Transcript Cultural Anthropology

What is Anthropology?
 Anthropology
can be understood as “the
holistic study of humankind”……………….
 Physical/biological
anthropology:
Deals with humans as
biological organisms
*concerned with two
broad areas of
investigation:
1. Reconstructing the evolutionary record of
the human species (asking questions about
the emergence of humans and how humans
have evolved up to the present time
(paleoanthropology)
 2.
How and why
the physical traits
of contemporary
human populations
vary throughout the
world.
 Primatology-area
of
specialization developed
since the 1950’s focusing on
the study of the anatomy
and social behavior of such
nonhuman primate species
such as gorillas, baboons
and chimpanzees in an
effort to gain clues about
our evolution as a species
 Archaeology:
Study of the lifeways of people from the past
by excavating and analyzing the material
culture they have left behind.
Archaeologists try to understand cultural
adaptations of ancient peoples by at least
partially reconstructing their cultures.
 Archaeologists
work with three types of
material remains:
1. artifacts: objects that have been made or
modified by humans and that can be
removed from the site and taken to the lab
for further analysis (tools, arrowheads and
fragments of pottery)
2. features: like artifacts, are made or
modified by people, but they cannot be
readily carried away from the dig site (house
foundations, fireplaces, postholes)
3. Ecofacts: include objects found
in the natural environment
(bones, seeds and wood) that
were not made or altered by
humans but were used by them.
Provide Archaeologists with
important data concerning the
environment and how people used
natural resources.
 Cultural
Resource Management (public
archaeology/contract archaeology):
A form of applied archaeology involving
evaluating, and sometimes excavating sites
before the construction of roads, dams and
buildings
 Anthropological
Linguistics:
Scientific study of human communication
within its sociocultural context.
Anthropological linguistics studies
contemporary human languages as well as
those of the past.
There are four distinct branches:
Historical Linguistics:
Deals with the
emergence of
language in general
and how specific
languages have
diverged over time.
 Glottochronology
Historical linguistic technique of determining
the approximate date that two languages
diverged by analyzing similarities and
differences in their vocabularies
 Descriptive
Linguistics
Branch of anthropological linguistics that
studies how languages are structured
 Ethnolinguistics
Study of the relationship between language
and culture
 Sociolinguistics:
Branch of
anthropological
linguistics that
studies how language
and culture are
related and how
language is used in
different social
contexts
 Cultural
Anthropology:
Branch of anthropology that deals with the
study of specific contemporary cultures and
the more general underlying patterns of
human culture derived through cultural
comparisons.
 Before
cultural
anthropologists can
examine cultural
differences and similarities
(ethnology)throughout the
world, they must first
describe the features of
specific cultures in as much
detail as possible.
 These
detailed descriptions are called
ETHNOGRAPHIES. They are the result of
extensive field studies (a year or two in
duration) in which the anthropologist
observes, talks to, and lives with the people
she is studying.
 Ethnology
The comparative study of contemporary
cultures, wherever they may be found.
Ethnologists seek to understand why both why
people today and in the recent past differ in
terms of ideas and behavior patterns and
what all cultures in the world have in
common with one another.
 Urban
Anthropology
 Medical Anthropology
 Educational anthropology
 Economic anthropology
 Psychological anthropology
 Holism:
a perspective in anthropology that
attempts to study a culture by looking at all
parts of the system and how those parts are
interrelated
 Cultural
relativism: the idea that cultural
traits are best understood when viewed
within the cultural context of which they are
a part