DSST General Anthropology cheat sheet

Four subfields of anthropology: physical (biological), cultural, archaeology, linguistics; physical anthropology studies human evolution, variation, and primate biology.

Natural selection (Darwin/Wallace): heritable variation plus differential reproductive success changes allele frequencies across generations; fitness = relative reproductive contribution.

Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium: p + q = 1 and p² + 2pq + q² = 1; deviations indicate selection, mutation, migration (gene flow), genetic drift, or nonrandom mating.

Speciation requires reproductive isolation: allopatric (geographic barrier) vs. sympatric (within one range); cline = gradual geographic change in a trait.

Hominin bipedalism indicators: foramen magnum positioned anteriorly, S-shaped spine, shortened and broadened pelvis, valgus knee, non-opposable big toe.

Key fossil sequence: Sahelanthropus and Ardipithecus (early candidates), Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy, ~3.2 Ma), Homo habilis (Oldowan tools), Homo erectus (Acheulean, fire, dispersal from Africa), Homo sapiens (~300 ka).

Brain size trend: australopithecines ~400-500 cc, H. erectus ~900-1100 cc, modern H. sapiens ~1350 cc average; cranial capacity alone does not determine cognition.

Primate traits: grasping hands and feet with nails, stereoscopic color vision, large brain-to-body ratio, reduced olfaction, extended juvenile dependency; prosimians, monkeys, apes, humans.

Modern human variation is clinal and largely continuous; biological race categories do not map onto discrete genetic clusters, and most genetic variation occurs within populations.

Culture is learned, shared, symbolic, integrated, and adaptive; ethnocentrism judges others by one's own standards, while cultural relativism interprets behavior within its own context.

Ethnography = long-term fieldwork producing detailed description of one society; ethnology = cross-cultural comparison to build general theory.

Participant observation: the researcher lives among people, joins daily activities, and records fieldnotes; reflexivity acknowledges the observer's effect on data.

Kinship systems: unilineal descent (patrilineal, matrilineal) vs. bilateral/cognatic; terminology sets (Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Omaha, Crow, Sudanese) reflect different patterns of cousin classification.

Marriage rules: exogamy requires marrying outside a group; endogamy requires marrying inside; bridewealth transfers goods to the bride's family, dowry to the couple or groom's household.

Subsistence types: foraging, pastoralism (nomadic or transhumant), horticulture (shifting cultivation, swidden), agriculture (intensive, irrigation, plow), industrial; each correlates with social complexity and sedentism.

Political organization typology (Service): band, tribe, chiefdom, state; associated with egalitarian vs. ranked vs. stratified social structures and centralized authority.

Economic anthropology: reciprocity (generalized, balanced, negative), redistribution (potlatch, tribute), and market exchange; gift exchange builds social obligation (Mauss).

Religion and symbolism: animism, animatism (mana), totemism, magic (Frazer: imitative and contagious), ritual (rites of passage: separation, liminality, incorporation - van Gennep/Turner).

Archaeology reconstructs past behavior from material remains; it is destructive, so recording context (provenience, stratigraphy, association) precedes removal of finds.

Law of superposition: in undisturbed deposits, lower strata are older; relative dating uses stratigraphy, seriation, and typology, while absolute dating uses radiocarbon, potassium-argon, thermoluminescence, and dendrochronology.

Radiocarbon dating applies to organic material up to ~50,000 years; results are reported as uncalibrated ¹⁴C years and must be calibrated (e.g., IntCal curve) before comparison with calendar dates.

Potassium-argon (K-Ar/Ar-Ar) dates volcanic rock and ash in the hundreds of thousands to millions of years, making it central to early hominin sites in East Africa.

Survey methods: pedestrian survey, remote sensing (LiDAR, aerial imagery), GIS, and sampling strategies (random, systematic, stratified) to locate sites without excavation.

Excavation follows natural or arbitrary levels, uses a datum and grid, and records plan and profile drawings plus photographs; flotation recovers plant remains and small artifacts.

Lithic analysis: core vs. flake, debitage, retouch; Oldowan (choppers) precedes Acheulean (hand axes) precedes prepared-core and blade technologies; use-wear and residue analysis infer function.

Taphonomy studies postmortem processes (scavenging, decay, water transport) that bias assemblages; experimental replication and ethnoarchaeology (Binford) help infer behavior.

Cultural resource management (CRM) is contract archaeology mandated by legislation (e.g., US NHPA Section 106); it accounts for most professional archaeological employment.

Descriptive linguistics analyzes language as spoken without judging correctness; prescriptivism instead imposes rules about 'proper' usage.

Levels of analysis: phonetics (sounds), phonology (sound systems), morphology (word structure), syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning), pragmatics (context-dependent meaning).

Phoneme = smallest contrastive sound unit (tested by minimal pairs, e.g., /p/ vs. /b/ in 'pat'/'bat'); allophone = non-contrastive variant of one phoneme.

Morpheme = smallest meaningful unit; free vs. bound morphemes; derivational affixes change category or meaning, inflectional affixes mark grammatical features such as tense or number.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: language influences thought; strong linguistic determinism is largely rejected, while weaker linguistic relativity has experimental support (e.g., color and spatial terms).

Language change: regular sound shifts (Grimm's law), comparative method reconstructs proto-languages, and cognates establish genetic relationships among languages.

Sociolinguistics: dialect variation by region, class, ethnicity, and gender; code-switching, pidgins (no native speakers), and creoles (nativized, full grammar) reflect contact situations.

Historical linguistics distinguishes language families (Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic); glottochronology estimates divergence but is controversial.

Human language design features (Hockett): arbitrariness, displacement, productivity, and duality of patterning distinguish it from most animal communication systems.