History 161 Ch. 1

1.Why did Archaic cultures in the Southwest adopt agriculture?

A) The supply of wild plant food was highly unreliable.

2.The Archaic Indians in the Great Basin inhabited a region with

A) great environmental diversity.

3.Evidence indicates that before 1492, Native Americans

B) practiced human sacrifice.

4.Archaeological evidence indicates that the California Chumash culture
was characterized by

D) a notable amount of conflict among villages.

5.Why did nomadic peoples shun the use of pottery?

C) Pots were too heavy to carry around

6.What was a similarity among the many tribes that inhabited North
America at the dawn of European colonization?

B) Their cultures had developed in relation to their local natural environments.

7.Why did Hohokam settlements utilize irrigation canals?

B) Canals allowed planting and harvesting crops twice a year.

8.What was the main source of food for Archaic peoples inhabiting the
Great Basin?

A) Plants

9.The Mexica used an extensive tribute system to redistribute wealth
from

D) the poor to the rich.

10.Although experts debate the exact time people began migrating to
North America, the first migrants probably arrived
A) less than 5,000 years ago.

C) around 15,000 BP.

11.What do the artifacts that have survived from the Paleo-Indian era
suggest about the first Americans?

B) They specialized in hunting big mammals.

12.What is a prudent estimate of the population of Native Americans in North America at the time of Columbus’s arrival in the New World?

B) 4 million

13.How do historians study the past?

D) They study artifacts but mainly concentrate on written documents to determine the attitudes of a people.

14.Ancient Southwestern Indians became experts in the conservation of

C) water.

15.Experts believe that the Cahokians used woodhenges for

C) celestial observations.

16.How did agriculture change Archaic cultures?

D) It encouraged the gradual establishment of permanent settlements.

17.What feature characterized the settlements of the Mogollon culture?

B) Pit houses

18.How did the Wisconsin glaciation allow hunters to reach the Western
Hemisphere?

A) The Wisconsin glaciation created the wide land bridge of Beringia.

19.The distinction between the study of humans by archaeologists and the study of humans by historians is often denoted by the

B) invention of writing.

20.Eastern Woodland peoples around the time of Columbus’s arrival in
1492 clustered into which three major groups?

C) Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Muskogean peoples

21.Burial mounds and chiefdoms are associated with which ancient
Americans?

D) Woodland peoples

22.How do modern archaeologists study ancient peoples?

D) Modern archaeologists combine a variety of approaches.

23.How did Native Americans relate to the natural environment?

B) They changed the environment in a variety of ways that served their own interests.

24.The Anasazi culture disappeared due to

B) a drought that lasted more than fifty years.

25.What environmental factor shaped the cultures of the Archaic peoples
of the Eastern Woodland?

A) Forests

26.What caused much of the warfare among Archaic Northwest peoples?

C) Conflicts over access to good fishing sites

27.Which group held the most exalted position in Mexican society?

A) Warriors

28.Scholars speculate that Hopewell culture declined because

B) farming and new weapons made central authority unnecessary.

29.Though ancient Americans lacked writing skills, they

B) used other kinds of symbolic representation.

30.In AD 1492, the empire of the Mexica

B) possessed land roughly equal to that of Spain.

31.What does the term Archaic describe?

B) Hunting and gathering cultures that descended from Paleo-Indians

32.The League of Five Nations, which remained powerful well into the eighteenth century, was formed as

B) a confederation of the Iroquoian tribes for the purposes of war and diplomacy.

33.About 11,000 years ago, the Paleo-Indians faced a major crisis because

D) the large animals they hunted had difficulty adapting to a warming climate.

34.Why did native peoples in California remain hunters and gatherers for hundreds of years after Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere?

C) Both land and ocean provided an abundant food supply.

35.When did Paleo-Indians reach the southern tip of South America and
complete their expansion into the Western Hemisphere?

D) One thousand years after they first migrated to the Western Hemisphere

36.When did corn become a food crop for Southwestern cultures?

D) 3500 BP

37.Spanish conquerors exploited which weakness of the Mexican empire?

C) The empire’s subjects did not see the Mexica as legitimate or fair rulers.

38.When Europeans arrived in 1492, Native American cultures were

B) so varied that they defy easy and simple description.

39.Which of the following is an accurate description of Archaic Indians?

D) Archaic Indians hunted smaller game with traps, nets, and hooks.

40.Multistory cliff dwellings and pueblos are residential structure associated with the

A) Anasazi culture.

41.Archaic Indians who hunted the bison herds of the Great Plains were

D) nomads who moved constantly with their prey.

42.What does the analysis of artifacts in burial mounds reveal about the
Hopewell chiefdom?

D) Burial was reserved for the most important members of society.

43.Why do archaeologists believe that the first ancient Woodland mound
builders were organized into chiefdoms?

D) The complexity of the mounds suggests that one chief commanded labor from others.

44.Early Woodland Indians obtained food by

C) hunting deer.

45.Although the two regions had roughly the same population in 1492,
the population density of North America was

C) much less than that of England.

46.How did the diet and culture of Woodland peoples change around
4000 BP?

C) Woodland cultures adopted limited forms of plant growing.

47.How did archaeologists determine that Folsom hunters and giant
bison were contemporaries?

C) They discovered a Folsom point lodged between the ribs of a giant bison.

48.How did Native American cultures adapt to the extinction of big
game?

A) Paleo-Indians began foraging wild plant foods.

49.What was the reason for the early, prolonged absence of humans in
the Western Hemisphere?

A) North and South America had become detached from the continent of Pangaea.

50.The Athapascan tribes—mainly Apache and Navajo—were

D) skillful warriors who preyed on the sedentary pueblo Indians.