Unit 2 Anthropology Terms

Front 1

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

Back 1

Age sets/Age grades

Front 2

Farming using animal or mechanical labor and complex technologies

Back 2

Agriculture

Front 3

Everything has a soul

Back 3

Animistic

Front 4

Any object consciously manufactured. Usually refers to human-made objects, but now includes those made by other primates

Back 4

Artifact

Front 5

Giving with expectation of equivalent return; People will get supplies when they need them

Back 5

Balanced reciprocity

Front 6

Small autonomous groups, usually associated with foraging societies

Back 6

Bands

Front 7

A kinship system in which an individual is a member of both parents’ descent lines

Back 7

Bilateral

Front 8

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 at any time. The purpose of the bride wealth is to determine custody of the children in the event of a divorce. If the wife leaves unprovoked and there was an exchange of wealth, the children are the husband’s. If there was no exchange of wealth, the children belong to the wife’s family. In addition, if it can be shown that the husband was unfit, the children are the wife’s even if there was an exchange of wealth. BRIDE WEALTH MAY BE SEEN AS A BOND FOR THE HUSBAND TO PERFORM WELL IN THIS MARRIAGE, OTHERWISE HIS WIFE MAY LEAVE, KEEP THE WEALTH, AND THE CHILDREN.

Back 8

Bride wealth

Front 9

A system of socioeconomic stratification in which strata are closed and a person’s membership is determined by birth

Back 9

Caste

Front 10

A political organization made up of groups of interacting units, each of which has a chief or leader

Back 10

Chiefdom

Front 11

Cultures with an agricultural surplus, social stratification, labor specialization, a formal governments, rule by power, monumental construction projects, and a system of record keeping

Back 11

Civilization

Front 12

A system of socioeconomic stratification in which the strata are open and a person may move to a different stratum

Back 12

Class

Front 13

To arrange systematically. To put into words

Back 13

Codify

Front 14

The children of your father’s sisters or mother’s brothers. Often preferred marriage partners because they are not part of your lineage, but come from a similar family.

Back 14

Cross cousins

Front 15

Anew; from nothing

Back 15

Denovo

Front 16

Nuclear families that are connected over time

Back 16

Descent line

Front 17

When certain individuals within a society perform certain jobs. Usually refers to the different jobs of men and women

Back 17

Division of labor

Front 18

You inherit father’s patrilineage and mother’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 corporeal things are inherited through the mother, spiritual through the father, so you belong to father’s church but mother’s political system.

Back 18

Double descent

Front 19

Bride’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.

Back 19

Dowry

Front 20

An unmodified natural object used as a tool

Back 20

Ecofact

Front 21

The practice of not recognizing, and even eliminating, differences in social status and wealth

Back 21

Egalitarianism

Front 22

Process of learning a culture. Also known as socialization

Back 22

Enculturation

Front 23

Marry within kinship

Back 23

Endogamy

Front 24

Making value judgments about another culture from the perspective of one’s own cultural system

Back 24

Ethnocentrism

Front 25

Marry outside of nuclear family

Back 25

Exogamy

Front 26

The nuclear family to which you belong as a child, consisting of your parents and siblings.

Back 26

Family of orientation

Front 27

The nuclear family to which you belong as an adult, consisting of your spouse and offspring

Back 27

Family of procreation

Front 28

Another name for hunting-and-gathering

Back 28

Foraging

Front 29

Giving with no expectations of equivalent return

Back 29

General reciprocity

Front 30

Living in groups

Back 30

Gregarious

Front 31

Farming using human labor and simple tools

Back 31

Horticulture

Front 32

A subsistence pattern that relies on naturally occurring sources of food

Back 32

Hunter-gatherer

Front 33

When one state tries to take the land of another state

Back 33

Imperialism

Front 34

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

Back 34

Industrialism

Front 35

The killing of infants

Back 35

Infanticide

Front 36

Hunting and gathering in an environment that provides a very wide range of food resources

Back 36

Intensive foraging

Front 37

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

Back 37

Kinship

Front 38

You cannot increase production by intensifying labor in a certain area

Back 38

Labor-extensive

Front 39

By increasing (intensifying) labor in a certain area, you increase production

Back 39

Labor-intensive

Front 40

When certain jobs are performed by particular individuals

Back 40

Labor specialization

Front 41

Widow inheritance; the process through which a man inherits his brother’s widow. The man may also inherit his brother’s land and is allowed to sleep with the widow, but all children of this relationship belong to the descent line of the deceased brother

Back 41

Levirate

Front 42

A portion of the brain involved in emotions such as fear, rage, and care for the young

Back 42

Limbic system

Front 43

Where money is used for exchange in place of goods and services

Back 43

Market System

Front 44

A unilineal kinship system in which an individual is a member of the mother's descent line

Back 44

Matrilineal

Front 45

A social unit made up of a society’s men. Common in highland New Guinea

Back 45

Men’s associations

Front 46

A symbolic representation of wealth. Used for exchange in place of actual products or services

Back 46

Money

Front 47

A marriage unit made up of only one husband and one wife

Back 47

Monogamy

Front 48

Refers to the religious system that recognizes a single supernatural being

Back 48

Monotheistic

Front 49

A portion of the brain involved in conscious thought, spatial reasoning, and sensory perception

Back 49

Neocortex

Front 50

Referring to societies that move from place to place in search of resources or in response to seasonal fluctuations

Back 50

Nomadic

Front 51

Minimal human family unit; Temporary units including the family of orientation as a child, and the family of procreation as an adult

Back 51

Nuclear family

Front 52

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”

Back 52

Orthogenesis

Front 53

The children of your father’s brothers or your mother’s sisters. Under the Omaha kinship system, they are considered equivalent to siblings, and thus cannot be married under the incest taboo

Back 53

Parallel cousins

Front 54

The subsistence pattern characterized by an emphasis on herding animals

Back 54

Pastoralism

Front 55

A unilineal kinship system in which an individual is a member of the father’s descent line

Back 55

Patrilineal

Front 56

The secular, nonkinship means of organizing the interactions within a society and between one society and others

Back 56

Political organization

Front 57

A marriage system with one wife and multiple husbands

Back 57

Polyandry

Front 58

A marriage system that allows multiple spouses

Back 58

Polygamy

Front 59

A marriage unit made up of one husband and multiple wives

Back 59

Polygyny

Front 60

Refers to a religious system that recognizes multiple supernatural beings, technically, multiple gods

Back 60

Polytheism

Front 61

The practice of prohibiting sex for a certain period of time after a woman gives birth for purposes of limiting the birthrate

Back 61

Postpartum sex taboo

Front 62

Technology developed to make food palatable and digestible by humans, i.e. a millstone

Back 62

Premastication

Front 63

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

Back 63

Protocultural

Front 64

A primitive portion of the brain involved in self-preservation behavior such as mating, aggressiveness, and territoriality

Back 64

R-Complex

Front 65

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

Back 65

Rank

Front 66

Where surplus goods are collected centrally and then given out to those persons in need of them

Back 66

Redistribution

Front 67

They share everything according to needs and work according to their abilities. May be seen in foraging communities

Back 67

Reciprocal economy

Front 68

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

Back 68

Sedentary

Front 69

The presence of acknowledged differences in social status, political influence, and wealth among the people within a society

Back 69

Social stratification

Front 70

Process of learning a culture. Also known as enculturation

Back 70

Socialization

Front 71

System under which if a woman dies, her sister may replace her place in a marriage

Back 71

Sororate

Front 72

A political organization with one central authority governing all the individual subunits

Back 72

State

Front 73

How a society acquires its food

Back 73

Subsistence pattern

Front 74

Something that stands for something else, with no necessary link between the symbol and its meaning

Back 74

Symbol

Front 75

A political organization with no central leader but in which the subunits may make collective decisions about the entire group

Back 75

Tribe

Front 76

Harvest resources from animals that do the work

Back 76

Unearned Resource Use

Front 77

A kinship system in which an individual is a member of only one parent’s descent line

Back 77

Unilineal

Front 78

Idea that there exists a natural tendency of progression. This progression includes the succession of foragers -> agriculture -> civilization. It is also completely false

Back 78

Unilinear evolution

Front 79

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

Back 79

Worldview

Front 80

Anthropologist who spent over 40 years studying a large population of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania

Back 80

Jane Goodall

Front 81

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

Back 81

Paul MacLean

Front 82

Author of American Anthropologist, in which he demonstrated how all cultures may be subjected to anthropological scrutiny.

Back 82

Horace Miner

Front 83

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 Soviets’ agriculture fell far behind that of the West

Back 83

Trofim D. Lysenko

Front 84

Walked around and collected food similar to a hunter-gatherer. Averaged about 100-150 lbs of meat a day.

Back 84

George Schaller

Front 85

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 forgiveness after killing a seal. This is seen in the Netsilik of the Hudson Bay region of Canada

Back 85

American Arctic/Eskimo

Front 86

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.

Back 86

Southwest Asia

Front 87

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 to thirty people and are egalitarian. This equality applies also to success in hunting, so to downplay the honor of making the kill they “insult the meat” (called this by Richard Lee). This covers up the natural inequality of some men being better hunters than others. The vast majority of men are monogamous, although some are polygynous. Multiple spiritual beings, including 2 more-important gods. They also display the foragers’ lack on understanding the ownership of land.

Back 87

San (Bushmen)

Front 88

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 didn’t need it all.

Back 88

Kwakiutl of British Columbia