Practice question · Multiple choice
An experiment shows a stone tool COULD have been made in four hours with locally available materials. Why does that not establish that it WAS?
Hints
- Distinguish "could have" from "did".
- What evidence would attach the method to THIS particular tool?
Show the answer
C. Because the experiment tests possibility rather than actuality
Why
Demonstrating feasibility narrows the space of explanations without picking one out of it. The experiment makes a hypothesis admissible; other evidence has to make it likely.
Practise Experimental and Cognitive Archaeology
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Experimental and Cognitive Archaeology
- Order the steps of a rigorous archaeological experiment.
- Grave goods tell you what the mourners chose to do, which is not the same as what the dead person believed.
- Knapping an Acheulean handaxe requires planning several strikes ahead toward a shape not yet present. What…
- Sort each claim: safely supported by the material record, or an overreach?
- Match each famous experiment to what it established.
- What can use-wear analysis reveal about a stone tool?