Anthro Midterm Flashcards
Archaeology
- Human behaviour in the past.
- Learned through things people leave behind
- Life in the past
- Adaptation to Human behaviour
- Reconstruct human behaviour
- Methods - Systematic Digging/ dating tech
Biological/ Physical Anthropology
- Biology & Culture
- Human evolution
- Human difference a genetic level
- Primatology
- Forensic Anthropology
- Methods - Archaeological methods
Linguistic Anthropology
- Human use of language in cultural context
* Methods - past observation/ tape recordings
Cultural Anthropology
- Study of cultures, ‘culture’
- Similarity + difference
- Influence each other
- Change over time
- Method - participant observation / ‘deep hanging out’
Ethnography
Definition: scientific description of the customs of individual people and cultures
•Written description of a particular culture
•Experiences at the local level
Ethnology
Definition: study of characteristics of various people and the difference and relationship between them
•Comparative study of cultures
•Similarities and differences
Ethnocentrism
Judging of other heard on your values, experiences, history’s, standards
Cultural Relativity
Try to understand how others live in terms of their beliefs, values, experiences, standards
Culture
Everything people have, think, do Characteristics of culture: •Learned •Shaped •Symbolic •Interact and change •Adaptive •Integrated- holistic/ holism
Economic Anthropology
•Food Gathering / production / growth •How G/S are produced, distributed, and consumed 1.Foraging 2.Horticulture 3.Pastoralism 4.Agriculture 5.Industrial capitalism
Foraging
- Forgers –> Food collectors/ collection
- Hunting, gathering, fishing, digging for roots, bark stripping, trapping / snaring
- Nomadic so they move around, but predictable movements
- Extensive land use. Requires a lot of land, not always in use.
- Oldest economic system –> most likely to disappear in my lifetime
Foraging Labour
- Small groups
- Families / extended families
- Collects for all
- Men hunt / women gather (stereotype)
- Labour is said to be divided along lines of efficiency
- Don’t own food or land
- Owning things restricts moving (geographically)
Foraging Sustainability
- Enough time for the regeneration of resources taken from the environment
- Foraging is sustainable, but as a forger you must be able to move
Horticulture
- 10,000 - 12,000 years old
- Production of food - domesticated
- Associated with growing population, larger groups of people that can be sustained
- Sub - Sahara Africa, South/ South east Asia, Central & South America, Southern Ontario
- Found in places with predictable rainfall. Aka consistent rainfall on an annual scale
Horticulture Food production
- Advantages - bigger groups (not everyone needs to participate in the growing of food)
- Disadvantages - diseases started to occur which effects population, more work than foraging
Horticulture crops
- Tree crops, bananas, figs
- Seed Crops, wheat, barely, corn, rice
- Root Crops, yam, potatoes
- Fibre crop, cotton, hemp
- Melons
Tools in horticulture
- Digging sticks, grinding stones
- This sort of production produces small surpluses –> produce in gardens
- Extensive activity
Horticulture cycle
a. Clear land
b. Plan your crops
c. Weed your gardens
d. Harvest
e. Regenerate fertility of soil
f. Eventually move the garden
Property
- Own what you produce, not the garden
* Some social inequality, some can produce more than other and gain more status
Pastoralism
•Economic system based on domesticated heard animals and the use of their meat, milk, bones, and skin
•Common inn southern Europe, sub - Sahara •Africa, middle east
Bread to live with humans
•148 Animals –> 45 grow large at adulthood
Pastoralism
Labour/ Movement
Labour/ Movement 2 Styles 1. Transhumance pastoralism - Men and older boys move animals - Women + young children stay in one spot for a year, also (horticulture) 2. Nomadic pastoralism - everyon is moving • Saami - heard reindeer • Navajo - heard sheep
Agriculture
•Growing food •Intensive scale •A lot of land is weeded over •Irrigation, Sale •Farm animals, plows, tractors •Permanent settlement Labour division (many people have nothing to do with food production at all)
Family Farm Agriculture
- Relatively self sustaining operation
- Production for family, some surplus for sale
- Leased equipment
- Private property
Types of Exchanges
Reciprocity (generalized, Balanced, Negative)
- -> Foraging, horticultural, pastoral societies. But –> Still found everywhere
- -> Mutual exchange of goods + services, gifts, transaction of G&S of roughly equal value
- -> A) Generalized Reciprocity, 2 parties w/ little concern for value of G&S exchanged. Happens between friends and family, people who are likely to see each other again. Series of debt exchanges.
- -> B) Balanced Reciprocity, exchange of stuff of equal value. Less personal.
- -> C) Negative/ Unbalanced Reciprocity, Theft, exploitation of sorts, Charity, true gifts
Redistribution
- Small surplus
- Horticulture, pastoral, agriculture
- One person in one family collects a lot of stuff, then gives it out
Market Exchange
- Agriculture, industry
- Happens in a grocery store, any kind of mall, etc. Formal location. Exchange is currency for commodity/ service
- Mostly impersonal
- Balanced Exchanged; Currency = value of G/S received
- Unbalanced Exchanged; currency =/ value of G/S receive
Kinship
- Relationships - defined by: Blood, Marriage
- Knowledge that insiders in family’s cultures have about
a. Who their relatives are
b. How to interact with those relatives - Kinship system - sources of relationships within a family
- Kinship Diagram - visualizing family / kin relationships
- Genealogies –> works own from a common ancestor
Eskimo Kinship System
Circle represent females, Triangle male. Anyone on the same line is a sibling. Any equal sign equals marriage.
Emic
who you as Ego think about cousins and siblings. Used to know who you can marry and cannot.
Cousins
parallel cousins
Parallel cousins are mother sisters children, or fathers brother children.
Cross cousins are fathers sisters children, or mothers brothers children. Cross cousins marriage is permitted
Descent System
•Relations through blood •Child -- Parent relationships •Defining social roles •Members with an identity
Descent groups:
- Relationships people back to a common ancestor
- Ancestors can be real
- Ancestors can be fake (Taltan has 2 clans, Crow & Wolf)
What do decedent groups do
- Give identity + history
- Labour groups
- Resource farming groups
- manage wealth distribution
- Regulate marriage
Patrilineal/ Matrilineal Descent
- Unilineal Descent (1 bloodline)
- Membership in group though 1 bloodline only
Patrilineal Descent (fathers line)
- Membership in the group is defined through fathers line back to a common ancestor
• Children are part of their fathers group
•After marriage the woman moves into the village, family, household.
•The woman inevitably remains part of her original group (patrilocal residence (pat = husband, local = location) - Common in pastoral and agricultural societies
Matrilineal Descent
- Matr = mother, lineal = line
- Descent group is defined by your relationship to your mother + bloodline
- Children part of their mother’s family
- Male authority is normally mothers brother, not biological father
- Foragers, horticulture societies
Bilateral Descent
- Bi = 2, lateral = side
- Equal association with mother + fathers side
- Lots of close relatives
- Nuclear household / family - high degree of social and economic commitment
- Foragers / industrial capitalist households
Double Descent
- Trace some elements of identity through mother side/ fathers side
- Bangonte
Through mother: Cattle (movable property)
Through father, village of residence, land, physical looks
Ambilineal Descent (Ambi = either)
- Chose affiliation
- Arranged marriage
Unilineal Descent
- Large social groups (clans)
- Stationary (horticulture, Agriculture, Pastoral)
- Redistribution
- Rigid, inflexible
- Lots of people to help you
- Look into the group for help
Bilateral Descent
- Smaller groups (nuclear family)
* Mobile (foragers, industrial)
