Exam 1: Getting Started in Archaeology

How can an archaeologist get an accurate quantitative picture of the relative frequency of different animals in the faunal assemblage?

________ comparisons examine differences between two or more sites.

The sequence of depositional units at a site is referred to as the siteʹs __________.

The goal of archaeology is to __________.

What are the eight principles of archaeological ethics set out by the Society for American Archaeology? What is their purpose?

An archaeological survey maps the distribution of __________.

Which of the following is an absolute dating method?

Wet screening is used to recover items from submerged sites.

________ refer to software applications that allow spatial data to be brought together and consolidated.

Any object that shows traces of human manufacture is referred to as a/n __________.

What is a list of artifact types for a particular archaeological context called?

What is the goal of archaeological recording and what are some of the recording methods employed by archaeologists?

Which of the following statements characterizes relative dating techniques?

A human body is buried in a peat bog one thousand years ago. Discuss the taphonomic processes that might have occurred and how they might affect the interpretation of the burial.

How does radiocarbon dating work? What are the advantages and limitations of this technique?

Radiocarbon dating can only be used on organic materials, such as charcoal and bone.

To understand how a feature such as a burial pit relates to the surrounding strata, it is necessary to determine the surface of origin for the pit.

Which of these statements best describes the law of superposition?

The ________ is used as a reference for all vertical measurements on an archaeological site.

The goal of horizontal excavation is to expose large areas of a site to reconstruct a single point in time.