In addition to an artifact’s provenience, archaeologists might also be interested in:
a. which side of an artifact was “up” when it was uncovered.
b. the compass orientation of an artifact’s long axis.
c. whether or not the artifact is burned.
d. all of the above.
Which of the following is true of the Bushmen of southern Africa?
a. They reject the name “Bushmen” (which they acquired from the Dutch) today
because of its derogatory origin and meaning.
b. They prefer to call themselves the San, !Kung, or Ju/”hoansi, indigenous names that
refer to all Bushmen as a whole.
c. There is no indigenous term for the Bushmen as a whole, because there are many
different groups of Bushmen.
d. They have been the subject of very little anthropological investigation, and as a result
little is known of their culture and history.
The Garbage Project demonstrated which of the following about America’s landfills?
a. Thanks to the recent public focus on recycling, only about 1% of our landfills’ space
is taken up by paper products.
b. Disposable diapers, plastic bottles, and large appliances together make up roughly
50% of a landfill’s volume.
c. Very little in our landfills actually biodegrades; after 20 years, from 1/3 to 1/2 of all
organic materials are still recognizable.
d. Organic material tends to biodegrade rapidly in our landfills, leaving abundant room
for other types of garbage; contrary to popular opinion, space for landfills around large
cities is in no danger of running out.
Petrographic and instrumental neutron activation analysis conducted on Micronesian
pottery determined which of the following?
a. Pottery found on the atolls was all manufactured on the high island of Yap,
confirming an ancient trade network between Yap and outlying atolls.
b. Pottery found on the atolls was all manufactured locally; each atoll had its own
source of high quality clay from which ceramic vessels were manufactured.
c. Although the clay used to manufacture most of the pottery came from the high island
of Yap, the actual manufacture of pottery took place on the atolls.
d. It was impossible to determine the particular high island that was the source of the
clay used to manufacture Micronesian pottery because the islands have such similar
geologic histories.
Blakey’s research team organized to study the African burial Ground in New York
included
a. Geologists
b. Anthropologists
c. Geneticists
d. B and C
If you are excavating a culturally homogeneous stratum or set of strata within a single
site, you are excavating a(n):
a. Component.
b. Assemblage.
c. Temporal type.
d. Period.
The illegal import of antiquities if hard to stop and the complexities of dealing with the
illegal trade are comparable to :
a. dealing with complexities related to illegal drug trade.
b. dealing with global warming.
c. dealing with forest conservation.
d. preserving biodiversity.
If you are analyzing a collection of artifacts of one or several classes of materials (stone
tools, ceramics, bones) that comes from a defined context such as a site, feature, or
stratum, you are analyzing a(n):
a. Component.
b. Assemblage.
c. Phase.
d. Period.
An artifact’s provenience is:
a. the geologic source of the raw material from which the artifact was manufactured.
b. the artifact’s location relative to a system of spatial data collection.
c. the facility where the artifact is currently stored.
d. how the artifact was used in the prehistoric past.
Neanderthal burials from Shanidar Cave, Iraq, associated with pollen indicate:
a. That humans are the only way that flowers could enter a cave.
b. That burial rituals began with the Neanderthals.
c. That the pollen in the cave was the result of normal background pollen “rain”.
d. That archaeologists need to take formation processes into account when interpreting
the meaning of data from ecofacts.
Deflation is:
a. A cultural process whereby one population’s technology becomes adopted by another
population in a different geographic region.
b. A geologic process whereby fine sediment is blown away by the wind and larger
items are lowered onto a common surface.
c. An archaeological phenomenon in which excavations produce fewer and fewer
artifacts with increasing depth.
d. A geologic process that results in rapid and complete burial of material remains.
Documenting how material culture changed over time and space is referred to as
a. Evolution
b. Stratigraphy
c. Culture history
d. Sedimentation
If you are defining measurable or observable qualities or characteristics of an artifact
that distinguish it from another on the basis of its size, surface texture, form, material,
method of manufacture, or design pattern, you are defining:
a. The Frison Effect.
b. Projectile point types.
c. Components.
d. Attributes.
The primary method for reconstructing male and female activities from the
archaeological record comes from:
a. Ceramic analysis.
b. Lithic (including groundstone) analysis.
c. Ethnographic analogy.
d. Gender ideology.
Many disciplines are involved in the study of humanity. What makes anthropology
unique from other disciplines that study humans?
a. Anthropology argues that the best understanding of the human condition comes from
a global, comparative, and holistic perspective.
b. Anthropology examines only one aspect of the human condition, but does so in great
detail.
c. Anthropology examines the social and cultural aspects of humanity, but leaves the
biological aspect of humans to other disciplines.
d. Anthropology focuses only on exotic peoples and cultures, while other disciplines are
more apt to study American or European society.
Which of the following is true about the Pleistocene?
a. It was a geologic period lasting from 2 million to 10 thousand years ago.
b. It was characterized by periods of extensive glaciation.
c. Many species of now extinct fauna existed during the Pleistocene.
d. All of the above.
When faced with a choice of wood to use in tree-ring dating, which of the following
would yield the best results?
a. Cottonwood.
b. Sagebrush.
c. Pine.
d. All types of wood are equally useful, making tree-ring dating such a powerful tool.
The symbolic nature of culture:
a. Facilitates cross-cultural communication, because all cultures use the same (or very
similar) symbols to mean the same things.
b. Can create considerable misunderstanding between people from different cultures.
c. Is now known to be not as significant as anthropologists once believed.
d. Is easily discernable from the archaeological record.
Archaeology is about ancient objects, referred to as
a. Stratigraphy
b. Middens
c. Potsherds
d. Artifacts
Three major areas of historical archaeological research today include
a. Historically disenfranchised groups.
b. Questions about the recent past left unanswered by history books.
c. Asian colonialism and its effects on indigenous peoples.
d. A and B
In science, an idea is testable if
a. The implications of the hypothesis can be measured in some fashion with the same
results obtained by different observers.
b. The implications of the hypothesis can be measured with different results obtained by
the same observers.
c. The implications of the hypothesis can be measured with the same results obtained by
the same observers.
d. The implications of the hypothesis cannot be measured.
Hastorf and Johannessen argue that changes in the types of fuel used through time in
the Upper Mantaro area of Peru are best explained by:
a. Changes in the abundance of high quality versus low quality fuel caused by
environmental change.
b. Increasing population density that denuded the landscape of trees, forcing people to
rely more and more on low quality fuel through time.
c. Forced fuel management programs mandated by an elite social class.
d. A combination of materialistic and ideological explanations.
The socially recognized network of relationships through which individuals are related
to one another by ties of descent (real or imagined) and marriage is known as
a. Family ties.
b. Descent.
c. Kinship.
d. Hierarchy.
A society’s mechanism for relating supernatural phenomena to the everyday world, and
enlisting supernatural powers to achieve or prevent transformations of state in humans
and nature, is:
a. Religion.
b. Ritual.
c. Cosmology.
d. Sympathetic magic.
Fort Mose, near the Georgia-Florida border, was found by Kathleen Deagan in 1986.
This site is important because:
a. It is the site of a large battle that took place in 1876 between General Custer and the
Lakota people, resulting in the death of Custer’s entire army.
b. It demonstrates the general unwillingness of state governments to become involved
in archaeological projects, usually because they cannot bear the monetary cost.
c. It demonstrated how the earliest slaves in North America were treated by the Spanish,
information that was previously unknown.
d. It was the first legally sanctioned, free African-American community in the country,
and therefore provides a different perspective on African-American history than that
provided by slave archaeology alone.
A. V. Kidder argued against the interdisciplinary involvement of specialists in
archaeological research because they lacked the necessary anthropological training.
If the date of a historic site is undocumented, archaeologists might use which of the
following techniques to provide a date?
a. Pipe stem dating.
b. Terminus post quem dating.
c. Radiocarbon dating
d. A and B
In order to understand exactly what a person ate within a 24 hour period, the most
useful source of data would be:
a. Phytolith analysis.
b. Macrobotanical analysis.
c. Pollen analysis.
d. Coprolite analysis.
With patrilocal residence, commonly associated with patrilineal descent:
a. A newly married couple lives in the groom’s village of origin.
b. A newly married couple lives in the groom’s mother’s village of origin.
c. A newly married couple lives in the bride’s village of origin.
d. A newly married couple lives in the bride’s father’s village of origin.
Christy Turner’s extensive research on variability in the crown and root areas of human
teeth found:
a. That pre-contact North American Indian teeth are less similar to pre-contact South
American Indian teeth than they are to pre-contact Eskimo and Aleut Indian teeth.
b. That the teeth of all North and South American Indians are remarkably similar,
suggesting a single migration from northern Asia at the end of the last Ice Age.
c. That modern and pre-contact American Indian teeth are most similar to the teeth of
northern Asians, and that three major Native American groups could be identified,
suggesting at least three migrations.
d. No similarity between the teeth of modern and pre-contact American Indians and the
teeth of people from northern Asia.
Critical theorists argue that the proper role of the historian is to
a. Leave the beginnings of contemporary class-based ideologies to another time when
prejudices are absent
b. Unearth the beginnings of repression to end prejudice
c. Unearth the beginnings of contemporary class-based ideologies ” distortions that
rationalize forms of exploitation, such as slavery
d. Cooperate with historical archaeologists
The purpose of middle range theory is to create arguments that link human behavior to
material remains so that archaeologists can make reliable behavioral inferences from
archaeological material.
A major concern of modern historical archaeology is uncovering the histories of
disenfranchised groups whose histories have often been ignored or incorrectly recorded.
Analogies must be used cautiously because there is no guarantee that the analogy will
accurately describe the prehistoric culture.
Osteoarthritis can result from continuous mechanical stress on a joint throughout a
lifetime.
Classical archaeology is concerned primarily with the “classical” civilizations of the
Mediterranean, such as Greece and Rome, and the Near East.
Archaeology can be used to further the political interests of particular groups of people.
Nazi archaeologists, for example, argued that agriculture, music and writing systems
first appeared in northern Germany and spread throughout the world from there; Hitler
used such information to justify the need for Nazi domination of the world.
An archaeological culture is the same thing as an ethnographic culture.
Artifacts are assigned catalog numbers in the lab after they are excavated because the
catalog number is what ties the artifact back to observations made in the field, ensuring
that an artifact’s provenience is never lost.
One strength of the AMS dating technique is that it requires a much smaller sample of
organic material than needed in the standard radiocarbon technique.
Obsidian blades are much sharper than steel scalpels, leaving smaller cuts with clearer
edges that heal more quickly and are less likely to scar than steel blades; because of
this, obsidian blades have been used in many surgical procedures.
Beneath many of the cave paintings at Lascaux there is abundant room for groups of
people to have gathered and participated in rituals; the common occurrence of dense
artifact scatters and hearth features in this location strongly suggests that they did so.
Archaeologists will generally agree that all trowels are similar in quality, and any brand
is just as suitable for excavation as another.
Temporal types are morphological types that have been empirically demonstrated to
span a specific period of time.
Morphological types become useful temporal types if their frequencies change
significantly through time and they are restricted in space.
There is no single “correct” typology.
Low power (40X to 60X) microscopic analysis is much more useful in determining
stone tool microwear than high power microscopy (up to 400X).
Although it has proven useful in the recovery of carbonized plant remains and bone
fragments, flotation is an uncommon archaeological technique because it is extremely
time consuming and costly.
U. S. Customs has estimated that illegal trafficking in antiquities may be second only to
the drug trade in international crime.
Natural disturbance processes are the only processes that affect the formation of
archaeological sites.
Since wood rats collect plant material for their nests from as much as two kilometers
away, they are good indicators of the regional environment.