Ch. 1 -- Encountering The Past Flashcards
Adapted
The state of being biologically capable or culturally prepared to survive in a given environment
Anthropological linguistics
Subfield of anthropology that focuses on language
Anthropology
The study of humanity
A broad social science with varied foci on human biological and cultural adaptations, human origins, and biological and cultural evolution as well as modern cultures
Archaeological site
A place where people lived and/or worked and where the material objects that they made, used, lost, or discarded can yet be recovered and analyzed
Archaeology
The study of humanity through the analysis 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 speak point or clay pot to distinguish it from larger more complex archaeological features
Catastrophist
An adherent to the perspective that he current appearance of the earth can be best explained as having resulted from a series of natural catastrophes
Creationist
One who believes that the universe, the earth, life, and humanity are the product of the creation of an all-powerful God
Cultural evolution
Posits ordered change through time among cultures
Cultures change in response to changes in their physical and cultural cultural environments, 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 adaptation of a human group
Erosion
The disintegration and transportation of geological material by wind, water, or ice
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
Ethnology
The comparative study of culture
Evolution
Systematic change through time of biological organisms or human cultural systems
Forensic anthropologist
A biological anthropologist who specializes in the identification of the human skeleton, often in the investigation of a crime
Holistic
Relating to or concerned with complete systems rather than with individual parts
Integrative
Serving to integrate or favoring integration
Multilineal evolution
The view that there are many pathways of change a culture may take over the time span of its existence
Cultures experience ordered change, but there is no single pathway that all cultures take
Natural selection
The process proposed by 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 other individuals that do not possess those advantages
Paleoanthropology
Anthropological study of the evolution 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, stereoscopic 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: prosimians, monkeys, or apes
Stratigraphic
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
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
(J.C. Thomsen)
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
Allowed for a great age of the earth
Unilineal evolution
The no longer accepted view that all cultures change or evolve along the same pathway, usually one of increasing complexity
Weathering
The decomposition and disintegration of rock, usually at or near the earth’s surface
Adaptation
Mode or strategy for survival
Can be a physical characteristic or cultural behavior
