World Archaeology Exam 1

Question 1

What is Anthropology?

Answer 1

Anthropology seeks to understand human identity, human behavior, and human nature in terms of both biology and culture.

Question 2

How does Anthropology differ from other fields

Answer 2

1. Holistic
2. Focuses on human populations
3. Comparative and cross-cultural
4. Fieldwork
5. Evolution

Question 3

Five major subfields of Anthropology

Answer 3

1. Physical (Biological) Anthropology
2. Ethnology
3. Linguistics
4. Archaeology
5. Applied Anthropology

Question 4

1. Goal of Archaeology: Chronology

Answer 4

Asking how old an object, site, or culture is.
If we do not have control of time, then there is little purpose in what we do.

Question 5

2. Goal of Archaeology: Describing Past Lifeways

Answer 5

How we record past lives. Diet, local resources, social organization, regional trade, mobility, ideology, etc.

Question 6

3. Goal of Anthropology: Understanding Cultural Process

Answer 6

How and why does culture change?
Ultimately most important. What causes change?

Question 7

Christian Thomsen’s Three-Age System

Answer 7

1. Iron Age
2. Bronze Age
   a. Late Bronze Age
   b. Middle Bronze Age
   c. Early Bronze Age
3. Stone Age
   a. Neolithic (New Stone Age)
   b. Paleolithic (Old Stone Age)

Question 8

Why did Christian Thomson create the Three-Age System?

Answer 8

He began to reorganize the collections, displaying items together that had been found together.
Thomsen reasons that stone, bronze, and iron artifacts represent different technological periods and are not typically found together.

Question 9

Museums and Imperialism

Answer 9

During the early 1800s, several European nations strove to collect ancient monuments from their colonies and bring back to their national museums, where they could be ‘appreciated.’
They were excavated to be put into public and private collections. Not much care was put into preserving them.

Question 10

How did the ideas of Julian Steward affect the development of American archaeology?

Answer 10

Cultural Ecology: Julian Steward linked cultural context with the environmental context and how they interacted with each other.

Question 11

How did the ideas of Lewis Binford affect the development of American archaeology?

Answer 11

Processual Archaeology: Lewis Binford presented a point to think that external (outside the mind) forces are the most important in cultural process, such as population growth, environmental change, trade, or warfare.

Question 12

How did the ideas of Ian Hodder affect the development of American archaeology?

Answer 12

Interpretive Archaeology: Ian Hodder argued that we need to understand how past people viewed their worlds and how this shaped their material culture. Some take it further and want to get view points from many different kinds of people.

Question 13

Elgin Marbles and their controversy

Answer 13

Pantheon Statues from Greece

They were given to Britain in the 1800s. Greece, where they were made, wants them back but they are in the British Museum.

Question 14

What are the three Goals of Archaeology?

Answer 14

1. Chronology
2. Describing past ways of life.
3. Understanding cultural process.

Question 15

What is NAGPRA and its purpose

Answer 15

Native American Graves and Repatriation Act: Provides a process for Native American cultures to request a return of objects.
These include: human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony.
It has to be a recognized culture to make a request.

Question 16

Holocene

Answer 16

Present day Epoch. 11,700kya–Today.

Question 17

Kennewick Man and its controversy

Answer 17

Pieces of a skeleton found by two teens in Kennewick, Washington in 1996.
1. Was thought to be part Caucasian. Turned out to be Native American.
2. Many groups took claim to the remains and repatriation processes were halted to figure out who it actually belong to. Turned over to Native Americans, and then it was buried a couple of days later.

Question 18

Natufian Culture

Answer 18

Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) 12,000–10,000BP.
1. Warming trends began 13,000BP. Warm coastal climate.
2. Small semi-subterranean homes. Contained storage and roasting pits.
3. Used sickles. Cemeteries show culture and social status (burial items).

Question 19

National Museum of the American Indian

Answer 19

It is located in Washington D.C and is there to preserve Native American artifacts and organize them chronologically. It is also there to paint them as people rather than as curiosities.

Question 20

Capsian Culture

Answer 20

Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age)
10,000–5,000BP.
1. Relied on shells, ostrich bones and eggs.

Question 21

Mesolithic

Answer 21

Middle Stone Age.
1. Social differences, warfare, and cemeteries arise.
2. Stone tools arise. Microliths (small flint heads) arise.

Question 22

Site

Answer 22

Location with evidence of past human activity

Question 23

Neolithic

Answer 23

New Stone Age.
1. Pottery (Middle East, 10,000BP), weaving, and trade. Societies become social internally and externally.
2. Agriculture and permanent settlements arise.

Question 24

Artifact

Answer 24

An object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest.

Question 25

What is the difference between relative and absolute dating?

Answer 25

Relative: Comparing layers and things nearby to determine age (ex. stratigraphy, typological, seriation).
Absolute: Giving a date that is as close as possible, measured in years. (Involves radiocarbon dating, tree-ring dating, obsidian hydration).

Question 26

What did Gordon Childe believe about the Neolithic?

Answer 26

Believed plant domestication in select areas slowly spread outward, causing the Neolithic Revolution.

Question 27

Biological Material

Answer 27

Remains of plants and animals. Can include remains of people as well.

Question 28

Feature

Answer 28

Parts of the site or environment that stand out or are more important (important structures, for ex.).

Question 29

Why is context so important?

Answer 29

So we can know what could have happened at a site and whaat may have caused it. It also gives a sense of purpose to a site instead just a hole that contains shining things.

Question 30

Four Theories about Plant Domestication

Answer 30

1. Environmental Change (Gordon Childe)
2. Social Change
3. Population Increase
4. Natural Selection

Question 31

TRUE OR FALSE: Mesolithic foragers had a healthier diet than Neolithic farmers.

Answer 31

TRUE. Foragers had more diverse diets and are argued to be healthier for it.

Question 32

How can Aerial photographs lead to discovery of sites?

Answer 32

From these photos, you can spot things that you normally couldn’t spot on the ground.

Question 33

Remote sensing

Answer 33

Scanning the composition of the ground

Question 34

Cultural Resource Management

Answer 34

the vocation and practice of managing heritage assets, and other cultural resources such as contemporary art. It incorporates Cultural Heritage Management which is concerned with traditional and historic culture.

Question 35

Pottery Knowledge

Answer 35

1. First found in the Middle East 10,000BP.
2. One of the defining factors of the Neolithic.
3. Ceramics are easier to make, shape, color, and trade than stone counterparts.

Question 36

When did modern people spread out of Africa?

Answer 36

90,000–60,000BP

Question 37

Upper Paleolithic (Old Stone Age)

Answer 37

Old Stone Age. 40,000–10,000.
1. Bones, antlers, shell, and teeth.
2. New hunting techniques such as domesticated dogs and throwing sticks (atlatls).
3. Pigments and ores. Decorative shells. Social status goods and exotic goods.
4. Documented art and calendars.

Question 38

Pleistocene

Answer 38

Ice Age Epoch. 1.8mya–12,000kya. Precedes the Holocene.

Question 39

How did AMS improve upon older radiocarbon dating techniques?

Answer 39

1. It can get results from smaller samples.
2. It can date back up to 80,000 year old samples over the original 50,000 years.

Question 40

Lewis Binford and the Inuit: Linking arguments for past societies

Answer 40

1. Ethnoarchaeology: The study of modern societies to understand societies of the past.
2. Drop zone: Something that is dropped and never retrieved
3. Toss zone: Something that was toss away and never recovered or used again.
4. Dump zone: Something that is simply used and then dumped on the ground, never to be used again.
5. Activity areas: Parts of a settlement or shelter used for different purposes.