Biological Anthropology Midterm - Lecture 1

anthropology

the study of human cultural and biological variation

four-field approach

- “holistic”/”holism” approach

- looking at multiple disciplines to understand humanity and evolution; cultural, linguistic, archaeology, and biological

- acknowledges the diversity and complexity of what it is to be a human

cultural anthropology

the study of cultures and societies of human beings and their very recent past

ethnographic method

- participant observation

- interviews, surveys, film and photography

what is archaeology

the study of past societies, including their material remains such as tools, food, and structures

what is an important material remain for the study of archaeology?

trash

linguistic anthropology

study of language, language origin and evolution, structure, and use

sociolinguistics

how social contexts (cultural expectations, ethnicity, status, gender, etc.) influence the way people use language

biological anthropology

study of human variation as biological organisms within an evolutionary context, both past and present

Franz Boas

- the ‘father of anthropology’

- focused on culture, NOT “race”; one of the first anthropologist projects to learn the language and customs of the community

when was the birth of the four fields, and who made them?

- Franz Boas

- Baffin Island, 1883

cultural relativism

not putting societies in a hierarchy; decenters scientists and centers cultures and societies

Earnest Hooten

- trained the first ‘generation’ of physical anthropologists (early biological anthropology)

- still categorized history of cultures based on race

- Harvard, 1913

Ales Hrdlicka

- founded American Journal of Physical Anthropology

- 1918

Sherwood Washburn

- student of Hooten’s

- promoted evolutionary perspective

- detailed his vision in his 1951 “The New Physical Anthropology”

Sherwood Washburn’s ideas

- the value of primatology and paleoanthropology

- function over form

- process over type

- “the simple statement, that a trait it or is not there, is replaced by the attempt to understand under what conditions it might be present

- not every trait has an executive function

- physical traits may change not due to natural selection, but rather to changes in lifestyle (migration, population size and interaction, etc.)

- collaboration with other subfields of anthropology

physical vs. biological anthropology

- measuring physical traits

- ex: craniometry

- history of racism and eugenics

- Washburn argued against Hooten and Hrdlicka’s ideas of this

physical vs. biological anthropology

- more representative of the range of work anthropologists do

- integrative, dynamic, and process-oriented

- asking “why” not “what”

biological anthropologists conduct research through the…

scientific method

- influence from Boas

scientific method

1. observe phenomenon

2. formulate a testable and falsifiable hypothesis

3. experimentation/data collection

4. evaluate/data analysis

5. repeat (if necessary)

6 big events of humanity

1. bipedalism

2. reduced (non-honing) canine

3. tool industries

4. spoken language

5. hunting

6. plant/animal domestication

large canines were what kind of trait for nonhuman primates?

- a communication trait

• - not a survival trait

• - humans found other ways to communicate