INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY: HOW DO WE
DISCOVER THE PAST?
 Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists rely on
four kinds of evidence to learn about the past:
 Artifacts
 Eco facts
 Fossils
 Features
ARTIFACTS
 Anything made or modified by humans is an artifact
 By far, the most common artifacts from the past
are stone tools, which archaeologists call lithics.
 Another common kind of artifact is ceramics (pots
and other items made from baked clay).
 Humans first started making ceramics about 20,000
years ago and ceramics objects such as storage and
cooking vessels quickly came to be widely used.
 Wood and bone artifacts are common too, and
were used to make hide-working, cooking, hunting,
and even butchering tools
 Wood and bone tools have been used by humans at
least as long as stone tools, but unlike stone tools,
they tend not to survive well in the archaeological
record.
 In some places, metals and glass are common
artifacts. These survive well in the archaeological
record, and hence they are often found where they
were used.
ECOFACTS
 Eco facts are natural objects that have been used or
affected by humans.
 Good examples are the bones of animals that have
been eaten. These bones are somewhat artifacts,
but they haven’t been made or modified by
humans just used and discarded them.
 Another example is pollens and seeds found at
archaeological sites. Because humans bring plants
back to their houses to use. Pollens and seeds from
many plants are commonly found.
FOSSILS
 A fossil may be an impression of an insect or leaf on
a muddy surface that now is a stone. Or it may
consist of the actual hardened remains if an
animal’s skeletal structure.
FEATURES
 Features are a kind of artifact, but archaeologists
distinguish them from other artifacts because they
cannot be easily removed from an archaeological
site.
 The most common features are called pits. Pits are
simply holes dug by humans that are later filled
with garbage or eroded soil.
 Living floors are another common type of feature.
These are the palaces where humans lived and
worked. The soil in these locations are often
compacted through human activity and are full of
minute pieces of garbage.
 Buildings are common features on archaeological
sites. These can range from the remains of stone
rings that once held down the sides of tents to
palaces built of stones that had been shaped and
fitted together.
FINDING THE EVIDENCE
 Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists usually
restrict their research to what are called sites. Sites
are known or suspected locations of human activity
in the past that contain a record of that activity.
 Sites can range from places where humans camped
for perhaps only one night to entire ancient cities.
HOW ARE SITES CREATED?
 The most dramatic one is volcanic activity; record
of human behavior (and even the humans
themselves) can be totally buried within seconds.
 The most impressive example of this must be
Pompeii, an entire city that was buried in the
eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79
 In the Philippine setting one example can be the
Mt. Mayon and the ruins of Casagwa
 Less dramatic means of burying the record of
human behavior are the natural processes of dirt
accumulation and erosion
 Wind or water borne soil and debris can cover a site
either quickly (as in a flood) or over a long period of
time preserving artifacts, Eco facts, fossils and
features left by humans.
HOW SITES ARE FOUND?
PEDESTRIAN SURVEY AND REMOTE SENSING
 Pedestrian survey is what the name suggests,
walking around looking for sites.
 Looking in obvious places like cave sites
 Remote sensing is a much more high-tech way of
finding sites. With remote sensing techniques,
archaeologists and paleoanthropologists find
archaeological deposits by sensing their presence
from a remote location, usually the current surface
of the ground beneath which the archaeological
deposits are buried.
 One device used is magnetometer.
 One of the most commonly used active technique is
soil interface radar (SIR) sometimes also called
ground penetrating radar (GPR). This technique is
based on the fact that different soils reflect radar
energy differently.
 These recording give the archaeologists a picture of
what is below the ground.
HOW ARE ARTIFACTS, ECOFACTS, AND FEATURES
RECOVERED FROM SITES?
 Whether they are identified by pedestrian survey or
remote sensing, once archaeological deposits are
found, there is only one way to recover them, by
excavation.
 Excavation itself is a complex process with two
goals:
 1. To find every scrap of evidence (or a statistically
representative sample) about the past that a
given site holds
2. To record the horizontal and vertical location of
that evidence with precision
ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
 Once archaeologists and paleoanthropologists have
found a site and recovered artifacts and other
materials from it, they are ready to begin “reading”
what they have found to learn the story of the past.
This “reading” of the archaeological record is called
analysis.
 Before doing analysis, then, archaeologists and
paleoanthropologists must first conserve and
reconstruct the materials they have found.
 Conservation is the process of treating artifacts, Eco
facts, and in some cases, even features, to stop
decay and, if possible, even reverse the
deterioration process.
 Reconstruction is like building puzzle- but a three-
dimensional puzzle where you’re not sure which
pieces belong and you know not all of the pieces
are there.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ARTIFACTS?
 First, archaeologists typically examine the form of
an artifact or how it is shaped. For most common
artifacts such as lithics and ceramics, forms are
known well enough to be grouped into typologies
 Typologies often provide a lot of information about
an artifact including its age, the species or culture
with which it is affiliated and, in some cases, even
how it is made, used or exchange in the past.
 Second, archaeologists often measure artifacts,
recording their size in various often strictly defined
dimensions. Such as metric analysis is used much
like formal analysis to group artifacts into a
typology.
 Third, archaeologists often attempt to understand
how an artifact was made. By examining the
material, the artifact is made from and how that
material was manipulated, archaeologists can learn
about the technology, economy, and exchange
systems of the people who made the artifact.
 Finally, archaeologists attempt to understand how
an artifact was used. Knowing how an artifact was
used allows the archaeologist a direct window onto
ancient life.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ARTIFACTS AND FOSSILS?
 New techniques such as electron microscopy, cat
scans, and computer assisted biochemical modeling
provide much information about how that
organism may have moved about the
microstructure of bone and teeth, and how the
organisms developed
 Chemical analysis of fossilized bone can suggest
what the animal typically ate
 Paleoanthropologists use the surrounding rocks to
indicate the time period in which the organism
died. In addition, the study of associated fauna and
flora can suggest what the ancient climate and
habitat were like.
 Much of the evidence from primate evolution
comes from teeth, which are the most common
animal parts (along with jaws) to be preserved as
fossils.
 Animals vary in dentition or the number and kinds
of teeth they have, their size, and their
arrangement in the mouth.
 Paleoanthropologists can tell much about an
animal’s posture and locomotion from fragments of
its skeleton.
 The underside if the cranium may provide
information about the proportions of the brain
devoted to vision, smell or memory.
 The skill also reveals information about
characteristics of smell and vision.
 For example, animals that rely more on the smell
than on vision tend to have large snouts. Nocturnal
animals tend to have large eye sockets.
DATING THE EVIDENCE
 For some time, relative dating methods were the
only methods available. Relative dating is used to
determine the age of a specimen or deposit relative
to another specimen or deposit.
 Absolute dating or chronometric dating is used to
measure how old a specimen or deposit in years.
RELATIVE DATING METHODS
DENDROCHRONOLOGY
 The method of dating events and conditions of the
recent past is based on the number, width, and
density of annual growth rings of long-lived trees.
THERMOLUMINESCENT (TL) DATING
 Thermoluminescence dating makes use of the
principle that if an object is heated at some point to
a point to a high temperature, as when clay is
baked to form a pot; it will release all the trapped
electrons it held previously.
 The amount of thermoluminescence emitted when
the object is heated during testing allows
researchers to calculate the age of the object.
RADIOMETRIC DATING
 Radiocarbon dating techniques, first developed by
the American chemist Willard F. Libby and his
associates at the University of Chicago in 1947, are
frequently useful in deciphering time-related
problems in archaeology, anthropology,
oceanography, pedology, climatology, and recent
geology. This method is popularly known as Carbon
14 Dating.
POTASSIUM-ARGON METHOD
 Potassium-40, a radioactive form of Potassium,
decays at an established rate and forms Argon-40.
The half of life of Potassium-40 is a known quantity,
 so the age of a material containing potassium can
be measured by the amount of Potassium-40
compared with the amount of Argon-40 it contains.
 Radioactive Potassium-40 half life is very long-
1,330 million years
 This means that Potassium-Argon dating may be
used to date samples from 5,00 years up to 3 billion
years old.
 The K-Ar method is used to date potassium rich
minerals in rock, not the fossils that may be found
in the rock. A very high temperature such as those
that occur in a volcanic event, drives off any original
Argon in the material. Therefore, the amount if
Argon that accumulates afterward from the decay
of radioactive potassium is directly related to the
amount of time since the volcanic event.
URANIUM SERIES DATING
 The dismay of two kinds of Uranium, U235 and
U238 (half-life is 4.5 billion years), into other
isotopes (such as Thorium 230) has also proved
useful for dating sites with remains of Homo
Sapiens (Modern looking Man) particularly in cave
sites were stalagmites and other calcites formations
form.
 Because water seeps into caves usually contains
Uranium but not Thorium, the calcite formation
trap Uranium. Uranium starts decaying at a known
rate into other isotopes (such as Thorium 230) and
the ratio of those isotopes can be used to estimate
the time elapsed.
 The Thorium-Uranium ratio is useful for dating cave
sites less than 300,000 years old where there are
no volcanic rocks suitable for the Potassium-Argon
method. Early Homo Sapiens from European cave
sites in Germany, Hungary, and Wales were dated
this way.
THE RESULTS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
 One goal of archaeological research is the
description or reconstruction of what happened in
the past. Archaeologists attempt to determine how
people lived in a particular place at a particular
time, and when and how their lifestyle changed.
 Also, of interest, of course, is whether new cultures
arrived or established cultures moved out of a given
area. Creating histories of cultures and their
changes over time is called culture history.
 A second major goal of archaeological research is
testing specific theories and hypothesis about
human evolution and behavior.
 In addition to testing hypotheses, archaeology has a
primary role within anthropology in its attempt to
identify and understand general trends and
patterns in human biological and cultural evolution.
THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION: THE DOMESTICATION OF
PLANTS AND ANIMALS
BROAD SPECTRUM REVOLUTION
 Term coined by Kent Flannery
 This refers to the period beginning around 15 000
BP in Middle East and 12 000 BP in Europe during
which a wider range or broader spectrum of plant
and animal life was hunted, gathered, collected,
caught, and fished.
 It was revolutionary because in the Middle East it
led to food production
 Food Production- human control over the
reproduction of plants and animals.
THE MESOLITHIC
 It has characteristic tool type-microlith
 After 15 000 BP, throughout the inhabited world, as
the big name supply dwindled, foragers had to
pursue new resources.
 Human attention shifted from large-bodied, slow
producers (such as mammoths) to species such as
fish, mollusks, and rabbits that produce quickly and
prolifically. This happened with the European
Mesolithic.
 It also happened at the Japanese site of an inlet
near Tokyo. Nittano was occupied several times
between 6000 and 5000 BP by the members of
Jomon Culture.
 These broad-spectrum foragers hunted deer, pigs,
bears, and antelope. They also ate fish, shellfish,
and plants.
 Jomon sites have yielded the remains of 300
species of shellfish and 180 species of edible plants
(including berries, nuts, and tubers).
NEOLITHIC
 It is the term used to describe economies based on
food production mainly through cultivated crops
and domestication of animals.
THE TRANSITION OF FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE
MIDDLE EAST (KENT FLANNERY)
ERA DATES (BP)
Origin of State (Sumer) 5500 BP
Increased specialization 7500-5500 BP
in food production
Early dry farming 10 000-7500 BP
(wheat and barley) or
farming without
irrigation thus it
depended on rainfall
 and caprine (goats and  In winter, they hunted in the piedmont steppe
sheep) domestication region. When winter ended, the steppe dried up.
Seminomadic hunting 12 000-10 000 BP  Game animals moved up to the hilly flanks and high
and gathering such as plateau country as the snow melted during
the Natufians summer. Pasture land became available at higher
 During the era of increasing specialization in food elevations.
production (750-5500 BP), new crops were added  Foragers gathered as they climbed, harvesting wild
to the diet, along with more productive varieties of grains that ripened later at higher altitudes.
wheat and barley.
 Cattles and pigs were domesticated. GENETIC CHANGES AND DOMESTICATION
 By 5500 BP, agriculture extended to the alluvial
 The seeds of domesticated cereals and often the
plain of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, where early
entire plants are larger thus they have higher yield
Mesopotamians lived in walled towns, some of
per unit area.
which grew into cities.
 Domesticated plants also lose their natural seed
 Metallurgy and the wheel were invented.
dispersal mechanisms. Beans have pods that hold
 Humans were living in the Bronze Age. together and domesticated cereals have tougher
 The archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe used the connective tissue holding the seedpods to the
term Neolithic Revolution to describe the origin and stem.
impact of food production – plant cultivation and  Animals got smaller when domesticated because
animal domestication. smaller animals are easier to control.
 Neolithic was coined to refer to new techniques of  When sheep got domesticated, advantageous new
grinding and polishing stone tools. phenotypes arose. Wild sheep are not woolly.
 Neolithic economies based on food production
were associated to substantial changes in human FOOD PRODUCTION AND THE STATE
lifestyles.
 Farming colonies spread down into the drier areas.
 By 12 000 BP, the shift toward the Neolithic was
By 7000 BP, simple irrigation systems had
under way in the Middle East (Turkey, Iran. Iraq,
developed, tapping springs in the foothills.
Syria, Jordan, and Israel) also known as the Fertile
 By 6000 BP, more complex irrigation techniques
Crescent.
made agriculture possible in the arid lowlands of
 People started intervening in the reproductive
southern Mesopotamia. In the alluvial desert plain
cycles of plants and animals.
of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a new economy
THE FIRST FAMERS AND HERDERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST based on irrigation and trade fueled the growth of
an entirely new form of society.
 Middle East food production arose in the context of  This was the state, a social and political unit
four environmental zones. featuring a central government, extreme contrasts
 From highest to lowest, they are High Plateau (5000 of wealth, and social classes.
ft or 1500 meters high), Hilly Flanks (woodland
zones that flanks Tigris and Euphrates), Piedmont SEVEN WORLD AREAS WHERE FOOD PRODUCTION WAS
Steppe (treeless plain) and the Alluvial desert INDEPENDENTLY INVENTED
(watered by Tigris and Euphrates with an altitude of
Area Major Earliest Date
30-150 meters above mean sea level) Domesticated
 Recent archaeological findings support the Plants and
hypothesis that food production began in Marginal Animals
areas such as piedmont steppe rather than in the Middle East wheat, barley, 10000 BP
optimal zones such as hilly flanks, where traditional sheep, goats,
foods were abundant. cattle, pigs
 Early cultivation began as an attempt to copy, in a South China rice, water 8500-6500 BP
less favorable environment (piedmont steppe), the (Yangtze River buffalo, dogs,
dense stands of wheat and barley tat grew wild in Corridor) pigs
the hilly flanks. North China millet, dogs, 7500 BP
(Yellow River) pigs, chickens
 Early seminomadic foragers in the Middle East has
Sub Saharan sorghum, pearl 4000 BP
followed game from zone to zone.
Africa millet, African
 rice, cattle (for Mathematics, weights, Greater stress
their milk and measures
blood) Trade and markets Public health declines
Central Mexico maize, beans, 4700BP (e.g. more exposure to
squash, dogs, pathogens including
turkeys communicable and
South Central potato, quinoa, 4500 BP epidemic diseases)
Andes beans, Increased economic Rise in protein deficiency
camelids, production and dental carries
(llama, alpaca), Urban life Social inequality and
guinea pigs poverty
Eastern United goosefoot, 4500 BP More reliable crop yields Slavery and other forms
States marsh elder, of human bondage
sunflower, Rise in crime, war, and
squash, turkey human sacrifice
Increased environmental
degradation (e.g. air and
EXPLAINING THE NEOLITHIC water pollution,
 Several factors including a diversity od useful plant deforestation)
and animal species and early sedentism, combined
to form the first domestication in the Ancient ORIGIN OF CITIES AND STATES
Middle East.
 Of the 148 large animals, species that seem STATE
potentially domesticable, only 14 actually have  Is a form of social and political organization that has
been domesticated. a formal, central government and a division of
 A mere dozen among 200 000 known plant species society into classes
account for 80% of the world’s food production.
 The 12 caloric staples are wheat, corn (maize), rice,
barley, sorghum (millet), soybeans, potatoes, ATTRIBUTE OF STATES
cassava (manioc), sweet potatoes, sugarcane, sugar 1. A state controls a specific regional territory such as
beets, and bananas. the Nile Valley and the Valley of Mexico.
 Domestication rested on a combination of  Early states were expansionists; they arose from
conditions and resources that had not come competition among chiefdoms, as the most
together previously. The development of a full- powerful chiefdom conquered others, extended its
fledged Neolithic economy required settling down. rule over a large territory.
 Sedentism (settled sedentary life) was especially 2. Early states had productive farming economies,
attractive when several species of plant and supporting dense populations, often in cities.
animals were available locally for foraging and  The agricultural economies of early states usually
eventually domestication involved some form of control or irrigation.
 THE BENEFITS AND COSTS OF FOOD PRODUCTION 3. Early states used tribute and taxation to
(COMPARED TO FORAGING accumulate at a central place, resources needed to
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES support hundreds, or thousands, of specialists.
Discoveries and Harder work 4. States are stratified into social classes. In the first
inventions states, the non-food producing population
New social, political, Less nutritious diets consisted of a tiny elite, plus artisans, officials,
scientific, and creative priests, and other specialists.
forms (e.g. spinning, 5. Early states had improving public buildings and
weaving, pottery, bricks, monumental architecture, including temples,
metallurgy) palaces, and storehouses.
Monumental Child labor and child Example: Egyptian Pyramids
architecture, arched care demands Aztec Temple
masonry, sculpture Abu Simbel Temple
Writing Taxes and military drafts
Forbidden City-Beijing
 Great Wall of China
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Harappa (India)
Machu Pichu, Peru
Mohenjodaro, Pakistan
Tikal (Mayan), Guatemala
Ziggurat of Ur, Iraq
6. Early states developed some form of record-
keeping system usually a written script.
Examples: Cuneiform
Hieroglyphics
Aztec codex
Mayan Writings
FIRST CITY STATES
 The first states developed in Mesopotamia by 5500
B.P. and in Mesoamerica some 3000 years later.
Chiefdoms were precursors to states.
WHAT IS CHIEFDOM?
 A chiefdom is a form of hierarchical political
organization in non-industrial societies usually
based on kinship, and in which formal leadership is
monopolized by the legitimate senior members of
select families or ‘houses’
HOW AND WHY DID CHIEFDOMS AND STATES
ORIGINATE?
 The complexity of division of social and economic
labor tended to grow as food production spread
and intensified.
 Systems of political authority and control
developed to handle regulatory problems which
emerges when the population grows and the
economy develops.
 Competition for territory and resources stimulates
state formation.
CAUSES OF STATE FORMATION: HYDRAULIC SYSTEMS
 One obvious cause of state formation: the need to
regulate hydraulic agricultural economies.
 In arid areas such as ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia, states have emerged to manage
systems of irrigation, drainage and flood control.
 Growth in hydraulic systems is often but not always
associated with state information.
LONG-DISTANCE TRADE ROUTES
 States arise at strategic locations in regional trade
networks.
 Long-distance trade has been important in the
evolution of many states, including those in
Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica. It can also occur
in societies such as those of Papua New Guinea
(even in pre-Spanish time in the Philippines), where
no states developed.
 POPULATION, WAR, AND CIRCUMSCRIPTION
 According to Carnelio, wherever and whenever
environmental circumscription (resource
concentration), increasing population and warfare
exist, state formation will begin.
 Multivariate Theory: involves multiple factors,
courses, or variables.
 Incorporating three factors working together
instead of a single cause of state formation
 Theory explains many, but not all, cases of state
formation.
THE URBAN REVOLUTION
 Childe, probably the most influential archaeologist
of the 20th century, chose the term “revolution”
deliberately.
 He used the term “Urban Revolution” to describe
the major transformation of human life and social
institutions. As a result of the Urban revolution,
economic activity of all was expanded greatly; and
the first cities were built.
 JULIAN STEWARD
 Suggested that at the core of the urban
transformation was a changing, functionally
interrelated group of social institutions.
 The rise of civilization was viewed by Steward as a
series of successive, major organizational levels.
 Hunting and gathering
 Incipient agriculture
 Formative years
 Regional fluorescence
 Initial Conquest
 Dark Ages
 Cyclical Conquests
KIND OF SOCIETIES
EGALITARIAN
 Nature of Status: Status differences are not
inherited. All status is based on age, gender, and
individuals’ qualities, talents and achievements.
 Common Form of Subsistence economy: Foraging
 Common Forms of Social Organization: Bands and
Tribes
 Examples: Inuit, Ju’/hoansi San, and Yanomami
RANKED
 Nature of Status: Status differences are inherited
and distributed along a continuum from the
highest-ranking member (chief) to the lowest
without any breaks
 Common Form of Subsistence: Horticulture,
pastoralism, and some foraging groups
 Common Forms of Social Organization: Chiefdom
and some tribes
 Examples: Pre-Spanish and American indigenous
groups and tribes of the Philippines; indigenous
Hawaiians; Trobriand Islanders.
STRATIFIED
 Nature of Status: Status differences are inherited
and divided sharply between distinct noble and
commoner classes
 Common Form of Subsistence: Agriculture
 Common Forms of Social Organization: States
 Examples: Teotihuacan, Uruk period of
Mesopotamia, Inca, Shang Dynasty of China, Rome,
Athens, Modern day Countries
WHY STATES COLLAPSE?
 Invasion, famine, disease, prolonged drought, soil
exhaustion, erosion and the build-up of irrigation
salts.
 States may collapse when they fail to keep social
and economic order to protect themselves against
outsiders.
EXAMPLES OF COLLAPSED STATES
 With the death of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony,
Egypt became a province of the Roma Empire
 Emperor Puyi is the last emperor of China. He died
in 1967 during the time of the cultural revolution of
Mao Zedong.
 The Spaniard Conquistadors headed by Francisco
Pizzaro captured and the later killed King Atahualpa
of the Inca Empire in 1533 AD
 The Spanish Conquistadors headed by Hernan
Cortes captured Tenochtitlan, the Aztec Capital in
1521
 The collapse of Mayan empire was caused by
overpopulation, Environmental degradation, and
climate change.
ETHNICITY AND RACE
ETHNICITY
 Ethnicity is based on cultural similarities (among
members of the same ethnic group) and
differences (between that group and others).
 Ethnicity is revealed when people claim a certain
ethnic identity for themselves and are defined by
others as having that identity.
 Ethnicity means identification with and feeling part
of an ethnic group and exclusion from certain other
groups because of this affiliation.
ETHNIC GROUP AND ETHNICITY
ETHNIC GROUP
 Shares certain beliefs, values, habits, customs, and
norms because of their common background. They
defined themselves as different and special
because of cultural features.
 The distinction may arise from language, religion,
historical experience, geographic isolation, kinship,
or “race”
STATUS
 Any position that determines where someone fits in
society. It encompasses the various positions that
people occupy in society.
ASCRIBED STATUS
 People have little or no choice about occupying
them.
 Example: age, race, sex, caste group in India.
ACHIEVED STATUS
 Are not automatic; they come through choices,
actions, efforts, talents, or accomplishments.
 Example: educational background, socio-economic
status, marital status (unless it is arranged
marriage).
RACE
 Are ethnic groups assumed (by members of
particular culture) to have a biological basis but
actually race is socially constructed.
RACISM
 Discrimination against an ethnic group assumed to
have a biological basis.
 In Charles Wagley’s terms, they are social races
(groups assumed to have a biological basis but
 actually defined in a culturally defined in a culturally
arbitrarily, rather than a scientific, manner.)
 Many Americans mistakenly assume that “whites”
and “blacks”, for example, are biologically distinct
and that these terms stand for discrete races.
RACE IN THE USA
 In American culture, one acquires his or her racial
status/identity at birth, as an ascribed status.
 American rules for assigning racial status can be
even more random. In some states, anyone to have
any black ancestor, no matter how remote, can be
classified as a member of the black race.
DESCENT
 Social identity on the basis of ancestry
 A rare variant of this rule of descent exists in USA.
 Hypodescent- hypodescent automatically places
children of mixed marriages in the group of their
minority parent (hypo means lower)
 It divides American society into groups that have
been unequal in their access to wealth, power, and
prestige.
NOT US: RACE IN JAPAN
 Japan is commonly viewed as a nation that is
homogeneous in race, ethnicity, language, and
culture-an image the Japanese themselves
cultivate. Japan is hardly a uniform entity.
 About 10% of its population consists of minorities.
These include aboriginal Ainu, annexed Okinawans,
outcast BARAKUMIN, children of mixed marriages
and immigrant nationalities specially Koreans.
 To describe racial attitudes in Japan, Jennifer
Robertson (1992) uses Kwame Anthony Appiah’s
term Intrinsic Racism
 Intrinsic Racism- a belief that a perceived racial
difference is a sufficient reason to value one person
less than another.
 In its construction of race, Japanese culture regards
certain ethnic groups as having a biological basis
when there is no evidence that they do.
 The best example is the Barakumin, a stigmatized
group of at least 4 million outcasts, sometimes
compared to India’s untouchables.
 Barakumin are perceived as standing apart from
majority of Japanese. Through ancestry and
descent, Barakumin are “not us.” Japanese try to
keep their lineage pure by discouraging mixing.
 The Barakumin are residentially segregated in
neighborhoods (rural or urban) called Baraku.
 The Barakumin are less likely to attend high school
or college. If they do, they face discrimination.
 Majority of children and teachers may refuse to eat
with them because Barakumin are considered
unclean.
 The origin of the Barakumin lies in a historical
tiered system of stratification from Tokugawa
period (1603-1868)
 The top four ranked categories were warrior-
administrator (samurai), farmers, artisans, and
merchants. The ancestors of the Barakumin were
below this hierarchy.
 Barakumin did “unclean” job such as animal
slaughters and disposal of the dead.
 They still do the same job including work with
leather and animal products.
 Barakumin and other minorities in Japan are more
likely to have careers in crime, prostitution,
entertainment, and sports.
ETHNIC GROUPS, NATIONS, AND NATIONALITIES
NATION
 Is a society that is sharing a language, religion,
history, territory, ancestry, and kinship.
STATE
 An independent centrally organized political unit or
a government.
NATION-STATE
 Refer to an autonomous political entity or a
country.
NATIONALITIES AND IMAGINED COMMUNITIES
 Groups that now have, or wish to have a regain,
autonomous political status (their own country) are
called nationalities.
 In the word of Benedict Anderson, they are
Imagined Communities. Their members do not
form an actual face-to-face community. They can
only imagine that they all belong to and participate
in the same group. Even if they become nation-
states, they remained imagined communities
because most of their members, though feeling
comradeship, will never meet.
PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE
 Ethnic diversity may be associated with positive
group interaction and coexistence or with conflict.
In many nations, multiple cultural groups live
together in reasonable harmony. Three ways of
 realizing such peaceful coexistence as assimilation,
the plural society, and multiculturalism.
ASSIMILATION
 Assimilation describes the process of change that a
minority ethnic group may experience when it
moves to a country where another culture
dominates.
 By assimilating, the minority adopts the patterns
and norms of its host culture.
 It incorporated into the dominant culture to the
point it no longer exists as a separate cultural unit.
 Examples: New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London,
Singapore, Hong Kong
 Assimilation is the “melting pot” model; ethnic
groups give up their own cultural traditions as they
blend into a common national stew
 Some countries such as Brazil are more
assimilationist than others are. German, Italians,
Japanese, Middle easterners, East Europeans
started migrating to Brazil late in the 29th Century.
THE PLURAL SOCIETY
 Ethnic distinctions can exist despite generations of
inter-ethnic contact.
 Through a study, it was shown that ethnic groups
can be in contact for generations without
assimilations and can live in a peaceful coexistence.
 Plural Society: a society that combines ethnic
contrasts ecological specialization (that is, use of
different environmental resources by each ethnic
group), and the economic interdependence of
those groups.
 Economic development in the middle East with still
camel herders and traders in the desert.
MULTICULTURALISM
 Multiculturalism is a view of cultural diversity as
valuable, good, desirable, and worth maintaining.
 Multiculturalism model promotes the practice of
other cultural/ethnic practices and traditions.
 Multiculturalism model works best in a country
where the political system promotes freedom of
expression
ROOTS OF ETHNIC CONFLICT
 Political
 Economic
 Religious
 Linguistic
 Cultural
 Racial
PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION
PREJUDICE
 Devaluing a group (looking down on) a group
because of its assumed behavior, values,
capabilities, or attributes.
 People are prejudiced when they hold stereotypes
about groups and apply them to individuals.
STEROTYPES
 Fixed ideas-often unfavorable-about what the
members of a group are like.
DISCRIMINATION
DE FACTO
 Practiced but not legally sanctioned.
 Examples: harsher treatment of American
minorities.
DE JURE
 Part of the law
 Example: Segregation in the Southern United States
and apartheid in South Africa which both no longer
in existence.
CHIPS IN MOSAIC
 Although multicultural model is increasingly
prominent in North America, ethnic competition
and conflict are just as evident.
 “They come into our neighborhoods and treat us
like dirt” -African Americans
 “It’s not part of our culture to smile.” -Koreans
AFTERMETHS OF OPPRESSION
 Fueling ethnic conflict are such forms of
discrimination as genocide, forced assimilation, and
cultural colonialism.
GENOCIDE
 Physical destruction of an ethnic or religious group
through mass murder.
 Example: holocaust of Nazi Germany and “ethnic
cleaning” in Bosnia.
ETHNOCIDE
 A dominant group may try to destroy the cultures
of certain ethnic groups.
FORCED ASSIMILATION
 A dominant group force the minority group to
adopt to the dominant culture.
ETHNIC EXPULSION Discrimination; Not legally Ageism, sexism
De Facto sanctioned but
 Removing groups that are culturally different from practiced
a country. TYPES OF NEGATIVE ETHNIC INTERACTION
 Example: the Rohingya (Muslims) in
Burma/Myanmar TYPES NATURE OF EXAMPLES
INTERACTION
REFUGEES Genocide Deliberate Nazi Germany;
elimination of ethnic
 People who have been forced (involuntary
ethnic group cleansing in
refugees) or who have chosen (voluntary refugees) through mass Bosnia,
to flee a country to escape persecution of war. murder Rwanda
COLONIALISM Ethnocide Cultural practices Ancient
attacked by practices of
 Political, social, economic, and cultural domination dominant culture Filipinos during
of a territory and its people by a foreign power for or colonial power. Spanish
an extended time. colonial period
Ethnic Forcing ethnic Middle East
CULTURAL COLONIALISM Expulsion group(s) out of a refugees now
country or region in Europe
 Internal domination- by one group and its because of ISIS
culture/ideology over others.
 Example: Chinese Han to Muslim areas in China and
in Tibet and Russians in non-Russian provinces of LANGUAGE AND COMUNICATION
USSR.
WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
TYPES OF POSITIVE ETHNIC INTERACTION
 Language, which may be written or spoken, is our
TYPES NATURE OF EXAMPLES primary means of communication.
INTERACTION  Writing has existed for 6000 years. Language has
Assimilation Ethnic groups United existed thousands of years before that, but no one
absorbed within States knows exactly when. Its complexity allows us to
dominant culture before create detailed images, to discuss abstract ideas,
Plural Society Society or region Areas of and to share our experiences with others.
contains Middle Easy  Since language is always changing, some linguistic
economically with farmers anthropologists reconstruct ancient languages by
interdependent and herders
comparing them to their contemporary
ethnic-groups
descendants.
Multiculturalism Cultural diversity Canada and
valued; ethnic United  Some explore the role of language in colonization
cultures coexist States now and in the expansion of world economy.
with dominant
LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY
culture
TYPES OF NEGATIVE ETHNIC INTERACTION  Examines language structure and use, linguistic
change, and the relations among language, society,
TYPES NATURE OF EXAMPLES
and culture
INTERACTION
Prejudice Devaluing a Homophobia; CALL SYSTEM
group based on islamophobia
assumed  The natural communication systems of other
attributes primates like monkeys and apes.
Discrimination; Legal policies Former  The call systems of our hominid ancestors
De Jure and practices segregation in eventually grew too complicated for genetic
that harm US and transmission. As hominids relied more and more on
particular apartheid in learning, their call systems evolved into language.
ethnic group South Africa
NON-HUMAN COMMUNICATION
 Systems of communication are not unique to LANGAUGE CONTRASED WITH CALL SYSTEM
human beings
HUMAN LANGUAGE PRIMATE CALL SYSTEM
 Other animal species communicate in variety of
Has the capacity to Are stimuli-dependent;
ways
speak of things that are the food call will be
1. A bird may communicate by a call that “this is not present made only in the
my territory.” (displacement) presence of food; it
2. A squirrel may utter a cry that leads other cannot be faked
squirrels to flee from dangers. Has the capacity to Consist of a limited
3. An ant releases a chemical when it dies and its generate new number of calls that
fellow then carry it away to the compost heap. expressions by cannot be combined to
 Karl von Frisch discovered that the black Australian combining other produce new calls
honeybee- by choosing a round dance, a wagging expressions
dance, or a short, straight run-can communicate (productivity)
not only the precise direction of the source of food Is group specific in that Tend to be species
all humans have the specific, with little
but also its distance from the hive.
capacity for language, variation among
SIGN LANGUAGE but each linguistic communities of the
community has its own same species for each
 Even though apes cannot speak language, they can language, which is call.
learn to use them culturally transmitted
ASL (AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE)
COMMUNICATION
 The first chimpanzee to learn ASL was Washoe. She
was captured from Africa and was also raised like a  Communicate comes from the Latin verb
human child by the Gardners and Roger Fouts. “communicare” which means to share or impart
 Another chimpanzee named Lucy also learned ASL.  We communicate to convey messages. The sender
She was Washoe’s junior by one year, and the two gives a signal that is received and decoded by the
lived in the same institute. receiver who usually responds with a specific action
 Both chimpanzees showed human traits like or reply.
swearing, joking, lying, and trying to teach language
OTHER FORMS OF COMMUNICATION ASIDE FROM
to others.
SPOKEN LANGUAGE INCLUDES:
 Because of their strength and size, gorillas are less
likely subjects for experiments like these.  Body stance
 Still, psychologist Penny Patterson managed to  Facial expressions
raise her now full-grown gorilla named Koko and  Gesture
teach her ASL.  Tone of Voice
 Koko’s vocabulary surpasses that any of chimp: she  Eye Contact
uses 400 ASL signs regularly and has used about
700 at least once.
 Even though they cannot use spoken language,  Calls carry in intensity and duration, but are
these apes can use gestural language, and they also automatic and cannot be combined.
showed traits that are similar to humans’ such as:
 Displacement-to talk about thinks that are not in  Somehow, our ancestors began to combine calls
sight, or are not tangible. and to understand them.
 Productivity- to make new expression that are
comprehensible to others  A communication (call, word, sentence) is symbolic
 Cultural transmission- to transmit through learning when:
CRITICISMS
1. The communication has meaning when its referent
 Some scholars compare these chimps and gorillas is not present
to circus animals and say that they don’t really have 2. The meaning is arbitrary wherein the receiver of
linguistic ability, but only one of these critics the message could not guess its meaning just from
actually worked with an ape.
 the sound(s) and does not know the meaning
instinctively.
HOW HUMAN VOCALIZATION IS DIFFERENT FROM
OTHER SPECIES?
1. All human languages employ a large set of symbols.
2. Human languages are open systems governed by
complex rules about how sounds and sequences of
sounds can be combined to produce an infinite
variety of new meanings.
Example is the word “care”- careless, careful,
carelessness, care bears, careless whisper, etc.
3. Humans can transmit many more complex
messages than any other animals.
4. Humans can talk (and think) with language about
things completely out of context.
5. Humans can be deliberately ambiguous in their
messages.
6. Humans have many kinds of discourse.
THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE
 Even though the apes have a latent ability to
combine and remember linguistic symbols, human
evolution is still needed to make this ability grow
into language.
FOXP2
 Those numbers who had inherited the non-speech
form of this mutated gene cannot speak properly,
just like apes. The same variant of this gene is also
found in chimpanzees.
 By comparing the genomes of chimps and humans,
it seems that the speech-friendly form of FOXP2
appeared in humans around 150,000 years ago.
 The appearance of language gave a big advantage
to Homo sapiens.
 The information stored in human societies are
much greater than those of any nonhuman group.
 New experiences cam be shared, and humans can
prepare for it the next time they have a similar
experience
 Homo sapiens perhaps 100,000 years ago may had
the beginnings of language but others believe that
language developed more recently/
 Noam Chomsky suggests that there may be a
language-acquisition device in the brain, as innate
to humans as call systems are to other animals.
 As the forebrain evolved, this device may have
become part of our biological maintenance.
 Chomsky argued that the human brain contains a
limited set of rules for organizing language, so that
all language has a common structural basis.
Chomsky calls this set of rules UNIVERSAL
GRAMMAR.
 The fact that we can learn foreign languages and
that words and ideas can be transmitted from one
language to another tends to support Chomsky’s
position that all humans have similar linguistic
abilities and thought processes.
FROM PIDGIN TO VREOLE LANGUAGES
 Some languages developed in various areas where
European colonial powers established commercial
enterprises that relied on imported labor, generally
slaves.
 The laborers/slaves in one place often came from
several different societies and in the beginning
would speak with their masters and with each other
in some kind of Pidgin (simplified) version of the
master’s language.
 Pidgin language lacks many of the building blocks
found in the languages of whole societies building
blocks such as:
1. Prepositions (to,on,and so forth) and
2. Auxiliary verbs (designating future and other
tenses)
 Many pidgin languages developed into and were
replaced by so called Creole languages, which
incorporate much of vocabulary of the masters;
language but also have a grammar that differs from
it and from the grammars of the laborers’ native
languages
 All creoles use intonation instead of a change in
word order to as a question. The creole version
puts a rising inflection at the end.
 Example: You can fix this?
 All creoles express the future and the past in the
same grammatical way, by the use of particles (e.g.
shall) between subject and the verb, and they all
employ double negatives.
 Example: Guyana English Creole
 Nobody no like me.
DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS
 Tries to discover the rules of phonology,
morphology, lexicon, and syntax.
 The scientific study of a spoken language.
GRAMAR
 For linguistics, grammar consists of the actual often
unconscious principles that predict how people
talk.
PHONOLOGY
 The study of speech sounds and considers which
sound are present and significant in a given
language.
 Although the human vocal tract theoretically can
make a very large number of different sound
(phones- to linguists) each language uses only some
of them.
 Finding it difficult to make certain sounds is only
one of the reasons we have trouble learning a
“foreign” language.
 Another problem is that we may not be used to
combining certain sounds or making a certain
sound in particular position in a word.
MORPHOLOGY
 Studies the forms in which sounds combine to form
MORPHS
 Smallest unit of language that has a meaning
MORPHEME
 One or more morphs with the same meaning.
 Prefixes in- such as incomplete and un- such as
unclear are from the same morpheme not.
LEXICON
 It is a dictionary containing all its morphemes and
their meanings.
SYNTAX
 Refers to the arrangement and order of words in
phrases and sentences.
HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
 Focuses on how languages change over time.
 Deals with long-term change; historical linguists can
reconstruct many features of past languages by
studying contemporary daughter languages.
 Language changes over time.
 It evolves-varies, spreads, divides into subgroups
(languages within a taxonomy of related languages
that are most closely related)
 Knowledge of linguistic relationships is often
valuable to anthropologists interested in history,
particularly events during the past 5,000 years.
 But cultural similarities aren’t limited to speakers of
related languages. Even groups whose members
speak unrelated languages have contact through
trade, intermarriages, and warfare.
 Ideas and inventions diffuse widely among human
groups.
 Linguistic evidence may confirm cultural contact
and borrowing when written history is lacking. By
considering which words have been borrowed, we
also can make inferences about the nature of the
contact.
 Example: Contemporary English
 Even without written documentation of France’s
influence after the Norman Conquest of England in
1066, linguistic evidence in Contemporary English
would reveal a long period of important firsthand
contact with France.
 Harrison’s recent book, When Languages Die
(2007), notes that an indigenous language goes
extinct every two weeks, as its last speaker die.
 Of approximately 7,000 remaining languages, about
20% are endangered.
 National Geographic’s Enduring Voices Project
strives to preserve endangered languages by
identifying the geographic areas with unique,
poorly understood, or threatened languages and by
documenting those languages and cultures.
PROTOLANGUAGE
 Original language from which daughter language
diverge
 Example: Latin is the protolanguage of Spanish and
English
THE PROCESS OF LANGUAGE DIVERGENCE
1. Geographic barrier such as bodies of water, deserts
and mountains
2. Social distance
Example: Untouchables of India
3. Contact with other groups
4. Conquest and colonization
THE SAPIR WHORF HYPOTHESIS
 Language is a force in its own rights that it affects
how people in a society perceive and conceive
reality
 Argued that the grammatical categories of different
languages lead their speakers to think about things
in particular ways
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
 Investigates relationships between social and
linguistic variation or language in its social context
 Is concerned with the ethnography of speaking-that
is, with cultural and subcultural patterns of speech
variation in different social contexts.
LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY
 Whether bilingual or not, we all vary our speech in
different contexts; we engage in style shifts
 In certain parts of Europe, people regularly switch
dialects. This phenomenon knowns as diglossia,
applies to “high” and “low” variants of the same
language.
 For example, in Belgium, is people speaking
German and Flemish.
 People employ the “high” variant (German) at
universities ad in writing, professions and mass
media. The use of “low” variant (Flemish) for
ordinary conversations with family members and
friends.
 According to the Principle of Linguistic Relativity, all
dialects are equally effective as systems of
communication, which is language’s main job.
 Our tendency to think of a particular dialect as
cruder or more sophisticated than others is a social
rather than a linguistic judgement.
GENDER SPEECH CONTRASTS
 In public contexts. Japanese women tend to adopt
an artificially high voice, for the sake of politeness,
according to their traditional culture,
 In North America and Great Britain (even in the
Philippines) women’s speech tend to be more
similar to the standard dialect than men’s is.
 Men may adopt working-class speech because hey
associate it with masculinity.
 The use of certain types of words and expressions
has been associated with women’s traditional
lesser power in society.
 Women tend to use words like “oh dear”, “o
fudge”, and “Goodness!” rather than “damn,”
“hell,” or “shit”
LANGUAGE AND STATUS POSITIONS
HONORIFICS
 Are terms used with people, often by being added
to their names to “honor” them.
 Such terms may convey or imply a status difference
between the speaker and the person being referred
to such as Dr. House and Professor Dumbledore
 The Japanese language has several honorifics, some
of which convey more respect than others do.
 The suffix -sama (added to a name) is used to
address someone of higher social status such as a
teacher. Women can use it to demonstrate love or
respect for their husbands.
 The most common Japanese honorific, -san,
attached to the last name, is respectful, but less
formal than “Mr.”, “Mrs.”, or “Ms.”
 Attached to a first name, -san denotes more
familiarity. The honorific -dono shows more respect
and is intermediate between -san and -sama.
 In Java, Indonesia, vocabularies of the groups in the
society-peasants, townspeople and aristocrats-
have some differences.
 Example: “now”
 Peasant: saiki
 Townspeople- saniki
 Aristocrat- samenika
MULTILINGUALISM AND CODESWITCHING
MAKING A LIVING: SUBSISTENCE AND EXCHANGE
SUBSISTENCE, ECONOMY, AND DISTRIBUTION: HOW
HUMANS DO IT
 Food is necessary for survival; the means of
subsistence of a given group has been called their
adaptive strategy.
 Cohen describes five adaptive strategies: foraging,
horticulture, agriculture, pastoralism, and
industrialism.
ECONOMIC PRODUCTION AS AN ADAPTIVE STRATEGY
FORAGING
 Also known as hunting and gathering
 Foraging was the only means of subsistence for the
first 5 million years of human history.
 Hunters and gatherers continued to exist after the
multiple inventions of agriculture in those areas ill-
suited to growing crops.
 Foraging relies on the collection of nutritionally
significant plant resources and the capture of
important animal protein sources for food.
 THE IMPORTANCE OF GATHERING
 For much of the 20th century, anthropologists
assumed hunting was more important than
gathering.
 Subsequent ethnographic work showed plant
resources usually make up 80% of the diet.
 Foragers live off the land, usually in small groups
called “bands”
 Because forages are highly mobile and frequently
live in marginal environments, they tend to live in
groups of 100 or less.
 This mobile lifestyle leads to temporary housing
structures.
 Most members of bands are related.
 The bands practice exogamy (marriage outside of
their family/band)
 Membership of band may change during the course
of a year.
 They practice seasonal transhumance (the seasonal
movement of people with their live stocks)
 Egalitarian
 Sexual division of labor
EXAMPLE OF FORAGERS
 California Indians
 Inuit (aka Eskimos)
 Australian aborigines
 !Kung san of South Africa
CULTIVATION
 Cultivation is food production rather food
gathering.
 According to Cohen’s scheme, the three forms of
food production are horticulture, agriculture, and
pastoralism
 Horticulture and agriculture focus on plant
resource production; pastoralism focuses on
herding and “harvesting” their animals.
HORTICULTURE
 Horticulture is the small-scale planting and
harvesting of food plants using simple tools and
small garden plots.
 Horticulturalists frequently use swidden or slash-
and-burn technique for fertilization of the soil.
 Shifting cultivation is common.
ADVANTAGES OF HORTICULTURE
 Can sustain large groups (example: kuikuru of South
America)
 Allows for flexible sedentism (staying in one place)
DISADVANTAGES OF HORTICULTURE
 Limited carrying capacity.
 Leads to rapid soil exhaustion
HORTICULTURAL GROUPS
 Yanomami
 The tribes of Papua New Guinea
 Hanunuo Mangyan of Mindoro
AGRICULTURE
 Differs from horticulture in that it is more labor
intensive, uses more sophisticated tools (such as
plows), engages the use of draft animals, may use
terracing, and employs irrigation.
 More labor is used, and greater quantities of crops
are produced.
DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND FARMING
 Domesticated animals, especially cattle and horses,
have played an important role in raising crops,
providing both labor (plowing) and fertilizer.
IRRIGATION AND TERRACING
 Irrigation provides nutrients and a continual source
of water to crops, allowing for continual use of
fields (rather than shifting)
 Terracing allows for cultivation of crops in
mountainous areas.
COSTS AND BENEFITS OF AGRICULTURE
 Human labor input greater for agriculture, since
time and energy are required to build and maintain
canals and terraces, as well as to feed and care for
animals.
 Yields are much greater with agriculture over
horticulture; provides long-term, dependable crops
that translates to lower labor costs per unit.
 THE CULTIVATION CONTINUUM
 Horticulture = low labor, shifting-plot
 Agriculture = labor-intensive; permanent plot
 Some world economies are intermediate between
horticulture and agriculture, suing sectorial
fallowing, which is a form of horticulture that is
employs by larger populations.
INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE
 Intensive agriculture allows for large population
 However, large populations combined with
intensive agricultural practices result in extreme
environmental degradation.
 Intensive agriculture often leads to specialization in
certain crops (rice, maize, potatoes), thereby
sacrificing dietary diversity
INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE GONE WRONG
 The ancient Maya civilization collapsed about 800
A.D., following a combination of agricultural
intensification and population growth that led to
deforestation and soil erosion.
PASTORALISM
 Pastoralists are herders who focus on animals such
as goats, sheep, cattle, camels, and yaks.
 Traditional pastoralists are found in parts of North
and Eastern Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and
Europe.
PASTORALISM AS A LIVING
 Pastoralists use their herds for food (milk, blood,
meat).
 Pastoralists frequently trade with farmers for grains
and vegetables, or may engage in limited
horticulture or foraging.
 Pastoralists practice pastoral nomadism (the whole
group moves) or transhumance (only certain
members of the group follow the herd animals).
EXAMPLE OF PASTORALISTS
 Reindeer herders of Mongolia
MODES OF PRODUCTION
 Economy = a system of production, distribution and
consumption of resources
 A mode of production is a way of organizing
production:
 “A set of social relations through which labor is
deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of
tools, skills, organization, and knowledge.”
(Wolf,1982)
CAPITALISM VS. NON-INDUSTRIAL MODES OF
PRODUCTION
 In non-industrial societies, labor is given as a social
obligation, and is frequently kin-based.
 In capitalist industrial societies, money buys labor
power, and there exists a social gap between the
purchasers of labor and their laborers (bosses and
workers).
INDUSTRIALISM
 Large scale, industrial production, involving
factories and mechanization.
 Industrial production can be either capitalist or
socialist
 Industrialism relies on corporate agriculture.
MEANS OF PRODUCTION
 The means, or factors of production, involve
territory, labor, and technology.
 In non-industrial societies, there is a closer
relationship between laborers and the means of
production.
 In industrial societies, there is frequent alienation
of the workers from the means of production.
DISTRIBUTION AND EXCHANGE
 The Market Principle: operates in a capitalist
economy by governing the distribution of land,
labor, natural resources, technology, and capital.
Items are bought and sold, and rely on the law of
supply and demand.
 Redistribution: goods and services move towards
the center, then redistributed.
 Example: Kwakiutl Group of Canada
RECIPROCITY
 Reciprocity is an exchange between social equals;
common in egalitarian societies.
THREE TYPES OF RECIPROCITY
GENERALIZED
 Someone gives with no explicit expectation that it
will be returned.
BALANCED
 Giving with expecting something in return
NEGATIVE
 Giving with the expectation of immediate return
but one of the parties is of disadvantaged. Barter of
goods is an example.
FAMILY AND MARRIAGE
FAMILY
 Is the basic institution and the primary group
in society.
MARRIAGE
 Means a socially approved and sexual and
economic union usually between a woman and
a man.
 It is presumed, by both the couple and others,
to be more or less permanent, and it
subsumes reciprocal rights and obligations
between the two spouses and between
spouses and their future children.
FUNCTIONS OF THE FAMILY
1. Family regulates sexual behavior and is the
unit of reproduction.
2. The family performs the functions of biological
maintenance.
 The family gives its member status
 The family is an important mechanism for
social control.
WHY MARRIAGE IS UNIVERSAL?
 Gender Division of Labor
 Prolonged Infant Dependency
 Sexual Competition
MARKING THE ONSET OF MARRIAGE
 The event that marks the commencement of
marriage varies in different societies
 Among the Turamiut Inuit, the betrothal is
considered extremely important and is arranged
between the parents at or before the time their
children reach puberty.
 Later when the youth is ready, he moves in with
betrothed’s family for a trial period. If all goes well-
that is the girl gives birth to a baby within a year or
so- the wife goes with her husband at his camp.
 In keeping with the general openness of their
society's attitude toward sexual matters, a
Trobriand couple advertise their desire to marry
“by sleeping together regularly, by showing
 themselves together in public, and by remaining
with each other for long periods of time.”
 When a girl accepts a small gift from a boy, she
demonstrates that her parents favor the match.
Before long, she moves to the boy’s house, takes
her meals there, and accompanies her husband all
day. Then the word goes around that the two are
married.
 Among those societies that have ceremonies
marking the onset of marriage, feasting is a
common element. It expresses publicly the
unification of the two families by marriage.
 The reindeer Tungus of Siberia set a wedding date
after protracted negotiations between two families
and their larger kin groups. Go-betweens assume
most of the responsibility for the negotiating.
 The wedding day opens with the two kin
groups pitching their lodges in separate areas
and offering a great feast. After the group’s
gift have been presented, the bride’s dowry is
loaded onto reindeer and carries to the
groom’s lodge.
 Then, the new couple will greet all the guests
in the lodge of the husband. Finally, the go-
betweens spit three times on the bride’s
hands, and the couple are formally husbands
and wife. More feasting and revelry bring the
day to a close.
 In marry cultures, marriage includes
ceremonial expressions of hostility.
 One form of this custom is the trading of
insults between kin groups such as the one
occurring on Polynesian atoll of Pukapuka.
 On occasion, hostility can have genuinely
aggressive overtones, as among Gusii of
Kenya.
 When the permission is granted, the bride
must hold on the house post because she will
be dragged outside by the clansmen of the
groom. Finally, she goes with them, crying and
with her hands on her head.
 But the battle is not over yet. Mutual
antagonism continues right into the marriage
bed, even up to the beyond coitus. The groom
is determined to display his virility; the bride is
equally determined to rest it.
 Brides are said to take pride in the length of
time they can hold off their mates. Men can
also win acclaim. Of the bride is unable to walk
the following day, the groom is considered a
“real man”.
ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF MARRIAGE
BRIDE PRICE
 Is a gift money or goods from the groom or his
kin to the bride’s kin; the gift usually grants the
groom the right to marry the bride and the
right to her children.
NANDI OF KENYA
 Bride price consists of about five to seven cattle
one or two sheep and goats, cowrie shells, and
money equivalent to the value of one cow
SUBANUN OF THE PHILIPPINES
 Several times the annual income of the groom plus
three to five years of bride service
BRIDE SERVICE
 Requires the groom to work for the bride’s family,
sometimes before marriage begins, sometimes
after. Bride service varies in duration. In some
societies it lasts for only a few months; in others, as
long as several years.
NORTH ALASKAN ESKIMOS
 Catch a seal
EXCHANGE OF FEMALES
 Custom whereby a sister or female relative of the
groom is exchanged for the bride.
 Societies with this custom tend to be horticultural,
egalitarian, and women have high contribution to
primary subsistence
GIFT EXCHANGE
 Involves the exchange gift of about equal by the
two kin groups about to be linked by marriage.
 Example: Andaman Islanders
DOWRY
 It is usually a substantial transfer of goods or
money from the bride’s family to the bride (but
given to the groom). A family has to have a wealth
to give a dowry.
 Payment of dowries was common in medieval and
renaissance Europe, where the size of the dowry
often determined the desirability of the daughter
 One theory suggests that the dowry is intended to
guarantee future support for a woman and her
children, even though she will not do much primary
subsistence work.
 Another theory is intended to attract the best
bridegroom for a daughter in monogamous
societies with a high degree of social inequality.
 Examples: Eastern Europe, Southern Italy, France,
Parts of India, Iraq
INDIRECT DOWRY
 The dowry is provided by the groom’s family to the
bride but it is sometimes first given to the bride’s
father.
BASERI OF SOUTHERN IRAN
 The groom’s father assumes the expense of setting
up couple’s new household.
 He gives cash to the bride’s father who uses at least
some of the money to buy his daughter household
utensils, blankets, and rugs.
INCEST TABOO
 Prohibition of sexual intercourse or marriage
between some categories of kin.
 The most universal aspect of the incest taboo is the
prohibition of sexual intercourse or marriage
between mother and son, father and daughter, and
brother and sister.
 A few societies in the past, however, permits incest,
mostly within the royal and aristocratic families,
though generally it was forbidden to the rest of the
population.
 For example, are the Incas of Peru, Hawaiian royal
families, and the Ancient Egyptians
THEORIES OF INCEST TABOO
CHILDHOOD-FAMILIARITY THEORY
 Edward Westermarck
 He argued that persons who have been closely
associated with each other since earliest childhood
such as sibling, are not sexually attracted to each
other and therefore would avoid marriage with
each other.
FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
 Sigmund Freud suggested that the incest taboo is a
reaction against unconscious, unacceptable desires.
 He suggested that the son is attracted to his
mother (Oedipal Complex) (as a daughter is to her
father (Electra Complex)) and as a result, feels
jealousy and hostility toward his father. But the son
knows that these feeling cannot continue, for they
might lead the father to retaliate against him;
therefore, they must renounce or repressed.
FAMILY DISRUPTION THEORY
 Bronisław Malinowski
 Sexual competition among family members would
create so much rivalry and tension that the family
could not function as an effective unit.
COOPERATION THEORY
 Edward B. Taylor and was elaborated by Leslie A.
White and Claude Levi-Strauss
 It emphasizes the value of incest taboo in
promoting cooperation among family groups and
thus helping communities to survive. (Joffrey
Baratheon and Sansa Stark)
 Early humans developed the incest taboo to ensure
that individuals would marry members of other
families. The tie created by intermarriage would
serve to hold the community together.
 Tylor, explained the incest taboo as an answer to
the choice “between marrying out and being killed
out.”
INBREEDING THEORY
 Focuses in the potentially damaging consequences
of inbreeding, or marrying within the family. People
within the same family are likely to carry the same
harmful recessive genes. People within the same
family are likely to die early of genetic disorders
than are the offspring of unrelated spouses.
FORMS OF MARRIAGE
MONOGAMY
 Permits a man to take only one spouse at a time
POLYGAMY
 Is plural marriage and may assume in three forms:
POLYGYNY
 Is the marriage of one man to two or more women
at the same time
 Arapesh of New Guinea- everything is so even
because they practiced sororal polygyny
 Plateau Tonga in Africa- they practice non sororal
polygyny the husband shares his personal goods
and his favors among his wives who live in separate
dwellings.
 Crow Indians- practiced sororal polygyny and co-
wives usually shared a tepee.
 Tanala of Madagascar-requires the husband to
spend a day with each co-wife in succession.
 Tonga of Polynesia-grant the first wife the status of
chief wife while the other wives are called small
wives.
EXPLANATIONS FOR POLYGYNY
 It is permitted in societies that have a long
postpartum sex taboo. In these societies, a
couple must abstain from intercourse until
their child is at least a year old.
 It is a response to an excess of women over
men.
 Society will allow polygyny when men marry at
an older age than women
POLYANDRY
 Is the marriage of a woman to two or more
men at the same time.
 Tibetans-fraternal
 Toda of India - fraternal
EXPLANATIONS FOR POLYANDRY
 Shortage of women. The Toda practiced female
infanticide and the Sinhalese had a shortage of
women but denied the practice of female
infanticide.
 It is an adaptive response to severely limited
resources. In Tibetans who lived in Nepal they
practiced fraternal polyandry in order to prevent
the division of a family’s farm and animals.
GROUP MARRIAGE
 More than one man is married to more than one
woman at the same time, sometimes occurs but it
is not customary in any known society
THE NAYAR EXCEPTION
 In the 19th century, a caste group in Southern India
called the Nayar seems to have treated sex and
economic relations between men and women as
things separate from marriage. About the time of
puberty, Nayar girls took ritual husbands.
 The union was publicly established in a ceremony
during which the husband tied a gold ornament
around the neck of his bride. But from that time on,
he had no more responsibility for her. Usually, he
never saw her again.
 The bride lived in a large household with her family,
where she was visited over the subsequent years by
other “husbands.” One might be a passing guest,
another more regular visitors.
 He came at night and left the following day. If a
regular visitor, he was expected to make a small gift
of cloth, betel nuts, and hair and bath oil. If the
father of her child, or one of a group who might be,
he was expected to pay the cost of the midwife.
 The Nayar situation seems to have been a special
response to the problem of extended make
absence during military service. In a more recent
times, military service ceased to be a common
occupation of the Nayars, and stable married
relationships have become the norm.
SELECTION OF MARRIAGE PARTNERS: WHOM SHOULD
ONE MARRY?
ARRANGED MARRIAGES
 In an appreciable number of societies, marriages
are arranged; negotiations are handled by the
immediate families or by go-betweens. Sometimes
betrothals are completed while the future partners
are still children.
 This was formerly the custom in much of Hindu
India, China, Japan, and Eastern and Southern
Europe
COUSIN MARRIAGES
 Some societies allow and even prefer particular
kinds of cousin marriages. Cross cousins are
children of siblings of the opposite sex; that is, a
person’s cross cousins are father’s sister’s children
and mother’s brother’s children. Parallel cousin are
children of siblings of the same sex; a person’s
parallel cousins, then, are father’s brother’s
children and mother’s sister’s children.
 Chippewa Indians- used to practice cross-cousin
marriage as well as cross-cousin joking.
 Kurds who are mostly Sunni Muslims prefer parallel
cousin marriage.
ENDOGAMY
 Dictates that one should marry within one’s clan or
ethnic group
 Caste group of India, Royal invest such as the Incas
of Peru, ancient Egypt and traditional Hawaii
 Examples: Masai Warriors of East Africa, Tutsi of
Rwanda
EXOGAMY
 Prescribes that one should marry outside one's clan
or ethnic group
 Filipinos
LEVIRATE
 Is a custom whereby a man is obliged to marry his
brother’s widow.
 Chukchee of Siberia- next oldest brother to be
successor or the nearest relative is obliged to care
for a woman left with children and a herd
SORORATE
 Obliges a woman to marry her deceased sister’s
husband
 Bhutan
TYPES OF FAMILY
BASED ON INTERNAL ORGANIZATION
NUCLEAR FAMILY
 Is composed of a husband and his wife and their
children in a union recognized by the other
members of the society.
EXTENDED FAMILY
 Is composed of 2 or more nuclear families
economically and socially related to each other
 Filipinos and Slovakian
MATRIFOCAL FAMILY
 The only parent left was the mother
PATRIFOCAL FAMILY
 The only parent left was the father
BASED ON DESCENT
PATRILINEAL DESCENT
 Affiliates a person with a group of relatives through
his or her father
 Kapauku Papuans of New Guinea
MATRILINEAL DESCENT
 Affiliates a person with a group of relatives through
his or her mother
 Navajo Indians, Truk of Pacific
AMBILINEAL DESCENT
 affiliates a person with a group of relatives related
through both his or her parents
 Filipinos, Samoans of South Pacific
BASED IN RESIDENCE
PATRILOCAL
 The son stays and the daughter leaves, so that the
married couple lives with or near the husband’s
parents
MATRILOCAL
 The daughter stays and the son leaves, so that the
married couple lives with or near the wife’s
parents.
BILOCAL
 Either the son or the daughter leaves with or near
either wife’s or husband’s parents
NEOLOCAL
 Both son and daughter leave; married couples live
apart from the relatives of both spouses
BASED ON AUTHORITY
PATRIARCHAL FAMILY
 Is one in which the authority is vested in the oldest
male in the family, often the father
MATRIARCHAL FAMILY
 Is one in which the authority is vested in the
mother or mother’s kin.
EGALITARIAN FAMILY
 Is one in which the husband and the wife exercise a
more or less equal amount of authority.
RARE TYPES
CHEYENNE INDIANS
 Allowed married men to take berdaches or male
transvestites as second wives.
AZANDE WARRIORS
 They are the ones who could not afford wives often
marries “boy-wives” to satisfy their sexual needs.
 As in normal marriages, gifts were given by the
“husbands” to the parents of his boy-wife. The
husband performed services for the boy’s parent
and could sue any other love of the boy in court for
adultery.
 The boy-wives not only have sexual relations with
their husbands but also performed many of the
chores female wives traditionally performed for the
husbands.
NANDI OF KENYA
 About 3 percent of the marriages appear to be a
Nandi solution to the problem of a regular
marriage’s failure to produce a male heir to
property
 The Nandi solution is to have the woman, even if
her husband is still alive, become a “husband” to a
younger female and “father” the younger woman’s
children.
 The female husbands arrange a male consort so
that the new wife can have children. Those
children, however, consider the female husband to
be their father because she is the socially designed
father.