Final Exam Flashcards
Emic
Explain cultural practices from the perspective of participants
Etic
Explain cultural practices from perspective of observer
Cultural Relativism
no judgment of cultural practices, only there to observed and explain
3 Levels of theory
High level: Accounts for practices or behaviours across all cultures. (more etic)
Middle level: Accounts for practices or behaviours across a broad set of contexts or circumstances.
Low level: Accounts for practices or behaviours in a specific context or circumstance. (more emic)
Ritual
The stylized and repetitive enaction of words, actions or performances involving or evoking symbols associated with magic or religious activities.
Magic
An explanatory system of causation that does not follow physical (naturalistic) explanations, involving powers that are real and consequential, typically invoked by rituals and often working at a distance without direct physical contact. Anthropological examples include sorcery, witchcraft and conjuration.
Sympathetic Magic
A way to explain magic with two laws:
Law of similarity and Law of contact
Law of Similarity
Cause generates desired effect based on similar properties
Law of Contact
Two things once connected remain so: action on one causes effect on the other.
Ludic, Empiric and Ritualistic Magic
LUDIC: for entertainment and pleasure
EMPIRIC: focused on material interactions and cause/effect relationships
RITUALISTIC: use of special instruments and powerful objects.
(more modern perspective)
The Paleolithic
The earliest period of human culture. Divided into three phases:
Lower Paleolithic
2.3 million years (mya) ago to 300 thousand years ago (kya).
Middle Paleolithic
300 kya ago to 50 kya.
(archaic humans)
– In Europe, produced by the Neanderthals; in Africa, modern humans
– First evidence for mortuary ritual, focus on flake tool production
– More limited evidence for art and other symbolic practices.
Upper Paleolithic
50 kya to 12 kya.
(modern humans)
– Global dispersal of early modern humans
– Multiple lines of evidence for ritual practices.
– Multiple instances of art and symbolic practices.
Mode 1, 2 and 3 technologies
Mode 3:
* Referred to a Mousterian.
* Defined by core and flake tool techno-complex associated with Neandertals in Europe.
Handaxes
First types of tools observed. Development can be linked to human development
*complexities of the form of hand-axes imply an ability to organize hierarchically complex patterns of action, including an ability to hold several concepts in mind at once.
Neanderthals
Neanderthals:
* They are associated with Mode 3 technology.
* Likely first use of hafted tools (stone spear heads with wooden shafts).
* Were cold adapted large game hunters.
* Likely buried their dead.
* There is evidence of art, symbols and likely language.
*In middle paleolithic
Prosocial behaviour
Activity that reinforces social bonds. Leads to increase of survival
Ochre Pigment
Evidence of possible symbolism by neanderthals, found in many important historic sites
Cognitive fluidity
Abstract connectivity of thoughts and different types of intelligence. Allow humans to create more symbolic concepts.
Archaic Sapiens
- Complex multi-regional story of human origins and species
- Key behaviours (hunting, scavenging, fire, settlements)
- Mode 2 Handaxe technologies
- Lower Paleolithic ritual
Mode 4 Technology
- Stone tools now made on blades (Mode 4)
- More complex and diverse toolkits
- Diversification and specialization in bone tools
- Diffusion of personal ornaments and art
- Increase in transport (exchange) of raw material
Out of Africa model
*Current research identifies earliest modern humans in N. Africa around 300 KYA
*Modern humans evolve in then migrate from Africa beginning 120,000 years ago
Human Dispersals
More efficient and adaptable hunting technology, including use of bone tools, leading to improved food security.
* Higher birthrates were driven by greater food security and prosociality.
* Greater capacity and use of ritual and other symbolic behaviour, leading to strong group identity, cohesion and security.
* Possibly greater cognitive flexibility (fluidity) leading to rapid cultural adaptations to new environments.
Shamanism
Specialists who are able to communicate directly with the transcendent world and who are thereby also possessed of the ability to heal and to divine; such individuals, or shamans, are held to be of great use to society in dealing with the spirit world
Shamans or shaman-like individuals are the religious practitioners who mediate between the spirit and material world.
Venus figurines
- 28,000 BP
- Designed to be held
- Traditionally though to be fertility related
- Or ordinary women’s views of their own bodies.
Dysphoric Ritual
Dysphoric rituals can result in a phenomenon that has been dubbed “identity fusion”, when members of a group identify with one another as if they are kin. The bonds that develop between group members undergoing dysphoric rituals can be stronger than those between kin.
Pressure Flaking
- technique allows for a high degree of control during the detachment of individual flakes
- Enables thinner, narrower, and sharper tips on bifacial points.
Cultural evolutionism
Nineteenth-century theory about human progress that contradicted earlier views on cultural degeneration. Viewed cultural development as occurring in a unilinear fashion, in stages from less to more advanced. This was very colonial.
Savagery -> Barbarism -> Civilization
Unilinear evolution
Unilineal evolution refers to the idea that there is a set sequence of cultural stages that all societies will pass through, although the pace of progress through these stages will vary.
Animism
Tylor explained animism as the outcome of a set of logical steps in religious belief:
1. There was a non-corporeal spirit in humans, as this is manifest in dreams.
2. That this spirit resides in the body but leaves it on death.
3. That animals (and other objects) have similar spiritual dimensions as humans.
Animism -> Polytheism -> Monotheism
Functionalism
Nineteenth and early twentieth century theory about the organization of society, proposing that society is analogous to an organism. Social institutions, like religion, function to maintain social stability and solidarity.
Sacred
Sacred things are those isolated and protected by powerful words and actions.
Profane
Profane things are those which, according to those interdictions, must remain at a distance from their sacred counterparts
Totemism
Totemism is a system of belief in which humans share kinship with a spiritbeing, such as an animal or plant.
Ontology
The study and understanding of the nature of reality and what exists in the world.
Epistemology
The way we know things (theory of knowledge).
The Yanomami
Classic anthropological study
The Yanomami’s traditional religious practices are based around supernatural world comprised of animism and shamanism.
An important substance used by Yanomami shaman to facilitate access to the sprit word is a hallucinogenic power called ebene which is administered nasally
Religion purpose in society
1.Discipline and encouraging prosocial behaviour in individuals.
2.Cohesion via collective rituals creates community from individual, in which people reaffirm and reinforce the bonds.
3.Vitalisation and maintenance of traditions, which conserves social values encourages group identity and collectivistic behaviour.
4.Euphoria (“collective effervescence”) through collective ritual practice that reminds individuals of the importance of the social group.
Evolutionary
A perspective developed in the 1950s, which remains influential today, that views cultural as adaptive. This means there is no inherent progress nor directionality to cultural evolution, only change in response to external forces.
Cultural change is multilinear.
Costly signaling theory
proposes that costly rituals function as hard-to-fake signals of commitment to the group
Aggrandizers
may act or compete to advance their own interests and those of their near kin at the expense of others.
social censure
- Complex hunter gatherers are transegalitarian or have
institutionalised hierarchies and religious activities may become coercive (high risk of participation).
*Needed in more developed societies to maintain control
Holocene epoch
Climate change in Holocene climate caused changes in human society organization.
* Expansion of diets to include more small seeded plants foods;
* Use of plant processing and storage technologies;
* Development of larger settlements (pre-agricultural villages);
* Corresponds with development of more elaborate ritual systems.
World renewal rites
ensure the maintenance of the natural seasonal cycle.
Seasonal rituals are collective activities where charismatic aggrandizers can reinforce authority and power.
EG Hopewell
Agriculture
raising of domestic plants/animals - includes gardening, horticulture, etc.
Domestication
The process by which wild plants or animals become domesticates and dependent on humans for propagation. Done through incidental or active selection by humans.
Began about 10,000 years ago with the Holocene climate stabilizing
Fertile Crescent
Specific region in eurasia with key arclogical sites that are part of the neolithic sequence
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
Round houses, small villages, community ritual and architecture.
Complex hunter-gatherers, who cultivated wild plants
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
Square houses, large villages, settled agriculture (stayed in one place).
household rituals (ancestor worship)
Ancestor Worship
Belief system which deceased ancestor is understood to be an entity in the daily lives of those who may fear, venerate or worship them.
Likely emerges with settled life and beginings of food production
Likely is used to establish kinship and a set of common rules/behaviours.
Religious dualism
Emergence of gods/goddesses representing two opposing ideas.
Catalhoyuk: Domus (goddess - household) - Agrios(bull - wild)
Human Sacrifice
multiple definitions-
most specific:
“The deliberate and ritualized killing of an individual in order to please or placate supernatural beings”
prevalent in almost every ancient society
Bog bodies
In peat across NW europe
Cahokia
bodies in mounds
Mayian
Human sacrifice was deeply ingrained in Maya culture.
* Public events tied to religious beliefs and cosmology.
* A basic need was to appease the gods for fertility, harvest, and protection.
* Social hierarchy reflected in choice of sacrificial victims.
Theories of human sacrifice
Scapegoat (sacrificial victim)
Protein (humans good food source)
Political power (shows political power)
Social control (legitimizes authority)
Marxism
Religion serves the purposes of those in power
Two levels:
Superstructure (religion, politics, art, etc.)
Base
(means of production and relations of production)
superstructure justifies base; base determines superstructure
Anthropophagy
Cannibalism
Types of Cannibalism
Endo (eating of insiders) and Exocannibalism (eating of outsiders)
Cannibalism reasonings
Fetish (vampires)
medicinal
ritual
Kuru
disease from eating the brain
Intuitive Beliefs
instinctive belief
Reflective Beliefs
A taught belief
Intuitive Dualism
something about being human allows us to separate mind and body
Intuitive Materialism
Minds are not separable from bodies and minds are not capable of independent existence
Reflective dualism
Sometimes ideas are intuitive, and sometimes reflective beliefs when regarding complicated ideas like death
memento mori
“remember that you need to die”
symbol that death is part of life - eg. tombstone
Rites of passage
4 universal rites:
birth, coming of age, marriage, death
Coming of age
children become full members of their community.
typically involves the onset of puberty
sometimes dysphoric rituals take place (circumcision, dental alteration)
Power to
Physically enforced power
Power over
socially enforced power (strong in egalitarian societies)
Otzi the Iceman
First record of tattoos, possibly used to relieve pain
Tattooing
Ancient form of body modification practiced globally
Witchcraft
Different depending on culture. But generally a person who uses magic in some sense to harm others.
Azande
Society where witchcraft is an element of day-to-day life, providing societal system and management
Psychic acts
An act of witchcraft to the Azande, requires no spell or ritual component
Witch doctor
can heal the effects of witches
oracles
ask for divine guidance to determine if witchcraft or sorcerers were involved
first wave feminism
Argued witches were pagan priestesses adhering to an ancient religion venerating a great goddess
Wiccan
neo-pagan movement
3 general characteristics
nature-centric beliefs
polytheistic and pantheistic
emphasis on person experience and empowerment
Reclaiming Witchcraft
Work published on european “witches” being healers and midwives
Spirituality
As part of third wave feminism, witchcraft has been fully reclaimed as a spiritual practice
Vodou vs Voodoo
Vodou:
*Haitian, combines west African deities with catholic saints
*Way of honouring and connecting with the dead through dance
Voodoo:
*Americanized version from new orleans
Veve
A symbolic diagram or pattern used to communicate with specific spirits, known as loa
Zombies
False death - body is alive, but is empty of a soul
Drive-discharge theory
sport is an adaptive mechanism that redirects human need to discharge aggression toward a more contained and localized form of violence
Cultural-pattern theory
violence is not innate but a learned behaviour
Warlike sports
contact sports that emphasize the importance of group physical force
Human Relations Area File
database used for anthropological studies
Satanic panic
Panic over RPG like DND in the 1980’s from the church
Plausibility Structures
specific systems of meaning within that define our sense of reality, or at least are thought to be possible.
Moral Panics
features of society, fueled by underlying social stress
Deviancy Amplification
The constant preoccupation with the breakdown of the moral order by older adults, complaining how youth are becoming more violent and immoral than ever before
5 concepts established and new religious movements share
- A belief in supernatural being or beings
- Rituals and Practices to access the sacred
- Sacred objects, places and symbols
- community and social organization
- worldview and belief system
Cults
aka. New religious movements
- An important set of mysteries/revelations only available to members
- membership provides access to an afterlife
- membership requires a ceremony
- religious community becomes a new family
Other way NRM differ
- blend spiritual traditions
- impending apocalypses
- reincarnation
- single authority figure
- cosmic evolution
NRM retain members through:
- isolation
- control over member’s lives
- aggressive recruitment tactics
- secrecy
- financial exploitation
- treatment of dissent
- exit difficulty
Sub fields of anthropology
archaeology
cultural
biological
linguistic
what is archaeology
- Studies the material residues of human behaviour and action.
- Uses these material residues to infer the behaviours that generated them, or to test hypotheses about cultural patterns or processes.
- To identify shared patterns of behaviour in the past and when and how they changed to build regional culture histories
- Is interested in the ways the cultural behaviours generate patterns that are materially observable
- Is the only discipline that takes a long-term view of human cultural change.
Archaeological Data
- Archaeological excavations or surveys
- The study of material culture (artifacts and structures, rock art)
- Food remains and food residues (e.g., bones, seeds, or residues left on pots,
grinding tools or cutting tools) - The study of ethnographic data or ethnographic observations
archaeology and context of artifacts
- were located in space
- were located stratigraphically, and
- what they were in association with.
- and whether we can be confident about how old they are
dating artifacts
- Relatively (e.g., using stratigraphy, the law of superposition says that material in stratigraphically deeper layers is older than material in younger layers);
- Absolutely by using a dating method such as radiocarbon dating (organic) or radioluminescence dating (minerals).
- Comparatively, based on stylistic or technological similarities (e.g., pottery made in a particular way and following a specific style is likely to be the same age if from the same region).
Cultural anthropology
- Primarily concerned with living people and their social lives;
- Committed to developing understanding of the different ways people live, think, and conceive of the world;
- Often focused on specific aspects of society, such as food, economy, religious practices, sexuality, marriage and kinship.
- May be involve working with specific communities to help draw attention to challenges or to achieve political goals (e.g., activist anthropology)
- Has many ethical and moral responsibilities.
Cutural anthro data
- Ethnographic fieldwork
- Interviews or questionnaires
- Participant observations
- Using historical documentation and film.
Biological anthropology
- Focuses on the human body;
- Studies the evolution of humans and our primate relatives;
- Studies human biological adaptation to environmental conditions;
- Studies the ways in which diet impacts human health in modern and ancient societies;
- Examines the history of human diseases;
- Contributes to criminal and legal processes through recovery, identification and analysis of skeletal remains of recently deceased individuals.
sub fields of biological anthropology
Medical (what treatments were used)
paleopathology (ancient diseases)
ancient DNA
Skeletal
Dental
Human evolution
biological anthro problem
ethics of looking at the dead
linguistics
Phonetics: study of sounds of human language
Phonology (phonemics): study of sound systems in particular languages
Morphology: study of word formation and the “parts” of
words
Syntax: study of how words relate to each other in a language (“grammar”)
Semantics: study of word meanings; not just “dictionary definitions,” but also the underlying meaning of words
Pragmatics: study of words-as-actions, the effects of utterances
features of language
Complex: there are more ways of speaking than there are atoms in the universe. Language is the most complex system we know of.
Creative: new ways of speaking are being developed every second.
Social (learned, interactional): it is the primary means of cultural transmission.
Dynamic (changes over time): innovation and drift change language structures over time leading to new dialects and eventually new languages.
Linguistic anthropology
Holistic: focused on language in the larger context of culture/human life
Comparative: based on comparisons between linguistic/cultural
(“languagculture”) systems, again seen in a holistic way
Fieldwork-based: relies on data from real, naturally-occurring speech in cultural context.
Phonetics and phonemics
Etic view: the view from outside the system (as in phonETIC) E.g., providing exact description of speech sounds.
Emic view: the view from inside the system (as in phonEMIC). The meaning of speech sounds as they are perceived by speakers of the language.
Semantic
The branch of linguistics concerned with meaning and the differences in meaning between works
