ANTH 3280 Exam 1 - Anna Tremblay (Clemson)

Anthropology

The study of humanity.

What are the four subfields of anthropology?

Cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and biological anthropology.

Cultural anthropology

The study of people's everyday lives, communities, behaviors, beliefs, and institutions.

Linguistic anthropology

The study of human language in the past and present, including changing systems of communication and symbols.

Archaeology

The study of the human past through excavation and analysis of material remains or artifacts.

Biological anthropology

The study of human biological evolution and biocultural variation.

Holism

An approach that examines biology, society, language, and culture as connected parts of the human experience.

Historical particularism

The view that each culture is shaped by its own unique historical path rather than one universal process.

Cultural ecology

The theory that culture develops as an adaptation to physical and social environments. Different environments help explain cultural differences, including different subsistence strategies.

Bias

A preference or systematic error that can distort judgments, investigations, measurements, or results.

Preservation bias

The archaeological problem that some materials survive better than others because preservation varies with material, size, environment, and time.

Biocultural approach

A framework in which biological, cultural, and environmental factors interact and affect one another.

Homeostasis

The tendency to keep the body's internal environment stable within a normal physiological range.

Stressor

Any stimulus that causes a response and may threaten the survival of an individual or group.

Adaptation

The process of adjusting to new conditions, or a trait that improves survival and reproduction.

What are the four types of adaptation?

Cultural, acclimatization, developmental, and genetic adaptation.

Cultural adaptation

A learned change in behavior or technology. It is generally the fastest type of adaptation.

Acclimatization

A physiological adjustment an individual makes after exposure to a new condition during the person's lifetime.

Developmental adaptation

A biological adjustment that develops while the body is growing and is generally irreversible later in life.

Genetic adaptation

An inherited population-level change that develops through evolution across generations.

How do anthropology's four subfields help people prepare for an uncertain future?

Together they show alternative cultural solutions, reveal lessons from past adaptations, explain communication, and connect environmental and social conditions to human biology and health.

How can cultural anthropology help with future problems?

It shows how other cultures meet needs and adapt, revealing alternative ways to solve problems.

How can archaeology help with future problems?

It provides evidence of how past populations successfully adapted or failed to adapt to changing conditions.

How can biological anthropology help with future problems?

It explains how biological, cultural, and environmental factors interact to affect human health.

Resource

Anything that serves a useful purpose, satisfies a need or want, or helps achieve a goal.

Tangible resource

A resource with a physical form, such as money, equipment, or a natural material.

Intangible resource

A nonphysical resource, such as time, knowledge, energy, or social rewards.

Renewable resource

A resource that replenishes over time.

Nonrenewable resource

A resource that exists in limited quantities and does not replenish on a human timescale.

Natural resources

Useful materials or assets from the environment, including fossil fuels, minerals, timber, agricultural products, water, and land.

GDP (Gross Domestic Product)

The total market value of final goods and services produced within a country's borders during a specific period. It does not show whether production is sustainable or distributed equally.

Comprehensive wealth

The assets that make future income possible, including produced capital, natural capital, human capital, and net foreign assets.

Changing Wealth of Nations (CWON)

A comprehensive-wealth measure that includes assets important for sustainable development, such as human capital and ecosystem assets.

International Wealth Index (IWI)

An index for low- and middle-income countries that uses household assets to compare material wealth.

Net worth

The value of a household's assets minus its debts.

Inequality

The unequal distribution of resources.

Gini coefficient

A statistical measure of income, wealth, or consumption inequality within a nation or social group.

About how long might major fossil-fuel supplies last?

Know the general estimates: oil and natural gas about 50 years; coal more than 100 years.

About what share of global electricity comes from renewable resources?

Just under one-third, and the share is expected to increase.

What is the broad global pattern of population and wealth?

Wealth is highly concentrated. Wealthier countries and households control a disproportionate share of resources, while poorer populations have much less. Focus on the imbalance rather than exact percentages.

What are major environmental and health effects of fossil fuels?

Climate change, air and water pollution, habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and cancer risk.

What are major effects of timber extraction and deforestation?

Carbon release, less carbon dioxide absorption, habitat and biodiversity loss, soil erosion, flooding, disrupted rainfall, drought, and watershed damage.

Is wealth distributed equally?

No. Wealth is concentrated in high-income countries and the wealthiest households.

Is the global wealth gap getting larger or smaller?

The pattern is uneven. Middle-income countries have gained some wealth, but low-income countries have seen little growth, while wealth concentration can widen the gap.

What factors can influence access to resources?

Age, class, disability, gender, origin, religion, race, and sexual orientation.

GDP versus comprehensive wealth and CWON

GDP measures current production. Comprehensive wealth and the Changing Wealth of Nations framework examine assets that support future income and sustainable development.

Domestication syndrome

A set of traits that commonly develops under domestication. In plants these include larger fruits or grains, reduced branching, less seed dispersal and dormancy, changed photoperiod sensitivity, and reduced toxins.

Domesticated animal

An animal population whose reproduction and traits have been shaped by humans. Traits that favor domestication include a broad diet, rapid maturation, captive breeding, docility, and a social hierarchy. Domestication can retain juvenile traits into adulthood.

Domesticated plant

A plant population changed through human selection so that traits useful to people become more common.

Timeline 1 of 9: Earliest anatomically modern humans (AMHs)

200 KYA, or about 200,000 years ago, on the lecture timeline. Use the course timeline dates for these cards.

Timeline 2 of 9: First AMHs leave Africa

90 KYA, or about 90,000 years ago, on the lecture timeline.

Timeline 3 of 9: Earliest animal domestication

15 KYA, or about 15,000 years ago. The lecture gives dogs as the possible first domesticated animal.

Timeline 4 of 9: Earliest plant domestication

10 KYA, or about 10,000 years ago, on the overview timeline. The detailed plant slide gives a range of 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

Timeline 5 of 9: Earliest agriculture

10 KYA, or about 10,000 years ago, on the lecture timeline. The transition was gradual and followed plant domestication.

Timeline 6 of 9: Inherited wealth

7 KYA, or about 7,000 years ago. Agricultural land, tools, and animals could be passed between generations.

Timeline 7 of 9: Earliest states

6 KYA, or about 6,000 years ago. The earliest state centers were generally in regions similar to early plant-domestication centers.

Timeline 8 of 9: European colonial expansion

The 1400s CE.

Timeline 9 of 9: Industrial Revolution

The 1800s CE. Machine production transformed agrarian societies into industrial and urban societies and increased class differences.

How might the transition to agriculture have occurred?

Repeated camps created favorable environments for useful plants. Human harvesting created new selection pressures, followed by deliberate sowing, weeding, watering, and dependence on cultivated foods.

Why could agriculture create inherited wealth?

Productive resources such as land, tools, and animals could be controlled by particular households and passed to later generations.

Do all societies have a division of labor?

Yes. All societies divide labor in some way.

How are food surplus and specialization connected?

A food surplus frees some people from subsistence work, allowing full-time specialization and differences in wealth and prestige.

Band

A small, usually mobile, kin-based society with informal leadership, commonly associated with foraging.

Tribe

A larger kin-based society with limited centralized authority, often organized through villages or descent groups.

Chiefdom

A ranked society with centralized leadership under a hereditary chief and systems of redistribution.

State

A large, stratified society with centralized government, formal laws and institutions, and control over a territory.

Egalitarian society

A society with relatively equal access to wealth, power, and prestige.

Ranked society

A society with unequal social status or prestige but fewer sharp differences in wealth than a stratified society.

Stratified society

A society divided into unequal social classes with major differences in access to wealth, power, and prestige.

Wealth

Control or ownership of valued economic and material resources.

Power

The ability to influence behavior, make decisions, or compel others.

Prestige

Social respect, honor, or status.

Circumscription Theory

Robert Carneiro's theory that states develop through the interaction of environmental limits, population growth, and warfare.

Environmental circumscription

Geographic limits on suitable land that restrict expansion or escape. In Circumscription Theory, defeated groups unable to leave become subject to the victors.

What sequence does Circumscription Theory propose?

Population grows in a limited region, suitable land becomes scarce, competition intensifies, one group gains political control, and defeated groups cannot leave and become dominated.

World Systems Analysis

Immanuel Wallerstein's framework describing a capitalist world economy divided into core, semi-periphery, and periphery countries through an international division of labor.

Core, semi-periphery, and periphery

Core countries dominate capital-intensive, high-skill production; periphery countries supply lower-skill labor and raw materials; semi-periphery countries occupy an intermediate position.

When and why did inequality emerge?

It became more visible with agriculture, inherited productive resources, food surplus, specialization, and later centralized states that created unequal access to wealth, power, and prestige.

Subsistence

Maintaining or supporting oneself at a minimum level.

Subsistence strategy

The way a society obtains the food and other resources needed to survive.

Food foraging

Obtaining food from wild plants and animals through gathering, hunting, fishing, or trapping.

Food producing

Obtaining food by managing domesticated plants or animals through pastoralism, horticulture, or agriculture.

Pastoralism

A food-producing strategy based mainly on herding domesticated animals.

Nomadism

A mobile pastoral strategy in which a group moves with its herds rather than maintaining one permanent settlement.

Transhumance

The seasonal movement of herds between established grazing areas.

Horticulture

Small-scale, nonintensive crop production, often using shifting or slash-and-burn cultivation and part-time labor.

Agriculture

Intensive food production that uses greater labor, land, technology, or other inputs and often produces a surplus.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

Deep, place-based knowledge of environments and relationships among living things, accumulated across generations by Indigenous and local communities.

Nose-to-tail eating

Using and eating as much of an animal as possible instead of discarding most parts.

Intensification

Increasing output by adding more fertilizer, labor, irrigation, machinery, or other inputs per unit of land.

Extensification

Increasing output by bringing more land into production.

Greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture

Direct emissions come from activities such as rice and livestock farming. Indirect emissions come from converting forests or other nonagricultural land into farmland.

Intercropping

Growing two or more crop species in the same field at the same time to improve resource use, biodiversity, and yields.

Food insecurity

Uncertainty about or inability to obtain enough food because money or other resources are insufficient.

Low food security

Households avoid major reductions in food intake by using coping strategies such as less-varied diets, assistance programs, or food pantries.

Very low food security

Normal eating patterns are disrupted and food intake decreases because a household lacks money or other food resources.

Food desert

An area with limited access to affordable, healthy food.

Hadza: subsistence strategy and basic foods

Foraging. They hunt animals, gather wild plant foods, and collect honey.

Martu: subsistence strategy and basic foods

Foraging. A small, mobile hunter-gatherer population that uses wild plants and animals.

Inuit: subsistence strategy and basic foods

Foraging, especially hunting and fishing. Animal foods such as seals and fish are important, along with some seasonal plants.