Deck 2: Putting the Picture Together

Question 1

Ideas that archaeologists have developed about the past and about the way we come to know about the past are referred to as ___________.

A) antiquarianism
B) archaeological theories
C) hermeneutics
D) historicism

Answer 1

B

Question 2

New laws requiring archaeological work to be done before damaging construction work created which of the following?

A) a wealth of artifacts for museums
B) a rejection of the New Archaeology
C) the New Archaeology
D) Cultural Resource Management (CRM) archaeology

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Which of the following statements best describes postprocessual archaeology?

A) It argues that archaeologists should emulate historians.
B) It is rooted in an etic approach to archaeology.
C) It avoids hypotheses in favor of more subjective analyses.
D) Postprocessual archaeologists study only on historical populations.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

The goal of postprocessual archaeology is to __________.

A) formulate general laws governing human behavior
B) offer interpretations based on contextual data
C) write culture history
D) test hypotheses

Question 5

Which of these theories stresses the interaction between the presuppositions we bring to a problem and the independent empirical reality of our observations and experiences?

A) systems theory
B) hermeneutics
C) heuristics
D) induction

Question 6

________ focuses on the way archaeologists study and represent gender in the archaeological record, as well as gender biases of the investigator.

A) Feminist archaeology
B) Gynocentric archaeology
C) Masculinist archaeology
D) Postprocessual archaeology

Question 7

__________ stressed the importance of the actions of the individual living in past society.

A) Lewis Binfordʹs writings
B) Feminist archaeology
C) Processual archaeology
D) Agency theory

Question 8

What is the difference between induction and deduction?

Question 9

How has systems theory been applied to archaeology?

Question 10

How has gender been misinterpreted by archaeologists?

Question 11

Which of the following statements best describes systems theory?

A) It was heavily influenced by the works of Marx.
B) It views society as an interconnected network of elements.
C) It represented a conservative alternative to the New Archaeology.
D) Systems theory plays a significant role in contemporary archaeology.

Question 12

Observations of archaeological materials in the present that can help create and test hypotheses about the past are called __________.

A) middle-range research
B) the culture history approach
C) postprocessual archaeology
D) systems theory

Question 13

Binford thought that for archaeology to be considered a science it must work by ________ from general laws and models.

A) drawing
B) induction
C) extrapolation
D) deduction

Question 14

Which of the following represents the first clear evidence for the use of excavation to recover and explore the past?

A) the exploration of a mound by Thomas Jefferson
B) the recovery of ʺthunderstonesʺ by Antoine de Jussieu
C) an emblem book written by Johannes Sambucus
D) John Frereʹs report on a Paleolithic site at Hoxne, England

Question 15

Which of the following scholars helped establish the antiquity of humanity?

A) Charles Lyell
B) John Frere
C) Lewis Binford
D) Ian Hodder

Question 16

The Three-Age system divided prehistory into the __________ Ages.

A) Savage, Barbarian, and Civilized
B) Stone, Bronze, and Iron
C) Foraging, Pastoral, and Agrarian
D) Animist, Theistic, and Secular

Question 17

Why did the publication of 'On the Origin of Species' upset the church?

A) It removed divinity from creation.
B) It proved the earth was created 4004 BC.
C) It showed the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
D) It helped Heinrich Schliemann explain Troy.

Question 18

The Neolithic and the Paleolithic were defined by whom?

A) Christian Thomsen
B) John Frere
C) John Lubbock
D) Heinrich Schliemann

Question 19

________ pioneered the methods of stratigraphic excavation and seriation to create a chronology in his work in Egypt.

A) Abbe Henri Breuil
B) Sir Flinders Petrie
C) V. Gordon Childe
D) Heinrich Schliemann

Question 20

Toward the end of the 19th century, the __________ approach was characterized.

A) processual
B) post-processual
C) culture history
D) evolutionary

Question 21

________ twisted the archaeological record to reinforce German nationalism and support the Nazi Party.

A) Gustaf Kossinna
B) Flinders Petri
C) John Lubbock
D) Heinrich Schliemann

Question 22

Which archaeologist proposed the idea of a Neolithic Revolution characterized by agricultural villages?

A) John Frere
B) John Lubbock
C) V. Gordon Childe
D) Lewis Binford

Question 23

Who was the catalyst for the New Archaeology?

A) Walter Taylor
B) Lewis Binford
C) Flinders Petrie
D) Ian Hodder

Question 24

What is evolutionary archaeology?

Question 25

What did Ian Hodder mean when he said that archaeology begins ʺat the edge of the trowelʺ?

Question 26

What is the goal of archaeological recording and what are some of the recording methods employed by archaeologists?

Question 27

What are the major areas of biological analysis and what do they describe?

Question 28

How can an archaeologist get an accurate quantitative picture of the relative frequency of different animals in the faunal assemblage?

Question 29

How can seriation be used to develop a relative chronology of an artifact type?

Question 30

Describe two ʺliving archaeologyʺ techniques used by archaeologists to help interpret archaeological remains.

Question 31

What are the eight principles of archaeological ethics set out by the Society for American Archaeology? What is their purpose?

Question 32

You have discovered a 1,000-year-old site that was occupied for only a year before being covered by a mudslide. What techniques will you employ to excavate the site? How will you record the data you collect?

Question 33

A human body is buried in a peat bog one thousand years ago. Discuss the taphonomic processes that might have occurred and how they might affect the interpretation of the burial.

Question 34

Discuss the application of ethnoarchaeology to archaeological interpretation. What areas of past human behavior can it help the archaeologist understand? What are the limitations of ethnoarchaeology?

Question 35

What are some methods that archaeologists employ in a stratigraphic analysis?

Question 36

Explain the difference between and the purpose of horizontal and vertical excavation.

Question 37

How are geographic information systems (GIS) used in archaeology?

Question 38

What was new about the New Archaeology?

Question 39

Compare and contrast the theoretical underpinnings of processual and postprocessual archaeology.

Question 40

How do Systems Theory and Hermeneutics help archaeologists understand the past?

Question 41

According to postprocessual archaeologists, what is the relationship of archaeology to modern society?

Question 42

What is gender and how can it be identified in the archaeological record? Discuss how feminist archaeology can radically alter our interpretation of the past.

Question 43

What is the significance of the Three-Age system?

Question 44

What was the contribution of V. Gordon Childe to archaeology?

Question 45

What was Grahame Clarkʹs contribution to scientific archaeology?

Question 46

What were the goals of the New Archaeology?

Question 47

What is remote sensing and what is it relevance to archaeology?

Question 48

How does radiocarbon dating work? What are the advantages and limitations of this technique?

Question 49

Albert Spaulding argued that archaeologists should impose categories on material culture in order to study it.

Question 50

Frost heave is an example of a climate-related post-depositional process that affects the archaeological record.

Question 51

Sampling is used to select a representative collection of a large group of artifacts for study.

Question 52

Typology is the study of the layers of the earth.

Question 53

Radiocarbon dating can only be used on organic materials, such as charcoal and bone.

Question 54

Experimental archaeology uses scientific techniques, such as DNA analysis, to interpret the past.

Question 55

The half-life of the carbon-12 atom is 5,730 years.

Question 56

King Tutankhamen conducted an early archaeological dig at the site of the Sphinx.

Question 57

In Medieval Europe, prehistoric stone tools found in fields were thought to be ""thunderstones"" formed where lightning struck.

Question 58

Thomas Jeffersonʹs excavations of a mound on his property proved it was not made by Indians.

Question 59

Ecofacts are objects that show traces of human manufacture.

Question 60

Wet screening is used to recover items from submerged sites.

Question 61

To understand how a feature such as a burial pit relates to the surrounding strata, it is necessary to determine the surface of origin for the pit.

Question 62

Lewis Binford pronounced that archaeology should be science or it should be nothing at all.

Question 63

Deduction involves taking available data and inferring general models from it.

Question 64

Hermeneutics views our knowledge of past societies as static and unchanging.

Question 65

Feminist archaeologists see males as responsible for most of the trouble in prehistory.

Question 66

Evolutionary archaeology, ironically, rejects the theory of evolution as having any application to modern archaeology.

Question 67

The law of superposition states that each layer is younger than the layer beneath it.

Question 68

Danish antiquarian Jean Baptiste Lamarck developed the Three Age System in 1816.

Question 69

The struggle between evolution and religion predates the publication of Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species.

Question 70

To recover the charred botanical remains (wood and seeds), it is often necessary to employ a method known as __________.

A) filtration
B) flotation
C) dry screening
D) piece plotting

Question 71

Any object that shows traces of human manufacture is referred to as a/n __________.

A) ecofact
B) artifact
C) site
D) feature