two strands

• scientific model, seeks explanations of universals

• interpretive approach to understand meanings of others

Science

• Test whether or not a theory is supported

• If supported, may have validity, not confirmed as true, has probability of approximation

• Testing done by establishing expectations, seeing if expectations are met or not

• Failure results in elimination or reworking

• Quantitative, qualitative data are both used

• Data best acquired by participant observation

• Operational definitions are descriptions of procedures followed to measure a variable – necessary to measure conditions of a theory

• Whiting's Operationalization

  • Protein in diet – based on staple foods

  • Taboo length – short (< year), long (> year)

• Data must be analyed statistically

• Direction of causality can be determined

• Cases don't always fit, can have exceptions, other factors can also hold

Effective science requires

• Clearly framed questions, descriptive or explanatory

• Potential answers must be stated hypothetically

• Clearly identified & operationalized variables

• Specified Methods for measuring variables

• Interpretation should include as many possible alternates if results fail to negate hypothesis

Spatial & Temporal scope

• spatial – single society, societies w/i region, world wide

• temporal – slices of time, swath of time

Ethnography

• traditional method

• participant observation

• living among the people

• observing, questioning, taking part in important events

• take notes, answers questions

• film/sound recordings are used

• Continuum of observation

  • complete – conceals data collection

  • participant as observer – known and participates

  • observer as participant – observation is primary, has some degree of participation

  • complete observer – observes only, no participation

• Writing up – detailed account (emic vs etic perspective)

• Becomes source of information for other kinds of anthropologists

• Who and when must be considered carefully

Standardized databases, SCCS, eHRAF World Cultures

Sampling is useful, random sampling is best

What is race?

Is it simply a matter of prejudice

Or how things are percieved?

So scientifically, it does not exist

It is only a matter of perception

Just a way humans classify things

physical differences are merely superficial, minor genetic changes

adaptations – "obvious" evidence off evolution

It all evolved by natural selection

Understanding this helps to understand behaviour

Humans have somet things that are unique

Great Chain of Being – all species created by God, involved fixity

Great diversity found, Linnaeus cdeveloped taxonomy, uses binomial system, hierarchical

Extinction by catastrophies

Lamark suggested inheritance of acquired charcteristics, the use-disuse theory

Darwin developed his theory

Based on non-random differential survival and reproduction

Everyone from Africa?

Reproductive Success

• Khan – by any means, many sons lived to reproductive age

Variation

• Genetic recombination

• Mutation

Variations shuffled in

• gene flow

• genetic drift (incl founder effect)

Hybridization provides more genetic variablity

Gene flow – process by which genes pass from one population to another

• Cline – gradual increas or decrease of frequency of a region from one end of a region to another

• Tends to reduce/prevent speciation

Hybridization – viable offspring from two species

• population of organizms able to intebreed and produce fertile/viable offspring

Microevolution – small changes occuring within speciase

Macroevolution – large-scale changes in a population over a long period of tie, potentially resulting in evolution of a new species

Speciation – formation of new species by selective pressures leading to changes in a subgroup of a population

Natural selection and culture and biologically informed behavior

• sociobiology

• behavioral ecology

• evolutionary psychology

• the dual-inheritance theory

E O Wilson – defined sociobiology, controversial in anthro because of genetic determinism, human sociobiology neglects culture unduly

Human Behavioral Ecology

• How ecological and social factors influence and shape behavioral flexibilyt

• competing life history, demands of growth, development, reproduction, parental care, mate acquisition

Evolutionary Psych

• Determines which traits are evolved adaptations

• Which traits are products of natural vs sexual selection

• Not blank slates, e.p shouldn't rule out an important role for culture

• no single past environment for psychological propensities

Cultural Evolution

• Culture is learned analogously to acquisition of genes from parets, subject to natural selection

Learning biases

• content-based – based on considering variant itself, is it useful or superior

• model-based – aboption based on social prominence of presenter

• frequency-based – adoption due to popularity and frequency

Skin Color – Nina Jablonski

• Darwin pigmented lightly

• Darwin was privileged

• Darwin took time to speak and write about humans

• Knew skin was in important mode of variation

• Differences don't correspond with differences in climate (per Darwin)

• Turns out, the differences they do vary based on UV radiation

• Relation between intensity of radiation and skin color

• Melanin is natural sunscreen, protects against damage to DNA

• Diasporas lead to loss of pigmentation

• Evolved in the Neanderthals as well as anatomically modern man

• Pigmentation (and lack thereof) has health consequences depending on location

Gloger's Rule

• Pigment depends on melanin in skin, amount of blood in small blood vessels in the skin

• Birds & Mammals living in warmer climates have more melanin than the same species living in colder areas

Loss of pigmentation – vitamin D hypothesis

• Few foods have it

• UV stimulates internal production

• aids in absorption of calcium

Dark skin protects against folate depletion from UV exposure

• folate B necessary for DNA synthesis, red blood cell formation, etc.

Differential survival, Differential Reproductive Success, Heritable Variation are key components of natural selection

Survival isn't the only thing

Phenotypes that enhance survival and reproduction are adaptive

Genetic and cultural/behavioral phenotypic variation

External/Internal features

Genes, particular environments, interaction of genes & environment

Some is a function of adaptation to environment

Tibetans & altitude

Hypoxia based on high altitudes, humans can adapt to high elevation living

Changes due to physiological adjustment are not genetic

Phenotypic plasticity, genotype produces more than one phenotype when exposed to different environments

The Andes:

• Great elevation

• large chests, great lung capacity, greater lung surface area

• More red blood cells, greater hemoglobin concentration

• Include also cultural practices (coca leaves)

Cultural practices

• Head binding

• Foot binding

• Tattooing

Primatology – study of fossile and living apes, monkeys & prosimians, incl behavior & social life

• Interest in and of itself

• To help understand human evolution

• Some trained as physical anthropologists

• Others in training including biology, etc

• Due to Jane Goodall

• Anthropomorphizing primates is easy, but not helpful to understanding them

• How do primates differ from other mammals?

• What distinguishes humans from other primates?

• When, where & why did early primates emerge

• How & why did they diverge?

Traditional interests

• Primates with adaptations similar to our own, living on the ground, not in the threes: terrestrial monkeys, terestrial apes

Monkeys used early on in the space program

Baboons of particular interest, savannah dwelling species

Bonobos, chimps, gorillas

Key adaptive traits: grasping hands, forward facing eyes, collarbones

• Also: social living, stereo vision

Romer's Rule: a trait that evolves to maintain an existing life form can play a role in changing that life form

Exaptation is current utility/function not being the cause of the adaptation

Broad and flatnailsinstead of claws

Sensitive pads on fingers, toes, heels, opposable thumbs, etc

Hand becomes used for feeding, clinging to mom, grooming

Color vision – detection of various properties of foods

Lessened sense of smell

Limbs dependent on locomotion type

Knuckle walking is common to apes

Dental features depend on diet

aye-aye – lemur with long middle finger

230ish species of primates, new are discovered, but outlook seems bleak

Genetics used to change taxonomy

Flat-nosed monkey – new world; down-nosed – old world

new world monkeys have prehensile tails

Old-world have more sexual diorphism, don't form as strong of pair bonds

dimorphism/pair bonding

• Pair bonding predicts sexual dimorphism

• Pair bonding reduced advantage of sexual dimorphism

Timing of differentiation based on genetic/molecular clock

Dental patterns also used

New world – Completely arboreal, diet primarily insects, nectar, sap, fruit, leaves

• Some use tools

• Tend to be smaller

• Pair bonding or polyandry

• males heavily involved in infant care

Old world – monkeys and apes

• more morphological/behavioral diversity

• Arboreal & teresstrial

• full-color vision, flat nails

• Some are carnivorous

Hominoids

• Generally

  • Large brains

  • long arms, short broad trunks

  • no tails

  • wrist/elbo/sholder allow range of movement

  • longer/stronger hands

  • Due often to suspensory locomotion

  • Different dentition

• Lesser apes – gibbons

  • SE asia, small

  • mostly fruit

  • pair bond

• Great Apes – gorillas, chimps, orangutans

  • huge sexual dimorphism

  • have some culture

  • Mostly not omnivorous, save chimps

• Hominids – Humans

dimorphism implied by harem-based reproduction

predation pressure is low in largely dimorphic populations

Less dimorphic seems generally same-sized

Female chimps mate with many males to ensure infanticide will not occur

Humans are the only extant spieces of Hominini of family Hominidae

Hominins are human ancestors back to split from apes

Many distinctive characteristics set us apart from other hominoids

Many beliee these justify separate family designation from chimps, bonobos, gorillas

Distinctives

1. Only habitual bipedal primate

   • shape of pelvis

   • Lumbar curve

   • Arched, non-prehensile feet

2. Larger complex brain

   • cerebral cortex, center of speech, higher mental activities

   • our brains average 1300 cc, gorillas, 525 cc

   • Higher neuron density

3. Prominent forheads given frontal areas are larger than other apes

4. Different dentition

   • Smaller canines, no diastema

   • thicker molars

   • Rounder arc of jaw, less u-shaped

   • flattening of face, i.e., no projecting jaw

5. Females sexually receptive throughout the year

6. Females have cryptic ovulation, no obvious sign of being fertile

7. Male-female bonding usual, single pair common

8. High male parental investment

9. Learned and patterend behavioral flexibility

10. Symbolic langugae

11. Hunt large animals

12. Live anywhere on land

13. Division of labor by sex in obtaining/sharing food

Bipedalism allowed movement from forest to forest

• Allows visual surveillance

• Frees hands

• Enables gathering of seeds and nuts

• Longdistance travel

• Better thermal regulation

Not mutually exclusive, consider Romer's Rule

Skeletal changes

• Repositioning of foramen magnum

• spinal curves

• Pelvis shortens and brodens

• etc

Adaptations always have trade-offs.

Large brains happened after bipedalism

Three fossil genera

• Sahelanthropus

• Orrorin

• Ardipithecus

Australopithecus

• Lived in both trees and on ground

Hominoids to Hominins

• Sahelanthropus tchadensis – 7 mya potential by Michel Brunet

• Almost complete skll combining hominoid and hominin trains

Common ancestor with Great Apes, but did not evolve from the other Great Apes

scavenging was an early part of thriving

Still done

Many branches of one tree

Homo is the most recent

Sometimes time is the most useful arrangement

Most ancient fossils rare and framented

More ancient were more ape-like

Videogame: "Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey"

Orrorin tugensis – after sahelanthropus, fully bipedal (due to femur head), small teeth with thick enamel

Australopithicines

• 2 genera – gracile, robust

• small canines, flat, large, thickly enameled molars, flared zygomatic arches, parabolic dental arc

• bipedalism seen

  • dated using K-AR dating (potassium argon)

Taung child was the start of the thought that man came out of Africa

• killed about 3, likely by eagle

Lucy provided info about gracile australopithecenes

• Could handle both life on ground and in trees

• considered female because of relatively small stature

• Seemed to act as groups

Australopithecus afarensis

• 2 doz from Laetoli, fossilied footprints

• Backbone was like modern humans

• How haired were they?

Australopithecus sediba

• Most likely to be in human lineage

Robust austalopithecines

• early split

• No relation to what lead to fully-modern humans

• Last died out about 1mya

2MYA gave us "Homo"

Homo habilis

• found with stone tools

• Tool use alone is probably not going to be the determineing factor

• Many others discovered

Habilis 2.4-1.4 MY:

Rudolfensis 2-1.8 mya

Erectus/ergaster 1.9mya-400kya

Tools evolved from simpler through rudolfensis to points in erectus

More advanced tools meant better adaptability

Homo erectus couldn't live in northern latitudes, but spread out of africa

Humans weren't first to use tools

Macaques pushing shellfish to extinction

Oysters change in size with regard to number of monkeys

TRying to fit into a niche of scavenging

Killer ape hypothesis – hominins were hunters and that's why he emerged

• Discredited, but hunting became critical

Marks on bones show priority of access

Humans were later to carcasses

Oldowan were ferst flaked stone tools

Acheulian Hand ax was the next

Mousterian was the next

Tools show adaptive radiation

Homo erectus proportionally similar to anatomically modern humans

• Smaller brain that humans

• Long, low, thickly walled skull, narrowed behind the eyes

• Pronounced brow ridges, ridge along the crest of the head

• Ridge horizontally around back of skull

The Neanderthals

• Separate species from Homo Erectus

• mtDNA significantly different from modern humans

• 27 substitutions between humans

• Nuclear DNA shows interbreeding

• Had red hair and fair skin

• Had FOXP2 (language)

• Many have Neanderthal DNA

• Were likely culturally similar to early AMHs

• Neanderthals dominated Europe & Asia for 300k+ years

• Successful adaptation

• Modern humans arrive 45kya

• 5k years later, Neanderthals were gone

• Neanderthals were technologically and cognitively disadvantaged (maybe)

  • Or assimilated & genetic swapping occured

• Things changed, Homo sapiens arrived

• AMH had greater reproductive success, etc

• Different culture traditions existed, supports the two being concurrent

Anatomically Modern Humans

• 200-300kya

• Africa

• High foreheads, reduced brow ridges

Cooperation was key. Cooperation outside of mere genetic relatedness

San having trouble hunting – constrained to reservations, limiting availability of resources

Is not:

• Only dinosaurs

• Treasure hunting

• No idols and booby traps

• Ancient Aliens

What is it?

• Study and preservation of material remains of past societies and their environments

• preservation – cultural resource management, etc

  • non-renewable resource

• Also includes modern material culture (The Tucson Garbage project)

  • Highlights difference between what people say they do and what they actually do

Material remains

• artifacts – things made by individuals, most technology was perishable

• ecofacts – things that come from nature: shells, grains, pollen, etc.

• features – non-portable, changes in the ground, evidence of activity: hearths, pits, pictographs, walls/floors, post holes/foundations, irrigation canals

Sites: – locations with material remains

• Cahokia – city

• Caves

• Pueblos

• Shelters

• A single jar cached somewhere

Remains have spatial/temporal distributions

• Spatial location and associations can be recorded

• Temporal placement/associations must be reconstructed

  • Absolute techniques assign an age estimate to finds

  • Relative techniques place finds in relative order

• Temporally diagnostic Artifacts – distinctive sty/efrom/manufacture with known/limited time period of production

Material Remains answer questions

• Who were the people?

• Whence did they come?

• What is their relationship to their forbears and successors?

• What was the environment?

• How did they interact with neighbors?

• How did they survive?

• How did their lifeway change?

• Why did their lifeway change?

Reconstruct past using "materialized history"

• Fate of uniquely preserved individuals

• Fate of variously sized social groups

• Local/short-term histories to regional/global long-term histories

Past is gone, can't be directly observed

• Evidence, observation, inference & justification present issues

• Are we simply detectives?

• But what about the three blind men and the elephant?

Evidence isn't perfectly preserved

• Lost/transformed

• Much is organic

• Some is diffuse and scattered

• So extensive, too hard to study

• Things get layered and bury earlier material culture

Ötzi and detectives

• No idea of antiquity

• Had to do more "detective work" to understand what happened

Goals

• Develop chronology (culture histories)

• Reconstruct past lifeways (reconstructing cultures)

• Explain cultural changes (cultural processes)

• Derive meaning (interpretation of culture)

Cultural History

• Goal – establish chronology w/o writing

• Method – construction from analysis of form in space

• Etc

• Time is concept, not observable

• Constructed using two critical methods

  • stratigraphy (vertical space)

    • Interpretation of sequence of strata

    • based on formation of depositional layers

    • Stratum is coherent layer

    • From geology

  • seriation (horizontal/vertical space)

    • Morphological changes based on style

    • Changes through time

• Charting by stylistic differences

  • innovations often seem to be independently discovered/developed

• Assumptions

  • Artifacts = Culture

  • Similar assemblies are equivalent to same time/people

  • And likewise negated

  • Change initiated by:

    • diffusion of ideas, people, independent invention

    • Radical changes caused by invasion or what historians describe as "site-unit intrusion"

• Reconstruction:

  • determining function

  • Variability may reflect changing functions/activities/organization, not in people/ideas

• Inferring of artifact function

  • What are things used for?

  • No ethnographic example

  • Use-wear analysis

Lice used to trace origins of human clothing

Needles also used to make these judgments

Louse species have an ancestor-descendant relationship

• Head louse ancestral to body louse

• Group containing body lice occurred recently

Clothing evidence comes from burials

• Sunghir site, hundreds of ivory beads around arms and legs

• All males, no close biological relationships

• Married outside of home groups

Migration to new world occurred only after anatomically modern human evolved

Founding populations must be sustaining and self-sufficient

Archaeological record is body of evidence relating to the past, it's not written

• We can become a part of the record over time

• Record is often deeply buried

• But can occur on the surface, where soil forms slowly (great basin of Nevada, Alaska, etc)

Archaeology isn't all about the artifacts

• It's also about the context!

• Associations to other artifacts, ecofacts, features, time relations, etc

• Amphorae in contexts, for what were they used?

Building knowledge:

• Evaluate ideas, test completeness, etc

• Inductive vs deductive reasonings

• Inductive: from particular observations to generalizations

• Deductive: From general principles to specific conclusions

Archaeology began with ideas

What about the mounds covering the midwest

• Who are the Native Americans? What were their origins?

• Contained artifacts from many different places

• Congress acted

occurred during last 12k years (the Holocene)

Food procurement: hunting, fishing, gathering animals and plants that nature provides without effort to enhance supply of resources

Food production: humans gaining control over supply with varying kinds and degrees of investment; clearest expression involves cultivation of domesticated plants and herding of domesticated animals

Hunter-gatherers altered environments to improve distribution and density of plants and animals

• Australian Aborigines have done so for 35k years by burning

• Domesticated the environment, but not the species therein

Domesticated lands

• Yosemite domesticated by native peoples

Low-level production

• vast/diverse middle ground between those depending solely on procurement and those depending on agriculture

• Domestication is central landmark of the middle ground

Resource management: extend range or modify nature, distribution and density of species

• propagation, tending, protecting

• Reducing competition

• prolonging or increasing harvest

• ensure appearance in space/time

Cultivation: conscious planting, protecting, harvesting, deliberate sowing of seeds etc, usually in prepared ground

Horticulture: small-scale planting in house gardens or swidden plots, combined w/ routine hunting/gathering

Agriculture: domesticates acct for majority of subsistence; essentially full commitment to and reliance upon food production

Domestication

• human manipulation of natural environment to improve food supply

• intervention into plants and animals

• def'n: plants or animals that show recognizable indications of morphological change away from wild phenotypes by conscious or unconscious selection of traits.

• domesticates: species of plants and animals with either physical or genetic changes, or a combination thereof caused by human activity

  • determine selective pressures, creating new rules for success

  • Generations of response to rules change pheno-/genotype

  • Some caused deliberately, but most are incidental

• Generally increases mutual dependence; human toll can be significant when domesticates fail

• Very long-term, incremental

• Unforeseen end results aren't reasons behind domestication and agriculture

• current utility is long-term consequence

• Dogs not intentional

• But guinea pigs were

• What about corn?

  • Originally for sugar in stalks

• How often informs why

• Wheat is good example

Holocene – humans go from hunter-gatherers to city-dwellers with complex formations

Agriculture is necessary, but not sufficient for formation of state-level societies

Money was commodity, social differentiation and resource distribution eventually evolves to market exchange

Lineage ties move clans, lineages, tribes: related ancestery

Chiefdom tends towards male-preference

What is culture?

• Behavioral complex, i.e., law, morals, custom, etc.

• Learned & shared

• All domains of behavior

• transmitted across generations

• Transmitted by language, symbols

• not genetic

• understood by group members

• includes guidelines for appropriate behavior

Subcultures exist within a larger culture – not same as ethnic group

Culture must be learned, humans in particular have long time for it

• Trial and error

• Social learning/imitation

• Learning biases exist, some are physiological

Distinctive, essential, mysterious, practical, essential

Means of coding information

Sharing ideas

Many, many languages, all complex

instinctive tendency to speak within man

Grammar, phonology, semantics, pragmatics

How is it processed?

How is it acquired?

How is it computed?

Not: written language, proper grammar (descriptive grammar vs prescriptive grammar), thought

Words arbitrary (Saussere)

Grammar & Chomsky

Phrase-structure rules important