Anthropology 308 Final
Archaeologists rely on two sources of information in order to understand the archaeological record?
archaeological theory and archaeological observations
It is essential that archaeologists take abundant, accurate, and detailed field notes during excavations because:
archaeology destroys data as it is gathered; once a site is excavated it cannot be re-excavated.
Grit, grog, and sand:
are commonly used to temper clay.
The remains of Otzi provides an example of:
how cold conditions can inhibit decomposition of organic material by preventing the production of microorganisms that cause decay.
Smithsonian number
A unique catalog number given to each site; it consists of a number (the state's position alphabetically), a letter abbreviation for the county, and the site's sequential number within the county.
loess
A wind-formed deposit made of fine particles of clay and silt
For purposes of radiocarbon dating, the "present" is set at:
A.D. 1950
Distinguish between what an antiquarian did and that of a modern archaeologist.
An antiquarian was someone who viewed collecting artifacts as a hobby. A modern archaeologist carefully excavates sites and utlizes specific methods to conduct their research. Archaeologists are professionally trained and are experts on artifacts and material culture from the past. An antiquarian was before archaeology became a specific discipline and they viewed collecting as a side job.
Which of the following is true of the Hudson-Meng site?
Taphonomic research suggests that humans played little, if any, role in the deaths of the bison at the site.
Windover
ancient cemetary in florida
Waterlogged sites such as Ozette on Washington's Olympic Peninsula demonstrate:
how organic remains can be remarkably preserved if saturated by water and sealed in an anaerobic environment.
To identify where a ceramic was made, an archaeologist could ______.
identify the kind of temper, examine the vessel shape and design motifs, use ceramic petrography
High magnification microwear is used to:
infer tool function.
Patterning in the archaeological record can:
inform us about patterns in human behavior.
Stratified means:
it is formed, arranged, or deposited in layers.
Which of the following measurements could provide useful information about an artifact's size?
length, width, height
Clary Ranch
locality in western Nebraska with sites deeply buried in alluvium
Common food sources in the Early Neolithic Near East did NOT include ______.
maize
Archaeology focuses on the study of:
material culture.
Archaeological pottery is usually made of _______.
mix of clay and temper
Attritional age-frequency mortality profile are characterized by:
more young and old individuals, compared to the number of prime-age individuals.
Literally "plant rocks," _______ can survive under conditions where pollen disappears.
phytoliths
advocates empathetic explanations
post-processual critique
Flexed and extended are types of:
primary burials.
An important theoretical development in archaeology during the 1960s and 1970s was _____.
processual archaeology
Attempts to remain objective
processual archaeology
emphasizes human ecology
processual archaeology
explicitly scientific explanation
processual archaeology
views cultures as systems
processual archaeology
A total station is used to:
provide electronic point-provenience.
Features at an archaeological site can include _________.
pyramids, hearths, burial mounds, brick walls
Because it is more porous, _______ usually decomposes first during burial.
trabecular bone
A typology is a formal system of classification for assigning time and space meaning to artifacts.
true
Amateur or avocational archaeologists can help discover archaeological sites.
true
Before humans started using metal tools, most tools with cutting edges were made of stone.
true
Dendrochronology is an absolute dating technique.
true
Lascaux Cave in southern France is perhaps the most famous of all European caves, containing many chambers and passageways with magnificent cave paintings and dating to 17,000 years ago; in order to preserve the cave and the artwork within it, it is now closed to regular public visitation.
true
Relative dating involves both the principle of superposition and dating by association.
true
Tempers are often added to clay to prevent cracking during drying and firing.
true
The archaeological record refers to the material that makes up the evidence of past human behavior.
true
The design screens for excavated matrix will vary from site to site, and is much less important than mesh size.
true
The classification of artifacts into types that organize and simplify artifact variability is termed:
typology
Pottery can be made by hand, in molds, or on the:
wheel
The first stage in making pottery is ______.
collecting raw materials
CRM is the acronym for:
cultural resources management.
Typology is:
the systematic arrangement of material culture into types.
Nels Nelson
- also established antiquity of Native Americans - American Museum of Natural History - stratigraphic excavations in American Southwest - Galisteo Basin defines ceramic sequence shows "Battleship curves": used to cross-date other archeological sites
In the PLSS, how many square miles are contained in one section?
1
The oldest unequivocal archaeological sites in Africa are:
2.5-2.6 million years old.
PLSS
A coordinate that indicates a specific place using quarters, sections, townships, and ranges.
absolute date
A date expressed in specific units of scientific measurement, such as days, years, centuries, or millennia; absolute determinations attempting to pinpoint a discrete, known interval in time.
How do archaeologists distinguish wild from domesticated animals in the archaeological record?
Archaeologists are able to distinguish wild animals from domesticated animals to due genome analysis. By comparing the archaefauna with current living animals, they can compare the genetics and detrmine if the ancient animal possed genetic traits of domestication. The comparison of ancient animals to present day animals allows researchers to distinguish whether the animal had altered genetics/genomes due to people domestication the animal. If the archaefauna poses different genomes than the non-domesticated, it is apparent that the animal had attapted and became dependent on humans for survival. Another way archaeologists determine if an animal was domesticated or not is by determining how the animal died. Wild animals tend to be hunted, where as domesticated animals tend to be butchered.
What are the two related propositions of the Binford/Saxe program of mortuary analysis?
Binford and Saxe program of mortuary analysis both support the idea that mortuary burials directly reflect the persons' status when they were alive. How, where, and when a person is buried reflects their social status and available resources they had prior to their death. Burials and mortuary sites provide a plethra of information reflecting the culture who buried the people.
Describe the difference between cold marrow extraction and hot marrow extraction in terms of the steps involved to amass the resource and how they would be differentially expressed archaeologically.
Cold marrow consists of the marrow being extracted by pulling it out of the bone after breakage, where as hot marrow extraction requires more effort, thought, and resources. Hot marrow extratction requires a pit to be dug, which is then lined with a hide and a fires is built underneath. The hide is then filled with water and is brought to a boil. The bones are boiled in the water for a long period of time and the fatty tissues and marrow float to the top where they are then scraped off and collected.
trapped charge dating
Forms of dating that rely upon the fact that electrons become trapped in minerals' crystal lattices as a function of background radiation; the age of the specimen is the total radiation received divided by the annual dose of radiation.
What do Dr. Hill's daughter, Eva, and some Upper Paleolithic artists have in common?
Halibut eyes
Artifacts made from obsidian, mica, and copper might be found in:
Hopewell burials.
Mortuary analysis at the site of _______ in Alabama showed ascribed status.
Moundville
Which of the following is not true of science?
It always provides the right answer to a question.
Laetoli
Location in Tanzania where tracks of australopithecine footprints were found showing that australopithecines walked upright
Otzi
Natural mummy found in Otzal Alps that was radio carbon dated to 3,300 BC
By combining both modern and ancient DNA, geneticists have shown that ______.
Neanderthals interbred with modern humans
Binford's ethnoarchaeological research was conducted among:
Nunamiut
imbrication
Overlapping and forming a regular pattern
Folsom
Paleo-Indian archaeological complex of the southern Great Plains, around 12,500 ya, characterized by fluted projectile points used for hunting now-extinct bison. Established human antiquity in the new world
Why do the researchers (Todd and Rapson) at Hudson-Meng site talk about the site as a bonebed rather than a kill site?
Refering to the Hudson-Meng site at a kill site is very misleading and an outdated term for the site. By calling it a kill site, researchers and visitors are predisposed to a biased view of the archaeological record present. Archaeologist may skew their research on the basis that the name "kill site" implies that people were involved in the death of the bison.
flotation
The use of fluid suspension to recover tiny burned plant remains and bone fragments from archaeological sites.
According to Dale Guthrie, Upper Paleolithic art contains a wealth of information about prehistoric life; list two of them.
Upper Paleolithic art contains information on the people who made the art. The art found in the caves provides information on the people of the time, what the animals looked like then, and the gender of the people who produced the artwork. The paintins also reveal hunting techniques they used during prehistoric life.
Which of the following is NOT an example of experimental archaeology?
Using Calib to calibrate radiocarbon ages.
midden
a garbage mound left by prehistoric people
geofact
a naturally shaped stone that resembles an artifact
feature
a non-portable artifact
One common way to describe hierarchical organization in the past is the __________ model.
band-tribe-chiefdom-state
Flakes often preserve a ______ of percussion on their ventral surfaces.
bulb
Methods of decorating pottery include _____.
burnishing, cord marking, impressing the pottery with shells
The process of flotation is based on the principle that:
carbonized plant remains will float when submerged in water, while heavier items (including dirt) will not.
The age of an animal when it died can be determined by ______.
cementum annuli
Identifying the age and sex composition of animals in an archaeofauna ______.
can provide direct evidence of domestication
Changes in _____ isotope ratios can tell archaeologists when corn became an important part of the diet.
carbon
Discarded bits and pieces of stone that are generated during flintknapping are referred to as:
debitage
After an organism dies, the amount of radioactive carbon in the body______.
decreases at a constant rate
Thomas Jefferson's contribution to the Moundbuilder debate was to:
excavate a mound to resolve the question of who made them.
Cause of death can be determined for a large percentage of burials.
false
Compared to seed crops, it is usually much more difficult to identify root crops in the archaeological record.
false
Experimental research on bison, elk, and deer long bones indicates the number of tool-strokes needed to disarticulate a limb joint closely matches the number of those tool-strokes that appear as archaeologically visible cutmarks.
false
Flintknapping is an additive process.
false
Interpretation of prehistoric art is as straightforward as the study of prehistoric subsistence strategies and technology.
false
It is preferable to use Magnetic North when setting up a site grid system because True North moves over time.
false
It is safe to say that OSL has greatly improved the quality of pedestrian survey data and expedited site recording.
false
Studies of human skeletal remains usually begin in the laboratory, since human remains are fragile.
false
The Folsom site in New Mexico is important because artifacts were discovered between the ribs of a dinosaur, thereby confirming that people coexisted with dinosaurs in the Americas.
false
The archaeological record is a direct reflection of the human behavior that produced it.
false
The first ceramic vessels were wheel-thrown.
false
To make pottery, people usually collect clays from at least 100 kilometers from their residences.
false
Using a large data base of radiocarbon dates, Squier and Davis demonstrated that the Moundbuilders lived between 3000-750 B.P.
false
The earliest ceramic containers, or pottery, __________.
first appeared in Japan 10,000 years ago
Anthropogenic materials in sediments can include ______.
fish bones, charcoal, artifacts
Archaeologists study variation in artifacts and ecofacts across three basic dimensions:
form, time, space
We understand how materials break through ______.
fracture mechanics
A flake can be removed through percussion using ______.
hammer stone, antler, another rock
The earliest pottery making techniques include _____.
hand-forming
Some lithic materials can be ________ to improve flaking.
heat-treated
plan map
shows horizontal locations of archaeological materials
Regional survey can be used to answer questions about:
site distribution, settlement patterns, political organization, how people used the landscape
Areas where there are concentrations of artifacts are called:
sites
Before 1950, archaeologists used ______ to date artifacts.
stratigraphy
Archaeologists can track the movement of people through _____.
strontium isotopes
diachronic
studying societies across time
The wild ancestor of corn or maize was _________.
teosinte
Ethnoarchaeological work with the Nunamiut demonstrated:
that different artifact assemblages could result from different activities conducted by the same culture.
Age of death can be determined by _______.
the fusing of the epiphyses
Site seasonality can be determined by _______.
the presence of specific migratory species, the presence of specific animal parts, such as antlers, the age of the animals present
