Practice Exam 3

ANT 105

Spring 2010

This practice exam is optional, and does not need to be turned in for credit or bonus credit. The answers will be posted online by Tuesday, April 27.

Please define two of the following four terms, and say how they are important to the study of anthropology:

1) Profile

A vertical exposure of the soil in an excavation, showing how the stratigraphy changed over time. It is important because we can use it to look at what happened at a site over time, and to use the Principle of Superposition to get relative dates for the different strata.

2) Secondary State

A state that forms due to contact with another state. This is important because most states form in this way, and because it shows how state formation spreads, once formed.

3) Relative dating

Dating techniques that do not give calendar years, but instead compare time periods, such as ‘layer A is older than layer B’—we don’t know the exact date of either layer, but do know which is older and which is younger. This is important because dating using the Principle of Superposition is a relative dating technique, as is typology and seriation. Basically, most non-radiometric dating techniques are relative.

4) Halafian

A culture and pottery style in Mesopotamia dating to 7500-6500 B.P. It is typified by beautiful pottery that was traded long distance—the people were probably a chiefdom. It is important because it is a possible example of a chiefdom, and part of the cultural sequence leading to statehood in Mesopotamia.

Write a paragraph on one of the following two topics:

5) How can the study of archaeological cultures help in the study of modern cultures? Why? Give at least one example.

There are several answers to this question, but the easier approach usually goes into the fact that archaeology gives time depth to the study of human history—without it, we cannot study pre-agricultural foraging groups, or indeed most of human history before the invention of writing, and even after it in many places, because people often lie or deceive in writing. The study of archaeological cultures can then be compared to the study of modern groups that are related to the ancient groups in a sort of reverse ethnographic analogy, or historical occurrences that affect modern culture can be uncovered, such as much of Roman history (many Roman chronicles were destroyed, and they tended not to concentrate on the lives of common people), Mesopotamian or ancient Iraqi history (ditto), or the rise of urbanization and states in general, which are crucial to modern life, but which cannot be studied without archaeology.

6) Why are complex chiefdoms so unstable, and what qualities help a complex chiefdom become a state?

Complex chiefdoms are unstable because they are essentially chiefdoms that are held together by the persuasion and political ability of one individual without much assistance from professional bureaucrats or a standing army. Various methods used by paramount chiefs to do this involve group activities, such as monument construction, ritual beliefs that center around the chief’s relation to the divine, and manipulation of kin ties and favors to control the largest section of the warriors and sub-chiefs. The belief in the paramount chief as semi-divine often results in human sacrifice or group suicide after the death of the ruler, which tends to make consistency through different reigns difficult. Furthermore, a paramount chief who was not clever or persuasive enough to manipulate patronage and kin ties, or to convince people to do much monumental architecture, is liable to being overthrown by other chiefs who cannot conceive of the incompetent as being semi-divine. The complex chiefdom is thus very prone to breaking down into warring chiefdoms. Qualities that help a complex chiefdom become a state include writing, or something like it, to help in the formation of a consistent bureaucratic class, environmental circumscription, so that in the event of a war, taxes, or unwelcome government policies people cannot escape, and the presence of a strong, intelligent, and usually ruthless paramount chief, who can weld the “nobles” of a complex chiefdom into the bureaucracy and standing army of a state. This is often accompanied by “proxy sacrifice” in which the former human sacrifice is substituted by the ceremonial death of figurines representing the people who would otherwise be sacrificed on the death of a ruler. A complex chiefdom can become a state without all of those things, but the more the better.