Help
Options
Didn't know it?
click below
click below
Knew it?
click below
click below
Don't Know
Remaining cards (0)
Know
retry
shuffle
restart
0:00
Embed Code - If you would like this activity on your web page, copy the script below and paste it into your web page.
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Archaeology Final
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is an archaeological site? Define it. | An archaeological site is any place where material evidence of past civilization or past human life/existence lies. |
| Archaeologists employ systematic regional surveys mainly to: | Arrive at accurate descriptions of the range of archaeological material across a landscape |
| A settlement pattern is: | The distribution of archaeological sites across a region |
| The quality of information collected through survey can be affected by: | A. Sampling strategy B. Working condition C. Transect interval |
| Today’s archaeology views sites differently than the way they were viewed in the past in that: | A. Today’s archaeological conservation ethic suggests that we dig less and save more of the archaeological record for the future |
| A “GPS” refers to a: | B. Device that uses radio waves from satellites to calculate position |
| Which of the following are used as non-invasive, below ground archaeological survey techniques? | A. Soil resistivity B. Proton magnetometer C. Ground penetrating radar |
| Geographic information systems (GIS) are: | A. Computer programs designed to store, retrieve, analyze, and display cartographic data |
| GIS was able to show that Chacoan roads did not follow the path of least resistance across the landscape. This can most likely be explained by: | The fact that the roads held a symbolic rather than purely economic value to the Ancestral Pueblo people |
| YYou discover artifacts in the Near East where a temple is believed to have existed. To minimize excavation, you need to locate the temple first. How can you map the site without digging? | Use ground penetrating radar to detect the walls B. Use aerial photography to detect the outline Use A or B depending on their potential utility in this specific case |
| An artifact’s provenience is: | B. The artifact’s location relative to a system of spatial data collection |
| It is essential that archaeologists take abundant, accurate, and detailed field notes during excavations because: | A. Archaeology destroys data as it is gathered; once a site is excavated it cannot be re-excavated |
| When archaeologists dig excavation units, they are concerned with: | A. Horizontal provenience B. Vertical provenience C. Keeping the walls of the unit straight and perpendicular |
| If an archaeologist is excavating in arbitrary levels: | B. Natural strata are probably lacking or difficult to recognize C. The natural strata may be very thick (e.g., more than 50 centimeters) |
| Natural levels are preferable to arbitrary levels because: | A. Arbitrary levels can potentially jumble together artifacts that come from different natural strata and thus different periods of time |
| Let’s say you are excavating a site. You are being pretty careful, and are using 1/4" mesh screens to sieve the dirt after it is removed by a trowel and dustpan from the site. You find a few very small but well-preserved fish bones. The next day: | While surveying in the Near East, you find artifacts where a temple may have stood. To avoid excavation, how can you map the temple’s location without digging? |
| Archaeological “site formation” refers to: | . The human and natural actions responsible for the creation of an archaeological site |
| What could account for chronologically older artifacts being found above younger artifacts in a stratigraphic sequence? | A. Faunalturbation (e.g., rodent burrows) B. Cultural disturbance (e.g., prehistoric digging of a hearth or pit) C. Graviturbation |
| Organic remains are best preserved in: | A cave, where conditions remain permanently cool and dry B. A bog, where conditions remain permanently wet and depleted of oxygen |
| Taphonomy is useful to archaeology because it: | . Helps archaeologists separate the effects of natural processes and human behavior on site formation |
| A relative date is: | B. A date expressed relative to another (e.g., earlier, later, more recent, etc.) rather than in absolute terms. |
| 2. Seriation differs from the index fossil concept in that: | A. Instead of relying on the presence or absence of distinctive kinds of artifacts, it relies on changes in the frequencies of artifacts or styles. |
| Tree ring dating is possible because: | A. Variable tree ring widths preserve information about past climatic change and can be fit into a long-term chronological sequence. |
| 4. 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. |
| 5. Which of the following dating methods provides the most precise date? | C. Dendrochronology. |
| 6. Factors that can affect the utility of radiocarbon dating include: | D. All of the above. |
| An advantage of the accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) method of radiocarbon dating is: | C. AMS dating requires much smaller carbon samples than standard dating methods. |
| 8. Radiocarbon dating cannot reliably date anything older than about: | B. 45,000 years. |
| 9. You have excavated a site, but have recovered no organic remains. The only material recovered from the site is pottery. Which of the following technique would you use to date pottery? | B. Thermoluminescence. |
| 0. A difference between optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and thermoluminescence (TL) is: | A. OSL dates the last time sediment was exposed to light, while TL dates the last time artifacts were heated. |
| Which of the following is true of archaeological types? | B. Archaeological types are abstractions; the same object could be classified in many different ways. |
| A good typology will: | A. Minimize differences within each created type and maximize differences between different types. |
| Which of the following measurements could provide useful information about an artifact’s size? | A. Length. B. Width. C. Weight. |
| An archaeological culture: | C. Is a region within a culture area whose material culture differed from that of other regions. |
| Archaeologists divide prehistory into periods based on: | D. Changes in observable material culture, such as house form, pottery, or subsistence. |
| Which of the following is true of archaeological phases? | A. They are defined by temporal types which have specific spatial distributions. B. They are blocks of time characterized by one or more distinctive artifact types. C. They further divide and refine archaeological periods. |
| 7. Why is an understanding of space-time systematics a crucial first step in understanding why people did what they did in the past? | C. It is impossible to understand why cultures change without first documenting temporal and spatial change in artifact types. |
| Lithics and ceramics are the most ubiquitous artifacts and are very useful for: | A. building a chronology. B. defining culture areas. C. reconstructing some aspects of social organization. |
| Which of the following is NOT an essential part of pottery production? A. Slip. B. Temper. C. Firing atmosphere. D. Honesty. | D. Honesty. |
| When analyzing a faunal assemblage, zooarchaeologists attempt to identify a specimen to: | A. Element. B. Taxon. C. Side (i.e. right or left). |
| 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? | C. 6. |
| How do we know that Folsom hunters camped at the Agate Basin site in the spring? | B. Bison tooth eruption patterns indicate the presence of juvenile bison that died in late March or early April. |
| 4. In reconstructing ancient environments, pollen is useful because: | A. It preserves well over a long period of time. B. Large amounts of pollen are trapped in sediment over time. C. Pollen is distinctive of the species of plant that produced it. |
| 5. If an archaeologist is analyzing tiny silica particles that were originally contained in plants, he or she is analyzing: | Phytoliths |
| 6. In order to understand exactly what a person ate within a 24 hour period, the most useful source of data would be: | D. Coprolite analysis. |
| 7. How does the sciatic notch of females differ from that of males? | B. It is wider in females and narrower in males. |
| 8. What could a bioarchaeologist look at to determine the age at death of a juvenile human skeleton? | A. Tooth eruption patterns. B. Patterns of bone fusion. |
| 9. You are examining a burial site, and are interested in the diet of the people, in particular, how much meat people were consuming on a daily basis. What might you examine? | B. Levels of Nitrogen-15 relative to Nitrogen-14 in the bones. |
| 10. Which of the following is true of mitochondrial DNA? | B. It is only transferred from mother to offspring. |
| Archaeometry provides effective tools for understanding: | A. ancient technologies. B. ancient trade networks. C. human diet and migration. |
| X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) measure the amount of different elements and can be used to: | A. detect the provenance of the raw material of stone tools and ceramics. |
| Meanings associated with ancient artifacts and features can best be examined through: | C. contextual analysis of those artifacts and features coupled with a comparison with ethnographic and ethnohistoric data. |
| The study of effigy pipes uncovered from Hopewell Culture in North America (100 BC-AD 400) suggests that: | D. pipes were used in rituals to mediate inter-group relations. |
| Cognitive ability of early modern humans, especially during the Upper Paleolithic period (ca. 40,000-10,000 years ago), was extremely limited; cave art turned out to be just random graffiti without specific meanings. | False |
| Monumental architecture in ancient civilizations (e.g., Chavin de Huantar in the Andes and Teotihuacan in Mesoamerica) often represents: | B. a set of meanings associated with worldviews and cosmologies. |
| Architectural analysis of house size variation has revealed that the larger size of houses is always correlated with the higher socioeconomic status of the residents. | B. False |
| Experimental archaeology is based on replicating past human behaviors that we cannot observe anymore. Which of the following is NOT a typical experimental archaeological study? | D. Human sacrifice |
| In ethnoarchaeology, past human behaviors are inferred by establishing material correlates of human behaviors through the observation of contemporary societies. | True |
| Recent studies have shown that experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology: | C. are essential for bridging archaeological data with human behaviors and/or natural processes. |
| The oldest stone tools (Oldowan Industry) are dated back to 2.6 m.y.a. (million years ago). This means that our ancestors before 2.6 m.y.a. did not use any tools. | B. False |
| 2. Some Oldowan tools were used for butchering animals, which suggests early humans were hunting or scavenging. We know this based on the results of: | A. Use-wear analysis of stone tools. B. Faunal analysis. |
| 3. Acheulean handaxe is a symmetrical, teardrop-shaped biface and was an all-purpose tool. It was associated with: | B. Homo erectus |
| 4. The Upper Paleolithic period (ca. 40,000-10,000 years ago) is characterized by a number of technological innovations. Which of the following is NOT the invention of this period? | C. Incipient metallurgy (e.g., copper). |
| 5. Which of the following is NOT true of the domestication of plants and animals? | B. It appears to have occurred at the same time around 10,000 BP across the globe. |
| 6. The “density-equilibrium theory,” proposed by Binford (the Materialist paradigm), claims that: | A. the adoption of agriculture was a product of population growth that eventually causes the human population to exceed the hunting and gathering carrying capacity of an environment. |
| 7. Which of the following is a true statement of differences between the food-producing traditions of SW Asia and Mesoamerica? | A. Domesticated animals played a greater role in SW Asia than in Mesoamerica. B. Sedentism preceded plant domestication in SW Asia whereas the latter preceded the former in Mesoamerica. |
| Which of the following is NOT true of the consequences of agriculture? | C. More balanced and healthier diet |
| 9. All the human societies develop through the same evolutionary trajectory from band to tribe to chiefdom and eventually to state. Therefore, contemporary hunter-gatherers are primitive people and are remnants of ancient human cultures. | False |
| 10. Wittfogel’s Irrigation hypothesis states that large-scale irrigation was a driving force of social evolution and it is proven to be true for all the ancient civilizations. | False |
| Historical records are always superior to archaeological records, and thus the contribution of historical archaeology has been very limited. | B. False |
| 2. Answer why it is true or false. | C. Both historical and archaeological records are biased. |
| 3. Which of the following is NOT true of historical archaeologists? | D. They mostly use historical documents for their study rather than excavated materials. |
| Which is NOT a main theme of historical archaeology? | C. Dynastic history of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. |
| It is illegal to excavate or collect remains from archaeological sites on public lands (but not on private lands except for burials) without government permission in the US. | A. True |
| In the National Register of Historical Places established in 1966 through the National Historical Preservation Act, all the archaeological sites, including scatters of lithic materials, are registered. | B. False |
| SHPO and the Advisory Council, with CRM archaeologists, assess how construction projects affect archaeological sites, regardless of size. | A. True |
| The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), established in 1990, states that all the prehistoric (i.e. pre-contact) archaeological materials have to be repatriated to Native Americans. | False |
| UNESCO’s World Heritage sites (e.g., Machu Picchu in Peru) belong to the United Nations, and no country is allowed to modify the landscape of those sites without a UN permit. | False |
| Which of the following is NOT true about applied archaeology? | D. Since we can observe and talk to modern people, archaeology is not useful for understanding modern cultures. |
Created by:
#FailingMyClasses