Deck 12: Settlement and Landscape

Question 1

The houses and villages of a prehistoric society, like the artifacts and food residues beside its hearths, are part of its

A) settlement pattern.
B) social organizations.
C) permanent settlements.
D) community interactions.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

The Chumash Indians of southern California lived in a place where natural ocean upwelling nourished one of the richest inshore fisheries on earth: the islands and shores of the

A) Gulf of Catalina.
B) Sea of Cortez.
C) Gulf of Mexico.
D) Santa Barbara Channel.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Settlement archaeology is about many layers of dynamic relationships. For working purposes, many archaeologists divide these layers of relationship into three levels:

A) households, towns, and cities
B) households, towns, and provinces
C) households, communities, and distribution of communities
D) towns, provinces, and states

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Cerén, El Salvador, is an extraordinary archaeological treasure, a prehistoric settlement frozen in time. The people who inhabited this village were

A) Aztec.
B) Moche.
C) Chimú.
D) Maya.

Question 5

What affects the permanency of settlement?

A) concepts of landscape of memory
B) physical environment
C) subsistence and ecology
D) garden space per person

Question 6

Places where individuals carried out specific tasks such as food preparation are known as

A) activity areas.
B) work areas.
C) community work areas.
D) creative technology centers.

Question 7

Economic and environmental realities affect the siting of any community, but more complex factors come into play with cities, including

A) food stress.
B) political and/or religious factors.
C) the payment of tribute.
D) frequent migration.

Question 8

René Millon has mapped dozens of residential compounds, a market, and vast ceremonial structures in the largest community settlement pattern ever investigated systematically: the ancient Mexican city of

A) Tenochtitlán.
B) Tulum.
C) Oaxaca.
D) Teotihuacán.

Question 9

Eric Higgs of Cambridge University developed a method that inventories resources within different radiuses of sites, an effective way of defining where people obtained food and other commodities. This method is known as

A) settlement archaeology.
B) community interaction archaeology.
C) resource differentiation.
D) site catchment analysis.

Question 10

Tenochtitlán, the Aztec imperial capital, housed at least 200,000 people; they were living in dense residential areas now buried under the concrete jungle of

A) Panama City, Panama.
B) Mexico City, Mexico.
C) Lima, Peru.
D) San Salvador, El Salvador.

Question 11

Virconium Cornoviorum, the site at present-day Wroxeter near Shrewsbury in west-central England, was the fourth largest urban center in

A) Roman Britain.
B) Welsh Britain.
C) Scottish Britain.
D) Celtic Britain.

Question 12

Recently, to obtain further answers to various questions about the Roman town that once existed at present-day Wroxeter, researchers combined aerial photographs and ground survey with

A) existing infrastructure.
B) available archaeological data.
C) a geographic information systems database.
D) changing patterns of supply and demand.

Question 13

Population growth was not a major factor in human history until about 15,000 years ago, after the end of the

A) Pliocene Epoch.
B) Miocene Epoch.
C) Ice Age.
D) Bronze Age.

Question 14

Most population estimates are at best rough approximations, despite attempts to develop censuses from house counts and

A) city wall segments.
B) numbers of streets.
C) size.
D) refuse accumulation.

Question 15

Potential carrying capacity and productivity of agricultural land show which variable as being critical in settlement archaeology?

A) population
B) landscape
C) transects
D) aerial photography+F22

Question 16

Some societies hold certain trees sacred, attribute supernatural qualities to fire and water, and assign benign and evil qualities to different winds. These intangible qualities are all part of the

A) landscape.
B) landscape of memory.
C) physical environment.
D) cultural environment.

Question 17

Many archaeologists see the organizing of landscape dimensions in all of the following EXCEPT

A) physical characteristics and properties.
B) historical transformations over time.
C) physical and symbolic relationships with the environments.
D) boundary walls.

Question 18

In landscape analysis, landscapes changing over long time periods serve as

A) site catchments.
B) community distributions
C) cultural records.
D) pyramids of human settlement.

Question 19

Two stone circles, the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, and a burial mound known as Maeshowe, lie at the heart of the landscape in the Orkney Islands. What type of landscape is this?

A) sacred landscape
B) landscape of memory
C) physical environment
D) cultural environment

Question 20

What is landscape? Why is landscape considered to be a human creation? How can landscape give us a glimpse into the otherwise intangible forces of culture?

Question 21

Many factors-including environment, economic practices, and technological skills-determine settlement patterns. Give examples from different societies for each factor.

Question 22

How is GIS (Geographic Information Systems) used to understand settlement patterns?

Question 23

What are households? What are communities? How do they interact with each other and with their overall physical environment?

Question 24

Explain the concept of landscape of memory. Are there examples of this in our own society? If so, explain.