Anthropology A103
Human Origins and Prehistory
Spring 2013, Dr. Mullins

The exam will be on MONDAY FEBRUARY 25.  Please do not forget the exam period or arrive late; if you are significantly late you will be required to take the makeup exam.  Plan to turn off your cell phones, beepers, and other potentially disturbing ringing devices.

There will be an in-class study session in the class immediately preceding the exam.  Please complete the study guide in as much detail as possible prior to the study session and bring the textbook to the study session.

Your syllabus includes references for all material from the course text that is included on the exam.  All remaining material comes directly from class notes; anything appearing on the Power Point lectures or within the text pages included on the syllabus may appear on the exam. 

The exam material ends immediately after slide "What do archaeologists find? Iron" in Powerpoint 3.

1. What is anthropology? What are the "four fields" in anthropology?

2. What is culture?

3. What is archaeology?  What is paleoanthropology?

4. What is material culture?

5. What are the common caricatures of archaeologists (e.g., Indiana Jones)? How is the reality different?

6. What is ideology? How are historic attitudes toward alcohol consumption and states’ ideologies about the social role of beer consumption in Britain and Sweden reflected in beer can designs? For instance, why does the British state hope to reproduce longstanding acceptance of beer consumption? Precisely what sorts of designs do British beer cans favor that reflects the broader societal attitude toward alcohol consumption, and why are these motifs favored? On the other hand, how do beer cans reflect a quite different vision of alcohol consumption in Sweden? What aesthetics do Swedish beer producers favor because of their societal perception of beer and alcohol consumption?

7. Who was Heinrich Schliemann? Why did he and similar sorts of genteel Victorians seek their Western historical and cultural roots in the late-nineteenth century? What is the name of the site where Schliemann excavated what we now consider to be Troy?

8. What is an archaeological site? Any space can be called an archaeological site provided it has integrity and significance. What do those two concepts mean?

9. What is remote sensing? Define the remote sensing techniques aerial photography, resistivity, magnetic survey, and ground-penetrating radar.

10. What is a grid? What is a datum?

11. Define stratigraphy. What are the two principles used to archaeologically analyze stratigraphy?

12. Define the two types of archaeological dating (reminder: this is NOT the same two principles used to analyze stratigraphy).

13. Define seriation and deep sea cores.

14. What is potassium-argon dating (a.k.a., radiopotassium dating); radiocarbon dating; thermoluminescence; obsidian hydration; dendrochronology? Which technique dates the oldest sites? What are the limitations of each (e.g., can only date certain types of material; are context specific and can only be used in a single region; date only objects from a particular span of time; and so on)?

15. What are lithics? What is a flake (also known as debitage)? What is flintknapping? What is percussion flaking? What is a "bulb of percussion"?  What is a core?  What is a dedicated tool?  What does it mean to say a toll is "bifacial"?

16. What is an archaeological survey? What are the purposes of a survey?

17. What is the technique known as accelerator mass spectrometry? How has it impacted radiocarbon dating?

18. What does it mean when radiocarbon dates are expressed as "calibrated dates"?

19. James Deetz used seriation to analyze New England gravestones.  What three types of stone designs did he identify, when do they occur, and why do they change over time?

20. What are the types of archaeological sites?

Questions?  Email me.

Last updated February 18, 2013