Adaptation

Adapted

The state of being biologically capable or culturally prepared to survive in a given environment. 

Anthropological Lingustics

Subfield of anthropology that focuses on language. 

Anthropology

The study of humanity. A broad social science with varied foci on human biological and cul- tural adaptations, human origins, and biological and cultural evolution as well as modern cultures.

Archaeology

The study of humanity through the analy- sis of the material remains of human behavior: the study of the things that people made and used in the past and that have fortuitously preserved. Archaeologists often focus on human cultural evolution.

Artifact

Any object manufactured by a human being or human ancestor. Usually defined further as a portable object like a stone spearpoint or clay pot to distinguish it from larger more complex archaeological features. 

Catasrophist

An adherent to the perspective that the current appearance of the earth can be best explained as having resulted from a series of natural catastrophes—for example, floods and volcanoes. Catastrophism was quite popular prior to the nineteenth century and lent support to the claim of a recent age for the earth.

Creationist

One who believes that the universe, the earth, life, and humanity are the product of the creation of an all-powerful god. Also belives that the world is 6000 years old.

Cultural Evolution

Just as biological evolution posits ordered change through time among biological or- ganisms, cultural evolution posits ordered change through time among cultures. Cultures change in re- sponse to changes in their physical environments (for example, changes in climate) and cultural environ- ments (contact with other human groups), as well as through the development of new technologies.

Culture

The invented, taught, and learned patterns of behavior of human groups.The extrasomatic (beyond the body or beyond the biological) means of adapta- tion of a human group. 

Erosion

The disintegration and transportation of geological material by wind, water, or ice.    

Forensic Anthropologist

A biological anthropologist who specializes in the identification of the human skeleton, often in the investigation of a crime. Forensic anthropologists are often employed by police agencies to assist in the identification of human remains.

Holistic

Characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the physical symptoms of a disease.

Integrative

combining allopathic and complementary therapies.

 The view that there are many pathways of change a culture may take over the time span of its existence. Multilineal evolutionary schemes recognize that cultures experience ordered change, but that there is no single pathway that all cultures take.

Natural Selection

The process proposed by Charles Darwin for how species evolve.Those individuals in a species that possess advantageous characteristics are more likely to survive and pass down those characteristics than are individuals that do not possess those advantages.

Paleoantropology

Anthropological study of the evo- lution of our species. Paleoanthropologists study the skeletal remains and cultures of ancient hominids. 

Primate

Members of the taxonomic order Primates. Animals possessed of grasping hands and feet, stereo- scopic vision, and relatively large brains (in proportion to body size). Most, but not all primates have nails instead of claws, tails, and an arboreal adaptation.

Primatologist

A person who studies primates: prosim- ians, monkeys, or apes.

Stratigraphic (Stratigraphy)

Related to the geological or cultural layer in which something has been found. Stratigraphic layering represents a relative sequence of geological time and/or cultural chronology.

Three-age System

Chronological breakdown of the history of human culture into a stone, bronze, and iron age. Developed in 1836 by J. C.Thomsen as part of a guidebook for the archaeological collections at the Danish National Museum, this evolutionary system achieved great popularity. 

Anthropological Site

A site is a place where people lived and/or worked and where the material objects that they made, used, lost, or discarded can yet be recov- ered and analyzed.

Ethnology

The comparative study of culture. Ethnolo- gists study human behavior cross-culturally, looking for similarities and differences in how people behave: how they raise their children, how they treat elders, how they organize their labor, etc.

Ethnographer

Cultural anthropologist who lives among a group of people or a cultural group. Interacts with them on a daily basis, often for an extended period of time, observing their behavior.

Uniformitarianism

The belief that the appearance of the earth could best be understood as resulting from the slow action of known processes over a very long period of time. Uniformitarianism, first championed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, allowed for a great age of the earth.    

Unilateral Evolution

The no longer accepted view that all cultures change or evolve along the same pathway, usually one of increasing complexity. In some unilin- eal evolutionary views, cultures can become “stuck” at a particular evolutionary step when some particu- lar, necessary technological development is lacking. Nineteenth-century scholar Lewis Henry Morgan’s sequence of savagery, barbarism, and civilization is an example.

Weathering

The decomposition and disintegration of rock, usually at or near the earth’s surface.