Exam 8: Understanding the Past: Archaeological and Paleoanthropological Methods

Humans differ from other animals in the extent to which they employ symbolic communication.

Define the goals of archaeological research and the techniques used in archaeological research projects.

Which of the following is NOT an example of a relative dating technique?

What are chronometric dating techniques? Provide an example.

What are three relative dating techniques? Provide an example.

The process of assigning an absolute age of materials is known as:

Seriation uses what principle to determine the ages of materials?

The overall study of fossil hominins is known as:

What are ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology? How are they used to provide information about past lifeways? Give an example of each.

To achieve any meaningful understanding of human origins we necessarily examine only the cultural information about the past.

Although there are important behavioral features of humans the most distinctive is not our extraordinary elaboration of and dependence on culture.

Which of the following is NOT a reason why Olduvai Gorge is an important source of information on hominin evolution?

One interpretation of Oldowan sites is that they served as stockpiles, or caches, for raw materials such as manuports in anticipation of future use.

Paleoanthropology involves input from geology, ecology, and ethology.

Define paleoanthropology and describe the nature and process of paleoanthropological research.

Where is the Olduvai Gorge and why is it an important location for understanding human evolution? What interpretations, and by whom, have been offered to explain the nature of hominin behavior at this site?

What types of features and artifacts that characterize the Oldowan tradition?

Experimental archaeology involves replicating past technology as a means of producing testable inferences about the past.

Potassium argon dating is typically used on hominin sites.

Protohominis lived approximately