Deck 4: Preindustrial Societies: Agrarian and Pastoral Societies

Question 1

Pastoralism should be seen as:

A) evolutionarily higher or more advanced than agriculture
B) an alternative to agriculture in arid environments
C) evolutionarily lower or less advanced than agriculture
D) a specialized subsistence adaptation found primarily in tropical rainforest areas

Answer 1

an alternative to agriculture in arid environments

Question 2

According to Boserup, the adoption of more intensive modes of production:

A) is likely to lead to an improvement in living standards
B) is likely to occur when people suffer a significant drop in their standard of living as a result of population growth
C) is likely to lead to a resumption of earlier living standards
D) a and b
E) a and c

Answer 2

is likely to occur when people suffer a significant drop in their standard of living as a result of population growth

Question 3

Cohen and Armelagos's analysis of paleopathological findings concerning the relationship between the rise of agriculture and changes in the standard of living suggest to them that:

A) old onward-and-upward theories of steady human progress must be seriously questioned
B) the standard of living increased substantially with the adoption of the plow and draft animals
C) the nineteenth-century evolutionists were on the right track
D) Boserup's theory of technological change must be wrong

Answer 3

old onward-and-upward theories of steady human progress must be seriously questioned

Question 4

Most members of agrarian societies are:

A) independent farmers
B) artisans
C) slaves
D) peasants

Question 5

Under the system that Sanderson and Alderson call seigneurial ownership:

A) land is owned and cultivated communally by villagers
B) land is owned or controlled by a class of landlords who impose severe restrictions on those who use it
C) land is owned privately by agricultural capitalists who use it in order to make a profit
D) land is not a significant resource to be owned by anyone

Question 6

Which of the following conclusions is supported by the paleopathological evidence analyzed by Cohen and Armelagos?

A) infection is a more frequent problem among farming populations than among hunter-gatherers
B) chronic malnutrition is a more frequent problem among hunter-gatherers than among farming populations
C) childhood growth disruption was equally significant among hunter-gatherers and farming populations
D) none of these

Question 7

Benjamin White, a strong critic of the population pressure theory of preindustrial technological change, rests much of his argument on his belief that:

A) there is no inherent tendency for preindustrial populations to grow
B) industrial populations grow faster than preindustrial ones
C) preindustrial population growth rates cannot be reliably determined
D) none of the above

Question 8

Agrarian societies:

A) generally have short fallow periods for land, or no fallow periods at all
B) cultivate the land by plowing with the use of traction animals
C) arose for the first time about 8,000 years ago in Peru and China
D) two of these
E) none of these

Question 9

Boserup has shown that:

A) people automatically desire to implement more advanced technologies when made aware of them
B) more advanced technologies require fewer labor inputs
C) technological regression frequently accompanies reductions in population pressure
D) the amount of time people must work to make a living is unrelated to their attitudes toward technological change

Question 10

The leading competitors to Mark Cohen's theory of the origins of agriculture:

A) are general theories of the worldwide transition to agriculture
B) stress the role of the "food crisis" in prehistory
C) emphasize the role of climate change or resource stress
D) stress the improvement in standards of living that followed the Neolithic Revolution

Question 11

Ester Boserup has proposed that people:

A) have no inherent desire to advance their technology
B) generally prefer to make a living by the simplest and easiest means available
C) will not switch to more intensive i.e., more time-and-energy-consuming) technologies unless compelled by specific social or environmental conditions
D) all of these

Question 12

The type of seigneurial ownership characteristic of medieval Europe is called ownership:

A) patrimonial
B) lineage
C) prebendal
D) familial

Question 13

Mark Cohen's theory of the origin of agriculture:

A) is based on Boserup's general argument
B) makes much of the fact that hunter-gatherers have apparently long understood the essentials of plant and animal domestication without putting such knowledge to use
C) makes much of the fact that the transition to agriculture occurred independently in several different regions of the world
D) none of these
E) all of these

Question 14

Sanderson and Alderson argue that the workload has and the standard of living has with the evolution from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies:

A) decreased; increased
B) increased; decreased
C) increased; increased
D) decreased; decreased

Question 15

Pastoral societies:

A) live off animal herds and their products rather than agriculture
B) are generally found in environments in which the practice of agriculture is difficult or impossible
C) are still found in some parts of the world today
D) all of these

Question 16

The first agrarian societies arose about:

A) between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago
B) 10,000 years ago
C) 20,000 years ago
D) 35,000-50,000 years ago

Question 17

Sanderson and Alderson suggest that the evolution of modes of property ownership is closely associated with the evolution of modes of resource distribution. Therefore:

A) primitive communism should be associated with pure redistribution
B) paramount ownership should be associated with partial redistribution
C) seigneurial ownership should be associated with reciprocity
D) lineage ownership should be associated with surplus expropriation

Question 18

Mark Cohen has proposed that hunter-gatherers in different areas turned to cultivation:

A) once they understood it
B) out of a desire to establish permanent residences
C) because of a "food crisis" that resulted from population growth
D) once experiments with planting demonstrated sufficient promise

Question 19

Ester Boserup's theory of the intensification of agricultural production holds that it results principally from:

A) human inventiveness
B) psychological dissatisfaction with old technologies
C) genetic changes in some human populations
D) population pressure

Question 20

Sanderson and Alderson argues that the major evolutionary trend in the ownership of productive resources in precapitalist societies is in the direction of:

A) increasing control over productive resources by a smaller and smaller fraction of the population
B) increasing willingness of elite groups to share in the ownership of resources with other groups
C) increasing control over productive resources by a "middle class"
D) little change in ownership patterns until the advent of agrarian societies

Question 21

Sanderson and Alderson suggest that a distinction must be made between expropriation and partial redistribution because:

A) landlords have considerably greater power than chiefs
B) the flow of goods between peasants and lords is substantially more unequal
Than the flow of valuables between chiefs and commoners
C) both of these
D) neither of these

Question 22

Lenski's surplus theory of stratification holds that the nature and extent of stratification depends mainly on:

A) a society's technological capacity and the size of its economic surplus
B) human greed
C) a society's religious and political institutions
D) the values that people hold about the desirability of stratification

Question 23

Which of the following tends to be a prominent feature of the state level of political evolution?

A) centralization of power in a few hands
B) monopolization of the means of violence
C) expropriation of surplus production
D) an ideology for the legitimation of power
E) all of these

Question 24

A scarcity intepretation of the origin and evolution of stratification holds that it:

A) emerges when labor becomes scarce
B) promotes the efficient functioning of society
C) results when greater population pressure leads to increasingly private forms of landownership
D) none of these
E) all of these

Question 25

According to Thomas Barfield, pastoralists are commonly found in which of the following world regions:

A) the Saharan and Arabian deserts
B) the Asian steppe from the Black Sea to Mongolia
C) the Tibetan plateau and neighboring mountain regions
D) Central Eurasia
E) all of these

Question 26

According to Sanderson, the most tyrannical and despotic of all preindustrial societies are:

A) simple horticulturalists
B) pastoralists
C) intensive horticulturalists
D) hunter-gatherers
E) agrarian societies

Question 27

Which of the following animals have been herded in pastoral societies?

A) sheep
B) goats
C) camels
D) cattle
E) all of these

Question 28

The "leopard-skin chief" is a major leader in which of the following societies?

A) the Kpelle
B) the Yanomama
C) the Nuer
D) the Basseri

Question 29

The retainer class in agrarian societies:

A) carried out the routine work necessary for getting the economic surplus into the hands of the ruler and governing classes
B) was composed of persons of widely varying privilege and social status
C) tended, on average, to share to a significant extent in the benefits of the wealth controlled by their employers
D) all of these

Question 30

Sanderson and Alderson believe that a major difficulty with Lenski's surplus theory is his:

A) underemphasis of the role of technology
B) underemphasis of the role of social conflict
C) excessive Marxian leanings
D) view that people will automatically produce an economic surplus when they are technologically capable of doing so

Question 31

Social mobility in agrarian societies was:

A) basically nonexistent
B) occasionally upward but mainly downward
C) occasionally downward but mainly upward
D) almost always upward

Question 32

The general principle that people prefer to carry out activities - at least burdensome activities - with a minimal expenditure of time and energy is known as:

A) the Law of Least Effort
B) Murphy's Law
C) the Law of Declining Returns to Labor
D) Parkinson's Law

Question 33

The social and economic gap between the two major classes in agrarian societies is generally:

A) extreme
B) softened by the redistributive tendencies of the elite
C) narrower than that of modern industrial societies
D) minor compared to the gap that opened after the rise of capitalism

Question 34

Sanderson and Alderson favor:

A) the surplus theory
B) the scarcity theory
C) a combination of the scarcity and the surplus theory
D) neither the surplus nor the scarcity theory

Question 35

A basic similarity between the surplus and scarcity theories is:

A) their emphasis on the functional benefits of stratification
B) their materialistic foundations
C) their emphasis on the role of the superstructure
D) none of these

Question 36

The two most important social classes in agrarian societies are:

A) landlords and merchants
B) merchants and craftsmen
C) landlords and peasants
D) merchants and priests
E) priests and peasants

Question 37

According to Sanderson and Alderson, the emergence of stratification:

A) is preceded in time by the production of an economic surplus
B) is unrelated to the production of an economic surplus
C) occurs first and is then followed by the production and unequal distribution of an economic surplus
D) none of the above

Question 38

The Basseri pastoralists studied by Fredrik Barth:

A) have a strong dislike for agriculture
B) subsist entirely by the use of animal products
C) live in sub-Saharan Africa
D) all of the above

Question 39

The political-economic elite in agrarian societies generally comprises of the population and receives of the total wealth:

A) 25%; less than half
B) 35%; almost 100%
C) 1-2%; half or more
D) 50%; only 1-2%

Question 40

Which of the following is a pastoral society?

A) the Nuer of eastern Africa
B) the Kpelle
C) the Yanomama
D) medieval England

Question 41

Agrarian societies were generally the first in human history to develop stratification systems.

Question 42

The Nuer herd primarily , whereas the Basseri herd :

A) reindeer; camels
B) water buffalo; yaks
C) zebras; water buffalo
D) cattle; sheep and goats

Question 43

Medieval England is a good example of the agrarian mode of subsistence technology.

Question 44

Because pasture for their herds is more abundant, most pastoralists prefer to live in temperate zones with substantial rainfall.

Question 45

Population pressure exists whenever population begins to grow.

Question 46

There is considerable evidence that many human populations have a kind of inertia with respect to technological change.

Question 47

What Sanderson and Alderson call the scarcity theory of stratification views surplus economic production as a consequence of an initial condition of stratification rather than as a fundamental cause of stratification.

Question 48

The average peasant in medieval England or traditional China had a significantly lower standard of living than the average hunter-gatherer of 15,000 years ago.

Question 49

Most of the world's pastoral societies have been located in the driest regions of Asia and Africa.

Question 50

Critics of the demographic theory of agricultural intensification have argued that the theory incorrectly assumes a natural tendency for preindustrial populations to grow.

Question 51

Because they produce large economic surpluses, agrarian societies enjoy higher standards of living than less technologically advanced societies.

Question 52

Pastoralists often obtain agricultural products through trade with agricultural neighbors.

Question 53

Boserup's theory of agricultural intensification assumes that people will generally not adopt more labor-intensive technologies unless compelled by falling living standards to do so.

Question 54

Pastoralists are usually organized into:

A) extremely large tribes
B) chiefdoms
C) states
D) tribes or chiefdoms

Question 55

Two well-known pastoral societies from the historical past were the:

A) Hsiung-nu and the Mongols
B) the Chinese and the Arabs
C) the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians
D) the Greeks and the Romans

Question 56

According to Sanderson and Alderson, whenever new forms of technology become available people will automatically adopt them because of their obvious benefits.

Question 57

Surplus expropriation is a distributive mode most generally found in agrarian societies having seigneurial property rights.

Question 58

In ancient Rome the system of surplus expropriation relied more on slave than on peasant labor.

Question 59

In agrarian societies, merchants sometimes possessed more wealth than members of the nobility, but they almost invariably held a very low social status.

Question 60

There are a number of true agrarian societies left in the world today.

Question 61

How do states differ from chiefdoms? Be as specific as possible.

Question 62

Discuss Boserup's theory of agricultural intensification, its reception by modern anthropologists, and its current status.

Question 63

Pastoralists who have been organized into states could only maintain those states by raiding neighboring settled civilizations and looting their wealth.

Question 64

Explain the similarities and differences between the surplus and scarcity theories of the origin of stratification. What weaknesses does the surplus theory contain that lead Sanderson and Alderson to favor the scarcity theory?

Question 65

The Mongols of centuries ago were horse-mounted pastoralists who raided China for its wealth.

Question 66

Discuss the nature of pastoral societies and how they differ from societies that rely on some sort of cultivation. What do pastoralists eat? Where are they found, and why are they found in these regions of the world?

Question 67

The "scarcity" postulated by the scarcity theory of the origin of stratification is the scarcity of land.

Question 68

Discuss the origin of agriculture and changes in archaeologists' theories about agriculturalorigins over the past 25 years.

Question 69

Does the standard of living increase with the advance of subsistence technology? Explainand cite as much evidence as you can to bolster your argument.

Question 70

The earliest Old World pristine states emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt around 5000 BP.

Question 71

Agrarian societies are by far the most highly stratified of all preindustrial societies.

Question 72

The artisan classes in agrarian societies were recruited mainly from the ranks of the governing class and were much better off economically than the peasantry.

Question 73

The privileged status of the priestly classes in agrarian societies was typically insecure.

Question 74

What is a peasant? Why are peasants known as "dependent cultivators"?

Question 75

Compare agrarian modes of subsistence technology to those of simple and intensive horticultural societies. What are the differences in terms of the tools used and the specifics of land cultivation?

Question 76

Both the surplus and scarcity theories of the origin of stratification see stratification systems as inherently self-perpetuating and self-enhancing.

Question 77

Discuss the changes in property rights as intensive horticultural societies evolve into agrarian societies.