ANTH 1: Lessons 10–12 Cultural Heritage, Ethnography, and Cultural Change

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards defining key archaeological, museum, cultural, and ethnographic concepts from ANTH 1 Lessons 10–12.

Cultural Heritage

The legacy of a group or society inherited from past generations that reinforces present cultural identity, blending archaeology and cultural anthropology.

Tangible Heritage

Physical places and objects inherited from past generations deemed worthy of preservation.

Intangible Heritage

Traditional, often endangered cultural practices inherited from past generations.

Myth (anthropological sense)

Stories about the past shaped by modern identities and agendas, which does not mean they are false.

Social Time

Herzfeld's concept of time in which objects derive their meaning through everyday use within an active, living system.

Monumental Time

Herzfeld's concept of time in which objects are removed from normal everyday time and treated as sacred, timeless, or priceless.

Antiquarians

Renaissance-era elites who collected antiquities for study and prestige, arguing that remnants of the past should be saved from destruction.

Cabinets of Curiosity

Private elite collections of antiquities from the Renaissance era that eventually formed the core of the earliest public museums.

Elgin Marbles

Parthenon sculptures acquired by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, with Ottoman permission, purchased by the British Parliament in $1816$ and currently claimed by Greece.

Anastylosis

The archaeological reassembly and rebuilding of a ruined monument using its original fragments, such as the Library of Celsus at Ephesus.

Stakeholder

Any group or individual with an interest in the ownership and interpretation of the past, including academics, governments, granting agencies, the general public, and Indigenous communities.

Looting

The illicit or private excavation and taking of antiquities, which is common in impoverished areas and illegal where governments declare all antiquities public property.

Accession

The formal acquisition and recording of an object into a museum's permanent collection.

Deaccession

The formal process of getting rid of or removing an object from a museum's permanent collection.

Benin Bronzes

A collection of approximately $4{,}000$ brass sculptures dating from the 14th to 16th centuries, looted by British troops from the Royal Palace of Benin (Nigeria) in $1897$.

UNESCO

The leading global authority on defining heritage (including the World Heritage list and intangible heritage), whose authority is limited to granting or revoking status and advocacy.

Antiquities Act of 1906

The first US federal law protecting archaeological sites on federal land, which empowers the President to declare National Monuments.

National Historic Preservation Act of 1966

US legislation requiring heritage impact surveys on federal land or for federally funded projects, establishing the foundation of cultural resource management.

Cultural Resource Management (CRM)

The commercial sector where private firms bid on survey and salvage-excavation contracts to comply with federal preservation laws, conducting most archaeology in the US.

State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO)

An official appointed in each US state responsible for overseeing compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act.

NAGPRA (1990)

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; protects Native American burials and mandates the repatriation of human remains and associated cultural items by federal agencies and federally funded museums.

Culture

Patterns of learned behavior and ideas, a way of life, and humanity's extrasomatic means of adaptation, characterized as learned, shared, symbolic, integrated, and adaptive.

Extrasomatic

Beyond the physical body; refers to culture functioning as a non-biological mechanism of human adaptation to environments.

Society

A population or group of people defined by a unifying identity trait, which can contain multiple cultures.

Others

Non-conformers within a society or members outside a group who do not adhere to shared cultural norms.

Multilinear Cultural Evolution

The evolutionary framework positing that cultures change gradually along multiple distinct pathways through interactive borrowing rather than a single uniform path.

Psychic Unity of Mankind

Adolf Bastian's principle that all human populations share the same species-level cognitive capabilities and psychological needs, with differences arising from social and cultural environments.

Socialization

The process of learning the rules, norms, and behavioral expectations necessary to function in a society.

Enculturation

The process of learning the ways of thinking, feeling, and acting appropriate within a specific cultural setting.

Institutions

Complex cultural practices and structures that organize social life across bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.

Coevolution

The reciprocal, mutual shaping of technology, the environment, and symbolic practices over long spans of time.

Agency

The capacity of an individual to act, make choices, and exert power within a society.

Holism (Holistic Perspective)

The anthropological perspective that views the mind, body, and external environment as fundamentally interwoven and inseparable.

Ethnography

A primary anthropological fieldwork method for studying living cultures, grounded in participant-observation.

Participant-Observation

A qualitative research method in which the ethnographer embeds themselves within a community, directly joining and recording daily life.

Armchair Anthropology

A 19th-century approach in which scholars analyzed second-hand travelogues without conducting direct fieldwork, often generating biased theories about race.

Rescue Anthropology

Early 20th-century fieldwork that attempted to document traditional cultural practices assumed to be dying out, frequently romanticizing or staging activities.

Emic

An insider's perspective and understanding of their own culture.

Etic

An outsider's analytical and descriptive perspective of a culture.

Thick Description

Detailed, context-rich ethnographic accounts explaining narratives, social relationships, politics, kinship, economics, conflicts, and values.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to view one's own culture as natural or superior while regarding other cultures as inferior or abnormal.

Cultural Relativism

An approach pioneered by Franz Boas asserting that a culture must be understood on its own terms, requiring researchers to recognize and compensate for personal biases.

Entheogen

A psychoactive substance used specifically within sacred or ritual contexts, such as the Yanomami ritual snuff Yopo.

Reified Concept (Reification)

A cultural practice or belief that has been reproduced for so long that it is treated as an immutable, objective social reality.

Tradition

Highly durable cultural practices that persist over generations, even without an obvious adaptive benefit, due to deep entanglement in economic, political, or religious systems.

Hybridization

The blending of elements, beliefs, or practices from different cultures in contact, often occurring within unequal colonial settings.

Columbian Exchange

The extensive global transfer of plants, animals, cultures, populations, and communicable diseases between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres following $1492$.