Anthro 2A Final Study Guide

Key Terms:
Four-field Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Biological Anthropology (or Physical Anthropology)
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Sociocultural Anthropology
The Crystal Palace (1851): London, England
- Site for the first worlds fair (exhibiton)
- Height of Industrial Revolution Britain
- Crystal Palace was made of glad and metal (iron)
- There were internal conflictions between capitalists and social workers
- 6 million visitors
- Building divided into courts that depicted various cultural traits (categories of
artifacts)
- Exhibitions of weapons and arts (medieval armors, guns, Bowen arrows)
- Narrative progress in technology and militaries
Sociocultural Evolution
- Narrative of progress, in which the idea of evolution began in 1859.
- Denial of coevalness to primitive people: to stand in as living history or
prehistory of the European gentlemen.
- The production of national consciousness (The age of equipoise)
- The Result of Colonial Power
The Comparative Method of Anthropology:
- The methodology of sociocultural evolutionism
- Studied the customs of primitive people
- Compared culture phenomena by their forms and perceived functions.
- Assumed that the sameness of cultural phenomena found in diverse regions is
proof that the human mind obeys the same laws everywhere.
The Historical Method of Anthropology:
- We need to study customs in their relation to the total culture of the people
practicing them.
- We need to understand each culture with its own history before trying to come
up with a grand theory of human history.
- The most effective way of studying cultures is long-term fieldwork: live with
the people you study and collect.
Ethnography
- A detailed, qualitative account of the results of ethnographic fieldwork.
- It is both descriptive and interpretive (made in translation)
- The ethnographer not only describes their observations, but also analyzes the
forms, structures, and meanings of what they have observed.
Fieldwork

An interactive approach in which the anthropologists study a group of people

in their own environment by living with them and participating in their daily
lives.
1. Participant Observation: the sit-and-watch method
2. Interviews to look for surprises and things we didnt think of before.