Flashcards Anthropology Foundations: Culture, Archaeology, and Evolution

Anthropology

The study of humans

holistic approach

study the broad range of human beliefs and behaviors to discover what it means to be human.

what does anthropology study

Human societies and cultures and their development

physical anthropology

the study of humans from a biological perspective, particularly focused on human evolution

primatology

the study of living nonhuman primates as well as primate fossils to better understand human evolution and early human behavior

human genetics

the study of inheritance as it occurs in human beings

population biology

the study of the interrelationships between population characteristics and environments

epidemiology

the study of the distribution of mental or physical disorders in a population

cultural anthropology

the study of people's communities, behaviors, beliefs, and institutions, including how people make meaning as they live, work, and play together

Archaeology

study of artifacts and relics of early mankind

Anthropoligical Linguistics

the scientific study of language within its broader cultural, historical, and social contexts

empirical evidence

evidence that comes from direct experience, scientifically gathered data, or experimentation

fieldwork

the study of geographic phenomena by visiting places and observing how people interact with and thereby change those places

ethnography

the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures.

enthology

the study of the characteristics of various peoples and the differences and relationships between them.

Cultural Relativism

the practice of judging a culture by its own standards

absolute cultural relativism

whatever goes on within a particular culture cannot be questioned or changed by outsiders as that would be ethnocentric

Critical Cultural Relativism

poses questions about cultural practices in terms of who is accepting them and why

ehtnocentrism

attitude that ones own ehtnic group is superior

artifacts

objects made by humans

lithics

stone tools

ecofacts

Natural materials that give environmental information about a site (bones)

fossils

Preserved remains of once-living organisms

midden

a garbage mound left by prehistoric people

sites

locations of past human activity, often associated with artifacts and features

strata

layers of rock

taphonomy

The study of how bones and other materials come to be buried in the earth and preserved as fossils.

remote sensing

A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments that are physically distant from the area or object of study.

excavation

the process of digging up the remains of the past

typology

the study and interpretation of types and symbols, originally especially in the Bible.

use wear analysis

Examining the wear patterns--microscopic striations and polish--on the surface of tools to determine what the tools were used on

Stratigraphy

the study of rock layers and the sequence of events they reflect

radiocarbon dating

method for determining age by comparing the amount of carbon-14 to the amount of carbon-12 in a sample

evolution

Change in a kind of organism over time; process by which modern organisms have descended from ancient organisms.

common descent

principle that all living things were derived from common ancestors

variational evolution

variants that are more successful survive and reproduce more offspring, who inherit the traits that made their parents fit

heredibility

the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes

differential reproductive success

the tendency of some individuals to have greater reproductive success than other individuals in a population