Anthro test #1
Intro / Big Picture
Four subfields of anthropology: (1) Cultural anthropology studies contemporary human cultures, (2) Archaeology studies past cultures through material remains, (3) Biological/Physical anthropology studies human biology, evolution, and variation, and (4) Linguistic anthropology studies language and its role in culture.
Fieldwork: Firsthand research in a community, usually through participant observation, interviews, and living among the people being studied. It is the signature method of cultural anthropology.
Human universals: Traits found in every known human society, such as language, kinship systems, cooking, music, and rules about incest.
Physical Anthropology and Human Evolution
Physical (biological) anthropology: The subfield studying human evolution, primates, genetics, and biological variation.
Hominin evolution: The evolutionary history of the human lineage after it split from the ancestors of chimpanzees, including the australopithecines, early Homo, and modern humans.
Species: A group of organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
Cladogenesis: Evolution in which one lineage splits into two or more separate lineages, producing a branching "bush" rather than a straight line.
Bipedalism: Walking upright on two legs. It is the earliest defining hominin trait and frees the hands for carrying and tool use.
Foramen magnum: The hole at the base of the skull where the spinal cord exits. Its position is used to tell whether an ancestor walked upright. Farther forward and underneath means bipedal.
Out of Africa theory: Modern Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and then spread across the world, replacing or mixing with other hominins. It contrasts with the multiregional model.
Tool making: Deliberately shaping objects to use as tools. It is a key marker of hominin behavior and cognition, and the earliest stone tools are about 2.5 to 3.3 million years old.
Homo sapiens: Anatomically modern humans, who appeared in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago.
Neanderthals: A close hominin relative (Homo neanderthalensis) that lived in Europe and western Asia. They made tools, used fire, and buried their dead. Modern non-African populations carry a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA.
Extinction: The complete disappearance of a species. Neanderthals and most hominin species are extinct.
Braided stream: A metaphor for human evolution as multiple lineages that split, run alongside each other, and sometimes merge (gene flow), rather than a single ladder or tree.
Race and Human Variation
Race: A socially constructed category that groups people by supposed physical traits. Anthropologists hold that it is not a valid biological classification.
Race as a category: Racial categories are cultural and historical inventions that vary by society and time, and they don't match real patterns of genetic variation. Most human genetic variation exists within so-called racial groups, not between them.
Physical variation: Biological differences among humans, such as skin color, body build, and blood type. It is real but continuous and doesn't sort neatly into races.
Adaptation: A biological trait shaped by natural selection that helps a population survive in its environment. Darker skin in high-UV regions is one example.
Acclimatization: A temporary, short-term physiological adjustment of an individual to an environment, like increased red blood cell production at high altitude. It is not genetic or inherited.
Clines: Gradual geographic gradients in a trait, such as skin color getting steadily lighter with distance from the equator. They show variation is continuous, not divided into discrete races.
Mitochondrial DNA: DNA inherited only through the mother. It is used to trace maternal ancestry, and it supports the Out of Africa theory because Africa shows the greatest genetic diversity.
Archaeology
Archaeology: The study of past human societies through their material remains, such as artifacts, features, and ecofacts.
Paleolithic: The "Old Stone Age," the longest period of human prehistory, from the first stone tools about 2.5 million years ago to about 12,000 years ago. People were hunter-gatherers.
Lithics: Stone tools and the debris from making them.
Flake: A piece struck off a stone during toolmaking. Flakes can be used as sharp cutting tools.
Core: The stone from which flakes are removed. It can be a tool itself or the leftover piece.
Retouch: Further shaping or sharpening of a flake's edge by removing tiny chips.
Atlatl: A spear-thrower, a handle or lever that lets a hunter throw a dart or spear with greater force and distance.
Peopling of the New World: The question of when and how humans first reached the Americas. The traditional view is migration from Asia, and the timing is debated.
Geochronology: Dating the age of geological deposits and layers, which helps date the archaeological finds in them.
Pleistocene: The Ice Age epoch, from about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. Sea levels were lower and large glaciers covered much of the land.
Beringia: The land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, exposed when sea levels dropped in the Ice Age. It is the likely migration route into the Americas.
Clovis and pre-Clovis: Clovis refers to distinctive fluted spear points from about 13,000 years ago, once thought to mark the first Americans. Pre-Clovis refers to evidence of people in the Americas before Clovis, which shows the peopling was earlier than once believed.
Megafauna extinction: The die-off of large Ice Age mammals such as mammoths and giant sloths. It is debated whether human overhunting, climate change, or both caused it.
Cultural Anthropology Concepts
Cultural relativism: Understanding a culture's beliefs and practices in the context of that culture, without judging them by your own standards.
Ethnocentrism: Judging other cultures by the standards of your own and assuming your own is superior. It is the opposite of cultural relativism.
Holism: Studying a society as an interconnected whole (economics, kinship, religion, politics, and so on), not as isolated parts.
Comparative perspective: Comparing cultures across time and place to identify patterns and differences and avoid generalizing from a single case.
Culture: The learned, shared, symbolic system of beliefs, values, behaviors, and material things passed on within a society.
Emic: The insider's view, meaning how members of a culture understand and explain their own practices.
Etic: The outsider's or scientific view, meaning the analytical categories an observer uses to describe and compare cultures.
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic anthropology: The study of language in relation to culture, history, and social life.
Symbol: Something that stands for something else by arbitrary, culturally agreed-upon meaning. Words are symbols.
Phonology: The study of a language's sound system and how sounds are organized and patterned.
Phonetics: The study of the physical production and perception of speech sounds, in any language.
Phonemics: The study of phonemes, the smallest sound units that distinguish meaning in a particular language, like /p/ vs. /b/ in "pat" and "bat."
Morphology: The study of how words are formed from morphemes, the smallest units of meaning, like un-happy or cat-s.
Syntax: The rules for arranging words into phrases and sentences.
Tonal languages: Languages, such as Mandarin and Yoruba, where pitch or tone changes a word's meaning.
Glottochronology: A method that estimates how long ago related languages diverged, based on the rate of vocabulary change. It is controversial.
Semantic domain: A set of related words and meanings in a language, such as color terms or kinship terms. It shows what a culture finds important.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The idea that language shapes or influences how its speakers think and perceive the world (linguistic relativity). The strong version, linguistic determinism, is largely rejected, and the weaker version has some support.
Sociolinguistics: The study of how language varies and is used in social contexts, including class, gender, ethnicity, and region.
Code-switching: Alternating between languages, dialects, or speech styles depending on the social situation.
Ethnicity
Ethnicity: A group identity based on perceived shared culture, ancestry, language, religion, or history.
Features of ethnic groups: Typically shared culture and traditions, a sense of common ancestry or history, self-identification and identification by others, and often a shared language, religion, or homeland. Ethnicity is about culture, not biology.
Ethnicity and nation: A nation is a people with a shared identity who are seeking or holding political self-rule, and a state is the political entity. Ethnic groups don't always match state borders, and multiethnic states are common.
Assimilation: A minority group is absorbed into the dominant culture and loses its distinctive identity, often through pressure.
Acculturation: Cultural change that results from contact between groups, where each adopts some of the other's traits while typically keeping its own identity.
Films
"Race: The Power of an Illusion": A PBS documentary series arguing that race is a social construct, not a biological reality. It shows that genetic variation doesn't follow racial lines, that racial categories have changed over time, and that race still has real social effects through policies and institutions (housing, wealth, and so on).
"The Kayapo": A documentary about the Kayapo people of the Brazilian Amazon. As far as I know, it covers their culture and their struggle to defend their land and way of life against outside development. I'm less sure of the exact film and its details, so review your notes from the screening for specifics like names and events.
Test Tips
Know the paired contrasts: emic/etic, ethnocentrism/relativism, assimilation/acculturation, phonetics/phonology/phonemics, adaptation/acclimatization, and Clovis/pre-Clovis.
Know why race isn't biological (clines, more variation within groups, and mtDNA and other genetics).