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Ethology
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Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Many naturalists have studied aspects of animal behaviour throughout history, Ethology is a combination of laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to some other disciplines such as neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Ethologists are typically interested in a process rather than in a particular animal group. Ethology is a growing field. New fields, such as neuroethology, have developed, understanding ethology or animal behaviour can be important in animal training. Considering the natural behaviours of different species or breeds enables the trainer to select the individuals best suited to perform the required task and it also enables the trainer to encourage the performance of naturally occurring behaviours and also the discontinuance of undesirable behaviours. The term ethology derives from the Greek language, ἦθος, ethos meaning character and -λογία, the term was first popularized by American myrmecologist William Morton Wheeler in 1902. An earlier, slightly different sense of the term was proposed by John Stuart Mill in his 1843 System of Logic. He recommended the development of a new science, ethology, the purpose of which would be explanation of individual and national differences in character and this use of the word was never adopted. Comparative psychology also studies animal behaviour, but, as opposed to ethology, is construed as a sub-topic of psychology rather than as one of biology. The two approaches are complementary rather than competitive, but they do result in different perspectives, in addition, for most of the twentieth century, comparative psychology developed most strongly in North America, while ethology was stronger in Europe. From a practical standpoint, early comparative psychologists concentrated on gaining extensive knowledge of the behaviour of very few species, ethologists were more interested in understanding behaviour across a wide range of species to facilitate principled comparisons across taxonomic groups. Ethologists have made more use of such cross-species comparisons than comparative psychologists have. See also, Great Chain of Being Until the 19th century, jean-Baptiste Lamarck was the first biologist to describe a complex theory of evolution. The second statement is that living organism, humans included. When Charles Darwin went to the Galapagos Islands, he was aware of Lamarcks theories and was influenced by them. In one sense, the first modern ethologist was Charles Darwin, whose book The Expression of the Emotions in Man, other early ethologists, such as Charles O. Their beginning for studying the behaviour of a new species was to construct an ethogram and this provided an objective, cumulative data-base of behaviour, which subsequent researchers could check and supplement
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Anthropology
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Anthropology is the study of various aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology and cultural anthropology study the norms and values of societies, linguistic anthropology studies how language affects social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the development of humans. The abstract noun anthropology is first attested in reference to history and its present use first appeared in Renaissance Germany in the works of Magnus Hundt and Otto Casmann. Their New Latin anthropologia derived from the forms of the Greek words ánthrōpos and lógos. It began to be used in English, possibly via French anthropologie, various short-lived organizations of anthropologists had already been formed. The Société Ethnologique de Paris, the first to use Ethnology, was formed in 1839 and its members were primarily anti-slavery activists. When slavery was abolished in France in 1848 the Société was abandoned and these anthropologists of the times were liberal, anti-slavery, and pro-human-rights activists. Anthropology and many other current fields are the results of the comparative methods developed in the earlier 19th century. For them, the publication of Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species was the epiphany of everything they had begun to suspect, Darwin himself arrived at his conclusions through comparison of species he had seen in agronomy and in the wild. Darwin and Wallace unveiled evolution in the late 1850s, there was an immediate rush to bring it into the social sciences. When he read Darwin he became a convert to Transformisme. His definition now became the study of the group, considered as a whole, in its details. Broca, being what today would be called a neurosurgeon, had taken an interest in the pathology of speech and he wanted to localize the difference between man and the other animals, which appeared to reside in speech. He discovered the speech center of the brain, today called Brocas area after him. The title was translated as The Anthropology of Primitive Peoples. The last two volumes were published posthumously, Waitz defined anthropology as the science of the nature of man. By nature he meant matter animated by the Divine breath, i. e. he was an animist and he stresses that the data of comparison must be empirical, gathered by experimentation
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History of anthropology
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History of anthropology in this article refers primarily to the 18th- and 19th-century precursors of modern anthropology. The term anthropology itself, innovated as a New Latin scientific word during the Renaissance, has meant the study of man. The topics to be included and the terminology have varied historically, at present they are more elaborate than they were during the development of anthropology. For a presentation of social and cultural anthropology as they have developed in Britain, France. The term anthropology ostensibly is a compound of Greek ἄνθρωπος anthrōpos, human being. The compound, however, is unknown in ancient Greek or Latin and it first appears sporadically in the scholarly Latin anthropologia of Renaissance France, where it spawns the French word anthropologie, transferred into English as anthropology. It does belong to a class of words produced with the suffix, such as archeo-logy, bio-logy, etc. “the study of. ”The mixed character of Greek anthropos. There is no independent noun, logia, however, of meaning in classical Greek. The word λόγος has that meaning, James Hunt attempted to rescue the etymology in his first address to the Anthropological Society of London as president and founder,1863. He did find an anthropologos from Aristotle in the standard ancient Greek Lexicon, which he defines the word as “speaking or treating of man. ”This view is entirely wishful thinking, as Liddell and Scott go on to explain the meaning, “i. e. fond of personal conversation. ”If Aristotle. The lack of any ancient denotation of anthropology, however, is not an etymological problem, Liddell and Scott list 170 Greek compounds ending in –logia, enough to justify its later use as a productive suffix. The ancient Greeks often used suffixes in forming compounds that had no independent variant, the etymological dictionaries are united in attributing –logia to logos, from legein, “to collect. ”The thing collected is primarily ideas, especially in speech. The American Heritage Dictionary says, “ derivatives independently built to logos, marvin Harris, a historian of anthropology, begins The Rise of Anthropological Theory with the statement that anthropology is “the science of history. Just as natural history comprises the characteristics of organisms past and present, so cultural or social history comprises the characteristics of society past and it includes both documented history and prehistory, but its slant is toward institutional development rather than particular non-repeatable historical events. According to Harris, the 19th-century anthropologists were theorizing under the presumption that the development of society followed some sort of laws and he decries the loss of that view in the 20th century by the denial that any laws are discernable or that current institutions have any bearing on ancient. He coins the term ideographic for them, the 19th-century views, on the other hand, are nomothetic, that is, they provide laws. He intends “to reassert the methodological priority of the search for the laws of history in the science of man. ”He is looking for “a general theory of history. ”The use of “tends to” implies some degree of freedom to happen or not happen, but in strict determinism, given certain causes, the result and only that result must occur. Different philosophers, however, use determinism in different senses. ”Institutions are not a physical reality, when they act in society, they do so according to the laws of history, of which they are not aware, hence, there is no historical element of free will
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Archaeology
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Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology as a field is distinct from the discipline of palaeontology, Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world, Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time. The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past, in broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Nonetheless, today, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, the science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts. Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Antiquarians, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, one of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other monuments in southern England. He was also ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings and he attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes. Excavations were also carried out in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, however, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard, the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked. The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington and he undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, one of the major achievements of 19th century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites
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Biological anthropology
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It is a subfield of anthropology that provides a biological perspective to the systematic study of human beings. As a subfield of anthropology, biological anthropology itself is divided into several branches. All branches are united in their application of evolutionary theory to understanding human morphology. Primatology, the study of primate behavior, morphology. Reasons via homology and analogy to infer how and why similar human traits evolved, human behavioral ecology, the study of behavioral adaptations from the evolutionary and ecologic perspectives. Human adaptation, the study of human responses to environmental stresses. Bioarchaeology, the study of past human cultures through examination of human remains recovered in an archaeological context, the examined human remains usually comprises bones, but may include preserved soft tissue. Researchers in bioarchaeology combine the skillsets of human osteology, paleopathology, and archaeology, paleopathology is the study of disease in antiquity. Scientific physical anthropology began in the 18th century with the study of racial classification, the first prominent physical anthropologist, the German physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach of Göttingen, amassed a large collection of human skulls. In 1897 Columbia University appointed Franz Boas as a physical anthropologist for his expertise in measuring schoolchildren, from his German education and training, Boas emphasized the mutability of the human form and minimized race in favor of culture. Ales Hrdlicka, a physician, studied anthropology in France under Leonce Manouvrier before working at the Smithsonian Institution from 1902. Earnest Hooton, a Classics PhD from the University of Wisconsin, entered anthropology as an Oxford Rhodes Scholar under R. R. Marett, there was much intellectual continuity with Germans such as Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz and Erwin Baur. In 1951 Sherwood Washburn, a Hooton alumnus, introduced a new physical anthropology and he changed the focus from racial typology to concentrate upon the study of human evolution, moving away from classification towards evolutionary process. Anthropology expanded to comprehend paleoanthropology and primatology, in contrast to much of medical anthropology, it does not generally take a critical approach to biomedicine and Western medicine. Instead, it seeks to improve medical practice and biomedical science through the integration of cross-cultural or biocultural, behavioral. As an academic discipline, biomedical anthropology is closely related to human biology, currently, the only accredited degree program in biomedical anthropology is at Binghamton University. Other anthropology departments, such as that of the University of Washington, anthropometry, the measurement of the human individual Craniometry Ethology Evolutionary biology Evolutionary psychology Paleontology Physiognomy Primatology Sociobiology Michael A
6.
Cultural anthropology
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Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of the anthropological constant, a variety of methods are involved in cultural anthropological, including participant observation, interviews, and surveys. The term civilization later gave way to definitions given by V. Gordon Childe, with forming an umbrella term. Anthropologists have argued that culture is human nature, and that all people have a capacity to classify experiences, encode classifications symbolically, since humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, people living in different places or different circumstances develop different cultures. Anthropologists have also pointed out that through culture people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, much of anthropological theory has originated in an appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local and the global. Colonialism and its processes increasingly brought European thinkers into direct or indirect contact with primitive others, the umbrella term socio-cultural anthropology draws upon both cultural and social anthropology traditions. Anthropology is with the lives of people within different parts of the world, particularly in relation to the discourse of beliefs, in addressing this question, ethnologists in the 19th century divided into two schools of thought. Other ethnologists argued that different groups had the capability of creating similar beliefs, Morgan, in particular, acknowledged that certain forms of society and culture could not possibly have arisen before others. For example, industrial farming could not have been invented before simple farming, Morgan, like other 19th century social evolutionists, believed there was a more or less orderly progression from the primitive to the civilized. Some 20th-century ethnologists, like Julian Steward, have argued that such similarities reflected similar adaptations to similar environments. But these ethnographers also pointed out the superficiality of such similarities. They noted that even traits that spread through diffusion often were given different meanings, others, such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, have argued that apparently similar patterns of development reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of human thought. Cultural relativism is a principle that was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas, Boas first articulated the idea in 1887. civilization is not something absolute, but. is relative, and. Our ideas and conceptions are only so far as our civilization goes. Although, Boas did not coin the term, it became common among anthropologists after Boas death in 1942, to express their synthesis of a number of ideas Boas had developed. Boas believed that the sweep of cultures, to be found in connection with any sub-species, is so vast, Cultural relativism involves specific epistemological and methodological claims. Whether or not these claims require a specific ethical stance is a matter of debate and this principle should not be confused with moral relativism. Cultural relativism was in part a response to Western ethnocentrism, ethnocentrism may take obvious forms, in which one consciously believes that ones peoples arts are the most beautiful, values the most virtuous, and beliefs the most truthful
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Social anthropology
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In the USA, social anthropology is commonly subsumed within cultural anthropology. Differences among British, French, and American sociocultural anthropologies have diminished with increasing dialogue, Social and cultural anthropologists, and some who integrate the two, are found in most institutes of anthropology. Thus the formal names of institutional units no longer necessarily reflect fully the content of the disciplines these cover, most retain the name under which they were founded. It is differentiated from sociology, both in its methods, and in its commitment to the relevance and illumination provided by micro studies. It extends beyond strictly social phenomena to culture, art, individuality, many social anthropologists use quantitative methods, too, particularly those whose research touches on topics such as local economies, demography, human ecology, cognition, or health and illness. The subject has been enlivened by, and has contributed to, approaches from other disciplines, such as philosophy, the history of science, psychoanalysis, the subject has both ethical and reflexive dimensions. An example of this is the effect, whereby those being studied may alter their behaviour in response to the knowledge that they are being watched and studied. Social anthropology has historical roots in a number of 19th-century disciplines, including ethnology, folklore studies, thus, savages from the colonies were displayed, often nudes, in cages, in what has been called human zoos. Penniman to write a history of the discipline entitled A Hundred Years of Anthropology, at the time, the field was dominated by the comparative method. It was assumed that all societies passed through an evolutionary process from the most primitive to most advanced. Non-European societies were seen as evolutionary living fossils that could be studied in order to understand the European past. Scholars wrote histories of prehistoric migrations which were sometimes valuable but often also fanciful and it was during this time that Europeans first accurately traced Polynesian migrations across the Pacific Ocean for instance - although some of them believed it originated in Egypt. Finally, the concept of race was actively discussed as a way to classify -, Tylor and James George Frazer are generally considered the antecedents to modern social anthropology in Britain. Tylor advocated strongly for unilinealism and a form of uniformity of mankind, Frazer, a Scottish scholar with a broad knowledge of Classics, also concerned himself with religion, myth, and magic. His comparative studies, most influentially in the editions of The Golden Bough, analyzed similarities in religious belief. Neither Tylor nor Frazer, however, were interested in fieldwork, nor were they interested in examining how the cultural elements. The Golden Bough was abridged drastically in subsequent editions after his first, the findings of the expedition set new standards for ethnographic description. As a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resident on a British colonial possession, theoretically, he advocated a functionalist interpretation, which examined how social institutions functioned to satisfy individual needs
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Aerial archaeology
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Aerial archaeology is the study of archaeological remains by examining them from altitude. Early investigators attempted to gain birdseye views of sites using hot air balloons, photographs may be taken either vertically, that is from directly overhead, or obliquely, meaning that they are taken at an angle. In order to provide an effect, an overlapping pair of vertical photographs, taken from slightly offset positions. The advantages of aerial photographs to archaeologists are manifold, large sites could for the first time be viewed accurately, in their entirety and within their landscape. This aided the production of plans and also inspired archaeologists to look beyond the discrete monument. Photos are taken vertically for the purposes of planning and spatial analysis, through the process of photogrammetry, vertical photos can be converted into scaled plans. Archaeological features may also be visible from the air than on the ground. In temperate Europe, aerial reconnaissance is one of the most important ways in which new archaeological sites are discovered and these are referred to as shadow marks. Frost can also appear in winter on ploughed fields where water has naturally accumulated along the lines of buried features, in cases like the Nazca lines, the features are meaningless from the ground but easily visible from the air. Aerial archaeology is used in the processes of research and investigation in aviation archaeology, archaeological field survey Cropmark Shadow marks Xenoarchaeology Bibliography Bourgeois, J. and Meganck, M. Aerial Photography and Archaeology 2003. ISBN 90-382-0782-4 Brophy, K. and Cowley, D, from the air, understanding aerial archaeology. ISBN 0-7524-3130-7 Riley, D. N. Air photography and archaeology, ISBN 0-8122-8087-3 Wilson, D. R. Air photo interpretation for archaeologists, London, The History Press Ltd. ISBN 0-7524-1498-4 Aerial Archaeology Research Group Emporia State University, Aerial Archaeology Aerial and Remote Sensing Archaeology Link, aerialArchaeology. com focuses heavily on near-earth imaging technologies such as kite aerial photography, remote-control powered parachutes, balloons, and model airplanes and helicopters. *** Off-line April 20,2010 *** ACE Foundation Kite Aerial Photographers - Archaeology Sir Henry Wellcome Aerial Archaeology in Northern France
9.
Aviation archaeology
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Aviation archaeology is a recognized sub-discipline within archaeology and underwater archaeology as a whole. It is an activity practiced by enthusiasts and academics in pursuit of finding, documenting, recovering, and preserving sites important in aviation history. For the most part, these sites are aircraft wrecks and crash sites, the activity dates to post-World War II Europe when, after the conflict, numerous aircraft wrecks studded the countryside. Many times, memorials to those involved in the crashes were put together by individuals, families, landholders, the United Kingdom, whose land was littered with enemy aircraft, introduced a scrap metal initiative for the public which encouraged its disposal. Members of the public who found aircraft sites, especially farmers who could dig them up, beginning in the 1970s, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, looting of aviation wreck sites began to disturb the general public. As the activity grew, laws and regulations were created in areas to counter problems created, such as trespassing. Crash sites vary in size and content, some may have fuselages, engines, Remains of military aircraft crash sites may also be removed by various aircraft restoration groups, particularly if the aircraft was found largely intact. In general, most recent-day aircraft crashes are removed entirely, due to environmental regulations, for example, military crashes in Arizona originate from numerous air bases, past and present. Because of the warm and sunny weather, much of the U. S. Army Air Forces flight training was located in the state, numerous air bases dotted the states - creating conditions for numerous training accidents. Old abandoned US Army Air Corp auxiliary fields and those converted to city municipal airports provide archaeological sites to be researched and investigated. The internet is a media for sharing, recording, educating. For identifying aircraft type and manufacturer by part numbers and manufacturing inspection stamps can be analysed, from detailed GPS data & maps, to researching accident reports information, numerous resources help create a complete picture of the historic event. Accident reports, such as the official US Air Force Accident Report Form 14 becomes the foundation of archaeology research, from there, newspaper articles, county clerk records, sheriff & coroner reports, and library records all aid an aviation archaeologist in their research. Legal protection of aircraft wreck sites is highly variable, in terms of protection by aircraft ownership, the U. S. Navy retains indefinite ownership of all Naval aircraft, including terrestrial or submerged wreck sites. The U. S. Air Force has no policies regarding disturbance of vintage aircraft wreck sites, Sites on federal land are further protected under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 throughout a determination process. The act stipulates that all historic sites must undergo a Section 106 review to determine eligibility for the National Register of Historical Places prior to being disturbed. Federal lands include, among others, National Parks, National Forests, National Marine Sanctuaries, in most cases, the State Historic Preservation Officer will determine whether or not an aviation site is eligible for the register. The National Register deems aviation wreck sites as “any aircraft that has crashed, ditched, damaged, stranded
10.
Biblical archaeology
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For the movement associated with William F. Albright and also known as biblical archaeology, see Biblical archaeology school. The principal location of interest is what is known in the relevant religions as the Holy Land, the scientific techniques used are the same as those used in general archaeology, such as excavation and radiocarbon dating. Biblical archaeology is polemical as there are a number of points of view regarding the nature of its purpose, a number of points of view from important archaeologists are included in the section on Expert Commentaries. In order to understand the significance of biblical archaeology it is first necessary to understand two basic concepts, archaeology as a framework and the Bible as an object for research. Archaeology is a science, not in the Aristotelian sense of cognitio certa per causas and it might be thought that archaeology would have to disregard the information contained within religions and many philosophical systems. This contemporary perception of the myth, mainly developed by Bultmann, has encouraged scientists such as archaeologists to examine the areas indicated by the biblical tales. Other authors prefer to talk about the archaeology of Palestine and to define the relevant territories as those to the east and west of the River Jordan and this indicates that biblical archaeology or that of Palestine is circumscribed by the territories that were the backdrop to the biblical stories. The raison d’etre of biblical archaeology derives from the fact that it allows an understanding of the peoples that inhabited the Holy Land and it allows an understanding of their history, culture, identity and movements. This makes it possible to know the location of the stories. Albright, G. Ernest Wright and Yigael Yadin, using this approach, introduced by P. Biblical archaeology lends fundamental support to exegetical studies, the geographical area that circumscribes the area of interest for biblical archaeology is obviously the biblical lands, also known as the Holy Land. Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece and Rome have greater connections with the stories from the New Testament, in the same way that the spatial criteria vary according to the various points of view of the different researchers, there are also a variety of dates that are of interest. This time period is considered by authorities to be too wide. The term Apostolic Church is taken to mean the period when Jesuss apostles were alive. This period ends with the death of John the Evangelist, the date of his death is not known. However, some consider that the authors of the Fourth Gospel. 8500–4300 BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic = c, 8500–6000 BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic A = c. The most important historical sources include Josephus, Origen, Eusebius, Egeria or Aetheria, was a Spanish woman who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 381 and 384
11.
Forensic anthropology
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Forensic anthropology is the application of the anatomical science of anthropology and its various subfields, including forensic archaeology and forensic taphonomy, in a legal setting. A forensic anthropologist can assist in the identification of deceased individuals whose remains are decomposed, burned, mutilated or otherwise unrecognizable, Forensic anthropologists are also instrumental to the investigation and documentation of genocide and mass graves. Along with forensic pathologists, forensic dentists, and homicide investigators, using physical markers present on a skeleton, a forensic anthropologist can potentially determine a victims age, sex, stature, and ancestry. The methods used to identity a person from a skeleton relies on the past contributions of various anthropologists, through the collection of thousands of specimens and the analysis of differences within a population, estimations can be made based on physical characteristics. Through these, a set of remains can potentially be identified, today, forensic anthropology is a well established discipline within the forensic field. Anthropologists are called upon to investigate remains and to identify individuals from bones when other physical characteristics which could be used to identify a body no longer exist. Forensic anthropologists work in conjunction with forensic pathologists to identify remains based on their skeletal characteristics, in addition to these duties, forensic anthropologists often assist in the investigation of war crimes and mass fatality investigations. Anthropologists have also helped victims of genocide in countries around the world. War crimes anthropologists have helped investigate include the Rwandan Genocide and the Srebrenica Genocide, the use of anthropology in the forensic investigation of remains grew out of the recognition of anthropology as a distinct scientific discipline and the growth of physical anthropology. The field of anthropology began in the United States and struggled to obtain recognition as a legitimate science during the years of the twentieth century. Earnest Hooton pioneered the field of anthropology and became the first physical anthropologist to hold a full-time teaching position in the United States. He was a committee member of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists along with its founder Aleš Hrdlička. Hootons students created some of the first doctoral programs in physical anthropology during the early 20th century, in addition to physical anthropology, Hooton was a proponent of criminal anthropology. Now considered a pseudoscience, criminal anthropologists believed that phrenology and physiognomy could link a persons behavior to specific physical characteristics, the use of criminal anthropology to try to explain certain criminal behaviors arose out of the eugenics movement, popular at the time. The study of information helped shape anthropologists understanding of the human skeleton. Another prominent early anthropologist, Thomas Wingate Todd, was responsible for the creation of the first large collection of human skeletons in 1912. In total, Todd acquired 3,300 human skulls and skeletons,600 anthropoid skulls and skeletons, todds contributions to the field of anthropology remain in use in the modern era and include various studies regarding suture closures on the skull and timing of teeth eruption in the mandible. Todd also developed age estimates based on characteristics of the pubic symphysis
12.
Maritime archaeology
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A specialty within maritime archaeology is nautical archaeology, which studies vessel construction and use. As with archaeology as a whole, maritime archaeology can be practised within the historical, industrial, an associated discipline, and again one that lies within archaeology itself, is underwater archaeology, which studies the past through any submerged remains be they of maritime interest or not. An example from the era would be the remains of submerged settlements or deposits now lying under water despite having been dry land when sea levels were lower. The study of submerged aircraft lost in lakes, rivers or in the sea is an example from the historical, industrial or modern era, many specialist sub-disciplines within the broader maritime and underwater archaeological categories have emerged in recent years. This fact has led to shipwrecks often being described in the media, archaeological material in the sea or in other underwater environments is typically subject to different factors than artifacts on land. However, as with terrestrial archaeology what survives to be investigated by modern archaeologists can often be a fraction of the material originally deposited. There are those in the community who see maritime archaeology as a separate discipline with its own concerns. Others value an integrated approach, stressing that nautical activity has economic and social links to communities on land, all that is required is the mastering of skills specific to the environment in which the work occurs. Before the industrial era, travel by water was often easier than over land, as a result, marine channels, navigable rivers and sea crossings formed the trade routes of historic and ancient civilisations. For example, the Mediterranean Sea was known to the Romans as the sea because the Roman empire spread around its coasts. The historic record as well as the remains of harbours, ships and cargoes, later, nations with a strong maritime culture such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal and Spain were able to establish colonies on other continents. Wars were fought at sea over the control of important resources, of late maritime archaeologists have been examining the submerged cultural remains of China, India, Korea and other Asian nations. Saltwater is particularly inimical to iron artefacts including metal shipwrecks, an example of such a collection is the Mary Rose. Where it remains even after the passage of time, the iron or steel hull is often fragile with no remaining metal within the layer of concretion and corrosion products. Even in deep water, commercial activities such as pipe-laying operations, such a wreck is the Mardi Gras shipwreck sunk in the Gulf of Mexico in 4,000 feet of water. The shipwreck lay forgotten at the bottom of the sea until it was discovered in 2002 by an inspection crew working for the Okeanos Gas Gathering Company. Large pipelines can crush sites and render some of their remnants inaccessible as pipe is dropped from the surface to the substrate thousands of feet below. Trawl nets snag and tear superstructures and separate artifacts from their context, the wrecks, and other archaeological sites that have been preserved have generally survived because the dynamic nature of the sea bed can result in artifacts becoming rapidly buried in sediments
13.
Paleoethnobotany
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Paleoethnobotany or Archaeobotany, is the study of remains of plants cultivated or used by man in ancient times, which have survived in archaeological contexts. Paleoethnobotany is the archaeological sub-field that studies plant remains from archaeological sites, Plant macrofossils are preserved through four main modes of preservation at archaeological sites. First, plant remains, usually cereal grains, chaff, seeds and these are referred to as charred or carbonised plant remains. This mode of preservation is biased towards plant remains that come into contact with fire, through cooking or fuel use, Second, plant remains deposited in permanently waterlogged anoxic conditions are preserved as the absence of oxygen prohibits microbial activity. This mode of preservation occurs in deep archaeological features such as wells, in settlements where organic refuse is rapidly deposited. A wide range of plant remains are preserved, including seeds, fruit stones, nutshells, leaves, straw. Third, calcium-phosphate mineralisation of plant remains occurs usually in latrine pits and in middens, in latrine pits, plant remains which have been consumed by humans are the most common items, such as seeds of flavourings, fruit pips and fruit stones. Finally, plant remains are preserved by desiccation in arid environments, delicate vegetative plant remains are preserved, such as onion skin and artichoke bracts, alongside fruit stones, cereal chaff and seeds of wild plants. Paleoethnobotanists use a variety of methods to recover and identify plant remains, charred plant remains are usually recovered by flotation. The matrix is slowly added to agitated water, the soil, sand, and other heavy material, known as heavy fraction, will sink to the bottom. The less dense material such as charred seeds, grains. The material that floats to the top, called light fraction, is poured into a sieve, the light fraction is then dried and later examined under a low power microscope. Samples of the fraction are also gathered for later analysis. Flotation can be undertaken manually with buckets, or by machine-assisted flotation where water is circulated through a series of tanks by a pump, waterlogged plant remains are separated from the matrix by a combination of wet-sieving and/or small-scale flotation in a laboratory. Desiccated plant remains are recovered by dry-sieving, using a stack of different sieves to separate larger items such as cereal straw. Identification literature as well as a collection of modern plant materials are crucial for reliable results. Depending on the type of material, and its condition, also other methods such as sections or SEM are applied. Paleoethnobotanists also recover and analyze microremains, human and animal excrements, or plant impressions in ceramic sherds, palynology is a mature and distinct scientific discipline that studies pollen, typically in the context of reconstructing past environments
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Zooarchaeology
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Zooarchaeology is the study of faunal remains. Faunal remains are the left behind when an animal dies. It includes, bones, shells, hair, chitin, scales, hides, proteins, of these items, bones and shells are the ones that occur most frequently at archaeological sites where faunal remains can be found. Much of the time, most of the remains do not survive. They often decompose or break because of various circumstances and this can cause difficulties in identifying the remains and interpreting their significance. The development of zooarchaeology in Eastern North America can be broken up into three different periods, the first being the Formative period starting around the 1860s, the second being the Systematization period beginning in the early 1950s, and the Integration period which began about 1969. Full-time zooarchaeologists didn’t come about until the Systematization period, before that it was just a technique that was applied but not specifically studied. Zooarchaeological specialists started to come about partly because of a new approach to archaeology known as “processual archaeology. ”This approach puts more emphasis on explaining why things happened, archaeologists began to specialize in zooarchaeology, and their numbers increased from there on. Zooarchaeology is primarily used to answer several questions and these include, What was the diet like, and in what ways were the animals used for food. Which were the animals that were eaten, in what amounts, who were the ones to obtain the food, and did the availability of that food depend on age or gender. How was culture, such as technologies and behavior, influenced by, what purposes, other than food, were animals used for. Zooarchaeology can also tell us what the environment might have been like in order for the different animals to have survived, in addition to helping us understand the past, zooarchaeology can also help us to improve the present and the future. Studying how people dealt with animals, and its effects can help us avoid many potential ecological problems and this specifically includes problems involving wildlife management. For example, one of the questions that wildlife preservationists ask is whether they should keep animals facing extinction in several smaller areas, based on zooarchaeological evidence, they found that animals that are split up into several smaller areas are more likely to go extinct. One of the techniques that use is close attention to taphonomy. This includes studying how items are buried and deposited at the site in question, what the conditions are that aid in the preservation of these items, another technique that zooarchaeologists use is lab analysis. This analysis can include comparing the skeletons found on site with already identified animal skeletons and this not only helps to identify what the animal is, but also whether the animal was domesticated or not. Yet another technique that zooarchaeologists use is quantification and they make interpretations based on the number and size of the bones
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Anthrozoology
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Anthrozoology is the subset of ethnobiology that deals with interactions between humans and other animals. It is a field that overlaps with other disciplines including anthropology, ethnology, medicine, psychology, veterinary medicine. A major focus of research is the quantifying of the positive effects of human-animal relationships on either party. It includes scholars from fields such as anthropology, sociology, biology, history, the interaction and enhancement within captive animal interactions. In the UK, the University of Exeter runs an MA in Anthrozoology which explores human-animal interactions from anthropological perspectives, there are now three primary lists for HAS scholars and students—H-Animal, the Human-Animal Studies listserv, and NILAS, as well as the Critical Animal Studies list. There are now over a dozen journals covering HAS issues, many of them founded in the last decade, and hundreds of HAS books, most of them published in the last decade. Brill, Berg, Johns Hopkins, Purdue, Columbia, Reaktion, Palgrave-McMillan, University of Minnesota, University of Illinois, beginning in 2011, ASI has partnered with Wesleyan Animal Studies, who will be hosting the fellowship in conjunction with ASI. There are also a handful of HAS conferences per year, including organized by ISAZ and NILAS. Finally, there are more HAS courses being taught now than ever before, the ASI website lists over 300 courses in twenty-nine disciplines at over 200 colleges and universities, not including over 100 law school courses. Animals and Society Institute Anthrozoology Research Group H-Animal Human-Animal Studies listserve Humanimalia, a journal of human-animal interface studies NILAS
16.
Evolutionary anthropology
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Evolutionary anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of the evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and the relation between hominids and non-hominid primates. Evolutionary anthropology is based in science and social science. Various fields and disciplines of evolutionary anthropology are, Human evolution, primatology and primate ethology and paleontology. The sociocultural evolution of human behavior, the evolutionary psychology and evolutionary linguistics of humans. The archaeological study of technology and change over time and space. Human evolutionary genetics and changes in the genome over time. The cognitive neuroscience and neuroanthropology of human and primate cognition, culture and actions, Human behavioural ecology and the interaction of humans and the environment. Studies of human anatomy, endocrinology, and neurobiology and differences and changes between species, variation between groups, and relationships to cultural factors. Evolutionary anthropology is concerned with biological and cultural evolution of humans, past and present. It is based on an approach, and brings together fields such as archaeology, behavioral ecology, psychology, primatology. It is a dynamic and interdisciplinary field, drawing on many lines of evidence to understand the experience, past. Studies of biological evolution generally concern the evolution of the human form, cultural evolution involves the study of cultural change over time and space and frequently incorporate cultural transmission models. The study of change is increasingly performed through cladistics and genetic models. Biocultural evolution Evolutionary psychology Evolutionary neuroscience Noogenesis Sociobiology Dual inheritance theory Homininae
17.
Molecular anthropology
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Generally, comparisons are made between sequence, either DNA or protein sequence, however early studies used comparative serology. By examining DNA sequences in different populations, scientists can determine the closeness of relationships between populations, Molecular anthropology has been extremely useful in establishing the evolutionary tree of humans and other primates, including closely related species like chimps and gorillas. However, more recent studies have modified the commonality of 98 percent to a commonality of 94 percent, such information is useful in searching for common ancestors and coming to a better understanding of how humans evolved. There are two continuous linkage groups in humans that are carried by a single sex, the first is the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son. Anatomical females carry a Y chromosome only rarely, as a result of genetic defect, the other linkage group is the mitochondrial DNA. MtDNA can only be passed to the generation by females. The non-recombinant portion of the Y chromosome and the mtDNA, under normal circumstances, part of the Y chromosome can undergo recombination with the X chromosome and within ape history the boundary has changed. Such recombinant changes in the non-recombinant region of Y are extremely rare, Mitochondrial DNA became an area of research in phylogenetics in the late 1970s. Unlike genomic DNA, it offered advantages in that it did not undergo recombination, the process of recombination, if frequent enough, corrupts the ability to create parsimonious trees because stretches of amino acid subsititions. When looking between distantly related species, recombination is less of a problem since recombination between branches from common ancestors is prevented after true speciation occurs, when examining closely related species, or branching within species, recombination creates a large number of irrelevant SNPs for cladistic analysis. MtDNA, through the process of division, become clonal over time, very little, too often none. While recombination may occur in mtDNA, there is risk that it will be passed to the next generation. As a result, mtDNA become clonal copies of each other, as a result, mtDNA does not have pitfalls of autosomal loci when studied in interbreeding groups. Another advantage of mtDNA is that the hyper-variable regions evolve very quickly and this allowed the use of mitochondrial DNA to determine that the relative age of the human population was small, having gone through a recent constriction at about 150,000 years ago. Mitochondrial DNA has also used to verify the proximity of chimpanzees to humans relative to gorillas. More recently, the genome has been used to estimate branching patterns in peoples around the world, such as when the new world was settled. The problem with these studies have been that they rely heavily on mutations in the coding region, many of the mtDNA have far more mutations and at rarely mutated coding sites relative to expectations of neutral mutations. Mitochondrial DNA offers another advantage over autosomal DNA, there are generally 2 to 4 copies of each chromosome in each cell
18.
Neuroanthropology
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Neuroanthropology is the study of the relationship between culture and the brain. Neuroanthropology explores how the brain gives rise to culture, how culture influences brain development, structure and function, moreover, neuroanthropologists consider how new findings in the brain sciences help us understand the interactive effects of culture and biology on human development and behavior. Cultural neuroscience Social neuroscience Behavioral neuroscience Neuroculture Neuroplasticity Books Arbib, Michael A, the Metaphorical Brain 2, Neural Networks and Beyond. E. G. dAquili, Laughlin, C. D. and McManus J The Spectrum of Ritual, donald, Merlin Origins of the Modern Mind, Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Donald, Merlin A Mind So Rare, The evolution of human consciousness Norton, New York, Henry Holt & Co. Dumit, J. Picturing personhood, brain scans and biomedical identity, the Origin of Mind, Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence. Ways of Knowing, New Approaches in the Anthropology of Experience, Laughlin, C. D. and E. G. dAquili Biogenetic Structuralism. John McManus and E. G. dAquili Brain, Symbol and Experience, the Encultured Brain, An Introduction to Neuroanthropology. Quartz, S. R. and T. J Sejnowzki Liars, Lovers, skoyles, John R. and Sagan, Dorion Up from Dragons, The Evolution of Human Intelligence. McGraw-Hill, New York, ISBN 0-07-137825-1 Winkelman, Michael Shamanism, The Neural Ecology of Consciousness, toward a neuroanthropology of ethics, Introduction. In, Jens Clausen and Neil Levy Handbook of Neuroethics, Springer, Volume 1, pp 289–298 Domínguez D, JF, Neuroanthropology and the Dialectical Imperative. Anthropological Theory 12, 5-27 Domínguez D, JF, Turner, R, Lewis, ED, and Egan, GF Neuroanthropology, A Humanistic Science for the Study of the Culture–Brain Nexus. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 5, 138–47 Domínguez D, JF, Lewis, ED, Turner, R and Egan, GF The Brain in Culture and Culture in the Brain, chiao Progress in Brain Research, Vol 178, Cultural Neuroscience, Cultural Influences on Brain Function. Elsevier, The Netherlands, pp. 43–6 Iacoboni, M. Lieberman, M. D. Knowlton, B. J. Molnar-Szakacs, moritz, M. Throop, C. J. et al. Watching social interactions produces dorsomedial prefrontal and medial parietal BOLD fMRI signal increases compared to a resting baseline, a historical survey and neuroanthropological perspective. In, Jens Clausen and Neil Levy Handbook of Neuroethics, Springer, Volume 1, in, Barfield, Thomas The Dictionary of Anthropology, pp. 340–2. Rilling, J. K. Barks, S. K. Parr, L. A. Preuss, T. M. Faber, T. L. Pagnoni, a comparison of resting-state brain activity in humans and chimpanzees. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A104, 17146-51, roepstorff, A Postscript, Mapping brain mappers, An ethnographic coda
19.
Palaeoanthropology
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Hominoids are a primate superfamily, the hominid family is currently considered to comprise both the great ape lineages and human lineages within the hominoid superfamily. The Homininae comprise both the human lineages and the African ape lineages, the term African apes refers only to chimpanzees and gorillas. The terminology of the biological family is currently in flux. The term hominin refers to any genus in the human tribe, since, the great apes were considered the closest relatives of human beings, based on morphological similarity. The science arguably began in the late 19th century when important discoveries occurred that led to the study of human evolution. The discovery of the Neanderthal in Germany, Thomas Huxleys Evidence as to Mans Place in Nature, the modern field of paleoanthropology began in the 19th century with the discovery of Neanderthal man, and with evidence of so-called cave men. Debates between Thomas Huxley and Richard Owen focused on the idea of human evolution, Huxley convincingly illustrated many of the similarities and differences between humans and apes in his 1863 book Evidence as to Mans Place in Nature. By the time Darwin published his own book on the subject, Descent of Man, even many of Darwins original supporters balked at the idea that human beings could have evolved their apparently boundless mental capacities and moral sensibilities through natural selection. Prior to todays general acceptance of Africa as the root of genus Homo, although Schlosser was very cautious, identifying the tooth only as “. Anthropoide g. et sp. indet. ”He was hopeful that future work would discover a new anthropoid in China. Eleven years later, the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson was sent to China as a mining advisor and it was he who, in 1918, discovered the sites around Zhoukoudian, a village about 50 kilometers southwest of Beijing. However, because of the nature of the initial finds. Work did not resume until 1921, when the Austrian paleontologist, Otto Zdansky, fresh with his degree from Vienna. Zdansky conducted short-term excavations at Locality 1 in 1921 and 1923, with that done, Zdansky returned to Austria and suspended all fieldwork. News of the fossil hominin teeth delighted the scientific community in Beijing, at the epicenter of excitement was Davidson Black, a Canadian-born anatomist working at Peking Union Medical College. Black shared Andersson’s interest, as well as his view that central Asia was a home for early humankind. The Zhoukoudian Project came into existence in the spring of 1927, being the first institution of its kind, the Cenozoic Laboratory opened up new avenues for the study of paleogeology and paleontology in China. The Laboratory was the precursor of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Science, the first of the major project finds are attributed to the young Swedish paleontologist, Anders Birger Bohlin, then serving as the field advisor at Zhoukoudian. He recovered a left lower molar that Black identified as unmistakably human, the news was at first met with skepticism, and many scholars had reservations that a single tooth was sufficient to justify the naming of a new type of early hominin
20.
Primatology
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Primatology is the scientific study of primates. There are two centers of primatology, Western primatology and Japanese primatology. These two divergent disciplines stem from their cultural backgrounds and philosophies that went into their founding. Although, fundamentally, both Western and Japanese primatology share many of the principles, the areas of their focus in primate research. Western primatology stems primarily from research by North American and European scientists, the study of primatology looks at the biological and psychological aspects of non-human primates. The focus is on studying the links between humans and primates. It is believed that by understanding our closest animal relatives, we might understand the nature shared with our ancestors. The general belief is that the observation of nature must be either extremely limited. Either way, the observers must be neutral to their subjects and this allows for data to be unbiased and for the subjects to be uninfluenced by human interference. Field is done in natural environments, in which scientific observers watch primates in their natural habitat, laboratory study is done in controlled lab settings. In lab settings, scientists are able to perform controlled experimentation on the learning capabilities, in semi-free ranging studies, scientists are able to watch how primates might act in the wild but have easier access to them, and the ability to control their environments. Such facilities include the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Georgia, all types of primate study in the Western methodology are meant to be neutral. Although there are certain Western primatologists who do more subjective research, early field primatology tended to focus on individual researchers. Researchers such as Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall are examples of this, long-term sites of research tend to be best associated with their founders, and this led to some tension between younger primatologists and the veterans in the field. The discipline of Japanese primatology was developed out of animal ecology and it is mainly credited to Kinji Imanishi and Junichiro Itani. Imanishi was an animal ecologist who began studying wild horses before focusing more on primate ecology and he helped found the Primate Research Group in 1950. Junichiro was a renowned anthropologist and a professor at Kyoto University and he is a co-founder of the Primate Research Institute and the Centre for African Area Studies. The Japanese discipline of primatology tends to be interested in the social aspects of primates
21.
Anthropology of development
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The anthropology of development is a term applied to a body of anthropological work which views development from a critical perspective. The kind of issues addressed, and implications for the approach typically adopted can be gleaned from a list questions posed by Gow and these questions involve anthropologists asking why, if a key development goal is to alleviate poverty, is poverty increasing. Why is there such a gap between plans and outcomes, why are those working in development so willing to disregard history and the lessons it might offer. Why is development so externally driven rather than having an internal basis, in short why does so much planned development fail. This anthropology of development has been distinguished from development anthropology, Development anthropology refers to the application of anthropological perspectives to the multidisciplinary branch of development studies. It takes international development and international aid as primary objects, while some theorists distinguish between the anthropology of development and development anthropology, this distinction is increasingly thought of as obsolete. The problem therefore is not that of driving out culture. The British government established the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in 1937 to conduct science research in British Central Africa. It was part of the establishment, although its head. The term subculture of poverty made its first prominent appearance in the ethnography Five Families, Lewis struggled to render the poor as legitimate subjects whose lives were transformed by poverty. Rostows unilineal evolutionist model hypothesized all societies would progress through the stages to a modernity defined by the West. George Dalton applied the substantivist economic ideas of Karl Polanyi to economic anthropology and he therefore critiqued the formalist economic modelling of Rostow. He was the author of Growth without development, An economic survey of Liberia and Economic Anthropology and Development, Essays on Tribal, Dependency theory arose as a theory in Latin America in reaction to modernization theory. It argues that resources flow from a periphery of poor and underdeveloped states to a core of wealthy states, immanuel Wallersteins world-systems theory was the version of Dependency theory that most North American anthropologists engaged with. His theories are similar to Dependency theory, although he placed emphasis on the system as system. Wallerstein also provided an account of the development of capitalism which had been missing from Dependency theory. Women in development is an approach to development projects that emerged in the 1970s, later, the Gender and development approach proposed more emphasis on gender relations rather than seeing womens issues in isolation. The WID school grew out of the work of Esther Boserup
22.
Ecological anthropology
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Ecological anthropology is a sub-field of anthropology and is defined as the “study of cultural adaptations to environments”. The sub-field is also defined as, the study of relationships between a population of humans and their biophysical environment. ”Ecological anthropology developed from the approach of cultural ecology, research pursued under this approach aims to study a wide range of human responses to environmental problems. In the 1960s, ecological anthropology first appeared as a response to cultural ecology, Steward focused on studying different modes of subsistence as methods of energy transfer and then analyzed how they determine other aspects of culture. Culture became the unit of analysis and it was characterised by systems theory, functionalism and negative feedback analysis. Benjamin S. Orlove has noted that the development of ecological anthropology has occurred in stages, “Each stage is a reaction to the previous one rather than merely an addition to it”. During the first stage, two different models were developed by both White and Steward, during the second stage, it was noted that the later group agreed with Steward and White, while the other disagreed. ‘Neoevolutionists’ borrowed from the work of Charles Darwin, the general approach suggested that “evolution is progressive and leads towards new and better forms in succeeding periods”. ‘Processual ecological anthropology’ is noted to be new, studies based on this approach “seek to overcome the split in the second stage of ecological anthropology between excessively short and long time scales”. The approach more specifically, examines “shifts and changes in individual and group activities, one of the leading practitioners within this sub-field of anthropology was Roy Rappaport. He conducted the majority, if not all, of his fieldwork amongst a group known as the Maring, patricia K. Townsends work highlights the difference between ecological anthropology and environmental anthropology. In her view, some anthropologists use both terms in an interchangeable fashion and she states that, “Ecological anthropology will refer to one particular type of research in environmental anthropology – field studies that describe a single ecosystem including a human population”. Studies conducted under this sub-field “frequently deal with a population of only a few hundred people such as a village or neighbourhood”. Studies under the discipline are concerned with the ethnoecologies of indigenous populations, “In the face of national and international incentives to exploit and degrade, ethnological systems that once preserved local and regional environments increasingly are ineffective or irrelevant”. Threats also exist of “commercial logging, industrial pollution, and the imposition of external management systems” on their local ecosystems and these threats to indigenous ways of life are a familiar occurrence in the field of anthropology. Conrad Phillip Kottak states that, “Today’s ecological anthropology, aka environmental anthropology, attempts not only to understand, one of the current criticisms is that, in its original form, ecological anthropology relies upon cultural relativism as the norm. However, in world, there are few cultures that are isolated enough to live in a true culturally relative state. Instead, cultures are being influenced and changed by media, governments, NGOs, businesses, in response, the discipline has seen a shift towards applied ecological anthropology, political ecology and environmental anthropology. ISBN 0-470-85000-0 McGrath, Stacy Ecological Anthropology, M. D Murphy Anthropological Theories
23.
Environmental anthropology
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Environmental anthropology is a sub-specialty within the field of anthropology that takes an active role in examining the relationships between humans and their environment across space and time. The sixties was a decade for environmental anthropology, with functionalism. The rudiments of the theories can be seen in Marcel Mauss Seasonal Variation of Eskimo. Although later, system theories were later criticized for narrowly assuming the state of societies as static. The main focus of theories in the sixties, as conveyed by Julian Steward, was acknowledgment of recurrence. Stewards ecological anthropology was based on topography, climate, and resources, while Marvin Harris cultural materialism observed and gauged social units by means of material production. Both focused on culture as a contingent to the environment. Importantly, those limitations are not considered determinants, the new focus of environmental anthropology was cultural variation and diversity. Roy A. Rappaport and Hawkes, Hill, and OConnells use of Pykes optimal foraging theory for the work are some examples of this new focus. The contemporary perspective of environmental anthropology, and arguably at least the backdrop, if not the focus of most of the ethnographies, many characterize this new perspective as more informed with culture, politics and power, globalization, localized issues, and more. The focus and data interpretation is used for arguments for/against or creation of policy. Often, the observer has become an part of the struggle either directly or indirectly. Such is the case with environmental justice advocate Melissa Checker and her relationship with the people of Hyde Park, critiques on this modern perspective and non-governmental organizations influences and effects on social groups is usually that they generalize and obscure local discourse and message. Often resulting in environmentalism by bureaucrats, PR firms, governments, an example of negative effects can be ascertained in the Malaysian Rainforest, in which NGOs and other outsider activist deflected the issue, ignoring the locality of the problem. Environmental anthropology enters the field as an applied dimension built on the primary approaches within contemporary ecological anthropology and it focuses on how culture promotes connections between humans and their occupied ecosystems. American anthropologist Julian Steward, is the originator of cultural ecology. A troubled childhood led to Stewards fascination of the natural world, in 1918 Steward attended a California College, found inspiration from the natural environment and gained insight which promoted a future passion toward ecological studies. Steward contributions to theories of cultural ecology and cultural evolution are renowned, Steward officially formulated the basic theoretical and methodological framework for cultural ecology in the 1950s–60s
24.
Economic anthropology
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Economic anthropology is a field that attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a relationship with the discipline of economics. For the most part, studies in economic anthropology focus on exchange, in contrast, the Marxian school known as political economy focuses on production. Post-World War II, economic anthropology was influenced by the work of economic historian Karl Polanyi. Polanyi drew on anthropological studies to argue that true market exchange was limited to a number of western. Applying formal economic theory to non-industrial societies was mistaken, he argued, in non-industrial societies, exchange was embedded in such non-market institutions as kinship, religion, and politics. The Formalist vs Substantivist debate was highly influential and defined an era, neo-substantivists examine the ways in which so-called pure market exchange in market societies fails to fit market ideology. Economic anthropologists have abandoned the primitivist niche they were relegated to by economists and they now study the operations of corporations, banks, and the global financial system from an anthropological perspective. Malinowski carefully traced the network of exchanges of bracelets and necklaces across the Trobriand Islands and he stated that this exchange system was clearly linked to political authority. In the 1920s and later, Malinowskis study became the subject of debate with the French anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, malinowski emphasised the exchange of goods between individuals, and their non-altruistic motives for giving, they expected a return of equal or greater value. In other words, reciprocity is an part of gifting. Mauss, in contrast, has emphasized that the gifts were not between individuals, but between representatives of larger collectivities and these gifts were, he argued, a total prestation. Given the stakes, Mauss asked why anyone would give them away and his answer was an enigmatic concept, hau, the spirit of the gift. A good part of the confusion was due to a bad translation, Mauss appeared to be arguing that a return gift is given to keep the very relationship between givers alive, a failure to return a gift ends the relationship and the promise of any future gifts. Mauss concept of total prestations has been developed in the later 20th century by Annette Weiner, malinowski missed this and ignored womens exchanges in his study. Secondly, Weiner has developed Mauss argument about reciprocity and the spirit of the gift in terms of inalienable possessions, Weiner contrasts moveable goods, which can be exchanged, with immoveable goods, which serve to draw the gifts back. She argues that the specific goods given, such as Crown Jewels, are so identified with groups that, even when given. Not all societies, however, have these kinds of goods, French anthropologist Maurice Godelier pushed the analysis further in The Enigma of the Gift
25.
Political economy in anthropology
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Political Economy introduced questions of history and colonialism to ahistorical anthropological theories of social structure and culture. Political Economy was introduced in American anthropology primarily through the support of Julian Steward, steward’s research interests centered on “subsistence” — the dynamic interaction of man, environment, technology, social structure, and the organization of work. This emphasis on subsistence and production - as opposed to exchange - is what distinguishes the Political Economy approach, stewards most theoretically productive years were from 1946-1953, while teaching at Columbia University. At this time, Columbia saw an influx of World War II veterans who were attending school thanks to the GI Bill, murphy, and influenced other scholars such as Elman Service, Marvin Harris and June Nash. Many of these participated in the Puerto Rico Project, a large-scale group research study that focused on modernization in Puerto Rico. Three main areas of interest rapidly developed, the first of these areas was concerned with the pre-capitalist societies that were subject to evolutionary tribal stereotypes. Sahlins work on hunter-gatherers as the affluent society did much to dissipate that image. The second area was concerned with the vast majority of the population at the time. The third area was on colonialism, imperialism, and the creation of the capitalist world-system, more recently, these political economists have more directly addressed issues of industrial capitalism around the world. Cultural materialism is a research orientation introduced by Marvin Harris in 1968, as a theoretical paradigm, indeed, it is said to be the most enduring achievement of that work. Harris subsequently developed a defense of the paradigm in his 1979 book Cultural Materialism, to Harris, cultural materialism is based on the simple premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence. Harris approach was influenced by but distinct from Marx, Harris method was to demonstrate how particular cultural practices served a materialistic function. Structural Marxism was an approach to Marxist philosophy based on structuralism, primarily associated with the work of the French philosopher Louis Althusser and it was influential in France during the 1960s and 1970s, and also came to influence philosophers, political theorists and anthropologists outside France during the 1970s. French structuralist Marxism melded Marxist political economy with Levi-Strausss structural methodology, eliminating the human subject, dialectical reason, a mode of production consisting of producers, non-producers and means of production, combined in a variety of ways, formed the deep structure of a social formation. A social formation combined several modes of production, only one of which was dominant or determinant, primary anthropological theorists of this school included Maurice Godelier, Claude Meillassoux, Emmanuel Terray and Pierre-Philippe Rey. Structural Marxism arose in opposition to the humanistic Marxism that dominated many western universities during the 1970s, in contrast to Humanistic Marxism, Althusser stressed that Marxism was a science that examined objective structures. Critical influences on Structural Marxism, primarily from the British Marxist historical tradition, Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm and Raymond Williams. They criticized the functionalist emphasis in Structural Marxism, that individuals in favour of the structural elements of their model
26.
Kinship
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Anthropologist Robin Fox states that the study of kinship is the study of what man does with these basic facts of life – mating, gestation, parenthood, socialization, siblingship etc. Human society is unique, he argues, in that we are working with the raw material as exists in the animal world. These social ends include the socialization of children and the formation of economic, political. Kinship can refer both to the patterns of social relationships themselves, or it can refer to the study of the patterns of relationships in one or more human cultures. Further, even within two broad usages of the term, there are different theoretical approaches. Broadly, kinship patterns may be considered to include people related by both descent – i. e. social relations during development – and by marriage. Human kinship relations through marriage are commonly called affinity in contrast to the relationships that arise in ones group of origin, in some cultures, kinship relationships may be considered to extend out to people an individual has economic or political relationships with, or other forms of social connections. Within a culture, some descent groups may be considered to lead back to gods or animal ancestors and this may be conceived of on a more or less literal basis. Kinship can also refer to a principle by which individuals or groups of individuals are organized into groups, roles, categories. Family relations can be represented concretely or abstractly by degrees of relationship, a relationship may be relative or reflect an absolute. Degrees of relationship are not identical to heirship or legal succession, many codes of ethics consider the bond of kinship as creating obligations between the related persons stronger than those between strangers, as in Confucian filial piety. In a more general sense, kinship may refer to a similarity or affinity between entities on the basis of some or all of their characteristics that are under focus. This may be due to a shared origin, a shared historical or cultural connection. For example, a person studying the roots of human languages might ask whether there is kinship between the English word seven and the German word sieben. It can be used in a more diffuse sense as in, for example, in biology, kinship typically refers to the degree of genetic relatedness or coefficient of relationship between individual members of a species. It may also be used in this sense when applied to human relationships. Family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, in most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children. Kin terminologies can be descriptive or classificatory
27.
Ethnomusicology
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Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. Stated broadly, ethnomusicology may be described as an investigation of music in its cultural contexts. When the field first came into existence, it was limited to the study of non-Western music—in contrast to the study of Western art music. Over time, the definition broadened to study of all the musics of the world according to certain approaches. While there is not a single, authoritative definition for ethnomusicology, Musical fieldworkers often also collect recordings and contextual information about the music of interest. Thus, ethnomusicological studies do not rely on printed or manuscript sources as the source of epistemic authority. Oskar Kolberg is regarded as one of the earliest European ethnomusicologists as he first began collecting Polish folk songs in 1839, comparative musicology, the primary precursor to ethnomusicology, emerged in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The International Musical Society in Berlin in 1899 acted as one of the first centers for ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music and the Society for Ethnomusicology are the primary international academic organizations for advancing the discipline of ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicologists have offered varying definitions of the field, more specifically, scholars debate what constitutes ethnomusicology. Bruno Nettl distinguishes between discipline and field, believing ethnomusicology is the latter, there are multiple approaches to and challenges of the field. Some approaches reference musical areas like musical synthesis in Ghana while others emphasize a study of culture through the avenue of music, the multifaceted and dynamic approaches to ethnomusicology allude to how the field has evolved. The primary element that distinguishes ethnomusicology from musicology is the expectation that ethnomusicologists engage in sustained, there are many individuals and groups who can be connected to ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicology has evolved both in terminology and ideology since its inception in the late 19th century. While studying in Berlin at Frederick William University and attending the International Music Society, in his notes, he emphasized cultural and religious elements as well as social aspects of music and poetry. Inspired by these thoughts, many Western European nations began to transcribe and categorize music based on ethnicity, inspired by these thoughts, many Western European nations began to put many ethnic and cultural pieces of music onto paper and separate them. In 1956 the hyphen was removed with ideological intent to signify the discipline’s validity and these changes to the field’s name paralleled its internal shifts in ideological and intellectual emphasis. Kolinski also urged the field to move beyond ethnocentrism even as the term grew in popularity as a replacement for what was once described by comparative musicology. In the 1970s, ethnomusicology was becoming well known outside of the small circle of scholars who had founded and fostered the early development of the field
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