Anthropology: Chapter 12 Review

The need to keep pace with your neighbors and maintain alliances as a reason for the rapid speed of cultivation in New Guinea was dubbed as the ______________.

"Jones effect"

The generalized foraging model holds that all the following are true

-The maintenance of material equality -An unwillingness to defend territory -An intentional effort to keep birth rates below carrying capacity

Generalized foraging model

A model asserted that hunter-gatherer societies have five basic characteristics.

The tending of the sago palm to increase the amount of starch in the tree is an example of

Arboriculture

Which of the following is NOT a reasonable account used to explain why humans started raising their own food by domestication plants and animals?

By the end of the ice age, human brains were finally large enough, and humans smart enough to learn that if they planted seeds they would grow. (?)

One of the ways that archaeologists can evaluate the extent of damage done by epidemic diseases in ancient human settlements is through

Careful evaluation of skeletons found in burial sites.

Domestication is the process of

Changing a wild plant or animal into something that can be controlled and used by humans.

David Rindos argues that the shift to agriculture happened because both humans and plants began to

Coevolve

One of the reasons that today's agricultural dietary practices seemingly restrict the variety of food choices stems from the existence of

Complex patterns of food taboos

The effects of sedentism and population growth on populations can also be seen in the presence of

Epidemic diseases

One consequence of sedentism is that populations tend to grow, and people lose control over their lives as a consequence of ______________.

Epidemic diseases (?)

True or False: The Neolithic Revolution happened only in the region we call the Middle East.

False

True or False: The shift to horticulture or simple farming typically increased the number of cultigens consumed by members of a community.

False

True or False: Women in Arctic hunter-gatherer groups do not work as hard as men because there is no option to forage.

False

One of the ways that peoples go Highland New Guinea stored their crops was by

Feeding them to their herds of pigs.

Egalitarianism is a significant part of the ______________ model.

Generalized Foraging

______________ populations have extraordinary knowledge of their natural environment, even though they may not generally seek to domesticate plants and animals.

Hunter-gatherers

One of the defining hypotheses about hunter-gatherer societies that changed after the "Man the Hunter" conference is that

Hunting was not the defining feature of hunter-gather societies.

V. Gordon Childe understood the revolution brought by the rise of early agriculture did not involve

Increasing brain size among the population that was at the heart of the revolution.

In what ways were principles of natural selection involved in the increasing size of food grains like corn, wheat, and barley?

Natural selection was not involved because the processes involved humans selecting the best seeds.

The "shift" in the primary mode of subsistence that resulted in agricultural production was called the ______________.

Neolithic Revolution

Foraging

Obtaining food by searching for it, as opposed to growing or raising the plants and animals people eat.

Potlatches

Opulent ceremonial feasts intended to display wealth and social status by giving away or destroying valuable possessions like carved copper plates, button blankets, and baskets of food. These were characteristic of the communities on the Northwest coast of North America.

Sedentism and increased population growth leads to ______________.

Permanent social inequality (?)

Esther Boserup argued that increases in ______________ led people to work harder.

Population

In analyzing the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society, Esther Boserup examined the relationship between

Population growth and food production.

Neolithic

The "new" stone age when humans had begun growing crops and raising animals for food, using a stone-tool technology.

The practice of pastoralism involves

The breeding, care, and use of domesticated herding animals.

For Robert Malthus, societies with small populations were limited by ______________.

The food available to them

Maize

The indigenous Species of corn that was first domesticated in Mexico--the term is often used for any variety of corn, since all current varieties are thought to have been derived from this early version of so-called Indian corn.

Mesolithic

The period from the end of the last ice age until the beginning of agriculture, a number of hunter-gatherer-forager groups had established lakeside or seaside settlements that seem to have been year-round sites during this period.

Pastoralism

The practice of animal husbandry, which is the breeding, care, and use of domesticated herding animals such as cattle, camels, goats, horses, llamas, reindeer, and yaks.

Transhumance

The practice of moving herds to different fields or pastures with the changing seasons.

One theory about the relationship between global warming and the shift from foraging food production holds that

The warming that took place after the last ice age made the environment more habitable.

The moving of animal herds to different places in accordance with seasonal changes is called ______________.

Transhumance

True or False: As the intensity of agricultural practices increases, the range of cultigens decreases.

True

True or False: Cultigens became an integral part of human life almost simultaneously in different parts of the world.

True

True or False: It is possible to know the nutritional problems found in early humans using fossil evidence.

True

True or False: It now seems very likely that the earliest human efforts to manipulate plants happened through the tending of useful trees.

True

True or False: One surprising discovery about hunter-gatherers lives was that they worked only a few hours a week.

True

True or False: Patrilocal bands are small groups where men control the hunting and territorial resources.

True

Anthropologist Michael Heckenberger found evidence that human settlements had much larger populations in parts of the Amazon rainforest earlier than was previously believed. His research suggests what?

Unlike more customary understandings of Amazon-dwelling people, they have been cultivating the rainforest for much longer than previously assumed.

What is NOT a feature of the generalized foraging model?

Unquestioned obedience to the leadership of the band's headman by members of the band.

Were you to visit the New Guinea Highlands, you might be offered a meal consisting of cooked pork and sweet potatoes, which demonstrates

Use of low-intensity agricultural practices that nevertheless can provide significant food resources.

Sedentism

Year-round settlement in a particular place.

When anthropology first appeared as a science, most human populations lived by means of

Agriculture

The importance of teosinte, or maize, in archeology is that it

Allows archaeologists to trace the earliest evidence of domesticated grains and to be able to demonstrate that domestication had happened in the first place.

The importance of Marshall Sahlins' analysis of hunter-gatherer societies was to note the existence of

An entirely different cultural logic about their lives and the environment.

The application of pastoral practices leads to both an increase in population and

An increase in social complexity.

The development of what might be called true agriculture--the use of fertilizers or elaborations of technology--was most likely due to

An increased probability of shortages.

One of the plausible reasons for the lack of surpluses in hunter-gatherer groups is that surpluses could deplete local resources. This argument is called

An optimal foraging strategy

What is the significance of tubers as a very early cultigen in the New Guinea Highlands?

It shows us that early cultigens can be something other than grains.

An important distinction between hunter gatherers today and those of the past is

Linkage to sedentary agricultural societies through trade and other social ties.

Early anthropologists considered the environments of hunter-gatherer societies to be harsh, and their methods of subsistence and technology to be simple, crude, and primitive, reinforcing

Long-held cultural stereotypes.

During the "Man the Hunter" conference, archaeologists and cultural anthropologists presented all sorts of evidence they had gathered about hunter-gatherers. Which of the following was not one of the conclusions of their collective assessments:

Most hunter-gatherers relied much more heavily on game that was hunted by men than had been understood previously.

Domestication

Refers to converting wild plants and animals to human uses by taming animals or turning them into herds that can be raised for meat or milk or making plants able to be grown for food or other uses.

Nearly all known hunter-gatherers avoided producing surpluses. The major exception is found in the Northwest Coast where people harvested salmon during their return to spawn. The economic activities of these Indian communities are almost like farming the salmon forced them into sedentary lifestyle to control the salmon streams. This difference from traditional hunter gatherer or foraging communities illustrates the transformation in social activities that comes with food production. What is a characteristic of activities that arise with sedentism?

Rise of artistic traditions, including elaborate carved sculptures.

The major shift that came when people left behind hunter-gatherer economy to become food producers who were practicing simple farming was not so much a change in technology, but brought many changes in lifestyles that came with ______________.

Sedentism (?)

One of the surprising things about planting seeds is that they start getting larger following cultivation. What is an explanation that anthropologists and archaeologists use to explain this shift in productivity?

Simple farmers selected the largest seeds for planting, improving the cultigen in the process.

Patrilocal bands

Small groups where men controlled resources and hunting territories.