ASSEB HS Anthropology cheat sheet

Holism: anthropology studies human life as an integrated whole, linking biology, culture, language, and material remains rather than isolating one dimension.

Four-field structure: biological anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology; applied anthropology is often treated as a fifth, practice-oriented branch.

Comparative and cross-cultural method: conclusions are tested against multiple societies to avoid generalizing from a single case (ethnocentrism risk).

Ethnography: long-term participant observation producing thick description (Geertz) of meaning, not just behavior counts.

Etic vs. emic: etic uses the analyst's external categories; emic uses insiders' own categories and meanings.

Reliability vs. validity: reliability is consistency of measurement across observers or occasions; validity is whether the measure captures the intended concept.

Sampling logic: probability samples support statistical generalization; purposive or snowball samples suit hidden or small populations but limit inference.

Ethical clearance: informed consent, anonymity, no-harm, and IRB or ethics-board review precede fieldwork involving human subjects.

Reflexivity: the researcher's position, presence, and biases are documented as part of the data, since observation alters the field.

Natural selection requires heritable variation, differential reproductive success, and competition for limited resources; it acts on phenotypes, changing allele frequencies.

Speciation: allopatric speciation follows geographic isolation; sympatric speciation occurs without geographic separation.

Bipedalism indicators in hominins: anteriorly placed foramen magnum, valgus knee, shortened pelvis, and non-opposable big toe.

Encephalization: brain size relative to body mass rises across the Homo lineage; Homo erectus shows expanded cranial capacity with controlled fire and Acheulean tools.

Dating methods: radiocarbon works on organic material up to roughly 50,000 years; potassium-argon and argon-argon date volcanic rock over millions of years.

Primate social patterns: many primates show female philopatry with male dispersal, but the pattern varies by species and mating system.

Human variation is clinal and continuous; biological race categories do not map onto discrete genetic clusters, and most genetic variation lies within populations.

Molecular evidence places the human-chimpanzee split roughly 6-8 million years ago; mitochondrial DNA traces maternal lineages to a common African ancestor.

Stratigraphy: lower layers are generally older (law of superposition); intrusions and disturbances must be identified before dating a sequence.

Relative dating orders finds without absolute ages: seriation, stratigraphy, and index fossils (biostratigraphy).

Absolute dating gives calendar or radiometric ages: radiocarbon, thermoluminescence, dendrochronology, and optically stimulated luminescence.

Formation processes: natural (erosion, decay, bioturbation) and cultural (discard, reuse, abandonment) processes both shape the archaeological record.

Context is primary data: an object's position, association, and matrix determine meaning; looting destroys context permanently.

Lithic analysis: core-and-flake versus blade technologies, use-wear, and debitage reveal reduction sequences and raw-material sourcing.

Excavation is destructive; recording (plans, photographs, three-point provenience) must precede removal, and in-situ conservation is preferred.

Ceramic seriation uses style change over time; frequency curves of decorated types order assemblages into relative sequences.

Descriptive linguistics analyzes phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics; no language is intrinsically simpler than another.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: strong version claims language determines thought; weak version claims language influences perception and categorization.

Linguistic relativity is tested with color terms, spatial frames, and grammatical gender; evidence supports influence, not determinism.

Code-switching is rule-governed alternation between languages or registers, marking identity, context, or stance.

Language ideology: beliefs about correct or prestigious speech shape social evaluation and access to resources.

Pidgin is a simplified contact language with no native speakers; creole is a pidgin that has acquired native speakers and full grammar.

Speech community shares norms of language use, not necessarily a single language; communicative competence (Hymes) complements grammatical competence.

Language shift and revitalization: intergenerational transmission is the key indicator; documentation alone does not maintain a language.

Culture is learned, shared, symbolic, integrated, and adaptive; it is not biologically inherited.

Ethnocentrism judges other cultures by one's own standards; cultural relativism interprets practices within their own context without necessarily endorsing them.

Structural functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski) explains institutions by the needs they meet; criticized for ignoring conflict and change.

Structuralism (Lévi-Strauss) analyzes binary oppositions and underlying mental structures in myth, kinship, and classification.

Symbolic and interpretive anthropology (Geertz) reads culture as webs of meaning; thick description distinguishes winking from blinking.

Practice theory (Bourdieu): habitus, capital, and field explain how structure is reproduced and transformed through everyday action.

Agency and structure: actors reproduce or resist norms; structuration (Giddens) treats the two as mutually constitutive.

Cultural change sources: diffusion, acculturation, invention, and forced change; syncretism blends elements into new forms.

Descent systems: unilineal (patrilineal or matrilineal), ambilineal, and bilateral/cognatic; unilineal groups often control property and political office.

Residence patterns: patrilocal, matrilocal, uxorilocal, avunculocal, neolocal, and ambilocal; residence often follows descent and economy.

Marriage forms: monogamy, polygyny (one man, several wives), polyandry (one woman, several husbands); fraternal polyandry conserves land.

Bridewealth transfers goods to the bride's family; dowry transfers goods with the bride; both differ from bride service (labor).

Cross-cousin marriage (MBD/FZS) versus parallel-cousin marriage reflects alliance and descent rules; prohibited versus preferred distinctions matter.

Terminology systems: Eskimo (bilateral), Hawaiian (generational), Iroquois (bifurcate merging), Sudanese (descriptive), and Omaha/Crow variants.

Incest taboo is near-universal but its content (which relatives) varies; explanations include inbreeding avoidance and alliance building.

Fictive kinship and adoption extend kin terms to non-relatives, showing that kinship is socially constructed as well as biological.

Subsistence types: foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture, and industrialism; each correlates with mobility, property, and social complexity.

Reciprocity forms: generalized (no immediate return), balanced (expected return), and negative (taking without return); redistribution centers goods through a authority; market exchange uses price.

Political typology: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state; scale, centralization, and stratification increase along the sequence, though the typology is idealized.

Legitimacy and authority (Weber): traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal bases; power is capacity, authority is legitimated power.

Social control includes gossip, shame, ritual sanctions, and formal courts; small-scale societies often rely on diffuse sanctions.

Religion elements: beliefs, myths, rituals, sacred/profane distinction (Durkheim), and specialists such as shamans, priests, and prophets.

Ritual types: rites of passage (separation, liminality, incorporation per van Gennep and Turner), calendrical rites, and rites of intensification.

Magic, religion, and science (Malinowski): magic is instrumental and practical, religion addresses ultimate meaning; both respond to uncertainty.

Applied anthropology uses anthropological methods to address practical problems in health, development, education, business, and policy.

AAA-style ethics: do no harm, obtain informed consent, ensure anonymity where promised, and weigh obligations to participants, sponsors, and the public.

Cultural resource management (CRM) is the largest employer of archaeologists; legislation such as Section 106 review requires assessment before construction.

Participatory action research involves communities as co-researchers, shifting authority from outside expert to local stakeholders.

Development critique: top-down projects fail when they ignore local knowledge, gender roles, and existing institutions.

Globalization effects: homogenization and hybridization coexist; glocalization adapts global goods to local meanings.

Digital and medical anthropology address online communities, surveillance, and health disparities; data ethics extends consent to secondary use.

Public anthropology communicates findings beyond academia; misrepresentation risks reinforcing stereotypes and harming studied communities.

Holism: anthropology studies human life as an integrated whole, linking biology, culture, language, and material remains rather than isolating one dimension.

Four-field structure: biological anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology; applied anthropology is often treated as a fifth, practice-oriented branch.

Comparative and cross-cultural method: conclusions are tested against multiple societies to avoid generalizing from a single case (ethnocentrism risk).

Ethnography: long-term participant observation producing thick description (Geertz) of meaning, not just behavior counts.

Etic vs. emic: etic uses the analyst's external categories; emic uses insiders' own categories and meanings.

Reliability vs. validity: reliability is consistency of measurement across observers or occasions; validity is whether the measure captures the intended concept.

Sampling logic: probability samples support statistical generalization; purposive or snowball samples suit hidden or small populations but limit inference.

Ethical clearance: informed consent, anonymity, no-harm, and IRB or ethics-board review precede fieldwork involving human subjects.

Reflexivity: the researcher's position, presence, and biases are documented as part of the data, since observation alters the field.

Natural selection requires heritable variation, differential reproductive success, and competition for limited resources; it acts on phenotypes, changing allele frequencies.

Speciation: allopatric speciation follows geographic isolation; sympatric speciation occurs without geographic separation.

Bipedalism indicators in hominins: anteriorly placed foramen magnum, valgus knee, shortened pelvis, and non-opposable big toe.

Encephalization: brain size relative to body mass rises across the Homo lineage; Homo erectus shows expanded cranial capacity with controlled fire and Acheulean tools.

Dating methods: radiocarbon works on organic material up to roughly 50,000 years; potassium-argon and argon-argon date volcanic rock over millions of years.

Primate social patterns: many primates show female philopatry with male dispersal, but the pattern varies by species and mating system.

Human variation is clinal and continuous; biological race categories do not map onto discrete genetic clusters, and most genetic variation lies within populations.

Molecular evidence places the human-chimpanzee split roughly 6-8 million years ago; mitochondrial DNA traces maternal lineages to a common African ancestor.

Stratigraphy: lower layers are generally older (law of superposition); intrusions and disturbances must be identified before dating a sequence.

Relative dating orders finds without absolute ages: seriation, stratigraphy, and index fossils (biostratigraphy).

Absolute dating gives calendar or radiometric ages: radiocarbon, thermoluminescence, dendrochronology, and optically stimulated luminescence.

Formation processes: natural (erosion, decay, bioturbation) and cultural (discard, reuse, abandonment) processes both shape the archaeological record.

Context is primary data: an object's position, association, and matrix determine meaning; looting destroys context permanently.

Lithic analysis: core-and-flake versus blade technologies, use-wear, and debitage reveal reduction sequences and raw-material sourcing.

Excavation is destructive; recording (plans, photographs, three-point provenience) must precede removal, and in-situ conservation is preferred.

Ceramic seriation uses style change over time; frequency curves of decorated types order assemblages into relative sequences.

Descriptive linguistics analyzes phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics; no language is intrinsically simpler than another.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: strong version claims language determines thought; weak version claims language influences perception and categorization.

Linguistic relativity is tested with color terms, spatial frames, and grammatical gender; evidence supports influence, not determinism.

Code-switching is rule-governed alternation between languages or registers, marking identity, context, or stance.

Language ideology: beliefs about correct or prestigious speech shape social evaluation and access to resources.

Pidgin is a simplified contact language with no native speakers; creole is a pidgin that has acquired native speakers and full grammar.

Speech community shares norms of language use, not necessarily a single language; communicative competence (Hymes) complements grammatical competence.

Language shift and revitalization: intergenerational transmission is the key indicator; documentation alone does not maintain a language.

Culture is learned, shared, symbolic, integrated, and adaptive; it is not biologically inherited.

Ethnocentrism judges other cultures by one's own standards; cultural relativism interprets practices within their own context without necessarily endorsing them.

Structural functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski) explains institutions by the needs they meet; criticized for ignoring conflict and change.

Structuralism (Lévi-Strauss) analyzes binary oppositions and underlying mental structures in myth, kinship, and classification.

Symbolic and interpretive anthropology (Geertz) reads culture as webs of meaning; thick description distinguishes winking from blinking.

Practice theory (Bourdieu): habitus, capital, and field explain how structure is reproduced and transformed through everyday action.

Agency and structure: actors reproduce or resist norms; structuration (Giddens) treats the two as mutually constitutive.

Cultural change sources: diffusion, acculturation, invention, and forced change; syncretism blends elements into new forms.

Descent systems: unilineal (patrilineal or matrilineal), ambilineal, and bilateral/cognatic; unilineal groups often control property and political office.

Residence patterns: patrilocal, matrilocal, uxorilocal, avunculocal, neolocal, and ambilocal; residence often follows descent and economy.

Marriage forms: monogamy, polygyny (one man, several wives), polyandry (one woman, several husbands); fraternal polyandry conserves land.

Bridewealth transfers goods to the bride's family; dowry transfers goods with the bride; both differ from bride service (labor).

Cross-cousin marriage (MBD/FZS) versus parallel-cousin marriage reflects alliance and descent rules; prohibited versus preferred distinctions matter.

Terminology systems: Eskimo (bilateral), Hawaiian (generational), Iroquois (bifurcate merging), Sudanese (descriptive), and Omaha/Crow variants.

Incest taboo is near-universal but its content (which relatives) varies; explanations include inbreeding avoidance and alliance building.

Fictive kinship and adoption extend kin terms to non-relatives, showing that kinship is socially constructed as well as biological.

Subsistence types: foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture, and industrialism; each correlates with mobility, property, and social complexity.

Reciprocity forms: generalized (no immediate return), balanced (expected return), and negative (taking without return); redistribution centers goods through a authority; market exchange uses price.

Political typology: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state; scale, centralization, and stratification increase along the sequence, though the typology is idealized.

Legitimacy and authority (Weber): traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal bases; power is capacity, authority is legitimated power.

Social control includes gossip, shame, ritual sanctions, and formal courts; small-scale societies often rely on diffuse sanctions.

Religion elements: beliefs, myths, rituals, sacred/profane distinction (Durkheim), and specialists such as shamans, priests, and prophets.

Ritual types: rites of passage (separation, liminality, incorporation per van Gennep and Turner), calendrical rites, and rites of intensification.

Magic, religion, and science (Malinowski): magic is instrumental and practical, religion addresses ultimate meaning; both respond to uncertainty.

Applied anthropology uses anthropological methods to address practical problems in health, development, education, business, and policy.

AAA-style ethics: do no harm, obtain informed consent, ensure anonymity where promised, and weigh obligations to participants, sponsors, and the public.

Cultural resource management (CRM) is the largest employer of archaeologists; legislation such as Section 106 review requires assessment before construction.

Participatory action research involves communities as co-researchers, shifting authority from outside expert to local stakeholders.

Development critique: top-down projects fail when they ignore local knowledge, gender roles, and existing institutions.

Globalization effects: homogenization and hybridization coexist; glocalization adapts global goods to local meanings.

Digital and medical anthropology address online communities, surveillance, and health disparities; data ethics extends consent to secondary use.

Public anthropology communicates findings beyond academia; misrepresentation risks reinforcing stereotypes and harming studied communities.