Test 3 Short Answer

Question 1

Why do archaeologists believe that body decoration and personal ornamentation was significant in early human history?

Answer 1

Body decoration and personal ornamentation was significant in early human history because it supplied individuals with self awareness, group identity, and social signaling.

Question 2

When did regionalism in material culture emerge, and why is it significant?

Answer 2

It occurred in the late Woodland period.

Broke down long distance exchange networks.

Question 3

What is the Neolithic, and what are the 2 central characteristics that define it?

Answer 3

the last phase of the Stone Age, marked by the domestication of animals, the development of agriculture, and the manufacture of pottery and textiles.
Characteristics: settled agriculture, increased population

Question 4

What might cause a society that has transitioned from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to farming to be ‘trapped’ and unable to go back to hunting and gathering?

Answer 4

The abundant population. Switching back to hunting and gathering would cause a majority of the population to die off since there is significantly less food.

Question 5

What are the four scalar categories of Human societies and how is each defined? Describe one reason this is a helpful framework and one reason that this is a problematic framework.

Answer 5

Bands: small, egalitarian groups of hunter-gatherers
Segmentary societies : kinship-based groups, usually farming peoples, no formal political institutions
Chiefdoms: larger stratified populations, class system, political and religious leaders
States: secular leaders, social classes, armies, taxation, laws, expansive economy

Helpful: gives us insight and a way to compare and contrast societies.
Hurtful: a state is not “better” than a chiefdom and a chiefdom is not “better” than a band. They are just different developments of societies. Some people actually prefer for example a segmentary society to a state. So problem number one, one is not better or worse than the other. Problem number 2, development is not linear. You don’t have to go through segmentary society to get to state.

Question 6

What do anthropologists mean by “Behavioral Modernity?”

Answer 6

Fully human behavior based on symbolic thought and cultural creativity
Wikipedia answer: refer to a list of traits that distinguish present day humans and their recent ancestors from both living primates and other extinct hominid lineages

Question 7

What are the three primary traits associated with the European Mesolithic?

Answer 7

Microlithic tools (tiny flakes attached to spears)
Broad spectrum diet (fish, plants, meat)
Hunting and fishing settlements along rivers and lake shores.

Question 8

Define “Domestication,” explain the process, and give an example of a species originally domesticated in the Neolithic.

Answer 8

Domestication is an evolutionary process whereby humans modify the genetic makeup of a population of plants or animals.
Barley and Chickpea

Question 9

What are the five major traits of domesticated plant species? How do these traits relate to the process of domestication?

Answer 9

Increased size
Decrease in natural means of seed dispersal
Decrease in protective devices, e.g. husks
Seeds ripen faster
Simultaneous ripening of the seed or fruit

Question 10

What are the major proposed routes in the peopling of the Americas? Which is/are currently favored?

Answer 10

Coastal route and ice-free corridor. Coastal route is favored because it better explains how we got to South America so quickly.

Question 11

If you were a Paleoindian in the Americas, what would you subsistence base consist of?

Answer 11

Mostly meat. Big game animals.

Question 12

When did the Eastern Agricultural Complex emerge? Name two domesticates from this period.

Answer 12

5000 – 4400 BP (Late Archaic)

Maygrass & Knotweed

Question 13

What were the four key cultural innovations in the Woodland Period?

Answer 13

Widespread use of pottery
• Elaborate burial practices
• Long-distance trade
• Bow and Arrow

Question 14

When did maize enter the southeast? How did the introduction of maize change agriculture in the southeast?

Answer 14

Late Woodland period and Mississippian period

· Allowed for a starchy diet and for societies to settle down and rely on this as a main food source.

Question 15

Describe three ways in which Mississippian society was different from societies in the earlier Woodland Period.

Answer 15

Maize agriculture – 50% of their diet
Organized into chiefdoms with relative power and elites
They were not living on the coasts – characterized by mounds and plazas with a permanent village settlement
Systematic warfare with warriors

Question 16

What was one early theory for the formation of the state and why was it found to be inadequate?

Answer 16

Long-distance trade
Though long distance trade was important in the evolution of Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, it did not form states in societies such as Papua New Guinea.

Creation and control of:
– Hydraulic systems for irrigation
Hydraulic agriculture is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for the rise of the state
Many societies with irrigation never experienced state formation, and states developed without hydraulic systems
– Long-distance trade
Though long distance trade was important in the evolution of Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, it did not form states in societies such as Papua New Guinea.

Question 17

How are “voluntaristic” and “coercive” processes of initial state formation different?

Answer 17

In voluntaristic state formation, populations may voluntarily band together, giving up their individual sovereignties in exchange for the security of the state. On the other hand, in coercive state formation conflict and dominance of some population over another is regarded as key to the formation of the state.

Question 18

What are the three primary variables in Carniero’s theory of the origin of the state?

Answer 18

Robert Carniero’s Circumscription Theory is a multivariate theory that involves multiple causes, factors, and variables.
The three primary variables include
Environmental circumscription/ resource concentration,
Increasing population,
Warfare- winners of warfare become elites and the losers become commoners.

Question 19

Describe 4 of the 6 basic characteristics of state-level societies?

Answer 19

1. Control regional territory
2. Productive farming economies
3. Social Stratification
4. Monumental architecture
5. Record keeping system
6. Accumulation of resources

Some of the basic characteristics of state-level societies include;
Control of a specific regional territory,
productive agricultural economies,
accumulation of resources,
social stratification,
public building and monumental architecture,
and a record keeping system.

Question 20

Name the scales of human societies.

Answer 20

Bands: small, egalitarian groups of hunter gatherers
Segmentary societies : kinship-based groups, usually farming peoples, no formal political institutions
Chiefdoms: larger stratified populations, class system, political and religious leaders
States: secular leaders, social classes, armies, taxation, laws, expansive economy

Question 21

Archaeologists explain the collapses of states in multiple ways. What are two common anthropological explanations of why states collapse?

Answer 21

Disease

Environmental degradation

Question 22

What was the subject of the first human writing?

Answer 22

The sumerians used cuneiform to record economic activities

Question 23

What does it mean for a monument to be mutable? Give an example from either class or the Scarre article.

Answer 23

1. It can change meaning over time
2. Arc de Triomphe (at first it was a celebration of war victory, it became
   Commemoration of fallen soldiers) (Napoleon, Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, Germans, Freedom, and Remembrance).

Question 24

Describe how monuments of war have changed.

Answer 24

Ancient world/ Pre WWI - Monuments to great men/victories in battle
Post WWI/Modern Day - Monuments as memorials to those slain in combat

Question 25

How does ideology relate to monumentality?

Answer 25

The dominant ideology is produced by the dominant class, extended/imposed on the rest often in the form of a monument

Question 26

How do elite members of a society use monuments to legitimize themselves?

Answer 26

They seize control and use monuments to legitimize themselves – they inscribe status onto the natural and built environment.

Question 27

List one legal and one illegal threat to the archaeological heritage

Answer 27

Illegal threats to the archaeological heritage
Looting-
Looter’s pits in Iraq 2003
The illicit trade in antiquities: illegally selling antiquities

Legal threats to the Archaeological heritage -
Infrastructure and land development

Question 28

Who is Kennewick Man? Briefly explain the controversy surrounding his remains.

Answer 28

Kennewick Man was discovered by two college students in Kennewick, Washington. He is one of the oldest skeletons ever found in the Americas, dating back to 9,000 years ago.
controversy: Who owns the remains? The ones who discovered it, or the owners of the land in which it was found. Currently under no single group’s possession. Remains held important information about the origins and “span” of the native americans in the new world
Scientists sued the government attempting to keep remains for scientific study
Scientists were allowed to study because he was too old to be traced to a single native group. Related to an Asian population.

Question 29

Who Built Stonehenge? What were their societies like?

Answer 29

• Neolithic society In 3000 BC (Stone Age)

- Raised wheat and barley. Wore leather. Aristocratic society. Most males were buried at Stonehenge.

Question 30

what is blue Stonehenge

Answer 30

blue stone is the ancient stone used to construct the tall structures that surround Stonehenge. I don’t think “blue Stonehenge” is a place, rather it is a rock used. Blue stonehenge was the second stonehenge they found next to the river. Blue stone was found there, but it was believed the moved the stones to the main stonehenge later. No one knows why this was done yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluestonehenge

Question 31

Relationship Between stonehenge and the nearby durrington walls

Answer 31

Archeologist believe that the durrington walls marked the realm of the living and Stonehenge marked the realm of the dead, the river linked the two. Durrington walls was where people lived, both the Stonehenge and durrington walls had a road leading to the river, people came to durrington walls on occasion. LINKED ON SUMMER AND WINTER SOLSTICE.

Question 32

Describe at least 3 kinds of archaeological evidence used to reconstruct what happened at the site.

Answer 32

Stonehenge was the realm of the dead and Durrington walls was the realm of the living. They both link during the summer and winter Solstice. The remains of the dead would be collected at Durrington and then poured into the Avon river going down to Stonehenge.

1. Stone balls (ball bearing technology to move other stones)
2. Grooves (made naturally and pointed where the sun touched the earth during the summer solstice).
3. Dug holes with flint stones (hold stones in blue Stonehenge).