Deck 5: World-Systems of Foragers

Question 1

Mortan Fried's description of egalitarian societies claims that:

A) people have access to natural resources and tools
B) people have open access to leadership positions
C) leadership is temporary
D) decision-making is consensual
E) a, b, c, d
F) neither a, b, c, or d

Answer 1

E

Question 2

Leadership in hunting and gathering societies:

A) has high prestige
B) is inherited
C) entitles the leader to accumulate resources
D) confers power to tell others what to do
E) a, b, c, d
F) neither a, b, c, d

Answer 2

F

Question 3

Women rarely did big game hunting because

A) it was emotionally repulsive to them
B) a higher percentage of women were vegetarians
C) it was too great a risk to the prospect of bearing children
D) male aggression towards women kept them from learning the techniques
E) none of the above

Answer 3

C

Question 4

The average number of children in nomadic hunter-gatherer societies was about 4-5 children per family because:

A) hunting and gathering subsistence lends itself to child labor
B) in more sedentary societies children are more likely to be bored
C) it was against their spiritual beliefs to abort children
D) a, b, c
E) none of the above

Question 5

What were the main causes of the emergence of diversified foraging?

A) curiosity
B) depletion of big game
C) increase in population density
D) regional tool kit styles
E) desire for exotic lithics
F) b and c

Question 6

When and where did the first sedentary societies emerge?

A) Oxford on the River Thames in the 11ᵗʰ century
B) With the development of the television in the 1950s
C) The Levant about 11,000 years ago
D) In the Yellow River valley of China in the 16ᵗʰ century
E) On the Nile near what is now Cairo during the reign of the Scorpion King

Question 7

Diversified foragers

A) live in villages
B) usually combine hunting with fishing and the gathering of vegetable materials
C) hunt more small game than most nomadic foragers
D) live in permanent locations in which there is enough food all year
E) all of the above

Question 8

Prestige goods were used by the Wintu to

A) allow the headmen to control marriages
B) symbolize the solidarity of the village
C) trade with other villages when food was scarce
D) decorate graves
E) pay taxes to the Yana

Question 9

Sedentism first emerged when

A) some people got sore feet from traveling
B) planting was invented
C) some nomads figured out how to hunt and gather enough food without migrating all the time
D) people began living in the same village most of the year
E) couches were invented
F) c and d

Question 10

At the time of the arrival of Europeans the Wintu were

A) a tribe in Northern California
B) a group of people who spoke similar languages of the Penutian language family
C) nomadic foragers
D) good friends with the Yana
E) slowly losing territory to their neighbors
F) a and b

Question 11

The prestige good network in which the Wintu participated was

A) based on trade with neighbors, but goods moved from group to group over long distances
B) facilitated by the use of clam shell disc beads as a standardize medium of exchange
C) made possible by traders who carried goods over long distances
D) spatially smaller than the network of bulk goods exchange
E) a and b

Question 12

Unlike domestic life in industrial-capitalist societies, families of nomadic hunter gatherers lived together inter-generationally.

Question 13

From what you have learned about hunter-gatherer societies it is clear that Marx's characterization of these societies as "primitive communism" is accurate.

Question 14

The choices nomadic hunter-gatherers made about what resources they exploited were entirely based on the food's nutritional value.

Question 15

In optimal foraging theory the choices hunters and gatherers made were rationally and consciously chosen.

Question 16

Unlike people living in industrial capitalist societies today, the economy of nomadic hunter-gatherers was altruistic.

Question 17

The spirits in hunter-gatherer societies were worshipped because there was no separation between the spiritual and secular world.

Question 18

According to the authors people do not imagine sacred hierarchies in the spiritual world until they have created political hierarchies in the material world.

Question 19

Polygamy was common among nomadic hunter-gatherers.

Question 20

The Yana had bigger villages than the Wintu.

Question 21

Diversified foragers combine different kinds of food resources.

Question 22

The phenomenon of pulsation is illustrated by archaeological evidence of the rise and fall of trade networks.

Question 23

Fill in the following table for patch choice theory (high or low?):

Question 24

Give an example from your life in which generalized reciprocity was operating with a friend. Justify why your example counts as generalized reciprocity.

Question 25

Fill in the following table which shows the minimum and maximum male-dominance

$\begin{array}{|l|l|l|}\hline \begin{array}{l}\text { Minimum Male } \\\text { Dominance }\end{array} & \text { Category of Comparison } & \text { Maximal male dominance } \\\hline & \begin{array}{l}\text { Climate Harshness or } \\\text { Mildness }\end{array} & \\\hline & \text { Abundance or scarcity of food } \\& \text { Population density} \\\hline & \text { Demographic sex ratios } \\\hline & \text {Social threat } \\& \text { Degree of labor-intensive } \\& \text { technology } \\\hline & \text { Control over tools and } \\& \text { means of subsistence } \\\hline & \text { Production for surplus or } \\& \text { production for subsistence } \\\hline & \text { Integration or segregation } \\& \text { of work patterns } \\\hline & \text { Integration or separation } \\& \text { of child-rearing practices } \\\hline & \text { Greater tracing of descent } \\& \text { lines } \\\hline & \text { Residency patterns } \\& \text {(women go to live in the } \\& \text { male's kin's part of the } \\& \text { village [matrilocal] or whether } \\& \text { men go to live with the wives kin } \\& \text { part of the village [patrilocal]) } \\\hline\end{array}$

Question 26

Discuss the differences between nomadic and sedentary foragers and the evolutionary significance of the rise of sedentism before the emergence of gardening.

Question 27

Why did humans migrate to all the continents except Antarctica?

Question 28

What are the limitations on the use of documentary and ethnographic evidence for inferring the nature of foraging societies that existed before the rise of horticulture?

Question 29

Discuss the causes and consequences of the emergence of smaller and more regular yearly migratory circuits among nomadic foragers.

Question 30

Define and discuss the idea of the settlement size distribution as illustrated in Figure 5.2 in Chapter 5.

Question 31

In what ways were the Natufians similar to the Wintu?

Question 32

Why is California a good place to study diversified foragers?

Question 33

What is meant by the idea of "international relations" in Northern California before the arrival of the Euroamericans?

Question 34

What was the nature of core/periphery relations in indigenous Northern California?

Question 35

According the Chapter 5, what are the implications of the nature of the small-scale world-system in Northern California for the issue of transformation vs. continuation in sociocultural evolution?