What is Cultural Anthropology?

Connotation

All the meanings, associations, or emotions that a word suggests

non-material culture

Human creations, such as values, norms, knowledge, systems of government, language, and so on, that are not embodied in physical objects

Artifacts

Items that have been made, used, or modified by human beings.

Primates

Members of the mammalian order Primates, which includes lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans.

Fossils

Preserved remains of once-living organisms

Primary Sources

Primary sources provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. They are created by witnesses or recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented.

Holism

The anthropological commitment to consider the full scope of human life, including culture, biology, history, and language, across space and time.

Acculturation

The process of adjusting to a secondary culture that is different from your own.

Adaptation

The process of species adjusting to better fit their environments through evolution.

Linguistic Anthropology

The study of human language in the past and present.

Anthropology

The study of humans

folklore

The traditional beliefs, myths, tales, and practices of a people, transmitted orally.

Applied Anthropology

The use of anthropological knowledge and methods to solve practical problems.

Moral Relativism

The view that there is no absolute or universal moral law or truth, resulting in a morality determined by cultural factors or personal preference.

Cultural Resource Management (CRM)

a professional field that conducts activities, including archaeology, related to compliance with legislation aimed at conserving cultural resources

prejudice

an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members. Prejudice generally involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action.

sign

anything that is used to represent something else.

empirical

based on observation or experiment

Norms

cultural rules of right and wrong

Physical Anthropology

focuses on anatomy in its study of human evolution and variation.

Evolution

genetic change in species over generations

cultural relativism

not judging a culture but trying to understand it on its own terms

material culture

tangible, physical items produced and used by members of a specific culture group and reflective of their traditions, lifestyles, and technologies

Forensic Archaeology

the application of archaeological and bioarchaeological knowledge for legal purposes

Cultural Anthropology

the comparative, cross-cultural study of human society and culture

natural history

the description and classification of all forms of life.

biological determinism

the idea that people's thoughts and actions are driven by inherited genetic factors.

Culture

the learned behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next. It is the primary non-biological strategy that humans use for coping with the environment.

Denotation

the literal meaning of a word

Ethnocentrism

the practice of judging other cultures by the standards of your own.

Enculturation

the process by which one's native cultures is/are learned and transmitted across the generations

Genetics

the study of DNA, the molecule that provides the blueprint for life.

Biological Anthropology

the study of human biological variation in time and space

Archaeology

the study of the past based on what people left behind

Interpretant

the term that C.S. Peirce used to refer to the connection that is made between the sign, or representamen, and its object.

Object

the term that C.S. Peirce used to refer to the thing that a sign represents.

icon

the type of sign that represents something because it bears a resemblance to it.

Index

the type of sign that represents something because it has a real physical relationship to it.

critical thinking

thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions. Rather, it examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions.

indigenous

those who are first or native to an area and cannot be said to have descended from immigrants.