Deck 11: Come Tell Me How You Lived

Question 1

Sto+B269:B293ne axes or iron hoe blades may give an indication of hunting or agriculture, but they hardly yield the kind of detail that archaeologists need in order to determine a prehistoric people's

A) subsistence.
B) lifeways.
C) hunting practices.
D) tool-making.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

The ultimate aim in studying prehistoric food remains is not only to establish how people obtained their food but also to reconstruct their actual

A) diet.
B) lifeways.
C) hunting practices.
D) tool-making practices.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Stable isotope samples from human skeletons at two sites near the Danube River show that between 60% and 85% of those ancient people's diet came from

A) meat and cultivated plants.
B) marginal farming.
C) aquatic sources.
D) agricultural products.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Most animal bones found in archaeological sites are

A) highly fragmentary.
B) well-preserved.
C) easily identifiable.
D) from domesticated species.

Question 5

Observing recently dead carcasses as they are gradually transformed into fossils and studying fossil remains with the knowledge gained from these observations are two related forms of research involved in what discipline?

A) zooarchaeology
B) palynology
C) taphonomy
D) phytolith studies

Question 6

The skeletons of modern-day domestic sheep and goats and the skeletons of their wild ancestors are

A) dissimilar.
B) almost identical.
C) very different.
D) identical.

Question 7

A count of the number of individuals necessary to account for all of the identifiable bones is called

A) NISP (Number of Identified Specimens).
B) BPI (Bones per Individual).
C) MNI (Minimum Number of Individuals).
D) TBC (Total Bone Count).

Question 8

This, rather than human culture, was probably responsible for most long-term shifts in abundance of animal species during the Great Ice Age:

A) sociological forces
B) solar variation
C) ice sheet distribution
D) climatic change

Question 9

This may have begun when a growing human population needed a regular food supply to support a greater density of people per square mile.

A) greater hunting activities
B) animal domestication
C) improved hunting technology
D) improved forestry technology

Question 10

How did ancient peoples use animal stomachs?

A) as garments
B) as hats
C) as slings
D) as bags

Question 11

To establish the ages of prehistoric animals, scientists most commonly look at the animals' teeth and at the parts at the end of limb bones, which are called

A) epiphyses.
B) carpals.
C) metacarpals.
D) phalanges.

Question 12

Richard Klein has used the height of tooth crowns to study the age of mammals taken by Stone Age hunters at the Klasies River and Nelson's Bay caves in South Africa. He has identified two "mortality distributions" that apply to prehistoric and living animal populations. Which of the following would be a normal distribution?

A) attritional age profile
B) geriatric age profile
C) catastrophic age profile
D) bell curve age profile

Question 13

When prime-age animals are underrepresented relative to their abundance in living populations, but young and old are overrepresented, the age profile is called

A) fragmentary.
B) attritional.
C) proportional.
D) catastrophic.

Question 14

In many societies, game meat formed far fewer meals than this type of food, which is often completely invisible in archaeological sites:

A) domesticated
B) vegetable
C) cooked
D) marine

Question 15

What is the original wild ancestor of Tehuacán maize?

A) rice
B) teosinte
C) wild asparagus
D) This is still unknown.

Question 16

Macrobotanical remains are

A) the remains of cooked food.
B) easily recognizable plant remains.
C) the results of processing to leach out toxins.
D) seeds from domesticated plants.

Question 17

Scientists who recover, identify, and study ancient vegetable remains and assess the relationships between people and plants are called

A) zooarchaeologists.
B) paleontologists.
C) macrobiologists.
D) paleoethnobotanists.

Question 18

Minute particles of silica from plant cells absorbed through a plant's roots are called

A) chloroplasts.
B) mitochondria.
C) opal phytoliths.
D) chalcedony phytoliths.

Question 19

The dessicated human feces that are sometimes recovered from dry caves in the American West and elsewhere are called

A) coprolites.
B) anthracites.
C) bituminous droppings.
D) intestinal remains.

Question 20

Early in the twentieth century, the paleornithologist Hildegarde Howard studied the remains of prehistoric waterbirds near San Francisco Bay and found that the Indians of the time

A) lived at that site in the winter and the early summer.
B) domesticated chickens, geese, and turkeys.
C) kept falcons for hunting.
D) traded the plumes of tropical birds.

Question 21

What insights does rock art give us into subsistence activities of ancient peoples, especially foragers?

Question 22

What do the bones of the Ice Man tell us about food availability during Bronze Age Europe? What do the the stomach contents of Tollund Man tell us about the use of wild and domesticated foods? Finally, how do we interpret the contents of coprolites from inhabitants of Lovelock Cave, Nevada? Did people once eat foods that we do not consider edible today? Why?

Question 23

How do zooarchaeologists use taphonomic studies to compare the proportions of different species from one site with those from another? Use the concepts of NISP and MNI in your answer.

Question 24

Define these two concepts: catastrophic age profile and attritional age profile. How do zooarchaeologists use them to determine hunting patterns and subsistence?

Question 25

From where do most plant remains come? What did Richard MacNeish discover about maize (corn) and its "evolution" from remains in Mexico's Tehuacán Valley?