Anthropology Cultural Archaeology What is this 02 05 2014 Culture is learned behavior that is transmitted from person to person Understand human behavioral characteristics similarities differences Social function within and between groups What does this study Study present day societies in non Western settings Study of human societies and their very recent past covers all aspects of human behavior How does this differ through time Link between behavior and environment how they utilized resources adapt lifestyle to surroundings and against environment Archaeology What is this remains What does this study where they did Study past human societies focusing mostly on their material Study of material objects artifacts from past cultures The processes behind past human behaviors e g why people lived They are the cultural anthropologists of the past reassemble cultures of the past How does this differ through time Perspective on old ways better understanding of modern ones Reconstruct lifestyles of extinct peoples Patterns of interaction between groups Trace development of ancient societies Linguistic Anthropology What is this Language a set of written or spoken symbols that refer to things other than themselves transfer of knowledge from one person to then next and from one generation to the next What does this study The construction and use of language by human societies How does this differ through time Structure Evolution of language Social and cultural contexts for language language impacted by culture contact Physical Anthropology What is this What does this study and culture Human biology is a product of evolutionary history Individuals are also the product of their individual life histories Combined effects of biology and environment interdependent Interrelationship between what humans have inherited genetically Study of human biological evolution human biocultural variation and our primate relatives How does this differ through time Helps us understand our own biology Clarifies our relationship to other animals Better address modern concenrs with human health and physical Influence of environment on biology well being o 3 main figures Hooton Boas and Hrdlicka o Boas 1858 1942 pulled together the various scholarly themes that give the discipline its distinctive identity first anthropological expedition observe the Inuit Eskimos living on Baffin Island in the eastern Artic of North America to find out as much on cultural and biological sides of human condition wanted to research relationships between land and people invents anthropology started the professional scientific journal and professional o Hrdlicka society devoted to the field o Hooton trained most of the first generation of physical anthropologists What makes us human and different from other primates Be able to list 6 traits and describe them 1 Bipedalism walking on two feet 2 Nonhoning Chewing loss of a large honing canine tooth to the simple nonhoning canine which we use to process food honing canine disappeared because acquired ability to make and use tools for processing food 3 Complex material culture and tool use used for day to day living and survival Material culture part of culture that is expressed as objects that humans use to manipulate environments e g hammer nails 4 Hunting 5 Speech social behavior where a group of adult men organize themselves to pursue animals for food communicates by talking presence of human hyoid bone part of vocal structure that helps produce words 6 Dependence on domesticated foods raise animals and grow plants reliance on domesticated species The Scientific Method Steps of scientific method and why they are important for physical anthropology and science Step 1 Identify a problem based on earlier observations Step 2 Stating the hypothesis Step 3 Collecting the data observations Step 4 Testing your hypothesis rejection acceptance or modification Physical anthropologists derive knowledge via the scientific method Scientists formulate and test hypotheses that they hope will lead to theories about the natural world The method is a systematic technique used to investigate any phenomena with the goal of acquiring new knowledge once a hypotheses cannot be falsified becomes a theory Important because without it physical anthropologists will never get new discoveries Theory A set of hypotheses that have been rigorously tested and validated leading to their establishment as a generally accepted explanation of specific phenomena grassland explanation grounded in a great deal of evidence evidentiary record e g Darwin s theory about human origins hypothesis that origin of human bipedalism was linked to shift from life in trees to life on the ground His theory disproved when it was found that hominids lived in woodlands not Law A theory that becomes absolutely true e g Newton s law of gravity 02 05 2014 Charles Darwin came up with hypothesis when on voyage he began to formulate questions about the origins of plants and animals living in the lands he explored observed physical differences or variation between and among members of species when travelling South America studied finches birds that live in the Galapagos a small cluster of islands off the coast of Ecuador Natural Selection The process by which some organisms with features that enable them to adapt to the environment preferentially survive and reproduce thereby increasing the frequency of those features in the population Fitness Average number of offspring produced by parents with a particular genotype compared to the number of offspring produced by parents with another genotype Reproductive Success Passing of genes onto the next generation so they can also pass on those genes Limits of Natural Selection traits must be heritable traits must be in variation Fitness is a relative measure that changes as the environment changes traits must affect fitness reproductive success Evolution Change in inherited characteristic of biological populations over successive generations 5 Disciplines Darwin used to come up with hypotheses 1 Geology 2 Paleontology Study of the earth its composition activity and history Study of fossils Detailed past life forms many now extinct 3 Taxonomy and Systematics Taxonomy classification of past and living life forms laid foundation for systematics Systematics study of biological taxonomic relationships over time 4 Demography Study of population especially birth survival and death and major factors that affect