Q&A Hero

Q: The Upper Paleolithic, the last major division of the Old World Paleolithic, dates to: a. 10,000 BC to present. b. 40,000-10,000 BC. c. 90,000-10,000 BC. d. None of the above; the temporal divisions of the Old World Upper Paleolithic vary dramatically in different regions of the Old World.

Q: The occurrence of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe is marked by the appearance of: a. A complex technology of stone, bone, and antler as well as art. b. Animal domestication. c. Agriculture. d. All of the above.

Q: The earliest evidence of artistic expression occurs _______ years ago, but becomes widespread only_______ years ago. a. 40,000/10,000 b. 90,000/40,000. c. 200,000/90,000. d. 500,000/200,000.

Q: Why do many archaeologists feel that oral traditions are not as reliable a source of information as archaeological data? a. Oral traditions can change over time; the older the events described, the more likely that elements were dropped or added. b. Oral traditions can be selective in what they remember, altering the nature or sequence of events over time to suit particular political needs. c. Oral traditions often encode cultural and religious knowledge that is not rooted in the material world, and that therefore cannot be scientifically evaluated. d. All of the above.

Q: According to Richard Burger, what best explains the widespread adoption of Chavn religion as evidenced by the spread of Chavn iconography across the central Andes between 500 and 250 BC? a. Political expansion; local communities were subject to military occupation by Chavn society, and local religions were prohibited and quickly replaced by Chavn religion. b. The reliance of neighboring communities on Chavn agricultural crops; crops were traded to local communities in exchange for political and religious allegiance to Chavn society. c. The extension of a powerful shared cosmology which resulted in the growth of complex interregional exchange networks. d. None of the above.

Q: 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.

Q: Chavn iconography commonly depicts: a. Chavn deities and elites being worshipped by the common people, often containing scenes of human sacrifice. b. Animals local to the Chavn region and those that the Chavn people depended upon for food, including wild deer, vicuna, llama, and guinea pigs. c. Stylized creatures native to forests of the eastern slope some several hundred miles away, and not occurring in the local highland environment. d. Agricultural scenes of crops the Chavn people relied upon, as well as their extensive irrigation systems.

Q: Why is the Chavn culture of the central Andes considered the first Andean civilization? a. Because of its stratified social and political organization and its monumental achievements in metallurgy, weaving, irrigation systems, and stone sculpture. b. Because of its intensive agricultural subsistence strategy. c. Because in spite of the fact that the Chavn people subsisted solely by hunting and gathering, they were still able to develop a sophisticated iconography that reflected a sophisticated cosmology. d. Because unlike previous cultures in the region, archaeological evidence has shown that the Chavn culture produced art and music.

Q: How could Robert Hall's interpretations about the symbolic meanings of Hopewell effigy pipes be tested? a. They could be tested directly simply by examining ethnographic data relating to the symbolic meaning of historic peace pipes. b. They could be tested indirectly by assessing the archaeological record of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, and determining whether the social and political ramifications predicted by Hall's hypothesis are archaeologically visible. c. If abundant evidence of conflict is present in Hopewell sites along with abundant effigy pipes, Hall's interpretation would be supported. d. They could not be tested; this is the major problem with cognitive archaeological approaches.

Q: Finely carved Hopewell effigy pipes have been interpreted as ritual artifacts. Robert L. Hall argued from ethnographic analogy in the late 1970s that these pipes: a. Represented ritual weapons (atlatls). b. Functioned as peace pipes functioned historically. c. Helped maintain relationships between communities, reducing regional differences and promoting contact and communication. d. All of the above.

Q: 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.

Q: 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.

Q: Archaeologists refer to the common set of symbols found in the Midwestern United States between 200 BC and AD 400 as the: a. Mississippian Interaction Sphere. b. Hopewell Interaction Sphere. c. Midwestern Ceremonial Complex. d. Magdalenian Symbolic Complex.

Q: 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.

Q: The difference between a symbol and a sign is: a. A symbol has connection to what it signifies, while a sign does not. b. A sign has a connection to what it signifies, while a symbol does not. c. Symbol is an archaeological term that refers to prehistoric behavior, while sign is an ethnographic term that refers to the behavior of living people. d. There is no difference between them; symbol and sign are terms that are use interchangeably.

Q: Which of the following is true of symbols and symbolic behavior? a. The ability to use symbols lies at the heart of what it means to be human; uniquely human attributes, such as language, are made possible by the ability to use symbols. b. Symbols have no necessary connection to their culturally assigned meanings; this means that the same symbols can differ in meaning cross-culturally, and that symbolic behavior is difficult to study archaeologically. c. The same symbol can carry different meanings in different contexts within the same culture. d. All of the above.

Q: An object or act that by cultural convention stands for something else with which it has no necessary connection is a(n): a. Symbol. b. Sign. c. Icon. d. Artifact.

Q: Which of the following is true of cognitive archaeology? a. It is appealing to cultural materialists who are less concerned with interpreting symbolic relationships than with reconstructing the material conditions of life. b. It is the study of all those aspects of ancient culture that are a product of the human mind. c. It is based more in the processual than in the postprocessual paradigm. d. Hypotheses generated within cognitive archaeology cannot be tested, and are therefore unscientific.

Q: Processual archaeology is appealing to some archaeologists because: a. It is concerned with discovering and interpreting symbolic relationships between material culture and the human mind. b. It emphasizes the values, ideas, and beliefs that make people human, and is less concerned with the material conditions of existence. c. It places priority on the very things that archaeologists are most confident in recovering from archaeological sites, such as environment, technology, and economy. d. All of the above.

Q: Status refers to the rights, duties, and privileges that define the nature of interpersonal relations.

Q: Archeologists think in terms of only residential groups, excluding non residential groups.

Q: 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.

Q: The purpose of adding temper to clay is to prevent cracking and improve the strength of the ceramic item.

Q: Matrilineal societies are extremely common, making up roughly 75% of the world's societies today; archaeologists also believe they were very common in the past.

Q: In general, bilateral descent is associated with industrialized nations; patrilineal descent is associated with a wide range of conditions such as hunting and gathering, agriculture, and pastoralism, as well as internal warfare; and matrilineal descent is associated with horticulture, long distance hunting, and warfare with distant enemies.

Q: If you call your father's brother's offspring "brother" and "sister" instead of "cousin", and you call your mother's sister's offspring "cousin", you most likely belong to a matrilineage.

Q: Kinship systems describe relationships based solely on biological descent.

Q: Ethnographic data indicate that when pottery production moves from manufacture for the residential group to manufacture for the nonresidential group, the task of pottery production shifts from women to men.

Q: In anthropology, the terms "gender" and "sex" are used interchangeably.

Q: In order to infer ancient social and political organization, it is important to remember that material culture reflects symbolic meaning as well as functional behaviors.

Q: The differential participation of males and females in the various social, economic, political, and religious institutions of a group is termed a. Gender ideology. b. Berdaches. c. Gender role. d. Sexual dichotomy.

Q: Anthropologists distinguish between gender and sex. Sex refers to a. Culturally constructed ideas about sex differences. b. The human capability to reproduce. c. Inherited biological differences between males and females. d. Biological differences that are not inherited.

Q: Members of the Tahitian villages were organized into competing chiefdoms ruled by a "sacred chief." Below the "sacred chiefs" were a. Other "sacred chiefs." b. Small chiefs. c. Sub-chiefs. d. The "sacred chief" was the only ruling chief.

Q: That material culture reflects symbolic meanings as well as functional behaviors a. Makes archaeological patterning easy to understand. b. Makes archeological patterning difficult to understand. c. Makes it impossible infer ancient social and political organization from artifacts. d. Makes it easy to tell if objects are best interpreted in terms of their symbolic or functional meanings.

Q: Physical, face to face associations of people are referred to by archeologists as a. Non-residential groups b. Residential groups c. Residences d. Non-residences

Q: Archaeologists know that the pottery wheel is associated with a. The horse drawn cart b. Craft specialization c. Marketing of pottery d. Craft specializations and marketing of pottery.

Q: We know much about what Maya hieroglyphs mean because a. Maya left written explanations. b. Maya epigraphers can read the hieroglyphs. c. Maya hieroglyphs are exactly the same as Egyptian hieroglyphs. d. We do not confuse hieroglyphs with art.

Q: Which of the following sourcing studies are not used to demonstrate the geographic scale of an economic and/or political organization? a. Obsidian b. Clay c. Temper d. Soil

Q: 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.

Q: In the reconstruction of social and political organizations archaeologists remember a. Artifacts were merely utilitarian items. b. Artifacts carried no social meanings. c. Artifacts carried symbolic meanings that reflect elements of social and political organization. d. It is not necessary to have well-supported ethnographic analogy.

Q: 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.

Q: A technique used to determine the source of pottery by identifying the trace element composition of the clay or temper used to manufacture the pot is: a. Petrographic analysis. b. Instrumental neutron activation analysis. c. Energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence. d. Any or all of the above.

Q: The current sourcing method used to fingerprint obsidian, and used by Richard Hughes to verify James Griffin's determination that obsidian in the Ohio Hopewell mounds had come from Obsidian Cliff in Yellowstone National Park some 2400 kilometers away is: a. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). b. Petrographic analysis. c. Microscopic observation of thin sections. d. X-ray fluorescence (XRF).

Q: Petrographic analysis involves: a. Shooting an x-ray beam onto lithic raw material causing the electrons to become excited and emit fluorescent energy. b. Trace element analysis of lithic raw material to obtain a "fingerprint" and identify source. c. Identifying the mineral composition of a pot's temper and clay through microscopic analysis of thin sections of the pottery. d. All of the above; petrographic analysis refers to all techniques that attempt to source ceramic or lithic raw material.

Q: The cultural tradition that is found primarily in the Ohio River Valley and its tributaries dating between 200 BC and AD 400, that constructed geometric earthworks and effigy mounds, and that is known for its elaborate mortuary rituals is: a. Mississippian. b. Moundville. c. Hopewell. d. Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.

Q: If a person goes to the natural source area of a raw material and either extracts the material him- or herself or trades for it or for finished products, he or she is engaging in: a. Direct acquisition. b. Down-the-line trade. c. Raw material sourcing. d. The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.

Q: Analyses of burial populations from Mississippian sites indicate: a. Clear status differences among men and women, as well as among classes, reflected by types and abundance of grave goods. b. That men ate more meat than women, and that high status men ate more meat than low status men. c. That although the elite had access to resources that low status individuals did not, the quality of life of low status individuals did not appear negatively affected. d. All of the above.

Q: By assuming that the treatment of people in death reflects their status and roles in life, the data from more than 3000 burials at Moundville indicates that: a. Moundville society was egalitarian. b. Moundville society was ranked, most likely a chiefdom. c. House structures as well as burials were unrelated to the status of people at Moundville. d. Moundville society was matrilineal; females were buried with many more grave goods than males.

Q: The name of the cultural tradition that was widespread across much of the eastern United States from AD 800-1500, engaged in intensive village-based maize horticulture, and constructed earthen platform mounds is: a. Mississippian. b. Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. c. Moundville. d. All of the above.

Q: An egalitarian society: a. Is a society in which people generally have equal access to critical, life-sustaining resources. b. Contains roughly as many valued positions as there are persons capable of filling them. c. Recognizes status on the basis of gender and age. d. All of the above.

Q: A social system in which positions of status are limited, and thus where not everyone of talent may achieve high status or prestige is called a(n): a. Ranked society. b. Egalitarian society. c. Nonresidential group. d. Residential group.

Q: Schillaci and Stojanowski (University of New Mexico) argue from their analysis of the Pueblo Bonito burial population that the people of Pueblo Bonito practiced bilocal rather than matrilocal residence because: a. Ethnographic analogy suggests that the presence of prestigious grave goods accompanying both male and female skeletons at Pueblo Bonito is characteristic of bilocal residence patterns. b. Mitochondrial DNA studies showed that males were more closely biologically related than females. c. Analysis of cranial traits showed that the male sample possessed greater variation than the female sample, a pattern not expected within a matrilocal residence pattern. d. Analysis of cranial traits showed that the female sample possessed greater variation than the male sample, a pattern not expected within a matrilocal residence pattern; bilocal residence was also common among the eastern pueblos at the time of European contact.

Q: Why has Peter Peregrine (Lawrence University) suggested that Chacoan pueblo society practiced matrilocal residence? a. The small size of Chacoan pueblos (<60 square meters) lies within the size limits of ethnographically documented matrilocal residences. b. The side-by-side spatial arrangement of pueblo rooms reflects social solidarity, which ethnographic data suggest is characteristic of matrilocal residence. c. Bioarchaeological analysis of Chacoan burial populations has shown that females are more genetically similar to each other than are males; this means that females stayed in their village of origin while males migrated from elsewhere. d. All of the above.

Q: Clusters of residences among the Mikea people in Madagascar reflect: a. Matrilineal descent groups, with clusters of families consisting of older women, sisters, and their husbands. b. Patrilineal descent groups, with clusters of families consisting of older men, brothers, and their wives c. A mixture of descent groups, with an equal chance of members belonging to a patrilineage or a matrilineage d. Status differences, with groups at the north end of a settlement having higher status than those at the south end.

Q: 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.

Q: A set of lineages that claims to share a distant, often-mythical ancestor is called a: a. Moiety. b. Clan. c. Kinship system. d. Berdache.

Q: The standard kinship system in North America as well as in many other industrialized nationsis: a. Patrilineal descent. b. Matrilineal descent. c. Bilateral descent. d. Mostly patrilineal descent, with an almost equal amount of bilateral descent.

Q: If a biological father has little to do with his biological offspring, and instead spends most of his time with his sister's children who call him by a term meaning "father" rather than "uncle," the descent system of these people is most likely: a. Patrilineal. b. Matrilineal. c. Bilateral. d. Any or all of the above.

Q: The socially recognized network of relationships through which individuals are related to one another by ties of descent (real or imagined) and marriage is called: a. A moiety. b. A lineage. c. Kinship. d. Bilateral descent.

Q: The argument that females depicted in Classic Maya stelae occupied similar and complimentary roles to those of males, and that these Maya stelae depict a prehistoric cargo system, is based on: a. Translation of Maya hieroglyphics that describe the operation of cargo systems. b. Historically linked ethnographic analogy. c. Oral tradition; although Maya today do not participate in cargo systems, a record of their past participation has been preserved through storytelling. d. All of the above.

Q: 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.

Q: Ethnographic data from a variety of societies around the world has shown which of the following about men's and women's roles in ceramic manufacture? a. When pottery is made by hand, it is usually made by women; when pottery is made on a wheel, it is usually made by men. b. When pottery is made by hand, it is usually made by men; when pottery is made on a wheel, it is usually made by women. c. When pottery is made on a wheel, men and women participate equally in the manufacturing process; women dominate the manufacturing process when pottery is made by hand. d. When pottery is made by hand, men and women participate equally in the manufacturing process; women dominate the manufacturing process when pottery is made on a wheel.

Q: Roughly what percent of professional archaeologists today are women? a. 2%. b. 10%. c. 25%. d. 50%.

Q: William Webb (1882-1964) excavated hundreds of burials at the Indian Knoll site in western Kentucky. How did Webb explain the presence of hunting weapons in the graves of women and children at the site? a. Women and children hunted in life; they were therefore interred with the objects they would need in the afterlife. b. Burial ritual; the artifacts were symbols of grief rather than objects that the interred used during life because women and children would not have hunted. c. Misinterpretation of the archaeological evidence; the "hunting weapons" were not hunting weapons at all, but rather tools used to process plants. d. All of the above; his interpretations of the site changed through time.

Q: The difference between gender roles and gender ideologies is: a. Gender roles are the culturally prescribed behaviors associated with men and women, while gender ideologies are the culturally prescribed values assigned to the tasks and status of men and women. b. Gender roles are highly variable among cultures, while gender ideologies are constant among all cultures. c. Gender roles are constant among all cultures, while gender ideologies are highly variable. d. None of the above; the terms are interchangeable.

Q: Berdaches were: a. Recognized by their cultural group as a third gender. b. Men who chose to live as women, performing women's traditional roles. c. Also known as "two-spirits" in some Plains Indian societies. d. All of the above.

Q: Margaret Conkey and Janet Spector pointed out which of the following biases in archaeology? a. The fact that plant remains are rarely preserved at archaeological sites while animal bones and stone tools are often abundant, leading archaeologists to overestimate the importance of meat in prehistoric diets. b. The fact that when archaeologists only study projectile points and ignore associated debitage, or debris, from the manufacture of stone tools, they end up with a biased view of prehistoric technological organization. c. The fact that archaeologists tend to impose the current political organization of their culture onto prehistoric political organizations without sufficient data to justify their inferences. d. The fact that archaeologists once viewed the world largely in terms of men's activities and perceptions, while the contributions of women were downplayed; this view was projected into prehistory, resulting in a strong androcentric bias in archaeology.

Q: If you live in a society in which two or more local groups are organized under a single highly ranked individual, you live in a(n): a. Egalitarian society, b. Patrilineal society. c. Chiefdom. d. Any or all of the above.

Q: Political organization can be defined as: a. The culturally prescribed behavior associated with men and women which can vary from society to society. b. The rules and structures that govern relations within a group of interacting people. c. A society's formal and informal institutions that regulate a population's collective acts. d. A network of relationships through which individuals are related to one another by ties of descent.

Q: Anthropologists refer to the rules and structures that govern relations within a group of interacting people as: a. Residence patterns. b. Social organization. c. Residence rules d. Kinship systems.

Q: Genetic material found in a cell's nucleus that is primarily responsible for an individual's inherited traits is called a. Gene b. Mitochondrial DNA c. Nuclear DNA d. Molecular DNA

Q: Christy Turner observed in human bones from Chacoan sites in the Four Corners region of the Southwest a. Evidence of bear stone tool cut marks in places that suggest flesh was stripped from them. b. Abraded surfaces similar to that produced by stirring boiling bones in a ceramic pot. c. Evidence that people were killed and eaten by bears. d. Both A and B

Q: Although we still have much to learn about the rates at which DNA mutates, current studies show that a. The ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone affect the DNA. b. Stature affects the rate. c. DNA studies are important in reconstructing the past. d. DNA studies will soon be obsolete.

Q: Iron deficiency leaves a distinctive spongy appearance on a. Eye orbits. b. Bone fusion. c. The skull. d. Tooth enamel.

Q: An individual's age under 25 can be determined by a. Tooth eruption patterns. b. Tooth wear. c. Patterns of bone wear. d. Bone fusion.

Q: Larsen was interested in how well the people of Stillwater Marsh lived because a. He wanted to show how "brutish" hunters-gatherers were. b. He wanted to show that hunter-gatherers worked very hard. c. He wanted to show that the hunter-gatherers had barely enough food to eat. d. He wanted to use the skeletal data to provide a more objective assessment of foraging lifeways.

Q: Ancient cultural practices mix human skeletal remains together, making it difficult to group skeletal remains by individual. Some examples of this mentioned in the text include a. Bundle burials where the bodies were placed in a communal grave. b. Bodies laid out together in a charnal house to decompose. c. Bodies laid to rest in a river where the current scattered the remains. d. Both A and B

Q: In the U.S. conducting research on American Indian remains is a sensitive issue and raises major ethical issues. Which of the following statements is true? a. Some modern archaeologists believe we should stop analyzing human remains. b. Many museums curate both Indian and non-Indian remains; the proportion of non-Indian skeletons outweighs the Native American skeletons. c. Reburying non-Native American remains seems to be a disrespectful thing to do. d. Archaeologists began curating Native American remains in museum collections very recently.

Q: Studies of from various modern human populations have found: a. Living Native Americans are not related to northern Asia b. Living Native Americans are descendants of a separate migratory wave from Europe. c. Living Native Americans are unlike Europeans, making an ancient migration from Europe as well as from Asia unlikely. d. modern human populations are close knit.

Q: Studies of some of the skeletal data of Neanderthals have concluded: a. They are different from modern Europeans. b. There is continuity between Neanderthals and modern Europeans. c. Similarities with Native American populations. d. Modern human capabilities to use symbols