Anthropology test 4

The Canadian government helps preserve the use of French by requiring all offical documents to be written in both English and French. The provincial government of the Canadian province of Quebec has implemented further regulations that require that signs have French letters larger than English letters. Why is the size of the letters important?

-symbolically, the size of the letters suggests the improtance of the language. -the regulations themselves give French canadians a feeling that they are as important english speakers, even though they are in the minority. -it is impossible to control what langauge ordinary canadians use, but they can measure the size of letters on signs. -all of the above

Animal call systems

1. animal call systems are limited in what and how much they can communicate 2. call systems are stimuli dependent, whcih means that an animal can only communicate in response to a real-world stimulus 3. each call is distinct and the calls are never considered to produce a song with a different meaning 4. animal call systems tend to be nearly the same within a species with only minor differences between call systems used in the widely separated region.

Assemblage

A group or collection of objects found together at an excavation or site.

pidgin language

A mixed language with a simplified grammar, typically borrowing its vocabulary from one language but its grammar from another.

Generalized foraging model

A model asserted that hunter-gatherer societies have five basic characteristics.

Social complexity

A society that have many different parts organized into a single social system

language

A system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar.

Koko and Washo were two primates who had learned

American Sign Language

Egalitarianism is a significant part of the _________ model.

Generalized Foraging

The need to keep pace with your neighbors and maintain alliances as a reason for the rapid spread of cultivation in New Guinea was dubbed the __________.

Jones Effect

what is language death?

Languages that are no longer acquired are pronounced dead

Despite the evidence of escalating warfare, excessive population growth, drought, and the failings of the ruling elite, the overwhelming evidence about the Mayan empire suggests that

Mayans did not disappear, they simply changed their social system

Microgravimetry Survey

Measuring the gravitational pull of different parts of the stone structure or pyramid to uncover formerly hollow sections that were filled with less dense stone

The "shift" in the primary mode of subsistence that resulted in agricultural production was called the ________.

Neolithic Revolution

When archaeologists study an excavation site, objects found closer to the surface are

Not as old as those found in deeper layers

Potlatches

Opulent ceremonial feasts intended to display wealth and social status by giving away or destroying valuable possessions like carved copper plates, button blankets, and baskets of food. These were characteristic of the communities on the Northwest coast of North America.

Syntax

Pattern of word order used to form sentences and longer utterances in a language.

Trade models of state formation focus on the people doing the trading work - traders - as well as the people

Providing military protection

Domestication

Refers to converting wild plants and animals to human uses by taming animals or turning them into herds that can be raised for meat or milk or making plants able to be grow for food or other uses.

Cities

Relatively large and permanent settlements, usually with populations of at least several thousand inhabitants.

Patrilocal bands

Small groups where men controlled resources and hunting territories.

Scott Van Keuren analyzed brushwork sequences in decorative styles of the pottery of the Southwestern United States. His research found that changes in style could be explained as evidence that

Societies with different original styles had moved to the same area leading to styles derived from several original styles.

Stops

Sounds that are formed by closing off and reopening the oral cavity so that it stops the flow of air through the mouth, such as the consonants p, b, t, d, k, and g.

Neolithic

The "new" Stone Age when humans begun growing crops and raising animals for food, using a stone-tool technology.

resilience

The ability of a social system to absorb changes and still retain certain basic cultural processes and structures, albeit in altered form.

philology

The comparative study of ancient texts and documents

For Robert Malthus, societies with small populations were limited by ______________.

The food available to them/food supply

Maize

The indigenous species of corn that was first domesticated in Mexico—the term is often used for any variety of corn, since all current varieties are thought to have been derived from this early version of so-called Indian corn.

Mesolithic

The period from the end of the last ice age until the beginning of agriculture, a number of hunter-gatherer-forager groups had established lakeside or seaside settlements that seem to have been year-round sites during this period.

Transhumance

The practice of moving herds to different fields or pastures with the changing seasons.

collapse

The rapid loss of a social, political, and economic order or complexity.

Morphology

The structure of words and word formation in a language.

Phonology

The systematic pattern of sounds in a language, also known as the language sound system.

cognate words

Words in two languages that show the same systematic sound shifts as other words in the two languages, usually interpreted by linguists as evidence for a common linguistic ancestry.

Proto-language

a hypothetical common ancestral language of two or more living languages

Creole language

a language of mixed origin that has developed from a complex blending of two parent languages that exists as a mother tongue for some part of the population

According to anthropologist Sherry Ortner's analysis, the American flag is an example of

a summarizing symbol

Edward Sapir urged cultural anthropologists to pay close attention to language during field research because

all of the above

which of the following is a contributing factor to the development of creoles, pidgins, and other hybird forms of language?

all of the above -colonialism -globalization -commerce -migration

which of the following features are characteristics of language?

all of the above -it developed over time -it is flexible -it is dynamic

which of the follwoing is a feature of language?

all of the above -it developed over time -it is flexible -it its dynamic

linguistic anthropologist Dennis Tedlock developed a new approach to the ethnography of speaking called ethopoetics. what viewpoint does ethnopoetics assume?

all speech acts are performances

The importance of maize in archeology is that it

allows archaeologists to trace the earliest evidence of domesticated grains and to be able to demonstrate that domestication had happened in the first place.

city-state

an autonomous political entity of a city and its surrounding countryside.

The importance of Marshall Sahlins' analysis of hunter-gatherer societies was to note the existence of

an entirely different cultural logic about their lives and the environment.

The application of pastoral practices leads to both an increase in population and

an increase in social complexity

A key requirement for the formation of a complex society is

an increased intensity of food production

The development of what might be called true agriculture- the use of fertilizers or elaborations of technology- was most likely due to

an increased probability of shortages

One of the limitations of the archaeological analysis of complexity is that

an object by itself cannot determine dynamics of wealth, power, or status

One of the plausible reasons for the lack of surpluses in hunter-gatherer groups is that surpluses could deplete local resources. This argument is called

an optimal foraging strategy

how do animal call systems differ from language?

animal calls are set, instinctive responses to particular stimuli based on only a few sounds.

The tending of the sago palm to increase the amount of starch in the tree is an example of

arboriculture

A hydraulic deposit is someone who

builds their empire around the control of water

Which of the following is NOT a reasonable account used to explain why humans started raising their own food by domesticating plants and animals?

by the end of the ice age, human brains were finally large enough and humans smart enough to learn that if they planted seeds they would grow

The set of sounds and movements that animals make to communicate is called a ________.

call system

The amount of _________ in a piece of organic material always declines over time, and always at the same rate.

carbon

What method establishes the date or period of an organic artifact or feature from the relative proportions of radioactive carbon to non-radioactive isotopes?

carbon-14 dating

Stelae

carved limestone slabs

Domestication is the process of

changing a wild plant or animal into something that can be controlled and used by humans

What material would be most suitable for Carbon-14 dating?

charcoal

although all primates use some form of call system, some, such as ______ and ________, are known to be capable of more complex communication than a simple call system.

chimps and gorillas

Often, the specific characteristics of ______________ become blurred because the definitions used fail to fully capture cultural dynamics.

cities and states

David Rindos argues that the shift to agriculture happened because both humans and plants began to

coevolve

Words that came from the same ancestral language and originated from the same word are called

cognate words

One of the reasons that today's agricultural dietary practices seemingly restrict the variety of food choices stems from the existence of

complex patterns of food taboos

A language of mixed origin that developed from a complex blending of two parent languages is called

creole language

Hydraulic Despotism

denotes empires built around the control of water resources by a despotic, or all-powerful, leaders

What anthropological approach to language distinguishes the way people actually speak from the ideal ways that people are supposed to speak?

descriptive linguistics, anthropolical lingustics, and ethnograpgy of speaking

A complex society is in part defined by a high degree of socioeconomic ______________.

differentiation

Of the many reasons suggested for the abandonment of the Mayan city of Copan, one reason we can safely say was not part of the process was

drought

For pastoral groups such as the Dinka and the Nuer, the cow acts as which kind of symbol?

elaborating symbol

One consequence of sedentism is that populations tend to grow, and people lose control over their lives as a consequence of ______________.

epidemic diseases

The effects of sedentism and population growth on populations can also be seen in the presence of

epidemic diseases

What is the study of how people classify things in the world called?

ethnoscience

The 200 communities in the north coast of Papua New Guinea have an egalitarian social complexity based on

exchange relationships between pairs of friends

T/F Languages change very slowly, taking generations or even centuries.

false

T/F Most mammals use some form of call system to communicate with others of their species. Dogs and chimpanzees share an additional linguistic characteristic because they can communicate simple combinations of ideas about things they are not currently seeing.

false

T/F The ancient Pueblo peoples disappeared due to environmental collapse.

false

T/F: Because of the widespread use of mass media today, sociolinguists have found increasing homogeneity in the use of language in the United States.

false

T/F: Countries find it relatively easy to decide what language its citizens will speak.

false

T/F: Rich documentation describing the minute details of daily life exist for all of the city-states in the Middle East region, including Mesopotamia and Egypt.

false

T/F: Socially complex societies can range in population size from hundreds to hundreds of thousands.

false

T/F: The Neolithic Revolution happened only in the region we call the Middle East.

false

T/F: The shift to horticulture or simple farming typically increased the number of cultigens consumed by members of a community.

false

T/F: Total collapse of city-states is a commonplace event.

false

T/F: Women in Arctic hunter-gatherer groups do not work as hard as men because there is no option to forage.

false

T/F: social complexity is always associated with social inequality and hierarchy.

false

One of the ways that peoples of Highland New Guinea stored their crops was by

feeding them to their herds of pigs

One of the most popular theories about the relationship between early states and warfare was promoted by Robert Carneiro. Which of the following was part of his model to explain the rise of early states?

growing populations put pressure on land needed to support the community, which led to conflict

The importance of Catal Hoyuk stems form the abscesses of evidence about _____________ inequality.

hereditary

Scott Van Keuren's work in social complexity leads us to better understand

how exclusivity in knowledge can signal changes in social complexity

If Jakob Grimm, who developed what has come to be known as Grimm's law, were analyzing the historical relationships among the so-called dialects of Chinese (such as Cantonese and Mandarin), what data would he be looking for in his linguistic fieldwork?

how the speakers of each dialect pronounce different words with similar meanings in the several dialects

____________ populations have extraordinary knowledge of their natural environment, even though they may not generally seek to domesticate plants and animals.

hunter-gatherers

One of the defining hypotheses about hunter-gatherer societies that changed after the "Man the Hunter" conference is that

hunting was not the defining feature of hunter-gather societies.

Studies of the inherited exchange relationships along the north coast of Papua New Guinea revealed that, despite a high degree of specialization within each community, all communities have essentially the same material culture and a very similar diet. This pattern is very different from the ancient state societies in the Middle East for which of the following reason?

ideology of equality

the key scenario differs from other kinds of symbols because it

implies how people should act

V. Gordon Childe understood the revolution brought by the rise of early agriculture of early agriculture involved all the following except

increasing brain size among the population that was at the heart of the revolution.

The "trade model" of state formation holds that trade and exchange create ______________ between neighboring societies.

interaction

True control of food production appeared with the development of

irrigation canals and systems that developed in early states

What is the significance of tubers as a very early cultigen in the New Guinea Highlands?

it shows us that early cultigens can be something other than grains

You are an archaeologist with a site in the African Rift Valley and you that you have discovered evidence that dates from 150,000 years ago. What dating method would you use to further your investigations?

k-Ar (potassium-Argon) dating of volcanic rock

Ferdinand de Saussure made a distinction between the formal rules of language (________________) and the ways people speak it (____________).

langue and parole

The dynamics of a complex society ensure that

lifestyles of the elites benefit from the labor of non-elites

_________ is the idea that people speaking different languages perceive the world differently.

linguistic relativity

An important distinction between hunter-gatherers today and those of the past is

linkage to sedentary agricultural societies through trade and other social ties

Early anthropologists considered the environments of hunter-gatherer societies to be harsh, and their methods of subsistence and technology to be simple, crude, and primitive, reinforcing

long-held cultural stereotypes

If you studied speech patterns such as those analyzed in Robin Lakoff's study of gendered speech, you might find that "talking like a lady"

marginalizes women's voices in work contexts

The primary contrast that shaped thinking about complex societies was between the

material and organizational aspects of a society

talking about sports as a battlefield is an example of

metaphor

Words that differ by only one single sound contrast, like in the case of "ban," "man," and "pan," are called _______ pairs.

minimal

What is the study of grammatical categories, such as tense and word order, called?

morphology

During the "Man the Hunter" conference, archaeologists and cultural anthropologists presented all sorts of evidence they had gathered about hunter-gatherers. Which of the following was not one of the conclusions of their collective assessments:

most hunter-gatherers relied much more heavily on game that was hunted by men than had been understood previously

Anthropologists Sherry Ortner distinguished three kinds of culturally powerful symbols that include all of the following except

narrative symbols

In what ways were principles of natural selection involved in the increasing size of food grains like corn, wheat, and barley?

natural selection was not involved because the processes involved humans selecting the best seeds

One of the side effects of increased food production is the generation of a surplus, something that helped give rise to

new social roles for food producers, typically specialist roles

is it true that some languages are better than others?

no

Archaeologists know that in the Tarascan empire there was consolidation a state power because

objects found with the dead were being produced in areas controlled by the empire

Foraging

obtaining food by searching for it, as opposed to growing or raising it

When anthropologists study the way people use language in real settings rather than as a set of grammatical rules, they are focusing on?

parole

When language speakers use slang or metaphor, they are engaging in which concept suggested by French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure?

parole

call systems

patterned sounds or utterances that express meaning

Sedentism and increased population growth leads to _________________.

permanent social inequality

The approach that compares ancient texts and documents to analyze long-term linguistic change is called _______.

philology

What term refers to the structure of speech sounds?

phonology

linguists refer to mixed languages with a simplified grammar that people rarely learn as a mother tongue as

pidgin language

Esther argued that increases in _______ led people to work harder

population

In analyzing the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society, Esther Boserup examined the relationship between

population growth and food production

The discovery that layers of sediment deposited in a lake were due to erosion from higher altitudes, indicated to archaeologists that in the Tarascan empire

population growth led to severe degradation of the soil

Ruralization

process in which the countryside was configured as a contested no-man's land lying between competing city-states

If you were a linguistic anthropologist interested in language change in smaller American cities, building on William Labov's studies from the 1980s, what method would you use?

record how younger people, middle-aged people, and senior citizens pronounce ordinary American words

Brent Berlin and Paul Kay found that if a language had only three color terms, they would always be black (dark), white (light), and ______.

red

The microscopic analysis of the residues of plant and animal foods on pottery or tools is known as _____________.

residue analysis

Archaeologists today generally agree that most social systems

routinely collapse and are then revived after some period of time

If you were interested in a past population's diet, what method of analysis would you be most likely to use on the artifacts available to you?

seriation

A stoplight is a visual example of which of the following?

sign

A society having many different parts organized into a single social system is said to have

social complexity

Similar to individual material objects, the determination of ____________ happens when individual elements of analysis are no longer taken in isolation.

social complexity

On the island of Java in Indonesia, nearly every sentence marks a person's _______ between speaker and listener.

social position

complex socities

societies in which socioeconomic differentiation, large populations, and centralized political control are pervasive and defining features of the society.

States

societies with forms of political and economic control over a particular territory and the inhabitants of that territory

______________ is the study of how sociocultural norms and contexts shape language use in society.

sociolinguistics

One of the ways that archeologists know there was social complexity in the Tarascan empire is through

spatial segregation of elite and commoner neighborhoods.

Much of our knowledge of the ancient Mayan empire comes from the careful study of

stelae

__________ are words or objects that stand for something else.

symbols

The practice of pastoralism involves

the breeding, care, and use of domesticated herding animals

Several hundred years after the Maya abandoned their ancient cities, Spanish observers reported a social hierarchy and inherited nobility that seemed related to what existed in the large, ancient, urban centers. This fact suggests that

the concept of population density is highly relative

Some archaeologists have interpreted the collapse of the Mayan empire as having been the result of overpopulation when they had reached a level of more than 150 persons per square kilometer. One possible problem with this explanation is that there are many other societies with much larger population densities, such as Los Angeles, which currently has about 2,700 persons per square mile, which shows that

the concept of population density is highly relative

The generalized foraging model holds that all of the following are true except

the creation of food sites in a territory.

If Benjamin Whorf were trying to find further proof that grammar shapes the way people perceive the world, which of the following would not be a focus of his research?

the density of the population in the several communities

Jared Diamond argues that cities and states don't last because

the fundamental cause of collapse is environmental

linguistic relativity

the idea that people speaking different languages perceive or interpret the world differently because of differences in their languages

One of the reasons that the understanding of many city-states is a challenging is due to

the lack of written records

Pastoralism

the practice of animal husbandry, which is the breeding, care, and use of domesticated herding animals such as cattle, camels, goats, horses, llamas, reindeer, and yaks

Urbanization

the process by which towns grew as residential centers as opposed to being trading centers.

We can apply the ideas of Robert Carneiro's argument about the role of war in a complex society to the Tarascan data by looking at

the shift in mortuary objects as a reflection of the consolidation of power

Ethnoscience

the study of how people classify things in the world, usually by considering some range or set of meanings

Sociolinguistics

the study of how sociocultural context and norms shape language use and the effects of language use on society

what would an ethnohraphy of speaking entail?

the study of writing about and or a description of people cultural knowledge

descriptive linguistics

the systematic analysis and description of a language's sound system and grammar

One theory about the relationship between global warming and the shift from foraging to food production holds that

the warming that took place after the last ice age made the environment more habitable.

Why do archaeologists disagree with Indiana Jones' approach to archaeology?

they only focus on finding treasures, and never record the context of tehse artifacts

Early European archaeologists were interested in studying the ancient societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the rest of the Fertile Crescent because

they saw European legal codes and philosophies as originating in these ancient Middle Eastern states

The moving of animal herds to different places in accordance with seasonal changes is called ______________.

transhumance

T/F: According to Edward Sapir, language is the symbolic guide to culture.

true

T/F: America's pattern of gender inequality is built into our linguistic practices.

true

T/F: As the intensity of agricultural practices increases, the range of cultigens decreases.

true

T/F: Cahokia's vast complex of mounds and ceremonial sites initially suggested that it was the center of a vast empire. What is surprising is that this socially complex state did not last very long before it was abandoned.

true

T/F: Cultigens became an integral part of human life almost simultaneously in different parts of the world

true

T/F: Elaborating symbols and summarizing symbols work in opposite ways.

true

T/F: It now seems very likely that the earliest human efforts to manipulate plants happened through the tending of useful trees.

true

T/F: Most people are unaware of the structure of a language until someone speaking it makes a mistake.

true

T/F: One surprising discovery about hunter-gatherer lives was that they worked only a few hours a week

true

T/F: Patrilocal bands are small groups where men control the hunting and territorial resources.

true

T/F: Ruralization is the process that leads to a contested space in the country located between different city-states.

true

T/F: Social complexity in ancient city-states did not always emerge on the basis of social inequality.

true

T/F: The complex social system on the north coast of Papua New Guinea precludes monopolistic behaviors because the network is so diffuse.

true

T/F: although language is one of the most rule-bound aspects of human culture, it is also one of the least conscious.

true

T/F: it is possible to know the nutritional problems found in early humans using fossil evidence.

true

Anthropologist Micheal Heckenberger found evidence that human settlements had much larger populations in parts of the Amazon rainforest earlier than was previously believed. His research suggests which of the following:

unlike more customary understandings of Amazon-dwelling people, they had been cultivating the rain forest for much longer than previously assumed.

Which of the following is NOT a feature of the generalized foraging model?

unquestioned obedience to the leadership of the band's headman by members of the band

Archaeologists can evaluate the complexity of a system through the analysis of material things because the material goods are part of an ______________.

urbanization

The growth of ancient towns into residential centers is called _______________.

urbanization

V. Gordon Childe's view of __________ was that social interactions lead to social stratification.

urbanization

Were you to visit the New Guinea Highlands, you might be offered a meal consisting of cooked pork and sweet potatoes, which demonstrates

use of low-intensity agricultural practices that nevertheless can provide significant food resources

Not all sites and materials are suitable for Carbon-14 dating. At which of the following sites would Carbon-14 dating be most appropriate?

volcanic rock beca

According to Robert Cameiro, increases in a society's population's size and social complexity lead to an increase in _____________.

warfare

in evolutionary terms, humans are distinct from the other primates with repsect to their ability to use language because

we can speak using our larynx

The recent interpretation of ancient empires has led archaeologists to conclude that many such empires were actually a little more than

well-organzied estates that served the needs of a temple

what does non-genetic language change mean?

when people are multilingual their use of each language subtly influences the other languages sounds, words, syntax, and grammar

Language ideology

widespread assumptions that people make about the relative sophistication and status of particular dialects and languages

Sedentism

year-round settlement in a particular place