The investigation of human past cultures through the excavation of material remains.

• prehistoric-investigates cultures that existed before the development of writing
• historic- investigates the past of literate peoples 

A major subfield of anthropology that studies the biological dimensions of humans and other primates.

• primatology- the study of primates (including monkeys and apes)
• paleoanthropology- investigates biological evolution of the human species
• Forensic Anthropology- analyzes and identifies human remains
• human variation- phyiscal differences among human populations

Cultural Anthropology

The subfield that studies the way of life of contemporary and historically recent peoples.

• Sociolinguistics- studies how language is related to culture and the social uses of speech

A written description of the way of life of some human population.

• Synchronic- the description of a culture at one period in time
• Diachronic- studies of changes in a culture over time
• Recall ethnography- the attempt to reconstruct a cultural system at a slightly earlier period by interviewing older individuals who lived during that period

A subfield of anthropology whose practioners use anthropological methods, theories and concepts to solve practical, real-world problems.

• Developmental- developing countries
• Educational- immigration and schooling
• Corporate- international business
• Medical- behavior that causes disease

The assumption that any aspect of a culture is integrated with other aspects, so that no dimension of culture can be understood in isolation.

Ex: An anthropologist studying the religious rituals of a culture must also investigate how those rituals are influenced by family life, economic forces, political leadership, etc.

Culture is:

• socially learned knowledge and patterns of behavior
• taught/ learned (generational)
• widely shared by members of that group/ society
• responsible for most diferences between societies (leads to warfare)
• always changing
• emphasizes unique customs and beliefs

Informations, skills, attitudes, conceptions, beliefs, values, and other mental components of cutlure that people socially learn during enculturation.

Ex: attitudes about friends and family, morals about right and wrong, ideas about appropriate dress/hygiene, manners, supernatural beliefs, etc.

Cultural differences characteristic of members of various ethnic groups, regions, religions, and so forth within a single society or country.

Ex: The subculture of gay people becomes meaningful if contrasted with straights in value and lifestyle

Ways in which the members of a culture divide up the natural and social world into categories, usually linguistically encoded.

Ex: All cultures recognize kinship relationships but in different ways

The way people intepret reality and events, including how they see themselves relating to the world around them. 

• Affected by constructions of reality
• Ex: beliefs about what happens to souls after death, how the earth was formed, notions of good and evil, etc.

The idea that biologically inherited differences between populations are important influences on cultural differences between them.

• Ex: Hitler 
• modern anthropologists reject this idea, culture is LEARNED and all humans equally capable of learning

Elements of culture that exist in all known human groups or societies.

Ex: ways of assigning tasks and roles according to age, gender and skill, the incest taboo, games/ sports or other types of recreational activities, etc.

When we speak, we combine units (words and sounds) according to shared and conventional rules. 

• discrete sounds are the building blocks of language

Our ability to talk about objects, people, things and events that are remote in time and space.

Ex: talking about someone that is out of sight, talking about the future, etc.

The smallest unit of sound that speakers unconsciously recognize as distinctive from other sounds.

• Phonology- the study of the sound system of language.
• Ex: F / Mi / Yu / He

A combination of phonemes that communicates a standardized meaning (a word).

• Morphology- the study of the units of meaning in language
• Free Morpheme- a morpheme that can be used alone (ex: desire, possible, health)
• Bound Morpheme- a morpheme attached to a free morpheme to alter its meaning (ex: prefixes and suffixes)

A class of things or properties perceived as alike in some fundamental respect; hierarchically organized.

Ex: A chair, table, and ottoman are all "furniture".

The idea that language profoundly shapes the perceptions and worldview of its speakers.

Ex: People talk about units of time the same way they'd talk about numbers or objects- we say 4 days and 4 apples although it's impossible to see 4 units of time.

A member of a society who provides information to a fieldworker, often through formal interviews or surveys.

• Key Consultant- someone who is especially knowledgable about some subject and supplies information to the fieldworker

A methodology for testing a hypothesis using a sample of societies drawn from around the world.

• examines statistical correlations between particular cultural variables

Adaptations based on the harvest of wild plants and animals.

• characteristic of band societies
• main mode of subsistance until 10,000 years ago

Intentional planting, cultivation, care, and harvest of domesticated food plants (crops).

• Intensive Agriculture- a system of cultivation in which plots are planted annually or semiannually; usually uses irrigation and natural fertilizers

A method of cultivation in which hand tools powered by human muscles are used and in which land use is extensive.

• includes clearing the land, turning the soil, and planting/weeding/harvesting crops

Seasonal mobility, often involving migration to high-altitude areas during the hottest and driest parts of the year.

• Transhumance- the pastoral pattern involving migration to different elevations to respond to seasonal differences in the availability of pastorlands.

1. Bands (simple and composite)
2. Tribes
3. Chiefdoms
4. States

A small foraging group with flexible composition that migrates seasonally.

• uses hunting and gathering subsistance mode (men hunt, women gather)
• low population density
• NOT materialistic
• politically independent
• Egalitarian, ordered primarily by kinship
• does not defend territory or make war
• oldest form of human existance

• Simple Band- independent political units, often consisting of little more than an extended family, with informal leadership vested in one of the older family members.
• Composite Band- independent political units consisting of several extended families that live together for most of or all of the year.

An autonomous political unit encompassing a number of distinct, geographically dispersed communities held together by sodalities.

• associated with food production (agriculture)
• livein settled villages
• leadership achieved rather than ascribed
• egalitarian
• have institutions above the level of the local community (ex: kin groups or "clans")
• frequent warfare (raiding)
• economies based on exchange-in-kind

Formal institutions that cut across communities and serve to unite geographically scattered groups; may be based on kin-groups or non kin- based groups.

Ex: age sets (like our graduating class), warrior societies, etc.

Mechanisms by which behavior is constrained and directed into acceptable channels, thus maintaining conformity.

Ex: Gossip or fear of gossip (levelling mechanisms) 

Informal legal systems in societies without centralized political systems, in which authorities who settle disputes are defined by the circumstances of the case.

• associated with most band-level and tribe-level societies
• only civil law
• legal actions concern only the principal parties and/or their families
• 2 main forms: familial (within the family/kin group) and mediator (neutral 3rd party)

Systems in which authority for settling legal

disputes and punishing crimes is formally vested in a single individual or group.

• Authority resides within the court
• exists only in societies with centralized formal political leadership
• divided into 3 categories: incipient courts, courts of mediation, and courts of regulation

Court systems in which judicial authorities meet, frequently informally, in private to discuss issues and determine solutions to be imposed. Evidence is not formally collected, and the parties involved in the cases are not formally consulted. 

• seen in SOME tribal communities but mostly chiefdoms and states

Condition in which people who are not biologically related behave as if they are relatives of a certain type.

Ex: Adoption 

Prohibition against sexual intercourse between certain kinds of relatives.

• universal in all cultures
• may cause genetically inherited problems in offspring (homozygous recessive)

• Endogamy- marriage within one's own group
• Exogamy- marriage to a member outside one's own group

Each individual is allowed to have only one spouse at a time.

Having multiple spouses.

• Polygyny- one man is allowed to have multiple wives
• Polyandry- one woman is allowed to have multiple husbands
• Group Marriage- several men and several women are married to one another simultaneously

• Levirate- custom whereby a widow marries a male relative (usually a brother) of her deceased husband.
• Sororate- custom whereby a widower marries a female relative of his deceased wife

Where the majority of newly married couples establish their own residence.

• Patrilocal- live with or near the husband's parents
• Matrilocal- live with or near the wife's parents
• Ambilocal- choose whether to live near wife's or husband's family
• Bilocal- move between the households of both sets of parents
• Neolocal- establishes a household apart from both sets of parents
• Avunculocal- live with or near the mother's brother of the husband

How a people trace their descent from previous generations.

• Unilineal- descent through "one line" (including patrilineal and matrilineal)
• Patrilineal- trace most important kinship relationships through fathers
• Matrilineal- trace most important kinship relationships through mothers

A group of relatives, all of whom are related through only one sex.

• Unilineally extended families- family grouping formed by tracing kinship relationships through only one sex, either male or female, but not both.

A named unilineal descent group, some of whose members are unable to trace how they are related, but who still believe themselves to be kinfolk (from a common ancestor)

• Main difference between a lineage is generational depth (the ancestor lived very far in the past)

Form of descent in which individuals do not regularly associate with either matrilineal or patrilineal relatives, but make choices about whom to live with and so forth.

• 2 different forms: cognatic and bilateral

Form of descent in which relationships may be traced through both females and males.

• Cognatic descent group- group of relatives created by tracing relatives through both females and males.

Kinship system in which individuals trace their kinship relationships equally through both parents.

• Kindred- all bilateral relatives of an individual

• Kin Terms- the words (labels) that an individual uses to refer to his or her relatives of various kinds
• Kinship Terminology- the logically consistant system by which people classify their relatives into labelled categories, or into "kinds of relatives"

The idea that the kinship relationships a given people recognize do NOT perfectly reflect biological relationships; reflected in the kinship terminology

Ex: adopted children

Kinship terminology system in which no nuclear family kin term is extended to more distant relatives; nuclear family members have unique terms.

• What is used to describe American families

Kin terminology system in which only sex and generation are relevant in defining labelled categories of relatives.

• The mother's brother is still considered "father" and vice versa because they are in the same generation

Kinship terminology system associated with patrilineal descent in which Ego's mother's relatives are distinguished only by their sex.

• distinction is made between cross-cousins on the mother's side and cross-cousins on the father's side

• Cross-Cousins- the child of one's father's sister or mother's brother
• Parallel Cousin- the child of same-sex siblings (mother's sister or father's brother)