically
stratified social organization.
b. A wide range of social formations that lie between egalitarian foragers and ranked
societies that are normally horticultural and sedentary with a higher level of
competition than seen among nomadic hunter-gatherers.
c. Any society that has the power to coerce, that includes military and fiscal specialists,
and that is controlled by elites.
d. Any stratified society that practices full-time agriculture.
“Gumshoe survey” is a good way to:
a. Find rare or spectacular sites.
b. Find common sites such as small lithic or potsherd scatters.
c. Provide the context necessary for interpreting rare or spectacular sites.
d. Obtain a 100% reconnaissance of a particular region.
How does American colonial Georgian material culture differ from the material culture
of the colonial medieval mind-set that preceded it?
a. Whereas medieval houses had only one or two rooms, Georgian houses were
functionally structured and compartmentalized.
b. Food preparation shifted from chopping bones to sawing them, as evidenced by the
shift from bones with articulated joints to more difficult to identify segmented cuts;
ceramics also shifted from plain, utilitarian earthenware to more technologically
advanced matched sets with serving vessels.
c. Whereas trash was simply tossed out of doors and windows during medieval days, it
was disposed of in deep pits during Georgian times.
d. All of the above.
What happened to the human skeletal remains from the African Burial Ground project?
a. They were reburied in October of 2003, after they had been analyzed.
b. They were stored in a basement at the World Trade Center along with all of the
excavation documents from the project; everything was destroyed when the building
collapsed on September 11, 2001.
c. They are on display at the African Burial Ground Center, which is actively engaged
in bringing the findings of the project to the public.
d. They were stolen from storage in 2003 and have not yet been recovered; authorities
believe they were taken by local community members who opposed the project.
Jack Lee Harelson was a dangerous looter, illegal gun salesman and attempted
murderer. In his backyard were found
a. antiquities that amounted to the “Rosetta Stone” of Nevada.
b. 10,000-year-old rifles that were some of the oldest dated in the world.
c. baskets with bodies of two children, mummified in the dry desert.
d. None of the above.
In Upper Paleolithic cave art, humans are:
a. Rarely represented, and when they are represented are poorly executed compared to
the marvelously depicted animal figures.
b. Frequently represented, and represented in a realistic manner, similar to animal
depictions.
c. Represented as deities, controlling the plant and animal world.
d. Never represented.
The idea that the origin of all modern humans can be traced to a single African ancestor
(“Eve”):
a. Is based on evidence from mitochondrial DNA.
b. Is accepted by nearly all biological anthropologists today.
c. Means that Neanderthals and modern humans most likely interbred.
d. All of the above.
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, is considered the first scientific
archaeologist in America based on his work involving his:
a. Writing of the Declaration of Independence.
b. Notes on the State of Virginia which dealt in part with the aborigines of Virginia,
their origin, and the question of the mounds.
c. Excavation of Jamestown, Virginia.
d. Advancement of horticulture in the New World.
Don Crabtree’s experimental flintknapping research:
a. Failed to discover any successful ways in which Folsom projectile points could be
fluted in spite of decades of research; flintknappers today still don”t understand how to
produce a flute.
b. Discovered successful ways in which Folsom projectile points could be fluted, and
stimulated additional research resulting in the discovery of more successful fluting
methods.
c. Discovered the purpose of the flute in Folsom projectile points; fluting was part of a
pre-hunting ritual designed to ensure hunting success.
d. Showed that the fluting of Folsom projectile points was actually a simple process that
any minimally skilled flintknapper (by today’s standards) could accomplish with
relative ease.
Macrobotanical remains are likely to be preserved if they were:
a. Deposited in arid climates or dry caves.
b. Deposited in waterlogged contexts, such as wells or shipwrecks.
c. Burned and carbonized.
d. All of the above.
In the Smithsonian site number 26CH798, the number “26” stands for:
a. The number of the county (arranged alphabetically) in which the site is located.
b. The number of the state (arranged alphabetically) in which the site is located.
c. The site’s sequential number within the county in which it is located (in other words,
it was the 26th site recorded in the county).
d. The type of site it is (e.g., a lithic scatter, ceramic scatter, pueblo, etc.)
The position held by Franz Boas, which maintained that each culture is the product of
its own unique sequence of developments and in which chance plays a major role in
bringing about change is called:
a. Unilineal evolution.
b. Cultural relativism.
c. Social Darwinism.
d. Historical particularism.
Archaeology constructs specific historical sequences in order to
a. Establish theories about necessary conditions.
b. Establish theories about major cultural evolutionary transitions.
c. Compare and then look for patterns to determine what conditions are necessary and
sufficient to explain major cultural evolutionary transitions.
d. Argue about the rise of agriculture in the New vs. Old World.