Unit 2 Anthropology Terms
Terms
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- A social unit made up of persons of approximately the same age; Groups in highly unilineal systems organized by age. Also, each generation has an identity and a bond from “hazing”. The older the generation, the more powerful
- Age sets/Age grades
- Farming using animal or mechanical labor and complex technologies
- Agriculture
- Everything has a soul
- Animistic
- Any object consciously manufactured. Usually refers to human-made objects, but now includes those made by other primates
- Artifact
- Giving with expectation of equivalent return; People will get supplies when they need them
- Balanced reciprocity
- Small autonomous groups, usually associated with foraging societies
- Bands
- A kinship system in which an individual is a member of both parentsÂ’ descent lines
- Bilateral
- The exchange of wealth from the groom to the bride’s family, i.e. cattle. Originally termed “bride price”, it was then noticed that marriages occurred even without this exchange and that even with the exchange the woman was free to leave the marriage
- Bride wealth
- A system of socioeconomic stratification in which strata are closed and a personÂ’s membership is determined by birth
- Caste
- A political organization made up of groups of interacting units, each of which has a chief or leader
- Chiefdom
- Cultures with an agricultural surplus, social stratification, labor specialization, a formal governments, rule by power, monumental construction projects, and a system of record keeping
- Civilization
- A system of socioeconomic stratification in which the strata are open and a person may move to a different stratum
- Class
- To arrange systematically. To put into words
- Codify
- The children of your fatherÂ’s sisters or motherÂ’s brothers. Often preferred marriage partners because they are not part of your lineage, but come from a similar family.
- Cross cousins
- Anew; from nothing
- Denovo
- Nuclear families that are connected over time
- Descent line
- When certain individuals within a society perform certain jobs. Usually refers to the different jobs of men and women
- Division of labor
- You inherit fatherÂ’s patrilineage and motherÂ’s matrilinage, but different trains from each lineage. For example, African culture may dictate that only men may inherit royalty, but royalty is inherited through the mother. Another example is that corpore
- Double descent
- BrideÂ’s family sends wealth to groom. They occur where location is overpopulated so that the process of marriage may be slowed down. Capitalist birth control.
- Dowry
- An unmodified natural object used as a tool
- Ecofact
- The practice of not recognizing, and even eliminating, differences in social status and wealth
- Egalitarianism
- Process of learning a culture. Also known as socialization
- Enculturation
- Marry within kinship
- Endogamy
- Making value judgments about another culture from the perspective of oneÂ’s own cultural system
- Ethnocentrism
- Marry outside of nuclear family
- Exogamy
- The nuclear family to which you belong as a child, consisting of your parents and siblings.
- Family of orientation
- The nuclear family to which you belong as an adult, consisting of your spouse and offspring
- Family of procreation
- Another name for hunting-and-gathering
- Foraging
- Giving with no expectations of equivalent return
- General reciprocity
- Living in groups
- Gregarious
- Farming using human labor and simple tools
- Horticulture
- A subsistence pattern that relies on naturally occurring sources of food
- Hunter-gatherer
- When one state tries to take the land of another state
- Imperialism
- Sometimes recognized as a subsistence pattern characterized by a focus on mechanical sources of energy and food production by a small percentage of the population
- Industrialism
- The killing of infants
- Infanticide
- Hunting and gathering in an environment that provides a very wide range of food resources
- Intensive foraging
- Your membership in a family and your relationship to other members of that family. May refer to biological ties but in anthropology usually refers to cultural ties modeled on biological ones
- Kinship
- You cannot increase production by intensifying labor in a certain area
- Labor-extensive
- By increasing (intensifying) labor in a certain area, you increase production
- Labor-intensive
- When certain jobs are performed by particular individuals
- Labor specialization
- Widow inheritance; the process through which a man inherits his brotherÂ’s widow. The man may also inherit his brotherÂ’s land and is allowed to sleep with the widow, but all children of this relationship belong to the descent line of the deceased brothe
- Levirate
- A portion of the brain involved in emotions such as fear, rage, and care for the young
- Limbic system
- Where money is used for exchange in place of goods and services
- Market System
- A unilineal kinship system in which an individual is a member of the mother's descent line
- Matrilineal
- A social unit made up of a societyÂ’s men. Common in highland New Guinea
- MenÂ’s associations
- A symbolic representation of wealth. Used for exchange in place of actual products or services
- Money
- A marriage unit made up of only one husband and one wife
- Monogamy
- Refers to the religious system that recognizes a single supernatural being
- Monotheistic
- A portion of the brain involved in conscious thought, spatial reasoning, and sensory perception
- Neocortex
- Referring to societies that move from place to place in search of resources or in response to seasonal fluctuations
- Nomadic
- Minimal human family unit; Temporary units including the family of orientation as a child, and the family of procreation as an adult
- Nuclear family
- Belief that “the seed contains the plant”, that the evolution is contained within the original. Under unilinear evolution, civilization was contained in foraging. “In the beginning is the outcome”
- Orthogenesis
- The children of your fatherÂ’s brothers or your motherÂ’s sisters. Under the Omaha kinship system, they are considered equivalent to siblings, and thus cannot be married under the incest taboo
- Parallel cousins
- The subsistence pattern characterized by an emphasis on herding animals
- Pastoralism
- A unilineal kinship system in which an individual is a member of the fatherÂ’s descent line
- Patrilineal
- The secular, nonkinship means of organizing the interactions within a society and between one society and others
- Political organization
- A marriage system with one wife and multiple husbands
- Polyandry
- A marriage system that allows multiple spouses
- Polygamy
- A marriage unit made up of one husband and multiple wives
- Polygyny
- Refers to a religious system that recognizes multiple supernatural beings, technically, multiple gods
- Polytheism
- The practice of prohibiting sex for a certain period of time after a woman gives birth for purposes of limiting the birthrate
- Postpartum sex taboo
- Technology developed to make food palatable and digestible by humans, i.e. a millstone
- Premastication
- A behavior containing most but not all of the characteristics of a cultural behavior; A precursor to culture which can be seen in primate populations
- Protocultural
- A primitive portion of the brain involved in self-preservation behavior such as mating, aggressiveness, and territoriality
- R-Complex
- Refers to a society that strives for equal distribution of goods and services but that achieves this through the use of recognized, often temporary, status differences
- Rank
- Where surplus goods are collected centrally and then given out to those persons in need of them
- Redistribution
- They share everything according to needs and work according to their abilities. May be seen in foraging communities
- Reciprocal economy
- A human settlement pattern in which people largely stay in one place year-round, although some members of the population may still be mobile in the search for food and raw materials
- Sedentary
- The presence of acknowledged differences in social status, political influence, and wealth among the people within a society
- Social stratification
- Process of learning a culture. Also known as enculturation
- Socialization
- System under which if a woman dies, her sister may replace her place in a marriage
- Sororate
- A political organization with one central authority governing all the individual subunits
- State
- How a society acquires its food
- Subsistence pattern
- Something that stands for something else, with no necessary link between the symbol and its meaning
- Symbol
- A political organization with no central leader but in which the subunits may make collective decisions about the entire group
- Tribe
- Harvest resources from animals that do the work
- Unearned Resource Use
- A kinship system in which an individual is a member of only one parentÂ’s descent line
- Unilineal
- Idea that there exists a natural tendency of progression. This progression includes the succession of foragers -> agriculture -> civilization. It is also completely false
- Unilinear evolution
- The collective interpretation of and response to the natural and cultural environments in which a group of people lives. Their assumptions about these environments and values derived from those assumptions
- Worldview
- Anthropologist who spent over 40 years studying a large population of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania
- Jane Goodall
- Member of the National Institute of Mental Health that proposed the model for the triune (three-part) brain, consisting of the R-complex, limbic system, and neocortex
- Paul MacLean
- Author of American Anthropologist, in which he demonstrated how all cultures may be subjected to anthropological scrutiny.
- Horace Miner
- Soviet agronomist that proposed a method for growing plants not based on evolution and Mendelian genetics, but rather Lamarkian ideas about the inheritance of acquired characteristics. It was adopted by the communist regime and, because of this, the Sovi
- Trofim D. Lysenko
- Walked around and collected food similar to a hunter-gatherer. Averaged about 100-150 lbs of meat a day.
- George Schaller
- This society lives in a harsh environment which they cannot pretend to control. This leads to their worldview as being part of nature, not above it. This also contributes to their animistic spiritual beliefs, which can be seen in their begging forgivenes
- American Arctic/Eskimo
- About 10,000 years ago they discovered agriculture which gradually allowed them to have more control over the environment. As a result, they began to recognize a monotheistic god that has control over all natural phenomena, much like they have control.
- Southwest Asia
- Found in Angola, Namibia, and Botswana in South Africa, they had been a foraging society until very recently. Their name comes from the use of clicks in the language. They are regularly on the move, so nomadic. They live in small bands that average ten t
- San (Bushmen)
- Foragers with a large population and sedentary communities. Able to do this b/c of annual salmon runs. Held potlatches to try and get rid of everything to demonstrate how they didnÂ’t need it all.
- Kwakiutl of British Columbia