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Questions for the Master's Exam in Archaeology1. What is the most interesting problem in the Holocene archaeology of a particular geographic region (e.g., Great Basin, California, Mesoamerica, Australia); discuss that problem in detail including the current status of research on it as well as the next step toward solving it. 2. In cultural historical archaeology, assemblage composition was treated as a measure of ethnic identity. In general, how is this phenomenon now approached? Discuss several substantive examples. What have we learned about past human behavior as a result? 3. Define archaeological site structure. What are the current strengths and weaknesses of this approach. 4. Lewis Binford has argued that archaeologists must develop "middle range theory." What is middle range theory? What contributions, if any, has it made to archaeology? 5. Archaeologists often devote much time and energy to the description and analysis of "interassemblage variability." Define interassemblage variability. What assumptions underlie and motivate this effort? What are its current strengths and weaknesses? 6. What do archaeologists mean by "settlement patterns?" What are the major advances that have been made in this field over the past several decades? What assumptions underlie behavioral reconstructions based on these patterns? 7. Archaeologists are deeply divided on the question of whether "ethnoarchaeology" is important to understanding the past. Define ethnoarchaeology. Explain this division, providing a rationale for both sides. 8. The models needed to reconstruct the past must be developed and tested in the present. True or false? Why? 9. Robert Dunnell and his students are often cited for the development of "evolutionary archaeology." What is evolutionary archaeology; what are its strengths and weaknesses? 10. Increasingly, models from evolutionary ecology are being applied to address questions involving human behavior in archaeological settings. Discuss key successes of this approach as well as the difficulties involved in applying it in archaeological contexts. 11. Characterize traditional ethnological analyses and contrast those with recent ethnological work carried out under the framework of evolutionary ecology. Evaluate this latter work as it may be applied to questions in prehistory. 12. Many anthropologists and most biologists assume that native peoples lived "in harmony" with nature and had little or no impacts on the distributions and abundances of vertebrate resources. Is this position consistent with optimal foraging models? Discuss empirical evidence from ethnographic and archaeological settings that inform on this issue. 13. The emergence of social complexity has long been a central issue in American archaeology. Discuss what "complex societies" are, how they can be identified archaeologically, how their emergence might be linked to human population density, health, and other aspects of human behavior? Use substantive examples to illustrate your answer. 14. What were the likely set of events/processes that led to the emergence of agriculture in a particular geographic setting? How have models from evolutionary ecology been used to inform on this issue? 15. Outline major features of world climate over the last 5-8 million years. How are these features generally explained? 16. What have we learned about hominid evolution from research on human and other primate biochemistry? 17. Outline major features of the hominid fossil record of the past five million years. 18. Outline major features of the archaeological record of the Lower Paleolithic. What questions of general anthropological interest emerge from this record? 19. Given what we now know about the biochemical, fossil and archaeological records, what can we infer about hominid ecology and life history in the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene? 20. Outline major features of the archaeological record of the Upper Pleistocene. What questions of general anthropological interest emerge from this record? 21. What do we know about the ecology and life history of "archaic" Homo sapiens? What are some potentially interesting points of contrast with the ecology and life history of modern human hunter-gatherers? 22. It is often suggested that long term changes in world climate have important effects on the course of human evolution. Evaluate this suggestion in light of what you know about late Pliocene and Pleistocene climate, environment, and archaeology. 23. Outline major features of the archaeological record for the initial development of agriculture. 24. What are some of the more widely cited explanations for the development of agriculture? What are their respective strengths and weaknesses? 25. Outline major features of the archaeological record for the initial appearance of state societies. 26. What are some of the more widely cite imate over the last 5-8 million years. How are these features generally explained? 27. Discuss the postmodern critique of scientific positivism. What are the most important questions postmodernism raises? How would you answer them? What are their implications for anthropological archaeology? For anthropology in general? 28. Low et al. (1992, Population and Development Review 18[1]) have suggested that a theoretical framework built on evolutionary models could provide alternative, powerful explanations of demographic phenomena. How might population studies contribute to the development and testing of evolutionary models? 29. Choose a theoretical model (for e.g., Functionalism, Cultural Ecology, Structuralism, NOT Evolutionary Ecology), used to explain human behavior and critique it. Be sure to include discussion of both its perceived strengths and weaknesses. Use specific case examples to illustrate your argument. 30. Critique evolutionary ecology from the point of view of another, prominent theoretical perspective (for e.g. functionalism, cultural ecology, structuralism). What are the most important weaknesses, or points of argument, that arise from your discussion? 31. Attempts to reconstruct prehistoric "community health" from human skeletons have been hindered by a range of biases and limitations inherent to the data. Discuss some of these. How have they been addressed (or not)? What do the problems associated with osteological data tell us (remind us) about archaeological data in general? 32. Models in human evolutionary ecology have tended to emphasize the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness" and focus on hunter-gatherer populations (e.g. Blurton-Jones et al. 1992; Hill and Hurtado 1995). Construct an essay arguing for the importance of studying Holocene, agricultural, populations for the same reason. How have selective pressures on people changed in the last 10,000 years? How might these changes have affected human life history or other characteristics evolutionary ecologists find interesting? 33. Historically, economic factors have figured (and continue to figure) prominently in discussions of culture change. Discuss how social scientists (e.g. Steward 1955, Wallerstein 1974) have used aspects of economy to explain culture change. 34. Discuss the most commonly used quantitative measures of relative abundance in analyses of archaeological faunas. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these measures? 35. In a series of influential papers, Paul Martin has argued that Clovis hunters caused the extinction of some 35 genera of late Pleistocene mammals. Discuss the details of his argument. Is it supported by archaeological/paleontological data? 36. The reconstruction of site "seasonality" is a common goal in archaeology. Discuss how analyses of archaeological vertebrate materials have been (or could be) used to this end. |