Exam 1 Flashcards
What is Anthropology?
Seeks to understand human identity, human behavior, and human nature through a biocultural lens.
How is Anthropology different from other fields that study humans? (Five Characteristics of Anthropology)
-Holistic.
-Focuses on human populations.
-Comparative and cross-cultural.
-Fieldwork.
-Evolution.
What are the five major subfields of Anthropology?
-Physical (Biological) Anthropology.
-Linguistics.
-Ethnology.
-Archaeology.
-Applied Anthropology.
Besides archaeologists, who else is interested in the results of the field?
-Professional Archaeologists
-Avocational Archaeologists
-Native American or other descendant populations.
-Educators/Collectors.
Why is context of archaeological finds so important?
Need context because without it you don’t get the whole/accurate picture. It’s easy to misinterpret things from the past without context.
How did the concept of Imperialism often become involved with early museums and research in the U.S. and Europe?
-Salvage ethnology ideas/concepts.
-Curio collections had been influential in Europe for centuries. Smithsonian and other American museums followed the trend, focusing on collecting contemporary archaeological collections for display.
-Combined European concept of the New World being a young, weak world.
What was the mound builder theory, and what groups were suspected of building prehistoric mounds in the Americas?
-Large human-created mounds found in many eastern states. Theories around who built them.
-Paleoindian populations were thought to have built the mounds initially. As time went on, people speculated that Europeans built them.
Why were Native Americans thought to have NOT built the mounds?
-Many scholars speculated that the builders of mounds could not be ‘primitive’ Native Americans but rather ‘civilized’ ancient Europeans or Asians.
How did the Bureau of American Ethnology researchers try to resolve the question of the mound builders?
-Survey and excavation of some of the mounds.
-No Old-World materials were found, rather artifacts resembled those of historic Native Americans.
-Ales Hrdlicka’s study of human remains from mounds. Remains resembled those of modern Indians rather than Old World people.
Lewis Henry Morgan
-Professional attorney. Correspondence with other scholars with little contact with Native Americans.
-Collected kinship data from many societies, thinking that they reflected cultural stages: promiscuity, brother-sister marriage, the communal idea of family, etc.
Franz Boas
-Historical Particularism.
-Focus on the uniqueness of each society as a product of Cultural Diffusion.
-Worked as a curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History. Additionally, he worked as a professor at Columbia University.
-Native American Culture Areas.
Galleries are based on tribe and culture area, not evolutionary stage or object type.
-Concept of Cultural Relativism.
A unified model of Anthropology: archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, physical, folklore.
-Columbia and programs founded by Boas students produced a broader range of anthropologists who spread across the country.
Historical Particularism
-Anthropology as the broad history of societies. Document how societies have changed through diffusion.
-Franz Boas.
Salvage Ethnology
-Early researchers collected ethnological and linguistic data assuming Native Americans would become extinct.
Ales Hrdlicka
-Early Physical anthropologist. Sought evidence of human races by measuring skulls, built collections of skeletal remains, and preserved brains.
John Wesley Powell
-Director of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879.
-Had archaeological research been forced upon him?
Cyrus Thomas
-Powell hired Cyrus Thomas in 1881 to oversee archaeological investigations.
-Entomologist.
-Mound survey and excavation.
Frederick Ward Putnam
-Curator of the Peabody Museum, 1874-1909.
-Harvard University.
-Originally trained as an ornithologist.
Frank Crushing
-Became a curator at the National Museum at 19, then worked for the BAE.
-Zuni fieldwork, 1879-1884. Going native and participant observation.
-Scalp dance.
Edward Sapir
-Developed linguistics not just as recording the languages of Native Americans but analysis of grammar and identification of broader language families.
Bureau of American Ethnology
-BAE archaeologists and ethnologists began working in the late 1800s. None had anthropological training, rather they were trained in Natural History or the Humanities.
Why did archaeologists of the mid-twentieth century become so concerned about culture chronology and typology?
-Chronology often implicitly thought of as evolutionary stages, though that was counter Boasian thinking.
-Boas and his thinking inspired a new generation of archaeologists. The new generation focused more on understanding cultural processes, not culture history.
-Archaeologists trained in anthropology at universities, not in natural history.
-The discovery of Paleoindian sites pushed back the antiquity of humans in the New World.
What were the limitations of culture chronology as an end to itself?
-Relative dating? It isn’t based on hard data.
-Chronology was thought about in evolutionary stages, which was counter to the new generation of anthropologists.
What is radiocarbon dating, and how was it a revolution in archaeology?
-Development of dating of organic (plant or animal) remains by measuring decay of radioactive isotopes.
-C 14 is radioactive, decaying into N 14.
-Absolute dating.
-Allows construction of chronologies that are not dependent on guesses, assumptions of cultural change, or historical records.
-Willard Libby.
What is Direct Historical Method?
-William Duncan Strong
-Investigates the past by working backward in time from the known ethnographic present to the unknown pre-colonial past. The approach assumes a historical connection between past and present and promises to yield insights into the contingent facts of particular cultural histories.
- Knowledge relating to historical periods is extended back into earlier times.
-The main issue with the approach is that in many parts of the world, there is no direct continuity between historically documented communities and the prehistoric occupants of the region.
What did Nels Nelson and A.V. Kidder accomplish in the Southwest?
-Basketmaker vs. Pueblo cultures/stages, 1927.
Each period was defined by traits of technology and architecture.
-Stratigraphic excavations.
Boas and Minik
-Boas thought that Inuit customs and traditions were adaptations to arctic life—interested in the Inuit a great deal.
-Minik was a six-year-old Inuit boy who lived with his father, Qisuk, in makeshift rooms at the museum. Other Inuit people lived there as well, and most of them ended up dying of TB. Boas arranged for them to stay over the summer for scientific purposes. Minik was the subject of many studies/recordings and photos.
-Minik was left orphaned in New York. Other Inuit people offered to kill Minik so he could be with this father after the died. This was a common cultural practice. Minik ended up staying in New York and lived on a dairy farm.
Alice Fletcher and the Omaha
-Alice Fletcher volunteered at the Peabody Museum for Putnam and did fieldwork among many tribes: acculturation advocate, Carlisle Indian School, and Dawes Act of 1887, which regulated land rights on tribal territories in the U.S.
-Collected ethnographic data about
the Omaha while living with them, such as songs and documentation of private rituals.
-Believed that inside, every Indian was a trapped white American ready to assimilate. Tribalism and communal reservations have halted the evolutionary development of the Indians.
-Proposed to Congress that every adult in the Omaha tribe be given land so they can make the transition from communal living to private land ownership.
