Study of humankind everywhere, throughout time in order to better understand aspects of humanity
Identify differences and similarities between societies.
Holistic: integrating many disciplines.
Asking questions about how people:
- Developed through the ages
- Organize daily activities
- Organize themselves in social groups
- Come to think the way they do, and express their thoughts
- Have developed language
- Perceive the world they live in
Sub-fields of Anthropology:
- Physical or Biological
- Archaeology
- Linguistic
- Cultural or Social
Physical or Biological Anthropology: Studies human biology within framework of
evolution. Emphasis on interaction between biology and culture. Focuses on humans as biological
organisms. Also explores our closest relatives and Examines Biological Adaptations.
Environmental Conditions: Extreme heat or cold, altitude, geographic isolation, infectious disease.
Nutrition: Cultural practices, physiology, health and disease, fertility, growth and development, genetics.
Molecular : Investigate human genetic variation, genetic relationships between contemporary populations, origins of
modern humans, relationships between living primate species, and the overall process of hominid evolution.
Significant Fields of Study in Physical Anthropology
Paleoanthropology: study human evolution through fossil record
Anthropometry: study body measurements of living as well as skeletal remains
Osteology: study of skeleton
Paleopathology: incident of trauma, infectious disease and nutritional deficiencies
Forensic anthropology: identification of human skeletal remains for legal purposes. Can often determine evidence
of trauma, deformities, age, sex, stature, ethnic group.
Missing persons (civilian and military - from past conflicts or wars)
People lost in disasters (plane crash, 9/11, earthquake)
Murder victims (crime scene and human rights abuses)
Archaeology: It is controlled destruction. Study of material remains through scientific recovery,
analysis, and interpretation. Describe and explain human behavior. Locate and retrieve fossils. Study
historical peoples.
Research is often focused on questions:
from a specific group:
-Social organization
-Subsistence techniques
-Factors that lead to collapse
that are general:
-Understanding development of agriculture
-Rise of cities
Fossil: Any trace or impression of an organism from the geologic past that has been preserved
in the earth’s crust
Typically: Bones, teeth, shells, horns and woody tissue from plants
Occasionally: Casts or impressions of footprints or even whole bodies
Preservation
Unaltered fossils:
-Ice
-Resin
-Lake bottoms and sea basins
-Mummified or preserved
Altered fossils:
-Scattered teeth
-Fragments of bone
Tolland Man - Northern Europe. Died from being hung 2,000 years ago
William Rathje (1973): Contemporary garbage study
-Tucson
-Wanted to test validity of interview-survey techniques
Garbology: The term coined to describe Rathje’s research, is now in the Oxford English Dictionary and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
His book Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage, co-authored with Cullen Murphy, was a national bestseller and is currently in print from the University
of Arizona Press.
- Since 1973, Professor Rathje’s Garbage Project has retrieved and analyzed fresh and land-filled refuse
- Determined patterns in resource waste, diet, nutrition, and disease vectors;
- Misidentified risks of household hazardous wastes; what is really filling up our landfills; the surprising truth about how fast
garbage biodegrades
- What it all means for life today and the legacy we leave for archaeologists in the future.
Sites
Hunting campsites
Kill sites
Village sites
Cemeteries
Picking a site:
Ground survey
- Soil marks
- Vegetation growth
Remote sensing techniques
- aerial photos
- High-resolution aerial photos
- Documents, maps, folklore, place-names and local lore
Natural agents
- Drought
- Soil erosion
Accidental discovery
- Plowing
- Strip mining
Cultural Resource Management:
- Historic Preservation Act of 1966
- National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
- Archaeological and Historical Preservation Act of 1974
- Contract archaeologist make up around 40% of all archaeologist in the U.S.
Excavation:
Must consider time, money and labor that can be committed to the endeavor. Shed light on human past and
help us understand cultural and evolutionary processes in general. Contribute to a solution for an important
research problem.
Dating Methods:
Relative
- Stratigraphy
- Fluorine test
- Palynology
- Paleontology
Absolute
- Radiocarbon analysis
- Dendrochronology
- Potassium-argon analysis
- Electron spin resonance
“The richness of human culture is made possible by language, one of our most distinctive characteristics.
Although we are genetically programmed to speak, what we speak is determined by our culture.”
Linguistics: The study of the way sentences are formed and the history of language. The study
of linguistics can be traced back 2,000 years to grammarians in India.
Linguistics
Anatomically modern humans believed to have had the structures in the brain as well as throat to produce
language 60,000 ya
- Hyoid bone, Kebara Cave, Israel
Distinctive feature of humans (other animals use symbolic communication, but not language)
Language: A system of sounds (no more than 50) or gestures put together according to
certain rules which provides meaningful messages. 6,000 languages around the world. Allows for
transmission of culture from one generation to another.
Language
Signal: A tear (self evident meaning)
Symbol: The word “crying” (sound or gesture assigned meaning to stand for something)
Language:
Allows for precise labels to phenomena
As well as displacement - refer to events removed in time and space
Gesture-Call System:
Shared with monkeys and apes
- Vervet monkeys
- Chimpanzees and gorillas
Provides a frame for interpreting what the speaker is saying
Consists of paralanguage
Provides messages about emotion, intention, age, sex and possibly identity of speaker
90% of emotional information is transmitted by body language and tone of voice (in English)
Kinesic (component of Gesture-Call System)
Postures
Facial Expressions
Bodily motions that convey messages
Basic facial expressions are similar around the world
Differences in responses and gestures
Paralanguage: -- “It is not so much what you say but how you say it”
Voice qualities:
- Pitch Range
- Lip Control
- Articulation Control
- Rhythm Control
- Resonance
- Tempo
Vocalizations:
- Voice Characterizers
- Voice Qualifiers
- Vocal Segregates
Linguistic Change
Descriptive Linguistics: Registering and explaining all the features of a particular language at any one time in history
Historical Linguistics: Investigates relationships between earlier and later forms of the same language
Glottochronology: Technique used as a dating technique to date divergence of branches of language families
Core Vocabulary: Pronouns, lower numerals, names for body parts and natural objects, believed to change at a more
or less constant rate
Forces of Change
- Borrowing from another language
- Novelty
- Group membership
- Phonological differences
- Linguistic nationalism
Language in its Cultural Setting
Social Variables: (class, ethnicity, and status)
Ethnolinguistics: Outgrowth of ethnology and descriptive linguistics. Concerned with every aspect of the structure and
use of language that has anything to do with society, culture, and human behavior.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: concerned with whether language determines other aspects of culture. Argues that language predisposes people to see the world in a certain way, therefore guides their thinking and behavior.
-focused attention on the relationships between language and the rest of culture.
Nuer from southern Sudan
Code-Switching: Process of changing from one level of language to another.
Cultural or Social Anthropology
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1871)
- Knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs
Today distinguishes more clearly between actual behavior and abstract values, beliefs and perceptions
of the world that lie behind the behavior on the other
-Rathje’s study in Tucson 1973
Culture: Unconscious standards by which societies operate
-Provides a degree of predictable behavior
Standards: Are learned rather than biologically inherited
Society: Group of people who have common homeland, are interdependent, and share a common
culture.
Social Structure: - relationship of groups within society that hold it together.
No member has the exact same version of his or her culture as another
Cross-cultural perspective
Gaining insight by developing theories based on worldwide comparisons
For example -- ideas about Gender and Age
Subgroups: Have distinct behavioral expectations (occupational groups, social class, ethnic groups)
Often termed subcultures - distinctive set of standard and behavior patterns that a group within a larger society operates by.
- Amish
Pluralistic societies: Societies that have a diversity of cultural patterns.
- Pony
Culture is Learned
Enculturation: Process by which culture is transmitted from one generation to the next; often growing up in the culture
- Eating and Drinking practices
Culture based on Symbols
Art, religion, and money involve symbols
Language
Culture is Integrated
Integration: Tendency for all aspects of culture to function as an interrelated whole
- Economic, political, social structure…
Culture in the Field
Ethnographies: Traditional - religion, ritual, myth, use of symbols, subsistence, technology, gender roles,
child-rearing, dietary preferences, taboos, medical practices and how kinship is reckoned
More recent - subcultures and their interactions with one another in contemporary metropolitan areas
- Urban, medical, economic anthropology
Culture in the Field
Ethnologies: Cross-cultural studies
- Housework example
Ethnohistory: Studies cultures of recent past through oral histories
- Accounts of explorers, missionaries, and traders, birth or death records
- *Zora Neale Hurston
Culture and Adaptation
Culture enables people to use a wide diversity of environments
Culture deals with basic needs/problems:
- Production and distribution of goods and services
- Reproduction
- Enculturate new members
- Maintain order of its members (between themselves and outsiders)
Culture and Change
Cultures change over time
Occur in response to events - environmental crisis, intrusion of outsiders, or modification of behavior or
values within the culture
Culture, Society and the Individual
Society is no more than a union of individuals, all of whom have their own special needs and interests
Must balance the self-interest of its members against the demands of the society as a whole
Evaluation of Culture
Ethnocentrism: Regards itself as the best or superior to others
Cultural relativism: Suspend judgment in order to understand another culture in their own terms
-Ask whether or not the culture satisfies its people’s needs and expectations
Scientific Method
Science: Understanding phenomena through observation, generalization, and verification.
Empirical: Gaining information through the use of systematic and explicit techniques.
Scientific method: Research problem is identified and information is gathered to solve it.
Hypothesis: Provisional explanation of phenomena. Must be tested by means of data collection and analysis.
Theory: Hypothesis that cannot be falsified. Firm basis of relationships as demonstrated through testing and accumulation
of evidence.
Bias: Occur in all studies, includes how the investigator was trained and by whom; what particular questions interest the researcher;
what specific skills or talents are possessed, personality; what samples are can be collected.
Scientific Theory: Formulation and testing of hypotheses (tentative explanations of observed phenomena). Develop
reliable theories (explanations supported by bodies of data). Frame hypotheses as objective and free of cultural bias as
possible. Maintain critical awareness of assumptions. Constantly testing conclusions against new sources of data