Anthropology of Sport

Anthropology is the most comprehensive

of the social sciences. Its focus spans the
entire range of human behavior, from the
biological to the cultural and from the past
to the future. Physical anthropologists
study human anatomy and physiology,
genetics, non-human primate biology and
behavior, the fossil record, and evolution in
all of its many manifestations.
The anthropology of sport is the
application of the perspectives, theories
and methodologies of the discipline to the
study of sport. By implication, sport is
viewed as a distinctive component of
culture, not unlike marriage, religion, or
music. It is treated as a separate
institution, but, like all cultural institutions,
it is thoroughly integrated with the other
institutions that characterize any given
culture.
By implication, the anthropology of sport is an
academic enterprise engaged in only by
anthropologists. However, in reality, the
anthropology of sport is more of a perspective
or an approach than a subdiscipline of
anthropology. Scholars of various academic
backgrounds from countries around the world
are bringing to the analysis of sport an
anthropological perspective and in this sense
doing the anthropology of sport.
 Historical Background
The anthropology of sport has it roots in the work of
early European anthropologists. For example, Sir
Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), a British scholar
sometimes referred to as the father of anthropology,
published an article entitled ‘The history of games’
(1879) in which he described several simple, natural
sports (for example, wrestling, ball tossing) and
argued that these had been invented independently
in many different geographical settings.
Although sport was not a central concern among
nineteenth-century anthropologists, it did receive
occasional attention from anthropologists other than
Tylor. For example, James Mooney, an anthropologist
and head of the Bureau of American Ethnology,
published in 1890 a detailed description of the
Cherokee ball game. The Cherokees, a Native American
tribe located in the southeastern United States,
traditionally played a racket game sometimes referred to
as the parent game of lacrosse. The racket game was
widely known and played among Native American tribes
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Cherokee version of the game was similar to
that of other tribes. Each player was equipped
with two ball sticks, hickory staffs with pouches
of twisted bear sinew at the end. The ball, less
than two inches in diameter, was made of tightly
packed deer hair and covered with deer hide.
Two teams of players competed in the attempt
to throw or carry the ball up and down a lengthy
field and strike the opponent’s goal and thus
score points.
Cherokee Ball Game
The early twentieth century witnessed an increased
interest in games and sports among anthropologists and
other students of culture. One of the most important
figures of this era was Stewart Culin (1859-1929). Culin, a
business person, developed an interest in archaeology
early in his career. This led eventually to a position as a
museum curator. He was particularly interested in games
and as curator of ethnology at the Brooklyn Museum he
collected many sport and game artifacts from around the
world and brought together volumes of information about
those artifacts. Out of these efforts came several
important books on games, perhaps his most significant
being Games of the North American Indians (1907).