A total station:
a. is accurate to +/- 3 millimeters.
b. is easily affordable by students and professionals alike.
c. is roughly the same in terms of accuracy as a line level and a measuring tape.
d. all of the above.
Which of the following is not a major theme of research in historical archaeology
today?
a. The study of historically disenfranchised groups whose histories were incompletely
recorded, recorded in a biased manner, or still sometimes ignored.
b. Attempts to resolve disputes over the nature of key historical events.
c. Attempts to locate and describe the oldest, largest, or most historically significant
sites in order to ensure their protection.
d. The nature of European colonialism, the development of capitalism, and their effects
on indigenous peoples.
The benefit of marker beds is that
a. they can provide clues to the age of sites with new sediments.
b. they can provide clues to the age of sediments in a new site.
c. they can be used to estimate the date of human materials.
d. they are easily transported back to the laboratory for analysis.
Characteristics of the Mousterian culture include:
a. A culture from the Middle Paleolithic period.
b. Appeared throughout Europe between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago.
c. Mousterian artifacts are frequently associated with Neanderthal human remains.
d. Both A and C
A shrine in which a deity reveals hidden knowledge or divine purpose is called
a. Mythological seat of power
b. Oracle
c. Throne
d. Totem
During WWII some American archeologists volunteered their services in the war effort.
a. Several collaborated on “national character” studies that tried to characterize peoples
who were either allies or enemies
b. Ruth Benedict provided information that would ultimately prove critical for Allied
forces occupying Japan during the prewar period
c. The Human Terrain Team helped military see situations from an indigenous
perspective
d. They volunteered as servicemen and women, not as archaeologists.
Provenience refers to
a. the relationship of an artifact, ecofact, or feature to other artifacts, ecofacts, features,
and geologic strata in a site.
b. the artifact’s location relative to a system of spatial data collection.
c. the position of the archaeologist when documenting a site.
d. an outdated way to map a site.
What would the MNI be for the following hypothetical assemblage of adult bison
bones: 4 left humeri, 2 left femura, 4 right femura, 5 skulls, and 6 left scapulae?
a. 21.
b. 4.
c. 6.
d. 5.
A “midden” is:
a. Any kind of artifact that has been discarded by prehistoric populations.
b. A refuse deposit resulting from human activities.
c. Any kind of historic artifact.
d. A specific kind of storage structure used by prehistoric populations.
What hypothesis best explains the origin and content of Chavn iconography?
a. Chavn’s religious leaders deliberately imported lowland symbolism, perhaps
believing that exotic lowland people had powerful esoteric knowledge; this
interpretation is supported by ethnographic and ethnohistoric documentation
b. Paleoenvironmental change; the climate was warmer and more humid during Chavn
times, and therefore the highlands were able to support the lowland complex of animals
commonly depicted in Chavn art.
c. Population pressure; early Chavn people were forced from the tropical forests into
the highlands, where they introduced lowland plants and animals; these plants and
animals were represented in Chavn iconography to pay homage and deference to the
ancient homeland.
d. It was a conscious effort by the Chavn elite to maintain their status; Chavn
iconography was created by the elite, and served as a constant reminder to the general
population that only the elite had access to the highly desirable plants and animals
represented in Chavn art.
The scientific method provides a powerful way to investigate the world around us
because:
a. Unlike other more subjective methods, science can guarantee absolute truth.
b. Almost all researchers accept the infallibility of science, making research across
different disciplines compatible.
c. Science is self-correcting; as more facts about the world become known, science is
willing to reject flawed explanations in favor of better ones.
d. All of the above.
The theory made popular by V. Gordon Childe in the 1940s, explaining the origin of
animal domestication as a response by animals and people to arid conditions following
the end of the Pleistocene, which caused them to congregate around water sources is
the:
a. Hilly flanks theory.
b. Density-equilibrium theory.
c. Oasis theory.
d. Optimal foraging theory.
The ritual importance of Chavin de Huntar___________ through time; the local
community __________in size.
a. Decreased, increased
b. Increased, decreased
c. Decreased, decreased
d. Increased, increased
You are excavating a site in the Great Basin and you find a stratum that contains only
Elko points. This indicates to you that the stratum dates to a particular period. The Elko
point, in this example, can be referred to as a(n):
a. Functional type.
b. Temporal type.
c. Seriated type.
d. Morphological type.
The last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Nabonidus, is frequently known as the
“first archaeologist” because:
a. he was the first documented prehistoric individual to show an interest in the past.
b. he tried to answer questions about the past by looking at the physical remains of the
past.
c. he employed modern archaeological field techniques in his excavations.
d. he worked within an explicit theoretical paradigm.
Which of the following actions is not required under NAGPRA for institutions
receiving federal funding?
a. Institutions must inventory burials/grave goods and objects of cultural patrimony.
b. Institutions must consult with appropriate Native American tribes determined to be
“culturally affiliated” with the remains and objects regarding their repatriation.
c. Institutions must pay the tribe affiliated with burials/grave goods possessed by the
institution.
d. Institutions must agree to repatriate materials if requested.
What information do ice cores taken from several places in the world indicate?
a. The last 10,000 years have been the warmest time on the earth out of the last
100,000.
b. The climate over the last 10,000 years has been surprisingly stable.
c. Both A and B.
d. Global temperatures have decreased significantly in the last 100 years.
The nests of wood rats are useful for paleoenvironmental reconstruction because they
can preserve a record of environmental change for:
a. Decades.
b. Hundreds of years.
c. Thousands of years.
d. Hundreds of thousands of years.
The culture of the early (pre-AD 1660) British colonies that emphasized the group
rather than the individual, and in which the line between culture and nature was blurred,
is known as:
a. The Georgian order.
b. The Age of Reason.
c. The Renaissance.
d. The medieval mind-set.
According to the textbook, the Garbage Project has studied a number of social issues,
including
a. Alcohol consumption
b. Cell phone communication
c. Underage use of prescription drugs
d. Gun trafficking
The difference between modern cultural evolutionary paradigms and 19th century
unilineal evolutionism is:
a. Modern evolutionism highlights the role of ecological, demographic, and/or
technological factors in conditioning cultural evolution.
b. Modern evolutionism does not contain the racist overtones inherent in 19th century
unilineal evolutionary schemes.
c. Modern evolutionists agree that cultural behavior is not controlled by biology, and
that the human past is much more complex than 19th century evolutionists imagined it.
d. All of the above.
If ceramic vessels are grouped together based on the fact they were all used as storage
containers, in spite of the fact that design elements indicate they are from different time
periods, then they have been grouped according to:
a. Functional type.
b. Morphological type.
c. Temporal type.
d. Space-time systematics.
The analysis of past ritual behavior is archaeology’s major contribution to the study of
religion because:
a. While all prehistoric cultures participated in ritual activities, many prehistoric
cultures did not have religion.
b. Rituals are behavioral acts that often entail material culture and that therefore can be
represented in the archaeological record.
c. Most archaeologists agree that prehistoric religion cannot be studied because it is
archaeologically invisible; it is therefore a waste of time, energy, and money to attempt
such a study.
d. All of the above.
What limits surface surveys?
a. Survey cannot reveal rare sites.
b. Survey cannot replace excavation.
c. Survey can only find what lies on the ground.
d. Survey cannot be used in association with GIS.
The Garbage Project was started in Tucson, Arizona in 1973 by:
a. Emil Haury.
b. William Rathje.
c. Wilson Hughes.
d. Clea Koff.
What can likely explain the formation of the Maya state?
a. Stress on food resources created by high population density.
b. The need for an overarching system of integration.
c. Opportunities for economic control.
d. All of the above.
Why is an understanding of space-time systematics a crucial first step in understanding
why people did what they did in the past?
a. Space-time systematics automatically explains why prehistory took the course that it
did; in other words, explanatory hypotheses are built into space-time systematics.
b. Research questions generated by space-time systematics are easily answered because
the necessary data have already been collected.
c. It is impossible to understand why cultures change without first documenting
temporal and spatial change in artifact types.
d. All of the above.
Squier and Davis contributed to investigations of the Moundbuilders by:
a. Intensively and systematically surveying and recording roughly 200 mound sites.
b. Being among the first to argue that the Native Americans had indeed built the
mounds.
c. Remaining objective, avoiding speculations, and ultimately arriving at the truth.
d. All of the above.
Mano is a term that refers to
a. A fist-sized round, flat, handheld stone used for grinding foods.
b. A large, flat stone used as a stationary surface upon which seeds, tuber, and nuts are
ground.
c. A settlement where there is evidence of hunting.
d. A settlement where there is evidence of gathering.
Mary Douglas, a symbolic anthropologist, has argued that which of the following
explains Near Eastern food taboos such as the prohibition against eating pork?
a. Prohibited animals are those that violate cultural ideas about the order of creation.
b. Any food will be tabooed when the cost of producing it outweighs its value (in
calories or nutrients).
c. Animals included in food taboos are always those that do not occur naturally in the
geographic region of the taboo; either the animal never lived in the region, or they lived
there once and are no extinct.
d. All of the above.
Repatriation is seen by:
a. archaeologists and other scientists as a tragedy that will only lead to the destruction
of irreplaceable scientific materials.
b. Native Americans as social justice; reburial is the only way to right the wrongs
inflicted by centuries of colonialism.
c. archaeologists as an ethical decision; archaeologists are not the only ones who own
the past.
d. everyone as an extremely divisive issue; there is no one “Native American
perspective” or one “archaeological” perspective.
Lascaux cave in southern France is perhaps the most famous of all European caves,
containing many chambers and passageways with magnificent cave paintings and
dating to 17,000 years ago; in order to preserve the cave and the artwork within it, it is
now closed to regular public visitation.
One way or another, virtually all archaeological research depends on public support.
Because different volcanic flows contain identical amounts of trace elements, it is
nearly impossible to source obsidian using methods that rely on trace element analysis.
Today, historical archaeology is a means of discovering predictable relationships
between human adaptive strategies, ideology, and patterned variability in the
archaeological record.
The goals and research interests of historical archaeology have remained largely
unchanged since its earliest practice.
The “battleship” shape that the text mentions when discussing seriation refers to
changes in the “popularity” of a morphological type.
Potassium-argon or argon-argon dating would be useful techniques for dating a volcanic
formation containing hominid fossil remains.
It is generally accepted that provenience measurements taken during an archaeological
excavation can be taken from either the modern ground surface of the site or from a
datum point.
The re-examination of the Battle of the Little Big Horn documented that, as was
commonly believed by American settlers at the time, Custer and his men had indeed
fought calmly and in a controlled manner, well-disciplined to the end.
Many researchers argue that cognitive archaeology will be most successful when
historical and ethnographic documentation is unavailable, because with the use of such
data, the archaeologists’ creativity and imagination are limited.
Evidence supporting the idea of Unilineal Evolution includes the adoption of
agriculture; ethnographic data show that once hunter-gatherers become aware of
agricultural techniques, they adopt them quickly.
The “Law of Superposition” is also known as “Steno’s Law”.
The Antiquities Act, passed in 1906, set firm penalties for the looting of archaeological
sites, even by today’s standards; because this law has worked so well to discourage
looting, no additional acts have been necessary.
The design and workmanship of archaeological screens will vary from site to site, and
is much less important than mesh size.
Modern plantation and slave archaeology is usually aimed at architectural
reconstruction, with public education focused on the genteel antebellum way of life,
now a thing of the past.
In spite of the fact that Thomas Jefferson regarded the institution of slavery as brutal
and immoral, and that he himself favored its abolition, he nonetheless had a slave force
at times numbering 200 people.