Free QCE Year 11 Ancient History Flashcard Review
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What separates an ancient source from a modern source in this syllabus?
Ancient sources were produced up to the end of the Middle Ages; modern sources were produced after it, such as historiography, reconstructions and websites.
Can an ancient source be secondary? Give the reason.
Yes. An ancient writer describing events long before their own lifetime is ancient but secondary, because they interpret earlier events rather than witnessing them.
Distinguish absolute (scientific) from relative (comparative) dating.
Absolute dating gives an age range in years, such as radiocarbon or luminescence dating; relative dating places evidence in sequence, such as stratigraphy or typology.
What does optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) date?
The time since sediment grains were last exposed to sunlight, which helps date the layer surrounding a burial or hearth.
How did erosion affect the Lake Mungo evidence?
Erosion of the lunette exposed hearths, middens, tools and burials, enabling discovery but also scattering and threatening the remains.
Why is Lake Mungo significant for understanding Ancient Australia?
It shows Aboriginal people living inland for at least about 40 000 years and practising complex ritual burial, including cremation and ochre burial.
Define repatriation and give an example.
The return of ancestral remains or cultural material to their community or country; Mungo Man was returned to Country in 2017.
Four questions for evaluating a reconstruction
What evidence was it based on? What is certain and what is assumed? Who made it, for whom and why? Does it show its uncertainty?
Name three contemporary threats to archaeological evidence.
Erosion and climate change, tourism and development pressure, and looting or deliberate destruction during conflict.
What question should you always ask about a museum display?
Whose past is being represented, and who chose what is shown and how it is described?
How do popular films often misrepresent archaeologists?
As treasure hunters taking objects, whereas real archaeology is slow, collaborative and focused on recording context.
What makes a good key inquiry question?
It is focused and open, applies a historical concept such as significance, and has a scope that sub-questions and available evidence can answer.
Outline Egypt's chronology up to and including the Old Kingdom.
Predynastic farming cultures, unification about 3100 BCE, the Early Dynastic period (Dynasties 1-2), then the Old Kingdom (Dynasties 3-6, about 2686-2181 BCE).
How did the Nile flood influence Egyptian society?
It produced fertile silt and grain surpluses, which required officials, scribes and taxation to manage, and it modelled renewal that shaped beliefs about rebirth.
How did the Old Kingdom economy operate without coins?
Taxes were paid in produce and labour, and the state redistributed goods such as bread and beer as rations to workers and officials.
Name one ancient primary literary source and one ancient secondary source for the Old Kingdom.
Primary: the Pyramid Texts or the Merer logbook. Secondary: Herodotus, writing about two thousand years later.
Distinguish the ka, ba and akh.
Ka: life force needing offerings. Ba: individuality, shown as a human-headed bird. Akh: the transformed spirit the dead hoped to become.
What were the main parts of an Old Kingdom pyramid complex?
The pyramid, a mortuary temple for ongoing offerings, a causeway, a valley temple at the river's edge and sometimes boat pits.
What was the purpose of a false door in a mastaba?
It was a symbolic doorway through which the ka could move between the burial and the chapel to receive offerings.
When and where do the Pyramid Texts first appear?
In the burial chambers of the pyramid of Unas, the last king of Dynasty 5, at Saqqara.