lecture 5

Question 1

what are the structural-functional factors in societal stability and solidarity

Answer 1

religion
kinship
economy
law
marriage

Question 2

T/F Evolutionism is accepted by anthropology as an explanatory framework in the 20th century

Answer 2

False: cultural change is not linear therefore it cannot be an explanatory framework

Question 3

T/F mid-20th century accepted evolutionary explanations instead of evolutionism

Answer 3

true:

a perspective in the 1950s, which remains influential today, views culture 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.

Question 4

what is gene-culture co-evolution

Answer 4

how human behavior is a product of two evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution.

aka dualinheritance theory

Question 5

T/F the evolution of cognitive fluidity in modern humans enabled supernatural belief systems

Answer 5

true

Question 6

what is the lascaux: positioning of animals

Answer 6

animal figures and signs being attributed to specific sectors based on themes and shapes

Question 7

1950s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s interpretations of the rock art

Answer 7

1950s
- Emperaire (person)
- interpreted rock as symbolic representations of ontology of the makers
- examine the way species are grouped on cave walls
- Lascaux table

1980s
- researchers began systematically relying on oral traditions to contextualize rock art
- Vastokas (Trent) Early pirnoeer
-focused on understanding rock art within the landscapes it occupied
- a greater consideration of the intrinsic experiential qualities of rock art sites and the materiality of their surface

1990s - 2000s
- rock art often depicts other-than-humans who were seen as intermediaries between spiritual realms and the physical world

MODERN
- multifunctional

Question 8

Early Holocene climate change involved four critical effects that create conditions for cultural change

Answer 8

1.) reduction in climatic variability
2.) increase in CO2
3.) increase in rainfall
4.) increase in temperature

Question 9

Pleistocene Epoch ___ million to __ BP

Answer 9

2.5 million to 11,700 BP

Question 10

Holocene Epoch ____ years BP to

Answer 10

11,700 to today

Question 11

what’s the significance of the Human Cultural Change from 11,700 BP

Answer 11

• expansion of diets to include more small seeded plants foods
• use of plant processing and storage technologies
• development of larger settlements
• corresponds with development of more elaborate ritual systems

Question 12

What is the relationship between population size and complexity of social
organization

Answer 12

• increasing social and political complexity is largely driven by population growth
• increased food security and decreasing mobility gives rise to high birth rates + community population sizes
• once a threshold reached some form of integrative structure is needed to maintain group cohesion (or social groups will splinter)
• costly religious activities orchestrated by charismatic religious leaders are commonly cited integrative structures

Question 13

what are simple hunter-gatherers

Answer 13

strongly egalitarian, and religious activity is non-coercive (low risk of non-participation)

Question 14

what are complex hunter gatherers

Answer 14

they are transegalitarian or have institutionalized hierarchies and religious activities may become coercive (high risk of non-participation)

Question 15

______ may act or compete to advance their own interests and those of their near kin at the expense of others

Answer 15

Aggrandizers

Question 16

Organized collective rituals provide these three things

Answer 16

1.) which aggrandizers can establish/exhibit power
2.) reinforce social cohesion and solidarity (enabling the maintenance of larger populations)
3.) increase the individual risk of non-participation

Question 17

The costly signaling theory of religion proposes that

Answer 17

costly rituals function as hard-to-fake signals of commitment to the group

Evolutionary perspectives suggest that participation in
collective rituals may serve important communicative
functions by signaling practitioners’ commitment to the
community and its values.

Question 18

what are World Renewal Rites

Answer 18

May take the form of ritualized labour for
monument construction for tracking the annual or
multiyear movements of (sun,
moon, constellations); and ceremonies marking
important moments

Question 19

Seasonal rituals are

Answer 19

collective activities where
charismatic aggrandizers can reinforce authority and
power.

Question 20

The Hopewell Culture

Answer 20

• 2200 - 1300 B.P. (200 BC to AD 700)
• Multiple communities of hunter-gatherers
  living in high biomass areas, enabling high
  population densities
• Early evidence of aggrandizers and
  religious elites marshalling human labour for the construction of religious monuments
• Hopewell religion is characterized by
  a focus on world renewal activities
  orchestrated by religious elites. World renewal activities were based on detailed astronomical
  observations focused on cyclical movements of the moon and sun.

Question 21

Hopewell Mound Group

Answer 21

• massive earthwork complex
• Large enclosure contains 29 burial
  mounds of religious elites.
• Two interior earthworks, one was the largest known to have
  been built by Hopewells

Question 22

The Ohio Hopewell were

Answer 22

mobile foragers, that gathered foods and
collected some
weedy plants as they moved between upland rock shelters and large
earthwork complexes over the course of the year. (Yerkes 2002:
239

Question 23

The Hopewell Problem

Answer 23

We can satisfactorily explain what and how, but we haven’t satisfactorily explained why.

Religious labour seems wasteful from a fitness standpoint

Why would hunter-gatherers engage in such expensive undertakings?

Why mobilize labour to construct monuments that may have involved
hundreds of thousands of person-hours

These are autonomous dispersed family-based communities with ephemeral
leadership (at best, managerial leaders who operate by consensus)

OBSERVATIONS
1. Participation provides more advantages than costs.
2. Advantages: risk reduction; access to community resources;
increased propensity of reciprocity; psychological comfort.
3. Costs: Retribution, social censure and increased risk arising
from reduced access to an expanded social network;
psychological stress from removal of ideological activity

Question 24

Feasts and Community Rituals

Answer 24

Great Circle was a monumental Hopewellian
woodhenge: an enormous wooden post circle
composed of nearly 100 substantial timbers,
flanked by an earthen bank and causewayed
ditch

Question 25

Burials of Religious Elites

Answer 25

Hopewell Mound Group appears to have
served a special role as a central burial
place for the most prestigious individuals
drawn from each of the three regional
communities.

Question 26

Elite Ritual Symbols

Answer 26

Multiple burials
of elites in
elaborate
mortuary
mounds with
high value
symbolic
materials.

Question 27

Hopewell Interaction Sphere

Answer 27

By the early 1960s, Hopewell is not
as a culture in the sense of a
distinct society together with its
own language, customs, and
technology, but rather as a religious
interaction sphere: a mortuary or
religious complex that crosscut and
influenced several distinct societies
between 2200 and 1300 years ago

Answer 28

Summary
Evolutionary theory provides strong theory and predictions for:
1. The fitness advantages of community ritual participation, and;
2. Why such rituals need to be costly to be effective.
Anthropological theory provides strong theory for the emergence of
leadership roles as religious aggrandizers who exploit these
advantages for their own benefits.
The Hopewell Problem is an illustrative case study in how religious
elites emerge, and relatively small-scale communities are able to
invest massive amounts of labour in the construction of religious
monuments