Chapter 1 Questions
1. Who is considered to be the first person to have conducted a scientific excavation
of an ancient site?
a) Thomas Jefferson
b) General Pitt-Rivers
c) Sir William Flinders Petrie
d) Willard Libby
e) Charles Darwin
2. Only just a century and a half ago, before the development of modern archaeology,
most well-read people in the Western world thought the world had been created
a) in the year 1 AD
b) in the year 1000 AD
c) 4.54 billion years ago
d) 2 million years ago
e) in 4004 BC
3. The ecological approach to archaeology developed by Grahame Clark and his
contemporaries could not only build up a picture of what prehistoric environments
were like, but could also provide information about human activities such as
a) what language people spoke in the past
b) why people believed in certain gods
c) what style of clothing people wore
d) what people ate in the past
e) all of the above
,4. Many 19th century scholars were obsessed with the Moundbuilders, a mythical
civilization that supposedly built the mounds and earthworks located in what is now
a) the United States
b) Greece
c) Eastern Europe
d) China
e) South Africa
5. Who formed the first cabinets of curiosities?
a) Sigmund Freud
b) Renaissance princes
c) Sir John Soane
d) the Aztecs
e) none of the above
6. After 14 years of work, this scholar was able to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs in
1822
a) Ephraim Squier
b) Gordon Childe
c) Jean-François Champollion
d) General Pitt-Rivers
e) C.J. Thomsen
7. “Survival of the fittest”, a key mechanism in Darwin’s theory of evolution, is also
known as
,a) natural selection
b) uniformitarianism
c) stratification
d) classification
e) ethnology
8. A late 19th-century pioneer in organized, precise excavation and total recording
methods was
a) Mortimer Wheeler
b) Charles Darwin
c) Gordon Childe
d) General Pitt-Rivers
e) Alfred Kidder
9. The Rosetta Stone was found to be the key to
a) deciphering Aramaic
b) deciphering ancient Hebrew
c) deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs
d) deciphering Linear A
e) deciphering ancient Greek
10. The study of the arrangement of superimposed layers of rocks or soil is called
a) processualism
b) the Three Age system
c) cultural ecology
, d) stratigraphy
e) the praxis approach
11. Although it was less applicable in places where bronze or iron were not used, the
Three Age System was conceptually significant to the study of the prehistory of
a) North America
b) Europe
c) South America
d) Africa
e) Mesoamerica
12. In North America, the influential anthropologist Julian Steward emphasized the
importance of environmental adaptation in cultural change. This approach was
termed
a) environmentalism
b) cultural ecology
c) eco-archaeology
d) diffusionism
e) processualism
13. A key breakthrough in the use of scientific methods to date archaeological
remains was Willard Libby’s 1949 invention of
a) neutron activation analysis
b) dendrochronology
c) radiocarbon dating
d) potassium-argon dating
1. Who is considered to be the first person to have conducted a scientific excavation
of an ancient site?
a) Thomas Jefferson
b) General Pitt-Rivers
c) Sir William Flinders Petrie
d) Willard Libby
e) Charles Darwin
2. Only just a century and a half ago, before the development of modern archaeology,
most well-read people in the Western world thought the world had been created
a) in the year 1 AD
b) in the year 1000 AD
c) 4.54 billion years ago
d) 2 million years ago
e) in 4004 BC
3. The ecological approach to archaeology developed by Grahame Clark and his
contemporaries could not only build up a picture of what prehistoric environments
were like, but could also provide information about human activities such as
a) what language people spoke in the past
b) why people believed in certain gods
c) what style of clothing people wore
d) what people ate in the past
e) all of the above
,4. Many 19th century scholars were obsessed with the Moundbuilders, a mythical
civilization that supposedly built the mounds and earthworks located in what is now
a) the United States
b) Greece
c) Eastern Europe
d) China
e) South Africa
5. Who formed the first cabinets of curiosities?
a) Sigmund Freud
b) Renaissance princes
c) Sir John Soane
d) the Aztecs
e) none of the above
6. After 14 years of work, this scholar was able to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs in
1822
a) Ephraim Squier
b) Gordon Childe
c) Jean-François Champollion
d) General Pitt-Rivers
e) C.J. Thomsen
7. “Survival of the fittest”, a key mechanism in Darwin’s theory of evolution, is also
known as
,a) natural selection
b) uniformitarianism
c) stratification
d) classification
e) ethnology
8. A late 19th-century pioneer in organized, precise excavation and total recording
methods was
a) Mortimer Wheeler
b) Charles Darwin
c) Gordon Childe
d) General Pitt-Rivers
e) Alfred Kidder
9. The Rosetta Stone was found to be the key to
a) deciphering Aramaic
b) deciphering ancient Hebrew
c) deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs
d) deciphering Linear A
e) deciphering ancient Greek
10. The study of the arrangement of superimposed layers of rocks or soil is called
a) processualism
b) the Three Age system
c) cultural ecology
, d) stratigraphy
e) the praxis approach
11. Although it was less applicable in places where bronze or iron were not used, the
Three Age System was conceptually significant to the study of the prehistory of
a) North America
b) Europe
c) South America
d) Africa
e) Mesoamerica
12. In North America, the influential anthropologist Julian Steward emphasized the
importance of environmental adaptation in cultural change. This approach was
termed
a) environmentalism
b) cultural ecology
c) eco-archaeology
d) diffusionism
e) processualism
13. A key breakthrough in the use of scientific methods to date archaeological
remains was Willard Libby’s 1949 invention of
a) neutron activation analysis
b) dendrochronology
c) radiocarbon dating
d) potassium-argon dating
