Q&A Hero

Q: The "density-equilibrium theory," which explains the origins of agriculture as a product of population growth that eventually causes the human population to exceed the hunting and gathering carrying capacity of an environment, was proposed by: a. Childe. b. Binford. c. Carneiro. d. Braidwood.

Q: The theory proposed by Robert Braidwood, arguing that agriculture arose in areas where the wild ancestors of domesticated wheat and barley grew, and resulted from human efforts to increase the productivity and stability of their food base, is the: a. Hilly flanks theory. b. Density-equilibrium theory. c. Oasis theory. d. Optimal foraging theory.

Q: The theory made popular by V. Gordon Childe in the 1940s, explaining the origin of animal domestication as a response by animals and people to arid conditions following the end of the Pleistocene, which caused them to congregate around water sources is the: a. Hilly flanks theory. b. Density-equilibrium theory. c. Oasis theory. d. Optimal foraging theory.

Q: Plant and animal domestication occurred independently in several centers across the globe. Which of the following is not a major independent hearth of plant domestication? a. The Americas (North, Central, and South America). b. Australia. c. Central Africa. d. Southeastern Asia.

Q: Egalitarian societies are associated with _____________, while chiefdoms and states are associated with_____________. a. Foraging and horticulture/intensive agriculture. b. Foraging/horticulture. c. Pastoralism/intensive agriculture. d. Horticulture/pastoralism.

Q: In anthropological terms, a civilization refers to: a. A complex urban society with a high level of cultural achievement in the art and sciences, craft specialization, a surplus of food and/or labor, and a hierarchically stratified social organization. b. A wide range of social formations that lie between egalitarian foragers and ranked societies that are normally horticultural and sedentary with a higher level of competition than seen among nomadic hunter-gatherers. c. Any society that has the power to coerce, that includes military and fiscal specialists, and that is controlled by elites. d. Any stratified society that practices full-time agriculture.

Q: The difference between modern cultural evolutionary paradigms and 19th century unilineal evolutionism is: a. Modern evolutionism highlights the role of ecological, demographic, and/or technological factors in conditioning cultural evolution. b. Modern evolutionism does not contain the racist overtones inherent in 19th century unilineal evolutionary schemes. c. Modern evolutionists agree that cultural behavior is not controlled by biology, and that the human past is much more complex than 19th century evolutionists imagined it. d. All of the above.

Q: If you live in a city with a high population density, with different types of specialized subsistence strategies and non-food producing specialists, where elites control access to strategic resources and where social organization is based on class membership (elite or commoner), you live in a: a. Tribe. b. Band. c. State. d. Chiefdom.

Q: If you live in an egalitarian foraging society with a low population density that occupies temporary camps, where everyone has equal access to resources through sharing and reciprocity, where there are no permanent positions of authority, and where membership is flexible, you live in a: a. Tribe. b. Band. c. State. d. Chiefdom.

Q: In the early 20th century, Franz Boas and his students: a. Rejected unilineal evolution as a valid means of studying human cultural diversity. b. Argued that all human cultures are unique and should be valued as such. c. Argued for the accumulation of ethnographic detail and historical facts prior to the construction of any generalities about human cultural evolution. d. All of the above.

Q: Nineteenth century social Darwinism provided justification for: a. Helping primitive peoples escape a fate of extinction. b. Boasian ideas of historical particularism and cultural relativism. c. A rejection of ethnocentrism. d. Unfettered economic competition and warfare.

Q: In the 19th century's most influential archaeology textbook, Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages (1865), John Lubbock argued that: a. Because the world's food supply is inherently inadequate, infants in primitive societies must struggle to survive; those who do survive possess favorable characteristics, and thus pass these characteristics on to future generations. b. Conflict between societies and between classes within the same society benefits humanity in the long run because it removes unfit individuals and social forms. c. Contemporary "primitives" were living approximations of what Europeans used to be (in other words, these primitives had not evolved to the same degree that Europeans had). d. Human cultural evolution could be divided into three phases: savagery, barbarism, and civilization.

Q: The process through which some individuals survive and reproduce at higher rates than others because of their genetic heritage is known as: a. Natural selection. b. Social Darwinism. c. Unilineal cultural evolution. d. Biological evolution.

Q: One effect of the 19th century comparative method was: a. Indigenous peoples were viewed from their own historical perspective, rather than a grand sequence of human evolution. b. The domination of "primitive" peoples by Europeans was legitimized because it was seen as the natural order of things. c. Scientific proof that humanity was improving biologically, culturally, intellectually, and spiritually. d. All of the above.

Q: Unilineal cultural evolution and the comparative method were rooted in: a. Renaissance philosophy. b. Enlightenment philosophy. c. Social Darwinism. d. Processualism.

Q: While today the comparative method refers to the testing of hypotheses against a range of human societies, in the 19th century the comparative method: a. Tested hypotheses only within the same types of societies; in other words, only egalitarian hunter-gatherers of arctic environments, or only stratified desert agriculturalists would be examined. b. Was a political tool used to argue against the racist idea that some living peoples had made it further up the evolutionary ladder of progress than others. c. Translated cultural diversity into an evolutionary sequence in which different living peoples represented different stages in humanity's march towards progress. d. Referred to the same thing; there has been little change in how the comparative method is used since the 19th century.

Q: The position held by Franz Boas, which maintained that each culture is the product of its own unique sequence of developments and in which chance plays a major role in bringing about change is called: a. Unilineal evolution. b. Cultural relativism. c. Social Darwinism. d. Historical particularism.

Q: The paradigm known as unilineal cultural evolution: a. Argues that human societies have evolved along a single developmental trajectory, with western civilization as the most advanced evolutionary stage. b. Argues that cultures can only be understood in their own terms, and cannot be usefully compared to other cultures. c. Argues against ethnocentrism, stressing the equality of all cultures, with none superior to any other. d. Has proven extremely useful for understanding cultural change; most anthropologists operate within this paradigm today.

Q: Studying ancient modes of thought requires the interpretation of symbols, objects, or acts that by cultural convention stand for something else with which they have no necessary connection.

Q: Lewis-Williams suggests that vision quests may have been held in the deepest cave spaces.

Q: Beneath many of the cave paintings at Lascaux there is abundant room for groups of people to have gathered and participated in rituals; the common occurrence of dense artifact scatters and hearth features in this location strongly suggests that they did so.

Q: 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.

Q: Upper Paleolithic cave art in France and Spain reached its height during the Magdalenian, the last major culture of the European Upper Paleolithic period, dating to between 16,000 and 10,000 BC.

Q: Upper Paleolithic cave art is often found in very obscure and difficult to access places such as the deepest recesses of caves, strongly suggesting a connection between the art and religious ritual.

Q: Many researchers argue that cognitive archaeology will be most successful when historical and ethnographic documentation is unavailable, because with the use of such data, the archaeologists' creativity and imagination are limited.

Q: The presence of lowland crops and animals in Chavn iconography strongly suggests that lowland immigrants introduced these crops and animals to the highlands; because the highland environment is so similar to that of the lowland, the imported plants and animals would have flourished.

Q: Iconography refers to art forms or writing systems that symbolically represent ideas about religion or cosmology.

Q: Tobacco was introduced to the New World by Spanish explorers in the late 15th century.

Q: All living cultures have some form of religion, and we assume that prehistoric cultures did as well.

Q: Most archaeologists would agree that recent advances in archaeological methods and analytic techniques have made the study of prehistoric symbolic behavior as straightforward as the study of prehistoric subsistence strategies and technology.

Q: According to the text, which of the following is not a way an individual seeks visions on a vision quest a. Starvation b. Dehydration c. Exposure d. Totems

Q: Using some historical or ethnographic information, as burger and Miller did with Chavin art, is the most secure way to go from ______________ to ________________. a. Meanings/ symbols b. Symbols/ meanings c. Totem/religion d. Religion/ totem

Q: Rituals in which doing something to an images of an object produces the desired effect in the real object are called a. Structuralism b. Totems c. Sympathetic magic d. Religion

Q: Leroi-Gourhan's maps of 66 French caves suggests that cave elements clustered into four major sets of images that do not include a. Small herbivores b. Rare species c. Dangerous animals d. Domesticated animals

Q: A shrine in which a deity reveals hidden knowledge or divine purpose is called a. Mythological seat of power b. Oracle c. Throne d. Totem

Q: Richard Burger suggests that power in Chavin culture came from the a. Early rulers b. Original agriculturalists c. Original priests d. Women

Q: Immigrants from the tropical forest were suggested to have introduced the lowland plants and animals to Chavin de Huantar. Plants indigenous to Amazonia include a. Manioc b. Potatoes c. Rice d. Tomatoes

Q: The study of the origin, large-scale structure, and future of the universe is termed a. Ritual b. Religion c. Iconography d. Cosmology

Q: A social institution containing a set of beliefs about supernatural beings and forces and one's relation to them is termed a. Ritual b. Iconography c. Religion d. Kinship

Q: Any archaeology of the mind will have more ___________than __________ flavor because such an approach will necessarily address recovering meanings (rather than law-like statements or generalizations about human behavior. a. Postprocessual/processual b. Processual/postprocessual c. Objective reasoning/subjective reasoning d. Subjective reasoning/objective reasoning

Q: Modern cognitive archaeology aims to do all of the following except: a. Study the perception, description and classification of the universe. b. Make interpretations about past cultures when there is no ethnographic data available. c. Understand past religions. d. Study a culture's expression of abstract ideas in art and writing systems.

Q: How has Lewis-Williams explained the cave paintings at Lascaux? a. The paintings represented totems, from which lineages or clans believed themselves to be descended. b. The paintings were left by hunters seeking to mark the territory as their own, and provided a sign to other hunters that they were not welcome. c. The paintings had no real symbolic meaning, and were essentially "art-for-art's sake", appreciated for its aesthetic value but containing little cultural meaning. d. The paintings are related to altered states of consciousness, and ultimately represent Upper Paleolithic people pondering the meaning of life.

Q: How was Lascaux cave discovered? a. Accidentally, by schoolboys and a lost dog. b. Through systematic survey of the Dordogne region of southern France, in search of caves with the potential for Upper Paleolithic art. c. By the landowner, who fell into a shallow pit and discovered cold air rising from a hole in the pit's bottom. d. By an avocational archaeologist who happened to be hiking in the region, and discovered artifacts near the cave's opening.

Q: What is Lascaux II? a. The only part of Lascaux cave that is currently open to the public. b. A recently discovered passage leading away from the main chambers at Lascaux, and into an additional chamber complex also containing Upper Paleolithic cave art. c. Another cave containing Upper Paleolithic cave art, located only 200 meters from Lascaux, found decades after the initial discovery of Lascaux. d. A very precise replica of the Hall of Bulls from the real Lascaux, constructed by the French government to limit visitation and reduce damage to the real Lascaux.

Q: Lewis-Williams has argued that much of the world's rock art is the result of shamanism. What is the basis for his argument? a. He is operating within the paradigm of structuralism, which frequently explains human behavior as a response to culturally dictated supernatural needs. b. He interprets the symbols depicted in rock art as representing shamans contacting the spirit world; thus the explanation for rock art lies within the rock art itself. c. Cross-cultural psychological and neurological research showing that individuals in a trance go through three universal stages of hallucination; rock art records these stages. d. There is no real basis for his argument; he arrived at his conclusions without the necessary data to support them and therefore demonstrates the dangers inherent in cognitive archaeological approaches.

Q: An individual who has the power to contact the spirit world through trance, possession, or visions, and who uses this power to influence the world of the living is: a. A totem. b. A shaman. c. An oracle. d. Any or all of the above.

Q: In Upper Paleolithic cave art, humans are: a. Rarely represented, and when they are represented are poorly executed compared to the marvelously depicted animal figures. b. Frequently represented, and represented in a realistic manner, similar to animal depictions. c. Represented as deities, controlling the plant and animal world. d. Never represented.

Q: A ritual in which an individual seeks visions through starvation, dehydration, and exposure, used in some cultures to communicate with the supernatural world, is: a. A vision quest. b. Shamanism. c. Totemism. d. Sympathetic magic.

Q: Leroi-Gourhan's interpretation that the symbols used in Upper Paleolithic cave art, including abstract shapes and animal figures, were ultimately male and female symbols: a. Was widely accepted by the archaeological community at the time, and is still considered the most likely interpretation of cave art today. b. Was based on ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological analogy, made stronger by the historical ties shared by modern Europeans and the prehistoric populations who created the cave art. c. Provides a good example of how archaeologists can escape the paradigm within which they are working to generate an objective and unbiased interpretation of archaeological data. d. Was most likely influenced by Freudian psychology, which was popular at the time.

Q: Which of the following is true of the interpretation of Upper Paleolithic cave art? a. Most archaeologists agree that cave art represents sympathetic magic, or rituals in which doing something to an image produces the desired effect in the real object (e.g., drawing pregnant bison ensures fertility, or killing a stylized animal on the cave wall guarantees hunting success). b. Most archaeologists agree that cave art should be interpreted within the structuralist paradigm, where all symbols define binary oppositions such as male and female. c. Because we lack any associated ethnographic data for the Upper Paleolithic, it is very difficult to securely interpret the meaning of symbols used in this art. d. Upper Paleolithic cave art represents the earliest beginnings of the human ability to appreciate art for its own aesthetic properties; it is thus "art-for-art's-sake", and animals drawn had no particular symbolic meaning.

Q: The paradigm that holds that human culture is the expression of unconscious modes of thought and reasoning, notably binary opposition, is: a. Processualism. b. Postprocessualism. c. Structuralism. d. Materialism.

Q: The Upper Paleolithic, the last major division of the Old World Paleolithic, dates to: a. 10,000 BC to present. b. 40,000-10,000 BC. c. 90,000-10,000 BC. d. None of the above; the temporal divisions of the Old World Upper Paleolithic vary dramatically in different regions of the Old World.

Q: The occurrence of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe is marked by the appearance of: a. A complex technology of stone, bone, and antler as well as art. b. Animal domestication. c. Agriculture. d. All of the above.

Q: The earliest evidence of artistic expression occurs _______ years ago, but becomes widespread only_______ years ago. a. 40,000/10,000 b. 90,000/40,000. c. 200,000/90,000. d. 500,000/200,000.

Q: Why do many archaeologists feel that oral traditions are not as reliable a source of information as archaeological data? a. Oral traditions can change over time; the older the events described, the more likely that elements were dropped or added. b. Oral traditions can be selective in what they remember, altering the nature or sequence of events over time to suit particular political needs. c. Oral traditions often encode cultural and religious knowledge that is not rooted in the material world, and that therefore cannot be scientifically evaluated. d. All of the above.

Q: According to Richard Burger, what best explains the widespread adoption of Chavn religion as evidenced by the spread of Chavn iconography across the central Andes between 500 and 250 BC? a. Political expansion; local communities were subject to military occupation by Chavn society, and local religions were prohibited and quickly replaced by Chavn religion. b. The reliance of neighboring communities on Chavn agricultural crops; crops were traded to local communities in exchange for political and religious allegiance to Chavn society. c. The extension of a powerful shared cosmology which resulted in the growth of complex interregional exchange networks. d. None of the above.

Q: What hypothesis best explains the origin and content of Chavn iconography? a. Chavn's religious leaders deliberately imported lowland symbolism, perhaps believing that exotic lowland people had powerful esoteric knowledge; this interpretation is supported by ethnographic and ethnohistoric documentation b. Paleoenvironmental change; the climate was warmer and more humid during Chavn times, and therefore the highlands were able to support the lowland complex of animals commonly depicted in Chavn art. c. Population pressure; early Chavn people were forced from the tropical forests into the highlands, where they introduced lowland plants and animals; these plants and animals were represented in Chavn iconography to pay homage and deference to the ancient homeland. d. It was a conscious effort by the Chavn elite to maintain their status; Chavn iconography was created by the elite, and served as a constant reminder to the general population that only the elite had access to the highly desirable plants and animals represented in Chavn art.

Q: Chavn iconography commonly depicts: a. Chavn deities and elites being worshipped by the common people, often containing scenes of human sacrifice. b. Animals local to the Chavn region and those that the Chavn people depended upon for food, including wild deer, vicuna, llama, and guinea pigs. c. Stylized creatures native to forests of the eastern slope some several hundred miles away, and not occurring in the local highland environment. d. Agricultural scenes of crops the Chavn people relied upon, as well as their extensive irrigation systems.

Q: Why is the Chavn culture of the central Andes considered the first Andean civilization? a. Because of its stratified social and political organization and its monumental achievements in metallurgy, weaving, irrigation systems, and stone sculpture. b. Because of its intensive agricultural subsistence strategy. c. Because in spite of the fact that the Chavn people subsisted solely by hunting and gathering, they were still able to develop a sophisticated iconography that reflected a sophisticated cosmology. d. Because unlike previous cultures in the region, archaeological evidence has shown that the Chavn culture produced art and music.

Q: How could Robert Hall's interpretations about the symbolic meanings of Hopewell effigy pipes be tested? a. They could be tested directly simply by examining ethnographic data relating to the symbolic meaning of historic peace pipes. b. They could be tested indirectly by assessing the archaeological record of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, and determining whether the social and political ramifications predicted by Hall's hypothesis are archaeologically visible. c. If abundant evidence of conflict is present in Hopewell sites along with abundant effigy pipes, Hall's interpretation would be supported. d. They could not be tested; this is the major problem with cognitive archaeological approaches.

Q: Finely carved Hopewell effigy pipes have been interpreted as ritual artifacts. Robert L. Hall argued from ethnographic analogy in the late 1970s that these pipes: a. Represented ritual weapons (atlatls). b. Functioned as peace pipes functioned historically. c. Helped maintain relationships between communities, reducing regional differences and promoting contact and communication. d. All of the above.

Q: The analysis of past ritual behavior is archaeology's major contribution to the study of religion because: a. While all prehistoric cultures participated in ritual activities, many prehistoric cultures did not have religion. b. Rituals are behavioral acts that often entail material culture and that therefore can be represented in the archaeological record. c. Most archaeologists agree that prehistoric religion cannot be studied because it is archaeologically invisible; it is therefore a waste of time, energy, and money to attempt such a study. d. All of the above.

Q: A society's mechanism for relating supernatural phenomena to the everyday world, and enlisting supernatural powers to achieve or prevent transformations of state in humans and nature, is: a. Religion. b. Ritual. c. Cosmology. d. Sympathetic magic.

Q: Archaeologists refer to the common set of symbols found in the Midwestern United States between 200 BC and AD 400 as the: a. Mississippian Interaction Sphere. b. Hopewell Interaction Sphere. c. Midwestern Ceremonial Complex. d. Magdalenian Symbolic Complex.

Q: Mary Douglas, a symbolic anthropologist, has argued that which of the following explains Near Eastern food taboos such as the prohibition against eating pork? a. Prohibited animals are those that violate cultural ideas about the order of creation. b. Any food will be tabooed when the cost of producing it outweighs its value (in calories or nutrients). c. Animals included in food taboos are always those that do not occur naturally in the geographic region of the taboo; either the animal never lived in the region, or they lived there once and are no extinct. d. All of the above.

Q: The difference between a symbol and a sign is: a. A symbol has connection to what it signifies, while a sign does not. b. A sign has a connection to what it signifies, while a symbol does not. c. Symbol is an archaeological term that refers to prehistoric behavior, while sign is an ethnographic term that refers to the behavior of living people. d. There is no difference between them; symbol and sign are terms that are use interchangeably.

Q: Which of the following is true of symbols and symbolic behavior? a. The ability to use symbols lies at the heart of what it means to be human; uniquely human attributes, such as language, are made possible by the ability to use symbols. b. Symbols have no necessary connection to their culturally assigned meanings; this means that the same symbols can differ in meaning cross-culturally, and that symbolic behavior is difficult to study archaeologically. c. The same symbol can carry different meanings in different contexts within the same culture. d. All of the above.

Q: An object or act that by cultural convention stands for something else with which it has no necessary connection is a(n): a. Symbol. b. Sign. c. Icon. d. Artifact.

Q: Which of the following is true of cognitive archaeology? a. It is appealing to cultural materialists who are less concerned with interpreting symbolic relationships than with reconstructing the material conditions of life. b. It is the study of all those aspects of ancient culture that are a product of the human mind. c. It is based more in the processual than in the postprocessual paradigm. d. Hypotheses generated within cognitive archaeology cannot be tested, and are therefore unscientific.

Q: Processual archaeology is appealing to some archaeologists because: a. It is concerned with discovering and interpreting symbolic relationships between material culture and the human mind. b. It emphasizes the values, ideas, and beliefs that make people human, and is less concerned with the material conditions of existence. c. It places priority on the very things that archaeologists are most confident in recovering from archaeological sites, such as environment, technology, and economy. d. All of the above.

Q: Status refers to the rights, duties, and privileges that define the nature of interpersonal relations.

Q: Archeologists think in terms of only residential groups, excluding non residential groups.

Q: Because different volcanic flows contain identical amounts of trace elements, it is nearly impossible to source obsidian using methods that rely on trace element analysis.

Q: The purpose of adding temper to clay is to prevent cracking and improve the strength of the ceramic item.

Q: Matrilineal societies are extremely common, making up roughly 75% of the world's societies today; archaeologists also believe they were very common in the past.

Q: In general, bilateral descent is associated with industrialized nations; patrilineal descent is associated with a wide range of conditions such as hunting and gathering, agriculture, and pastoralism, as well as internal warfare; and matrilineal descent is associated with horticulture, long distance hunting, and warfare with distant enemies.

Q: If you call your father's brother's offspring "brother" and "sister" instead of "cousin", and you call your mother's sister's offspring "cousin", you most likely belong to a matrilineage.

Q: Kinship systems describe relationships based solely on biological descent.

Q: Ethnographic data indicate that when pottery production moves from manufacture for the residential group to manufacture for the nonresidential group, the task of pottery production shifts from women to men.

Q: In anthropology, the terms "gender" and "sex" are used interchangeably.