Chapter 12 Terminology Flashcards
Cognitive archaeology
The study of all those aspects of ancient culure that are the product of the human mind: the perception, and classification of the universe; the nature of the supernatural; the principles, philosophies, ethics, and values by which human societies are governed; and the ways in which aspects of the wold, the supernatural or human values are conveyed in art.
Cosmology
The study of the origin, large-scale structure, and future of the universe. A cosmological explanation demonstrates how the universe developed - both the totality and its constituent parts - and also describes what principles keep it together.
Hopewell Interaction Sphere
The common set of symbols found in the midwestern United States between 2200 and 1600 BP.
Iconography
Art form or writing systems (such as Maya or Egyptian hieroglyphics) that symbolically represent ideas about religion or cosmology.
Magdalenian
The last major European Upper Paleolithic period (ca. 18,000 - 12,000 BP); named after the rockshelter La Madeleine, in southwest France. Magdalenian artisans crafted intricately carved tools of reindeer bone and antler; this was also the period during which Upper Paleolithic cave art in France and Spain reached its zenith.
Oracle
A shrine in which a deity reveals hidden knowledge or divine purpose.
Religion
A social institution containing a set of beliefs about supernatural beings and forces and one’s relation to them
Ritual
A succession of discrete behaviors that must be performed in a particular order under particular circumstances.
Shaman
One who has the power to contact the spirit through trance, possession, or visions. On the basis of this ability, the shaman invokes, manipulates, or coerces the power of the spirits for socially recognized ends - both good and ill.
Structuralism
A paradigm holding that human culture is the expression of unconscious modes of thought and reasoning, notably binary oppositions. Structuralism is most closely associated with the work of the French anthropologist Claud Levi - Strauss.
Symbol
An object or act (verbal and nonverbal) that by cultural convention, stands for something else with which it has no necessary connection.
Sympathetic magic
Rituals in which doing something to an image of an object produces the desired effect in the real object.
Totem
A natural object, often an animal, from which a lineage or clan believes itself to be descended and / or with lineage or clan (φυλή) members have special relations.
Upper Paleolithic
The last major division of the Old World Paleolithic, beginning about 40,000 years ago and lasting until the end of the Pleistocene (10,000 BC)
Vision Quest
A ritual in which an individual seeks visions through starvation, dehydration, and exposure; considered in some cultures to be a way to communicate with the supernatural world.
