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Chapter 2: Putting the Picture Together
In this test bank for World Prehistory and Archaeology, Third Edition, there is a new system
for identifying the difficulty of the questions. Questions are now tagged according to the four
levels of learning that help organize the text. Think of these four levels as moving from
lower-level to higher-level cognitive reasoning. The four levels are:
REMEMBER: a question involving recall of key terms or factual material
UNDERSTAND: a question testing comprehension of more complex ideas
APPLY: a question applying anthropological knowledge to some new situation
ANALYZE: a question requiring identifying elements of an argument and their
interrelationship
Multiple Choice
1. Ideas that archaeologists have developed about the past and about the way we come to
know about the past are referred to as ___________.
a. antiquarianism
b. archaeological theories
c. hermeneutics
d. historicism
(REMEMBER; answer b; page 32)
2. Which of the following represents the first clear evidence for the use of excavation to
recover and explore the past?
a. the exploration of a mound by Thomas Jefferson
b. the recovery of ʺthunderstonesʺ by Antoine de Jussieu
c. an emblem book written by Johannes Sambucus
d. John Frereʹs report on a Paleolithic site at Hoxne, England
(UNDERSTAND; answer c; page 33)
3. Which of the following scholars helped establish the antiquity of humanity?
a. Charles Lyell
b. John Frere
c. Lewis Binford
d. Ian Hodder
(REMEMBER; answer a; page 35)
4. The Three-Age system divided prehistory into the __________ Ages.
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a. Savage, Barbarian, and Civilized
b. Stone, Bronze, and Iron
c. Foraging, Pastoral, and Agrarian
d. Animist, Theistic, and Secular
(REMEMBER; answer b; page 35)
5. Why did the publication of On the Origin of Species upset the church?
a. It removed divinity from creation.
b. It proved the earth was created 4004 BC.
c. It showed the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
d. It helped Heinrich Schliemann explain Troy.
(UNDERSTAND; answer a; page 36)
6. The Neolithic and the Paleolithic were defined by
whom?
a. Christian Thomsen
b. John Frere
c. John Lubbock
d. Heinrich Schliemann
(REMEMBER; answer c; page 36)
7. ________ pioneered the methods of stratigraphic excavation and seriation to create a
chronology in his work in Egypt.
a. Abbe Henri Breuil
b. Sir Flinders Petrie
c. V. Gordon Childe
d. Heinrich Schliemann
(REMEMBER; answer b; page 37)
8. Toward the end of the 19th century, the __________ approach was
characterized by the emergence of modern methods of excavation and analysis and
formal schemes of classification.
a. processual
b. post-processual
c. culture history
d. evolutionary
(REMEMBER; answer c; page 38)
9. ________ twisted the archaeological record to reinforce German nationalism and
support the Nazi party.
a. Gustav Kossinna
b. Flinders Petri
c. John Lubbock
d. Heinrich Schliemann
(REMEMBER; answer a; page 38)
10. Which archaeologist proposed the idea of a Neolithic Revolution characterized by
agricultural villages?
a. John Frere
b. John Lubbock
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c. V. Gordon Childe
d. Lewis Binford
(REMEMBER; answer c; page 38)
11. Who was the catalyst for the New Archaeology?
a. Walter Taylor
b. Lewis Binford
c. Flinders Petrie
d. Ian Hodder
(UNDERSTAND; answer b; page 40)
12. Binford thought that for archaeology to be considered a science it must work by
________ from general laws and models.
a. drawing
b. induction
c. extrapolation
d. deduction
(REMEMBER; answer d; page 40)
13. Observations of archaeological materials in the present that can help create and test
hypotheses about the past are called __________.
a. middle-range research
b. the culture history approach
c. postprocessual archaeology
d. systems theory
(REMEMBER; answer a; page 41)
14. Which of the following statements best describes systems theory?
a. It was heavily influenced by the works of Marx.
b. It views society as an interconnected network of elements.
c. It represented a conservative alternative to the New Archaeology.
d. Systems theory plays a significant role in contemporary archaeology.
(UNDERSTAND; answer b; page 41)
15. New laws requiring archaeological work to be done before damaging construction
work created which of the following?
a. a wealth of artifacts for museums
b. a rejection of the New Archaeology
c. the New Archaeology
d. Cultural Resource Management (CRM) archaeology
(REMEMBER; answer d; page 42)
16. Which of the following statements best describes postprocessual archaeology?
a. It argues that archaeologists should emulate historians.
b. It is rooted in an etic approach to archaeology.
c. It avoids hypotheses in favor of more subjective analyses.
d. Postprocessual archaeologists study only on historical populations.
(UNDERSTAND; answer a; page 44)
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17. The goal of postprocessual archaeology is to __________.
a. formulate general laws governing human behavior
b. offer interpretations based on contextual data
c. write culture history
d. test hypotheses
(UNDERSTAND; answer b; page 44)
18. Which of these theories stresses the interaction between the presuppositions we bring
to a problem and the independent empirical reality of our observations and experiences?
a. systems theory
b. hermeneutics
c. heuristics
d. induction
(UNDERSTAND; answer b; page 45)
19. ________ focuses on the way archaeologists study and represent gender in the
archaeological record, as well as gender biases of the investigator.
a. Feminist archaeology
b. Gynocentric archaeology
c. Masculinist archaeology
d. Postprocessual archaeology
(REMEMBER: answer a; page 46)
20. __________ stressed the importance of the actions of the individual living in past
society.
a. Lewis Binfordʹs writings
b. Feminist archaeology
c. Processual archaeology
d. Agency theory
(UNDERSTAND; answer d; page 46)
True False
1. King Tutankhamen conducted an early archaeological dig at the site of the Sphinx.
(REMEMBER; answer False; page 33)
2. In Medieval Europe, prehistoric stone tools found in fields were thought to
be ʺthunderstonesʺ formed where lightening struck.
(REMEMBER; answer True; page 33)
3. Thomas Jeffersonʹs excavations of a mound on his property proved it was not made
by Indians.
(REMEMBER; answer False; page 34)
4. Danish antiquarian, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, developed the Three Age System in 1816.
(REMEMBER; answer False; page 35)
5. The struggle between evolution and religion predates the publication of Charles
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Darwin’s On The Origin of Species.
(UNDERSTAND; answer True; page 36)
6. In 1865, John Lubbock divided the Stone Age into the Neolithic (New Stone
Age) and Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), terms that are still used to this day.
(REMEMBER; answer True; page 36)
7. During the 19th century, archaeologists spread across the world to dig in such places
as Africa, Mesopotamia, and Turkey.
(REMEMBER; answer True; page 36)
8. The Pecos Classification and Midwest Taxonomic system typified the culture history
periodʹs concern with classification.
(UNDERSTAND; answer True; page 37)
9. Graham Clark led a multi-disciplinary team to study the remains at Star Carr.
(REMEMBER; answer Ttrue; page 39)
10. Albert Spaulding argued that archaeologists should impose categories on
material culture in order to study it.
(REMEMBER; answer False; page 39)
11. Lewis Binford pronounced that archaeology should be science or it should be nothing
at all.
(REMEMBER; answer True; page 40)
12. Deduction involves taking available data and inferring general models from it.
(UNDERSTAND; answer False; page 40)
13. Hermeneutics views our knowledge of past societies as static and unchanging.
(UNDERSTAND; answer False; page 45)
14. Feminist archaeologists see males as responsible for most of the trouble in prehistory.
(UNDERSTAND; answer False; page 46)
15. Evolutionary archaeology, ironically, rejects the theory of evolution as having any
application to modern archaeology.
(UNDERSTAND; answer False; page 48)
Short Answer
1. What is the significance of the Three-Age system?
Answer: During the rise of archaeology in the 19th century, artifacts poured into
museums, but there was no way to know how old they were or how to organize
them. Christian Thomsenʹs solution was to divide them into relics of three periods—
the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age—based on the material of
manufacture. He recognized that though this was the relative chronology some stone
and bronze artifacts continued to be manufactured in the later periods. He therefore
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augmented his classification by considering designs found on the objects.
(UNDERSTAND; page 35)
2. What was the contribution of V. Gordon Childe to archaeology?
Answer: Although his only excavation was a small village in Orkney, Childe is
known for his ability to compare and to recognize patterning in the archaeological
collections across Europe. Archaeology showed him that around the world societies
had undergone two revolutions: the Neolithic revolution (a sedentary life brought
about by the adoption of agriculture) and the urban revolution (the rise of cities and
complex governments). Childe shifted the focus of archaeology from just the
artifacts to societies of people living in a network of social and economic
relationships.
(UNDERSTAND; page 38)
3. What was Graham Clarkʹs contribution to scientific archaeology?
Answer: Clark brought together botanists, zoologists, and archaeologists to excavate
Star Carr, a prehistoric hunter-gatherer site in England. Because the site was
waterlogged, perishable items, such as wood, were well-preserved. Clarkʹs goal was
to understand the subsistence practices of late prehistoric hunter-gatherers and he
realized that he needed the expertise of many other disciplines to help him achieve
that.
(UNDERSTAND; page 39)
4. What were the goals of the New Archaeology?
Answer: The processual archaeologists were interested in the dynamics of past
societies, but what they had to study were the static objects of the archaeological
record. The fundamental method of archaeology should be testing hypotheses.
Archaeologists were not limited to just describing the archaeological record, but
theory and method had the potential for extending into all aspects of past society.
(ANALYZE; page 39)
5. What is the difference between induction and deduction?
Answer: Induction involves drawing inferences on the basis of available data (the
particular) and reaching a conclusion (generality) based on an examination of that
data. Deduction is guided by general laws and model and testing those on the
available data.
(UNDERSTAND; page 40)
6. What is middle-range research?
Answer: Middle-range research allows us to make secure statements about past
dynamics on the basis of observations made on archaeological material. The key is to
look at processes that we can observe in the present and then analyze the material
patterning left by those processes. We can then develop hypotheses about the past that
can be tested by reference to our observations in the present.
(UNDERSTAND; page 41)
7. How has systems theory been applied to archaeology?
Answer: The system approach makes it possible to look at periods of rapid change in
the archaeological record as the result of feedback among elements of a complex
system. As a result, change could be understood as the effect of internal processes—
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processes that took place within a society. Systems theory has been particularly
valuable in giving archaeologists tools to integrate evidence of ecological change into
models of social change.
(APPLY; page 41)
8. How has gender been misinterpreted by archaeologists?
Answer: Archaeologists have tended to treat society as homogenous. Feminist
archaeologists have drawn on ethnographic studies to show that the experience of
individuals is shaped by their role in society. They have also demonstrated that there
is a strong bias toward viewing men as active and productive agents and women as
passive in society.
(ANALYZE; page 46)
9. What is evolutionary archaeology?
Answer: Evolutionary archaeology was developed by processual archaeologists
who stress the importance of evolutionary theory as a potential unifying theory for
archaeology. In recent years, it has come to encompass a range of approaches, from
ecological studies that look at changes in culture as changes in human adaptation to
attempts to apply Darwinian theory to changes in the frequencies and types of
artifacts found at a site.
(UNDERSTAND; page 48)
10. What did Ian Hodder mean when he said that archaeology begins ʺat the edge of the
trowelʺ?
Answer: He meant that archaeologists should change archaeological theory from a top
down approach (i.e., guided by theory) to one that builds from observations. Drawing
on the theory of hermeneutics, he argues that archaeological theory should build upon
what archaeologists actually do, rather than prescribing what they should do.
(ANALYZE; page 49)
Essay
1. What was new about the New Archaeology?
(ANALYZE; page 39-41)
2. Compare and contrast the theoretical underpinnings of processual and postprocessual
archaeology.
(ANALYZE; page 39-45)
3. How do Systems Theory and Hermeneutics help archaeologists understand the past?
(UNDERSTAND; page 41-45)
4. According to postprocessual archaeologists, what is the relationship of archaeology to
modern society?
(APPLY; page 44-45)
5. What is gender and how can it be identified in the archaeological record? Discuss how
feminist archaeology can radically alter our interpretation of the past.
(APPLY; page 46-48)
