The Department of Ethnography: reading answers and analysis
The British Museum's Department of Ethnography holds about 300,000 objects from Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, focused on small-scale societies. It collects whole groups of material, often in the field and with photographs, to document change and technical ingenuity. Experts expected these societies to vanish after 1945, but many adapted, and the collections now serve schools, artists and designers.
Questions 1-12 · 12 marks · 2 question blocks
Where the answers sit
TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN (1-6) runs from the first paragraph to the fifth. The collection-type matching (7-12) is all in the third paragraph.
Questions 1-6
The first three are FALSE and each contradicts the opening paragraphs: the focus is small-scale societies (not mainstream or modern ones), and the Department prefers groups of material to single objects. The textile series is described but never ranked, so 'largest in the world' is NOT GIVEN.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | FALSE | — |
| 2 | FALSE | — |
| 3 | FALSE | — |
| 4 | NOT GIVEN | — |
| 5 | TRUE | — |
| 6 | TRUE | — |
Questions 7-12
The third paragraph sorts examples under headings. Textiles are 'technical series'. Boats (coracles, kayaks) are 'artefact types'. Field assemblages cover everything from one people, from a farmer's necessities to airport art. Clothes, jewellery and tents show 'social experience'. Evolution of Ceremony isn't needed.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | E | — |
| 8 | A | — |
| 9 | C | — |
| 10 | A | — |
| 11 | C | — |
| 12 | D | — |
The questions most people get wrong
FALSE. The twentieth-century focus has been on small-scale societies, while complex kingdoms and empires are the exception.
C (field assemblages). Airport art is listed among the whole range of material in the field collections from Sudan, Madagascar and Yemen.
D (social experience). Middle Eastern tents appear in the decade of fieldwork documenting social experience, alongside clothing and camel trappings.
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