Practice Final Answers

ANT 207

Spring 2010

Please complete the following exercise by the beginning of class on Monday, April 26. I will post model definitions on the afternoon of that day.

Define three of the following six terms, and explain why it is important to archaeology:

1) Hopewell

An interaction sphere present throughout the Midwestern and southeastern United States during the Middle Woodland period. Hopewell is basically a group of cultures around the continent with shared burial practices, although the basic way of life for each culture was clearly locally based. Hopewell burial practices include mound construction over burnt charnel houses, including primary extended burials, secondary cremated burials, large amounts of grave goods with distinctive Hopewellian art styles, and secondary pit burials placed in the burial mounds. Hopewellian sites were also part of a long-distance trade network by which rare raw materials were apparently distributed by means of nodal households. Hopewell is important because it is the first widespread shared material culture in North America, and because its members used the Eastern Horticultural Complex.

2) Shovel Test Pit (STP)

This is a type of unit used in intrusive survey, usually about 60 cm in diameter, and round in shape. They are used when there is insufficient surface visibility for an unintrusive survey, or there is deep stratigraphy and a surface survey would not be representative of the archaeology present in an area. It is important because it is one of the major tools in Phase I archaeology, which allows us to find sites and determine approximately how large they area.

3) Dendrochronology

Dating by counting tree rings. In order for dendrochronology to work, there must be a database of tree rings from a species that date to known time periods. If a tree with bark belonging to that species is found on an archaeological site, its ring patterns can be matched to the database, producing an absolute date. Important because it is the earliest, and still the most accurate, form of absolute dating.

4) Mound 72

The mound dating to the Lohmann phase at Cahokia that contains a large number of human burials, suggesting a fair degree of social complexity and trade during this period at the site. It is important because it is the only elite burial mound scientifically excavated at Cahokia, and tells us a lot about how people lived and were buried during the Lohmann phase.

5) Random Sample

A sampling technique in which units or transects are chosen at random in order to give a better statistical basis for the study. It is important because it is the most statistically useful type of sampling strategy for Phase I & II projects, but is seldom used as it is hard to select units or transects truly randomly in the field, and it tends to be hard to implement. Also, random clustering can cause undersampling in some crucial project areas.

6) Disease vector

The way in which a disease is moved from the pool to the victim—generally, but not always, some sort of insect, such as fleas, ticks, or flies. It is important because a disease vector is needed to produce an epidemic—without it, the disease would stay in the pool and not move out of it.

Answer one of the following two essay questions:

7) Beginning in the 1700s, many scientists believed that native peoples did not build the mounds at Cahokia, but that they were instead built by another group—Phoenicians, the lost tribe of Israel, etc. Why would people believe this? Support your answer.

There are a series of factors involved here:

--The Indian population had dropped to at least 5% of their original number by the 1700s, and the survivors tended to not live in large, concentrated settlements, because members of those settlements had been preferentially killed by epidemic diseases. Therefore, the Europeans had little experience of viewing Indians as urban, mound-building peoples.

--The Indians were viewed as inferior savages, who were not capable of monumental construction. Therefore, they could not (according to the people of the 1700s) have produced the mounds.

--The European settlers were engaged in a fairly systematic campaign of land theft and murder against many Indian groups at this time. To admit that the Indians were capable of complex monumental architecture would have been to admit that the Indians had a true claim to the land, and to the settlers’ respect. However, if the Lost Tribes of Israel or the Phoenicians had constructed the mounds, then the Indians must have killed the ‘civilized’ immigrants who produced the monumental construction, and the settlers were merely avenging the deaths of the Phoenicians or the Israelites at the hands of the Indians.

8) Why did maize spread from Mexico throughout the New and Old Worlds? What were some disadvantages of this? How did the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, or didn’t they?

Well, this is sort of the Big One. Here are some factors:

--First and probably most importantly, maize is exceptionally productive, allowing large surpluses that were very attractive to large populations in both the Old and New Worlds.

--Maize is easily storable, allowing these surpluses to be kept over the non-growing season.

--Harvesting maize is relatively easy—no sickle-harvesting or anything like that.

Some disadvantages of maize use are:

--Maize requires a lot of water. This is fine in wet years, but in parts of the world with variable rainfall, the shift from wet to dry can mean the difference between maize and no maize. Since the productivity of maize allows serious population growth, that means people in these parts of the world are stuck with large populations that can’t be supported by any crop other than maize, which will only grow in wet years.

--Maize requires a lot of fertilizer, and can drain the soil of nutrients very quickly. Without careful fertilization and/or intercropping, it can play the fields out very rapidly, and then people are in the same trap as in part I.

--Maize is not the most nutritious of foods, as it lacks niacin and protein. The niacin problem can be solved through alkali-processing, but the small amount of protein tends to lead to small stature and weak bones in populations that depend on the crop too much

--It is very starchy, which often leads to tooth decay.

Whether the advantages outweighed the disadvantages depends on the individual culture and environment. In the Midwest, maize was not adopted for about 900 years after its original appearance, suggesting that the disadvantages did outweigh the advantages until serious population growth made productivity a key factor around 1000-1200 AD. In other areas, such as parts of Africa, maize adoption appeared to make sense at the time, but climactic change to a drier climate means that this situation was temporary. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to switch off maize production, owing to the population growth caused by the surplus. In areas with a lot of rainfall, fertile soil, and a need for a productive crop, the advantages clearly outweighed the disadvantages.