Anthropology 176A UCSC North American Archaeology Spring 2009 End of Term Examination General Instructions: This exam is worth 100 points. This is an open-book, take-home exam. You may, and should, consult your lecture notes, textbook, and ERES readings to answer these questions. No additional research is necessary. Feel free to discuss these issues among your colleagues, although each student must produce a unique and original set of answers. Answers Due: Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by 4 p.m. at 403 Soc Sci 1 Answer any Two (2) of the following short essay questions. Demonstrate your versatility and mastery of diverse material. Choose questions that cover a variety of times and places in North American Prehistory; DO NOT choose two questions from the same culture area. Each question is worth a total of fifty (50) points. Each answer should not need to be more than about three to four pages in length, so be clear and concise. Include specific information regarding people, sites, dates, artifacts, etc. to support your answer. Integrate information from your textbook, reader and lecture notes to construct your answer. Think critically and analytically about this material. 1) Describe the site of Shabik'eschee Village. How has evidence from this site been used by different researchers (identify by name) to support alternative models of site aggregation, sedentism and social integration during the late Basketmaker Period (BM III) in the American Southwest? 2) Paul Minnis once referred to the initial adoption of agriculture in North America as a "monumental non-event." What did he mean? Using his comments as a starting point, discuss the latest archaeological evidence for the adoption of agriculture in the American Southwest. Compare and contrast developments in the desert lowlands of the Tucson Basin with those on the highlands of the Colorado Plateau. Do you agree or disagree with Minnis’ characterization of this process? [Hint: look to ERES articles and lecture notes for most up-to-date information for answering this question.] 3) Chaco Canyon has been described as the "Middle Place" of the 11th century Ancestral Pueblo world. What is meant by this description? What evidence is there for viewing the Chaco Phenomenon from such a perspective? 4) Why was so much of the northern Southwest abandoned at the end of the 13th century? Discuss various factors for why they left and where they went. What evidence do we have of these factors and their impacts? (More questions on back)5) Compare and contrast cultural developments on the western short-grass plains with those on the mixed-grass and tall-grass prairies to the east during the late Prehistoric Period (A.D.1000 to European Contact). How are these differences associated with variation in climate, topography and resources? In what ways were these two strategies related to, and dependent upon, one another? 6) What did Joseph Caldwell (1958) mean by "Primary Forest Efficiency?" Compare and contrast his analysis of subsistence change during the Archaic Period in the Eastern Woodlands with a model based on Evolutionary Ecology and "optimal foraging theory"? Use the site of Koster as an example to support your analysis. 7) Jon Gibson (1974) argued that the Poverty Point culture represented the earliest "chiefdom" in North America. What did he mean by that designation and what evidence did he present to support his argument? Discuss one alternative explanation discussed in Fagan or in class lecture for the regional role of the Poverty Point site in the Lower Mississippi Valley during the Terminal Archaic/EarlyWoodland transition. 8) Why is it more appropriate to refer to the Hopewell Tradition as a “ritual complex,” “interaction sphere,” or “horizon,” rather than a “culture”? Compare and contrast at least two different models for understanding the role and meaning of Hopewell-style ritual and interaction during the Middle Woodland Period in the Northeast. 9) It what ways can Eastern Woodland resources be described as "circumscribed?" Using the model of state formation developed by Robert Carniero, discuss how resource circumscription and competition may have influenced the development of politically centralized and socially complex Mississippian polities like Cahokia. 10) Discuss different models of rulership and power among the complex chiefdoms of the Mississippian tradition of the Eastern Woodlands. How are these different aspects of leadership reflected in the archaeological record from that