Deck 1: Fossils, Cities, and Civilizations: the Birth of a Science

Question 1

Archaeology is the _____________ study of the past.

A) exclusive
B) humanistic
C) scientific
D) romantic

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Using Old Testament genealogies, Archbishop James Ussher "determined" that the earth was created how long ago?

A) 4.5 billion years
B) just a couple of million years ago
C) actually, he could not calculate this
D) about 6,000 years ago

Answer 2

D

Question 3

French scientist Georges Cuvier believed that the fossils he pieced together demonstrated

A) uniformitarianism.
B) stratigraphic succession.
C) several creations of life by God.
D) the earth's ancient age.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

French linguist Jean Champollion deciphered what great inscription and thus opened the door for the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics?

A) Rosetta Stone
B) tablet mundi
C) Egyptian papyrus inscriptions
D) Alexandrian texts

Question 5

Who introduced scientific excavation methods to the Nile in the late nineteenth century?

A) Jean Champollion
B) John Wilkinson
C) Giovanni Belzoni
D) Flinders Petrie

Question 6

English Austen Henry Layard is well known for his discovery of

A) King Tut's tomb.
B) Assyria.
C) the Hittite culture.
D) Nineveh.

Question 7

Who discovered and excavated the site of Homeric Troy?

A) Jean Champollion
B) Giovanni Belzoni
C) Heinrich Schliemann
D) Howard Carter

Question 8

French zoologist Herni Mouhot wrote the first vivid account of what spectacular Southeast Asian city site?

A) Angkor Wat
B) Mekong
C) Khmer Palace
D) Cambodian Gardens

Question 9

Shoulder blades and tortoise shells were used by the Shang civilization for what kind of purposes?

A) pharmaceutical
B) philosophical
C) political
D) oracle and divination

Question 10

Who proclaimed that Africa was the cradle of humanity?

A) Austen Layard
B) Louis Leakey
C) Charles Darwin
D) Tim White

Question 11

Gertrude Caton-Thompson proved conclusively that Great Zimbabwe was

A) the creation of Phoenician culture.
B) the creation of ancient Chinese culture.
C) an entirely African creation.
D) the basis for the creation of the state of Rhodesia.

Question 12

Who made the first stratigraphic excavation in America?

A) John Quincy Adams
B) Patrick Henry
C) John Foster Dulles
D) Thomas Jefferson

Question 13

Which individual of the Bureau of American Ethnology proved beyond a doubt that the "Moundbuilder" mounds were in fact of Native American manufacture?

A) Cyrus Thomas
B) Thomas Jefferson
C) Heinrich Schliemann
D) Austen Layard

Question 14

Stephens and Catherwood recorded details of several ancient city sites in which culture?

A) Egyptian
B) Khmer
C) Mayan
D) Aztec

Question 15

Alfred Kidder of Harvard University excavated the intricate strata of Pecos using a(n)

A) backhoe.
B) direct historical approach.
C) ethnographical analysis.
D) painstaking horizontal approach.

Question 16

That a severe drought may have induced hunter-gatherers in the Euphrates Valley to switch to agriculture is an example of what kind of archaeology?

A) uniformitarian
B) ecological/evolutionary
C) palynology
D) historical materialist

Question 17

A historical materialist's approach to archaeology gives extra attention to

A) excavation as a systematic way of recording ancient human behavior.
B) human existence as a constant negotiation with other humans.
C) the general processes of cultural change.
D) the complex interplay of environmental factors.

Question 18

In the 1800s, Darwin's theories of biological evolution seemed a natural extension of the doctrines of social progress; archaeologists and anthropologists embrace the idea as well, through

A) unilinear evolution.
B) three-age system.
C) diffusion.
D) divination.

Question 19

As the scientific study of the human past, most archaeology is part of another, wider discipline called

A) ethnology.
B) cultural ecology.
C) anthropology.
D) Egyptology.

Question 20

The scientific methods used in archeology have changed over the centuries. Of the methods mentioned in the text, which of the following is the most recent?

A) stratigraphic excavation
B) photography
C) radiocarbon dating
D) investigating multiple sites within a region

Question 21

Discuss the intellectual problems with the diffusionist ideas of Elliot Grafton Smith.

Question 22

Discuss how General Augustus Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers' attitude about artifacts translates into excavation techniques.

Question 23

Compare and contrast ecological/evolutionary approaches in archaeology to "Historical Materialist" approaches.

Question 24

Explain in detail the three-age system developed by Christian Jurgensen Thomsen.

Question 25

Describe and then compare the idea of "from them to us" as it was seen during the 1800s and as it is viewed in archaeological theory today.