ANTH 1001 Study Guide Questions with 100%
Correct Answers
What is Anthropology?
Anthropology is the study of humankind, viewed from the perspective of all people and all
times. It includes four branches or subdisciplines: cultural anthropology, archaeology,
linguistic anthropology, and biological anthropology.
What makes anthropology different from other social science fields?
It's a comparative discipline, biocultural approach.
Ethnocentrism
Thinking your own ethnicity is the center of the world.
Name and define the four major subfields.
1. Cultural Anthropology - study of customary patterns in human behavior, thought, and
feelings. Describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and
differences.
2. Archaeology - study of human cultures through the recovery, analysis, and interpretation of
material culture from past civilizations. Considered the cultural anthropology of the human
past.
3. Linguistic Anthropology - study of language. Allows people to preserve and transmit
details of their culture from generation to generation.
4. Biological Anthropology - systematic study of humans as biological organisms.
What are some examples of each?
,Cultural Anthropology - Ethnography
Archaeology - Zooarchaeology
Linguistic Anthropology - Socio-linguistics
Biological Anthropology - Primatology
Explain how all four of the subfields can be considered anthropology.
They all acknowledge the diversity of humankind in all contexts. No other discipline
embraces the breadth of the human condition in this manner. Also the diverse discipline
differs from other disciplines in its commitment to the notion that unlike other animals,
humans are biocultural.
Explain the concept of a theory.
An explanation as to why a natural phenomenon takes place. The scientist thus uses
observation, documentation, and testing to generate hypotheses and, eventually, to construct a
theory based on those hypotheses.
What does it mean to say that anthropology is a science? What does this entail?
They derive knowledge via the scientific method
John Ray
species/genus
Carolus Linnaeus
Systema Naturae (1758), Taxonomy, Binomial nomenclature
Comte de Buffon
dynamic relationship between environment and life
Erasmus Darwin
, Zoonomia and Temple of Nature
Jean Baptiste Lamarck
theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics and animals change in response to their
environment (i.e. Short-necked Giraffes to Longer-necked descendants).
Georges Cuvier
Catastrophism
Thomas Malthus
Malthus Theory: population increases faster than resources and thus there is a crisis point
Essay on Principles of Population: Two Principles
-Malthus
1. more individuals are born in a species than reach maturity
2. high death rate before adulthood is a result of "struggle for existence"
James Hutton
founder of modern geology
-Uniformitarianism: rejects catastrophism, the processes at work today in forming the Earth
have always been at work
-earth is millions of years old
Charles Lyell
Catastrophism vs. Gradualism? Both.
Mary Anning
Fossil collector: Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus
Correct Answers
What is Anthropology?
Anthropology is the study of humankind, viewed from the perspective of all people and all
times. It includes four branches or subdisciplines: cultural anthropology, archaeology,
linguistic anthropology, and biological anthropology.
What makes anthropology different from other social science fields?
It's a comparative discipline, biocultural approach.
Ethnocentrism
Thinking your own ethnicity is the center of the world.
Name and define the four major subfields.
1. Cultural Anthropology - study of customary patterns in human behavior, thought, and
feelings. Describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and
differences.
2. Archaeology - study of human cultures through the recovery, analysis, and interpretation of
material culture from past civilizations. Considered the cultural anthropology of the human
past.
3. Linguistic Anthropology - study of language. Allows people to preserve and transmit
details of their culture from generation to generation.
4. Biological Anthropology - systematic study of humans as biological organisms.
What are some examples of each?
,Cultural Anthropology - Ethnography
Archaeology - Zooarchaeology
Linguistic Anthropology - Socio-linguistics
Biological Anthropology - Primatology
Explain how all four of the subfields can be considered anthropology.
They all acknowledge the diversity of humankind in all contexts. No other discipline
embraces the breadth of the human condition in this manner. Also the diverse discipline
differs from other disciplines in its commitment to the notion that unlike other animals,
humans are biocultural.
Explain the concept of a theory.
An explanation as to why a natural phenomenon takes place. The scientist thus uses
observation, documentation, and testing to generate hypotheses and, eventually, to construct a
theory based on those hypotheses.
What does it mean to say that anthropology is a science? What does this entail?
They derive knowledge via the scientific method
John Ray
species/genus
Carolus Linnaeus
Systema Naturae (1758), Taxonomy, Binomial nomenclature
Comte de Buffon
dynamic relationship between environment and life
Erasmus Darwin
, Zoonomia and Temple of Nature
Jean Baptiste Lamarck
theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics and animals change in response to their
environment (i.e. Short-necked Giraffes to Longer-necked descendants).
Georges Cuvier
Catastrophism
Thomas Malthus
Malthus Theory: population increases faster than resources and thus there is a crisis point
Essay on Principles of Population: Two Principles
-Malthus
1. more individuals are born in a species than reach maturity
2. high death rate before adulthood is a result of "struggle for existence"
James Hutton
founder of modern geology
-Uniformitarianism: rejects catastrophism, the processes at work today in forming the Earth
have always been at work
-earth is millions of years old
Charles Lyell
Catastrophism vs. Gradualism? Both.
Mary Anning
Fossil collector: Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus
