Anthropology Final Exam

What date did people first begin to domesticate plants & animals and where?

(10,000 years ago) Mesopotamia.

Costs and Benefits of Agriculture

- Agriculture's main advantage is that the long-term yield per area is far greater and more dependable. - a single field sustains its owners year after year, there is no need to maintain a reserve of uncultivated land as horticulturalists do. - agricultural societies tend to be more densely populated than are horticultural ones. - Agriculture requires human labor to build and maintain irrigation systems, terraces, and other works. - People must feed, water, and care for their animals. - Given sufficient labor input and management, agricultural land can yield one or two crops annually for years or even generations. - An agricultural field does not necessarily produce a higher single-year yield than does a horticultural plot. The first crop grown by horticulturalists on long-idle land may be larger than that from an agricultural plot of the same size. - Furthermore, because agriculturalists have to work more hours than horticulturalists do, agriculture's yield relative to the labor time invested also is lower.

Differences between Old and New World Food Production

- involved animal domestication, which was much more important in the Old World - Three key caloric staples, major sources of carbohydrates, were domesticated by Native Americans. - The other two staples were root crops: white ("Irish") potatoes, first domesticated in the Andes, and manioc, or cassava, a tuber first cultivated in the South American lowlands

Ehnographic Techniques

1. Direct firsthand observation of behavior 2. Conversations with different people with varying degrees of formality 3. Genealogical Method 4. Work closely with key informants 5. In-depth interviews to collect life histories 6. Discovery, observation, recording of local beliefs and customs 7. Problem oriented research 8. Longitudinal research 9. Team research

Key Attributes of Cities and States

1. The first cities were larger and more densely populated than previous settlements. 2. Within the city were full-time specialist craftsmen, transport workers, merchants, officials, and priests. 3. Each primary producer (e.g., farmer) had to pay a tithe or tax to a deity or a divine king; those contributions were stored in a central place, such as a temple or treasury. 4. Monumental buildings distinguished cities from villages while also symbolizing the right of rulers to draw on the treasury and to command a labor force. 5. Supported by the treasury, priests, civil officials, and military leaders made up a ruling class. 6. Writing was used for record keeping. 7. Predictive sciences developed, including arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. 8. Sophisticated art styles developed, expressed in sculpture, painting, and architecture. 9. There was long-distance and foreign trade. 10. Society was reorganized on the basis of territorial divisions (where one lived) rather than kinship groups.

Ethnic Group

A category of people who identify with each other based on similarities, such as common ancestral, language, social, cultural, or national experiences. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language, or dialect, symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art, and physical appearance.

Sedentism

A characteristic of moving into the agricultural age and moving into a farming lifestyle. Even out issues of seasonality. Increases population growth. local environments were so rich in resources that foragers could adopt sedentism. the people most likely to adopt a new subsistence strategy, such as cultivation, would be those having the most trouble in following their traditional subsistence strategy. Thus, those ancient Middle Easterners living outside the area where wild foods were most abundant would be the most likely to experiment and to adopt new subsistence strategies. Recent archaeological finds support this hypothesis that food production began in marginal areas, such as the piedmont steppe, rather than in the optimal zones, such as the hilly flanks, where traditional foods were most abundant. Sedentary village life thus developed before farming and herding in the Middle East. The movement of people, animals, and products between zones—plus population increase supported by highly productive broad-spectrum foraging—was a precondition for the emergence of food production. As they traveled between zones, people carried seeds into new habitats. Mutations, genetic recombinations, and human selection led to new kinds of wheat and barley. Some of the new varieties were better adapted to the steppe and, eventually, the alluvial desert than the wild forms had been.

Clines

A gradual shift in gene frequencies between neighboring populations

Empire

A mature, territorially large, and expansive state; empires are typically multiethnic, multilinguistic, and more mitilaristic, with a better-developed bureaucracy than earlier states.

State (defintion)

A state is a polity that has a formal, central government and social stratification—a division of society into classes.

People Oriented Ethnography

Although anthropologists are interested in the whole context of human behavior, it is impossible to study everything. Most ethnographers now enter the field with a specific problem to investigate, and they collect data relevant to that problem (see Murchison 2010; Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater 2012). Local people's answers to questions are not the only data source. Anthropologists also gather information on factors such as population density, climate, diet, and land use. Sometimes this involves direct measurement—of rainfall, temperature, fields, yields, dietary quantities, or time allocation. Often it means that we consult government records or archives. The information of interest to ethnographers is not limited to what local people can and do tell us.

Regional Trade

Another key factor in primary state formation. States may arise to control and regulate key nodes in regional trade networks. Long-distance trade has been important in the formation of many states, including those of Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, and Peru (Hirth and Pillsbury 2013). Long-distance trade also exists, however, in areas where no primary states developed, such as in Papua New Guinea.

Balanced Reciprocity

Applies to exchanges between people who are more distantly related than are members of the same band or household. In a horticultural society, for example, a man presents a gift to someone in another village. The recipient may be a cousin, a trading partner, or a brother's fictive kinsman. The giver expects something in return. This may not come immediately, but the social relationship will be strained if there is no reciprocation.

Pidgins Language

Blending of two languages; facilities trade. languages that form in situations of acculturation, when different societies come into contact and must devise a system of communication. Pidgins based on English and native languages developed in the context of trade and colonialism in China, Papua New Guinea, and West Africa (see Gu 2012). Eventually, after generations of being spoken, pidgins may develop into creole languages. These are more mature languages, with developed grammatical rules and native speakers

Stratification

Characteristic of a system with socioeconomic strata -- groups that contrast in regard to social status and access to strategic resources. Each stratum includes people of both sexes and all ages. Status differences are inherited and divided sharply between distinct noble and commoner classes. Agriculture. States.

Chiefdom (definition)

Chiefdom refers to a form of sociopolitical organization intermediate between the tribe and the state. In chiefdoms, social relations were based mainly on kinship, marriage, descent, age, generation, and gender. although chiefdoms were kin based, they featured differential access to resources (some people had more wealth, prestige, and power than others did) and a permanent political structure.

Chiefdom and Differential Access

Chiefdoms featured differential access. Differential access: unequal access to resources; basic attribute of chiefdoms and states. Superordinates have favored access to such resources, while the access of subordinates is limited by superordinates.

Neolithic in Asia

China was also one of the first world areas to develop farming, based on millet and rice. Millet cultivation paved the way for widespread village life and eventually for Shang dynasty civilization, based on irrigated agriculture, between 3600 and 3100 b.p. The northern Chinese also had domesticated dogs, pigs, and possibly cattle, goats, and sheep by 7000 b.p. China seems to have been the scene of two independent transitions to food production, based on different crops grown in strikingly different climates. Southern Chinese farming was rice aquaculture in rich subtropical wetlands. Southern winters were mild and summer rains reliable. Northern China, by contrast, had harsh winters, with unreliable rainfall during the summer growing season. Both supported successful growing cultures.

Characteristics of Culture

Culture is learned, Culture is symbolic, Culture is shared, Culture and Nature, Culture is All Encompassing, Culture is Integrated, Culture is Instrumental, Adaptive, and maladaptive

Culture is Learned

Culture is learned: uniquely elaborated human ability to learn from other members of a group; learn from symbols; taught from unconscious and conscious learning as well as observation

Culture is Instrumental, Adaptive, and Maladaptive

Culture is the main reason for human adaptability and success. To cope with environmental stresses we habitually use technology, or tools. Or we plan action to increase our comfort. People use culture instrumentally, that is, to fulfill their basic biological needs for food, drink, shelter, comfort, and reproduction. People also use culture to fulfill psychological and emotional needs, such as friendship, companionship, approval, and sexual desirability. People seek informal support—help from people who care about them—as well as formal support from associations and institutions. To these ends, individuals cultivate ties with others on the basis of common experiences, political interests, aesthetic sensibilities, or personal attraction. On one level, cultural traits (e.g., air conditioning) may be called adaptive if they help individuals cope with environmental stresses. But on a different level, such traits can also be maladaptive. Examples of maladaptive aspects of culture include policies that encourage overpopulation, poor food-distribution systems, overconsumption, and industrial pollution.

Emic Perspective

Culture's explanation. Is concerned with how local people think. How do they perceive, categorize, and explain things? What are their rules for behavior? What has meaning for them? The ethnographer seeks to understand the "native viewpoint," relying on local people to explain things and to say whether something is significant or not.

Culture is Integrated

Cultures are integrated, patterned systems. If one part of the system (e.g., the economy) changes, other parts change as well. Cultures are integrated not simply by their dominant economic activities and related social patterns but also by sets of values, ideas, symbols, and judgments. Cultures train their individual members to share certain personality traits. A set of core values (key, basic, or central values) integrates each culture and helps distinguish it from others. For instance, the work ethic and individualism are core values that have integrated American culture for generations. Different sets of dominant values exist in other cultures.

Main Differences between Wild and Domesticated Plants

Domesticated Plants: 1) increase of seed size; 2) number of seeds on plant (increased); 3) lose natural dispersal

Participant Observation

Ethnographers strive to establish rapport, a good, friendly working relationship based on personal contact, with their hosts. One of ethnography's most characteristic procedures is participant observation, which means that we take part in community life as we study it. We take part in many events and processes we are observing and trying to comprehend. By participating, we may learn why people find such events meaningful, as we see how they are organized and conducted.

Correlates of Foraging

Ethnographic studies in hundreds of societies have revealed many correlations between the economy and social life. Some foragers lack cultural features usually associated with foraging, and some of those features are found in groups with other adaptive strategies. People who subsisted by hunting and gathering often, but not always, lived in band-organized societies. Their basic social unit, the band, was a small group of fewer than a hundred people, all related by kinship or marriage. Typical characteristics of the foraging life are flexibility and mobility. Many foraging societies make distinctions based on age. Old people may receive respect as guardians of myths, legends, stories, and traditions. Younger people may value the elders' special knowledge of ritual and practical matters. In general, foraging societies tend to be egalitarian, with only minor contrasts in prestige and no significant contrasts in wealth and power.

African Neolithic

Excavations in southern Egypt have revealed considerable complexity in its Neolithic economy and social system, along with very early pottery and cattle, which may have been domesticated locally. Nabta Playa was first occupied around 12,000 b.p., as Africa's summer rains moved northward, providing moisture for grasses, trees, bushes, hares, and gazelle, along with humans. The earliest settlements (11,000-9300 b.p.) at Nabta were small, seasonal camps of herders of domesticated cattle. Nabta Playa provides early evidence for what anthropologists have called the "African cattle complex," in which cattle are used economically for their milk and blood, rather than killed for their meat.

Explanatory Approach to Biological Diversity

Focuses on understanding specific differences. In theory, a biological race would be a geographically isolated subdivision of a species.Such a subspecies would be capable of interbreeding with other subspecies of the same species, but it would not actually do so because of its geographic isolation. A race is supposed to reflect shared genetic material (inherited from a common ancestor), but early scholars instead used phenotypical traits (such as skin color and facial features) for racial classification. The number of combinations (of physical traits) is very large, and the amount that heredity (versus environment) contributes to such phenotypical traits is often unclear. The analysis of human DNA indicates that fully 94 percent of human genetic variation occurs within so-called races. Humans are much more alike genetically than are other hominoids. Although long-term genetic markers do exist, they don't correlate neatly with phenotype. Phenotypical similarities and differences aren't precisely or even necessarily correlated with genetic relationships. Because of changes in the environment that affect individuals during growth and development, the range of phenotypes characteristic of a population may change without any genetic change whatsoever.

Tribe (Definition)

Form of sociopolitical organization usually based on horticulture or pastoralism. Socioeconomic stratification and centralized rule are absent in tribes, and there is no means of enforcing political decisions. tribes have no formal government.

Causes of Human Variation

Genetic differences both within and among populations. Independent assortment. Natural selection. High degree of neutrality of most mutations --> lack of selective effect. Genetic drift --> random changes in gene pool.

Longitudinal Research

Geography limits anthropologists less now than in the past, when it could take months to reach a field site and return visits were rare. New systems of transportation allow anthropologists to widen the area of their research and to return repeatedly. Ethnographic reports now routinely include data from two or more field stays. Longitudinal research is the long-term study of a community, region, society, culture, or other unit. Napoleon Chagnon: Recognized as one of the first attempts of longitudinal research; northwestern university; since 1964; must participate in another culture for a long period of time to understand it

Slash and Burn Technique

Horticulturists clear land by cutting down (slashing) and burning forest or bush or by setting fire to the grass covering the plot. The vegetation is broken down, pests are killed, and the ashes remain to fertilize the soil. Crops then are sown, tended, and harvested. Use of the plot is not continuous. Often it is cultivated only for a year or two.

Benefits of Food Production

Increased population growth More stable amount of food Provided opportunity for invention and cultural growth

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Language shapes the way people think. No universal grammar. Sapir and Whorf argued that the grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways.

Egalitarian Society

No class distinction (except for age, gender, or talent). Redistribute wealth/resources. Most typically found among hunter-gatherers. Foraging. Bands and tribes.

Sociolinguistics

No language is a uniform system in which everyone talks just like everyone else. Linguistic performance (what people actually say) is the concern of sociolinguists. The field of sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation, or language in its social context.

Horticulture

Nonindustrial system of plan cultivation in which the plots lie fallow for varying lengths of time. Non-intensive, shifting cultivation. Horticulturalists use simple tools such as hoes and digging sticks to grow their crops. Horticulturalists preserve their ecosystems by allowing their fields to lie fallow for varying lengths of time. Often, horticulturalists employ slash-and-burn techniques. When horticulturalists abandon a plot, they clear another piece of land, and the original plot reverts to forest. Horticulture is also called shifting cultivation. Such shifts from plot to plot do not mean that whole villages must move when plots are abandoned. Horticulture can support large, permanent villages.

Agriculture

Nonindustrial systems of plant cultivation characterized by continuous and intensive use of land and labor. The greater labor demands associated with agriculture, as compared with horticulture, reflect its common use of domesticated animals, irrigation, or terracing. Many agriculturalists use animals as means of production—for transport, as cultivating machines, and for their manure.

Etic Perspective

Objective Approach. The focus shifts from local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist. Members of a culture often are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their culture impartially. Operating etically, the ethnographer emphasizes what he or she (the observer) notices and considers important. the ethnographer should try to bring an objective and comprehensive viewpoint to the study of other cultures.

Life Histories

Often, when we find someone unusually interesting, we collect his or her life history. This recollection of a lifetime of experiences provides a more intimate and personal cultural portrait than would be possible otherwise. Life histories, which may be recorded or videoed for later review and analysis, reveal how specific people perceive, react to, and contribute to changes that affect their lives. Such accounts can illustrate diversity, which exists within any community, because the focus is on how different people interpret and deal with some of the same problems. Many ethnographers include the collection of life histories as an important part of their research strategy.

Hydraulic Systems

One factor favoring state formation has been the need to regulate hydraulic (water-based) agricultural economies (Wittfogel 1957). In arid areas, such as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, a key role of state officials was to manage systems of irrigation, drainage, and flood control. Hydraulic agriculture spurs state formation because it has certain implications. Because it can feed more people, while requiring more labor, irrigated agriculture sustains and fuels population growth, which in turn promotes expansion of the system. With larger and denser concentrations of people, the potential grows for conflict over access to water and irrigated land. Political authorities typically arise to regulate production, as well as to manage interpersonal and intergroup relations. Regulators protect the economy by mobilizing crews to maintain and repair the hydraulic system, and they settle disputes about access to water. These life-and-death functions enhance the authority of state officials. Thus, growth in hydraulic systems is often (as in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Valley of Mexico) but not always associated with state formation.

Interviewing

Participating in local life means that ethnographers constantly talk to people and ask questions. As their knowledge of the local language and culture increases, they understand more. Typically interview key informants as well as members of the society.

Broad Spectrum Revolution

Period beginning around 15,000 B.P. in the Middle East and 12,000 B.P. in Europe, during which a wider range, or broader spectrum, of plant and animal life was hunted, gathered, collected, caught, and fished; revolutionary because it led to food production. More options for food; anatomically modern humans; before agriculture; Ability to adapt to every environment; change diet with changing environment.

Primary State

Primary states are states that arose on their own, not through contact with other state societies (Wright 1994). Also called archaic states or first-generation states, primary states emerged from competition among chiefdoms, as one chiefdom managed to conquer its neighbors and make them part of a larger political unit (Stanish and Levine 2011). Scholars have documented the process of state formation in at least six areas where first-generation states are known to have developed: Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, northern China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes (Millaire 2010).

Genealogical Method

Procedures by which ethnographers discover and record connections of kinship, descent, and marriage, using diagrams and symbols. Extended kinship is a prominent building block in the social organization of nonindustrial societies, where people live and work each day with their close kin. Anthropologists need to collect genealogical data to understand current social relations and to reconstruct history. In many nonindustrial societies, links through kinship and marriage form the core of social life. Anthropologists even call such cultures "kin-based societies."

Market Principle

Profit-oriented principle of exchange that dominates in states, particularly industrial states. Goods and services are bought and sold, and values are determined by supply and demand. It governs the distribution of the means of production: land, labor, natural resources, technology, knowledge, and capital. "Market exchange refers to the organizational process of purchase and sale at money price". Bargaining is characteristic of market-principle exchanges.

Ranked Society

Ranked societies, in contrast, do have hereditary inequality. But they lack stratification (sharp social divisions—strata—based on unequal access to wealth and power) into noble and commoner classes. In ranked societies, individuals tend to be ranked in terms of their genealogical distance from the chief. Closer relatives of the chief have higher rank or social status than more distant ones do. But there is a continuum of status, with many individuals and kin groups ranked about equally, which can lead to competition for positions of leadership. Horticulture, pastoralism, and some foraging groups. Chiefdoms and some tribes.

Reciprocity

Reciprocity is exchange between social equals, who are normally related by kinship, marriage, or another close personal tie. Because it occurs between social equals, it is dominant in the more egalitarian societies—among foragers, cultivators, and pastoralists. There are three degrees of reciprocity: generalized, balanced, and negative. Generalized reciprocity, the purest form of reciprocity, is characteristic of exchanges between closely related people. In balanced reciprocity, social distance increases, as does the need to reciprocate. In negative reciprocity, social distance is greatest and reciprocation is most calculated. This range, from generalized to negative, is called the reciprocity continuum. Generalized and balanced reciprocity are based on trust and a social tie. But negative reciprocity involves the attempt to get something for as little as possible, even if it means being cagey or deceitful or cheating.

Redistribution

Redistribution operates when goods, services, or their equivalent move from the local level to a center. The center may be a capital, a regional collection point, or a storehouse near a chief's residence. Products often move through a hierarchy of officials for storage at the center. Along the way, officials and their dependents may consume some of them, but the exchange principle here is redistribution. The flow of goods eventually reverses direction—out from the center, down through the hierarchy, and back to the common people.

Bergmann's Rule

Rule stating that the smaller of two bodies similar in shape has more surface area per unit of weight and therefore can dissipate heat more efficiently; hence, large bodies tend to be found in colder areas and smaller bodies in warmer ones.

Cultural Diffusion

Spread of cultural traits; between cultures; acculturation and assimilation. Borrowing of traits between cultures. direct when two cultures trade, intermarry, or wage war on one another. Diffusion is forced when one culture subjugates another and imposes its customs on the dominated group. Diffusion is indirect when items move from group A to group C via group B without any firsthand contact between A and C. In this case, group B might consist of traders or merchants who take products from a variety of places to new markets. Or group B might be geographically situated between A and C, so that what it gets from A eventually winds up in C, and vice versa. In today's world, much transnational diffusion is due to the spread of the mass media and advanced information technology.

Why States Collapse

States can disintegrate along the same cleavage lines (e.g., regional political units) that were originally forged together to form the state. Various factors, such as invasion, disease, famine, or prolonged drought, can threaten their economies and political institutions. Citizens might degrade the environment, usually with economic costs.

Ethnography

Systematic study of cultures. Means to represent graphically/visually. a research strategy in societies with less social differentiation than is found in large, modern, industrial nations. the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures. Method: Social connections; social networks --> reconstruct; cross cultural observations; participant observation

Culture

Systems of human behavior and thought. Set of rules or standards. Is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. Ideas based on cultural learning and symbols.

Neolithic

Term used to describe economies based on food production (cultivated crops and domesticated animals)

Code of Ethics

The Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) recognizes that anthropologists have obligations to their scholarly field, to the wider society, and to the human species, other species, and the environment. The anthropologist's primary obligation is to do no harm to the people being studied. The stated aim of the AAA code is to offer guidelines and to promote discussion and education, rather than to investigate possible misconduct. Some of the code's main points may be reviewed. Anthropologists should inform all parties affected by their research about its nature, goals, procedures, potential impacts, and source(s) of funding. Researchers should establish proper relationships with the countries and communities where they work.

Vertical Economy

The Middle East, along with certain other world areas where food production originated, is a region that for thousands of years has had a vertical economy. (Other examples include Peru and Mesoamerica—Middle America, including Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.) A vertical economy exploits environmental zones that, although close together in space, contrast with one another in altitude, rainfall, overall climate, and vegetation (see Figure 11.1). Such a close juxtaposition of varied environments allowed broad-spectrum foragers to use different resources in different seasons.

Explaining the Neolithic (Large Animals)

The animals that had been hunted during the early American big-game tradition either became extinct before people could domesticate them or were not domesticable.

Racial Classification

The attempt to assign humans to discrete categories (purportedly) based on common ancestry

Why the First States Developed

The development and spread of Neolithic economies fueled population growth and established large group settlements. New tasks, activities, and functions emerged in the larger and denser populations. Systems of political authority and control typically develop to handle regulatory problems that arise as the population grows, social groups proliferate, and the economy increases in scale and diversity. A systemic, regional perspective is necessary to understand any case of state formation. Primary states emerge from a regional process that requires a long period (generations) of interaction among competing polities (Stanish and Levine 2011). Furthermore, multiple factors always contribute to state formation, with the effects of one magnifying those of the others.

The Maya Decline

The environmental factors behind Copán's collapse may have included deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion due to overpopulation and overfarming. Hillside farmhouses, in particular, had debris from erosion—probably caused by overfarming of the hillsides. This erosion began as early as 750 c.e.—until these farm sites were abandoned, with some eventually buried by erosion debris. Food stress and malnutrition were clearly present at Copán, where 80 percent of the buried skeletons display signs of anemia, due to iron deficiency. One skull shows anemia severe enough to have been the cause of death. Even the nobility were malnourished. One noble skull, known to be such from its carved teeth and cosmetic deformation, also has telltale signs of anemia: spongy areas at its rear. Archaeologists now believe that social, political, and military upheaval and competition had as much as or more to do with the Maya decline and abandonment of cities as did natural environmental factors. Increased warfare and political competition destabilized many of its dynasties and governments. Archaeologists now stress the role of warfare in Maya state decline. archaeological evidence for increased concern with fortifications and relocation to defensible locations.

First State Development

The first states had developed in Mesopotamia by 5500 b.p. and in Mesoamerica about 3,000 years later.

Call Systems (Non-Human Primate Communication)

The natural communication systems of other primates (monkeys and apes) are call systems. These vocal systems consist of a limited number of sounds—calls—that are produced only when particular environmental stimuli are encountered. Such calls may be varied in intensity and duration, but they are much less flexible than language because they are automatic and can't be combined.

Cultural Relativism

The position that values and standards of cultures differ and deserve respect. Anthropology is characterized by methodological rather than moral relativism: in order to understand another culture fully, anthropologists try to understand its members' beliefs and motivations. Methodological relativism does not preclude making moral judgments or taking action.

Enculturation

The process by which a child learns his or her culture. Enculturation unifies people by providing us with common experiences.

Neolithic in Europe

The researchers concluded that migrating farmers spread their crops and technology across Europe from the Mediterranean beginning around 8,500 years ago. It took them about 3,000 years to reach northwestern Europe. New excavations on Cyprus show that the island had been colonized by 10,600 b.p.—the early Neolithic—with village life and farming well underway. This confirms that migration from the mainland began—by boat—shortly after the beginning of farming in the Middle East. Sailing 60 kilometers from the mainland to Cyprus, Neolithic colonists carried with them all four major livestock species (sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs). To Cyprus they introduced the full Neolithic package: farming and herding, technologies, and, most likely, the social networks and belief systems they brought from their original homeland. Rather than an isolated event, the colonization of Cyprus can serve as a model of how the Neolithic spread across the rest of the Mediterranean basin—by boat and seafaring colonists (Zeder 2008).

Skin Color Variation

The role of natural selection in producing variation in skin color will illustrate the explanatory approach to human biological diversity. Skin color is a complex biological trait—influenced by several genes (see Jablonski 2006, 2012). Just how many genes is not known. Melanin, the primary determinant of human skin color, is a chemical substance manufactured in the epidermis, or outer skin layer. The melanin cells of darker-skinned people produce more and larger granules of melanin than do those of lighter-skinned people. By screening out ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun, melanin offers protection against a variety of maladies, including sunburn and skin cancer. Melanin, nature's own sunscreen, confers a selective advantage (i.e., a better chance to survive and reproduce) on darker-skinned people living in the tropics.

Stratification with Social Systems

The status system of a chiefdom differed from that of a state because of the chiefdom's kinship basis. In the context of differential wealth and power, the chiefly type of status system didn't last very long. Chiefs would start acting like kings and try to erode the kinship basis of the chiefdom. created separate social strata—unrelated groups that differ in their access to wealth, prestige, and power. (A stratum is one of two or more groups that contrast in social status and access to strategic resources. Each stratum includes people of both genders and all ages.). The creation of separate social strata is called stratification, and its emergence signified the transition from chiefdom to state. The presence of stratification is one of the key distinguishing features of a state. In archaic states—for the first time in human evolution—there were contrasts in wealth, power, and prestige between entire groups (social strata) of men and women. Each stratum included people of both genders and all ages. The superordinate (higher or elite) stratum had privileged access to valued resources. Access to those resources by members of the subordinate (lower or underprivileged) stratum was limited by the privileged group.

Key Cultural Consultants

The term cultural consultants, or informants, refers to individuals the ethnographer gets to know in the field, the people who teach him or her about their culture. Every community has people who by accident, experience, talent, or training can provide the most complete or useful information about particular aspects of life. These people are key cultural consultants, also called key informants.

Pastoralism

They live in North and sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. East African pastoralists, like many others, live in symbiosis with their herds. Herders attempt to protect their animals and to ensure their reproduction in return for food (dairy products and meat) and other products, such as leather. typically use their herds for food. Although some pastoralists rely on their herds more completely than others do, it is impossible to base subsistence solely on animals. Most pastoralists therefore supplement their diet by hunting, gathering, fishing, cultivating, or trading. Two patterns of movement occur with pastoralism: nomadism and transhumance. Both are based on the fact that herds must move to use pasture available in particular places in different seasons. In pastoral nomadism, the entire group—women, men, and children—moves with the animals throughout the year. transhumance. part of the group moves with the herds, but most people stay in the home village.

Settlement Hierarchy

This is a ranked series of communities that differ in size, function, and building types. The settlements at the top of the hierarchy were political and religious centers. Those at the bottom were rural villages. We have seen that a four-level settlement hierarchy provides archaeological evidence for state organization.

Population, War, and Circumscription

Three key factors interacting to produce state formation. Environmental circumscription may be either physical or social. Physically circumscribed environments include small islands and, in arid areas, river plains, oases, and valleys with streams—areas surrounded by some boundary. Social circumscription exists when neighboring societies block expansion, emigration, or access to resources. When strategic resources are concentrated in limited areas—even when no obstacles to migration exist—the effects are similar to those of circumscription. The first states developed when one chiefdom in a valley conquered the others (Carneiro 1990; Stanish and Levine 2011). Eventually, different valleys began to fight. The winners brought the losers into growing states and empires, which eventually expanded from the coast to the highlands. Sometimes, however, the coexistence of population increase, warfare, and circumscription is insufficient to spur state formation. In any case of state formation, interacting causes (often comparable ones) magnified each other's effects. Key ingredients in state formation are changes in patterns of control over resources, resulting in social stratification, and increasing regulatory concerns, fostering management by state machinery. Different agencies arise to handle particular functions.

Ethnology

Way to address a question. the study of the characteristics of various peoples and the differences and relationships between them.

Chiefdom

advanced chiefdoms arose in northern areas of the Middle East independently of the better-known city-states of southern Mesopotamia, in southern Iraq. a form of hierarchical political organization in non-industrial societies usually based on kinship, and in which formal leadership is monopolized by the legitimate senior members of select families or 'houses'. These elites form a political-ideological aristocracy relative to the general group. Archaeologists now believe it was the intensity of competitive interaction—rather than the supremacy of any one chiefdom—that made social change so rapid. Waging warfare and attracting followers are two key elements in state formation. Mesoamerica's many chiefdoms were linked by trade and exchange. Chiefly centers were concentrating labor power, intensifying agriculture, exchanging trade goods, and borrowing ideas, including art motifs and styles, from each other. It used to be thought that a single chiefdom could become a state on its own. Archaeologists know now that state formation involves one chiefdom's incorporating several others into the emerging state it controls, and making changes in its own infrastructure as it acquires and holds on to new territories, followers, and goods.

State Systems

are autonomous political units with social strata and a formal government. States tend to be large and populous, and certain statuses, systems, and subsystems with specialized functions are found in all states

Culture is All Encompassing

culture includes much more than refinement, taste, sophistication, education, and appreciation of the fine arts. The most interesting and significant cultural forces are those that affect people every day of their lives, particularly those that influence children during enculturation. Culture, as defined anthropologically, encompasses features that are sometimes regarded as trivial or unworthy of serious study, such as "popular" culture.

Terracing

cut into the hillside and build stage after stage of terraced fields rising above the valley floor. Springs located above the terraces supply their irrigation water. The labor necessary to build and maintain a system of terraces is great. Terrace walls crumble each year and must be partially rebuilt. The canals that bring water down through the terraces also demand attention.

Max Weber's Social Stratification

defined three related dimensions of social stratification: (1) Economic status, or wealth, encompasses all a person's material assets, including income, land, and other types of property. (2) Power, the ability to exercise one's will over others—to get what one wants—is the basis of political status. (3) Prestige—the basis of social status—refers to esteem, respect, or approval for acts, deeds, or qualities considered exemplary. Prestige, or "cultural capital" (Bourdieu 1984), gives people a sense of worth and respect, which they may often convert into economic advantage.

Culture is Symbolic

dependent upon symbolling. ... Culture consists of tools, implements, utensils, clothing, ornaments, customs, institutions, beliefs, rituals, games, works of art, language, etc. Culture originated when our ancestors gained the ability to use tools. Symbol is nonverbal or verbal. Specific type of learning. Unique to humans.

Foraging

environmental differences did create substantial contrasts among the world's foragers. Despite differences caused by such environmental variation, all foraging economies have shared one essential feature: People rely on nature to make their living. They don't grow crops or breed and or tend animals. All contemporary foragers live in nation-states and are influenced by national policies. Typically, they are in contact with food-producing neighbors as well as with missionaries and other outsiders. We should not view contemporary foragers as isolated or pristine survivors of the Stone Age. Modern foragers are influenced by national and international policies and political and economic events in the world system. People still do, or until recently did, subsistence foraging in certain remote forests in Madagascar, South and Southeast Asia, Malaysia, and the Philippines and on certain islands off the Indian coast. Some of the best-known recent foragers are the aborigines of Australia. Those Native Australians lived on their island continent for perhaps 50,000 years without developing food production.

Noam Chomsky

has argued that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis. (Chomsky calls this set of rules universal grammar.) The fact that people can learn foreign languages and that words and ideas can be translated from one language into another tends to support Chomsky's position that all humans have similar linguistic abilities and thought processes. Another line of support comes from creole languages. Such languages develop from pidgins, languages that form in situations of acculturation, when different societies come into contact and must devise a system of communication.

Culture is Shared

individuals as members of groups. Transmitted in society. Culture molds "human nature" in many directions. Our culture—and cultural changes—affect the ways in which we perceive nature, human nature, and "the natural." Through science, invention, and discovery, cultural advances have overcome many "natural" limitations

Assimilation

is the process by which a person or a group's language and/or culture come to resemble those of another group.

Ethnocentrism

is the tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to use one's own standards and values in judging outsiders. We witness ethnocentrism when people consider their own cultural beliefs to be truer, more proper, or more moral than those of other groups.

Historical Linguistics

istorical linguistics deals with longer-term change. Language changes over time. It evolves—varies, spreads, divides into dialects and eventually into subgroups (languages within a taxonomy of related languages that are most closely related). Historical linguists can reconstruct many features of past languages by studying contemporary daughter languages. These are languages that descend from the same parent language and that have been changing for hundreds or even thousands of years. We call the original language from which they diverge the protolanguage.

Negative Reciprocity

mainly in dealing with people outside or on the fringes of their social systems. To people who live in a world of close personal relations, exchanges with outsiders are full of ambiguity and distrust. Exchange is one way of establishing friendly relations with outsiders, but especially when trade begins, the relationship is still tentative. Often, the initial exchange is close to being purely economic; people want to get something back immediately. Just as in market economies, but without using money, they try to get the best possible immediate return for their investment

Spread of Agriculture: Black Sea

o Based on impacts of biblical flood o Every world tradition has this component in it • Likely event that did happen • Sufficiently impactful

Ain Ghazal Site, Jordan

o Early farming villages o One of the best o Really documents transition from hunting and gathering o Key period is like 8000 - 6000 BC o Genetic studies of individuals • People inhabiting villages were fairly isolated genetically o Increased social complexity

Cultural Evolution

o Need for growing society o Desire by elites to acquire goods that are considered high status o Growing cultural complexity • Consequence o Elites • Concept of inequality o Monumental architecture o Leads to the development of cities and states

The Rise of the States

o Often chosen based on personal traits o Chiefdom power is hereditary • Power is absolute in some respects

Costs of Food Production

o Resulted in massive impact of European diseases • Originally brought by Spanish in Southern Hemisphere o Largely those drawn from mutated animal viruses o Developing immunities o Had a devastating impact on native populations

Old World Food Producers

people independently invented domestication, although of different sets of crops and animals. Food production also spread out from the Middle East. This happened through trade; through the diffusion of plants, animals, products, and information; and through the actual migration of farmers. Middle Eastern domesticates spread westward to northern Africa, including Egypt's Nile Valley, and eventually into Europe. Trade also extended eastward to India and Pakistan. In Egypt, an agricultural economy based on plants and animals originally domesticated in the Middle East led to a pharaonic civilization. African Neolithic, European Neolithic, Asian Neolithic.

Approaches to biological diversity

racial classification and explanatory approach

Band (Definition)

small, kin-based group (all its members are related by kinship or marriage) found among foragers.

Social Status in Chiefdoms

social relations were based mainly on kinship, marriage, descent, age, generation, and gender.

Generalized Reciprocity

someone gives to another person and expects nothing concrete or immediate in return. Such exchanges (including parental gift giving in contemporary North America) are not primarily economic transactions but expressions of personal relationships.

Culture and Nature

takes the natural biological urges we share with other animals and teaches us how to express them in particular ways

Acculturation

the exchange of cultural features that results when groups have continuous firsthand contact. The cultures of either group or both groups may be changed by this contact. With acculturation, parts of the cultures change, but each group remains distinct.

Independent Invention

the process by which humans innovate, creatively finding solutions to problems. Faced with comparable problems and challenges, people in different societies have innovated and changed in similar ways, which is one reason cultural generalities exist.

Language Definition

which may be spoken (speech) or written (writing), is our primary means of communication. Writing has existed for less than 6,000 years. Language originated thousands of years before that, but no one can say exactly when. Like culture in general, of which language is a part, language is transmitted through learning, as part of enculturation. Language is based on arbitrary, learned associations between words and the things for which they stand. The complexity of language—absent in the communication systems of other animals—allows humans to conjure up elaborate images, to discuss the past and the future, to share our experiences with others, and to benefit from their experiences. Some linguistic anthropologists reconstruct ancient languages by comparing their contemporary descendants and in so doing make discoveries about history. Others study linguistic differences to discover the varied worldviews and patterns of thought in a multitude of cultures. Sociolinguists examine linguistic diversity in nation-states, ranging from multilingualism to the varied dialects and styles used in a single language, to show how speech reflects social differences. . Linguistic anthropologists also explore the role of language in colonization and in the expansion of the world economy.