Archaeology Essentials

Thomas Malthus has argued that human population tends to grow to the limit permitted by

The idea that the human mind evolved under the selective pressures faced by the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of Ice-age humans is an important aspect of

Some Processualists have accused Critical Theorists of believing that one person's idea is as good as any other person's idea: basically that fringe and alternative beliefs are as good as those produced by experts and trained professionals.Such a belief is also called

When the Spanish reached Mexico in the early 16th century they found

Change in the archaeological record is sometimes attributed to struggles between social classes,a result of contradictions that arise between the forces of production and the relations of production (mainly the social organization).Such an approach to understanding the past would be considered

If,in your explanation for a cultural change (for example,the origin of the state),you stress the importance and interaction of several different factors operating at the same time,this would be considered a(n)

The Classic Maya kings portrayed themselves as great guarantors of prosperity and stability,but during the critical 8th and 9th centuries leading up to the Maya collapse they were unable to deliver on these promises because of

The controversial framework developed by Carl Hempel and adopted by some New Archaeologists and heavily criticized by other New Archaeologists is based on the development of universal statements and

______________ is a theoretical approach developed by the "Frankfurt School" of German social thinkers.This approach stresses that all knowledge is historical,biased communication,and thus all claims to objective knowledge are illusory

Robert Carneiro,a major proponent of ______________,emphasized the importance of environmental constraints and territorial limitations to explain the origins of the state

Relying on a single dominant explanatory factor to account for a cultural change is known as a(n)

Which of the following has been put forth as a monocausal explanation for the origins of a state

______________ archaeologists stress that human actions are guided by beliefs and symbolic concepts,and that the proper object of study is the structures of thought-the ideas-of the human actors who made the artifacts and created the archaeological record

The argument that large-scale irrigation alone leads to urbanization is known as the

In migrationist and diffusionist explanations of the past,a "people" is defined as

Before the New Archaeology,changes observed in the archaeological record were often explained by the idea of

A notable feature of Lewis Binford's work on the origins of farming was its generality: he was seeking to explain the origins of agriculture worldwide.His is an example of a _________ approach to archaeology

The theoretical position in archaeology that nearly all archaeologists believe in and commands widespread respect is

One explanation for the emergence of state societies in the Maya lowlands is based on the lack of basic raw materials in the area,forcing the Maya to develop an intricate system of

In the 1960s,the "loss of innocence" that came with the realization that there was no well-established body of theory to underpin current archaeological methods sparked the development of