ANT2100 Exam 1 UPDATED Questions and
CORRECT Answers
Artifacts - CORRECT ANSWER - Human made objects retrieved from sites that are the
primary source of information for archaeologists.
BC - CORRECT ANSWER - Before Christ, ex 3200BC (letters follow the date)
- latest BC date is 0BC
AD - CORRECT ANSWER - Anno Domini
- indicates a year that falls within the Christian era (after the birth of Christ)
- AD goes before the numerical age, ex: AD1066
- Earliest AD date is AD 1
CE - CORRECT ANSWER - - Common Era
- basically same thing as AD but is intended to avoid religious connotations
BCE - CORRECT ANSWER - - before Common Era
- basically same thing as BC, but it avoids the religious connotation
BP - CORRECT ANSWER - - Before Present
- most archaeologists prefer to use an age estimate
- AD 1950 is arbitrarily selected as zero point
- AD 1950- AD 1066 = 884 BP
Classical archaeology - CORRECT ANSWER - The branch of archaeology that studies
"classical" civilizations of the Mediterranean, such as Greece and Rome and the Near East
,Antiquarian - CORRECT ANSWER - - studied antiques (ancient objects) largely for the
sake of the objects themselves, not to understand the people or culture that produced them
Middens - CORRECT ANSWER - - refuse deposit resulting from human activities,
generally consisting of sediment; food remains such as charred seeds, animal bone, and shell;
and discarded artifacts
- trash heaps people created
Potsherds - CORRECT ANSWER - - fragment of pottery
Stratigraphy/strata - CORRECT ANSWER - - a site's physical structure produced by the
deposition of geological and/or cultural sediments into layers, or strata, to reveal age and original
inhabitants
- established by Gertrude Caton-Thompson
Culture History - CORRECT ANSWER - - the kind of archaeology practiced mainly in the
early to mid-twentieth century; it "explains" differences or changes over time in artifact
frequencies by posting the diffusion of ideas between neighboring cultures or the migration of a
people who had different mental templates for artifact styles
New Archaeology - CORRECT ANSWER - An approach to archaeology that arose in the
1960s emphasizing the understanding of underlying cultural processes and the use of the
scientific method; today's version of the "new archaeology" is sometimes called processual
archaeology.
Why was Charles Lyell's 1865 book The Geologic Evidences for the Antiquity of Man
important? - CORRECT ANSWER - it connected time and geology
- uniformitarianism: idea that same geological processes that go on today have always occurred
(shifting of plates, sedimentary layers)
What is "Deep Time"? - CORRECT ANSWER - - the recognition that life was far more
ancient than biblical scholars recognized and that human culture had evolved over time
, - Crude stone tools discovered in England and continental Europe, along with bones of long
extinct mammals "prove the existence of very ancient man" (Jacques Boucher Crevecoeur de
Perthes)
Nabonidus - CORRECT ANSWER - - Most historians list him, the last king of the neo-
Babylonian Empire as the "first archaeologist"
- he rebuilt temples of ancient Babylon and searched the foundations for inscriptions of earlier
kings
- "he looked to the physical residues of antiquity - things - to answer questions about the past."
Francesco Petrarch - CORRECT ANSWER - - During the Renaissance he proposed that
the remote past was an ideal of perfection and he looked to antiquity for moral philosophy
- the "father of humanism"
- he and his contemporaries began to collect ancient texts and to make systematic observations
on archaeological monuments
Boucher de Perthes - CORRECT ANSWER - - Challenged the understanding that the age
of the earth was no more than about 6000 years
- found ancient axe heads in the gravel of the Somme river and the bones of long-extinct
mammals and realized that there was a very ancient man
James Ussher - CORRECT ANSWER - - Irish prelate who deduced from the Bible that
Creation occurred in the year 4004 BC (1581-1656)
- his reasoning was so convincing that people thought Boucher de Perthes was mistaken, some
suggested that the tools were really meteorites and others said they were produced by lightning,
elves or fairies
Charles Lyell - CORRECT ANSWER - - wrote The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity
of Man which included the idea that humans had lived with now extinct animals in the far distant
past
Charles Darwin - CORRECT ANSWER - - On the Origin of Species (1859)
CORRECT Answers
Artifacts - CORRECT ANSWER - Human made objects retrieved from sites that are the
primary source of information for archaeologists.
BC - CORRECT ANSWER - Before Christ, ex 3200BC (letters follow the date)
- latest BC date is 0BC
AD - CORRECT ANSWER - Anno Domini
- indicates a year that falls within the Christian era (after the birth of Christ)
- AD goes before the numerical age, ex: AD1066
- Earliest AD date is AD 1
CE - CORRECT ANSWER - - Common Era
- basically same thing as AD but is intended to avoid religious connotations
BCE - CORRECT ANSWER - - before Common Era
- basically same thing as BC, but it avoids the religious connotation
BP - CORRECT ANSWER - - Before Present
- most archaeologists prefer to use an age estimate
- AD 1950 is arbitrarily selected as zero point
- AD 1950- AD 1066 = 884 BP
Classical archaeology - CORRECT ANSWER - The branch of archaeology that studies
"classical" civilizations of the Mediterranean, such as Greece and Rome and the Near East
,Antiquarian - CORRECT ANSWER - - studied antiques (ancient objects) largely for the
sake of the objects themselves, not to understand the people or culture that produced them
Middens - CORRECT ANSWER - - refuse deposit resulting from human activities,
generally consisting of sediment; food remains such as charred seeds, animal bone, and shell;
and discarded artifacts
- trash heaps people created
Potsherds - CORRECT ANSWER - - fragment of pottery
Stratigraphy/strata - CORRECT ANSWER - - a site's physical structure produced by the
deposition of geological and/or cultural sediments into layers, or strata, to reveal age and original
inhabitants
- established by Gertrude Caton-Thompson
Culture History - CORRECT ANSWER - - the kind of archaeology practiced mainly in the
early to mid-twentieth century; it "explains" differences or changes over time in artifact
frequencies by posting the diffusion of ideas between neighboring cultures or the migration of a
people who had different mental templates for artifact styles
New Archaeology - CORRECT ANSWER - An approach to archaeology that arose in the
1960s emphasizing the understanding of underlying cultural processes and the use of the
scientific method; today's version of the "new archaeology" is sometimes called processual
archaeology.
Why was Charles Lyell's 1865 book The Geologic Evidences for the Antiquity of Man
important? - CORRECT ANSWER - it connected time and geology
- uniformitarianism: idea that same geological processes that go on today have always occurred
(shifting of plates, sedimentary layers)
What is "Deep Time"? - CORRECT ANSWER - - the recognition that life was far more
ancient than biblical scholars recognized and that human culture had evolved over time
, - Crude stone tools discovered in England and continental Europe, along with bones of long
extinct mammals "prove the existence of very ancient man" (Jacques Boucher Crevecoeur de
Perthes)
Nabonidus - CORRECT ANSWER - - Most historians list him, the last king of the neo-
Babylonian Empire as the "first archaeologist"
- he rebuilt temples of ancient Babylon and searched the foundations for inscriptions of earlier
kings
- "he looked to the physical residues of antiquity - things - to answer questions about the past."
Francesco Petrarch - CORRECT ANSWER - - During the Renaissance he proposed that
the remote past was an ideal of perfection and he looked to antiquity for moral philosophy
- the "father of humanism"
- he and his contemporaries began to collect ancient texts and to make systematic observations
on archaeological monuments
Boucher de Perthes - CORRECT ANSWER - - Challenged the understanding that the age
of the earth was no more than about 6000 years
- found ancient axe heads in the gravel of the Somme river and the bones of long-extinct
mammals and realized that there was a very ancient man
James Ussher - CORRECT ANSWER - - Irish prelate who deduced from the Bible that
Creation occurred in the year 4004 BC (1581-1656)
- his reasoning was so convincing that people thought Boucher de Perthes was mistaken, some
suggested that the tools were really meteorites and others said they were produced by lightning,
elves or fairies
Charles Lyell - CORRECT ANSWER - - wrote The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity
of Man which included the idea that humans had lived with now extinct animals in the far distant
past
Charles Darwin - CORRECT ANSWER - - On the Origin of Species (1859)
