Academic Terms
Anthropologists, archaeologists, and museum scholars are notorious for borrowing heavy philosophical concepts to describe human behavior and material culture.
I’ve broken this down into categories, moving from the broad theoretical concepts you mentioned right down into the nitty-gritty of fieldwork, cataloging, and curatorial practice.
The Core Inquiries
Ethnography: The systematic study and written description of a specific human culture, historically relying on immersive, first-hand observation (participant observation).
Ontology / Ontological: The philosophical study of being and reality. When anthropologists talk about an "ontological turn," they are looking at how different cultures might actually experience entirely different realities, rather than just having different beliefs about a single shared reality.
Pedagogy: The method, practice, and theory of teaching. In museum contexts, this often refers to how an exhibit is designed to educate the public.
Epistemology: The study of knowledge. How do we know what we know? What counts as "valid" data (e.g., oral histories vs. radiocarbon dating)?
Phenomenology: The study of conscious experience from the first-person point of view; how individuals actually experience the world sensorily and emotionally.
Anthropology & Cultural Theory
Agency: The capacity of individuals to act independently and make their own free choices, often discussed in contrast to "structure" (the societal rules that limit those choices).
Alterity: The state of being different; "otherness." Often used to describe how dominant cultures construct minority cultures as "the Other."
Bricolage: The construction or creation of something from a diverse range of available things.
Cultural Relativism: The principle that an individual's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture, not judged by outside standards.
Dialectic: A discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments.
Discourse: More than just conversation; it refers to the ways in which language, concepts, and power dynamics shape how we understand a topic.
Emic: An "insider's" perspective or understanding of a culture.
Etic: An "outsider's" (often the researcher's) perspective or understanding of a culture.
Ethnocentrism: Evaluating other peoples and cultures according to the standards of one's own culture.
Habitus: A concept popularized by Pierre Bourdieu referring to the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions we possess due to our life experiences.
Hegemony: The political, economic, or cultural dominance of one group over others, often so normalized that it is accepted as "common sense."
Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of social categorizations (race, class, gender) as they apply to a given individual or group, creating overlapping systems of disadvantage.
Liminality: A state of transition or being "in-between." Often used to describe rites of passage where someone is no longer their old self, but not quite their new self yet.
Materiality: The physical properties of an artifact, but more broadly, how those physical properties influence and interact with human behavior.
Praxis: The process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted or realized. Theory put into action.
Reflexivity: A researcher's awareness of their own biases, background, and influence on the research process and subjects.
Subaltern: Populations that are socially, politically, and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure of the colony or colonial homeland.
Syncretism: The amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought.
Archaeology & The Field
Assemblage: A group of different artifacts found in association with one another in the same context.
Bioturbation: The disturbance of sedimentary deposits by living organisms (like roots growing or rodents burrowing), which can mess up archaeological context.
Context: The spatial and temporal association of artifacts and features. Primary context means it hasn't moved since deposition; secondary context means it was disturbed or moved.
Dendrochronology: The scientific method of dating tree rings to the exact year they were formed.
Feature: A non-portable artifact. Things like hearths, postholes, or storage pits.
Lithics: Stone tools or the debris left over from making them (debitage).
Midden: An archaeological term for a trash heap or refuse deposit.
Paleoethnobotany: The study of relationships between people and plants, using the archaeological record.
Provenience: The exact, three-dimensional location where an artifact or feature was found in the ground during an excavation.
Seriation: A relative dating method in which assemblages or artifacts from numerous sites in the same culture are placed in chronological order based on changing styles.
Sherd (vs. Shard): In archaeology, a sherd specifically refers to a broken piece of ceramic or pottery. A shard usually refers to broken glass or metal.
Stratigraphy: The study of rock layers (strata) and the layering process. The Law of Superposition states that older layers are typically at the bottom.
Taphonomy: The study of how organisms decay and become fossilized or preserved in the archaeological record.
Typology: The classification of objects according to their physical characteristics.
Zooarchaeology: The study of faunal (animal) remains left behind when an animal dies on an archaeological site.
Museum Studies, Curation & Cataloging
Accessioning: The formal, legal process of accepting an item or collection into a museum's permanent holdings.
Cataloging: The process of creating a full descriptive record of an object, including its physical description, condition, and history.
Deaccessioning: The formal, legal process of permanently removing an item from a museum's collection.
Decolonization (Museum Context): The active process of critically examining and dismantling colonial power structures within a museum, often involving the inclusion of marginalized voices in how their history is told.
Didactic: Educational or instructional materials. In a museum, didactic labels are the texts that explain the context of an object or exhibit.
Docent: A trained volunteer who provides educational tours to museum visitors.
Intangible Cultural Heritage: Practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and skills that communities recognize as part of their cultural heritage (e.g., oral traditions, performing arts, traditional craftsmanship).
Material Culture: The physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture.
Museology: The science or profession of museum organization and management.
NAGPRA: The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. A vital piece of U.S. legislation requiring institutions receiving federal funding to return Native American "cultural items" to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated Indian tribes.
Nomenclature: A structured and standardized system of naming objects, essential for consistent database management in collections.
Preventive Conservation: Non-interventive actions taken to slow the deterioration of objects, such as controlling temperature, humidity, and light exposure in a storage facility.
Provenance: The chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. (Distinct from provenience, which is its specific find-spot in the dirt).
Repatriation: The process of returning cultural artifacts or human remains to their place of origin or culturally affiliated group.
Stakeholder: Anyone who has an interest or concern in the museum and its collections, including the local community, descendant communities, scholars, and funders.