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 Contents vii

What Do We Know about the Kinds of Primates

Living Today?  72
What Is Ethnoprimatology?   81
Are There Patterns in Primate Evolution?   81
How Do Paleoanthropologists Reconstruct Primate
Evolutionary History?  83
Chapter Summary  85
For Review  86
Key Terms  87
References   87

Why Is Evolution
Important
to Anthropologists? 43
What Is Evolutionary Theory?   45
What Material Evidence Is There
for Evolution?  45
Pre-Darwinian Views of the Natural World   45
What Is Natural Selection?   51
How Did Biologists Learn about Genes?   54
Genotype, Phenotype, and the Norm
of Reaction   61
What Does Evolution Mean to
What Can the Fossil
Anthropologists?  64 Record Tell Us about
Chapter Summary  65
For Review  66
Human Origins? 89
Key Terms  67 What Is Macroevolution?   90
References  67 What Is Hominin Evolution?   92
Who Were the First Hominins (6–3 mya)?   93
Who Were the Later Australopiths
(3–1.5 mya)?  99
How Can Anthropologists Explain the Human
Transition?  101
What Do We Know about Early Homo
(2.4–1.5 mya)?  102
Who Was Homo erectus (1.8–0.3 mya)?   104
Chapter Summary  109
For Review    110
Key Terms  110
References  110

What Can the Study of

Primates Tell Us about
Human Beings? 69
What Are Primates?   70
How Do Anthropologists Classify Primates?   71
viii Contents

How Did Homo sapiens What Can Evolutionary

Evolve? 112 Theory Tell Us about
How Did Homo sapiens Evolve?  113 Human Variation? 134
Who Were the Neanderthals (230,000–27,000
What Is Microevolution?   135
Years Ago)?  116
Can We Predict the Future of Human
What Do We Know about the Culture of the Middle
Evolution?  151
Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age?   118
Chapter Summary  151
What Do We Know about Anatomically
Modern Humans (300,000 Years Ago to For Review  152
Present)?  120 Key Terms  152
What Do We Know about the Upper Paleolithic/ References  153
Late Stone Age (40,000–10,000 Years
Ago)?  123
What Happened to the Neanderthals?   124
How Many Kinds of Upper Paleolithic/Late Stone
Age Cultures Were There?   125
Where Did Modern Homo sapiens Migrate in Late
Pleistocene Times?  126
Two Million Years of Human Evolution   129
Chapter Summary  130
For Review  131
Key Terms    132
References  132

How Do We Know about

the Human Past? 154
What Is Archaeology?   155
How Do Archaeologists Interpret the Past?   165
Whose Past Is It?   167
Plundering the Past   170
Contemporary Trends in Archaeology   172
Chapter Summary  179
For Review  180
Key Terms  180
References  180
 Contents ix

Why Did Humans Settle Why Do Anthropologists

Down, Build Cities, and Study Economic
Establish States? 182 Relations? 213
How Is the Human Imagination Entangled with the How Do Anthropologists Study Economic
Material World?  183 Relations?  214
Is Plant Cultivation a Form of Niche How Do Anthropologists Study Production,
Construction?  185 Distribution, and Consumption?   215
How Do Anthropologists Explain the Origins of How Are Goods Distributed and
Animal Domestication?  189 Exchanged?  216
When and Why Did Animal Domestication Does Production Drive Economic Activities?   221
Begin?  190 Why Do People Consume What They Do?   224
What Influenced the Beginnings of Domestication The Anthropology of Food    230
at Different Places around the World?    192 Chapter Summary  232
How Did Domestication, Cul­tivation, and For Review  232
Sedentism Begin in Southwestern Asia?   193
Key Terms    233
What Were the Consequences of Domestication
References  233
and Sedentism?  198
How Do Anthropologists Define Social
Complexity?  201
What Is the Archaeological Evidence for Social
Complexity?  203
How Can Anthropologists Explain the Rise of
Complex Societies?  207
Chapter Summary  209
For Review  210
Key Terms  211
References  211

What Can Anthropology

Teach Us about
Sex, Gender, and
Sexuality? 234
How Did Twentieth-Century Feminism Shape
the Anthropological Study of Sex, Gender,
and Sexuality?   235
x Contents

How Do Anthropologists Organize the Study of Chapter Summary  291

Sex, Gender, and Sexuality?   238 For Review  293
How Are Sex and Gender Affected by Other Forms Key Terms    293
of Identity?  242 References  294
How Do Ethnographers Study Gender
Performativity?  243
How Do Anthropologists Study Connections
among Sex, Gender, Sexuality, and the
Body?   245
How Do Anthropologists Study Relations ­between
Sex, Gender, and Sexuality?   247
How Does Ethnography Document Variable
Cultural Understandings Concerning Sex,
Gender, and Sexuality?    250
Chapter Summary  254
For Review  255
Key Terms  256
References  256

How Do Anthropologists
Study Political
Relations? 295
How Are Culture and Politics Related?   296
How Do Anthropologists Study Politics?   299
How Do Anthropologists Study Politics of the
Nation-State?  307
What Happens to Citizenship in a Globalized
World?  318
Global Politics in the Twenty-First Century   320
Chapter Summary  321
For Review  322
Where Do Our Relatives Key Terms  323
Come From and Why Do References  323

They Matter? 257

How Do Human Beings Organize
Interdependence?  258
What Is Kinship?   261
What Is Adoption?   271
How Flexible Can Relatedness Be?   273
What Is Marriage?   274
What Is a Family?   284
How Are Families Transformed over Time?   286
How Does International Migration Affect the
Family?  288
What Is Friendship?   290
 Contents xi

What Happens When Languages Come into

Contact with One Another?   365
What Is Linguistic Inequality?   365
What Is Lost if a Language Dies?   371
How Are Language and Truth Connected?   374
Chapter Summary  375
For Review  376
Key Terms  376
References  377

What Can Anthropology

Tell Us about
Social Groups
and Inequality? 325
What Are Naturalizing Discourses?   326
How Do Anthropologists Study Human
Rights?  341
Chapter Summary  348
For Review  349
Key Terms  350
How Do We Make
References  350 Meaning? 378
What Is Play?   379
What Is Art?   382
What Is Myth?   386
What Is Ritual?   389
How Are World View and Symbolic Practice
Related?  393
World Views in Operation   397
Maintaining and Changing a World View   399
How Are World Views Used as Instruments of
Power?  402
Why Study Anthropology?   403
Chapter Summary  404
Why Is Understanding For Review  405
Human Language Key Terms    406
References  406
Important? 351
What Makes Language Distinctively
Human?  352
Glossary  409
How Are Language and Culture Related?   355
Index  419
How Do We Communicate without
Language?  357
How Do Languages Change over Time?   359
What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?   360
Preface
This original US version of this book emerged out of
Robert Lavenda’s and Emily Schultz’s increasing dis-
satisfaction with all the available general anthropology
texts. The authors found that these texts either over-
whelmed beginning students with detail and the sheer
volume of material or else provided overly brief intro-
ductions that failed to convey the richness of the field.
They therefore set out to write a book that introduces
this broad field concisely yet thoroughly, providing di-
verse perspectives and examples to foster not only an
appreciation of anthropology but also a deeper engage-
ment with it—one that helps students better understand
themselves and the world around them. Anthropology
professors (and their students) needed a general an-
thropology text that struck the right balance, fit into a
15-week semester, and came with a complete package of
ancillary materials.
In preparing the Canadian edition, Cynthia Zutter
has focused on two central themes, both of which Lavenda
and Schultz strongly support. First, she has incorporated
Canadian ideas and practices in as many ways as pos-
sible. Throughout the text, she has added discussions
that focus on Canadian topics such as multiculturalism,
bilingualism, same-sex marriage, and cultural resource
management. She has also included many examples from
across Canada, covering concerns such as how Canadian
laws and policies affect people’s everyday lives, how eth-
nicity and indigeneity are recognized, how Indigenous
languages are being revitalized, and how French is being
preserved in Acadia. In addition, Zutter has incorpor-
ated a wide variety of anthropological research carried
out by Canadian anthropologists, both within Canada
and in other regions—from Madagascar to Taiwan to
Brazil. Second, like previous US editions of this text, this
Canadian edition continues to address the central issues
of the discipline, highlighting the controversies and
commitments that shape contemporary anthropology in
North America and around the world, and that make it
interesting and exciting.
Approach
This book may be concise, but we cover the field effect-
ively. We take a question-oriented approach that illumin-
ates major concepts for students and shows them the
relevance of anthropology in today’s world. Structuring
each chapter around an important question and its
subquestions, we explore what it means to be human,
incorporating answers from all four major subfields of
anthropology—biological anthropology, archaeology,
linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology—as
well as from applied anthropology. We have made every
effort to provide a balanced perspective, both in the level
of detail we present and in our coverage of the major
subfields.
The questioning approach not only sparks curiosity
but orients students’ reading and comprehension of each
chapter, highlighting the concepts every student should
take away from a general anthropology course. For ex-
ample, students need to know about evolutionary theory,
human variation, and the biological, social, and cultural
critique of the concept of race, since knowledge in these
areas is one of the great achievements of the discipline of
anthropology. No other discipline (and possibly no other
course) will teach about these matters the way anthropol-
ogists do, focusing on the idea of humans as biocultural
organisms. Students need to know about the fossil evi-
dence for the evolution of Homo sapiens, which they are
not likely to learn about elsewhere. Students need to know
what archaeology can tell us about the human past, as well
as what ethnography can teach us about social complexity

and inequality. They need to know that culture is more
than just cultural festivals, regional foods, and interest-
ing traditional costumes. They need to know about lan-
guage and cognition and the central role of learning and
play in human development. They need to understand
the wellsprings of human creativity and imagination. It
is valuable for them to see the many forms of human re-
latedness, and how people organize themselves. They need
to know about globalization from the bottom up and not
just the top down. They need to see how all the subfields
of anthropology together can provide important, unique
insights into all these topics, and how anthropology can
provide a vital foundation for their university education.
The world we face as anthropologists has changed
dramatically in the last quarter-century, and anthropol-
ogy has changed, too. We have always felt it necessary to
present students with a view of what contemporary an-
thropologists are doing; we therefore address the most
current issues in the field and have thoroughly updated
the text accordingly for this edition. Students will take
away from the book an appreciation of how these areas
of specialization have developed over time, and how
they contribute to our understanding of the world in the
twenty-first century.
Organization
Divided into 16 chapters with four “Focus” features
online, this book is the ideal length for a one-semester
course. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the entire field and
the concept of culture, which intersects all aspects of the
discipline of anthropology. Following this comprehen-
sive introduction, six chapters are devoted to biological
anthropology and archaeology: evolution (Chapter 3); the
Acknowledgements
My thanks goes out to all of the many people who helped
me throughout the development of this Canadian edition
of Robert Lavenda and Emily Schultz’s Anthropology:
What Does It Mean to Be Human? The editors at Oxford
University Press have been a pleasure to work with, es-
pecially Tanuja Weerasooriya, Janice Evans, Leah-Ann
Lymer, and Elizabeth Ferguson, who were patient and
provided sage advice as they guided me through this
Preface xiii
primates (Chapter 4); the fossil record and human ori-
gins (Chapters 5 and 6); human variation (Chapter 7); the
human past (Chapter 8); and the first farmers, cities, and
states (Chapter 9). Topics in linguistic and cultural anthro-
pology are covered in chapters on economics (Chapter 10);
sex, gender, and sexuality (Chapter 11); kinship and mar-
riage (Chapter 12); politics (Chapter 13); social inequality
(Chapter 14, covering gender, class, caste, race, ethnicity,
and nationalism); language and communication (Chapter
15); and symbolic practices (Chapter 16, covering play,
art, myth, ritual, and religion). Throughout, the book in-
corporates discussions of indigeneity and gender, while
paying special attention to issues of power and inequality
in Canada and the contemporary world.
In the Canadian edition, Zutter placed the chapter
on culture immediately after the introductory chapter
to highlight the important role that culture plays in all
aspects of anthropology, including biological anthropol-
ogy and archaeology. She has also included additional
emphasis on the biocultural nature of human organisms
throughout, to facilitate the integration of biological and
cultural approaches in anthropology.
In addition, the four brief “Focus” features (online)
explore key concerns, methods, and approaches within
each of the four major subfields of anthropology in
greater depth, focusing on bioarchaeology and the stor-
ies that our skeletons hold (biological anthropology);
methods for dating archaeological remains and homi-
nin fossils (archaeology); the study of language use and
the components of language (linguistic anthropology);
and ethnographic methods commonly used in fieldwork
(cultural anthropology).
—Robert H. Lavenda, Emily A. Schultz,
and Cynthia Zutter
project, and the entire production team. As well, I would
like to extend a note of gratitude to Caroline Starr,
who initiated and championed this project from its in-
itial stages. Editorial assistance was provided by Rose
Lorentzen, whose organizational skills were extremely
helpful. My students at MacEwan University guided the
project with their valuable comments and suggestions.
In addition, I’d like to extend my gratitude to Robert
xiv Preface
Lavenda and Emily Schultz for providing me with such
a wonderful opportunity to combine their exceptional
textbook with Canadian content.
Individual contributions from Canadian anthropol-
ogists form some of the key additions to this text, and I
am grateful to those who provided personal explanations
of their current research. My thanks goes out to Nicholas
Bala, Michel Bouchard, Martin Cannon, Leslie Dawson,
Carly Dokis, Parin Dossa, Linda Fedigan, Nicole
Gombay, Sarah King, Jennifer Liu, Roderick McInnes,
April Nowell, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, Tanya Romaniuk,
Christine Schreyer, Sarah Shulist, Treena Swanston,
Kisha Supernant, and Andrew Walsh. I appreciate their
generosity in sharing their work for this project.
I would also like to extend my thanks to the fol-
lowing reviewers, as well as those who wish to remain
anonymous:
Michel Bouchard, UNBC
Alexis Dolphin, Western University
Maciej Domanski, Dawson College
Nick Gabrilopoulos, Dawson College
Michael Gregg, Mount Allison University
Karoline Guelke, Camosun College
Helen R. Haines, Trent University
Brent Hammer, University of Alberta
Götz Hoeppe, University of Waterloo
David Hopwood, Vancouver Island University
Nicole Kilburn, Camosun College
Yin Lam, University of Victoria
Kathleen Lowrey, University of Alberta
Karen McGarry, McMaster University
Hugh McKenzie, MacEwan University
Lisa Mutch, MacEwan University
Brian Myhre, University of Winnipeg
Mark Prentice, Vanier College
Robbyn Seller, John Abbott College
Matthieu Sossoyan, Vanier College
Kisha Supernant, University of Alberta
Paul Thibaudeau, Carleton University
Tara Tudor, Camosun College
Jacky Vallée, Vanier College
Their insightful comments and suggestions contributed
to the outcome of this Canadian edition.
This edition is dedicated to my family, including my
siblings and my children, Kris, Troy, and Matthew. Their
support and understanding throughout this process has
been enduring. I am grateful to my husband, Mike, as well,
for sharing in my journey as a Canadian anthropologist.
—Cynthia Zutter
 Publisher’s Preface xv

Publisher’s Preface
Oxford University Press is delighted to present the a deeper understanding of the many factors shaping
second Canadian edition of Anthropology: What Does human experience. Discussing issues and examples from
It Mean to Be Human? This thought-provoking work across the globe, this comprehensive text shows Canadian
offers an informative, practical, and comprehensive students the relevance of anthropology in today’s world—
introduction to the discipline—one that not only reveals both at home and abroad.
the richness of anthropological study but also fosters

Key Features

392 Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?

relative ease into and out of play, but such is not the case
with ritual.
Finally, play usually has little effect on the social
order of ordinary life; as a result, play can safely create a
wide range of commentary on the social order. Ritual is
272 Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?
different: its role is explicitly to maintain the status quo,
Rick Madonik/Toronto Star via Getty Images

including the prescribed ritual transformations. Societies

FIGURE 16.8 A crowd of hockey fans cheers on Team Canada
during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. These
kinds of mass public events can create a feeling of com-
munitas in today’s nation-states.
through the climactic winning moments of a sports
team (Figure 16.8), attendance at large-scale rock con-
certs, participation in mass public events like Carnival
in Rio de Janeiro, Carnaval de Quebec in Quebec City,
or the Calgary Stampede.
How Are Play and Ritual
Complementary?
How does the logic of ritual differ from the logic of play?
Play and ritual are complementary forms of metacom-
munication, although play is not real and not serious
while ritual is considered important and very real. The
movement from non-play to play is based on the prem-
ise of metaphor (“Let’s make believe”); the movement to
ritual is based on the premise of literalness (“Let’s be-
lieve”). From the perspective of the everyday social order,
the result of these contrasting premises is the “inauth-
enticity” of play and the “truth” of ritual.
Because of the connection of ritual with self-evident
truth, the metacommunication of the ritual frame (“This
differ in the extent to which ritual behaviour alternates
with everyday, non-ritual behaviour. When nearly every
act of everyday life is ritualized and other forms of be-
haviour are strongly discouraged, we sometimes speak
of orthopraxy (“correct practice”). Traditionally observ-
ant Jews and Muslims, for example, lead a highly ritual-
ized daily life, attempting from the moment they awaken
until the moment they fall asleep to carry out even the
humblest of activities in a manner that is ritually correct.
In their view, ritual correctness is the result of God’s law,
and it is their duty and joy to conform their every action
to God’s will.
Margaret Drewal (1992) argues that, at least among
the Yoruba, play and ritual overlap (see EthnoProfile 16.3:
Yoruba). Yoruba rituals combine spectacle, festival, play,
sacrifice, and so on and integrate diverse media—music,
dance, poetry, theatre, sculpture (Drewal 1992, 198).
They are events that require improvisatory, spontaneous
individual moves; as a result, the mundane order is not
only inverted and reversed but may also be subverted
through power play and gender play. For example, gender
roles are rigidly structured in Yoruba society. Yoruba
rituals, however, allow some cross-dressing by both men
EthnoProfile 16.3
Yoruba NIGER
Region: Western Africa Kano
Kaduna
Nation: Nigeria
N
BENI
ascribed statuses Social positions people are assigned at
birth.
achieved statuses Social positions people may attain later in
life, often as the result of their own (or other people’s) effort.
achieved statuses, those social positions that people
may attain later in life, often as the result of their own
(or other people’s) effort, such as becoming a spouse or
college graduate. All societies have ways of incorporat-
ing outsiders into their kinship groups, however, which
they achieve by converting supposedly ascribed kinship
statuses into achieved ones, thus undermining the dis-
tinction between them. We will use the term adoption to
refer to these practices that allow people to transform re-
lationships based on nurturance into relations of kinship.
Adoption and Naming among
the Inuit of Nunavut
In some societies, such as that of ancient Rome, people
distinguish between Ego’s biological father (or genitor)
and Ego’s social father (or pater); they may also distin-
guish between Ego’s biological mother (or genetrix) and
Ego’s social mother (or mater). Social parents are those
who nurture a child, and they are often the child’s bio-
logical parents as well. Among the Inuit of Nunavut, these
distinguishing factors are not strongly acknowledged (see
EthnoProfile 12.4). Rather, the Inuit view of extended
Lake
Chad
EthnoProfile 12.4
family encompasses the concept of “custom adoption”—a
traditional form of adoption in which the adoptee main-
tains flexible relationships with her or his birth and adopt-
ive families. As Valerie Alia (2007, 35) has observed, in
Nunavut communities, “children move daily among the
homes of birth and adoptive parents . . . receiving care, food,
and companionship.” Alia further notes that this form of
adoption is generally considered to be “more welcoming
and less stigmatized than adoption among Qallunaat [i.e.,
southerners]” (36). According to Alia’s informants, “adop-
tions are a part of everyday life,” and “giving a child for
adoption is a way of making sure every amauti (or am-
autik) (the baby-carrying hood on a woman’s parka, or
amautik) carries a child” (36) (Figure 12.7). This practice
of adoption encourages the formation of families, which
contributes to a strong sense of community and provides
families with many hands to help with hunting, fishing,
preparing food, maintaining homes, and other sustenance
tasks. Moreover, as Alia notes, “[w]hen communities are
small and communication is open, adopted children grow
up well nurtured and loved” (36).
To understand the cultural significance of custom
adoption, it is important to understand the Inuit trad-
ition of naming. According to the highly intricate sauniq
naming system, Inuit parents and other relatives (usually
women, sometimes men) assign the adoptee the name
of a deceased relative. This act not only commemorates
the deceased but also forms a vital, symbolic connection
between the adoptee and her or his namesake, allowing
the namesake to “live on” in the community. To the
Inuit, the giving of a sauniq name is an act of extreme

Nig
NIGERIA
importance. As Alia (2007, 37) notes, “naming is a—
is ritual”) is associated with an additional metacom-
e r
Population: 40,000,000 Yoruba e perhaps the—central component of Inuit culture. It is
nu
munication: “All messages within this frame are true.” Environment: Coastal and Lagos
Be
Inuit (Nunavut) Ellesmere
Island
It is ritual that asserts what should be to play’s what can forest CAMEROON GREENLAND

0 300 60 Region: North American

be. The ritual frame is more rigid than the play frame. Livelihood: Farming, com- Gulf of Guinea Kilometres Arctic
Consequently, ritual is the most stable liminal domain, merce, modern professions Banks
Baffin
Nation: Canada Island
Bay

whereas play is the most flexible. Players can move with Political organization: Traditionally, kingdoms; today, part
Population: 100,000
Victoria
Island
Baf
fin
Isla
of a modern nation-state nd

Environment: Arctic
For more information: Bascom, William. 1969. The Yoruba
archipelago, tundra, shrub Nunavut
Inuit
orthopraxy “Correct practice”; the prohibition of deviation of Southwestern Nigeria. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and (Nunavut)
Lee Thomas/Alamy Stock Photo

tundra Northwest
from approved forms of behaviour. Winston. Territories
0 300 600
Livelihood: Hunting, Kilometres

fishing
Political organization: Traditionally, band societies; today,
self-governing as part of a modern nation-state
For more information: McElroy, Ann. 2008. Nunavut
Generations: Change and Continuity in Canadian Inuit
FIGURE 12.7 An Inuit mother carries her daughter in
Communities. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
her amauti on Baffin Island, Nunavut.
lav32563_ch16_378-408.indd 392 02/21/20 04:01 PM

lav32563_ch12_257-294.indd 272 02/21/20 03:47 PM

Canadian focus. An array of Canadian examples makes the text highly relevant and accessible to students in
Canada. Canadian scholarship and perspectives throughout also give readers insight into the many Canadian
contributions to the field.
xvi Publisher’s Preface

How Do Anthropologists Study Political Relations? 319 Why Did Humans Settle Down, Build Cities, and Establish States? 197

European empires. Money could be made in these set- between 9000 and 4000 years ago, with beans about 2000 in this region (Powis et al. 2008). Animal domestica-
tings, but success required Chinese merchant families years ago (Smith 1995). In eastern Canada, maize ap- tion was far less important in the Americas than it was
to cut themselves off from ties to mainland China and peared around 1500 years ago, while it appeared around in Mesopotamia as the ideal wild herd animals, such as
to reinforce bonds among family members and busi- 1000 years ago at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in goats and sheep, were not common in the Americas. The
ness partners in terms of guanxi (“relationships of social Alberta. Maize (corn) forms the cornerstone of plant Andean llama is the largest animal domesticated in the
connections built primarily upon shared identities such domesticates in the Americas and has been the focus of Americas while the turkey was also domesticated and
as native place, kinship or attending the same school” Dr Michael Blake’s (University of British Columbia) re- became a valuable food source.
[Smart 1999, 120]). search for many years. With colleagues across Canada Other notable plants were domesticated in Africa,

© Tanawat Pontchour | Dreamstime.com

The family discipline of overseas Chinese enabled
them to become wealthy and provided the resour-
ces to subvert the governmentality of the nation-state.
The orientation of these wealthy families toward na-
tional identity and citizenship, Ong explains, is
“market-driven.” In Hong Kong, for example, in the years
leading up to its return to mainland China in 1997, many
wealthy Chinese thought of citizenship not as the right to
demand full democratic representation, but as the right
to promote familial interests apart from the well-being of
society (Ong 2002, 178). None of the overseas Chinese she
knew expressed any commitment to nationalism, either
local or long distance—quite the contrary. Relying on
family discipline and loyalty and buttressed by consider-
able wealth and strong interpersonal ties, they actively
worked to evade the governmentality of nation-states.
For example, Chinese from Hong Kong who wanted to
migrate to Britain in the 1960s were able to evade racial
barriers that blocked other “coloured” immigrants be-
cause of their experience with capitalism and their repu-
tation for peaceful acquiescence to British rule. When
the British decided to award citizenship to some Hong
and the world, Blake has created an interactive website,
“Ancient Maize Map,” documenting the recent discov-
eries of maize throughout North, Central, and South
America (http://en.ancientmaize.com). As well, Blake’s
recent book (2015) Maize for the Gods outlines the inter-
sections of maize as a food for survival and one for spirit-
ual beings. Other plants, including goosefoot, marsh
FIGURE 13.8 Overseas Chinese are to be found in many elder, sunflowers, and squash, were also domesticated in
parts of the world, as here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They are eastern North America (Smith 1995, 189–90). In South
not always millionaire businesspeople but are shopkeepers America, maize appears between 4000 and 3000 years
and small businesspeople as well.
ago but was only one of several domesticates. In other
areas of South America, soil conditions, altitude, and cli-
market. To be sure, market discipline under globaliza- mate favoured root crops—manioc or potatoes—as well
tion was very different from the market discipline typ- as beans and quinoa (a high-altitude grain), which were
ical in the 1950s and 1960s. Making money in the context of greater importance. Cocoa and chili, which were do-
of globalization required the flexibility to take advan- mesticated around 4000 years ago, were also important
tage of economic opportunities wherever and whenever
they appeared. Ong described one family in which the
eldest son remained in Hong Kong to run part of the
family hotel chain located in the Pacific region while
his brother lived in San Francisco and managed the
hotels located in North America and Europe. Children
such as coffee, millet, okra, and sorghum, while a large
number of domesticates came from eastern Asia, includ-
ing rice, yam, tea, sugarcane, garlic, onion, apple, and
carrot (Map 9.4 and Figure 9.7).
Archaeologists are coming to agree that complex
foragers living in areas of relatively abundant resour-
ces were probably responsible for domestication wher-
ever it developed (Price and Gebauer 1995; Smith 1995).
Rich and complex archaeological and genetic evidence
from specific areas of the world downplays single-cause
explanations of domestication and stresses the need to
consider each domestication event on its own terms.
Melinda A. Zeder and Bruce D. Smith (2009) are im-
pressed by abundant and varied data from southwestern
Asia showing that during several thousand years prior
to the appearance of agriculture, “people appear to have
Goats, dogs, cattle, Dogs, millet, chickens,
wheat, sheep, barley cattle, rice, pigs

Kong residents in the 1990s, they used a point system that can be separated from their parents when they are, for
favoured applicants with education, fluency in English, example, installed in one country to be educated while
NORTH
and training in professions of value to the economy, such their parents manage businesses in other countries on AMERICA EUROPE
as accountancy and law. These attributes fitted well the different continents. Sunflower,
criteria for citizenship valued under the government of These flexible family arrangements are not without dogs
ASIA
Margaret Thatcher, while other applicants for citizenship costs: “Familial regimes of dispersal and localization . . .
Pacific
who lacked such attributes were excluded. Citizenship, or discipline family members to make do with very little Beans, gourds, maize,
cats
Ocean
at least a passport, could be purchased by those who had emotional support; disrupted parental responsibility, amaranth, squash AFRICA
Pacific
the money: “well-off families accumulated passports not strained marital relations, and abandoned children are Ocean
Oil palm, millet,
Indian
yams, sorghum
SOUTH Ocean
only from Canada, Australia, Singapore, and the United such common circumstances that they have special AMERICA
States but also from revenue-poor Fiji, the Philippines, terms” (Ong 2002, 190). At the same time, individual Atlantic
Panama, and Tonga which required in return for a pass- family members truly do seem to live comfortably as cit- Ocean AUSTRALIA
port a down payment of U.S. $200,000 and an equal izens of the world. A Chinese banker in San Francisco
amount in installments” (Ong 2002, 183) (Figure 13.8). told Ong that he could live in Asia, Canada, or Europe: Sheep, wheat, pigs,
Although wealthy overseas Chinese families had “I can live anywhere in the world, but it must be near an Llamas, cotton,
barley, goats

thus managed to evade or subvert both the governmen- airport” (190). gourds, squash, beans, alpacas,
maize, potatoes, guinea pigs
tality of Chinese kinship and that of nation-states, they Ong concludes that, for these elite Chinese, the con-
remained vulnerable to the discipline of the capitalist cept of nationalism has lost its meaning. Instead, she MAP 9.4 A map of probable locations where various plants and animals were domesticated.

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Global approach. Providing a broad context for analysis, the text features examples from around the world and
highlights how globalization and the spread of capitalism has drastically shaped how people everywhere live their lives.

What Can Anthropology Teach Us about Sex, Gender, and Sexuality? 241 What Can Anthropology Teach Us about Sex, Gender, and Sexuality? 245

the manner Guto enacted) and perhaps elsewhere in the

In Their Own Words
The Consequences of Being a Woman
Bonnie L. Hewlett is an anthropologist who has spent many years working with women in the Central African
Republic, women who told her they wanted to tell her their stories. One of these women she calls Blondine.
Blondine tells of her marriage.
After Issa [her first husband] left, my second husband,
Levi, saw me and wanted to marry me. He spoke so
much he had no saliva in his mouth! I loved my second
husband Levi. It was a good marriage, but over a long
time I came to lose respect for my husband. The most
important feeling in a marriage is respect. If you love
your husband, you show him respect. But after some
time of marriage, if he drank a lot of embacko [moon-
shine], he hit me. One time my friend heard the fighting
work,” then sometimes it is good to have two wives.
The second wife becomes like a sister and respects
the first wife. If they both have a good heart, they work
together in the fields and help each other with the work
in the house and it is good. But if the second wife is not
obedient and respectful, then there is war.
After much hitting and fighting, we tried to reconcile
and for a while we lived together, but when the second
wife came, our husband said, “You two wives! Do not
world (Figure 11.6).
Lancaster uses the term transvestics to encompass
everything from these everyday forms of gender mim-
icry to fully fledged performances that cite not only gen-
dered speech but also gendered forms of dress and bodily
movement. All transvestic performers are not equally
skilled, of course, but how their performances are judged
varies, depending on context. Lancaster points out that in
the context of North American drag balls, the performer
may sometimes be evaluated positively by convincingly
portraying another gender role, but in other contexts the
drag performance fails unless it demonstrates an ironic
parody of that other gender role.
Lancaster concluded that Guto’s performance in-
volved the portrayal of a stock Carnival figure in a manner
that was both hostile and affectionate, and that this per- Thornton Cohen / Alamy Stock Photo

and she came and said, “Why are you hitting your wife?
Stop this!” After a few years in the marriage, Levi would
drink and he’d talk and talk and yell and start fights.
Sometimes I’d yell back, but most times I kept quiet
until he fell asleep. Levi also neglected me, but not like
the first husband, Issa. Levi searched for another wife.
He did not ask me. I thought, “This can’t be, not yet.” If
he had asked me before, if he had said, “My wife, can I
search for another wife?” and explained to me, I would
have said yes. But he married another woman and neg-
lected me. He did not give me money or food and spent
most of his nights with his other wife. I was so mad be-
cause he did not ask. I hit him. When Levi brought in
the second wife, I hit her too. One time a man will look
for another wife. Maybe because the other woman is
beautiful and he says to himself, “I will marry her.” If he
tells the first wife, “Is it okay? She can help you with your
man whom Wentzell calls Johnny considered himself to
have been both economically and sexually successful,
working as a chef in the United States and engaging in
penetrative sex with many women other than his wife.
When Wentzell met him, however, he was in the hospi-
tal, facing the surgical removal of his cancerous penis.
Prior to the surgery, Johnny was despondent, convinced
that his manhood would disappear when his penis was
removed. After the surgery, however, his mood was much
more positive.
Johnny’s loss of his penis was extreme. But many
other older men Wentzell met, experiencing aging,
illness, and increasing erectile difficulty, had similar
fight!!” When she’d come we worked together and pre-
pared food for the family and we’d eat together. But then
Levi began to neglect me. He slept too much with the
second wife and bought her clothes and shoes and not
me. I grabbed him by the neck and said, “My husband!
Why do you not sleep with me? Tonight it is my turn!”
When he came into the second wife’s bedroom one night
I grabbed his neck and said, “No! You sleep with me, not
her!” If the husband organizes it good, it works so well!
But if he does not, if he sleeps three nights with one and
two nights with the other it does not work! Even so, when
I heard them speak on the bed at night to each other, I
listened and it made me so angry! I was jealous. I suffered
and because of his neglect I divorced him. After Levi left,
life was so difficult. I was alone with two children.
Source: Hewlett 2013, 163–4.
worries about losing their manhood. In their cases, one
possible solution might have been drugs like Viagra,
Cialis, or Levitra, which, at the time of Wentzell’s re-
search, were being heavily marketed in Mexico as medi-
cation to treat what was coming to be called “erectile
dysfunction,” or ED. Wentzell initially thought that
such drugs would have been seized upon by older men
for whom sexual potency was central to their composite
masculinities. However, many older men were not inter-
ested in taking the drugs. Their reasons varied but often
included a revised composite masculinity in which the
reckless virile behaviour of a young man was replaced by
“responsible” forms of “mature masculinity,” involving
formance involved “play acting” (1994). Indeed, cochones
are much admired for their transvestic performances, but
not all the men who cross-dress in Carnival are cochones,
and telling them apart is not easy. As a festival, Carnival
involves turning the world upside down, and this involves
upending a range of stereotypes about gender, sexuality,
race, class, and ethnicity. As our previous discussion of
intersectionality suggests, we agree with Lancaster that we
humans “play our games freely, but we are not free to play
them just any way we choose” (1994, 568). He suggests that
play of this kind needs to be understood “as both a human
universal and as a base condition of culture,” which aligns
with our discussion of play in Chapter 16.
How Do Anthropologists
Study Connections among
Sex, Gender, Sexuality,
and the Body?
An important trend in sociocultural anthropology in
recent decades has been attention to “the body,” an
object of study that is of obvious relevance to discus-
sions of sex, gender, and sexuality. To understand the
growth of interest in the body, remember that, for most
of the twentieth century, sociocultural anthropology
consistently downplayed human individuals (and their
individual bodies) and instead highlighted patterns
that characterized the social groups to which individual
humans belonged. In recent years, anthropologists have
turned to the work of Michel Foucault (Figure 11.7),
FIGURE 11.6 A Nicaraguan cowboy poses with a cross-dressing
male during Carnival in Nicaragua.
whose writings highlight the way social power, particu-
larly in modern Western societies, acts on individual
bodies. Social institutions such as schools and armies
regulate the actions of individual bodies in order to
render them more efficient in the performance of par-
ticular skills or practices. At the same time, modern
states depend on statistical information about their
populations in order to devise ways of regulating those
populations, engaging in what Foucault calls biopolitics
(see Chapter 13). For example, campaigns to improve the
well-being of citizens via medical interventions such as
inoculations have allowed state institutions to increase
the numbers of healthy individuals ready for the labour
force, or the numbers of healthy recruits eligible to be
drafted into the armed forces. Finally, Foucault argues,
societies have devised ways of persuading individuals
to bring their own bodily activities into conformity
with social expectations, a phenomenon he calls “the
care of the self.” Foucault’s theoretical framework
has informed work in many areas of anthropological
research but has mainly focused on documenting

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Coverage of gender and feminist anthropology. The authors tightly weave the topics of gender and sexuality
into the fabric of the text. Discussion of issues such as gender identity, gender inequality, feminist archeology, and
varieties of human sexual practice offers students insight into important areas of study within anthropology.

342 Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?
attentive to the spread of this discourse and the issues it
raises, some of which we explore here.
Are Human Rights Universal?
Globalization has stimulated discussions about human
rights: powers, privileges, or material resources to which
people everywhere, by virtue of being human, are justly
entitled. Rapidly circulating capital, images, people, things,
and ideologies juxtapose different understandings about
what it means to be human or what kinds of rights people
may be entitled to. The context within which human
rights discourse becomes relevant is often described as
multiculturalism: living permanently in settings sur-
rounded by people with cultural backgrounds different
from your own and struggling to define with them the
degree to which the wider society should accord respect and
recognition to the cultural beliefs and practices of differ-
ent groups. It is precisely in multicultural settings—found
everywhere in today’s globalized world—that questions of
rights become salient and different cultural understandings
of what it means to be human, and what rights humans are
entitled to, become the focus of contention.
Human Rights Discourse as the Global
Language of Social Justice
Discourses about human rights have proliferated in
recent decades, stimulated by the original UN Universal
Declaration on Human Rights in 1948 and followed by
numerous subsequent declarations. For example, in 1992,
the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women (CEDAW) declared that violence against
women was a form of gender discrimination that violated
the human rights of women. This declaration was adopted
by the UN General Assembly in 1993 and became part
of the rights platform at the Fourth World Conference
on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995 (Figure 14.6).
Anthropologist Sally Merry (2001) observes that this
declaration “dramatically demonstrates the creation of
new rights—rights which depend on the state’s failure to
human rights Powers, privileges, or material resources to
which people everywhere, by virtue of being human, are justly
entitled.
multiculturalism Living permanently in settings surrounded
by people with cultural backgrounds different from one’s own
and struggling to define with them the degree to which the
cultural beliefs and practices of different groups should or
should not be accorded respect and recognition by the wider
society.
lav32563_ch14_325-350.indd 342
Current anthropological approaches to power and inequality. In-depth treatment of issues such as nationalism,
racism, class, caste, and human rights helps students understand how power is manifested, deployed, resisted,
and transformed.
A questions-oriented approach.
Structuring each chapter around
an important question and its sub-
questions, the authors illuminate major
concepts, incorporating answers from
the main subfields of anthropology—
biological anthropology, archaeology,
linguistic anthropology, and cultural
anthropology—as well as applied
anthropology. This engaging approach
sparks students’ curiosity while
focusing their learning around key
topics in the field.
Publisher’s Preface xvii
What Can Anthropology Tell Us about Social Groups and Inequality? 327
protect women rather than its active violation of rights”
and that “the emergence of violence against women as
a distinct human rights violation depends on redefining
the family so that it is no longer shielded from legal scru-
tiny” (36–7).
Although CEDAW has proven particularly conten-
tious, other human rights documents have been signed
without controversy by many national governments.
Signing a human rights declaration supposedly binds
governments to take official action to implement changes Gopalpur
Guider
in local practices that might be seen to violate the rights
asserted in the declaration. Human rights discourses are
common currency in all societies, at all levels.
Because of the wide adoption of human rights dis-
courses throughout the world, some people have come to
speak of an emerging “culture of human rights,” which
has now become “the preeminent global language of
social justice” (Merry 2001, 38). Important to this dia-
logue is the inclusion of Indigenous peoples’ rights in the
UN declaration of 1989. As Jane Cowan, Marie-Bénédicte MAP 14.1 Location of societies whose EthnoProfiles appear in Chapter 14.
Dembour, and Richard Wilson (2001) write, it is “no use
imagining a ‘primitive’ tribe which has not yet heard of
human rights . . . what it means to be ‘indigenous’ is itself members of lower ranked classes have much more lim- society, the classes defined by these unequal roles in the
transformed through interaction with human-rights dis- ited access to wealth (Figure 14.1). division of labour will also persist. The French Revolution
courses and institutions” (5). These developments mean The concept of class has a double heritage in modern had triggered the displacement of aristocrats and peas-
that anthropologists must take note of the important in- anthropology, one stemming from Europe and the other ants, who had played the key roles in European feudal-
fluence of this human rights discourse as it shapes the from North America. European social scientists lived in ism. They were replaced by new key classes—industrial
community-focused research that they do. states with a long history of social class divisions reach- entrepreneurs and the industrial working class—who
What counts as “human rights” has changed over ing back to the Middle Ages and, in some cases, to even were linked together within the capitalist mode of
time, not only because of the action of international earlier times. In their experience, social classes were production. In time, Marx predicted, these industrial
bodies like the UN but also because of the efforts of an well-entrenched and relatively closed groups. In the late
increasing number of NGOs that have become involved 1700s, both the Industrial Revolution and the French
in various countries of the world, many of them deeply Revolution promised to end the oppressive privileges
committed to projects designed to improve people’s lives of the ruling class and to equalize everyone’s access to
and protect their rights (Figure 14.7). As Merry (2001) wealth. However, class divisions did not wither away in
says, these developments “have created a new legal order” Europe during the nineteenth century; they just changed
(35) that has given birth to new possibilities throughout their contours. Followers of Karl Marx judged that, at
the world for the elaboration and discussion of what best, an old ruling class had been displaced by a new
human rights are all about. one: feudal aristocrats had been replaced by bourgeois
In addition, because the “culture of human rights” capitalists. The lowest level in European societies—rural
is increasingly regarded, in one way or another, as the peasants—were partially displaced as well, with the ap-
iStockphoto/Cesar Okada
“culture of globalization,” it would seem to be a topic pearance of the urban working class. But the barriers
separating those at the top of the class hierarchy from
well-suited to anthropological analysis in itself. This is
those at the bottom seemed just as rigid as ever.
because, as we shall see, human rights discourse is not
as straightforward as it seems. On the face of things, de- As we described in Chapter 10, Marx defines classes
fending human rights for all people would seem unprob- in terms of their members’ different relations to the FIGURE 14.1 Members of different social classes often live
lematic. Few people who are aware of the devastation means of production. This means that as long as a par- within easy sight of one another. Here, luxury apartments and
wrought by colonial exploitation, for example, would ticular set of unequal productive relations flourishes in a squatter settlements rub shoulders in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
02/21/20 03:53 PM lav32563_ch14_325-350.indd 327 02/21/20 03:53 PM
▲ The evolution of human ancestry, visible through changes in anatomy, is displayed at the National Museum of Natural
Sciences in Kiev, Ukraine. Photo: Andrii Zastrozhnov/Shutterstock
Why Is Evolution Important
to Anthropologists?
Chapter Outline
• What Is Evolutionary Theory? • What Does Evolution Mean to Anthropologists?
• What Material Evidence Is There for Evolution? • Chapter Summary
• Pre-Darwinian Views of the Natural World • For Review
• What Is Natural Selection? • Key Terms
• How Did Biologists Learn about Genes? • References
• Genotype, Phenotype, and the Norm of Reaction
lav32563_ch03_043-068.indd 43 02/21/20 03:15 PM
xviii Publisher’s Preface
194 CHAPTER 6: HOW DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN PAST?
FIGURE 6.16 Historical archaeologists, shown here excavating in the Roman Forum, supplement written documents with records
of settlement patterns, structures, and artifacts, which reveal valuable information about the past that was never written down.
In 1980, Spector and her team began to dig at a
site near Jordan, Minnesota, known by the Dakota as
Inyan Ceayak Atonwan, or “Village at the Rapids.” She
examined historical documents that referred to the site
for clues about what tasks were carried on by men and
women at the site, as a guide to what kinds of mate-
rial remains to look for. After several seasons, concerned
that her work might be meaningless or offensive to the
Dakota, Spector met a Dakota man who was a descen-
dant of a man named Mazomani, one of the original
inhabitants of the Village at the Rapids. Eventually,
other descendants of Mazomani visited the site. By the
1985–1986 season, Dakota and non-Dakota were col-
laborating in teaching Dakota language, oral history,
ethnobotany, ecology, and history at the site while dig-
ging continued. A Dakota elder conducted a pipe cer-
emony at the site shortly before the field season began,
which symbolized for Spector the Dakota people’s per-
mission to work there.
Since the early 1980s, collaborative archaeological
research of this kind has become increasingly common.
Renfrew and Bahn (2008), for example, report on a
lav40686_ch06_168-199.indd 194
Online “Focus on Four Fields” features. Engaging modules introduce students to the methods and approaches
anthropologists use to conduct research within their various subfields.
Cross-chapter references. Marginal notes help
readers make connections between topics, issues,
and subfields of anthropology.
What Are the Critical Issues in Contemporary Archaeology?
respectful. They insisted that one member of the com-
munity supervise the project, primarily “to protect the
diggers from doing something that could bring practi-
cal or ritual danger: the totemic geography of a region
contains some ‘dangerous places,’ into which archae-
ologists might stray through ignorance” (Renfrew and
Bahn 2008, 521). The archaeologists also had to agree
to complete work at one site before moving on to an-
other and to return all disturbed areas to the condition
in which they had been prior to the excavation. But Ab-
original involvement in the project did not stop there.
“Senior Aborigine men representing the relevant groups
accompanied the team on field trips and carefully mon-
itored the excavations, while trainee Aboriginal rang-
ers helped in the laboratory, and were instructed in
archaeological procedures” (Renfrew and Bahn 2008,
522). When the project was completed, the research-
ers did indeed find evidence that verified Chaloupka’s
hypothesis, but two other findings were perhaps even
more exciting. The first was the discovery of plant re-
mains as much as 6,000 years old, preserved thanks to
the unusual microclimate present in one rockshelter.
The second came from a second rockshelter and con-
sisted of pieces of red ochre, a pigment used by ancient
human populations in many parts of the world. These
pieces were 53,000 years old, had been worked by hand,
and might have been the sources of pigment for some of
the rock art. Renfrew and Bahn (2008) judge this proj-
ect “very successful” (528), and one measure of its suc-
cess was the way it provided a model—as did Spector’s
multidisciplinary research project inside Kakadu National work—of finding a way to do archaeology while work-
Park in the Northern Territory of Australia that began ing together with an indigenous community that had its
in 1981. Archaeologists wanted to learn more about own stake in the way the project was carried out, as well
the earliest occupation of tropical Australia, which as in the outcome.
began more than 23,000 years ago, and Kakadu
National Park was an ideal place to look: the park con-
tains a number of rockshelters filled with rich material
Cosmopolitan Archaeologies
traces of ancient human occupation, including rock A variety of far-reaching changes have swept the world
paintings as old as those found in European caves such since the end of the Cold War in 1989. As we will see
as Lascaux. Archaeologists wanted to build on previ- in later chapters, these changes have affected the way
ous work and to test the proposal made by an earlier all anthropologists do research, and archaeologists
researcher, George Chaloupka, who argued that the are no exception. Collaborative projects between local
rock art in the region reflected changes in the environ- communities and archaeologists have become increas-
ment triggered by rising sea levels (Renfrew and Bahn ingly common in recent years, but these collaborations
2008, 521). themselves have been affected by a number of broader
But Rhys Jones, the team leader from the Australian changes. For example, global tourism has mushroomed,
National University, knew that the site was legally owned and huge numbers of tourists from all over the world
by the local Aborigine community, whose permission now want to visit archaeological sites such as Machu
would be needed before any excavation could begin. Picchu or Kakaku National Park, both of which have
The Aborigine community was willing to give permis- been named UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
sion for the project, but they wanted to ensure that the As we saw in the case of Machu Picchu, a lot of
dig was carried out in a way that was responsible and money can be made managing flows of wealthy tourists
09/08/17 07:48 AM lav40686_ch06_168-199.indd 195
what makes them different from or similar to other ani-
mals. Early interest in these matters was a by-product of
centuries of exploration and colonial expansion. Western
Europeans found tremendous variation in the physical ap-
pearance of peoples around the world and tried to make
sense of these differences. Some researchers developed a
series of elaborate techniques to measure different observ-
able features of human populations, including skin colour,
hair type, and skull shape, hoping to find scientific evi-
dence that would allow them to classify all the peoples of
the world into a set of unambiguous categories based on
distinct sets of biological attributes. Such categories were
called races, and many scientists were convinced that
clear-cut criteria for racial classification would be dis-
covered if careful measurements were made on enough
people from a range of different populations.
European scientists first applied racial categories
to the peoples of Europe itself, but their classifications
soon included non-European peoples, who were coming
under increasing political and economic domination
through colonial expansion by European and European
American capitalist societies. These peoples differed
from “white” Europeans not only because of their skin
colour but also because of their unfamiliar languages
and customs. In most cases, their technologies were also
no match for the potent armaments of the West. In the
early eighteenth century, using terms that are no longer
in use today, the European biologist Carolus Linnaeus
(Carl von Linné, 1707–1778) classified known human
populations into four races (Amerindian, Caucasian,
Asian, and Negro) based on skin colour (reddish, white,
yellow, and black, respectively).
In the nineteenth century, influential natural scien-
tists such as Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), Samuel George
Morton (1799–1851), Francis Galton (1822–1911), and
Paul Broca (1824–1880) built on this idea of race, rank-
ing different populations of the world in terms of skull
size; they found the brains of “white” Europeans and
North Americans to be larger and saw the other “races”
as representing varying grades of inferiority, with the
two lowest grades being represented by Amerindians
(i.e., Indigenous) and Africans (Gould 1996). These find-
ings were used to validate the social practice of racism:
the systematic oppression of members of one or more
socially defined “race” by members of another socially
defined “race” that is justified in terms of the supposed
inherent biological superiority of the rulers and the sup-
posed inherent biological inferiority of those they rule.
For example, despite the fact that millions of Indigenous
lav32563_ch01_001-022.indd 7 02/21/20 03:08 PM
195
to well-known cultural heritage sites (see Figure 6.10).
When tourist traffic threatens to destroy such sites, there-
fore, it is not merely the ruins themselves that are at
stake; so are the livelihoods of local people and govern-
ments. Moreover, powerless minorities with traditional
connections to these sites frequently find themselves
shoved aside as national and international institu-
tions step in and take over. In the past, most archae-
ologists tried to do their research while avoiding local
legal and political involvements, hoping to achieve “a
‘do no harm’ model of coexistence” (Meskell 2009, 5).
Today, many archaeologists have adopted the view that
their first obligation should be to those local (and often
marginalized) people with traditional connections to
the archaeological sites where they work. But more and
more archaeologists are finding that this kind of single-
minded commitment is increasingly problematic be-
cause they and their local allies must find a way to deal
with a range of other local and global stakeholders who
have their own, often conflicting, ideas about how cul-
tural heritage should be managed.
Like many contemporary cultural anthropologists
(see Chapter 8), some archaeologists have been moved
by these struggles to question a view of the world that
divides it up into a patchwork quilt of distinct, neatly
bounded “cultures,” each of which embodies a unique
heritage that must be protected from change at all
costs. Again, like many of their cultural anthropolo-
gist colleagues, these archaeologists have concluded
that the only way forward is to cultivate a “cosmopoli-
tan” point of view. For many cultural anthropologists,
cosmopolitanism means being able to move with ease
from one cultural setting to another. Cultural anthro-
pologists regularly develop cosmopolitan skills and
awareness as they move in and out of fieldwork situ-
ations. Moreover, people everywhere—tourists, immi-
grants, or refugees, for example—have crafted a variety
of different kinds of cosmopolitan skills to cope suc-
cessfully with movement from one cultural setting to
another. As you will see later, these movements have
become the focus of new “multisited” forms of ethno-
graphic research.
For archaeologists, adopting a cosmopolitan ori-
entation means giving up universalistic assumptions
about the meaning of the past. It means acknowledging,
for example, that preservation of material artifacts may
in fact sometimes go against the wishes of local groups
with close connections to those artifacts. Dealing with
cosmopolitanism Being able to move with ease from one cultural set-
ting to another.
09/08/17 07:48 AM
What Is Anthropology? 7
people were living and thriving in the Americas for
thousands of years, racism and racist ideals supported
the nineteenth-century colonial perspective that the
land was nobody’s (terra nullius) and open to be settled.
Consequently, thousands of Indigenous people were en-
slaved, removed from their land, and died as their land
was settled by European colonizers.
In the recent past, the treatment of Indigenous peoples
in Canada exemplifies clear racist practices. By far one of
the most devastating of these was the establishment of the
residential school program in Canada. Indigenous chil-
dren from across the country were taken from their fam-
ilies in an attempt to take the “Indian out of the Indian”
and assimilate them into the Euro-Christian culture. As
a result, these children were forced to live in boarding
schools, subjected to horrendous living conditions, and
not allowed to speak their Indigenous language; essen-
tially, they had their Indigenous culture stripped away.
These schools were in existence for over 100 years, im-
pacting over 100,000 children, who essentially grew up
without a connection to
their culture. To redress
For further discussion of the
the legacy of residential
Truth and Reconciliation
schools and this devas- Commission (TRC), see Chapter 13,
p. 305, and Chapter 15, p. 366.
tating loss of Indigenous
culture, the Canadian
government created a
Truth and Reconciliation For expanded discussion
of the methods anthropol-
Commission (TRC). The
ogists use to study human varia-
TRC was created to hear tion without using the term race,
the stories of the sur- see Chapter 7, pp. 137–9. For a
discussion of present-day racism
vivors of the residential and associated social issues in
school system and to lay Canada, see Chapter 14, pp. 332–3.
the foundation for recon-
ciliation. Ten principles of reconciliation and 94 Calls to
Action were put forward to guide the process of repairing
the broken relationship between Indigenous and non-In-
digenous peoples in Canada. The Calls to Action are to be
used to change all levels of government, including sectors
that deal with child welfare, health, justice, and education
(TRC 2015).
races Social groupings that allegedly reflect biological
differences.
racism The systematic oppression of members of one or
more socially defined “race” by members of another socially
defined “race” that is justified in terms of the supposed in-
herent biological superiority of the rulers and the supposed
inherent biological inferiority of those they rule.

▲ Mehndi (temporary skin decoration drawn in dye derived from the henna plant) applied to the hands and feet is a wedding
tradition in India and many other South Asian countries. Photo: gooddesign10/iStockphoto
How Do We Make Meaning?
Chapter Outline
• What Is Play?
• What Is Art?
• What Is Myth?
• What Is Ritual?
• How Are World View and Symbolic Practice Related?
• World Views in Operation
• Maintaining and Changing a World View
lav32563_ch16_378-408.indd 378
Vibrant four-colour design. A wide array of photos, maps, tables, and illustrations helps bring anthropology to life!
care. According to anthropologist Merrill Singer (1998,
195), critical medical anthropology “is committed to
the ‘making social’ and the ‘making political’ of health
and medicine.” Thus, critical medical anthropologists
pay attention to the way social divisions based on class,
“race,” gender, and ethnicity can block access to medical
attention or make people more vulnerable to disease
and suffering. They draw attention to the way Western
biomedicine “encourages people to fight disease rather
than to make the changes necessary to prevent it,” for
example, by linking low birth weight in newborn babies
to poor nutrition, but failing to note that poor nutri-
tion “may be a major health factor among impoverished
social classes and oppressed ethnic groups in developed
countries despite an abundance of food in society gen-
erally” (Singer 1998, 106, 109).
The Uses of Anthropology
Why take a course in anthropology? An immediate
answer might be that human fossils or broken bits of
ancient pots or the customs of faraway peoples inspire
a fascination that is its own reward. But the experience
of being dazzled by seemingly exotic places and peoples
carries with it a risk. As you become increasingly aware
of the range of anthropological data, including the many
options that exist for living a satisfying human life, you
may find yourself wondering about the life you are living.
Contact with the unfamiliar can be liberating, but it can
Chapter Summary
1. Anthropology aims to describe in the broadest
sense what it means to be human. The anthropo-
logical perspective is holistic, comparative, and
evolutionary and has relied on the concept of
culture to explain the diversity of human ways of life.
Human beings depend on cultural learning for suc-
cessful biological survival and reproduction, which
is why anthropologists consider human beings to
be biocultural organisms. Anthropology is also a
field-based discipline. In North America today,
anthropology is considered to have four major
subfields: biological anthropology, archaeology,
cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology;
lav32563_ch01_001-022.indd 19
Engaging learning tools. Chapter outlines, marginal definitions of key terms, chapter summaries, questions for review,
a glossary, and additional online content help students synthesize concepts and offer avenues for further exploration.
• How Are World Views Used as Instruments
of Power?
• Why Study Anthropology?
• Chapter Summary
• For Review
• Key Terms
• References
02/21/20 04:01 PM
What Is Anthropology?
also be threatening if it undermines your confidence in
the absolute truth and universal rightness of your previ-
ous understanding of the way the world works.
The contemporary world is increasingly inter-
connected. As people from different cultural back-
grounds come into contact with one another, learning
to cope with cultural differences becomes crucial.
Anthropologists experience both the rewards and the
risks of getting to know how other people live, and their
work has helped to dispel many harmful stereotypes
that sometimes make cross-cultural contact dangerous
or impossible. Studying anthropology may help prepare
you for some of the shocks you will encounter in deal-
ing with people who look different from you, speak a
different language, or do not agree that the world works
exactly the way you think it does.
Anthropology involves learning about the kinds of
living organisms we human beings are, the various ways
we live our lives, and how we make sense of our experi-
ences. Studying anthropology can equip you to deal with
people with different cultural backgrounds in a less threat-
ened, more tolerant manner. You may never be called on
to eat termite paste. Still, you may one day encounter a
situation in which none of the old rules seem to apply. As
you struggle to make sense of what is happening, what you
learned in anthropology class may help you relax and dare
to try something totally new to you. If you do so, perhaps
you too will discover the rewards of an encounter with the
unfamiliar that is at the same time unaccountably famil-
iar. We hope you will savour the experience.
many people also consider applied anthropology
to be a fifth major subfield.
2. Biological anthropology began as an attempt
to classify all the world’s populations into dif-
ferent races. By the early twentieth century,
however, most anthropologists had rejected
racial classifications as scientifically unjustifiable
and objected to the ways in which racial classi-
fications were used to justify the social prac-
tice of racism. Contemporary anthropologists
who are interested in human biology include
biological anthropologists, primatologists, and
paleoanthropologists.
02/21/20 03:08 PM
270 Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?
matrilineage belonging to either the Raven or the Eagle
k’waalaa (clan). Strong feelings of reciprocity and social
responsibility exist between the Ravens and the Eagles, and
membership in a particular matrilineage and its k’waalaa
shapes individuals’ identities as well as social relationships
(Krmpotich 2010). The Haida use matrilineal identity to
navigate such matters as their participation in potlatches,
their use of property, whom they should marry, their social
status, and whom they can ask for economic support.
A Haida matrilineage can be thought of as a broad
network of families linked through ancestry, property,
and common social responsibilities. The most closely re-
lated members of a matrilineage tend to share the strongest
bonds, which are based on love, friendship, history, obli-
gations, shared work, and commitment. Indeed, matrilin-
eal kin form the basis of each person’s sense of family, and
they play integral roles in major life events—for example,
by leading rites of passage; by preparing feasts, potlatches,
weddings, and other celebrations; and by mourning the
deceased (Krmpotich 2010, 162). At the same time, indi-
viduals are generally encouraged to marry outside of their
k’waalaa, a practice that facilitates non-matrilineal kin-
ship bonds (e.g., between children and fathers).
Haida often wear crests to represent the matrilin-
eage to which they belong. The designs of these crests
are owned and inherited by members of the k’waalaa
to which they correspond, and they can be painted or
embroidered onto garments and even tattooed onto
a person (Figure 12.5). These material expressions
Photo by Ann Johansson/Corbis via Getty Images
FIGURE 12.5 Haida use crests to physically represent the
matrilineages to which they belong. Here, canoe paddles
painted with family crests are stored in a longhouse on
Graham Island, part of the Queen Charlotte Islands, in British
Columbia.
lav32563_ch12_257-294.indd 270
19 132 Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?
5. Choose and defend one of the proposed
explanations for the extinction of Neanderthals.
Explain why you chose this hypothesis. Refer to April
Nowell’s hypothesis regarding play in your answer.
6. How do archaeology and biological anthropology
contribute to our understanding of the evolution of
a modern human capacity for culture?
Key Terms
African hybridization and blades 123
replacement model 115 composite tools 123
anatomically modern human Denisovans 122
beings 120 Late Stone Age (LSA) 123
archaic Homo sapiens 113 Middle Stone Age (MSA) 119
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Publisher’s Preface xix
perpetuate a sense of be-
See Chapter 16, pp. 390–1,
longing and continuity for a discussion of rites of
of family and lineages. passage.
A significant factor in
Haida kinship is the relationships between the living
and the dead. Ancestors are often considered as guides
for the living, providing opportunities and compan-
ionship. The recently deceased often accompany a rela-
tive for days or months after their death. Thus, kinship
relationships are not only part of the living world; they
transcend into the past, solidifying the matrilineal ties
among the Haida (Krmpotich 2010, 163).
Kinship Terminologies
People everywhere use special terms to refer to people
they recognize as related to them. Despite the variety of
kinship systems in the world, anthropologists have iden-
tified six major patterns of kinship terminology based
on how people categorize their cousins. The six patterns
reflect common solutions to structural problems faced
by societies organized in terms of kinship. Kinship ter-
minologies suggest both the external boundaries and the
internal divisions of kinship groups, and they outline the
structure of rights and obligations assigned to different
members of the society. They also provide clues about
how the vast and undifferentiated world of potential re-
lations may be divided.
What Criteria Are Used for Making
Kinship Distinctions?
Anthropologists have identified several criteria that
people use to indicate how people are related to one an-
other. See Table 12.1 for a list of the most common to the
least common criteria.
By the early 1950s, kinship specialists in anthropol-
ogy had identified six major patterns of kinship termin-
ology, based on how cousins were classified. In recent
years, however, anthropologists have become quite
skeptical of the value of these idealized models, in large
measure because they are highly formalized, neglect all
kin categories except cousins, and fail to consider the
full range of people’s actual kinship practices. Perhaps
the main value to come from formal kinship studies is
the fact that they took seriously the ways other people
classified their relatives and were able to display the logic
that informed such classifications.
02/21/20 03:47 PM
7. Describe the evidence that archaeologists, bio-
logical anthropologists, and others use to iden-
tify when the first people arrived in the Americas
and who these people were. Are there any con-
tradictions between different sets of data?
Explain.
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Neanderthals 116
regional continuity model 115
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Udo Stenzel, Martin Kircher, Nick Patterson, et al. 2010. “A Draft
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Milton, J. Zilhão, J.J. Alcolea-González, et al. 2018. “U-Th Dating of
Carbonate Crusts Reveals Neandertal Origin of Iberian Cave Art.”
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Hublin, Jean-Jacques, Fred Spoor, Marc Braun, Frans Zonneveld,
and Silvana Condemi. 1996. “A Late Neanderthal Associated with
Upper Palaeolithic Artifacts.” Nature 381: 224–6.
Hublin, Jean-Jacques, Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer, Shara E. Bailey, Sarah
E. Freidline, Simon Neubauer, Matthew M. Skinner, et al. 2017. “New
Fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the Pan-African Origin
of Homo sapiens.” Nature 546: 289–92. |
Klein, Richard G. 2009. The Human Career: Human Biological and
Cultural Origins. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Krings, Matthias, Anne Stone, Ralf W. Schmitz, Heike Krainitzki, and
Mark Stoneking. 1997. “Neandertal DNA Sequences and the Origin
of Modern Humans.” Cell 90: 19–30.
Krings, Matthias, Helga Geisart, Ralf W. Schmitz, Heike Krainitzki,
and Svante Pääbo. 1999. “ DNA Sequence of the Mitochondrial
Hypervariable Region II from the Neandertal Type Specimen.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95: 5581–5.
02/21/20 03:21 PM
xx Publisher’s Preface

A Full Complement of Ancillaries

This text is supported by an array of supplementary resources, for both students and instructors,
designed to enrich the learning experience. The companion websites for the second edition of
Anthropology can be found at www.oup.com/he/Lavenda2Ce

For the Student

• Student study guide. An extensive package of review material—including chapter outlines, key
points, and multiple choice, true/false, and essay questions, as well as lists of relevant readings,
websites, films, and video links—is designed to reinforce and enhance student learning.

For the Instructor

• Instructor’s manual. This comprehensive resource features chapter summaries, questions for dis-
cussion and debate, suggested activities and assignments, and lists of suggested readings, web
links, and films.
• PowerPoint slides. Dynamic lecture slides summarize key points from each chapter and incorpor-
ate figures and tables from the text.
• Image bank. This expansive resource contains a wealth of full-colour figures, photographs, and
tables that will make classroom lectures engaging and relevant for students.
• Test generator. A comprehensive bank of test questions provides hundreds of multiple-choice,
true/false, and short-answer questions.

Boxes
“Anthropology in Everyday Life” Boxes
Language Revitalization: What Can We Learn from
Conlang Communities? 13
Anthropology and Indigenous Rights 37
Orangutan Conservation in Borneo 77
Why Do Female Humans Experience Menopause? 80
Examining the Remains of Richard III 150
Archaeogaming: Video Games and Archaeology 164
Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement 177
Resistance in the Face of Assimilation 304
“Anthropology in Everyday Life” boxes. A range of fascinating examples and cases help students see the many ways
in which anthropology is relevant today.
“In Their Own Words” Boxes
Anthropology as a Vocation 6
Birth Places, Embodied Spaces: Tlicho Pregnancy
Stories across Generations 17
The Nature/Culture of Genetic Facts 27
The Paradox of Ethnocentrism 32
Culture: The Silent Language Geneticists
Must Learn 58
Science, Democracy, and Taiwanese Stem Cells 62
Finding Fossils 98
Growing Up Fast: Young Neanderthals Had No Time
for Imaginary “What If?” Games 117
Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį (“Long Ago Person Found”):
Disease and Lineage 160
GIS and Métis Settlement 162
The Food Revolution 202
Treating Your Food Good: Changing Natures and
Economies in the Northwest Territories 223
Making a Living: Place, Food, and Economy in an Inuit
Community 225
Fake Masks and Faux Modernity 229
The Consequences of Being a Woman 241
“In Their Own Words” boxes. Short commentaries capture diverse voices—including those of anthropologists, non-
anthropologists, and Indigenous peoples—providing students with fresh perspectives on interesting topics related to
chapter content.
Publisher’s Preface xxi
Human Terrain Teams and Anthropological
Ethics 320
Diverse Experiences with Intimate Relationships
and Dating among South Asian Youth in the
Greater Toronto Area 341
Indigenous Language Revitalization 368
Language Preservation in Baie Sainte-Marie:
Acadajonne ou Français? 374
Archaeology of Childhood 380
Survival and a Surrogate Family 260
Mayan Queens: Rulers and Warriors 266
Two Cheers for Gay Marriage 277
Marriage in Canada: The Evolution of a Fundamental
Social Institution 279
Law, Custom, and Crimes against Women 283
Idle No More: Giving a Voice to the Voiceless 306
Caste and Class in Contemporary India 331
Racism, Colonialism, and Indigeneity in Canada 332
Racialized Bodies, Disabling Worlds: Storied Lives of
Immigrant Muslim Women 336
The Politics of Ethnicity 338
The “Clinton Cackle”: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s
Laughter in News Interviews 359
Borrowed Words, Mock Language, and Nationalism in
Canada 370
Revitalizing Indigenous Languages in the Urban
Amazon 372
The Importance of Context in Mi’kmaq
World Views 400
Custom and Confrontation 402
xxii Publisher’s Preface

EthnoProfile Boxes

2.1 Tswana 29 12.2 Nuer 267 14.2 Guider 337

8.1 Champagne and Aishihik 12.3 Haida 269 15.1 Java 361
First Nations (CAFN) 159 12.4 Inuit (Nunavut) 272 16.1 Margi 383
10.1 Ju/’hoansi (!Kung) 215 12.5 Nyinba 281 16.2 Trobriand Islanders 388
10.2 Nootka (Nuu-chah-nulth) 12.6 Mende 286 16.3 Yoruba 392
219 12.7 Inuit (Alaska) 287 16.4 Dinka 393
10.3 Dene 222 12.8 Los Pinos 289 16.5 Huichol 395
11.1 Mount Hagen 237 13.1 “Sedaka” Village 301 16.6 Azande 397
11.2 Haiti 242 13.2 Fiji 308 16.7 Mi’kmaq 399
11.3 Mombasa Swahilis 250 13.3 Rione Monti (Rome) 314 16.8 Kwaio 401
12.1 Tiv 267 14.1 Gopalpur 329

EthnoProfiles. Brief overviews of geographic, linguistic, demographic, and organizational information offer students
context regarding various societies discussed in the text.
▲ Anthropologists study artifacts to learn about the human past. This ceramic shard found at an early nineteenth-­century
site in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, can help paint a picture of the local economy in the region at that time.
Photo by Brittney Richardson

What Is Anthropology?

Chapter Outline
• What Is Anthropology? • Applied Anthropology
• What Is the Concept of Culture? • Medical Anthropology
• What Makes Anthropology a Cross-Disciplinary • The Uses of Anthropology
Discipline? • Chapter Summary
• Biological Anthropology • For Review
• Cultural Anthropology • Key Terms
• Linguistic Anthropology • References
• Archaeology
2 Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?
T his chapter introduces the field of anthropology. We look at what anthropology is and
­explore its four main subfields: biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistic
anthropology, and archaeology. We touch on anthropology’s key concept—culture—as well as
its key research method—fieldwork. We conclude with a discussion of the ways anthropological
insights are relevant in everyday life.
In early 1976, two of the authors of this book (Robert H.
Lavenda and Emily A. Schultz) travelled to northern
Cameroon, in western Africa, to study social relations
in the town of Guider, where they rented a small house.
In the first weeks they lived there, Lavenda and Schultz
enjoyed spending the warm evenings of the dry season
reading and writing in the glow of the house’s brightest
electric fixture, which illuminated a large, unscreened
veranda. After a short time, however, the rains began,
and with them appeared swarms of winged termites.
These slow-moving insects with fat, two-inch abdomens
were attracted to the light on the veranda, and the an-
thropologists soon found themselves spending more
time swatting at the insects than reading or writing. One
evening, in a fit of desperation, they rolled up old copies
of the international edition of Newsweek and began an
all-out assault, determined to rid the veranda of every
single termite.
The rent Lavenda and Schultz paid for this house
included the services of a night watchman. As they
launched their attack on the termites, the night watch-
man suddenly appeared beside the veranda carrying an
empty powdered milk tin. When he asked if he could
have the insects they had been killing, Lavenda and
Schultz were a bit taken aback but warmly invited him
to help himself. He moved onto the veranda, quickly
­collected the corpses of fallen insects, and then joined
the anthropologists in going after those termites that
were still a­irborne. Although Lavenda and Schultz
became skilled at thwacking the insects with their
rolled-up magazines, their skills paled beside those of
the night watchman, who simply snatched the termites
out of the air with his hand, squeezed them gently, and
dropped them into his rapidly filling tin can. The three
individuals managed to clear the air of insects—and
fill the night watchman’s tin—in about 10 minutes. The
night watchman thanked Lavenda and Schultz and re-
turned to his post, and the anthropologists returned to
their books.
The following evening, soon after Lavenda and
Schultz took up their usual places on the veranda, the
watchman appeared at the steps bearing a tray with two
covered dishes. He explained that his wife had prepared
the food for them in exchange for their help in collecting
termites. The anthropologists accepted the food and care-
fully lifted the lids. One dish contained nyiri, a stiff paste
made of red sorghum, a staple of the local diet. The other
dish contained another pasty substance with a speckled,
salt-and-pepper appearance, which Lavenda and Schultz
realized was termite paste prepared from the insects they
and the watchman had killed the previous night.
The night watchman waited at the foot of the ver-
anda steps, an expectant smile on his face. Clearly, he
did not intend to leave until the others tasted the food
his wife had prepared. Lavenda and Schultz looked at
each other. They had never eaten insects before, nor had
they considered them edible in the North American,
­middle-class diet they were used to. To be sure, “deli-
cacies” like c­hocolate-covered ants existed, but such
items were considered by most North Americans to be
food fit only for eccentrics. However, the anthropolo-
gists understood the importance of not insulting the
night watchman and his wife, who were being so gen-
erous. They knew that insects were a favoured food in
many human societies and that eating them brought no
ill effects (Figure 1.1). So, they reached into the dish of
nyiri, pulling off a small amount. They then used the
ball of nyiri to scoop up a small portion of termite paste,
brought the mixture to their mouths, ate, chewed, and
swallowed. The watchman beamed, bid them good night,
and returned to his post.
Lavenda and Schultz looked at each other in wonder.
The sorghum paste had a grainy tang that was rather
pleasant. The termite paste tasted mild, like chicken,
not unpleasant at all. The anthropologists later wrote to
their families about this experience. When their families
wrote back, they described how they had told friends
about Lavenda and Schultz’s experience. Most of their
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 In the Customs of the Augustinian priory of Barnwell, written
towards the end of the thirteenth century, the following passage
occurs: “The press in which the books are kept ought to be lined
inside with wood, that the damp of the walls may not moisten or stain
the books. This press should be divided vertically as well as
horizontally by sundry partitions, on which the books may be ranged
so as to be separated from one another: for fear they be packed so
close as to injure each other, or to delay those who want them.”
The catalogue of the House of the White Canons at Titchfield in
Hampshire, dated 1400, shows that the books were kept in a small
room, on shelves called columpnæ, and set against the walls. A
closet of this kind was evidently not a working place, but simply a
place of storage. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the larger
monasteries had accumulated many hundred volumes, and it began
to be customary to provide for the collections separate quarters,
rooms constructed for the purpose. The presses in the cloisters were
still utilised for books in daily reference.
In Christ Church, Canterbury, where as early as the fourteenth
century, the collection comprised as many as 698 books, a library at
Durham was built about 1425 by Archbishop Chichele: the library at
Durham was built about the same time by Prior Wessyngton. That at
Citeaux, which was placed over the scriptorium, dates from 1480,
and that of St. Germain des Prés from 1513. The collection of the
latter foundation was one of the earliest in France, and as early as
the beginning of the thirteenth century, there is record of its being
consulted by strangers. At the time of the French Revolution, it
contained 7000 manuscripts and 4900 printed books.[218]
The Queen of Sicily, who in 1517 visited Clairvaux, one of the two
great Cistercian foundations in France, describes the library as
follows: “On the same side of the cloister are fourteen studies, where
the monks do their reading and writing, and over these studies, one
mounts by a broad spiral staircase to the new library. This library is
189 feet long by 17 feet wide. It contains 48 seats (bancs) and in
each banc four shelves (poulpitres) furnished with books on all
subjects, but chiefly theology; the greater number of the said books
are of vellum and are written by hand, richly storied and illuminated.”
 The phrase “written by hand,” indicates that the Queen was
already acquainted with books produced from type, some of which
had in fact been produced in Italy as early as 1464.
Another description, written in 1723 by the author of the Voyage
Littéraire, speaks of “the fifteen little cells, all in a row, where the
Brethren formerly used to write books, for which reason they are still
called the writing rooms. Over these cells is the library, the building
for which is large, vaulted, well lighted, and stocked with a large
number of manuscripts, fastened by chains to desks; but there are
not many printed books.”
The provisions of the statutes affecting the library imposed upon
the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, were evidently borrowed
directly from the customs of the monasteries. The statutes of Oriel
College, Oxford, dated 1329, present an example: “The common
books (libri communes) of the House are to be brought out and
inspected once a year, on the feast of the Commemoration of Souls
(November 2d) in the presence of the Provost or his deputy, and of
the scholars (Fellows). Each one of the scholars, in the order of
seniority, may select a single book which either treats of the science
to which he is devoting himself, or which he requires for his use. This
he may keep until the same festival in the succeeding year, when a
similar selection of books is to take place, and so on, from year to
year. If there should happen to be more books than persons, those
that remain are to be selected in the same manner.”
A statute of Archbishop Lanfranc, for the English Benedictines,
dated 1070, and based, as he tells us, on the general monastic
practice of his time, gives the following regulation: “On the Monday
after the first Sunday in Lent, before Brethren come into the Chapter
House, the librarian [here called not armarius but custos librorum]
shall have a carpet laid down and all the books got together upon it,
except those which the year previous had been assigned for reading.
These the Brethren are to bring with them, when they come into the
Chapter House, each his book in his hand. Then the librarian shall
read a statement as to the manner in which Brethren have had
books during the past year. As each Brother hears his name
pronounced, he is to give back the book which had been entrusted to
him for reading; and he whose conscience accuses him of not
having read through the book which he had received, is to fall on his
face, confess his fault, and entreat forgiveness. The librarian shall
then make a fresh distribution of books, namely a different volume to
each Brother for his reading.”
It would appear from this reference as if Lanfranc’s monks were
under obligations to read through but one book each year, which was
certainly a very moderate allowance. It is also to be noted that the
books appear not to have been distributed according to the
preferences of the readers, but to have been assigned at the will of
the librarian. There must certainly have been no little difference in
the character and extent of the duty imposed of reading through one
book (even with so long an allowance of time) according to the
particular volume which the custos saw fit to assign. The worthy
Archbishop writes, however, as if a book were a book and one as
good for edification or as fitting for penance as another.
It is evident that there were two classes of volumes, one utilised
for distribution for separate reading, and the other reserved for
reference and placed in a separate room (first called armarium and
later bibliotheca) where they were fastened with irons chains to
lecterns or reading-desks.
In the various details concerning the distribution of books, the
arrangement of the lecterns for the chained books, etc., the practice
in the early colleges was evidently modelled on that of the
monasteries. The system of chaining, as adopted in England, would
allow of the books being readily taken down from the shelves and
placed on the lectern for reading. One end of the chain was attached
to the middle of the upper edge of the right-hand board or cover; the
other to a ring which played on a bar which set in front of the shelf on
which the book stood. The fore-edge of the books, not the back, was
turned to the front. A swivel, usually in the middle of the chain,
prevented tangling. The chains varied in length according to the
distance of the shelf from the desk.[219]
In a copy of Locke’s Treatise on the Epistles, printed in 1711,
Maitland found inscribed the following “advertisement”: “Since, to the
great reproach of the nations and a much greater one of our Holy
Religion, the thievish disposition of some that enter into libraries to
learn there no good, hath made it necessary to secure the innocent
books, and even the sacred volumes themselves, with chains (which
are better deserved by those ill persons who have too much learning
to be hanged and too little to be honest), care should be taken
hereafter that as additions shall be made to this library (of which
there is a hopeful expectation), the chains should neither be longer
nor more clumsy than the use of them requires, and that the loops
whereby they are fastened to the books may be rivetted on such a
part of the cover and so smoothly as not to gall or raze the books
while these are removed from or to their respective places.”[220]
Isidore, Bishop of Seville (c. 560-636), possessed probably the
largest collection of books at that time in Europe. It was contained in
fourteen presses or armaria, each of which was ornamented with a
bust and inscribed with verses. The series of verses concludes with
the following notice addressed ad interventorem, a term which may
be interpreted a talkative intruder:

Non patitur quemquam coram se scriba loquentem;

Non est hic quod agas, garrule, perge foras.

(The scribe allows no one to speak in his presence; there is

nothing for you to do here, chatterbox; you had better go outside)—a
motto which would serve very well for a reading-room of to-day.
In Rome the Church had, from an early date, preserved a
collection of manuscripts which related more particularly to church
matters, but which included also some specimens of the Roman
Classics. In 855, Lupus, of Ferrières, writes to Pope Benedict III.,
begging for the loan of certain texts from which to make transcripts.
He specifies the Commentary of S. Jerome on Jeremiah, Cicero de
Oratore, Quintilian, and Terence.[221]
In the centuries following, however, as the Roman Church sank
into a condition of ignorance and strife, and Italy was continuously
upset by invasions, the library in Rome and the collections which had
been instituted in certain churches outside of Rome were either
seriously lessened or entirely destroyed. As late, however, as 1276,
a few valuable manuscripts were still to be found in the church
collections. Wattenbach speaks of the collection in Verona, in the
library of the Town Hall, as one of the most important of those in Italy
in which old manuscripts have been preserved to the present time.
Next in importance among the older collections, he mentions that of
Hexham in England, which had been originally collected by Bishop
Acca in the year 700, and which is referred to by Bede.[222]
With this is to be mentioned the library of York, which is first
described by Alcuin.[223]
Among the earlier important library collections was that of the
monastery of Vivaria, which had been founded by Cassiodorus; the
writings were classified according to their contents, and were
arranged in a series of armaria.
After the beginning of the seventh century, the most noteworthy
collection was that of Bobbio, a portion of which remained as late as
1618, and was taken by Paul V. for the Vatican Library. Another
portion found its way to Turin.
The literary activity of the monastery of Corbie has already been
mentioned, and the library there continued in existence during the
entire lifetime of the monastery. After 1350 the monks appear to
have themselves given up the work of writing. Étienne de Conty is
recorded as one of the special benefactors of the library. He
collected books for it, and he employed special scribes to add to the
collection.[224]
In Germany, the monastery of Reichenau was noted as early as
821 for its excellent collection of manuscripts. The librarian
Reginbert prepared in 821 an exhaustive catalogue of the collection.
Not a few of the manuscripts were, as appeared by the notes in the
catalogue, the work of his own hands. Of these manuscripts, which
he had prepared with so great zeal and labour, there have remained
but five sheets of one book, with a portion of the catalogue.
Of nearly as early a date is the first catalogue of the library of St.
Gall, previously referred to; in the catalogue of this there are beneath
the titles various critical notes. There is record of the loan of books to
the Emperor Charles III., to Frau Rickert, and to Liutward, Bishop of
Vercelli.[225]
In the monastery of Pomposa, in Lombardy, Abbot Jerome brought
together in the eleventh century (in spite of certain grumblings on the
part of the monks, the ground for which is not clearly explained) a
great collection of manuscripts.[226] A certain Henricus Clericus,
writing in 1093, describing this collection to a friend, says that in no
church, not even in Rome, could so wonderful a group of books be
found. Henricus prepared a catalogue of the library, and at the close
of the catalogue he finds it necessary, as a matter of consistency, to
apologise for the abbot who had ventured to include in the collection
heathen books. The presence of such books, known at the time as
libri scholastici, was, however, by no means exceptional in
monastery collections, and in many of these were to be found copies
of Virgil, Ovid, and particularly Cicero. While this was more
frequently the case in Italy, it occurred also in Germany. An inventory
made in 1233 of the monastery of Neumünster, near Wurzburg,
includes in a special list the titles of a number of the Classics.
A similar separate catalogue of libri scholastici was made in 1297
for the collection in the cathedral library of Lübeck.
While the principal increase in the monastery libraries had been
secured through the work of scribes and through exchanges, and
occasionally through purchases, a considerable proportion of the
books came to them through gifts or bequests. The gift that it was
customary for a novice to make on entering a monastery very
frequently took the form of books.
In 1055, the priest Richlof, in placing his son with the
Benedictines, gave as an accompanying present a farm and some
books, and his mother gave a copy of a treatise of S. Ambrose.[227]
Léon Maitre says that in Fleury, each new scholar was expected to
present at least two codices. Towards the end of the eleventh
century, a noble cleric, who entered as a monk the monastery at
Tegernsee, brought with him so many books that, according to the
account, when placed by the principal altar they covered this from
top to bottom.[228]
In what was known as the Scottish Monastery, near Vienna, there
was kept in the thirteenth century a record of gifts, which record
includes a long list of presents of books. In the latter part of the
century, the monastery appears to have degenerated, the library fell
into disuse, and the presents of books ceased. In 1418 the so-called
Scottish monks were driven out, and the foundation was taken
possession of by Germans. From this date the record of gifts of
books again began.
In 1453, the monastery received as a bequest from Dr. Johannes
Polzmacher his entire library. The library came to include a
considerable list of works on jurisprudence together with a series of
classics, including several copies of Ovid. The latter appears to have
been a special favourite in the monastic collections. The books on
jurisprudence were utilised for the profit of the monastery by being
loaned out to the jurisprudence Faculty of the university. They were,
it appears, also occasionally loaned to the students for transcribing.
In the chance of the manuscripts suffering damage while out on hire,
the borrower was compelled to deposit an adequate pledge in the
shape either of money or other valuable property.[229]
The monastery in Bobbio received books from wandering
Irishmen, as is indicated by the following inscription:

Sancte Columba, tibi Scotto tuus incola Dungal,

Tradidit hunc librum, quo fratrum corda beentur.
Qui legis ergo, Deus pretium sit muneris ora.[230]

(Holy Columba of Scotland, thy votary Dungal has bestowed upon

thee this book, whereby the hearts of the brothers may be
gladdened. Do thou who readest it pray that God may be the reward
of thy labour.)
In the monastery of St. Père-de-Chartres the Abbot Alveus, who
died in 955, presented to S. Peter a book Pro Vita Æterna.[231]
 Dietrich Schreiber, a citizen of Halle, who, notwithstanding his
name, is said not to have been a scribe, gave, in 1239, for the good
of his soul, to the preaching Brothers of Leipzig, a canonistic
manuscript, with the condition that either of his sons should have the
privilege of redeeming the same for the sum of five marks, in case
he might require it in connection with his study of the law.[232] Robert
of Lille, who died in 1339, left in his will to his daughters a certain
illuminated calendar, with the condition attached that after their death
the calendar was to be given to the nuns of Chikessaund.[233]
It is also the case that bequests securing an annual income were
occasionally given with the specific purpose of founding or endowing
monastery scriptoria and libraries. The Abbot of St. Père-de-Chartres
ordered, in 1145, that the tenants or others recognising the authority
of the monastery must take up each year for the support of the
library the sum of eighty-six solidos.[234]
His successor, Fulbert, instituted a new room for the collection and
kept the monks themselves at work, so that in 1367 a catalogue,
inscribed in four rolls, gives the titles of 201 volumes.[235]
Also in Evesham, in Worcestershire, England, a statute enacted in
1215 provides that certain tenths coming into the priory should be
reserved for the purpose of buying parchment and for the increase of
the library. During the following year the amount available for this
purpose was five solidos, eighteen deniers.[236]
The account books of the monks of Ely showed that in the year
1300 they purchased five dozen sheets of parchment, four pounds of
ink, eight calf-skins, four sheep-skins, five dozen sheets of vellum,
and six pairs of book clasps. In the same year they paid six shillings
for a Decretal and two shillings for a Speculum Gregor. In 1329, the
Precentor received six shillings and seven pence with which he was
instructed to go to Balsham to purchase books. In the same year,
four shillings were paid for twelve iron chains (used, of course, for
fastening the books safely to the reading-desks). Between 1350 and
1356, the purchases appear to have included no less than seventy
dozen sheets of parchment and thirty dozen sheets of vellum.[237]
 Prince Borwin, of Rostock, in 1240 presented the monastery of
Dargun with a hide of land, the proceeds of which were to be used
for the repairing and preservation of the books in the library.[238]
Adam, treasurer of the Chapter of Rennes, in 1231, presented his
library to the abbey of Penfont, with the condition that the books
were never to be diverted from the abbey, and that copies were to be
lent only against adequate pledges.
In 1345, a library was founded in the House of the German
Brothers of Beuggen, near Rheinfelden, through the exertions of
Wulfram of Nellenberg. He directed that all books left by deceased
Brothers throughout Elsass were to be brought to this library, and the
living Brothers were also earnestly urged to present their own books
to the same collection.[239]
The great library of the monastery of Admunt was catalogued in
1380 by Brother Peter of Arbonne. The Chapter of S. Pancras, in
Leyden, received in 1380, through a bequest of Philip of Leyden, a
collection of eighty manuscripts, the catalogue of which has been
preserved.[240]
As before indicated, the Monastery Reform, which was instituted
with the beginning of the fifteenth century, exercised a very decided
influence upon the interest in books and upon the development of
libraries. In Tegernsee, where the once noted library had fallen into
ruins, the Abbot Casper (1426-1461) reorganised it, restored such of
the old manuscripts as were still in existence, bought new codices,
and put to work a number of hired scribes. His successor, Conrad V.,
carried on the work actively and purchased for the sum of eleven
hundred pounds heller no less than 450 volumes, in addition to
which he secured a number of gifts or devout presents.[241]
In Salzburg, the Archbishop Johann II. (1429-1441) caused a new
library building to be erected, and collected for it many beautiful
manuscripts. In the monastery of Bergen, near Magdeburg, the
Abbot Bursfelder (1450-1478) organised a library, and utilised for his
books an old chapel. In 1477, the Prior Martin instituted a library in
Bordesholm, and Brother Liborius, who was a professor in Rostock,
gave over, in 1405, to this library, for the good of his soul, his works
on jurisprudence, with the provision that they were to be placed in
chains and to remain forever in the reading-room. A catalogue of this
collection, which was prepared in 1498, and which contains more
than five hundred titles, has been preserved.[242] The library of the
Benedictine monastery of St. Ulrich, near Augsburg, retained its
early importance until the invention of printing, and in 1472, as
before mentioned, a printing office was instituted in connection with
the monastery, by the Abbot and the Chapter, in which active work
was carried on. Abbot Trithemius presented to the monastery of
Sponheim, in 1480, the sum of fifteen hundred ducats for the
enlargement of its library.
As before stated, the Brothers of Common Life planned their
collections of books expressly with reference to the service of the
students in their schools, and these libraries contained, therefore, a
much larger proportion of books in the vernacular than were to be
found in other monasteries. In some of the Brotherhood Homes, the
library was divided into the collection for the Brothers and the
collection for the students. It was ordered that at least once a year all
books that were not out on loan should be called in and should be
inspected in the presence of the Brothers.
Public Libraries.—Of the libraries of antiquity, only a single
one, and that the latest in foundation, the Imperial Library of
Constantinople, continued in existence as late as the Middle Ages.
This library, founded in 354 by the Emperor Constantius, was largely
added to by Julian the Philosopher. Under the Emperor Basiliscus,
the original library, which at that time was said to have contained no
less than 120,000 volumes, was destroyed by fire. It was afterwards
reinstituted by the Emperor Zeno, the prefect of the city, Julian,
having given to the work his personal supervision. References are
made to this library in 1276, and again early in the fourteenth
century, when John Palæologus was able to present from it certain
manuscripts (probably duplicates) to the well known manuscript
dealer Aurispa of Venice. It is probable that the manuscripts of the
imperial collection had been to some extent scattered before the fall
of the city in 1453. Such manuscripts as had escaped destruction
during the confusion of the siege of the city were hidden away by the
scholars interested, in various monasteries and in out-of-the-way
corners, from which they were brought out by degrees during the
following two or three centuries.
Large quantities of these manuscripts found their way, however,
very promptly to Italy, chiefly through Venice, and, as is described in
another chapter, not a few of the Greek scholars who were driven
from the Byzantine territories, or who refused to live under the rule of
the Turk, brought with them into Italy, as their sole valuable
possessions, collections of manuscripts, more or less important,
which they used either as texts for their lectures or for transcribing
for sale.
The collections in the monasteries of the West, brought together in
the first place simply for the requirements of the monks and
restricted (at least in theory) to devotional or doctrinal books, were,
in large measure at least, placed at the disposal of scholars and
readers outside of the monasteries, as the interest in literature came
to extend beyond the class of ecclesiastics. With this extension of
the use of the libraries, there came a natural development in the
range of the books collected.
Long after the monks or ecclesiastics had ceased to exercise any
control over the books or to be themselves the only readers
interested in their preservation and use, the most convenient space
for the collection was to be found in the church buildings. Many of
the collections came, in fact, to be known as cathedral libraries.
In certain cases, books or money for the purchase of books was
bequeathed in trust to ecclesiastical authorities with the direct
purpose of providing a library for the use of the general public. The
cathedral Prior of Vercelli (in Piedmont), Jacob Carnarius, who died
in 1234, left his books to the Dominicans of S. Paul. He made it,
however, a condition of the bequest that under proper security of
deposit or pledge, the books should be placed at the disposal of any
scholars desiring their use, and particularly of instructors in the
Theological Faculty of the University of Vercelli.
Petrarch’s library was bequeathed in 1362 to the Church of S.
Mark in Venice, with the condition that the collection was to be for
the use of the general public. The books were neglected, and for
some time disappeared altogether, and it was only in 1635 that a
portion of them were recovered. The famous library of S. Mark dates
from 1468, when Cardinal Bessarion presented to the city eight
hundred manuscripts, assigning as his reason for the gift the
generous hospitality extended by Venice to the refugees from
Constantinople. These books were to be for the use of any qualified
citizens of the city, a pledge of double the value being deposited for
any manuscript borrowed. The library of Boccaccio, who died in
1375, was bequeathed to the monks of the Holy Ghost in Florence.
This library was afterwards added to by the collection of the famous
theologian, Luigi Marsigli, and that of Niccolo Niccoli.[243]
To Florence, which stood at the front of the intellectual
development of Italy, belongs the credit of instituting the largest and
most important of the earlier public libraries of Italy. Niccolo Niccoli,
one of the most energetic of the scholarly book collectors, specified
in his will, made in 1430, that his manuscripts should be placed in
the Camal-dulensian monastery of S. Maria, where his friend
Traversari was prior, and that these manuscripts were to be available
for public use. In 1437, however, the day before his death, he added
a codicil to his will, under which the decision as to the abiding-place
for his manuscripts was left to sixteen trustees.
He died in debt, however, and the books would have been seized
by his creditors if they had not been redeemed by Cosimo de’
Medici. Cosimo placed them in the Dominican monastery of S. Mark,
the collection in which, in 1444, comprised four hundred Latin and
Greek manuscripts. Cosimo gave much care to the further
development of this collection. As has already been mentioned, he
used for the purpose the services of the great manuscript dealer,
Vespasiano. After the earthquake of 1453, he caused the library
building to be restored with greater magnificence than before. The
care of the library was continued, after the death of Cosimo, by his
son Pietro, and the collection finally became the foundation of the
famous Laurentian library, which is in existence to-day.
Pietro took pains to send the Greek grammarian, Laskaris, twice to
the Orient to collect further manuscripts. From his first journey,
Laskaris brought back no less than two hundred works, of which
eighty had not heretofore been known in Italy. On his second
journey, Laskaris died.
The library suffered much during the invasion of Charles VIII., but
a large proportion of the books were redeemed from the French
invaders by the Dominican monks, who paid for them three thousand
gulden.
Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici (later Pope Leo X.) took the
collection from the monastery with him to Rome, but it was
afterwards returned to Florence by Pope Clemens VII.
Clemens gave to Michel Angelo the commission to build a hall for
the library, but both Pope and architect died before the work was
completed, and the building took shape only finally in 1571, the plan
of Michel Angelo having been carried out in substance.
The library of the Vatican passed through various vicissitudes
according to the interest or the lack of interest of the successive
popes, but under Pope Nicholas V. (1447-1455) it became one of the
most important collections in the world for the use of scholars. In
1471, Sixtus IV. completed the library building and the rooms for the
archives and added many works, and it was under this Pope that the
use of the books was thrown open (under certain conditions) to the
general public.
Frederick, Duke of Urbino, is reported to have spent as much as
40,000 ducats on the ducal collection in Urbino, and Vespasiano
rendered important services in the selection and development of this
library. The books were, in 1657, under the papacy of Alexander VII.,
transferred to the Vatican.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there was very
considerable interest in literary work in Hungary and some
noteworthy collections of manuscripts were there brought together.
The collectors in Italy found in fact some of their richest treasures,
particularly in manuscripts in Greek, in the monasteries of Hungary
and of Transylvania. The cause of literature was much furthered by
King Matthias Corvinus, who brought together a very valuable
collection in Ofen. He kept four scribes in Florence preparing works
for the Ofen library, and thirty were continually at work in Ofen itself.
His wife, Beatrix, who was a daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples,
and a grand-daughter of Alfonso the Good, is said to have exercised
no little influence upon the literary culture of the Hungarian Court. At
her instance, many Italian scholars were brought to Hungary, and
their aid utilised in completing the library. The codices Budences
came to be well known in the scholarly world, and secured fame both
for the beauty of their script and the richness of their adornment.
Wattenbach says of these, however, that their text is very largely
inaccurate, giving the impression that the transcripts had been
prepared hurriedly and to order. After the death of King Matthias, a
number of his books came into the possession of Emperor
Maximilian, who used them for the foundation of the Court Library of
Vienna. This was the only portion of the original Hungarian collection
which escaped destruction at the hands of the Turks.
Among the public libraries in France is to be noted that of Louis
IX., which was open for the use of scholars, but which, being limited
almost entirely to devotional books, could not have been of any great
scholarly service. In the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard de
Furnival, chancellor of the Cathedral of Amiens, instituted a public
library, and himself wrote, as a guide for the same, a work entitled
Biblionomia.
The libraries of S. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg have already been
referred to.[244]
According to Savigny, there were before the time of printing no
university libraries in Italy. The stationarii provided both instructors
and students with such books as were prescribed in the courses,
and the demand for others appears not to have been great. In Paris,
on the other hand, a collection of books for the use of the students
was instituted as early as 1270, the first benefactor being Stephen,
Archdeacon of Canterbury. Stephen gave his books to the church of
Notre Dame to be loaned to poor students of theology. In 1297,
Peter of Joigny, in continuation of the same work, gave a collection
of books in trust to the university directly for the use of these poor
students of theology. The famous College of the Sorbonne probably
dates from 1253. The librarium of the college was instituted in 1289,
and it was specified that the books were for the common use of the
instructors and students. The catalogue of this collection, prepared in
the following year, is still in existence and contains 1017 titles.[245]
Each socius of the college had a key to the library rooms and was
permitted to take guests in with him. The books were all fastened to
the wall or to the reading-desks by chains, so that the risk of
abstraction was not a serious one. The statutes of 1321 prescribed
that of every work issued, one copy in the best form must be
preserved for the Sorbonne collection. This is probably the first
statute of the kind having in view the preservation, in a public
collection, of copies of all works produced. It is to be borne in mind,
however, in the first place, that it could have had reference only to
books produced under the direct supervision of the college, and
secondly, that there was here no question of original literary
production, but merely of copies of the older works accepted as
possessing doctrinal authority. The books in this library (and
probably in other similar libraries) which were not protected by
chains were called libri vagantes, and these could, under certain
restrictions, be loaned out. Wattenbach is of opinion, however, that
no books other than duplicates were placed in this class.
Another library of importance was contained in the College of
Narbonne, which had been founded in 1316, and which was itself a
continuation of an earlier foundation instituted in 1238 by the
Archbishop Peter, at the time he was about to take part in the
Crusade. The books were to be open for the use of students as well
in Paris as of Narbonne.[246]
In the College of Plessis, the statutes of 1455 described that all
books, with the exception of the Missals, must be chained, and that
no unchaining should be permitted except with the authorisation of
the master of all the bursars. In the College of the Scots, the loaning
of books outside of the building was absolutely forbidden.
To the College of the Sorbonne belongs the credit of taking the
initiative step in inviting the first printers to Paris. In 1469, the prior
and the librarian made themselves responsible for finding work and
support for two printers, called to Paris from Mayence. The fact that
the Prior Johann Heynlin was himself a German was doubtless of
influence in bringing to the college early information concerning the
importance of the new art.[247] The first book which was printed in
Paris was the letters of Gasparin of Bergamo, which appeared in
1470 (twenty years after the perfecting of the Gutenberg press), and
bore the imprint in ædibus Sorbonnæ.
In England, the foundation of the Franciscans in Oxford took, early
in the thirteenth century, active part in furthering library facilities for
the clerics and the students. They appear to have had two
collections, one called libraria conventus, doubtless restricted to
theological and religious books, and one described as libraria
scholarium or studentium, which contained a number of examples of
the classics. It was to the Franciscans that Bishop Grosseteste, who
died in 1253, bequeathed all his books.
The interest in literature of Richard de Bury, the friend of Petrarch,
has already been referred to. He was the instructor of King Edward
III., and exercised later, important official responsibilities. He served
as a foreign representative more than once, and was for a time
chancellor of the kingdom. At the time of his death in 1345, he was
Bishop of Durham. He had a passion for the collecting of books, and
with the exceptional advantages of wealth, official station, and
knowledge of distant countries, he had advantages in this pursuit
possessed by no other Englishman of the time. It is said that the
other rooms in his house having already been crowded with books,
these were massed in his bedroom also in such quantities that he
could get to his bed only by stepping upon them. His library was
bequeathed to Durham College in Oxford, which had been founded
by himself. The college was discontinued by Henry VIII., and the
books were scattered, not even the catalogue, which Bury had
himself prepared, having been preserved. In confiding his books to
Oxford for the use of the students, Richard gives various earnest
injunctions as to the proper respect in which they should be held and
the care with which they should be handled. A reader who should
handle the books with dirty hands or while eating or drinking, could,
in Bury’s opinion, be fitly punished with nothing less than
banishment. The collection of Durham College was to be open not
only to the use of the members of the college itself, but of all masters
and students in Oxford, but no books of which there were no
duplicates were to be taken out of the building.
The earliest university library of Germany was that of the College
Carolinum in Prague, instituted by Charles IV. The next in date
appears to have been that of Heidelberg, where as early as 1386 the
Faculty of Arts had a library for itself in addition to the general
collection belonging to the university. As before stated, there was
also a collection in the Castle which was open for the use of all
readers, students, citizens, or strangers. The university library in
Vienna dates from 1415, and that in Erfurt from 1433. The town
library in Leipzig had for its origin a collection possessed by the
Augustinian monks in the monastery of S. Thomas, which collection
was thrown open for the use of the public in 1445. Additions to the
library were to be made only under the inspection and supervision of
the monastery authorities.
The most noteworthy library which had no connection with any
university was instituted at Alzei (in Hesse Cassel) in 1409. Its
founders were Johannes of Kirchdorf, Prebendary of the Cathedral
of Worms and chaplain of King Rupert.
The books were given in order that the clerics and other scholarly
people who belonged to the city of Alzei “could use the same for
entertainment and instruction, and could spread among the
community at large the learning contained therein.”[248]
In Hamburg there was, as early as 1469, a collection comprising
forty volumes of medical books, for the use more particularly of the
city physician and his assistant, and also for general reference. In
1480 the burgermeister Neuermeister left a considerable legacy for
the foundation of a city library. In Frankfort, the library of the
Carmelite monastery was taken over in 1477 for the use of the city,
in order that the “books could be made of service for the
enlightenment of the community to the greater glory of God and of
the Mother of God.”
 Collections by Individuals.—Among the laity (outside,
at least, of Italy) it was particularly the kings who from time to time
interested themselves in collecting books. Pepin received from Pope
Paul I., at his own urgent request, a collection of books which
included certain Greek manuscripts. The latter could, however,
hardly have been of any particular service either to the King or to any
members of his Court.[249]
The collection formed by Charlemagne has already been referred
to, and also the provision of his will, under which, after his death, the
books were to be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Charles
the Bald, with whose name it is not easy to associate intellectual
activity, appears to have been a great collector of books. After his
death his library was, under his directions, divided between St.
Denis, Compiègne, and his son.[250] It is recorded of William the
Great of Aquitaine, who died in 1030, and who was the father of the
Empress Agnes, that “he had many books and read zealously
therein.”[251] Count Baldwin of Guines, who died in 1205, brought
together a collection of books which he had translated into the
Romance tongue. Louis IX. of France was interested in the idea of
bringing together a collection of devout books, and, although he did
not live to carry out his plan, the manuscripts which were left by him
served for the scholar Vincennes of Beauvais in the preparation of
his great encyclopedia.
Louis heard, during his crusade, of some sultan who had caused
to be prepared transcripts of all the noted works of philosophy. This
example incited the zeal of Louis, who gave directions that all the
“authentic, useful, and devout books” which were to be found within
his realm were to be transcribed, and the transcripts placed in the
Royal Library. The collection was, however, not allowed to remain
complete, as in his will Louis directed that the books should be
divided between the preacher monks and the Minorites of Paris, the
Abbey Royaumont, and the Dominican monks of Compiègne.[252]
John, Duke of Berry, son of the Good King John, and brother of
King Charles V., found opportunity, even during the troublous times
which culminated with the battle of Poitiers and the imprisonment of
his father, to bring together a noteworthy collection of books. It was
this collection that made the beginning of the library of the Louvre,
instituted by Charles V., a library for which Gilles Mallet prepared in
1373 a very complete catalogue. Barrois published in 1830, in Paris,
a work devoted entirely to a description of the books collected by
Prince John and his brother Charles.
David Aubert, whose translation of the History of the Emperors
was published[253] in 1457, makes, in the preface to this history,
special mention of the literary tastes of Philip, Duke of Burgundy. He
says that Philip made a daily practice of having read to him ancient
histories and that he kept employed a great number of skilled
translators, learned historians, and capable scribes who were busied
in adding to his great library. This collection of Philip appears later to
have been scattered as there is no record of its preservation.
The Duke of Bedford found time, between his frequent campaigns,
to interest himself in the collection of manuscripts, and more
particularly of works which were beautifully illuminated. He
purchased, for 1200 francs, a portion of the library of Charles V.,
which had been captured, and, these books being taken to Oxford,
finally found place in the Bodleian collection.
Philip of Cleves, who died in 1528 and who was connected with
the Burgundy House, shared the passion of his relatives for
magnificent manuscripts.
An inventory of Margaret, Duchess of Brittany, contains the
descriptive titles of eleven books of devotion and four romances, “all
bound in satin.”[254]
The name of Anne of Brittany, the wife of King Charles VIII., and
later of Louis XII., has long been famous in connection with her
fondness for books of devotion and with the great collection which
she succeeded in making of these. An inventory of 1498 gives the
titles of 1140 books as belonging to Anne’s collection.[255]
In Italy, it was not until the time of Petrarch that there came to be
any general interest in the collection of books. This interest was
naturally associated with the great Humanistic movement of which it
may be considered as partly the cause and partly the effect. The
development of literary interests in Italy during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries will be considered in the chapter on the
Renaissance.
In Germany, the collections outside of the monasteries appear to
have been less important than in Burgundy and in France, the
difference being probably in part due to the narrower cultivation of
the German noblemen, and probably also in part to their smaller
resources. In fact, the more important collections do not appear to
have been in the possession of the nobility at all, but to have come
into existence through the public spirit of citizens of lower degree.
The library of two hundred volumes brought together as early as
1260 by Hugo Trimberg, a schoolmaster of St. Gangolf, has already
been referred to.
Duke Ludwig of Brieg is described as having had as early as 1360
a considerable collection of books, and as having had written, in
1353, by some scribe whose name has not been preserved, the
Hedwig legends.
The Electors of the Palatinate interested themselves in the
formation of libraries, having possibly been influenced to some
extent by their relations with their neighbours on the other side of the
Rhine. Authors such as Matthias of Kemnat and Michel Behaim
worked at the instance of the Electors and under pay from them. The
books of Kemnat and Behaim were either originally written in
German, or were promptly translated into German for the use of the
Electors and of their wives. A number of books in this series are also
ornamented with pictures, but, according to the descriptions, the art
work in these illustrations was much inferior to that done at the same
time in Burgundy.
The most important group of the Heidelberg manuscripts was
collected by Ludwig III., who died in 1437.[256] His daughter
Mechthild, whose first husband was the Count Ludwig of
Wurtemberg, and whose second, the Archduke Albrich, retained in
her widowhood in her castle at Rotenburg a collection of ninety-four
volumes of the mediæval poets, whose works were written in the